Why We Are Living In The Golden Age Of Solopreneurship.
The decade of opportunity is in your hands.
My grandmother owned a flower store.
As a child, I worked in her store for $5 per day. Child labour laws were slightly different back then. The exploitation of overseas grandchildren was required.
Jokes aside, my grandmother was the first solopreneur that I ever knew.
This early business experience shaped me.
At that young age, I saw what it was like to be a solopreneur. My grandmother was the CEO, COO, CMO, and everything in between. She worked long hours and weekends. But she felt free.
I didn’t realize what impression this would have on me.
A quote from Naval Ravikant:
There are almost 7B people on this planet. Someday, I hope, there will be almost 7B companies.
In the future, we will all work for ourselves.
The means for starting your one-person business are abundant. It’s the desire to do so that is scarce. But unlike my grandmother’s generation, we have modern tools available to help build a modern one-person business.
I recently read a book by Venture Capitalist James Wise called Start-Up Century.
This book writes about the trends and technologies that are eroding traditional forms of employment. He predicts that we are entering the start-up century.
Here’s why we will all be entrepreneurs.
Technology has reduced the…
Cost
Risk
Capability
of starting a business.
In 2023, according to a World Bank report:
It costs, on average, an entire year’s wages to set up an offline business almost anywhere in the developed world. A prohibitive sum for most people.
But that’s no longer the case.
The expense and complexities of opening a virtual storefront are close to zero. There are tools like Shopify and online marketplaces like Etsy, that, combined with the virality of social media, make creating a business far easier and cheaper than ever before.
To start a business in 2026, you don’t need:
Capital.
Inventory.
Equipment (besides your laptop).
You just need a high-value skillset that can be digitized, a creative mindset to spot hidden opportunities, and the openness to test and experiment with new technologies.
With technology, you can do 10x more with 100x less.
James Wise found that:
The number of workers required to generate $1 million in revenue for the average S&P500 company has fallen significantly as well, as more value is created with fewer workers using steadily improving technologies and processes.
In 18 months since its start, Loveable hit $100 million in annual recurring revenue with a lean team of around 45 employees.
But the number of people required to make $1m in revenue is shrinking.
A one-person business now has more power than a 20-person company did 30 years ago. The world of work is changing incredibly fast.
But while all the tools are there, 90% of solopreneurs haven’t caught up yet.
Here’s what you need to do next.
Don’t be a digital ghost.
“Let me look them up on LinkedIn”
Every day, people are stalking you.
Not in some creepy way like Joe Goldberg in the show You. But consumers and businesses are much more savvy than ever before. They will research the hell out of you before deciding to work with you.
But most people’s online presence is mediocre.
At best, people don’t really understand what you do.
At worst, you have a social media presence that actively works against you.
But most people aren’t focusing on building their digital presence.
Solopreneurs who say that they don’t want to ‘self-promote’ and just focus on doing the work are being extremely naive about business.
There is a reason it’s called the best-selling author, not the best writing author.
Being technically good at your job is not good enough.
I’ve closed clients solely through my social media presence. They were already 80% sold. I once walked into a meeting with a Family Office, and the first question they asked:
How did you grow to 90,000 followers on Medium?
I’m not joking.
They had researched the heck out of me before the meeting.
They read my words. My long-form articles were functioning as my salespeople. My email sequence built trust and authority. They didn’t just accept my high-ticket offer, they upsold themselves.
The CEO of the Family Office wanted to build a brand for herself.
I don’t think I’d even get a meeting if I didn’t have an online presence. My follower count provided a level of social proof that’s hard to replicate.
Love it or hate it, that’s where business is headed.
Everyone’s attention is on social media now.
Refusing to accept this reality is stupid. You can’t stop the waves of change. Learn to surf them or be crushed by them when they inevitably land.
In 2026, my plan is to double down on video content.
While I love writing, with AI, more and more people's attention is shifting to video and audio. The amount of time people spend on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok is wild. YouTube has 2 billion monthly views. Put energy into where consumer attention already is.
But I’m not starting from zero.
My writing provides a solid foundation for my video content scripts. I can repurpose my best-performing articles into high-performing scripts. I’m really excited about this challenge in 2026. Stay tuned for this change.
But how will I stand out with the competition? Well…
Become a f*cking oddball online.
In the online world, weirdness gets you rich.
In the corporate world, weirdness gets you fired.
In my online personality, I combine everything that makes me a f*cking oddball:
My profuse love for durians.
Obsession with online sales and marketing.
I was born in Singapore but raised in Australia.
Dedication to mastering handstands and weighted muscle-ups.
Put everything together, and I create a category of ONE.
No one else can beat me. There’s no competition.
Why? Because no one is better at being me than me.
This might seem like a Dr Seuss mantra you’d tell children in Kindergarten. But in the online world, being an oddball pays well and creates meaning beyond just what society accepts of you.
As Tim Denning writes:
I’d argue that having people think you’re weird is the requirement to lead a good life that ends in zero regrets.
If people can define you neatly by a title or label, you’re not weird enough.
Friends and family have a hard time describing what I do, especially in Southeast Asian culture. If you can’t be defined, it gives them anxiety. This makes me laugh. When they struggle to describe what I do, this is a signal I’m on the right track.
Being predictable makes you acceptable.
But if you want to achieve what most people can’t. You have to be what most people aren’t. While everyone is drowning themselves in AI slop, you’re investing in understanding yourself more and more.
People are so obsessed with ‘creating’ a personal brand.
You don’t need to create anything. Don’t overcomplicate a very simple process. Just be who you already are. Use social media to amplify your personality.
Everyone is uniquely weird in their own way.
Be unapologetically who you are.
Being weird = being memorable.
A focused fool beats a distracted genius.
I’ve got a friend in Bali who is starting four businesses.
You heard that right. He is simultaneously trying to launch 4 different businesses. He spends so much time switching between tasks that he never fully gets into depth building one.
But building one company is already hard.
Splitting your time across four businesses will lead nowhere.
He spent last Saturday sitting in back-to-back Zoom calls with each of his co-founders of the different businesses. By the end of the day, he had talked a lot but made no progress on building a product.
“It’s hard to build momentum if you keep dividing your attention”
– James Clear
Without obsessive focus, there is no mastery.
You’d never hear of an athlete trying to become pro at four different sports.
But being an entrepreneur is no different to being an athlete. Entrepreneurship is a high-performance act. It requires a level of professionalism.
When you keep switching, you can never build compound interest.
It’s like taking your stock investments out after 3 days and putting them into another ‘better’ investment.
As Warren Buffett says,
‘It’s not timing of the market, it’s time in the market.’
Almost all my investments that I made 5+ years ago have already doubled in value.
Without focus, making daily progress is impossible.
If you’ve got a 9–5 corporate job, you’re already a solopreneur.
Congrats.
This is big news.
Now, you just need to sell your expertise via a fee-for-service to more than your employer. Your 9–5 job already validates that you’ve got a skillset that people will pay for.
In a global marketplace of billions, you only need 3–5 clients.
If you’ve got 500 people on social media, that’s 0.000008% conversion rate. When you do the maths, you’ll start to realize how simple it really is to launch your business. You can do this while you have a 9–5 job.
And while you do so,
Become a digital
Become an oddball online.
Create focus.
We are living in the Solopreneur Century.
This is the roadmap to thrive, not just survive.
——
👉 Build your PROFITABLE six-figure one-person business while you work a 9–5 corporate job (Even if you have kids or a mortgage). If you want my one-person business growth system, I’ve created a FREE email course for you to get started
