🎧 Listen to the podcast version of this email here.
Most independents I know are struggling a bit right now.
Not always publicly, of course. Online everybody still seems to be absolutely flying.
Every founder is apparently scaling effortlessly. Every second post starts with somebody announcing they just closed a five-figure deal, checked the moolah rolling into their Stripe account, or helped their clients generate 17 million dollars through some framework you can buy for a limited time at a price that somehow always ends in a 7.
And look, I get it: money matters. Business matters. Results matter.
But there’s also this strange pressure online now where everybody feels the need to constantly look successful, busy, in demand, and "crushing it".
If you spend enough time around that stuff, it can really start to feel like everybody has their sh*t figured out except you.
The older I get, the more I know that that is nonsense.
Most people know far less than they pretend to.
We’re all just trying to figure out this weird little stint we have on the planet while the rules keep changing every couple of years.
And lately I’ve been thinking about that a lot.
Now let’s be clear before you think this is a “Joeri is being vulnerable” post.
(My generation doesn’t really do that whole vulnerability thing, by the way.)
I’m not sad about this. I’m not losing confidence. I don’t need a pep talk, a group hug or a pat on the back.
It’s just a sober observation that’s been sitting in my head for a while and I thought it was worth talking about honestly.
The thing I’ve been wrestling with recently is not that the world changes. Of course it does. I’ve reinvented myself multiple times already.
That’s life. Adapt or die.
What’s been bothering me is that usually, even when the landscape changed, some of the core principles seemed to hold up.
Principles like:
When everybody zigs, you zag.
Clarity beats cleverness.
You don’t have to constantly perform to stay visible.
Consistency compounds.
And audiences reward originality more than optimisation.
Recently though, something feels different and I can’t fully explain why.
It feels a bit like I’m offering meat in a world that’s gone vegan.
And part of me is looking around thinking
"Well… if that’s where the market is headed, maybe that’s what I should be doing too.
Maybe I should be posting more. Optimising more. Automating more. Throwing around dollar signs. Playing the game harder".
There’s merit to that.
But if I’m honest, the market seems to be rewarding a different kind of behaviour than the one I naturally believe in or enjoy, and adapting to that is starting to feel harder and less enjoyable than it used to.
That’s uncomfortable to admit because my Stoic side immediately goes: stop whining, adapt, figure it out.
Maybe it’s age. Maybe I’m overcomplicating it. Maybe we’re all just a bit tired.
Too much screen time, too much noise, too much shouting into the void all day long trying to convince strangers we exist.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that I’m seeing a lot of very smart, experienced people quietly struggling with visibility right now.
And that matters to me because that was the whole reason I started The Solo Sauce in the first place.
Not to teach people how to “hack the algorithm.” That’s never really been my thing.
The whole point was much simpler than that:
I kept seeing incredibly capable solo professionals with real experience, real battle scars and genuinely useful ideas getting completely ignored because nobody could find them.
People who should have been known for something becoming the world’s best kept secret.
And because I’d been a solo professional myself for more than a decade, I understood that world. I understood that pain.
At the same time, I thought I understood content pretty well too. I’ve been creating content online for years and spent a ton of time thinking about why certain ideas spread and others don’t.
So I thought maybe I could combine those two worlds into something meaningful.
Help experienced solo professionals turn their expertise into clearer positioning and content that helps them get found and hired.
And to be fair, I still think I can help people sharpen their positioning, clarify what they want to be known for, and stop sounding like everybody else online.
Where I’m less certain lately is whether the old instincts around traction, attention and getting found still work the way they used to.
Because most people in my ecosystem right now don’t need another inspirational quote floating over a mountain.
They need work coming in again.
And I don’t want to become one of those people pretending to have simple black-and-white answers when I honestly don’t think those exist right now.
I can share what I’m learning and what I’m testing myself, but I’m much less sure what consistently creates meaningful traction online anymore.
I’m not sure anybody genuinely has that answer at the moment, at least not the kind of people I tend to trust.
At the same time, I also don’t think the answer is to throw your hands up and give up.
If anything, this might be the moment to challenge some of our own assumptions again, test things properly and admit that whatever got us here might not get us there.
That doesn’t mean you suddenly don’t have what it takes.
It might simply mean the entire game as you knew it has changed and now you need to decide what kind of player you want to become in this next version of it.
And maybe that’s the uncomfortable bit.
Not adaptation itself, but adapting without slowly turning into somebody you don’t really recognise anymore.
So what do you do with this then?
A few things I think are probably still true:
- Don’t mistake changing market conditions for personal failure.
- Be careful of people who seem overly certain right now.
- Keep testing instead of clinging too tightly to old playbooks.
- Focus on becoming clearer and more human, not louder.
And if things have felt a little harder lately, there’s a good chance you’re not imagining it.
Anyway, these are just some thoughts I’ve been having lately. Hope they made sense.
I’d genuinely be curious to hear how you’re experiencing all this yourself.
Make it a great day.
