Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Though I long resisted the label, I have been a solopreneur ever since I started working as a freelance writer in 2010. As the owner, manager, and only employee, all decisions about my solo freelancing business are up to me—which continues to feel simultaneously invigorating and terrifying. But not all daunting solopreneurship decisions are the same. While taking creative risks and pitching big names continue to cause some minor fingernail-chewing even after all these years, investing in my business is the leading cause of second-guessing (and third-guessing, fourth-guessing) my own abilities as an entrepreneur. Many other solopreneurs share my lack of confidence …

There’s a restaurant in New York City called Rosa Mexicana that positions itself as a fresh take on Mexican cuisine. It’s upscale, well curated, and delicious. However, my favorite part about the dining experience is when you order guacamole, the wait-staff wheels out a little cart, draped in the traditional Mexican cloth, a vibrant sarape, and staked with fresh ingredients—avocados, lime, onion, salt, all the things. And as they arrive at your table, they make the guacamole right there in front of you. It’s quite the show, and it makes the entire dining experience better. What the restaurant has realized is what some of the best organizations know to be true: when the b…

There’s a generational shift happening in workplaces that goes far deeper than debates about RTO or perks and snacks. Gen Z—the cohort that learned to communicate through stories, stickers, and swipe culture—is fundamentally reimagining how work gets done. After analyzing data from 2,475 professionals across our latest research, I’m convinced they’re crafting the future of work. Gen Z intuitively understands something many organizations are still learning. As we live in a world drowning in information, clarity is a competitive advantage. And increasingly, that clarity is offered visually. The Visual-First Expectation Sound familiar? Workplace tools mirror socia…

Revolutionary France may seem like a strange place to find a life hack, but in the 1790s, the French satirist Nicolas Chamfort offered some stark advice to cope with our daily travails. “One should swallow a toad every morning, so as not to find anything disgusting for the rest of the day,” he wrote. In other words, start with the thing you dread most, and the following obligations will feel far more pleasant. Chamfort’s name has largely been forgotten by the English-speaking world, but his unsettling phrase has endured as a popular productivity mantra: “Eat the frog.” The idea has even inspired a best-selling self-help book from the 2000s. But does it actually work? …

Lately, I’ve felt weighed down by the constant churn of chaos and uncertainty—like I’m carrying a low-grade tension in my body that never fully lets up. The news is dizzying. The pace of change is relentless. Some days it feels like we’re lurching from one crisis to the next with no time to process, no moment to exhale. I find myself waking up already bracing for what the day might bring. It’s like the ground is constantly shifting, and we’re all being asked to find our footing in real time. And then there are the quieter, internal questions I carry with me—the ones that tug at me in the middle of the night or when I’m trying to make sense of the day: Am I doing enough? …

Before becoming a coach for neurodiverse individuals with ADHD, Justine Capelle Collis had a successful advertising career. She worked in Australia and the UK, and also across the US and Canadian markets. Her clients have included Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. And she achieved all this without realizing that she has ADHD. That realization came when she became a mother. Both of her sons were diagnosed with ADHD, and she started asking questions. “How do I advocate” and get “the system to bend” for them, rather than having them “fit into the system and then break?” she asked. She then went on a personal journey to retrain. Collis enrolled in po…

How should leaders prepare for AI’s accelerating impact on work and everyday life? AI scientist, entrepreneur, and Pioneers of AI podcast host Rana el Kaliouby shares her predictions for the year ahead—from physical AI entering the real world to what it means to onboard AI into your org chart. El Kaliouby cuts through today’s biggest AI headlines, bringing to light the insights that will matter most in the months to come. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business le…

“I see a bunch of Americans drinking hot water with lemon and honey, eating congee, drinking hot pot, drinking more soup, eating Chinese vegetables,” one Chinese creator, Emma Peng, recently shared in a TikTok, currently with over 3 million views. “I just want to say that my culture can be your culture. You’re doing really good hydrating yourself. I’m proud of you.” The “becoming Chinese” trend is currently everywhere on the app, and while the name might give pause, it’s mostly about adopting lifestyle habits rooted in traditional Chinese medicine. In the past month or so, Chinese creators have gone viral for espousing the benefits of common Chinese cultural prac…

If you have travel plans this weekend and don’t necessarily need to travel, you may be in luck. A massive winter storm is forecasted this weekend—dubbed Winter Storm Fern by the Weather Channel—and could bring crippling ice and heavy snow to more than 30 states stretching from Arizona to Maine. With some 230 million Americans potentially affected, many airlines are preemptively warning travelers about potential weather-related disruptions and offering travel waivers in advance. The major U.S. carriers have issued alerts to travelers with flights scheduled out of airports across more than 20 states, though the terms for changing your travel plans can vary significantly b…

When a major power outage left tens of thousands of San Francisco residents in the dark weekend, the city’s fleet of high tech self-driving vehicles went offline too. Videos circulating on social media showed Waymo robotaxis clogging up intersections, addled by the sudden absence of guidance from traffic lights. In one video posted to TikTok, a Waymo robotaxi sporting its telltale rooftop cluster of sensors blocks a busy intersection as human drivers stream around it on both sides. “This car did not move for 10+ min – it only left when the passengers ditched the car,” the TikTok user who caught the footage wrote in the caption. In another widely circulated video, at le…

This story first appeared in Advisorator, Jared’s weekly tech advice newsletter. Sign up to get more insights every Tuesday. On a recent evening, I had a mild panic after trying to call my wife and repeatedly getting the same error: “Your call could not be completed as dialed.” She was supposed to come home late that night from an out-of-town trip with some old friends, but I hadn’t heard from her that day and couldn’t recall the timing of her flight. If her phone was merely in Airplane mode, my calls should have gone to voicemail instead of failing to connect outright. In the end, it was just a random network connectivity glitch, solved by a reboot after my w…

Humans, for all our intellectual sophistication, are still tribal creatures at heart. We tend to gravitate toward people who are like us—individuals who look like us, think like us, share our values, and even mirror our quirks and tastes. On the surface, this makes intuitive sense. It explains the evolutionary origins of empathy: we feel the joys, sorrows, and struggles of others more deeply when we perceive them as part of our own “in-group.” But here’s the catch: What feels good for individuals can be disastrous for diversity. If left unchecked, our biological instinct to seek sameness undermines one of the core ingredients of high-performing organizations—diversity o…

Being seen is a fundamental human need. We all can recall a moment when we truly felt “seen” by someone for who we are, and how good and empowering it made us feel. When this happens, it deepens our sense of belonging and makes us more connected to our work, and to others. And today, with so much of our attention being scattered and superficial, being truly seen is as surprising as it is refreshing. Research supports this: a sense of social belonging is one of the strongest predictors of engagement and performance at work. According to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report, 79% of organizations say that creating a sense of belonging is important or very import…

Sales has historically been a true proving ground for new technological breakthroughs. CRM systems, predictive analytics, tools that promise better targeting, faster follow-up, and higher close rates have to be proven, or shown to be false in the realm of sales. The next technology to be proven is agentic AI. Agentic AI will create the most profound transformation sales will undergo in this century. Agentic AI systems can act independently, pursue goals, adapt to context, and collaborate with humans through the duration of a sales cycle, no matter how short or elongated. AI alone already saves sales team members over two hours a day in admin tasks, and agentics will …

It’s no secret: Landing a job in today’s economy can feel overwhelmingly difficult. Qualified candidates regularly apply to hundreds—sometimes even thousands—of positions before receiving that one coveted offer. In fact, over half of unemployed job seekers have been searching for four months or longer, highlighting how competitive the market has become. And it’s not just the job market itself that’s challenging. We’re living through one of the most turbulent periods in modern history: The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 4.1%, the highest in over two years. 23,000+ tech layoffs occurred in the first three months of 2025 alone. Nearly 50% of Americans are living pa…

Yes, it’s that time of year again: when we don’t just wrap up one chapter but start anticipating the next, determined to begin with something that resembles a clean slate. The ritual is familiar: a little reflection, a little optimism, and a list of promises to our future selves. New Year’s resolutions are extremely popular, particularly relative to their low execution rate. According to a recent 2025 YouGov survey, 31% of U.S. adults can be expected to set at least one resolution for the new year–with the highest participation among younger adults (under 30), of whom 58% say they will make a resolution. Saving money emerges as the single most common New Year’s resoluti…

As tech companies shell out millions for top AI talent—even reportedly billions—regular rank-and-file employees are left wondering how to get in on the action and land a job in artificial intelligence. One report found that job postings that mention needing at least one AI skill had salaries 28% higher than other jobs, which translates to $18,000 more. Jobs that required two AI skills had a 43% salary jump. To begin with, it’s worth considering where the AI jobs are and how this intersects with your interests and existing skills. Many jobs in AI can roughly be divided into five different categories: researchers engineers business strategists doma…

Two romantasy authors have publicly defended their use of artificial intelligence after being caught with AI-generated prompts left in their published works. While their readers are far from impressed, the writers insist that it does not take away from their craft. Excerpts from novels published by K.C. Crowne and Lena McDonald have been spreading across Reddit, Goodreads, and Bluesky, after readers discovered revision notes that read like ChatGPT and cues that reference the style of other authors embedded in the copy. “I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath …

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 True Nort…

Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91. Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals. Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death, and said that no arrangements had been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month. Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by then husband Roger Vadim, it tr…

Zohran Mamdani has promised to transform New York City government when he becomes mayor. Can he do it? Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, already faces intense scrutiny, even before taking office in one of the country’s most scrutinized political jobs. Republicans have cast him as a liberal boogeyman. Some of his fellow Democrats have deemed him too far left. Progressives are closely watching for any signs of him shifting toward the center. On Jan. 1, he will assume control of America’s biggest city under that harsh spotlight, with the country watching to see if he can pull off the big promises that vaulted him to office and handle the everyday duties of the …

A new year often starts with a simple question: How can we do better? For businesses, it’s a question that applies to almost everything, from product innovation to climate impact—an area of increasing urgency for many. The goal of achieving net-zero is now a staple of most businesses’ annual plans, however the journey there is often challenging. It can be fraught with hidden trade-offs, making it difficult for ESG leaders to know whether they are truly backing the right solutions in pursuit of their climate goals. Take aviation, for example. As one of the world’s most difficult sectors to decarbonize, its 2.5% share of global CO2 emissions represents a major challenge f…

Construction materials are responsible for nearly one-third of global carbon dioxide emissions. And as global demand for construction continues to rise (it has already tripled over the past 25 years), its emissions are bound to climb even higher.e In fact, some, like environmental engineer and University of Virginia professor Andres Clarens, see materials’ potential negative impact as so existential that he calls them the “last major frontier” in the fight against climate change. If that’s the case, we need to reduce the emissions associated with commonly used building materials like cement and steel—and we need to develop alternative materials that emit fewer greenhouse …