96: The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business with Elaine Pofeldt

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next.

For show notes from this episode. Visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I'm very excited to be here today with Elaine Poffelt. Elaine is an independent journalist who specializes in writing about careers, entrepreneurship and business, and she is the author of the Million Dollar One Person Business. Make great work the way you like. Have the life you want. Elaine, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jenny. It's great to be here.

I loved in reading you said we all geek out on something and the thing that you geek out on is U.S. census Bureau's annual statistics on non employee businesses. And I just love that, like this is the thing that you look forward to every year.

It's really geeky. I know.

Except. Well, they're pretty exciting though.

Which is one of the things I found out in doing my reporting as a journalist on entrepreneurship is that the number of people that are breaking 1 million in revenue in these non employer businesses, those are the ones that have no employees other than the owners, has been going up. And there are now more than 35,000 businesses in this category and that number is up 33% since 2011 alone. So we're seeing a lot of opportunity for people to get to revenue levels that they never have before, running a side business, a business from home, et cetera. And I find it super exciting as somebody who's run a freelance business myself for the past 10 years.

Yeah, I found that statistic so interesting as well that you share in the book. 23 million out of 28 million small businesses are non employers, meaning they're solopreneurs, basically is what I describe it as. And that you shared that number. 35,000 are earning 1 million or more.

It's really interesting there are so many solopreneurs out there. Almost all of the non employer businesses are solopreneurs. So you're correct about that, Jenny. There are some partnerships. So sometimes you might see a husband and wife team, two friends that start a business with mostly their solos, and they've been ignored by the business media. I think for many years we've always focused on scalable entrepreneurship, which is very exciting. We all want to know who's creating the next Facebook or who the next Elon Musk is. Those types of stories are very inspiring for everybody. But the reality is most people run one person businesses and have been kind of told that's wrong, that they should be thinking bigger, they should be trying to scale the traditional way. Maybe they didn't read the E Myth carefully enough.

And I realized they're not unhappy. I speak with many, many entrepreneurs and when I speak with people in one person businesses, very few of them say, I'm sorry, I'm not the next Mark Zuckerberg. They love their lifestyle, they love what they're doing, they love doing a deep dive into whatever it is the business does. And so I thought, why not look a little more deeply into why they're doing so well now and try to help the people that haven't quite hit their stride by learning from those Olympic athletes of the one person business.

Well, that's what attracted me to your work. As soon as I saw this book title, I thought, aha. She has defined the category that I see myself in. And you're right that in the business landscape there is a lot of talk about, well, if you're not trying to scale, you're not ambitious enough or you're clearly not running your business well, if you're not hiring a whole team of people beneath you and that it seems like there's this.

Misconception that the only way to grow the business is to grow the infrastructure and that that's what success is. As you said for everyone who read E Myth, well, you better not still be in your business. And you and I corresponded as we were booking this, this conversation. And I said that, you know, when I worked at Google, I worked under Sheryl Sandberg. I wasn't her direct report, but she was a couple layers up the chain from me. And one of defining moments was realizing I didn't want her job that I had thought my whole life, oh, I'll be CEO. I'll be rising the ranks and become a manager or CEO someday. And for the first time, I was about 26, 27, I thought, I don't want that. I don't want all the infrastructure. I don't want to have a lot of employees. And so I've been running my own business now almost seven years and I still have zero employees. And I remember full time and I remember thinking in the beginning that well, is this allowed? Am I allowed to become a business consultant but not try to scale it to this mega team? So I love that you're highlighting the one person million dollar business that's so.

Interesting and I would love to interview you at some point about that decision. I think a lot of the rhetoric about having to scale comes from the venture capital community. Because when you think about if you're an investor in a business, you want the quickest return and the highest return possible.

As you can get. If you have a whole bunch of people working 24 7, living on Soylent, churning out revenue, you're going to get your exit very quickly. But challenges. A lot of people actually would like to run a business for a long time. They don't want to just sell it in two years and cash out. They actually like what they do. They like giving back through the business and they don't necessarily need that type of revenue to live the life that they want. A lot of people will be fine with a mid six figure income, which gives you a lot of insulation against all the hassles of freelancing like the high cost of health insurance and the fact that you don't get workers compensation, and I'm sorry, not workers compensation, that you don't get unemployment insurance if you lose your job like your neighbor in a normal W2 job would get. So you need a little insulation, but you don't necessarily need millions to have a really great lifestyle.

And as you said that some people are experiencing stagnant salaries even in traditional jobs. So I found it fascinating that 43% of solo entrepreneurs say that they're making more than they were in their traditional jobs, which is now the case for me too. It was not the case in my first few years in business, but it is now. And that was always the goal. Like if I could last long enough to hit that tipping point, ideally my goal was earn twice as much in half the time.

That's a great goal and it's very attainable for a lot of professionals who have worked in corporate America. Because if you actually put forth the effort that you put toward your corporate career into your business, you'd be amazed at the results you achieve. Because when you think about it, in a corporate job, you have to waste a lot of time. Think of all the Time that many people spend sitting in a conference room, in a meeting that's going nowhere, that drones on for three hours. Nothing really gets done. You don't have to do that in your own business. You can just work on what's important. So that's why you're able to do it in half the time.

And you can really, you're free to call the shots about what actually is important. A lot of times people who are corporate employees are working on things that they have no idea whether it's it's a valuable activity or not. Their boss just told them they have to do it and they don't want to raise a big fuss about it. So they go on and do it. But it might not even be a high value activity. You don't really have to do that type of thing in your own business.

I remember being so relieved that I used to have all these objectives and key results when I worked at Google and such a long kind of to do list constantly. And I remember the first month after I left, I thought, oh my goodness, I only have one goal. It's to pay the rent. That's it. You know, of course I could have like other strategic aims in my business. But at the end of the day, the one thing I needed to figure out in 30 hours a week for four weeks a month was just how to earn this certain amount of money. Like if I boiled it down to the most simple goal, that was it. And it was a huge relief. All of a sudden you're right. Like I could apply all of that energy and creative brain power and harness it toward this one thing. And later I' became more sophisticated in terms of what I was working on. But I still, to this day it's like, as long as I can make that monthly nut, there's so much freedom about what else to work on.

Absolutely. And that's very much tied into the message of the book. Not everybody needs to bring in 1 million in revenue. But if you set your own revenue benchmark and work toward it, it's much better than not having one because it does keep you focused. And if that benchmark is paying the rent and being able to buy groceries in the beginning, that's pretty. In your own business the first year or two, because you're learning how to generate revenue. What types of customers are right for you, what type of work is best suited for you in this business, it might not be the same as the work that was best suited for you in a corporate business with a lot of infrastructure. So it's like you've gone back to school the first year or two. And that rent goal is a pretty smart one. Ideally you get a little beyond that. I recommend that people try to bring in, if they can, at least 30 to 40% more than they brought in in their job because the cost of benefits is about. Of health care alone is about 30% more. So you may have some other costs you want to make up for too. Like your 401k for instance. You're investing in your own retirement, Right?

And then I have now disability insurance and then one of my corporate clients requires all kinds of other insurances. So. That's very true. Those all add up. And then I remember to the initial shock of taxes and realizing that I had to earn so much more than my monthly net number just to take that amount home and.

Absolutely, because you're paying the employer and the employee portion of the taxes. And you need a good accountant too because you can pay more in taxes than you need to if you're not really careful. So you have to be able to pay for a good accountant too. The cost of a good accountant will more than pay for itself, but you need the cash flow to cover that.

Right? I think we can all agree that the work landscape is changing and that jobs are going to continue to evolve and look different in the future. And your work is highlighting these different choices people are already making even in their own business. I'm curious how you define the difference between the gig economy, the freelancer economy and then what separates someone into this category that you're writing about, about the million dollar non employer business.

That's a great question, Jenny. I think of the gig economy as people trading time for dollars, usually in lower wage occupations. So things like driving in a ride sharing service would be the gig economy. That's the hardest way to make a living when you're self employed because the base pay is so low and you only have so many hours in a day. So it can be okay for people that don't have that many marketable skills. It's better than some of the other options out there because there is a lot of work available. And if you really hustle and you situate yourself in the right location, you can do okay. But you're not really going to get to 1 million in revenue in a business like that unless you're very ingenious in a way that I have not come across. Maybe they can outsource the work to contractors, I'm not sure. But freelancing is different. It's usually More professional services oriented. So you might have graphic designers, writers like me. It could be people who are a self employed attorney. Self employed professionals generally would be freelancers. And those folks often get into the six figures once they get established and they have the potential to get into 1 million in revenue and beyond. But it takes a little bit of thinking about the business to do that. And then the folks in this book are different because they've done that thinking and they've figured out ways to extend what one person can do without adding employees. Often the first step toward doing that is automating things that they really don't need to be doing. This is even before bringing on the first contractor. Because with automation, if you pay for an app and you don't have the cash flow to support it, you can cancel it. It's pretty easy. It's a little harder when you get into a routine with a human being to do that. So you have to make sure you're ready for it and you have the cash flow to support it. So they might use Calendly, I think that's the one that you use. Or schedule ones to set up appointments. They might use an app to track their mileage so they're not wasting time sitting there and writing it down every time they get in the car. I use Everlands. They might use specialized apps for their industry. One of the entrepreneurs in the book, Alan Walton, runs an online store called Spy Guy. It sells spy cameras and he uses something called Shipping Easy, which is a specialized program for shipping to simplify some of the routine tasks so they're not wasting a lot of time on things that could just be done automatically. I recommend that anybody in a one person business take the next month to really pay attention to their workflow and look for at least seven hours a week worth of tasks that you can automate. And it's not that hard to find them once you start thinking this way. Like I know I save at least two or maybe even three hours a week just on setting up appointments by using schedule ones. Because I set up a lot of appointments. Maybe I save a half an hour a week using Everlance. And if you add it up, then that frees you up for one day a week. If you really think about your time and protect your time for high value tests where you can work on strategy and things like meeting with important clients who are likely to do a lot more business with you or rethinking your marketing, the really higher level tasks that only you can do in the business. The second things that they do are hiring contractors and using outsourcing. And these are different ideas on the same continuum. So freelancing out things would be hiring a graphic designer, it might be hiring a bookkeeper, et cetera, to do things that you're not a professional at. It's going to take you some time to learn and it's probably not efficient for you to learn. Like, yeah, maybe you could be a great web designer. But if you're an attorney, should you really be doing your own website when you can hire somebody to do it for several hundred dollars? Probably not. So that's one of the things I've seen that they do extensively, much more so than the average entrepreneur. And they'll use back office services to outsource. One of the entrepreneurs in the book, Harry ayn, is at 4 million in annual revenue. He's a seller of swag, those tote bags that have a company's name on them or pens with a sponsor's name on them. He runs it from his garage. He's got lots of time to spend with his young son. And the reason he's able to do this is he uses I promote you, which is a back office service that targets swag sellers. Who knew, right? I didn't know there were that many swag sellers. There are. So he found out about them. And what he's done is as his business has grown, he's paid for more time from I promote you to support his business. So he's not sitting there fussing around with an invoice and QuickBooks. Someone else is. And he's there meeting with his enterprise clients who do a lot of business with him. It's that type of thing. And I would say the other commonality is they're not on a hamster wheel. They may get caught on it sometimes, but when they do, they course correct. So they'll say I'm spending too much time doing something that could be done differently. Let me step back, let me think about it. How can I do this better? And one example is Matt Friel, who he runs a business called Game Deal Daily where he sells video games that he resells. Basically they're games that have kind of gone out of style, but video gamers who love this game still want to play it and buy it. And he started out buying them at big box stores when they went on sale. And then one day he realized, I'm spending the whole day in the car driving around to these big box stores and I'm not at my business doing anything else that I should be doing. So he wound up calling some of his competitors and saying, hey, would you guys mind telling me where you get your games? And it turned out they were distributors. So now he gets the games through these distributors instead of driving around to every single Best Buy in his area.

And has a really efficient, nice business where he has time to do fun things with his friends and family. And he has freed himself. But that's the difference. I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs who will go for years on end driving around in the car for 12 hours because they won't give themselves a break enough to say, wait a minute, what's wrong with this picture? And how can I fix it? Oh, go right ahead.

I love that what you're saying about that. They might get on the hamster wheel for a little bit, but they don't stay there, they zoom out and they say, okay, what's going on here? And how can I remove myself from this element or streamline this somehow? We are two birds of the same feather. I also created a course called Delegation Ninja where I help people figure out to observe to track what they're doing. And you mentioned automation and then outsourcing. And so much of delegating involves systems anyway. Even if it's going to end up at a person's desk instead of in an app, you still need to have systems. And what I find is with my team, we're using all kinds of apps and software to make those tasks easier. So there's no getting around the automating. And we're lucky. I mean I was marveling just today I had to kind of last minute change of schedule where I wasn't going to be at my laptop and I can run practically my entire business from my phone now. You know, 10 years ago, isn't that incredible?

That blows my mind too. And that course sounds fantastic by the way. What a great idea.

Thank you. Yeah, It's. I mean 10 years ago, Tim Ferriss popularized like okay, you can work, run a business from your laptop from anywhere and then now it's like from our phone. It's just, it's wild. So, yeah, I think, I think I feel very privileged actually. I look at what I can do on my phone, everything from checking podcast stats to newsletter editing to I can even edit and almost create. I don't ever do it from start to finish, but a whole podcast episode in the Squarespace app. The bottom line is I feel very lucky. I feel part of the thing that enables me to free up so much of my time and get More leverage on how I run my business are these apps that help automate and outsource.

There's such a gift to the one person business. It's so incredible that we have access to all of these tools. It can be a little overwhelming, I have to say. I'm doing setup for two things this week and I have found that you have to sort of commit to it and say, you know what, I'm going to spend one hour a week working on my CRM this week until I get it up and running. And sometimes you get busy and it's like, oh, should I be sitting here doing this? But once you get them in place, then they kind of run themselves. And that's the beauty of it. You can also hire people to help you. And I didn't realize that there were so many services available to do that. I went to an event called Zero Con run by Zero Accounting not too long ago and there were accountants who were very tech oriented who spoke at one of the panels. One of them said she was getting all of her clients onto Xero, but they were using outside providers to migrate them from other types of accounting software. Then they were automating all kinds of tasks for the clients so they could focus more on the business strategy and being more profitable with them and providing a higher value task than just entering things into the Xero accounting platform. I thought that was such an interesting thing to know because sometimes I have things I've had on my list for two months, but I've got other things ahead of them on my list to automate. So I thought this is beautiful that you could probably go on almost any freelance platform, find people that specialize in these migrations or setup. That's also a good use of money in a one person business. If you can pay someone several hundred dollars to do something like that and get you up and running quickly. And now they're freeing three hours of your time every.

It's another way you can start doing this if you really feel like you're too busy.

And watching your course. Sounds worthwhile.

Thank you. Yeah. Well, what sounds like what you're describing or what I call bottlenecks, like where are you the bottleneck in your business or from critical things getting done. And if you have such a barrier to transitioning to your new accounting software that you know that is going to save you so much time and money. Like you said, that's a great example of a bottleneck that doesn't really need to be there. That in the case that you can hire someone yes, you are going to spend a little more money up front than you might have otherwise, but it gets it done and things keep moving and you keep the flow happening in your business.

Absolutely. And you can do these things gradually too, because there is a cash flow issue. When you're first starting out, you're so lucky to be getting any revenue in at all. I think it's so hard to let everybody know that you're in business. So. So you may not feel like I can spend $2,000 this year on getting all this stuff set up or whatever it may cost in your industry. It actually probably doesn't cost $2,000. I think if I spend like $500 on all my apps, that would be a very high figure. But just pick one thing. Pick one thing to do until you get the cash flowing and then as you have a little more money to reinvest in the business, pick another thing and keep on phasing them in as you have the money. And that will free time to go do those things that actually bring in the money.

That's how I recommend starting with any delegation as well, which is pick a small experiment. I think sometimes hearing a conversation like this one, it might be intimidating that someone has to go from no help at all to delegating and automating everything overnight and spend all this money and spend all this money time. But really pick one thing that's the most blocked or the most you're the most stuck on or that you like the least or the least equipped to handle. Pick that one thing and start delegating that and then let momentum build. It can grow organically just like you're saying. But I love that approach of just taking one thing, tackling it and keep moving.

I want to share some other stats. You have such great figures in your book that are hopefully encouraging for solopreneurs or side hustlers who are astounding aspiring to have their own million dollar one person business. One of them is that over 260,000 people earn between $500,000 and a million in revenue a year. 585,000 people are earning between 250,000 and 500,000 and almost 2 million people are earning six figures. So between 100,000 and 250,000. Now I love hearing things like this because not everyone, it's as you said, it's about 35,000 in the million dollar category of non employer businesses. But on the other side, you share a statistic that.

For many people in their first year, so only 38% of entrepreneurs rely solely on the income from their startup in year one. So many are relying on another job as their primary income and then it's really within the first two to five years. You say 44% still rely on another job. I want to highlight that as well because I get a lot of coaching clients who feel bad almost if they need to have another job or do some stream of income that isn't related to the main thing. But I've seen so many clients pivot successfully by quitting a full time job and proposing themselves as a contractor for that role. And I just, I would love to hear from you. What do you see people doing to bolster or incubate their one person business and what have you seen work to help make that transition?

Well, what you just described, Jenny, is very common where people leave their primary company and do propose themselves as contractors because a lot of times they're leaving on good terms and they don't have to do much selling to win over the employer. Now they're saving the employer the cost of benefits. So this is a great situation and it gives them a stable base of income so that they can then invest a little bit in marketing themselves and going out there and bringing on new clients. I think the side gig is really important in terms of getting people started. In the ideal world, you'd have saved six months of living expenses and six months of business expenses, et cetera. But, but if you look at the stats from the Fed, I think it's close to half of all Americans are not able to come up with $400 in case of an emergency. Yet millions of businesses are being started. So if you can't really save a lot of money to start it, then you need cash coming in from some other way, which is probably your job, a spouse's job, a partner's job, some other source of income. I don't think people should feel bad about it. That's a little bit part of the whole Silicon Valley dive in with two feet mentality. And it's true. It's good to be gung ho, it's good to be obsessed with your business, but sometimes life doesn't allow it. You might have kids to support, you might have a mortgage, you might have a health issue where you need to be able to cover good health insurance. You might have some financial demands that don't allow that. So if you do, you're in a big club of people who are also coping with life, existing and finding ways around it. You need to figure out, okay, so where do I have Time to work on this. Around my job, you don't want to totally burn yourself out, but I think most people can probably find five hours a week somewhere. Four or five hours. Maybe you get up an hour early every workday or a couple of hours each weekend day that you work toward the business as you get money rolling in from it. It's really important to focus on revenue generating activities too, because the more you do that, the closer you'll get to being able to leave your job. There's a lot of stuff you can do that's nice, like perfecting your skills in something. And yeah, it's good to be an expert at Facebook marketing or whatever it may be, but you don't really have to be an expert to use it in your business. You know, same thing with many things. You have to be an expert in your primary service, but you don't have to be an expert in all the ancillary aspects of the business. And so you shouldn't really let that hang you up so that you really don't get moving. Think about how, you know, how do you replace your salary or pay the rent? I mean, if you can figure that out, you'll be in a very good position a year from now or two years from now.

Yeah, I do an exercise with clients sometimes of imagine, let's say their monthly target is $10,000 or 15,000 pre tax, pre everything. So how would you earn that if. If you had to go earn that from one client, what would you offer? Okay, now if you could earn it from five clients, what would you offer? Okay, 10 clients. And just to get people thinking creatively about how do you earn that monthly nut and ideally on a recurring basis. So not just one time, but how can you set up clients or services or products on retainer or, you know, you describe a lot of people in the book, I'm in the consulting category, but who sell products, information products or physical products, but they're not involved with every step of the production.

Informational products are great sideline for people in professional services firms because it's so easy to get caught up in the whole trading time for dollars mentality. And even if you're charging $300 an hour or more, you only have so many hours. So it still becomes very hard to scale the business that way. You need to think a little bit beyond that. So it could be that you have events. I've seen people such as attorneys and accountants do webinars about some very wonky aspect of their practice that a lot of people ask them about and need to know about. And people might pay two or three hundred dollars to come and hear about this new change in the law that might be incredibly boring on some level, but is really essential to what they do. So sometimes you might think, oh, it's not sexy enough. It's got to be really motivating and exciting. It might not have to be. It might just be something practical that people need to know and that you keep on repeating yourself about to each client. Because chances are, if you have clients that are paying you by the hour to get that information, there are other clients, another tier, who can't afford it but need the information. So they might go to a webinar. If you charge $600 an hour, maybe they can't pay you $1,200 for two of your hours, but they could pay $300 for that webinar. I see courses are really popular now. I noticed copywriters, for instance, are often offering courses to people who can't afford to put them on retainer but need to have someone on their staff know how to write good copy. And so they might send a junior employee who's doing their social media and website and that sort of thing to the course so that they raise the level of that person's work. But they don't have the, you know, 5,000 or $10,000 monthly expense of having somebody who's always there doing that work.

I love what you highlighted about some wonky aspect of the business, because I think now there's some fatigue around how many courses or info products not just exist, but how many. There's just so much out there, so we're all sort of inundated. But I think you're right, the more wonky, the more specific, the more practical, that actually those are the ones people really need because that's the stuff they can't find anywhere else.

I agree with you. I do think there's so many people with a system that promises to make everything easy and then you'll be ultra rich. But I don't really think most of those work. I think the things that do work are practical skills that people can bring back to their business or something that if they invest their money in going to the course, actually translates to money that they earn. So if you think of it that way, it's a very small investment for someone. For instance, even if you had a conference and the quality of the networking is so good that you know in your heart, if someone goes there, they'll probably close at least two or three deals that might be worth over $100,000 a year to their company, and you charge $5,000 for them to come to that conference. That's a tiny investment for them. But you have to deliver the quality. And there's a lot of work involved in curating the conference where you have that quality of attendee. So if you have that type of expertise where you can, that's where you can really make great money in a professional services business. And I see people doing things like that, but there's an effort to it. So you have to think about, okay, how do I best allocate my time? Maybe I spend 60% of my time serving clients who are retainer clients so that I have that recurring interview that Jenny just talked about. And then Maybe I spend 40% of my time developing informational products, which takes a little bit of experimenting and figuring out where do I really bring the most value, because there's something unique about each person. That was one common thread I found with the entrepreneurs in the book. Some of them were doing things that were not that unique, like selling something on Amazon, but they distinguish themselves by thinking about, you know, what can I bring to the table? So one couple, Camille and Ben Arneberg, run a store called Willow and Everett that sells decorative housewares for parties and that sort of thing. They have really good taste, so they were able to curate a very nice collection at an affordable price point that was very relatable to their following. And so they were able to separate that Amazon store from the many others in that space. It might be something like that, you know, it's just that you have a unique eye. She's a photographer, and so she's got a good visual eye for what people will like. And only you know, what your skills and talents are. And maybe the people around you can help with that a little bit. But you have to take stock of, you know, where do I really see things differently from other people? Because that might be a disadvantage in a very buttoned up corporate environment to be different. But being different is actually a huge advantage when you're an entrepreneur.

I love the questions you share at the end of the book about how to find what makes you different. And you asked, what challenges and problems have you uniquely faced? What roles? I liked this one. I hadn't seen it before. What roles do you play in your personal life? I thought that was great. Just like, you know, mother, father, coach, friend, helper, nurse. Like, it could be anything but that. If we think about what roles we've already played, there could be business ideas in there somewhere.

Oh, definitely. I came across an entrepreneur recently who developed an app that came out of his volunteering for Meals on Wheels with one of his children. Where he found. And this goes back a ways because now the map making technology available on anybody's phone is probably pretty advanced and advanced enough for Meals on Wheels, but at the time they were using paper maps and it was taking a lot of time for people to create the maps for the volunteers to go and deliver the food to the elderly. So he came up with an app to help with that. So, I mean, we all do things like this where we volunteer or we go to our child's school and participate in an event. And those skills that we're deploying could be marketable skills if we so choose. So it's good to take inventory and think about what am I good at or where am I spotting a need. There's something impractical maybe about how you're doing something in these capacities that you might be able to fix whatever is impractical and make it easy. So definitely look at your whole life, not just what you do at work, because sometimes your greatest passions are outside of work and you just haven't figured out that those could be something you turn into a business.

How can someone know when it's time to move on from a business or when they're not on track or on target to reach this $1 million revenue producing, one person business?

Those are maybe two separate issues. When it's time to move on is when you really find you hate and dread the business. I've talked to people about that. You know, they just, they can't face it anymore for whatever reason. If you really just hate your business, then it's time to do something else. It's kind of a no questions asked type of thing. Because once you reach a certain point of burnout and depression or despair, it's time to just do something different. Your whole life is telling you this isn't right. If you're just hitting challenges or roadblocks. There's always ups and downs in a business. Sometimes there are extreme highs and lows. And I'm sure you've experienced this, Jenny. I certainly have. One day is fantastic, then the next day there's some terrible, really mean and brutal rejection. Like, why am I doing this? This is terrible. That's not what I'm talking about. It's, you know, day after day, you're going to your laptop or wherever you work and you're saying, why am I doing this? I don't know why I started this in the first place. I just can't stand it. I hate the customers. I mean, if you're feeling like that, move on. There's no business that's worth it to make you completely miserable.

In terms of determining whether you'll get to 1 million, I think you don't always know on your own if you can get to 1 million. So I highly recommend anybody who feels like, you know what, I'm in the mid six figures and I feel like I can grow this, but I'm a little bit stuck. I don't know what else to do next. Should I productize this and come up with a course or do a weekend workshop or raise my day rate to $25,000? You may not really have enough experience to figure out on your own what the right step is. So you might want to work with a coach or you might want to go to a very high value networking event. And by high value, I mean it'll have more experienced people than you are. Because I've gone to networking events of all different levels. If I go to something where everybody else is just starting out, I'm more of a mentor to them. So I'm not going to really grow and learn that much except about giving to other people, which is a good thing too. But it's not going to help me to scale my business. So you want to think about, okay, where I might have to pay a little bit more, but where will I find people that are at that next level? And there are a few events mentioned in the book. In fact, one of the entrepreneurs, Jason Gignard, runs Mastermind Talks. It's a by application only event where he curates a group of these high revenue entrepreneurs to all be in the same room together for a couple of days, do outdoor activities and things. And that can be really helpful to really just talk with other people who have gotten a little bit further than you and see what they think because they know where you're getting stuck. They've been stuck there themselves and they'll keep you honest. Sometimes we have fears of things like fear of raising our prices and we can really do it, but you almost need someone to kind of spur you on a little bit. So that's what I would recommend.

Or just shed light on market rates. There's I talk to new coaches entering speaking or consulting and I'll say, oh, this is a minimum day rate. You know, they just wouldn't have known their pricing based on. Of course you have to price based on the value that you're delivering and include your level of experience within that. But it's so I've. I know I've had the feeling of shooting in the dark versus when a friend who works at a company who hires consultants like me can just tell me, this is what we tend to pay people. It's such a, such a short call. Yeah, yeah.

And that's why, you know, I think it's important to be very collaborative. I found a lot of people in the book were like that. They had more like friendly competitors than arch rivals and they were very generous in sharing information. When you're a one person business, you can't take on that much more work unless you are going to scale the traditional way. You can take on a certain amount with contractors and quite a bit, but there's a level that you can't really go beyond. So instead of trying to hoard all the work, which I think people sometimes have a tendency to feel they should do, sometimes just being open with friends and saying, hey, I can't take on this project. Can you do it? And then maybe next time you ask them, I have to price this big project. What would you price it at? What do you charge? There's more of a give and take that can really help you grow your business and like your friend telling you what the company pays for something that can be invaluable.

Yeah, well, that's important too. Yeah. Like we are different enough as businesses and as people that I find competition. It's kind of a moot point in certain ways because there is just the right client for me and there's just the right client for someone else. And even if we had the same ideal client, our timing, our schedule, our. You know, I'm thinking of my friend Dori. She and I exchange speaking clients a lot. With someone's booked, we send the other person's name not as any formalized thing. We don't do revenue sharing though. We'll take each other out to dinner as like, as a thank you. But it's like, it's just no problem, you know. And I always even like giving clients the option like I want them to choose. I don't mind giving them multiple names of people or options. And then if they choose me, I know it really resonates for them and that you're right. It creates such a virtuous circle for things down the road even. Even if that's not the primary aim of doing it.

I agree with you. I actually have a second business with another freelancer who I Feel like I could send to any client that I have, and I know the result will be great. And what we did was we formed an LLC together, and we have a bank account together, and we just. We kind of share projects. So if we're doing a big scalable project, we might both do half of it, or maybe, you know, depending on availability, she does one third and I do two thirds or whatever. We just basically.

Pay ourselves out of that bank account for the project. It's very simple. And there's no fear of poaching each other's clients or anything like that. It's understood that we're a team, and it's worked out great. We've been doing it since 2011, so you could even formalize it a little bit with someone, so that way it's a little simpler for the client. They just invoice this company and. And that's it. It's so easy to maintain. We have an accountant maintain the finances, and it's gone great so far.

Wonderful. As we start to wrap up, you wrote an article for Forbes called Don't Lean In, Walk out. And you said, what society really needs right now is a guru to show more women how to start their own ventures. Why spend so much energy trying to change institutions that are stuck in the past? I'm curious to know what the response was to this article, because we know that Lean in had a lot of feedback, let's say, positive and otherwise. And I always have clients who come to me telling me they're leaning sideways. That seems to be who I attract. But what was the response when you said, you know, don't lean in, walk out. What you really need is to go start your own business.

I got a huge response to this article from both women and men. Interestingly, it was very positive. I think a lot of people realize that the corporate cultures of today are really stuck in the past. They change very slowly. And you only have one life. And if you wait for everything to change from within and you're 20 now, maybe it won't change until you're 70. Is it worth it for you to sit there and fight to change everything? Sometimes it might be because what you're fighting for is so important that you're willing to do that. But I think increasingly the better option is leave for a different institution that is much more progressive or start your own company. It depends on your preference as to how to work. Some people really like working in a corporate environment, so I don't want to make it sound like I think it's terrible to work for a corporate environment. I worked in corporate America for many years and I enjoyed it. But I don't see much benefit to sticking with a corporate culture that is really unfair to you, whether it's because you're a woman or for some other reason because it wears you down. And if it's structured only so that people in a certain demographic can do the job successfully or that it's very hard for people outside those demographics to do so. You know, for instance, if there's an assumption that you have no kids, you can work unlimited hours, nights, weekends, and you happen to have kids, it's going to be very hard, no matter how much you lean into that, to ever get your due. No matter how hard you're working and whether you're working at night, at 11 o' clock after your kids went to bed, you're not going to get any credit for it. So why keep doing that to yourself? Are you really going to change things through your solo effort? I think earlier in my career I thought it was possible. But when we see how.

Bad some of these cultures are, like reading the headlines about some of the things that have gone on with sexual harassment and things like that, I think some of them are just in the dark ages and how much are they really going to change? You might as well go somewhere that has a totally different outlook and get your due and have a fair shot. And that might be your own business.

I thought it was really poignant toward the end of the article. Speaking of children, you said.

You'Ve noticed a huge difference of being out on your own for over 10 years now. You say of the type of parent you want to be to your four children, and then not having to apologize for having a family has freed up creative energy I didn't even know was being squandered in the past.

It's interesting because it does really drain you, I think, in ways that you don't realize until you're out of it. Even in a very progressive culture. I worked at Time Inc. And I had a really generous work from home arrangement. But when you have four kids, what happens is one of them gets sick and there's a domino effect. Right. So your boss is very understanding. You have to take one day off to go to the doctor, but then the next kid is sick and they're home crying with an ear infection. What are you gonna do? Leave them crying? You can't.

And then if you get sick, everything is out of whack.

Yeah. And so it's like then you start Feeling like you're apologizing, like, I'm so sorry I have to take another day off. But you really need to. Yeah, you need to. And it's really not even the whole day. But you can't just leave a child sick. And that's. It's just so stressful that after a while it may not be worth it. And it's different. I have a large family. It might be different for each family depending on their situation, if there's a stay at home, spouse, et cetera. But I found it very freeing to just say, you know what, I'll get my work done. For the clients, it might not be at the exact hour someone else wants me to do it like a boss would. It'll be at the hour I choose, when I can do my best work and I might have to run out to the doctor at noon or something like that, but I'll come back and I'll finish it and get it in on time. It makes me feel like more of an adult than having to explain to a boss my life circumstances and why it's the responsible thing to do to take care of my child. You start to just question, why am I doing this? Why am I telling this person my child has an ear infection and apologizing for it? It's just crazy. And that's kind of the corporate world we live in where a lot of people are not allowed to behave as adults and do the right thing and made to feel bad for taking care of their outside responsibilities.

I had a very memorable call recently with a woman who, her 2 year old. We were on a video call and her 2 year old was in the room and the dad came in and eventually got her and. But it was fine, actually. Like I enjoyed seeing her child on the video. That would never happen. It would never happen. If either one of us probably worked at a larger company. It would be unacceptable to have that, you know, like it just wouldn't be part of the culture and here.

Exactly.

Oh, how fun. I get to meet your 2 year old. That's great. Yeah. We paused a few more times, but it was, it was working. And I just loved her unapologetic ness about this is my life. And yeah, I'm running, she's running five businesses, not to mention one. But it was really inspiring.

Well, it's nice to just be your real self. It's not that every business contact has to know every detail of your life, but if there's a little, little sound of a child in the background, who does it harm? And it's nice to know a little bit about the other person that you're working with and can lead to deeper business relationships. But you're right, a lot of corporate cultures would really frown on that. And why is it so bad if every moment of your day is not focused on commerce or doesn't appear to be focused on commerce? Everybody has a life outside of work.

And that's what this takes us full circle back to your mission behind the book, which I resonate with so much that for people who aspire to have these one person businesses, it is to maintain that sense of freedom and autonomy. And it's less. You know, I even love how you describe. In one hand, we could be seen as we're not growing the economy because we're not employing other people full time or as many people as small businesses in the past. But what we are creating are these concurrent ecosystems where we all grow together. And I know my right hand woman, Marisol, the business built itself around her through referrals from friends of mine where I don't employ her full time. But because of our work together, she was able to build a thriving business. Maybe she's so good at what she does.

Well, it's very symbiotic and there is a lot of contribution to the economy. I mean, if you hire four or five different contractors, you're helping their business grow. And I know when people send me work, I'm a freelancer and contractor. I really appreciate it. I'm not mad that they didn't put me on payroll. I don't want to be on payroll. I like my freedom. And I think there's lots and lots of people that are exactly like us and like Marisol who want to grow their business. And they're so happy to have the freelance business. And I think we need both types of growth. There are people in society that love to be employees. And there should be jobs for those folks and there should also be freelancers. Opportunities both can coexist. And I don't feel you should feel guilty or bad if you're not creating jobs because you are contributing to the economy in other ways and you've created a job for yourself also.

I love it. Elaine, this has been so wonderful. What's one piece of homework that you want to give to everybody listening, whether they have a side hustle or a solopreneurship, what should they do?

I would suggest taking stock this week of how you're spending your time. Just write down every day after looking at your calendar how you spent your time and try to find one time waster every day that could be automated. I think that will get you on your way to saving seven hours a week of time and then a month from now put in your schedule a day that you spend on business strategy. It doesn't have to be all sitting at a desk. You could be meditating, you could be at yoga, you could be going for walks. But thinking about the business and how to grow it, I think that would help a lot of people to get to the next level in their business.

Perfect. And where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

They can find me at my website, which is elainepofeld.com It's E L A I N E P as in Peter, O F as in Frank, E L as in Larry, D as in David, T as in Tom or at the million dollar one person business.com and that's all spelled out in words rather than numbers.

Brilliant. And I'll put these in the show notes as well@pivotmethod.com podcast Elaine, thank you so much for this work and enlightening conversation.

Oh thank you Jenny. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so.

Much.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for PivotList, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at jennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.