I Ranked the Best Businesses to Start Before 2026
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Summary
In this episode, I rank the best and worst businesses you could start before 2026. Some of these will make you rich, and others are a massive waste of your f***ing time. I've built 7 multimillion dollar companies and I coach hundreds of business owners. So I'm gonna use everything I've learned over the years to rank these 15 businesses with the following criteria in mind: 1) How quickly can you get your first dollar? 2) How hard is it to learn? 3) How profitable is it in the long run? 4) Is it a business people would buy in the future? And these are the tiers we ll be placing them in: S tier, no-brainer, start now, high profits, fast cash, and here to stay.
Transcript
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and others are a massive waste of your f***ing time.
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I've built seven multimillion dollar companies
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So I'm gonna use everything I've learned over the years
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Number one, how quickly can you get your first dollar?
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And four, is it a business people would buy in the future?
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And these are the tiers we'll be placing them in.
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A tier, worth it, but you gotta know business first.
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Most millionaires, the majority of wealth created
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in the US was made on the back end of real estate.
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it's a no brainer. Most people do this. They have the main business that makes cash and then they
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take the cash and they put into real estate. One, you make cashflow every month. Two, you have the
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tax advantage. Three, you have the asset increasing. Four, you have high leverage on capital. I mean,
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it is incredibly profitable once it gets going. Next is NFTs and crypto projects. Here's the
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problem. One, easy to make your first dollar. Used to, not today. Everybody's dealing with
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the fact that they essentially sold unregulated securities and people lost their money. I'm not
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going to give it a high score on that one. Two, easy to learn. Not that easy to learn, man. Three,
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how profitable is in the long run? Not very profitable right now. So not a high score there.
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And would somebody buy your portfolio of NFT projects? It's going in the scam category because
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if you look at a thousand NFT projects, more than 500 are pure scams. They were f***ing
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literally money grabs. So I'm putting it in the scam category. Paid ads agency. Ooh,
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this one's a good one. Helping people get customers is a beautiful thing to do because
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you're essentially selling dollars. How quick is it to make your first dollar? Really quick.
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If you can learn to sell, you can pick up the phone, you can send a text message, you can sell.
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How hard is it to learn? It's probably the thing that you can go on YouTube and learn the fastest.
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How profitable is in the long run? It's very profitable. I know young people that are 22
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making 6 million bucks a year with this agency.
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and there's no reoccurring and there's no contracts
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and you're the expert that's doing all the ad stuff,
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but I'm concerned that it may not be relevant long-term.
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Next up, we've got coaching and online courses.
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how profitable it is. Two of my favorite business models in the world. One is software and the other
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one is information. Why? Because they have 97% profit. If you're selling courses, then every
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course you sell costs you nothing essentially. It's so profitable. So it's not very sellable
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long-term. I'm going to put this in the worth it category. If you get good at this, it's a
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meta skill that can compound other areas of your entrepreneurial life. Next up, we've got the AI
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automation agency. First off, speed to first dollar, the speediest. It is the most searched
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term right now, AI automation, AI automation. It is a hot topic, which means there's a lot of
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demand for it. The ability to learn it, super easy to learn. How profitable? Right now,
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incredibly profitable. There is a risk that the AI will get better at automating than you will
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using AI. But that's true for all businesses because you're in the game of AI and being in
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the game of AI is the most important thing. And then would somebody buy it from you in the future?
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It's hard to build something that somebody would wanna buy
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versus AI automation, I'm gonna put AI in front of it
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because it's a better skill to develop than online training,
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It's not hard to learn, it's hard to be good at it.
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You gotta get to a point where you're entertaining
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and try to add some value by having a unique perspective.
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He's like, what do you think the number one channel
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that would be valuable for somebody else to buy.
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It's just not as good as some of the other options, okay?
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Yeah, there's a lot of content on how to do this.
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And fourth, is it something that somebody else will buy?
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but not unless you build a productized service.
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and more defensible than trying to just be traffic buyer
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No, you have to find a concept, pre-buy inventory.
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You're in the sea of sameness of everybody else
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and you're gonna end up having to reinvent yourself
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it's obviously gonna create some pressure on that space.
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Yeah, you just need to find somebody to pay you.
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It's a little harder because if you're not a good writer,
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Not really, because you're just selling your time.
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I've never heard of a ghostwriter selling their business.
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that they would scam anybody to me is like laughable.
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If anything, they should charge more for their services.
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regardless if you make money for anybody or not.
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So very unsellable. Yeah, I'm going to put it in the should you and on the right side of ghost
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writing. That feels about right. Virtual assistant agency, VAs. Is it a fast way to make some money?
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Very fast because you're essentially a middleman. You're finding people that want to do VA. You're
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finding somebody that needs a VA and you just, you know, you help them out and you connect them. So
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is it profitable? Not that profitable. The margins in it are not that high. Is it easy to learn?
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The problem is, is that every client that you get
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Do you really want to be in that space? Because you could be in AI automation and that's such a
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better business to be in because it's similar. Next up, we got web design agency. Is it easy
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to make your first dollar? Yes. Is it easy to learn? Yeah, you can learn the tools of web design.
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There's a bunch of existing platforms and templates and all that stuff and use some of
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these no-code AI platforms. Is it profitable long-term? I think AI is going to take a lot
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of this work off the plate of individuals and the business owners are just going to order it up.
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And then will somebody buy a web design agency?
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I'm going to put it right behind paid ads agency.
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who's willing to buy a t-shirt with a word on it.
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Not really, because you don't own the infrastructure.
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And then is it worth something to somebody else?
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and I'm going to put it on the other side of day trading,
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Somebody has to buy it, so you got to stock it.
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I don't think it's very quick to make your first dollar.
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but it's not as easy as a lot of these other business models.
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If you get it in the right location, profitable somewhere else.
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it's like real estate and people will buy it. I'm going to put it in the worth it category,
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but on the right side of the coaching and online. And then we've got affiliate marketing. All right,
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quick to make your first dollar. Yes. Easy to learn. Incredibly easy to learn. Okay. It's
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literally audience traffic, sell something that somebody else has built. Is it profitable long
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term? It's one of those things that will always be around. If there's businesses, there's people
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that can represent those businesses and sell on their behalf. That's what affiliate marketing is.
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Will somebody buy it long-term? Not likely. So it has a low, low rating. If I'm looking through
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the lens of 2026 and onward, making money, easy to learn, get you the skillset that's like a
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meta skill for other stuff, I'm going to put it in the worth it on the right side of the vending
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machine ahead of social media marketing agency, which is wild. So one that wasn't on this list,
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which is where I spend 98% of my time is software. And the reason why is one, you can literally use
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AI to build the software today. These literally no-code platforms like Lovable or Replit. You
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can just talk to it and they'll write code. Two, it creates subscription revenue or reoccurring
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revenue, which is an incredible business model. The margins on it, like I said earlier, 97%.
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What people are willing to pay, like the multiple, like of profit, how many times more of profit will
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they pay for that business is one of the highest in the world. So personally, it's not there and
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it should have been in the no-brainer category. And like one that's not on this list, that's for
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sure in the scam, again, thousand businesses, half of them are scammy is probably some level
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of network marketing. Like most people will use network marketing properly for distribution.
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Awesome. Not properly to essentially sell people on business opportunities. And the way they make
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money is selling the next person on the next thing, on the next thing, on the next thing.
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There are a ton of legal cases going after network marketing. And unfortunately there's
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more bad actors than good. And it creates a bad taste in the market. There's nothing wrong with
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the ones that are like compliant and legal and not selling just to try to train people. But yeah,
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it's not on the list. And I would have put that in the scam category. The other one that's not
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in there that I have a problem with is franchise. This is a controversial one, because most people
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think that owning a franchise is owning a business. Here's my definition. If you don't control the
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product development, then it's not really a business. You're essentially a reseller. You're
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just reselling somebody else's business model. So you're essentially a glorified salesperson,
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which you can make a ton of money in franchises,
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Being a person that buys franchises, not so much.
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understand the way I thought through the business models.
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One, is it something I can get to revenue quickly?
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The other thing I said that hopefully you caught
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copywriting, paid ads, AI. These are meta skills that even if the business you start doesn't work,
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they're skills that you can stack into the future to be even more successful. So being in that
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business, if it doesn't work out, will set you up for success into the future. And then finally,
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which most entrepreneurs never learn, is are you building something that becomes an asset that
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somebody else will want to buy? Or are you just building a really low paying job at first,
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if you're working 100 hours a week making 50 grand a year or high paying job making a million
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bucks a year, but still having to be stuck in the business. If you need to show up for the
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business to make you money, you didn't build something valuable that somebody else would
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want to buy. Now, if you want to learn the only skill you absolutely need to make your first
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million, click here and I'll see you on the other side.