As a leader, you’ll feel it well before you understand it. It shows up in different forms, but usually it starts with progress slowing down. Projects stall and decisions take longer than they should. Everyone truly works hard, but everything moves with an increasing amount of friction.

It feels like the team is trying, but something, somewhere, is still holding the work back.

When this happens, most leaders blame the slowdown on “effort” or a “lack of motivation.” They assume people are either distracted or overloaded. They also assume that their team needs stronger time management or better focus. The real cause, though, is much simpler.

Decisions slow down when people aren’t clear on who decides what.

Related: Want to Scale? Streamline Your Decision-Making Process in 3 Steps

When ownership is unclear, decisions will stall

When ownership is unclear, even the most routine decisions bounce between people. One team member wants to move something forward, but they hesitate. They check with another person who also hesitates. Then that person checks with a manager. The manager, meanwhile, asks someone else for input.

No one is clear or sure where the authority sits, so decisions continue to sit.

This hesitation looks extremely harmless in the moment, and it often sounds like one or more of the following:

• “Let me check with them first.“

• “I’m not sure this is my call.“

• “Should we run this by someone else?“

• “Let’s discuss it in the next meeting.“

Each sentence may seem small on the surface, but together they slow your entire business.

A story that reveals the pattern

I remember a founder I supported who went through this exact experience.

Their team was incredibly smart and also committed. They had good systems, met often and worked hard. But despite all this, decisions continued to drag. Every delay slowed growth, so understandably, they wanted the team to move quickly. They just couldn’t understand why simple decisions turned into long discussions.

Here’s the fix we implemented.

We first mapped how decisions flowed, and it soon became clear that no one, not a single person, knew who owned the key calls. The reason the team kept checking with each other was that they didn’t want to overstep.

The result was that decisions bounced around until the founder stepped in. The team wasn’t slow, but they were certainly unsure.

Once we named the pattern and clarified ownership, everything changed. Decisions moved faster, and people felt more confident.

Work regained momentum.

Related: Does Your Business Feel Stuck? Here’s the Mindset Shift That Will Move It Forward.

Why do teams fall into this pattern?

This pattern shows up in every growing organization.

Leaders assume slow decisions come from a lack of effort or commitment, when in reality, slow decisions come from a lack of certainty. When people don’t know or aren’t sure whether a decision belongs to them, they naturally hesitate. That simple hesitation repeats across the team and eventually slows the entire business.

It’s a fact that as companies grow, decision rights often get blurred. A team that may have once worked closely together now has new roles, new layers and often, new responsibilities. What used to be obvious becomes uncertain, and no one notices the shift until everything takes longer and they’re impacted.

The uncertainty creates hidden costs that many leaders don’t see immediately.

• Projects take longer than originally planned

• Work piles up between stages

• Leaders become default decision-makers for far too many issues

• Teams gradually lose confidence in their ability to act

• Momentum fades in the most critical moments

By the time the slowdown becomes painful or visible, the leak has already been active for weeks and maybe even months.

Why slow decisions feel “normal”

Most teams I’ve supported don’t see this as an execution leak. They see it as normal and assume the friction is just part of their growth. They assume the business will always run this way and that the answer is more effort.

But the truth is different. Slow decisions aren’t a sign of growth, but actually a sign that people need clarity.

Without clear decision ownership, even small choices become group discussions. When that happens (and it often does), teams start to rely on meetings to compensate for uncertainty. Leaders end up involved in far more decisions than they should, and people wait for approvals that may not be necessary.

Interestingly, the organization adapts to the leak without realizing it, and they move more slowly, think more slowly and act more slowly.

This becomes the new normal, and no one questions it until the cost becomes impossible to ignore anymore.

The small shift that changes everything

Here’s a simple way to break the pattern.

1. Select just one important decision that keeps slowing down.

2. Name the person who owns that decision from start to finish.

3. Make the ownership clear, simple and direct.

4. Tell the owner they can make the call without waiting for approval unless the decision affects something specific and predefined.

This may feel small, but it’ll shift your entire system.

Once one decision flows cleanly, others begin to follow. People start to gain confidence, and they see that decisions don’t have to bounce between people. Best of all, they learn that clarity creates speed.

You don’t need a complex system to fix this.

You need one clear rule:

If a decision belongs to you, make it. If it affects someone else’s area, bring them in early, not late.

Teams feel lighter when they’re clear about how decisions work in their organization, and leaders feel less pressure. Work moves with more rhythm, and momentum returns.

Related: What Leaders Must Understand About Decision-Making in the Age of AI

Slow decisions — a common execution leak

Slow decisions are one of the five execution leaks that show up in organizations at every stage of growth.

Each leak slows progress in a different way, but this one is often the first to appear. If you’re a leader who can relate to this, then here’s your opportunity to fix it. I know from my work with organizations of varying sizes around the globe that leaders who fix this leak early protect their team from unnecessary friction and give their business room to move faster and grow.

As momentum returns, people feel more capable and stop waiting and start acting. They also naturally bring more energy to their work as they regain confidence. They’ll feel the difference long before the results show up on a dashboard.

The interesting thing about speed is that it isn’t created by pressure or effort but by clarity.

When your people know what they can decide and where their work fits, they’ll move faster without working harder. That’s the shift you need as a leader if you want your team to grow with confidence instead of strain.

If your team works hard but still feels slow, the issue likely isn’t effort but an execution leak. Once you see it, you can fix it. And once you fix it, everything else moves with more ease.

As a leader, you’ll feel it well before you understand it. It shows up in different forms, but usually it starts with progress slowing down. Projects stall and decisions take longer than they should. Everyone truly works hard, but everything moves with an increasing amount of friction.

It feels like the team is trying, but something, somewhere, is still holding the work back.

Meta is planning to increase prices for its popular virtual reality (VR) headsets, according to a leaked internal memo obtained by Business Insider this week.

VR leaders Gabriel Aul and Ryan Cairns wrote in the memo that Meta has to change its business model for long-term growth. They said that the company will raise device prices “going forward” without specifying exactly how much prices will increase. It’s unclear if prices will go up for current headsets or for future models.

“Our devices will be more premium in price going forward, but we’ll have a healthier business to anchor on and free ourselves from feeling existential about any singular device’s success,” Aul and Cairns wrote in the memo, which they shared with staff last week.

Related: This Meta Product Unexpectedly Tripled in Revenue Over the Past Year

The Meta Quest 3 VR headset retails for $499.99, while its budget option retails at $299.99. The headsets are popular, with reports that Meta sold over one million Quest 3 devices as of last year. The previous models, the Quest 1 and Quest 2, sold nearly 20 million units.

Meta also remains the undisputed global leader in VR, even as the market itself shrinks due to weak demand. According to research released earlier this year from global intelligence firm Counterpoint, Meta dominated the global VR headset market in 2024, with a market share of 77%. However, the global VR headset market fell 12% in 2024, marking the third straight year of declines due to diminished consumer demand.

Aul and Cairns also wrote in the memo that Meta may slow the pace of new hardware releases and focus more on delivering “world-class” software experiences that match the quality of its devices. “We [may] ship new hardware at a slower cadence going forward,” the memo read.

Related: Apple Is Reportedly Developing AI Smart Glasses to Compete with Meta and Google

The leaders also sought to soothe staff fears by reassuring them that the division remains focused on VR, even in the face of budget cuts. A Bloomberg report last week revealed that Meta plans to cut the budget of Reality Labs, the section in charge of Meta’s VR hardware and AI glasses, by up to 30%. The division has lost $73 billion since the start of 2021. Substantial cuts would likely mean layoffs as early as January, according to Bloomberg’s sources.

“We’re committed to VR for the long haul so we need to align our business model and roadmap to an approach that will make this possible,” Aul and Cairns wrote in the memo.

Meta stock is up over 8% year-to-date. The company, which operates the largest social media platforms in the world by number of users, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is valued at $1.6 trillion.

Ready to explore everything on Entrepreneur.com? December is your free pass to Entrepreneur+. Enjoy complete access, no strings attached. Claim your free month

Meta is planning to increase prices for its popular virtual reality (VR) headsets, according to a leaked internal memo obtained by Business Insider this week.

VR leaders Gabriel Aul and Ryan Cairns wrote in the memo that Meta has to change its business model for long-term growth. They said that the company will raise device prices “going forward” without specifying exactly how much prices will increase. It’s unclear if prices will go up for current headsets or for future models.

This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features San Francisco, California-based entrepreneur Colby Mancasola, 54. Mancasola used Kickstarter to launch his Calabrian chili hot sauce brand MOTO as a side hustle earlier this year. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Want to read more stories like this? Subscribe to Money Makers, our free newsletter packed with creative side hustle ideas and successful strategies. Sign up here.

What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?
I was senior director of digital strategy and insights at a luxury home goods brand when I launched MOTO as a side hustle. I have since left and am consulting part-time while I grow the brand. I am also in an indie rock band from the ’90s called Knapsack that still tours and plays festivals sporadically.

Related: This 31-Year-Old Ex-Microsoft Worker Used $3,000 to Start a Side Hustle — Now the Product’s in Erewhon and Eyeing $1 Million in Revenue

When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?
I launched a Kickstarter campaign in February of 2025 and then went live to the public in June.

I had always loved the unique characteristics of Calabrian chilis and how they enhanced Italian food. But it seemed outdated that they came in a jar and required a spoon, which also led to me destroying countless tablecloths and shirts.

I wondered why this flavor bomb was trapped in an inconvenient jar and why America’s favorite food (pizza) didn’t have its own hot sauce when other cuisines had several. It seemed like a no-brainer to create a squeeze-bottle version given sriracha’s popularity. But no one had done it yet.

As I started testing recipes, I realized that MOTO works well beyond Italian food. For instance, it is great on egg dishes, avocado toast and sandwiches. It is really more of a flavor-enhancing condiment than a mouth-numbing hot sauce. Calabrian chilis have a deep, warm heat that is new and exciting to a lot of people. And MOTO delivers that in an easy squeeze bottle.

Related: This Couple’s Spicy Side Hustle Is About to Hit $15,000 a Month: ‘Small Things Feel Huge’

What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money/investment did it take to launch?
I spent about a year refining the recipe and researching ingredient sourcing, packaging, legal requirements and bottling. During that same time, I was refining the brand positioning in a deck that I would share with friends and family. Then, I raised about $12,000 through Kickstarter. While that may not sound like a lot of money, the response was really overwhelming and empowering. The reassurance that I wasn’t crazy was just as important as the capital.

Are there any free or paid resources that have been especially helpful for you in starting and running this business?
Wholesale platforms like Faire and Airgoods allowed me to get into specialty retail shops across the country right out of the gate. And now MOTO is carried in over 30 states. The margins are much slimmer than direct-to-consumer, of course, but I think of it as a branding opportunity as much as I do a revenue source. It has connected me with like-minded independent business owners with whom I feel camaraderie and want to support.

Most days, something cool happens that makes me feel like I’m building something special.

When it comes to this specific business, what is something you’ve found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for, but likely aren’t?
As a one-man band, the mode switching can make my head spin. I’m constantly toggling between designer, marketer, accountant, salesperson, customer service representative and hauler of boxes. Some days I feel like I’m doing them all relatively poorly. But most days, something cool happens that makes me feel like I’m building something special.

Related: She Built Airplane Wings for a Living — Now Her Surprising Side Hustle Brings In $50,000 a Month

How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? What does growth and revenue look like now?
My goal for the first year has always been to build the brand, find my people and learn as much as possible. While all revenue has been reinvested to date, I will say that it started to pick up steam as the holiday rush hit in early fall.

My goals for 2026 are to pick up some regional distributors on the West Coast, grow DTC through markets and collaborations, establish an event or physical presence of some kind in San Francisco, get MOTO HQ out of my house, and have revenue come in at $120,000 to $180,000 for the year. I’m also working with my co-packer to lower costs and establish a more consistent cadence.

I think I approach growth differently because of my background in independent music. I want to build an audience organically with MOTO. One that is passionate about the product and will stick with it long term. In that analogy, national chains are like major record labels. I’m not opposed to working with them eventually. But I want to come to them with some leverage and work together in ways that I’m comfortable with.

Related: This 27-Year-Old’s ‘Chewy, Bouncy’ Side Hustle Turned Full-Time Business Made $100,000 in Month 1

Trust your instincts, do things your own way and be nice to people.

How much time do you spend working on your business on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?
In the era of phones, social media and constant connectivity, I don’t really know how to answer that question. But it is different because MOTO is a passion project. I’m always thinking about it because it is a creative outlet and extension of myself. That’s a very different feeling than receiving an angry text from your corporate boss at 3 a.m.

What do you enjoy most about running this business?
My two favorite things about MOTO are complete opposites. On one hand, I love the creative aspects: The design, brand building, etc. On the other hand, I love the day-to-day routine: The packing of boxes, delivering to local shops and talking sports with the postman. Norman Rockwell stuff.

Related: My Coffee-Fueled Idea Brought In $200K on Kickstarter — Then Became a 9-Figure Business

What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
I’m no expert. I toured in an indie rock band for most of my 20s, then worked for other people for decades before striking out on my own with MOTO this year. With that said, my advice about anything is usually to trust your instincts, do things your own way and be nice to people.

This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features San Francisco, California-based entrepreneur Colby Mancasola, 54. Mancasola used Kickstarter to launch his Calabrian chili hot sauce brand MOTO as a side hustle earlier this year. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Want to read more stories like this? Subscribe to Money Makers, our free newsletter packed with creative side hustle ideas and successful strategies. Sign up here.

High Touch-High Tech stands out as a rewarding investment opportunity in the fast-growing youth enrichment and STEM education sector that’s a low-overhead, home-based model with multiple revenue streams. With more than 30 years of operating history and programs now delivered in 11 countries to over 16 million children annually, the brand offers investors a mature, scalable system rather than an untested concept.

Key Features of a High Touch-High Tech franchise:

• Mobile Business Model: High Touch-High Tech operates without the need for a physical location, significantly reducing overhead costs.

• Comprehensive Training and Support: Franchisees receive extensive training and support.

• Low Initial Investment: The total investment starts from $63,250 with a minimum liquid capital requirement of $39,500.

• Multiple Revenue Streams: High Touch-High Tech offers diverse services such as in-school workshops, after-school programs, summer camps, birthday parties, and holiday camps.

As aHigh Touch-High Tech franchisee, you’ll benefit from:

• Growing Demand for STEM Education: High Touch-High Tech addresses a critical need by making science education fun and accessible for children.

• Social Impact: Franchisees contribute to their communities by fostering curiosity and a love for science in young learners.

• Scalable Business Opportunity: The mobile model allows franchisees to expand into multiple territories or grow their client base without significant additional cost.

With its low-cost entry point, strong support system, and focus on impactful education, High Touch-High Tech offers a rewarding opportunity for entrepreneurs passionate about making a difference while running a profitable business.

High Touch-High Tech stands out as a rewarding investment opportunity in the fast-growing youth enrichment and STEM education sector that’s a low-overhead, home-based model with multiple revenue streams. With more than 30 years of operating history and programs now delivered in 11 countries to over 16 million children annually, the brand offers investors a mature, scalable system rather than an untested concept.

Key Features of a High Touch-High Tech franchise:

• Mobile Business Model: High Touch-High Tech operates without the need for a physical location, significantly reducing overhead costs.

• Comprehensive Training and Support: Franchisees receive extensive training and support.

• Low Initial Investment: The total investment starts from $63,250 with a minimum liquid capital requirement of $39,500.

• Multiple Revenue Streams: High Touch-High Tech offers diverse services such as in-school workshops, after-school programs, summer camps, birthday parties, and holiday camps.

As aHigh Touch-High Tech franchisee, you’ll benefit from:

• Growing Demand for STEM Education: High Touch-High Tech addresses a critical need by making science education fun and accessible for children.

• Social Impact: Franchisees contribute to their communities by fostering curiosity and a love for science in young learners.

• Scalable Business Opportunity: The mobile model allows franchisees to expand into multiple territories or grow their client base without significant additional cost.

With its low-cost entry point, strong support system, and focus on impactful education, High Touch-High Tech offers a rewarding opportunity for entrepreneurs passionate about making a difference while running a profitable business.

Dylan Field found out the hard way that being a good leader doesn’t necessarily mean being a good manager.

The Figma CEO assumed that because he had always been a leader, he was automatically ready to manage — only to learn that management was its own separate skill set.

On an episode of the First Time Founders podcast that aired earlier this week, Field explained that he “definitely did not know” how to be a good manager at first. Before he co-founded Figma, a $19.45 billion design company used by 95% of the Fortune 500, he interned at companies like LinkedIn and Flipboard. He had never been a manager before co-founding the company in 2012. Figma now has a 1,600-person workforce.

“The good news is if you’re a first-time manager, it’s all very learnable,” Field said on the podcast. “It’ll feel like muscle memory eventually.”

Related: Instead of Cuts, This $28 Billion Dollar Design Company’s Response to AI Is To Hire More People

Field listed the managerial basics: knowing where his team was, running effective one-on-ones, building relationships, setting clear goals and holding people accountable.

“I think I was bad at all of it,” Field said.

Investors also added to the pressure by voicing concerns about Figma quickly getting a product to market, he said. Field co-founded Figma in 2012, but it took the company three years to ship a beta product. Opening up the product to the public took another year, and adding a paid plan took until 2017, marking five years from idea to full product launch.

“Please don’t take away that you should take five years to launch a company,” Field said on the podcast. “You’ll be dead. We are the outlier, from a different time.”

Related: These Billionaire Founders Famously Hate Being a CEO: ‘Like Staring Into the Abyss and Eating Glass’

Field said that what was “tremendously helpful” for growth was hiring the company’s first manager, Sho Kuwamoto, who started as Figma’s director of engineering in 2015. Field “learned a ton” from Kuwamoto about managerial skills.

Over time, Field got better at management, practicing skills like clear goal-setting, until they became instinctual.

Field’s experience is similar to other founders, like Dustin Moskovitz, who have had to learn how to effectively manage employees. Moskovitz co-founded Facebook and Asana, leading Asana for 15 years as CEO. In an interview in October, he said that the CEO role was “exhausting” and didn’t suit his introverted personality.

“By personality, I don’t like to manage teams, and it wasn’t my intention when we started Asana,” he explained. “Then one thing led to another, and I was CEO.”

Related: Airbnb’s CEO Says He Personally Manages 40 to 50 Employees as Direct Reports

Ready to explore everything on Entrepreneur.com? December is your free pass to Entrepreneur+. Enjoy complete access, no strings attached. Claim your free month.

Dylan Field found out the hard way that being a good leader doesn’t necessarily mean being a good manager.

The Figma CEO assumed that because he had always been a leader, he was automatically ready to manage — only to learn that management was its own separate skill set.

Most companies focus heavily on customers, revenue growth and product execution. The balance sheet, for many, has long been treated as a compliance requirement — something revisited during audits, financing rounds or year-end reviews. That dynamic is now shifting. The balance sheet is becoming a strategic instrument, and tokenization is accelerating this transition at a pace few businesses fully recognize.

Tokenization is the process of converting real-world assets into secure digital representations. What makes it transformative is not the digital form itself, but how these digital assets behave. They can move faster, settle instantly, integrate into automated systems and generate yield in ways that legacy financial infrastructure cannot support. This transition is not built on hype; it mirrors previous industry-wide upgrades such as the shift from paperwork to ERP systems or from manual banking to online transactions. Tokenization represents the next stage of functional modernization.

Related: The $16 Trillion Revolution That’s Unlocking the Next Generation of Finance

How tokenization changes corporate finance

When an asset is tokenized, it becomes programmable. It can be transferred instantly, priced continuously, or pledged as collateral without intermediaries. It can carry embedded audit trails that simplify reporting. It can be governed by rules written directly into smart contracts.

These capabilities transform how companies manage capital. Instead of waiting for settlement delays or slow release of funds, capital becomes fluid. Instead of relying on retrospective reporting, companies gain real-time visibility. Assets that once remained idle between review cycles can now generate yield continuously without losing liquidity. The balance sheet becomes a living system rather than a static snapshot.

The business implications are straightforward: faster liquidity cycles, more transparent financial operations, and more efficient capital deployment.

Yet, despite this clear potential, adoption has been slower than the technology would suggest.

The market’s bottleneck: A lack of institutional-grade tokenized products

The primary barrier to adoption is not technological readiness but product availability. Today’s tokenized financial markets still offer a limited range of instruments that meet the standards companies require. Any financial product considered for the balance sheet must satisfy expectations around liquidity, regulatory clarity, custody options, risk classification, accounting treatment and audit readiness. Only a small selection of tokenized instruments currently meets all of these criteria.

For tokenization to become part of everyday balance-sheet management, businesses need a wider universe of safe and familiar options — the same breadth found in traditional finance. That includes tokenized equivalents of money market funds, short-duration government securities, regulated credit portfolios, treasury yield instruments, carbon units and other forms of working capital. Until these products are widely available, tokenization will remain underutilized relative to its potential.

Related: The Tokenization Revolution: Reshaping How We Own and Trade Assets

Tokenization requires a complete industry ecosystem

Tokenization is often described as a standalone innovation, but it is far more accurate to view it as an ecosystem. Companies will only adopt tokenized finance at scale when every part of that ecosystem matures and functions reliably.

At the Upstream Level, asset managers, fund issuers, custodians, credit originators and other financial institutions need to create regulated tokenized products that businesses can trust. These products must be structured, compliant and transparent enough to meet the standards that corporate finance teams operate under.

In the Midstream Layer, infrastructure must support the full lifecycle of tokenized assets. This includes issuance, settlement, valuation, pricing, custody, compliance controls, oracle feeds and reporting systems that deliver the same level of reliability expected from traditional financial markets. Without this backbone, tokenized assets cannot be used confidently for treasury or balance-sheet purposes.

Downstream, the broader financial system needs to integrate tokenization into its existing architecture. Banks, exchanges, clearing networks, auditors and regulators all play a role in ensuring that tokenized assets can be held, classified, reported, insured, financed and audited with the same ease and predictability as conventional instruments.

Tokenization becomes truly useful only when all of these components advance together. When the ecosystem is complete — upstream, midstream, and downstream — tokenized assets stop being an experimental concept and start becoming part of mainstream corporate finance. At that point, tokenization is no longer a niche innovation; it is an industry standard.

A parallel to the electric-vehicle industry

A useful way to understand tokenization’s trajectory is to look at the evolution of the electric-vehicle sector. Early EVs were compelling, but mass adoption did not occur until the entire ecosystem matured. Better batteries, widespread charging networks, upgraded car parks, trained mechanics, supportive regulations and new financing models had to emerge. Once the ecosystem aligned, EV adoption accelerated dramatically.

Tokenization follows the same pattern. The core innovation exists, but for companies to fully adopt tokenized finance, the surrounding infrastructure must expand and mature. Businesses that understand this progression will be prepared as the ecosystem strengthens.

The emergence of the Digital Asset Treasury

One of the most significant developments within this shift is the rise of the Digital Asset Treasury — a structured approach to integrating tokenized assets into corporate treasury operations. This is not about speculation. It is about improving capital efficiency through instruments like tokenized treasury bills that offer liquidity, stable yield, programmable behavior and transparent reporting.

A Digital Asset Treasury allows a company to combine traditional financial instruments with tokenized ones in a balanced, risk-managed way. Capital can be deployed more flexibly, collateral can move more quickly, treasury operations can be automated, and financial reporting becomes more accurate due to on-chain transparency. Over time, tokenized instruments will sit alongside cash, deposits and other conventional short-term assets, becoming part of the standard treasury toolkit.

Companies that understand how to use these tools early will have an advantage in liquidity management, yield enhancement and operational efficiency.

What companies should expect over the next decade

Tokenization will integrate directly into business finance, not replace it. Companies can expect balance-sheet activity to become real-time, with liquidity positions and asset valuations updating continuously rather than quarterly. Audit and reporting functions will become more automated, easing reconciliation workloads. Tokenized liquidity instruments — including short-term credit, treasury assets, and carbon units — will become more widely available, and companies will gain access to new financing channels built on tokenized issuance.

Treasury operations will eventually span both traditional and tokenized markets as capital moves fluidly between conventional accounts and tokenized instruments. This blended approach will allow companies to improve capital efficiency without abandoning established financial frameworks.

The cumulative effect of these developments will fundamentally change how balance sheets operate.

Related: Building Trust in the Digital Age: Abdullah Al-Maxsour and the Future of Tokenization

Tokenization is not an experimental side path. It is the next foundational layer of financial infrastructure. As more regulated tokenized products become available and the ecosystem matures across all levels of the market, tokenization will transition from early adoption to standard practice.

When that happens, the balance sheet will evolve from a static record into a dynamic system — one that is liquid, programmable and continuously active. Companies that understand this transition early will be positioned to make better use of their capital, respond more quickly to market conditions and operate with greater clarity and efficiency.

Tokenization will not just change how companies move capital — it will change how they think about it.

Most companies focus heavily on customers, revenue growth and product execution. The balance sheet, for many, has long been treated as a compliance requirement — something revisited during audits, financing rounds or year-end reviews. That dynamic is now shifting. The balance sheet is becoming a strategic instrument, and tokenization is accelerating this transition at a pace few businesses fully recognize.

Tokenization is the process of converting real-world assets into secure digital representations. What makes it transformative is not the digital form itself, but how these digital assets behave. They can move faster, settle instantly, integrate into automated systems and generate yield in ways that legacy financial infrastructure cannot support. This transition is not built on hype; it mirrors previous industry-wide upgrades such as the shift from paperwork to ERP systems or from manual banking to online transactions. Tokenization represents the next stage of functional modernization.

With the pace of change these days, we may feel that the past year has been defined by speed, a relentless push to innovate faster, launch sooner and adopt the newest technologies as soon as possible. Yet, one of the most transformative leadership qualities today isn’t just speed. It’s stillness.

It is evident that the most impactful leaders aren’t those who process the most data, but those who can access awareness and attention. They lead not from the noise of reaction, but from the quiet of reflection and foresight. In the same way an athlete depends on recovery to reach peak performance, truly effective leaders draw on moments of inner silence to see clearly, decide wisely and act decisively. Such actions help build velocity — speed with direction that benefits all stakeholders.

Around the world, corporate culture celebrates action. The calendar is crowded, the inbox never ends, and “move fast” remains a mantra. Yet every major crisis, from corporate scandals to policy missteps, has its roots in a failure to pause. It is just speed — motion without a specific direction.

Related: The Business Owner’s Guide to Meditation

The power of meditation

It’s important to remember that stillness is not the absence of movement; it is the presence of clarity. Meditation strengthens the mind’s ability to be self-aware before it acts — to see thought, emotion and bias arise without being ruled by them.

Practices like SKY Breath Meditation effortlessly settle the mind and regulate the nervous system, offering reliable access to this clarity. Neuroscience research confirms what ancient traditions have long taught: When we are able to bring our attention to the present while remaining relaxed, the prefrontal cortex regains control, stress hormones decline, and our decisions shift from instinctive defense to creative design.

In my years of working with global Fortune 500 corporations, I’ve seen a pattern. The leaders most trusted in turbulent times are not the loudest or the most active; they are often the calmest in the room. Their calm is contagious. It regulates the emotional climate of an entire organization.

Traditional management logic assumes that better results require tighter control in the form of more oversight, metrics or meetings. But control is a fragile strategy in a world defined by complexity.

Meditation cultivates a different faculty: meta-cognition, or awareness of awareness itself. Instead of micromanaging every variable, leaders learn to see patterns and relationships. They shift from driving the system to designing the conditions in which excellence naturally emerges. When the mind is clear, leaders perceive leverage points, the few actions that change everything else. Without clarity, we chase symptoms. With it, we are able to address causes.

Related: 7 Proven Ways Meditating Prepares You for Success

Presence and impact

If attention is the new currency, most leaders are broke. They’re spending their days following distractions instead of presence. True leadership isn’t merely about productivity but about being fully present. Teams follow presence and impact, not titles.

Leaders can signal these qualities through tone, body language and deep listening. SKY Breath Meditation strengthens this capacity, helping leaders stay centered amid chaos. From that stillness, decisions sharpen, communication aligns faster, and innovation flows, proving that stillness doesn’t slow leaders down; it actually helps make progress towards a goal more steadily.

When individuals on a team learn to quiet the inner chatter of their minds, collective intelligence can emerge. Meditation has the potential to turn leadership from a solo performance into a symphony. The still mind listens not only to self and others, but is able to access the subtle wisdom of the group. In my work, I’ve found that teams that practice meditation together report higher trust, psychological safety and creative flow, all qualities every organization claims to value yet rarely cultivates intentionally.

Related: How Meditation Can Transform Your Business

Synchronized stillness

On December 21, millions around the world will meditate together in a global event led by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. It’s more than a moment of collective calm; it’s a demonstration of what synchronized stillness can achieve. When individuals across continents meditate at the same time, they remind us that peace scales from the individual nervous system to the shared consciousness of humanity.

Established by the United Nations to recognize meditation’s role in advancing human well-being, World Meditation Day is more than a symbolic observance; it’s an acknowledgment that inner awareness is essential to global progress. The UN highlights meditation’s universal appeal, practiced by people of every culture and faith, and endorsed by the World Health Organization for its proven impact on stress reduction, mental clarity and emotional balance. In times marked by conflict, climate strain and rapid technological acceleration, the UN’s message is timely: Cultivating stillness is a form of leadership.

For business leaders, this isn’t just symbolic. It’s instructive. The same principle applies in organizations: When minds align in calm, teams align in purpose. A shared pause can unlock the kind of synergy no strategy session can manufacture.

Stillness doesn’t mean withdrawal from the world; it means engaging the world without being consumed by it. It is balanced in perspective, precision in action and compassion in power.

As we approach World Meditation Day, the invitation to every leader is simple: experiment.

SKY Breath is one accessible way to begin. The ROI of spending this time going within may surprise you: clearer strategy, calmer teams and a culture that leads from awareness, not anxiety.

When we meditate together, even virtually, we remember that presence begins where distraction ends. The quiet mind is not just empty; it is spacious enough to hold the future.

With the pace of change these days, we may feel that the past year has been defined by speed, a relentless push to innovate faster, launch sooner and adopt the newest technologies as soon as possible. Yet, one of the most transformative leadership qualities today isn’t just speed. It’s stillness.

It is evident that the most impactful leaders aren’t those who process the most data, but those who can access awareness and attention. They lead not from the noise of reaction, but from the quiet of reflection and foresight. In the same way an athlete depends on recovery to reach peak performance, truly effective leaders draw on moments of inner silence to see clearly, decide wisely and act decisively. Such actions help build velocity — speed with direction that benefits all stakeholders.

Susan Orlean is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of multiple bestselling books, including The Orchid Thief, which was adapted into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. Her new book, Joy Ride, is a gripping and funny memoir that details her incredible writing journey, and also serves as an inspiring guide filled with actionable tips for anyone embarking on a creative project.

Orlean built a wildly original career by following her curiosity, taking big creative risks, and treating her writing like a business she runs herself. We’ve broken down her recent appearance on the How Success Happens podcast to help you apply her advice to launch your own success in three, two, one!

Subscribe now: Apple | Spotify | YouTube

Three Key Insights

1. How to Know If Your Big Idea Is Worth It
Susan says the instinct to know whether an idea is worth years of work is “probably the single most important” skill you can develop, whether you’re writing a book or building a business. When a new idea hits, she does not jump in immediately; instead she “pushes it away,” tries to forget it, and pays close attention to whether it keeps resurfacing and “nagging” at her as both a writer and a reader. She also normalizes doubt, explaining that losing faith in an idea mid-process is not automatically a sign to quit but a natural part of starting from zero and testing what you’re doing. The real challenge is learning to distinguish ordinary fear and laziness from the deeper realization that “this really isn’t as good an idea as I thought.”
Takeaway: When a new idea excites you, deliberately step back, see if it keeps coming back, and only then commit the time, money, and energy to build it.

2. Treat Your Creativity Like a Business
Even though she’s a New Yorker staff writer, Susan describes herself as “essentially self-directed and self-employed,” choosing each project the way a founder chooses what to build next. She spends months or years purely researching—interviewing, reading, and going deep—before she writes a single word, saying she must be “a student” of a topic before she earns the right to become “the teacher.” To avoid overwhelm, she types up her notes, transfers them to index cards, and then sets a strict daily quota of 1,000 words, comparing it to running exactly three miles instead of an undefined workout. That concrete metric “demystified” the work and kept her from sitting down to vaguely “write my book,” which she says is impossible.
Takeaway: Run your creative work like a business by defining clear tasks, building a repeatable system, and holding yourself to simple, concrete daily goals.

3. Editing (and Feedback) Makes You Stronger
Susan is blunt about writers who romanticize “deathless prose” and hate edits, saying people who think editing ruins their work are “probably not very sophisticated writers.” She credits good editors who respect her voice and focus on clarity, repetition, and what needs more or less emphasis, calling them “really good readers” whose confusion or questions always have “validity.” For her, being open to discussion, debate, and occasionally pushing back is part of a mature creative practice, not a threat to it. She even likens that back-and-forth to the constant testing entrepreneurs do when they hit walls and have to decide whether to adjust or abandon an idea.
Takeaway: Seek out tough, thoughtful feedback, and treat it as market insight on your ideas rather than an attack on your talent.

Subscribe to the How Success Happens newsletter for more insights and inspiration.

Two Ways to Learn More

1. Keep up with Susan through her Substack newsletter Wordy Bird, and pick up her new book Joy Ride—a candid, funny look at her career and craft.
2. Check out one of Entrepreneur.com’s most-read articles on getting your writing project started — and finished: 7 Writing Hacks Every Writer Must Know

One Question to Ponder

Susan discusses the inevitable moments when you lose confidence and have to decide whether you’re just tired or truly need to walk away from an idea. What’s one project, business, or creative idea you nearly quit—but didn’t—and how did you know it was worth pushing through that doubt?

Send your answer to: howsuccesshappens@entrepreneur.com. We’ll read the best answers on a future episode of How Success Happens!

About How Success Happens

Each episode of How Success Happens shares the inspiring, entertaining, and unexpected journeys that influential leaders in business, the arts, and sports traveled on their way to becoming household names. It’s a reminder that behind every big-time career, there is a person who persisted in the face of self-doubt, failure, and anything else that got thrown in their way.

Subscribe now: Apple | Spotify | YouTube

Susan Orlean is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of multiple bestselling books, including The Orchid Thief, which was adapted into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. Her new book, Joy Ride, is a gripping and funny memoir that details her incredible writing journey, and also serves as an inspiring guide filled with actionable tips for anyone embarking on a creative project.

Orlean built a wildly original career by following her curiosity, taking big creative risks, and treating her writing like a business she runs herself. We’ve broken down her recent appearance on the How Success Happens podcast to help you apply her advice to launch your own success in three, two, one!

The world we are living in is fast-moving digitally. Companies must always be forward-thinking and resilient in order to compete with others. For many, data disaster and recovery is treated as a pain and something that must just be adhered to for the sake of it. This way of thinking can be costly.

For dynamic leaders, a well-planned data recovery strategy is something that they simply have to have out there to build trust among their clients and to achieve year-on-year growth.

Data recovery must be an important part of a business’s strategy. With the IT industry undergoing a lot of change as AI, among other things, advances, the chances of data being compromised and needing to be recovered in some form are high. This article will aim to outline how your data recovery strategy should be shaped to become your competitive advantage.

Related: One of the Most Overlooked Risks in Business — and How to Protect Yourself Before It’s Too Late

The strategic hook: Why DR is no longer just an IT problem

Most companies have not been taking data disaster seriously for a long time. Costs are a factor that has been a put-off. Nowadays, this form of thinking can be dangerous. Data recovery must be planned for. Costs can be saved by planning carefully for it. Having a good data recovery policy can prevent your business reputation from being damaged and also help you maintain business productivity when your data is compromised.

A wake-up call once stated, “For C-level leaders, the goal isn’t just to survive a data disaster, it’s to emerge from it faster, cleaner and with less friction than your direct competitors.”

Competitive advantage 1: Speed-to-market resilience (the RTO advantage)

These days, a solid DR strategy will help your business survive in the long term. It is necessary because it helps you convert things, such as the recovery time and point objectives (RTO/RPO), and helps drive growth. If you have a solid strategy, your recovery time and point objectives (RTO/RPO) will achieve sustainable growth. A low RPO will help ensure your data is of a high standard, and a low RTO will keep your customers happy.

Imagine a scenario in which a competitor is incapacitated for 72 hours while your business is operational for four hours. You will not only capture their frustrated market share, but you will also be achieving a reputation for reliability.

You will need to move beyond traditional backup methods and onto more automation to achieve this. You also need to be regularly testing recovery scenarios, which bring back your whole systems and not just servers online.

Related: How These Little-Known Data Recovery Solutions Can Help You

Competitive advantage 2: The trust and compliance differentiator

A good data recovery strategy helps you build trust with customers and win more business. In industries like finance and healthcare, which most people have to make use of, audited recovery plans are a vital sales tool and ensure customers and partners that your data has a high level of integrity.

You need to prove that resilience is a big part of what you offer, and to do this, you should combine your DR certifications into a B2B sales pitch.

Competitive advantage 3: Forensic intelligence and proactive defence

A good data recovery strategy is not just about restoring and fixing your data. It should also present you with a good learning opportunity. By analyzing the fixes and what happened, you should gather data to become better at protecting your systems in the future.

The knowledge gained will allow you to improve your systems and provide better training to employees. When challenges and data disasters occur, your team must always be able to produce a good “lessons learned” report. This will help you to plan effectively for the next financial year and also to develop a good long-term plan against data loss and software vulnerabilities.

To ensure that your team is as well-equipped as possible to handle current and future data problems and disasters, there should be lessons learned from every single incident. A failure to learn can lead to repeated mistakes and your defense systems not being strengthened.

Related: 5 Data Backup Mistakes that Could Bankrupt Your Startup (and How to Quickly Fix Them)

The DR mandate for the C-suite

For any C-suite person today, data recovery is not just something to be invested in for the IT department but an important part of corporate strategy. Leadership should always ensure that data recovery strategies are a core focus of the business plan. AI is continuously advancing, and gone are the days when data disasters are an “if” scenario. They are now a “when” scenario.

The critical question now is not just “how much does it cost” but “how much does this allow us to safely grow and innovate.” The companies that dominate for the next decade will be those that have a well-engineered data recovery strategy.

The world we are living in is fast-moving digitally. Companies must always be forward-thinking and resilient in order to compete with others. For many, data disaster and recovery is treated as a pain and something that must just be adhered to for the sake of it. This way of thinking can be costly.

For dynamic leaders, a well-planned data recovery strategy is something that they simply have to have out there to build trust among their clients and to achieve year-on-year growth.

Silicon Valley’s infamous 996 work schedule (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) holds little appeal for Karri Saarinen, the 38-year-old CEO of project management startup Linear.

“We haven’t implemented that kind of culture, and I don’t personally believe it produces the outcomes I want,” Saarinen says in a new interview with Entrepreneur.

Instead, Saarinen asks employees to work the standard 40 hours, with generous perks. Linear, a remote company that offers five weeks of paid time off per year and four months of paid parental leave, is proof that it’s possible to build a world-class tech business without sacrificing worker wellbeing. The startup’s 100 employees are spread across 10 different time zones, from the U.S. to Finland.

Linear’s core product is a system to coordinate work in companies. It offers a project management issue tracking tool as well as a code review tool. The startup was last valued at $1.25 billion in June after raising $82 million for a Series C funding round, bringing its total funds raised to $134.2 million. More than 2,000 companies, including OpenAI, Cursor and Block, rely on the startup’s software tools, according to Saarinen.

Related: You Need These 3 Skills to Master AI, Says the CEO of a Billion-Dollar AI Company

Saarinen sees the urgent rush in AI as a race that won’t end soon, and says companies that adopt 996 work schedules and other “hustle culture” methods risk burning out staff in pursuit of speed. Plus, the output from demanding companies is “actually not that good,” Saarinen says.

“People are rushing too much and launching things that don’t quite work,” he says. “In our company, we always try to err on the side of quality, not quantity.”

Saarinen himself prioritizes work-life balance. Instead of a standard hour-long commute to the office, he spends the first hour of his day playing with his 3-year-old son before logging on for work remotely at 8 a.m. “With remote work and working from home, you have the ability to participate in family life as well,” he explains.

He ends his day at 4 p.m., but sometimes logs on for an extra hour of work between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. as needed to answer Slack messages and emails.

Proponents of in-person work, like Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, say that working in the office allows junior employees to learn from senior ones by soaking in office conversations. Schmidt said earlier this year that tech workers had to make “some tradeoffs” between work and life to succeed in the industry.

Meanwhile, companies like Amazon and AT&T have called workers into the office full-time this year, saying that the move would strengthen company culture.

Related: This Founder Solved His ‘Biggest Mistake’ to Go From 0 to 500,000 Customers

Saarinen, who previously worked as a designer at Coinbase and Airbnb, decided to make Linear a remote company back when co-founding the startup in 2019, before the pandemic and the remote boom. The practical reason was that building a company was a 10- or 20-year journey. Linear got started in San Francisco, but Saarinen couldn’t see himself living there for the next two decades. He and his co-founders couldn’t commit to one specific location for the long haul, so they decided to make the startup remote-based.

“Remote is not necessarily a better or worse way to build a company,” Saarinen says. “I just think it’s different.”

Going remote has allowed Linear to tap into talent outside of San Francisco — and permitted its founders to live wherever they want. Saarinen is now based in Southern California, while his two co-founders live in New York and Finland.

Linear’s culture builds in autonomy, as team members have the freedom to set their own work hours, rather than adhering to rigid schedules. “We want to hire people we can trust — and trust their judgment not just on product, but also how much work is enough,” Saarinen says.

Related: He Started an eBay Side Hustle at 14 – Then Grew It Into a $92 Million Business

Linear has grown slowly and deliberately. Saarinen noticed that in hyper-growth companies, hiring quickly meant quality of work could suffer because there were suddenly a lot more people who didn’t really know what was happening. He wanted to avoid that. “We tried to hire really good people and tried to hire them slowly,” he says.

Linear’s approach had an unexpected side effect — the startup’s revenue grew much faster than its costs, leading the company to become profitable for the past four years. Saarinen says achieving profitability allows the company to control its own path because it is not beholden to external investment.

At the heart of Linear’s success is the belief that great products don’t come from nonstop hustle, but from a fulfilling life outside of work.

“If your life is a little more balanced, you’ll feel happier, more fulfilled — and it shows in your work,” Saarinen says. “You’re not just grinding; you’re inspired.”

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Silicon Valley’s infamous 996 work schedule (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week) holds little appeal for Karri Saarinen, the 38-year-old CEO of project management startup Linear.

“We haven’t implemented that kind of culture, and I don’t personally believe it produces the outcomes I want,” Saarinen says in a new interview with Entrepreneur.