The 5 Warning Signs Every Business Owner Needs to Know
There’s a small island in the Pacific where, every February 15th, the residents paint “USA” on their chests, pick up bamboo rifles, and march in formation.
They’ve been doing it for over 70 years.
During World War II, US military forces used those islands to establish Pacific bases. For a few years, the locals watched as thousands of soldiers arrived, built airstrips, set up docks — and brought cargo. Food. Medicine. Clothing. An unimaginable abundance falling from the sky.
Then the war ended. The soldiers left. The planes stopped coming.
So the locals did the only rational thing they could think of: they tried to bring the planes back. They built replica airstrips out of bamboo. They carved wooden headsets. They marched the way the soldiers marched. They waited.
Historians call these communities “cargo cults.” The physicist Richard Feynman coined the phrase “cargo cult science” to describe the mistake they made: confusing cause and effect. The cargo didn’t come because of the airstrips. The airstrips were built because of the cargo. But without understanding why the miracle happened, the islanders repeated the rituals — and expected the miracle to follow.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: this happens in business all the time. Maybe it’s happening in yours.
How a Good Brand Becomes a Cult
Every successful brand earns its following the same way: by doing something that genuinely works, and doing it better than anyone else.
Innovation. Testing. Relentless focus on results. The willingness to try new things and discard the ones that don’t perform.
That’s how brands are built.
But success creates attachment. And attachment, unchecked, creates dogma.
The method that produced the results becomes the mission. The rituals that emerged from the innovation become the point of the whole enterprise. And slowly — gradually, then all at once — the organization stops asking “what works best?” and starts asking “what did we do before?”
When a leader does something because it’s “the way we’ve always done it,” they’re not running a business. They’re performing a rite.
That’s the moment a brand becomes a cult. And that’s the moment it starts to die.
The CrossFit Case Study
CrossFit is the clearest example I know.
In its early days, CrossFit was one of the most innovative fitness programs in the world — precisely because its founder, Greg Glassman, wasn’t loyal to any method. He borrowed from Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, gymnastics, rowing, sprinting. He tested constantly. He discarded whatever didn’t produce results. He was loyal to the science, not to any brand.
It worked spectacularly. CrossFit spread across the world.
But it also created a culture unlike anything else in fitness. CrossFitters developed their own language — WOD, AMRAP, Rx, “the Box.” Their own dress code. Their own dietary laws (first Zone, then Paleo). Their own annual pilgrimage (the Open). Their coach certifications followed a specific sequence, like clerical ordination.
You could pick a CrossFitter out at a busy airport. Not just by their appearance — by how they talked.
Greg Glassman knew exactly what he had built. He didn’t speak at Harvard Business School. He spoke at the Harvard School of Divinity.
A cult of fitness. And for a while, it was brilliant.
Then Glassman left. And CrossFit entered its dark age.
What Happens When the Founder Leaves
There’s a historical pattern here worth naming.
When Rome fell, the engineers, the traders, the scientists — the people who understood why the empire worked — scattered. What remained were the rituals. The trappings of a civilization, held by people who no longer understood the mechanisms behind them. Trade routes collapsed. Libraries fell silent. The great aqueducts stopped flowing.
Not from a single catastrophe. From a series of small surrenders: curiosity replaced by dogma. Testing replaced by tradition. Asking why replaced by insisting on what has always been.
That’s a dark age. And it doesn’t take centuries — it can happen to a company in a decade.
After Glassman left, CrossFit stopped evolving. The question stopped being “what produces the best results?” and became “what would Greg do?” — even as Greg himself moved on and built something new.
Here’s the sharpest example of this: a CrossFit Journal article once asked, “Why don’t we do Zone 2 training in CrossFit?” Zone 2 — low-intensity aerobic base work — has decades of compelling cardiovascular research behind it. Elite athletes, longevity researchers, and special operations forces have all adopted it.
The article’s own answer: “Because we’re CrossFit.”
That’s not science. That’s dogma. That’s a bamboo headset.
Meanwhile, Hyrox and MetFix arrived — doing what CrossFit used to do. Testing. Borrowing. Building around results rather than identity. They were early CrossFit, without the cult baggage.
And here’s the most telling detail of all: Greg Glassman could rebuild CrossFit right now. Under a new name, with new science. He’s proven he can. MetFix exists.
So why is everyone else still loyal to what Glassman thought twenty-five years ago, when Glassman himself has moved on?
Three More Cautionary Tales
CrossFit isn’t the only brand that followed this path. Here are three more — each with a precise, traceable timeline of when the cult replaced the company.
Kodak (1975–2012). Kodak invented digital photography. Their own engineer built the first digital camera in 1975. Leadership shelved it because it threatened their film revenue. For twenty years, they protected the ritual (film) instead of pursuing the mission (capturing memories). Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. The mission survived. The company didn’t.
Blackberry (2007–2016). Blackberry had one of the most devoted brand followings in tech history — their customers were literally called “Crackberry addicts.” The keyboard was their identity. When the iPhone launched in 2007, leadership dismissed it: our customers are professionals, they want real keyboards. That wasn’t strategy. That was a mantra. By 2016, Blackberry held less than 1% of the global smartphone market. The cult outlasted the company.
Blockbuster (2000–2010). In 2000, Netflix offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for $50 million. Blockbuster’s CEO laughed them out of the room. The Friday-night-store-visit ritual was their brand. They protected the experience instead of questioning whether it served the customer better than the alternative. Ten years later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Netflix is now worth $400 billion.
The pattern is identical in every case. Method confused for mission. Ritual replacing result. Innovation dismissed as threat.
The Five Warning Signs
Here’s how to spot it before it’s too late — in your competitors, and in yourself.
1. “Because that’s how we do it.” If the answer to “why?” is tradition rather than evidence, you’re repeating a rite, not running a strategy. Every practice in your business should answer the question: what result does this produce, and is it still the best way to get there?
2. Your followers are more fundamentalist than your founder. Greg Glassman moved on. Steve Sasson (who built Kodak’s digital camera) moved on. The people who built the thing figured out what to build next. The warning sign is when the followers become more attached to the old ideas than the person who had them.
3. Critics are treated as heretics, not feedback. Healthy companies argue internally. They debate. They test competing ideas and let the results decide. Cult brands treat disagreement as betrayal. When criticism triggers defensiveness rather than curiosity, the transformation is already well underway.
4. Innovation looks like going back. When a cult brand hits trouble, it doesn’t ask “what’s next?” — it asks “what did we used to do?” They rehire former executives. They “return to their roots.” They go retro. Heritage has its place. But if your response to disruption is to retreat to what worked twenty years ago, you’re not innovating. You’re praying for the planes to come back.
5. The company is waiting for a messiah. When a founder leaves, healthy companies ask: what do we build now? Cult companies enter suspended animation. They wait for someone — a new CEO, a returning executive, a specific hire — who will restore the old magic. The messiah is never coming. The old magic wasn’t magic. It was work. The work is still available. You just have to choose to do it.
What Good Brands Do Instead
Ask the best carpenter you know what brand of tools they use.
They’ll tell you: whatever serves the work. They’re not loyal to DeWalt or Milwaukee. They buy the best tool for the job, and when a better one exists, they switch. No ceremony. No grief. The work is the point — not the tool.
What typewriter does Stephen King use?
Doesn’t matter. Never mattered. He’s loyal to storytelling.
The best practitioners in any field are loyal to the craft. The tools are interchangeable. The method is always under review. What worked last year is a starting point, not a destination.
That orientation — constant testing, constant discarding, constant willingness to be wrong about what you thought worked — is science. It’s the Enlightenment. It’s what breaks a dark age.
The Current Test
Right now, there is one test that every business owner, educator, and leader is facing in real time.
AI.
The companies already working with AI — testing it, adapting it, finding what it does well and what it doesn’t — are going to have a staggering advantage in the next five years. Not because AI is magic. But because the willingness to test new things, combined with sustained effort, compounds.
The companies performing the old rites — hoping that what always worked will keep working, dismissing AI as a fad or a threat to what they’ve built — are already entering their dark ages.
This has happened before.
Thirty years ago, the internet arrived. The businesses that tested it early, figured out what worked, and adapted their client acquisition strategies to the new reality thrived. The businesses that relied on the Yellow Pages for new clients until the Yellow Pages were already dead? They didn’t get a second chance.
You’re watching that moment happen again. Right now. Today.
Someone in your company should be actively working with AI. Not reading about it. Not waiting to see how it develops. Working with it. Testing what it can do in your specific context. Finding where it makes you faster, better, more capable of serving your clients.
If that’s not happening, you’re building bamboo control towers.
The planes aren’t coming back.
But the new planes? They’re already in the air.
Chris Cooper is the host of BusinessIsGood, a podcast for Canadian small business owners. New episodes at businessisgood.com.
Website – https://businessisgood.com/
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