August 2026

I have used an LLC formation service myself. It organized an unfamiliar process, clarified the required steps and helped turn a business idea into a registered legal entity.

The service did what it was designed to do. It made formation easier.

But once the LLC existed, the difficult questions remained. How should limited capital be used? Which expenses could be reduced without weakening the business? When should work be delegated? How could revenue become sustainable profit? Which processes needed to become repeatable before growth created disorder?

The administrative beginning had become easier. Building the company had not.

Interest in starting businesses remains strong. The U.S. Census Bureau recorded 531,423 seasonally adjusted business applications in June 2026, an increase of 1.1% from May. The figure shows that a substantial number of Americans continue to take formal steps toward creating new ventures.

That activity creates a natural market for formation support. More prospective owners entering the process means more people confronting entity registration, tax identification, state filings and continuing compliance obligations.

Texas illustrates the scale of that opportunity. The state has 3.52 million small businesses, second only to California’s 4.34 million, making it one of the country’s largest potential markets for LLC services in Texas.

Volume is only part of the explanation. Texas founders forming an LLC must navigate requirements across state and federal agencies, including Secretary of State filings, registered-agent rules, federal tax identification and continuing state reporting obligations. That administrative burden helps explain the demand for services that simplify formation and compliance.

The logic is straightforward. More people are taking steps toward business ownership, large states such as Texas contain significant potential markets, and the formation process remains complex enough for outside support to be useful.

But these conditions say more about access to entrepreneurship than the difficulty of succeeding at it.

Registration has a defined result. The filing is accepted and the entity becomes active. Operating the resulting company has no comparable endpoint. Each completed task introduces another decision involving customers, money, people or capacity.

Making the entry point easier does not remove the challenges waiting beyond it.

Registration solves a defined problem, not the hardest one

The difference between forming and operating a business becomes clearer once the owner moves beyond administrative work.

The Federal Reserve Banks’ 2026 Report on Employer Firms found that reaching customers and growing sales was the most common operational challenge among small employer firms. Hiring or retaining qualified staff followed, while increased costs were the leading financial challenge.

These challenges cannot be solved through registration.

A formation service can help establish the entity, but it cannot create demand for what the company sells. It cannot determine whether prices protect margins, whether another employee is affordable or whether a marketing campaign will attract customers at a sustainable cost.

Financing pressure makes those decisions harder. 60% of firms in the Federal Reserve survey sought financing during the previous year. Among applicants, 56% sought funds to meet operating expenses.

This is where the nature of the work changes. Formation is largely procedural. Operating a company requires judgment under uncertainty.

Money allocated to customer acquisition cannot simultaneously fund product development. Hiring may create capacity but reduce the company’s financial cushion. Faster growth may increase revenue while also raising labor, support and delivery costs.

The correct decision depends on margins, demand, timing and the business’s ability to recover when an assumption proves wrong.

Costs, people and systems determine what happens next

Cost control is not simply a matter of spending less. Owners must determine which expenses create long-term capacity and which merely create activity.

Cutting too aggressively can weaken the product, slow delivery or damage the customer experience. Growing revenue can also conceal weak economics when every additional sale brings disproportionate labor, support or overhead.

Revenue shows that customers are buying. Profit shows whether the model can sustain the work required to serve them.

People introduce a different kind of complexity.

A founder who begins alone may eventually depend on employees, contractors, partners and suppliers. Work must be delegated without losing accountability. Expectations must be communicated before problems become urgent. Decisions that once existed only in the founder’s head must become understandable to other people.

That transition is difficult because delegation requires more than assigning tasks. It requires clear standards, useful feedback and enough trust for others to act without constant supervision.

Systems become important for the same reason.

During the earliest stage, the founder may personally remember every customer request, deadline, payment and delivery step. That approach can work while the volume remains low.

It becomes fragile as activity increases.

Processes held in one person’s memory can turn into missed follow-ups, inconsistent service and delayed decisions. The founder may then become both the company’s most valuable worker and its largest bottleneck.

Formation tools can reduce repetitive administrative work. They cannot decide how a company should price, sell, hire, communicate or consistently deliver what customers were promised.

The value of easier formation is the attention it preserves

Recognizing these limits does not reduce the value of formation services.

Administrative work consumes time and attention. Simplifying filings and compliance allows founders to direct more of both toward customers, finances, people and operations.

That is the real benefit.

The mistake is treating administrative completion as evidence that the business itself is ready. A newly approved LLC has a legal identity, but it may not yet have stable demand, healthy margins, reliable processes or enough capital to withstand a difficult period.

Those capabilities develop through testing, correction and repeated decisions.

Formation is therefore best understood as infrastructure. Good infrastructure reduces avoidable friction, but it does not replace the work built on top of it.

Easier LLC formation is meaningful progress because it creates a clearer starting point. The hard part begins when the founder must turn that legal entity into a functioning company.

The filing creates the entity. Execution creates the business.

I have used an LLC formation service myself. It organized an unfamiliar process, clarified the required steps and helped turn a business idea into a registered legal entity.

The service did what it was designed to do. It made formation easier.

But once the LLC existed, the difficult questions remained. How should limited capital be used? Which expenses could be reduced without weakening the business? When should work be delegated? How could revenue become sustainable profit? Which processes needed to become repeatable before growth created disorder?

As I write this, both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are up over 12% since the beginning of the year and more than 20% over the past 12 months.  It’s boom times in the markets.  But make no mistake: sooner or later, there is going to be another significant stock market contraction. History guarantees that much. What history doesn’t tell us is when.

Over the past 50 years, the S&P 500 has fallen more than 10% on 25 separate occasions and more than 20% six times. People overbuy, overvalue and overextend themselves. It’s just human nature.  This time will be no different.  Back in the day, there were banking, internet, real estate, junk bonds, recession, inflation, energy and war crisis which caused stock market contractions.  Today, there are many of the same factors, with the addition of crypto, terror attacks, AI and data center over-investment. All, most or any of these factors will contribute to the next contraction.

No matter how much you may want to deny it, the stock market has an enormous impact on your business. Customers delay purchases, banks tighten lending standards, investors become more cautious, employees get nervous about their 401(k)s, owners see their personal net worth decline, vendors become more aggressive about collections, hiring gets postponed and capital spending is curtailed.

If you’re like most business owners, you’ve got your company, personal, retirement and college fund savings invested in the markets. So do your employees. So does everyone else. When the markets drop, it causes a collapse in confidence in the economy. People feel less wealthy, and they get scared. The impact reverberates.  Economics is not a science. It’s an art. It’s psychology. It’s emotions and feelings and confidence and moods.  When there’s a blow to all or any of those factors, the impact is felt throughout.

This will happen. So, as a business owner, what should you do to protect yourself?  Here’s what I’ve learned over the past 30-plus years living through a number of stock market contractions.

For starters, pay attention to history

In 2009, during the Great Recession, the Dow fell from a high of 14,165 to 6,547.  That’s a loss of value of almost 54%. Imagine living through that. Like me, maybe you don’t have to imagine. It was ugly. But what eventually happened? The markets recovered. They always do. Now the Dow is more than eight times the value over its low recorded in 2009.   Know your history. Stay the course.

Check your greed

If you had your money in an S&P stock index fund, your $100,000 in investments from 2021 — five years ago — would now be worth about $175,000.  Even if today’s markets drop 20%, it’s still a pretty big win, don’t you think? If you’ve already made 70% over five years, giving back some of those gains in a correction doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly become poor. You’ve heard that the stock market generally outpaces all other markets over the long term. It’s true. Don’t be greedy. Be grateful.

Next, make sure your assets are diversified

I know it’s fun to speculate, but try to limit your investments in individual stocks unless they’re a relatively smaller part of your overall wealth and are mostly in companies with strong financials, well-known brands and that you regularly use and trust (For me,  it’s Microsoft, Amazon, American Airlines and Marriott). Keep the lion’s share of your stock investments in mutual funds, indexed to sectors and larger, more stable corporations. They will ultimately recover from a contraction. Also, if you’re able, spread your investments between stocks, bonds and real estate.

Take advantage of significant tax deductions

There are significant tax deductions when you lose money on a stock.  You can sell it and offset the loss against any capital gains up to $3,000 and then carry the rest forward.  In addition, you can use a tactic known as a “wash sale,” where you sell the stock and then buy it back after 30 days. You can then add that loss to the basis of the stock, thereby lowering your overall taxable gain in the future if and when the stock has regained value and you sell it. 

Get your financing in place

When markets fall, the banking industry tends to freeze up and everyone runs for cover.  They limit new loans and re-evaluate existing loans.  If you know this is going to happen in the future, then it’s best to open, secure and renew available working capital lines of credit for your business now so that they’re able to be used if you have any liquidity issues during a downturn. You may pay additional fees today, but consider it insurance for tomorrow.

Turn off the internet

CNBC will put red arrows on the screen. Websites will run photos of terrified traders. Experts who didn’t predict the crash will confidently predict what happens next. Ignore most of it. This is how we in the media earn our money — we create fear and we count the clicks.  Most of the stock market and economic coverage you’ll read will not make you happy during a downturn, so do your best to limit it.  For your mental health, turn down or turn off the noise. Go outside. Ride your bike. Walk your dog. You’ll find that the world is still there and looks exactly the same as it did before the markets fell. And it will look the same generations later.

Build your cash reserves now, so that you can buy later

If you’re able to do so now, try to accumulate some cash and put it in an interest-bearing account. Because when the market falls, all stocks will fall, even the ones of companies that have strong earnings, great brands and competent management. Those companies — as they always do — will recover and will probably exceed even their value before their stock declined. Your goal is to snap up a few shares at a discount so you can ride this recovery.

Finally, work with a wealth manager

You know your business. The stock market people know their business. Just like you rely on electricians, shippers, marketing agencies and accounting firms for their expertise, so should you be doing the same with your individual and corporate savings. Use a wealth manager and, yes, like all the others, pay their fees. It’s their job to maximize your returns. It’s also their job to console, comfort, soothe and calm you when the market falls. You’ll find their advice to be helpful, as I always do.  However, don’t just have one wealth manager: diversify with two or three. Meet with them once or twice a year and measure their results.

My best clients are always thinking ahead.  So should you and I. The markets are no different. We know darn well that there’s going to be a significant contraction; we just don’t know when. But, like so many other uncertainties that impact our business, that shouldn’t stop either of us from being prepared for this inevitable event.

As I write this, both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average are up over 12% since the beginning of the year and more than 20% over the past 12 months.  It’s boom times in the markets.  But make no mistake: sooner or later, there is going to be another significant stock market contraction. History guarantees that much. What history doesn’t tell us is when.

Over the past 50 years, the S&P 500 has fallen more than 10% on 25 separate occasions and more than 20% six times. People overbuy, overvalue and overextend themselves. It’s just human nature.  This time will be no different.  Back in the day, there were banking, internet, real estate, junk bonds, recession, inflation, energy and war crisis which caused stock market contractions.  Today, there are many of the same factors, with the addition of crypto, terror attacks, AI and data center over-investment. All, most or any of these factors will contribute to the next contraction.

No matter how much you may want to deny it, the stock market has an enormous impact on your business. Customers delay purchases, banks tighten lending standards, investors become more cautious, employees get nervous about their 401(k)s, owners see their personal net worth decline, vendors become more aggressive about collections, hiring gets postponed and capital spending is curtailed.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Success in business is often associated with confidence. Founders are expected to make decisions quickly, project certainty and inspire others to follow their vision. Yet the longer I have spent around entrepreneurs, the more I have come to believe that their greatest competitive advantage has little to do with certainty. The business leaders who continue thriving over decades are rarely those who believe they have all the answers. They are the ones who never stop learning.

Learning looks very different once formal education ends. No curriculum tells entrepreneurs what comes next, no examination confirms they are ready, and no graduation marks the moment they know enough. Markets evolve, industries are reshaped, and new technologies continually rewrite the rules. Those changes reward people who treat learning as a lifelong discipline rather than a stage of life.

Here are five lessons that have shaped my own thinking.

1. Learn beyond your industry

Many entrepreneurs spend years becoming experts in a single field. Expertise is valuable, but breakthroughs often arrive from somewhere else.

Some of the most innovative ideas in business have emerged when leaders borrowed concepts from psychology, architecture, healthcare, behavioral economics or the arts rather than simply studying their competitors. Reading widely is not a distraction from business. It is often where the next opportunity begins.

2. Use AI to gather information, not replace judgment

Artificial intelligence has transformed the speed at which entrepreneurs can learn. Market reports can be summarized in minutes, unfamiliar concepts explained instantly and emerging trends identified long before they become mainstream.

Those capabilities should be embraced. Judgment, however, remains a human responsibility. AI can tell you what happened. Deciding why it matters, what to ignore and which risks are worth taking still depends upon experience, curiosity and values. The most effective entrepreneurs use technology to improve their thinking, not to outsource it.

3. Success can become your greatest blind spot

Early-stage founders ask questions because they have no alternative. Established entrepreneurs sometimes stop asking because previous success appears to validate existing assumptions. Markets rarely reward that mindset for long. Customer expectations change, technologies evolve, and younger competitors often see opportunities that established businesses overlook. Confidence should grow with experience. Certainty should not.

Success also changes the feedback entrepreneurs receive. As organizations grow, people become less inclined to challenge the founder’s thinking. Teams naturally seek alignment, customers become more forgiving, and public recognition can create the impression that past judgment will continue producing future results. That is precisely when leaders need to seek out disagreement deliberately.

The willingness to invite criticism, question familiar assumptions and remain intellectually uncomfortable often becomes the difference between businesses that endure for generations and those that gradually become victims of their own success.

4. Your smartest teacher may not be your mentor

Mentors remain invaluable, but entrepreneurs who learn consistently draw lessons from unexpected places. The most influential teacher in your career may not carry an impressive title or decades of executive experience. Sometimes the person closest to a problem sees it more clearly than the person furthest up the organizational chart.

A dissatisfied customer may reveal more about your business than a consultant. A graduate joining the company may understand changing consumer behavior better than senior management. Competitors, suppliers and businesses operating in completely different sectors can all become teachers if approached with genuine curiosity.

Even failures deserve closer attention. Deals that fall apart, products that underperform and partnerships that never materialize often contain insights that success quietly conceals. Entrepreneurs who develop the habit of conducting honest post-mortems frequently discover that disappointment can become one of the most valuable forms of education.

Learning depends less on where knowledge comes from than on whether we remain willing to recognize it. The entrepreneurs who continue growing are rarely the loudest people in the room. More often, they are the ones who continue listening long after everyone else believes the lesson has ended.

5. Never confuse knowledge with education

Knowledge has become increasingly accessible. Education remains something different. Knowledge answers questions. Education teaches us which questions deserve asking in the first place. Entrepreneurs who continue learning throughout their careers rarely succeed because they possess more information than everyone else. They succeed because they continue questioning assumptions, revising their thinking and remaining intellectually flexible when circumstances change.

Entrepreneurship has never been a destination reached through expertise alone. Every stage of building a business demands new perspectives, unfamiliar skills and the humility to admit that yesterday’s answers may no longer fit tomorrow’s challenges. The entrepreneurs who endure are rarely the ones who know the most. More often, they are the ones who have never lost the curiosity that first inspired them to begin.

The future may reward an entirely different kind of entrepreneur from the one we have traditionally celebrated. For generations, business admired those who projected certainty, moved decisively and appeared to have all the answers. The decades ahead may favor leaders who are intellectually adaptable enough to change their minds, curious enough to keep learning and humble enough to recognize that every technological revolution creates questions no previous generation has had to answer.

Perhaps the ultimate measure of an entrepreneur will no longer be how much they know, but how quickly they can continue learning. In a world where knowledge is becoming increasingly commoditized, curiosity may prove to be the rarest and most valuable form of capital.

Success in business is often associated with confidence. Founders are expected to make decisions quickly, project certainty and inspire others to follow their vision. Yet the longer I have spent around entrepreneurs, the more I have come to believe that their greatest competitive advantage has little to do with certainty. The business leaders who continue thriving over decades are rarely those who believe they have all the answers. They are the ones who never stop learning.

Learning looks very different once formal education ends. No curriculum tells entrepreneurs what comes next, no examination confirms they are ready, and no graduation marks the moment they know enough. Markets evolve, industries are reshaped, and new technologies continually rewrite the rules. Those changes reward people who treat learning as a lifelong discipline rather than a stage of life.

Here are five lessons that have shaped my own thinking.

I have recently been looking for new site locations for my co-warehousing business, Blue Co.  What an eye-opening experience that has been over the last couple of months, rife with ups and downs and business lessons for all. The short story is: as a startup, you only have a few opportunities to open a new location, and you have to get it right to impress your investors. 

No opportunity is perfect, and you may need to make some sacrifices. But knowing what elements are non-negotiable could be the difference between keeping your business growing and potentially “sinking the ship.” 

Allow me to explain.

What was Blue Co searching for?

Blue Co was on the hunt for 50,000 to 70,000-square-foot buildings in major metropolitan markets of the Southeast at terms its unique co-warehousing model could afford. The locations needed to be within the beltways of those major markets (e.g., under 10 miles from the city center), with nearby highway access and plenty of parking for its members. After reviewing over 200 listings and not a single signed lease to show for it, it became clear that this search would be a lot harder than expected.

What were the challenges?

There were so many decision points in picking a new location. The city, the location, the property, the surrounding neighborhood and demographics, the building type (e.g., industrial, retail, office), the floor plan, the building features (e.g., number of docks,  number of parking spots), the lease terms and the capital required, to name a few. 

On this last point about capital, there were a lot of variations, including financing the real estate, tenant improvements, lease securitization, startup costs, etc. And to make matters worse, there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all investor — some preferred real estate investing, some preferred venture investing in the operating company, and some preferred lending debt secured by needed equipment. 

Even if you found the right building, there was no guarantee it would come at terms you would be happy with or with financing partners that shared the enthusiasm for that location.

Some screening decisions were easy — decisions made by me

For our business, having enough parking was pretty important. If the property wasn’t at least 5 acres to accommodate parking for over 150 cars, it was largely a non-starter and could quickly cut those properties from the list. If we really liked the location, maybe we could find a nearby satellite parking lot, but that meant we couldn’t do one without the other, adding complexity to our search and discussions. Other simple decisions could be made quickly to ensure the property had an entrepreneur-friendly landlord, affordable rent, sufficient square footage, nearby highway access, etc. The point here is that the better you can screen these properties for the most important need, the less time you will waste.

Some screening decisions were easy — decisions made by them

Sometimes, a building would check all the right boxes for us, but we didn’t check all the right boxes for our landlord. Maybe they didn’t like our co-warehousing model in their building.  Or their lending banks didn’t like having a start-up as a tenant. Or our financials were not as “pretty” as those of other larger companies. Whatever the case may be, it is never fun to find a great building only to have it shot down by the other party. So ask those questions early in the process to ensure you do not unnecessarily spin your wheels.

Issues with the landlord

Not all landlords are created equal. Institutionally owned, big, billion-dollar buildings were typically the hardest to work with. Their requests of a tenant were pretty much the same regardless of the tenant’s business size, making it much harder for a startup to secure a building with them. But, on the other hand, even if you found an entrepreneur-friendly landlord, that doesn’t mean they will give you the best terms. As an example, we had one such landlord try to charge us 33% higher rent because they knew we didn’t have much negotiating power as a startup. Just make sure whoever you decide to work with will do so in a win-win way and have your back in good times and bad.

Investor issues

We have had a couple of situations where we found an investor for the building, but something didn’t work well for them. They liked to invest in Raleigh (not Greensboro, too far away). They like to invest in industrial buildings (not the converted big-box retail site were looking at). They won’t look at any building with rezoning risks. We had one investor say, “We’ll fund the building you like, but we are going to need to take this other, less desirable building as well,” which didn’t work for us. Or we needed to hit some operating metrics on our old buildings, before they would consider the new buildings. Fundraising is never easy, but make sure you do your due diligence on them, at the same time, they are doing their due diligence on you.

Issues with the building and lease terms

Every building brings its own set of challenges: floor configuration, ceiling height for racking, office build-out, climate control, system age, dock type, and whether the exterior matches your brand image. You need to know which of these are genuine deal killers and which you can live with.

Commercial leases have just as many variables: term, base rent, operating costs, free rent, tenant improvement dollars, and securitization demands such as guarantees, letters of credit, or deposits. All of these pieces must fit together for both parties to close. Get these terms on the table early, before you fall in love with a building, so you do not waste time chasing a deal that will never work.

One case study worth calling out: The perfect building at less than perfect terms

We found what felt like the perfect building in the perfect location with a landlord who understood our business. But once their bank stepped in, the required letter of credit was so high it effectively blocked us until we completed our fundraising, and the only way to reduce it was to cut back tenant improvements to a point where we would not have enough office space to support clients or the P&L.

We tried every angle to make it work, but signing that lease would have created an underperforming location and drained our cash cushion at the same time we were raising capital. Moving forward before the fundraise closed felt like putting the cart before the horse, so as painful as it was, we walked to avoid putting the business in a bind if things did not go according to plan

Closing thoughts

So, why did I share all these excruciating details about our site selection process? To basically say three things: (1) know what the priority levers are in any business decision to save you from spinning your wheels on a lot of unnecessary work; (2) when you do find something that could work, quickly assess it to ensure the terms and partners are to your liking; and (3) never “force it” — if your gut is telling you moving forward would be a stretch for your business, walk away to live another day, no matter how much you like it.

I have recently been looking for new site locations for my co-warehousing business, Blue Co.  What an eye-opening experience that has been over the last couple of months, rife with ups and downs and business lessons for all. The short story is: as a startup, you only have a few opportunities to open a new location, and you have to get it right to impress your investors. 

No opportunity is perfect, and you may need to make some sacrifices. But knowing what elements are non-negotiable could be the difference between keeping your business growing and potentially “sinking the ship.” 

Allow me to explain.

Higher education has spent the last decade going digital. Most universities now have application portals, CRMs, student information systems and automation tools meant to make admissions faster and smoother. On paper, everything looks modernized.

But inside admissions offices, the reality feels very different. Recent research from AACRAO’s 2025 staffing survey throws light on the growing strain within admissions offices. It raises an alarming issue of lean enrollment teams managing increasingly complex workloads, sans a corresponding increase in resources or support. The same research has also highlighted that staffing challenges and excessive workloads are becoming perennial concerns for enrollment leaders across institutions.

Teams are busier than ever. Not because applications are harder to access, but because they are harder to process. Applications are harder to process because they no longer come in a standard format. A single application can include transcripts, identity documents and academic records that all need to be interpreted and verified. 

Transcripts vary widely across countries and grading systems, so teams often need to decode formats and convert GPAs before they can even evaluate them. On top of that, information is usually scattered across different systems, which means a lot of time goes into assembling and validating data rather than reviewing applicants.

The problem is not visibility or access anymore. It is operational overload that has quietly scaled with complexity.

Admissions didn’t get simpler; it got heavier

Admissions workflows have grown substantially heavier in both scope and complexity in recent years. Transcripts come in different formats. Grading systems vary widely. Identity documents need validation. Transfer credits need to be mapped across institutions.

Every application is slightly different, and each distinction adds time.

At the same time, application volumes continue to rise, especially in international education. Studies on global enrollment patterns show a steady increase in cross-border applications, which has added both volume and complexity to admissions pipelines. Institutions are no longer processing uniform applications but highly fragmented and diverse documentation sets.

So the workload is not just complex. It is multiplying. And yet, most admissions teams are still operating within systems designed for bygone era.

Most of the work is not decision-making

A common misconception is that admissions teams spend most of their time evaluating candidates.

In reality, a large portion of their day is spent on manual processing.

That includes:

• Reading and extracting information from transcripts
• Checking and verifying identity documents
• Converting GPAs across different grading systems
• Evaluating transfer credits manually
• Responding to repetitive student queries
• Coordinating information across disconnected systems

None of this is optional. It is essential work. But it is also work that takes time away from higher-value decision-making and student engagement.

Research on administrative burden in higher education has shown that as processes become more compliance-heavy and documentation-intensive, staff spend significantly more time on coordination and validation tasks than on core evaluative responsibilities. This shift increases cognitive load and reduces the time available for meaningful admissions decisions.

The cost is not always visible, but it is real

This overload does not always show up as a clear failure point. Instead, it shows up in smaller, cumulative ways. Students often experience longer waiting times before receiving responses, which slows down the overall admission journey. Decision-making cycles have become more time-intensive, leading to delays in final outcomes. Workloads tend to become unevenly distributed during peak admission periods, creating operational pressure points.
Experienced staff end up holding a disproportionate amount of institutional and contextual knowledge. New team members often require more time to ramp up because much of the process knowledge is not systematized. And over time, teams feel it.

A 2024 research study published in Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education highlights a significant and under-recognized burnout crisis among non-academic administrative staff in universities. The study warns that sustained overwork among professional services teams risks destabilizing institutional operations.

Turnover in admissions roles also remains a concern across institutions. Many professionals stay in these roles only for a few years, which creates a recurring cycle of hiring and training that further adds to operational strain.

Burnout is not sudden. It builds gradually. Most importantly, institutions do not always recognize that this is a systems issue, not a performance issue.

Most universities are not without technology. CRMs, SIS platforms and application systems exist almost everywhere now. But digitization is not the same as simplification. In many cases, what used to happen on paper now happens on screens, but the underlying process remains unchanged.

Information is stored digitally, but still processed manually. Systems exist side by side, but do not fully work together in a unified way.

So instead of removing effort, digital transformation has often just relocated it.

The real gap is operational intelligence

What is missing is not more software. It is intelligence that connects the workflow. Operational intelligence means systems that help structure, interpret and move information in real time, instead of just storing it.

It means reducing the need for manual extraction, repeated validation and disconnected decision steps. And it means shifting from a world of batch processing to one where information flows through a connected system.

What changes when this problem is solved

When admissions operations become more intelligent, the entire nature of the work begins to shift in a meaningful way. Instead of spending the majority of their time manually processing documents, extracting information and reconciling data across systems, teams are able to focus more on higher-order responsibilities such as evaluating exceptions, applying institutional judgment and engaging directly with students in a more meaningful and responsive way.

Instead of constantly chasing missing or fragmented information across emails, portals and disconnected systems, staff can work with structured and readily available data that is already organized, validated and easy to act on. 

This reduces the friction in everyday workflows and allows decisions to move forward without unnecessary delays caused by manual coordination.

Instead of reacting to backlogs that accumulate during peak admission cycles, teams are able to manage a continuous flow of applications in real time, where information is processed and surfaced as it arrives rather than being handled in large, delayed batches. This creates a more stable and predictable operational rhythm across the admissions cycle.

The role of admissions teams does not diminish in this model. It evolves. Work becomes less about repetitive execution and more about meaningful decision-making, student support and institutional impact, making the function not only more efficient but also more strategically valuable within the university ecosystem.

Why this matters now

Higher education is becoming more competitive, more global and more time-sensitive. Students expect faster responses. Institutions are competing across borders. Application complexity is not going down anytime soon.

In this environment, operational delays are no longer just inefficiencies. They directly affect enrollment outcomes. Speed, consistency and clarity are becoming part of institutional competitiveness.

Closing thought

Admissions teams are struggling because the system around them has quietly become heavier than it was designed to handle. And the longer that reality is treated as normal, the harder it becomes to change.

The encouraging shift now is that institutions are beginning to rethink not just the tools they use, but the structure of the workflows themselves. AI-powered systems and operational redesign are helping streamline repetitive tasks, connect fragmented data sources and reduce the manual effort required at each step of the admissions process.

As these changes take hold, enrollment workflows become faster, more transparent and more predictable. Teams are able to move away from constant firefighting and instead operate within a more structured, real-time flow of information. This creates space for better decision-making, stronger student engagement and a more sustainable working environment for admissions professionals.

The direction of change is already clear. With the right combination of AI and thoughtful process restructuring, admissions operations can shift from being overloaded and reactive to becoming streamlined, responsive and far more effective in supporting both institutions and students.

Higher education has spent the last decade going digital. Most universities now have application portals, CRMs, student information systems and automation tools meant to make admissions faster and smoother. On paper, everything looks modernized.

But inside admissions offices, the reality feels very different. Recent research from AACRAO’s 2025 staffing survey throws light on the growing strain within admissions offices. It raises an alarming issue of lean enrollment teams managing increasingly complex workloads, sans a corresponding increase in resources or support. The same research has also highlighted that staffing challenges and excessive workloads are becoming perennial concerns for enrollment leaders across institutions.

Teams are busier than ever. Not because applications are harder to access, but because they are harder to process. Applications are harder to process because they no longer come in a standard format. A single application can include transcripts, identity documents and academic records that all need to be interpreted and verified. 

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Britt Riley, founder and CEO of childcare company Haven, designed her company with rest in mind. She has spent the past seven years creating a network of clubs that offer daycare, workspace and fitness for families. The company has raised about $20 million in funding and recently started franchising. 

Since launching the company in 2019, Riley has prioritized well-being for her team of about 60 people. To that end, she closes the company for an entire week every summer and for the last week of the year so employees can completely unplug without the pressure of meetings or emails — and still get paid. She says these summer and winter resets have proved foundational to the company.

The following as-told-to interview has been edited for clarity and concision. 

When I realized that mandatory time off was a good idea

It goes back to the beginning of my career. I wrote my college thesis on company culture at Patagonia, where I had the great privilege of spending some of the earliest days of my career. There, “Let my people go surfing” wasn’t a slogan or an empty promise. I was able to see the elements of that mindset in practice and witnessed a company that literally operated on a whole different playing field than any other. 

Witnessing a serious and profitable company trust its people with their own time and seeing how that produced dedication and willingness from employees to give their best work every day formed my own values set. I could see no other way after that point. 

Fixing a broken system

Our teams have always been happy to be given the time; some are pretty taken aback by our general approach to “benefits” and our culture — in the best way. I didn’t have a background in childcare prior to starting Haven, so I came to every element of it with an outside perspective and an appetite to help evolve what I had come to understand was a broken industry. 

From my conversations and research, it felt that early childhood educators were used to being treated as coverage, not as people, and many of our team members expressed that they were coming from settings where taking a personal day meant guilt and apologizing.

The resets become something people protect by giving their all when they are inside our walls. Our teams plan their own vacations around it, and they feel valued and appreciated knowing that we see them as humans who are living their own lives. We show up for each other; in this case that means not showing up at all for a week. 

There were some skeptics and drawbacks

Childcare is an industry where the unwritten rule is that you never close, and I heard concerns, but once people realized that parents understood it immediately, the arguments ended. At the end of the day parents know better than anyone what running on empty does to a person who cares for children. The skeptics were asking, “How can you afford to close?” Our members were happy to support their hard-working Haven family with this time.

For one week, families who count on us need another plan, and for dual-income households that is a real ask. We owe them enormous notice, and we give it. The balance of two separate weeks of time off, when weighed against the turnover we avoid and the energy our team is able to bring to the table, makes the time a small cost in the long run.

There are also some clear advantages

Retention, of course, but this also supports our goal of showing up wholeheartedly for all of the children in our care each day. It shows up in recruiting, because the best early childhood educators see that we take their work seriously and want to work where they are treated with the appreciation and support that should be afforded to anyone committed to such a critical career. It takes committing to your values to then determine what is necessary to achieve the end goal. 

Doing that has helped make decisions like this easy. It feeds into the main advantage of showing up for your team. They are then more able to show up for their crew of children. We are a Great Place to Work certified company, and 100% of our team this year said that Haven is a great place to work. You don’t get a number like that with pizza Fridays; you get it from seeing each person as an individual and showing up for them. 

Our closures are predictable. We schedule them more than a year in advance, families learn about it during their enrollment process, and we anchor it to two of the historically slowest weeks of the year. In the run-up, we over-communicate and set expectations clearly so it does not creep up on anyone. For inquiries, it is actually a great indicator of our commitment to quality service when a family that reaches out about membership sees our out-of-office reply and gets to know who we are at our core a little better. 

Why I created Haven

Haven is childcare, workspace and fitness under one roof, built around one idea we call familycare: care for the whole family. 

A parent can drop their little one into a fully licensed, play-based classroom where they will benefit from our proprietary Haven Method curriculum. They are then welcome (but not required) to walk 30 seconds to our intentionally designed workspace, take a fitness class, go for a run or jump on a bike between meetings, get a massage, a facial or even just a hot shower. And, most importantly, save tons of time by not having to shuffle between everything. They can be present for the moments that matter, all in one community built for whatever their day requires. 

I started developing the concept for Haven when I had my own newborn and toddler and a need for that “village” everyone has always talked about. We built our first club in Middletown, Rhode Island and opened when my youngest turned 2. Today we have clubs in Rhode Island and New Jersey and have recently begun franchising so passionate local owners can bring Haven to their own communities.

Revenue has grown every year since we opened in 2019

Our established clubs operate at healthy margins. With our growth program underway, the next five years will see Haven evolve into a national network. The interest in opening Haven clubs has been overwhelming. Our lead volume has quadrupled since January, and demand from families continues to outpace supply both locally and at an industry-wide level.

By 2030, our plan calls for more than 100 Haven clubs open across the country. In people terms, that’s thousands of jobs: educators, directors, general managers and dozens of empowered Haven club owners. Women have submitted 86% of all of our new club opening leads. 

On satisfaction, my target is genuinely unreasonable, and I don’t care: Keep the Great Place to Work score at 100% as we scale. Most people will say that’s impossible past a certain size. But the entire Haven platform has thrived on doing what folks have balked at in childcare; we plan to keep that up. 

My advice for founders

First, build your values into the fabric of every element of your company, not just something you hang on the wall. Anyone can write “we value wellbeing.” Your culture is the sum of what you’re willing to do at the expense of “it’s always been done this way” or simply the bottom line. You can’t fake authenticity or a healthy culture.

Second, stay curious always. If what you are working towards has a solid purpose, that curiosity will allow you to keep doing the next right thing. I wasn’t a childcare expert or an expert in brick and mortar businesses, or even technical development when I started, and that blank slate and open mind has become one of Haven’s superpowers. 

If you pair curiosity with surrounding yourself with experts who are incredibly insightful and passionate about what you are doing, you’ll keep winding up way beyond wherever your wildest dreams took you. There are so many things I have learned that I would share with founders, but at the end of the day, the last thing I’ll share is: As long as you believe wholeheartedly in what you are doing, as long as you have no reasonable doubt in it, keep going. 

Sit through enough award stages at real estate conferences, and the script starts to repeat itself. Three hundred deals closed last year. Twenty-five agents on the roster. Two hundred million in volume. Everyone claps, a few people scribble the number down, somebody asks for a business card on the way out.

It’s a real accomplishment. It’s also not the question worth asking. Try this one instead: What happens if the founder disappears for six months?

For a lot of teams, the answer isn’t pretty. Referrals dry up because they were tied to a person, not a brand. Recruiting slows because agents joined to be near someone specific, not to be part of an institution. The momentum everyone mistook for business growth turns out to have been one person’s output running under a company name. That’s not really a business. It’s a personality with a payroll.

A recent study tracking over 184,000 productive agents across major MLS regions found that the top 10% of agents who switched brokerages controlled roughly 45% of the total transaction volume tracked in that period. That kind of concentration isn’t an outlier in this business. It’s closer to the default setting. Most teams have an outsized share of production riding on a small handful of people, frequently just one. When that person walks away, retires or even just slows down, the business doesn’t ease into a smaller version of itself. It can come apart fast, and the founder is often the most surprised person in the room.

Growth hides a lot of weak foundations

When the market is good and the founder is producing at full speed, almost everything looks healthy. They’re recruiting, closing, marketing, fielding every referral and putting out every fire personally. From the outside, that reads as a well-oiled operation. From the inside, it’s frequently one person doing the job of an org chart and calling it a system. Growth papers over that completely. As long as the numbers keep going up, hardly anyone stops to ask whether there’s actual infrastructure underneath them or just a very fast person running very hard.

The truth tends to surface later, once growth slows down or the founder simply runs out of capacity to keep absorbing everything. The National Association of Realtors’ most recent member profile put the median realtor age at 57, and the organization is projecting membership could fall by roughly 150,000 agents by the end of this year. A large piece of that decline will be experienced producers retiring, and 21% of agents with more than 25 years in the business are already actively planning their exit, according to the same research. A lot of teams built around one of those careers are about to learn exactly how dependent they really were on it.

Top producers often become the bottleneck

Here’s the part nobody likes saying at the team meeting. The person who built the business is often the same person now holding it back. Clients want that person specifically. Major decisions route through them because that’s simply how it’s always worked. Recruiting pitches lean on access to them because that access was the actual sales pitch. None of this is a character flaw. It’s just what happens when a business gets built around one exceptional performer instead of around systems anyone could run.

Many teams don’t really scale. They stretch. Those two things look the same on a chart showing year-over-year growth, but they’re not the same thing at all. Scaling means a team can take on more volume without putting proportionally more pressure on one individual. Stretching means leaning on that same individual to absorb more, with less room to breathe, until eventually something gives out. Usually it’s the founder.

Institutions compound, personalities burn out

Real businesses build in repeatability. They develop a culture that holds regardless of any one person’s mood or bandwidth on a particular day. They build a genuinely recognizable brand. None of that means stripping out the personality that built the thing in the first place. It means building something larger than that personality, so growth doesn’t stall the second the person at the center steps back.

Law firms that last figured this out generations ago. Family offices that survive across decades figured it out, too. The strongest brokerage brands work the same way. Nobody is immune to losing key people. What separates the ones that endure is that losing one person, even a critical one, doesn’t threaten to take the whole structure down with them. Businesses built entirely around a single individual don’t compound the way people assume they will. They just get older, and eventually the bill comes due.

The next great brokerages will feel like institutions

The teams and brokerages that matter a decade out probably won’t be the loudest or even the largest. They’ll be the ones that made it through something. A leadership transition. A rough cycle. A founder’s retirement that didn’t drag the whole business down with it. Durability like that doesn’t happen by accident, and it doesn’t get built during the good years when everyone’s too busy producing to think about it. It gets built deliberately, usually well before anyone believes it’s necessary.

If your business stops growing the moment you stop showing up, you may have built a career instead of a company. Those aren’t the same accomplishment, even though they can look identical from a conference stage. One of them is worth real money to someone other than you. The other one was always just you, with a bigger title attached.

Sit through enough award stages at real estate conferences, and the script starts to repeat itself. Three hundred deals closed last year. Twenty-five agents on the roster. Two hundred million in volume. Everyone claps, a few people scribble the number down, somebody asks for a business card on the way out.

It’s a real accomplishment. It’s also not the question worth asking. Try this one instead: What happens if the founder disappears for six months?

For a lot of teams, the answer isn’t pretty. Referrals dry up because they were tied to a person, not a brand. Recruiting slows because agents joined to be near someone specific, not to be part of an institution. The momentum everyone mistook for business growth turns out to have been one person’s output running under a company name. That’s not really a business. It’s a personality with a payroll.

Every entrepreneur hopes that a great product or service can stand on its own; that it can be successful enough to help them grow their business and personal profile.

Unfortunately, such successes tend to be the exception rather than the rule. As Tyler Wagner, founder of Authors Unite, explains, entrepreneurs typically need much more than a great product to achieve long-term results. They need a platform. And by delivering value through personal, authoritative content, they can achieve exactly that.

The Danger of Product-Only Thinking

While the product or service is usually the baseline for a successful business, Wagner is quick to note that entrepreneurs have a tendency to focus on the product itself, rather than the people behind it — and that can be a detriment.

“Many of the most successful entrepreneurs didn’t get that way because of their products alone. They achieved their influence, and in some cases fame, because of the platform they were able to build around themselves. They built a personal brand, and the products were an extension of that personal brand. At the end of the day, we’re attracted to ideas that come from people, rather than faceless businesses. When entrepreneurs only focus on the product itself, they miss out on half the picture.”

For example, one recent study found that readers rated AI-written stories significantly higher when they were told the stories had actually been written by humans. A study by Baringa found that 81% of people preferred human-created content because it was perceived as more authentic, original or personal.

Without taking the time to showcase the people behind the product, rather than just the product itself, entrepreneurs miss out on crucial opportunities for connection with their audience.

Creating a Platform Through Expertise

Wagner notes that there is no shortage of opportunities to build a platform: “Decades ago, entrepreneurs had to rely on traditional media to get any kind of attention and coverage for themselves and their products,” he says.

“Now, we live in a completely different environment. Entrepreneurs can start podcasts, publish a book without going through a traditional publishing house or even start a YouTube channel. There are so many different opportunities to create a platform that plays to your strengths, where you can share your insights and expertise in a personal and meaningful way.”

As Wagner explains, many entrepreneurs are tempted to ignore such activities because they don’t always deliver immediate, direct revenue. But he says that ignores the point of platform-building activities.

“Whether you’re investing in a book or a YouTube channel, these things are rarely going to become your primary source of revenue in and of themselves, even though they can add to your total revenue. Instead, these platform-builders are powerful lead generators that drive warm leads directly to your business. Your audience comes to know and trust you because of the expertise you’ve shared, and now they’re even more ready to pay for your other products and services.”

One need only look at how the success of Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People helped turn FranklinCovey into a global enterprise to see this principle in action.

Books as Your Entrepreneur Platform

From short social media posts to longer video essays, the opportunities for platform-building are plentiful. But for his part, Wagner highly recommends that entrepreneurs consider the power of a book for building their platform. “Few things can build your niche authority like being able to say that you’re a bestselling author,” he says.

“Being a bestselling author is an instant indicator of social proof, as well as the trust and authority you have in your area. Even as other platform-building opportunities grow, there’s an inherent credibility and level of expertise that comes from being an author. And that social proof is what can move you from someone’s ‘maybe’ pile to a ‘yes’, both for using your products and services and for booking you for speaking engagements and other lucrative opportunities.”

In Wagner’s experience, a book can become a tangible springboard that can power an entrepreneur’s status to new heights, even as it also creates an ancillary product that can directly contribute to revenue. The book itself becomes an ongoing marketing tool that is available to a global audience, which can greatly expand your reach — especially if the book itself is marketed successfully to achieve that bestseller status.

“The same level of thinking and care that goes into building a great product or service should also go into building your platform,” Wagner says. “This way, you can deliver maximum value to your readers, and that positive first encounter with you will lead to meaningful business growth.”

Building for Growth

No business idea will succeed without a great product or service behind it. But as Wagner’s insights reveal, focusing exclusively on a product or service at the expense of an entrepreneur’s personal platform can greatly limit its potential. 

By using your specific niche expertise and experience to build a platform (whether through a book or other format), you can build industry authority and generate downstream revenue that takes your business to new heights.

Every entrepreneur hopes that a great product or service can stand on its own; that it can be successful enough to help them grow their business and personal profile.

Unfortunately, such successes tend to be the exception rather than the rule. As Tyler Wagner, founder of Authors Unite, explains, entrepreneurs typically need much more than a great product to achieve long-term results. They need a platform. And by delivering value through personal, authoritative content, they can achieve exactly that.