Building a One-Person Business
Building a large, scalable one-person business has become within reach for millions of people.
What do I think is necessary to achieve that?
One of them is endurance to focus on a meaningful problem for customers who will pay.
I've been thinking about what are the different elements.
The first is endurance.
While I think making and building fast is obviously best, often times, if the opportunity were one that speed is the only thing that matters, it could be arbitraged away.
But even fast needs duration.
Many of these "build an Internet business" online courses reduced that endurance requirement -- largely because patience and endurance doesn't sell.
Even the early blogging and content businesses just said to write and produce content. They benefitted because Google was still early and nearly any content could get indexed and drive traffic quickly.
But it does seem that any game worth playing is, in fact, the long game.
What motivates someone's endurance will vary, and diving into that is critical.
"Passion" or "Calling" has often been raised as that source of endurance. And for me, that has been the driving force. It's also what has made it difficult to really hone in on a business.
But perhaps it could be the excitement of running a business itself.
"AppSumo" doesn't look like (and from what I've read, didn't start out as) a passion project.
It largely was opportunistic, a way to make money. And it takes a certain build of person to be motivated and to find such a thing fun.
They will certainly have an advantage.
The other is seeing an opportunity really early and going for it.
I suspect Microsoft's Bill Gates say teh potential of computers deeply and was just naturally good at business and technology that he was able to ride that wave.
So having an insight is probably another good motivator. That insight into a very large opportunity, a vision for what could become, and an excitement of that future.
The difference is having a vision for a better world and needing to ride the wave of the market or trying to build a utopia. Both can be endurance.
But not all solve for the second part: building what customers will pay for.
This means understanding why do people buy. And there's probably a lifetime of research into this:
- Make more money
- Reduce risks of loss, punishment, jail
- Increase status in the eyes of peers
- Beat the competition
- Save on costs
- Save on time
Once the real pain and real reason for people to buy is deeply understood (the above list is just a ramble but going more granular is critical), then what else do you do?
I think once the pains and domain is understood, it's channels: finding out how to get to the customer.
Many of these things are going to become common knowledge. Between search engines and AI, any captive insight is going to be arbitraged. There will not be any real secrets that are publicly accessible.
So it will need to be experience-based insights: doing the actual shoe leather work.
It's much like being an investor. Alpha can't be found on Google anymore.
What about being a niche player in a large market?
I think ensuring the market will definitely grow, will pay more -- all of those matter.
I did listen to an Alex Hormozi podcast where he consulted a woman who was running a multi-million business focusing on nurses. That seems like just such a small business, but because it was niche (or maybe it was nutritionists, I don't remember, but it doesn't matter) -- the point is the focus.
The third is probably focus in the beginning and the ability to oursource, first to humans, then to AI/ agents.
This will likely be the leverage the people really need and it will become a thing.
I have been envious of people who really really knew a deep niche and by automation and low-cost customer acquisition build up for themselves a position in the market the was largely defensiible and profitable.
An example, at least in the early days, were things like Piano Instructor or Copywriter school.
These are now crowded niches, I am sure, but Piano is interesting because it taps into people's desire for Self Improvement The Desire for Self Improvement. Self expression might be a better way to phrase it.
Or writing -- so many people teaching people how to become a writer. It's not a profitable form of business at all yet there are some who are teaching expensive courses on this.
I paid for one, myself to my own chagrin for not getting much out of it.
Learning my lessons there.
Getting a result, that can improve status (look, I can play the piano), personal enjoyment (I can surf, I can play the drums), and accelerating success there seems to be a good area.
But soon people may be able to run huge businesses with very few people and it will be largely automated.
For example, I think we aren't far off from robot-powered franchies.
Here in Hawaii, for example, was a huge line of people putting their orders into a touch-powered kiosk for shaved ice.
And the person behind the counter was reading the orders and in sequence assembling this.
Soon, robots may become affordable or customizable enough that franchisees can purchase such a stand, set it up, and have it run regularly.
However, the supplies may still, in the short term, need to be updated with a person who would also inspect and clean the machinery. Supplies will eventually be provided by autonomous, side-walk-based vehicles that carry all the items in pre-packaged contains and deliver the goods.
The costs of all of these things need to drop considerably before it becomes a real thing.
But it's going to happen.
Anyway, back to other one-person businesses.
Start Story's own story of leveraging SEO is something that I could perhaps learn from.
If SEO is still a good source of leads that is, I don't know.
But he highlights a bunch of one-person businesses that started off, many of them based on SEO.
But SEO still needs a deep understanding of the customer: what do they want to learn what do they want to do?
AI will start to have a better understanding of this, so even that will be competed away.
What is left, then?
What is the critical ingredient to a successful one-person business?