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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, entrepreneurism takes on many forms: From five-person startups to 200-strong enterprises and one-woman shows, becoming your own boss doesn’t follow a check-sheet of requirements. Connelly shares even if women aren’t prepared to hire another person in their big idea, women are more likely to develop a side hustle than men in the next year. According to a Harris Poll, 75% of women reported seeking a side hustle for additional income (compared to 58% of men) and 28% of millennial women are already in the throes of juggling. And a juggle it is, since Connelly shares women spend more time with one half of their attention in a traditional corporate job and another half in their gig life, in large because they aren’t funded or embraced at the same rate as men. The more they—ahem—hustle though, the better those numbers will change in their favor in years to come.

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.

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.