Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

In certain corners of corporate America, a generous parental leave policy has become a crucial tool for recruiting and retention. Many of the biggest tech employers have been leaders on this front, offering 16 to 20 weeks of leave, or even close to six months at companies like Google. But even as companies have expanded their parental leave benefits, few of them have sought to address the unique challenges many parents—and especially mothers—face when they actually return to work. A handful of companies, among them Apple and Amazon, offer a grace period that enables employees to ease back into work part-time or work flexible hours for a few weeks. Despite all th…

There is a type of business story that has become nearly cliché: A legacy brand is facing stagnating growth. Loyal customers are aging out, and new customers aren’t taking their place. So the brand reinvents itself to pull in a younger segment of the market, often by borrowing ideas from cooler competitors to seem more “on-trend.” But instead of younger and cooler, the rebrand comes off as insincere, stilted, or cringey. Worse, the brand’s older, core customers, who liked the brand as it was, are irritated by the changes. Instead of spurring new growth, the effort drives off some of the existing customers, leaving the brand worse off than when it started. This is …

Even after the final whistle blew on the Seattle Seahawks’ 29-13 win over the New England Patriots, Rocket’s Super Bowl was far from over. Sure, the brand had a Super Bowl ad featuring Lady Gaga singing a Mr. Rogers classic, but that was just the beginning. At 8 p.m. ET, immediately after Rocket and Redfin’s Super Bowl spot aired, the brands released the first of six app-exclusive clues that would roll out over the next 48 hours for users to play a contest in order to win a million-dollar home. This last part of Rocket’s Super Bowl strategy is perhaps its most important because it’s not just focused on entertaining audiences or attracting their attention; it’s a…

Like fingernails, human hair is something that’s considered normal and fine when it’s attached to the body, but gross in any other context. Hair clogs our drains. Seeing a single strand on our plates is grounds for returning food at a restaurant. And after it’s cut off at salons and barbershops, it’s promptly swept up and thrown away. Hair is usually destined for the dustbin, but what if it could be reused as a raw material for design? One designer is exploring some novel uses for hair, including making a biotextile that feels like wool. Designer Laura Oliveira collected clippings at two Portugese hair salons for her master’s thesis in product and industrial desig…

No matter how much you like your coworkers, you’re going to have some conflicts with them. Most of those conflicts involve differences of opinion or approach. A colleague may do something that irks you or causes difficulties for the work you’re doing. While those conflicts may lead to tension for some period, you typically get beyond those difficulties and may even wind up with a closer relationship to them later. But, there are some colleagues where anger hardens into resentment. That can cause real workplace problems, because you’re going to have to engage with that colleague which can get in the way of a project’s success. Plus, no matter how good you think you are…

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. The conversation around energy use in the United States has become . . . electric. Everyone from President Donald The President to the cohosts of Today show has been talking about the surging demand for, and rising costs of, electrons. Many people worry that utilities won’t be able to produce enough power. But a report released today argues that the better question is: Can we use what utilities already produce more efficiently in order to absorb the coming surge? “A lot of folks have been looking at this from the perspective of, Do we need more supply-side resources and gas p…

When Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards steps onto the NBA All-Star court in Los Angeles with the league’s best players, there will be cameras following his every move. But it won’t just be NBC clocking the action. Edwards’s own Three-Fifths Media will be there for his ongoing unscripted show, Year Six. It’s the second season chronicling the daily grind of his NBA exploits, building on last year’s Year Five. Three-Fifths Media started in 2019, with Justin Holland, Edwards’s business partner and manager. They signed a production deal with Wheelhouse in 2024 to collaborate on projects like Year Six. So far, Three-Fifths has produced Serious Busines…

When I spoke at the Arabian Business Awards a few years ago, I showed a slide describing research that shows meetings literally make people dumber: a study published in Transcripts of the Royal Society of London found that meetings cause you to (during the meeting) lose IQ points. A bunch of people in the audience took photos of that slide. The same was true when I presented a slide describing research published in Journal of Business Research showing that not only do 90 percent of employees feel meetings are unproductive, but when the number of meetings is reduced by 40 percent employee productivity increases by 70 percent. A bunch of people took photos of th…

Tax filing season is in full swing, and while preparing your taxes can often be filled with stress, misplaced documents, and worries about proper filing, this year, there may be a silver lining. According to analysts, many Americans may get larger refunds in 2026 due to The President’s 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill legislation. Last year, the average refund was $3,167, but, given there are a number of new changes and deductions, experts say many Americans are looking to get back an additional $1,000 or more. Overall, that could come out to around $90 billion more dollars in tax returns. Here are the biggest changes that could boost your tax refund this year: No tax…

For consumer packaged goods, the path from product idea to store shelves runs directly through the center of Unilever‘s new North American headquarters, and not just because the company makes market-saturating products like Hellmann’s mayonnaise and TRESemmé shampoo. This new headquarters space was designed specifically to put the entire process of product creation on display in its office, from ideation to development to marketing to retailing. Spread across 111,000 square feet in downtown Hoboken, New Jersey, Unilever’s newly opened headquarters is centered around an accessible spine of rooms and facilities that are optimized for bringing new products to market. The…

Gary Vaynerchuk prides himself on being ahead of the curve. As the chairman of communications company VaynerX and the cofounder of Resy, not to mention an angel investor in brands like Twitter, Facebook, Uber, and Venmo, he knows a thing or two about trends in business. And in a new interview with CBS Mornings, he shared what he thinks is to blame for consumer burnout: not advertisers, social media, or even consumers themselves—but modern parenting. “I think that parenting needs to be called out of the last 40 years,” Vaynerchuk said. “I believe that the burnout, the insecurity, all the stuff we talk about, I believe the reason we’re buying more stuff is, we’re using …

They say job hunting is just like dating. Some are taking that advice literally. “Job market so bad I’m using Hinge to find work,” one job seeker posted on TikTok in December. Sharing a look at her dating app profile, in place of a photo of her best angle, she instead uploaded a snapshot of her résumé. Answering the prompt “a life goal of mine,” she wrote “to find work in the creative industries.” Since it was posted in December, the video has gained almost a quarter of a million views. In a recent update, the TikTok user shared that Hinge has since taken down her profile for breaking their policies. But she is not the only one. Others are also using th…

Figma’s fourth-quarter earnings report arrived on Wednesday afternoon with a notable claim from one of its top executives: AI should “complement,” not replace, employees. It’s a bold statement from the leader of a tech company at a moment when many are scaling back. “We don’t see it as a tool that replaces our talent, but rather how can we augment the team that we already have,” Figma CFO Praveer Melwani said during Figma’s earnings call. “So we will continue to hire, but we will be able to complement that with efficiency gained by some of the tools out there as well.” The comment came in response to an analyst’s question about how AI might impact Figma’s res…

American statesman and polymath Ben Franklin’s legacy includes inspirational quotes on frugality, honesty, and hard work. He’s less frequently thought of as an icon of successful aging. But as doctor and author Ezekiel Emanuel recently pointed out on Big Think, “At a time when the average age at death was under 40, he lived to 84, fully mentally competent all the way to the end.” That makes the founding father a worthy source of advice on aging well. What’s the biggest lesson we can learn from him. Unsurprisingly, given he lived at a time when dentures were made out of wood and surgery was done without anesthesia, Franklin can’t teach us anything about the latest …

After officials released millions of pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, revelations in his emails and other files have led to the resignations of multiple corporate executives, new investigations into abuses by Epstein and potential accomplices, and even the arrest of the United Kingdom’s former Prince Andrew. For those looking to research Epstein’s vast correspondence and web of connections across industry, government, and academia, some of the most effective tools have been built not by federal investigators or big-name news organizations but by a scrappy team of volunteer developers. Starting with a website called Jmail, which …

Neuroscientists have found birding is actually a brain hack. A new study published in JNeurosci, the Journal of Neuroscience found birdwatching may actually alter the structure and function of your brain—what is known as neuroplasticity—effectively helping to boost cognitive abilities, especially in more seasoned bird watchers. “Our brains are very malleable,” lead researcher Erik Wing, a research associate at York University in Toronto, explained. Wait, what exactly is neuroplasticity? Neuroplasticity is basically the process or way your brain learns, creates memory, and adapts to experiences and trauma, according to Psychology Today. Research shows that …

The advice you get early in your career can disproportionately shape your future. I can recall two or three conversations from when I was a college kid who liked writing that melted away ambiguity and set my vague ambitions on a path into the fog like a compass. For the latest release by The Steve Jobs Archive, the group is making the advice of some of the most uniquely impactful people in the world available to everyone. Given that Jobs did not own many physical objects, the archive has served as more of a repository of ideas for the next generation to think different. Each year, the Archive takes on SJA Fellows. And each year, it gives these fellows a book of l…

Spirit Airlines is hanging on by a thread –but it is hanging on. The budget airline announced a plan Tuesday that would put it on track to exit its second bankruptcy in less than two years and stay in operation. The arrangement will keep the company alive while shrinking its expenses and operations down to an even smaller size than what it aimed for during its first bankruptcy, which it filed for in November 2024. With financial support from its creditors, Spirit says it plans to emerge from bankruptcy in late spring or early summer. The company plans to keep its core identity as a value carrier that can still offer fliers “the lowest fares in the sky” while bolst…

Ten years ago, I ended a meeting at WeWork with an offer to grab a free beer on tap. Last week, I ended it with a similar offer, except this time the beverage on offer was kombucha. The seemingly innocuous shift is symbolic of a bigger evolution underway at the coworking giant: less coolness, more functionality. WeWork is growing up, and its newest location in downtown Manhattan is the most visible proof yet: 250 Broadway, which opened in January, is WeWork’s first outpost in the city since 2019—the year WeWork abandoned its initial public offering and ousted cofounder Adam Neumann as CEO. The space adds 60,000 square feet to the company’s New York portfolio, which al…

Some bad news for all the mutual fund managers out there: A new study from researchers at Harvard Business School seems to support the fear that artificial intelligence and machine learning could do their jobs. But here’s the catch—with only about 71% accuracy, depending on how predictable their trades are. The working paper “Mimicking Finance” from Lauren Cohen, Yiwen Lu, and Quoc H. Nguyen, published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, finds “that 71% of mutual fund managers’ trade directions can be predicted in the absence of the agent making a single trade.” The paper goes on to say, “For some managers, this increases to nearly all of their…

Most workplace frustration doesn’t come from a lack of effort or commitment. It comes from expectations that weren’t met—not because people failed to try, but because those expectations were never clearly stated or truly understood. In our organizational research over the past 30 years, we’ve seen this pattern repeatedly: when expectations are unclear, trust in leadership and collaboration begins to drop. When this happens, the frustration that follows is real. But the deeper cost is often invisible—trust begins to erode. This dynamic is increasingly common. Roles evolve, priorities shift, and teams are asked to move faster with less certainty. People continue to …

In 2015, in Gallup’s “State of the American Manager” report, then CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton made an assertion that startled many and quietly confirmed what others already suspected: “Most CEOs I know honestly don’t care about employees or take an interest in human resources. Sure, they know who their stars are and love them—but it ends there. Since CEOs don’t care, they put little to no pressure on their HR departments to get their cultures right . . .” Given the unique vantage point Clifton had into American business at the time, he offered a rather harsh and honest assessment. And, more than a decade later, the obvious question worth asking isn’t whether Clif…

Yet another powerful person has stepped down after being named in the Epstein files. Børge Brende, president and CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEF), best known for hosting an annual summit of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland, has stepped down after an internal investigation into his ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a statement released Thursday, Brende announced that after eight years in his role, he’d be resigning in the wake of the latest batch of files released from the federal investigation into Epstein. “I am grateful for the incredible collaboration with my colleagues, partners, and constituents, and I believe now is the right mo…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Since the Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, some overheated parts of the country—particularly in the West, Southwest, and Southeast—have experienced home price declines from their peak (see this map). While many of these markets have seen only modest drops, a few metro areas, such as Cape Coral and Austin, have undergone what I’d consider “material” home price corrections, falling -19.1% and -27.8%, respectively, from their peaks. These regional home price declines raise the question: How many mortgage borrowers are actually “u…

The rise of full-body MRI scans has been framed as a victory for consumer empowerment. Skip the referrals. Skip the waiting. Pay out of pocket and finally see what is happening inside your body, before it’s too late. For many, especially women, these scans are compelling. They offer agency in a healthcare system that often feels slow, dismissive, and reactive, rather than preventive. What many women would be surprised to learn, however, is despite the name, many full-body MRI scans do not reliably screen for breast cancer, the most common cancer in women. Women make roughly 80% of healthcare purchasing decisions in the United States. They spend more out of pocket …