How to Build a Team That Can Execute Your Vision

Key Takeaways

A vision only works when your team feels equipped to execute it.
Empowerment happens through trust, autonomy and permission to lead confidently.
Mistakes are growth moments; support your team through missteps, not micromanage.

In a recent team meeting, something became undeniably clear to me: Although I’ve got a bold, clear vision for my PR firm, not everyone on my team felt confident about stepping into it, either when I first hired them or even later, once they were an established staffer.

Some felt they lacked the education to connect their daily work to our broader purpose; others simply didn’t believe they were equipped to carry out that purpose. When they shared their thoughts with me, that’s when I realized where leadership meets reality. A vision without empowered people behind it is just a poster on a wall — it’s nothing but a framed motto in the office that no one pays attention to with their heads down at their desks.

As leaders, therefore, it’s our job to go beyond just articulating a mission. We must create the systems, the culture and the psychological safety our teams require to own it. Execution doesn’t happen because the boss demands it; it happens because people believe they have the capacity and capabilities to execute.

If you want your team to execute your vision, start by making sure they understand it, see themselves in it and feel supported enough to take resolute steps forward. Vision becomes reality through confident action, and confident action begins with intentional leadership. Here are the guidelines I relay to my team to enable that.

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Step #1: Trust your judgment

Remind every member on your team that they were hired for their strengths and instincts. If you didn’t see in them characteristics that would serve both your own company objectives and their professional growth, you wouldn’t have brought them on. So counsel them to trust their own judgment — built on their distinct proficiencies and experiences — when they’re making decisions on behalf of your organization. The more they see that you have trust in them, the more they’ll trust themselves.

Step #2: Self-assurance counts

Even when your people feel a little trepidatious or unsure on the inside, you want your customers to feel assured in your company’s services or products. So I tell my staff to speak with confidence in their responses and communications, which sets our clients at ease and makes them feel well taken care of.

It’s fine to still be learning (to always be learning, actually); it’s okay to not always have the answers. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t present yourself as knowledgeable and resourceful in the interests of the company’s overall goals. Saying, “You know, I’m not 100% sure of that, but I’ll ask our marketing director and get back to you with an answer by the end of the day” is just as reassuring to the client as having the answer readily available on the spot.

Step #3: Mistakes are fixable

Mistakes are going to happen. People are going to mess up. Details are going to slip through the cracks. It’s inevitable. But you can make your staff feel vitally supported even when missteps occur by explaining that there’s nothing someone can say or do that can’t be corrected. Maybe it can’t be erased or totally remedied, but I can’t think of any company faux pas we’ve experienced that hasn’t been made better by a concerted effort to improve the situation.

We all grow by trying, not by being paralyzed by fear or giving in to anxiety. So make it part of your company ethos — make sure your people know that it’s okay to slip up and that you’ll be there for them to get them back on solid footing. By doing so, you’ll all continue to advance toward a vision that’s perfectly imperfect for your company profile.

Step #4: Be forward-thinking

A great way to effectively execute a company vision is to keep looking at it through your forward-facing windshield, not your rearview mirror. So I consistently encourage my team members to anticipate needs, plan next steps, devise solutions, sometimes even before there’s a need for them.

Part of this mindset is prompting your people to lead from where they are, to not wait to be led. When you allow this kind of autonomy and self-determination at work, it boosts your team’s morale, it builds their cumulative strength, and it shepherds them toward enacting their own informed choices. All of this feeds into your company vision positively, proactively and powerfully.

Step #5: Don’t wait for permission

On a related but separate note, you can nurture your team by permitting them to not seek permission. True, you don’t want people going rogue and implementing plans that could negatively affect your client base or that involve pricing. But if something falls squarely within their role and it aligns with the spirit and intent of your company’s values, let your team members roam free. Just be sure they’re well-versed on those values first!

Examples of this: I let my writers write the way they think is best for our clients. I let my publicists devise their own pitching hooks and press release themes. I let my operations manager manage operations without too much input from me, and I let my client representatives establish their own one-on-one personal relationships with their accounts. If things aren’t clear, they know they can ask questions. If they need authorization for something, they know who to go to. But mostly, I like to write out a lot of permission slips and see how far my staff can go on their own merits.

Step #6: Management has your back

If you’re grooming a team that can help you progress toward your overarching vision for your company day by day, it’s imperative that they feel wholly supported in their efforts. This means showing them — not just telling them — that leadership is there to guide, to bolster, to champion, not to micromanage.

Nothing will kill a company’s elan like looking over everyone’s shoulder every day and questioning their actions. Instead, management should embrace the role of being the team’s coach and cheerleader all in one, the buttress to lean upon when reinforcement is needed and the voice that amplifies their own rather than stymying it.

When you empower your team with all these ideas and ideologies, empowerment isn’t just part of your culture; it becomes your culture. And when you’re the wind beneath your team’s wings, not only will they fly, you’ll all fly strong and steady together toward the company of your dreams.

The Surprising Strategy Smart Leaders Use to Outpace Disruption

Key Takeaways

Anticipate what’s next, not just what’s now.
Strengthen your tech foundation before it’s tested.
Build an agile organization that frees your team to innovate.
Understand that agility is a mindset, not just a model.

Nothing tests a leader like turbulence. Just ask the thousands of executives watching AI disrupt their industries. ChatGPT was released just two years ago; OpenAI reports it now sees over 400 million weekly users, with more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies integrating its tools. By comparison, the internet didn’t reach this level of adoption until nearly a decade after its debut. That kind of acceleration isn’t just impressive — it’s disorienting. Nearly three-quarters of professionals globally say they feel overwhelmed by the current pace of change at work. So, how do leaders prepare for this level of disruption while managing the change required to unlock real value from new technologies?

There’s a saying: You don’t lose your job or your business to AI (or any “new technology” for that matter); you lose it to the person or competitor who learns how to use it better than you do. As AI drives unprecedented speed and efficiency, the real competitive threat isn’t the technology itself, but the leaders who harness it first.

One thing is clear: Companies that can’t adapt fast enough fall behind, no matter how brilliant their product or loyal their customer base. The key difference between the brands thriving through AI disruption and those scrambling to stay afloat? Leadership agility.

Agile leaders don’t simply absorb change — they anticipate it, build for it and move through it with intentional speed. The good news? You don’t need a C-suite full of technologists to lead this way. Here are three ways you can foster business agility right now:

1. Anticipate what’s next, not just what’s now

Reactive leaders chase problems. Proactive leaders predict them and pivot early enough to turn friction into advantage. This kind of leadership doesn’t just respond to change; it creates the conditions to meet it strategically, before urgency takes over — especially as new AI-driven tools, old competitors and new market entrants can change the market landscape in weeks, not years.

One example: Zoom, once known mostly as a conferencing tool, anticipated that hybrid work wasn’t going away. Instead of coasting on its pandemic-fueled popularity, it expanded into virtual collaboration, AI note-taking and whiteboarding. That foresight helped the brand stay essential even as competitors caught up.

Similarly, leaders who recognize that AI can offload repetitive tasks, such as scheduling, data entry or note-taking, free their people to operate at the top of their license. In other words, by pushing repetitive, more tactical work to machines, humans can spend more time on strategic, creative or relationship-driven activities.

In executive coaching, for instance, senior coaches can now dedicate more time to meaningful conversations with clients because AI-powered summaries handle the note-taking. Or take nursing in hospitals and add in AI-video-based fall-risk detection. Now, nurses can spend less time watching patients and more time “top of their licenses” caring for them. These kinds of shifts allow teams to deliver more value, faster and at lower cost. And if your competitors embrace this before you do, they’ll pull ahead.

The takeaway? Market signals rarely whisper for long. Pay attention closely, anticipate and move while you still have the advantage. Think about your industry, company and people. How might AI improve or replace some (or all) of what you do in the future? Then find ways to leverage new technology to level up what you do.

2. Strengthen your tech foundation before it’s tested

Agility doesn’t come from reacting faster. It comes from building infrastructure that can flex under pressure, not crack. Too many businesses delay adopting new technologies until something breaks, opening themselves up to downtime, security threats and operational standstills. And in an AI-enabled environment where new platforms evolve rapidly, that lag can make the difference between staying relevant or falling behind.

Technical debt — the accumulation of outdated systems and patchwork fixes — can quietly slow a company to a crawl. But it’s not just technology that creates drag. Procedural debt, or the tendency to keep doing things the “old” way simply because that’s how it’s always been done, can be just as dangerous. Legacy processes layered with workarounds become a hidden barrier to speed and innovation, trapping organizations in patterns that no longer serve their goals.

By confronting both technical and procedural debt early, leaders clear the path for true agility. This proactive approach ensures their teams and systems are ready to pivot, scale and seize opportunities without being held back by outdated tools or entrenched habits.

As Thomas Koll, CEO of Laplink Software, puts it: “Forward-thinking companies are moving away from reactive tech upgrades and instead building resilient, adaptable infrastructures that support continuous AI adoption — including AI PCs — as part of an ongoing evolution. This empowers professionals to experience fewer technical disruptions, be ready for new AI tools right on their desktops and focus on innovating and streamlining business workflows.”

Building a resilient, AI-ready organization isn’t just a technical necessity. It’s a strategic move to empower your team to do higher-value work. When leaders implement systems that incorporate AI thoughtfully, they enable employees to focus on tasks that require human judgment, emotional intelligence and creative problem-solving. This sets a new standard for productivity and innovation that competitors will quickly match (or exceed) if you don’t move first.

Strong tech foundations aren’t about shiny tools; they’re about keeping your people and systems ready for the next pivot, before it’s forced on you.

3. Build an agile organization that frees your team to innovate

Agility isn’t just about having the right technology and processes. It’s about creating an organizational structure that keeps teams flexible, focused and forward-looking.

Rigid hierarchies, overcomplicated approval chains and outdated workflows weigh down progress. Leaders who prioritize process agility create space for innovation by reducing daily friction. This might mean empowering teams to make faster decisions, rethinking how information flows or eliminating bottlenecks that slow execution.

Spotify offers a compelling model. As the company scaled, it pioneered the use of squads: small, cross-functional teams with end-to-end responsibility for a feature or product area. Each squad operates like a mini-startup, empowered to make decisions independently, experiment with ideas and release updates without getting bogged down in centralized approvals. By combining autonomy with a shared mission, Spotify’s squads keep collaboration tight and innovation fast, helping the company respond quickly to user needs and industry trends.

Leaders who clear these kinds of roadblocks give their teams room to solve problems before they become crises and room to experiment before competitors do.

Agility is a mindset, not just a model

In a market where AI is accelerating change faster than ever, agility isn’t optional. The most successful companies aren’t the ones that dodge disruption altogether. They’re the ones whose leaders build the muscle to adapt and empower their teams to stay ahead.

Remember: AI adoption isn’t about replacing people, but about amplifying them. By delegating lower-value tasks to AI, you unlock your team’s potential to operate strategically and empathetically — capabilities no algorithm can truly replicate. Companies that seize this opportunity will position themselves to innovate continuously, while those who hesitate risk being left behind by faster, more adaptive competitors.

Whether you’re refining your tech stack, streamlining how your team works or scanning the horizon for what’s next, every decision you make sets the tone for how your business handles change. Lead with agility, and your company won’t just survive the next shift — it’ll shape what comes after.

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I Took My Side Hustle Full-Time and Made $222,000 Last Year. Here’s How — and Why Sometimes I Work Just 10 Hours a Week.

Key Takeaways

After six years as a part-time consultant, Osborne made the leap to full-time — and nearly doubled his annual earnings.
Learn how he knew it was the right choice and his tips for other tutors considering the transition.

This as-told-to story is based on an interview with Seattle, Washington-based tutor Carter Osborne, who owns college essay consulting business Carter Osborne Tutoring. Osborne started tutoring as a side hustle in 2017 to help with tuition payments while in graduate school. In 2024, Osborne quit his job as a PR director to take the business full-time. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Image Credit: Courtesy of Carter Osborne

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I turned my tutoring side hustle into a full-time business in January 2024.

There was a push and pull for me in this direction: The push was that it became challenging to balance both my full-time PR job and my college essays, which I considered a side hustle at the time, although it had grown to the point that it took up as much time as my PR job. During the busy college application season, I was essentially working two full-time jobs, and it just didn’t work anymore.

Then the pull was that I love the artistic and creative aspect of working on college application essays. I find it so personal and enriching in a way that PR just didn’t quite match. So I was like, Okay, I have a connection to something here that is generating a lot of revenue, as much revenue as my PR job, but it’s more enjoyable day-to-day. I like working with the kids. I like working on storytelling. By the time I made the choice, it had become fairly obvious which one was right.

I had a vague idea that I wanted to increase my revenue by about double, thinking, Okay, I’ll have twice as much time and should be able to dedicate that to my business. I’d love to double my revenue. So I raised my rates, knowing that that was a stretch goal going in. Just because I’d freed up an hour didn’t mean I’d have that much more business. I had to go out and earn more clients and spend more time with them.

Between 2020, a few years into the side hustle, and 2023, I grew revenue from $58,000 a year to $114,250 a year. I had 37 clients in 2020 and 54 clients in 2023. When I took the side business full-time in 2024, I hit $222,000 in revenue with 66 clients. My business is highly seasonal. College application deadlines typically fall between November and January, so the second half of the year is the busiest. I made roughly 80% of my revenue last year between July and December.

During the busy season, I work 50 to 70 hours per week, depending on the month. October is typically the busiest as we approach the first major deadlines of the year, which fall on October 15 and November 1. During the off-season, I work roughly 10 to 15 hours per week, and I often step away entirely for vacations that aren’t possible during the busy season.

This industry runs on referrals; they’re the golden ticket. When parents want to hire someone to work with their kid on something as high-stakes as the college admissions process, frontline advertisements, social media marketing or other click-and-learn campaigns aren’t the way in for people because it feels a little too high-stakes and is often a multi-thousand-dollar commitment. Parents want to hear from their friend that they had a really good experience, and then rely on that barometer of trust to select a consultant.

So, the more clients I work with, the more referrals I get for the following year. It’s an exponential increase, so often in this industry, starting out is quite slow, which is why I ran the business as a side hustle for a long time. As word got out, my name got around at different schools and communities, and because I went full-time last year, I had a lot more time to put into actively working my network to generate more referrals. And I generated enough referrals to meet my revenue goals. I was actually more excited about the number of clients I worked with than the revenue that I saw last year, because I knew it would set me up for even bigger years this year and then the following year.

Additionally, referrals from other consultants play an important role in the business’s growth. Currently, there is far more demand for services within the college admissions industry than there are professionals to provide them, so that means folks like me typically are fully booked every year. Nearly everyone in my network has filled up for this year; I’ve almost filled up. So that means we don’t have to be cutthroat and competitive with each other. I’ll receive referrals from other consultants whom I know and who trust me to do high-quality work.

I’ve also found that sharing my story with media outlets has helped my business get some attention, but interestingly, those pieces more often lead to messages from people who want to start a tutoring side hustle themselves, versus paying clients. I’ve been able to have a lot of great conversations with aspiring tutors.

Since I’ve taken the side hustle full-time, one of the biggest challenges has been staying on top of the administrative workflow. Now that I work with a lot more clients, I’m answering a lot more emails and addressing small questions that a student or a parent might have after our meeting is over. I do a lot more scheduling and onboarding calls with people. Even the time I spend billing and invoicing has gone up. So there’s a lot around the margins that I’m trying to make as efficient as possible.

Down the line, I’d consider hiring someone to help with the administrative side, and by next year, I’d definitely like to hire tutors to work with me. I’d like to bring someone on to help with editing and a little bit of the at-home essay work that I spend a lot of my time doing. But I like to be hands-on with that and am hesitant to hand that off to anybody else whom I haven’t thoroughly trained, so it’ll be a long process to get the person I hire up to speed.

I’m looking forward to building a team around this business. Obviously, I worked for a large company during my PR days, but I’ve never built my own team before. You hear entrepreneurs talk all the time about how motivating and inspirational it is to build something yourself, and while I don’t necessarily know if I would call myself an entrepreneur so much as just a tutor who’s managed to find some success, the idea of building a team and expanding my services is really exciting for me.

I now work with students all around the U.S. and from around the world. Over half of my clients come from outside of Washington state. That is fundamentally motivating for me, to think I’m able to meet these people from all over, learn all these stories and help students who are in other countries work through the international application system. That is exciting in a way that I haven’t felt in another job before.

I genuinely love working with these students on their personal statements. Most people are very stressed out by college essays. I am not at all. To be fair, it’s easier when you’re not the one writing it. But I love working with the kids on these essays. I never cease to be amazed by the thoughtfulness and insight that high school students can bring to these essays. We often think of them as people in development, but that’s not true at all. When you read these personal statements, you realize that they see the world in a different way than we do, and often it’s in a very rich and constructive way. The more students I get to work with, the more creative and inspiring stories I get to come across in the future, which I find to be enriching in my own life as well.

For anyone considering taking a tutoring side hustle full-time, my first piece of advice is pragmatic: Map out the finances. Use constructive negative thinking and assume that it won’t work, then ask yourself, What would happen if this totally crashed and burned? Do I have a backup option? Can I handle it financially for 10 to 12 months? Try to give yourself a cushion just in case.

I was part-time for six years before I transitioned to full-time, so when I made the leap, I was fairly confident I had enough support to make it happen. You have to suss out the environment to know if going full-time is really right for you.

Also, think critically about what working independently means. Often, we glorify independent work as a sense of freedom. You don’t have a boss. You don’t have performance reviews. You don’t have any externally imposed deadlines. The flip side of that is that everything is on you. If I’m going to generate a dollar of revenue, I have to go out and find it myself. If I make a mistake, there’s no one to shift blame onto, and I need to take responsibility. The safety rails are taken away, and for a lot of people, that doesn’t work. That’s not a commentary on their work ethic; it’s just not the style of work that they enjoy. For me, it is — I like that independence.

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Netflix Co-CEO Says the Company Used AI on a TV Show for the First Time: ‘Completed 10 Times Faster’

Key Takeaways

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a post-earnings call on Thursday that the company used AI-generated footage for the first time in one of its shows.
The Argentine science fiction show, “El Eternauta,” was released on April 30.
Netflix reported strong quarterly earnings on Thursday, with a 16% increase in revenue compared to the same period last year.

Netflix used AI to shape one of its TV shows for the first time, marking a significant milestone in the technology’s involvement in film.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on Thursday that the company used footage generated by AI in the 2025 Argentine science fiction series “El Eternauta” (“The Eternaut”), a show that follows survivors of a toxic snowfall. For the six-episode show, which arrived on Netflix on April 30, Netflix’s visual effects artists tapped into AI to create a scene showing a building collapsing in Buenos Aires.

That visual effects sequence “was completed 10 times faster” than it would have with standard tools and workflows, Sarandos said in a conference call on Thursday after Netflix delivered its second quarter financial results. Netflix reported a strong quarter, with revenue of $11.08 billion, a 16% year-over-year increase, and $3.13 billion in profit.

According to Sarandos, “AI represents an incredible opportunity” for creators and presents a chance to make movies and TV shows “better, not just cheaper.” The AI-generated scene in “El Eternauta” resonated with the show’s audience, he said.

“This is real people doing real work with better tools,” Sarandos said on the call. “The creators were thrilled with the result. We were thrilled with the result, and more importantly, the audience was thrilled with the result.”

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. Photo by David Benito/FilmMagic

Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters also mentioned on the call that Netflix is incorporating AI into other aspects of its business, including personalization, search, and ads. Netflix introduced a new AI-powered search tool in May that allows users to find shows using prompts like, “I want something funny and upbeat.”

Netflix also reported on Thursday that its subscribers watched over 95 billion hours worth of TV shows and movies through the platform in the first half of the year, a 1% increase from a year earlier. Non-English content made up one-third of overall viewing time.

What is the difference between CGI and Generative AI?

So, how is AI use in shows different from CGI? Movies have been using CGI, or computer-generated imagery, for decades, starting with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo. CGI is a tool that allows professionals to create content using computer software, giving them manual control over elements like textures and lighting.

CGI means that users create objects themselves. Generative AI, meanwhile, automatically generates objects based on a prompt. AI figures out on its own how to accomplish what is asked for in the prompt, making it less hands-on than CGI. This also means that the user has less control over an AI-generated output compared to CGI.

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How These 2 Stanford Students Turned a College Project Into a WNBA Partnership

The tampon hasn’t changed much since it was invented over 80 years ago by a male doctor named Earle Haas. That might suggest the design was flawless — but ask the people who use them, and you’ll hear a different story.

“Period products are unreliable in critical moments,” says athlete and entrepreneur Amanda Calabrese. “For athletes, that could be sporting moments, but for a mom, it could be dropping your kids off at school, or running through the airport.”

Instead of accepting the status quo, Calabrese and her Stanford classmate and fellow athlete, Greta Meyer, set out to rethink the product entirely. In 2019, they created Sequel, the world’s first spiral tampon, engineered by and for people who actually use it.

Engineering meets experience

The idea for Sequel wasn’t born out of a desire to make money — it was about solving a real problem. Calabrese and Meyer met at Stanford, where they both majored in mechanical engineering. But their connection ran deeper than academics. Both were high-level athletes: Meyer played Division I lacrosse for Stanford, while Calabrese is a six-time national champion in lifesaving, which is a whole other story.

“I’ve competed around the world wearing nothing but a star-spangled Team USA bikini, sometimes for 10-hour events on the beach,” Calabrese says. “You’re running, sweating, constantly going from wet to dry, and then add your period on top of that.”

Meyer had similar frustrations during her time on the lacrosse team. She and her teammates, often wearing white home skirts, frequently struggled with unreliable period products.

“In the locker room, they were always talking about how they could improve the experience,” Calabrese recalls.

One day in a shared entrepreneurship class, Meyer approached Calabrese with an idea: why not build a better period product?

“She pointed out that we were both engineering students and athletes, and that this would be perfect for our Entrepreneurship project,” Calabrese says. “I was immediately on board.”

Calabrese and Meyer were so committed to the idea that they expanded it into their senior capstone. At Stanford, capstones require a working proof of concept. So the duo went above and beyond, raising $50,000 in grant funding to continue the project after graduation and prove its potential beyond the classroom.

While most college grads spent that first post-grad summer relaxing or traveling, Calabrese and Meyer traded in pool parties for manufacturing plant tours.

“We spent that summer refining our idea and learning through Stanford’s accelerator, StartX,” Calabrese says. “We knew we’d need funding to kick off R&D, so we focused on crafting our pitch, and not long after COVID, we closed a $1 million pre-seed round to get things off the ground.”

From the lockeroom to the lab

Starting with a clear problem gave the co-founders direction, but there were more questions to be answered before they could start developing solutions.

“Now we had to ask: Why aren’t these products doing their job?” Calabrese asks. “And what exactly is the job they’re supposed to do?”

After conferring with countless female athletes, they determined that the primary issue was what the industry calls “bypass leakage.”

Upon deeper reflection, the duo realized this issue was the byproduct of a design flaw.

“Tampons have vertical channels that go top to bottom on the outside of the product,” Calabrese explains. “This effectively funnels the fluid away from the absorbent core and down the side of the product.”

Recognizing the mechanical inefficiency of this outdated design, the pair came up with the concept for Sequel’s masthead product: the spiral tampon. By introducing a spiral into the tampon’s construction, they created a horizontal flow path alongside the existing vertical channels. This design increases surface area, promotes even absorption and helps prevent premature leaks by disrupting the downward flow.

“We spent years testing the fluid mechanics behind the design,” Calabrese says. “I even have a video from our dorm room where we were illustrating those concepts.”

Eventually, they started hand-pressing prototypes.

“Greta was in a full cleanroom suit, manually applying heat and pressure to create and test each one,” Calabrese recalls.

The capstone goes courtside

Since then, Sequel has flourished, becoming the first tampon partnership in the history of the NCAA by sponsoring Stanford athletics. They’ve worked with Athletes Unlimited, USL and Unrivaled.

Now, the company is taking its next big step, partnering with one of the WNBA’s premier teams, the Indiana Fever. The founders reached out to Fever star Lexie Hull, who attended Stanford herself, and left with an NCAA national championship and a bachelor’s AND master’s in management science and engineering to show for it.

“Lexie remembered hearing about us as an example in one of her entrepreneurship classes,” Calabrese shares. “We reached out to her to be our first WNBA ambassador, and she was so excited.”

The partnership offers clear financial upside for Sequel, but for Calabrese, the intangibles matter even more. “These athletes are role models,” she says. “Thousands of little girls across the country look up to players on the Fever and see themselves in these athletes.”

She notes that the first period product someone uses is often the one they stick with for life.

“Getting to work with real-life superheroes like Lexie Hull means everything to the young audience we want to reach,” Calabrese says. “But beyond that, we’re normalizing conversations around tampons and period care, ultimately aiming for them to be seen as essential game day gear, just like soccer cleats.”

After six years of research, testing, development, and navigating FDA commercial standards, Sequel is beginning to make waves in an industry that hasn’t evolved in decades.

“We believe Sequel can dramatically improve the experience of athletes and fans everywhere,” Calabrese says. “From little girls playing softball to the moms cheering them on, everyone deserves better.”

With its spiral design and athlete-driven mission, Sequel isn’t just redesigning a product. It’s redefining the conversation around period care.

Why Emotional Branding is Out and Functional Loyalty Is In

Key Takeaways

Loyalty today is earned through functionality, not just emotional storytelling.
Seamless, useful experiences create habit-forming loyalty rooted in daily value.
Integrate loyalty into your product’s UX, not a separate campaign.

32% of customers say they would walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience, no matter how long they’ve been loyal

Brand loyalty isn’t dead, but it is evolving. At Digital Silk, we’ve worked with hundreds of growing brands across industries, and the pattern is clear: emotionally driven loyalty is losing ground to functionality-first experiences. Consumers don’t just want to feel something — they want things to work.

And that’s a shift both in sentiment and in economics.

A decade ago, brands poured resources into storytelling and emotional resonance. But today’s consumers, especially Gen Z and Millennials, are loyal to experiences, not just feelings.

As McKinsey notes, more than 75% of consumers have changed buying behavior since the pandemic began, with many switching brands due to availability, value or digital service quality.

To stay competitive, brands need to rethink loyalty not as a marketing campaign but as a product feature.

Functionality now defines loyalty

Amazon is continuously ranked as the most trusted brand in the retail and eCommerce category in the U.S., and that’s not because of its logo or brand promise. It’s because Amazon delivers, literally and metaphorically. Free returns, one-click ordering and fast shipping are tangible functions that keep customers coming back.

And it’s not just Amazon. In a Deloitte study, 84% of consumers ranked “program simplicity and ease of use” as one of the most important loyalty attributes. This shifts the narrative. While emotional connection once held sway, today the true battleground for loyalty is built on functional design—loyalty programs and platforms must work seamlessly, not just look or feel good.

Convenience is the new brand personality.

Loyalty programs are being re-engineered for utility

Traditional points-for-purchase loyalty programs are fading. Today’s leaders are embedding rewards directly into product functionality. Starbucks is a prime example, not because of stars and freebies alone, but because of how the program powers frictionless ordering, payment and personalization through its mobile app.

As of September 2024, the company reported $1.7 billion in deferred revenue tied to stored value cards and loyalty activity, with over $1.6 billion expected to be redeemed within a year, according to its annual report. That is proof that users are consistently engaging with the platform, placing mobile orders, customizing drinks and redeeming offers as part of their daily routine.

This level of functionality doesn’t just improve convenience. It reinforces habit loops that make the app, not just the coffee, the sticky part of the brand experience.

Uber takes a similar approach. Through its free Uber Rewards program and paid Uber One membership, the brand rewards active users with friction-reducing perks like priority pickups, price-protected routes, free deliveries and cashback on rides.

These benefits are functional. Uber One members now account for 40% of Uber Eats U.S. bookings, spend four times more per month, and show 15% higher retention than non-members. Loyalty, in this case, is a consequence of daily usefulness.

This shift away from symbolic rewards toward integrated utility reinforces the point: the most effective loyalty programs today earn attention; they don’t ask for it.

What this means for your brand

Stop thinking about loyalty as a brand halo. Think of it as friction reduction. Ask:

How easy is it to reorder or renew?
Do your top customers get better service, faster responses or deeper insight?
Is your loyalty program integrated into the daily flow of your product?

If not, you’re leaving equity on the table. Loyalty shouldn’t live in a separate system, but in your UX.

Almost 90% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. That experience starts with functionality: seamless logins, fast checkout, accurate personalization and responsive support.

AI personalization is reinforcing functional loyalty

AI is accelerating this shift. Brands are now using real-time behavioral data to offer smarter, faster and more relevant experiences.

Netflix’s content suggestions, Spotify’s Discover Weekly and Amazon’s product recommendations all operate on this principle. These platforms don’t ask for loyalty. Instead, they earn it through predictive personalization and time-saving interfaces.

AI serves customers, but it also trains them to return.

The emotional layer still matters — but it’s built on function

To be clear, emotional affinity still matters, but only after functional trust is built.

Apple users may love the brand, but they wouldn’t stick around if the devices stopped syncing. Netflix wouldn’t survive on content alone without its intuitive interface and hyper-personalized recommendations.

Functional loyalty is the gateway to emotional connection, and not the other way around.

Make loyalty invisible

The most successful loyalty strategies are the ones customers don’t notice. They just work. They’re embedded in your product, reinforced by your service and rewarded by your infrastructure.

Brands that still chase emotional loyalty without delivering on functional expectations risk becoming irrelevant. The future belongs to businesses that treat loyalty not as a feeling to inspire, but as a function to engineer.

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Why Nobody’s Reading Your Company Blog — and How to Fix It

Key Takeaways

Transform your company updates from mundane announcements to compelling stories that provide real value to the reader.
Adapt your message to various formats and utilize channels where your audience already engages to maximize reach.
Encourage interaction by ending updates with a call-to-action, giving readers a clear next step to connect with your content.

You spent hours drafting it, your team member proofread it, the CEO signed off on it and then you hit publish. The company update is now live on LinkedIn, your website’s blog and even in the monthly newsletter. You waited, but nothing happened except maybe a couple of likes from employees. Maybe one comment from someone who clearly didn’t read it.

Here’s the truth most companies don’t want to hear: People don’t care about your updates. Not because your company is irrelevant, but because they have no reason to care unless you give them one.

Why it happens

Most company updates are written for the company, not the reader.

They follow a common pattern:

“We’re excited to announce…”
“We’ve moved into a new office…”
“We’ve partnered with XYZ Corp…”

This language makes sense internally. It reflects effort and progress, but from the outside? It’s a wall of content that answers questions no one was asking. Customers, readers and even industry peers scroll past because there’s no clear answer to the question, “Why should I care?”

Let’s look at a few reasons why your update likely gets ignored:

If there’s no clear takeaway for your viewers, they’ll move on.
Announcing a partnership without explaining the benefit doesn’t connect. What problem does this solve? For whom?
It tries to be polished. But “polished” often sounds like corporate theatre and people can smell rehearsed excitement.
Launching a new logo is not always news. Moving to a bigger office doesn’t mean much unless you tie it to a larger story.
Too many updates and people stop checking. Too few, and they forget you exist.

So what can you actually do to change that?

1. Stop writing “updates” and start telling stories

An update is a status, but a story is a reason to care. If you launched a new feature, explain how it solves a common customer problem. Tell the story of someone who struggled before and how this makes life easier now.

If you hired someone important, talk about the gaps they’re filling, the direction the company is going, and what this means for clients. Even something as dry as regulatory compliance can be framed as trust-building. You just have to shift the focus away from yourself and toward the impact.

Don’t say:

“We have added new encryption standards to meet XYZ requirements.”

Try:

“Your data is now protected to a higher standard — here’s what that means for your security and peace of mind.”

2. Choose the right format

Not everything belongs in a blog post. Some updates are better as a short video. Others work best as a LinkedIn carousel. Some might do well as a quote-tweet from your founder.

The “newsroom” blog post is not dead, but it’s not always the best vehicle for reach or engagement. Repurpose the same message in different formats and test what works. Don’t assume people will come to your website; go where they already are.

3. Anchor it in the real world

Internal changes are interesting to you because you’re in it. For everyone else, the signal needs to be clearer.

Tie your update to something current:

A customer pain point
A shift in your industry
A recent trend or stat

For example, instead of saying “we hired a new head of operations,” frame it as “with demand growing 40% this year, we brought in operational experience from X to help us scale without burning out our team or our service quality.”

It will be a more relevant angle.

4. Give people something to do

If someone reads your update and shrugs, that’s on you. A good update gives them something next — sign up for early access, register for a webinar, download the case study, share feedback or simply reply. So always end with a small next step, even if it’s just, “We’d love to hear how you handle this at your company — reply and tell us.” You won’t get hundreds of replies, but the few you get are often worth much more than a dozen empty likes.

5. Don’t just announce — reflect

Sometimes, people engage not with updates, but with your thinking.

“We launched this thing” doesn’t land. But “here’s what we thought was going to happen vs. what actually happened” — that will surely get attention. That feels human and it shows thinking in motion, not just PR statements.

Remember that people follow people, not brands. And when they follow brands, they want some trace of personality and perspective. So share how a decision was made — what you were wrong about or what surprised you. A short post titled “We thought X. We got Y. Here’s what we learned.” often gets more traction than an entire product announcement.

6. Don’t expect everyone to care — target the few who will

No matter how well you frame it, not everyone will care, and that’s fine. If you’re making a change that only affects a subset of users, speak directly to them. Use the channels they use and tailor your message.

Note that trying to appeal to “everyone” will mean you’ll connect with no one. A 500-view update that got five replies from actual customers is far more useful than a 10,000-impression update that no one engaged with.

There is nothing wrong with celebrating wins and marking milestones. But if you’re putting it out into the world, make sure you are offering something in return: a takeaway, a perspective, a lesson or at the very least, a reason for them to keep watching. Good luck!

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ChatGPT’s New Update Can Create PowerPoint Presentations and Excel Spreadsheets for You

Key Takeaways

The agent can also act as a virtual assistant, connecting to apps like Gmail.
OpenAI released the new AI agent on Thursday to paying subscribers.

ChatGPT can now create a PowerPoint presentation or make purchases online for you — with just a prompt.

OpenAI released the new ChatGPT agent on Thursday, a general-purpose AI tool that can complete complex tasks on a user’s behalf, like searching the web, running code, and creating slideshows and spreadsheets. The AI agent can click, type, and submit forms on its own based on a natural language prompt, and users can interrupt it at any time. It’s part of OpenAI’s effort to make ChatGPT more of a tool capable of handling autonomous tasks instead of just a chatbot that answers questions. As of March, ChatGPT had over 500 million global weekly users.

ChatGPT agent can also act as a virtual assistant, connecting to apps like Gmail and Google Calendar to carry out tasks like drafting emails and making appointments. It completes tasks using its own virtual computer and shifts on its own between reasoning and action to carry out instructions.

OpenAI says the new tool can “analyze three competitors and make a slide deck” — the agent will chart out a course of action, go through websites, and create an editable slideshow.

It can also create editable Excel spreadsheets by taking in a prompt like “make a spreadsheet based on the San Francisco annual comprehensive financial reports (ACFR).”

The agent can also shop online for users, though it will always ask for approval before carrying out a sensitive action, like entering personal information or making a purchase.

OpenAI is embedding the agent within ChatGPT and allowing paying users to access it immediately by selecting “agent mode” in ChatGPT’s dropdown tool menu. The agent starts rolling out today for Pro, Plus, and Team users, with plans to become available to Enterprise and Education customers over the summer.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

OpenAI says the agent could help workers, like financial analysts, complete tasks more quickly.

“We think that this model is actually going to be quite good at low-level, first-, second-year, financial analysis type work that might have taken someone a night to do if they’re getting pinged by their boss late at night,” ChatGPT agent product manager Neel Ajjarapu told The Wall Street Journal.

ChatGPT isn’t the first AI tool to be able to make PowerPoint presentations, but it is the most mainstream AI product to offer the agentic capability. Other AI presentation tools include Microsoft Copilot, which is integrated into PowerPoint and can generate presentations from prompts, and Google Workspace add-on SlidesAI.io, which converts any text into a Google Slides presentation.

Meanwhile, other companies are leveraging internal AI tools to create slide decks. For example, McKinsey consultants are using an internal AI tool to create PowerPoint presentations, taking over junior employee tasks.

OpenAI was valued at $300 billion in March following a $40 billion funding round.

ChatGPT agent is a combination of two other agents OpenAI released earlier this year: Operator, which can browse the web to fill out forms and take action like a virtual assistant, and Deep Research, which searches the web for answers to research questions and presents the findings in a paper with citations — though it far exceeds the capabilities of both.

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Why Most Startups Fail to Get National Press — and What To Do Instead

Key Takeaways

Every founder wants national media attention, but most are going about it the wrong way.
Here’s why startups get overlooked by the press — and what to focus on instead.

When you’re launching a tech startup, it’s natural to want attention — the kind of media coverage that builds credibility, attracts investors and validates your vision. But for most early-stage founders, that kind of visibility remains out of reach.

The reality is this: for every breakout startup that gets wide recognition, thousands of others struggle to gain even a mention. Not because they lack innovation, but because they haven’t built the right foundation to get noticed.

So why do so many startups fail to earn meaningful media attention? And more importantly, what can they do about it?

Why startups get overlooked by the media

Many founders make the same early mistake: chasing high-level media exposure before they’ve clarified what makes their story relevant, credible or different.

Here are a few of the most common missteps:

No clear differentiation. In a saturated market, having a “great product” isn’t enough. Founders need to be able to clearly and confidently explain what sets their startup apart.
No media-ready narrative. Journalists aren’t looking to promote your product — they’re looking to tell a story. If you haven’t crafted a human-centered, problem-solution-driven narrative, your pitch likely won’t stick.
Poor timing. National news cycles are driven by relevance and urgency. If your story isn’t tied to something current, insightful or timely, it’s easy to be overlooked.

And finally, many startups skip the essentials: building relationships, starting with niche publications and establishing credibility over time. Big coverage rarely comes without smaller wins first.

What to do instead: a smarter PR strategy for startups

While national press may be a long-term goal, early-stage startups are more likely to gain traction through a strategic, incremental approach. Here’s how to start building visibility now — and set yourself up for bigger wins later.

Start with niche and local press

Instead of focusing only on broad national attention, identify local media outlets, vertical publications or industry newsletters relevant to your space. These are more accessible and often open to spotlighting new, compelling businesses.

Try this: Make a list of five local or niche outlets. Note which reporters cover tech or business and start tracking what kinds of stories they write.

Craft your origin story with intention

What inspired your startup? What problem are you solving, and why does it matter now? A well-framed origin story — one rooted in real-world challenges — makes your brand feel relatable and relevant.

Tip: Avoid overly technical explanations. Focus on the “why” behind your business, and make sure a journalist could retell your story in one paragraph.

Build real relationships with journalists

Before you pitch anyone, follow relevant journalists on platforms like LinkedIn or X. Engage with their posts. Share their work. Start showing up on their radar.

Media outreach is more effective when it’s built on familiarity, not a cold pitch.

Develop a clear thought leadership angle

Thought leadership builds trust and authority. Don’t wait for media attention to position yourself as a credible voice — start writing. Focus on lessons learned, market insights or founder perspectives.

Try this: Draft a short article titled “What I Learned Launching in a Crowded Market” or “How We Validated Our Startup Without Outside Funding.” Share it on your blog or LinkedIn, or pitch it to a relevant trade publication.

Repurpose and amplify every media win

Even small mentions count. A podcast interview, a quote in a trade newsletter or a well-performing LinkedIn post can all be leveraged for credibility.

Add these wins to your website, share them on social and use them to strengthen future pitches. Visibility compounds — and perceived momentum matters.

The long game: start small, grow smart

Every founder wants recognition, but media success isn’t about luck, hype or chasing headlines. It’s about strategy, relevance, and consistency.

Start with what you can control: your message, your story, your presence. Focus on building meaningful relationships and sharing useful insights. Then use every small win to build momentum — step by step.

Big stories often start small. But with a focused, intentional PR strategy, they don’t have to stay that way.

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Elon Musk’s xAI Is Hiring Engineers for Its Anime ‘AI Companions’ — With Salaries Up to $440,000 a Year

Elon Musk’s xAI is hiring two software engineers to develop AI anime “companions,” according to a job listing on the company’s website. The company is looking for a “Fullstack Engineer – Waifus” and a “Mobile Android Engineer – Waifus” to make “Grok’s realtime avatar products the best in the world” — and both pay up to $440,000 in compensation.

According to Dictionary.com, a “waifu” is a “term for a fictional character, usually in anime or related media, that someone has great, and sometimes romantic, affection for.” Business Insider notes that earlier this week, xAI released two AI “companions” for Grok, the company’s AI platform, and one of the “companions,” named “Ani,” looks like an anime character. There is also a red panda, “Bad Rudi,” who insults users when used, according to NBC News. A third male anime character is on the way.

According to the company website, xAI’s mission is “to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge.”

The roles will make “Grok’s realtime avatar products fast, scalable, and reliable,” according to the postings, and “help push forward audio and gameplay research.”

The Fullstack Engineer role is located in the Bay Area, and tech skills needed include: Python, Rust, WebSocket, WebRTC. The interview process begins with a 15-30 minute phone interview with technical questions. After that, there are two other steps: a “deep dive coding challenge” and a meet and greet with the wider team. The salary range is $180,000 to $440,000.

The Mobile Android Engineer role has the same salary range and also will work on Grok’s real-time avatar products, but should have knowledge of Kotlin, Jetpack Compose and the Android View system, Coroutines, Flow, Android Studio, Gradle, Media3 or ExoPlayer, and Rust.

The interview process is also longer: a 15-minute phone interview with basic questions, then 3 technical interviews: a coding assessment in a language of your choice; a systems hands-on demonstrating practical skills in a live problem-solving session; and a project deep-dive presenting your past exceptional work. Finally, a meet and greet with the wider team.

“Our goal is to finish the main process within one week,” the post reads. “All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet.”

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Here’s How the CEO of the Biggest Bank in the U.S. Spends His Downtime: ‘This Gives Me Purpose in Life’

Key Takeaways

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, 69, says his top hobbies are spending time with family, barbecuing, and reading.
With assets of $3.9 trillion, JPMorgan is the biggest U.S. bank.

When he’s not leading the largest bank in the U.S., JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, 69, spends his spare time reading, hiking, and traveling with family.

On an episode of the “Acquired” podcast released Wednesday, Dimon said that in his “hierarchy of life,” his top three priorities were his family, his country, and his purpose, which is working at the bank, in that order. Dimon, who has three adult daughters and seven grandchildren, said that one of his daughters recently told him to get some hobbies.

“And I said, ‘I do. Hanging out with you, family travel, barbecuing, wine,'” Dimon said on the podcast.

He also stated that he enjoys reading, learning history, and going hiking.

“I don’t buy fancy cars and stuff like that, but this gives me purpose in life beyond family and beyond country,” Dimon explained in the interview.

And some former hobbies must be kept in he past. Dimon said that he stopped playing tennis because of his back, and he doesn’t play golf — he can’t even picture himself playing the sport.

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Dimon, who is frequently asked about his succession and retirement plans, also said on the podcast that he plans to keep running the bank as long as he has the “energy,” without giving a specific timeline. At JPMorgan’s Investor Day last year, Dimon said his retirement was “less than five years” away and that the company was looking into finding a successor.

Now, Dimon says on the podcast that when he is done leading JPMorgan, he will “teach and write” and maybe “write a book.”

“I have got to do something,” he said. “I’m not going to twiddle my thumbs and smell the flowers.”

Many Wall Street executives have hobbies. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has been a DJ since 2015, according to his Instagram account. He stopped taking DJ gigs in 2023, though, after Goldman board members expressed concern that the hobby would distract him from his CEO job.

Apple CEO Tim Cook enjoys cycling and rock climbing, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is famously into combat sports.

JPMorgan is the biggest bank in the U.S., with assets of $3.9 trillion. With a market value of over $800 billion, JPMorgan is worth more than its three biggest competitors, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, and Bank of America, combined. In the first half of the year, the leading bank achieved $30 billion in profit.

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Does Your Business Feel Stuck? Here’s the Mindset Shift That Will Move It Forward.

Key Takeaways

When your business hits a plateau, throwing money or new tactics at the problem won’t fix it.
Reframing the questions you ask can uncover hidden bottlenecks, unlock creativity and get your growth back on track.

As a business owner, there is nothing more exciting than watching the venture that you built thrive. When things are going well, growth can feel effortless. This can be an exhilarating experience for an ambitious entrepreneur. But the real test comes when growth slows or the business becomes stagnant. New marketing campaigns aren’t working, your sales team struggles to convert leads, and your target consumer seems less excited about your products and services. When this happens, it’s easy to feel like a failure. No matter what you try, you can’t move the needle.

Business owners are naturally problem solvers. After all, businesses exist because their founder saw an opportunity in the market and delivered an effective solution. They know how to make incredible progress through out-of-the-box thinking, determination, hard work and a dash of luck. The challenge is that not every problem can be solved with brute force.

Our immediate impulse is to jump straight to finding a solution, such as deploying a new technology, replacing your management or injecting more capital. But this rarely works because it avoids the crucial step of truly understanding why things aren’t moving. Entrepreneurs are hardwired for action, often skipping the deep evaluation that might be necessary to find a true solution.

Instead, reframing your questions is the key to unlocking new strategic pathways. It forces you to challenge old assumptions, revealing hidden bottlenecks and sparking a wave of creativity. This shift in mindset empowers you to push past outdated approaches, re-energize your vision and stimulate growth when your business feels stuck.

1. Reframing your perspective with a question audit

Our brains naturally favor efficiency, leading us to ask questions that reinforce existing assumptions or focus on symptoms, not root causes. Entrepreneurs often jump to questions like “What’s not working?” or “How do we get more customers?” While these seem logical, they typically lead to superficial fixes.

For instance, if you’re struggling to find new customers, asking “How can we get more leads?” often just pushes you to double down on ineffective sales routines. It might increase raw lead numbers, but it ignores why current methods aren’t working. A better approach is to ask why current leads aren’t converting or if you’re even attracting the right types of leads. This opens the door to truly innovative solutions.

The goal is to shift your questions from blame to ownership, reactive to proactive, and vague to specific. Sit down and list your top three to five business challenges, and then reframe each question to be more open-ended, proactive and solution-focused.

2. Start with a blank slate

When your business feels stuck, you’re often looking at problems through the lens of existing structures and past decisions. Break free of these assumptions by imagining that you’re starting your business from scratch today, armed with all your current knowledge. This powerful thought experiment is effective because it frees your mind from ingrained assumptions.

Instead of asking, “How can we improve our existing marketing channels?”, you might ask, “What would be the most effective way to reach our ideal customer if we were just launching this product today?” This radical shift helps identify fundamental changes or entirely new directions your current thinking might miss.

3. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes

As business owners, our deep immersion in day-to-day operations can create blind spots. We often view problems internally. To uncover new insights, step out of your own shoes and into your customer’s by imagining their daily challenges, anxieties and their experience interacting with your brand.

Instead of asking how to reduce customer service calls, a customer-centric question would focus on understanding the underlying frustrations leading customers to call support in the first place and how to proactively address them earlier. By empathizing deeply, you’ll discover crucial gaps and identify friction points you might otherwise overlook, leading to truly customer-focused solutions.

4. Envision your successful future

Stagnation can force entrepreneurs to fixate on immediate problems, hindering foresight. A powerful technique is to fast-forward to what you believe your business would look like if it were successful and thriving three to five years from now. From this successful future, look back to the present. What actions did you take? What critical decisions were made? What pivotal questions did you ask that led to this renewed success? This isn’t wishful thinking; it’s reverse-engineering success. This approach pulls you from reactive problem-solving, forcing strategic and aspirational thinking that identifies big, impactful levers for change.

Overcoming business stagnation isn’t about one magical solution. It’s about a continuous, iterative cycle of inquiry and improvement. The questions you ask are your compass. It’s critical that you repeatedly ask the right questions, act on the insights, assess the results and adapt your approach. This iterative process of slow, steady refinement is the true engine of sustainable growth. By consistently reflecting on what to improve or change, you’ll avoid getting stuck and keep your business moving forward.

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I’ve Helped 124,393 Entrepreneurs With Their Advertising — Here Are My Top 3 Secrets Proven to Generate Results

Key Takeaways

Always include an offer, since 92% of U.S. consumers actively search for them.
Focus on the marketing channels that grab attention for the longest periods of time.
Personalize your advertisements for a 40% increase in revenue compared to those who don’t.

It’s the end of a typical work day, and you’re excited to come home. On the way in, you grab the mail stack and set it aside as you walk in. After getting comfy and settling in for the evening, you lounge on the couch and check social media, then your inbox. While dinner is simmering, you peruse your mail, then go back to your phone.

How many ads did you just see? And more importantly — how many do you remember?

This daily process is so routine to all of us that we rarely think twice about why we trash some mail and keep others, why we scroll past some social ads more than others, and which emails we save. However, there’s a reason behind why some advertisements stick and some don’t.

I’ve been in marketing since 1995 and have built my $119 million business on reliably turning neutral and unaware prospects into leads — nearly 4,000 a week — and then into buyers.

Take a look at these road-tested marketing strategies I’ve used over the years that have worked for my clients thousands of times over.

Always include an offer, since 92% of U.S. consumers actively search for them

There is one way to ensure people take a good look at your ad, and it’s by including an offer. You love free stuff or a good discount, right? Your audience does, too.

Case in point: Our most successful offers are all freebies. Free samples or free add-ons when you purchase something.

We mail over 232,000 postcards a week for our own marketing, and over four million a week on behalf of our clients. Response is always higher on the mailers with a great offer. Physical advertisements are easier to store and keep in sight around the home. A person may click on a digital ad in the moment, but if they don’t save the link for later, it’s going to get lost in the World Wide Web void.

Consider this: The average person doesn’t quickly throw away mail when there’s a coupon or free gift included. In fact, they probably stick it on the fridge for later.

Overall, studies show that coupons in mailings can increase response rates up to 13%.

The offer you place on your mailer doesn’t have to be massive, but ideally, it will stop prospects in their tracks. Buy-one-get-one (BOGO) or offering something for free is a great way to grab attention.

If you’re in ecommerce or retail, consider mailing special promo codes to people who abandoned their shopping cart. You can do this automatically by connecting your online shop to a direct mail automation platform. It’s something you can program in a short period of time that will continuously follow up in order to bring people back to finish their purchase.

Focus on the marketing channels that grab attention for the longest periods of time

I spend over $100,000 every week on marketing across every channel, but there’s still one that feels like a cheat code or hack for generating high-quality leads reliably every week, and sometimes its performance still surprises even me — and that’s postcards.

Direct mail has a higher return on investment than digital ads. We analyzed 115,393 leads that converted to sales last year and found that direct mail leads generated 6x more revenue than digital leads.

Here’s my theory on why: When that moment comes and people are going through their mail, you have an opportunity to make a deep, long-lasting impression that you can’t replicate through online ads or an email inbox.

Studies have confirmed this — people are 70% better at recalling a brand when they’ve seen a direct mail piece compared to an online ad. Research also shows that nearly two out of three people (63%) give mail their undivided attention.

This all means that you aren’t competing with a big screen or a little one. So, if you want to try your hand at direct mail, make sure you use these precious few seconds of undiluted attention to be direct with your message — ensure your headline plainly states the benefits of your product or service, and choose an image that immediately communicates what you’re selling.

In my decades of experience, too many marketers try to get clever and use messaging that has nothing to do with their products or services. Yes, pictures of puppies will always turn heads, but if you’re selling lawn mowers, you’re going to confuse your audience first and foremost.

Even if you aren’t sold on direct mail, I encourage you to test a clear and direct ad (with an offer!) against a more clever one to see if this advice holds true with your business as well. Just make sure you’re tracking closely, and let me know if the clever ad ever works better.

Personalize your advertisements for a 40% increase in revenue compared to those who don’t

There are two ways you can personalize an ad online or in print: Provide some personal information about you and your business, or create a buying journey for prospects that is personalized to them.

I recommend doing both to maximize response. Approximately 97% of direct mail users see higher response rates with personalized/customized direct mail, and 56% said that response rates were significantly higher with personalized/customized direct mail.

Adding personal details to an online ad will also increase your responses — about 72% of consumers report engaging only with personalized messaging. You can accomplish this by utilizing targeting tools. For example, Google Ads allows you to set specific targeting parameters based on demographics, location, interests and behaviors.

The more unique details you can place on your postcard or digital ad, the better. If you must use stock photos, that’s better than no photos at all. However, it’s most ideal to show off what your business looks like or real images of your products and/or services.

I suggest you take it a step further and even include photos of yourself or key members of your staff. Prospects love seeing a real person’s face. It builds trust and evokes a positive emotional response.

When it comes to direct mail, you can customize each design to feature the recipient’s first name in the headline, and even some of their previous actions, like filling up a shopping cart and not checking out.

An automated direct mail marketing campaign makes this easy. Just connect your CRM (customer relationship manager) to your direct mail automation platform and program these mailings based on triggers. For example, if your prospect goes two weeks without answering a call — boom, that triggers a postcard saying, “We’ve been trying to reach you about a special discount, give me a call.”

There are so many ways to utilize this technology to personalize the customer journey. Your CRM already has this information, so make the best use of it.

Whether you are creating an online ad or postcard, personalize it! You’ll get more responses and more opportunities for fast revenue.

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Got a Startup Idea? Here’s What It Really Takes to Make It Work

Key Takeaways

What separates dreamers from doers is the relentless execution — the daily grind, tough decisions, and long-term commitment it takes to turn vision into reality.

In the startup world, great ideas are everywhere. But turning an idea into something real? That’s rare. And sticking with it long enough to make a real dent? That’s where most people give up.

When I started my latest venture, I believed I had a solid idea. Maybe I did. But I quickly learned the truth: the idea is only 5% of the journey. The other 95% is execution — showing up every day, fixing what’s broken, listening to feedback and grinding through the not-so-glamorous parts of building something from nothing.

Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

1. You didn’t create the problem, but you still have to solve it

Spotting a problem in the world isn’t hard. Many founders are motivated by something they’ve experienced or seen firsthand. We chose to take on a broken job marketplace. That was the easy part — seeing the gap.

The real challenge is building a solution that works and scales. It takes time, patience and iteration. The “how” behind your idea is your true differentiator — and it’s the part that requires the most effort, testing, pivoting and perseverance.

2. ‘I had that idea too; doesn’t matter

You’ll hear it: “Oh yeah, I thought of that years ago.” Maybe they did. But ideas are cheap — execution is where value is built.

There’s a graveyard full of great ideas that never got off the ground. Execution, even when it’s messy and unpredictable, is what gives your idea a heartbeat.

3. Startup life is less glamorous than it looks

People imagine startups as pitch meetings, product launches and buzz. In reality, it’s writing support docs at midnight, testing referral flows that don’t work, replying to user complaints, tweaking landing pages, managing customer feedback — all while building operational systems in the background.

It’s not flashy. It’s a consistent, often invisible effort.

As a self-funded founder, I feel every dollar spent. I juggle a day job and burn early mornings and late nights trying to move the needle. The sacrifice is real — emotionally, financially and mentally. But the progress, however small, is what keeps you going.

4. How long is the long game?

Here’s a truth most founders underestimate: meaningful traction takes time. Sometimes a lot of it. Most startups don’t see real growth for 12–24 months. Sometimes more.

You need to ask yourself: Can I stay committed, aligned and focused for the next 1,000 days? Even when it feels like nothing is working? Even when others stop believing?

As a founder, your belief has to carry the weight for your team, your customers, your family and yourself.

Startups don’t fail only because of bad ideas. They fail because people misjudge how long and hard the road really is, and give up too early.

The real test isn’t the idea — it’s the grind

If you’re thinking about launching something, ask yourself this:

“Am I ready to go into full execution mode for the next 1,000 days — through all the friction, feedback and potential failure?”

Only you can answer that. But answering it honestly may be the most important part of your startup journey.

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