The Business of One

There is a new way, and it’s here to stay.

The kids are right. It’s time to admit it.

There is a new way, and it’s here to stay.

I’m not talking about baggy pants and chokers making a comeback, I’m talking about weaponized attention. Leveraging the Internet to build a community by sharing your thoughts, beliefs, and expertise.

The apps are free, the time is yours, and if you want to spend it scrolling, that is entirely up to you.

But with intention, and a commitment to lead with value, social media can go from the biggest time-suck to one of the highest ROI things you can spend your time using.

The only gatekeeper is you, and the longer you wait to use it right, instead of being used by it, the more opportunity costs slip through your hands. If you have an interest, passion, talent, or skill, you’d be stupid not to talk about it, not to push it into the world.

So why aren’t you?

This is the new way, and it’s not going to change. You can either accept that and take advantage of it, or watch.

Techno-Phobia

I’m not writing this today because I think everyone should be glued to their screens 24/7, posting half-naked pictures on Instagram to get likes and comments from strangers. This is self-sabotage.

Every technology invented in human history has had the power of misuse, and social media is no different.

I’m writing this because the world needs sovereign, optimized individuals, who are spending their time on this earth doing the things they love more than anything else. It’s obvious that in 2023, the best way to facilitate this freedom is by becoming a business of one.

AI is going to be automating millions of jobs in the coming years, and the education landscape has become overpriced and undervalued.

A record number of Gen Z high school graduates are skipping college altogether because they’re aware of this shift. And it’s time for the rest of us to catch up.

If we can learn anything from history, it’s that when technology changes, so do our behaviors and norms. Early adopters come out on top, and the general public is left with a lot to learn and very little time to learn it. By this time, the landscape has changed again, and the cycle continues in perpetuity.

The Business of One

Social media has changed my life.

My current job, which I love, I found on Twitter.

My Instagram account has landed me clients and partnerships which I’ve sustained for years.

I have an audience that I can share my thoughts and ideas with directly, outside of the endless email chains of editor feedback like when I was pitching to magazines.

It’s allowed me to escape the liner pay raises of a typical salaried job and build cash flow that can grow exponentially.

And most importantly, It’s opened up me up to the world outside of the small town where I’m writing this from.

I want everyone with a skill or interest (should be all of you reading this) to capitalize on this new technology as I have. But first, we have to see how things have changed.

The old way looked like this:

• Develop a skill or expertise through college or some other type of training

• Use this training as social proof to get hired or noticed by another entity

• Work under said entity’s rules and obligations to generate a single source of income

This isn’t a bad life.

But if you don’t enjoy the skill you learned or the business you’re working for, it can be a 40-year death trap.

Before the internet, the path to getting out of an environment like this usually meant repeating the same cycle: more education and a different job.

But that is no longer the case.

This is the new way:

• Develop a skill or expertise through education or self-study

• Share valuable, entertaining, or inspiring information related to this skill or expertise on social media to build an engaged audience

• Monetize your skill or expertise by teaching others how to do it themselves or by leveraging your audience to buy your creative work directly from you

If you have a job you enjoy, that’s great. Keep it.

But if you’re sitting at a desk, watching the clock tick by so you can come home and trade stocks, write music, or create art, this is a sign, that you need to be bringing your passion into the digital world.

Let’s take a personal trainer as an example.

Under the old model, you would:

• Become licensed under your state governing board and develop your knowledge base

• Get hired by a gym where you would train clients 1:1 with a percentage split

• Eventually, you could build a local client base and fill your weeks

There is an upper limit to your growth. And even if you’re part of the 0.00001% training celebrities and millionaires, you’re still going to be working 40-50 hours per week with an income that hits a ceiling.

Under the new model, this looks very different:

• Become licensed under your state governing board and develop your knowledge base

• Work part-time at a gym (or another job entirely) and start to create content in your free time highlighting your personality, transformation, and unique approach to fitness

• Launch a higher ticket ($2,000-$4,000) one-on-one coaching program online to your engaged audience tailored specifically to the people you want to work with

• Launch a down-sell offer ($500-$900) that includes video courses, guides, and resources you’ve built, that are totally independent of the one-on-one coaching. This allows you to capture a market that either doesn’t have the time, or money, to work with you one-on-one

In one month, if you sell a 3-month fitness program to 10 people for $3,000 you just made $30,000.

And let’s say you also sold 25 of your $500 pre-built, down-sell courses…

You just made a total of $50,000 dollars in one month.

If you have an audience of 5,000-10,000 people who look to you as the expert and enjoy who you are as a person, this is not an impossible number to hit. In fact, I’d say it’s much easier than trying to land a corporate desk job with a $250k-a-year salary.

And this framework can be applied to anything. All it takes is you.

I know this is a deviation from a lot of the recent essays and topics I’ve covered here, but I felt like I needed to share this with you.

This is exactly what I do for work, so I figured I’d go off-script a little bit and highlight something that I am passionate about from a professional perspective.

The interests you have can be leveraged into something big and I believe with my full heart, that it is absolutely something others want to know about as well.

All it takes is a willingness to execute daily and iterate your process.

Once you get past the phase of “I look stupid”, the only way is up.

I hope you found this valuable, and please, if you have any questions/ideas/concerns/comments, leave them below and I’ll get back to you.

With love,

-Joe