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Show that you value your clients – and yourself. By Martin Bissett Business Development on a Budget Go PRO for members-only access to more Martin Bissett. View the full article

Apple shareholders on Tuesday are expected to reject an attempt to pressure the technology trendsetter into scrapping its corporate programs designed to diversify its workforce. The proposal drafted by the National Center for Public Policy Research — a self-described conservative think tank — urges Apple to follow a litany of high-profile companies that have retreated from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives currently in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump. It comes a month after the same group presented a similar proposal during Costco’s annual meeting, only to have it overwhelmingly rejected. A similar outcome is expected during Apple’s annual meeting despite the strident objections of critics. Just as Costco does, Apple has steadfastly stood behind diversity and inclusion efforts that its management contends good business sense. But the National Center for Public Policy Research’s proposal has attacked Apple’s diversity commitments for being out of line with recent court rulings and said the programs expose the Cupertino, California, company to an onslaught of potential lawsuits for alleged discrimination. The group estimated about 50,000 Apple employees could file cases against Apple without detailing how it arrived at that figure. “It’s clear that DEI poses litigation, reputational and financial risks to companies, and therefore financial risks to their shareholders, and therefore further risks to companies for not abiding by their fiduciary duties,” the National Center for Public Policy Research says in its proposal. The specter of potential legal trouble was magnified last week when Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a federal lawsuit against Target alleging the retailer’s recently scaled-back DEI program alienated many consumers and undercut sales to the detriment of shareholders. In its rebuttal to the anti-DEI proposal, Apple said its program is an integral part of a culture that has helped elevate the company to its current market value of $3.7 trillion — greater than any other business in the world. “We believe that how we conduct ourselves is as critical to Apple’s success as making the best products in the world,” the company said in its statement against the proposal. “We seek to conduct business ethically, honestly, and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations.” In its last diversity and inclusion report issued in 2022, Apple disclosed nearly that three-fourths of its global workforce consisted of white and Asian employees. Nearly two-thirds of its employees at that juncture were men. Other major technology companies for years have reported employing mostly white and Asian men, especially in high-paid engineering jobs — a tendency that spurred the industry to pursue what have been largely unsuccessful efforts to diversify. —Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer View the full article

AI chatbots – are they killing search or just changing the game? Kevin Indig analyzed 14 studies on their impact and how businesses can adapt. The post The State Of AI Chatbots And SEO appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

French president to be followed by British PM in seeking support for US ‘backstop’ in postwar UkraineView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Before this review, I had never heard of Brane, but now, it's all I want to hear when I play my music. The Brane X is many things, but cheap isn't one of them. But for $499, you get a multi-use premium speaker that can handle itself underwater, has Alexa voice assistant, connects through wifi for better audio, has the best bass of any wifi speaker, and can be used as a soundbar and subwoofer combo. The Brane X is a great wifi speaker for someone who values bass, would like to take their speaker outdoors, and needs a soundbar and subwoofer combo for their home theater. However, it isn't perfect and at its price, it competes with the best. The Sonos Move 2 is slightly cheaper, offers a replaceable battery with 24 hours of juice, and better treble and mids (but nowhere near the same range or bass power fo the Brane X). Brane reached out to me to review the Brane X and sent me the speaker for my honest thoughts, which is exactly what you'll get in this review. Brane X Smart Speaker $499.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $499.00 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Brane X speaker pros, cons, and specsProsBest-in-class bass and sub-bass for smart speakers Wifi streaming over Spotify and AirPlay 2 Compact and portable Powerful 98dB stereo speaker IP57 dust and waterproof Doubles as a soundbar and subwoofer combo in one with an AUX connection Companion app with EQ ConsExpensive Upper registers sound compressed at max volume when using Bluetooth No Chromecast support No speakerphone function Some features make a whirring noise No USB-C charging (only DC) SpecsBattery Life: About six hours of battery at a moderately high volume (about 12 hours at a moderate level, according to Brane). Connectivity: Wifi supports 802.11a/b/g/n/ac standards, Bluetooth version 5.1, streaming services compatible with AirPlay 2, Spotify Connect, and Amazon Alexa. Inputs: Auxiliary input 3.5 mm jack for wired connections. App: Brane companion app for fine-tuning bass, customizing EQ settings, managing speaker groups, and adjusting various settings. Drivers: One 6.5" by 9" Repel-Attract-Driver (RAD) subwoofer, two 2.5" midrange drivers, two 0.75" dome tweeters. Power Output: Four Class-D digital amplifiers delivering a combined output of over 200 watts (98dB). Water Resistance: Rated IP57, making it fully waterproof and dust-protected. Size: 6.1 inches x 9.3 inches x 7 inches (H × W × D) Weight: 7.7 lbs First impressions of the Brane X speaker Credit: Daniel Oropeza I have to be honest: First impressions of the Brane X weren't good. Turning it on wasn't intuitive, since the power button doesn't provide any feedback that I pressed it properly. The same can be said about the media controls on top, but I'll get more into those details later. There is also a weird whirring sound that the speaker makes once you turn it on that made me think my speaker was defective (it goes away after a few seconds). The sound is actually an air pump equalizing the air pressure inside the speaker, which is a patent technology that Brane called Repel-Attract-Driver (RAD). RAD is what makes this speaker unique, giving it the best bass range output I've heard on any speaker. Try this frequency range test on your wifi or Bluetooth speaker and see how it performs. The Brane X didn't just play through the whole range but vibrated my entire office with its powerful bass. And because of that, I'm willing to put up with the humming sound it makes when it's turned on. Design The Brane X uses touch controls for media. Credit: Daniel Oropeza The design is, well, boring. All black is a safe option and with no color variations, it leaves me wanting to fill it with stickers to give it some personality. But that leads to my next issue: touch controls. To control the speaker you have a few options on top of the speaker, none of which provide haptic feedback. And since their touch controls, you don't really know if your command when though unless you hear the speaker. There is also no play/pause button, so I can only control it with my phone (or Alexa if using it to play music). Considering this is also an outdoor speaker with an IP57 rating that can be completely submerged underwater, physical buttons could've come in handy. The handle on the top is useful considering the speaker almost weighs eight pounds. The Brane X charger is DC, so no USB-C. Credit: Daniel Oropeza The charger is DC, so no USB-C for fast universal charging, unfortunately. The battery is marketed as 20 hours of battery life at a moderate volume, but I only got around six hours of juice at around 75% volume (which to be fair, is very loud indoors unless you're having a house party). It'll take about three hours to fully charge it once it is drained. Sound Credit: Daniel Oropeza The sound is where the Brane X blows away the competition and really shines, especially if you love bass (and I do). As I explained earlier, the RAD technology really pumps out incredible power out of this small speaker. Considering this is less than 10% the size of JBL's PartyBox Stage 320 (my favorite party speaker), it's impressive that it nearly matches its 240 W of output power (the Brane X gets to 200 W), only about a 2dB difference in volume to my favorite party speaker. I will caveat that this isn't a party speaker, and you can really hear it struggle on upper registers when getting it to its max volume. Unless I'm blasting the Brane X, though, the sound quality is pristine. Because the frequency range of the bass is so wide, you can really hear and feel the lower registers, giving it a full sound without needing to get too loud. It makes for a fun sound that is distinctive to the Brane X. I listened to MONACO by Bad Bunny and could hear the sub-bass parts of the bass clearly. The sensation of feeling the bass at this level usually means blasting the music on regular speakers or headphones, but the Brane X manages to provide that feeling without scaring my neighbors. Features of the Brane X speaker Credit: Daniel Oropeza The Brane X is a wifi speaker first, meaning it performs better than Bluetooth speakers in terms of connectivity with a wider range, better sound quality by streaming higher bitrate audio, and other features. Instead of connecting to the speaker over Bluetooth, you can play music directly into it through Spotify Connect, so you'll get a better connection and sound quality. You can also connect via AirPlay 2 and Amazon Alexa. The Amazon smart assistant performs as well as any Alexa device. The Brane app Left: Main screen. Middle: EQ. Right: The AUX Pass-Through feature to minimize delay with the TV. Credit: Daniel Oropeza My experience with the companion app was like most speaker apps: It does its simple job well, but it can disconnect on occasion and can be slow at times. The main things I used the app were to check the battery life, mess with the EQ (you get a five-band equalizer) which adjusts your changes in real time, and setting the AUX Pass-Through feature when setting it up as a soundbar. The app gives you the option to link up groups if you have more than one Brane X speaker. As I only have one speaker, I wasn't able to try this feature. The Brane X as an outdoor speaker Credit: Daniel Oropeza As I do with all of my outdoor speakers, I took it out to the court while hosting my Street FC soccer games. We played five on five on a hockey rink with walls, so the sound bounces off to give it a "surround" feel. Even then, the Brane X struggles to fill the court completely. This is by far the smallest speaker I've ever taken to my games, however, and I'm comparing the sound decibels to party speakers, which is an unfair comparison. The fact that the Brane X is even a contender here speaks volumes to its versatility. With that said, the audio did sound compressed at maximum volumes sometimes. Since it's a Bluetooth connection outdoors instead of wifi, the compression sound is more noticeable at max volume (it'll sound better indoors with a wifi connection). The Brane X comes with an IP57 rating, making it fully waterproof and dust-protected—great for an outdoor speaker. The Brane X as a soundbar The Brane X doubles as a soundbar and sub woofer combo with an AUX cable. Credit: Daniel Oropeza If you want to use the speaker as a soundbar, you'll need an AUX cable (at least the end that connects to the speaker needs to be AUX). I wish the Brane X had Google Chromecast support so it could connect wirelessly to my smart TV, but you can't have everything in life. You can still connect it with Bluetooth, but you won't be able to use the AUX Pass-Though feature on the app to get rid of the sound delay (the delay is not bad, but sticklers will notice it). You won't get eARC sound quality, but the speaker itself has a subwoofer, so the sound is surprisingly good as a soundbar and subwoofer combo. I decided to re-watch Dune to hear how well the Brane X performed as a soundbar and subwoofer combo and compared it to the speaker system on my TCL QM7 TV, which has a subwoofer speaker on the back. The Brane X really brought Dune to life compared to the television speakers. I could feel every thud of the thumpers as they hit the sand when calling the worms. The soundtrack and vibrations of the explosions really put the excellent broad frequency range the Brane X has to use. The speaker is able to handle the dynamic audio you want from a soundbar, hearing whispers and feeling explosions. Bottom line Credit: Daniel Oropeza The Brane X is a powerful wifi speaker with a subwoofer that gives it an incredible range in the sub-bass frequencies. It's the best wifi and smart speaker for bass lovers. With Spotify and AirPlay 2, most people's needs for music will be met. Its small compact size also makes it a great portable and outdoor speaker, with a waterproof IP57 rating and up to 12 hours of battery life. It can get very loud with a maximum of 98 dBs, and it doubles as a soundbar and subwoofer combo, making it great for watching movies. However, all that versatility comes at a high price of $499. If you're looking to blast the Brane X at max volume, know that playing over Bluetooth will lead to some compression being noticeable. There is no speakerphone option despite its many microphones, and you'll need to depend on the DC charger, which isn't ideal for portable speakers. The Brane X is ideal for someone looking for a wifi speaker that can do a bit of everything. A one-stop speaker that you can take to the beach, use as a soundbar, fill your living room for a party, or take on a whim to your next adventure. It definitely rivals the Sonos Move 2, and would recommend it to anyone who isn't in the Sonos ecosystem already and/or loves to feel bass in their life. View the full article

Tens of thousands of planes take off, land, and perform touch-and-goes at the Marana Regional Airport in southern Arizona every year. Without an air traffic control tower, it’s a calculated dance that requires communication by pilots. Two small planes collided in midair over one of the runways on the outskirts of Tucson last week. One hit the ground and caught fire, sending up a plume of black smoke. The remains of two people were found in the charred wreckage. The other plane was able to land, with those occupants uninjured. The collision was the latest aviation mishap to draw attention in recent weeks. The circumstances vary widely with each case, however, and experts who study aviation accidents say they don’t see any connection between them. Chatter over the airwaves has provided some clues about what happened in Arizona. A chief flight instructor who was in the air with a student that day heard the commotion over the radio: One plane was attempting a touch-and-go when another clipped its propeller while attempting to land. Erwin Castillo, who works for IFLY Pilot Training, recalled hearing one pilot scream: “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! He just hit us.” It will be up to federal investigators to determine what caused the crash, a detailed process that will take months. While some observers suggest having a control tower may have made a difference, experts say not having a tower doesn’t mean the airport is any less safe; pilots just have a different set of communication procedures to follow. How many airports in the U.S. have control towers? Of the 5,100 public airports across the country, only about 10% have towers staffed by people who direct the flow of traffic. These are the busiest of airports, with complex operations and large volumes of commercial flights. For the airports without control towers, pilots rely on radio communications and the principle of “see and avoid” to ensure they can maneuver safely. The concept is drilled into pilots from Day 1 of their training and it’s applicable regardless of the kind of airspace they’re in, said Mike Ginter, a retired Navy aviator and senior vice president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association’s Air Safety Institute. He likened it to being behind the wheel of a car and practicing all the safety rules learned in driver’s ed. “You don’t have to tell the state police that you’re getting ready to drive to the supermarket to get groceries. You just go out, and you look both ways before you turn, and you turn on your turn signal and you drive,” he explained, saying there are basic tenets of safety that are ingrained in pilots. The system has worked well, considering the sheer number of planes coming and going daily from small airports and the roughly 26 million hours of flight time logged by general aviation pilots. What prompted regulation of the friendly skies? It was a summer day in 1956 when two commercial flights left Los Angeles within minutes of each other—one en route to Chicago and the other to Kansas. Flying under visual flight rules, the planes collided over the Grand Canyon in Arizona, killing all 128 people aboard. The crash site is now a National Historic Landmark. Even though U.S. air traffic had more than doubled since the end of World War II, it was this disaster that helped to fuel efforts to overhaul aviation safety. Legislation was introduced in 1958 to create an independent federal agency that would provide for the safe and efficient use of national airspace. The bill was signed within months and the first Federal Aviation Agency administrator was appointed. Responsibilities evolved, and the agency became the Federal Aviation Administration as air traffic control systems were being modernized. Are new control towers being planned? Through the FAA, airports can apply for federal grants to modernize and build air traffic control towers that are staffed by private companies and contract workers, rather than FAA staff. Nearly 180 airports nationwide are eligible for funding under the program, with most looking to upgrade existing towers—some that date back to the 1940s and others that were meant to be temporary. A review of funding awarded through the program over the past four fiscal year shows a handful of airports were awarded money specifically for site studies, environmental work and construction of new towers. That includes airports in Bend, Oregon; Boulder City, Nevada; and Mankato, Minnesota. In the case of Marana, the airport was first accepted into the program in 2019 but the coronavirus pandemic stalled efforts to get a tower built by the five-year deadline. Airport officials have said they now are on track to complete the project by 2029. Will federal job cuts affect air traffic safety? U.S. President Donald Trump issued a memo in late January to top transportation officials, ordering an immediate assessment of aviation safety following the midair collision of an Army helicopter and commercial passenger jet over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. Sixty-seven people were killed. Trump raised questions about hiring practices within the FAA, suggesting previous Democratic administrations had shifted away from merit-based hiring. Some FAA jobs have been eliminated as Trump streamlines the federal workforce and looks to ferret out waste and curb spending, but less than 1% of the agency’s more than 45,000 workers were probationary employees targeted as part of the job cuts, federal officials have said. In addition, the administration has said no air traffic controllers or critical safety personnel were fired as part of the effort. But labor and industry groups say even without cuts, air traffic control towers were already understaffed. Trump has said that he would support legislation aimed at modernizing the nation’s air traffic control system. In a letter sent to members of Congress last week, the industry group Airlines for America pushed for emergency funding for critical air traffic control technology and infrastructure as well as air controller staffing and training. Associated Press writer Sejal Govindarao in Phoenix contributed to this report. —Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press View the full article

Get all the details on Plume's latest vision and strategy in our brand new interview with co-founder and acting CEO Adam Hotchkiss above. The post Interview: Effective consumer engagement is the next major goal, says Plume’s Adam Hotchkiss appeared first on Wi-Fi NOW Global. View the full article

"Photoshop" is synonymous with image editing, and for good reason. The app is an industry standard, and has been for over 30 years. But while Photoshop has been available on computers and tablets for some time now, those looking to edit images on their smartphones have had to make due with alternative programs—or simply stick to their other devices instead. That changes today. As of Tuesday, Feb. 25, Photoshop is officially on iPhone. You can go to the App Store, search "Photoshop," and see not just the usual alternatives—like Lightroom, Canva, and Facetune—but the real deal, too. Plus, the app itself is free, in addition to a number of "core imaging and design tools." According to the company, that includes the following, free of charge: Selections, layers and masks Tap Select tool Spot Healing Brush Adobe Firefly AI features, like Generative Fill and Generative Expand Integration with Adobe Express, Adobe Fresco, and Adobe Lightroom Access to "hundreds of thousands" of free Adobe Stock assets Credit: Adobe The company showed off a number of edit examples one might use the app for: using a masking tool to copy a subject from one image and paste it to another; using a "quick select brush" to isolate parts of an image from the final product; layering multiple images over one another to create a dramatic but realistic assortment of items around the subject; changing the color of one element of an image, while preserving the rest; and selecting objects to quickly remove them from the scene. Of course, Adobe is also pushing its AI features, as well—namely, Generative Fill. In one demo, a rep wants to insert an island onto an image of an ocean. They use the lasso tool to highlight where in the image they want that island to be, then use Generative Fill to create a grassy piece of land with AI. In another, Generative Fill is used to remove a background, replacing it with the sky seen in a different part of the image. Obviously, if you have previous Photoshop experience, you should be quite familiar with the tools and features of this version of the app. However, it may take you a moment to get your bearings: Based on press images and videos, this is definitely a mobile app, meaning its UI looks like many other image editing apps you might have used before. As such, it might take some trial and error before you understand where all of your usual options and features are. But based on what I see, this is the typical Photoshop experience—just distilled into mobile form. There are more features (if you pay for them)While Photoshop and its "core" features are free to download and use on iPhone, there are more features and perks if you choose to pay. Adobe now has a "Photoshop Mobile and Web plan" for customers who want more on the iOS, iPadOS, and web versions of the app. That includes: Access to Photoshop on the web Expanded access to Firefly-powered AI tools, like Generate Similar and Reference Image Access to over 20,000 fonts (or import your own) Object Select for precise selections Magic Wand for targeted adjustments Remove Tool Clone Stamp Content-Aware Fill Advanced blend modes for styling your image "Lighten" and "Darken" to lighten or darken different parts of an image This plan costs $7.99 per month, or $69.99 per year. If you already pay for Photoshop, you now have all of these perks included in your plan. View the full article

Budgeting for paid ad campaigns has long been a static process – set a monthly budget, monitor spending, and adjust incrementally as needed. This method works for industries with stable demand and predictable conversion rates but falls short in dynamic, competitive markets. Still, static budgets aren’t obsolete. In industries with long sales cycles, consistent conversion trends, or strict financial planning – like B2B SaaS and healthcare – planned budgets remain essential. The key isn’t choosing between static and dynamic budgeting; it’s knowing when and how to adjust PPC spend using data-driven signals. The role of Smart Bidding and Performance Max in budgeting Automation has changed our budgeting strategies, but it hasn’t eliminated the need for human oversight. While Google’s Smart Bidding and Performance Max (PMax) campaigns help optimize performance, they do not fully control budget allocation the way some advertisers may assume. Smart Bidding: What it does (and doesn’t do) for budgeting Smart Bidding (i.e., Target ROAS, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, and Maximize Conversion Value) uses real-time auction signals to adjust bids but does not shift budgets between campaigns. If a campaign has an insufficient budget, smart bidding won’t automatically pull spend from another campaign; this still requires manual adjustments or automated budget rules. To overcome the budget allocation limitations of Smart Bidding, use: Portfolio bidding strategies: Setting bid strategies at the campaign level lets you use a common bidding approach (e.g., Target ROAS or Target CPA) across multiple campaigns. This enables more efficient spending across campaigns with similar goals without manual adjustments. Shared budgets: Assigning a single budget across multiple campaigns ensures high-performing campaigns receive adequate funding while preventing overspending on lower-performing ones. Dig deeper: How each Google Ads bid strategy influences campaign success Performance Max: A black box for budget allocation? PMax automates asset and bid optimization across multiple Google properties (Search, Display, YouTube, Discovery, etc.), but you don’t control which channel yorur budget goes to. Google’s algorithm decides how much to allocate to each network, which can sometimes result in excessive spend on lower-performing placements like Display rather than Search. Instead of relying solely on PMax, run separate Search campaigns alongside it to ensure an adequate budget is allocated to high-intent traffic. Dig deeper: How to make search and PMax campaigns complement each other Balancing automation and control: Avoid these PPC budget pitfalls While automation streamlines bidding, it can also lead to costly mistakes. Watch out for these common budget-wasting pitfalls and learn to stay in control. Overspending on low-value traffic Smart Bidding sometimes aggressively increases bids to meet a Target ROAS or Target CPA, which can inflate CPCs without increasing conversion volume. Solution Set bid caps when using Maximize Conversion Value to prevent excessive CPC increases. Monitor search terms to ensure increased bids aren’t capturing low-intent queries. Advanced tip When setting a tCPA or tROAS, allow a 10-20% margin for flexibility to help Google’s algorithm optimize effectively. For example, if your ideal tCPA is $100, setting it to $115 gives Google room to secure conversions that may exceed your target while still delivering strong performance. Since tCPA operates as an average, not every lead will cost the same amount. Once you are consistently hitting your target, gradually lower the tCPA (or raise the tROAS) to improve budget efficiency without restricting conversions. Underfunding efficient campaigns If a campaign has a long conversion delay (i.e., B2B lead gen), Smart Bidding may incorrectly shift the budget elsewhere before enough data accumulates. Solution Extend conversion windows in Smart Bidding settings. The default is 30 days, but advertisers can adjust the window from one day up to 90 days. Manually monitor lagging conversions and adjust budgets proactively. Lack of budget control in PMax campaigns Performance Max doesn’t allow advertisers to set separate budgets for Search, YouTube, and Display. As a result, Google may (advertiser sentiment is that they do) favor low-cost clicks from Display rather than higher-intent Search traffic. Solution Run branded and high-intent non-branded Search campaigns separately to control budget spend on direct-response traffic. Use brand exclusions in PMax to prevent Google from serving brand search queries within PMax, ensuring that branded traffic remains in the dedicated Search campaign. Apply negative keywords via account-level negatives. While PMax doesn’t allow campaign-level negatives, account-level negative keyword lists can help block irrelevant or redundant queries. The maximum number of negative keywords allowed to be applied is 100. Google has stated that it created this limit because PMax isn’t meant to be a heavily restricted campaign type. By monitoring your search impression share, you can identify when branded queries are slipping into PMax instead of the dedicated Search campaign. This will allow you to adjust bid strategies and audience signals accordingly. Use audience exclusions in PMax to prevent excessive Display spend on irrelevant audiences. Advanced tip Tools like Optmyzr can help advertisers determine how their budget is allocated in PMax with the PMax Channel Distribution feature. Although we may not have much control over the allocation, we can at least be aware of it. Dig deeper: How to manage a paid media budget: Allocation, risk and scaling How to use first-party data to improve budget allocation An underutilized strategy for improving budgeting is leveraging first-party data to allocate spend toward high-value audiences. As privacy restrictions tighten and tracking capabilities decline, it’s important to shift your focus from broad automated bidding to first-party audience targeting. Use customer match to prioritize high-value audiences Instead of spending equally across all users, advertisers can upload Customer Match lists (based on past purchasers, high-LTV customers, or CRM data) and adjust budgets accordingly. Example If historical data shows that repeat customers generate a higher ROAS than new users, more budget should be allocated to remarketing campaigns targeting Customer Match audiences. Advanced tip To maximize campaign efficiency, consider using value-based bidding (VBB) to ensure your budget prioritizes high-value conversions rather than just the volume of leads. By assigning different conversion values based on customer lifetime value (LTV), using Customer Match, GA4 insights, or CRM data, you can direct more spending toward audiences that generate the highest long-term revenue. Changes to customer match lists Google recently introduced two key updates to Customer Match lists that will impact how advertisers manage audience data. As of Jan. 13, stricter policy enforcement means you must comply with Google’s advertising standards. Violations could lead to restricted access or account suspension after a seven-day warning. From April 7, the maximum membership duration for Customer Match lists will be extended to 540 days, giving you more time to engage high-value customers. To stay compliant and maximize audience targeting, be sure to regularly refresh your lists and align your data collection with Google’s updated policies. Apply GA4 data for smarter budget scaling Google Analytics 4 (GA4) provides insights into conversion paths, high-value audience segments, and multi-channel attribution. Instead of relying solely on Google Ads conversion tracking, use GA4 to determine which audience segments should receive higher budgets. Best practice Create custom lists/audiences around users with high engagement signals (repeat visits, add-to-cart actions, lead form interactions) and allocate more budget toward these users. Create custom lists/audiences around low-intent users who bounce after viewing one page. To reduce wasted ad spend, decrease your bids or exclude them. Dig deeper: How to leverage Google Analytics 4 and Google Ads for better audience targeting Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. Business email address Sign me up! Processing... See terms. Budget scaling strategies: When and how to increase PPC spend Scaling your PPC campaigns requires a structured, gradual approach. Increasing budgets too aggressively can cause Smart Bidding to overcompensate, leading to inefficient scaling and missed revenue opportunities. Incremental budget scaling Instead of doubling your budget overnight, it is better to gradually increase it by 10-20% daily. This gives Smart Bidding algorithms time to adjust without overspending or wasting budget. This will also allow us better control as we can monitor performance changes due to budget shifts more closely. Example If a campaign is hitting its conversion goals consistently, increase the budget by 15% per week while monitoring conversion trends. Cross-campaign budget reallocation Rather than increasing spend across the board, shift budget strategically between: Branded campaigns (lower-funnel, high-converting). Non-branded search campaigns (high-growth potential). Remarketing campaigns (high-value repeat customers). Dayparting for more efficient spend Instead of distributing the budget equally across all hours, allocate more to high-converting time periods. Example If the lead volume is highest between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m., increase bids and budget during these hours. If your business hours are from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m., lower your bids during the hours you aren’t operating to prevent unnecessary ad expenses. Industry-specific budgeting approaches As we all know, no two industries are the same, so the approach to budgeting should also be different. Here’s how different business models should think about budget allocation: B2B lead generation Budgeting for B2B lead generation requires a long-term view. Unlike ecommerce, where purchases can happen quickly, B2B sales cycles can range from a week to over a year, depending on the contract size and decision-making process. As such, budget pacing should be planned over months. Don’t make frequent (i.e., daily or weekly) adjustments that could cause instability in the account. Because the cycle is longer, conversions often take some time to materialize, so conversion delays should be considered when evaluating Smart Bidding performance. If budgets are adjusted too soon based on incomplete data, campaigns may be underfunded before the true impact of conversions is realized. Dig deeper: Paid search for lead gen: Tips for new accounts with limited budgets Ecommerce Seasonality plays a large role in budgeting decisions for ecommerce brands. Aggressively increase budgets ahead of major sales events, like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday shopping, to capitalize on higher purchase intent. Reacting to performance mid-season will likely result in missed opportunities if the budget is exhausted too early. Also, rather than spreading spend evenly across all potential buyers, prioritize high-LTV customers using Customer Match lists and past purchase data. This ensures that ad spend is directed toward audiences likely to generate repeat purchases and higher average order values (AOVs). Dig deeper: Lead gen vs. ecommerce: How to tailor your PPC strategies for success Local businesses Budget allocation for local businesses should be narrowly geo-targeted. Instead of distributing spend evenly across an entire service area (although you should have some presence in the area), analyze past geographic conversion data to determine which locations typically generate the highest return. The budget should then be allocated accordingly, ensuring that high-performing areas receive the majority of ad spend. Another important factor is setting up call tracking. Since many conversions happen over the phone rather than through online forms, integrate call-tracking data to identify which campaigns generate high-quality leads. By analyzing call duration, lead quality, and customer inquiries, you can refine budget allocation to optimize for calls that convert into sales or appointments. Dig deeper: 9 essential geotargeting tactics for Google Ads Each industry requires a different budgeting approach tailored to its sales cycles, customer behavior, and conversion patterns. Understanding these nuances ensures that your PPC budgets are allocated strategically for maximum impact, whether it’s long-term pacing for B2B, seasonal surges for ecommerce, or localized targeting for service-based businesses. A smarter approach to budgeting Budgeting for your PPC campaigns doesn’t involve choosing between static and dynamic models; it involves strategically using both. Smart Bidding and PMax improve efficiency but require human oversight. First-party data should play a bigger role in spend allocation. Budget scaling should be incremental and structured. Industry-specific needs should dictate budget pacing strategies. The best budgets are adaptable, data-driven, and aligned with long-term profitability rather than short-term spend fluctuations. Those who master this approach will gain a competitive advantage in an increasingly automated advertising landscape. View the full article

Patrón says all the tequila it has ever made since 1989 has been free of additives. The brand is now ready to get loud and talk about it. This week, Patrón is debuting a new additive-free marketing campaign that will run across digital, print, and out-of-home advertising in key markets including New York City and Los Angeles. The additive-free copy features lines like “Our secret ingredient is that we have no secret ingredients” and “When tequila is this good, additives don’t add anything.” Since Patrón’s inception, the brand says it has only made tequila with three ingredients: 100% weber blue agave, water, and yeast. The few exceptions are for the brand’s liqueurs, including orange and coffee flavored expressions, which always include added flavoring. But even the base spirit used to make those liqueurs only feature the three core ingredients. “Consumers are not going up to bartenders and asking for a tequila and soda and expecting to get a splash of caramel coloring or a sprinkle of glycerin,” says Ned Duggan, chief marketing officer at Patrón, in an interview with Fast Company. “We think that they want to know what’s in their tequila.” Patrón’s additive-free campaign may reignite a debate that’s been swirling in the tequila industry about the use and marketing of additives. Additives are permitted if less than 1% of the weight of the tequila, without any requirement of disclosure, according to the standards set by the Tequila Regulatory Council, or CRT, a group that’s backed by tequila brands, agave producers, and distributors to monitor and certify all tequila. Common additives that are in tequila include sugars and sweeteners like fructose and aspartame, oak extract, and caramel coloring. Patrón estimates that as much as 80% of tequila brands on the shelf today use additives. [Photo: Patrón] Agave typically needs six to eight years before it is ready to harvest, but with a supply shortage and higher prices, brands have started to pull agave from the earth after just two to three years. That results in a bitter flavor, and some producers have begun to lean more heavily on additives to combat that bitterness. For aged tequilas like añejo and reposado, caramel is used to improve the consistency of the color and make it appear “older,” as if it had been aged in oak barrels for a longer period of time. Patrón says 61% of consumers prefer additive-free liquors, citing a global survey conducted by the brand’s parent company Bacardi. Retailers have taken notice too, carving out shelf space that only promotes additive-free tequilas. Some mixologists prioritize crafting additive-free tequila libations. “We recognize that people are caring more and more about what they’re putting into their bodies, and also the ingredients that are in the brands that they’re putting in their bodies,” says Duggan. Among the loudest proponents of additive-free clarity is Grover Sanschagrin, who along with his wife Scarlet, cofounded an app called Tequila Matchmaker. The couple had developed a program that would certify tequila brands as additive-free and then share that information with consumers who were curious to know what was in the liquor they were drinking. But last year, the Sanschagrin’s home was raided in Mexico, part of a pressure campaign he says was spurred by the CRT’s anger about Tequila Matchmaker’s push for transparency. The Tequila Matchmaker app still exists for tequila reviews, but provides no information about additives. The Sanschagrins also created a new U.S.-based nonprofit called the Additive Free Alliance, which is angling to set up an independent process to identify and list additive-free brands, but thus far includes no tequila producers, only one agave-based vodka and a couple of mezcal brands. “There’s a void now,” says Sanschagrin. “Every brand is basically saying they are additive-free and now there is no way to offer proof of that.” In 2023, Patrón announced an additive-free seal, a label that was designed to appear on the brand’s bottles, a bid for transparency that was blessed by the CRT at the time. But that on-packaging messaging never came to fruition. “I think we were a little bit ahead of the rest of the industry and the CRT ultimately requested that we not move forward,” says Duggan. “But that’s why it’s been so important for us to launch this campaign where regardless of whether it’s on our bottle or not, we are being forthcoming with consumers and transparent about our no additive message.” A memo circulated by the CRT last year, obtained by Fast Company, told tequila producers that because additives are permitted under the 1% level, they believe there is no such thing as an additive-free tequila. The CRT ordered distillers to stop marketing tequila as additive-free, saying it was a “false and misleading statement” that could harm the spirit’s reputation with consumers. The CRT didn’t respond to requests for comment. [Photo: Patrón] Sanschagrin welcomes the message that Patrón is sending with the new marketing campaign, both to consumers and tequila’s regulatory body. “The CRT overreached and somebody needs to check them,” he says. “I’m excited that Patrón has decided to take this on.” The additive-free movement also reflects an evolution of how tequila is produced. When tequila sales first began to boom in the U.S. in the 1980s, most were gold tequila, or mixto, a tequila made from a minimum of 51% agave and the rest from other sugars. Patrón’s launch, and other tequilas that have since entered the market, popularized the use of 100% agave and that claim became the baseline that consumers look for when buying any tequila north of $20. But the 100% agave claim became more difficult to stick to as tequila demand has soared. Tequila and mezcal sales now total $6.7 billion in annual revenue in the U.S. market, the second-most popular liquor category following vodka, according to the trade group the Distilled Spirits Council. Dave Karraker, president of PR consultancy Raptor Communications, says the 100% additive-free claim is a way that brands like Patrón can distinguish themselves from the crowd. “How do I differentiate myself from all of these players that are adding additives,” he asks. “As a marketer, you’re looking for points of differentiation to lean into, that are on trend with consumers.” View the full article

Riddle me this: What exactly is Trello? Despite counting myself as a heavy-duty power user of the product for well over a decade now, it’s a question I’ve long struggled to answer. Technically, Trello has always seemed to fall into that group of apps folks like to frame as “project management tools”—products like Asana, ClickUp, and Notion that do a pinch of everything and are as much note makers, info savers, and life managers as they are project organizers. But Trello in particular has always been a bit of a chameleon. Personally, I’ve used it for everything from storing story ideas to mapping out my weekly newsletters and even organizing my home workouts. Part of what makes the app so powerful is its versatility. With a flexible series of boards, columns, and cards acting as its core interface, you can shape it into serving practically any purpose imaginable for yourself or your company. It seems, though, that that very same versatility may have morphed into a challenge for the product. This week, Atlassian—the business-tech behemoth that bought Trello for $425 million in 2017 and brought it into its sprawling software empire—is announcing Trello’s biggest pivot to date. It’s essentially a total reinvention, despite the fact that on the surface, not all that much actually seems to be changing. So, here it is: As of this spring, Trello will no longer be a “project management tool”—or whatever else you want to call it. It’ll be a personal tasks app, presented as being the best all-around hub for juggling all of your important to-do items, no matter where they may originate. Notably, too, it’ll now be aimed at individual users, not teams, which marks a pretty big shift from its original focus. But in an appropriately Trello-y twist, the service’s trademark versatility isn’t going anywhere—for the most part. And in spite of the official new framing and all the added elements that come with it, it’s still up to you to decide how you want to use Trello and what you want it to be. Outside of a small subset of early beta testers, most Trello users will see its new touches sometime in April. That’s when Trello’s next era will truly begin. The Trello tale—from inception to reinventionI’ve been spending much of this month living with the still-under-wraps new version of Trello, and I’ll share some detailed thoughts and impressions about what it’s all about in a moment. First, though, before we can wrap our heads around Trello’s present and its future, we need to take a swift trip back to its past. Trello first entered the world as a concept nearly 14 years ago, in September of 2011—the brainchild of Michael Pryor and Joel Spolsky. (Pryor stuck around to lead its development post-Atlassian-acquisition until mid-2022.) From the get-go, the pair described the app as “a totally horizontal product”—meaning, in the words of co-founder Spolsky at the time, “it can be used by people from all walks of life”: Some people saw Trello and said, “Oh, it’s Kanban boards. For developing software the agile way.” Yeah, it’s that, but it’s also for planning a wedding, for making a list of potential vacation spots to share with your family, for keeping track of applicants to open job positions, and for a billion other things. In fact, Trello is for anything where you want to maintain a list of lists with a group of people. That versatility and the tough-to-pin-down quality that comes with it was a key part of Trello’s foundation, in other words. It may have initially been inspired by the engineer-adored idea of Post-It Notes arranged into columns on a whiteboard, but it was always meant to be everything to everyone, without any guardrails or specific definitions for exactly how it should be used. Trello’s board-centric interface has long been the service’s calling card. [Image: Trello]Over time, that underlying elasticity never wavered. But Trello began to be positioned as more of a team-oriented tool—that whole “project management” thing. In the context of its ultimate home within Atlassian, a company known for collaboration software, that focus made sense—even if Trello did always overlap somewhat awkwardly with the organization’s homegrown Jira offering. By 2021, Atlassian had introduced a whole series of new views that promised to transform the Trello experience and make it even more well-suited for multiuer productivity. You could switch away from the standard Trello boards and view your data instead in a spreadsheet-like “Team Table View,” for instance, or flip over to a “Timeline View” that put all your info into a year-long spectrum. You could even opt for a location-centric “Map View” built specifically with sales and service teams in mind. And that’s exactly where Gaurav Kataria, Atlassian’s head of product for Trello since 2020 and a former Google Cloud executive, sees the service as starting to lose its way. “Typically, everything tries to become the one tool to manage everything, like one tool to rule them all—and typically, they tend come to become more complex,” Kataria says. “It has happened to every tool in the industry, Trello included.” Kataria and his team decided it was time to step back and really think about what made Trello special, why people appreciated it, and where it should fit into our personal productivity puzzles. Meet the Trello task transformationOfficially, today’s Trello announcement is about a fresh set of features coming into the service—features that aim to make it easier to capture and organize all types of task-oriented info. But beyond the surface, the announcement is really more about redefining what Trello is for and how Atlassian, at least, wants it to be seen—even if you still have the power to shape it into something broader. “We are taking a step back and staying that rather than trying to be that one tool, which is the project management tool for the whole team that can handle all levels of complexity and dependency and reporting, how about we focus on making the individual user more productive,” Kataria says. “Rather than being everything for everyone, let’s be really useful to the one user that’s using the product.” The team behind Trello determined that the best way to do that was to shed Trello’s murky “project management” moniker and frame the app as an all-purpose to-do hub that pulls in info from all sorts of other services and makes it exceptionally easy to organize. (The service will still offer its same generous free plan, which includes unlimited cards and up to 10 boards for individual users—along with its existing premium and enterprise-level plans for companies that want to provide the service to larger groups of workers.) The centerpiece of that strategy is a new Inbox feature that exists as a sidebar to the left of every Trello board you’re viewing. The idea is that it’s a landing pad of sorts for any type of task you’re thinking about—a place for all that stuff to show up in Trello without any real effort and then be ready for you to drag wherever you see fit. The new Trello Inbox is a landing pad for all your incoming tasks. [Image: Trello]“Today, if suddenly, a new idea pops into your head, you might have to first decide which board it goes into, which list it goes into, and does it go into the middle of the list or the top of the list—so there’s a little cognitive burden that you have to go through before you add something to Trello,” Kataria says. “We want to remove that cognitive burden.” To that end, Inbox offers four integrations to start: Email—where you can forward any message to a special address to have it instantly added into your Inbox Slack—where you can use the inbox emoji reaction (📥) or the native Slack save-for-later feature to save any message into your Trello Inbox Jira—where you can click a new native menu command to pull any issues from a project into your Inbox And Siri—where you can simply ask your iOS device to add something into Trello to get it into that same Inbox view The Trello Inbox integrates with email, Slack, Jira, and Siri to start. [Image: Trello]Android support is on hold for the moment because of Google’s awkward Assistant-Gemini transition and the current lack of support for third-party integrations with Gemini—but Kataria tells me the team is watching the situation closely and plans to add in support as soon as it becomes possible. And in the meantime, a button on the Trello Android widget can serve as an only slightly more complex way to achieve the same end result. Atlassian plans to add support for some Microsoft-specific integrations next, but beyond that, it’s relying on the fact that almost every external service generates notifications of some sort—typically via either Slack or email—and so it can tap into those notifications easily via its existing integrations without requiring any additional connections or data access. “We don’t need to build a native integration with every tool under the sun,” Kataria explains. As part of its tasks-centric transition, the service is also adding in the ability to check off a card and mark it as done from any board view—something Kataria says has been the company’s longest standing feature request. By default, when you mark a card as done, it stays in place and just gains a checkmark indication on its cover. But thanks to Trello’s powerful automation system—the feature formerly known as Butler, for any of my fellow Trello long-timers—you can take total control of that process and set the system up to work any way you like. You might create an automation rule that instantly archives any card when it’s marked as done, for instance, or that moves it to a special list where finished cards are stored. The power is entirely in your hands, which feels like a thoughtful blending of the traditional Trello philosophy and its newly reshaped purpose. “The user is still very much in control,” Kataria says. All of that aside, what makes the setup especially interesting is the way Trello is integrating AI into all of this in a similarly thoughtful and actually useful way. Trello’s finer task touchesRather than cramming in the standard and often silly “write/rewrite text for me” or “make a list for me”-style generative-AI options, Trello is opting to lean on AI solely to transform whatever you add into your Inbox into a simple, task-like summary—with a succinct title for the associated card, a single-paragraph overview of the info in its description field, and then the full text and a link back to the original item for further reference. Trello’s AI is all about making info easier to manage—not writing or organizing it for you. [Image: Trello]It works brilliantly well, in my experience, and makes me wish every app offered something similar. And, suffice it to say, I don’t at all find myself missing the option to have the service write stuff or attempt to organize stuff for me—and then, in all likelihood, having to waste my time redoing and fixing what it did. That seems to be exactly the experience the Trello team is aiming to create. “The reason people use Trello is because it reflects their mind,” Kataria says. “We want to remain really true to that spirit—that Trello is about how people see the world, not about how they follow a certain workflow or process.” (If you want, you can still add cards directly to a specific board like before, by the way—and as of this week, doing so will incorporate the same AI formatting magic present in the new Inbox approach.) Ultimately, Inbox is just another list in Trello. But it lives in that special sidebar that makes it easy to access as a single starting point for any incoming items—until and unless you decide to sort and file them into a board. Inbox and its AI elements also go hand in hand with another new task-oriented Trello addition known as Planner. Trello’s Planner is an integrated calendar that connects to Google Calendar (with support for Microsoft Outlook on the way soon) and lets you drag and drop tasks from your Inbox—or any Trello board—directly into that day-to-day view. That way, you can see all your tasks alongside your agenda and plan out your hours accordingly, with the full perspective of everything on your plate. You can drag cards from your Inbox or any board directly into the new Trello Planner. [Image: Trello]It’s a step forward from the tacked-on calendar elements Trello previously provided, and it ties back into the newfound goal of making Trello all about the individual rather than the team. “All the previous calendar views are the legacy of trying to solve project management use cases,” Kataria says. “With the Planner, we’re really thinking about planning your day, planning your week, where you’re only looking at your calendar.” The approach actually reminds me a lot of Akiflow, a calendar and tasks app I wrote about last fall and have been personally using ever since—only, for better or for worse, Akiflow is solely a calendar and tasks app. Trello, in contrast, has the advantage (or maybe distraction) of all the board elements and the broader organizational opportunities they offer. Speaking of which, for now, at least, all of Trello’s “legacy” elements and potential use cases will continue to be supported. Kataria hinted that certain elements—like those team-centric “Timeline” and “Table” views—may be phased out eventually, over time (and will certainly be de-emphasized in the meantime). But the general goal seems to be to keep allowing everyone to use Trello in whatever way they see fit, even if personal task management is now the main purpose being presented. Some actions around more complex team-oriented project management uses will now lead to gentle nudges to move over to Jira for such purposes—a move that’s frankly surprising Atlassian has managed to resist up until now. But everything from automations to the rich ecosystem of third-party Power-Up add-ons will remain, just with the added emphasis on Trello being the place for personal productivity. “It’s [still] a project, but a project that’s born out of your own mind,” Kataria says. “Trello is so well-loved as a tool that people bend it in different ways to make it whatever they want it to become.” Card-mirroring is one of the smaller but still significant touches coming into the new Trello. [Image: Trello]Only time will tell, of course, if the world embraces the service’s new task-centric framing or if people keep treating it as the versatile productivity power-tool it’s known to be. Either way, its creators seem content with knowing they’re shifting the focus to individuals over teams and presenting their best vision for how Trello can help. “We are really thinking about how the world is going to change over the next decade and how we can make every individual more productive,” Kataria says. Be the first to learn about all sorts of interesting new productivity treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence—a single eye-opening new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday! View the full article

The intense red color of classic lipstick traditionally comes from an unlikely source: crushed bugs that live on cactus plants in South America. It takes tens of thousands of the ground-up insects to make just a pound of the vivid red dye. The red coloring, called carmine, also shows up in food—from red velvet cupcakes to sausages, gummy candies, and some versions of strawberry yogurt. In the cosmetics industry, major brands started moving away from carmine in the 2010s because of ethical concerns. A growing number of consumers wanted vegan makeup. (Crushing bugs also creates an allergen because of other bug parts that end up in the dye.) But because synthetic dyes don’t perform as well, carmine is still found in some high-end products, from shades of MAC lipstick and NARS blush to Chanel nail polish. Now, a biotech startup called Debut has developed a new alternative: an exact replica of carmine that’s made from fermentation rather than bugs. [Photo: Debut] The molecule was incredibly difficult to replicate. “It’s a really unique color . . . it’s a very complicated [chemical] structure,” says Joshua Britton, Debut’s CEO and founder. Academic scientists took 15 years to understand it, he says, “and it took us three to four years to work out how to make it.” The company discovered two new classes of enzymes that were the missing pieces of the manufacturing process, and found a way to keep the cost of the whole system relatively affordable. The resulting product is the same as the original color, minus the allergen and gross-out factor. There’s strong demand for a product like this in the beauty industry. Carmine is a “perfect ingredient,” Britton says. It’s stable when it interacts with other ingredients, long-lasting, and vibrant in a way that other dyes aren’t. When Spanish explorers arrived in South America in the 1500s, carmine quickly became a major trade item. In Europe, red dye was difficult and expensive to make, and red clothing was mostly reserved for royalty (or, say, the Pope). In Peru, carmine had been used to dye fabric for at least two centuries, and the explorers realized that it far outperformed European dyes. Carmine started to show up in everything from oil paintings to British military uniforms. By the late 19th century, as the cosmetics industry was scaling up, carmine was a natural choice of ingredient for red, pink, and peach products. Right now, making the biotech version costs more than standard carmine, unsurprisingly. “The traditional bug version is at the moment cheaper, and that’s because there are 70,000 bugs hand picked off the leaf of a cactus dissolved in acid, and that’s the process,” says Britton. But the new tech is still at a pilot stage, and the company is now working with a larger company to scale up production and bring the cost down. Fermenting the product is also far more efficient than extracting it from bugs. “We typically don’t invest in molecules where we don’t think we can get down to cost parity,” he says. The cosmetics industry is a good initial fit, he says, since only small amounts of color are needed. (A pound of Debut’s carmine could color 6,500 tubes of lipstick.) The company is already working with a handful of beauty brands in its labs to develop new formulations for products. The food and pharmaceutical industries, which are also looking for alternatives to carmine, will come next, after the company works with the Food and Drug Administration for approvals and to figure out how the product will be labeled. Another factor is helping drive demand: the FDA recently banned Red No. 3, a common food dye, because of potential health risks. Food brands will have to phase out that dye over the next two years—and biotech carmine could be a viable choice. View the full article

There are numerous reports that the Google Search Console API is delayed and not showing data sooner than this past Thursday, February 20th. If you use this API for your own tools, or bring in this data through Looker Studio reports, Big Query or other tools, your reports may be delayed. More details. The delays started around last Wednesday and some are now saying some data for Thursday is slowly coming in. However, generally, data is as recent as today through the Search Console API. The web interface is not impacted, so you can get data from going to Google Search Console directly. Some are saying data for Thursday is now coming in, but others are not sure yet. Google has not comments on this issue yet. Why we care. If you are noticing weird data in your tools or reports and that data generally comes from Google Search Console’s API, this is why. I suspect the data flow will return to normal in the coming days, but if you do report and you see weirdness in those reports, this is your explanation. For more, if you need that data, access it directly through the web interface. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Last week during an interview on Air Force One, a reporter asked Donald Trump whether Elon Musk was planning to cut the Pentagon's budget when he's finished with the National Park Service and other departments. Trump responded that Musk will instead be looking at Fort Knox. I'm assuming there was a uncomfortably long pause before the reporter asked why. "To make sure the gold is there,” Trump responded. Whether the gold is actually at Fort Knox is a question Musk had posed a few days previously in this post on X: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This has led many to believe that something happened to the gold at Fort Knox. No one knows exactly what happened, but something. Those people are (probably) wrong. Of course the gold is still at Fort KnoxThe most likely (and boring) Fort Knox scenario: all 147.3 million ounces of U.S. gold are sitting there, waiting for you to dive in like Scrooge McDuck. All the bars, half of the U.S. total gold reserves, are safe in a heavily guarded, secretive vault on a Kentucky military installation, just as they've been since the 1940s. According to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, there is an audit of Fort Knox every year and that “all the gold is present and accounted for.” "The only gold removed has been very small quantities used to test the purity of gold during regularly scheduled audits. Except for these samples, no gold has been transferred to or from the Depository for many years," confirms the U.S. Mint. But isn't that exactly what the U.S. Mint would say? Maybe someone has been stealing all the gold, or the government has been secretly selling the people's bullion for years! Yeah, probably not. Conspiracy theories about Fort KnoxMusk and Trump are not saying anything new—murmurs of "the gold is not really there" have been common among conspiracy theorists since the 1940s, soon after construction was completed on The United States Bullion Depository and the gold was shipped from the coasts to the heartland to protect it from theoretical invaders. Here are only some of the conspiracy theories about Fort Knox: 1952: The Daughters of the American Revolution allege that the gold has been stolen from Fort Knox. President Truman invites them to inspect the vault but they decline. 1973: Dr. Peter Beter (his actual name) published The Conspiracy Against the Dollar: The Spirit of the New Imperialism, a book that contends "powerful Americans have secretly permitted $20 billion worth of gold to be removed from Ft. Knox. According to Beter, they took it out through a secret tunnel in the vault. 2009: Online cranks assert that Fort Knox's gold bars were replaced with tungsten-filled forgeries so the real gold could be sold by the Clinton administration. 2010: Ron Paul questions whether there is gold at Fort Knox. Unknown: There are aliens there. These conspiracy theories spring from a weird mix of monetary policy disagreements that date back to the 1800s, hucksters trying to get people to invest in gold schemes, and the questions some people have about anything secret that "the government doesn't want you to know." Like everything else, the internet gives people time and space to spread and modernize ideas, but the Trump/Musk quotes are just warmed-over bullshit. And this isn't even the golden age of Fort Knox conspiracy theories. That was during the 1970s, when fear about our nation's gold was so pervasive, the Treasury Department had a brief moment of transparency. That time the press was allowed into Fort KnoxIt's not on many people's shelves in 2025, but Dr. Peter Beter's (again, really his name) The Conspiracy Against the Dollar was influential enough in the early 1970s that tabloids picked up on his claims, and soon members of Congress were getting calls from constituents, calling for proof that the Fort Knox gold reserves were still there. So in 1974, the Treasure Department sighed and said, "fine," then invited members of Congress and the press to visit Fort Knox to see for themselves. This was the first time anyone other than treasury employees had been allowed inside the vault since a limited audit was conducted in 1953. A handful of congresspeople and about 120 members of the media were escorted behind 20-ton steel doors and shown the gold bars. They picked them up. Weighed them. They even got to see the secret tunnel, an escape hatch that ends in the building, a failsafe for anyone accidentally locked in the vault. The press took pictures and shot film of all of it: Even the most skeptical congresspeople who toured the vault basically concluded "looks like the gold's there," and so, it seems, did most Americans. But for diehard conspiracy theorists (and dummies) no amount of evidence is enough. Some derided the visit as a "show audit" that proved nothing, and others concocted "the bars are filled with tungsten" theories because even if people saw it and took pictures, it's still not true. Trump's Treasury Secretary's 2017 visit to Fort KnoxTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently has said he would arrange an inspection for any senator who is interested in seeing the vaults. Steven Mnuchin, Trump's first treasury secretary, had a similar policy. In 2017, Mnuchin, Mitch McConnell, and other officials visited Fort Knox to review the bullion. Their visit included a viewing of the total eclipse as an added bonus. What good timing. Here's Mitch McConnell with gold bars. Adorable! Credit: US Treasury Department Apparently you can sign your name when you visit Fort Knox, as Mnuchin does here. Credit: US Treasury Department The exact purpose of Mnuchin and company's Fort Knox outing isn't clear, but I'm sure they were conducting important governmental business, not just sightseeing, and if they had noticed any missing bars, they would have alerted the proper authorities. Documents, crowns, and lots of narcotics: strange things stored at Fort KnoxWhile the gold seems to be there, alien bodies are (probably) not stored at Fort Knox, but that doesn't mean we don't put weird things down there sometimes. Back in the 1940s, with World War II ravaging Europe, the U.S. government moved the signed original Constitution of the United States, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, and drafts of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address into the vault for safe-keeping. The vault was used to store the Crown of St. Stephen, until we sent it back to Hungary in 1978. Until recently, Fort Knox was home to the U.S.'s strategic reserves of pain-killers: At one time, 68,269 pounds of opium and morphine were stored in the vault—that's a lot of narcotics! It isn't stored there any longer, and where it went is not public. Why don't you look into that, Elon Musk? Still in the vault are ten 1933 Double Eagle gold coins, a 1974-D aluminum cent, and twelve gold (22-karat) Sacagawea dollar coins that flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1999. Does the gold in Fort Knox even matter?It's cool that we have a great huge Smaug-sized treasure trove in the U.S., but does it do us any good? The gold bars stored in Fort Knox have been gathering dust since the early 1940s, and we don't do anything with them and they don't affect anything tangible. Our money hasn't been directly tied to gold since the 1930s (or 1970s; it's complicated) so in a sense it doesn't matter whether all the bars are filled with tungsten. The piles of gold serve mainly as a symbolic representation of our nation's wealth and stability—gold is very shiny, after all. Consider this: Fort Knox's gold is worth $435 billion, total. The U.S. nation debt is $36.22 trillion. So even if we were to sell it all tomorrow, it would be a drop in the bucket. Like the cash hidden under the nation's blanket, Fort Knox gold is our "if things get really bad, we still have this." It's the money in the banana stand. If Elon Musk opens the vault doors and does find nothing there, I hope he's smart enough to keep it to himself. View the full article

Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows. The Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings. That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so. “It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot when there’s nothing left in it. It doesn’t accomplish any policy objective,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. “Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.” Dozens of them were for already-paid subscriptions to The Associated Press, Politico and other media services that the administration said it would discontinue. Others were for research studies that have been awarded, training that has taken place, software that has been purchased and interns that have come and gone. An administration official said it made sense to cancel contracts that are seen as potential dead weight, even if the moves do not yield any savings. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. In all, DOGE data says the 417 contracts in question had a total value of $478 million. Dozens of other canceled contracts are expected to yield little if any savings. “It’s too late for the government to change its mind on many of these contracts and walk away from its payment obligation,” said Tiefer, who served on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tiefer said DOGE appeared to be taking a “slash and burn” approach to cutting contracts, which he said could damage the performance of government agencies. He said savings could be made instead by working with agency contracting officers and inspectors general to find efficiencies, an approach the administration has not taken. DOGE says the overall contract cancellations are expected to save more than $7 billion so far, an amount that has been questioned as inflated by independent experts. The canceled contracts were to purchase a wide range of goods and services. The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a contract in September to purchase and install office furniture at various branches. While the contract does not expire until later this year, federal records show the agency had already agreed to spend the maximum $567,809 with a furniture company. The U.S. Agency for International Development negotiated a $145,549 contract last year to clean the carpet at its headquarters in Washington. But the full amount had already been obligated to a firm that is owned by a Native American tribe based in Michigan. Another already-spent $249,600 contract went to a Washington, D.C., firm to help prepare the Department of Transportation for the recent transition from the Biden to the Trump administration. Some of the canceled contracts were intended to modernize and improve the way government works, which would seem to be at odds with DOGE’s cost-cutting mission. One of the largest, for instance, went to a consulting firm to help carry out a reorganization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which led the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The maximum $13.6 million had already been obligated to Deloitte Consulting LLP for help with the restructuring, which included closing several research offices. Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa. —Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press View the full article

Investors in cryptocurrencies are seeing red today. In the past 24 hours, the prices of most major cryptocurrencies and meme coins have plummeted. This includes crypto heavyweights like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP as well as popular meme coins like Dogecoin (DOGE) and TRUMP. Here’s what to know about the biggest losers and possible reasons behind the crash. Bitcoin drops below $90K for the first time since November Unsurprisingly, the crypto that is getting the most headlines today is Bitcoin, which as of the time of this writing currently sits at around $89,000 per coin. That’s a 7% drop in the last 24 hours alone. It also represents of few other ignominious milestones for the cryptocurrency king as of late. First, today’s decline marks the first time that Bitcoin has fallen below $90,000 since November 2024, after Donald Trump’s election victory sparked a crypto rally. Second, Bitcoin is now also down 20% since another important Trump marker: his inauguration day on January 20. On Trump’s inauguration day, Bitcoin had hit an all-time high of over $106,000. The post-election victory and post-inauguration gains were largely fueled by the belief that a Trump presidency would be good for the crypto markets in general. But it’s not just Bitcoin that is plummeting today. Other cryptocurrencies are as well. Those include (as of the time of this writing): Ethereum, which is down almost 10% in the past 24 hours (and down over 27% in the past month). XRP, which is down over 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 31% in the past month) Solana, which is down almost 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 46% in the past month) Dogecoin, which is down almost 11% in the past 24 hours (and down over 42% in the past month) Official Trump, which is down almost 14% in the past 24 hours (and down over 56% in the past month) But what exactly is causing today’s crypto crash? While the digital assets do tend to be highly volatile anyway, the general consensus among crypto industry watchers is that two main events could be contributing to the plunge. Trump’s tariffs lead to macroeconomic uncertainty While Trump’s election victory was hailed as the best possible outcome for the crypto industry, it now appears that Trump could be doing more harm than good for digital currency markets. That’s because since Trump was sworn in, he quickly set to initiating tariffs—or at least threatening to—against America’s major trading partners, including China, Mexico, Canada, and nearly every other country in the world. Many fear these that tariff threats may lead to an all-out trade war between America and other major economies. Indeed, as BeinCrypto points out, after Trump seemed to confirm yesterday that the tariffs on Mexico and Canada would be moving ahead, Bitcoin sank and crypto markets saw almost $1 billion in liquidations. When there is macroeconomic uncertainty—like the kind generated by potential trade wars—investors usually seek to lock in gains where they can by selling assets that have had good returns as of late. Larger anxieties about where the economy may be headed may be driving many crypto investors to take their profits now to buffer any losses in the future. The Bybit hack reminds crypto investors they are vulnerable It’s not just Trump’s actions that are rattling crypto investors. Last week, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hacked, leading to $1.5 billion dollars of cryptocurrencies being stolen. It is reportedly the largest crypto heist on record and is believed to have been carried out by actors in North Korea, reports CNN. Major crypto heists in the past have rattled investor confidence, and this one is no different. Heists such as this remind investors that cryptocurrencies are more readily at risk of theft than other assets, such as stocks or properties. To put the Bybit hack into greater perspective, Reuters reports that in all of 2024, there was $2.2 billion worth of crypto stolen. The ByBit hack signals that 2025 may be an even bigger year for crypto heists. View the full article

Are you considering owning a Chick-fil-A franchise? If that’s the case, you probably have questions about the ownership process and what it entails. In this blog post, we’ll answer some of the most commonly asked questions about Chick-fil-A franchising. We’ll also provide a few tips to help you determine if owning a Chick-fil-A is the right choice for you. So, whether you’re just starting to explore franchise opportunities or you’re ready to take the next step, keep reading for helpful information about Chick-fil-A ownership. What is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? A Chick-fil-A franchise is a restaurant chain specializing in chicken sandwiches and other related menu items. Their logo is a Chick-fil-A cow standing in front of the restaurant with the words “Eat Mor Chikin” written on it. Their headquarters is located in College Park, Georgia. The first Chick-fil-A restaurant opened in 1967 in Atlanta, Georgia, and it now has over 2,800 restaurants, mostly in the US. Chick-fil-A stands out among fast-food franchises due to its unique operating model and financial structure, which includes minimal initial investment for franchisees and high revenue per store. READ MORE:Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed Chick-fil-A Franchise History The company was founded in 1946 by S. Truett Cathy. The franchise model is based on a simple formula: produce a quality product at a reasonable price and provide excellent customer service. This has helped Chick-fil-A to become one of the most successful restaurant chains in the country. In addition to its menu items, the company is also known for its Christian values and conservative stance on social issues. This has occasionally led to controversy, but it has also endeared the company to a loyal customer base. READ MORE: Chick-Fil-A Success Shows Brand’s Ability to Triumph Over PR Problems Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise Right for You? Now that you have gained some insight into Chick-fil-A and the services they provide, it’s time to determine whether owning a Chick-fil-A franchise is the right choice for you. Here are several factors to take into account: Pros: Chick-fil-A pays for nearly all startup costs, including real estate, construction, and equipment, making the initial investment significantly lower compared to other fast-food franchises. Strong brand recognition and customer loyalty. Comprehensive training and support for franchisees. High average sales per unit. Pros: Chick-fil-A is a well-established brand with a loyal customer base. They have a proven business model that is successful in both good and bad economic times. Their restaurants are generally located in high-traffic areas. Chick-fil-A offers comprehensive training and support for franchisees. They offer a unique product that is not easily replicated by their competitors. Cons: You don’t actually own or receive any equity when you own a restaurant. Chick-Fil-A owns it and you’re considered an “Operator.” This means you can’t sell your Chick-fil-A location or pass it on to anyone. Chick-Fil-A requires that franchise owners actively manage their fast food restaurants full-time, overseeing daily operations. This approach differs from many other franchises, where ownership can be more of a passive investment. A franchise owner cannot open multiple locations, which can limit your profits. How Much Do Chick-fil-A Franchises Cost? To get started with your own Chick-fil-A franchise, you’ll need to pay an initial investment of only $10,000. While the restaurant can cost anywhere between $342,990 and $1,982,225 to start, a franchisee is only responsible for the initial franchise fee. Chick-fil-A covers the rest. READ MORE: Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed How to Become a Chick-fil-A Franchisee If you’re interested in becoming a franchisee, here are the steps: Attend an informational session You’ll first need to attend an informational session to learn more about the franchising process. During this session, you’ll have the opportunity to ask any questions you may have about owning a Chick-fil-A franchise. Submit an application After participating in an informational session, you will have the opportunity to submit an online application. Once your application is evaluated, you will be contacted to arrange an interview. To get ready for your interview, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with the company’s history and values. Interview with Chick-fil-A During your interview, you will meet with a franchising representative from the Chick-fil-A corporation. They will inquire about your background, experience, and your motivations for wanting to own a Chick-fil-A franchise. Additionally, they will evaluate whether you are a suitable match for the company. This is also an excellent opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have regarding the franchising process. Be approved by the Franchise Board If you’re approved by the Franchise Board, you’ll be able to sign a franchise agreement and begin the process of opening your own restaurant. If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations! Not many people are given the opportunity to become a franchisee of a Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant. Complete training After signing your franchise agreement, you will be required to undergo a multi-week training program at Chick-fil-A’s Restaurant Support Center located in Atlanta, Georgia. This program is designed to provide you with all the essential knowledge needed to effectively operate a Chick-fil-A restaurant. READ MORE: 10 Chicken Wing Franchises for Food Entrepreneurs Open your restaurant Once you’ve completed training, you’ll be ready to open your own restaurant. You’ll be supported throughout the process by Chick-fil-A’s experienced team of franchise consultants. They’ll help you with everything from site selection to grand opening. How Profitable Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? Chick-fil-A is one of the most profitable fast-food chains in the United States, bringing in over $11 billion in annual sales. That’s second only to McDonald’s, which generates over $40 billion in annual sales. On average, franchise owners earn $220,000 each year. Additionally, Chick-fil-A restaurants typically achieve $5.3 million in annual sales. Important Information for Prospective Chick-fil-A Franchisees If you’re considering opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, there are several additional details you should be aware of, including: The chain is closed on Sundays, as well as on Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is due to the company’s religious roots. The founder, S. Truett Cathy, was a devout Southern Baptist. The Chick-fil-A franchise operates in 47 states throughout the United States, as well as in Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, South Africa, and the UK. In addition to the initial franchise fee of $10,000, Chick-fil-A operators pay a 15% royalty fee plus an additional 50% of pretax profit. What’s more, is that they require that their franchisees not have any other active business ventures. So if you’re a serial entrepreneur, being a Chick-Fil-A operator isn’t for you. There are over 20,000 applications yearly, but only 75 to 80 get accepted to open new franchises each year (about 0.4% on the high end). So it’s clear that competition for these spots is fierce. The selection process can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months. So if you’re thinking about opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, be prepared for a long and difficult process. READ MORE: What is a Franchise? 20 Fast Food Franchise Opportunities Image: Depositphotos This article, "How to Open a Chick-fil-A Franchise" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Are you considering owning a Chick-fil-A franchise? If that’s the case, you probably have questions about the ownership process and what it entails. In this blog post, we’ll answer some of the most commonly asked questions about Chick-fil-A franchising. We’ll also provide a few tips to help you determine if owning a Chick-fil-A is the right choice for you. So, whether you’re just starting to explore franchise opportunities or you’re ready to take the next step, keep reading for helpful information about Chick-fil-A ownership. What is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? A Chick-fil-A franchise is a restaurant chain specializing in chicken sandwiches and other related menu items. Their logo is a Chick-fil-A cow standing in front of the restaurant with the words “Eat Mor Chikin” written on it. Their headquarters is located in College Park, Georgia. The first Chick-fil-A restaurant opened in 1967 in Atlanta, Georgia, and it now has over 2,800 restaurants, mostly in the US. Chick-fil-A stands out among fast-food franchises due to its unique operating model and financial structure, which includes minimal initial investment for franchisees and high revenue per store. READ MORE:Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed Chick-fil-A Franchise History The company was founded in 1946 by S. Truett Cathy. The franchise model is based on a simple formula: produce a quality product at a reasonable price and provide excellent customer service. This has helped Chick-fil-A to become one of the most successful restaurant chains in the country. In addition to its menu items, the company is also known for its Christian values and conservative stance on social issues. This has occasionally led to controversy, but it has also endeared the company to a loyal customer base. READ MORE: Chick-Fil-A Success Shows Brand’s Ability to Triumph Over PR Problems Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise Right for You? Now that you have gained some insight into Chick-fil-A and the services they provide, it’s time to determine whether owning a Chick-fil-A franchise is the right choice for you. Here are several factors to take into account: Pros: Chick-fil-A pays for nearly all startup costs, including real estate, construction, and equipment, making the initial investment significantly lower compared to other fast-food franchises. Strong brand recognition and customer loyalty. Comprehensive training and support for franchisees. High average sales per unit. Pros: Chick-fil-A is a well-established brand with a loyal customer base. They have a proven business model that is successful in both good and bad economic times. Their restaurants are generally located in high-traffic areas. Chick-fil-A offers comprehensive training and support for franchisees. They offer a unique product that is not easily replicated by their competitors. Cons: You don’t actually own or receive any equity when you own a restaurant. Chick-Fil-A owns it and you’re considered an “Operator.” This means you can’t sell your Chick-fil-A location or pass it on to anyone. Chick-Fil-A requires that franchise owners actively manage their fast food restaurants full-time, overseeing daily operations. This approach differs from many other franchises, where ownership can be more of a passive investment. A franchise owner cannot open multiple locations, which can limit your profits. How Much Do Chick-fil-A Franchises Cost? To get started with your own Chick-fil-A franchise, you’ll need to pay an initial investment of only $10,000. While the restaurant can cost anywhere between $342,990 and $1,982,225 to start, a franchisee is only responsible for the initial franchise fee. Chick-fil-A covers the rest. READ MORE: Buy Your First Franchise: Secrets Revealed How to Become a Chick-fil-A Franchisee If you’re interested in becoming a franchisee, here are the steps: Attend an informational session You’ll first need to attend an informational session to learn more about the franchising process. During this session, you’ll have the opportunity to ask any questions you may have about owning a Chick-fil-A franchise. Submit an application After participating in an informational session, you will have the opportunity to submit an online application. Once your application is evaluated, you will be contacted to arrange an interview. To get ready for your interview, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with the company’s history and values. Interview with Chick-fil-A During your interview, you will meet with a franchising representative from the Chick-fil-A corporation. They will inquire about your background, experience, and your motivations for wanting to own a Chick-fil-A franchise. Additionally, they will evaluate whether you are a suitable match for the company. This is also an excellent opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have regarding the franchising process. Be approved by the Franchise Board If you’re approved by the Franchise Board, you’ll be able to sign a franchise agreement and begin the process of opening your own restaurant. If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations! Not many people are given the opportunity to become a franchisee of a Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant. Complete training After signing your franchise agreement, you will be required to undergo a multi-week training program at Chick-fil-A’s Restaurant Support Center located in Atlanta, Georgia. This program is designed to provide you with all the essential knowledge needed to effectively operate a Chick-fil-A restaurant. READ MORE: 10 Chicken Wing Franchises for Food Entrepreneurs Open your restaurant Once you’ve completed training, you’ll be ready to open your own restaurant. You’ll be supported throughout the process by Chick-fil-A’s experienced team of franchise consultants. They’ll help you with everything from site selection to grand opening. How Profitable Is a Chick-fil-A Franchise? Chick-fil-A is one of the most profitable fast-food chains in the United States, bringing in over $11 billion in annual sales. That’s second only to McDonald’s, which generates over $40 billion in annual sales. On average, franchise owners earn $220,000 each year. Additionally, Chick-fil-A restaurants typically achieve $5.3 million in annual sales. Important Information for Prospective Chick-fil-A Franchisees If you’re considering opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, there are several additional details you should be aware of, including: The chain is closed on Sundays, as well as on Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is due to the company’s religious roots. The founder, S. Truett Cathy, was a devout Southern Baptist. The Chick-fil-A franchise operates in 47 states throughout the United States, as well as in Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, South Africa, and the UK. In addition to the initial franchise fee of $10,000, Chick-fil-A operators pay a 15% royalty fee plus an additional 50% of pretax profit. What’s more, is that they require that their franchisees not have any other active business ventures. So if you’re a serial entrepreneur, being a Chick-Fil-A operator isn’t for you. There are over 20,000 applications yearly, but only 75 to 80 get accepted to open new franchises each year (about 0.4% on the high end). So it’s clear that competition for these spots is fierce. The selection process can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months. So if you’re thinking about opening a Chick-fil-A franchise, be prepared for a long and difficult process. READ MORE: What is a Franchise? 20 Fast Food Franchise Opportunities Image: Depositphotos This article, "How to Open a Chick-fil-A Franchise" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Starmer announcement of ‘biggest sustained rise’ since cold war comes ahead of Trump meeting on Thursday View the full article

After 16 years of experiments to bring Photoshop apps to the phone, Adobe is launching its most convincing attempt yet. Called Photoshop Mobile and available in the App Store today, it’s Adobe’s first earnest attempt to build a Photoshop on mobile with the same unique powers that have made it so popular on desktop. This new Photoshop has been built from the ground up specifically for the phone, where it can sync seamlessly with Photoshop versions on the web and desktop. (An Android version is due this summer.) Pros will appreciate a few big technical headlines: You can have an unlimited number of layers, and there is no restriction on file sizes. (Vector drawing tools aren’t in this initial release, but I’m told Shapes are coming soon.) Casual editors will want to know that the app is free to use, though many features will be tucked inside an $8/month subscription that comes paired with access to Photoshop on the web. “Not all of Photoshop is in here, but we’re very confident in the foundations that we have that people are going to be able to use,” says Matthew Richmond, VP of design for Creative Cloud Pro products and 3D at Adobe. “A big part of this is the focus on the next-gen users, the individuals where, in a lot of cases [the phone is] their only computer.” Truth be told, phones have been fast enough for Photoshop for years. The big breakthrough that made Photoshop on iPhone is beyond technical specs. It’s the app’s entire UX that—at least as I squinted through a webcam demo—looks powerful, quick, and easy to learn. It’s the first time I’ve seen a permutation of Photoshop on a small screen that just seemed right, even if it looked new. A brief history of Photoshop on mobileAdobe’s first attempt at Photoshop on smartphones started in 2009, with a “Photoshop.com” mobile app. It was essentially an extension of the Camera app, and it allowed use of only the most basic controls, like cropping, rotation, and color. It was followed by Photoshop Mix (2014), Photoshop Fix (2015), and, finally, Photoshop Express, which lives on today. With all respect to Express, it’s not really Photoshop. You only need to load it for a few minutes to realize its extreme limitations: namely, building and managing layers and applying masks, when the app is really more focused on creating social-ready image and text layouts. Photoshop Mobile is different. It’s the company’s first smartphone app to take the core UX metaphor inside Photoshop—of creating layers, masking out bits of images, and applying different appearances at each level—and bringing it to a small touchscreen. This approach to image editing is foundational, not just to Adobe’s own software but also to the very way artists and designers have constructed images for centuries. It’s the fundamental framework of putting one color or cutout atop another that makes Photoshop’s approach to digital craft work at all. [Image: Adobe]Photoshop’s new “Select and do” UXThe brilliance of the app is that instead of drop-down menus and palettes of tools on the screen, it starts with your finger—an approach to UI that Adobe calls “select and do.” The idea is that you can tap on whatever part of the image you want, and you’ll be ushered through a workflow suggesting options for your next steps. In Photoshop desktop, and even in the tablet version, selection tools are hidden behind drop-down menus. You might even need to watch a tutorial to discover that they exist. On Photoshop mobile, you’re urged to start selecting right away. A “select area” button sits at the bottom of the screen. Tap on that, and you’re offered all sorts of ways to select (like draw a circle, or use the classic Magic Wand). You can even zoom in to the pixel level to make adjustments on what you select. But its newest option is called “tap select.” And it means that you can simply tap on a photo’s subjects (people, buses, plants) to highlight them, so editing on a phone stays easy. Richmond says it was this and related breakthroughs in touch accuracy—born from the most recent AI technologies—that convinced Adobe that real Photoshop Mobile was feasible. Once something is highlighted, a new menu appears to help with wayfinding in the app. Adobe uses a combination of proven workflows and contextual UI to guide you to your next step. In this case, options appear to modify just this highlighted portion of the image (perhaps you want to use generative fill on that area, or change the color). Select whatever option you like, and that work becomes a new layer. [Image: Adobe]And gosh, those layers look lovely. They appear on the right side of your screen as thumbnails, always in reach. And you tap in to adjust their properties or reorder them on the stack, just like you can on a desktop. Still, the experience is specifically not the desktop. Yes, Adobe’s tens of thousands of fonts and Stock gradients and images are available for building new layers and masks. But no, you don’t have every possible button you can imagine there all the time. And countless sub-features—especially appearance options—have been left out of the mobile app. Adobe has limited functionality in part just to ship v1.0 of the product, and in part because it believes that this more focused approach to workflows can bring in a new generation of users to Photoshop, coaxing them ahead with a project to discover the power of selection tools and layering from the jump. “It’s figuring out how to play this kind of musical instrument,” says Richmond, explaining that the notes in Photoshop are “layers, selections, masks, and appearance.” He adds: “We’ve been . . . trying to figure out if there are easier, faster ways to get started and really understand these concepts, because once you unlock them, it’s open-ended exploration.” The business impact of Photoshop MobileMake no mistake: Adobe needs Photoshop on the iPhone to woo the majority of creators today—from a generation of young designers hooked on the quick construction tools of Canva to content creators who use a sea of different apps and, often, social media’s own design tools to create their statement. Quite simply, it does not matter if Photoshop and the accompanying Creative Cloud is the most powerful editing software in the world on a desktop for a world hooked on good-enough production on a phone. However, the company is banking on the mobile market expanding its potential audience, because even as we’re nearly two decades into modern smartphones, there still isn’t a perfect analog for Photoshop on phones—the kind of ubiquitous software that allows deep-editing capability in a world reliant on filters and pre-chewed layouts. “Creators, whether or not they become professionals, really have that desire to express themselves in a unique way,” says Ashley Still, GM of Adobe Creative Cloud. “They want to make sure that the content they’re creating is not just another template, that it represents their unique voice.” Still is confident in the higher end of the mobile market after studying the public’s response to Adobe photo editing program Lightroom on mobile. Originally launched in 2015, the app has been a success story for the company. Lightroom’s users on mobile now outnumber its users on desktop, and Still believes the same will prove true for Photoshop in the next few years. Then, with Lightroom, Photoshop, and Express, she imagines a new creative workflow coming to the phone, where you can touch up an image in Lightroom, edit it with layers in Photoshop, then add text and other production elements in Express. Firefly image generation can sneak into this loop, too, turning one’s phone into a fairly capable Adobe editing suite. In some ways, that sounds like Adobe’s strategy from a decade ago, when it was launching micro apps that handed off specialized functions to slice and dice media. The difference now, however, is that Adobe’s mobile apps are growing more capable and equivalent in scope to their desktop counterparts. “It’s hard to make a single app best at everything,” Still concedes, noting, “a lot of the magic is also going to happen with workflows across the applications.” Adobe imagines that pro users, in particular, will choose to start a project on their phone but fine-tune it on a desktop. The company does not want to be prescriptive, Still insists, saying that Adobe apps won’t offer complete feature parity across surfaces, but they should be optimized for where you meet them. [Image: Adobe]“One of the things that I think we also didn’t get quite right with [Photoshop on] the iPad is the expectation that we set within the community of the roles that these different devices play,” she says. The challenge for Adobe now is, first, getting a working Photoshop app on Android, where the majority of smartphone users in the world reside. And then, second and more ongoing, figuring out how well all of its Photoshop “select and do” workflows really operate in the wild, while folding in the most demanded, most feasible add-ons into the product in a monthly release cadence. “There’s a line in the sand where, like, we can’t keep it inside the building anymore,” says Richmond. “We need to put it out there so we can see what happens at scale.” View the full article

If you feel like you’re being pulled in different directions with your SEO program, you aren’t alone. How do you know where to focus first for the most impact? And when that’s done, what do you do next? It can be challenging to decide which SEO tasks to prioritize because they all impact the end user in some way – but some more than others. This is where discernment comes into play. This article will help you build a path to get your SEO program organized from point A to point B and figure out how to prioritize tasks to get ROI quicker. Frameworks for identifying high-impact SEO opportunities When every SEO task feels urgent, knowing where to focus first can make or break your strategy. These three frameworks can help you prioritize what moves the needle. 1. Technical SEO audit A technical SEO audit is your roadmap for identifying and fixing the issues that directly impact search visibility and user experience. The right audit reveals the most urgent technical barriers to ranking – and helps you prioritize based on impact. But not all audits are created equal. Here’s a breakdown of the different types: Basic SEO audit This is where automated software scans your site and flags common SEO issues. While the insights can be helpful, they come in a generic, one-size-fits-all report. This type of audit is ideal if you’re working with a tight budget or just want to get a basic overview before bringing in an expert. It’s never a bad idea, but it won’t provide an in-depth analysis. Mid-level SEO audit Here, you can expect a professional SEO specialist or vendor to go beyond automated reports and offer additional insights that software alone might miss. While these can pinpoint issues that require attention, they may not provide detailed solutions. This approach is useful when you need to identify potential problem areas but aren’t ready for a full-scale SEO strategy. Comprehensive SEO audit This is a full technical audit conducted by experienced technical SEOs. This deep dive involves top-tier tools, data analysis, and an in-depth website and SEO review by skilled analysts specializing in technical SEO and business strategy. Tools assist the process, but the real value comes from expert analysis, which makes it a time-intensive but highly valuable investment. Knowing these key differences in audits can help you make an informed decision before you invest. Dig deeper: Technical SEO: Don’t rush the process 2. The Eisenhower Matrix The Eisenhower Matrix is a powerful tool for prioritizing tasks by urgency and importance. Applying it to your SEO strategy helps you determine which tasks need immediate attention and which can wait. To get started, divide tasks into four quadrants: Quadrant 1: Urgent and important These are the critical issues that directly impact rankings and user experience. For example, this could be a slow site or fixing a misconfigured robots.txt file that is blocking search engines from crawling and indexing key pages. Whatever tasks you put in this category will be non-negotiable. Addressing these items can sometimes have an immediate impact on your ability to compete. Quadrant 2: Important but not urgent These will be the longer-term strategies that build sustainable growth. For instance, maybe developing a long-term content strategy focused on topic authority and evergreen content falls here. These efforts don’t require immediate attention but are essential for long-term SEO success. Quadrant 3: Urgent but not important This bucket is for handling tasks that are time-sensitive but don’t significantly influence rankings or user experience. This could be something like responding to a minor Google Search Console alert about a non-critical issue. While these tasks may not have a high impact, taking care of them prevents minor issues from accumulating into big projects. Quadrant 4: Neither urgent nor important Anything that falls into this category is something you avoid. One example might be spending hours tweaking meta descriptions that already meet best practices without significant SEO gains. These activities consume time and resources without delivering meaningful results. Using the Eisenhower Matrix helps your SEO by enhancing: Clarity: Identify and fix what demands attention now versus what can wait. Efficiency: Prioritize the highest ROI tasks without getting bogged down. Focus: Stay aligned with business goals, eliminating distractions. 3. The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule) The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of efforts. In SEO, focusing on the most impactful tasks helps you drive faster, more meaningful results without spreading yourself too thin. Keyword targeting It’s common for a small subset of your keywords to drive most organic traffic. Instead of spreading your efforts thin across all keywords, focus on optimizing the ones that deliver the most value. Use SEO tools to identify the top-performing 20% of keywords that bring in most of your traffic and conversions. Prioritize pages that rank between Positions 5 and 20 for those high-value keywords. These are low-hanging fruit that can move up with improvements. Expand content for high-value keywords by answering related questions and creating supporting content. Content focus Most of your website’s traffic and engagement likely comes from a handful of high-performing pages. Instead of endlessly creating new content, invest in improving the 20% of pages that already generate the most traffic and leads. Identify your top 20% of pages by traffic and conversions using analytics tools. Revamp those pages by updating outdated content to enhance optimization and engagement. Create supporting content to build topical authority around your best pages. Technical fixes Technical SEO can feel overwhelming because there’s always more to fix. But, a small subset of technical issues typically has the most impact on site performance. Focus on fixing the top 20% of technical issues that cause 80% of your performance problems. Prioritize high-impact fixes like: Resolving crawl errors so search engines can access your site. Improving page load speed for user experience and rankings. Fixing broken links to avoid losing link equity and frustrating users. Optimizing usability to retain visitors and improve your ability to compete in the search results. Dig deeper: Prioritizing SEO strategies: Where to focus your efforts Having a framework for approaching your SEO program helps you stay organized. Within that framework, you must consider how you will execute both short-term wins and longer-term strategies. Balancing long-term strategies with quick wins To succeed in SEO, you must balance short-term wins with long-term growth. Quick wins can show immediate improvements, but foundational efforts are what build lasting authority. To achieve the best results, it’s important to defer resources to both. Quick wins Quick wins are tactical SEO tasks that can be implemented quickly to produce noticeable results. These tasks usually involve optimizing existing content or resolving certain technical issues. They may not require large investments of time or resources but can lead to meaningful improvements in rankings, traffic, or user experience. What constitutes a quick win? Tasks that are simple to implement. Things that address known website performance issues. Fixes that improve both search engine visibility and user experience. Examples of SEO quick wins include: Fixing technical errors, like resolving 404 pages, broken links, and crawl issues. Improving site speed. Optimizing existing content by adding internal links, updating outdated information, or including relevant keywords. Quick wins are valuable because they deliver early signs of progress. This helps build momentum and gain stakeholder buy-in. However, relying solely on quick wins isn’t enough to achieve a sustainable SEO program. That’s where long-term strategies come in. Long-term strategies Long-term strategies require more time and effort but are key to creating a strong foundation. These strategies help your website become more authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant in the eyes of both search engines and your audience. Examples of long-term strategies include: Content creation that targets important keywords and answers user questions in-depth. Try SEO siloing to build authority around a topic. Earning backlinks through your high-quality content and partnerships. Refreshing top-performing content to make sure it remains evergreen and relevant. I recommend spending 50% of your content resources on maintaining older but high-performing content. Continuing education so you can stay ahead of the curve. Consider annual SEO training with additional learning opportunities throughout the year. Search evolves fast, and you want to be able to forecast what’s coming up so you can start working on it early. Foundational efforts don’t deliver instant results, but as your site’s authority grows, you’ll see compounding benefits with higher rankings, more traffic, and increased user trust. Fast gains, lasting growth: Crafting a balanced SEO plan A good SEO roadmap should include both short-term quick wins and long-term projects. But where to start? Here’s one scenario: You could focus 70% of your time on quick wins early on to show immediate results and 30% on long-term efforts. Over time, you might adjust the balance to a 50/50 split as your site becomes more stable and foundational work becomes a bigger priority. Dig deeper: 3 quick SEO wins to kick-start growth next year Focus on what matters most for lasting results Prioritizing your SEO strategies is the key to driving meaningful results. SEO isn’t about doing everything at once. It’s about doing the right things at the right time. When you focus on high-impact tasks and continuously refine your approach, you’ll build a more competitive search engine presence that pays off for years to come. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The JBL Flip 6 is currently $89.95 on Woot (and will remain so for the next four days or until stocks last)—$40 off its usual $129.95 price tag, and if you're a Prime member, you also get free standard shipping (otherwise, it's $6). It’s available in black, white, teal, gray, and green, giving you a decent range of options to match your vibe. The design is classic JBL—cylindrical, durable, and built to be tossed into a bag without worry. Its passive radiators on both ends let you feel the bass in your hands (earning itself a place in PCMag's "Best Outdoor Speakers for 2025" roundup). Just don’t expect a true subwoofer experience; it’s still a compact speaker, after all. JBL Flip 6 Portable Bluetooth Speaker $89.95 $129.95 Save $40.00 Get Deal Get Deal $89.95 $129.95 Save $40.00 Inside, the Flip 6 packs a 20-watt woofer and a 10-watt tweeter, covering a frequency range of 63Hz to 20kHz. It connects via Bluetooth 5.1 and supports AAC and SBC Bluetooth codecs, but not AptX, so audiophiles looking for higher-quality streaming may want to look elsewhere. The top panel houses volume and playback controls, though the multi-function button weirdly only lets you skip forward—not back. JBL’s PartyBoost feature is also here, letting you link multiple compatible JBL speakers for a bigger sound. Battery life is estimated at around 12 hours, but that depends on how loud you like your music. Crank it up, and you’ll burn through that charge much faster. There’s no speakerphone function or aux input, which might be a dealbreaker if you like having wired options. Durability is where the Flip 6 shines—with an IP67 rating, it’s fully dust-proof and waterproof, meaning it can survive a pool dunk and even float (though don’t expect Bluetooth to work well underwater). It also comes with a 90-day Woot Limited Warranty for added peace of mind. JBL’s companion app gives you access to customizable three-band EQ and PartyBoost controls, though the app itself is pretty barebones. Sound-wise, the Flip 6 delivers impressive low-end depth, and at moderate volumes, the bass is strong without distortion. Push it too high, though, and its digital signal processing (DSP) kicks in, thinning out the lows, according to this PCMag review. If you considering alternatives, the Sony SRS-XB23 might be worth checking out at around $95. Note: This item can't be delivered to Alaska, Hawaii, and PO Box addresses. View the full article

I’m going on a book tour! My next book, How to Travel the World on $75 a Day, is coming out on March 25th and I’m going on a book tour to talk about it and the current state of travel! This is my first book tour in six years and I’m very excited to get out there and talk about how travel has changed as well as hang out with readers of this site! The last edition of my book came out in 2017 and, since then, a lot has changed. COVID forever changed the travel industry. A lot of companies/hotels/hostels closed during the pandemic while old methods of saving money became obsolete and new methods came into being. And, since 2017, prices have gone up. A lot. Not only because of natural inflation but because of the post-COVID inflation boom. (As you’ve probably noticed, it’s not as cheap to travel as it was back in 2017!) Since travel has changed so much, I wanted the new book to reflect the current conditions we travelers face when it comes to planning a trip, saving money, and navigating regions around the world. The book is focused on long-term travelers, but it’s also just for anyone who just wants to save money when they travel. The tips and tricks can be applied to any trip of any length. So, come meet me on book tour and learn how to travel smarter for less this year! Here are my tour dates and how to sign up: March 26th: New York City – The Strand, 7pm. Sign up here! March 28th: Chicago – Barbara’s, 6pm. Sign up here! April 1st: Austin – Location and time TBD. April 3: San Diego – Warwick’s, 7:30pm. Sign up here! April 8: San Francisco – Book Passage, 5:30pm. Sign up here! April 10th: Los Angeles – Location and time TBD. April 16: Portland – Powell’s, 7pm. Sign up here! Note: I’m working on adding a few more locations to the tour! I’ll add new destinations as they come. You’ll be able to get the book at any tour stop but, if I’m not coming to your city and you still want the book, you can order the books from these fine establishments: Amazon Bookshop.org Barnes & Noble *** If you live in any of the cities above, I hope you’ll make out out to an event! And, if you’re not in any of those cities, please consider pre-ordering a copy. Pre-orders determine the print run of the book and how many copies local bookstores buy. The stronger the pre-sale orders, the more likely they are to stock the book so please order the book in advance! I’m really excited about this new edition of the book and I can’t wait to talk about it with you! Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner. It’s my favorite search engine because it searches websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is being left unturned. Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as it consistently returns the cheapest rates for guesthouses and hotels. Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are: SafetyWing (best for budget travelers) World Nomads (best for mid-range travelers) InsureMyTrip (for those 70 and over) Medjet (for additional evacuation coverage) Want to Travel for Free? Travel credit cards allow you to earn points that can be redeemed for free flights and accommodation — all without any extra spending. Check out my guide to picking the right card and my current favorites to get started and see the latest best deals. Need a Rental Car? Discover Cars is a budget-friendly international car rental website. No matter where you’re headed, they’ll be able to find the best — and cheapest — rental for your trip! Need Help Finding Activities for Your Trip? Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can find cool walking tours, fun excursions, skip-the-line tickets, private guides, and more. Ready to Book Your Trip? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel. I list all the ones I use when I travel. They are the best in class and you can’t go wrong using them on your trip. The post Come See Me on Book Tour! appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site. View the full article

The surge in anti-DEI sentiment, fueled by political actions, social pressures, and legal uncertainties creates a complex environment for organizations striving to foster diverse and inclusive workplaces. To navigate this turbulent environment and advance diversity, equity and inclusion, companies should focus on three key actions: 1. Tying DEI to outcomes, 2. Creating systems that focus on debiasing, 3. Building cultures of accountability. Understanding the backlash and how to defend against it The current DEI backlash creates a complex environment for companies that want to foster diverse and inclusive workplaces. To respond effectively, organizations must first understand the three sources of the backlash: The political backlash: The current political climate is undeniably hostile toward DEI. From executive orders dismantling federal DEI programs to legislative efforts like the “Dismantle DEI Act,” the message is clear: DEI initiatives are under attack. Since last year’s SCOTUS affirmative action decision and the closing of the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion, threats to the public sector have had a chilling effect on the private sector. The social battlefield: The social backlash against DEI is just as significant as the political one. Organizations face pressure from all sides, with some stakeholders demanding more aggressive DEI initiatives while others decry them as “woke” or divisive. Fear of alienating customers or facing boycotts can lead organizations to water down or avoid speaking publicly about their DEI efforts. And while cessation sensationalism may provide effective air cover for quietly continuing DEI work, what happens when there’s a disconnect between what a company says – or doesn’t say – and what it does? Our brains crave predictability. When we see contradictory actions and statements, it creates cognitive dissonance, which erodes trust and engagement. In fact, alignment between what an organization says and what it does is the foundation of organizational accountability. Therefore, organizations need to think about the impact of this strategy on their employees. The legal minefield: Although the law moves much more slowly than political and social forces, it is crucial for organizations to have a clear understanding of the legal framework governing DEI. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. However, as interpretation and application of laws are subject to change, organizations must stay informed about the latest legal developments to ensure compliance. This includes seeking legal counsel when necessary, conducting regular audits of DEI policies and practices, and staying abreast of any changes in legislation or judicial interpretation. Organizations must be prepared to defend their DEI initiatives against government scrutiny. They can mitigate legal risk in their DEI initiatives by avoiding the “three Ps”: 1. conferring preferences, 2. on protected groups, 3. with respect to palpable benefits. How companies can continue DEI work Despite these forces, organizations cannot afford to abandon their DEI efforts. DEI is not just a moral imperative; DEI is a business necessity. Research shows that when leveraged in the best way, diverse teams are more innovative and make better decisions, leading to improved performance and financial outcomes. According to a 2023 survey, inclusive companies are 1.7 times more likely to be innovative, and they achieve 2.3 times more cash flow per employee., To navigate the current landscape and continue to reap the benefits of DEI, organizations must adopt a strategic and proactive approach, focusing on three key actions: Make the case for impact. Organizations must be able to articulate the “why” behind their DEI commitments in a way that resonates with diverse – and sometimes resistant – stakeholders. By articulating the “why,” organizations make DEI compelling, tapping into our intrinsic motivational brain networks. Research shows that adding a “what’s in it for me” allows others to align their own individual goals with those of the initiatives, making it more likely they’ll act upon them. This calls for moving beyond the moral case for DEI to prove its tangible value. We have developed a science-based framework that outlines the tangible benefits of DEI and provides practical guidance on how to achieve them. It emphasizes the importance of prioritizing diversity and habituating inclusion to drive business success and create a more just, sustainable work environment for everyone. It provides a roadmap for organizations to measure the impact of their DEI initiatives and demonstrate their return on investment. In today’s climate, where DEI is facing increased scrutiny, it is more critical than ever for organizations to articulate the business case for DEI and demonstrate its value. Embrace the power of de-biasing: Debiasing is a powerful tool for building fair and inclusive systems and processes. By removing unconscious bias from decision-making, organizations can create an equitable environment where merit matters. Thus, even those who oppose DEI from a “meritocracy” standpoint cannot reasonably argue against debiasing, Yoshino says. At the individual level, this means understanding and mitigating unconscious bias. Interpersonally, it calls for changing behaviors, adopting habits of inclusion, and enabling psychological safety in teams. At the institutional level, implementing strategies such as blind recruitment, structured interviews, and standardized performance evaluations can sustain individual and interpersonal progress. Ongoing education and training maintain and increase awareness of unconscious bias and equip individuals with the skills to mitigate its impact. Organizations can move beyond simply acknowledging the existence of unconscious bias to actively addressing it and creating a more inclusive workplace where everyone can deliver value. Build a culture of accountability: Accountability is the backbone of any successful DEI strategy. It’s not enough to simply have policies in place; organizations must ensure that these policies are translated into action, both for their employees and their customers. Not only does organizational accountability boost employee engagement and performance, it is also a predictor of long-term organizational performance. Inclusive leadership calls for accountability, both in modeling and ensuring inclusive behaviors. Neuroleadership Institute research has revealed two distinct forms of accountability that can apply to how we continue DEI work. Many organizations default to a punitive form of accountability — like withholding bonuses — that focuses on blame and punishment, hindering progress and creating a toxic environment. Fostering a proactive culture of accountability, on the other hand, frames accountability as a challenge and opportunity for growth. For DEI work, this means creating and communicating the “why” behind initiatives, establishing success metrics, and sharing outcomes with employees and customers. Proactive accountability, supported by neuroscience, drives individuals and organizations to achieve goals and own outcomes. This fosters trust among stakeholders, ultimately leading to improved results. Inclusive leadership development can create ownership and empowerment by redefining DEI accountability as a necessity for positive business outcomes. Looking Ahead The road ahead for DEI is bumpy, winding, and fraught with challenges. It is also paved with opportunities. By embracing a strategic and proactive approach, organizations can withstand the present to win the future in an increasingly diverse world. This is a defining moment for DEI. Organizations that rise to the occasion will not only reap the rewards of a diverse and inclusive workforce but also contribute to a more just and equitable society. By weaving DEI into their business goals, eliminating bias from their systems, and fostering cultures of accountability, organizations can navigate the turbulent waters ahead and emerge stronger and more inclusive than ever before. Janet M. Stovall, CDE, is the Global Head of D&I at the NeuroLeadership Institute. View the full article

Treasury yields have declined amid signs US economic growth is slowingView the full article