Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / How to Run a 7-figure Solo Business with Elaine Pofeldt

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How to Run a 7-figure Solo Business with Elaine Pofeldt · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

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  3, 2, 1, 0, ignition.
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  Lift off.
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  Ending small business failure.
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  Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with the number 1 small business expert, Melinda
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  Emerson.
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  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
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  you need succeed and live the life you dream of.
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  Now here's your host, the small Biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
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  Have you subscribed to the small bizchett podcast?
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  Well, it's time every Wednesday we offer listeners bite sized actionable tips to start
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  and grow a successful small business.
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  And just 20 minutes or so a week you can get a ton of insight and resources to propel your
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  business forward.
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  Be sure to subscribe to the small beachhead podcast today.
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  Alright.
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  So I'm so excited to now introduce you to my guest Aileen Fulfelt, and she is gonna talk to
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  us about how to build a 7 figure solo business.
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  Elaine is an independent journalist who lies in small business, entrepreneurship, and careers.
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  She's the author of $1,000,000 one person business, and she takes a look at how
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  entrepreneurs are hitting 7 figures in revenue when they are the only employee tapping into
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  automation and other technology to scale their effort.
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  Our work has appeared in fortune money, CNBC Inc.
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  Forbes, and Cranes, New York, and many other business publications.
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  She's also the former editor of Fortune Small Business.
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  You can get more information about her atlainepollfield.com.
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  Alright, Elaine, tell us, how is it that you came to you know, write this book about solo 6
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  for your businesses.
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  I was incredibly intrigued when I heard the title.
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  Oh, thank you so much, Melinda.
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  And it is so great to be here.
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  What a roster, a guest, and a lot of the stuff we're doing is very interrelated.
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  So I'm excited to be on this panel.
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  I started looking into this as a blogger for Forbes.
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  I've been writing about small business for several decades and I came across these
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  statistics on non employer businesses that the US Census Bureau puts out, and they look very
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  boring at first glance.
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  But they're filled with exciting news.
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  And what I found was that there were a certain number of businesses that have no payroll.
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  They have owners, but no paid employees that were getting to 1,000,000 to 2 point 5,000,000
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  generally.
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  There were some that we even above that.
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  And I wrote a blog post about it, and it went viral.
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  People were writing to me from all over asking me, what were these businesses doing?
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  All I had were the, industrial codes that the Census Bureau uses because when we fill out
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  those surveys, we don't want them giving out our personal information.
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  So to find out who they were, I wrote to the readers of Forbes and 1 by 1, they started
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  writing into me and The first five that I found were in a very wide range of businesses.
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  1 was, Rachel Charleuke running the babysitting company from at the time, it was from her
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  Blackberry, and she had a whole posse of babysitters all across the country.
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  Alan Walton ran an online spy camera store.
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  So, for, you know, nanny cameras and things like that.
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  Dan Messerich was a fitness trainer who was licensing out his fitness methodology.
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  We had, a personal finance guru who had a newsletter and and so on.
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  And over time, more of them wrote to me.
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  Now I've probably been in touch with about a 100.
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  And I found that the average person in business is less interested in becoming the next hot
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  startup and really wants to have a great lifestyle business where they make great money
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  can live anywhere they want, but have control of their time.
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  So that was what what, led to the $1,000,000 one person business in the later my my next
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  book tiny business big money.
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  Well, so talk
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  to me about the real numbers, though.
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  Okay.
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  So you talked to a hundred people, but how many are there really Like, what is the trend of
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  these, $1,000,000 solo per nurse?
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  Well, in the latest round of data, There were 53,460 businesses with 1 to 2,490,000, and that
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  number is up nearly 48% since 2012, which is very exciting.
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  And there are another 32100 and change bringing in between two point 5,000,000 and, you know,
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  in some cases, over 5,000,000, but those are more the outliers.
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  Those are people, like, actors who have their own business, hedge fund managers.
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  There's a lot in financial services, and isn't the norm, but the biggest group has been
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  growing tremendously.
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  Wow.
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  That that a lot bigger number than what I thought you were gonna say, actually.
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  I mean, 55,000 people, that's a lot of people that run-in, which means anyone do it, the,
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  right, if you do it the right way.
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  So so let's talk about what are the industries or niches that you really see people that are
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  able to do this?
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  Well, the biggest one is the most surprising one, and it's professional services.
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  We've heard so many gurus say don't trade time for dollars right, you're wasting your life,
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  trading your time for God.
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  And and the and the truth is they're doing quite well with it because many of these are
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  very smart about doing things like informational marketing.
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  They'll have paid webinars.
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  They have to eat books.
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  They have all kinds of digital terms of information that they're selling to scale their
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  messaging because if they sat down one on one with every client, they would never be able to
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  reach that many people.
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  And now it's gotten easier than ever because of all the different platforms out there like
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  Kajabi and, you know, all the rest of those for the average person on an average person's
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  budget to achieve that number.
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  The fastest growing categories interestingly are finance and insurance.
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  So there are a lot of independent people in these small agencies, you know, CPAs, people
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  like that, and construction is another one Even though interest rates are very high, there is a
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  lot of construction going on, and those are businesses that often use outsourcing where
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  they're subcontracting and things like that so you can be a solopreneur.
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  But, there are some other areas too that are quite big, real estate rental and leasing.
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  They're people that are the, kings and queens of Airbnb and things like that.
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  That's a hot category.
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  Ecommerce is a really big one.
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  B2Becommerce in particular because you're doing bigger ticket sales, even just service
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  businesses, things like being a nutritionist, but, again, scaling your messaging, maybe you
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  have a cooking academy or something along those lines.
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  What about AI and how is AI affecting these these one person businesses?
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  Is it making more of them, or is it endangering that group of people?
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  AI is incredibly empowering for this group of businesses.
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  Now the census data also shows that Less than 3% of small businesses are currently using AI,
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  but interestingly enough, Professional services are the largest group that are, and they're at
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  about 9%.
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  So you could sort of see how that correlates with the largest group of those that are
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  scaling.
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  What it does is it allows one person to scale what they can accomplish in any given day.
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  It also lowers the barriers to entry to running a business.
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  Historically, women and people of color have been denied access capital, and that has been a
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  big barrier to scaling.
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  But in this category of non employer businesses, you don't necessarily need a
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  banking relationship because you don't have to make payroll.
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  So it's a great equalizer.
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  And when you look at the numbers, women and people of color are creating one person
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  businesses at one of the fastest rates in the country.
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  So I could see a big explosion of these businesses.
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  And eventually, many of them do hire employees.
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  AI is part of this because AI does things that you might need a person to do.
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  And if you're starting out on a shoestring budget and you'd have access to capital.
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  Maybe you can use AI to jumpstart your social media until you can afford to hire a social
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  media agency.
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  And you still need the people somewhere of anybody who's experimented with chat CPT.
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  No.
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  You can't just put it up raw.
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  But it it allows you to save a lot of time or to maybe do things that you don't know how to
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  do as well.
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  There are a lot of prompts that you can use to ask it to do things that maybe you don't have
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  the technical proficiency to do.
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  I even did a story.
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  It was an app called seek where The founder did not know how to code.
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  He used low code and no, no code tools, but he told CHIPT what he wanted the no code and low
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  code tools to do.
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  So he was able to get it into the Apple store, and I thought, wow, when this catches on and
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  you have all the gurus teaching, all of us how to do these things, there's gonna be an
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  explosion of creativity because now you don't have to hire the tech team or the engineers and
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  the engineers themselves can scale their impact.
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  So it's not like they'll be put out to pass you.
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  They'll be able to do more interesting things too.
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  So it's It's tremendously empowering and exciting, I think, for all of us.
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  I look at it almost like cloud computing where That allowed a lot of people to do things that
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  previously you had to hire other people to do, and it didn't eliminate jobs.
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  It just changed which jobs we had to hire people to do and allowed us to use automation
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  more.
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  I completely agree.
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  And when we come right back, we're gonna talk more with Elaine about how to build a solo 7
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  figure bigs.
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  You're watching the small bus chat podcast, and we will be right back.
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  Hi.
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  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small busily.
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  And I wanna welcome you to smallvisladyacademy.com, your go to resource
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  for women entrepreneur.
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  Whether you're just starting out or ready to grow, we've got everything you need to succeed
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  from expert interviews to live coaching sessions Our platform offers practical tools
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  and strategy to help you build a profitable small business join our vibrant community of
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  like minded entrepreneurs today and take your business to new heights.
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  Visit smallbizladyacademy.com and start your journey.
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  Hi, everybody.
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  Welcome back to the small business chat podcast I'm Melinda Emerson's small business and your
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  host.
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  And we're talking with Elaine Pophil, and she is talking to us about how to build a 7 figure
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  solo business.
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  Alright, Elaine.
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  I gotta say all of this sounds great.
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  There's all these people making money dollars, but, okay, what are the challenges for solo
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  $1,000,000 business hours.
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  In a word, overwhelm.
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  There's a lot to get done in any solo business and you can really overwhelm yourself with that
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  list of to dos.
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  What these $1,000,000 entrepreneurs have done is reduce the overwhelm by using contractors,
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  people like myself who provide services who are glad to be a contractor.
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  They don't want to be on your payroll necessarily.
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  Using outsourcing, like, fulfilled by Amazon in an e commerce business or using automation.
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  And that that's a good way to keep yourself from drowning and all of the work of realizing
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  your ambitions.
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  Now what about personal branding?
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  It seems like if you're a solopreneur, you better be dog on good at branding yourself and
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  branding what your offerings are.
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  Can you talk to us about the connection between Venus of successful personal brand and really
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  having a successful solo business?
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  Sure.
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  Well, it's very important to the solo business because One of our strengths is that we aren't
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  General Motors.
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  People are dealing with a real person.
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  They like that about dealing with a small business.
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  So you wanna show your personality in whatever way you're most comfortable.
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  If you're an introvert, it might be through email marketing, If you're an extrovert, maybe
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  you're going to trade shows or you're doing YouTube videos or podcasts or things where
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  you're expressing your personality.
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  It that it's really a matter of finding out what works for you, but you do have to show in,
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  in some way.
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  Alright.
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  And what is the best business advice you have ever received?
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  Just do it.
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  The Nike slogan because There are a lot of people who are dreamers of having a small
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  business, but it takes some lead time to get going.
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  So if you can take just one step to move yourself forward today, then tomorrow you'll be
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  that much closer to the goal.
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  Love it.
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  Love it.
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  Thank you so much, Elaine.
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  I really appreciate all of your valuable wisdom, and we're gonna come back to you, so
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  don't go away.
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  Thanks for listening podcast with Melinda Emerson.
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  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday for more
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  fantastic information and interviews.
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  You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
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  website succeed as your own boss.com.
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  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.