One-Person Business Demands the Highest Version of You
Nobody wants 50-hour work weeks anymore.
They don’t want to sit in traffic for hours on end. They don’t want to sit in sticky offices whilst the sun beats down on the world. They don’t want to be stuck in the same conversations.
They don’t want life on repeat.
Instead, people want to work from where they want, on what they want, with who they want, when they want.
It’s a deep shift. It’s a life 180. It picks up the rule book and throws it out the window. It’s a total flip on what the world has designed. But for some people, they’re making it happen.
And here’s how.
Understanding the task
Sounds magic right? Working from home, avoiding the morning traffic. Bliss. Work that makes you feel alive? Amazing. People that light you up? Incredible.
But what I see time and time again from the people actually making this happen is one fundamental distinction. It’s this: they know the gravity of the undertaking.
They know they’re not going to click their fingers and it’s just going to happen. They know the truth: work at this thing for 5 years before anything big happens.
Then they’ll have the options they crave.
So once you’ve stomached that, this is how you become the highest version of yourself.
1. Build self-respect from the ground up
I’m in year 3.
When I first started, I had zero self-respect. I had no accountability. I was living in Lala land. I’d get a dopamine rush from writing down my goals ‘make $1 million this year’ and then collapse into the sofa with no idea where to start.
Each day I told myself I was going to do something. Today was the day. It never was. Many tomorrows later, I still hadn’t started.
If you want to do this thing, you have to build accountability which in turn builds your self-respect. You have to get good at doing the things you said you would.
So make the ask small and the expectation low, build from the ground up. Start with 20 minutes a day.
2. Hard work, pain and perspective
It’s no secret.
Demanding the highest version of yourself is hard work. Btw the highest version of yourself is not a lean mean money-making machine. It’s the version of you that you are a) most proud of and b) living in line with how you want to spend your days.
If you want to get there, you must accept that pain is part of the package. There are going to be days when you feel like giving up when nothing works, when everything that was working no longer does.
That’s the price. The price of a big life is hard days.
3. The long-game
Every time you lose. Fail. Find yourself staring into the world thinking why on Earth did I bother? You must refocus yourself on the one truth of this thing.
It’s a long game.
It’s going to take you 5 years to get to where you want to go. You must understand that on the deepest of levels. It’s about maximising the day but learning to understand yourself. It’s about adapation:
If you’re exhausted, rest.
If you’re frustrated, change your environment.
If you feel like giving up, reach out to your pals.
You must internalize the long game, really understand it and adapt your game accordingly. Play in a way that means when you hit year 5, you feel like you’re just getting started.
4. Build emotional resilience
The first time you read a nasty comment, get a refund, or someone sends you a snotty DM, your heart will come out of your chest.
Your palms sweat, your mouth goes dry, and your head races through the emotional spectrum in 17 seconds flat. You go from sunken to upset to frustrated to downright angry.
That’s okay.
The first time is always the worst. And then you realise a few things:
Naysayers are part of the game.
No matter how hard you try, you’ll never please everyone.
With each encounter, you become more resilient to negativity. You start to see it as noise. You begin to see it as energy wasted. You start to understand that you have one life and your most precious asset is time. So you allocate accordingly.
5. Create something of value
Of course, to build a business you must be selling something that other people want to buy. You’ll notice that none of this so far has been about making money.
And that’s because steps 1–4 are about building the mindset before the business. A business is emotionally demanding. It’s just putting out fires 24/7.
Becoming the highest version of yourself equips you for those fires. It helps you understand who you are and what life you want to live. It makes creating something of value the next logical step.
The world is big. You get one life. If you want to become the highest version of yourself, you can get after it. You can start today.
And I really hope you do.
This edition is free. If you liked it be sure to share it with your pals. Sharing it helps more people see my work :)