Want to Get Rich in 2026? — 4 Businesses Worth Starting Today
You don’t need a big budget - just the right business model at the right time
These are the 4 best, smartest, and most profitable businesses that you could start in 2026, as the co-founder and president of a $100 million business that has analyzed $5 billion worth of businesses over the past 5 years.
What Makes A Good Business
I see every day which business models succeed and which fail, and based on current markets.
There are 4 business opportunities I would personally pursue if I wanted to start a million-dollar business in 2026.
Before we even get into the 4 business models of 2026, we have to go over what makes for a good business.
There are 2 things that you should focus on when deciding what kind of business to start:
#1. The buyer’s income and the idea of selling to rich people
Go up Market, better to start with premium, high-ticket, low-volume, then scale with small ticket and high volume.
Why is it that people with more money are willing to have their problems solved?
#2. To consider when deciding what kind of business to start is the market growth rate
Now, you can easily Google this to find out how fast a market is growing to decide if right now is a good Market to start your business in.
What’s really cool about 2026 is that we are going to have a golden era of growth in our economy.
There has never been a better time than right now to start a business and to make a lot of money, especially in the United States of America.
Creating an online coaching business is super cool and awesome, and I know a lot of people who have found success doing that.
But at some point, there is a cap on what that person can actually generate because it is a business based on them, in an industry that might not have the growth rate that they’re looking for.
The idea behind this is that now probably wouldn’t be the best time to choose the opportunity to go into the printing business.
The whole world has moved on to digital now.
Sure, there is an opportunity for certain things to be printed; of course, there is, and somebody somewhere can make money doing that.
But is that the most strategic business to start right now? Probably not.
You can make money, but there’s not enough headroom to be able to truly grow and scale a large business.
And think of how many printing businesses or faxing businesses are no longer in business because that’s not how we do business any longer.
If they had chosen to go into the streaming business, there would have been tons of Headroom.
So this is the type of thought process that you have to have if you’re looking to start a business that’s going to scale in 2026, because the growth rate is so important.
Let’s go through these 4 best business models in order of how fast their markets are growing:
1. Pet care
This one is unexpected, but the Pet Care Market has been growing annually by 5%, so let’s talk about some stats in the United States.
The Pet Care Market is expected to grow from $151 billion in 2024 to $251 billion in 2030.
So if you want the entry point for the Pet Care space, you should focus on high-end services like pet sitting, pet grooming, or Premium Pet treats.
What’s so cool about the Pet Care space is you’re trying to solve the problem, not necessarily of the pet, but of the owner, so sure, you could focus on making the world’s fanciest treat.
- What problem does the owner of the pet have?
- How do you associate your service, your solution, with that owner?
Now I think of all of the team members who are required to travel inside our business, and some of them pay a hefty amount to send their beloved Pooch to a pet hotel.
And then the pet hotel has all of these additional Services, all of these ways to be able to look at and watch the dog or cat, to be able to communicate with the dog or cat.
And it is solving this huge guilt-related problem that my team member has, because they can’t be with their pet all the time or throughout the day.
So if I were going to cut out my piece of this industry, that’s exactly what I would do.
I would focus on premium solutions for busy business owners, busy moms, busy dads who can’t spend time with their pets, but feel very guilty about it, and that guilt will drive them to invest and spend more money on their pets, and make sure that their fluffy little loved one is well taken care of throughout the day.
If I were looking to create a business, I would lean into the guilt that pet owners have about not being with their pets.
The wildest types of products have been created for pets in the last decade, everything from snout soothers to spa treatments where pets actually have cucumbers on their eyes.
There is so much money to be made as the urbanization of the United States continues to happen, people live in smaller homes, smaller Apartments, they are busier and have more demands, therefore, cannot be with their precious Pooch.
But want to be able to provide their most beloved family member with something that removes their guilt and treats their pet.
2. Health and Wellness Space
The health and wellness industry is a gold mine for new businesses, with forecasts predicting the market will rise from $6.82 trillion in 2025 to over $10 trillion by 2030.
I know this to be true because one of our primary Investments inside our Ventures business is in the health and wellness space.
We made a small investment 3 years ago in a business that was generating $2 million, and this year that business will do over $100 million.
Why do people care about their health?
Longevity is not just a trend; it is something that people prioritize in a post-pandemic world where we feel like the healthcare system failed us.
Consumers want better information, more data about themselves, and more options that they truly understand, where they’re actually in control of how they feel and the future of their health.
With the traditional Healthcare System failing the US during the pandemic.
If you love the health and wellness space, you no longer have to use the fact that you don’t have a degree as your barrier to being able to start a business in the space, because you have access to real-time information that doctors have access to.
A doctor who got their medical degree 20 years ago has to entirely understand what has evolved in the field of medicine, and most of them don’t keep up to date on this.
So the health and wellness field has never seen the opportunities that are about to be created in 2025 and Beyond, because of this barrier that has practically evaporated in front of us now.
If you do have a degree, there is still hope for you, because the global Wellness economy was valued at $5.6 trillion in 2022 and is projected to reach $8.5 trillion by 2027.
What does this mean for you?
People are still investing in their health; they want Solutions, and you are trained specifically to be able to provide those things to them.
So how can you pivot your products and services to be able to be more focused on Med spas, telemedicine, or Wellness treatments and centers that cater to high-end clientele?
People want these solutions; they want these products.
You can just change the service offering instead of going through traditional Healthcare, traditional hospitals, and partner with somebody who is business savvy to create the health and wellness Empire of your dreams.
3. Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Products
Sustainable and eco-friendly products have a 5-year compounded annual growth rate of 99.9% compared to 6.4% for conventional products, so what does that even mean?
Well, what’s wild about sustainable products is that you could apply them to anything that people purchase.
So the barrier to entry is ridiculously low, because this can apply to cosmetics:
- It can apply to Skin Care.
- It can apply to fashion clothing, garments, shoes, the idea of sustainability, and sustainable products.
- It can be looked at from so many different lenses, because there’s no shortage of things that are made in a non-sustainable way.
2026 brings no better time to hop on board this shift that really started two decades ago, into more sustainable products and creating a more sustainable lifestyle.
As the perfect example, this founder, Vicky Sai, took her small sustainable Beauty business from completely unknown to getting celebrity deals with Jennifer Aniston and Drew Barrymore, and eventually sold her business for $500 million.
“The key to Tatcha’s success was unique ingredients that merged this idea of being eco-friendly with a sense of Premium luxury.”
There is often the stigma of eco-friendly products being flat out boring, so to succeed in this space with these types of products, you’ll need to combine this idea of sustainability with a fun and sexy brand that stands out.
And the key to making money in this market is to avoid the traditional granola type brands for these products, instead develop a brand that emphasizes fresh and clean Aesthetics, focusing on household goods, beauty products, pet supplements, and make them eco-friendly.
Finally, we have the largest, fastest-growing market where I would recommend starting a business in 2026.
The demand for this kind of business is expected to reach a value of around $10.2 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 14% from 2022 to 2030, and it is social media Consulting specifically for businesses, not creators.
I work with thousands of business owners, and what I know is:
- They know nothing about social media.
- They don’t know how to leverage it in their business.
- They normally hire somebody who is very Junior.
- They think that they’re young.
- They think they understand how to communicate on social.
Social has evolved so much over the last 15 years, and you can no longer have your cousin, your nephew, your niece, your daughter just handle your social media and have results; you need somebody who actually knows what the heck they’re doing.
If I were actually starting a business in the space:
- I would niche down so far.
- I would pick one industry.
- I would pick one platform.
I would not just do social media, because Instagram is very different from YouTube, it’s very different from TikTok, Twitter X, I don’t even know, is TikTok still around by the time you’re watching this? So much uncertainty.
The point with that is you should pick one platform for one type of Industry where you can drive results for that business owner.
There is no shortage of opportunity in the space, because what’s so cool about this is you can actually make a business owner more money, which means that they’re willing to pay you more money.
The more you focus on business models that allow you to do exactly this, the longer you’re going to have retention with these customers.
If your products make somebody more money, not just make them look better or feel better, but actual dollars are generated, it’s easy to charge what you’re charging and then charge more, because they see a result, and results can be created in the social space.
4. One Platform in One Industry
You go Gang Busters learning how to get those results, and you will have no shortage of people who are banging down your door in that space who want your services.
So here are 2 obstacles that I want to help you get in front of:
#1. Onboarding and Offboarding your client
Yes, you might be fantastic inside the application and posting the content, but if you were so great as a technician in the platform, you might not be great at setting expectations and communicating what the process is for no longer utilizing your services.
You will get more business and create more confidence in the person that you’re doing business with if you have a dialed-in onboarding plan and a dialed-in offboarding plan.
And you can even talk about the offboarding plan when you onboard them, just so that they know that they’re not going to be held hostage by your business.
And your primary responsibility is to set them up for Success, that is how you gain trust with the business owner.
#2. Talent Acquisition
There are so many different ways that you can try to solve this problem, most people when they start a business like this, think that they should offshore the talent.
- I would strongly recommend that until you have fantastic processes that you can prove work and that you can prove can be duplicated over and over again.
- I wouldn’t recommend bringing on offshore talent.
Because it is going to create more of a lag, and you’re cutting a corner instead of really understanding what is working and what is not working, before you bring somebody on that potentially has a language barrier and a time zone barrier.
As you build this business, you being the person who understands it first, then creating documentation to train somebody else, who could then train somebody who lives in a different country how to do it, is the best way to set yourself up for Success.
Because I work with thousands of business owners, I know what they are willing to spend to solve this problem, and it is Mega dollars.
But the people who are providing these Solutions for them are very confused. You are not going to be confused.
You could at least charge $5, if not $10,000 a month, if you could guarantee that the results that you’re driving would equate to $5 or $10,000 a month, plus the brand recognition.
So when you think about it like that, it’s very easy to start a business and create real value through leveraging social media, but you have to gain the expertise first.
I know our business spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on social in order to be able to support the ads that we run.
And many businesses don’t look at the fact that they run ads, and that their social media should be complementing what that ad strategy looks like.
We used to lose hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, all because our ad strategy was not in alignment with our representation on social, and when these 2 things are combined, there is an exponential effect that can take place in a business.
Thanks For Reading 🙂
