Transcription
In today's video, I'm going to give you my best advice if you're going to start an online business in 2026. Now, for those of you who don't know, I have been in online business for over 10 years now. I've made several million dollars in profit throughout this journey and in this video it is going to be the conversation that I wish someone had had with me when I was starting online business except specific to the year of 2026. Now, not only am I going to explain these things here on camera, but I'll actually switch you over to my own computer and show you these real examples on screen recording. So for those of you who are just thinking about starting an online business, or if you have started an online business and you're still figuring all this out, please watch this video through just one time. You are going to learn so much and you'll see all the headaches and the obstacles to avoid this year. All right guys, without further ado, let's go ahead and get started.
All right guys, so the very first thing that we need to talk about and probably the biggest thing in this video is using artificial intelligence. Now when it comes to artificial intelligence, the way that that's going to play a role in online business is it's going to be in the form of tools. So if I switch you over to the computer here real quick, if you just go to Google and you search for AI tools for online business, you are going to see all of these and these are just some of the bigger ones. There are literally thousands of artificial intelligence tools that are actually good tools that you can use for online business. Flashback about a year from now. All these tools were just starting and they weren't all that great, but these tools are learning so quickly that they can actually be extremely helpful for online business.
Now with that being said, there are two really important things that you have to understand about artificial intelligence. The first thing is that when you are choosing an online business idea, you have to be aware of artificial intelligence. How is that going to play a role? What are other people doing with artificial intelligence? Is this business model even going to be around in a year or two years due to artificial intelligence? So that's the first thing is you really have to see how AI is interacting with that business model.
The second thing is something that not a lot of people are talking about, but you really need to be aware of is copyright infringement from AI. So let me quickly switch you over to the computer here and show you this. So this is on congress.gov, if you scroll down here to do AI outputs infringe copyrights and other works, the first line here says some outputs of AI programs might infringe copyrights in other works they resemble that were used to train the AI. Essentially a lot of these big AI programs, the big names that you know, they may or may not have used copyrighted material to train their programs. Meaning that when you actually use those tools and they give you an output, it may or may not have copyrighted material in that output. Always be looking at the graphics you generate to make sure that they are not too similar to something that you recognize, that could potentially be an issue. Same thing goes for text. Just make sure that you have no copyright infringement issues there.
Now the reason that I tell you guys all of this is because not many people are talking about it, therefore not many people are aware of it, but if your eyes are open to it, you can use all of these tools responsibly and you shouldn't have any issues with copyright.
All right, so that brings us straight into the next important thing to know if you're starting an online business in 2026. What this one is, is to be aware of trendy business ideas. Now, when I was just getting started in online business, I was going on Google and YouTube and I was looking up what are the best online business ideas to start and then I was trying them. Well, the difference between back then and now is that back then there were very few results, but now there are tons of results. So to show you some real examples of this, if you just go on to Google, you can do this on YouTube, any social media platform and you search for business ideas, you are going to see tons of business idea lists. So these are going to be people showing just specific business ideas or they're going to be top business ideas, top 25 business ideas. Please take these videos with a grain of salt. I have been in online business long enough to know that all of the ideas that are on these lists are definitely not ideas that I would be recommending to my family or my friends. A lot of these businesses I have done myself, wasted time, wasted money, and ultimately my advice to you if you're going to be watching these videos is to look at who is making the video. If the business ideas that they are talking about are that good, they will be personally doing them themselves. So if the person that created the video does not have other videos or proof or credibility that they do those businesses themselves, then I would definitely be very cautious about investing your time and your money to start that business yourself. The kind of rule of thumb that I've learned here is that if a lot of people are talking about a business opportunity or a business model, the opportunity has probably already passed. Those who find really good business ideas, they typically keep it to themselves at least for several years till they've made their money and if you found a good person, they will turn around and try to teach other people how to do what they've done.
Now, for those of you who don't know, that has been my personal goal with this specific YouTube channel over the last several years, all of the businesses that I've had really good success in, I have started making full step-by-step tutorials showing you guys how to do exactly what I've done and not charging you guys a dollar for it in a course. So I can't speak for every content creator out there, but there are other people like me who are creating videos on their channel to genuinely help. If you guys do need a credible video on what are the best business ideas to start in 2026, I just released a great one of those videos last week. It goes over what businesses are currently working for me and I even show you on screen recording. For those of you who need that video, I'll put a link to it down in the description below.
Now guys, this is actually a perfect transition into the next thing that you really need to know. What this is is on the topic of paid courses. Over the last couple of years I have seen a huge uptick in people trying to create free content on YouTube and ultimately lead you to a paid course. Now to show you a real example of this, and let me start by saying I do not know this creator. I have not watched their content. I don't know if it's good or bad, I just saw it. This is a perfect example of a business strategy that content creators use to try to sell paid courses. So what you'll see in this video is it's how to start drop shipping for free and then it goes over some pretty basic information and then once you are a bit interested in it, they will walk you through how to sign up for their free drop shipping course. And what I can tell you from experience here is that this is either going to lead you into a free course that has more basic information or a webinar that is 60 minutes, 90 minutes, again giving you basic information but hyping up a paid course. So once you're in the free course or the webinar, there's going to be some type of deal for a paid course and that in itself is a business strategy that content creators use.
Now the reason that I wanted to explain this is that as you are watching all this content in 2026 trying to learn business models, be aware that some content creators are using this as an actual business strategy to sell their paid courses and that is kind of their own business strategy to make money. Now, over the years that I've been in online business, I have spent a lot of money on paid courses and what I have learned from this experience is that there are actually good paid courses and there are bad paid courses. There's people that are in it for the right reasons and they've just kind of dumped everything they know about a topic into a course and they charge a fair price for it. On the other end, there are people who have really good funnels and marketing and advertising and they make it seem really good and it's really just a money grab tactic to try to make more money in their business.
So at the end of the day, what I would recommend is once you find the online business model that you want to do, go to YouTube and watch all of the free tutorials. You are going to see different creators. Some of them you are going to like a lot better than others because they're giving real valuable information. And what I would do is watch all of those tutorials and they will get you to about 75, 80% of what you need to know about that business to be extremely successful. Once you've done all of that, try to keep your costs low and just try to learn the remaining 20 or 25% of things that you need to know on your own with trial and error. Guys, that is what I personally do and recommend to you. And the reason is because you're going to come across people like myself who have created full fledged, hour long course level tutorials and they're posted on YouTube entirely for free. If you guys are interested in any of the online business models that I personally do, I highly recommend these tutorials on my channel. You will find people commenting that they paid thousands of dollars for courses and learned more in the free tutorial that's on my channel than they did in that entire course. So guys, all of the information that you need is already out there. You just have to find the right sources.
All right guys, just like that, we are moving on to the next important thing. And what this one is, is something that I wish someone told me on the very first day that I was starting an online business. What this is is a formula that comes out of the book, "The Millionaire Fast Lane," by MJ DeMarco, and this is a formula that changed all of the online businesses that I personally do. What this formula is is value times scale equals money or how much money you can make. Now, the way that you use this is that whenever you are considering an online business model, you first have to run it through this formula. How much value does that online business deliver? And then how many people can that online business reach? That's your scale. The part that I totally had backwards when I was starting an online business is I was worried about how big were my profit margins. The more money that I can make on each sale ultimately must be the more money that I'll make overall. When it comes to online business, that is entirely backwards. What I really needed to be focusing on and what I learned many years later is the scale part.
Now, in order for this to make sense without it being confusing, I'm actually going to put up some screenshots from my email newsletter where I broke down how this really works in detail. I will keep these up for the next couple of seconds, but feel free to pause this and actually read through this and it's going to make a lot more sense.
So guys, now that hopefully you understand what this formula is and how to use it, the reason that it is so important for 2026 is that the reach of the internet through social media is so much higher than it's ever been. That is the scale portion of this equation. So all you have to do is figure out how to give value to all those people that you can reach. Guys, I know this little chapter with this formula has been so quick in this video, but this is something that I really can't stress enough. This is something that I would be spending a lot of time focusing on to figure out what business you want to go into in 2026.
All right guys, just like that, we are onto the last important thing to know if you're starting an online business in 2026. What this one is, is the concept of mental bandwidth. Now, this is something that I've only seen a couple other people ever share or talk about online, so it's something you're going to learn from experience or you're going to learn right now in this video. What this is that every day when you wake up, you have 100% of energy and focus. You can apply this energy or focus anywhere, it can go to your day job, it can go to social media, it can go to gossiping, or having negative or overthinking thoughts. All of those things, including other things, are going to eat away at that 100% of your energy and focus.
Now, the way that this concept works for online business is that if you are able to apply the full 100% of your energy and focus each day to your online business, that is how you will see results the fastest. Now, if you dilute that 100% down by 50% goes to scrolling through different social medias each day and the other 50% goes to your online business, that is then going to take you twice as long to see results in your business.
Now, this is where things start to get interesting. Social media is very easy to track. You can just look on your phone. It tells you how long you spent on different social media platforms. However, things that are not so easy to track that are still draining your energy and focus are things like overthinking about that business, having negative thoughts on why it may not work, or stressing about finances or gossiping or having a bad night's sleep where you wake up tired for the first few hours of the day. All of these things, even though we don't realize it, are taking away from that 100% of energy and focus that we have to apply to the business. So try to protect as much of that 100% of that energy and focus that you start each day with and apply it to your online business, and that's how you will grow the business and see results the fastest.
Guys, hopefully this video gets you on the right track for starting an online business in 2026. As mentioned earlier, I'll put a link to that video down in the description that talks about what businesses are currently working for me and what I can wholeheartedly recommend to you if you are starting a new business in 2026. Guys, as always, if you have any questions at all, just let me know down in the comments, and if you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. I would really appreciate that. Otherwise, that is it for this video and I will plan to see you all in the next one.