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Across the country, solopreneurship is taking off. People are starting their own, one-person businesses in droves. But when it comes to who is doing all of this solopreneuring (yes, it’s a word), one-woman businesses are gaining more traction. More women are starting their own businesses than everwhether solo or with employees. According to May 2025 data from small business platform Gusto, in the last five years, there’s been a huge leap in just how many women left their jobs to start their own business. In 2019, just 29% of new businesses were started by women. By 2024, that number was 49%. Moreover, over half (52%) of solopreneurs in the U.S. are now women. So, why are women so interested in steering their own ships? According to the May 2025 Gusto report, women crave a sense of autonomy. Almost three-quarters of women who started businesses in 2024 said they did so to have control over their own schedules. Likewise, 71% said they wanted to be their own boss. Meanwhile, men were more likely to cite earning more money as an incentive than women, with 35% pointing to increasing their income as a driving force compared to 29% of women. Female solopreneurs aren’t uninterested in money, but they do seem to deeply value making their own decisions at work. That’s true for Ana Beig, a mix-media artist and retreat host based in Austin, Texas. She tells Fast Company that autonomy isn’t just important. It’s “a condition for doing meaningful work.” For starters, she says that’s because her environment is deeply impactful when it comes to how she’s able to show up to create every day. She adds that while financial incentives do matter, they are far from what drives her to stay committed to her solo work. “I was drawn to solopreneurship because it lets me integrate work with life rather than constantly negotiating between the two. I can choose how I structure my time, how I engage emotionally, and what kinds of relationships I build through my work,” she explains. For Gigi Robison, a solopreneur with a chronic illness, who helps creators and thought leaders build brands, and was recently named one of Gen Z’s leading voices in the creator economy, becoming a solopreneur was all about having autonomy. She says having control over her work schedule enables to put her energy exactly where she needs to and to structure her day in a way that works for her life. It also enables her to redefine “success beyond someone elses version of productivity.” Before she started her own ventures, she says she didn’t feel as if her time was nearly as well-spent. “In a traditional job, I often felt like I was spending more time proving my value than actually creating value,” she explains. “In solopreneurship, I get to focus on outcomes, impact, and building something that lasts.” There are plenty of good reasons why so many people are starting their own businessesand doing it solo. But for women, who may be more heavily impacted by power dynamics at work, running your own operation may be a reprieve from office dynamics. According to one recent study from the University of Georgia, even women who were leaders felt constrained by gender dynamics at work. That means that womeneven those who successfully climbed the corporate laddermay still not feel a sense of autonomy. For womenwho earn less on the dollar than men, are promoted less often than men, and, according to new research, less interested in promotionssolopreneurship may offer a way to build a future without having to deal with the thorny gender dynamics of corporate life. For women solopreneurs, freedom is the real draw. And it’s one that’s catching on.
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E-Commerce
Look, we all know the drill by now: You type a question into the magic AI box, and the magic AI box spits out an answer that is usually pretty good, occasionally mind-blowing, and every once in a blue moon mind-blowingly bizarre. But if youre just treating Google Gemini like a glorified search bar, youre leaving a lot of utility on the table. Its sort of like buying a Swiss Army knife and only ever using the toothpick. If you want to move past the beginner phase and actually make Gemini work for you, here are four tricks that might not be immediately obvious but are surprisingly handy. Stop copy-pasting your own emails If youre trying to summarize a long email thread or find a specific document to pull data from, your first instinct is probably to open a new tab, find the email, copy the text, go back to Gemini, paste it in, and then ask your question. No need: Gemini has “Extensions” built right in. If you want to know when your flight is or summarize a Doc, just type @ in the prompt box. Youll see a menu pop up for Google Docs, Gmail, Drive, Maps, and other Google services. Select one, and say something like, “@Gmail find the email from Bob about the Q3 budget and summarize the main points.” It goes and finds the info, saving you from tab fatigue. If you need to turn on these extensions, heres how. The trust but verify button Use AI long enough and youll eventually come across “hallucinations,” which is a polite way of saying the AI just made something up because it sounded good. If youre using Gemini for important research, make sure to use the Double-check response feature, which can be found by clicking the three-dot icon at the bottom of a response. When you click it, Google runs a search to see if theres content on the web to substantiate what the AI just told you. A green highlight means Google found a search result that supports the statement, while an orange highlight means Google either found content that might contradict it, or it couldn’t find a match. Its not foolproof, but its a helpful extra step to take in order to make sure Googles info isnt too far off base. Tables and spreadsheets Were used to chatbots just . . . chatting. But if youre trying to make a decision, like comparing three different project management tools or deciding among five hotels for that Nashville trip, paragraphs of text are actually pretty annoying to parse. You can force Gemini to make information more digestible by telling it, for example: “Output this as a table comparing [Option A] and [Option B] based on price, reviews, and features.” Itll organize the messy data into a clean grid. And if youre feeling especially ambitious, youll notice an “Export to Sheets” icon underneath the table. One click creates a brand-new Google Sheet with all that data populated, formatted, and saved to your Google Drive. It turns cumbersome manual data entry into a single button press. Audio uploads Most people know Gemini can read text and look at pictures. But it also has ears. If you have a recording of a chaotic 45-minute meeting, a rambling lecture, or an interview you recorded on your phone, dont waste your time listening to it at 2x speed. You can upload audio files directly into the prompt bar. Just click the plus (+) icon, select Upload files, and drop in your audio clip. Then ask for what you need: “Summarize this meeting and extract the three action items assigned to me” or “Find the timestamp where they discuss the Q3 budget, for example. It doesnt just transcribe; Gemini “listens” to the context and turns an hour of audio into a 30-second read.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its been called the AI Super Bowl, thanks to Anthropic and OpenAI launching what (hopefully) might become AIs very own Cola Wars. Its been called the MAHA Bowl, thanks to brands like Novo Nordisk promoting Wegovy pills, while Ro and hims & hers are pitching telehealth services, Novartis got NFL tight ends to relax for prostate cancer checks, and pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim hypes kidney health. But we know it was the Super Bowl because mixed in amongst the trends were Sabrina Carpenters FrankenPringles man, both T-Mobile and Coinbase hit play on the Backstreet Boys, Oakley Meta made connected glasses look pretty good, and Manscaped somehow turned shaved body hair into emotionally-resonant characters. Another distinct sign this was as Super Bowl-y an ad game as any other Super Bowl? Celebrity directors. Taika Waititi took on Pepsi, Spike Jonze went full Italian variety show with Ben Stiller for Instacart, and Joseph Kosinski took all the innovation from his experiences at the helm of last years blockbuster F1 to get Kurt Russell to teach a guy how to ski. Oh, and somehow the award-winning director with the least commercial films had two spots in the gameYorgos Lathimos directed both Squarespace and Grubhub. Apple continued its complete reinvention of the halftime show, turning Bad Bunnys electric performance into a global event. We also saw a respectable number of hit songs get classically commercial reinterpretations. The aforementioned Backstreet Boys were joined by Andy Samberg becoming Meal Diamond for Hellmanns, Danny McBride and Keegan-Michael Key butchering Bon Jovi for State Farm, and both the NFL and Rocket crafting emotional gut punch moments by reinterpreting two songs from the Mr. Rogers catalog. Advertising! It was a feast for the sensesa cornucopia of commercial extravaganza. All with enough choices that everyone watching the game has their own favorites Including me! Here are my picks for the best ads from the 2026 Super Bowl. But first, the worst! Svedka Vodka Shake Your Bots Off Its apparently the first Super Bowl ad known to be produced primarily with AI. I never wouldve guessed This ad so bad Im not sure its fair to make fun of it, even if its somehow purposely awful. This is the kind of bad that should be taught in schools. It looks like it was made by Advertising 101 students in a rush. The AI angle is a gimmick for gimmicks sake, obviously, and doesn’t add anything to the ad at all except the robots’ nightmare fuel faces. What is so disappointing is that vodka has historically been a pretty great place for advertising. For anyone curious about the kind of creativity is possible in the vodka category, just watch Belvedere Vodkas 2022 spot Daniel Craig, directed by Waititi. Or Absoluts Vodka Movie from 2008, made by Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and Zach Galifianakis. Glorious. Svedka, conversely, serves up the advertising equivalent to the most vapid, superficial people youve ever seen in a club. A robot apocalypse as imagined by the Butabi brothers. OK, now lets get to the good stuff. Here are my Top 5 ads from this year… Budweiser “American Icons” As I said in my pregame brand power rankings, Bud was here for the crown. Created by BBDO New York, this takes Budweisers penchant for animal buddies to a new, non-partisan patriotic level. What could possibly be cuter than a horse and a yellow lab becoming best friends? Well, when its Buds 150th anniversary and Americas 250th, the answer, of course, is EAGLET. These are divisive times, with many states feeling less and less united with every news cycle. But here, just for a moment, Bud has served up something that we can all agree on. When that bald eagle spread its big grown wings for the first time from behind that leaping horse, red states, blue states, MAGA, Democratic Socialists, coastal elites, flyover rednecks, and everyone in between were able to say, Oh HELLS yeah. And in 2026, thats something to raise a glass to. Jeep Billy Bass Goes to the River What initially appears to be a pretty run-of-the-mill car ad takes a decidedly epic turn that transforms ths spot into a classic. If you listen to the Super Bowl episode of Fast Companys Brand New World podcast (do it!), youll know I spoke to the folks who made it, Mark Gross and Chad Broude, who are co-founders and co-chief creative officers of Chicago-based independent ad agency Highdive. They have hundreds of Super Bowl ads between them, and this latest piece of work shows the benefit of that experience. Highdive has become synonymous with great Super Bowl work since the 2020 Super Bowl and their fantastic Jeep commercial starring Bill Murray, reliving the classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day. The level of difficulty here is highno nostalgic soundtrack, no celebrity, no gimmick. Just a straight shot of good ol fashioned copywriting, perfect casting and comedic timing straight into the veins. Rocket x Redfin America Needs Neighbors Like You With the amount of money required just for Super Bowl air timea reported $8 million, plus a required additional matching ad buy across other NBC sports brands need to ensure they get your attention. This year, Rocket and Redfin did that by combining three things that would create a large Venn diagram of interest: Lady Gaga singing Mr. Rogerss Wont You Be My Neighbor?; a heartwarming commercial airing during the game; and, most crucially, giving viewers the chance to win a million-dollar house. But everything revolves around the spot, which was a well-crafted, heartwarming vibe shift from all the comedy and celebrities. I spoke to CMO Jonathan Mildenhall about this triple threat approach. “The only way to win at the Super Bowl is to win a disproportionate share of conversation pregame, as well as during game, and, increasingly, the progressive brands are talking about postgame conversation, Mildenhall says. For us the pregame was Lady Gaga behind the scenes, then during the game there is the spot, and were announcing the Great American home search for people to participate in over the days after the game. Hellmanns Meal Diamond The Boston Red Sox, and every karaoke bar on the planet, utilize Neil Diamonds Sweet Caroline effectively to bring a crowd together, put an arm around one another and scream SO GOOD! SO GOOD! SO GOOD! in unison. Here we get that 1969 hit remixed for mayo thanks to Andy Samberg as Meal Diamond. Of course this looks and sounds ridiculous. But it actually continues a strategy Hellmanns started in 2024. Mayo Cat starred Kate McKinnon and was able to put one word into the mouth of every cat: Mayyo. Its ambition to embed itself in our brains in such an insidious way that we hear it every time a cat meows was commendable. Clearly, that ambition remains. Now when youre making lunch, you may find yourself humming a familiar tune and whisper-crooning to yourself, Haaaam, touching ham.. until it hits a crescendo, Sweet Sandwich Time! Bah-bah-baaaaah. Bud Light Keg Bud Light was in a dark place not that long ago. It was unfairly punished for its one-off partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, which turned into an unlikely lightning rod for anti-trans weirdos and fans of Kid Rock. Thankfully, with Shane Gillis, the brand has been building back its beer advertising pedigree by making commercials that are funny as hell. His impressive run includes Confessions, Wrong Commercial, and last years big game ad BMOC. Now Gillis, Post Malone, and Peyton Manning return, this time at a wedding. When the keg gets knocked over and rolls down a hill, the entire wedding party does its best Princess Bride As you wish impression. Dumb, fun, and exactly what you want from a Bud Light ad.
Category:
E-Commerce
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