Build
The economy is sending signals. Most people are waiting. Builders don’t wait.
My colleague Chris Naugle posted a video this week that stopped me mid-scroll.
Chris is one of the sharpest financial minds I know. Pro-snowboarder turned money mogul, founder of The Money School, builder of 19 companies. He’s spent his career teaching people how money actually works. He doesn’t alarm easily.
This week, he alarmed.
Debt. Deficit. The dollar. Oil. The bond market doing things that shouldn’t make sense, but make complete sense once you understand what’s underneath them.
He connected dots that most people aren’t even looking at, and he landed here: we are probably heading into an economic slowdown. Late 2026, early 2027, his best guess.
I watched it twice.
And then I went back to the conversations I’d been having all week with the business owners I coach.
Here’s what struck me.
Every single one of them is building. In spite of everything. Not because they’re ignoring the signals. They see the same headlines you see. They feel the same tightening. They’re watching their dollars stretch thinner than they did five or six years ago.
And let’s be honest about what those years were.
COVID hit small businesses like a wrecking ball. I know because I lived it. I had a pet services company. We were classified as essential services, which sounds like protection until you watch 90% of your business disappear almost overnight. Essential meant nothing when nobody was going anywhere. I watched people who had built something real. Real customers, real revenue, real lives. Just gone. Not because they weren’t good enough. Because the ground disappeared beneath them. Some called it quits. Some said they just couldn’t. I understood every one of them. I was fighting for my own business at the same time.
Then we spent years in a policy environment that made everything harder. Inflation. Regulations. Taxes. A cost of doing business that kept climbing while margins stayed flat. It was a grind that didn’t let up.
I’m cautiously more optimistic now. But concerned. The signals Chris is pointing to are real, and this is not the time to assume someone else is managing your future.
But here’s what I keep coming back to.
The people I’m talking to this week? They’re building anyway.
That’s not recklessness. That’s pattern recognition.
Because here is what history keeps trying to tell us, and what we keep forgetting every time the headlines get loud:
Half of all Fortune 500 companies were created during a recession or economic crisis.
Half.
Disney. Microsoft. Airbnb. Slack. Publix. Revlon. FedEx. Charles Schwab. Goldman Sachs. Burger King. Trader Joe’s.
And the ones you’ve never heard of. Vernon Rudolph started Krispy Kreme during the 1937 recession. He had a secret donut recipe, no money, and a borrowed car he used as a delivery rack. Tim Chen got laid off from his hedge fund job in 2008 and launched NerdWallet from his apartment because he couldn’t find honest financial information online.
Not built in spite of the chaos. Built inside it.
George Jenkins quit his job in 1930 — the year after the market crashed — and started what became Publix. He didn’t wait for conditions to improve. He saw empty storefronts and a population that still needed to eat, and he built.
Reed Hastings founded Netflix during an economic slowdown. Brian Chesky pitched Airbnb to fifteen investors before he got his first yes. Eight said no. Seven didn't bother to respond. He built anyway.
This is a pattern. And patterns tell you something.
When things contract, the noise clears. The people who were building on borrowed confidence stop. They freeze. They wait.
The builders move.
So here’s the question nobody’s asking out loud.
While the unemployment numbers climb. While the layoffs keep hitting. While your company quietly starts talking about “restructuring” in meetings that didn’t used to happen.
What are you doing to change your situation?
Not tomorrow. Not if they let you go. Now. While you still have a paycheck, still have leverage, still have options.
And before you tell me that AI is going to take your job anyway. Let’s talk about that for a second.
Maybe it will. Maybe it already is, in some form.
But AI is also the great equalizer for anyone willing to use it. It is not the end of human expertise. It is a tool that makes one person capable of doing what used to take a team. The question isn’t whether AI changes the game. It’s whether you’re going to be someone who uses it, or someone who gets left behind waiting for someone else to decide.
The people who are scared of AI are the ones who have one income stream and no plan B.
The average millionaire has seven different income streams.
Seven.
If you have one — and that one is your job — you are already operating with your hands tied behind your back. You’re one decision by someone else away from starting over.
That’s not a judgment. That’s the math. And the math doesn’t care how good you are at your job.
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I had a call this week that ended with a proposal.
The person on the other end wanted my help building their business. Smart, driven, moving fast. Their offer: do the work, and get paid when they’re successful.
I’ve heard this before. It always comes from someone who has never had to build anything from scratch. Someone who doesn’t yet understand that expertise isn’t a gamble you make on someone else’s timeline.
I passed.
I’m not telling that story to be harsh. I’m telling it because it’s a perfect picture of where many people are right now. Waiting for someone else to create the opportunity. Waiting for the right conditions. Waiting to be validated before they move.
The economy doesn’t wait. And neither do the people who come out of a downturn ahead of where they started.
When I was building a pet services company, I knew my numbers.
Not the annual revenue goal. Not the five-year vision. The 22-day number. The 30-day number. The exact amount I needed to survive and make it to the next month.
And I did what it took to hit it.
I drove Uber. Early morning shifts, usually starting around 4 or 4:30am, chasing airport runs. Then I’d walk and care for dogs through the day. Then I’d catch the evening rush. Then back to dogs for evening walks. Maybe a few more Uber runs, and then grab some sleep before I started again. Rinse and repeat.
Sleep was limited. Very limited. The hustle was real. The 22 and 30 day numbers weren’t a framework. They were the difference between keeping a roof over my head and losing everything.
It was not a cake walk. I’m not going to tell you it was.
But, I’m going to tell you this: there is still tremendous opportunity in this country. Not in spite of the chaos. Inside it.
You just have to start.
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This is how you can help me, and help others find me.
I want to tell you about my mom.
She’s 80 years old. A post-war immigrant, born in Sweden, who came to this country legally with her family and nothing else. They built a life. Built businesses. Raised a family. Did it the hard way because that was the only way available to them.
She is, to everyone who knows her, their personal Martha Stewart. The woman can take twenty dollars and feed a family like she’s running a five-star kitchen.
This year, she’s taking computer classes. She’s working on her memoir. And we’re building her a column on everyday nutrition. Real food, real budgets, real life. She has decades of knowledge that people need and she’s not waiting for someone to give her permission to share it.
She’s 80.
If she’s building, what’s your excuse?
Here’s the thing about a line I keep coming back to. Not endorsing the source, just the idea: look at everything you know. Everything you can do. Someone out there needs exactly that. Not a version of it. Not a polished, perfected, fully-funded version of it. What you already know, right now.
Your expertise is not a free sample. It is the asset.
I’m on a mission to bring back Main Street. Current day style.
Not the nostalgia version. The real one, where people build businesses that serve their communities, create their own income, and stop waiting for a corporation to decide their worth.
There are a lot of us on this mission. And small business is how it happens.
Here’s what I’m telling everyone I work with right now.
Create before you need to. The best time to build a second income stream was before the layoffs started. The second best time is right now, while you still have the stability of a job to build from. Use that runway. Don’t wait until the decision gets made for you.
Know your number. Chris is right that liquidity is the real problem. Not rates, liquidity. That’s true at the macro level and it’s true for you personally. What do you need to survive the next 22 days? The next 30? If you don’t know that number, that’s where you start. Everything else comes after.
Stop depending on one source. One job. One client. One income stream. That’s not stability. That’s a single point of exposure. The people who come out of what’s coming ahead of where they started will be the ones who built multiple ways to generate income before they needed them.
Watch what’s actually happening, not what gets reported. Chris says follow the bond market, not the headline. By the time it’s a headline, it’s already happened. The signals are already there. Act on them.
If you have an idea, even a rough one, and you want to run a scenario by someone who has actually built from nothing, schedule a call.
Not a pitch. Not a package. Just a conversation with someone who has been at zero, built to seven figures, and knows what the path between them actually looks like.
The economy does what it does. It always has.
Your job is to build something it can’t break.
Built from nothing. Rebuilt from less.
If this landed, share it.
The people in your life who need to read this won’t find it on their own. Forward it. Post it. Drop it in a group chat.
Main Street doesn’t come back without the people who are willing to build it.
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Sources & Further Reading:
Chris Naugle — LinkedIn | The Money School
Half of Fortune 500 companies founded during recessions — Startups Magazine
U.S. Unemployment Rate — 20-year historical data, Macrotrends
Unemployment Rate Projections 2026–2028 — CBO (January 2026), Federal Reserve (December 2025), OMB (August 2025)
Brilliance Insightful and Courageous and the discipline to move