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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. When Valerie Oswalt became CEO of breakfast and snack products company Kodiak in November 2022, she inherited a fast-growing business with beloved products, dedicated employees, and an outdoorsy vibe, befitting its Park City, Utah, headquarters. She also walked into a company that needed to bolster the talent, tools, and systems needed to scale the company. Her challenge: bring the discipline and knowledge she’d acquired during leadership stints at consumer packaged goods (CPG) giants such as The Campbell’s Company and Mondelēz International without losing the nimbleness and authenticity that had made Kodiak a household name. “It was a powerhouse brand that had a startup mindset,” Oswalt recalls. A recipe for success Kodiak has classic entrepreneurial roots. Founder and former CEO Joel Clark started selling his mother’s homemade whole-grain pancake mix as an 8-year-old. The company catapulted to national attention when an episode of ABC’s “Shark Tank” featuring Clark and cofounder Cameron Smith aired in 2014. Kodiak passed on a deal with the Sharks, but the publicity and the launch of protein-packed pancakes boosted sales. Private equity firm L Catterton acquired Kodiak in 2021, and Oswalt became CEO 17 months later, replacing cofounder Clark, who remains chairman of the company’s board of directors. To support Kodiak’s growth, Oswalt, who ran Campbell’s $4 billion snack division prior to joining Kodiak, brought in leaders with key experience in certain areas. She revamped the performance review process and instituted a new incentive plan tied to financial outcomes. (All 160 full-time employees have equity in the company.) “There were more processes that needed to be put in place than I had originally anticipated,” she recalls. Still, she was mindful of the impact change would have on the company’s entrepreneurial culture. “I did listening tours,” she says. “I talked to every person in the organization. It took about six months, but that was really important.” From there, her team identified the gaps, explained the rationale behind changes, and celebrated wins. She also course corrected when her changes were “too heavy” for an organization Kodiak’s size, such as when she rolled out a robust integrated business planning process to help gain insight into inventory and cash flows, plus do forecasting and planning. The fix was to listen to feedback and provide more training. “We wanted to ensure the proper education was provided to effectively” use the tools, she says. On a roll attracting celebrity investors Meanwhile, Kodiak has kept its in-house creative team, which handles all design, photography, and videography. Because the creatives are all employees, Oswalt says they are intimately familiar with the brand, which helps Kodiak retain an authentic voice even as it grows. She also notes that the team can quickly test and make design changes. Oswalt’s moves appear to be paying off. Last year, the company’s retail sales value hit $580 million, up 30% from 2023, Oswalt’s first full year in the role. “Valerie is building the kind of brand that earns deep loyalty—one that sits at the intersection of performance, trust, and culture,” says Mark Patricof, whose sports-focused investment firm invested in Kodiak in 2022. Athletes who participated in the round include football stars Travis Kelce and Joe Burrow, who have teamed up with Kodiak to donate meals in Kansas City and Cincinnati, respectively. Investors also include tennis player Sloane Stephens and baseball legend CC Sabathia. “That’s a big reason Kodiak has connected so well with our athlete investors, who recognize the authenticity of the mission. Each of our athlete clients who came into this deal have told me time and again how proud they are to be investors in Kodiak,” Patricof says. I asked Oswalt what advice she might have for other corporate executives thinking of making the move to a more entrepreneurial brand. “You have to be scrappy. It gets messy,” she says. “If you’re inspired by overcoming challenges and being connected—to your people, your consumers, your suppliers, your customers—then it’s awesome. And if you can find partners who are aligned with your priorities and your values, it’s absolutely magical.” Go big or go small What’s your experience bringing big-company discipline to a smaller organization—or vice versa? I’d love to hear what’s worked and what hasn’t. Send examples to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’ll publish the best examples in a future newsletter. Read more: from big to small What Alicia Boler David had to ‘unlearn’ from Amazon Inside the founder factory known as Palantir Laid off from Big Tech, these are the rebounder founders View the full article

Sundar Pichai was blindsided by ChatGPT. Soon after being named Google CEO in 2015, he’d declared that the world was entering an AI-first era. He went on to bet his stewardship of the entire company on his belief that the technology would be “an intelligent assistant helping you throughout your day,” as he put it in his first shareholder letter. Yet his prescience hadn’t prevented OpenAI from swooping in on November 30, 2022, with the first product that truly demonstrated the epoch-shifting power of generative AI, a breakthrough that had emerged from Google’s research labs in the first place. Pichai remembers his instinctive response to ChatGPT: “Wow, this technology is going to diffuse earlier and faster than we were expecting.” The feeling, he says, was “uncomfortably exciting.” He knew that if AI was entering hyperdrive ahead of schedule, Google would have to scramble. Pichai is sharing this memory in a conference room at Google’s expansive office at Manhattan’s Pier 57, a former steamship cargo facility. As we talk, in early January, he radiates his usual air of genial unflappability—the same manner with which he apparently received the arrival of ChatGPT just over three years ago. “I felt we had all the right building blocks in place,” he explains. “And so my genuine reaction was, ‘How do we meet that moment with the resources we have?’ I was deeply focused on what I needed to do.” Assembling those building blocks was a yearslong process that led to the company’s newest series of AI models, Gemini 3. It debuted in November with Gemini 3 Pro, which beat its rivals from OpenAI and Anthropic across an array of industry-standard benchmarks for gauging AI capabilities—sometimes by dramatic margins. A faster, more computationally efficient version, Gemini 3 Flash, followed the next month. Both are already powering Google Search and other products, impressing AI watchers. Even Open­AI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the wind in Google’s sails: “I expect the vibes out there to be rough for a bit,” he told staffers in an internal memo after Gemini 3 Pro’s release. Gemini 3’s strong start capped a year of steady AI progress mirrored in the stock price of Alphabet, Google’s parent company. After underperforming throughout the broad AI rally and bottoming out in April 2025, its stock price has more than doubled. In January 2026, when Google and Apple announced a deal to run future versions of Siri and other Apple AI features on Gemini, Alphabet hit a $4 trillion market cap for the first time. That Google is suddenly so widely regarded as one of AI’s biggest winners is striking given the skepticism that once clouded its efforts. Many observers saw the 28-year-old company’s previous success—particularly in monetizing its market-dominating search engine—as an obstacle to it being able to reimagine itself around the technology. “Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption,” tweeted ex-Googler and Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit the day after ChatGPT’s appearance. “AI will eliminate the Search Engine Result Page, which is where they make most of their money. Even if they catch up on AI, they can’t fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business!” Sundar PichaiBenedict Evans Though the next couple of years didn’t spell Google’s doom, they also failed to quell doubts about its future. Outside the company, “there were questions around, ‘Will we be able to do new things? Can we catch up? Can we have momentum?’ ” says Josh Woodward, the VP in charge of the Gemini app. The tech giant with the most AI juice seemed to be Microsoft, thanks in large part to the Open­AI partnership it had established by plowing billions into the startup, starting in 2019. By some measures, Google is still playing catch-up. According to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, monthly downloads of the Gemini app grew by 480% over 2025, but its 376 million monthly active users fall far short of ChatGPT’s 945 million. (Using its own methodology, which includes both the Gemini app and its web-based interface, Google says that Gemini has 750 million monthly users.) Another firm, Similarweb, reports that Gemini accounts for 22% of traffic to AI chatbot sites—up more than 670% year over year, but still barely a third of ChatGPT’s 63% share. But with Gemini coming into its own, there are signs Google can finally take full advantage of some of its defining strengths as a company. The company’s myriad products for work and home, running in data centers equipped with Google-designed Tensor Processing Unit chips, provide it with a wealth of touchpoints for Gemini. Even Alphabet’s Waymo robotaxis call on Gemini to help with particularly tricky scenarios, such as what to do if a vehicle ahead is in flames. “The same underlying technology is driving momentum across what look like very different businesses,” says Pichai. OpenAI also had a busy 2025, but much of it involved trying to be, well, more like Google. For instance, it released a web browser, Atlas, and started production on its own bespoke AI processors. It’s also in the earliest stages of competing with Google’s $295 billion ad business and—with its $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s hardware startup Io—getting into consumer electronics, where Google already offers its Pixel, Home, and Nest gadgets. (Google doesn’t disclose its hardware sales, which it rolls up into a “subscriptions, platforms, and devices” revenue line that totaled $48 billion in 2025.) Both companies have much left to prove, but even observers who thought AI might be a textbook example of Clayton Christensen’s “innovator’s dilemma” in action have reconsidered their gut reactions. “Google has definitely woken up,” says Gmail creator Buchheit, who now believes it might be the best-positioned company in tech. Suddenly, Pichai’s vision of useful AI everywhere is feeling more like a reality. Pichai may have been optimistic about Google’s ability to take on ChatGPT, but he treated its arrival as an emergency. Just three weeks after the OpenAI chatbot appeared, The New York Times reported that Google had declared a “Code Red,” instructing staffers to set aside other projects to fast-track new AI products and features. In early February 2023, the company announced a decidedly ChatGPT-esque bot called Bard. Actually, Bard had been in the works all along but hadn’t previously been considered ready for deployment. Google, which Pichai says aspires to be “bold but responsible,” had been bothered by generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate misinformation. Watching the world become smitten with ChatGPT, the company steeled its nerves and moved forward. In its initial form, Bard felt like it had been rushed to market. Widely regarded as a tepid response to the white-hot OpenAI, it had so little brand equity after its first year that Google relaunched it as Gemini, aligning the chatbot’s name with the LLM that powered it. Even as Bard foundered, though, Google was making consequential moves behind the scenes. Cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who had long been absent from day-to-day operations, threw their weight behind the effort to quicken Google’s AI progress. Brin in particular returned to active duty, participating in everything from hiring decisions to code reviews. “Having the founder of the company sitting together with your engineers sweating out the details of the model—I can’t imagine a more motivating thing for people,” says Pichai, his ego apparently unbruised by Brin’s return. [carousel_block id=”carousel-1773695343155″] The need for speed also led Google to take a hard look at its AI research organization—or, rather, organizations. The company had two of them, each managed separately and bulging with world-class talent. One, Google Brain, had been catalyzed within Google X, Google’s incubator for big ideas known as “moonshots.” Eight Google Brain scientists had coauthored “Attention Is All You Need,” the groundbreaking 2017 paper that introduced the concept of transformers, the technology that makes all generative AI possible. Google’s other AI research arm was London-based DeepMind, a 2014 acquisition. Formed to pursue artificial general intelligence, or AGI—AI capable of at least equaling human cognitive abilities across all domains—it had thrived under Google ownership. Its breakthroughs included the creation of AlphaFold, a protein research technology with the potential to dramatically accelerate drug discovery for which DeepMind cofounder and CEO Demis Hassabis and director John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. This sprawl and overlap of responsibilities wasn’t unusual at Google. “While it was great to have two teams, that moment called for more focus,” says Pichai. In April 2023, the labs joined forces to become Google DeepMind, with Hassabis running the combined operation and Google Brain cofounder Jeff Dean as its chief scientist. The merger acknowledged that Google needed to shift more aggressively from pure research to turning innovations into products. “It’s still research, but it’s research that has impacted the real world,” says Google DeepMind chief technology officer Koray Kavukcuoglu, who joined DeepMind as a research scientist when it was a two-year-old startup. “It has to be done with that mentality and with that collaboration across all of Google.” (In June 2025, Kavukcuoglu pushed this integration even further by taking on an additional role—chief AI architect for all of Google, reporting directly to Pichai.) Shortly after Google Brain and DeepMind became one, Google hosted I/O, its annual developer conference. The event was its first big chance to steal back some of the attention that OpenAI had sucked up. Among the announcements: Google was reviving an opt-in program, called Google Labs, as a way for users to try AI features under development, with the understanding that they were works in progress. One of Google Labs’ first rough drafts was an update to Google Search called the Search Generative Experience, or SGE. Its results pages retained the familiar blue links to external websites. In some cases, however, it preceded them with AI-generated summaries. Google spent a year refining the SGE before fully deploying it. But when the feature—renamed AI Overviews—started showing up in search results in volume in spring 2024, it made the news for all the wrong reasons. In a mishap demonstrating AI’s inability to recognize an old Reddit post’s absurdist humor, one AI Overview suggested using glue to help cheese stick to pizza. Another recommended eating a rock a day. According to VP of search Liz Reid, these goofs were few in number and sometimes stemmed from Google underestimating the degree to which people would prankishly mess around with AI. As she dryly notes, “Before we had AI Overviews, nobody went to us and was like, ‘How many rocks should I eat?’ ” As the company ironed out AI Overviews’ bugs, it was heartened by research indicating that users valued the feature. “They really wanted to be able to continue this conversation,” she says. And when the overview didn’t show up, “they were grumpy.” That led to Google Search’s second major foray into generative AI, a tab called AI Mode. Introduced as a Labs experiment in March 2025, it lets users click into a chatbot-style experience that provides more detailed responses than AI Overviews and permits follow-up questions. Reid likens it to the engine’s long-standing tabs for images, news, and shopping—an optional complement to search in its classic, general-purpose form, not a substitute for it. Nobody thinks Google Search is anywhere near its AI end state. Like everyone else in the tech industry, Google is certain that we’ll increasingly call on agents to perform complex jobs with minimal supervision. Already, a Google Labs experiment called Gemini Agent can assist with tasks such as researching and booking a car rental, though Woodward acknowledges that agentic AI can be “hit or miss” and “slow.” For now, Search strikes a balance that’s tough to get right: enough AI, but not too much. “It wasn’t like we were going to go change the default to AI Mode,” says Reid. “I don’t think AI for the sake of AI is useful. [Google Search] exists because 2 billion people like using it. You don’t want to betray that trust. You want to continue to live up to that promise.” Last August, Google DeepMind product manager Naina Raisinghani uploaded a cutting-edge new generative AI image model to LMArena, a widely used AI benchmarking platform. When it came time to fill out a field specifying its name, she didn’t give the matter a whole lot of thought—it was 2:30 a.m.—and mashed up two of her own nicknames. Ta-da: The new model was known as Nano Banana. The wacky monicker was an attention grabber, but so was the model’s skill set. In seconds, it could perform practically any photo-editing trick that popped into someone’s head—say, replacing a portrait subject’s hoodie with a sequined tuxedo jacket. Google quickly rolled it into the Gemini app, where it became a sensation. “We almost put a superpower in people’s hands,” says Woodward. “And you could see how fast people were like, ‘Did you see this? Look what I created. Look what I did.’ ” As word spread, Gemini downloads in Apple’s and Google’s app stores surged, briefly passing even those of ChatGPT. This publicity bonanza was reminiscent of OpenAI’s knack for seizing the spotlight by helping its users create shareable content, such as when ChatGPT added a filter that could give photos a Studio Ghibli–esque anime look. “Google, historically, has not been as good at that,” says independent investor and writer (and Google alum) M.G. Siegler. “Part of it, I think, is just a cultural reticence around wanting to do these viral moments. But they honed it in with Nano Banana.” (Meanwhile, OpenAI’s biggest launch of 2025—the much-anticipated GPT-5—was widely deemed a dud, though its recently released GPT-5.3 Codex is getting rave reviews.) Google was still riding a wave of buzzy goodwill when it announced Gemini 3 Pro in November. Instead of tentatively making it available to a subset of users for testing purposes, the company went wide. The new model immediately began powering the Gemini app and, for paying subscribers, Google Search’s AI Mode. Google also made it available as a service for developers via Google Cloud and incorporated it into a new coding platform called Antigravity, a competitor to hot products such as Claude Code and Cursor. Within weeks, it shipped two additional versions: the high-end Gemini 3 Deep Think, optimized for math and science questions, and the lighter-weight Gemini 3 Flash. Gemini 3’s big bang effect isn’t just evidence of Google’s confidence in its quality. It’s a reflection of its yearslong build-out of the cloud infrastructure necessary to deliver AI to billions of people and do it with optimal speed. Thanks to the Google DeepMind merger, the company has also gotten better at putting new models into the hands of internal teams so they can begin building with them. “We were able to simultaneously bring it to life across many of our products, and that made the launch much, much better,” says Pichai. More than anything else, Gemini 3 is a foundation—both for future models and useful features Google hasn’t even thought of yet. There’s no lack of work left to do. For example, like Microsoft, Google hasn’t made AI feel essential inside productivity mainstays such as word processing and spreadsheets. “A lot of the things they built specifically for Gemini are great, and then, when they’re throwing Gemini into existing apps . . . it’s basically not useful,” says Creative Strategies analyst Max Weinbach. Even Pichai concedes that users are wary about AI until it proves its worth. “Forcing the technology on people just because it’s a moment and you think you can put it everywhere, I think that’s where there’s backlash,” he says. That said, Google is not shy about leveraging its existing apps to Gemini’s advantage. For example, after the company’s search engine business was declared a monopoly under U.S. antitrust law in August 2024, it argued that new restrictions imposed by a U.S. District judge on its distribution tactics shouldn’t prevent it from bundling the Gemini app with Google staples such as Maps and YouTube. OpenAI—whose only blockbuster app is ChatGPT itself—couldn’t pursue a similar strategy. Two basic facts about generative AI have been in conflict. Running the technology in enormous data centers is pricey—in February, Alphabet startled analysts by saying it may spend $185 billion on capital expenditures in 2026, more than double its 2025 total—yet the overwhelming majority of people who use AI chatbots haven’t been paying or seeing advertising. More than anything else, that explains OpenAI’s estimated $9 billion loss in 2025—and why, in January, the company announced that it had begun testing targeted advertising in ChatGPT, sharing an example in which a user asks the chatbot for Mexican recipes and sees a small boxed promo for hot sauce. Intermingling organic generative AI responses with paid messaging is still a new proposition. Done badly, it might damage users’ faith that AI-based services are working on their behalf—a point Google’s Hassabis made during an Axios interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He expressed surprise that OpenAI was moving ahead with ads in ChatGPT and said Google had no immediate plans to follow suit with Gemini. It’s a competitive advantage that Google—the world’s largest seller of advertising—can afford, at least for now. That’s not to say that Google refuses to sully new AI products with ads. In 2025, it started testing them in Google Search’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. Rather than selling ads specifically into these features, its algorithms pluck relevant ads from its massive inventory for display. Google is also working with Target, Walmart, Etsy, and others to integrate commerce links into both AI Mode and the Gemini app. What AI will do to Google’s search revenue over time is anyone’s guess. Early third-party data indicates a high click rate for ads associated with AI Overviews. But it also reports reduced interaction with ads positioned among the classic blue links, which users might ignore altogether if an AI Overview has done its job. Talking about the future, Pichai exhibits the same sort of self-assurance that once led Page and Brin to launch their groundbreaking search engine without having a business model in place at all. “I’ve always felt if you solve problems for users in meaningful ways, there will be commercial value,” he says. “And inherently, a lot of what people are looking for is also commercial in nature. So I think it’ll tend to work out fine in the long run.” As Google goes about selling ads and signing up paid users—Google offers three AI plans with progressively unfettered access to its latest models and features, priced from $8 to $250 a month—the company is also managing the tricky economics of AI computational resources. Here, too, it has an underappreciated head start on Open­AI, which wasn’t even founded until four months after Pichai became Google’s CEO. “They have advantages in a bunch of areas,” says Zach Lloyd, the CEO of AI coding platform Warp and a former Google principal engineer. “They make their own chips, and that really matters. They have all of the cloud infrastructure for serving these models. They have an extremely profitable business with which to fund capital expenditures and train models.” Google’s investment in AI computing capacity hasn’t attracted much attention, at least compared to Stargate, OpenAI’s splashy collaboration with SoftBank and Oracle to sink up to $500 billion into state-of-the-art AI farms. But Google is spending $40 billion in Texas, where it’s building three huge new AI and cloud data center campuses. It’s pouring tens of billions more into Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia. Outside the U.S., it’s building out infrastructure in India, Germany, Belgium, and Thailand. Should Wall Street develop jitters over the tech industry’s present level of spending on AI, even Google might have to dial back. “The market might say, ‘Sorry, but not right now—let’s revisit this in a couple of years,’ ” says investor/writer and ex-Googler Siegler. Asked whether we’re currently in an AI bubble, Pichai pauses long enough to suggest he’s taking the question seriously. Eventually, an answer comes: “We are going to go through periods of underinvestment and then periods of overinvestment. It’s always tough to predict that. But if I were to take a decade-long view, no, I don’t think we are in an AI bubble.” Every tech CEO claims to think 10 years into the future. Many move onto new grand pronouncements within a couple of years, well before making the old ones a reality. But when Pichai says he’s taking a decade-long view of where the technology is going, it’s not just a platitude. That universal assistant he wrote about in that 2016 shareholder letter? Google is on the cusp of creating it. Explore the full 2026 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 720 honorees that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the companies making the biggest impact across 59 categories, including advertising, applied AI, biotech, retail, sustainability, and more. View the full article

I recently met with 300 leaders at one of the country’s top-performing transit authorities. I asked them to raise their hands if they’d ever worked for a leader who truly cared about them. Nearly every hand rose. The room lit up with warmth, as people recalled a boss who’d looked after them. Then I asked: on that team, how many of you were pushed to truly exceptional results? Lots of hands dropped. Then I turned the question around: Who has worked for a leader who drove performance like no other? Hands shot up. And how many of you felt valued and understood as a member of that team? Many hands fell. Only a smattering of people kept their hands up through all four questions. And you could see that they were proud. Heads nodded, and there was a visible pride having worked with someone rare—an “Expect a Lot, Care a Lot” leader. New data from FranklinCovey Institute’s The Case for the 6 Critical Practices Survey confirms just how rare they are. · Only 7% of leaders scored high on both expectations and care when rated by their team members. · Only 13% of leaders scored high on both expectations and care when rated by their leaders. · And the ones who do have an exceptional impact: 43% of their direct reports rate themselves in the highest engagement tier—what we call Creative Excitement—compared to just 20% of everyone else’s team members. That’s more than a two-to-one advantage. · Some 92% of leaders, who were rated as Expect A Lot, Care A Lot Leaders, inspire either Willing Cooperation or Creative Excitement from their teams, versus 78% of leaders who Expect A Lot or Care A Lot, but don’t do both. · And 76% of Expect a Lot, Care a Lot leaders are rated by their own managers as exceptional at delivering performance, versus just 23% of other leaders. The Consistency Problem Almost by definition, it requires consistency and balance to be an Expect a Lot, Care a Lot leader. The late Joel Peterson, who served on FranklinCovey’s board of directors for more than 30 years, put it this way: a CEO’s real job, once the right team is in place and the direction is set, is to weigh in only on the true jump balls, the decisions where talented leaders genuinely need a tiebreaker. But your team has to know you’re consistent. If they can’t predict what you would do, how you would navigate a challenge, they won’t run far without you. And you need them to be willing to run a long way. Imagine a leader who genuinely possesses both qualities, deep care and intense drive, but can’t regulate them. He revs high in the heat of the moment, says things he regrets, realizes he’s crossed a line, then floods the zone with warmth. His team members probably wouldn’t say they distrust him on a macro level, but day-to-day, his unpredictability erodes their sense of safety. In need of interim feedback on a big project—but reluctant to bring the boss something that he will tear apart—they slow down and wait for relevant insights they might pick up through back channels or in a chance encounter. We found this in our data as well. FranklinCovey Institute’s recent Insight Report, AI Transformation & the Human Imperative, found 36% of employees hesitate to make decisions without manager approval, and 92% of employees spend hours every week waiting for clarity or resolving misalignment. When care and demand are applied in inconsistent bursts, rather than together, performance is subjected to a kind of tax, paid in the form of hesitation and doubt. Reality Check: What Is ‘Care,’ Anyway? As we evaluate leadership along these lines, it’s easy to oversimplify what it means to care, reducing it to something that exists at the surface level—like asking how someone spent their weekend. It’s much more than that. One leader at the transit authority gathering described a colleague whose care was bidirectional: she cared deeply about her people and deeply about the organization’s mission. For leaders, care requires thoughtfully engaging with others in the context of what you’re all trying to accomplish together. It’s not just being nice or kind. By the same token, a lack of care can show up in unexpected ways. If you never give someone performance feedback, never have a hard conversation, and then one day let them go—that’s demand without care. If you avoid difficult discussions because they’re uncomfortable, that’s not kindness. It’s abandonment. Most leaders I encounter struggle to give feedback. Most employees, as a result, work in a feedback-free environment. And I believe the gap stems from a misunderstanding—the idea that giving honest, direct feedback is somehow at odds with caring. It’s not. It’s one of its highest expressions of care. A Walmart-Sized Example Doug McMillon offers one of the clearest illustrations. When he became CEO of Walmart roughly 12 years ago, many had written the company off as a legacy retailer destined to be overtaken by Amazon. His first move was to advocate to the board for a $3 billion investment in employee wages. The stock took a short-term hit, but the message was unambiguous: This is a people business. At the same time, McMillon told employees that just about everything was going to change, from roles and operations to expectations—with only a few exceptions, like mission and culture. And he promised to support teams as they made the transition into the new environment and took stock of the new expectations they’d be accountable for. McMillon treated people with transparency and humanity. The results speak for themselves. So You Want to Be an ‘Expect a Lot, Care a Lot’ Star? If you’re a leader somewhere in the middle of an organization today—managing a team of six or sixteen or sixty, not setting enterprise strategy or being profiled in the business press for your leadership prowess—what should you do? One starting point might be to think about which side of the ledger you’re undersupplying. Most leaders, when they’re being honest with themselves, already have a good sense of the answer. The manager who runs a tight ship but hasn’t had a real conversation with a direct report in months knows something. So does the department head who genuinely loves their team but habitually procrastinates on performance feedback. You might also take a first, uncomfortable step by asking team members what they think. Maybe not everyone all at once, but a few individuals you trust to tell you the truth. Do you feel like I push this team toward work that genuinely stretches them? Do you feel like I care about our mission? About work-life balance? Most leaders never ask these questions because they’re afraid of what they’ll learn. But that reluctance, that avoidance is itself a form of the problem. The leaders people remember, the ones whose current and former team members kept their hands raised through all four questions, were anything but avoidant. Somewhere along the way they’d resolved a) not to let the demands of the work make them strangers to the people doing it, and b) not to let their care for those people become an excuse to go easy on them. Knowing where you’re strong or weak is only a starting point, however. To shore up one dimension of leadership without neglecting the other, while avoiding the trap of inconsistency, requires discipline and intention. But as the data makes plain, the few leaders who can sustain it, and their teams, get a payoff in terms of both how they feel at work, and how they perform. View the full article

Yoast SEO co-founder shares that most sites don't need content management systems like WordPress anymore. The post Is WordPress Too Complex For Most Sites? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

A surge of affordable used EVs is about to hit the market—at exactly the same time as drivers are looking to avoid high gas prices. Around 300,000 EV leases are set to expire this year, driven by a leasing boom that started around three years ago, when leasing offered the widest range of models eligible for federal tax credits. A wave of hybrid leases is also expiring this year. At the same time, there are fewer used gas cars on the market than usual because of slow sales in 2023 and 2024. Used EV sales are already strong, even as the rest of the EV market is struggling. Right now, buying an electric car can be a better deal than a similar used gas vehicle. At $20,000 to $30,000, a typical used gas option might be a five-year-old Toyota Camry or RAV4 with 50,000 miles, according to Recurrent, a company that studies the EV industry. In the same price range, you can get a Tesla Model 3 or Volkswagen ID.4 that’s a year newer, with 20,000 fewer miles on it. For cars that cost less than $20,000, the average EV is two years newer than a gas car, with 40,000 fewer miles. “For the same amount of money, you’re getting a newer used car with lower miles on it and more technology,” says Scott Case, Recurrent’s cofounder and CEO. “And also, right from the jump, you’re saving a substantial amount of money in gas prices.” EVs have depreciated faster than gas cars in part because the technology is improving so quickly; the latest models have the best features. But for budget-conscious buyers, a two or three-year-old EV is still a good option and “very undervalued,” Case says. When the The President administration ended EV tax credits last September, including incentives for used EVs, sales were expected to plummet. “Everyone thought, ‘That’s it for EVs—there aren’t going to be more sales,’” says Case. “I think to an extent that was true on the new side—there was just a ton of pull-forward demand and Q4 was really, really soft. But we work with used EV specialists all over the country and almost immediately—October 1st, the day after the deadline—we were hearing from dealers all over that were selling used EVs.” By December, used EV sales were up 10.2% year-over-year. Total used EV sales in 2025 were up 35% compared to 2024. More than half of the inventory is $30,000 or less. Now, as leases end, there will be many more options. “What that means is that for consumers who have found new car sales to be too high and have wanted to get an electric vehicle but have found it too pricey in the past, they’re now going to have two or three-year-old vehicles that are top quality, and still under EV battery warranty,” says Corey Cantor, research director at the nonprofit Zero Emission Transportation Association. In the past, consumers have cited cost as one of the top barriers to buying an EV. Range or charging is the other top issue, but that’s less of a challenge now as well. A typical EV might have a range of 300 miles. More than 18,000 new public fast chargers were added throughout the U.S. last year, up 30% from 2024. And current batteries aren’t degrading quickly. Recurrent tracks battery health, and has found that after three years, EV batteries still show 97% of their original range. In many cases, three-year-old EVs are getting better than their initial advertised EPA range. “Across the board, batteries and range are holding up better than people think,” says Case. “There’s this big misconception about buying an ‘iPhone on wheels’ and expecting the battery to wear out in three years just like an iPhone. And that’s not true.” Recurrent has also studied how gas prices affect EV sales. Spikes in gas prices don’t necessarily mean that people run out to buy electric vehicles. When the company looked at data over the last 10 years, gas prices only had a meaningful impact when they stayed high in the wake of the Ukraine invasion. Still, that could happen again now. “If this is just a spike that jumps and then goes back down, that probably doesn’t lead to a lot of new EV sales, but if it stays around, we’ve forecasted that could lead to an extra two to four percentage points above baseline [sales] for the year,” Case says. Already, Edmunds reports that it’s seeing an uptick in searches for EVs. EV dealers also say that they’re seeing more interest. “I’ve never seen so many trade-ins come in on fumes because people are trading in a gas car and literally, we can’t get it to the other side of the parking lot because it has so little gas in it—people don’t want to hit the pump one more time,” says Jesse Lore, CEO of Green Wave Electric Vehicles, with dealerships in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Lore says that he recently sold a plug-in hybrid to a The President supporter with a big diesel pickup. “He was putting $60 in his tank every weekend, and that was going to go up 20 or 30%,” he says. “We did the math. On the plug-in hybrid, he has a 20-mile commute. He’s going to put $40 in every six weeks.” Even for new EVs, and even when gas prices are lower, the total cost of ownership is often less than the cost of owning a similar gas car. That’s both because of fuel savings and because EVs require less maintenance over time. The benefit varies by location, as this gas-versus-electric calculator shows. But the cost savings are clearest for used cars. Many customers who are concerned about gas prices now are particularly interested in lower-cost used EVs, says Shannon Golbienko, co-owner of Eco Auto Northwest in Washington State. “They’re looking for Chevy Bolts, and they’re looking for Nissan LEAFs,” she says. A used Bolt can sell for around $15,000. Historically, “whenever there is a gas price spike new car sales collapse, and used car sales stay remarkably resilient,” says Case. “People don’t stop buying cars, they just trade down to cheaper ones. What I think is interesting and unique about 2026 is this is the first time—if gas prices stay high—that there have been enough used EVs to make that a really interesting segment.” View the full article

It’s still more than two years until the cauldron lights up for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but we now know what the multibillion-dollar global sports spectacle will look like. The design team at LA28, the local organizing committee for the games, has given Fast Company a preview of the concepts and visuals that will guide the look and feel of the 2028 Olympics. The design approach is conceptually based on the superbloom, a natural phenomenon sometimes experienced in Southern California when an unusually wet winter leads to an explosively colorful spring bloom of wildflowers. The LA28 design approach uses bright, almost neon tones and an abstract graphic that will become the basis for the design of everything from stadium decorations to event tickets to promotional material and signage plastered across Southern California. “It’ll take over miles of printed graphics, probably the same amount of digital screens, thousands of pieces of sport equipment from batons to hurdles to rugby balls,” says Geoff Englehardt, head of brand and design for LA28. As a branding expert who has worked in the Olympics sphere since a stint with Team USA’s official outfitter, Ralph Lauren, for the 2008 Summer Olympics, Englehardt is deeply versed in the history and complexity of designing for the games. Working alongside LA28 executive design director Ric Edwards, Englehardt has helped craft a 250-page guidebook that sets the visual tone for every aspect of the games. “All of these things will carry our look,” Englehardt says. “To create a system that can work for all of that was quite challenging.” The superbloom concept became a framework for this design language, providing a vibrant color scheme as well as the visual form of flower petals to guide the graphic treatment. The team developed a core superbloom graphic made of 12 long horizontal rows that are subdivided into kaleidoscopic arrays of primary and secondary colors. Different patterns within the graphic form 13 discrete “blooms” that represent different aspects of L.A.’s culture and history, including its status as a world stage, a culinary crossroads, and a diverse melting pot. The shapes within each bloom are designed to seamlessly flow into each other, allowing them to either stand alone on a poster or flow together for miles along a marathon route. “It was really important that we developed a toolkit that worked for millions of brand impressions,” says Edwards. “Each real estate is not always a one-by-one square ratio or perfect rectangle. You have to solve for everything and anything.” A high bar for L.A. Olympic design Defining the visuals of a Summer Olympics is no small task, but it carried an even greater weight in L.A., which last hosted the event in 1984 and had one of the most beloved designs in Olympics history. Led by the design firm Sussman/Prezja, the look of the 1984 Olympics was a flamboyant and celebratory event that diverged from the more conventional and austere Olympics of the past. Defined by a bold magenta, yellow, and teal color scheme that spread across dozens of sites and venues in the city, it became a widely celebrated and influential design. “I saw in my head this sky and the ground sprinkled with confetti, sprinkled with all this magical stuff that shimmered and expressed joy, excitement—expressed the goals of the Olympics,” designer Deborah Sussman told Los Angeles Magazine in 2014. That even extended to the bouquets of flowers handed to Olympians on the medal stands. Sussman insisted that local flowers take the place of conventional roses, so every medalist at the games ended up holding pointy, multi-colored bird of paradise flowers. That same flower—the official flower of the city, no less—has been re-embraced for the main color palette of the 2028 Olympics, which is made up of the four colors: poppy, scarlet flax, bluebell, and sage brush. “It shows up in every neighborhood in LA, from the inner city to the hills to the beach to the desert. This thing can grow. It’s the grittiest thing you’ve ever seen. It could be two feet tall or 20 feet tall, and just thrives in any condition, which is such a great metaphor for the people that that make up this beautiful city,” Edwards says. “But also it’s just awesome to look at.” Designed for broadcast The LA28 design team worked closely with the Culver City office of Koto to translate the concept and bird of paradise color scheme into a more detailed design guidebook. Koto and the LA28 team developed four bespoke typefaces inspired by the hand-painted signage of L.A. strip malls, and consulted with LA28’s in-house athletes’f department to better understand how certain design approaches may or may not distract an athlete during an event. Crucially, the team also made early contact with the Olympic Broadcasting Services, the official camera crew that captures all the Olympic event video that gets broadcast around the world. “Their point of view is the view that the world sees,” Englehardt says. The designers consulted with them to better understand whether graphics they created would work onscreen or if color treatments on an event sideline would blur or vibrate when captured on video. “It’s very important for them to kind of understand our not only graphic direction, but our color direction. And it was quite frankly a surprise to us that those teams historically have not been brought into the creative process.” Edwards says this kind of early consultation was done with a variety of stakeholders and partners with the intention of solving downstream problems before they become too costly or complicated to solve. “This creative concept is the foundation for anything that’s created after. This will inspire the medals, this will inspire the torch, this will inspire the mascot,” he says. “If we’re not crossing every T and dotting every I when we’re thinking about this design system, it will fail when we need to do simple tasks like wrap a building or create fencing for a marathon.” Designed for sponsors The 2028 Olympics design approach also considers how its partners—particularly its sponsors—will be able to use these guidelines to aid their own preparations and brand activations ahead of the Olympics. Englehardt notes that Olympic organizing committees usually reveal the look and feel of their games about a year or so before the actual event, which doesn’t leave much time for partners like broadcasters and major sponsors to fall in line. As a result, these partners end up making their own visuals and physical sets, which can clash with the official design on the ground. “As a viewer, there’s a disconnect from what shows up on the field of play to what shows up in the broadcast partner’s animation. We want to eliminate that and have every partner show up whether on the ground or on broadcast in the same theme,” Englehardt says. LA28 revealed its look and feel to partners in early 2026. “We want 100% adoption. That’s a big part of why we developed the look with over two and a half years to the games,” Englehardt says. “We want to get all of our stakeholder ecosystem excited about this so that they don’t have to worry about going off and creating something new. We want everybody to show up dressed for the party in ’28.” This approach shows up most transparently in the official LA28 emblem, revealed back in 2020, which makes the “A” portion of the logo a variable that can be endlessly designed and redesigned by partner organizations. Edwards calls it “a big departure from traditional Olympic emblems,” and Englehardt says “it has afforded us a ton of opportunity.” Some critics have blasted this approach. “In LA28’s quest to have so many logos, now LA’s games have no logo,” writes design journalist Alissa Walker in her L.A. Olympics publication Torched. But, on the business side, the approach has already proven successful, with brands like Delta, Visa, and NBC making their own versions of the LA28 emblem. Many others are likely to follow in the next two years. LA28’s design team is also hopeful this visual approach will extend further, with brands embracing the design guide and possibly even making their own LA28-inspired products and packaging ahead of the games, from superbloom soda cans to bird of paradise-colored clothing. “Our partners shouldn’t feel like outsiders during the games,” says Englehardt. “We wanted to get our design elements into their hands with enough time for them to experiment.” Image is increasingly important for this Olympics, which is facing a range of existential controversies, from LA28 chairman Casey Wasserstein’s salacious emails revealed in the files of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the potential for politically motivated Olympic boycotts. But even more important is business. By December 2025, LA28 reported that it had already inked deals for more than $2 billion in domestic sponsorship revenue, putting it on pace to be one of the most commercially successful Olympics in history. In multiple ways, this is by design. View the full article

​Last week​ in this newsletter, I summarized some interesting results from ​a study​ that analyzed the behavior of 164,000 knowledge workers. It found that introducing AI tools increased administrative tasks by more than 90% while reducing deep work effort by almost 10%. The problem, I concluded, was that digital productivity tools sometimes speed up the wrong tasks, which might feel efficient in the moment, but lead us to accomplish less over time. As I emphasized, AI is not the only technology to produce this paradoxical side effect —we saw something similar with email, mobile computing, and online meeting software as well. So, what’s the solution to avoid these traps? In ​today’s episode​ of my podcast, I suggested three ideas that might help. I want to summarize them here as well: Idea #1: Use a Better Scoreboard Make sure you measure what actually matters in your job. If you’re a professor at a research institution, for example, this might be the number of papers you publish per year. If you’re a team manager, it might be the number of priority projects completed per month. When you introduce new digital productivity tools into your workflow, don’t focus too much on their impact on individual tasks (e.g., “Wow! That email was much faster to send than a fax,” or “AI just finished a task in 20 minutes that would have taken me 3 hours!”). Pay attention instead to your scoreboard. If you’re not producing more valuable output than before, the tool isn’t really making you more productive. Idea #2: Focus on the Right Bottlenecks If you look closer at many knowledge work projects, you’ll identify a key bottleneck that determines how fast they can be accomplished. If you want to become more productive, you should look for ways to deploy tools that improve this specific step. When working on Deep Work, for example, I spoke with a prominent Wharton professor who told me that one of the keys to publishing journal papers in his field was access to interesting data sets. He published more papers per year than most of his peers, largely because he spent more time building relationships with companies and institutions in search of good data. This was the bottleneck for his work. Accordingly, any tool that could help him cultivate more such relationships and gather better data from the relationships he had already formed would directly improve his productivity. Compare this, for example, to using Claude Code to speed up the process of producing plots for his papers. This might, in limited windows of time, make his job more convenient, but not necessarily increase the number of papers he publishes per year. Idea #3: Separate Deep from Shallow Work My final idea is the simplest: on your daily calendar, clearly separate time for focused effort that directly produces value from administrative, logistical, and collaborative tasks. In this way, if a digital productivity tool ends up accidentally increasing the volume of shallow work you face each day, you’ll limit the damage to your ability to make progress on important projects. This makes it easier to experiment with different tools without worrying that you might end up — like many of the subjects in the study cited above — suddenly overwhelmed by the ultra-fast processing of minutiae while the big things slowly languish. The post Avoiding Digital Productivity Traps appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

​Last week​ in this newsletter, I summarized some interesting results from ​a study​ that analyzed the behavior of 164,000 knowledge workers. It found that introducing AI tools increased administrative tasks by more than 90% while reducing deep work effort by almost 10%. The problem, I concluded, was that digital productivity tools sometimes speed up the wrong tasks, which might feel efficient in the moment, but lead us to accomplish less over time. As I emphasized, AI is not the only technology to produce this paradoxical side effect —we saw something similar with email, mobile computing, and online meeting software as well. So, what’s the solution to avoid these traps? In ​today’s episode​ of my podcast, I suggested three ideas that might help. I want to summarize them here as well: Idea #1: Use a Better Scoreboard Make sure you measure what actually matters in your job. If you’re a professor at a research institution, for example, this might be the number of papers you publish per year. If you’re a team manager, it might be the number of priority projects completed per month. When you introduce new digital productivity tools into your workflow, don’t focus too much on their impact on individual tasks (e.g., “Wow! That email was much faster to send than a fax,” or “AI just finished a task in 20 minutes that would have taken me 3 hours!”). Pay attention instead to your scoreboard. If you’re not producing more valuable output than before, the tool isn’t really making you more productive. Idea #2: Focus on the Right Bottlenecks If you look closer at many knowledge work projects, you’ll identify a key bottleneck that determines how fast they can be accomplished. If you want to become more productive, you should look for ways to deploy tools that improve this specific step. When working on Deep Work, for example, I spoke with a prominent Wharton professor who told me that one of the keys to publishing journal papers in his field was access to interesting data sets. He published more papers per year than most of his peers, largely because he spent more time building relationships with companies and institutions in search of good data. This was the bottleneck for his work. Accordingly, any tool that could help him cultivate more such relationships and gather better data from the relationships he had already formed would directly improve his productivity. Compare this, for example, to using Claude Code to speed up the process of producing plots for his papers. This might, in limited windows of time, make his job more convenient, but not necessarily increase the number of papers he publishes per year. Idea #3: Separate Deep from Shallow Work My final idea is the simplest: on your daily calendar, clearly separate time for focused effort that directly produces value from administrative, logistical, and collaborative tasks. In this way, if a digital productivity tool ends up accidentally increasing the volume of shallow work you face each day, you’ll limit the damage to your ability to make progress on important projects. This makes it easier to experiment with different tools without worrying that you might end up — like many of the subjects in the study cited above — suddenly overwhelmed by the ultra-fast processing of minutiae while the big things slowly languish. The post Avoiding Digital Productivity Traps appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Former Stockton originators are suing their ex-bosses for violating their privacy, in searching their personal accounts to show they were diverting borrowers. View the full article

For the past several months, the food scientists at PepsiCo have been working overtime to dream up new products that meet young consumers’ health and wellness demands. First, there was a new Starbucks coffee protein drink. Then, there were dustless Cheetos. And now, the company’s latest innovation is Doritos Protein. Doritos Protein launched in select retailers this month and come in two different flavors: classic Nacho Cheese and Sweet & Tangy BBQ. One 28 gram serving of these chips contains 10 grams of protein and 150 calories, compared to the meager two grams of protein in a 28 gram, 150 calorie serving of standard Doritos Nacho Cheese. And, unlike regular Doritos, Doritos Protein contain no artificial colors or flavors, relying instead on naturally derived ingredients. Based on taste alone, though, you might not even be able to tell the difference between a standard Dorito and a protein Dorito. Jason Niermann, R&D senior director at PepsiCo Foods North American Snacking, says that was the goal. “We tried dozens of protein snacks that were available in our market, and we did see a lot of trade-offs in products,” Niermann says. “They can be dry, they can be chalky, they can have off flavors. We knew that our consumers have a very high expectation on flavor and crunch. And, as a team, we really wanted to raise the bar on quality and hold ourselves to very high standards that we could be proud of.” How PepsiCo is rethinking its iconic snacks For PepsiCo, Doritos Protein fit into a growing portfolio of snacks and beverages designed to cater to an audience of wellness-obsessed consumers. These innovations range from the new Pepsi Prebiotic Cola to SmartFood Fiber Pop, Quaker Protein oats, Sun Chips Fiber whole grain, and the aforementioned dye-free Cheetos. According to data collected by PepsiCo, 86% of Americans are actively looking to add more protein to their diets, while 70% want their salty snacks to contain protein—marking out a major opportunity for the company to protein-ify its iconic chips. PepsiCo is also actively working to reduce its usage of artificial colors and flavors, in tandem with new initiatives from the The President administration to phase out certain synthetic dyes. Right now, the company is testing natural alternatives to color its core products like Gatorade and Cheetos—a process that it expects to take several years. In the meantime, starting this year, all of the company’s new innovations in the U.S. will be made without artificial colors or flavors. Niermann says designing Doritos Protein under these parameters presented a major challenge: recreating the look and taste of an original Dorito as closely as possible, while making several major tweaks to the recipe. How Doritos got the protein treatment Anyone who’s explored the existing protein bars, shakes, and snacks on the market knows that they have a laundry list of pitfalls. A chalky texture, artificial flavor, and bitter aftertaste are just a few of the issues that can arise when manufacturers try to pack a few extra grams into a protein-centric product. Balancing added protein with flavor is a challenge at the best of times—but working with a beloved snack like Doritos meant that Niermann’s team was under even more pressure to get the flavor spot-on. The key to a successful protein Dorito, Niermann says, was finding the right kind of protein. His team tried plant-based proteins from ingredients like soybeans and chickpeas, as well as various different animal-based proteins. Ultimately, they landed on casein—the main protein present in milk and cheese—as the best-tasting option of the bunch. “Some of the plant proteins can come with off flavors or notes that are just inherent in those raw materials,” Niermann says. “When you compare that with milk-based protein, we felt like it was a great compliment to delivering the bold texture of our product as well as flavor profiles like nacho cheese, which of course already has dairy in it.” Once casein was selected as the protein product, PepsiCo’s food scientists needed to incorporate it into the actual dough used as the base of the Doritos. This was an intensive trial-and-error process that included repeatedly tweaking the ratios of other ingredients—like the Doritos’ core corn powder—to find the right combination. “One of the specific challenges that came into account was the texture of the product and, how do you come up with a Doritos-worthy crunch when milk protein is the number one ingredient?” Niermann says. “And the secondary challenge was, also, how do you retain as many whole chips through the process so you don’t end up with a bunch of crumbs in the bottom of a bag?” To address these challenges, Niermann’s team experimented with variables including the dough’s ingredients, the size of the chips, and the thickness of each individual Dorito. They seasoned the chips with natural ingredients, like cheddar cheese, buttermilk, and romano cheese, and colored them with add-ins including paprika extract and vegetable juice. Then, they called in a team of trained chefs, scientists, and engineers to sample the chip prototypes and evaluate them on a range of sensory qualities, like texture, taste, and smell. Having sampled the Doritos Protein myself, I can attest that they’re probably the best-tasting protein snack I’ve ever encountered. If you presented me with the protein version and the original, I’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference (aside from just a slightly odd aftertaste). One important caveat is the macronutrient profile: Doritos Protein have a lower protein-to-calorie ratio compared to a competitor like Quest, which sells nacho cheese protein chips that contain 18 grams of protein in a 32 gram, 150 calorie portion. Doritos Protein might not be the most “optimized” protein snack—but if you’re craving Doritos, you’re probably after optimization in the first place. View the full article

A few years ago, the reusable water bottle transformed from a humble utilitarian good into a status-signaling piece of arm candy. On TikTok, popular creators were decking out their water bottles with custom accessories and add-ons. Out in the real world, people were coordinating their water bottle colors with their activewear sets. Some consumers were even willing to drop hundreds of dollars for a “luxury” hydration experience. It was a full-on war of the water bottles, and there was a clear leader in the pack of drinkware brands vying for attention: Stanley 1913. For Stanley, a subsidiary of the parent company PMI WW Brands, the great water bottle wars were a business turning point. The 113-year-old brand, which invented the first all-steel vacuum-sealed water bottle, was originally an under-the-radar name beloved mainly by outdoorsmen. After its Quencher water bottle caught the attention of a popular shopping blog called The Buy Guide, though, Stanley launched into the cultural zeitgeist, appearing everywhere from the Barbie movie to the TV show Yellowstone and SNL. Stanley’s revenues skyrocketed from $73 million in 2019 to an estimated $750 million in 2023. Since then, the rising star of reusable water bottles has dimmed somewhat. In an interview with Modern Retail last April, Matt Tucker, a sports equipment analyst at the Chicago-based market research firm Circana, said that sporting goods retailers saw year-over-year declines of bottles and insulated containers each month from September 2024 to February 2025. On a full-year basis in these retailers, he added, the overall category declined from 38% growth in 2023 to 14% growth in 2024. As the water bottle craze dies down, Stanley is looking to new horizons. The brand is betting that it can bring its unique attention to detail to other areas of its consumers’ lives, from the gym to the boardroom. Its first big play is a line of bags that’s taking a few major design lessons from the Quencher—and is already becoming a fan favorite. What’s next for Stanley after the great Quencher frenzy Stanley’s history can be told through three major eras, according to Graham Nearn, chief product and sustainability officer at PMI. The first—and longest—lasted from around 1913 to 2020, when the brand was focused on work and outdoor gear, primarily targeted toward a male audience. Then, from 2020 to 2024, the Quencher’s viral success ushered in a second era for the company focused on its hydration line, which also meant an influx of primarily female customers. For the last couple of years, Stanley has been outlining a plan for its third era in the wake of the Quencher’s explosion. Stanley declined to share financial data on its recent Quencher sales and overall revenue with Fast Company, citing the company’s status as a private entity. But, at a March 2025 event, Stanley 1913 global president Matt Navarro said he was seeing “a settling of the hydration category in the U.S., in particular,” despite overall growth across Stanley’s business from 2020 to 2024. He added that the company’s huge boost in success came from being “a disrupter in a stale space,” and in order to maintain that momentum, it would need to “continue to bring relevant, innovative products to the market.” Nearn says the company has landed on a three-pronged strategy for this next era: Investing in new global markets, like Asia Pacific and Latin America; capturing a more gender-diverse customer base with new products and partnerships (including recent collabs with Lionel Messi and Post Malone); and, finally, launching new products beyond the Quencher. While water bottles will remain a core element of Stanley’s offerings—in fact, the company just launched a new bottle format called the “Clutch” on March 17—Nearn says the company sees an opportunity to turn Stanley into a broader brand that’s known for more than just hydration. “The Quencher was this incredible inflection point for the company and the brand,” Nearn says. “Actually, it was a signal. It was a signal that consumers wanted performance; they wanted self-expression; they wanted our Built for Life warranty; they wanted our quality; but the signal also was they wanted it in other parts of their life. Since 2024, Stanley’s been really on a pivot to giving ourselves the opportunity to create a premium lifestyle brand.” Three design lessons Stanley is taking from the Quencher When deciding the best way to diversify its product mix, Stanley turned to customer interviews and feedback on socials. One theme kept recurring: Customers loved how the Quencher could move with them everywhere, from home to work and the gym. They wanted more versatile products that would fit within that “connective tissue,” Nearn says, or the parts of the day when they were on the move. Based on that insight, Stanley’s big swing out of the hydration category is Vitalize, the company’s first-ever line of bags. The collection includes a tote, crossbody bag, and backpack (alongside a shaker bottle). In the past, Nearn says, Stanley has experimented with various lines of soft coolers and lunchboxes, but it’s never produced more general bags. Like water bottles, bags are a category that’s become saturated in recent years. In order to make a product that would stand out among the thousands of existing options, Stanley’s product designers—led by Roger Jackson, director of industrial design at PMI—turned to the core attributes that made the Quencher such a success: frictionless transport, i.e. the Quencher’s cupholder-friendly design; versatility, demonstrated by its ability to hold both hot and cold beverages; and personalization, as in the many different bottles colors and add-ons (like charms, straws, and side kits) that made the Quenchers such an aesthetic hit on TikTok. “With the Quencher, I think the superpower that we brought to it was this understanding that people were seeing these products as not just a carrying device for water,” Jackson says. “It was becoming a companion throughout their day.” How Stanley designed its new line of bags The Stanley team started by ensuring that the bags would be compatible with the Quencher’s fixed handle, which Jackson says has been “a tough proposition traditionally for backpacks and bags,” given the Quencher’s atypical shape and size. Both the tote and the backpack come with two large side pockets and an adjustable, buckled strap to hold bottles in, allowing the Quencher’s handle to slot smoothly into an empty space beneath the strap. The adjustable design is made to accommodate Stanley products, but it’s also a clever solution for anyone with a larger water bottle that might not fit into a traditional, rigid side pocket. Another common problem that the team endeavored to solve was “contamination concerns,” Jackson says. Stanley noticed that consumers were often traveling with their electronics and valuables, alongside items like lunchboxes, thermoses, and gym shoes. “A really simple observation is the lack of trust people have in food containment storage boxes—you’ll just see that people chuck them in a Target plastic bag and wrap it up before they put it into their backpack,” Jackson says. “What that tells us is that there’s contamination, there’s leak concerns, and so we wanted to provide a whole separate section for that product. So even if the worst happens, it’s contained in there.” Their design solution, which appears on the backpack and tote, is a zippered bottom compartment that’s completely insulated from the rest of the bag and made of an easily wipeable white nylon. This section is also expandable, so that anything contained in it—whether that be a lunchbox, gym shoes, or a sweaty towel—won’t cramp the rest of the bag’s storage space. All three of the new Vitalize bags are designed so that people can customize them as much as possible. Each product comes with multiple interior compartments for users to fit their electronics, stationery, and an additional tumbler. Even the small crossbody bag has one exterior pocket, three interior pockets, and room to hold a full water bottle. On the outside of the bags, adjustable buckles and clips invite users to attach their keys and charms (based on several TikToks, users are already catching on). Color options in the Vitalize line include on-trend hues like “sage grey,” “rose quartz,” and “twilight.” Already, Nearn says, the team has seen these details paying off. Within a week of Vitalize’s February 17 launch, the tote bag sold out in direct-to-consumer sales, and the line became Amazon’s top new release in gym totes and backpacks. Most of the products have now been restocked on Stanley’s website, though the rose quartz tote is still sold out. Stanley typically takes around three years to brainstorm and prototype new products, so Jackson is hesitant to share any specific details of where the company might go next. Generally, though, he says that sports, lunch, and wellness are all categories that it plans to target as it aims to move beyond the Quencher’s shadow. View the full article

Think about how we commonly seek to motivate human performance in our workplaces: Employees are treated as costs to be minimized rather than people to be invested in. Performance is managed through fear of consequences. Supervisors closely monitor daily tasks, requiring frequent check-ins or reports. Being available at all hours is treated as evidence of commitment. Directives flow one way—downward. Feedback is delivered as judgment rather than support. In practice, if not in intention, we still manage people more like machines than human beings. How did we get here—and, more importantly, why have we never left? Most of what we call “modern management” isn’t modern at all. It was born on factory floors over a century ago, in an era when work was often dehumanizing: repetitive, physical and performed by people who needed a paycheck and had little choice but to show up. It was Frederick Winslow Taylor—the father of scientific management—who gave it shape. He believed workers were inherently unmotivated and therefore had to be told exactly what to do, how to do it, and when. Control and even micromanagement was seen as essential to driving performance. The problem isn’t that Taylor was wrong for his time. The problem is that we’re still using his model in a completely different era of work. Today’s workplace runs on judgment, adaptability, creativity, collaboration, and discretionary effort—none of which can be commanded or controlled. When the nature of work changes this fundamentally, the philosophy we use to lead people must change with it. So far, it really hasn’t. A Deeply Entrenched Mindset Over time, Taylor’s ideas became the blueprint for how organizations everywhere learned to manage people. They shaped how business schools taught leadership, how organizations were structured, and perhaps most powerfully, how one generation of managers trained the next. The underlying assumption—that people are fundamentally unmotivated and need to be pushed, watched, and held accountable through oversight and intimidation—became so entrenched, it stopped feeling like an assumption at all. It started feeling like common sense. But it was never really common sense. As far back as the 1920s, the Hawthorne studies revealed that workers became more productive simply when they felt noticed and valued. People, it turns out, want to contribute. They want to grow. They want to do good work—when given the conditions to do so. Despite these findings, little changed because Taylor’s ideas had already become so deeply rooted in business that his assumptions were no longer questioned. His rigid ideology was simply passed on from one generation of managers to the next. What The Research Has Been Telling Us For Decades The research that has accumulated over the past several decades makes one thing unmistakably clear: the fear that giving people more autonomy, trust, and support will come at the expense of performance is empirically and patently wrong. We now know it’s just the opposite. In 2011, London Business School professor Alex Edmans tracked Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For” over 28 years and found they outperformed their peers by as much as 3.8% annually in stock returns. What distinguished these organizations wasn’t perks or pay—it was how their leaders treated people. They communicated transparently. They empowered rather than micromanaged. They invested in growth. They built cultures where people felt trusted, valued, and respected as human beings. Treating people well, Edmans concluded, isn’t charity—it’s a widely undervalued competitive advantage. The Conference Board, drawing on decades of human capital research, points consistently in the same direction—leaders who communicate with empathy, build trust, and show genuine care for their people drive stronger commitment, lower turnover, and better organizational outcomes. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson’s landmark research has demonstrated that psychological safety—the belief that one can speak up, take risks, and make mistakes without fear of punishment or humiliation—is also one of the most enabling conditions for high performance. This includes emotional safety—the confidence that you can bring your whole self to work, express what you genuinely think and feel, and be accepted for who you are across every dimension of your life. And it includes belonging—the felt sense of being genuinely connected to the people you work alongside and truly valued as part of the team. When those conditions exist, people don’t just feel better, they think more creatively, take smarter risks, and collaborate more openly. When they don’t, people hold back. And when people hold back, performance plateaus or declines. Most recently, the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre confirmed in a sweeping meta-analysis of 339 studies covering nearly 1.9 million workers that employee well-being and performance go hand in hand. Their conclusion was clear: higher employee well-being drives more sustainable performance and stronger shareholder returns. The reality is all of this research—and much more—has been widely communicated. Which means what we’re facing isn’t a lack of evidence. It’s a classic knowing-doing gap. Researcher after researcher, institution after institution, has arrived at the same conclusion. The evidence isn’t emerging—it’s overwhelming. Bottom line, when employees feel genuinely valued and cared for, they bring a level of commitment and discretionary effort that no compliance system can replicate. The only unanswered question is whether leaders and organizations will ever be willing to act on this knowledge and fundamentally rethink how they lead. The Choice Every Leader (You) Gets to Make Because the research is both voluminous and irrefutable, what only remains now is a choice. Continue operating from assumptions built for factories in the 1900s—or lead people the way human beings have always deserved, and to which they respond at their best. At the end of the day, no matter how talented your people are, it’s the system you create that determines what they can achieve. As W. Edwards Deming put it: “A bad system will beat a good person every time.” The question is simple, yet profound: will we sustain outdated practices, or design workplaces that cultivate trust, contribution, and human potential? The evidence, the research, and decades of my own leadership experience all point in one direction. The choice is ours and ours alone. View the full article

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K-12 teachers and students across the country are increasingly using AI in and out of classrooms, whether it is teachers turning to AI to refine lesson plans or students asking AI to help them research a particular topic. An estimated 85% of K-12 public school teachers recently reported that they used AI during the 2024-2025 school year, often for curriculum and content development. In 2023, 13% of teens said they used ChatGPT to complete their schoolwork, while 26% of them said in 2025 that they were using ChatGPT for this purpose. Similarly, 86% of K-12 students shared in 2025 that they have used AI in general. An estimated 50% of students reported that they use it for schoolwork, such as for learning more about topics outside of what was taught in class, tutoring on specific subjects, receiving help with a homework assignment, or asking for college advice. However, policies and training have not kept pace with how frequently teachers and students are using AI. Only 35% of school district leaders reported in 2025 that they provided students with any AI training, according to the global policy think tank RAND Corp. Additionally, 45% of principals reported school or district policies or guidance on the use of AI in schools, according to these findings. Another challenge is that students are also using AI for potentially dangerous uses. There are recent examples of students who self-harmed or died by suicide after they used AI for mental health support. A 2025 study found that when a chatbot responded to 60 simulated scenarios that posed mental health questions, the chatbots sometimes made harmful proposals—such as cutting off all human contact for a month or dropping out of school. So, is it safe for young students to use AI? Does using AI provide better learning outcomes for students when compared to traditional instruction? Does AI help teachers reduce their workload? The answers to these questions are complicated. It is not yet clear how AI influences learning in K-12 settings or when and how it is best for teachers and students to use AI. Some clear pros As an associate professor of inclusive teacher education, I’m trying to answer some of these big questions about AI and K-12 education. Some university centers that I’ve worked with, such as the Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning at the University of Kansas, are conducting research on how AI can be used to support students with learning disabilities. In 2025, 57% of special education teachers said they use AI to help develop individualized plans, often called an individualized education program, for their students with learning disabilities. I believe there is no doubt that AI can, in some ways, reduce barriers and support students with disabilities. In my own research, for example, my coauthors and I show that AI can help students learn by adapting assignments to meet their personal learning needs and pace. It can also help teachers reduce their time spent grading or editing assignments. There remain concerns over student privacy and whether AI systems will reinforce bias, but special-education teachers are testing the benefits of generative AI. The missing evidence Among the broader available research and evidence on AI and K-12 education, some studies from 2019 through 2022 show that AI might help students learn and stay motivated by providing a personalized learning experience. However, the evidence appears less promising when considering how students learn after they use AI and then stop using it. For example, Guilherme Lichand, an economics scholar at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, found in 2026 that when students use AI and then are told they can no longer use it for their studies, students actually perform worse than those who never used AI. This shows that additional research on how AI influences students’ long-term learning and development is necessary. The Brookings Institution also recently warned in a 2026 AI and K-12 education report that the risks of using generative AI in education overshadow its benefits. These risks include weakened relationships between students and teachers, as well as students’ safety. A 2025 report by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology also shows that an average of 71% of K-12 teachers reported that when students use AI to complete their schoolwork, it is hard for the teachers to understand whether student work is their own. Similarly, almost two-thirds of parents of K-12 students said in 2025 that AI is weakening important academic skills that their child needs to learn, such as writing, reading comprehension, and critical thinking. Lessons from the past AI is being introduced to K-12 classrooms faster than evidence and understanding can support. But schools have rushed to incorporate educational technologies into their classrooms before. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, schools needed to quickly equip teachers and students with online platforms for remote learning. But the rush also challenged educators to learn how to effectively teach and provide individual support for each student, and to ensure that all students, including students with disabilities, could participate in remote learning. Similarly, not long ago, some educators thought that social media and smartphones would bring the next frontier in education, with the idea that these technologies could increase student engagement. Yet we now know the dangers that both social media and smartphones pose for children. Slowing down how students especially are using AI in the classroom does not mean rejecting it altogether. I think it means being responsible, especially when there is a good chance children’s academic skills, behaviors, or emotions are at risk. New evidence on AI and education is coming from scholars like me and my colleagues. There is little doubt that AI and future technologies are game changers in society and education. I think it is also critical that we slow down and follow the evidence that is available. Speed is a choice, and education deserves intention. Tal Slemrod is an associate professor of special education at California State University, Chico. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

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In today’s digital world, your online reputation can make or break your business. Negative reviews, poor search results, and damaging content can deter potential customers. Comprehending and addressing these issues is vital for your brand’s success. Many effective services exist to help you repair and manage your reputation. From content suppression to local SEO integration, these strategies can greatly improve your online image. Let’s explore the fundamental services that can help restore your reputation and elevate your business credibility. Key Takeaways NetReputation: Offers a structured five-step process for effective content suppression and ongoing monitoring of your online presence. NP Digital: Combines local SEO with tailored reputation management strategies to enhance visibility and brand perception. Better Reputation: Focuses on the removal and suppression of negative online content to improve overall brand reputation. Reputation Rhino: Provides affordable reputation management packages, making it accessible for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs. Crisis Intervention Services: Specialized services to manage urgent reputation crises, often costing between $5,000 and over $20,000 for comprehensive solutions. Understanding the Importance of Online Reputation Repair Grasping the importance of online reputation repair is fundamental for any business today, especially since negative information can considerably impact customer decisions. A damaged online reputation can cause you to lose up to 22% of potential customers, which highlights the financial implications of negative search results. With about 97% of consumers searching for local businesses online, managing your online presence becomes significant. You need effective reputation management for individuals to guarantee your business stands out positively. Remember, negative online reviews can deter 60% of potential customers, so proactive steps to repair personal reputation are crucial. Trust plays a significant role in consumer choices, as 90% of people value online reviews as much as personal recommendations. As a result, engaging in reputation repair not only protects against revenue loss but likewise helps build strong customer relationships and promotes brand loyalty, making it a fundamental strategy for success in today’s digital scenery. Common Causes of Reputation Damage Reputation damage can stem from various sources, and comprehension of these causes is vital for your business’s longevity. Viral complaints can quickly escalate, creating significant public relations challenges if not addressed immediately. Furthermore, fake reviews and legal issues can mislead customers and tarnish your brand’s trustworthiness, making it indispensable to stay vigilant and proactive in managing your online presence. Viral Complaints and Backlash When negative customer complaints go viral, they can create immediate and notable challenges for a brand’s image. These complaints often escalate quickly on social media, leading to PR crises that can damage your reputation and considerably impact your revenue. Studies show that up to 60% of consumers are deterred by negative reviews, meaning viral backlash can severely hinder customer acquisition and retention. Furthermore, legal troubles or data breaches can exacerbate issues, haunting your online presence and eroding trust. To combat these challenges, consider online reputation repair services focused on reputation restoration. Reading Reputation Defender reviews can guide you in selecting effective services to manage your brand’s online image and mitigate the harmful effects of viral complaints. Fake Reviews and Scams Negative customer complaints can escalate into a full-blown PR crisis, but another significant threat to your brand’s image comes from fake reviews and scams. Malicious reviews, often posted by competitors or disgruntled employees, can deter up to 60% of potential customers, even though they’re unfounded. Since 90% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, the impact can be severe. Fraudulent reviews mislead potential customers and may lead to a 22% drop in revenue. Addressing these fake reviews swiftly is crucial; otherwise, you risk declining customer trust and a tarnished reputation. To combat this issue, consider services like Norton Reputation Defender, though it’s important to evaluate the Norton Reputation Defender cost in relation to your needs. Legal and Regulatory Issues Legal and regulatory issues can pose significant threats to your business’s standing and trustworthiness in the eyes of customers. Legal troubles, like lawsuits or regulatory violations, can quickly become public knowledge, severely damaging your online reputation. Negative press from these issues can lead to a significant revenue decline, as 97% of consumers research businesses online before making purchases. Regulatory scrutiny may expose your vulnerabilities, making it essential to manage your online presence effectively. Furthermore, data breaches can erode customer trust, with negative mentions lingering in search results. Scandals involving executives or unethical practices likewise tarnish your brand perception, underscoring the need for robust reputation management strategies to address and recover from such incidents swiftly. Signs Your Business Needs Reputation Repair If you notice a drop in your business’s overall rating, it’s a clear sign that you might need reputation repair, as many customers avoid businesses with ratings below four stars. Furthermore, an increase in negative mentions online can further damage your brand’s image and deter potential customers from choosing your services. Recognizing these signs early is essential to addressing issues before they impact your bottom line. Decrease in Ratings When your business ratings drop, it can signal serious underlying issues that need urgent attention. A decline in ratings not only affects customer trust but can lead to significant losses. Here are four signs that indicate you should consider reputation repair: Ratings below 4 stars: Over 60% of potential customers are put off by negative reviews. Decreased website traffic: A sudden drop may suggest negative sentiment is driving customers away. Declining sales or conversion rates: These often indicate reputation problems, leading to substantial revenue loss. Negative content on search results: With 97% of consumers researching online, this can actively repel customers. Addressing these issues swiftly can help restore your business’s reputation and regain consumer interest. Increased Negative Mentions A noticeable increase in negative mentions can serve as a red flag for your business, signaling that reputation repair is necessary. If your overall rating drops below four stars, consumers may start avoiding your brand, leading to potential revenue loss. You might likewise notice a significant decrease in website traffic, indicating that negative online content is impacting your visibility. A decline in sales or conversion rates without clear causes often points to urgent reputation issues. Furthermore, if negative content appears on the first page of search results, it can actively deter potential customers. Frequent negative media coverage or poor employee reviews can further damage your reputation, making it difficult to attract and retain talent. Addressing these issues swiftly is vital for recovery. Overview of Top Reputation Repair Services In today’s digital environment, choosing the right reputation repair service can greatly impact your online presence. Various services offer customized solutions to manage and improve your brand’s image. Here’s an overview of some top reputation repair services you might consider: NetReputation: They use a five-step process, including content suppression and monitoring, to boost your online visibility effectively. NP Digital: This service combines local SEO with reputation management strategies, helping enhance your brand visibility and consumer trust in local markets. Better Reputation: Specializing in content removal and suppression, they focus on eliminating negative content from online platforms. Reputation Rhino: Offering affordable packages, they cater to small businesses and solo entrepreneurs, ensuring cost-effective solutions. These services can help you effectively manage your online reputation and build a positive digital presence. Strategies for Effective Reputation Management Effective reputation management involves a strategic blend of monitoring, engagement, and content optimization, ensuring your brand maintains a positive online presence. Begin by regularly monitoring brand mentions and feedback across various platforms. This practice helps you identify negative sentiment early, allowing you to manage potential crises before they escalate. Next, engage with customers by thoughtfully responding to reviews. This approach can improve your overall ratings and reduce potential customer loss by 60% because of negative feedback. Furthermore, employ SEO techniques to suppress unfavorable content, effectively pushing it off the first page of search results, where 95% of users won’t venture beyond. Lastly, establish a proactive review generation strategy, as positive reviews greatly influence 17% of how search engines rank local businesses. Pricing and Guarantees in Reputation Repair Services How much should you expect to pay for reputation repair services? The costs can vary greatly based on the type of service you need. Here’s a breakdown: One-time removal services: Typically range from $500 to $5,000 for negative content removal. Monthly retainer packages: These can cost between $1,500 and $10,000, depending on the services provided. Crisis intervention: Full-blown scenarios can run from $5,000 to over $20,000, reflecting urgency and complexity. Guarantees: Some providers offer specific guarantees, like content removal, whereas others might promise satisfaction or performance-based outcomes. Keep in mind that guarantees should be approached with caution. Absolute guarantees on search rankings or content removal aren’t realistic because of the constantly changing digital environment. Always look for transparent contracts outlining deliverables, timelines, and refund policies to understand what to expect from these services. Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation After Repair After addressing the immediate challenges of negative content, maintaining a positive online reputation requires ongoing effort and strategy. First, continuous monitoring of your brand mentions is essential; tools like Google Alerts can help you stay informed about any new negative content that may arise. Next, implement a proactive review generation strategy to encourage satisfied customers to leave positive feedback, which bolsters your online presence. Regularly publishing fresh, positive content not just reinforces your brand’s good reputation but also improves search engine rankings, as online reviews greatly influence local business visibility. Furthermore, training your employees in customer service and social media policies guarantees they engage effectively with customers, preserving a positive image. Finally, establishing a content calendar for consistent posts and updates keeps your brand relevant, nurturing trust and loyalty among your audience. Frequently Asked Questions Which Component Is Essential for Online Reputation Management? To effectively manage your online reputation, continuous monitoring is crucial. It allows you to detect negative content or emerging threats before they escalate. By regularly checking online mentions and reviews, you can respond swiftly to potential issues. This proactive approach not just safeguards your brand image but likewise helps maintain customer trust. What Are Online Reputation Management Services? Online reputation management (ORM) services help you improve and restore your digital presence. They use strategies like content removal, positive content promotion, and SEO suppression to elevate your brand perception. ORM professionals monitor brand mentions across platforms to identify reputation threats early. By employing techniques like reverse SEO, they push negative search results down, ensuring positive content ranks higher. Engaging with experts can lead to quicker recovery from reputation issues, often within 3-6 months. What Are the 7 Dimensions of Reputation? The seven dimensions of reputation are credibility, reliability, trustworthiness, esteem, admiration, respect, and transparency. Credibility guarantees customers view you as trustworthy, whereas reliability reflects your consistency in delivering quality. Trustworthiness builds on this by influencing how much people rely on your reviews. Esteem and admiration indicate how others perceive your value, whereas respect shows recognition for your contributions. Finally, transparency nurtures open communication, enhancing relationships and accountability, especially during crises. How Much Does Online Reputation Repair Cost? Online reputation repair costs vary greatly based on the complexity of the issues you’re facing. One-time content removal services typically range from $500 to $5,000. If you opt for ongoing management, monthly retainers can cost between $1,500 and $10,000. For severe reputation damage, crisis intervention services might exceed $20,000. It’s essential to assess providers for expertise and clarity in pricing, as commitments often extend for a year or more. Conclusion In summary, prioritizing your online reputation is vital for business success. By utilizing fundamental reputation repair services, you can effectively address negative content, improve customer trust, and promote a positive brand image. Monitoring your reputation continuously and employing proactive strategies will help you maintain this positive perception over time. Investing in these services not only reduces damage but furthermore positions your business for future growth and success in an increasingly digital marketplace. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "7 Essential Online Reputation Repair Services You Need" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

In today’s digital world, your online reputation can make or break your business. Negative reviews, poor search results, and damaging content can deter potential customers. Comprehending and addressing these issues is vital for your brand’s success. Many effective services exist to help you repair and manage your reputation. From content suppression to local SEO integration, these strategies can greatly improve your online image. Let’s explore the fundamental services that can help restore your reputation and elevate your business credibility. Key Takeaways NetReputation: Offers a structured five-step process for effective content suppression and ongoing monitoring of your online presence. NP Digital: Combines local SEO with tailored reputation management strategies to enhance visibility and brand perception. Better Reputation: Focuses on the removal and suppression of negative online content to improve overall brand reputation. Reputation Rhino: Provides affordable reputation management packages, making it accessible for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs. Crisis Intervention Services: Specialized services to manage urgent reputation crises, often costing between $5,000 and over $20,000 for comprehensive solutions. Understanding the Importance of Online Reputation Repair Grasping the importance of online reputation repair is fundamental for any business today, especially since negative information can considerably impact customer decisions. A damaged online reputation can cause you to lose up to 22% of potential customers, which highlights the financial implications of negative search results. With about 97% of consumers searching for local businesses online, managing your online presence becomes significant. You need effective reputation management for individuals to guarantee your business stands out positively. Remember, negative online reviews can deter 60% of potential customers, so proactive steps to repair personal reputation are crucial. Trust plays a significant role in consumer choices, as 90% of people value online reviews as much as personal recommendations. As a result, engaging in reputation repair not only protects against revenue loss but likewise helps build strong customer relationships and promotes brand loyalty, making it a fundamental strategy for success in today’s digital scenery. Common Causes of Reputation Damage Reputation damage can stem from various sources, and comprehension of these causes is vital for your business’s longevity. Viral complaints can quickly escalate, creating significant public relations challenges if not addressed immediately. Furthermore, fake reviews and legal issues can mislead customers and tarnish your brand’s trustworthiness, making it indispensable to stay vigilant and proactive in managing your online presence. Viral Complaints and Backlash When negative customer complaints go viral, they can create immediate and notable challenges for a brand’s image. These complaints often escalate quickly on social media, leading to PR crises that can damage your reputation and considerably impact your revenue. Studies show that up to 60% of consumers are deterred by negative reviews, meaning viral backlash can severely hinder customer acquisition and retention. Furthermore, legal troubles or data breaches can exacerbate issues, haunting your online presence and eroding trust. To combat these challenges, consider online reputation repair services focused on reputation restoration. Reading Reputation Defender reviews can guide you in selecting effective services to manage your brand’s online image and mitigate the harmful effects of viral complaints. Fake Reviews and Scams Negative customer complaints can escalate into a full-blown PR crisis, but another significant threat to your brand’s image comes from fake reviews and scams. Malicious reviews, often posted by competitors or disgruntled employees, can deter up to 60% of potential customers, even though they’re unfounded. Since 90% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, the impact can be severe. Fraudulent reviews mislead potential customers and may lead to a 22% drop in revenue. Addressing these fake reviews swiftly is crucial; otherwise, you risk declining customer trust and a tarnished reputation. To combat this issue, consider services like Norton Reputation Defender, though it’s important to evaluate the Norton Reputation Defender cost in relation to your needs. Legal and Regulatory Issues Legal and regulatory issues can pose significant threats to your business’s standing and trustworthiness in the eyes of customers. Legal troubles, like lawsuits or regulatory violations, can quickly become public knowledge, severely damaging your online reputation. Negative press from these issues can lead to a significant revenue decline, as 97% of consumers research businesses online before making purchases. Regulatory scrutiny may expose your vulnerabilities, making it essential to manage your online presence effectively. Furthermore, data breaches can erode customer trust, with negative mentions lingering in search results. Scandals involving executives or unethical practices likewise tarnish your brand perception, underscoring the need for robust reputation management strategies to address and recover from such incidents swiftly. Signs Your Business Needs Reputation Repair If you notice a drop in your business’s overall rating, it’s a clear sign that you might need reputation repair, as many customers avoid businesses with ratings below four stars. Furthermore, an increase in negative mentions online can further damage your brand’s image and deter potential customers from choosing your services. Recognizing these signs early is essential to addressing issues before they impact your bottom line. Decrease in Ratings When your business ratings drop, it can signal serious underlying issues that need urgent attention. A decline in ratings not only affects customer trust but can lead to significant losses. Here are four signs that indicate you should consider reputation repair: Ratings below 4 stars: Over 60% of potential customers are put off by negative reviews. Decreased website traffic: A sudden drop may suggest negative sentiment is driving customers away. Declining sales or conversion rates: These often indicate reputation problems, leading to substantial revenue loss. Negative content on search results: With 97% of consumers researching online, this can actively repel customers. Addressing these issues swiftly can help restore your business’s reputation and regain consumer interest. Increased Negative Mentions A noticeable increase in negative mentions can serve as a red flag for your business, signaling that reputation repair is necessary. If your overall rating drops below four stars, consumers may start avoiding your brand, leading to potential revenue loss. You might likewise notice a significant decrease in website traffic, indicating that negative online content is impacting your visibility. A decline in sales or conversion rates without clear causes often points to urgent reputation issues. Furthermore, if negative content appears on the first page of search results, it can actively deter potential customers. Frequent negative media coverage or poor employee reviews can further damage your reputation, making it difficult to attract and retain talent. Addressing these issues swiftly is vital for recovery. Overview of Top Reputation Repair Services In today’s digital environment, choosing the right reputation repair service can greatly impact your online presence. Various services offer customized solutions to manage and improve your brand’s image. Here’s an overview of some top reputation repair services you might consider: NetReputation: They use a five-step process, including content suppression and monitoring, to boost your online visibility effectively. NP Digital: This service combines local SEO with reputation management strategies, helping enhance your brand visibility and consumer trust in local markets. Better Reputation: Specializing in content removal and suppression, they focus on eliminating negative content from online platforms. Reputation Rhino: Offering affordable packages, they cater to small businesses and solo entrepreneurs, ensuring cost-effective solutions. These services can help you effectively manage your online reputation and build a positive digital presence. Strategies for Effective Reputation Management Effective reputation management involves a strategic blend of monitoring, engagement, and content optimization, ensuring your brand maintains a positive online presence. Begin by regularly monitoring brand mentions and feedback across various platforms. This practice helps you identify negative sentiment early, allowing you to manage potential crises before they escalate. Next, engage with customers by thoughtfully responding to reviews. This approach can improve your overall ratings and reduce potential customer loss by 60% because of negative feedback. Furthermore, employ SEO techniques to suppress unfavorable content, effectively pushing it off the first page of search results, where 95% of users won’t venture beyond. Lastly, establish a proactive review generation strategy, as positive reviews greatly influence 17% of how search engines rank local businesses. Pricing and Guarantees in Reputation Repair Services How much should you expect to pay for reputation repair services? The costs can vary greatly based on the type of service you need. Here’s a breakdown: One-time removal services: Typically range from $500 to $5,000 for negative content removal. Monthly retainer packages: These can cost between $1,500 and $10,000, depending on the services provided. Crisis intervention: Full-blown scenarios can run from $5,000 to over $20,000, reflecting urgency and complexity. Guarantees: Some providers offer specific guarantees, like content removal, whereas others might promise satisfaction or performance-based outcomes. Keep in mind that guarantees should be approached with caution. Absolute guarantees on search rankings or content removal aren’t realistic because of the constantly changing digital environment. Always look for transparent contracts outlining deliverables, timelines, and refund policies to understand what to expect from these services. Maintaining a Positive Online Reputation After Repair After addressing the immediate challenges of negative content, maintaining a positive online reputation requires ongoing effort and strategy. First, continuous monitoring of your brand mentions is essential; tools like Google Alerts can help you stay informed about any new negative content that may arise. Next, implement a proactive review generation strategy to encourage satisfied customers to leave positive feedback, which bolsters your online presence. Regularly publishing fresh, positive content not just reinforces your brand’s good reputation but also improves search engine rankings, as online reviews greatly influence local business visibility. Furthermore, training your employees in customer service and social media policies guarantees they engage effectively with customers, preserving a positive image. Finally, establishing a content calendar for consistent posts and updates keeps your brand relevant, nurturing trust and loyalty among your audience. Frequently Asked Questions Which Component Is Essential for Online Reputation Management? To effectively manage your online reputation, continuous monitoring is crucial. It allows you to detect negative content or emerging threats before they escalate. By regularly checking online mentions and reviews, you can respond swiftly to potential issues. This proactive approach not just safeguards your brand image but likewise helps maintain customer trust. What Are Online Reputation Management Services? Online reputation management (ORM) services help you improve and restore your digital presence. They use strategies like content removal, positive content promotion, and SEO suppression to elevate your brand perception. ORM professionals monitor brand mentions across platforms to identify reputation threats early. By employing techniques like reverse SEO, they push negative search results down, ensuring positive content ranks higher. Engaging with experts can lead to quicker recovery from reputation issues, often within 3-6 months. What Are the 7 Dimensions of Reputation? The seven dimensions of reputation are credibility, reliability, trustworthiness, esteem, admiration, respect, and transparency. Credibility guarantees customers view you as trustworthy, whereas reliability reflects your consistency in delivering quality. Trustworthiness builds on this by influencing how much people rely on your reviews. Esteem and admiration indicate how others perceive your value, whereas respect shows recognition for your contributions. Finally, transparency nurtures open communication, enhancing relationships and accountability, especially during crises. How Much Does Online Reputation Repair Cost? Online reputation repair costs vary greatly based on the complexity of the issues you’re facing. One-time content removal services typically range from $500 to $5,000. If you opt for ongoing management, monthly retainers can cost between $1,500 and $10,000. For severe reputation damage, crisis intervention services might exceed $20,000. It’s essential to assess providers for expertise and clarity in pricing, as commitments often extend for a year or more. Conclusion In summary, prioritizing your online reputation is vital for business success. By utilizing fundamental reputation repair services, you can effectively address negative content, improve customer trust, and promote a positive brand image. Monitoring your reputation continuously and employing proactive strategies will help you maintain this positive perception over time. Investing in these services not only reduces damage but furthermore positions your business for future growth and success in an increasingly digital marketplace. Image via Google Gemini and ArtSmart This article, "7 Essential Online Reputation Repair Services You Need" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Stop being invisible to AI search. These 5 strategies will get your brand cited and recommended by AI engines. The post 5 GEO Strategies To Make AI Search Engines Recommend Your Brand In 2026 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

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