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Did everyone get the Microsoft 365 rate-hike notice? The personal plan is going from $70 a year to $100 a year. According to the email, my financial commitment is getting me secure cloud storage, advanced security for your data and devices, and cutting-edge AI-powered features, among other goodies. But the real reason I subscribe? Microsoft Word. We’ve all used it and many of us rely on it. But many people even arent using all the bells and whistles that come with Word and the larger Microsoft 365 package. So as Microsoft hits us with a price hike to go along with all the other price hikes consumers have been facing in the past year, now might be the perfect time to explore some excellentand completely freealternatives. Google Docs [Photo: Google] You probably already have a Google account, which means you already have access to Google Docs. That’s likely the most frictionless switch from Word. And just because Google Docs is free and easy doesnt mean its a slouch. Its cloud-based, has excellent collaboration features, plus real-time editing, voice typing, auto-saving, and seamless integration with other Google services. If youre looking for collaboration, sharing documents with multiple people, and quick document creation that wont feel vastly different from Word, this is it. LibreOffice Writer [Photo: LibreOffice] If you prefer a desktop application, need advanced formatting options, and want a powerful, feature-filled Word replacement, check out LibreOffice Writer. Its part of the LibreOffice suite, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office, so if youre also looking to replace the desktop versions of Excel, PowerPoint, and the like, youre covered. Though LibreOffice Writer can feel a bit outdated compared to some modern options and theres an initial learning curve for those used to Word’s interface, this is a tried-and-true alternative for grizzled word-processing pros. WPS Office Writer [Photo: WPS] If youre looking for a Word-like experience without the price tag and don’t mind occasional ads, give WPS Office Writer a look. Its got a similar interface to Microsoft Word, good compatibility with Microsoft Word formats, and nice extras such as free templates, cloud saves, and mobile apps. And though it contains ads in the free version, theres an affordable $36 per year premium subscription that removes ads and throws in some extra features you may or may not use. Give the free version a fair shake first, though: The ads arent super intrusive and the feature list is plenty full for what you get.
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E-Commerce
Dr. Becky Kennedy, a New York City-based clinical psychologist who coaches parents through difficult moments with their kids, has created a booming business centered on the notion that kids are, essentially, good people. The idea sounds simple, but to Kennedy, it’s profoundthe key to unlocking healthy parent-child relationships. And that insight, which Kennedy has developed into the Good Inside method, has turned “Dr. Becky” from prominent psychologist into a celebrity-status parenting guru. [Image: Dr. Becky] Early in her career, Kennedy embraced what she calls a behavior-first, reward-and-punishment” approach to parenting. But she came to understand that the method, which emphasizes discipline and consequences, doesn’t help children develop the skills they need to handle complicated emotional situations. So, Kennedy came up with an entirely new framework. The basic idea of Good Inside is that children act out when they feel misunderstood or their needs aren’t being metthat their bad behavior doesn’t reflect their inherent character. And parents who approach them through this perspective are better able to set boundaries and develop healthy relationships with their children. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Kennedy joined Instagram to dispense advice to parents struggling with their suddenly trapped-at-home children. Dr. Becky soon became a social media sensation: She currently has more than 3 million Instagram followers and a growing presence on TikTok. In the meantime, she’s spun her Good Inside brand into a bestselling book, a podcast, and a subscription-based app, which launched last year and uses generative AI trained on Kennedy’s writing and videos to give parents personalized, specific advice to deal with situations in real time. The Good Inside app, which costs $276 a year, now counts more than 50,000 members. Fast Company spoke to Kennedy about her approach to empowering parents, using generative AI and social media to spread her message, and growing the Good Inside brand. What made you join Instagram in 2020? I started to see that we create issues in childhood and then we try to solve them in adulthood. When I noticed this, I couldn’t unthink it. I’m always focused on efficiency. I think what led me to Instagram was the thought that more people need to know this. More people need access to the type of education that you get in every other job. Parenting is the hardest job in the world, and we are sold this bullshit narrative that we should have a maternal instinct and that it should come naturally. The only thing that comes naturally in parenting is how you were parented. Technology is now being used to solve a lot of the world’s struggles and make certain things easier. Where’s the education and the technology for parents? I want parents to say, I feel like I have the best parenting coach in the world in my pocket. I shouldn’t spiral after I yell at my kid. It shouldn’t be a mystery what to say when my kid comes home after getting in trouble at school. [Image: Dr. Becky] Is that why you developed the Good Inside app? We grew completely organically on Instagram. Parents have basically told us along the way what they want, and we’re just serving it up for them. They want education. They want access to experts and access to each other so they know theyre not alone. With that kind of insight we’re like, okay, we are going to create this ongoing experience. The app has a subscription model because if you’re a parent with kids, they are often living in your home for 18 years. We just want to be with people on their journey. We have more than 50,000 members in over 108 countries, even though we’re still just English-speaking. We heard from parents during [the pandemic] that they wanted longer content. But now they are on the go and need advice for very specific situations, so it needs to be personalized. So when someone only has five minutes, they can feel productive. This is really a digital product, just like Duolingo. We want parents to have a way to learn the language of parenting. Parents can type in a specific situation, and get practical advice on what they can do tailored to them using generative AI. They can also delve deeper and learn more if they want to. What is the overarching theory behind Good Inside, and how did you come to it? This all came together in my private practice. I’d work with adults, and I felt like there was one thing that was true about everyone, regardless of what they came to talk about. It’s that the patterns and the circuitry that were put in our bodies to protect us and help us adapt early on in life start to work against us in adulthood. A lot of our early childhood adaptations ironically become symptoms in adulthood. [People wonder], Why don’t I trust people? I’m so hypervigilant. I don’t think I was born that way. So what did I learn early on that made me untrusting? I used to tell adults that the circuits that were put in place to protect us are hard to unwind because our body thinks it’s helping us. So I’d work with adults in helping them understand why they do things they do. That’s the first step, because we can’t intervene before we understand. How does this theory apply to parenting? I’d see parents of a four-year-old, they’d be like, My kid is hitting, and I don’t know what to do. I’d say to them what I was taught, which was to tell their kid, “We’re going to do a timeout.” Then take away their dessert and give them a sticker every time they don’t hit their friend. But then I pictured doing this with the adults I’d see in my practice: Them saying, I yelled at someone at work, and me being like, Give me your phone, and by the way, you didn’t hit someone yesterday, so here’s a sticker. In that scenario, they’d reply, Why would taking away my phone help me stay calm? I think you just made me feel worse. Nobody would come back to my office. No good CEOs make employees better by punishing them. But weÙve been doing this to kids for generations. We think, I’m punishing my kid and I tell myself that’s being in charge. But punishing is a sign of desperation, not authority. Good Inside is an approach for someone who can say, “I need to own my parental authority. What do you advise parents to do in this scenario instead? First, I have to set a true boundary. I would go to my kid and say, I’m not going to let you hit. When I did that, I’d actually hold their wrist or get in between them and the other kid. This is the opposite of what a lot of us do as parents. Many parents might say, Okay, stop hitting, or we do something weird and say, I’m going to count to three. It doesn’t make any sense. I would never say, I’m going to count to three and I hope you don’t run into oncoming traffic. I would just not let my kid run into oncoming traffic. That is what I call setting a boundary and embodying your authority. After I set a boundary, I’d say something to stay connected to my kid and see the good inside them. Something like, “Hey, you’re allowed to be mad. Your sister’s playing with your favorite truck. But let’s figure out another way you can communicate that. [Image: Dr. Becky] What does this method teach kids? Big picture: Nobody learns skills for better behavior by going to their room. I don’t know a four-year-old who’s like, Oh, let me search on the internet what to do the next time I’m mad so I don’t hit. A four-year-old is feeling ashamed. They feel like a bad kid. Ironically, their feelings are going to be harder to manage and they’re more likely to hit tomorrow. Good Inside separates who you are from what you donot to let you off the hook, but to provide a foundation to build skills and to improve behavior. What if parents say, I have a four-year-old, theyre not going to understand that? They will understand. They’ll understand that you set a boundary to stop them from acting out. They finally feel like they have an adult in the room keeping them safe. And they’ll understand that you’re looking at them. They’re a good person having a hard time, not a bad kid doing bad things. That difference is massive. People often use the word “boundary” to express something that others should react to. But in your definition, it sounds like a boundary is something that requires nothing of the other person. Often we say we’re setting a boundary when in fact we’re just making a request. Parents say, I set a boundary, and my kid’s not respecting it. Whenever I hear that, I think someone has an incorrect definition of a boundary. My definition of a boundary, whether you’re a parent or not, is something you tell someone you will do. It requires the other person to do nothing. A boundary might look like you saying to your kid, Hey, I’m going to walk over to you, and if things aren’t calm by the time I get there, I’m picking you up and I’m carrying you to your room. Because my No. 1 job is to keep you safe, and hitting isn’t safe and you’re clearly not capable of making good decisions right now. When a parent says, I’m going to literally hold you to stop hitting your friend, other parents on the playground might watch that and think, what the hell are they doing? What’s the best way to respond in that scenario? I think you’re asking a bigger question: How much of my time do I spend in other people’s brains thinking about what they think about me? And how much of my time do I spend in my own brain gazing in and thinking about what I want and need? What’s really sadand this is what happens to a lot of women because were trained to gaze out before we gaze inis we don’t even really know what we want to do anymore. One of the biggest things we do at Good Inside is empower parents to be the sturdiest, most healed version of themselves, which is the most important thing they can do to help their kids. [Image: Dr. Becky] So how do parents use the app? For instance, what if I had a kid, and they spilled a glass or water and screamed about it for an hour. How would the app help me? Let’s do it right now. I’m typing the scenario into the app. Want me to read to you what it said? That sounds really intense. Kids often have big reactions to small accidents because they feel overwhelmed, and don’t know how to manage that. Your kid probably felt a mix of surprise, frustration, and maybe even fear of the mess, which led to that hour-long scream fest. In moments like this, start by just acknowledging what’s happening, acknowledge the surprise, not just the feeling, wow, that was a surprise. Then they’ll probably start to calm down and you can guide them through cleaning up together. This not only helps them learn to manage the situation, it also reinforces that mistakes happen and it’s okay to feel upset. Remember, you’re really helping your kid learn how to navigate big feelings. Then we have the next step for you if you want it. We have a primer to kids who are overly emotional. It’s a little bit longer, but it’ll take you one level deeper if that’s what you’re looking for. How did you develop AI tools that can deliver these kinds of responses? It took a year. I worked with an amazing clinical team of people who are trained in the Good Inside approach and our amazing machine-learning engineers. In terms of the content itself, I have a produced a lot, so it’s trained on that. The app costs almost $25 a month. How did you think about that pricing strategy? We think about things as expensive or cheap relative to what we’re comparing it to. If people compare our app to free reels on Instagram, they’d think it’s expensive. We have a lot of members who say, This is transforming my life at $25 a month. I pay way more than that in copays for my in-network therapist. My copays add up to over a hundred dollars a month.” So, this actually feels ncredibly reasonable. Nobody values their own mental health or their kids’ mental health as low on their list, and yet sometimes I think when we look at where we invest money, there’s a lot of other things we place above that. When you compare the price point to anything else that involves mental wellness, I think the value you get far exceeds the value you’re investing. Is it ever too late for someone to change their parenting style? Everything in our app, in our membership, in our company is based on the belief that it is not too late. We underestimate how much our bodies accept repair. We are all looking for the compassion and understanding that we never got. I think when parents say, Is it too late? They’re kind of saying, “Have I lost the ability to stay calm, to feel good about myself, to feel confident that I can handle hard challenges with uncertainty?” I want to give that person a hug. I know it sounds cheesy, but I want them to feel the strength of my conviction in saying, “No.” Will the journey be easy? Will everything change tomorrow? No way. But as long as it takes for our circuitry to build, it doesn’t take that same amount of time for it to unwind. We need a guide, we need some powerful ideas. We definitely need some practical, actionable strategies and many experiments. I think that’s what I’m most proud of. At Good Inside, we change a parent even more than their parenting.
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E-Commerce
Disney might tout its rides and character IP when it looks to lure people to its theme parks around the world, but once visitors get there, the draw is an escape from reality. Fans call it the Disney Bubble: The day-to-day world melts away and you’re immersed in an environment that is carefully crafted (and controlled) by Disney. The Disney Bubble is designed to let vacationers to take one step away from the real world for the length of their stay. Distractions are minimized. You dont even need to pull out your wallet. Paying for things like a souvenir or a snack can be done with just the tap of your phone or Magic Band. The Bubble is why many guests prefer to stay within the Disney ecosystem for the entirety of their trip, shopping, eating and sleeping at Disney-operated stores rather than less-expensive options just a few miles away. Disney’s customer service is an essential part of creating that Bubble, say executives. Interactions with staff, which Disney calls cast members can make visitors feel appreciated, whether its the Disney bus driver or a costumed character in the park. Our cast are the heart of the magic at Walt Disney World, says Jason Kirk, senior vice president of operations, who oversees all four Disney theme parks in Orlando. Of course, guests love the fireworks. Of course, they love Space Mountain. But those moments with the cast are the things that create lifetime memories. The Bubble starts with ensuring guests have a seamless experience throughout their stay, says Allison Armor, vice president of resorts operations at Walt Disney World. In other words, the check-in process at the hotel cant be separate from the park experience. The same level of service and helpfulness needs to be pervasive. The cleaning staff at hotels provide hallway hospitality, which covers everything from a smile and a greeting to guests to helping them solve any problem or fulfilling a request. And the parks transportation workers, from bus drivers to boat captains, interact with guests, offering park tips and collectible trading cards. (Bus drivers, in fact, receive the highest ratings of any cast members, Kirk says.) [Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images] [Guests] walk away with a feeling of immersion from beginning to end, says Armor. It has to be cohesive and an elevated interaction. Every cast member at every moment has to own that vacation experience for the guest. Creating pixie dust moments One of the most important ways Disney creates its Bubble is by giving every employee the decision-making power to enhance a guests stay, even if its just in a small way. This can range from the pixie dust moments (where a food service worker announces that a Dole Whip or churro is on Mickey and free to guests or a ride operator asks if you had fun and, if so, offers to let you ride again without a wait in line) to attending to any challenges guests encounter. If the cast member cant solve the problem, theyre trained to elevate it to someone who can. Customer service is one of the most-frequently cited perks of the parks. Part of creating the Bubble is ensuring that guest experiences while theyre at the parks are as smooth as possible. To ensure this, Disney leaders study guest feedback to streamline and upgrade systems that customers interact with. For example, after the parks reopened from the pandemic closure, Chelsea Filley, vice president of customer experience and commercial strategy, and her division launched a customer experience team, to understand and correct things that were making the Disney planning process complex for potential visitors. That led to a variety of changes, from how dining availability was displayed to the renaming of the Genie+ reservation system, which had been criticized as overly complex. Subsequent work by the companys team of analytical engineers resulted in further refinement of that skip-the-line reservation system. Lightning Lane selection, for example, was recently changed from the day of a persons park visit to prior to their arrival, letting them plan their trips in advance. That was based on [guest] feedback and it has played out so well, says Kirk. It has taken the stress out of the day for our guests, but also our guest are getting more out of Lighting Lane. Theyre able to experience more attractions. The Disney Bubble has become a big thing to maintainand will get even bigger with upcoming park expansions. Walt Disney World, in Orlando, spans nearly 30,000 acres, houses 25 hotels, offers more than 115 attractions, over 40 forms of entertainment (including parades, fireworks and live performances) and more than 50 character experiences. By creating the Bubble, execs say they hope to make that choice not only less intimidating, but more welcoming. Our breadth is our superpower, says Filley. The Bubble is what makes the magic, but you want that magic to feel like I am making the most of my time here.
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E-Commerce
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