Starting a new business in a small town can feel both easy and hard. Easy because you don’t have to fight through the same crowd as in big cities. Hard because everyone already knows everyone, and outsiders don’t always get attention right away. Still, most small towns run on relationships, habits and word of mouth — which means if you learn how to use those right, your business can grow faster than you think.

Let’s talk about how to do that, without using vague advice like “just market better” or “be active online.” Here are some real ways to grow your small-town business.

1. Get known by showing up everywhere (even when you don’t want to)

In small towns, marketing will not run only on ads. It’s about being seen often enough that people remember your face when they need something.

If you think your business can grow quietly, it won’t. People in small towns notice who’s around and who’s missing. Showing up at local events, farmers’ markets and even school fundraisers helps people connect your name to your business. You don’t have to talk about your product every time — just show up, talk, listen and be friendly in a normal way.

People buy from people they know — not from strangers who appear out of nowhere with an ad or discount code. So even if you’re an introvert or hate networking, pick two or three local things each month to show up for.

Related: How to Grow Your Small Business Without Breaking the Bank

2. Keep your online presence simple but consistent

You might think small-town businesses don’t need a strong online presence because your customers live nearby. But that’s not true anymore. A lot of people now use Google Maps and Facebook to decide where to go — even if it’s just five minutes away.

Here’s a real number: 46% of all Google searches are for local information, according to a HubSpot report. That means if your business isn’t easy to find online, you’re invisible to half your potential customers.

You don’t need to post every day or hire someone to manage your social media. Just make sure you’ve got:

• A Google Business profile with your correct address, phone number and hours.
• A Facebook page or Instagram account where people can check if you’re open and what you sell.
• A few recent photos or short updates that prove you’re active.

You need to stay visible. When people can find you online, they trust you more — even if they already drive by your place every day.

3. Focus on word-of-mouth before advertising

In small towns, people talk — a lot. That can work against you or for you. Most new businesses rush into ads, discounts and flyers, but what really lasts is a slow build of a good reputation.

According to a Nielsen report, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over any form of advertising. That number’s even higher in smaller communities, where everyone overlaps socially.

So instead of spending on big ads right away, try to do this:

• Offer a small loyalty deal to your first few customers.
• Give local clubs or teachers a small discount.
• Thank people publicly when they support your business.

If one person feels appreciated, they’ll tell two more for sure. It sounds simple, but that’s how momentum grows in a town where everyone knows everyone’s business.

Related: Word-of-Mouth Alone Can Double Your Revenue Growth — Here’s How to Turn Your Customers Into Brand Advocates

4. Partner instead of competing

In big cities, businesses fight for attention. In small towns, they survive better by helping each other. Partnering doesn’t mean merging — it just means working together in small ways that help both sides.

If you run a gym, you could partner with a local cafe to give their customers a discount on memberships. If you run a repair shop, maybe you recommend the car wash nearby, and they recommend you.

There’s also a smart side to this: Joint promotions save money. You don’t need to overthink it. Just look around and ask, “Who’s serving the same kind of customers but not competing with me?” Then start a conversation.

5. Use local media — it still works

You might think nobody reads the local newspaper or listens to local radio anymore, but those still matter in small towns. While national marketing trends keep moving toward digital, local media still holds trust.

A 2024 Pew Research Center study found that there is a growing percentage of Americans who trust their local news outlets more than national ones. If your business gets featured or even mentioned there, that’s powerful social proof.

Write a short, clear press release when something new happens — like a new service, local event or partnership — and send it to your town’s newspaper or radio station. You don’t need fancy or any kind of professional writing to get viewers. Just explain what’s happening, who’s involved and why it matters to local people.

Also, sponsor small things. A local football team, a charity walk or even a trivia night. People remember sponsors, especially when they’re not huge companies but small, honest ones trying to grow.

Related: Why Local Media is the Secret to Getting Free PR

6. Don’t rush — build systems before you scale

The hardest part of small-town growth is patience. When you start out, business will be slow. Some days you’ll wonder if you should move to a bigger city. But slow growth is good growth — it gives you time to build systems that work before things get too big to manage.

Did you know nearly50% of small businesses fail within five years — most due to poor operations, not lack of customers? That means even if you get popular, chaos can still kill your business if you don’t have a plan. Take it one level at a time. First, build habits. Then, improve them. When the time comes to expand (maybe to the next town), you’ll already have a model that works. All the best!

Starting a new business in a small town can feel both easy and hard. Easy because you don’t have to fight through the same crowd as in big cities. Hard because everyone already knows everyone, and outsiders don’t always get attention right away. Still, most small towns run on relationships, habits and word of mouth — which means if you learn how to use those right, your business can grow faster than you think.

Let’s talk about how to do that, without using vague advice like “just market better” or “be active online.” Here are some real ways to grow your small-town business.

When Darren Litt’s daughters were little, he asked their pediatrician for tips to keep them healthy. The doctor recommended a daily multivitamin, but when Litt ordered the brand on Amazon, the product that arrived gave him pause: The gummy vitamins were stuck together in their plastic tub with a layer of sugar on the bottom.

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Hiya Health. Darren Litt.}

“ I thought, If I won’t give this to my own kids, why would anybody?” Litt recalls. “So I asked friends, ‘Is this what you give your kids?’ And almost everyone said the same thing: ‘Yeah, kids like the taste, but we’re not sure it’s good for them.’”

One of those friends was Litt’s former co-worker Adam Gillman; he had the same impression, and a light bulb went off: What if they built a “smarter version” of the type of multivitamin they wanted for their own children? “ No sugar, no gummy junk, just what kids actually need,” Litt says.

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

It was 2019 and the beginning of Hiya Health, the children’s health and wellness brand that USANA acquired in a $260 million deal last year.

We applied a Silicon Valley discipline to children’s health.

Both co-founders had a professional background in technology, which came in handy during Hiya’s product-development phase, Litt notes. Litt and Gillman had to ship, test and improve constantly, closely listening to feedback from other parents — their first formula changed three times in year one.

“To  put it simply, we applied a Silicon Valley discipline to children’s health,” Litt explains.

Litt also notes that Hiya is self-funded; the co-founders “stayed incredibly disciplined,” particularly around cash flow, investing every dollar into improving the product or deepening trust with parents.

Related: These Brothers Started a Business to Improve an Everyday Task. They Made Their First Products in the Garage — Now They’ve Raised Over $100 Million.

Hiya launched as a direct-to-consumer product with a clear incentive for parents — vitamins for kids without unnecessary sugar and extras — but the brand also needed to win over its young consumers in order to keep growing and have a lasting impact in the children’s health and wellness space.

Through those thousands of conversations with parents in the early days, the business developed an intentional approach to the “entire experience” with its product. “We see our product not just as the vitamin you put in your mouth, but an experience that kids love,” Litt says. Some of those experiential elements include a refillable bottle that kids can decorate with stickers and a game that changes every month.

Additionally, Hiya’s strategic partnerships with kid-favorite brands like Disney and Mattel have helped accelerate its growth trajectory. Hiya wanted its potential partners to share its commitment to putting kids first and reinforce the young consumers’ enthusiasm for the brand.

“Kids  don’t wake up excited about vitamins per se,” Litt says, “but they wake up excited about Disney princesses, Pixar characters, Hot Wheels and Barbie.”

Related: This Mom’s Garage Side Hustle for Kids Became a Business With $1 Billion Revenue

We refused to compromise on safety, quality and testing.

Hiya’s growth strategy has paid off: The business is projecting more than $100 million in net sales for 2025, with over one million parents purchasing its DTC subscription.

According to Litt, two significant challenges have emerged over the course of Hiya’s rapid growth: the ongoing need to change the perception that widespread “sugar gummies” are as healthful as parents might believe, and continuing to scale the business responsibly.

“ We grew very fast, probably as fast as any direct-to-consumer company out there, but we refused to compromise on safety, quality and testing,” Litt says. “We overcame both [challenges] by staying grounded in a core Hiya principle: It’s kids first, always.”

Related: After a 12-Year-Old’s Side Hustle Made Over $4,000 in 1 Day, He and His Dad Grew the Business to Nearly $50,000 a Month: ‘It Takes Commitment’

These days, Litt’s and Gillman’s roles at Hiya remain much the same as they were before the brand’s acquisition. Litt still serves as CEO and Gillman as president.  

“My job is to build the brand parents trust most for their kids’ health,” Litt says. “Now I have a much bigger engine behind us to do it.”

Your instincts help you see what others missed.

Looking forward, Litt sees Hiya evolving into a complete kids’ health system spanning hydration, gut health, immune support and more. The co-founder hopes the brand can help build healthy habits into every part of a child’s day.

To other entrepreneurs considering starting a business of their own, especially one in wellness, Litt emphasizes the importance of trusting your instincts and listening to the data — because both matter.

“ But don’t overindex on either,” Litt says. “Your instincts help you see what others missed [and solve problems], and the data keeps you honest.”

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

When Darren Litt’s daughters were little, he asked their pediatrician for tips to keep them healthy. The doctor recommended a daily multivitamin, but when Litt ordered the brand on Amazon, the product that arrived gave him pause: The gummy vitamins were stuck together in their plastic tub with a layer of sugar on the bottom.

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Hiya Health. Darren Litt.}

Debby Soo believes a CEO should never hide behind the brand.

As the leader of OpenTable, she uses social media to stay close to the people who matter most: restaurant operators and diners. She scrolls, reads and listens. For her, staying visible is not about promotion. It is about connection.

“I get so much feedback from social,” she says. “Feedback is gold. I look at comments. I look at reviews. I look at everything.” And she means it. She reads tags from restaurants, questions from diners, pushback, praise and everything in between.

Related: This Michelin-Trained Chef Now Cooks for One of California’s Fastest-Growing Brands

Before taking over at OpenTable, Soo spent years in travel and technology, working in product, marketing and leadership roles that taught her the value of staying curious.

But when she stepped into the CEO role during one of hospitality’s most turbulent eras, she was walking into an industry still reeling from the pandemic. Restaurants were short-staffed, reservation patterns had changed, and operators everywhere were speaking honestly about what was not working.

In New York City, one of OpenTable’s biggest markets, the data showed a clear decline. “We had lost the hearts and minds of restaurants and diners in New York City,” she says.

Search interest was down. Sentiment had shifted. Some inside the company did not want to share that reality publicly. Soo disagreed. “We cannot fix it until we talk about the fact that it is broken,” she says.

Her instinct was not to pull back, but to show up. “I think the worst thing you can do is not be present,” she explains. The only way to rebuild trust was to begin with honesty.

Her team encouraged her to take that presence even further. They pushed her to show up online, speak directly to operators and make being the CEO more human than corporate. She resisted at first, but once she leaned in, something shifted. “I started posting more because my team told me I needed to,” she says. “And I realized they were right.”

Related: This Michelin-Trained Chef Now Cooks for One of California’s Fastest-Growing Brands

Her experience taught her something she believes applies to every restaurant, not just a global platform. You cannot afford to stay silent. “If you want people to find you, you have to tell your story,” she says.

Diners want to follow restaurants they feel connected to. That mindset helped OpenTable begin the work of rebuilding. It helped Soo understand what restaurants needed most and where the company had to evolve. The feedback was sometimes tough, sometimes helpful, always honest. She welcomed all of it.

Her leadership begins with listening. Her strategy begins with transparency. And her belief in hospitality begins with understanding the people she serves.

Related: His Restaurants Won Awards — Then His Next Business Changed the Industry

Smarter dining solutions

Today, Soo is focused on shaping the next chapter of OpenTable. The company that transformed reservations decades ago is expanding its role, becoming a platform restaurants can rely on for far more than bookings.

Large-party dining is one of the biggest opportunities. Restaurants told her that big groups bring big revenue but enormous operational pressure. Soo responded by directing her team to build tools that help restaurants manage demand, secure commitments and communicate more clearly with guests.

She is equally focused on using AI responsibly. OpenTable’s AI-driven tool, Concierge, automates guest messaging, handles common questions and surfaces smart recommendations so managers can focus on service instead of screens.

But Soo’s belief in restaurants goes far deeper than product strategy. She sees restaurants as the heartbeat of a community. They are where people celebrate, reconnect, grieve, heal and feel seen. In her view, restaurants are not optional. They are essential. “Restaurants are resilient,” she says. “They always find a way.”

For Soo, the future of OpenTable is about supporting the people who bring hospitality to life. And for a CEO who refuses to stay quiet, showing up for restaurants is the only way forward.

Related: He Signed His First Business Deal on His Honeymoon. Now His Drive-Thru Coffee Brand Has 15 Locations.

About Restaurant Influencers

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Debby Soo believes a CEO should never hide behind the brand.

As the leader of OpenTable, she uses social media to stay close to the people who matter most: restaurant operators and diners. She scrolls, reads and listens. For her, staying visible is not about promotion. It is about connection.

Every year, franchisors spend months preparing for their annual conference. The room fills with energy, inspiration and stories that remind people why the brand exists.

And then it ends. The lights go off. The banners come down. The energy fades.

Most of what happens in those few days disappears — even though it represents some of the most valuable, authentic content a brand could ever create.

But it doesn’t have to. When franchisors capture the right stories and build a plan to use them, a three-day event can fuel twelve months of trust, culture and growth.

The stories most franchisors overlook

A conference isn’t just a series of keynotes and breakouts. It’s the entire ecosystem of your brand gathered in one place — founders, franchisees, partners, sponsors and leaders. It’s your culture at full volume, and it’s filled with moments that rarely get documented.

Founders telling the origin story reveal an authenticity that prospective owners often never hear. Franchisees sharing their journeys show real-world credibility more powerful than any brochure or slide deck. Sponsors and partners offer insight into how your ecosystem supports growth from the outside in.

And then there are the unscripted moments — the conversations in hallways, the laughter between sessions, the camaraderie that defines your community. These are the moments that communicate what it truly feels like to be part of your brand.

What surprises many franchisors is how eager people are to share their stories. A team can plan for a handful of interviews and end up with many more simply because franchisees want their experiences captured. Pride tends to multiply when the camera is rolling.

Related: 5 Ways to Spot Trends Before They Explode — and Turn Them Into Growth

Why story-driven video builds lasting trust

Storytelling is one of the most efficient ways to build credibility, connection and belief. Well-captured conference content works because it shows a brand as it really is — not polished, not scripted, but human.

Social platforms reward real voices and fast-moving, personal content. Prospects increasingly want authenticity over polish. Franchisees want to feel seen and valued. And leaders need a way to reinforce culture that doesn’t fade a week after the conference ends.

When attendees see themselves in a recap video or highlight reel during the event, it creates a powerful loop of recognition and pride. They share it. They talk about it. They energize the brand from the inside out. And once those videos are published externally, the same momentum spreads to prospects and future partners.

The impact of a live premiere

One of the most electrifying moments at any conference is the premiere of a new brand video. As the room darkens and familiar faces appear on-screen, the effect is immediate. People see their own journey reflected back at them — and they feel it.

That emotional reaction isn’t accidental. It’s the foundation of unity and culture. And when the video gets released beyond the event, that same energy becomes a powerful asset for reputation, recruiting and long-term storytelling.

A live premiere doesn’t just close a chapter of the event. It often becomes the narrative people carry home.

How to turn your conference into a storytelling engine

The most successful franchisors approach their conferences with a plan, not just an agenda. They begin by identifying the stories they need most: founder insights, franchisee journeys, sponsor perspectives and cultural moments that reveal the brand’s personality.

They create opportunities for structured interviews while leaving room for spontaneous conversations. They capture keynotes, panels and the emotional moments that happen between sessions. And instead of letting footage sit unused, they develop a plan to transform it into short-form videos, testimonials, development assets and internal culture pieces that last all year.

A single conference can supply recruitment content, leadership messages, social posts, franchise development narratives and sponsor highlights — often for months. What would normally require dozens of separate production days is captured in one concentrated burst.

Turning three days into twelve months of value

The real return on conference video isn’t measured in views alone. It’s measured in longevity and leverage.

A founder interview can anchor your development campaigns for an entire year. A single testimonial can become one of your highest-performing social posts. A five-minute story can evolve into dozens of clips shared across platforms. Even a brief moment of hallway conversation can become a culture-building message inside your organization.

When you treat your conference as a story factory instead of a one-time event, you dramatically extend its impact. You transform a weekend of programming into an ongoing narrative that keeps your brand visible, human and connected.

Related: How to Expand Your Business to Over 30 Markets in 5 Years — 7 Tips for Successful Growth

The future of franchise conferences

The most forward-thinking brands in 2025 aren’t just hosting events — they’re documenting their evolution. They understand that authenticity is an asset, culture is a differentiator and stories are the currency that builds trust.

They know that what happens at the conference shouldn’t stay there. It should live on — in your marketing, your development messaging, your culture, your leadership communication and your brand identity.

So as you plan your next event, don’t think of it as something that ends when the lights go out.

If you film it right, it’s where the real story begins.

Every year, franchisors spend months preparing for their annual conference. The room fills with energy, inspiration and stories that remind people why the brand exists.

And then it ends. The lights go off. The banners come down. The energy fades.

Most franchises rely heavily on paid ads, not because they want to, but because their SEO isn’t built to scale.

A franchisor might operate 50, 100 or even 500 locations, yet only a handful appear on the first page of Google.

The rest stay buried behind competitors, forcing franchisees to rely on expensive PPC campaigns just to stay visible.

After managing SEO for more than 70 franchise locations across Canada and the U.S., I realized something: Franchise SEO fails not because it’s difficult, but because it’s misunderstood.

Traditional SEO strategies focus on optimizing a single website. But franchising isn’t a single-site problem; it’s a multi-location growth engine that requires a replicable, scalable, data-driven system.

In 2025, the franchises that win will be the ones that treat SEO as a standardized, location-level process — not a one-time corporate initiative. This is the playbook.

Related: SEO Essentials for Businesses — 4 Key Tips for Driving Visibility and Growth

Why franchise SEO fails (and why it’s so different from normal SEO)

Even well-established franchises run into SEO roadblocks. It’s not because they lack resources; it’s because their structure creates unique challenges.

Corporate websites don’t support local search:

Most franchises operate a single corporate domain with a “Find a Location” directory. In theory, this is great. In reality, these location pages are:

• Thin

• Duplicate

• Template-based

• Lacking real local value

Google sees them as nearly identical. And identical content rarely ranks.

Duplicate templates kill ranking potential:

If 50 pages use the same copy, the same structure and the same images, only a handful will rank.

Google rewards specificity, not scale. Franchises unintentionally sabotage themselves by using identical pages across all territories.

Franchises rely too much on PPC because organic is broken:

When location pages don’t rank, franchisees turn to ads.

But paid channels have become increasingly expensive:

• Google PPC costs have risen up to 20% year over year across many industries.

• Local service keywords in major metro areas now exceed $20-$40 per click.

When SEO works, it dramatically lowers customer acquisition costs. When it doesn’t, franchises have no choice but to overspend on PPC.

Related: How I Helped a Local Service Business Generate $5.1 Million in 6 Months — Without Spending Big on Ads

The 2025 franchise SEO framework

This is the scalable system I use to manage SEO for dozens of franchise locations. It’s designed so every franchise, regardless of size, can build a predictable, repeatable, search-driven growth engine.

Step 1: Build high-quality, fully unique location pages

Every location needs a page that feels handcrafted, even if the system behind it is templated. A high-ranking location page should include:

• Unique local copy (minimum 600-900 words)

• City-specific keywords

• Local testimonials

• Photos from that location

• Service area references

• Local FAQs

• Internal links to relevant service pages

Google must see each location as a real business, not a cloned subpage.

Step 2: Standardize on-page SEO across all locations

To scale SEO, standardization is everything.

Every page should follow the same on-page checklist:

• One clear, keyword-driven H1

• Optimized meta tags

• Structured data (LocalBusiness schema)

• A consistent H2/H3 hierarchy

• Internal linking to related services

• Properly compressed images

• Clean URL structure

This is the foundation for ranking dozens of locations at once.

Step 3: Own local search intent with hyper-relevant content

Owning local search intent means creating content that answers the exact questions customers are asking in each city.

This is where franchises often miss the biggest opportunities.

When you understand local search intent, you can publish hyper-relevant topics like “best moving companies in Toronto” or “how much does a move cost in Toronto,” which attract nearby customers who are already ready to book.

Step 4: Centralized NAP + decentralized execution

One of the biggest problems in franchise SEO is inconsistent NAP (name, address, phone number) data. The corporation should maintain:

• A master database

• Correct formatting

• Accurate listings

But the execution, specifically reviews and engagement, should be local. Google rewards businesses that are active in their own communities.

Step 5: Build a scalable review system

Reviews can’t be left to chance.

Franchises should implement:

When each location builds steady review velocity, rankings improve across the entire franchise.

Step 6: Monthly rank tracking and KPI reporting

Franchisees want clarity. Corporations want consistency.

The only way to deliver both is with standardized KPIs:

When every location sees the same reports, it becomes easier to identify wins, gaps and priorities.

Real-world impact: How this framework helped scale 70+ locations

Implementing this framework across dozens of franchise territories produced measurable results.

Lower cost per lead:

Organic leads often cost 80-90% less than PPC. When franchisees rank locally, their marketing spend decreases, often dramatically.

Two to five times more organic leads per location:

Location pages that once sat on page three or four now consistently rank in the top three. This drives:

• More phone calls

• More form submissions

• More high-intent traffic

Some locations even reduce ads to zero after SEO matures.

Faster expansion into new territories:

Strong SEO isn’t just a lead-gen channel; it’s a franchise-development asset.

Growth becomes easier when new territories instantly benefit from the parent brand’s local authority and structured system.

Related: Boost Your Business’s Visibility in Local Search Results by Combining These 2 Key Strategies

What franchise founders need to do next

If you’re building or scaling a franchise, you don’t need to reinvent your marketing. You just need a repeatable SEO system.

• Audit your current franchise SEO system: Identify weaknesses in location pages, GBP optimization and local content.

• Implement standardized location page templates: Start with a template — then localize every piece of content.

• Train each location to manage reviews and GBP: Corporations cannot do all of this centrally. Empower franchisees with simple, clear SOPs.

• Track all locations with the same KPIs: Consistency makes your SEO system scalable, and franchisees love transparency.

Franchise SEO is no longer optional. It’s one of the most powerful ways to lower acquisition costs, generate predictable leads and accelerate expansion.

Paid ads may help you grow quickly, but SEO builds the foundation that supports long-term franchise success.

The franchises that win in the coming years will be the ones that treat SEO as a scalable system, not a side project. Build it once. Replicate it everywhere. Optimize continuously. The results follow.

Most franchises rely heavily on paid ads, not because they want to, but because their SEO isn’t built to scale.

A franchisor might operate 50, 100 or even 500 locations, yet only a handful appear on the first page of Google.

Justin Bieber is frustrated with Apple’s iPhone dictation button and its placement in the Messages app. The singer’s complaint, which he shared in identical posts across Instagram and X last week, reached tens of millions of users.

The issue centers around the small microphone button in iMessage, which activates voice dictation or voice notes. The button appears before or after sending a text, replacing the send button in iMessage. Bieber says he frequently hits the microphone button right after sending a text, causing a beep that briefly pauses his music and disrupts what he is listening to.

In a now-viral post, Bieber joked that if the dictation button interrupted his music one more time, he would “find everyone at Apple” and “put them in a rear naked choke hold.” He followed the joke with a request: Apple should stop giving the send button multiple functions in the same location and reconsider the layout so users can text and listen to music without accidental interruptions.

Related: Apple Conducted Rare Layoffs Focused on One Specific Team

“The send button should not have multiple functions in the same spot,” Bieber wrote in an X post that has been viewed over 44 million times.

Bieber illustrated his request with a screenshot of his iMessage screen, with a red circle around the dictation button. His posts drew support, garnering hundreds of thousands of likes across X and Instagram. OpenAI’s head of design, Ian Silber, jokingly invited Bieber to join the company’s weekly design critiques after seeing his posts, and Elon Musk replied to Bieber’s post on X with multiple fire emojis.

If I hit this dictation button after sending a text and it beeps and stops my music one more time,

I’m gonna find everyone at apple and put them in a rear naked choke hold

Even if I turn off dictation I somehow hit the voice note thing

The send button should not have multiple… pic.twitter.com/9R0oKw239L

— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) December 6, 2025

Apple has not publicly responded to Bieber’s suggestion.

Bieber’s frustration with Apple arrives as the company is weathering one of its toughest leadership shakeups in years, with several top executives headed for retirement.

Related: Apple Reclaims the Top Phone Seller Crown After 14 Years

Last week, Apple revealed that John Giannandrea, its senior vice president for machine learning and AI strategy, is stepping down and will transition into an advisory role before retiring in 2026. General counsel Kate Adams and environmental policy chief Lisa Jackson are also planning to retire next year.

Another Apple executive is choosing to leave for a competing tech company. Meta announced last week that Alan Dye, who was previously vice president of human interface design at Apple, is joining Meta to lead a new creative studio within the company. Dye has worked at Apple for nearly two decades.

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

Justin Bieber is frustrated with Apple’s iPhone dictation button and its placement in the Messages app. The singer’s complaint, which he shared in identical posts across Instagram and X last week, reached tens of millions of users.

The issue centers around the small microphone button in iMessage, which activates voice dictation or voice notes. The button appears before or after sending a text, replacing the send button in iMessage. Bieber says he frequently hits the microphone button right after sending a text, causing a beep that briefly pauses his music and disrupts what he is listening to.

There’s a well-known allegory that tells the story of several blind men who encounter an elephant for the first time: one touches the tusk and declares it’s a spear, another touches the leg and calls it a tree, while a third grabs the tail and insists it’s a rope. And while each man draws a reasonable conclusion based on the data he has, they are all completely wrong about the nature of the animal.

This dynamic is precisely why 70% of all organizational transformation initiatives fail. As leaders, it’s easy to blame this failure rate on external factors like a flawed strategy, an insufficient budget or bad market timing. But those excuses mask a deeper problem, as most transformations are dead on arrival for reasons that have little to do with these external factors. Instead, the failure is almost always internal.

A leader from sales touches the customer-facing part of a project and sees one reality, while a leader from operations touches the internal process and sees another. So, although they leave the same meeting nodding in agreement, in truth, they are all trying to manage a different beast, which creates the fundamental disconnect — or, if you will, the elephant in the conference room.

Related: Want Your Next Change Initiative to Succeed? Start With These 4 Coaching Moves

Stop solving problems from the inside out

Once you see the elephant, you can’t unsee it. And that realization immediately clarifies why the conventional playbook of more PowerPoint decks and status meetings is so ineffective. It’s a playbook designed to report on a problem, not solve a deep-seated misalignment of perception. It is painfully obvious that in order to break this cycle, you have to architect a new system dedicated entirely to creating clarity.

This is why the foundation of my approach is built on a methodology I call Collective Clarity — a disciplined approach for creating genuine alignment that hinges on these non-negotiable first steps: You have clearly defined the problem, then work from the outside in to define the optimum solution.

After all, an organization that keeps using the same set of carpenters swinging the same hammers will only get the same results. Therefore, getting a different outcome requires an outside perspective, because your internal experts are, by definition, already one of the blind men — they are too close to the problem to see the whole animal. This calls for a facilitator: someone empowered to operate outside of a designated swim lane and ask the basic, naive questions internal teams are often too conditioned to see.

A system for shared reality

As a leader who specializes in parachuting into these complex, often failing, transformations, this is the point where my work begins. Once that outside perspective is established, I design a single, intensive all-in session to get the stakeholders to finally see the complete elephant through a clear, four-step process:

1. The Rules of Engagement: First, I enforce absolute presence. This means a strict no-computers, no-phones environment where everyone is compelled to engage. I also deliberately call on people for input outside their wheelhouse, which captures the fresh perspectives needed to break expert groupthink.

2. The Collective Brain Dump: Next, we get every possible input, idea and frustration out in the open, usually on hundreds of Post-it notes, so that everyone in the room can finally see all the pieces of the puzzle. This usually unveils a number of “Ah-ha” moments among cross-functional teams.

3. The Percolation: This is where the process is infused with Six Sigma rigor — a systematic, data-driven discipline used to eliminate defects and noise. Here, my role is to “percolate” the raw data by looking for patterns and grouping similar themes.

4. The Simplification: Finally, as the facilitator, my most important job is to remove those anecdotal rabbit hole comments that can distort the issue. My entire goal is to distill the complexity into a few simple, summary statements that get everyone on the same page.

Through this structured process, the “elephant” finally comes into focus, and for the first time, the entire team sees the same animal. Yet, this newfound clarity is fragile because a great meeting is simply useless if the alignment evaporates the moment people leave the room. And this is why the facilitation system that creates clarity must be immediately reinforced by an accountability system that makes it stick.

Related: The 3-Step Framework to Lead with Clarity and Confidence

From a “RACI on paper” to a living system

I saw the power of this all-in session during a recent transformation I led, when an HR person, with a fresh perspective on a complex operational problem, asked a simple question that revealed an elegant solution the experts had completely missed. But there’s a danger in these breakthrough moments. The most elegant solution in the world is still just an idea, and great ideas die in conference rooms every day for a simple reason: An idea is useless without a path to execution, and execution is impossible without clear ownership.

This is precisely where a tool like a RACI matrix — a simple chart that clarifies who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed — becomes essential. The problem is, a RACI on paper doesn’t do much. It must become a living way of working, a principle I saw in action during my most formative career experience at W.L. Gore.

There, we managed by what was called “situational leadership.” While developing fuel cell technology, for example, the scientists and engineers leading the project eventually stopped a meeting and said, “We don’t know anything about marketing. Melissa, you need to take this over. You need to lead the project now.”

That is the clear passing of the baton — a living accountability system that creates genuine, empowering ownership.

Related: Ambiguity Isn’t Leadership — It’s Avoidance. Why Modern Teams Are Starving for Decisiveness

Your mandate as a leader

This inside-out thinking is most dangerous in technology deployments where, as the old adage goes, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

This is because when an IT team is in the lead, the tech solution is often perceived as the completion of the project itself, while stakeholder adoption is overlooked. That is why it is critical to bring in different perspectives to ensure all the bases are covered. Complicated problems do not always need complicated solutions. What they do need is fresh eyes and a disciplined, guided approach to see the whole picture.

In the end, as a leader, your job isn’t to have all the answers. Your job is to stop swinging the hammer and instead create the conditions that allow your team to finally see the entire elephant.

There’s a well-known allegory that tells the story of several blind men who encounter an elephant for the first time: one touches the tusk and declares it’s a spear, another touches the leg and calls it a tree, while a third grabs the tail and insists it’s a rope. And while each man draws a reasonable conclusion based on the data he has, they are all completely wrong about the nature of the animal.

This dynamic is precisely why 70% of all organizational transformation initiatives fail. As leaders, it’s easy to blame this failure rate on external factors like a flawed strategy, an insufficient budget or bad market timing. But those excuses mask a deeper problem, as most transformations are dead on arrival for reasons that have little to do with these external factors. Instead, the failure is almost always internal.

Work-life balance may be unrealistic, but employees can aspire to work-life “harmony” instead, says Shopify president Harley Finkelstein.

On a recent episode of the Aspire podcast, which aired last week, Finkelstein, who leads the ecommerce platform valued at over $210 billion, called work-life balance a “misnomer.”

“I think actually what we’re all searching for is some sort of harmony,” he said. “There are some Saturdays where I have to work, and there are some Thursday afternoons that I go for a walk with my wife. That’s my version of harmony.”

Work-life balance implies a fixed, even split between work and personal life, which rarely matches how jobs actually work. In Finkelstein’s view, harmony means accepting that some periods lean heavily toward work and others toward life, as long as the overall rhythm feels sustainable.

Related: What Is 996? A Banned-in-China Work Schedule Is Trending in Silicon Valley: ‘We Don’t Believe in Work-Life Balance’

Finkelstein said that work-life harmony can look different depending on the stage of life. For example, before marriage and kids, he noted that he could work 80-hour weeks. That kind of schedule became impossible when he had children.

“When I had newborns, I wasn’t able to work 80 hours,” he said. “I think everyone needs to find their own version of it.”

Finkelstein said you don’t necessarily have to put in 80-hour weeks to be a top performer. He said some of the “greatest performers ever” only work 40 hours a week, but are “incredibly efficient with their time.” In Finkelstein’s view, harmony is more about effectiveness than sheer number of hours.

Related: These Companies Offer the Best Work-Life Balance, According to Employees

Other leaders, like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, have voiced similar ideas. Nadella said that instead of separating work and life, he likes to think about the equation as “work-life harmony.” He focuses on aligning what he cares about with his work, so that each part of life energizes the other.

“What I’m trying to do is harmonize what I deeply care about, my deep interests, with my work,” Nadella told the Australian Financial Review in November 2019.

Meanwhile, Bezos said in an April 2018 interview that he prefers the word “harmony” to the word “balance” because “balance tends to imply a strict tradeoff.”

“It actually is a circle; it’s not a balance,” he said. He added in an interview with Thrive Global that being happy and energized in one domain positively reinforces the other.

Related: This Is Where Microsoft CEO ‘Learns the Most’ — and It’s Not in Meetings

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Work-life balance may be unrealistic, but employees can aspire to work-life “harmony” instead, says Shopify president Harley Finkelstein.

On a recent episode of the Aspire podcast, which aired last week, Finkelstein, who leads the ecommerce platform valued at over $210 billion, called work-life balance a “misnomer.”

Stagnant industries are prolific, and they erode customer trust. When environments become stale, and associations with a type of business are hardened and archaic, breaking the mold and inciting interest in your business becomes a losing battle.

Take the gold resale world for example. Images that come to mind include harsh fluorescent lights in unwelcoming environments, confusing pricing with no transparency and lowball offers. How do you break through these associations to establish trust and investment in your brand in spaces like these?

The fact is, category-defining businesses don’t emerge from invention alone — they emerge from moral reconstruction. Real innovation doesn’t always look like a new product, but instead restoring trust where it’s been lost.

Related: 4 Entrepreneurs Who Refreshed Stale Industries and Made Millions

Finding opportunity in dysfunction

Every broken industry shares common DNA: opacity, misaligned incentives and customer fatigue. But the real problem lies in dismissing industries outright for fear of predestined failure. Founders can be inclined to overlook these markets because they seem outdated or “too messy.”

But what if that dysfunction is not a warning light, and instead a ripe opportunity? Where some business leaders may see stagnation and flaws, progressive ones can find possibilities to innovate. That dysfunction is exactly where the opportunity lies — it signals unmet emotional needs, not just economic ones.

In the case of the gold resale industry, The Alloy Market seized this kind of opportunity. In the past, customers associated this kind of business with sleazy practices, and distrust was rampant. We chose to directly combat this expectation with clarity in order to establish trust, offering appraisals based on fair market prices, transparent processes and no hidden fees or shady terms.

Trust as a market advantage

Trust is a common brand value, but it is more than that; it is a structural advantage. Most founders chase efficiency metrics before earning credibility, but in low-trust markets, that’s reversed.

When you establish trust in your business, growth abounds. It reduces acquisition costs, lowering the barrier for attracting customers who believe in your value proposition. It increases word-of-mouth, encouraging consumers to recommend your trustworthy service. And it compounds retention, enhancing the chances your brand becomes the dependable, reputable destination for your product or service in an otherwise unreliable industry.

In this way, the next decade’s category leaders will be those who repair trust faster than others can buy attention.How to redefine a broken market

Of course, redefining a market with negative associations is easier said than done. Repairing a broken industry requires intentional steps and dedication. Leaders will have to work to understand what defines stagnation in a particular industry in the first place and then develop systems to directly combat negative associations.

Related: Don’t Let Your Organization Become Stagnant — Learn How to Innovate with These 5 Tips

The stages of this process look like this:

1. See what others ignore. Naturally, the first step is recognizing opportunities where other founders see a mess. Spend time in areas where customers feel the least respected. It is here that you can leverage trust as an advantage.
2. Map the emotional friction. What factors lead to this industry feeling stagnant in the first place? Every operational failure is rooted in a feeling — confusion, shame, fear or distrust. Identify the problems to better understand where you can strive for redemption.
3. Build systems around clarity. Once you understand the problem, you can work toward the solution. Fix the experience before you scale it. Create systems rooted in transparency that redefine your industry before you focus on growth.
4. Turn consistency into your product. In broken markets, predictability itself is innovation. Simply providing a trustworthy product or service with clarity as your core value can set you apart in a stale industry.

Stale markets are abundant — so opportunity is as well. Opacity is nearly ubiquitous in industries like insurance, healthcare billing and car sales. In my case, the broken market happened to be gold resale, a category that hadn’t changed in decades. Yet potential is endless with imagination and resolve.

Lessons for founders

With Alloy Market, I embraced an industry ripe with mistrust and focused on clarity as a differentiator. The gold resale market was primed for disruption because trust had been lost, and the chance for regaining that trust served as the impetus for Alloy’s growth. The journey taught me important lessons about innovation.

Founders who are interested in disrupting the mold of broken industries should remember these key maxims:

• Trust compounds. You can’t buy it — you earn it, and it scales faster than marketing. A business built on trust grows faster and retains customers better.
• Fix before you flash. Addressing the problems in your industry is always the first step. Know what you need to set yourself apart from untrustworthy competitors. Make the unglamorous parts your differentiator.
• Transparency converts. Clarity builds confidence in your brand. Confidence builds conversion.
• Empathy is efficiency. Redefining a broken market means embracing consumers’ misgivings and directly confronting them. Understanding the customer’s fear saves a thousand service tickets.
• Integrity travels. In a connected world, honesty becomes viral. Trustworthy missions promote businesses that scale readily.

Remember that innovation doesn’t have to come from new ideas, but instead can look like redefining an existing industry.

Related: How Entrepreneurs Can Fuel Innovation and Push Societal Limits

Reckoning with trust

While certain industries may come to mind when you think of stagnation and mistrust, the truth is that every industry will face its reckoning in this regard. Skepticism is rampant in today’s world, and business leaders need to face this head-on.

The founders who step into spaces where suspicion is baked into the characterization of a market — not with gimmicks, but with genuine care — define their categories. Clarity is important in establishing trust, and sincerity is crucial. Empathy for the emotional friction that previously defined an industry set you apart from disreputable competitors. It’s here that you start redefining a market.

The future of disruption isn’t about speed or code. It’s about rebuilding faith one honest transaction at a time.

Stagnant industries are prolific, and they erode customer trust. When environments become stale, and associations with a type of business are hardened and archaic, breaking the mold and inciting interest in your business becomes a losing battle.

Take the gold resale world for example. Images that come to mind include harsh fluorescent lights in unwelcoming environments, confusing pricing with no transparency and lowball offers. How do you break through these associations to establish trust and investment in your brand in spaces like these?

As AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity become primary gateways for discovery, a new metric is rising in strategic importance: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

This isn’t just a marketing buzzword. GEO is emerging as a core indicator of brand authority and relevance in AI-driven ecosystems. For entrepreneurs and investors, understanding GEO offers a competitive edge.

Founders can use GEO data to prioritize content investments, measure marketing ROI and spot whitespace for product positioning. Investors are using GEO visibility as an emerging due diligence signal. And for those building AI-native startups, understanding how LLMs surface information is essential to designing discoverable, scalable offerings.

GEO isn’t just something to monitor. It’s a strategic lever. Entrepreneurs who harness it now can drive smarter go-to-market decisions, increase visibility where it matters most and stay ahead in an economy increasingly shaped by generative AI.

Related: The Key to Better SEO Actually Comes From Your Customers — Here’s How

A background on Generative Engine Optimization

When PR and marketing pros undertake GEO, the goal is to optimize content so that it shows up in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) and similar tools. It’s not the same as SEO.

Practitioners of GEO are focused on creating content that is conversational and easy to understand. Content like this is more accessible to AI systems that are spinning up human-like responses. They prefer concise, well-structured and authoritative content (such as bulleted overviews in the introduction) that AI can interpret and blend without difficulty.

Unlike SEO, the goal isn’t to get clicks or increase search engine rankings. GEO’s success metrics include mentions, citations and inclusion in AI answers and summaries.

AI has changed the way people discover companies

When product reviews in print magazines gave way to the internet, search engines became a sweet spot for brands to focus on. Everyone wanted to rank high in Google searches. The mid-90s saw the heyday of SEO; suddenly, everyone was looking to hire an SEO ninja to ensure their company was getting listed as high as possible on search pages. Keyword stuffing became the name of the game, although the backlash would eventually come.

As tools like Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT are changing how customers discover and trust information, it’s pushing traditional searches to the sidelines. In fact, a new report from McKinsey found that half of consumers use AI-powered search today, and “by 2028, $750 billion in revenue will funnel through AI search.”

What’s more, McKinsey also finds that brands unprepared for this shift “may experience a decline in traffic from the traditional search channels, anywhere from 20 to 50%.”

The takeaway is that GEO isn’t just a marketing or PR concern, and it’s not just hype that can be ignored; this is where content – and company – discovery is going. As I detailed in my last piece, GEO insights can be used to make smarter decisions about content investment, but that’s not all.

Related: Don’t Fall for ‘AI SEO’ Gimmicks — Here’s What It Really Takes to Win in the Age of AI Search

How GEO visibility goes beyond just marketing

As more investors look beyond spreadsheets to assess brand strength and market potential, GEO visibility will increasingly complement traditional metrics. It’s the public traction layer in the investment thesis.

• It captures narrative strength. GEO visibility reflects how well a company is positioning itself in the market, not just what it does, but why it matters. In a crowded space, owning the narrative can be a differentiator.
• It reveals category leadership. If a company is consistently cited in discussions about its industry, it’s likely helping to shape that conversation. Investors take note of thought leaders because they often become market leaders.
• It enhances exit potential. Strong GEO visibility makes a company more attractive to investors AND also to potential acquirers, customers and top-tier talent. It supports valuation by amplifying perceived market relevance.
• It’s measurable. With advances in AI and media intelligence, investors can now track share of voice, sentiment, reach and impact – making GEO visibility a quantifiable signal, not just a qualitative one.

Advantage: Discoverability

It’s AI’s turn to “eat the world,” and GEO is part of the inevitable transitions that occur with any major technological shift. Content strategists and creators aren’t trying to write like AI but rather for AI, using techniques like overviews and summaries to frame content for easy comprehension by generative AI tools.

Clear, concise and authoritative website copy, articles and other content types are more important now than ever. PR and marketing teams can use data from GEO to find out what’s working and adjust as necessary.

Goodbye, search rankings; hello, discoverability. Organizations that prioritize this shift will gain a competitive advantage as generative AI continues to set the agenda.

As AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity become primary gateways for discovery, a new metric is rising in strategic importance: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

This isn’t just a marketing buzzword. GEO is emerging as a core indicator of brand authority and relevance in AI-driven ecosystems. For entrepreneurs and investors, understanding GEO offers a competitive edge.