July 2026

There’s a widely repeated stat in recruiting circles: 75% of resumes are rejected by applicant tracking systems (ATS) before a human ever sees them. Career coaches cite it, LinkedIn posts recycle it, and job seekers build entire application strategies around it.

It’s almost certainly not true — at least not in the way most people mean it.

When we interviewed 25 U.S. recruiters across industries for our research at Enhancv, 92% told us their systems don’t automatically reject resumes based on content or formatting. The actual filtering happens when an exhausted human recruiter runs out of time and stops reading.

Most hiring leaders don’t fully realize how much this is costing them. There are actually two invisibility problems in modern hiring, not one, and understanding the difference is where solving them begins.

The myth recruiters can’t stop hearing

The ATS-rejection narrative has become so pervasive that it shapes how candidates behave before they even apply. They obsess over keyword density or strip formatting. Some use invisible white text to stuff resumes with phrases they hope will satisfy an algorithm. Forty-one percent of candidates admit to using prompt injections or hidden text to try to bypass AI filters.

What recruiters really want is a resume that’s easy to scan, relevant to the role and written like a human being prepared it.

The real screening mechanism is volume. Entry-level roles routinely pull 400 to 600 applications. Remote tech positions can hit 2,000 before a recruiter has reviewed the first batch. Recruiters spend seconds, not minutes, on initial review. Many stop once they have a shortlist, regardless of what’s still waiting. If you applied on day four to a role that went live Monday, there’s a decent chance you simply never got read.

But that’s a different problem than the one most employers are actually equipped to fix.

The visibility problem companies can control

Volume is structural. It’s slow to solve and mostly beyond what any individual hiring manager can change alone. 

The second problem is entirely within an organization’s control. And it’s doing serious damage.

According to Greenhouse, 46% of job seekers say their trust in hiring has decreased over the past year — not because they didn’t get the job, but because of how the process made them feel. Rejections sent before the posting closed. Weeks of silence. Confirmation emails so generic they may as well have been addressed to “Applicant.” 

I’ve watched this erode something that’s genuinely hard to rebuild, and the cost is measurable: 26% of job seekers have declined offers because of poor communication or unclear expectations. Not compensation, not the role itself. The process.

What automation was supposed to do

There’s an important distinction between using automation to handle scale and using it as a substitute for human judgment. LinkedIn’s research on the future of recruiting found that employers were 54 times more likely than the year before to list “relationship development” as a required skill for recruiters. Efficiency and connection aren’t the same capability — and the market has already figured that out.

SHRM is consistent on this point: Recruiting success depends on blending automation with human oversight, not replacing one with the other. Teams integrating AI save roughly 20% of their work week. The question is what that time gets spent on.

When the system filters out the wrong people

Even when automation isn’t mass-rejecting resumes based on fonts and formatting, the reliance on keyword matching and rigid criteria does create real problems.

Recruiters have described to me what happens with experienced candidates who don’t map neatly onto job descriptions (former general managers applying for senior individual contributor roles, professionals over 40 whose backgrounds read as overqualified, people in career transitions whose most relevant skills appear in unexpected places). Some of them spend a year in silence before realizing that instead of reading their experience, the system is pattern-matching against a template.

The irony is that these are often exactly the candidates a hiring manager would want if they ever got to see the application. But by the time nuance would matter, the pile has already been sorted. According to Pew, 66% of Americans wouldn’t apply for a job if the employer revealed AI was used in the process. Based on what I’ve observed, that skepticism isn’t entirely misplaced.

What leaders can really do about this

The volume problem requires long-term structural thinking — better sourcing, clearer role definitions, faster internal pipelines. None of that happens overnight.

The communication problem can start being fixed this week. 

According to Employ’s 2026 Job Seeker Nation Report, 44% of candidates say not hearing back after applying is their biggest challenge, and ghosting by recruiters has risen to 32%. 

So, tell candidates how your process works and how long it takes. Acknowledge applications like a human wrote the response. When AI is involved in screening, say so. Close the loop with anyone who made it past the initial review but didn’t move forward. None of this is complicated — it’s just discipline.

What candidates remember long after the process ends

What’s really happening in modern hiring isn’t a software problem — it’s what occurs when organizations optimize so hard for their own operational needs that they stop thinking about what the process feels like on the other side.

Candidates who feel seen — even when rejected — remember it. They reapply when circumstances change, refer people in their networks and give you the benefit of the doubt when your Glassdoor score isn’t perfect. That’s a long-term talent asset, and it costs almost nothing to build.

The companies that understand this will keep attracting strong candidates even in difficult markets. The ones that don’t will wonder why their pipeline keeps getting worse.

There’s a widely repeated stat in recruiting circles: 75% of resumes are rejected by applicant tracking systems (ATS) before a human ever sees them. Career coaches cite it, LinkedIn posts recycle it, and job seekers build entire application strategies around it.

It’s almost certainly not true — at least not in the way most people mean it.

When we interviewed 25 U.S. recruiters across industries for our research at Enhancv, 92% told us their systems don’t automatically reject resumes based on content or formatting. The actual filtering happens when an exhausted human recruiter runs out of time and stops reading.

A company’s website rarely becomes ineffective overnight.

In the work that crosses my desk and in the conversations we have with clients at ArtVersion, this pattern comes up often: The first concern is usually visual, but the deeper issue is that the business has changed and the website has not fully caught up.

The company added a service, and a new audience became important. The sales process changed, and leadership refined the positioning. Marketing launched campaigns for the new market the business entered.

Each update made sense at the time. But after enough small changes, the website may no longer represent the business clearly. That usually means the company grew and the site may have been built for an earlier version of the business. As the company evolves, the website has to explain more, guide more, prove more and support more decisions.

At some point, redesigning a site becomes a business realignment project too.

Growth changes what your website needs to do

In the early stages of a company, a website usually has a straightforward job to explain who the company is, what it offers and why someone should care.

As the business matures, that task becomes more complex. The website now may need to speak to multiple buyer types, support different stages of decision-making, explain a broader service offering, build trust for a wider audience, support recruiting, help sales conversations and strengthen brand perception.

The challenge is that many websites are expanded piece by piece instead of being reconsidered as the business changes.

That is how a site that once felt clear begins to feel crowded and the user journey becomes confusing.

Users do not see the internal history behind all that growth. They only experience what is in front of them. If the path feels unclear, hesitation happens. If the message feels inconsistent, questions about the fit arise. If the value is hard to understand, they move on.

This is why a good-looking website can still underperform.

The warning signs are not always visual

It’s easy to assume you will know when a website needs attention because it looks outdated. Sometimes that is true. But a website can look current and still create confusion.

One sign is explanation fatigue. If your sales or marketing team regularly has to clarify what the company is or what the brand differentiator is, the site may no longer be supporting the business properly.

Another sign is audience drift. The homepage may still speak to the audience your company served three years ago, while the business is now trying to reach a different buyer. The services may be accurate, but may no longer reflect the company’s current priorities.

Navigation is another signal. When menus reflect internal priorities more than customer needs, visitors have to translate the business for themselves. Users should not have to do heavy lifting.

Content can also reveal the gap. Case studies may no longer represent the company’s strongest work. Blog content may attract traffic but fail to support current goals. Service pages may rank in search but describe an older version of the offer.

The site may contain useful information overall, but it is no longer organized around the decisions customers are trying to make.

Start with the business questions

Visual design matters, and that is true for every brand. A website should feel current, credible and aligned with the brand. But when a business has outgrown its website, the process should begin with sharper questions.

• Who is the site built for?
• What does that audience need to understand first?
• Which services or products matter most to the next stage of growth?
• Where do prospects hesitate?
• What proof do they need?
• What should the website help them do next?
• How would they find us?

Those questions change the role of a redesign. The work becomes less about replacing pages and more about rebuilding clarity.

They also help avoid costly technical errors that need to be addressed in the post-launch phase.

Build for the business you are becoming

A strong redesign should solve for the present while preparing for what comes next.

That means creating a structure that can grow without becoming hard to maintain. Navigation should be clear but flexible, with page content that is easy to update. Design patterns should be consistent enough to scale and also repeatable as new pages are published. SEO should be considered before launch. Analytics should help teams learn from real behavior. And web accessibility and site performance should be part of the foundation.

The best websites are built with enough clarity and structure to support change. The change always happens; it’s just a matter of time when it will accrue.

A website is one of the most important assets a business has. It shapes first impressions, supports sales, builds trust, helps internal teams stay aligned and helps customers understand why they should take the next step.

If the company has grown, expanded, repositioned or matured, the website should evolve with it. That is not a sign that something went wrong. It is often a sign that the business has moved forward.

A company’s website rarely becomes ineffective overnight.

In the work that crosses my desk and in the conversations we have with clients at ArtVersion, this pattern comes up often: The first concern is usually visual, but the deeper issue is that the business has changed and the website has not fully caught up.

The company added a service, and a new audience became important. The sales process changed, and leadership refined the positioning. Marketing launched campaigns for the new market the business entered.

Rapid growth is the goal for just about every entrepreneur, but seeing your revenue go up is only half of the picture. While it’s essential that you keep your finances healthy, many businesses struggle during this phase because of what is known as the “efficiency paradox.”

In the efficiency paradox, the business has existing practices or people in place that are allowing it to maintain its current level of income at an affordable rate. However, while this is financially efficient, it often requires unsustainable levels of work from existing team members, greatly increasing the risk of manual error, burnout and other problems that will negatively affect your long-term bottom line.

Here’s a closer look at what you need to do to keep the efficiency paradox from hurting your own business.

Cost efficiency comes at a cost

As your business grows, so does the workload. If you sell physical products, a higher number of orders means more hours will be required to fulfill those orders. Whether the work involves physically packing an order and putting it in the mail or managing the electronic back-end associated with each order, high-growth companies often find that the increased workload becomes too much for their existing team to handle.

It can be tempting to look at this as part of the startup process. Scale operations now, expand later. We’ve all heard entrepreneurs bragging about working 60 to 80 hours a week (or even more) to build their business. But this isn’t sustainable or healthy. Newsweek reports that 72% of U.S. employees deal with moderate to high burnout at work, with heavy workloads cited as the top reason behind their stress.

Heavy workloads and long hours aren’t good for anyone, no matter how efficient it’s keeping your business going at the moment. Burnout has been linked to impaired memory, emotional regulation, executive function and physical energy. It leads to more error-prone, lower-quality work, while also increasing turnover rates.

These issues can quickly compound for an organization targeting financial efficiency above all else. Gallup reports that 52% of U.S. employees are watching for or actively seeking a new job, an indicator of high levels of dissatisfaction across the board. Unsurprisingly, this can also lead to high rates of voluntary turnover, which can quickly eat away at financial growth.

Overcoming the efficiency paradox

Left unchecked, the efficiency paradox can be devastating for entrepreneurs. You’re not going to maintain high levels of growth if you can’t keep your existing team together. As their working abilities slip or they leave because they are overwhelmed by the workload, the quality of what you have to offer your clients will decline, too. Bad customer experiences will undermine the growth you’ve achieved up to this point.

Fortunately, overcoming the efficiency paradox isn’t a big mystery. In my own experience, I’ve found it generally comes down to making investments in two key areas: the right tech and the right hires.

From a cost efficiency perspective, tech is likely going to be the preferred option for many entrepreneurs, especially with the wave of AI tools designed to automate repetitive tasks and improve efficiency. The more of the manual, repetitive work you can offload onto AI, the more time your current team has for higher-level tasks. This can also reduce other operating expenses. 

For example, studies on AI use in healthcare have found it can help reduce costs associated with patient diagnostics by as much as 52%. A report from Zentist, an AI-powered revenue cycle management platform for dental practices, reveals that 58% of dental RCMs have adopted or are planning to adopt AI, with top focuses being on high-volume administrative tasks such as verifying insurance eligibility (67%), handling patient communication (57%), and posting payments (43%).

However, you need to make the right tech investments. If you don’t have standardized workflows for integrating new AI tools, you might end up creating more friction and duplicate work for your team. You need to have the right systems and data in place so you can scale order and efficiency instead of broken processes.

Making new hires can be less cost-efficient, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve often worked with freelancers and part-time employees to fill needs as my business has gone through scaling. This allows for greater flexibility in hiring, especially when the growing workload doesn’t yet require an additional full-time employee. You can hire additional freelancers as needed, or transfer someone into a full-time role when the need arises. 

While extra hires lower your short-term cost efficiency, they can increase productivity by keeping your existing team’s workload more manageable. As with tech tools, the right hires can also give your current team more time to focus on higher-level tasks that further drive profitability.

Finding the right balance

Overcoming the efficiency paradox can be a challenge, in large part because it isn’t an exact science. What worked for my business isn’t necessarily what’s going to work for yours. You might need different tools or processes to streamline your workflows. You might need to hire more people. 

What’s most important is that you always consider how your current high rate of growth is impacting the people who matter most: your existing team. They’re the ones who helped you get to your current level, and you need to make sure you still have an environment where they can thrive.

By finding the right balance between cost efficiency and operational needs, you’ll set your team — and your business as a whole — up for long-term success.

Rapid growth is the goal for just about every entrepreneur, but seeing your revenue go up is only half of the picture. While it’s essential that you keep your finances healthy, many businesses struggle during this phase because of what is known as the “efficiency paradox.”

In the efficiency paradox, the business has existing practices or people in place that are allowing it to maintain its current level of income at an affordable rate. However, while this is financially efficient, it often requires unsustainable levels of work from existing team members, greatly increasing the risk of manual error, burnout and other problems that will negatively affect your long-term bottom line.

Here’s a closer look at what you need to do to keep the efficiency paradox from hurting your own business.

AI has disrupted the business landscape almost overnight. According to Stanford’s 2025 AI Index Report, AI adoption by organizations grew from 55% in 2023 to 78% by late 2024 — a 23% jump in a single year. And it isn’t just penetration that’s growing. The functionality companies are getting out of AI is expanding, too. As the tools evolve, their uses diversify, driving efficiency up and overhead down.

The impact is especially pertinent to tech-enabled startups, where founders operate on lean budgets and every dollar invested is coveted. Startups can now build “AI Lean” — my term for leveraging AI capabilities to reduce overhead and expenses across multiple areas of the organization, thereby requiring less upfront expenditure and, therefore, less external funding. By tapping into AI’s efficiencies, today’s startups can grow organically, keeping resources at a minimum as they scale. Their paths to profitability become more tangible and their need for outside financing less pressing. Founders gain more agency, growing their companies on their own timelines while maintaining significant control throughout the growth lifecycle.

As entrepreneurs leverage AI efficiencies to build the enterprises of the future, here are six key actions to take when building AI Lean.

Conduct an overall AI usability assessment

AI can impact many functions of the organization, eliminating the need for excess resources while making the work of the team you already have more effective. Used well, AI can play a pivotal role in coding, product development, marketing, data analysis, operations and even recruiting — saving critical time and capital. To understand where AI can plug in, founders should conduct an AI assessment that reviews every organizational function and maps out where and when AI can have an impact, along with the benefits and risks of leveraging it in each.

Update the talent rubric and hire accordingly

AI is replacing traditional engineering functions that tech companies once fought tooth and nail to staff. Non-engineers can now leverage AI to manage engineering work, using tools like Claude to operate as their engineering teams. That shift has placed newfound importance on softer, people-led skills. Founders should look to hire teammates with updated superpowers: multi-talented, nimble and able to manage several roles at once. In this new AI-led tech climate, candidates’ EQ (emotional quotient), communication skills and adaptability are the traits AI can’t replace — and the ones founders should weigh most heavily.

Build products with low CAC and high retention

The B2C tech landscape has become extremely crowded. According to SQ Magazine, there are over 1.8 million iOS apps alone, all competing for coveted but limited space on our iPhones. To build beyond the noise, tech creators need to create need goods, not want goods. The most effective way to do that is to move products out of the purely B2C landscape and instead build B2B or B2B2C platforms, where users are themselves businesses that acquire their own customers on your behalf. Once on the platform, businesses face higher switching costs — to leave, they’d have to move themselves and their customer bases to a competitor. The moat becomes far more pronounced.

Focus on autonomy, not just scale

Growth for growth’s sake is, in many cases, an outdated tech model. The new AI lean companies are focused on efficiency as a gateway to autonomy. To build one, founders must intentionally map their paths to profitability while retaining as much control of the company as possible. By leveraging AI to handle most of the engineering and administrative workload, founders can operate leanly and keep overhead low. They also give themselves more runway to reach product-market fit.

Stay lean and nimble with funding

Rapid AI adoption has reduced the need for significant upfront funding at efficient startups. As founders navigate this new environment, keeping the burn rate low is essential. Venture capital can often be replaced with friends-and-family money, especially at the early stage. The best path is frequently the quickest path to profitability: low overhead and purposeful organic growth.

Prioritize lifestyle to avoid burnout

The burnout epidemic is real. Sifted surveyed 138 founders and found 54% had experienced burnout in the past 12 months, 46% described their mental health as “bad” or “very bad” and 75% reported anxiety in the same period. Even more startling: 94% of founders reported some mental health issue in the past year. Sifted noted that “fundraising remains the most common challenge founders face,” which is why the first step to reducing burnout is to operate AI lean — removing the need for significant early outside capital. The second is to prioritize work/life wellness by setting intentional boundaries and creating time and space to decompress. That’s what allows founders and their teams to play the long game and see their startups through to fruition.

The AI lean startup has become the new face of the entrepreneurial world. The once-significant roadblocks of time, funding and resources have been bulldozed, opening paths for technology founders willing to pave roads where, not long ago, there were none. Healthy and nimble have replaced scaled and heavily funded as the north-star metrics, especially in the early stages. AI lean entrepreneurs have a new way to build — this time on their terms.

AI has disrupted the business landscape almost overnight. According to Stanford’s 2025 AI Index Report, AI adoption by organizations grew from 55% in 2023 to 78% by late 2024 — a 23% jump in a single year. And it isn’t just penetration that’s growing. The functionality companies are getting out of AI is expanding, too. As the tools evolve, their uses diversify, driving efficiency up and overhead down.

The impact is especially pertinent to tech-enabled startups, where founders operate on lean budgets and every dollar invested is coveted. Startups can now build “AI Lean” — my term for leveraging AI capabilities to reduce overhead and expenses across multiple areas of the organization, thereby requiring less upfront expenditure and, therefore, less external funding. By tapping into AI’s efficiencies, today’s startups can grow organically, keeping resources at a minimum as they scale. Their paths to profitability become more tangible and their need for outside financing less pressing. Founders gain more agency, growing their companies on their own timelines while maintaining significant control throughout the growth lifecycle.

As entrepreneurs leverage AI efficiencies to build the enterprises of the future, here are six key actions to take when building AI Lean.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Most business owners treat workplace injuries as a rare disruption — something handled by HR, filed with insurance and quietly resolved. But here’s what I’ve seen firsthand: A single incident can set off a chain reaction that quietly bleeds a company dry for years.

The direct costs are just the tip of the iceberg. The real damage hides in places most owners never think to look.

The direct costs (what most businesses expect)

Every business owner knows some costs are unavoidable when an injury happens. These are the ones that show up quickly on your balance sheet.

Medical expenses and compensation:

Immediate treatment, including emergency care, specialist visits and rehabilitation, can run into tens of thousands before you blink. Workers’ compensation payouts pile on top, and if coverage gaps exist, those costs land directly on the business.

Legal and compliance costs:

Regulatory investigations and OSHA fines aren’t just a possibility; they’re a near-certainty after a serious incident. Understanding workplace injuries that can put you out of business is the first step toward protecting your operation before something goes wrong.

The hidden financial impact

This is where businesses get blindsided. Indirect costs of workplace injuries routinely outpace direct costs by a ratio of four to one, according to data tracked by OSHA’s business case for workplace safety.

Lost productivity:

An injured employee doesn’t just leave a gap; they leave a vacuum. Projects stall, deadlines slip, and the remaining team absorbs extra work at reduced efficiency. That invisible output loss rarely appears on any claim form.

Increased insurance premiums:

File a claim, and watch your experience modification rate climb. Businesses with even a handful of incidents can see their premiums spike significantly over three to five years, a compounding cost that outlasts the injury itself.

Hiring and training replacements:

Replacing a skilled worker costs real money:

• Temporary staffing agencies typically charge 25-40% above base salary
• Recruitment and onboarding for permanent replacements averages 50-200% of the departing employee’s annual wage
• Institutional knowledge (the kind you can’t train in a week) walks out the door entirely

Operational disruptions

Beyond finances, workplace injuries create a ripple through your entire operation that’s harder to quantify but equally damaging.

Workflow interruptions:

A single injury can stall an entire production line, delay client deliverables or derail a product launch. The downstream effects, including missed revenue, penalty clauses and renegotiated contracts, rarely make it into the original cost estimate.

Management time drain:

When an incident happens, your leadership team isn’t running the business; they’re managing incident reports, insurance calls, compliance documentation and internal communications. That’s attention pulled directly away from growth.

Employee morale and workplace culture

Here’s what most business owners miss entirely: Research consistently shows that engaged workers have far fewer safety violations and incidents, which means morale and safety are inseparable issues.

Impact on team confidence:

After an injury, fear quietly spreads through the workforce. Employees who once worked confidently start second-guessing themselves. Anxiety slows output, and motivation erodes in ways no policy document can reverse.

Retention challenges:

Talent leaves unsafe environments. And the employees who leave first are often your best ones, the ones with options. High turnover in the wake of safety incidents creates a self-reinforcing cycle of instability.

Reputation and brand risk

Your employer brand is a business asset. Workplace incidents, especially ones that become public, can do lasting damage to both internal culture and external perception.

Negative reviews on hiring platforms spread fast. Candidates research before accepting offers, and clients do too. A business with a visible safety track record problem signals operational instability, a real concern for enterprise clients weighing long-term partnerships.

Legal and long-term consequences

Workplace incidents don’t stop at the insurance claim. They can lead to employment disputes, wrongful termination allegations and long-running litigation that ties up resources for years. Understanding how personal injuries can impact your ability to work reveals just how far-reaching these consequences can be, both for the injured employee and for the business responsible for their safety.

Many business owners underestimate how quickly a single incident escalates from a workers’ comp claim into a full employment dispute, especially when documentation gaps or compliance failures come to light during an investigation.

Prevention as a business strategy

Smart operators don’t wait for an incident to act. Familiarizing yourself with workplace safety law and building programs around those requirements pays dividends long before any incident occurs.

Safety culture isn’t a poster on a wall. It requires:

• Leadership modeling safe behavior visibly and consistently
• Psychological safety for employees to report near-misses without fear
• Regular, practical safety training, not annual checkbox exercises
• Clear accountability structures for managers, not just frontline workers

The ROI of prevention

The math is straightforward. According to OSHA’s analysis of safety program benefits, employers that invest in workplace safety consistently see reductions in workers’ compensation costs, fewer OSHA penalties and measurable gains in productivity and employee retention. Prevention is always cheaper than recovery.

The businesses with the strongest safety records tend to have the lowest turnover, the most stable operations and the best employer reputations in their industries. Knowing how to establish a workplace safety policy is a foundational step every business owner should take before they need it.

Start treating safety like strategy

Workplace injuries carry costs that go far beyond the emergency room bill or the insurance claim. The hidden toll, covering lost productivity, rising premiums, operational disruption, damaged morale and long-term legal exposure, can quietly undermine a business for years after the incident itself is forgotten.

The businesses that win long-term treat safety not as a compliance burden, but as a competitive advantage. They invest proactively, build accountable cultures and protect their people, because protecting people and protecting the business are ultimately the same thing.

Most business owners treat workplace injuries as a rare disruption — something handled by HR, filed with insurance and quietly resolved. But here’s what I’ve seen firsthand: A single incident can set off a chain reaction that quietly bleeds a company dry for years.

The direct costs are just the tip of the iceberg. The real damage hides in places most owners never think to look.

The direct costs (what most businesses expect)

Every business owner knows some costs are unavoidable when an injury happens. These are the ones that show up quickly on your balance sheet.

Entrepreneurs are often told to be “data-driven.” In theory, that sounds simple: gather the numbers, analyze the trends and make the most logical decision. But many of the most important decisions happen long before enough data exists to feel confident.

New markets, emerging technologies and innovative products rarely come with a complete roadmap. Leaders often have to decide whether to invest, expand or pivot while facing incomplete information and real consequences for their teams and organizations.

Research from McKinsey reports that while executives spend 40% of their time making decisions, nearly 60% feel that time is poorly used, particularly in an age of urgency and uncertainty.

Over time, I’ve learned that uncertainty is not a weakness in the entrepreneurial process. It is the environment where innovation actually happens. The challenge is learning how to navigate it.

Anchor every decision to your mission and values

When information is incomplete, purpose becomes the most reliable compass. A clear mission provides direction when multiple paths appear equally uncertain. Decisions aligned with long-term vision are far less likely to derail progress, even if the outcome cannot be predicted perfectly.

Across my work under DRC Ventures and expanding health and wellness companies such as The ROOT Brands into international markets, there have been moments when strong scientific direction existed, but long-term market data had not yet developed.

In those situations, the mission became the filter. The most important question was whether the decision aligned with our broader goal of improving health, sustainability and well-being. If the science supported the work and the mission remained clear, that alignment created enough confidence to move forward thoughtfully.

Separate perceived risk from real risk

Uncertainty tends to amplify fear. When leaders don’t have complete information, it is easy to imagine worst-case scenarios. One of the most valuable habits I’ve developed is learning to separate real risk from perceived risk.

Real risk involves measurable factors — financial exposure, regulatory challenges or operational issues that could threaten the company’s stability. Perceived risk often comes from the discomfort of stepping into unfamiliar territory.

Entrepreneurship naturally pushes leaders into spaces where no roadmap exists. But feeling uncomfortable does not necessarily mean something is wrong. In many cases, it means the organization is exploring new ground. By separating emotional reactions from measurable consequences, leaders can evaluate opportunities with greater clarity.

Determine what’s reversible — and what isn’t

Not every decision deserves the same level of analysis. Some choices shape a company’s long-term direction and require careful evaluation. Others are operational or experimental and can be adjusted as new information becomes available.

Understanding this distinction dramatically improves decision-making speed. If a decision is reversible, I am comfortable moving forward quickly and learning from the outcome. Action generates feedback that theoretical planning alone cannot provide.

But if a decision significantly affects partnerships, capital allocation or long-term strategy, it deserves deeper discussion and careful evaluation. Recognizing which decisions are reversible helps maintain momentum while still protecting the long-term health of the organization.

Use directional signals instead of waiting for perfect data

One of the biggest traps in uncertain environments is waiting for perfect information. Perfect information rarely arrives in time to guide innovation. Instead, I’ve learned to interpret directional signals.

These signals can come from emerging trends, customer conversations, early pilot results, scientific research and feedback from trusted advisors. Experience also plays an important role. After working across industries and international markets, patterns begin to emerge — signals that suggest where opportunity may exist or where caution is warranted.

A study in Harvard Business Review reports that organizations that make decisions with roughly 70% of the available information often outperform slower competitors that wait for complete certainty. In fast-moving industries, waiting for perfect clarity often means missing the opportunity entirely.

Create momentum through action and transparent leadership

Momentum creates clarity. Action produces information that analysis alone cannot generate. Moving forward with thoughtful experimentation allows teams to learn quickly, refine strategy and reduce uncertainty over time.

Equally important is how leaders communicate during uncertain periods. In my experience, teams don’t expect leaders to have every answer. What they need is transparency about what is known, honesty about what is still evolving and confidence that the organization has a thoughtful path forward.

When leaders remain steady and focused on solutions, teams are far more likely to stay engaged and productive even when the path ahead is still developing. Confidence does not require pretending to know everything. It requires the courage to move forward responsibly.

Uncertainty is the cost of innovation

Entrepreneurship has never been about having all the answers before taking action. Many of the most impactful companies were built by leaders who moved forward before all variables were understood. Data remains an important tool, but it is not the only guide.

Mission, experience, pattern recognition and thoughtful courage all play critical roles in navigating uncertainty. When leaders anchor decisions to purpose, separate real risk from emotional discomfort, recognize which choices are reversible and act on meaningful signals, uncertainty becomes far less intimidating.

Innovation rarely happens with complete visibility. Usually, the path becomes clear only after leaders take the first step.

Entrepreneurs are often told to be “data-driven.” In theory, that sounds simple: gather the numbers, analyze the trends and make the most logical decision. But many of the most important decisions happen long before enough data exists to feel confident.

New markets, emerging technologies and innovative products rarely come with a complete roadmap. Leaders often have to decide whether to invest, expand or pivot while facing incomplete information and real consequences for their teams and organizations.

Research from McKinsey reports that while executives spend 40% of their time making decisions, nearly 60% feel that time is poorly used, particularly in an age of urgency and uncertainty.

In 2025, ROMTech had a problem most startups would envy: far more demand than it could immediately fulfill.

The Connecticut-based company makes the PortableConnect, a connected rehabilitation device that lets patients recovering from orthopedic surgery complete therapy at home while clinicians monitor their progress remotely. As orders accelerated, CEO Peter Arn made a decision that runs counter to most growth-stage playbooks:  he made revenue wait.

The company kept growing, but deliberately moderated its expansion while strengthening the operational infrastructure and clinical oversight required for larger scale. It meant leaving some short-term revenue on the table. It also meant giving the service model time to catch up with demand— and as those systems strengthened, patient volume hit record levels, with more than 57,000 patients served in 2025 and 34% year-over-year growth.  

“Sustainable growth in healthcare has to prioritize quality, safety and patient outcomes,” Arn says. “In this industry, growing faster than your ability to deliver isn’t ambition. It’s risk.”

The Home-Care Shift

ROMTech’s bet sits inside a much larger trend. Hospital-at-home programs, remote patient monitoring and virtual physical therapy have all expanded as health systems look to cut costs and patients push for convenience. Rehabilitation is a natural candidate: it’s frequent, repetitive and traditionally requires patients — many of them fresh out of joint-replacement surgery — to travel to a clinic multiple times a week.

The catch is that home-based care only works if clinicians can still see what’s happening. That’s the gap ROMTech is trying to close. The PortableConnect combines an adaptive therapy device with software that captures objective performance data — range of motion, session compliance, progress over time — and feeds it back to the care team.

To date, the company says more than 190,000 patients have used the platform.

Turning Demand Into Scalable Care

Healthcare is famously difficult to change, and for defensible reasons: the cost of getting it wrong is measured in patient outcomes, not churn rates. Arn’s experience building ROMTech reflects that reality. The company’s biggest obstacle wasn’t demand.  Physicians understood the model almost immediately, and health systems were receptive.  The harder work was building the operating discipline required to turn a new care model into a scalable national service while the company was already growing at high speed..

His answer has been to lead with evidence and real-world execution rather than novelty. “Innovation only matters if it solves meaningful problems,” he says. “Healthcare entrepreneurs should spend more time understanding patients and clinicians than chasing the newest technology.”

It’s advice that cuts against the grain in a moment when AI features and flashy demos dominate healthtech pitches. Arn’s version of product development is less flashy and more disciplined: listen, listen, listen; validate with data; improve based on real-world use; repeat.

That disciplined approach has started to earn outside validation. ROMTech was named to The Healthcare Technology Report’s list of top healthcare technology companies for 2026, won a 2026 MedTech Breakthrough Award for best home healthcare solution, and appeared on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies list in 2025 and the LexisNexis Top 100 Global Innovators ranking for its intellectual property.

What Comes Next

The more interesting question is how far the model travels. ROMTech is piloting applications beyond orthopedics — cardiology, oncology, metabolic care and post-acute recovery — betting that the same combination of guided movement, remote monitoring and engagement applies wherever recovery depends on patients doing the work at home.

The company’s accumulating rehabilitation data may prove to be the more durable asset. Ultra-dense, real-world recovery data at that scale is rare, and it has opened the door to more personalized protocols and AI-driven prediction, optimization, and mitigation.

The next test is how broadly ROMTech can extend its nationwide platform.  The company is focused on expanding into new diagnoses, provider relationships, and patient populations while maintaining the service consistency, clinical quality, and operating discipline required at scale.

“Building a healthcare technology company requires patience, persistence and the willingness to overcome setbacks,” Arn says. “Success isn’t measured simply by growth. It’s measured by the number of lives you improve.”

In 2025, ROMTech had a problem most startups would envy: far more demand than it could immediately fulfill.

The Connecticut-based company makes the PortableConnect, a connected rehabilitation device that lets patients recovering from orthopedic surgery complete therapy at home while clinicians monitor their progress remotely. As orders accelerated, CEO Peter Arn made a decision that runs counter to most growth-stage playbooks:  he made revenue wait.

The company kept growing, but deliberately moderated its expansion while strengthening the operational infrastructure and clinical oversight required for larger scale. It meant leaving some short-term revenue on the table. It also meant giving the service model time to catch up with demand— and as those systems strengthened, patient volume hit record levels, with more than 57,000 patients served in 2025 and 34% year-over-year growth.  

Moonlighting, or working more than one role, is a contested topic in the tech industry. I recently spoke at a human resources retreat and broached it with leaders in the field. Some thought it was ethically okay or even necessary in the current economy. Others thought it was never acceptable, regardless of the circumstances.

Landing a single tech job is becoming increasingly competitive in the current labor market. If you’re lucky enough to land not just one, but multiple roles, how do you do so ethically? I’m a career coach specializing in the tech industry. I’ve helped clients navigate this exact dilemma. Let’s explore the steps to take to ensure you’re working and living in alignment with your values.

1. Review your employment contract

Regardless of your views on moonlighting, reviewing your employment contract is a smart place to start when considering holding more than one role in the tech industry. Many employees sign a heap of documents when joining a company, only to never reference them again. If you’re thinking about moonlighting, you’ll want to review the promises you made.

Moonlighting policies vary dramatically across companies and are often tied to seniority. It’s common for tech firms to require you to sign an agreement stating you won’t simultaneously work for a competitor. It’s less common at junior levels for them to restrict outside employment entirely. That said, at the executive level, it’s possible that any external employment will require company or board approval or be outright barred.

2. Define your goals

Get clear on why you want to work multiple jobs. While increased income is a common reason for moonlighting, and certainly a valid one, it’s not always why people pursue simultaneous employment. Sometimes, they’re looking to gain experience or skills that aren’t available in their current role.

Before pursuing a second position, consider whether you’ve exhausted the opportunities at your current employer. I’ve spoken with countless clients who wanted new exposure and assumed it had to come from outside their company since it was beyond their job description. They eventually spoke with their manager and realized they could get what they needed right where they were. They sold their employer short by assuming they would be denied.

I don’t want you to make the same mistake they did. Clarify your goals first. The exposure you’re looking for might already be within reach.

3. Be intentional about logistics

It’s common for employees to occasionally use their company-issued laptop, phone or Wi-Fi for non-work-related tasks. While that’s already a grey area, the potential for a mix-up can escalate quickly if you use company resources for a second or third job. Think twice before using company-provided technology for anything outside your primary role.

Companies are increasingly using AI and other monitoring tools to track employee activity. The last thing you want is to lose your current job because of a careless oversight. Keep each job digitally and technologically separate.

One of my clients currently holds down four full-time roles. Rather than risk a mix-up, he places four laptops side-by-side to ensure complete separation. He has received praise across all four roles for exceeding performance expectations.

4. Know your limits before you overextend

Taking on multiple roles isn’t just a logistical challenge. It’s also a values question. If you accept a second or third job knowing you don’t have the capacity to perform well in all of them, you’ve already made an unethical choice, regardless of how you choose to frame it.

Before you say yes to another offer, ask yourself: How am I actually performing in my current role? Do I have breathing room in my schedule, or am I stretched thin? What will happen to my mental health if I add more?

My client with four laptops isn’t just an impressive story. He’s also someone who reflected deeply on his capacity before he committed. That self-awareness is what separates successful moonlighting from futile moonlighting.

5. Decide how to handle transparency with your manager

Before making any decisions about transparency, review whether disclosure is required by your employment contract or company policy. If disclosure isn’t required, think critically about the relationship you have with your manager and how they’ve responded to other sensitive topics in the past. While voluntary transparency can build trust and goodwill, it also opens a conversation you can’t undo.

Whatever you decide, don’t let your performance slip at your primary job. That’s the clearest signal to your manager that something is off. It’s also the most likely reason a conversation you didn’t want will occur anyway.

Final thoughts

Moonlighting isn’t inherently ethical or unethical, and there is no universal answer here. The ethics come down to how you do it. You must protect yourself, protect your integrity and protect your reputation. You’ve got this!

Moonlighting, or working more than one role, is a contested topic in the tech industry. I recently spoke at a human resources retreat and broached it with leaders in the field. Some thought it was ethically okay or even necessary in the current economy. Others thought it was never acceptable, regardless of the circumstances.

Landing a single tech job is becoming increasingly competitive in the current labor market. If you’re lucky enough to land not just one, but multiple roles, how do you do so ethically? I’m a career coach specializing in the tech industry. I’ve helped clients navigate this exact dilemma. Let’s explore the steps to take to ensure you’re working and living in alignment with your values.

1. Review your employment contract

Regardless of your views on moonlighting, reviewing your employment contract is a smart place to start when considering holding more than one role in the tech industry. Many employees sign a heap of documents when joining a company, only to never reference them again. If you’re thinking about moonlighting, you’ll want to review the promises you made.

AI is everywhere, and if you have spent any time evaluating tools for your business, you already know the gap between pitch and payoff is wide. Most tools promise to change everything; very few actually free up your calendar.

The real win is the hours you reclaim when repetitive tasks stop living on your to-do list and start running themselves. Here are 15 tools delivering on that promise right now.

1. ChatGPT (OpenAI)

ChatGPT has become the workhorse for founders who used to spend half a morning drafting one email.

Use it for writing, brainstorming, competitive research and communication templates. What used to take three hours of manual content work now takes 20 minutes.

2. Notion AI

Notion AI earns its keep inside teams that live in documentation. It summarizes meeting notes, auto-fills templates and surfaces relevant pages before you finish typing.

For fast-scaling teams, faster knowledge management means fewer Slack threads asking “where’s that doc?”

3. Zapier

Zapier is the glue between your apps, running quietly in the background, handling tasks you’d otherwise do manually a dozen times a day.

It connects your CRM to your email platform, auto-logs form submissions and triggers alerts when deals close, eliminating manual data entry and the mental overhead of constant task switching.

4. Make (formerly Integromat)

Make is the pick when workflows get complex. Where Zapier handles straightforward if-this-then-that logic, Make handles multi-step, conditional processes that would otherwise require a developer. For operations-heavy businesses, it’s a serious force multiplier.

Marketing and content creation

5. Jasper AI

Jasper AI is built for marketing teams who need volume without sacrificing brand voice. That includes campaign emails, landing page copy, ad variants and product descriptions.

It learns your tone and speeds up execution significantly. Here’s how to build a content strategy that actually generates leads if you want to pair it with the right framework.

6. Copy.ai

Copy.ai handles short-form ad copy and social content at a pace human writers simply can’t match.

If you are running A/B tests across multiple platforms, generating dozens of copy variants in minutes is a real competitive edge. See how AI is transforming content creation for businesses of every size.

Sales and CRM optimization

7. HubSpot AI

HubSpot AI has quietly made its CRM far smarter. It personalizes email sequences, recommends follow-up timing and summarizes deal activity, so your sales team spends time selling instead of updating records.

8. Clay

Clay is a secret weapon for outbound teams. It enriches lead data from dozens of sources and writes hyper-personalized outreach at scale. What used to require a full-time researcher now runs as an automated overnight workflow.

Customer support and lead capture

9. Intercom AI

Intercom AI handles the support query volume that used to bury small teams. It resolves FAQs instantly and escalates the right tickets to humans, meaning your staff handles exceptions, not repetition, and response times drop noticeably.

10. Drift

Drift works at the front of your funnel, engaging website visitors and qualifying leads before a human ever gets involved.

According to the MIT Lead Response Management Study, responding to leads within the first hour makes you seven times more likely to qualify them, and Drift makes that speed possible around the clock.

11. AI-powered intake and call handling

Missed calls are missed revenue, and most businesses have more of both than they realize. Speed-to-lead has become a measurable competitive advantage, especially for service businesses where the first response wins the client.

These tools are helping businesses eliminate missed opportunities by ensuring every call and inquiry is captured, qualified and responded to instantly, including at 6 p.m. on a Friday when no one is at their desk.

See how AI is reshaping customer service for businesses for service-based businesses looking to close the response-time gap.

12. Pecan AI

Pecan AI brings predictive analytics to teams without a data science department. It identifies churn risk, forecasts revenue and surfaces patterns your spreadsheet will never catch.

According to Sloan Management Review, companies using AI-driven decision tools report faster and more confident strategic moves.

13. Obviously AI

Obviously AI takes this further by letting non-technical teams build predictive models through a clean interface: no Python, no engineering tickets, just better decisions faster.

14. Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai records, transcribes and summarizes every meeting automatically. Instead of writing notes while trying to listen, you’re fully present, and the recap with action items lands in your inbox before you’ve closed your laptop.

• Searchable transcripts across all recorded meetings
• Action item extraction built in
• Works with Zoom, Google Meet and Teams

15. Otter.ai

Otter.ai delivers real-time transcription accurate enough to be genuinely useful on live client calls and interviews. It reduces miscommunication, improves documentation and keeps teams aligned without anyone replaying a long recording. Explore how AI meeting tools are improving team workflows across distributed teams.

The businesses getting the most from AI right now aren’t the ones with the biggest tech budgets; they are the ones who picked tools that slot cleanly into existing workflows and committed to using them. Pick two or three from this list, run them for 30 days, and let the results tell you where to go next.

AI is everywhere, and if you have spent any time evaluating tools for your business, you already know the gap between pitch and payoff is wide. Most tools promise to change everything; very few actually free up your calendar.

The real win is the hours you reclaim when repetitive tasks stop living on your to-do list and start running themselves. Here are 15 tools delivering on that promise right now.

1. ChatGPT (OpenAI)

ChatGPT has become the workhorse for founders who used to spend half a morning drafting one email.