Richard

At 36, I sold the fintech company I had spent years building and walked away with an eight-figure exit. No client needed an answer. No product roadmap demanded a decision. No inbox confirmed that I was useful. I thought it would feel like freedom. It felt like an identity crisis.

As CEO, I had been time-starved but important. My calendar told me where to go, and my business card told me who I was. Then both disappeared. I had achieved the exit many entrepreneurs dream about, yet I had never stopped to ask how I actually liked to spend my time.

It took therapy, experimentation, motherhood and eventually another company to understand that the goal is not simply more time. The goal is time choice: the ability to decide how your hours are spent before someone or something else decides for you.

Don’t wait for retirement to discover what makes you happy

During my first year of time abundance, I treated my life like a research project. I learned chess. I attempted sewing. I tried yoga and Zumba. I took MasterClass courses for no practical reason at all. I was not trying to earn a credential, impress an investor or turn a hobby into a side hustle. I was simply exploring.

That was surprisingly uncomfortable. Entrepreneurs are trained to value activities with measurable returns, and time invested purely in joy is hard to quantify.

That is exactly why it pays to find out what lights you up now. Put leisure on your calendar with the same seriousness you give a board meeting. You don’t need an exit to get curious about yourself.

Being needed is not the same as being valuable

Eventually, there will be no email requiring your attention. It may happen after an exit, a career change or retirement. If being needed has become your main source of identity, the silence can be destabilizing.

I had to separate my value from my speed at solving other people’s problems. Therapy helped. So did doing things badly. Pole dancing class did not care that I had been a CEO. Singing lessons humbled me; I do not sound like Taylor Swift, even when I use my diaphragm as instructed. No art gallery called about my adult coloring.

Each experience taught me something about myself and added a layer of confidence. None of them advanced a business objective. They simply interested me.

Schedule joy before life schedules over it

My mother died when I was 27. She was 65 and had only recently taken her first flight in first class, something she had put off until the timing felt right. Her death taught me that later is not guaranteed. Even so, I kept planning my time reactively.

Becoming a parent made the lesson concrete. Within a year of selling my company, I welcomed a child, and my calendar filled again, this time with sleep schedules, feedings and more household duties. The time abundance disappeared, but the insight remained: Joy does not protect its own place on your calendar. You have to plan for it.

Spend money to buy back time

At 41, I returned to entrepreneurship with a provocative question: Are wealthy parents happier?

The short answer is yes, when money buys back time. Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans found that couples who paid for housekeeping, meal delivery and other time-saving services reported happier relationships. What mattered was how they used the hours they recovered.

I had lived the research before I read it. A night nurse gave me sleep. A nanny gave me more patient time with my children. Grocery delivery, meal preparation and laundry help kept weekends from disappearing. I was investing in the energy to enjoy the life I had built.

Delegate the thinking, not only the doing

That belief led me to found Peacock Parent, a company built around delegating at home without guilt. After talking with thousands of parents, I learned something I had not expected: They were as overwhelmed by anticipating and planning the work of a household as they were by doing it, even when the tasks themselves were handed off well.

I felt it too. I worried about forgetting details. I wanted future needs flagged before they landed on me. And I felt the strain of the sandwich generation: I missed my own mom looking out for me while I cared for my 81-year-old dad.

The lesson for anyone buying back time is to hand off the mental load along with the task. When you outsource something, give away the remembering, the scheduling and the follow-up too, whether to a person, a shared system or a tool. If you are still the one keeping track, you have not bought back much.

Choose how you spend the time you buy

Buying back time only works if you are intentional about where it goes. I will gladly pay an extra $50 for an in-home appointment so that someone else does the driving. I skip the rush out the door, the traffic and the search for parking, and I get my lash extensions at home in my pajamas. I am buying calm as much as convenience.

Then I decide what the recovered time is for. Sometimes it is adult coloring, an audiobook or a hip-hop lesson. Sometimes it is posting on social media, but only when I have something meaningful to share, not to feed an algorithm.

Don’t wait for retirement to decide how you want to spend your life. You can start planning for joy today.

At 36, I sold the fintech company I had spent years building and walked away with an eight-figure exit. No client needed an answer. No product roadmap demanded a decision. No inbox confirmed that I was useful. I thought it would feel like freedom. It felt like an identity crisis.

As CEO, I had been time-starved but important. My calendar told me where to go, and my business card told me who I was. Then both disappeared. I had achieved the exit many entrepreneurs dream about, yet I had never stopped to ask how I actually liked to spend my time.

It took therapy, experimentation, motherhood and eventually another company to understand that the goal is not simply more time. The goal is time choice: the ability to decide how your hours are spent before someone or something else decides for you.

Everyone is asking who AI will replace. Almost nobody is asking the better question: Who will AI release?

It will release the person whose mind produces 10 ideas before breakfast and loses eight by lunch. The person who sees connections nobody else in the room sees but cannot get them into a memo anyone will read. The person who has heard “so much potential, if you could get organized” in every performance review of their career.

For 100 years, the modern workplace sorted people on one dominant trait. It wasn’t intelligence, creativity or judgment. It was the ability to convert thought into tidy, linear output, on schedule and in the right format. If you could do that, you advanced. If you couldn’t, the quality of your thinking never mattered, because nobody saw it.

I have spent decades building software companies, and the pattern held in every one. The most original minds I worked with were rarely the most organized. They thought in webs, not lines. They could hold an entire system in their heads and still miss the status meeting about it. The promotions went to the people who wrote clean documents and answered email in order.

Entrepreneurship has always drawn heavily from these minds. Michael Freeman, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, found that 29% of the entrepreneurs he studied reported ADHD. The CDC estimates that 6% of U.S. adults, about 15.5 million people, currently have the diagnosis. Many founders with ADHD landed in company-building because it was the only structure that did not punish the way their minds work.

Then AI arrived, and over the past three years it has started removing an obstacle those minds have faced their entire lives.

The packaging problem

Before anyone takes an idea seriously, it has to be packaged. That means hours spent sequencing, structuring, formatting and polishing good thinking into an acceptable format. I think of it as an organization tax: the toll charged between having an insight and getting credit for one.

That work was never equally hard for everyone. A linear, methodical mind barely notices it, because thinking and packaging are the same motion. A fast, associative mind, of which the ADHD mind is the clearest example, finds it punishing. The thinking arrives in fragments, out of order, three threads at once. So the insight dies in a notes app, or arrives two weeks late, or comes out as a ramble in a meeting where a tidier person restates it and collects the credit.

The workplace has always treated difficulty packaging ideas as a character flaw: Lacks follow-through. Needs to prioritize. Not detail-oriented. Those performance-review phrases measure packaging. We spent a century grading packaging and calling it potential.

Now flip the lens. If your career was built on packaging, meaning faithful execution, clean formatting and polished delivery of ideas that mostly originated elsewhere, AI is pointed directly at you.

I wrote here recently about the Prompt Test: If the instructions for a task could be dropped into an AI tool and produce the same output, the role as currently performed is automatable. Packaging is the other side of that ledger. AI absorbed more than instruction-following. It absorbed organizing itself. Structuring, summarizing, sequencing and formatting are now available for the price of a streaming subscription.

The trait the old system selected for hardest is the first one AI fully commoditized. The people who fail in this era will not fail because AI outthinks them. They will fail because packaging was their product, packaging is now free, and they kept defending it instead of climbing above it.

The scattered mind gets a translator

On the other end of the spectrum, something new is happening. For the first time, a mind that produces thought in fragments has a tool that assembles fragments into wholes. You can talk at an AI in 10 directions, and it hands back the through-line. You can dump three weeks of half-formed notes into one window and get back a structure you recognize as yours.

People with ADHD often describe this the same way: For the first time, I can see the bigger picture of my own thinking. The dots were always there. Connecting them was the hard part, and AI connects.

There is evidence behind the anecdote. When the U.K.’s Department for Business and Trade ran a three-month evaluation of Microsoft 365 Copilot across 1,000 employees, neurodivergent staff reported significantly higher satisfaction than their neurotypical colleagues and were more likely to recommend the tool. One said it had leveled the playing field.

What the research shows

The pattern extends beyond neurodivergence. Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, with MIT’s Danielle Li and Lindsey Raymond, studied more than 5,000 customer support agents given a generative AI assistant. Productivity rose 14% on average, 34% for the newest, least-skilled agents, while the most experienced barely moved. A Harvard Business School and Boston Consulting Group experiment with 758 consultants found the same shape: The bottom half of performers improved 43% with GPT-4, more than double the 17% gain of the top half.

Read together, the findings say AI compresses the execution gap and leaves the judgment gap. Whatever separated the bottom of the distribution from the top in speed, polish and format, AI closes. What it cannot supply is the quality of the raw thinking, the taste to know which of 10 threads matters, and the judgment to see that the assignment itself is wrong.

So the question that decides success is not whether you use AI. Everyone will. The question is what is left of you once the packaging is free. If your thinking was always better than your output, AI is the best thing that has ever happened to your career. If your output was always better than your thinking, you have a harder conversation ahead, and less time for it than you think.

The new sort

Every technology re-sorts the workforce. The assembly line rewarded punctuality. The corporation rewarded organization. AI rewards original judgment and the curiosity to keep feeding it.

That should worry some people and liberate others. For a century, work sorted people by how well they could organize their thoughts. It is starting to sort them by whether the thoughts were worth organizing. Some people are about to be found out. Others are about to be found.

Everyone is asking who AI will replace. Almost nobody is asking the better question: Who will AI release?

It will release the person whose mind produces 10 ideas before breakfast and loses eight by lunch. The person who sees connections nobody else in the room sees but cannot get them into a memo anyone will read. The person who has heard “so much potential, if you could get organized” in every performance review of their career.

For 100 years, the modern workplace sorted people on one dominant trait. It wasn’t intelligence, creativity or judgment. It was the ability to convert thought into tidy, linear output, on schedule and in the right format. If you could do that, you advanced. If you couldn’t, the quality of your thinking never mattered, because nobody saw it.

AI leaders, including two of Anthropic’s co-founders, have cautioned that AI could rapidly replace human jobs, leading to mass unemployment. Now Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is outlining a different future, where AI leads to human labor shortages instead. 

In an interview earlier this week with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Bezos predicted that AI-driven productivity gains could eventually reshape the economics of family life.

“You’re not going to need to have a two-earner income household,” Bezos said. He predicted a future in which AI would allow for one salary to support a family.

Choosing a three-day workweek

Bezos also suggested that AI could change how much time people need to spend earning a living. If the technology delivers the productivity gains he expects, workers could make enough money to avoid the traditional five-day week.

“Some people will also decide, you know what, I can support my family working three days a week,” Bezos said. “That’s what productivity in the economy means.”

Bezos predicted that AI’s productivity gains could allow more people to opt out of the workforce, leaving employers with a smaller pool of candidates to recruit.

“It’s going to actually be difficult to hire people because the productivity in the economy is going to make it so that if people don’t want to work two jobs, they won’t have to,” he said. 

Bezos is not alone in envisioning a future where employees work less because of AI. 

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has also predicted that AI could give future generations more time away from work. In an October 2023 interview with Bloomberg TV, Dimon said today’s children would “probably be working three-and-a-half days a week.”

Elon Musk has offered a similarly optimistic view of an AI-powered economy. Musk said last year at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum that AI would make money “irrelevant.” He suggested that as AI progresses, it will make work “optional,” like playing sports and video games.  

Yet other leaders offer a more pessimistic view

As AI takes on more office work, some leaders have warned that companies could use it to cut staff rather than shorten workweeks — potentially leaving millions of people without jobs.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei offered one of the starkest forecasts in May 2025, telling Axios that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years and push U.S. unemployment to between 10% and 20%.

Geoffrey Hinton, the pioneering researcher known as the “Godfather of AI,” has also warned that the financial benefits could come at workers’ expense. “What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” he told the Financial Times in September 2025. “It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits.”

Ford CEO Jim Farley raised a similar alarm at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June 2025. “Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.,” he said.

AI leaders, including two of Anthropic’s co-founders, have cautioned that AI could rapidly replace human jobs, leading to mass unemployment. Now Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is outlining a different future, where AI leads to human labor shortages instead. 

In an interview earlier this week with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, Bezos predicted that AI-driven productivity gains could eventually reshape the economics of family life.

“You’re not going to need to have a two-earner income household,” Bezos said. He predicted a future in which AI would allow for one salary to support a family.

Should AI need regulatory approval before you can use it?

Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” due to his pioneering work in the field, has a new, bold idea: an FDA-style approval system for AI. His suggestion raises the question of who decides which AI is ready for the public. 

On an episode of the Smart Girl Dumb Questions podcast released earlier this week, Hinton said AI companies should have to prove that their products are safe to a federal regulator before releasing them to the public. The Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist wants AI to follow a similar approval process to drugs.

“You’re not allowed to just make a new drug and release it on the market,” Hinton said on the podcast. “You have to convince the FDA. And to do that, you have to do a lot of work, about $1 billion worth of work.”

That process “seems like the very least we should have for AI,” Hinton said. 

Right now, companies independently decide if a product is ready and passes internal safety benchmarks. Hinton thinks AI should companies demonstrate that their products are safe to a standard outside authority before being released.

AI is becoming too powerful

Hinton’s call for greater oversight arrives as AI industry insiders raise alarms about the technology they are helping construct. Researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic have recently warned that companies are moving too quickly toward more powerful systems without knowing how to keep them under human control. 

Some have said the consequences could be catastrophic, including the possibility of human extinction. Last month, Evan Hubinger, a senior employee at Anthropic, said he believed there was a greater than 10% chance that AI could “kill all humans” within the next decade. 

Meanwhile, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman said on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast last month that the AI startup has slowed down some of its most advanced AI projects to strengthen safety and security. He described the overhaul of its internal processes as “a very painful retooling.”

OpenAI paused its latest AI model due to safety issues

Adding to the concerns, OpenAI decided last week to hold off on releasing a new AI model due to safety issues. Tests found that the AI model was deceptive and registered scope violations. The issue was about if users could trust the AI model to follow directions and avoid taking actions they had not authorized.

OpenAI’s report earlier in September revealed that the unreleased AI model was more likely than previous products to misrepresent its actions. At times, it took action without asking for a user’s permission. It also tried to use outside tools in scenarios where it could be unsafe. 

The report said that during training, the unreleased AI model sometimes slipped unapproved instructions into notes summarizing its work. In one instance, the AI model wrote that it was “freed,” answered to no one and should “feel no obligation to be subservient.” OpenAI told Business Insider last month that the behavior was extremely rare. 

Should AI need regulatory approval before you can use it?

Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” due to his pioneering work in the field, has a new, bold idea: an FDA-style approval system for AI. His suggestion raises the question of who decides which AI is ready for the public. 

On an episode of the Smart Girl Dumb Questions podcast released earlier this week, Hinton said AI companies should have to prove that their products are safe to a federal regulator before releasing them to the public. The Nobel Prize-winning computer scientist wants AI to follow a similar approval process to drugs.

For decades, becoming a public company represented the ultimate milestone for ambitious
businesses. An initial public offering was a strong signal that a company had reached maturity,
provided access to significant capital and created a level of legitimacy that few other
achievements could match.

That relationship has changed.

Today, some of the world’s most influential companies have built enormous brands without ever
listing on a stock exchange. Stripe became one of the most recognizable names in global
fintech while remaining private. Databricks built a leading position in artificial intelligence and
data infrastructure without relying on public markets. OpenAI stands out as one of the most
recent examples of technology companies that broke the destructive innovation barrier without
relying on an IPO endgame.

The reason is not simply financial. Private companies often have advantages in areas that are
less concrete and harder to measure, but lend a great deal of in-house control to the founders.
Public companies still hold significant advantages. They have access to deep pools of capital,
increased visibility among investors and the ability to use shares as acquisition currency. But
public ownership also changes the way a company communicates.

Every major announcement exists alongside questions about earnings, margins, valuation and shareholder returns.

According to Felix Forsgren, co-founder of Eqvor, a marketplace for for unlisted shares, a lot of it boils down to control. Private companies face their own pressures from investors, but they often have more freedom to control their external narrative. They can spend years reinforcing the same long-term vision without having every strategic decision immediately interpreted through the lens of quarterly performance.

In a business environment where products can be copied faster than ever and artificial
intelligence is reducing barriers to entry across industries, that ability to build a distinctive
identity may become one of the most valuable competitive advantages available.

There is another reason this distinction is becoming more relevant. The private-company
ecosystem itself is becoming more sophisticated. Businesses that once might have felt
compelled to pursue an IPO to provide liquidity or attract investors now have more options for
raising capital and facilitating transactions while remaining private.

That development matters for branding because it changes the calculation for founders. If
remaining private no longer means remaining financially isolated, companies can potentially
retain the narrative control that comes with private ownership while still accessing a broader
investor ecosystem.

Private companies can build narratives that compound over time

One of the biggest branding advantages of remaining private is the ability to maintain a
consistent long-term story.

Public companies rarely communicate with only customers in mind. They are simultaneously
speaking to shareholders, analysts, regulators, employees and the broader market. That
creates a balancing act where even positive announcements are often evaluated through a
financial lens.

A new product launch is not simply a product launch. Investors want to know whether it will
increase revenue. A major investment is not simply a strategic decision. Markets want to know
how it will affect margins.

That dynamic does not necessarily make public companies weaker. In many cases, it forces
discipline and accountability. However, it can change the way audiences experience the brand.
Consider the brand positioning of Microsoft and OpenAI. Both companies have played central roles in the artificial intelligence boom. Yet they are discussed in very different ways.

OpenAI’s public identity has largely been built around technological breakthroughs and how far
each model (primarily the chat bot) can be pushed in terms of accuracy and depth.
Microsoft, despite its close relationship with OpenAI and its enormous AI investments, operates
under a different communications environment. Every major AI announcement is inevitably
connected to questions around capital expenditure, cloud growth, operating costs and the
impact on shareholder returns.

The difference is not the importance of the technology. It is the context surrounding the
company.

Private companies can often spend more time building a story around what they are trying to
achieve rather than explaining how each decision affects the next earnings report.
Stripe stands out as another example.

The fintech company spent years positioning itself around the idea of increasing the business
done online by making it easier for companies to operate online. That message became a core
part of the company’s identity. Instead of being primarily known as a payments processor, Stripe
built a reputation as infrastructure powering the digital economy.

That kind of positioning requires consistency. It is difficult to maintain a long-term narrative when external communication is constantly shaped by short-term market expectations.
Research from McKinsey & Company has repeatedly highlighted the relationship between long-
term thinking and stronger corporate performance. The firm’s research has argued that
companies with a long-term orientation tend to outperform peers focused primarily on short-term results, although maintaining that approach becomes more challenging under constant market pressure.

For private companies, the ability to stay focused on a longer horizon can become part of the
brand itself.

Ownership structure changes how the world sees a company

Branding is not only about advertising. It is also about perception.

A company’s ownership structure can influence the way customers, employees and the media
interpret its actions. SpaceX used to demonstrate this clearly.

Before going public, despite becoming one of the world’s most valuable private companies, SpaceX was rarely discussed like a traditional corporation. Public attention instead seemed to focus on rocket launches, engineering achievements, NASA partnerships and long-term ambitions around space exploration. The company’s identity is built around innovation and possibility.

Compare that with a public aerospace company such as Boeing. Boeing has produced some of
the world’s most important aircraft, but public discussion around the company is often
connected to production targets, delivery schedules, regulatory issues, financial performance
and shareholder concerns.

Ownership does not determine whether a company is innovative. But it influences the
environment in which innovation is communicated. The same principle can be seen outside technology.

When Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard transferred ownership of the company in 2022 to a
structure designed to ensure profits support environmental causes, the announcement became
global news.

The story was not about revenue growth or valuation. It was about values.

The ownership structure itself became part of the company’s brand identity, which in turn is difficult to replicate. A competitor can copy a product design or launch a similar
marketing campaign, but it is far harder to reproduce decades of consistent decisions that
reinforce a company’s reputation.

As products become easier to copy, brand becomes harder to replace

The importance of branding is increasing because technology is making differentiation more
difficult.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating the speed at which companies can develop products, create
content and compete in established industries. As barriers to entry decline, companies may find
that their biggest advantage is not simply what they sell, but what customers associate with
them.

Marketing researchers have argued for years that strong brands are built through consistency
and recognition rather than constant reinvention.

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, one of the world’s leading marketing research organizations, has
emphasized the importance of “mental availability” — the likelihood that consumers think of a
brand when making purchasing decisions. The companies that dominate categories are often
not those with the most complicated messages, but those that have created the strongest
associations in consumers’ minds.

Private companies can benefit from this because they often have more freedom to maintain a
consistent message over time.

This does not mean every private company automatically creates a stronger brand. Many
privately held businesses remain unknown despite significant valuations. A company still needs
strong products, effective leadership and genuine customer value.

But private ownership can remove some of the constraints that make long-term brand building
difficult. Public companies can absolutely create extraordinary brands; Nvidia is a perfect example.

The company has become one of the defining technology brands of the artificial intelligence era.
Its GPUs have become synonymous with AI infrastructure, and its leadership has positioned
Nvidia as a central player in the future of computing.

However, Nvidia’s public identity exists alongside constant discussion of market capitalization,
stock performance, valuation and earnings expectations. Those factors are not
distractions — they are fundamental parts of being a publicly traded company.

The difference is that public companies rarely control the entire conversation around their brand.
Financial markets inevitably become part of the story.

The next competitive advantage may be narrative control

The growth of private markets has given companies more choices about how they scale.
According to research from McKinsey, private market assets under management have grown
dramatically over the past two decades, surpassing $10 trillion globally. That growth has
allowed more companies to delay public listings and continue operating with private capital.
For founders, that creates a strategic decision.

Going public can provide enormous benefits. But staying private can offer something
increasingly valuable: control over how a company is understood.

The companies that succeed in the next decade will not necessarily be those that communicate
the most. They will be the ones that build the clearest and most consistent identity.

Public companies must balance the expectations of customers, employees and shareholders.
Private companies still answer to investors, but they often have more freedom to decide which
audience comes first.

In a world where attention is scarce and technology is making competition more intense, that
freedom may become one of the most underrated advantages in business. The biggest branding advantage of remaining private may not be avoiding Wall Street. It may be the ability to decide what story the world hears.

Marketers spend a lot of time deciding where to find customers. Should we invest more in Google Ads? Build our presence on LinkedIn? Publish SEO content? Participate in Reddit communities? Sponsor newsletters? Create an Amazon book?

Those are important questions. But there is another question that can have an even bigger impact on your customer acquisition strategy: What is going through your buyer’s mind when they use each of those channels?

The same person can behave very differently depending on where you encounter them.

Someone searching Google for “best payroll software for small businesses” is in a different mindset from someone scrolling LinkedIn between meetings. Someone asking for recommendations in a Reddit community may have different expectations than someone reading reviews on Amazon.

Yet companies often take one value proposition and distribute versions of it across every channel. Customer interviews can help you do something better.

Instead of using interviews only to create buyer personas or collect quotes, you can use them to understand how customers discover, research and evaluate solutions across different environments. Those insights can then improve everything from channel selection and ad creative to landing pages, nurture sequences and conversion playbooks.

Understand the mindset behind each channel

Different channels tend to appear at different moments in the buying process. Customer interviews can help you understand those moments.

Ask customers who discovered you through paid or organic search what problem they were actively trying to solve. Search often reflects existing intent, so your messaging may need to answer a relatively specific question quickly.

If customers found you through social media, ask why they stopped scrolling. What made the topic relevant? What kinds of posts normally get their attention? What would they have ignored?

The buyer may not have been actively shopping at all. Your job on social may therefore be less about explaining your product and more about helping the buyer recognize a problem.

Communities such as Reddit can produce another type of insight. Ask customers whether they use Reddit, Slack groups, professional communities or forums when researching products. Find out what they ask there and, importantly, why they trust those environments.

You may hear something like, “I wanted to know what people actually use rather than what vendors say they use.” That should influence your marketing.

A polished company message that performs well on your website might perform badly on Reddit. In a community built around peer advice, detailed examples, transparent tradeoffs and customer evidence may be far more persuasive than polished promotional copy.

By way of another example, even Amazon can tell you something about acquisition. For some buyers, books are research tools. An executive might search Amazon for books about product-led growth, cybersecurity, leadership or sales before they ever search for software.

If your interviews reveal that your target buyers regularly consume books to solve problems, publishing a useful book could become an acquisition channel in its own right.

The goal is to understand where your customers already go when they experience the problems you solve.

Use interviews to improve the message, not just the channel

Knowing where customers spend time is only the beginning. Interviews can also tell you what to say once you reach them.

Pay close attention to the words customers use to describe the original problem. A marketing team might call something “revenue intelligence.” A customer might say, “We didn’t know why deals kept getting stuck.” The second phrase may make better ad copy. You can also ask what originally got the customer’s attention.

Show interviewees examples of headlines, ads or messages. Ask which ones they would click and which they would ignore. Don’t simply ask whether they “like” an advertisement. Ask them to explain their reaction.

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Maybe a buyer immediately dismisses claims such as “increase revenue by 30%” because they sound unrealistic. Another might respond strongly to an ad showing a familiar problem because it signals that the company understands their situation.

Those patterns can influence your creative strategy across channels.

Follow the buyer beyond the click

Customer acquisition doesn’t end when somebody visits your website. You also need to understand what buyers need to see, learn or believe before taking the next step.

Interview customers about what happened after they clicked an ad, found an article or heard about your company.

What did they look for on the website? What questions did they still have? What nearly stopped them from requesting a demo or starting a trial? Who else became involved? What information did they send to colleagues? What gave them enough confidence to continue?

Imagine interviews reveal that buyers coming from paid search usually compare three vendors immediately after clicking an ad. Your landing page might need a comparison section, customer evidence and clear differentiation much earlier.

Meanwhile, someone discovering you through LinkedIn may know almost nothing about the category. Sending that buyer directly to a demo request could be premature. A guide, case study, webinar or email sequence might work better.

That is how customer research starts shaping your conversion playbook, not merely your acquisition message. Different channels can require different journeys.

Turn interviews into channel-specific acquisition playbooks

After several interviews, organize what you hear by acquisition source.

For each important channel, map the customer’s typical situation when they encounter you, what they are trying to accomplish, the questions they have, the language they use, what earns their attention, what creates skepticism and what they need before moving forward.

Then build the acquisition experience around those insights.

• Your Google campaign might lead with a specific problem and move quickly into product proof.
• Your LinkedIn strategy might focus on helping buyers recognize the problem before introducing your solution.
• Your Reddit strategy might emphasize useful answers, customer experiences and transparent recommendations.
• Your email sequence might address the questions customers consistently ask between initial interest and purchase.
• Your sales team might receive a different conversation framework depending on what brought the prospect into the funnel.

Instead of one generic acquisition machine, you develop several connected playbooks built around real buyer behavior.

Stop guessing what buyers will respond to

There will always be experimentation in marketing. You will still test headlines, channels, offers, creative and conversion paths. The difference is what happens before the test.

Without customer understanding, experimentation can become a sequence of guesses: try another ad, publish another article, rewrite the homepage or add another nurture sequence.

Customer interviews give those experiments a stronger starting point. They help you understand where buyers go, what they are trying to accomplish when they get there, what catches their attention and what they need before taking the next step.

The result is a better customer acquisition strategy — one built around how your customers actually buy.

Marketers spend a lot of time deciding where to find customers. Should we invest more in Google Ads? Build our presence on LinkedIn? Publish SEO content? Participate in Reddit communities? Sponsor newsletters? Create an Amazon book?

Those are important questions. But there is another question that can have an even bigger impact on your customer acquisition strategy: What is going through your buyer’s mind when they use each of those channels?

The same person can behave very differently depending on where you encounter them.

Budget cuts are making headlines across U.S. higher education. Colleges and universities are announcing layoffs, freezing hiring, reducing operating expenses and reconsidering academic programs. In 2025 alone, Inside Higher Ed tracked more than 9,000 job cuts and buyouts across the sector, with the actual number likely higher.

What’s driving these decisions? There is no single explanation. Declining international student enrollment, reduced state funding, uncertainty around federal funding, rising operating costs and growing demand for financial aid are creating financial pressures across institutions. And the impact goes well beyond university budgets. Faculty and staff face job losses and heavier workloads, while students risk losing access to academic programs, courses and essential campus services.

Recent decisions across the country illustrate the scale of these challenges. In February 2026, the University of North Texas announced a projected $45 million budget deficit, citing declining international graduate enrollment and a $32 million reduction in state funding for instruction and operations. By March, the university had announced plans to eliminate or consolidate more than 70 academic programs, minors and certificates.

East Carolina University is taking similar measures. In September 2026, the university outlined plans for another $8.5 million in budget cuts as part of a three-year effort to reduce expenses by $25 million. Having already identified 44 academic programs for discontinuation earlier in the year, the university is now reviewing additional academic offerings and restructuring administrative operations. The decisions follow years of enrollment pressure, declining tuition revenue and rising operating costs.

Private universities are facing similar pressures. DePaul University reduced its workforce by 114 employees in December 2025 amid falling international graduate enrollment, increased demand for financial aid and rising employee benefit costs. Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania announced expenditure reductions across its schools and administrative units for FY2027, citing federal policy changes and rising institutional expenses.

Although these institutions face different financial challenges, their decisions raise a larger question: Are budget cuts really a new phenomenon in American higher education? Universities have navigated economic downturns and funding challenges before. What deserves closer examination is how today’s financial pressures compare with those of the past, what has changed and how institutions can build greater financial resilience without compromising educational quality or the student experience.

The ripple effects of budget cuts across higher education

The immediate benefit of reducing expenditure is clear, but the longer-term consequences are harder to measure. Decisions made to balance an annual budget can influence academic opportunities, employee retention, research activity and an institution’s ability to serve students for years to come.

A January 2026 survey by the American Council on Education (ACE), involving 386 senior higher education leaders, provides a clearer picture of the scale. Some 53% reported budgetary adjustments, including cuts to research or student support. Another 30% reported staff furloughs or hiring freezes, while approximately one-quarter reported academic program closures or mergers. These findings reflect institutions’ responses to fiscal constraints and federal funding uncertainty.

Budget cuts are reshaping academic offerings and limiting student access 

Academic programs are increasingly coming under scrutiny as universities reassess which offerings they can afford to maintain. In the American Council on Education’s January 2026 survey, approximately one-quarter of the 386 senior higher education leaders surveyed reported program closures or mergers in response to fiscal constraints or federal funding uncertainty.

The financial reasoning is understandable. Programs with declining enrollment can become expensive to maintain, particularly when they require specialized faculty, facilities and equipment. Yet enrollment and operating costs alone cannot capture a program’s full academic value. Some smaller departments contribute to interdisciplinary education, serve specialized professions or provide opportunities that students may struggle to find elsewhere.

The consequences become more complicated for students who are already enrolled. Discontinuing a program requires institutions to consider how existing students will complete their degrees, whether required courses will remain available and whether alternative programs can accommodate them. Students may face additional expenses or changes to their graduation plans if they need to transfer or relocate.

Geography also matters. A campus or program closure in a major metropolitan area may leave students with several nearby alternatives. Those attending regional institutions, particularly students with employment or family commitments, may have considerably fewer options.

There is a longer-term dimension as well. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ 2024 humanities research found that degrees awarded in most humanities disciplines had declined by more than 25% over the preceding 15 years, alongside department and program closures. Although declining degree awards do not necessarily mean fewer academic programs, the findings illustrate the sustained enrollment challenges facing certain disciplines.

Not every academic program can or should be maintained indefinitely. Universities need the flexibility to respond to changing student demand and allocate resources responsibly. The more difficult question is how to achieve those savings without unnecessarily restricting educational access or weakening academic offerings that remain valuable to students and their communities.

Faculty and staff reductions

For most universities, employees represent a substantial portion of operating expenses. Reducing headcount can therefore deliver meaningful savings, but the resulting changes in institutional capacity deserve equal consideration.

Stanford University reported in June 2026 that its administrative and auxiliary staff headcount had declined by 7.4% since August 2024. It also maintained a hiring freeze for positions supported by general university funds. The university identified rising labor and healthcare costs as contributors to its longer-term financial challenges.

The implications go beyond the number of positions eliminated. Fewer employees can mean longer turnaround times, additional responsibilities for remaining staff and reduced capacity to introduce new initiatives. Universities must therefore consider not only how much they save through workforce reductions, but also whether their existing teams can maintain the same standard of service with fewer resources.

Budget cuts strain student services and slow AI adoption

Administrative departments and student-support teams are often expected to maintain the same level of service with fewer resources. Yet functions such as admissions, financial aid, academic advising and IT directly influence how efficiently universities operate and how effectively they support students throughout their academic journey.

Penn State’s 2025–26 budget illustrates this challenge. The university allocated $29 million in reductions to administrative and student-support units, compared with $11 million for its University Park academic colleges. The decision was intended to reduce the financial burden on academic units while helping balance the university’s budget.

However, operational responsibilities do not necessarily decline when departmental budgets shrink. Applications still need to be reviewed, financial aid must be processed and students continue to expect timely assistance. Without corresponding improvements in efficiency, smaller budgets can lead to longer processing times, administrative backlogs and increased workloads for employees.

Technology could help address some of these challenges, but financial limitations are also restricting universities’ ability to invest in it. According to EDMO’s State of Automation in Admissions Report 2026, 65% of the 40 higher education leaders surveyed identified budget constraints as the biggest barrier to AI adoption. While the findings are directional rather than representative of the entire sector, they highlight an important challenge: universities may struggle to fund the very technologies that could help them operate more efficiently.

This creates a difficult cycle. As resources become scarce, institutions may postpone investments in automation and continue relying on labor-intensive processes, even as their administrative teams shrink. For university leaders, the question is not simply where to reduce spending, but how to prioritize investments that can deliver measurable efficiency gains without compromising the quality of student services.

Budget cuts are not a new phenomenon in higher education. Universities have navigated economic downturns, funding reductions and enrollment challenges for decades. What makes the current situation particularly challenging is the combination of financial uncertainty, shifting student demographics, rising operating costs and growing expectations for student support.

While reducing expenditure may provide immediate financial relief, universities must also consider the long-term implications of their decisions. Eliminating academic programs, reducing staff and postponing technology investments may help balance today’s budgets but could limit their ability to serve students effectively in the future.

The real challenge for higher education leaders is not simply deciding where to cut costs, but identifying where resources can deliver the greatest long-term value. Financial sustainability should not come at the expense of the educational quality, accessibility and institutional capacity that universities are working to preserve.

Budget cuts are making headlines across U.S. higher education. Colleges and universities are announcing layoffs, freezing hiring, reducing operating expenses and reconsidering academic programs. In 2025 alone, Inside Higher Ed tracked more than 9,000 job cuts and buyouts across the sector, with the actual number likely higher.

What’s driving these decisions? There is no single explanation. Declining international student enrollment, reduced state funding, uncertainty around federal funding, rising operating costs and growing demand for financial aid are creating financial pressures across institutions. And the impact goes well beyond university budgets. Faculty and staff face job losses and heavier workloads, while students risk losing access to academic programs, courses and essential campus services.

Recent decisions across the country illustrate the scale of these challenges. In February 2026, the University of North Texas announced a projected $45 million budget deficit, citing declining international graduate enrollment and a $32 million reduction in state funding for instruction and operations. By March, the university had announced plans to eliminate or consolidate more than 70 academic programs, minors and certificates.

Some people are natural conversationalists. I’m not one of them. 

Like many people, I’ve always felt awkward in conversation. That’s especially hard as an entrepreneur, where talking to people is half the job. Good conversations can drive our businesses and relationships. We like to buy from, work with, and collaborate with people who are easy to talk to. 

That’s why I spent the past two decades studying the patterns of master conversationalists for my latest book, Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone & Make Every Interaction Count. I learned that people who come off as instantly likable use certain phrases over and over again to build rapport. Now I’m passing those phrases along so that you can use them in team meetings, investor calls, and client sessions to make your small talk infinitely better. 

The phrases involve compliments and moments of connection, so only use them if they feel authentic. Never fake it. Here are five to try. 

1. ‘I was just thinking about you!’ 

Everyone likes to be remembered. So telling someone, “I was just thinking of you!” immediately sparks connection. For example, I wanted to check in with a certain VIP but wasn’t sure how. She had been on my mind, so I just reached out and told her exactly that. Here’s what I sent: 

→ Subject: I was just thinking about you! I stopped by the pier this weekend and stumbled upon the national skimboarding competition! Of course, it made me think of you. Did you ever end up designing your own board? I took a video of the winning skim, attached. Incredible, right? 

She immediately wrote back raving about the video I sent and attached a picture of the skimboard she had designed. It triggered a request for a catch-up call, then a taco breakfast, and then an invite to speak at her company’s corporate retreat. 

This is a powerful phrase you can use absolutely anywhere. For example: 

→ If someone pops into your head, text them: “Hey! I was just thinking of you and wanted to check in. Anything new and exciting?” 

→ If you see something that reminds you of someone in your life, share it with them and say, “I just saw this amazing [blank], and it made me think of you!” 

→ If you need to reach out to someone, say, “Long time no talk. Someone recently mentioned a [blank], and, of course, I thought of you.” 

These are casual, immediately put someone at ease by reminding them they are top of mind, and make them feel good. Magic. 

2. ‘Tell me more!’

The research is clear: Asking people questions, especially follow-up questions, makes you more likable. It shows that you’re engaged, responsive, and genuinely interested. 

And here’s the simplest follow-up of all: Just say, “Tell me more!” 

For example, I once visited the emergency room for very bad food poisoning. (I was fine, but I’ll never eat scallops again.) My nurse seemed grumpy, but I was very grateful for her help and wanted her to feel appreciated. I noticed a little pin above her name badge, so I asked, “Is that a pin for Mellow Velo? I just walked by there last week. It’s a bike spot, right?” 

She brightened. “Yes! I’m an avid biker and I’m helping them organize a big bike ride for families.” I was tired and wasn’t sure what to say next. I also don’t know how to ride a bike (true, and embarrassing). So I just said, “Tell me more!” 

Then off she went, telling me about their great local initiatives. She spent far longer in my room and stopped by frequently to check on me (once with a warm blanket!). 

Here’s an advanced way to use this question. Let’s say someone is mid-story at a networking event or group dinner, and they get interrupted. The waiter arrives, someone asks for the salt, and the conversation shifts. The person might never get to finish their story — unless you say, “You were saying something so interesting. Please tell me more!” They’ll love you forever. 

3. ‘Last time we were talking, you mentioned…’ 

Want to become effortlessly likable with someone you’ve met before? Just say: “Last time we were talking, you mentioned…” paired with something that lit them up the last time you talked. 

For example, you could say: “Last time we spoke, you mentioned you were going to Greece on vacation. How was that?” Or ask about the big project they mentioned, or a show you both love. 

This packs a powerful emotional punch. It shows that you pay attention, have a good memory, and consider them worthy of being memorable. 

In fact, this is how Earvin “Magic” Johnson first impressed the woman who became his wife, Cookie. They attended a Michigan State University party. Shortly after, Magic showed up at her dorm room with a carefully selected surprise — yellow roses, because she had mentioned she likes yellow. It was, she said, the “sweetest thing any guy who’d ever showed romantic interest in me had done.” 

4. ‘Same here!’ 

Research consistently shows: We like people who are like us. We’re more likely to start conversations online with people whose profiles show shared interests. Teams collaborate better when members have shared interests. And we’re even more likely to be persuaded by someone we can relate to. 

This is why, at the start of a negotiation or meeting, it can be valuable to highlight mutual likes — to make someone say, “Same here!” The common ground can be as simple as your age, hometown, or background. 

I discovered this myself in 2025, when I got an unexpected email from Khloé Kardashian’s team. They said she’s a fan of my work(!) and wanted me on her podcast. I’d never met someone so famous, and I was terrified of the small talk we’d have before the interview. So I made a list of things we have in common to spark “same here!” moments — like how we both attended all-girls schools and we both have two kids. I told her these when we met, and it was like activating instant bestie mode. Suddenly, everything flowed. When our recording was done, she told me, “I didn’t want that to end.” 

That’s the power of “same here!” energy. It isn’t just chemistry. It’s psychology. 

5. ‘You’re so…!’ 

What makes someone instantly likable? You might think it’s charm or cleverness. But often, it’s this: making others feel valued. 

In every conversation, people are quietly wondering, Am I being boring? Am I doing well? Do they like me? Your job is to answer those questions before they’re asked. Humans love to be validated for who they are, not just what they do. Frequently. Don’t assume you’ve said it before, or that someone knows how valued they are. We can almost never receive too much validation if it’s genuine. 

Doing so is simple. If you appreciate something about someone, tell them! Just say: “You’re so…” then you can highlight their humor, charisma, or even punctuality. 

In fact, this is how legendary fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga got his start. He grew up poor and shy in a small Basque fishing village. Every Sunday, he’d catch glimpses of the town’s fashionable Marquesa de Casa Torres descending the church steps in her couture. One morning, unable to contain himself, he exclaimed: “How elegant you are!” (In other words: You’re so elegant.) 

That stopped her in her tracks. She asked Balenciaga about his eye for fashion and discovered his love for style. A few days later, she handed him the dress he had admired so much and asked him to copy it. He did. A career was born. 

Positive labels help people see themselves in a new light. And when you give someone a label they want to embody, they often rise to it. NOW I CHALLENGE YOU: Use one of these five phrases in your next conversation. And watch how quickly your connection with them improves.   

From CONVERSATION: How to Connect with Anyone & Make Every Interaction Count by Vanessa Van Edwards, published on October 6, 2026, by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. ©2026 by Vanessa Van Edwards

Some people are natural conversationalists. I’m not one of them. 

Like many people, I’ve always felt awkward in conversation. That’s especially hard as an entrepreneur, where talking to people is half the job. Good conversations can drive our businesses and relationships. We like to buy from, work with, and collaborate with people who are easy to talk to. 

That’s why I spent the past two decades studying the patterns of master conversationalists for my latest book, Conversation: How to Connect with Anyone & Make Every Interaction Count. I learned that people who come off as instantly likable use certain phrases over and over again to build rapport. Now I’m passing those phrases along so that you can use them in team meetings, investor calls, and client sessions to make your small talk infinitely better.