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Tom First founded and ultimately sold Nantucket Nectars, then spent years working with emerging food and beverage brands. Working closely with the kombucha industry, he saw a need for a more approachable option for gut health. The idea clicked at a family dinner when a bartender served carbonated mocktails made with fruit juice, herbs and spices, and Tom wondered why no one was making soda that way. He launched Culture Pop in 2020 with $200,000 from his own money and one friend's capital, made the first run at a small factory in Saratoga, New York, and started selling out of his car during Covid the next day. An early crisis hit when the facility turned out to have yeast in its production lines. About six months in, cans began exploding in the warehouse and on shelves. Culture Pop destroyed a lot of product and quickly moved to a new facility. Culture Pop is sweetened only with fruit juice instead of refined sugar or high-intensity sweeteners like stevia. Tom expected that to be an enormous advantage, but many shoppers don't realize what's in other products until they're told. The brand has grown 50% to 100% a year since the start and is now sold nationally across major retailers. His advice: hire people who are better than you at what they do and give them room to do it. Have an idea? Build your website for as little as $1/month: https://tidd.ly/4wZP9sI

Local Legends — and Round 1 of voting — wraps up with Wild Rumpus Books vs Tin Roof Maui in the bracket for America’s Favorite Mom & Pop Shops®. Hurry, voting ends in 24 hours! Only votes cast in the poll will be counted. Voting is available on Entrepreneur's Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and X. Information about each of the businesses is available in the comments. In partnership with CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen).

BCG and MIT researchers studied more than 2,000 leaders across 100+ countries to understand how executives are navigating the shift to agentic AI, and their finding is clear: the old management playbook no longer applies.   Inserting AI into existing workflows and measuring outputs was the right approach for the last era. Agentic AI demands something different. It doesn't execute a process; it reimagines it dynamically. The leaders getting the most out of it aren't overseeing outputs anymore. They're guiding actions: defining what data agents can access, which systems they can trigger and when human judgment needs to step in.   The companies furthest ahead took a different approach from the start. Instead of layering AI on top of how they already worked, they identified a handful of high-value end-to-end processes and rebuilt them from scratch around how humans and agents learn and act together. Leaders only needed to define inputs and desired outcomes. What happened in between became a living system that optimizes itself in real time.   BCG and MIT's research points to a clear new leadership profile emerging at the companies moving fastest: people who combine business judgment, technical fluency and ethical awareness to guide hybrid teams of humans and agents. The era of AI as innovation has begun. Companies still chasing efficiency with AI will be outgrown by the ones using it to continuously reinvent how they work.   Presented by Chase. Take your business to the next level with Chase's Sapphire Reserve for Business card. Learn more, visit: https://lnkd.in/g2xN-GvM

In this edition: 3 questions to ask before you take a risk, how to be less defensive, and the "stupid" idea that went on to sell millions.

Round 1 is almost complete, but first we have Girls Auto Clinic vs Nick's Seafood competing for America’s Favorite Mom & Pop Shops®. Hurry, voting ends in 24 hours! Only votes cast in the poll will be counted. Voting is available on Entrepreneur's Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and X. Information about each of the businesses is available in the comments. In partnership with CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen)

As organizations grow, finance needs shift from basic bookkeeping to strategic insight. This guide breaks down the three stages of that evolution and what practical steps to take at each one. Access the free guide now: https://entm.ag/sZxfMR

Discovering your passion looks different for everyone. For celebrity chef Robert Irvine, he got thrown right in the fire. Join top entrepreneurs like Robert Irvine, Megan Thee Stallion and Gary Vee at Overcoming Impossible Live, an Entrepreneur Level Up event. It's designed for decision-makers looking to access proven growth strategies and level up their network. Learn more: https://lnkd.in/g8BnZepe

Local Legends are back, this time it's Proud Mary Coffee vs Bedo's Leatherworks in the contest for America’s Favorite Mom & Pop Shops®. Hurry, voting ends in 24 hours! Only votes cast in the poll will be counted. Voting is available on Entrepreneur's Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and X. Information about each of the businesses is available in the comments. In partnership with CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen).

Ambry Mehr spent almost 10 years building a personal brand online, starting with a blog at 17 before moving into marketing for other brands. While working a 9-to-5 and selling through TikTok Shop, she saved enough to bootstrap Weekend Sleepover in 2025. The idea came from a feeling she loved: checking into a beautiful hotel, putting on the robe and slowing down. Slim Aarons' photography, especially his striped umbrellas, shaped the brand's signature stripes. Before she had a product, Ambry spent almost a year building the brand publicly on TikTok and Instagram. She shared AI mockups, took her community along to Portugal to find a manufacturer and let followers weigh in on colors, packaging and the logo. By launch day, nearly 4,000 girls had joined her Discord. With no investors, she put around $80,000 of her life savings into the first drop. After a 15-week production delay, 600 robes sold out in under five minutes and generated over $130,000. Family and friends shipped every order from her uncle's garage. The highs came with lows. Ambry went five months without enough product to sell, straining cash flow, and learned how expensive it is to scale a product business. She's reinvesting everything and hasn't taken a paycheck yet. Weekend Sleepover has since expanded into makeup bags, skincare headbands, slippers and hair towels, with each striped colorway inspired by a destination. Her advice: sell a feeling, build the community before the product and keep showing up even when nobody is clapping yet.

Maury Povich and Jerry Springer go way back, and this compliment really stuck with Maury. The host of Maury and now host of the podcast On Par with Maury Povich sits down with Dan Bova to talk about how he got that unmistakable voice (spoiler: it's not vocal lessons), what Jerry Springer really thought of his show and why he never wanted to know who the father was until you did.