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One of the most notable features of President Donald Trumps big beautiful bill passed by the House early Thursday is a series of tax cuts exempting tips, overtime, and Social Security from taxes. The White House said no taxes on overtime and tips makes good on two of President Trumps cornerstone campaign promises and benefits hardworking Americans where they need it the mosttheir paychecks. The so-called populist tax measures have garnered headlines and won praise from Republican lawmakers, as well as unions representing police and firefighters. And lawmakers in 19 states from Massachusetts to Mississippi have proposed their own no tax on overtime bills this year, according to the Economic Policy Institute. What has received far less attention, aside from a legal blog or two, is that the Trump administration just made it more difficult for millions of American workers to earn overtimeand actually benefit from the tax measure. The U.S. Department of Labor has quietly paused its appeals of a ruling by a Texas judge that reversed the Biden administrations changes to the overtime rulewhich expanded the right to overtime pay for 4.3 million salaried American workers. The rule had increased the salary threshold for overtime exemption from $35,568 to $43,888 on July 1, 2024, and then to $58,656 on January 1, 2025. A spokesperson for the Department of Labor did not immediately return requests from Capital & Main for comment. The rule was spearheaded by Biden administration Secretary of Labor Julie Su, who noted the irony of Trumps tax proposal on overtime pay, telling Capital & Main: You cant benefit from no taxes on overtime if youre not even paid overtime. She added: When you work longer hours, you should be paid for it. Thats why we expanded overtime pay to 4 million more Americans. This administration has walked away from that rule, showing yet again that you cant have an administration of billionaires and depend on them to fight for working people. Cutting the number of workers eligible for overtime means less money in workers pockets. Judy Conti, government affairs director of the National Employment Law Project, called the tax measure a gimmick, noting that the Trump administration is already making it easier to classify people as independent contractors, rather than employees, and they arent entitled to overtime at all. Trumps allies in the House, including Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, have claimed that the measure could impact more than 80 million hourly workers. But in reality, only 8% of them are estimated to earn overtime pay on a regular basis, according to the Budget Lab at Yale. That Doesnt Help Me Among those workers is Terri, a cashier at a Dollar Tree store in Brooklyn, who was nonplussed when asked about no tax on overtime. So what? That doesnt help me. I dont even get overtime, no matter how many hours I work. The workers who would benefit from the exemption tend to be employed in sectors such as manufacturing, mining, and public safety. One of the most vocal supporters of the measure is the International Association of Fire Fighters, whose members often work many hours of overtime a month. Firefighters already work 53 hours a week before even qualifying for overtime pay. Thats 35% more hours a week than the average worker. The proposal to eliminate taxes on overtime would bring meaningful relief to firefighters, helping them keep more of what they earn while working long hours to keep their communities safe, Edward Kelly, general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said in a statement to NBC News. The measure is estimated to cost some $866 billion over the next 10 years, per the Budget Lab at Yale. And state measures could have a devastating impact on their budgets, hurting their ability to pay for essential services. In Alabama, which became the first state to exempt overtime pay from state taxes, the measure cost the state $230 million in the first nine months of 2024, cutting off millions in funding for the states Education Trust Fund, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In the end, exempting overtime from taxes is not a real pro-worker policy, write EPIs David Cooper and Nina Mast. Instead, it is a giveaway to businesses that would create new inequities in the tax code while expanding employer power and draining public budgets of resources for all the thingsschools, infrastructure, safety, healththat workers, their families, and their communities actually need to thrive. This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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E-Commerce
These days, our tech experiences are all about speedand our expectations for instant action are actually kinda insane. Think about it: Not so long ago, phones, computers, and especially the internet were all painfully slow (at least, by todays sonic-speed standards). Things have come a long way in a short time. And for most of us now, if something doesnt load within a fraction of second, we grow impatient and maybe give up entirelylike when a webpage has the audacity to take a handful of seconds to show up and we click away in an indignant huff. Hey, weve all been there. Whats especially wild, though, is that while the standards for speed have skyrocketed forward, the way we measure this stuff has remained mostly the same. At least, until now. This week, Ive got an incredibly cool and tantalizingly new tool to share with ya. Its an overdue update to the way we think about speed and assessing the allegedly lightning-fast connections we all pay for. Get ready for a whole new way to think about the tech in front of you. Psst: If you love these types of tools as much as I do, check out my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. You’ll be the first to find all sorts of simple tech treasures! The internet speed testreinvented Traditionally, when we talk about tools for testing your tech connection speed, we think about things like Ooklas Speedtest, the native Google speed testing system, or the newer Cloudflare Internet Speed Test service. Weve covered those types of tools before. Theyre all useful, in different waysbut theyre also all variations on the same tried-and-true type of speed assessment thats been around for ages now. Todays tool is different. But it comes from a familiar sourcesomeone who knows this area inside and out. Its the brand-new brainchild of the guy who created Ooklas Speedtest, arguably the first internet speed test that became broadly known and embraced by the masses. Its called Orb. And its decidedly different from your typical tech speed tester. Orb works by looking not only at the basic power of your connection but also its responsiveness and reliability. The idea is that all of that adds up to create a more complete and ultimately meaningful view of your connection quality. And that number isnt only about bragging rights, either: Its meant to help you make sure youre actually getting the speed youre paying forand then able to pinpoint precisely where and when any problems pop up. Youll need about two minutes to set Orb up and take it out for a spin. First, install the appropriate Orb app for whatever type of device youre using. Orb is free to use, and its available for most major platformsAndroid, iOS, Windows, MacOS, even Linux. If youre using a Chromebook, you can go with either the Android app or the Linux version. Open up the app and follow the quick steps to get it set up and ready. Orb will prompt you to sign in or create an account, but you can skip over that if youd rather. The account just makes it possible to sync your testing data and view it from other devices. Once that swift onetime setups out of the way, youll see Orbs dashboardwith a tremendous amount of detail that lets you peek under the hood and learn exactly how much your current connection leaves to be desired. Orb assesses your internet connection across numerous measures beyond just basic data transfers. Specifically: Responsiveness tells you how quickly your connection acts and how much lag youve got going. Reliability looks at the consistency of your connection and its responsiveness over time. And speed is the more standard measure of how quickly bits and bytes move across your connection (as measured by Cloudflarethe same basic speed testing tool weve recommended before!). It all adds up to give you a never-before-visible complete picture of your internet speed qualityon your current device as well as any other devices on which youve installed the app and signed in. If you sign into Orb, you can see results from any connected devices in a single streamlined dashboard. Knowledge is power, as they say. And with Orbs in-depth intelligence firmly in your mitts, youll be armed to the gills and ready to confirm that everythings working the way it oughtaand ready to point your finger at the precise problem, if and when one appears. Orb is available on all major platforms, via a variety of native apps. Its completely free for personal use. (The company also sells large-scale enterprise software setups, which seems to be where it intends to make money.) The tool comes from known, reputable internet researchers and is explicit about the fact that it doesnt do anything disconcerting ith the limited amount of data it collects. Treat yourself to even more tech-enhancing goodness with my free Cool Tools newsletter. You’ll get an instant introduction to an incredible audio app and a new off-the-beaten-path gem every Wednesday!
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E-Commerce
David Brickley is something of a social marketing pioneer. In 2011, he founded STN Digital, a leading social-first digital marketing company in sports and entertainment. STN now has more than 50 employees and creates hundreds of pieces of content daily for partners like ESPN, Warner Bros., NBC Sports, Under Armour, the Philadelphia Phillies, and NBA star Jayson Tatum, among dozens of others. The company helped Elton John launch his TikTok. In 2023, digital sports viewership surpassed traditional television viewers for the first time. Forty-three percent of young adult sports fans follow their favorite league on social media, 54% follow their favorite athlete, and 32% of all sports fans use social media while watching games. Brickley and STN have been at the forefront of this social-first revolution. Brickley never wanted to start a social marketing agency. But when Kobe Bryant opens a dooreven by accidentyou walk through. Building a business A lifelong Lakers fan who grew up east of Los Angeles, Brickley took a job in 2011 as a producer at Fox Sports Radio with the dream of hosting his own sports talk radio show. I thought I should have my own afternoon show, he said. My program director thought differently. Shut down by the higher-ups, Brickey became an entrepreneur by necessity. He used Fox Sports AV equipment and studio space after hours to launch his own YouTube channel. At the time, original sports content on the platform was scarce. His content regularly made it on YouTubes front page, which grew his profile enough for him to start working directly with professional athletes, eventually landing Bryant as a client in 2013. In an exclusive interview, Brickley spoke with Fast Company about his evolution into a digital maven, sharing his insights on how social audience habits have changed, how he sees them evolving in the future, and how any company can build a social content strategy that works. The interview has been edited and condensed. How did you land Kobe Bryant as a client when you were just getting started as a small shop? It started with good karma. I did a ton of favors for the publicist of Matt Barnes, who was a Lakers player at the time, and as a favor, I interviewed his twins after they got on the honor roll at their elementary school. In exchange, I got a 10-minute one-on-one with Matt. Then one day I was at a boxing class and I ran into his publicist. She mentioned she was working with Kobe, so I asked if I could send over some ideas. Because of all those favors I’d done, she let me pitch Kobe the concept of the “Kobe Minute”a 60-second weekly video about his on-court and off-court successes. They loved it because we could highlight his charitable work without it feeling self-promotional. How did creating content for Kobe and his team open your eyes to the idea of creating a social marketing agency? The Kobe opportunity was the epiphany moment. I had just reached out to my childhood hero about working together, and he said yes. So I realized if I could land Kobe, I could reach other athletes and teams too. We built an Excel sheet with all 32 NFL teams, found every email, and reached out. Seven hopped on calls, three wanted proposals, and the Minnesota Vikings were willing to try us out as a partner. It was pure bootstrapped cold outreach. Being able to create your own destiny without relying on someone else for opportunity was intoxicating. You started STN Digital basically from scratch. What struggles were your clients having when creating original contentspecifically for socialand how did you position yourself as the solution? Back in 2013, every sports entity had social channelsthe Facebooks and Twitters. But they weren’t posting original content. They had these audiences but didn’t know how to engage them. Social was just a PR dump of press releases and super boring, non-fan-centric content. So my message was, “We understand fans, we understand what the sports fan wants, and we can curate content specifically on social that speaks to them.” You gotta understand that at that time, a fan-first approach of speaking authentically about topics fans cared about didnt exist. Now, as we transition to 2025, every CEO, president, CMO in the world is starting to think about a social-first approach, which is awesome to see. How does the agency work? In what ways do partners deploy your services and expertise on a given social marketing campaign or initiative? Our clients use us in one of two ways. Usually, they’ll either hire us as a world-class social media department and we run everything A to Zcopywriting, content, analytics, everythingor they’ll bolt us on as a world-class content house. In that case, they have an incredible team already, but they add us on top because their team doesnt have three and a half hours to dream up a bunch of dope ideas in a whiteboard session or simply need more engaging content for all their initiatives. ESPN has a 75-person social team with incredible engines internally, but we’re able to be that supercharger to take them from 99% potential to hopefully 125% potential. What’s an example of a creative campaign you’ve executed that you’re really proud of? Our work with the Indiana Fever during the Caitlin Clark draft just won a Webby. My team spent 70 to 80 hours creating this video of a Toy Story-esque action figure of Caitlin Clark dribbling around her bedroom, shooting hoops. It got around 10 million views on TikTok alone and 500,000 engagements. What’s interesting is we’re seeing lo-fi content outperform hi-fi content by 40% more views and 30% more engagements on average. But this high-production piece was thumb-stopping creative that nobody else was postingsomething that made people think, I gotta watch the rest of this. Its something the Fever and we are super proud to have collaborated on. What are some of the biggest misconceptions you see about social marketing content, and what strategies that may seem counterintuitive actually work? I look at social media as upper-funnel fan engagementbuilding community, credibility, and trust. But a lot of the time, brands see it as a lower-funnel platform where they’re trying to talk about brand, logo, messaging, and calls to action. You have to be social on social. You have to provide valuewhether it’s education, laughter, or elicit some type of emotion. People arent required to follow you, so why do they? You have to build that relationship. Brands that do social wrong are mostly just, “Look at me, look at me!” and constantly making calls to action. That’s not how you build true community, no different than a friendship or relationship. For every eight things you give your community, you have then earned the right to ask for two things in return. And the value you give in that 80% needs to be memorable. What are some of the other lessons you’ve learned about social engagement or audience behavior over the years? The power of real-time social, especially in sports, continues to b undervalued. During the Olympics with NBC Sports, we worked back-to-back 12-hour shifts daily and helped them get 6.5 billion impressions in 17 days. Those impressions would cost $50 million if you bought them on the open market. The key is being ready for every moment. If Simone Biles won bronze, silver, or gold, we had content ready for all scenarios with different angles and storylines. Same with Caitlin Clark’s draft. We spent 30 days planning content for before, during, and after she was picked to capitalize on arguably the biggest moment in the Fevers franchise history. How do you approach data and measurement when creating content strategies and campaigns? We follow the data of what works, but we also pay attention to how different platforms’ algorithms behave. Instagram will serve you something in your feed that happened five days ago, so there are considerations about what goes on Stories versus in-feed. We’re constantly obsessed with datanot just what’s working or not working, but what different post types perform best, whether it’s a reel, carousel, or single post. We’re analyzing timing, post type, static versus video versus carousel, and noticing how algorithms are being optimized differently across Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. We use platforms like Sprout Social and Rival IQ to get super deep with third-party and first-party data. We analyze our top 10 and bottom 10 posts constantlyweekly or monthlyto understand why certain posts underperformed. We look at who was featured, what time it was posted, whether it was a carousel versus a reel. We might notice reels are taking a dive and wonder if the algorithm has changed. Not all engagement metrics are equal, either. Watching something for 3 seconds and scrolling past is much different than watching it for the full 60 seconds. And I believe that one of the most undervalued engagement metrics is shares. If you take time to DM content to a friend saying, “This is so us,” that’s 10 times more important engagement than just a like because you’re actually taking time to send it to someone you love. We look seriously at shareability and ask, Is this something you want to DM your family or best friend? What about platforms? Which are the most important, and where do you see the most success and engagement? We still see Instagram and TikTok at the top in terms of engagement and virality. From a sports perspective, Twitter is still that real-time water coolernobody else holds a candle to it. There have been attempts with platforms like Bluesky, but we saw with the Luka Dončić trade how NBA Twitter just exploded in ways other platforms can’t replicate. Social behavior continues to swing back and forth. Once something becomes too saturated, there’s an opportunity for new platforms or content types to emerge as fresh ways to connect with audiences. The key is being adaptable and understanding where your specific audience lives and engages most authentically. Marketing efforts can often become fragmented across different departments. How should companies think about aligning their social strategy with broader marketing goals? Social and sales teamseven CMOs and marketing teamsoften operate separately from social, which is a problem. CMOs should always oversee the social department because it has to ladder up to a greater vision of value prop and audience understanding. Social and community building and fan engagement at the top of the funnel is all to eventually work people down the funnel to become customers and drive revenue generation. If I were a prospective client who came to you and said, “My social strategy sucks. What can I do?” what’s the first piece of advice you would give me? Where would you start? I would ask, What audience specifically are you trying to grow? Then we can reverse-engineer a strategy based on what that audience finds valuable, entertaining, and engaging. Are you trying to grow mass audience because you’re a large brand, or are you saturated in one demo but want to diversify? Then, once we identify the target avatar, we can develop a strategy based on what we know works with other brands talking to that same audience. Without figuring out who your customer is at the very top of the conversation, you’re just posting content and hoping it works with no real endgame. So lets figure out who youre talking to, what they want most, and how we can meet them where they are and deliver it to them.
Category:
E-Commerce
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