I spent the first half of my career as the product manager at a software company. Product teams are constantly reviewing their products, assessing: What do our customers want? What changes should we make? Do we (maybe) need to retire a product altogether because it no longer serves its purpose?
Most solopreneurs don’t take the same approach. They continue to push the same products or services, or tack on new items until they have a large suite of offers they have to maintain. We rarely take anything away.
I’ve gotten into the habit of an annual review to make sure everything I put out into the world for my business still makes sense for both me and my customers.
The trap of adding and never subtracting
Part of the joy of running a solo business is launching something new. You get to make all the decisions about what an offer looks like and how to launch it.
Removing an offer is a lot less fun. It can feel like a loss. Plus, you may have material (website, slide decks, email sequences) that need to be updated.
The problem is that every offer needs upkeep. Content gets out of date. You may also be paying for tools related to hosting or delivering an offer that isn’t doing anything for you.
I create a lot of resources for solopreneurs, often describing systems or processes that make a solo business run efficiently. These can quickly feel dated—or even obsolete—as technology changes.
For a long time, I spent my precious hours creating new resources without a process for updating existing material. That’s a mistake, since outdated information quickly erodes trust.
The questions I ask about every offer
Now I take time to review every product and service I offer and ask myself the same questions:
Is anyone buying it? I start with sales or bookings from the past year. Low numbers aren’t automatically a reason to cut, but I need to review the offer more closely.
Do I still want to do this work? A service can sell well and still be work you don’t enjoy.
What does it cost me to maintain? I count the time I spend updating information and supporting it, plus the time it takes to promote. Then I add any tool subscriptions tied to it.
Does it still fit where my business is headed? An offer that made sense two years ago may not match the clients or work I want now.
I maintain a business road map and value statements, and compare my offers against these documents. I use AI to help this process by having Claude do the initial comparison. This becomes my checklist for a human review and assessment.
What to do with an offer that isn’t working
Keeping an offer as is and cutting it aren’t the only two choices. There are a few other paths:
- Refresh it: Update outdated content.
- Reprice or repackage it: Raise the price or bundle it with something else so it doesn’t stand on its own.
- Re-promote it: Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with the offer; perhaps it just hasn’t been marketed enough.
- Retire it: Take it down, and let existing customers or clients know if needed.
I have a resource related to AI tools for solopreneurs. It made sense when I first created it several years ago. Now it’s impossible to maintain because the AI changes at lightning speed. Instead of spending my time updating it, I spent my time finding all the places where I reference this resource and removing it.
But to start, the most important step is making the time for a review. Block off time on your calendar once a year or put it on your to-do list. The review process is separate from acting on your decision. Your goal is to land on “Where do I go from here?”
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Most people I know have asked themselves some version of “Is AI replacing me?” It’s a fair question.
But, running a solo business, I think the question extends beyond “Is AI replacing the work I do?” It’s also impacted the way clients interact with the people they hire.
Clients expect AI to make your work cheaper
Some companies are really moving their budgets away from hiring people to AI. The Ramp Economics Lab tracked how businesses split their spending between freelance marketplaces and AI model providers. Among the companies it studied, the share of spend going to freelance marketplaces dropped from 0.66% in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 0.14% in the third quarter of 2025. Over the same time period, the share going to AI model providers climbed from zero to nearly 3%.
How far that shift goes varies from company to company and the type of service provided. But clients know AI is cheaper (Ramp’s data bears that out). As a result, some clients may expect to pay less for human work. I suspect this is because they think that if AI allows the solopreneur to work faster, then they, the client, should get some benefit.
I don’t think solopreneurs should drop their rates to compete with AI, because that devalues the end result that the client is paying for. If a client’s budget has shrunk, you might cut the scope before you reduce your rates. You could also offer more flexible terms, like ad hoc or on-demand work, so a client with a tight budget can still bring you in when they need you.
When a client runs your work through AI
Clients now have a free “second opinion” on everything you deliver. They can paste your work into a chatbot and ask for a critique, and the answer will sound confident (even if it’s confidently wrong). AI feedback also tends to be generic. It can misunderstand the project’s goals or what the client hired you for—forcing you to respond to a robot’s assessment.
It helps to cover AI upfront, either during a discovery call or in the contract. You might explain how you use AI yourself and how you respond to requests for changes to the deliverables.
I know some solopreneurs who let clients know that they won’t consider AI-generated feedback, like a long email that was clearly written by AI. Whether or not you go that far, the scope of the project should clearly limit how much feedback gets incorporated into any revisions you make.
Getting found when everyone’s outreach sounds like AI
Cold pitches and social posts are now full of AI-generated content, so the usual ways of finding clients don’t work as well.
I’m on the receiving end of many cold pitches, and my inbox is now flooded with emails written by AI. I also used to find clients for my business through LinkedIn, but it feels impossible at times to stand out among the “noise.”
These days, personal connections reign supreme. It feels like the only surefire way to make sure you break through the AI content: having people who know you, understand what you do, can vouch for your work, and are willing to refer you.
The effort it takes to connect with people on a human level also goes further when so much of the outreach around you sounds like it came from the same template.
The clients worth keeping want a human collaborator
The people and companies trying to replace work with AI aren’t necessarily a fit for you anyway. They don’t value the human aspect of that particular type of work, and you’re not going to convince them otherwise. It might mean the pool of potential clients is smaller, in addition to a more challenging environment to find clients in the first place. Put it all together, and it’s a stressful time to run a business.
But if you can find the right clients, they’ll appreciate you more. My own clients hire me for judgment and expertise, and they still want a person behind that work.
Many call the development of artificial intelligence the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but I disagree. I would say AI is the first, and the last, intelligence revolution.
Every industrial revolution makes something that was once expensive very chea…
