I share writing & editing lessons so entrepreneurs & founders can attract + convert high-value clients | Edited 3M+ words | Former Head of Content | Running on seltzer 🤩

I help solopreneurs and founders turn their scattered expertise into content that drives business. AKA, I get you out of the "recognition gap."

If you're stuck in the recognition gap, your content probably isn't making people think, "Holy sh*t, I need to work with this person."

I've been there.

After 4.5 years as Head of Content, I went solo and made every mistake in the book: scattered messaging, feast-or-famine revenue cycles, content that got likes but zero leads, relying on referrals like my business depended on it (cuz it did).

Then I had my 'aha!' moment: Stop trying to be known for everything. Own one specific problem so I can become the obvious solution. 

What I do now:

🏴‍☠️Duo Consulting: We help solopreneurs standardize, market, and sell their consulting offers

📈 How Solos Scale: Podcast, newsletter, and mini books for solos stuck in the recognition gap and keen to scale from $20K+ to $50K+ per month

📚 Cut the Fluff Newsletter: Exploring how solopreneurs and founders can cut the fluff in their content, business, and life

A few milestones for good measure:

→ Built a 90K+ audience in 3 years
→ Sold multi-six figures in courses to 2100+ students
→ Helped dozens of clients land $45K+ deals and scale to high six and seven figures. 

My philosophy: Your expertise and the way you frame the problem you solve is your edge. Let's package it into an offer your ICP knows, likes, and buys. 

✉️ Weekly insights: Cut the Fluff newsletter, How Solos Scale podcast 
🎯 Work with me: Duo Consulting 2:1 program 

Book a call: Duoconsulting.co

Erica Schneider

Dear everyone on LinkedIn,

You’re not wrong. But you’re also not right.

Sincerely,

Nuance

Offer design & content for scaling solopreneurs | Co-Founder @ Duo Consulting | Running on seltzer 🤩

Here's how to go viral on LinkedIn as a solopreneur in 2026:

(trust me, read this)




STOP TRYING TO GO F*CKING VIRAL IT'S A WASTE OF ENERGY. JUST MARKET THE PROBLEM, PROCESS, AND PROOF AND FOCUS ON STARTING CONVERSATIONS WITH YOUR ICP.

SHEEEEEESH.

Me: Am I really gonna keep posting on LinkedIn year after year after year after year...

My bank account: Shut up and post

Me: 🫡

If you want to grow your solo business in 2026, you only need to talk about three things in your content. (And a fourth optional moment, if you want.)

We call it the MP3 Framework. (Or MP4, if you add the optional one.)

Market the Problem. 
Market the Process. 
Market the Proof. 
(Market the Parasocial.)

That's it. That's the whole strategy.

🔴 Market the Problem means articulating your audience's pain better than they can themselves.

You're not yelling at them that they suck and making them feel sh*tty. 

You're diagnosing their problems and making them feel seen.

When you name their silent struggles, they assume you know how to solve them. 

🔵 Market the Process means showing how you think. 

You're letting people see your decision-making, your frameworks, your approach. 

This is how you stand out from everyone else selling the same category of results. Your process is your differentiator.

It also proves you have experience solving the same problems you're preaching you understand. (Trust builder, baby.)

🟢 Market the Proof means showing receipts. 

Before/afters. Specific numbers. Screenshots. Client stories. 

This answers the question every prospect is secretly asking: "But will it work for me?"

Well yes, indeed it will, and here is the proof.

These three are required. 

🟡 The fourth P - Market the Parasocial - is optional.

This is the content that makes people feel like they know you as a person, not just as an expert. 

Your kids, your therapy breakthroughs, your existential crises. These behind-the-scenes moments make people feel like they know you, which makes them like you, which can accelerate trust.

But parasocial content can also become a trap.

We've seen solos with 50K, 70K, 100K followers who are struggling to pay the bills. They built an audience of people who like them but don't need them. Affinity without demand.

So if you're naturally drawn to share personal stuff, go for it. But only if the first three Ps are already running. 

---

Stop overthinking your content.

Start with Problem, Process, and Proof. Add parasocial if it gives you energy.

That's how solos scale in 2026.

I'M HONORED TO INTRODUCE YOU TO SUPER DING-DONG CONSULTING. Nick Bennett 🏴‍☠️ and I did something so stupid, and I must share. 

Duo Consulting is doing really well, and we wanted to make it official on the books.

But we didn't want a purely partnership-based structure for many reasons.

So we created a new shared company that both of our individual companies own.

But there was a problem...

This company needed a name.

So we pondered.

And pondered some more.

And then, when we thought we couldn't ponder for a minute longer, it hit us.

Why not name it an inside joke? I mean, who cares, right? 

And thus, SUPER DING-DONG was born. It's the shadow company that owns our company. Clients will still get invoiced by Duo Consulting.

The pleasure I get from seeing this stupid name in my inbox is unmatched. 

I giggle.

And now I hope you, too, giggle.

This is the best time of year to ask yourself: What kind of business do I want to build?

We don’t ask ourselves this enough. Especially if we’re talented, capable, and successful by “winging our way through things.”

Most of the solos and micro agency owners we work with doing $50k+ months have no idea what they’re working towards.

They’re just working.

That’s only sustainable for so long.

By the way I don’t mean sit down and answer:

“What revenue targets should I hit?”
“How many clients do I need?”
“What's my growth trajectory?”

I mean ask yourself: 

"What's my vision for this business?"

This shifts your focus to what you're working toward, not just the tactics and targets to get there. 

It makes you think deeply about: 

"How does this business fit into the life I want to live?"

We’re releasing a mini book in a few days that’ll go deeper into this. You can subscribe to our newsletter How Solos Scale in my profile. 

In the meantime, like I said, it’s a great time to throw some brain cycles at this.

Alright alright everyone sit down please. That’s enough chitchat. 

STARTS WRITING ON CHALKBOARD.

Ok so let’s pick up where we left off. 

“Ignoring advice that keeps you poor.”

Tony, can you remind the class what kind of advice keeps you poor?

Ummm, chasing likes?

Aha! So you do pay attention. Fantastic.

CHASING LIKES

Deb, what’s wrong with chasing likes?

It can trick our brains.

Yes, elaborate please?

Well, the more likes you get, the better you feel, so you chase that feeling. It’s like a drug.

Indeed, we call this:

CHEAP DOPAMINE

Sasha, what’s better than cheap dopamine?

Money?

Haha, money is amazing. But it’s only part of it. What’s the real goal of being on social if you’re a consultant?

Finding the right clients?

Yes!

RESONANCE 

A byproduct of resonating with the right people is making money, so you weren’t far off Sasha.

Teacher Erica?

Yes, Zach?

If chasing likes is a trap, why do so many people preach this strategy?

Excellent question Zach.

The short answer is: We’re human, and we all want to fit in. More likes feels good, and it’s also a good strategy for traffic businesses or SaaS founders in growth mode. 

But not for consultants who run relationship businesses?

Exactly.

You only need 10-30 clients a year. And they don’t need you to teach them how to do something. They need to feel like you understand their problem so well, they can trust you to fix it.

So when you teach people how to do something, it’s more likely to get likes?

Yeah. Teaching posts attract lower maturity lower ticket buyers trying to figure it out on their own.

But when you market the problem and your process for solving it, that’s how you reach people looking to spend $5000+ for a partner, instead of <$150 for a self guided experience or SaaS.

Alright that’s enough for today. Great job everyone.

Class dismissed.

Year 1 of going solo feels the most exciting, but it's the most dangerous. Especially if you're making good money right off the bat.

Cuz it's way too easy to fall into this trap:

Year 1: Clients show up. Revenue happens. You're like, "Holy shit, I should've done this years ago."

And then somewhere around months 12, 14, 18: It stops. The pipeline thins out. The inbounds dry up. You're not sure what changed, but something definitely changed.

What happened?

Your network was clearing the decks.

Most of those early clients were people who'd been waiting for you to go solo. Old colleagues. Friends-of-friends. That one person who'd been in your DMs for months. 

Maybe some were evidence of product-market fit. 

But most were pent-up demand with a shelf life.

And that shelf life is about 12-18 months.

A rough map of how it plays out:

Months 1-6: The flood. More leads than you can handle. You're saying no to people. Life is good.

Months 6-12: Still cruising. A few renewals, some referrals from early clients. You're heads-down on delivery. Marketing falls off, but whatever cuz pipeline feels fine.

Months 12-18: Things slow down. You notice it but explain it away. Slow season. The economy's weird. "I've been so focused on client work." You haven't posted consistently in months, but whatever.

Month 18+: Panic. Pipeline's empty. And you realize you have no idea how to actually generate demand because you've never had to. Everything before this was gravity.

Now you need to climb. And you don't have the equipment.

If this is hitting a nerve, please know two things:

1. This is normal and almost everyone we work with goes through it
2. Once you realize it, it's fixable

At Duo Consulting, we help solopreneurs stuck around $30-50k months fix your offer, fix your messaging, and build the systems that help you escape the Recognition Gap (the distance between what problem you solve and how many people know it).

Not how many people know YOU, cuz even if you have tons of followers, if people can't name the problem you solve, you're in the danger zone.

Getting out of the Recognition Gap is the difference between "I have to move mountains on every sales call" and "people show up ready to buy."

DM me if this resonates and let's talk.

“I hit up my referral partners and for the first time ever I heard nothing back.”

Yoooo this is a scary moment. And it usually happens around months 12-18 of your solo biz.

Why?

Cuz pent up demand from year one has a shelf life.

It’s not unusual in our world of former tech operators to hit $20k, $30k, maybe $50k months within year one.

If you’re good at your job and well-connected in-house, you likely have old colleagues and friends-of-friends excited to hire you.

Almost everyone we know taps into this network. 

Some of them even get hired to contract for the company they just quit. It’s crazy!

But yeah it doesn’t last. Nor should it, because a sustainable biz must be built on more than your existing network. You have to tap into the wider market if you plan to survive long term.

So if you’re in months 12-18 right now and things are starting to feel a bit weird, this is your window.

Build the machine while you’ve got runway. While you’ve got confidence. 

It’s so much harder to fix this stuff when you’re scared and broke than when you’re stable and thinking clearly.

And if you’re already in the panic, it’s not too late, but you gotta move.

The lie of the year-one-to-year-two transition is that it’ll keep working even if nothing changes.

If most of your clients aren't getting results, is that their fault or yours?

Nick and I ask all the consultants we work with to do a client audit. Rate every client on a scale of 1-10. Not just outcomes, but energy. 

Did you enjoy working with them? 
Would you work with them again?
Did they follow your advice?

One client recently told us he wanted to give almost everyone a 1. 

A ONE out of TEN. Yikes.

He'd never looked at his roster like that before. And when we dug into why, the answer was the same across the board: 

They weren't doing anything with the strategy he delivered.

His first instinct was frustration. "I gave them everything they needed."

But after seeing this pattern over and over again, we've come to believe, as harsh at it sounds... 

Our failures as consultants are ours, not our clients'.

There's only so much "I took on a bad client" to go around. 

At some point, if no one is executing, if no one is getting results, if your brilliant strategies are collecting dust on a shelf somewhere, the engagement model is the problem. Not the client.

The consultants who make the most money? They drag their clients to glory.

Not "here's the plan, good luck."
Not "I'll check in next quarter to see how it went."

They stay in it. They do the work alongside. They build execution into the engagement so the client can't not succeed.

Like it or not, what people pay for is the likelihood that they will actually be successful. That the thing will get done. That someone will make sure it happens.

If you're a consultant right now wondering why your clients aren't getting results, stop asking what's wrong with them.

Start asking what's missing from your offer.

PS. Thanks to Rachel Elsts Downey✨and the Share Your Genius team for making us sound amazing every week.

Liam 2x’d his revenue in 2 months (without working more hours). Here’s how we took him from $40k to $80k mrr in 60 days:

When Liam came to us, he was running a successful fractional growth practice. Four clients. ~9k average retainers. Referrals coming in left, right, and center.

But he was stuck.

He was working 60-hour weeks doing all the button-clicking himself. LinkedIn ads, Google ads, reporting, everything.

He had no capacity to take on the referrals people were sending him.

He was actually telling his network to stop sending deals because he couldn’t handle more work.

And his positioning was generic. He sounded like every other demand gen consultant in the market.

Here’s where he is now:

Running at $80K/month. That’s a $1M annual run rate.

7-8 active clients at ~12k retainers with pricing power to push higher.
Full contractor team operational at ~70% margins. All running through ClickUp with proper workflows.

Capacity to take on 3-4 more accounts.

Here’s the insight that unlocked everything:

Liam isn’t a paid media consultant. Paid media is table stakes. What he actually does is help companies stop being over-reliant on a single source of pipeline.

Once we nailed that positioning, everything else fell into place. The offer made sense. The pricing made sense. Conversations with prospects got easier because he could finally explain why he’s not just another fractional marketing hire.

The other piece: Liam pushes back on founders. He won’t be an order taker. That’s a feature, not a bug. But he wasn’t articulating it. Now it’s part of his positioning, and it resonates with the exact clients he wants to work with.

Two months. Doubled his revenue. Built the infrastructure to scale past where he was stuck.

That’s what happens when you stop selling your time and start selling a point of view.

DM me if you’re doing $30K+ mrr and want to scale without working more hours.

"I have enough deals in my pipeline, but I need help standardizing my scope."

All five of our latest clients said this when we asked what's going on in their business. This means:

-The demand is there 
-People want to work with them 
-But every new deal feels like starting from scratch 
-Every engagement has a different scope, different deliverables, different timeline
-They're customizing everything because they haven't figured out what "the work" actually looks like when it's repeatable

You know you're here if:

🤪 You dread writing proposals because you have to rebuild the entire engagement from scratch every time.

🤪 You've said yes to scope that made you miserable because you didn't have a clear boundary to point to.

🤪 You undercharge because you're not sure what the work is worth when it changes every single time.

🤪 You can't delegate anything because the "process" lives in your head and shifts depending on your mood and the client's budget.

🤪 You're technically at your highest revenue ever but you've never felt more exhausted.

🤪 You've caught yourself thinking "maybe I should just go back in-house" because at least that chaos came with a steady paycheck and PTO.

The fix isn't productizing everything into a rigid box. That's an overcorrection. 

The fix is standardization: every client engagement looks the same at the top level, even if the details vary. 

A clear arc. Defined phases. Deliverables you can name. A process you can refine over time instead of reinventing every time.

If your pipeline is full but every deal feels like a custom nightmare, you have a systems problem. And it's the reason your success is making things harder instead of easier.

DM me if you're doing $30k+ MRR and are ready to fix this.

Hi, I’m Etashe, a content partner and community designer. 

Over the past five years, I’ve developed content for companies in the data, cybersecurity, and AI spaces, managed content strategy for editorial and e-commerce projects, and led community design for a marketing-career brand.

✨ I care and share a lot about…

→ Creating frameworks for content production.
→ Using insights from community behavior to inform content and product development.
→ Improving operational systems in content teams using workflows, collaboration hubs, and more.
→ Human behavior and how language influences it.

Outside work, I muddy my hands with many things: I design sketchnotes, make tickling tea, and write Letters of Consolation—a bi-weekly newsletter for moving towards calm, meaning, and connection as humans—etc, etc.

You'll often find me talking about content/community frameworks, principles, and systems here on LinkedIn.

Want to work together or say hi? Send a direct message!

Etashe Okpola

Here's how I design my work year using two systems: systems for executing and systems for documenting.

Execution systems help me ease into work without friction. They include;
- my brand stack
- my workflows for different project types
- a tools and resources database with 300+ resources
- a data and research library
- a research sources database with links to quality data sources

Documentation systems help me store my ideas, processes, new frameworks I develop while working, work pace, and work observations and lessons.

If you're designing your year, I recommend building systems that support how you work. Both systems simplify getting started at work and keeping tabs on growth.

I share more of my thinking around and templates for work in my newsletter, Craft & Machines. Click 'view my newsletter' in my profile to read if clear thinking and building systems and frameworks are your thing.

Etashe  Okpola

Week one back from the long break, and you're probably still trying to find your rhythm. 

Here’s what I do to return to work without struggling to settle in.

1️⃣ Before the break:

I make a simple list of the things I need to pick up in January. Not a detailed project plan, just enough context so future me isn't scrambling to figure out where to start.

2️⃣ Day 1 back, I:

 - Skim through work emails to note key projects or people to follow up with. 

 - Revisit notes from my last few meetings to help me remember what I committed to.

 - Review my pre-holiday list and make an action plan for the first week or two.

 - Lean on my systems so I can move straight into execution instead of trying to figure things out. (more on the systems I use in my next post).

What helps you ease back into work after a long break?

Lmk in the comments, and happy new year!

taplio

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