Welcome to Day 9 of 60 in Must-Read Books to Elevate Your Skills, Mindset, and Knowledge. This series explores practical lessons from pioneers, practitioners, founders, researchers, and leaders who have built, studied, or shaped what many of us aspire to create.

About the Book and Author

Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business was written by Paul Jarvis, a consultant and longtime online technology veteran who spent roughly two decades working as a web designer and independent business owner. Before this book, he wrote Everything I Know (2013). His experience running a small, focused business on his own terms shaped the book’s central argument: growth is a choice, not an obligation. The book was published in 2019 and has been described by Kirkus Reviews as a useful entry in the “small is beautiful” genre.

The Hook

What if the goal of your business is not to get bigger, but to get better?

The Core Lesson

Most business advice assumes that success means constant expansion: more staff, more funding, more customers, more complexity. Jarvis challenges that default. He argues that growth brings higher costs, more management overhead and more risk, and that pressure to grow often comes from outside expectations rather than from what the owner actually wants.

His alternative is a “company of one,” a business that deliberately stays small and focuses on being resilient, autonomous, fast and simple. Rather than chasing endless new customers, a company of one invests in serving existing customers well, building real relationships and trust. The book also encourages owners to ask what motivates them beyond profit, to build systems that fit the size of the business they actually have, and to set clear limits so that staying small is a strategy rather than an accident. The idea applies to independent operators and to people inside larger organizations who want to work leaner.

Personal Application: AI Agents and the Company of One

This lesson has a new relevance in the age of AI agents. Tools that handle scheduling, customer support triage, research, reporting and content drafting mean a very small team can now deliver work that once required a department. A solo consultant, for example, could use an agent to prepare client briefings and follow-ups, then spend the saved hours on strategy and relationships. The question shifts from “How many people do I need to hire?” to “Which tasks should an automated workflow handle so that I can protect the work only I can do?”

That is a principle worth applying with care: automation should serve the business you want, not push you toward a size you never chose.

Practical Action

This week, write down three numbers: the annual profit that would make your business a success, the number of customers you can serve really well, and the hours per week you want to work. Then list the tasks that fall outside what you do best and consider which of them an AI agent or simple workflow could take over. Use those limits as a filter for every new opportunity, hire or tool you consider. For more on practical automation, explore the latest articles at BigAIAgent, or revisit Day 8: The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman.

Further reading: the Kirkus Reviews write-up of the book.

How would you apply this lesson to your business?