If your thinking about doing ecom in 2026 watch this... (brutally honest)

What's going on, guys? So today we're going to be talking about what to expect when trying e-com in 2026. And I really feel called to make this video because there are so many people out there and there's so many just different figures who are giving really unrealistic advice and expectations as well. And they're teaching very outdated playbooks when it comes to e-commerce, when it comes to dropshipping, especially when it comes to beginners as well. And I really want to change that and flip that and just give you guys the honest, real, and like no BS advice because I just feel like there's a lack of that from some of the major influencers that we see in the e-com space. So without further ado, let's get into this. First thing I wanted to highlight here is when you're looking at this, right, you see me quote the word trying. In e-com, there is no trying anymore. There's no trying. You either do something or you don't. If you say you tried something, then you simply just didn't do it. Right. And so I want to challenge you guys to take the word trying out of your vocabulary when it comes to anything in life. If you try to do something, it doesn't happen. You simply just didn't do what you needed to do to get it done. It's really that simple. Everyone wants to say, oh, I tried really hard. You didn't try really hard. You just, you simply just didn't do what it takes, right? Everything has a barrier of entry. Everything has the amount of, you know, work, the amount of repetitions, the amount of learning and requirements that it actually takes to succeed in that thing. Right? And you simply just didn't do it. If you tried, you failed. So trying is a failing word. Don't use the word trying. So the way— the word I like to say is when pursuing, right? When pursuing e-com, I just like that word a lot better. So what to expect when pursuing e-com in 2026. So number one, right? And I'll zoom out a little bit for you guys, is ripping is more unreliable. Than ever before, right? And a couple years ago, and luckily I was joining at this particular time and space, and, um, there was a time where Kali Data— this is probably the most talked about platform spy tool on YouTube, right? There was a time where you could just find a product off Kali Data, throw up the ads on, on Facebook, and, you know, 2 out of 10 times you'd get some decent result, right? That is not the case anymore. That is simply not the case anymore. The market is simply just getting more saturated. So there are more people who are competing for the same killer data products and running the same products. More people are running all these different types of ads. You see natives, you see VSLs. People are getting more skilled. AI is also increasing the amount of rate that people are testing things at. And so straight up ripping is— it always was a guessing game and it always was, in a sense, a cheap result. But especially now, ripping is just not a sustainable way to go about doing e-com because number one, when you're ripping, like I said, you're guessing. And when you're guessing, right, there is no way for you to pull any feedback from that guessing because you're guessing. You don't know why you threw up the product. You don't know what made you throw up the product, and you don't learn anything when it fails. So if you don't learn anything, then you don't improve. And if you don't improve, you just get caught And essentially hamster wheel, right, where you are test— testing products over and over and over again and you're not improving your skills. And this is what I see a lot, a lot of people, especially beginners, um, they expect it to be like 2022 dropshipping or 2023 dropshipping when it's 2026. The game changes every single year. It changes every single year. And that's something that you're going to have to accept. You're going to have to be able to evolve and to be able to actually grow constantly. Because like, you can't— there's no businessman, there's no famous dude ever in the world who learned a skill once and just copy and pasted it over the rest of his career. They always evolve. You even look at players, for example, like you guys know Lonzo Ball. Lonzo Ball had a terrible jump shot. Right now, let's look up Lonzo Ball jump. Shot, right? You see, I don't know if you guys can see that. You guys can see that this is how Lonzo Ball used to shoot, right? When he got to the NBA, right? He got to the NBA, he achieved something significantly, and his shot form was terrible. But even him at his level, he knew he needed to evolve, right? He couldn't just copy and paste this and expect to be at an elite level, right? He needed to evolve. And so eventually If we look up new jump shot. Okay, you guys see this one right here? Now that he's on the Bulls, right, he has a much different jump shot. His elbow is straighter, right? And so it just gives him a much more reliable way to shoot the ball. And so even you see professional athletes do this, even at their level, they're evolving to succeed. Because when you get to these different levels of e-com, you always have to evolve because the game is always evolving. People are always improving. There's new tools, new AI features. There's all these new things that, that come into it. And so evolution is a really important part of this. And unfortunately, Kayla data is just getting, you know, pushed and pushed and pushed out. And I do still see people, right? It's not impossible. I do see people who do have success with ripping at first, but it doesn't— it never lasts, that's for sure. Um, they do eventually have to learn direct response or learn how to make, you know, or brief UGC or something like that, right? And so without further ado, let's get into the next point. And the next point is the ceiling has increased as well as the floor. And I say the ceiling has increased because we're seeing dudes hit $300, $400, $500 million days that you would never see 5, 6 years ago, right? You just never saw that. And I think a big part of this is because e-com Twitter, like, you just see people on a regular basis doing crazy numbers. But you're starting to see more and more people like this, and people are just cracking formulas and scaling it super, super hard because people are understanding we have AI. And so the turnaround is a lot, lot faster. And so there is a higher ceiling when it comes to e-com, which is something to be really excited about. But the thing is, the floor is also raised with the increase of ceiling, right? It's not— the floor hasn't stayed the same. You have to be a little bit better than you did a couple years ago if you wanted to succeed now. And that's something that a lot of people just haven't, haven't understood and haven't put the time and effort into learning these skills that are actually required now. But the thing is, because the floor has increased, it actually in a way has lowered competition because less people are willing to put in the effort that it actually takes to succeed in e-com nowadays. And so you're actually going to be facing less competition. They're just going to be a bit better. And so it's a very interesting time in the market, but it's a very exciting one as well. The next one I want to talk about is 2 skills that you need to understand, and that's going to be copy or copywriting and then consumer psychology. These are hand in hand with today's day. It doesn't matter if you're doing a UGC brief, it doesn't matter if you even ripped a creative, it doesn't matter if you wrote a native. There's always psychology and copywriting behind those things. If you guys understand these things, then these are the skills you learn. That actually translate into winning ads, into a brand that scales, and into a business you can run for a long time, right? And so there's, there's no more just like I said, guessing at what kind of copy's gonna work. There's no more guessing and just throwing stuff up really. You are a scientist now. You are literally analyzing results and data you get from Meta ads, and you're trying to iterate and trying to improve every single day. That's— you have to have an analytical kind of Moneyball approach to this stuff now. And if you don't have that, you're going to be left behind if you just keep guessing and keep throwing stuff up and hoping it works. And, you know, hope isn't a strategy, guys. So you need to have a legit strategy in this day and age when, you know, your competition is going to be a bit better. And then another thing I want to talk about is most likely it's going to take more time. And it's not a get-rich-quick kind of— and I'll elaborate what I mean on that, but it's going to take more time. These skills are not something you can learn in a week. You can learn to win, or you can learn to rip a creative from freaking Kayla Data in a day, right? And it's super easy, super fast. But actually real copywriting, real direct response, understanding UMP, UMS, understanding storytelling, all of these things, they take time. They take time to break down ads. They take time to learn. And that's why a lot of people just end up quitting or end up, you know, staying the same place they are because they're not actually willing to put in the work. They say they want to. They'll Throw up more reps, they'll throw up more products, but they're not actually gonna go and trench direct response. And so that being said, it takes more time to learn those skills, which I say it's not a get rich quick. You cannot throw up stuff and just immediately print 3, 4, 5 $50K days anymore like you used to be able to, right? But I say kind of because rich quick is, you know, getting rich quick is kind of on a spectrum, right? It's not a defined thing. And you can see, as a lot of people get rich, if you look at just people who are in real estate or look at people who work normal jobs, the traditional way of getting rich, it takes 20 to 40 years. Like, it takes a long time. And so with doing all this, it's still— you could still get rich in under a year easily, even like 6 months. I think if you trench your balls off, you can get rich in freaking 2 to 3 months, right? But A lot of people want to say getting rich quick is like they're just so used to this crypto, you know, meme coin stuff that just like, oh, I'm going to print within the first month or I'm going to print within the first week or something like that. And it's going to be amazing. And like, it's just not going to happen. And also, good things take time. Like, it's very true. That's a true thing. I've seen it in my life. Good things take time and it's going to be a lot more fulfilling for you as well. And so I think that's something that's really important for you guys to understand. Um, and then lastly but not least, I want to give you guys some final points of do not do e-com if you— right, if you do these things, I'm just going to be honest with you, e-com, you're not built for it, right? I'm just going to be straight up with you. I'm glad you're watching this video. I'm glad you're still here watching. But if you're listening to this right now and one of these things pertains to you, then you're just not in a place to compete, right? You are not going to be able to compete whatsoever with the rest of the crowd. These people are super hungry. These people who want it bad. Okay? So first things first is, I guess that's first. You're not willing to compete. So you're not willing to put in the hard yards. You're not willing to take extra effort to, you know, actually go read, you know, books that are about copywriting, like the fundamentals. You're not willing to go outta your way to do that. You're not willing to go outta your way to do learnings, to write scripts, right? To not just rely everything on AI. If you're not willing to do that, you are not going to see success. If you're not entirely dedicated, and it doesn't have to be entirely dedicated, you can still have a life, right? But if you're not putting, I would at least say 4 to 8 hours a day, right? Completely focused on this stuff. And this is what you think about when you're going to bed. This is what you think about when you're in the shower. Ecom is kind of your life. If you're not like that and you're not willing to get to that point of level, if you want it to be, oh, a side hustle, if you see ecom as a side hustle in 2026, Please just do not even try. You're just going to waste money. And so you have to have that level of dedication. If you're not willing to risk any money, then you're also not going to make it, because in this game you pay to get results. You pay Meta to give you data, to give you this feedback that you can iterate on. And so you're not willing to pay and cough up a little bit of money, right? You're not going to learn simply. And so you're just not going to get the skills you need to. To actually see the success. And then if you want to see major results in under a month, if you're expecting to see major results in under a month, and it's like you have to do that in under a month or else you're going to go broke, or you're going to— whatever the circumstances, I don't think e-com is for you. I think you should see it as more of a long-term game. I think you should be like, I'm going to do this for the next 1 to 2 years, right? People go to college for 4 years to get a bachelor's degree to make $80K a year. You can't Trench ecom for two years, right? To make eighty k a month. Like that's a lowball. Like you know, like how bad do you want it? How bad do you really want it? And so these these are all the things that really resonate and really stick out to me. And I really wanted to make this video because I think a lot of people just give really bad advice. They give really bad advice. They They don't actually tell you what it takes. And then in these days, you think you can just do the same playbook every year and make it in e-com, and it's just not true. So this is what to expect when trying e-com in 2026. If you guys are looking for someone to learn from, I do coaching. I do have a mentorship, so a link's going to be in the bio. Shameless plug, I know. But basically, I hope everyone who does try e-com, I hope that you guys make it. I hope that you guys are able to see success and you guys are able to get to that level of satisfaction and fulfillment that I have. Um, e-com is a great thing. E-com does change lives. E-com has changed my life. I just lit— I just moved into a new house. You guys see me in this office. I moved into this new house with my girlfriend. It's amazing. Like, I'm not gonna lie, having my own house that's pretty nice and having an M3 in the garage and just living my life, it makes the simple things a lot better. And I have so much freedom, and I'm using this freedom to teach others and to also learn and grow my new custom product that I'm working on. So Thank you guys for watching this video. I felt called to make this, and yeah, I'll see you in the next one.