What I learned growing a $1 Million business ALONE

Hola, my name is Sorelle Amore and welcome to this Finance and Freedom channel. Most people who create a $1 million business oftentimes have a lot of support staff, whether it's contractors, full-time staff. In my case, it was primarily by myself. So in this video, I'm breaking down the pros and the cons of growing an operation of this size by yourself for those that want to go solo. If you are new here, please make sure you subscribe. And if you get value from this video, definitely hit that like button. We also have an exceptional newsletter that goes out with extra information about finance, freedom, global structures, and so much more. So sign up for that link in bio. And finally, we have just launched the presale of a course membership combo, All Things Finance and Freedom. If you wanted to get access to this at a huge discount for being an early supporter of this channel, check out the link in the bio. I was inspired to make this video because of a podcast that Tim Ferriss himself has put out about people that have created million dollar businesses by themselves. And there was a huge range of people that were able to do this from different backgrounds, different types of businesses. So I wanted to add to this conversation from my point of view as well. Some of the people interviewed by Tim Ferriss, they had online stores, they provided coaching or consultation, they had social media followings, they didn't have social media followings. Very important. It's not just for those that have social media followings. This channel and my whole life, I've always been inspired to help people just become as free as possible. And for me, business is one way I do that. I think it's one of the fastest and easiest ways to become financially free. Oh, did I say easy? I didn't mean easy. Business isn't easy, but it's a challenge that a lot of people want to undertake specifically if their core deep seated value is freedom. Of course, though, there are pros and cons to everything we do in life. So you have to figure out what is for you. You can't take everybody's advice. You have to figure out what is right for you in this lifetime. I'm gonna link down below the podcast for you to have a further listen to that if you would like to. Also, there is a book called I haven't read this book, but it is reviewed quite well. So if you wanted to have a further read of this, this is where you can do so. Some things to note. So yes, I did create a $1 million business by myself. Now, I am not here to glamorize this kind of a lifestyle because I think anyone can realize that it is not something that is the easiest thing. And I do come from the years of very strong hustle culture. I think maybe a few years ago, there was about a decade where everybody was just saying, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle. And I went for it as well. So yes, there was hustle periods in this. There was a lot of sacrifice, which I'll go into in a second. But there are still people that wanna try this type of a lifestyle and they wanna figure this out for themselves. So I'm just giving you the overview of what worked for me, what didn't work for me, so you can learn from my mistakes and my successes. Now, when I say that I've built a $1 million solar business, I mean that I did majority of the work myself in almost every area. However, I did try to hire some people. I'm really bad at delegating. I've tried to hire three virtual assistants in my time owning this business, and that's in five years. So I have tried the assistants. They lasted about maybe three months max. I wasn't able to let go of the work. So instead of them taking work off my plate, I would create extra work for them so that they would fulfill that work. And then I would say, I have a staff member, except that they were doing extra work that wasn't taking anything away from me. And I was really ashamed by how I was running my business as well, because I don't have, have not had, and I still probably don't have the best structures in my business. If people saw it, they would realize it's actually a little bit messy, but it worked. And what is the most important thing when it comes to business is really the results. So it definitely did work. I also had my partner Leon help out with some launches. He's extremely good at writing. So he obviously, he's the one that writes the newsletter because I'm better on video, he's better in text. He was the one that helped me make sure that my sales pages were tip top. And if I had needed some scripts for sales videos for my courses, he would also assist with that and tweak it and so forth. So he was a very important part of the conversation, but it was not full-time at all. It was like, hey, I have a launch this year, once a year. And so he would help me out with that. I have never had full-time staff. I have also tried to delegate my work through videographers and editors, and that also failed. It's just been a mess. I am a control freak, I guess. However, people do learn. It is taking a while. So this is why I'm going to be mentioning the pros and cons in this video, because I've learned a lot along my way and a lot of things I would do differently in the future. But first, what is my business, for those that might not know? Primarily, I am a social media person. It is hard for me to describe the business model because it's not just YouTube. I am a business with me as the face of it. So yes, I have Instagram. Yes, I have YouTube. These are the two platforms that I focus on. But if we take away the negative connotations of what it means to be a YouTuber, it is essentially someone that has a TV network, a TV station. I have a certain amount of views that I can get paid sponsorship ads in there, just like a regular TV station, just like a regular TV show. And so imagine a network, a TV network, with all the marketing involved, with all the promotion, with all the ideas, the scripting, the photography, the branding, everything, and then transfer it into my life. So that is what I have been doing for the last five years. It is not for everyone. That's why this video specifically is talking about different people that have made it. Tim Ferriss interviews a whole bunch of people that have made this business work for them. For me, I was interested in this. And I took a very different approach to what most social media influencers do. So instead of just, you know, waiting, sitting dark, being like, when are the sponsors gonna come to me? When I make sponsors, I'm gonna make the money. That's not what I did. I wasn't interested in waiting. I don't like waiting. I don't want someone to grant me permission to be free. I do it myself. So I came from a marketing manager background where we focused on direct response marketing, specifically selling online courses. I always loved this model, and this is where it came from. So my mind was just like straight into online courses and selling information because I have always been an education junkie. I love to learn. Courses have been primarily the most important thing I do. Secondly, we're looking at brand sponsorships, then extra small things, affiliates and book deals, speaking gigs, something I wanna stress so much. My business has been primarily focusing on selling my own things, because again, I don't wanna ask people for freedom and permission to be free. So I need to create that freedom for myself. And the more that you create your own products with as low of an overhead as possible, which in my case, selling information products, you create the product once and then you can sell it, is the same idea for anyone else. No matter how big your social media following is. I know people with very few followers that do an exceptional job, sell so well. The theory of a thousand true fans really, really still stands. If I break it down, if I look at how many people I have sold to and actually monetize a specific part of my audience versus how many people I actually have, it is ridiculous. It is at such a tiny portion compared to the 1.5 million people that I have as followers versus the people that I've sold to. So it confirms the theory even further that you don't need a really huge audience, you just need a very specific tailored audience. And that's where the beauty comes in. Because the internet is so vast, you can find so many people interested in what you're interested in selling, producing. And if you hone your marketing so tightly and so well, you will find those people. And you don't need a giant audience for that. That's the fun of it. So that's why I'm saying creating your own product is so important. And that's been important for me. It's important for other people that have created the $1 million solo businesses. The other people mentioned in Tim's podcast, create your own product, much more revenue, much more control over it, highly profitable. Let's get into the pros and cons of the video starting with the pros. Never have to communicate, direct people, knowing things will always be done to your standards, always being able to completely manage your own time without thinking of others, not having to clock on and off when other people do, lowering staff costs, having to do everything on your own, more revenue in your own pocket. Some of the things that I wrote down. I think I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something like this by myself. Things weren't clear in my mind as to what I was doing a lot of the time. It was just like, whoa, that seems to be working. Let's go. So I wouldn't say that my business plan was very set in stone. So I wasn't sure how to bring people on to help me, but the benefits have been incredible. I have had a life of living in so many different places, traveling, experiencing things by myself. And there is this really warm, fuzzy feeling when I think about the fact that I did so much work and I created this by myself. I'm like, wow, I have skills. And I do also like the fact that I've developed so many skills along the way now. And I have so much to give. I have a lot of value that I can provide in a lot of different areas because I've become an expert in so many different areas. I really love to learn. And I think the best way to learn is to do. I think you can read as much as possible. You can study as much as possible. But when you do something, you learn it. It becomes part of your soul. So I feel like I have been upgraded on a major level. Even though I have been a marketer and I did study business major in marketing at university, I will say I learned basically nothing at university. And that still annoys me to this day. I learned more in the three months that I worked at the direct response marketing job that I had than the entire two years that I did at university, fast-tracked university degree. So I love how many skills I have. I love that I don't have to talk to people a lot of the time and I don't have to answer them. You know, if my staff members would be like, Terrell, you said that there was a schedule for posting videos, but you haven't posted anything for two weeks and what's happening? We have to get it on. I don't have to be like, I guess, yeah, answering to anyone. So it's been fun for a really long time. I really enjoyed it for a while. I was just very proud of myself, but came a time where things got a little bit boring and they started getting really, really hard. So let me talk about the cons now. All right, some of the things that I wrote down. Doing everything yourself, your time and others needs, wants such as family, health, joy, not getting as big of a priority because of that, loneliness, not having creative outlets to discuss in business, micromanaging things that are too low level for you to do, which are exhausting. And when you're really good at something, you should, as soon as possible, try to prioritize what you're good at and delegate the rest because those small micro things that just drain you and they kill your creative vibe and ability to express yourself and build your business further. Less collective experience in the company, nobody to bounce ideas off. I'd say this was one of the biggest things for me, not having someone to bounce ideas off. I tried to introduce a few people to help with that, except no one really knew what was happening in my business because things got really messy in the end and I didn't know how to save it. I didn't know where to introduce people to salvage it because it was messy. Luckily, I have Leon now. Last year, he helped me to tie things up a bit, helped me figure out how to put structures in place and systems in place to bring things back into balance because I was honestly juggling everything and it was all up in the air. Plus, at the same time, I didn't realize and I still am experiencing this, which is madness, burnout, it's still going. I thought I had it December 20, I made a video on my other channel about it, 2018 maybe, and I was feeling it really, really hard because this was not only just my business that I had, I've had the business for five and a half years as the YouTuber that I am, but before that, it was also about five years of me trying to figure out how to make everything work, trialing selling physical products, trialing selling digital products, trialing writing books, trialing being a consultant. Then there was the full-on execution and I come from the hustle culture days, so it was the execution for about three years of that and then burnout hit, but I was too afraid to admit that this was happening to me because I was always a workaholic, so as if I could burn out, I am invincible, there's no way. I am not in my flow at all, things are still very hard for me to do, I don't have the best ideas, so there were really, really big downsides to running everything by yourself. If I just learn how to delegate a little bit better at some point and release the control, and it's so good to get professional advice, professional help to help sort things out, it is important to get people that are better than you at things that you don't wanna be doing and delegating those as soon as possible because yes, okay, I have five houses, fun, and I have more money in my own bank account, would it have been worth for me to spend $100,000 a year for maybe one or two staff members in order for me to let go of the burden so I could have prioritized other things in my life? Yes, and it's taken me a very long time to realize that I am safe and I'm okay. Now my battle is figuring out how to delegate this and sharing my resources, so it's winding back those habits and habits take a while to learn. I've never done delegation before. So yes, solo is so possible. I've proven it 10 times over, like I've done really well. I have proven it, I've done it. I hope you enjoyed this video. 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