Every other day, someone rolls out a confident take: Gen Z isnt really all that different. Give them a few years, they say, and theyll fall in line like every generation before them.
Its a comforting storyespecially for those who built the system they expect Gen Z to fit into. But after years of teaching Gen Z, studying their values, and listening to what they need from work and leadership, I can say with certainty: Its not that simple. And pretending it is might be the biggest leadership blind spot of our time.
Gen Z didnt grow up in the same world their managers did. Every generation faces unique strugglesbut those struggles shape different expectations, different instincts, and different realities. For Gen Z, those realities include climate anxiety, political polarization, mass shootings, pandemic isolation, and economic instability. They watched institutions crumble in real time. Their parents raised them in a world with constantly changing rules, a workplace that doesnt always reward loyalty, and an environment that makes it seem like success involves passing the stress test.
What Gen Z actually wants
When Gen Z employees walk into a workplace, theyre not trying to conform. Theyre looking for clarity. Theyre looking for fairness. And theyre looking for leaders who make sense. I surveyed 175 Gen Z college students, ages 18 to 21, and asked them: What leadership traits do you most value in a boss? What helps you feel engaged at work?
The answers werent radical. They were grounded, human, and refreshingly reasonable. Here are the top 10.
1. Organization: Clear expectations and structured leadership
2. Respect: Fair treatment and valuing individual input
3. Communication: Honest feedback and transparency
4. Positive Attitude: Supportive, motivating tone
5. Approachability: Leaders who feel safe to talk to
6. Flexibility: Some autonomy in how and when work is done
7. Fair Pay: Transparent and equitable compensation
8. Responsibility: Leaders who take accountability
9. Trust: Confidence in leadership decision-making
10. Acknowledgment: Recognition for effort and contribution
What struck me was not how surprising the results were but how basic they were. Gen Z isnt demanding perfection. Theyre asking for what most generations have wantedbut theyre less willing to tolerate its absence.
They arent disengaged. Theyre discerning.
The importance of empathy
That distinction matters. In my conversations with executives, I often hear frustration: They dont want to pay their dues. They push back too much. They ghost interviews. But when I talk to Gen Z, what I hear is something different: I want to understand the why. I need a boss I can actually talk to. If I feel invisible, Ill leave.
Gen Z isnt fragile. Theyre focused. Theyre not afraid of hard workthey’re just not willing to do it in a place that treats them like a cog with a college degree. They want work environments that align with their values: fairness, flexibility, and the radical notion that people deserve to be treated like people. And if they dont find it, they move on. Not out of entitlement, but out of self-preservation. Because theyve learnedsometimes the hard waythat no job is worth your dignity. And they dont see burnout as a badge of honor.
Thats where empathy comes in. Not the curated kind, where a company posts a mindfulness webinar at noon and sends passive-aggressive emails at five. Im talking about real, grounded empathythe kind that shows up in how leaders communicate, take responsibility, and follow through. Its not about being soft. Its about being steady. And its the difference between a boss who manages tasks and a leader who earns trust.
I call it engaged empathy: leadership that listens, adapts, and holds firm when it matters but never forgets its leading people. Its not about coddling or over-accommodating. Its about removing the guesswork from work and building trustday by day, word by word.
Somewhere along the way, leadership got tangled in bravado. But Gen Z doesnt respond to that. They want and respond to consistency, communication, and yes, kindness. The best leaders Ive observed dont perform strengththey embody steadiness.
A generation forging their own path
Theres something Ive been thinking about a lot lately: Gen Z isnt waiting to be moldedtheyre choosing whats worth shaping themselves around. And thats not a sign of weaknessits a sign of agency. Its easy to compare them to how we were at 22, to say Theyll figure it out, and move on. But the truth is, theyve come of age in a different world. Of course, they see things differently. Thats not a threat to traditionits an invitation to evolve.
When the workplace grows to meet its clarity, we all benefit. Burnout goes down. Retention goes up. Cultures become more thoughtful and more human. Leadership becomes something people want to follownot something they endure. Wouldnt that result in a better workplace for us all?
So no, theyre not like you were at 22. And thats more than okay. In fact, that might be exactly what the workplace has been waiting for.
Most of us Americans have firsthand experience with the broken state of the U.S. prescription drug market. In March, our son said his ADHD medication wasnt working anymore. We set up an appointment with his pediatrician, which is when the Kafka-esque insurance wrangling began.
The doctor prescribed a medication listed on our insurers published formulary (the list of prescription drugs, whether brand name or generic, covered by its policies). The insurer denied the prescription, then denied the prior authorization our pediatrician submitted. Then we learned the published formulary was incorrect.
We got a copy of the correct formulary and tried again. We had to call around to find a pharmacy that had the new drug in the generic form (since the name brand isnt covered), only to have the prescription denied again.
Rx Frustration Redux
The insurer told our doctor that a prior authorization was required, even though this medication is on the preferred formulary, so the pediatrician dutifully submitted that paperwork. Several days later, this prior authorization was also denied. The pediatricians nurse practitioner called the insurer, threw a bit of a fit, and got the insurance company to follow its own rules.
I picked up the medicine that same day. But despite the drug being listed in the formulary as costing $21 with insurance, I was charged $215because our son has not yet met his $3,300 annual deductible.
The cherry on top of this sundae of frustration is that the new medication doesnt seem to be working as hopedso were going to have to go through all this again with another drug.
I know our situation is far from unique. But how did we get here? Why do insurance companies have so much power over our prescription drug choices and costs? And considering Trumps May 12th executive order to lower prescription drugs costs, is it possible that there may be some relief on the horizon?
Heres what contributes to the dystopia that is American prescription drug prices, and what we can expect from the current administrations plans to improve the situation.
Why do prescription drugs cost us so dang much?
The press conference where Trump announced the executive order to lower prescription drug costs was plagued by his usual word saladwith a side of weird fat-shaming. But the verbal weaver-in-chief did at least make one valid point: Americans pay a lot more for the same drugs compared to citizens of other countries.
There are a number of potential reasons for this cost disparity, none of which are within an individual consumers control:
Research and development
Pharmaceutical companies like to point to the high cost of research and development as the main driving force behind the high cost of prescription drugs in America. And to be fair to Eli Lilly et al. (which is not a phrase that I often type), the pharmaceutical industry spent $83 billion on R&D in 2019 alone, which is more than 10 times the amount spent per year in the 1980s, adjusted for inflation.
But even with that staggering cost of R&D, thats not the reason Americans are rationing their lifesaving medicine. The Journal of the American Medical Association found in 2022 that there is no connection between the amount of money a drug company spends on developing a medication and the price of that medication.
Profit motives
Though the top executives will deny this until theyre blue in the face, its hard to ignore the fact that pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars per yearand can even measure their profits in hundreds of dollars per second.
Drug companies can set their own prices for medically necessary drugs, and they are abetted by an opaque, inconsistent, and bureaucratic employer-sponsored insurance system. This allows big pharma to (allegedly) determine drug prices based on profit motive rather than health outcomes.
Direct-to-consumer advertising
In 1997, the FDA relaxed the rules for pharmaceutical broadcast advertising, making it possible to advertise prescription medications directly to consumers on TV and radio. Drug companies embraced the opportunity wholeheartedly, spending about $1.3 billion on direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads in 1997, and that number soared to $8.1 billion in 2022. Pharmaceutical companies claim that DTC advertising helps inform consumers about health conditions and medical treatments.
Im old enough to remember when direct-to-consumer prescription drug commercials first appeared. The ads seemed dubious to teenage me, since every commercial spot convinced me I needed Claritin, despite having no seasonal allergies. Many consumer advocates and medical professionals worry that consumers are similarly influenced to request unnecessary medication, which increases the cost of care.
Those increased costs appear to be the rationale behind the huge investment pharmaceutical companies put into DTC ads. The industry wouldnt shell out more than $8 billion per year for the altruistic goal of keeping patients well-informed. Its a for-profit industry, after all.
Pharmacy benefit managers
Pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is the health industry role youve never heard of thats behind the rage-inducing price of your blood pressure medicine. The PBM is a third-party contractor that negotiates drug prices between the pharmaceutical company, the insurer, and the pharmacy.
Its the PBM that created the formulary we consulted while trying to get my sons prescription (and it was probably the PBM that failed to update the formulary, which added three weeks to our hyperactive goose chase). Additionally, the PBM decides which medications are preferred, which are not covered, and how much patients will pay for them before and after meeting the deductible.
On the other side of the equation, the PBM negotiates discounts or rebates for the insurance companies from the drug manufacturers and determines how much the pharmacies will get paid by the insurers.
Unfortunately, the PBM can keep a portion of the discount or rebate they negotiate, as well as some of the money they receive from the insurer for the pharmacyand none of their fees or incentives are transparent. These go-betweens are incentivized to increase prices for everyone to line their own pockets and their involvement is not a line item in your drug price.
Insurer cost sharing
Big Pharma doesnt carry all of the blame for high drug costs. Insurance is also a usual suspect. Many insurance companies have shifted more of their costs onto patients in recent years via higher premiums, copays, and deductibles.
In our case, all three of those insurance costs have gone up in the past few years. Meaning we will be paying over $200 for our sons monthly medication unless he reaches his $3,300 annual deductibleHa Shem forbid.
Trump to the rescue . . .?
Like a broken clock occasionally telling time, our fearful leader has bumbled into identifying a real problem. Americans are spending way too much money on prescription drugs and its easy to see that citizens of other countries dont have this issue.
So what exactly does the May 12th executive order say, and will it bring relief to patients who just want reasonable drug prices?
Whats in the executive order
The specific plan outlined in the so-called Delivering Most-Favored Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients executive order is classic Trump, overpromising a bright and beautiful improvement with an unclear method of execution.
The order directs the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to negotiate with pharmaceutical manufacturers to set lower drug prices by mid-June. If that doesnt happen, Secretary Bear Carcass will create a new rule tying U.S. drug prices to prices paid by patients in other countries.
And thats it. Thats all the executive has ordered.
Prices arent going down anytime soon
Unfortunately, other than threatening to take the CEOs of Merck, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson to RFK Jrs favorite swimming hole, theres not much Trump can do to get the pharma companies to agree to lower prices.
As of right now, the administration seems to mainly be asking the drug manufacturers to pretty please lower their prices.
Im not holding my breath. (Well, except around certain cabinet members.)
Complex, infuriating, and ubiquitous
Theres no bright side to the dystopian reality were living in, where a pencil-pusher in another state gets to decide on my kids medical care and Im still coughing up a couple of Benjamins every month for medicine that doesnt work. And even when our leaders correctly identify this as a problem, they dont have real solutions, because the issue is so big, entrenched, and difficult to solve.
That doesnt mean theres no hope for us little folk. Whether its your kids nurse practitioner giving your insurance company a piece of her mind, your pharmacist finding you money-saving coupons, your doctor calling colleagues to get you as many samples as possible, or just a fellow patient listening sympathetically, the American healthcare system is still full of compassionate people supporting each other through this crap.
Last week, the nonprofit that runs New York City Pride revealed that around a quarter of its corporate donors have either canceled or diminished their support this year. The pullback has result in an estimated $750,000 shortfall for the organization as it gears up for its biggest event of the year.
According to Chris Piedmont, media director at Heritage of Pride, many sponsors cited uncertainty around the economic impact of tariffs as their reasoning for scaling back. Others, though, expressed concern about potential blowback from the current administration for publicly supporting Pride and other [DEI] initiatives. Its a troubling new chapter in a months-long trend of companies that once championedand, in some cases, profited off ofDEI initiatives, which are now quietly diminishing their support.
The drop in corporate sponsorship isnt isolated to New York City; its happening across the country, from San Francisco to St. Louis, Missouri, to St. Petersburg, Florida. Joanna Schwartz is a professor at Georgia College & State University with a specialty in LGBTQ+ marketing. She says that, while there has been more caution around this marketing in the last few years, the current political climate has made companies especially fearful of the backlash that might come with supporting the queer community.
Amid this climate of capitulation, Schwartz says its more valuable than ever for companies who truly hold LGBTQ+ support as a core value to stand by the community rather than abandoning it.
Pride celebrations losing sponsorship dollars
In a press release sent to supporters last week, Heritage of Pride said NYC Pride is hoping to raise $25,000 before June 30 to account for its funding gap. While the number of partners supporting the event has actually increased from 70 last year to 76 this year, overall investment has taken a drastic hit.
Spokesperson Kevin Kilbride told the New York Times that PepsiCo, Skyy Vodka, Target, Nissan, and Mastercard are some of the brands that either backed out, reduced their contributions, or asked for their involvement to go unpublicized. In a statement to Fast Company, Nissan said it “is currently reviewing all marketing and sales spendingincluding select consumer auto shows, sports properties and other entertainment activationsto maximize both efficiency and breakthrough effectiveness.” LOreal is the only brand returning from 2024 as a platinum sponsor, contributing $175,000 to NYC Pride.
Meanwhile, small, local, and queer-owned businesseslike Brooklyn Brewery, Mischief Mates, Radiant Light Candles, and the Travel Agencyhave stepped up in the absence of larger corporate sponsors.
Still, the organization is in a challenging place as it looks to stage a successful Pride this year. Per the release, a 25% budget gap could mean fewer floats and performers, a loss in grant programs that aid queer New Yorkers, and difficulty hiring security teams.
These are concerns that have been echoed across the U.S. In St. Louis, Anheuser-Busch, a key sponsor of PrideFest for over 30 years, didn’t renew its sponsorship in 2025. After other sponsors also pulled back, the organization was left with a $150,000 deficit. San Francisco Pride organizers told Bloomberg in late April that their event is down nearly $200,000 this year after Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Benefit Cosmetics, and the liquor brand Diageo dropped their sponsorships. And Twin Cities Pride reported a similar financial shortfall as it waited to hear back from around 30 former sponsors.
In small towns, the impact is felt even more acutely. Eve Keller, co-president of USA Prides, a national network of LGBTQ Pride organizers, told NBC News that some smaller, rural Prides have reported sponsorships declining 70% to 90% compared to the average year.
Piedmont says its been beyond disheartening to watch corporations bow to public pressure at a time when the queer community, and especially trans individuals, are under attack now more than ever. Last week, House Republicans passed a budget bill that a bill that would cut off Medicaid funding for all gender transition care. Experts have called it “an assault” on transgender healthcare. (The bill still has to go to the Senate.)
We need corporations and partners of all sizes to step up to the plate, stay on the right side of history and support the entire LGBTQIA+ community, Piedmont says. We’re here. We’re queer. And we’re not going anywhere. Regardless, our community will do what it has always donefrom Stonewall, to Compton’s Cafeteria, to the youth-led trans protests todaywe march on.
Since last week’s news of Heritage of Pride’s budget shortfall, Piedmont says the organization has received nearly $10,000 from almost 100 different donors.
A troubling chapter in a larger trend of capitulation
The retreat of companies like Nissan and Anheuser-Busch, who once served as major Pride sponsors across the U.S., follows a more troubling trend. As the Trump administration pushes to codify its extreme views, brands including Tractor Supply Co., John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Ford, and Lowes have walked back DEI efforts.
Pride parades have typically been a relatively inexpensive opportunity for companies to demonstrate support for their LGBTQ+ employees while hitting a very targeted audience, Schwartz says. But in the current political environment, companies are being far more careful about being connected to support for the community because theres a growing backlash calling attention to corporate efforts at inclusivity, particularly of LGBTQ+ people generally, and trans and nonbinary people in particular.
This is striking, Schwartz says, in that it feels like a regression to an era when corporate support for the queer community was almost nowhere to be found. When Pride first started out, it was a kind of grassroots way to acknowledge and celebrate Stonewall. Only in the last decade or so have companies become more willing to openly sponsor queer eventsso much so, in fact, that NYC Pride has previously faced criticism for transforming from a community-focused event into a “corporate party.”
Part of the benefit of sponsorship isn’t just advertising to the LGBT community, but also showing support for your LGBT employees, so it builds community within organizations, Schwartz says. Up until the last couple of years, companies were being more and more supportive of the LGBT community and, to be perfectly frank about it, also profiting off of that, which gets into rainbow capitalism.
Rainbow capitalism, or rainbow washing, generally refers to a company’s outward support of the queer community, while not truly backing up LGBTQ+ customers or employees behind the scenes. The perception of rainbow washing is one of the reasons why Target, which spent years promoting Pride Month collections, is facing major financial backlash for its retreat from Pride and DEI efforts at large.
Financially speaking, there was a good reason for companies to embrace the queer community: According to a 2023 study by the investment adviser LGBT Capital, LGBTQ+ people hold an estimated $3.9 trillion in global purchasing power.
“You don’t want to let that part of the community think you just don’t care about it, but unlike every other sub-population in the United States, that’s the one target that, if you advertise to it, you potentially lose other customers,” Schwartz says.
Anheuser-Busch subsidiary Bud Light experienced a similar problem in 2023. After the company released a small ad campaign featuring trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, conservative critics spread transphobic rhetoric and advocated boycotting the brand. Bud Light shrank away from critics rather than facing them head-on, in turn alienating its queer customers. In 2023 alone, Bud Light lost an estimated $1.4 billion in U.S. beer sales as both conservatives and LGBTQ+ advocates spoke out against it.
Currently, some companies are publicly retreating from DEI initiatives while still maintaining behind-the-scenes initiatives, like support for LGBTQ+ employee resource groups. Schwartz says she’s also noticed a trend of companies being much more careful about how they support the queer community, like avoiding any overt reference to trans or non-binary people, in order to avoid becoming “targets” of conservative media or the Trump administration. She believes this overarching fear is the main reason that many companies are backing out of Pride celebrations this year.
“They’re saying, ‘There’s shifting corporate alignment, and we’re looking at our advertising budgets.’ All of that is just a polite way of a company saying, ‘We’re too scared to do this, and we don’t want to own it because we also don’t want to disenfranchise the LGBT community,'” Schwartz says.
For many LGBTQ+ community members, theres a feeling that some companies only offered their support when it was convenient, and are retracting it now that the optics are no longer as beneficial. On Reddit, dozens of users are collating lists of companies deemed “fair weather friends” for their recent backtracking.
The [queer] community has been completely abandoned by a number of major companies, across a lot of brand categories, Schwartz says. The current prevailing wind is out of a far more conservative place, and companies are trying not to make anyone mad, but the companies that were really trying to make an easy buck off of the community were the first ones to leave. In that way, there is a little bit more of a purity with the companies that have stuck around.
As millions of new graduates enter the job market this spring and summer, many may encounter a potentially frustrating paradox: They need experience to get hired, but they need a job or internship to gain that experience.This paradox is deepening in todays labor market. At Deloitte, we recently released a Global Human Capital Trends report that found that 66% of hiring managers say most recent hires are not fully prepared for their roles, most often due to a lack of experience. Meanwhile, research has shown that a majority of employers have increased experience requirements over the past three years, and many entry-level roles today often require two to five years of prior experience.This can present a virtually impossible situation for young talent. Foot-hold jobs, especially those traditional entry-level roles where workers could grow into an organization, are becoming increasingly hard to find. If organizations want to build sustainable talent pipelines and develop tomorrows leaders, they should rethink what it means to be ready for work and how they help people get there.
The Disappearing Entry-Level Job
For years, work has been trending towards greater complexity and specialization. It demands judgment, creativity, and adaptabilityenduring human capabilities that are hard to acquire without hands-on experience. AI and automation amplify the issue, consuming many of the routine, repeatable tasks that once formed the core of entry-level roles.Simultaneously, some organizations are flattening their structures to increase agility. But this can have unintended consequences, as they may potentially risk eliminating stepping-stone roles and informal mentorship channels that can help early-career workers grow.This erosion of early-career development doesnt just affect individuals. It could threaten future leadership pipelines and innovation capacity. Thats why organizations need to take action now to close the growing experience gap among tomorrows business leaders.
Experience Readiness
We need to challenge the assumption that experience or degrees automatically equate to job readiness. They often dont. Human capabilities like empathy, curiosity, and problem-solving are more predictive of success than a bullet point on a résumé. In the AI age, human capabilities are tested just as much as hard skills. Nurturing these capabilities is incredibly important for creating leaders with the resilience and problem-solving skills for any challenge.
In 2025, modern workforce development modelslike what we have at Deloitteemphasize three factors: technical skills (such as coding or accounting), human capabilities (such as critical thinking and emotional intelligence), and potential (including adjacent skills or latent abilities that can be nurtured). Yet, hiring systems often filter out high-potential candidates who dont meet what can sometimes be arbitrary experience thresholds. That means career changers, first-generation graduates, or self-taught professionals often struggle to get noticed.
Strategies to Close the Experience Gap
Fixing the experience gap requires systemic change, from hiring criteria to day-to-day development.1. Adopt Skills-First Hiring and Whole-Person Models: Move beyond degree and tenure filters. Focus on demonstrated skills, motivation, and learning agility. This approach opens doors to candidates who may not follow traditional paths but are ready to grow.2. Invest in Internships and Modern Apprenticeships: Paid internships and apprenticeships offer the context-rich experience grads need to develop. Research from Burning Glass Institute and Strada Education Foundation shows these programs not only reduce underemployment but also improve long-term retention.Theres an unmet demand for these programs, too, as Deloittes Workplace Skills Survey revealed that 57% of employees want more on-the-job observation and shadowing opportunities. Moreover, 61% of workers value mentorship programs as an effective way to build workplace relationships, emphasizing the importance of fostering connections alongside structured development initiatives.
3. Use AI to Accelerate, Not Replace, Early Career Development: AI can simulate on-the-job experience in safe, low-risk environments. Digital playgrounds allow early-career employees to test their decision-making and receive feedback.
AI tools can:
Prompt reflection with critical questions
Synthesize knowledge from experienced colleagues
Help users practice judgment via realistic scenarios, including answering client questions during mock presentations
When used intentionally, AI becomes an acceleratornot a displacerof new talent development.4. Create Micro-Opportunities for Experiential Learning: Organizations should make it easier for employees to gain experience through short-term projects. Talent marketplaces, internal gig platforms, and simulations allow early-career employees to try new challenges and build confidence incrementally.5. Empower Managers to Develop Talent: Managers still control hiring filters, but theyre often overwhelmed. Deloittes 2025 Human Capital Trends Report shows managers spend just 13% of their time on tasks like hiring and onboarding. And 36% say they arent well prepared to manage people.That has to change. Managers need training and bandwidth to mentor early-career employees. With around 40% of their time dedicated to administrative work or problem-solving, most managers simply lack the time to be the mentors most junior staff need. Formal mentorship, real-time feedback, and inclusive leadership practices help new hires grow and turn potential into performance.
From Experience Gaps to Opportunity Gateways
The potential risks of inaction are clear: persistent underemployment, shrinking leadership pipelines, and a projected global shortfall of 85 million skilled workers by 2030. These arent future concerns; theyre already weakening competitiveness today.Gen Z, however, is ready. Deloittes 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey shows nearly a third plan to leave their employers within two years, not from disloyalty, but in pursuit of growth, stability, and purpose. Theyre reskilling on their own and eager to contribute.
Its time to redefine readinessnot as tenure or credentialsbut as the potentialand agility that comes from well-honed human capabilities. Its time to treat AI and access to apprenticeships as launchpads for early career professionals, not barriers to their ability to gain the experience they need. And its time to equip managers to be talent builders, not just task owners.The class of 2025 doesnt lack talent, but they do often lack access. Its time for organizations to stop asking Wheres the experience? and start creating it.
After months of rigorous searching, youve found your ideal executive candidate. They tick every box on paper and seem perfect in interviews. But then reality hits: Your Cinderella candidate isnt prepared for the real-world challenges of the role. Now what?
A popular study highlights just how commonand costlythis scenario is. A 2015 research report from Corporate Executive Board found that 50% to 70% of leadership hires fail within 18 months. And that can cost the company one-half to twice the hires annual salary, according to a 2019 Gallup report. Given the high levels of remuneration, the financial impact can be even more severe at the executive level.
As someone who has navigated countless executive searches, Ive seen how easy it is to fall into the trap of searching for a Cinderella candidatesomeone who appears to match a meticulously defined set of qualifications perfectly. And even if the ideal candidate does exist, they may not be interested in your opportunity or ready for a career move. Compounding these challenges, you have noncompete agreements that further shrink the available talent pool.
Setting the ideal candidate bar high can help, but an overly rigid vision often results in a long, drawn-out search with diminishing returns. When we accept that perfection on paper rarely translates into perfection in practice, we create opportunities to find strong candidates who bring real, tangible strengths to the table, even if they dont check every box.
To find the right hire and mitigate leadership turnover, we must rethink how we define, evaluate, and select leadership candidates. The following insights will help broaden your approach:
1. The right leader is a catalyst, not a title
Rather than locking into overly specific C-suite qualifications, consider the characteristics of transformational leaders that your team genuinely needs. While technical skills matter, you should emphasize broader competencies like adaptability, decision-making in ambiguity, and the ability to motivate diverse teams. These qualities often predict long-term success better than niche expertise. Consider leaders with transferable skills. They can bring fresh insights and a broader understanding of how to drive success in evolving environments.
To implement this shift in your recruitment strategy, broaden your search criteria. Identify three competencies that you need to navigate the companys evolving needs, and build the ideal candidate profile around them. Instead of seeking candidates with narrow expertise, look for ones who have thrived in roles requiring agility, like leading R&D initiatives or driving organizational change amid disruption. This approach allows you to attract versatile leaders who are ready to innovate and guide your organization through periods of uncertainty and change.
2. Culture isnt one size fits all
To achieve a balance in hiring for cultural fit versus hiring for skills, employ structured assessments that translate fit into measurable attributes. Tools like DISC profiles or situational interviews provide concrete data on qualities such as empathy, resilience, and adaptability, allowing hiring teams to evaluate whether candidates align with company culture in objective terms. This avoids the common pitfalls of hiring based on intuition alone and helps avoid overreliance on subjective notions of the perfect candidate.
For senior leadership roles like COOs, scenario-based interviews should focus on how candidates have successfully navigated complex challenges related to people, processes, and change management. Ask how theyve implemented large-scale organizational changes or optimized operations to drive efficiency. These structured assessments reveal a candidates approach to strategic problem-solving and their leadership style. In turn, this ensures they can align with the companys vision and foster a high-performing culture.
3. Cross-functional input is key
When creating an ideal candidate profile for a role that requires strong cross-departmental collaboration, include perspectives from various departments in the hiring process, such as finance, HR, operations, and product development. By aligning on core characteristics of leaders who inspire and unify, hiring managers gain a comprehensive view of each candidates potential impact across teams.
For instance, used vehicle retailer CarMax involves leaders from product management, engineering, and customer experience to evaluate candidates for roles within its technology and innovation teams. Each team member provides insights into collaborative skills that they need for meeting customer needs and delivering fast solutions across functions. Utilizing these teams in the hiring process helps ensure that selected leaders can build relationships, bridge departmental divides, and facilitate cohesive, organization-wide success.
4. The perfect candidate is a myth
The perfect candidate is a myth that often leads hiring managers to overlook leaders with qualities like resilience and learning agility. In executive hiring, finding the right cultural fit often outweighs industry expertise alone. Sure, technical knowledge is essential, and you can use that for a candidate in the room. But ultimately, you should make sure that the candidate aligns with the companys values, vision, and culture.
Leaders who seamlessly align with the companys culture tend to engage teams more effectively, navigate challenges agilely, and drive change in ways that feel authentic to the organization.
A high-performing C-suite hinges less on perfect matches than on leaders who can innovate within an evolving landscape. Hiring for sustainable success requires shifting from rigid, idealized profiles to assessing candidates for resilience, adaptability, and alignment with the core values of the organization.
The last two years have been one of the toughest job markets Ive seen in decades. This isnt like 2020 or 2021, where after the initial phase of the pandemic receded, jobs quickly reappeared. This one has been slow and unrelentingmarket volatility causing uncertainty, and digital transformation of workplaces, and AI taking over jobs faster than you can read the headlines. These days, it feels like youre sending your resume into the abyss. Sound familiar?
I see it every day as a recruiter and career coach: talented job-seekers submitting application after application into what feels like a black hole. Weeks turn into months. The silence is deafening. Each passing day without a response chips away at your confidence, your bank account, and your sense of professional identity.
Luckily, through my work, Ive also developed tried-and-true strategies for standing out no matter the market conditions. Here are three powerful steps to reinvigorate your job search.
1. Reclaim Your Value
Whether youve just gotten laid off or have already been job searching for months, your self-esteem probably isnt the strongest. You may be feeling bitter, angry, and doubtful of your professional value. Being in that kind of mindset while trying to find a job wont allow you to show up as your best self.
For example, I recently worked with a very successful leader who had steered a company over the last several years with enormous success, each year hitting higher and higher revenue targets and winning some of the most sought-after projects in the industry. As the economy shifted, those revenues took a hitand he was let go because of a spreadsheet decision. He was blindsided and stepped into his job search doubting himself.
When working with job seekers who are struggling, we always start with a simple but powerful exercise: documenting significant achievements from their career. Not just responsibilitiesactual metrics and results, problems solved, value delivered.
I’ll ask people to think about things they’ve done that they’re really proud of. I make them dig deep to detail what they do really well, what gets them fired up, and ask them how their colleagues and clients would describe working with them. As they reconnect with their expertise, things they havent thought of for a while, I see their faces light up and confidence starting to return. You can do this with a career coach, your partner, a best friend, even a colleague who knows you welljust ask them to take notes about what youre telling them to read back to you at the end.
Working through these questions with my executive client helped remind him of the successes he was responsible for and the resilience he showed in a tough market. Those reminders allowed him to work through his disappointment, prepare for how he’d talk about the challenges when asked, and enter his job search with renewed confidence in what he had to offer.
This isnt just about feeling better; its about how you show up. When you remember your professional value, you communicate with clarity and conviction. Your entire energy changes, and people take notice.
2. Stop Trying to Be Everything to Everyone
When desperation sets in, the instinct is to cast a bigger net. The thinking is, by applying to more jobs, youll have better odds of landing something. This approach feels logical, but produces the opposite of what you hope for. Sure, youll be busy applying to things, but because youre not the expert, you likely wont get responses, so all that busy work will lead to frustration and burnout.
I recently worked with a client who was going on two years of being out of work. The longer his job search went on, the more he began applying to a broader set of roles, thinking it would increase his chances of landing something.
Heres the counterintuitive truth: The more you narrow your focus and lean into your specific expertise, the more responses youll receive. When I tell people this, their initial response is anxiety; they dont want to limit their options. But when you stop trying to appeal to everyone and boldly claim your niche, everything changes. Applications that once disappeared suddenly generate responses. Interviews that went nowhere convert to eager follow-ups. When youre interviewing for a role where you are the expert, thats the interview youre going to ace.
When I work with clients to understand how theyre speaking about themselves, we dig deep into what truly distinguishes them. We return to some of those questions from above that uncover their unique approach and what motivates and energizes them.
Then we look at the roles theyre applying to and narrow their focus to roles and companies where their specific and unique expertise is sought after. We look at their job application materials and see if theyre making statements that many others could equally say and ensure that we get quite specific. When I read their new narrative back to them, all of it in their own words, many remark that they got chillstheyre finally hearing their professional value articulated in a way that feels authentically powerful and totally unique.
When I reminded my client of his incredibly niche expertiseskills that very few people possessand focused all his job-seeking efforts on companies who could benefit from him, things immediately began to shift. Within one day, he landed an interview. Two days later, he was meeting the leadership team. Companies want to hire the expert. Show them that its you.
3. Show That You’re The Solution Theyre Looking For
The interview is your last chance to not just show why youre great, but show why youre exactly the solution an employer has been looking for. Ive seen so many clients underperform in interviews because theyre not giving themselves enough credit. But a few simple shifts can transform that:
Think offense, not defense. The minute you start justifying why youre right for the role, youve already lost it. Interviewers can feel defensiveness. Own the narrative before that happens by confidently articulating how your experience directly addresses the role’s most critical requirements before doubts can surface.
Use high-impact storytelling. Give specific examples demonstrating how your experience solves exactly what they need. When you paint these pictures vividly, you allow the interviewer to truly see how effective you will be on day-one. Rehearse your stories before your interview so they are memorable.
Embrace transparent confidence. Nothing undermines trust faster than pretending to know everything. When you confidently acknowledge what you know and dont know, you establish genuine credibility. If they really like you and you satisfy most requirements, chances are they can evolve the role around you and fill in the gaps.
Take your time. Less is often more. Really listen to what they are asking you, pause, and take a moment to reflect so you can give a considered response. If it’s a really tough question, you can even tell the interviewer you’d like a moment to think through your response. It buys you a few seconds to really compose a well-thought out answer and it never fails to impress an interviewer. Thy’ll remember the great answers and they often remark how much they enjoyed how reflective you were in wanting to answer it well.
Simple Job Application Changes, Profound Results
The strategies Ive shared may seem straightforward, or even obvious. But when implemented with consistency and conviction, they transform job searches from no traction to multiple interviews and competing job offers.
These strategies work not because theyre complicated, but because they align with a fundamental truth: Employers arent looking for generic candidates; theyre looking for the expert to solve their problem, now. When you reconnect with your expertise, focus your efforts, and communicate your value with clarity and confidence, you become that solution.
You transform from just another resume in the pile to exactly what theyve been searching for.
You couldnt have missed the news: Jony Ive and Sam Altman have teamed up, after OpenAI acquired Ives company io for $6.5 billion. The plan? For Ive, and a sizable team of ex-employees from Apple, its to create a series of hardware products for OpenAI.
The news alone dropped shares of Apple by 1.8% as two of the most celebrated software and hardware development teams in the modern era have combined to realize the potential of artificial intelligence and change the way we live. Hopefully for the better.
The first io product, according to The Wall Street Journal, arrives in 2026. It will be a small object capable of being fully aware of a users surroundings and life. I imagine an environmental (audio, video, etc.) monitor the size of a macaron or iPod shuffle that Ive says accompanies a smartphone and laptop as a third devicewhich you can carry on your person or put onto the table.
Despite the immensity of the partnership, its easy to be skeptical. After all, AI hardware has flopped thus far, due to a lack of vision and a lack of execution. And as wondrous as ChatGPT is, it still hallucinates and requires vast amounts of energy to train and operate. But within these barely explored large language models, theres still hidden potential that designers have yet to tap.
As Ive told me back in 2023, there have been only three significant modalities in the history of computing. After the original command line, we got the graphical user interface (the desktop, folders, and mouse of Xerox, Mac OS, and Windows), then voice (Alexa, Siri), and, finally, with the iPhone, multitouch (not just the ability to tap a screen, but to gesture and receive haptic feedback). When I brought up some other examples, Ive quickly nodded but dismissed them, acknowledging these as tributaries of experimentation. Then he said that to him the promise, and excitement, of building new AI hardware was that it might introduce a new breakthrough modality to interacting with a machine. A fourth modality.
Ives fourth modality, as I gleaned, was about translating AI intuition into human sensation. And its the exact sort of technology we need to introduce ubiquitous computing, also called quiet computing and ambient computing. These are terms coined by the late UX researcher Mark Weiser, who in the 1990s began dreaming of a world that broke us free from our desktop computers to usher in devices that were one with our environment. Weiser did much of this work at Xerox PARC, the same R&D lab that developed the mouse and GUI technology that Steve Jobs would eventually adopt for the Macintosh. (I would also be remiss to ignore that ubiquitous computing is the foundation of the sci-fi film Her, one of Altmans self-stated goalposts.)
Ive written about the premise and promise of ubiquitous computing at length, having been privileged enough to have spoken with several of Weisers peers. But one idea has stuck with me the most from Weisers theories. He often compared the vision of quiet computing to a forest. In a forest, youre surrounded by informationplants, animals, and weather are all signaling you at once. And yet, despite your senses taking in all this data, youre never overwhelmed. You never find yourself distracted, or unhappy. (Perhaps its disconcerting when the storm clouds roll in, but Id still take the sound of low rolling thunder over a Microsoft Teams notification any day.)
Ive never described what that fourth approach to interface looked likehe chooses his descriptors carefully and would not pigeonhole a burgeoning idea with limiting words. But for a man who planted 9,000 native trees when designing Apple Park and has expressed his own responsibility for the negative impacts of the smartphone, its hard to imagine he feels all that differently from Weiser. And that all comes to mind when analyzing the very little we know about the first io product.
This first machine from io seems to be the input device needed for ubiquitous computing. I imagine the macaron will likely leverage notifications on your phone and audio in your ear to communicate with you. Down the line the partnership has teased a family of products, meaning, who knows what other UX possibilities io could dream up.
[Images: Jason marz/Getty Images, Yevhen Borysov/iStock/Getty Images Plus]
While we can barely say anything more specific, there does seem to be a fork in the road here philosophically. Whereas it appears that Google, Apple, Meta, and Snap are all betting on smart glasses to introduce the idea of ubiquitous computingsensors and pixels that sit in your eyes all the timeat least for launch, io is doing the opposite. All of the leaked details so far point toward io developing the quietest, most discreet computing device weve ever had. Im thinking of it as something like the silent conductor to the orchestra of the products we already own before, perhaps, one day doing more.
Drafting off the smartphone
The inconvenient truth for any innovator planning to disrupt consumer hardware is that theres a lot more competition than there used to be when the Walkman, iPod, or Razr came around. There are 7.21 billion smartphones in the world todaynearly one per person, adding up to a $434 billion hardware industry in 2025, according to IDC. (Do note: Almost all of them, regardless of brand, are stil designed along the lines of Ive and his teams original vision.)
These supercomputing screens arent simply ubiquitous; they are essential. From 4K video social media posts that go global in an instant, to turn-by-turn GPS directions navigating us through our lives, to the infrastructure of hailing an Uber or Lyft, to the mindlessness of checking out at stores, to the frictionless experience of riding public transit, to the necessary remote for controlling appliances, to, when all else fails, having the option to makes calls via satellites, we deeply depend on these screens in our pockets. There is no future in which the smartphone suddenly goes extinct, not because its perfect for society but because its so ingrained in the many disparate parts of our living infrastructure. A world suddenly without working smartphones would plunge us into some level of chaos.
The first error of the Humane Ai Pinthe hyped AI gadget by Apple alum Imran Chaudhri, backed by Altmanwas when it claimed it could replace your phone by, more or less, simply removing the screen and sticking it on your shirt. (The second error was when it just didnt work.)
The first io device seems to acknowledge the phones inertia. Instead of presenting itself as a smartphone-killer like the Ai Pin or as a fabled second screen like the Apple Watch, its been positioned as a third, er, um . . . thing next to your phone and laptop. Yeah, thats confusing, and perhaps positions the io product as unessential. But it also appears to be a needed strategy: Rather than topple these screened devices, it will attempt to draft off them.
[Images: iStock/Getty Images Plus, Yevhen Borysov/iStock/Getty Images Plus]
On paper, that is such a vague idea that its either dull or exhilarating, depending on your disposition. Personally, its so darn hard to realize that I wouldnt give it much attention if it weren’t for the team building it. Ive founded io with some of the greatest engineering and design talents out of Apple. He also founded his firm LoveFrom with much of his core design team from Apple. These two firms will be tag teaming with OpenAI, the most singular force in kicking off the current AI era.
By comparison, as I write this, a Limitless pendant sits on my desk, fully charged, fully unused. Its an AI system that will listen to your life to transcribe everything. Designed by Ammunition, the same lauded design firm behind Beats headphones, its slick, small, and carefully realized. It clamps right onto any fabric with a magnet. But after a week with it, I still dont know when or where I should wear it. With my family? Feels weird. At work? I work remotely, so I have Zoom, Teams, Slack, and every other platform already recording me. (And at any job, theres sensitive stuff you dont want recorded.) So thats out. What does that leave? Hanging with friends? The one time in my life as a journalist thats thoroughly off the record, no thank you.
How deep is too deep into your life?
My concerns for this io device are many, though privacy is top of mind. I can imagine some interesting UX around opting in to being recorded, but will OpenAI go that direction or just brute force itself into our lives? I cant help but remember that despite Apples privacy-first messaging, the iPhone went from a wondrous pocket computer to the ultimate personal advertising trackera decision made at the level of its chipset and supportive APIs.
However, my concerns around privacy are perhaps more existential than my personal conversations being monetized. I wonder, if theres always this AI around, will we be allowed to be private in our own thoughts anymore? Will we be afforded the privacy to draw our own conclusions?
Before these artificial entities, our lives have largely been colored by the people around us. Our family, spouses, friends, and coworkers. A chance encounter with a stranger can make a day or spoil it. Its so often someones take on events that shapes our ownlike leaving a movie theater, I almost always agree with the take of my companion.
Lets assume we all acquiesce to this new wave of technology where an AI companion sits alongside us all the time. Suddenly, every experience we have is being processed by a third party. Its something that will be analyzing and summarizing our actions and interactions. It will shape what we do next, a vast acceleration of how algorithms shape our experience across social media today.
Even if this io product doesnt live in our eyes, the extreme subtleties with which it chronicles our lives means it may live in our hearts. If that sounds cheesy, fair! Imagine if ChatGPT summarizes your life with all of the nuance of Apples AI of todayMark, confused by menu, ordered cowboy burger. Nobody will use the thing. A system like this inherently has to go deeper to prove its utility, but in doing so it has to balance the burden of that responsibility.
A subjective computer
Technologists discussing AI today often draw a line between a deterministic and probabilistic interface. A deterministic interface is what weve had for the past 50 years. Buttons always lead you through the same preplanned routes to play a song or pull up an email. Every app is essentially a permutation of a calculator that always leads to a perfect end point. With probabilistic AI, however, every question is more like a wheelspin of roulette. ChatGPT spins up its responses like an infinite Rubiks Cube spinning together every piece of media ever recorded. No one knows exactly what youll get, so the argument has been that probabilistic interfaces have to be built to accommodate for the unknown.
If the Star Trek computer, with its clear answers like Alexa or Siri, was a deterministic computer, then the Star Trek holodeck, with its ever-shifting invented characters and worlds, is a probabilistic one.
But I want to challenge that framing as inhuman, and irrelevant for our discussion of intimate, ambient computing. Instead of deterministic versus probabilistic, I think AI is shifing us from objective to subjective. When a Fitbit counts your steps and calories burned, thats an objective interface. When you ask ChatGPT to gauge the tone of a conversation, or whether you should eat better, thats a subjective interface. It offers perspective, bias, and, to some extent, personality. Its not just serving facts; its offering interpretation.
The AI companion from io needs to be the first subjective interface. And that makes it as complicated and risky as any other relationship we have.
Years ago when big data was all the rage, I asked the question, Should Google tell you if you have cancer? The idea being that it could track search patterns of someone who was sick over time and predict where they would go next. So shouldnt it intervene when it spots you searching for a known pattern of disease?
The io device, presumably recording and analyzing your whole life, would have a similar remit, but with all sorts of additional questions. If it followed along in a conversation, and you couldnt think of the name of that book you read . . . should it whisper that name into your ear? If it caught you misremembering, or even lying, should it call you out? Privately or publicly?
When Microsoft built Cortana, it interviewed real executive assistants largely to get the systems voice right, to know what it might say or not say, and how it could respond to certain questions. That level of sophistication was fine for scheduling a meeting or asking about the weatherconversational calculatorsbut we are so far beyond that now. Consider that an AI listening in or filming a room can do more than remember where you put your keys. Research is proving that it can spot finite relationships that humans cant even identify. Archetype AI, for instance, has demonstrated that with nothing more than an A/V feed, AI can predict everything from the swing of a pendulum to whether there might be a workplace accident. An io device will be able to hear so much more than what you say.
Its why, as nonsensical as this unknown product might seem to critics (Im supposed to buy this surveillance thingy?!?), I cant question the potential utility. Executed well (thats a big caveat!), it is potentially the first step in a realized vision of ubiquitous computing, a little buddy in your pocket that experiences life with you so that you dont need to explain (or input) whats going on. And as wild as the alternative other companies are pursuing areto see holograms floating in front of your facethe vision for a quieter era of computing is about as old as computing itself.
Its as if we realized, from the earliest days, that our natural world was already a utopia. Now, it will take incredible creativity and restraint from OpenAI, io, and LoveFrom to enhance whats remaining of this world, rather than seize its last bits.
Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) are far more interested in buying homes today than they were just six months ago. That makes the group the only generation whose interest in homeownership has increased since September 2024. However, these same people are tending to put off the investment due to sky-high mortgage rates.
The new data comes from an online survey of 2,230 adults conducted by Realtor.com. Six months ago, 15% of millennials said they were interested in buying a home. Now 23% are interested, according to the latest survey.
Still, that doesn’t mean more 29- to 44-year-olds are actually buying homes.
In a press release, Laura Eddy, vice president of research and insights at Realtor.com, noted how the desire to buy a home is being sidelined by soaring mortgage rates. Even though we found a change in millennial home-buying intent, the influence of mortgage rates cannot be overstated, with the vast majority of Americans, including millennials, prioritizing lower rates before committing to a purchase.”
Eddy added: “The lock-in effect is still very much in effect “
The survey also found that most Americans don’t have plans to buy a home in the immediate future. Some 69% said they don’t intend to go through with a home purchase over the next six months. And one-third of respondents said they have pushed back plans due to those high mortgage rates. But millennials and Gen Zers have delayed their plans at disproportionate rates, with more than half saying they’ve had to put off their plans to buy a home.
Two-thirds of those surveyed by Realtor.com said mortgage rates have great influence over whether or not they will buy a home. Only 2% said they would even consider a home purchase with mortgage rates exceeding 6%; the threshold appears to be somewhere below 5% for 63% of respondents. (Meanwhile, the national average interest rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage is currently 6.95%, according to Bankrate.)
Across much of our research we see a trend where potential homebuyers feel stuck when it comes to buying a home due to their current mortgage rate, Hannah Jones, senior research analyst at Realtor.com, said in the release.Jones continued, Mortgage rates on top of an insufficient supply of budget-friendly homes complicates the affordability picture for many homeowners, especially first-time homebuyers who do not have equity from their existing home to help offset mortgage rates.” Jones added that the experts at Realtor.com believe potential homebuyers are likely to get tired of waiting for change, and out of necessity may go forward with purchases even if they aren’t totally satisfied with the rates.
According to recent median home price listings, how much Americans need to earn to afford a home is growing exponentially. As of April 2024, they needed to earn $47,000 more per year to afford a home than they would have just six months prior.
eOlipop’s surging popularity has taken the $60 billion soda industry by storm. As Gen Z and millennials ditch sugary sodas, Olipop is leading the pre-biotic beverage trend, sparking the likes of Coca Cola and PepsiCo to enter the fray. Olipop co-founder, CEO and formulator, Ben Goodwin, shares how the brand is navigating the turbulence of rapid growth amid rising competition, and whether healthy soda is actually healthy or just a TikTok-fueled fad.This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
So for folks who are less familiar, Olipop’s known as a functional soda. What does that mean? What is a prebiotic soda versus a probiotic soda? Give us the landscape.
Soda itself has a really, really interesting, very deep history. It goes back a couple hundred years. There’s Middle East roots, there’s European roots.
So in the U.S., obviously full-sugar soda in a myriad of forms existed for many, many decades, especially starting in the late 1800s. It actually wasn’t until 1943 that the federal government stepped in and told Coke and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper that they could no longer call soda “healthy.” That’s how long it was they were saying that it was healthy, even though, by that time, it was loaded with caffeine and sugar. And then in the ’60s and ’70s, and then really peaking in the ’80s, you had diet soda come in, and that was this awareness that, “Hey, all the sugar’s not great for you. Let’s go with these kind of artificial sweeteners.” And it’s been that two-horse race for a really long time.
Ben Goodwin [Photo: Olipop]
Functional soda, which I am fortunate enough to effectively have been the one that created the category and I’ve been working on it since about 2010, is basically this idea that soda can actually be health-contributing. I was looking at the evolution of the science around digestive and microbiome health and decided that this kind of nutritional intervention was, I thought, actually a superior strategy. The base of our nutritional pillars are fiber, prebiotics, and nutritional diversity.
So sometimes when I hear people say, “The prebiotic soda category,” I’m like, “Well, that’s true, but that’s just part of the story,” because a lot of the other competitors that have come into the space are just looking to capitalize for the most part on a trend, but it only is actually technically a part of what we offer.
The health benefits, not everyone’s on board about them. There have been some class-action lawsuits, not about your claims, but about claims from others. Is Olipop actually healthy for me, or is it just better for me than traditional soda?
I’m actually so grateful that you asked that question. I don’t want to wade into trash-talking territory here, but I do think a lot of the other entrants, they’ve either got a really small amount of total fiber or they’re putting some of that fiber in and it’s not even stable in their product. You really want a blend of different high-quality prebiotics. It’s how you get to the best outcome. That’s at least my formulation philosophy.
Olipop is actually healthy. We have done multiple in vitro clinical trials now at Purdue. We’ve a partnership with their stability lab, we’ve a partnership with their complex carbohydrates laboratory, and we’ve looked at microbiome and digestive health outputs. We saw incredible bifidogenesis. We saw the fermentation of multiple forms of short-chain fatty acids. And then we just finished our first pilot human clinical trial, and we were looking at blood sugar stability and blood sugar response. And basically, of the folks that we studied, it kept their blood sugar stable for a full three hours.
[Photo: Rob Kim/Getty Images for NYCWFF]
So if you start stabilizing people’s blood sugar response, you start benefiting their digestive health microbiome outputs. I don’t know exactly what level of data most people need to classify something as healthy, but I’d say that certainly meets my criteria. My goal is to say, “Health and wellness should be actually contributing to your health and wellness,” and you should have some empirical data to validate that. If you’re going to ask consumers to spend a premium, you want to know that you’re actually giving them real outcomes for what they’re spending.
You mentioned how fast your business has been growing, and it’s one of the fastest-growing U.S. beverage brands ever. You recently raised funds that, I don’t know, around a $2 billion valuation, but you do have this intense competition, right?
Poppi, which is known for these Super Bowl ads, that was recently acquired by PepsiCo for just under $2 billion. Coca-Cola’s launched Simply Pop. How much does that change the game when the big players step in?
I really want to see this category live up to its full potential. You’ve got soda, which is a $60 billion, 98% household penetration market in the United States. If we can do good in that category and use that as a kind of a Trojan horse to drive healthy outcomes for people, it’s really powerful.
In terms of big players entering the space, to be honest with you, I think it’s fantastic. Some of the largest brands and the largest players in the soda and beverage space in the world getting into your category goes a long way to massively validate what you’re doing. And so hats off to Poppi. I know that getting out, selling their business was really important to them. Coke as well getting involved. It’s like, to be honest with you, it’s a bit of an honor.
One of your investors is Indra Nooyi, the former PepsiCo CEO. I imagine that PepsiCo may have approached you at the same time as they did Poppi. I don’t know. Do you consider tying up with a bigger place?
Look, I mean, I can’t really speak to that with a lot of detail. I don’t want to be overly coy in terms of Olipop does need to create a liquidity event, right? The reality is we’ve taken on investor capital, you just pointed to that, that was our final round into the business. We’re very, very fully profitable and really liquid, pun intended, but we have raised investor capital, which means you need to generate a liquidity event. There’s multiple ways that you can go through M&A, there’s obviously IPO going public, and so that is where right nowwe’re just preserving optionality.
I mentioned Poppi’s Super Bowl ad earlier. They spent, I don’t know, $16 million on a one-minute spot.
Oh, more than that, yeah.
You didn’t make that investment, and, instead, you teased them for their spending on social media, which they then called online bullying. Is that kind of back-and-forth with them, is that strategic? Is that what customers want from brands? You’re laughing.
Yeah, I have no idea. The online bullying thing is really good. It’s really good.
First of all, there’s a difference between the stuff that I personally authorize, and sometimes the stuff that the social media team decides that they want to get up to. And that was a moment where, to be honest with you, there was a little bit of a gap. I was actually at a friend’s wedding in Puerto Rico. I was not the one hitting send on the whatever platform it is that we were commenting on.
But at the same time, I understand where the consumers were coming from, which is we do live in a time with an enormous amount of income inequality. Whatever it was about how Poppi showed up, that hit a nerve for a lot of people. They made their own voices heard. I don’t need to add to that conversation. Our team did say a couple things, but then they stopped, and that’s good because they probably would’ve been fired if they hadn’t, and we just went on with their lives.
But yeah, I think that we don’t spend the same amount of money on marketing that Poppi does. I’m okay with that because a lot of what has driven our business has been organic demand and organic word-of-mouth. That is real, sustainable growth that we’re experiencing, and I’m really proud of that. And as long as you can continue to grow the business like that, you should. I think that we will probably have increase in spend in marketing as we go, but it’s okay for us as brands to have different strategies in terms of how we approach growth.
For generations of Americans, the soundtrack to spring weekends has been a rise in birdsong and the loud, constant virrrrrr of neighbors cutting their growing grass. But the gas lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and weed eaters that have been used for more than a century to keep lawns manicured aren’t only noisyin the past few years, researchers have discovered that they also pose an outsize risk to the environment and to human health.
In response, cities across the U.S. are experimenting with incentive programs to encourage residents to opt for more environmentally friendly electric lawn equipment. The shape these programs take isn’t one size fits all: From bans to rebates to tax credits offered at a variety of price points, each program has made its own calculations about what the location can afford and what will best attract residents. But across the board, these relatively new programs are producing promising results.
I think the most important thing is that its really exciting to see that so many cities and counties and states and utilities and communities across our country are taking action to tackle the really polluting, really loud, gas-powered lawn equipment, says Kirsten Schatz, clean air advocate for Colorado Public Interest Research Group (CoPIRG). Its a real mix of approaches with, I think, some mixed results. But altogether, things are moving in the right direction.
Anything that runs on gasthink cars, planes, stoves, and water heatersreleases greenhouse gases that contribute to the warming of the planet. An important step in curbing emissions is to transition these machines to electric whenever and wherever possible. You might think that saving up to tackle the biggest items would make the biggest impact on reducing your carbon footprint. But physical size doesn’t always correlate to impact. Gas-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers may be smaller than cars and used less frequently, but they produce a shocking amount of pollution because their engines are less efficient than those used in more technologically advanced products.
In 2023, Environment America Research & Policy Center published a report based on 2020 data from the Environmental Protection Agency that found gas-powered lawn equipment produced the same amount of fine particulate pollution in a year as 234 million cars and more carbon dioxide than the entire city of Los Angeles. In addition to polluting the environment, the toxic by-products of running gas equipment have been linked to negative health impacts ranging from cancer and reproductive issues to mental health problems.
There are many benefits to going electric: In addition to being better for the environment and human health, battery-powered equipment has the potential to save money and is quieter. But like all electrification efforts, switching requires what may at first seem like a hefty investment in new equipmentwhich is where incentives and rebates come in.
As with many environmental issues, California was a leader in addressing the problem, choosing both a carrot and a stick approach. In October 2021, the governor signed into law a ban on new gas-powered equipment that took effect in January 2024. In the lead-up to the ban, the state offered generous incentives covering more than 50% of the cost of new equipment and batteries. In just two years, Assemblymember Marc Berman estimated that 90% of the $30 million allotted to these rebates had already been paid out.
While several other communities have also adopted bans, including Washington D.C.; Palm Beach, Florida; and Burlington, Vermont, a larger number of programs across the country have taken an incentive-only approach. These incentives can help cost-conscious residents make the leap.
We know that electric lawn equipment is increasingly popular, particularly in recent years as the prices have come down, the performance has improved, and its much more widely available, says Luke Metzger, executive director of the nonprofit Environment Texas. We know that certainly over several years, given that electricity is cheaper generally than gas, [switching] more than pays for itself. But still theres that up-front cost . . . and so those incentives can make a big difference.
Efforts in Texas have been a bit of a roller coaster. In 2022, Dallas was considering banning gas-powered lawn equipment. But the next year, the Republican-led state government ruled that bans were illegal. The city is now working on launching an incentive program. In the meantime, roughly 200 miles south, Austins publicly owned utility provider, Austin Energy, has operated a seasonal rebate program since 2020. At participating retailers, customers can get a $15 discount on weed trimmers and leaf blowers and a $25 discount on lawn mowers taken off the price of purchase during certain times of the year.
In the past six months, Austin Energy has offered rebates on 2,053 lawnmowers, 1,008 weed trimmers, and 578 leaf blowers. Im excited to see people participating, says Donylle Green Seals, environmental program coordinator at Austin Energy. Participation is above the forecast and has been growing steadily since 2020. Not growing astronomically, but I would say by at least a few hundred per product.
In the past year and a half, Colorado has also been experimenting with various strategies. A statewide program went into effect on January 1, 2024, giving residents a 30% discount at participating retail locations. This is in addition to a variety of local and utility company-based rebates offered throughout the state. The Colorado Public Interest Network has tracked 200 initiatives across 26 states20 of them are in Colorado.
Schatz says the decision to implement a statewide program was all about improving air quality. While she doesnt have data yet as to the success of the program, in her role working with retailers to offer the discounts and educating customers about them, she says, The vibe is good. Anecdotally, it feels like its been a great success.
Not only has Colorado been encouraging private homeowners to make the electric leap, but it has also been tackling the problem of getting commercial landscapers to invest in a greener business model. This has been a harder segment to convert given the logistics. While a new electric battery can easily last for an entire session in the yard of an average private home, the costs and inconvenience of charging can rack up when businesses are using their equipment all day long.
Though businesses can take advantage of the state rebate programs, new regulations set to take effect this summerwill also impose bans on gas-powered equipment use on public property. This means any lawn care company with state or federal land as a customer will have to switch to electric to keep its clients.
This is also where efforts to educate and sway both private citizens and companies convergeas more homeowners learn about the effects of gas-powered equipment, consumer opinion begins to change. I would say about two-thirds of my customers reach out to me specifically because I am fully electric, Jordan Champalou, owner of Electric Lawn Care in the Denver suburb of Westminster, told Denver7.
Electric equipment is undeniably a win for the environment, for public health, and for peaceful neighbor relations. But on the financial side, it isnt quite as simple as a onetime investment that will pay off once and for all. Incentives can get new adopters in the door, and those investments will eventually save them additional money, once the cost of buying gas for their old equipment surpasses the cost of buying new equipment and powering it with electricity. (Consumer Reports published a tool that allows readers to see when and how their new electric-equipment will start saving them money over a five-year period.)
But there are still some kinks to work out. Electric batteries eventually wear out (current estimates are three to five years), and new batteries can be costly. Some users also claim that electric equipment isnt quite as powerful as gas, though not all agree and many tout the greater reliability of electric as a bonus.
While incentives and bans are helping customers make the switch, achieving widespread electrification of lawn equipment may come down to something even simpler: Equipment manufacturers and retailers control the products available for consumers to buy.
In June 2023, Home Depot announced a company goal that 85% of all its lawn equipment sales will be battery-powered by 2028. On a recent trip to my local Lowes in Austin, there were twice as many electric lawn mowers available as gas ones, and prices were close if not on par. Ultimately, if manufacturers and retailers make the pivot to electric, incentives and bans will no longer be necessarythough they could still encourage customers to retire their gas equipment earlier than they otherwise might have.
Austin Energy reevaluates its rebate programs every year, with the goal of making sure its offering the best options to raise customers awareness about energy efficiency and electrification savings opportunities. If electric equipment is all or most of what retailers are selling, and therefore most of what customers are buying, then Green says Austin Energy may decide to discontinue its lawn equipment rebates and shift its efforts to a new product category that needs the help more.
But while the choice still sits in customers hands, a growing number of incentive programs will give them the nudge they need to go electric. As Schatz of CoPIRG says, We know things are moving in the right direction, but we want to accelerate it, because it just doesnt make sense to tolerate this much harmful pollution and noise from cutting grass and blowing leaves around when we have better ways.
