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NOVEMBER 2026

ISSUE – 26 EXPERT SPOTLIGHT

Emily Musil: Unlocking Innovation Through Competition, Capital, and Opportunity EXPERT SPOTLIGHT

Failure Is an Opportunity, Not an Identity

Laurie Jane Roth WINNING THE INSIDE GAME OF HIRING

Building a Business That Lasts: Lessons From Nearly 30 Years of Entrepreneur ship

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LEADERSHIP SPOTLIGHT / BUSINESS INSIGHTS/ ENTREPRENEURIAL STORIES

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Editor-in-Chief –

Daryl Yeung

Art Director –

Naomi Lam

Managing Editor -

Matt Reis

Creative Director –

Akshay Panzade

Project Manager –

Richard Dann

Marketing Manager –

Soﬁa Brown

Customer Relationship –

Natasha Green

Business Development –

Mayank Saxena, Josh Wilder, Anish Miller

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Ed orial Note The way we build careers has changed signicantly over the past few years. Traditional career paths are giving way to new opportunities, evolving workplace expectations, and a growing emphasis on adaptability, personal branding, and professional development. With articial intelligence reshaping recruitment, employers reassessing the skills they value, and professionals navigating increasingly competitive job markets, the need for meaningful career guidance has become more important than ever. Career and interview coaches are playing an essential role in this transformation. Beyond helping individuals prepare for interviews or improve their résumés, they are empowering professionals to recognize their strengths, communicate their value, overcome career transitions, and pursue opportunities with greater condence. Gracing the cover of this edition is Laurie Jane Roth, whose dedication to career coaching and professional empowerment reects the spirit of this issue. As the professional landscape continues to evolve, one thing remains constant: the value of having someone who can help us recognize opportunities we might otherwise overlook. We hope the stories and insights featured in this edition inspire our readers to invest in their professional growth, embrace change, and approach the next chapter of their careers with condence.

Daryl Yeung Editor-in-Chief

CONTENTS

12 LAURIE JANE ROTH

CONTENTS

20 EMILY MUSIL

CONTENTS

28 JESSICA REID SLIWERSKI

LAURIE JANE ROTH Winning the Inside Game of Hiring 12 | NOVEMBER 2026

EXELEON MAGAZINE

C O V E R S T O RY

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C O V E R S T O RY

he most revealing part of an interview often happens after the candidate leaves.

The hiring team begins comparing impressions. They discuss what inspired condence, what created doubt, and whether the candidate understood the problems behind the position. Qualications matter, but so do judgment, clarity, relevance, and the way someone communicates their value. For more than 25 years, Laurie Jane Roth has been part of those conversations and continues to participate in them as an active recruiter. Her career in recruiting gave her a view of the hiring process that candidates rarely see. They encounter the job description, interview, and eventual decision. Laurie hears what happens in between, including the concerns behind a rejection and the subtle differences that cause one qualied candidate to advance while another does not. That understanding now forms the foundation of The Inside Game, Laurie’s coaching practice for experienced technology professionals, as well as senior leaders and executives, navigating interviews, career transitions, and an increasingly competitive hiring market.She is also the author of Get the Job... I Can Help, where she reveals her long-held insider secrets to a successful job search.

Her work begins with a simple reality: being qualied does not guarantee that an employer will understand your value. Seeing What the Employer Sees Laurie entered recruiting after beginning her career in other sales roles. Working entirely on commission meant she had to learn quickly what moved a candidate from consideration to employment. “What shaped me most was witnessing rsthand what gets someone noticed, what gets them in front of the right people, and ultimately, what gets them the offer,” she explains. Laurie learned that hiring decisions are rarely based on credentials alone. Two candidates can have similar experience and technical ability, yet create completely different levels of condence. One may present an extensive history without making its relevance clear. Another may recognize the employer’s central concern and connect a carefully chosen example directly to it. Both might be capable, but only one makes the hiring decision feel safe. This taught Laurie to evaluate every résumé and interview from the employer’s perspective.

After more than 25 years in recruiting, Laurie Jane Roth remains active in the eld, working directly with hiring managers, presenting candidates, hearing feedback, and seeing hiring decisions unfold in real time. Through The Inside Game, she is giving experienced professionals the employer-side perspective they need to turn overlooked expertise into a compelling reason to hire.

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What will the hiring manager think when reading this? What questions will the candidate's background create? Where might the company perceive risk? What does the team need to hear before it can condently move forward? “That employer-side perspective became the foundation of everything I do today.”

Opinions begin forming as soon as someone enters the room or joins the video call. The company is not only determining whether an answer is technically correct. Its representatives are observing how the candidate thinks, communicates, builds rapport, and responds under pressure. “The opening and the closing are the two most important points of the interview,” Laurie says.

When Experience Stops Speaking for Itself The idea for The Inside Game grew from what Laurie was witnessing in technology recruitment. For years, many IT professionals enjoyed strong demand for their skills. As the market changed, people who had once been hired largely because they worked in technology suddenly found themselves competing intensely for every interview. Highly capable candidates were becoming exhausted and demoralized. They had experience, technical knowledge, and a history of results, but many struggled to communicate those strengths in a way that matched how employers evaluated them. Laurie recognized that candidates usually know what they have done. Employers, however, are listening for something more immediate: What can this person do for us? Which problem can they solve? Why should we feel condent placing them in this role?

Throughout the conversation, the hiring team is considering several underlying questions. Does this person understand what we need? Can they solve the problems attached to the role? Will they work well with the team? Can we trust their judgment? Do we believe they will succeed here? Many candidates answer from their own perspective. They focus on what they want, everything they have done, and the full range of what they know. The strongest candidates learn to answer from the employer's perspective. Laurie teaches clients to identify the two or three priorities that matter most to the hiring manager and select examples that demonstrate those qualities throughout the interview. “The goal is not to manipulate the interview,” she says. “It is to make the value clear.”

The Inside Game was created to close that gap.

Relevance Beats Volume

“I wanted to teach candidates what is happening on the other side of the table,” Laurie says. “Not generic interview theory, but what hiring managers and recruiters are evaluating in real time.”

Experienced professionals frequently assume the best way to establish credibility is to share more. They describe every responsibility, skill, and achievement accumulated across their careers.

Her work helps experienced technology professionals understand interview strategy and employer-side hiring dynamics, communicate their value clearly, and stop expecting interviewers to connect the dots for them.

Yet the higher the position, the less effective that approach becomes.

The Interview Starts Before the Questions

Senior candidates are evaluated on judgment, leadership, inuence, decision-making, business impact, and executive communication. Their ability to select what matters is itself part of the assessment.

Candidates often prepare for interviews by anticipating questions. Laurie encourages them to think more broadly.

“One of the biggest challenges experienced professionals have is deciding what to leave out,” Laurie explains. “Relevance beats volume.”

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Her coaching process is direct, diagnostic, and highly personalized because no two candidates arrive with the same challenge.

“Condence is not pretending there are no weaknesses. Condence is being able to talk about them without losing control of your story.”

A mid-career professional may need help positioning transferable skills, narrowing a broad search, or demonstrating readiness for greater responsibility. A senior executive may need to move beyond operational detail and communicate at the level of enterprise decisions and measurable business outcomes.

When Rejection Is Not a Verdict

Laurie listens for what hiring managers hear, identies exactly where the client's search or interview process is breaking down, and then uses pointed questions to uncover the deeper issue. A candidate may believe the problem is nervousness when the real problem is an unclear professional identity. Another may blame the market when their examples are not relevant to the positions they are pursuing. Someone else may have exceptional experience but describe it in a way that creates confusion rather than condence. Laurie summarizes her process through three actions: reveal, show, and teach. She identies the obstacle, shows the client how an employer may be perceiving it, and teaches the client how to correct it.

Laurie’s years in recruiting have taught her that hiring is not always fair or predictable. She has represented candidates she believed were perfect for a position, only to see the employer choose someone entirely different. Even after decades in the eld, those outcomes can still sting. But she has learned not to treat every rejection as a verdict on the candidate. Sometimes the decision comes down to t, timing, internal preferences, or circumstances that neither the recruiter nor candidate can see. A qualied person can perform well and still not receive the offer. When experienced professionals endure repeated setbacks, they may begin questioning whether they still belong in the market. Laurie helps them examine what is actually happening instead of allowing rejection to dene their professional worth.

Owning the Difcult Parts

Once the real issue is diagnosed, many discover that they do not need to reinvent themselves.

Nearly every career contains something that may raise questions.

“Sometimes they need to reposition what they already know how to do.”

It may be an employment gap, brief tenure, career change, or perceived weakness. Candidates often avoid these areas, hoping the interviewer will not notice.

Control Creates Condence

Laurie recommends a more direct approach: own it, then reframe it. “If there is a gap, weakness, career change, short tenure, or something else that may create concern, do not hide from it,” she says. “Address it honestly, then move the conversation toward what you bring to the role.” Avoidance can increase uncertainty because the employer is left to create its own explanation. A clear response demonstrates self-awareness and allows the candidate to guide the conversation back toward relevance.

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For Laurie, condence does not come from motivational language. It grows from clarity and preparation. “When people don't know how to explain who they are professionally, what they do well, or why an employer should hire them, they feel uncertain, and uncertainty doesn't sell.” Once clients understand their value and learn how to communicate it, they regain a sense of control. “Control creates condence.” A client may arrive feeling rejected by the market and unsure what to do next. By examining how the person

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C O V E R S T O RY

Laurie’s Coaching Approach

Teach

Reveal Identify the real issue preventing the candidate from moving forward.

“

Show Help the candidate understand how employers may perceive their experience and communication.

Give the candidate practical tools to position their value with greater clarity and conﬁdence.

I want people to stop approaching interviews as an exam they must pass and start seeing them as a business conversation.

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C O V E R S T O RY positions their experience, answers questions, selects examples, and interprets employer reactions, Laurie helps replace confusion with a practical strategy.

What they can control is how well they understand the employer, how clearly they communicate their value, and how intentionally they manage their careers.

The candidate still cannot control every decision. But they can understand what is happening, improve what they communicate, and move forward without allowing each outcome to diminish their condence.

After more than 25 years inside recruiting, Laurie Jane Roth is bringing the conversations behind hiring decisions into the open. Through The Inside Game, she is helping experienced technology professionals, senior leaders, and executives replace guesswork with insight and approach their next opportunity with greater clarity, control, and condence.

Turning Interviews into Business Conversations Laurie believes the strategies that worked ve years ago are no longer enough for many experienced professionals. Her vision for The Inside Game is to help candidates become more strategic, beginning with how they view the interview itself.

@laurie-jane-roth www.dsn-it.com

“I want people to stop approaching interviews as an exam they must pass and start seeing them as a business conversation.” A business conversation is not a one-sided performance. Both parties are evaluating needs, expectations, risks, priorities, and whether the relationship makes sense. Laurie also wants candidates to become more thoughtful about evaluating employers. A successful search is not solely about persuading someone to offer a job. It is about understanding what the candidate needs, asking better questions, recognizing whether the opportunity genuinely ts, and making an intentional career decision. This broader vision is guiding The Inside Game beyond individual interview preparation. Laurie is developing tools, frameworks, and services to help experienced professionals navigate positioning, career transitions, interviews, decision-making, and the uncertain periods between one chapter and the next. Her goal is not to convince candidates that they can control the hiring process. They cannot. Hiring will always involve preferences, timing, competition, and decisions made beyond their view.

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My work is about helping people understand the psychology of hiring and stop leaving it up to the interviewer to connect the dots. EXELEON MAGAZINE

E X E L E O N I N T E RV I E W

Emily Musil Unlocking Innovation Through Competition, Capital, and Opportunity Emily Musil, PhD | Managing Director, Prize Program, Milken Institute

ome of the world's most promising solutions emerge from people and communities that have the least access to the resources needed to bring them to life. For Emily Musil, PhD, addressing this imbalance has become a central focus of her career, one that brings together research, entrepreneurship, philanthropy, and innovative approaches to funding. From her early work as a professor of history and international studies to her experience at XPRIZE and her current leadership at the Milken Institute, Emily has explored how competitions and catalytic capital can help entrepreneurs tackle complex social and economic challenges. At the Milken Institute, she built and now leads the Prize Program, which connects promising innovators with funding, expertise, networks, and opportunities to scale their solutions. Her work spans sectors including agricultural technology, nancial inclusion, articial intelligence, and manufacturing, with a particular emphasis on supporting innovators in emerging markets and underserved communities. In this exclusive interview with Exeleon Magazine, Emily discusses the role of prize-based funding in advancing entrepreneurship, the importance of philanthropic risk-taking, and how alternative approaches to capital can help transform promising ideas into solutions with lasting impact.

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Emily, your career has taken you from academic research and global development work to XPRIZE and now the Milken Institute. How did that journey shape your belief in using competition and capital to solve difcult social and economic problems? As a professor of history and international studies, I was particularly interested in how people both responded to and created change within their material, social, and geopolitical conditions. I conducted research in more than a dozen countries across three continents and saw that people closest to a problem usually understand it best but are rarely the ones holding the resources to solve it. Talent is distributed everywhere, but capital and opportunity are not. At XPRIZE, I saw how a well-designed competition can focus brilliant people on a hard problem, attract resources and media attention, and generate real evidence of what is possible. When I joined the Milken Institute, I wanted to combine the rigor of research and expertise, the expansiveness and audacity of cutting-edge technology and entrepreneurship, and the power of philanthropic capital as part of a social impact capital stack that can scale. Taken together and aimed at places where markets have not yet fully emerged, that’s how people can create real change in the contemporary era.

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BIGGER IDEAS MORE ACCESS LASTING IMPACT

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E X E L E O N I N T E RV I E W

At the Milken Institute, you built and now lead the Prize Program. What gap were you trying to address, and what makes prize-based funding different from more traditional grantmaking, venture capital, or government funding? Too many promising entrepreneurs fall through the cracks. They are too early for venture capital, too commercial for traditional grants, and too risky for most government programs.

platform get attention, but a well-structured prize program gives entrepreneurs wraparound and continuing support as their businesses grow and change. Philanthropic capital can often take risks that conventional investors are not yet prepared to take. Where do you believe this exibility is most valuable when supporting early-stage entrepreneurs and unproven business models?

Prizes work differently. A grant typically funds a plan; a prize rewards results. That shifts the question from “Who writes the best proposal?” to "Who can actually do it?" Prizes are also open by design, so they reach innovators traditional grants often miss. The prize money is nondilutive; founders keep their equity.

Philanthropy’s advantages are speed, risk, patience, and a social good end goal. The purpose of capital is to provide societal or planetary benet rather than nancial returns. Conventional investors need a return on a dened timeline, which makes it hard to back a company before its model is proven or in a market with thin infrastructure. Philanthropic capital can tolerate that uncertainty.

The prize itself is only one piece. The Milken Institute brings cross-sector expertise, eld landscaping, data analysis, expert convening, and access to a global network of experts and investors at every stage. The money and

I see the greatest value in this high-risk exibility in three places. First, validation: paying for real-world pilots that show a technology works in the conditions people face. Second, the “unglamorous middle,” such as data, testing,

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and market-building, that private investors rarely fund but that determines whether a start-up survives. Third, the earliest signal. A credible prize award signals to investors, partners, and customers that a company has been rigorously vetted, reducing the perceived risk for everyone who follows. To date, our Milken prizes have attracted followon investment exceeding 31 times the prize purse. You have worked with innovators across areas including FinTech, AgriTech, and AI-driven manufacturing. What characteristics tend to distinguish entrepreneurs who successfully turn a promising idea into something commercially viable and scalable? The strongest entrepreneurs I meet share a few traits: audacity, persistence, adaptability, and human understanding. I start with audacity because you have to see beyond what currently exists and believe you can help build something better. Persistence is key because a successful entrepreneur will fail more times than they succeed and continue to nd a way when they face challenges. Adaptability is critical, as entrepreneurs must adapt to constant change and not get stuck in one way of doing things.

That is why we design with intention long before we launch each prize. We have an online community of over 16,000 members who have access to a free library of resources and regular connections to ongoing opportunities. The seminalists get tuition-free executive educational opportunities from Ivy League institutions. We offer media coverage, free attendance and travel to highlevel conferences, and networking opportunities. Networks open doors to investors, corporate partners, and governments. Follow-on capital and market access turn momentum into growth. In our FinTech work, we mobilized and supported hundreds of entrepreneurs in emerging economies, and many beneted from that ecosystem whether or not they took home the top award. We continue to offer benets, education, mentoring, and events to past winners as well. From your experience, what have funders and investors learned about supporting innovation in markets or communities that may initially appear too risky, too early, or too complex for conventional capital?

And nally, probably the most important and unrecognized characteristic of a successful entrepreneur is the ability to connect with and understand the human beings around them. This allows them to understand the context and needs of the community they are solving problems for, build trust, and communicate social needs in terms of sustainable investment and business needs.

The biggest lesson is that “too risky” often means “poorly understood.” Much of the perceived risk comes from missing data, unfamiliar context, and few trusted intermediaries, not from a lack of opportunity. When funders invest in research, local partnerships, and honest evidence, risk becomes something they can price.

The Milken-Motsepe Prize in AgriTech, for example, was designed around increasing economic value for farmers, particularly smallholders, and the teams that stood out understood a farmer’s lived experience, not just the technology. The winners had deep knowledge of the communities, had built trust, and exemplied the audacity, persistence, and ability to adapt that took them from an idea to a world-changing solution.

Partnership matters enormously. Our work with the Motsepe Foundation on the Milken-Motsepe Prize, focused on Africa, shows what happens when global and local expertise are combined from day one. I have also seen that catalytic and philanthropic capital can make a rst investment possible and then step aside as commercial capital arrives. Patience and humility matter too: communities are the experts on their own needs, and funders learn most when they listen. That’s a major part of what we do at the Milken Institute: identifying and linking different forms of capital to scalable solutions.

What does a successful prize competition look like beyond simply selecting a winner? How important are mentorship, visibility, networks, follow-on capital, and access to markets in helping prize participants continue building after the competition ends? Winning is a milestone, not the outcome. The real measure is whether participants are stronger, better connected, and better funded after winning a prize.

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As articial intelligence, climate technologies, nancial inclusion, and other emerging elds evolve rapidly, where do you see the greatest opportunities for prize-based innovation over the next several years?

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Prizes work best where technology is moving faster than the evidence about how to apply it responsibly. That describes several elds today. AI is the clearest example. The Milken-Motsepe Prize in AI and Manufacturing highlighted companies transforming manufacturing value chains in emerging markets, improving efciency and reducing waste. The opportunity is not AI in the abstract but proof that it performs in real factories, at scale. Climate and clean energy offer another opportunity, including off-grid and distributed solutions that communities can actually afford. Financial inclusion remains a third: expanding access to capital and services is still one of the most direct ways to unlock entrepreneurship.

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Across all of them, I care about ethics. As technologies advance quickly, prizes can reward not only what works but what works responsibly, with transparency, fairness, and local ownership built in. Looking ahead, how would you like the Milken Institute Prize Program to evolve, and what larger role do you believe philanthropy and alternative forms of capital can play in shaping the next generation of entrepreneurs? I would like the Prize Program to continue deepening its work after the award: stronger links to follow-on capital, more partnerships with investors and corporates, and better tracking of long-term results so

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E X E L E O N I N T E RV I E W

we can show what prizes achieve. I would also like to bring the model to more sectors and geographies, including the United States, where our workshops are helping crosssector teams design solutions for thriving communities. More broadly, I believe philanthropy should act as risk capital for society: willing to try things before the evidence is in, willing to share what it learns, and designed to bring larger pools of capital in behind it. If we do that well, the next generation of entrepreneurs will have a path from rst idea to lasting impact, wherever they start.

@emily-musil milkenmotsepeprize.org

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EXELEON INSIGHT

Failure Is an Opportunity, Not an Identity - Written By Jessica Reid Sliwerski

n my early twenties, I stood in front of a classroom of elementary school students in the Bronx and realized something terrifying: I had no idea how to teach them to read.

I had a degree, a certication, and the best of intentions. What I didn’t have was the science of how kids actually learn to read. For my rst two years in the classroom, I watched bright, capable students struggle to decode text, and I wasn’t equipped to help them. It was absolutely agonizing. When you fall short in a job where the stakes are high, it’s easy to turn the setback into a verdict on who you are: I am a failure. It took me time to understand that my struggle wasn’t a verdict. It was an opportunity, a chance to get better, not proof that I sucked. My training had failed me, not the other way around. Once I stopped treating it as a referendum on my worth and started treating it as something to grow from, everything changed. That early disappointment didn’t end my career. Instead, it became the blueprint for it. It planted the seed for what would later become Ignite Reading, the early literacy organization I built with an ambitious vision: eliminating our country’s literacy crisis by ensuring every child learns to read on time. That distinction between failing and being a failure is where I think leadership is actually built. Leaders who treat failure as identity get defensive and rigid. They stop taking risks. Leaders who treat it as an opportunity get better. Here's what that looks like in practice. 1. Look for the Lesson, Not the Verdict When something breaks, whether it’s a lesson plan, a marketing strategy, or a product launch, the instinct is emotional: Why did I mess this up? The better question is: What can this teach me?

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EXELEON INSIGHT When I realized my classroom methods were failing, I didn’t quit teaching. I found a school that invested in teachers and used an evidence-based curriculum. I committed to becoming the best reading teacher possible and rigorously re-educated myself until my students began making meaningful gains. Years later, when I founded Ignite Reading, we applied that same mindset. We didn’t just hope our model worked. We partnered with researchers at Johns Hopkins University to study our outcomes and identify where we could improve. Rening our delivery model until every child makes measurable progress is core to our mission.

4. Leadership Starts Above the Line Leading through turbulence, whether that's a market shift or a personal crisis like the breast cancer diagnosis I received as a new mother, requires staying “above the line.” When pressure mounts, human nature pulls us “below the line" into defensiveness, blame, and victimhood. Staying above the line means taking radical ownership of outcomes. It means looking at a crisis or a missed milestone and saying, "This is the reality of where we are. What can I learn from it, and what do I do next?”

2. Failure Claries Your Non-Negotiables

When you stop treating setbacks as an indictment of your competence, you have more energy left to actually solve the problem and grow from it.

When you treat setbacks as a chance to grow instead of a verdict on who you are, bad-t opportunities become much easier to spot and reject.

The Work of Iteration

In the early stages of a startup, the temptation to accept “bad-t revenue,” such as funding or partnerships that stray from what you actually do well, is strong. But I’ve learned what happens when you compromise on the fundamentals. At Ignite Reading, our north star is our First Grade Promise: ensuring every child reads by the end of rst grade. If a prospective partner asks us to dilute our model or compromise on evidence-based practices to cut costs, the answer is no. Declining revenue feels scary, but protecting the integrity of your delivery is the only way to scale sustainably.

Success is rarely a straight line. It’s the sum of thousands of small corrections, each one made possible by clear, honest feedback. If I had let those early struggles in my classroom in the Bronx dene who I was, Ignite Reading would not exist today, and thousands of children might still be waiting for the literacy support they deserve. The next time a project fails, a deal falls through, or a strategy misses the mark, resist the urge to make it mean something about who you are. Strip away the ego, look at what actually happened, and treat it as the opportunity it is.

3. High Standards Require Psychological Safety

About the Author You cannot hold high standards in an organization if your team is afraid to report bad news. If failure equals personal shame, people hide mistakes, manipulate metrics, and defend broken systems. Building that kind of culture means separating performance from personal dignity. At Ignite Reading, we hold exceptionally high expectations because the children we serve cannot afford mediocrity. But high standards have to be paired with psychological safety. When a pilot program stumbles or a metric dips, we treat it as a problem to x and an opportunity to improve, not a reason to blame someone. When your team knows bad news won’t be used against them, they bring you problems immediately, and you can x them before they compound.

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Jessica Reid Sliwerski is the CEO and co-founder of Ignite Reading, a San Francisco Bay Area-based education technology organization providing virtual, one-on-one, high-dosage tutoring to K-2 students in under-resourced schools across the country. Backed by a research partnership with Johns Hopkins University, Ignite Reading has helped thousands of students learn to read. Jessica lives in Oakland, California.

@jessicareidsliwe ignite-reading.com @msreidreads

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IN-FOCUS

Building a Business That Lasts

Lessons From Nearly 30 Years of Entrepreneurship

usiness growth is often presented as a race for funding, rapid expansion, and market dominance. But lasting companies are rarely built through speed alone. They grow by solving real problems, learning from customers, and creating systems that can withstand change. Ákos Barazsy, founder and CEO of MileageWise, has spent almost three decades building IT and software businesses. His experience offers practical lessons for entrepreneurs who want to build something sustainable. Start With a Painful, Persistent Problem Strong business ideas often begin with an ordinary frustration. The key is nding a problem that happens repeatedly and matters enough for people to pay for a solution. Barazsy entered the mileage-log eld in 2001 after recognizing a familiar pattern. People used their vehicles for work, delayed the paperwork, and later struggled when tax season or reimbursement deadlines arrived. The task was easy to postpone but costly to ignore.

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That distinction matters. A product does not need to address a glamorous problem. It needs to relieve genuine pressure. Entrepreneurs should look beyond what customers say they want and examine what causes wasted time, lost money, stress, or risk in their daily lives. Build Expertise Before Chasing Scale Deep knowledge of a narrow market can become a powerful advantage. RoadRecord, Barazsy’s earlier mileage-log business, became a market leader in Hungary before he brought that experience to the United States through MileageWise. The company did not enter a larger market with an untested idea. It arrived with years of knowledge about customer behavior, unusual use cases, technical challenges, and compliance needs. That foundation helped the team identify gaps that newer competitors could overlook.

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IN-FOCUS For small businesses, focus can be more valuable than reach. A company does not need to solve every problem for everyone. It can become difcult to replace by understanding one important problem better than anyone else.

MileageWise, for example, helps users track current business mileage and reconstruct earlier records from sources such as Google Maps Timeline. The product is part of the story, but the broader business lesson is more important: specialized tools succeed when they reduce uncertainty and deliver relief at a high-stakes moment.

Turn Repeated Work Into a System Barazsy describes himself as a practical systems-builder. His approach is simple: when work is messy, manual, and unpredictable, create a reliable process around it. This principle applies well beyond software. A growing business needs repeatable systems for support, onboarding, quality control, marketing, hiring, and decision-making. Without them, the founder becomes the solution to every problem, and growth creates chaos instead of value. A useful system should make good results easier to repeat. It should also reveal where customers become confused, where work slows down, and where mistakes happen most often.

Winning a customer is only the rst step. Reliable performance, responsive support, and clear communication are what turn a purchase into retention and recommendation. Use Constraints as a Strategic Advantage Barazsy has built his businesses without outside investors or debt. Bootstrapping can limit how quickly a company expands, particularly when competitors have much larger budgets. It also forces discipline.

Learn From Behavior, Not Only Feedback

When money is limited, every investment must answer a practical question: will this improve the product, strengthen the customer experience, or create durable growth? A smaller company may not be able to outspend its competitors, but it can out-focus them.

Customers rarely explain every reason behind their decisions. Many will not say why they abandoned a purchase, stopped using a feature, or chose a competitor. They simply leave.

Independence also keeps the market at the center of decision-making. Revenue, renewals, and referrals provide direct evidence that the company is creating value.

That means companies must pay attention to indirect signals. Support requests, usage patterns, conversion rates, and drop-off points can reveal where the product or message is failing. One complaint may identify a technical issue. A repeated pattern may expose a business problem.

Keep Adapting Without Losing the Core

This requires humility. Founders can spend months perfecting an idea that the market does not value. Barazsy compares experimentation to lifting ten stones to nd one diamond. Most ideas will not work as expected, but each test can improve the next decision. Earn Trust Quickly, Then Keep Earning It In a crowded market, customers may give a company only a short window to prove its value. A confusing setup, poorly explained feature, or unreliable experience can end the relationship before it begins. Trust becomes even more important when a product handles nancial records or compliance-related work.

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Over nearly 25 years, Barazsy’s business moved from Windows software to mobile apps and web-based tools. It entered new countries and adapted when major platforms changed how data was stored. The format changed, but the central purpose did not: solve a difcult administrative problem in a dependable way. That balance is essential for long-term business building. Companies must adapt their technology, messaging, and operations as markets change. At the same time, they need a clear core that guides those decisions. Sustainable businesses are not built through one perfect idea. They emerge from focused expertise, repeatable systems, careful investment, and the willingness to keep learning. Growth may be slower that way, but it rests on something far more valuable than momentum: a business customers genuinely need and trust.

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About Akos Barazsy An entrepreneur at heart, Akos was already trading and making deals in elementary school and working night shifts at Burger King while attending high school. He eventually became an IT professional and, after a few years as an employee, founded his rst IT business in 1999, which he sold in 2010. He owns RoadRecord, a market leader in mileage logging in Hungary, was among the rst to publish Google Ads training materials and is a cofounder of the internationally recognized MiniCRM. He is currently working on his company's international expansion. Its mileage logging software tailored to the US market launched as MileageWise in 2020.

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Lolita Beylina IN-FOCUS

Leading with Purpose, Pioneering Change

outh unemployment is a pressing challenge that transcends borders, affecting nations and communities worldwide. The repercussions of youth unemployment are far-reaching, encompassing not only economic ramications but also social and psychological burdens. Lolita Beylina is an example of a pioneer who is not only addressing this prevalent issue but is working towards nding potential solutions to reduce its impact. For Lolita, being a pioneer means embracing the uncertainty to bring about meaningful change into the community and across industries. Fittingly, featuring as a pioneering woman in this issue, we look into the vision of Lolita Beylina, her journey, as well as her individual struggles. The Early Years Raised in a household of immigrant women who came as refugees from Ukraine, Lolita’s early life was marked by various challenges.

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At the age of 3, Lolita was evaluated to have the language development of a 13-month-old. Her inability to articulate sentences comprehensively in English or Russian made her earliest academic years difcult. However, her determination and creativity shone through, and she eventually found her academic footing. She recalls, “I lacked the strong logical reasoning skills, but creativity was a distinct cognitive side I relied on to excel in education. I went from being in a special education needs program with an IEP to earning a sweep in honor roll and Dean’s List awards.” Years later, Lolita's entrepreneurial spirit was ignited during high school when she participated in the Junior Achievement Company Program. The program is for empowering high school students to create a successful startup business, developing transferable entrepreneurship skills, and receiving direct mentorship from an assigned company throughout the program. Under the mentorship of Accenture, Lolita and her

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IN-FOCUS

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Meaningful change begins with the courage to embrace uncertainty.

team brainstormed a business named “Portify,” selling portable charger products. “We presented our business against other high-school students at the program’s local competition.” This experience ignited her passion for entrepreneurship and marked the beginning of her pursuit of a meaningful career. Empowering Youth through Hopeworks Today, as a Career Readiness Coach at Hopeworks, Lolita Beylina plays a pivotal role in empowering young adults (aged 17-26) to secure living-wage opportunities and enter the workforce with condence.

programs, enhancing job readiness, and optimizing their professional proles, including LinkedIn. In addition to her core responsibilities, Lolita goes the extra mile by capturing professional headshots for her clients and curating job opportunities to help them secure lasting employment. She also coordinates Listen-and-Learn (L2) network events, where subject-matter experts share their knowledge and skills with young adults, enriching their career journeys. “In essence, my day-to-day efforts are dedicated to ensuring young adults on their career path of lasting success and breaking barriers,” Lolita asserts. Reecting Back Lolita Beylina’s career journey is a testament to her adaptability and unwavering commitment to personal and professional growth. She acknowledges that, in hindsight, committing to psychology earlier might have expedited her academic path. Nevertheless, as the rst woman in her family to achieve both a bachelor’s and master’s degree, she takes immense pride in her accomplishments. Lolita started her professional career right after high school at the age of 18 as a retail associate. After losing her rst job at 21, she struggled to secure a new job, facing multiple rejections and lack of worthwhile employment opportunities. During these eight months of struggle, she persevered and honed her skills in resume building, interview preparation, networking, and more.

She mentions, “Each day, I foster a collaborative environment with my caseload to help them envision and strategize their future goals.”

She explains, “I’ve learned to view each stage of my professional life as purposeful, seeing challenges not as roadblocks but as opportunities for learning and development. Shifting from asking “Why is this happening to me?” to “What is happening for me?" has been crucial in navigating and gaining value from my experiences.”

Her daily responsibilities involve fostering a collaborative environment, guiding individuals through comprehensive training and internship

This innate ability to turn challenges into opportunities has been instrumental in her continued success.

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The Pioneer’s Mindset For Lolita Beylina, being a pioneer is about embracing uncertainty to create meaningful change. Her career is a testament to this philosophy, as she has continually sought innovative ways to drive positive impact in both communities and industries. Through proactive mentorship, innovative workshops, resourcefulness, and networking, she has woven a pioneering spirit into her leadership style.

Exeleon Shorts One Book Entrepreneurs Must Read - The Happiness Project (10th Anniversary Edition) by Gretchen Rubin

Lolita’s journey is dened by her holistic approach, strategic thinking, data-driven decisions, community engagement, and an unwavering commitment to continuous learning.

One Productivity Tool / App That You Use - Google Calendar

Leveraging this mindset in her advocacy of reducing youth unemployment, she points out the following key strategies: ● Innovative program development aimed at addressing creative solutions to break any barrier for youth and young adults entering the workforce. ● Establishment of partnerships with diverse stakeholders leveraging a supportive ecosystem within the community. ● Technology integration to enhance career development programs with digital tools promoting neurodiversity, such as online training and job matching. The Vision Ahead As Lolita Beylina looks ahead, her vision remains clear. Professionally, she is dedicated to designing experiential learning programs and breaking barriers to youth unemployment. She aims to foster strategic partnerships and integrate neurodivergent-friendly technologies into career development initiatives. On a personal level, Lolita envisions selfimprovement and a thriving family life. She also aspires to write a self-help autobiographical ction series titled “The Glow-Up Formula,” chronicling her journey of reection and transformation over the last ve years.

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One Quote that Motivates you the Most - “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” - Albert Schweitzer One Advice for Women Entrepreneurs - Power through to grow through what you go through One Movie / Podcast / Show You Recommend - Movie: Legally Blonde | Show: Undercover Boss

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Why Successful

AI Adoption Starts With the Customer Experience By Theo Satloﬀ, Co-Founder and CEO of Remark

efore I entered the world of computers and technology, my rst passion was retail. I spent countless hours watching my mother sell ne jewelry, where I quickly saw that the work wasn't just about explaining what made a piece special. It was about understanding the person considering it and what they needed. When I later studied machine learning and researched Alexa at Amazon, I found myself drawn to the gap between those two things. Online shopping made it easy to nd products, but shoppers were often left to gure out what was right for them on their own. I wanted to understand how technology could offer more of what my mother provided across the counter: guidance that started with the person, not the product. That question became more concrete when we built Outdoorly, the marketplace that preceded Remark. Outdoor experts helped shoppers choose gear, and we initially thought the marketplace itself was the business. What became clear through those conversations was that the most valuable part of the experience was the advice. A shopper didn't necessarily need more products to consider. They needed someone who understood the conditions they would be using a product in and could explain what made one option more suitable than another. Recognizing that changed the direction of our business. It also shaped how I think about AI adoption. The mistake is assuming that adding AI to an existing product automatically makes it more useful to the person using it. Consider a shopper comparing two jackets. Sure, a generic AI assistant could explain the differences in their specications, but useful guidance depends on why someone is buying the jacket. A person preparing for wet weather needs a recommendation grounded in those conditions, not just a summary of which jacket has more features. That context should shape the conversation from the beginning. Otherwise, the business has introduced a new way to ask questions without necessarily making the decision easier.

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IN-FOCUS For leaders, this suggests a different place to begin. Before selecting a tool, identify something your customers struggle with and spend time considering what might actually help them through it. Often, the answer is already present in another part of the business. A brand might make it easy for shoppers to choose in a store while leaving them to make the same decision largely on their own online. The opportunity is to close that gap by extending something that already works, not inventing a new reason to use AI. For us, that meant building on the guidance we had already seen work at Outdoorly. We knew shoppers valued advice that was specic to their circumstances. The challenge was making that experience available more broadly. Remark grew out of that process. We were not looking for an application for AI; we had something useful and a new way to make it better. Starting with something that works, though, does not mean preserving every part of the existing product. What we wanted to carry forward was the relevance of the guidance, not the structure of the marketplace. That meant thinking beyond how to answer questions and considering how those answers should shape the rest of the experience. When a shopper explains what they need, that understanding should inform the recommendations they receive and carry through as they explore their options. Making the website more conversational is only useful if it also makes the shopping experience more responsive to the person. But a better experience also has to translate into a measurable business result. At Remark, our standard is incremental revenue, not just attributed revenue. A shopper can interact with an AI tool before placing an order they

would have placed anyway. Crediting the tool with that sale might produce an impressive dashboard, but it does not establish that the business earned anything additional. That is why we believe brands should run A/B tests against their current experience and measure incremental revenue. The question is whether the new experience generates revenue the brand would not otherwise have earned. That is a more demanding test than counting purchases that happened after an interaction, and it should be. If we believe our approach makes a meaningful difference, we should be willing to demonstrate it against what the brand already has. For business leaders, dening that test belongs at the beginning of an AI project, not after launch. Be clear about what the new experience needs to improve and what evidence would justify expanding it. A focused rollout gives the business room to learn before making a larger commitment. It also keeps the team accountable to an outcome beyond getting a feature live. The goal is not to nd numbers that make the technology look successful. It is to nd out whether the investment is actually making the business better. When I think back to my mother's counter, what stays with me is how much easier the decision became once someone felt understood. That was the value we recognized at Outdoorly and carried into Remark. AI has changed how broadly we can deliver it, but not why it matters. The opportunity is not simply to add AI to what already exists. It is to identify what makes an experience valuable, rethink how that value can be delivered, and prove that the result is better for both the customer and the business.

Innovation begins when we stop asking what technology can do and start asking what people need.

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