If there's one thing I know from over two decades in business and over $2M in revenue generated, it's that the people in power never let economic challenges carry on once they are impacted.
People in power want their power to continue.
Once the current climate impacts their power, their wealth, their life in some material way, we'll see a shift in policy and a shift in macroeconomics.
How you're positioned in that moment almost entirely dictates how that will go for you.
If I'm right, and the upswing comes, building what you want it to look like now only has advantages.
If I'm wrong, and this is followed by the complete collapse of society as we know it and the system is well and truly broken, I'll meet you at the bonfire to watch it burn - and we'll be well prepared and positioned to help the world come through what comes next.
There are lots of things outside of your control. I don't personally come from generational wealth, I'm a woman, I'm queer, I'm disabled, but I'm also white-passing in a western social democracy and have clawed my way up to participate in the lower rungs of what is left of the middle class. So, I have some things going for me and some things working against me.
Some of the things I've mentioned are working both for and against me.
Within the options that are available to me at the intersection of those privileges and disadvantages, I have a lot to work with.
So, here's what I'm doing over the next 18 months to position myself for the upswing.
- I'm going all-in on human connection.
You might not think this, given the amount of time I spend talking about technology lately, but it's true. I am all-in on human connection.
Human-first, tech-supported is the way I see things going. We're already starved for connection and community, and our reliance on technology is making this feel acute.
If they're no longer keeping us too busy with work to have a life, just happy enough to not revolt because the system is breaking, then guess what?
We get to reconnect and do what is important to us.
I'm doing more in-person. I'm getting out into the real world. I'm having more 1:1s again to get deeper in conversation. I'm intentionally building relationships that support me and the people around me so that when the ride rises, the boats float together.
When the opportunities come, I want to know about them - and I want to have people to share them with.
My core offers over the next 18 months are centering around human connection, mentorship, community, building together, and supporting that with the technology available to us.
Part of this is simply humans craving connection during times of uncertainty...
... but part of this is also a business move.
When information is everywhere, lived experience becomes premium.
People don't want to know what to do as much as they want to know what you would do. That distinction matters.
- I'm not building any generic software.
I know. You're super excited because now you can build an app - a CRM, a website, a calculator, a social scheduler, a chatbot, a processor or generator, whatever - in an hour or two. And that's awesome!
But if you can do it?
So can anyone else who has the idea and an LLM account, from other people in your field to people in other fields entirely and even your clients themselves.
There are exactly three things left in software that will make an app worth building or buying:
- Personalization.
Was it built for me specifically, suiting my needs exactly? Is the button exactly where I need it to be? Have we eliminated all the features I don't need? Does it connect to everything I need it to?
You can't compete here unless you're doing bespoke software, and that's not a long-term play. Right now, your tech-savvy clients can build this for themselves. Soon, even your tech-fearing clients will be able to do this for themselves. This is not a viable play for most people unless you're pivoting from operations or admin in certain specific ways, and have skills to do things that AI can't currently do for people (like understanding API/MCP connections and making that work for people.) - Stability at scale.
This is why Slack, Discord, Squarespace, etc will survive, at least for now. Yes, you can vibe code a chat app or a website, but it's a new place for your clients to go. It's another login, another bookmark, another app, there's friction. And when it breaks? That's on you.
Apps that have millions of users and established stability and interconnectivity will still rule their respective spaces for some time. Why build Notion when it already exists, works flawlessly, is familiar to your clients and your team, and doesn't really need to be changed at all?
But you need VC-level resources to make this play. If you don't have a couple hundred million to light on fire while pushing out your competition, this isn't the move for most people either. - IP-based software.
Your clients can build a generic CRM in 15 minutes with Airtable and n8n and it'll be better than most apps available on the market right now, because it'll be personalized to them.
But they can't build your outreach process into a CRM specifically, because they don't have your process yet and they don't have the rights to create commercial products with your IP. Your templates, your ways of categorizing contacts, the questions you ask on sales calls, these have always been yours and still are.
And now, you can code them into custom tools that help your clients do the work.
You can build the CRM that helps people implement your sales process specifically in a couple of hours, and include it with your mentorship to make it easier to actually implement your advice.
Same with calculators, template builders, website builders, conferencing software, document editors, proposal builders... The list goes on.
Between what is available on Open Source and what you can build with an LLM in a few hours, your clients don't need anything but YOU and THEM to implement anymore.
Instead of teaching and then sending them off into whatever software works, you can now build a tool that implements your frameworks and methodologies for them automatically - without having to spend $250k on custom development.
This is the play that most expert businesses should be making in the next 18 months. You don't have to, but within the next two years, custom apps to implement your IP will basically be an expectation and not a bonus. Get ahead of this if you can.
3. I'm going asset-based in my marketing.
I'm tired of content hamster wheels, I'm tired of pretending that social media works the way it did in 2023, I'm tired of pretending my brain works the way that most content marketing advice says it should.
Yes, my brain doesn't allow me to be "consistent" in my inputs into my business. I'm tired of pretending it does and trying to force it. I'm also tired of pretending it's the only way to do things.
I'm spending 2026 building interest-based social media accounts that repurpose content, autoresponder sequences that deliver my best writing, conversion mechanisms that don't need me to show up at the same time every week, assets that live on other people's platforms like guest blogs, guest podcast episodes, guest trainings, and more.
My goal is to set these up to run without my active participation unless and until a human needs me, ready for me to add to when I'm inspired but not as a constant demand. If I can start with 12 weeks of emails, and write another 5 before those 12 are up, and continue adding to them when I feel inspired, then I'll be able to market my business consistently without having to initiate the consistency myself.
This is mirrored in what algorithms actually want from us right now, by the way. Gone are the days of "post 20+ times per day if you want to be seen", and "put a new video on YouTube every Tuesday or you'll get buried."
The things that matter most to the algorithms across all social platforms right now are authenticity, depth into a specific interest (2-3 related interests MAX), and value.
If you can show up on the same topic(s) over and over, authentically, delivering the value of your lived experience, you'll get reach.
This is also true if you're not using social media at all.
If you're using SEO/GEO, guest posting, podcast tours, ads, whatever it is, the tactic dictates the details but not the overall strategy.
Valuable, authentic, deep lived experience on a specific interest is what matters right now everywhere.
(You can set up multiple social profiles to make this work if you have multiple areas. You don't suddenly have to niche. You just have to use the system the way it was designed!)
If you offer more value on the back-end of it, that reach can turn into email subscribers, leads, and eventually clients.
But if you don't bring your real self to it and make sure you're relatable, if you don't focus in a specific area or set of interests, if you don't share valuable lived experience, you won't get anywhere no matter where you're building.
From now through 2027, that is my plan.
Build human-first, tech-supported experiences for clients, and grow my reach through authentic, valuable, lived experience content put out across multiple channels in ways that will work better if I don't try to show up every Tuesday.
I predict that by 2028, having a software tool to implement your IP will be a baseline expectation.
I predict that by 2028, mentorship, coaching, and 1:1 time will be even more important.
I predict that by 2028, AI slop content will be relegated to mindless entertainment and gone from thought leadership spaces entirely.
And I'm acting accordingly.
If you want to do the same, I'm going to be diving deep into this throughout the month of April along with some additional resources to support experts - creatives, consultants, creators - who want to make this shift with me.
If you want to learn how to build tech tools that add to your human-first approach, if you want to learn how to build marketing assets that work for you even when you're not working, if you want to move with where things are going and set yourself up to thrive as best you can, make sure you're watching for my emails (and my posts on Facebook, if you're still there!)
Hit reply and tell me what you would build for your clients, if anything was possible?
- Cheryl
