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This year, tax refunds are generally lower than they were previously. Increasingly they're zero; sometimes they're negative, and extra tax payments are owed. https://t.co/0BX7BKG0uP
Female #entrepreneurship continues to change the face of #business. Here are 8 predictions from @FastCompany with @HarrisPoll data revealing 75% of women reported seeking a side hustle for additional income (compared to 58% of men) https://t.co/Q2MMElCqQr @LindsayTigar
Only 35% use different #password for all accounts.
By @HarrisPoll @Google
#infosecurity #Cybersecurity #passwords #phishing #managers
Cc: @Paula_Piccard @Julez_Norton @sallyeaves @archonsec @DrJDrooghaag @mclynd @cybersecboardrm @digitalcloudgal @grattongirl @ChuckDBrooks
[Photo: Hero Images/Getty Images]
By Lindsay Tigar | Fast Company
Who runs the world? Well, still, by and large, men. But gradually and strategically—women, if you pay attention to statistics. Over the past two decades, the number of women-owned businesses has grown 114%, compared to the 44% national growth rate for all new companies. As more women venture into entrepreneurship, they will tackle the laundry list of gaps women are continuing to change.
The past year was pivotal in bringing important issues to light. From #MeToo to #TimesUp and the unprecedented number of women running for public office, it was a revolutionary year that touched every industry and group, says corporate futurist for Ford Motor Company, Sheryl Connelly. The shift in dynamics and speech isn’t just happening stateside, but globally. Connelly points out that women internationally are standing together to assert greater control of their rights, their safety, their health, and their success too. “Women aren’t finding opportunities in traditional corporate paths that meet their needs and, as such, are pioneering their own path to find new avenues to flex their skills,” she adds.
And hey, we’re just getting started. Here, female leaders predict entrepreneurism trends for 2019.
1. MORE WOMEN WILL DEVELOP SIDE HUSTLES
By definition,
Read the full story at Fast Company.
By John Gerzema | Forbes
We're increasingly confronted with evidence of how harsh the world is today. Americans say our society feels more divisive now, and daily anxiety is rising, especially among young Americans. Faced with these external pressures, more of us are looking inward toward our spiritual, physical and mental health and well-being.
Our recent survey with Lululemon found that more than eight in 10 people believe wellness is not a fad, but a lifestyle. And of those surveyed, 71% want to achieve mind and body balance this year. Wellness and health in culture today is a "new wealth," where being well means status, luxury and experience.
And like all new trends, it seems to have an origin in Brooklyn. Wellvyl is a Brooklyn startup that caters to single-mingles who also have a penchant for working out and eating well. (We were curiously attracted to a post on their site entitled "Death, Abs and Smoothies.")
But as we age, there are now is a range of private-equity-funded startups that aim to improve teletherapy through apps like Healthloop and Onkol for digi-elder-care, as well as smart sheets that monitor insulin levels and provide screeners for cystic fibrosis. And somewhere in between, there are partnerships like The Mandarin Oriental and The Mayo Clinic, where a luxury spa includes a top-notch physical. Did you ever expect to click on a story about Mayo in The Robb Report?
My point is health is inside and out: The rise of genetic testing has led to personalized diets through startups like Habit and made-to-your-DNA workouts through STYR. Yet, wellness also extends to affinity groups like new parents, where digital bassinets like Hatch Baby capture baby metrics, and Sleep IQ smart beds track baby’s REM. There’s even Fitzania, an arcade that tracks kids’ biometrics while they play laser tag.
Wellness is not the property of some zany Sonoma retreat, but a pursuit by an ever-growing number of people and industries. Here’s how to think about your customers and their quest for better health and mindfulness:
Resist The Clinical
While it’s tempting to want to get "all pharma" on people, wellness is actually an all-encompassing mindset today, so products and services should be, too. According to our study, 64% of respondents want to improve physical health, but they also want to improve their financial health (57%), mental health (41%), relationship health (40%) and spiritual health (39%).
Consumers also want easier ways to manage their wellness goals. Aetna’s Health Ambitions study found that, if given an extra hour in the day, 60% of people would spend it on mental and physical well-being activities. How does your product or service help attain one or more of these desires? Frame wellness in the aspirational and the emotional. That’s how exercise equipment and media company Peloton gets us out of bed in the morning.
It’s All About Me
According to a recent report from Apple, the hottest trending apps in 2018 were in the “self-care” category, but new research signals that this is just the beginning of self-care trends. Our survey also found that 73% of respondents said that “2019 is the year I will achieve my ideal mind/body balance,” while 81% said, “In 2019, I will be more compassionate with myself."
Self-care will be a driving force in achieving a wellness lifestyle for the coming years, so make it personal. There are startups like Mirror that are providing virtual trainers and Somnox’s cuddly sleep robots that lull you to sleep with any calming audio you like. (There’s some artificial intelligence that doesn’t sound dystopian.)
Eat Like Tom Brady
While most of society is confused by labels and what’s bad for us, many people are simply editing their way to better health. According to the Celiac Disease Center, 1% of Americans have celiac disease, yet in our 2014 Harris Poll survey, 26% of Americans pursued some form of gluten-free diet that year. People feel increasingly empowered to make their own selections. This week it’s keto; what is the next trend in deprivation?
All of these signs point to a new reality for marketers: Consumer-centric brands have a leg up in keeping pace with consumers in the wellness lifestyle revolution. From holistic services and products, convenience, personalization, transparency and ethics, consumers have raised the bar with new expectations from the brands they love. This signals a new opportunity for marketers to authentically relate to their audiences by thinking past earning impressions and more toward holistically connecting and creating value exchanges with consumers.
Read more at Forbes.
Procter & Gamble Co.’s Gillette ad asked men to consider doing better. As a result, at least some are willing to consider Gillette.
Though the early reaction seemed to be dominated by male umbrage, early data suggests the ad split two important groups for the brand. More than half of younger men -- a group the 117-year-old brand’s struggled with -- reacted positively, according to survey data from Harris Poll. Their dads, though, were more likely to be offended.
Among millennials and Gen Zs, 57 percent said they’d be more likely to consider purchasing Gillette products. Nearly two-thirds of Gen X men said the same. Roughly the same proportion of Baby Boomers, though, felt the opposite.
“We knew this film might be polarizing,” a P&G spokeswoman told Bloomberg. “Conversations on these profound social issues can be difficult for all sides but we believe they are important and that, by sparking the discussion, we can play a part in creating meaningful and positive change.”
Brands are growing increasingly comfortable making politics part of their marketing, courting buzz and controversy at the risk of alienating some consumers, at least in the short term. The effects on the bottom line, however, take longer to reveal themselves. For example, Nike Inc.’s commercial featuring quarterback-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick inspired a social media call for a boycott. Months later, the company reported that the campaign boosted its online traffic and engagement, leading to sales growth.
The jury is still out for Gillette, whose products are used by 800 million men every year. While Nike’s Kaepernick campaign played to its core customers, Gillette sought to make an impression on the group it’s been losing to online startups like Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club.
The advertisement, which has by now been viewed more than 70 million times across its social media channels, was “dog whistling to a younger demographic,” said Jess Weiner, culture expert and chief executive officer of Talk to Jess, a marketing and advertising consulting firm.
“Gillette is an iconic brand but it’s probably your dad’s or your granddad’s brand,’’ she said. “They were intentionally taking on a topic that is in the zeitgeist for millennial audiences right now.’’
During the first week of the campaign’s run, it generated over $34 million in media exposure, according to Eric Smallwood of Apex Marketing, which measures sentiment on TV, radio and online news. A little more than one-third of the coverage and reaction was negative, he said, roughly on par with the reactions to Nike’s Kaepernick ad during its first week.
Six percent of responses to Gillette were positive, fewer than the 11 percent positive responses generated by the Nike ad.
“The way to be modern is to take on a social issue,” said John Gerzema, chief executive officer of The Harris Poll. “They were successful in getting the brand back into the culture.’’
Read more at Bloomberg.
At the time of his murder in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had become the proverbial prophet without honor in his own land. A survey by the Harris Poll found that the 39-year-old civil rights leader appeared to have lost his grip on the American imagination. Three out of 4 white respondents said they disapproved of King’s work after his turn against the war in Vietnam. More striking, roughly half of all black Americans also disapproved.
Only a few years earlier, King had been at a zenith: In 1964, he was Time magazine’s Man of the Year and the youngest person to date to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His success in seeing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed into law was followed by the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
But 1968: This scant time later, King was widely criticized, even by his peers in the civil rights movement. African American leaders admonished him not to bring his protests to their cities. Of black leaders such as Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Rep. Adam Clayton Powell (D-N.Y.) of Harlem, King lamented: “Their point is . . . Martin Luther King is dead; he’s finished; his nonviolence is nothing. No one is listening to it.”
And from leaders of the rising Black Power movement came other criticisms. King’s philosophy of peaceful protest was weak and servile; some derided his churchly bearing by calling him, behind his back, “De Lawd.” (Even at the height of King’s influence, Malcolm X attacked him as a “modern Uncle Tom.”) As one left-wing writer declared of King’s final, underwhelming effort, the Poor People’s Campaign: “The failure of the campaign is the kiss of death” for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Friends of King remarked on his dejection during his last months, historian David Garrow says in “Bearing the Cross.” “He was just a different person,” said stalwart ally the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. “He was sad and depressed.”
King wondered whether his work was having any impact and noted the animosity aimed at champions of unfulfilled hopes. “The bitterness is often greater toward that person who built up the hope, who could say ‘I have a dream,’ but couldn’t produce the dream because of the failure and the sickness of the nation to respond to the dream,” King said.
By John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll | U.S. News & World Report
"MY GOAL IS TO BE THE least-powerful CEO ever," Ilkka Paananen told me in an phone interview in 2015. At the time, we had just published our book The Athena Doctrine (How Women (And the Men Who Think Like Them) Will Rule the Future. I was trying to document how modern leaders were adapting from the old 'command and control' style of leading. And Paananen's leadership ethos was not just humble, but practical. As CEO of Supercell, the Finnish mobile game studio (e.g. Clash of Clans), the decision to put the CEO at the bottom of the org chart was an intentional strategy to leave power in the hands of developers and those closest to their customers.
More leaders should take note of what's happening in Helsinki. Today, new demographics, new social movements and new attitudes on what makes a great leader are hollowing out the perch on which traditional leadership sits. And our Harris Poll data suggests there is a referendum upon leaders to build organizations that are more diverse, more inclusive and more in sync with society.
The movement toward inclusive leadership is everywhere. In politics, America elected the first Muslim and Native-American congresswomen to the House of Representatives, which is now the most racially-diverse and female in U.S. history. In the wake of #metoo and #blacklivesmatter, the world is awaking to the perils of privilege and the need to re-think leadership access. According to The World Economic Forum, 86 percent of people globally say, "we have a leadership crisis in the world today". And in our Harris Poll data, we discovered a fifteen-year inverted relationship between corporate reputation and the size of a firm. In fact, 60 percent of Americans today trust smaller companies over larger ones.
This 'Scale is Fail' phenomenon highlights a growing mistrust of power at the top. People see institutional self-interests – 79 percent of Americans think big company leaders are only looking out for themselves (tied with U.S. Congress) – as a reason why power is an obstacle to progress.
Yet no group demands more of leaders than millennials. Unafraid of the ongoing transformation – because they were born into it – 63 percent say they buy more from businesses who speak out on social issues, while 60 percent feel CEO's of large companies should be visibly discussing income, racial and gender inequality and their own personal views on social issues. That millennials are now moving into the c-suite (while Gen Z are becoming their interns), the top-down leader is being replaced by a bottom-up consensus seeker, who acts decisively by utilizing multiple streams of information.
Read more on U.S. News & World Report.