The best business model isn't a business model.
It's a way of life.
But most beginners don't care about that, or even think about it.
They want to learn the "best" skills.
They want to make more money to leave their job.
They want to have full control over how they spend their time.
They silently want to prove themselves to their friends and family.
Life's work?
Purpose?
Enjoyment?
Nah… that stuff comes later.
And that's fine. That's actually how it's supposed to happen.
The problem then is beginners blindness.
Most people who start a business don't know how to start a business, obviously.
So they start searching blindly for businesses to start rather than deeply considering how they want to live and engineering a path to get there.
They start their journey with the same mind that was useful for doing well in school and getting a job, so they start looking for a new job to perform while learning like they were in school.
In other words, they try to build a business with the mindset of an employee, not an entrepreneur.
They study how to freelance.
They study how to start a social media marketing agency.
They study how to build an eCommerce store and run paid ads.
They build themselves in a new 9-5 and once again feel like they are strapped for cash and out of control of their day. But this time, it's worse. If they lose a client or stop working 12 hours a day, their income drops significantly.
They have no leverage. They feel trapped.
In this letter, I'm not going to give you a static business model that puts you in a box.
Instead, I'm going to give you flexible roadmap for pursuing your life's work.
Business, then, is simply the vessel by which you share what you enjoy doing to those who value it enough to pay you.
The New Way To Start A Business
The good – With the internet and social media, business has drastically changed for the better. More power to solopreneurs and small teams that will only get more powerful beyond the internet and social media.
The bad – Almost any beginner business information you find is still plagued with the old business paradigm.
The old way of doing things is to:
95% of the time, people choose the thing that someone else tells them is the most profitable.
As a byproduct, they choose a niche they have zero experience with, work with people they don't care about, learn a skill that doesn't align with their interests, and pick a business model that sounds the flashiest or easiest.
Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make money. But it's completely idiotic to think that you can't make money without sacrificing what makes life good.
What makes life good?
Investing attention in what you deem important and meaningful.
The thing is, "what you deem important and meaningful" evolves as your mind develops. So if you pick a business model that always stays the same, you set yourself up for a life of misery.
In the old way of doing business, where money is placed as the first and only reason, you invest attention in people, projects, and skills that other people persuade you to believe are important.
The new way of doing business is to put your ideal life as the first reason, but not the only reason.
In this new way, you don't choose a niche or skill or model, you:
- Follow the highest leverage path, which involves changing business "models" as you progress
You don't need "work life balance" because work and life collapse into one. You get paid for being yourself. As it should have been in the first place.
When you realize that this has always been an option and that you were drawn to schools and jobs based on how your mind was conditioned to adopt the values based on your past life conditions, you can't unsee it. So you're welcome for that. Enjoy the ride.
This path is a process where you develop yourself, share the value you've cultivated, and sustain your ideal life by packaging up solutions to your own problems and distributing them to people who were in a similar position as you.
With that, this path is only for those who value improving their mind, body, skill set, finances, and relationships. This is a way of life, and if your way of life is laziness and mediocrity and quick fixes, you won't make it, and probably wouldn't have made it with any other form of business.
The Highest Leverage Path
If you want to turn yourself into the business, or get paid for doing what you want, you need a few things:
- A developmental progression from beginner to advanced
- A way to attract people to the value you are acquiring
- Products or services that evolve as you do
With old outdated business models, you choose a model—like eCommerce—that comes with a lot of pre-requisites that most beginners can't deal with.
You need a few thousand bucks to invest in inventory. You need to learn marketing, sales, advertising, and more… but you've already set a ticking time bomb. Most businesses fail because they don't have the money to keep that business going through trial and error. If it fails with the first or second iteration, you're done for.
You rarely start earning money immediately. Instead, you start spending immediately and hope that you can make it work before you have to give up.
In the new way of doing business, it's the complete opposite.
You need zero experience, because the business is how you gain experience in the first place.
You use free or inexpensive technology and software to build an audience and create your first product or service.
You decrease the chances of failure (by lack of money or experience) to zero. The only reason you would fail doing this is because you quit early, can't persist, can't iterate, or refuse to learn… or you just decide that the current life you wanted to escape in the first place "isn't that bad" because your mind starts playing tricks on you.
With those limitations (beginner, lack of money, zero experience) that gives us a few starting points:
1) Build An Audience
If you don't have money for paid ads, sponsorships, or influencer marketing, your best bet is to build an audience.
Actually, I would argue that every single beginner should build an audience anyway.
Why?
Because it teaches you the skills you need (for free, through experience) to do well in any form of business: marketing, persuasion, media, writing, design, psychology, human nature.
Even further, that's the modern path to talking about and teaching your interests. Not only do you learn the necessary parts of skills like marketing, but you learn about your interests faster because of the Feynman Technique. With each piece of content you post, you expose gaps in your knowledge that allows you to learn that topic faster.
Building an audience is like combining personal growth and your interests in a way that allows you to get paid to do that for the rest of your life.
Yes, you could post to Reddit forums or work on your website SEO to get customers, but we are taking the highest leverage path.
When you build an audience, you keep that audience, especially if you have an email list people can join.
With paid ads, you are paying a social platform to display your content to an audience that isn't yours, and those people have no idea who you are.
With building an audience, you don't need to worry about marketing or sales as much because those skills are about trust. If you post content to a growing audience every day, your trust automatically builds over time.
If you need a starting point for all of this with templates, consider grabbing the One-Person Business Launchpad. No gimmicks, just the basics for those who want it all in once place.
2) Evolving Products & Services
When your audience is small, you need to be mindful of that.
You need to do some math.
If you try to sell a $19 physical book or planner, you will need a lot of customers in order to replace your current income.
The same goes for building an app or software as an independent programmer and slapping a $10-$20/month price tag on it.
That doesn't mean this path doesn't work. I actually recommend it for people who are fast learners.
With the right social media strategy, your posts can do very well from the start, so you can pull off a low-ticket product.
But for most people, that's not going to happen.
It's better to start with a freelance, coaching, or consulting service.
Many people are averse to that because there are so many freelancers and coaches (in reality, there aren't, you just aren't in the game yet so you misperceive it) so they go for a more advanced business model and fail anyway.
With those services, you only need 3-5 clients for $1000 to $3000 per month (depending on your offer) to make a decent income.
There are various ways to make this work, but when building an audience:
- You can message people who engage with your content about your service (this is better than cold outreach because people already know who you are).
- You can link a questionnaire in your bio and high performing content for people to fill out to work with you, then message them to follow up and close the deal.
Remember our two starter options:
- A digital product like a template, guide, or ebook
- A freelance, coaching, or consulting service
For the first, you will need to be very good at generating traffic with content.
For the second, you will need sales and outreach knowledge to close those deals.
Both are viable first options, but understand that this is a learning process. You learn and try to make an income, and at bare minimum you are building an audience on the side that slowly makes it easier and easier.
Then, when you make one of those work, you can evolve that product or service into something with higher leverage.
A freelance service can evolve into a digital product that teaches your skill or your system.
A digital product can evolve into a software or physical product (now you have an audience and knowledge to make the eCommerce business work on the first go, rather than trying to make it work the other way around).
Do you see why this is powerful? You can still build any type of business you want with this model, you just start in a way that allows you to do that as a beginner.
With each evolution, you decrease the amount of time you spend fulfilling the work, increase the amount of money you can make, and have an audience large enough to fuel that entire process.
Client work—like freelancing or coaching—means you only have so much time, and can only take on so many clients, meaning your income is capped at some point unless you hire a team.
Products in general can sell while you sleep, and if you have an audience to fuel them, you can do quite well for yourself and gain more control over your day.
By that point, you should have more than enough money to enjoy your life or take it further and invest in starting a bigger company, like a software startup or more intensive business.
3) T-Shaped Content
If you cringe when you hear the word "content" or "content creator," don't worry, I do too.
What I want you to realize is that there are three main ways to attract customers to your work: media, word of mouth, and direct outreach.
Direct outreach is useful when starting out with something like a service, but it's low leverage and slow.
You also probably won't get word of mouth without media first, so we are obviously focused on that.
Paid ads are media. SEO is media. Billboards and radio are (outdated) media.
Anything you produce as marketing material to attract customers is media. But of course, we're building an audience.
So, if it helps, think of "content" as synonymous with media, because it is.
You don't need to identify as a content creator to execute on the singular part of your business that will determine most of it's success: creating content.
But how do you start writing content as a beginner?
80% based on the topic you plan to create a product or service around.
20% based on other interests or opinions to experiment with what your audience likes.
"T-shaped." A term Valve uses for employees who are good at many things and great at one thing. Deep in your main expertise, complimented with your other interests.
But remember, on social media you are being spread to random people who have no idea who you are and are probably a beginner in the topic you are talking about (yes, even if you're selling a freelance service, the person you are doing the work for is a beginner, otherwise they wouldn't hire you).
So, avoid getting too technical or clever.
Focus on educating and persuading people on why your main topic is important.
As your audience grows and your products evolve, so does your content.
There is a lot of nuance to this, so I would either recommend grabbing 2 Hour Writer or waiting for another letter where I can dive deeper.
But How Do I Start?
Let's get one thing straight:
Nobody can tell you how to build a business.
They can only tell you how they built theirs.
Nobody can teach you branding, content creation, writing, marketing, product, or any of those things. They can only share the processes that worked for them, in the situation they were in, with the mind they have.
The thing is, you aren't in their situation.
You don't have access to their mind.
This holds true for anything in your life:
You can study others invaluable processes, but you will never escape the need for experimentation, persistence, and iteration to the point where you turn that process into your own.
So, you can treat these as a starting point, but that's all they are.
These guidelines are for clarity.
They are not law.
Learn the rules, then break them so you don't become both a clone and a failure.
1) Intelligent Imitation
You don't need a book of information to set up your profile, write viral content, and make millions selling a product.
You simply need 2 eyes connected to a half functioning brain.
Observation and experimentation are the best teachers, and you are literally drowning in education. You look at social media bios, brands, content, and marketing every day, but you view it as a consumer.
Once you flip to the lens of a creator, everything on your feed becomes inspiration that you can steal like an artist.
In a nutshell, if you want to learn how to do anything:
- Save 3-5 sources of inspiration (brands, content, products)
- Break down the structure and characteristics of each of those things
- Take one little piece of what they do and try it out
- Then take another, then another, then another
- Supplement with courses, videos, or education as you go (so you understand why you are doing what you are doing)
As an example, if you want to write a newsletter and use mine as inspiration, you start by breaking down the structure:
- Introduction with how I view a topic, expose how most people think about it, and dig deep into why that's a problem
- A section that illustrates the "old way" and "new way" of doing something
- A section with a big picture overview of the entire process
- A final section with actionable steps for beginners
You can take that, outline a newsletter on a completely different topic, and make your first piece of writing better than 99% of people.
What about building a brand?
Look at your 3-5 sources of inspiration and spot patterns between them.
What about writing content?
Find a validated idea that has great engagement and break it down into what makes it do well, then rewrite it.
Learning anything can be as simple (not easy) as that.
Do exactly that as you set up your profile, write your first pieces of content, and build your first product.
Study content that does well. Study brands that do well. Study products that do well. Take a piece from each every time you write, design, build, or sell and you will turn out fine.
2) Learn Direct Response Marketing, Then Forget It
Direct response marketing is the poster child for scammers and sleazy car salesmen.
It birthed the era of Clickfunnels, countdown timers, fake scarcity, and everything that sets off alarms in peoples heads now even though it was insanely profitable during that time.
It's still around today in TikTok shop, dropshipping, consumer app downloads—mostly short form content and sales pages. Some people do it more tastefully than others.
In short, direct response marketing, or advertising in general, is learning how to capture attention, guide attention, and get the reader to take action or "convert."
Many people just call it "copywriting" now and flex it as "the greatest skill to learn to make money." They're not completely wrong. It's how Hormozi built is fame.
While this skill can be sleazy and unethical, it doesn't have to be.
In my eyes, it's the best way to find the principles of psychology, human nature, and attention all in one practical place.
The trap with direct response is focusing on quick cash grabs over long term brand building. The magic happens when you merge both, and when you don't sacrifice long term brand for short term cash.
If I were to learn the fundamentals today, I would:
- Read Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman
- Read Influence by Robert Cialdini
- I haven't read these, but I've heard great things about Traffic Secrets and Expert Secrets by Russel Brunson (even though he's not looking too hot in the public eye anymore)
- Listen to 5-10 YouTube videos and podcasts
- Write newsletters, landing pages, and social posts practicing what you learn
Many copywriters don't agree with me when I say to read those things (they have other recommendations) but those are what I read, and they helped a lot. I'm not an expert copywriter, but I've done quite well for myself.
I can't stress this enough:
Focus on the principles, not the tactics, and you'll be fine.
3) Establish Who You Are, What You Do, And Why You're Here
Again, the single biggest mistake people make is thinking that social media is some kind of lottery.
They don't understand that social media is a skill that can be learned—like anything—so they go in thinking they can just write any old post and pray that our lord and savior the algorithm will make them rich and famous overnight.
Stop it.
The reality is that when you start, absolutely nobody knows about you or cares about you.
The first 6-12 months of your journey should be to prove that you have value to offer.
How do you do that?
- Free Download — Create a comprehensive free download that teaches the fundamentals of your main topic or interest. Unlike social content that disappears after a day, a free download can be linked in your bio and promoted over and over again. You can host your free download, create a link for your bio, and build products or services on Stan.
- Extend That Into A Product Or Service — People think that digital products make them a sell out when it does the complete opposite. Most creators fail because they don't have a product people can buy that changes their life to the point of becoming loyal fans. Your content can only do so much. Link your product in your free download and let that bring in your first few dollars.
- Write Cornerstone Content — 80% of your content should be about your story, the basics of your main topic, actionable and authoritative tips, what you do during your day, and why you feel like all of those are important.
- Inject Yourself Into A "Tribe" — When I want to join a new "space" or niche on social media, I make a list of 5-10 people and start making myself known to them. I comment on their posts, join their communities, share their content, and DM them to start conversations. Over time, that community gets to know me and see my face more. This is arguably the most important step.
- Write Good Comments — Excuse my language but holy shit do people not understand what this means no matter how much it's repeated in any piece of social media advice you get. Opening the comment sections of any post is a complete trash heap. It's the simplest thing in the world to stand out. "Great insight" is not a good comment and won't get people to care about you. AI generated responses are obvious and get you blocked. Just start your comment on someones post with "I remember when…" and talk about a time in your life where the topic of their post was relevant to your life. This gets way more people to become curious in you.
Yes. This takes work. This is a business. It's not quick. It takes time. All of those things should be obvious. You clearly have to establish a baseline level of information people can sink their teeth into before they trust you. A few social posts isn't going to cut it.
That's it for this letter.
I'll expand on some of these in future ones.
For now, the best place to learn more would be OPBL or the 2 Hour Writer if you want to invest in your education.