Why Now Is the Best Time to Go All In on Solopreneurship

Speaker A: Welcome to all Caribbean entrepreneurs. If you've been ready and waiting to take your business digital and get paid online while you sip something strong on the beach, this podcast is for you. We'll hear from the Caribbean's finest entrepreneurs on topics like E commerce, business development, brand building, social media, their wins and failures. This is the only place in the region helping you navigate the digital age from the Caribbean's perspective. This is digipreneur FM M. And now let's give it up for The Digiboss himself, Mr. Caron Rose. What's going on, everybody? Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Digipreneur FM podcast. And as usual, it is your boy, Mr. Rose checking in yet again. This is episode number 200. Oh, my goodness. You know, if we're being honest, podcast family knows we should have hit episode 200 maybe two years ago. But you know what, man? Ah, such is life. When you are building in today's digital space, you know, life really does come at you fast. Uh, I can't even believe we're at 200 episodes. And we started. We started what, back in 2021. Yeah, it's been, it's been five years. Like, like, you see what I'm saying? Like, it is so crazy to think that, uh, this podcast, this podcast started at this point years ago. Oh, my good. Like, let me double check. When was the first. I'm on the, um, my podcast host. Yeah, the first episode was June 20, 2021. That was the first episode. June 20, 2021. So I didn't even realize it, but I hit the five year mark last week. Last week we hit the five year mark. When did we publish? Oh, my God. So we had published, um, the last. So last Week's episode was June 22, and the five year was June 20. And I didn't even realize that June 20 was the anniversary. And it's because I. My head is just down. I just. I create. I am not. I'm not, um, what's the word I want to say? I create. And I'm not attached to the results. So I create. I put things out and I just keep moving. I'm not attached to the results, so whatever I get is what I'm supposed to get. And I just keep on trying to get better in a little bit incrementally every single time we do anything. So I did not realize that June 20th is our anniversary and we hit five years last week. So episode 200, five years later. That is insanity. And, uh, when you think about just how much has changed. Oh, my goodness. Listen to me. This. This week has been. Has really been a crazy, crazy, crazy week. My daughter just graduated, so we had prom this week, graduation this weekend. You know, she turned 18. My son's birthday was a couple weeks ago. He just turned 11. And it's crazy. It's crazy how fast life happens. And you really do have to take a. You really do have to take time to slow down and really think about where you have, you know, where you come from. Because it's one thing to have your head down 24 7, and you just keep grinding, just keep working. But, you know, life. Life is going, man. Life is going. So you really do have to take time to slow down and enjoy it because. What do you mean? Uh, my daughter starts university, finish with. Finish with, uh, uh, 90% average, finished off honor roll. Like, I'm just like, this is insane. And I had to laugh with my brother because I'm like, yo. Like, in 2003, when we just moved from Toronto, we moved out to the suburbs in Ajax, um, the school, the high school that I went to, Notre Dame, uh, it just opened like, it was the. I was the. I was the. The first grade 11 class of. Of Notre Dame when it opened in 2003. So the grade 12s, that was the very first year that the, uh, graduates. So my class graduated as a second year. I didn't graduate. I dropped out. I still have one credit to get, but that's a story for another day. I've talked about it, you know, throughout the podcast episodes. But my brother, my sister went to that school. My daughter went to that school. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's how crazy this is. Now she's graduating four years later. Like, it's just take the time, slow down, enjoy every. Enjoy every bit of it. Five years later, 200 episodes in Digipreneur FM M is still here. Yes. You know, I've. I've. I've slacked off a bit, and I really had to do a lot of digging to figure things out on just my end as to what I want to do, where I want to go, what do I want to take this. The world is just changing at such a crazy, crazy rate. Right? And that's really, uh, a good segue into today's episode. And today's episode is why now is the best time to go all in on solopreneurship. And I really, really believe this. This is something that I don't want to say I told you so to people, but you understand where I'm coming from, I don't want to say I told you so, but it's going to have that kind of energy. Uh, it's going to feel like that throughout the episode and it's going to feel like that because I've been a solopreneur ever since I started in 2016, and from every person I can think of, it has been, you have to have a team, you have to have a team, you have to have a team. But I think as I was learning, uh, how to build this business and just the time that we are in, I started building something in 2016 where tools and platforms had a level of maturity that I realized the better I get at having the right systems, the less people I actually need. And I was actually able to build a one man e commerce business from day one, from the start. And it's only ever grown because the tools and the access to platforms and everything just keep getting better and better and better and more affordable. So that way, you know, you, you could grow. So I've been able to be a solopreneur for the last 10 years and every single person that I could think of has always told me I need to build a team. And now that we are in 2026, the same people, the same people that have been telling me I need to get a team are the same people that are downsizing or be becoming more lean with their teams because they have access to so many platforms and tools. So it's just good to see that I started in the right direction. Even if I did not know that it was the right direction. I just knew I did not have money to hire nobody. Right. So when you are doing things with no budget, you find all the things that you can do. Um, you, you invest the time, you learn and you learn as much as you can that you can do things to the best of your abilities and you just figure things out and you kind of grow from there. So today, because of all of the tools and the platforms and the maturity that is happening and the speed of the maturity that is happening now due to, you know the, our favorite buzzword, AI, for the first time ever, one person has access to the tools and infrastructure that previously only corporations had. So when you think about artificial intelligence, freelancers, global manufacturing, digital payments, automation, creator platforms, what's happening today is everything is converging into one ecosystem. So somebody can wake up today, grab their phone and decide, you know what? I'm going to do food, uh, reviews. I'm going to do food reviews, build an audience and next thing you know, they can go and sell merch and they don't even have to invest in the merch up front. They can do print on demand. They could use AI, uh, create designs. At the end of the day, if they have a loyal audience, they're going to buy whatever they want from the creator. And the creator doesn't have to invest upfront for merch. They have access to print on demand platforms, they have access to drop shipping platforms in China. All of, all of these are things that just didn't exist in the way that it exists today. Excuse me, I was about to cough, I had to take a little sip of water. Anyway, let me, let me. Want to backtrack for a second, right? Because all of these things are conversion. A lot of these platforms existed in isolation of each other and they were costly, they were expensive. Uh, information wasn't always readily available. So it just, you know, who knew new and if you had the money, the resources, you, you could get a lot of these things done individually, but for the first time because everything is converging into one, it's made it a lot easier for people to learn, for people, for people to learn and then go from idea to execution and then scale. And you literally, you, if, if you learn how to do it, you don't even have to spend money up front to do it because you could learn from YouTube, you can, you have a phone, you have social media. All of these things are free. You can do drop shipping and drop shipping allow, or print on demand. And print on demand even better because then you don't even have to pay for things up front if you want to start. Like there's just so much conversion that has happened and it is, it has created a new ecosystem. So the cost of building a business today has completely collapsed. And because it has collapsed, the new modern solopreneur is no longer longer just working alone. You're no longer doing this thing alone. Because now, right, you can be the solo operator. But because of everything we said from, from the AI tools to access to freelancers, global manufacturing, payments, the, the, the, the social media platforms, websites, e commerce, all of these things you have access to as a solopreneur and you could tap into them 247 and you don't even have to spend any money upfront to access these things. Think about that. You can access chat, GPT, Claude Grok, meta, AI madness, you can access all of these things for free. Heck, Deep Seek is free, right? You can set up websites for free. Will be it won't be a branded domain, but you could still set up websites for free. PayPal, Payoneer, these things are free. Social media platforms, these things are free. And if you learn just enough to get started, you learn as you go and then you realize just how much access you have to build what you want to build. And when you are operating digitally and you're leveraging the infrastructure that you have access to, you as a single person today can operate more powerfully than some small companies could 15 years ago. And let me throw this out as a disclaimer. We're not talking about the Internet culture of hustle culture. No, we're talking about infrastructure, platforms, tools have evolved and it's cutting down the amount of time it takes to build. So you're, you, you don't have to be burned out because that's the next thing to five plus years ago. If you wanted to do all of these things, you really had to spend a whole lot of time to build it. And that is what mixed with the times that we are in with social media. I think that is where hustle culture really came from. Because at the end of the day hustle culture started and is rooted in a lot of truth. You do have to put in a whole lot of time to build anything worthwhile. You do have to spend a lot of time to be great. There's, there's no getting around it. And of course with Internet culture we bottle everything to package it to then go and run on social media and try to monetize. But ah, at uh, the genesis you did have to spend a lot of time to build a lot of these things. The beautiful thing with, with, with all of the tools and the maturity of the stuff that we have today is that we don't have to hustle. AI is cutting the time it takes to do what you have to do in your business by astronomical numbers. So now if you, if you continue to learn and you continue to upskill, you as a solo operator can really outperform what entire companies who had a payroll of a million plus dollars, what they could do 15 plus years ago. And even now in today's day and age, as a solo, as a solo act, you can operate to the scale of a 10, 20 person team. You're see people coming out, uh, building agents and agent. AI agent culture isn't going to go away. And it's not going to go away because AI agents are actually doing tasks. And if the person learns how to master not just the use of Chad GPT but now they're getting into the open clause, the Hermes or the Hermes. Um, if you're getting into that world, the orchestration of the teams that you're going to be able to build and be able to wield and the outputs that you can create with you at the helm, it just multiplies by an exponential amount. So why was this impossible 15 plus years ago? Well, I was on, I was on. Where was, I was on a call. Yes. Uh, so Digital World on Friday, I was just trying to remember where I was having a conversation. So last week, Friday that just passed, um, we were talking with Anan, with um, Raw Announce from Founders Caribbean. And I was on our show Digital World with and his co founder at the Founders Institute, Dr. Nikkei Schmidt. Um, and of course you know my, my co host, Curtis Jordan. So we're talking about why the next time, why the best time to build an AI startup is right now. One of the things I said was this is the first time in history since I've been alive in 39 years, this is the first time where when someone says, you could be whatever you want, I actually believe it. Now, we've been hearing that phrase our entire life. To me, you could be whatever you could afford to be. That's how it was before. To me, you could be whatever you could afford to be. Realistically, uh, anybody that you know made it to celebrity status, I mean they're still, there's still one in a million, right? They're not the average person. The average person, you could be whatever you really could afford to be. But today, today is the first time in history where I truly believe that anybody could be whatever they want to be. Because the, the, the ability to create is endless right now. Fifteen years ago, when you think about how you had to start, it was expensive, websites were expensive, video production, Jesus required teams, required hours. It required a whole lot of money. If you were going to shoot video content, international payments, fintech, these things were in its infancy stages or just nowhere near as mature as it is today. Um, so getting paid was difficult. Access to manufacturing, uh, wasn't, uh, the same 15 years ago like you, literally the things that Alibaba and Aliexpress have been able to do, um, over the last decade, Revel has revolutionized manufacturing or access to manufacturing, I should say, right? You didn't have these things, you know, 15, 20, 20 years ago, uh, to create your own software for your business. Ridiculously expensive. Now you have AI tools that are going to allow, that are allowing people to create their own amps, their own Applications with prompts. Now think about what that means for organizations. If you are working in an organization today, every organization should have some form of AI software developer in house, or at least access to one. And the reason why I say it might be a good idea to have it in house is because now you have somebody who is working inside of your business that can literally build custom applications to suit your specific business workflows and processes. That is unheard of. Actually. No, it's not unheard of. It's expensive. It was expensive. But now I honestly think now, and this is crazy because I didn't really think this would have made sense six months ago. Right. So software development has been, has been historically been expensive, but now you literally could have somebody, um, or should have somebody in house who can use AI to build applications because if they're inside of your business, they're going to be learning your business and that person is to be working on refining the applications that your internal business runs off of. Right. And they're internal. So now they could take all of the feedback from everybody and they could just continuously innovate. Innovate. That would have been millions of dollars before now you could do it with, with an application. The next thing. Remote work was not normalized. So you're going to see in 2026 that the language of remote work is evolving. So now you're see distributed teams, um, asynchronous work. So when a company says they're asynchronous, it's meaning that they don't really do, uh, you're not clocking in, you work on your time, you have deliverables, you have due dates and you work to that. And asynchronous you. It means that they don't really have a meeting culture or an email culture. They're using things like slack to communicate. And you would usually have set up, uh, an overlap of when you would have to overlap with your, with your manager or your direct team. So a couple of the companies I've interviewed for out here, when they were talking asynchronous, it was you had to have a two hour overlap with your direct manager in case you have to jump on a call or in case you guys have to communicate or whatever the case is. Um, but they typically don't really do calls. Everything is really slack and you would communicate during that window because everybody can work at their own time. So some people work best at nighttime, some people work best in the morning to get the best out of people. Companies are learning that asynchronous work might really be the way to go because you get people at their best when they can perform. And again, as long as they're hitting their due dates and their deadlines, then they're pretty much good to go. So you're seeing a lot more asynchronous, um, terminology in the jobs that you are looking for, and you're seeing a lot more, um, distributed teams. So people. So companies and people are realizing that, hey, I don't have access to the skill sets or I don't have access to labor at the cost that I can afford in the city that I am in. So now if you can go and find somebody in another country that has a skill set at the price point that you could afford, you can hire them and now you can go and do what you got to do to build your business. So that is becoming a whole lot more normalized. AI did not exist, right? AI has really only got popping. It's 2026 now. AI ch GBT really came on the scene 2022. And let's be honest, chat, GPT, Claude Grock. These things really got good over the last year. It was good before, but let's be honest, over the last year, AI has taken quantum leaps. And now those quantum leaps are happening almost every week. So it's getting better week after week after week after week. It's a pain to keep up with. But you know what? I'm realizing that every week that passes by, there is a feature or there's something that's coming out that's giving me more power to do things as a solopreneur. So I'm even more addicted to learning the updates because again, there are things that. I told you this a lot in the last episode. When I went to Seneca College, I dropped out of my. Of my, um, of my course because I could not pass web design, and I had to code with Dreamweaver. Twenty years later, I am coding with my eyes closed inside of Chat, GPT and Claude to build out applications or to build out coding for my webs. Like, there's so much power that these tools can do that. I. I was. I would have died. I was dying 20 years ago, right? That is insane. But, yeah, the. The entrepreneur that was starting a business in 2008 versus the entrepreneur that was. That starts a business in 2026. You. You needed people. You needed you in 20. In 2008, you needed people, and you needed access to skilled people. You needed access to labor that you could afford, which is why so many people would have sought out people in India, people in Pakistan, people in, um, uh, Philippines, because you needed to have access to labor that you could afford to grow in. 2008, when you look at 20, 26 now, you're not necessarily looking at headcount. You're looking at having the. A lean team, a core group of people, if you do want to have a small team. But in the case of a solopreneur, Solopreneur to himself today can say, you know what? We have access to AI tools, we have access to AI agents. I can literally build out my own team using AI agents, and I can have my own solopreneur business. Again, this is something that you could do today. Twenty years ago, 2008, 2010, 2015, you were looking at headcount, right? This is why the global workforce has to change. Because even if, like, I, I don't believe, I don't believe that every company is just going to wipe off everybody and it's just going to be AI, right? But the reality is, is that augmented teams, augmented with AI skills, you just, you just don't need as much people. And I think everybody is figuring out the right amount of people they need and what AI tools and the right amount of humans to AI tools and agents. You need to build a business to, to, to do whatever you needed to do. But for the solopreneur, for the person who is, wants to get started today, who, historically, you have seen how businesses have been built, and you have seen that it has historically needed people with specific skill sets. And obviously, if you need to work with people, you got to hire them, you got to pay them, whatever the, the person that's building a business today, all they need is AI tools and Internet access. And as long as they're willing to learn and learn daily and fail fast and fail forward, they have real operational leverage than somebody ever had trying to build a business in 2008. And you can do that as a solopreneur. And here's the thing, this is why you're seeing even more teenagers starting to build businesses. Because there's no, there's no age limit to this thing anymore. As long as you have the skill sets, you can build something significant and build it online. And as long as you can execute and do what you got to do, people are not asking. People that are booking you online are not asking, uh, where did you go to school or how old you are, they can see the work that you are doing. Whatever that work is, they can see the work and they're booking You. My goodness. So the other thing that we are going to see a lot more of is the rise of the one man corporation. You're seeing solopreneurs. They can do marketing, they can do operations, they can do customer support, they can do design, they can create content, they can set up E commerce, they can set up distribution of content, they can set up fulfillment of physical products, they can build automation. Uh, a Solopreneur can do all of those things. I do every single one of them. And it's possible because we have the tools that we have even before AI. I'm looking at the list of things that um, that we can do in a business, right? So marketing, operations, customer support, all those things, right. And when I was starting it, when I was doing them In Ah, in 2016 with Droid island, it took a lot of time, it took a lot of time to execute all of these things because it was more manual, right? So even if you still had the software and the tools, it was still more of a manual process to, to, to still you still, there was still a lot more uh, manual processes that you had to do and time to get these things done. Today AI acts essentially like your staff and it can cut down the workload dramatically. The SAS tools that we have access to today act like infrastructure. So we have access to a CRM, right? You, you. I am still on the free version of HubSpot. On HubSpot serves me tremendously. And I'm still on the free version of HubSpot. So you have access to tools that are free, that are key parts of your business. You have access to cloud storage, you have access to payment tools. All of these tools are now infrastructural pieces inside of your business, right? And anything that you can't do on your own or you can't figure out how to do it, AI, that's okay because now you have access to freelancers. And that's why platforms like Fiverr, Freelancer.com Upwork, these things will never go away because you're always going to need access to expertise. Companies and people just don't want to have to hire expertise full time, right? They want to be able to get a freelancer on board for a project base. Hey, I need to get this done, hire that and pay them for a job and you go from there. But a solopreneur can now do the same thing. You can find labor and skill sets at any price point you need when you're on Fiverr and upwork and freelancer.com so you can't do something cool, you budget yourself accordingly and go and find your go to freelancers on any one of the freelancing platforms and when you go and get those jobs for any aspect of the business that you can't do, you have access to the freelancers and you're the project manager. So we also have to start having, and I'm speaking specifically to, to, to our listeners in the Caribbean region now. Uh, we have a lot of, listen to me, we have listeners that are listening in from all over the place, shout outs to Singapore, shout outs to China. Um, I am getting a whole lot of people listening in from, from Singapore, from China. Um, it's, it's really been interesting to see. But anyway, this is specifically to the Caribbean listeners. India, my goodness, UK have a lot of people. Japan. I'm seeing a lot of different countries tuning uh, into the program now. But anyways, this is specifically to the Caribbean users. We have to have a maturity about the freelancing platforms. We are still, when we still hear Fiverr, we still think it's people who don't speak English and can't help us and do sloppy work. That might have been true 15 years ago, 10, 15 years ago, but that's not the case now. Now these platforms are super, super legitimate workforce augmentation platforms. Anything that you need to get done there is a skill set on those platforms. And just like work, the episode suggests rise of the solopreneurship. A lot of the people that are freelancers on these platforms, they work for themselves and they do it 100% freelancing platforms. So now they don't even have to be the ones to go out and find clients. They just have to worry about building their portfolios, getting their, getting their reviews and Fiverr freelance. The platforms help them get clients and as long as they're building their, their portfolios, the business still keeps coming in that solopreneurship at its finest right there too. So if you're acting on your own now, you have access to the skill set. So when you are working with a client, you can take on business that you might have given up because it might have just sat outside of your specific skill set. And rather than you turn down the business, you could say, all right, cool, I'll take this part on, I'll get paid accordingly. And then you are now going to go and find your yourself a freelancer on any one of the platforms and you're the project manager. You're the one that's going to give everything to pass and Grade, you're the one that's going to make sure it's done to spec. And then when you find the freelancers that you are comfortable with, they now essentially become just external staff. Anytime you need them, you can go back to the same people. We have access to a whole ton of automation tools and platforms, shout outs to. If anybody is looking to start specializing a new skill set, go specialize in automation. Go learn tools like Zapier. If you can learn automation, if you could learn the tools like Zapier and all the other ones that are adjacent to Zapier, if you could learn that you have a whole lot of money to make. And it's something that every time I think about, every time I think about learning automation, uh, I literally like, I want to learn, I want to learn bad. But my brain just hasn't gotten to a place where I'm like, I'm ready to take on that challenge. There's, there's so much to learn, there's so much to do. But I think the best, one of the best skill sets to learn right now, yes, you want to pick up some AI skills and maybe we got to do an episode on some of the best AI skills to learn. But you see automation skills right now using tools like Zapier, not I'm um, saying Zapier. So you have an example, you have a reference point. You could throw Zapier into Chad GPT and ask about Zapier, some of the best tools to learn alongside Zapier for automation. But Adam, automation specialist right now, if you can go and learn that, you are going to have a very significant career moving forward because there is so much that needs to be put together to build systems and automation specialists. All you do is build systems for people, build systems for companies. But anyways, a, uh, solopreneur can learn automation and build out their own automation tech stack. That way automation acts like management, right? It also acts like employees because it's. A lot of these things are being done for you, um, internal processes and it's, it's, it's crazy to see, you know, the types of workflows and processes that, that, that can happen now, especially with AI. Like I'm seeing, I'm seeing an automation where somebody can go fill out a form on your website, maybe they want to do business with you. So they click on the form, they fill out some information, that information gets entered into your CRM, that information gets sent to you and it gives you a nice brief on this client and you can grade that client or the AI tool can grade the CL client to see if this is somebody that you should, um, which product or which service you can go and recommend. Like there's just so much types of things that you could do right now that is insane. So you are no longer building a loan anymore. If you learn the right tools, the right platforms, the payment structure, if you learn these things, you are now orchestrating an entire system. You are not building a business alone in isolation. These tools create a uh, digital operating system for solopreneurs. So the AI tools, the freelancing platforms, the Shopify, the WordPress, which is like your storefronts, your platforms, the AI tools, payment tools, the automation tools, the content creation tools, all of these things together are your digital operating system for a solopreneur. One of the things that I thought was pretty interesting the other day, if you haven't heard about it by now, um, son Altman a couple of, a couple months ago by now, um, he made the prediction that 2026 we're going to see the very first uh, first person billion dollar company. Because AI is collapsing operational complexity and it's just compressing the execution from, or the, the, the whole process from idea to execution. You're seeing how this can happen because one person can now build an entire team and operate. So I thought I was pretty interesting first, first one person billion dollar company coming in 2026. And I think we're getting close to that. I remember seeing something, I should have pulled this up before, but I had remember seeing something that we were very close uh, to get into that first person billionaire company. So it's, it's on the way. It's going to happen. It is going to happen. But even if you don't have your sight set on billions or millions, even building a uh, business that's going to give you a uh, sustainable living in the thousands. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. That's not bad at all. So even if you're not aiming for the millions and the billions, you can still carve out some good income and build a nice life that you could enjoy for yourself. Now AI as we know is restructuring labor. So now junior execution work is being automated. Repetitive tasks are disappearing. Small operational teams are becoming more and more powerful. Agencies on a whole are being challenged and individuals can now execute at uh, complete scale. So when we're talking about how AI is changing labor, as I said before, we are going to see this entire restructuring happening and it's not going to settle in real time. Because AI is changing so fast, so frequently and the amount of, of, of power that it's giving the individual. I just continue to think that a lot of the existing companies are going to continue to restructure and they're going to continue to downsize because they're learning that mix of how much humans they need, how much automation they, they can build to do, and how much, um, what, what does that AI tech stack look like with the right skill sets? I think everybody's in the messy middle right now figuring it out. But the figuring out that messy middle is collapsing everything. It is collapsing everything. And now I think this is why it's even more important to be that solopreneur is because if companies continue to lean out and they're going to be continuing to outsource skill sets that they might not have, uh, internally, somebody is always going to get that job, right? Somebody is always going to get that work. So what I think, what I, what I'm seeing right now, what I'm experiencing for myself and what I am seeing is the more you upskill any more access to tools and platforms that you have, you can carve out this, this, this, what do I want to say? You can carve out this space for yourself where you really sit in the gray, where you can now be outsourced labor from multiple, for multiple companies. Because some of the things that I'm doing right now, for example, some of the things I'm doing for companies right now is data research, content web content optimization, um, digital competitor benchmarking, whatever. Digital competitor benchmarking, we're benchmarking socials or benchmarking the digital presence and then digital strategy on a whole, whole for, for organizations, whatever the case is, the, the reason why it's always going to have to be solopreneurship for me is because I am always looking outward at what is happening at the market, refining my skills, refining my strategies with companies. Companies are always looking internally. They're not always looking to see, you know, what's best and what's best practice, um, for this, what's the best practice on social media, what's the best practice on digital? Like they're always, they're always still focused on what's happening internally. They don't, when you work for the company, you're not always keeping up to date with, with, with the market or what's happening externally. So anyways, there's always going to be a need for specialists, uh, a growing need for specialists now, but with the teams themselves being shrunk down and they don't have to pay somebody every single month for, for every, for every single thing. You're going to have multiple companies reaching out to you to do business with you because you're a specialist in this space and they don't have that experience, that expertise internally because maybe they don't need it as a full time thing internally. So you are going to start getting multiple companies contacting you, reaching out, uh, to you to execute very specific things. And again, if you set yourself up right, if you have the right tech stack, if you have the right operations, uh, you have the right automations, the right processes in place, you can do a whole lot of high value work for a lot of companies that have the budget and you don't. You might not even need, I'm not saying no, let me re, let me bring it back. It's not that you don't need a whole ton of money or you need a whole ton of clients, but with how things are set up, this is a uh, point in time where you can really decide who you want to work with and how you want to work with them. So if you have the right frame of mind to design your life and say, hey, you know what, okay, um, I'm gonna live in this particular country, in this particular city, it's gonna cost me this amount of money to live here or to have the life that I want to live. What is that high value work that I can do and how many of those high value clients, um, can I go and look for or have or how many do I need at the time to provide me the kind of lifestyle that you want? And this is where digital nomads are really leveraging. Because now if I'm living in Toronto, a good life that I could afford, I might need 10,000amonth, which means I gotta, I gotta do some really high value work and find some really high value clients. But the digital nomads that are now saying, hey, let me go move to Portugal, let me go move to Mexico, let me go, move to Thailand, let me go move to Vietnam, where cost of living is a thousand dollars a month, $2,000 a month at a, at a bare minimum right now you could say, all right, well I only need like if I get three clients, four clients paying me a thousand dollars a month, that might be way more than I need to live the life that I want in Vietnam, where I only have to speak to four reps or deal with only four companies. So now you have real leverage. You're doing the high value Work, you're doing the work of what would have taken 20, 30 people. Now you're doing it to yourself because you have the right tech stack and the right AI stack. Now you leverage lower cost of living. And now you start to realize that solopreneurship might just be the way to go. How many of you are just don't like meetings and don't like talking to people? I laugh when I say that because I'm not weird. Uh, I don't like to do it a lot of people. But you see where this is going. So when you can find the right mix of tools, when you can find the right skill set, that now gives you the ability to start looking at, hey, might we be able to do a different change of city? Maybe a different province, maybe a different parish. You can choose a different country. Because countries around the world are now opening the world up to anybody with remote businesses. Remote, um, remote jobs, remote businesses. Why? Because you're going to be bringing that income into their country. Right. And this is why it's also important for our Caribbean region to really focus on a digital nomad policy. Because we could be doing the same thing too. There's a lot of people that would love to come and live in the Caribbean. But the first things first is you have to have the right environment, uh, that makes sense for digital nomads. And then you also have to build the right environment to protect all of your local people that live there. Right? We don't, we can't allow for gentrification. We would have seen a couple of years ago the whole situation. Mexico City, Mexico City did not, not put the right framework infrastructure. They put nothing in place. They just said, all digital nomads, it's cheap to live in Mexico. Mexico, uh, city, come on down. And they let everybody in and it drove the prices of real estate all the way up. And it almost started to gentrify. Mexico, uh, city. There was riots, there was a whole lot of thing. But that's when you, that's what happens when you do it with no plan. The difference is all the Asian countries that have rolled out digital nomad visas, they have been building out the capacity for years. This is why you keep seeing a million Thailand condo videos. Why you think that is? Because they have been building out the capacity and they're showcasing that. What do you think the problem is in Canada? Same thing, invited everybody and they've, they've allowed everybody to come in. Housing crisis. They never built capacity. So that's why they had to cut down the numbers to 50% reduction in migration so that they could try to build up the, the housing capacity and then start trying to get more people to come back into the, into the country. But the Asian countries have been doing that. So that's why you're seeing a lot more digital nomad visas, not just in Asia, but digital nomad visas happening around the world. Countries are learning build the, build the infrastructure, build the housing, uh, make the environment friendly for, or make the environment friendly and easy for people to come migrate. They have long term visas here I, my visa is five years, so I get, I renew my visa every five years, years. I don't need residency, I don't need citizenship. Your visa is, is, is, is your long, is your long term stay. So every five years I renew my visa. And um, five years is a good time too. Because you know what, the way the world is changing so much today, right, if you are that solopreneur and you're building your business, you have the flexibility. So on a, on a visa, on a five year visa, when the five year visa is up, I can now look and say, hey, you know, do I want to try a different country? Is there a better environment for me and for, and for my business or for what I want out of life? You know, you can have those, those conversations now. All right, so that's why you're seeing a lot of these digital nomad visas. And that's why, um, as a solopreneur, if you can build the right skill sets, the right tech stack and you can start to perform high value work, it really opens up options now because now you can say, hey, I might be able to go and move and live in a different country, go get a long term visa. You could migrate you and your family. A lot of the, again, a lot of these visas are now allowing you to bring your spouse and your dependents. This is not like the U.S. canada, the U.K. uh, visa situation where it was, it was a whole lot of stress. I got my visa online in two weeks. And you can bring your spouse or I'm on the destination Thailand visa, You could bring your spouse and you can bring a dependence on that one visa. So a lot of the visas that are coming out now are making those provisions for you to bring your spouse and for you to bring your family on that one visa. So that's huge. And these are some of the things that we got to start thinking about, um, in the Caribbean because again, we could be bringing in more people that already have their jobs, have their knowledge, have their skill sets and come in on a long term visa and they would gladly come and everybody's on the benefit because now they're spending that money inside of the Caribbean. And then also you have more skilled labor mixing in the population. So you have that transfer that, that, that, that, that, that, that transfer of, of knowledge, uh, happening as well. Right? The people that I meet here in, in Bangkok, in Thailand, from all over the world, all over the world with skill sets. You, I, man, I thought I would have never have seen of in real life. I've met some people with some skill sets where I'm like, Jesus, I've, I've only heard about this in the movies, right? So you, you have that mix when you, when your business or your brand or your job is, is, is digital in nature. And now you're living in countries that uh, uh, that really do facilitate the movement of people. Uh, the digital nomads, uh, coming into your country leveraging geo arbitrage. And geo arbitrage is when you're higher currency and live in a lower cost environment. The Caribbean is a lower cost environment to, to many of these countries around the world. We do have people that would absolutely love to live here. But this has to be a conversation that our governments really doubled down on. Um, that way we could take advantage of it too. But for you, the solopreneur that's listening to this episode, it's just more reason for you to really start looking at the path of being a solopreneur. You can be a solo operator, learning the right tools, the right tech stack, finding the right problems for the right people to solve. And then when you start to generate the money, you can really start looking at, hey, is there a country that's going to give me the environment that I need and can I leverage that? Because like I said before, if you can get a couple of uh. Well, let me say it like this. When you are planning out what you want to do, how much clients you need, what you do, the prices you charge are going to be all relative to the environment that you are in. So there are things that, because this is my third country, Canada was the most expensive country I lived in and I lived in Toronto for the majority of my life. Uh, Toronto is expensive. It's one of the most expensive countries in the world. When I moved to Trinidad, that was a relief because it's just so much cheaper than living in Toronto. And uh, for perspective, whenever I would hear people complain about Trinidad, I never complained about Trinidad because I'm like, I'm I'm coming from Toronto. It's no better. It's even worse where I'm coming from. Right. So when I was leaving I was looking at Colombia because the business environment is booming in Colombia, but elsewhere, lower cost of living. It was, it was far more financially, uh, better for me to operate out of Colombia than it was for me to operate in Trinidad. And it wasn't until I left Colombia the second time and I started to just research, you know, what are some of the other top digital, uh, online destinations. And I got to see places like Bali, Portugal, um, you know, I looked at Singapore and I was like, man, Singapore is dope for tech. But I saw the cost of living for Singapore. I'm like, yeah, ah, that, that ain't. And right around that time is when I had seen the announcement for the new destination Thailand visa, the new five year digital med visa targeting remote workers, digital business owners and then some of their soft power skills. Um, that came out, that announcement happened August, uh, July 2024. August 2024. It came out in the Gazette, it became law. I applied end of August, got my visa two weeks later, mid September, and I was on a plane September 19th. So you get to decide if I choose to live over here in, in Asia or Vietnam. When you are doing your business, you are going to be able to charge a different price or work with a different amount of customers, um, all depending on where you live. But now you have that option. So this is why I really want people to, to really consider, you know, getting into solopreneurship because you just have more flexibility and you have more ability to create and do things on your own without big investments to get started. All right? And that flexibility just gives you more access to create the lifestyle and the life that you want for yourself. Because trust and believe. You could be a solopreneur anywhere in the world. But to be a solopreneur in Toronto, that's going to take a certain amount of clients because Toronto is expensive. If you're a solopreneur in the Caribbean, that's a different price point and a different amount of clients that you're going to need if you're living in Jamaica versus living in say Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad. TNT is a whole lot cheaper to live in than Jamaica. Right? So how much clients you need, what you're going to charge, what you're going to do, all of that's going to be shaped by the environment that you are in because of the amount of money you're going to have to charge. Because obviously you're going to charge according to what it's going to cost for you to run your business, but also to live. So when you now start looking at different countries, like the Portugals, like the Mexico's, like the Colombia, the Thailand, the Vietnam's, the Indonesians, I don't want to, I don't want to limit it to Bali, Indonesia, uh, Malaysia. When you start looking at all of these, uh, new countries rolling out these digital nomad visas that have the lower cost of living. Because there are a lot of countries that have digital nomad visas where cost of living is higher, which is fine. I mean if you could afford, if you could afford it and want to afford it, no problem. But for many of you who are trying to get started in business, it would do you better to really consider a, uh, move out to a lower cost environment while you build because it's going to give you more Runway to build. Since it's not going to cost you as much money to build the business, but it's also not going to cost you as much money to feed yourself and to, and to house yourself. All of these things are going to help you build the business and the lifestyle that you want. That these are things that you could not have done. Fifteen years ago ago, I moved out of Toronto. September 2013, I moved out of Toronto. Um, I was 27 at the time. December is my birthday. So just before my 28th birthday I moved to Trinidad and then I came out here, spent a month in Jamaica. Uh, and life for me really started in Trinidad in 2014. That's when I kind of like mentally life started. Right, right. But the things that you were able to build and start from 2013, I could have never have dreamed of doing now. I could have never have dreamed of doing now. When I think the way that my life has gone, I can see how it has progressed in a, uh, in, in this particular way, but I could have never have imagined it because it just wasn't a thing, you know, uh, uh, at uh, 2728. Digital Nomad. What are you talking about? I, what do you mean? Web development. And you're doing all this for clients? Bro, I don't want to see nothing but web development. I left school because I don't, I did not want to do it. And now we can do all of these things on our own. We can choose where we want to live. And now, and what I've really kind of been learning over the last year, I've been here since September 2024. Right. So September is my two years in Thailand. Amazing. That's insane. But over the last year, I had to do a lot of soul searching because the majority of my audience and business I do is within the Caribbean region, right? The majority of it. And when people would come to me to do business and they give me a budget or they, they, they, they're fussing about a price or whatever the case is, man, I used to just want to just kiss my teeth and just say, man, just, just don't bother me, right? Just don't bother me. But here's the thing. Some of the things or some of the prices that people would pitch me to do things, I was judging it based on, I'm, um, living in Trinidad and my cost of living is this, the value of what I provide is this like all of these things go into how you charge, right? You're in business to fund your life, so all of these things go into, into how you go about charging. Your goal is to try to provide as much value or more value you for whatever you're, whatever you're justifying your prices at, right? What I did not do was I didn't recalibrate my entire life and business. When I moved to Thailand, I was still operating like I'm in Trinidad mentally, price wise, everything right? There is obviously a particular pressure because cost of living is much higher in Trinidad. So there's a particular pressure to perform and to do this and to do that because you have to, you know what your bills are like, you know what it costs to, you know what it costs for you to run your business. So you know what those numbers are like. But the recalibration that I had to do living in Thailand and this, like I said, you learn more about yourself building a business then than almost anything. Adding migrants, another culture as well, my goodness. But migrating to Thailand, I had to recalibrate because I'm like, yo, it costs me significantly less to live in Thailand, significantly less. I don't need nowhere near as much money to live than when I lived in Toronto, than when I lived in Trinidad. That, so I don't have to charge a particular way because when I was coming up with all of my price points, whatever it was, it was priced because of me living in Trinidad. But even if the value of what I'm doing is still very high and I want to keep those prices, there is less pressure for me to get as many people to work with because now my cost of living is so much, is so much lower, which now gives me more flexibility to choose the people that I want to work with. And I could say no a whole lot more because I have leverage now. Hope that makes sense. So the recalibration, me coming to Thailand, whole different environment, whole different values, whole different cost, um, of cost of living situation. I had to change or recalibrate my process, my vision, my prior. Like, I had to recalibrate everything because I'm living in a completely different environment. And this completely different environment requires a, uh, completely different approach. And it gives me advantages that I did not have before and I wouldn't have had if I was living in Toronto. So the power to say no, I don't have to just work with any and everybody. And because I don't have to work with people or clients that drain me, I can say no to that. And I can put more effort into creating the type of business that I want. I can spend more time learning new skill sets, upskilling, learning how to provide new value, and then create a business that attracts the right people that I want to work with. And because it's a lower cost of living, I don't have to work with a whole lot of people to live the life that I want. I'm not, like, if I was trying to be a millionaire, then that's a whole different thing. I'm not. I mean, if we ever get to millionaire status, great. But I'm not on that vibe. My vibe is I just want to afford the life that I want to live. I just want to be able to do what I want to do. And what I want to do isn't crazy. Like, if I just want to have a lifestyle where I can say, you know what, man, um, I feel like going Japan for a couple of days and I just go. I don't have to think about. I just want to just say I want to go India and eat some, eat some whatever over there, there. Go, go, go laugh at them street food videos or go make some of my own India street food. Like, like, I just want to be able to do that. Like, uh, that is the life that I want, right? I want to build the life where time, location and financial freedom are all within my grasp. And uh, like I said in the last episode, I have two of them. Time location. I had time freedom and location freedom. I have, I have down packed, right? Financial freedom. My daughter won't let me be great. I feel like every time I get. You know how you know that? You know the joke where it's like your car knows when you have money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right now I don't have the car, so, you know, my bills are looking nice. M. But it's like every single time you think you have some money money, a child comes calling. But shout out to Keanu, man. Shout outs to my girl. Uh, my girl is going into university. And you know, it's, it's, it's really a blessing to just, wow, how on earth did we get here? You know, um, like my brother is just wrapped up university. Like I still feel like everybody is kids. Like my brother just wrapped up university or whatever the case is. My mom is like, I don't see myself as an adult yet. Like the way I see my mom, like, my mom is like, what do you mean? I have to pay university fees now? My mom is paying university fees for my brother. It's just, it's, it's crazy. But anyways, man, if you're thinking about getting into or becoming a solopreneur, you know, start looking at a couple of industries that are going to make sense. So I think if you're, if you want to start and you don't know where to start, one, um, let me put it like this. Find something that you actually like, find an industry you actually like and jump inside of chat GPT, Claude, any one of these tools, if you like Pokemon cards, go and ask the question inside of any of the AI tools. How are, how is AI being used in the Pokemon field industry? How is AI being used in cooking? Just, just start by just seeing how is AI being used in that particular space. Because the skill sets that you're going to have to build up to really be a solopreneur. You want to build up your AI skills, you want to build up some automation skills, you want to solve key problems for people that have money, right? But what problems to go and solve. I think the first thing you can do is start with things that you're interested in and see how AI is being used. See what types of problems people are facing in there. You know, uh, who knows, you might even want to go and build your own application to go and track, uh, Pokemon cards and Pokemon strategy. Like, like you can do these things now, right? You, you can legitimately do these things. So start looking at a, uh, feeling you're passionate about. And if you don't really have a passion, because I think a lot of us have just been in the system for so long that the system has sucked out our passion. What is a passion these days? But if you don't really know what your passion is, then look at businesses, look at workflow automations. Look at workflows and processes. Look how AI is changing workflows. Look how automation is changing processes. Look at what AI content systems look like. Look at how artificial intelligence is being used inside of customer support. Look at how companies are defining AI strategies. If you can get businesses that can help, if you can start a business as a solopreneur, that you can help people build workflows, automate processes, um, create systems for them. If you can help, um, businesses create their own, uh, content systems. If you can help businesses build their own AI customer support. Like these are some things that every single business needs. And the majority, 99% of businesses are not going to build out their own AI customer support or their own AI card. They don't need even know what workflows exist, um, inside of the baking industry. You know what I mean? Like, business owners are so focused on, on what it is that they're doing that they don't have time to look to see what is happening in the world. And that is why solopreneurs are the perfect people. Like you are in the perfect space right now because you might not have of the full time job. I'm learning that I might never be employed again. Lord knows I'm trying to go and work for one of these Asian companies right now. But I'm like, man, I've been applying a job since February, I've been getting interviews and some of these jobs have actually changed on the fly as we talked about in the last episode, right? But you look at the job market globally, the job market is pretty rough right now because we're going into this transition where everybody is leaning out, but the skill sets are still needed. So again, even though I hear and I ain't hired by nobody yet, I'm still getting booked to execute as a solopreneur. I'm still getting booked to do events, I'm still getting booked to do workshops, I'm still getting booked to host, I'm still getting booked to do a bunch of different things. So, so you might really never get a job again. But if you can build yourself up and be a solopreneur and have the skill sets, even if you don't get a job working for a company, you're still going to get booked by clients. You might still be the freelancer, you might still be the outsourced label and that's a great space that you want to be right now. Because now again, you're not waiting around hoping somebody called you, you're not waiting around Hoping that somebody picks you and you're not waiting around for a job to happen in your specific city or your specific country. Because the truth is the one thing that, that I've learned in living in Canada and living in the Caribbean is that a lot of the jobs are not in your city. City. And in the case of us moving out to the suburbs in Toronto, people are moving further and further and further away from the cities because living in the cities is becoming too expensive to live in. So you're living two and three hours away from the cities, then you have to drive into work and it's more money in gas, more money on maintenance, more time on the mo, on the road, more wear and tear on your mental, all of that stuff, right? And when you're living in the Caribbean, a lot of the jobs, a lot of the high paying jobs are not in the Caribbean, they're elsewhere. So if I'm living in Toronto and I'm a remote worker and I have now moved out to the suburbs to afford a better cost of living, then if I'm a remote worker, I don't have to now drive three hours to get to work or live in an expensive downtown Toronto to be close to work. Like you don't have to do that. If you're living in Trinidad and Tobago, you're living in Jamaica, living in Barbados where a lot of the high paying jobs just simply don't exist. You can still learn the skill sets and work for companies or people abroad. You have the pathways to learn the skill sets without having to go to a local college or university. Because in the case of the Caribbean, a lot of the universities are not even offering up to date, uh, degree programs, uh, for you to really come out and do anything in today's job market, right? The things that people are learning, and I've talked about this before, the things that people are learning in digital marketing here in Asia is 15 years ahead than what they're teaching in, in the Caribbean universities. Um, in the same, in the same subject. The subject in Asia has completely evolved and it's evolved into digital business. Digital marketing is not just marketing, more it is, it is business, it is infrastructure, it is tools, it is platforms of the digital payments, it is not just posting on social media, it's not just communications. And we still treat uh, marketing in the Caribbean as just a communications which is why they don't want to invest in a lot of these digital platforms because they still view marketing as communications. Why am I going to spend $10,000 on a website when I could just post that, hey, we have a new product on social media is because we still view digital as digital, marketing as communications, whereas in Asia, it is fully integrated business. You have farmers streaming because they've built the social media platforms that allow people now to stream from anywhere. So you have a farmer streaming from his farm in Lord knows no, anywhere in China, and he is showcasing his mango, and people are able to order a dozen mango right from the live stream and have it delivered to their house. I just watched a video not too long ago today where I'm seeing China has now built robots that can do deliveries on bike. I am like, oh, my goodness, this. I don't know how I feel about this. I get it. But here's the thing here in Asia, one of the biggest platforms, Grab, I use Grab every day. I order food on Grab. Matter of fact, let me see if my food is on the way. Uh, my food was. Yeah, my food just came. Yeah, okay, good. Anyways. Yeah, my food just came. So here's the thing with Grab. You have all of these drivers and the drivers, actual humans. Grab hires hundreds of thousands of people everyday. People who might not have the most skill sets as long as they have the bike. They could at least go work for Grab and go and work bike, taxi, or food. And guess what? It's perfect because I could be sitting here doing my podcast and I ordered food on Grab, and now my food is waiting downstairs for me. Right. Because it employs so many people. I've always admired that about Grab. Like, look at commerce. Look at all of these people who might not have the best skill sets. They can at least drive a bike and go and drive people around or deliver food. And they're making money. Right? Right. And we are using them every day, man. Sometimes I go downstairs and this is 10 Grab drivers coming at the exact same time, dropping off, um, product, dropping off food, dropping off groceries, you name it. Like, listen, these people are busy. China is now. Has now built robots to do that. I'm like, holy, Holy smokes. Holy smokes. What is. What is going on on? So the robotics and the AI automate, these things are happening. They're happening. So now you don't want to put yourself in. In. In these positions to become obsolete. You got to be the one now to start learning these skill sets so that you can be your own solo operator as well. And as long as you can do that, you are going to find. Find value. You're going to be of value. And now you're not limited to just earning money. From people within a small radius. Your customers, your clients can be any part of the world now and you can execute for them. Your location doesn't matter. That when you work, doesn't matter. And then you have the digital, the right digital payment infrastructure you write down in the Caribbean right now can be getting paid globally from anybody. The real thing that you're going to have to work on though, is building that portfolio, building your personal brand. Because that is how you're going to acquire your customers, your clients. And if you don't want to build a personal brand, you know what, I hear you and I think if you're not building a personal brand and you got to be really good at networking, working, I think if you learn how to build your, I think you have to do one of three things. If you could do all three things, you're unstoppable. But I think you have to get amazing at one of these three things. This is going to be all based on your personality. One, the best thing for you to do is build your personal brand. If you build a personal brand, obviously the more people that know you and know what you are capable of, it's going to create more opportunities for you. But not everybody wants to do that. Some people want to fly below the radar and just do good work. Uh, second best thing you could possibly learn how to do. If you don't want to, uh, build an amazing personal brand, be an amazing network networker. If you can network, network your ass off on platforms like LinkedIn or in person. If you could network your ass off, you will never run out of opportunities. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to build a personal brand. But if you're not building a personal brand, you had better be an amazing network. You had better be an amazing networker because that's the only way you are going to be able to get away. Moving forward with not having a personal brand, people need to know you and they need to know what you can do. So first thing, the best thing that you can do is build a personal brand. I am a terrible networker. I am a great person at building. I'm great at building a personal brand. Brand. Terrible networker, though. I don't like people that much anyways. Um, if you're not building a personal brand, if you're not an amazing networker, then what you got to do, um, third would be learn how to build a portfolio, learn how to be searchable. If you can build your portfolio and learn how to be searchable, and that search could be whether it's a search engines, whether it's AI, get good at that. Get good at building a portfolio, documenting your work, documenting your processes and continue to learn enough about how to have your work searchable through the search engines and through AI search because more and more people are finding out business or people that they need or that they can work with through AI tools through Google. So you either have to do one of those three things really, really well to continue to build and be a solopreneur and excel and have a career and create the lifestyle that want. And those three ways, those three strategies will be building your personal brand, networking or getting really, really good at building your portfolio. If you can do all three, that's what you're supposed to do, but depending on your personality that might not be feasible, uh, for you to do all three. So then pick one and get really, really good at that. And I say that last part about building your portfolio and learning how to be searchable because like I said said, if more and more people are going to the AI tools, AI search and that's how they're finding out about products and um, services and businesses that they need, then you at least want to know how to show up there because that's where the customers are going to be coming in from. If you're not really building that personal brand, if you're not really, you know, a great networker, build a really solid portfolio and be searchable. That way when people do find you and they see the body of work, then it doesn't matter whether you're popular or not or who you know and who you don't know, it doesn't matter matter. You are the person that they are searching for. Their AI tools are able to vet you and they said this is the person that you need to execute and do exactly what you want. And then when they come into your, your website or your, your platform, whatever, and they see your body of work, they say okay, cool, this is the exact person I need and that is how you can go and get that client. So solopreneurs, you have access to everything. You have access to knowledge, you can go. There's a million platforms for you to learn those skill sets. You have access to a wide variety of digital payment platforms from the PayPal, again from the Caribbean, you have access to the PayPals, you have access to the Charles Schwab's, you have access to the send down as I would have been talking about that as of late, um, you can go on my website, learn about Sandana SCN Dana another great tool that can connect to PayPal, give you a Visa debit card, give um, you a ah, US bank account with banking Rails so that people, so the companies, if you get a job, companies can do wire transfers to you but then you can also connect, send down to PayPal so a client or company can pay you through PayPal and then you have that Visa debit card, um, and that'll collect US dollars for you and then you can um, go and make payments or do whatever you got to do with that, with that Visa debt debit card. So you have ways to learn, you have ways to get paid, you have the platforms to acquire customers, social media, um, AI tools, learn how to be searchable, learn how to be citable, learn to do these things. All of these things come together, right? The AI tools, the access to automations, access to factories where you can, you can build products, put all of these things together. A solopreneur can do all of them today in 2026. And that is why now is the best possible time to be a solopreneur. We are entering the era of networked individuals. One person has access to AI, global labor, global labor, manufacturing, automation, media, payments, distribution. The opportunity today is unprecedented and execution is what is going to separate everybody. Ideas mean absolutely nothing. I can generate ideas out the wazoo. The people who can execute are who are going to kill it. And now you don't have to be limited to any one market. You can get customers and clients from all over the place. That is why 2026 is the year that solopreneurs, as Altman is saying, solopreneurs can now become a billion dollar business. We have all the tools and the platforms to do it. The future is not going to belong to the biggest companies anymore. It is going to belong to the most adaptable individuals. I hope this episode gave you something to really think about and understand the opportunities that exist in today's day and age. And this is not business as usual anymore. This is a completely different time. And we across the entire Caribbean region need to wake up and shake up right now because we are being left behind in real time. The things that I'm watching people out here in Thailand do. And I'm not just talking about Thai people. I'm talking about people from all over the world that are doing exactly what I talked about, learning skills. They've migrated, not migrated because they don't love their country. You can't tell the Italians that Italy not great. But they know they have to put themselves in the best possible situation to build the life and what they are trying to do. And again, you might migrate. It might not be permanent permanent, but at least you might be able to give yourself a real fighting chance. Mix with some of the other people that you could learn from, but also be in an environment where the cost of living is so much lower that you actually can build what you are trying to build. So I' ma leave it there. This was episode 200 of the Digipreneur Fam. Check me out at Karen Rose K-E R O N R O-S E.com to continue to learn more about building your digital presence and monetizing your platforms. And I mean, digiproon or Digiproon, the whole is going through its own transition right now. More to come on that. Um, but yeah, we're, we're back on the podcast game. We're back in the space. There's so much to talk about. There's so much to, there's so much going on. There's so much I want to say. So we definitely have a lot of content and things that we want to do moving forward with, with, with, with Digipreneur and Digipreneur FM. But thank you for tuning into episode 200. Five years in the, uh, game. 200 episodes later. Timing is absolutely insane. Thank you to each and every one of you who have reached out and, you know, just said, yo, where's the podcast? Where the episodes at? Shout outs to y' all and shout outs to everybody that's tuning in from all over. Hong Kong, uk, India, Singapore, uh, Japan, Brazil, uh, Germany, Finland, uh, Russia. Shout outs to everybody outside of the Caribbean tapping in. And of course shout outs to every single Caribbean island tapping in as well. Tnt, Malavia Yard, Malavia, Guyana, Bahamas. Ah, Grenada. Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Montserrat. Shout outs to each and every single Caribbean island that, that I'm seeing that, that has tuned into the podcast. Um, much love to everybody. Anyways, follow me on social media, Karen Rose, at all social media platforms. And, you know, if you ever need to have questions that you want to ask, if you just jump inside the chat GPT or any one of the, uh, AI tools, you can literally ask a question and say, you know, how would Karen Rose think about this? All of my content feeds into the AI chatbots or now you literally have a mini version of me inside of your own, uh, inside of your own AI tools that can. You, you can, you can ask questions though. So, yeah, see y' all in the next one. You've been listening to the Digiboss. Karan Rose we hope your notepad was filled after this episode. Make sure to like, rate and review the show. The learning doesn't stop folks. Uh, and to make sure you don't miss any gems from the digiboss, go over and follow him on all social media media platforms. Aronrose Folks, don't just sit there with a notepad. We need you to implement at least one thing into your business before the next episode. That's the only way your business levels up. Thanks for listening to digipreneur fm. Now go be great.