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In this episode of Reclaim + Advance, we’ll hear from Jess Ekstrom. Jess is the founder of Headbands of Hope and Mic Drop Workshop. She also invests in women-owned businesses, is a two-time bestselling author, a top-rated speaker, and a new mom. Jess and her companies have been featured on Today, Good Morning America, 17 magazine, Vanity Fair, Forbes, People, and more importantly, they’ve helped millions of women and girls around the world.

For years Jess Ekstrom avoided speaking about a formative event in her family life — her family getting swindled out of money by her uncle, Bernie Madoff. But on the show, she explains what spurred her to start speaking about formative challenges, and how true optimism isn’t naive.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• How Jess turned a family scandal into fuel for her entrepreneurial journey.
• The shocking pay gap revelation that inspired Jess to champion women speakers.
• Why simplifying complex ideas is key to connecting with your audience.
• How embracing vulnerability can amplify your impact as a speaker and leader.

I’ll share a few of my favorite quotes from my conversation with Jess below:

On Authentic Expertise:

“A lot of [the] time, the thing that you teach to others is the thing that didn’t come naturally to you. It’s the thing that you had to will yourself to learn and to practice.”

The Power of Simplicity:

“I like to simplify the complex for people. We make things too complicated, whether that be entrepreneurship or speaking or writing. I like to make things feel attainable to someone.”

Embracing Struggle in Storytelling:

“No one wants to learn from someone who’s just naturally good at something. Sometimes the greatest lessons that you have to share with others come from your worst moments.”

Click here to listen on your platform of choice, or tune in below.

In August, Google entered a $2.7 billion agreement with AI chatbot startup Character.AI. The official reason? Getting a license to use Character’s technology.

The unofficial reason? According to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report, the consensus within Google is that the tech giant primarily wanted to rehire a former employee who quit in 2021 after creating an AI chatbot that Google refused to take public.

The engineer, 48-year-old Noam Shazeer, was one of the first hundred employees at Google. He quickly established himself as an AI expert and wrote a paper in 2017 with seven other Google employees called “Attention is All You Need” which introduced a new deep learning architecture. That paper has been cited by other researchers more than 100,000 times and established him as one of the inventors of modern AI.

Related: Google Introduces Its New Project Astra AI Assistant at I/O Event — Here’s What Else You Missed

Shazeer claims credit for his contributions: His LinkedIn “About” section at the time of writing reads, “I have invented much of the current revolution in large language models.”

^{Noam Shazeer. Credit: Winni Wintermeyer for The Washington Post via Getty Images}

In 2021, before the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Shazeer was working on AI at Google. He and his colleagues created an AI chatbot that could interact with users conversationally, and they advocated for Google to demo it to the public. Google refused multiple times and Shazeer quit to start Character, building up the startup from 2021 to the present with over $150 million in funding at a valuation of $1 billion as of March.

Google’s August agreement with Character brought Shazeer back into the company as part of the DeepMind research team, which works on AI.

Shazeer made hundreds of millions of dollars as part of the deal, according to the WSJ.

Related: Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Is Back at the Company ‘Pretty Much Every Day.’ Here’s What He’s Working On.

Other big tech companies have made similar agreements recently. In late August, Amazon signed a deal to non-exclusively license AI models developed by AI robotics startup Covariant and bring over Covariant’s co-founders and some employees.

Local search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important aspects of SEO strategy. For many businesses, the local community makes up most or all of their customer base. But even for larger businesses with multiple locations, local SEO is a powerful tool to help your ideal audience find you faster and easier by bringing you to the top of their search results.

In fact, local SEO is one of the best places to get started if you’re new to SEO, because it’s often much easier to achieve high search results ranking for localized queries rather than general queries. Here are the basics you need to get started:

Related: 12 Local SEO Tips From SEO Agency Founders

Start with best practices to optimize your website

Local SEO begins with the same best practices that any type of SEO uses. Before you move on to more specific strategies, make sure you’re already doing the following well:

• Your website has been set up to follow technical SEO rules so it’s functioning well and doesn’t have any issues that would cause it to be penalized by Google’s algorithm.

• Your website is designed for both mobile and desktop users to engage with easily and loads quickly with alt text on all images and those images optimized for website performance.

• You publish valuable and interesting content and optimize it with keywords that you’ve researched, as well as title tags and meta descriptions.

• You’re effectively using internal links.

• You use analytics tools to track your website traffic and make adjustments based on that data.

Understand your market

If you’re a local business, understanding your market requires you to know your local community as well as your competitors. Research in this stage is particularly important for businesses that have multiple locations and may not have a strong understanding of how the market differs in each location.

Analyze your competitors in order to understand what they’re doing well and where you see room for improvements. Both of these serve as valuable information you can use to improve upon what they’re doing. Start by seeing where they pop up in local search queries and visiting their websites. Do they have particular pages that perform well in the search results? If so, can you create a page that’s even better than theirs?

Next, look them up on Google Maps and view their ratings and reviews — what do people say they love about the business, and what complaints do they have?

Whatever you discover, good or bad, look for ways you can improve upon it for your own website and your customer experience as a whole. While you’re bound to find ways you can improve your website, you may also find some tips about how to beat your competitors offline as well, which will ultimately come back around to benefit your website in the form of improved reviews, repeat customers, referrals and increased traffic.

Related: Struggling to Attract Local Customers to Your Business? Use These Digital Marketing Strategies to Increase Your Visibility.

Make sure you’re set up to be seen locally

Google Maps and other local directories are one of the primary ways customers find businesses in their area. It’s important to build a strong brand that addresses client-centered marketing strategies. While it may seem obvious that you want to be on Google Maps, you’d be surprised how many businesses haven’t set up their Google Business Profile properly. In some cases, someone else may even have set it up for them!

Here’s a quick guide:

• If you haven’t set up Google Maps for your business, someone else may already have done so. Don’t worry if they have — you’ll just need to claim your business.

• Once you have your Google My Business profile set up, fill it out in full. Include your website, phone number, business hours and photos of your business. The more complete it is, the better. Don’t forget to keep it up to date! This information directly interacts with Google’s algorithm and will boost your website.

• Ask customers to leave a positive review for you on Google Maps. And for any reviews you receive, be sure to respond. Thank people for positive reviews, and respond politely and respectfully to negative reviews with an offer to fix any problems. Do not argue with or insult negative reviewers, as it will reflect badly on you — prospective customers are more likely to identify with other customers and not with your business.

Once you’ve gotten set up on Google Maps, you’ll be able to make use of the Google My Business’s insights dashboard in order to analyze data about your leads. This can give you important information to help you focus your SEO efforts for better results, such as which search queries led to your pages and where website traffic came from.

Publish local content

One of the best ways to optimize your website for local SEO is simply to publish content that’s relevant to your community using localized keywords. The more often you publish content related to a specific location, the more Google’s algorithm will associate your business with that location. It’s also often easier to rank for location-specific topics than for topics that aren’t tied to any location.

One of my favorite ways to create local content is by engaging with my local community and posting about it. You can highlight businesses and events in your area, and if you attend any of those events, write or make a video about it! This strategy can go far in creating a strong reputation in your community.

Reach your community through offsite SEO

In addition to publishing content about local topics, there’s a significant amount you can do to boost your SEO by engaging with your community off of your website. This could include link-building with other businesses, publishing articles in a local publication and even getting offline and engaging with the community directly in order to build relationships and your reputation.

Related: 4 Strategies to Help You Attract More Local Customers to Your Small Business

Never stop learning more about SEO

Search engine optimization is a constantly changing practice, and even those of us who are experts need to continue learning to stay up to date on best practices. Luckily, there are many resources available to keep learning. Watch recently published YouTube instructional videos about SEO, and read recently published books about how to create effective SEO strategies written by SEO experts.

Ultimately, the best way to learn is to create your strategy, document the results and then simply learn through experience. The more you experiment, the more you’ll learn. Just keep trying — remember, SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.

Before establishing a trio of eponymous gymnastics and ninja training academies, Dominique Dawes was a standout member of 1996’s iconic “Magnificent Seven” — the first USA women’s gymnastics squad to clinch Olympic gold.

During those Games, Dawes also earned a bronze in the floor exercise, becoming the first female African American gymnast to medal in an individual event. But ever the competitor, Dawes thinks about what could have been. She says she made her greatest athletic mistake during that floor routine: a slip in front of three billion viewers that cost her the gold. Decades later, Dawes has transformed that embarrassing experience into an empowering one. “It’s given me the perseverance I have today,” she told Entrepreneur. “Whenever I falter in my business endeavors, or I get rejected, I see it as an opportunity for growth.”

Hard work and perseverance

Dawes’s historic career started and ended at an exceptionally young age. She had her first competition when she was only six and was competing in the Olympics by age 15. By the time she was 24, Dawes was in her third and final Olympics and starting to feel the pressure of figuring out her life after athletics. “It was quite challenging for me,” she admits. “I had to search long and hard for something for which I had the same passion and talent.”

Related: ‘Bite My Face Off!’ Shaquille O’Neal Releases New Line of Gummy Candies Shaped Like His Head

After pirouetting from broadcast TV to the Broadway stage, Dawes gravitated towards motivational speaking because of the impact she could make on other people’s lives. The revelations of decades-long misconduct within the USA Women’s Gymnastics organization strengthened her resolve to be a force for change. “When all of the abuses in gymnastics were brought to light, I realized I needed to be a part of the solution,” Dawes says. This commitment to progress inspired her to open the Dominique Dawes Gymnastics and Ninja Academy in 2020, focused on creating a supportive and nurturing space for young gymnasts.

Learning to Be Flexible

In November 2019, Dawes posted a picture of herself smiling with her children on Instagram, showing off her middle splits while signing the 10-year lease for her first academy. Little did she know, just four months later, that a global pandemic would turn the world upside down.

The academy was supposed to open in April 2020, but COVID-19 squashed any chance of that. Nevertheless, Dawes persevered. Proving she can be flexible in more ways than one, she pushed the opening back to July 2020. “I had a chance to walk away and cut my losses,” Dawes says. “But I know from experience that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Vaulting Over Obstacles

The setbacks Dawes dealt with as a new business owner during COVID-19 were slightly more relatable than slipping during the Olympics and settling for Bronze. Small businesses around the country suffered record losses during the pandemic, with some studies showing closure rates as high as 43%. In July 2020, the same month Dawes opened her first location, Wells Fargo started the Open for Business Fund, aimed at helping small business owners. The fund has donated roughly $420 million to community development financial institutions and nonprofits between 2020 and 2023, helping over 336,000 small businesses nationwide.

Related: Taylor Swift Is Drawing Up Plays for the Kansas City Chiefs. Here’s Why That Is a Great Lesson for Career Couples.

Although her academy did not directly benefit from the fund, Dawes, a consistent advocate for small businesses, embraced the opportunity to support the initiative. “I love that Wells Fargo stepped in and supported these small businesses so they could remain open during the toughest time of their lives,” she says. “Ask yourself, how many mom-and-pop shops did you grow up supporting? Imagine how much of a loss that would be for the community if they had to shut their doors.”

Maintaining a Balance

Supporting small businesses is personal for Dawes, who grew up in a “family of entrepreneurs.” Her father and uncle each owned and operated garbage disposal companies in Takoma Park, Maryland, where they worked long hours every day. Dawes was inspired by seeing family members build their businesses but wary of how taxing the work was on their personal lives. “Running a business full-time can consume you, so it’s also important to make sure you have your priorities straight,” Dawes said.

While she no longer has to worry about slipping during her beam routine, keeping her balance is still crucial to Dawes’s success. When she opened the first academy, Dawes was on site 24/7, putting out fires and assisting with coaching. She quickly realized this wasn’t a sustainable lifestyle, especially for someone who values family as much as she does. “If I tried to run this business and coach full time, my kids would never see me as a mom,” she says. With her coaching days behind her, Dawes finds other ways to be hands-on. She’s interviewed over 100 of her employees personally and tries to sit down with them one-on-one and discuss their needs when possible. Still, there are rare instances where Dawes makes a cameo as the most overqualified substitute gymnastics coach ever to grace the mat.

Related: 3 Secrets to Help You Win Gold at Work, According to Greatest-of-All-Time Olympic Athletes

Attention, Kmart shoppers: On October 20, Kmart’s last full-sized location in the mainland U.S., a store in Bridgehampton, New York, will close its doors.

That leaves just one smaller Kmart in Miami and three stores in the U.S. Virgin Islands as the only locations left — a far cry from the over 2,300 stores Kmart operated in its prime in the 1990s.

Related: Tupperware Unable to Keep Its Sales Strategy Fresh — Company Files for Bankruptcy

“Kmart was part of America,” U.S. retail history author Michael Lisicky told PBS. “Everybody went to Kmart, whether you liked it or not.”

^{The Kmart store in Bridgehampton, New York. Credit: Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

What happened? According to the company site, Kmart had a promising start. It opened its first store in 1962, the same year as Walmart and Target. By 1966, sales surpassed $1 billion.

However, in January 2002, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing competition and failed sales and marketing campaigns. At the time, Kmart closed about 600 stores and laid off 57,000 employees.

Related: Christmas Tree Shops to Close All 70 Locations: ‘I Wish Someone Could Save These Stores’

According to a 2002 analysis, although Kmart initially grew faster than its competitors, the company’s lack of technology investments hindered its growth. Its market position trapped between the trendier Target and the more price-competitive Walmart didn’t help either, because Kmart wasn’t able to define who its customers were.

Kmart emerged from Chapter 11 in May 2003 and acquired Sears about two years later for $11 billion. Meanwhile, sales continued to drop, falling from $37 billion in 2000 to $12.1 billion in 2014. The acquisition didn’t pan out either: Sears filed for bankruptcy in October 2018, emerging from it in 2022, and now has only about a dozen stores open in the U.S.

“Sears should have never gone away; Kmart was in worse shape, but not fatally so,” Mark Cohen, former CEO of Sears Canada and former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, told PBS. “And now they’re both gone.”

Related: Music Retailer Sam Ash to Shut Down After 100 Years in Business

Although 83% of U.S. adults said parents are the most responsible for teaching their children about money, 31% of American parents never speak to their kids about the topic, according to a survey from CNBC and Acorns.

Last week, the subject came up on Northwestern Mutual’s A Better Way to Money podcast, which featured social media star and owner of Stur Drinks Kat Stickler and Northwestern Mutual vice president and chief portfolio manager Matt Stucky.

“I love and respect my parents, but we didn’t really talk about money ever — I never saw them talk about money,” Stickler told Stucky during the conversation. “It was taboo. It wasn’t brought up once.”

Related: Members of Every Generation Have Side Hustles — But They Don’t Spend Their Earnings the Same Way. Here’s the Breakdown.

According to Stucky, parents can instill strong money management skills like any other good habit.

“It just takes a lot of repetition — things like saving, investing,” Stucky said. “I’m not going to teach my 4-year-old about investing, but just the idea of if I save a dollar, that means I can spend it down the road on something that I really want. That takes a while to sink in.”

Money might not have been a regular topic of discussion while Stickler was growing up, but the entrepreneur says her mother did show her the value of a dollar in other ways: repurposing old jeans into shorts or empty butter tubs into containers for school lunch.

In addition to talking to their kids about money, parents can lead by example when it comes to smart financial decisions.

“There are new risks that are now in the equation of being a parent,” Stucky said. “Things like, What if something happens to me; what if I can’t work anymore? How does that impact my child’s financial life?“

Navigating those uncertainties means planning for big-ticket items, according to Stucky. Stickler, who has a young daughter, said she’s already taken some key steps to secure her future: setting up a will complete with a month-by-month timeline and establishing funds for healthcare and school — and even one for clothes and toys.

Related: What Your Parents Never Taught You About Money

According to Stucky, parents should leverage today’s circumstances for tomorrow’s success.

Stucky recommends setting up a 529, to which you can contribute funds for education, and a Roth IRA for your child.

“[With a Roth IRA], you are able to contribute on their behalf up to the child’s earned income amount or the current contribution limits of $7,000, and the dollars come out tax-free after age 59 ½ or if they need to use it for a qualifying life event,” Stucky explains. “It’s a way to set up your children for their retirement, as well as support generational wealth.”

Parents might also consider a Uniform Transfer to Minors Account (UTMA), which has no limit on the amount that goes in and allows them to retain control until their kids reach 18-21, depending on where they live, Stucky says.

Related: Shark Tank’s ‘Mr. Wonderful’ on Teaching Kids About Money: ‘Put Their Noses In It, Like You’re Training a Puppy’

Finally, Stucky recommends the “often overlooked option” of permanent life insurance for your child.

“The policy will pay a death benefit someday so long as the required premiums are paid,” he explains. “In addition, policies accumulate cash value, which your child could access during their lifetime.”

As the 2024 election grows closer, many voters are wondering how different outcomes will affect them financially. A big question is how the outcome of the presidential election could affect interest rates.

In July, the Federal Reserve chose to keep the federal funds rate steady at 5.25% to 5.50% after increasing it 11 times between March 2022 and July 2023. When the federal funds rate is high, this increases the cost of borrowing for businesses and consumers.

The sitting president doesn’t have a direct impact on interest rates, but they can indirectly influence them with their actions and policies. Let’s look at how each candidate’s policies could affect the financial landscape going forward.

Related: How Billionaires, Millionaires and Market Analysts Are Reacting to the Trump-Harris Debate

How does the President impact interest rates?

The Federal Reserve aims to keep inflation at around 2%, and it does this by raising or lowering interest rates. When inflation falls too low, the Fed lowers interest rates to stimulate the economy.

Likewise, if inflation gets too high, the Fed raises interest rates to make it harder for banks to borrow money from each other. When interest rates are high, business and consumer spending tends to slow down, hopefully reducing inflation at the same time.

The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) sets the federal funds rate, which is the target interest rate range. However, there are several ways the President can influence interest rates:

• Removing the Fed chair: According to the Federal Reserve Act, the President can remove the Fed chair “for cause.” Some legal scholars have taken this to mean malfeasance, not policy differences, but the statute is ambiguous at best.

• Nominating members: The President can appoint the Federal Reserve Chair and nominate members of the Board of Governors. However, each term lasts 14 years, and the Senate has to confirm each appointment, so the President’s authority is still fairly limited.

• Voicing concerns: The President can disagree with the Federal Reserve’s decisions and express them publicly. However, they can’t prohibit the Federal Reserve from raising interest rates.

It’s also important to note that there are 12 Federal regional banks located across the country. The President has no say in who runs these banks.

Related: 10 Significant Ways Your Taxes Will Be Impacted By A Kamala Harris Administration

Election outcomes that could affect interest rates

The President’s policies and actions can indirectly affect the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise or lower rates. There are two major candidates in the upcoming 2024 election — let’s look at how a win on either side could affect interest rates.

Kamala Harris wins:

When President Biden was running for re-election, the general consensus was that a Biden victory would result in almost no change to interest rates. But in July, Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, and Kamala Harris is now the Democratic nominee for president.

It’s hard to predict how a Harris presidency would impact interest rates, especially since she hasn’t fully outlined her economic policies. Harris has urged lowering taxes on lower and middle-class families and has promised to repeal the Trump tax cuts if she wins the White House. And like Biden, Harris supports investing in green energy and infrastructure.

As a Senator, Harris voted against Jerome Powell’s confirmation as the Federal Reserve chair in 2018. Some have speculated that she’s unlikely to reappoint him when his term ends.

Former President Trump wins:

If Donald Trump is elected in November, he will likely extend tax cuts until at least 2027. His policies tend to favor tax cuts and deregulation, which benefits businesses and could increase the demand for business loans. However, there’s speculation that his plan to cut taxes could drive inflation higher, causing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to combat inflation.

During Trump’s term, there was significant tension between him and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Many people have wondered whether Trump will fire Chairman Powell if granted a second term. Chairman Powell’s term ends in 2026, and the former President has stated that while he’ll allow Powell to finish his term, he will not reappoint him.

The Federal Reserve has already indicated it might cut rates in September. However, if inflation becomes a concern or begins going up again, the Fed could maintain or even increase interest rates.

Related: This Election Season Full of Deepfakes, Doubts and Disinformation Should Motivate You to Do Your Own Research — Here’s How to Uncover the Truth

How to prepare for election season

Election seasons can be stressful as many people wonder how the outcome will affect the economy and their livelihood. Fortunately, data shows that the market tends to perform well during an election year.

Even if the election outcome creates some volatility, the impact will likely be short-lasting. Fundamental drivers of the economy, like inflation and Federal Reserve policies, will likely have a bigger impact on interest rates than the election itself.

For example, JP Morgan found that during the 2020 election, the ending of lockdowns impacted the market more than the views of either presidential candidate. Likewise, in 2008, the Financial Crisis was the primary driver of the economy, not the election.

Inflation is decreasing, and unemployment is at an all-time low, so it’s likely we’ll see a potential rate cut or two in 2024, regardless of who wins the presidency. But regardless of what happens, there’s never a perfect time to access capital. If you have an opportunity to grow your business, don’t let it pass you by due to election fears.

Look, chances are that if you’ve clicked on this article, then you’re at least interested in the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur. However, if you’re like most of us, then it’s also likely that just as quickly as dreams of entrepreneurship enter your mind, you’re also seeing warning signs, roadblocks, depressing statistics and maybe a horror story or two of that person you know who took a leap that didn’t pan out. You’re not alone. And yet … it’s a tempting thought.

As a former corporate employee of many years, I am all too familiar with the motivators behind becoming an entrepreneur:

• The autonomy to decide your own fate after years of bureaucratic red tape
• The flexibility of building your own schedule after a traditional 9 to 5
• The financial security of knowing your hard work directly impacts your bottom line rather than accepting a predetermined salary
• The sheer excitement of finding purpose in the day-to-day work

Trust me, I get it.

However, as we know, entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. So how do you decide whether to consider it for yourself, much less take the necessary leap? In my current role as a franchise consultant and small business owner, I work with people all of the time who are on the cusp of making this very decision. So before diving in, how can you prime yourself for entrepreneurship before jumping in with both feet?

Related: How to Know If You’re Ready to Leave Your 9-5 and Go All In on Your Side Hustle

1. Reflect and self-assess

As mentioned, not everyone can become an entrepreneur, so you have to honestly ask yourself: What am I good at? What do you like to do? Am I a creator/visionary or am I an operations/execution person?

Make a list (yes, actually put pen to paper or pull up a document) and take an inventory.

2. Start networking with business owners in your community

At the end of the day, being an entrepreneur requires a certain level of social ability. I’m not suggesting that you need to be the life of the party or the most extroverted person in the room — in fact, there are lots of successful entrepreneurs who are predominantly introverted. However, there is no faster way to become aware of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship than putting yourself in front of business owners.

Meet them through the chamber of commerce events, meetups, professional development service get-togethers, trade networking events and education groups. There are even executive transition groups specifically designed for making this jump.

Don’t limit yourself. Unless you are totally confident in the type of business you want to own, cast a wide net. Network with franchise owners, online startup business owners, etc. If you are making an effort to meet these people and make these connections, you will find them.

3. Educate yourself

Unless you are sitting on a large inheritance, there isn’t a golden ticket way to fast-track your success. It’s important that you take the time to educate yourself on various opportunities. Hit the books and read, read, read about business ownership, leadership and management skills. Perhaps consider getting something like Kindle Unlimited which allows you to peruse thousands of books and check out up to 20 at any given time for a monthly subscription.

I often like to say that as a business owner, you are the OEO (Only Executive Officer), so make sure you are also reading up on some of the less glamorous aspects like human resources, training and tech tools.

In addition to reading, watch YouTube videos, follow social media influencers, listen to podcasts — whatever it is that you think you may be lacking or whatever skill you need to hone before becoming a business owner, make a list and cultivate your knowledge in these areas.

Related: Most People Have No Business Starting a Business. Here’s What to Consider Before You Become an Entrepreneur

4. Start a small side hustle

Ultimately, if you’re going to start a business, you are going to have to juggle and sacrifice things. For example, there may be times when you can’t go on a vacation or take time off. You know the phrase: “The grind is real.”

As an entrepreneur, your work life and your personal life intertwine, especially at the beginning. A successful business gives you all four of those motivators I mentioned above (autonomy, flexibility, financial security and purpose), but not upfront — it takes time to get there.

If you, like many, are considering entrepreneurship but still have a day job, you need to ask yourself: Do I have the mental flexibility to compartmentalize and move back and forth between both?

Starting a small side hustle is a testing ground for you. Start with low stakes and a lower investment. This can help you prepare to become an entrepreneur.

5. Speak with the decision-makers in your life

Last, but certainly not least, it’s important to speak with the people in your life who may be impacted by your decision to become an entrepreneur, most likely a spouse.

Have a deep dive and a serious conversation that you schedule separately from just another evening conversation after a busy day. Have a planning discussion for the future. Create a future vision for what you want your life to look like over the next 5, 10 or 15 years. Will you stay in your corporate role? Do you have plans in place for retirement? What’s your risk tolerance? Rate it on a scale of 1-10. Now what is your spouse’s risk tolerance? Is there alignment?

I truly can’t overstress this: Creating that future plan/vision is key. After all, if you don’t have a target to aim at, you won’t hit it.

Ultimately, entrepreneurship can be a fantastic path leading toward a fulfilling and exciting life — it’s the best professional decision I ever made. That said, it’s vital that you take the time to understand yourself and the opportunities available. Consider taking these steps above to prime yourself for entrepreneurship so that when the time comes, you’ll be ready to take the leap.

The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses Meta introduced last year are catching on with consumers — Meta sold more pairs of the new glasses in just a couple of months than the older 2021 Ray-Ban (then called “Stories”) in two full years.

Part of the glasses’ success could be attributed to taking criticism from the competition — and then hiring them.

The person who introduced the new Ray-Ban Metas at Meta Connect in October 2023 is its vice president of product, Li-Chen Miller, who stepped into the role at Meta in 2022, after working for a Meta rival.

^{Li-Chen Miller. Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images}

According to a Monday Bloomberg report, Miller wrote a thorough email in late 2021 to Alex Himel, then Meta’s head of wearables, detailing her experience with the Ray-Ban Stories. She had bought them, and had thoughts and ideas about what to improve.

“She wrote me an email that articulated what she thought was good about the device and what was promising, and then a longer list of things that she would improve,” Himel told Bloomberg.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Says an Upcoming Meta Product Left Testers ‘Giddy’

At the time, Miller was corporate vice president of Microsoft Search, Experiences, and Devices at Microsoft and had worked there for nearly two decades in program manager roles. She had even shared the stage with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at a 2017 keynote event, where she demoed new workplace features.

Himel hadn’t asked for the list, though he agreed with most of Miller’s points.

The next year, Miller got a job at Meta leading the wearables division. The email she sent Himel played a key role in her taking on the role she currently has at Meta, per Bloomberg.

Miller could take the stage on Wednesday at Meta’s annual Connect event, where the company is expected to announce updates to its smart glasses.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Uses an Easy But Powerful Formula to Keep Facebook Relevant — Here’s How It Works

Meta has already indicated that wearables are a focus moving forward. According to a press release from earlier this month, Meta aims to “write the history of wearables” by drawing out its Ray-Ban deal beyond 2030.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also spoke positively about the Ray-Ban Metas at its latest earnings call in July and said the glasses had promising sales numbers.

“Ray-Ban Meta glasses continue to be a bigger hit sooner than we expected — thanks in part to AI,” Zuckerberg said. “Demand is still outpacing our ability to build them, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to meet that demand soon.”

Related: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Calls Mark Zuckerberg’s Vision for the Future of AI a ‘Home Run Idea’

Three Mile Island, the three-mile nuclear station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has been closed since 2019. Now the island is set to reopen by 2028 to power Microsoft’s data centers, which are foundational to the tech giant’s AI and cloud computing businesses.

Constellation Energy, the owner of the power unit, announced the 20-year deal on Friday, which involves Microsoft buying energy from the restored plant. Restarting the plant means a $1.6 billion investment to revive it, ensure everything is up to date, and obtain the necessary permits and licenses. The payoff is significant though — the plant could create 3,400 new jobs directly and indirectly, and add $16 billion to Pennsylvania’s GDP.

Microsoft’s decision to turn to nuclear power is a sign of the high amounts of power required for the AI boom. According to Bloomberg, AI has increased demand for carbon-free electricity — and Microsoft’s move to purchase nuclear energy for 20 years, the first agreement the tech giant has signed of its kind, is the latest move to meet that need.

^{Three Mile Island. Credit: Getty Images}

Since the agreement was announced, opinions have been mixed about how to proceed. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro supports the deal and wants it “fast-tracked.” Residents of Perry County, Pennsylvania, however, are writing letters to the newspaper noting that the problem of nuclear waste or by-products should be addressed before the plant opens.

Related: How Much Does It Cost to Develop and Train AI? Too Much.

Dr. Michael Goff, acting assistant secretary of the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, stated that the restart was “an important milestone.”

“Always-on, carbon-free nuclear energy plays an important role in the fight against climate change and meeting the country’s growing energy demands,” Goff said.

Three Mile Island was once known as the site of the most serious accident in U.S. commercial operating history. In March 1979, part of the power plant melted down and released small amounts of radioactivity. The incident inspired greater regulations and led to less public confidence in nuclear power in the following decades, though there were no injuries, deaths, or long-term health effects observed from the accident.