Five parts of a business, and how I run them alone

Every company has the same five parts. Here is how I cover all five with no staff, and why I test everything on my own company first.

Every company I look at has the same five parts. A two-person shop has them. So does a company of a thousand. What changes is how many people each part takes.

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  • People: hiring, pay, who does what
  • Infrastructure: the computers, accounts and tools it all runs on
  • Admin and finance: books, contracts, invoices, tax
  • Delivery: making the product and getting it to the customer
  • Sales and marketing: finding the people who need it, and getting them to buy

I run Wren with no staff, so all five are mine. I can’t do that by hand. So I build software for each part, and I run it on my own company first.

I’m my own first customer

Before I sell a system to anyone, it runs Wren. Take Meta ads. Before one ad goes out, the account has to be set up and warmed up. Then I research who the ad is for. Then I write down what I’m testing: how aware is this person of the problem, what should the ad ask them to do, and where does the click land.

Each of those is a job someone does every time. So each one becomes a piece of software, and it breaks on my money before it ever touches a client’s.

What counts as busy work

That’s why I don’t automate everything. If a task is teaching me something I need, I keep doing it myself.

Where AI helps and where it doesn’t

AI is very good at writing software, because software has a clear test: it runs or it doesn’t. It’s much weaker where there’s no clear test, like coming up with ideas or writing copy that sells.

  • Writing and fixing the code for each part
  • Doing the same steps the same way every time
  • Turning one draft into many formats
  • Deciding who a product is for
  • The idea behind each post
  • The last edit on anything a person reads

That’s why I spend my own learning time on sales and marketing. Software keeps getting cheaper to build. Knowing what to build, and how to sell it, hasn’t, at least not yet.

I talk through all of this in the full video.