Almost every dealership owner right now is hearing the same warning: get on AI or get left behind. So they move fast. A chatbot on the website. A scheduling assistant in service. Another tool for sales. One for texting. Another for marketing.

On their own, most AI solutions do exactly what they’re supposed to do. The problem is that these tools rarely share context with each other, so they usually don’t know what the others already know. That’s where customer experience starts to break down.

Every new AI tool creates another customer touchpoint.

If those touchpoints don’t work together, customers feel it.

Whether you sell cars or software, the goal isn’t simply to add AI. It’s to create a customer experience that feels connected from beginning to end. Here are five ways to get there.

Shop your own business

Before you think about adding another AI tool, become your own customer. Visit your own website, fill out the form, ask your bot the question a nervous first-time buyer would ask. You’ll quickly discover whether the experience feels seamless or stitched together. Maybe the chatbot asks for information the customer has already entered. Maybe the follow-up email arrives hours later, or the salesperson has no idea which vehicle the customer was looking at.

Individually, these moments seem minor. Together, they shape how customers judge your business.

Shop your own store like a stranger, and do it often, not once. Whatever you sell, spending one hour as your own customer will answer half your AI questions before you spend a dime.

You’ll learn more from one hour as your own customer than from a month of vendor demos.

Build accountability before you build automation

AI should make good decisions, not every decision. That starts with clear ownership and accountability.

Every AI tool should have an owner.

Too often, businesses buy AI, turn it on and expect it to run itself. But AI isn’t a “set it and forget it” technology.

Someone should be responsible for making sure the information it’s using is accurate, that promotions are current, that pricing changes are reflected and that responses still match how the business wants to communicate with customers.

Just as you coach employees, AI needs oversight. It should be reviewed, tested and updated regularly.

That also means checking how it performs over time. Are customers getting the answers they need? Is it escalating conversations appropriately? Is it reflecting changes to inventory, pricing and promotions? Like any member of your team, AI performs better when someone is responsible for it.

Pick one story and stick to it

One of the fastest ways to lose trust is conflicting information.

A promotion on your homepage doesn’t match what’s in a text message. The chatbot quotes something different than your sales team. Service has no idea what happened online.

Every AI tool becomes another voice speaking on behalf of your business. Before adding another one, make sure they’re telling the same story. Customers don’t know which system generated the message. They only know your dealership gave them conflicting information.

Trust is difficult to earn and easy to lose. If customers have to stop and wonder which message is correct, they’ll start questioning the overall experience.

Think beyond the feature you’re buying

It’s easy to evaluate AI one feature at a time.

Will this answer chats?

Will this schedule appointments?

Will this write emails?

Those are important questions. But the more important question is what happens after the tool does its job.

Before buying another AI tool, ask a different question: What happens after this tool does its job? Does the information flow into your CRM? Can sales, service and marketing all see it? Or have you simply created another silo? The feature may work exactly as advertised, but if it can’t share context with the rest of your business, you’ve created another disconnect.

Design for continuity

Nobody wants to introduce themselves twice. Customers shouldn’t have to start over simply because they moved from your website to a text conversation, or from sales to service.

The goal isn’t to give every department its own AI.

The goal is to create one customer experience, even if multiple systems are working behind the scenes.

The best AI is almost invisible. Customers shouldn’t have to think about which tool they’re interacting with or whether they’re talking to a bot or a person. They should simply feel like your business remembers who they are and picks up where the last conversation left off. That’s what great customer experience has always been about.

AI will continue getting better. New tools will keep arriving. But at the end of the day, customers don’t walk away asking for your AI strategy. They leave remembering whether it was easy or difficult to do business with you. That’s the question every AI investment should answer.

Almost every dealership owner right now is hearing the same warning: get on AI or get left behind. So they move fast. A chatbot on the website. A scheduling assistant in service. Another tool for sales. One for texting. Another for marketing.

On their own, most AI solutions do exactly what they’re supposed to do. The problem is that these tools rarely share context with each other, so they usually don’t know what the others already know. That’s where customer experience starts to break down.

Every new AI tool creates another customer touchpoint.

Want to work for yourself? You’re in good company; 62% of U.S. adults would prefer to be their own boss. 

But with no shortage of business ideas, which ones do people gravitate toward? Business lender OnDeck decided to find out. 

Researchers analyzed the number of searches for advice for particular business types to see which are most popular across the U.S. and determine where interest is surging rapidly. 

Across the country, people are searching for advice on starting cleaning, real estate and restaurant businesses most frequently, according to OnDeck’s report. 

However, those aren’t the same businesses seeing the greatest uptick in interest. Starting a Spotify podcast has become the fastest-growing new business idea, the research found. 

And entrepreneurs who host a successful one can generate significant income. A “mid-size” podcast boasting 10,000 to 50,000 monthly listeners might bring in $5,000 to $20,000 a month, while a top 1% podcast surpassing 50,000 monthly listeners can exceed $100,000 in that period, Backstage reported. 

Read on to see the top 10 trending business ideas, per OnDeck’s analysis: 

Want to work for yourself? You’re in good company; 62% of U.S. adults would prefer to be their own boss. 

But with no shortage of business ideas, which ones do people gravitate toward? Business lender OnDeck decided to find out. 

Researchers analyzed the number of searches for advice for particular business types to see which are most popular across the U.S. and determine where interest is surging rapidly. 

Across the country, people are searching for advice on starting cleaning, real estate and restaurant businesses most frequently, according to OnDeck’s report. 

However, those aren’t the same businesses seeing the greatest uptick in interest. Starting a Spotify podcast has become the fastest-growing new business idea, the research found. 

And entrepreneurs who host a successful one can generate significant income. A “mid-size” podcast boasting 10,000 to 50,000 monthly listeners might bring in $5,000 to $20,000 a month, while a top 1% podcast surpassing 50,000 monthly listeners can exceed $100,000 in that period, Backstage reported. 

Read on to see the top 10 trending business ideas, per OnDeck’s analysis: 

According to Silicon Valley Bank’s February 2026 State of the Markets report, U.S. VC fundraising dollars fell almost 20% year over year to their lowest level since 2019. For founders outside the AI boom, the odds are already stacked. Luxury and lifestyle tech founders face an additional layer: a category that’s harder to model, harder to benchmark and, frankly, harder for most investors to intuitively grasp.

When I was raising for InList, a members-only platform for booking curated nightlife and events, I heard a version of the same hesitation in room after room: “This seems great, but we don’t really invest in this space.”

That sentence is where the pitch actually begins. Here’s how to turn skeptical investors into convinced ones:

1. Reframe your market size before they ask

The first thing a consumer-skeptic investor looks at is total addressable market (TAM). If your pitch deck doesn’t answer the market-size question preemptively and credibly, you’ve already lost them. The instinct for many founders in experience-driven verticals is to go broad — “the global events industry is worth $2 trillion” — but that breadth actually signals weakness. Sophisticated investors know you can’t chase it all.

Instead, define a tight, defensible wedge and then show the path to expand it. When pitching InList, we didn’t lead with nightlife. We led with the behavior: high-net-worth individuals who pay a premium to skip friction and guarantee access. That behavior cuts across dining, travel, private events and beyond. The niche entry point was a feature, not a ceiling.

That same thinking also helped us broaden the conversation with investors by shifting the focus from the product to the customer. Our members were affluent consumers who travel frequently, spend on experiences and luxury goods and influence purchasing across categories, from hospitality and private aviation to watches, spirits and other premium brands. When investors understand the value of the customer you’re acquiring, not just the transaction you’re facilitating, they can more easily see the long-term opportunity.

Uber employed a similar approach in its earliest days. Rather than pitching itself as a taxi alternative, it framed the opportunity around a specific behavior: professionals in New York and San Francisco who wanted a black car at the push of a button. That tight wedge gave investors a believable entry point while signaling a much larger platform opportunity beyond it.

2. Speak the investor’s language, not your customer’s

The words that make your members feel special are often the words that make investors nervous. “Curated.” “Exclusive.” “Premium.” These land beautifully in consumer marketing; in a pitch room, they can sound like soft proxies for “small” and “hard to scale.” You have to translate.

When your product relies on high lifetime value and low churn rather than high volume and fast growth, say that explicitly and bring the numbers to prove it. For InList, instead of describing the vibe of the member experience, we anchored every qualitative claim to a data point: average booking value, repeat usage rates, referral-driven acquisition cost. Investors who don’t know the luxury market still know what great unit economics look like.

Rent the Runway navigated this same tension head-on. Jennifer Hyman has said that as a female founder pitching a fashion concept, she had to walk into investor meetings with what she called “15 spreadsheets,” while male founders got by with “a PowerPoint and a dream.” The luxury experience was the hook; the data was what closed the room.

3. Use your waitlist as a proof point

In exclusive consumer platforms, demand signals carry unusual weight if you frame them correctly. A 10,000-person waitlist is nearly meaningless as a raw number. The same waitlist becomes compelling when you can say, “These are verified high-net-worth individuals; they converted from a referral-only funnel, and 40% completed a detailed application to get on it.” Now you’ve turned a vanity metric into evidence of real, qualified demand.

During InList’s raise, the quality of our waitlist mattered more than its size. We could demonstrate that our prospective members matched the profile investors recognized from other luxury verticals: the kind of spender who doesn’t churn over price, who refers organically and who elevates the brand simply by belonging. Scarcity was a deliberate product decision, and we treated it like one.

This approach mirrors what Soho House did in its early expansion. The brand used its waitlists not as marketing theater, but as evidence of concentrated demand in specific cities — a city-by-city proof point that made each new location look like a pre-sold asset rather than a speculative bet.

4. Build the relationships that make the raise inevitable

Traditional venture capital isn’t always the right first call for luxury and lifestyle tech, and waiting for it can cost you momentum you can’t afford to lose. Before raising institutional capital for InList, my co-founder and I structured a creative development partnership to get the product built, which meant we arrived at investor conversations with a working app, real users and proof of concept rather than a deck and a dream.

When we did raise, the $3 million round came through relationships built inside the world InList served. My co-founder and I had deep roots in the Miami nightlife and events scene, exactly the ecosystem our product was designed for. That credibility opened doors that a cold pitch process never would have.

According to a survey published in Harvard Business Review, more than 30% of deals come from a VC’s former colleagues or work acquaintances, with another 20% coming from referrals by other investors. Only 10% result from cold email pitches. In a niche vertical such as luxury or lifestyle tech, that ratio almost certainly skews even further toward relationships. Build your investor network the same way you build your member network: through deliberate access, not broadcast outreach.

Raising capital for a luxury or lifestyle tech company is a different game — not a harder one, once you understand the rules. The investors are out there. They just need the right translator.

According to Silicon Valley Bank’s February 2026 State of the Markets report, U.S. VC fundraising dollars fell almost 20% year over year to their lowest level since 2019. For founders outside the AI boom, the odds are already stacked. Luxury and lifestyle tech founders face an additional layer: a category that’s harder to model, harder to benchmark and, frankly, harder for most investors to intuitively grasp.

When I was raising for InList, a members-only platform for booking curated nightlife and events, I heard a version of the same hesitation in room after room: “This seems great, but we don’t really invest in this space.”

That sentence is where the pitch actually begins. Here’s how to turn skeptical investors into convinced ones:

When something isn’t working on your team, it’s natural to look outward first.

We examine performance, processes, communication and accountability. We ask why people aren’t meeting expectations or why the same problems keep showing up. Sometimes those things are the issue. But over the years, I’ve learned that recurring leadership challenges often have a common denominator: me.

Before I make assumptions about my team, I try to run what I call an emotional pattern audit. These five questions help me identify blind spots before those blind spots become barriers.

1. What problem keeps showing up repeatedly?

One of my favorite tools for self-awareness is the Enneagram because it highlights how you behave when you’re thriving versus when you’re stressed. The greatest strength a leader can have is knowing their own weaknesses.

When I notice the same frustration appearing over and over again, I stop focusing on the individual situation and start looking for the pattern. If the same challenge keeps showing up with different people or under different circumstances, there’s usually something deeper worth examining. Patterns often reveal issues that a single event cannot.

2. What role might I be playing in that pattern?

This is often the hardest question to answer honestly. For years, I thought I had a delegation problem. I couldn’t understand why everything seemed to come back to me. Then I realized I wasn’t struggling with delegation at all. I was struggling with my own understanding of my role.

I explained this recently using family photos. When my children were little, I was always the one holding the camera. I was organizing everyone and managing the moment instead of simply being in it. In business, I was doing the same thing. Instead of focusing on my responsibilities as the owner, I kept stepping into responsibilities that belonged to other people. I was unintentionally preventing ownership.

3. Am I expecting my team to be as invested as I am?

One of the hardest lessons I learned was accepting that my team will never care about the business the way I do. That’s not because they aren’t committed. In fact, they work for me because they’re committed to educating children and care about it deeply. However, that investment has a different lens than that of an owner. They’re simply not going to care about the same things I care about to the same degree that I care as the owner.

For a long time, I found myself frustrated when people didn’t show the same level of passion or urgency that I felt. Eventually, I realized I was expecting people to experience the business through my lens instead of theirs. Once I adjusted that expectation, I became a better leader because I stopped measuring commitment by whether someone thought exactly like me.

Sometimes, the feedback we’re least willing to hear is that we need to adjust our expectations, not our people.

4. Who has permission to tell me when I’m off course?

Every leader needs someone who can see what they can’t. For me, that’s often my husband. I’m a visionary by nature, which means I’m usually thinking years ahead. While that’s one of my greatest strengths, it can also become a blind spot.

Whenever I get too focused on the future, my husband jokes that I’m Icarus flying too close to the sun. What he’s really telling me is that while I’m looking at the horizon, there are things happening right in front of me that need my attention. I have similar people at work, too, people who can prod me back onto the right path.

The best leaders don’t surround themselves with people who always agree with them. They surround themselves with people who are willing to tell them the truth.

5. Am I acting from intention or habit?

Once you’ve identified a pattern, the next question is whether it’s something that can actually change. There are things about me that I can improve. I can communicate more clearly. I can create better systems. I can be more intentional in how I lead. There are also things that are simply part of who I am. I’m always going to be a visionary. I’m always going to care deeply about people.

Growth doesn’t happen when we try to become someone else, but when we learn to refine the habits that hold us back while leaning into the strengths that make us effective.

Turning awareness into action

Identifying a pattern is only the beginning. The next step is deciding whether it’s something you can change and then creating a simple plan to address it. One mistake I see leaders make is trying to fix everything at once. If you discover that you’re avoiding difficult conversations, struggling with delegation or creating confusion through unclear communication, don’t create a ten-step improvement plan. Pick one area and focus on making consistent progress.

I like to identify no more than three action items. For example, if clarity is the issue, I might commit to ending every meeting with clearly defined ownership and next steps. If delegation is the issue, I might choose one responsibility to fully hand off instead of continuing to check in on it. If emotional awareness is the issue, I might ask a trusted colleague to tell me when they notice I’m operating from stress instead of intention.

Just as importantly, check back in with the people affected by the change. Ask whether they’re seeing improvement and whether there’s anything you’re still missing. Leadership growth isn’t about making assumptions. It’s about creating feedback loops that help you improve over time.

The leaders who grow the fastest aren’t the ones who never have blind spots. They’re the ones willing to identify them, work on them, and measure their progress honestly.

When something isn’t working on your team, it’s natural to look outward first.

We examine performance, processes, communication and accountability. We ask why people aren’t meeting expectations or why the same problems keep showing up. Sometimes those things are the issue. But over the years, I’ve learned that recurring leadership challenges often have a common denominator: me.

Before I make assumptions about my team, I try to run what I call an emotional pattern audit. These five questions help me identify blind spots before those blind spots become barriers.

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Every owner enjoys seeing a profitable year. It validates years of hard work, reassures stakeholders and creates confidence that the business is moving in the right direction. Yet one of the biggest surprises I see in private markets is how often profitable companies struggle to attract premium valuations.

The assumption is understandable. If profits are growing, surely the business must be worth more. Unfortunately, buyers, lenders and institutional investors rarely see it that way.

Profit explains what happened last year. Value reflects what someone believes can happen after ownership changes. That difference is where many businesses unintentionally leave money on the table.

Profit is an accounting outcome. Value is an underwriting decision.

A company’s income statement may show healthy margins, consistent EBITDA and year-over-year growth. Those numbers matter, but they are only the beginning of the conversation.

Acquirers spend far more time asking a different question: “How confident are we that these earnings will continue after closing?” That single question changes the entire discussion.

A business earning $15 million of EBITDA may receive dramatically different offers depending on how buyers assess the quality of those earnings. The headline number is identical. The perceived risk is not.

Value is ultimately a judgment about future cash flows, not a reward for historical profitability.

Buyers don’t purchase yesterday’s earnings

Owners naturally focus on what they have achieved. Buyers focus on what they are inheriting. That distinction sounds subtle until a transaction begins.

During diligence, profitability is dissected from every angle. Revenue concentration, customer retention, supplier relationships, pricing power, recurring demand, working capital needs, management depth, reporting quality and capital expenditure requirements all become part of the underwriting process.

Suddenly, the conversation shifts away from “How profitable is the company?” toward “How dependable are these profits?”

Those are very different questions.

It’s a little like buying a rental property. The current rent matters, but so does the condition of the building, the quality of the tenants and whether the income is likely to continue after the keys change hands. Businesses are no different.

What creates enterprise value beyond profit?

Several characteristics consistently separate companies that merely report profits from those that command premium valuations.

Cash conversion:

Accounting profits are important, but lenders and investors ultimately finance cash generation.

If EBITDA consistently turns into operating cash flow, confidence increases. If cash is perpetually tied up in receivables, inventory or unexpected capital expenditures, profitability becomes less convincing. Healthy cash conversion demonstrates operational discipline rather than accounting success.

Earnings durability:

One exceptional year rarely defines enterprise value. Institutional buyers want confidence that earnings can withstand changing market conditions.

They examine customer contracts, retention rates, pricing flexibility, backlog, recurring revenue and competitive positioning.

The real asset is not last year’s earnings. It is the likelihood of earning them again.

Management depth:

One uncomfortable truth appears repeatedly in privately held businesses: The more indispensable the owner becomes, the less transferable the business often is.

If every major customer relationship, hiring decision, pricing negotiation and strategic choice depends on one individual, buyers inherit dependency rather than infrastructure.

Ironically, the owner who built the business can unintentionally become its biggest valuation discount.

Financial visibility:

Sophisticated buyers dislike surprises more than imperfect performance. Reliable monthly reporting, realistic forecasting, clear KPIs and disciplined financial controls reduce uncertainty. Uncertainty almost always carries a financial cost.

One investment banker once joked that every missing report eventually finds its way into a lower purchase price. While perhaps an exaggeration, the principle is difficult to argue with.

The hidden cost of looking better than you are

Many businesses spend significant effort making profitability appear stronger. Adjustments are reasonable when they reflect genuine one-time events. But there is a fine line between explaining earnings and stretching them.

Every seller believes the add-backs are perfectly reasonable. Buyers have an impressive ability to become forensic accountants the moment those adjustments appear.

The issue is not whether adjustments exist. The issue is whether they improve credibility or reduce it. Trust is difficult to rebuild once buyers begin questioning the financial story.

A better question for owners

Owners often ask: “How can I increase my valuation?”

I think a better question is: “What would make a sophisticated buyer more confident in the sustainability of my earnings?”

That shift changes management priorities.

Instead of chasing short-term accounting improvements, businesses begin strengthening the characteristics that institutional capital actually rewards.

That may include reducing customer concentration, strengthening reporting systems, building management depth, improving working capital discipline or documenting repeatable operating processes.

These initiatives rarely create overnight profits. They often create something more valuable: confidence.

A practical framework

Before assuming profitability will translate into value, management teams should ask themselves five questions:

1. Would earnings remain stable if the owner stepped away for six months?
2. Does EBITDA consistently convert into operating cash flow?
3. Are customers diversified enough that losing one account would not materially change the business?
4. Can management explain the monthly financial performance without relying on informal knowledge?
5. Would an outside investor understand how the business creates sustainable cash flow within a few weeks of diligence?

If several answers are uncertain, the business may be profitable without yet being fully institutionalized. That distinction matters.

Profitability earns attention. Business quality earns confidence. Confidence earns premium valuations.

The companies that attract the strongest buyers are not always the ones reporting the highest earnings. More often, they are the ones whose earnings appear understandable, repeatable, transferable and capable of surviving well beyond the current ownership team.

Profit tells the story of the past. Value reflects how believable the future looks. For owners considering growth, outside capital or an eventual exit, that difference is more than semantics. It is often measured in the price the market is ultimately willing to pay.

Every owner enjoys seeing a profitable year. It validates years of hard work, reassures stakeholders and creates confidence that the business is moving in the right direction. Yet one of the biggest surprises I see in private markets is how often profitable companies struggle to attract premium valuations.

The assumption is understandable. If profits are growing, surely the business must be worth more. Unfortunately, buyers, lenders and institutional investors rarely see it that way.

Profit explains what happened last year. Value reflects what someone believes can happen after ownership changes. That difference is where many businesses unintentionally leave money on the table.

In 2013, St. Louis, Missouri-based sisters Jane Molina and Joy Williams were in a busy season of life, running their family’s long-time heating and cooling business and raising five young children between them. 

Despite having no shortage of to-dos on her list, as Molina breastfed her third son, a new project took shape. She noticed that sometimes he would latch not for milk, but for comfort, and searched for a pacifier that could fulfill that need and give her back some time.

But she couldn’t find a product that mimicked real breast tissue and encouraged a wide latch, rather than the typical tight, pursed one. What if she created it herself? 

Molina voiced her idea to Williams, whose marketing background would be a serious asset. At first,  Williams questioned the practicality of starting another business. The family HVAC company continued to struggle in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis; it was tough to cover all of the bills. 

“ We basically were walking around with holes in our shoes, eating bologna sandwiches and drinking Coca-Cola, paying payroll and then having $150 in our bank account at the end of a week,” Williams says. 

Starting a new business to soothe babies: Ninni Co.

However, Molina felt called to bring the ultra-soft silicone pacifier to life, and before long, Williams was on board. Their pacifier brand Ninni Co., named to honor their grandmother, who breastfed 10 children and referred to the act as “the ninni,” was born. 

But it would be a long road before the product hit the market. 

For about seven years, the sisters worked on Ninni Co. on the side, drawing on financial support from family, including their mother. They tapped into their retirement funds and personal savings to develop a prototype, which cost less than $1,000, and work with an attorney to secure a patent.

Selling the HVAC business to fund Ninni Co.

By 2019, Molina and Williams were ready to go all-in; they decided to sell the HVAC company and open up additional funds for Ninni Co. 

The sisters sold the business for $500,000, to be paid in three installments, and owed $120,000 to vendors. “ People hear, ‘Oh, you sold a business and used that money,’ but it’s not all glitz and glamour or some exorbitant amount,” Williams notes. 

Next, the co-founders joined incubator programs, including BioSTL and the CET’s (Center for Emerging Technologies) flagship program for entrepreneurs, Square One, and received $10,000 through the Level Next program. They used the money for consumer testing the prototype and secured a manufacturer, the same one they use today, in upstate New York. 

Then the sisters were told it would cost $50,000 to $75,000 to create their product mold. The co-founders needed more cash. 

Meeting for coffee leads to a much-needed loan

Fortunately, a chance encounter at a networking event with a man who worked at Carrollton Bank helped them secure it. 

“I used to carry the prototype in a little box, something I got from Marshalls or Ross,” Molina says. She presented that box to the man over coffee, and he immediately understood the product — because his wife was currently breastfeeding. 

He agreed to structure a loan, and the journey to market continued.

Pre-launch, the sisters also received a $70,000 angel investment for a 20% stake in the company from two older men in their church. “ It was a large chunk that we unloaded right at the beginning,” Molina says, “but of course we were valued at zero. So where Joy and I were at, $70,000 might as well have been $250,000.”

Launching the product on Shopify in 2021

By March 2021, the sisters couldn’t wait to test the waters any longer; they launched with a modest supply. They went live on Shopify and priced the pacifiers at $12.99. They didn’t have professional photography, so they used stock images and spread the word on social media. 

On day one, they sold about 100 pacifiers, thanks to support from family and friends, but the number dwindled, sometimes to zero sales in a day. Molina and Williams fulfilled orders in their mother’s basement for about six months, with her help.  

Then, in April 2021, a viral TikTok video changed everything. 

A friend of Williams’ who happened to be an influencer loved using the product for her son, so she created an Instagram reel about it. Then Williams reposted the same video to TikTok.

Since the beginning, the sisters had turned on Shopify alerts on their phones, the “dings” tracking each sale in real time — and that night, they wouldn’t stop going off.

The next morning, the sisters realized Ninni Co. had gone viral, but they only had about 35 pacifiers in stock, with an additional 250 ready at the factory.

Williams put on her marketing hat and leaned into the demand, posting on Instagram and Facebook about upcoming drops and colors. The strategy lent the brand an exclusivity — and it paid off in a major way. 

Going viral brings a serious revenue boost

In 2023, Ninni Co. saw about $2.2 million in annual revenue. The following year, revenue hit $2.9 million, then $5.3 million in 2025, up 83% year over year.

In 2026, Ninni Co. is on track to reach $6.5 million in revenue. The brand sells more than 1,000 pacifiers every day.

Within four years, Molina and Williams bought back 95% of the company from their angel investors. Currently, the co-founders have eight employees and still manage the company’s fulfillment themselves. 

Learning a lesson through Amazon selling

What’s more, the sisters haven’t lost sight of Ninni Co.’s original mission.

As a U.S.-manufactured brand with sourcing focused in the U.S. and Sweden, profit margins are slimmer than on products made in some places overseas, and they’ve had to be selective with their distribution channels.

For example, Ninni Co. stopped selling on Amazon after four months because “it was one of the most stressful, hardest times of our company,” Molina says. 

The platform diverted substantial traffic from the company’s website, and Amazon held money from the sales for two to three weeks, then took up to 50% in the end. Additionally, Ninni Co. had invested in a team to manage the channel. 

“ It wasn’t right for our business model,” Williams adds. “Not every platform is made for every single business or product. Everyone is unique, and you have to honor that.”

Other advantages come with being the customer’s primary contact too, the co-founders note. 

Not only do the sisters get a firsthand look at valuable feedback, but they’ve also built strong communities on Instagram and Facebook  — and it’s part of why it’s been so easy to say “no” to the many people who have expressed an interest in buying them out over the years.

“We wanted to build this business as the two moms behind the dream,” Williams says. “We really feel like we’re living the American dream, and we love what we do every day.”

In 2013, St. Louis, Missouri-based sisters Jane Molina and Joy Williams were in a busy season of life, running their family’s long-time heating and cooling business and raising five young children between them. 

Despite having no shortage of to-dos on her list, as Molina breastfed her third son, a new project took shape. She noticed that sometimes he would latch not for milk, but for comfort, and searched for a pacifier that could fulfill that need and give her back some time.

But she couldn’t find a product that mimicked real breast tissue and encouraged a wide latch, rather than the typical tight, pursed one. What if she created it herself? 

Many entrepreneurs are drawn to exciting sectors such as AI, crypto or whatever is trending, and it’s easy to understand why. There’s glamour in telling people at a dinner party that you’re building the future.

The businesses I’d bet on, though, are the ones nobody wants to talk about: the boring, mundane industries that people tune out as soon as they come up. These are the markets where the most defensible, high-margin businesses get built, and most entrepreneurs walk right past them chasing something flashier.

I know this because I picked one of the least glamorous industries imaginable: insurance (specifically, jewelry insurance). Nobody dreams about working in this sector, but that’s exactly why it worked for me.

Boring usually means overlooked

A boring industry is typically overlooked and underserved. These are old, entrenched, legacy markets where customers might interact with the product once a year, if that. People are frustrated with the status quo, but they’ve accepted it because what’s the alternative? The technology is bad, and the service is worse, but everyone puts up with it because that’s how it’s always been.

This frustration is the opening. When customers are annoyed but resigned, you’ve found a market with an unsolved problem. Insurance is a perfect example because it’s complex and widely avoided. It’s also as far from glamorous as a business gets, and that’s precisely why so few entrepreneurs bother to look at it.

Established businesses get complacent

The reason why these industries stay boring is simple: Established players get comfortable. When no one pays attention to a market, the players in it stop innovating and lose sight of what a good product even looks like, relying on the fact that customers don’t have a better option. Complacency is a strong sign that a market is ready for someone new.

Before BriteCo, I witnessed this firsthand. I’m a third-generation jeweler and a Gemological Institute of America gemologist, so I spent years watching customers try to insure rings and watches they’d just bought. The application process was miserable, requiring customers to fax documents, then wait days or weeks for a coverage decision. Making a claim was a manual, over-the-phone process with no technology to handle it. NPS scores were dismal, and nobody in the industry seemed to care. This was the accepted standard because people had no real alternative.

Distribution is hard to replicate

We’ve now built much better software. Customers can get a quote and coverage in minutes instead of waiting weeks, and making a claim doesn’t require navigating frustrating phone menus. But fixing the software was the easy part.

Jewelry insurance has a timing problem. Customers often purchase jewelry and then don’t think about insuring it until months later, if ever. There are perhaps two moments when insurance even crosses their mind: standing at the jeweler’s counter with the purchase receipt in hand, sitting at home at 11 p.m., and finally typing “jewelry insurance” into Google.

At BriteCo, we addressed both moments. We sold to jewelers for years before offering direct options to consumers because store owners are unlikely to refer their best customers to a brand nobody has heard of. We then built the direct-to-customer side to be there when they finally decide to search for insurance on their own.

This is the advantage of a boring niche. A national carrier can’t justify investing in a business case this small, while established specialists have no reason to change when the current processes are simply accepted as they are. Find a problem, figure out when customers are most likely to care about it, and go solve it.

Profitability is often overlooked

I want to challenge a common assumption about building companies. Growth gets all the attention. Entrepreneurs talk endlessly about scaling but not enough about profitability, and that’s backward. The entire point of a business is to be profitable; if you’re not, you’re out of business.

Boring industries are often the most profitable. These niche, overlooked markets have customers with valid problems and real money at stake. Solving a mundane but important problem is far more valuable than building another AI demo with little practical use.

This is the model we run at BriteCo. We found an underserved niche market, built a better product, and now we dominate the sector and cross-sell to a growing base of policyholders. It’s profitable.

If you’re deciding where to build, resist the pull toward whatever’s trending. Instead, look at the industries people complain about but continue to tolerate because they’ve stopped expecting better. Find the market where the established players have lost momentum and processes still rely on paperwork and patience. If you modernize the technology and reach customers earlier than established businesses bother to, the boring, neglected industry becomes an area your competitors can’t replicate.

After you find success, go do it again for the next one.

Many entrepreneurs are drawn to exciting sectors such as AI, crypto or whatever is trending, and it’s easy to understand why. There’s glamour in telling people at a dinner party that you’re building the future.

The businesses I’d bet on, though, are the ones nobody wants to talk about: the boring, mundane industries that people tune out as soon as they come up. These are the markets where the most defensible, high-margin businesses get built, and most entrepreneurs walk right past them chasing something flashier.

I know this because I picked one of the least glamorous industries imaginable: insurance (specifically, jewelry insurance). Nobody dreams about working in this sector, but that’s exactly why it worked for me.