Solo Consulting as a Small Business

Today is officially Small Business Saturday — squeezed in between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday to try and remind us all of the important of supporting small or community-owned businesses.

Small Business Saturday is sponsored by American Express, which feels a bit disjointed since Amex has annual revenue in excess of $50 billion. But if that helps boost small businesses by getting folks thinking about where they spend their dollars, so be it.

I first became aware of Small Business Saturday almost a decade ago, when I was a partner-owner in a small business making money and delivering value in a very different way to how I work now — making and selling physical products made using materials grown and harvested from the ground. Another story for another day. At the time we jumped on the Small Business Saturday trend in our marketing because what we were doing felt like it fit very clearly in the small business category.

Blue Hills Digital has been in operation even longer, but it was only two years ago this month that I shifted into running the business as my sole, full-time income. Reflecting on that milestone today I realize there's something about Blue Hills that feels less like a "small business," at least in the way the savvy marketing folks at American Express use the term.

Blue Hills Digital doesn't have any employees. There isn't a physical location on an archetypal "Main Street." The services (and occasional digital product) I sell are all delivered virtually: you can't hold them in your hands. I don’t think these are necessarily good or bad things. But these absences make some of the marketing messages suggested by Amex feel like less of a fit for a virtual consulting business providing remote services to organizational clients.

Nonetheless I'm doing my best to lean into the small business owner identity. I love running my own business. I get to choose how the business operates. I get the privilege of supporting a variety of clients doing powerful, mission-driven work. I like the autonomy.

Unlike BIG businesses, Blue Hills Digital isn't public and has no shareholders extracting value from the business. And the business has no investors waiting for a return. This means the value created in the business either stays in the business or flows through to me and my family, and to the communities we live in or visit.

The lack of shareholders or investors also means I get to control the growth rate of the business — I'm not forced to grow revenue year-over-year if I don't want or need to, and there's no pressure to increase "headcount" or pay increasingly large dividends to people removed from day-to-day operations.

These advantages to small, closely-held businesses are a bit more abstract than the #ShopSmall marketing messages about shopping on Main Street delivered by Amex, but they feel important to me. They're about keeping decision-making power in the hands of the people actually doing the work, and making sure the resulting value is distributed back to those same people, their families, and their communities.

So go ahead #ShopSmall, not just for your holiday gifts, but in the professional services you purchase too. Your small business-owning family members, friends, and neighbors will appreciate it.