One Person Business: Week 1 Results | $0 - $100k Challenge

We're starting a one-person business completely from scratch and the goal is to get it to $10K per month within the next 6 months…

But before I show you what happened in week one, let me be honest about something - this isn't my first attempt at building a business.

And my previous business taught me something about entrepreneurship that nobody talks about.

See, everyone's quick to tell you what business to build, but nobody talks about whether that business actually fits who you are.

For instance, if you’re someone who’s money-driven and see influencers making 100k per month with their agency, you automatically assume that that is what you should be doing.

And that’s what I did.

Six months ago, I did what every business influencer tells you to do - chasing client work and dreaming of building a social media marketing agency.

They seem to preach how simple the business model is but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

What they don't tell you is the mental toll of constantly hunting for clients, the awkward sales calls, and that sinking feeling in your stomach when a potential client tries to haggle your already reasonable prices down to nothing.

And that’s when I had a little bit of a mental breakdown.

Now, I could blame external factors. Living in a third-world country made using Stripe a nightmare. Maybe I was offering the wrong service.

But the truth is that any service can work. My problem wasn't the service - it was me.

When I finally took a step back to analyze why I was struggling, it hit me:

I hated every part of client acquisition or at least the way most people teach you.

The endless outreach, the sales calls, the constant need to prove my worth to people who were already trying to devalue my work. It felt like I was building someone else's dream life while putting mine on hold.

I’m not saying that starting an agency or doing client work is wrong, but this business model is genuinely suited for a specific type of person.

(And here's a little industry secret: remember Iman Ghadzi? The agency guru? He shut down his agency years ago because he found better ways to make money. But that part doesn't make it into his inspirational YouTube videos, does it?)

That's why I'm starting something different - a one-person business with a twist.

Dan Koe popularized this term, "The One Person Business", but I'm taking a different route.

Instead of spending months or years building a personal brand, I'm combining the best of e-commerce with digital products. I'm talking about having 90% profit margins, and minimal ad spend.

And the best part is that you don't need an audience to start.

I call it the "faceless funnel" model, and over the next 6 months, I'm aiming to scale it to $10K per month.

This isn't some get-rich-quick scheme - it's a real business model that no one seems to be talking about.

I'm documenting everything as I build it, starting with what happened in week one. No filters, no fluff - just teaching you on how you can potentially start one yourself, plus, sharing my lessons to help

The AI Opportunity Nobody's Talking About

Let me tell you something interesting about timing.

A lot of people believe that "the AI hype is over," you had people teaching how to make millions with AI but most of it is just what I'd call "AI fluff".

And we're at that same point with AI right now.

The ChatGPT hype has died, and that's exactly why it's the perfect time to actually start leveraging AI.

Think about it… last year, everyone was throwing AI at everything without a real strategy.

People were asking AI to spit out 30 generic content ideas and leave it at that.

Now?

We have mature tools, clear use cases, and most importantly, less noise in the market.

For our faceless funnel model, this timing is perfect.

Here's why:

First, AI has gotten insanely good at helping create digital products.

I'm not talking about generic, AI-written ebooks that everyone and their dog was trying to sell last year.

I'm talking about genuinely helpful products that solve real problems.

The key is using AI as a collaborative tool, not a replacement for human expertise.

Second, these tools have become more reliable and sophisticated.

If you remember early ChatGPT responses, they were like throwing spaghetti at a wall.

Now, with proper prompting and the improved performance of AI, you can create consistently high-quality content that actually helps people.

"The Faceless Funnel Model Breakdown"

Let’s get specific about how this business actually works.

Traditional e-commerce typically means dealing with inventory, shipping, finding suppliers, and tight profit margins - usually around 20-30% if you're lucky.

The other issue is there's a lot more customer service and refund rates compared to other businesses.

Because with dropshipping, you don’t have control of the quality of the product you’re selling.

On the flip side, selling digital products can give you sometimes up to 90% profit margins.

And you have absolute control over it.

Now I honestly prefer the idea of selling digital products but both these businesses have just one problem.

Traffic.

Ads are expensive and content takes long.

This is why the faceless funnel model combines the best of both worlds.

Here's the basic framework:

  1. We identify specific pain points or problems in profitable niches and then create an AI persona with branding along with it.

  2. We then create digital products using a combination of your own research & knowledge, with AI assistance

  3. Build automated marketing systems that don't require your constant attention. This will be primarily through optimised sales funnels and email marketing.

  4. Lastly we with paid traffic that essentially pays for itself. You see with dropshipping when you spend a dollar and make 2 dollars back, you still need to consider the actual product costs apart from the Facebook ads costs, such as the cost, shipping fees and higher refund rates.

  5. With this business, we’re using digital products that have over 90% profit margins, as there are essentially no expenses besides software and facebook ads. And when we use a specific sales funnel with some email marketing, we can break even with our Facebook ads quite quickly.

  6. So when you spend a dollar and make $2 back, you're able to keep almost all of that profit.

The beauty of this model is that once you set it up correctly, it's almost entirely automated.

Unlike client work, where more success means more work, this scales without eating up more of your time.

You can even sell these automated funnels for 5-10x its monthly profit.

key point 2 → what my week looked like

What Week 1 Actually Looked Like

So let me walk you through exactly what I did over the past week and a half for this business.

At the start, the biggest challenge wasn't finding the right offer or choosing the right market – it was actually being new to an entirely different business model.

When you're used to client work, and then switching to creating digital products, it's in itself a completely new skill to learn

There is an entire product creation process as well as figuring out the best products to solve those pain points.

And the first thing I did was find a problem in a specific market.

Now, I know that this might seem obvious to most of you, but if you can't find a problem to solve then no one is going to buy your product.

So instead of just picking a broad market like health, wealth, or relationships, we need to identify specific pain points or problems that people are actively trying to solve.

For example: Let's say you're interested in the health market.

Instead of creating a generic fitness product on how to lose weight, you rather focus specifically on helping busy professionals who can only work out at home with minimal equipment and want to see results within a specific time frame.

See how that's much more specific than just "fitness"?

The key is to find problems that people are already trying to solve and are willing to pay for solutions.

I won't tell you what product plan to sell in this video but maybe in the next one ;).

The Product Creation Process

After I chose my niche this is where things got interesting - and if I'm honest, a bit messy.

Creating digital products is both easier and harder than most people think.

Here's what my process looked like:

First, I created products with the help of AI that would actually help solve a real pain point or problem with my market.

With the products we plan to sell, we're selling products in the $20-$40 range, followed by 2 order bumps to increase our average order value to around $70.

Why?

Well firstly, to break even with ads quicker and make more profit on the front end.

Secondly, it's easier to get someone to trust you with a smaller purchase, and once they see the value, they're more likely to buy your higher-priced offerings.

I used AI (specifically Claude) to help brainstorm and refine my product ideas. But here's where I made my first mistake: I let the AI suggestions send me down a rabbit hole of endless improvements. It's like having a perfectionist friend who always has "just one more suggestion." You have to know when to say enough is enough.

So that’s why it was important for me to plan out the products I plan to create, as well as exactly what each product needs to include.

This allows us to get AI to be more strict with what content it can create.

The Reality Check: What Actually Worked

In the past week, I'm 99% complete with my initial product along with 3 bonuses and 2 order bumps.

Once this is completed, I can quickly start dialling in my sales funnel and ad creatives.

Some people might say that I should market before building but because these products are reasonably quick to build, we can easily test and refine these products until they’re profitable.

Once they're tested and validated, we can look at creating upsells and more expensive backend products so we can make A LOT more money.

More importantly, here are the key lessons I learned:

  1. Batch creation is essential. Instead of creating one product at a time, it's more efficient to create all your content first for each product, then handle design and formatting.

  2. Branding consistency matters more than I initially thought. Even without showing your face, your products need to feel cohesive. I suggest having your branding colours and fonts set before creating anything so that it's all plug-and-play when you design and format. Don't overthink branding, you can use a tool like Coolers.co and find branding colours there.

  3. The last lesson I learned is that each product needs to solve a specific problem or objection. Random "nice to have" products don't sell well in this model. What I mean by this is that if I am selling a product helping men become more confident in online dating, I could make a strength training program specifically designed to help men build an aesthetic physique to improve their confidence because that is selling another pain point.

Now my plan for the next week or 2 is to polish the products, build out the funnel and emails, and potentially play around with TikTok organic content for initial testing.

I believe that at this rate we can start selling products fairly quickly after this is all dialled in.

Thanks for reading!

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Best,

Jarrod