Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

After years of struggling with the complexities of a merger that saw the combination of two major discount retailers a decade ago, Dollar Tree has decided to cut ties with Family Dollar. The company has announced an agreement to divest its Family Dollar business to private equity firms Brigade Capital Management and Macellum Capital Management for $1 billion, a strategic move that aims to streamline operations and enhance focus on its core Dollar Tree segment. Following the announcement, Dollar Tree’s shares surged nearly 7% in premarket trading on Wednesday. The deal is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to improve performance, with CEO Rick Dreiling emp…

Ask almost any pediatrician or child expert, and they will tell you: Good nutrition is the foundation for healthy development, especially during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. When children are well-nourished, they are better able to grow, learn, and engage with their communities, and to be resilient in the face of illness.     Undernutrition is linked to nearly half of all deaths in children under five. Today, an estimated 148 million young children are affected by stunting—being too short for their age as a result of chronic undernutrition, often starting in the womb. Stunting isn’t just about height; it reflects lasting setbacks in brain development, immu…

The AI revolution is redefining business and tech leadership—and no one is standing more squarely on the front lines than product leaders. Once seen as a behind-the-scenes role, the CPO is now one of the most powerful voices in the executive suite. In 2020, only 4% of the Fortune 1000 had a CPO, a number that has since ballooned to almost 50%. In the next few years, we expect to see that figure grow to 70%. At Products That Count, the nonprofit for product managers I chair, we’ve spent the past year talking to almost 1,000 CPOs at companies ranging from startup unicorns to Fortune 100 giants like Salesforce, Walmart, and Microsoft. What we’ve heard is clear: The o…

Office work is officially back from the dead—if New York is any indication, that is. In Manhattan, businesses are leasing more office space than they have in close to a decade, in a sign that the return-to-office movement is likely to stick around. According to real estate investor CBRE, during the first nine months of 2025, Manhattan businesses leased 23.2 million square feet of office space, the most since 2006. Leasing has already surpassed last year’s total, with 143 leases at more than $100 per square foot. However, as the epicenter of business, New York City is an outlier: Nationally, leasing is still around 11% below the pre-COVID average. Unsurprisingly, …

Navigating bedtime with a teenager is, in many homes, a nightly battle with a constant refrain: Get off your phone! Go to bed! Research shows that today’s teenagers are more sleep-deprived than ever before. Adolescents need between eight and 10 hours of sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But nearly 80% of American teenagers aren’t getting that, and experts say it’s affecting important areas like mental health and school attendance. Bedtime routines aren’t just for toddlers. Teenagers need them, too, says Denise Pope, an expert on child development and a senior lecturer at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Experts in ad…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. I’ve recently written about free, private AI tools and the best AI mobile apps. To build on that AI series, I’m sharing a new guest post today on how to make the most of AI by Frank Andrade, The PyCoach. He’s an AI & Python instructor who has helped thousands of people on YouTube and Substack master AI with beginner-friendly guides and in-depth tutorials. As he starts a new journey on Instagram, he’s offering his ChatGPT course free to anyone who follows & DMs him. I’ve been using ChatGPT since the day it was released. Bac…

Fabric and craft retailer Joann Inc. is officially shutting down all of its stores following a turbulent bankruptcy process. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January for the second time in less than a year, initially saying it would keep its stores open while restructuring its debt. However, just weeks after the filing, Joann reversed course and announced it would close 500 of its roughly 800 locations, as Fast Company reported. The closure of those stores was just the beginning. As part of the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings, Joann held an auction on February 21 to sell off its assets. A limited liability company called GA Joann Retail P…

Altadena Girls began as a pop-up shop immediately after the Eaton Fire tore through Los Angeles, born out of a desire to help affected teenage girls regain a sense of their identity. The mission was simple yet profound: offer a space where they could rebuild what had been lost—clothing, makeup, and other items that help define who they are. The impact was significant as it reached more than 42 million people on social media in the first few weeks while receiving support from high-level brands and celebrities. Now, Altadena Girls is planning to open a community center dedicated to empowering young girls, helping them through trauma, and providing long-term support…

Shares of ​​UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) plunged by more than 22% Thursday morning after the company reported underwhelming first-quarter earnings and revised its full-year outlook. The health insurance giant lowered its 2025 earnings forecast, now projecting net earnings of $24.65 to $25.15 per share and adjusted earnings of $26.00 to $26.50 per share. This marks a downgrade from its January guidance, which anticipated net earnings between $28.15 and $28.65 per share and adjusted earnings in the range of $29.50 to $30.00 per share. “UnitedHealth Group grew to serve more people more comprehensively but did not perform up to our expectations, and we are aggressiv…

Inside a new factory near Louisville, Kentucky, bright orange robots will soon begin carefully loading boot parts into a machine that adds soles. It’s one step in the highly automated process of making a Keen work boot—and an illustration of what it looks like now to bring factories back to the United States. Keen, which is headquartered in Portland, Oregon, started planning the new factory last year, long before current tariffs were in place. And the company, unlike the majority of shoe brands, had already been manufacturing some shoes in Portland for more than a decade. The Portland factory is now closing as the company prepares to open the larger factory in Kentucky n…

In the future, your roof could generate power not only from the sun but also from falling rain. In a recent study, scientists demonstrated a new way to capture renewable energy from rainwater. “There is a large amount of energy in rain,” says Siowling Soh, an engineering professor at the National University of Singapore and author of the study, which was published in ACS Central Science. “This large amount of energy is wasted every day. There is currently no commercial technology that tries to harvest it.” When water flows down a pipe, it can pick up and move tiny electric charges from the pipe’s surface. That creates a small electric current. It’s similar to the …

The NBA’s Boston Celtics are used to packing their arena with a sea of green. Now, the company’s owners, the Grousbeck family, are seeing green. That’s because the franchise has reportedly been sold for $6.1 billion, per ESPN, to a group led by Bill Chisholm, managing partner at private equity firm Symphony Technology Group. The sale would be the largest for a sports franchise in North American history, beating out the sale of the NFL’s Washington Commanders franchise two years ago, which tallied $6.05 billion. The sale would still need to be approved by the NBA Board of Governors. Fast Company has reached out to both the Celtics and Symphony Technology Group for …

Organizations look structured and logical from the outside—boxes and lines, reporting relationships, KPIs, and performance frameworks. But walk into any real meeting, and you’ll sense it: side glances, shifting energy, people going silent when one voice enters the room, unexplained resistance to change, and power dynamics no slide deck could predict. That’s not just dysfunction. That’s the system speaking, and most leaders aren’t listening. That is why we need something called systemic intelligence. Systemic intelligence is the capacity to sense and respond to the invisible forces shaping an organization’s behavior, culture, and outcomes. It’s not about…

Data shows that workers and bosses are already at war over where to work, with management demanding more days in the office and employees trying to buck these mandates. But according to a recent report, a new front has opened in the battle over workplace flexibility. It centers not on where employees work but when. When videoconferencing company Owl Labs surveyed 2,000 U.S. workers for its 2025 State of Hybrid Work report, almost half reported they did not have enough flexibility in regard to when they worked. What kind of flexibility were they hoping to get? Something that Owl Labs calls “microshifting.” You may know it simply as breaking up your day as you see …

“Who am I to tell them how to make decisions?” This anxiety-induced thought played like a broken record in my head as my first leadership training event approached in my new role as a training director. Talking in front of 40 leaders, most of whom were older than my ripe old age of 30 at the time felt like the perfect opportunity for them to see right through my lack of expertise and expose me as the fraud I was. Years ago, while working at a regional bank, I was promoted from trainer to leading a training team in another department. My prior roles as a sales trainer and human resources consultant allowed me to build a company-wide reputation as an expert on compl…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Regular readers of Modern CEO know I often cite advice and anecdotes from Bill George, the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. I share his words in part because of the depth of his experience and his extensive body of work, including Tru…

The cost of a multistep skincare routine can quickly add up. But have you ever wondered what would happen if you simply stopped? This weekend, a TikTok creator went viral for discussing her controversial “Caveman Method,” which she claims is helping restore her skin barrier after years of picking at her skin. In a video that has since racked up nearly 10 million views, Tia Zakher announced she had cut out everything from her beauty routine—even water. “What you are seeing is dead skin that’s going to flake off eventually while healthy skin forms underneath,” she posted in response to questions about the texture on her face. In a separate video, she explain…

Ashlee Piper is a former political strategist turned eco-lifestyle journalist. She has been a Professor of Sustainability Marketing at Loyola University Chicago and eco instructor for LinkedIn Learning. Well-known companies, such as Airbnb, LUSH, and Nissan, have sought her counsel on sustainability practices. Piper has spoken at the United Nations, SXSW, and has a popular TED Talk. What’s the big idea? A life of overconsumption can feel almost inescapable in our hyper-personalized advertising ecosystem. Billions of dollars go into getting people hooked on shopping. Fortunately, a way out of this addictive cycle is the No New Things challenge, which guides anyone f…

One X user named Julia recently shared screenshots of an email exchange with her boyfriend in which she was, in her own words, “colleague-zoned.” In the now-viral post, which has over 15.4 million views at the time of writing, Julia penned in the caption: “Sent a document to my boyfriend’s work email so he could print it for me and got colleague-zoned.” Julia had emailed her boyfriend a document to print, ending her note with, “I love you! Please print this for me! Thanks,” and a red heart emoji. To which he formally responded: “Julia, thanks for reaching out. I have received your document and printed it on 8″ x 11″ paper. Will deliver to you later this evening to…

You’ve probably heard of Charles and Ray Eames, the designers behind the iconic Eames chair and ottoman, and Georgia O’Keefe, the trailblazing artist. But you might not know about how these artists were connected during their careers—or the art that came from their camaraderie. Herman Miller, in collaboration with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, is bringing that history to light with a new limited-run furniture line. The New Mexico Collection, set to be released on May 20, celebrates the Eameses, O’Keeffe, and designer Alexander Girard, the founding director of Herman Miller’s textile division. Included in the launch are 300 special Eames Wire Chairs, retailing for $1,9…