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2026 is the year of alignment.

You can’t be wishy washy anymore. What do you want? And do you want it bad enough to never give up?

In this episode, I talk about why being disconnected from your mission, vision, and values is THE biggest threat to your business in 2026.

If you’ve felt burnout, procrastination, overwhelm, confusion, or like you’re spinning your wheels, this will be a wake up call!

Key Takeaways

• Misalignment is the real cause of overwhelm, procrastination, and burnout.
• You can’t copy & paste anyone’s strategy. You need to build your own.
• Alignment does NOT mean comfort. It means you’ll never give up.

This is part 4 of my 2026 Prediction Series!

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

Misaligned businesses are going to get louder and burn faster. If there’s one thing I continuously learn when I interview people and hear on the podcast when I talk to successful entrepreneurs and when I see the path that they took to grow, there is not one way to do something, but the one thing that will kill business.

Is misalignment. Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way. They lead from within. Move by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. We are in full force holiday season. How are we all doing? Are you guys doing okay?

I swear to God, every single year. Time gets faster. What even is time? My kids tell me every day, how many days till Christmas? And I’m like, excuse me, what, how many days? I am very excited for next year though. I’m coming off of, last week I went to a mastermind that I’m in. It’s actually a peer led mastermind, so there’s not like a leader of the group.

And it’s a group of incredible seven and eight figure business owners who come together and we will pull money together and hire different people to come in and speak to us and different experiences. And so this time they actually all came to Austin. Which was really nice for me. And we got to go to Cody Sanchez’s headquarter and spend pretty much a half of a day there.

And we got to hear from Cody and do q and a with her. And then all these members of her team, so like her president director of her marketing and all these levels. And it was. It was really cool. It was really inspiring and really cool to be, in the headquarters and behind the scenes of, I don’t know the exact revenue that she does.

I don’t know if it’s published or not, but a hundred million dollar company making a massive impact. And I think one of my biggest takeaways, which maybe I’ll do a separate podcast on my takeaways, ’cause I have notebooks full of them or a notebook full of them. But one of the biggest things I left with was going, dang, I could play so much bigger.

I could play such a bigger game. And putting yourself in a room with people who are thinking bigger than you just because they. Are at a different level, right? They’ve unlocked a different level of business and impact. It forces you to realize, like where you are playing small or playing safe without even realizing it.

Just thinking this is what I’ve told myself, the limit is, or this is what I’ve told myself is normal. And I walked into her office and not everyone in the group felt this way, but I was like, I think I want headquarters like this. Like I want to have. This level of impact. It’s not about the money.

Money is a byproduct of impact. And I think when you are leveraging your gifts and your wisdom and what you are here to do in this world to that full potential, you can have that big of an impact. And so for me it was inspiring. It was exactly what I needed. That between that and all the masterminding that the group did, and I have some really big goals for 2026 and.

Also some fun ways I’m gonna challenge myself that you guys might be surprised on. I’m not gonna share ’em yet ’cause I’m doing an experiment and I wanna do the experiment and then I wanna share it here. But it’s gonna be good. I’ve made the decision, get a new podcast studio and also have that be space for the start of an in-person office.

I want the in-person team collaboration. I live in a great city for. Hiring people. And when you see the way a team can work together in person, there’s a reason why. All you know Alex Hermo Cody, Dan Martel, who we heard from. Elon has this opinion, like I think when you’re going for a big team, it is a huge impact.

And so that’s the, I don’t think I’ll have, I have a remote team right now and I don’t wanna reset my whole team obviously, but I wanna start in that direction of bringing the in-person people and being able to have a headquarters, the Embodied Marketing headquarters. At the end of the Mastermind, we committed to some six month.

We meet every six months goals, and one of mine was I’m gonna have a, the start of a headquarters. So perfect timing that I have to also get a new podcast studio and can just time it with that. Continuing on this series that I’ve been doing. This is the fourth prediction of next year. And it’s perfect that I didn’t record it until after last week.

’cause I think it, it goes so well. And the prediction is misaligned businesses, meaning misaligned from the founder. And their mission and their vision, why they even have their business and what they’re doing. What’s driving them, what’s keeping them going, what they want their life to look like, how they want their business to support their life.

Misaligned businesses are going to get louder and burn faster. I do not think that you can be a super misaligned CEO and business owner. And succeed next year. And let me explain this. So we are coming from an industry, when I started 10 years ago and eight years ago when I was heavily involved in ClickFunnels and that whole world, it was very templated, right?

It was very much find somebody who is successful in this space and. Replicate what they’re doing and copy their funnels, copy their strategy, and maybe infuse a little bit of you in it, but replicate that and you’ll be successful. And the thing is, that doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work at all anymore.

There are always gonna be foundational marketing principles, but you have to turn your business. Into you authentically, and you have to figure out what alignment looks like for you. Because if there’s one thing I continuously learn when I interview people and hear on the podcast, when I talk to successful entrepreneurs and when I see the path that they took to grow, there is not one way to do something.

There are people who have done a certain strategy. Let’s just say went all in on organic and then there are others who avoided organic and went all in on paid ads. Both have been successful. There are people who went all in on a certain price offer versus another price offer who went, did a membership versus not, who create certain types of content versus other types of content.

There is not one way to do business, but the one thing that will kill business. Is misalignment because when you are misaligned, meaning you are following somebody else’s template, somebody else’s blueprint, somebody else’s advice, without filtering it through your own discernment of does this align with my life and my business and where I wanna take it and with what would be authentic to me.

If you’re not filtering it through that, there becomes a disconnection, and that disconnection typically results in procrastination, overwhelm, chaos, confusion, spinning your wheels, not committing to something, two steps forward, three steps back. All of that is a symptom. Of misalignment because you are not bought in on why you’re doing it, and if you feel it’s the best thing.

Now, when I say alignment, I don’t mean easy. Here’s the thing there, there should be components of your life and your business that you put energy towards, that you say, I know that this is in alignment with where I’m going and therefore I will still do this. I will take action on this, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if I don’t really want to, even if it’s hard, I will do it.

I look at myself with CrossFit, for example. I train 10 to 12 hours a week, at least two days a week. I don’t wanna go train, so I’m not going, oh, it’s misaligned for me today to go train. No, it’s in alignment with my values and my goals for me to train, because I’m training for competitions, because I’m training for a bigger purpose, because I’m training for a bigger goal when I create content.

Right now my podcast studio, it’s like the opposite direction of where I have to go because my life has shifted around so much and where I’m driving. I don’t wanna drive here today, but I need to, and I’m committed to recording this podcast, and it is in alignment for me to show up for this community to create my content to deliver this series so it’s in alignment.

Did I wanna do it? No. Was I motivated to do it? No, but I did it anyways, so don’t confuse misalignment for easy. Okay. That’s really important. If you’re not doing anything in your business in life that’s actually uncomfortable and hard and challenging for you. I’m not saying forced, you are not forcing yourself to do it, but you’re going, this is aligned for me.

This is aligned because it’s aligned with my goals and where I’m going and who I’m becoming and who I wanna be and all of those things. I don’t wanna do it. I’m still doing it. Okay, so misaligned businesses are going to. Be very challenging. Next year it, they’re going to be highlighted. So when I say that, I also think that because of AI and because of the vast amount of information and feedback and fast advice that we have, because of that, I think that people will stop thinking for themselves and will stop questioning things and really processing things and will possibly lose.

Their alignment through that piece because they will count on something outside of themselves to dictate what is in alignment. So when you look at your next year, I want you to think about what is the purpose? Where am I going? Who am I becoming that is so much bigger and so much more meaningful than these little day-to-day things that I allow myself to get stuck into?

So that. The next time that you come across, a challenging situation, you come across a time where somebody is, or you’re in your business. It’s I have to do this thing and I really don’t wanna, I gotta go put myself out there and con creating content and I’m not good at it yet, or I’m nervous about it, or I’m uncomfortable, or I have to do a webinar, I have to sell this product.

I have to put myself out there to try to get on a stage, whatever. I don’t have to, I get to do all these things. I’m choosing to do all these things. But when you’re, when you come across all of those scenarios, you have a clear North star, whether it’s, yeah, mission, but dreams, goals of where you’re going, a vision of where you’re going, that’s bigger than those things that says, yeah, sure, I might be uncomfortable.

I might be scared. I might be afraid of this. And I have a bigger North star that is directing me and guiding me and allowing me to know, to choose that anyways. Also, what I mean when I say misaligned businesses is what are you creating your business for? I really think that we can have it all. We can have the life of our dreams, whether that’s how much we work.

How much we travel, what we spend our time doing, what we’re able to pour our energy into, how present we can be with our friends and family. And I think your business should be the mechanism that supports that. And so if you build a business that you hate because you don’t like the customers you’re serving or you don’t like, you know what you’re doing on a day to day, or it’s requiring you to work more than you are in alignment with.

There are seasons where you have to maybe work more than you want and like careful with that. ’cause there’s such a movement today of I just wanna work 10 hours a week and have a multimillion dollar business. And I really get annoyed at that because yes, you can get yourself to where you’re not working a lot, but it takes years and systems and team.

Anyways. What is it that you’re building the business for? What’s the mission? What’s the lifestyle like? Is it supporting your lifestyle? Because if you don’t know that and you just keep executing and building your business and taking these actions that you don’t know why you’re taking them, eventually you’re gonna burn out.

So if this last year you have felt burnout, procrastination, spinning your wheels, chaos, overwhelm, confusion, likely at the root of that, there’s some sort of misalignment or lack of clarity. And what I’m predicting and what I’m saying is the business owners who don’t address that and ask the questions of why and where is it coming from, and how do I get myself back into alignment are going to struggle.

Because the more aligned you are with your mission, with your dreams, with who you’re becoming, with what your business is building, with all of these things, the more powerful your movement becomes, the more synced up and aligned your actions become, the more momentum you gain from the actions you take.

I hosted a training a couple weeks back on your strategy, your annual strategy in our obsessed membership. And actually a lot of people said one of the things they wanted to stop doing this next year was procrastinating. And I thought that was really interesting. So there was a huge amount of people, like at least 10 on the call, who were like.

One of the number one things I wanna do is stop procrastinating. And I said, you’re not procrastinating because something is wrong with you, or you’re just naturally a procrastinator. We really only procrastinate when either we’re misaligned with what we’re supposed to be doing. Like we’re not bought in going, I know if I do this, it’s going to equal this.

And so our brain’s I don’t really wanna do it. Or You’re lacking clarity, let procrastination be a data point of saying, why am I procrastinating? Is there a misalignment in why I am doing this and my buy-in on it? Or is there a lack of clarity in what I’m supposed to be doing and I need to break it down into smaller pieces?

And because entrepreneurs will do things like, create all of this content. Or create this goal for themselves, but they haven’t broken it down into the steps that actually allow them to take that first action. So that’s just a note on that. So next year, misalignment also with your messaging, if you are not passionate and so bought in on.

Your mission and what you’re here to do, and the problems you’re here to solve, and what you stand for, and what you stand against, and you’re like wishy-washy on that, it’s gonna, it’s gonna stand out. It’s gonna be an issue. You have to be so clear and so aligned that the noise doesn’t even matter anymore because you’re so clear.

And here’s the thing. The only person who can give you that clarity and that alignment is you. You’re not gonna find it through somebody else. Now what people can do, what mentors can do and even in my mastermind group last week, it’s like people can ask you the right questions to get you to the right perspective, to be able to bring you into alignment.

So one of the things that my live event, embodied Marketing Live happening in January, one of my biggest themes is that we’re gonna look at everything you’ve done this last year and where is the misalignment? Like where are the things that we’re just doing? Because we think we have to do them. We don’t believe in them.

It is a different energetic charge misalignment compared to alignment because when you’re aligned, you’re unstoppable. You’re like, this is where I’m going. I believe in this. I’m all in. I’m obsessed, and you’re unstoppable. When you’re misaligned and you’re like, I’m just doing this ’cause I have to, and someone told me to do this and I don’t really wanna do this.

I don’t really believe in it. I don’t really believe in myself with it. It’s a totally different energy. So looking at where are you misaligned, and then what needs to shift to get you aligned and what brings you that electric energy to really feel fully aligned with where you’re going, who you’re becoming, why you’re doing it, what you have to do to get there.

And this is so important because next year, like guaranteed, there will be roadblocks, there will be challenges, there will be things that happen that. Are going to make you question if you should keep going or if you wanna do this, or if you should give up, or if you should stop. And you’ve gotta have alignment so strong that noise doesn’t matter anymore.

So that is a prediction I have misaligned and really just. Vanilla, like vanilla business owners of I’m only one foot in, one foot out and I don’t really know why I’m doing this, and I don’t have conviction and I don’t have passion. That’s very strong. It’s driven by, I just want the money, or I just wanna see the sales.

It’s not gonna fly. It will be highlighted so big. And that is what leads to burnout, overwhelm. Giving up, burning down the business. All of these procrastination, all of these things that happen come from misalignment, and you’re gonna get yourself in alignment going into the new year. And then you’re gonna have to do it a bunch more times again next year.

It’s constantly like a recalibration. All right, everybody. That was my fourth prediction of the series. Hopefully it gave you some things to think about. And of course, if you have not gotten your ticket to Embody Marketing Live, we are getting very close. I’m so excited. There’s gonna be new content, such good strategy, messaging, strategy, AI workshops.

But one of the big things is it’s pulling you outta your day to day. It’s pulling you out of your environment. And it’s getting you to see your business from up here instead of down here, and a different perspective, different questions, different thinking that is going to bring alignment, bring clarity, bring that passion back into your business.

So embodiedmarketing.com/live is how you can grab your ticket. If you have questions, message me and I’ll talk to you guys next time.