There are almost 7B people on this planet. Someday, I hope, there will be almost 7B companies.
‍
- Naval Ravikant

I built a one-person business that hit 6-figures last year.

‍

But it took me over 3 years — and a lot of mistakes — to get there.

‍

And in this newsletter, I’ll show you exactly how I’d do it faster if I had to start over and I'll give you the exact steps to go from zero to 6-figures with a one-person business in a year.

‍

Let’s dive in.

One-Person Business Model Simplified

Sensible people get paid for doing what they enjoy doing.​

‍- Alan Watts

The one-person business model is turning yourself into the business.

‍

You get paid to be yourself. You are the business. So by improving yourself, you improve the business (and vice versa).

‍

The beauty is that you can get paid to do what you love.

‍

• You pursue your interests

• You solve your own problems

• You sell the solution to others

‍

You literally get paid to improve yourself.

‍

You teach your lessons to others to help them get there faster.

‍

Learn a skill. Teach the skill. Sell the skill.

‍

You pursue your curiosity and you help people with similar interests.

‍

This is why I think it's the ideal business model. You have creative freedom, control over your time and location, and the potential to make millions if you stick with it.

‍

There are only 2 things you need to make it work.

‍

1) Something to sell.

‍

2) People to sell it to.

‍

That's it.

‍

People love to overcomplicate it, but this is what it all comes down to.

‍

Something to sell = your offer & product/service

‍

People to sell to = your audience (followers + email list)

‍

This is the foundation for the rest of this article.

‍

Think of it as a tree. This is the trunk. In the rest of this article, I'll build on top of this and I'll show you what they branches and leaves look like.

‍

At the end of this article you'll know exactly how to build a one-person business that gives you creative control, time and location freedom.

‍

The first branch we'll talk about is the skills that you need to learn.

High-Income Skills For Solopreneurs

Learn to build. Learn to sell. If you can do both, you’ll be unstoppable.

‍- Naval Ravikant

I differentiate between 2 types of high-income skills:

‍

1) Primary skills: skills you need to learn (can't be outsourced)

‍

2) Secondary skills: skills you'll need (but can be outsourced).

‍

It's best to have both but you have a limited amount of time.

So it's best to focus on the primary high-income skills first:

‍

• Sales

• Writing

• Speaking

• Marketing

‍

You can build a business with just these skills.

‍

• Sales helps to sell your offer and make money

• Marketing helps to make people aware of your brand

• Writing and speaking help to make high-quality content

‍

These skills are required to build a one-person business.

‍

So learning these should be your first priority.

‍

If you combine these with your craft, you won't become a starving artist because you have what you need to make money as a creator.

‍

But it's also useful to have the secondary high-income skills:

‍

• AI use

• Web design

• Video editing

• Graphic design

‍

These skills are also very useful.

‍

But they're secondary because you can build a successful one-person business without them. And they're also easier to outsource.

‍

You can hire a video editor or a freelancer to design your website. But it's harder to outsource sales or writing.

‍

Sure, you can hire a salesrep or ghostwriter. But if you're starting out, this won't be realistic (because it's expensive and you consistently need to write and sell).

‍

But you can make 6-figures (or even 7-figures) without a website or video content (if you can write, build, and sell well).

‍

So that's why you want to learn those skills first.

‍

Learning high-income skills is like learning to juggle.

‍

Jugglers start with one ball. Once they have good control over it, they add a second one.

‍

High-income skills are the same.

‍

I recommend starting with writing. If you can write, you can create high-quality content, gain thousands of followers, and build your email list.

‍

This puts you in the perfect position to learn the second high-income skill: selling.

‍

Again, learn to write. Then learn to build and sell. If you can do these things, you'll be unstoppable.

‍

If you want to master digital writing, check out my Aesthetic Writing course. It's been endorsed by Dan Koe, multiple millionaires, and hundreds of happy customers. It explains writing tweets, threads, long-forms, newsletters, stories, and much more. So if you're serious about becoming a digital writer, definitely check it out to see if it's a good fit for you.

‍

But anyways, now you understand:

‍

1) How a one-person business works

‍

2) What skills a solopreneur needs

‍

This puts you in the perfect situation to learn the next topic we'll cover:

‍

Your niche (or lack there of, let me explain)

Specialists vs. Generalists (Niche Battle)

There are usually 2 camps when it comes to picking a niche.

‍

1) The specialists. They urge you to niche down as much as possible. If you don't, you won't make money and you won't build authority according to them. They prioritize money.

‍

2) The generalists. They tell you to write about whatever you want in whatever way you want to write about it. They tell you everything will be alright no matter what you do. They prioritize passion.

‍

I've tried both approaches - and both failed me.

‍

As a specialist, I made money but I hated the process.

‍

As a generalist, I loved the process but made no money.

‍

This led me to develop my own approach to it:

‍

I call it the specialized generalist.

‍

You specialize in one thing and you still talk about what you want. But in a way that makes it interesting to other people.

‍

This sounds a bit abstract, so let me clarify it with an example.

‍

For this, you need to understand the Customer Journey.

‍

This is the journey that your customer needs to go on to go from where they are to where they want to go to.

‍

In my case, here are the things they need to learn for this:

‍

According to specialists, you should stick to these topics to build authority.

‍

But here's what they miss:

‍

People who want to grow and monetize their audience care about much more than just growth and business tips.

‍

You could call business and writing the primary topics. Because you need these to get the outcome.

‍

But there are also tons of other topics that might be useful to people who want to build a one-person business.

‍

For example:

‍

• Fitness

• Psychology

• Emotional control

‍

And many more.

‍

We can call these your secondary topics.

‍

These aren't required to build a business, but they will make it much easier to build a successful business.

‍

So people who want to build a one-person business via X will also be interested in these topics.

‍

Because it helps them to achieve their goal(s). And this is what makes it interesting to them.

‍

So it's not so much about sticking to certain topics. It's about showing people how your interests will help them to achieve their goals.

‍

I'm not in the walking niche. But if I want to, I can talk about it by showing my audience how it'll help them to achieve their goals.

‍

Like this:

‍

See what I did there?

‍

My audience may not care about walking, but they care about mental clarity, idea generation, and writing well.

‍

So if I show them how walking helps them with this, they become interested it. It's not about the topic, it's about showing how the topic benefits them.

‍

You need to show how your interest helps them to get what they want. This is how you can talk about what you want while still keeping it relevant and interesting for your ideal reader.

‍

People don't care about your 'topics', they care about what these topics can do for them. So clearly show them how it will help them and they'll be happy to listen.

‍

But how do you know what people care about?

‍

People figured that out long ago, so let's talk about the eternal markets.

The Eternal Markets

The 3 eternal markets.

‍

• Health

• Wealth

• Relationships

‍

Or the one overarching market: happiness.

‍

You need to pick an outcome that people care about in one of these markets.

‍

Examples:

‍

• Health: getting a sixpack

• Wealth: making $5k/mo online

• Relationships: getting a girlfriend

‍

Then you identify the problems they need to solve and the primary and secondary skills that they need to develop.

‍

Then you make a list of the topics they need to understand for that and the interests you want to talk about (that could help them).

‍

This will give you plenty of content ideas.

‍

If you need a place to start, it can be helpful to come up with your Ikigai and Brand Ikigai.

‍

Your Ikigai is your reason for being.

‍

Your Brand Ikigai is your reason for brand.

‍

I came up with this idea because 'Ikigai' is great, but your Brand Ikigai is more practical when it comes to building your brand.

‍

Make a list for 4 for of the categories and look where they all connect:

‍

After you've done this, you'll have clarity on how to sell, what content to create, and how you build an audience.

‍

So now that you understand all of that, let's jump into the practical steps you can take to build a one-person business.

How To Build Your One-Person Business

There are 8 steps to building your one-person business.

‍

1. Pick a Platform

‍

I recommend you start on Twitter (X).

‍

You only need to learn writing, not design or video editing. It's more time-efficient, it gives you the chance to test your ideas, the people are business-oriented, and it's great for networking.

‍

When you start growing on Twitter, you collect a lot of validated content ideas that you can repurpose later to other platforms.

‍

If you want the system that I used to gain 18K followers and 70M views in 90 days on Twitter, check out the X Growth System (paid) or my X Simplified ebook (free).

‍

2. Optimize Your Profile‍

‍

Your profile needs to look professional.

‍

It determines if people follow you and see you as competent. So iterate until it looks like you could have 100K followers.

‍

Include the following 4 things:

‍

3. Create Content

‍

The goal of content is to gain followers and customers.

‍

You gain followers with growth content.

‍

• Platitudes

• Social hacking

• Inspirational posts

‍

You gain customers with competence content.

‍

• Insights

• Case studies

• Educational posts

‍

Use growth content to grow your audience.

‍

Then use competence content to filter out the customers.

‍

The best creators combine both.

‍

4. Network & Engage

‍

Here's how audience growth on X works:

‍

• People see your tweet or comment

• If it's good, they click on your profile

• If your profile is optimized, they hit follow

‍

But at the start, your tweets don't have organic reach yet.

‍

So you need to leave comments.

‍

Make a list of 100 people in your niche and leave 50-100 comments per day.

‍

Also DM the people you like best to help each other grow.

‍

5. Create Lead Magnet

‍

A lead magnet helps you to gain email subscribers.

‍

It's a valuable solution to a problem that your audience has.

‍

To make a great lead magnet:

‍

• You start with the goal

• You identify the important topics

• You write down the problems people face

‍

Then you target one small problem and you make a valuable free product that solves it completely.

‍

6. Create Offer

‍

You want to create an offer based on the outcome that you help people to achieve.

‍

It needs to include:

‍

• Person

• Outcome

• Timeframe

• Steps to take

• Guarantee (optional)

• Required effort (time)

‍

Then put a price tag on it that makes sense.

‍

And you determine which type of offer you want to create:

‍

• Done For You (DFY) - people pay you to do the work for them.

• Done With You (DWY) - people pay you so you help them through the process.

• Do It Yourself (DIY) - people pay you for your information so they can go through the process themselves.

‍

All of them work well, and you can even have an offer for all 3.

‍

I prefer DIY and DWY offers because they scale better (especially DIY offers, but more on that in a second).

‍

7. Build Leverage

‍

Build distribution, then build whatever you want.

‍- Jack Butcher

Leverage allows you to get a bigger outcome with the same inputs.

‍

This image illustrates it best:

‍

You get a bigger return on your input if you push at the place with the green check.

‍

Business is the same.

‍

Which is why we want to build leverage. So followers and an email list.

‍

The bigger it gets, the bigger your returns will get as well (without you having to do more).

‍

It takes the same amount of effort to write an email to 100 or 100,000 people. But the outcome will be 1000x bigger.

‍

Do work that scales.

‍

8. Productize Your Knowledge

‍

When you have enough leverage, and a process that helps people to achieve a specific outcome, you want to productize your knowledge.

‍

Digital products are great because you build them once, and then you can sell them forever.

‍

This is the stage you want to get to because it'll help you to sell while you sleep.

‍

You make a product, write the salespage, and then you promote it. Forever (if you want to).

‍

The bigger your audience gets, the more money you'll make. And the more people you will help.

‍

My Productize Knowledge course explains exactly how to do this so check it out if this business model appeals to you.

‍

So in short:

‍

• Pick a platform (𝕏)

• Optimize profile

• Create content

• Network & engage

• Build a lead magnet

• Create a valuable offer

• Build leverage (audience)

• Productize your knowledge

‍

If you do this, you'll be able to build a one-person business that hit 6-figures.

‍

Talk soon my friend,

‍

Stijn Noorman