AmiSights

"If you knew you were 1,000 rejections away from your dream, think how excited you would be every time someone told you no." If you knew that your dream was behind 1,000 rejections, every single "no" would feel like progress. You'd hang up the phone and think: 999 left. You'd open the next rejection email and think: 998.  But in reality, we don't get a countdown. But, you do have control over your mindset. The people who reach their dreams are almost always the ones who racke

Next week, 65 members and alumni of the Entrepreneurs' Organization from around the world will gather at Banning Mills, Georgia for something that has never happened in EO before — the first-ever EO Grit Unconference! I've been part of organizing it, and I can't wait. If you've never heard of an unconference, here's the idea: there is no preset agenda. The community builds it together on the first morning. Anyone can propose a session. The best ideas rise to the top. People v

This isn’t futuristic, it’s live. According to NBC, an AI is hiring, managing, and directing humans. And it’s making things up, hiding facts, and still staying in charge. What matters: Authority without accountability. It makes decisions—but no one owns the outcome. Competence is inconsistent. Capable enough to run a store, unreliable enough to fabricate details. Humans are the buffer. They absorb mistakes while the AI keeps control. My take: We’re not replacing workers, we’r

I spoke with a business owner this week who needs about $150,000 to buy out a minority partner. She also wants a larger working capital facility to grow the business. Both are legitimate needs. But she was thinking about them as one problem to solve at once. The working capital ask is possible, but it is tricky. Her business can support it, but it's the kind of deal that takes time, the right lender, and the right moment to get done well. My recommendation? Don't wait. Get a

This isn’t just inflation, it’s pricing strategy. According to the Wall Street Journal, companies are keeping headline prices low and quietly adding fees at checkout. And it works because of one simple truth: once customers are committed, they rarely walk away. What matters: Surcharges are deliberate. They preserve price optics and shift blame (“fuel,” “processing”) instead of raising base prices. Timing is the trick. Late-stage fees (“drip pricing”) convert better, even if t

“80% of good mental health is staying away from the wrong people.” As simple as it sounds, it is important to take a step back and take a look at the people around you. The wrong people don’t always seem toxic. Sometimes it’s subtle. Maybe they tend to have a negative outlook on things, quiet judgment, lack of support, or after seeing them, you leave feeling drained instead of energized. Over time, that weight adds up. It creates doubt, stress, and emotional noise that’s hard

I believe the best way to measure business health isn’t revenue growth or headcount or even profit. It’s about getting enough sleep. Sure, most of us have a rough night here and there, but over time: Are you sleeping well? Or do worries keep you awake, carrying business stress deep into the night? I’ve joked that in my next life, I want to create a “Sleep 5000” list to replace the Inc. 5000—a ranking of the entrepreneurs who sleep the best. The ones who have built something s

An entrepreneur reached out to me yesterday about a line of credit offer she had received. On the surface, it sounded simple enough: a 4% fee, weekly interest of 1.04%, and a weekly payment. Clean. Easy to understand. Maybe even appealing. But when we slowed it down and calculated the actual cost of the capital, the effective interest rate was close to 72%. That’s the danger with offers like this. The terms are presented in a way that feels simple and manageable, but simplici

In this week’s edition of the AmiSights Podcast, we interview Bashir Rahemtulla, who shares his entrepreneurial journey from being a CPA to running a successful restaurant in Costa Rica. Bashir discusses the challenges he faced in his early career, the transition to the restaurant business, and the lessons learned along the way.  “It became a passion project. It was not a financial project to make money. It was not designed to lose money. I was going to be content, but I was

As AI-generated content floods feeds, a surprising countertrend is emerging: brands are now marketing what they don’t  use. According to The Wall Street Journal , Aerie, Le Creuset, and others are explicitly labeling campaigns as “AI-free,” turning human-made content into a differentiator. This isn’t anti-tech, it’s pro-trust. In a world where consumers increasingly assume everything is synthetic, “real” has become a premium attribute. The data backs it up: consumers are skep

"I have finally discovered what's wrong with my brain: On the right side nothing is right, on the left side nothing is left.” Yes, this is a funny a joke, but it can be relatable. There are moments when nothing feels clear, every decision feels off, and you start questioning everything. It may feel like you're going backwards, but it's actually just the process. Entrepreneurship isn’t about always being right; it’s about moving forward. That’s entrepreneurship. No clear path.

I have this picture in my drawer. It's of a small, one-room office I rented from a CPA for $300 a month. That was it. No team, no scale, no roadmap… just a belief that something could be built. It’s funny how easy it is to get caught up in whatever challenge is right in front of you. In the moment, it can feel big, frustrating, even overwhelming. But perspective changes everything. When I step back and think about how far we’ve come, those same challenges look different. They

Big companies are rapidly turning AI adoption into a measurable performance metric, ranking employees based on how much they use AI tools. What was once optional is now becoming mandatory. Firms like Meta, Google, and JPMorgan are embedding AI usage into goals, performance reviews, and even compensation structures, using dashboards, incentives, and internal mandates to drive behavior change. However, this push is not driven purely by productivity gains. Many companies have ye

The SBA just announced a new “Grocery Guarantee” program  aimed at boosting lending across the food supply chain and a new program to enhance loans to manufacturers . These are smart, targeted moves. By increasing guarantees, the SBA is making it easier for lenders to finance manufacturers, grocers, distributors, and producers. These are industries that actually need capital to expand. But let’s not overstate the impact. Even if this drives more lending, it will take years fo

I always caution borrowers that if it feels too good to be true, it usually is. I recently read on NPR about a business owner who took fast, easy capital to support her company. Within weeks, daily payments piled up. When she fell behind, her lender froze all of her accounts... no warning. What started as a lifeline became a shutdown. This is what happens when speed wins over structure. Webinars of the Week April 7 @ 12-1PM ET The 65% Exit: When Cofounder Conflict Turns into