The One-Person Business Explained (In Plain English)
I’ve worked a ton of jobs.
Delivered rice noodles door-to-door for the family business.
Climbed the corporate ladder as a consultant with a suit & tie.
Flown back and forth from offshore oil rigs as a safety advisor.
Hustled as a freelance copywriter for small business owners.
Each one a natural succession from the last.
I never “hated” any of my previous jobs, but I’d always find myself reaching a point where it was either evolve or face the existential crisis of stagnation.
That “wall” can be summarized by a single question you’ve most likely asked yourself.
“Can I see myself doing this for the rest of my life?”
This bloody question is probably the reason I’ve got permanent bags under my eyes.
Any time I was in a season of self-assurance, this single line would pop into my head and cause me to go down some deep existential rabbit holes.
Today, I can say with confidence, that I’ve never felt more self-assured in my life.
And it’s because I feel like I’ve finally stumbled on a business model that was specifically designed for someone like me (& perhaps you)—the one-person business.
Where Purpose Meets Profit
The #1 trait of the one-person business model (in my opinion) that puts it in a class of its own is that it is introspective first, extrospective second.
One more time: Introspective first. Extrospective second.
The best way I can explain it is by contrasting it to work we’re more commonly used to:
Working a 9-5
Working for clients
Working for the fam
These are all forms of assigned work.
They are extrospective first and introspective second.
Meaning: someone assigns me a goal (external focus) and I optimize my path to achieve that goal by acquiring the skills, knowledge, & expertise to get the job done (internal focus).
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t inherently a bad thing.
When you’re young, you need wiser heads to assign you things because you simply don’t know any better (like a parent raising their child).
On rare occasions, you might even align to your assignments, which is how people can end up in their “dream jobs.”
But for most of us, this isn’t the case.
We’re stuck learning skills, acquiring knowledge, and mastering a craft we wouldn’t otherwise care about if it didn’t pay for our time.
On the other hand, when you approach your work from a place of introspection, that is, you assign your own goals, then the externalities take care of themselves—the people you help, the products you produce, and the service you sell.
Here’s a quick personal story:
When I was a freelance copywriter, I used to send out 100s of shitty outreach emails a day, to businesses I didn’t care about, hoping I’d land a gig and get paid quick money.
(the irony now is I get dozens of these DMs a day)
I put the external first, impacting my internal skills and expertise—whatever my client’s “niche” happened to be.
After getting ghosted without pay by this one client (4 weeks of solid work btw), I finally asked myself:
“Why don’t I just build my own shit, so I’m at least putting SOME eggs in my basket, instead of throwing them at the wall praying one would stick.”
(I didn’t say it exactly like that but you get the idea)
By “build my own shit” I meant:
Write to myself
For myself
Under my own name
That way, I can at least improve my skills by building something real AND have a kind of “digital resume” where potential clients can see my work in real time.
Little did I know I’d be attracting the perfect audience, building social leverage, and a personal brand that puts a face to an otherwise “faceless freelancer.”
All by leading with introspection.
The One-Person Business Model Canvas
So what does the one-person business model actually look like?
I see tons of people give their take online but I always feel like they miss the mark in certain areas, or get way too caught up in the maze of tools, tactics, and trends.
I’m going to paint my own picture (canvas to be precise) so anyone can walk into the museum and leave with something to ponder.
Keep in mind this is all within the context of building a personal business online, but I’ll cross-reference to more conventional methods to help distinguish its qualities.
The one-person business can be broken down into 7 core elements.
Each element is interconnected and interdependent. Meaning, like the human body, they each depend on the other to maximize their function.
Let’s walk through them.
Element 1: Customer Avatar — Who You Help The Most
One of the biggest mistakes new solopreneurs make (myself included) is hard focusing on the product rather than the person they are trying to serve.
The most fundamental part of any business is not WHAT we sell but WHO we serve. Your customer avatar is a description of the person you can help the most — your ideal buyer.
Think of it as the lifeblood of your business.
You can have all the heart in the world but if you don’t have blood to supply the heart, your business won’t survive. You typically create customer avatars by asking a series of questions to narrow the pains, desires, and motivations of a group so you can position and market your product/service.
But here’s the downside most tend to ignore:
The tendency to prioritize quick & easy money at the cost of actually caring about the people we serve.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t look for a “starving market.”
What I am saying is if all you focus on is how much money you can milk from a certain group of people, the odds of you actually caring about the service you provide are pretty slim.
How we account for this is simple: you are the customer avatar.
You have experienced adversity in the past that other people are going through right now. You have solutions to problems, that would completely transform someone else’s life.
You are your own “starving crowd”, making you the perfect avatar for your business.
Write what you want to read; Build what you want to see; Sell what you want to buy.
Knowing who you help defines what you sell—because understanding their specific problem informs the specific outcome you promise.
Your core offer is how you package up that solution so people have a reason to turn to you over someone else.
That’s value creation.
Solving a specific problem by getting from A → B in less time, with less effort, and minimal sacrifice.
If your customer avatar is the lifeblood, then your core offer is the heart.
Your core offer will revolve around a singleskill or expertise.
By skill, think of things like:
Copywriting
Video editing
Email marketing
Web design & SEO
Graphic & brand design
By expertise, think of things like:
Health, diet, and fitness
Productivity and performance
Business, consulting, and coaching
Relationships, marriage, or dating
Personal development and spirituality
I’ve made this distinguishment because I’ve come to learn people are either skill-dominant or knowledge-dominant (or a mix of both).
Clarifying which arena suits you most gives you an immediate starting point to help and provide value for somebody else.
The true beauty of the one-person business is that your offer will naturally evolve as you gain experience, and acquire multidisciplinary skills.
You will never be capped so long as you continue to self-educate.
Quick example:
Let’s say you are helping a business owner struggling to make sales and your clear promise is to improve their conversion rate by x% by redesigning their sales page.
You could package your core offer as a:
Done for you: freelancing service where you get paid for the project.
Done with you: tutoring service with step-by-step guidance over a series of calls.
Do it yourself: online course, video, or guide for self-paced learning.
You can then slowly improve your offer by learning complementary skills such as copywriting, sales funnels, email marketing, etc. and continue to stack value on your offer.
There is so much more to this but I’ll leave it at that.
Element 3: Touchpoints — How You Deliver Value
The touchpoints of your business are how you reach and deliver value to your customers.
Like how a new restaurant will give out free samples at a busy intersection to raise awareness, drive traffic, and deliver their product.
They grab your attention by:
Waving you down
Wearing a flashy costume, &
Filling the air with an alluring aroma
They ‘convert’ your attention by:
Offering a free sample
Handing a flyer with the location, &
Giving you a limited-time discount to increase urgency
This is called the Customer Journey.
The touchpoints that turn an unaware bypasser into a raving fan.
A common problem new solopreneurs make is having a less-than-friendly set-up, which tends to create ‘avoidant skeptics’ instead of raving fans.
By “less-than-friendly,” think salesmen knocking on your front door while you’re having dinner type scenario.
It’s kind of just…annoying?
People need to invest in you long before they pull out their wallets, and it helps to establish trust by optimizing your customer journey at every touchpoint.
The touchpoints or “funnel” for the one-person business look something like this:
Top of funnel: social media post
This is you grabbing bypasser attention by posting content on social media.
Think of it as waving your arms and “filling the air with an alluring aroma.”
High-mid point: lead magnet
This is you providing free value and raising awareness of what you have to offer by either plugging it under your posts or pinning it on your profile.
Think of it as providing “free samples” for people to get a taste and want more.
Mid-point: Personal website or blog
This is you giving a place for interested people (warm leads) to go deeper by visiting your store and learning what you are about.
Think of it as taking people off the busy streets of social media and into the distractionless domain of your personal website.
Low-mid point: Offer stack
This is you providing information on everything you have to offer: free resources, mid-ticket products, high-ticket services, etc.
Think of it as people seeing your “menu” for the first time where they can get up to speed on how they can benefit from your offers.
Bottom of funnel: Core offer
This is where you “sell” your offer by providing specific details on a landing page or through a sales call to give that final push.
Think of it as the “meal” you deliver to your customer and where their specific needs are met.
It’s worth noting that this is just one of many routes a person can take so treat this more as a map of reference.
Element 4: Customer Relationship — How You Create Customers
Every business interacts with its customers in some way, but not all businesses build, maintain, and strengthen their relationships so they come back for more.
Business people call it Life Time Value or LTV, which is simply how much value a customer will contribute to a business over the course of their entire lives.
You maximize LTV not by getting the job done and closing the door on their way out, but by continuously interacting, engaging, and educating your audience.
How often do you go back to the same hairdresser because they know exactly what you want; checkout at the same cashier because they always have a warm smile; or re-read your favourite book because you always learn something new?
It’s these little things that add up, that slowly build a monopoly in the buyer’s mind—because buyers buy again.
The core principle that drives the relationship between you and your audience is education.
Think more teacher-student and less salesmen-buyer.
Like an “astrophysicist” creating future astrophysicists by explaining your expertise at varying levels of awareness.
Raising people’s awareness from beginner to expert is how you not only “create customers” but empower people as future leaders.
You do this by having awareness of your customer’s awareness and adjusting your message accordingly.
(This element is heavily linked to element 3 — touchpoints)
Element 5: Key Resources — Your Essential Assets
These are the minimum assets you need in order to create and deliver value to your customers.
For standard businesses, think of things like:
Material: raw materials, buildings, factories, vehicles, machinery, etc.
Intellectual: brand equity, copyrights, patents, databases, etc.
Human: staff, specialists, etc
Managing big teams, complicated supply chains, and large infrastructure is a big reason why most people never fully commit.
What makes the one-person business shine is just how lean it is.
There are only three essential assets to start, sustain, and scale a one-person business (everything else are amplifications):
Your public journal (X, IG, Threads, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, etc.)
This is your top-of-funnel social media where you expose your ideas to the world.
This is where you post content, capture attention, and educate people to your core offer.
Your digital real estate (Website, blogs, landing pages, courses, etc.)
This is where you lead traffic on top-of-funnel socials like Twitter, to off-platform domains like your personal blog, free/paid courses, website, etc.
You don’t own social media platforms, but you do own all of the assets on your personal domains—hence the name digital real estate.
Your knowledge management system (Any notetaking app e.g. Notion, Obsidian, Evernote, etc.)
Every social media post, every landing page copy, every blog you write, every newsletter you send out, every course you build, every script you read on camera—every single thing that contributes to the success of your business are ideas.
This is where you capture ideas, store high-performing content, build your projects, strategize promotion campaigns, outline courses, organize thoughts, and much more.
I’m only scratching the surface but think of your Knowledge Management System (KMS) as the central hub for all of your intellectual property—your second brain.
A bodybuilder’s greatest asset is his body; the knowledge worker’s greatest asset is his mind.
A clear mind leads to clear thinking, clear thinking leads to good writing, good writing leads to good ideas, and good ideas are the gold of the information age.
Element 6: Key Levers — Your Essential Levers
Every business has a vision.
The vision informs a high-level strategy.
The high-level strategy informs mid-level projects.
The mid-level projects inform individual responsibilities.
The individual responsibilities inform Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
And KPIs inform the daily tasks that move the needle towards the company vision.
From macro down to micro and all the way back up—this is performance in a nutshell.
It is essential—in any business—let alone the one-person business, to be crystal clear on what you should be doing to operate and meet business demands.
It’s in the name but the one-person business means you are the business.
All the roles, all the KPIs, and all the responsibility falls with you.
This can either be extremely liberating or anxiety-inducing depending on whether or not you have clarity.
In my opinion, clarity is the biggest factor in whether people burnout in 3 months or go on to label it their “life’s work”.
I’ll try to keep this as clear and concise as possible.
From a high level, there are only two levers you should be focused on.
Product
People
Anything that does not fall under these two levers is either a bonus or a waste of time.
For product:
When you’re first starting, the priority is to build your core offer.
This means you need to have your project management hat on and walk through the phases of concept → planning → execution → review to get your offer to a minimum viable standard.
Once you’ve established the “heart,” you’ll need to switch to your operations hat and prioritize iteration and troubleshooting to get the kinks out and build that quality.
Critical tasks under this lever include:
Building the product: curriculum, coaching program, ebook, fitness program, etc.
Building the funnel: lead magnets, landing pages, appointments, etc.
For people:
Everything under this lever will be for the purpose of generating and driving as much traffic as possible down the funnel to your core offer.
This is where you’ll be wearing your marketing hat to:
Generate leads
Build an audience
Raise brand awareness
Increase social engagement
Capture as many eyes as possible
You’ll also be switching to your sales hat to convert and close people through persuasive strategies.
Critical tasks under this lever include:
Weekly newsletters
Posting short/mid/long-form content
Engaging & networking with your audience and other creators
I know I might be making this sound more daunting than it actually is, but remember, this is a snapshot of a process that takes time.
I’ll be writing more in-depth on the creator roadmap in a future letter.
Element 7: Key Allies — Your Essential Alliances
Last but not least, you need allies.
Sony formed a joint venture with Ericsson to produce mobile phones.
Nike has partnerships with retailers like Foot Locker to diversify its distribution.
Samsung supplies Apple with components even though they are direct competitors.
These alliances aren’t just “nice-to-haves” but are absolutely essential in keeping the business alive.
This is the level of importance I want to emphasize for this element.
The term “one-person” is typically what attracts most to this business model (at least it did for me), so it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking you can do it all alone.
While yes, from an internal operational perspective, you have all the power, from an external market perspective where things change all the time—forming strategic alliances is a no-brainer.
Here’s a pill to swallow to save you a lot of pain:
At the start, you have:
No skills
No leverage
No audience
No experience
Everyone has to start from somewhere.
This means, the relationships you form with like-minded people are that much more important in getting you (& them) off the ground.
This is because early on, your audience is not your audience.
Trust, likeability, and loyalty—all the things that characterise a strong and engaging audience do not happen overnight.
You will be leveraging other people’s resources (audience, network, strategies, etc.) while helping other people leverage yours.
This is your tribe. Your mastermind.
Over time, these relationships compound and become priceless.
One final point: seeing other creators in your space as competition and therefore avoiding them, or worse, gossipping (yes—people do this, idk why) is never the right play.
Remember, you can be in direct “competition” with someone and still be able to collaborate with them, the same way Samsung and Apple have a mutually beneficial relationship.
Don’t be quick to burn your bridges.
I hope you enjoyed the 2nd installment of the Solopreneur Series. This one was packed with information and I loved every bit of putting it all together.
