This Former Boy Scout Created A Million-Dollar, One-Person Business—Joining A Growing Number Of Seven-Figure Solopreneurs

Jaron Lodge discovered he had a knack for entrepreneurship when, as a Cub Scout, he hit the highest sales goal selling popcorn. “I got addicted from there,” he says. By age 18, he’d saved $25,000 from a dog-sitting business he started and jobs at Subway and an Ashley Furniture warehouse. After listening to a series of audiobooks on sales, he sold $30,000 worth of high-end cutlery the summer after high school.

Inspired by entrepreneurs he followed on YouTube, he began experimenting with creating a game based on skipping stones, which he’d gotten familiar with in Boy Scouts. Reading up on stone skipping games, he discovered people around the world enjoyed it, and there were dozens of ways to describe the game in different languages. That pointed to the potential for creating a fast-growing business around it. “It seemed like the game was the beginning of a new sport, and it would be really cool if I created the standard ball for this sport,” he recalls.

Enrolling at Arizona State University (ASU), he joined the business entrepreneurship program. He began experimenting with making the stones from fish food, selling them from a pop-up shop at the Sun Devil Marketplace Store. Enlisting testers to try using the homemade stones in a 24-foot pool, he says, “I realized the fish-food skipping stones were really messy, and just decided to 3-D print them at the ASU library,” which has a Makerspace.

As he perfected the plastic version of the stones, he went door-to-door to ask 100 homeowners about their frustrations with backyard games. “A lot of them said the games didn’t last more than a season, weren’t portable and were hard to store,” he says. “It was also very hot in Arizona, and they needed something to escape the heat and play outside.”

It was that research that helped him come up with the idea for SKIP ‘NN Hole, a pool game that combines skipping stones with corn hole. He raised about $35,000 to grow the business through competitions organized through programs such as Venture Devils, which supports ASU students and other members of its community in growing businesses and earning accolades from the university for his success with the business. “Jaron Lodge honed his natural talent for selling and creating at ASU,” the J. Orin Edison Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute announced when he graduated in 2021.

Lodge also dove into ongoing self-education. After listening to and taking notes on all of the episodes of Funded Today, a podcast suggested by an entrepreneur friend, Adam Craft, he decided to put the product on Kickstarter. In this crowdfunding marketplace, fans of a yet-to-be-manufactured product can place preorders. Uncovering manufacturing help through Alibaba, a hub for manufacturing resources, he rolled out his initial product, SKIP ‘NN Hole on Kickstarter in 2020. He raised $53,378, exceeding his goal of $11,300 in eight hours.

Today, Lodge sells Skipp ‘NN Hole on Amazon, through the sporting goods chain Scheel’s, nationwide, and on his site. It retails for $99.99 on Amazon. His Score ‘NN Hole all-in-one game set includes his first game and several others, such as Floating Beer Pong, with add-ons—which his site, built on Shopify, encourages shoppers to buy. Lodge was involved in sports in high school, among them baseball, golf, gymnastics, and swimming. “Maybe that was why I wanted to make the game versatile—I love playing all these different games.”

Lodge’s one-person business in Surprise, Arizona grew from $60,000 in revenue in 2020 to an anticipated $3 million this year, already reaching $1 million in revenue by March 2024 as he stepped up marketing efforts on Facebook and Instagram and brought in an agency to help him with marketing.

Lodge is part of an exciting trend that keeps accelerating: the growth of million-dollar, one-person businesses. The number of businesses with no payroll that are hitting $1 million to $2.49 million in revenue rose to 53,460 for the first time in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That number was up nearly 48% since 2012 when the government started tracking the statistics on nonemployer businesses. Nonemployer businesses are those run by the owners with no formal employees, though sometimes they rely on contractors. Back in 2012, just 29,494 businesses reached this revenue size.

Some businesses are going beyond this. Another 2,708 nonemployer businesses hit $2.5-$4.99 million in revenue in 2021, up from 1,900 in 2012. 536 reached $5 million in revenue and more, growing from 386 in 2012.

That said, these businesses are still the elite Olympians of the small business world. There were about 28.5 million nonemployer businesses in the U.S. in 2021, and most are not generating $1 million or more in revenue.

How are the owners of the seven-figure businesses reaching such heights? As Lodge’s story illustrates, it’s probably never been easier for budding entrepreneurs to learn from each other, thanks to online resources like YouTube and podcasts. Entrepreneurship education at universities, though not mandatory for becoming an entrepreneur, is more widely available than ever before. Meanwhile, free and low-cost digital and AI-powered tools are helping entrepreneurs get more done with less funding than in the past. And, at the same time, it is easier than ever to find freelancers and contractors to help grow a business on platforms like Upwork and Freelancer, or to outsource to programs such as Fulfillment by Amazon.

The top seven industries for businesses in the $1-2.49 million range—the largest group of seven-figure one-person businesses and partnerships—were:

* Professional services, with 13,576 businesses (up 48% since 2012)

* Retail, with 4,215 businesses (up nearly 31% since 2012)

* Construction (6,399 businesses, up 119.5% since 2012)

* Wholesale trade (2,652 businesses, up nearly 15% since 2012)

* Health care and social assistance (2,947 businesses, up nearly 19% since 2012)

* Finance and insurance (5,064 businesses, up 102.1% since 2012)

* Real estate rental and leasing (4,536 businesses, up 76% since 2012).

Keep in mind that businesses are not static. Some of these businesses will stay million-dollar, one- or two-person businesses for their lifetime; others will only remain so for a year or two before morphing into small businesses and traditional startups with employees. Achieving seven-figure revenue, if they do so profitably, gives them many options for growth.

Lodge, at the moment, is working on preparing his million-dollar, one-man business to scale up. He experienced some early supply chain issues, so he is making sure his manufacturers are ready to expand production exponentially. “It’s hard for manufacturers to have that capacity, and it takes a while for them to scale up like that,” he says.

In the meantime, he’s planning on expanding his marketing, emphasizing the fact that his game is one that the whole family can play together. “There are a lot of backyard games like pool basketball and pool volleyball that it’s hard for the whole family to play together because there’s a height advantage or a strength advantage,” he says. “My game lets everyone of all ages play competitively together.” In the meantime, he’s on the front lines of the million-dollar, one-person business trend, helping to invent new ways of doing business as he goes along.