Business strategy 2026-2027
Every week I get to interview founders who are actually growing in this economy and actually making money, not just hoping their ideas pan out at some point or their moonshot product takes off in the future, not just losing money to get “distribution” in the hopes it will all turn around someday. I’m talking about real, concrete, economically efficient businesses. And they don’t look like you are picturing in your head.
What they look like is this. The dial has shifted very far towards empathy and human connection. These businesses are driven by content that connects at a relational level, with the founder and team speaking directly to the wants, needs, and feelings of the audience. It’s a direct connection between the people operating the business and the customers buying the products. The customers know who the people are who run the business, they are known persons with track records and relationships in the industry.
Where they show up is on video. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Shorts, Pinterest, X, LinkedIn. On video, showing their humanity and helping customers for free through the content they create.
At the same time, what is happening with the operations of the business is it’s being automated. All the back office stuff, the website optimizations, the structuring of data, the analyzing of information. It’s all becoming more and more efficient. Building products is also getting dramatically faster.
So how do those two things work together? What I’ve seen is that the emphasis and time goes to the human connection part. Which makes sense because that takes way longer anyways. To get to know someone, to get to know your audience, takes a really really long time. And that’s where the energy is going from entrepreneurs who are doing well in this environment. They spend hours every week talking to customers, even though they have scaled enough where they don’t need to. They translate what they learn from customers and interpret their needs into content that goes back out to reach more people who are thinking about the same things. They translate the repeatable fixes into products and services they can offer for a payment. With those products and services directly reflecting what their audience wants.
As we think about what business looks like when there’s so much fear around what’s going to happen with AI, this path is really clear to me. It’s the path that actually makes money now, and also builds a legacy for later. Rather than hoping something will pan out, this strategy focuses on what is going to serve customers in this moment, and also build up goodwill for future recurring revenue.
