The Biggest Shift You Need To Make in 2026

Are you stuck in consumption mode, endlessly scrolling, listening, and learning, but not actually building anything that moves your practice forward?

In this episode, I'm challenging you to make the biggest shift of 2026: go from consumer to producer.

Most practitioners spend hours consuming content with zero strategy. You're reading articles, watching videos, and listening to podcasts... but you're not turning any of it into assets that serve your clients or grow your practice.

The truth? Consumption doesn't build practices. Production does.

I break down:

• Why strategic consumption is the only consumption worth your time
• How to use media leverage to stop repeating yourself endlessly
• The exact ratio shift you need to make in 2026
• Practical steps to turn every insight into content that works for you

If you want a fulfilling, leveraged practice this year, you need to stop being a consumption machine and start becoming a producer.

Let's make 2026 the year you finally build the practice you've been dreaming about.

Get my book The Fulfilled Practitioner for FREE: www.rbrar.com/tfpbook

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Set up a strategy call with me here: Schedule Here

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:32

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Fulfilled Practitioner. I'm Ricky Brahr, your host, and today we're diving into what I believe is the most critical shift you need to make in 2026 if you want to build a fulfilling and leveraged practice. Here's the reality: most of us were actually doing the complete opposite of what will move the needle for us. We're constantly consuming instead of producing. We're scrolling instead of creating, and we're learning instead of implementing. So let me be blunt the big change, if you want to see 2026 actually be different, this has to change. You have to go from a consumer to a producer. And we're gonna unpackage that a little bit, but I really want you to mull that over it and really think about it. You want to turn from a consumer to a producer. So I work with practitioners pretty much all day. And here's what I see happening almost with every practitioner when we first get started. They're overconsuming. So they wake up, they check their phone, they scroll Instagram or Facebook for just a few minutes to see what other people are posting. They might listen to a podcast on their drive to the office or if they're going for a walk during the day. They might read a few articles during lunch. And then the big one for me personally, they might watch a YouTube video and go down a YouTube rabbit hole and they might be doing it to stay current or feel current. But at the end of the day, they've consumed hours and hours and hours of content, but they haven't created a single asset that serves their clients, builds their brand, or grows their practice. So at the end of the day, you turn into a consumption machine. And guess what? So am I, by the way, like I want to get that out of the way. We all are consumption machines. But here's the problem: consumption doesn't build practices, production does. So the practitioners who are winning right now, the ones with leverage, fulfilling practices, they're actually not consuming more than you, or sometimes they might be. They're producing more than you. They've made the shift to go from consumer to producer, and that's exactly what we're gonna unpackage today for you. So in my book, The Fulfilled Practitioner, I talk a lot about the reality that 99% of people, they're consuming some form of media all day long, from podcasts to Instagram meals to YouTube videos. We're just constantly consuming. And here's what's absolutely wild. If you know Gary Vanderchuk, he says that attention is the most valuable currency in the world. Everyone's attention is focused on media, which means if you're not creating media, you're kind of invisible. You're letting other practitioners capture the attention of your ideal client. But here's the deeper issue I want you to understand. Most practitioners consume content, but they do it with zero strategy. You're not consuming to fuel production, you're consuming to feel productive. So I'll repeat that. You're not consuming to fuel production, you're consuming to feel productive, to feel like you're doing something, to feel like you're learning. A lot of different words for this and terms for this. Uh, one of the ones that comes to mind is productive procrastination. That's essentially what this is, right? If you're learning without implementation, guess what? I hate to say it, it's just entertainment. Think back to going to university or college or even high school. When teachers taught you something, it wasn't taught to you so you could just consume that something, whether they were having you read a book as a classroom and a novel as a classroom, and you had to actually do something with it afterward, they weren't just make you read the book and then honor system, you've learned and you move forward. They'd quiz you on it. You'd have to write an essay on it, you'd have to actually implement what you learned from that book to turn it into something meaningful. So we have to get out of this loop where we're constantly just entertaining ourselves. We're giving ourselves dopamine hits. So think about your week. How many hours did you spend consuming content? So again, podcasts, courses, social media, YouTube videos, books, webinars, this exact podcast episode you're listening to right now. Now ask yourself, how much did you create this week? How many social media posts did you publish? How many emails did you send? How many pieces of content did you produce that could actually become an asset for your practice? I'm willing to bet that that ratio is way off. And I'll be nice here, maybe it's 10 hours of consumption to one hour of creation, maybe, but most likely it's even worse than that. So for some of you, it might even be 100 hours of consumption to only one hour of creation. And that's the problem. You're constantly in input mode, you're not in output mode. So, what's the shift that we have to make in 2026? It's this you need to start consuming with intention and producing with leverage. So let me break this down. First, you consume with intention. So stop mindlessly scrolling, stop watching random videos, stop listening to podcasts just to stay current. Instead, change this consumption to something strategic. So when you consume content, ask yourself, can I use this in my practice somehow? What insight from this can I share with my audience? What lesson can I teach my clients based on this? Every piece of content you consume should fuel your production. It should give you ideas for social posts, podcast episodes, email newsletters, client resources. The list goes on and on and on. So when I listen to a podcast or read a book, I'm constantly taking notes. Uh, in I love to use this app called Google Keep, uh, and not to remember everything, but to capture ideas that I can turn into content. So one good podcast I listen to can give me five to ten things that I can then either put into my newsletter, turn it into a social media post, or add it to a client handout or something along the lines of that. So that's strategic consumption. So right off the bat, I don't want you to think consuming is bad. The message today isn't to stop consuming, it's to consume with intention. And the other thing I highlighted there, just as an aside, there is ideas are very important. Ideas are our lifeblood. They're what allow us to create more things. So one of my favorite quotes on idea generation comes from the legendary music producer Rick Rubin, and he has an amazing book called The Creative Uh Act, and it's how you actually cultivate creativity and come up with ideas. And he says this if you have an idea you're excited about and you don't bring it to life, it's not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. So that just blew my mind because so many times an idea has come to me, I did not act on it, and then somebody else is talking about it or creating it into something useful just a few days later. I'm sure that's happened to you, and then you're kicking yourself. Like, why didn't I do that? And that's because the idea is time had come, but you didn't capture that idea. So when you consume with intention and you have something that allows you to capture ideas at the same time, now you have a content library, essentially. You have something to pull from all of the time. And I teach this in my school community. I have the ultimate productivity program in there, and that teaches you my exact idea capturing system, which has helped many people really start to capture ideas, but you just need to create this one degree shift and it will do you so much good. So the first part of all of this was consume with intention. The second part is produce with leverage. This is where we bring in one of the most powerful concepts I talk about for my book, and that's leverage. And there's a form of leverage called media leverage. So media leverage means you create something once and it works for you over and over again. So just like this podcast episode, or if this was a YouTube video or a social media post or an email or a client resource guide, the list goes on and on and on. I create this once. Now, if 10 of you listen to this, a hundred of you listen to this, a thousand, a million of you listen to this, I don't have to repeat this myself to each and every single person that wants to hear it. This is something that goes out. I make it once and now it's leveraged. So that's what media leverage is. You don't have to repeat yourself to a million people a million times. Say it once and it might reach thousands, maybe millions over time. And that's what I really love about this form of leverage. You don't actually have to stay stuck. Just think about your practice right now. How many times do you repeat the same thing over and over? Explanations, or here's why gluten causes gut issues, or why sleep is critical for hormone health, or why stress management isn't always so simple. So you're repeating yourself over and over in one-on-one appointments, and it actually exhausts you and it's inefficient because you're repeating yourself. Your client doesn't know you're repeating yourself, but that's something that you might not have the same excitement about anything more when you do say it. So just think about this form of leverage. And what if you recorded one video explaining your approach to gut health? Or what if you wrote one email series on stress management? Or what if you created one resource guide on sleep optimization? Now that piece of content becomes an asset for you. It works for you while you sleep, pun intended, serves your clients without requiring your time, and it positions you as an authority. So that's media leverage. And it's one of the most powerful forms of leverage we have access to as practitioners. So here's my challenge for you in 2026. We need to flip this consumption-production ratio. Instead of 10 hours of consumption and one hour of creation, I want you to aim for three hours of consumption and maybe seven hours of intentional production or any way of flipping it. You want that production side to be higher than the consumption side. And that's where you start to win this game long term. So here's some practical ways to do this. The first thing you should try to do is batch your consumption. You don't want to scroll through every spare minute in the day. You want to set aside time to consume content. So this is really interesting because sometimes we feel guilty. You might open up Instagram when you had 10 minutes, and after the 10 minutes are up and you got to get to your next appointment, you're like, oh, I should have used that time more effectively. Maybe I should have just popped outside for some sunlight or gone for a quick walk or something like that. So if you plan the consumption into your calendar and you know what you're also going to be consuming at that time, whether it's an article, a book, a podcast, uh, you scrolling on social media, now you won't feel guilty about it either. And you'll have that intention of finding ideas to create from. So batch your consumption into times. The other big pro tip is turn every insight into content. So if you read something valuable, create a post about it. If you learn something new, record a quick video. If you have a breakthrough with a client, share that lesson with their permission, of course. But this lets you stay in a flow state and ideas will come to you. And many, many things will come to you that if you weren't in this mind state, probably would have just gone right over your head and you would have not been paying attention to them. The other practical tip is to build your content library. So start recording videos that answer some of the most common client questions you get. So you could create email templates for your most frequent explanations. You build resources that you can use over and over and over. And then the big, big, big takeaway and the big practical way to get this done is commit to consistency, not perfection. You don't need to create masterpieces every single time. You do need to create regularly. So a social media post a day, a podcast a week, an email to your list, maybe a newsletter every two weeks or monthly or weekly, whatever resonates with your calendar, but that consistency is very important. So the practitioners who win aren't the ones with perfect content. They're the ones who show up consistently. So here's my vision. Here's what happens when you make this shift. You stop feeling like you're drowning in information and you actually start feeling like you're building something meaningful. Your content becomes an asset that attracts clients, builds trust, and positions you as an authority. Your practice becomes more leverage because you're not constantly repeating yourself. You're directing people to the resources you've already created. And you finally break free from the trap of being a consumer and you really step into this role as a leader, an educator, and a producer in the field. So this is how you build a fulfilling high impact practice in 2026. Not by consuming more, it's by producing more. So my question for you is simple: are you going to stay a consumer or are you ready to become a producer? If you're ready to make this shift, start today, right now. Take one insight that you learned from this episode or any of the previous episodes and turn it into a piece of content. Think about your clients who could benefit from my teaching today. Even people who are going through health journeys, a lot of them are consumption machines. So this is where they might watch 50 videos on the best nutrition and diet strategy to lose weight, but then they haven't walked even a thousand steps. So the first step is often really, really easy. So that's something that is uh something I learned the hard way. The first step is often the simplest, and we we oversimplify that first step. So maybe your first step today is to write an email, write a social post, make a video of yourself, just anything at all. Please produce. That is the big take home point. And if you start to make this one shift, you will have an amazing 2026. I'll see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed this.