The Digital Contrarian

TDC 052: Category of One: A $10M/Year Business Blueprint (How I Made Inc 5000 Seven Times)

• Ryan Levesque • Episode 52

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#052: Category of One: A $10 Million Business Blueprint

After a decade building a highly profitable $10M/year consulting and software company, I reveal the contrarian framework that made it all possible.

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Digital Contrarian, host Ryan Levesque dives into what it really means to create a "Category of One" business and why it's the only type worth building.

You'll learn how to position yourself where no direct comparison exists, discover the exact framework for charging premium prices, and find the three-phase growth strategy that took his company from zero to over $1M/month.

Question of the Day 🗣️

What unique combination of forces in your market could you identify and label to position yourself as the only logical choice?

Key Take-aways

  • The only business worth building is one that puts you in a category of one
  • Competition is for losers—eliminate it by making yourself incomparable
  • Identify a confluence of 3–5 forces creating your customer's pain
  • Attach a unique label to the problem that resonates at a deep level
  • Map your solution's features back to each converging force

Timestamped Outline ⏱️

00:00 – Introduction and Grand Canyon trip
00:34 – The beginning of The Digital Contrarian newsletter
01:21 – Creating a category of one
02:22 – Getting into the top 0.3% of CEOs
03:27 – The biggest lesson from growing to $10M
04:20 – What is a category of one business?
05:11 – The business benefits of being in a category of one
06:15 – The framework for building your own category of one business
07:25 – Step 1: Establish a problem as a confluence of forces
08:05 – Step 2: Introduce your contrarian approach
09:20 – The power of this framework for positioning
10:10 – The one additional factor: Being authentically you
10:30 – Final thoughts and invitation

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Credits

Host: Ryan Levesque
© 2025 RL & Associates LLC. All rights reserved.

Category of one, a $10 million a year business blueprint. As I record this, my older son and I are about to leave to hike the Grand Canyon together. It's a father-son rite of passage trip with a small group of fellow dads and our teenage sons, and I'll have more to say about the experience after we return.

But I share this with you because this is issue 52 of the Digital Contrarian, meaning one year ago this week, I started writing this weekly newsletter that I am recording right now as we speak. And it all began quite inauspiciously with the first issue titled issue number one, an embarrassing confession. In that issue, I wrote, as I sit here writing this, I have an embarrassing confession to make.

It's been a minute since I've actually sat down and typed an email to you like this, personally myself with my own two hands in quite some time. In fact, my confession to you is this, virtually every email that we've sent as a company with my name attached to it, barring a handful of exceptions, was actually written not by me, but instead by one of our in-house writers signed with my name. And it's been this way for the last seven years.

Shocking. I know. By the way, we'll make sure that we link to the entire issue so you can check it out for yourself. 

Now, at the same time, I didn't know exactly where I would take things with this newsletter. But after a few weeks of writing a weekly email personally by hand, I made the decision that I wanted to create something unique. The world had reached a fever pitch of enthusiasm around AI generated content and services were emerging that promised to use the power of AI to generate email newsletters that required zero human effort.

What if I did the opposite? I thought, what if I wrote every word of copy myself, no team of writers, no AI. And instead of trying to spend as little time as possible, what if I spent an entire day writing each issue each week? What if I put real effort into it? What if I wrote about business and life through the lens of the highly diverse domains unique or nearly unique to my life? Everything from permaculture and regenerative farming, neuroscience and consumer psychology, global macroeconomics and investing, fatherhood and philosophy. Could I create something that would stand out in the sea of noise? Could I create a category of one? Getting yourself into the top 0.3%. I just come off a 10 year run building a highly profitable $10 million a year consulting and software company. 

And as CEO of two businesses simultaneously, our companies landed on the Inc 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in America and unprecedented seven years in a row. Now to put that in perspective, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the BLS, there are approximately 211,230 people employed as chief executives or CEOs in the United States. And according to Inc magazine, since 1982, there have been approximately 31,700 companies that have landed on the Inc 5000 list at least once. 

Any guesses on how many CEOs have made it on to the Inc 5000 list seven times or more in the last four decades? Well, I was curious, so I did the research myself. The answer is fewer than 700. Less than 700 human beings on planet earth have ever done it. 

The equivalent of 0.3% of all CEOs in the United States or one in 11.6 million people alive today. In other words, that may not put you in a category of one, but it gets you pretty damn close. The single biggest lesson I've learned as an entrepreneur. 

Now, there are so many contrarian lessons that I've learned as an entrepreneur, especially when it comes to earning a place among those 700. By the way, the Inc 5000 list is something that you become eligible for when you hit $2 million a year in revenue in your business and are growing at least 40% over the most recent three year period. The results are based on your actual IRS tax returns. 

They're signed off by a certified public accountant. Now, for reference, Inc 500 companies, the top 500 fastest growing businesses, have typically grown by 1600% or more over their most recent three year period. Now, we made the Inc 500 list once when we landed at number 462, which was extremely hard to do. 

That was a wild, intense three year period of hyper growth and not something that I'd recommend repeating without serious purpose. Now, speaking of lessons learned, there are a few notable lessons that I've learned along the way. Like, for example, in phase one, growing from $0 to $25,000 a month in 18 months.

This is all about using Kaizen to grow $500 at a time. Phase two, expanding to over $100,000 a month within three years. This is all about the relentless pursuit of less, but better.

Phase three, scaling to over a million dollars a month over the next decade. This was all about inch wide, mile deep, powered by rocket fuel. And these were the Inc 5000 years, by the way.

Then phase four was the phase where we sold the company back in 2024. And this was all about the hidden M&A dynamics of every market, which I unpacked, by the way, in something I call the $70 million business exit mistake, a session I hosted a few months ago for subscribers of the Digital Contrarian. But by far, the biggest business lesson that I've learned as an entrepreneur is this. 

No matter what you decide to build, no matter what you decide to sell, the only business worth building is a business that puts you in a category of one. Anything else is a complete waste of time. So you might be asking, what is a category of one business and why is it so critical? Well, a category of one business is one where no direct comparison exists because your positioning, your packaging, and your personality effectively make you the only choice for your ideal customer.

And more than anything else, this is the secret to charging premium prices, generating way above average profit margins, creating a line of people desperate to do business with you, avoiding the slow death of commoditization, and making your competition irrelevant. Because after all, as Peter Thiel famously wrote in Zero to One, competition is for losers. Hey, he wrote it, not me.

Okay, when I'm not in the field farming or writing my next book or hiking the Grand Canyon as I'm about to do, I'm spending my days advising a small handful of smart, ambitious entrepreneurs, typically running one to ten million dollar a year businesses, who get this idea and who are looking to create their own category of one company with my help. And in this process, I've discovered something important. The playbook that I followed in my business step by step, it can be repeated.

So how do you build your own category of one business? Well, let me begin by sharing a story. I was helping a private client better position himself recently in his market and create a unique point of view that cuts through the noise in what is a very competitive space. And I explained a simple but universal framework that has completely reshaped how he'll be positioning and repositioning his business going forward. 

And the framework goes something like this. Step one, you want to begin by establishing a problem that represents a confluence of forces. This is where you describe the problem that your customer is facing in a new and novel way, by explaining the confluence of three to five forces that are converging right now as we speak, and which are responsible for the pain that they're experiencing. 

You then attach a unique label to that problem, a term that they've never heard before, but which resonates at a deep level, because it's exactly what they're experiencing. Step two is to introduce your solution, which is naturally your contrarian approach. This is where you explain that the reason you created your program, your product, your service is because of the unique combination of forces that have emerged, and that you do things differently from everybody else. 

The old ways are outmoded because they're not fully addressing this new confluence of forces. Then you explain the key three to five pillars or features of your product by napping them back to how they address each of these three to five forces that are converging right now as we speak. Make sense so far? Okay, great. 

So what's so magical about this simple but powerful framework is that it effectively positions you as a category of one. Number one, you've identified multiple forces in the world right now in a new and novel way that's never been exposed or explained. Number two, you've attached a label to define that unique confluence of forces that represents language that you effectively own in your prospect's mind.

Number three, you explain how your contrarian approach addresses this confluence of events and how it's the reason your product came into existence. And number four, you've mapped the features of your product back to each of these forces, presenting your solution as the only logical choice based on the premise of the root cause behind the problem. Now there is one other factor to consider in all this, but it's really beyond the scope of this video, and frankly I need wrap this up so we can get going on our big trip. 

My son and I have a big few days ahead of us on the trail. So I'll leave you with that for now. Have a great rest of your week and remember to hug the ones you love. 

And by the way, just to give you a little bit of a hint, what is that one additional factor to building a category of one business? Well, it starts with this. Nobody can out-compete you at being you. By the way, if you enjoyed this video, or if it's helped make you think, be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to be notified for when the next video episode drops.

And in the meantime, I have another episode that I think you might enjoy that goes deeper into some of the ideas that we began exploring together in this piece. Have a great rest of your day, and I'll see you again inside the next episode.