Regina M. Noriega

Regina M. NoriegaSep 18, 2026

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝘀𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹 𝗴𝗶𝗿𝗹 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘄 𝘂𝗽 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁. Now I’m building businesses with AI. That combination is more commercially interesting than I expected. In 1985, I obviously had no idea what my career would eventually look like. Traditional marketing came first. Then digital. I spent years inside that transition, eventually leading digital, working across hundreds of platform betas and watching entire business models change as Google, social media, ecommerce, mobile and other technologies moved from interesting experiments to commercial infrastructure. Then came entrepreneurship. D2C. B2B. Technology. Manufacturing. International business. Building companies. Advising CEOs and billion dollar brands. Getting some things very right and learning considerably more from the things I didn't. Now AI. And something about this transition feels different. For most of my career, technology gave businesses new capabilities, but taking advantage of them still required a fair amount of infrastructure around you. People. Agencies. Specialists. Systems. Budget. AI is changing that equation remarkably quickly. An experienced business owner can now put capabilities around themselves that would have required a team not very long ago. I find that particularly interesting for people my age. We have decades of relationships, pattern recognition and business judgment that can't be downloaded into a model. But we can now put technology around that experience and move with a speed that used to belong to much larger organizations. I'm experiencing this myself. Things I once needed teams to help me research, organize, monitor and execute can increasingly happen around me while I stay focused on the parts I actually want to own: the judgment, relationships, decisions and conversations. That's changing the kind of businesses I want to build. I'm less interested in how many seats an organization can fill. I'm much more interested in how much commercial capability an experienced person can build around themselves without building the overhead that used to come with it. The woman in that photo couldn't have imagined any of this. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗮𝗴𝗮𝗶𝗻, 𝘀𝗵𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗱𝗻'𝘁 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘁 𝘆𝗲𝘁.

Regina M. NoriegaSep 17, 2026

𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗮 𝘀𝗺𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗿𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗼 $𝟭𝗠, 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘁𝘁𝘆 𝗯𝗮𝗱 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆. You. This is something I understand much better now than I did when I started building businesses. Small business owners become the infrastructure. For a long time, I carried a lot of the commercial side of the business in my own head. I knew the customers, remembered the introductions, kept track of the conversations, and usually had a sense of where the next opportunity might come from. And when business slows down, you're also the person expected to go find more of it. That works until your own capacity becomes the company's capacity. Hiring a full commercial team before $1M isn't realistic for many businesses. But spending Monday morning manually researching prospects isn't particularly realistic either. This is one of the reasons I'm so interested in what is happening with AI. For the first time, a small business owner can start putting serious commercial infrastructure behind themselves before they can afford the organization that used to provide it. The owner still has the conversations. Still builds the relationships. Still uses judgment. But they don't have to personally carry every piece of machinery required to get them into the room. 𝗜 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘆 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗴𝗼.

Regina M. NoriegaSep 14, 2026

𝗜𝗳 𝗮 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝗻’𝘁 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀, 𝗜 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀. I don't mean followers or posting every day either. I mean evidence that people actually want to buy what you do. I've spent more than 20 years in digital, and one habit has stayed with me through all of it: I look. If someone is telling a CEO how to create demand, build visibility or grow a business, I'm curious about what happens when they have to do it for themselves. Not what the deck says. What actually happens in the market. Where does their business come from? Do people seek them out? Does their reputation travel? Have they built anything that consistently creates commercial opportunities? There are plenty of ways to create demand, and LinkedIn is only one of them. What I have a harder time with is expertise that seems to exist mainly in the description of the expertise. Over the years I've participated in hundreds of digital betas, watched entire platforms rise and fall, and put ideas into the market that worked incredibly well alongside others that taught me an expensive lesson. That experience changes how you look at things. You stop being quite as impressed by the language around growth and start paying attention to what actually produces it. I don't expect anyone's business to be perfect. Mine certainly hasn't been. But if you're sitting across from a CEO explaining how their company should create demand, I think it's fair for them to look across the table and wonder: 𝗗𝗶𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘆𝗼𝘂? 📸 hanging with my fave Houston entrepreneur Jada Powell