Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The gadgets produced by this year’s most innovative companies in consumer and household goods are, in their small way, revolutionizing every room in the house. From standout kitchen devices and boundary-pushing wellness products to a more humane mousetrap, this year’s list offers something for every moment of the day. Starting at the front door, there’s Level, the leader in smart locks, which finally upgraded its “invisible” system to sync with smart home hubs like Apple Home and Google Home via a low-tech radio connection. For the kitchen, there’s Walmart, which debuted Bettergoods, its first new private label in 20 years with a lineup of 300 quality products, not just…

AI rivalry heats up: Glean CEO Arvind Jain replies to Sam Altman’s caution to investors. View the full article

“We want grandparents who want to have pizza nights with us, attend baseball and basketball games, have ice cream dates, take bike rides, just genuinely have fun with us and our boys,” reads one post on the Facebook group Surrogate Grandparents USA, a place where grandparent-seeking families can connect with surrogate grandparents. “One lonely grandma here. I would love to share affection and attention with a nearby family,” posted another. Created in 2015 by 68-year-old retired paralegal Donna Skora, Surrogate Grandparents USA now has more than 11,800 members. The page is described as “a place where grandparents who are missing having grandchildren in their lives &a…

During the Great Resignation, employers offered signing bonuses at unprecedented rates and, while the labor market has since cooled, the cash incentive remains popular, especially among in-person roles. According to a recent study by Indeed’s Hiring Lab, the one-time bonus was included in less than 2% of job postings on the platform before the pandemic, and skyrocketed to a peak of 5.6% in September of 2022. Though the labor market is largely back to pre-pandemic norms, signing bonus offers remain nearly twice as common as they were in 2019, and are now attached to 3.7% of U.S. job postings. “In the last couple years, the trend line has actually diverged,” ex…

Before air-conditioning existed, staying cool during the summer months in the southern United States was a foreign skill for early European colonists. But enslaved Africans, hailing from similar warm climates, had developed, over centuries, architectural strategies for combating sweltering summer conditions. It was from these early enslaved builders that the most quintessential architectural feature of homes in the United States emerged: the porch. Porches, verandas, porticoes, and other types of outdoor coverings connected to a building have existed in various forms across the globe for centuries. However, what we think of as an American style of porch, first associated…

Israa Nasir is a psychotherapist and founder of WellGuide, a digital community for mental health awareness. Her work centers around helping people redefine their relationship with productivity and achievement to lead more mindful, purpose-driven lives. She has been featured in Vox, NBC, and Teen Vogue and invited to speak at Google, Meta, and Yale. What’s the big idea? Productivity isn’t always a good thing. It can be a way to fill the void of unmet emotional needs, perpetuate a constant state of busyness, and erode well-being. For productivity to be healthy rather than toxic—an activity, not an identity—it must come from a place of self-care, balance, and personal fulfi…

Jane, a vice president of Human Resources at a growing tech company, often found herself overwhelmed by her team’s reliance on her. Because her job required her to manage a flat, decentralized organization with a mix of senior managers, rising leaders, and embedded HR personnel within the product business units, she was frequently the go-to person for problem-solving. One particularly hectic week, she skipped lunch for three days. Despite her exhaustion, she agreed to a last-minute meeting late in the day before heading out to her daughter’s soccer match. When her direct report, Jesse, presented a complex issue, Jane, feeling pressed for time, interrupted: “I do not have…

PepsiCo said Tuesday that high prices and changing consumer tastes have weakened U.S. demand for its snacks and drinks but it’s confident it can turn that around in the coming year. The Purchase, New York-based company said its revenue fell slightly to $27.78 billion in the fourth quarter. That was short of Wall Street’s forecast of $27.89 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet. U.S. demand flagged last year after two years of outsized, double-digit price increases. The average price of a 16-ounce bag of potato chips peaked at $6.68 in October 2023, according to government data. PepsiCo hit the brakes on prices, which rose 4% globally in 2024. The company foc…

The top is a fine suede. The bottom is a stack of foam so tall you’ll instinctively pop an energy ball. You can wear it barefoot. You could run a marathon in it. I just . . . wish . . . it didn’t look like an orthopedic pair of Vans. This is the Ahnu Sequence 1.1. Suede, launching today for $240. While you may not have heard of Ahnu yet (the boutique brand launched quietly in 2024), you do know the company behind it. Deckers owns brands including Teva, Ugg, and Hoka, which has celebrated healthy growth across its acquired brand portfolio over the past few years—sales across Deckers were up 17% over the past year. [Photo: Ahnu] Unlike its sister brands, Ahnu is bein…

Gucci announced on Thursday that its creative director of under two years, Sabato De Sarno, has left the position just two and a half weeks before the next runway show, and that the new collection would be created by the design team. The abrupt announcement of De Sarno’s departure comes as Gucci prepares to open Milan Fashion Week with a combined womenswear and menswear collection on February 25. His replacement will be announced “in due time,” the statement said. Gucci’s new CEO, Stefano Cantino, expressed gratitude for De Sarno’s focus on “Gucci’s craftsmanship and heritage,” while Kering deputy CEO Francesca Bellettini said he had “further strengthened Gucci’s fundam…

The standing desk is old news. Behold, the standing table. Herman Miller just released a new design that takes the concept of a standing desk to a whole new level. The Spout Sit-to-Stand Table comes in a range of sizes, from 2-by-4 feet to a whopping 4-by-7 feet, supports up to 400 pounds, and can seat a whole team rather than just one worker. That’s because it breaks a key form factor that most other standing desks follow: the number of legs in use. The vast majority of standing desks have only two motorized legs, mostly because they’re easier to stabilize and engineer to move seamlessly. Meanwhile, the Spout table stands on four legs, allowing chairs to be placed co…

Even tech giant Apple couldn’t prevent its artificial intelligence from making things up. Last month, the company suspended its AI-powered news alert feature after it falsely claimed a murder suspect had shot himself, one of several fabricated headlines that appeared under trusted news organizations’ logos. The embarrassing pullback came despite Apple’s vast resources and technical expertise. Most users probably weren’t fooled by the more obvious errors, but the incident highlights a growing challenge. Companies are racing to integrate AI into everything from medical advice to legal documents to financial services, often prioritizing speed over safety. Many of these appl…

This year, 2,500 girls will be able to attend secondary school in Afghanistan. While this shouldn’t be a remarkable feat, it is: The Taliban government forbids girls from receiving an education beyond 6th grade. Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit organization, is helping to support The Underground School Initiative that educates girls in 38 secret locations throughout Afghanistan. In an unexpected turn, this project will be partially funded by The Citizenry, a U.S.-based home goods brand, which raised money during its Black Friday sale last year to pay for teachers, educational supplies, and facilities for these students. [Photo: The Citizenry] Desperate for an Educatio…

When he was 17 years old, Arne Hillerns moved from his small village in Northern Germany to spend a year in Wausau, Wisconsin. For a brief period of time, he felt like the foreign exchange high school student that he was: “People look at you [and think,] ‘Who’s that kid?‘“ he recalls. Just a year prior, Hillerns had discovered skateboarding, and the skate scene in Wisconsin was buzzing. Within three days or so, he had found a community of skateboarders. “Skating made me so much more open in my personality and gave me confidence,” he says. “It was a very easy entry to this new world for me.” Fast-forward 25 years, and Hillerns’s passion for skateboarding has spread acr…

In 2017, Nathan Cozzolino started Rose, a “farm to edibles” brand based in Los Angeles. Cozzolino and his team cultivated organic hemp and marijuana, produced its own low-dose gummies with natural organic ingredients, and sold the product to licensed dispensaries. This structure required overhead that cost upwards of $80,000 a month. Six years in, the brand wasn’t able to sell enough products to cover its expenses despite being sold in more than 100 retailers. That changed in July of 2023 when Rose switched the entirety of its production to hemp. “We did it because it was that or go out of business,” Cozzolino says. He let go of his cannabis licenses, downsized his faci…

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. Consumers will spend a whopping $27.5 billion on Valentine’s Day this year, up from $25.8 billion last year, according to the National Retail Federation. For 1-800-Flowers.com, the purveyor of candy, cards, and—yes—flowers, February 14 is a bit like its Super Bowl, with year-long planning…

This month’s legal dustup between NFL quarterback Lamar Jackson and NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt Jr. over trademark rights to the number 8 may have amounted to little more than a tempest in a teapot, but it has drawn attention to a rarely considered topic in branding and marketing: the use of numbers in brand names and logos. Why might a seemingly arbitrary number like 8—or 27 or 63, for that matter—be worth fighting over? And are some numbers worth more than others? Obviously, numbers are at an important disadvantage compared to letters when it comes to their use as trademarks. While an initial letter can stand for any word that it begins with, numbers are much more con…

The other day, my 15-year-old daughter and her friend were smelling candles in the local grocery store just two blocks from our home. I frequently send my daughter, and my younger son, 10, to grab a few items there when I’m busy—especially in the summer when no one gripes about the walk. But on this particular day, an employee approached the girls and asked them to leave the store immediately. “Why?” they responded in unison, taken aback. The answer: Because they didn’t have a parent or guardian with them. Annoyed, but not entirely shocked, I popped by and spoke to a manager (in the least Karen-like fashion I could muster). I was told that the grocery store does not h…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, home flipping surged as soaring home prices and ultralow-interest rates attracted more flippers, especially newcomers, to the market. However, as the market shifted due to the rate shock of 2022, home-flipping activity has seen the biggest pullback since 2007, and many of those newcomers pulled back. In the last quarter of 2018, there were 71,358 home flips. In the last quarter of 2021, that shot up to 120,531 flips, before falling to 87,851 flips in the last quarter of 2022. In the last quarter of 2024, there were j…

You know what I miss? Listening to the radio. I’ve always loved background music, which helps me focus. But modern music-streaming services can be distracting. Yes, I enjoy having instant access to millions of songs with services like Spotify. But I find myself constantly fiddling—searching for the next song, hitting the forward button, and choosing new playlists. Radio stations are a great alternative. You just hit the play button, and someone else makes the decisions. Now, of course, Spotify and other such services offer radio-station-like options of their own. But there’s always that “next track” button tempting you to skip around. Plus, these options s…

Memorial Day Weekend is upon us, marking the unofficial start of the summer vacation season in America. Yet, a recent Bankrate survey from late April found that only 46% of Americans plan to travel domestically or internationally this summer, with costs cited as the primary concern. Dwindling U.S. consumer confidence may lead some individuals to reconsider spending their precious discretionary dollars on travel. Still, you may have more travel options within your budget than you thought. For those determined to get away, there’s an excellent Google Flights hack that reveals options within a certain budget. Some Google Flights aficionados know this as the “anywhere” ha…

DEI measures may be under threat, but the reality is many workers want jobs at companies that value diversity. Comparably, a platform for salary data and work culture insights, just released its list of the top 100 large companies for diversity. To compile the list, Comparably asked 30,000 employees of color to weigh in on 16 different categories, including satisfaction with leadership, compensation, and career growth opportunities. The ratings were collected between February 10, 2024 and February 10, 2025. To qualify, large companies had to employ over 500 employees and needed at least 75 employee ratings. (Comparably also published a list of top 25 small-to-midsize com…

The ceasefire agreed between Israel and Hamas makes provisions for the passage of food and humanitarian aid into Gaza. This support is much needed given that Gaza’s agricultural system has been severely damaged over the course of the war. Over the past 17 months we have analysed satellite images across the Gaza Strip to quantify the scale of agricultural destruction across the region. Our newly published research reveals not only the widespread extent of this destruction but also the potentially unprecedented pace at which it occurred. Our work covers the period until September 2024 but further data through to January 2025 is also available. Before the war, tomato…

It looks like brothers Jake and Logan Paul won’t be squaring off in the boxing ring anytime soon. Instead, they are launching a family reality series, Paul American, starting March 27 on HBO Max. Promotional social media posts on Tuesday teasing an “announcement” tricked fans into believing they could be going head-to-head in the ring on March 27. However, it was all a big ruse to create hype for their first foray into reality TV. “We’re the true American family,” Jake Paul says in the series trailer. What exactly that means, you’ll have to tune in to find out. “Everyone thinks they know Jake and Logan Paul—they’re the original superstars of influencer culture a…