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Facebook’s Marketplace is set to transform the online shopping experience for small businesses, offering enhanced features designed to cultivate community engagement and facilitate easier transactions. The recent updates focus on empowering users to interact with listings more effectively, making it a prime time for small business owners to reassess their digital sales strategies. Every day, approximately 25% of young adult users in the U.S. and Canada utilize Facebook Marketplace, showing its potential as a bustling platform for buying and selling. These updates aim to streamline that experience, particularly for items like home decor, clothing, and vehicles—categories that resonate strongly with younger demographics. One of the standout features introduced is the ability to create collections. This allows users to curate groups of Marketplace listings and invite friends to join in the conversation. Small business owners can leverage this feature to showcase their products in a more visually appealing way. By enabling customers to share their collections through platforms like Messenger and WhatsApp, businesses can create a sense of community around their offerings. “Start a new collection, choose whether to make it public or private, and share updates easily,” the announcement states, emphasizing the collaborative aspect. Additionally, Facebook now allows reactions and comments directly on listings, providing more transparency about product quality. This can be crucial for small businesses as real-time feedback can drive engagement. A potential customer may learn more about your product just through a few comments and reactions from other users. The platform will learn from user interactions, showing individuals more items aligned with their interests. This personalization could translate into higher conversion rates for small business owners, as their products will be paired with users who are genuinely interested. A significant enhancement comes from AI integration. Marketplace now offers suggested questions when buyers start a conversation with sellers. This feature facilitates smoother negotiations and can empower buyers to make informed decisions. For small business owners, anticipating these questions can help prepare them better for customer interactions and improve buyer satisfaction. Particularly noteworthy for automotive small businesses, there are advancements in vehicle listings. Users will see AI-curated insights offering crucial details like engine options, safety ratings, and reviews—all in one view. This feature aims to simplify the car-buying journey, but it also requires small automotive sellers to ensure their inventory is updated and accurately represented on the platform. For those focusing on fashion, Facebook has integrated inventory from eBay and Poshmark to expand the selection on Marketplace. This partnership marks a strategic move for small businesses offering unique or vintage items. With over 200 million fashion items already listed, being part of this growing marketplace can significantly elevate visibility. Partner listings will clearly incorporate an icon, ensuring customers know they are browsing expanded options, enhancing credibility and variety. Another essential update is the improved shipping experience. Sellers and buyers can expect a more transparent process with clearer shipping costs and automatic notifications about order status changes. For small business owners, this provides an opportunity to offer seamless transactions and potentially attract customers who may have hesitated in the past due to unclear costs. However, while these updates enhance the buying experience, small business owners should be prepared for potential challenges. With a more crowded marketplace due to expanded inventories and increased options, they may need to navigate more competition. Engaging effectively with customers—be it through collections or in conversation—will be crucial. As Facebook Marketplace continues to evolve, small business owners should consider how these features can be integrated into their sales strategies. From leveraging collections to optimizing listings for AI insights, these changes hold the potential to elevate local businesses into community favorites. For more details on these updates, you can view the original announcement here. As these features roll out into 2026, businesses can capitalize on the increasing trend toward social shopping and community engagement. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Facebook Marketplace Revamps Shopping Experience with AI and Social Features" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Facebook’s Marketplace is set to transform the online shopping experience for small businesses, offering enhanced features designed to cultivate community engagement and facilitate easier transactions. The recent updates focus on empowering users to interact with listings more effectively, making it a prime time for small business owners to reassess their digital sales strategies. Every day, approximately 25% of young adult users in the U.S. and Canada utilize Facebook Marketplace, showing its potential as a bustling platform for buying and selling. These updates aim to streamline that experience, particularly for items like home decor, clothing, and vehicles—categories that resonate strongly with younger demographics. One of the standout features introduced is the ability to create collections. This allows users to curate groups of Marketplace listings and invite friends to join in the conversation. Small business owners can leverage this feature to showcase their products in a more visually appealing way. By enabling customers to share their collections through platforms like Messenger and WhatsApp, businesses can create a sense of community around their offerings. “Start a new collection, choose whether to make it public or private, and share updates easily,” the announcement states, emphasizing the collaborative aspect. Additionally, Facebook now allows reactions and comments directly on listings, providing more transparency about product quality. This can be crucial for small businesses as real-time feedback can drive engagement. A potential customer may learn more about your product just through a few comments and reactions from other users. The platform will learn from user interactions, showing individuals more items aligned with their interests. This personalization could translate into higher conversion rates for small business owners, as their products will be paired with users who are genuinely interested. A significant enhancement comes from AI integration. Marketplace now offers suggested questions when buyers start a conversation with sellers. This feature facilitates smoother negotiations and can empower buyers to make informed decisions. For small business owners, anticipating these questions can help prepare them better for customer interactions and improve buyer satisfaction. Particularly noteworthy for automotive small businesses, there are advancements in vehicle listings. Users will see AI-curated insights offering crucial details like engine options, safety ratings, and reviews—all in one view. This feature aims to simplify the car-buying journey, but it also requires small automotive sellers to ensure their inventory is updated and accurately represented on the platform. For those focusing on fashion, Facebook has integrated inventory from eBay and Poshmark to expand the selection on Marketplace. This partnership marks a strategic move for small businesses offering unique or vintage items. With over 200 million fashion items already listed, being part of this growing marketplace can significantly elevate visibility. Partner listings will clearly incorporate an icon, ensuring customers know they are browsing expanded options, enhancing credibility and variety. Another essential update is the improved shipping experience. Sellers and buyers can expect a more transparent process with clearer shipping costs and automatic notifications about order status changes. For small business owners, this provides an opportunity to offer seamless transactions and potentially attract customers who may have hesitated in the past due to unclear costs. However, while these updates enhance the buying experience, small business owners should be prepared for potential challenges. With a more crowded marketplace due to expanded inventories and increased options, they may need to navigate more competition. Engaging effectively with customers—be it through collections or in conversation—will be crucial. As Facebook Marketplace continues to evolve, small business owners should consider how these features can be integrated into their sales strategies. From leveraging collections to optimizing listings for AI insights, these changes hold the potential to elevate local businesses into community favorites. For more details on these updates, you can view the original announcement here. As these features roll out into 2026, businesses can capitalize on the increasing trend toward social shopping and community engagement. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Facebook Marketplace Revamps Shopping Experience with AI and Social Features" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

US sanctions on Russia’s biggest oil companies have added to fears of shortages from refinery shutdownsView the full article

Consecutive weeks of mortgage rate increases resulted in a 5.2% decrease in mortgage loan application volume, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. View the full article

When I talk with small business owners about their tech stack, I hear the same frustrations over and over: too many apps, too many logins, and not enough time to make sense of all the data scattered across them. Instead of technology simplifying their day, it often feels like they’re spending half their week just stitching tools together, chasing down information, and trying to keep everything secure with limited IT support. At the same time, the pressure to “do more with less” keeps rising—especially as AI, remote work, and customer expectations all move faster than most small teams can reasonably keep up with. That’s why I wanted to sit down with someone who lives at the intersection of product strategy and real-world business needs. In this conversation, I talk with Ali Shabdar, Director of Strategic Growth at Zoho, about a major new update to Zoho One, the company’s all-in-one operating system for business. Over the course of our discussion, we dive into how Zoho is trying to move from a bundle of apps to a true unified platform, what that means for day-to-day workflows, and how features like Spaces, Unified Dashboards, Vani, native integrations, smarter security, and Zia AI aim to cut complexity instead of adding to it. If you run a small business or lead a lean team, the details matter: how your calendar connects to your projects, how you off-board a departing employee without leaving security gaps, and how you get a meaningful snapshot of customers or sales without becoming a data analyst. Ali and I explore those very practical pain points through the lens of Zoho One’s latest changes. In the transcript below, you’ll see how Zoho is positioning these updates—not just as “new features,” but as steps toward making technology more invisible, so you can spend more time serving customers and growing your business, and less time wrestling with software. Leland McFarland: All right, I am here with Ali from Zoho. We have some brand-new news coming out of Zoho, involving Zoho One, and we’re going to talk with Ali about all of this and see what he has to say about it. All right, Ali, great to have you on. Why don’t you start off by introducing yourself and telling what you do at Zoho? Ali Shabdar: Great to be here, Leland, and with your audience. My name is Ali Shabdar, I’m the Director of Strategic Growth at Zoho. Leland McFarland: All right, thank you. So from a small business perspective, what problems is Zoho trying to solve with this new major update to Zoho? Ali Shabdar: Great question, and let me go back a little bit. It’s been almost eight years, full eight years, since we launched Zoho One. We had a number of products that each served parts or entire parts of the funnel, a function, or an activity like sales, marketing, etc., etc.. And we decided at some point to bundle these up for a number of reasons. Number one was to reduce complexity. One of the main issues of any business of any size—could be a solopreneur to even an enterprise—is that we end up dealing with a lot of products, with a lot of software, to solve our day-to-day problems or our long-term problems. The promise of technology was to make our lives easier, but in the past quarter century, I can remember, that technology actually made things more complex in a lot of cases. Which means we have to throw more technology at the existing technology to make it less complex. So Zoho One’s promise was to remove that complexity by starting with bundling products together. And this bundle allows the user to have a singular view toward multiple functions that they might be dealing with. At the executive level, you’re looking at your entire business, almost live, and being able to connect the dots from your sales pipeline, to your cash flow, to your marketing activities, etc., etc., depending on what you’re doing. In the eight years, one of the key tenets of our progress with Zoho One was to remove that complexity even more. So, moving from a bundle of products, bundle of apps, to a unified platform. That unification where the products talk to each other better and better, they’re tightly integrated out of the box. So you don’t need to worry about connecting sales to the finance function; it just works. And then that means that your data gets tighter and tighter, clearer and clearer. Data hygiene and data governance also gets better. These are scary, scary labels, as SMBs might not worry about data governance, but what I mean is that you have all your data in the same place. We all know what single source of truth is. We want to open one cupboard, one wardrobe, and have everything there, and that’s what Zoho One is doing with your data: putting it all next to each other and giving it a context based on the lens you want to be looking at that entire system that is helping you to run your business. So it’s been an evolution, again, from bundle to a unified platform where everything is connected, and a small business goes back to what they need to do: working on their products and services, making their customers happy, rather than dealing with connecting technology together and having what we call the spaghetti solution—multiple vendors, multiple products, multiple invoices, so many support teams. You just deal with Zoho, and that’s about it. Leland McFarland: Great. So, I mean, yeah, that’s going to hopefully save small businesses a whole bunch of time, a whole bunch of money, and a lot of whole bunch of effort. So diving into some of the changes that you’ve done, one aspect was in user experience and productivity. How many small businesses struggle with many small businesses struggle with app overload. How does this new Spaces concept simplify daily workflows for a small team? Ali Shabdar: Great question. So, again, moving toward the same direction, it is all about context and simplification, as you said. Now, I’ll give you an example, a calendar. As any knowledge worker, regardless of who you are, you’re the business owner, you’re the CEO, or you’re one of the knowledge-working team, you’re doing sales, you’re answering emails, calendar is an inseparable part of our lives. Without a calendar, I can’t live an organized life at all. Now, if if I’m a user working for again, any company of any size, imagine I have my Zoho Calendar where my meetings are, where Zoho meeting links are going. Then there might be a calendar that comes from Zoho Projects if I’m working on certain projects with a number of other team members, internal or external. If I’m collaborating with my own close team, I might have some Kanban lists, which are again with deadlines and all, as another calendar on Zoho Connect. But all I care about is a calendar. I just want a view to my all my tasks, all my deadlines in one singular place. So Spaces allows you to basically bring all of those together and see everything from through one lens: the lens of the calendar. Now, another part of Spaces, which I personally appreciate and I could see on my day-to-day it added to my productivity, is the idea of having your personal space and your organizational space. Like the way I live in my house, we have the living room, we have the kitchen, where this is more of a place of gathering, the rest of the family and friends there, we converse, we do things, we cook together. And then there’s the bedroom for, it’s a personal space, or there’s my office. And then there’s the bathroom, more, of course, more personal. So, the division here into two major spaces or the context or areas, if you will, of personal and organizational, allows me to quickly switch between Click, Connect, Email, and my Vault where I keep my passwords, versus a Connect versus Projects or our expense management, which is more of an organizational thing. So, again, same products, different lenses, which allows my subconscious mind to work faster and connect the dots better. Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, moving on to Action Panels and Quick Navigation features. What practical gains might a small business owner see from these new features? Ali Shabdar: I think the the most visible improvement is the fact that they are more accessible, more visible, and organized in a more intuitive way. So, you can, of course, make modifications, but everything boils down into better access to what you already have in a more logical way. It’s more organized. Leland McFarland: Awesome. So, dashboards can be overwhelming for a non-technical user. How does the new Unified Dashboard help a small business owner get actionable insights without needing a data analyst? Ali Shabdar: I hope no small business owner needs a dedicated data analyst, but that could be good news for expansion and scaling. But again, I’ll go back to the point that I mentioned: it’s again about context. By having, by providing you, the user, with a clear context that is divided into concepts and ideas that that our brain is more familiar with—tasks and deadlines, calendar, data that is coming from different places—the context helps beyond just I won’t I don’t want to say beyond our imagination, but it’s surprising how putting things in different contexts helps you just see the data faster and make decisions quicker. So, clarity is a result of that contextual look into the same data, and by clarity means that your your errors are are are less, you’ll make less mistakes, and and you will be able to make better decisions. Of course, we can get carried away and still make those dashboards really complicated, but those are best practices that I would say we should start simple, small, seeing our messages, again, the tasks, and and the data that is coming from, uh, if if you’re using CRM, if you’re using finance information, to put them in one dashboard where the data is is kind of gelled into each other. Leland McFarland: Perfect. So, Vani is a new tool. It was just announced last month, and we we actually got to sit down with Arthi to to be able to do an interview with that, and it seems like a really great tool. And it’s been announced that it’s been incorporated into Zoho One. So, for small businesses with a distributed or hybrid team, what does Vani enable that they didn’t have before? What does it bring to the table for a small business? Ali Shabdar: I’m very glad that we added Vani to Zoho One. It’s one of my favorite apps, I used it since pre-beta when it was still not quite stable. But now it has grown into a full-on product. I’ll I’ll tell you about our idea and why we added it, and also I’ll share you my own experience as a user, not a user that works for a large company, this the scenario also applies for smaller setups. We did not have any tool in our Zoho One platform that allowed teams and even individuals to create content that was about ideate on content and collaborate. We use Writer, drafting things, you know, collaborating live, probably use some we got on Meetings and and all. But Vani allows you to create ideas, put them on digital paper. If you’re doing a brainstorming session with your with your team or with yourself, putting a diagram, a mind map. If you’re working on a draft of your next invitation to your next event or or a flyer, you don’t need fancy graphic design software, especially if you’re not a designer or you do not have designers because you have a small business. You can ideate on Vani, have as many collaborators as you want, and and then do whatever you want with with the output. We did not have such thing in Zoho One, so I I think we the addition makes Zoho One more complete in terms of helping teams work better with each other. And some of the practical examples: we have our internal magazine, Zoho Business Pulse, and I saw the team actually putting the draft design on Vani and sharing it with respective team members. We could have done this in some other expensive software, which we have access to, but out of the box, because everybody is on Zoho One, and this could be a company of 10,000, 20,000, or a company of five, because everybody has access to the same platform, you just share the document. You you open a space on Vani, you ideate, you put your magazine ideas, and then me, as one of the members, I can go in and share a comment about, can we move this a bit to the right, without even touching the the content, actually, leave a comment and get out. And whoever is in charge of that content, they can take my feedback, use it or not, it’s their decision, of course. So, long story short, probably we added the best collaborative ideation tool that we have till date to Zoho One. Now, somebody might use Canva, somebody might use Miro, Visio, all of those are available, they have their own capabilities, some of them are cool, really cool packages. But you’re getting this product as a part of Zoho One. All you need to do is use it. You already are familiar with with the interface, you’re not paying anything extra, and it integrates with everything else as well. Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, so let’s move on to Native Integrations and Security. Small businesses often mix many tools together, leading to disjointed workflows. How does Zoho One’s new approach to native integration help reduce that fragmentation? Ali Shabdar: This is an excellent point and and often overlooked point, because security, first of all, is not in the back of our mind. Secondly, we usually are not skilled enough, so we can just forget about it until something bad happens. We want to solve that challenge as much as possible for the user, for the customer, without getting them involved in the technicalities. So bringing native integrations to Zoho One is in line with that with that strategy. I’m sure you’ve seen the demo in previous sessions of how Zoho Directory actually took everything to the next level. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. We are using it in the background as users. However, I saw all these features where you can integrate, of course, Zoho to Zoho products, no problem. Zoho to third-party product, still not a problem. But there’s a much tighter grip on the security and how things work. And then third-party to third-party integrations. So, you can bring both of your third-party products within Zoho Directory, which is the underlying layer of of Zoho One, and the entire platform, and then make sure that you’re on top of that integration and nothing bad happens there. Of course, there’s a bit of Zoho admin knowledge needed, but you don’t need to be an IT person, you don’t need to be a data scientist for that matter. It’s really intuitive, just a quick look will logically explain everything to you and and you’ll be able to do those things. I think Directory has grown leaps and bounds compared to how it was for the users even a week ago. The team has been working really hard on on adding those features, one of them is is what you mentioned, and that’s integration and security. Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, so the the press release that you guys put out mentioned Unified Portals. How is this different from traditional integration or dashboards, and what pain points does it solve for small teams? Ali Shabdar: I think again, it’s about context. Until now, portals were there again, it looked to me as a user as a bundle of apps present together in an environment. Now, I can easily find myself forgetting about those barriers between certain apps and just look at them as concepts. I want to do X, I want to check my day, I want to work on my projects, I want to work on my finance. So, we move from product-focused workflows into context-focused workflows. And and the portals and the interface is trying to communicate that and drive that behavior for the users. Now, mind you, this is the best version we can come up with so far, but I’m sure that our users, starting today, we’ve officially launched it, are going to come back to us with a lot of comments and and and tell us how it can be improved. We can’t wait to hear from our users and our partners how we can take this to the next level. Leland McFarland: All right, perfect. All right, and final question in the native integration and security. So we have Smart Off-boarding, which sounds particularly useful to SMBs that lack a robust IT department. How would this feature protect small businesses during employee transitions? Ali Shabdar: Not a favorite feature of mine. I remember probably five or six years ago, talking with a customer who had multiple different products. They were using a couple of Zoho products, but most of their stack was outside Zoho, and they did not use Zoho One. And they realized, one of their marketers, who departed, left the organization almost a year before. Of course, they removed their access from their email, the first, you know, obvious thing is, okay, remove the access to email and CRM. But they still had access to the entire marketing stack, including the Facebook accounts and other things. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, but you know, you don’t want to wake up one day and see that some somebody had access to your speakerphone, which is your marketing channel, or to your financial information. Now, Zoho One again tries to reduce that risk by allowing you to just disable one user account, and boom, boom, boom, their access is gone from all the products. This was existing. But now, if if you open the Zoho One, well, in the back end, in the admin space, you can see off-boarding. You start the off-boarding process, it takes you through a checklist of, of course, removing app access, software access, changing the reporting structure. Imagine if the person was a manager, and a couple of other people were reporting to the person. You can choose the new reporting structure, a bunch of other settings, and I need to remember how many, probably more than 10 different items in that checklist, where you slowly remove everything, terminating their accesses and all of that. And of course, all the legal considerations also happen in that space. So you make sure that the person is off-boarded in the best way possible, hopefully in good terms, so you can have a good conversation, log all the experience as well, and making sure that there is not a single gap left when the person is moved down from your organization. The admin space is is really great, really intuitive. Leland McFarland: All right, that sounds very useful and really good when it comes to security, especially when you know, if if an employee doesn’t leave on good terms, you want to make sure that they can’t cause any damage on their way out. Ali Shabdar: Absolutely. Leland McFarland: All right, moving on to Zia and your AI. Small teams typically work across multiple apps, email, CRM, documents. How does Zia help unify this data so they spend less time searching and more time acting? Ali Shabdar: Right out of the box, because you’re using Zoho One, which means all the apps, all the products are integrated. When you open, ask Zia textbox, and you ask any question, it’ll pull data from across your your entire stack. So if you’re checking, “tell me more about Ali”. The data is pulled from CRM if I’m your contact, if we had some ongoing deals in the past year or so, if there are notes about what kind of prospect I was. If I’m a customer, it pulls data from Desk where it can show you some of the recent tickets. If if I’m an employee or a contractor, it can pull data from HR, from Projects. So you get an almost immediate full picture about the question you have to the system. Of course, you can pull data the pull information that that rely on data about sales seasonalities and sales data and analytics and all of that. But to me, if I want to, let’s say, I’m about to get on a call with you, and I don’t remember much because the last time we spoke was three months or six months ago, or I’m somebody handed over your your your account to me, I’m just going to ask, “tell me more about Leland”. And it’s it’s going to give me whatever information we have about you. And the good thing is, not only it’s pretty accurate today, but also it’s learning more and more and more. So it’s not just one snapshot in in the history. So if I ask the same question two weeks from now, and if there’s a development in our relationship, from the point of data, then the information will be different. So, and and I think in the past couple of years, most of us have learned to talk to AI more or less. It is in English, but sometimes you have to be more specific to come up with the prompt. I I see Zia to be quite forgiving when it comes to writing a prompt. It understands you fairly easily. You don’t have to really get very regimented in formulating your sentence. Again, productivity. Leland McFarland: Nice. And that really does sound nice, not having to open up 50 different apps to get 50 different pieces of information and then bring them together manually or anything like that. Just having Zia pull it out automatically just sounds like a dream. Ali Shabdar: Absolutely. Leland McFarland: All right, so wrapping it up. With these updates, where do you see Zoho One heading in the next few years, especially in supporting small businesses growth? Ali Shabdar: Our focus is small businesses, multi-medium businesses, especially when it comes to, you know, development of Zoho One features. And we want to we want to make sure Zoho One gets out of the way of the customers, the users as much as possible. The best technology is invisible technology. So, if you can open the environment, if it’s a Spaces in five years, or it’s something else, or if it’s constantly, you know, on call to listen to you, to to be able to not only answer your questions, give your data in the best way possible, visually clear and all of that, but also become more and more proactive and, you know, kind of tap on your shoulder and remind you of things. The things you know that you don’t know, and the things that you didn’t know that you did not know. So I think again, simplification, more context. In the age of AI, the focus on human-computer interface is even more because the the lines are blurring. We are entering an age where we are literally talking to our computers, to our machines, and where where our workspace is becoming hybrid. By hybrid, I’m not talking about remote work. I’m talking about having digital colleagues, digital employees, where probably my my copywriter, my social media marketer, or a bunch of other people are actually agents. So we are moving towards that space with Zia Agents, with Ask Zia, with Zia as a whole empowering the entire platform. Today, if I want to use the overused iceberg cliché, you see the tip of Zoho, is Zia. A lot of it is is hidden with with the things it does in the background. It’s been doing for a long time before LLM advent. And we want to keep it that way. We want Zia to be there when you need it, but do a good bunch of things in the background and help you more and more to focus on what matters: doing your business and and scaling. Leland McFarland: Sounds perfect. I can’t wait to see what comes next. I I’ve got to dive into what you’ve got put out now a little bit more for myself, but it’s it’s very interesting to see where Zoho is going with Zoho One. And you’re just adding more and more to it, making it such a good value, especially at what was it, $37 per person, I think it is? Ali Shabdar: It is. Leland McFarland: Yeah, I got that right. It’s it’s insane. That’s less than like a dollar an app. But perfect. Thank you for coming on. That’s all I got for you. And and yeah, thank you for for sharing. Ali Shabdar: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Stepping back from this conversation with Ali, what stands out to me most is how much of Zoho One’s roadmap revolves around a simple, almost old-fashioned idea: get out of the user’s way. Small business owners don’t wake up excited about integrations, dashboards, or AI prompts. They care about finishing projects on time, serving customers well, protecting their data, and keeping costs predictable. The updates we discussed—Spaces for contextual work, more intuitive action panels and navigation, unified dashboards, Vani for collaborative ideation, stronger native integrations, and Smart Off-boarding—are all attempts to turn those goals into something the software quietly supports in the background. From my perspective, a few themes matter for small businesses. First, context is becoming just as important as features. Whether it’s viewing all your deadlines through a single calendar, or seeing customer information pulled together in one Zia query, the value lies in how quickly you can understand what’s going on and act on it. Second, security and governance can’t be “someday” topics anymore. Tools like Zoho Directory and Smart Off-boarding may not feel glamorous, but they directly address real risks around user access and fragmented stacks—problems that hit small teams hardest when something goes wrong. Finally, the way Zoho talks about Zia and “digital colleagues” hints at where small business software is heading: toward AI that doesn’t just answer questions, but anticipates needs, nudges you with timely insights, and handles more of the repetitive mental load. We’re still early in that journey, and there will be a learning curve for every team. But if Zoho One continues down the path Ali describes—more unification, more simplicity, more invisible intelligence—then the real opportunity for small businesses is not just saving a few hours a week. It’s being able to run a modern, data-driven operation without needing an enterprise-level IT department or a budget to match. As I continue to dig into these updates hands-on, that’s the lens I’ll use: does this help small business owners focus more on their business—and less on the spaghetti of software behind it? This article, "Interview with Ali Shabdar: Zoho One’s Big Update for Small Business" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When I talk with small business owners about their tech stack, I hear the same frustrations over and over: too many apps, too many logins, and not enough time to make sense of all the data scattered across them. Instead of technology simplifying their day, it often feels like they’re spending half their week just stitching tools together, chasing down information, and trying to keep everything secure with limited IT support. At the same time, the pressure to “do more with less” keeps rising—especially as AI, remote work, and customer expectations all move faster than most small teams can reasonably keep up with. That’s why I wanted to sit down with someone who lives at the intersection of product strategy and real-world business needs. In this conversation, I talk with Ali Shabdar, Director of Strategic Growth at Zoho, about a major new update to Zoho One, the company’s all-in-one operating system for business. Over the course of our discussion, we dive into how Zoho is trying to move from a bundle of apps to a true unified platform, what that means for day-to-day workflows, and how features like Spaces, Unified Dashboards, Vani, native integrations, smarter security, and Zia AI aim to cut complexity instead of adding to it. If you run a small business or lead a lean team, the details matter: how your calendar connects to your projects, how you off-board a departing employee without leaving security gaps, and how you get a meaningful snapshot of customers or sales without becoming a data analyst. Ali and I explore those very practical pain points through the lens of Zoho One’s latest changes. In the transcript below, you’ll see how Zoho is positioning these updates—not just as “new features,” but as steps toward making technology more invisible, so you can spend more time serving customers and growing your business, and less time wrestling with software. Leland McFarland: All right, I am here with Ali from Zoho. We have some brand-new news coming out of Zoho, involving Zoho One, and we’re going to talk with Ali about all of this and see what he has to say about it. All right, Ali, great to have you on. Why don’t you start off by introducing yourself and telling what you do at Zoho? Ali Shabdar: Great to be here, Leland, and with your audience. My name is Ali Shabdar, I’m the Director of Strategic Growth at Zoho. Leland McFarland: All right, thank you. So from a small business perspective, what problems is Zoho trying to solve with this new major update to Zoho? Ali Shabdar: Great question, and let me go back a little bit. It’s been almost eight years, full eight years, since we launched Zoho One. We had a number of products that each served parts or entire parts of the funnel, a function, or an activity like sales, marketing, etc., etc.. And we decided at some point to bundle these up for a number of reasons. Number one was to reduce complexity. One of the main issues of any business of any size—could be a solopreneur to even an enterprise—is that we end up dealing with a lot of products, with a lot of software, to solve our day-to-day problems or our long-term problems. The promise of technology was to make our lives easier, but in the past quarter century, I can remember, that technology actually made things more complex in a lot of cases. Which means we have to throw more technology at the existing technology to make it less complex. So Zoho One’s promise was to remove that complexity by starting with bundling products together. And this bundle allows the user to have a singular view toward multiple functions that they might be dealing with. At the executive level, you’re looking at your entire business, almost live, and being able to connect the dots from your sales pipeline, to your cash flow, to your marketing activities, etc., etc., depending on what you’re doing. In the eight years, one of the key tenets of our progress with Zoho One was to remove that complexity even more. So, moving from a bundle of products, bundle of apps, to a unified platform. That unification where the products talk to each other better and better, they’re tightly integrated out of the box. So you don’t need to worry about connecting sales to the finance function; it just works. And then that means that your data gets tighter and tighter, clearer and clearer. Data hygiene and data governance also gets better. These are scary, scary labels, as SMBs might not worry about data governance, but what I mean is that you have all your data in the same place. We all know what single source of truth is. We want to open one cupboard, one wardrobe, and have everything there, and that’s what Zoho One is doing with your data: putting it all next to each other and giving it a context based on the lens you want to be looking at that entire system that is helping you to run your business. So it’s been an evolution, again, from bundle to a unified platform where everything is connected, and a small business goes back to what they need to do: working on their products and services, making their customers happy, rather than dealing with connecting technology together and having what we call the spaghetti solution—multiple vendors, multiple products, multiple invoices, so many support teams. You just deal with Zoho, and that’s about it. Leland McFarland: Great. So, I mean, yeah, that’s going to hopefully save small businesses a whole bunch of time, a whole bunch of money, and a lot of whole bunch of effort. So diving into some of the changes that you’ve done, one aspect was in user experience and productivity. How many small businesses struggle with many small businesses struggle with app overload. How does this new Spaces concept simplify daily workflows for a small team? Ali Shabdar: Great question. So, again, moving toward the same direction, it is all about context and simplification, as you said. Now, I’ll give you an example, a calendar. As any knowledge worker, regardless of who you are, you’re the business owner, you’re the CEO, or you’re one of the knowledge-working team, you’re doing sales, you’re answering emails, calendar is an inseparable part of our lives. Without a calendar, I can’t live an organized life at all. Now, if if I’m a user working for again, any company of any size, imagine I have my Zoho Calendar where my meetings are, where Zoho meeting links are going. Then there might be a calendar that comes from Zoho Projects if I’m working on certain projects with a number of other team members, internal or external. If I’m collaborating with my own close team, I might have some Kanban lists, which are again with deadlines and all, as another calendar on Zoho Connect. But all I care about is a calendar. I just want a view to my all my tasks, all my deadlines in one singular place. So Spaces allows you to basically bring all of those together and see everything from through one lens: the lens of the calendar. Now, another part of Spaces, which I personally appreciate and I could see on my day-to-day it added to my productivity, is the idea of having your personal space and your organizational space. Like the way I live in my house, we have the living room, we have the kitchen, where this is more of a place of gathering, the rest of the family and friends there, we converse, we do things, we cook together. And then there’s the bedroom for, it’s a personal space, or there’s my office. And then there’s the bathroom, more, of course, more personal. So, the division here into two major spaces or the context or areas, if you will, of personal and organizational, allows me to quickly switch between Click, Connect, Email, and my Vault where I keep my passwords, versus a Connect versus Projects or our expense management, which is more of an organizational thing. So, again, same products, different lenses, which allows my subconscious mind to work faster and connect the dots better. Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, moving on to Action Panels and Quick Navigation features. What practical gains might a small business owner see from these new features? Ali Shabdar: I think the the most visible improvement is the fact that they are more accessible, more visible, and organized in a more intuitive way. So, you can, of course, make modifications, but everything boils down into better access to what you already have in a more logical way. It’s more organized. Leland McFarland: Awesome. So, dashboards can be overwhelming for a non-technical user. How does the new Unified Dashboard help a small business owner get actionable insights without needing a data analyst? Ali Shabdar: I hope no small business owner needs a dedicated data analyst, but that could be good news for expansion and scaling. But again, I’ll go back to the point that I mentioned: it’s again about context. By having, by providing you, the user, with a clear context that is divided into concepts and ideas that that our brain is more familiar with—tasks and deadlines, calendar, data that is coming from different places—the context helps beyond just I won’t I don’t want to say beyond our imagination, but it’s surprising how putting things in different contexts helps you just see the data faster and make decisions quicker. So, clarity is a result of that contextual look into the same data, and by clarity means that your your errors are are are less, you’ll make less mistakes, and and you will be able to make better decisions. Of course, we can get carried away and still make those dashboards really complicated, but those are best practices that I would say we should start simple, small, seeing our messages, again, the tasks, and and the data that is coming from, uh, if if you’re using CRM, if you’re using finance information, to put them in one dashboard where the data is is kind of gelled into each other. Leland McFarland: Perfect. So, Vani is a new tool. It was just announced last month, and we we actually got to sit down with Arthi to to be able to do an interview with that, and it seems like a really great tool. And it’s been announced that it’s been incorporated into Zoho One. So, for small businesses with a distributed or hybrid team, what does Vani enable that they didn’t have before? What does it bring to the table for a small business? Ali Shabdar: I’m very glad that we added Vani to Zoho One. It’s one of my favorite apps, I used it since pre-beta when it was still not quite stable. But now it has grown into a full-on product. I’ll I’ll tell you about our idea and why we added it, and also I’ll share you my own experience as a user, not a user that works for a large company, this the scenario also applies for smaller setups. We did not have any tool in our Zoho One platform that allowed teams and even individuals to create content that was about ideate on content and collaborate. We use Writer, drafting things, you know, collaborating live, probably use some we got on Meetings and and all. But Vani allows you to create ideas, put them on digital paper. If you’re doing a brainstorming session with your with your team or with yourself, putting a diagram, a mind map. If you’re working on a draft of your next invitation to your next event or or a flyer, you don’t need fancy graphic design software, especially if you’re not a designer or you do not have designers because you have a small business. You can ideate on Vani, have as many collaborators as you want, and and then do whatever you want with with the output. We did not have such thing in Zoho One, so I I think we the addition makes Zoho One more complete in terms of helping teams work better with each other. And some of the practical examples: we have our internal magazine, Zoho Business Pulse, and I saw the team actually putting the draft design on Vani and sharing it with respective team members. We could have done this in some other expensive software, which we have access to, but out of the box, because everybody is on Zoho One, and this could be a company of 10,000, 20,000, or a company of five, because everybody has access to the same platform, you just share the document. You you open a space on Vani, you ideate, you put your magazine ideas, and then me, as one of the members, I can go in and share a comment about, can we move this a bit to the right, without even touching the the content, actually, leave a comment and get out. And whoever is in charge of that content, they can take my feedback, use it or not, it’s their decision, of course. So, long story short, probably we added the best collaborative ideation tool that we have till date to Zoho One. Now, somebody might use Canva, somebody might use Miro, Visio, all of those are available, they have their own capabilities, some of them are cool, really cool packages. But you’re getting this product as a part of Zoho One. All you need to do is use it. You already are familiar with with the interface, you’re not paying anything extra, and it integrates with everything else as well. Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, so let’s move on to Native Integrations and Security. Small businesses often mix many tools together, leading to disjointed workflows. How does Zoho One’s new approach to native integration help reduce that fragmentation? Ali Shabdar: This is an excellent point and and often overlooked point, because security, first of all, is not in the back of our mind. Secondly, we usually are not skilled enough, so we can just forget about it until something bad happens. We want to solve that challenge as much as possible for the user, for the customer, without getting them involved in the technicalities. So bringing native integrations to Zoho One is in line with that with that strategy. I’m sure you’ve seen the demo in previous sessions of how Zoho Directory actually took everything to the next level. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. We are using it in the background as users. However, I saw all these features where you can integrate, of course, Zoho to Zoho products, no problem. Zoho to third-party product, still not a problem. But there’s a much tighter grip on the security and how things work. And then third-party to third-party integrations. So, you can bring both of your third-party products within Zoho Directory, which is the underlying layer of of Zoho One, and the entire platform, and then make sure that you’re on top of that integration and nothing bad happens there. Of course, there’s a bit of Zoho admin knowledge needed, but you don’t need to be an IT person, you don’t need to be a data scientist for that matter. It’s really intuitive, just a quick look will logically explain everything to you and and you’ll be able to do those things. I think Directory has grown leaps and bounds compared to how it was for the users even a week ago. The team has been working really hard on on adding those features, one of them is is what you mentioned, and that’s integration and security. Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, so the the press release that you guys put out mentioned Unified Portals. How is this different from traditional integration or dashboards, and what pain points does it solve for small teams? Ali Shabdar: I think again, it’s about context. Until now, portals were there again, it looked to me as a user as a bundle of apps present together in an environment. Now, I can easily find myself forgetting about those barriers between certain apps and just look at them as concepts. I want to do X, I want to check my day, I want to work on my projects, I want to work on my finance. So, we move from product-focused workflows into context-focused workflows. And and the portals and the interface is trying to communicate that and drive that behavior for the users. Now, mind you, this is the best version we can come up with so far, but I’m sure that our users, starting today, we’ve officially launched it, are going to come back to us with a lot of comments and and and tell us how it can be improved. We can’t wait to hear from our users and our partners how we can take this to the next level. Leland McFarland: All right, perfect. All right, and final question in the native integration and security. So we have Smart Off-boarding, which sounds particularly useful to SMBs that lack a robust IT department. How would this feature protect small businesses during employee transitions? Ali Shabdar: Not a favorite feature of mine. I remember probably five or six years ago, talking with a customer who had multiple different products. They were using a couple of Zoho products, but most of their stack was outside Zoho, and they did not use Zoho One. And they realized, one of their marketers, who departed, left the organization almost a year before. Of course, they removed their access from their email, the first, you know, obvious thing is, okay, remove the access to email and CRM. But they still had access to the entire marketing stack, including the Facebook accounts and other things. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, but you know, you don’t want to wake up one day and see that some somebody had access to your speakerphone, which is your marketing channel, or to your financial information. Now, Zoho One again tries to reduce that risk by allowing you to just disable one user account, and boom, boom, boom, their access is gone from all the products. This was existing. But now, if if you open the Zoho One, well, in the back end, in the admin space, you can see off-boarding. You start the off-boarding process, it takes you through a checklist of, of course, removing app access, software access, changing the reporting structure. Imagine if the person was a manager, and a couple of other people were reporting to the person. You can choose the new reporting structure, a bunch of other settings, and I need to remember how many, probably more than 10 different items in that checklist, where you slowly remove everything, terminating their accesses and all of that. And of course, all the legal considerations also happen in that space. So you make sure that the person is off-boarded in the best way possible, hopefully in good terms, so you can have a good conversation, log all the experience as well, and making sure that there is not a single gap left when the person is moved down from your organization. The admin space is is really great, really intuitive. Leland McFarland: All right, that sounds very useful and really good when it comes to security, especially when you know, if if an employee doesn’t leave on good terms, you want to make sure that they can’t cause any damage on their way out. Ali Shabdar: Absolutely. Leland McFarland: All right, moving on to Zia and your AI. Small teams typically work across multiple apps, email, CRM, documents. How does Zia help unify this data so they spend less time searching and more time acting? Ali Shabdar: Right out of the box, because you’re using Zoho One, which means all the apps, all the products are integrated. When you open, ask Zia textbox, and you ask any question, it’ll pull data from across your your entire stack. So if you’re checking, “tell me more about Ali”. The data is pulled from CRM if I’m your contact, if we had some ongoing deals in the past year or so, if there are notes about what kind of prospect I was. If I’m a customer, it pulls data from Desk where it can show you some of the recent tickets. If if I’m an employee or a contractor, it can pull data from HR, from Projects. So you get an almost immediate full picture about the question you have to the system. Of course, you can pull data the pull information that that rely on data about sales seasonalities and sales data and analytics and all of that. But to me, if I want to, let’s say, I’m about to get on a call with you, and I don’t remember much because the last time we spoke was three months or six months ago, or I’m somebody handed over your your your account to me, I’m just going to ask, “tell me more about Leland”. And it’s it’s going to give me whatever information we have about you. And the good thing is, not only it’s pretty accurate today, but also it’s learning more and more and more. So it’s not just one snapshot in in the history. So if I ask the same question two weeks from now, and if there’s a development in our relationship, from the point of data, then the information will be different. So, and and I think in the past couple of years, most of us have learned to talk to AI more or less. It is in English, but sometimes you have to be more specific to come up with the prompt. I I see Zia to be quite forgiving when it comes to writing a prompt. It understands you fairly easily. You don’t have to really get very regimented in formulating your sentence. Again, productivity. Leland McFarland: Nice. And that really does sound nice, not having to open up 50 different apps to get 50 different pieces of information and then bring them together manually or anything like that. Just having Zia pull it out automatically just sounds like a dream. Ali Shabdar: Absolutely. Leland McFarland: All right, so wrapping it up. With these updates, where do you see Zoho One heading in the next few years, especially in supporting small businesses growth? Ali Shabdar: Our focus is small businesses, multi-medium businesses, especially when it comes to, you know, development of Zoho One features. And we want to we want to make sure Zoho One gets out of the way of the customers, the users as much as possible. The best technology is invisible technology. So, if you can open the environment, if it’s a Spaces in five years, or it’s something else, or if it’s constantly, you know, on call to listen to you, to to be able to not only answer your questions, give your data in the best way possible, visually clear and all of that, but also become more and more proactive and, you know, kind of tap on your shoulder and remind you of things. The things you know that you don’t know, and the things that you didn’t know that you did not know. So I think again, simplification, more context. In the age of AI, the focus on human-computer interface is even more because the the lines are blurring. We are entering an age where we are literally talking to our computers, to our machines, and where where our workspace is becoming hybrid. By hybrid, I’m not talking about remote work. I’m talking about having digital colleagues, digital employees, where probably my my copywriter, my social media marketer, or a bunch of other people are actually agents. So we are moving towards that space with Zia Agents, with Ask Zia, with Zia as a whole empowering the entire platform. Today, if I want to use the overused iceberg cliché, you see the tip of Zoho, is Zia. A lot of it is is hidden with with the things it does in the background. It’s been doing for a long time before LLM advent. And we want to keep it that way. We want Zia to be there when you need it, but do a good bunch of things in the background and help you more and more to focus on what matters: doing your business and and scaling. Leland McFarland: Sounds perfect. I can’t wait to see what comes next. I I’ve got to dive into what you’ve got put out now a little bit more for myself, but it’s it’s very interesting to see where Zoho is going with Zoho One. And you’re just adding more and more to it, making it such a good value, especially at what was it, $37 per person, I think it is? Ali Shabdar: It is. Leland McFarland: Yeah, I got that right. It’s it’s insane. That’s less than like a dollar an app. But perfect. Thank you for coming on. That’s all I got for you. And and yeah, thank you for for sharing. Ali Shabdar: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure. Stepping back from this conversation with Ali, what stands out to me most is how much of Zoho One’s roadmap revolves around a simple, almost old-fashioned idea: get out of the user’s way. Small business owners don’t wake up excited about integrations, dashboards, or AI prompts. They care about finishing projects on time, serving customers well, protecting their data, and keeping costs predictable. The updates we discussed—Spaces for contextual work, more intuitive action panels and navigation, unified dashboards, Vani for collaborative ideation, stronger native integrations, and Smart Off-boarding—are all attempts to turn those goals into something the software quietly supports in the background. From my perspective, a few themes matter for small businesses. First, context is becoming just as important as features. Whether it’s viewing all your deadlines through a single calendar, or seeing customer information pulled together in one Zia query, the value lies in how quickly you can understand what’s going on and act on it. Second, security and governance can’t be “someday” topics anymore. Tools like Zoho Directory and Smart Off-boarding may not feel glamorous, but they directly address real risks around user access and fragmented stacks—problems that hit small teams hardest when something goes wrong. Finally, the way Zoho talks about Zia and “digital colleagues” hints at where small business software is heading: toward AI that doesn’t just answer questions, but anticipates needs, nudges you with timely insights, and handles more of the repetitive mental load. We’re still early in that journey, and there will be a learning curve for every team. But if Zoho One continues down the path Ali describes—more unification, more simplicity, more invisible intelligence—then the real opportunity for small businesses is not just saving a few hours a week. It’s being able to run a modern, data-driven operation without needing an enterprise-level IT department or a budget to match. As I continue to dig into these updates hands-on, that’s the lens I’ll use: does this help small business owners focus more on their business—and less on the spaghetti of software behind it? This article, "Interview with Ali Shabdar: Zoho One’s Big Update for Small Business" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

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Adobe will acquire software platform Semrush for $1.9 billion, the companies said on Wednesday, as the Photoshop maker looks to strengthen its marketing tools and attract brands with generative artificial intelligence products. The company will pay $12 per share for Semrush, representing a premium of around 77.5% to its stock’s last closing price. Semrush shares jumped 75% to $11.83 in premarket trading. Semrush designs and develops AI software that helps companies with search engine optimization, social media, and digital advertising. The acquisition, expected to close in the first half of next year, would allow Adobe to help marketers better understand how their brands are viewed by online consumers through searches on websites and generative AI bots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. The Wall Street Journal first reported the deal earlier in the day. Adobe’s tools, which also include InDesign, Acrobat, and Illustrator, have become household names in design software, widely used by enterprises, students, and creative professionals to edit, create websites, brochures, and graphics. The company also provides “Adobe Experience Cloud” to help companies with data and analytics. But investor pressure to ramp up monetization of AI products and features amid intensifying competition in the digital design industry has weighed on its shares, which have fallen more than 27% so far this year. Adobe had said in October its video and image editing tools could be controlled by chatting with them. The company also said it was working with OpenAI to let users directly control one of its apps through ChatGPT. —Zaheer Kachwala, Reuters View the full article

When Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier calmly sat down and told a group of assembled local media the WNBA is helmed by “the worst leadership in the world” on September 30, she likely did so with a full understanding of the potential impact of her words. Collier—who launched Unrivaled, the women’s professional three-on-three basketball league alongside the New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart in 2023—is the granddaughter of Gershon Collier, who served as Sierra Leone’s representative in the United Nations in the 1960s. She understands the impact of the right words. And the words she chose forced the in-house negotiations between the WNBA and the players’ union, the Women’s National Basketball Player’s Association (WNBPA), fully into the public eye. “I think it’s time that people know what’s happening—the way that the league is not valuing us the way that we need to be valued,” Collier said. WNBA players opted out of their current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) last year, and since then the clock has been ticking: after missing the October deadline, the WNBA offered players a 30-day extension, they agreed; the new deadline is November 30. “[The players] are at the center of everything we do,” Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said speaking to reporters on October 3. “If the players in the W don’t feel appreciated and valued by the league, then we have to do better, and I have to do better.” The WNBPA’s current fight is one that hails from a long lineage of women-led labor strikes and disputes. UC Santa Barbara’s Dr. Eileen Boris, who specializes in labor studies as well as gender, race, class, and women’s history in the university’s Feminist Studies department, told Fast Company that there is a “big history of women organizing” in the United States. “Women have never been passive in the workplace,” she says. We’re seeing that play out yet again—and in the case of the WNBA, on one of the biggest public stages possible. Echoes of the past The heart of the dispute is money: the WNBA has never been more popular, and more money than ever has been pouring into the league. At the same time, the players are not adequately compensated—a reality that is all the more confusing when one considers that the athletes in the WNBA are both the product and, effectively, the marketing team. Throughout the regular season, fans turn to social media more often than not to catch up on game scores, tunnel fits, and what teams are up to, and they form parasocial relationships with the stars of the game. It should be noted that the WNBA’s astronomical growth—staggering increases in viewership and game attendance, league expansion that has included adding a total of six new teams by 2030, improved resources for players such as chartered flights, and an influx of funds from media rights deals and partnerships—have all happened under Engelbert’s watch. She emphasized to the reporters that the “heart” of the league lies with “building a movement that not only showcases the best athletes in the world, but also inspires millions who dream of following in their footsteps.” At the top of the players’ list of demands is a more equitable share of overall revenue that’s coming into the league. The players have proposed a new system: one that allows that share to grow as the league’s revenue grows. That would benefit not only the athletes currently in the league, but for the athletes who will join in years to come. But in response, the league has suggested a system not too dissimilar from what is already in place, offering salary increases that include a cap that increases by a fixed rate over time. To complicate matters further, the WNBA and NBA have not yet shared the books that explain just how much revenue there is. This is hardly the first time the 29-year-old league’s athletes have entered into a legal dispute with the league’s leadership. In fact, the first-ever CBA nearly tore the league apart—but ultimately set the standard for women’s professional sports leagues in the United States (and even in the world). And yet, today, players remain embroiled in an extremely public, high-stakes fight; workers (in this case, players) are pushing back on a leadership they believe to be toxic. This reality is underscored by a host of women-led labor movements: From the striking female workers at textile factories in the 1800s in Lowell, Massachusetts, to the garment workers of New York City, to the 1881 Atlanta Washerwomen strike, which achieved racial solidarity as part of its movement. Historically, Boris says, “women who were considered the consumers of the goods supported the [striking] workers” in past U.S. disputes — a pattern that is also playing out as the WNBPA continues to receive broad support from female fans. Those past movements are not dissimilar to what the players of the WNBA face now, and one key to success will be garnering and retaining mass public support for the fight. ‘Contentious’ negotiations “The players are demanding what they feel is fair,” author and cohost of The Women’s Hoop Show podcast Jordan Robinson explained to Fast Company. “And I believe that the players feel like they maybe settled [for less than they deserved] in their last CBA negotiation with the hope of the league growing down the line.” Now? “That growth happened way faster and way sooner than a lot of the players probably were thinking.” That growth is owed in large part to Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark, as well as Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese and Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers, and “these new rookies coming in bringing a lot of fans from college, and a lot of eyes, attention, and dollars,” Robinson says. Under the current agreement, a rookie drafted in the top four spots in 2025 makes $78,831 this year. But Clark, who is responsible for 26.5% of WNBA revenue all by herself, signed a contract that began at $76,535 annually when she was drafted as the number-one overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft. ESPN reported this week that the WNBA has proposed increasing the max salary as part of the current negotiations. But why are some of the league’s best players making less than $80,000 a year, especially in a league that landed a $2.2 billion media rights deal in July 2024? The answer might be hiding behind what increasingly appears to be a toxic storm brewing within the league itself. Collier hinted at league-wide dysfunction and unrest in her statement, and in an interview with Glamour published October 28, she took things a step further. “We are being so grossly almost taken advantage of, and it should be illegal,” she insisted. “The amount of money that Caitlin Clark has made the league is insane, and she’s getting 0% of it because we have no rev share. She gets less than $80,000 a year, and she’s bringing in, like, hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s insane.” As Boris put it, “the general public does not look at these workers as workers.” “They don’t see the working conditions. They don’t see the kind of bullying that might be taking place” and “the hierarchies” behind the scenes. It’s “a big problem,” she says. Like generations of women who have spearheaded labor disputes in the past, from the New York shirt waist strike of 1909 (which fought for better pay and hours, safer, more humane conditions) to a 2022 strike against Kroger (around wages and COVID-era safety at work), the players have to prove their own humanity to garner support. Workers in other industries have been forced to take drastic measures to get their needs met, too: there were the dual SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America (WGA) Hollywood strikes in 2023, or what may unfold in West Virginia if coal miners struggling with black lung disease aren’t adequately responded to. A WNBA spokesperson noted on October 28 that the league urges “the Players Association to spend less time disseminating public misinformation and more time joining us in constructive engagement.” But when toxicity feels as if it’s baked into the culture of the job, what options do any workers have but to fight for what they believe they deserve? ‘Self-sabotage’ for the organization Like these labor disputes of the past, WNBA players are pushing for the same goals so many workers everywhere want: higher pay, increased benefits, and protection from occupational hazards, like injuries on the court. As Collier also said, “Whether the league cares about the health of the players is one thing, but to also not care about the product we put on the floor is truly self-sabotage.” As we should have learned by now, it doesn’t typically pay to devalue workers and continue with toxic conditions. Over time, that erodes an organization from the inside out, something that has been demonstrated throughout the history of work in the United States. When it comes to the WNBA, the concerns are a little more physical and personal. Injuries are part of the game, and perhaps no one knows this better than Collier herself. The 29-year-old forward suffered at least two at crucial moments this season alone: she missed several games due to a sprained ankle, a reality that could have cost her the coveted MVP crown this season. But players—workers—feel within their rights to challenge any circumstances in which they don’t feel safe. Many of the great labor advances in this country started exactly that way. “This is not only for us” Though it may feel obvious to those watching the WNBA and CBA negotiations closely that players are making demands that are reasonable when considering what they bring to the league, the path ahead of them is still “very hard,” Boris says. All workers “have to get as high of a salary as you can during your prime when you’re working,” she explains. The success of negotiations will depend in part on “how public they are. One strategy which is really useful is having workers give testimony about working conditions or being forced to play, and [being] forced to practice with injuries or lack of sick days or family accommodation.” To that end, it seems that’s what some players have had in mind: In addition to Collier, plenty of WNBA superstars, including four-time MVP A’ja Wilson and the Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham, have made it clear where they stand on the issue and that they are willing to fight tooth and nail. That’s necessary because the stakes are just so high, Boris says. And like the historic, women-led labor movements in the past, the outcome won’t just affect the women currently playing in the league. When asked about the perception that WNBA leadership is not pro-player, Seattle Storm guard Lexie Brown tells Fast Company: “I think it runs deep. I think it’s been this way for a long time, and I think it’s getting to the point where we just finally have the leverage.” WNBA players have other opportunities, she points out, like AU Pro Basketball, the women’s professional league that will kick off its fifth season in Nashville in February. The new Player B league in Europe and Asia also promises higher pay than the WNBA does. Such leagues afford players “the money to potentially not have a [WNBA] season,” she explains. “None of us want that to happen, but I think it’s just been a build up over years and years, and we have to stand on business when it comes to this.” The league’s players are fighting this fight for those who came before them: the players who “continued to show up to work, every single year, despite the conditions, despite not having facilities, despite flying commercial, sharing hotel rooms,” she says. They’re also fighting for “all the little girls out there that want to be in the WNBA.” “This is not only for us,” Brown added. “It’s for everybody in the future.” View the full article

Don't let a partner do this alone. By Jody Padar Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA Go PRO for members-only access to more Jody Padar. View the full article

Don't let a partner do this alone. By Jody Padar Radical Pricing – By The Radical CPA Go PRO for members-only access to more Jody Padar. View the full article

You need a plan. By Ed Mendlowitz 77 Ways to Wow! Go PRO for members-only access to more Edward Mendlowitz. View the full article

You need a plan. By Ed Mendlowitz 77 Ways to Wow! Go PRO for members-only access to more Edward Mendlowitz. View the full article

Gantt charts are one of the most versatile project management tools there are as they can help plan, schedule and track projects. However, not all Gantt chart software has the features needed. That’s why we’ve reviewed some of the best Gantt chart software alternatives to help make a more informed decision. In this blog, we’ll go over the key features and pros and cons of a Canva Gantt chart, as well as some alternatives that can be used instead. What Is Canva? Canva is an online graphic design tool that allows users to edit images and videos for creative briefs, presentations, websites and many other creative projects. For example, it can help design printed products, make a logo for a business or create social media content. The software uses a drag-and-drop interface to make the design process easier. Since its introduction in 2013, Canva has added services such as a print product platform and video editing tool. It has a free model, but users can unlock premium features and upgrade to Canva Pro for professional design tools. This has made Canva one of the most popular graphic design tools used by creative business owners. It’s simple enough to use that beginners can make a quick graphic on a collaborative platform. The web-based tool has regular updates and additions that are constantly improving its functionality. Does Canva Have a Gantt Chart? Gantt charts are foundational tools for managing work. While Canva focuses on graphic design and offering users a simple and effective way to make quick designs, it falls short on project management. It relies on the graphic creation of presentations and other visual tools. However, it falls short when managing those projects with essential tools, such as Gantt charts. Gantt charts are made up of two parts. On the left is a spreadsheet that lists all the project tasks, their duration and related costs and resources. On the right, this data is populated on a visual timeline that shows the entire project on one page. Gantt charts can then plot milestones, link dependencies and more, giving managers greater control when planning, managing and tracking projects. Related: Best Gantt Chart Software Rankings Canva has templates and design tools that can mimic a Gantt chart, but lack the features that project managers need to ensure their projects are delivered on time and within budget. Design apps like Canva aren’t built for that sort of work. Short Answer: Yes, Canva Has a Gantt Chart Canva doesn’t have a built-in Gantt chart feature but has free and paid productivity and document editing tools such as tables, graphs and charts that can be used to make a basic Gantt chart. To do so, export the Canva Gantt chart as an image or PDF format and attach it to a project documentation or presentation slides. Long Answer: Canva’s Gantt Chart Lacks Key Features for Project Management Canva has Gantt chart templates to list tasks and edit timelines and bars. These Gantt chart templates can also add details, such as milestones and assignees. But because Canva relies so heavily on templates there is limited customization. This restricts creative freedom and, more importantly, limits the value of using a real, robust Gantt chart. Not using a real Gantt chart could mean the difference between a successful project and a failure. Don’t take that risk. ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with powerful Gantt charts that are easy to use. They can do everything a normal Gantt chart can do, such as organizing tasks, resources and costs, but go beyond the basics. Users can link all four types of task dependencies to avoid costly delays, filter for the critical path to identify essential tasks and set a baseline to track planned effort against actual effort in real time to stay on schedule and keep to the project budget. Get started with ProjectManager today for free. /wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Construction-Gantt-light-mode-task-info-general-CTA-BUTTON-1.jpgLearn more Canva Gantt Chart Features As previously mentioned, Canva allows users to assemble a basic, visual approximation of a Gantt chart using Canva’s graphic-design elements. While this can produce a simple timeline illustration, it lacks the functionality, automation and data-driven capabilities of a true Gantt chart found in project management software. Tables to structure task names and time periods. Rectangles and shape elements to represent task bars. Drag-and-drop resizing to visually adjust bar lengths. Color fills to differentiate phases or task categories. Text boxes for task names, dates and labels. Line and arrow elements to illustrate dependencies visually. Grid and alignment tools to create cleaner layouts. Templates that can serve as a starting point for timeline-style designs. What Project Management Features Is Canva Gantt Chart Missing? Because Canva is not a project management platform, its makeshift Gantt charts do not include any real project management features. It cannot calculate schedules, track progress, manage resources or monitor budgets. Canva can only display graphics—the operational and analytical capabilities required for managing projects simply do not exist in the tool. Canva provides no features for managing team capacity or assigning resources, so workload distribution and utilization analysis aren’t possible. There’s no logic engine for identifying the critical path—Canva cannot calculate FS, SS, FF or SF task dependencies. Financial oversight tools are absent; you can’t track project costs, compare planned vs actual spending or build budget variance reports. Baseline creation isn’t supported, meaning there’s no way to freeze an original plan or measure schedule or cost deviations over time. Milestones can only be drawn manually; Canva doesn’t support date-driven milestone mapping or automatic milestone updates. Progress tracking isn’t built in—you can’t update percent complete, monitor task health or generate status summaries. Task relationships aren’t functional; while you can sketch dependencies visually, Canva cannot enforce or update them in response to schedule changes. Canva offers no alternative project views—features like kanban boards, dashboards, timeline views or task lists simply don’t exist. How to Make a Canva Gantt Chart Better With ProjectManager Don’t let Canva keep the power of a Gantt chart beyond reach. Get a fully functional Gantt chart that can do much more than the bare-bones ones users make in Canva. Follow these steps to create a better Gantt chart in ProjectManager. Before we dive into the process let’s quickly go over a side-by-side comparison of ProjectManager’s Gantt chart and Canva’s Gantt chart. Canva Gantt Chart ProjectManager Gantt Chart No real task dependencies — only drawn manually (not functional) Four fully functional task dependencies (FS, SS, FF, SF) No auto-shift behavior — moving a bar does nothing Automatic cascading updates for all linked tasks Milestones can only be drawn as shapes Built-in milestones, subtasks and hierarchy tools for accurate scheduling No ability to set or compare baselines Full baseline tracking and schedule/cost variance reporting Single static visual — no true multi-project view Supports portfolio-level Gantt charts and multi-project roadmapping No cost, budget or planned-vs-actual tracking Tracks estimated vs. actual costs with real-time budget reporting No resource workload, allocation or utilization tools Resource allocation, workload monitoring and utilization charts built in No percent-complete tracking — everything must be drawn manually Percent-complete column with automatic sync to dashboards and reports No task prioritization or task-level metadata Priority fields, custom columns and full task-level detail panels Only visual “sections” if manually drawn Supports full Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) hierarchy No column customization — it’s just graphics Fully customizable columns for tasks, dates, costs, resources and more Exports are limited to static images of your design Exports to PDF, Excel and images with structured project data included Manual drag-and-drop of shapes (no actual scheduling logic) Advanced drag-and-drop task scheduling with real-time recalculations No planned vs. actual duration tracking Tracks planned vs. actual hours automatically for schedule accuracy Only basic templates for timelines, none for real Gantt charts Ready-made Gantt chart templates for multiple industries and use cases 1. Start a Free Trial Take a free trial with ProjectManager. There’s no credit card info needed. Once signed up, users have 30 days to kick the tires and explore the features of ProjectManager. There are Gantt charts, of course, but also task and resource management features, risk management tools and real-time dashboards and customizable reports to monitor and control projects to deliver them successfully. /wp-content/uploads/2024/07/canva-import-pm.png 2. Import Project Tasks Into ProjectManager Instead of manually adding tasks into Canva, you can instantly import several columns of project data from existing Excel spreadsheets, CSV files or even Microsoft Project files. /wp-content/uploads/2022/03/GantChart-IMPORT-CAR-e1666882142827-600x359.jpg 3. Select Options Now, decide if this will be a new project or if it should be added to an existing project. If it’s new, name it, and if it’s being added to a project, note whether to keep or delete the existing data. 4. Create a Robust ProjectManager Gantt Chart with More Features Than a Canva Gantt Chart A popup window will say, “Success!” showing that the project has been imported. It’s now a real Gantt chart in ProjectManager. Look around and see what our Gantt chart can do. It’s packed with features, can be shared with the team and also links to the other project views (kanban boards, task lists, calendars, etc.) and informs other features, such as the dashboard, reports and workload chart. /wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Gantt-Chart-Template-Excel-image.png Get your free Gantt Chart Template Use this free Gantt Chart Template to manage your projects better. Get the Template Canva Gantt Chart Pricing Canva does not include a built-in Gantt chart in any of its pricing plans. All versions only allow a manually designed, static timeline using shapes, tables or stacked bar-style graphics. However, chart availability varies by plan—some advanced chart types and customization features are only included in paid tiers. Free ($0): No built-in Gantt chart. Limited access to chart types; some advanced charts and customizations are locked behind paid plans. Pro ($14.99/user/month): No built-in Gantt chart. Full access to Canva’s chart library, including stacked bar charts and additional customization tools. Teams ($29.99/user/month): No built-in Gantt chart. Includes all Pro chart features plus enhanced collaboration and asset management. Enterprise (custom pricing): No built-in Gantt chart. Offers admin and brand controls; chart functionality remains the same as Pro. ProjectManager’s Gantt Chart Does More Than a Canva Gantt Ever Could Now it’s time to look at ProjectManager’s Gantt chart and see what it can do. There’s no reason to ever go back to Canva because our Gantt chart seamlessly integrates with the rest of our project tools. That means users can track time and costs, balance workload and much more. Set Milestones & Track Baselines Milestones are represented by diamond icons. They are used to indicate important project dates, such as the end of one phase and the beginning of another. They can help track progress, but for a more powerful tracking tool, set a baseline. Once the baseline is captured on the Gantt chart, users get real-time data on how the project is doing. They can see planned costs against actual costs and planned progress against actual progress in real time to help deliver the project successfully. Plus, it’s easy to filter for the critical path. There are no time-consuming and complicated calculations needed. Try that on Canva. /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/critical-path-light-mode-gantt-construction-1.png Filter by Priority, Dependencies & More The Gantt chart can be filtered in any number of ways to allow project managers to focus on the information they want to see. For example, they can filter by priority to ensure those tasks are being executed in a timely fashion. It’s also possible to filter by dependencies to avoid delays. Canva can’t do that. A big difference between Canva and ProjectManager is that users can link all four types of task dependencies. There are also customized tags to make tasks easier to find. It’s easy to assign team members to tasks, see their availability and better manage resources. /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/assign-people-resource-allocation-light-mode-gantt-chart-workload-assignments.png What Can You Use a Canva Gantt Chart For? Canva Gantt charts are simplistic and only allow for basic task management and scheduling. Users can plan and schedule project tasks, track their progress on timelines and visualize the project in one place. While these Gantt charts can be helpful in specific situations, they aren’t nearly as powerful as project management software. How to Create a Canva Gantt Chart If you’re still curious about how to make a Canva Gantt chart, we’ve outlined what you should know. There are two main methods for making a Gantt chart in Canva. Use a free or paid Canva Gantt chart template or make one from scratch. Here’s a quick overview of both of these approaches. Use a Canva Gantt Chart Template Using a template is the easiest way to make a Gantt chart in Canva. 1. Choose a Gantt Chart Template From Canva’s Library First, log into the Canva account and use the search box to look for a Gantt chart template. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Canva-Gantt-chart-search-bar-e1717714730506-1600x530.webp There are hundreds of Gantt chart templates in Canva’s library. However, some of them aren’t free and require a paid plan. Also, it’s important to notice that most Gantt chart templates available in Canva’s library are uploaded by users, so there might be some errors. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Canva-Gantt-chart-templates-1600x781.webp 2. Edit the Canva Gantt Chart Template Then after having chosen a template, edit it further to visualize the project schedule as shown in the image below. We edited this Canva Gantt chart template to list project tasks and their due dates on a visual calendar. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Edited-Canva-Gantt-chart-template-1-1600x785.webp This is the most basic version of a Gantt chart. Ideally, a Gantt chart should track many other task details such as resources, costs, priority, status and more. Unfortunately, most of the project templates in Canva’s library have a similar level of detail as this template. On top of that, editing these Canva Gantt chart templates can be hard to do, as most of them don’t function as spreadsheets but rather as images which editing requires lots of manual work. Make a Canva Gantt Chart From Scratch To add more details to a Canva Gantt chart than those offered by Canva’s templates, make one from scratch by following the steps below. 1. Make a Gantt Chart Grid in Canva The easiest way to make a Gantt chart grid in Canva is to insert a table. To do so, open a new Canva presentation, whiteboard or document view and look for a table using the “Elements” search box on the left side of the screen. By default, the table will come with three columns, so begin by editing these three columns, one for listing your project tasks and their start and end dates. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Insert-a-table-in-Canva-1-e1717714664108-1600x587.webp Now let’s add the fields we referenced, a priority level, assignee and estimated cost of each project task. To do this, simply click the three dots of the right-end column of the table and then click “Add column.” When done, the Canva Gantt chart grid should look like this. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Gantt-chart-grid-example-Canva-600x266.webp 2. Make a Gantt Chart Timeline in Canva Now, create the other half of the Canva Gantt chart, the stacked bar project timeline. To do so, add 12 columns to the right and one row at the top. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Making-a-Gantt-chart-stacked-bar-chart-in-Canva_1-1-600x295.webp Then merge those cells until it looks like the example below. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Adding-bars-to-Canva-Gantt-chart_1-1-600x294.webp Finally, insert rounded square shapes and adjust their size to fit each of the project task rows to indicate their duration. Fill out all the Gantt chart grid cells with the project information and adjust the task bars accordingly. /wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Canva-Gantt-chart-example-1600x510.webp ProjectManager Has Better Gantt Charts Than Canva As stated above, ProjectManager is software specifically designed to plan, schedule and track projects from start to finish, which is the main reason why it offers a much better Gantt chart tool than Canva. Let’s zoom into other advantages of using ProjectManager’s Gantt charts. Advanced Gantt Chart Features ProjectManager is one of the best Gantt chart software due to its advanced project management features that will allow you to link four types of task dependencies, allocate resources, identify the critical path of your project, track project costs and much more. Use the task information panel popup on the Gantt chart to change priority levels, set milestones, add inter-project dependencies and more. /wp-content/uploads/2023/02/operations-implementation-gantt-task-info-open-1600x787.png Multiple Project Management Tools Use other project management tools besides Gantt charts such as kanban boards, project calendars, task lists, roadmaps and spreadsheets. Each of these offers a different perspective on your projects. /wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Kanban-task-card-moving-manufacturing-order-management-light-mode-1600x874.png Track Project Progress, Schedule, Resources & Costs Real-time dashboards automatically collect data from the Gantt chart in real time and show project metrics in easy-to-read charts for a high-level overview of the project status. Customizable reports get more detailed information on project and portfolio status, workload, timesheets, variance and more. /wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Dashboard-light-mode-1600x857.jpg Resource management tools, such as the color-coded workload chart and team page show how work is being distributed among team members so you can reallocate resources to keep teams working at capacity and increase productivity. More Free Gantt Chart Templates While Excel is the most popular choice for Gantt chart templates, other free productivity tools can help make a Gantt chart. Gantt Chart Template for PowerPoint Gantt Chart Template for Google Sheets Gantt Chart Template for Word While all these Gantt chart templates can be used to make a simple project schedule, they can’t compete with the functionality offered by project management software like ProjectManager. Related Gantt Chart Content We’ve created dozens of blogs, templates and guides to help understand how to use Gantt charts to manage projects. Here are some of them. 14 Best Gantt Chart Software of 2024 (Free & Paid) 5 Tools to Make a Gantt Chart on Mac How to Make a Gantt Chart In Excel How to Make a Gantt Chart in Google Sheets (Template Included) Trello Gantt Charts: How to Make a Gantt Chart in Trello Microsoft Planner Gantt Chart: How to Make a Gantt Chart in Microsoft Planner ProjectManager is online project and portfolio management software that connects teams in the office, out in the field and anywhere in between. They can share files, comment at the task level and stay updated with email and in-app notifications. Join teams at Avis, Nestle and Siemens who use our tool to deliver successful projects. Get started with ProjectManager today for free. The post Canva Gantt Chart: A How-to Guide With Pros, Cons & Alternatives appeared first on ProjectManager. View the full article

A jovial President Donald The President held a warm and friendly meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman at the White House, packed with plenty of handshakes and back pats. He brushed aside questions about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, praised the prince for his statesmanship and announced hundreds of billions of dollars in new Saudi investment in the United States. The White House rolled out plenty of pomp for the Saudi royal on Tuesday, dispatching fighter jets that the two leaders watched from a red carpet, parading out an honor guard on horseback and giving a lavish dinner in the East Room. In a sitdown in the Oval Office that took place just seven years after Prince Mohammad was implicated by U.S. intelligence agencies in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, The President and the prince took numerous questions from reporters — one of whom was repeatedly insulted by The President — on everything from commerce to the sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets to Riyadh. Here is a look at some of the takeaways from the visit: Movement on military cooperation The President had previewed his decision to sell F-35s on Sunday but formalized it before the prince on Tuesday when he said the approval was complete and that Israel’s fears about maintaining its qualitative military edge in the Middle East would be addressed. Details of the deal were not immediately clear, but some in the Pentagon and other agencies have opposed the sale because of the potential for advanced technology being shared with China, which also has close ties with Saudi Arabia. “As far as I’m concerned, I think they are both at a level where they should get top of the line,” The President said of Saudi Arabia and Israel, which already has F-35s. “Israel’s aware and they’re going to be very happy.” Israeli officials have suggested that they would not be opposed to Saudi Arabia getting F-35s as long as Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords framework. The Saudis have said they would join the Abraham Accords but only after there is a credible and guaranteed path to Palestinian statehood, a position Prince Mohammad repeated in the meeting. “We want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path of two-state solution,” he said. “We’re going to work on that to be sure that we come prepared for the situation as soon as possible to have that.” The President also said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia would complete a broader agreement on military and security issues during the visit and that the U.S. would proceed with a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia, about which Israel also has raised concerns. The two nations also signed a deal that calls for the Saudis to purchase nearly 300 tanks from the U.S. At the dinner Tuesday night, The President announced he was designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally, a largely symbolic move that gives foreign partners some defense, trade and security cooperation benefits. Khashoggi’s killing gets swept aside Tuesday’s meeting was the first White House visit for the crown prince since Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist, was killed and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2018. U.S. intelligence said Prince Mohammad likely approved the slaying. In a remarkable scene in the Oval Office, the prince, nicknamed MBS, faced questions from reporters, something not typical for the de facto head of the absolute monarchy where dissent is criminalized. He was asked about Khashoggi’s slaying along with the role that Saudi citizens played in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The President, however, lashed out at the reporter for the line of questioning. The President called Khashoggi, a Saudi pro-democracy activist, “extremely controversial” and said “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he (the crown prince) knew nothing about it and we can leave it at that.” Prince Mohammad, who has denied involvement in Khashoggi’s killing, replied that his government had taken action. “It’s been painful for us in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “We did all the right steps of investigation, etc., in Saudi Arabia, and we’ve improved our system to be sure that nothing happens like that again. And it’s painful, and it was a huge mistake.” The President also commended the Saudi leader for strides made by the kingdom on human rights without providing any specific detail but presumably referring to reforms relating to women’s rights. “What’s he done is incredible in terms of human rights and everything else,” The President said. Lots of pomp and circumstance The President greeted Prince Mohammed at the White House’s South Lawn entrance with a handshake and arm slung over the prince’s shoulder. The President literally rolled out the red carpet for the Saudi leader, with a military band on hand and a flyover by U.S. military planes, before showing the crown prince his decorations along the White House Colonnade. “We have a extremely respected man in the Oval Office today,” The President said at the top of meeting, calling the prince “a friend of mine for a very long time.” The President also castigated his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, for greeting Prince Mohammed with a fist bump during his 2022 visit to Saudi Arabia. “When you get out of the plane and you get the future king — and a man who is one of the most respected people in the world — you shake his hand, you don’t give him a fist bump, right?” The President said. “The President doesn’t give a fist bump. I grab that hand” — and he did just that. At the dinner Tuesday night, the tuxedo-clad president and first lady Melania The President welcomed the crown prince back on the red carpet again, before feting him at a dinner attended by tech titans such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla founder Elon Musk, and Apple CEO Tim Cook, along with golfer Bryson DeChambeau and soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. They dined on a pistachio-crusted rack of lamb, followed by a couverture mousse pear for dessert. Vast but vague commercial and economic deals Prince Mohammad told The President that his country would be increasing its financial commitments to the U.S. from $600 billion, which was announced during the president’s trip to Riyadh in May, to $1 trillion. Details of those deals were not immediately clear but are expected to include investments in a variety of American businesses, including artificial Intelligence, as well as the purchase of jet engines and other equipment. —Matthew Lee, AP diplomatic writer Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report. View the full article

When planning your next craft project, consider utilizing low-cost supplies that can improve your creativity. Start by repurposing items you already have at home, such as toilet paper rolls or egg cartons. Explore thrift stores for affordable fabric scraps and old magazines suitable for decoupage. Furthermore, check community platforms like Facebook Marketplace for free or cheap materials. With dollar stores stocking crucial craft items, you can find everything you need without overspending. Exploring these options will reveal even more possibilities. Key Takeaways Repurpose materials like toilet paper rolls, egg cartons, and glass containers from your recycling box for unique craft projects. Visit thrift stores for affordable supplies, including fabric scraps, old jewelry, and magazines perfect for decoupage. Check community platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Freecycle for low-cost or free crafting materials from local residents. Explore dollar stores for budget-friendly essentials like wooden craft sticks, decorative tape, and tissue paper to enhance your projects. Take advantage of sales at craft stores and online retailers, often offering discounts up to 70% on a wide range of supplies. Your Own Home When you look around your home, you may be surprised to find a wealth of crafting materials readily available in your recycling box. Common items like toilet paper rolls, egg cartons, and glass containers can be easily repurposed into unique projects. Cardboard from cereal boxes and shipping packages offers a sturdy base for various crafts, as water bottles and milk cartons encourage creativity through upcycling. Furthermore, old newspapers and magazines serve as excellent resources for decoupage and collage, making them both economical and eco-friendly. Don’t forget to explore kids’ rooms and offices for markers and crayons, which can improve your crafting experience. With these low-cost craft supplies at hand, you might find inspiration that rivals any craft catalogs by mail. Yard Sales Exploring yard sales can be a rewarding way to expand your crafting supplies without breaking the bank. These sales often feature a variety of craft items at considerably reduced prices, perfect for budget-conscious crafters. You might find: Fabric scraps – Ideal for quilting or small projects. Yarn skeins – Great for knitting or crocheting unique pieces. Art supplies – Such as paints and brushes, often sold in bulk. Vintage craft books – Offering unique techniques and inspiration. Additionally, many yard sales have leftover supplies from previous projects, allowing you to discover unexpected treasures. Searching online platforms like Craigslist can help you locate specific sales in your area, making it easier to score unique materials for your next project. Your Neighborhood When you’re looking for craft supplies, your neighborhood can be a goldmine of resources. Check out platforms like Facebook Marketplace or Freecycle, where you can find low-cost or even free materials offered by local residents. Furthermore, keep an eye on community events like garage sales and fairs, as they often feature unique items that can inspire your next project. Local Community Resources Local community resources offer a wealth of opportunities for sourcing craft supplies at little to no cost. By tapping into these local avenues, you can easily find materials for your next project. Here are some options to contemplate: Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp: These platforms often feature neighbors giving away or selling craft supplies at low prices. Freecycle: Join this network to receive free items, including unused craft materials from locals. Community Events: Attend seasonal fairs or garage sales where people sell or donate crafting supplies. Thrift Stores: Check your nearby thrift shops for both used and new items perfect for crafting. Utilizing these resources can greatly reduce your crafting expenses during nurturing community connections. Online Marketplace Options Online marketplaces provide a convenient and efficient way to find craft supplies right in your neighborhood. Platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Freecycle, and OfferUp let you search for affordable or even free materials from local sellers. You’ll often find listings from neighbors who are selling or giving away surplus items, which can help you discover unique supplies at low costs. Moreover, many neighborhood groups facilitate the sharing and trading of craft materials, allowing you to acquire what you need without spending money. Seasonal events and community clean-ups often result in people listing unwanted craft supplies, providing a chance to stock up at minimal or no cost. Utilizing these resources can keep your projects budget-friendly and locally inspired. Thrift Stores Thrift stores are excellent resources for crafters seeking affordable supplies, often featuring a wide variety of both new and gently used items. These stores can be a treasure trove for budget-conscious individuals like you. Here are four items you should look for: Fabric: Large pieces like old blankets or tablecloths can be repurposed for various fabric crafts, saving you money on retail prices. Magazines: You’ll find a range of magazines perfect for decoupage or scrapbooking, enhancing your creative projects without breaking the bank. Jewelry: Old jewelry provides valuable beads and hardware, allowing you to create unique pieces as you reduce waste. Seasonal Supplies: Check seasonal sections for items customized to upcoming holidays, giving your crafts a festive touch. Dollar Stores In terms of affordable craft materials, dollar stores are a treasure trove for budget-conscious crafters. You can find a variety of crucial supplies, like wooden craft sticks, clothespins, and decorative tape, all priced at just a dollar each. Affordable Craft Materials If you’re looking for budget-friendly craft materials, dollar stores are a treasure trove of affordable options. You can find a wide variety of supplies for just a dollar, making these stores ideal for budget-conscious crafters. Here are four crucial items you should consider picking up: Wooden craft sticks – perfect for building and creating various projects. Clothespins – great for holding items together or as decorative accents. Tissue paper – ideal for gift wrapping or adding color to crafts. Decorative craft tape – useful for embellishing and personalizing your creations. Additionally, don’t overlook office and party supply sections for more materials. Regular visits can reveal new arrivals and seasonal items that inspire your next creative endeavor without breaking the bank. Diverse Crafting Options Exploring diverse crafting options at dollar stores opens up a world of creativity without straining your budget. You’ll find an impressive selection of craft supplies, such as wooden craft sticks, tissue paper, and decorative tape, all priced at just a dollar each. Seasonal items and party supplies make these stores ideal for themed crafts and events. Common supplies like glues, foam brushes, beads, and floral foam allow for a variety of projects without overspending. Furthermore, you can discover vases, candle holders, and other decorative items that can be creatively repurposed. Regular visits to dollar stores can likewise reveal new and unique materials, as inventory constantly changes, offering both fresh finds and clearance items perfect for your next DIY project. Craft Reuse Centers Craft reuse centers serve as valuable resources for crafters looking to acquire materials during the promotion of sustainability. These centers accept donations of crafting supplies and resell them at low prices, helping to keep materials out of landfills. You’ll find a wide variety of supplies catering to different crafting needs, perfect for both children and adults. Shopping at these centers not just saves money but also offers unique finds that can inspire your projects. Here are four benefits of visiting a craft reuse center: Affordability: Prices are considerably lower than traditional retail. Variety: A diverse range of materials for various types of crafts. Community Engagement: Encourages local collaboration and support. Unexpected Treasures: Unique and vintage items that spark creativity. Discount Stores When you’re looking for affordable craft options, discount stores can be a valuable resource. Places like Big Lots and Five Below offer a range of materials, from decorative craft tape to floral foam, all at budget-friendly prices. Plus, with seasonal discounts and unique finds arriving regularly, you’re likely to discover fresh supplies that can inspire your next project. Affordable Craft Options If you’re on the lookout for budget-friendly craft supplies, discount stores like Big Lots, Five Below, and Dollar General can be excellent resources. These stores often have dedicated craft sections, making it easy to find materials for various projects at low prices. Here are some popular items you can typically find: Glassware – perfect for DIY home decor or candle holders. Fake flowers – great for floral arrangements without the maintenance. Wooden craft sticks – useful for a variety of projects, from models to frames. Decorative craft tape – ideal for adding flair to cards or scrapbooks. Regular visits can yield unique finds, especially with seasonal items, allowing you to experiment creatively while sticking to your budget. Unique Finds Available Have you ever considered the hidden gems waiting for you in discount stores? Places like Big Lots, Five Below, Wal-Mart, and Dollar General often have dedicated craft supply sections filled with low-cost materials. You can find raw materials such as glassware, fake flowers, and frames at markedly reduced prices, making it easy to stock up on necessities without breaking the bank. Regular visits can reveal new arrivals and discounts, allowing you to discover unique supplies that you mightn’t find elsewhere. Furthermore, these stores offer unconventional crafting items, encouraging you to get creative with everyday objects. Seasonal Discounts Offered Seasonal discounts at discount stores present an excellent opportunity for crafters looking to save on materials for holiday-themed projects. Stores like Dollar General and Big Lots frequently offer markdowns on a variety of craft supplies. You can find unique items that rotate with the seasons, making it easier to celebrate any occasion without overspending. Here are four types of supplies you might find on sale: Decorative paints and brushes for seasonal crafts. Holiday-themed decorations like ornaments and garlands. Crafting tools, such as scissors and glue guns. Wrapping paper and gift-making materials during clearance events. Unconventional Stores Though many crafters typically turn to traditional craft stores for their supplies, unconventional stores can offer a treasure trove of materials that mightn’t be found elsewhere. Specialty shops like hardware stores provide discounted storage containers, magnets, and tools perfect for various projects. Office supply stores often carry paper, adhesives, and scissors at competitive prices, making them excellent resources for DIY enthusiasts. Pharmacies frequently have seasonal items and party supplies at reduced rates, ideal for those last-minute crafting needs. Antique stores present unique old and new supplies that can be creatively repurposed. Finally, regular visits to discount chains like Big Lots, Five Below, and Dollar General can yield cheap materials such as glassware and fake flowers, perfect for budget-friendly crafting. Craft Stores Craft stores serve as a go-to resource for crafters seeking an extensive range of supplies customized to various projects. They cater to all budget ranges by offering both cheap and expensive items, making it easy to find what you need. To help you save even more, many stores have frequent sales and coupons, often providing discounts up to 70% off original prices. Seasonal items are likewise typically discounted, allowing access to themed supplies for holidays at lower prices. You’ll find dedicated sections for specific crafts, such as: Yarn for knitting and crocheting Scrapbooking materials for creative layouts Painting supplies like canvases and brushes Beading kits for jewelry-making These features guarantee that you can find everything you need in one convenient location. Online Stores When you’re looking for craft supplies, online stores offer a convenient and often cost-effective alternative to traditional brick-and-mortar locations. Retailers like Amazon and eBay frequently provide competitive prices on a vast array of items, making it simple to find budget-friendly options. Websites such as Oriental Trading and Fabric.com grant discounts on bulk purchases, letting you stock up without overspending. Plus, online shopping expands your access to specialty supplies that local stores may not carry. Seasonal sales and promotions further improve savings throughout the year. The table below highlights some popular online craft supply retailers and their primary advantages. Store Advantages Amazon Wide selection, competitive prices eBay Auctions, unique finds Oriental Trading Bulk discounts, party supplies Frequently Asked Questions What Are the Best Crafting Supplies for Beginners? For beginners, vital crafting supplies include versatile acrylic paints, brushes, and canvases, which are affordable and support various projects. You should furthermore have basic tools like scissors, glue, and tape, important for crafting tasks. Colored paper and cardstock are cost-effective choices for numerous projects, encouraging creativity. In addition, consider beginner craft kits that provide structured guidance and required materials. Basic fabric supplies like felt and yarn are budget-friendly options for textile crafts, promoting hands-on learning. Does Dollar General Have Craft Supplies? Yes, Dollar General offers a variety of craft supplies. You can find items like wooden craft sticks, tissue paper, and foam paint brushes, often priced around one dollar each. The store likewise stocks decorative craft tape, glues, and floral foam. In addition, seasonal items can be repurposed for crafts, providing more options. Regular visits can help you discover new arrivals and seasonal discounts, enhancing your crafting experience at affordable prices. How to Declutter Your Craft Supplies? To declutter your craft supplies, start by sorting everything into clear categories like paint, fabric, and tools. Use labeled storage bins for easy access and organization. Set a schedule to review your supplies every six months, donating or discarding items you don’t use or that are damaged. Implement a “one in, one out” rule to maintain balance, and consider repurposing materials from your collection to inspire new projects during reducing clutter effectively. Does Family Dollar Have Craft Stuff? Yes, Family Dollar carries a variety of craft supplies. You’ll find crucial items like glue, scissors, construction paper, and markers, which are perfect for various projects. They likewise stock seasonal craft supplies, ideal for holiday-themed creations. Furthermore, you can discover DIY kits and basic tools suitable for both kids and adults. With prices typically ranging from $1 to $5, it’s a budget-friendly option for anyone looking to craft without overspending. Conclusion By exploring various sources for low-cost craft supplies, you can maximize your creativity as you stay within budget. Look around your home for items like toilet paper rolls and egg cartons, visit yard sales for hidden treasures, and check thrift stores for unique fabric scraps. Furthermore, dollar stores and online platforms can provide affordable necessities. With these strategies, you can gather the materials you need for your next project without overspending, ensuring you have fun during crafting. Image via Google Gemini This article, "10 Low Cost Craft Supplies for Your Next Project" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When planning your next craft project, consider utilizing low-cost supplies that can improve your creativity. Start by repurposing items you already have at home, such as toilet paper rolls or egg cartons. Explore thrift stores for affordable fabric scraps and old magazines suitable for decoupage. Furthermore, check community platforms like Facebook Marketplace for free or cheap materials. With dollar stores stocking crucial craft items, you can find everything you need without overspending. Exploring these options will reveal even more possibilities. Key Takeaways Repurpose materials like toilet paper rolls, egg cartons, and glass containers from your recycling box for unique craft projects. Visit thrift stores for affordable supplies, including fabric scraps, old jewelry, and magazines perfect for decoupage. Check community platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Freecycle for low-cost or free crafting materials from local residents. Explore dollar stores for budget-friendly essentials like wooden craft sticks, decorative tape, and tissue paper to enhance your projects. Take advantage of sales at craft stores and online retailers, often offering discounts up to 70% on a wide range of supplies. Your Own Home When you look around your home, you may be surprised to find a wealth of crafting materials readily available in your recycling box. Common items like toilet paper rolls, egg cartons, and glass containers can be easily repurposed into unique projects. Cardboard from cereal boxes and shipping packages offers a sturdy base for various crafts, as water bottles and milk cartons encourage creativity through upcycling. Furthermore, old newspapers and magazines serve as excellent resources for decoupage and collage, making them both economical and eco-friendly. Don’t forget to explore kids’ rooms and offices for markers and crayons, which can improve your crafting experience. With these low-cost craft supplies at hand, you might find inspiration that rivals any craft catalogs by mail. Yard Sales Exploring yard sales can be a rewarding way to expand your crafting supplies without breaking the bank. These sales often feature a variety of craft items at considerably reduced prices, perfect for budget-conscious crafters. You might find: Fabric scraps – Ideal for quilting or small projects. Yarn skeins – Great for knitting or crocheting unique pieces. Art supplies – Such as paints and brushes, often sold in bulk. Vintage craft books – Offering unique techniques and inspiration. Additionally, many yard sales have leftover supplies from previous projects, allowing you to discover unexpected treasures. Searching online platforms like Craigslist can help you locate specific sales in your area, making it easier to score unique materials for your next project. Your Neighborhood When you’re looking for craft supplies, your neighborhood can be a goldmine of resources. Check out platforms like Facebook Marketplace or Freecycle, where you can find low-cost or even free materials offered by local residents. Furthermore, keep an eye on community events like garage sales and fairs, as they often feature unique items that can inspire your next project. Local Community Resources Local community resources offer a wealth of opportunities for sourcing craft supplies at little to no cost. By tapping into these local avenues, you can easily find materials for your next project. Here are some options to contemplate: Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp: These platforms often feature neighbors giving away or selling craft supplies at low prices. Freecycle: Join this network to receive free items, including unused craft materials from locals. Community Events: Attend seasonal fairs or garage sales where people sell or donate crafting supplies. Thrift Stores: Check your nearby thrift shops for both used and new items perfect for crafting. Utilizing these resources can greatly reduce your crafting expenses during nurturing community connections. Online Marketplace Options Online marketplaces provide a convenient and efficient way to find craft supplies right in your neighborhood. Platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Freecycle, and OfferUp let you search for affordable or even free materials from local sellers. You’ll often find listings from neighbors who are selling or giving away surplus items, which can help you discover unique supplies at low costs. Moreover, many neighborhood groups facilitate the sharing and trading of craft materials, allowing you to acquire what you need without spending money. Seasonal events and community clean-ups often result in people listing unwanted craft supplies, providing a chance to stock up at minimal or no cost. Utilizing these resources can keep your projects budget-friendly and locally inspired. Thrift Stores Thrift stores are excellent resources for crafters seeking affordable supplies, often featuring a wide variety of both new and gently used items. These stores can be a treasure trove for budget-conscious individuals like you. Here are four items you should look for: Fabric: Large pieces like old blankets or tablecloths can be repurposed for various fabric crafts, saving you money on retail prices. Magazines: You’ll find a range of magazines perfect for decoupage or scrapbooking, enhancing your creative projects without breaking the bank. Jewelry: Old jewelry provides valuable beads and hardware, allowing you to create unique pieces as you reduce waste. Seasonal Supplies: Check seasonal sections for items customized to upcoming holidays, giving your crafts a festive touch. Dollar Stores In terms of affordable craft materials, dollar stores are a treasure trove for budget-conscious crafters. You can find a variety of crucial supplies, like wooden craft sticks, clothespins, and decorative tape, all priced at just a dollar each. Affordable Craft Materials If you’re looking for budget-friendly craft materials, dollar stores are a treasure trove of affordable options. You can find a wide variety of supplies for just a dollar, making these stores ideal for budget-conscious crafters. Here are four crucial items you should consider picking up: Wooden craft sticks – perfect for building and creating various projects. Clothespins – great for holding items together or as decorative accents. Tissue paper – ideal for gift wrapping or adding color to crafts. Decorative craft tape – useful for embellishing and personalizing your creations. Additionally, don’t overlook office and party supply sections for more materials. Regular visits can reveal new arrivals and seasonal items that inspire your next creative endeavor without breaking the bank. Diverse Crafting Options Exploring diverse crafting options at dollar stores opens up a world of creativity without straining your budget. You’ll find an impressive selection of craft supplies, such as wooden craft sticks, tissue paper, and decorative tape, all priced at just a dollar each. Seasonal items and party supplies make these stores ideal for themed crafts and events. Common supplies like glues, foam brushes, beads, and floral foam allow for a variety of projects without overspending. Furthermore, you can discover vases, candle holders, and other decorative items that can be creatively repurposed. Regular visits to dollar stores can likewise reveal new and unique materials, as inventory constantly changes, offering both fresh finds and clearance items perfect for your next DIY project. Craft Reuse Centers Craft reuse centers serve as valuable resources for crafters looking to acquire materials during the promotion of sustainability. These centers accept donations of crafting supplies and resell them at low prices, helping to keep materials out of landfills. You’ll find a wide variety of supplies catering to different crafting needs, perfect for both children and adults. Shopping at these centers not just saves money but also offers unique finds that can inspire your projects. Here are four benefits of visiting a craft reuse center: Affordability: Prices are considerably lower than traditional retail. Variety: A diverse range of materials for various types of crafts. Community Engagement: Encourages local collaboration and support. Unexpected Treasures: Unique and vintage items that spark creativity. Discount Stores When you’re looking for affordable craft options, discount stores can be a valuable resource. Places like Big Lots and Five Below offer a range of materials, from decorative craft tape to floral foam, all at budget-friendly prices. Plus, with seasonal discounts and unique finds arriving regularly, you’re likely to discover fresh supplies that can inspire your next project. Affordable Craft Options If you’re on the lookout for budget-friendly craft supplies, discount stores like Big Lots, Five Below, and Dollar General can be excellent resources. These stores often have dedicated craft sections, making it easy to find materials for various projects at low prices. Here are some popular items you can typically find: Glassware – perfect for DIY home decor or candle holders. Fake flowers – great for floral arrangements without the maintenance. Wooden craft sticks – useful for a variety of projects, from models to frames. Decorative craft tape – ideal for adding flair to cards or scrapbooks. Regular visits can yield unique finds, especially with seasonal items, allowing you to experiment creatively while sticking to your budget. Unique Finds Available Have you ever considered the hidden gems waiting for you in discount stores? Places like Big Lots, Five Below, Wal-Mart, and Dollar General often have dedicated craft supply sections filled with low-cost materials. You can find raw materials such as glassware, fake flowers, and frames at markedly reduced prices, making it easy to stock up on necessities without breaking the bank. Regular visits can reveal new arrivals and discounts, allowing you to discover unique supplies that you mightn’t find elsewhere. Furthermore, these stores offer unconventional crafting items, encouraging you to get creative with everyday objects. Seasonal Discounts Offered Seasonal discounts at discount stores present an excellent opportunity for crafters looking to save on materials for holiday-themed projects. Stores like Dollar General and Big Lots frequently offer markdowns on a variety of craft supplies. You can find unique items that rotate with the seasons, making it easier to celebrate any occasion without overspending. Here are four types of supplies you might find on sale: Decorative paints and brushes for seasonal crafts. Holiday-themed decorations like ornaments and garlands. Crafting tools, such as scissors and glue guns. Wrapping paper and gift-making materials during clearance events. Unconventional Stores Though many crafters typically turn to traditional craft stores for their supplies, unconventional stores can offer a treasure trove of materials that mightn’t be found elsewhere. Specialty shops like hardware stores provide discounted storage containers, magnets, and tools perfect for various projects. Office supply stores often carry paper, adhesives, and scissors at competitive prices, making them excellent resources for DIY enthusiasts. Pharmacies frequently have seasonal items and party supplies at reduced rates, ideal for those last-minute crafting needs. Antique stores present unique old and new supplies that can be creatively repurposed. Finally, regular visits to discount chains like Big Lots, Five Below, and Dollar General can yield cheap materials such as glassware and fake flowers, perfect for budget-friendly crafting. Craft Stores Craft stores serve as a go-to resource for crafters seeking an extensive range of supplies customized to various projects. They cater to all budget ranges by offering both cheap and expensive items, making it easy to find what you need. To help you save even more, many stores have frequent sales and coupons, often providing discounts up to 70% off original prices. Seasonal items are likewise typically discounted, allowing access to themed supplies for holidays at lower prices. You’ll find dedicated sections for specific crafts, such as: Yarn for knitting and crocheting Scrapbooking materials for creative layouts Painting supplies like canvases and brushes Beading kits for jewelry-making These features guarantee that you can find everything you need in one convenient location. Online Stores When you’re looking for craft supplies, online stores offer a convenient and often cost-effective alternative to traditional brick-and-mortar locations. Retailers like Amazon and eBay frequently provide competitive prices on a vast array of items, making it simple to find budget-friendly options. Websites such as Oriental Trading and Fabric.com grant discounts on bulk purchases, letting you stock up without overspending. Plus, online shopping expands your access to specialty supplies that local stores may not carry. Seasonal sales and promotions further improve savings throughout the year. The table below highlights some popular online craft supply retailers and their primary advantages. Store Advantages Amazon Wide selection, competitive prices eBay Auctions, unique finds Oriental Trading Bulk discounts, party supplies Frequently Asked Questions What Are the Best Crafting Supplies for Beginners? For beginners, vital crafting supplies include versatile acrylic paints, brushes, and canvases, which are affordable and support various projects. You should furthermore have basic tools like scissors, glue, and tape, important for crafting tasks. Colored paper and cardstock are cost-effective choices for numerous projects, encouraging creativity. In addition, consider beginner craft kits that provide structured guidance and required materials. Basic fabric supplies like felt and yarn are budget-friendly options for textile crafts, promoting hands-on learning. Does Dollar General Have Craft Supplies? Yes, Dollar General offers a variety of craft supplies. You can find items like wooden craft sticks, tissue paper, and foam paint brushes, often priced around one dollar each. The store likewise stocks decorative craft tape, glues, and floral foam. In addition, seasonal items can be repurposed for crafts, providing more options. Regular visits can help you discover new arrivals and seasonal discounts, enhancing your crafting experience at affordable prices. How to Declutter Your Craft Supplies? To declutter your craft supplies, start by sorting everything into clear categories like paint, fabric, and tools. Use labeled storage bins for easy access and organization. Set a schedule to review your supplies every six months, donating or discarding items you don’t use or that are damaged. Implement a “one in, one out” rule to maintain balance, and consider repurposing materials from your collection to inspire new projects during reducing clutter effectively. Does Family Dollar Have Craft Stuff? Yes, Family Dollar carries a variety of craft supplies. You’ll find crucial items like glue, scissors, construction paper, and markers, which are perfect for various projects. They likewise stock seasonal craft supplies, ideal for holiday-themed creations. Furthermore, you can discover DIY kits and basic tools suitable for both kids and adults. With prices typically ranging from $1 to $5, it’s a budget-friendly option for anyone looking to craft without overspending. Conclusion By exploring various sources for low-cost craft supplies, you can maximize your creativity as you stay within budget. Look around your home for items like toilet paper rolls and egg cartons, visit yard sales for hidden treasures, and check thrift stores for unique fabric scraps. Furthermore, dollar stores and online platforms can provide affordable necessities. With these strategies, you can gather the materials you need for your next project without overspending, ensuring you have fun during crafting. Image via Google Gemini This article, "10 Low Cost Craft Supplies for Your Next Project" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Time slows. The mind chatter quietens. Outside distractions dial down to a hum. You are at one with the task at hand. Congratulations, you’ve reached flow state. Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi coined the term to describe a state of complete immersion in an activity, one in which focus comes naturally and you’re “in the zone.” Think of the hours flying by as a painter gets lost in their art. Or when you’re juggling three browser tabs, the caffeine hits, and suddenly, your fingers start flying across the keyboard. Well, over on TikTok, a new trend has the internet sharing the hyper-specific ways they “genuinely” enter their “flow state”—the more chaotic, the better. One example: “When the iced latte, Zyn & Adderall hit at the same time and I genuinely reach flow state,” a TikTok user wrote, blinking and looking around the room with full alertness, punctuated by slurping coffee through a straw. “When I have a drink for hydration, a drink for caffeine, and a drink for fun & genuinely reach a flow state,” another wrote, triple-fisting beverages while standing in front of a laptop. Another added, “When you’re matching socks and genuinely reach flow state.” Boom. While the trend takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to the psychological phenomenon, it is a real, if elusive, feeling. Csíkszentmihályi explains that flow happens when our abilities line up just right with the task in front of us. Too easy, and we get bored. Too hard, and we get stressed. Flow occurs in the “sweet spot” where we’re both completely absorbed and able to enjoy the process. “There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback,” Csikszentmihalyi said in a 2004 TED Talk. “You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger.” Research shows that entering the flow state can boost performance in activities such as sports or music, and also improve both creativity and well-being. Csíkszentmihályi went as far as to call it “the secret to happiness,” with research showing those who regularly experience flow appear to be less susceptible to depression. With Gen Z “locking in” from now until the end of the year, now is as good a time as ever to practice getting in the zone, blocking out all distractions, and checking off some goals before 2026. Or, as one TikTok user suggested: “When I’m eating the wings and fries at the same time while also getting water and I genuinely reach flow state.” View the full article

Netflix's December lineup has a little something for everyone, from familiar original series to live sports. Emily in Paris returns for a fifth season (Dec. 18), this time set in Rome. The final installment of Stranger Things is coming at the end of the month—the first half of season five premiered in November—with volume two releasing at 5 p.m. PT on Christmas Day and the finale at 5 p.m. PT on New Year's Eve. There's also Love Is Blind: Italy (Dec. 1) and My Next Guest with David Letterman and Adam Sandler (Dec. 1), in which Letterman joins Adam Sandler backstage on his comedy tour, and What's In The Box? (Dec. 17), a new game show hosted by Neil Patrick Harris. On the film side, Daniel Craig returns as Detective Benoit Blanc in a new Knives Out mystery called Wake Up, Dead Man (Dec. 12). The standalone sequel to Glass Onion also stars Josh O'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, and Andrew Scott. Goodbye June (Dec. 24) also has a stacked cast, including Helen Mirren, Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, and Kate Winslet—the film is her directorial debut. Four siblings are dealing with their mother's nearing death over the holiday season. Finally, the live events lineup in December includes Jake vs. Joshua: Judgment Day (Dec. 19) and two Christmas Day NFL match-ups: Cowboys vs. Commanders and Lions vs. Vikings. Here's everything else coming to Netflix in December, and everything that's leaving. What's coming to Netflix in December 2025Coming soonCashero—Netflix Series Pro Bono—Netflix Series Robby Hoffman: Wake U—Netflix Comedy Special Available December 1All The Empty Rooms—Netflix Documentary CoComelon Lane: Season 6—Netflix Family Love is Blind: Italy—Netflix Series My Next Guest with David Letterman and Adam Sandler—Netflix Series Playing Gracie Darling—Netflix Series Troll 2—Netflix Film A League of Their Own As Good as It Gets Bad Teacher Big Momma's House Big Momma's House 2 Brightburn Burlesque Cheaper by the Dozen Cheaper by the Dozen 2 Christmas Break-In Downton Abbey Godzilla Hollow Man Joy for Christmas Kung Fu Panda Kung Fu Panda 2 Kung Fu Panda 3 Little Women Pulp Fiction Stripes The Ugly Truth Victoria: Seasons 1-3 What Lies Beneath The Wolf of Wall Street Zero Dark Thirty Available December 2Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches: Season 2 Matt Rife: Unwrapped - A Christmas Crowd Work Special—Netflix Comedy Special Available December 3My Secret Santa—Netflix Film The Northman Stranded with my Mother-in-Law: Season 3—Netflix Series With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration—Netflix Series Available December 4A Lot Like Christmas The Abandons—Netflix Series The Believers: Season 2—Netflix Series Forrest Gump Fugue State 1986—Netflix Series I Wish You Had Told Me—Netflix Film Lali: Time to Step Up—Netflix Documentary Mean Girls (2004) Available December 5Jay Kelly—Netflix Film Love and Wine—Netflix Film The Making of Jay Kelly—Netflix Documentary The New Yorker at 100—Netflix Documentary The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2—Netflix Film The Price of Confession—Netflix Series Owning Manhattan: Season 2—Netflix Series Available December 7Babylon Cast Away Available December 8Elmo and Mark Rober's Merry Giftmas—Netflix Family Available December 9Badly in Love—Netflix Series Blood Coast: Season 2—Netflix Series Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within—Netflix Documentary The West Wing: Seasons 1-7 Available December 10The Accident: Season 2—Netflix Series Record of Ragnarok: Season 3—Netflix Series Simon Cowell: The Next Act—Netflix Documentary Available December 11The Fakenapping—Netflix Film Had I Not Seen the Sun: Part 2—Netflix Series Lost in the Spotlight—Netflix Film Man Vs Baby—Netflix Series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft: Season 2—Netflix Series The Town—Netflix Series Available December 12The Amazing Digital Circus: Season 1: episodes 5-7 City of Shadows—Netflix Series Home for Christmas: Season 3—Netflix Series Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery—Netflix Film Available December 13The Talented Mr. Ripley Available December 14PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie Available December 15A Cowboy Christmas Romance Christmas at the Chalet The Christmas Classic Christmas on the Alpaca Farm The Creature Cases: Chapter 6—Netflix Family Available December 16Castle Rock: Seasons 1-2 Culinary Class Wars: Season 2—Netflix Series Available December 17The Manny: Season 3—Netflix Series Murder in Monaco—Netflix Documentary What's In The Box?—Netflix Series Available December 1810DANCE—Netflix Film Emily in Paris: Season 5—Netflix Series Available December 19A Time For Bravery—Netflix Film Breakdown: 1975—Netflix Documentary The Great Flood—Netflix Film Jake vs. Joshua: Judgment Day—Netflix Live Event Available December 22The Closer: Seasons 1-7 Elway—Netflix Documentary Sicily Express—Netflix Series Available December 23Eden King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch: Season 3—Netflix Series Available December 24Downton Abbey: A New Era Goodbye June—Netflix Film Tom Segura: Teacher—Netflix Comedy Special Available December 25Christmas Gameday: Cowboys vs. Commanders—Netflix Live Event Christmas Gameday: Lions vs. Vikings—Netflix Live Event Stranger Things 5: Volume 2—Netflix Series Available December 26Cover-Up—Netflix Documentary Available December 29Members Only: Palm Beach—Netflix Series Available December 30Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story—Netflix Documentary Ricky Gervais: Mortality—Netflix Comedy Special Available December 31Sleeping with Other People Stranger Things 5: The Finale—Netflix Series What's leaving Netflix in December 2025Leaving December 1Austin Powers in Goldmember Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Back to the Future Back to the Future Part II Back to the Future Part III Beverly Hills Cop Beverly Hills Cop II Beverly Hills Cop III Billy Madison Clueless Cold Pursuit The Dark Tower Downton Abbey E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Edge of Tomorrow Escape Room Game Night The Goonies The Happytime Murders Inglourious Basterds Kicking and Screaming The Nutty Professor The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps Paddington Wonka Leaving December 3How I Met Your Mother: Seasons 1-9 Leaving December 5Compliance Leaving December 7Gods of Egypt Leaving December 9Daddy's Home Daddy's Home 2 Leaving December 17Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Leaving December 18The 100: Seasons 1-7 Arrow: Seasons 1-8 Supernatural: Seasons 1-15 Leaving December 25Transformers Transformers: Age of Extinction Transformers: Dark of the Moon Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Leaving December 2910 Things I Hate About You Idiocracy Sweet Home Alabama Leaving December 30Ready Player One Leaving December 31Evil: Seasons 1-3 View the full article

With AI Max for Search now widely available in beta, advertisers are debating everything from performance comparisons to how it plays with existing keyword structures. Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin is stepping in to clarify what AI Max is — and what it isn’t. What AI Max is designed to do. AI Max aims to unlock incremental conversions or conversion value — not replace or compete with your current keyword setup. It expands reach using broad match logic and keywordless matching (think DSA-style crawling of your landing pages). It pairs that with dynamic creative optimization, including text customization and Final URL expansion, to match intent more precisely. Bottom line. If a query already matches one of your keywords, that keyword takes priority. AI Max is there to bring in net-new queries you aren’t capturing. Is this just a rebrand? Sort of — but with upgrades. AI Max bundles broad match, DSA, generated text assets, and Final URL expansion into one system. But it also adds: Ad-group-level controls (locations, brands) New search-term reporting, including which creative and landing page served And more features incoming, like text guidelines Marvin says the goal is to make these components work better together than they do separately. What to expect based on your current setup Mostly Phrase/Exact users: Expect the biggest lift. AI Max can open new search term coverage using both broader matching and keywordless capabilities. Heavy Broad Match users: Smaller expansion — you already cover much of that reach. DSA users: Less keywordless expansion, but improved performance through asset-driven signals absent in standard DSA. PMax-heavy advertisers: AI Max brings PMax-like matching to Search. Even so, Google says many PMax users still see incremental lift. Why CPA/ROAS may look different. AI Max specializes in incrementality, and incremental conversions often cost more than the “core” conversions captured by tightly curated keywords. Google’s advice – don’t compare match types in isolation — evaluate whether the total campaign is delivering more conversions or value at your target CPA/ROAS. Why we care. Advertisers are getting a Google clarification that AI Max is built to uncover incremental demand their current keyword setup can’t reach, opening the door to more conversions or revenue without overhauling existing campaigns. It consolidates broad match, DSA, and dynamic creative into a single system with better controls and reporting, making expansion more transparent and measurable. And with built-in A/B testing, advertisers can finally validate whether the lift is real — not just assumed. How to measure incremental lift. Google now offers AI Max experiments — true A/B tests that split traffic into control and treatment groups. Caveats: Brand settings and location controls aren’t supported yet in AI Max experiments. You can test those using Custom Experiments. Ignore the learning period when evaluating results. The big picture. AI Max is built to drive net-new, relevant demand your keywords don’t currently catch. To judge whether it’s working, shift your mindset from match-type comparisons to campaign-level incremental lift — more conversions or conversion value at your target efficiency. Google says more features are on the roadmap and urges advertisers to keep testing and sending feedback. Dig Deeper. Full article from Ginny Marvin. View the full article

While Redfin argues the housing market is stuck and First American was cautious, Remax and Zillow had positive observations about the month's sales activity. View the full article