Artificial intelligence can write business plans, removing the grunt work from an otherwise laborious process. But that doesn’t mean the plans it creates are good — and investors can spot a generic plan from a mile away. They aren’t interested in funding companies that simply have their ducks in a row. They want to fund conviction. They’re looking for founders who deeply understand their market, numbers and risks.

As a regular advisor to early-stage startups, I see the limitations of automated content daily. And while AI is a powerful tool for structure, it lacks the nuance needed to build trust. In a landscape flooded with AI-generated templates, the competitive advantage lies with those who can refine the output into a human strategy.

AI business plans offer clean documentation and a polished deck. But checking that format box is just the first step. Founders must infuse their plans with passion and expertise — and be specific about how AI helps them achieve their goals.

What investors really look for in a business plan

The venture firm Navigate Ventures argues that investors want to peek below the surface of a business plan. They look for the real problems a startup addresses and whether a growing market exists for that solution. 

Is there a clear, scalable business model and a credible path to profitability? What about the team behind the plan? Successful founders must demonstrate deep domain knowledge or have a strategy to recruit commercial expertise.

A strong business plan is only the tip of the iceberg. Investors know a document does not run a company — people do. A winning plan is only effective if it reflects the founder’s deeper passion and expertise. It should serve as a strategic roadmap, turning that knowledge into a sustainable competitive advantage.

Shift your mindset and understand your audience

Anyone can create a plan that looks good. But you need to shift your mindset if you want to court investor cash. Think of your plan like your resume in an interview. You can put anything on there you want — but if you can’t back it up — you won’t get the job.

Spotting the weakness in AI business plans

AI-generated business plans often sound good on paper (or in a chat window). In reality, though, they’re often full of fluff or, in some cases, worse. 

Intuition Labs points out that LLMs (large language models) often hallucinate because they aren’t trying to speak the truth. They are trying to predict the next token. AI doesn’t just lack research depth. It follows a method that involves literally guessing the next word in a sentence based on pattern recognition.

This leads to blatantly incorrect or difficult-to-back-up statements. That’s fine for a social media post. But if it’s in your business plan and gets in front of an investor, it’s a disaster.

Gut check how you’re using AI in your business planning

Along with a lack of passion and unique conviction, AI-generated business plans can set you up for major issues. It’s a great tool to frame out what you want your plan to say. But before you send your business plan up the ladder, make sure you review it, back it up with facts and edit it.

Using AI beyond iteration

If you’re nervous about using artificial intelligence for a business plan, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can still use AI, but go beyond good prompts and copy-pasting. Flesh out your thoughts and add original ideas throughout your plan. Run it through a detector like Undetectable AI, too, to make sure it sounds human.

It’s also a good idea to treat AI use within your business with a similar “human touch.” Don’t just say you’ll use generic AI tools, templates or consultants to speed things up. That can be unsettling when security and bloated tech stacks are common concerns, especially in a lean startup phase.

Instead, be specific about how AI factors into your launch. Look for ways to show unique and innovative uses for the technology that go past the planning phase. For instance, your pitch might involve using AI to remain lean and efficient. In that case, identify a tool like LivePlan that helps you stay on track as you go. 

Platforms like this are just starting to emerge. They use AI-powered business planning and financial forecasting grounded in real market data, verified industry benchmarks and a fully interconnected financial model. This lets founders confidently validate every assumption, number and strategy, not just at the start, but throughout the life of the business. 

Start building AI into your full business plan

Signaling the use of these kinds of tools shows you’re not just using AI for flash. You’re building systems that depend on an AI-backed iterative methodology. Look for ways to call out specific tools and strategies that allow you to document, validate and refine as you go. This shows investors you can make informed decisions with clarity as you execute your business plan over time. 

Building investor-approved, AI-backed business plans

AI is rewriting the business planning game. It helps startups launch and assists in drafting their business plans. But don’t let the overuse of AI erode investor trust. 

Use AI as a tool, but refine everything it creates. Add your own passion and conviction. Then call out your specific AI use throughout the plan, finding tools that will support your strategy as you scale. If you bridge the gap between automated efficiency and human expertise, expect investors to bite.

Artificial intelligence can write business plans, removing the grunt work from an otherwise laborious process. But that doesn’t mean the plans it creates are good — and investors can spot a generic plan from a mile away. They aren’t interested in funding companies that simply have their ducks in a row. They want to fund conviction. They’re looking for founders who deeply understand their market, numbers and risks.

As a regular advisor to early-stage startups, I see the limitations of automated content daily. And while AI is a powerful tool for structure, it lacks the nuance needed to build trust. In a landscape flooded with AI-generated templates, the competitive advantage lies with those who can refine the output into a human strategy.

AI business plans offer clean documentation and a polished deck. But checking that format box is just the first step. Founders must infuse their plans with passion and expertise — and be specific about how AI helps them achieve their goals.

Let’s face it. There’s nothing fun or entertaining about a Financial Disclosure Document (FDD), which your prospective franchisor is legally required to provide, so you will have full transparency into the deal you’re considering. It’s a contract, with page after page of dry, densely composed legal language for your attorney to wade through and explain.  

Like all contracts, the FDD is a roadmap to the kind of business relationship you will have with your franchisor. Different areas are important to different people, but there are some critical concerns to look for with your attorney. They can identify potential red flags and explain the pros and cons, but it’s up to you to ask the franchisor to clarify any provisions or questions until you’re satisfied with the answers. 

The agreement length

The length of the agreement can tell you whether you’ll have a stable, predictable relationship or may have to deal with unexpected, unwanted changes. I lean towards a longer franchise agreement that’s assignable down the road, rather than a five- or ten-year agreement. Five years go very quickly; just as you’re getting your footing, it’s time for a new agreement with any or every item changed, including a higher royalty fee. 

A longer agreement is better for both parties. It protects the franchisee’s investment and makes the franchisor more stable. At United Franchise Group, our brands have agreements that are 25 or even 35 years; I’m glad we’re not constantly renewing and renegotiating. However, make sure you’re not locked into a decades-long agreement without being able to transfer or sell the business if you wish. 

Brand rules

The agreement should spell out exactly what products are offered and how much freedom you have to change them. A successful brand is going to give you very little freedom, which you should know long before you even get to the FDD stage. You’d be surprised at how many people have tried to “tweak” things that go completely against their franchisor’s brand. 

The brand, not the franchisee, determines things like the products you sell. If you buy into a burger chain, you’ll be selling hamburgers, not hot dogs. And if you try to change the main menu, you’re going to have a problem. Your franchisor is selling brand awareness and may have locations all over the world. Customers want and expect the same customer experience at every location. 

The same goes for things like service hours, employee uniforms and store design. A 24-hour coffee brand won’t be happy if you decide to close on Sundays, change the store’s colors, or otherwise deviate from the brand profile. 

Look at it this way: You’re joining a club. This club says, here’s what we do and here are our rules. Your choice is whether you want to join that club or not. If you want to change it, what’s the point of joining it? 

Now, that doesn’t mean a franchisee can’t make suggestions that align with the brand. We get our best ideas from our franchise owners. Talk to your franchisor about what procedures are in place for accepting ideas from franchisees. If having input into the customer experience is important to you, be sure the agreement makes room for that. 

Relationships matters

Beyond the legal and financial issues spelled out in the FDD, you are entering a business that’s all about relationships. The FDD goes into a filing cabinet, and we never take it out. In fact, we pray we will never have to use it, which would mean a franchisee relationship has deteriorated so badly we have to resort to legal actions. 

To avoid that, we build on our relationships and work with each other personally and help each other grow. If you provide ongoing training and support, maintain honest communication and stay abreast of how each franchisee is operating, you’re a lot less likely to need to pull the document out of the drawer. 

Like any other brand, we have occasionally had a store owner depart from policies clearly spelled out by the FDD. But I don’t think we’ve ever handled it by saying, “Well, look here. According to page three, paragraph four, you’re supposed to do this or that.” Instead, we might say, “Here’s how many of our best store owners do this. We have a proven way of doing things, but you’re not following the program. Is there a reason? What’s stopping you?” 

We do a lot of things that go beyond the scope of the franchise agreement while making sure everyone adheres to the formal contract. The FDD is just one of many tools that both sides use to assess each other. Talking to other franchisees is also essential for the would-be franchisee.  

At the end of the day, the FDD is an irreplaceable part of the franchise process. Understanding it (with an attorney’s guidance) can help you learn whether you and the brand are a good fit.

Let’s face it. There’s nothing fun or entertaining about a Financial Disclosure Document (FDD), which your prospective franchisor is legally required to provide, so you will have full transparency into the deal you’re considering. It’s a contract, with page after page of dry, densely composed legal language for your attorney to wade through and explain.  

Like all contracts, the FDD is a roadmap to the kind of business relationship you will have with your franchisor. Different areas are important to different people, but there are some critical concerns to look for with your attorney. They can identify potential red flags and explain the pros and cons, but it’s up to you to ask the franchisor to clarify any provisions or questions until you’re satisfied with the answers. 

The agreement length

The length of the agreement can tell you whether you’ll have a stable, predictable relationship or may have to deal with unexpected, unwanted changes. I lean towards a longer franchise agreement that’s assignable down the road, rather than a five- or ten-year agreement. Five years go very quickly; just as you’re getting your footing, it’s time for a new agreement with any or every item changed, including a higher royalty fee. 

When I first stepped into leadership, I believed something that many ambitious professionals believe: Leadership meant having all the answers.

I thought my responsibility as a leader was to be the person everyone turned to for solutions. If a problem surfaced, I needed to solve it. If uncertainty emerged, I needed to eliminate it. If my team had questions, I was expected to provide immediate direction.

At the time, that seemed logical.

After all, many people are promoted into leadership because they’ve demonstrated expertise. They know the product. They understand the industry. They consistently deliver results. The natural assumption is that the more senior you become, the more answers you’re supposed to have.

What I’ve learned over the years is that leadership is not about having all the answers. In fact, the leaders who believe they must always have the answers often become the biggest obstacle to their organization’s growth.

The most effective leaders I’ve worked with, advised and learned from share a different mindset. They understand that leadership isn’t about being the smartest person in the room. It’s about creating an environment where the smartest ideas can emerge from everyone in the room.

That realization fundamentally changed how I lead.

The trap of expertise

One of the most common leadership traps is confusing expertise with leadership.

Many executives earn their positions because they excelled in a specific function. The top salesperson becomes the sales leader. The strongest engineer becomes the technology executive. The best operator becomes the division president.

The skills that helped them succeed as individual contributors often revolve around personal knowledge and execution.

Leadership requires a different set of skills.

When leaders continue to rely exclusively on their own expertise, they unintentionally create dependency. Team members stop bringing ideas. Innovation slows. Decisions become bottlenecked around one person.

I’ve seen organizations where every significant decision had to pass through the CEO because the leader believed no one else could make the right call. The result wasn’t better decisions. The result was slower growth, frustrated employees and missed opportunities.

The irony is that many leaders create these bottlenecks with good intentions. They want to help. They want to protect the company. They want to ensure success. But leadership isn’t about being indispensable. It’s about building organizations that can thrive beyond your individual contribution.

The power of asking better questions

One of the most transformative leadership lessons I’ve learned is that questions often create more value than answers.

Early in my career, I entered meetings looking for opportunities to contribute solutions. Today, I enter meetings looking for opportunities to ask better questions.

Questions uncover assumptions. Questions create dialogue. Questions encourage critical thinking. Questions invite participation. Most importantly, questions help people discover answers for themselves.

When leaders constantly provide answers, employees become conditioned to wait for direction. When leaders ask thoughtful questions, employees become empowered to think independently.

That shift creates something every organization needs: ownership. People are far more committed to solutions they help create than solutions they are simply told to execute.

The strongest leaders don’t dominate conversations. They guide conversations. They create space for others to contribute. They understand that leadership is less about broadcasting expertise and more about facilitating insight.

Why humility has become a leadership superpower

The pace of change in today’s business environment makes it impossible for any one person to know everything.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries. New technologies emerge constantly. Consumer behavior evolves rapidly. Market dynamics shift overnight. The idea that a leader can possess all the necessary knowledge to navigate every challenge is no longer realistic.

That’s why humility has become one of the most important leadership traits. Humility doesn’t mean lacking confidence. It means recognizing that no matter how much experience you’ve accumulated, there is always more to learn.

Some of the most successful executives I’ve met are also the most curious. They ask questions. They seek feedback. They challenge their own assumptions. They remain students even after becoming leaders.

Unfortunately, some leaders view admitting uncertainty as a sign of weakness. In reality, the opposite is true. Teams trust leaders who are authentic. People respect leaders who are willing to say, “I don’t know, but let’s figure it out together.”

Authenticity builds credibility. Humility builds trust. Trust builds strong organizations.

Why great leaders build great teams

One of the biggest mindset shifts in my leadership journey occurred when I stopped focusing on being the smartest person in the room and started focusing on assembling the smartest room possible.

No great company is built by one person. No major innovation is created by one perspective. No lasting organization succeeds because of a single leader.

The best leaders understand that their greatest competitive advantage isn’t their personal knowledge — it’s the collective intelligence of their team. This is why hiring matters. This is why culture matters. This is why diversity of thought matters.

A leader surrounded by people who think exactly the same way gains very little value from those relationships. Progress comes from different perspectives. It comes from constructive disagreement. It comes from people who challenge assumptions and offer insights that leadership may not have considered.

When leaders surround themselves with talented people and genuinely empower them, remarkable things happen. The organization becomes stronger. Decisions improve. Innovation accelerates. Growth becomes sustainable.

The importance of advisors and mentors

This lesson extends beyond internal teams.

Throughout my career, I’ve become increasingly convinced that no leader should navigate growth alone. This belief is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about boards, advisors and mentorship.

The most successful executives understand the value of external perspective. They actively seek advisors who bring different experiences and expertise. They recognize that wisdom often comes from people who have already traveled the path they’re currently navigating.

An effective advisor doesn’t provide all the answers. They help leaders ask better questions. They challenge blind spots. They share lessons learned through experience. They provide perspective during moments of uncertainty.

In many cases, the most valuable advice isn’t a solution. It’s a different way of looking at the problem.

Leadership is about multiplying others

Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is that leadership is not about personal achievement. It’s about multiplying the potential of others.

The leaders who leave the greatest legacy are not remembered because they had all the answers. They’re remembered because they developed people, built teams, created opportunities, inspired growth and helped others become leaders themselves.

Leadership is not measured by how many people depend on you. Leadership is measured by how many people become stronger because of you.

When I look back on my own journey, I realize I spent too much time early on believing leadership required certainty. Today, I understand that leadership requires curiosity. I believed leadership was about directing people. Today, I believe it’s about empowering people.

I thought leadership meant being the person with all the answers. I was wrong.

The best leaders don’t have all the answers. They create environments where the best answers can be discovered, challenged, refined and implemented together.

And in a world that is changing faster than ever before, that may be the most important leadership lesson of all.

When I first stepped into leadership, I believed something that many ambitious professionals believe: Leadership meant having all the answers.

I thought my responsibility as a leader was to be the person everyone turned to for solutions. If a problem surfaced, I needed to solve it. If uncertainty emerged, I needed to eliminate it. If my team had questions, I was expected to provide immediate direction.

At the time, that seemed logical.

The two-word term “customer experience” contains a whole world in itself, defining the success of the company. Regardless of the scale of the business, it’s the top priority of the customer success department to collect, optimize and refine the user’s journey. But with the advancement of tech, traditional strategies are now being replaced with the latest AI-enabled frameworks that are much more effective and ensure better ROI.

Here’s how you can transform your customers’ journey to its peak and set autonomous development as a default framework.

Before AI

Once, the customers’ research department used to develop the heat map, which was shocking in its time. Marketers took it as a futuristic tool that keenly observes and visualizes the user’s behavior on a platform. Though the concept was borrowed from conventional thermal energy sensor gadgets, some advancements, as per the digital demands, crafted a fully functional software.

Sports, tech, retail and even every industry reap the perks of the heat mapping algorithm that provides companies with real-time data of a visitor’s scrolling habits. Yet, that’s the thing of the past, as now we have far more advanced observational capabilities that are empowered by AI.

Each click, scroll and submission tells us more intelligently than the brand ever imagined. Previously, the input we gathered in the raw form was now more organized and even mature enough to portray the whole picture of what’s going on.

The journey of raw to real

Each bit is meaningful in our era, where data is becoming the new standard of supremacy. The real challenge begins with the utilization of the scattered information that doesn’t contribute to the productive growth of the systems. For every governing body that is questionable to the improvement and enhancement of the company, they have to tackle the challenges critically and act proactively before their competitors do.

Here, some organizations develop their own ecosystems to level up the customer experience on a scale. Unfortunately, for some, it isn’t feasible for entities to afford the in-house upgrades due to the nature of the business and resource availability. That’s where base-level systems allow the organizations to deploy their systems in an integrated manner and tune them as per the business’s tailored demands.

AI-backed frameworks to enhance the user’s journey

Going back to the basics, the core mission of the brands is to offer a best-in-class experience that reflects their value-driven approach for customers. Below are the frameworks that can be implemented in an altered manner to reap their perks.

Predictive analysis

Sales aren’t the end objective of the brands, but influencing, shaping customers’ mindset and retaining them is. Theoretically, the process may sound simple, but in practice, it is resource-consuming and demands back-and-forth alterations.

An organization hires data experts who forecast the business growth trend based on the input of the customer’s history. No doubt the insights are valuable for the companies, but unless they’re used to train the self-empowered algorithms, the real challenge stays there until it’s fixed.

Thankfully, we now have the opportunity to enable our existing systems with the artificial intelligence frameworks and tools. That tweaked software’s capable of processing and squeezing the raw input into meaningful results that can enrich the end customer experiences.

Reduce the friction

Transitioning isn’t an easy process that happens overnight, especially in complex structures. It takes time and resources to seamlessly integrate the new developments into an existing ecosystem. Sometimes organizations unintentionally get trapped in unforeseen circumstances in the middle of the upgrade phases.

Meanwhile, they’re aware of the potential risks and rewards, but the disturbance gets triggered when the unexpected error gets contagious. Strategically controllable, the situation cools down when the “Beta” versions are first run among cross-platform devices. Doing so exposes the vulnerability and critical errors of the development and allows the developers to fix them on a priority basis.

Hyper-personalization

Customers don’t appreciate it if the brand targets them and has no prior understanding of their preferences. Leaving an unexpected impression, the user experience can make or break the brand’s perception. That’s why catering to the stakeholders with a tailored approach is now more than a necessity in the era where every click counts.

For instance, a practical approach to offer customers a unique experience is by offering an all-in-one platform that is intelligent enough to adapt as per the scenario. Here, ML (Machine Learning) and LLMs (Large Language Models) play a pivotal role in laying the foundation of an exceptional user experience.

Measure the results

The change will be unseen unless it’s measured as per the standards. Sometimes, the benchmark will be the peer’s growth, while it can also be the organization’s own if they’re the trendsetters. But the essence remains the same as the results are gauged, reflecting the growth in all aspects from leads to post-sale activities and beyond.

For instance, if your organization is running multiple experiments at once as an A/B approach. Those should be categorized to reduce the hassle of finding what works best and what doesn’t. That’s the ideal pathway to gain impact measurement insights and strategically plan the rest of the actions.

The never-ending cycle

For growth, the sky isn’t the limit, but the growth itself is if the establishments put AI to work the right way. Regardless of how much perfection the organization achieves in refining its customers’ experience. There’s always some room left to improve unless there’s a paradigm shift. For the entities who assume they’re at the top of the cliff, for others, it’s just a new normal, and it’s just a platform for them to amplify their growth trajectory.

The two-word term “customer experience” contains a whole world in itself, defining the success of the company. Regardless of the scale of the business, it’s the top priority of the customer success department to collect, optimize and refine the user’s journey. But with the advancement of tech, traditional strategies are now being replaced with the latest AI-enabled frameworks that are much more effective and ensure better ROI.

Here’s how you can transform your customers’ journey to its peak and set autonomous development as a default framework.

Before AI

Once, the customers’ research department used to develop the heat map, which was shocking in its time. Marketers took it as a futuristic tool that keenly observes and visualizes the user’s behavior on a platform. Though the concept was borrowed from conventional thermal energy sensor gadgets, some advancements, as per the digital demands, crafted a fully functional software.

Every week, you enter the same loop. You have to pull the stats, sample the calls, file the reports. One week goes by. Nothing happens. You didn’t miss a goal. You missed a phase.

As a result, your business ultimately doesn’t grow.

It’s not because you have a discipline, motivation or procrastination problem. You’ve got a flow problem, and you’ve never been taught how to solve it.

As a business owner striving for growth you look for two things:

1. The activities that truly move the needle in your business.
2. A productive state where you execute at a high degree.

However, you can’t grow a business with just the activities. You need the state. The most productive state a human being can experience is flow, that state of optimal consciousness in which you feel and perform at your best, where you’re fully immersed in a task and time seems to distort.

However, people rarely reach this state, because they’re not aware of the flow cycle, and the initial phase that most get stuck in (and how to overcome it).

Why working on growing your business feels like a snake in the room

If you’re a practice owner within the medical space, for example, you’re probably a great dentist or a skilled surgeon. You’re good at what you built this business around. But despite your professional skills, your business stalls because you don’t do well with the development side.

Business development has abandonment and rejection woven into it. For many practice owners, the uncomfortable activities that have nothing to do with the actual deliverables can feel like facing the snake in the room.

That is why you recoil.

Specific business development tasks have higher resistance than others because of the conditioned angle or previous experiences. Maybe your family fought over money so nowadays you hate quarterly budget planning and refuse to look at spreadsheets. When you see this task, your brain sees a threat. What it should be seeing is an opportunity.

A destination called flow with a gate in front of it

In his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains that true flow begins when the challenging task matches your high skill level.

But when it comes to business development activities, the challenge is there, but your confidence leaves the room. That’s the reason you can’t reach the flow.

People who don’t know that the flow is a cycle, not a single event, never achieve it.

And most business owners never go past stage one.

Stage one is called the struggle, and it’s supposed to feel exactly like this

The flow starts with the struggle. It starts with the queasy stomach feeling when you have to sit down with the numbers, and a sudden urge to pick up your phone or eat something arises. You will do anything that relieves you of the discomfort of doing something you don’t feel like doing right now.

The feeling and the discomfort are confirmation you’ve started the cycle, not a stop sign to quit and move to something else. For business development, how you feel is completely irrelevant.

The chemicals confirm it: During the struggle phase, stress neurotransmitters are released, cortisol rises and serotonin drops. This is just a common biochemical reaction, not a signal to stop. So, next time it feels bad, the correct response is: Brilliant. This is exactly how this stage is supposed to feel.

The reset nobody talks about

You can go through the struggle phase and embrace the flow. There is no shortcut through it, but there is a shortcut to the flow: Don’t pick up your phone. Don’t eat a donut. Don’t do anything else except that activity for 23 minutes.

You’ve done this a hundred times without realizing the clock reset each time. And you keep telling yourself you just aren’t cut out for it — false.

There is something you’ve never considered: You’ve never liked certain activities because you have never sat in the discomfort of the struggle phase for 23 minutes without distractions.

The 23-minute rule: What marathon runners understand that sprinters don’t

Business growth doesn’t happen in 100 meters. It begins at the 10th mile of the 26-mile marathon. Sprinters exhaust themselves. A marathon runner keeps going long after it feels hard.

If you don’t feel like doing it, run it past 23 minutes to get in the flow. Everything will align from there. This applies to everything from difficult conversations to numbers reviews and performance discussions.

In practical terms, apply time-boxing. Schedule your day in 30-minute blocks for each activity. The activities remain the same as yesterday, but you are the one who changes.

Each time you sit through those 23 minutes, something shifts. And according to Dr. Andrew Huberman, it matters because the brain releases its reward signal, unlike anything else, after sustained effort through discomfort.

How to use the 23-minute rule to grow your business

Don’t let your emotions run you. Ignore them. That is what’s pulling you out before you enter the flow.

Unsuccessful people are driven by their emotions; the 23-minute rule is the first step to stop being one of them.

You want to grow. The activities aren’t hard. Your ability to sit there and build an intimate relationship with them is what you need to work on. Now you know where to start.

Every week, you enter the same loop. You have to pull the stats, sample the calls, file the reports. One week goes by. Nothing happens. You didn’t miss a goal. You missed a phase.

As a result, your business ultimately doesn’t grow.

It’s not because you have a discipline, motivation or procrastination problem. You’ve got a flow problem, and you’ve never been taught how to solve it.

Burger King is getting ready for a future where people still want fast food, just less food. “This GLP-1 movement is going to have a profound impact on the industry,” said Tom Curtis, Burger King’s president of U.S. and Canada, in an interview with NBC News. The chain is already testing items like Whopper Bites and protein-forward bowls to satisfy shifting appetites.

The stakes are real. A Gallup poll found 11% of U.S. adults are currently on a GLP-1 medication, nearly four times the number from two years ago, and nearly half of GLP-1 users told the National Restaurant Association they’ve cut back on dining out. JPMorgan estimates GLP-1s could wipe out $30 billion to $55 billion in annual food and beverage industry revenue by 2030.

Curtis said Burger King isn’t rushing to overhaul the menu yet, since Whopper sales remain strong. The chain is instead leaning on its $2 billion “Reclaim the Flame” turnaround, which helped drive a 5.8% same-store sales increase last quarter, reversing a 1.1% decline the year before.

Burger King is getting ready for a future where people still want fast food, just less food. “This GLP-1 movement is going to have a profound impact on the industry,” said Tom Curtis, Burger King’s president of U.S. and Canada, in an interview with NBC News. The chain is already testing items like Whopper Bites and protein-forward bowls to satisfy shifting appetites.

The stakes are real. A Gallup poll found 11% of U.S. adults are currently on a GLP-1 medication, nearly four times the number from two years ago, and nearly half of GLP-1 users told the National Restaurant Association they’ve cut back on dining out. JPMorgan estimates GLP-1s could wipe out $30 billion to $55 billion in annual food and beverage industry revenue by 2030.

Curtis said Burger King isn’t rushing to overhaul the menu yet, since Whopper sales remain strong. The chain is instead leaning on its $2 billion “Reclaim the Flame” turnaround, which helped drive a 5.8% same-store sales increase last quarter, reversing a 1.1% decline the year before.

Colette Bell and her husband, Andy Bell, started a handyman business in Denver, Colorado, in 1998 after identifying a unique need. 

They found that big specialty contracting companies did not want to do small projects for homeowners. For example, if someone had one sticky window and called a window company, the firm wanted to sell them 25 new windows for their house. 

“We found that homeowners had a really hard time finding somebody professional and reliable for small projects,” Colette tells Entrepreneur in a new interview. “That was the niche market we built this business to serve.”

They knew immediately that they had struck gold. Their first year in business, the company “just took off like a rocket,” Colette says.

They ended up franchising the business, called Handyman Matters, in 2001. Andy led the business as CEO while Colette took on multiple leadership roles over the years, including chairman of the board. In 2018, they connected with Ace Hardware, which acquired the business in 2019. 

“This is the only career I’ve had my whole life,” Colette says. “For 28 years, I’ve been working on the handyman business.”

Andy is now the CEO and president of Ace Handyman Services, and Colette is the vice president of franchise development, a position she has held since 2019. She continues to lead expansion, helping the brand grow from 119 territories at the time of its 2019 acquisition to 383 territories as of April this year, more than tripling its footprint.

Ace Handyman Services grew by 12% from 2024 to 2025, with total sales exceeding $113 million in 2025.  

The following interview with Colette has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

Growth tactics

What were the main factors that allowed the company to grow so quickly? What did you do to facilitate growth?
We set exact appointment times and coach our employees that “if you’re not early, you’re late.” They need to arrive on time, look professional and wear logoed shirts. If they walk up and see the trash cans still at the curb after pickup, we coach them to move the cans back up the driveway — little things that show we’re there to help with the whole house, not just a single project.

We do extensive follow-up: calling the day after to make sure the customer is happy, and again at 11 months because we offer a one-year warranty. Adding that high level of customer service to a low-tech, fragmented industry made a big difference.

Getting things right with franchising

Looking back at that 2001 decision to franchise, what did you get right about franchising, and what did you underestimate about how hard it would be?
We underestimated everything. But we did get a couple of important things right. One was creating protected territories for franchise owners delineated by ZIP codes. ZIP codes are clearly defined by the post office and have accessible demographic data, so we could build territories using that data. Franchise owners then had protected territories and didn’t have to worry about competition from neighboring owners. We did that from day one.

The other thing we did right, which was more accidental, was our billing model. Even though we’re a handyman business and construction often estimates projects as fixed dollar amounts, we decided to bill customers using a time-and-materials format. Time is universal — an hour is an hour everywhere. Pricing, on the other hand, varies significantly between, say, Connecticut and Arkansas or Illinois and California. Instead of trying to force one universal price structure across the U.S., we made time the constant and allowed each owner to choose their own hourly rate. 

That made the business much more feasible in different markets. About 85% of our work is labor and only about 15% is materials, because we focus on small repairs and restorations, not large remodels.

Choosing franchising over corporate locations

What convinced you that this idea would scale better through franchising than through company-owned locations?
We learned that firsthand when we expanded to California. At one point, we were effectively running six corporate locations — three in Colorado and three in California. We quickly realized we couldn’t give every employee, and therefore every customer, the time and leadership they deserved.

It was clear this business model should be available across the U.S. Every homeowner deserves a professional, reliable handyman service for small projects, but there was no way we could build that nationally as a purely corporate chain — especially since we started in our basement with $10,000, every bit of savings we could scrape together. 

The franchise model made national expansion possible because it relies on local owners rooted in their communities. Handyman businesses are very community-centric; you’re basically working for your neighbors. Franchising fits the model perfectly.

The biggest surprise about franchising

What is something about franchising that surprised you?
The biggest surprise — though everyone tells you this upfront — is how much the success or failure of the business model depends on the relationship between franchisor and franchise owners. Until you’ve lived it, that doesn’t fully sink in. This relationship has to be strong and reciprocal. It can’t just be the franchisor giving and the franchise owners taking; franchisees also need to contribute ideas and feedback.

Early on, we had franchise owners with fantastic business ideas we never would have developed on our own, and they were willing to share them so we could roll them out systemwide.

A great example was during Covid, when the whole country shut down, and no one could enter customers’ homes. We spent that downtime on conference calls with franchise owners, figuring out how to make the business as touchless as possible.

For instance, we used to take customer signatures on invoices. During Covid, we shifted to reading the contract language aloud and recording “verified by voice” instead of a signature. 

Franchise owners helped design new standard operating procedures, which we rolled out to everyone. So when we were designated essential in April and could return to homes, we had safer, smarter procedures in place. That level of support and collaboration is critical in franchising.

The ideal franchisee

For an entrepreneur evaluating Ace Handyman, how do you define the ideal franchisee in terms of background, skills and mindset?
Our owners come from all kinds of backgrounds. One of our top franchisees is a former horticulturalist. We have people from finance, marketing, plant management, a large number of veterans, former teachers, and former coaches and mentors.

The through line is a passion for improving their community and strong leadership skills. As an owner, you don’t go to every customer’s house; our volume is too high for that. The way you deliver great service is through your employees, which means you must be an excellent leader. That includes paying good wages, providing training and mentoring and offering real growth opportunities. Leadership is at the heart of our most successful franchisees.

For us, a red flag is when a prospective owner focuses more on money than culture and people. Our business has robust numbers — you don’t grow otherwise — but if the primary focus is financial, it typically isn’t a good fit.

How much does it cost to start an Ace Handyman franchise?
In our 2026 franchise disclosure document, Item 7 shows startup costs ranging from $132,200 on the low end to $226,000 on the high end. That includes a $70,000 franchise fee.

Long-term vision

When you imagine Ace Handyman Services 10 years from now, what does success look like for the brand, for individual owners and for the customers they serve?
First, success means our current franchise owners are still here. Longevity is very important in franchising. Ace has always believed in generational businesses; many hardware stores have been passed down from great-great-grandparents through multiple generations.

In our system, we already have franchise owners who’ve been with us 24 years. I’m very proud of that. They stuck with us when we were young and figuring things out and contributed ideas, passion and suggestions. We’ve seen transitions where a father handed the business to his daughter and uncles passed locations to nephews.

My goal for the next 10 years is that we’ll not only expand to cover perhaps half of the U.S., but also see more of our locations become generational businesses, with kids taking over for their parents. That kind of longevity would be a real measure of success.

Colette Bell and her husband, Andy Bell, started a handyman business in Denver, Colorado, in 1998 after identifying a unique need. 

They found that big specialty contracting companies did not want to do small projects for homeowners. For example, if someone had one sticky window and called a window company, the firm wanted to sell them 25 new windows for their house. 

“We found that homeowners had a really hard time finding somebody professional and reliable for small projects,” Colette tells Entrepreneur in a new interview. “That was the niche market we built this business to serve.”

There is a stage in business where effort stops producing the results it once did. Your calendar is full, your team depends on you and yet progress feels slower than it should. You are involved in everything, solving problems throughout the day, and still carrying work into the evening. From the outside, it looks like commitment. Internally, it starts to feel like pressure.

I reached that point while building our companies. I believed staying involved in everything was leadership. In reality, it was creating a ceiling. The business was growing, but only as fast as I could personally keep up. That realization forced me to rethink how I was spending my time and what my role actually needed to be.

This five-day audit is the framework I now give entrepreneurs to help them step out of the daily grind and back into a leadership role that allows the business to grow.

Day 1: Capture your time with precision

Start by tracking your day in real time, not from memory. I like to write down what I do in short intervals as the day unfolds. This includes meetings, emails, problem-solving, quick check-ins and even the small interruptions that seem insignificant in the moment. Those small moments add up quickly, so it’s important to track them alongside the larger time drains.

Most business owners underestimate how much of their time is reactive. When you see it on paper, it becomes clear how often your day is shaped by what comes at you rather than what you plan. This is where many leaders lose control of their schedule without realizing it. But before you can optimize your time, you need to know where it’s going.

Day 2: Evaluate the return on your time

Once you have a clear picture of your day, begin evaluating the return on your time. Look at each activity and ask whether it contributes to growth, improves the business or simply keeps things running. There is nothing wrong with operational work, but problems arise when it takes up the majority of your attention.

In our own experience, the biggest breakthroughs came from focusing on the right work, not just doing more. When we expanded into new business lines and partnerships, those decisions did not come from busy days. They came from time set aside to think, plan and act strategically. That kind of work creates leverage because it produces results that extend beyond a single day’s effort.

If most of your time is tied to maintenance, your business may stay stable but will struggle to scale. Growth requires deliberate time investment in areas that move the company forward.

Day 3: Identify where you’ve become the bottleneck

By the third day, you will start to see where your involvement is slowing things down. These are the areas where decisions wait on you, tasks return to you for approval or outcomes depend entirely on your direct input. While this often comes from a desire to maintain quality or control, it creates dependency that limits progress.

For me, one clear example was decision-making. Team members would wait for my input before moving forward, even on routine issues. At first, I saw that as a responsibility. Over time, I realized it was slowing everything down.

I recommend putting pen to paper and writing down every time your team relies on you to move forward. Note the questions that get sent to you and the approvals you oversee. Then identify whether someone else can step in or how you can free up the chain of approval for a faster result.

Day 4: Redefine what only you should own

After identifying where your time is going and where you are over-involved, the next step is redefining your role. Not everything on your schedule deserves your attention at your level. The most effective leaders focus on a small number of responsibilities where their input creates the greatest impact.

I remember a point where I had to consciously step away from tasks I had done for years. It felt uncomfortable because those tasks were familiar and I knew I could do them well. But they were no longer the best use of my time.

Instead, I shifted my focus toward developing leaders and thinking about where the business needed to go next. That change created space for others to step up and for the company to grow beyond my direct involvement.

This change typically includes setting direction, developing key people and making decisions that shape the future of the business. Everything else should either be delegated, systemized or eliminated over time. The goal is not to remove yourself from the business, but to reposition yourself where you create the most value.

Day 5: Rebuild your week with intention

The final step is to redesign your schedule based on what you have learned. Start by making targeted adjustments that create space for higher-value work.

Block time each week for activities that drive growth. This might include developing partnerships, improving systems, mentoring key team members or evaluating new opportunities. Treat this time as a priority, not something that gets pushed aside when things get busy.

In our own journey, the most meaningful growth came when we intentionally created time to step back and focus on expansion. That shift allowed us to build businesses that were not dependent on our constant involvement. Instead of reacting to daily demands, we were able to guide the direction of the company and make decisions that produced long-term results.

Consistency is what makes this work. Even a small, protected block of strategic time each week can change how the business operates over time.

Start with one change

You do not need to implement everything at once. Start by tracking your time for a few days and reviewing it honestly. Identify one area where you are over-involved and take steps to shift it.

Delegate one responsibility. Create one process. Protect one block of time for growth.

Burnout is rarely caused by effort alone. It comes from spending your effort in a role your business no longer needs you to play. When your time aligns with your leadership, the business begins to move differently.

There is a stage in business where effort stops producing the results it once did. Your calendar is full, your team depends on you and yet progress feels slower than it should. You are involved in everything, solving problems throughout the day, and still carrying work into the evening. From the outside, it looks like commitment. Internally, it starts to feel like pressure.

I reached that point while building our companies. I believed staying involved in everything was leadership. In reality, it was creating a ceiling. The business was growing, but only as fast as I could personally keep up. That realization forced me to rethink how I was spending my time and what my role actually needed to be.

This five-day audit is the framework I now give entrepreneurs to help them step out of the daily grind and back into a leadership role that allows the business to grow.

Long before Adam Multz became the founder and CEO of Diamond Recovery Group, he was simply a younger brother searching for help.

At sixteen years old, he watched his older brother struggle with substance use disorder. Finding quality treatment proved far more difficult than his family expected, exposing the challenges many families face when trying to navigate an already overwhelming healthcare system.

That experience ultimately shaped the course of his career.

Rather than pursuing behavioral healthcare as a business opportunity, Multz entered the field with a deeply personal mission: to help people and families find hope during some of the most difficult moments of their lives.

Years later, that mission became Diamond Recovery Group.

Growing With Purpose

Since opening its first facility, Diamond Recovery Group has expanded into a multi-state behavioral healthcare organization operating seven treatment centers throughout Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and California.

Today, the organization employs more than 300 professionals and offers a full continuum of behavioral healthcare services, including medical detoxification, residential treatment, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient programming, and specialized mental health care.

The company’s growth has been significant, but its leadership maintains that expansion has never been the objective.

Instead, growth has been the result of a simple philosophy: every new facility represents another opportunity to provide life-changing care to individuals who may otherwise struggle to access quality treatment.

That mission continues to guide the organization’s long-term vision of making exceptional behavioral healthcare available to more communities across the country.

Changing How Behavioral Healthcare Feels

While many treatment organizations focus almost exclusively on clinical outcomes, Diamond Recovery Group has built its identity around something less common in healthcare: hospitality.

Multz believes that people seeking treatment for addiction and mental illness have spent decades carrying the weight of stigma. Too often, individuals entering treatment have been made to feel ashamed, judged, or less deserving of compassion than patients receiving care for other medical conditions.

Diamond Recovery Group was intentionally designed to challenge that perception.

Drawing inspiration from world-class hospitality organizations, the company has developed a patient experience centered around dignity, warmth, service, and human connection. Every interaction—from the first admissions phone call through discharge planning—is designed to remind patients that they are valued, respected, and deserving of care.

The philosophy extends beyond customer service.

Within the organization, hospitality is viewed as an essential component of treatment itself. Clinical excellence remains the foundation of recovery, but Diamond Recovery Group believes healing also requires people to feel safe, welcomed, and genuinely cared for.

For many patients, that sense of belonging becomes the first step toward believing recovery is possible.

In an industry often defined by protocols and regulations, Diamond Recovery Group has sought to humanize the treatment experience without compromising clinical quality.

Specialized Care, Not One-Size-Fits-All Treatment

As the organization expanded, Multz recognized that different patient populations required different treatment environments.

Rather than housing addiction treatment and primary mental healthcare under one umbrella, Diamond Behavioral Health was created as a dedicated division focused exclusively on individuals whose primary diagnosis is mental illness.

The separation allowed each organization to build specialized clinical teams, programming, and environments tailored to the unique needs of the people they serve.

That philosophy of specialization continued in 2026 with the launch of Diamond Nourish, a 15-bed residential behavioral health program in Braselton, Georgia, designed exclusively for women experiencing mental health disorders and disordered eating.

The program was created in response to a growing recognition that many women benefit from a more intimate, highly specialized treatment environment—one that addresses the complex relationship between mental health, trauma, nutrition, body image, and emotional wellness.

Rather than adapting an existing model, Diamond Nourish was intentionally developed from the ground up as a boutique behavioral healthcare experience where every aspect of treatment is designed specifically for women.

The program combines evidence-based psychiatric care, nutritional rehabilitation, trauma-informed therapy, and individualized treatment planning within an environment that reflects the same hospitality-first philosophy found throughout Diamond Recovery Group.

For Multz, specialization represents the future of behavioral healthcare. As patient needs become increasingly complex, he believes treatment providers must move beyond generalized programming and create environments intentionally designed around the populations they serve.

Building an Organization Through People

Rapid expansion often leads organizations to prioritize hiring quickly.

Diamond Recovery Group has attempted to take the opposite approach.

The company places significant emphasis on culture, believing that technical skills can be developed, while compassion, integrity, humility, and service must already exist within the people joining the organization.

That philosophy has helped shape a workforce of more than 300 professionals across multiple states, while maintaining a culture centered on patient care rather than operational growth alone.

Multz has frequently credited the organization’s success not to having every answer himself, but to building leadership teams capable of challenging ideas, solving problems collaboratively, and remaining committed to the company’s mission.

For him, leadership is less about individual expertise and more about creating an organization where exceptional people can do their best work.

Looking Ahead

Behavioral healthcare continues to face rising demand throughout the United States, with millions of Americans still unable to access timely addiction and mental health treatment.

Multz believes the next generation of providers will need to do more than simply expand capacity. They will need to rethink how behavioral healthcare is experienced.

That philosophy extends beyond the organization’s existing facilities.

Through the Diamond Fund, Diamond Recovery Group plans to provide treatment scholarships for individuals who otherwise could not afford care, reinforcing the company’s belief that financial limitations should never prevent someone from receiving lifesaving treatment.

Looking ahead, Multz’s long-term vision is to build a nationwide behavioral healthcare network that combines clinical excellence with genuine compassion, creating environments where patients receive not only exceptional medical and therapeutic care but also the dignity, kindness, and human connection every person deserves.

For Adam Multz, success has never been measured by the number of facilities the organization operates.

It is measured by the number of lives that leave those facilities believing something they may not have believed when they arrived:

That they are worthy of healing.

A campaign launches with the right intentions, taps into a cultural moment that feels relevant, and within hours, the reaction shifts. What was meant to connect starts to divide. The comments tell the story before the brand has a chance to explain itself.

Brands are showing up in cultural spaces more often, but the margin for error has narrowed. According to Sprout Social’s Q1 2026 Pulse Survey, 66% of consumers say they feel more selective about the content they engage with than they did a year ago.

What’s changed isn’t the ambition to be part of the conversation. It’s the expectation that brands understand the role they’re playing before they enter it — and that audiences are far less willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

From where we sit at Inspira, working at the intersection of brand, culture and live engagement, one thing is clear: Cultural relevance isn’t something a brand claims; it’s something an audience decides based on what they experience.

Why more brands are getting cultural moments wrong

Culture isn’t a trend cycle. It’s how people express identity, build community and define belonging. That makes it powerful, but also unforgiving when something feels off.

Audiences are more selective about who gets to participate. The question is no longer, “Why is this brand here?” It’s “Should this brand be here?” That shift raises the bar from visibility to legitimacy.

At the same time, brands are moving faster than ever. Teams are built to react in real time, but culture doesn’t reward speed without understanding. When brands jump into moments without fully grasping the context, what feels timely internally can feel forced externally.

The brands that get it right aren’t just faster. They’re more aligned. They understand the role they can credibly play and show up in ways that reflect it consistently. So, how do brands close that gap?

1. Define your role before entering the moment

The most common mistake brands make is showing up before deciding why they belong there in the first place. Audiences can tell the difference between a brand that is contributing to a moment and one that is borrowing from it. Without a clearly defined role, even well-intentioned campaigns can feel out of place. That’s when participation starts to feel self-serving rather than additive.

Brands that consistently resonate take a different approach. They align their presence in cultural moments with how they behave every day. That consistency builds familiarity and trust, which makes their participation feel natural instead of opportunistic.

Nike is a useful example. Its presence in conversations around athlete advocacy didn’t appear overnight. Years of alignment with athletes and a clear brand point of view made its role in those moments feel credible and authentic.

Defining a role upfront creates a filter. It helps teams quickly identify which opportunities make sense and which ones don’t, before anything goes live.

2. Design for participation, not passive visibility

Visibility alone doesn’t build connection. Participation does. According to Eventbrite, almost 80% of event attendees say they would pay more for entertaining or educational events that are also meaningful or transformative experiences. That shift reflects a broader expectation: People don’t just want to be targeted; they want to be considered and involved in what brands create.

Brands often focus on what they want to say instead of how people will experience it. That gap is where many cultural efforts fall short. Messaging might be clear, but if the audience doesn’t feel invited into the moment, the impact is limited.

Experiential marketing shifts that dynamic. It creates space for people to engage, respond and shape the moment alongside the brand. When done well, the experience becomes part of the culture around it rather than an interruption.

Designing for participation forces a different mindset. It requires brands to think about how they are adding value in real time, not just what they are communicating.

3. Pressure test ideas through the audience lens

Many missteps happen before a campaign ever reaches the public. The issue isn’t always the idea itself. It’s the lack of perspective applied to it.

Pressure testing starts with a simple shift. Stop asking what the brand wants to say and start asking how the audience will receive it.

The most effective brands gut-check ideas against two questions: How will this land with our consumer? And how does this make the moment better for them? In practice, this is where many ideas fall apart. Concepts that feel strong internally often reveal blind spots once they’re evaluated against real audience expectations, cultural context and timing.

In our own work, we’ve seen how quickly those blind spots surface when ideas are pressure-tested properly. Concepts that initially feel timely or compelling can reveal disconnects once they’re viewed through the audience’s lens, which is why this step is critical before anything goes live.

It’s also critical to pressure test intent. If the primary beneficiary of the idea is the brand itself, that’s a red flag. The ideas that resonate tend to create value for the audience first, whether that’s enhancing an experience, adding meaning or simply showing up in a way that feels thoughtful and relevant.

Strong brands rely on a clear understanding of who they are and how they behave. That clarity makes it easier to sense-check ideas before they go live and identify what feels off before it becomes a public misstep.

4. Commit to consistency beyond the campaign

Cultural relevance isn’t built in a single moment. It’s built over time. One of the biggest misconceptions is that a well-executed campaign can establish credibility on its own. In reality, audiences look for patterns. They pay attention to how brands show up before, during and after key moments.

Dove, for example, didn’t earn its place in cultural conversations overnight. For more than a decade, the brand has consistently challenged traditional beauty standards through campaigns, partnerships and ongoing initiatives that reinforce the same point of view. That consistency has shaped a clear role in culture, so when Dove shows up, it feels credible rather than opportunistic.

Consistency is what turns a one-off activation into something more meaningful. It signals that the brand’s presence is intentional, not reactive. It also changes how brands recover when things don’t land. Missteps happen, even with the right intentions. What matters is how a brand responds and what it does next. Owning the mistake, understanding the disconnect and adjusting behavior moving forward carries more weight than any single statement.

Trust is built through repeated actions. Brands that stay close to their audience, listen continuously and evolve with them are the ones that maintain relevance over the years.

Cultural relevance isn’t about reacting faster or louder than everyone else. It’s about showing up with a clear sense of purpose and delivering experiences that reflect it. Brands that focus on alignment and contribution tend to find their place naturally. The ones that don’t usually find out just as quickly.

A campaign launches with the right intentions, taps into a cultural moment that feels relevant, and within hours, the reaction shifts. What was meant to connect starts to divide. The comments tell the story before the brand has a chance to explain itself.

Brands are showing up in cultural spaces more often, but the margin for error has narrowed. According to Sprout Social’s Q1 2026 Pulse Survey, 66% of consumers say they feel more selective about the content they engage with than they did a year ago.

What’s changed isn’t the ambition to be part of the conversation. It’s the expectation that brands understand the role they’re playing before they enter it — and that audiences are far less willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.