A YouTube video by Alex Micol. Transcribed for you.
“We’re almost at 80 employees right now. I can tell you it is very, very, very difficult to sit on the beach in pure peace and bliss when you’ve got this much responsibility. You should really focus on having a lifestyle business, making money, but actually enjoying it. I’m talking about solopreneurship, earning as much money as Fortune 500 CEOs do but without the stress and responsibilities, with more freedom and fun all by yourself. But how do you start a one-man business? How much can you really make without hiring anyone? And is it actually as good as it sounds? Well, I’ll tell you because I am a solopreneur myself. Well, I was actually because here’s what happened. I started being a so-called solopreneur almost by mistake. Like, I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t feel the need to work with anyone else or to hire anyone else because no one really gave me a business to follow. I just stumbled onto the business that I’m doing right now, where I can be absolutely independent. I don’t need to outsource any of the work, and I can do it all by myself, with my two hands, with my brain, and I can actually scale a lot and make a lot of money without the need to have any employees whatsoever. But right now, this is actually changing because I’ve scaled a lot in my business, and it started being very repetitive. I’ve been doing this for the last three to four years, and as much as I like it, I need some new challenges every now and then. And right now, I’m actually hiring freelancers and employees to help me do YouTube content, to help me manage all my education business and the other businesses that I’m launching. But my main business, my main cash cow, doesn’t require any employees, and that is great because that allows me to be free and do whatever I want. So technically, right now, I’m not a solopreneur anymore, just to be completely transparent with you. But I am a solopreneur in my main business.
Let’s talk a bit about the benefits of being a solopreneur because, see, there are many, in my opinion. Like, I am a guy in my 20s; I’m 26 right now, and I’ve lived the last couple of years in complete freedom, and that’s exactly the lifestyle that I was chasing. So, I always envisioned making a lot of money, but at the same time, I wanted to be wealthy and have a lot of free time as well because that’s the difference between being rich and wealthy, and I want to have both because I’m in my 20s. I don’t want to work all my life and have a lot of money and only get to enjoy it when I’m 50 or 60 years old. That’s exactly what we tend to believe because we weren’t born in this society where everyone has the same type of life path, and you only get to enjoy it when you retire from work. And that’s when you have a lot of free time. No, that wasn’t my goal. My goal was to enjoy my life already now because we are in our 20s, and I didn’t want to go to any university and just go party every weekend and whatnot. I wanted to make money and build the life of my dreams, and this is exactly what I did. And being a solopreneur allows me that because I don’t have employees to manage; I don’t have strict schedules. I can make my own schedule when I want. I just need to do what I’m doing at my business, which is selling things, and I’m going to talk about it later. But the only thing that I need to do is perform, and that’s up to me. When I perform, it’s not up to anyone else, and that leads to a terrific lifestyle.
So, the benefits are, for sure, freedom and lifestyle. And after maxing it out for the last three years, I decided to do something else because, you see, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows when you work by yourself. When it hits the fan, it’s all on you. The pressure is on you, and there’s no one to blame; there’s no one to ask for advice from, no one but you. You have to take a deep look in the mirror and figure things out, and it’s not pretty, especially when things don’t work out. You start questioning yourself; you start thinking that maybe you’re not suited for that. You go through all the doubts that you can imagine. But that’s exactly where a lot of people quit, and that’s exactly where you shouldn’t be quitting. And that’s exactly where I pushed through, and that’s why now I enjoy all my fruits. And again, it’s a process, and by going through this, you will learn so much by yourself, and you will learn so much about yourself that you can’t even imagine. And with great responsibilities, which is doing everything by your own, comes a great reward, which is the amounts of money that you can make.
Because guess how much money you can make by being an entrepreneur? In my opinion, there are not real limits. Like, there are people that, as a solopreneur, build companies, maybe using one or two freelancers at max, which is using them occasionally, and sell companies for millions of dollars. And I, by myself, managed to make even eight figures of revenue a year, just by myself. There are not real limits, and that’s my case. But for the average viewer on YouTube, that is us, we all want to know, can I make 10K a month? Can I make 30K a month? Can I make 100K a month, maybe? And the answer is absolutely yes.
So, story time. One time, I went to this Mastermind that I attend almost every year, and I was talking with a guy that does something rather similar to what I do, just in a completely different way. He has a lot of employees, and I asked him, ‘Can you share how much revenue your company is making, more or less?’ Turns out he was also in the eight-figure range. To me, he was doing anywhere between 15 and 20 million dollars. And I told him, ‘You know what? I’m doing pretty much the same, and the only difference between my company and your company were 120 employees, just because he picked a different business model. And there’s nothing wrong in having 120 employees; actually, I think it’s great. You know why? Because you’re giving money to 120 people, and that is nurturing many families. Kudos for that, respect. Like, I might be more selfish that I don’t even do that, but the hustle and the amount of work involved are completely different. I can just work a few hours per week when things go really well. But he has to work regardless because he has so many people to manage, and you can have the supervisors, the super supervisors, the managers, whatever, you can set it up. You still need to talk with someone every single day and manage all these people because, unfortunately, people equal problems. You need to solve their problems.
So, even if you don’t, let’s say you’re an agency, and you work with clients, and you hire people to work with clients, maybe you’re not going to talk directly to the clients anymore. But you are going to talk to all your employees that manage those clients. So, regardless, you’re creating a job for yourself, and it’s very important that if you want to become a solopreneur, you make the smart and right choices to put yourself in such a position. So, you need to pick the right business model, which I’m going to cover in just a bit. So, there are no really low limits when it comes down to being a solopreneur and how much money you can make because, for example, I make eight figures a year by being a solopreneur. And there are many influencers, for example, that are solopreneurs and make seven figures a year of pure profit by making content and promoting different brands. Or they’re different consultants that sell their time at hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars per hour. There’s also that. Or they do consulting with a success fee. So, if they perform and they can solve an important issue, they get a big chunk of money right away. And then they can chill for a while. And then you can also be a freelancer, so you can do jobs every now and then and perhaps get heavily paid for that too. The only thing with freelancers is it’s still a job, so you’re still capped.
So, in my opinion, the best categories are always to go for a business model that pays you for your performance and is not attached to your time. And the best business category for me is anything that has to do with sales. So, as many sales you can generate, the more money you can make. You could be an appointment setter, for example. You’re taking calls and you’re trying to close deals and get a percentage of that. That’s not bad; you can make thousands of dollars a day even like that. But again, you need to put in a lot of work every single day. It’s not really something you can do on autopilot. But for me, I would always say that affiliate marketing is the best business model out there, simply because of how the model works. You sell products that don’t belong to you on the internet, and your only responsibility is to create marketing campaigns, is to create ads that work. And the beauty of that is that once you find one ad that works, you can chill. That ad is going to spend a couple of thousand dollars per week, per day, whatever your pace is going to be. But an ad usually lasts for some good amount of time. And that’s the magic with affiliate marketing. And during that time, you have choices. You either work on more products; you work on more ads, or you can go chill and travel the world. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past years, balancing the work and my lifestyle, enjoying the fruits of my results when things go well, work more when things don’t go as well.
And to be honest, in the last few years, I didn’t work as much. I’ve been pretty lazy when it comes down to my affiliate business. But still, because I mastered it and I know what I was doing and I know how to predict the waves and always make sure that revenue goes back up and profits as well, I lived my dream life. So, if you want to learn how to start affiliate marketing, there’s a video right here that teaches you how to start affiliate marketing from zero. And again, for me, that’s the best business model out there. So, go check it out and see you next time. Peace.”
