Imagine building a business you enjoy without setting goals and believing in motivation. Picture becoming an author and creating a great community without ever having a Facebook or LinkedIn account.

Does it sound impossible?

You may be inclined to think so Paul Jarvis is proof that it can be done.

Not only is Paul a skilled writer and a good teacher but he’s also one of the best people on the internet (and the awesome guest of this podcast episode!). Here are some of the things I learned from our conversation and his work.

Nothing is absolute. Do your thing and learn along the way

In a newsletter he sent on November 7, Paul wrote:

“If I hadn’t realized that nothing in business (or life) is absolute, I’d have never written any books, created products, become a designer or started a newsletter. We collectively assume that most things are absolutes in our work because we simply haven’t questioned them enough.”

Paul Jarvis

In the podcast, Paul mentions that writing his latest book, Company of One, is one of the best decisions he ever made.

He did it in spite of the challenge of writing a book for a crowded niche (business books) and touching on topics that other authors have touched on.

This decision not only benefited him and everyone who read his book, which goes to show how far-reaching the impact of such a choice can have.

Now people can explore a different perspective on building and growing a business that contradicts conventional knowledge and provides a viable alternative to work and enjoy life. His writing is an invaluable help to gain clarity when working as others expect you to leads to burnout instead of fulfillment.

Paul told me that doing projects like his latest book is one of the ways he leaves himself open to possibility (which reminds me of one of my favorite books). He experiments a lot and rejects restrictions in the form of goals or plans. He prefers not to set any.

“Business is an experiment. If it wasn’t, everyone’s businesses would be profitable all the time. And experimenting implies an outcome is unknown. Even when it comes to how you “feel” about something in business. It’s hard to absolutely say “Well, I would never do that” or “that’s not how I run my business” since things change. Minds change. Your stance on what’s good or bad changes. Not because you’re a wishy-washy rubber band of a human being, but because as a business owner, you evolve, learn, adapt, grow and play with ideas.”

Paul prefers to use these 4 simple rules to run his business and do his work. As someone who’s read his articles, books, listened to his podcasts and had the opportunity to talk to him for an hour, I can confirm that he applies these rules consistently.

You can build a business on your own terms

When he started writing Company of One, Paul felt like he was the only one who wanted to run a business the way he does (small, lean, with no employees). However, that changed when he wrote about his ideas in his newsletter. The people in his community who felt the same responded with overwhelming support and interest.

That’s when he decided his message deserved to be shared widely.

His message gained traction in his community and beyond. Revered authors, such as Cal Newport, and founders, such as Ben Chestnut, MailChimp’s founder, and CEO, hold his book in high praise.

Hearing Paul speak about his vision of alternative paths to building and growing a business is galvanizing. It’s so different from what you read about on tech websites. It’s real, unfiltered, and, most of all, human.

“Start small and don’t beat yourself up”, he advocates.

Here’s a truth that his freelancing career spanning over 20 years proves: “social media is not required for business”, emphasizes Paul, because “business was possible before all of it”.

We tend to forget that sometimes, don’t we?

Paul’s never been on Facebook and you can’t find him on LinkedIn either. He told me his Instagram account made him feel bad about himself so he quit that too.

Digital minimalism may only now begin to be valued for its positive impact on productivity and mental health, but Paul found that out years ago.

3 or 4 things that help Paul make better decisions

  1. Internalize that “we don’t have control over the things we think we do”.
  2. Remember that a sense of purpose pulls you through bad days.
  3. Cultivate your ability to adapt because resilience is everything.

Trusting your guts, as Eric Moeller also mentions in the first episode of the podcast, is also something worth paying attention to.

“We all come wired to make better decisions if we will just shut up and listen to our guts.”

As a keen seeker of questions that help us make better choices (I gathered 100 of them so far), I was thrilled to learn 3 new ones from Paul. When making an important decision, Paul defines success by asking himself:

  1. How much is enough?
  2. How will I know I have reached it?
  3. What will change when I do?

Sit with these questions for a while. They may prove more helpful than you anticipate.

The core value that guides Paul’s choices

During our conversation, Paul told me he never wants to be in the position of saying “I have to do this”.

This is why he doesn’t grow his business more or hire employees.

The central value to his choices is freedom and it consistently guides his decisions.

Paul is intent on living as lean as possible so he’s not compelled to make that much more money. What he truly wants is to make his own choices and not be forced into them so he acts accordingly on every occasion.

“The business world thinks that after success comes growth” but Paul believes that “after success comes freedom.”

You may feel that reaching this level of clarity and focus is challenging which is true. But it is 100% attainable.

Cultivating self-awareness is how you get there.

In the episode, Paul highlights that “introspection is one of the most important things we have to do”, even more so since it’s “a constant and difficult work which is why people avoid it.”

One way he went about was to move from the city, where he and his wife were plagued by “a cacophony of interruption and distraction”, and settle in a quiet Canadian town in the woods.

Many people fantasize about this (myself included) but very few of them do it. Studies show that removing stimulus from your life may be so scary that people would rather shock themselves than be alone.

However, the only way is through. Rebuilding our focus and making an effort to get to know ourselves deeply are fundamental to self-awareness and figuring out what we really need to be content and lead a meaningful life.

How to deal with imposter syndrome

Paul inspired me to finally publish an article about handling imposter syndrome that I’d been thinking about for a while.

“Imposter syndrome doesn’t go away.”

This idea stuck with me because I couldn’t find a permanent antidote myself.

Paul says he became comfortable to be afraid and act at the same time, allowing these two separate thoughts to coexist in his mind.

Another of his ideas, this time from the Creative Class podcast (which I love!), makes this challenge a lot more approachable:

“People fear the things they haven’t already done.”

Paul insists that all it takes to get better is to iterate and I tend to agree.

“I even assumed I couldn’t be a writer because I wasn’t a writer (but then I wrote 5 books). I also assumed that I was an awful speaker, and now I host a couple podcasts that people actually listen to (which I still find freaky).”

Looking back at my personal projects, the articles I wrote 10 years ago were crap but I slowly got better by writing more and more.

The thing about imposter syndrome is that it tends to go away when you focus on acting on your ideas and following through on your decisions. Do the work to get motivated by the work instead of being motivated to do the work.

company of one book cover

By now you can probably tell that I really enjoyed talking to Paul and tried to make the most of this opportunity in spite of being nervous (which is why I tend to ask long-winded questions). Before I wrap up, I really want to highlight how good Company of One is.

Here’s what Paul says about it:

“The book is more about the mindset required to define your own version of success in business, and work towards it.”

“It helps clarify what we can consider as success internally.”

“The book delves into how to make the right decisions about growth, and how to figure out when it makes sense to grow and when it doesn’t.”

Enjoy the episode and rate it on iTunes if you find it helpful and believe others might as well.

PS: You can find Paul’s favorite book in the list of resources below.

Resources mentioned in the podcast:

BOOKS:

 

Alternatively, play the episode in your favorite apps:

Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Simplecast | Stitcher | Pocket Casts | Player.fm

Full episode transcript:

Andra Zaharia: Hi everyone! On this episode of the podcast, you will get to know Paul Jarvis, one of the best people on the internet. Paul is a professional freelancer and has been building his Company of One for the last 20 years. He’s an incredible writer, he’s a skill maker, and a friendly and helpful human being.  As he always does, Paul brought his transparency, his insight and his energy to the conversation as he shared what helps him make better decisions. His ideas and work are refreshing and build on one of the most important changes in our lives, moving to a more autonomous, more flexible and more rewarding way of working in living. I’m really excited I had to share this episode with you. Hi, Paul. Welcome to the How Do You Know? Podcast. It is absolutely wonderful to have you!

Paul Jarvis: Cool! Thank you very much for having me on the show today. 

Andra Zaharia: I appreciate even more, you know, a great moment to have you on the podcast in so many ways. You’ve just launched your new book, Company of One, which, I dug into like the minute it was released and it is beyond awesome and super helpful! Plus, I get to learn so much from you and from your work and everything that you’re doing and putting out there. Given that, I’m a very fresh freelancer. So, being able to talk to you and being able to learn more from you and dig into your process is a unique opportunity and it helped to make the most of it for everyone that’s going to listen to this episode. 

Paul Jarvis: Sounds good!

Andra Zaharia: Awesome! So how, how does your life look these days? What is a day in the life of a recently published author? 

Paul: Yeah, so, well, it’s very different than my life. It’s usually not that busy, but lately I’ve had to be getting up very early because I’ve been doing a lot of morning radio shows on the East Coast of North America. And I live on the West Coast. So, I’m three hours behind. I’ve been getting up at like 5 or 6 in the morning, which isn’t… I get up early anyways, but I don’t get up that early. Like I usually, I don’t ever set an alarm, so I usually like just naturally wake up around 6:37, but I’ve actually used an alarm clock for the first time, for the last little while. My life is interviews, but that’s part of writing a book is promoting the book as much as I like the quiet time to just sit and, right, I also know that part of it is not sitting by myself and writing. It’s talking to other people and just getting word out. So that’s basically my life. I wish I had more time to write right now. I’m trying to find time to just write articles for my newsletter. Like in-between calls and that sort of thing, but really, everything else in my business is pretty much on hold at the moment while I talk about the book. 

Andra Zaharia: Oh, and it’s so worth talking about, and I love how everything in your work and in general, everything you’ve produced kind of lines up.

It all feels very consistent, very tight together around kind of the same values around the same themes that not only do we need, but I think there are so valuable to so many people. And I bet the people that are going to read the book once, they discover how much content you already have out there. They’re going to take a while to catch up before you actually, you know, need to write anything new. So, I think you could take some peace in that. 

Paul Jarvis: Okay. Thank you!

Andra Zaharia: I really wanted to, you know, dig into some of the key aspects that I feel you’ve included in the book and that are sprinkled kind of throughout your work and your articles. Because you talk a lot about decision-making, whether it’s in building your business and building your principles, a certain lifestyle, a certain set of values. So I really wanted to explore a lot more about that. And I wanted to start with a question related to actually the book, which is, what do you feel like is the best decision that you’ve made around this book project? 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah, I think, probably the best decision that I made was that it was worth writing because initially I didn’t think like the content of the book is something that I’ve always believed for myself and for my own business. But I felt like I was the only one who felt that way. I felt like I was the only one who wanted to run a business and the way that I run my business. And being a writer, I was like, “Well, whatever, I write lots of weird stuff, send it to my newsletter.” So, I decided, okay, I’m just going to write about business growth and why I don’t like business growth for myself. And I sent it and I’m just like: “This is just going to be some random thing that I write.” And I share with my lesson, people are going to be like, “Okay, this is good for you, Paul, next.” But when I wrote about, it’s kind of the thesis or the philosophy behind the book and shared it as like 500 or 600 words article with my list. I was like inundated with people saying like, “Oh, I thought I was the only one who ran my business the exact same way as you.” And I was like, “Oh, there’s a lot of people. There’s a lot of people who feel this way.” Like maybe this is a message that should be shared. Widely like maybe this is something that deserves to be a book. Like this is something that is kind of counter to the way the business world works and talks now, but it’s relevant and it’s useful, especially in so much as I think a lot of times, especially in the business world. We’re kind of shown this, like, this is what a business person looks like. This is how business person asks. This is what a successful business looks like. This is how you grow a bit. And it’s like, there are other ways, like what if we’re putting off entrepreneurs who want to start something on their own, but they’re like, “I don’t want to be like Elon Musk or like Sheryl Sandberg or Facebook. I don’t want to have like a massive business and I have to testify in front of Congress and the UK and the US. What if I don’t want that kind of business? What if I just want a business that’s smaller and that still has an impact. And that was really like, that was probably the best decision was the fact that I was like, okay, somebody needs to write about this. I guess it’s me. So, let’s get writing. 

Andra Zaharia: I’m so glad you did this, and I’m so glad you leaned into this decision because you speak for so many people out there who just don’t align at all with how business works. And I’m talking about this from my own experience as well, because for the past 10 years, you know, I’ve been an employee, I’ve had various roles. I’ve had rewarding roles and experience since and less rewarding ones. But at the end of the day, it kept burning out. Partly, it was my fault. I had made my own responsibility in that, but then again, another factor was the fact that I could not get done the work I wanted to do the way I wanted to do it, simply because there were always you kind of hit the ceiling or some points that you certainly, you just can’t cross. So, that’s how I decided to kind of take the dive as well. And when, you know, having read your work, having led Kaleigh Moore’s work as well, and then finding you guys together, doing the Creative Class Podcast was a wonderful opportunity that allowed me to get real insights from real people, making real decisions about growing their businesses in a different way. So that to me is not only a decision you make for your professional life. It’s a decision you make for your life in general, and it shapes the way you choose in every other aspect of your life, which I believe is essential if we want to maintain our health, both physical and especially mental, in the long run.

Paul Jarvis: Yeah, it’s hard to be busy as a default state. Like it’s hard to just constantly be pushing as hard as you can. Life, isn’t a sprint. It doesn’t work that way. 

Andra Zaharia: And plus, you don’t want to wear out and burn out in your thirties so you can, you know, spend the rest of your life working to pay medical bills. Cause that’s simply, that’s not a sustainable or healthy in any way. So, you have a lot of stories in your book stories about people who decided to do things differently, you know, besides your own and your own experience and trajectory. Do you have like a favorite example from the book or something that you’d like to share with us, and right now, like as a tiny snippet, for those who have read it.

Paul Jarvis: Yeah, I think my favorite story is from my friend Miranda Hickson. She’s an interior designer for businesses in San Francisco. And as she growing up, her dad, I think he was an architect and he was working at a big company and then they got bought by a bigger company and then he got laid off. And so, he started his own architecture. He was basically a freelancer, but this was like in the ‘70s and ‘80s before. I didn’t even know if freelancer was a word back then. And like he had his office, it was the computer, not the like flat screen, the little computers, but the computer with like half a meter behind it of space. The second I see our teas and it was in their garage and it was like a windowless room. And on his computer, he had a post-it note that said “OVERHEAD = DEATH” in all capital letters, because he was like, “Well, if I grow my business as big as the one that I just got fired, then I would potentially have to fire other people. Like if I keep my costs down, if I keep my expenses down, if I keep my business running as lean as possible, then it doesn’t have to make as much money to be profitable. It can make enough money that I can support my family. And it can also mean that I can work when I want to.” And Miranda was a softball player. So like he could go to all of her softball games and that sort of thing. And he really just wanted to have a business that was kind of dictated by the freedom that he wanted to have his life, as opposed to just growth. And I just loved that. Like I just always thinking about him having like a stage like this guy in the ‘70s or ‘80s, having like a sticky note on this massive computer that said “OVERHEAD = DEATH”. And I just love it. And like that sums the buck up. Like that’s basically the blog. 

Andra Zaharia: Just, you know, write this on a sticky note, put it on your, which is now very thin screen, and just go execute on it because that’s where the differences, but no, seriously, you know, who. For everyone that’s listening first, buy the book. You’ll see why you’ll understand many things. And I think that many, many people will really take your message to heart and really find a lot of truth in there. About life in general and about these key decisions that we make that pile up over time and, you know, build into habits, into ways of thinking that either deplete us or they can be super rewarding and energizing depending on what we choose for ourselves even if we have, you know, parents who don’t understand our traces and cultures that are more conservative and, you know, want to kind of pull you back and get you into line with everyone else.   But you can still do it your way and still be happy. And my opinion and having examples like you and many people, you know, a few others, not that many, but there are beginning to be a few strong voices out there that kind of, you know, they’re communicating in trying to get across the same message such as Jason and David from base camp who I’ve been watching for a while as well. And they know you mentioned them. And, I noted they have many fans throughout the world as well. 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah, I think that it’s funny, but like there’s like a growing movement of people who are kind of feeling this way. I mean their most recent book, Calm Company is a great example of that. Elaine Paul Felds, a one person, $1 million business is a good example of that. Bo Burlingham, I think its name is Small Giants. Like there are other people, which is awesome, which I think is really awesome. I think it’s really cool that there are other people kind of destroying the idea that there’s like one narrative in business and there can really just be like infinite options. Like if it’s your business, you should get to make the decisions that suit you and that suit your life and that suit the way that you want to work. I think we all, like if we come from the corporate world, like a lot of us do, we end up working for ourselves because we don’t want to work in that way. And so, we start a business where like, “Oh, I’ll have so much more freedom. I’ll be able to do things my way.” And we start and we start doing it and we ended up like, “Oh, maybe I do have to work like nine to five, Monday to Friday.” Like maybe I have to put in a bit of like unpaid overtime. But you started your business because you wanted the opposite of that. And now you’re working in the exact right way that you just left. Stop and think about these things. Because I think that, yeah, there are different ways to do business. So, there are different ways for a business to run. There are different ways to define success. For a business even.

Andra Zaharia: Absolutely. And you really have to understand the definition of success because they think that, you know, a lot of your, your book talks a lot about that. Your articles talk a lot about that as well. And, you know, just to speak to what you’re writing about, I was talking with a friend who actually went freelancing first and then starting to build his own agency. And then he told me, you know, “If I’d have to do it over again, I would rather still be a freelancer and find some other way of working because having to pay a salary for someone or multiple people is a huge responsibility that kind of takes it out of you.” So, you know, learning that there are other ways to work like you do employing gathered freelancers who are managed, you know, working on doing collaborative projects and so on. I think that there’s a lot of value in that. And that is a definitely a more scalable way to approach more complex projects because no one wants to do tiny, simple work all the time. You still have that drive to do more.  So, I wanted to roll back a little bit because I know that many choices have led you to this moment and these realizations, and they’ve definitely had the compound effect over time of choosing here and there, kind of carving your own path. So, I know that you’ve been freelancing for about 20 years, right? 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I started in the ‘90s. It makes me sound and feel old.

Andra Zaharia: I never, I still like… in my head you’re 30 at most. I cannot get over that. And it doesn’t really matter. You have like more energy than I’ve seen in Twitter year old. So, I think that’s makes all the difference. So, you’ve been freelancing for 20 years, which is an impressive amount of time. And plus given that, so many things have changed in when you first started out. It was like a thousand times more difficult than it is now to do anything, basically. Absolutely anything. So, I wanted to ask you what were the moments that shaped your trajectory and kept you on this path because I’m sure that there were many challenging moments where you felt like kind of giving up and maybe finding another solution or becoming an employee again.

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I mean, I never really wanted to work for myself to be honest. Like I was working at an agency, after I dropped out of university and I was a creative director in doing website stuff and I liked the work that I was doing, but I didn’t like the agency owners. And so, I was going to go find another job. It’s funny, like this is so long ago. Like I was going to go to a library, to look up how to write a resume because the internet didn’t really have the resources that it has now. This also makes me feel old, but I was going to go to the library to look up how to write a resume. And then I started to get calls from the clients of the agency and they were all saying like, “Hey, we like working with you more than the owners. Let us know where you’re going to work next and we’ll just take our business there. And I got a bunch of calls like this, and I was like, well, I guess I could just work for them directly and like start my own business and like do that. But that was never like… I didn’t dream of being a business owner when I was a kid. I think I jumped to being a dinosaur far more exciting anyways, but, so I ended up going to the library to look up how to start a business in Ontario, Canada, where I was living at the time. And it just kind of started from there. But I mean, like there’s been a lot, it isn’t always been… I’ve done well, and I’ve been successful by my own definition, I guess, with the work that I do. But like, it’s still hard. Like there’s still days when I’m like, “Oh, I wish like all my clients would disappear” or like, “I wish I would stop getting emails from customers.” And this is very difficult work and I’m stressed out, but that doesn’t really matter because overall, I enjoy the work overall. I know that I’m kind of working always towards like the sense of the purpose that I have. And I think didn’t order to work for yourself. I think more than, and it’s funny, there’s a study dine that guy’s name was Dean Becker. He works for adaptive systems or something like that. He looked at resilience. I talked about resilience in the book a lot, and he found that resilience is more useful than education or training or business experience or anything else. Resilience is the most important thing, right? And I think that I’ve just been lucky that I’ve been able to kind of cultivate resilience in my work, because I have had lots of things that have failed. I’ve had software projects with like zero customers after like a year of work one that had one customer for a month after a year of work. And then that customer churned out and was like, “Oh, that sucks.” Like courses that haven’t done well, but like, I don’t think that resilience is something that I was born with or that anybody is born with. I think resilience is something that you kind of work at and I think when you kind of consider like we really don’t have control over the things in our life that we think we do. We could say like, “Oh, well, I know how to launch a business because I’ve launched one before. So, the next one I launched is going to be successful.” No, it’s not. It may not be, it’s more likely to be, but maybe it won’t be so we don’t have control over all the things in our lives that we do. I mean, it can get philosophical and control is an illusion, but from a pragmatic sense we really don’t have control over the things we think we do. The other thing, like I said in resilience is that I think when we’re working towards a sense of purpose or like a greater good, or like a thing that we actually want, then even when we have those bad days or when things go wrong, it’s still okay. Because we’re still moving right? In the direction that we want. And then I think the final thing is just like being able to adapt, being able to kind of roll with the punches because if we don’t control everything and if control is sort of an illusion, if things can go wrong, even for working towards what we want, if we can adapt and change, then we’re always going to be moving closer to alignment with what we want with the purpose that we have. And so even in terms of building websites, like when I started websites were tables and flash. And is just like the way websites work now. There’s almost no similarity, like there’s more differences even like in sharing, writing online, it’s changed so many times. You just always have to be adapting, always have to be seeing like what’s the trend, what’s not a trend, what’s was falling out of favor. What do people want? And doing that, I think more than like, I don’t think there’s really any skills that you need to have to work for yourself, at least none that you’re born with. But I think if we’re always looking to foster, like how we can be more resilient, cause a lot of entrepreneurial-ism is failing repeatedly, right? Like it’s just so much love. I don’t know, “Oh, it’s going to happen. Let’s just see if this will work and all. Maybe it didn’t or maybe it did”. I just think that like the resilience aspect of it is like probably the most important thing. 

Andra Zaharia: Absolutely! So, we have resilience and a purpose, you know, having that meaningful thing that drives you so much and while you were talking about being responsive to change and being able to keep it lean and flexible, I kept thinking about this book that I came across. I didn’t get to read it yet, but it is farming to think about it a lot called “What got you here, won’t get you there.” And I thought that it was a… I added it to my trait list simply because that title was so good that it got me thinking about this and how important this is, because in hindsight, when we look at things, we try to make them seem like they fit together. Like we planned them to do so because our mind plays tricks on us like that. And in fact, if we’re objective and if we look at it objectively when we analyze our past or reflect on it, the thing is that it didn’t everything go according to plan at all. And I don’t think anyone can say like, you know, for my life’s perfectly planned out, this, I meant to do that.

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. That’s not, yeah. That’s not how it works and then we look back and see like, “Oh, okay. It just ended up working out like that.” And that’s why it’s just like, I just have such a hard time when people are like, “Well, what’s your five-year plan?” Or like, “Where do you see yourself in the future?” What’s next? And it’s like, I don’t know, like how, I don’t know. I like there’s no, I didn’t know that I was going to work for myself. And so, till I started, I didn’t know I was going to do design until I started. I didn’t know I was going to be an author until I started writing books. I would just rather leave myself open to the possibility of things happening because I don’t have control over anything anyways. So why not just be open to it? If something starts to work out then great. If something isn’t working out, then let’s try something different to see what can work instead. And, yeah, I mean, that’s why I don’t like goals. That’s why I hate having like a plan or having goals. It’s so funny that people put so much stock into like goals or even in a business plan. It’s like the plan is only good until you start doing the work and then it all falls apart. And then what was the point of having the plan in the first place? 

Andra Zaharia: That is so true and, you know, but it takes a lot of self-awareness and a lot of, you know, understanding how the human mind works, how we work and how others work to get to this point. Because otherwise, people aren’t just driven by conventional wisdom and that’s what makes me happy to be able to to learn from people like you who think differently, who do things differently and who, especially walk the talk because that’s where most people get stuck, including myself, many, many times.  And you’ve talked a lot about your values and, you know, you’ve talked about not setting goals and, something that I want to touch on further is that you don’t believe in motivation, which is something of very interesting that kind of, you know, just brings down all the myths, half of the internet articles number, topic. I wanted to ask about your values and principles, you know, how did you get to them? How did you manage to kind of, let’s say summarize them so well, and just have a finite number of them and say, “Okay, these are my values, and I’m going to guide my decisions in the future, based on these.”

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I mean, for me, all was like the root of all, of the decisions that I make. It always comes down to freedom and I value having freedom more than anything else. I value having freedom more than money, more than clients, more than anything. Because I think freedom gives us the ability to be able to make choices that we want, to make and not be forced into choices of saying like, “Oh, I have to choose this because of X.” I don’t want to be in a position where I have to say like, “Oh, I have to take on this client or a half to make this feature.” Or I have to say “no” to this customer for this reason. Like, I always want my business to be as free as possible. Like I want to be free. And I think that’s what having a smaller business. Means. I think that if you have a small business, then you’re free from having like a lot of responsibilities or a lot of stress. If you live a very minimal, comfortable life, you’re free from having to make so much more money too, to be able to cover your expenses. Like if I live as lean as possible, then I don’t have to make as much money a month to be able to cover like mortgage food and whatever, internet and whatever else. So, I’m always thinking like, what can I do to be as free as possible in my life. That’s the biggest thing for me. Like I want to be able to make decisions I want to make and not be forced into making decisions just because it’s the only option I have. And I mean that for me, that’s why I don’t grow my business. That’s why I don’t hire employees. That’s why I don’t have like an office. Like all of those things, all come back to “I value freedom more than anything else.” And I think that, where I kind of differ from the business world is that the business world thinks that success after success comes growth, like that’s the next step. Like it goes, you’re successful, then you grow and then you get successful and then you grow. For me, it’s like you get successful and then you have freedom to choose freedom, to choose whether or not you want to grow freedom, to choose whether or not you want to have more customers or more. I answer more features in your product or service. And it’s just that, to me is the best, like that to me is the best thing, because then I feel like I can make decisions more based on how I’ll be content or how I’ll be happy instead of my business is like, once people get inspired that you brought up base camp. I interviewed Jason Fried for the book and he’s like, people don’t pine over having like the good old days when their business was huge. It’s like they pine over days when their business was small and scrappy and three or four co-founders that were their friends, or they could move on a dime or they could like do extra things for customers. People like that time, because that’s the time when they had the most freedom. And then, as they grow their freedom to minute, like, as things grow, the freedom diminishes and I don’t want to be in a position like that. So that’s, yeah, that’s the value that I always kind of lean on to see, am I moving closer to freedom and more choices or am I leading for “is this opportunity, which is really just an obligation with a pretty bow. Is this leading me more towards freedom or further from freedom? 

Andra Zaharia: Pause. So many things to unpack there and you know, sometimes consultants do for their clients when they want to clarify things before starting a project. So, they make sure they’re moving towards the right direction. I think that, you know, Seth Godin’s talked a lot about this, even on his podcast, Kimbo. He talks about if we’d be our own bosses, we’d be really terrible bosses because we don’t give ourselves that structure. Maybe we don’t think enough and you spend enough time reflecting: What is my core value? What are my core principles? What do I want to achieve with this? So, we can make these choices, so we can understand that. We have the liberty of making these traces and, you know, not being course into all kinds of other decisions by the environment we live in by, society, parents, our group of friends, whatever it may be, and just acknowledging and opening your yourself up to the possibility of doing things differently, but with as much impact in value also means, you know, it’s incredibly important. It can be in one of those aha-moments and that totally changes their perspective. But, in order to do that, you kind of have to just move away from external rewards and be very, very considerate of yourself and, cultivate that self-awareness and that inner peace, that, you know, some of the best people, I know, it’s not this Zen all the time, smooth sailing that never ever gets you mad don’t ever, you know, raise your voice or anything else. It’s just that you have this ongoing purpose and a red thread that kind of, you know, keeps you going in the right direction. So, it’s wonderful you talked about all of this and I wanted to ask because he talks a lot about, you know, not doing business in the conventional way, but you’re also not living your life in a conventional way at all. Given that you live, as you said, in the woods, on an island, where there’s almost no one else and I think that many people think of, you know, moving away from the city. I keep telling my boyfriend I want to move to the mountains and raise goats. He keeps thinking it’s not going to happen, but you know, especially planning towards that, so we’ll see how things spread out. I wanted to understand better how this move worked for you and if it worked in the ways, you expected it to, and how it surprised you and how it may have, the way you look at things. 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I mean, I grew up in the suburbs outside of a huge city. As an adult, I moved to the downtown core of a city, it’s a lot like of young people do. And then I just realized I can, luckily my wife realized the same thing. It was just like, there’s just too much noise and too much stimulus. And like we had blackout blinds on the curtains in our bedroom because there was a billboard across. Like an animate, like a video billboard that was always flashing across from us. We had a fan that we would run at night, just as white noise to drown out the drunken buffoons beneath the building. And it was just this like kickoff bunny of like interruption and distraction. And we were just like, “Why are we living like this? Like, especially when we don’t need to live like this, I can do my job anywhere.” And she wanted to change her career anyways. And it was just like, “Why don’t we just leave?” And then we moved. Yeah, we moved to the woods on an island. We’ve since moved, I think the book starts with us moving to Tofino. I’m in British Columbia. We don’t live there anymore, but we live similar, just with less tourists. But yeah, I mean, like the thing that we kind of realized in doing that, is that when you remove most of the stimulus from your life, like you’re left with your own thoughts and that’s scary and that’s difficult. There was, I can’t remember who did this, what university, is an American University? They did this study where they put on subjects in a room and they couldn’t have their phones and there’s no screens or anything. And they put, they hook them up to electrodes and they put a little red button in the center of the table and they were like, “You just sit here alone with your thoughts, or you can press the button and you’re going to get an electric shock and it’s going to hurt. You’re not going to die, but if you press the button, you’re going to get a shock”. You do not have to press the button. There’s no reason to press the button. If you press the button, you’ll get a shock.” And then, they let the researchers left the room. Most people press the button. Most people would rather, you may be shocked and experienced the pain of shocks, then alone with their thoughts for like a couple of minutes. It seems so ridiculous that that’s the case, but it’s so completely understandable. Like this is the way our lives are now. We can’t stand in line or like set on a bus without like looking at our tiny pocket computers. But I think that’s like some of the most important work we have to do is… Is that like introspection? Is that like, what is it that I want? Like, why am I working towards the things that I’m working towards? Like, what do I need, what do I not need in my life? And all of those things, they’re like the most important questions and they’re not easy to come to. And they also shift all the time. It’s not like you can say like, “Oh, I figured out what I want in my life and never think about it again, because things change all the time, right?” So, it’s like it’s a constant difficult to work, which is why most people avoid it at all costs because it’s all the time and it’s hard. So, it’s just, yeah, it’s just set up to not be easy.

Andra Zaharia: Exactly. That’s why a few people do it, unfortunately, but I hope that, you know, more and more, just because I think it’s not only builds resilience, but it builds kind of mental health that really keeps you going and striving and, you know, understanding and taking pleasure and deriving happiness from things in life that you may have. Not even noticed simply because you were caught up in your own things, so living there definitely, you know, was a change of pace in terms of stimulus. I think that, you know, David and Jason talk about a lot in it. Doesn’t have to be crazy at work. They talk about, they’ll bend space works someplace, so which is… it is hell. I’ve lived through it as well. I did feel like my brain was chattering and just, you know, be going from that to being at home almost all the time and working by myself was a huge change. I kept seeing myself go to social, you know, Twitter, which is mostly the only social network I’m still on. And that I actually enjoy because there are many great people there. The downside is that I kept, you know, watching myself. I caught myself opening that tab, but I was like, “No, I was trying to do something else and rebuilding your focus back from that state of overstimulation is very difficult, but it’s temporary.” I mean, we have to, I think that an important realization that I’ve seen in your work and in other books as well that I’ve run into this topic is that, you know, anxiety, these constantly big changes in our lives. They’re just temporary. And we have to remind ourselves that we will get over the hurdle and we will get to a state of calmness, but we have to be patient with ourselves throughout this change. You know, I bet that it was not that easy to adapt to a new lifestyle, but it is so super rewarding that, once you get acclimated with it, you look back and ask, “How could I have lived, you know, so differently for so long knowing that it hurt me in various ways?”

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. And attention is a muscle. And just like going to the gym, you can’t go to the gym and like bench 300 pounds. Like you have to start small. Like you have to work at it. You have to build it up. You have to build up resistance and tolerance. And it’s the exact same thing with focus. It’s like if you’re used to not focusing for more than a minute or two on anything, then you’re not going to be able to sit down for like five hours and do some deep work. Like it’s just not going to work out like that. And you shouldn’t beat yourself up if that’s not the case either. It’s like just set like many things, like maybe sit down for like five minutes. Maybe 10, like just start small and like, don’t be yourself. I was just saying when people, because I’ve been vegan for a long time. People are always talking to me about like how to be vegan or like, “Oh, I tried to be vegan” and like, “I ate something by accident and I’m not vegan anymore.” And it’s like, who cares, Steve? Like, just eat like the people who I’ve talked to, who are the happiest with like their diet or with focus or whatever are the ones who kind of took it in small steps and like maybe tried it for. A day or a week, or like try to focus for like 15 minutes without any notifications on. And it’s just like, it’s just work. It’s just like, it’s just a way to work in a different way. It’s a way to just be a bit more focused, but it’s also a way to get a lot of stuff done. Like I get a lot of work done because I haven’t had notifications on any device that I own. Probably five or six or seven years. Like my business hasn’t gone away. My business hasn’t died. I’ve not lost touch with people. Like, and I don’t have… the only thing that interrupts me is the phone. Like nobody who uses a phone, like nobody ever calls me and my mom calls me on the weekend and that’s about it. Or if I have a calendar reminder for something that like a meeting or a call, like what we’re doing right now, where I have to be at. It’s important that I’m interrupted from my work, because I have something that has to happen at a certain time. But other, because somebody emails me, I don’t know somebody tweets at me. I don’t know any of these things unless I’m doing those things. And then when I’m on Twitter or when I’m in my inbox, the only thing I’m focused on is that thing until I’m done and then I close it and then I go and work on something else. And I just feel like I get a lot of work. I don’t know how to work in any other way, because they know that working in this way gets the most done for me, that I don’t know how I would be able to work. Like if I go to sit in a coffee shop and try to work, I can’t, like there’s just too much happen. There’s too much happening everywhere. And people talking and music and like espresso machines clanking, and it seems like a good idea that like, “Oh, I’ll go work at a coffee shop.” Then I sit there and I’m like, I can’t do anything. Like, I’m just going home. 

Andra Zaharia: I so understand it. There are those background noise generators online that kind of give you like the soothing sound of wind through the leaves. And then there’s the coffee shop noise, the white noise. And I put it on. I was like, I cannot focus with those. Who can get anything done? Because our minds, they’re just triggered by this. And we have to understand this and make the conscious decision of moving away from them and finding that the thing that works for us. You know, that may be so different from someone else. And I think many people listening to, you mentioned that you haven’t had any notification in the past six years will think, “Oh my God, it takes so much willpower to do that. And how would I even… I cannot, I could not live without the knowing because FOMO, you know, will eventually kill them. Did you do it gradually? Was this a process for you or do you just turn them off completely one day and just started fresh the next day? 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I just turned them all off. I was just like moving. I was just like, “This isn’t suiting me, isn’t making me happy. So, let’s just see, this is an experiment, I don’t have to do this. Like, let’s just see what happens if I turn them off for a day.” Nothing bad happened. And then it’s like, let’s just leave them off for a week. And now it’s like, I don’t even notice because it’s been so long. It’s just like, when I leave Social Media for like a month or two at a time, it’s like the first day I’m like, “Oh, I should check Twitter.” And then I have to stop myself from doing that, like, “Okay, I’m going to open a tab and see what’s happening.” But then, after a day or two, I’m like, I’ve forgotten that Twitter exists. Like after a month, I’m just like, “This is my life now. Like I don’t, I don’t look at this thing.” And then when I go back, I’m just like, “Why did I come back again?” And then I say, I remember like, “Oh, there’s like good conversations and interesting people and that brings me back, but never been on Facebook. That doesn’t hurt my life in any way. I’ve never been on LinkedIn, had an Instagram account, that just made me feel bad about myself. So, I deleted it. So, we don’t need these things. These things didn’t exist like 15 years ago and people were all right. This thing didn’t exist like a hundred years ago and people were fine. 

Andra Zaharia: Then business got done and relationships were created. 

Paul Jarvis: Exactly. We don’t, need these things. We like them. And they’re addictive for sure but they’re not required. 

Andra Zaharia: See, this is one of the most impressive things about you and your work is that there’s this constant challenge, let’s say for many people between consuming and creating. And I think that you’re doing a fantastic job in creating so much, in so many assets because you know, your revenue sources are courses there, you’re writing your books, there’s some consulting work as well, if I’m not mistaken, 

Paul Jarvis: I haven’t worked with clients for a couple of years, but all the other things, yeah. 

Andra Zaharia: So, you’ve productized your knowledge, you’ve done so, so much because you don’t consume as much. I wanted to ask you how much of your time, let’s say, you know, fake percentages you spend creating versus consuming and what are the types of information or sources that you go to when you need to fuel up on insights or whatever type of knowledge it may be. 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah, I mean, it changes like, right now, I have almost no time to create just because it’s like book launch time, but that’s only going to last like a month or two. Then I can get back to it. I’m usually like, I usually do creative work about three, four hours a day, admin work for about an hour or two a day and then that’s it for work. And then I’d like to go exercise, I’d go to the gym, go to yoga, do something like that. I like to take time to make meals from like whole fresh ingredients to finish product on the summer. I spend a lot of my time in the garden and then I do like watch TV. I’ll watch TV a couple of hours. Like, and it’s usually just a garbage TV, like right now. I think I’m watching the Punisher on Netflix. Cause I’m a nerd and I like comic book stuff. And then when I read, I mostly read like science fiction or fantasy because I’m just not interested in business books… They are so boring and I’m like, I know, I write business books. I try to write non boring business books, but like, I honestly don’t care about the genre, about the industries I’m in. Like, I honestly don’t care what other designers are doing. I don’t care what other writers are doing. I don’t care what other course makers are doing. It’s just not interesting. Like, I don’t know, I just, I guess I built different, but like that kind of stuff, isn’t interesting to me at all. Like I just couldn’t care less about what other people who do work like me do. Like it’s cool and I have some friends who do that and we’ll talk about. I have a couple of friends who are authors and we talk about books that mostly just gripe about the pains and the issues with like publishing books. But for the most part, I would rather just consume brain candy. I just want to read like Sci-Fi or watch just garbage television and just kind of like distress or be outside for a little bit and distress and that kind of thing. So as well for work, it’s probably about 50 or 60, 40 creative stuff. Because there’s always admin stuff, anytime. It’s funny when freelancers start, they’re like, “Oh, I can work like eight hours a day.” It’s like, no, you can probably work like four or five hours a day. And the other four hours, if you’re working eight hours, they’re going to be like, running the business cause you got to run the business kind of thing.

Andra Zaharia: You got to talk to the accountants and everyone else. I have a couple of notes here. I think, you know, from reading your work and your book, you’re extremely relatable. You’re working because it’s just relatable. The situations you depict, the way you talk to people, it just, it feels like you’re a disclosed friend that, you know, they’ve known for forever and ever. Which I think is absolutely wonderful and, and then you have the structure that keeps coming back. There’s a backbone that’s very strong that, you know, gives you strong opinions that are backed up by your experience and the fact that you never claimed to be a specialist and nodal type of person. I think that is one of the things I admire and respect the most because so very few people would be able to be vulnerable in this way. And we’ll be able to be honest, because again, I know we live in this era, in which many companies, and so specialists of all kinds and freelancers, entrepreneurs, whatever claim that they value transparency, but so very few people actually practice it. The rest just end up making everyone else feel bad with their curated feeds and leaves perfect photos and so on. And it’s, yeah, it brings this entire distortion to not just the business world, but way beyond that. And Instagram is like one of those toxic places as well. So, you made some very good points about it, which I hope people, you know, not only think about, but also try it. And just try it themselves in practice at least for a week, just to give it time, try to see how your brain feels after you disconnect after you read whatever you’d like, whatever makes you, you know, helps you sleep better or helps you relax and unwind without getting all that stimulus about someone else’s problem, someone else’s life, someone else’s opinions. Because you never get time to think about your own. And you may get this courage from voicing your opinion simply because you feel that. Oh, everyone else has said it perfectly. And I bet that, you know, that basically would keep authors from ever writing anything else because everything’s been written before, create and move for, but not in this way. So, I think that there’s a lot of room to create and to grow their tiny rent. I wanted to ask if you ever deal with, you know, throughout your work… You’re working your own way and you set aside other people’s way of doing things, the trends, the whole market dynamic that keeps going back and forth. Do you ever deal with imposter syndrome though? And, what do you, what has helped you, just kick it out of your life? So, you can, because it can drain you, It can take so much energy, and I know that many people are confronted with this, especially women, no matter the field.

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I don’t know if it goes away, it doesn’t go away. At least for me, like, I still feel like that sometimes or all the time or whatever, but I don’t know. Like, I feel like it’s funny. I did a survey of my newsletter probably about three years ago and I was just like, I was coming up with questions. Because I like to learn about my audience and see kind of like what they’re working on, what they want from me and all of that. I think one question I just added on a whim was like, why do you buy from like, why have you bought something from me? It’s just like the weirdest question. Like, who asks, why you bought, why did you buy something from me? But I added it in the survey. I don’t even remember why it was funny because I was looking at all the answers to that question specifically. And most people were like, because you wrote it. Because there’s a gazillion business books, there’s a gazillion courses on freelancing and like, I just exist in industries that have tons of other examples of products that are almost the same, but they’re like you said. They’re not made by me. It’s not like my voice and everybody’s voice. I think is worth sharing because we all have different takes on things. We all have different experience with things. So I think that we shouldn’t be like, if I were like, “Oh, there are the business books. I can’t write a business book”, I would never be able to do anything in my life. If I were like, “Well, that’s already been done before because everything, like everything has been done before, everything’s really just a remix of something that exists.” Even Airbnb is hotels, Uber is taxis. Like they’re just remixes on an idea that’s existed for so long. And I don’t know, I for imposter syndrome, I think for me, it’s just that, I guess I’ve just become comfortable with the fact that I can be afraid and act at the same time, like I can have fear and action exist in parallel. So, I can be afraid to do something and be afraid to publish something and be afraid to write something and be afraid to do something. But I can do it anyways because I don’t know how to get rid of that fear. I honestly don’t, I’m scared and anxious about pretty much everything, but I know that I can have those feelings and those fears and still do the things. And it doesn’t seem like it’s, who wrote that book? Oliver Burkeman wrote a book called The Antidote, which talks a lot about happiness. This is one of my favorite books and entity talks about how most people’s worst-case scenarios aren’t actually the worst-case scenario. If I write an article and somebody hates it, that sucks, but it’s not like the end of the world. And I think the worst case-scenario is really just like dying and embarrassing death, like being on a stage naked and die. Which, why would you ever end up, like, how, what are the things that happen in your life that make that a possibility? I don’t know. I can, I just feel like everything is just iterations on everything else. So, if some, like if an article that I write, because I send an article to my newsletter once a week. If an article doesn’t hit or land, well then like, “whatever”, right? Another one next week, if that doesn’t work, I’ll write another one next week. And it’s like if people don’t like this book, they might like another one or they might like one that I wrote in the past. It’s just everything, just kind of like isn’t iteration and everything. Action can exist in parallel with fear. So, just do the thing. I don’t know how to get rid of imposter syndrome. I still have it, but I could do things anyways. 

Andra Zaharia: Precisely, I think I heard this on an episode of the creative class podcast with Kaleigh Moore that you did, is that you talked about people fear to things that they haven’t already done. And, you know, once you do them, that fear disappears. It’s just like I think it’s similar to the experiences of growing up. Because, for example, we bought an apartment like two years ago and I was like, terrified of all the bureaucracy. And I was like, I don’t think I’d met adult yet. Cause I don’t know how to have all these things. And once I had to get them then, and once I got through it, I realized that it’s actually not that bad. And you know, you get to talk to people and things, you know, workouts, you made them workout or someone else helps you and you can always ask for help. I had this realization that’s like, okay. So, I guess a part of being an adult, because I’ve been struggling with this idea for a long time, powering through this fear and shipping things, which is another very important lesson that I learned both from you and Seth Gordon, who also preaches, you know, this constantly throughout his work. Practice just liberates you from your kind of mind prison and it keeps you going. 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah, it’s just like the, I think that episode, Kaleigh and I were talking about pricing. Yeah. Or like giving quotes to clients. So as just like we were talking about how, cause a lot of freelancers especially, are scared of giving a quote to a client because they think like, “Oh, I’m overpricing myself” or like, “What if somebody comes in at a lower price?” By the end of me doing freelancing, I have no problem talking to clients. Like I had all the calm. I’m not a very confident person, but like I had all the confidence in the world telling clients like, “Hey, look, this is my price.” Like, “I’m going to do a good job, here’s why you should hire me. It’s going to cost this much.” And there’s a lot of mine has charged a ton of money at the time. And it’s like, I didn’t get to that point by doing it first time. I was scared shitless. The first time I had to do a budget for a client, but over the course of the years that I’d done it, I’d probably like giving quotes to like 500, 600 clients at least. And just by virtue of doing it over and over again, like that, fear did dissipate. That anxiety, “Oh, what if they say no”, it was like, whatever they say no and then somebody else says, yes, who cares? This is the price, like the price of the price. I know that I’m making money at this price. So, this person doesn’t want it, Somebody else will. It’s just like experience. In the beginning, it was hard to give prices to clients after doing it for a while. It wasn’t so hard after that. 

Andra Zaharia: So just keep going at it constantly. I have like two more questions. I really want to see squeeze into, let’s say the last minutes of our conversation, you mentioned in the book and throughout your articles, that one of your key focuses is to ask better questions. So, I wanted to ask if you have some specific questions that kind of help you make a decision, whether it is to take on a new client or do a new project or whatever. It may be something even in your personal life as well. 

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I mean, especially thinking about the book a lot, I think there’s like three things that I like to like to ask, especially as it relates to business growth or personal growth or whatever is like, how much is enough? How will I know when I’ve reached it and what will change if I do? Because a lot of times we just think that more is better. And we don’t think like, well, how is better? Like if I did make more, what would change for the good or for the better? So, those are the three things that I like to ask the most just because the book has been on my mind so much. And that’s basically the book is those three questions. 

Andra Zaharia: But you know, as in much more detail and with, let’s say, examples that drive you and push you to seek your own path, I love that at the end of each chapter, you have like those, let’s say, those not, they’re not exactly question. They’re just ideas to reflect exactly and to keep you going. I think some of the best books included some of those things, especially I for example, Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari, who at the end of the book, he asks three questions and you’re just left with like, “Oh, I have a lot of things to think about now.” And I love that you do that as well. So, just keep in mind those three questions. I’ll write them down in the show notes just to make sure that everyone gets them and I wanted to get back to that thing that you don’t believe in motivation. I think that is my last thing before asking, you know, for other resources that you’d like people to reach.

Paul Jarvis: Yeah. I just think that, especially when you do creative work, we think that we need to be like motivated to do it. But I think we have a reverse. I think like believing that we have to be motivated to be creative is the opposite of how we should work. Because they feel like I get motivated by doing the work. So, I might as well do the work and then I will get motivated for it. It’s just like I never sit down and I’m only going to write if I feel like I’m motivated today. It’s like, “No, I’m a writer. That’s my job.” So, then I sit down and start writing and it’s probably going to be very painful for the first, like 15-20 minutes, but then I’m going to get into it. I didn’t get to find my flowing and things are going to start being easier Then, I’m going to be motivated. So, I feel like we have to do the work to get motivated by the work instead of getting motivated in order to do the work. 

Andra Zaharia: Well, that’s an important shift in mindset that I hope really more people consider and think about and try to practice on their own as well. Any other resources? You’ve mentioned a couple of books throughout the show, and I’ll definitely link to each one because I think that people should read them and I should read them as well. Because I’ve only heard about some of them, but not actually read them. Anything else you’d glad to reach it, the list, maybe one of your favorite fiction books. 

Paul Jarvis: We Are Bob, the trilogy. Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s like Sci-Fi, AI stuff, but it’s so relatable. It’s just so well written. It’s just such an easy, good read. And who wouldn’t want to read a book called We are Bob, it sounds fun. It’s just sounds ridiculous. And it’s awesome. 

Andra Zaharia: Oh, absolutely. I can wait to read it. Any last thoughts you’d like to add before we wrap up? 

Paul Jarvis: No, I think we’re good. I think we covered it. I think we covered a lot here today. 

Andra Zaharia: Good. And I know that it sounds like so cliche, but I really feel like time has flown. I feel like we’ve been talking for about two minutes. I know that you probably feel a lot differently because you’ve had like six interviews before me. But, again, it was absolutely wonderful having you on the show and being able to discuss all these things with you. Can’t wait to share it with more people. And I want to remind them again that they, you know, go buy the book, read polls articles, listen to the Creative Class Podcast. Even if you’re not a freelancer, there’s so much great stuff in there and also made me take the course, if that’s up your alley. I know I certainly will this year.  So, you know, I’ll be around there somewhere as well. Thank you so much, Paul, for everything, for the world that you do for, for just the type of person that you are and for driving the community forward! And for speaking for those who haven’t found their voice yet, but thanks for your work. I think they’ll do. 

Paul Jarvis: Well, yeah, thank you very much. This was so much fun to chat with you today. So, thank you! Thank you as well!