The SoloPreneur Gaining Traction

Competition is heating up to prove not only your contribution to other companies but also your ability to promote yourself externally as a leader in your field. I see this happening in every niche. Some people might describe this as the “Age of the Influencer” and yes, that’s certainly an aspect of this trend. There has been a huge increase in the number of people attempting the role of “Influencer” or “Thought Leader” to promote their product or service. There is so much of this happening on social media these days, that it’s become almost impossible to connect casually. Just today, I observed someone in my Threads feed complaining that their Instagram was simply a rotation of ads, which is true, even if the content we scroll through isn’t explicitly labeled as such.

The status quo at play here is signaling a bigger shift, potentially reframing what we understand as the marketplace itself. Who is the buyer when everyone is attempting to sell you something? That’s how an interconnected community of trade starts. Will a new economy be born of individuals trading with individuals for services?

What I’m talking about here goes beyond the “Thought Leader” or “Influencer.” As we have experienced mass lay-offs in tech, and as AI looms as a threat to re-hiring, we have an influx of people needing to find alternative ways of making money. The days of steady full-time employment as a means of lifetime security have been on the wane for some time, but this appears to be accelerating towards a major transformation next year. You could label this the “Gig Economy,” but I’m casting a much wider net than that. While people will cobble together diverse gigs to make money, I think there will be a more sophisticated development around the individual. So less about plugging into other companies as a “Gig Worker” and more about companies empowering the Individual as a sole proprietor. Communities will grow around the individual contributor who will share and collaborate with other individuals. Like the fractional community, my friend built that suddenly took off this year.

This may not be fully realized next year, but I see the economy going in this direction over the next 5 years mainly because the nature of how we work is shifting. Small business software is predicted to grow 57.7B in the next 5 years — I see this upward growth trending even higher, especially with the various AI tools starting to take off. This shift will impact not just individuals, but organizations too, as software companies will either consolidate or partner as there will be a need to access an interconnected hub of services.

Consolidation

And it’s not only small business software companies that are primed for more consolidation in 2024. I see more opportunities to consolidate services targeted at the growing solopreneur market. Even larger companies will need to adapt, as fewer and fewer companies employ larger groups of people full-time.

The question emerging from this will be: how do we adapt our services to plug and play into these networks of individual contributors? Will joining these niche communities assist in the integration of services? Well, you already have companies testing this out. We’re seeing community offerings like Nacho to communities like Fractionals United, where individuals pay a nominal fee a month to get discounts on software they already use. But this is just a baby step to what will eventually be developed. Consolidation and integration is the name of the game.

Has Automated Prospecting Jumped the Shark?

In 2014, while I was attempting to position a Virtual Tour company as a Virtual Reality company, I was tasked with setting up a mass-automated prospecting campaign. One of the founders was responsible for sales and he had discovered a shortcut to getting inbound leads. This was before automated prospecting became popular and to the company’s targeted customer base, it was 10x more efficient getting leads than a normal marketing campaign. That makes sense, right? If it’s targeted and the company/product is established, an email appearing to come from a real person will typically elicit a higher response rate than a mass marketing email.

But since automation has become so prevalent, the line between mass marketing and sales has continued to blur. What once was a sure bet, has now decreased response rates for all involved. I hear more and more negative chatter from my network about these insufferable automations. It is much easier to ignore an email when you suspect it is automated, despite any refined tools of mass personalization. The moment you recognize automation, even personalized emails may go ignored unless there is a tangible personal connection. That is if the email gets to the person’s inbox.

Another roadblock to the seeming efficiency of automation is the growing sophistication of SPAM blockers. Because of the astronomical number of automated emails being sent out each day, businesses and ESPs have had to create more advanced ways to block these emails. Now, consider this trend with AI entering the market. Will AI improve the issue or will it further exacerbate the issue? In some ways, it is likely to improve, as automated hyper-personalization becomes more accessible. However, that too will have its limits as more and more people catch onto the bot’s formula.

What are some solutions to this growing problem? I believe resisting the pressure to follow the herd will pay off in multiple ways. There is a point when the gains to be had from efficiency provide diminishing returns. So what if you can email 50k people at once if your reply rate is less than a quarter of a percent and the people who do reply ghost you or end up wasting your time? You’ve actually lost in that equation. Not only have the people who responded wasted your time, but they are also unlikely to have a lasting memory of you when they really need someone — because there is little genuine connection in this kind of outreach.

Scaling has always been an obsessive priority for startups. You only have a certain amount of runway, right? But if you do have product/market fit, success is more about being in the right place at the right time than a lot of ineffective activity. What does one do to prepare to be in the right place at the right time? I will repeat this ad-nauseum to anyone who will listen: the right strategy is about deciding what not to do as much as it’s about deciding what to do.

Authentic, personal connections will become more and more sought after in the age of robots. Let marketing do the job of positioning the company at scale, providing the runway for the personal connection with sales. Both marketing and sales perform the best when you prioritize authentic connections that provide value to your prospects.

Beyond Content

This is a topic I’ve already broached in previous posts and if it was true then, it’s doubly true now. With the amount of content that has flooded the market, and with AI decreasing search visibility, brands will have to be more creative in value exchange. One of the ingenious ways to provide value in the age of technology is through free technology that adds an embedded stickiness. Most often this is a freemium model but it can also be something that is not a part of the core business, especially if the company is not primarily a tech company.

An example would be a beauty company that gives away a free digital makeup app that allows you to “try on” makeup before you buy it. Or a production company that gives an agency a free budget estimation tool for client projects which become an embedded offering to purchase their vendor services. The exchange of value for customer loyalty will continue to be a top marketing strategy for businesses, but it will require more creativity as simple content becomes less and less effective in getting a prospect’s attention.

AI to the … Rescue?

AI has already started to provide relief for the average marketer who wears multiple hats. I can’t tell you how many marketers in my network have complained about burnout as their teams have gotten cut. How does one keep up in the age of 24/7 promotion? Now, at least they have a creative assistant. This becomes especially important when creative brains become fatigued from overwork. It can become frustrating to the marketer who prioritizes quality work to not be able to perform at one’s highest level. Most creative breakthroughs happen at rest, after all.

However, creativity is also about sound-boarding and ideation with other creatives. Ironically, while many creators have felt their professions threatened by AI, when there is a lack of creatives with whom to collaborate, AI provides a lot of creative support for the user who’s comfortable giving it prompts. Plus, AI is always available and never gets burned out. I think AI will be an interesting experiment as far as creativity goes. Will it increase creative play, or will it also go the way of other formulas that get stale easily?

I’ve already heard some chatter from other marketers about the tell-tell sign of a post written by AI. Apparently AI social posts are notorious for emoji lead bullet points. I was wondering how everyone had mastered the use of emoji art so suddenly 😂. As is the pattern with all formulas, it will take some time for the formula to hit maximum saturation before performance starts to wane. Then there will be the necessary crash and resulting breakthrough. But aside from the trend followers, real creative people will use AI to their advantage to stretch the possibilities of their inborn creative genius.

I have been pondering this for some time now. Does the impact of algorithms and AI take more than it gives? I’ve noticed, as Meta has launched Threads while simultaneously pushing a whole bunch of random content into my feed, I’ve grown sort of listless with scrolling. The purpose of Facebook for me was sharing and discovering with friends. But when you take the social element out of sharing, that discovery process that happens between people, replacing it with machine curation, it’s taking the magic out of the social experience.

I start to think about the promise of having more information at my fingertips at any given moment. Some of the questions that popped into my head were around the cost of automating the very thing that promises us joy: the creative discovery process, the struggle that leads to growth, and the resulting breakthrough that makes us feel like we’ve accomplished something worthwhile… Is my thinking here too limited? Will AI just push the boundaries of discovery? Will there always be something beyond what AI has knowledge about? Will it actually push the limits of our knowledge, therefore allowing us to learn things we never thought possible?

Interestingly enough while I was pondering these questions, I was led to a book about the power of asking the right question, and one of the headlines asks “Are Questions Becoming More Valuable Than Answers?”. The topic at hand was value-based pricing which had nothing to do with this blog post, but it’s a brilliant example of how the creative process works. Perhaps this is the way we should be thinking about AI. Perhaps it’s not about the answer at all, perhaps it’s about The Question.

But what I want to challenge is this need in humans to explore, to create, to learn… to access our spirit. Machines cannot fulfill this and we should be wary of prioritizing knowledge over our creative spirit. People need purpose. It’s not just about earning a wage, although that’s certainly a priority. We need purpose and we need to feel like we have something unique to contribute.

It has been interesting for me to look back at prior annual outlooks I’ve written. What topics have actually taken off? What haven’t? For instance, the need for authentic connections was top of mind for me back in 2021, and not only has this need become more pronounced, but now, even tech companies are trying to solve the problem with bot personalization. How else has the world changed? How much have I changed?

As much trepidation as I have about AI, I am still also curious to see where it will take us — and growing more intrigued about where we’ll take it. There is a part of me that really loves innovation and being at the cutting edge of something. It’s what seduced me into Marketing in the first place. I am motivated by hope and I see endless possibilities so that’s where I’ll leave this for now. Hoping for the best, imagining all of the wonderful possibilities that are on the horizon for myself, and for humanity.