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I recently put together a list of the best small portable gaming handhelds for people who are tired of how big the Nintendo Switch 2 and handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck are. In an era of gaming devices that often feel like laptops with grips and buttons added to them, these retro gaming handhelds (as I call them) can be a great solution for people who miss the days of the PSP and Nintendo DS. But since they come from smaller companies, and run either Linux or Android, actually getting games on these devices is not quite so straightforward. After all, it's not like the people making these handhelds are publishing cartridges for them. While that's true, there are plenty of ways to play games both new and old on these devices, even if they were originally made for other consoles. And despite a reputation to the contrary, if you do them right, they're all legal. Retro gaming handhelds and emulation Credit: Libetro Emulation is a common use for retro gaming handhelds, to the point where some people just call them emulators. It isn’t the only thing you can do with these devices, but it’s definitely a popular way to put games on them, especially the weaker ones. Through emulation, your system can mimic older devices like the Game Boy, Super Nintendo, and PlayStation 1, to play games originally released for those platforms. This works by using your modern device’s more powerful hardware to run software that virtually recreates all the processes of old consoles, making older games think they’re running on the real thing. This is in comparison to games that “run natively,” meaning they’re running on the system they were built for. Emulators developed by fans are well-known, but even large companies like Nintendo use emulation. In fact, the games you play on Nintendo Switch Online are technically all emulated. This can come with downsides. You might run into minor inaccuracies in sound or graphics, but typically, the more powerful your device’s chip and the weaker the system you’re emulating, the less common these will be. You could also experience input lag, although I’ve never once been able to actually feel it across most of the devices I’ve used to emulate. (I say this as someone who has beaten all three of the original Ninja Gaiden games using emulation.) And there are upsides to emulation, too. Games can be upscaled to push out higher resolutions than ever intended natively, which can make for homebrew HD remasters if played on a nice enough screen. And most emulation programs support save states, which let you save your progress anywhere, anytime, separate from a specific game’s built-in save system. Save states can be a lifesaver for especially difficult games, or while playing on the go. The biggest hurdle, then, is setup. Some devices come with emulators built in, although you'll probably want to configure them to your specifications, and if you're on a Linux-based handheld, possibly run them alongside a custom, third-party firmware (more on that later). Specifics will vary from device to device, so for help, I suggest YouTuber Russ Crandall's guides on emulation. Crandall runs the channel Retro Game Corps, and has been a big help in my own emulation journey. He's also exhaustively catalogued the steps you'll need to go through for various handhelds. Truth be told, though, you'll probably be using similar programs across your handhelds. RetroArch is popular for emulating older systems, while newer ones require specific apps like Dolphin (for GameCube and Wii) or PPSSPP (for PSP). After you've set these up once, doing it for other handhelds is kind of like riding a bike. The biggest difficulty you’ll probably encounter will be providing ROM files for your emulators, which leads me to the elephant in the room. How legal is emulation?Emulation is convenient, and a great way to experience games that haven’t been re-released for modern consoles. But it also has a bit of a reputation for being shady. For comment, I reached out to YouTube Bob Wulff of Wulff Den, another mainstay in guides and reviews for retro gaming handhelds. Ultimately, Wulff thinks this reputation is undeserved. “I don’t like this stigma that Emulation [equals] Piracy,” he told me. “There are plenty of ways to acquire your ROMs legally.” And therein lies the rub. When people think that emulation is illegal, they’re usually conflating emulator programs with pirated game files, or ROMs. The process of writing original software to mimic a console’s function is actually perfectly legal, to the point where Apple now allows emulators on the App Store, but distributing copyrighted software to run on those emulators is where you get into legal issues. That’s why handheld companies like Anbernic have a bit of a bad reputation for including ROMs with their devices, as I highlight in my list of the best retro gaming handhelds. But theoretically, if you legally own a game, U.S. law allows you to make your own backup of it, which you could then play on an emulator without issue. Unless you’re downloading your games off pirate sites or buying SD cards with pirated ROMs pre-loaded onto them, playing games using an emulator shouldn't be any different in the eyes of the law than playing games on original hardware. As for how you can actually get your own legal backups of games you own, there are a number of devices that will read your cartridges and back up their ROM files for you, as well as PC programs that will do the same thing for disc-based games. Also note that you can emulate on phones and PCs, too, although there is a certain magic in emulating using a small handheld with controls built-in. You can also play Android and PC games Credit: PCMag But as much as some fans like to call retro gaming handhelds “emulators” and leave it at that, these devices can do more than mimic old consoles. The hardware for these devices is usually versatile enough to support playing modern games natively, streaming games from the cloud, or in some cases, even playing games originally meant for PC. You can play new games on these handhelds, too. Let's start with Android and cloud gaming, as they're among the simplest ways to get games on these devices. Android gamesThis is the obvious one. If your retro gaming handheld runs Android, then it stands to reason that it can run Android apps. This means that in addition to emulation, you can play phone games like Genshin Impact or Call of Duty Mobile. Your device's built-in controller will work with the game like any standard phone controller, and you’ll be able to play just as well as anyone on a phone could. Android-based gaming handhelds also come with touchscreens, so you shouldn’t run into problems if your game needs one. The only catch is that some devices with a square-ish aspect ratio might use a lot of letterboxing to actually show anything other than retro games on-screen, which could make for a tiny image (they'll be great for old, 4:3 games, though). Otherwise, know that the Play Store is your oyster. Cloud gamingIf your retro gaming handheld has Android installed on it, then you can also use it to stream games from the cloud. That means you could connect it to either your own home console, your PC, or a subscription service to play games that your device isn’t able to run on its own, or that you don’t want to install to it. The only issues you’ll face will be potential input lag and video compression, plus the need for a constant internet connection. But given that Sony sells a whole handheld built entirely around Remote Play, it’s great to have it as an option on these devices, while knowing that they can also play games on their own power, too. It’s an especially great choice for turn-based games, or other titles that don’t require twitchy, fast-paced inputs. How to play PC games on Linux and Android handhelds Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt This is a more recent innovation, but there are currently two ways to play PC games on your retro gaming handheld without relying on the cloud. One runs them natively, and one uses technology similar to the Steam Deck’s. PortmasterThe first method is for retro gaming handhelds that run Linux. These are usually the cheaper devices, the type you’ll get from companies like Anbernic or Miyoo. The version of Linux on these isn’t the same as on handhelds like the Steam Deck, so don’t expect to just be able to log into your Steam account with these and go off to the races. But thanks to the fan-made program Portmaster, you can still play some of your Steam games on these handhelds. Portmaster connects you with fan-made ports of PC games built to run natively on your retro gaming handheld. Some of these are freeware, and some will need you to plug in files from your own Steam installs to avoid violating copyright. But both types of games can be up-and-running in just a few steps, and like with emulation, Crandall has a guide to help get you started on your particular device. The big caveat here is that, to get Portmaster, you'll probably need to install a third-party firmware, also fan-made, to your device, rather than using what comes with it out of the box. I use muOS, but if you want something with a different style, there are other options, depending on your device. Since there's so much variation, I haven't personally tested all options, but Crandall again has you covered. You’ll also mostly be stuck with retro and lightweight games using this method, but there's an upside to that, too. I’ve already used it to help get through the indie darlings in my Steam back catalog, like Undertale. GameHub, GameHub Lite, and GameNativeThe second method is for devices that run Android. Much like the Steam Deck uses real-time compatibility layers to convert Windows games to run on its version of Linux, there are now Android apps that can help you run your Steam games on either your phone or your retro gaming handheld. The three popular ones are called GameHub, GameHub Lite, and GameNative. These programs add extra configuration and user friendliness on top of an existing app called WinLator, a compatibility layer that allows Windows programs to run on Android. You can log right into your Steam account using these apps, then download your games and play them on your Android handheld, complete with cloud saves. You’ll still be limited in what you can play, based on what’s had the most compatibility work put into it, but it’s great for lightweight games, older AAA games, and if your handheld is powerful enough (think the AYN Odin 3), even more recent AAA games from the PS4 era. “These Windows containers are really exciting,” Crandall told me when I reached out for comment. “I don’t think they are anywhere close to replacing a PC, but it’s exciting to get a lightweight PC game running nicely on a smaller handheld.” The problems with playing Steam games on AndroidThat said, there are a few concerns with using these apps. While Gamenative is open source, and GameHub Lite is an independent fork of GameHub that tries to fix its issues, GameHub will likely be the easiest app for most people to use, as it has the simplest interface and the most compatibility updates for various games. Unfortunately, it comes with a number of privacy concerns. Gamehub is made by controller company GameSir, which has made reputable products in the past, but it does want you to log into a GameSir account to use it, and some users might be uncomfortable linking their Steam data to that. It also includes, in Crandall’s words, “some fairly intrusive telemetry permissions.” However, both Crandall and Wulff are ultimately positive enough on GameHub. “It’s frankly no more nosy than any of the various social media apps we already have on our phones,” Crandall told me, also saying that if you’re uncomfortable logging in with a GameSir account, you can use “a Steam login token via QR code,” which should be more secure. Wulff, meanwhile, said “I don’t personally think there are any potential security issues with GameHub,” citing GameSir’s reputation and saying “I also just don’t think our Steam data is worth a damn.” The future of PC games on AndroidI see where both creators are coming from, but I have been a bit more cautious on this front. Still, it’s an enticing option if you’re willing to try it out, and it actually points to things to come. Recently, Valve announced its Steam Frame VR headset, which runs on the same type of framework that Android phones do. With that, retro gaming handheld enthusiasts are hopeful Valve will soon release an official way to play Steam games on these devices (and phones). That's something the company recently hinted at in an interview with The Verge, saying it has been quietly bankrolling much of the development on the compatibility layers that apps like WinLator and its derivatives use. On that note, if you’re brave, you could also just play your PC games on these devices using WinLator itself, or other alternatives like Pluvia. However, these have been too complex for me to fiddle with, and I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone but the most hardcore tinkerers. I think I’m with Crandall in saying that “I’d much rather have a proper Steam-derived solution.” Fingers-crossed. 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Evaluating SEO tools has never been more complicated. Costs keep rising, and promises for new AI features are everywhere. This combination is hardly convincing when you need leadership to approve a new tool or expand the budget for an existing one. Your boss still expects SEO to show business impact – not how many keywords or prompts you can track, how fast you can optimize content, or what your visibility score is. That is exactly where most tools still fail miserably. The landscape adds even more friction. Features are bundled into confusing packages and add-on models, and the number of solutions has grown sharply in the last 12 months. Teams can spend weeks or even months comparing platforms only to discover they still cannot demonstrate clear ROI or the tools are simply out of budget. If this sounds familiar, keep reading. This article outlines a practical framework for evaluating your SEO tool stack in 2026, focusing on: Must-have features. A faster way to compare multiple tools. How to approach vendor conversations. The new realities of SEO tooling in 2026 Before evaluating vendors, it helps to understand the forces reshaping the SEO tooling landscape – and why many platforms are struggling to keep pace. Leadership wants MQLs, not rankings Both traditional and modern SEO tools still center on keyword and prompt tracking and visibility metrics. These are useful, but they are not enough to justify the rising prices. In 2026, teams need a way to connect searches to traffic and then to MQLs and revenue. Almost no tool provides that link, which makes securing larger budgets nearly impossible. (I say “almost” because I have not tested every platform, so the unicorn may exist somewhere.) AI agents raise expectations With AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity – along with the ability to build custom GPTs, Gems, and Agents – teams can automate a wide range of tasks. That includes everything from simple content rewriting and keyword clustering to more complex competitor analysis and multi-step workflows. Because of this, SEO tools now need to explain why they are better than a well-trained AI agent. Many can’t. This means that during evaluation, you inevitably end up asking a simple question: do you spend the time training your own agent, or do you buy a ready-made one? Small teams need automation that truly saves time If you want real impact, your automation shouldn’t be cosmetic. You can’t rely on generic checklists or basic AI recommendations, yet many tools still provide exactly that – fast checklists with no context. Without context, automation becomes noise. It generates generic insights that are not tailored to your company, product, or market, and those insights will not save time or drive results. Teams need automation that removes repetitive work and delivers better insights while genuinely giving time back. Dig deeper: 11 of the best free tools every SEO should know about A note on technical SEO tools Technical SEO tools remain the most stable part of the SEO stack. The vendor landscape has not shifted dramatically, and most major platforms are innovating at a similar pace. Because of this, they do not require the same level of reevaluation as newer AI-driven categories. That said, budgeting for them may still become challenging. Leadership often assumes AI can solve every problem, but we know that without strong technical performance, SEO, content, and AI efforts can easily fail. I will also make one bold prediction – we should be prepared to expect the unexpected in this category. These platforms can crawl almost any site at scale and extract structured information, which could make them some of the most important and powerful tools in the stack. Many already pull data from GA and GSC, and integrating with CRM or other data platforms may be only a matter of time. I see that as a likely 2026 development. What must-have features actually look like in 2026 To evaluate tools effectively, it helps to focus on the capabilities that drive real impact. These are the ones worth prioritizing in 2026. Advanced data analysis and blended data capabilities Data analysis will play a much bigger role. Tools that let you blend data from GA, GSC, Salesforce, and similar sources will move you closer to the Holy Grail of SEO – understanding whether a prompt or search eventually leads to an MQL or a closed-won deal. This will never be a perfect science, but even a solid guesstimation is more useful than another visibility chart. Integration maturity is becoming a competitive differentiator. Disconnected data remains the biggest barrier between SEO work and business attribution. SERP intelligence for keywords and prompts Traditional SERP intelligence remains essential. You still need: Topic research and insights for top-ranking pages. Competitor analysis. Content gap insights. Technical issues and ways to fix them. You also need AI SERP intelligence, which analyzes: How AI tools answer specific prompts. What sources do they cite. If your brand appears, and if your competitors are also mentioned. In an ideal world, these two groups should appear side by side and provide you with a 360-degree view of your performance. Automation with real-time savings Prioritize tools that: Cluster automatically. Detect anomalies. Provide prioritized recommendations for improvements. Turn data into easy-to-understand insights. These are just some of the examples of practical AI that can really guide you and save you time. Strong multilingual support This applies to SEO experts who work with websites in languages other than English. Many tools are still heavily English-centric. Before choosing a tool, make sure the databases, SERP tracking, and AI insights work across languages, not just English. Transparent pricing and clear feature lists Hidden pricing, confusing bundles, and multiple add-ons make evaluation frustrating. Tools should communicate clearly: Which features they have. All related limitations. Whether a feature is part of the standard plan or an add-on. When something from the standard plan moves to an add-on. Many vendors change these things quietly, which makes calculating the investment you need difficult and hard to justify. Dig deeper: How to choose the best AI visibility tool Plus, some features that might be overhyped AI writing If you can’t input detailed information about your brand, product, and persona, the content you produce will be the same as everyone else’s. Many tools already offer this and can make your content sound as if it were written by one of your writers. So the question is whether you need a specialized tool or if a custom GPT can do the job. Prompt tracking It’s positioned as the new rank tracking, but it is like looking at one pixel of your monitor. It gives you only a tiny clue of the whole picture. AI answers change based on personalization and small differences in prompts, and the variations are endless. Still, this tactic is helpful in: Providing directional signals. Helping you benchmark brand presence. Highlighting recurring themes AI platforms use. Allowing competitive analysis within a controlled sample. Large keyword databases They still matter for directional research, but are not a true competitive differentiator. Most modern tools have enough coverage to guide your strategy. The value now stems from the practical insights derived from the data. How to compare 10 tools without wasting your time Understanding features is only half the equation. The real challenge is knowing how to evaluate specialized tools and all-in-one platforms without losing your sanity or blocking your team for weeks. After going through this process for the tenth time, I’ve found an approach that works for me. Step 1: Start with the pricing page I always begin my evaluation on the pricing page. With one page, you can get a clear sense of: All features. Limitations. Which ones fall under add-ons. The general structure of the pricing tiers. Even if you need a demo to get the exact price, the framework should still be relatively transparent. Step 2: Test using your normal weekly work No checklist will show you more than trying your regular BAU tasks with a couple of tools in parallel. This reveals: How long each task takes. What insights appear or disappear. What feels smoother or more clunky. How difficult the setup is – including whether the learning curve is huge. I work in a small team, and a tool that takes many hours just to set up likely will not make my final list. Not all evaluations can rely on BAU tasks. For example, when we researched tools for prompt and AI visibility tracking, we tested more than ten platforms. This capability did not exist in our stack, and at first, we had no idea what to check. In those cases, you need to define a small set of test scenarios from scratch and compare how each tool performs. Continue refining your scenarios, because each new evaluation will teach you something new. Dig deeper: Want to improve rankings and traffic? Stop blindly following SEO tool recommendations Step 3: Always get a free trial Demos are polished. Reality often is not. If there is no option for a free trial, either walk away or, if the tool is not too expensive, pay for a month. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Step 4: Involve only the people who will actually use the tool Always ask yourself who truly needs to be involved in the evaluation. For example, we are currently assessing a platform used not only by the SEO team but also by two other teams. We asked those teams for a brief summary of their requirements, but until we have a shortlist, there is no reason to involve them further or slow the process. And if your company has a heavy procurement or security review, involving too many people too early will slow everything down even more. At the same time, involve the whole SEO team, because each person will see different strengths and weaknesses and everyone will rely on the tool. Step 5: Evaluate results, not features Many features sound like magic wands. In reality, the magic often works only sometimes, or it works but is very expensive. To understand what you truly need, always ask yourself: Did the tool save time? Did it surface insights that my current stack does not? Could a custom GPT do this instead? Does the price make sense for my team, and can I prove its ROI? These questions turn the decision into a business conversation rather than a feature debate and help you prepare your “sales” pitch for your boss. Step 6: Evaluate support quality, not just product features Support has become one of the most overlooked parts of tool evaluation. Many platforms rely heavily on AI chat and automated replies, which can be extremely frustrating when you are dealing with a time-sensitive issue or have to explain your problem multiple times. Support quality can significantly affect your team’s efficiency, especially in small teams with limited resources. When evaluating tools, check: How easy it is to reach a human. What response times look like. Whether the vendor offers onboarding or ongoing guidance. A great product with weak support can quickly become a bottleneck. Once you have a shortlist, the quality of your vendor conversations will determine how quickly you can move forward. And this may be the hardest part – especially for the introverted SEO leads, myself included. How to navigate vendor conversations I’m practical, and I don’t like wasting anyone’s time. I have plenty of tasks waiting, so fluff conversations aren’t helpful. That’s why I start every vendor call by setting clear goals, limitations, a timeline, and next steps. Over time, I’ve learned that conversations run much more smoothly when I follow a few simple principles. Be prepared for meetings If you are evaluating a tool, come prepared to the demo. Ideally, you should have access to a free trial, tested the platform, and created a list of practical questions. Showing up unprepared is not a good sign, and that applies to both sides. For example, I am always impressed when a vendor joins the conversation having already researched who we are, what we do, and who our competitors are. If you have spoken with the vendor before, directly ask what has changed since your last discussion. Ask for competitor comparisons When comparing a few tools, I always ask each vendor for a direct comparison. These comparisons will be biased, but collecting them from all sides can reveal insights I had not considered and give me ideas for specific things to test. Often, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. Ask how annual contracts influence pricing Annual contracts reduce administrative work and give vendors room to negotiate, which can lead to better pricing. Many tools include this information on their pricing pages, and we have all seen it. Ask about any other nuances that might affect the final price – such as additional user seats or add-ons. Don’t start from scratch with vendors you know Often, the most effective approach is simply to say: “This is our budget. This is what we need. Can you support this?” This works especially well with vendors you have used before because both sides already know each other. What to consider from a business perspective Even if you select a tool, that does not mean you will receive the budget for it. Proving ROI is especially difficult with SEO tools. But there are a few things you can do to increase your chances of getting a yes. Present at least three alternatives in every request This shows you have done your homework, not just picked the first thing you found. Present your leadership with: The criteria you used in your evaluation. Pros and cons of each tool. The business case and why the capability is needed. What happens if you do not buy the tool. Providing this view builds trust in your ability to make decisions. Avoid overselling Tools improve efficiency, but they cannot guarantee outcomes – especially in SEO, GEO, or whatever you call it. Spend time explaining how quickly things are changing and how many factors are outside your control. Managing expectations will strengthen your team’s credibility. But even with thorough evaluation and negotiation, we still face the same issue: the SEO tooling market has not caught up with what companies now expect. Let’s hope the future brings something closer to the clarity we see in Google Ads. Dig deeper: How to master the enterprise SEO procurement process The future of the SEO tool stack The next generation of SEO tools must move beyond vanity metrics. Trained AI agents and custom GPTs can already automate much of the work. In a landscape where companies want to reduce employee and operational costs, you need concrete business numbers to justify high tool prices. The platforms that can connect searches, traffic, and revenue will become the new premium category in SEO technology. For now, most SEO teams will continue to hear “no” when requesting budgets because that connection does not yet exist. And the moment a tool finally solves this attribution problem, it will redefine the entire SEO technology market. View the full article

After Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO of Allbirds in March 2024, he took three months off—mainly because his wife Liz said she’d divorce him if he jumped into another venture. He had run the sustainable shoe company for 10 years while the couple raised their three young children. “It took a real toll on the family,” Liz says. (“I would say it developed character in our family,” Zwillinger counters.) Before long, he was itching to start a new project, an ambition he shyly expressed to his wife. “It was really hard to want to sign up for something like that all over again,” Liz says. But this time, he cofounded the venture with Liz. It’s also a bold pivot from a sustainable shoe company to an entirely different industry: women’s hormone health supplements. At a time when health and wellness is big business, it might also be a smart pivot. But it’s an undeniably different world, navigating health regulations and making bold investment choices when such bets didn’t go so well at Allbirds. Revenue and share prices dipped drastically starting in 2022, and have hardly recovered. Launching December 9, Biologica is a set of new supplements for women’s health, naturally flavored and powdered to fizz into water. Each single sachet, or separately sealed daily dose to be mixed with eight ounces of water, targets different body functions with ingredients including electrolytes, multivitamins, botanicals, and probiotics. Crucially to the value proposition, there are three products for different life stages: younger reproductive years, perimenopause, and post-menopause. While some share ingredients like Vitamin C and potassium, for different stages you may have dosages of broccoli extract (for detoxification and liver function), pomegranate extract (for skin hydration), or saffron (for mood balance and sleep quality). The idea came from Liz’s own struggles; she would take different supplements daily for various issues, leading to seven separate pills plus extra vitamins, which became “a super onerous supplement routine that didn’t feel like it was sustainable,” she says. That was a common issue the couple found in their initial focus groups. Women could only find a one-size-fits-all pill or gummy that promised to do everything. Or, as in Liz’s case, various targeted supplements, which became unsustainable as the cost of living rose. They also found that women of different ages had different concerns. So they set out to create a company with only one product per customer—but narrowed to their hormonal age. They believe that’s their major selling point. MAHA movement and ‘changing winds’ The health and wellness sector is “absolutely” an attractive space for founders now, says Matthew Oster, head of health, beauty, and hygiene insights at Euromonitor International. He says lines are now blurrier than ever between pharma and food and beverage. A trend toward natural and food-based remedies has been “churning in the background culturally over the last 10 or 15 years,” he says, and increasingly linked with medical distrust—and has now become branded as RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. “So at the same time that these companies are recognizing that consumers want healthier products,” he says, “there’s this whole movement codifying that.” Supplements, whether fortified fibers, proteins, or biotics, are no longer just a “hippie, natural, crunchy thing,” Oster says. “It’s a dead-right-in-the-middle mainstream proposition.” But in the age of TikTokification, “this wellness market is rife with changing winds, on a dime,” Oster says. “Some of these ingredients trends last months as opposed to years.” Longevity is often hard to forecast: CBD was an example of a fleeting fad, but other trends, like protein, are only getting bigger. Women’s health might be a better bet, especially around life stages. “No one really even talked about perimenopause a few years ago from a product formulation perspective,” Oster says. “In a short amount of time, we had a proliferation of products in that space.” There are others on the market, but “not a tremendous amount,” Oster says. Perelel is a supplements company that has seen strong growth since August 2024, where you can “shop by stage,” from “trying to conceive,” through “perimenopause.” Health & Her is a British company with capsule products for different life stages, which launched in the U.S. this summer with CVS. Now, he says, it’s just about seeing which products will stick, and which will fizzle out. The failure rate may be high, but at least it’s a relatively short lead time to get to market versus digital health or pharma products (the Zwillingers have gone from ideation to rollout in a year and a half), and a relatively minimal financial commitment (they raised a $7 million seed round). “This is a low bet from an investment cost,” Oster says, “that if you lose your shirt, you lose your shirt.” Learning lessons from Allbirds’ fall But it’s still a risk to navigate a new industry when Zwillinger’s previous venture took an unexpected plunge after its initial success. In the late 2010s, Allbirds was a phenomenon. Its minimalist running sneakers, made from merino wool and a foam sole of sugar cane, were named the “world’s most comfortable shoes” by Time in 2017. They became almost the official dress code of Silicon Valley, part of the “tech bro starter pack” meme (along with the Patagonia zipper vest, Yeti bottle, and Lime scooter). They were like a cultural snapshot of the era; even Obama was spotted wearing them. But in March 2024, Zwillinger resigned and handed over the CEO reins after repeated cycles of declining revenue. Even by 2022, The Wall Street Journal assessed, the tech bros had moved on. The media’s Allbirds postmortems blamed overly ambitious expansion beyond their core bestsellers, and too rashly opening numerous brick-and-mortar stores. Today, revenue is still declining, and half its stores are closed. Zwillinger, still an active board member, says when COVID-19 hit during the company’s peak—eclipsing $200 million in revenue—he and his cofounder, Tim Brown, responded too dramatically to shifting consumer trends, including pivoting too hard from lifestyle to running and hiking. “We were too immature of a company to parse out what was signal and what was noise,” he says, “and we made some really big bets based on that.” They were forced to discount the product to move the inventory. Allbirds was also known for its eco-friendliness: it’s a certified B Corp, with a core polymer material that’s carbon-negative. Zwillinger says he’s learned you can’t build a business around sustainability alone. “[Consumers] want to make sure that the innovation actually does something that meets their needs,” he says. In a way, navigating health in the new business is similar to navigating sustainability. Once competing with some rivals that were greenwashing, they now face some wellness brands that make unsubstantiated claims. Companies “feel free to say whatever to make a sale,” Zwillinger says. “It’s a little scary starting a business in a space like that.” There’s enough leniency from the FDA for some bold claims, and a lack of budget for the agency to do much even when there’s blatant overstepping. You can’t say a supplement cures or prevents a disease, but you can make a claim about the role of an ingredient, like “calcium builds strong bones.” But some of the gray areas can lead to a “freewheeling, cowboy approach to what they claim,” Zwillinger says. That’s concerning to many medical experts, who have publicly noted their skepticism around supplements, some recommending not to spend money on something that most people can obtain from a healthy diet alone. An independent panel of national experts in 2022 reviewed 84 supplements studies and concluded there was “insufficient evidence” of their efficacy. The Zwillingers say they have tried to do things right via focus groups, clinical research, and a 1,000-woman study; they have a medical advisory board with two ob-gyns and a breast cancer surgeon specialist (as well as a more Eastern-focused herbalist). Oster says it’s good to get everything right with the science. But in this social media era, it might not even be science that drives sales for some consumers. “Vibes and feelings are pretty influential,” he says. DTC as the initial test Still, from a business strategy perspective, the reliance on data has been helpful, allowing them to be less subjective, and not cater to their own tastes, as Zwillinger and Brown did at Allbirds. “In this situation, I have zero lived experience and no subjectivity,” he says. “Looking back, everyone should do that with every business they run—take themselves out of it.” Consumer trends have also changed dramatically, as pandemic patterns faded and social media proliferated. Allbirds, along with fellow unicorns Warby Parker and Casper, was a direct-to-consumer (DTC) pioneer. Though assessments that “DTC is dead” are highly exaggerated, Oster says, companies have to get social media marketing right, as people now just buy directly from those platforms. “TikTok Shop has really taken over from a supplements perspective,” Oster says. Zwillinger knows they will ultimately have to be “predominantly retail-oriented to be successful,” but they have to start with DTC, probably for a year or two (products will be ready to ship to consumers December 9). “I have learned deeply and with some scars,” he says, that you need a robust and popular product before entering wholesale relationships. The DTC launch will be a way to test the product, and iron out issues. Those could be things like flavors, which they’ve formulated without sugar. Or the price, which is $59 a month, for 30 sachets in a tin, to finance some expensive ingredients like saffron. Or, the branding of the product, which they’ve tried to give a premium feel, with elegant-looking tins to be displayed on a counter or desk, not shoved away in the pantry, and to speak to a sophisticated customer base. But of course, all remains to be seen as it rolls out. “We think we’re brilliant, [that] we’ve done everything right,” Zwillinger says. “But when we start selling, we’re going to find out we were idiots about lots of things.” View the full article

Michael Burry, the money manager made famous in The Big Short, believes a re-listing of the US housing-finance giants is "nearly upon us." View the full article

If you’re searching for a new snack that’s heavy on flavor but manages to skip the unhealthy additives, you’re in luck. There’s a new one called Ragerz from Good Eat’n, NBA star Chris Paul’s snack brand, in partnership with the WNBA’s Paige Bueckers. And it sounds like a slam dunk. For starters, the snack—which is a bit like a healthier take on Takis—is focused on delivering a fierce flavor without the junk. It comes in Chili Lime and Sweet Chili Crunch flavors that, Bueckers tells Fast Company, do not miss the mark (hoop?). The snack “isn’t asking people to give up flavor to feel better about what they’re eating,” she says, adding that with Ragerz, “you can have both.” Chris Paul agrees, and says that now is the right time for better snacking options. “Families want snacks that taste amazing but don’t come with all the artificial colors and additives,” he tells Fast Company. “You’re seeing that shift in retail data: U.S. snacking is a $46 billion industry, most of it controlled by one big company that’s now experiencing decline.” According to Paul, Good Eat’n snacks have only organic ingredients and no artificial flavors, or dyes like Red 40. “People want bold flavors, but they also want to feel good about what’s in the bag,” Paul says. “Ragerz hits that sweet spot: big flavor, organic corn, no artificial colors, and ingredient integrity.” The taste certainly sounds epic. However, the brand is shooting for more than a new crunchy and delicious snack. Good Eat’n’s mission, fighting childhood hunger, is what seems to matter most to the brand. Good Eat’n says it is donating a portion of all Ragerz sales to charity, as well as partnering with the Paige Bueckers Foundation, which works to create opportunities and promote justice in sports and elsewhere, to donate Ragerz and other Good Eat’n snacks to Feed the Children. “[Being] able to support Feed the Children and their resources centers inside of schools in the Dallas School District means a lot,” Bueckers explains. “I’m trying to find ways to engage and support the Dallas community, which has shown me so much love in my first season there.” For the Dallas Wings point guard, the partnership is a big responsibility, and it’s one she takes seriously, calling it an opportunity to learn “how to be a leader from Chris.” Bueckers says that, in addition to Paul’s success on the court, he has been able to “break barriers and do amazing things off the court,” adding that “for him to want to invest in me and in women’s sport makes it a special moment.” The partnership marks the first time that a WNBA star has taken an equity stake in a food brand founded by an NBA player, which isn’t lost on Bueckers, who says that “being the first at something means there will be a second and a third.” According to the company, Good Eat’n snacks are available nationwide at Walmart, and Ragerz are now available for pre-order at GoodEatn.com. The snack will be available at H-E-B stores across Texas, as well as via DoorDash in Texas and Gopuff nationwide. View the full article

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

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

In this Ask an SEO, Adam Riemer examines why digital PR delivers a stronger business case than link-driven tactics built for ranking manipulation. The post Ask An SEO: Digital PR Or Traditional Link Building, Which Is Better? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

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

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

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

In 2026 and well beyond, a core part of the performance marketer’s charter is learning to leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency. Anyone who isn’t actively evaluating new AI tools to improve or streamline their PPC work is doing their brand or clients a disservice. The challenge is that keeping up with these tools has become almost a full-time job, which is why my agency has made AI a priority in our structured knowledge-sharing. As a team, we’ve honed in on favorites across creative, campaign management, and AI search measurement. This article breaks down key options in each category, with brief reviews and a callout of my current pick. One overarching recommendation before we dive in: be cautious about signing long-term contracts for AI tools or platforms. At the pace things are moving, the tool that catches your eye in December could be an afterthought by April. AI creative tools for paid social campaigns There’s no shortage of tools that can generate creative assets, and each comes with benefits as well as the risks of producing AI slop. Regardless of the tool you choose, it must be thoroughly vetted and supported by a strong human-in-the-loop process to ensure quality, accuracy, and brand alignment. Here’s a quick breakdown of the tools we’ve tested: AdCreative.ai: Auto-generates images, video creatives, ad copy, and headlines in multiple sizes, with data-backed scoring for outputs. Creatify: Particularly strong on video ads with multi-format support. WASK: Combines AI creative generation with campaign optimization and competitor analysis. Revid AI: Well-suited for story formats. ChatGPT: Free and widely familiar, giving marketers an edge in effective prompting. Our current tool of choice is AdCreative.ai. It’s easy to use and especially helpful for quickly brainstorming creative angles and variations to test. Like its competitors, it offers meaningful advantages, including: Speed and scale that allow you to generate dozens or hundreds of variants in minutes to keep creative fresh and reduce ad fatigue. Less reliance on external designers or editors for routine or templated outputs. Rapid creative experimentation across images, copy, and layouts to find winning combinations faster. Data-driven insights, such as creative scores or performance predictions, when available. The usual caveats apply across all creative tools: Build guardrails to avoid off-brand outputs by maintaining a strong voice guide, providing exemplar content, enforcing style rules and banned words, and ensuring human review at every step. Watch for accuracy issues or hallucinations and include verification in your process, especially for technical claims, data, or legal copy. Dig deeper: How to get smarter with AI in PPC AI campaign management and workflow tools for performance campaigns There are plenty of workflow automation tools on the market, including long-standing options, like Zapier, Workato, and Microsoft Power Automate. Our preferred choice, though, is n8n. Its agentic workflows and built-in connections across ad platforms, CRMs, and reporting tools have been invaluable in automating redundant tasks. Here are my agency’s primary use cases for n8n: Lead management: Automatically enrich new leads from HubSpot or Salesforce with n8n’s Clearbit automation, then route them to the right rep or nurture sequence. UTM cleanup: When a form fill or ad conversion comes in, automatically normalize UTM parameters before pushing them to your CRM. Some systems, like HubSpot, store values in fields such as “first URL seen” that aren’t parsed into UTM fields, so UTMs remain associated with the user but aren’t stored properly and require reconciliation. Data reporting: Pull metrics from APIs, structure the data, and use AI to summarize insights. Reports can then be shared via Slack and email, or dropped into collaborative tools like Google Docs. As with any tool, n8n comes with caveats to keep in mind: It requires some technical ability because it’s low-code, not no-code. You often need to understand APIs, JSON, and authentication, such as OAuth or API keys. Even basic automations may involve light logic or expressions. Integrations with less mainstream tools can require scripting. You need a deliberate setup to maintain security. There’s no built-in role-based access control in all configurations unless you use n8n Cloud Enterprise. Misconfigured webhooks can expose data if not handled properly. Its ad platform integrations aren’t as broad as those of some competitors. For example, it doesn’t include LinkedIn Ads, Reddit Ads, or TikTok Ads. These can be added via direct API calls, but that takes more manual work. Dig deeper: Top AI tools and tactics you should be using in PPC Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. AI search visibility measurement tools Most SEOs already have preferred platforms for measurement and insights – Semrush, Moz, SE Ranking, and others. While many now offer reports on brand visibility in AI search results from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and similar tools, these features are add-ons to products built for traditional SEO. To track how our brands show up in AI search results, we use Profound. While other purpose-built tools exist, we’ve found that it offers differentiated persona-level and competitor-level analysis and ties its reporting to strategic levers like content and PR or sentiment, making it clear how to act on the data. These platforms can provide near real-time insights such as: Performance benchmarks that show AI visibility against competitors to highlight strengths and weaknesses. Content and messaging intel, including the language AI uses to describe brands and their solutions, which can inform thought leadership and messaging refinement. Signals that show whether your efforts are improving the consistency and favorability of brand mentions in AI answers. Trends illustrating how generative AI is reshaping search results and user behavior. Insights beyond linear keyword rankings that reveal the narratives AI models generate about your company, competitors, and industry. Gaps and opportunities to address to influence how your brand appears in AI answers. No matter which tool you choose, the key is to adopt one quickly. The more data you gather on rapidly evolving AI search trends, the more agile you can be in adjusting your strategy to capture the growing share of users turning to AI tools during their purchase journey. Dig deeper: Scaling PPC with AI automation: Scripts, data, and custom tools What remains true as the AI toolset keeps shifting I like to think most of my content for this publication ages well, but I’m not expecting this one to follow suit. Anyone reading it a few months after it runs will likely see it as more of a time capsule than a set of current recommendations – and that’s fine. What does feel evergreen is the need to: Monitor the AI landscape. Aggressively test new tools and features. Build or maintain a strong knowledge-sharing function across your team. We’re well past head-in-the-sand territory with AI in performance marketing, yet there’s still room for differentiation among teams that move quickly, test strategically, and pivot together as needed. Dig deeper: AI agents in PPC: What to know and build today View the full article

Compare coordinator vs manager on duties, authority, pay, tools, and career path—plus when to hire each and how to move from coordinator to PM. The post Project Coordinator vs Manager: Roles, Pay & Path Differences appeared first on project-management.com. View the full article

OpenAI has updated its spider/crawler it uses for ChatGPT, OAI-SearchBot. The AI company updated the description and details of the crawler information removing that it is used for links and to train OpenAI's generative AI foundation models.View the full article

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

Google's Vice President, Global Ads at Google, Dan Taylor, said that there are no plans to bring ads to the Gemini app. This comes after AdWeek reported based on sources that ads will be coming to Gemini in 2026.View the full article

With Google Ads releasing AI Max globally back in September, more and more advertisers are trying it out. While some of the early data can show it underperforms, some are seeing success by using it for specific applications. That being said, one recent study showed that using AI Max helps broaden your work with exact match and phrase match keywords.View the full article

Google has a bug with the Google Ads offline conversion uploads feature. Much, but not all, of the offline conversion data you upload is not being added to Google Ads. This obviously makes the reporting look off and bad for your ad campaigns.View the full article

Google rolled out Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor a few weeks ago and did you know that it can reference and cite third-party external sources, outside of just Google's own help documentation? Well, it does.View the full article

When historians assess this age of American populism, Silicon Valley’s plutocrats will surely be judged its winnersView the full article

Commodities trader says burst of new supply coming online will collide with reduced demand growthView the full article

In 1997, Apple launched a campaign that became cultural gospel. “Think Different” celebrated the rebels, the misfits, the troublemakers. The ones who saw things differently. The ones who changed the world. Apple understood something fundamental: the constraints that limited imagination weren’t real. They were inherited. Accepted. Assumed. And the people who broke through weren’t smarter or more talented. They simply refused to believe the constraints applied to them. Twenty-eight years later, marketing faces its own Think Different moment. The constraints are gone. Technology has removed them. AI can generate infinite variants. Data platforms deliver real-time insights. Orchestration tools coordinate across every channel instantly. The infrastructure that once required armies of specialists, weeks of coordination and endless approvals now exists in platforms accessible to any marketer willing to learn them. Yet most marketers still operate as if the box exists. They wait for the data team to run the analysis. They wait for creative to deliver the assets. They wait for engineering to build the integration. They operate within constraints that technology has already eliminated, not because they must, but because assembly-line marketing taught them that’s how it worked. Creative waits for data. Campaigns wait for creative. Launch waits for engineering. Move from station to station. Hand off to the next department. That was the assembly line. That was the box. And that box is gone. But the habits remain. Here’s to the marketers who refuse to wait for approval The ones who see a customer signal at 3 p.m. and launch a personalized journey by 4 p.m., not because they asked permission but because the customer needed it now. The ones who don’t send briefs to three different teams. They access the data, generate the creative and orchestrate the campaign themselves. Not because they’re trying to eliminate specialists, but because waiting days for what they can deliver in hours wastes the moment. The ones who run experiments constantly, not occasionally. Who test 10 variants instead of two. Who measure lift instead of clicks. Who know that perfect insight arrives through iteration, not through analysis paralysis. Here’s to the ones who see campaigns where others see dependencies They don’t see a handoff to the analytics team. They see customer data they can access instantly to understand behavior, predict intent and target precisely. They don’t see a creative approval process. They see AI tools that generate channel-ready assets in minutes, allowing them to personalize at scale rather than compromise for efficiency. They don’t see an engineering backlog. They see orchestration platforms that automate journeys, test variations and optimize outcomes without a single ticket. They’re not reckless. They’re not cowboys They’re simply operating at the speed technology now enables, constrained only by strategy and judgment rather than structure and process. This is what Positionless Marketing means: Wielding Data Power, Creative Power and Optimization Power simultaneously. Not because you’ve eliminated everyone else, but because technology eliminated the dependencies that once made those handoffs necessary. And here’s what most people miss: This isn’t just about speed. It’s about potential When marketers were constrained by assembly-line marketing infrastructure, their job was to manage the line. Write the brief. Coordinate the teams. Navigate the approvals. Wait for each station to finish its work. The marketer’s skill was project management. Their value was orchestrating others. Now? Your job in marketing has changed entirely Your job is no longer to manage process. Your job is to enable potential. To help every person on your team (and yourself) realize what they’re capable of when the constraints disappear. To show them that the data they’ve been waiting for is accessible now. That the creative they’ve been briefing can be generated instantly. That the campaigns they’ve been coordinating can be orchestrated autonomously. Teach people to think outside the box by showing them there is no longer a box The data analyst who only ran reports can now build predictive models and operationalize them in real time. The campaign manager who only coordinated handoffs can now design, test and optimize end-to-end journeys independently. The creative strategist who only wrote briefs can now generate and deploy assets across every channel. This is the revolution: not that technology does the work, but that technology removes the barriers that prevented people from doing work they were always capable of. The misfits and rebels of 1997 saw possibilities where others saw limitations. They refused to accept that things had to be done the way they’d always been done. The Positionless Marketers of today are doing the same thing They’re refusing to wait when customers need action now. They’re refusing to accept that insight takes weeks when platforms deliver it in seconds. They’re refusing to operate within constraints that technology has already eliminated. They’re thinking differently. Not because they’re trying to be difficult. But because the old way of thinking no longer matches the new reality of what’s possible. In 1997, Apple told us: “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” In 2025, the people crazy enough to think they can deliver personalized experiences at scale, launch campaigns in hours instead of weeks, and operate without dependencies are the ones who will. The constraints are gone. The assembly-line marketing box can no longer exist. View the full article

In 2025, remote work continued to reshape how businesses operate and how employees participate in the workforce. This report revisits the key developments of the past year, highlights the trends that defined workplace dynamics, and looks ahead to what these shifts mean as we approach 2026. Today, the world of work is more polarised than ever. Calls for return-to-office mandates clash with workers who refuse to give up their hard-earned flexibility.‡ At the same time, many Gen Z professionals are returning to office spaces in search of structure, mentorship, and reduced isolation.‡ Week after week, headlines suggest that the balance is shifting. One wave rises, another retreats. Yet one truth remains steady: remote work continues to dominate the conversation. It lies at the centre of today’s workplace debate and shows no signs of disappearing. Office Attendance: Small Increase vs Flat as a PancakeHeadlines often swing between announcing the end of remote work and declaring its rise. The clearest way to cut through the noise is to look at the data from the third quarter of 2025. Two-thirds of U.S. firms (66%) still offer location flexibility. This represents a small decline from 2024, when 68% did. Interestingly, 5% of companies are now more flexible than they were two years ago.‡ The full breakdown looks like this:‡ Out of all fully flexible companies, 5% are fully remote, while the remaining 19% allow employees to choose freely how much they work from home versus the office. 🌪 The twist? While employers are calling people back, employees aren’t fully complying. Between Q1 2024 and Q3 2025, the number of required office days rose 12%, but actual attendance increased by only 1–3%, depending on the source.‡ 📣 According to Stanford’s Nick Bloom, the mix of remote vs office days remains “flat as a pancake".‡Understanding Low RTO ComplianceBloom points to what he calls the “composition effect” to explain the gap: overall WFH levels appear flat because older, shrinking firms are cutting flexibility, while younger, fast-growing ones are quietly expanding it. The averages even out, but only the RTO headlines make the news.‡ A Predominantly White, Male Remote WorkforceIf you ask who’s still lucky enough to be working from home, the short answer might surprise you: apparently, half of the U.S. workforce is. Smaller companies remain the champions of flexibility — 67% of firms with under 500 employees are fully flexible, covering roughly half of the U.S. workforce.‡ The trend is especially strong in sectors built around digital or client-based work.‡ Highest numbers of fully remote openings are posted in following sectors at the moment: 💻 Computer & IT, 🗓 Project Management, 🤝 Sales, 🏢 Operations and 🧚 Customer Service.‡ Most of these roles are for experienced positions (66%), followed by manager (27%) and entry-level (7%) jobs.‡ The age distribution of remote workers is best illustrated in the chart below. 👨🏻‍💻 WFH workforce remains predominantly white and male. Nearly half of the US remote workers identify as male, and they're distributed by race as follows: CEO's who are first to offer flexibility and remote work are young (<30) females. Generally, studies suggest that the younger the CEO, the more likely they are to offer flexible arrangements.‡ Where Remote Workers Actually WorkOne of our LinkedIn polls on remote work sparked an unusually lively debate. The question was simple: where do remote workers actually prefer to work from? A coworking space, a favorite coffee shop, or simply home? ‡ Out of nearly 4,000 votes, the results were striking: 🏢 Coworking space — 3% ☕ Coffee shop — 4% 🏠 Home — 93% 📣 One respondent summed it up perfectly: Freedom to work from anywhere often leads people back to the place they control most: home. For many, this is not just a preference, it’s essential. Disabled and neurodivergent workers frequently rely on home setups as the only environment where they can perform at their best. Remote Work in 2026: Right or Perk? Remote work enables countless individuals to stay employed who might otherwise be forced out of the labor market. About 5.7 million people with disabilities are currently employed nationwide in USA, an increase of more than 500,000 workers since September 2021.‡ The rise didn’t occur in fields unsuitable for remote work, underscoring a clear correlation between WFH and the employability of people with disabilities.‡ This makes remote work far more than a preference. It represents access — particularly for: 🧑‍🦽 Workers with disabilities 🤰 Working mothers 🦄 Neurodivergent professionals …and many others. Mandated office returns risk undoing these gains and undermining companies’ commitments to inclusion.‡ Taking the remote option away isn’t simply a policy shift; it edges toward limiting the right to work itself. For millions, remote work is the bridge that keeps them in the economy: contributing and thriving. Hiring Trends: RTOs, Job Huggers, and the Great PushbackHiring trends always mirror the market mood. Over the past year, especially in tech, that mood has been bleak. ▲ The upside is simple: when things hit bottom, the only way forward is up. Until that recovery arrives, the power sits squarely with employers. In a market where remote jobs are scarce and applicants are many, companies hold the ball, and lately, they have been throwing it in unpopular directions. 🏒 Push for RTOsPandemic restrictions faded and economic uncertainty grew, questions of trust and productivity gave many large firms the perfect excuse to push for RTOs. In 2025, Amazon, Dell, Apple, Google, IBM, Meta, Salesforce, and dozens of others have doubled down on demands for employees to return to the office at least three days a week, if not all five.‡ Compliance of the "Job Huggers"In response, employees prioritizing security quietly complied. Others refused to trade flexibility for long commutes and the patronizing treatment of being managed like kids who can’t be trusted to work on their own. We all still remember the striking headlines about Dell’s RTO‡: The message was loud and clear: remote work is not just a perk workers are willing to negotiate; it is a deal-breaker.‡ 🌪 The twist? Many suspect companies saw this coming. RTOs, they argue, are a quiet way to trim staff without formal layoffs.‡ 📣 As tech veteran Joe Procopio genuinely puts it: "And that kinda worked. But kinda didn’t. Sure, the troublemakers all found the door and gave the finger on the way out, but the go-along-to-get-along crowd stopped performing and got performative, and the rest of the tech workforce got ready to revolt. Then the employers got bailed out by the worst tech labor market in history."‡The Return of Talent PowerThe real test will come once the job market shifts again and talent, not companies, regains control. When that happens, the same firms tightening their grip today may find themselves loosening it fast, as retention becomes the next big headline. And to end the year on a good note: this might happen sooner than we expect! Recent research shows that the “great freeze in hiring” is beginning to thaw, with 63% of businesses preparing to increase hiring in the year ahead.‡ 2025: Wins and Losses in Remote Work🚀 Win: Async takes the stage. As remote work matures, asynchronous communication has become a key theme — and increasingly, a requirement. The first to go? Endless 🙌 “all-hands” meetings, 🧵email threads about emails and 📝 check-ins that could have been async updates. As the end of 2025 nears, async-first companies are showing what true respect for multiple time zones looks like, and how it unlocks genuine work-life balance.‡ ⚠️ Loss: The rise of the contractor model. Employers have learned that flexibility works both ways. While international contracting has always been part of global hiring, the economic uncertainty of 2025 has pushed more employers to choose contractors rather than permanent employees.‡ ▲ The upside for companies is obvious: faster hiring, lower costs, and fewer compliance challenges. ▼ The downside is equally clear: weaker team cohesion, lower loyalty, and growing frustration among workers stuck in the “no benefits” model. 🌪Plot twist: Some professionals actually enjoy fractional hiring and the opportunity to sharpen their business skills in different environments.‡ 🚀 Win: Time over money. Across surveys, workers consistently say they would accept lower pay in exchange for greater flexibility. The value of time, autonomy, and balance is now openly competing with salary in shaping job satisfaction.‡ ⚠️ Loss: The gentrification effect. A smaller fraction of remote workers — digital nomads — are unintentionally reshaping local economies. In cities like Lisbon, high-earning foreign remote professionals often outprice locals, driving up rents and daily living costs.‡ The freedom to work from anywhere, it turns out, can carry unintended social consequences for the places that host it. 🚀 Win: Pay transparency goes mainstream. Beyond legal mandates, transparency has become a competitive advantage. Open pay practices build trust, reduce inequity, and strengthen retention. But they also expose internal pay gaps and push employers to rethink outdated compensation models.‡ ⚠️ Loss: Increased employee tracking. Alongside the rise of tools that support remote work came a rise in tools that monitor remote workers. In our LinkedIn poll, 26% of nearly 500 respondents said their employer had noticeably increased monitoring over the past year — using methods like time-tracking software and‡, in more extreme cases, requiring employees to stay on camera throughout the day to mimic an office environment. The Most Loved Sides of Remote WorkBeyond flexibility and freedom, remote work offers a set of everyday benefits that redefine what people value in their jobs. These are the aspects people love the most: 🏆 No commute (44%) For most workers, this remains the number one perk. Remote work eliminates the hours spent in traffic or public transport for tasks easily done from home. 🥈 Freedom to live anywhere (26%) Without the need to live near an office, people choose locations that better match their lifestyle — quieter neighborhoods, lower rent, cleaner air. 🥉 More work-life balance (18%) Flexibility makes it easier to show up for life outside of work: picking up kids, running errands off-peak, or managing personal time with autonomy. It gives people ownership of their days again. 💫 Higher productivity (12%) Many remote professionals report sharper focus and stronger output when office distractions are gone. Deep work becomes far more achievable. 📣 Our community additionally highlighted perks like: How People Use Their Extra TimeThe time gained back from removing commutes and office distractions doesn’t disappear — it gets reinvested. According to our community, most people use those reclaimed hours to 🏃‍♀️ exercise more (45%) and🧘‍♀️ invest in their mental health (37%), followed by 👥 socialising, 😴 getting more sleep, 🛁 relaxing more, 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 spending more time with family, 🎨 learning new skills and 🎸 embracing hobbies. Remote Work ChallengesEven a work model as beneficial as remote work comes with its own challenges. Media coverage often points to rising feelings of 🧍🏿‍♂️isolation (especially among Gen Z, who sometimes consider returning to the office for more social interaction)‡, dips in motivation, “quiet overworking” driven by blurred work–life boundaries‡, and concerns about 🐌 slower career progression compared to in-office or hybrid peers‡. Our LinkedIn community echoed many of these points, with nearly 1,000 people responding. Here’s how their answers broke down: Possible Solutions: 🧍‍♂️ Combat isolation Make social connection intentional. Schedule regular meet-ups with friends or family, and consider working 1–2 days a week from a favourite coffee shop or coworking space. Sometimes simply getting dressed can boost your mood and restore a sense of belonging. 🔥 Rebuild motivation Start by identifying the root cause: has this feeling always been present, or did it appear with remote work or life changes? Understanding why motivation dipped is often the first step toward improving it. Time-block your day and stick to a clear structure — discipline helps, because deadlines arrive whether motivation shows up or not. 🔕 Reduce distractions A poor workspace can sabotage productivity. If home is too noisy and coworking feels too expensive, look for quieter, affordable alternatives like libraries. Silence notifications during deep-work periods, put your phone away, and let the cat nap on your partner’s keyboard for once. 🗂️ Optimise your setup and boundaries 🎧 Invest in good tech, it’s always worth it; 🔁 Don’t stay available 24/7, it never works long-term; ⚡ Normalize slower replies - instant responses shouldn’t be the default.;🔒 Respect your team’s boundaries and communicate your own. Company Culture Non-NegotiablesSide by side with remote-work challenges stands company culture: that mix of good practices, communication norms, and thoughtfully chosen tools that can make all the difference. It shapes not only the daily experience of individual remote workers but also overall performance and long-term success. According to our LinkedIn community, these are the non-negotiables of a healthy remote-first culture: 📣 As one respondent sharply commented: Remote work may rely on tools and technology, but its foundation is still built on human principles: 🤝 trust, 💧 clarity, and 🙏 respect. 📣 Chase Warrington, head of operations at Doist, writes: "Company culture has nothing to do with the office, and even less to do with virtual Zoom happy hours. It’s much more complex, and although many see this as a challenge to overcome when moving to a remote model, it’s actually an awesome opportunity to intentionally curate the space for your team to connect and thrive"‡.The Pitfalls of Remote Talent AcquisitionIt’s debatable whether recruiting has ever been harder than it is today. Recruiters are navigating a constantly shifting job market where the rising desire for flexibility clashes with a year of layoffs, hiring freezes, and cautious budgets. Add to that the first true wave of AI-influenced applications, and the job gets even more complex.🧶 Hiring teams now sort through unprecedented volumes of AI-generated résumés. Remote recruiters face an extra layer of difficulty: ensuring candidates aren’t quietly using AI tools during interviews, especially when answering technical or situational questions. One viral example said it all. 📣A remote recruiter recently asked a candidate to “close eyes and answer the question”‡ to prevent AI-assisted responses. It was funny, a bit surreal, and a perfect snapshot of where remote recruiting stands today. When asked about their biggest challenges in remote hiring, recruiters highlighted three main pain points: Remote work opens the talent pool, but it also amplifies the noise, the logistics, and the legal layers that hiring teams must navigate. Possible Solutions:💧 Write crystal-clear job ads State salary, location, and remote expectations in a way candidates can spot instantly. 📌 Use geoblockers They help filter out bulk applicants who apply without fully reading the description. 🌐 Choose the right hiring model for international hires Decide whether to hire someone as an employee, contractor, or through an EOR (Employer of Record) / global-payroll provider. Misclassification risks, compliance requirements, and local labour laws differ significantly across models. 📕 Map out local labour laws when outsourcing Understand tax rules, employment protections, termination regulations, and data-privacy obligations before extending an offer. ✓ Standardize global hiring and compliance processes Maintain a centralized system (or partner with an EOR/compliance provider) to manage contracts, payroll, tax withholding/reporting, data privacy, and cross-border requirements. 💰 Offer competitive, context-aware compensation and benefits Balance internal pay equity with local cost-of-living benchmarks and regional market standards to stay attractive and fair across all locations. Remote Work: The Long GameRemote work arrived like a tide. It existed before, but the pandemic — a moment we’d gladly forget — pushed it into mainstream culture. That tide swept away many long-established traditions built around office life, along with assumptions we once considered constants. When looking at the broader picture of where remote work stands today, key takeaways are: 🏙️ Remote work didn’t just change how we work — it reshaped entire city ecosystems. Empty offices shifted retail patterns, shrank commutes, eased traffic, and reduced the need for constant business travel. 🌍 Its impact reaches far beyond individual workers or companies. Remote work is reviving overlooked places, redrawing economic maps, and even influencing our collective environmental footprint. 🌊 Like any tide, it always comes back. RTO waves may rise and fall, but the real question for 2026 and years to come isn’t whether remote work persists — it’s how much further its return will transform the world around us. Keep following Remotive as we explore — with curiosity and a front-row seat — how this tide continues to shape the world around us. Before we wrap up, a quick reminder: ❣️ Remotive is a premium job board designed to make remote job searching easier by curating a high volume of thoroughly vetted listings. We want to give recruiters visibility, give job seekers meaningful opportunities, and support both sides with clear insights and helpful resources. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram and X. View the full article

UAE energy giant emerges as frontrunner to buy Russia’s controlling stake in Serbia’s sole oil-processing facility View the full article

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