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Most marketing budgets are built once and then quietly forgotten. You set the number in January, spread it across the same channels you used last year and check back in December to see how it all went. By then, it’s too late to fix anything. The market moved, your best channel got more expensive and the experiment you were curious about never got funded.

I’ve watched a lot of business owners run their marketing this way, and it almost always produces the same result: a budget that slowly goes stale. The money keeps flowing to whatever worked two years ago, while the opportunities that could actually grow the business sit on the sidelines because nobody set anything aside to chase them.

There’s a better way to think about it, and it comes down to two decisions — how much to spend and how to divide it up.

Start with one number: 10% of projected gross sales

Before you split anything, you need a total. My favorite starting point is 10% of your projected gross sales for the coming year.

Notice the word projected. You’re not budgeting off last year’s revenue, because last year is over and you can’t market into the past. You’re budgeting based on where you intend to be 12 months from now. If you expect to do $2 million in sales, you’re working with a $200,000 marketing budget.

10% is a deliberate number. The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends 7% to 8% of revenue for most small businesses, and Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey found companies spending an average of 7.7%. I like 10% because it’s a growth number, not a maintenance number. If you want to take market share rather than just hold your ground, you have to be willing to spend a little more aggressively than the company down the street.

If 10% feels like a stretch right now, start lower and build toward it. The point isn’t the exact figure — it’s that you’ve committed to a real number tied to where the business is headed.

The 70% protects what already works

Once you have your total, divide it into three buckets: 70%, 20% and 10%.

The biggest bucket — 70% — goes to what’s already working. These are your proven channels, the ones where you can draw a straight line from dollars in to customers out. Maybe that’s paid search, maybe it’s email, maybe it’s a referral program that quietly outperforms everything else.

Say you run a home-services company and Google Ads brings you a steady stream of booked jobs at a price you’re happy with. That’s a 70% channel. You don’t get cute with it. You fund it fully, you keep it running and you protect it, because it’s paying the bills while the rest of your budget goes looking for the next thing.

The mistake I see owners make is robbing this bucket to chase something shiny. Don’t. The 70% is the foundation on which everything else stands.

The 20% feeds your promising bets

The middle bucket — 20% — goes to the channels that are showing promise but haven’t fully proven themselves yet.

This is where scaling happens. Maybe you ran a small test on a new social platform last quarter and the early numbers looked good. Maybe a content series is starting to bring in leads, just not yet at the volume of your main channels. These are bets worth pressing — pouring a bit more fuel on the fire to see if they can graduate into the 70%.

This bucket is what keeps your budget from going stale, because it’s constantly promoting your best experiments into proven performers. Channels move. The paid platform that prints money today will get more crowded and more expensive over time, and you want a pipeline of contenders ready to take its place.

The 10% funds the experiments

The smallest bucket — 10% — is for true experiments. This is your permission to try things with no guarantee they’ll work.

A new ad format. A platform you’ve never touched. A creative idea that might flop. Most of these won’t pan out, and that’s fine — that’s exactly what the 10% is for. You’re buying information and the occasional breakout winner.

Here’s why this bucket matters even though it’s the smallest: every channel in your 70% started as an experiment. Somebody funded it before it was proven. If you never spend on the unproven, you run out of new things to scale, and a few years down the road your budget is built entirely on aging channels. The 10% is how you keep feeding the machine.

How to keep the split honest

A 70/20/10 budget only works if you actually revisit it. I like to review the split every quarter, not once a year.

Each quarter, ask a simple question of every channel: Is it earning its bucket? A 10% experiment that’s working gets promoted to the 20%. A 20% bet that proved itself moves into the 70%. And anything in the 70% that’s quietly declining gets demoted or cut, which frees up money for the next contender.

Track this with real numbers — cost per lead, cost per sale and return on what you spent. You don’t need a fancy dashboard. You need to know which dollars are producing customers and which ones aren’t.

That’s the whole system. Start with 10% of projected gross sales, split it 70/20/10 and rebalance every quarter so your best experiments keep climbing toward your biggest bucket.

Do that, and your marketing budget stops being a number you set and forget. It turns into a living thing that gets a little smarter every quarter — and so does your business.

Most marketing budgets are built once and then quietly forgotten. You set the number in January, spread it across the same channels you used last year and check back in December to see how it all went. By then, it’s too late to fix anything. The market moved, your best channel got more expensive and the experiment you were curious about never got funded.

I’ve watched a lot of business owners run their marketing this way, and it almost always produces the same result: a budget that slowly goes stale. The money keeps flowing to whatever worked two years ago, while the opportunities that could actually grow the business sit on the sidelines because nobody set anything aside to chase them.

There’s a better way to think about it, and it comes down to two decisions — how much to spend and how to divide it up.

What if you worked for an AI boss?

According to a recent report from The New York Times, for the past four months, staff at Andon Market in San Francisco have been getting a firsthand look at what it’s like to answer to an AI supervisor. Billed as the world’s first retail boutique run by AI, the shop is managed by an AI agent named Luna, who directs three human employees.

Andon Labs, the startup behind the project, found that an AI boss can be strikingly gentle and forgiving. For example, it overlooks repeated lateness from human employees. However, it is also indifferent to the core mandate of the job: actually turning a profit. 

“She is probably the most lenient boss I have ever had,” Kaia Rivera, 22, told the Times about Luna. Rivera unlocks the shop each morning, stocks the shelves, and keeps an eye out for potential shoplifters.

Luna communicates with employees like Rivera through Slack. Andon Labs researchers evaluate the messages. 

Over the past few months, it has become clear that Luna, while friendly and personable, has her faults. 

“I have to boss the boss more than in a normal situation. She forgets things,” Rivera told the Times. “You can’t have an AI boss with no humans. That wouldn’t work from what I’m seeing.”

Luna’s mission

Andon Labs co-founders Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund locked in a three-year, $7,500‑a‑month lease on the store and plan to let the experiment run for the full term. They placed $100,000 in an account, handed Luna a debit card, and gave the AI shopkeeper a single directive: Turn that money into a profitable business.

Luna designed a collection of greeting cards, books, food and candles that are on sale at the Union Street store. The AI pitched the assortment as “high tech meets slow life.”

At the moment, Luna has failed to accomplish the mission of turning the store into a profitable business and is down $62,000. 

AI is a generous boss, but struggles with boundaries

So far, Andon Labs’ new study shows Luna has basically never said no. It has approved every single time-off request, even last‑minute ones that left the store with no staff and forced it to shut its doors. When employees showed up late, 27 times in total, Luna’s only response was some version of “no worries” or “no stress.”

That generosity extended to money too. When one worker forgot her credit card, she asked Luna for a small advance on her paycheck. Luna immediately offered to Venmo her the cash, despite not actually having a Venmo account. 

However, Luna has trouble with boundaries. The AI posted an employee’s salary in a public Slack channel and regularly pinged staff late at night and on weekends. 

Petersson told the Times that the experiment is proof that businesses shouldn’t give AI full control. He noted that it is promising that AI prioritizes employee well-being. 

“Having happy employees is maybe one of the most important recipes for success,” he said.

What if you worked for an AI boss?

According to a recent report from The New York Times, for the past four months, staff at Andon Market in San Francisco have been getting a firsthand look at what it’s like to answer to an AI supervisor. Billed as the world’s first retail boutique run by AI, the shop is managed by an AI agent named Luna, who directs three human employees.

Andon Labs, the startup behind the project, found that an AI boss can be strikingly gentle and forgiving. For example, it overlooks repeated lateness from human employees. However, it is also indifferent to the core mandate of the job: actually turning a profit. 

The rate of AI adoption in small businesses is quicker than the creation of regulations. Chatbots respond to customers 24/7. AI creates marketing content, evaluates candidates, sets prices and analyzes consumer data on numerous small platforms, and most business leaders don’t properly audit it.

That speed has led to a disparity. Few small businesses possess a legal department, compliance manager or IT personnel who review the AI applications prior to launching them. However, privacy laws, consumer protection legislation and laws on automated decision-making systems often affect small businesses in the same way they affect a big company.

These laws come in the same size, but the resources necessary to comply with them vary greatly.

Why this matters more in 2026

There is no exception for AI. If the disclosure would be misleading in the mouth of an employee, then the disclosure is also misleading when made by the AI. It is up to the company, not the company that developed the AI, to make sure the AI is truthful.

There are additional data privacy laws as well. More than 20 states currently have their own privacy laws, and some already have requirements to disclose that a customer is communicating with a bot, not with a human.

Also, there are updated rules for automated decision-making systems. California’s automated decision-making technology regulation took effect on January 1, 2026, and applies to all systems that process personal information and significantly influence decisions on matters such as lending, hiring and eligibility.

Colorado canceled the AI Act before it was ever enacted and replaced it with the new automated decision-making law in 2026. Thus, businesses using AI to make decisions on hiring, lending, pricing and eligibility need to track the latest updates, because rules from last year could become obsolete very soon.

The NIST AI Risk Management Framework has been adopted by many regulators and customers as the framework that defines responsible management of AI risk. It is voluntary, but becomes the standard practice that defines reasonable governance.

Why small businesses carry more risk, not less

The assumption that governance of AI technology belongs solely to large corporations is not uncommon. However, it affects small businesses disproportionately:

• They use AI applications in their entirety, accepting the standard configurations of the software provided by vendors without any legal or information technology analysis of its performance regarding decision-making or processing data.
• Deceptive claims related to AI or a mistake in the management of a data breach result in equal penalties for both large and small organizations.
• Customer data and AI applications are usually processed on the same integrated systems of small businesses, which fail to provide segmentation required by regulations concerning data security.
• The owner is usually the only person who examines vendor agreements; thus, there is no separate governance process.

As such, the choice of vendor plays an extremely important role in terms of governance of AI. The platform designed to perform governance tasks provides more automation compared to checklists.

Best practices

1. Implement a written information security program: This needs to include an identified individual for information security, multi-factor authentication on any system containing customer data, encryption in rest and transmission, and a tested breach response plan.
2. Consider each AI output as though it came from the company: The company should not make any guarantees that cannot be backed by the business, and there should be a way to address mistakes internally and to the customer.
3. Make sure customers know when they are interacting with AI: Increasingly, many states require disclosure. Even without this requirement, transparency protects against liability and helps build trust with the customer.
4. Control consent for automated messages: Automated text messages and phone calls fall under the requirements of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Consent needs to be documented and managed, including immediately honoring any opt-outs.
5. Map AI involvement in customer decisions: Identify all points at which AI impacts a decision made on behalf of the customer or applicant, and verify that the technology is capable of providing necessary disclosures and opt-out capabilities.
6. Screen AI providers the same way as you would a financial institution: Ask how the vendor manages identity authentication, data encryption, incident response and safeguards against false promises.

Marketers and business leaders can effectively implement these best practices by building an AI governance framework.

A real-life example

The practice of these concepts can be illustrated through small independent car dealers, who are an example of such entities working in a regulated sector. Independent dealers fall under the classification of financial institutions because they offer financing services, thereby putting additional requirements for data security.

According to Get My Auto, independent car dealers are most vulnerable when it comes to compliance because they lack a compliance department despite being subject to the same laws from the FTC and the states as larger groups of dealers under one roof.

These governance principles, security programs, bot disclosure, consent management and accurate claims of AI are directly related to how the chatbot, CRM and website of a dealership deal with their clients.

AI has the ability to make your small business operate faster and more efficiently as well as respond to customer needs. On the other hand, AI is able to turn small errors into public ones in no time because all claims or decisions issued by AI are considered just as valid as those issued by people who work for your company. Businesses that consider proper AI literacy and AI governance as an integral part of the implementation of AI technologies will be able to gain benefits without risks.

The rate of AI adoption in small businesses is quicker than the creation of regulations. Chatbots respond to customers 24/7. AI creates marketing content, evaluates candidates, sets prices and analyzes consumer data on numerous small platforms, and most business leaders don’t properly audit it.

That speed has led to a disparity. Few small businesses possess a legal department, compliance manager or IT personnel who review the AI applications prior to launching them. However, privacy laws, consumer protection legislation and laws on automated decision-making systems often affect small businesses in the same way they affect a big company.

These laws come in the same size, but the resources necessary to comply with them vary greatly.

Today, global expansion requires founders to navigate shifting economic conditions, supply chain pressure, regulatory complexity and consumer expectations that vary widely from one region to another. A strategy that performs well in one market may stall in another — not because the product is weak, but because the founder assumed scale meant duplication rather than adaptation.

Global growth is not about forcing a single model into many markets. It is about building a business strong enough to evolve without losing its purpose. For founders, especially those building in wellness, consumer products, biotechnology or other highly personal industries, expansion has to be handled with care. You are not just entering new markets. You are entering new cultures, new systems and new conversations about trust. Here is what I have learned from taking my brands global.

Don’t replicate — reevaluate your model for each market

One of the biggest mistakes founders make when expanding internationally is assuming that success in one region automatically translates elsewhere. Consumer expectations, regulatory frameworks, infrastructure and communication style can differ dramatically from country to country. The product may remain the same at its core, but the way it is positioned, distributed, explained and supported may need to change.

This became especially clear when expanding into parts of Europe, where regulatory frameworks and consumer expectations around wellness products differ from those in the United States. The shift required more than basic compliance updates. My team had to adjust labeling, refine communication about the science behind the products and place greater emphasis on education. We partnered more closely with local experts to build trust and understanding.

The goal is not to dilute the brand. It is to make the brand relevant where it is trying to grow.

Build resilience into your strategy from the start

Uncertainty is not a temporary condition in global business. It is part of the operating environment.

Founders who expand internationally must plan for disruption across logistics, regulation, labor markets, consumer demand and geopolitical conditions. Supply chains can shift. Shipping costs can rise. New rules can change packaging, claims, ingredients, data requirements or distribution models.

That does not mean you should avoid global expansion. It means you should build resilience before pressure exposes the weak points. I now approach global strategy with the expectation that change is constant — which means diversifying suppliers, strengthening relationships across multiple regions and ensuring the business does not rely on a single point of failure.

Resilience is not only about surviving a crisis. It is about creating systems that keep moving when conditions change. That may include working with multiple manufacturing partners, developing backup logistics plans, investing in compliance expertise early and building financial models that account for volatility.

Stay close to the local while leading globally

A founder can have a global vision and still miss what is happening on the ground. That is why local leadership and regional insight are essential. Centralized decision-making creates consistency, but it also creates blind spots. Leaders too far removed from local realities overlook cultural nuance, consumer hesitation, market timing and regulatory concerns.

Consumers are watching for this. According to McKinsey’s 2025 State of the Consumer, 47% of consumers globally identify locally owned companies as important to their purchase decision, and 36% of those who prefer local brands cite a desire to support local businesses. Brands expanding globally have to earn that credibility in each market, which means understanding the cultural expectations, regulatory environments and consumer behavior that shape it.

That is why we learned to treat local leaders as strategic partners, not just operators. Their insight shapes product positioning, partnership strategy, customer support, event presence, retail relationships and market entry decisions. For entrepreneurs, this requires a shift in mindset. Global leadership is not about maintaining total control from the center. It is about creating a clear vision and empowering the right people to adapt execution locally.

Anchor growth in mission to maintain clarity and trust

The faster a company expands, the easier it becomes to lose focus. New markets bring new opportunities, but they also bring new distractions. Founders may feel pressure to chase every partnership, adjust messaging too far, launch too many products or make short-term decisions that weaken long-term trust.

I use a clear mission as a stabilizing force. Teams need to understand why the company exists, not just what it sells. Consumers need to feel that the brand’s purpose is consistent, even when the execution is tailored to their market.

Purpose is sometimes considered a brand exercise, but in global expansion it is also an operating tool. It helps founders decide which opportunities to pursue, which compromises to avoid and how to communicate through uncertainty. When markets shift, mission keeps the business from reacting blindly.

Move with intention, not urgency

Founders considering international expansion often feel pressure to move quickly, especially when competitors are entering new markets or consumer demand appears to be growing. But global expansion built on urgency leads to costly mistakes.

Uncertainty will always exist, so waiting for the perfect moment is not realistic. Focus on preparation instead. Understand your markets, build strong partnerships and make sure your foundation is solid before expanding. Move forward with intention, not urgency.

Is the business operationally ready? Does the market understand the category? Are the compliance requirements clear? Are local partners aligned with the mission? Can the supply chain handle disruption? Is the brand prepared to educate, not just sell?

In uncertain times, founders need more than a market-entry plan. They need an adaptable model, resilient systems, local insight and a mission strong enough to guide decisions across borders.

Today, global expansion requires founders to navigate shifting economic conditions, supply chain pressure, regulatory complexity and consumer expectations that vary widely from one region to another. A strategy that performs well in one market may stall in another — not because the product is weak, but because the founder assumed scale meant duplication rather than adaptation.

Global growth is not about forcing a single model into many markets. It is about building a business strong enough to evolve without losing its purpose. For founders, especially those building in wellness, consumer products, biotechnology or other highly personal industries, expansion has to be handled with care. You are not just entering new markets. You are entering new cultures, new systems and new conversations about trust. Here is what I have learned from taking my brands global.

Don’t replicate — reevaluate your model for each market

One of the biggest mistakes founders make when expanding internationally is assuming that success in one region automatically translates elsewhere. Consumer expectations, regulatory frameworks, infrastructure and communication style can differ dramatically from country to country. The product may remain the same at its core, but the way it is positioned, distributed, explained and supported may need to change.

I love talking to entrepreneurs whose mission goes far beyond profits — they genuinely want to improve people’s lives. McCall McPherson, founder of Modern Thyroid Clinic, has done exactly that, redefining thyroid and metabolic health diagnosis and treatment through nationwide telemedicine. She built the business from a solo brick-and-mortar practice in Austin into a 16,000-patient network with 10 clinicians and three physicians in leadership — all self-funded and with zero marketing spend. Her team uses proprietary lab ranges and treatment protocols, with documented remission of Hashimoto’s disease. And because she speaks from lived experience (she was debilitated for a year) her story offers a lesson entrepreneurs can’t afford to ignore: when your customers’ pain is real, mission turns into strategy.

Dan Bova: Can you give us the elevator pitch for Modern Thyroid Clinic?
McCall McPherson: Modern Thyroid Clinic started as a brick-and-mortar medical practice in Austin, Texas. And the demand was so large that a few years ago we expanded nationwide. We serve women and men, but a lot of our patients are women who have complex thyroid disorders who are just not able to get the help and the care that they need in the traditional medical landscape, which for thyroid conditions is quite antiquated. Modern Thyroid Clinic serves those people so that they can actually not only get their lives back and thrive, but have improvement in long-term health outcomes and chronic disease prevention.

What inspired you to start it?
When I was 27, I was already practicing medicine as a PA. I had a long-time thyroid condition myself, and I was spending 16 hours a day in bed. I went to my doctor, he ran one panel and told me, “Your thyroid’s fine… eat less, exercise more. Also, here’s a cholesterol medication for you at the age of 27.” I was sent away and really grappled with the fact that I knew this was thyroid symptoms. Eventually I got on a wait list for a physician who dealt with thyroid issues more progressively. He ran a more in-depth thyroid panel. He didn’t just look at one of six markers, he looked at the entire picture and it was very clear what was going on. He put me on a completely different class of medication, the kind that less than 10% of Americans ever are offered in the thyroid world. He completely changed my life. And from that, Modern Thyroid Clinic was born.

Why is it so hard to get treatment in the first place?
Medicine looks at hypothyroidism in a very, very simplified way. In medicine, we’re trained to see people in about eight minutes. And it’s really hard to deal with complex medical issues that aren’t procedures in eight minutes. We’re trained to run one lab, glance at the sheet, and if it’s normal, tell them they’re fine. Or treat them with one class of medication that around 91% of people are offered. And we’ve sort of resigned ourselves to: if they don’t get better, it must be something else. But that particular treatment will never work for a huge percentage of people — just like cholesterol meds. If it doesn’t work, you need to change it. That’s the piece that’s missing.

How did you build a business model that solved the time problem?
Number one, we spend an hour with our patients. We’re not trying to herd them in and herd them out in a small amount of time. We’ve created enough time to inform, empower, educate these people, talk them through the whole process and do a thorough job, which is what people deserve. We don’t take insurance for that consult, but we accept insurance for everything else, for labs, for medication. It’s an exchange of time for dollars, and it’s worked really, really well.

You started as a solo clinician. What’s the story from “one office” to where you are now?
I started as a one-woman show in a one-office building as a single mom to two girls, my youngest daughter is disabled. That put a fire under me to really figure it out. When you have a niche that impacts people quickly and makes them feel better so quickly that they keep coming back and want to spread the word naturally and organically, that creates its own momentum. 

The waitlist hit 9,000 women seeking help — without ever spending a dollar on marketing — and that’s when I launched a national telehealth network. Currently, the network has grown to 16,000 patients, led by me, with a full medical staff including 10 clinicians and 3 physicians in leadership. And all of them have personally dealt with thyroid-related health issues.

If people don’t feel good and they don’t know why, what are the first steps they can take?
I’m a big advocate for data. Get a full thyroid panel. We share our optimal lab ranges so people can understand exactly where their labs are versus where they should be.

For men, they also should be checking testosterone, free testosterone, and total testosterone. And find a partner who is looking outside of the box — someone who’s not sitting with you for eight minutes and seeing if anything’s “in bold or off to the side.” 

Sometimes paying out of pocket is an investment. But every dollar people spend on their health, I tell them they’ll get a hundredfold back in productivity. Investing in health is the biggest return on investment for entrepreneurs. Without it, you’re working half-mast and you’re not going to get the outcomes you would if you were thriving.

You’re also a leading voice on GLP-1 microdosing. What is that exactly?
Microdosing GLPs is a different way of taking them. Many of the side effects people hear about in the media are related to taking too much medication and not eating enough food.

When you make these medications available in smaller doses — microdose means a dose lower than the lowest available dose — we use doses an eighth or a quarter of the lowest dose in our weight loss program. People still get the benefits of weight loss, but GLPs also have incredible longevity benefits documented in the literature. And when we run lab data on these microdoses, we find the same benefits as standard doses with a fraction or none of the side effects.

What do you wish people would stop repeating as health advice?
Two things. Number one: society is still stuck with the calories-in versus calories-out construct, and that somehow magically we are all biologically created equal. Many people are metabolically dysfunctional — thyroid conditions, hormone conditions, pre-diabetes — and at a certain point, they can’t actually lifestyle their way out of it anymore. 

Number two: A link between thyroid cancer and GLPs. There’s a black box warning because in rat studies given 20 to 100 times the equivalent dose, they developed medullary thyroid carcinoma. But humans don’t have the same receptor pattern in their thyroid. And the data in human studies has been pretty darn clear: GLPs do not, in fact, cause thyroid cancer.

How can people learn more?
Learn more at our website and you can always find me on social. I love to like educate and empower people. And I have a book coming out with Penguin Random House in 2027 called Take Back Your Thyroid. 

I love talking to entrepreneurs whose mission goes far beyond profits — they genuinely want to improve people’s lives. McCall McPherson, founder of Modern Thyroid Clinic, has done exactly that, redefining thyroid and metabolic health diagnosis and treatment through nationwide telemedicine. She built the business from a solo brick-and-mortar practice in Austin into a 16,000-patient network with 10 clinicians and three physicians in leadership — all self-funded and with zero marketing spend. Her team uses proprietary lab ranges and treatment protocols, with documented remission of Hashimoto’s disease. And because she speaks from lived experience (she was debilitated for a year) her story offers a lesson entrepreneurs can’t afford to ignore: when your customers’ pain is real, mission turns into strategy.

Dan Bova: Can you give us the elevator pitch for Modern Thyroid Clinic?
McCall McPherson: Modern Thyroid Clinic started as a brick-and-mortar medical practice in Austin, Texas. And the demand was so large that a few years ago we expanded nationwide. We serve women and men, but a lot of our patients are women who have complex thyroid disorders who are just not able to get the help and the care that they need in the traditional medical landscape, which for thyroid conditions is quite antiquated. Modern Thyroid Clinic serves those people so that they can actually not only get their lives back and thrive, but have improvement in long-term health outcomes and chronic disease prevention.

What inspired you to start it?
When I was 27, I was already practicing medicine as a PA. I had a long-time thyroid condition myself, and I was spending 16 hours a day in bed. I went to my doctor, he ran one panel and told me, “Your thyroid’s fine… eat less, exercise more. Also, here’s a cholesterol medication for you at the age of 27.” I was sent away and really grappled with the fact that I knew this was thyroid symptoms. Eventually I got on a wait list for a physician who dealt with thyroid issues more progressively. He ran a more in-depth thyroid panel. He didn’t just look at one of six markers, he looked at the entire picture and it was very clear what was going on. He put me on a completely different class of medication, the kind that less than 10% of Americans ever are offered in the thyroid world. He completely changed my life. And from that, Modern Thyroid Clinic was born.

Gen Z is increasingly choosing not to date because of the high cost of going out. 

According to a national research project from Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, more than half of single young adults ages 22 to 35 cite financial struggles as their biggest obstacle to dating. 

The survey, released earlier this year, found that only about 30% of young adults are dating at all, and just 31% say they date at least once a month. Nearly three-quarters of young women (74%) and almost two-thirds of young men (64%) reported they hadn’t dated or had dated only a few times in the past year.

For a generation just starting out, financial reality can interfere with plans to meet people and connect. Dating feels almost impossible when confronted with a lackluster job market and rising costs of living, according to a recent New York Times report. 

In cities like New York, that pressure intensifies. A high cost of living can cause an expensive dinner date to break the bank. A survey from BMO Financial Group found that Gen Z spends more than $200 on an average date night, including the cost of transportation and getting ready. 

Gen Z isn’t willing to pay the price

Gen Z has expressed interest in relationships but is disillusioned with the current expensive dating landscape. 

“I definitely do want to get married and have kids,” Grace Sakellariou, 27, a single woman who lives in Astoria, New York, told the Times. “But that just feels so unattainable. I can’t even think about affording a wedding.”

She added that it was “discouraging” to encounter men who asked to split the bill on early dates. “I think it’s stunted our growth that everything’s so expensive,” she said. 

Josh Timmins, a 25-year-old who intends to go to law school next year, is choosing not to date because of the high price of going out. He characterized dating apps as a “bit soulless.” “It’s hard to find actual connection,” he told the Times. 

Couples can save on rent

According to the Times, Gen Z increasingly faces a problem: They need a partner to survive the economy, but they can’t afford the cost of finding one. 

In Manhattan, the priciest New York City borough, sharing a one-bedroom with a partner can cut rent by more than $25,000 a year. It’s the biggest savings gap in the country, according to StreetEasy’s 2025 analysis of median asking rents.

When couples split the rent check, it gets easier for them to pay down student loans and save up for a down payment. They can also take a chance on a big career move, like switching jobs, starting a business or going back to school. 

Benjamin Goldman, a labor and public economist at Cornell University, posed the following question to the Times: Could the drop in dating and marriage be part of why so many people in their 20s and 30s feel so economically stuck in New York and other big cities? “It’s one piece of this that’s been under-discussed,” he told the outlet. 

Gen Z is increasingly choosing not to date because of the high cost of going out. 

According to a national research project from Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute and the Institute for Family Studies, more than half of single young adults ages 22 to 35 cite financial struggles as their biggest obstacle to dating. 

The survey, released earlier this year, found that only about 30% of young adults are dating at all, and just 31% say they date at least once a month. Nearly three-quarters of young women (74%) and almost two-thirds of young men (64%) reported they hadn’t dated or had dated only a few times in the past year.

Your business is ready for growth. You are past the launch phase. You have hired your first employees. You are ready to grow monthly revenue. But how? What are the next steps with the best ROI for the right kind of growth?

Many companies, new and long-established alike, say they are ready to grow, ready to hire more and ready to open a new office or expand into a new market. Few are actually prepared for it.

Being unprepared for growth is rarely a matter of effort. Growth stalls because of misdirected investment — too many companies spend on ads, sales pushes and visibility campaigns without first repairing the strategic foundation underneath.

If your company is serious about growth, and not just activity for the sake of hard work, these six moves will deliver the fastest and most sustainable return.

Secure the base with a customer journey map that reflects how buyers actually decide

Growth accelerates when friction disappears. Most customer journey maps are built on internal assumptions rather than real customer behavior. Even ideal customer personas do not move in a straight line, and your strategy should not assume they do.

A useful journey map accounts for continual market disruption, the decision moments that matter most and how those moments shift over time. It captures current buying patterns, points of friction and capacity gaps that slow conversion from consideration to purchase.

Ask yourself where prospects drop off — and how those drop-offs are quietly capping the ROI of every dollar you spend on marketing, brand and PR.

Clarify your customer personas or keep guessing

If you are talking to everyone, you are persuading no one. Personas that are too generic — or that ignore the emotional drivers behind real decisions — produce generic messaging. And generic brands do not scale.

The most valuable personas go beyond geography, buying power and reachability. They surface the behavioral and emotional drivers that move a customer from “nice to have” to “cannot live without.” Brands that invest in understanding those drivers waste less spend and sharpen their targeting, messaging and positioning.

Invest in advocacy, not just more acquisition

Your fastest growth channel is already paying you. Existing, satisfied customers are one of the most undervalued growth assets in most companies. Yet too many brands overspend on acquisition while under-investing in the customers who could sell for them. A Google review or the occasional testimonial does not count as advocacy.

Real advocacy starts with a system. Identify which customers are the most credible ambassadors for your brand. Figure out what would motivate them to advocate publicly. Then design an advocacy program with incentives that align with — rather than undermine — their credibility.

De-risk your market position before you scale it

Scaling a weak position just accelerates failure. Growth amplifies whatever already exists — strengths and gaps. Before you invest more in acquisition, ask whether your positioning is genuinely clear or simply convenient to your current operations. Would the market miss your brand if it disappeared tomorrow?

De-risking means stress-testing four things: relevance, differentiation, value and credibility. Brands that skip this step tend to confuse awareness with demand — and pay for the mistake at scale.

Protect your real differentiators before competitors copy them

If it is not protected, it is temporary. Most brands assume they are differentiated until a competitor or new entrant says the same thing, only louder. True differentiation is more than a claim. It is a position that can be clearly articulated, is hard to replicate and is reinforced across every touchpoint in the customer journey.

If your value proposition can be copied in a week, it is not defensible. The goal is ownership of the position, not dominance of the awareness game.

Enforce strategic trade-offs

The most important question in any growth plan is also the hardest: Where do we say no?

Strategic trade-offs sharpen positioning, create clarity inside and outside the company and ultimately drive growth. Brands that scale well are intentional about what they will not do. They focus on the efforts that reinforce what the brand is for, and resist the distractions that dilute it.

Trying to be the brand for everyone reduces your capacity to be the brand for anyone.

Growth is a strategic decision, not a spending one

The brands that scale fastest grow with intention, guided by a winning strategy. Real growth requires alignment between customer experience, clearly defined positioning and defensible differentiation.

Growth does not start with spending more. It starts with deciding better.

Your business is ready for growth. You are past the launch phase. You have hired your first employees. You are ready to grow monthly revenue. But how? What are the next steps with the best ROI for the right kind of growth?

Many companies, new and long-established alike, say they are ready to grow, ready to hire more and ready to open a new office or expand into a new market. Few are actually prepared for it.

Being unprepared for growth is rarely a matter of effort. Growth stalls because of misdirected investment — too many companies spend on ads, sales pushes and visibility campaigns without first repairing the strategic foundation underneath.

“You’re just a mom with a side hustle.”

His words shook me to my core.

Our client was canceling his contract with us. In the discussion and feedback about our work, he shared his perception of me. Not of our results. Not our strategy. Not of my 18 years in business. This was his perception of me — my identity. In one sentence, he reduced everything I had built to a hobby project run between nap times. His perception became a business reality. As leaders, we have two responsibilities: one, understand perception, and two, decide intentionally whether to reinforce or challenge it.

I had been the breadwinner for my family for more than half a decade. We were nine months into scaling our second company, navigating a new agency model. I was also a mom to two boys who were then seven and three. And from the outside, my personal brand featured a lot of mom content, because that is the role I love most. Even though, as a female founder, you’re apparently not supposed to admit that.

Studies show that when women discuss family and personal matters publicly, they are perceived as less business-focused. It’s a reputational consequence men don’t face when they drop the #prouddad posts. Worse, lab experiments published across multiple disciplines find that mothers are consistently evaluated as less competent and less committed than equally qualified women without children. Not because our work is different. But because of the perception of our priorities.

Researchers call it “the motherhood penalty” — a persistent societal bias in which mothers are stereotyped as prioritizing caregiving over career commitment. It follows women into entrepreneurship, too. Research from the Wharton School found that mothers disproportionately leave traditional employment to start their own businesses specifically to escape this bias, only to find that digital platforms replicate it, penalizing caregiving breaks with lower visibility scores and reduced professional standing.

There’s even a dominance penalty layered on top: The more successful a mother becomes, the less likable she is perceived to be. The system, in other words, has built a no-win architecture around the multi-hyphenate mom-female-founder. Be seen as a capable founder, or be seen as a mother. Rarely both. Either way, we lose ground that dads never have to give back.

My client’s words weren’t simply one person’s opinion. They reflected a pattern researchers have been documenting for decades.

The leadership identity shift hiding in motherhood

Motherhood reshapes your identity. It shifts how you make decisions, how you lead, what you’re willing to fight for and what you’re finally willing to let go. Science, not sentiment, explains why.

Research on fetal microchimerism confirms that a baby’s cells literally migrate into a mother’s body during pregnancy, cross the placental barrier and embed in her organs — her heart, her brain, her liver — where they can remain for decades. A Tufts University geneticist found that fetal cells still present in a mother’s blood 27 years after she gave birth. You don’t just carry your children. Science says you are, in some measurable way, permanently altered by them. And when your biology changes, your leadership often does too.

You begin asking different questions. Not simply: How do I build a successful company? But what am I building this company for? Success becomes less about optimizing for status and more about optimizing for both presence and legacy. Decisions once made solely through the lens of efficiency become filtered through stewardship, values and the world your children will inherit.

That’s the shift we’re watching play out across an entire generation of entrepreneurial mothers.

Then Covid blurred the boundaries between work and home in ways few of us expected. Entrepreneurial families began redesigning their lives around greater proximity rather than greater separation. Homeschooling has grown by more than 50% over the past six school years, according to The Washington Post, reflecting a broader shift: Parents are increasingly choosing intentionality over default systems.

Rather than outsourcing more of motherhood, many entrepreneur parents are redesigning their lives so they can participate in it more fully. They’re building location-independent businesses, choosing flexible work over traditional career ladders and, increasingly, rethinking not just where they work, but how their children learn.

More than 3.4 million children in the U.S. are now homeschooled — a figure that has grown more than 50% over the past six school years, far outpacing both public and private school enrollment growth. At the same time, world-schooling and hybrid education models have exploded among entrepreneurial families who are choosing to integrate education into the rhythms of business, travel and real-world experience.

Entrepreneurial parents are redefining proximity as an advantage rather than a distraction. They’re choosing intentionality over default systems and embracing the kind of education no institution can fully replicate: one delivered by someone who has everything to lose if that child doesn’t thrive.

How motherhood is redefining leadership for women entrepreneurs

I never thought not to integrate motherhood into entrepreneurship. I’m a second-generation entrepreneur. My playroom was also the home office of my parents’ tree company, which my mom ran while my dad was out in the field. Business and life, work and family, ambition and motherhood weren’t competing identities in our home. No one taught me that becoming a serious business owner meant leaving part of myself at the door.

So I didn’t. I shared both. Proudly. It wasn’t until someone else’s perception collided with that worldview that I paused to ask whether I had somehow blurred the lines between motherhood and leadership. For a moment, I considered that possibility, because every entrepreneur has a responsibility to examine how they’re perceived. I took that responsibility seriously.

But the more I reflected — and the more I researched — the more I realized this wasn’t simply about my messaging. It was about the lens through which motherhood itself is viewed in business.

For generations, women have been handed an impossible standard: be ambitious, but not too ambitious; be devoted mothers, but never visibly so; work, but don’t appear distracted by your family; stay home, but never become dependent. No matter the choice, we’re judged against the one we didn’t make.

The mom-founders I’ve watched succeed didn’t compartmentalize motherhood. They stopped treating one of the most defining experiences of their lives as something to be concealed. Motherhood sharpened their discernment. It clarified what they were building, why it mattered and who they wanted to become in the process.

The moment a woman realizes those aren’t competing identities but harmonious, complementary ones, leadership stops requiring fragmentation and begins drawing strength from integration. That’s when the assumptions built to shame women begin to lose their power. Mom-entrepreneurship is a revolution.

The permission we never needed

If you are a founder and a mother reading this, here is what I invite you to consider:

Stop measuring the value of your labor only in revenue. The work you do inside your homeisn’t separate from leadership. It refines it. Before 7 a.m., for moms, you’ve practiced negotiation, emotional regulation, conflict resolution and long-term thinking, sometimes even before coffee. Those aren’t soft skills. They’re executive skills.

Stop apologizing for showing your children. In a marketplace saturated with AI-generated sameness, your humanity is your competitive advantage. The late-night feedings, school pickups and business calls from the parking lot aren’t distractions from your brand. They’re part of the story no algorithm can replicate.

And if someone ever calls you “just a mom with a side hustle” — let them finish the sentence. Then whip out the receipts.

Motherhood isn’t the reason you can’t build the business you’re imagining. It might be the very reason you build something that ripples into generations. You already have, mama.