Ozempic-maker Novo Nordisk turned to the actors from Apple’s 2000s “Get a Mac” ads to differentiate its GLP-1 medication amid a rising sea of competitors.
On January 20, the Danish pharmaceutical company announced its “There’s Only One Ozempic” campaign starring Justin Long and John Hodgman. The actors are reprising their roles from Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads playing the personifications of a name brand and the alternativebut now for weight-loss drugs.
[Video: Novo Nordisk]
Long personified Mac in the original Apple campaign by dressing in a more youthful, casual way than Hodgman, who personified a stuffy, dorky PC by wearing glasses and a suit and tie with a closely cropped haircut. (Think Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates.) In the Apple ads, Mac was always portrayed by Long as more cool and capable.
In the new Ozempic ad, Long personifies Ozempic, facing off in a mock game show against Hodgman, who plays all of Ozempic’s competitors wrapped up in one dull brown T-shirt. (His hardworking name is “Other GLP-1s for Type 2 Diabetes.”) Hodgman’s character gets the game show’s single question right after the host asks which GLP-1 is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to lower the risk of worsening chronic kidney disease. The answer is, of course, “Ozempic,” which ultimately makes his win bittersweet.
The “Get a Mac” campaign was created by Apple’s ad agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab; 66 total spots aired from 2006 to 2009. In 2010, Adweek named it the best ad campaign of the 2000s for connecting technology to humanity. Now Novo Nordisk is hoping some of that magic can rub off.
The new campaign aims to reassert Ozempic’s brand equity in the public sphere as it faces business headwinds. It follows both layoffs and lower sales growth at the company, even as its U.S. competitor Eli Lilly is ascendent. The ad also drops shortly after Novo Nordisk’s other GLP-1, Wegovy, hit the market in pill form.
In such a competitive landscape, Novo Nordisk is working to make its brand name the standard. “There’s Only One Ozempic” plays up Ozempic’s unique selling proposition in a practical sense, as a solution to chronic kidney disease. But with a jingle based on the song “Magic” and a pair of actors remembered for selling computers, it’s also positioning its drug as the most desirable GLP-1.
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
Among the 24 price forecasts tracked by ResiClub in our final 2026 home price forecast roundup, the average prediction is a +1.43% increase in U.S. home prices in 2026.
Keep in mind that roundup mentioned above looks at forecasts for nationally aggregated home prices. On a regional and neighborhood basis, home price swings can vary greatly from the national figure. For example, on a year-over-year basis, U.S. home prices as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index are up +0.1%, while home prices in the Hartford-East Hartford-Middletown, Connecticut metro area are up +4.6% and home prices in the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, Texas metro area are down -6.0% during that same timeframe.
To better understand how regional home prices may vary in 2026, ResiClub reached out to economists at Zillowwhose forecast of U.S. home prices rising by +2.1% in calendar 2026 is slightly above the average modeland economists at Moodys Analyticswhose forecast of U.S. home prices rising by +0.8% in 2026 is slightly more bearish than the average modelto gather their metro-level home price forecasts.
Lets take a look at the metro-level forecasts.
window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});
When we published our final roundup of national home price forecasts for 2026, Zillow was forecasting +1.2% for 2026; however, over the weekend they slightly upgraded that to +2.1%.
Zillow economists write the following:
With supply no longer as tight as it was during the pandemic, price gains are likely to stay modest. Buyers should see a bit more time and leverage when they shop, while sellers can still build equity, just at a slower pace than in past boom year(s) . . . Looking ahead, Zillow projects sales will strengthen in 2026 as mortgage rates trend lower and affordability improves. Existing home sales are forecast to reach 4.3 million next year, a 5.2% yearoveryear gain. After two slow years, the recovery is expected to be led by the Southeast and West, where demand is more ratesensitive and is starting to rebound as borrowing costs ease.
window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}});
The forecast by Moodys chief economist Mark Zandi has U.S. home prices, as measured by the Moody’s repeat sales index, rising just +0.8% in calendar year 2026, followed by +1.5% uptick in 2027.
When I recently reached out to Moodys Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi for his updated home price forecast, he said his long-term outlook for the U.S. housing market remains largely unchanged: He expects a prolonged period of stagnation as affordability gradually improves. Following the historic run-up in prices during the pandemic housing boom and the subsequent mortgage rate shock, Zandi believes resale activity/existing home sales will likely stay frozen for several more years.
Affordability has to be restored for housing to regain its mojo, Zandi told ResiClub a few months ago. Flat home prices [adjusted for inflation] is the healthiest path forwardits the only way for incomes to catch up.
Zandi expects nominal national home prices to move sideways over the next 12 to 18 months, with local variation: markets in the South and West, where building has been stronger, seeing some modest declines, while tight-inventory markets in the Northeast and Midwest remain more stable.
The worst of the pain in the housing market might be now and in the next six to nine months. After that, things will begin to feel a little betterbut not good, Zandi told ResiClub in October. The housing market will heal . . . but its going to take timeand a lot of patience.
Over the next decade, Zandi projects U.S. home prices will rise roughly in line with inflation, meaning no real [adjusted for inflation] house price gains for around 10 years.
We expect homes for sale to steadily increase as more existing homeowners need to sell for demographic reasonsdeath, divorce, children, job changeand lower mortgage rates help ease their interest rate lock. The [potentially] lower rates will also support housing demand, but the increase in housing supply will be even more significant, weighing on house price gains, Zandi tells ResiClub.
What is ResiClubs take?
The housing market is still working through a cyclical cooling phase, with many of the nations fastest-growing Sun Belt boomtowns undergoing a deeper recalibration after experiencing greater overheating during the pandemic housing boom. This adjustment period wont last forever, and the long-term growth fundamentalssuch as rising populationin many of these Southern markets remain attractive. However, in 2026, ResiClub believes the market is still within that normalization window (but weregetting closer to exiting it).
Broadly speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has climbed well above pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced softer/weaker home price growth (or event outright declines) over the past 42 months since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below 2019 pre-pandemic levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 42 months.
Using active inventory/months of supply as a short-term guide, we expect the greatest pricing resilience in 2026 to be in Midwest and Northeast markets, while the greatest pricing softness is still likely in Gulf markets such as Austin and Punta Gorda, Florida. (I think both Zillow and Moodys are a little too optimistic about Southwest Florida in particular, which I believe is still in correction modealthough it is starting to create some interesting buying opportunities.)
Regardless of how regional inventory (see our latest monthly inventory update here) or regional home prices (see our latest monthly home price update here) perform in 2026, well be closely tracking the trends to keep you informed of any shifts.
In the world of business, we tend to believe that success is a direct result of talent, resources, and a “great idea.” We expect that if a company has a track record of dominance, like Google, Amazon, or Apple, they are a sure bet for the next big thing. Yet, the history of innovation is littered with the wreckage of unexpected flops launched by industry giants.
From the futuristic promise of the Segway to the early dominance of MySpace, these failures prove that even a massive war chest and a visionary concept cannot guarantee market survival. Here are some of the traps that companies fall into.
The ‘Solution in Search of a Problem’ Trap
One of the most common reasons for failure is based on “technology push” versus “market pull.” This happens when a company develops a sophisticated piece of technology and then hunts for a problem to solve, rather than starting with a genuine consumer need.
Google Glass is a fine example. Technically, it was a marvel, an engineering feat that brought augmented reality to a wearable form. However, Google failed to articulate why the average person needed it. It lacked a defined purpose. The device made people uncomfortable regarding privacy (the “Glasshole” effect), leading to it being banned in bars and theaters before it even hit mass-market shelves.
Similarly, the Segway was heralded by Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos as a revolution in urban transport that would “reshape cities.” But for the consumer, it was an expensive, bulky solution to a problem that didn’t exist. It was too fast for sidewalks and too slow for roads. It was a great idea in theory, but a failure in the real world.
The Arrogance of Success Trap
When a company is dominant in one field, it can become blind to its limitations. They try to force the approach of their successful core business into a completely different field.
Amazons Fire Phone failed because Amazon treated hardware like its retail platform. They packed the phone with “Dynamic Perspective” (a 3D effect) and “Firefly”a button to scan products to buy on Amazon. These were clever technical features, but they served Amazons needs more than the users. Users wanted a robust ecosystem of apps and a reliable interface; they didn’t want a shopping cart in their pocket. Amazons immense success in e-commerce blinded them to the specific needs of the smartphone market.
The ‘First Mover’ Trap
It is a common precept that being first to market is an advantage. However, Friendster and MySpace prove that being first is a double-edged sword. Friendster had the great idea of social networking long before Facebook. It failed because it couldn’t handle its own success. The servers crashed constantly, and the site became unusable. This technical failure allowed MySpace to take the lead. But MySpace eventually fell into the same trap: It became cluttered with ads and customizable profiles, failing to evolve its user experience as the audience matured. These companies didn’t fail because their ideas were bad. They failed because they couldn’t scale as demand grew.
The Timing Trap
Bill Gross has studied what makes some start-ups succeed and so many fail. He analyzed the histories of 200 startup companies and compared five factors: the idea, the team, the business model, the funding, and the timing. You can see him relate his findings in his Ted talk, The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed.
His findings were striking. The most important factor was timing, then the team, and then the idea. Many startup companies with great teams and innovative business ideas fail because the timing of their launch is unfortunate. And this can be down to luck.
The timing trap applies to big companies too. If you launch a product too early, you have to educate the market which is expensive. If you launch too late, youre fighting for scraps.
An idea might be great, but the world isn’t ready yet. For example, the online grocery business Webvan failed during the dot-com bubble (Webvan) because high-speed internet and mobile logistics weren’t mature. Twenty years later, the same idea is a multi-billion-dollar industry. Similarly, Google Glass might have succeeded today in an era of TikTok creators and remote assistance, but in 2013, the culture was far more sensitive to “always-on” cameras.
Is it Just Luck?
In his book The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb argues that we often underestimate the role of randomness in success. A sudden shift in the economy, a competitors unexpected move, or even a global pandemic can make a “great idea” look like a disaster, or a “mediocre idea” look like a stroke of genius.
Luck plays a role, but “luck” depends on preparation and timing. Successful companies that fail usually have the preparation but miss the timing. They are so focused on their internal roadmap that they lose sight of the external environment.
Lessons for Todays Leaders
These failed ventures can teach us some powerful lessons:
Solve a Real Problem: You should be able to explain the problem your product solves in one concise sentence. Leave out buzzwords like revolutionary, ground-breaking, or next-generation.
Social Context Matters: Technology does not exist in a vacuum. How will people feel when they use it? How will others feel around them?
Minimun Viable Product: Build a small cheap prototype or model and show it to discerning customers. Ask, Does it solve your problem? Would you pay money for it? What needs to change?
Kill The Losers: Successful companies often suffer from “sunk cost fallacy.” They keep pouring money into a failing venture because they are too proud to admit the “great idea” isn’t working.
Agility Over Ego: The ability to pivot is critical. When Slack found that their video games was a flop they switched to producing a communication tool.
A great idea is just a hypothesis. The failures of Google Glass, the Fire Phone, and the Segway teach us that the market is a harsh laboratory. Success requires more than just a breakthrough in engineering. It requires an alignment of cultural timing, user-centric design, and the humility to adapt when reality contradicts your vision. Even the giants can fall. It is vital to look at the world through the eyes of the user and stop admiring your own designsno matter how brilliant they appear.
The Tesla Cybertruck is the new Ford Edsel, taking the crown from one of the biggest flops in American car history.
Last year, the Cybertruck spiraled into market irrelevance while the rest of the EV market found its footing, as the pickup experienced the single biggest sales collapse of any electric vehicle in the United States.
Elon Musks flailing company managed to move only an estimated 20,237 Cybertrucks in 2025. And thats counting the units that Musk reportedly bought for himself through SpaceX and xAI to avoid further ridicule.
He had his private companies buy hundreds if not thousands of Cybertrucks, wrote Fred Lambert at EV blog Electrek. Thats an eye-popping 48.1% crash from the 39,000 units sold in 2024. Elon, seriously, stop this embarrassment and kill this polygonal joke already. I laughed at first but now its painful to watch.
To understand the magnitude of this failure, the all-electric Ford F-150 Lightningan EV pickup so unsuccessful that Ford officially ended its production in December 2025 to pivot to a new hybrid modelstill managed to humiliate Tesla from the grave. Ford sold 27,307 Lightnings in 2025, making it the best-selling EV pickup truck in America.
Both companies tried to buy their way out of trouble with heavy discounts and 0% financing offers. But while aggressive incentives helped Ford clear inventory and post growth, the same tactics failed to save the apocalypse-proof” pickup from becoming a sales armageddon. Think about that for a minute: A discontinued EV truck outsold the Tesla truck by nearly 7,000 units and got canceled. Come the truck on.
I already called the Cybertruck a flop, but the final sales tally is even worse than I imagined. Its officially the biggest flop in decades, according to Forbes. This is especially humiliating when Musk overpromised sales of 250,000 Cybertrucks annually by 2025. Tesla reached barely 8% of that target.
Cybertrucks at a Tesla dealership in October 2025 [Photo: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group/Getty Images]
Plenty of reasons for failure
The reason for the Cybertruck’s collapse isn’t a mystery. Its not the EV slump. It’s the inevitable result of shipping a beta product to customers as a finished vehicle, a design failure since its inception. The truck isn’t just ugly, its fundamentally broken. In 2025 alone, Tesla issued recalls covering a combined 115,912 Cybertrucksmore than double the number of recalls in 2024. That averages out to 318 recalls per day.
We are not talking about inconsequential software updates. These were dangerous, amateur-hour defects. The largest recall campaign involved 46,096 trucks that risked shedding their stainless-steel exterior trim while driving, turning the vehicle into a shrapnel grenade on the highway. Another 6,000 trucks were recalled because their optional light bars were attached with the wrong primer and could simply fall off. This follows a chronicle of disasters documented since Musk shattered the unshatterable pickups glass.
Weve seen the “stuck pedal” trap that locked accelerators at full throttle, critical system failures where owners drove a mere mile off the lot before the truck died with a “red screen of death,” losing steering and braking redundancy, and misaligned doors and uneven surfaces that Musk himself admitted in leaked emails stuck out like a sore thumb. That’s just a selection of this disaster on wheels.
As Adrian Clarkea professional car designer who now writes design critiques for the automobile publication The Autopiantold me when it was about to come out the factory line: The Cybertruck is a low-polygon joke that only exists in the fever dreams of Tesla fans that stands high on the smell of Elon Musks flatulences. Back then, Clarke also called out the terrible design choices that were going to lead to the bevy of manufacturing and quality problems, all part of the design and brand crisis that Tesla has been experiencing since 2023.
Bu there’s a third component that completes the Cybertruck’s failure trifecta: Musk’s former bromance with Donald Trump and his DOGE antics. Turns out not all press is good press, as these moves killed the Tesla brand perhaps more than the model stagnation, deadly car accidents, and mechanical failures. Musks political radicalization led many of Teslas existing customers to regret their purchases and potential clients to avoid them, both in the U.S. and abroad. As dealerships got torched and cars vandalized, the Cybertruck arguably became “America’s most hated car.
The 2025 sales figures just confirm what we have known for more than two years now. The Cybertruck is not the disruptor Musk sold to the world and Tesla shareholders. It is a finger-chopping brick that depreciates faster than used bridal dresses. An ugly failure that is doing nothing but draining resources and further damaging the brand’s reputation (if it still has one).
Its time to bury what’s already dead, Elon. The experiment is over. Sink this polygonal mess deep underground, along with all your failed promises, and call it a day.
Six years ago, Atari announced ambitious plans to build a gamer-themed hotel in Las Vegas, featuring an e-sports studio and a movie theater. The legacy video game companys management at the time saw hotels as a way to revitalize the brand’s name, which was largely a nostalgia play.
“I love the idea. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” said then-CEO Fred Chesnais. “I always wanted to make an amusement park, and hotels could be the first step.”
But now the company tells the Las Vegas Sun that the project has been shelved after “the deal didn’t come to fruition.” It’s the latest in a series of disappointments for Ataris lodging ambitions. Only one of what the company had hoped would be at least eight hotels across the U.S. is still in any stage of development. And construction has yet to begin on that project.
Chesnais bought Atari in 2013 for just 400 euros following the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing (inheriting with it a debt load of 34 million euros). But he was replaced as CEO in 2021 and formalized his exit from the company in 2022.
Despite his departure, the hotel plans pushed forward. Atari continued to look for potential land partners through 2024planning to make announcements in the first half of that yearbut was unable to secure a deal.
Other planned hotels in Austin, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle also are no longer being discussed publicly and have shown no progress since the company first revealed those locations.
That leaves Phoenix, where Atari Hotels (now being run by Intersection Development) is still hoping to salvage at least part of the project. Originally expected to open in 2022, that location is now slated for a late-2028 grand opening, although even that date is hardly set in stone.
The developer is appealing to Atari fans to help pay for the project. A fundraising page for the Phoenix hotel says the facility has raised $14 million and secured land (for a project with a total development budget of $124 million). Participants can make a minimum investment of $500, for which they will be part of the hotel’s loyalty program. Those who cough up $50,000 will receive a physical brick in the gaming-area walkway of the hotel, the builders say. (A “digital brick” runs $25,000.)
Intersection aims to raise between $35 million and $40 million from investors as part of its next phase.
Atari never positioned the hotels, even the Las Vegas one, as casinos, though the investment deck does mention a “state-of-the-art sports betting arena with immersive screens and premium gaming experiences. Instead, it hoped to blend video games, music, and entertainment in an immersive, tech-heavy facility, with a rooftop pool and “sci-fi inspired rooms” being promised for the Phoenix location.
In recent years, hotels were just one of the ways Atari considered in its effort to revitalize the brand. In 2018, the company announced plans to launch its own cryptocurrencies: the Atari Token and the Pong Token. The company acquired a minority stake in Infinity Networks, which was developing a decentralized blockchain for digital entertainment platforms, and recruited Anthony Di Iorio, who cofounded Ethereum and Jaxx, to assist with the launch. The Atari Token peaked in 2021 at around 78 cents. Today, it trades for $0.0001935.
Founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in 1972, Atari has been bought and sold numerous times through the years, often balancing on the precipice of becoming nothing more than nostalgia. In its fiscal 2025 earnings report released in July, the company reported a 14 million euro loss. Half-year results for fiscal 2026, released in December of last year, showed a net loss of 6.4 million euros.
A few years ago, I discovered a tomato sauce recipe that was surprisingly simple: just canned tomatoes, butter, salt, and an onion. It inspired me to experiment, adding this and that each time to see how the flavor changed. Today, Id call myself an amateur sauce expert. I know exactly how long it needs to simmer, what shade of red signals its ready, and how to improvise with whatevers in the fridge.
As my kitchen exploits remind me, experimentation is part of learning. It wouldnt be the same if Id just asked ChatGPT how to make sauce each time. Id be outsourcing my culinary creativity and losing the teachable moments that come from trial and error.
As New Yorker writer Joshua Rothman observed, [I]ts becoming clear that artificial intelligence can relieve us of the burden of trying and trying again. A.I. systems make it trivially easy to take an existing thing and ask for a new iteration.
AI can boost creative thinkingor eliminate it entirely. As the CEO of a company built on automation, Ive found that the key is to treat AI as a creative collaborator, not a replacement.
Here are a few rules of thumb for striking the right balance.
1. Use AI for idea generationnot final decisions
When generative AI became widely available, a lot of hype swirled around its implications. Professionals, from knowledge workers to authors and beyond, feared that AI would take their jobs. AI seemed destined to keep improving, outpacing the skills and intelligence of its human counterparts.
More recently, the technologys limits have become more apparent. While AI tools remain powerful workplace tools, their progress is unlikely to be endlessly exponential. As Cal Newport notes, critics argue that the technology is important but not poised to radically transform our lives; it may not get dramatically better than it is today.
AI wont write the next great novel or compose symphonies to rival Bach. But it is an excellent brainstorming partner. Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch, who tested ChatGPTs idea generation against college students, explained: Its cheap. Its fast. Its good. Whats not to be liked? Worst case is you reject all of the ideas and run with your own. But our research speaks strongly to the fact that your idea pool will get better.
Let AI tools like ChatGPT help you generate more, better ideas. Start with your own thoughts, and use AI to generate alternatives. Then, apply your own human judgment to refine and select the best path forward.
Treat prompts like a conversation, not a command
One of the strengths of generative AI tools like ChatGPT is their conversational nature. Think of your first prompt as an icebreakerits just there to get the dialogue started.
While I recommend being as specific as possible, that is, giving the tool enough context to generate strong, accurate replies, you can always refine as you go. To offer a visual, imagine your dialogue with AI as a funnel: wide at the top and narrowing as you move toward the bottom.
You might start by asking ChatGPT to generate ideas for a marketing campaign. Once it produces a list, ask it to refine those ideas for a specific target audiencesay, tech entrepreneurs in their 20s to 40s, or suburban parents.
Keep iterating until you land on the output that works best for you.
Create space for experimentation
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it certainly wont kill your company. In fact, a healthy sense of curiosity among employees will strengthen it. Research-backed benefits include boosted innovation, reduced group conflict, fewer decision-making errors, and improved communication.
While leaders often claim to value curiosity, they tend to stifle it, preferring that employees stay within the lines. Instead, leaders should give employees the freedom to explore. Build enough slack into their schedules so they can test and tinker with AI tools without the pressure to prove immediate ROI. Lead by example: Share your own experimentswhether its trying a new AI feature or recounting an automation gone awry. Getting it wrong can be valuable, too.
Ask for employee feedback to uncover what theyre curious about: new systems or tools theyd like to try, or better ways the company could operate. It might feel inefficient, like a misuse of employee time and effort, but in the AI era, staying competitive depends on curiosity and experimentation. Like a chef giving their team full access to the kitchen, leaders must create workplaces where both creativity and experimentation can thrive.
As we move into 2026, it’s time to examine the subtle behaviors that undermine our professional impact. As someone who works with mid- to senior-level leaders, I see and hear the ways in which communication behaviors and patterns get in their way. Small changes can create influential outcomes!
Here are three critical habits to eliminate if you want to project true confidence and gravitas.
Breaking these three habits isn’t about becoming someone you’re notit’s about removing the barriers between your capabilities and how others perceive them. True executive presence combines confident delivery with substantive content, and that starts with eliminating the small behaviors that undermine your authority.
1. Using Passive and Tentative Language
The Habit: Softening your statements with phrases like “I think maybe we could consider . . .” or “The report was completed by the team” instead of owning your ideas and actions.
Why It Matters: Tentative language signals uncertainty, even when you’re confident in your position. Passive voice distances you from your accomplishments and makes your contributions invisible.
Break It: Replace hedging language with direct statements. Say “I recommend this strategy” instead of “I think this could work.” Use active voice: “I led the initiative” rather than “The initiative was led.” This shift isn’t about arroganceit’s about clarity and ownership.
2. Relying on Verbal Fillers and Rushed Responses
The Habit: Punctuating your speech with “uh,” “um,” “like,” and “you know,” or immediately jumping to answer questions without pausing to think.
Why It Matters: Verbal fillers make you appear unprepared or nervous, undermining your credibility. Rushing to respond can make you seem reactive rather than thoughtful, and it robs you of the power that silence provides.
Break It: Practice embracing pauses. When asked a question, take a breath before respondingthis demonstrates that you’re considering the question seriously. During presentations, pause after making an important point. That brief silence creates emphasis and gives your audience time to absorb what you’ve said. The discomfort you feel in silence is temporary; the authority you project is lasting.
3. Neglecting Nonverbal Communication
The Habit: Being unaware of how you enter spaces, sit, stand, gesture, or control your facial expressionsessentially letting your body language happen unconsciously.
Why It Matters: Your body speaks before you do. How you walk into a room, whether you slouch in your chair, fidget during difficult conversations, or fail to make appropriate eye contact all send powerful messages about your confidence and composure. You can have brilliant ideas, but if your nonverbal cues signal discomfort or uncertainty, your message loses impact.
Break It: Become intentional about your physical presence. Notice how you enter meetingswalk with purpose, not hurried but not hesitant. Pay attention to your posture when sitting or standing; it should convey engagement and authority. Use gestures deliberately to reinforce your message rather than as nervous habits. Master your facial expressions so they remain appropriate and controlled even under pressure. Practice using space confidently, whether at a conference table or presenting to a group.
The Path Forward
Executive presence develops continuously throughout your career. Each email you send, every videoconference you lead, and all the presentations you deliver are opportunities to practice these principles. Focus on crafting messages that are organized, clear, concise, audience-centered, and compelling. Master your vocal deliverytone, volume, pitch, articulation, and pacing all add meaning to your words.
Remember: confidence can be quiet. It’s not about being the loudest voice in the room, but about projecting self-assurance, composure, and poise. Gravitas comes from conveying dignity and substance, not from dominating every conversation.
As you break these three habits in 2026, you’ll find that your voice carries more weight, your ideas gain traction more easily, and your leadership presence strengthens naturally. The goal isn’t perfectionit’s progress toward communicating with the clarity and conviction that marks an effective leader.
From greater flexibility to a sense of ownership and the hope of financial gain, solopreneurship feels like the new American dream. However, there’s a hidden cost to that dream that has nothing to do with the unending hustle that comes with being both a business owner and that business’s sole employee. It’s the undeniable cost to the planet.
In 2025, about 41 million businesses in the U.S. were run by a sole individual who is both its owner and only employee. As AI allows for solopreneurs to automate a growing number of tasks, the technology is enabling small businessesfrom gigs like content creation to event planner or even niche work like dog grooming or jewelry making, and moreto absolutely thrive with a team of only one. Therefore, while an individual with an idea may have needed an entire team to turn that idea into real cash flow in the past, it’s now completely feasible (and massively popular) to do so with the help of AI.
That’s true for solopreneur Dan Mazei, who was formerly communications and marketing leader for organizations like Reebok, Tinder, Activision Blizzard, and Ford, and a long-time agency leader for major clients like Nintendo and Unilever. Now, Mazei runs his own business as the founder and principal of All Tangled Roots, a marketing consultancy for brands, with the help of AI. Mazei tells Fast Company that AI is crucial to his business model, as it can “level the playing field for a solo service provider against a sea of heavily staffed agencies” that are doing the same kind of work.
That same is true for Samantha Levitin, a solopreneur and founder of Levitin Collective, a boutique PR firm working across lifestyle, wellness, hospitality, and consumer brands, in NYC. (She’s also a new mom to a 15-month-old baby.) Levitin says that AI enables her to manage the dreaded mental load that comes with running a business while being a parent. “Starting my own firm meant knowing Id be doing everything myself, and AI helped fill gaps that would normally require a small team, which I was used to,” Levitin says.
The solopreneur adds that she began building her business while on maternity leave, and, ultimately, it’s given her both “flexibility and balance.” She says, “I intentionally designed the firm to be small . . . and AI gives me back time and mental space so I can focus on what matters most in my field: creative thinking, relationship building, and hands-on client work.”
Still, we can’t talk about AI’s incredible power to turn dreams into reality without talking about the cost. While there are many challenges that may come from running a business made up of onesuch as working around the clock, or the significant financial risksthere are also clear environmental costs which are largely being ignored.
According to a 2024 MIT report on the environmental impact of AI, the energy demands that come from both training and using AI are massive and growing all the time. In North America, electricity requirements increased from 2,688 megawatts at the end of 2022 to 5,341 megawatts by the following year, mostly due to the growing demand for generative AI. And experts worry we simply aren’t concerned enough about that stark reality.
Noman Bashir, lead author of the environmental impact paper, and a Computing and Climate Impact Fellow at MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) and a postdoc in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), says, per MIT, that the impact is massive but “everyday user doesnt think too much about that.” According to Bashir, the reason is two-fold. The ease of use of generative AI interfaces and the lack of information about the environmental impacts of my actions means that, as a user, I dont have much incentive to cut back on my use of generative AI,” Bashir explains.
Jonathan Schaeffer, an AI researcher and CEO of a startup called Kind, agrees. Schaefer tells Fast Company that not enough attention is being paid to the hidden environmental costs of the widespread technology. AI tools can significantly increase the energy consumption involved, particularly from the massive data centers required to support cloud-based AI systems, the CEO explains. These data centers, housing thousands of servers running AI models, consume large amounts of electricity, much of which is still sourced from nonrenewable resources, contributing significantly to carbon emissions.
Schaefer adds that the technology also comes with a hidden financial cost that most people dont realize they may end up paying for themselves. In many jurisdictions, the capacity to feed these data centers contributes to a significant increase in the price of electricity, a cost that is often passed on to consumers.
Moreover, the CEO says that data centers require more than energy to operate, but “they also need cooling systems to prevent overheating” which would increase their environmental footprint further. According to Bloomberg, which analyzed data from DC Byte, electricity costs in areas located near significant data center activity rose 267% over a month when compared to data from five years earlier.
Kevin Gast, cofounder and CEO of VVater, a next-generation water treatment company dedicated to using advanced technologies to address global water challenges, is mostly concerned with the pace at which AI is moving. “When you multiply millions of daily AI interactions across businesses worldwide, you’re looking at a significant environmental load that most people simply aren’t aware of,” Gast tells Fast Company. “Data centers are already using billions of gallons (of water) annually, and as AI becomes more embedded in everyday business operations, that demand is only accelerating. We’re seeing increased pressure on freshwater resources in certain regions, especially where facilities overlap with areas already managing water.” According to a 2025 global study from Arizona State University, freshwater resources have been drying up since 2002 at an unprecedented rate.
On the bright side, Gast says solutions are being developed almost as quickly. “We’re seeing serious investment in closed-loop water recycling systems, advanced treatment technologies, and strategic facility placement in regions with better water availability and natural cooling climates.” He continues, The challenge now is accelerating that progress to keep pace with how quickly AI is being adopted across every sector.”
While more and more individuals are certainly turning to AI to run their businesses, that doesn’t mean they aren’t all totally in the dark about its impact. Mazei says that, on a human level, he’s cautious of big tech’s “overreach”, such as “potentially integrating someone else̵s code into our most personal choices.” Still, the solopreneur credits the technology with helping him “choose a professional path that he didn’t believe was viable just a few short years ago.”
As the cost of living continues to soar, and even talented and driven professionals struggle to find well-paying jobs, solopreneurship may find that putting aside their concern for the environment is a small price to pay for making good on the American dream that feels otherwise hard to come by.
In a powerful speech before the Minneapolis City Council, a nurse broke down as she shed light on the fear so many in her profession are feeling as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have stormed the city.
“In Minneapolis, I feel like I’m a sitting duck,” the speaker began in a January 15 address. “I don’t feel safe at home. I don’t feel safe at work. Kids aren’t safe at school,” she said through sobs. “I was born in Minneapolis and I am scared out of my mind because I have skin that is not white and that is not fair.”
The speaker went on to contend that ICE’s presence and the aggressive tactics agents have increasingly been using has created a “public health emergency” in the city. She said nurses now fear for their own safety and the safety of their patients of color, many of whom may be too afraid to leave home and seek medical help when they need it, regardless of their immigration status.
“What happens when ICE comes into our hospitals?” she said. “Where is our moral code?”
The speech was delivered a week after Renee Nicole Good, an American citizen and mother of three, was shot and killed by an ICE agent in her own Minneapolis neighborhood. Since Good’s death, ICE’s actions have seemed to grow even more extreme. Just hours after the killing, reports of agents tear-gassing students outside a school began circulating. Following the incident, Minneapolis Public Schools canceled classes for the rest of the week, citing safety concerns.
In another recent incident, ICE agents dragged multiple workers out of a Target store. Videos of the incident have been circulating online, prompting outrage.
But even as workplaces are being disrupted by violent altercations at the hands of immigration enforcement agents and employees are left feeling unsafe at work (or are too afraid to go to work at all), major companies are remaining silent. Fast Company reached out to Target, General Mills, Best Buy, Carhartt, and others to find out their stance on ICE’s presence, yet not a single business responded.
Fear is impacting a number of business sectors, particularly those that employ a large number of undocumented individuals, including restaurants, farming, and construction. On January 19, Minnesota state Senator Aric Putnam was joined by agriculture leaders at a press conference to discuss the growing fears. Putnam said both documented and undocumented people are staying home because they are too terrified to go to work.
“People are genuinely experiencing this anxiety and this fear. This is about fear,” Putnam said. “Real cops don’t wear masks. That’s just the way it works.”
Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, warned that deportation fears are bound to impact food deliveries. “We work with restaurants in the Minneapolis area and other parts of the state,” he said. “They’re closing because their workers, even though they’re legal, they’re afraid to go out of their house. They’re afraid to go to work.”
While the economic toll on Minnesota isn’t yet known, when ICE showed up on farms in California, the impact was crushing. A 2025 case study looking at the economic impact of ICE on California’s agricultural industry estimated that it drove a crop loss of anywhere from $3 billion to $7 billion and a 5% to 12% increase in the price of produce.
Likewise, according to recent reporting from The Minnesota Star Tribune, roughly 80% of immigrant-owned businesses along main drags in both Minneapolis and St. Paul had closed as of January 13 as employees stayed home in droves. GoFundMe pages are popping up to support employees and their families.
Right before Christmas, a lot of businesses were telling us sales were down 50%, 70%, or 80%,” Allison Sharkey, president of Lake Street Council, told the outlet. “Now this week? For a lot of business, its down to zero.
Spend an hour talking to 37signals CEO Jason Fried, and youll find yourself drawn into his fixation on three frustrating facts about productivity tools today:
They’re boring.
They’re complicated.
They’re overpacked with overhyped AI features that fail to do what they promise and end up providing little in the way of practical value.
Those same realities are the reason Fried decided to launch Fizzya new app that aims to reinvent organization software by undoing everything that’s happened to it over the past several years.
Challenging current standards is nothing new to 37signals, of course. Fried and his fellow face-of-the-company David Heinemeier Hansson have made a name for themselves as gadflies who aren’t afraid to take on conventional wisdom and criticize both Big Tech tendencies and general workplace politics across any and all mediums.
Their software, too, has often hinted at a decidedly rebellious streak that suggests the way we’ve been trained to do things is ripe for rethinkingsomething that’s apparent both with the company’s venerable project management product Basecamp and with its more recent email service Hey, which emphasizes privacy and control to give Gmail a run for its money.
Take a peek at the Fizzy homepage, and you’ll instantly see a sense of that same sort of us-against-them mentality in this newest projectwith pointed jabs at the current states of Trello, Jira, Asana, and even GitHub Issues.
On the surface, interestingly enough, Fizzy actually seems a lot like Trellothe kanban-style cards-and-boards app that’s been through pivot after pivot and, in many views beyond just 37signals’ own assertions, gotten so bogged down in superfluous features that it’s lost sight of why people once loved it.
Fizzy, then, is “a return to the fundamentals,” Fried says”with some changes.” And, fitting with the at-times contrarian philosophy of 37signals, the entire project started on a whim.
Fizzy’s bubbled-up beginnings
Two years ago, Fried and his team were sitting around at a company meetup and talking about bugsthe buzzing, leg-biting variety, not the virtual ones we sometimes see in software.
“Someone said something about bugs hitting a windshield,” Fried recalls. “And I said, ‘Waitthat’s interesting.'”
Fried had been wanting to create a simple app for tracking software bugs for ages, but he’d never quite landed on the right approach or angle to make it unique. The visual of literal insects splatting onto a windshield struck him as the metaphor he’d been missing.
“The [computer] screen would be a windshield, with the splatters all over itand the splatters would be like bugs,” he explains. “Bigger splats would be like bigger issues, and smaller splats would be smaller issues.”
This led to the creation of an internal tool called, fittingly enough, Splat. Eventually, the bugs-on-a-windshield concept evolved into bubbles representing different bugsbubbles that, notably, looked fizzyand from there, the interface became a simpler and less cartoony series of boards and cards.
And then, another light bulb went off in Fried’s busy brain.
Basecamp has had a feature in it called Card Tables for a while nowessentially a form of Trello-like kanban boards for organizing info within the service. The same sort of setup exists as a feature or an optional view in lots of other productivity suites, too, ranging from Notion to ClickUp, Asana, Any.do, and beyond.
But Fried suddenly realized that with Trello’s seemingly endless identity crisis, no simple, stand-alone option for easy kanban-style organization existed as a de facto default anymore. And while that sort of interface worked well as one feature within a broader service like Basecampas well as an element in Jira, Asana, and the other productivity tools Fizzys web marketing calls out as having grown stale and sluggishthere was also a demand for it to be its own isolated entity, without an entire ecosystem of features around it.
“I’ve always been fanatically obsessed with ‘what’s the simplest good version of this idea,'” Fried says. “We didn’t build this to compete with anybody. . . . We build things that we want to exist.”
And thus, Fizzy was borna freemium and open source app that’s “Kanban as it should be,” as its homepage declares, and not (ahem) “as it has been.”
The Fizzy kanban experience
When you first sign into Fizzy and start a new board, you’re greeted with three default columns: “Not Now,” “Maybe,” and “Done.” And, interestingly, only one of those columns is open and fully visible at a time.
Every Fizzy board begins with the same three columns, two of which are collapsed at any given time.
You can always add more columns beyond those, of course, but that opening trio is intended to serve as a simple starting point and way to remain focusedwith an approach that Fried believes will work for a surprising number of organizational needs.
That’s the main Fizzy framework. Within any column in any board, then, you can create a card and fill it in with any manner of text, lists, or images. You might create cards to track bugs, for instance, following Fizzy’s original vision. Or you might use cards to represent work tasks, household chores, customer feedbackalmost anything imaginable.
A Fizzy card is a flexible canvas for practically any kind of information.
From there, you can easily move cards between columns or even to different boards to represent their status at any given moment. You can add steps, leave comments, and assign cards to collaborators as well as place tags on cards to group related items together. And you can pin cards, too, to put them in an easily visible stack in the lower-left corner of the screena possibility I’ve found myself especially enamored with as I’ve explored Fizzy and figured out how it might work for me.
Another particularly fun and helpful touch is Fizzy’s feature for labeling a card as urgent: You just click a ticket icon in the card’s corner, and that turns it into a “Golden Ticket”which causes the card to both appear golden in color and move to the top of its column.
One struggle I’ve absolutely experienced with Trello and other organizational apps is what I think of as “the graveyard problem,” or the tendency to start seeing these systems as dumping grounds for info that you never end up revisiting. Fizzy helps you avoid that dump-and-jump mentality by automatically moving any card you create into the “Not Now” column if there’s no activity on it after 30 daysthough you can opt to change that timing on an account-wide basis or specifically for any individual board.
“The idea [is] that you cannot just keep adding things that you’re never going to do,” Fried says. “These things are ephemeral. You don’t get to just have something on a list forever.”
Fizzy doesn’t want you to keep cards around forever, and it actively works to help you avoid it.
That’s all well and good, and it helps Fizzy feel like a fresher version of a familiar environment. What’s most striking about using the app, though, is its simplicityfor better or, sometimes, for worseand, alongside that, its unabashed boldness in what it wants to be.
The pros and cons of simplicity
More than anything, what I noticed within seconds of trying Fizzy was the absence of overwhelming menus, buried options, and integrations I never asked for. At the same time, I was struck by the presence of a distinctive design and sense of whimsy that’s largely faded from the greater software universe.
That feeling is palpable in everything from Fizzy’s large, playful fonts to the splashes of color throughout its interfaceall subtle-seeming touches on paper but noticeable contrasts in practice, coming from the largely gray-on-gray world that’s become commonplace in what Fried considers the “Notionization” of software design.
“Software’s become boringcorporate,” he says. “It’s lost a lot of personality over the years. We wanted to bring some of that back in.”
Design aside, the relatively small number of feature-oriented bells and whistles acts as both an asset and a liability for Fizzy, especially now in its early form. As someone who spends hours a week inside Trello, not having Fizzy feel slow and bloated and larded up with awkwardly tacked-on options really is refreshing. But at the same time, for me, there are certain elements missing that make Fizzy difficult to fully embrace.
To wit: At this point, I use Trello primarly for organizing my writingand that means I’m constantly saving stuff I see on the web for later revisiting. I rely heavily on both an unofficial Trello browser extension and the official Trello mobile app for being able to beam anything I see on any device I’m using into a specific Trello spot with a single swift click on my computer or a couple quick taps on my phone. It’s integral to my workflow.
Fizzy, as of this moment, exists only as a progressive web appsomething you install from your browser, without any platform-native form. And for the most part, that approach works admirably. But when it comes to a use case like mine, where I need a native presence that makes link-saving easy, it’s a limitation that would keep me from being able to leap to Fizzy today.
Weighing out cases like that and deciding what’s worth adding versus when it’s more important to prioritize the product’s purity is high on Fried’s mind, particularly as someone who’s watched so many other apps get weighted down, overly complicated, and increasingly unpleasant to use over time.
“Software slides downhillthat’s how it evolves, unfortunately,” he says. “What was once good is now complicated. It’s now harder than it used to be and unnecessarily so, for most cases.”
Fried readily concedes that there are always instances where someone needs something more in a piece of software. For what it’s worth, he says his team would like to make mobile apps for Fizzy eventually. (37signals offers a full complement of native versions of Basecamp and Hey.) And he seemed intrigued by my browser extension use case as well.
But by failing to maintain a strong vision for what a product should and shouldn’t beand what specific needs it should and, equally important, shouldn’t servean app can try to be everything for everyone and end up being nothing of consequence for anyone.
“What ends up happening is . . . almost everyone lose[s] the charm in the beauty of the simple thing, argues Fried.
AI, source code, and beyond
One feature I’ve found myself pleased not to find in Fizzy is any manner of AIas in, the large-language-model-powered generative-AI fiddliness that’s being crammed into every nook and cranny of so many other services and serving as the entire raison d’tre for countless new tools.
Fried says his team experimented with bringing AI into Fizzy in a few different forms but ultimately determined it wasn’t useful enoughand good enough, for nowto release.
“When it exists, people tend to lean on it in a way where it’s considered to be the be-all, end-all truth,” he says. “In our testing, it was not that at all. It was a bit of a mirage.”
One early experiment involved a system that’d let you ask your account questions in natural language and receive summarized info about your data. Given how new the product was, though, 37signals found it was often failing to provide any meaningful insightsand decided not to present an opportunity for users to ask questions that the service couldn’t effectively answer.
Another AI experiment offered a weekly newsletter-style overview of all the activity across your Fizzy boards, with five headlines of things that happened in the previous week. Fried says it was fine, but he found that reading it didn’t make him feel any more informedso the feature didn’t really need to exist, unless it was there solely for buzzword bragging.
“I don’t want to put software out in the world that’s checking a box if it’s not really doing its job,” he says.
To be clear, Fried doesn’t see his present stance on AI within Fizzy to be any sort of dogma. If and when the technology serves a clear and effective goal with genuine practical benefit, he says, he’ll consider it. But until then, he sees no reason to indulge an industry obsession and add to the hype only to leave folks disappointed when they actually experience it.
Another area where Fizzy is breaking the productivity app mold is in 37signals’ decision to share the softwares source code, with the option for anyone to host it themselves and use itheck, even customize and modify itfor free. The only limitation, according to 37signals, is not being able to run it as a hosted commercial service for other users, a right the company reserves for itself.
If you use the app in its more standard 37signals-hosted setup, you can create up to 1,000 cards across 1GB of storage without having to paya threshold Fried expects will be more than enough for most people to embrace the service for years before having to shell out a dime. Once you cross the 1,000-card threshold, it costs $20 per month for unlimited cards and up to 5GB of storage, with additional space available for an extra fee.
Fried says there’s no sweeping strategic vision behind this or any grand plan for Fizzy to act as a gateway toward Basecamp or other 37signals products. It’s just an app he and his team wanted to see exist and so decided to create, as its own stand-alone thing, for anyone else who might benefit from using it.
“This is not going to be our breadwinner,” he says. “We’re at the point in our careers . . . [where] we can do stuff we just want to try to do because we think it’s the right thing.”
Fried even goes as far as to say that if current 37signals customers find they can accomplish everything they need with Fizzy and no longer require the much more ambitious Basecamp subscription, he considers that a company win. In fact, he says that’s happened numerous times alreadyand in each instance, he’s done nothing but celebrate it.
“If you don’t need [Basecamp], now we have something else for you,” he says.
More than anything, Fried’s hope is that Fizzy can not only serve its direct users but also serve the tech industry by setting an example ofand maybe even creating expectations forhow satisfying software can be when it deliberately tries to be different and doesn’t just blindly mimic trends.
“Our products don’t look like anybody else’s,” he says. “They don’t work like anybody else’s. And I’d like to see more companies do that versus just follow the established patterns.”
