184: Build Better, Not Bigger, Businesses with Paul Jarvis

In this episode, I talk about a job opening at WP Tasty, and then Bjork interviews Paul Jarvis, author of Company of One, about building better, not necessarily bigger businesses. Hey. Hey, lovely listener. You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast and we'd like to take a second to thank you for downloading, subscribing and listening. You know, this is the first episode, the first new episode of 2019, and it's just so cool that we get to hang out together for an hour every single week in the pursuit of building profitable, sustainable blogs and businesses. We'd also like to take a minute to thank our sponsors, WP Tasty, our sister site that sells WordPress plugins for food bloggers. You can learn more about WP Tasty's recipe plugin, their Pinterest plugin, and their keyword auto linking plugin by going to wptast. And for today's Tasty tip, that is the little piece of advice that goes along with the information about this episode Sponsor is WP Tasty is hiring.

Yep.

WP Tasty is searching for a customer success agent to help support their customers. They're looking for an awesome communicator patient self starter who's excited about the potential for helping others. And if that sounds like you or someone you know, that's awesome. You can learn more and apply@wptasty.com job the deadline is this Sunday, January 13th. And now the episode. Paul Jarvis is one of my favorite makers online entrepreneurs ever. And he's back on the Food Blogger Pro podcast today to chat a bit about his new book, Building Better Businesses, defining growth, and learning from people who are already paying attention. Paul understands businesses in a pretty unique way. You know, it's almost like that Game of Thrones quote where Daenerys is like, I'm going to break the wheel. Paul is breaking the wheel. AKA the misconception that you need to follow everyone else's journey and definitions of success. He'll talk about how figuring out what's enough for you and your business can lead you to finding your own definition of success. It's a great episode. I'm excited for you to check it out. So if you're ready to jump in. Bjork, take it away.

Paul, welcome back to the podcast.

Heck yeah, man. Thanks for having me back.

Yeah, super excited too, to be asked.

Back a second time.

Yeah, I saw this Onion article and it was on podcasts and it said something, the title was something like, uh, 12 million podcasts are still waiting for a guest or something like that. We'll have to link to it in the show notes. But the nice thing is I feel like for our podcast, we for the most part have this idea of like, here are the people that we want to talk to and, and we're going to try and make that happen. And we were able to do that the first time. And I really encourage people to go back and check that out. Uh, it's episode 111 and we're able to do it again because you have officially gotten to the point where you have a release date for your book. We talked about that a little bit in, in the podcast episode we did before. But when is the release date and what is the book name? Let's start off by that.

Yes. So the book is called Company of One. Why Staying Small is the next big thing in Business. And it is out January 15, North America, Jan17, rest of the world.

Great. And I realized before we started this interview, you said when, when is the next time that. Or when is this podcast episode coming out? And then I got distracted and I started talking to you about the fo. Martha Melissa Coleman, who we interviewed. And then we started talking about Monster Jam. And then we started talking about this rally sport where you, like, we're doing figure eights and gonna hit people. And I never actually said the date when it would come out. So this is scheduled for January 8th. So for people that are listening to this, you can go and you can pre order the book. I've done that. And actually pre ordered one for a friend as well. And so we'll link to that. And pre orders apparently are a big deal with books. Is that right? Like, that's something that really helps books if you're able to go and pre order them. Does that sound right?

Every single pre order counts as a sale on launch day. So if you have a thousand pre orders on day one, you have a thousand recorded orders. And that helps for things like Amazon's fancy recommendation algorithm. It helps for lists like the big ones like New York Times, Wall Street Journal, that kind of stuff. And it just helps publishers know, like, okay, did we print enough books? Because a few of my friends who've written books, the audiences have been chasing physical copies because publishers hadn't printed enough. So if my publisher knows, hey, a lot of people are pre ordering this and they'll be like, hey, we will actually print enough copies for everybody so they won't be back ordered. And then everybody, then everybody wins.

Everybody gets one.

And there's a bunch of bonuses on the of1co website. As well, because I want people pre order it. They're doing me a favor, so I want to give them a little something.

Yeah, for sure. And here's what I'll say. Before we get into it, I want to make sure that we say this at the beginning. We will either it'll give away three copies or what we'll do is if you pre order it, we will somehow figure a way to cover the cost of it. So, uh, what we'd love for you to do is think about something as you're listening to this interview, one takeaway that you'd have and then jump onto the blog post that we'll publish for this and leave a comment and let us know what is. What is one thing that you're able to take away from this interview. And the, the interview is number one eight four. So you can go to foodbloggerpro.com one eight four and that will redirect you to the page for this podcast interview. And we're talking about Company of One today. And this is going to line up really well both with some of the concepts for this interview that we did with Melissa. And that was interview that's already been published and we can link to that as well. But also it's going to line up with a lot of the. The ways that I think people that listen to this podcast think about building a business. And what we so often find is there's this conflict that is introduced when somebody starts something and they feel like, hey, this is. In order for this to be successful, I have to grow this and get to this point where I have what other people would deem success. And my guess is that for you, Paul, that you maybe had a point in your career and in your life as well, where you started to step back a little bit and say, hey, what do I actually view as success? So the first question that I want to ask you is when did things start to change for you a little bit? When did you start to step back and say, hey, maybe this, maybe the game I'm playing isn't the game that I, that I actually want to be playing and I need to change up the quote unquote rules a little bit for sure.

And I mean, that's kind of the point of the book is that success is personal, so we, we should get to make better decisions. For me, man, it was like a pretty low point, to be honest. Where I was, I thought, and I've been working for myself for a while. So I'm just trying to remember the feels I had when this happened and it was back. For some reason, I thought that I would be a successful business owner if I made a million dollars a year, which, like, that sounds like a legitimate thing to try to work towards, but it wasn't based on anything. It was just. I had seen other people and I was like, if you're a millionaire, you're happy, or if you're a millionaire, you're successful, or if you're a millionaire, you know how to run a business. So it's like, I want that, too. And so I started working towards that, which was basically, I don't get paid if I'm not working. If I'm working, I get paid. So why not just work all of the hours and then I'll get paid all of the money? Which, I mean, you can see the logical progression of my idiot mind with that. But it does. Like, it doesn't hold because it wasn't based on anything. It was based on somebody else's ideal of what a business should look like or how a business should run or even what success looks like.

Where do you think you absorbed those. Those ideals from? Where. Where were those coming from?

Like, I want to just blame the media. Seems like an easy scapegoat, but I just think that. But I also think that is true in part. Like, obviously, I'm responsible for my own decisions in life, but I do think that the. The news and kind of what's out there and what's talked about, like, in the world is that this is what a successful business person is. This is how a successful business person acts. This is what a successful business does. And we're given one. Like, we're shown one example of one way to do things and one way to succeed. And I'm just like, well, I don't want. I don't want that. Now what? Now what?

And when you came to that point where you had that now what Question, I think there's multiple things that you'd have to do. One is the dismantling of this previous kind of success idol that you had. And I'm curious first to know, how did you go about doing that? How did you dismantle that and say, not only am I comfortable taking this down, but I'm now going to rebuild a new success idol and feel really good about redirecting that because that's a hard mental shift to redefine what success.

Looks like for sure, because it requires introspection, and introspection is hard. I can't remember what university there's a University that did a study where they didn't tell the participants what they were studying. They just put them in a room with no stimulus except for they hooked them up to electrodes and put a button on the table.

Yeah, I know the study you're talking about.

They were like, sit here, you'll be fine. You need to press a button. If you press the button, you get a shot. But you don't have to press a button. Yeah, most people press a button because most people don't want to sit alone with their own thoughts. Which is, which is just nuts. But also completely humanly understandable. Yeah, I mean, in order for me to dismantle it, I had to think about like. And for me, I'm so wholly pragmatic in my thought processes, I had to think about it like, like an if else statement. So employing some Boolean logic where it was like, okay, if I'm going to chase somebody else's version of success, if I win, that's one option I'm going to end up with their version. And what if I don't like it? That's not a good thing. Or else if I chase somebody else's version of success and I don't like it, then I'm going to feel like I failed at something I didn't want to. So it's a lose, lose. Like there's, there's no, there's no. Like the if isn't a good situation and the else isn't a good situation. So maybe this doesn't seem, maybe this doesn't seem right. Like maybe I can. And I'm such a. As well, like my personality is so anti authority and has always been that way. That's just like how I'm built and I'm just like, well, I don't need to do what the man wants. Like, who is this man?

Yeah, yeah.

I don't have to follow what they.

That was, that was actually going to be one of the questions that I had. You know, we're talking about Company of One and it's a. Not only is it the book, but it's also, it's a concept and it's something that I think for a lot of people will be extremely influential in shaping how they view their work and how they view what they want to become and what they want their work to become. One of the questions that I have around it is do you think that Company of One, the concept is something that when people hear it, they know that they are a company of one person. And if so, what are the characteristics of those people. And I'm thinking of somebody who's maybe in a job that's not a good fit for a company of one kind of person. And this would be a self discovery process for them. So the question again is like, are there certain characteristics of people who should be considered or consider themselves company of one people?

For sure. And I think I'll just slightly back up a bit because when I'm talking about, and I think you worded it perfectly, is it's more of like a company of one is more of a mindset. It's not a, you have to work for yourself and just be a one person business. Because I don't. That's not my business and that's not your business. I think the point is to question what makes sense and what doesn't, especially around growth. So I think in order for. And even throughout the book I talk about businesses that are like 30 to 50 people, some of them, and they're perfect examples of companies of one. So when we're talking about a company of one and defining it, actually I'll relate it to food because this is a food blogger. So just like Michael Poland's food ideology is summarized by three simple rules. I think we can do the same with Company of One. So his food ideology is eat food, not too much, mostly plants, which I agree with, except for me it's all plants instead of mostly. So I think the company of one mental model can be laid out in kind of a similar way where it's start small, define growth and keep learning. Because I think if we do those things, then we can come to better decisions. And even if we're working for another business, I think that if we take into consideration what we want to do, what we need to do, I don't think everybody is suited to be an entrepreneur. And I don't think being an entrepreneur is better than working for a company. It's only better if it doesn't make sense if you're not, if you're not finding what you need to find in your work, in so much as work can give you that, that kind of like direction and that kind of path that you want. So I think some common traits for a company of one, which could be a business of any size is things like resilience where you need to have like a greater sense of purpose which helps you adapt and change. Because things change. Things always change. You need to. If you, if you're looking at becoming a company of one or even just adopting that mental model, working on Things like autonomy. So you have to get good at something first, and then you can do the work without the micromanaging. You can basically just be given a direction, not commands to move forward. And for me especially, like I just said, I'm really bad with authority. So somebody commands me something, probably not going to do it. Somebody gives me direction for a task, I'll be like, okay, this is the direction I need to go. I'll figure out how to do it, especially if it's work. If you're paying me to figure something out, I'm going to figure out how to do it best. You just need to give me the direction. Two other things that define it are speed. So being able to work faster and get things done more efficiently. I think so, not actually, sorry, not working faster, but being able to get things done more efficiently. Because being faster can just lead to, like, frantic work, which I don't think is a good thing. And then finally, simplicity. And I think that's probably one of the biggest things, especially for me, is having simple rules, simple processes, simple systems, because they're easier to manage, they're easier to maintain, they're easier to. It's just easier for me to run a business that's simple and actually really like it. And it gives me the ability and the freedom to be creative. If all the simple nuts and bolts are taken care of and they're easy to maintain, then all I have to worry about is the creative part of my job, which is the part of the job that I like.

So those are the traits that makes sense. So resilience, autonomy, speed and simplicity. And then there's some you had talked about kind of the characteristics or the traits of a company of one, start small, define growth, keep learning. Would love to jump into each one of those. Before we get too far away from it, though, I have a question about simplicity. So the thing about simplicity or minimalism or anything that you kind of put in that category is it takes. It actually takes a lot of work. You'd think that to keep things simple means that you aren't having to do as much, but in actuality, there's a lot that goes into keeping things simple for you personally. Do you have rules around the work that you're doing that help you maintain that simplicity?

For sure. Because I think there's a difference between simple and easy. Like, I think that in order to determine, like what? Like we basically, and for me, minimalism, or considering a minimalist business, or however you want to say it, it's not about learning to Be okay with less. It's learning to be okay with enough and determining enough. And I mean, that's kind of the constant thread through the entire book that I wrote, Idea of enough. So I think in terms of thinking about how to make things simple, it requires experimentation. Like, otherwise there would just be one way to do things and we would all be handed that and be like, this is how you do it and that's the best way to do it. So I think we have to be willing to experiment with what's enough, what is too little and what is too much. Simple typically means that we're able to be able to kind of. We can apply ingenuity to work with what we've got. Kind of like MacGyver the situation because it's easier, I found, to solve problems by adding more. The simplest solution to almost anything is to just add more to fix it. And so if we come up with solutions based more on creativity or ingenuity and like MacGyver it, then we can come to more simple solutions. And then I think simplicity does require that speed that I talked about. Like, we need to be able to move quickly to keep things as simple, as simple as possible. So, yeah, it's more of a. Yeah, I think it's more of like a mindset than like a blind purge that a lot of people assume.

And when you say the simplest answer is usually to add more, what you mean? It was. It was like simplicity, inception, a little bit. What you mean is like the quickest and the most immediate answer is like, hey, let's just add more. It's not always the right answer. Like, if we are trying to keep things simple, sometimes that takes some really intentional thinking and processing. And it's not always. This is. I'm going to try and phrase this off the top of my head. Let me know if this makes sense. The. The simple answer for solving a problem isn't always going to keep things simple within the business. Does that make sense?

Kind of. So I think it would help to. We're talking really heady right now. So a good example of this would be if you have a lot of support requests in your business, this way to solve that is to hire a support person or hire another one or hire a team. But maybe the simplest solution and the best solution to get better instead of just bigger would be to maybe like tweak your onboarding. So if you're selling something, maybe you onboard people in a way that pre answers questions so they're asking less questions. Maybe it's. You make A bunch of videos that people can self select based on the problem that they have. Or maybe you have just a better way of explaining your product. Or maybe you just need to take things out of your product so it's easier to use or simpler to use. And so if we talk about it kind of in that case, it's harder to do those things. Like it's easier to just say, I'll just hire somebody to do that, but it may not necessarily be the best. Or you may end up with like, oh, holy smokes, I have 30 support people. Maybe my business can't support that, maybe the revenue that I'm generating can't support that. So it could be easier to solve any problem with more, but it may not be the best solution.

Yes. Yeah, got it. That makes sense. So I want to go back to what you're saying and remind me what you called these. Start small, define growth, keep learning. Characteristics of a company of one. Or what would you consider those three things?

The ideology of company of.

So taking that into consideration, these really three important pieces. Starting small, defining growth, which I think is so important, and then continual learning. Keep learning. What if you were to do, let's say we were to jump on a call, we had an imaginary third person on this call, and you were consulting them on starting from the beginning, a company with the mindset and characteristics of a company of one kind of culture, or, you know, adopting the principles of a company of one, keeping those things in mind, what would you, how would you advise this person to go about getting up and running with their business? What are the things that they need to introduce at the very beginning in order to have some of the company of one characteristics?

Yeah. So I think what's the most important in the beginning is figuring out what you can do quickly. Because if you're not, if you're not doing something that's making money, you're not making money. Which sounds ridiculous to say, but I think a lot of people start businesses and they have to work for months or even years to get to the point of revenue, which is risky and it's scary. And I mean, for myself and for a lot of people that I know, starting with services can actually be the fastest way to generate income in the beginning. Because if I know how to do web design, then I can offer web design to you today after this call, I could say, I'll design you a website. Whereas if I wanted to make a product that designs websites for people like Squarespace or something like that, that's going to take Months, if not years to build. I think if we're starting small, we need to think about what's the smallest version of the idea that we have that makes sense, that we can get in the market, start making money from, and start seeing how it works and how it operates. Because a lot of times we have to make a lot of assumptions and guesses about a market until it's in the market. So we can say like, oh, a bunch of people have said, like, oh, yeah, I would buy this off of you if you were selling it. That's very different than somebody punching in their credit card and giving you money for something. A lot of people say, like, I buy that, and then they probably wouldn't buy it. So getting something to market quickly as possible makes a lot of sense, even with my own stuff. Like, I run an online course called Creative Class. The initial plan was to do, I think, 32 or 33 lessons. And that was based on the pace of how long it takes me to make a lesson. That was going to take me about six months. So I pared it back to, like, okay, what are the things I absolutely have to teach in this for it to make sense? And there were seven lessons, and I got that done in, I think, like, about a month, maybe a bit more than a month. And I got it to market, and then with the people who were buying it, because I could sell it faster because it had less stuff, I just started asking the customers, what do you think is missing from this? What do you wish you knew that you didn't learn? And then I started building more lessons based on that. And those lessons, the additional lessons are way more popular than the initial lessons because I was learning from the market, so I just got something into the market faster. So I think starting small is good because a lot of us have these. These big ideas of, like, I want to make like, well, nobody says this anymore, but, like, I want to make like the next Facebook or the next LinkedIn or the next, like, Amazon. And it's like, that's great, and you can definitely work towards that. But how can you pare it back to get something out there now to start testing, to start learning, to start making money off of it, to see if you can even make money off of it. So that first one, start small, I think really relates to that is like, what can we get out there quickly to just see, like, let's see if this works or not, because there's no absolutes in business.

It's. It's amazing. The. This year for the first time I'm advising a company and this is Silicon Valley startup company that is building tools for blogs to like increase engagement. And one of the things that's been so amazing to me is, and they're way smarter than I am for this stuff that they're working on, they're just so knowledgeable. One thing that's so amazing to me though is how open they are to my feedback and insight and then how quickly they iterate on it. Like it's within a couple days they'll send me back this updated version. And what's, what I learned from that as a business owner myself, is how intentional they are in having conversations with the people that will be using their product and then taking that, integrating that in, and then showing them the next version and saying like, what do you think of this? How does this work? What are your thoughts on it? And I know that they're having these conversations with other, other people as well. And for me it was this challenge of like, gosh, what does that look like in the work that we're doing on a, on a day to day basis to like you said, start with something small, get it out into the world, shine some light on it, and what you'll see is like the idea that was in your head once there's direct sunlight on it, like looks very different than it, than it did when it's just kind of bouncing around in your mind, especially when you start to get that feedback. So for people that are listening, I think one piece of feedback is number one. Try and find that thing that's able to produce revenue for you. Maybe it's a service, maybe it's creating a product with a shorter timeline, not spending a year creating it and then actually putting that out into the world and knowing that even if people don't buy, there's still value in learning what people would be interested in or what it didn't have that they wish that they had, that it had. So I think that's great. Starting small with thinking about the business and not trying to build this huge thing and then put it out into the world. What about that second thing, defining growth? I think this was something in the book that you talked about that is so helpful and I think we can go kind of deep on this because I think there's a lot to talk about. So what does defining growth look like and why is that important?

Yeah, this is the main, like this is the meat of the book, which vegan meat in my case.

Side note there is this. I just so appreciated this it was PETA put out this. Different, different phrases, like different sayings that you should use. Did you see this? I thought it was, I thought it was so creative. Like instead of kill two birds with one stone, feed two birds with one scone. Or instead of be the guinea pig, be the test tube.

Yeah, I know. That was funnier. Still is if you look at that tweet and look at the replies of people it and running with that meme.

Yes, yes. Like the thousands of creative people that could contribute. So good. But yeah, so the meat or maybe you would say in this case the potatoes of this meal. Defining growth, what does that look like? And would love to hear your thoughts around that.

Yeah. So I think the main thing we kind of touched on this in the beginning is that I think every business is a lifestyle business in so much as every career choice you make gives you a predetermined amount of time and type of time outside of work. Like if you work for a corporation, then you're probably working 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, whether or not you have enough to do. You're sitting your butt in a chair, like pretty much a set amount of hours, time to time. If you work for a high growth startup, you're probably going to have to work a lot of hours. Elon Musk says that startups have to work 80 hours a week and he sleeps on a couch in his office and that's the lifestyle that he's given. I think that especially if we work for ourselves, I don't want my business to just give me a life and then I have to be happy or not happy with the life that it's given me. I would rather think about, okay, what's the lifestyle that I want and then how can I build a business? A profitable one of course, because it's business, but still, like, how can I build a business around the lifestyle I want? How can I build a business around what I like to do every day? And I mean that really came to the idea of growth in so much as the work that I do is writing in design. And pretty much like I have products and books and courses and software and stuff. It's writing and design is what I do and I like doing that and I like the things that I do in my day to day life. And so if I were to grow my business, which I could because it's profitable and all that, I would have to hire more people and they would have to do the job that I like doing and then I would be managing other people, which I don't actually like doing. And so the consequence of growth would be net negative for me because I don't actually want those things. It may seem like, oh, well, if I grow, I could make more money and I could do, I could have more impact and more reach. And I don't. But when I look at like the, the back end of that, the obligation of that decision making tree, it doesn't really make sense. Like, I know that I make enough money, I know that I reach enough people. And I know, especially to that point, I know that the size of my audience is somewhere there where it's profitable. But also I can get to know the people in my audience. Like if somebody buys a product from me, I've probably seen their email before on their mailing list. I've probably seen their name before on Twitter. I can get to know my audience because they're not. I don't have a massive audience. I have an audience that's big enough, but I don't need to keep growing it because that doesn't benefit me in any way. Right.

Well, go ahead, finish that thought.

Oh, I was just going to say. So determining growth, I think it makes sense to consider, obviously the lower bound of every business needs to be profitable. If you work for yourself, your business needs to be profitable and it needs to generate enough money for you to live off of comfortably. So the lower bound, I would say, is that that's like until you reach that you're in a pre enough stage, but then there's a middle part enough and then there's a part after that post enough where I think more growth may not make sense. In that post enough phase, I think it's better to optimize for enough instead of just blindly chasing growth past what your business and what your life actually needs. And I mean that I think is the like determining growth or defining growth. That's how you do it.

Yeah. And what I love about that is saying like, okay, what are the, what's the lower threshold? What's like kind of the sweet spot? And then where is it potentially getting into? Like, what does too much growth look like? And that's that being such a counterintuitive idea. Like there is no, you know, upper limit to growth and you want to have this hockey stick growth. And what I hear you saying is that's not always the case. There is a sweet spot of saying, hey, this feels really good and aligns with the things that are important to me. I think one of the things that's so hard about that is there's that phrase where it's like you can't grow what you don't track or something like that. But I think some of the things that you're talking about that relate to traditional growth, money traffic, social media followers and you know, social media engagement, comments, things like that are all such tangible things. Like we can go into Google Analytics and we can see our traffic, we can log into our bank account and see how much money there is. And I think because of that it triggers us to say, okay, this is something we can track, much like a video game and therefore we want to increase this thing. Whereas some of the other things that are so important are really hard to track. And it's things like how much am I enjoying my work or how, how is my relationship with my significant other or my kids? And do you have any recommendations for people who are, are wanting to shift what they are deem important and starting to track other areas and somehow making that more tangible?

For sure. Because I think it's such a human trait to want more. I mean from an evolutionary standpoint, our ancestors wanted more because we just needed resources to survive. But now I don't think that that's always the case. I think that so one, we need to kind of check our reasoning because a lot of times it's, we just want to like, it's just growth may just serve our ego or our social standing. So if I like, I'm introduced to you and you ask what I do and then you ask like kind of how the business works, I could say like what is actually my life is I sit in my sweatpants at home and I work like by myself and I'm a one person business with a bunch of freelancers. But it would sound better if I was like, well I have like a thousand person company across like 14 offices in eight countries. But like, does that, like, is that a good enough reason to try to achieve that so it sounds better to other people when you explain it right? I don't necessarily think so. I don't think so. It also may not serve our existing customers. I think a lot of times when we, when we think about growth, we put acquisition over retention. And I would rather find a way to be valuable to a small group of people over and over again over time because it's cheaper and it's easier to just, if somebody buys something from you once and they're happy, then it's easier to sell to them again. It's easier to make different things or more things or repeatable things because they Already like your product, they already like you. You don't need to go through a sales cycle with them. So I think it was something like five to eight times cheaper to retain a customer than to acquire a new one. Yet so many people just focus on the retention side of things. So I don't think that it makes sense. And I mean it is. Like you said, it's so counterintuitive. I think we just need to ask ourselves specific questions to determine, like if it's just for social standing or ego. Some of those questions, I guess the three main questions would be how much is enough? How do I know when I've reached it and what changes if I do?

Yeah, and I think finish that thought and then I have a follow up question on that.

I was just going to say, like, I think those can become the framework of determining, like if we're thinking about defining growth, those are kind of like, those are the three things I ask myself all the time. And it changes. It's not like I asked myself those three questions once in my life and.

I'm like, hooray, yeah, now I know. And forever these will be the same because things change.

Like everything changes. So I, we need to check back in on those things on a regular basis.

Can you talk about what that was like, so can you repeat those three questions? Uh, what is enough?

How much is enough? How will I know when I've reached it and what will change when I do?

Uh, uh, and then what will change when I do? So can you talk about you going through that process? Is that you sitting down and saying, hey, I, I want to answer these three questions and, and I'm going to get really specific. And then are you doing like kind of this, mentally checking back on that every once in a while and saying like, hey, this needs to change. Are you doing, hey, twice a year, I'm gonna schedule half a day and reflect on this. What does that actually look like to go through that process? Because regardless of where somebody's at with their creative endeavor or the work that they're doing, their career, the business they're building, it'd probably be advantageous for somebody to sit with this for an hour and say, okay, you know, how do I answer each one of these questions? And I think it'd be helpful to hear what process you went through. You don't have to share numbers around business growth or anything like that. But just talking about your experience of going through this, I think it'd be helpful to inform other people about what that might look like. For them, sure.

Start of it. It's easy for me. I would hope it's simple. Otherwise, me talking about simple seems kind of weird. But I start them every month. I just, I think about them basically, like I try to. I think we, when we work for ourselves, we get so caught up on working in our business that we don't think about working on our business very much. So I'm always trying to take a step back because, I mean, if you think about like a bigger business, like the CEO's job is to think about things and make decisions. If we work for ourselves, we have to do the work and be the CEO and think about things and make decisions. So I try to like once a month, spend an hour or two on this. I mean, I'm also a writer, so my job is being introspective. Introspective for a living. But I do try to focus beginning of every month because it's easy to remember for me as I go. If it's start of the month, then this is. I'm going to spend an hour or so either writing about, like journaling about it, writing about it, maybe thinking about it, maybe looking back at the previous month and being like, this was a bad decision because it wasn't what I needed, or it went past what enough is, or I didn't hit enough this month. And these are the things I need to do in the future. So I think it needs to kind of walk the line of being like super pragmatic, like, you didn't make enough, you want to make more next month, Cool. Work on that. Or you made more than you needed. Was that at the expense of your health, your life, your relationships? And then maybe you, you see that, oh, I didn't need to make that much. Maybe I can scale back if it wasn't, if it was putting the rest of my life out of balance. For me, monthly makes sense. For smarter people, twice a year might make a lot of sense as well.

Yeah. So. So is that the enough number for you is largely around finance. So what is the. From a business perspective, for my career, from my work, what is enough from a dollar amount? Is that basically, like when you're walking through this checklist, what you're looking at.

There'S a few aspects. So the one aspect. So another aspect is focus. Because I work on a lot of different things. I like to do different things. Like, I would be bored if I was just writing books. I would get bored of writing books and I wouldn't want to write books. So I like having Books and software and podcasts and all of that. But I also know that there's a line where if I take on too many different projects, it's going to be stressful and I'm not going to be able to focus on anyone because I do like to focus on one at a time, even though there's a bunch. The other thing is reach as well. Like I talked about earlier, I like to have relationships and conversations with my customers. So even things like my mailing list, like, I know that my mailing list is a big enough size where it generates the bulk of my revenue because I'm an email marketing nerd. So that's what I do. But it's not so big that I can send out an email every Sunday, which I've done for six years, get a couple hundred replies. I can read all of them because it's a few hundred. I can reply to the ones that require answers because there's a few hundred. So working on growth for my list wouldn't make sense because if I grew it by, like, if I 10x my list, then I might 10x the responses, and then I wouldn't be able to read them all. I wouldn't be able to reply to them all. And those conversations ultimately helped me as the business owner to see, like, what people care about, what people are working on, what the things that I'm talking about are resonating or not resonating. So, I mean, it really spans a bunch of aspects. So, yeah, definitely finances, definitely reach, and definitely focus. I think those are probably the three biggest. Like, when I'm thinking about it in my head, those are kind of the three areas that I always go to.

Yep. And when you ask the question, how will I know when I reach it? Is that essentially, is that a version of a goal or is that saying, like, here is the enough. What is enough? And then what does enough look like as it relates to this thing? Finance. It makes sense. It's maybe this dollar amount focus would be saying, hey, I'm able to. I'm able to do the things that I want to do consistently without feeling distracted that I need to, you know, multitask. So that's maybe a little bit more of an intuition thing, but. But essentially it's defining a little bit of what that looks like to actually get to that enough point. Yeah.

And I mean, it's funny because I think it. I think it's a type of goal, but it's a good, A good goal. I think most goals are garbage. Like, I think most Goals are fake artificial targets that we set for the sake of setting fake and artificial targets. Like me working towards making a million dollars a year. Like that's a bad goal and a bad logic to get to setting that goal. Whereas when I'm considering enough, I'm considering what is actually required. So it seems like a goal with like real targets, because it's not like I want to make this much or more, it's I want to make between this and this, or I want my focus to be between this amount of projects and this amount of projects or my audience to be between this and this. So it seems more like a goal with a lower and an upper bound that's based on useful data instead of just artificial metrics of like ego or like inflated self worth.

Yes, for sure. And the last piece that I think is so interesting, especially if you consider doing this on a monthly basis basis, is the idea of what will change when I do. And I think for so many people, myself included, we kind of march on in our days and our weeks, and our weeks then become our months, and our months become our years. And we're not doing these kind of micro adjustments. And I think this question, along with kind of this general process of defining growth could be really helpful for us to make these small changes in order to then align whatever you want to call it, like our happiness, our enjoyment of our work. And that's this question of what will change when I do. So let's say you go through this process, you define what enough is, you know what it looks like when you reach it. Can you give some examples of this idea of what will change when I do? And maybe in your personal life some of the things that you've implemented that you've defined around enough and then what changed when you, when you reached that?

Yeah, so if I know, and even just talking about money, because that's the easiest one, if I know how much money I need for my business to one, make a profit and to pay me enough to be comfortable in my life. I know I don't need a lot in my life, but I also want to be comfortable, especially as I get older and my back hurts and you.

Don'T want to sit as much.

I want to be comfortable. So I want to think about like, okay, well, I need to, I know I need to make this much, but if I make more than this, it's going to add like, in order to make more than I need, it's going to add probably more responsibilities, more work time, more resources, more stress and so even though I'm making more is taking everything else out of balance. And it could mean that like, oh, I can't go like paddle boarding or biking with my wife. And it's sunny out today and I live in the Pacific Northwest and it's never sunny. And if I can't breaks like that, it doesn't. Like, it doesn't make my life enjoyable enough and it doesn't make me want to be productive and efficient to get the work done or even like more customers. Like, if I had more customers, then I wouldn't be able to interact with them. They might not be as happy with my product. They may not buy from me repeatedly. And half of my customers have bought more than one thing from me. So it's really important. That's an important metric to me. And then I would have to work harder at getting, acquiring new customers because I wasn't able to retain the people because I had too many to be able to spend any time with them answering questions or talking to them and that. So I think there's always kind of like that nice squishy middle ground. I also think it just lifts this tremendous burden off of yourself if you stop thinking that you need to be huge or things need to be ridiculously big in order to be good. Like, most of the people I know that are very happy and content aren't the ones that make the most money, they're the ones that make enough money. And even there was a. I think it was Gallup did a study of like 2 million people across every country in the world and they found that there was like an optimal earning amount for people where people get happier as they make more money, but only up to a certain point. I think it was something like the bare minimum was like 60 to 70k US dollars and then the optimal amount was about 90k. And that took into account like saving for the future and that. And they found that as people made more than that, and it's different for everybody depending on like how many dependents you have or where you live in the world. But that was like the average. And they found that if you made more than that, you're actually more unhappy. So your happiness kind of peaks at this, at this kind of enough level. And it doesn't make sense to go after more if you're not going to, if you're making money to be happy and more money isn't going to make you more happy, more money is probably going to mean that you're chasing more material things and having more unhealthy social comparisons, then maybe you're okay to stop at a certain point, and that means you're working like 30 hours a week or 40 hours a week, as opposed to 80. And then that makes sense.

It reminds me of maybe what it would be like in a similar situation to eat ice cream. And it's like there's this. I imagine this, like, graph where it's like your first bite is, like, so good, and your second one is pretty good, and third one is good. And then it's like you get to this point where you've. It's like diminishing returns, diminishing returns. But then it also dips and gets worse. Like, if you were. If you continue to eat it, it would be like, no more ice cream. This is terrible. And, and, and, and that's so counterintuitive to us, I think, to think about the potential of. Of there being a peak on growth or success in the traditional sense. And. But at the same time, it makes a lot of sense because like you said, in general, usually what happens is you have to continue trading these other things in your life in order to access more of, you know, growth in the traditional sense. And those other things are really important things like, like friends and family and health and, you know, time by yourself if you're somebody who's more introverted. Things like that are so, so important, and yet we can sacrifice those in order to serve, you know, this, this thing that our culture says is so important, which is growth, but so often it. It will lead to negative results both. Both personally and within our relationships. So the last piece that you talk about, we talked about starting small and this idea of being really intentional to not spend a bunch of time building this really big thing and then putting it out into the world, but start small with what you can give, teach what, you know, be really intentional to think about. What is it that I'm creating that can help people. I think people understand that this kind of new concept of defining growth, where we're being really intentional to say, what does it look like for me to continue to grow? It's not always going to be, you know, grow as much as possible as quick as possible, but really defining that. And we talked about this idea of understanding what enough is and knowing the impact that that has on us once we get enough. And then this last thing that you said was continually learning, what does that look like? And why is that an important piece of this concept of a company of one?

Yeah, I think the learning piece is necessary there because I think Some aspects of growth are always required. Like, I think we should always be working at becoming better people as well, or like, enriching life experiences. I don't think there's. There's, like, you can't. That doesn't relate to the ice cream analogy, which I think is really good. So I think the learning piece is the most important piece because one, things, like I said, things change. So maybe what enough is right now isn't enough in five years. Or maybe it's more than enough for me in five years. Or maybe learning for me, especially, like, working in the industry that I do like the way that even because I started building websites when I started working for myself and it was using, like, tables and HTML and flash and those things don't even exist anymore. So, like, if I wasn't continually learning and keeping up with my craft, I would be nowhere. Like, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't be able to make money. But the other aspect of learning is learning from the people who are paying attention. Like, the people who are. I think I interviewed a woman named Danielle Lepore, who's one of my favorite entrepreneurs and somebody I worked with for a long time. And she talked about her business actually shifted from trying to reach everybody, trying to let light reach everybody, to just trying to affect the people who are already at the table. Like if she's imagining a dinner table. And I think that for me, learning, one, that the people who are already paying attention are the most important people in my business. But two, those are the people that I have the most to learn from. Yes, they're my customers or my audience or whatever you want to call it. But like, business exists, or good business exists to serve other people. My business can't exist just to serve my own ego. I never make a dollar. My business exists because I want to help other people. And they get something so valuable that they give me money for that help, whether it's through a course or a book or paying for monthly software or whatever it is, it's businesses serving other people. And they need that so much that they're willing to trade their money for it. It. So I think I have to. There's so much that I can learn from the people who are paying attention, people who are at the table, like, joining me for dinner and that, like, even in such, like, ridiculously pragmatic ways in which, like, if I'm writing sales copy for a landing page, I'm going to talk to the people who have bought it in beta or who have given access to. To Test it out. Because starting small requires a lot of iteration. And that was the first point. So I'm going to talk to those people and see what they valued from it, how they would describe it to other people. And I'm going to use the language that they've used to write the language of the sales page. Because the language that I have for the thing that I'm selling isn't the same language. Like if I'm selling something, I'm an expert in that and the way I talk about it is going to be very different than the way somebody who's not an expert but wants to be in that topic is going to talk about it. So I'm going to take every sales call, every piece of copy I've ever written for any sales page or email automation or anything, is directly taken from me. Learning from the people who are paying attention, because I think that that's so important. Even in like deciding what to make. I make things that people are asking me to make. And if I'm not learning, if I'm not paying attention to the people who are paying attention, then it's going to be really hard. It's going to be really hard to run a business. So I think that the learning aspect of it is, is so important because that's like learning is going to help us start small and iterate. Learning is going to help us to find growth for ourself and determine what's right for our business. So that's kind of the thread that weaves everything together.

It's interesting when you're talking about it, almost another word that came to mind related to learning. At first when I thought you were saying this, I thought you'd talk about reading books and courses and learning in that sense, but it was all almost like learning in the word that came to mind was humble. Like staying humble in your pursuit of feedback and being flexible and agile enough to say, okay, I'm going to let other people speak into the work that I'm doing and the things that I'm creating and learning from those people. A lot of times the people that are closest to me, whether that be customers or team members or whoever it might might be, and allowing them to weigh in on this and, and using that to continually grow and change and adjust, which is a different type of learning than I thought it would be. And it's so refreshing to hear that.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of Eastern philosophy talks about like the beginner's mindset. And I mean, I found as well, like with the things That I think I know. Like, as I learn more about something, I also learn how much I don't know about something. Month.

Yeah.

And like, even like, when I. When I was doing yoga, like the first, like, year or two of doing yoga, I. I was like, I'm. I'm past beginner classes, bro. Like, like, I get it, I know it. And then as I started to learn more and more about yoga, I was like, oh, my God, there's so much I can be working on in a beginner class in terms of, like, alignment and breath work and stuff like this. I have more than I need in terms of, like, what I need to work on and learn. Even in, like, the most basic of classes, I think just apply. Like, that also applies to, like, as soon as we assume we know everything about an industry or about a customer base or about a niche, like, we're going to start making mistakes. Like, we're all wrong. We're just going to start making mistakes.

I remember vividly having this conversation. It was maybe within the first month or two of when I was doing meditation and trying to build that in as part of my daily routine. And I was having breakfast with a friend who had been doing it for a long time. And I go, gosh, I just feel like I'm so bad at meditation. And he's like, beginner's mindset, man. Like, you always will be. And so some sense it was like, oh, yeah, like, there probably is some truth in that. Like, anybody that ever feels like they are like, hey, I am. I am really awesome at meditation. And let me teach you all of the things. There maybe is a sliver of that where it's like, oh, maybe this person doesn't have this beginner's mindset that's so important to keep in mind as you stay humble and continually evolve. So important point. One of the things that I.

It's hard to win at meditation or exactly how do you win?

Yes. One of the things that I thought was a really important part of the book and I think would be a good note to end on and to talk about, is you talk about this idea of the ulcer of the soul. And I think that exists in such a real way, especially with the accessibility of other people's lives. And a lot of times they're highlight reeling online and how that relates to us and being influenced by that in ways that we can kind of insulate ourselves from that. So can you talk about this idea of the ulcer of the soul, what that is? And as creators, business owners, Just people in general, how we protect ourselves from that.

Yeah, I mean, and that's Socrates. Envy is the ulcer of the soul. And I think that we all innately get it, but we're all, none of us are immune. And so like, we can look at even like in our personal lives where like keeping up with the Joneses, like, just because our neighbors have like, bigger house doesn't mean we need a bigger house or a better car, bigger tv. We fall prey to the same things in every aspect of our lives. Even, even in business. Like, I think that transparency is kind of a double edged sword because we see what other people are doing or we see like income reports from some bloggers. And those can be good and those can be such a valuable learning tool, but they can also be, they can also breed envy where we're like, well, I don't make as much as Pat Flynn's monthly reports or something like that. And it's like, then you feel bad and like, oh, my business is maybe unsuccessful because it's not making like 200 or 300 grand a month. There's. Or that. And it's like, that's okay. But like, do you. So one, do you need that? And two, what's the point of comparison for that? And even with social media, like, like you said, people only share their highlight reels. So we're, we're comparing our insides with somebody else's outsides that they want us to see and it's Apple's telephones. Like, it's just, there's no comparison because like, even if we look at our own like highlight reel or our own social media feeds, like, we're mostly sharing things that other people would probably be envious. Like, I can have worst day in my entire life and still post something. Like post a sunset and be like hashtag black. For sure. Anybody can do that. Right? And it's just like, I wish I could remember the name of the guy. He was the star on Prison Break. He was doing an interview with, with a school the other week and he. The one line that stood out to me was like, if I talk to my friends the way I talk to myself, I'd have no friends.

Yeah, you. Yeah.

And I was like, my brain has just exploded because I think, like, we get so down on ourselves for things that we would, that we would be so encouraging to other people. Like, if other people brought us the problems that we have, we would encourage them or just talk them out of their own boat. We tell ourselves stories in our heads and we believe Those stories. So if it's not a good story, we're going to be believing things that could be detrimental to us. Us. And if somebody else brings it, like if I talking to a friend and they're having a bad day, then I'll be. I'll encourage them, like, this is just one day out of. Out of a million, or these are the things that you can work on. If I'm having a bad day, I'm like, I suck. The end.

Yes.

It's just not. It's just not good. It's just not good to do that. And I think one way to kind of get out of that and I think it's almost impossible to get out of it entirely unless you reach some like, Zen master level. But there's. It's funny, there's a term in Sanskrit that there's no code. There's no term in English. Because I'm a writer, I'm always looking for, like, this word exists in this language. There's a term in Sanskrit, mudita, which I'm sure I'm pronouncing wrong, first of all. And second of all, it's the ability to find joy in other people's successes. And I think that that's like. That feels like almost the opposite of envy, where we can just feel proud, like, hey, I know somebody who's successful or I know somebody that's making. Or I've read that somebody's making like $200,000 a month and that's possible and that's awesome and that's good. And it's never a zero sum game. Right. Like, just because somebody else is doing well doesn't mean you're therefore not going to do well. There's not one, like, there's not one success prize where somebody got it already.

It's all taken for sure.

It's not a zero sum game. So I think if we can kind of be thankful and find joy in. In the happiness of other people, then we can start to. To work on. On our own, like self talk and our own. Our own envy.

Yeah.

And it can. Yeah. There's no definite answer to that, but I think we do need to be one, aware of it and two, aware of what needs to change. Even if it's just something we work on. It's just like you're not winning at meditation. You're not having zero envy for other people. But work towards correcting that a bit.

And I think there are one thing that's so refreshing to me and it's interesting to see so we on Pinch of Yum, the food blog that Lindsay does, and I have a very small role in it kind of day to day, but started doing reports. We'd say, hey, from the very beginning, here's how much we were able to make from the blog. Here's the traffic that we had and you know, it would be $20 and it would kind of grow over time. And it was exactly like you said, where, you know, as that started to build for us and as we did these reports, there became this disconnect of like, it felt like it wasn't even the business. Even though the business was growing, it wasn't telling the whole story of the business. And that was one of the biggest things for us in playing into the reason for winding those down was because I think what happens is people come and they see this number, they maybe read the post, maybe not. But the context of like everything that's happening around the business and the struggle in the day to day and, you know, like working to build up an emergency fund for the business so you can pay expenses for six months, like that so often isn't told. And I think the same is true whether it's with the business or social media and you're following somebody's, you know, posts from a trip that they had or a travel blog or whatever it is. So often the entire story isn't told. But what's so refreshing is people like yourself and there are other people in business and outside of business who are just willing to on those platforms, like lean into some of those things and tell those stories and show the, the shadow along with the sunshine. And for us as creators, we are all a part of this, listening to this podcast have the ability to push back against that a little bit. And I think there's one thing to be said about protecting ourselves, which I think we have to be intentional about. Seth Godin talked about being on Twitter and then having this moment after giving a speech somewhere where he saw this interaction with somebody regarding his speech and was like, I just can't do it, and then just turned it off and wasn't a part of it because they knew that, you know, like that would just happen. And I feel like that's true for myself in regards to certain platforms. It's just like I'm just not on there due to those reasons. But there's also something we can do to push back against that. Paul, I think you're a great example of it. And all of us can do that where we can be our true selves as Much as possible and as much as makes sense, sense and be authentic. And that can be something that can be an advantage to us. As much as it seems counterintuitive, being your true self, showing your shadow and being willing to talk about that can be a really powerful and impactful thing. And speaking of Seth Godin, I actually just pulled up the pre order page for Company of One and frequently bought together. Paul Jarvis, Company of One, Atomic Habits. James Clear here. And this is marketing by Seth Godin. That's kind of like the ultimate trifecta right there of books that you can package all together and pick up. You actually quote James a couple times in your book as well. So coming to an end, talking about Company of One, what this looks like, Paul, what would your kind of departing wisdom be for people who are interested in adopting some of these things in the way that they work and kind of, of using some of these, adopting some of these mindsets in terms of how they view their life and their work?

Yeah. So I think that obviously, like, more isn't better. Better is better. That's why they're, that's why they're different words. And I think that if we start to think like what you and I have been talking about today, I think we start to think about, like, what's the purpose of why we're doing what we're doing, then I think purpose can be the lens through which all decisions should filter through. Because maybe growth feeds our ego or social standing, but if it doesn't align with our purpose, then the answer to growth in some cases may be like, no, this doesn't make sense. This doesn't give me a business I want to run. This doesn't give me the life that I want to lead. So then maybe I can make better decisions. If I always consider aligning with my purpose for making decisions. Because I think decisions are really important. Because every business is faced with a litany of decisions. Because we're always having to decide things, things all the time. And a lot of times we're presented with opportunities and opportunities seem like, I have to say yes to this. This is a big thing. And I think every opportunity has an obligation debt attached. It just seems really like it just has a pretty bow on it. So it's called an opportunity instead of like an obligation. So I think if we consider that the other thing is like, I've been in business for 20 years, like, there's no. And I've done years of research at this point on this subject, there's no one opportunity that's going to make or break your business. Any successful business, however you want to define success, is the series of a bunch of decisions that made sense for that business. And sometimes they're wrong decisions and then we course correct. But it's never just one. There's never one make or break thing. It's so highly unlikely that any decision that you're like, I don't want to make this, but I feel like I should, you probably don't actually need to make that decision or you don't need to make that now.

And in so many ways that lifts the pressure of needing to say yes to all of the things in case this might be the one that is the breakout or the most important thing and therefore resulting in you being so committed to so many things that you've squeezed out all potential, time and energy and focus. Yes, that's great, Paul. If people want to check out the book, if they want to pre order it like we have done, what's the best way for them to do that? And we'll be sure to include any links that are needed as well.

Yeah, I mean the book, because it's traditionally published, it's available pretty much everywhere. And for right now, I guess for the next week or so, depending on when you're listening to this, there's a bunch of pre order goodies on my website for the book which is of 1 CO of N E co.

Awesome. We'll link to that. And I was looking through that before we pressed record here and there's some like you said, kind of some, some awesome stuff that comes along with that. So be sure to check that out as well. And, and everywhere that books are sold, which is so cool to be able to say that. You can walk into any store and see it there. I saw a photo that you had posted and it was in a store next to Seth's latest book, which is kind of a cool thing to see. So not only is Amazon recommending it, but also in store, they're putting it right next to.

We shared the same publisher that was at Penguins uk.

Yeah, got it. Cool. Well, Paul, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate it. And it's an honor to have people on once. It's an extreme honor to have you on twice. And I know that people will get a lot out of the episode. So thanks so much for coming on.

Yeah. And thanks for having me on the other end as well. It's an even bigger honor to, to be invited back.

Thanks so much.

Cheers.

Awesome episode. Right. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast with Paul Jarvis. And if you're interested in winning a copy of Paul's new book Company of One, be sure to head over to foodbloggerpro.com 184 to leave a comment about your biggest takeaway from this episode. And before we sign off this week, it's time for a Reviewer of the Week. And it's been a while since we've done one of these, so I'm extra extra excited to feature Carolyn's review from itunes. Carolyn runs the blog umamigirl.com and her review says to 1 1% infinity and beyond I've been blogging for a decade and listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast from its beginning have learned so much over time and often the most valuable insights come from tiny details in a conversation that aren't even about the main topic. I'm finally writing review because I've just relaunched Umami Girl after a very long intensive rebranding and site redesign process. And even though I've known about people Bjork's 1% infinity for a long time, it really became more meaningful to me throughout this challenging process. After months of 12 hour days getting the new site ready, I was just starting to feel a sense of overwhelm creep in. I re listened to an old episode that mentioned 1% infinity and just reminding myself of that principle made all the difference in my outlook at this critical time. It provided some much needed context for the work of showing up every day and making small endless seeming improvements. So yay for that and thanks. It's amazing you've been blogging for a decade Carolyn. So honored to have you as a listener and part of the Food Blogger Pro podcast community. Thank you so much for your review and congratulations on your rebrand. And that does it for us this week friends. Thank you again for tuning in and from all of us here at fbphq, make it a great week weekend.