A new society has emerged.
A virtual one.
We all thought that a “virtual reality” was a few years out from existence and that it would be composed of technology like Apple’s new VR headset.
But that’s not how evolution works.
Evolution is about solving problems that cause our suffering.
It is a slow burn.
The emergence of this new society was fast like an exploding star. We called it social media.
There were burning problems in human life that led to programmers, visionaries, and businessmen building a mass solution.
Communication was local.
Information was local.
Business was local.
Opportunities were local.
Centuries of geographic restriction changed in the blink of an eye.
The internet allowed for the emergence of social media.
Social media allowed for the emergence of the creator economy.
The creator economy allowed for the advancement of decentralization.
The Industrial Revolution caused an unsustainable development of dominator hierarchies – more power and less people at the top, less power with more people at the bottom.
The Age of Information began to reverse this effect with the development of creator actualization hierarchies.
Creators educate, entertain, and inspire those beneath them with content and courses – but there is nothing holding any individual back from advancing to the top of the ladder.
Let’s deconstruct this a bit:
What Is The Creator Society?
With the development of the internet, information has spread beyond measure.
This led to the development of a more advanced, global, and accessible society.
Societies consist of institutions, and communities with shared beliefs, and cultural ideas.
The most notable aspects are the school system, workforce, social and business tribes, and religious establishments.
Social media has expanded and collapsed the lines between these.
Everything is becoming more holistic and interconnected like rain to the ocean as the pattern of Universal division and unity hints at.
The public school system had many problems:
- Convergent thinking
- Compartmentalized learning
- Conformity over authenticity
- Memorization over process
- Failure as something to avoid
- Authorities as unquestionable
- Long work over efficiency and true value
- Intelligence defined by book smarts
- Decade-old curriculums that only worry about training you into a replaceable job
The new school system in the creator society allows individuals to:
- Pursue their curiosity
- Find teachers (creators) that they learn best from
- Treat learning as a part of life rather than an annoying obligation
- Learn modern skills that allow you to adapt fast to the fast-changing environment
- Find specific knowledge that contributes to their pursuit of self-generated (rather than assigned) goals
- Prioritize entrepreneurship as it is the only logical end goal for those that want more out of life
The new school system is internet content. None of this is labeled. It is just a part of virtual life.
The religious establishments narrowed the minds of its followers and fought any perspective that contradicted their own.
Now, spiritual awareness and education are accessible in most creator brands.
You can open your mind, study different perspectives, and self-experiment until you cultivate a philosophy that suits you.
This is not only for spiritual growth, but mental, financial, and health-related.
What Is The Creator Economy?
The exchange of goods has been a natural part of society since the inception of human interaction.
Value creation and exchange are the foundation of communication and relationships. Humans are deeply social creatures.
Money, or currency, is a neutral form of value.
Individuals spend it on what they perceive as valuable.
What they perceive as valuable is dependent on their identity, perspective, goals, current state of mind, and level of awareness of their problems.
We can start to see the importance of marketing and sales – as they are the main skills for illustrating the value you have to offer.
Marketing and sales take everything above into account.
If you don’t position a product or service to a specific person (identity) with a specific goal that implies a specific problem, you won’t make money.
The Creator Economy is composed of individuals distributing value in the form of content and products.
They educate their audience on the skills and interests that will aid in the actualization of their goals.
Their products or services are meant to generate results and move them faster toward those goals.
My One-Person Business Philosophy
There are almost 7B people on this planet. Someday, I hope, there will be almost 7B companies. – Naval
The best businesses change lives.
And transformations make a winning product.
Stop trying to solve imaginary problems.
Solve your problems.
Change your own life.
Package up the method.
Slap a price tag on it.
You’re less likely to fail if you solve real, meaningful problems.
This is the problem with most people entering business.
They don’t have an understanding of marketing, sales, psychology, or evolution in general.
Stop trying to land on Saturn or build a billion-dollar tech company when a majority of the population is suffering from low-consciousness problems (that are holding the collective ego back from enlightenment).
Start as a micro education business that helps people solve the real problems in their life.
That is how you contribute to the happiness and evolution of humanity.
You do this by understanding the eternal markets: health, wealth, relationships, and happiness.
By solving your own problems in these domains, you:
- Push toward your own self-actualization
- Create a unique map with your own story that you can pass down
- Make an income by helping others heal and achieve their goals
From there, everyone is at a higher state of consciousness.
We can then do what we love with our time and solve deeper problems that we are passionate about (like landing on Saturn).
The Path To Self-Monetization
Social media is a new society.
Personal brands are the “people” of that society.
And no, this is not limited to people that have a business.
Creators large and small are hiring left and right.
Brands and corporations are hiring those that display their value in public.
Social media is a public job board, public school, public note-taking system, and public party where you can find friends and nurture business relationships.
To start, you can work for another creator to gain experience in the new society. This is a great option, but you can also go straight into building your own thing.
Path 1) Learn A Skill, Sell A Skill
This is what most people recommend you do to start making money fast:
- Learn a modern skill that creators or brands use in their business (like email marketing, funnel design, or content writing)
- Create content based around that skill to flex your knowledge (frankly, this won’t gain many followers. Your profile will be more like a resume).
- Charge higher prices for a freelance or consulting service because you don’t have the audience to sell a product in your sleep.
For any of this to work, you will have to learn the evergreen skills: writing, speaking, marketing, and sales.
Path 2) Become A Value Creator Around Your Interests
This is difficult to articulate, because the most common problem is, “I don’t have any interests.”
So let’s start there.
You create interest in a topic by investing energy in a goal.
That way you feel as if you are wasting your investment if you don’t achieve it. The pressure holds you accountable.
True goals are based on the eternal markets in pursuit of self-actualization.
The interests you learn along the way are applied to the achievement of that goal.
For the health market, I can become interested in sub-topics of nutrition, training, and mental health:
- Bodybuilding
- The ancestral diet
- Minimalist training
- Yoga
- Mindfulness
For the wealth market, I can become interested in sub-topics of business, career development, and finance:
- Freelancing
- Software as a service
- Resume building
- Interview preparation
- Budgeting
- Any skill listed in the previous section
For the relationships market, I can become interested in sub-topics of social dynamics, dating, and marriage:
- Couples therapy
- Confidence and charisma
- Day game
- How to approach
All help me push toward the development of each area. This is how you become a modern Renaissance man.
You must become a lifelong autodidact (self-learner) if you want to be truly irreplaceable.
You can learn anything in record time thanks to internet content, courses, and unconventional schooling in the new society.
Path 3) Do Both For Maximum Effect
With a personal brand, you will be forced to learn most modern skills to make it a success.
You will have to build your own landing pages, funnels, emails, content, profile design, graphics, and the rest to make your brand a success.
If it doesn’t help your brand grow, it won’t help others, and it isn’t worth learning in this case.
When you get results for your own brand, you then have the knowledge to help others with theirs.
The product or service you will sell (to practice your skill development) will be based on your interests.
You will create a minimum viable offer around those interests with a freelance or consulting service.
As you grow your audience with the content you produce, you can eventually turn that into a product that sells with less effort.
This is a longer path, but oh so worth it.
You drastically improve yourself, and your business has more leverage than most out there.
The 4 Pillars Of A 6-Figure One-Person Business
The one-person business model can have many definitions.
And now that I have a small team, I can’t really call myself a “one-person business,” but I’m going to redefine it so that I can (lol).
On top of that, I pushed a bit too far into a business model I don’t care for. I am actively working to get back to one person and maybe a VA. I’m okay with the decrease in income that comes from that.
I’ve realized what I want (writing and creative challenges) which allows me to ruthlessly eliminate what stands in the way (with time).
The one-person business model is turning yourself into the business.
It is a novel and attention-grabbing way of saying, “Become high-value and put yourself out there until enough people know who you are, what you do, and why you do it. Opportunities will compound.”
In a nutshell, that’s all you really need to do to succeed.
For clarity, let’s dive into the 4 pillars of the one-person business:
Brand – You Are The Niche
Your personal brand is your “self” or “identity” in the new society.
Your identity is the underlying story that shapes your perspective.
Your perspective contains goals from which you perceive situations.
These goals can be assigned to you (social conditioning) or self-generated (in alignment with your vision).
When you read a book, you will interpret it differently from the next person, because you have different goals as your lens.
If I read the book Awareness at a low financial point in my life, I will absorb ideas related to reaching my financial vision (that I can distribute in my content).
Another person that reads the book at a high relationship point in their life, they may get nothing from it, or absorb ideas to aid in the nurturing of that relationship.
Your brand is your vision for the future (and you vision evolves as you do).
Your vision for the future implies that you have, or are learning, the skills and interests necessary to achieve it.
Your job is to illustrate this wherever a reader can come in contact with you. All of your content will be written from the lens of your brand.
If my current vision / goal / purpose is to make more money…
And the skills I’ve learned or am learning are marketing, health, and spirituality…
My bio would be, “I write about marketing, health, and spirituality so you can build a holistic one-person business.”
Yes, even health and spirituality can be framed as a way to help with business. This is where most people get confused about incorporating their interests into a confined niche they feel tied to.
What are you leading people toward?
That’s how you attract followers.
Content – Documenting Your Mind
I like to think of social media as a public note-taking system where you jot down:
- What you are learning and how it applies to your life
- Your thoughts and opinions on your skills and interests
- The lessons you are learning throughout the story of life
Without knowing it, we are actively building out the collective consciousness in an explorable fashion on the internet.
But, you can’t just write things out and pray that you grow your brand.
You have to study marketing, and persuasion, and immerse yourself in content that does well so you can note the patterns between them all.
I would recommend the free course on the Digital Economics landing page – you just enter your email at the top of the page.
If you haven’t learned marketing, sales, or copywriting – start now. They will change your life. And there is too much to go over in this letter about them (double and I’ve talked about them multiple times before, this letter is a good starting point).
Product – Public Personal Projects
Under the one-person business philosophy, you contribute to the new society by solving your own problems and selling the solution.
Here’s the progression:
- Identify a problem in your life
- Turn it into a personal project for experience
- Turn it into a minimum viable offer
- Start selling for $500-$1000 (freelancing or consulting)
- Build your audience along the way with content
- Increase the depth and complexity of your offer
- Productize it when you feel ready so it can sell in your sleep
This will take 1-3 years.
If your goal is to make more money in business or your career, you can learn a skill like email marketing.
If your goal is to get ripped and increase your attraction & confidence, you can go to the gym and fix your nutrition.
Once you do, you can begin selling it as a freelance or consulting service.
With the email marketing example, freelance is the obvious option.
Teaching others often gets swept under the rug.
You can teach other creators or brands what you’ve learned in your email marketing pursuits – especially if you applied it to your own brand and saw results along the way.
Where does a “project” come into play?
Projects are how you actually solve your problems in the real world.
They force you to apply what you learn.
They are also tangible, they are your result.
You can iterate on them and get better with time.
You can reflect on them and make it easier to achieve for the next person.
With email marketing, write an email sequence for your own brand. You can practice selling someone else’s product (affiliate), or practice promoting your favorite books or products. Craft a persuasive argument around them.
Then, do the same thing for your favorite brand. Build them an email sequence.
Now that you have real-world practice, you can either pitch your services to that brand, or start helping others build their own out.
Teaching is how you identify knowledge gaps.
That is the only way you will be able to fill them.
By not building projects and teaching what you learn, your journey will be slow and painful.
Marketing – Sell To Yourself
You won’t make a single penny if you never promote yourself.
Simple as that.
People ask me (from a state of stress, overwhelm, and panic) why they aren’t making money from their efforts.
It’s because they do everything but promote their products or services.
Marketing exists across the entirety of your brand but is most prevalent in:
- Your landing pages for your products and services
- Your emails where you promote them
- Your content where you promote them
- Your outreach messages where you see if others are a fit for them
Again, I’ve talked about this all before, and I give my exact systems in Digital Economics, so let’s go over a framework you can practice with.
Identify Their Goals or Desired Outcome
You have to know what your audience wants.
Make it top-of-mind by asking them or illustrating what the goal is in your marketing.
When you are the niche, this is a goal that you’ve already achieved. You should already know what is desirable to your audience through self-reflection.
Identify What Is Standing In The Way
What is the reason people aren’t achieving their goals?
What is the reason you didn’t achieve the goal at the start?
Write it out in your promotions or ask the person you are talking to in your outreach messages.
“What’s preventing you from achieving [the goal they mentioned]?”
Present Your Solution To Solve A Burning Problem
Now that they are clear on the goal and what is standing in the way, you know whether or not they are a fit for your solution.
If they aren’t, wish them a good day and leave them alone.
If they are, ask them how their life would be impacted if they could achieve that goal – this shines a light on the problem they are facing.
From here, you can present your offer as a potential solution.
To practice this process more as a beginner, read this letter on The Non-Needy Networking Process.
That’s all you need to know about the one-person business model for now.
Feel free to watch through the rest of The One Person Business playlist on my YouTube.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
– Dan Koe
