Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

In 2015, I had a stillborn baby girl. I found out during a prenatal appointment that my daughter had no heartbeat. Because I was in my second trimester, I was admitted to the hospital’s labor and delivery ward. The same ward where women deliver live babies. Except I did not get to bring my baby home. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. I’ve talked openly about pregnancy loss for many years. I’ve advocated for more openness in the workplace. It’s a way to honor my daughter, to use my voice to make things better for other grieving parents. Bereavement policies should cover pregnancy loss My employer at the time had a very flexible leave …

As a home business owner, understanding how to effectively communicate with your team is crucial for growth and success. Have you ever considered what factors you should weigh before making a significant request from your direct reports? Assess Your Relationship: Before making a big ask, evaluate your rapport with your team. Trust and respect are foundational; if these elements are strong, your request is more likely to be met with a positive response.Clarity of Purpose: Clearly articulate the reason behind your request. When team members understand the 'why,' they are more likely to feel motivated and engaged in the process.Timing is Everything: Choose the right moment …

How would a school shooting affect your employees? It’s something that most employers never want to think about, but it’s a horrifyingly real threat to any community—and the companies and organizations that do business there. Following the death of my youngest son, Dylan, in the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting, I can tell you first-hand about the lasting trauma that occurs when your child is injured or killed in this type of tragedy—and how that ripples through the entire community. In October, we held America’s Safe Schools Week, a national initiative to raise awareness about school violence and promote safety. It’s also a time for companies to recognize they have a …

Stocks are drifting near their record heights on Wall Street Wednesday, while the price of gold falls again to trim more off its tremendous gain for the year. The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% in early trading and is sitting just underneath its all-time high, which was set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 65 points, or 0.1%, coming off its own record. The Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time. Bank stocks were holding relatively steady after Capital One Financial, Western Alliance Bancorp and others reported stronger profits for the summer than analysts expected. The report from Western Alliance was particularly welcome a…

As climate change causes increasingly severe natural disasters, it’s also increasingly threatening our art, culture, and shared history. In the recent Los Angeles wildfires, billions of dollars in fine art may have been consumed; architectural gems by Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, and others were destroyed; and the warehouse of Belmont Music Publishing, a repository chronicling Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg, was lost in what the composer’s son called “a profound cultural blow.” For museums, archives, and libraries, which often operate as nonprofits on limited budgets, meeting these increased risks poses significant financial constraints. This challenge has…

The chief executive of Primark, one of Europe’s biggest fast fashion retailers, has resigned after an investigation into his behavior toward a woman in a social environment. Paul Marchant, Primark’s CEO since 2009, has apologized to the individual involved and resigned with immediate effect, the company said Monday. Shares in Primark’s parent, Associated British Foods, fell 4.9% in early trading, compared with a 0.8% drop in Britain’s benchmark stock index. Marchant “acknowledged his error of judgement and accepts that his actions fell below the standards expected by the company,” Primark said in a statement. The retailer has 451 stores in 17 countries across …

The walk sign lights up, and you’re ready to step off the curb when you hear the blare of an ambulance siren—or the sound of kids screaming, or even some leaves rustling in the wind. How do you make a sensible decision about whether it’s safe to cross the street when your brain must instantaneously juggle conflicting and related sensory information? Those decisions are made in the prefrontal cortex. One of the last areas of the brain to mature, it’s responsible for moment-to-moment reactions. And although researchers have long studied how brain cells process mixed signals, the mechanism has largely remained a mystery. Finally, new research is providing some insigh…

Spring is in the air! The tulips are blooming, college acceptance letters are zooming into email inboxes, and the majority of parents with college-bound students are panicking about paying for their kid’s schooling. Ain’t this time of year grand? There’s a lot that families can do to tame the cost of higher education, starting with filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) which determines a student’s eligibility for federal aid, applying for scholarships and grants which don’t need to be repaid, and considering the cost of attendance when comparing college acceptance offers. But for some college students, there is a funding gap between their…

Last week, in an article for Fast Company, author and tech executive Rebekah Bastian wrote about why she doesn’t read productivity books. The vast majority of these books are written by men who don’t shoulder the majority of parenting duties, she says. “Like so many working women, I carry a substantial portion of the ‘second shift’ at home: cooking, homework help, bedtime routines, and general emotional support,” she writes. “The big chunk of uninterrupted time that these authors count on—whether it’s a 5 a.m. stretch of ‘sacred hours’ or a mini-sabbatical to reboot creativity—just doesn’t exist in my life. If I tried to follow their advice, I’d be setting myself up f…

AI can do a lot of things. It can write your emails. It can make your grocery list. It can even interview you for a job. But now, more and more people are depending on AI for things that require real human qualities: life coaching, therapy, even companionship. Scott Galloway, best-selling author and professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says the real problem with synthetic relationships is what they lack: any kind of struggle or challenge that comes with maintaining real relationships. Leaning on AI In a recent social media post, Galloway calls AI “a rabbit hole” that is “sequestering us from each other”—and while it may…

Project management software giant Asana is rolling out what it calls “AI teammates”—bots that can participate in handling and discussing work via Asana’s platform in similar ways to actual humans. Unlike some AI assistant and copilot products that take direction only from one human user, Asana’s AI teammates are designed to work with multiple humans, similar to how an actual new hire might receive assignments, feedback, and comments from a range of coworkers. The aim is to offer a set of AI tools that integrate not only with software companies already use, but with the Asana-based workflows they rely on to divvy up and discuss work. So while the bots won’t necessaril…

“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…

Brawny just went big on bulk. The Georgia-Pacific paper towel brand introduced a new logo set in a thicker font and breathed new life into its lumberjack mascot, the Brawny Man—all as part of a shift to stand out on store shelves and launch a new product, three-ply paper towels. “We weren’t just evolving a visual identity,” Amanda Earley, Georgia-Pacific’s brand director for Brawny, tells Fast Company. “We were launching a new product, shifting our full lineup, and repositioning the brand in culture, all while protecting what made Brawny special in the first place.” Bringing all this to market at the same time was a challenge, Earley says, but necessary to achieve…

Featuring Matthew Prince, Cofounder and CEO, Cloudflare. Moderated by Brendan Vaughan, Editor in Chief, Fast Company. With a quarter of the global internet powered by Cloudflare—its network provides service to over 300 cities across more than 100 countries—the company is at the helm of delivering content and connecting millions. But as AI-powered bots grow at a prolific rate and cybersecurity risks become increasingly sophisticated, ensuring the safety of the internet requires innovative thinking. Join Cloudflare cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince for a one-on-one conversation on how the company plans to tackle the challenges of the future. View the full article

I don’t care if you own a car, SUV, minivan, pickup truck, private jet, or one of each. This essay isn’t a judgment on consumerism. It’s about how the forces shaping our automotive obsession ripple into land use policy, infrastructure funding, government subsidies, and every facet of urbanism. Once upon a time, did Americans flock to dealerships out of pure need—or were they herded by subversive forces? Was it free will or predestination? The automobile’s rise was a masterclass in what the military would call a psychological operation, a psy-op. In a flash, the “household automobile” became the “personal automobile,” thanks to advertising genius that turned utilit…

When leadership trends become corporate wallpaper, they risk losing the very edge that made them useful in the first place. That’s where psychological safety risks finding itself today. It’s plastered on slide decks, plugged into engagement surveys, and whispered in HR circles as the answer to “Why don’t people speak up?” but it’s rarely connected to what happens after someone actually does speak up. This distinction between permission to speak and protection from consequences matters more than leaders often realize. Psychological safety tells you that people feel comfortable raising questions or concerns and that they believe they won’t be overtly sanctioned for …

I just got back from a week on the beach. The water was crystal clear, the sky blue, and my butt was in a lounge chair all day. I certainly enjoyed myself and caught up on a ton of sleep. But did I return to work today bursting with ideas and fresh energy? If I’m honest, not really. It feels more like I left my brain sunning itself on the seaside. Meanwhile, I need to dig myself out from under a mountain of work and complete my massive back-to-school to-do list. Where did I go wrong in my vacation planning? If I was looking to maximize floating time and the amount of tasty fish I ate, nowhere. But according to psychology, as much as I enjoyed my break, I al…

Are you prepared for when the power goes out? To prevent massive wildfires in drought-prone, high-wind areas, electrical companies have begun preemptively shutting off electricity. These planned shutdowns are called public safety power shutoffs, abbreviated to PSPS, and they’re increasingly common. So far this year, we’ve seen them in Texas, New Mexico, and California. Unlike regular power failures, which on average last only about two hours while a piece of broken equipment is repaired, a PSPS lasts until weather conditions improve, which could be days. And these shutoffs come at a steep price. In 2010 alone, they cost California more than $13 billion. A 2019 analysi…

I think the strongest indicator of how normal using AI has become is the language we use as shorthand for it. It’s now extremely common for someone to say they asked “chat” for some piece of information. We all know what they mean. But if you needed data on how popular AI portals are now, OpenAI provided it recently when the company revealed that ChatGPT has 900 million users, up from 800 million in the fall. Even if Gemini, Copilot, and Claude weren’t also rising (they are), that would be enough for the media—not to mention brands and marketing/PR agencies—to really understand how fast AI is growing as a discovery channel. Whether or not it’s a source of traffic doesn’t…

There are few things that unite the world like animal videos. There are also few things that are so readily commoditized. Both have occurred in the case of Punch, a baby monkey at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan. Punch captured hearts around the world after a viral post showed him hugging a stuffed orangutan toy after being rejected by other monkeys. E-commerce sellers act quickly with monkey merch Now, the young Japanese macaque and his stuffed friend are available as everything from toys on Etsy to a—decide for yourself if it’s AI—children’s book on Amazon. There’s also an “official” Punch Monkey store with products like stickers, shirts, and mugs. S…