Every year, a good friend of mine visits me to catch up on life. His name is Derek, we met in Canada during a student exchange programme 7 years ago and over the last few years, it’s been a privilege to watch him grow as an individual and a creative professional. He’s been a freelance Webflow web developer for the last 4 years who’s built over 150+ websites in various industries and the only person I know who is independently living the life of a digital nomad. Check out his website here!

He’s the type of guy who flies down on unassuming weekends to drop a “Yo I’m here, you free?”, which is why his presence often takes me by surprise. Despite his die-hard introvert claims, I think he’s a great conversationalist and what I would label as a awkwardly social person. As we share similar types of work, I learn a lot from his simple lifestyle, effective systems and humble setups. It reminds me of many qualities from a book, titled “Company of One” by Paul Jarvis.

The main concept of the book aims to challenge the norm of scaling up businesses at the expense of one’s livelihood by breaking down successful cases of entrepreneurs and professionals who live by the philosophy that less is more. They focus on maximising their workflow on top of high-quality services/products they provide instead of branching out their business or expanding their scope of work. The idea of a “company of one” doesn’t necessarily mean to run a business solo, but rather, highlights the importance of autonomy through elevated workflows and smart systems and I think Derek is a prime example of this.

In fact, his lifestyle reminds me of a sentence from the book: “If you’re a company of one, your mind-set is to build your business around your life, not the other way around”. On the other hand, I’ve been working in opposite of this. I realised that my way of working has been closely tied to society’s expectations of success, which is why my approach has been to add more to everything. More hours, more content, more softwares, always more… which is funny to grasp because it’s the exact opposite of what the book teaches.

It’s made me take a step back to consider the idea that more may not equate to better. If so, how should I hone my skillset without doing more than necessary? Where can I fine tune my creative workflow to achieve better results instead of adding layers that complicate process? These are two questions I intend to unravel soon and the first step would be to finish the book.