Business as Lifestyle
Creating a Life While Making a Living
The One-Person Business: Still Growing, Still Easy to Overlook
When I wrote Running a One-Person Business in 1989—and expanded it for a second edition in 1994—the one-person business was already becoming a significant part of American economic life. It has become larger and more varied since then.
Measuring it is not as simple as it might appear. Government agencies and private organizations count different things: self-employed workers, sole proprietors filing Schedule C, businesses without paid employees, people working from home, independent contractors, and, more recently, gig workers. These groups overlap, but they are not identical and cannot be added together.
Each offers a different view. Taken together, they reveal something important: millions of Americans are making at least part of their living through enterprises they operate largely on their own.
Two federal measures give us the clearest view of long-term growth.
The first comes from the Internal Revenue Service. In 1978, the IRS counted about 8.9 million nonfarm sole proprietorships. By 1990, the number of nonfarm sole-proprietorship returns had reached 14.8 million. It rose to 23.1 million by 2007 and to 29.3 million by 2021. These are tax returns rather than a precise count of full-time one-person business owners, but the direction of change is unmistakable.
The second comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. It calls businesses with no paid employees nonemployer establishments. Most are operated by self-employed individuals, although the category also includes some partnerships and corporations. Some are full-time businesses; others supplement wages, retirement income, or income from another enterprise.
In 2000, the Census Bureau counted 16.5 million nonemployer establishments, with receipts of about $709 billion. By 2007, their number had grown to 21.7 million and their receipts had reached nearly $992 billion. In 2023, the latest year for which Census figures are available, the number had reached 30.4 million. Together, these businesses produced nearly $1.8 trillion in revenue.
The long-term pattern is not one of decline. According to the Census Bureau, the number of nonemployer establishments increased every year from 1997 through 2023 except during the financial crisis in 2008. Their growth slowed sharply during the first year of the pandemic, then accelerated: 4.9 percent in 2021, 4.7 percent in 2022, and another 2.1 percent in 2023.
The pandemic did not create the one-person business, nor did the gig economy. Both made a much older form of enterprise more visible. Recessions, layoffs, changes in family life, dissatisfaction with conventional employment, remote work and digital platforms, and the desire for greater autonomy have all encouraged people to find ways of earning a living outside a standard job. Technology has also reduced the cost of reaching customers, delivering services, collecting payment, and coordinating work.
Historical estimates of home-based business add another perspective, although they are less useful for measuring change over time. Surveys in the 1990s suggested that many millions of Americans were already operating businesses from home. The exact estimates varied because the surveys used different definitions and methods. What they established was not a dependable trend line, but the breadth of a phenomenon that conventional employment statistics often failed to capture.
The one-person business is not new. Individual ownership was part of the early foundation of American enterprise. What changed during the industrial era was the growing expectation that most people would earn their livelihood by working for someone else. Large organizations became the visible center of economic life, while very small enterprises were often treated as marginal.
The numbers tell a different story. The one-person business has become one of the most durable—and least heralded—changes in American working life. It includes the independent craftsperson and consultant, the shopkeeper and artist, the home-based practitioner, the online teacher, the tradesperson, the local service provider, and the person using a small enterprise to supplement other income.
Not every nonemployer establishment is a one-person business in the strictest sense, and not every one-person business appears neatly in a single government category. We should therefore resist pretending that there is one exact count. But the evidence supports two conclusions with confidence: there are a great many one-person businesses, and their number has grown substantially since the first edition of this book appeared
What's the Attraction?
People who brave the relatively uncharted world of the one-person business are looking for many things—among them a greater degree of personal autonomy and self-expression than is possible within other career structures. They desire to be their own bosses, without the responsibility of overseeing others. This autonomy offers them the opportunity to restructure their lives in an inventive way and, at the same time, maintain their personal independence.
Running a one-person business is not only flexible, challenging, and creative, it is also a liberating and effective way to respond authentically and gracefully to the changing face of life in these times. It also seems that a growing number of people are sick and tired of just living for the weekend, for two weeks of vacation with pay, and for the increasingly ephemeral promise of the good life after retirement.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the family of one-person-business options is the incredible range of lifestyles and goals it embraces. While some, for whatever reasons, want a lot of money, others prefer few possessions and a simple lifestyle. Some work only to make a living; others view work itself as a positive value. Whatever style of life you prefer, it can be supported by running a one-person business.
Running a one-person business is about creating a life while making a living.
From the owners of such businesses we often hear a startling fact: they don’t want their businesses to grow large and they are not interested in becoming wealthy.
“Wealth is not the goal. All the business books are filled with the same few examples of highly successful (read ‘rich’) entrepreneurs. Less than 5 percent of us will ever become really affluent. Most of us have to be happy just making a living. It’s the quality of the process of making a living that counts—and it’s the chance to define ‘quality’ for yourself that’s critical.”
Robert Kourik
Master Horticulturist, serial entrepreneur,
one-person business
Why Fly the Corporate Nest?
“As a society, we’re gradually starting to view ‘work’ not as a single place of employment, but as a series of engagements or projects.
“The millennial generation in particular views the traditional aspiration to a corporate job in an office as something more like a satirical sitcom, à la The Office, than something they wish to strive for.”
Paul Jarvis
Company of One:
Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business
Since Running a One-Person Business first appeared in 1989, the very way business is conducted has been in constant flux. In an article from the 1990s, USA Today reported that U.S. employers were laying off workers at the rate of 2,200 a day. Salaries were being frozen, health benefits were scaled back, pension plans have proven shaky. The 20th-century version of the “American Dream,” which included the security of life-long employment by the same company, has almost completely disappeared from American culture.
Big corporations have shipped jobs overseas and the employment culture of most companies treats workers as easily replaceable cogs in giant global mega machines. Benefits have shrunk or completely disappeared, and retirement plans have gone bankrupt.
As an unavoidable consequence, a whole new expectation of a career track made up of a series of short engagements at multiple companies has become the norm.
The smart have adopted “intrapreneurship” as a replacement for old-fashioned employee loyalty. Intrapreneurship is an entrepreneurial mindset within the employment venue. It sees each individual as a “one-person business” within a series of employment gigs. Companies encourage it because it fits their expectation of interchangeable wheel cogs. And it can, if done right, be a superior survival strategy for employees.
This trend toward intrapreneurship can be indexed by the growing number of books with titles such as:
- You, Inc.
- Creating You and Company
- Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business
- Intrapreneurship; The Greenhouse Approach
- Cultivating Intrapreneurship
- Intrapreneurs: Who, What, How, Why
- Intrapreneurship: Ignite Innovation
- Winning at Intrapreneurship: 12 Labors to Overcome Corporate Culture and Achieve Startup Success
- The Brand You 50 (Reinventing Work): Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!
The major weakness of this mega-corp strategy, however, is that it creates a vision of and yearning for self-employment. Without old-fashioned employee loyalty, companies live with the uncertainty of their best workers moving on to better jobs or their own entrepreneurial adventure. This trend can be indexed by the growing number of books with titles such as:
- Breaking Free: How to Work at Home with the Perfect Small Business Opportunity
- Breaking Free: How to Quit Your Job and Start Your Own Businesses
- Break Free from Corporate: Be Your Own Boss
- Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business
- Earn Your Piece of the American Pie: Start Your Own Business
It’s now a common belief that job security has deteriorated over the last several decades. Younger workers no longer even think much about it. Instead, they focus on their own career needs and the charting of a path through several companies to achieve their goals.
One media outlet recently ran a story on one job applicant fresh from college who got six employment offers within a 72 hour period—each slightly better than the previous one. He agreed to take each job but in the end, let the five losers know that he wouldn’t be accepting their offers after all—with no apparent qualms about making and breaking his employment agreements. This would have been unheard-of behavior in the WWII or early half of the Boomer generations.
There’s been a growing discomfort among workers with the disparity between what they feel is important and the work that they do. This has come to a head with the experience of the COVID pandemic. In September of 2021 alone, 4.4 million people quit their jobs. That’s 4.4 million beyond those that lost their jobs because of pandemic restrictions.
There are currently widespread reports of worker dissatisfaction with what jobs have to offer—beyond benefits and wages or salaries, to include meaning and sense of making a contribution.
More and more people are searching for ways to integrate their work with the rest of their lives.
People are even willing to give up the security of a steady paycheck in exchange for more control over their life and work.
Why the Book Running a One-Person Business?
Running a One-Person Business is for you who are daydreaming about the possibility of running a sole proprietorship or who are working for someone else as you make a transition to becoming your own boss. It’s also for you who are knee-deep in the first year of being your own boss and for those who are old hands at it but who need specifics and refinement to help you remain a one-person business. This book is for all of you who suspect or already know that
It is possible to create fulfilling work and integrate it with all that is important in your life.
The one-person business has distinct characteristics that make it very different from other businesses. So we decided to fill the void with a book liberally sprinkled with both nuts-and-bolts practical advice and words of inspiration from people who were actually running successful one-person businesses.
We continue to refine and hone our knowledge and to listen to and learn from our students, clients, and the diverse community of one-person businesses. For nearly five decades now, we have had the privilege of advising hundreds of one person businesses from around the world. We’ve also experienced the deeply meaningful adventure of teaching thousands through our writing, lectures, workshops, courses, and webinars.
To write Running a One-Person Business we conducted in-depth interviews with successful one-person businesses. This gave us the chance to delve into the highly effective systems and practices that these businesses had worked out over the years. Like all the one-person businesses we have known, those we chose to examine more closely were run by individuals whose incomes varied as widely as their goals and lifestyles. They represent a variety of fields and live in different pats of the U.S. and overseas. In our discussion with the interviewees, we captured many insights about the real meaning of success and how it relates to social issues.
In Running a One-Person Business we show how to incorporate personal and social needs gracefully into the whole business picture. We also show you how to apply sound business practices, such as the diligent use of effective record-keeping systems, regular activity measurements, and careful planning of daily work strategy, to the management of a one-person business.
Although we wrote Running a One-Person Business primarily as a practical guide, it seemed to us that all really good “how-to” books give the reader confidence—a sense of “I know that” or “I was on the right track” and “I am not alone.” We don’t deny the fragility of one-person businesses. In fact, we stress just how difficult running one can be and spend considerable time explaining what it takes to succeed and what to do if you find yourself short of the prerequisites. In addition, we suggest many ways to reduce the inherent risks—experiences drawn from our own work and the work of our colleagues and interviewees.
Our hope is that this book will allow you to determine if the one-person-business form is for you, and, if so, to run your one-person business in an efficient, profitable way while remaining true to your social and ethical values.
Remember, as the owner of a one-person business, you’re part of a growing group of entrepreneurs who can act as a positive social force. You can’t be fired and, once you’ve learned to make your business work, you can be secure enough to take strong moral, ethical, political, and environmental stands, if you choose.
Running a one-person business can provide you with a decent living, make your personal life more meaningful, and give your social and civic life a level of excitement and interest that working for someone else seldom delivers.
Welcome to the growing community of one-person business owners! You represent both a vital force in American business and one of the most significant social revolutions occurring today!
Based on “Introduction: Business as Lifestyle” in the 1994 Second Revised Edition of Running a One-Person Business. Updated 2021.