I’ve watched people freak out about “dying industries” for years. Journalism, retail, taxis, travel agencies, record labels, local advertising, law firms, real estate brokerages – every few years another sector gets declared dead on arrival. And every time, a subset of players quietly keeps making money, often more than before.
If you’re scared your industry is falling apart, the very first thing you should do is stop reading the macro obituaries and start spying on your competitors – especially the ones who are obviously still winning.
Because if even one company (or solo operator) is thriving in the exact same market that’s supposedly “impossible” right now, the industry isn’t dead.Your strategy is.
The “Someone Is Winning” Rule
Whenever I coach founders or freelancers who say “there’s no money left in X anymore,” I give them a dead-simple assignment: find three competitors (big or small) who are clearly doing well right now, then document exactly what they’re doing differently.
Nine times out of ten they come back wide-eyed. The winners are almost never doing anything magical or unethical. They’re just optimized in ways the complainers haven’t bothered to copy yet.
Examples I’ve seen in the last 18 months alone:
A local print shop owner thought “print is dead” until he found three shops within 50 miles quietly doing $2–4M a year focusing on packaging, wide-format, and same-day turnaround. He copied their pricing tiers and lead-gen playbook and 3x’d revenue in 14 months.
A travel agent in the Caribbean was ready to shut down post-COVID until she discovered a husband-and-wife team on another island pulling seven figures selling hyper-niche luxury itineraries to repeat clients. She adopted their WhatsApp-first sales process and private-villa partnerships and saved her business.
A small-town real estate agent thought Zillow killed the game, then found three agents in neighboring counties closing 70–100 transactions a year with zero ad spend by running hyper-local YouTube channels and email newsletters. Eighteen months later he’s one of them.Same shrinking (or “shrunk”) market. Dramatically different outcomes.
Most Industries Are Big Enough for Multiple Winners – Even When They’re Shrinking
People love the phrase “winner-take-all” but it’s rare outside of pure network-effect platforms (think Google search, Facebook 2010, Uber in a specific city at surge scale). In almost every other industry, the pie can be getting smaller and you can still grab a much bigger slice than you have now.Think about it:
The U.S. ad agency market has been “shrinking” for a decade if you listen to trade pubs. Yet WPromote, Tinuiti, and a dozen other independent agencies are doing $100M–$500M+ with fat margins.
Vinyl records were supposedly obliterated by streaming. Global vinyl revenue is now over $1.4 billion and growing double digits, supporting hundreds of profitable pressing plants and indie labels.
Independent bookstores were “killed” by Amazon. Today there are more indie bookstores in the U.S. than there were in 2009.Shrinking total dollars ≠ no dollars left for you.
Optimization Beats Waiting for a New IndustryWaiting for the “next big thing” or trying to pivot into AI/crypto/green energy because your current industry feels hard is usually far riskier than ruthlessly copying and improving what the current winners already figured out.The winners have already done the expensive experimentation. They’ve found the pricing model that still works, the distribution channel that hasn’t been saturated yet, the customer segment that still has budget, the offer that cuts through the noise.Your job isn’t to invent a new game.
Your job is to become the best player in the existing game.
Action Steps (Do This Today)
Make a private list of 10 competitors or peers in your exact niche. Then ruthlessly stalk their public activity for 2–3 hours: what are they selling and at what price, where are they getting traffic or clients, what do their customer reviews say they love (and hate), what do they repeat in their marketing that you’re not saying?
Once you’ve done that, pick the 3–5 things the top performers all do that you don’t. Implement one of them this week. Then the next one next week.You don’t need a grand strategy. You need a better scorecard than the people who are panicking.
If someone, somewhere, is still making good money doing roughly what you do, the ceiling hasn’t collapsed.The floor just got higher.
Raise your game to the new floor and you’ll be fine. Most people won’t bother. That’s why there’s still room.
