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Tag: Creativity

  • Guillermo del Toro Reveals the 1 Creative Skill AI Can’t Replace

    Romance, fairy tales, and gothic horror don’t seem like they belong together, but filmmaker Guillermo del Toro skillfully weaves them into stories unlike anything audiences have seen before. The legendary director has applied his magic touch to a new Netflix adaptation of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. The film is an international hit for the streaming network, debuting as the top English-language film in more than 70 countries. 

    The secret ingredient behind del Toro’s success is an approach to storytelling that AI can’t replace. If you build a business presentation the way del Toro constructs a film, your audience will lean in and become emotionally invested in the journey you’re taking them on. 

    Use technology to complement your story 

    You might not be developing an epic two-hour film for the screen, but every pitch or presentation is still, at its core, a story. Your audience doesn’t just want to hear information. They want to feel something. Since AI lacks emotions, feelings, goals, and aspirations, it can’t motivate people to act—only you can. 

    When an NPR reporter asked del Toro for his stance on using generative AI for filmmaking, del Toro said, “I’d rather die.” 

    Del Toro has a strong opinion on AI because he believes that digital tools—especially generative AI—should be used only to enhance a story, not to replace a human’s authentic voice. “Otherwise, why not buy a printer, print the Mona Lisa, and say you made it,” del Toro added. 

    I share a similar message with business communicators: AI-based writing and design tools should complement the story, but the story comes first. Your ideas are the star. 

    Plan presentations in analog 

    When I wrote the first book on how Steve Jobs created and delivered his awe-inspiring presentations, I devoted a chapter to “planning in analog.” Jobs built cutting-edge technology but talked about it like a storyteller. For example, Jobs didn’t begin presentations by opening a slide deck. Instead, he and the team brainstormed ideas, took notes, gathered stories, built props, and sketched scenes on a whiteboard. 

    Del Toro, too, is an advocate of starting in analog. In a video titled “Anatomy of a Scene” for The New York Times, del Toro walks the viewer through a pivotal scene when Dr. Victor Frankenstein, played by Oscar Isaac, is defending his experiments at the Royal College of Medicine. He pulls the drape off a corpse that terrifyingly comes to life. 

    “That’s completely done in analog,” del Toro explained. “There’s no CGI. It’s a puppet, with puppeteers pulling the strings.” 

    The puppeteers are later bluescreened out of the scene—that’s where technology comes into play. However, the technology is used in the service of the story, which must be as authentic as possible in del Toro’s world. 

    Steve Jobs liked to pull drapes off things, too. In January 1984, Jobs kept the audience in suspense as he talked about Apple’s first Macintosh. He started talking about the product without showing it. Then came the big reveal. Jobs walked to the center of the stage, where the Macintosh was sitting on a small table, hidden beneath a black cloth. Like a magician, he lifted the cloth with a flourish, revealing the beige box that would change computing forever. 

    Jobs played the role of storyteller whenever he stepped on stage. 

    It’s hard to imagine that ChatGPT would have come up with the idea for a product launch as theatrical as Jobs did. AI is a tool, not a source for original creative ideas. It doesn’t have a unique personality, experiences, perspectives, or worldviews. Those belong exclusively to you, not to an algorithm. 

    Write the script before building slides 

    A great presentation has engaging visuals, graphics, photos, and animations, but those embellishments should serve the story. Writing down your ideas is a good starting point. Del Toro fills notebooks with sketches and words before he picks up a camera. He once advised content creators to write the stories they want to tell and put them on paper.  

    “I write a biography for the characters that is eight pages long,” he explained. “It has everything about them: what they like, what they eat, what they read, what they listen to, what they don’t like, etc.” 

    Once del Toro has a fully baked idea of who the characters are, he gives the idea to the design department so they can “articulate the biography with visuals and sound.” Once again, technology complements the story, but the story comes first. 

    AI can take what already exists and reproduce, analyze, and remix it. However, that’s not creation. Creation begins with your voice, your imagination, and your unique lived experience that no algorithm can replace. 

    If you want your presentations to stand out and keep your audience glued to their seats, don’t think like a presenter. Think like a movie director. Shape the story you want to tell and let technology play a supporting role. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Carmine Gallo

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  • Taylor Swift’s Newest Obsession Can Teach You a Lot About Creativity

    What’s the best way to stay fresh and creative when you’re putting in long hours and facing tight deadlines? Especially when you can’t take much time off? For Taylor Swift, the answer is to do something completely different–but also highly creative–that you’re passionate about.

    Many creative people take their hobbies very seriously. Steve Jobs famously followed his passion to a calligraphy course that later helped when it came time to create Apple’s fonts. Albert Einstein was an accomplished violinist. Swift bakes bread. Specifically, sourdough bread. Loaves and loaves of it.

    Whether you consider her a genius or not, there’s no denying that Swift’s creative output is prodigious and impressive. She recently released her 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl. It was mostly written while she performed three-hour shows in the long-running Eras tour, at the same time as she was releasing her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department. Oh, and making it to every Kansas City Chiefs football game she could so she could cheer for her now-fiancé Travis Kelce.

    Swift works almost every waking hour.

    “My question is, when do you sleep?” Seth Meyers asked her in a recent interview on Late Night.

    “I actually sleep a lot,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t do anything other than this when I’m not sleeping.” She loves what she does so much that it doesn’t feel like work, she explained. And she does it for all her waking hours. Except when she’s baking bread.

    Baking allows her to stop her mind from continuing to work on songs. “It’s, like, stress relief,” she said. “Like, you’re following instructions. You’re doing a thing they’ve done for thousands of years. There’s something kind of calming about it.”

    It’s also a different form of creativity for Swift, and one that can be all-consuming. “It’s like I have when I have a hobby, it becomes an obsession, and then it becomes my entire personality,” she said. To prove her point, she gave two loaves of bread to Meyers before the show, in their own bakery-type bread bags, and covered with stickers that said things like “Are you bready for it?” and “The fate of Doughphelia” (a play on Swift’s new song, “The Fate of Ophelia.”) And, of course, there were pictures of Swift’s cats, another of her obsessions.

    She even described how delighted she was that a loaf of her bread made a cameo appearance on a table next to an apple in the “Fate of Ophelia” video. “It was a huge moment for me,” she said. She was accustomed to baking bread for texture and flavor, but this time she was aiming for visual appeal. “And I’m just really excited that it seems to have gone really well. Like, I did the feather scoring–” she paused in a moment of apparent realization “–that nobody cares about, except for me.”

    Baking bread is a healthy release.

    So, yup, beyond all doubt, Swift’s breadmaking had turned into an over-the-top obsession. But it’s also a healthy release from the pressures of her very public, very work-focused life. It’s a chance to do something completely different from writing songs, or making videos, or singing. It’s tactile, and extremely satisfying. And, just as important, it gives her creative, obsessive mind something different to focus on. It’s a way to let herself play.

    If you’re an entrepreneur or business leader, chances are you’re obsessed with your work, too. You may not have much time off. And you may still need to keep that creativity flowing and a fresh outlook. If so, try finding a hobby that fascinates you as much as bread fascinates Swift. It just may be the outlet, and the creative boost you need.

    There’s a growing audience of Inc.com readers who receive a daily text from me with a self-care or motivational micro-challenge or tip. Often, they text me back and we wind up in a conversation. (Want to know more? Here’s some information about the texts and a special invitation to a two-month free trial.) Many of my subscribers are entrepreneurs or business leaders. A lot of them are completely consumed by their work. But they also know how important it is to have creative passions that have nothing to do with their job. Should you give it a try?

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Minda Zetlin

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  • Apple Made an Ad Featuring the Late Jane Goodall. It’s a Callback to Its Greatest Era

    Obviously, most people know Apple as the company that makes the iPhone. That makes sense, the iPhone—after all—is the single most successful consumer product in history. It’s the reason Apple is a $3 trillion company.

    But—believe it or not—there was a time before the iPhone when Apple was known for something else. And it’s latest ad is a telling reminder of what might be its best era.

    The company’s latest ad isn’t about the iPhone. Technically, it’s about the Mac, but really, it’s about Apple and what the company wants you to think about what it stands for. And, it’s a reminder of a very different era for the company.

    The ad opens with the flicker of a cursor on a blank screen and a voice that sounds both familiar and true.

    “Every story you love, every invention that moves you, every idea you wished was yours, all began as nothing. Just a flicker on the screen asking a simple question: What do you see?”

    The voice is Jane Goodall’s.

    If you’ve followed Apple for long enough, that name already connects a few dots. Goodall was one of the people featured in Apple’s original Think Different print ad campaign in 1997—the one that marked Steve Jobs’ return to the company he co-founded and, in many ways, saved. The one that wasn’t really about computers at all, but about creativity. It was about imagination and people who “see things differently.”

    And that’s what makes this new spot, Great Ideas Start on Mac, feel like a callback to Apple’s best era—the one before the iPhone, before the trillion-dollar valuation, before Apple became the most valuable company on earth. The one when Apple’s identity wasn’t tied to growth curves or quarterly revenue, but to the artists and dreamers who used its tools to make something new.

    I have always loved that version of Apple.

    Before the iPhone, Apple’s entire story—its entire brand—revolved around creativity. It was a company for artists, designers, writers, and musicians. The Mac wasn’t just a computer—it was a tool just as much as a pencil or guitar or paintbrush. You bought one because you wanted to make something beautiful, and you believed that tools should serve creativity, not the other way around.

    Jobs made that belief central to Apple’s DNA. He often said that Apple existed at “the intersection of technology and the liberal arts,” and he meant it. He saw computers not as boxes of circuits but as something that could unlock the greatest forms of human expression.

    That’s why the Think Different campaign worked so well. It wasn’t just an ad; it was a manifesto. It told the world that Apple was for people who imagined something that didn’t exist yet. It was about what you could see that others couldn’t.

    This new ad doesn’t use those words, but it carries the same spirit. The flicker on the screen is also familiar and true. It reminds us that creativity doesn’t start with code or pixels, but with curiosity.

    There’s something poetic about Apple bringing back Goodall. She’s not a celebrity in the traditional sense. She’s a scientist, an activist, and a storyteller. Her work studying chimpanzees wasn’t just groundbreaking—it changed how we think about what it means to be human.

    That’s exactly why she was in the original Think Different campaign. She represented the kind of independent creativity and courage that Jobs seemed to admire most: the people who don’t just see the world differently, but act on it.

    In this new ad, her voice bridges the gap between Apple’s past and present. When she asks, “What do you see?” it’s a question Jobs himself might have asked. What do you see when you look at a blank page? Or an empty timeline? Or a flickering screen waiting for your next idea?

    In 1997, Apple needed to remind the world what it stood for. The company was nearly bankrupt, but the message wasn’t about survival. It was about purpose. That’s what made Think Different so powerful—it was a declaration that creativity mattered.

    This new ad feels like a reminder that it still does.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Jason Aten

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  • Productivity Is Hurting Your Creativity. Just Look at Taylor Swift

    When Taylor Swift released her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, listeners online found not only easter eggs, but familiar tunes too.

    According to internet users, the album’s namesake track, “The Life of A Showgirl” closely resembles the Jonas Brothers’ “Cool” and Jordin Spark’s “Air.”

    It’s not just the one song. Users have drawn comparisons to Pixie’s “Where is my mind?” and The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” as well as music from Post Malone, The Ronettes, and Mexican singer Luis Miguel.

    “She sued Olivia for less,” a user commented on a TikTok with 6 million views comparing Swift’s new tracks to older songs. The comment, which echoed several others left on the video, references Olivia Rodrigo crediting Swift on songs inspired by her—although Swift never actually sued Rodrigo.

    Nothing New

    Yet, the issue of music sounding the time or homogenous is not new. A report from 12 years ago by the Spanish National Research Council found that music in the last 50 year has become less diverse sounding.

    These days, the music industry’s dependance on social media platforms is exacerbating the homogeneity. According to TikTok data, 84 percent of songs that entered the Billboard Global 200 last year went viral on TikTok first.

    “When every viral trend depends on instant recognition, producers are more likely to rework hooks or melodies that audiences already know,” music industry director Nikki Camilleri told Inc. “Sampling itself isn’t lazy,” she clarifies, noting that “it can be deeply creative when used to reimagine, not replicate.”

    But, beyond the algorithm, an issue of hyper-productivity arises, with quantity overriding quality and uniqueness.

    “The challenge is that in today’s fast-turnover pop ecosystem, commercial pressure often pushes artists to lean on nostalgia rather than innovation,” Camilleri says.

    Jeffrey Davis, Business Growth & Thought Leader Strategist and author of Tracking Wonder agrees, explaining that oftentimes hyper-productivity dulls and dilutes creativity.

    “Our culture of productivity loves to optimize and block every hour and being very efficient and productive and getting things done. But that’s not where innovation happens,” he says. In a way, Swift’s hyper-productivity (or over production) could stunt creativity leading to more homogenous and familiar sounding music.

    Shake it Off

    So how does one get out of the rut?

    “I work with teams in technology and I get them to take breaks from the screen, do something analog, like sketch in a notebook. Do something with their hands,” Davis says. “Some people knit just to get their brains working in a different way, and to pay attention to what’s happening on the margins of their thoughts, rather than just trying to get something done.”

    Award-winning creativity strategist Natalie Nixon also believes that the best work happens when taking a step back. She recommends making space for creative strategic thinking and prioritizing rest as ways of harnessing creativity.

    Other ways to spark creativity are often simple, from taking a shower, to getting a hobby, or even walking and talking. Even though it might feel counter intuitive, taking time leads to more productivity.

    “A lot of innovation comes from mind wandering,” david says. “From stepping away from screens, from literally taking a wonder walk to allow those sort of insights happen.”

    María José Gutierrez Chavez

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  • The Power of Empty Space

    We live in a world obsessed with activity. Productivity is glorified, calendars are crammed, and success is often measured by how much we can fit into a single day.

    But what if true progress doesn’t come from filling every gap, but from leaving space?

    In architecture, empty space gives a building balance and elegance. In music, silence gives notes their meaning. In life, pauses create perspective.

    In business, empty space can be the difference between running faster into chaos or slowing down to see new possibilities and giving ideas room to breathe.

    The value of subtraction

    Most companies chase growth by adding more—more meetings, more projects, more noise. However, addition isn’t always progress. Sometimes it’s subtraction that creates clarity.

    Space in business is not wasted time; it’s the fertile ground where creativity grows, where strategy deepens, where courage has room to take shape. 

    Think about how many breakthroughs happen not in the middle of a frantic schedule, but in the quiet moments: during a walk, while reflecting, or even while doing nothing at all. It is in the gaps that ideas breathe. It is in the pauses that vision emerges.

    Lessons from engineering and ancient wisdom

    Empty space in business is also about restraint. Engineers know this well: the essence of their work is to use the least possible to create the most impact. That principle doesn’t only apply to materials or physical resources—it applies to everything.

    From words, to decisions, to the way we use energy. The maturity of a business is shown not by how much it consumes, but by how wisely it chooses where to focus. 

    It’s fascinating to see that this principle is not only found in engineering but has been part of human wisdom for centuries. Ancient thinkers spoke about it in different ways. Taoist masters called it “wu wei,” the art of achieving more by forcing less. In yoga, the practice of pratyahara teaches the power of withdrawal, of creating space by turning inward.

    Both ideas remind us that value often comes from restraint, from the pause, from the silence in between. In our modern world, where everything pushes us to add, consume, and accelerate, these lessons feel more urgent than ever. 

    What would happen if businesses started to measure their value not by the noise they make, but by the clarity they create?

    The courage to pause

    Leaving empty space is countercultural. It means resisting the pressure to be always available, always active, always producing. However, real leadership is not about being the busiest person in the room, it is about having the clarity to see what others miss. Leaders who embrace empty space allow themselves to think bigger, to listen more deeply, and to create with intention. 

    In practice, this could mean fewer but more meaningful meetings, products designed with elegance instead of excess, and business strategies that prioritize focus over distraction. It’s a discipline of less, but better.

    The truth is we cannot keep running businesses—or the world—with the immaturity of “more at all costs.” It drains people, it drains resources, and it blinds us to the possibilities of doing things differently. Space allows us to step back, to challenge old patterns, and to ask better questions. What are we really building? What are we leaving behind? 

    These are not questions you can answer when your schedule is full to the brim. They are the questions that require silence, reflection, and the courage to pause.

    Final thoughts

    The future of business will not belong to those who push the hardest, but to those who know how to hold space. This is space to listen, space to question, space to imagine a new way of working that respects both people and the world we live in. This is space to create value that is not only financial, but also human.

    Empty space is not absence. It is presence of clarity, of meaning, of intention. It is the pause that makes the rest of the music possible.  If business is what makes the world go round, then perhaps the revolution we need is not in doing more, but in learning how to do less with wisdom. The essence of building lies not in filling every gap, but in creating space for what truly matters to emerge.

    Klodian Pepaj

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  • Need Smart, Creative, Employees Who Will Master Their Jobs? Science Says Hire People In their 30s, 40s, and Even 60s

    A business owner I know tends to only hire people in their twenties, under the under the assumption they bring new life into his business: new ideas, new innovations, new skills.

    And he’s sometimes right, especially in the specific.

    But in general? Science says his hiring approach is probably wrong.

    In a review of studies published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers found that the age at which scientists and inventors reach their moment of “genius: is increasing: while the average age used to be younger, the majority now make their biggest contributions to their field after the age of 40. 

    As the researchers write: 

    This research consistently finds that performance peaks in middle age: the life-cycle begins with a training period in which major creative output is absent, followed by a rapid rise in output to a peak, often in the late 30s or 40s.

    The same is often true for entrepreneurs. A Journal of Business Venturing study found that the most successful entrepreneurs tend to be middle-aged, even in tech. In fact, a 60-year-old startup founder was three times more likely to launch a successful startup than a 30-year-old startup founder, and nearly twice as likely to launch a startup that landed in the top 0.1 percent of all companies in terms of revenue and profits. 

    Why does scientific genius tend to occur later, rather than earlier? Sure, occasionally an apple will still fall off a tree to spark insight; Sir Isaac Newton was 23 when he developed his theory of gravity (as well as calculus, a subject my high school report card despised him for).

    But true mastery typically takes time. As the researchers write, “The link between creativity and extant knowledge may depend not just on the acquisition of extant knowledge via training, but may depend on the nature and difficulty of the cognitive processes involved in drawing together and extending sets of extant knowledge.”

    Or in non-researcher-speak, it’s not enough to just know things; you have to know how those things fit within larger frameworks in order to make new connections and new breakthroughs. 

    The same is true for entrepreneurs. While younger startup founders tend to be more tech savvy and less risk-averse, older startup founders benefit from greater experience, business skill, connections, and access to connections and capital. 

    In a broader sense, it’s hard to develop a sound strategy, to make the endless number of tactical decisions required to build a business, or to be a good leader when you have limited experience. For entrepreneurs, being older isn’t something to overcome. Experience is a genuine competitive advantage.

    And that’s also true for new employees. Sure, younger workers tend to be more tech savvy. They may possess recent education more applicable to a rapidly changing industry. If you need specific skills, a younger job candidate may be the perfect fit.

    But if you need broader skills, or an interconnected set of skills like leadership, take a closer look at a more seasoned candidate. 

    Younger or older, the person you hire should be the best person for the job, regardless of age. That’s why the real key is to identify the skills and attributes you need, and then focus on finding the best fit regardless of any preconceptions you might have — especially if you assume older dogs can’t be taught new tricks.

    Because contrary to popular belief, genius usually takes time to develop and emerge.

    After all: Steve Jobs may have been 21 when he co-founded Apple, but his most commercially successful innovations came when he was in his late 40s and early 50s.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Jeff Haden

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  • The Surprising Secret of Success, from Nobel Laureates: Move Around More

    Have you ever wondered where most Nobel Laureates are from? If so, the Nobel organization website helpfully provides both their birthplaces and academic affiliations at the time of their awards. If you start browsing, you may notice a pattern. The world’s most revered scientists are an incredibly mobile bunch. 

    Most of us have heard the story of Polish born Marie Curie’s move to France or Einstein fleeing Europe for the United States. But they are only the most famous of the many, many Nobel laureates who moved from country to country and institution to institution. One analysis of 21st-century Nobel winners showed a full 40 percent of laureates who did their prizewinning work in the U.S. were born abroad. 

    Does this just reflect that the best and the brightest can work where they please? Or do the mobile lives of Nobel laureates have anything to teach the rest of us about how to be more creative and successful? 

    A new study into these questions and came to a fascinating conclusion: if you want to come up with more and better ideas, you should probably move more.  

    More moves leads to quicker success 

    Ohio State University labor economist Bruce Weinberg has spent much of his career studying innovation. Where do important ideas come from? How do they spread? And how can we encourage more of them? If these are your questions, Nobel laureates are an excellent group to study. 

    And not just because they’re the source of some of the most impactful ideas. They’re also famous. Which means it’s possible to dig up detailed information on their lives. 

    Which is just what Weinberg and his colleagues, John Ham, a professor of economics at New York University in Abu Dhabi, and Brian Quistorff of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis did for a recent study published in the journal International Economic Review.

    Reconstructing the biographies of Nobel laureates in chemistry, medicine and physics from 1901 to 2003 yielded an interesting pattern. The more these scientists moved from place to place, the earlier they came up with the groundbreaking ideas that won them the Nobel.  

    If, for instance, a scientist changed location every two years, they started their Nobel-worthy work an average of two years earlier. Time and place were irrelevant. The pattern held whether they were a chemist in 1916 or a medical doctor in 2001. 

    “For someone who might have taken ten years to begin their prizewinning research if they stayed in one place, moving every two years could reduce that time by nearly a quarter. That is substantially accelerating their innovations,” Weinberg commented. 

    Why new places lead to new ideas

    As anyone who has ever changed jobs can tell you, settling into a new role in a new place is difficult and time-consuming. At first your productivity suffers. So why did moving around make Nobel laureates more successful, more quickly? 

    The researchers believe switching locations does have costs. But it also comes with a huge compensatory benefit. In each new location scientists are exposed to new people and new ideas that can advance and inspire their work. 

    “Really interesting work happens when people combine ideas in novel ways,” Weinberg explained on the Curious by Nature podcast. If a young scientist moves from Boston to New York or London, say, “they’re going to be exposed to a different set of ideas than the ones they already have.” 

    That means they “can mix them up in a novel way relative to other people who hadn’t just made that transition.” 

    Does this work for nongeniuses too? 

    Which is fascinating, but what does it have to do with us nongeniuses who aren’t regularly being invited to CERN for research collaborations? Is it likely these findings apply beyond the rarified world of Nobel Laureates? 

    Weinberg and his collaborators believe they do (more on exactly how later). Plus, theirs is not the only research suggesting that physically moving can have a much bigger effect on our life trajectories than we think. 

    National Geographic journalist Dan Buettner studied the world’s happiest places for 15 years for his book The Blue Zones of Happiness. His conclusion: “There’s no other intervention anybody can tell me about that has that dependable and lasting impact on happiness than your geography.” 

    Similarly, where a child grows up has a surprisingly large impact on how their life turns out. When data scientist and author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz analyzed research on the biggest factors influencing kids’ life outcomes, he found, “the best cities can increase a child’s future income by about 12 percent.” 

    That’s not just because parents in some neighborhoods have more resources than in others. The same family tends to have substantially different outcomes in different places. “I have estimated that some 25 percent–and possibly more–of the overall effects of a parent are driven by where that parent raises their child,” he reports in the Atlantic. 

    Can’t move? Nobel laureates can still teach you a lesson.

    Where you live matters an incredible amount for how your life turns out no matter who you are. 

    But that being said, Weinberg acknowledges, “most people just aren’t going to move, uproot their family and [say] ‘honey, pack up the boxes and pack up the kids and let’s go somewhere completely new.’”

    But you can still use his study of Nobel laureates to nudge you towards new ideas and greater success. Moving around accelerates innovation because it exposes people to fresh ideas and contacts. “Exposing yourself to novel combinations of ideas, novel sets of ideas, ideas that other people aren’t getting exposed to is really the key,” Weinberg underlines. 

    Moving is one way to do that. But there are alternative ways to bring fresh inspiration into your life: 

    “Reading something that you wouldn’t ordinarily read, talking to a different set of people than you would ordinarily talk to, going to see a lecture or a movie or a piece of art that you wouldn’t necessarily expose yourself to is a way of seeing things and learning things that you wouldn’t naturally have come across.” 

    Be like Nobel laureates: seek novelty

    University of Chicago economist Stephen Levitt once set up an unusual experiment. He solicited people on the internet who were struggling with a decision to let him decide with a random coin toss. 

    Surprisingly, 20,000 people agreed to leave a big life decision to chance. When Levitt followed up to see how things turned out, he discovered people were much happier when the coin flip had told them to do something new — to quit that job, start that venture, or get that tattoo. 

    “I believe that people are too cautious when it comes to making a change,” Levitt concluded. 

    Which is the practical takeaway of this new study of Nobel laureates too. If your life is such that a new adventure in a new place is just a U-haul drive away. Then by all means, start packing. The lives of celebrated scientists suggest you will be more creative and successful if you move more. 

    But if you have kids in school, a mortgage to pay, or a business to think of and can’t go to a new place, you can still up your chances of having breakthrough ideas. Just add more new people and new ideas to your life. That will almost certainly increase your odds of success no matter who you are or what you’re aiming for. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Jessica Stillman

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  • Using AI Gave Me Free Time — So I Turned It Into My Competitive Edge | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Artificial intelligence has changed my business entirely. The majority of my business is ecommerce-based, and AI has allowed me to automate many of the most time-consuming tasks. This shift hasn’t just saved me time; it’s made daily operations more efficient and enabled smarter, data-driven decisions that have elevated both productivity and customer satisfaction. In the early days, I spent nearly every waking hour creating products and listing them online. Every process was manual — from product descriptions to market research — and if I wasn’t actively working, nothing moved forward.

    But once I began incorporating AI into my workflow, everything changed. By automating some of the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks, I suddenly found myself with hours of free time each week. At first, it felt strange — almost unsettling — to no longer be chained to my desk for 10 hours a day. This raised a new and surprisingly tricky question: What should I do with this extra time?

    I quickly realized that I wasn’t alone in facing this dilemma. As AI and automation become more common, many entrepreneurs and business owners will find themselves in the same situation. Once your most tedious processes are handled automatically, how should you invest the hours you’ve reclaimed?

    When the time savings first hit, my instinct was to keep the momentum going by diving deeper into automation. I figured the best way to occupy myself was to learn more about artificial intelligence systems that could help automate my business even more. Meanwhile, all I was reading online was talking about how the AI revolution was occurring now, and to be successful, one must adapt and understand AI. I was constantly consuming new information, but wasn’t giving myself the mental space to process it. The quality of my learning declined, and my creativity began to plummet.

    Related: 5 Practical Ways Entrepreneurs Can Add AI to Their Toolkit Today

    It was a hard truth to swallow: You can only work so hard and absorb so much information in a day before your effectiveness starts to drop.

    At that point, I made a conscious decision to try something different. Instead of spending all my newfound time chasing more efficiencies, I decided to invest a portion of it into myself — outside the world of technology and business.

    I returned to activities that had once brought me joy but had been pushed aside by the demands of my business. I started going to the gym, which I hadn’t been doing consistently since college. I downloaded Apple Fitness and started using its guided meditations. I also started playing guitar in the evenings and making much more time for spending time with friends and family.

    The impact was immediate and unexpected. My stress levels dropped, my energy increased and I felt a sense of balance that I hadn’t experienced in years. Most surprisingly, my work performance improved dramatically.

    When I allowed myself to slow down, my productivity at work didn’t shrink; it grew. With a clearer mind and a healthier body, I was able to focus for more extended periods, think more creatively and approach challenges with a calmer, more strategic mindset.

    Simple changes made a difference:

    • Morning exercise gave me more energy throughout the day.
    • Meditation helped me approach business decisions with a clearer head.
    • Time with friends reminded me there’s more to life than my business.

    This wasn’t just about feeling better personally — it had a direct, measurable effect on my business. I made better decisions, communicated more effectively with clients and partners and spotted opportunities I might have missed when I was too buried in the grind.

    Many entrepreneurs pride themselves on living and breathing their work. That dedication can produce great results — but it can also lead to burnout, tunnel vision and declining performance over time.

    Automation offers us a rare opportunity, not just to get more done, but to create space in our lives for things that make us better humans and better leaders. Taking time to step away from constant work is not laziness — it’s a strategy for long-term success.

    Related: Are You Using AI Effectively — or Are You Wasting Its Potential? Ask Yourself These 5 Questions to Find Out

    How to manage your newfound free time

    When I started going back to the gym, meeting with friends, taking time off during lunch to take a walk outside and getting some sunlight, I felt much better and found that my creativity was coming back, as well as my ability to work with a clear head. Taking time to work on myself outside of my business has had a profoundly positive impact on me, both professionally and personally.

    Here’s the balance I’ve found works best:

    1. Dedicate part of your extra time to learning new tools, strategies or skills — but keep it intentional. Focus on areas that will directly move your business or personal goals forward.
    2. Physical and mental health is a business investment. Regular exercise, quality sleep and time outdoors will give you energy and mental clarity that directly benefit your work.
    3. Pursue your hobbies or revisit ones you used to enjoy.
    4. Creative outlets — whether that’s music, art, cooking or something else entirely — can recharge your brain and make you a more well-rounded thinker.
    5. Relationships take work and time; focus on continually growing and improving them.
    6. Strong personal connections improve resilience, reduce stress and can even lead to unexpected opportunities.

    Related: Why Smart Entrepreneurs Let AI Do the Heavy Business Lifting

    AI and automation are not just productivity tools — they are lifestyle-changing technologies. The real opportunity isn’t just in what they help you accomplish in your business, but in the freedom they give you to live better.

    The hours you reclaim are valuable. If you use them only to cram in more work, you risk missing the bigger picture. If you use them to grow as a person — in health, relationships and creativity — you may find that your business thrives as a natural byproduct.

    So, the next time automation gives you back an afternoon, ask yourself: Will I spend this making my systems faster, or making my life better? The answer you choose could change not just your business, but your life.

    Artificial intelligence has changed my business entirely. The majority of my business is ecommerce-based, and AI has allowed me to automate many of the most time-consuming tasks. This shift hasn’t just saved me time; it’s made daily operations more efficient and enabled smarter, data-driven decisions that have elevated both productivity and customer satisfaction. In the early days, I spent nearly every waking hour creating products and listing them online. Every process was manual — from product descriptions to market research — and if I wasn’t actively working, nothing moved forward.

    But once I began incorporating AI into my workflow, everything changed. By automating some of the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks, I suddenly found myself with hours of free time each week. At first, it felt strange — almost unsettling — to no longer be chained to my desk for 10 hours a day. This raised a new and surprisingly tricky question: What should I do with this extra time?

    I quickly realized that I wasn’t alone in facing this dilemma. As AI and automation become more common, many entrepreneurs and business owners will find themselves in the same situation. Once your most tedious processes are handled automatically, how should you invest the hours you’ve reclaimed?

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    David Peterson

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  • ‘With sand, you can create just about anything’: Town hosts legendary sandcastle contest

    REPORTER… JOYCE KIM… SHOWS US WHY THIS EVENT… STILL IT’S A CARMEL TRADITION THAT’S BEEN STANDING TALL – AND THEN WASHED AWAY – FOR MORE THAN SIX DECADES. THE 62ND ANNUAL GREAT SANDCASTLE CONTEST RETURNS TO CARMEL BEACH THIS SUNDAY, AND ORGANIZERS SAY IT’S ALL ABOUT CREATIVITY, COMMUNITY, AND FUN. YES.” BUILDERS OF ALL AGES HIT THE SAND AT HELD ON CARMEL BEACH AS EARLY AS 7 IN THE MORNING TO CREATE THEIR ARTWORKS. “IT’S NOT ONLY CREATIVE, BUT IT’S, I GUESS MAYBE THAT’S PART OF CREATIVITY IS THE IT’S A IT’S A VERY FREE A FREE AND EXPERIENCE.” THIS YEAR’S THEME, “CARMEL’S NATURE,” INVITES CONTESTANTS TO DRAW INSPIRATION FROM THE CENTRAL COAST’S LANDSCAPES, WILDLIFE, AND NATURAL BEAUTY. “THE WHOLE FUN OF IT IS THE BUILD.IT’S THE IMAGINATION. WITH SAND, YOU CAN CREATE JUST ABOUT ANYTHING. AND IN THIS PARTICULAR PROJECT THAT WE PUT TOGETHER WHERE WE HAVE THE MOMMY OTTER, LOOKING AT HER BABY OTTER WITH THE WAVE COMING UP, AND THEY’RE JUST PLAYING IN THE SURF AND HAVING A GREAT TIME.” THE CONTEST IS HOSTED BY THE CITY OF CARMEL-BY- THE-SEA AND THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS MONTEREY BAY. WIN OR LOSE, THE TIDE WILL TAKE IT ALL AWAY – BUT T

    ‘With sand, you can create just about anything’: Town hosts legendary sandcastle contest

    Updated: 1:18 AM EDT Sep 16, 2025

    Editorial Standards ⓘ

    The 62nd annual Great Sandcastle Contest returned to Carmel Beach in California, Sunday, inviting builders of all ages to showcase their creativity and enjoy a day of community fun.Builders gathered as early as 7 a.m. to craft their sand artworks.Alfred Seccombe said, “It’s not only creative, but it’s, I guess, maybe that’s part of creativity is the it’s a it’s a free experience.”Builders are drawing inspiration from the landscapes, wildlife, and natural beauty of California.”The whole fun of it is the build. It’s the imagination,” Robert Slawinski, a builder, said. “With sand, you can create just about anything.”Slawinski had a family theme in his sandcastle creation. “And in this particular project that we put together, where we have the mommy otter, looking at her baby otter with the wave coming up, and they’re just playing in the surf and having a great time,” he said. The contest is hosted by the city of Carmel-by-the-Sea and the American Institute of Architects Monterey Bay.Win or lose, the tide will take it all away, but the memories will stick.

    CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, Calif. —

    The 62nd annual Great Sandcastle Contest returned to Carmel Beach in California, Sunday, inviting builders of all ages to showcase their creativity and enjoy a day of community fun.

    Builders gathered as early as 7 a.m. to craft their sand artworks.

    Alfred Seccombe said, “It’s not only creative, but it’s, I guess, maybe that’s part of creativity is the it’s a it’s a free experience.”

    Builders are drawing inspiration from the landscapes, wildlife, and natural beauty of California.

    “The whole fun of it is the build. It’s the imagination,” Robert Slawinski, a builder, said. “With sand, you can create just about anything.”

    Slawinski had a family theme in his sandcastle creation.

    “And in this particular project that we put together, where we have the mommy otter, looking at her baby otter with the wave coming up, and they’re just playing in the surf and having a great time,” he said.

    The contest is hosted by the city of Carmel-by-the-Sea and the American Institute of Architects Monterey Bay.

    Win or lose, the tide will take it all away, but the memories will stick.

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  • How a Mom’s Garage Side Hustle Hit $1 Billion Revenue | Entrepreneur

    This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Sandra Oh Lin, 50, of Los Altos, California. She is the founder and CEO of KiwiCo, a company that provides educational activities for kids meant to spark creativity and problem-solving through hands-on play. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of KiwiCo. Sandra Oh Lin.

    Want to read more stories like this? Subscribe to Money Makers, our free newsletter packed with creative side hustle ideas and successful strategies. Sign up here.

    What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?
    I had just stepped away from seven years at eBay Inc., where I had launched PayPal Mobile and led the eBay fashion business. I was working on a new fashion-related startup idea before I ended up starting KiwiCo in 2011.

    Where did you find the inspiration for the side hustle?
    When my kids were younger, I tried to find ways for them to exercise their creativity and put their problem-solving skills to work. I wanted them to grow up to feel like they could envision and better the world around them. As an engineer by training, I saw creating and building through hands-on activities as a way to explore, discover and build creative confidence. At the same time, I was drawing on my own childhood — I have such fond memories of making and building things with my mom while I was growing up.

    Related: After College, She Spent $800 to Start a Side Hustle That Became a ‘Monster’ Business Making $35 Million a Year: ‘I Set Intense Sales Targets’

    What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money/investment did it take to launch?
    I started by creating hands-on projects for my kids. Then, I started to share them with friends and family during playdates. The parents and kids were so enthusiastic about the activities that it gave me the confidence to take it further. I laid the groundwork to see if there was a market for a real business. Then, I leveraged my network to start conversations with investors. We raised a little more than $10 million in venture funding. From there, we were able to become profitable and cash flow positive — and fund our own growth.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of KiwiCo

    Are there any free or paid resources that have been especially helpful for you in starting and running this business?
    I had a strong background in product design (having worked in R&D at Procter & Gamble) and ecommerce (from time at PayPal and eBay). Yet, I didn’t have any direct experience with fulfillment, supply chain and operations. I had a lot to learn. So I made a conscious effort to surround myself with people who were true experts. One example is Mike Smith, who was the COO of Walmart. He provided invaluable guidance, and he even helped interview our VP of operations candidates when we were hiring. Advisors like Mike were so helpful to us at that time.

    If you could go back in your business journey and change one process or approach, what would it be, and how do you wish you’d done it differently?
    I had always heard people say that a strong culture is so important to define and cultivate when you build a company. That way, you can point to and reinforce the behavior and values that align. While I was able to grok that academically, I put it aside when I should have addressed it earlier. As a result, some of our hiring was off in the beginning, and we had to course correct, which was costly. It would have been helpful to have put the framework into place from the beginning.

    When it comes to this specific business, what is something you’ve found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for, but likely aren’t?
    During the pandemic, one of our toughest challenges was sourcing enough supplies to keep up with surging demand. In the years since, we’ve seen our fair share of ups and downs on that front, but one thing has remained constant: the importance of strong, trusted relationships with our suppliers. They’ve been incredible partners through it all, and those collaborations have been key to helping us navigate post-pandemic growth with resilience and adaptability.

    Related: This Mom’s Creative Side Hustle Started As a Hobby With Less Than $100 — Then Grew Into a Business Averaging $570,000 a Month: ‘It’s Crazy’

    Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong? How did you fix it?
    I’ll never forget our very first alpha shipment. We had just 19 crates to send out, and it took a team of five of us the entire day to get them boxed and shipped. By the end, we were exhausted and looking at each other like, There has to be a better way. It was a wake-up call that we needed better systems and processes for fulfillment if we were going to scale. We figured it out along the way, but that moment sticks with me as a reminder of how far we’ve come.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of KiwiCo

    How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue?
    With our core business being subscription-based, we’ve seen consistent monthly revenue from the beginning. KiwiCo has been profitable and self-funded for many years now. What started in my garage has grown into a company that has shipped more than 50 million crates to families in over 40 countries and created more than 1,500 hands-on products and activities. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come, while still staying true to the heart of why we started: sparking creativity and confidence in kids everywhere.

    What does growth and revenue look like now?
    To date, KiwiCo has generated more than $1 billion in lifetime revenue. This is something I’m incredibly proud of, not just because of the number itself, but because it represents millions of moments of creativity and discovery for kids and families. Additionally, we launched in Target and Barnes & Noble this past year as part of building our wholesale channels.

    Related: He Spent $36 to Start a Side Hustle. Now the Business Earns 6 Figures a Year — With Just 1-2 Hours of Work a Day: ‘Freedom.’

    What do you enjoy most about running this business?
    One of my favorite parts of this journey is that my kids not only understand what I do for work but also are involved in helping shape KiwiCo’s products. My kids were the original source of inspiration for the company, and they continue to be critical testers of our products to ensure we’re creating the best hands-on activities for kids to discover and unleash their creativity and explore as they learn about the world around them.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of KiwiCo

    What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
    Finding a community of founders can be so helpful. Sharing the challenges and the opportunities that come from building a business with others who are in the same boat can be so valuable. You can gather everything from tangible, actionable advice to empathetic ears that have been there and done that.

    This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Sandra Oh Lin, 50, of Los Altos, California. She is the founder and CEO of KiwiCo, a company that provides educational activities for kids meant to spark creativity and problem-solving through hands-on play. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of KiwiCo. Sandra Oh Lin.

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.

    Amanda Breen

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  • Mom’s Creative Side Hustle Grew to $570,000 a Month: Penny Linn | Entrepreneur

    This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Krista LeRay, the 34-year-old founder of needlepoint store Penny Linn. She lives with her husband and two children in Westport, Connecticut. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of Penny Linn. Krista LeRay.

    Want to read more stories like this? Subscribe to Money Makers, our free newsletter packed with creative side hustle ideas and successful strategies. Sign up here.

    What was your day job or primary occupation when you started your side hustle?
    Before starting Penny Linn, a new-age needlepoint store offering hand-painted canvases, accessories and more, I was a full-time influencer running my blog, Covering The Bases. I started the blog in 2013, but I only took it full-time about a year before starting Penny Linn. While managing the blog, I had a corporate career at Major League Baseball, where I worked on the social media team for over five years.

    Related: He Spent $36 to Start a Side Hustle. Now the Business Earns 6 Figures a Year — With Just 1-2 Hours of Work a Day: ‘Freedom.’

    When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it?
    I initially learned to stitch from my grandma, who inspired the name of the business, and then I really got into it in college at the University of Kentucky. I picked it back up again in 2018 when I started stitching custom belts for my dad and husband, and a ring bearer pillow for my wedding in 2019. Little did I know that this would be the perfect hobby to fall back in love with as the pandemic approached.

    As I got back into stitching, I quickly stitched through my stash of canvases and was disappointed with both the in-person and online needlepoint shopping experiences. It felt antiquated; there weren’t many sites with a good user experience, a handful of the shops made you call to order, and the designs felt very mature. I found myself wishing there were more fun and better accessories and canvases, so I started making them after my search came up short.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of Penny Linn

    What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money/investment did it take to launch?
    When I started painting my own canvases, I wasn’t even in the mindset of starting a business; it was still just a hobby for me. I probably spent under $100 buying a blank canvas on Etsy and paint at Michaels, and painted the infamous Ralph’s Coffee cup for myself. When I shared it on my Instagram, I had an overwhelming number of followers ask to buy one, so I knew my followers were also interested in needlepoint.

    As I began searching for cuter accessories for myself, I found that many custom items had a 100-item minimum. At the time, I had a business bank account for my blog, so I used that money to order the inventory and knew that I could at least sell 90 of them to my followers who also needlepointed. After making a few canvases and seeing the demand, I realized I had enough ideas to launch a larger collection online. So I bought the smallest Shopify package, started sourcing needleminders and project bags, and recruited my friends and family to help paint canvases.

    All in all, I spent about $5,000 on the initial inventory for our accessories and an additional $2,000 on shipping materials, canvas tape, etc., but none of this accounted for my time painting the canvases one by one, which was the biggest investment.

    Related: These 31-Year-Old Best Friends Started a Side Hustle to Solve a Workout Struggle — And It’s On Track to Hit $10 Million Annual Revenue This Year

    If you could go back in your business journey and change one process or approach, what would it be, and how do you wish you’d done it differently?
    Looking back on how I built my business, it’s a catch-22; if I had known what I know today, I might have done it differently. However, having my hands in every aspect of the business has brought me a great deal of knowledge and appreciation that continues to shape the business.

    In the beginning, I hand-painted nearly every canvas, which took many, many hours, but it kept costs low since my labor was essentially free and gave me control over my inventory. If I had known that people outsourced painting, it would have saved me so much time and energy, but doing it myself taught me the value of a hand-painted canvas.

    Similarly, I wish I had hired people at the beginning to take more off my plate, but by doing it all, I learned valuable lessons and knew how I wanted every aspect of the business to run. I don’t think Penny Linn would be such a thoughtful and impactful brand today if I hadn’t had my fingers on every aspect of the business in the beginning.

    Related: I Interviewed 5 Entrepreneurs Generating Up to $20 Million in Revenue a Year — And They All Have the Same Regret About Starting Their Business

    When it comes to this specific business, what is something you’ve found particularly challenging and/or surprising that people who get into this type of work should be prepared for, but likely aren’t?
    The reason Penny Linn has been so successful as a business, and also in reviving the cultural love for needlepoint, is that we brought much-needed innovation to the industry. I never expected the amount of pushback from vendors and industry vets I received. Across the board, people pushed back on our ideas and how we ran our business.

    Today, we have found partners who believe in our growth and are building with us. When we launched our acrylic line in 2022, there was so much chatter online that it wasn’t innovative or unique, but today we hold a patent for the design, and it’s one of our bestselling lines. We also take a slightly smaller wholesale margin than the industry standard because I believe in making needlepoint accessible. Our wholesale partners were initially adamant that it wouldn’t be successful, but it has proven otherwise. I developed a thick skin while blogging and learned to shut out the noise, which has followed me into Penny Linn as we continue to shake up the industry.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of Penny Linn

    Can you recall a specific instance when something went very wrong? How did you fix it?
    I vividly remember one of our first bag launches, which did not go as planned. It was a beautiful project bag with leather and PVC that we sold through so quickly! As I was packing them, I tested a few of the zippers and was very disappointed to find that they stuck and were difficult to open, despite the samples working perfectly. I reached out to each customer who had ordered them and let them know that the bags weren’t up to our standards. I offered them a full refund if they wanted to return the bag or a discount if they wanted to keep it.

    This became one of my biggest rules in business: When anything goes wrong, I need to take ownership and work to rectify it immediately. Our community was beyond appreciative of how proactive we were, and most ended up keeping the bags. We put the rest of the bags on clearance and now work with our team and vendors to ensure we have quality control measures in place.

    How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the side hustle earn?
    In the first six months after we launched, the only consistent revenue was what we generated during launches. Everything would sell out so quickly that we wouldn’t have any inventory left until the next launch. We would often have a day or two without sales in between launches, which wasn’t a sustainable way to run a business. To prevent this, we started producing more inventory and introduced our Penny Linn Collective, allowing us to bring on designers who expanded our offerings. Our designer collective has been fruitful for us over the past five years, and we continue to grow it today.

    We started seeing more consistent revenue in year two, doing just over $30,000 per month. The popularity of our launches started to level out, and we could better forecast inventory to keep our income steady. It was such a big deal for us at the time to reach these numbers, but we do that in a day now. Each year has been drastically different in terms of demand, and about every six months, we reach an inflection point where we need to increase quantities even more.

    Related: This Couple’s ‘Scrappy’ Side Hustle Sold Out in 1 Weekend — It Hit $1 Million in 3 Years and Now Makes Millions Annually: ‘Lean But Powerful’

    What does growth and revenue look like now?
    It’s been really exciting that Penny Linn has doubled or tripled each year. In 2024, we did $4.4 million in revenue, and we have already surpassed that and are on track to double it in 2025. We are currently averaging $570,000 per month. Whatever I think our ceiling might be, we come in and double it each year. Our growth has been so explosive that I do expect it to start leveling out in the next year or so, but there is still so much opportunity for the business.

    My mind is always racing with new ideas for the brand as we expand our product offering, launch new designers under the Penny Linn Collective and bring new accessories to market. Our store opening in Norwalk, Connecticut, earlier this year was a huge milestone for us, and now we are exploring what more stores might look like. I don’t see our growth slowing down anytime soon.

    Image Credit: Courtesy of Penny Linn

    What do you enjoy most about running this business?
    I honestly love what I do so much and find great fulfillment in it. I feel so much pride, excitement and joy thinking about what we’ve created at Penny Linn and the business I’ve built in under five years. It’s nothing I could have ever imagined as my career or what I expected Penny Linn to grow into. We haven’t seen many bumps in the road yet, and keep having success after success, which energizes me to keep going.

    I pride myself on the fact that Penny Linn is “by a stitcher for a stitcher,” and there is nothing more satisfying as a needlepointer to want something in my collection and to be able to make it. I’m privileged to have the ability to work with our vendors to create the products of my dreams, and it’s just as exciting to see how much our community loves them.

    I also find so much joy in the change we have brought to the industry and how we have been able to bring needlepoint to the forefront for a new generation. It’s crazy to sit back and think that my brand has revived a centuries-old tradition and built it into something that will continue to live on and evolve for generations to come.

    Related: These Friends Started a Side Hustle in Their Kitchens. Sales Spiked to $130,000 in 3 Days — Then 7 Figures: ‘Revenue Has Grown Consistently.’

    What’s your best business advice?
    The first is, “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.” People are often scared to reach out because they are afraid of rejection, but my motto is always to ask, and if they don’t reply, it’s still not a no. If they don’t respond, it’s not the end of the world, but the opportunity for the answer to be yes is so much greater.

    My second is to learn the difference between constructive feedback and criticism. If someone doesn’t like you or your business, they will never have anything nice to say, and it’s not worth listening to. However, if they are a loyal fan and a frequent shopper, and they comment on how a product or process might be improved, it’s worth listening to. It’s easy to get lost in the negative feedback, but the faster you learn what is worth listening to, the better decisions you will make for your business.

    Amanda Breen

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  • This Simple Practice Did More for My Business Than Any Productivity Hack | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    When it comes to entrepreneurship, picking up a new hobby probably isn’t top of mind. You’re already juggling a packed schedule — and maybe you already have hobbies you love. Still, it should come as no surprise: hobbies are good for you.

    In fact, a 2023 study published in Nature Medicine found that adults aged 65-plus who engaged in hobbies reported better health, higher life satisfaction and greater happiness. And in my own experience, embracing a musical hobby has been one of the most effective ways to improve my mental health, reduce stress and maintain a sense of balance as a business owner.

    You don’t need to be a lifelong musician to benefit. Music offers a creative outlet and a mental reset — something all entrepreneurs need more of. Whether you’re learning an instrument, singing, or simply listening more intentionally, musical hobbies can change how you show up in business and life.

    Let’s break down three key ways music can positively impact entrepreneurs.

    1. Music relieves stress — fast

    Entrepreneurship comes with constant pressure — deadlines, decisions, responsibilities. Stress builds up over time, and if left unchecked, it can lead to burnout, anxiety, trouble concentrating or even depression.

    A musical hobby can serve as a powerful stress reliever. Studies show that playing an instrument or singing can lower cortisol levels and reduce anxiety. Even listening to music intentionally — without multitasking — can focus your mind and create a sense of calm.

    Of course, not everyone has time to learn an instrument. That’s okay. For me, just putting on a record and truly listening helps me reset. Whether it’s practicing piano, jamming with friends or listening to a favorite playlist, music becomes something to look forward to — a reliable, restorative escape.

    Related: How I Turned My Hobbies Into Profitable Side Businesses With My Friends — Without Losing the Joy

    2. It builds transferable skills

    Musical hobbies don’t just relieve stress — they sharpen your mind. Actively engaging with music can improve memory, concentration, and cognitive flexibility. For entrepreneurs, that’s a powerful edge.

    Learning to play an instrument, for instance, requires self-discipline, time management and resilience — all skills that mirror the entrepreneurial journey. It challenges you to get comfortable being a beginner again, to practice patience, and to build momentum over time.

    Musical practice enhances:

    • Creativity
    • Problem-solving
    • Focus
    • Coordination
    • Confidence
    • Discipline
    • Learning agility

    And perhaps most importantly, it reminds you that growth comes from consistency — a principle that applies just as much in business as it does in music.

    Related: Every Entrepreneur Needs a Hobby Separate From the Company — Here’s Why

    3. It strengthens your brain

    Engaging with music activates multiple regions of the brain — the same areas responsible for memory, movement, emotional regulation and complex thinking.

    A 2023 study found that musical training enhances auditory processing and working memory. According to AARP, playing an instrument lights up your brain, improving functions like listening, reading, and recall — and may even help grow new neural pathways. That means better cognitive health, greater adaptability, and increased creative thinking.

    For entrepreneurs who rely on clear decision-making, creative problem-solving and rapid learning, that kind of cognitive workout is invaluable.

    Treat music as self-care, not a side project

    Musical hobbies give entrepreneurs more than just stress relief. They offer a creative space to disconnect from the daily grind, while strengthening the mental and emotional muscles that help you lead, build and grow.

    Even if you can’t commit to lessons or learning an instrument, find ways to engage with music that work for your schedule. Deep listening, group classes, or even karaoke nights can reignite joy and spark inspiration.

    Entrepreneurship demands everything from you — but that doesn’t mean you can’t take something back. A musical hobby could be exactly what you need to recharge, grow and show up better in every area of your life.

    When it comes to entrepreneurship, picking up a new hobby probably isn’t top of mind. You’re already juggling a packed schedule — and maybe you already have hobbies you love. Still, it should come as no surprise: hobbies are good for you.

    In fact, a 2023 study published in Nature Medicine found that adults aged 65-plus who engaged in hobbies reported better health, higher life satisfaction and greater happiness. And in my own experience, embracing a musical hobby has been one of the most effective ways to improve my mental health, reduce stress and maintain a sense of balance as a business owner.

    You don’t need to be a lifelong musician to benefit. Music offers a creative outlet and a mental reset — something all entrepreneurs need more of. Whether you’re learning an instrument, singing, or simply listening more intentionally, musical hobbies can change how you show up in business and life.

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.

    Dr. Christina Rahm

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  • AI company Anthropic to pay authors $1.5 billion over pirated books used to train chatbots

    Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.Related video above: The risks to children under President Trump’s new AI policyThe landmark settlement, if approved by a judge as soon as Monday, could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and the writers, visual artists and other creative professionals who accuse them of copyright infringement.The company has agreed to pay authors or publishers about $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.”As best as we can tell, it’s the largest copyright recovery ever,” said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors. “It is the first of its kind in the AI era.”A trio of authors — thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — sued last year and now represent a broader group of writers and publishers whose books Anthropic downloaded to train its chatbot Claude.A federal judge dealt the case a mixed ruling in June, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites. If Anthropic had not settled, experts say losing the case after a scheduled December trial could have cost the San Francisco-based company even more money.”We were looking at a strong possibility of multiple billions of dollars, enough to potentially cripple or even put Anthropic out of business,” said William Long, a legal analyst for Wolters Kluwer.U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco has scheduled a Monday hearing to review the settlement terms.Anthropic said in a statement Friday that the settlement, if approved, “will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims.””We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” said Aparna Sridhar, the company’s deputy general counsel.As part of the settlement, the company has also agreed to destroy the original book files it downloaded.Books are known to be important sources of data — in essence, billions of words carefully strung together — that are needed to build the AI large language models behind chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude and its chief rival, OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Alsup’s June ruling found that Anthropic had downloaded more than 7 million digitized books that it “knew had been pirated.” It started with nearly 200,000 from an online library called Books3, assembled by AI researchers outside of OpenAI to match the vast collections on which ChatGPT was trained.Debut thriller novel “The Lost Night” by Bartz, a lead plaintiff in the case, was among those found in the dataset.Anthropic later took at least 5 million copies from the pirate website Library Genesis, or LibGen, and at least 2 million copies from the Pirate Library Mirror, Alsup wrote.The Authors Guild told its thousands of members last month that it expected “damages will be minimally $750 per work and could be much higher” if Anthropic was found at trial to have willfully infringed their copyrights. The settlement’s higher award — approximately $3,000 per work — likely reflects a smaller pool of affected books, after taking out duplicates and those without copyright. On Friday, Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, called the settlement “an excellent result for authors, publishers, and rightsholders generally, sending a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it.” The Danish Rights Alliance, which successfully fought to take down one of those shadow libraries, said Friday that the settlement would be of little help to European writers and publishers whose works aren’t registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.”On the one hand, it’s comforting to see that compiling AI training datasets by downloading millions of books from known illegal file-sharing sites comes at a price,” said Thomas Heldrup, the group’s head of content protection and enforcement.On the other hand, Heldrup said it fits a tech industry playbook to grow a business first and later pay a relatively small fine, compared to the size of the business, for breaking the rules.”It is my understanding that these companies see a settlement like the Anthropic one as a price of conducting business in a fiercely competitive space,” Heldrup said.The privately held Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021, earlier this week put its value at $183 billion after raising another $13 billion in investments.Anthropic also said it expects to make $5 billion in sales this year, but, like OpenAI and many other AI startups, it has never reported making a profit, relying instead on investors to back the high costs of developing AI technology for the expectation of future payoffs.The settlement could influence other disputes, including an ongoing lawsuit by authors and newspapers against OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft, and cases against Meta and Midjourney. And just as the Anthropic settlement terms were filed, another group of authors sued Apple on Friday in the same San Francisco federal court.”This indicates that maybe for other cases, it’s possible for creators and AI companies to reach settlements without having to essentially go for broke in court,” said Long, the legal analyst.The industry, including Anthropic, had largely praised Alsup’s June ruling because he found that training AI systems on copyrighted works so chatbots can produce their own passages of text qualified as “fair use” under U.S. copyright law because it was “quintessentially transformative.”Comparing the AI model to “any reader aspiring to be a writer,” Alsup wrote that Anthropic “trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different.”But documents disclosed in court showed Anthropic employees’ internal concerns about the legality of their use of pirate sites. The company later shifted its approach and hired Tom Turvey, the former Google executive in charge of Google Books, a searchable library of digitized books that successfully weathered years of copyright battles.With his help, Anthropic began buying books in bulk, tearing off the bindings and scanning each page before feeding the digitized versions into its AI model, according to court documents. That was legal but didn’t undo the earlier piracy, according to the judge.

    NEW YORK —

    Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit by book authors who say the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.

    Related video above: The risks to children under President Trump’s new AI policy

    The landmark settlement, if approved by a judge as soon as Monday, could mark a turning point in legal battles between AI companies and the writers, visual artists and other creative professionals who accuse them of copyright infringement.

    The company has agreed to pay authors or publishers about $3,000 for each of an estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.

    “As best as we can tell, it’s the largest copyright recovery ever,” said Justin Nelson, a lawyer for the authors. “It is the first of its kind in the AI era.”

    A trio of authors — thriller novelist Andrea Bartz and nonfiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — sued last year and now represent a broader group of writers and publishers whose books Anthropic downloaded to train its chatbot Claude.

    A federal judge dealt the case a mixed ruling in June, finding that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites.

    If Anthropic had not settled, experts say losing the case after a scheduled December trial could have cost the San Francisco-based company even more money.

    “We were looking at a strong possibility of multiple billions of dollars, enough to potentially cripple or even put Anthropic out of business,” said William Long, a legal analyst for Wolters Kluwer.

    U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco has scheduled a Monday hearing to review the settlement terms.

    Anthropic said in a statement Friday that the settlement, if approved, “will resolve the plaintiffs’ remaining legacy claims.”

    “We remain committed to developing safe AI systems that help people and organizations extend their capabilities, advance scientific discovery, and solve complex problems,” said Aparna Sridhar, the company’s deputy general counsel.

    As part of the settlement, the company has also agreed to destroy the original book files it downloaded.

    Books are known to be important sources of data — in essence, billions of words carefully strung together — that are needed to build the AI large language models behind chatbots like Anthropic’s Claude and its chief rival, OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

    Alsup’s June ruling found that Anthropic had downloaded more than 7 million digitized books that it “knew had been pirated.” It started with nearly 200,000 from an online library called Books3, assembled by AI researchers outside of OpenAI to match the vast collections on which ChatGPT was trained.

    Debut thriller novel “The Lost Night” by Bartz, a lead plaintiff in the case, was among those found in the dataset.

    Anthropic later took at least 5 million copies from the pirate website Library Genesis, or LibGen, and at least 2 million copies from the Pirate Library Mirror, Alsup wrote.

    The Authors Guild told its thousands of members last month that it expected “damages will be minimally $750 per work and could be much higher” if Anthropic was found at trial to have willfully infringed their copyrights. The settlement’s higher award — approximately $3,000 per work — likely reflects a smaller pool of affected books, after taking out duplicates and those without copyright.

    On Friday, Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, called the settlement “an excellent result for authors, publishers, and rightsholders generally, sending a strong message to the AI industry that there are serious consequences when they pirate authors’ works to train their AI, robbing those least able to afford it.”

    The Danish Rights Alliance, which successfully fought to take down one of those shadow libraries, said Friday that the settlement would be of little help to European writers and publishers whose works aren’t registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

    “On the one hand, it’s comforting to see that compiling AI training datasets by downloading millions of books from known illegal file-sharing sites comes at a price,” said Thomas Heldrup, the group’s head of content protection and enforcement.

    On the other hand, Heldrup said it fits a tech industry playbook to grow a business first and later pay a relatively small fine, compared to the size of the business, for breaking the rules.

    “It is my understanding that these companies see a settlement like the Anthropic one as a price of conducting business in a fiercely competitive space,” Heldrup said.

    The privately held Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021, earlier this week put its value at $183 billion after raising another $13 billion in investments.

    Anthropic also said it expects to make $5 billion in sales this year, but, like OpenAI and many other AI startups, it has never reported making a profit, relying instead on investors to back the high costs of developing AI technology for the expectation of future payoffs.

    The settlement could influence other disputes, including an ongoing lawsuit by authors and newspapers against OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft, and cases against Meta and Midjourney. And just as the Anthropic settlement terms were filed, another group of authors sued Apple on Friday in the same San Francisco federal court.

    “This indicates that maybe for other cases, it’s possible for creators and AI companies to reach settlements without having to essentially go for broke in court,” said Long, the legal analyst.

    The industry, including Anthropic, had largely praised Alsup’s June ruling because he found that training AI systems on copyrighted works so chatbots can produce their own passages of text qualified as “fair use” under U.S. copyright law because it was “quintessentially transformative.”

    Comparing the AI model to “any reader aspiring to be a writer,” Alsup wrote that Anthropic “trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different.”

    But documents disclosed in court showed Anthropic employees’ internal concerns about the legality of their use of pirate sites. The company later shifted its approach and hired Tom Turvey, the former Google executive in charge of Google Books, a searchable library of digitized books that successfully weathered years of copyright battles.

    With his help, Anthropic began buying books in bulk, tearing off the bindings and scanning each page before feeding the digitized versions into its AI model, according to court documents. That was legal but didn’t undo the earlier piracy, according to the judge.

    Source link

  • The Hidden Ingredients Behind AI’s Creativity

    The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine.

    We were once promised self-driving cars and robot maids. Instead, we’ve seen the rise of artificial intelligence systems that can beat us in chess, analyze huge reams of text, and compose sonnets. This has been one of the great surprises of the modern era: physical tasks that are easy for humans turn out to be very difficult for robots, while algorithms are increasingly able to mimic our intellect.

    Another surprise that has long perplexed researchers is those algorithms’ knack for their own, strange kind of creativity.

    Diffusion models, the backbone of image-generating tools such as DALL·E, Imagen, and Stable Diffusion, are designed to generate carbon copies of the images on which they’ve been trained. In practice, however, they seem to improvise, blending elements within images to create something new—not just nonsensical blobs of color, but coherent images with semantic meaning. This is the “paradox” behind diffusion models, said Giulio Biroli, an AI researcher and physicist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris: “If they worked perfectly, they should just memorize,” he said. “But they don’t—they’re actually able to produce new samples.”

    To generate images, diffusion models use a process known as denoising. They convert an image into digital noise (an incoherent collection of pixels), then reassemble it. It’s like repeatedly putting a painting through a shredder until all you have left is a pile of fine dust, then patching the pieces back together. For years, researchers have wondered: If the models are just reassembling, then how does novelty come into the picture? It’s like reassembling your shredded painting into a completely new work of art.

    Now two physicists have made a startling claim: It’s the technical imperfections in the denoising process itself that leads to the creativity of diffusion models. In a paper presented at the International Conference on Machine Learning 2025, the duo developed a mathematical model of trained diffusion models to show that their so-called creativity is in fact a deterministic process—a direct, inevitable consequence of their architecture.

    By illuminating the black box of diffusion models, the new research could have big implications for future AI research—and perhaps even for our understanding of human creativity. “The real strength of the paper is that it makes very accurate predictions of something very nontrivial,” said Luca Ambrogioni, a computer scientist at Radboud University in the Netherlands.

    Bottoms Up

    Mason Kamb, a graduate student studying applied physics at Stanford University and the lead author of the new paper, has long been fascinated by morphogenesis: the processes by which living systems self-assemble.

    One way to understand the development of embryos in humans and other animals is through what’s known as a Turing pattern, named after the 20th-century mathematician Alan Turing. Turing patterns explain how groups of cells can organize themselves into distinct organs and limbs. Crucially, this coordination all takes place at a local level. There’s no CEO overseeing the trillions of cells to make sure they all conform to a final body plan. Individual cells, in other words, don’t have some finished blueprint of a body on which to base their work. They’re just taking action and making corrections in response to signals from their neighbors. This bottom-up system usually runs smoothly, but every now and then it goes awry—producing hands with extra fingers, for example.

    Webb Wright

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  • 4 ways to transform your classroom through playful gamification 

    Key points:

    Every educator hopes to instill a lifelong love of learning within their students. We strive to make each lesson engaging, while igniting a sense of curiosity, wonder, and discovery in every child.

    Unfortunately, we don’t always succeed, and recent reports suggest that today’s students are struggling to connect with the material they’re taught in school–particularly when it comes to STEM. While there are many potential culprits behind these numbers (shortened attention spans, the presence of phones, dependency on AI, etc.), educators should still take a moment to reflect and strategize when preparing a new lesson for their class. If we truly want to foster a growth mindset within our students, we need to provide lessons that invite them to embrace the learning process itself.

    One way to accomplish this is through gamification. Gamification brings the motivational elements of games into your everyday lessons. It increases student engagement, builds perseverance, and promotes a growth mindset. When used strategically, it helps learners take ownership of their progress and encourages creativity and collaboration without sacrificing academic rigor.

    Here are just 4 ways that educators can transform their classroom through playful gamification:

    1. Introduce points and badges: Modern video games like Pokémon and Minecraft frequently use achievements to guide new players through the gaming process. Teachers can do the same by assigning points to different activities that students can acquire throughout the week. These experience points can also double as currency that students can exchange for small rewards, such as extra free time or an end-of-year pizza party.
    2. Create choice boards: Choice boards provide students with a range of task options, each with a point value or challenge level. You can assign themes or badges for completing tasks in a certain sequence (e.g., “complete a column” or “complete one of each difficulty level”). This allows students to take ownership of their learning path and pace, while still hitting key learning targets.
    3. Host a digital breakout: Virtual escape rooms and digital breakouts are great for fostering engagement and getting students to think outside the box. By challenging students to solve content-based puzzles to unlock “locks” or progress through scenarios, they’re encouraged to think creatively while also collaborating with their peers. They’re the ideal activity for reviewing classwork and reinforcing key concepts across subjects.
    4. Boss battle assessments: This gamified review activity has students “battle” a fictional character by answering questions or completing tasks. Each correct response helps them defeat the boss, which can be tracked with points, health bars, or progress meters. This engaging format turns practice into a collaborative challenge, building excitement and reinforcing content mastery.

    When implemented correctly, gamification can be incredibly fun and rewarding for our students. With the fall semester drawing closer, there has never been a better time to prepare lessons that will spark student curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking.

    We can show our students that STEM learning is not a chore, but a gateway to discovery and excitement. So, get your pencils ready, and let the games begin.

    Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)

    Cory Kavanagh, Van Andel Institute for Education

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  • Why Are We Afraid To Create?

    Why Are We Afraid To Create?

    My son, now four years old, loves drawing people with really long necks, long oval eyes, a dot for a nose, a jagged line for a mouth and sometimes there’s a torso, sometimes the arms and legs come straight from the neck. He puts marker to paper, or chalk to sidewalk and just goes for it. There’s no pause. No doubt. No I’m worried this won’t turn out like I imagine or what if no one likes this?

    I can remember a defining moment for me. As a kid, from around the age of seven or eight, I sewed my own clothes. I loved it. They were awful and crooked and usually fell apart by the end of the day. The next day, I’d sew something new. I did get better over time, and was the student designer in my high school fashion shows and loved nothing more than spending hours creating in my basement sewing room.

    Then I spent four years in fashion school and never sewed again. The joy of creation was taken out of the creative process.

    That, I believe, is what plants the first seed of hesitation for our creations. We become too attached to the outcome, the critics, the judgements, the grand finale result, and the resistance becomes so strong that we don’t even start the creative process.

    It applies to our work, too, you know. We have ideas – ideas for the company we work for, ideas for our own business or an idea of a new business, hobby, or initiative we want to do. We’re sparked, we’re excited and then do nothing. We don’t ever take the first step. We’re afraid it’s silly, or will be a lot of work, or won’t succeed and so… nothing.

    taking the leap to create

    One of my most favourite moments in the work that I do is during the first week of the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program when our newest students introduce themselves and share a bit of their personal story and inspiration for joining. There is always a huge majority of students who will include something along the lines of:

    I’ve been looking at this program for years and finally took the leap.

    I am so excited to finally be pursuing a dream of mine.

    I’m retired/my kids are all gone / I quit my job… and I am finally doing something for me.

    There is an energy that comes from finally taking that leap to create. The creative process itself is healing, grounding and resonates in profound ways, and yet, we allow our fear to stop us before we start.

    how can we start the creative process?

    What if creation could be part of our everyday lives? What if every single day we set the goal to do one thing that tapped into that inner creative force we all have to create something? Can you think of what your thing would be?

    Maybe it’s as straightforward as trying a new recipe and making something new for dinner. Maybe it’s writing the first page of a book you want to write. Perhaps it’s putting paintbrush to canvas, or fingers to piano keys or guitar strings. Maybe it involves knitting needles, tap shoes, a garden hoe, or a roll of wallpaper.

    Creation comes in all forms and bringing something new into the world that never existed is a powerful part of the experience of being human. Creativity is built into our make-up – every single one of us. It has nothing to do with left brain or right brain. Creativity is simply how our brains work, and what’s really incredible is like any wiring of the brain – the more you tune into the creative aspects of yourself, the stronger they become. Creative thinking, creative production, creative creating can be strengthened through practice.

    Why Are We Afraid to Create Quote

    how am i tapping into my creativity these days?

    As you may be aware, I’ve been working on two things primarily these days. The first is running the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program (it’s the tenth run!) and connecting with my students and answering their questions (and digging in to find those answers) is one form of the creative work I am doing.

    The other has been digging in deep, in myself and in research to create my new program. What’s been really incredible to experience is that as I do more and more work getting into coherence, calming the mind, nurturing the space in between and learning about the mind, brain, body and our capacity to create, my creative drive is exploding.

    I am back to sewing clothes at long last, doing cross-stitch, getting thrifty and creative in decorating my new house, and pouring my creative energy into this new program. The program isn’t about creativity or the creative process, but as I’m working on it, I realize that one of the ways it will serve those who join is that by doing the work we’re going to do together, creativity is going to blossom.

    I have long since come to trust that whatever experience I have in creating something is the experience others will have as they participate in it. I do believe that one of the greatest gifts for our wellbeing, our development and fulfillment and evolution as humans is taking the leap and creating without fear. And that creative energy, all of us thinking and being in the zone of creation, well that is needed right now more than ever. Go for it. Take it on. Make it happen. Send me a photo!

    Photo Credit: Nikki McKean

    On My Mind Episode 29: Why Are We Afraid to Create?

    Subscribe today on your favourite podcast app and never miss an episode.

    Meghan Telpner

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  • 2 Ways to Declutter Your Day and Unleash Creative Freedom | Entrepreneur

    2 Ways to Declutter Your Day and Unleash Creative Freedom | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As an entrepreneur, it can be difficult to navigate the responsibilities of running a business while still leaving room for creativity. The everyday responsibilities of running a business can overwhelm your bandwidth and hold you back from innovation. Here are two strategies to help you snip the unnecessary weights holding you back from creative freedom.

    Related: 5 Ways to Jump-Start Your Creativity — Even When It’s Running Low

    Letting go

    Unpack your to-do list and consider letting go of what is no longer serving your success. Taking the time to reassess the day’s priorities can save you from feeling overwhelmed by future obligations. When I start my day, I concentrate on what my team needs from me to keep projects moving forward. If there is a task that needs my approval, I make it a priority so my team can continue their work.

    Add a sense of urgency to responsibilities that are most integral to today’s schedule. By prioritizing certain tasks, you can release unnecessary weight from your day and free up more time and space for creative thinking.

    Don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to your team. As an entrepreneur, it can feel like you are the only person who can do the job. But this isn’t true. If a project can be outsourced to someone else, trust that your team has got your back. Being legally blind, I’ve had to rely on others to be the eyes on projects that I cannot see. What some may consider a disability has allowed me to organically grow my business by sharing projects with others.

    Outsourcing projects can also lead to a higher quality of work. More eyes on a project ensures tasks are handled with greater care and attention to detail. Plus, you never know when a team member might have an innovative solution.

    Learn to let go of projects and ideas when necessary. As an entrepreneur, it’s important to gain the skills necessary to know when to move on. Notice when you are continuously hitting a brick wall and either let go or pivot and start from scratch.

    When I am evaluating a campaign for my business, I track the number of successes along with the times when no results were converted. I turn those results over to a professional with more skill than me and stay humble while they report on the campaign’s potential. Allowing room for others to point out your blind spots is essential to the growth of your business.

    Talking through the project with another professional helps hold you accountable and acknowledge when a project has run its course. Retiring an idea is not a sign of failure. It’s only from a place of raw truth that you can bounce back and soar higher than before.

    Related: How I Transformed My Business by Letting Go of Low-Value Tasks and Focusing on High-Impact Activities

    Looking ahead

    When you feel weighed down by responsibilities, visualizing your future success can help you maintain a positive mindset. You want to taste, smell, see, hear, and touch what it will be like to attain your ultimate goals.

    It can be easy to fall into the trap of negative thinking, but it’s essential to protect your mind by choosing hope and resiliency. Try stating words of affirmation or embodying mantras that feed your heart and vision to keep a positive mindset.

    My visualization is that I consider my mind as a neighborhood. There is no trash on the sidewalk or bars on the windows. The streets are clean and full of enthusiastic energy. I allow the momentum of this vision to surge into the words I speak, the actions I take, and the results I achieve.

    Through visualization, you help shape your thoughts into positive actions. Take time every day to refocus on hope and resilience to help you overcome obstacles and achieve success. Even the best idea can get derailed by circumstances. Reassess your goals on a quarterly or annual basis to make room for any necessary adjustments to your budget, staff or vendors. There is always room for growth and for embracing new ideas.

    I’ve learned to make education a priority in my business. I embrace workshops and partner with experts to constantly expand my skill set. But it’s up to me to turn that knowledge into action. By reassessing, I give my goals the wings they need to fly. Create a vision board to put out into the universe what you want to achieve. This can be pictures that remind you of your goals taped to your refrigerator or having a dedicated space in your office for images that motivate you.

    When I discuss my business, I talk about it like it’s a person. I give it legs and eyes and breathe life into it. I visualize my business growing from a toddler to a teenager to an adult. This helps me better understand its journey and advocate for it when I share my goals with others. Personifying your business can help you gain motivation to achieve your goals. Allowing yourself to visualize your future success opens your mind up to new possibilities and helps you stay creative amidst the responsibilities of your business.

    Related: Vision Boards: A Powerful Tool for Achieving Your Goals

    Conclusion

    Snipping the weights that hold you down frees you from unnecessary stress. By delegating and learning to let go of projects, you invite more room for innovation into your business. As an entrepreneur, it can often feel like all the responsibility falls on you. Trust in your team to lift some weight off your shoulders to allow your business to grow. Use visualization techniques to help you remain positive during the many ups and downs of business ownership.

    Nancy Solari

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  • Lingokids Launches New Animated Learning Series “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales”

    Lingokids Launches New Animated Learning Series “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales”

    LOS ANGELES (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Lingokids, the top early learning app for children, today announced the launch of its new animated series, “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales”. The latest video series from the award-winning learning company invites viewers to join beloved character Baby Bot and his friends on magical adventures in the backyard. Each mini-episode is crafted to engage children in humor and play while imparting important lessons about kindness, compassion, creativity, and honesty.

    “We’re thrilled to welcome ‘Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales’ to the Lingokids family. This engaging co-viewing show offers families a delightful way to bond while learning together,” said Cristobal Viedma, founder and CEO at Lingokids. “This new series underscores our dedication to creating educational entertainment that nurtures crucial social-emotional skills, empowering children to thrive both now and well into the future.”

    The series kicks off with three captivating episodes designed to address common social-emotional topics and life lessons:

    1. The Mysterious Magic Stick: A tale of honesty and respecting others’ belongings.
    2. The Best Nest in the World: An exploration of empathy and appreciating differences.
    3. Bee-YOU-tiful!: A heartwarming story about body positivity and self-acceptance.

    “Baby Bot’s Backyard Tales” is now available on the Lingokids app, where users can enjoy an exclusive 1-week anticipated premiere of new episodes before they get aired on the company’s YouTube channel.

    About Lingokids

    Lingokids is an educational tech and media company dedicated to transforming the way children learn traditional and modern life skills. Through its unique Playlearning™ approach, Lingokids provides engaging, interactive learning experiences, empowering children to lead their own educational journeys. Launched in 2015, Lingokids has become a trusted platform for over 95 million families worldwide, offering the award-winning Lingokids app, podcasts, videos, and more.

    eSchool News Staff
    Latest posts by eSchool News Staff (see all)

    ESchool News Staff

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  • How To Draw a Rose (Free Printable + Video)

    How To Draw a Rose (Free Printable + Video)

    Want an activity that will have your students blooming in your classroom? Elementary school is the perfect time to nurture the inner artist that lives in every child. What better way than to encourage them to learn to draw something beautiful like a rose? Our free printable has step-by-step instructions for teaching kids how to draw a rose. Make it a fun Friday group activity or keep it on hand for your fast finishers!  

    There’s a video tutorial and images with step-by-step instructions. Plus, be sure to download the free printable instructions so kids can easily follow along.

    How To Draw a Rose Video

    There are six easy-to-follow steps below for teaching kids how to draw a rose. They should simplify the process for kids of all ages and abilities.

    How To Draw a Rose Step-by-Step

    Step 1

    Start with your marker in the very center of the page and then make a small swirl. The bottom of it should actually look like an upside down Y with a swirly tail. Finally, draw a short line straight down from the right edge of the swirl and another just under the center point of the swirl.

    How to Draw a Rose 2 with rose at the top and shows a step underneath in black marker on white paper.

    Step 2

    Now you’re going to draw two almost heart-like shapes coming off of either side of the center of the rose. Then, you’re going to draw a cloud-like shape across the top.

    How to Draw a Rose 3 with rose at the top and shows a step underneath in black marker on white paper.

    Step 3

    Now we’re going to build upon the existing rose shape. Add two shapes on either side. These shapes should loop out, come to a point, and then loop back down to the bottom where they meet.

    How to Draw a Rose 4 with rose at the top and shows a step underneath in black marker on white paper.

    Step 4

    We’re going to flush the rose shape out a bit more in this step. Draw an upside-down half-moon shape where the middle meets the point you created at the bottom in the last step. Finally add another shape coming off of the last one. It should come to a downward-facing point.

    How to Draw a Rose 5 with rose at the top and shows a step underneath in black marker on white paper.

    Step 5

    It’s now time to continue adding petals to our rose and really bring it to life! Add another petal to the left and right sides. Then, add another bottom petal that connects the two petals that you just created.

    How to Draw a Rose 6 with rose at the top and shows a step underneath in black marker on white paper.

    Step 6

    With the petals complete, it’s now time to add some leaves. You can add about four leaves, two on each of the sides. Draw them in slightly different sizes and shapes for a more realistic effect. Once drawn, add a line down the middle of each with a few smaller lines coming off of it. You can also add some short lines inside some of the petals for a finishing touch. Finally, color with your medium of choice.

    Get your free How To Draw a Rose printable with step-by-step instructions!

    How To Draw a Rose printable gif with rose at the top and shows a step underneath in black marker on white paper.

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    Kristy Zamagni-Twomey, B.S., ELA and Fine Arts

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  • Beyond the bookshelves: 3 ways school libraries have evolved to meet students’ needs

    Beyond the bookshelves: 3 ways school libraries have evolved to meet students’ needs

    Key points:

    School libraries have undergone a significant shift over the years, adapting to changes in technology, education philosophies, and the dynamic needs of students. Once simply a quiet space to check out books, libraries have evolved to provide students with a holistic and interactive learning experience. 

    Over the past several years, these spaces have transformed into collaborative areas that encourage group work, discussions, and hands-on activities, promoting creativity and innovation–ultimately becoming instrumental in shaping well-rounded, adaptable learners. 

    While still a repository for information, there has been a major shift from traditional print materials to a blend of physical and digital resources including: e-books, online databases, and multimedia resources to support diverse learning levels. Librarians and media specialists are now tasked with not only ensuring students and educators have easy access to essential physical media and textbooks, but also efficiently managing an infinite amount of digital resources. 

    Here are three ways school districts are using libraries as a venue to provide students with effective, personalized approaches to learning: 

    Flexible spaces 

    School libraries have shifted to interactive spaces, equipped with 3D printers, coding kits, multimedia production equipment, whiteboards, games, and other tools that encourage communication and teamwork. Traditional beige, rigid layouts with rows of bookshelves and tables have given way to open, adaptable spaces that accommodate group work, discussions and various learning activities. Libraries now incorporate mixed-use furniture, movable partitions, and diverse seating arrangements to create spaces that can be easily reconfigured to accommodate various group sizes and activities. Design elements such as writable surfaces, multimedia stations, and intentionally placed power outlets are integrated to support collaborative projects and technology use. For instance, in our library, we have bike desks and crafting stations, and recently our students engineered a Makerspace-style mini-golf course throughout the aisles of our non-fiction section using found materials. 

    This shift reflects a move toward active and collaborative learning environments, as well as provides students with the tools and resources to engage in hands-on, creative learning projects. These modern spaces encourage creativity, innovation, problem-solving, and integration of STEM concepts, while giving students a “brain break” from traditional classroom learning. 

    By embracing flexible learning spaces, libraries are transforming into dynamic centers that not only house information but actively encourage social interaction, teamwork, and the development of crucial collaborative skills essential for success in today’s interconnected world. 

    The digital shift 

    Along with traditional physical materials, school libraries now also house a wealth of digital tools, including e-books, online databases and multimedia resources. Especially relevant during periods of remote or hybrid learning, educational technology can grant students remote access to library resources before or after school, or in the event of an absence. Adopting student-centric digital platforms empowers learners to conveniently access essential learning materials, online databases, and educational software independently from anywhere, promoting continuous learning and opportunities for enrichment outside the physical school environment.

    Integrating with edtech software and e-learning platforms allows librarians to collaborate with teachers in delivering digital content and resources directly to students, facilitating a seamless connection between classroom instruction and library resources. 

    By understanding and embracing digital media trends, school libraries are not only adapting to the changing educational landscape, but also playing a pivotal role in fostering digital literacy, creativity and innovation among students. 

    Partnering with a resource management system 

    Library resource management software enables librarians and media specialists to effectively manage physical and digital resources efficiently, inducing cataloging, circulation and inventory management, ultimately streamlining library operations. Valuable analytics provide insights into resource usage patterns, students’ reading habits, preferences, and overall engagement with library materials. This enables librarians to make recommendations for resources that align with students’ interests and learning preferences. It also provides the ability to curate collections that reflect diverse perspectives and cultures fostering inclusivity and equal learning opportunities to broaden students’ world views. 

    Adopting a data-driven approach can inform librarians about the effectiveness of certain materials and guide future collection development, ultimately reducing the need for over-purchasing, duplicate spending or underutilization of resources, which results in efficient time management and cost savings. 

    Changes in our schools’ libraries reflect the broader educational shift towards preparing students for the demands of the 21st century, where digital literacy, collaboration, and adaptability are essential skills for success. Shifting the focus from a “traditional library” to a space that promotes lifelong learning skills prepares students for continuous learning in an ever-changing world, contributing to the development of students’ critical thinking, research skills, and overall academic success.

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    Carrie Friday, Melbourne High School

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