Get revenue agents, workflows, and automations across every stage of your motion. Access customer data in real time through Attio's web app, MCP, API, and SDK.

Then Ask Attio anything about your business and get instant answers.

It's the CRM that runs the work behind every win.

Try Attio Now

You probably don't even need 10 tools.

One person can now handle the website, content, sales, email, design, customer support, bookkeeping and a surprising amount of the actual work with a pretty small tech stack.

The trick is knowing what you actually need.

Here’s the stack I’d build around if I were starting a one-person online business today.

You need somewhere people can understand what you do and take the next step.

You don't need a complicated website.

For a simple business, Carrd is enough.

For something more polished, Framer is a great option.

Your website needs to answer three questions:

What do you sell?
Who is it for?
What should I do next?

That's it.

Don't spend three weeks choosing fonts.

Social media gives you attention.

Your email list gives you access to people who have already raised their hand.

Use Beehiiv if you're building a newsletter or content-led business.

Use ConvertKit if you're more focused on creators, products and automated email sequences.

And start collecting emails from day one.

Even if you only have 12 subscribers.

Those 12 people are more valuable than 12,000 random followers.

If you're selling something online, you need a ridiculously easy way for someone to give you money.

That's where Stripe comes in.

You can use it for:

You don't need to build your own payment system.

Let Stripe deal with the boring stuff.

This is where the one-person business gets interesting.

ChatGPT can help with:

Then there's Canva for turning ideas into something people actually want to look at.

The important bit:

Don't let AI become your entire content strategy.

Use it to move faster.

Your experience, opinions and point of view are still the interesting part.

You need one place where everything lives.

Ideas.

Content calendar.

Customer notes.

Product roadmap.

SOPs.

Random business thoughts you had at 11:47pm.

Notion can handle all of it.

The goal isn't to build an elaborate productivity system.

It's to stop having your business scattered across 14 browser tabs, WhatsApp messages and screenshots.

If your business involves calls, stop playing email tennis.

"Does Tuesday work?"

"No, how about Wednesday?"

"Morning?"

"Afternoon?"

Just send a Calendly link.

Five minutes saved here and there adds up quickly when you're doing everything yourself.

You don't need a $500/month analytics platform when you're starting.

You need to know:

Where are people coming from?
What are they looking at?
What are they doing next?

Google Analytics can give you the basics.

Your first goal isn't to become a data scientist.

It's to figure out what's actually working.

This is where you start getting some of your time back.

For example:

Someone buys your product → add them to your email list → send them the welcome email → add them to your customer database.

You shouldn't have to manually do all of that.

If you find yourself doing the same digital task over and over again, ask:

"Can I automate this?"

The answer is surprisingly often yes.

If I wanted to keep it ridiculously simple:

Website: Carrd / Framer
Email: Beehiiv / ConvertKit
Payments: Stripe
AI: ChatGPT
Design: Canva
Organisation: Notion
Scheduling: Calendly
Analytics: Google Analytics
Automation: Zapier / Make

That's enough to get a lot of businesses off the ground.

And here's the part I think people get wrong.

They spend months building the stack before they've built the business.

They buy the CRM.

Then the project management tool.

Then the expensive website.

Then the social scheduling platform.

Then six AI subscriptions.

Then they spend a week setting everything up.

And still haven't made their first sale.

Your tech stack should grow because your business grows.

Not the other way around.

Start with the minimum.

Make something.

Sell something.

Get customers.

Then add tools when you have a problem worth solving.

Look at the tools you're paying for right now.

How many do you actually use every week?

And how many did you buy because someone on the internet told you that you "needed" them?

You might already have everything you need to start.