Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

It’s been more than half a century since it became more common to ship freight in trucks than by train. But when one company decided to start selling its product in the New York City market, it built its own new rail terminal to avoid the cost and emissions of trucking. “A truck is not an efficient way to take these types of materials long distance,” says Grant Quasha, CEO of Eco Material Technologies. The company makes supplementary cementitious material or SCM, a component added to concrete to make it stronger and longer-lasting. The material is made from fly ash, a type of waste produced from coal plants that the company sources from landfills at locations througho…

Psychologist: “Design influences behavior.” Neuroscientist: “Design influences behavior.” Uncivil engineer: “It’s not like my road design influences driver behavior.” Every day, preventable crashes are destroying lives because transportation planners and engineers don’t understand that design influences behavior. (I’m being charitable by assuming they don’t understand.) Drivers respond to the built environment much the same way water responds to a riverbed. The shape, width, and surface conditions of the riverbed determine the water’s speed, turbulence, and direction. Likewise, the width of a road, presence of visual cues, curvature, intersections, and sur…

As the year winds down, many leaders find themselves in a familiar ritual: closing the books, reviewing revenue targets, and drafting ambitious financial goals for the year ahead. These practices are important. But after years of designing teams and advising organizations at different stages of growth, I’ve come to believe that the most valuable year-end ritual has little to do with money alone. Instead, it’s about setting nonfinancial metrics alongside your financial ones. Revenue tells you where your business landed. Nonfinancial metrics tell you why and whether the success you’re chasing is sustainable. They reveal the health of your organization from the insid…

When OpenAI pulled back its latest ChatGPT release—one that apparently turned the helpful chatbot into a total suck-up—the company took the welcome step of explaining exactly what happened in a pair of blog posts. The response was a notable move and really pulled back the curtain on how much of what these systems do is shaped by language choices most people never see. A tweak in phrasing, a shift in tone, and suddenly the model behaves differently. For journalists, this shouldn’t be surprising. Many editorial meetings are spent agonizing over framing, tone, and headline language. But what is surprising—and maybe even a little disorienting—is that the same editorial se…

The fintech industry has spent the last decade obsessing over seamless experiences and bringing financial products inside the tools that consumers were already hooked on. Instant approvals, one-click funding, and frictionless onboarding became the benchmarks of success. And for good reason; they removed friction that had frustrated their customers for generations. But here’s what we’re learning as embedded finance matures: The consumers and businesses that use embedded financial products repeatedly and stay loyal to their platforms are not just staying for the technology and platform. They’re staying because when they need it, they’re able to get help from people who …

After a two-year battle with regulators, a federal judge ruled in late December to block the merger of grocery behemoths Kroger and Albertsons. The deal fell apart after facing significant pushback—and a lawsuit—from the Federal Trade Commission under the Biden administration, in part over concerns that unionized grocery workers would have less leverage to negotiate wage increases and respond to layoffs following a merger. Those concerns were not unfounded: The overwhelming majority of grocery workers (92%) are frontline staff in nonsupervisory positions, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics—and as industry leaders, Kroger and Albertsons employ 28% o…

Few things seem more obvious and unquestionable than the notion that leaders should always be true to their values, no matter what. This widely-endorsed mantra, known as moral authenticity, is based on two rather logical assumptions. First, leaders (unlike, say, first line supervisors or mid-level managers), are not just in charge to coordinate human activity, but also to act as agents of meaning. Indeed, what most people expect from leaders is some form of inspiration, including ethical guidance, spiritual direction, and strong alignment between their values and behaviors. Second, followers gravitate towards leaders who share their values or core beliefs. T…

If you’ve ever been hit with a sketchy text warning you of an overdue toll road payment or mysterious U.S. Postal Service fees, you’ve likely been targeted by one of the largest cyber scams sweeping the globe. Now, Google is suing an international cybercrime group it believes is responsible for the ubiquitous text-based phishing scheme, which may have raked in as much as $1 billion over the last three years. In the lawsuit filed Wednesday, Google alleges that 25 people are part of a sprawling scam operation that is known as “Lighthouse” and was designed to swipe the logins and passwords of victims caught in its web. The Lighthouse scam hinges on tricking people w…

As press releases go, it was a mic drop moment. On September 4, OpenAI announced that it was coming after LinkedIn. And it was coming after job search specifically. For those unfamiliar with the story, it was reported across multiple sources that not content with torpedoing Google, education, interpersonal relationships, and entire industries such as psychiatry or management consultancy (both smugly considered untouchable until about 15 minutes ago), OpenAI is now coming after the age-old industry of human resources. Specifically, the $300 billion company wants to streamline the process of hiring by automatically matching candidates to roles via context alone,…

One of the best performing stocks on the market yesterday was Webull Corporation (Nasdaq: BULL), which saw its shares surge nearly 375% in a single trading session to end the day at $62.90. The stock price surge in BULL occurred on its second trading day after the stock-trading platform merged with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to go public. But in premarket trading today, BULL shares are down a significant amount—about 15% as of the time of this writing. Here’s what to know about the stock and what could be next for Webull shares. What is Webull? Webull Corporation is the owner of the Webull trading platform. The online platform allows users to …

Experience sharpens judgment, boosts productivity, and teaches lessons that only come from years on the job. Yet, despite its value, companies continue to undervalue those with the most experience to offer. Employers have spent the past decade championing inclusivity. Yet, our latest survey of 1,000 Americans over 50 by DateMyAge found that 73% of over-50s feel treated as if their best years are already behind them, and 62% believe that employers have written them off professionally. Ageism isn’t just a workplace issue. It’s a cultural one. We wanted to explore it more deeply to challenge the idea that life and ambition have an expiration date. Age bias, som…

It’s the day after Super Bowl Sunday, otherwise known as National Hangover Day. Because, let’s face it—even if you have zero interest in football and can’t even remember who won the game, if you’re like many Americans, you probably at least went to a watch party. (If for nothing else than for the joy-bringing halftime show led by the one and only Bad Bunny.) But if you’re feeling a little, er, off today. . .you’re far from alone. According to UKG’s annual Super Bowl Absenteeism Survey, an estimated 26.2 million U.S. employees were anticipated to stay home today. That means, that no matter who wins or loses the Super Bowl, the big loser on Super “Sick Monday” is t…

Block recently made headlines when CEO Jack Dorsey announced it was reducing its workforce and replacing some roles with AI agents. But it wasn’t the first organization to do this. And it won’t be the last. And in the middle of that announcement—and the LinkedIn hot takes—there are real managers trying to figure out what to say to their teams. That’s the part people want to hear—and need. Your Team Is Already Scared—And They’re Watching You If your organization has made any moves toward AI in the last year—and most have—your team is likely on edge. They’ve watched colleagues get laid off. They’ve heard the buzzwords: “efficiency, “optimization,” “doing more …

California’s top insurance regulator said Tuesday that State Farm can soon start raising premiums by 17% for all of its home insurance customers in the state to help the insurer rebuild its capital following the Los Angeles wildfires. State Farm has argued the emergency rate hikes are necessary to help the company avoid a “dire” financial crisis that could force them to drop more California policies. The state’s largest home insurer said it was already struggling financially before this year but the LA fires, which destroyed more than 16,000 buildings in January, have made things worse. The increase will apply to all of the roughly one million homeowners State Farm insu…