Entrepreneur Media

Brandi Dunham was working as a marketing manager in Las Vegas in 2022 when she kept noticing that smart, accomplished executives had LinkedIn profiles that were either empty or years out of date. One asked her offhand if she could help with a few posts. She charged $300 for the month. He got three new business inquiries directly from those posts. She realized there was a real market nobody around her was talking about. Total startup cost: under $50. A LinkedIn Premium subscription and a Canva Pro plan for a one-page service menu. She messaged 20 executives, offered one free sample post and had two paying clients within two weeks. She immediately stopped offering free samples and has charged from the first conversation ever since. By month six she raised her rate from $300 to $800 after building a portfolio of results. She now manages six clients at $1,200 to $2,500 per month — earning between $9,000 and $12,000 a month, or roughly $110,000 to $120,000 a year, on top of her full-time salary. The work is harder than it looks. Getting inside another person's professional identity well enough to write something that sounds exactly like them — not like you — takes real time. One client rejected drafts for three weeks before Brandi figured out he hated corporate language and naturally wrote in short punchy sentences. Nobody told her that upfront because he'd never had to think about it consciously. A workflow error that published one client's post under another's name led her to rebuild her entire system the same day it happened. That client stayed with her for two more years. Her advice: raise your rates before you feel ready to. Take your current rate, add 40% and send it to the next inquiry without apologizing. The confidence doesn't come before the ask. It comes after the yes.

John spent 20 years in the restaurant business before he felt like he'd truly figured it out. These days that means two Bar Avalon locations, a catering arm and a pasta sauce line, all running at once. The job hasn't gotten less chaotic. He's up at 6am picking up supplies, and by 3pm he's usually fielding a missed order or some other fire that needs putting out before the doors open. What's changed is how he handles it. Being connected across both restaurants means he can solve a problem at one location while he's standing in the other, instead of the whole operation grinding to a halt. That's what frees him up to focus on the part of the job he actually started this for: building a neighborhood spot where people come back to celebrate the moments that matter to them. When orders are coming in, customers are ready to pay or when your team needs an answer fast to make service happen that night, your connection has to work. AT&T Business helps small businesses stay ready in the moments that really matter. To learn how they can help support your business as it grows, visit https://entm.ag/ATTSMB_JBL #AD

Jeremiah Gardner is one of the world's few qualified underwater cave divers and an innovation strategist who has worked with GE, Nike and ING. The parallels he draws between navigating dark underwater caves and navigating uncertainty in business are worth paying attention to. Three frameworks from his work that apply directly to founders and operators: Follow what calls to you — even when it looks irrational. Gardner spent two years training before his first real cave dive because he couldn't shake the pull toward it. His read on entrepreneurship is the same: the ideas that won't leave you alone are often the ones worth building a company around, even before they make sense on paper. Get uncomfortably narrow before you think about scale. He defines innovation as the discovery, delivery and development of new value in the customer's eyes — and it starts with specificity, not breadth. Facebook launched at Harvard. Amazon sold books in Seattle. "You need one customer," Gardner says. "And if you can do that, you can get to two." Most founders try to serve everyone and end up serving no one well. Learn fast instead of failing fast. Gardner dislikes "fail fast" enough that he has a T-shirt crossing it out and replacing it with "learn." The practical version: identify your riskiest assumptions — is there a customer, is there a real need — and run the smallest possible experiment to test them first. Killing a bad idea early is a cost-saving function as much as a growth one. "Learning what doesn't work is as valuable to us as learning what does." The cave diving parallel he uses: the gold line is the physical guide rope that gets you back out alive. In business, it's clarity about who you serve and what specific problem you solve. Keep that line in your hand and you can move forward boldly into uncertainty without losing your way.

Fall down. Learn. Get back up.

On this week’s #RestaurantInfluencers, sponsored by Toast: Host Shawn P. Walchef interviews Deborah Matteliano Simeoni from AWS about what digital hospitality means, why first-party data matters and how technology can strengthen the guest experience at restaurant. Listen now: https://entm.ag/RIPodcast

Brian Weiss grew up in the toy industry — his father was a manufacturer's rep with a showroom in the old New York toy building, and Brian spent his childhood learning how to merchandise and price great toys. After stints at Jakks Pacific and Moose Toys, he joined Goliath to build out a true toy business alongside its established games operation. The idea for Clickeez started with what Weiss calls "comp shopping" — watching what adults were obsessing over and figuring out how to translate it for kids. Mechanical keyboard customization was trending among designers and gamers. Combined with the sensory and fidget toy wave, the concept emerged: a collectible that looks, sounds and feels like a mechanical keyboard key, stackable into custom keychains and wearables. Goliath moved fast, launching in July 2025 after just one year of development — well under the typical 18 to 21-month toy timeline — backed by a multi-million dollar upfront investment in tooling, testing and consumer research. Clickeez debuted at Five Below, spread through TikTok and Reddit with minimal paid advertising and took on a life of its own. More than 10 million pieces have sold since launch, the toy won Collectible of the Year in France and expanded to major UK retailers. Brian projects over 100 million sold by end of year, with a 360 brand vision spanning apparel, accessories and beyond. His advice: do the research, come prepared and treat every no as something worth understanding. The brands that last are the ones that did the consumer work before anyone else did.

An entrepreneur's work is never done. Pro Football Hall of Famer Michael Strahan and Constance Schwartz - Morini, co-founders of SMAC Entertainment, discuss the iceberg of running a business. What most people see isn't what's really going on behind the scenes. The Entrepreneur Playbook is presented by Capital One Business.

Starting a business in 2026 is genuinely more accessible than it's ever been — but "accessible" and "easy" aren't the same thing. The barrier to starting has dropped. The barrier to building something that lasts hasn't moved much. A few things worth knowing before you pick an idea: The best business idea for you sits at the intersection of three things: what you already know how to do well, what your specific market actually needs and what you're willing to show up for consistently when the early excitement wears off. Most people spend too long on the first question and skip the other two entirely. The ideas generating the most traction right now fall into a few clear categories. Service businesses built on existing credentials — accounting, financial advising, coaching, consulting — have low startup costs and immediate credibility. Skilled trades — electrical, carpentry, landscaping, HVAC — have strong and growing demand with relatively little competition from new entrants. Digital and content businesses — online courses, podcasting, UGC, social media management — have near-zero overhead and global reach. And the boring-but-reliable category — cleaning services, property management, storage, pet care — tends to outperform expectations precisely because nobody glamorizes it. A few things that matter more than which idea you pick: knowing what kind of life you're trying to build around the business before you commit to a model, doing a genuine market analysis before you open shop and separating your personal and business finances from day one. That last one sounds obvious and gets skipped constantly. The right idea is the one you'll actually execute — not the one that looks best on paper or sounds most impressive at dinner. Start there.

So start now.