Turn Your Small Business into Big Money | Elaine Pofeldt

[EP] Elaine Pofeldt | Turn Your Small Business into Big Money

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Matt Edmundson: Welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. This is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow. And to help us do just that today, my very special guest is the wonderful Elaine Pofeld. We are going to be talking about her book and the latest findings and all that sort of good stuff.

But before we get into it, let me say a big warm welcome to all of our new listeners today. Bye bye. A very warm welcome to you if this is your first time here on the eCommerce Podcast. It is great to be connected with you. Make sure you subscribe to the show because I just don't understand why you wouldn't want to be subscribed to the show because I would.

I'm slightly biased. I get it. I know. But you can head over to eCommercePodcast. net, sign up to the newsletter and every week we send you the links and the notes and all that sort of stuff from each of our guests. So, uh, pretty straightforward, [00:01:00] just head over and do that. Now let's talk about Elaine, who is a, uh, just, Lovely person.

Actually, we've had quite a, a, a good chat already and so I'm really excited about today's podcast. She's a top business journalist featured in Fortune CNBC and Forbes, and she shines a light on seven figure successes with small teams and solo ventures. In her book, the latest book, Tiny Business, Big Money, which is the sequel, if you like, to the million dollar one person business.

Uh, Elaine is a Yale grad and former fortune editor, loves yoga and kickboxing, so watch out, as well as long walks with her four kids in New Jersey. Elaine, welcome to the show. Great to have you on. How are you doing today?

Elaine Pofeldt: Oh, thank you so much, Matt. I'm, I'm doing very well. And hello listeners. I'm so excited to be here.

Matt Edmundson: It's great to have you, it's great to have you, part of me would like to be in the same room chatting away, but if you've got kickboxing [00:02:00] skills, maybe, I don't know.

Well, I only do it on the heavy bag, so nothing to worry

Matt Edmundson: about. To be fair, I've been called worst, but that's okay. So you've, um, let's jump straight into it.

You know, you've got your books, Tiny Business, Big Money, and The Million Dollar One Person Business, which is a great book. Um, and. What's the latest on that? What's the sort of the latest news, uh, if you like, uh, based on this idea of the million dollar one person business? I mean, it's a beautiful title, kind of encapsulates everything that you mean.

Is that still right? Is it still relevant? What's, what's going on in that world?

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, Matt, there's some really good news about this, which is that the number of million dollar one person businesses has been skyrocketing. We got the numbers from the Census Bureau in the U. S. which tracks it at a level of detail that's a little bit more detailed than any other country so far, but others [00:03:00] are starting to do this too.

Right. They

Elaine Pofeldt: have, there are now 53, 460 businesses that are bringing in 1 to 2. 49 million in annual revenue a year and that's up nearly 48 percent since 2012. There are even, yeah, and there are even another 3, 244 bringing in 2. 5 million and up. Now, to be, uh, to give you some context, there are about 28 million small businesses in the U.

S. for that year that, that were recorded, so this is a tiny percentage of all of the businesses, but these are the businesses that we can all learn from and their numbers are growing. So, I was very excited to see these numbers and interestingly, One of the categories we're told to avoid, Professional Services, actually has the biggest cohort.

Thirteen thousand and change are in Professional Services. [00:04:00] Retail is another big one and for eCommerce there were 4, 215 and that was up nearly 31 percent since 2012. I'm a data geek so I go bananas, I'm going to stop myself from

Matt Edmundson: Got your spreadsheet, you're okay, yeah, yeah,

Elaine Pofeldt: yeah. It's good news. I, I, I think Programs like this are, it's really important to subscribe to them because they're really on the cutting edge of the knowledge that is allowing people to scale their revenues. This is not being taught in a business school, it's not being taught in a textbook, it's being learned on the ground, day by day, now it's incorporating AI.

And, it's tremendously empowering to the average person who is out there feeling like the system isn't really working for me, I'm an honest person, I'm working so hard, I can't keep up with my bills, even though I give 180 percent to my company, I'm somehow not getting any [00:05:00] financial rewards. Self employment is a powerful route to building wealth and I'm very excited that more people are doing it.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's, it's an interesting one, isn't it? Because when I, if I think back when I, when I started my business, I started it in the late nineties, right? So this was right back at the birth of the internet, um, to sort of put some kind of an age on myself. I had a full time job. I was designing health spas, you know, saunas and steam rooms and all that kind of stuff.

And I set up this business as a side hustle. Um, And started doing websites as a friend of mine, for a friend of mine. And here I am, you know, however many years later, uh, 26, 27 years later. And just, we have a company, we have a whole bunch, you know, we've got a great team. The whole thing has grown way beyond what I thought it was ever going to.

Um, but it, it's [00:06:00] not something anyone at school ever taught me. It's not really an option that I ever thought about when I was at school, this sort of whole entrepreneur, self employed idea. Um, but it's changed my life, you know,

Elaine Pofeldt: it's a real powerful tool for self realization. And I think there, I have four children ages, um, right now, 14 through 20.

And I've had a lot of experience with the public school system in the U S and I feel like it should be taught more because there are a lot of brilliant people who come out of schools feeling like they're not smart, because they're, you know, they're not smart. Intelligence lies more in the area of business and creating something out of nothing.

Basically, that's what you're doing with the business, right? You're using all your ingenuity to create something new and schools kind of funnel us into the existing system of jobs. They prepare us for traditional jobs, but guess what's [00:07:00] happening. We all see it around us. Companies are being disrupted. A lot is changing and.

You could give your all to a traditional career and then all of a sudden the whole industry is disrupted or the company brings in efficiencies or a private equity firm buys them and wants to cut all the jobs, whatever it may be. And all of a sudden you're back to square one. And I feel that self employment should be a mandatory skill for everyone in every country, as long as the country allows it.

Um, And even then they should probably be allowing it. But, but we, I think we need it. I also feel that the employment system is very discriminatory towards a lot of different people for different reasons. They're too young, too old, they're women, they're people of color, whatever it is, it's not stacked evenly in favor of all people.

And at some point people want to receive the fruits of their labors. And. The way [00:08:00] to do it is really through self employment where there's no gatekeeper telling you that you can't do it because of who you intrinsically are.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of power in that, isn't it? It kind of, it goes back to the sort of the pre industrial age where most people were self employed, wasn't it?

And, and then the, you know, the industrial age happened and the Victorians happened and it all went a little bit different. Um, you know, Henry Ford just decided to put a quite genius, you know, methodology in car building, but it's, It is changed how we do things now. So actually for the longest time, um, being an entrepreneur or being self-employed was almost looked down on, you know, it's like, oh, can't you get a proper job?

You know, that, I dunno what it was like in the States, but that's what it was like a little bit in England. Um, obviously that's changed a lot I think with social media and there seems to be some good kudos around it now. And I know we get a lot of people listening to the show who are just starting out or who are thinking of starting an e-comm business.

And taking that sort of step, whether it's a side hustle, whether it's a full time job, [00:09:00] um, you know, all kinds of different possibilities going on. So let's dig into it a little bit. I mean, what's working at the moment? You've, you've obviously written the book, you've had lots of stories, you've met lots of amazing people.

What's, what are some of the things that we should be thinking about ourselves to ensure success going forward?

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, one key The one thing that's really important is to go rogue and what I mean by that is last night, the reason I have shadows under my eyes a little bit is because my children and I were having dinner with Gary Lim, who was the founder of the entrepreneurship education program at Prince, at Syracuse University.

He went to Princeton University. They founded the program at Syracuse many years ago and it was when I was a young journalist and at that time, Entrepreneurship education was new. Columbia University was a pioneer. There were a few schools. Wharton was a pioneer, but most of [00:10:00] the schools that were teaching it were doing it on the down low.

Right.

Elaine Pofeldt: It was seen as a, as sort of a lesser discipline. The only corporate business was the thing you should be teaching. And I think in part that was because in the MBA programs, companies were sending their workers there to get an MBA. So maybe it would have offended. um, so, I think being an early adapter of the new information that's out there is really important, because if you waited 30 years for it to be mainstream, you would have missed out on a lot, And interestingly, I had to do an article about the history of entrepreneurship in New York City.

And around the time that you were starting your [00:11:00] business, that was when there was Silicon Alley in New York City. City starting up. I mean, there was almost nothing until Bill Gates going on in terms of the type of entrepreneurship you and I are talking about. There was always, you know, Henry Ford, people like that.

But in terms of more everyday people starting businesses, it's only really been the last 25 or 30 years. So we are on the front lines of something new. And what I've seen, because a, a good part of that time, I've been writing about entrepreneurs, the people that do things early, that experiment early. Make new connections all the time and learn from each other will always do better.

And that's what I've learned with writing the two books. A lot of the people in these books know each other, not through me, but just independently, getting out there and meeting each other. Cause that's the only way to learn. And you really have so many opportunities to have an exciting career where you're a lifelong learner if you're in [00:12:00] entrepreneurship.

So that's one thing I would encourage people to. Embrace, um, and if you do that, you'll have a much greater chance of success.

Matt Edmundson: That's super powerful. I love the phrase, Go Rogue, uh, I, I, I, I, it's a t shirt slogan in many ways, isn't it? I love that and I think I can see that, that one working quite well. I actually have t shirts with the Rogue brand on from, uh, the CrossFit and, um, um, yeah.

Yeah, I, I, I should just write the word go above it, I think that's quite, because I think going rogue or going off the beaten path, becoming an early adopter, going out meeting people, figuring out problems, trying to solve them, that kind of lies at the heart of entrepreneurship, right?

Elaine Pofeldt: It really does, and also being willing to risk social disapproval, because so many entrepreneurs have told me their stories, and there was always somebody in their life who was worried about them.

That they were not going to have a steady job and would be unemployed and [00:13:00] parasitically living off everyone else around them. And the truth is you do have to do the work. I mean, that's another part of going rogue, go rogue, but do the work, show up for the business every day. Like you did, if you have to do it as a side hustle, well, you have plenty of company, most people do it as a side hustle.

So if you're saying, Oh, I have to wait till the day that I can quit everything. I have no financial responsibilities. You'll be in a very elite few, people that are in that situation usually don't even have to work, so most people do start it on the side. That gives you some runway, because let's face it, it's hard to come up with the amount of startup capital people say that you need, it's, you know, they'll say, oh, you have to have one year's worth of living expenses, and one year's worth of business expenses.

Who can save that kind of money today? Almost nobody. Average Income, or even Above Average Income can really do that, so don't let people talk you out of it. Usually in, in my books, what I found is maybe if they were [00:14:00] in a couple, maybe one person worked and the other person started the business, or one person went to consulting instead of having a full time job so they had a little more flexibility to start the business.

Find a way to do it. Because it's worth doing. And it gives you a lot of staying power in your career, especially as you get older, because I don't know if this is true in the UK, but in the U S in certain fields, if someone's over 45. The companies don't even want them, like in the tech industry, and they have so much knowledge and value to give.

They're becoming a very big cohort of people that are starting businesses because they have so much life left in them and so much knowledge. So you may not need it early in your career. You may, you know, as Tim Ferriss says, you may be learning on someone else's dime and building connections on someone else's dime, but at a certain point you may need to You tap into everything you've built to start your own business, so why not start early, make the [00:15:00] mistakes, learn early, and then if you need to pull that out of your toolkit or if there's a recession and you downsize, and you were downsized, you can start your own business and hit the ground running.

Plus, you don't have to compromise yourself as much. I think there are a lot of people that are in jobs that literally are killing them with stress. And they're being asked to do so many things that maybe don't even make sense to them. If you know you can start your own business, it gives you a lot of courage.

So even if you never start a business that goes full time, you can bring something different to your job where you can just be a little more firm and independent when you're making recommendations, because you know you would quit if you had to and start the business.

And

Elaine Pofeldt: I think that's very empowering today because of the world that we live in business wise, it's a very weird world right now.

And I think people are being de emphasized and yet we are people and we know that we matter and our souls matter, not just money and [00:16:00] the bottom line. I think that's another thing that often the readers of my books have in common. They really prioritize their personal life. They want to live life while they're on this planet and not just be a cog and That's why self employment can be so valuable.

Matt Edmundson: It's really, really powerful. I, I, it's something I just want to pick up on there. I read a stat and Elaine, I don't know how true it is. Maybe you can speak to this. That the average age of an entrepreneur starting their first business is actually in their early to mid forties. And this surprised me that, um, it was sort of this late.

In life that actually I kind of expect if someone had said to me, you know, how, what's the older, the age of a typical entrepreneur? I'd have said 12, I don't know, you know, maybe 18 or something like that. But apparently it, it, it seems to be that as we get. Further on in life, we're more likely to start a business.

Is that true? [00:17:00]

Elaine Pofeldt: One of the fastest growing groups in the US of business owners is actually over 50. So that number actually rings true to me. I think the reason is people reach a certain point in their careers where they have a point of view. And I noticed this because I'm a ghostwriter also. And I find that generally speaking, not always, but generally the majority of my clients At age 45 and up have started to form a point of view where they can be a thought leader in their field.

Before that, they're still kind of learning

the

Elaine Pofeldt: basics and becoming proficient in it. But at a certain point, you'll have a, an area of friendly disagreement with your industry where you realize there's a better way to do things. And that's usually where the innovation comes or the book comes or the new system comes.

It's, it's in that. Moving of the conversation forward around whatever it is that you're doing or selling. So it makes [00:18:00] total sense. Plus you may have amassed some savings. So although maybe you can't save a whole year's worth of expenses for the business and living expenses, you've saved something.

Whereas someone who is just out of college in the U S I don't know if this is true all over, but we have a lot of student debt. And so. It could take someone until their mid thirties to pay that off, or maybe even later. So it's harder for them to start a business when they're paying off these huge bills for tuition.

But there may be things in other countries, you know, similar to that, where it, it's hard. Plus people have to become proficient in their field.

Yeah,

Elaine Pofeldt: I mean, sometimes people, I have written some articles recently about some very young entrepreneurs, sometimes. They can become proficient as teenagers, so it's not always true.

And they're more proficient than we'll ever be. So . I don't wanna stop anyone of any age from doing this. Mm-Hmm. . Because a lot depends on the business that you're starting too.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. But I love that I, it's [00:19:00] interesting that the fastest grown is in the fifties. I think you're right. I, yeah, I, which makes me think you're never too old.

Right. And, and I think some people discount themselves because of age and actually. I think in your 40s and your 50s, you, you not only know stuff, which you didn't know when you were younger. Um, but actually I think life has a different, I'm just thinking about, I mean, I mean I'm in my early 50s now and I think back to my 20s, you know, um, I was very much about success.

I wanted success in my 20s. And then sort of in my 40s and 50s, I think I transitioned more to Wanting more significance rather than success is maybe a word that I'd use, you know, and I think, um, I think your outlook on life begins to change, doesn't it? And so it's stuck, and you, you start to think there's got to be more than the, the rat race that I'm in, and, and somehow starting your own business brings with it an, an element of, Fear, but an element of freedom at the same time, isn't it?

It's like I, you know, I'm, [00:20:00] I'm starting to take a little bit more control over my life and have a bit more say.

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, there's definitely an element of risk to it. And although I'm a big champion of starting a business, there is some fear, but there's also self mastery. I look at a business as a practice. I do yoga and until the pandemic, I was doing a lot of martial arts, not the kickboxing, but the real Taekwondo.

And. And with my daughters, it was actually our mother daughter activity. And, um, what happens is you have to show up to a large number of classes before you have the breakthrough. And what it teaches you is you don't know what day the breakthrough will come. So the people that are successful, they may have fear, but they keep showing up and maybe the way they allow themselves to keep showing up is doing it as a side hustle as you did, Matt, so that you have the time to let the [00:21:00] ideas and insights and innovations take place naturally where you're not so pressured that you're about to lose the roof over your head.

I mean, as you get older too, you might have children or dependents where you can't just Say sink or swim because they won't have a roof with kids, or there will be no groceries in the refrigerator. You have to be mindful of that if, if you have dependent. So the showing up gives you that chance of, you know, even if you spend one hour a day and just buff up your LinkedIn profile or reach out to one person, if you do one thing.

For five days a week, one important thing going back to the one thing book, right? Um, you, you really get pretty far. You might not have things happen exactly on your personal schedule. I mean, I think that's what happens when you're very young. You want those instant hits of gratification. You know, you won an award or you got a promotion, a lot of external [00:22:00] things because you're really trained in the school system to look for external validation.

But I think As your life deepens, you start to look for deeper, more spiritual validation or internal validation, and you realize a lot of the external things are so subjective anyway.

Yeah.

Elaine Pofeldt: They mean less to you. I'm not saying they don't mean anything, but There are a lot of great people that don't get recognized.

Like we look at that movie Hidden Figures, you know, and so

you

Elaine Pofeldt: realize it's not a level playing field anyway. So if you didn't get the awards, but you deserve them, well, in your business, you can have a chance to get the prizes anyway. But it's not just about that. You know, money is fleeting. It goes up and down.

There are cycles to it. There are economic cycles out of our control, like COVID that came out of left field hit everybody around the world. No one could have predicted that. I mean, some people did predict it, but generally most of us weren't walking around worrying about a global pandemic, shutting down our businesses [00:23:00] and doing all that it did.

Um, and you realize that I think, you know, as you get older, but it also makes running a business more exciting because you're open to the journey and you also have the life skills and the scaffolding in your life to support you in it in whatever form it takes. And you have the network too. I, I want to say something about that because.

I usually, in the mornings, I go on a walk and I brainstorm with my friend Diamond Michael Scott, who runs Great Books, Great Minds, which is, if you love reading, he's a great curator of books, and we were talking about how Connection is going to be one of the most important resources for people in the future with all the AI driven systems and tech driven system to get anything done.

Here in the U. S. it seems like if you have to do anything like call a credit card company, Call anybody. You have to go through some sort of automated system. And then they [00:24:00] put, they always say due to high call volume, there isn't a customer service rep and you sit there for an hour. I had something happen yesterday.

Literally. I forgot that I even called and it was, it was on for an hour. Then I hear this voice. I'm like, who did I call? And I'm like, Oh, that was like an hour ago, but, but. The people that are going to be successful are not going to be hijacked by all of these systems as they get through their daily life.

They will have human connections where they can say, I'm not going through that stupid system. I'm calling a real person and getting this done in one minute the way it's supposed to take. And I think tools like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, all of those are valuable because if you have genuine relationships with people and you have a question about something, You can reach out to them and just bypass all of these tools that are really tools for efficiency to allow the owner to build profits.

But really today, I think in many cases at people's expense, at the expense of society, at the [00:25:00] expense of their team and the customer.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's fascinating. Fascinating. How long did you, I'm just curious, Elaine, going back to the book, how long did it take for you to write the book?

Elaine Pofeldt: It took a long time because I started writing blogs about this topic, it was about, I think, 2013 that I wrote the first one about the non employer business.

I came across these stats on the Census Bureau site when I, I write a blog for Forbes and you write five a month as part of your requirement and I was getting towards the end of the month Googling for inspiration for something I could write about and I had kind of run through all the interviews. That I did for the month and I saw this data and I started poking around and I love data and I noticed that there were people breaking 1 million in these self-employed businesses, which is far from the norm.

I think the average in the US is around 60,000 compared to 1 million. So this [00:26:00] is many times what people will make and they're not necessarily even full-time businesses. So I wrote a post about the data because you can't call a government agency and say, Oh, who, who were the people that filled out this survey?

What was the name of their business? And, and, um, I, when I wrote it, it went viral and people started writing to me and saying, this was a cliffhanger, Elaine. Why did you write about it and not tell us who the businesses were? So. I wrote to the readers of Forbes, and I said, if you're one of these businesses, please tell us who you are, and they started writing to me, but it was very slow, and each time I, I found one, I would interview them, and then I did this post, um, it was about a year later, about the rise of the million dollar one person business, and I had five businesses, um, one was Alan Walton, an eCommerce entrepreneur who runs Spy Guy, it's a, um, like a nanny camera store,

Okay.

Um,

Elaine Pofeldt: and then Rachel Char Lipski runs [00:27:00] the babysitting company, which she was running it from a Blackberry at the time. It was a, a babysitting network, but for sports teams. So if the players were on the field and their spouses wanted to come. They could bring the kids into this very secure babysitting area.

Um, there was somebody, Peter Leeds, who did a finance newsletter. Uh, Dan Mezaritsky, he was a fitness trainer who licensed his methodology and, um, they were all breaking 1 million. There was, there was one other. And. It went even more viral. So then I saw there was a real interest in this topic and much more than anything I ever wrote about startups.

And I wrote quite a few articles about entrepreneurship. And so each time I found one, they were a needle in a haystack. I would profile them and I came to understand, you know, what people were interested in knowing about them. And I also got to observe their [00:28:00] best practices. And that, uh, led to this whole, uh, book journey and agent Layla Campoli saw the posts and wrote to me and, um, we actually just did an event for the New York Public Library about writing a business book and she spoke and we talked about this in terms of if any of the listeners plan to write a book, testing your material.

out in the marketplace like that can be a good idea because you see what people are curious about. But anyway, that led to the million dollar one person business. And what was very interesting was that many of them were inspired by Tim Ferriss, the author of the four hour work week. And so when they celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the four hour work week, I co hosted that podcast with him a couple of times with some of the people from the book.

And

it

Elaine Pofeldt: was so much fun to see because I had actually interviewed him. He, we did the first excerpt of his book before he was known at [00:29:00] all at Fortune Small Business Magazine.

Mm-Hmm. .

Elaine Pofeldt: And he was an e-commerce entrepreneur. I don't know if people know this, he may, if they follow him, but he was doing supplements.

Um, that's

right. Yep.

Elaine Pofeldt: And he had a million dollar one person business basically. And so we took an excerpt from the book, but we added material like that into the piece because there was a requirement at Fortune Small Business Magazine that you had to be breaking one million. And it was so interesting to see how his ideas evolved, but Not only that, how real people interacted with them and applied

them

Elaine Pofeldt: and fine tuned them to their unique needs over a 10 year period, and I would say probably more than any other person on the planet, he probably influenced the creation of more of the million dollar one person businesses than anyone else.

And I'm a journalist, I'm chronicling it, and I'm learning from them on the ground. In tiny business, big money, what happened was some of them started [00:30:00] to hire one or two employees, or sometimes they would actually become a traditional scale up. And I looked at how do they keep all the good parts of being a million dollar one person business, what you've been talking about, Matt, all the freedom and excitement of the journey, while they build the team, because There's one entrepreneur, Jason Alan Scott, he does a podcast company, he's from the UK, he says, never have a boss, never be a boss, that's his motto, and I think a lot of them subscribe to that,

but

Elaine Pofeldt: how do you, when you do have to kind of be a boss, maybe it's a team of contractors, but you have to tell people what good looks like, what you want them to do, how do you hold on to all the good stuff without turning back into the company that you didn't want to be.

And some of them are doing interesting things. One guy who is living in Portugal now, Brian Dean, he started Backlinko, which is, um, it's an SEO course, and he wound up selling it to a [00:31:00] publicly traded company, SEMrush,

as a

Elaine Pofeldt: one person business. He had contractors, um, and he runs his whole team on Notion. He has contractors, uh, you know, maybe ten that are recurring, but he's not an employer, and, um, Think about that.

He doesn't like meetings, so he doesn't have them. You can actually do that.

Matt Edmundson: It's wonderful, isn't it? And, and it's the, what's intrigued me actually, as I'm listening to you talk is the rise of people who run their business. It's just them. Don't be a boss. Don't, you know, don't have a boss. It is an interesting, I mean, I failed at that because we have a team, but, um, what is interesting is, is, is the rise in the digital nomad now, so these, these people run their business from a laptop and they're using it as an excuse to travel the world because they can work on their laptop, again I think inspired by books like 4 Hour Workweek, um, to the point now where there's websites, there's companies like [00:32:00] Airbnb, specifically for come stay in this house for two months, you know, you've got everything you need to work, plus you can sit on the beach and travel and make friends and all that sort of stuff and it's great.

That sort of rise of the lifestyle, self employed business, where you're making money, but you have not as much responsibility as you would if you went down the traditional route, is seemingly becoming more and more popular.

Elaine Pofeldt: Matt, you're raising a very important global issue, because think about what the average person's biggest expense is.

It's housing. So people that cannot find the money to run a business. Can easily hack their housing costs if they have the mobility. Now, if you have children in a school system, it's very difficult unless you're homeschooling them. And I have done homeschooling. It's a big commitment. Um, and I was not able to sustain it because I work a lot.

And, uh, but for [00:33:00] people that do have that mobility, it's a big trend. It's very interesting. It brings in a lot of new inputs to the business. And one thing I find, um, because of the rise of all the different. Video conferencing platforms that are free. It used to be that a long distance call costs a lot of money, like 200, you know, and, and now you can talk to people anywhere in the world for free.

And what I find is entrepreneurs are a special breed and they're so similar in every country in the world, you know, just their whole mojo and their vibe. And. Being a digital nomad is such a great way to tap into that and just cross pollinate with all the people around the globe that share that passion for entrepreneurship and doing things your way and, and basically it's freedom.

They like freedom. They don't want to be fit into a cookie cutter system. You were talking about, um, Henry Ford, you know, and the, um, automobile [00:34:00] and factories, right? And that whole. System of manufacturing cars and things from the manufacturing age is disappearing

and

Elaine Pofeldt: would make no sense to someone my son's age who's 14 because they do everything digitally.

They don't understand. I think this is why there is so many conflicts about why do I have to work in the office when I could do it just as well from my balcony. And we, we we're working in so many new ways. And the old systems are kind of self defending. Commercial real estate, for instance, they want us in those buildings.

Yeah.

Elaine Pofeldt: But do we need to be there? Is it good for us? Is it good for the planet for all these people to be in cars and trains and everything else? I think younger generations and even older people that just think differently are questioning these things.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right and quite rightly so too.

Uh, listen, Elaine, I, I'm aware of time, uh, and I'm aware that the conversation is just getting started. What would be, [00:35:00] um, just to sort of in closing really, uh, people that listen to the show, I would, I don't have an exact number, but I'm going to say 95 percent of them will be, um, their own boss. Now they may have a team, they may be running their eCom business as a side hustle, it may be just them or that them and their partner or whatever it is.

It can get tough and so could you just maybe in closing to speak to that what what would be some advice that you've learned You know in all the interviews and in writing the books that just helps people to keep going when times get tough

Elaine Pofeldt: Well through safety in numbers. There's one Event that I've been covering for a while called the seven figure Seller Summit, Gary Huang runs it.

A lot of the eCommerce people seem to come together at that event and I know he did a really deep dive into AI and how that can be used to offload some of the work of an eCommerce business. There, I'm sure there are other people like him who are out there, that's the one I'm most [00:36:00] familiar with, but find some groups that you can belong to and events to go to so that you're in touch with other people walking the same journey because of him.

Amazon may change its algorithms. I mean, there's so many and Amazon isn't the only place that people are selling. So sharing that information can help insulate you from the impact of the changes, I would say, be a student of automation, of using contractors, of outsourcing, because sometimes you have to put in an upfront investment of time in learning these things and there's time on the setup, but you can sometimes pay someone to set you up and save you that time.

So that you can avail yourself of that, and I'm not against hiring employees, if you need to hire them, that's good, but wait until you can afford it, because you have to make payroll if you do have a payroll, and that puts a lot of pressure on your bottom line, so [00:37:00] go as far as you can with those things, and then when you really need to bring on full time people, do it, but do it when you're ready, so that you have the nimbleness of a small business.

Matt Edmundson: That's fantastic. I love that. I love that get together in community or find people that you like, you know, where I'm, I'm part of four or five groups like that in the different things I'm involved with. And it is just priceless, um, absolutely priceless. And of course, it's a nice segue, Elaine, not that we planned this.

Uh, if you are an eCommerce and would like to join a said group, uh, like that, get in touch with us because we do actually have something like that, which you could join, but. Uh, just contact us through the website or on social media, we'll send you more information. But Elaine, listen, uh, if people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect, if they want to find out more, maybe even get the copy of the book, what's the best way to do that?

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, they can reach me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and X. My book is under my full name, Elaine Pofel, which is [00:38:00] spelled in the show notes. You'll never remember how it's spelled.

My books are in Amazon or Barnes Noble, any major bookseller. I'm on Instagram under million dollar one person business. So you can basically reach me anywhere. I do write back. Please do write to me because I'm a journalist and it makes me a better journalist. And. Um, I'd love to hear what's on your minds and how I can be more helpful in my coverage.

I do want to say something about the groups. A lot of times people are hesitant to invest in themselves with these groups, but what I always think about is what if you got one new customer from being part of these groups? What is the lifetime value of the customer going to an event? When I'm talking myself out of, myself out of doing something, you know, Oh, I'm going to spend 2, 000 on this.

Business Trip. I think about that and almost [00:39:00] always there is one customer gained from every trip or one valuable partner. It could be a collaborator. So think about that because I think that's one thing that I noticed the million dollar one person businesses do is they do invest in themselves and Strategically, not in every single thing, but putting themselves in groups where they can be either with their peers or people a few steps ahead of them is invaluable.

So if there's any parting word, I would say that that it is so important. I've been thinking a lot about connection and community. And I think if you spend 20, 25, Just building community and connection. Your business will be so much bigger than you ever imagined.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Very powerful words. Elaine, thank you so much for joining us, uh, on the eCommerce Podcast.

It's been an absolute treat and joy to talk to you and love the book, love what you're doing. I just, you know, I just love it because we're all here doing our thing. And it's just nice to [00:40:00] hear stories and encouragement about, you know, being A small business guy really, and, and just, yeah, hope you guys, uh, got something out of it as well.

Keep going, keep listening. Uh, keep persevering because it, it, it pays off. So, Elaine, thank you. Thank you so much.

Elaine Pofeldt: Thank you so much, Matt.

Matt Edmundson: Wow. What a fantastic episode. We will of course, link to Elaine's info in the show notes, which you can get along for free with the [email protected]. And it will be winging its way direct your inbox if you have signed up for the newsletter now.

Great, a great conversation. Just love that. Now be sure to follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from because we have yet more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are.

Created awesome. It's just a burden you've got to bear. Elaine's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now the eCommerce Podcast is [00:41:00] produced by PodJunction. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The wonderful team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon and Jonah Priska.

Theme music was written by Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, simply head over to the website or just scroll down actually on your podcast app. They're also there as well. Uh, but that's it from me. That's it from Elaine. Thank you so much for joining us.

Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.