July 2024

Athletes who win a gold, silver, or bronze medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics receive a medal, a poster, and a stuffed toy of the Olympics mascot — but no money.

Even though the International Olympic Committee doesn’t offer a financial prize for a win, some countries still offer medalists cash bonuses. On Tuesday, based on data from the National Olympic Committees, CNBC published a list of the countries that reward winning athletes and how much they receive for each medal.

Related: ‘The Olympics Are a Business’: Mark Cuban Says NBA Players Should Not Be Permitted to Play in the 2024 Summer Games

Hong Kong and Singapore are the most generous, rewarding gold medalists with over half a million dollars.

^{Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images}

The U.S. finished tenth on the list, with prizes ranging from $15,000 to $38,000.

Becoming an Olympic athlete takes a six-figure investment with no guaranteed return, salary, or federal support to cover expenses. Rick Hawn, who competed in the 2004 Olympics in judo, said his family felt the financial strain of his Olympic career.

“My parents nearly went bankrupt,” Hawn told The Huffington Post. “They put whatever they could into me and I’m the oldest of six kids.”

The Paris Olympics costs up to $21,700 in fees and membership dues, but the annual income of one in four U.S. Olympians is less than $15,000. Team USA does award nearly $2.5 million in private grants every year.

Related: Famed Broadcaster Al Michaels’ Voice Will Be AI-Generated for Summer Olympics Coverage

Here are the top five countries with the highest Olympic payouts.

Hong Kong

Gold: $768,000

Silver: $384,000

Bronze: $192,000

Singapore

Gold: $745,000

Silver: $373,000

Bronze: $186,000

Indonesia

Gold: $300,000

Silver: $150,000

Bronze: $60,000

Israel

Gold: $271,000

Silver: $216,000

Bronze: $135,000

Republic of Kazakhstan

Gold: $250,000

Silver: $150,000

Bronze: $75,000

Here’s how the U.S. pays its medalists

Gold: $38,000

Silver: $23,000

Bronze: $15,000

For the full chart, click here.

A recent study by Northeastern University revealed that 48% of healthcare staff feel their organizations are not addressing burnout. In an industry where burnout is prevalent, I’m proud to say that our practice stands out.

Our team falls within the minority of healthcare professionals who feel genuinely valued and maintain a healthy work-life balance. This positive environment isn’t just good for our staff — it’s a critical factor in our ability to deliver compassionate, high-quality care while growing a thriving medical practice.

Conventional options are usually welcomed with raised eyebrows and skepticism, especially with technological advancements popping up every second of the day. On the contrary, my progressive education and extensive clinical experience have taught me that for a solution to work, it needs to be as natural as possible. This is backed by over a decade of practice with countless incredible opportunities to support individuals on their journey to optimal health and wellness.

I’ve seen and come to grips with complex health issues, but it’s never been short of a fulfilling experience. The immense satisfaction of witnessing patients smile, thrive and return to me for further support with positive testimonies has always filled my heart. But from a business perspective, I want to make sure that my success is a shared victory with the people who share my passion for preventing illness and providing compassionate care — my team.

This collaborative approach not only enhances patient care but also contributes to a positive, productive work environment—essential elements in building and sustaining a prosperous healthcare business.

Related: Unlock Business Resiliency By Prioritizing Your People

Define and communicate a clear mission and vision

When I embraced my calling to help people achieve optimum wellness and health, my mission was integrative and preventive medicine, prescribing drugs when necessary and providing alternative options for patients to decide their commitment.

Chronic illnesses like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s have plagued the lives of many. Whether you’ve personally battled these life-threatening conditions or know someone who is on their journey to healing, you understand how these conditions can significantly alter lifestyles. With this in mind, I have been advocating for a model prioritizing prevention over prescription, emphasizing lifestyle alterations and natural healing alongside conventional treatments. I take a proactive, not reactive, approach to my patients. To provide education, alternative and traditional options, hope, partnership, and continuity of care and accountability. This mission was the foundation of my practice, guiding every decision from service offerings to team culture.

To bring this vision to life, I intentionally built a business model focused on prevention, habit modifications and prescription as a last resort. This approach was more complex, requiring a deep dive into integrated medicine and a commitment to continuous learning. I joined relevant associations and collaborated with colleagues to expand my knowledge base.

Related: Don’t Be a Statistic in the Great Resignation: Prioritize Employees’ Health to Retain and Attract Talent

Find a team that resonates with your mission

Aligning my team with this vision was important for me. I sought individuals who shared my passion for preventive care and understood the importance of patient-centered care. Certainly, it wasn’t easy, especially 25 years ago when functional medicine was considered controversial. However, I persisted in finding a team that resonated with my mission.

Make sure your patients feel heard

Moreover, top-notch customer service is the heart of our practice. Our team understands that often, patients feel unheard and undervalued by the healthcare system. But in our practice, we try our best to cater to their needs and offer empathetic care. We prioritize patient needs and convenience, and our practice mainly revolves around customer service. We’ve been committed to doing this for years, allowing us to leverage word-of-mouth referrals and ultimately build strong retention and a loyal patient base.

Because everyone shares the same mission, my team is inspired to go above and beyond to ensure patients walk out of our doors beyond satisfied, recognizing that their emotional experience has a direct impact on their overall perspective on healthcare services.

Related: 7 Tips for Reaching More Patients and Growing Your Healthcare Practice

Cultivate a positive and appreciative work culture

Since founding my medical practice, I have prioritized creating a positive and supportive work environment. This has made it easier for me to attract and retain talented team members. I prefer to hire kind and empathetic individuals rather than skilled individuals. These qualities cannot be taught, and they are fundamental to providing exceptional patient care.

To continuously build a strong team culture, I emphasize ownership, contribution and appreciation. I find the time to recognize and appreciate their hard, dedicated work ethic and empower them to take initiative. This approach created a sense of belonging and purpose. I remember during the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone on the team kept their chins up. This was because of the strong foundation of trust and mutual respect we successfully cultivated.

I’m proud to say that my team is among the few in healthcare who are well-recognized at work and enjoy work-life balance. I’m grateful for the teamwork and supportive environment we continue to pull off, especially during high-pressure situations.

AI and blockchain are complementary forms of technology that have, as readers are likely aware, gained stunning momentum in recent years. Over the course of just last year, the former has found expansive application across the business landscape: According to a survey from UKG from late 2023, no less than 78% of executives reported that their companies were using artificial intelligence. A further 71% considered AI to be a medium to high priority for their businesses, and 62% thought they were not adopting such solutions fast enough.

Second, we have blockchain technology. As early as 2018, 84% of C-suite members in a PwC survey claimed to have a blockchain initiative underway, and the rapid rise of cryptocurrency in the intervening years has shed further light on its potential.

Related: Meet The Visionary Shaping Entertainment Through Blockchain

The benefits of AI and blockchain working in tandem

As these two concepts become more mainstream, business leaders are increasingly recognizing their productive capacity in working together. In a recent presentation at the EY Global Blockchain Summit 2024, for example, EY Global Chief Innovation Officer Jeff Wong addressed the synergistic possibilities of blockchain’s ability to certify original ownership, particularly as AI-generated content increases. He pointed out that technologies rarely create a leap forward on their own: Usually, Wong said, they have to come together with other new or existing ones to enable higher utility and a surge of development.

Companies can use AI and blockchain together to change business processes and influence digital transactions—among the payoffs are a further reduction in costs and a transformation of consumer experiences in the consumption of online content and in other digital interactions.

The question is, what might all this potentially translate to in day-to-day business operations?

Here are a few possibilities:

1. AI-driven predictive analytics

The ability of artificial intelligence to look at past data and use it to predict future outcomes has gained impressive recent utility. However, that usefulness diminishes if past data is unreliable. Blockchain reinforces the predictions of AI-driven analytics by ensuring that data used in each algorithm is accurate, untampered with and transparent.

Companies can use blockchain to create a level of integrity and reliability that’s not possible in a less secure set of data for AI models.

Related: A Complete Guide to Using Predictive Analytics in Your Business

2. Enhanced data security and capability

Blockchain’s ability to improve data trustworthiness is unrivaled. It publicly traces all iterations of a piece of data, recording transactions in a decentralized and tamper-proof manner.

This markedly improves data quality but does not boost utility. That’s where AI comes into the picture: It can execute increasingly sophisticated actions, including creation and generation. But here once again, the quality of data lies at the heart of each LLM’s (large language models) dependability — something blockchain naturally elevates.

Blockchain technology can create data that powers cleaner and more accurate AI results.

3. Sophisticated smart contracts

Contracts make the business world go round, but can also hold things up when not handled efficiently. Blockchain makes it possible to store self-executing smart contracts on-chain when certain conditions are met. This reduces errors, eliminates the need for intermediaries and lowers costs.

AI takes the basic yet vital acceleration of blockchain contract execution and increases complexity. The LLM models and neural networks that power AI algorithms introduce a higher degree of adaptation to the smart contract model. This gives them a dynamic, decision-making quality that uses real-time data to power adjustments.

Businesses can use AI to enhance smart contract capabilities and reduce workloads.

Related: Making a Difference with Adaptive Neural Networks

Investing in synergy

Technology is always advancing, but rare are the moments when multiple complementary techs overlap in powerful ways. The intersection of blockchain’s reliability and AI’s capability could lead to an explosion in business efficiency and dynamism. The question is, are you and your company ready to explore that new frontier?

Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for AI isn’t a single chatbot like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude; he instead envisions as many chatbots as there are Meta users, each infused with unique personalities and likenesses.

At the 2024 SIGGRAPH conference on Monday, Zuckerberg told Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about Meta’s new AI studio, released the same day to U.S. users. The AI studio allows anyone to create an AI chatbot modeled after themselves or a fictional character — with no code required.

“We want to empower all the people who use our products to basically create agents for themselves,” Zuckerberg explained.

The chatbots work across Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp, and the web, and Meta has a handbook that guides interested AI creators through the process of making one.

Huang said he was “super excited” about creator AI and called it a “home run idea.”

He stated that the power to create AI now extends to the hundreds of millions of small businesses that use Meta’s products.

“We eventually want to be able to pull in all of your content and very quickly stand up a business agent and be able to interact with your customers and do sales and customer support,” Zuckerberg said.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Says This CEO Is the ‘Taylor Swift’ of Tech

He positioned the AI studio as the first step towards custom AI chatbots that could help small businesses and creators interact more personally with their communities. The AI personalities would be trained on the material needed to properly represent the business.

^{Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Meta’s AI studio had bots like GreenThumbGuru, which focused on gardening tips, and The Sassy Psychic Priscilla, which advertised “real talk, no fluff,” at the time of writing.

Zuckerberg said that one of the top use cases so far for Meta AI has been emotional support. People are using AI to think through difficult social situations, like asking their manager for a promotion.

This is where the flexibility to create different AI personalities comes in handy compared to a unified AI model, according to Zuckerberg.

“It’s all part of this bigger view we have that there shouldn’t just be one big AI,” Zuckerberg said. “We just think that the world will be better and more interesting if there’s a diversity of these different things.”

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Says Apple’s ‘Constrained’ Platform Is the ‘Major Reason’ He’s Pushing for Open Source AI

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan had a similar outlook on the future of AI.

In a June interview, Yuan told The Verge that his vision was to have an AI version of himself attend meetings, act as a personal assistant, and send him summaries of meetings. Custom AI bots have the potential to cut the five-day workweek down to four or three days, he said.

In a stunning display of skill and mental fortitude, Stephen Nedoroscik, the U.S. pommel horse specialist, helped deliver the U.S. men’s gymnastics team’s first Olympic medal in nearly two decades. It was a task described as “impossible” by Olympic reporter Will Graves.

The critical moment came during a routine that brought the crowd to its feet in Bercy Arena. Sam Mikulak, former Olympic gymnast turned mentor, had a key moment with Nedoroscik before his routine. He told Nedoroscik that a controlled effort at 80% would suffice, knowing full well that Nedoroscik has a 100% commitment to his sport and problem-solving — including his Rubik’s Cube playing hobby.

“You have to trick yourself,” Mikulak, a three-time Olympian turned coach, told AP News. “You’ve got to make sure you don’t let all the noise get into your head.”

Mikulak’s mental coaching kept Nedoroscik composed amidst the monumental pressure of the Olympic stage.

The U.S. gymnastics team was just a routine away from clinching a medal, following an impressive series of performances from team members Frederick Richard, Brody Malone, Paul Juda, and Asher Hong.

Nedoroscik’s routine was hailed a masterclass in pommel horse excellence, earning resounding approval from his teammates and the throngs of American supporters present. His final score of 14.866 served as a decisive “exclamation point” on the U.S. team’s efforts.

Much anticipation surrounds Nedoroscik as he enters the event finals on Wednesday, carrying the top qualifying score—a testament to his hard work and innovation in the sport. Whatever the outcome, Monday’s performance cements his legacy and inspires both his teammates and fans worldwide with his big heart.

“I’m really proud of these guys,” he said while sitting with his gold medal teammates. “I love you boys.”

Read more at AP News

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The 2024 Summer Olympics are making a bang in Paris, France, but local businesses are saying sales are anything but booming.

Despite an influx of visitors and tourists coming to watch the games, local business owners are reporting slow summer days due to several factors affecting the city and surrounding areas, including acts of vandalism and security issues.

In addition to increased security measures around the city, including metal detectors and police checkpoints, certain landmarks and tourist attractions also have restricted and limited access for visitors, which means surrounding businesses are suffering.

Related: Delta CEO Says the Airline Will Suffer a $100 Million Loss Due to 2024 Paris Olympic Games

“It’s been very slow since the beginning of June,” menswear shop owner Jean-Pierre Salson told the Associated Press. “July is worse. There’s a lot less tourists, from all the countries. I think they’re avoiding France and Paris because they’re afraid of the Olympics.”

While Parisian locals often opt to leave the city for summer vacation, tourists without tickets to the games are avoiding the area, too.

In a joint statement to Paris24, a group of restaurant, hotel, retail, and nightspot unions said that, despite optimistic forecasts, “many professionals have seen their revenue fall by 30 percent compared with previous years.”

Hotel prices have also skyrocketed, making visitors choose other European locales to visit this summer, instead.

“It’s very quiet now,” said Guillaume Faller, a restaurant manager in Paris, per the AP. “Much quieter than the same period last year. But I think it will bounce back in a few days. In any case, I hope so.”

Airlines are also feeling the brunt.

Related: Paris Olympics Athletes: Food a ‘Disaster,’ Teams Hire Chefs

Earlier this month, Delta Airlines announced it was anticipating a $100 million quarterly loss due to the Olympics.

“Unless you’re going to the Olympics, people aren’t going to Paris … very few are,” CEO Ed Bastian said, at the time. “Business travel, you know, other types of tourism is potentially going elsewhere.”

The 2024 Summer Olympic Games began on Friday, July 26, and continue through Sunday, August 11.

In business, everyone has an opinion. It can be easy for founders to get swayed by the latest trends, customer chatter, or investor pressure. However, for Christian Toetzke, founder and CEO of the global fitness racing craze HYROX, staying true to his original vision has been key to the company’s explosive growth.

“You have to be very convinced about your product and the DNA of a product. And you have to stick to the game plan,” he says.

Toetzke appears this week on an episode of One Day with Jon Bier to talk about the power of persistence, the importance of retaining company equity, and other lessons he’s learned since launching his brand in 2017.

Staying the course

By any metrics, HYROX is a success. Competitors run 1 km during the races, followed by one functional workout station, repeated eight times. In 2024, 260,000 people are expected to participate in 60 global events in 65 countries. Sponsors include Red Bull, Puma and Centr.

Still, Toetzke says he’s frequently asked to tinker with the formula.

“In the last five years, I don’t know how many people told me what we have to do.”

The number one request he gets is to change the workouts, which are always the same and include the farmer’s carry, rowing, SkiErg, wall balls, burpee broad jumps, sandbag lunges, and sled push and pull. But Toetzke says he’s studied the most successful sports in the world—marathons, triathlons, golf, tennis, Olympic sports—and notes they never change the fundamental rules of the competition.

Sports are “built around principles and rules and history and heritage,” he says.

Moreover, constantly changing the competition makes it impossible to compare the results of past competitors.

“In traditional sports, you have world records, and that’s one of the strongest marking tools in the world of sports,” he says. “If someone breaks a world record in a hundred-meter run, he’s immediately a global superstar.”

Related: How One Company Transformed a Medical Device into a Mass Market Phenomenon

Being reliable

By maintaining consistency, Toetzke has built a strong brand identity for HYROX. He wants to make it the “marathon of fitness” — a gold standard event that remains consistent across locations.

He admits they still have work to do on this front. As HYROX expands globally, he personally attends events worldwide to ensure they meet brand standards. “I see one million things they did differently in Melbourne and Mexico City. And that’s what we have to change.”

He wants HYROX to be a consistent, reliable experience for participants worldwide.

“To control the brand that is exploding globally, everyone has to follow the same game plan. Everyone has to follow the brand DNA. That’s a difficult task and not easy to do because with more and more people involved, everyone has own ideas how to do it.”

Related: 40 Entrepreneurs Share Their Secrets to Staying Focused

Innovating with constraints

This is not to say that HYROX isn’t in favor of innovation. Toetzke says that HYROX continually tries to evolve and improve without changing the fundamentals of the sport.

He uses the iPhone as an example. Since its inception, there have been 42 different models with different features, but the basic look has remained the same.

In that regard, Hyrox has made significant innovations in its technology, as well as practical innovations with its equipment. Recently, they introduced sensors so that counting during the wall ball competition is done digitally, taking the onus off the judges. Through their partnership with Centr, the Official Equipment Partner of HYROX, the competition kettlebells are now designed with a unique ‘octo’ shape to allow for better weight distribution and handling during the farmer’s carry.

Taking financial risk

In an era where many startups rush to secure venture capital, often at the cost of significant ownership dilution, Toetzke calls for a more measured approach.

“My biggest advice is if you really believe in your product, try to keep as many shares as possible as long as you can,” he says. “Don’t take the quick money; take the risk.”

He warns against being the “guy who drives the whole business, who’s running all the operations, while the investors are making all the money but do nothing for the business.”

Related: How to Fund Your Business With Venture Capital

Fostering community

Another factor in HYROX’s success has been its ability to build a strong, engaged community around the brand. Toetzke says that 60 to 80 percent of the HYROX community view fitness as integral to their social life.

“You’re not just going to a gym. It’s your group of people. It’s your community, and that is now happening in every gym around the world.”

Toetzke envisions gyms becoming modern-day clubhouses, similar to golf clubs, where members form strong social bonds.

You go together to a HYROX event where you compete together, and you represent your gym,” he says. “Suddenly it’s emotional, suddenly it’s become a community.”

When it comes to thought leadership, content marketers love to talk about authenticity. However, other aspects of a thought leadership content strategy might be more relevant. Every leader working on their thought leadership content has heard the A word: authenticity.

The Oxford Dictionary defines authenticity as “of undisputed origin and not a copy; genuine,” and to me, that is a given when it comes to a thought leadership strategy — but it shouldn’t be the only thing that you focus on.

In fact, I’d say there are more important aspects to focus on if you want your thought leadership strategy to work in the long run for your personal brand.

In this article, I’ll define what an authentic thought leadership strategy is, explain why it’s not the only thing you should focus on, and tell you which alternative approach will give you optimal long-term results. Let’s start with the basics.

Related: Authenticity Is the Latest Business Buzzword — But Don’t Fall Into Its Trap. You Need to Balance It With This.

What is authentic thought leadership?

An authentic thought leadership strategy involves sharing genuine insights about your expert topic or industry.

It focuses on showcasing personal values along with action steps, showing a legitimate alignment between thoughts and actions. And as a strategy, it prioritizes original and honest interactions and communication, encouraging trust and accountability not only with their audience but also with their teams and stakeholders.

Isn’t that what every leader aims to be? That’s why there’s more to thought leadership than just authenticity.

Why not focus only on authenticity?

While sharing original content is one of the fundamental pillars of thought leadership, it’s not the only important aspect of it.

And here’s why: Scientific studies show that the average person needs to hear the same message around two to seven times to take action. This concept became known as the marketing rule of seven. As the American writer Zig Ziglar put it: “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”

This means that if you don’t repeat your message enough times, all that authentic thought leadership is lost in content limbo. And worse: it means that your content is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on your audience or stakeholders. People need to engage with your thought leadership messages multiple times for them to “sink in.”

All the effort (and money) you put into authentic content, and a thought leadership strategy is wasted. Alone, authenticity is not enough to make a lasting impact. Without consistency, you might as well throw those carefully crafted pieces of content to the wind.

Related: 5 Key Elements to Master Thought Leadership and Establish Your Credibility

Consistency is the new authenticity — here’s why

Personally, I think consistency is the undervalued side of most thought leadership content strategies. But it shouldn’t be.

Merriam-Webster defines consistency as “steadfast adherence to the same principles, course, form, etc.” Consistent leaders adhere to the same principles every day. It helps to define who they are and how they serve their community.

As studies show, messages need repetition if they’re to be effective. Having a consistent message, then, leads to a true, meaningful impact. And just as it would in any relationship, consistency builds a trustworthy foundation.

But that doesn’t mean you must repeat your message word-by-word or post the same content every week. Consistency is about evolution, not mindless repetition.

Instead of copying and pasting previous work, bring authenticity into each message, providing new insights and building on your previous content. This will help to ensure that your audience grows into long-term followers and helps you achieve the ultimate goal of a thought leadership strategy: becoming a trustworthy industry resource.

That consistency can show up in a thought leadership strategy in several ways, too. It’s not only about having an increasingly insightful content strategy that builds on your authentic message every week. Consistency is also about showing up for your audience, team and stakeholders genuinely, actively joining conversations, answering questions in a timely manner and offering feedback when necessary.

When you break down your thought leadership strategy into bite-size pieces, working on them consistently, your message builds up over time, and your results last much longer than a single (and accidental) viral post.

Without consistency, your authenticity might lose its purpose, as you might jump around ideas and projects. This will also make it more difficult to determine what parts of your thought leadership strategy work and where the successes and failures are.

Related: What Your Brand Needs to Unlock The Power of Thought Leadership

Establishing a consistent thought leadership strategy

Thought leadership is a marathon, not a sprint: It takes time and consistent effort. While the occasional viral post is a great motivator, it won’t guarantee long-term success and a reputation as a thought leader.

Nurture your audience consistently, and they will regularly return for your advice. Remain true to your values and principles, and your followers will know exactly where you stand and what insights they will find.

Consistency used to be the forgotten sibling of authenticity — but not anymore!