Why 95% Of Creators Quit Within Their First Year (& How To Persist)

January 18th, 2023.

That’s the day I decided to stop hiding behind my screen and make my first public post.

Was I afraid? Shit yeah.

I’m pretty sure I was using an AI generated image that made me look like a villain from Dragon Ball Z.

But I still made the cringey post, and haven’t quit since.

But do you know who did quit?

99% of creators—people just like me—who were also taking their first steps into the world of online business.

This is not a hit piece of how weak-minded people are and how I’m so much better.

Truth is, there hasn’t been a single day where I didn’t question the path I was on.

The hard part about business is the delay between when you do and when you receive.

And that’s only if you know exactly what you need to do to get the desired result.

That, my friends, is the single biggest cause for the demise of most early entrepreneurs.

Not knowing what to do next.

Today, I summarize roughly 2 years of solo-experience into a 7-step roadmap, so you can avoid my (& many others) mistakes and have something to fall back on when you feel lost.

Here are those 7 steps:

1. Craft your core offer
2. Identify your ideal avatar
3. Pick a channel
4. Clarify your relationship
5. Outline your key projects
6. Compile a list of allies
7. Get your daily reps in

Before we begin: I’ll be running a free 6-week Solopreneur Speedrun on November 13th.

If you’re a creator, coach, or consultant who just needs someone to tell them exactly how to build and monetize your audience from scratch (no fancy fluff)—I’m currently taking 5 committed individuals to do exactly that.

This is a one-time offer, so if you wanna take advantage of that check it out here.

With that said, let’s get into it.

The One-Person Business Beginner Blueprint

Step 1: Craft your core offer

This is the thing you give to people in exchange for money.

Make your intentions clear from the start: you are here to make money.

This doesn’t mean you need to get on your knees, cup your hands, and beg every single person you interact with online (yes, people actually do this).

All you’re doing is setting your intention so your beginner brain can look for patterns where people are making a killing. You’ll notice very quickly that these people provide the most value to their community.

How can you emulate that? How can you model your unique skills, experience, and beliefs off that?

Don’t be that guy commenting 300+ times a day to build traffic, without something valuable to trade for that attention. It’s putting the horse before the cart.

I’ve made an entire step-by-step guide on how to figure out what you want to sell and make your first offer (which I’ll link below), so I won’t get into it here.

But at a high level, think, “what burning problem do I want to solve?”

Step 2: Identify your ideal avatar

This is the person who needs your core offer the most.

Those desperate for a solution to their burning problem.

“Anyone who’d pay me” is not going to cut it.

Everything from your brand, content, product, and promotion strategies will suffer if you do not know exactly who you are trying to reach. You’ll confuse them and you’ll confuse yourself.

Get crystal clear on who it is you’re talking to—when in doubt, start with yourself.

Paint a picture by asking yourself:

What’s my profession?

What’s my pain points (past & present)?

What’s my personality type?

Use yourself as a mirror reflection of the ideal avatar you’re trying to reach.

You’ll know you’re on the right track when you can confidently call them out like this:

“I help [age][gender][profession] who struggle with [pain points]”

Step 3: Pick a channel

This is how you reach your avatar so they know you exist.

There are four (& only four) ways you can do this:

[Full credit to Alex Hormozi’s “core four” from his book: 100M leads]

1. One to many (warm) → building a warm audience by posting content to many people

2. One to one (warm) → reaching out directly to people who know and shown interest in you

3. One to one (cold) → reaching out directly to people who don’t know and haven’t shown interest in you

4. One to many (cold) → getting in front of many cold leads through paid methods

Start by choosing one of these channels on one platform so you can:

a) Get good at it

b) Transfer those skills over when you need to scale

Since you’re reading this on X, I assume you’re already posting (or thinking about) content.

Good. Persist.

Don’t be that guy bouncing between different platforms, juggling every format under the sun—videos, podcasts, reels, long form articles—without mastering the basics.

You’ll spread yourself thin.

Pick one. Invest in those skills. Get fucking good at it. Transfer those skills over when it’s time to scale.

Step 4: Clarify your relationship

This is how you maximize value per customer.

I know this sounds super transactional with no heart, but trust me, it’s the complete opposite.

I’ve found most creators don’t think about the long term relationship they can foster with their audience.

They prioritize automation over personalization.

This makes their content feel salesy, superficial, and short-term.

Have you ever run into a profile that just looks and feels like an advertising billboard?

(note this isn’t me having a dig at automation. You absolutely should prioritize optimization)

Like, sure, I said it at the start, we’re all here to make money—but Jesus, add some personalization so you don’t sound like a cold-hearted robot.

To re-frame this: I want you to think about your barber.

He cuts your hair, treats you well—knowing full well you’ll be back in a month.

He’s extracting life-time value from you (and vice versa)

This is what your personal brand should be like.

Stop looking at followers as merely a number in your bank account.

Start looking at them as actual human beings who crave meaningful connection just as much as you do.

This plays a huge role in how you plan & produce content.

Think community, not commodity and the money will come.

Step 5: Outline your key projects

These are what you’ll be focused on building at the start.

Projects are what define, frame, and direct your actions.

Actions (inputs) are how you achieve a desired goal (outcome).

If you’re overwhelmed it’s because you haven’t taken the time to outline your key projects.

Now, there are a lot of moving parts to this, but I’m gonna make it simple.

I’ve found that 99% of all activity will fall under one of these two categories:

1. Product
2. Traffic

Your product is just your core offer packaged in a useable form.

So if you’re offering web design services you could package it in a:

• Done for you (DFY) → “I’ll build the website for you.”
• Done with you (DWY) → “I’ll walk you through building your website.”
• Do it yourself (DIY) → “I’ll make a tutorial that you can follow.”

Your project deliverables depend on the nature of your offer, and at the start, you’ll spend a lot of time building the first viable iteration of your product (again, I teach this in the Solopreneur Starter)

Secondly, traffic is just how you get eyes to your product.

At the start, you’ll virtually have none.

Which is why you’ll need to spend time building the funnel—so you can capture as much of the right people as possible.

Here’s what a basic funnel looks like:

Obviously, you won’t have all of these in place, which is why you’ll need to plan your projects accordingly.

Focus on these two projects (product & traffic) and you can rest assured that your efforts are actually contributing to something tangible and meaningful.

Step 6: Compile a list of allies

These are the people who will help you reach your avatar.

Can you see how everything converges back to this one goal?

Things like followers, likes, impressions, engagement, etc. are all by-products of this one aim: to provide value to your avatar.

But you can’t provide to them if you can’t find them.

This is where your list of allies come in.

To make this easy to understand, I want you to think of Nike partnering with Lebron so they could access his fans.

Now imagine if Nike had a list of “Lebron’s” so they could access their fans too.

All parties stand to gain which is why they’re allies (nobody’s getting ripped off).

This is the perspective I want you to have with your one-person business.

The goal is to make a list of these allies so you not only have access to their audience, but so you can form mutually beneficial relationships with them as you grow on your journey.

This step is highly tactical, and I want to keep this piece relatively short—so I’ll be compiling everything I know about this step within The Solopreneur Creator which you can check out for free.

Step 7: Get your daily reps in

This is what you need to do every. single. day.

How you plan, schedule, and timeblock these daily tasks is entirely on you—so I won’t be prescribing an hour-by-hour task list.

But with all things considered, these are what you should prioritize when starting from absolute zero.

Priority 1: Build

What should you build?

Your key projects outlined in step 5.

Build that offer to minimum viability. A.ka., it works. It’s functional. It gets someone from A → B.

Build that funnel to minimum viability. A.ka., it works. It’s functional. It gets someone from A → B.

For reference: I ususally spend the first 2 hours of my day building (this changes based on priority).

Priority 2: Broadcast

Who are you broadcasting to?

i) Your avatar

ii) Your allies

How are you broadcasting to them?

With your chosen method from the core four (content, outreach, paid)

For reference: I ususally spend the second 2 hours of my day broadcasting (this changes based on priority).

Priority 3: Better

What are you trying to make better?

All of the above.

You are going to suck. Shits going to break. Everything is going to feel inefficient.

This is completely normal.

Just do the thing, fail a lot, and refine your system until its bullet proof.

(This is the effort, time, and sacrifice people ultimately pay for btw)

For reference: I usually schedule Sundays to review all my systems.

Awesome, what next?

Start back at the top.

Go through each step again and cycle through them over and over until you don’t wanna play no more.

The best part about business is that it’s an infinite game with an infinite supply of joy, meaning, & fulfillment.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. If you want a system for branding, writing, and monetizing your expertise, I’m currently taking 5 people through The Solopreneur Speedrun completely free. One-time offer. Enrollments close Nov 13th.

Check it out here if you’re keen.