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A new short film premiered at SXSW over the weekend, written and directed by Jeff Nichols (Mud, The Bikeriders) starring Oscar nominee Michael Shannon, Oscar-winning singer/songwriter Ryan Bingham, Hassie Harrison, and narrated by Oscar winner Sissy Spacek. Love Letter to Texas is a 12-minute story of personal reinvention, and a beautiful visual tribute to some of the Lone Star states most photogenic and iconic backdrops in film history. Its also Tecovas ad, bankrolled and produced by the Western apparel and cowboy boot brand. Founded in 2015, Tecovas is a new brand in a category steeped in heritage. It began as the Warby Parker of Boots but has since opened 56 stores around the U.S., including in New York City and Boston. In 2024 the company surpassed $250 million in revenue, and expected to pass the $300 million mark in 2025. Tecovas vice-president of brand marketing Samantha Fodrowski says Love Letter to Texas represents the brands ambition to show people it puts the same amount of care and attention to detail into its content as it does its cowboy boots. We want to be known as a brand that really is investing in craft, says Fodrowski. If that’s something that people start to recognize and associate with Tecovas, that’s a win for us. It has nothing to do with selling products. It’s about how we’re making that first introduction. If this film is any indication, itll be a helluva ride. Love Letter High profile brand entertainment has hit the mainstream, with projects like the unprecedented deal struck between AB InBev and Netflix, WhatsApp working with Modern Arts on a Netflix doc about the Mercedes F1 team, to Dicks Sporting Goods formally establishing an internal entertainment studio. But smaller brands, like Huckberry, are also making shrewd investments in longer form content. It really should come as no surprise that Tecovas is investing in longer form brand content, considering it brought on Scott Ballew as its vice-president of creative in 2024, after Ballew led Yetis film and content work for more than a decade. His first piece of work for Tecovas was True West, a brand manifesto of sorts, both visually and in its script. Directed by Ballew, narrator artist Terry Allen says, The true west has no fences. There’s an edge, but you got to find it. As artful shots of open spaces, horses, and running trains, which Ballew describes as a Texas fever dream, it ends with Allen saying, Now, we might not need more people in the West, but would it hurt to have a little more west in the people?” The spot ran in limited markets over 2025, but the brand then decided to put it on Peacock for the Super Bowl this year. Ballew says that the idea for Love Letter came about as a result of feeling they left some meat on the bone and had more to show and tell about how the brand feels about its home state. Jeff [Nichols] came up with the idea of taking some of these scenes, characters, storylines and locations, and take inspiration from this handful of films and make our own story out of it,” says Ballew. Scenes for the film were deliberately shot at locations featured in iconic Texas-shot movies like There Will Be Blood, Giant, No Country for Old Men, and Paris, Texas. While Ballews work at Yeti helped popularize brands creating character-driven documentary content, he sees an opportunity for Tecovas to zag. Now everyone has their own little documentary thing going, which makes none of them feel important or unique or original, says Ballew. So being able to cast and write a script and scout and be really specific with the style and the look and the pace, is a new way to find your own thumbprint.” Building the roots Too often an investment like this in longer form brand entertainment can be seen as self-indulgent for a brand. But CEO David Lafitte sees it as part of a much bigger picture. He says that the role of a cinematic project like Love Letter to Texas is to provide the essential “heavy lifting” of brand building that prevents a company from getting trapped in a cycle of purely transactional marketing. “If you dont do the heavy lifting of brand awareness and brand building, the lower funnel performance marketing conversion becomes a merry-go-round thats hard to get off of, says Lafitte. By focusing on what Lafitte says is a “North Star” of authentic storytelling, the brand is attracting a more engaged consumer. This ultimately boosts efficiency at the lower funnel because it builds an emotional connection that “qualified traffic” responds to more effectively than repetitive conversion ads. Fodrowski says projects like this become a shorthand for people to know who the brand is and its perspective. We’re coming into this space as a newer brand in a craft that’s been around for over a hundred years, she says. And so we have to have our own take on what that looks like. We talk a lot at Tecovas about the idea of honoring the West and crafting its future. This really speaks to that. Ballew is the first to say hes much more of a creative lens than a marketer. He knows that films like this arent for results next week, next quarter or even next year. He likens a brand to a growing tree. When a company grows quickly and starts developing a cult following, and there’s this need to grow and grow and sell and sell, the tree gets really top heavy and all these things like Instagram and TikTok ads are adding leaves, and making the tree fuller, he says. And I’ve always felt like my job is to build the roots deeper so that the tree lasts a long time. So these projects that I’m interested in are root builders to keep the foundation steady. The film will launch on Tecovas social and digital channels on April 7th, and the brand plans to hold screenings at its stores across the country. Giddyup.
Category:
E-Commerce
A middle manager sits in a 1:1 with their boss. They nod along to strategic priorities they already know are unrealistic. The deadlines dont match the staffing plan. The new initiative competes with the last top priority. The team is already stretched thin. But the manager doesnt say itnot plainlybecause honesty can be misread as incompetence, negativity, or a lack of readiness for the next level. Two hours later, that same manager is in a team meeting projecting confidence about those same priorities. They translate contradictions into something coherent, reassure direct reports who are already anxious, and say, Well figure it out, while privately wondering how. Later, at lunch with peers, they compare notes on workload and shifting expectations. Everyone laughs in that awkward were fine way. No one admits theyre drowningbecause even peer relationships can feel political when resources are scarce. Heres the question were not asking: Who can middle managers actually be honest with? In too many organizations, the answer is: no one. Thats not a personality problem or a resilience issue. Its a design issueone I call Organizational Latchkey Syndrome: a workplace reality where middle managers are handed responsibility and expected to figure it out with limited authority, limited support, and limited psychological safety. As a licensed psychotherapist, I see this pattern constantly: organizations demanding emotional intelligence from people inside emotionally unintelligent systems. Its like asking someone to practice healthy attachment in a relationship that punishes vulnerability. And because middle managers are the emotional and relational bridge between strategy and execution, Organizational Latchkey Syndrome doesnt just burn people out. It quietly breaks culture. Why middle managers cant be safe in any direction Middle managers are often told they need more EQmore empathy, better communication, stronger coaching skills. And yes, EQ matters. But middle management already demands a high level of emotional intelligence. The problem is that many organizations ask for high-EQ performance from managers while building systems that make it risky to tell the truth. This is a high-EQ role inside a low-EQ system. Upward: They perform competence Safety is conditional. You can raise concerns, but only if theyre packaged correctly. You can push back, but only if you already have political capital. You can speak candidly, but only if you can guarantee a solution. In many work cultures, the emotional subtext of leadership is: Bring answers, not complexity. So managers learn to manage impressions instead of surfacing realityand self-protection replaces reflection. Downward: They perform steadiness Middle managers are expected to provide stability for their teamsespecially during change. Theyre asked to maintain morale, protect psychological safety, coach performance, and hold space for stress. But many managers dont have full information, which means theyre asked to create clarity they dont possess. So they buffer uncertainty, absorb pressure, and make it make sense. Thats leadershipand its costly. Emotional labor without recovery becomes emotional depletion. Sideways: They manage scarcity In a healthy organization, peers are where managers can exhale. In many organizations, scarcity activates competition. When budget, headcount, or executive attention is scarce, peer relationships become strategic. Managers perform camaraderie while privately feeling isolated. Everyone says theyre busy, but no one says, Im not okay. Put those directions together and you get the most under-acknowledged reality of modern middle management: they are organizationally isolated in the role designed to connect everyone else. Organizational Latchkey Syndrome is an execution problem If we treat middle management isolation as a wellness issue, well respond with wellness solutions: a workshop, a coaching module, a reminder to take PTO, encouragement to set boundaries. Those supports can help individuals. They dont fix the system. When people feel psychologically unsafe, they shift into self-protective mode. They share less, ask less, challenge less. And when your middle layer goes into self-protective mode, the organization pays the price. Heres what breaks: 1) Feedback stops traveling upward. When managers cant be honest about capacity, risk, or contradictions, senior leaders make decisions on partial information. Risks surface late. Surprises multiply. 2) Innovation stalls. You cant access your most creative, strategic thinking in survival mode. And managers cant model psychological safety they dont experience, so teams learn to keep their heads down. 3) Execution quietly breaks. A manager gets handed three top priorities, each requiring full-time focus. They know the team can realistically handle one, maybe two. So they say well figure it out and watch their team burn out trying to deliver the impossible. Execution erodes in missed deadlines, quality slips, and people quietly opting out. As one reader put it in response to my last article: being in the middlemanaging up, down, and sidewayscan make psychological safety nearly impossible when each side has competing priorities that weigh you down. That isolation isnt a side effect. Its a design flaw. What manager-safe spaces actually look like If middle managers are isolated by design, then support has to be intentionalnot assumed. A manager-safe space is any structure where managers can tell the truth early without it becoming a performance liability. Heres what works in practice: 1) Peer cohorts that are truly confidential. Same-level managers (not direct competitors), clear confidentiality norms, a consistent rhythm, and facilitation. The goal is simple: a place to say, I dont know, before that becomes burnoutor resignation. 2) External coaching that doesnt report back. A protected space to process the role and name what cant be said inside the normal system. If coaching feeds into evaluation or succession planning, it stops being safe. 3) Executive sponsorship that actually covers them. Cover means a senior leader who protects the messenger, backs early risk-flagging, and names tradeoffs publicly so managers arent left absorbing the fallout alone. 4) Clarity on decision rights. If managers dont have authority, stop evaluating them as if they do. Define what they own, what they influence, what requires escalationand commit to not second-guessing decisions after the fact. The litmus test Can your middle managers tell the truth early without consequences? Can they say This isnt resourced, I need help, or I dont agreeand still feel trusted afterward? If the answer is no, you dont have a training problem. You have a design problem. Unil middle managers have real coverclarity, capacity, and communitymany will keep doing what latchkey kids do best: theyll figure it out alone. This is Organizational Latchkey Syndrome in full effect. And its entirely fixable.But survival shouldnt be the standard for your culture. And it cant be the foundation for your leadership pipeline. The question isnt whether theyre resilient enough to keep going. The question is: how much longer can they sustain it? And what will it cost your organization when they cant?
Category:
E-Commerce
Spend any time on social media, and its only a matter of time before one genre of content starts hitting your timeline: Someone telling you they make a fortune by doing something that sounds absurdly easy. (And that you can, too.) Maybe they (kind of) show you how to design and sell your own sweatshirts or notebooks, a venture that supposedly earns them five figures a month. Or maybe they tell you about how they started a $100,000 business with no inventory. Whatever the enticing story is, the ending is usually the same: they offer to teach you how to do the same. And who would say no to easy money? Get-rich-quick how-tos have existed foreverand more recently, side hustles have become a hallmark of American existence. According to SurveyMonkeys 2025 Workplace Culture and Trends survey, 72% of U.S. workers either already have a side gig or are considering picking one up. That might explain why the past few years have flooded platforms like Instagram and TikTok with get-rich-quick guides, many of which seem to carry nearly identical talking points. These social media solopreneurs supposedly make incredible money by working only two to three hours a day, and theyre generous enough to share their wisdom with you. But how is anyone supposed to separate the legitimate techniques from the scams and the flops? Enter: the side hustle reviewer. A TRY GUY FOR SIDE GIGS The stated purpose of side-hustle review accounts is simple: they test out money-making schemes so you dont have to. The people behind them are basically business guinea pigs who flip phones on Facebook marketplace and design T shirts that are print-on-demand (in which a third party creates the shirts the side hustlers design after a customer makes the purchase) on platforms like Redbubble and Shopifyall to see if they can actually make a buck. Other side hustles could include posting product videos on Amazon, or starting a newsletter. Often, theyll break down how much money they made, and sometimes, theyll even walk you through the fine print of the trade. This might sound altruistic on its face, and it can be. But in a way, its also its own kind of side hustleone that, like all the others, comes with its own business incentives. Few people know this better than Ryan, the 40-year-old tech worker behind Side Hustle Review. (He keeps his surname private to protect his full-time job.) Thanks to his 229,500 followers on TikTok and 473,000 on Instagram, Ryan says that sometimes, side-hustle platforms approach him with a simple offer: if he promotes their ecosystem, theyll give him a cut of every paid sign-up he generates. Unfortunately, he adds, many of these platforms take would-be hustlers money without ever actually making money for them. In light of these offers, Ryan openly admits he could start an evil arc, exploiting viewer trust for personal gain by endorsing bogus money-making platforms. I’m not saying I would, he says, but the fact that that could happen makes me go, I do have something very precious here. Thats why he always turns these offers down. Its not just sketchy courses, either. When asked to name the weirdest side hustle hes ever tried, Ryan dished on one he actually hasnt tried: selling images of his feet. (Although hes never uploaded a foot photo himself, he has received emails from less-than-ethical platforms asking him to share an affiliate link with his users in exchange for a cut of their sign-up fees.) [Users] pay the money to post their feet pictures thinking they’re going to make the money back, and they never do, he says. At the same time, some of the ideas floating around on the internet are totally legitimate. SEPARATING WHEAT FROM CHAFF The demand for the kind of service Ryan and other side-hustle reviewers provide is clearly there. The internet is rife with online courses and guides that claim to explain how to set up various businesses in exchange for a few hundred (or thousand) dollars. Ryan says he receives 80 to 90 DMs per day from viewers who want him to review this or that course, which is part of why hes begun work on a site called review.courses. He hopes the site could grow into a sort of Yelp! for side hustles, where users can post their own reviews. As Ryan points out, the price tags some courses carry are incredibly high, especially for a product with no real regulatory body. Some can range from $5,000 to $8,000. When you go to buy a $2,000 laptop, how many reviews do you watch? Ryan asks. Ten, 15, 20 before you make your purchase? None of this exists for courses that teach you how to operate an online side hustle, and the ones that tend to go viral the fastest offer people what they most want: easy money. Some of these courses are complete cash grabs, Ryan saysthey could be extremely vague, AI-generated, or copied straight from a guide the creator themselves previously purchased from someone else. Once you buy the thing, it’s trash course, trash content. WHEN SIDE HUSTLE REVIEWING BECOMES THE SIDE HUSTLE With the right strategy, Ryan says, you can make good money by creating, say, a print-on-demand T-shirt empire. Same goes for dropshipping, where you sell products without any actual inventory by purchasing the items from a third party after someone hits Place Order. When asked which side hustles viability actually surprised him, Ryan called out user-generated content: brand-related media created by social media users instead of the companies themselves. This could include product review videos, including Amazon on-site videos (product videos that anyone can post onto product pages in exchange for a cut of the commission if a customer makes a purchase after watching). Ryan was also pleasantly shocked by how easily he found success creating a newsletter, a scheme hed thought for sure must be a scam. I get a 40% open rate, he says with audible surprise. I guess people do want more emails. And yet, it turns out that reviewing side hustles is more profitable than the hustles themselves. While Ryan cited $5,000 in gross revenue from testing in 2024, he made $35,000 from Side Hustle Review. That said, 90% of the latter income came from sponsorships, a revenue stream hes since ended to preserve editorial independence and trust. I find every sponsor comes to me with desired sales outcomes, he says, which really easily pushes me into becoming more of a salesperson. Given the direction corporate America has taken side hustles seem bound for continued expansion, and their growing popularity is an ever-present sign that many workers, mistrustful of large companies, are bracing for a big shift. While some side hustlers are hedging their bets against an uncertain economy, others might be working to compensate for the bite inflation has taken out of their pockets. And the rest, Ryan figures, probably just want some disposable income. Regardless of the reason, he says, I think were all feeling a bit of a squeeze.
Category:
E-Commerce
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