How to build a successful one-person business
How to build a successful one-person business
Productise yourself.
Having control over what you work on and who you work with is something that is hard to beat.
That’s the beauty of a one-person business- no employees, no overheads, no bullsh*t.
This begs the question: Why aren’t more people trying their hand at it?
Myths that are holding you back
“I don’t have enough experience”
Use past experience to help other people, by self-reflecting on the problems you’ve overcome
“I am too boring.”
You don’t need a glamorous lifestyle to do this stuff.
You need to be interesting enough to make your interest interesting to people. This can be done via effective communication and effective thinking.
Who is the one-person business for?
People who value self-reliance, time and location freedom, autonomy
Being able to do what you want and having enough money to do so while impacting the world and having a purpose behind your life
One-person businesses use social media to build an audience/ community and attracting like-minded people.
Building an audience gives us leverage for the future.
Use social media as traffic
Use no code tools to host their product/ content/ newsletter
If you’re worried about competition, here’s the good news:
There is no saturation in a one person business. It evolves with you.
2 paths to starting a one person business (with ZERO experience)
If you can teach others about what you are studying on social media, or in school, you’re already doing it.
Instead of doing it in private, do it in public.
Path #1: Skill based
Path 1 is based on skills.
Learn a skill, sell a skill, teach a skill.
Selling one skill is a great starting point. The problem with this is that but automation might replace you.
Path #2: Development based
Path 2 is based on development.
This requires understanding the 4 internal markets, which are:
Health
Wealth
Relationships
Happiness.
Based on the 4 internal markets, where people are trying to achieve lofty goals but there are many problems in the way of those goals.
That’s where the money is being made — solving profitable burning problems that people have.
You solve your problems as you are pursuing your goals by researching your curiosities that allow you to achieve those goals faster.
Create content about this
Create a system to help others do the same.
Self reflect on:
How could I have done this better
How did I do this?
What results did I have?
How can I help other people step by step in a faster way get to those results?
An alternative (and possibly the best) path to a one-person business
Path #3: Skill + Development
Why not get the best of both worlds?
Twitter ghostwriter, insta post creator, video editor, design banners for people.
Monetising pretty close to from the start is doable.
Here’s how:
Build skills as you grow your business, help others grow their biz by offering freelance services
Do it in a way that you’re getting results for yourself in a real world setting rather than just building out portfolio pieces and never getting paid what you deserve because you don’t know how to apply your skills to someone’s business.
Practice your skills on your own business -> build your own website, build your own landing page (e.g. build a landing page for an affiliate product to test your copywriting skills).
Crafting the offer
The step-by-step system is your offer/ product.
That’s how you be yourself, improve yourself, and profit off yourself.
Pay attention to where you are now, where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there.
Position yourself as a leader.
4 pillars of the one person business
For those that want to do what they want, and help the people that they can help
You are your customer avatar, you are your brand. You are your niche, you are your content, you are your offer.
You don’t need to wait to monetise (also known as gatekeeping). This is something we can learn from freelancers.
Freelancers make money by:
Learning the fundamentals of a skill very quickly
Reaching out to people immediately to get real world feedback
Charging free or very low cost because their skill isn’t up to par
Gradually working their way up step-by-step
The sooner you start selling something, the sooner you can start failing, and the sooner you can start iterating.
The first product is always gonna be sh*t, so just get it out so you can make it better.
What do I sell?
Minimum viable offer
Either a single freelance skill or
Single interest consulting service
Consulting offers are more scalable than freelance offers.
Teach other people, and get them results.
Note the commonalities on what you are talking about on each call. Then package it up into a course, e-book, cohort.
These are my takeaways from Dan Koe’s Youtube video, where he shares about how to build a one-person business from scratch.