5 Lessons That Helped Me Build A Six-Figure Online Business (That I Wish I Learned Sooner)
“Learn to sell, learn to build, if you can do both, you will be unstoppable.”
I started my first online business (Peak Productivity) early in 2018.
But it wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine.
It took me more than two years (filled with mistakes and harsh lessons) before I finally started making some money.
Fast-forward a few years later, and I’m fortunate enough to make a full-time income with my online businesses.
In this article, I’ll share five of the most impactful business lessons that I wish I learned when I just started my online business.
1. Business = Solving Problems
Building an online business is about solving problems for people.
That’s it.
The bigger the problem you solve, the more money you make.
I learned this lesson the hard way. One of the first digital products I created was a course on morning routines.
It totally flopped…
It took me about two months to create, and I made maybe $5,000 with it. That’s because it didn’t solve a specific, painful problem.
Yes, people are often interested in reading about other people’s morning routines. But they’re not willing to pay for it, because it’s not perceived as a big enough problem.
In my niche (productivity), the most painful problem people struggle with is procrastination.
They have many goals, plans, and ideas, but struggle to follow through with them because of distractions, low motivation, or lack of self-discipline.
So, I created an online course that helps people conquer procrastination once and for all — and it became my all-time best-selling product.
That’s because it helped solve a specific, painful problem.
And that’s what people pay for.
So, when you want to start a one-person business or create a new digital product, always ask yourself:
What’s a specific problem I can solve for someone?
What’s a big enough pain point I can help someone get rid of?
Which type of person do I solve this problem for?
People are willing to pay handsomely for products or services that help them solve a specific, painful problem.
2. Offer Mid/High-Ticket Products
Once you’ve identified which problem to solve, the next question is how you’re going to package the solution.
What’s the type of product you’re going to sell?
The most common product types are:
E-Books
Courses
Tools & Templates
Services (Done-For-You)
Coaching / Consulting (Done-With-You)
Cohorts
Communities
Keep in mind, the format of your product determines the perceived value.
For example, most people aren’t willing to pay $197 for an e-book, but they’re willing to pay that amount for an online course.
Even if both products solve a problem in the exact same way, the perceived value of an online course is generally much higher than that of an e-book.
The higher the perceived value of your product, the higher the price you can charge. The higher the price you can charge, the more money you’ll make.
When I just started my one-person business, I ignored a basic business principle:
Business is math. The numbers have to make sense.
Let’s say your goal is to make $5,000 a month with your online business.
If you sell an e-book and charge $19 for it, you’d have to sell 263 e-books per month (that’s 9 copies a day) to make $5,000.
But if you package it into an online course and charge $197 for it, you’d only have to sell 25 copies per month (less than one per day) to make $5,000.
I can tell from experience it’s much more difficult to sell 263 e-books at $19 every month than it is to sell 25 courses at $197.
You’d have to convince ten times the number of people every single month to make the same amount of money.
You can always add lower-ticket products later down the line, but start with higher-ticket offers such as courses, coaching, or services.
It will make your life 10x easier.
3. Learn To Build & Sell
To run a highly profitable online business, you have to master the skills of building and selling.
As Naval Ravikant said, “Learn to sell, learn to build, if you can do both, you will be unstoppable.”
Creating content is building.
Creating a lead magnet is building.
Creating a course or e-book is building.
Creating a coaching program is building.
To most creators, building is the fun part, but selling is not. But without selling, you can’t run a successful business.
The adage of ‘build it and they will come’ is a flat-out lie.
You have to make people aware that your products even exist (marketing) and convince them they are worth buying (sales).
You have to market and sell, there’s no way around it.
Lots of creators and one-person business owners hate selling because they believe it means tricking their audience into buying something.
(Most people associate selling with cringy telemarketers and sneaky car salespeople.)
But you don’t have to trick people into buying your stuff.
In fact, people love to buy.
I’ll repeat that once more, because it took me years to fully realize:
People love to buy.
For example, whenever I buy a book or invest in a course, I feel inspired and motivated. I’m excited because I hope to learn something new.
Buying is usually a positive experience.
When I realized people don’t have to be tricked into buying, but they actually enjoy spending money and investing in themselves, everything changed.
I became more comfortable marketing my products — and that directly increased the amount of money I made.
So, don’t just learn to build, but also learn to sell. You’re running a business, not a charity.
4. Start An Email List As Soon As Possible
You probably heard it before, but it’s true:
The money is in the list.
Starting your email list as soon as possible is one of the best things you can do to set your one-person business up for success.
I’m happy I started this early in my process — and my email list has grown to over 17,000 subscribers over the years.
There are two main benefits of having an email list:
You actually own your audience: You might have a good social media following, but that’s an audience you rent, not own. In case the algorithm changes, platforms lose users, or your account gets banned, you lose access to your audience. An email list, however, is a true business asset that you own.
It’s the best place to sell: Use social media to grow your audience, and use email to sell to your audience. I generate at least 75% of my revenue from my email list by promoting my digital products in emails.
The most effective way to grow your list is to offer a valuable freebie (also called a lead magnet) as an extra incentive for people to join your email list.
(A call-to-action to sign up for your newsletter can also work, but the conversion rate is usually lower compared to downloadable freebie.)
(For my Peak Productivity newsletter, I created a free guide with 17 productivity hacks, which has 15,000+ downloads.)
If you’re looking for lead magnet ideas, these tend to work well:
Guides
E-books
Checklists
Toolkits
Email courses
Webinars
Quizzes
Challenges
Templates
All in all, start your email list as soon as possible. It’s the most valuable asset for your one-person business.
5. Build Systems To Separate Your Time And Income
For years, my business used to be completely dependent on my input. If I stopped working, money stopped coming in.
That’s not a business you own, it’s a job you own. A real business makes money even if you take a few weeks (or months) off.
But this can’t be done without building systems.
Without systems, your time (input) and money (output) are always directly attached.
No input = no output.
But with the right systems, you can separate your time and income as your business can operate without your active involvement.
For my online business, email automation is the system that makes everything run on autopilot.
When someone downloads my free productivity guide and joins my email list, they’ll go into a 12-month email automation.
In this email automation, they’ll get two emails a week. Most of these emails are value emails that contain free productivity tips and tools.
No call-to-action.
No sales or promotion.
Just valuable content that builds trust and authority.
But every 6–8 emails, I’ll promote one of my digital products, and that’s how the business generates revenue on autopilot.
By having automated so much of the business, I’ve freed up my time and energy to work on new projects (such as the Write • Build • Scale Substack).
This is gold, very thorough guide! Thank you for putting this together.
This is all great advice, Jari. I loved seeing that you could write 12 months of emails to subscribers. After the 12 months, do you continue to write emails? How do you continue to nurture people after that initial period?