The End of Bullshit Businesses
Welcome To The New Economy
The funny money era is over. Now we find out who was actually building and who was just playing with Monopoly money. Welcome to the real economy. The cheap capital party is done. The zero-interest, VC-fueled, growth-at-all-costs fantasyland? Dead. There are no more free rides, no more “We’ll figure out monetization later,” and no more excuses for keeping bloated teams afloat with investor cash and hope. We’re moving back to the basics now. Real businesses. Real people. Real profit. And guess what? Most companies aren’t ready for it.
Why? Because they’ve been lying to themselves for years. Propped up by an artificial economy that rewarded scale over substance, noise over execution, and complexity over fucking profit. Now the tide’s gone out and it’s slowly exposing everything. But the funny part is that most of the companies struggling right now aren’t even failing because the market changed or because their product suddenly became irrelevant. They’re failing because they’re bloated. Bloated with unnecessary roles. Bloated with performative teams that exist to check boxes and “collaborate” but not to drive profit. Bloated with seven-person “strategy” meetings that produce nothing but “let’s circle back” responses and paralysis. Bloated with “culture” hires, DEI consultants, marketing hires that don’t understand advertising, wellness ambassadors, and vibes managers. Bloated with cowardice.
Because that’s what it really comes down to. Cowardice. A fear of hard decisions. A culture of soft leadership that confuses being liked with being effective. Let’s call it what it is: Most businesses aren’t full of anything real they’re actually just full of shit. They’ve been layering headcount on top of inefficiencies, building job roles that protect feelings instead of drive outcomes, and dragging out decisions because no one wants to be the “bad guy.” Here’s what that looks like in the wild…You have a marketing team of 9 but no one can tell you who’s responsible for actual revenue and distribution. Your product roadmap is driven by consensus, not customer data. You’ve got a “Chief People Officer” but can’t hit payroll without taking on debt. You’ve got departments built around optics, not output.
In a funny money market with VC money shooting out your ass like rainbows, you could get away with that. When money was free and growth was king, nobody cared about efficiency. It was all about headcount, valuation, and looking good to the competition. THE COMPETITION. But now? Now we’re back to meritocracy.
The real economy doesn’t care about your team-building retreats or how “collaborative” your org chart looks. It cares about one thing…Are you profitable? Yes or no. And if the answer is no? You’ve got two options…1. Keep pretending your bloat is “scalable infrastructure.” or 2. Get honest, get lean, and start cutting the fat. Fast.
Because bloated companies don’t usually die with a bang. They die slowly. Quietly. Rotted from the inside out. While leaders delay the hard decisions and tell themselves, “Just one more quarter and we’ll turn it around.” But it doesn’t turn around. Because bloat never fixes itself. It feeds on fear, grows in silence, and calcifies until it’s too big to cut without killing the host. This isn’t a downturn. It’s a reality check. And if you’ve built a team that only works when capital is cheap, your business isn’t built for reality.
So, stop asking if the market is coming back. Start asking if you’ve got the guts to run a real business. One that makes money. One that moves fast. One where roles are tied to outcomes not vibes. One where you don’t need to hide behind meetings and memos to avoid making a fucking decision.
This isn’t cruelty. This is clarity. The kind of clarity that only shows up when the delusions run dry. Because in the real economy, only the lean survive. The rest? They die trying to protect their feelings.
Elizabeth Duffy