Pivoting for 2026? Read this.
For most of my life, I've felt the subtle shame that comes from changing my mind in a world where "quitting" is frowned upon.
Comments like "I can't keep track of what you're doing anymore" or "I thought you were XYZ?" reminded me that from the outside, my career and my hobbies and my home looked like absolute chaos.
That it looked like I kept quitting things and starting something new. That I never stuck with anything long enough to see it through.
On the inside, it was completely different.
I wasn't changing what I was doing. I was following the natural progession of what I was doing.
I started as a copywriter. When I spent more time answering my clients' marketing questions than doing the actual writing, I started consulting.
When the economy shifted, I went back to done-for-you services of one type or another. Web design and development in 2011 and 2012, WordPress sites in 2017 or so, ecommerce and Shopify in 2020 for reasons that should be obvious by now.
In 2021, people wanted to know how I was marketing, so I started teaching them.
When most of them were neurodivergent, I started looking deeper into how to serve them better. I learned more about what it meant to be neurodivergent. I got my own diagnosis not long after.
Turns out that my clients were teaching me things, too. 😉
To me, the only real transition I made in this entire journey of 22 years was the dividing line between consulting/agency/freelance work and teaching/coaching/mentoring.
Everything else was a natural evolution. A series of interconnected changes, with a natural throughline.
As the market changed, as *I* changed, my business changed to meet it. Not because I couldn't stick with something, but because my brain saw the connections and trends quickly enough to follow where they were going while building on what I already had.
Right now, my brain sees the trends and connections between the evolution of the market, technology, and society as a whole.
I can see that courses and information products are never going to be the same market again. When you can ask Gemini to build you a personal curriculum of any topic under the sun, linked to articles and videos written and produced by real, credible experts, why would you need a course, right?
I can see that people are growing tired of having to do everything themselves to run a business. More and more threads popping up across social this year with people saying they're going to invest in tech, tools, and time in 2026. They're hiring people and buying software and investing in templates instead of courses and coaching. When you're already stretched to the max, and technology has been promising to make you more productive in every. single. dang. article. for two whole years... You're going to want to cash in on that promise and see what it can do.
I can see that the low- to mid-level of done-for-you has dropped out of the market almost completely. When businesses are struggling, it is far easier to leverage Canva with some AI support and have your VA produce a mediocre graphic than it is to hire a brand designer to do it for thousands.
Coaches, course creators, and small-business focused freelancers are no longer competing with each other or with in-house staff or big agencies.
They're competing with a $19 OpenAI subscription, or a $14 Canva subscription. And unfortunately, many of them are not winning.
We can talk all day long about how the results aren't nearly as good. We all know this. And in time, those clients will, too. But for now? When budgets are tight and businesses are weary?
Standing on a soapbox doesn't pay the bills.
Now, there are exceptions to this rule. Absolutely.
People will still pay for specialized information. If Gemini can't find it, or would hallucinate it? There's still a market for that.
Cursor isn't out there coding in COBOL, fixing government programs. They tried that. It failed.
People will still pay for strategy. As much as LLMs can help spot patterns and make connections, it can't replicate the pattern-spotting and diagnostic ability of a brilliant human mind. The high levels of many of these services still exist because they cannot yet be replicated.
People are still investing in connection, community, in having as one of our more recent members put it "a sparring partner" to bounce ideas off of. Someone with lived experience doing the thing you're doing, who can help you make decisions for yourself on what to do next.
Coaching, essentially, but not the leveraged model you've grown used to. Not the 5 minute hotseat and "go watch a video". Real, stimulating intellectual discussion, with questions and development and accountability and action.
But if you want to not just make it through this economic and tech transition alive, but really thrive?
Tech is giving us one of the greatest opportunities of our time, if we're willing to use it the right way.
Not replacing writers and artists and brilliant minds with LLMs and AI slop...
... but leaning into the market's overwhelming desire for actual tools that help them do the work.
It has never been easier to start a micro-SaaS. I have personally witnessed 3 people in the past week build a simple app in less than 2 hours and have it ready for launch as a lead magnet.
People without a ton of tech skills, too.
It has never been easier to map out your IP and frameworks into simple database tools, spreadsheets, worksheets, templates... And hand them to your clients to actually do the work, instead of just learning how to do the work.
None of this has to be done with AI, by the way. If LLMs and generative AI aren't your thing? They don't have to be. Those tools can make it faster, but they're not necessary to thrive through this shift.
The reason there is an AI bubble in the first place is because there is demand for tools and technology to automate the labour we don't enjoy, or don't have the tools to do.
We just want something to give us the answers, give us the solution, give us the output so we can move on with the things we do want to do.
Just look at every quiz, assessment, or archetype test you've ever taken.
You wanted something to just tell you what to do, so you could do it. Put a label on those traits you couldn't figure out. Give you clarity. Give you certainty.
For a long time, courses and information were the best we could get. Learn how someone else did it, so you can try to do it for yourself. That was the shortcut.
If you can take that same information and put it into a template, a worksheet, a micro-app and pass it along so they can do it themselves?
If you can back that up with coaching and community and a "sparring partner" to feel through the shifts?
You can thrive through this shift, too.
Solo School is doing this through 2026. We've already been building micro-apps throughout our curriculum, from our pricing calculator to our niche and skills assessments and beyond. Not just telling you how to figure it out for yourself, but actually taking your inputs and telling you what to do.
(And no, we don't use AI for the pricing calculator. LLMs are notoriously bad at math 😂 )
If you want the tools to actually navigate this pivot, figure out how to package up your knowledge and IP into tools and tech and connection and community, come join us. With our new monthly option, it's $12/day for unlimited access to *everything*.
Join us before the end of the year, and you'll get our January Countdown Calendar included!
- Cheryl
