Basics Pick a solo-viable business, make your first offer, and get paid
- The model-for-the-job chooserDownload MD
Chapter 3
Staff a tiny company: pick the AI by the job — reasoning, research, writing, building — not the brand. Current picks dated, the method timeless.
- The starter operating brainDownload TXT
Chapter 3
The half-page context that makes any AI act as your company, not a generic stranger — who you serve, what you sell, how you sound, your lines.
- The demand test + founding-reservation termsDownload TXT
Chapter 4
Ask for money before you build: a rough offer at a founding price, tested by a refundable deposit — with the exact, honest pre-sale terms that keep it legitimate.
- The offer builderDownload TXT
Chapter 5
Turn the validated rough version into one sharp offer for one buyer — the four parts, in the buyer's own words, until the right person thinks "that is me".
- The margin sum — "what you keep"Spreadsheet XLSX
Chapter 6
Type your price and your route's fee, in your own currency, and see what actually reaches you — contribution, not profit. Never hard-codes a fee it can't verify.
- The four-suspects diagnosticDownload TXT
Chapter 8
Launched to silence? Read it as information, not a verdict: offer, price, audience or ask — name the likeliest, change one thing, then measure.
Intermediate Build the operating system that runs the whole business without you in every task
- The bottleneck auditDownload TXT
Chapter 1
Find the exact shape of your bottleneck: log one ordinary week, tagged by function, as you go — then let it tell you which function to hand off first, and what "good" looks like for it.
- The operating-brain builderDownload TXT
Chapter 2
Turn the half-page starter into the real mind of the business: brand, offers, and the decision rules that make AI act as your company, not just sound like it.
- The function-delegation kitDownload TXT
Chapters 3–7
Copy one per function: the inputs, the output shape, the acceptance line you can check in minutes, the control point, and the one decision the AI may never make.
- The guardrails & kill-switch sheetDownload TXT
Chapter 8
Sort every action by risk, decide what needs a human before it goes live, and write the four-step kill switch before you need it. Includes the money rule: AI checks and prepares, a human approves and releases.
- The leverage-ratio spreadsheetSpreadsheet XLSX
Chapter 9
The five-number monthly panel plus revenue per owner-hour — the number the book exists to move — and a baseline-vs-now view so you watch it rise on leverage, not more labour.
- The weekly cadence plannerDownload TXT
Chapter 10
Book your week around gates, not tasks, so the business gets a heartbeat that isn't you — a handful of scheduled checks while the machine runs between them.
Advanced Compound revenue per hour — leverage, not labour
- The ceiling diagnosticDownload TXT
Chapter 1
Find which wall actually holds you down — hours, attention, or positioning — from evidence, not a hunch, so you don't spend a year lifting the wrong one.
- The leverage-ratio scoreboardSpreadsheet XLSX
Chapter 2
Revenue per owner-hour — the one number this book raises. An activity ledger that finds your lowest-leverage work, plus a 12-month trend so you can see whether you're compounding or just buying growth with hours.
- The positioning & proof worksheetDownload TXT
Chapter 3
Earn a corner you can own: narrow it, check people will pay for it, write the sentence it earns, and publish the give-first proof — without cannibalising what you sell.
- The productised-judgement plannerDownload TXT
Chapter 4
Turn what only you can decide into an asset that earns without your recurring hours — with honest economics (build, break-even, maintenance), pre-sell validation, and a two-sided stop rule.
- The price-rise calculatorSpreadsheet XLSX
Chapter 5
See exactly how much churn a price rise could survive before you're worse off — how much pricing headroom your fear was hiding. Type your own numbers.
- The flywheel trackerSpreadsheet XLSX
Chapter 6
Is your owned audience actually compounding? Track inflow, referrals, and decay each quarter and watch give-first hours per paying customer fall — or find out it's still a treadmill.
- The governed-autonomy tableDownload TXT
Chapter 7
Let AI run more of the business safely: tiered action classes, authority caps, a quantitative kill threshold, and a reversion protocol — the decision, not the wiring. Money stays human-executed.
- The profitable-but-hungry auditDownload TXT
Chapter 8
Find the activity that pays but drags your ratio down, and run the two-stage rule — rescue first, kill only if it fails and the freed hours have a named use — so you don't destroy good cash flow.
- The durability scorecardDownload TXT
Chapter 9
Score how much of the business you actually own versus rent — concentration, operational single points of failure, owned-demand share — against fixed bands, and fix the worst first.
- The leverage-cycle plannerDownload TXT
Chapters 10–11
Deploy one governed move that raises revenue per hour with no added recurring labour — with the full before/after ledger and the retreat-costly rule — then book the quarterly cadence that keeps it compounding.
Kept current Model prices & payment fees, checked by hand
The two fastest-changing figures the books touch — AI model prices and payment fees — checked by hand and dated. The books' method doesn't move; these numbers do.
⚠️ A percentage is not the whole fee, and a model tier is not one fixed price. Payment fees add a fixed amount per sale on top of a percentage, and differ by country; model prices change monthly. Always work it out at your numbers — the margin spreadsheet does it for you.
AI model tiers — the shape, not the brand (illustrative)
- Reasoning tier (most capable, priciest — for judgement) — the frontier "thinking" models, roughly $2–10 in / $10–50 out per million tokens (varying a lot by model) (a token ≈ ¾ of a word).
- Balanced tier (the workhorse — for most writing) — roughly $0.75–2 in / $4–10 out per million tokens.
- Fast-cheap tier (bulk and simple jobs) — roughly $0.10–0.30 in / $0.50–2.50 out.
The major model families (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) generally offer all three tiers. A free tier can usually run the whole first loop; upgrade only when a real limit blocks you. Look up the current name and price for each tier at the provider's own pricing page; they move monthly.
Payment routes — per digital sale
- Raw card processor (e.g. Stripe) — US cards ~2.9% + $0.30; standard UK cards ~1.5% + 20p (verified 2026-10-12; premium/commercial and non-UK cards cost more). Keeps you the most of the sale; you handle tax, refunds and chargebacks yourself.
- Merchant of record (e.g. Lemon Squeezy) — 5% + $0.50, and it handles your sales tax and VAT across countries for you — a whole job lifted off one pair of hands.
- All-in stores (e.g. Gumroad) — ⚠️ headline percentage plus a fixed fee, but whether card processing is bundled or charged on top is reported inconsistently, and Gumroad became a full merchant of record in 2025. We print no "you keep" figure for these on purpose — confirm the real take on the platform's own current pricing page before you rely on it.
Checked at source 2026-10-12; next review due Jan 2027. Dated copy, not a live feed — verify at each platform's own pricing page before you rely on a figure. Nothing here is tax or legal advice.
Free calculators Live tools you can use right now — no download
- Freelance / solo hourly rate calculatorCalculator Live
Turn your target income, expenses, tax and billable hours into the hourly rate that keeps you solvent.
- Salary → freelance rate converterCalculator Live
The hourly and day rate that replaces an employee salary once benefits, taxes and unpaid time are covered.
- Project price calculatorCalculator Live
Turn an hours estimate and your rate into a fixed-price quote that still pays, with a scope buffer.
- Business runway calculatorCalculator Live
How many months of cash the business has left at its current burn rate — the one number to recheck monthly.
Take them free — that is what they are for. When you want the argument for using them, The One-Person AI Business — Basics takes you from no idea to a business one person can run, a first offer in front of real people, and your first paid sale — with AI as your team. Intermediate and Advanced follow, when the loop works and the constraint moves from doubt, to your own two hands, to the ceiling of your hours.
See the One-Person AI Business series →