What solopreneurs get wrong about services
The $40K contract playbook.
I just tried an AI tool for solopreneurs and founders to see if it’s a fit for a sponsorship. Turned out, I’d recommend it even if they weren’t sponsoring my newsletter.
Here’s the message I sent the founder after trying it:
It’s called aicofounder, and it’s the business partner you didn’t know you needed. At least, I didn’t, until I tried it.
You get a generous amount of free credits when you sign up (enough for me to have a massive breakthrough), but I’m planning to upgrade anyway.
You can check it out here.
The acting industry has a perception problem. The movie star — the $30 million per picture, the red carpet, the cultural mythology — is so dominant an image that it distorts the judgment of everyone trying to build a real career in the industry.
The numbers behind the dream are brutal. Only 12% of SAG-AFTRA actors earn more than $1,000 in a year. Around 90% are unemployed at any given moment. The blockbuster career isn’t a long shot — it’s essentially a mirage that a tiny fraction stumble into, usually after years of doing something else entirely.
The something else is where the actual careers are. Broadway performers earn a union minimum of over $120,000 a year for a full run. Soap opera regulars make $3,000 to $5,000 per episode on a stable, consistent schedule. Voice actors average around $100,000 a year doing work most people don’t even think of as acting. The actress who plays Flo in the Progressive commercials reportedly clears over a million dollars a year. These aren’t consolation prizes. They’re careers — built on steady, expert, in-demand work rather than on winning a lottery.
Solopreneurship has exactly the same problem.
Every solopreneur wants to build the thing that makes money while they sleep. The digital product, the paid newsletter, the YouTube channel that compounds while you live your life. And yes, some people get there — just as some theatre actors make it to Hollywood. Hugh Jackman started in musical theatre.
But the State of Solopreneurship 2026 report surveyed 153 solopreneurs — people three or more years into their businesses—and found that 1:1 and done-for-you work was still their highest revenue source. Not as a stepping stone but as the actual business.
The problem isn’t that products don’t work. The problem is that you’ve been conditioned to see service work as something you tolerate until you graduate to something better. So you underprice it, underinvest in it, and treat every client engagement like an unfortunate detour from your real business — when the data is telling you, clearly, that it is your real business.
You just need to make it more efficient and more profitable.
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