Why Success Might Be Worse Than Failure in 2026 

If you're aiming for success and avoiding failure at all costs, I'd be willing to bet you won't experience much transformation in your business this year.

I know because I spent the last decade achieving wins that looked impressive on paper but ultimately just kept me busy. I landed deals with Fortune 500 companies like Target, appeared on Good Morning America, and became a Verizon brand ambassador. Each accomplishment felt validating, but none of them changed my life.

In this article, I'll share why I think the kind of success most of us chase—incremental wins that keep us operating but never transform anything—might actually be worse than failure. And why setting goals so big that failure is a real possibility is the only way to ensure 2026 becomes a year of actual transformation for your business and your life.

What Mediocre Success Actually Looks Like

After five years of struggling to grow my garden kit company, Hortiki Plants, I was overjoyed when I was finally accepted as a supplier to a major, global retail chain: Target. However, I was accepted as a direct-ship supplier. That meant that I had to fulfill orders as they came in through the Target.com website. I had to maintain a full warehouse and a team in order to quickly fulfill orders according to their standards. Was it a major accomplishment to secure this deal? Absolutely! Did it make me a millionaire and change my life? Not yet. It was just enough success for me to believe in my product and keep going but not yet enough to retire me from non-stop hustle.

Has this ever happened to you? Maybe you were able to move out of your home into your first storefront. Or maybe you "cracked the code" and learned how to do a TikTok Shopping live where people actually showed up and started buying. Or got the bigger client for a service you offer. Exciting steps forward. But on the other side of those wins, was there so much more work, you weren't sure if the extra money was even worth it?

That's mediocre success: it keeps you operating, but it doesn't transform anything.

Why Mediocre Success Is Actually Worse Than Failure

Here's what I've realized: mediocre success traps you in a way that failure doesn't.

When something fails cleanly, you're done. You can move on to your next idea without guilt or second-guessing. There's a clarity to it.

But mediocre success keeps you stuck because you can't justify walking away from something that's "working." Even when it's exhausting. Even when it's not giving you what you actually want.

Meanwhile, failure gives you something mediocre success never will: freedom to start fresh.

What I'm Doing Differently This Year

I'm done with incremental goals. In 2026, I'm pursuing ideas so ambitious that I only have two possible outcomes: significant transformation or clean failure.

For example, I started planning for this year thinking I'd launch a small podcast. I'd do everything on a budget, using the library and whatever free tools I could find, to "test it out" before I committed anything significant. Small goal, reasonable plan.

Then I asked myself: what if I didn't let my current resources limit what I wanted to create?

That question turned a podcast idea into a full media project—a documentary series, a book, certification programs for hotels and schools, and production funding through grants and sponsorships I never would have thought to pursue if I'd stayed focused on trying to borrow a decent microphone.

I don't have all the results yet. But here's what I do have: knowledge about documentary production, connections with editors and producers, conversations with potential sponsors, and grant applications in progress. Thinking bigger unlocked opportunities that didn't exist when I was thinking small.

The execution plan is still strategic. I'm pursuing funding aggressively and early so if benchmarks aren't met by specific dates I'll know I need to make up that revenue in some other way and I'll have most of the year to do it. So the dream is massive, but the plan has checkpoints to keep me safe.

The Critical Distinction: Goals vs. Plans

I'm not advocating for reckless risk-taking.

My goals are hyper-ambitious—borderline unreasonable. But my execution plan is strategic, de-risked, and data-driven.

Those are two completely different things.

The dream of what's possible needs to be radical—unrestrained by what you currently have access to. But when you reverse-engineer your plan, you solve for reality. You identify what needs to be true for this to work. You build in decision gates where you can stop if certain milestones aren't met. You define what "failure" would actually look like in concrete terms—not catastrophic thinking, just the actual outcome.

And here's the counterintuitive part: this approach is actually LESS risky than mediocre success.

Because with mediocre success, you keep investing time and energy into something that will never give you what you want. You're trapped. You can't quit, but you can't breakthrough either.

With transformation-or-failure goals, you either get the life-changing result you actually want, or you get clear feedback that it's not working and the freedom to move on to your next idea.

Either way, you're not stuck.

How to Apply This to Your Own Business

If you're interested in trying this approach, here's a practical framework:

Step 1: Identify your current "safe" goal

Write down what you're working toward right now. What feels reasonable and achievable given your current resources and constraints?

Step 2: Remove the resource constraints

What would this goal look like if you didn't have to worry about your current budget, your current time, or your current capabilities? Don't censor yourself. Don't worry yet about whether it's realistic—just write down what you'd actually want if resources weren't the limiting factor.

This might feel uncomfortable. That's the point.

Step 3: Notice what opportunities unlock

When you think at that scale, what becomes possible that wasn't even on your radar before? What funding sources, partnerships, or revenue streams only make sense at the bigger scale?

Write those down. You might not pursue all of them, but now you know they exist.

Step 4: Design a de-risked execution plan

Now bring strategy back into the picture. What would you need to test first? What's the smallest investment that gets you the first piece of meaningful data?

Identify three specific decision gates where you could stop if certain milestones aren't met. Define what "failure" would actually look like in concrete terms—not catastrophic thinking, just the actual outcome.

Step 5: Build your backup plan

What's your revenue safety net if this doesn't work? For me, it's speaking gigs. For you, it might be consulting, a different product line, or returning to a previous revenue stream temporarily.

Knowing you have a backup makes it easier to take the risk.

Your Turn

Take fifteen minutes this week to write down your transformation-or-failure goal—the one that feels uncomfortably ambitious. You don't have to show it to anyone. You don't have to commit to pursuing it tomorrow.

Just write it down and see what opportunities it unlocks in your thinking.

If you want to share what you came up with, I'd genuinely love to hear it. Drop a comment or send me a message. I'm building a community of people who are done playing small, and I'd be honored to cheer you on.