Your employer captures the value of everything you produce.
This is how employment works.
You generate value.
The company packages and distributes it.
They pay you a salary.
They keep the spread.
Your salary is the cost of your labor, not the value of your output.
And if you didn't create more value for the company than your salary, then you wouldn't have a job.
It's a "win-win"! You get a stable income, the company captures your value.
A solopreneur is someone who eliminates that spread. And more and more people are seeing successful solopreneurs and are asking “Why not me?”
Today, we’ll cover:
What is a solopreneur?
The difference between a solopreneur, entrepreneur, freelancer, and indie hacker
Why solopreneurship is on the rise
The opportunity cost of employment
How to become a solopreneur
And much more.
Before we dive in…
I have some exciting news to share with you all very soon on the Wealth Potion website.
Long-time subscribers know that I started Wealth Potion to teach personal finance, investing, and economics in a way that actually helps you build wealth.
An official announcement is coming soon, but I love the idea of Easter Eggs in video games…
So for those of you who are keen, you can find it on my website already (and there might even be a reward for those that do).
Back to the article.
What a Solopreneur Actually Is
The word “solopreneur” often gets misused. Some people use it interchangeably with "freelancer", "indie hacker", or "unemployed".
Here's the actual distinction:
A freelancer trades time for money. They have clients, not customers. When they stop working, income stops. They own a job, not a business.
An indie hacker is closer, but they are focused on product development. These products can be hobbies or side projects or businesses.
An entrepreneur builds a company. They hire, manage, raise capital, take on partners. The goal is scale — and the cost is complexity, equity, and headcount.
A solopreneur builds a business that runs on one person plus leverage. No employees, no partners, no VC. The leverage comes from systems, software, and audience. And now, AI.
And the distinction matters because the constraints are completely different.
A freelancer is still capped by hours worked. An entrepreneur is capped by the ability to recruit and manage people. A solopreneur is capped by how effectively they deploy leverage.
In an age where AI handles more and more execution work, leverage becomes more and more powerful.
Why the Model Works Now
In 50 years, everyone will be working for themselves.
There are three primary things that make solopreneurship viable in 2026, where it wasn't before:
Distribution is free. Before the internet, reaching customers required capital: print, radio, retail. Now a single person can build an audience of thousands with nothing but a camera and a clear point of view. That audience is owned distribution. It's the solopreneur's equivalent of a sales and marketing team.
Software handles fulfillment. Digital products (courses, tools, newsletters, templates) can be sold and delivered automatically, at scale, without hiring anyone. No warehouse, no shipping, no customer service headcount. Your cost of marginal production can be near-zero.
AI handles execution. Writing, design, code, research… the tasks that used to require junior hires are now largely automatable. One person with the right stack can produce what used to take a team. Solopreneurs now have a team. But it's a team of AI agents.
The playbook, in short: build an audience, package your knowledge into a product, let software deliver it. Iterate. The creator economy made this possible. AI makes it more accessible than ever before.
What Staying Employed Actually Costs You
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
If you stay in employment, you keep the stability but surrender the upside.
I've shared this in plenty of Wealth Potion newsletters and YouTube videos, but I spent 10+ years working in software startups. I specifically chose to work at startups. Across the 4 tech companies I worked at, the largest company I ever joined was 30 people when I joined, and 250 people when I left.
Working at startups can be brutal, and I certainly didn't choose to work at small companies because I enjoyed the pain. I chose to work at startups for the equity. Stock options that gain in value based on the performance of the company. Upside.
As an employee, every time you create something valuable — a system, a process, a framework, a product feature, a slide deck — the company owns it. You get a salary. They get the asset.
If you stay a freelancer, sure, you get independence... but you don't get leverage. Every project resets. There's no compounding.
The opportunity cost is significant enough to really sit with and think about.
A solopreneur who builds the right audience and the right product can reach income levels that a salaried employee almost never will. Not because they work harder, but because they own the whole stack.
Tech Layoffs Weren't Your Fault covers why the traditional employment contract is becoming a worse deal for skilled workers. The solopreneur model is one direct response to that.
Solopreneurs are at the Top of the Leverage Ladder
Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world.
Think of it in terms of leverage.
Employees have labor leverage — their skill, sold as units per hour (oftentimes smoothed into an annual salary).
Freelancers have the same leverage on their work, albeit slightly unbundled from a single employer. They get to control their calendar, but their labor is doing the heavy lifting.
Solopreneurs have media leverage, software leverage, and capital leverage — simultaneously.
Building Wealth is a Video Game (The 5 Levels) covers why moving up the leverage ladder is the whole game. Solopreneurship is one of the most direct on-ramps to that.
The goal isn't to work more. The goal is to own more of what you produce. To build systems so that production doesn't require your presence every time.
From that point of leverage, you could work less and earn more. And if you choose to work more, you will capture more value. Because there's no middleman taking your upside.
How to Get Started
There are many paths to becoming a solopreneur, but here's the one that I took, and could work for you:
1. Pick your niche
What do you know that someone else would pay to learn or use? What topics do people often ask you questions about? Start at the intersection of your existing knowledge, a real problem, and a specific audience.
2. Build in public before you have a product
Before you can sell anything, you need an audience. Writing or recording about what you're learning attracts people who are one step behind you. Building in Public covers exactly how this compounds over time.
3. Own one channel first
Newsletter, YouTube, Twitter/X — pick one and become genuinely known there before expanding. I had to learn this one the hard way. Scattered presence compounds nothing. 1000 True Fans is the framework and the goal.
4. Ship a product earlier than feels comfortable
A paid product changes your relationship to the work. It converts your audience from readers into customers. Start small: a guide, a template, a short course. Ship fast, iterate later.
5. Systematize relentlessly
Every task you repeat is a candidate for automation or templating. You aren't an employee anymore! You'll have to unlearn some bad habits. Your output-to-hours ratio is what separates a solopreneur from a freelancer. That ratio is the business.
FAQ
Is a solopreneur just a freelancer with a better title?
No. A freelancer exchanges time for money with clients. A solopreneur builds systems and products that generate revenue independent of hours worked. The business model is fundamentally different, even if the headcount is the same.
Do I need to quit my job first?
No. And for most people, building while employed is the smarter play. I've shared in the past that I burned the boats, but that path is not for everyone. Validate the audience, validate the revenue, then decide.
What's the difference between a solopreneur and an entrepreneur?
Scale and intent. An entrepreneur typically builds toward a company. They often pride themselves on employees, investors, and exits. A solopreneur deliberately stays small to preserve margin and autonomy. Neither is objectively better, but they are different games. Most solopreneurs aren't interested in managing people; they're interested in owning the output of their own work. And I suspect if you're a subscriber of Wealth Potion, solopreneurship is the one that calls to you.
How much can a solopreneur realistically earn?
It varies enormously by niche, leverage, and product type. The realistic range for someone who builds a genuine audience and one solid product runs from supplemental income to replacing a six-figure salary. The upside is uncapped in a way that employment structurally never is. If there is interest, I'll do a breakdown of some of successful solopreneurs I follow and admire. In short, regardless of niche, it is not unreasonable to build a 7-to-8 figure business as a solopreneur.
Isn't this just a trendy word for self-employed?
The model isn't new. The label is new. But most importantly, the tools are new. Writers, consultants, and independent craftspeople have operated this way for centuries. What changed is the available leverage. Digital distribution and AI dramatically raised the ceiling on what one person can build. The word caught up to an existing reality. And AI is pouring fuel on that fire.
The Bottom Line
Lately, I've been loving the term "unemployable".
To the average salaryman, being unemployable sounds like an insult. To be so unskilled, unqualified, and deplorable that you can't get a normal job.
To the solopreneur, being "unemployable" is a compliment. In fact, it's the goal. The goal is to run your own business, on your own terms, to the point where you could ignore every job recruiter email and delete your LinkedIn profile. Because you don't want a normal job.
A solopreneur is someone who looked at the modern employment model — where you generate value and your employer captures most of it — and decided to opt out.
The solopreneur asks "Why can't I own the whole equation instead?"
And then they answer, "I can."
Ultimately, the solopreneurship model is working in 2026 because leverage exists that didn't before:
Free distribution
Digital products
AI execution
All while the existing employment paradigm is starting to show its flaws.
One person with the right toolkit and a genuine audience can build something durable. The hard part is executing.
Whether that's the right move for you depends entirely on what you value. But understanding what solopreneurship actually is (and how it differs from freelancing and entrepreneurship) is the starting point.
To your prosperity,
Brandon @ Wealth Potion
PS. If you missed last week’s article about OpenClaw, you can check out the video version on the YouTube channel: