Elaine Pofeldt is a journalist who has contributed to Forbes.com, CNBC, INC, and Money Magazine among others and is the author of the brilliant book “Tiny Business, Big Money: Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness”. It’s brand new (published this month), and in it, Elaine shares her blueprint for going high revenue without building a huge team.
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Writing The Book
Elaine says that when she followed up with the businesses for her book, The Million-Dollar One-Person Business, some of them evolved and were no longer solopreneurs. But she also got feedback that these business owners found it challenging to transition from having the freedom of running a one-person business to managing a team.
So what she did was to interview these entrepreneurs on how they were pivoting to having a team, whether in-house employees or hired contractors, and that became the genesis of her latest book, Tiny Business, Big Money.
Finding The Rule Breakers
Elaine considers these solopreneurs as rule breakers who are introducing the next version of business.
Whereas one-person businesses were not taken seriously before, these have now gained traction because people are seeing that you can have a great career while still having the freedom to pursue other interests and travel among other things.
What’s meaningful is seeing the positive business results these businesses are generating.
Learning From Tiny Businesses
Currently, the world is seeing a lot of resignations and people leaving traditional jobs. Elaine says this could be because people no longer enjoy all the meetings and bureaucracy inside big businesses.
These big businesses can reevaluate what they’re doing to see if they can adapt the methods used by small businesses, and apply them to their own business units that have 20 or less people.
Keys To Success
Elaine gives us a few common factors that have made these tiny businesses successful:
- They get the business model right.
- They build on their success.
- Their business is very fluid and they do what works at the time.
These entrepreneurs are experimenters, which makes them iconic and classic.
The Right Mindset
Elaine believes that most people were raised to be employees, not entrepreneurs. The idea that being a business owner is risky should be unlearned and replaced with a mindset of being able to define your own future.
Another mindset is being prepared to create the financial base you need. There are different ways to do it, but this is critical and you have to put in the effort and you have to consistently show up.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business by Jenny Blake
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- Word-of-mouth or relationship marketing because building relationships brings good karma around your business.
Tool Top Tip
Elaine gives us several:
- ScheduleOnce scheduling app
- Notion project management app
- Podia digital storefront
- Bench Accounting online bookkeeping app
Growth Top Tip
- Lean into aspects of your business that you love the most and have been successful for you.
Interview Links
- Business
- Tiny Business, Big Money
- The Million-Dollar One-Person Business
Related episodes
- eCommerce Startups
- 140: The $1m 1-person company – journalist and author Elaine Pofeldt joins us to explain how to build a huge one-person business
- 089: Michael E Gerber, author of Beyond the eMyth and small business guru talks eCommerce with Chloë
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