Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

In my old banking job, where I worked for 12 years, I found myself frustrated with the slow pace of the work, the layers of red tape and approvals to get anything done. After all, banking was a highly regulated industry, and while there were many rules to follow, they were just simply being a good bank by following them. I felt tired, drained, and lacked energy—similar symptoms to burnout. While the organization was frequently voted a “best place to work,” I couldn’t figure out why my “great job” felt so bad. I wasn’t overworking or spending endless evenings logging in, so the typical paths to burnout didn’t make sense. What I was actually experiencing was rust out. …

When I worked in tech, I often heard engineering leaders explain why they couldn’t hire more women or minorities: the so-called pipeline problem. They claimed there simply weren’t enough qualified candidates entering the system, so naturally the pool of diverse talent remained thin. Many of us in the ecosystem called BS. The reality wasn’t a lack of qualified people; it was a lack of imagination, access, and commitment to creating inclusive environments where diverse talent could thrive. Fast forward to my work today in women’s sports. I find myself thinking about that same phrase—this time with a twist. In sports, a pipeline problem is very real, and very serious. Gi…

There are many reasons why someone may have a second job or some kind of side gig when they’re working for you. They may have financial needs that are greater than what you can pay. They may have expertise that enables them to consult or engage with other businesses. They may have a passion project or startup that they’re nurturing while they work for you. Whatever it is that is driving your employees, their other line of work can affect their performance for you. It is valuable to understand what your team members are doing and the impact it is having on their responsibilities for you. Some workplaces (like mine) require explicit declarations of conflicts of inte…

For decades, MBA programs, leadership trainings, and consultancies have told us that effective leaders share a set of “essential competencies.” You know the lists: empathy, strategic vision, humility, charisma, psychological safety, communication skills. These ideas get repeated in boardrooms and promised in executive education programs. But if these competencies were truly essential, then the leaders we most admire should have them. The truth is, they often don’t. This never made sense to me. In addition to my writing and research, I’ve spent the past 15 years running a secret dining experience called the Influencers Dinner. We’ve hosted close to 4,000 Olympians, Nob…

When we first started Little Spoon, our mission was clear: Make fresh, healthy food accessible at every age and stage of early childhood. But we quickly realized checking the proverbial boxes alone (nutritious: check, convenient: check) wasn’t enough. After all, parents are inundated with options—the decision fatigue surrounding parenting choices is overwhelming. What makes a brand stand apart isn’t utility; it’s the ability to understand and affirm who your customer is (and hopes to be). Parents want to feel emotionally supported, seen, and confident in their decisions, particularly within the vast excess of parenting advice in 2025: chock full of dated narrative…

Nearly every company I work with is focused on using AI to drive productivity and efficiency. They are starting to see real gains, and that’s leading to excitement about AI’s future potential. However, AI used to drive efficiency is only the starting line, and there’s real risk if we stop there. In my work with Fortune 500 leaders across the C-suite, from chief HR officers (CHROs) to CTOs and CMOs, I’ve seen that the very best organizations recognize a bigger opportunity: using AI to help managers build connection and trust with their teams. The companies that are able to leverage AI both to drive efficiency gains and to build highly motivated teams will be the ones that …

How many female entrepreneurs, bankers, and industrialists from the past can you name? You could be forgiven for thinking that, until relatively recently, there were none at all. Women are commonly assumed to have spent most of history as housewives. But in my new book, Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power, I present a revised economic history of the world—one that places women at the heart of the development of the global economy. Here are just five of the (many) ways that women have powered the global economy from the Stone Age to the present day. 1. Creators of global money Before electronic payments, banknotes, and silver coins, it was cloth—…

Quantum computing promises to disrupt entire industries because it leverages the rules of quantum physics to perform calculations in fundamentally new ways. Unlike traditional computers that process information in a linear, step-by-step fashion, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, which can represent multiple states simultaneously. This leads to breakthroughs in areas such as drug discovery, financial modeling, and cybersecurity by overcoming computational barriers that have limited progress for decades. Quantum computing is transitioning from theoretical research to a transformative force for industries worldwide, much like AI and cloud computing before it. …

In the 1960s, IBM embarked on what Fortune called the $5 billion gamble. It was a bet-the-company investment on a scale nobody had seen before. The payoff was the legendary System/360 mainframes, which revolutionized computing and set the stage for two decades of IBM dominance. That $5 billion would be roughly the equivalent of $50 billion today, but even that princely sum is dwarfed by the $364 billion that tech giants are expected to invest in artificial intelligence this year. And the spending won’t stop there. McKinsey projects that building AI data centers alone could demand $5.2 trillion by 2030. Today, the AI investment boom is probably the single biggest f…

This year, Columbus Day, also known as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, lands on Monday, October 13. While it’s a federal holiday and many schools have it off, there are plenty of businesses still open—as well as U.S. stock markets. Here’s what to know about the holiday, and what’s open and closed today. Why is the holiday called Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day? Columbus Day, named after Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, occurs on the second Monday in October of every year, and celebrates Columbus’s arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492, in the Bahamas. However, due to criticism over the treatment of Native Americans who were here when Colum…

There’s a line I heard recently from Mel Robbins that’s been echoing in my head ever since: “People do well if they can.” It’s deceptively simple. The kind of phrase you nod at, maybe even repost. But when you sit with it, really sit with it, it starts to challenge a lot of the assumptions made every day. Especially when it comes to financial health and literacy. NOT LAZY, JUST LIMITED OPTIONS Let’s be honest: It’s easy to judge what we don’t understand. It’s easy to look at people struggling with money and tell ourselves stories. They’re reckless. They don’t care. They should know better. But here’s the thing: Most people actually do care. They want to pay off…

What if, instead of working toward an exit strategy, we built companies for longevity? That’s the question at the heart of employee ownership. It’s not just a perk to lure talent. It’s a fundamentally different way of building a business, and one that might just be the key to long-term resilience. I’ve spent nearly my entire career inside a 100% employee-owned architecture, engineering, planning, and interiors design firm. Today as CEO, I lead its 1,800 employee-owners. I’ve seen firsthand how this model changes everything, from how team members treat clients to how the organization is able to weather change. But this isn’t a story about just one company. It’s abo…

When companies undergo a major change, such as a CEO transition, reorganization, merger, or acquisition, most leaders default to one well-worn instinct: control the message. Lock down talking points. Tighten the language. Make it polished and official. In working with executive teams across industries, from tech to retail, we’ve seen time and again that simply trying to control the message isn’t enough. In fact, it often has the opposite effect, creating more confusion and mistrust than clarity. Because in every high-stakes moment, your audience—employees, customers, investors—is asking the same unspoken question: “What’s in it for me?” And if you’re not answe…

It’s a sound—and smell—car commuters have become intimately familiar with: the noxious fumes of asphalt repaving. U.S. road maintenance and highway expansion require a massive quantity of asphalt every year, roughly 400 million tons a year on average, according to Asphalt magazine, a publication of the international trade association Asphalt Institute. But a new process developed by St. Louis-based firm Verde Resources seeks to streamline the process, making it more sustainable and odorless. Verde’s new BioAsphalt process, which has been in development since 2022, utilizes what’s called biochar, or natural wood remnants from forestry waste that get added into the trad…

I like chatting with my friends—who doesn’t?—but I don’t always know where to find them. There are simply too many apps. Some of my friends text, others use WhatsApp, while others yet insist on using Discord or the DM feature in whatever random social network they prefer. It’s a mess, and it can mean keeping several tabs open all day just to keep the conversations flowing. It makes you wish some application could combine all of your conversations into one place. This is a dream that used to be reality. Applications like Trillian, Pidgin, and Adium all combined instant messaging services like AIM, MSN, and ICQ in one handy interface. Over time, though, messaging se…

A blood test for more than 50 types of cancer could significantly boost early detection and speed up diagnosis, according to a new study. Made by U.S. pharmaceutical company Grail, the Galleri test aims to find fragments of DNA in a person’s blood that can indicate the presence of a cancerous tumor. Among the cancers that the test can detect, many have no current screening programs. The PATHFINDER 2 study included more than 36,000 people aged 50 and older who had no cancer symptoms. In participants who were followed for more than a year, the test caught some 40.4% of cancer cases. For those who got a positive result on the Galleri test, 61.6% of them went on to …

The one practical career security no one can take from you is control. I’ve built my career on five core mindsets that helped me transition to being responsible for my own career success. It’s how I run my professional life. Careers are not just built. They’re owned. That’s how you become indispensable. Your career isn’t a ladder. It’s a business. And you are in charge. Most people treat it like a job. I treat it like an asset. Every skill, every project, every task matters. If you want leverage, freedom, and a career that works for you, these mindsets can help you take your career to another level. They can determine your choices, growth, and freedom. And change how you …

In a stunt that’s surely destined for Netflix adaptation, this weekend a group of thieves broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and stole nine pieces of priceless jewelry in less than seven minutes. Prediction markets are already betting on whether the robbers will be caught. Prediction markets, including popular sites like Polymarket and Kalshi, are platforms dedicated to betting on current events including elections, sports events, and even cultural moments. In the past, they’ve been used to gamble on the next pope, the incoming editor of Vogue, and even whether the “Coldplaygate” couple would each get a divorce. Now, as French police desperately search for th…

Many news outlets have reported an increase—or surge—in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, diagnoses in both children and adults. At the same time, health care providers, teachers, and school systems have reported an uptick in requests for ADHD assessments. These reports have led some experts and parents to wonder whether ADHD is being overdiagnosed and overtreated. As researchers who have spent our careers studying neurodevelopmental disorders like ADHD, we are concerned that fears about widespread overdiagnosis are misplaced, perhaps based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the condition. Understanding ADHD as one end of a spectrum Discu…

When AI wearable company Friend blanketed New York City with ads last month, there was significant backlash. Many of the company’s ads (which included rage-baiting copy like, “I’ll never bail on our dinner plans”) ended up defaced with graffiti that called the product “AI trash,” “surveillance capitalism,” and a tool to “profit off of loneliness.” Despite the campaign running in New York, it struck a national nerve as it became a lightening rod for people’s feelings around AI. It was only a matter of time before the brands got in on the debate. A couple weeks after the campaign’s debut, beer giant Heineken joined the chat, posting on Instagram: “The best way to ma…

Seeking a flatter management structure is a leadership trend you could compare to fashion’s craze for skinny jeans—trendy yesterday, forgotten tomorrow, then back in fashion again before you know it. Recently, big tech firms like Meta, Microsoft, and Google made headlines for cutting management positions to lower costs and increase productivity—turning some of their workloads over to AI tools. But a new survey from San Francisco-based workplace communications outfit Firstup shows that eliminating too many management jobs can have some unexpected effects on the way your teams work, sometimes damaging employee engagement, which undermines productivity. This is definitel…

For many, picking up a controller at the end of a long day to neutralize some zombies or take on a side quest with a fairy is a way to unwind and escape from the demands of work. But it might also have some unexpected benefits that follow you from the character select screen and into the office. A new report from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) finds that the motivations behind gaming go far beyond fun. While 66% of the more than 24,000 players in 21 countries surveyed say they play primarily for enjoyment, the majority credit gaming with developing real-world skills, like problem-solving, teamwork, adaptability, and critical thinking. All useful tr…

San Diego-based Shield AI is developing a first of its kind fighter jet: a 2,000-mile-range pilotless plane that takes off and lands vertically and uses artificial intelligence to fly itself, even when adversaries jam navigation and communication systems. Like the company’s smaller, combat-tested autonomous drone, the V-BAT, the X-BAT doesn’t need a runway, allowing it to launch from remote islands or the decks of aircraft carriers or drone ships. But with its larger blended wing body design, the X-BAT can carry missiles and electronic weapons. Instead of propellers, it’s powered by an afterburning jet engine. “Airpower without runways is the holy grail of deterr…

Research shows that an employee’s perception of what makes an authentic leader is the most significant predictor of job satisfaction and happiness at work. And I experienced this firsthand when my boss said three simple words that changed everything. You see, as a journalist, I was always accustomed to someone checking, editing, and approving every piece before publication. So when I asked my new boss yet another question about a piece of content I was working on, his response shocked me. He turned around and said, “I trust you.” I was blown away because it was a huge shift. For the first time, Someone is encouraging me to trust my own judgement instead of seeking…

You might have a tough time getting your hands on a pumpkin spice latte over the next few days. Starbucks Workers United, the union representing more than 12,000 workers across 650 stores nationwide, is planning to picket and stage rallies outside 60 locations of the coffee chain this weekend. Seventy rallies and pickets will take place from today through November 1, the union said. Today the union will begin voting on a work strike authorization, stemming from demands for new contracts that address better staffing hours, higher pay, and “resolution for hundreds of outstanding unfair labor practice charges,” according to the union. Starbucks has faced a …