5 Small Business Ideas You NEED To Start In 2026

Imagine creating content about pickle ball, uploading one video a week, and making $25,000 a month from it. Well, that's not hypothetical. That's a real business, and it's run by one guy. And it's not the only one. I found businesses that are just as simple, in fact, a lot simpler in some cases, and just as profitable. And I'm going to be presenting those businesses to you today. And I'm not saying you should copy these, but I do think these will give you different business ideas for different businesses that you could start. And at the very least, this is going to inspire or motivate you to start a business, a side hustle, or scale your existing thing. So, if you like me doing this type of content, gently tap that like button and let's jump into it right now. Oh, yeah, and by the way, quick disclaimer before we jump in. I'm always going to be brutally honest with you. Most business ideas, most YouTube channels, most any type of venture that people try online don't work out. And it's not just online, it's physical businesses as well. That's just reality. There are no guarantees here, and you should always do your own research. And that's exactly why I run a one-time live workshop with an extensive Q&A session. All right, quick break, guys. This week, I'm going to be hosting a free live workshop that's going to be designed to help you grow and make money on YouTube. So, click the link in the description below to check out when that will be happening. And at this workshop, I'm going to be giving away my brand new tool, the Niche Validator Pro 1.5, completely free. This is a powerful GPT-driven tool that I've been working on, and it's been trained on thousands of hours of my teaching, my philosophy, and coaching sessions. And with it, you can uncover hidden profitable YouTube niches and generate viral content ideas with just one click. And I'm going to be giving it away for this one time only at the workshop. So, make sure you show up. Click the link in the description or the pin comment below. And when you're done registering, make sure to click on add this to your calendar so it'll show up in your Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar. So, you won't miss a chance to grab this free AI tool. Now, you'll also be able to ask me questions live. So, I look forward to meeting you. See you this week on the live workshop. Click that link in the description in the pin comment below to sign up and make sure you put it in your calendar. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming. All right, so this is a very interesting business which is operating remote controlled butterflies for weddings. So, what if you could make a small business where you could make money and have a lot of fun doing it? So, check out this Flutonic Studio video. Well, that's exactly what this person does. And of course, the wedding industry is absolutely massive. And there are websites that sell these butterfly flying devices. And of course, you could manufacture them yourself and then make social media just like these websites and just like these social medias, or you can actually use them at weddings and get paid to do so. So, yeah, it is absolutely absurd that there are people making a ton of money doing this, but they really are. And in fact, this video right here got 422,000 likes on Instagram. And these freaking butterflies literally fly around. Like, this is the real deal. And they'll even land on your hand. And you can even have the butterfly deliver the ring directly to somebody's hand. And some people even do intricate lighting setups where the butterflies are lit up and everything in the surrounding is lit up as well. So yeah, I think you get the idea. People want to have memorable, fantastic weddings. They will pay a premium to have that. You can buy these butterflies and make that happen. You can even set up the lighting and charge a lot more than that. Or you could just be the person who sells the butterflies. And then you can advertise your products and services on social media. Now, all of these things are great, but the key thing to understand the reason why this person is winning is because of the fact that they are getting a ton of views on social media. Okay, it's a great product, but the problem is there's a lot of great products out there. What you need is distribution. And distribution is how you actually reach people who could potentially buy your products. It's kind of like if you have a great physical product, but no stores want to show people your physical products, then nobody's ever going to buy it, right? Getting distribution would be getting Target or Walmart to put your product on their shelves. And that's where the real magic is. And the way that you can have your own distribution is, of course, starting your own social media. That video with the butterfly got over 400,000 likes, which means it likely got tens of millions of views. That's tens of millions of views of free advertising and by far the most powerful social media platform. And if you want to learn how to grow your side hustle, your business on YouTube, go ahead and click the link in the description and the pinned comment below for a completely free live workshop. All right, the second interesting side hustle that I saw that absolutely blew up on social media is selling dehydrated fruits. So check this out. This is David Blake Cocktails. And this guy basically makes videos where he's selling dehydrated fruit. And he shows the entire process of how he does that. and he talked about how he spent over $50,000 on fruits in 2025 and he predicts that he's going to spend over $100,000 in 2026. So what this guy essentially does is he buys fruit like oranges, lemons, etc. from retail stores like Walmart. Then he cuts them up and he dehydrates the fruit and then he sells them. And he's making $12,000 a month doing this. That's all he does. He buys fruit from the store. He cuts the fruit up. He dehydrates it and then he sells it to locals or online. What an unbelievably simple but actually amazing business, right? Because let's be honest, a lot of people want to buy dehydrated fruit, but they don't want all the preservatives that come with it, right? They don't want all that extra stuff. And so, they're willing to buy from this guy. They trust this guy. He's going to do it the correct way, and they're willing to buy the stuff at a premium price. And again, I have to tell you guys, the secret to his success is social media. The fact that he's actually advertising this stuff on social media is the actual secret to his success. So, don't forget that. All right. The next one is going to be a secret indoor pickle ball club. And this is a subscription model. Now, pickle ball is currently the fastest growing sport in the world. And in the last few years, it has really blown up. Just to put this in perspective, this was a study from a few years ago, but the change in participation rate from 2019 to 2022 for pickle ball versus every other sport, pickle ball was growing the fastest. And it's growing about five times faster than even tennis. And as you can imagine, there are tons of pickle ball channels blowing up on YouTube. For instance, this channel right here, Ed Jew, I built a pickle ball court, cost and construction breakdown. or this guy, that pickle ball guy, Kyle Kazuta. He's got about 219,000 subs. Now, they estimate that he's making about $2 to $5,000 a month just from AdSense alone on YouTube. But much more importantly, he actually has a membership group that costs about $39 a month. And he's got over $1.3,000 members. So, he's making well over $50,000 a month from this membership group, teaching people how to do pickle ball. And that's not to mention all of his affiliate links and his sponsorship stuff that he's got on his YouTube channel. Wouldn't be surprised if he is monetizing correctly that he's making over $100,000 a month just teaching people how to play pickle ball, which is pretty epic. And he's good, but he's not like that good. He's not like one of the world's top pros good. He's just someone who is very passionate about pickle ball. So yeah, that's another thing is a lot of people know how to get views on social media, but they don't know how to actually monetize those views. And that's something I will be digging deep into in this live training. So click the link in the description and the pin comment below to check that out. Definitely don't miss out on it. All right, so the next one is a wholein-one floating golf challenge. I thought this was one of the most brilliant businesses I have ever seen in my life. And this is something that got really viral on YouTube and as well as other social media platforms. But basically, it's one of the simplest businesses I've ever seen and probably one of the most profitable ones as well. They very simply just set up a place to hit the golf ball and then a place to aim the golf ball at that's out in the ocean. And if you hit the golf ball and you aim it at that place and you actually get a hole in one, you make $10,000. It's that simple. So all it requires is like one employee just to run it. And the chances of you actually making a hole in one are about 12,500 to one. And they charge $50 for 50 balls. Plus, they run a sensor in the hole and they actually send divers out to retrieve the balls once a week. And one guy with an iPad runs the entire operation. And people end up buying a bunch of stuff while they're at the place. Anyways, now let's break this down cuz this is kind of a law of average type numbers thing here. They're probably making at least $300 to $500,000 a year net. They do have to hire the divers, the operators, the installers, and they do have to pay for the initial setup. But you could probably get something like this, an inflatable floating dock with wood grain EVA non-slip water floating dock swim platform on Amazon for about $150. Then you get some fake grass. You get a bunch of golf balls, you buy some clubs, and overall you can do everything for less than a couple hundred. Then you set it up in the ocean or in a lake depending on what body of water you're right next to and try to find a place where there's a lot of people that are already there and preferably a lot of people already interested in golf. And by the way, these are very conservative numbers. The 1 in 12,500, it's probably more like 1 in 100,000 or more. In this particular video, for instance, they've been around for 30 years and they've only had nine people hit the $10,000 hole. So, it's probably much more like one in a 100,000 or or one in even 500,000 or something like that. But regardless, there's other ones they can hit that have lesser prizes and there's other ways you can make it more fun. Plus, you get to sell extra stuff. But even if it was one out of every 12,000, they're paying at least $1 per ball. And that would mean if it's one out of every 12,500, they're still making at least 25% profit. And they recover all the balls. And chances are they're making a heck of a lot more than that. They're selling other stuff. People are hanging out there. And it just seems like a very, very good business. Now, the way they get a lot of their business is, of course, through social media with videos like this that cover them because people wouldn't even be aware of them if it wasn't for that. So again, social media is the key here. Click the link in the description in the pin comment below to learn how you can promote your products completely free on social media. In fact, you'll get paid to promote your products and services. Completely free live workshop. And the next one I'm going to go over is the miniature guy dollhouse construction kit, which I thought was absolutely hilarious. And this comes from Studson Studio. Now, there's other people that make similar stuff on different social media platforms, but this guy's most viewed video is I made a miniature Howlsm moving castle out of junk Gibbly Crafts. And that got $19 million views. And he made an unbelievable $93,000 from that video. And that's just from the ads that showed up on his channel. So, he basically got paid $93,000 to market his products. Let me just repeat that. Let me just repeat that. Instead of having to pay $93,000 to market his products and services, he got paid $93,000 to market his products and services. And let me show you exactly what I mean by that. He has a website where he markets all of his different stuff. If you want like uh merch or stuff where you can potentially make your own stuff, he's got a website where he markets that. And I'm sure he gets a ton of sales. If he's seeing this and he doesn't and he's not monetizing correctly, he needs to attend the live training because he definitely should be. But to be fair, a lot of YouTubers are actually kind of bad at marketing their products and services. And by the way, 99% of people who watch this video are just going to enjoy my free content, get inspired, get motivated, and they're never going to work directly with myself or my team. But for the 1% or even 0.1% of you out there that are business owners, serious YouTubers, right? either YouTubers are getting views but having trouble monetizing or YouTubers that are getting views and monetizing but they want to actually take it to the next level and really scale their channel or just people who want to treat YouTube like a pro. They want to take YouTube seriously and really treat it like a business. For all those types of people, book a call with us down in the description in the pin comment below. If for whatever reason the link's not there, it will be in our about section. If you want to see an example of someone who was in that exact situation, Sean was stuck with a low six-figure business for a very long time and we helped him scale to over $500,000 a month. And you can check out this video by clicking right here.