How to Build a One-Person Business in 2025 (In 12 Months or Less)

This year, I made over 360k US from this YouTube channel without having any full-time employees. In this video, I'm going to show you how I would do that exactly, step by step, in the next 12 months so that you can copy my framework in 2025. But be careful; I'm not promising you to make like $10,000 in 30 days or anything like that. I'm not here to sell you an unattainable dream. In fact, I'm going to show you a realistic approach, and by using this approach in 12 months, you will be able to go from zero to $2,000, maybe even beyond, even with a full-time job and even without any experience.

If you're still chasing the dream of getting rich quick, of suddenly becoming a millionaire in like 6 months or anything, forget about those. Okay, let's be realistic and let's get started. When it comes to building a one-person business, there are six steps, in my opinion, and the first one is understanding how attention works and how the creator economy works. Most people think that actually when they start like posting online, the thing that they fear is getting canceled. But in reality, actually getting canceled or being controversial is not really a big issue because as long as people are caring about you and as long as they are giving attention to you, it's actually much better than not getting any attention at all.

Sure, it can have a long-term impact on your personal branding and it can affect you in a negative way, but actually, the most important thing in social media, in today's internet currency, is attention. If you would, for example, even look at Kim Kardashian's like Skims, it's a billion-dollar company. The reason behind that is, sure, like she's doing a great job and she has probably good products, but mainly the reason why she was so wildly successful at her business is because she gets a lot of attention. She is able to monetize and capitalize that attention and turn it into a product.

Even though Kim Kardashian doesn't necessarily have like the most safe and most loved brand, she's still able to capitalize on that attention and turn it into money because she gets attention. If you would only talk in terms of money, then as long as you're getting attention and if you know how to capitalize on that, you can make money. The problem with only relying on attention is that you can easily become a one-hit wonder. Yes, maybe there's like a video of you going viral and you were able to get attention and turn that into money, but if it's not recurring attention and if you are not able to build true influence, then you won't be able to make money in the long term.

So if you want to think long-term, then we can only rely on attention. What we need to rely on is influence. So what do I mean by this? You might be thinking, what is the difference between influence and attention? Attention is anyone just being interested in you, right? But influence is actually the ability to change people's way of thinking and the way that they act.

For example, if you would compare TikTokers and YouTubers, you can clearly understand the difference between influence and attention. I remember there was a TikToker who had like millions of followers and she did a meet and greet, but no one showed up. That shows she gets attention, but she has no influence. She couldn't influence people to, you know, get to meet her in real life. So even though she was getting a lot of eyeballs, there was no true influence. She wasn't able to change anyone's behavior, so we don't want to be like that.

If you would, for example, compare to a YouTuber, even, you know, I know YouTubers who are around like 10,000 subscribers making millions of dollars. The reason behind that is, even though the attention is smaller, the influence is bigger. Yes, attention is important, but the quality of that attention is even more important, actually. Understanding this will allow you to shape your mindset around it and try to create as much value as you can to influence people.

The way that I like to think about it is that without attention, you have no influence, but without influence, you have no business. So it's always influence is more important than actually attention. But if you don't have attention, if you don't get attention at all, then it doesn't matter because you can't have influence without attention. So understanding how to get attention and create influence is the first step of building a one-person business.

To do this, we need to focus on our second step, which is creating your USB and delivering free value. USB is actually a very important term used in business and also when it comes to growing your YouTube channel too. The first question that I always like to ask my students who are trying to grow their YouTube channel is: What makes you different than others? Why should people care about you? This is also the question that I ask myself every single time I'm about to create a new video.

If you want to build a one-person business in 2025, then we need to have a USB, which stands for Unique Selling Position. There are already so many creators and so many people out there creating content, right? We need to have something different about us that is going to differentiate ourselves from the market. It's really just sitting down and answering: Why you? What is going to make you different? Because the USB determines everything.

If you would, let's say, start a YouTube channel and copy the most popular videos on YouTube, you might get views for one or two times, but you will see that over time, you won't be able to capture attention and make people come back to your videos because they did not connect with something unique about you. So you might be thinking, what was your USB ready when starting out, right? If you don't know, I had actually like four or five failed channels before this one, and I've been doing YouTube since 2016.

Even though people say that, like, "Oh, you succeeded because you're a young female," etc., etc., I couldn't back then. What I was doing was that I was just posting random videos. I was just sharing like random things online, but then I realized that if there's nothing special about me to make people care, then I had to figure that out. I sat down and wrote down everything that I know, that I experience, that I can share with the world that I can bring value to the table and that people can find helpful.

The first thing that I recognized was that I was really good at language learning. At that time, I was fluent in English, Japanese, Turkish, and German. I knew how to learn languages without necessarily studying. The thing that I did was I looked online. I went to YouTube and looked at the old language learning videos, and I've seen that nobody was doing my method. People were talking about very boring methods.

So I thought this could be my USB; this could be my breakthrough. I can make a video about language learning, and also I can make a video about what it's like to be mixed because I am mixed. That was my USB. So I did the video, it went viral, and after that, I saw that I can make more videos about it, and then my channel started to grow. But I did not want to talk about, for example, language learning for the rest of my life. I wanted to switch to a new topic, and I wanted to talk about productivity and self-improvement.

But then I looked at the market and it was really crowded. So I was thinking, how can I make myself different than others? How can I differentiate myself? I was thinking about my USB again. The thing that I found was that most people were talking about very western concepts, naturally, and they were talking about western books and western ways of thinking, but everyone was kind of talking about the same stuff.

So what I did was to differentiate myself. I started reading Japanese books. I started to consume more Japanese media because the way that we think about personal development and self-improvement in Japan is quite different than the Western world. I decided this could be my USB, and I started to make videos around that. That really actually changed, and after that, I basically experimented with more different things, and that allowed me to build an audience in the self-improvement and personal development niche that made me differentiate from other people.

If you're just starting out, you have to make yourself different from others, and you have to tap into something unique that is going to make you stand out. If you're struggling with this, I basically created a free USB finder worksheet that you can find in the description below. It's completely free and it is designed to help you find your unique strength so that you can stand out from the crowd.

After you find the USB, because without the USB you're going to fail, that is for sure, or even if you succeed, people are going to forget about you very easily because there is nothing special about you, right? So what we need to do is that the second step is we need to learn how to deliver value for free.

For example, this video, the reason why I'm sharing all these things that I learned over multiple years of me trying to build this YouTube channel and trying to build a business around it is because I want to deliver you free value. I want you to find this video valuable so that I can prove myself that I know what I'm talking about, and I can gain your trust. Because if you find this video valuable, you'll probably look into my other videos. If you find them valuable enough, when I, let's say, offer a service to teach you and coach you, you will be more interested in it.

Most people online fail to identify their USB. Not only that, they also try to sell products and services too early without bringing free value to people. There is no way you can sell a product because think about it this way: You come across a random like stranger online and they're offering a product. Nice, but you don't know them; you have no idea whether they're a scammer or whether they're a trustworthy person.

I feel like also the reputation of people selling stuff online is not that good because so many people use it in a bad way. What we need to do is to share valuable information as much as we can with our audience. Share whatever we know that we can teach to people; share our experiences, etc., so that we can gain our audience's trust and prove to them that we're not scammers, right?

If you're just starting out, whether that's YouTube, or through Twitter, or whatever that is, if you're building your online business, especially as a one-person, the first thing you need to do is not to create your product, but first, build your USB and also deliver lots of value for free so that you can gain that trust and build that community.

Now that you understand the importance of USB and also delivering value for free, you might be thinking, how can I deliver value for free? What should I do? I personally recommend doing YouTube. Not because I'm biased and I'm a YouTuber, but because I personally think YouTube is the best platform. The amount of influence you can have on YouTube is something you can't even compare to other platforms.

I know YouTubers who are making millions with just only 10,000 subscribers. I know so many Instagrammers and TikTokers who have millions of followers, but they don't even make like $10,000 per month. The reason behind that is because of the screen time we have. When someone watches your YouTube videos, they're likely watching for minutes and minutes and minutes.

As you build your video catalog, they're going to have already consumed your videos for hours. But let's say for Instagram, even if you have hundreds of pieces of content, most people are just watching it for 30 seconds. So if you compare the amount of time that we spend together, YouTube always wins.

Actually, because of that, you can build a deeper relationship with your audience. When you're developing your products and services, your YouTube audience will be more likely to buy that product because they already know who you are and what you stand for. If you want to build a one-person business, I personally recommend YouTube and using YouTube as a way to deliver value and establish your work.

If you think other platforms are better, just let me know in the comments down below why you think that way, and tell me whether I'm biased about this. But in my opinion, out of all platforms, YouTube is the king.

If you want to know the most common mistakes people do when starting their YouTube channel and how to overcome them, I have a free 7-day email newsletter that will guide you through the common mistakes and how to overcome them. So if you're interested, check the link in the description below. It's free.

If you want to learn about the specifics of creating content like idea generation, scripting, filming, and editing, I'm going to make a video about how to do that in the next week or so, so stay tuned.

The third step of building a one-person business is creating and establishing your email list. What is an email list and why does it matter? Let me explain. The problem with social media platforms, including YouTube, is that you don't own your audience. What do I mean by this? Let's say you post a video and it is against the guidelines of YouTube. What will YouTube do? They will probably warn you, and if you keep doing that for a couple of times, they will probably ban your account and delete your YouTube channel, right?

What happens after they delete your YouTube channel? You don't have the channel anymore; you have no way to access your subscribers. Even though, for example, on my channel, we have 1.4 million of you guys, there is no way that I can directly contact you, right? If YouTube shows my video to you, if the YouTube algorithm recommends my videos to you, or if you directly search for it, you can find it.

But there's no way that I can, let's say, email you or contact you without using YouTube, and that is a huge problem actually. Because whenever a YouTube algorithm changes or whenever your sort of life becomes inconsistent at posting videos and maybe you take a break, it actually affects the YouTube algorithm a lot and the YouTube algorithm also fluctuates. People's interests also fluctuate.

So if we are relying on the YouTube algorithm to reach out to our audience, then it means YouTube has control over our audience. And that is a very risky situation to be in, because what happens if, let's say, your country bans YouTube? It actually happens all around the world. It means you're out of business, and there's a huge risk that we don't want to take.

Maybe in the future, you might be thinking, "Okay, I actually don't want to create videos anymore," but how am I going to reach my customers or audience? So to solve this issue and also to solve the stress around the YouTube algorithm of like, "Oh, YouTube is not recommending my videos, and I'm not getting views," the thing that we need to do is to build and establish our email list.

When you establish an email list, right, whether that's through email newsletters or whether that's through asking your subscribers for your emails, you're going to have direct access to your audience and it's not going to be affected by the algorithm or anything. Because every time you send an email, it will be delivered to their inbox.

So how can we do this? You can obviously ask your audience to drop their email if they want an update from you and if they want to sign up for your email newsletter. But usually, that is not enough; most people are not going to be interested in that. So what we need to do is that we first need to deliver value for free so that they will give their email in exchange.

For example, at the beginning of this video, I told you to check out my free USB finder worksheet that you can find in the description below. It's completely free and it's valuable, right? If you're interested and if you find it valuable enough, you will drop your email into my form. By doing this, I will have direct access to you, so whenever, let's say, I want to announce something or I want to maybe create a product or service that I think will benefit you, I don't have to rely on the YouTube algorithm.

I can directly email you, and I don't even maybe have to mention whatever I'm offering on YouTube, which will prevent you from getting backlash. It will also allow you to provide services and products to the best, most engaging audience that you have. The reason why I'm saying this is not because you should hide whatever you're offering or products and services, but it's because on YouTube, whenever you're sharing a video, a lot of new people come into your video, right?

If they see someone that they don't know enough and they don't trust yet, they always first assume that that person is a scammer, and they just first think that the product is just designed for a cash grab. But I've taken so many courses, so many coaching programs, and things like that, and they changed my life, and I only buy from people who I trust.

The people who signed up for your email list found it valuable enough that they dropped their email. So if you're only offering to people who already know you, trust you, like you, and find your work valuable, no one is going to question whether your work is a scam or like a cash grab or anything like that.

By doing this, first, you can increase the quality of your customers, which will help you to increase the overall community, the quality of the community. Secondly, you will prevent getting backlash, even if you care about it. Most people are really scared of selling things online because they're scared of getting backlash. But if you're only selling to people who are on your list, then it's not an issue.

Those people are already the ones who found value in your work, and that's the reason they signed up. As long as you're creating a product that you're proud of, that you're passionate about, and that fits your audience's needs, then there is nothing to worry about it.

For example, I am actually running a YouTube community where I'm helping creators for 12 months, and I'm offering one-on-one coaching. I didn't announce this on my YouTube channel; I only announced this through my email list. The people who dropped their email were interested in maybe a YouTube guide that I was providing for free, and actually, we're getting a lot of reach just by using my email list.

I didn't even have to announce it on YouTube or make a separate video to start getting students, actually. So you don't necessarily have to announce it on YouTube; you can do that all on your email. But to do so, you need to bring value for free and start collecting your email.

The great part about collecting emails is that even if you don't have a product yet, you can start collecting your emails from the beginning, the day you're starting to create content, the day you're starting to create and bring value to people. You can start your email list, and as you go along, you can build your product. You can then offer the product using your email list to the people who signed up.

That is the thing that I highly recommend for those of you who are just starting out now to collect emails and also offer your lead magnet. You'll obviously need a website, but creating a professional website can be really difficult and overwhelming, especially if you don't know anything like me about website design and website development. But you don't have to worry because Hostinger has you covered.

Their AI website builder actually makes it super easy to create a business site, portfolio, and even an online store, and you can do that literally in just a few minutes. You don't need any coding or design skills. All you need to do is to really describe the website that you want to Hostinger AI, and it will just do the rest for you.

The best part is that when you get the business plan, you get access to tools like AI Writer, which can generate you SEO-friendly copy, and also the AI heat map will optimize the layout of the website for you. There's also even an AI logo maker that can make logos for you. All you have to do is head to Hostinger.com/dy10 and select the business plan for all the AI features and e-commerce capabilities, and at checkout, I even secured a special discount for you.

Just use my code RUDYTAN at the checkout. Once you have logged in and selected the AI business plan, all you have to do is enter your business name and describe the sort of site you are building and then click generate website, and AI will generate a professional-looking website in less than a minute. You can then adjust the website according to your preference by using the drag-and-drop feature.

For those of you who are interested in Hostinger, I have a special discount that you can use at checkout, and also I have a link in the description below too. With Hostinger, you can start building your online presence today, and you can collect emails and give away your lead magnets very easily. Thank you, Hostinger, for sponsoring the portion of this video.

Now, let's talk about the fourth step of building a one-person business, which is all about creating your first MVP. What does MVP mean? It means Minimum Viable Product. I want you to only focus on building your MVP once you build an audience and once you see some growth because trying to grow your online presence while building a product is actually much harder than you think. When you split your focus, you become mediocre at both of them.

So once you build a certain amount of audience, a certain amount of views, and a certain amount of engagement, then you can start to think about building a product, which is going to be MVP, Minimum Viable Product. A minimum viable product is something that you can create in the shortest amount of time possible, and you can test it on your audience.

Let's say you want to create an app or software in the long term, but developing a software takes a lot of time and a lot of money. The first thing that we need to do is to see whether there's enough demand for it. That is one of the most common mistakes that I have done in the past, and that so many creators and so many people trying to build online businesses do: If there's no demand, no one's going to buy it.

So what do we need to do? If you want to, let's say, create a software in the future, we need to think about the easiest, simplest version of it that we can create in the minimum amount of time and test it with our audience. You know, and we're going to test it on the email list that we built and see whether there's enough interest and demand for it, then get feedback and improve it before we launch something bigger.

Let me give you an example. In the long term, I actually want to build an ADHD-specific productivity app because I personally have ADHD and I'm struggling with it, but I didn't know whether there's enough demand for it and developing an app costs a lot of money. So the first step that I did was to see whether there's enough demand for it. I created a video about ADHD, talking about my issues, and that video got a lot of views, which signaled to me there's enough demand for it.

Let me create my MVP, Minimum Viable Product. Yes, I want to build an ADHD-specific productivity app in the future, but it takes a lot of time and it costs a lot. So the first thing that I've done was create a simple version of the app how I would envision it in Notion. Notion is a free app that you can use; I'm not sponsored, I just love it. I created a template, a Notion template specifically designed for ADHD people.

Instead of announcing it very bigly, I talked about it in a couple of my videos and mentioned it here and there, and that template actually sold around like 500 templates or something. It was priced at like $99, and I think at the launch it was priced around maybe $49. About 500 people bought it, which is a high signal that there is enough demand for it.

So right now, I'm working on making it better, and I'm going to improve it over time, and I'm going to launch the second version. If the second version does well, then I'm going to start moving towards building that software. So before you make a big investment in terms of time, energy, and money to build a product or build a business, you need to first create the MVP, test it with your audience, and see whether it's actually worth it.

Sometimes, for example, let's look at MKBHD. He created the Panels app where he was selling wallpapers and things like that, and he got a huge backlash. The reason behind that, in my opinion, is that he didn't do an MVP. He didn't do a test with his audience and he launched it massively and announced it. That got him a lot of backlash.

Even if you have a very established brand like MKBHD, things can still go wrong, and also wasting time and energy is not worth it. So always, always create your MVP, like the simplest, shortest version, so that first, you won't procrastinate on building that product and become a perfectionist.

Secondly, you can test whether your audience is interested in it, get feedback, and improve it before doing a big launch. These MVPs could be, for example, an ebook if you want to publish a book, or a mini course if you want to launch a course. You can do mini small group coaching if you want to do massive coaching in the future.

Let's say if you want to level up a software, it could be a simple worksheet or Notion template like I have done. It could be a service used by third-party services, etc. There are so many ways to create an MVP, but before building a product, always create your MVP.

Once you create your MVP, the fifth step of our one-person business is to go to your email list and create a new email sequence explaining the story behind it, why you're interested in it, and key selling points. Whenever you're creating your MVP, just like with our YouTube channel or whatever content you want to create, USB, your unique selling position, is going to be important.

Your MVP has to be different from the products around the market so that people would be interested in it and buy it. For example, for my ADHD template, there's already Thomas Frank who's making a million dollars selling Notion templates. I was thinking, "I cannot be Thomas Frank." Like, I'm not going to open a YouTube related channel and I'm not established yet, and I'm not a Notion nerd as he is.

So what can I do? I bought his template and tried to see what his key selling points were. His Notion template is amazing, but it was too difficult for me personally, and also Thomas doesn't have ADHD. So the problems and issues that we had were completely different.

I looked online and tried to see whether there were truly ADHD-friendly designs for ADHD templates, and I couldn't find any of them. I personally listed down every single problem that I was facing, and then I created the template that I'm selling. The USB of my MVP is ADHD-friendly; it's simple to use, and it is catered towards ADHD people.

Obviously, if you don't have ADHD, you can still use it, but that was the unique selling point of it; it was designed for ADHD people, designed for people who are procrastinating and struggling with productivity just like I am. That made me kind of like differentiate it from that, right?

Whenever I want to sell that Notion template, I can reach out to my email list and I can announce it there without even talking about it on YouTube. The focus of this channel is to bring free value as much as I can and build a relationship, build a community, so that I don't have to do sneaky sales tactics or anything like that.

If you do that, if you can build an audience that resonates with you, that likes you and finds your work valuable, actually they are going to be like, "Thank you so much for building this product! I really enjoy it; it changed my life." Every single day, whether that's my YouTube coaching students or my ADHD template, I'm getting lots and lots and lots of positive comments from people.

Even if people don't purchase your product, that's fine because you're building a community that trusts you and that likes you. In the future, you might create something new, and they will be interested in that because you already gave them free value, so they want to give something back to you.

The last step of building a one-person business is really about growth and improvement. After you launch your first MVP, you need to get a lot of feedback because especially those early birds who bought your product before you even launched it like hugely and massively are the people who are most interested in your channel and your product, and probably they're your biggest fans.

First, I would offer a huge discount for those early adopters and ask for feedback in exchange for this discount. If you do this, you would be able to get real feedback to improve your product and change it in the future before you launch massively.

Once you launch your MVP, what you need to do is think about the YouTube videos that you can promote your lead magnet without sounding pushy and making the lead magnet actually valuable. For example, in this video, I'm talking about building a one-person business, right? I'm offering a USB finder worksheet for free, a lead magnet. If you find everything that I said valuable, you probably need to look at the USB worksheet, and you might get that.

By doing that, I will have you on my email list, right? Whenever I'm launching a product, instead of announcing it on YouTube, I can send you an email, and if you find it valuable, you can get the product. At this step, what you need to do is really improve your product based on the feedback that you get from these early birds and create more content, improving the content, and scaling more and more and more.

The important thing is that success really doesn't happen overnight; it takes years for people to see results. But that's completely normal. Think about it: If you would go to a college, you would at least take like four years to get a job, right? People normalize this so much, but for some reason, when it comes to the internet, people think that they can become successful in 30 days or anything like that.

It doesn't work like that, you know? Whether it's sports, music, or even college, it takes years to see some results. So normalize that in your head. Just because you're not making money right now doesn't mean that you're not going to make money in the future. You're planting the seeds online, and in my opinion, sharing valuable stuff online is the best way you can make money in 2025 because there is leverage and scalability.

So, it's going to take time, and people might discourage you. But just believe in yourself, and if you copy everything that I said in this video, I know it's easier said than done, but you're going to achieve that. If you want to learn more and if you want to get into details about building a one-person business, check out this video. I'm sure you're going to find it helpful.