A Year-End Take on Where Growth Is Really Heading in 2026

Wow, the year is winding down, crazy! So, I’ll start with the obvious disclaimer.

I’m not Nostradamus. I’m not Mary Meeker. I don’t have a crystal ball or a 150-page trend deck.

And that’s kind of the point. The end of the year isn’t about being right. It’s about slowing down long enough to notice the patterns that already revealed themselves, then choosing what you want to carry forward with intention.

Consider this my entry into the 2026 predictions bandwagon. Not prophecy. Pattern recognition, grounded in the conversations, posts, and debates many of you engaged with me on throughout 2025.

• First prediction: AI becomes the forcing mechanism for decision management. I’ve written repeatedly this year that AI didn’t fix growth, creative, or performance. It exposed operating debt. In posts about creative scale, agentic AI, and testing velocity, the same theme kept surfacing. Output exploded. Decisions slowed. Teams produced more answers than leaders could act on. The bottleneck wasn’t intelligence. It was decision ownership, kill criteria, and judgment. In 2026, AI won’t separate winners from losers. Decision systems will.
• Second prediction: IRL experiences become the new brand storytelling strategy. My take on Netflix moving into physical experiences wasn’t about retail or merch. It was about lifecycle value and memory. I’ve argued all year that digital reach is commoditized and attribution undervalues emotional imprint. Netflix House isn’t a stunt. It’s infrastructure. A way to turn IP into identity and deepen attachment in a world of infinite content. In 2026, more digital-native brands will follow, not to scale faster, but to build meaning that compounds.
• Third: Operators are the new strategists. Some of the most personal engagement I saw came from posts about teams being treated as service layers instead of strategic partners. This wasn’t venting. It was diagnosis. Strategy without operating literacy collapses under pressure. In 2026, the most credible strategists will be operators. People who’ve built systems, owned outcomes, and made tradeoffs with real consequences. Decks won’t carry weight. Scar tissue will.
• Fourth: Durability will be the new business currency. Affiliate debates, discounting, post-purchase suppression, CAC obsession. Different posts, same conclusion. Efficient growth often destroys long-term value. I’ve been consistent in arguing that retention, contribution margin, and lifetime value matter more than short-term optics. In 2026, durability stops being a finance concern and becomes a leadership mandate. Businesses that don’t compound will quietly decay.
• Fifth, MMM and incrementality become do-or-die for marketing. If there’s one topic we turn to relentlessly, it’s this. Attribution certainty is a myth. MMM doesn’t track everything people want it to, but it forces honesty about causation. Performance teams that can’t operate under probabilistic truth will overspend and misallocate. In 2026, incrementality won’t be a nice-to-have. It will be existential.

If you connect all of this, the takeaway isn’t about tools, tactics, or trends.

It’s about maturity. 2026 rewards leaders who can decide under uncertainty.

Who design systems before buying software.

Who protect taste while scaling output.

Who optimize for compounding value instead of quarterly applause.

And with that, the most important part of this post. Everyone needs rest.

Replenishment.

Perspective.

Focus.

So wherever you are, and whatever you celebrate, I genuinely hope you unplug, reset, and start the new year with clarity.

Have an awesome Christmas. A meaningful Hanukkah. A joyful Kwanzaa.

And here’s to a 2026 defined less by noise and more by intention.

Onward.