Building Better Systems and Building Better Businesses
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
By Monique Shuler
When we talk about entrepreneurship, especially as women, the message often sounds familiar. Work harder, push through, make it all fit. I believed that early in my mortgage career, too, until I realized something important. Most challenges are not caused by the people doing the work. They come from the systems around them that are not keeping up.
I learned that during the foreclosure crisis, working in rooms filled with paper files and families who needed answers. I learned it again during COVID, when people were trying to navigate forbearance, job changes, childcare, and uncertainty, while financial systems behind the scenes struggled to adjust. When systems break down, people feel it immediately. And although everyone feels the impact, women often feel the weight differently because of the multiple roles we carry at the same time.
Those moments shaped my path as a founder. They taught me that if I ever built something of my own, it would need to do more than solve a single problem. It would need to strengthen the foundation that people rely on every day.
That is how BOLT came to life. I am the Founder and CEO of VeriCore Systems, and I created BOLT, our patent-pending AI testing platform, to help lenders and and loan administrators trust their technology before a loan ever reaches a customer. BOLT is a mortgage testing assistant that simplifies and guides your testing process. What used to take hours of manual preparation now becomes simple and understandable. Operators get more time to think, plan, and make decisions, and less time fighting through steps. This is the space where strategy and technology come to life.
Entrepreneurship taught me something else. Building a business is not only about the product. It is about trust. It is about creating something that supports people in the moments when it matters most. And while strong systems help everyone, they make a meaningful difference for women who are balancing leadership, family, community, and often financial responsibility all at once.
At the same time, none of this is about excluding anyone. Men contribute significantly to financial services and technology. My perspective simply comes from the reality that women often navigate work and life with a different type of pressure, and reliable systems make that weight easier to carry.
Stepping into entrepreneurship also showed me that equity is not only about access. It is about who builds the tools that shape the industry. After years of helping companies bring their technology ideas to life, becoming a founder allowed me to design something grounded in how operations actually work. It supported the people, across all backgrounds and genders, who keep financial processes moving every day.
At the heart of it, this is about building systems that allow people to thrive. When the foundation of a business is strong, the outcomes are strong. And when more voices help build those foundations, innovation grows and the entire industry benefits. That is the kind of entrepreneurship I want to continue contributing to.
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