Running a One-Person Business

One-Person Business Owners: A Unique Group

(Excerpts from Chapter 1 of Running a One-Person Business)

One-person businesses can be found nearly everywhere, and they earn a wide range of incomes. Consider the oil traders who buy and sell drilling rights worldwide and deal in millions of dollars from their home phone. Or the arbitragers and bond dealers working on investment portfolios of their own, with just a telephone and a rented desk in the back of some brokerage office. These one-person businesses are often major forces in the financial market.

In the political realm, a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and a private consultant specializing in policy analysis are among the best-paid and most influential people in our nation’s capital. Both run quiet, behind-the-scenes, one-person businesses.

There are also professional one-person businesses such as realtors, consultants, accountants, speakers, trainers, free-lance editors, psychotherapists, and tax preparers.

Some one-person businesses are retailers, for example, the flower shops, juice bars, and food carts that flourish in many cities. There is a fellow in Seattle, Washington, who motors his little boat around Lake Union selling espresso and croissants to houseboats, ships at anchor, and shoreline offices. And we’ve encountered many a homey resort-town gift shop catering to the many tourists who drive through each year.

Traditionally, many service trades have been run as one-person businesses, including, housekeeping, beauty salons, shoeshine stands, tailoring, plumbing, carpentry, fortune-telling, child-care providers, and mechanics. The last twenty years have seen a proliferation of service providers as more and more women join the workforce and households with two wage earners become the norm. As Americans work longer hours and are under more stress many new market niches have been created in the personal service and alternative healing fields which include: herbalists, personal trainers, acupuncturists, aura and angel readers, channelers, and practitioners of bio-feedback.

Regardless of the field, it takes a certain turn of mind, some unique skills, and a big dollop of realism to successfully run a business on your own. A one-person business is not primarily a stepping-stone to a bigger enterprise, though you could use it in that way. People run one-person businesses because they prefer that form of business. They like the opportunities and freedoms it gives them — to enjoy more agile and expansive personal lives, to express their political and ethical values, to play a larger role in their communities, and, in some cases, to pioneer new fields.

Having control over their work coupled with the joy and security that comes from expressing their internal vision plays a primary role in why people choose to start a one-person business. Increasingly people are feeling the need to make a difference, to take charge of their lives as testified to by the following statements of some of the people we interviewed for this book: