The Rise Of The Million Dollar, One-Person Business

I know the IRS 15-A rules have a carve out for "computer programmers, etc" that limits how such employees can function as 1-person LLC's for the purpose of 1099 employment with a corporation. (That is, the IRS says in such cases we're employees and a 1-man business won't save you from that, so we should be W2'd). But that doesn't affect double taxation?

LLCs pass through the tax burden to the individual partner so whether that's RE or software engineering, there won't be double taxation on the partnerships profits.

Am I missing something else that affects this?

What that means is that if I want to have a long-term high-security relationship with a couple of key clients, I basically hit a ceiling in hourly rate (a good rate, but slightly below what your general multi-person agency will charge) and I've been at that ceiling for a couple of years now - nowhere close to $250k .

It appears the way to transition out is to bump the rate up significantly so it doesn't appear you're trying to compete with agencies - maybe around $200/hour or 6k-8k/week. But the problem with that is that the long-term relationships can go out the window. They only want to bring you in for shorter periods of time, and you have to hustle more. So the marginal benefit isn't awesome. And I really like my clients and I hate hustling, so I stick with where I'm at. This higher rate I've had for the last 2-3 years is nice and all, but practically what it means is that I'm projected to be able to retire at age 65 instead of age 75. It's not a dramatic difference in lifestyle.

So instead, I've just been trying to amass a larger emergency fund outside of maxing my retirement savings every year. And then I'll do something with it... what, I don't know.

I know, first-world problems, but it seems that now that I finally have a bit of a nest egg, the income-maximizing move would be to use it to invest in one of these other careers the forbes article mentions. But what? Nest egg money isn't really the limiting factor behind a retail operation, it's the actual retail product idea, and I don't really think that way. What's left is real estate, but I'm regularly told I shouldn't even bother if I'm not a fix-it handyman sort, which I'm not. So I'm sort of in this state of perpetual mulling. I wonder if I could just find a talented-but-poor subcontractor, get my own general contractor license, and handle all the business and project management parts (which I love) despite knowing nothing about construction.

You don't need to do the fixing yourself... My advice would be to read 3+1 Plan book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_3%2B1_Plan). You can get it for free in PDF from the author if you sing up for one of his websites.

- Point 1

26,744 had sales between $1 million and $2.49 million (up from 24,945 in 2010)

It's a 7% rise, in a year. Those who are in the $100k-$250k range, rose by 6%; not much of a difference.

When we talk (or at least from my perspective) about the rise of a group or minority, it means their growth is much faster than the average and they are probably doing some kind of disruption.

- Point 2

The author talks about the revenue. The revenue means little. Some solo-entrepreneur are selling their craft. A Software developer working remotely has almost no costs. Some are trading stuff. So their revenues are high, but not really their profit.