In 2019, I read Company of One by Paul Jarvis.
It arrived at exactly the right time.
I’d spent years building businesses, working with clients, leading teams, creating content, recording podcasts, writing copy, producing videos and helping other people show up better online.
Before that, I’d spent a long time as a Chartered Financial Planner, helping people answer one of the most important questions in life.
How much is enough?
It’s a question I asked clients all the time.
Enough money.
Enough security.
Enough freedom.
Enough success.
Enough time to do the things that actually matter.
Then, at some point, I realised I needed to ask myself the same question.
Bigger isn’t always better
For a long time, I thought the natural path for a business was growth.
More clients.
More people.
More systems.
More services.
More turnover.
More of everything.
That’s the story we’re usually sold.
Start small, then scale. Hire. Expand. Add more moving parts. Make the business look bigger, even if it also makes your life more complicated.
There’s nothing wrong with that if it’s what you want.
But I started to realise it wasn’t what I wanted.
I didn’t want to spend my days managing layers of complexity. I didn’t want to build a business that needed constant feeding. I didn’t want to keep chasing growth for the sake of it.
I wanted to do good work.
Work I cared about.
Work I could stand behind.
Work that felt personal, creative and useful.
That shift changed everything.
The agency years taught me a lot
Running a creative agency was a brilliant chapter.
It gave me the chance to work with some excellent clients and talented people. It helped me understand storytelling, branding, marketing, websites, social media, video and the pressure small businesses feel when they’re trying to be seen.
It also taught me what I didn’t want.
I didn’t want to sit between too many people, juggling other people’s priorities all day.
I didn’t want every piece of work to become a process.
I didn’t want to be further away from the creative bit.
And more than anything, I didn’t want to build a business that looked successful from the outside, but didn’t feel right on the inside.
That’s not failure.
That’s information.
Useful information, as it turns out.
Finding my way back to photography
Photography had been part of my life since my early twenties.
At first, it was a hobby. Then it became part of the work. Then, gradually, it became the work that made the most sense.
The more I photographed people, the more I realised this was where I wanted to put my energy.
Portraits.
Headshots.
Personal branding.
Actors.
Musicians.
Small business owners.
Hardworking professionals who need to show up with more confidence.
People who hate having their photo taken, then leave the studio saying it was nowhere near as bad as they expected.
That’s the work I enjoy most.
Not because it’s always easy. It isn’t.
People arrive with nerves, self-doubt and years of believing they’re not photogenic.
But that’s what makes it worthwhile.
A good portrait can change the way someone sees themselves.
It can help them show up better on their website, LinkedIn profile, speaker bio, press feature, book jacket, theatre programme, business card, or wherever else they need to be seen.
That matters.
Becoming a company of one
The idea of being a “company of one” appealed to me because it gave me permission to stop chasing a version of success I didn’t actually want.
It reminded me that small can be strong.
Small can be focused.
Small can be profitable.
Small can be personal.
Small can be enough.
I don’t need to build a big studio with a large team, a complicated structure and a diary full of work I don’t really want to do.
I need to build a business that lets me do excellent work for the right people.
That means staying close to the client experience.
It means answering the emails.
Having the conversations.
Planning the shoot.
Setting up the lights.
Giving the direction.
Editing the images.
Delivering the gallery.
Seeing the reaction.
I like that.
I like knowing that when someone books me, they get me.
Not a junior photographer. Not a process. Not a handover. Not a diluted version of the thing they thought they were buying.
Just me, doing the work properly.
The financial planning lesson that stayed with me
My old financial planning career still shapes how I think.
Back then, “enough” was usually framed around money.
How much do you need to stop working?
How much do you need to feel safe?
How much do you need to live the life you want?
But the same question applies to business.
How much work is enough?
How much income is enough?
How much ambition is enough?
How much complexity are you willing to carry?
How much of your time do you want to give away?
Those questions are uncomfortable, but useful.
Because more isn’t always the answer.
Sometimes the better answer is clearer.
Better clients.
Better work.
Better boundaries.
Better use of time.
Better fit between the business you run and the life you actually want.
That’s what I’m trying to build.
Small doesn’t mean unambitious
There’s a danger people hear “company of one” and think it means playing small.
I don’t see it that way.
I’m still ambitious.
Very ambitious, actually.
I want to keep getting better.
I want to create portraits people are proud to use.
I want to work with interesting people.
I want to shoot for magazines.
I want to see my work in print.
I want to build a reputation for honest, confident, characterful portraits.
I want people in Surrey and beyond to think of me when they need photography that feels human and useful.
That doesn’t require a large agency.
It requires focus.
It requires consistency.
It requires doing the work and doing it well.
What I’ve stopped doing
Part of this journey has been deciding what not to do.
I don’t photograph weddings.
I don’t want to travel into central London for every shoot.
I don’t want to become a high-volume, low-touch photography business.
I don’t want to sell people things they don’t need.
I don’t want to create bland images that could belong to anyone.
I don’t want to chase every enquiry just because it has a budget attached.
That might sound limiting.
I find it freeing.
The clearer I am about what I don’t do, the easier it is to focus on what I do best.
Portraits.
Headshots.
Personal branding.
Events with people and atmosphere.
Photography that helps someone feel more confident, more visible and more themselves.
What I’m building now
The business I’m building now is simpler.
Not easy, but simpler.
It’s built around my own photography, my own voice and my own relationship with clients.
It’s about creating images that help people show up properly.
Not fake confidence.
Not glossy nonsense.
Not turning people into someone they’re not.
Just strong, honest photographs that make people look credible, approachable and worth trusting.
That’s the work that feels right to me.
It brings together everything I’ve done before.
The financial planning years taught me how to listen, ask better questions and help people feel at ease.
The agency years taught me how businesses communicate, how people build trust online and why good content matters.
Photography gives all of that a visible form.
Redefining success
Success looks different to me now.
It’s not about building the biggest business.
It’s not about the largest team.
It’s not about looking busy, or important, or constantly in demand.
Success is doing work I’m proud of, with people I like, in a way that gives me enough freedom to enjoy the rest of my life too.
It’s making a good living without building something that swallows me whole.
It’s being present with clients.
It’s improving my craft.
It’s making photographs that people actually use and value.
It’s knowing when enough is enough.
That doesn’t mean I’ve got it all perfectly worked out.
Of course I haven’t.
But the direction feels right.
And that matters.
The road ahead
Moving from a creative agency to a company of one wasn’t a retreat.
It was a decision to get closer to the work.
Closer to the people I photograph.
Closer to the thing I actually want to be known for.
I’m grateful for the agency chapter and everything it taught me. I’m grateful to the people who were part of it. But I’m also glad to be here now, building something smaller, clearer and more personal.
A business doesn’t have to be big to be meaningful.
A photographer doesn’t need a team behind them to make an impact.
And sometimes the best move isn’t scaling up.
It’s stripping things back until the work feels like yours again.
