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If you’re considering purchasing an LLC, it’s important to understand the steps involved in the process. Start by identifying a business that fits your goals, then move into negotiations to set the terms. You’ll need to conduct due diligence to guarantee the company’s financial stability and compliance. Once you agree on terms, finalizing the purchase agreement with legal assistance is vital. Next, you should notify relevant parties about the ownership change. What comes next in this process? Key Takeaways Identify potential businesses for sale by networking, researching local listings, and exploring online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa. Negotiate terms by initiating conversations, gathering financial statements, and outlining key transaction details in a term sheet. Conduct thorough due diligence by reviewing financial records, legal obligations, and compliance with regulations to assess business health. Finalize the purchase agreement with legal assistance, ensuring all essential components are included and necessary signatures are obtained. Notify stakeholders of the ownership change, update relevant documents, and consider forming a new LLC for liability protection. Find a Business to Buy When you’re ready to find a business to buy, where do you start? Begin by exploring local chambers of commerce, trade groups, and industry publications. These resources often list businesses for sale that aren’t widely advertised. Networking is additionally essential; connect with existing business owners, especially those nearing retirement, to uncover informal sale opportunities and gain market insights. Online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa can help you compare various options. Conduct thorough market research to identify industries of interest and evaluate the long-term viability of potential businesses through their financial performance. Finally, prepare a list of specific criteria, including location, size, and industry, to streamline your search as you look to purchase your LLC effectively. Begin Negotiations Once you’ve identified a business that aligns with your goals, it’s time to begin negotiations. Start by confirming the identity of the authorized negotiator for the LLC, ensuring all discussions are valid. Gather crucial documents like financial statements and operating agreements to demonstrate your seriousness. Initiate conversations to learn about the business’s operations and challenges. Provide a financial statement to showcase your purchasing capability. Aim to establish rapport with the seller for open communication. Understanding what the owner of an LLC is called, you can better navigate these discussions. Engaging with LLC formation companies can likewise provide support during this process, ensuring you’re well-prepared to negotiate effectively. Create a Term Sheet Creating a term sheet is a crucial step in formalizing the negotiation process for purchasing an LLC, as it outlines the key terms and conditions of the proposed transaction. This document should detail the purchase price, payment terms, and which assets or liabilities are included in the sale. It serves as a preliminary agreement that helps clarify intentions before drafting a formal purchase agreement. Important details to include in your term sheet are the identities of the buyer and seller, the duration of the due diligence period, and any financing contingencies. Although it’s typically non-binding, it lays the groundwork for the binding agreement to follow. Consider seeking legal advice to cover all necessary elements. You can find the best website to create LegalZoom documents online for guidance. Conduct Due Diligence Before finalizing your purchase of an LLC, it’s essential to conduct due diligence. Start by examining financial records to gauge the business’s fiscal health and scrutinize its operating agreement for ownership and management details. Furthermore, check for any outstanding debts and guarantee the LLC complies with all relevant laws to avoid potential legal issues down the line. Financial Record Examination Examining financial records is a critical step in the due diligence process when purchasing an LLC. You’ll want to conduct a thorough financial record examination to assess the company’s health and identify any red flags. This includes reviewing accounting books, tax returns, and bank statements. Investigate outstanding debts and financial obligations through business credit reports. Analyze revenue streams, profit margins, and cash flow statements to guarantee stable income. Review existing contracts and loans to understand what liabilities you might inherit. If you’re unsure about the process or how much it costs to create an LLC, consider hiring a CPA or financial advisor for expert insights and evaluation. Their guidance can be invaluable in steering through potential risks. Legal Compliance Review Following a thorough examination of financial records, it’s time to focus on the legal aspects of the LLC. Start by checking for any outstanding legal obligations, such as lawsuits or liens, which could impact the LLC post-purchase. Review public records to uncover these issues. Next, guarantee the LLC complies with local, state, and federal regulations by examining its licenses and permits. Comprehending the domestic LLC meaning is essential, as it affects operational standards. Don’t forget to evaluate the operating agreement and articles of organization; these documents govern ownership transfer and could include conditions impacting the sale. It’s wise to contemplate hiring a lawyer or CPA for legal and financial document review, especially if you’re dealing with LegalZoom filing companies. Operational Audit Insights When you conduct an operational audit during the due diligence process, it’s crucial to guarantee the business complies with all relevant laws and regulations, as any outstanding legal issues could adversely affect your ownership. This audit helps in evaluating the efficiency of business operations and identifying risks that may impact profitability. Consider reviewing: Key operational documents like employee contracts and vendor agreements. The company’s processes, inventory management, and customer service practices. Potential hidden inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. Understanding these aspects can influence how much it costs to become an LLC and guide you in choosing the best LLC formation service. An operational audit is fundamental for ensuring stability post-acquisition and making informed decisions. Finalize Your Purchase Agreement When you’re ready to finalize your purchase agreement, make sure it includes all crucial components to protect your interests. You’ll need to gather the necessary signatures and documentation to validate the agreement, ensuring compliance with relevant regulations. Consulting with legal professionals can help you tailor the agreement to your specific purchase structure, whether it’s a membership-interest agreement or an asset purchase agreement. Essential Agreement Components To finalize your purchase agreement effectively, it’s crucial to include several key components that clearly outline the terms of the sale. Start by identifying both the buyer and seller, specifying the purchase price and closing date. You should also clarify what’s included in the sale, such as: Assets, liabilities, and any existing contracts Contingencies to protect both parties Extra documents like non-compete clauses Including these elements helps avoid misunderstandings later on. Moreover, consider having an attorney draft or review the purchase agreement to guarantee compliance with laws. This step can save you time and money in the long run, especially if you’re utilizing the best LLC filing service or evaluating the cost to establish LLC. Signatures and Documentation Requirements Finalizing your purchase agreement requires careful attention to signatures and documentation, as these elements solidify the transaction and confirm that all parties are legally bound to the terms outlined. The purchase agreement must include vital details like the identities of the buyer and seller, the purchase price, and the closing date. Both parties need to sign this agreement, making it a binding contract. You may additionally require additional documents, such as non-compete agreements and lease assignments, to protect interests. After the purchase is complete, update all filings with state authorities, the IRS, and financial institutions. Using a closing checklist can help guarantee all documents and accounts are properly transferred, making your domestic LLC purchase the cheapest way to form an LLC. Notify Relevant Parties Notifying relevant parties about the ownership change of an LLC is vital for maintaining transparency and guaranteeing smooth changes. First, you should notify all current members to comply with the operating agreement. Next, inform employees about the shift to keep morale high and clarify management changes. Update vendors and suppliers to guarantee continued business relationships. Reassure customers, if appropriate, about service continuity and any new developments. Don’t forget to file necessary paperwork with state authorities to reflect the new ownership structure officially, which can sometimes be the cheapest way to file an LLC. Transition Ownership Shifting ownership of an LLC requires careful planning and compliance with legal requirements to guarantee a smooth process. Start by reviewing the existing operating agreement to understand rules about ownership transfer. You’ll need approval from all current members to minimize disputes. It’s crucial to conduct a professional valuation of the business to determine a fair price for the ownership stake being transferred. To protect liability, consider forming a new LLC and transferring assets. After that, file the necessary paperwork with your state and update all LLC documents to reflect the new ownership structure. If you’re unsure about the process, seeking the best LLC service can help, but remember, it may likewise raise questions about how much it costs to incorporate an LLC. Frequently Asked Questions How Do You Buy an Existing LLC? To buy an existing LLC, first, search for listings on platforms like BizBuySell. Once you find a potential business, negotiate with its representative, and request crucial documents like financial statements. Conduct thorough due diligence to assess financial health and liabilities. Next, draft a term sheet that includes the purchase price and payment terms. Finally, complete the transaction by signing necessary documents and updating filings with state authorities and the IRS. What Happens if My LLC Makes No Money? If your LLC makes no money, you’ll still face ongoing costs like annual fees and taxes, which you might’ve to cover personally. Even without income, specific state and federal filing requirements still apply. Lack of profits can hurt your creditworthiness, making loans difficult to secure. If losses continue, consider restructuring, dissolving, or selling your LLC to prevent further financial strain and potential legal issues related to unpaid debts. How Do You Pay Yourself When You Own an LLC? When you own an LLC, you can pay yourself through owner draws, withdrawing funds from the business’s profits. If your LLC is taxed as an S Corporation, you must pay yourself a reasonable salary via payroll, subject to payroll taxes, in addition to taking draws. It’s essential to keep accurate records of these payments for your tax returns. Always refer to your operating agreement to stay compliant and avoid disputes among members. Should I Set up an LLC Before Buying a Business? Yes, you should set up an LLC before buying a business. This structure protects your personal assets from business liabilities, facilitating a smoother shift of operations and assets. An LLC further improves your credibility with vendors and customers, which can be beneficial in negotiations. Moreover, it streamlines tax processes through pass-through taxation. Consulting legal and financial professionals is essential to guarantee you comply with all regulatory requirements during this process. Conclusion In conclusion, purchasing an LLC involves several key steps: finding the right business, negotiating terms, creating a term sheet, conducting due diligence, finalizing the purchase agreement, notifying relevant parties, and shifting ownership. By following this structured approach, you can guarantee a smooth acquisition process. Remember to seek legal guidance throughout to protect your interests and confirm compliance with all regulations. Taking these steps will help you navigate the intricacies of acquiring an LLC effectively. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Are the Steps to Purchase My LLC?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

If you’re considering purchasing an LLC, it’s important to understand the steps involved in the process. Start by identifying a business that fits your goals, then move into negotiations to set the terms. You’ll need to conduct due diligence to guarantee the company’s financial stability and compliance. Once you agree on terms, finalizing the purchase agreement with legal assistance is vital. Next, you should notify relevant parties about the ownership change. What comes next in this process? Key Takeaways Identify potential businesses for sale by networking, researching local listings, and exploring online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa. Negotiate terms by initiating conversations, gathering financial statements, and outlining key transaction details in a term sheet. Conduct thorough due diligence by reviewing financial records, legal obligations, and compliance with regulations to assess business health. Finalize the purchase agreement with legal assistance, ensuring all essential components are included and necessary signatures are obtained. Notify stakeholders of the ownership change, update relevant documents, and consider forming a new LLC for liability protection. Find a Business to Buy When you’re ready to find a business to buy, where do you start? Begin by exploring local chambers of commerce, trade groups, and industry publications. These resources often list businesses for sale that aren’t widely advertised. Networking is additionally essential; connect with existing business owners, especially those nearing retirement, to uncover informal sale opportunities and gain market insights. Online marketplaces like BizBuySell and Flippa can help you compare various options. Conduct thorough market research to identify industries of interest and evaluate the long-term viability of potential businesses through their financial performance. Finally, prepare a list of specific criteria, including location, size, and industry, to streamline your search as you look to purchase your LLC effectively. Begin Negotiations Once you’ve identified a business that aligns with your goals, it’s time to begin negotiations. Start by confirming the identity of the authorized negotiator for the LLC, ensuring all discussions are valid. Gather crucial documents like financial statements and operating agreements to demonstrate your seriousness. Initiate conversations to learn about the business’s operations and challenges. Provide a financial statement to showcase your purchasing capability. Aim to establish rapport with the seller for open communication. Understanding what the owner of an LLC is called, you can better navigate these discussions. Engaging with LLC formation companies can likewise provide support during this process, ensuring you’re well-prepared to negotiate effectively. Create a Term Sheet Creating a term sheet is a crucial step in formalizing the negotiation process for purchasing an LLC, as it outlines the key terms and conditions of the proposed transaction. This document should detail the purchase price, payment terms, and which assets or liabilities are included in the sale. It serves as a preliminary agreement that helps clarify intentions before drafting a formal purchase agreement. Important details to include in your term sheet are the identities of the buyer and seller, the duration of the due diligence period, and any financing contingencies. Although it’s typically non-binding, it lays the groundwork for the binding agreement to follow. Consider seeking legal advice to cover all necessary elements. You can find the best website to create LegalZoom documents online for guidance. Conduct Due Diligence Before finalizing your purchase of an LLC, it’s essential to conduct due diligence. Start by examining financial records to gauge the business’s fiscal health and scrutinize its operating agreement for ownership and management details. Furthermore, check for any outstanding debts and guarantee the LLC complies with all relevant laws to avoid potential legal issues down the line. Financial Record Examination Examining financial records is a critical step in the due diligence process when purchasing an LLC. You’ll want to conduct a thorough financial record examination to assess the company’s health and identify any red flags. This includes reviewing accounting books, tax returns, and bank statements. Investigate outstanding debts and financial obligations through business credit reports. Analyze revenue streams, profit margins, and cash flow statements to guarantee stable income. Review existing contracts and loans to understand what liabilities you might inherit. If you’re unsure about the process or how much it costs to create an LLC, consider hiring a CPA or financial advisor for expert insights and evaluation. Their guidance can be invaluable in steering through potential risks. Legal Compliance Review Following a thorough examination of financial records, it’s time to focus on the legal aspects of the LLC. Start by checking for any outstanding legal obligations, such as lawsuits or liens, which could impact the LLC post-purchase. Review public records to uncover these issues. Next, guarantee the LLC complies with local, state, and federal regulations by examining its licenses and permits. Comprehending the domestic LLC meaning is essential, as it affects operational standards. Don’t forget to evaluate the operating agreement and articles of organization; these documents govern ownership transfer and could include conditions impacting the sale. It’s wise to contemplate hiring a lawyer or CPA for legal and financial document review, especially if you’re dealing with LegalZoom filing companies. Operational Audit Insights When you conduct an operational audit during the due diligence process, it’s crucial to guarantee the business complies with all relevant laws and regulations, as any outstanding legal issues could adversely affect your ownership. This audit helps in evaluating the efficiency of business operations and identifying risks that may impact profitability. Consider reviewing: Key operational documents like employee contracts and vendor agreements. The company’s processes, inventory management, and customer service practices. Potential hidden inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement. Understanding these aspects can influence how much it costs to become an LLC and guide you in choosing the best LLC formation service. An operational audit is fundamental for ensuring stability post-acquisition and making informed decisions. Finalize Your Purchase Agreement When you’re ready to finalize your purchase agreement, make sure it includes all crucial components to protect your interests. You’ll need to gather the necessary signatures and documentation to validate the agreement, ensuring compliance with relevant regulations. Consulting with legal professionals can help you tailor the agreement to your specific purchase structure, whether it’s a membership-interest agreement or an asset purchase agreement. Essential Agreement Components To finalize your purchase agreement effectively, it’s crucial to include several key components that clearly outline the terms of the sale. Start by identifying both the buyer and seller, specifying the purchase price and closing date. You should also clarify what’s included in the sale, such as: Assets, liabilities, and any existing contracts Contingencies to protect both parties Extra documents like non-compete clauses Including these elements helps avoid misunderstandings later on. Moreover, consider having an attorney draft or review the purchase agreement to guarantee compliance with laws. This step can save you time and money in the long run, especially if you’re utilizing the best LLC filing service or evaluating the cost to establish LLC. Signatures and Documentation Requirements Finalizing your purchase agreement requires careful attention to signatures and documentation, as these elements solidify the transaction and confirm that all parties are legally bound to the terms outlined. The purchase agreement must include vital details like the identities of the buyer and seller, the purchase price, and the closing date. Both parties need to sign this agreement, making it a binding contract. You may additionally require additional documents, such as non-compete agreements and lease assignments, to protect interests. After the purchase is complete, update all filings with state authorities, the IRS, and financial institutions. Using a closing checklist can help guarantee all documents and accounts are properly transferred, making your domestic LLC purchase the cheapest way to form an LLC. Notify Relevant Parties Notifying relevant parties about the ownership change of an LLC is vital for maintaining transparency and guaranteeing smooth changes. First, you should notify all current members to comply with the operating agreement. Next, inform employees about the shift to keep morale high and clarify management changes. Update vendors and suppliers to guarantee continued business relationships. Reassure customers, if appropriate, about service continuity and any new developments. Don’t forget to file necessary paperwork with state authorities to reflect the new ownership structure officially, which can sometimes be the cheapest way to file an LLC. Transition Ownership Shifting ownership of an LLC requires careful planning and compliance with legal requirements to guarantee a smooth process. Start by reviewing the existing operating agreement to understand rules about ownership transfer. You’ll need approval from all current members to minimize disputes. It’s crucial to conduct a professional valuation of the business to determine a fair price for the ownership stake being transferred. To protect liability, consider forming a new LLC and transferring assets. After that, file the necessary paperwork with your state and update all LLC documents to reflect the new ownership structure. If you’re unsure about the process, seeking the best LLC service can help, but remember, it may likewise raise questions about how much it costs to incorporate an LLC. Frequently Asked Questions How Do You Buy an Existing LLC? To buy an existing LLC, first, search for listings on platforms like BizBuySell. Once you find a potential business, negotiate with its representative, and request crucial documents like financial statements. Conduct thorough due diligence to assess financial health and liabilities. Next, draft a term sheet that includes the purchase price and payment terms. Finally, complete the transaction by signing necessary documents and updating filings with state authorities and the IRS. What Happens if My LLC Makes No Money? If your LLC makes no money, you’ll still face ongoing costs like annual fees and taxes, which you might’ve to cover personally. Even without income, specific state and federal filing requirements still apply. Lack of profits can hurt your creditworthiness, making loans difficult to secure. If losses continue, consider restructuring, dissolving, or selling your LLC to prevent further financial strain and potential legal issues related to unpaid debts. How Do You Pay Yourself When You Own an LLC? When you own an LLC, you can pay yourself through owner draws, withdrawing funds from the business’s profits. If your LLC is taxed as an S Corporation, you must pay yourself a reasonable salary via payroll, subject to payroll taxes, in addition to taking draws. It’s essential to keep accurate records of these payments for your tax returns. Always refer to your operating agreement to stay compliant and avoid disputes among members. Should I Set up an LLC Before Buying a Business? Yes, you should set up an LLC before buying a business. This structure protects your personal assets from business liabilities, facilitating a smoother shift of operations and assets. An LLC further improves your credibility with vendors and customers, which can be beneficial in negotiations. Moreover, it streamlines tax processes through pass-through taxation. Consulting legal and financial professionals is essential to guarantee you comply with all regulatory requirements during this process. Conclusion In conclusion, purchasing an LLC involves several key steps: finding the right business, negotiating terms, creating a term sheet, conducting due diligence, finalizing the purchase agreement, notifying relevant parties, and shifting ownership. By following this structured approach, you can guarantee a smooth acquisition process. Remember to seek legal guidance throughout to protect your interests and confirm compliance with all regulations. Taking these steps will help you navigate the intricacies of acquiring an LLC effectively. Image via Google Gemini This article, "What Are the Steps to Purchase My LLC?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Many of us with professions that center on writing once toiled in a book shop to make ends meet, including me. When I worked at Barnes & Noble in college, I was dumbfounded by how many books there were on productivity and self-betterment. Surely, they couldn't all contain nuggets of wisdom. Certainly, they must be money-grabs aiming to profit off people's self-doubt. In many cases, that's true; but, I learned, some of them do have serious value to share. The catch is that if you spend all your time reading about some author's productivity, you won't have much time for enhancing your own. Smartly choosing which to read is a major first step toward productivity and better time management, but I went ahead and did a little of the legwork for you. Here are the best tidbits on productivity and the books they come from. The best productivity tips from booksGetting Things Done (GTD)GTD is a method that comes from David Allen's infamous 2001 book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, which was updated in 2015. GTD has been popular for a long time and is all about organizing your to-do lists, priorities, and schedule in a way that keeps it all manageable. You use five pillars—capture everything in a notebook, app, or planner; clarify what you need to do by breaking it all down into actionable steps; organize the steps by category and priority; reflect on the to-do list; and get to work—to streamline your planning, thinking, and action. It's stuck around this long because it's effective, but that means it's now also recognizable. This is a solid entry-level productivity plan that has been written about a lot, has plenty of adherents, and makes sense in the real world. The action methodThe action method comes from Scott Belsky's 2010 book, Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality. Like GTD, it aims to organize your ideas and priorities, giving you a path to more action than deliberation. You write down your to-dos, then organize them into action steps (the specific tasks you need to get done and the ones with actions behind them), references (extra info you need to accomplish those tasks), and back-burners (more nebulous goals that don't need to be accomplished right now). Use a planner or spreadsheet to create the three columns, bearing in mind that references and back-burners are typically things that supplement the action steps, so you should always be checking those while you tackle the action steps. And never forget that, if left unattended, a back-burner can escalate into an actionable item quickly, so take this one on if you need guidance but are serious about sticking with it. Zen to DoneAt the heart of Zen to Done is the idea that your sense of wellbeing is integral to your overall productivity. It comes from Leo Babauta, who has written books like Essential Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change, Briefly and The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential... in Business and in Life. Reading his work, you start to see the value of changing your habits and building new ones incrementally and peacefully. Because you're changing your habits over time and in a chill way, you can focus on the actual work you need to get done. ZTD contains 10 habits total, but Babauta says you can focus on the first four to get started: "Collect" by always taking notes about what you need to do and ideas you have, "process" by making quick decisions on tasks that are in front of you at the moment, "plan" by setting goals every Monday, and "do" by selecting a task and focusing on it and only it. Deep workI talk about deep work a lot because it's an important concept that impacts a lot of other productivity techniques. Deep work is the ability to focus completely on a demanding task without allowing any distraction get in your way, according to Cal Newport's Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. His work focuses on drawing the distinction between deep work and shallow work, or the kind of work that you can still get done while distracted, then building time into your schedule to take care of the deeper tasks. Mastering the art of slipping into a flow state and getting into deep work is foundational to basically any other productivity approach, so this full book might be worth the read. Eat the frogThis approach to productivity calls for you to tackle your biggest, most demanding task first during the course of your day, so everything after that feels easier by comparison. The evocative phrase, "eat the frog," comes from a quote that's usually attributed to Mark Twain, but it was Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog book series that made it catch on. Per Tracy, your "frog" is whatever task "you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don't do something about it." In workbooks and quick-tip books, he helps you figure out your frogs, then come up with strategies to get the motivation to tackle them. Committing to eating the frog is a big part of other productivity approaches and scheduling techniques, like the 1-3-5 list and the pickle jar theory, so the more familiar you are with the idea, the better off you'll be. Power HourPower Hour is a productivity technique that aims to empower you to reclaim part of your daily time and devote it to something intentional, whether that's a passion project or a major task that needs completing. It comes from Adrienne Herbert's book, Power Hour: How to Focus on Your Goals and Create a Life You Love, and is complementary to Newport's deep work concept. Herbert suggests you find an hour in each day that you can use for a completely focused, intentional project. During that hour you'll use deep work, but Herbert's strategy focuses more on finding and defining that critical hour in your schedule more than training yourself to sink into the zone and avoid distractions. The 168-hour methodYou may not think that having 24 hours in a day is enough, but what about 168 hours in a week? Laura Vanderkam wrote 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think to encourage people to stop thinking about your time in terms of days and start thinking about how much you can accomplish in a week. Spend a week tracking your time using time-tracking software or a spreadsheet, keeping your entries as detailed as possible. At the end of the week, look at your data and figure out when you wasted time, spent too long on something, or could have been doing something else. Using Vanderkam's method, you can make more time for the things you want to do by getting a solid grasp of how you allot your existing time over seven days. Flow theoryYou've probably heard of flow theory, the brainchild of psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who came up with it in 1970 and then wrote a number of books on it. According to him, a flow state is similar to when someone is floating along, being carried by water. The person is working so efficiently that they're just gliding ahead with no problems and the state is practically propelling them. (It's quite similar to deep work, mentioned above, so this would be a good one to read along with Newport's book.) There are eight characteristics of being in flow, ranging from complete concentration on the task to finding intrinsic rewards in the work and feeling confident in possessing the necessary skills to complete it, and these offer almost a step-by-step guide for getting into deep work, the method mentioned above. The best book combo for busy folksHaving a hard time narrowing down which books to grab? I'd suggest one of Csíkszentmihályi's books on flow theory, Newport's book on deep work, and Herbert's book on power hours, as these all describe similar practices, but offer complementary, supplemental advice that all adds up to help you pick a specific time of day to get work done easily and efficiently. It's important to remember that motivation can—and does—come from a variety of sources, including break time, having a purpose, and actually getting things done. The combination of these three authors' approaches makes plenty of space for all of that, which will leave you actually wanting to get to work. View the full article

Oil major will cut investment over next five years from $30bn to $20bnView the full article

It’s likely you’ve heard of the Pareto principle (maybe even while reading my tips on how to be more productive at work or study more effectively). But do you really know what the Pareto principle is? To be honest, I only just started to get a grip on it fairly recently, because it's a lot easier to read about than put into practice. Also known as the 80/20 rule or the law of the vital few, it can be little confusing at first, but understanding and implementing it can truly transformative, helping you to better manage your time and get more done with less effort. Who doesn't want that? What is the Pareto principle?Basically, the Pareto principle states that 80% of your outcomes result from just 20% of your effort. The principle was coined by consultant Joseph M. Juran in the 1940s and he named it after a sociologist and economist named Vilfredo Pareto, who was famous for pointing out that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the total amount of people. You’ll hear it described a number of ways: 80% of results come from 20% of the work, or 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. No matter the wording, it all means the same thing; just focus on that 80/20 split. An often-cited example of how this works for everyday people is learning the piano or guitar. You study individual notes, keys, time signatures, tempos, chords, rhythms, styles and so much else, including music theory. But when it’s time to jam, you’re probably falling back on a handful of the most common chords—and it sounds fine. In that way, a huge chunk of your actual playing is dependent on just a few small things you've mastered (although you do need that knowledge of keys and styles to make it come together). For another example, consider how a few truly excellent players tend to be responsible for the majority of points scored by your favorite sports team during a given game. Now think of how much you do in a day: You go to your job, work any side gigs you might have, do household chores, and devote time to hobbies, child-rearing, studying for classes, going to the gym, and seeing friends. You do a lot, but you only get paid for a small fraction of that work, which is why you might prioritize your job over some of the other things on the list—even side hustles, which typically generate less money. That's where the 80/20 rule comes in: It helps you prioritize your to-do list. How to use the Pareto principle to maximize your resultsYou can identify ways the general principle manifests in your work. For instance, if you work for a retail company, you might notice a major chunk of profits comes from a small but dedicated group of consistent buyers. It would make sense, then, to focus a majority of your work on appealing to them, or to bringing others into that group—maybe by strategic, data-based advertising. If the majority of would-be consumers ignore your email marketing, don't keep doing what you're doing. Instead, zero in on how you can add more people to that core group, or just go all-in on the core group itself. The real trick to using this principle is figuring out how it applies to your own day-to-day tasks. When you make your daily to-do list, use a prioritization technique, like the 1-3-5 list, Kanban, or Eisenhower Matrix. Right off the bat, this helps you figure out which of your necessary tasks for the day are important and which can be pushed off or delegated. Spend about two weeks working on your to-do lists every day as normal, but at the end of the day, write down what the direct results of each activity were. So, if you spent half an hour responding to emails and netted 10 new clients from that, write it down. If you dedicated an hour to compiling the data for a big meeting that got your project greenlit, mark it down. Over time, the basic functions that yield the biggest results will become apparent and you can start making those activities—the 20%-of-your-effort activities—a bigger priority, so you waste less time on the tasks that don’t produce as many results. Working backward and considering the effects, then identifying their causes, will help you prioritize and get more done, but it can also help you with non-work tasks. In a more abstract sense, a relatively small amount of effort is required to grab a coffee with a friend or help your kid with homework, but the 80% yield might be reenforcing and maintaining a friendship or helping your child feel safe and accomplished, which have longer-lasting impacts than the 30 minutes those tasks take. When you free up your working time through prioritization and an understanding of the Pareto principle, you have more opportunities to spread it around in other areas of your life and keep reaping the benefits. View the full article

It’s a historic day for both Walmart and the Nasdaq. Today, America’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer begins trading on the Nasdaq after its shares spent over half a century on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Here’s what you need to know about Walmart’s move to the Nasdaq. What’s happened? A week before Thanksgiving, Walmart announced that it would transfer its common stock listing from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to the Nasdaq Global Select Market. The move is historic for a few reasons. The first is that Walmart (Nasdaq: WMT) shares have traded on the NYSE since 1972—the last 53 years. Walmart went public in 1970, but traded on over-the-counter markets for the first two years before joining the NYSE. That ends today. And Walmart’s time on the NYSE was a good one. Over the last 53 years, Walmart’s stock on the NYSE has grown more than 536,000% as of yesterday’s market close. By moving to the Nasdaq, Walmart is beginning a new chapter of its financial life. But the second reason Walmart’s move to the Nasdaq is historic is because of Walmart’s current valuation. As of its last trading day on the NYSE yesterday, Walmart had a market cap of more than $905 billion. Its transfer from the NYSE to the Nasdaq represents the largest stock exchange transfer in history. Other companies have moved stock exchanges in the past, but the total value of their shares was nowhere near Walmart’s. Why is Walmart moving to the Nasdaq? Walmart cited several reasons for its decision to move from the NYSE to the Nasdaq. But a lot of it has to do with image. Over the past few decades, the Nasdaq has become home for the most technologically progressive, forward-thinking companies on the planet. The Nasdaq is where all of the so-called Magnificent 7 tech companies are traded: Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Amazon (Nasdaq: MSFT) Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Meta (Nasdaq: META) Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) All those companies have experienced tremendous growth on the Nasdaq, and they are seen as engines of America’s economic innovation. On the other hand, the New York Stock Exchange, while a respected institution and storied marketplace, is sometimes seen as the exchange for legacy companies, such as big banks in the financial sector and other industrial stocks like automakers and agricultural companies, not to mention brick-and-mortar retailers like Target (NYSE: TGT) and Gap (NYSE: GAP). It seems that Walmart no longer wants to be grouped with those legacy companies (and, in some cases, competitors) and instead wants to be seen as being in the same league with the country’s innovative tech giants. (To be sure, NYSE still gets its share of high-profile tech listings, including companies like Figma and Circle Internet Group, which went public just this year.) “Moving to Nasdaq aligns with the people-led, tech-powered approach to our long-term strategy,” Walmart’s chief financial officer, John David Rainey, said when announcing the move last month. “Walmart is setting a new standard for omnichannel retail by integrating automation and AI to build smarter, faster and more connected experiences for customers, while enabling our associates to deliver even greater value at scale.” In other words, the move underscores Walmart’s desire to be seen more as a tech-focused, AI-first company rather than the world’s largest legacy retailer. As the company said in its announcement: “The move to Nasdaq underscores the strong alignment between Walmart and Nasdaq’s shared values: a technology-forward approach, delivering exceptional client value and redefining their respective industries through innovation.” When is Walmart moving to the Nasdaq? Walmart moves to the Nasdaq today, Tuesday, December 9. Walmart’s last trading day on the New York Stock Exchange was yesterday. As of the time of this writing, its shares are already trading in premarket trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market Is Walmart getting a new ticker symbol? No. Walmart will continue to retain its historic ticker symbol of WMT. Are stock exchange transfers common? They aren’t frequent events, but they aren’t uncommon. As Reuters notes, earlier this year, Shopify (Nasdaq: SHOP) and Kimberly-Clark (Nasdaq: KMB) transferred to the Nasdaq. Other companies, including CSW Industrials (NYSE: CSW) and Virtu Financial (NYSE: VIRT) transferred to the NYSE. But what is uncommon about Walmart’s move to the Nasdaq is the sheer size of the company doing so. As the Motley Fool points out, Walmart’s current market cap makes it the largest company to ever transfer stock exchanges. Walmart is currently worth around $905 billion. That value dwarfs the value of the next-largest company ever to switch exchanges: chemicals and gas giant Linde (Nasdaq: LIN), which moved to the Nasdaq in 2023 with a then-market value of $180 billion. Before Linde’s move, soda maker PepsiCo (Nasdaq: PEP) was the previous largest company to switch exchanges, moving to the Nasdaq in 2017 when it had a market value of around $166 billion. So while stock exchange transfers aren’t rare, Walmart’s stock exchange transfer is notable given the size of the company. Could this boost Walmart’s stock price? That’s hard to say. The most significant factor in Walmart’s future share performance will continue to be the company’s fundamentals. If Walmart continues to perform well, its stock is likely to keep rising. If it starts performing badly, the stock is likely to fall. However, Walmart’s move to the Nasdaq could have a psychological effect on some investors, who may see the company now more as a tech-focused growth stock than a legacy retailer. That type of psychological impact could lead to greater interest in the stock, which could push up its share price. Walmart shares could also get a boost if they are included in index funds that are compiled with stocks that mimic the makeup of the largest companies on the Nasdaq. As of today, Walmart is the 9th largest company by market cap on the Nasdaq. How have WMT shares performed in 2025? Walmart shares have performed well so far this year. As of yesterday’s close, WMT shares were up more than 25% for the year. At around $113.50 per share, they are near an all-time high. And another potential milestone is also within reach. As of yesterday’s close, Walmart’s market cap was just over $905 billion. That means the company is only about $95 billion away from becoming a trillion-dollar giant. The company’s stock price now needs to rise only about 10.5% more to cross that milestone. Walmart is clearly hoping it can do that on the Nasdaq. View the full article

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Rare earth minerals are so ubiquitous and critical to much of today’s technology, that tonight’s dinner might not have made it to the table without them. And according to USA Rare Earth CEO Barbara Humpton, for decades, the world has sat back and let China become the sole supplier of these minerals, even as the country has used its dominance in this market as a geopolitical game piece. “We believe it’s time to take the game piece off the board,” Humpton said at last month’s World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. USA Rare Earth is wholly dedicated to bringing rare earth metals mining to the U.S., and changing this dynamic is “humanly possible,” says Humpton—though it will require the support of governments, academia, and private industry. “We’re gonna have to use some real strategy to actually turn the tide,” she says. It may be difficult, but there are already some early signs of progress, as governments that include the U.S., Japan, and the European Union have collaborated to agree on supporting a rare earth supply chain beyond China. Getting academia involved to educate students in magnet-making and rare earth processing is also a priority, Humpton says, along with securing the support of major industries that rely on these minerals, like the automotive sector. A good chance to turn this around According to Humpton, many countries—the U.S. included—were “perfectly happy” to let China dominate this market, because it was cheaper and less messy for them. But China’s behavior in recent years has led to this moment, she says, adding that there are many benefits to bringing this type of mining to the U.S., including the potential for economic development, and addressing some environmental concerns to mitigate consequences and utilize cleaner extraction techniques. “Because we are in an area where it’s a relatively small market, a relatively small number of companies, we have a good chance to turn this around,” she says. “If we don’t get started, we’ll never get done.” View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Earlier in the spring, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced that, starting in late May 2025, H-1B visa holders and other non-permanent residents would be banned from taking out new FHA mortgages. The result? Non-permanent residents—including H-1B visa holders—saw their share of FHA mortgage locks crater from 3.8% in September 2024 to 0.2% in September 2025, according to Optimal Blue. This sharp pullback comes after their share of FHA mortgage locks had spiked between 2020 and 2024. Keep in mind that FHA mortgages make up a much smaller share of overall borrowers than, say, GSE conventional borrowers. Indeed, Optimal Blue data reviewed by ResiClub shows that FHA mortgages accounted for 22.0% of total U.S. mortgage-purchase locks in September 2025. Meanwhile, according to the New York Fed, as of June 2025, FHA mortgages represent just 12% of the nation’s $12.94 trillion in mortgage debt. While FHA has pulled back on lending to H-1B visa holders, as far as ResiClub can tell there hasn’t been a similar change—at least not yet—in the conventional mortgage space (Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac). “This squeezes entry-level homebuying in some key housing markets already dealing with weak sales and too much supply,” writes Eric Finnigan, president of Demographics Research at John Burns Research and Consulting. (JBREC published a report in October on the topic for its clients.) As an example of a potentially affected housing market, Finnigan points to Fayetteville, AR—which is where Walmart is headquartered. Walmart HQ has reportedly paused new H-1B hiring in late 2025 after the The President administration announced it’d impose a $100,000 fee for certain new H-1B applications. “Walmart HQ stops new H-1B hiring due to $100K fee. Lines up with research we sent to clients last week calling out Walmart HQ’s metro [Fayetteville] as 1 of ~15 local housing markets most exposed to H-1B changes, based on analysis of loan-level data by citizenship status,” wrote Finnigan in October. While growth markets in the South—particularly those with the higher levels of homebuilding, such as Dallas, TX; Fayetteville, AR; and Durham, NC—might feel a sharper housing-demand contraction from this specific FHA policy change, they aren’t necessarily the markets that would see the greatest softening if there were a broader pullback in H-1B activity. To run an apples-to-apples comparison that accounts for market size, ResiClub calculated H-1B visa petitions per 1,000 residents. The states with the highest exposure to high-salary H-1B workers—and the housing and rental demand they generate—include Washington, California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and the District of Columbia. Click here for an interactive of the chart below Zooming out to the big picture, we are in something of an international migration bust following a boom in 2021-2024. Between summer 2021 and summer 2024, the U.S. saw a substantial upswing in net international migration—much of it coming through the Southern Border. As of July 2024, the U.S. population stood at 340.1 million, up 3.3 million from 336.8 million in July 2023. Of that population increase, 2.8 million (or 85%) came from net international migration. That international migration burst, of course, is behind us now. Recently, border crossings have plummeted. A July forecast by researchers at AEI expects that net international migration in 2025 will be somewhere between +115,000 and -525,000. What does this international migration slump mean for the U.S. housing market? All else being equal, an immediate and direct housing impact of fewer immigrants coming through the Southern Border, in my view, is lower aggregate rental demand—specifically at the lower end of the market—than if that burst had continued. Rental markets likely to see the biggest impact are in metro areas that have experienced the most international immigration in recent years. In particular, major markets such as New York City, Miami, Dallas, and Houston could feel the greatest effects. View the full article

For budding influencers, class is now in session. Jessica Henig, founder of Unlocked Branding, is rolling out Social Media University, a new platform launching today that promises to decode the influencer industry for the next wave of creators and industry professionals. The platform is free to join. “We wanted it to be accessible for anyone who is interested in building a career in media and their network,” Henig tells Fast Company. “This community was built on after years of successfully building talent into top tier brands themselves, and we’ve seen such high demand from others who want to know where to start.” Henig knows the formula, after helping shape some of the internet’s It-talent, including Alicia Breuer, Millie Leer, Pia Mia, and Montana Brown among them. Those who sign up can expect a mix of online and in-person interactive masterclasses with leading industry voices, seminars, trips, and community events, as well as mentorship and behind-the-scenes access to Unlocked Branding’s global network of creators and partners. “The missing link from young people, over the past few years especially, has been that they are missing in person community,” says Henig. “Working for yourself can be isolating sometimes and we want to get everyone in the same room to foster connections and creativity.” With rising unemployment and a college degree no longer guaranteeing a career path, the creator economy has become a bright spot for young people navigating a bleak job market. The number of creators globally is expected to grow at a compound annual rate between 10 and 20% and the total addressable market is expected to increase to a projected $500 billion by 2027, according to Goldman Sachs. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are fully bought in. Over half of Gen Z wants to become influencers, according to a Morning Consult survey. A 2024 Whop survey found that the top two career aspirations among Gen Alpha are YouTuber and TikTok creator. “With the influencer industry being so new in comparison to more ‘traditional’ career and education paths, there’s a huge education context gap when it comes to breaking into the industry,” says Henig. “I’ve built talent up from the start of their careers, many of which started as early as 16 years old, and found that the intense experiential nature of the social media industry set them up for incredible success and long term career paths in the real world—without having to go to a traditional university route.” For those after a traditional education experience, Syracuse University recently announced its new “Center for the Creator Economy,” looking to train the new class of influencers, streamers, podcasters, and YouTubers. Still, one of the biggest selling points of a career in content creation is precisely the fact it doesn’t require a degree or hundreds of thousands of dollars of student debt that come with one. Starting out as a content creator has never been easier, you mostly need a phone and a dream. Yet, because of the low barrier to entry, the industry is saturated and some expert guidance could be that all-important leg up. “People should sign up if they want valuable insight, to understand the economics of the industry and how it affects strategy and work,” says Henig. “And a community of people that share similar values to want to stay at the forefront of what is moving the needle.” View the full article

Like many American cities, the streetscape in downtown Brooklyn was for a long time very heavy on the street: a great place to park a car or drive through. But over the past 20 years, the area itself has gone from being a 9-to-5 shopping and business district to one where a growing number of people live 24-7. Since 2004, more than 22,000 housing units have been added to the neighborhood, changing its character so much that its old streetscape just wasn’t cutting it. “There was a real evolution of the neighborhood,” says Regina Myer, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP), a business improvement district representing the area’s business owners, shopkeepers, and, increasingly, residential developers. “Frankly, the construction fences were down, and it was really time to look at the public realm afresh.” So in late 2018, DBP hired the urban design and architecture firms WXY and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) to come up with some new ideas for Downtown Brooklyn’s streetscape. Myer says her organization wanted “infrastructure that really focused in on the pedestrian and mobility, shared streets, increased biodiversity, and also really making sure this was a bold plan for Brooklyn, that it didn’t look like something generic.” Now, after seven years of planning and prototypes, the designs have been fully installed. As these before-and-after images show, the transformation has been dramatic. The formerly congested streets of downtown Brooklyn have been augmented with planters, bollards, street bistro seating, and other traffic calming measures, as well as increased greenery and public open space. Redesigned tree pits add a larger and more refined space for street trees to grow, and curving benches follow cobblestone paving that hugs the edge of the sidewalk. Compare to the preexisting street furniture, which Myer calls “mean,” the new spaces invite pedestrians to sit and experience the city around them. Prototyping public space This work came about incrementally at first. WXY and BIG’s design guidance was first tested on the streetscape outside a Studio Gang-designed residential tower that was completed in 2021. Working with the city’s Department of Transportation during the project’s mid-pandemic construction, DBP convinced the city to allow sidewalks on two sides of the building to be widened to make space for these new streetscape amenities as an experimental pilot project. The resulting streetscape sparked a desire for other, more officially sanctioned improvements. A second pilot project was then built outside the city’s first all-electric skyscraper, and officials were fully on board. “They liked it so much that they actually asked us to go through the [Public Design Commission] process for a plan for the entire neighborhood,” Myer says, referring to the path for making improvements to public and civic spaces in the city. This work led to the 2021 release of a Public Realm Action Plan covering more than 40 blocks in the area. In 2023, the mayor’s office dedicated $40 million in funding to put the plan into action. “The prototyping process really worked for us,” Myer says. And in the four years since the plan was released—relative light speed in the realm of public space projects—it has materialized on sidewalks and shared streets across downtown Brooklyn. Bright yellow planters now sit in the spaces where cars once parked, carving out niches for outdoor seating and dining. Teardrop-shaped tree planters add flourish to the edges of sidewalks where trash once gathered. Swooping benches teem with life along streets packed with an increasing mix of uses. This could be just the start of a broader transformation in the area. WXY and BIG’s design has now become a system that developers can use to improve the streetscape of future projects. Myer says the plan was strategically minimal in its proposed interventions. The redesign requires little large-scale construction, utilizing existing street poles, for example, and making the most of the existing width of the sidewalk. Aside from the two pilot projects, no other sidewalks were extended, “because you know how gnarly that can get,” Myer says. The plan has sailed through approvals and construction, and downtown Brooklyn’s streetscapes are almost unrecognizable from what they looked like just a few years ago. Myer calls it an effort that appeals across the spectrum, from business owners to building tenants to the growing residential population to visitors and tourists. “What we really were seeking here was to use our existing space better for people,” she says. View the full article

President Donald The President has always been a master marketer. He is particularly adept at lending his name to products and buildings, which has proven to be a lucrative business. Now in office, he’s bringing that same licensing mindset to the very act of governing. Last week, the State Department said it renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) after The President and put his name on its building in Washington, D.C. This comes after The President fired the board members and nearly all U.S. employees of the USIP. The USIP’s open, natural-light-drenched headquarters was designed by Safdie Architects to symbolize conflict resolution. But it has ironically become the flashpoint of what former board members have described as a hostile takeover of the federally funded independent nonprofit in The President’s second term. DOGE staff and police entered the building in March, but USIP took control two months later after a judge ruled the firings were illegal. Then a federal appeals court stayed the ruling in June. The building’s switched hands several times, and with it back in the The President administration’s hands, they’re looking to make it formal with signage. The politics of unearned credit The building’s new “Donald J. The President” signage is just the latest example of a larger trend where The President has assigned his name to policies and initiatives that he once opposed. For example, The President campaigned against the infrastructure bill signed into law by then-President Joe Biden in 2021, and yet The President’s name went up earlier this year on new signage in Seattle for an Amtrak rain project funded by Biden’s bipartisan law. “President Donald J. The President, Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure,” the bright “Make America Great Again” hat-red sign says. The words, “Funded by the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act,” are written in smaller type below. Then there’s the Nation Park Service (NPS), which The President has taken an axe to, cutting staff 16.5% and the budget by more than a third. Still, The President’s image is going on two designs for next year’s annual NPS passes. The Interior Department is also making The President’s birthday, which falls on Flag Day, one of several “resident-only patriotic fee-free days” to parks next year while dropping it for MLK Day and Juneteenth. When The President put his name on stimulus checks funded through the CARES ACT, passed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it was unprecedented, the first time a president’s name had appeared on an IRS disbursement. Now, it seems, it’s just politics as usual. The man who once gave us The President Steaks now seeks to gives us a The President peace institute, and some might say its good politics. Biden called it “stupid” that he didn’t put his own name on stimulus checks funded through the 2021 American Rescue Plan. But with The President’s approval at a second-term low of 36%, according to Gallup, these branding efforts don’t exactly seem to be working. View the full article

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Judge a book by its cover, and you might think that American Canto, the memoir by Vanity Fair‘s outgoing West Coast editor Olivia Nuzzi, is destined to be a classic. The memoir, which chronicles Nuzzi’s drama-filled life and career as a political reporter in the The President era, features a strikingly simple cover that serves as shorthand for the book’s ambitions. “The intent was to give the book a clean, no-frills design that felt both classic and contemporary,” says Simon & Schuster senior art director Alison Forner, who’s also designed book covers like Ezra Klein’s all-type cover Why We’re Polarized and Garrett M. Graff’s Watergate: A New History. Nuzzi’s book features a stark white cover with the title and her name rendered in a serif typeface inspired by fashion magazine typography of the 1980s. The typeface does a lot of work for the book, which appears to be off to a slow start amid the ongoing media storm surrounding its rollout. A political reporter since 2014, Nuzzi was fired last year from New York magazine following an alleged relationship with now-Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Her publisher Simon & Schuster describes the much buzzed-about book by what it’s not: “not a memoir, nor a tell-all, nor a book about the president,” but “a character study of a nation undergoing radical transformation in real time.” Critics have called it a “tell-nothing memoir” that falls short of its ambition and is less interesting than the scandal that surrounds it. Typographic covers using a vintage-inspired font is a surefire way to evoke a classic mid-20th century look, like in covers for John F. Kennedy’s 1956 Profiles in Courage or Robert A. Caro’s 1990 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent. Most bestselling books today, however, use pictures and illustrations. On the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list, just two books have type-led covers, and both have numbers in their titles and also use other visual elements. (Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929, about the year’s market crash, uses a cratering market line to divide the bright red cover, and the cover of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s 107 Days about her 2024 campaign counts down in serif numerals from 1 to 107 on a blue background.) American Canto goes further, relying on just text and a subversively patriotic white, red, and black color palette to communicate its message. “I wanted something simple and evocative—red, black, and white give the jacket an urgent minimalism,” Forner tells Fast Company. “Olivia specified wanting a red without blue undertones, and I was more than happy to oblige.” To capture the right shade of red, Nuzzi sent still photos of wildflower petals and cropped stills from films by director Martin Scorsese, including a scene in Goodfellas where a body’s in the back trunk of a car and the taillights are lighting up the fog. “When there’s no imagery to rely on, every detail becomes extremely important—from the typeface choices and letter spacing, to the negative space and color,” Forner says. “They all need to work on an almost subliminal level to become the ‘voice’ of the book.” View the full article

Enterprises have often dreamed about AI systems that can reason across their most sensitive data, execute multistep tasks, and explain their logic while remaining inside a highly governed environment. Snowflake and Anthropic are betting they can finally crack the code. Through a multiyear, $200-million expansion of their agentic AI partnership, the companies plan to deliver an operational “control plane” that uses Anthropic’s latest Claude models, such as Sonnet and Opus 4.5, to power enterprise intelligence. The announcement landed alongside Snowflake’s Q3 earnings for fiscal year 2025, which showed the company maintaining strong momentum. Snowflake reported $1.21 billion in revenue, up 29% year over year, driven by $1.16 billion in product revenue. The company now operates at a $100 million AI run rate (year to date) while adding a record 615 new customers. But as the race to dominate enterprise agentic AI accelerates, not everyone is convinced that Snowflake’s momentum guarantees staying power. “Snowflake is still in the early innings of seeing if the traction will stick,” says William Falcon, founder and CEO of Lightning AI. “For a database like Snowflake, they’ve hopefully learned from others’ mistakes and invested in Anthropic to try and avoid similar problems.” That skepticism frames what makes Snowflake’s approach so interesting. Instead of treating AI as an external service that companies must funnel their data toward, the company wants the intelligence layer to reside where the data already lives. Its philosophy is to “bring AI to the data.” “By deeply integrating Claude into Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex AI, we’ve collapsed that sprawl into a single governed environment where the model runs directly where a company’s data already lives, securely with full business context and without ever moving that data or introducing risk,” says Vivek Raghunathan, senior vice president of engineering at Snowflake. The hallmark of this collaboration is a new class of AI agents capable of multistep reasoning on governed corporate data through Snowflake Intelligence, the company’s enterprise intelligence agent powered by Claude Sonnet 4.5. Under the hood of Snowflake Intelligence sits Cortex Agents, the Snowflake Horizon Catalog, and a layer of semantic models. Analysts can ask complex questions in natural language, developers can build intelligent agents without stitching together infrastructure, and business teams can get deep insights with citations and traceability. In practice, the integration means a business user can ask a natural-language question, such as “What is driving churn in our Northeast customer segment?” and Claude will determine which datasets are relevant, write and execute the SQL, and explain how it arrived at its conclusion. In highly regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, or life sciences, that combination of deep reasoning with end-to-end governance is especially transformative. “In regulated environments, ‘here’s the answer’ isn’t enough. You need ‘here’s how I got there’,” says Katelyn Lesse, head of API at Anthropic. In areas like financial reconciliation, companies routinely juggle data from disparate systems that rarely align cleanly, with exceptions that demand human judgment. Lesse noted that earlier approaches either overlooked this nuance or relied so heavily on manual review that any promised efficiency gains disappeared. “Claude can work through those discrepancies and flag where it’s uncertain, which is just as important as getting the answer right.” A larger bet on enterprise transformation Enterprises can also design custom multi-agent systems, with Snowflake Cortex Agents serving as the scaffolding for production-ready data agents powered by Claude. These agents can retrieve, interpret, and reason across structured and unstructured data with greater precision and efficiency. “We don’t see or access customer data because Claude operates within Snowflake’s security perimeter, so the customer’s data stays private,” Lesse added. Raghunathan notes that Snowflake uses Claude internally across engineering, sales, and operations. Developers rely on Claude Code to accelerate development and code production cycles, while its sales teams use a Claude-powered assistant to unify data across the organization and shorten deal timelines. The companies say that early customer results are already showcasing what an enterprise built around AI agents might look like. Customer communications platform Intercom now uses Claude through Snowflake Cortex AI to power its Fin AI Agent. Likewise, Simon Data, a composable customer data platform, uses Claude on Snowflake to unearth patterns that conventional analytics overlooked, while maintaining governance across customer datasets. A growing competitive frontier The race to dominate enterprise agentic AI has intensified pressure across the technology landscape. Snowflake’s rising AI revenue has seized market attention, but experts argue that its strategy, while meaningful, does not fundamentally reshape enterprise AI’s competitive frontier. Gregor Stewart, chief AI officer at SentinelOne, believes the Anthropic alliance strengthens Snowflake but does not vault it ahead of rivals. “Databricks has a stronger internal team and just as good relationships and arrangements with the frontier labs. In some ways, Snowflake is just catching up to them,” he adds. “I see hyperscalers using models and generic compute to build ‘one-size-fits-all’ assistants that lack the specific business context residing in the data layer. In contrast, Snowflake is positioning itself as the governed brain where the actual work happens, rather than just the infrastructure where the model runs.” The positioning, AI where the data lives, is the philosophical gulf separating Snowflake and Anthropic from Databricks, Microsoft’s Copilot ecosystem, Google’s integrated cloud stack, and AWS. The companies are betting that enterprises will increasingly favor systems that minimize data movement, maximize security, and deliver reasoning directly within existing governance boundaries. “Enterprises have been burned by AI projects that demanded new infrastructure, new skills, new risk, and delivered unclear ROI. Snowflake’s revenue run rate validates that ease of adoption beats raw capability,” says Ian Riopel, CEO of Root. “Against Databricks: ‘intelligence in SQL’ beats ‘build custom pipelines’; Against Microsoft and Google: ‘AI in your existing flow’ beats ‘adopt our new flow.’ The reality most vendors miss is that enterprises aren’t looking for another platform to master, they want 100 times the efficiency with the same knowledge and access their employees already have.” If that thesis proves correct, Snowflake and Anthropic may be constructing more than a partnership—an architecture for how enterprise software will work over the next decade. In that vision, agentic AI doesn’t sit beside business systems; it becomes the operating system. And both companies are intent on owning the moment when enterprises decide to make that shift. “Our AI strategy is inherently open. We support models from several leading providers so enterprises can orchestrate multi-agent systems without being locked into a single cloud or model provider,” Raghunathan added. “This is what makes Snowflake a true AI control plane.” View the full article

Artificial intelligence is the most exhaustively covered technology since the dawn of the internet. As any tech editor will tell you, it can be challenging to find stories about AI that are not merely new but big. So when our editorial director, Jill Bernstein, forwarded me a pitch from journalist John Pavlus, who wanted to write about a “mad scientist” attempting to “stomp out hallucinations and other gen-AI nonsense from Amazon’s cloud security/ chatbots/robots/agents,” I said yes in seconds. (He actually used a more pungent term than “nonsense,” but for decorum’s sake, I’m keeping that to myself.) And then I braced myself. The pitch promised to explain the “abstruse formal mathematics” behind “neuro-symbolic AI,” a totally different kind of AI that is not based on the kind of large language models that power ChatGPT and just about every other AI product that has infiltrated our lives over the past three years. The mad scientist was Byron Cook, who heads up Amazon’s automated reasoning group. Reader, I trust your intelligence, but this sounded like heady stuff. My concern was not that the piece wouldn’t be smart or interesting. It was that you might need to be Byron Cook himself to understand it. I needn’t have worried. I’ve worked with countless reporters over my three-decade career, and many of them dazzled me with their brilliance. But I’m not sure I’ve worked with anyone as gifted as Pavlus at translating the difficult into the digestible, let alone the delightful. See his story, “Amazon’s hallucination hunter.” This article closes out our third annual AI 20 package. For this year’s list, global technology editor Harry McCracken and senior editor Max Ufberg set out to identify the unheralded “scientists and ethicists, CEOs and investors, and Big Tech veterans and first-time founders” of the AI universe, as McCracken writes in the introduction. “Household names, they’re not. Yet they’re already changing our world, with much more to come.” You may have noticed that I’ve now spent nearly 300 words touting our AI coverage without using the word bubble. That was intentional, and a bit superstitious. Do you have any idea how nerve-racking it is to produce a quarterly print magazine, in the age of AI, amid one of the frothiest stock markets in history, hoping that the tech reporting will hold? Because of course it’s a bubble. The question is when it will pop, and how loudly, and how long it will take for the market (and the industry) to recover and settle into a more sustainable trajectory, with costs and revenue in alignment and real value returned to shareholders. A bubble can be a bubble and still be revolutionary, as we learned after the dotcom crash of the early 2000s. Not everyone agrees, of course, especially the publicist, gadfly, podcaster, and mini media mogul Ed Zitron, who has become famous predicting that AI isn’t just a bubble but a colossal fraud. He makes his case to McCracken in “Meet Ed Zitron, AI’s original prophet of doom.” View the full article

When Levi’s CEO Michelle Gass was in Japan last summer, she and chief product officer Karyn Hillman wandered down the street from the brand’s store in Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku neighborhood to a small, unassuming vintage shop called BerBerJin. They took the stairs down into its cavernous basement, where it keeps racks and racks of its best denim finds, and began the slow, laborious task of searching for treasure. A couple of hours later, Gass walked out with a pair of 1947 vintage 501s and an even rarer 1952 trucker jacket. “We tried on so many, many pairs of jeans,” Gass tells me over coffee in her San Francisco office in September. “You appreciate the nuances and beauty of denim, how it ages and how it’s worn. There are these incredible finishes that come as a result of people wearing it for 70 years. It’s so special.” It’s the kind of experience that can only happen in Japan. When American Levi’s factories began modernizing their denim production lines in the 1960s and ’70s, Japanese collectors came to America to buy up as much vintage and deadstock denim as they could. (Japanese manufacturers bought the antique shuttle looms, sparking homegrown brands like Big John and Studio D’Artisan.) Levi’s created its Levi’s Vintage Collection—new replicas of historical designs—in the country in 1996. Recently, Levi’s cemented the relationship further, launching its “Made in Japan” Blue Tab collection, a premium line of trendy takes on classic Levi’s designs, last February. Gass’s success in striking vintage gold in Tokyo last summer is also symbolic of a larger trend for the 172-year-old company: Most of its consumers are now outside of the U.S. This has been a blessing for the bottom line. At a time when U.S. retailers have been roiled by tariffs and global supply chain challenges, Levi’s is outperforming its peers, posting 14 consecutive quarters of direct-to-consumer channel growth. It’s a level of consistency its competitors undoubtedly envy; Gap posted its first annual revenue increase since 2022 last year (1%) after years of flat sales and declines. Forty years ago, international sales accounted for just 23% of the company’s annual revenue. Now that figure is close to 60%. The increase is noteworthy, given how low the U.S., as a country, has plunged recently in international esteem. According to recent Ipsos surveys, the opinion of America as having an overall positive effect on world affairs has fallen in 26 out of 29 countries over the last six months. Only 19% of Canadians see the U.S. as a positive influence, down from 52% six months ago. “The aesthetics of America from the past are not the aesthetics of America for today,” says University of Michigan marketing professor Marcus Collins. In September, Levi’s leadership in the U.K. acknowledged as much, saying that “rising anti-Americanism as a consequence of the The President tariffs and governmental policies” could drive British shoppers away. The company avoided much of the impact from tariffs in 2025, thanks to a diversified supplier base across 28 different countries and minimal exposure to China, with less than 1% of its goods sold in the U.S. manufactured there. But it’s not immune: Gass said in October that the company will be raising prices on some of its products next year. But the company’s success overseas shows that though the brand of America might be struggling—riven at home and distrusted abroad—the quin­tessential brand of Americana that Levi’s represents is thriving. Sales in foreign markets are generating double-digit year-over-year sales growth for the company. In a July interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Gass said the brand is “on fire” in Europe, especially among younger consumers, pointing to Paris, Barcelona, and Milan. Gass’s vintage shopping spree reveals something else as well: that the woman at the helm of Levi’s grasps the intimacy of the relationship between people and their jeans. Fit, color, wash, age—they all add up to something ineffable for the wearer: identity. Merging heritage and quality with values of inclusivity, Levi’s is the ultimate ambassador for a certain kind of classic American cool, earning its spot on this year’s list of Brands That Matter. Since arriving at Levi’s two years ago, Gass has been rewiring the company into what she calls “the world’s definitive denim lifestyle brand,” with a target of $10 billion in annual revenue, a significant jump from the $6.4 billion the company generated in 2024. It entails growing the women’s category (from 40% today to 50% of total sales); accelerating the company’s direct-to-consumer business (currently about 47% of sales); streamlining its manufacturing supply chain; and expanding its brick-and-mortar footprint of 1,200 owned and operated stores by 250 locations over the next five years, particularly in high-growth regions like India, Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. This will better help the company control the consumer experience and how wholesale partners market Levi’s. “Our brand is actually bigger than our business right now,” says chief marketing officer Kenny Mitchell. Levi’s has a market cap of $8.36 billion—tiny compared to an American retailer like Nike ($107 billion). It’s small even compared to Lululemon ($21.19 billion), a company with higher margins and a more developed DTC operation. (Denim, a more mature market than athleisure, has traditionally had lower margins and more competition.) “Our job,” Mitchell says, “is to get our fair share.” Mitchell was on vacation in Paris to celebrate his wife’s 50th birthday in early 2024 when he started to hear the rumors: When Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter—the follow-up to her chart-topping Renaissance—dropped that March, it would include a track titled “Levii’s Jeans.” He immediately called Gass, who was barely three months into her CEO tenure. (She had been hand-picked for the role by her predecessor, Chip Bergh, after spending five years running Kohl’s and 16 years before that at Starbucks, eventually overseeing the European, Middle East, and Africa business.) “It was the biggest gift,” she recalls. “I really could not believe it. Like, how in the world, or the universe, did this happen?” Beyoncé clearly harbored affection for the brand, which had offered sponsorship support to Destiny’s Child in the early 2000s, featuring ads with the group wearing Levi’s Low Rise Jeans. (She also famously wore a custom pair of Levi’s cutoffs during her Coachella set in 2018.) For Gass, the song was a double win: Not only did it position the brand at the center of culture, it also offered a direct appeal to women, a critical component of Gass’s growth strategy for Levi’s. She and Mitchell formed a team to brainstorm a joint campaign they might pitch to Beyoncé, if they got the chance. Levi’s “is known for a lot of good things, but agility hasn’t necessarily been one of ’em,” says Mitchell, a veteran of McDonald’s, Gatorade, and Nascar, who joined the company in June 2023 from Snap. The quick response “showed what’s possible,” he says. Kenny MitchellVincent Tullo When the album came out in late March, Levi’s quickly changed all its social handles to include the extra “i.” (Fans were excited, too: The brand’s posts attracted 3 billion impressions within a month of the album’s release.) Then Mitchell called Beyoncé’s team at Parkwood Entertainment; they’d seen the social swap and loved it, which led to talk of an official collaboration. Between September 2024 and August 2025, the parties would release three lushly produced video ads, all of which drew on the brand’s history while re-situating Levi’s within contemporary America. In a company press release to announce them, Beyoncé described Levi’s as “the ultimate Americana uniform.” Beyoncé’s embrace of Levi’s was unique, but stars have been aligning themselves with the brand since the 1930s, harnessing its working-class, Western roots to signal, and burnish, their own rebellious, down-to-earth image. John Wayne in Stagecoach. Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones. Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Elizabeth Taylor in Giant. A pair of 505s adorned the cover of the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers. Bruce Springsteen’s 501-clad backside graced the cover of his 1984 album Born in the U.S.A. (in a photo shot by Annie Liebovitz). President Ronald Reagan, no marketing slouch himself, liked to wear Levi’s while working on his ranch. He often talked about America being “the shining city upon a hill,” a beacon for the rest of the world. Over the decades, that light has been a swoosh, the golden arches, an apple, a Coke bottle, and, yes, the iconic little red tab that identifies a pair of Levi’s. Mitchell recently returned from India, where he was visiting with two new Levi’s brand ambassadors: musician and actor Diljit Dosanjh and Bollywood star Alia Bhatt. “I can’t think of a lot of brands that have that dimension,” he says of the variety of international cultures baked into its partnerships. Levi’s direct-to-consumer sales in Asia, including India, grew by 14% in Q1 2025. When Gass delivered the undergraduate commencement address at her alma mater, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), in Massachusetts, last May, she spoke about growing up in Lewiston, Maine, and the jobs she had before college, including working at a bread factory and bagging groceries at the local Shop ’N Save. Sitting in her office on the seventh floor of Levi’s headquarters on a September afternoon, with a stunning view of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, she smiles thinking about those old jobs, especially “being a bun sorter at the bread factory,” she says. “It was for Burger King buns, no joke, that would come down the conveyor, and you’d have to make sure that they were all lined up properly, toss the bad ones, and make sure it didn’t get jammed up. I had a total I Love Lucy moment with hamburger buns that was really true. Buns were flying everywhere.” In her speech to WPI’s graduating class, Gass, who’d received a partial scholarship to attend the school, charted her path from chemical engineering major to leader of an iconic brand like Levi’s by identifying five principles that were instilled in her during her time at the school in the late ’80s: Ask the question; It’s science and imagination; It will be hard; The right distance between two points may not be a straight line; and Consider the impact. Asked today how these principles apply to her work, she offers an example that illustrates principle one. Early in Gass’s tenure as a marketer at Starbucks, in the late ’90s, the company was still using red and white straws, like every other fast-food joint. She asked the question: Why don’t we have green straws, to match the company’s logo? That question prompted a company-wide look at small branding opportunities. Years later, after her almost 10-year stint at Kohl’s, Gass became Levi’s president in 2023, under then-CEO Bergh. While touring stores and offices around the world, she wondered, Where are all the denim skirts? “Shouldn’t Levi’s be the destination for the best denim skirt, like the 501 of a denim skirt?” she recalls asking Bergh. “It seems so simple, but it was not part of our core line.” Karyn HillmanVincent Tullo The strategy she and Bergh developed for transforming Levi’s into a fuller “denim lifestyle” brand entailed expanding the women’s category beyond jeans, which means skirts and tops. Karyn Hillman’s office is packed with five different racks of clothing samples, which she uses as inspiration for new products. Wearing a pair of vintage 1950s men’s 501s, a brown leather jacket over a chambray blouse, and boots, the Levi’s product head exudes the company’s denim lifestyle ambitions. She is positioning the brand as something of a personal stylist, helping shoppers make good-looking decisions—the logic being, who knows what goes with 501s better than Levi’s? “We have to keep answering that question day after day,” Hillman says. “Why would you buy that top, and why from us? And what makes it ours?” As of Q3, tops comprise about 22% of the company’s overall business, up 9% that quarter year over year. Meanwhile, Gass unified regional product teams within one group focused on design and merchandising, which helped Hillman and her team develop functional new materials. A new line of denim thread called Thermodapt, for example, can now be found in certain jeans and jackets (like the 501s and trucker). Thermodapt contains hollow-core cotton yarn designed to wick away moisture, trap warmth, and improve breathability in the heat. It’s something increasingly important to customers in a warming world, especially in Asia. The rest of the “denim lifestyle” plan—which also involves bolstering the company’s direct-to-consumer business, opening fully owned brick-and-mortar stores (particularly in Asia), and simplifying its supply chain and manufacturing operations—has involved difficult decisions. Last year, the company discontinued its sub-brand Denizen, originally launched in 2010. It sold another sub-brand, Dockers, for more than $300 million to Authentic Brands Group. These moves reduced staff in the company’s headquarters by 44 people. Closing a production factory in Poland and a distribution center in Kentucky eliminated nearly 1,000 other jobs. “One of the most important jobs of a CEO is resource allocation,” Gass says. “Now Levi’s is more focused.” Levi’s will need that focus to navigate a landscape that is increasingly volatile. Last summer’s controversy surrounding American Eagle’s campaign with Sydney Sweeney (“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring. . . . My jeans are blue”) is a prime example. When social reactions objecting to the slogan’s eugenic undertones went viral, the right pounced. President The President called the American Eagle ad “fantastic” and the “hottest ad out there.” American Eagle decided to do absolutely nothing, sticking with the campaign. In September, the brand reported that between the Sweeney spot and a Travis Kelce collab soon after, it had attracted 700,000 new customers and boosted the stock price, but Q2 comparable sales still slid by 3% compared to the year before. “We are operating in a very complex environment,” Gass says, “but what gives me great confidence to navigate this time is that we have so much history and heritage around our values.” The company began when Levi Strauss, a German Jewish immigrant, worked with tailor Jacob Davis to apply copper rivet reinforcements to tough denim in 1873, making the first manufactured waist overalls. Its social efforts began soon after that. Strauss started endowing college scholarships for women at the University of California, Berkeley in 1897. The company operated racially integrated factories in California during World War II and opened one of the first integrated factories in the South—in Blackstone, Virginia—in 1960, four years before the Civil Rights Act outlawed workplace discrimination. In various marketing campaigns over the last few decades, Levi’s has often depicted itself as offering something for everyone. In a 2024 campaign, it called itself “the unofficial uniform of progress.” Earlier this year, as corporate DEI programs were being shuttered, suppressed, or de-emphasized to avoid undue negative attention, Levi’s did what it has always done. The company launched its annual Pride product collection, sponsored Pride events in San Francisco, and continued its donations to the Stonewall Foundation and the Trevor Project. In April, a conservative think tank called the National Center for Public Policy Research formally submitted a proposal to shareholders calling for the company to “consider abolishing its DEI program, policies, department, and goals.” More than 99% of shareholders voted to reject the proposal. [carousel_block id=”carousel-1764951032757″] “We did advocate for our position on diversity and inclusion,” Gass says. “We did maintain our Pride sponsorship. This is who we are. And in times like these, it’s important to be consistent. It’s the right thing to do, it’s part of our history, but it’s critical for business. Having a diverse workforce allows you to make better business decisions. I’ve seen that time and time again.” In August, Levi’s released a multimedia campaign starring Grammy-winning musical artist Shaboozey and chef Matty Matheson (who is also an actor and producer on The Bear) that exuded full-on, sun-soaked Americana vibes with a surrealist twist. Like Beyoncé’s commercials, theirs—quirky odes to the Western shirt, 501s, and the trucker jacket—evoke the history of Levi’s and of the American West. But they’re filmed through a modern lens (and maybe on shrooms?), blurring the line between heritage and hipster. Shaboozey’s music does something similar, straddling the disparate worlds of country and hip-hop. He is a Black artist drawing acclaim in a genre largely dominated by white artists and audiences, and his success is a living example of how expansive Americana can be. “It’s knowing where you’re from, not being scared to journey into new territories,” he says, and “understanding that at the center of everything, it’s the same heart, soul, and spirit of whatever it is you represent. I think for Levi’s, across any decade or trend, the soul and the heart remains the same.” Shaboozey says he’s been collecting Levi’s denim for as long as he can remember. “I’ve bought and sold and spent way more than I should on jeans,” he says. “It is part of my whole brand. My Twitter handle has been @ShaboozeyJeans since 2016.” He was thrilled earlier this year to visit the “Haus of Strauss,” the nondescript bungalow near the Chateau Marmont on L.A.’s Sunset Strip that opened in 2022 as a place for artists, stylists, producers, managers, and others in arts and entertainment to check out the denim brand’s best and even get customized pieces. (There are now outposts in Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo, and London.) If you see Ryan Gosling in Barbie wearing a Levi’s vest, it wasn’t a paid sponsorship—it’s because of the relationship with his costumer. “Or artists come through before Coachella to pick outfits. It’s an investment,” CMO Mitchell says, “but it’s a part of how we stay connected to culture and subcultures.” Beyoncé is a tough act to follow, but the NFL has gifted Levi’s with another potential megawatt moment: Super Bowl LX. The game will take place at the Levi’s Stadium in San Francisco in February, and perhaps even more importantly, so will the Super Bowl halftime show. It will be broadcast to more than 180 countries, with a total worldwide audience of more than 200 million. Once again, Mitchell says, “We will be in the center of culture.” The scheduled performer? Bad Bunny, whose politics of inclusion align with the company’s values, and who has drawn public scorn and ridicule from conservatives all the way up to President The President and Mike Johnson, who disagree with his politics and lack of English lyrics. The spotlight will offer a powerful opportunity for all three parties—Bad Bunny, Levi’s, and America itself—to assure global audiences that there is still a lot to love on these shores. And it’s a high-profile chance for Levi’s to grow its business to be as big as its brand, finally. Gass believes it can be done; 172 years of history give her confidence. “We know who we are, we’re clear in our values, and we always want to be on the right side of history.” Plus, she says, “At times like these, consumers go to brands that they recognize and trust. Levi’s is one of those brands.” Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is no stranger to Levi’s products. At the 2023 Grammys, his pared-down outfit—a Uniqlo tee and Levi’s 501s—drew rhapsodic reviews from no less than Vogue. Will he sport a Blue Tab Canadian tuxedo on the 50-yard line? “I’m not going to break any news,” Mitchell says, “but I think your instincts are good.” View the full article

The smartest financial move I ever made was to stop contributing to retirement savings. It may sound counterintuitive, even reckless. Dave Ramsey would have stress dreams about this article, but it may be time to get a divorce from your 401(k). Here’s the truth: You actually don’t need millions to retire. Those retirement calculators love to spit out impossible numbers: $3 million, $5 million, sometimes more. Numbers so big they make financial freedom feel like a five-decade slog. Here’s the part they leave out. Most people following the “save for 40 years” script never hit those numbers. They keep working and waiting, but they’re aiming for a moving goalpost. And this isn’t about only money. It’s about decades of your life you don’t get back. The real shift isn’t stockpiling a fortune someday, but creating passive income now. You don’t need millions. You need cash flow. Changing your perspective on that changes everything. Why the ‘retirement number’ is a mirage Here’s the dirty secret about those retirement calculators: They’re built on a foundation of mediocre returns. Financial advisers love showing you diversified portfolios earning 2% on treasuries, 4% on bonds, maybe 8% to 10% on index funds if you’re lucky. Then they compound those small numbers over 40 years and tell you that’s the path to freedom. But what if I told you I routinely invest in small businesses earning annual returns of 32% or more? Same dollars, radically different outcome. The $3 million to $5 million magic number isn’t magic at all. It’s a moving target designed to keep you paying fees to Wall Street. Inflation pushes it higher. Lifestyle creep makes it bigger. Market volatility makes it unpredictable. And here’s the part Wall Street doesn’t mention: The longer your money stays parked in their products, the more fees they collect. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s a business model. Their incentive is to keep your money locked up for decades. What $120,000 taught me about real wealth Early in my investing journey, I had a choice with my $120,000 of life savings. I could do what most people do: Put it into bonds or index funds, let it grow slowly, and maybe, decades later, it would turn into something meaningful. At 4%, that money would earn about $400 per month. I’d be waiting 30 years before I could really use it. Instead, I bought a small business that was already earning $150,000 a year. I made a few simple changes, tightened operations, hired a virtual assistant, improved SEO, and that same business had grown by nearly 40%. That one decision changed how I think about investing forever. Once you see cash flow hitting your bank account in real time, “waiting for retirement” at 6% earnings stops making sense. A few investments pay back your income entirely. Since then, I’ve repeated and improved that model over and over, not just with my own capital but with investors I work with. We buy existing businesses selling for three to four times earnings, translating to annual returns of 32% or more. And unlike stocks or bonds, those returns don’t sit on a statement. They generate cash flow starting in year one. Compress 40 years into 5 Here’s the most important lesson I’ve learned: The difference between traditional investing and high return cash flow investing isn’t the return, it’s the time. Traditional retirement thinking locks you into a 50-year plan. You keep saving, hoping compound interest will eventually catch up with your life goals. Cash flow flips that script. It lets you start living off your investments almost immediately. I started this approach back in 2017 and bought, merged, and managed eight companies. After perfecting the process, I helped other investors and operators do the same. None of us waited for a magical retirement number. We built predictable income streams that paid our expenses, and with those returns financial freedom is available in under five years. What surprises most people is this: You don’t need hundreds of businesses to create substantial passive income or diversification. A portfolio of 8 to 10 uncorrelated small businesses can deliver 60% to 80% of the diversification benefits of thousands of stocks, without watering down returns. The future of financial freedom Building wealth isn’t about chasing a number. A net worth target is a someday goal, and “someday” often never comes. Cash flow is about today. It’s about building predictable income that pays your bills and funds your lifestyle now. It’s about having the freedom to pursue meaningful work while you’re still young enough to make an impact. Financial freedom isn’t a number on a screen. It’s a system that pays you month after month and gives you back the decades most people trade away. The retirement lie costs you 30 years. Cash flow gives them back. —Joseph Drups This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

Nearly a quarter of American workers didn’t take any of their vacation days this year. That’s according to a report published in October from FlexJobs based on a survey of over 3,000 U.S. workers. Despite workers being more burnt out and disengaged than ever, many refuse to take time off. Could unlimited PTO be to blame? It’s been well-documented that unlimited PTO may not be the generous gift workers are led to believe. A recent skit from TikToker and comedian Jacob Capozzi assumes the role of “the guy who invented unlimited PTO” to highlight some of the reasons why. Capozzi poses as an executive who wants to incorporate “something more interesting to get people to want to work here.” One coworker suggests “more competitive pay.” Another chimes in, “what if instead of limiting their time off, we removed the limits entirely?” Cue foreboding music. During the past decade, unlimited PTO has emerged as a popular benefit in which companies allow workers to take time off at their discretion (pending manager approval). Sounds great, right? Wrong. “If I gave you my debit card and told you you could spend up to $20, I’d bet my life savings you’d spend $19.50 without hesitation,” Capozzi explains. “But if I were to tell you in that same scenario you had no limit. How much would you spend?” The answer is probably less. “If we give them 25 days a year, they’ll take 25 because it’s theirs. But if we give them infinity, they’ll hesitate,” the executive in the skit explains. “They’ll work harder. Burn out faster. And best of all, we don’t have to pay them out for unused vacation days.” There is now no vacation cap at 7% of U.S. employers, according to the Society of Human Resource Management and in data shared with the Wall Street Journal. This has jumped significantly from a decade ago when, in 2014, just 1% of companies offered unlimited PTO as a perk. Still, a Harris Poll conducted last year found 47% of American workers feel guilty taking time away, and 49% get nervous requesting time off. Rather than deal with the smoke and mirrors of unlimited PTO, one in 10 applicants said they wouldn’t bother applying for a role if it offered it as a benefit, when surveyed by Adobe Acrobat on the biggest red flags in a job listing. “Just realized that i always brag about my company having unlimited PTO but in my 2 years here i’ve only taken 10 days off… my god im right where they want me aren’t i…,” one commented beneath Capozzi’s video, which has more than 2.3 million views. “Don’t forget if you use too much you’ll be letting your team down,” another added. “You want to be a team player right?” On the other hand, many are taking the unlimited PTO policy at face value and are more than happy to use it to their full advantage. “This only works in America. Nobody feels bad about taking time off in the rest of the world,” one comment suggested. “I’m so glad I don’t relate to this, I’ve lost count of how much pto I used, which is the whole point of unlimited pto,” another wrote. “Not me gang, sitting at almost 40 days this year,” another wrote. “Y’all be safe tho.” View the full article

The hype train on corporate purpose keeps steaming down the tracks. I have written about it before and tried to be positive. But I feel the need to be more constructively critical. If everyone has been convinced that they need to have a corporate purpose, let’s at least have it be a useful one. I try to contribute to that goal in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The hype train The articles and books on corporate purpose just keep coming. For example, in the past month alone, Harvard Business Review published four pieces on purpose (one, two, three, four). And the books keep coming, whether David Gelles’ Dirtbag Billionaire, Ranjay Gulati’s Deep Purpose, or the somewhat earlier Corporate Purpose: Why It Matters More Than Strategy by Shankar Basu. There is lots of sensible stuff in the articles and books. However, there is a theme across them that is most explicit in Corporate Purpose: Why It Matters More Than Strategy. It reminds me of the logical problem in my least favorite business book ever—Execution, which argues that execution is more important than strategy and then proceeds to include strategy as a subcomponent of its definition of execution. In this (il-)logical construction, if there is anything useful at all about execution outside of strategy, it will be more important than strategy by tautology. In similar fashion, if you think corporate purpose—which is clearly one of your strategic choices—matters more than strategy, you have no idea what strategy is. The general view being put forward in the purpose arena is that having a societally lofty corporate purpose is the most important thing a company can do—and largely guarantees success or at least is strongly correlated with success. I don’t buy it. I don’t see it as a helpful view. Integration is the key The same thing worries me about purpose as worries me generally about the first box of the Strategy Choice Cascade—Winning Aspiration. Visually, it is the first box. And management teams and boards get excited about diving into it first. They often spend massive amounts of time on determining their Winning Aspiration and in due course nail it down and etch it in stone. But their chosen Winning Aspiration not infrequently lacks integration with the other four questions. That is how you end up with insane aspirations like WeWork’s infamous “to elevate human consciousness.” I don’t know what that has to do with leasing office space, even if it is funky space! A Winning Aspiration of that sort is worse than nothing at all. And that leads to my concern about the corporate purpose hype train. Purpose is just another name for that first box. You can call it vision, mission, purpose or aspiration. It doesn’t really matter to me—though I think having one of those four is better than having multiple ones (which I have argued before). And because of the hype, I fear that the outcomes will be unconnected and unrealistic because companies have been convinced that if they have some lofty save-the-world purpose, they will succeed. So, make it bigger and better! No. The absolute key is integration. The five choices on the Strategy Choice Cascade need to fit with and reinforce each other. The only way that happens is if each of the five choices is flexible—and customizes to the others. If the five choices independently are inflexibly locked and loaded on, you will have a bad strategy. That means if you start by setting and locking on a lofty purpose, it is unlikely that you will be able to realize that purpose because you won’t be able to make four other choices—Where-to-Play (WTP), How-to-Win (HTW), Must-Have Capabilities (MHC), and Enabling Management Systems (EMS)—that bring the purpose to life. Chances are, your purpose, regardless of how lofty, will end up looking naïve and unrealistic, like WeWork’s. Instead, you need to toggle back and forth between the five choices to build the fit and reinforcement until such time as you have a purpose on which you can reasonably expect to deliver. If you care about having a lofty purpose and you do the hard thinking work, you should be able to achieve a nicely integrated Strategy Choice Cascade—with a purpose about which you can be proud. Sustainability is the goal A critical aspect of any great strategy is sustainability. By this I don’t mean the narrow goal of environmental sustainability. I mean a strategy that is built to last. We like and admire strategies like those of P&G or Lego or Apple because they are successful across generations. That doesn’t mean they are immune to crises—they are demonstrably not—but that they have the strength to get through the crises and renew themselves—like Apple in 1997 and Lego in 2005. I believe that the only strategies that are sustainable are strategies that are good for all the parties involved. If your strategy requires you to abuse your employees, rip off your customers, hurt the communities in which you operate, and/or skirt society’s laws and regulations—it won’t last. It may be profitable for a time, but in due course, one or more of these constituencies will successfully undermine it. For sustainability, you need employees who thrive—which I wrote about earlier in this series with Zeynep Ton. You need customers to truly benefit from your existence. You need communities that are delighted to have you as part of them. And you need to make society a better place—which I also wrote about earlier in this series. Any company has the ability, as I termed it in that piece and in a longer Harvard Business Review article earlier, to improve the civil foundation of society through innovation designed to make the world a better place. If you do these things, it is much less likely that anyone will fight you or undermine you. You will get the benefit of the doubt. Competitors will be inclined to go elsewhere and/or compete differently. And the ecosystem around you will help you evolve positively because the players in it have the desire to see you prosper. If a corporate purpose integrates seamlessly with the other Strategy Choice Cascade choices, resulting in a high level of fit and reinforcement and it helps the company pursue a sustainable strategy, it is a strong positive feature. And I support that kind of corporate purpose as an integral part of strategy (which I view as fitting into the Winning Aspiration box of the Strategy Choice Cascade). E.l.f. Beauty example Wildly successful e.l.f. Beauty provides a great example of a constructive and strategic corporate purpose, which is: To create a different kind of beauty company by building brands that disrupt norms, shape culture, and connect communities through positivity, inclusivity, and accessibility. That Purpose/Winning Aspiration choice is perfectly integrated with its other strategy choices. Those choices include a WTP focused on millennials and Gen Z, who find the e.l.f purpose highly appealing. It includes a HTW focused on providing premium quality cosmetics and skincare products at extremely affordable prices—to achieve the accessibility purpose. The MHC include low-cost sourcing, and both understanding and supporting the community of e.l.f. enthusiasts. The EMS include management approaches that enable “moving at e.l.f. speed,” in keeping with the needs and demands of the customer community the company serves. The strategy, including the purpose, shows the hallmarks of sustainability. Employees love working there and being part of the diverse, inclusive community inside the company. Their retail partners love e.l.f.’s focus on their productivity, not just e.l.f.’s own. The customer community loves them, including e.l.f.’s commitment to clean, vegan, and cruelty-free products, and its willingness “to challenge industry norms and shape a more inclusive and positive culture in the beauty world.” Competitors mainly choose to compete elsewhere or in different ways rather than challenge e.l.f. head on. Sustainability can only ever be proven over the fullness of time. But thus far things are looking positive for this integrated, sustainable approach to strategy and purpose. Practitioner insights A corporate purpose won’t help the world just because it is lofty. Purposes would all be loftier than they are today if it was easy. It isn’t. Like all strategy choices, the choice of Purpose (or Winning Aspiration, whichever term you prefer) entails making hard and creative choices. When making your purpose choice, aim for sustainability through integration. Never consider your purpose choice independently of the other four key choices. Consider multiple draft purpose possibilities and build Strategy Choice Cascades for each of them. Only then choose the purpose and remaining cascade choices that give you the best shot at the holy grail—a sustainable strategy. If you do it that way, I will applaud your purpose. I won’t fear that you have simply boarded the corporate purpose hype train! View the full article

Kazuo Ueda’s comments feed market expectations of an interest rate rise at next week’s meetingView the full article

Below, Jane Marie Chen shares five key insights from her new book, Like a Wave We Break: A Memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself. Jane is a leadership coach, public speaker, and cofounder of Embrace Global, a social enterprise that developed a low-cost infant incubator. She has been a TED Fellow, an Echoing Green Fellow, and a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. Her many honors include being recognized as a Forbes Impact 30 and receiving The Economist’s Innovation Award. What’s the big idea? Like a Wave We Break is a story of self-discovery. When achievements define us or serve as an escape from hidden scars of trauma, we do ourselves and others a disservice. Pushing onward from a fractured foundation can break a person and limit their leadership potential. Self-compassion and self-worth are found not by running ahead, but by looking within. Such a journey is the incubator of life’s biggest breakthroughs. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Jane herself—below, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Our wounds can drive us until they break us I grew up in a home with physical violence. As a little girl, I often felt powerless. That sense of powerlessness became the engine that unknowingly drove much of my life. When I was a graduate school student at Stanford, my team invented a portable infant incubator for premature babies. Unlike traditional incubators, our technology could work without constant electricity. It was designed to be used in remote parts of the world. We turned the idea into a company called Embrace and set a goal to save a million babies. After graduation, I moved to India, where nearly 40 percent of the world’s premature babies are born. Over the next few years, we did product development, clinical testing, figured out manufacturing, and then we finally launched the product. It was so rewarding to save lives with our incubators. One of the first babies we saved was in China. We donated a few incubators to an orphanage in Beijing and they rescued a two-pound baby that had been found abandoned on a street. They kept him in our incubator for weeks, and he survived. Seven months later, I visited this orphanage and held this baby in my arms. Stories like his kept me going. Over the next few years, I gave my life to this mission. “Seven months later, I visited this orphanage and held this baby in my arms.” Our work was recognized by President Obama, funded by Beyoncé, and covered by global media. On the outside, it looked like a success story, but what fueled me also eventually broke me. The powerlessness I felt during my childhood had given me purpose, but it also drove me to complete burnout. After a decade of insurmountable setbacks and obstacles, Embrace nearly collapsed—and I did too. Through it all, I learned that achievement, even when rooted in purpose, can be a survival strategy or way to outrun our pain. Our wounds can give us extraordinary drive, but if we never face them, those same wounds can consume us. This is a trap I see many leaders fall into. On the surface, it looks like grit or vision, but beneath, there may be an unconscious attempt to fill an inner void. Leadership can carry shadows—burnout, perfectionism, control, hunger for validation—but when we do the inner work, we stop leading from fear. We begin to lead from wholeness, and that shift makes leadership far more sustainable. 2. Healing starts with feeling When Embrace nearly collapsed, I didn’t just lose my company; I lost my entire identity. Everything I had poured my soul into for a decade was gone. I felt utterly broken, and because I don’t know how to do anything halfway, I bought a one-way ticket to Indonesia and launched a healing quest. I tried every healing modality I could find. I did a 10-day silent meditation retreat in the jungle, where I sat cross-legged for 14 hours a day, and no reading, writing, exercise, or even eye contact was allowed. I surfed epic waves, chasing adrenaline in the ocean just as I had once chased it in my work. I tried psychedelic therapy. I even did a frog poison ceremony, burning holes in my leg and vomiting so that there was nothing left inside me. With each experience, I hoped that maybe this would be the magic elixir that would fix me, but my real breakthroughs didn’t come in the jungle, ocean, or during a ceremony. They came when I stopped running and finally turned toward the grief I was avoiding. This was way harder than it sounds, especially given that I trained myself not to feel anything to survive my childhood. As Bessel van der Kolk writes, “The body keeps the score.” Trauma isn’t just in our memories. It lives in our bodies. Healing required me not to do more, but to feel more—to turn toward the pain I’d spent a lifetime outrunning and to meet it with compassion. “Our feelings are data. They carry so much wisdom.” We live in an escapist society that offers endless ways to numb, be that through work, achievement, substances, or self-help rituals. You might be listening to this podcast as an escape, but true healing isn’t about chasing the next fix. It’s about learning to sit with ourselves, and this isn’t just personal; it applies to leadership. Our feelings are data. They carry so much wisdom. When we can slow down enough to notice and honor them, we make wiser choices personally and for the people we lead. Leaders who can feel are leaders who can truly connect. 3. Resilience comes from self-compassion For most of my life, I thought resilience meant powering through. If I was tired, I kept pushing. If I was afraid, I doubled down. I believed grit was strength, but that belief is what led me to burn out. On my healing journey, one of the most transformative frameworks I encountered was Internal Family Systems (IFS), which teaches that we are all made of a multitude of inner parts: Protector parts that drive us to achieve control or push harder so that we don’t have to feel pain. Exiles are the wounded parts that hold emotions like shame, fear, or loneliness. The Self, with a capital S, being the calm, compassionate core of who we are. One of my protectors was the warrior within who was willing to fight every battle. Someone nicknamed this part of me, Janis Khan. Another protector was the overachiever, the part that kept me working to exhaustion. That part had won my life for decades. When I began turning toward my parts with compassion and curiosity, I began asking, What are you protecting me from, and what are you afraid of? Beneath these protectors, I met the scared little girl who felt like she was never enough. For years, I had abandoned her. Slowly, I turned toward her. I told her, You are enough exactly as you are. For the first time, I met her with love. This practice changed everything. Real resilience is about cultivating self-compassion so we can meet life with authenticity and courage. When we are kind to ourselves, we are more willing to take risks, stumble, and even fail because we know we will still be okay. As leaders, this matters deeply. If we want to create psychological safety for others, we first need to create it within ourselves. Only then can we build teams and organizations where people thrive. 4. Our biggest breaking points can become our biggest breakthroughs When Embrace shut down after 10 years, I reached the lowest point of my life. I was having panic attacks. I was depressed. There was a part of me that didn’t want to be doing the work anymore because I was so burned out. Another part of me saw the collapse as a failure—the death of everything I had worked so hard for. But the unraveling of Embrace ended up cracking me open. It forced me onto a healing journey. For the first time, I had to confront the history that lived inside me. I would have never chosen that path if the company hadn’t collapsed. “For the first time, I had to confront the history that lived inside me.” One of the teachers I had the opportunity to learn from was Tony Robbins, who often says, “Life happens for you, not to you.” I really believe these words. The adversity I faced growing up and the powerlessness I felt as a child became the foundation for my purpose, and the collapse of Embrace became the doorway into my healing. We often think of challenges as obstacles to overcome or detours from the life we planned, but sometimes they are the teachers we need. My most painful breaking point turned out to be the catalyst for my deepest breakthrough. 5. We are worth more than the sum of our achievements For years, I believed that if I just worked harder, achieved more, and saved more lives, then maybe I would finally feel like I was enough. But no award, recognition, or headline ever quieted that inner voice of self-doubt. When Embrace shut down, I had to ask, Who am I without my mission, my work, my title? I think it’s a question many of us are facing now because of AI that is capable of doing our jobs faster and better than us. We live in a culture that defines us by our output, but we are enough just as we are. We each carry an innate worth beneath all that noise of titles and social media likes. We each carry an innate worthiness that cannot be taken away. Having an unshakeable inner sense of worthiness gives us the resilience to face whatever life brings. The collapse of Embrace freed me from the prison of equating my worth with my achievements, and as a result, opened me to a life that feels fuller, freer, and more authentic. In a miraculous and serendipitous turn of events, Embrace was saved. It continues as a nonprofit, and this year we reached a million babies saved with our incubators. That goal we set nearly two decades ago. I am so proud of this milestone, but it no longer defines all of who I am. My worth is not in headlines or metrics. It’s in the simple truth that I am enough, just as I am. You too are enough, just as you are. Enjoy our full library of Book Bites—read by the authors!—in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article