The Game Is Getting Harder. Here’s How Experts Win in 2026

Joe Parish (0:00)

Most men don't stagnate in business because they've got a work ethic or a will problem. It's because they're trying to copy somebody else's version of success, which is now the reason that they're stuck. Instead of actually designing and building a business their way. Now, don't get me wrong, when you first start out in business, you're in the startup phase, zero to six figures, you need to spend time following the breadcrumbs. You've got to have guardrails on because you need to develop the skills. You need to say yes to everything. You've got to fuck about and find out. You've got to be able to get as much experience as humanly possible. You need to develop your craft. You're building a business on results, reputation, retention, referrals. You're trying to get as much surface area as possible across all the different key components that make up running a business. And in that phase, you need to stay clear and focused on, like, what's the process I need to be able to follow because you haven't got a toolbox. You haven't got awareness. You haven't got that level of experience that you do later down the line, which then allows you to unpack and decide, here's what I want to do more of, here's what I want to do less of. And of course, in that phase, you don't have any evidence yet either. So when you're in that initial startup phase, you have to follow a process. But here's the thing. As you start to grow, this is where so many great business owners end up getting stuck, and they leave so much potential on the table. They're now successful enough that you don't have to panic. They've accomplished so much of what they said that they wanted to. They're now busy, but they also know they're capable of so much more. They know that they want to grow. But they're also very clear around now what it is that they're not willing to trade, what they're not willing to do, because they already know exactly what it's taken, and what they've had to do, and what they've had to give up to get to where they are right now.

So growing can often feel like a loss, which is weird to say, because when you're wired like you are, you love growth, you love progress, you love momentum. But growth, once you reach a certain point, it feels like sacrifice, it feels like compromise, it feels like giving up and losing what you've already got. So you end up at this glass ceiling that you find yourself bumping up against. You know that you're capable of more. You know that you're driven by a mission. You wanna and have a strong purpose. You want that quest. And you love making progress and momentum and that challenge and the love of the game. But it's like, how can I actually now do that with losing now what I've got? It feels like a risk. And whenever you look around you, you see all these other people that are now starting to tell you, here's what you need to do. Here's how you need to grow your business. Here's how you need to do things. Here's the exact funnel, flywheel, system, AI integration piece that you need to install into your business. And this is exactly what you wanna do if you wanna add an extra 20, 30, 50, 100 grand a month into your business revenue. And usually, what you find is that everybody is now pumping this volume business. You have to copy everybody else, what they are telling you to do, because it's their version of success. You're creating viral content to try and get more eyeballs, and you're focusing on what are the trends and what everybody else is now saying on the internet that I now feel like I need to say to get client, because that's what I need to do. You're looking at what do I need to do to grow, but it's just growing at all costs without actually taking into account the lifestyle, your energy, your time, your focus, what it actually is that you want. There is only one metric and one measure of success. And it's often like the bigger the business, the more accolades, the more praise, but that doesn't actually now mean it's a better business.

And one of the big things that we speak about all the time is like, are you proud and excited and enjoying the work that you're currently doing? Because in a volume business, you just get told to spend more on ads, send more DM, chase more signups, hire more setters, hire a bigger team, remove yourself from delivery, delegate yourself into them, the stuff that you probably don't want to do. You end up becoming a manager. You onboard clients that maybe aren't the right fit. You're just focusing again on volume. You get told that you need to actually have a bigger business. When in fact, actually, do you maybe want a lighter, a leaner, and a smaller business, work with less clients at a higher level? You end up then with more moving parts and more complexity, and you build a business that just fills up a buckaroo. And all of a sudden, you've built a business that now doesn't necessarily align and doesn't excite and doesn't fulfill you in the same way that it used to.