Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business

Reviewed in Australia on 13 January 2020

The premise of this book is solid and the preamble sells it really well. After that I found it a disappointment. There are a few nuggets in here but overall it's a fairly simple argument explained in an unwarranted amount of pages. It loses focus in the midsection as a variety of contemporary management theories are referenced. These don't bolster the book's argument so much as make it appear that being a company of one involves aping startups, Google, Patagonia etc. Look for pivots...experiment...the usual suspects. It gets woolly and really repetitive unfortunately. Great premise, perhaps a missed opportunity.

2 people found this helpful

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Paul Hoskins

A missed opportunity - underwhelming and repetitive

Reviewed in Australia on 24 January 2020

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Great premise, but poor execution —an extremely underwhelming book. The author shares a lot of generic and basic business advice, and fails to meaningfully link any of it back to the idea of resisting growth and staying small. The basis for advice is seemingly random and shallow references to other thought-leaders or fairly recent business books, together with observations from the authors own web design consultancy. All in all, a horribly myopic approach. The book is also extremely repetitive, the author literally, and seemingly accidentally, uses the same sentence multiple times and keeps hammering the same pedestrian points throughout. It’s crying out for a decent editor. Overall, a big missed opportunity.

One person found this helpful

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Dr Alec E Wills

Lots of personal growth

Reviewed in Australia on 24 January 2019

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Highly appealing book on the dangers of business growth for the sake of it. Well written and inline with other books on personal happiness helps align how you work with goals that lead to a fulfilled life. Great if you work for yourself or are considering it and concerned about the order to do things.

One person found this helpful

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VP

Excellent book!

Reviewed in Australia on 21 November 2020

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If you already own a business or planning to do so in the future, there is a lot to learn from this book. Excellent work Paul Jarvis!

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D. Stewart

Don't bother if you are already a company of one

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 July 2020

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This book doesn't seem to know what it wants to be; a guide finding the courage to leave your current job, or a guide to what to do once you have left.

As a long-time company of one, this book didn't give me anything new whatsoever, and no real concrete advice I could use. Midway through I felt sure it wasn't going to provide, but I finished it anyway.

It's a valiant attempt, but more hype than substance.

Save yourself the time and get the value you need on a forum like Indie Hackers instead.

9 people found this helpful

Clare Barry

A must-read for anyone starting out out aspiring to leave that day job they hate

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 January 2019

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Paul Jarvis has a clear writing style and his book includes many valuable case studies to reinforce his idea that staying small with intention is the way to go for many of us with small businesses or aspirations to build a different life and way of working. It is easy to get sucked into the idea that bigger is better. I like how the book reminds us to get clear on motivations and being realistic about what comes with scaling a small business. Paul is clear on what is enough for him and his enthusiasm for companies of one is contagious. Company of One is an easy read and an important one.

13 people found this helpful

Rutherbooks

Repetitive. And repetitive. And repetitive.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 July 2019

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If you're just out of business school, this is probably useful. If you've been around the block - even just once - it doesn't say very much, over and over. Like most business books, there's a 2,500 word essay hiding in 250 pages.

12 people found this helpful

Mcf

A humble mountain of a business book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 June 2019

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I am half way through this book but would give it 5 stars even at this stage because it is truly standing out as a game changer in the business/start up/make money genre. Most books and guidance on starting out in commerce/business are about scaling up in one form or another. This one goes completely against the grain and author Paul Jarvis gently leads you through the whys and hows of such a rationale. His approach is thoughtful rather than directive and allows the reader to contemplate, with many examples, the pros and cons of organically growing a business within flexible boundaries that are conceived from the start. It is a great read for someone starting out and bootstrapping their way in business but also very good for business owners, managers, corporate directors and CEOs who have been seduced by the blue sky approach to growth and are now well and truly on a speeding gravy train that could crash out of control. Mr Jarvis clearly describes the harder fall that can result from this kind of over scaling. True, an ambitiously scaling business might just fly but there are many other problems and downsides that come with that which may not necessarily suit the owners, directors, employees or customers. Importantly, scaling up big time with all the associated issues it brings may not suit the company or organisation’s raison d’être, mission or ethos. This book is a discussion on humility in business- a condition which is not common and something which we can all learn from.

2 people found this helpful

Darjan

Helped confirm the feelings mindset I had for the past 10 years

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 February 2019

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I've always felt like an outsider and wasn't really understood in my career either working in an agency, in-house, freelance or consultant. The mindset of growth is dangerous for a lot of companies and employees as things can go bad and it's hard to fix them. Creating solid core principles that can support growth from strategy or processes should be a must for any business that wants control over their long term growth.

Understanding growth and being able to influence it is the same as being able to control and know how to drive a formula 1 race car. Things will go bad if you're doing things you're not ready for.

Great book that opens and asks the questions you need to think about if you don't want to run your company to the ground. I also enjoyed the principle of empathy (towards employees, customers, partners,...) that rarely anyone understands today. There are amazing opportunities (that not many companies do!) when you approach your problems from this angle.

8 people found this helpful

Justine Zamora

Amazing Book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 September 2021

Verified Purchase

This book has so many valuable information about being a company of one. I particularly like that after the end of each chapter there’s questions to think about that Paul has written down for readers to reflect. I have taken so much value from this book personally and it’s really changed my perspective on running my business. I love this book for that.

I purchased the kindle version of this and love it, so easy to read and add notes to and highlight! I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested or running a business already. If you’re looking for an alternative way to run a business, this is the best book to read in my opinion. It’s based off research and real life people/businesses as examples to back up what Paul says in the book.

5 star		72%
4 star		16%
3 star		8%
2 star		3%
1 star		2%

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