Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Most people think of wisdom as an arrival. You accumulate enough experience or perspective, then you get there. You become the sage. And stop making mistakes. They’ve got it completely backward. The wisest or smartest people I know are still making mistakes. They’re just much better at noticing them, sitting with them, and learning from them. “Let’s never speak of this again” is not a thing for them. Wisdom is a practice. And failure is the training. Experience alone is not enough. You can accumulate all the experiences in life and still deflect, rationalize, or tell yourself a comforting story in your head. Some people even think of their mistakes as someone else’s…

At any given time, I’m juggling multiple clients. That means I’m juggling context for multiple projects, background information on various companies, and a lot of deadlines. Some of my clients give me a steady stream of work each month, while others pop in with a request every few weeks. Whether you’re coaching, doing creative work, or have long-term retainers, most solopreneurs eventually find themselves managing multiple clients simultaneously. The number of clients you take on directly impacts your income, but more clients also means more complexity. In my corporate life, I worked as a product manager at a software company. Even though my work is very differe…

Below, Nedra Glover Tawwab shares five key insights from her new book, The Balancing Act: Creating Healthy Dependency and Connection Without Losing Yourself. Nedra is a licensed therapist and author of the instant New York Times bestseller Set Boundaries, Find Peace. She has practiced relationship therapy for almost 20 years and has over 2.5 million followers across her social media platforms. Nedra has appeared as an expert on multiple news shows, such as the CBS Morning Show, and has had her work highlighted in publications such as the New York Times and Vice. What’s the big idea? Healthy relationships are built on flexibility, not fixed labels or rigid patterns. By s…

Spring break season is in full swing, and summer vacations will be here before you know it. Layoff fears, however, have some Americans forgoing their paid time off (PTO) just when they need it the most—but experts warn pushing themselves won’t help their careers, either. According to a new survey conducted by outplacement services provider Careerminds, 17.5% of American workers worry that using their PTO will make them more vulnerable to layoffs, and an equal proportion believe it will negatively impact performance reviews or promotion opportunities. “It’s not paranoia; it’s being pragmatic,” says Amanda Augustine, a certified professional career coach for Careerm…

On a recent trip to my husband’s hometown in India, I was stopped in my tracks by a thousand-year-old banyan tree, tall and regal, standing in the middle of an ancient temple. A vast canopy was supported by roots that had taken centuries to reach the ground. The temple had been built around it, not the other way around, in quiet acknowledgment that some things cannot—and should not—be hurried. The tree’s beauty and strength came not from efficiency or design, but from patience. It had grown by using time as a gift rather than a constraint, expanding slowly, deliberately, without urgency. Standing there, it became difficult not to reflect on how rarely modern work allo…

I can tell within two sentences if ChatGPT wrote your email. It sounds like every other one I’ve read today. Professionally mediocre. Perfectly bland tone. Strategic use of “leverage.” Transitions so smooth they may as well be butter slathered on a biscuit. As for what it doesn’t have? You. No sauce, no flavor, no quirks. I work with entrepreneurs and leaders on their marketing and communication, and it’s true: more and more, people continue to polish away anything distinctive (then wonder why no one responds). Your pitch deck sounds like their pitch deck sounds like that other person’s pitch deck. Your LinkedIn post? Could’ve been written by literal…

Spend enough time in corporate America, and somewhere along the line you’ll hear the refrain: Bring your whole self to work. It’s become the mantra of modern management—printed on culture decks, repeated in leadership off-sites, and embedded in HR rhetoric. The idea traces back to management thinker and author Frederic Laloux, a former associate partner at McKinsey & Company, who argued that the most progressive organizations invite employees to show up fully. Not as cogs in the machine, but as the complex and multifaceted humans we are. We invited Eric Solomon on the From the Culture podcast, where the PhD-trained cognitive psychologist who’s led research for You…

When Riz Ahmed feels lost in his creative endeavors, he asks two questions: Does it stretch me? Does it stretch culture? Those questions have guided Ahmed to an Oscar and Emmy-winning acting career (The Long Goodbye; The Night Of, respectively), a boundary-pushing music catalog, and creating stories that have redefined who gets to be seen at the center of the frame. And now, in the latest chapter of his career, he’s posing those two questions to all creatives. Last year, WePresent, the arts platform of file sharing service WeTransfer, announced Ahmed as their guest curator. It’s a role previously held by the likes of Marina Abramović, Solange Knowles, and Olaf…

If you’re traveling soon, some grueling wait times at the airport may be in your future thanks to a partial government shutdown. But to make matters even more complicated, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is not currently updating its sites during the partial shutdown, meaning fliers can’t easily check TSA wait times before heading to the airport. “Due to the lapse in federal funding, this website will not be actively managed,” the Department of Homeland Security, which manages TSA, wrote in a Feb. 17 statement. “This website was last updated on February 17, 2026 and will not be updated until after funding is enacted. As such, information on this websi…

Billionaire investor Bill Ackman is planning to take his Pershing Square management company (PS) public. But in doing so, Ackman is taking an unusual route: He is also starting a new fund, Pershing Square USA (PSUS), and if you want to get in on the Pershing Square management company’s initial public offering (IPO), the only way to do so is to buy shares in the new fund first. Here’s what you need to know about Pershing Square’s IPO: Pershing’s combined IPO When announcing its intention to go public, Pershing Square Inc. also announced that it will launch a new fund called Pershing Square USA (PSUS), and investors in the new fund will receive a set number…

The oil markets are rattled. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz—through which a fifth of the world’s oil flows—have sent prices toward $90 a barrel, with Qatar’s energy minister warning they could hit $150 within weeks. Energy analysts are invoking “the mother of all disaster scenarios.” Commentators are drawing comparisons to the 1970s. The mood is grim. But here is an uncomfortable question worth contemplating: What if expensive oil is not a catastrophe, but an inflection point that finally aligns economic incentives to address critical issues that decision-makers in the global economy have been ignoring for decades? That is the argument that economic historian Ca…

Fresh off a historic 40-point performance in the finals of the Unrivaled season, WNBA player Kelsey Plum is taking a different shot: an AI twin. Fans can now voice call with a digital version of the Los Angeles Sparks star. Plum announced the twin on her personal Instagram account on March 6, asking her AI self for advice on her ponytail and coffee versus energy drink. Plum is the first professional female athlete to launch a verified AI digital twin. It’s a move that’s earning plaudits as a way for women in sports to take control of their image and expand their reach. “The opportunity to have a twin that can connect with fans, with young people, people tha…

The steady encroachment of email into all moments of life has been quiet but formidable. A quick glance during a first date. Surreptitiously tapping out a reply during a wedding ceremony. Some even admit to refreshing their inbox at a funeral. Often it’s not the infinite scroll on social media that triggers the nervous phone-glancing. It’s the inbox. More than half of professionals check work email outside regular working hours, according to a recent study published by ZeroBounce, surveying 1,157 professionals in the United States and Europe last month. Nearly 3 in 4 professionals feel pressure to respond to emails off the clock, with that pressure intensify…

Whatever your take on humanity, it is hard to deny one fact: we are, as a species, more hypocritical than we think, and tend to display a curious tendency for holding strong moral principles on one hand, and disregarding them without much guilt or awareness on the other. Unlike humans, a penguin does not preach fidelity in the morning and download Tinder by lunch. A meerkat on guard does not issue a memo on teamwork before sneaking off duty. A wolf does not publish a servant-leadership manifesto before stealing the kill. Across history, human moral systems have shared a curious pattern: the stricter the rulebook, the richer the archive of exceptions. Religions preach cha…

Everything from global turmoil to inflation has caused consumers to tighten their purse strings. While many businesses have subsequently reported lower sales, some companies are still seeing significant success. On Tuesday, March 10, The Lego Group announced impressive 2025 financial results that included a 12% increase in revenue year-over-year. The privately held Danish toy company reached 83.5 billion Danish kroner (DKK), about $13.2 billion, up from 2024’s 74.3 billion DKK, about $11.6 billion. Similarly, the company’s operating and net profit rose 18% and 21% YOY, respectively. Lego also reported a 16% increase in consumer sales, a figure it primarily …

For over 40 years, “Mac vs. PC” has been technology’s most iconic rivalry. Yet in many ways, it’s been an indirect one. Apple, being Apple, has mostly stuck to computers with four-digit price tags—a rarefied territory where it can make the products it wants to make, not just the ones a given price point allows. Meanwhile, one of the best things about Windows PCs is that there’s something for everyone, including folks who don’t have a ton of money to spend. Every once in a while, though, Apple does ship something whose identity is defined by its attractive cost. I can’t think of any example more potentially impactful than its latest laptop, the MacBook Neo. It goes on sal…

Today Adobe is launching the public beta of its new AI assistant for Photoshop Web and Photoshop Mobile. The company’s impressive new assistant technology enables anyone to do seemingly flawless photo editing—Nano Banana style—by prompting the apps. Then it ups its power by giving you easy and precise ways to interact with that software—whether it’s via voice or using your finger to navigate the interface. Photoshop Mobile and Web have included AI features for a while. The web version already had Adobe Firefly generative AI features like generative fill and generative expand. The previous mobile version of Photoshop became truly usable because it smartly integrated AI to …

A streamlined application makes it easier than ever to apply to Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators. Here are six reasons why you should apply to our eighth annual BWFI program. 1. Brand exposure. Every ranked company and all those earning honoree status in a category will appear in the fall (September) issue of the magazine and on fastcompany.com. 2. Talent retention. Public recognition as a Best Workplace for Innovators honoree provides powerful third-party validation that enhances your ability to recruit and retain top talent. 3. Editorial access. Fast Company editors will review all applications; the application represents an opportunity to highl…