The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business

February 2018 | 1:00 - 2:00 PM EST

Content

Topics in the Webinar 

Event Description

Transcript

Featured Speakers

Moderator: 

Emily Stringer, Manager, Executive Advisory Services at MBO Partners

Featured Speaker:

Elaine Pofeldt, Independent Journalist

Transcript

[00:00:02] Emily Stringer Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, the Million-Dollar One-Person Business featuring independent journalist Elaine Pofeldt. We still have a number of attendees who are coming on the line. So we're going to give everyone about 2 more minutes to join and settle in and we will get started momentarily.

[00:01:03] Emily Stringer Good afternoon, everyone. It looks like we are all getting settled in here for today's presentation. With that said, we will get things started here. Welcome to the Million-Dollar One-Person Business featuring independent journalist Elaine Pofeldt. Elaine, next slide, please.

[00:01:26] Emily Stringer My name is Emily Stringer and I will be moderating today's webinar. A little background on me. I've been with the MBO for over 7 and 1/2 years. As a consultant services advisor, I respond to requests from independents who are curious about MBO's service offerings. This is done through consultation appointments where we learn more about your background and needs and determine if both services are the right fit for your business. Next slide, please. MBO's mission statement is to make it easy for independent consultants and their clients to work together for a high-level overview. We offer a complete, all-inclusive business operating platform for independent consultants. We take care of the administrative items that are typically outsourced to several different vendors, like incorporation, contract review, liability coverage, invoicing, expense review and processing tax withholding and payroll, and access to tax-efficient portable benefits. Additionally, we offer a proprietary marketplace for independence called MBO Connect. Here you can view opportunities from Fortune 500 client partners and find your next independent consulting project. Next slide, please. Now for some housekeeping items on the webinar set up, first and foremost, you can see all of the controls listed here. Secondly, we will be emailing a slide deck and a recorded copy of the entire webinar to all registrants within the next week. Last, we will be taking questions throughout there that will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Any questions that we do not get to at the end of the presentation will be answered via email after the presentation. Next slide, please. If you would like to follow this presentation on Twitter, use #MBOWeb to submit your questions and comments @MBOPartners. Next slide, please. At this time, it is my pleasure to introduce you to our speaker, Elaine Pofeldt. Elaine is an independent journalist who specializes in small business, entrepreneurship and careers. She has authored the Million-Dollar One-Person Business, a look at how entrepreneurs are hitting 7 figure revenue in businesses where they are the only employee. Her work has appeared in Fortune, Money, CNBC, Forbes, Crain's New York Business and many other business publications. She is also a regular contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit. Elaine graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in English and now lives in New Jersey with her husband and 4 children. She enjoys taekwondo, yoga, and running in her free time. Elaine, at this time, I'll turn it over to you.

[00:04:33] Elaine Pofeldt Thank you, Emily, for that kind introduction. It is really nice to be here, and I am so excited to see this great turnout of fellow self-employed professionals. So this should be a wonderful discussion. And I hope you have plenty of questions for the session at the end because I'm really eager to have a dialog with you. The book that I wrote, The Million-Dollar One-Person Business, looks at one of the most exciting trends in employment today, and it's one that many people on this webinar are part of. It's the growth of high revenue. One-person businesses, many people are turning to one-person businesses and partnerships because they would like to live the lifestyle they want while earning a great income. And in the book, I was lucky enough to interview more than 30 owners of businesses that are breaking one million in revenue to find out the pathways that they followed to join this entrepreneurial movement. And I've been able to synthesize the advice that they generously shared with me. I should say, as we start out, that running a million-dollar one-person business is not just about hitting a revenue benchmark, financial goals are motivating and important for us to set so that we have something to work toward in a business. But ultimately, the reason many of us go into business is freedom. We want to be our own boss. We want to call the shots. We want to do work the way that we know is best. And by being self-employed, we can have those things. As you listen to the rest of the webinar, I would encourage you to think about what your equivalent of $1 million in revenue is. If you don't have a lot of financial responsibilities, you may not need to get to one million in revenue to have the lifestyle that you want. For other people who have a lot of dependents or live in a high-cost state, they may need to be at one million in revenue to actually clear the 2 to 400,000  in income that many of the owners in the book have when all is said and done. So it's very important to personalize the information to your unique situation. There's no one person who can tell you what you should personally make, including me. The book is about a brand new outlook on running a business. It is one that is realistic about what it costs to live and offers a way to rise above the grinding stress that I see in a lot of my freelance friends. It's society right now that does not favor freelancers. We don't have much of a social safety net. So although we have had some progress in terms of health care, it's still a very expensive line item for many freelancers. And we don't have much insurance against our work drying up the way our friends do when they might get unemployment insurance if their job dries up. So as a result, I have concluded after 10 years in business and after interviewing hundreds of entrepreneurs, that if you want to have a stable and happy life as a self-employed person, you have to create your own safety net. It shouldn't necessarily have to be that way. But this is reality and I'm a pragmatist. So this book is my attempt to help you address that challenge, that the ultimate goal is to help you build a life where you determine your personal priorities and design a business that supports them and you in a healthy way.

[00:07:56] Elaine Pofeldt In this webinar, you will learn several things, one is how to identify a business with the potential to grow to seven-figure revenue or to pinpoint an area of an existing business where you have the potential to scale your revenue. A lot of people listening to this may already be in business but may not have figured out that sweet spot in their business. So the system that I've written about will help you to do that. It's also important to develop the right mindset to grow your ultra-lean business to seven figures. One of the things you'll notice if you read the book is that not all businesses are the most innovative business in the world. Some of them are doing things that many other people are doing, such as running an Amazon store, for instance. But what is very different about the owners from the struggling freelancer or struggling self-employed business owner is their mindset. They are perpetual learners. They're not looking for somebody to give them three easy steps to create a million to one person. It would be nice if that was the case. But if you're in business, you know that's not realistic. They're experimenters. They're willing to try things and keep fine-tuning and iterating their business until they get it to the point where it will really generate the revenue they want. And it is very much a matter of personal commitment. There's nobody out there who can tell you the recipe to get to one million no matter how many people. I'm sure you've seen all kinds of systems being sold that I don't believe that there is one. It's really up to you. The book will also and the webinar will help you expand what you can accomplish on your own by applying the strategies and systems used by successful million-dollar one-person businesses. One thing I found was that there are many different industries from selling honey online to real estate, but they did have some common factors. And that was so interesting to me because they're really quite different. Businesses also help you keep getting smarter about running your business so you can amplify what is really moving the needle and get towards one million in revenue and learn from your mistakes. Because the truth is, in any business, it's not easy. You will make mistakes. We all do. We waste money. We hire the wrong people to help us as contractors, et cetera. But the difference between the million-dollar entrepreneurs and people who give up is that they really study those mistakes and learn from them and use them to get better as entrepreneurs. And then finally, you will learn how to fine-tune your business to keep pace with your evolving personal goals. Most people's lives are dynamic and things change. Maybe you get married, you have a child, you retire, you decide you want to live somewhere else. All of these things will affect how you want to run the business. And you will learn from the entrepreneurs that I learned from how to fine-tune the business so that it adjusts to the life that you want. 

[00:10:56] Elaine Pofeldt So why did I write this book? I've been a business journalist for a really long time, and what prompted me to finally write a book was coming across some very interesting US Census Bureau statistics on non-employer firms. And you may be familiar with this if you are not an employer, but these are companies that employ nobody but the owner. So they could be one-person businesses, most of them are. They could be partnerships. So maybe two friends get together and start a business, a husband and wife team, several partners, but they don't have W2 employees. And about 3 years ago, I came across statistics showing that there was a group of these businesses that were breaking one million in annual revenue. And I was curious because I knew so many freelancers. I've been an assignment editor and a magazine. I hired freelancers. I had friends who were freelancers, and they were making a million dollars in revenue.

 

[00:11:53] Elaine Pofeldt So I started digging around in the census statistics and slicing and dicing the data. And I found that the numbers were climbing. As of 2015, there were 35,584 US businesses, bringing in one million to 2.49 million in revenue. And that number rose by 33% percent since 2011. And what struck me was every year I looked at it, the numbers were growing and they were in many categories. 

[00:12:27] Elaine Pofeldt  There wasn't just one. So it wasn't an anomaly. It was that they were getting better at generating revenue overall. When I looked at the data, the categories I saw as most relevant to the average business owner, meaning they're not in completely niche areas like running a hedge fund that only a few people can do. Were these 6? 

[00:12:47] Elaine Pofeldt One is E-commerce. So you have people who are running Amazon stores, running freestanding online stores, engage in various forms of online commerce. That's a very hot area. And it's one where I see people with the greatest potential to get to very high revenue in a one-person business. I'm coming across more that are over 3 million in revenue. It's also one where you need some access to capital or you need some cash because it also requires inventory sometimes unless you're using other outside fulfillment services.

[00:13:23] Elaine Pofeldt Another area that's really interesting and exciting to me is Manufacturing. And when you think about it, 30 years ago, one person could not really be a manufacturer. But today, you don't need a factory. You can outsource everything. There are sites like Maker's Row, which is a wonderful site that can connect you with the resources you need for manufacturing. There are sites like Alibaba where you can source resources overseas if you would prefer to order products manufactured overseas, where you can connect with everybody that you need to become a manufacturer. And I'm coming across more people that are just one person in their home manufacturing. So, for instance, Rebecca Krones and Luis Zevallos, a married couple from California that I interviewed, sell honey online and they use a co-packer who makes sure that the honey is bottled correctly and nobody gets sick from eating the honey, etc. There are a couple with 2 young children. They have a lot of time to spend with their family and their manufacturers. 

[00:14:26] Elaine Pofeldt Another area that I think is very, very exciting, particularly for this audience, because we have a lot of people in professional services, is Informational Content Creation. And that means creating products like webinars. It's an ebook. It could be white papers, it could be courses. Courses on platforms like teachable are very hot. And what it is, is instead of trading your time for dollars, we have more professionals who are creating informational products and essentially productizing a service business so that they can earn income from work they did repeatedly instead of this one time. I feel this is something that could almost be added to any business. If you have expertise in an area, which you probably do if you're in business.

 

[00:15:17] Elaine Pofeldt The 4th area is more straightforward. It's Professional Services and Creative Businesses. But what is different about them getting them to 1,000,000 is that they've found a way to deliver so much value to their customers that they can charge more. So this might be the very high-level programmer who serves Wall Street banks and charges $1000 an hour. The attorney charges $1000 an hour. There are many people that don't charge enough for their services and could charge more if they are able to quantify what the value is that it's actually a bargain compared to, for instance, putting them on retainer, so there are many people in these fields that are getting to one million. 

[00:16:04] Elaine Pofeldt Another similar field is Personal Services. And with Personal Services, we have people like nutritionists, fitness coaches, etc. Usually, they're not getting to 1,000,000 with an hourly fee. And those types of businesses, it's usually informational products. So, for instance, Nick Shaw, one of the entrepreneurs in the book, is a week-long training coach. He does he's a powerlifter and he has created diets that help his clients who are in competitive bodybuilding and also just average people that would like to get into shape. And so he created diet templates that he sells on his website that he's researched thoroughly. He's teamed up with the university professor. So he's not just making it up. This is scientifically researched information and there's a real market for it. And there are many, many people in these types of fields that have specialized expertise, things they've studied, things that they've learned through a clinical application that can be monetized.

[00:17:05] Elaine Pofeldt And then finally, a fun one is Real Estate. This is something that you can do on the side in many careers. And one of the entrepreneurs in the book who you'll meet, Cory Binsfield, that he's a financial planner and gradually built up to owning 116 very small residential properties in Duluth, Minnesota, his hometown, and that has become his million-dollar one-person business and a nice adjunct to his financial planning firm. So these are the areas. There are other ones as well. I don't mean to suggest these are the only ones, but I thought in terms of the big picture, it's good to have a sense of where the opportunities are.

[00:17:47] Elaine Pofeldt So let's look at a few fun examples of the people that I've met in this whole journey of interviewing entrepreneurs who have gotten to one million. One of my favorite stories is of Laszlo Nadler, who today brings in $2 million in revenue selling paper planners, meaning day books on Amazon at a business called "Tools for Wisdom". He is in a situation that many people are in today, or he was, I should say, he was a project manager for a big bank in New York. He had a great job, but it really wasn't doing it for him. His passions lie elsewhere and he started designing planners. He's a person who really is into personal productivity and efficiency and achieving peak performance. So he said, let me design a planner that will help people to do that by focusing on rather than a to-do list of the tasks that will move them forward towards their biggest life school. So he played around with designing them and it was almost like a hobby. The first year we actually just did a live event and I found out a little more about him. I don't think he was even sure it would turn into a business the first year. But then he finally got the courage to put them up online and found there was a market for them. He didn't have a huge amount of start-up capital, so he used to print on demand and gradually kept on experimenting, getting feedback from people who bought them. He put a lot of priority on actually interacting with the customers that he met through Amazon and perfected them and gradually got to the point after two years where he was at six-figure revenue and he could quit his job and know that he could support his family and have a successful business. At that point, he was able to truly scale up and put all of his efforts into the business. I loved his story because there are so many people that feel trapped in a corporate job and feel like they can't quit and therefore can't start a business. But he just did it on the side, which is a wonderful way to get started and give yourself the runway that you need and the cash flow you need to really give your idea a chance because it might not take off that much the first year. I don't think his business did very much. The first year it was as he learned what worked and what didn't work, that he could really accelerate the growth. And having a job gives you some runway. And it's a little bit counterintuitive because I think a lot of us have heard the Silicon Valley party line. I guess you have to jump in with two feet, go all in 24/7. But how many people can really do that? There are very few people that can just give up on everything else and focus 100% on the business from day one. So don't let that discourage you. These people have very successful businesses and did not do it that way for the most part.

[00:20:42] Elaine Pofeldt So another area, Informational Content Creation. I have a story that I love. So or will he break seven-figure selling reports on nutritional supplements online at Examine.com? He's somebody who is sort of a serial entrepreneur. He had done a variety of different types of websites involved with gaming and other areas that interested him. And he was looking for a business that would allow him to travel 3 or 4 months out of the year. He just loves to travel. He's young, he doesn't have kids yet, and he has a lot of freedom to do that. So he came up with an idea based on his own weight loss journey. He was trying to find out which supplements he should take to slim down. And he felt that there were not a lot of good reports out there telling him the truth about supplements. And he was not an expert on supplements, although he was interested in them. So he started hiring experts like PhDs and nutritional researchers to write the definitive report on various vitamins and supplements he was thinking about and knew others would be. And he gradually built that up to a hub that is very respected, where he sells reports and he's branched out into a newsletter and other informational products. Over time, it's become a nice business. He's actually at the point now where he's going to scale and is starting to bring on employees. But what he did, which many other people can learn from, if they would like that type of lifestyle, is he brought in the contractor to run a lot of the day today and gave him some equity. He keeps most of the equity, but it gives the contractor an incentive to grow the business. So it worked out beautifully for both of them.

[00:22:26] Elaine Pofeldt Another area that a lot of people are interested in today is Personal Services. This is that area that Nick Shaw is in terms of fitness coaching. One of my favorite stories was of Meghan Telpner, who's a nutritionist. She was working in Advertising about 10 or 11 years ago and went on a trip to Africa and became very, very ill and discovered she had Crohn's disease and was really not happy with the treatments that conventional medicine had to offer and felt there had to be a better way to heal herself. So she took some time off from work and began studying Nutrition and Wellness and came to a lot of different conclusions. One was that her advertising lifestyle was too stressful. This was not going to help her heal, so she needed to make a career change. She felt nutrition was the path to healing for her. So she actually went back to school and became a nutritionist and wound up developing some informational products to teach people what she was learning. So I think her first product was a 3-day Green Smoothie Cleanse that I think she told me she sold for $10 and she began introducing new products based on what other people were responding to and finding useful. She also blogged 4 days a week for years to build up her presence online. It's not an overnight success story by any means, but as she healed herself, she's now been in remission for over 10 years. She wanted to teach more people what she was learning, so she created a business called the Academy of Culinary Nutrition, where she shares her healthy cooking methods and teachings about nutrition with other nutritionists and with laypeople who would just like to eat healthily. So she's built a wonderful business. And in terms of lifestyle, she just had a baby and she's been able to flex the business because of the system she put in place to accommodate that. So she and her husband took the whole summer off to do things with their baby and had a wonderful summer because of this business. So I love her story because she's inspiring in so many ways. 

[00:24:37] Elaine Pofeldt Another area that is just exploding is Manufacturing and a case study that isn't in the book I just came across, Wendy Colson is a nurse, with no business experience whatsoever. She's a mother of 3 and she was a NICU nurse who has a lot of expertise in that area. She got into lactation consulting and started baking bars with protein and other nutrition for lactating moms and found that the women were doing so much better eating the bars that they wanted to buy them. So she started selling them. And then really she should really scale this up because she kept on selling out. But she knew she could do this from her kitchen. So she began looking into co-packing, which is the same thing that that honey manufactures I told you about, that she found an outsourced manufacturer package of the bars properly and started getting them into big baby stores and marketing them to the big box stores. And she just got on Shark Tank and she also got into Walmart. And I just love this story that this mom of 3, a nurse with no business background, could do so well in a one-person business. She broke one million. And it's just the beginning if she's in Walmart. So very inspiring to me.

 [00:25:59] Elaine Pofeldt And then Professional Services is another area where so many of you are on the line that I believe is in professional services. Sometimes, this is an area where it can be extremely hard to figure out how to get past a revenue plateau. A lot of people will get stuck in the zone between $100,000 a year and maybe $500,000 a year. And they can't get past it and they don't know why. They can't really do it anymore where they feel like they've hit the max in terms of their hourly rate. And one of the interesting things I learned from the entrepreneurs in the book is you don't have to do it all yourself. And I recently interviewed an entrepreneur named Chad Patschke, who's a father of 5, who is a consultant. He does have a specialized area of expertise. He advises companies in the oil and gas industry and other industries like that on how to avoid explosions and handle their equipment. He brings in a high hourly rate. He was telling me that in his field, it's not uncommon for certain types of work to bring in over $300 an hour. But that is not what got him to one million in revenue. What did was he has been in the business for a long time. He knows a lot of consultants who are looking to scale down from stressful corporate careers but still want to stay in the game. So he began bringing on his colleagues as part-time freelance consultants. And so with this team of flexible consultants, he was able to scale the business. And of course, there's a markup in there for his services as the connector between them and their work. So that's how he continues to scale his profits as well. It's a great case study for people that feel like they're stuck because sometimes it does involve other people. And I should say this right now, the book is called The Million-Dollar One-Person Business. That refers to the fact that they are treated as one person by the government when they pay their taxes. But a lot of times there's a team around them. And what will help you to scale is to let go of the do-it-yourself mentality that many of us battle with all the time and bring in other people to help so that you can go after those bigger jobs. It's so important and sometimes it's a stretch. 

[00:28:23] Elaine Pofeldt I just interviewed an entrepreneur from Guatemala who has a design firm and he wanted to go after bigger jobs and realized that he could not find somebody with the specific technical expertise he needed for a certain project within Guatemala. So he had to hire a worker from Canada, which was a big stretch for him economically because the labor costs are much higher in Canada. But what it enabled him to do by making that investment was to scale his business well beyond what he could do if he decided, well, I can't pay for more expensive talent than I can find in my own country. So building a team is really important. Even if you choose never to hire employees because you just don't want to deal with it, you can still do this. 

[00:29:10] Elaine Pofeldt Finally, Real Estate. I mentioned to you, Cory Binsfield, and he is a wonderful person. He's a skateboarder and he has tapped into his passion for skateboarding in his business. He called it "Skateboarding for dollars" when he's taking a break from his financial advisory practice. He likes to skateboard around Duluth, Minnesota, and look for properties he would like to invest in. He's a real student of architecture. He loves old buildings. And gradually, as he has brought in income from one property, he reinvests it in others. And he's built a really nice business that basically operates itself. He has outsourced the handyman work so that he's not there fixing drains and things like that. So he's got a really nice side and it really taps into his passion. And recently he's even been consulting with other people who are thinking about doing this type of investing. So he's started aside like he has his own podcast now. And it's just an example of how once you start taking steps, getting into a whole new area, it can open up new opportunities you might not ever have imagined. 

[00:30:22] Elaine Pofeldt I should also point out some people might feel like they can never get to one million, it just seems too high for their industry and it's important to realize that even if you don't, it's very possible for many people to build a very strong six-figure business. There might be people on the line who are just starting a business and just getting to six figures would be incredible at this moment. If you look at these figures, I'm not going to rattle them all off. But there has been a huge increase in businesses from $500,000 to $999,999 and so forth. So you can see that they're poised to possibly get to a million. They might not get there next year, but they're all growing. And this gives us all hope that we can keep on growing our businesses. 

[00:31:13] Elaine Pofeldt I should point out, though, that these businesses are still the exception, the average revenue of non-employer businesses was $47,211 in 2015. And that is sort of a warning where you can stay if you don't apply the mindset of growth towards a solo business. 

[00:31:37] Elaine Pofeldt A lot of people can bring in an adequate revenue that they can live on, but it will be lower than the median household income in the US and that really isn't enough to build your own safety net. So I feel like even if your goal is to get your $100,000, you still need to be thinking about how do I maximize the revenue that I bring in from the time that I am putting in?

[00:32:02] Elaine Pofeldt So one question people often ask me is, why are some businesses getting to a million and others aren't? Is it because the ones that got to a million had a eureka moment and just had a better idea than anybody else? I found that one key factor was they picked the right type of business to get to one million. Some businesses really can scale and others are going to be very small. If you pick a business that has a very tiny niche audience, it's going to be very hard unless the audience is willing to pay you a lot of money for what you do. So you could be a very high-end consultant to whom people pay $25,000 a day to. You could get to a million that way, but you better have very unique expertise that has real value if you want to go that route.

[00:32:55] Elaine Pofeldt Sometimes people feel like they're stuck and they cannot come up with a business idea that will get them to one million, and in the course of doing the book, I interviewed entrepreneurs to help with this problem because a lot of them did a lot of hard work and thinking about that very issue as they built their business. So I came up with some questions based on what they told me about how they identified that million-dollar area of their expertise.

 

[00:33:24] Elaine Pofeldt One of the key questions that everyone should ask themselves is, what niche areas of your work do you have a special passion for and a deep knowledge about? That is often where you have a pocket of genius that really can be monetized. 

[00:33:41] Elaine Pofeldt Another area is, which of your endeavors generate the most curiosity among the people you know? Because sometimes we don't know how interesting we really are. I find this as a journalist. I interview people and they try to tell me one story about themselves and I say, wait a minute, like that little thing you just said, can we rewind for a minute and dig down a little deeper? Everyone has those conversations where you're just chatting with someone on the soccer field or at the gym or at the office. The people are curious about it. Might be a hobby you have. Think about that because there might be something you can monetize.

[00:34:17] Elaine Pofeldt That's also important to think about what you're really interested in. So what hobbies and personal interests do you read and learn about constantly and feel like you enjoy continuing to learn about? That's really important because if you run a business, you're going to be thinking about the topic a lot. 

[00:34:34] Elaine Pofeldt Another area might be what challenges and problems have you addressed successfully in your own life and for which the solution could be useful to other people. Of course, you've got to find problems not a lot of other people are solving, which is hard. But many of us have challenges in life that are very steep and we have come up with a solution.

[00:34:54] Elaine Pofeldt Another question to ask yourself is what roles do you play in your personal life that have given you a unique knowledge that might benefit others? Sometimes people feel they can't start a business because they're not currently working. Maybe they're volunteers, but that volunteer work could be a great source of information that you could then turn into a business. 

[00:35:17] Elaine Pofeldt Another question to ask is, what situations have you been thrust into that have given you a fresh perspective on issues that other people care about? I see so many situations like this. For instance, if you're a parent of a special-needs child, you might be in a situation that is very challenging. But you've come up with some great ideas on how to make the best of the situation that could help other people, that could be something that is turned into a business, a business that gives them.

 

[00:35:49] Elaine Pofeldt And then finally, what trends do you know about that other people have yet to discover? We all, if you work or volunteer, you're probably on the front lines of some trends that other people haven't given much thought about. Maybe you notice kids in your children's school or playing with a certain kind of toy and it's just starting to take off. Or you notice in your professional services practice, a certain type of question keeps coming up. You could probably get a valuable idea from that. It could be accelerated into a high-revenue business.

[00:36:24] Elaine Pofeldt So what if your business is not in the six fields we discussed where you are in one of the six fields, but you're not hitting your revenue goal, it doesn't mean you're doing something wrong, but it means it's time to build on what you're doing right now. One way to do this would be to introduce a product or service in the high-revenue category that is new to you. For instance, if you're a consultant who is already charging high-hourly fees, you could add informational products such as a paid webinar. I know I've paid $200 or $300 to go to certain webinars on very specific topics run by attorneys or accountants, people with very specialized knowledge that can be a way to break out of the hole, treating your time for dollars. And it can also be a way to onboard new clients who might not be able to afford to put you on retainer but would still greatly benefit from your knowledge. 

[00:37:19] Elaine Pofeldt One case study that I loved, I recently interviewed Dana Derricks, who is a copywriter. He was providing retainer services and he found that many clients had the same needs. They wanted to do some things in-house. They didn't have the budget to really hire somebody for the full service. So he began creating specialized books that he sells for $400 to $2,500 each to people that want to do it yourself. And he sold more than 1,000 copies of the first one for $400. It showed how Amazon sellers can use their copywriting to improve sales, which is something that he probably can do in his sleep but is new to them. And it was worth $400 to them. So if you think about it, maybe you have clients, you're turning away because you sell your retainer services for $5,000 or $10,000 a month and they don't have it. They might have $500 that they would pay for a book like this that you only have to produce once it is worth upfront. But you might already have it in your head and you could probably hire a ghostwriter to write it for you. So it could be a wonderful investment.

[00:38:30] Elaine Pofeldt And then there is that whole aspect of charging more. I find that a lot of free agents undervalue their services. They feel like there's so much competition out there. Sometimes they get work through online platforms where the competition is very intense and it gives them a false sense that their work is not worth much. And what I would say is to really think about how you can quantify the value you provide to your clients. For instance, if you're a copywriter and you write web copy, that helps them close one sale and their commission on the sale is $20,000 and you paid $5,000. That's a bargain. So you have to think in that way. Sometimes I think especially creative professionals and I'm one of them, we don't think in terms of quantifying our monetary value to our clients, but there's a reason they're hiring you. So think about what value are you providing to them? What profit are they getting from hiring you? And you can reframe your marketing and your sales pitch along those lines and charge more. You can also experiment with charging when you onboard new clients. Maybe you feel like you can't raise prices with the existing clients you've had for the last 10 years. But as you take on new ones, you can institute more value-based pricing.

[00:39:49] Elaine Pofeldt Another important thing to think about as you grow your business is to expand what you can accomplish on your own, and I found this to be very profound. The entrepreneurs who hit one million in revenue have a different approach to getting things done than a lot of entrepreneurs in the standard freelance business or self-employed business. They use automation to offload tedious tasks that a lot of people are still doing. So they'll use a scheduling application like schedule once or collectively. Instead of emailing back and forth to set up appointments, they'll use an app on their phone, like every glance, to track their mileage.

[00:40:29] Elaine Pofeldt Another thing they'll do is hire contractors. A lot of people have apprehension about hiring a freelance web designer or hiring a bookkeeper because they think they will hire the wrong person. That might happen. I've hired the wrong person sometimes in my own business. But you'll never find the right person if you're not willing to do that. And it will be very, very hard to expand what you do without working a zillion hours a year. If you aren't willing to trust other people to take on certain tasks in your business, it will also free you up to do more of the high-value tasks in your own business. If you're willing to offload some of the tasks in your business to someone who might know more about it than you. 

[00:41:08] Elaine Pofeldt Finally, using outsourced services is really important. There was one entrepreneur in the book, Harry Ein, who sells swag, which is those tote bags with the company's name on them, etc., and what he does to expand. What he can do is he uses an office service provider that specializes in swag sellers, that does his invoicing and collections and that sort of thing, so he can be out there meeting with the corporate clients who do business with him. And his business is growing like gangbusters. He runs it from his garage. He has a young son. He's got plenty of time to go swimming lessons with him and coaches, sports teams. He loves his life. So and the reason he is able to have this lifestyle is he outsources his back-office services. So look for ways you can do that in your own field. It might be using fulfillment by Amazon. If you're an e-commerce seller, it might be something entirely different, like outsourcing the telephone reception in your business. The more you can do that, the more time you will have for high-value activities. You just have to make sure your cash flow can support it. So you may have to wait a year or two into the business to do it. 

[00:42:19] Elaine Pofeldt It's also important to have the right mindset, so you have to let go of the all or nothing, I'm going to do everything myself mindset and you've got to let go of the all or nothing mindset that you have to quit your job to start a business. If you really want to do this, you have to find a way. And it's not really an easy formula, but by actually taking the first step and experimenting, you'll be much further along than you are if you just keep waiting for the perfect moment. Most of the entrepreneurs in the book, by the way, did not get everything right on the first try. Some of them tried several businesses before they wound up finding the right one. 

[00:42:57] Elaine Pofeldt One couple that is a very good example is Ben and Camille Arneberg. They run e-commerce, Stuart, Willow and Everett. And when they started the business, they put $5,000 into inventory. They had saved the money. They could afford to lose it. And they said, let's see what works, what sells. And if we lose all the money, we'll look at it as if we had invested in a college course. And that is the best attitude to have because that's how you learn the things that you need to learn to build your own unique business to one million. It's really a matter of being the operator of a living laboratory. If you want a cookie-cutter, you're not going to get to one million. You have to really be an experimenter and try things. Just try them at a scale that's small so you're not wasting huge amounts of money and then double down when you find something that's working, whether it's a course, a webinar, a product, a type of real estate investment, the same principle applies. You have to do a lot of research on your own. There's no one way to start a business. So you have to be willing to use the school of Google. A lot of people told me that. I said, how did you find out how to do this? How do you find the time to do dropshipping? There are lots of great books and resources out there. If you're waiting for somebody to tell you these are the five things you have to do to have a successful e-commerce business, it's not going to happen. You're going to have to research and boring and mundane things to get to the good things, which is which are having a great business and a great lifestyle. 

[00:44:29] Elaine Pofeldt And you have the course-correct. When one entrepreneur, Matt Friel, who runs GameDealDaily started out, he's a young guy who loves video games and started buying games that had been discontinued from big box stores and reselling them online, he did well with that. But then the business took off and one day he found himself in the car for hours and hours, like the whole day, just driving around, buying up these video games. And he said, I have no lifestyle, so I have to do something differently. So then he began, he actually had some of his competitors where they were getting their games. And it turned out some were distributors. So bingo, yes, he had to pay more for that. But now this freed him up to scale the business even more. 

[00:45:12] Elaine Pofeldt So it's really important to stop and pause sometimes and say, is this working and then not be committed to doing it exactly the way you did in the beginning. If it is not, it's also important to realize and reset your vision. So as your business evolves, your priorities might cause you to really think about what your goals are. Maybe this year your goals are X because you have a new baby and you can only put so much time into the business, but next year you'll have more time. So you might need to reset them. Or this year you're starting the business while you're working in a corporate job. But by next year you hope to have left that job. You have to really be flexible and keep on reimagining the business and making sure that it connects with who you are at the moment. I should also say running a business as a solo operation is not an end in itself. I found when I did fact-checking of the book, people were apologizing to me and saying, Elaine, guess what? I scaled up. I hired people. I hope you're not mad at me. And of course, I'm not mad at you. That's awesome. For some people, it's great to stay at a boutique size and have a high revenue boutique for other people. It's better to scale up the traditional way, but it's a living dynamic business. And it's so important that you take stock of where you are and keep on resetting your vision so that you maximize it in the best way that you can if you're having trouble. A coach is always a good way to figure out where you go next, but really listen to yourself. That's the most important thing that you can do. I realize we're going a little long, so I think I should probably open the floor to questions.

[00:46:58] Emily Stringer All right, Elaine, thank you so much. I really appreciate the great insightful feedback and some inspiring stories of consultants who have started million- dollar businesses and other entrepreneurs outside of consulting, even who maybe have started businesses in fields that we hadn't even previously considered. So I very much appreciate it. And for all those who have participated in this particular presentation, please feel free to take a look at Elaine's information on the web: elainepofeldt.com, at Twitter @elainepofeldt, Instagram @milliondollaronepersonbusiness, LinkedIn: Elaine Pofeldt, Facebook: @milliondollaronepersonbusiness. 

[00:47:46] Emily Stringer Elaine, thank you so much again. So first and foremost, we have a couple of questions that we are going to put up on the screen to see who we need to get some information from after the presentation. So we'll go ahead and launch into that very quickly first. First and foremost, would you like more information about Elaine Pofeldt? yes or no? And we'll give you about 30 seconds to chime in here. All right, we are at 55%, so we'll give everyone about 10 more seconds. All right, and we will pause on that and launch into our next question. Would you like more information about MBO Partners, yes or no? We here at MBO Partners are able to provide an outsourced back office solution, as Elaine had mentioned in her presentation. So, Elaine, I thank you for the shout out there.

[00:49:22] Elaine Pofeldt That's actually a common strategy for the million-dollar reward-person businesses.

[00:49:27] Emily Stringer Yes, make yourself as billable as possible. All right, we are at 65%. We'll give everyone a couple of more seconds here. And we will cut the polling and. And will launch into our last question. Would you like an invitation to MBO Connect, which is our marketplace that could help you find your next project with a Fortune 500 client? Yes or no? For those who have requested additional information, a very quick note here, we will be getting information out to all of you within the next 2 business days. So please keep an eye on your inbox and we will get back to you as quickly as possible. And we'll give everyone about 5 more seconds here. And we will cut our polling. All right, so, Elaine, now that we are past our polling, we will go into a couple of questions that we've had here. We have lots of great questions that I think you'll enjoy answering. So first and foremost, keeping in mind that these are mostly from professional services consultants, from one participant, he's asked, I am just getting started as a project management consultant, my specific expertise, and is in the development of new therapies. I would welcome ideas on how to increase awareness of the existence of my business. 

[00:51:16] Elaine Pofeldt I would say content marketing is essential. Blogging is a really great way to reach your public. It's a matter of thinking about what they read, what they would be interested in reading and targeting, what you write to their pain point in a way that allows you to showcase your unique expertise. It takes a little bit of experimenting, but you could probably ask people that come into your business, what do you like to read or where do you get information? It might not even be writing. It might be something different, like a podcast. But content is a really great way to show what you know and to connect with the right types of people for your business.

[00:51:59] Emily Stringer That's great feedback, Elaine, I really appreciate it. So along those lines, in relation to timing and hiring other consultants, how do you or do you have any tips that you can share with regard to identifying the right person to work with your business? 

[00:52:20] Elaine Pofeldt The easiest way to do it is through word-of-mouth recommendations. There are many systems, but what I have personally found is there's no substitute for having a good network and getting recommendations from people you trust. The recommendation should come from people that have a similar standard of performing their work, as you do. So if you're an "A player", you will want recommendations from other A players who are demanding of their contractors. So I would start there. You can also look on platforms to get highly rated freelancers and contractors. But sometimes what you can't tell from a platform is about somebody's personality, which can be important. If you're building a team, you need people that play well with others so that that's something where you can sort of have an off-the-cuff conversation with other professional colleagues to get the real information you need to select somebody. And then I would always say try a very small project with someone and see how they execute it before you bring them on for something bigger, because you can always course correct it. If it's not a good fit, just decide not to move on. But it's very hard once you've signed a big contract with somebody to fix that, once you've committed.

[00:53:40] Emily Stringer That's great advice, Elaine. I actually tend to side with you on giving a small assignment first and then moving on to something more meaningful. Beyond that, it's good to have a trial period. 

[00:53:52] Elaine Pofeldt I think so, and I think that most freelancers understand it, they're not going to be offended. I know as a freelancer myself, I want to know that there's a good fit with the client, too, because I don't want there to be an unsuccessful project. I'd rather not have the work than do an unsuccessful project. I think you'll find that freelancers who take their work seriously feel the same way. So they'll want to do the trial too.

[00:54:16] Emily Stringer Yes, you are absolutely right, the next step is eliminating non-billable tasks. Do you recommend drafting a list of things that you aren't as good at or that don't create much money?

[00:54:32] Elaine Pofeldt Absolutely. That is a really good place to start. I think the number one thing on your list should be something you hate to do. I hate to do bookkeeping. That was the first thing that I outsourced because I would put it off. I could do it, but it would take me too long. I would have to keep on researching things about it. And I realized it was not a good use of my time. I could find someone who was much better at it. It wasn't that expensive to outsource and it is such a relief. So if you think of something that you just hate doing in your business, put that at the top of your list, because realistically, you cannot. If you're your one-person business, you might have 8 things you can outsource, but you might not have the cash flow to support paying all those contractors, and then you don't want to burn them and then have them not want to work with you. So it's better just pick one thing and then as your cash flow picks up, then you think, OK, what's the next thing? You know, some tedious thing that I don't want to do that can't be done through automation. You should always, I think, start with automation because it's usually cheaper and easier, like using a scheduling app. You don't necessarily need to hire an admin to schedule your phone calls. You might need an admin if you need more sophisticated tech, but maybe you just need an app as I do. You look for things that have to be done by a person but that you're not good at or that are just taking too much time.

[00:55:52] Emily Stringer Great, I think that's excellent advice as well. Focus on what you are good at and what you enjoy doing, you'll always get more satisfaction out of your business that way. So next up, Elaine, do you have a checklist that you house anywhere related to being successful as a one-person business?

[00:56:13] Elaine Pofeldt There are a lot of exercises in the appendix of the book that will help people, there really isn't one checklist that defines success because success is different to every person. So I am very much taking the philosophy that you have to define it for yourself. That's a lot harder, by the way. But it's sort of that it's a difference between doing your kids homework for them versus guiding them. I think we all have coaches in my life who do that. You know, they sort of make me answer the questions. And I think it's really helpful to do that for yourself. Create your own checklist about what? How do I define success? Maybe success for you is working 30 hours a week and having a great relationship with your significant other and having time for your kids and working out three times a week and making $1 million in revenue a year for another person. It might be those same things, but making $60,000 in revenue a year, it really depends. It's a good idea to have a general checklist but I think the exercise is if you look at the exercises in the appendix, you'll have some guidance there that will get you started and then you can create your own very customized version. 

[00:57:25] Emily Stringer Great advice, Elaine. We will do one last question since we are at 1:58 p.m., do you see a common thread with the successful entrepreneurs that you study?

[00:57:39] Elaine Pofeldt Definitely, it's that they are very focused on extending what one person can do beyond the norm and they are very open to doing what it will take to do so. A lot of us know we should Artemy, we should use contractors, we should outsource. It's not new information, but we don't act on it. So what's different about them is the execution. They actually act on it and they're willing to do the small experiments and they're willing to put some of their money in. They're not waiting for a grant from the sky to pay for their business idea that they find a way to make it happen. And it's not a simple formula for that. But they're willing to accept that there's some complexity to it and they like the challenge. They thrive on it. They don't beat themselves up. If something doesn't go right, they just keep on learning from it. That's the common thread. It's really an attitude more than anything else, and it's easier said than done. But if you really push yourself to say, you know what, I'm going to find 7 hours a week, I can free up with automation by the end of this month, anybody can do that. Any entrepreneur in a professional services business or through outsourcing or whatever you are at the stage to do, you will be much closer to being where these entrepreneurs are than you may be today. 

[00:58:57] Emily Stringer I think that's excellent advice, Elaine, you have to be willing to take the risk and dive in. So with that said, Elaine, thank you so much for all of your insight, for inspiring us all to want to become million-dollar businesses of one. And we really appreciate you joining us today and providing such a great presentation to all of our participants. A quick reminder, we will get a slide deck out to everyone within the next week. And for those who have requested additional information, we will get your information to you within the next 24 to 48 hours. Thank you for joining us. And we look forward to seeing you or hearing you on future webinars. Have a great afternoon.

[00:59:46] Elaine Pofeldt Thank you, Emily. It was a pleasure and I welcome everyone who's listening to get in touch. Let me know how your business is going and any questions you may have.

[00:59:55] Emily Stringer Great, thank you, Elaine.

[00:59:58] Elaine Pofeldt Thank you so much.