Why I’m building a one-person business

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Why I’m building a one-person business

I used to think “the goal” was building something big.

A big team.

A big office.

A big brand.

I also used to think that if I did not keep expanding, I was somehow going backwards.

Then I remembered something I learned the hard way.

In the 90’s and 00’s I managed around 250 people.

It looked impressive on paper.

It paid well.

It gave me a seat at tables I thought I wanted to sit at.

It also stopped being fun.

Not at the start.

At the start it is exciting.

You are building.

You are leading.

You are solving problems.

Then the shape of the work changes.

The bigger the organisation gets, the less you do the thing.

You spend more time on:

– Hiring
– Performance issues
– Politics
– Meetings about meetings
– Risk management
– Keeping everyone busy, even when the work is not clear

Some people love that.

I do not.

The trade-off nobody talks about

When you run a big team, you are not buying “scale”.

You are buying responsibility.

Responsibility for:

– Other people’s livelihoods
– The culture
– The momentum
– The overhead
– The stress that comes when the numbers have to go up every quarter

That is fine when it matches what you want out of life.

It did for me for a career.

Then it didn’t.

What I want now

These days I want a business that fits around my life, not a life that gets squeezed around business.

I live on a tropical island.

I am a bit of a beach bum.

I want to be able to work anywhere.

I also have a very simple answer when people ask what I do:

“I work, I do French lessons and I paddle.”

That is not a joke.

That is the plan.

I want:

– A calm calendar
– Deep work in the morning
– A hard cap of about 4 hours a day on work
– Clients I actually like
– Work I can do from anywhere
– Enough profit to live well, invest, and not worry

And yes, there is a longer horizon too.

At some point, I want to live in a chateau in France.

Not because I need a bigger “success story”, but because I like the idea of building a life with more space, more beauty, and a slower pace.

That is the lifestyle business deal.

The business supports the life.

The one-person business is not “small”, it is deliberate

A one-person business is not a stepping stone.

It is not a consolation prize for people who could not build a bigger company.

For me it is a design choice.

It means:

– No layers of management
– No internal politics
– No constant recruiting cycle
– No “keep the team fed” pressure
– Less admin
– Faster decisions
– More time doing the work I am actually good at

It also means I can keep the business portable.

Laptop business, yes, but not in the Instagram way.

In the real way.

The way where I can work from Rarotonga, London, a hotel room, or a friend’s spare desk.

The real metric is freedom, not headcount

A lot of business advice is built around one metric.

Growth.

But there are at least three other metrics that matter more to me now:

– Freedom
– Calm
– Control

Control over what I work on.

Control over who I work with.

Control over when I stop.

You can have high revenue and low control.

You can also have lower revenue and far more control.

And here is the part most people miss.

A lean business can be *more* profitable.

When you remove payroll, office costs, layers of software, and the hidden cost of managing humans, the numbers get simpler.

The margin gets healthier.

And the stress drops.

The work I actually want to spend my time on

I like:

– Diagnosing what is really going on in a business
– Designing simple workflows that people will actually use
– Building automations that remove friction
– Teaching clients how to think about systems
– Creating content that attracts the right kind of work

I do not want to spend my best energy doing HR.

I have done that.

I am not going back.

My rule now

If a decision adds complexity, it needs to buy me freedom.

If it adds complexity and it does not buy freedom, it is a bad deal.

Hiring lots of staff adds complexity.

It can buy freedom, but only if you want to become a manager of managers.

I do not.

So I am building the simplest version of my business that still does the job.

What this means in practice

It means I will:

– Stay small on purpose
– Say no more often
– Price properly
– Choose work that travels
– Build systems that keep me focused
– Keep my time protected

Some people will look at that and think I am not ambitious.

I am.

I am just ambitious about a different thing.

I am ambitious about living well.

One last thing. This did not happen by accident. I have spent years systemising how I work, automating the repeatable bits, and using AI agents where it makes sense so the busy work does not follow me around. Every hour I invest in removing friction buys me another hour of freedom later. That is how a one-person business stays light, portable, and genuinely enjoyable.

P.S. If you have ever built a “big” thing and found it strangely empty at the end, you are not alone. The point is not to win at business. The point is to design a life you actually want to wake up to.

If you want a business that gives you time back instead of taking more, contact me.