SCFO #007: What Separates Solopreneurs Who Create Million-Dollar Businesses?
Read time: 5 minutes or less
I recently read The Million-Dollar One-Person Business by Elaine Pofeldt.
I came away absolutely fascinated by what other solopreneurs are building.
What surprised me most was the numbers.
As of 2019, 45k+ solopreneurs in the U.S. are running million-dollar businesses!
Let that sink in for a second.
I was so inspired by the book that I laid out an audacious goal myself - one that I am almost embarrassed to share.
Almost.
To get past my fear, I even posted it on social media, so now there’s no turning back… 👇
Generally, I’m not one to set monetary goals.
In the past, I’ve outright resisted them.
As a solopreneur, I find far more joy in:
Doing what I want
When I want, and
With who I want
It’s why I constrained my goal to 30 hours per week.
I never want to sacrifice time for money.
Time is the holy grail.
So the question remains.
Will I accomplish my goal? Who knows.
Do I care if I fall short? Hell no.
To me, solopreneurship is all about the journey and living a purpose-filled life.
But enough about me.
Let’s get back to what I teased out in the title.
What Separates the Solopreneurs that create Million-Dollar Businesses?
Let’s dive in.
It’s all about leverage, but not the kind you think.
After researching and publishing a thread on 5 solopreneurs that achieved million-dollar status, one thing became clear:
Leverage is the key.
But not leverage in the traditional sense.
We’re not talking about financing a start-up by raising capital or taking out a loan.
We’re talking about a new form of leverage → Digital Leverage.
It encompasses things like:
Building a brand
Productizing your work,
And shipping your product
And it’s exactly how every solopreneur achieved million-dollar status from my case study.
Let’s break it down further.
Building a Brand
“An artist who doesn’t have any audience is not an artist.”
— Rokia Traore
In the digital economy, your brand is your distribution channel.
If you have no audience, you have no brand.
Conversely, if you have an audience, you have a brand.
One thing was clear from the creators I studied. Their path to creating authority included:
Creating quality content and
Distributing content in a unique way
Let’s take solopreneur Justin Welsh, for example.
He mastered brand building through LinkedIn and Twitter, but he didn’t do so right away.
He started as a SaaS consultant (his old Twitter handle was @JustinSaaS), but quickly realized that people wanted to hear more about:
His journey as a solopreneur,
His content creation process
And how he grew his audience.
So he absorbed this new information and pivoted to give the people exactly what they wanted.
Flash forward to today, and his business generates $1.7m per year from two-course offerings tailored to his audience → Content OS and LinkedIn OS.
Justin is shooting for even bigger goals in 2023. He set his sights on achieving $5m in revenue.
The best part?
He plans to accomplish it with a 3-day work week.
What’s not to like about that plan?!
Productizing your Work
“Working with templates, the scalability is limitless.”
— Nick Shaw
Universally, every digital solopreneur I studied packaged their product.
To get to one million, you need to think beyond the 1:1 model.
Miss Excel, Kat Norton, identified this early in her journey after going viral on TikTok.
She was still working her 9-5, but on the side, started posting catchy excel videos.
Her unique teaching style caught on like wildfire.
Rather than waiting, Kat dove in while the iron was hot and spent a few weeks building excel courses to distribute to her audience.
12 months later, she did $100k in sales…in one day.
She now generates a comfortable $1m+ in revenue while working less than 4 hours per day.
Whatever area you specialize in, packaging your product is key.
Templatize your offering with:
A course
A product
A community
If you truly are on a mission to build a million-dollar business, set your sites on building small so you can sell it an unlimited number of times. Digital. Leverage.
Shipping your Work
“The future belongs to those who ship.”
— AJ (founder of Carrd)
A shared trait of one-million-dollar solopreneurs is that they don’t get stuck in the planning phase.
They:
Create a product
Ship earlier than most would, and
Aren’t afraid to move on if it doesn’t work
They know that you’ll learn far more by shipping a product than by plotting out your next move.
Worst case? The product sucks and doesn’t sell, and you’re back to square one.
Best case? The product’s a hit, and you build from there.
Take AJ, founder of the one-page website builder, Carrd, as an example.
He famously launched his product with one simple tweet.
AJ realized that less is more and didn’t try to compete in the space of giants.
He identified a missing piece in the website market and delivered on that need.
Flash forward to today, and Carrd is a $1m+ business used by 5m+ websites and operated by one person, AJ.
His goal for 2023? Work less.
If you can get comfortable shipping a product, you’ll quickly find success.
Does it mean you’ll nail it on your first go?
No.
But with each attempt, you’ll learn something new until you discover where you’re meant to be.
As Sam Parr said,
”You’re going to swing and you’re going to miss, but you can’t get a hit unless you’re in the game.”
TL;DR
Million-dollar, one-person businesses are trending up. 📈
Solopreneurs are applying digital leverage to build ‘em fast.
What’s the formula they apply?
Build a brand
Productize your work
And ship your product
Kill the duds, and double down on what works.
Thank you for reading!
P.S. if you’re a solopreneur and feeling stuck on your journey to building true wealth, book a free 15-minute call today.
Let me help you get unstuck, so you can focus on doing the things you love.
