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Over the past 50 years in the shoe trade, I have had my fair share of failure. The biggest lesson I learned, at the start of my career, is not to devote time and energy to a business or project that has little chance of success. This might sound obvious, however sometimes you are so involved in the detail of the day to day running of the business that you don’t stand back and question the future viability of what you are doing. I was a women’s shoe manufacturer in London in the 1980s. If I had looked at the big picture I would have seen that the future of manufacturing in the U.K. for low technology, high labor content businesses like footwear manufacturing, was unsustainable. Most of the production was moving to Asia where costs were much lower and the quality was excellent. It took a visit to Taiwan to see the same shoes being made at half the price that it was costing us in our London factory to persuade me to leave manufacturing and become an importer. My lesson is to respond quickly and try and anticipate change. Pressure on middlemen Another example is from the 2000s. I was a successful importer from Asia, a business I set up in 1986 called Browning Enterprises. It had a turnover of £60m. As communications improved and markets opened, more Chinese manufacturers and trading companies came directly to the major U.K. retailers, putting pressure on the margins of the middlemen, like me. Our costs were too high. We couldn’t compete. The import company struggled on till 2009. It was the decline in the importing business and the desire to start my own brand that led to me to launch Dune in 1992. Temper your optimism Another failure was opening unprofitable stores. This is an expensive mistake as the £400k investment is written off when the store is closed. The failure is usually due to overestimating the level of sales. The costs of a new store are easily calculated. The big variable, that is largely a matter of judgement, is the sales number. Of course you do your due diligence by looking at footfall figures, studying demographics, and talking to adjacent stores to try and judge their performance. Finally, you come to a sales number. The lesson is to be cautious about the level of sales. Look carefully at the possible downsides. As an entrepreneur your natural tendency is to be optimistic. You must temper this optimism. Resist the temptation to open the shop because you want to grow. It has got to make commercial sense. As an entrepreneur it is easy to get distracted and sidetracked into ventures that are not related to your area of expertise. This loss of focus can be damaging, as not only is there a high probability that the new venture is unprofitable and you will lose money, but it also takes your attention away from your main activity. Not special My career has been in fashion footwear. That’s what I know. However, during the pandemic, I launched a sustainable trainer brand. I felt that was where the growth was in footwear, so that’s where I needed to be. It was a failure. Why? Two reasons. Firstly, it wasn’t special enough. It was a good, well-made sustainable product but in a crowded market it didn’t have an important point of difference that would make it stand out. Secondly, we didn’t go out and aggressively sell the product. I thought I would generate the online sales through the website. This was a mistake. We needed to sell wholesale as well, not only to generate sales but to get the brand out there in the market. There are two important lessons for entrepreneurs here. One: Don’t underestimate the marketing cost of selling a new brand online. Two: You may have a great product, but it is essential that you get out there and sell. It is no coincidence that over the years the sales team has been the highest earners in the business. Avoid distraction We launched a range of children’s shoes. This was related to our main activity, but as we found to our cost, the market is very different from adult’s shoes. As we didn’t have the space in our stores to offer the range we focussed on online and wholesale. Selling a new brand of children’s shoes online was more difficult than we anticipated. Mothers like to buy their kids’ shoes in a physical store. In addition, the market was polarized between the established heritage brands, Clarks and Startrite, and the large stores like Next, Marks & Spencer, and Zara, who were offering similar shoes at lower prices. The lesson is clear. Resist the temptation to get distracted unless you are very confident that the new venture is financially compelling. The right team Finally, having the right team in place is essential. As an entrepreneur there is a danger that you are reluctant to give up control. It is essential to recognize the limitations of your abilities and hire a team that can do things better than you. The importance of building the right team came into sharp focus in 2009 when we acquired a company called Shoe Studio and trebled our size. A year after the acquisition we started to struggle. Our profits fell. We didn’t have the management expertise to run a larger business. My skills and time were being stretched to the limit. We employed a first-class FD and a team of senior experienced retailers which transformed the business. It is a well-known expression that you learn more from your failures than your successes. That is certainly my experience. And if the project is failing, then fail fast. View the full article

When OpenAI launched its text-to-video app Sora in September, there was immediate blowback. To absolutely no one’s surprise, users on the platform had a field day using popular characters in their AI-generated videos, in all sorts of—admittedly creative!—situations. (See OpenAI founder Sam Altman grilling Nintendo’s Pikachu.) Brands condemned the use of their intellectual property without permission. The Motion Picture Academy called out OpenAI for its blatant copyright violations. Soon after launch, Altman wrote a blog post addressing the issue, stating that Sora would give rightsholders “more granular control” of their IP on the app, adding that in the near future he expected that plenty of brands and content makers would actually welcome the chance to have their characters on the app. He called it a new form of “interactive fan fiction.” Well, that day is here. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI has opened the floodgates and is now in talks with brands about how they can bring their mascots and characters into the app for users to feature in videos. It’s obvious why OpenAI wants brands to free their mascots. People would love to play in that sandbox with well-known characters. Hell, they’re already doing it. But, um, what’s in it for the brands? Most brands are still trying to figure out what their mascot stance on Sora will be. I reached out to McDonald’s, Geico, KFC, and General Mills but none were ready to comment about it on the record. This is a newer, more urgent version of a conversation brands have been having for the past 15 years. In the age of social media, how much creative control should a brand cede to its audience? Now the stakes are even higher, given the pace of technological advancement, the public’s appetite to get AI sloppy, and our inability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t. “Sharing the pen” For what seems like centuries, the conversation between brands and everyone else was a one-way street. Advertising flashed in our eyes and blasted in our ears, and that was that. With social media, a two-way conversation began. The mantra among marketers circa 2008 was to get involved in the social conversation because people are talking about your brand whether you’re there or not. In the past few years, that has evolved even further to brands actually collaborating with fans and creators. Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s global chief marketing officer, calls this “sharing the pen.” Historically, most brands are nervous or overprotective when they aren’t in full control of the creative. McDonald’s was prime among them, vigilantly protecting its IP. In 2013, it won a federal case on trademark infringement in Canada against a dim sum restaurant called MacDimsum. In 2019, it sent a cease-and-desist order to a small Edmonton restaurant serving an “Effing Filet O’ Fish.” But the success of Famous Orders, a campaign launched in 2020 where it began regularly partnering with artists to customize meals and create merch, changed things. Allowing artists like Travis Scott, BTS, and Cactus Plant Flea Market to play with its brand logos and characters, and the passionate response from fans—along with the sold-out merch and boosted sales—gave Flatley and the brand more confidence to loosen the reins. The win for McDonald’s was in reflecting its role in culture (the artists are genuine fans) while creating something new. “I’ve become a big believer that if we lean into the right kind of creators in the right cultural phenomenon, and loosen some of our control on the brand, magic will happen,” Flatley told me back in 2023 when we talked about the brand’s partnership with Marvel. “A few years ago, I don’t know that we would have felt as comfortable handing over key aspects of our brand to be part of a storyline like this, but today we’re really aware of the authenticity of our brand and the role that it can play.” Alyson Griffin, State Farm’s head of marketing, told me recently that the key to a successful partnership with creators is to be prepared to give up some control. Brand leaders must do their due diligence and vet any potential partner, but then they must let them cook. “If you know you have the right person, because you vetted them to your brand needs, let them be them,” Griffin said. “Let them create, because then it looks and is authentic.” According to marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Sora was downloaded 3.8 million times in the U.S. in its first month, despite only being available on iOS with an invite code. It was the No. 4 app in the U.S. over that same time. In a world where brands and marketers are looking for any and every opportunity to gain our attention, the temptation here is clear. Handing over your brand IP to the Sora 2 slop factory, however, is a recipe for disaster. Character chaos Brand mascots have been a staple of advertising for more than 100 years. They’re used to hawk everything from kids’ cereal to batteries, cigarettes to insurance, and they continue to be a valuable way for brands to forge an emotional connection with people. Take the insurance industry, which has a huge roster of mascots that aim to make their brands more relatable: Jake from State Farm, the Geico gecko, Flo from Progressive, Mayhem for Allstate, Liberty Mutual’s LiMu Emu (and Doug), and the Aflac Duck. A 2021 study reported that a long-term campaign featuring a recurring character will, on average, increase market share gain by 41%. The Grimace Shake helped McDonald’s boost U.S. sales by 10.3% in 2023. When I was in journalism school 20 years ago, we got an assignment to practice what’s called a survey article. Basically, you pick a topic and go ask a bunch of people the same question, then see what story angle emerges from their answer. I chose to visit as many tattoo artists as I could in an afternoon and ask them all “What’s the craziest tattoo you’ve ever done?” I’ll never forget the clear winner. When I asked the question, this artist’s eyes lit up, and he rushed to find a specific binder on his shelf. He frantically flipped through the photos and flash designs until he found it. “There!” He pointed to a photo of a man’s meaty calf featuring a very detailed and anatomically correct depiction of all the characters from Winnie-the-Pooh on a picnic blanket—having an orgy. That story taught me that some people will do anything for attention (and that I would never sing the Tigger song ever, ever again). Now that’s playing out in real time on Sora, with the app granting anyone’s weirdest visual wish. Remember the public discourse when M&M’s talked about making the green M&M “less sexy”? If Mars put its beloved characters on Sora 2, the brand is one quick prompt away from someone making Behind the Green (M&M) Door. You think that Duolingo owl is weird now? Just wait. Kevin Mulroy, founding partner and ECD at award-winning ad agency Mischief, says the upside for brands to surrender rights to their IP on Sora is still unclear. “Without much narrative control, and no clear link back to a strategy, it’s highly unlikely everyday people are going to use these mascots in the way these brands intend,” he says. Strategy vs. Slop The risk here is not just about brand mascots appearing in questionable content. It’s also the trade-off between the idea of facilitating people’s creativity versus brands being complicit in the sloppification of culture by allowing their mascots to be used on Sora. Prediction market Kalshi made a viral splash during last spring’s NBA playoffs with an absolutely hilarious and unhinged AI-generated spot (see above) that cost just $2,000 to make. Then in September, Jake Paul tricked folks with AI videos of himself in strange situations, later revealing that it was all a marketing stunt for Sora 2 (the spot attracted about 1 billion views in six days). Whenever new tech hits the market, the initial stunts get a ton of attention as these illustrate. But then what? “No doubt whichever brands are first to experiment will benefit from a bump in cultural awareness, as we’ve seen with Jake Paul’s likeness,” Mulroy admits. “But at what cost? In a world where it has never been easier for a brand to say something, the true value is in figuring out what it is the brand should say. The latter won’t come from rogue AI content.” Eventually every marketer will have to decide the value exchange in joining the Sora party. As Mulroy says, the key is making sure there’s an actual strategy behind it. If not, all that mascot’s brand value could end up getting f***ked on a picnic blanket. View the full article

I love FM radio. It’s okay: You can call me a Luddite. My alarm clock is the local public radio station. I love toggling between a few music stations while driving, or even while reading at home. And during a road trip, there’s nothing quite like discovering a community station with random locals curating their own playlists—it gives you a sense of where you are that no Spotify playlist can match. The problem: It’s hard to know what stations exist locally, even in your own town but particularly while on a road trip. You can explore the dial, which has a certain serendipity, but what if you just want to . . . know? And be able to tune in with or without an actual traditional radio in front of you? This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! Old-school listening with a modern twist This exact problem is why I like Radio Locator​. It’s a free website that lets you enter any city or zip code and find all the terrestrial stations that are available for that area. ➜ It’ll show you a list of every FM and AM station in any U.S. city or zip code. You can also browse international radio stations by country. ⌚ And it all takes just a few seconds to do. This is a rare service that isn’t cluttered with ads or upselling. Just open the site, type a place, and you’ll see a list. Stations are sorted by frequency, but you’ll also see the call sign, the distance to the tower, and what format of radio station is offered. (I’m personally always looking for public radio or alternative stations, but you can figure out what you want for yourself.) 📲 Of course, all of this only applies if you’ve got an actual-factual FM radio on your hands. What if you’re more of a computer-and-phone kind of person? Easy: Just click through on any of the stations on Radio Locator, and they’ll generally take you to a website where you can stream the station. 💡 Or, if you prefer a dedicated tool for the job, there’s ​Streema​. It’s a free site that makes it easy to search for and stream just about any radio station imaginable, anywhere in the world. A few stations redirect to websites—best I can tell for legal reasons—but the overwhelming majority of the time, you can just search for a website and start listening. Either way, you can find and listen to old-fashioned radio stations anytime. Again: I recommend finding public and community stations, as those tend not to have ads, but take the time to explore. It’s nice to get away from the algorithm sometimes. You can open Radio Locator​ and ​Streema​ directly in your web browser on any device. Streema also offers an app called Simple Radio for both ​Android​ and ​iOS,​ if you’d rather go that route. Radio Locator and Streema are both free in the browser. Simple Radio is free with on-screen ads or you can get an ad-free version for $6 a month. Neither site requires a login or any real personal data, but you can opt to share your location—if you want. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletter—starting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app that’ll tune up your days in truly delightful ways. View the full article

“You really have to stand up for yourself.” That’s the message Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran sent loud and clear in a recent interview she gave LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. The interview is full of powerful lessons from Corcoran’s life, but one story stood head and shoulders above the rest: The time Shark Tank fired her, before she taped a single episode. Corcoran said she received a call from a woman asking her to be on a new show called Shark Tank. Ecstatic, Corcoran agreed. She immediately went on a shopping spree, buying new outfits and autograph-signing materials. “I’m going to Hollywood!” she excitedly told her friends. Then, Corcoran got a dreadful phone call telling her “they changed their mind” and had decided to give her seat to another woman. “I just couldn’t believe it,” said Corcoran. “It was the equivalent of [my ex-boyfriend] telling me he was marrying my secretary.” After hanging up the phone, Corcoran says she was “crestfallen.” But after taking a minute to feel sorry for herself, she took matters into her own hands. Corcoran wrote an email directly to Shark Tank creator, Mark Burnett. “Dear Mark, I consider your rejection a lucky charm,” Corcoran says. “Everything good happens to me after I get rejected.” Corcoran then detailed multiple stories as evidence, including the time Donald The President told her she’d never collect a penny of her $4 million commission, after which Corcoran says she sued The President and got every penny. Corcoran says she ended the email like this: “I expect to be on that plane on Tuesday. And I hope you let me compete for the seat.” Shortly thereafter, Burnett’s secretary wrote Corcoran telling her she would have the chance to compete for the seat. The rest is history. Corcoran’s actions teach a powerful lesson in emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage emotions effectively. Let’s break down three valuable takeaways from Corcoran’s story and see how you can apply them to your own business. (If you find value in this lesson, you might be interested in my free emotional intelligence course, which provides a new tip for building emotional intelligence every day for a week.) Don’t dwell on negative emotions Corcoran credits her employees for teaching her a lesson that helped her at this crucial moment. “I learned from my salespeople over the years that the greatest salespeople [spend] less time feeling sorry for themselves,” Corcoran said. “They take the hits like everybody else but they don’t give themselves much time.” “I mimic them in my own personality. And I really credit their example [for] what I did to Mark Burnett.” It’s not just effective salespeople. Everyone experiences failure. Everyone has bad moments. But instead of dwelling on negative emotions, emotionally intelligent people have the ability to process them and move on. As it’s been said: You may not be able to stop a bird from landing on your head, but you can keep it from building a nest. Use negative experiences as motivation Instead of throwing herself a pity party, Corcoran used Burnett’s rejection as motivation. She then channeled those feelings and emotions into her email. It worked. Not only did Corcoran motivate herself, her quick action, confidence, and masterful storytelling convinced Burnett to change course and give her a shot. Corcoran says she learned that lesson when her ex-husband told her he was leaving her for her secretary. Consequently, Corcoran split the business she ran with her ex in half, and he told her she’d never succeed without him. “When he gave me that curse leaving, I’ll tell you, I knew I was going to be successful,” Cocoran said. “Just to prove him wrong.” Negative emotions can be useful if you learn how to harness them. But to do that, you have to consciously decide what you’re going to do with them. Be like Corcoran and use negative emotions as a catalyst for positive action. Focus on what you can control Corcoran realized she couldn’t force Burnett to change his mind. But she could stand up for herself, which would prove beneficial for her mental state. And by getting on that plane and showing up, Corcoran gave herself every opportunity to get on Shark Tank. This teaches a final powerful lesson: You can’t waste time on things you can’t control. But you can focus on what you can control and take action accordingly. Dealing with a customer who refused to pay an invoice? Offer them a compelling reason to pay. Got an employee who’s lost their drive? Give them a listening ear and think of how you can support them. The key is to ask yourself: What can I do to make this situation better? So, the next time you’re frustrated by someone else’s actions, take a page out of Barbara Corcoran’s playbook and: Don’t dwell on negative emotions. Use the experience as motivation. Focus on what you can control. In doing so, you’ll turn a negative into a positive, make emotions work for you, and experience positive results in the process. —Justin Bariso This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

Two months ago, Apple released iOS 26 for the iPhone. The new operating system includes several productivity and other enhancements, but the main feature is a new design language called Liquid Glass. The flat, minimalist look of iOS that lasted for more than a decade is gone, replaced by a transparent interface of toolbars and buttons that mimic how light bends and warps as it passes through glass. Those who appreciate the new look of iOS often praise Liquid Glass as refreshing and unique, saying it gives the iPhone’s software a sense of fluidity that other touch interfaces lack. Others argue that Liquid Glass’s transparent elements make the device harder to use, as the content behind iOS 26’s buttons and toolbars often obscures the symbols or text that label the interface elements. If you fall into the latter group, there’s some good news. Apple is increasingly providing options to tone down the most controversial aspects of the Liquid Glass design. Here they are: Option #1: Turn on the tint This week, Apple released its first major update to iOS 26: iOS 26.1. This update fixed numerous bugs while also adding new features; it expanded Apple Intelligence and AirPods Live Translation features to new countries, added new swipe controls to the Music app, and overhauled the alarm clock interface so you don’t accidentally tap “snooze” and miss your meeting. But as Fast Company previously reported, iOS 26.1’s best new feature is a toggle that lets users tone down Liquid Glass’s design. It does this by allowing users to choose between two different Liquid Glass interfaces. The “Clear” interface is the default Liquid Glass, with interface element transparency at a maximum. The “Tinted” interface option reduces this default transparency to give Liquid Glass elements a more frosted look. This can greatly improve the readability of button and toolbar labels by increasing their contrast. Turning on the Liquid Glass tint is easy, as long as you have iOS 26.1 installed on your iPhone: Open the Settings app. Tap Display and Brightness. Tap Liquid Glass. Tap the “Tinted” option. As you can see from the screenshots above, the “tinted” Liquid Glass option brings a frosted look (right) to the default transparency (left). Option #2: Increase the contrast If you’re still on iOS 26.0 or just want to eliminate the default look of Liquid Glass even more on your iPhone that’s running iOS 26.1, you can tone down Liquid Glass in three other ways. . The first is by enabling the “Increase Contrast” Accessibility option on your iPhone. This feature is designed for users with sight issues, but anyone can enable it, and many have found that doing so makes Liquid Glass more palatable. As Apple notes, enabling this setting helps “Increase color contrast between app foreground and background colors.” Here’s how you turn it on: Open the Settings app. Tap Accessibility. Tap Display & Text Size. Toggle the “Increase Contrast” switch to ON (green). As you can see in the screenshots above, enabling the “Increase Contrast” option (right) adds a slight outline around interface borders and adds a grey smokiness to transparent elements, which makes text and buttons easier to see than they are in the default Liquid Glass design (left). Option #3: Reduce the transparency A third way to tone down Liquid Glass is to enable another Accessibility option on your iPhone called “Reduce Transparency.” This option tones Liquid Glass down even further than the “Increase Contrast” option, greatly reducing its transparency. As Apple notes, this option helps “Improve contrast by reducing transparency and blurs on some backgrounds to increase legibility.” To enable the setting: Open the Settings app. Tap Accessibility. Tap Display & Text Size. Toggle the “Reduce Transparency” switch to ON (green). As you can see in the screenshot above, enabling the “Reduce Transparency” option (right) virtually blocks any background content from bleeding through buttons and toolbar elements. Option #4: Outline buttons for easier visibility A final way to tone down Liquid Glass is to force iOS 26.1 to show borders around buttons and other UI elements. This is done via the “Show Borders” Accessibility option. This option forces outlines to appear around “prominent UI,” according to Apple’s iOS 26.1 notes. To enable the setting: Open the Settings app. Tap Accessibility. Tap Display & Text Size. Toggle the “Show Borders” switch to ON (green). As you can see in the screenshot above, enabling this option displays a thin outline around buttons and other UI elements, helping them stand out more on your screen. Liquid Glass isn’t going away The new look of iOS 26 isn’t temporary—nor should it be. While there have been some vocal detractors to the new design, a large majority of iPhone users seem to love the refreshed look. After Apple spent years developing that new design, there’s no way they would go back to the old one. But Apple’s addition of a new “tint” option for Liquid Glass via a dedicated control in the iOS 26.1 Settings app shows that the company is listening to feedback from all its users and is not averse to giving individuals more control over how Liquid Glass looks to them. So, while you may not be able to turn off Liquid Glass, you now at least have three ways to tone it down. View the full article

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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Microsoft Surface Book 3 isn't the newest model on the market, but it's one of the few laptops that can serve as both a tablet and a creative workstation, which helps explain why it initially launched at nearly $1,700. Currently, StackSocial is offering the 15-inch 2020 Surface Book 3 on sale for $929.99, equipped with 32GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage, or on sale for $999.99 for the 1TB version. The smaller 13.5-inch models are also available, priced between $699.99 and $799.99. Each one is refurbished to Grade A condition, meaning it looks nearly new, has undergone thorough testing, and comes with a one-year warranty. Even today, the Surface Book 3 remains a standout in real-world use. The combination of a 10th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 graphics still handles most creative workloads—such as photo editing, video projects, or even casual gaming—with minimal slowdown. The 15-inch PixelSense touchscreen is crisp and color-rich, supporting both touch and stylus input, making it ideal for sketching or taking handwritten notes. The screen detaches completely, transforming it into a tablet or studio-style canvas when needed. That flexibility is where the Surface Book line really shines, especially for individuals who frequently switch between productivity, design, and entertainment. The 32GB of RAM and 512GB or 1TB SSD options make it easy to run multiple apps or store large projects, and the battery life still impressively stretches close to 15 hours under normal use. Of course, this is still a 2020 model, so there are trade-offs: The design isn’t as slim as newer Surface devices, and the webcam is limited to 720p. Also, it ships with Windows 10, but is fully upgradeable to Windows 11. For anyone who values flexibility in their setup (something that works as a full laptop one minute and a sketching tablet the next), the Surface Book 3 offers plenty of value at its refurbished price. Microsoft Surface Book 3 (2020) 15" 512GB ($929) Microsoft Surface Book 3 (2020) 15" 1TB ($999) Microsoft Surface Book 3 (2020) 13.5" 512 GB ($699) Microsoft Surface Book 3 (2020) 13.5" 1TB ($799) Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Wireless Earbuds — $119.00 (List Price $129.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $299.00 (List Price $349.00) Shark AI Ultra Matrix Clean Mapping Voice Control Robot Vacuum with XL Self-Empty Base — $299.99 (List Price $599.00) Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Plus — $24.99 (List Price $49.99) Google Pixel 10 Pro 128GB Unlocked Phone (Obsidian) — $749.00 (List Price $999.00) Amazon Fire HD 10 (2023) — $69.99 (List Price $139.99) Google Nest Cam Indoor (Wired, 3rd Gen) - Security Camera with 2K Video and Gemini, Night Vision, 2-Way Audio, Works with Google Home - 2025 Model - Snow — $74.99 (List Price $99.99) Sony WH-1000XM5 — $328.00 (List Price $399.99) Fitbit Versa 4 Fitness Smartwatch (Black) — $119.95 (List Price $199.95) Blink Outdoor 4 1080p Wireless Security Camera (5-Pack) — $159.99 (List Price $399.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: Nobody’s Girl, by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. It’s an account of the author’s abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (including abuse that simply took another form after she escaped them), and it’s absolutely harrowing. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. The post weekend open thread – November 8-9, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

Traditional stakeholder management methods are becoming obsolete. AI presents a future of personalized, efficient, and competitive stakeholder interactions. This article provides strategic insights and playbooks for executives aiming to leverage AI for a distinct advantage. The post AI in Stakeholder Management: How AI Is Shaping the Future of Project Delivery appeared first on The Digital Project Manager. View the full article

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Defence secretary announces measures to increase competition for Pentagon contractsView the full article

If your business depends on local traffic, this audit checklist highlights where to focus for stronger visibility in both organic and AI search. The post How To Do A Complete Local SEO Audit: 11-Point Checklist appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Now that Halloween has come and gone, you might have wrongly assumed that candy season is over. Not if the Hershey Company anything to say about it. In fact, the sweets are just getting started. On its first-annual holiday virtual preview this week, the confectionary company revealed four exciting new products and explained how the company is stocked and ready to make the hectic holiday season even sweeter. Here’s what to know: What new items does Hershey have up its sleeve? Hershey announced four new treats that will hit shelves this holiday season: Hershey’s Kisses Snickerdoodle Cookie Candy Kit Kat Peppermint Stick Reese’s Mini Trees Hershey’s Grinch Milk Chocolate Bar After extensive market research, Hershey discovered that a resounding 76% of people stated they would purchase a snickerdoodle-flavored option, and Hersey is obliging with new snickerdoodle Kisses. It’s the perfect topping for a cookie and there’s even a recipe right on the packaging. The gold wrapper also looks delightful in a candy dish. Research also showed that mint is a popular flavor during the winter months. To capitalize on that trend, Kit Kat bars now have a peppermint version. These come in snack size, normal size, and king size to appease all hunger magnitudes. Meanwhile, the classic Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars are continuing their partnership with the Grinch, Dr. Seuss’s iconic Christmas hater. Popular characters such as Cindy Lou Who, Max, and the big-hearted green guy himself are molding into the chocolate making it extra festive. Cheerful shapes are also here to stay. Reese’s Peanut Butter Trees, now available in a mini version, are a perfect tree trimming snack. How Hershey became a confectionary powerhouse These days, the name Hershey is almost synonymous with chocolate bars but the company actually started with caramel. In 1886, Milton S. Hershey founded the Lancaster Caramel Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. After attending the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Hershey fell in love with chocolate and created the Hershey Chocolate Company as a subsidiary of his original company. In 1900, he would sell the Lancaster Caramel Company but retain the chocolate side of the business. That same year, the first Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars were sold in an effort to make the confection affordable to the average person. Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses would make their debut seven years later. In 1925, the Goodbar was introduced, and in 1963 Hershey acquired H.B. Reese Candy Company. The Hershey Company today is the parent company for over 100 brands, including Jolly Rancher, Rolos, and SkinnyPop. With a market cap of roughly $34 billion, the company reported net sales of $11.2 billion last year. And it’s not just about sweet treats. Hershey’s salty snacks unit in North America grew 10% in the third quarter of this year, generating $321 million. It’s never too early Hershey’s is ready for the big holiday shopping rush. In the preview event, the company explained that customers shop early because they are planning ahead, want a little treat for themselves, and don’t want to miss out on limited-edition items. So if you were worried about missing the Halloween season, consider holiday sweets as just as satisfying. And as an added bonus, you get to create traditions around the confections that don’t require anything scary. Savor the sweetness of the season with Hershey’s many merry offerings. View the full article

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity: these are the new operating environments. Your content must be invokable inside them, or no one will see it. At SMX Advanced, I broke down how to build an AI visibility engine: a system for making your net-new facts reusable by humans and agents across synthesis-first platforms. It goes beyond publishing to show how teams can deploy structured content that survives LLM compression and shows up for buyers during their purchasing decisions. It’s what we’re building with clients and inside XOFU, our LLM visibility GPT. Here’s how it works. Find the FLUQs (Friction-Inducing Latent Unasked Questions) Friction-Inducing Latent Unasked Questions are the unasked questions your audience doesn’t know about. But if left unanswered, they can derail the entire buying process. Costing you existing and future customers. FLUQs live in the gap between what’s known and what’s required, often right where AI hallucinates or buyers hesitate. That’s the zone we’re scanning now. We explored this with a client that’s a prominent competitor in the online education space. They had the standard FAQs: tuition, payment plans, and eligibility. But we hypothesized that there were numerous unknown unknowns that, when discovered, could negatively impact new students. We believed this would negatively impact existing and future enrollments. Mid-career students going back to school weren’t asking: Who watches the kids while I study for the next 18 months? Who takes on extra shifts at work? How do I discuss schedule flexibility with my boss? These aren’t theoretical questions. They’re real decision-blockers that don’t reveal themselves until later in the buying cycle or after the purchase. And they’re invisible to traditional SEO. There’s no search volume for “How do I renegotiate domestic labor before grad school?” That doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. It means the system doesn’t recognize it yet. You have to surface it. These are the FLUQs. And by solving them, you give your audience foresight, build trust, and strengthen their buying decision. That’s the yield. You’re saving them cognitive, emotional, reputational, and time costs, particularly in last-minute crisis response. And you’re helping them succeed before the failure point shows up. At least, this was our hypothesis before we ran the survey. Where FLUQs hide (and how to extract them) You go where the problems live. Customer service logs, Reddit threads, support tickets, on-site reviews, even your existing FAQs, you dig anywhere friction shows up and gets repeated. You also need to examine how AI responds to your ICP’s prompts: What’s being overgeneralized? Where are the hallucinations happening? (This is difficult to do without a framework, which is what we’re building out with XOFU.) You have to be hungry for the information gaps. That’s your job now. You aren’t optimizing content for keywords anymore. This ain’t Kansas. We’re in Milwaukee at a cheese curd museum, mad that we didn’t bring a tote bag to carry 5 pounds of samples. You’re scanning for information your audience needs but doesn’t know they’re missing If you’re not finding that, you’re not building visibility. You’re just hoping someone stumbles into your blog post before the LLM does. And the chances of that happening are growing smaller every day. There are four questions we ask to identify FLUQs: What’s not being asked by your ICP that directly impacts their success? Whose voice or stake is missing across reviews, forums, and existing content? Which prompts trigger the model to hallucinate or flatten nuance? What’s missing in the AI-cited resources that show up for your ICP’s bottom-funnel queries? That last one’s big. Often, you can pull citations from ChatGPT for your category right now. That becomes your link building list. That’s where you knock. Bring those publishers new facts and information. Get cited. Maybe you pay. Maybe you guest post. Whatever it takes, you show up where your ICP’s prompts pull citations. This is what link building looks like now. We’re beyond PageRank. We’re trying to gain visibility in the synthesis layer. And if you’re not on the list, you ain’t in the conversation. Prove FLUQs matter with facts (FRFYs) Once you’ve spotted a FLUQ, your next move is to test it. Don’t just assume it’s real because it sounds plausible. Turn it into a fact. That’s where FRFYs come in: FLUQ Resolution Foresight Yield. When you resolve a FLUQ, you’re filling a gap and giving your audience foresight. You’re sparing them cognitive, emotional, reputational, and temporal costs. Especially during a last-minute crisis response. You’re saving their butts in the future by giving them clarity now. For our client in online education, we had a hypothesis: prospective students believe that getting admitted means their stakeholders (their partners, bosses, coworkers) will automatically support them. We didn’t know if that was true. So we tested it. We surveyed 500 students. We conducted one-on-one interviews with an additional 24 participants. And we found that students who pre-negotiated with their stakeholders had measurably better success rates. Now we have a fact. A net-new fact. This is a knowledge fragment that survives synthesis. Something a model can cite. Something a prospective student or AI assistant can reuse. We’re way beyond the SEO approach of generating summaries and trying to rank. We have to mint new information that’s grounded in data. That’s what makes it reusable (not just plausible). Without that, you’re sharing obvious insights and guesses. LLMs may pull that, but they often won’t cite it. So your brand stays invisible. Structure knowledge that survives AI compression Now that you’ve got a net-new fact, the question is: how do you make it reusable? You structure it with EchoBlocks. You turn it into a fragment that survives compression, synthesis, and being yanked into a Gemini answer box without context. That means you stop thinking in paragraphs and start thinking in what we call EchoBlocks. EchoBlocks are formats designed for reuse. They’re traceable. They’re concise. They carry causal logic. And they help you know whether the model actually used your information. My favorite is the causal triplet. Subject, predicate, object. For example: Subject: Mid-career students Predicate: Often disengage Object: Without pre-enrollment stakeholder negotiation Then you wrap it in a known format: an FAQ, a checklist, a guide. This needs to be something LLMs can parse and reuse. The goal is survivability, not elegance. That’s when it becomes usable – when it can show up inside someone else’s system. Structure is what transforms facts into signals. Without it, your facts vanish. Where to publish so AI reuses your content We think about three surface types: controlled, collaborative, and emergent: Controlled means you own it. Your glossary. Help docs. Product pages. Anywhere you can add a triplet, a checklist, or a causal chain. That’s where you emit. Structure matters. Collaborative is where you publish with someone else. Co-branded reports. Guest posts. Even Reddit or LinkedIn, if your ICP is there. You can still structure and EchoBlock it. Emergent is where it gets harder. It’s ChatGPT. Gemini. Perplexity. You’re showing up in somebody else’s system. These aren’t websites. These are operating environments. Agentic layers. And your content (brand) has to survive synthesis. That means your fragment – whatever it is – has to be callable. It has to make sense in someone else’s planner and query. If your content can’t survive compression, it’s less likely to be reused or cited, and that’s where visibility disappears. That’s why we EchoBlock and create triplets. The focus is on getting your content reused in LLMs. Note: Tracking reuse is challenging as tools and tech are new. But we’re building this out with XOFU. You can drop your URL into the tool and analyze your reuse. Test if your content survives AI: 5 steps Do this right now: 1. Find a high-traffic page. Start with a page that already draws attention. This is your testing ground. 2. Scan for friction-inducing fact gaps. Use the FLUQs-finder prompting sequence to locate missing but mission-critical facts: Your proposed prompt structure is deeply practitioner-aware and already aligned with SL11.0 and SL07 protocol logic. Here’s a synthesis-driven refinement for role-coherence and FLUQ-sensitivity: Refined prompts with emission-ready framing Input type 1: Known materials Prompt: “Given this [FAQ / page], and my ICP is <insert ICP>, what are the latent practitioner-relevant questions they are unlikely to know to ask — but that critically determine their ability to succeed with our solution? Can you group them by role, phase of use, or symbolic misunderstanding?” Input type 2: Ambient signal Prompt: “My ICP is <insert ICP>. Based on this customer review set / forum thread, what FLUQs are likely present? What misunderstandings, fears, or misaligned expectations are they carrying into their attempt to succeed — that our product must account for, even if never voiced?” Optional add-on: “Flag any FLUQs likely to generate symbolic drift, role misfires, or narrative friction if not resolved early.” Drop it into this PARSE GPT. Sources include: Reviews and forum threads. Customer service logs. Sales and implementation team conversations. 3. Locate and answer one unasked but high-stakes question Focus on what your ICP doesn’t know they need to ask, especially if it blocks success. 4. Format your answer as a causal triplet, FAQ, or checklist These structures improve survivability and reuse inside LLM environments. 5. Publish and monitor what fragments get picked up Watch for reuse in RAG pipelines, overview summaries, or agentic workflows. The day Google quietly buried SEO We were in Room B43, just off the main stage at Google I/O. A small group of us – mostly long-time SEOs – had just watched the keynote where Google rolled out AI Mode (it’s “replacement” for AI Overviews). We were invited to a closed-door session with Danny Sullivan and a search engineer. It was a weird moment. You could feel it. The tension. The panic behind the questions. “If I rank #1, why am I still showing up on page 2?” “What’s the point of optimizing if I just get synthesized into oblivion?” “Where are my 10 blue links?” Nobody said that last one out loud, but it hung in the air. Google’s answer? Make non-commoditized content. Give us new data. Ground AI Mode in fact. No mention of attribution. No guarantees of traffic. No way to know if your insights were even being used. Just… keep publishing. Hope for a citation. Expect nothing back. That was the moment I knew the old playbook was done. Synthesis is the new front page. If your content can’t survive that layer, it’s invisible. Appendix 1. Content Metabolic Efficiency Index (useful content theory) View the full article