“You’re doing great! I love what you’re doing in The Council” — my friend and founding member of The Council, Bryan Yates, two days ago during a strategy session.
His words felt equal parts damning and uplifting. He was right about The Council. But I’d just spent the better part of a day examining everything else I’d neglected, abandoned, or royally screwed up this year.
You see, Strategic AF turns FOUR years old today — can you believe that? ‘Cause I certainly can’t!
To mark this anniversary, I wanted to release the State of Solopreneurship report because I know you’ve been waiting for it.
But since I’m not happy with the number of responses I’ve collected so far, I decided to postpone it for next week. If you haven’t filled it out yet or if you know someone who’s a solopreneur, please use this link to make the report better for everyone!
Anyway, instead of The State of Solopreneurship, you’re getting the State of ONE Solopreneur today. Yep, that solopreneur is me, so let’s talk about what went well in my business, what didn’t, and where I F-ed up this year.
Before we dig in, you absolutely have to grab the resource below. You know I’m BIG on testimonials and social proof, and I’m happy to introduce you to the resource that makes testimonial collection easier and, most importantly, more relevant.
📣 Brought to you by 📣
The Testimonial Toolkit
Don’t settle for “great to work with”.
People hire people they trust, and they trust people like them more than anything you say about yourself. (Vague doesn’t count. Sorry, not sorry.)
Stacy Eleczko’s toolkit gives you 6 questions that draw out what clients struggle with, why they choose you, and what changes, in their own words–plus a checklist to audit what you have and a copy-and-paste email.
Specific testimonials let prospects see their own business in someone else’s story, which moves them from considering you to hiring you.
(I’ve had the privilege to see this before it went live, and I’m still surprised Stacy’s not charging for it — if you know what I mean 😉)
Want your name up here? Reserve your slot!
Side note: Stacy won our Threads challenge in The Council, and the prize is a feature across my channels, so expect to see her amazing resource everywhere.
What I built, tested, and learned in 2026
If there’s one thing I can’t be accused of in 2026, it’s sitting around waiting for business opportunities to knock on my door (well, for the most part).
I launched a community, started a YouTube channel, ran a newsletter growth challenge, then ran a 30-day Threads challenge, experimented with LinkedIn, worked on another State of Solopreneurship report, and rethought how I position and sell my expertise.
Some of those bets paid off. Others gave me valuable information, which is business-speak for, well, that was a lot of fucking work for very little return.
Here’s my breakdown of three things that worked, two that disappointed me, and one surprise I probably should have seen coming.
Three things that worked
1. The Council proved there’s demand for strategic support beyond one-off consulting
I soft-launched The Council in late December and started running it in January with 10 founding members. Today, we’re 29.
The idea came from a very practical problem: people needed ongoing access to me and a group of peers they could trust.
The initial response was encouraging. Around 70% of my one-to-one sales conversations converted into memberships, making it one of the easiest offers I’ve ever sold.
In the meantime, early members have made some impressive moves, from rebranding and repositioning their businesses to improving conversion rates and growing their audiences. One reported growing their newsletter by 50%; another improved conversions by 30%.
Of course, the picture gets more complicated when you look beyond acquisition.
Running a community is no walk in the park and, even when acquisition seems hard, it’s not as hard as generating and keeping momentum.
My stretch goal is to reach 100 members in 2027. Before I get there, I need to make sure the business model works for its members and for me.
The lesson: Give people what they want. The Council works in terms of acquisition because launching it was backed by demand. It works for its members because the things we prioritize there are based on members’ demand.
2. The Newsletter Growth Bootcamp was a massive success
The first bootcamp in The Council was, as per the members’ request, focused on newsletter growth. The landing page is here, in case you want to check it out (for historical purposes, registration is closed).
Not only did a bunch of people from outside The Council join us, but most of them became full members after the bootcamp.
Better yet, people had real, tangible results: they grew their email lists (some by 50%), improved the conversion rates of their lead magnets, got clearer on the positioning of their newsletter, and more.
My favorite thing about it is that some Council members still go back to the recordings and the slide decks whenever they need a refresher — and they use them with their own clients.
The lesson: same as above — give people what they want, and they will join AND do the work. Can you start spotting a pattern? ‘Cause I can.
3. I finally got clearer about what I’m actually selling
For much of my career, people have known me for content marketing, SEO, and marketing strategy. I’ve worked across dozens of industries and with hundreds of brands, so my expertise covers considerably more ground than any one of those disciplines.
Over the past few years, I’ve increasingly focused on helping solopreneurs make better business decisions: what to sell, how to position it, where to find buyers, how to price their expertise, and where to invest their limited resources.
That’s also what people frequently come to me for: they want someone who can examine their situation, connect the dots, challenge their assumptions, and help them figure out their next move.
So I’ve been repositioning myself as a strategic growth advisor for solopreneurs. It may be a mouthful, but it’s definitely better than “marketing strategist”.
It’s still a work in progress, and I can’t attribute a revenue increase to the repositioning yet.
I’m also rebuilding my website to make the commercial side of the business clearer.
The lesson: Expertise becomes easier to sell when buyers understand the specific situations in which they should hire you. Being known for a subject is valuable, but being the person someone thinks of when a particular problem becomes urgent is considerably more valuable.
Two things that disappointed me
1. The Threads Challenge generated plenty of interest and…not much else
In September, I launched a 30-day Threads Challenge to help people test whether the platform could become a useful business channel.
I had around 50 people on the waitlist. Emails were getting a 60% open rate and a 44% click rate. Those are numbers that make you feel pretty good about your marketing.
And then people had to actually buy.
I’ll just say that, as an acquisition experiment, it was disappointing — the people who initially raised their hands cited timing conflicts, full dance cards, and a general meh feeling about Threads. All of this made the challenge one of my biggest flops of the year (potentially the decade) — purely from a commercial point of view.
The challenge still delivered useful learning, even if the commercial results were underwhelming relative to the effort involved in planning, promoting, and delivering it. For a few members of The Council and myself, Threads became a dependable second social channel, the place where we go when LinkedIn screws us over (I’m sure you know the feeling).
Overall, I’m happy I did it, albeit selfishly, because I got something out of it.
The lesson: Interest, engagement, and even clicks can create a convincing illusion of demand. I went forward with this challenge even though my core audience wasn’t thrilled about it, as they were about the newsletter bootcamp. Again, give people what they want.
2. YouTube has been a much slower experiment than I expected
I started my YouTube channel in March because I wanted to experiment with long-form video, reach people outside my existing audience, and give prospective clients another way to experience how I think.
Several months later, my subscriber count was still in the dozens. The latest figure was 71.
I’m practically giving MrBeast sleepless nights.
I also kinda ditched it for months now, which is essentially a way to say I’m more disappointed in myself than the platform.
I still believe YouTube has potential for building trust and demonstrating expertise. The bigger question is whether it deserves a substantial share of my attention right now, given the alternatives.
I’m not (fully) calling quits yet, but I won’t give myself such ambitious deadlines in the future. I should have known that one long-form video per week with a team of one was unsustainable.
The lesson: Be kinder to yourself and your schedule. The fact that you have a couple of hours to record and edit doesn’t mean you also have the mental bandwidth for it.
And one thing that surprised me
From mid-July to October, I’ve done…well, nothing much. To say that I’ve been doing the bare minimum would be the understatement of the day. My MacBook stats say that I’ve been working an average of less than two hours a day.
Candidly, I needed a break. Looking back on it (because this wasn’t a conscious decision), I somehow stuck to the things that mattered to me: The Council and Strategic AF.
I did zero outreach, 90% of my social media posts were repurposed and reused, and some email replies fell between the cracks.
Up until October, the revenue numbers didn’t look so bad (because these things are almost never instant). October, on the other hand, was abysmal.
That’s not the surprise; I knew it was coming.
What surprised me is that, abysmal as it was, October wasn’t dead-dead. We still had new members join The Council and I still sold strategy sessions and various other products without trying and without asking.
I’m also surprisingly ok with all of this. I needed the half-break, and I don’t regret it. Yes, some things will take time to rebuild, but I’m feeling refreshed and ready to get shit done again.
The strategy session I’d rather avoid
After looking at all of this, I decided to do something potentially dangerous: imagine myself as one of my own clients. It’s a little game I play when I feel like I’m too wrapped up in my own shit and I need a bit of objectivity.
If someone came to me with this business, these numbers, and this collection of half-finished experiments, I’d have a few things to say. And I’d probably be quite annoying about it.
For starters, I’d point out that the biggest problem is how dependent revenue still is on my active involvement in marketing and sales.
October proved that rather spectacularly. Sure, the business kept generating sales while I was doing very little. That’s encouraging, and it shows that I’ve built assets that continue working for me.
But there’s a limit to how long those assets can sustain revenue without replenishing the pipeline.
So, here’s what I’d recommend to myself.
- Make The Council your primary growth bet for 2027. You’ve validated demand. Now prove retention, improve engagement, collect concrete success stories, and build a repeatable acquisition system. The 100-member target is achievable only with consistent sales activity and healthy renewals.
- Build a sales routine you can sustain. Your biggest vulnerability is the lag between stopping outreach and revenue declining. Dedicate a fixed weekly block to follow-ups, referrals, and partnerships, then protect it like a client appointment.
- Make your 1:1 advisory work your premium revenue engine. Your strategic judgment is your differentiator. Strengthen the path from newsletter reader to strategy session to longer advisory engagement.
- Put digital products on evergreen autopilot. Keep the profitable ones, automate their promotion, and retire those requiring disproportionate effort.
- Stop expanding your marketing footprint. Build on what you already have: there are plenty of frameworks, ideas, and tools you created but never promoted enough.
And I’d probably tell myself to stop making ambitious plans for a fictional version of Adriana who has unlimited time, endless energy, and no desire to occasionally sit on a beach doing fuck-all.
Your turn: Give your business a five-minute reality check
Since it’s an anniversary edition, I’m going to share a tiny part of what I do with clients.
Before you start planning 2027, take five minutes to answer these four questions. Be brutally honest.
- Which activities generated the most profit in 2026, relative to the time you invested? Include your own delivery and marketing hours. Revenue alone can hide some spectacularly inefficient business decisions.
- What happened to your revenue when you reduced your marketing efforts? Identify what continued generating sales and what dried up. That tells you something about how resilient your business actually is.
- Where will your next 10 customers come from? Be specific about the channels, conversations, and actions involved. “LinkedIn” and “word of mouth” are starting points for investigation.
- If you could only pursue one growth priority for the next 90 days, what would it be? Consider what the evidence supports, what you’re willing to deprioritize, and what a successful outcome would look like.
The last question is usually the hardest because every attractive new opportunity comes with something you’re giving up.
And if you’re struggling to answer these questions, I get it.
It’s considerably easier to diagnose someone else’s business than your own. I’ve just spent an entire newsletter demonstrating that particular professional embarrassment.
