The Productive Writer

James Taylor interviews Elaine Pofeldt and they talk about Her latest book The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business

In this episode, we cover:

• The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business
• The discipline of writing
• Working to deadlines

Resources:

• Official Website

• Recommended Book: Superconnector by Scott Gerber

• Recommended Tools: ScheduleOnce

For More of Creative Life Podcast By James Taylor

Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript

Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.

James Taylor
Hi, I'm James Taylor business creativity and innovation keynote speaker. And this is the Creative Life, a show dedicated to you the creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration and advice, while at home at work or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, perform a designer, or a thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much much more. You'll find Show Notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at Jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode.

Hi, it's James Taylor here. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Authors Summit. This inspiring virtual summit reveals the secrets of making marketing and monetizing a best selling book. If you would like to access the full video version as well as in depth sessions with over 40 Best Selling authors that I've got a very special offer for you just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yeah, that's right. Over 40 New York Times and Amazon best selling authors, book editors, agents and publishers, sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to write and market your first or next best sellers. So just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, but not before you listen to today's episode.

Hey, there is James Taylor and I'm delighted today to be interviewing Elaine Pofeldt. Elaine is an author and freelance journalist who specializes in small business entrepreneurship and careers. Her latest book The million dollar, one person business looks at how entrepreneurs are hitting seven figure revenues in businesses without the only employee. How do they do this? Well by topic, automation and other technologies to scale their efforts. Her work has appeared in fortune, money, CNBC, Inc, Forbes and many other business publications. And she is a contributor to The Economist Intelligence Unit and it's my great pleasure to have Elaine join us today. So welcome Elaine. Thank you so much James. It's great to be here and we connect with you I have so I love speaking it was always you always a fascinating person to have a conversation with because you read so widely you can have you write on so many different areas robot tell everyone what are you working on just now what's currently got your focus?

Elaine Pofeldt
Well, I'm actually working on the proposal for my next book, I've been out and about doing a book tour and talking with a lot of entrepreneurs and hearing what's on their mind so it's given me a lot of ideas for where to take this concept further and where it can be most helpful to readers.

James Taylor
So so I know in your your very kind of case study focus, you do a lot of interviews, a lot of research, especially on this book, as well. Where did the Where did the initial idea come from? Where did the the inception of the idea of writing a book on this topic come from?

Elaine Pofeldt
English It was an accident, James. I am a writer better Entrepreneurship, as you know, and for many, many years, I was writing stories about scalable startups. That's kind of what the public likes to read about the next Facebook, or LinkedIn, whatever it may be. But what I found was a lot of the people running one person businesses had great stories too. And they were very happy. And they had amazing likes. Opie was interested in them. Just kind of in the back of my mind when running up against a deadline. Like a lot of writers, I tend to write things at the last minute like the really last minute. So it was it was the last day of the month and I had one more Forbes blog do and I was scrolling around on the internet for ideas. And I came across these Census Bureau statistics on the non employer business that's just that term non employee your business could put you to sleep by itself, but I knew it meant freelancers and one person businesses which I was interested in and I noticed that there was a packet of them bringing in between 1,000,002.4 9 million a year there were also some even over 5 million, but it was a very small number. So I started scrolling through the statistics. And I wrote a post about the industries that they ran because I thought it was fascinating. But you can't find out from the Census Bureau who the people are, it's a confidential survey. And when that post went up, I started getting a lot of reader mail saying, I would like to start a million dollar one person business. And I need to know exactly what they were doing. Was it e commerce? Was it professional services, etc. So I wrote to the readers and I said, people are really interested in this. If you're one of these businesses, please write to me. So about five of them wrote to me, and I wrote a post about them that went completely viral is now it's something like 340,000 page views. It went up about, I think, three years ago at this point. One of them was a babysitting company, a woman named Rachel Charlie ski. started at while in college she has 2500 babysitters, as contractors. Amazing and she's still in business. And then there's another one Alan Walton who started an online spy camera shop. And he got it to a million on his own. Now he's scaled a little bit I think he's currently at five or six employees, but he kept it ultra lean for a long time. Dan Meza wretzky in Toronto, Canada has been on the go, and he was a personal trainer who he hadn't trainers as employees. But he found it didn't work out too well. They were sort of cutting side deals with the clients and taking them off, you know, as freelance clients. So he started using them as contractors instead and then found the contractors business would grow when his business grew. So their interests were more aligned. So he's, he's built it up quite a bit to it, but that was just the beginning and then I started covering more of them. As they would read that post, which was very widely circulated in, you know, over a number of years, and write to me, and that was what eventually led to the idea for the book, because I never really had the opportunity to look at them as a group, I had over 30 in the book. And now I've probably interviewed at least 55 of them to really look at it from the high level and say, Okay, what have I noticed they all have in common, and that's what the book does.

James Taylor
Now, something that I was quite surprised that because you've been writing as a journalist as a freelance journalist for a long time, but this was actually your first book out under your own name. So I'm correct in saying that, that was that was a that was a first under your own name.

Elaine Pofeldt
It's not my first book, but it is my first book under my own name. So I had some experience with with structuring a book and the whole process of outlining it which was really helpful actually, having done it before for other people. I had a sense of how to cut out the things that would not be that interesting. to people and really focus on the entertainment and the value, at least I hope I did. Right. readers have adjusted very but but but I wanted to make sure that sometimes you can get books where there's so much instruction and you don't get inspired by them. You just you know, you read them and you think, Okay, I'm gonna settle this up and then you never do. I find stories are more memorable for people and inspire them more. So I it's very story driven, but I've had people write to me and say I've either listened to the book four times or read it multiple times. And each time I read the stories, I get one more nugget that I can apply to my business and what I found in my own business, just that one nugget could be like a six figure nugget that you add to your revenue. It's a matter of taking it and realizing this not a cookie cutter to how to apply these things. Like anything creative. A business is a creative thing. You have to interpret it and apply it to your own business, which is not going to be exactly like the businesses in the book. But we'll have some similarities. So that's the fun part, you kind of have to get into enjoying the process of experimenting and iterating till you get it right for you. There's no right but right for your business,

James Taylor
but one of those things by going and choosing different case studies from different types of industries. I know you talk about really six types of industries where you see these one, these these one person $1 million businesses more and more prevalent. But the other thing I think, as I was reading, it was thinking, I can imagine there's there's a viral nature to someone reading this book as well, because they will read it and they'll say, Oh, that's, that's it. I've got a friend that works in that industry or my brother in law works in that same industry, I should get a copy of this book for him. So by choosing different industries, they can have going on you come in different areas. I can actually imagine this is this is quite a giftable type of book. Here we go. I mean,

Elaine Pofeldt
I don't know I don't actually know too much about how people are purchasing it and what they do once they purchase it. Now, I looked at it from the point of view of a journalist because I thought, this is really interesting that this is even happening as a freelancer myself. I didn't know that there were people with no employees who were getting to 1 million I just didn't know it was possible. So when I saw that it was I thought, wow, like there's got to be something to this. So what you know, what, what are they doing, you know, and certain areas really surprising manufacturing. Who knew you could even do that as a one person business? The way that the businesses can do it is by using a co Packer second outsource manufacturing for more often they're in food when it's a one person business. So I have a panel coming up in San Francisco next week, where there's a woman who makes a product called boobie bar, and it's for lactating mothers. It's like powerbar type thing filled with nutrition. And she's a nurse had no business experience whatsoever. She's not in the book by the way, I met her after the book and I'm so sorry that she couldn't be this perfect example but maybe in the next one and she used a co Packer because she she started baking these bars for this group. She was running as a nurse teaching moms how to breastfeed after they had a new baby. And she couldn't make them in her kitchen for health reasons. You have to use a professional facility they have to have the right labels on them. But once she found the CO Packer to do all of that for her she was able to get into Walmart and and even with the name of the product, which my kids say I shouldn't even say on the air.

James Taylor
I like it. I think it's a memorable name. Oh

Elaine Pofeldt
parked in Walmart in bulk, right so so neither will I. And now she's gone on Shark Tank and it's been a great business for someone who had no business experience at all. She just Did it right she figured it out. And that's what I think is so cool. It's, there's not any precedent for this. So all the people who are doing this are inventing it as they go along. It was similar with another couple that's in the book, Rebecca Cronus and Luis Ceballos, they're a married couple with two small kids. And the woman's husband is a beekeeper and her father brother is a beekeeper and he was selling the bees to farms if he does it on a commercial level, and not doing too much with the honey. So they said, Dad, we want to sell the honey and we know there's been a problem in the market with adulterated honey with toxins in it. We know this came from you. It's clean. And so they built tropical trader specialty foods and online business where they sell this honey and it's not inexpensive. I think it was about $16 a jar but for someone who eats a lot of honey and concerned about toxins, there's a market and they've done really well. With this and they the way they do this is with a co Packer because they made a very deliberate lifestyle decision. She wants to be in the house with her children. She does want to work but but she has limited time. And this is how they extend what just two people can do

James Taylor
by using Luca Vikas. I know I know one of the examples you mentioned in the book is is an author as well. So, this this woman Megan, who is one of those one person $1 million businesses that tell us a little about her story.

Elaine Pofeldt
Megan Telenor is a great story. She is a nutritionist, and she started blogging about 10 years ago, I believe, might even be 11 at this point, but she blogged every single day for four years straight about different nutritional topics that kind of put her website on the map. And over time, she built a rapport with her readers and was able to figure out what are they really interested in and that led her to productizing, the business where she introduced the The green smoothie fast it was like a $10 product, a PDF file that she sold. And when it sold well, she realized I can build on this idea. What can I do next. And so gradually, she scaled up her product offerings to the point that she built the Academy of culinary nutrition, which is a school to teach people healthy cooking. And now she's close to 2 million in revenue. I think she's hired one employee since the book. But she's got a small baby. She's able to run this while taking summers off and has a great lifestyle it and she also wrote two cookbooks, the undying cookbook and another one under the diet brand, where she explores some of the recipes that she had put on the blog and it's a good example of discipline with writing. When she looks back I did a panel with her and she said she was sort of cringing looking back at her early blog like we all cringe looking back at our first drafts in early writing. But if you keep on keeping on, then you start building a body of work, you start building your reputation and and people keep coming back. I think the consistency is a common theme in all the businesses, whether they blog or not, it's just the consistency and showing up, maybe it was doing an email newsletter, for instance, they're good communicators with their following because that's the one thing as a one person business, you can do better than Amazon or any of the really big companies is connect on a human level

James Taylor
your click, you're closer to your customer. And you mentioned this idea of discipline and consistency. What is your daily writing practice, okay, because you obviously writing your your books, but you're also writing articles and obviously for Forbes, and we mentioned fortune as well. So tell us about your daily writing practice.

Elaine Pofeldt
I write every single day of the week, pretty much it's a little challenging for me, I have four children ages eight to 14, so sometimes My husband and I double as their personal Uber drivers. But, but I I am very disciplined about writing I have to say I wish I was a less disciplined person in certain ways but I can't help myself and I get up at five every day and either I go and do yoga or or cycling or something like that in the morning and then write or I write and then go do something like that. I tend to break it up with exercise because I find I'm not a good sitter, like I'll stand at my desk but when I'm doing heavy thinking I can't stand I have to sit for some reason I have to pay

James Taylor
I'm a terrible Pacer. I'm I've got whiteboards I'm always pacing especially in those ideation periods.

Elaine Pofeldt
Well that's good for your Fitbit right? Yeah,

James Taylor
yeah, I get my steps up that way as well.

Elaine Pofeldt
Me miles today so far kilometers.

James Taylor
If I could only figure out a way to be able to write and and walk at the same time I haven't quite got that I can do this. The speaking ideas As I'm out walking or if I'm running, but haven't got the bit to be able to do that where you can actually, you know, get words out in the page. I bet I haven't mastered yet.

Elaine Pofeldt
Yeah, I wish I could do that too. I'm a pacer a little bit too. But I find breaking up the day that way where you're not just glued to your computer, I remember reading a book saying that we all have a better 90 minute attention span for doing that type of work. So after 90 minutes, I usually break I mean, sometimes I do household chores or things like that, or I make a phone call. I'm gearing more towards AI since I'm a journalist, and I interview people a lot. And I'm starting to do things with my schedule, using an app called scheduling once where I have days that I don't do phone calls, because I find they're sort of interrupting factor to my train of thought when I'm doing a lot of phone work. And I'll just group all the calls on one or two days. That can be stressful too. But then there's no perfect balance. I mean, I think with writers if you have to make a living doing something like a book is sort of a long pay off type of project. So you have to pace yourself. And there's the perfect world, we quit everything, you have no other responsibilities and no bills to pay. And then there's the real world, we have these chunks of time that you can use to write or not right? But you have to treat yourself like these business owners do as a precious resource, and not neglect yourself. I had to learn that over time, because when I had young children, it would, you know, I like a lot of working parents, it would be like, okay, I'll skip yoga, because I didn't have any quality time with my children today or whatever, which is, you know, makes sense at the time. But now I realized that for stamina and staying power and doing what I want to do, I do have to actually physically take care of myself too. And then it's not bad for my kids to see that. Yeah. So I think for the people that tend to sort of feel they have to always say no to themselves and yes to everyone else. It's important to just think of it as more of a marathon and not a sprint and think about what would you do to take care of yourself if you were training for a

James Taylor
marathon, I did the same thing as you you mentioned like the scheduling your calls I scheduled mines. Mostly on this isn't unusual. We're actually speaking on Friday, but normally I'll do mine on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays I'll do them in the afternoon and I never do calls in the mornings because I just find that's my most creative time. And it really is, I get really frustrated if I have to do a call for some reason in the morning. Because it just it breaks my my flow a little bit so that I think that's a great and mentioned schools to like schedule once I use calendly very similar. So it allows you can have someone scheduling all those different research calls and interviews that you can do to start getting the ideas and content for your stories.

Elaine Pofeldt
And that makes a lot of sense. And I think first thing the morning energy if you're a morning person is really helpful because your mind is so uncluttered and it's usually quiet and in once you bang out that writing, then the whole rest of the day you feel you've been productive.

James Taylor
You've what you've won that day already. I haven't quite got the I am thing I'm very, I would love to get to this that 5am thing I haven't quite managed to get that Father,

Elaine Pofeldt
I would have if I didn't have four children. It's funny because I was when I had my third child, I have, I have 214 year olds, 12 year old and an eight year old. So I had like three babies at one time, basically. And afraid I was having trouble getting my work done. And one of my friends said, Oh, you got to get up at 5am. And I never had really gotten up at that time before. But I started doing it. And then I adjusted my clock to it. And then I found I couldn't really live without that two hour block before my family got up that quiet. So now I just do it on the weekends most of the time. It just gives you back some time that no one else is going to be up and ask anything of you. So you have no excuse not to, I don't know what

James Taylor
whatever other guests who actually worked in the Navy and he was building up his writing career as he was doing a full time job in the Navy. So you work from eight to four, eight to five in the job that he was doing there. And so he was he He said, I just had to get up at 5am because was the only time I would be able to do that work. And he said, even when he left the Navy, he still keeps that morning ritual, even though he doesn't have and that allows him, you know, eight o'clock, you know, starts preparing food and things for the kids and whatnot. So he said it was difficult at first, but he said, you can get used to it as you say,

Elaine Pofeldt
yeah, you just you'll eventually reset unless you're really, really a night person. Sometimes I do writing at night, I think it's important to just get it done. Whatever time of the day it is, if you sort of loan your perfect schedule. Last night, I was writing till one o'clock in the morning, which I didn't really wish to do. But it was just I had some scheduling issues yesterday that changed my schedule, and I had to get it done. So if you stick with it and say what my deadline is today, that's another thing I would say. I need deadlines. Everybody needs deadlines. When I work with ghostwriting clients, they need deadlines for thinking about the ideas. If you don't set deadlines, you won't get things done. Just saying I want to get a book done. In the next year does not cut it. You have to, I think, use some project management skills, sort of think about, okay, you know, what are the components of this project? This is what I will do with a ghostwriting client is what I wound up doing with myself. Okay, you know, what are the chapters that should be in this book? What are the sections of those chapters? How much time does it take to write each chunk of the chapter? And then you plan it that there are certain deadlines like maybe this month you're doing this one chapter, I think with a book, realistically, you aim for two weeks for a chapter with almost any book. And then it will spread to one month because things happen like you get a creative block or you get busy or whatever. If you could knock out say, a five or six chapter book over the next six or seven months, your book will be done.

James Taylor
Done. Yeah, it's just getting it as good as you say it's going to setting those deadlines, scheduling those those times in your calendar, whether it means getting up early or Time blocking, and we often hear about as well. And what about tools? Are there any tools that you find very useful wrench and schedule once they're in terms of scheduling calls with, with people you're gonna be interviewing for your books? But is there any other tools that you use you find very useful in your writing?

Elaine Pofeldt
No, it's not really a tool. But I know this will sound counterintuitive, but I find that actually getting out of my house and going to things like meetups or having my own events around the book, where I actually spend time having real conversations with entrepreneurs is the most important thing because sometimes you get into an echo chamber in your own head where you you're processing the material, and you get to a sticking point in your understanding, and you're not going to solve it on your own. So I might schedule a call if I can't get out with somebody, you know, maybe when, like it for the second book, I've been talking to some of the entrepreneurs from the first book that some unresolved questions that I had from that book, to get their take because they're the ones Who are the entrepreneurs? I mean, I, I am somewhat of an entrepreneur too. But I'm basically a freelancer and a book author. It's different than running, you know, an e commerce store, for instance, that, so I tried to get their take on things. And then I decided, Okay, that makes sense to me. It doesn't make sense to me, and then come back to the material fresh and try to imagine them reading it, like, would they get any value out of it. So it's more of like a real time interaction with the types of people that you think would be interested in the book, and also the people that might become those people. So I pay a lot of attention when I have an event, to the people that come up to me afterward and say, Elaine, I would love to get to $1 million in revenue. But I'm at 40,000. I want to get to six figures first. What do I do? And a lot of times it wasn't having lunch with them or coffee and talk with them. And that helps me to see their thinking patterns and why why is their business different from the person that got to 1 million and what's stopping them? And then that helps me fill in the gaps with exercises and things that I can do in the book that will help them to make that leap. Which is not easy. Yeah. And it can be a 10 year process too. It's not an overnight process, I won't.

James Taylor
But if you do recommend one book on the year, the craft of writing how to be a better writer, or on the marketing side of writing, what would that book be? Oh, that's,

Elaine Pofeldt
that's really a tough one. You know, I recently read a book called Super connector by Scott Gerber and a co author. And they talked a lot about building deep relationships with other people, basically. And not the kind of superficial and networking that other people have. No, this is not so much about the craft of writing, but in terms of like journalistic writing, if you want to do good journalistic writing, you have to be good at building relationships with people and I think there are people that are used to being sort of used by journalists and exploited. That's why the media has a bad name. So to build real relationships, you have to go deep and you have to spend time with people and talk with them and care about them. And you know, not not go down that path that some folks in the media do. And so I think he talks about it in an interesting way. It's sort of indent millennials, I think. But there there are a lot of good grains of truth in that. And that out of that flow is good writing. Because if you don't get the good stories, then you're not going to have much to write about, or people are only going to tell you the high level and not the backstory that

James Taylor
you really need to understand when I hear that word, super connector I think of in the 1920s, late 20s with the whole scene in Paris with like Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald, and I'm trying to remember the name who was the who was the editor that was there at that time the or she was an author. Yeah, Gertrude Stein. Gorgeous. And she was like, in my head that's like a super connector as well, because she was she was connecting all these different artists and creators differently. And I think when you see a lot of scenes come up, regardless of whether whether it's someone that I see coming up in the speaking in the professional speaking side, and there's certain people in that world who will let the super connectors of those they they have relationships with, with everyone and often built very deep relationships with people. And that the the have a long term view of those relationships is, but then if you're one of those people if you have those those skills, and and that's something that you think is a very powerful position to be in because everyone wants to want to be able to connect with someone like that.

Elaine Pofeldt
Yeah, I think so. And you know, I think it happens somewhat, it's somewhat of an innate type of thing. I mean, some people just are deeper people. You know what I mean? I think a lot of people who are book authors are they tend to be introverts, but he makes the point that introverts can be the best superconductors because Exactly, yeah. So good at like the small talk side of things, but they're really good at connecting on a deeper and more thoughtful level. But I think we can all learn from this, you know, in terms of how to reach out to other people. Some authors are shy, and they're very shy people like my so so they can pick up some techniques from this book I wrote about them for Forbes. It's funny that you asked him about it, because I hadn't thought about that book in a while.

James Taylor
But we'll put we'll put we'll put a link here to that book as well. And a final question for your lane. I want you to imagine you woke up tomorrow morning, and you have to start from scratch. So no one knows you, you have none of your current relationships. You'd have none of those current connections. But you have all the skills you've acquired over the years as a writer, what would you do? How would you restart

Elaine Pofeldt
I would probably start out by building my own platform. Because I what I've seen after being in the media all these years is immediate as we know it has pretty much died. The traditional media it makes me very sad to say that but I see the fiscal state that the bigger Media Presence user in and they're gone. But there's a lot of innovation coming out in areas like podcasting, video audio. And I think there's still an appetite for high quality writing. Yeah. But the problem is finding the outlets for it. Because once these big entities die, which I think is going to happen in this period of creative destruction, they're sort of a crutch for all the authors who don't want to deal with the business side of things. Where are you going to publish the good stuff? Right? Not everybody wants to just keep churning out listicles that they get paid 100 bucks for or whatever. So So where do you publish quality, it may have to be through your own platform. And that's one of the reasons I wrote this book, because so many of us are in fields that are changing, and we don't know where to begin. But all these folks have essentially built some sort of a platform for themselves. And I think we have to be more entrepreneurial in addition to being creative writer types. That is a vital skill set if you want to do anything creative these days, and I think it's going to lead to good things, I think it's just, you know, many of us are habitually dependent on these editors in, you know, in a publishing house or in a magazine that we worked with. And now, that's going to be gone. It's almost

James Taylor
kind of going back to the way it wasn't, we think about 100 years ago, we really starting in the big employment outcomes, like Ford, for example, employing large numbers of people, but probably, I don't know, 200 years ago, if you'd looked at it, most people work for themselves, or they were and they weren't the as a result, you had to be more they wouldn't call it entrepreneurship at that point. But you had to be you know, you're always thinking about how you could drive things ahead, how you could kind of build that biz how you could bring that person into, into your world as well. If you want to connect with you learn more about the the book, great book, where's the best place to go and do that

Elaine Pofeldt
it can go to themilliondollaronepersonbusiness.com that's the book title. spelled out in words, not numbers. And there's a contact me box there. So I invite everybody to write to me, I hear from so many people read the book on LinkedIn and Twitter, it's under my full name, which you can get in the show notes. I won't spell it out, because it's a mouthful. I love hearing from people and talking with them about their businesses because it helps me as a journalist to try to stay relevant and, and there's just something about a book that brings people together, it's a wonderful thing that people around the world can connect around a book. So I really hope you will write to me and get in touch.

James Taylor
Fantastic. We're gonna have all those links there. I mean, thank you so much for coming on today and all the best with the the next book writing your your your proposal outline for your next book. I look forward to reading that when that comes out.

Elaine Pofeldt
I thanks so much. It was so nice to talk with you.

James Taylor
If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to jamestaylor.me. That's jamestaylor.me. To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.

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