Elaine Pofeldt
speaker
42 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Elaine Pofeldt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I would say keep showing up because I have literally interviewed thousands of entrepreneurs over the years. I was a senior editor at Fortune Small Business Magazine. I've written for many publications and None of them get where they're going without putting in a daily commitment. I'm not saying you have to work 24-7. Some of them work four hours a week, like the four-hour work week.
Others work all the time. It's really a matter of the business and the person. But if you don't show up consistently, you will not get results.
Thanks a lot, Rudy. Great to be here.
Well, you've got to be a good observer of what's going on in the marketplace right now. What I found is the number one category for million dollar one person businesses is professional services. So you would definitely want to be looking at what those types of businesses are doing right now.
They generally will have VAs. They're what are called non-employer businesses by government jargon meisters. And basically, they have no payroll.
These entrepreneurs are great students of efficiency. They're also using automation. I mean, even something like Calendly can save you half a day a week if you book a lot of appointments. And they're using outsourcing like Fulfilled by Amazon, things that are available to anybody, which is very refreshing and now AI.
Absolutely. One of the entrepreneurs I wrote about, Jason Allen Scott, is a speaker. And he said, never have a boss, never be a boss. And that's a good mantra for the million-dollar one-person business. It's not most people's dream to manage other people. What's so nice about the system that you're using is the VA has a business too.
And if their business is more efficient, then that frees both people them and you to do the things where you really bring value to your customers.
Well, sometimes with good reason in some of the big companies, they will lose their job. But in a better run company, the leaders will say, we can use these employees to do strategy or we can use them to make our customers feel better or, you know, enjoy the experience more. And I think those are the companies that are going to lead in the future.
The ones that it is such a great experience because they've automated all the crap and they're doing all the good stuff.
It's really important to be different. There are so many copycats out there. And one way people learn is by copying. But at a certain point, you really have to differentiate yourself and stand out. And I think with the million dollar one person businesses, they bring a lot of personality to the business. I mean, obviously, you value personality with the chair that you're sitting in.
It's really important because life can be pretty boring if there's no human element to it.
Definitely. You know, one thing to think about when you're trying to do this is help other people make or keep money. I mean, one of the entrepreneurs in the book, he runs a company called Ocean Audit, Steve Ferreira. And what he does is he... His business is as boring as you can imagine.
He audits shipping bills of lading to see if there were any mistakes made in shipping a bunch of shirts to JCPenney or somewhere like that. But what he does is... goes to the CEOs and says, I found a $250,000 mistake. Do you want me to tell you what it is and collect it? But I get to keep 50%. And he does it with a flourish. He has these pins made for his fancy suits and things. He was an actor.
And he just brings a lot of theater to it, but they're getting money back in their budget. And that's something that many businesses can do, you know, help people optimize their own lives or businesses, especially in today's environment around the world with housing costs, inflation and all of that stuff. So I would say that's it. I would say build relationships very consciously.
One of the entrepreneurs who grew during the pandemic was Elisa Shira, who did live events, her whole business. was shut down and yet she grew from one to 1.5 million by switching to Zoom events. And what saved her was all along the way, she was never afraid to approach celebrities, to bring them into her events for corporate people.
And a lot of meeting planners really don't have that relationship building. in their toolkit. Well, she got them to speak at annual meetings and liven up the annual meetings when everyone was home during the pandemic. And that helped her grow her business. She went up growing to two employees. And, you know, you would think a live events business would just crash, but it didn't.
Oh, absolutely. And I think you're right, Rudy. Many of us pivot at gunpoint. But the fact is, if we do pivot, we have more chances of being successful. One entrepreneur that did a great job of this, Joey Healy, he had an eyebrow studio. He developed the Joey Healy method of styling eyebrows. And if you ever saw his eyebrows, they're just magnificent.
But basically, he had a little studio in Manhattan. He was working on wealthy women on the Upper East Side, going from house to house, found that was inefficient, started his own studio. Then he rented a fancy space near New York University.
He got shut down in the pandemic, but he made this private label makeup that would be like an add-on for each visit, adding to how much each person would spend on the visit because they get the brow style plus the makeup. Well, during the pandemic, he couldn't do any styling and neither could his stylist.
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