The Truth About Entrepreneurship in 2026

It's been five years since I started my company, Career Coach Mandy.  Five years since I left Corporate America.  Five years since my last all-hands meeting where I came off mute and talked about how we were going to hit our KPIs.  On TikTok, I've talked a lot about Corporate America: how it feels, how to quit, how to find another job.  Now I'd like to talk about what it means to be a founder in 2026.

First, let's talk about success metrics.  When you transition from corporate to running your own company, you are used to having targets and markers of success.  When I worked at American Express, I was on the interactive marketing team and we really, really wanted to be awarded the JD Power award.  We did win that, over Discover and Mastercard, and it was viewed as a huge victory.  As an entrepreneur, you also look for these markers: getting into Y Combinator, getting the 100k plaque from YouTube, being featured in Forbes 40 under 40.  In every single industry, even if you break free from the corporate machine, there will be a way to be "the best."

I am hard wired to want admiration and achievement, but at the same time, this is the exact reason that I burned out from corporate and was yearning to do my own thing.  I wanted freedom over my time, but more recently, I want freedom over my own mind.  This means making my own rules for success, not just playing into what society expects for entrepreneurs.  We aren't just all in our direct to consumer warehouses, with fancy microphones, scaling effortlessly.  Sometimes we are down in the mud and flopping.  You can't be winning all the time.  

Second, because you are responsible for deciding what success looks like, your work never feels done.  As soon as you hit a milestone, you just put another one up.  You put your head down and just keep going.  For a long time, I thought when I hit 100K followers on TikTok, that I would "make it" somehow.  I didn't know what making it meant.  Then after two years of posting almost every day, I did it.  But you know what?  Nothing changed.  The follower count just kept rolling, and I just kept posting.  Then all I saw was more of the same, like staring into the abyss of your own unfurling road of more ... hard work of posting, creating more content, getting more views.  Again and again.    

You wonder why you're such a dumb dumb in the first place, like why didn't you question this earlier?  But you are only one person, and you can only see what you see.  Eventually, you come to the realization that outcomes are kind of random, and all you can control are the inputs.  How many times you post.  How many articles you write.  How many videos you film.  And that instead of obsessing about the accolades and recognition, you actually have to start liking the process of the work.  That becoming a fan of the craft is the only thing that will bring you back your humanity.  Which is hard because the craft is HARD.  

Here's what got me through it: I tell myself "I want to meet the version of myself who has done that."  I know that all of these cycles of idea-development-reality will ultimately make me a more interesting, weathered person.  I want to be seasoned.  I want to pick up these skills.  I want to be someone who has posted 500 YouTube videos, has written a 60,000 word manuscript, has made 2,000 TikToks.  Not because it's some kind of achievement in itself, but because the person that I will have to become in order to do those things is the person I want to become.  I'm trying to make it about identity ("I am a person who does hard things") rather than praise ("I am a person who has been perceived positively by others").  It's fact rather than opinion.

Third, speaking of becoming a person who can withstand hard things, I think the truth is that for founders or small biz owners in 2026, you have to be public to succeed.  You have to be posting on social.  You have to be writing on your own website or Substack or LinkedIn or whatever.  If people don't know you exist, your business will not grow.  This is the reality.  So, you must become comfortable with climbing cringe mountain.  You will post and it will only get 200 views, you will post and it will land with silence, you will post and the algorithm (aka just normal people reacting or not reacting to your content) will decide it sucks.  

I do not know of a way, in 2026, for you to successfully thrive in business without having a sophisticated, very public, and annoyingly consistent posting schedule on social.  This is the future.  And yet, it is a very lonely road.  I say this for other entrepreneurs, who are in the game, not for anyone to feel sorry for me (I choose the road, so I am not complaining).  But it is a fact that it is lonely because not many people will choose to do what you're doing, and they won't "get" it, and they will question why you're doing it.  "I could never put myself on social, I'm too private," or "I saw one of your videos on my feed and I couldn't believe it was you, it was like a jump scare!"  

But no risk, no reward.  Because there are so many tiny instances of resistance (death by a thousand cuts), most people don't pursue it in the first place, or when they start they just quit.  Let that bitterness fuel you.  Every time you feel bad, or get criticized, that is a moment in time when someone quit.  For someone else, that was too much to bear.  For you, you've been taking a little poison every day and so it's no big deal.  You're building your immunity against mainstream thinking and doing your thing anyway.  

Fourth, you have to be ready to change an pivot at a moment's notice.  What was working last year might not be working this year.  So you have to listen to the market and understand and watch and then try things.  This is on top of the success that you've already achieved, so the "don't fix it if it ain't broke" philosophy just doesn't work.  You have to be constantly fixing and tweaking things.  I'll give you a stupid example.  For the longest time, I've been using one font for my headers in my TikTok videos.  It's this black and white header, simple, there's zero thought behind it.  Then yesterday, I was like, wait, maybe this 2023 header isn't cute anymore.  I started paying attention to the videos in my FYP, and looking to see what other people were using.  I got curious and then I got inspired.  I moved the placement of my header to below my face (instead of above it).  It's such a tiny thing, but you can never be complacent.  You need to be doing this all the time, with every aspect of your business.  

Fifth, people will be mean.  A few weeks ago, I had a video on TikTok where I was promoting my 10-Week Plan journal.  Someone commented, "girl I gotta give you credit, you've been on my feed for years hustling and selling stuff."  It's like a compliment, but is it?  Also, not really.  Then, someone responded to that comment and said, "deadass. 💀 it's something new every month," which okaaaay bitch.  BUT ALSO, like she's right.  It's true.  Like, my ass is on TikTok selling my products all the time and the promotion of consumerism IS disgusting and I hate the fact that when I make a video with a link to TikTok shop it gets like 10,000 views (or basically 100x a normal video), but I also love it because it has meant that I have been able to quit my corporate job and do this full time.  And at least I am promoting my OWN JOURNALS that I wrote, produced, edited, printed, and shipped to customers with a 4.8 / 5.0 rating across hundreds of reviews?  

In truth, I don't think people are mean.  I think those random commenters are being honest about their reaction to constantly being sold to.  It's true.  It's all true.  So the work is reconciling, within yourself, that you can hold multiple things at once.  That you can create products that truly help people and have really good intentions, are made of the highest quality, and are in service of others while also providing a living for yourself and your family.  And ALSO: that you are part of a capitalist machine that sells things and adds to over consumption and that your helpful videos are fueled by a voracious TikTok shop algorithm that just wants to sell, sell, sell.  It is, in fact, your job as an entrepreneur to love yourself in spite of these contradictions.  That you have light and dark, a full belly and an endless hunger.  

As a founder in 2026, you need to be able to right the ship through many storms:  personal waverings, indecision, outside criticism, the frequent indifference that the universe has to your trying.