Why Emotional Branding is Out and Functional Loyalty Is In

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.

Related: How to Build a Brand That Stands the Test of Time

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.

Related: Why Gamification is the Secret Weapon for Brand Engagement

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.

Related: How I Used AI to Transform My Business and Create Multiple Revenue Streams

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.

Related: Fix This First To Make Every Ad Dollar Count

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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For small-business owners and solopreneurs who are juggling client files, project archives, and marketing assets, cloud storage isn’t just a convenience—it’s a necessity. Scramble Cloud offers end-to-end encryption and cross-platform access via web, mobile, and desktop, making it easy to store, sync, and share files from anywhere.

With 2TB of space, you can back up everything from contracts and financial records to high-resolution videos, design files, and product photos. It’s also ideal for remote teams who need centralized access to shared assets without jumping into expensive enterprise-level subscriptions.

Scramble Cloud puts privacy front and center, the company says. All files are encrypted during upload and while stored, and the company says it follows a strict zero-knowledge policy—meaning your data stays your data. For professionals who are working with sensitive client info or proprietary content, that extra layer of protection can be a major plus.

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

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?

Related: 5 Ways to Avoid Writing Content That Will Never Be Read by Anyone

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.

Related: The 7 Deadly Sins of Business Blogging

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!

Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.

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

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.

Related: AI Could Replace 200,000 Jobs on Wall Street, According to a New Report. These Are the Jobs Most at Risk.

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 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.

Related: ChatGPT Can Now Complete a Major Task That Would Take a Human Up to 30 Days. Here’s How it Works.

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.

Related: The CEO of $61 Billion Anthropic Says AI Will Take Over a Crucial Part of Software Engineers’ Jobs Within a Year

Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.

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

Related: 90% of Startups Fail—Here’s How I Made Sure I Was in the 10%

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.

Related: 5 Reasons Startups Fail (and Why Each One Is Preventable)

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.

Ready to break through your revenue ceiling? Join us at Level Up, a conference for ambitious business leaders to unlock new growth opportunities.

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.

Related: Here’s How Much a Typical Microsoft Employee Makes in a Year

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.

Related: Here’s How Much a Typical Nvidia Employee Makes in a Year

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.”

Related: This New AI Startup Led By a Former OpenAI Exec Is Offering $500,000 Salaries

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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’

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.

Related: JPMorgan Will Fire Junior Bankers Over a Common Practice That CEO Jamie Dimon Calls ‘Unethical’

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.

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.”

Related: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Just Made a Big Announcement About His Retirement Timeline: ‘I Love What I Do’

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.

Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.

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

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.

Related: What To Do When Your Business Seems ‘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.

Related: Five Questions Every Entrepreneur Needs to Answer During Stagnation

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.

Related: How to Get Unstuck And Start Growing

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.

Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.

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

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.

Related: The 3 Greatest Lessons I’ve Learned After 25 Years in Business and $100 Million in Revenue

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.

Related: 3 Marketing Trends You Need to Capitalize on Now Before Your Competition Beats You to It

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.

Related: This Powerful Marketing Strategy Will Help You Outshine Your Competitors and Make Your Brand More Memorable

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.

Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.

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

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.

Related: Got an Awesome New Business Idea? Here’s What to Do Next.

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.

Related: Have a Business Idea? Here’s How To Put It into Action.

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.

Ready to break through your revenue ceiling? Join us at Level Up, a conference for ambitious business leaders to unlock new growth opportunities.

We Have More Productivity Tools Than Ever — So Why Are We Getting Less Done?

Let me start by saying, I’m not anti-tech. I love it. I use it every day, for everything from audio and video production, to video conferencing and streaming, to time management tools. I would venture to say, and I’m sure most would agree, that technology is essential today. Technology drives efficiency, scalability and speed. It’s the backbone of logistics, data management, internal communications, marketing automation and so much more. You’d be hard-pressed to find a company that isn’t leaning on tech to gain a competitive edge.

But here’s the other side of this coin: technology is also killing productivity, crippling communication and slowly eroding the human side of business. Not because the tech itself is bad, but because the way we use it is bad. We’re not in control. It is.

We’re so “connected” that we’ve become fragmented. We’re so efficient we’ve forgotten how to think critically. We rely so much on technology that our cognitive skills are in decline.

We are so focused on tools that we’ve stopped building culture. And that’s the dilemma leaders across all industries need to wake up to.

Related: Technology Might Be Killing Us, But It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way

The productivity illusion

Ask most leaders if technology makes their people more productive, and you’ll get a quick “absolutely.” That’s the promise, right? Automate more. Communicate faster. Get more done. But dig a little deeper, and it’s not that simple.

A study by Bain & Company found that the average mid-level leader now processes over 30,000 communications a year. That’s up from just 1,000 in the early ’90s. Email, chat, Slack, Zoom, Asana, Teams, the list goes on. All of it is designed to “make work better.”

Yet most professionals only get about seven hours of true focus time in a 47-hour work week. Seven hours. That’s one good day of deep, uninterrupted work buried in a week full of buzzing phones, message alerts, pointless meetings and endless scrolling. This is the cost of what is known as “context switching.”

Every time we jump from a spreadsheet to a meeting invite, from writing a proposal to answering a text, we lose momentum. Our brains burn energy every time they shift gears, and it takes time to get back into flow. Multiply that by ten, twenty or fifty interruptions a day, and you’ve got a productivity drain hiding in plain sight.

It’s not just bad time management. It’s bad tech discipline.

Related: Why Employee Productivity in the Tech Industry Is Down

Using technology with intention

Every organization has its own operational pace, but across industries — manufacturing, healthcare, banking, retail, construction, etc., the story is the same: busy people, lots of activity, not enough output. The real question isn’t “how can we do more?” It’s “how can we be smarter with our time and technology?”

If you’re blocking out time for high-impact work, protect it. Close your email. Silence your phone. Turn off Teams notifications. Let your team know you’re in focus mode. And encourage them to do the same. This isn’t about rejecting communication. It’s about owning it. Creating structure. Setting boundaries. And making tech serve you, not the other way around.

This isn’t revolutionary advice. But it’s something that’s rarely practiced. And it’s costing companies millions in wasted effort, delayed decisions and half-baked results.

The distraction spiral

We all know this one. You’re working on something important. You’re exhausted. You hit a snag. Your brain wants a break. What do you do? You grab your phone.

“Just checking the weather.”

“Just one scroll through Instagram.”

“Just a quick look at the stock market.”

Except it’s never just one scroll. Five minutes becomes fifteen. And when you finally return to your task, you’re mentally foggy. The flow is gone. That break didn’t help you; it hurt you.

If you really want to clear your head and reset, step outside. Walk. Stretch. Talk to someone. Give your brain oxygen and space, not more stimulation. Phones are great tools, but terrible distractions. Know the difference.

Related: The Most Successful Founders Take Retreats — Here’s Why You Should, Too

Communication isn’t just volume

This is very important to remember. More communication doesn’t equal better communication. In fact, the quality of communication is dropping fast. We’re hiding behind emails and texts. Avoiding real conversations. Cutting out nuance. And then wondering why teams are misaligned, messages are misinterpreted, tensions are up, and collaboration feels like a chore.

Technology-based communication has its place. But if a conversation is important, complex or emotional, don’t text it. Don’t email it. Talk it. Pick up the phone. Walk to someone’s desk. Get on a quick video call. Real-time, real-tone, real presence.

And leaders? Don’t hide behind system messages or company-wide memos. Talk to your people. Listen to your people. Culture doesn’t live in your technology arsenal, it lives in your connections and interactions.

Remote work isn’t the culprit. Disconnection is.

To be clear, remote work isn’t killing productivity. In fact, for many companies, output is up. People are focused, efficient, and getting more done without the distractions of a traditional office. But there’s a flip side. While productivity has gone up, collaboration and innovation have taken a hit. That’s because what remote work gives in efficiency, it often takes away in human connection.

You can’t build a strong culture through a webcam. You can’t spark big ideas when every conversation has to be scheduled. And collaboration doesn’t just happen during Zoom calls, it happens between them. In the hallways. At the coffee machine. In that five-minute conversation before a meeting starts. Those spontaneous moments are where trust is built and ideas take shape.

The answer isn’t mandating a return to the office. It’s being more deliberate about connection. Unscheduled check-ins. Culture-building moments that aren’t tied to deadlines. Occasional in-person meetups that serve a real purpose. And leaders who make themselves visible and available, even if it’s virtually. Because what drives a great company isn’t just systems and tools. It’s trust. It’s energy. It’s people who feel seen, heard, and valued. You don’t get that by chance. You get it by design.

So what can you do?

Here’s the quick hit list:

If you’re on a team:

• Protect your deep work time like it’s gold, because it is.
• Schedule response windows instead of reacting to every ping.
• When you feel distracted, take a real break, not a digital one.
• Know when a conversation needs to be live, not typed.

If you’re leading:

• Model the behavior. Don’t say “focus matters” while flooding your team with noise.
• Be clear on what tools are for and what they’re not for.
• Use tech to enhance relationships, not replace them.
• Keep communication personal, especially in critical moments.

We can automate tasks. We can digitize processes. But we can’t digitize relationships, and we can’t digitize trust. And we shouldn’t try.

Technology should enhance your culture, not compete with it. It should accelerate your results, not dilute your focus. And it should support your people, not sideline them. The smartest companies in the world aren’t the ones with the most software. They’re the ones who know how to use it and when to use it.

If you want to build a brand that lasts, a team that performs, and a culture people fight to be part of, don’t just invest in better technology. Invest in better habits. Because at the end of the day, it’s not your technology that sets you apart, it’s your people.

This Is the Newest Real Estate Trend You Can’t Miss — and It’s Worth $438 Billion

“It’s all about location, location, location” is the old but humorous business adage about the importance of where property is located and how that affects its valuation. This is a phrase that is ubiquitous among real estate vendors and agents worldwide.

But location aside, there is another consideration for entrepreneurs in this market that could also change the game. A new trend sheds light on a brand new factor that is driving rapid market growth: Does your property have a wellness concept?

And by this, we are not only talking about whether enough natural light comes in through your French doors. Today, there are wellness-oriented buildings that boast everything from hydroponic herb gardens on private terraces to vitamin drips, vibrational healing and acupuncture and yoga classes being offered in situ. These are projected to sell extremely well, too.

The concept of wellness is not at all new to the real estate world, since we have seen hotels and spas emerge since time immemorial. In fact, according to the Financial Times, the wellness trend used to be regarded as “woo woo” in the past. Today, it is no laughing matter, as more and more high end private residences are built with hotel-style concierge services and amenities in major cities and even countryside spots across the world.

Since my entry into entrepreneurship in 2003, I have been following this trend closely, when it was just at its infancy. This is why I want to share the top five things real estate entrepreneurs need to know about this trend to stay well ahead of the curve.

Related: The Wellness Industry Is Now Richer Than Big Pharma and Sports

1. A growth trajectory with “uninterrupted momentum”

The numbers speak for themselves. The Global Wellness Institute recently released a report that projected that wellness real estate as a global sector could be worth $913 billion by the end of 2028, and that’s close enough to a trillion-dollar valuation. This projection was extrapolated from its most recent growth spurt, doubling from $225 billion in 2019 to $438 billion in 2024.

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the wellness real estate sector has seen “uninterrupted momentum before, during and after the pandemic,” boasting an 18% annual growth rate since 2019.

2. Wellness real estate parallels longevity trends

What’s more interesting is when we see that the wellness real estate boom seems to run in parallel with the wider human longevity revolution, a phenomenon where an ageing global consumer population is more focused on living a longer, healthier life, where wellness becomes a priority in making major life decisions and purchases, instead of it being an afterthought.

This longevity trend is opening up market opportunities valued at roughly $8 trillion by 2030, according to a report by UBS. I encourage entrepreneurs to monitor both wellness real estate trends and longevity trends and see how they correlate with one another.

3. The U.S. dominates the market, with Asia Pacific and Europe performing as strong competitors

According to the Global Wellness Institute, the market is heavily concentrated in North America, which holds 44% of the total market share. Together with Asia-Pacific and Europe, these three regions represent 99% of the global wellness real estate sector. Asia-Pacific in particular is really interesting for entrepreneurs, since wellness real estate growth has overtaken growth in their respective construction sectors in countries such as Australia, China, Japan and India. This trend has been continuing since 2019 across all these regions, by “a factor of 3-4 times or more” according to the report.

4. Wellness is offered for a healthy premium

The wellness real estate sector is lucrative, with some wellness-focused developers in the U.S. charging properties from 25% to 40% higher prices compared to other homes within a locality, according to a representative of Tavistock Development Company, who recently talked to the Financial Times about this rising trend. The Global Wellness Institute stated in its report that in the middle and upper ends of the market, the premium earned is between 10-25% compared to properties without a substantive wellness offering.

5. The AI and tech accompaniment

Since wellness real estate is connected to the $2 trillion global wellness market which is led by Gen Z and millennial consumers’ insights and preferences, it will come as no surprise that a higher demand for wellness-focused buildings will be accompanied by an array of technological innovations.

This can include anything from AI-powered wearables, Oura Rings to WHOOP health monitors which consumers rely on since they have readily become “lifestyle staples” for many, according to a partner at Knight Frank’s buying arm. For entrepreneurs, paying attention to this detail could make a huge difference between success and failure in the wellness real estate market.

Buildings that accommodate and collaborate with the range of wearables buyers already possess will prove to be more desirable. This also brings with it another question around trust and security, since property will now be increasingly privy to data exchange.

Related: Everyone’s Burned Out, So ‘Burnout’ Means Nothing — Here’s How Leaders Can Support Wellness Outside the Office

Conclusion

This trend illustrates that there are a host of opportunities and challenges that await the real estate entrepreneur hungry for exploring a rapidly emerging market. As it is also my personal motto, I would advise entrepreneurs to make sure they do their due diligence and research before they embark on a brave, more wellness-focused new world.

Ready to break through your revenue ceiling? Join us at Level Up, a conference for ambitious business leaders to unlock new growth opportunities.

‘We Got So Many DMs’: This 27-Year-Old Revamped Her Parents’ Decades-Old Business and Grew Direct-to-Consumer Sales From From $60,000 to Over $500,000

Ruth Sack, 27, grew up with Streets Ahead, the luxury leather accessories brand her father, David Sack, founded in 1982. She and her siblings painted belts with nail polish in the Los Angeles factory and attended trade shows across the country with their parents.

But it wasn’t until 2020 that Sack considered dedicating significant time to the brand. “I went to UCLA and studied gender studies, and then Covid hit,” Sack says. “I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I started helping out with the family business because things were pretty tough, and I actually sort of loved it.”

Sack went on to attend the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) and step in as Streets Ahead’s head of marketing and design.

Related: This 29-Year-Old’s Side Hustle Brought People ‘to the Dark Green Side.’ It Made $10,000 Within 2 Days and Sees 6 Figures a Month.

Streets Ahead’s products are made locally in California with leather and hardware sourced from Italy, and the brand is known for its novelty pieces —  ”bestselling belts [with] crazy heart hardware with chains and snakes and things like that” — that have been spotted on numerous celebrities, including Beyoncé during her Cowboy Carter tour.

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Streets Ahead}

The brand built on its success as a legacy wholesale business over the decades, but when Sack joined the team, she wanted to explore its potential in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) space.

As it turns out, there was a lot: In just a few years, Sack grew DTC revenue from $60,000 to more than $500,000. Streets Ahead is projected to hit $3.2 million to $3.5 million in total revenue in 2025, with $2.7 million to $3 million from wholesale and $500,000 to $600,000 from DTC.

Related: ‘Absolute Freedom’: Siblings Behind a Self-Funded 8-Figure Brand Reveal 3 Secrets Aspiring Entrepreneurs Should Know About Growth and Success

“I came in and changed the platform to Shopify, kind of just revamped the whole thing.”

Streets Ahead’s foray into DTC sales started with a website refresh.

“We always had a website, but [no one ran it],” Sack says. “It didn’t really make any money. It was never up to date. So I came in and changed the platform to Shopify, kind of just revamped the whole thing, and started adding products and keeping it up to date. And immediately we saw a difference.”

Once her parents saw the results, they were even more willing to invest in the brand’s DTC strategy. Streets Ahead leaned into professional content creation and advertising and continued to see its DTC sales grow.

Related: 6 Questions You Need to Ask Yourself Before Launching a Direct to Consumer Brand

Part of the brand’s digital transformation also included a logo overhaul, Sack says.

The company featured the new design across its social media platforms and started to generate interest from major influencers like Rocky Barnes, who boasts more than three million followers on Instagram and 200,000 followers on TikTok.

“ She found us through an ad that we were running, and she wanted the exact belts from the ad,” Sack recalls. “So we started doing some gifting, and we could see that it worked. As we built our social presence, especially Instagram and ads, we got so many DMs, and now they keep coming.”

^{Image Credit: Courtesy of Streets Ahead}

“99% of the time we’re making it from scratch.”

Sack would love to sell more on TikTok, but the platform’s quick-ship requirements prove challenging for the made-to-order brand, as “everything is essentially custom” and takes time to manufacture.

Whereas other companies might have thousands of units sitting in a warehouse ready to ship, every time Streets Ahead receives an order, that request is sent down to the factory, which starts the production process.  

“We don’t have anything made here unless there was a return and we have [that returned product],” Sack says. “99% of the time we’re making it from scratch.”

Related: I Revamped a Men’s Product for Women. The Bootstrapped Business Was a Hit — and Pledged $20 Million to Support Women Entrepreneurs.

Because of Streets Ahead’s branding and social media presence, it can get “a little bit lost” on people that each item really is custom-made for them, Sack notes. The company follows up on particularly large orders to confirm them before moving forward with fulfillment.

What’s more, despite the business’s made-to-order model, Streets Ahead does accept returns.

“ I buy things that I want to try and might return — we all do it,” Sack says. “If we want to have this type of direct-to-consumer [platform], there has to be some kind of return. People need to try things on. They don’t know their size. So we do allow returns, [but] we’ve now started to put a little tag on [products] that says, If this tag is removed, we can’t accept the return, to prevent people from wearing it and then sending it back.”

“You have to be okay doing the grunt work.”

As Sack considers Street Ahead’s future and her own role within it, she’s excited to expand the brand’s offerings beyond belts. The brand dropped its first handbag collection last month, and Sack says she’d love to branch into shoes, particularly leather boots and sandals with hardware, down the line.

Related: ‘Rules Are Suggestions’: This Fashion Founder Is Using AI to Eliminate the Industry’s Massive Sizing and Waste Problems

For young professionals or aspiring entrepreneurs who hope to make their mark on the fashion industry, Sack says it’s important to “learn a little bit of everything” — and be prepared to do your part.

“You have to be okay doing the grunt work,” Sack says. “There are some days I’m down shipping, some days I’m cleaning buckles, things that someone as a designer or creative director doesn’t necessarily want to do. But you need to be a team player and be willing to know every single role.”

Perfection Is Out. Realness Runs the Room Now — Here’s How Authentic CEOs Can Win Trust Today

As Gen-Z begins to reveal their personal values and desires, it’s apparent now that public-facing perfection is out of style, and transparency is king. There is now a move from a curated and performative charisma to a desire for a real and candid thought leader.

People are tired of having perfect-looking celebrities, perfect-looking social media and perfect-looking CEO’s. There’s a deep fatigue of performative leadership, and the Kool-Aid is no longer being drunk. Audiences gravitate towards realness and personality, especially in times of uncertainty and controversy.

Vulnerability used to be seen as a gateway for people to attack and criticize CEO’s and brand leaders. However, now it’s transforming into a superpower and a leadership strength. People want leaders not just who are flawed, but accept that they are flawed and don’t try to skate past it. Smart CEO’s use their flaws as a branding strategy and leverage them to place themselves as open, real, and humanized leaders.

Gone is the old model of leadership where perfectionism was mandatory. Secrets had to be kept tight and swept under the rug, and real personalities couldn’t be seen in public for fear of seeming passive. It was more important to “sound” media-trained than to address actual issues that pertained to your sector.

Related: Every Successful Business Has Bad Reviews — Even Mine. Here’s How I Tackle Negative Feedback.

Why transparency is no longer optional

So, why the shift now?

The culture has seen time and time again, celebrities and leaders get in front of a camera and apologize for a mistake they made, or an old tweet that resurfaced. The oversaturation of online apologies makes them fall flat and seem more rehearsed each time. The only real motivation for leaders to apologize was the fear of being cancelled and losing influence, and that agenda only became more apparent.

Mistakes are bound to happen because imperfection is a part of humanity. When you’re a CEO, you’re now in the public eye whether you like it or not. This isn’t a call to be perfect. It’s an inescapable elevation that comes with the position. You now have a team to lead, and that team will have an expectation of honesty, openness and behind-the-scenes access, not just corporate jargon and a polished statement.

The elevation to public figure can be seen as a burden or a mantel, and intentional CEO’s will leverage it to ensure their success.

How Steve Madden turned criticism into credibility

In a recent interview, Steve Madden, the Founder of Steve Madden Ltd., was asked what he thinks when people call his brand a knockoff. In the past, a well-trained media leader would be told that they should dodge any negative association and give a vague but passable answer to satisfy the interviewer and keep themselves safe.

Steve Madden took this jarring question as an opportunity to leverage his authenticity and elevate his brand. He admittedly said that his brand does take inspiration from other brands and redesigns them as their own. Steve made his authenticity an asset, not a liability, and because he was authentic, he was celebrated.

While Steve spoke without a filter during this interview, he never conjured chaos by doing so. As an intentional thought leader, he dropped the corporate dialogue, remained an in-touch human being, and spoke with directness that was admired.

Related: Why Vulnerability May Be a Leader’s Greatest Strength

How to redefine transparent leadership in the CEO era

Transparency is not about being theatrical, or the “most open”, or transforming yourself into a lifestyle influencer. It’s about being who you actually are and leveraging that to be a more relatable and human leader. Transparency as a CEO is to accept that you’re human and let your humanness be celebrated.

Personality-driven leadership is a mask that one must put on and take off as they step in and out of professional spaces. It’s a character CEO’s and managers must choose to play, then retire from when the work day ends. But when communication is a leadership tool, your desire becomes for your company and those connected to it to flourish.

When you view your company as a societal solution, and not a corporate money machine, you grant yourself the freedom to not be charismatic out of performance.

Authenticity as a CEO is more than being able to charm people or be a likable person. As the leader, you must be able to take accountability, speak the truth and clarify yourself in order to actually live out that authenticity.

Why CEOs must choose transparency over armor

As a CEO, you now have a choice to make: hold onto your armor and look strong, or become authentic and actually be strong. Vulnerability is only a liability if you don’t admit that you’re vulnerable.

Influence comes to those who are most relatable, and what’s more relatable than being human? Today’s power move isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being transparent enough to earn belief.

Robinhood Is Writing More Code with AI than Google or Microsoft

Engineers at the stock trading and investing app Robinhood are using AI to generate new code instead of writing it themselves.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said on the 20VC podcast earlier this week that “close to 100%” of software engineers at the company are using AI to write blocks of code, tapping into tools like Cursor and Windsurf, which advertise advanced coding, debugging, and editing capabilities. According to Tenev, over 50% of new code at Robinhood is AI-generated, the same percentage as Salesforce.

Related: Robinhood Is Offering a Credit Card for the First Time — and It’s Available in 10-Karat Gold

Tenev said that it was difficult to differentiate between AI-written code and human-created code, estimating that only a “minority” of new code at Robinhood was now written by humans.

“It’s hard to even determine what the human-generated code is,” Tenev said on the podcast. “If I had to guess, it’s in the minority.”

Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have individually stated that AI writes 30% of the code at their respective companies, putting Robinhood’s AI coding adoption ahead of those big tech companies.

Tenev also said on the podcast that AI has had a “huge” impact on Robinhood internally, affecting teams like customer support. For example, Robinhood built its own version of ChatGPT for customer service.

“The impact that it’s had on internal teams, ranging from software engineering to customer support, the really big internal teams, has been huge,” Tenev said on the podcast.

Related: OpenAI Blasts Robinhood for Selling OpenAI Tokens: ‘We Do Not Endorse It’

Robinhood has more than quadrupled its market capitalization in the past eight months, from $21 billion in November to about $90 billion at the time of writing. In 2024, the company achieved total net revenue of $2.95 billion, up 58% year-over-year.

Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.