In this episode of Push to be More, host Matt Edmundson interviews Elaine Pofeldt, author of Tiny Business, Big Money and The Million Dollar One-Person Business. Using sage insights from her books Elaine shares how entrepreneurs, specifically solopreneurs, can grow their business to seven-figures whilst still maintaining a satisfying lifestyle. 

Key Takeaways:

1. Systems and Automation Drive Growth: Elaine emphasises that successful solopreneurs use systems like Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and tech tools to manage their businesses efficiently. These systems allow them to focus on innovation and growth, rather than getting bogged down in daily tasks.
2. Flexibility and Control Are Key to Success: Entrepreneurship offers the flexibility to balance work and personal life. Elaine highlights how being in control of her own schedule allowed her to juggle family responsibilities while still growing her career, a benefit she encourages others to pursue.
3. Business Development and Building Relationships Matter: Elaine underscores the importance of prioritising business development and surrounding yourself with the right people. Building strong relationships, hiring well, and dedicating time to growth and development are essential for long-term business success.

If this episode of Push to be More piqued your interest make sure to visit pushtobemore.com and keep up to date with everything we do here on the Push to be More Podcast.

Elaine Pofeldt | How to Build a Million-Dollar Business Alone

Matt Edmundson: Welcome to Push To Be More. My name is Matt Edmundson and we are about to have another conversation with another fantastic person about what truly fuels the journey of life. Today I'm talking with the magnificent Elaine Pofeldt, author of the books Tiny Business, Big Money and the Million Dollar One Person Business, which has got some rave reviews on Amazon, let me tell you.

Now, before we get into that, let me tell you, you can find all the show notes, uh, and transcript, uh, with my conversation today with Elaine over at PushToBeMore. com. That's all one word, PushToBeMore. com. And there's more information about the podcast. And if you like, you can sign up to the newsletter, uh, because whenever we release an episode, we just send you the, the notes, the links, everything.

Oh yes, but you might be thinking, why start a podcast? Well, let me tell you. My podcast journey has been nothing short of transformational. It's not just about marketing, although podcasting is a really good marketing tool. It's about community, it's about connection, it's about networking, it's about meeting amazing people like Elaine.

And honestly, who wants to do podcast production? No one. That's who. It takes a very specific breed of person who wants to do podcast production. And it's just not me. I'm not going to lie. And that's where PodJunction steps in. They are my backstage crew. That makes sure the show goes on flawlessly. You know what you get to do what you love engaging with incredible people and Podjunction takes care of all the nitty gritty details.

Oh, yes. Elaine, welcome to the show. Great to have you here. How are we doing?

Elaine Pofeldt: Oh, thank you, Matt. It's great to be here.

Matt Edmundson: You know what? Full disclosure, ladies and gentlemen, I have two podcasts. Well, I host more than two podcasts, one of which is called the eCommerce Podcast. If you don't know if you're an eCommerce, go check it out.

But we literally have just finished recording that podcast, had a quick cup of tea, and now we're back doing this one. So it just feels like a continuation of what was a fantastic conversation in so many ways.

Elaine Pofeldt: Oh, it was so much fun. Yeah, I can't wait to continue.

Matt Edmundson: Now, before we get too carried away, Elaine, because, you know, I have a habit of doing that, um, let's start with our opening question that we love to ask our guests.

Elaine Pofeldt: It would be Thomas Pynchon, who wrote some of my favorite books, The Crime of Love 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. Even though I'm an entrepreneurship writer, I love literature and what he has in common with a lot of the entrepreneurs I write about was he is An innovator. He's also very elusive. I doubt he would ever be on a podcast anonymously, but I think I would like the challenge of trying to get him on.

But I don't have a podcast, alas, so I just have to read his books and, and hope that I can learn from him as a writer.

Matt Edmundson: So what is it about him and his books that, um, that draws you in?

Um, but the books are very challenging and really you need to read them a few times to get the full meaning. And I feel like if I read them again now, compared to a few years ago, I'll get even more out of them. And I think that's a sign of, of the depth of, of what he's writing about.

Matt Edmundson: So what sort of stuff does he actually write about?

I mean, I've not actually read, I've not heard of him to be fair, but I've definitely not read one of his books.

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, I think a lot of it has to do with living in the nuclear age. I mean, if you ask what are his books about, there are professors at all the top universities who will tell you what they're about.

And I'm probably just scratching the surface.

A lot of

Matt Edmundson: So they're quite, they're what we would call a deep book.

They're

Elaine Pofeldt: very deep, they're hard work but I like a challenge honestly. I feel like we need to challenge ourselves and They're hard, they're a hard read, really. They really are. But I think it's worth having some time in your life that you put into doing things that are hard because they're so well done.

He's so brilliant. And as a writer, it's just incredible to see someone who is that brilliant and what they do with their gifts. I mean, it's just amazing.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, I love that. There's been quite a few books over the years that I have, um, how, what was, what's the phrase I would use to describe it? Wrestled with, uh, is, is, is probably a, a fair, a fair bet.

Elaine Pofeldt: Get them to the wrestling list for sure, they're not beach reading.

Matt Edmundson: So here you are Elaine, you've written two books, which you know, certainly the first one, I read them the wrong way round, I read the million dollar book second, but Small People Big Business is actually your new book, right?

Elaine Pofeldt: Tiny Business, Big Money. Same idea though. And, uh, it's funny cause I experimented with different titles.

Hiring. I, I worked with Vern Harnish who wrote Scaling Up. He's the king of

Matt Edmundson: scaling. He also wrote the Rockefeller Habits, didn't

Elaine Pofeldt: he? Yeah. He wrote that as well. Yeah. Great book. He's a great student of, uh, scaling. And I think every business has its own natural size and that might change over time, but what I was really interested in was people in these million dollar one person businesses were really happy and they had great lifestyles.

Although it was sometimes a work in progress to get the great lifestyle.

Yeah.

Elaine Pofeldt: They had it and they had a lot of time freedom. And so I wondered, how do you keep that when you start adding one or two employees, because once you add other people into the mix and you have to tell them how to do something, it puts new demands on you as a leader.

So how do you be a boss without really being a bad boss, I guess, because people. One thing that we see with Gallup research is people quit bad bosses, not companies. The boss has a bad name here, at least in the US, but I think his research, I think the research at Gallup is global. Why is that? I think it has to do with Welcome back to the podcast.

You know, where you're building on a bad system and trying to tweak it and you can never really fix it because it just doesn't work anymore.

Yeah.

Elaine Pofeldt: That's kind of what we're doing with the employment system. So I was curious about, okay, what does this look like if done well by people who are making seven figures and happy?

And I found out a lot about what they're doing. And it was just fascinating.

Matt Edmundson: So what was some of the, I'm sucked in, what were some of the things that you found out?

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, a lot of them don't have meetings. Think about what people hate. You know, what is the subject of sitcoms? It's, it's meetings where somebody is pontificating and, you know, wasting everybody's time.

He wrote a book called Quit Repeating Yourself. He has a, um, a virtual assistant agency called Bottleneck Distant Assistants, and he's the king of the SOP, but a lot of, a lot of these entrepreneurs, they commit to paper or a video or some other form, how they want things done so that they don't have to keep on teaching people how to do it.

They allow people to sort self teach and therefore they can focus on the true job of a leader, which is Is being the visionary for the business and moving it forward and the R& D and all of, all of the things that will make it reach its full potential, whether that's the potential of a two person business or a hundred person business.

And they'll really scale up. I mean, Brooklyn Inn was like that when I met them. Um, they were a husband and wife team in Brooklyn selling direct to consumer sheets by eCommerce. And then they raise a lot of venture capital. Um, another one is called Birch Benders. I met, they were also a husband and wife team.

They make a pancake mix, a healthy pancake mix. And they were just, Doing it outta their apartment, and then they scaled it up. They, they went to Boulder, Colorado, which is a, uh, a natural foods mecca in the United States. And I think it was sold, actually, I think it may have been sold twice even, but it entered that whole world of transactions and

Mm-hmm.

So that's why podcasts are important.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. And I, my brain's going 25 different ways now because I, part of me is like, it's interesting, you talked about SOPs. It reminds me of the book, um, by Michael Gerber, The E Myth, you know, I don't know if you ever read that book, The E Myth by Michael Gerber, he talked about.

But then the other part of it, the bit that you just said at the end there, where when you are self employed and it's just you, you've got to get the foundations right if you want to expand, because if you don't, when you try and expand your options are limited. Uh, somewhat. Did I understand that right?

Elaine Pofeldt: Yes. Yes. And well, I think with the SOP, one thing that really gets lost in the whole discussion is you have to customize and we're going into an era where things are going to be more and more standardized, automated, etc. It can be very frustrating, right? If you're dealing with a bot, for instance, I'm sure there was an SOP that said that in this situation, the bot should be used, but then the bot is really stupid and you're going crazy.

But you can go off script if needed, and I'm going to give you a certain amount of discretion to use your, Emotional intelligence to handle the situation the way you would like to be treated within a certain budget,

right?

Elaine Pofeldt: You're not going to hand over the keys to the company because somebody didn't like the product, but at the same time, maybe somebody could just give someone a refund and win a customer for life.

And even though technically you don't really want to do that too often. You empower them to use their best judgment and maybe incentivize them

to

Yeah. As opposed to a big company where they're saying to themselves, well, we have to be fair to everybody and we can't make exceptions and everything has to be the same for every person. It can be more like a family where you can, you can lean into what someone does well and reward them for it. Make, make the reward available to all who maybe are doing that work, but customize and make it more human.

And we found actually, if we took the time to, One, hire well. Um, and two, spend time sort of teaching, imparting, educating, whatever language you want to use about the values which matter to us most as a company. Um, and so we found that if a member of staff understood our values, And we hired well, then when it came time to deviate from the script, they would do it.

But the, the boundaries would be the values of the company, if that makes sense. Um, and that works super well, especially in things like customer service.

Elaine Pofeldt: That works very well. That's what Bern Harnish talks about in scaling up is you have your core values and you hire for them, your interview questions, ask about things related to it.

It gives you a framework to work from where it's not so personal because as the company grows, you may not know what each person is doing at any given moment, but you can score them against the core values. Are they living them? You know, if it's kindness, are they polite to your customers, are they polite to the other people on the team?

You can, you can evaluate based on that.

Um, and so we, we tend to squabble like family. We tend to have fun like family. Um, but family in its own right is not always a good thing. You can become a bit over familiar. There can be a little bit of a lack of accountability. How have you, how have you found it, you know, with, with the, with the books and the research and the dealing with small businesses?

How do I, how do I avoid that pitfall?

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, they do have to be boundaries where something needs to be delivered. It has to be delivered and someone has to be accountable if it isn't done. I think it's good to be a family, but they're also dysfunctional families too. So we all have to be mindful of that, right?

And I'll say, we're not that kind of a family where we curse at each other if we're angry. Um, it's a little different in a business cause you're not their parent, but you can set a tone for things through your own behavior as a leader, as to, you know, You know, what is a fair squabble, or what do we do if there's a disagreement?

What is completely out of bounds and outside of normal where we would bring in outside help if that happened? And you might not really even be aware of all the situations where things will come up until they do, but that's where talking to other business owners is helpful. There are a number of groups, uh, like EO, for instance, where there are forums.

So, whenever We had to decide if we were going to take on something. We started it when our children were very little and we were both managing, working with having small children. We would say no to things that we thought it was going to be a really stressful client. Maybe it was prestigious, but not worth it really because we didn't have the bandwidth to do that kind of handholding for instance.

And it was a really helpful rule. We'd always go back to that. Is this Fitting our no stress rule.

Matt Edmundson: It sounds like a dream. Business, but no stress. I think that could be the title of your third book.

Matt Edmundson: going to say, when you do nail that down, I think that's a bestseller.

The No Stress Business. Um, and, uh, so I, I'm intrigued. You live in New Jersey. Um, you've written two books, which sounds like, well, it doesn't sound like an easy task, Elaine. I'm not going to put it, uh, you know, I don't know. It just does not sound easy to me. You, you're a journalist, you're four kids. How do you, how do you juggle it all?

Elaine Pofeldt: That's a good question. It has changed over time because when my children were little, a lot of my day had to revolve around their needs. I always worked full time. I never took time off. I basically always worked really from giving birth, um, because I, when I worked at Fortune Small Business, the first four years, I had a really wonderful work from home arrangement and my oldest children were preemies actually, my twins, and they were in the hospital for three months.

I really enjoy interviewing people. I love the subject matter. So it doesn't feel like work. I do a lot of things and I feel like I'm just being paid to have fun because I love entrepreneurs. I, I love this world. I stumbled into it for whatever reason, it syncs up nicely with who I am. So that helped a lot.

I think choosing. The area that you go into wisely and not like I, as I mentioned, I love English literature. I was an English literature major. I never studied business. I just fell into it and I found I really enjoy it. I love reading about private equity and things like that. I don't know why it's mysterious to me.

I, I remember with my twins, when they came home from the hospital, they were colicky, I would do yoga, they'd be swinging in these chairs, these baby chairs, and I have it on a video. And it was insane, you know, to try to do yoga with these screaming children, but I tried to do it, or I'd go walking with them, then I had my younger daughter, they'd be in a triple stroller, but I felt like.

Content marketing. And then I started doing some ghost writing and private editing. And when I edit on the books, I found that project management is very important. You can't do a book all in one shot. There are people that say, Oh, I'm an all or nothing person. I'm going to write it in a weekend.

You

Elaine Pofeldt: can do an outline and book proposal in a year.

It's a conversation. It's a two way conversation, really, and it has to be about the reader. So I would first put the idea out there for a while as a journalist. And I had the advantage that I was writing about what I wanted to write the books about already, but I would pay attention to the feedback. And then that helped me with shaping the idea.

And I think chunking things up like that. To maximize your attention is also important. Working when you don't have good attention is really not helpful. That would be when I would call a friend or exercise or do something else that would kind of recharge the battery, and I would usually have, and I still do have about three good chunks of work time every day, and I try not to work.

Outside of those chunks, if you try to go straight through, I know some people do cause they want to have boundaries around their work day. I don't think you're as productive and you don't get as much done. I don't know. Do you find that?

Um, but it's just not me really. Um, but if I, if I have, I find sort of two, two and a half hours are good slots for me. Um, And I have very specific moments in the day where I, I'll just cut up, I won't have an agenda. I'm just like, in this section, I'm going to do what Cal Newport called deep work. So you know, you switch off all the distractions and, um, and you just get into something and it's just, it's great.

And it works well for me, but I've got to then go and go for a walk afterwards, or I've got to do a workout or I've got to do something physical. Um, Before I, before I try and become mega productive again, if I go all the way through, I tend to, I tend to have a nap at three o'clock because I'm knackered, you know, um, I don't know if it's an age thing.

It throws your whole life out of balance. And over time, I just winnowed away anybody who was an egomaniac or really inconsiderate. And I feel like a hundred percent of my clients are now nice people. It has infinite value. I also just enjoy working with them and I learn from them. So I would recommend that to people as well.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. That, that, it's an interesting one, isn't it? I think one of the, the lessons you learned as I, as you've been in business for a little certainly that I've learned as, as you stay in business for a while, is learning who to say no to.

And actually having the freedom to say no to people, um, when I remember when I was, we first started out in, in business and I was, I was sat in my room doing website design and, you know, coding up websites and we had no money. At this point we were, we were quite desperate for money and, uh, my, I have three kids now, but I had one at the time, my oldest child, you know, newborn baby-ish, um, maybe eight, nine months old, something like that.

I just wouldn't have been able to do it. And so, I, I had to refuse. that on the basis of my values, but it's hard when you're starting out in business to say no to clients because you need the money. But as you get older, I think, and as your business grows, what it does do is it affords you the ability to say no to people and not stress about it as much.

I hear this. I think one of the, you know, Things that happens as an entrepreneur is you see all the other people kind of crowing about their achievements and things that are going well, and you can feel very lonely if things are slow. I know from the off the record conversations, a lot of people are hurting this year and their costs are very high.

What do you do in those years? Well, you and I have both been through a few recessions now in the course of our businesses, you plant seeds.

And a lot

Elaine Pofeldt: of times there's a lot of output, you'll have a period of. Trying new things, experimenting, collaborating with other people, building, building, building, and nothing comes to fruition.

And find some other thing to do in its place, you know, shop around for a better phone plan or something like that, where. You know, or one week of camp instead of two or little things like that, where you can get through it and meanwhile reap all the benefits of planting the seeds and really reverting to what you should be doing anyway, but we don't do, and we're busy, which is being the leader of our business and being the visionary and doing business development.

The creative and higher level thinking of an entrepreneur.

Matt Edmundson: That's really good. That's really good. I like that. Work with nice people. And I think that applies to staff. I think that applies to customers. Um, and I like the idea of business development, um, being at the forefront, uh, and I just love the phrase planting seed, you know, seed time and harvest, uh, what you sow you shall reap.

How do you build that level of resilience? Because that's, that's what I hear when you talk. I'm thinking, man, this is one resilient lady. How did you do that? But where did that come from is maybe a better question. I think

Elaine Pofeldt: it was pretty clear on what I wanted. I wanted to have a family and I wanted to do what I was doing to do the career that I had.

And both things were very important to me. I mean, if I had to choose, I would choose my children. I think like most mothers and parents, you would choose your kids. Then, but I didn't have to choose because I had a very flexible type of career. Being a writer, I'm very lucky. But e-commerce, you know, you, I know you're heavily in that world.

That's another world where you have a lot of control over your time. Mm-Hmm. . And that's why I got so interested in entrepreneurship in the beginning because. There are a lot of systems that take control of your time. The traditional employment system does for the most part, it's gotten a little bit better since the pandemic, but I see on LinkedIn, a lot of young women with small children are posting about how.

It will be the mother who takes them. That's just reality. I don't know why it's like that. It's probably true in many households. If something happens with the car, that the dad will deal with that. But not always. There might be some women that love cars and they're the one who deals with it. There's some stereotypes to that.

And no one can tell you it's wrong because it doesn't fit into this system. And that's what interested me because the system, it seemed logical from the point of view of the owners who are profiting, but more and more really, since the Jack Welsh era, it has become so worker unfriendly.

Matt Edmundson: And

Elaine Pofeldt: it hurts people.

They feel like something is wrong with them. Why can't they fit into this? Why can't they travel 25 days out of the month when they have small children? It's inhumane. And people are saying enough to that. And it's. I have to find another way. And what changed over the last 30 years that was very positive was the cloud.

He always worked from home and many men have a lot of pain about that, that they've had to travel so much and they couldn't spend as much time as they went with their children. And that's really time you cannot get back. Now we can make that choice. And I think. I have never met anyone who made it, who regretted it, even if the business failed, they knew they made an attempt and they also learned from it and they can now apply it to something else in the future.

Even if it's going back into a company, if you can think like a business owner, you're so valuable.

If I wasn't succeeding at home, it, it, it never made any sense to me. So I've been married for 26 years. I've got three great kids. We get on really well. I feel like that's a good job done. And one of the, the other thing that I was thinking, as you were talking, one of the things that I realized, um, a few years ago, um, was there is a, or there was at the time it's in, I think it's slightly shifted now, but.

There was a bunch of ladies who had had kids, you know, they'd had two or three kids and they'd maybe been stay at home mums with the kids while they were growing up. The kids were like nine, ten years old now, you know, whatever sort of age, um, but they're sort of full time in school, you know, and so the mums are like wanting to return back to work, but they've been out of the workforce maybe for, I don't know, eight, 10 years.

And so I just thought to myself, if I can be flexible here, I am going to get one of the most astounding people because she had all these skills and then she became a mum. A mum, I think, looking at my wife, you learn how to be resilient, how to juggle 25, 000 balls in the air, how to get things done, how not to panic, you know, in stressful situations.

I'm like, These are ideal qualities. And so I would say that most of the really good hires I've made over the last, I don't know, five, six years have been mums returning back to work.

We have a spreadsheet where people can submit their questions, and I think many people feel imposter syndrome, you know, when they're starting a business or taking a new job, but I definitely think for mothers, It's particularly true because they've been so devalued. But I agree with you, all of the skills of being a successful mother, the organizational skills, the creativity, the networking and gathering of informal information.

You know, what is the best camp in this town for a 14 year old boy? That kind of thing. It's very valuable in the business world. And I'm surprised more people. Don't recognize it. Yeah. I, I really am, but I think they're too caught up in enforcing rules and this sort of top down hierarchical thing and power and all that stuff.

Maybe they haven't totally nailed their revenue model or in the US a lot of people do it for the benefits for the healthcare.

Yeah.

Elaine Pofeldt: We don't have the same as other countries, unfortunately, um, and it can bankrupt you if you don't have health insurance. So people have to do what they have to do, but they're still learning constantly in that role.

And so I was always kind of toggling where, you know, maybe my friends could go for the whole day, but I could go for two hours or something like that. And I felt like, well, it's better than nothing. If I was in New York city in my office, it would only be on the weekends. If that was the case, I would have to make the best of it, and I would, but it's always nicer if you have control.

My son, uh, he recently had mononucleosis and then he had his appendix out like in short succession and. It put a lot of demands on me because there was a lot of medical stuff going on, but because I had the flexibility, I didn't have to keep telling a boss, Oh, you know, this week my son has his appendix out.

I could just do what I needed to do as a responsible mom and attend to his emotional needs too. It's not just racing him to the doctor,

but,

Elaine Pofeldt: you know, there's other parts of being a parent too. That this lends itself well to.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, I agree. I, I, it's great that you can do that. I think that's one of the benefits of running your own business, isn't it?

Um, and I, yeah, I can just say for employees listening out there, mom's returning back to work right deal. They need confidence. You've got to give them confidence and you've got to give them flexibility. And if you can do those two things, you will find very talented people who will be very loyal and have a really big impact on your business.

Very grateful. It's radically changed our business in so many ways.

Elaine Pofeldt: They bring a lot of soft skills too, I think, that are valuable. They're the hard skills that they have maybe from their previous career. But also just being a mother, EQ is so important in today's workforce and things like collaboration.

I mean, when you, you have a family too, right, trying to get your kids to all collaborate on something, you have to really read the room and you have to understand that each person is different and has different things that will motivate them and has different skills, different things they need to learn.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, it is. The soft skills. Love that. And I'm, I'm aware this conversation is just, is wonderful. Um, and I've not asked you half the questions I had planned today. Uh, what do you do to refill your tank? How do you stay on top of things? How do you recharge your battery? I know you mentioned yoga. We talked about kickboxing, which I, I'm in awe of.

Um, but what sort of, what sort of, how do you stay sharp?

Elaine Pofeldt: Well, those are the, those are the yin and yang of my workouts. Sometimes you need the yoga, sometimes the kickboxing and, and it's, it's good to really have a physical outlet. I think if you're working on a computer. You know, because just tension builds up in your body.

Um, I sometimes do these super long interviews that are like five part series and in the course of that, I get to know people and I've really become friends with them and, um, it keeps my life very interesting. I've had a long period where it was hard for me to really go into New York City much and go to business events and things because my family was here and I had a lot of obligation.

And now my kids are a little bit older. And I can do that more. So I try to do that, go to events and lectures and things where I can, or even join a Zoom event if I can. I think we all need a lot of different inputs so we get out of our own head.

Yeah.

Elaine Pofeldt: Reading is really important. I love listening to podcasts.

Cause I'm a professional communicator, so I can always get better at what I do. And I also help other book authors and I try to see where. Maybe, you know, someone else might be better at being a YouTube star than me or whatever. I think about the people I'm serving and who would have the skill set to excel at this, you know, and do what this author is doing.

I mean, some people are public speakers, some are on video, some are on social media, etc.

It's, I find it super helpful. So, uh, in, in closing, uh, Elaine, what does, what does more look like for you? What does growth look like? What's tomorrow look like? Is there a third book? Um, what's, what's the future hold?

Elaine Pofeldt: I'm doubling down on the million dollar one person business idea right now because there has been so much growth in the number of these businesses and I think with AI, although there are some negatives to AI that we're still working out as a global society, There are a lot of advantages for the one person business who can learn the prompts and everything else.

And probably today's tools are going to seem so clunky, they'll be like the old mobile phone that you had to carry in a suitcase. And we're not even going to believe this is what AI was, um, but that will empower more people to start their own businesses and grow them. And it's going to remove a big barrier to entry.

I think it will probably be. In that area somewhere, um, my reporting usually shows me the way because I start to see the unanswered questions. That's why I always encourage people to write to me because I really want to know how I can be helpful. I have these skills at asking questions and finding the entrepreneurs and I want to be of service.

And, um, so I'm transitioning, you know, like I'm not an empty nester. Um, And I won't be for a while, but I have a little more space in my life

for

Elaine Pofeldt: friends and for travel and things that were put on hold temporarily. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to doing more speaking, not just on zoom, but in person, because I always love that.

I'm going to new places. Um, More reading of fiction and then other things like that, more yoga. I actually, I, it's funny, cause I was thinking if you like simpler things, then your life is always happy. You know, if, if, if everything depends on material things, then you're really subject to a lot of, you know, External forces make you unhappy.

You know, I, like, especially now with my all four kids at home temporarily, I enjoy my family life and I have my work and my family. So I I'm very blessed and my friends.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's lovely. That's lovely. And I, uh, yeah, I think it's, um, it's an interesting phase of life, isn't it? Because my similar story with my kids too, one has just graduated from uni.

I, I mean, he's at home now, but I don't think he'll ever move back into that. I mean, he might do, but I don't think he'll move back into home. He's got no plans to. Um, my middle child is away for the whole summer lifeguarding on a beach in Jersey, as in the Island off the North coast of France. Um, but he'll graduate next year.

I don't actually know, but it's just a really interesting phase of life where some of my kids have left, some of them haven't. I'm kind of in this in between stage, but I have a lot more capacity in my diary. And I still don't seem to have more money in my bank account. They still seem to take all of that, but you know, um, it's just a really interesting phase, isn't it?

It's an interesting phase of life that I think, um, I, I've enjoyed having them at home. Don't get me wrong. And I, I love having them back, but I'm also quite enjoying this new sense of, oh, I wonder what's next, you know,

But it's just becoming clear in small increments by the day.

And

Elaine Pofeldt: you have to be open to the journey. That's where yoga helps me, reminding me that I can't be impatient as to what's next, but just keep putting good inputs in and surrounding yourself with good and stimulating people. So that you go in the right direction and you get good ideas about what to do with your time, because time is finite.

So and plus people are staying healthy for such a late age. I mean, both of my parents are in their 80s and they still work. And They love it. My dad's a working photographer. He goes on trips to Africa with his girlfriend. And I feel like that's really changing things. We have a much longer horizon to do interesting projects and things.

And the key is really taking care of ourselves so that we can avail ourselves of that. There's an element of luck and good fortune to that that is out of our control, but to the extent we can control it, It's, I think it's really important to really prioritize our, our wellness and whatever that means to us so that we can enjoy a creative life for a long time to come.

Elaine Pofeldt: They can reach me on LinkedIn, Facebook, or X under my full name, which is in the show notes and on Instagram under million dollar one person business.

Please do write to me. I write back. I love to know what's on your minds, what you'd like me to research as a reporter or in my next book. It really helps me to get better. And I also feel like we all need to connect and support each other in this entrepreneurial community because it can get lonely. You can feel like you're the only one.

But one benefit I have from talking to so many people as a reporter is I can almost guarantee you that you're not the only one, whatever it is, you're not the only one. But there's more of us and, uh, I really love to hear from people that thank you so much Matt for what you do, by the way, because you're a catalyst.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, it's really kind of you to say so, Elaine, and uh, I appreciate it very much so, um, and appreciate you coming on the show, obviously, uh, and it's been wonderful to get to know you. And so, uh, if you haven't done so already, do check out our podcast recording over on the eCommerce Podcast, where we talk a bit more about the book, so learning from the book, um, and how it works for EP, um, and so, yeah, do check that out.

And of course, we will link to, Elaine's info in the show notes, which will be on your podcast app. You know, just click on the show notes and Elaine's links will be in there. Um, there'll be also on the website, pushtobemore. com. Um, and also if you sign up to the newsletter, there will be in your inbox, but Elaine, you're a legend.

Elaine Pofeldt: Thank you so much, Matt. What a pleasure.

Matt Edmundson: Well, that's a wrap on another great conversation, a massive round of applause. In fact, let me, I really should get this queued up better. Hang on a second. A massive round of applause. There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, for joining us today.

Elaine Pofeldt: We want a copy of that to play for myself when I'm feeling low, right?

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just not feeling great. Hang on. There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, uh, I just have so much fun with this sound desk. Anyway, uh, a huge thanks today also to our champion sponsor, Podjunction, for all you changemakers out there contemplating podcasting as your new marketing thing.

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 this show, as I've said, is produced by PodJunction. Transcript show notes all on the website. Big kudos to the PodJunction team that makes this show possible.

But that's it from me. That's it from Elaine. Thank you so much for joining us. Have an awesome week. I'll catch you on the flip side. Until then, keep on pushing.