[Offer Grid] 📬 | Seven Billion Businesses | Issue No. 14

Hey there, you brilliant human, you!

Last week we talked layoffs and fresh starts. This week we’re cranking the telescope to its widest setting and zooming out on the entire world economy. Ready?

Because what I’m seeing is a tidal wave of solo businesses. Seven billion of them, give or take the population of Earth at lunchtime (and excluding child labor for the little ones).

Let’s call it the Seven Billion Businesses Trend (7BB for short). Here’s the elevator pitch:

Sound grandiose? Maybe. Sound inevitable? Absolutely. Let me show you why, and how you can hitch a ride on this rocket.

The Digital Toolkit Is Now a Swiss Army Knife

Once upon a dial-up modem, launching a company meant bank loans, warehouses, and begging a newspaper to run your ad above the “Used Lawn-Mower” classifieds.

Today? A Stripe account, Canva, and a Wi-Fi signal strong enough to stream cat videos. That might be enough for the tools.

The project is BYOG (bring your own genius).

• Need storefront tech? Shopify or Gumroad.

• Need an audience? YouTube, TikTok, Substack, Medium.

• Need fulfillment? Print-on-demand, dropshipping, or a digital download that costs zero to “ship.”

Barrier to entry = a coffee and a Saturday afternoon. (Decaf if you’re spicy enough without it.)

Currently the U.S. economy is less than 10% manufacturing. We’re a service economy. The long-term play on the tariff situation remains to be seen.

But more than any other time in U.S. history, you can make a business of just one or two people, a good idea, and a crowd who wants what you have.

Niche Is the New Scale

“Go big or go home” is sooo 1990s. In the 7BB world, you win by going weird:

• A Cincinnati-based pottery artist sells only tiny succulent planters shaped like Mars rover wheels, and makes rent every month.

• A laid-off accountant loves Dungeons & Dragons and now runs a bookkeeping service exclusively for tabletop game designers.

• My buddy Leigh teaches yoga to neighborhood hipsters, and her YouTube channel is right on the edge of paying more than her old gig.

Pick the micro-corner nobody else bothers to dust, and suddenly you own the whole shelf.

In a business where you do you, there’s no upper limit. Start where you are. Serve the audience you serve. Expand where you can.

Time and money become yours to enhance your life, and you can make the business as big a deal as you want.

Work-Life Lego: Snap Together Your Perfect Week

The old model: job → paycheck → maybe a life on evenings and weekends.

The 7BB model is a Lego set:

• Mon & Tue: client work or product creation.

• Wed: a live workshop or coaching call (or many coaching calls).

• Thu: deep-work day with no meetings, phone in airplane mode, brain in bliss.

• Fri: invoices in the morning, beach (literal or metaphorical).

Instead of squeezing hobbies between commutes, you design a business that requires hobbies. (Writing sci-fi flash fiction? That can be your community-building content pillar.)

Safety Nets Look Different (But They Exist)

“Yeah, Amy, but what about steady income and health insurance and that sweet 401(k) match?” Fair questions. Some quick thoughts:

1. Portfolio Living: One revenue stream feels safe until it disappears. Three small streams (course sales + consulting retainer + affiliate income) beat one giant paycheck every day ending in “y.” You could choose to put all of your eggs in one basket, or you could have a bunch of eggs in a bunch of baskets.

2. Collective Benefits: Freelancers’ unions, co-ops, and group plans are sprouting faster than AI-generated Garfield memes. The safety net is no longer HR. It’s community.

3. Private Pay Benefits: I’ve had health insurance the whole time I’ve been out on my own. That’s 17 years. Call a health insurance broker and see what’s possible for you.

4. Retirement: When you’re self employed there are 401(k)s and other saving/investing features that are only available to corporations that you can take advantage of. Work with a smart CPA and get the skinny on self-directed Roth IRAs, and solo 401(k)s.

How to Spot Your 7BB Angle (A Mini-Exercise)

Grab a pen, sticky notes, or the back of your kid’s math worksheet (no judgment).

1. Interests List: Jot every curiosity, hobby, or rabbit hole you lose sleep exploring.

2. Skill Stack: Write your hard skills (data analysis) and soft quirks (you tell a killer dad joke). Can you teach the job you were just in? The job didn’t go away, and people will pay for mentors.

3. People Map: Who already hangs out where those two lists of interest and skill overlap? (Reddit? Discord? Local meetup?)

4. Problems Column: Ask, “What keeps those people up at night?” Write five headaches.

5. Offer Seed: Pair one headache with one skill or interest. Voilà: prototype business idea.

Here’s an ultra-simple example:

Interest: vintage sneakers.

Skill: photography.

People: collectors on Instagram.

Problem: listings with awful photos don’t sell.

Seed: “I shoot high-gloss product photos for sneaker resellers with overnight turnaround.”

That’s a business, friend.

The Mindset Shift (Again, Because It’s That Important)

Last week we compared employee vs. entrepreneur thinking. Here’s the remix for 7BB:

Your brain’s job title is now CEO of Me Inc..

My Own Micro-Mogul Story (Because Receipts Matter)

You know my Christmas-tree-farm origin story and the MLM detour that I shared last week.

What you might not know is that just before the pandemic vacuum, I spun up a community on winning at ecommerce for solopreneurs. Zoom link, Facebook group, Stripe account, and I had just under 100 members at $5k per seat.

I didn’t have a crazy product that I had to wait for weeks to be made. I only hired a couple of contractors for help when I needed to fill-in some help. And whatever members wanted to know they got live, daily.

I didn’t build a Fortune 500. I built a community that served a need right then, just as the ecommerce boom happened during lockdown.

Micro wins, macro impact. That’s 7BB in a nutshell.

Your Turn: Two Ways to Dip a Toe

1. The 24-Hour Pop-Up: Offer a one-time service or flash digital product by this time tomorrow. Imperfect, scrappy, public. Lesson: speed beats perfection. Offer it in public, on LinkedIn, Facebook, a community bulletin board, or wherever you know people are looking.

2. The Curiosity Log: For one week, write down every moment you think, “Someone should make X.” Congrats! You just outlined your next long list of offers.

Reply and tell me which experiment you’re doing. I love collecting these stories (and yes, with permission, I might feature you in a future issue).

Big-Picture Takeaway

The world isn’t moving toward monopolies of labor. It’s splintering into billions of shops, studios, streams, and storefronts. The question isn’t “Will this happen?” It’s “Will you claim your square on the quilt?”

I’m cheering for you!

Talk soon,

Amy

P.S. Want some hard numbers on solopreneur businesses?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau 5.5 million new businesses were started in 2023. (That’s the highest number on record.)

And, data from the Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report shows that solopreneur businesses are on the rise: 76% in 1997 to 84% in 2020. They also report (not available yet) that 2024 numbers on solopreneur businesses are even higher.

You can get help choosing the right legal entity for your business (LLC or corporation? You can get help choosing and you don’t have to register an entity to start.) There are a ton of benefits available to you no matter which you choose. You can pay less tax, write off more expenses, save more for retirement than an individual person can.