IAM186- Writer, Author and Podcast Host Creates Products to Help Other Creators and CEOs

Paul Jarvis is a writer and designer who’s had his own company of one for the last two decades. He's the author of Company of one: why staying small is the next big thing for business.

He’s worked with professional athletes like Steve Nash and Shaquille O’Neal, corporate giants like Microsoft and Mercedes-Benz, and entrepreneurs with online empires like Danielle LaPorte and Marie Forleo.

Currently he teaches popular online courses, hosts several podcasts and develops small but mighty software solutions. Paul’s ideas about growth have been featured in: Wired, Huffington Post, Fast Company, INC Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine.

• CEO Hack: (1) Growth is optional, (2) Having a smaller audience to provide quality services
• CEO Nugget: Every business is a lifestyle business
• CEO Defined: Defining what success is at a personal level

Website: https://ofone.co/

Twitter: @pjrvs

Full Interview

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresham from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Paul Jarvis of the Company of One. Paul, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Paul Jarvis 0:35

Yeah, thanks, Gresham for having me. Appreciate it.

Gresham Harkless 0:37

No problem. No problem. Super happy to have you on. What I wanted to do was just read your bio so everyone can learn a little bit more about Paul and all the awesome things that he's doing. Paul Jarvis is a writer and designer who has had his Company of one for the last two decades.

He's the author of Company of One: why staying small is the next big thing for Businesses. He's worried about professional athletes like Steve Nash and Shaquille O'Neal, corporate giants like Microsoft and Mercedes Benz, and entrepreneurs with online empires like Danielle Laporte and Marie Forleo. Currently, he teaches popular online courses hosts several podcasts, and develops small but mighty software solutions. Paul's ideas and growth have been featured in Wired, Huffington Post, Fast Company, INC Magazine, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Paul, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Paul Jarvis 1:19

Yeah, let's do this.

Gresham Harkless 1:21

Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business and write your book?

Paul Jarvis 1:27

Yeah, so it was an accident, to be honest. I was working at an agency doing design, and I wanted to find another job, I liked the work. And I like the clients. I didn't like the company. So I was like, I'm just gonna go find another job.

So I quit. And I was gonna go to the life, this is the 90s, remember, so he's gonna go to the library to look up how to write a resume so I could get another job. But before I could do that, I started to get calls from the clients of that agency saying, like, hey, Paul, we like working with you more than the agency, let us know where you're going to go next for your job.

And we'll take our business there. And I got a bunch of these calls. And I was like, Maybe I should just work for myself. And then I can work with these people directly. And then I can just run the business in the way that I actually want to run the business. And that's kind of how it started. And it's been, it's been 20 years. So I didn't end up ever learning how to write a resume.

Gresham Harkless 2:16

There you go. That's it sounds like that was a good thing, though. In the grand scheme of things.

Paul Jarvis 2:19

Definitely. Well, no, that's awesome to hear kind of how sometimes, you know, we have a plan for our lives and things and how we want to do things. And the universe sometimes pushes us toward where we should be going, even though we don't necessarily want to go there.

Gresham Harkless 2:31

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I know you've touched on a little bit, but I wanted to hear a little bit more about like what you're doing that kind of helps support clients. Tell us a little bit more about you know what you've done with your work. Tell us how you kind of helps work.

Paul Jarvis 2:40

Yeah, so I did client work, and web design work with clients for probably about 12 years, and I transitioned away from that into products. So now I do so I write books like Company of One: why staying small is the next big thing in Business. That's available Jan 15, audio, digital, and physical, it actually exists as a book as well. But then I also do things like make software products.

So I have a product called Fathom that does analytics without taking and using personal data from website visitors. I teach a bunch of courses for freelancers and email marketers, creative bosses, and Chimp Essentials, really I just do a lot of writing and making things on the internet. That's kind of my daily life writing a bunch and then making things for other creators and other CEOs, other business people on the internet. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 3:26

Interesting. That sounds like a creative dream to be able to kind of like create content yourself and then have a mix of actually creating things to help out creatives as well.

Paul Jarvis 3:33

Yeah, exactly. I really like it. And I'm glad. Yeah, I'm glad that my day is filled with that, to be honest.

Gresham Harkless 3:39

Yeah, it sounds like a good day. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is kind of like your differentiator, what you feel kind of sets you and or your organization apart.

Paul Jarvis 3:48
Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is that I focus on retention over acquisition. So I focus on making the customers that I have very happy. Happy with the things they buy, I want them to feel just as excited after they purchase something from me, as they do with that moment where the endorphins are released, where they're like, oh, I'm gonna buy this thing. And they're excited, I want them to feel excited after they buy the things I sell as well.

And so I focus on retaining customers. And actually, more than half of the customers that I have that about one thing from me have bought multiple things from me or all of the products that I have.

And by doing that, it's easier because it's I don't have to go out and constantly try to pitch new people, I just have to make sure that my existing customer base is happy, and make sure that I'm always building products for them. And then if I do have a new product, I don't really have to sell them on it because they already trust me. They trust my brand. They trust my company, they know they're getting something quality. So if it makes sense for them, then they're just gonna buy it and I don't have to work on like a long sales cycle or a long sales pitch.

And then as well by focusing on that by focusing on retention, they actually become my sales force. So I don't need a sales team because my customers are always out there in the market and talking to their own audiences about hey, this is a product that I really like. This is a business that I really liked. This is a writer that I really like, why don't you check him out it's a non-paid sales force. So as long as I keep my customers happy, then that basically becomes the engine for driving revenue for my business.

Gresham Harkless 5:11

Yeah, that makes sense. And it kind of sounds like you develop what I like to always call a drive, which is people that are so passionate about what it is that you're doing that not only will they buy, they'll continue to buy, they're happy. They don't have the frustration of buyer's remorse after they buy something that they want to buy. And then they also want to advocate for you as well, too.

Paul Jarvis 5:28

Yeah, exactly. And that's really worked well for my business.

Gresham Harkless 5:31

How have you been able to kind of build that? Has it been something that kind of just happened? Or did you kind of say, Okay, this is something that where I want to build for myself, and then it happens that other people wanted it as well, too?

Paul Jarvis 5:41

Yeah, I mean, there's a bunch of factors there. I think the first is that trust if you want to build a product that's trustworthy, it has to happen before you actually start building it. So I'm always focused on making something that's of the highest quality. And in order to do that, the second part of that is that I'm always in conversation with my customers and with my audience.

So the biggest thing for me is that I share an article that I write every single week with my newsletter, I've done this for six years, and I've never missed a Sunday other than when I'm taking a break from the list, which I, which I mentioned to people.

And so I'm always in communication with them. I'm always seeing like, what they're working on what they're struggling with what they like, what they don't like, even with like sales cycles for the products that I have, I'm always asking people like, why did you buy this thing, because there are millions of other business books, or there's million, or there are thousands of other courses that they could buy. So I'm interested in why they specifically buy it from me, and then how I can better serve those people who are interested in buying from me as opposed to somebody else.

And it's just it's constant communication. Like, I've been talking to my audience once a week, starting the last six years through my newsletter. And before that, when I was doing client service work, I was talking to my customers all the time, even if we had finished projects, I was always keeping in touch with the clients that I had, because those clients would lead to either more work from that same client, or they would refer me to somebody else. So after I finished a client project, I didn't just stop talking to the client, I was just always keeping the lines of communication open.

Gresham Harkless 6:59

Yeah. And that's a great thing. Because as you said, through that communication you found and been able to kind of do that. Customer psychology, I guess you can call it where you're able to understand exactly, why they bought what they bought, what they were thinking through just because you kept those lines of communication open. So that's definitely a great reminder. Now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or even more information about your book, but it's something that you feel makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Paul Jarvis 7:25

Yeah, I think the biggest lesson from the book is that growth is optional. So you can grow a business and there's nothing wrong with growing a business, but you don't have to the byproduct of business success isn't always growth, it's the ability to choose what you want to do. And so my biggest thing for my business is that I like to be able to focus, like I said, on the customers that I have, that doesn't work if I had millions of customers that that works if I have thousands of customers.

And so I built a business around being able to make a great living from them. But still have a customer base that isn't so big that I can't communicate with them on a regular basis. Like I recognize people's names. When I see a sale come in for one of my products, more than likely unless it's their first purchase, I recognize their name, like I've talked to them on email, I've talked to them on Twitter, that sort of thing.

So by focusing on how I can serve my audience the best and for me, it's having a smaller audience that really makes a lot of sense to me. And that's really, it's really allowed me to build a business that I really enjoy running for, for a long time. It's, it's 20 years for me. So I'd like to keep doing it for another 20.

Gresham Harkless 8:27

Yeah, that makes sense. And I love you know, actually got a copy of your book. And when it came in, I was like this is really awesome concept because I think so much so in the business world. I've even spoken to this where the number of employees, the bigger your businesses, that is a sign of success. But I've never believed that. And I loved when I got a copy of your book and looking to have that on our bookshelf, but really looking at and changing the perspective on what success is in business and having to kind of eat up to what you want to do.

Paul Jarvis 8:51

Yeah, definitely.

Gresham Harkless 8:52

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Paul Jarvis 9:01

Oh, yeah, I mean, it would be what we were talking about that the byproduct of business success doesn't have to grow. It's freedom. And it's the freedom to choose what you want to do. I honestly think that every business is a lifestyle business, whether you work for a company, and you have to have your button to cheer from nine to five, Monday to Friday, or you work at a high growth startup where you have no time off and no free time for if you work for yourself. If you're the CEO of your own business, then you should be able to run your business in a way that helps you have the lifestyle that you want.

As for me, I like not having to be on call 24/7. That wouldn't be very fun for me. I like that I can take time off and my business isn't hurt by that. I like that if it's sunny on a Wednesday afternoon and my wife and I want to go for a bike ride because we live in the Pacific Northwest and it's never sunny! If it's a sunny day then I want to do that. So I think that if we work for ourselves, we should consider the freedoms that we want to have, and sometimes growth makes sense, but sometimes it doesn't.

Gresham Harkless 9:56

Yeah. And at your disposal, you have the option to choose one or the other which is really powerful and something that a lot of people forget. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be CEO. And as we kind of touched on a little bit, we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show, whether it be entrepreneurs or big, huge companies, or solopreneurs. But I wanted to ask you, Paul, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Paul Jarvis 10:16

Yeah, I think being a CEO means that I get to define what success is because I think the definition of success is personal. I mean, we're shown in the media that success really looks like one way. And if you're a quote-unquote, business person, then this is what success looks to you. But I think if we chase somebody else's version of success, at best, we end up with their life. And we have to hope that we're happy with that, or at worse, we failed at something that we probably didn't want in the first place. So for me, being a CEO means that I get to determine what success is to me because success really is personal.

Gresham Harkless 10:47

There you go. And that's an awesome reminder. And I love that definition. And, Chris, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best of course, they can get a hold of you and a copy of your book and hear about all the awesome projects you're working on.

Paul Jarvis 11:03

Yeah, I mean, the best way to get in touch with me is my newsletter this Sunday dispatched at pjrvs.com. Or if you Google, Paul Jarvis is my domain name, hard to remember, that's where I spend all my time. I'm not on LinkedIn, I'm not on Facebook, I'm not really on anywhere else, but my newsletters where I focus.

So that's probably the best way to get in touch with me, I think the other piece of advice that I would ask your listeners to consider is that goals can sometimes be fake, or they can be not really based on anything useful. They're just based on what we think we want.

And so if they're just artificial targets that we set for the sake of setting artificial targets, then we can get stressed out when we're trying to reach for those. It's like when I was much younger, I thought that to be a success in business, I had to make a million dollars a year. And so I started to chase that. And I was working 16 hours a day, and I was really pushing myself too hard.

And then I realized like, why am I trying to make a million dollars a year? Like what 500 or less than that would actually work for me? What if that was enough? And so when we start to consider the reason why we're setting goals, and we're setting targets, then I think we can actually set better goals and targets and we can also be less stressed out trying to achieve and then exceed these expectations over and over again.

Gresham Harkless 11:03

Yeah, that makes sense. And that's definitely a great reminder. Just because, you know, we can always listen to external forces to determine our goals. But really, all the work needs to be done internally to figure out exactly what freedom is for us. And now Paul, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out and truly appreciate you for writing the book we'll have all the links in the show notes just so that everybody can subscribe to your newsletter I appreciate you again and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Paul Jarvis 12:34

Thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Outro 12:35

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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