Informed i’s Weekly Business Insights

Bryan Johnson wants to live for ever. The American businessman pops a hundred pills a day, never eats after 11am, and obsessively monitors dozens of his body’s “biomarkers”. The goal, as he will tell anyone who asks, is not merely to live a few years longer. It is to vanquish death entirely.

Eccentric? Undoubtedly. But as we report this week, Mr Johnson is not alone. He is part of a growing movement that sees the human body as just another piece of hardware to be hacked, optimised and upgraded. In the name of “human enhancement” Mr Johnson and his fellows, who include Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, are exploring life extension, brain implants and drugs that enhance mind and body.

It would be easy to recoil from a project that is filled with cranks and has uncomfortable echoes of the eugenics movement of the early 20th century. But it would be a mistake to dismiss all forms of human enhancement. The idea that medicine should seek to augment the body, not just restore it to health when it goes wrong, has plenty of merit. The key to maximising the benefits and minimising the risks will be to drive out the quacks and bring this rapidly growing project into the scientific mainstream.

A wannabe superhuman has a large menu of techniques to choose from.  Adventurous biohackers can do more than pop pills. They might travel to Próspera, a lightly regulated place in Honduras founded with help from Mr Thiel. There they can have genes inserted into their cells to try to get their body to make more of a protein called follistatin. The clinic says that this will promote muscle growth and lengthen telomeres, chemical caps on the ends of chromosomes that shorten with age.  A still more drastic choice is the brain-computer interface (BCI), a device designed to pass signals directly between biological brains and silicon chips.

The human-enhancement project suffers from two related problems. The first is that it is a baffling mix of cutting-edge science and old-fashioned snake oil. Some of its ideas look genuinely promising, some are honest long shots and many are designed to fleece gullible customers of their money. The second problem is that the poor reputation this quackery produces scares off the sort of large-scale investment that could help move enhancement forward more quickly and safely. The industry is at once dangerous and short of cash.

To fix that, governments should create an environment in which rigorous trials can more easily take place. That will mean rethinking the purpose of medical regulation. For decades, regulators have concentrated on treatments that are designed to restore ill people to a baseline of health. Attempts to improve those who are already healthy, or to fight natural processes, are therefore neglected. Ageing, for instance, is not usually classified as a disease, which makes it harder to run trials designed to “treat” it. That is starting to change: American regulators recently approved a trial of metformin as an anti-ageing medicine. Reform needs to go further and faster.

Energy innovation can take many forms, and the variety in energy research was on display at the summit. ARPA-E, part of the US Department of Energy, provides funding for high-risk, high-reward research projects. 2025 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit just outside Washington, DC. this week gathers projects the agency has funded, along with investors, policymakers, and journalists.  Four of the most interesting innovations MIT Technology Review spotted on site were

1. Steel made with lasers.  Startup Limelight Steel has developed a process to make iron, the main component in steel, by using lasers to heat iron ore to super-high temperatures.  Steel production makes up roughly 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions today, in part because most steel is still made with blast furnaces, which rely on coal to hit the high temperatures that kick off the required chemical reactions.   Limelight instead shines lasers on iron ore, heating it to temperatures over 1,600 °C. Molten iron can then be separated from impurities, and the iron can be put through existing processes to make steel.
2. Rocks that can make fuel.  The hunks of rock at a booth hosted by MIT might not seem all that high-tech, but someday they could help produce fuels and chemicals.  A major topic of conversation at the ARPA-E summit was geologic hydrogen—there’s a ton of excitement about efforts to find underground deposits of the gas, which can be used as a fuel across a wide range of industries, including transportation and heavy industry.
3. An electric guitar powered by iron nitride magnets.  Most high-powered magnets today contain neodymium—demand for them is set to skyrocket in the coming years, especially as the world builds more electric vehicles and wind turbines. Supplies could stretch thin, and the geopolitics are complicated because most of the supply comes from China.  Niron is making new magnets that don’t contain rare earth metals. Instead, Niron’s technology is based on more abundant materials: nitrogen and iron.   The guitar is a demonstration product—today, magnets in electric guitars typically contain aluminum, nickel, and cobalt-based magnets that help translate the vibrations from steel strings into an electric signal that is broadcast through an amplifier.
4. Batteries for powering high-performance data centers.  Natron Energy is making sodium-ion batteries to help meet power demand from data centers.   Data centers’ energy demands can be incredibly variable—and as their total power needs get bigger, those swings can start to affect the grid. Natron’s sodium-ion batteries can be installed at these facilities to help level off the biggest peaks, allowing computing equipment to run full out without overly taxing the grid.

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Less than two decades since making her debut recording, Taylor Swift has conquered the music industry. She has released 11 original studio albums, and the combined sales and streams of her music catalog place her among the top 10 best-selling artists of all time—a group dominated by commercial juggernauts such as Michael Jackson, Elvis, Madonna, and Frank Sinatra. Her recently concluded Eras Tour—the highest-grossing tour of all time—set off a global frenzy that sparked comparisons to the Beatles. With a net worth estimated at $1.6 billion, Swift is the most financially successful musician of her generation. And she’s managed to achieve all this during a time when the industry has undergone profound technological and business model shifts, moving from CDs to iTunes to Spotify.

Historically, musicians have found it difficult to sustain success.   At 35, Swift is already a multigenerational phenomenon: The teenage girls who bought her 2006 debut album are now bringing their own children to her shows.

Over the years Swift has displayed such a remarkable ability to innovate—and to make sophisticated strategy and marketing moves—that it’s worth trying to draw lessons from her career, the same way we study traditional business visionaries such as Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos.  So what is the secret to Swift’s long-term success? According to the author who has written a book on Swift it can be attributed to four behaviors:

1. Targeting Untapped Markets.  Swift started out with advantages. Born into a Pennsylvania family with show-business ties—her maternal grandmother, Marjorie, was an opera singer—Swift benefited from her parents’ unwavering support. They connected her with Britney Spears’s former manager, who helped Swift secure a development deal with RCA Records at age 13. And in 2003 her parents moved the entire family near Nashville so that Swift could collaborate with top-notch writers and producers.  Instead of focusing on obstacles, Swift recognized a “blue ocean”—what the strategy gurus W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne call a completely untapped market (in contrast with a bloody “red ocean,” where competitors fight over the same customers). “All the songs I heard on the radio were about marriage and kids and settling down. I just couldn’t relate to that,” Swift told the Telegraph. “I felt there was no reason why country music shouldn’t relate to someone my age if someone my age was writing it.”  Swift’s intent to target a completely new demographic has parallels to the strategy Marvel used to dominate the comic book industry.
2. Finding Opportunities to Create Stickiness.  When Swift came on the scene, in 2006, the relationship between artists and fans was undergoing significant changes. The internet was making music cheaper and easier to discover, and as social media gave fans greater access and connection, they began to expect more than just a passive listening experience. “The customers’ problem is how to navigate and ‘do things’ with the music they have access to. In other words, customer value was becoming less about getting music into fans’ hands and more about giving people new ways to engage with it. Swift did that by sharing highly personal and authentic accounts of her own experiences with her young fan base in her lyrics.  And with Swift there was the internet, which, as it has done to most things, scaled this kind of community engagement up to extreme new levels.  The more she encourages her fans to interpret her music, the more sophisticated their interpretations become. They analyze complex metaphors, track motifs across albums, and spin theories about her artistic vision. And they keep coming back for more.
   
3. Maintaining Productive Paranoia.  Swift’s last 10 original studio albums have reached number one on the Billboard 200—an unprecedented run. But Swift has rarely shown signs of complacency. In fact, she has expressed a constant fear that her success will eventually come to an end.  Swift’s self-professed anxiety aligns with a core principle of strategy. As Intel’s legendary founder, Andy Grove, famously stated, “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”  Looking through a strategy lens, it’s apparent that at critical moments, Swift has channeled her fear into creative pivots. Often she has executed them when external signs—album sales, critical response, and award recognition—suggested that doing more of the same was optimal. Frequently she changed direction by carefully choosing a small group of collaborators to help her explore new sounds and genres.
4. Adapting to Radical Shifts in Platforms.  If Swift’s rise to superstardom was made possible by her skillful navigation of the digital age, her recent mastery of streaming has elevated her success and popularity.  In truth, she took a while to come around to streaming. Swift is considered a “class 1 superstar,” a term that the music-research firm Midia uses to describe artists whose careers started before the streaming era. This status made Swift somewhat immune to the challenges that streaming posed. Her albums received blockbuster-like attention and fanfare, so she didn’t need to come up with new, innovative ways to keep people’s attention. Because her tours are so profitable, she didn’t have to rely on streaming’s difficult economics.  But as streaming took hold, her strategy evolved. From 2015 to 2019, Spotify’s paid-subscriber base increased from 15 million to 124 million users—a growth rate of 726%. Streaming has changed content strategies: Before its rise, fans were accustomed to artists’ releasing a full-length album every few years. In a streaming-dominant world, the volume of material musicians produce matters because putting out more songs allows them to game the algorithm.

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The image of a large leaky bucket illustrates both the theory and complexity of customer portfolio management or CPM. Consider the choice between two very different buckets, or portfolios, of customers: (1) a smaller, watertight bucket of loyal and profitable customers, or (2) a larger, albeit leaky bucket of customers that includes both stronger and weaker customer relationships.   The authors’ research and applications of CPM have taught us that it is typically more profitable in the long run to pursue a larger, leaky bucket.  In this article, drawn from their book, Customer Portfolio Management: Creating Value With a Large Leaky Bucket of Customers, they explain how companies can understand what types of relationships dominate their customer bases so that they can identify strategies for portfolio growth.

In traditional market segmentation, unique populations of customers are segmented and targeted using differentiated products and services. The segments are based on differences in customer needs, wants, or benefits sought.  The limitation of traditional needs-based segmentation, however, is its focus on a particular product or service category and brand. It is a relatively static approach that presumes customers are in a particular needs-based segment.  The reality is that customer behavior is dynamic, where a company’s or brand’s customers are active in multiple needs-based segments within and across product or service categories. Customers use a portfolio of brands that evolves over time and depends on the context or usage occasion.

In their applications of customer portfolio management, the authors have found that the best place to start understanding customers is to segment them based on the strength of their relationship with a brand.  In the framework of CPM, “acquaintances” provide both a source of future loyal customers and a basis for scale economies, while “friends” and “partners” provide greater margins and future cash flows.

Stronger relationships increase customer expectations, brand preference, usage, and resulting customer satisfaction. As satisfaction and relationship strength grow, so does a customer’s willingness to share knowledge and adapt to a brand’s systems, services, and brand extensions, thus increasing margins and lowering costs per customer.

Categorizing customers into relationship segments is the result of a segmentation process. There are a variety of approaches to sorting existing customers into acquaintances, friends, and partners. The authors recommend using a combination of measures that include customer preference, satisfaction, purchase volume, and gross margins to classify customers into segments.  Another general approach to relationship segmentation is to derive segments through statistical methods.  Loyalty programs can be another basis for relationship segmentation, but with caveats.

The framework of CPM rests on three key building blocks: relationship segmentation, customer portfolio lifetime value, and the management decisions that impact portfolio growth and profitability.

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The DNA testing company 23andMe—once one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley—declared bankruptcy on Monday. Anne Wojcicki, the cofounder and CEO who popularized consumer-focused genomic testing, has also resigned.

“We have had many successes but I equally take accountability for the challenges we have today,” Wojcicki wrote in a statement shared on social media. “There is no doubt that the challenges faced by 23andMe through an evolving business model have been real, but my belief in the company and its future is unwavering.” 

23andMe’s bankruptcy wasn’t entirely a surprise given the recent board and share price turmoil at the cash-strapped firm. Still, the turn has raised concerns for the company’s 15 million customers whose DNA now appears to be in limbo. (23andMe has said there will be no changes to how it stores or protects customer data.)

Wojcicki’s decision to step down follows months of pressure on the cofounder, whose entire board resigned on the same day last fall. For many years, Wojcicki was seen as a leading thinker, champion of consumer health rights, and one of a few women leading an influential biotech firm. Through her connections in tech, politics, and Hollywood, she helped push 23andMe and the possibilities of genetic testing into mainstream culture. But events of the last few years have raised questions about her legacy.

Founded in 2006, 23andMe begins offering DNA tests for $1,000 per order in 2007, asking customers to send their spit to the company in a vial in exchange for information about their ancestry and some health risks. The company’s test allows users to opt in to share their data with researchers and answer questions about their lifestyle, creating a potentially valuable database for future mining.

March 12, 2015: Wojcicki launches a drug discovery business, looking to capitalize on the data it has collected from consumers. This leads the company into a costly undertaking, with Wojcicki later recounting how she was warned against doing drug research, which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, require several years, and doesn’t guarantee success. Wojcicki recruits top scientific researchers and 23andMe eventually develops two cancer drug targets that will reach clinical phase trials.

July 25, 2018: GSK signs a deal with 23andMe that gives the drug company exclusive access to 23andMe’s database—including DNA data for it’s then-5 million customers—for four years. “The goal of the collaboration is to gather insights and discover novel drug targets driving disease progression and develop therapies for serious unmet medical needs based on those discoveries,” GSK says in a press release. This partnership will later be extended until 2025 and GSK will announce that it led to potentially viable drug targets.

June 16, 2021: 23andMe goes public via a Richard Branson and Virgin Group—backed SPAC deal. The listing briefly values the company at $6 billion, but it will be worth $3 billion by the end of the year.

October 6, 2023: A major data breach exposes the DNA of 6.9 million people targeted by hackers. The company later confirms that the hackers targeted customers of Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese ancestry. The breach also leads to a class-action lawsuit that will force the company to pay a $30 million settlement in 2024.

January 31, 2024: The Wall Street Journal publishes an explosive story looking at the reasons 23andMe’s was trading as a penny stock and has never turned a profit. As a public company, major flaws in its business model become obvious. Sources in the story question whether Wojcicki is paying enough attention to the company’s fundamentals or if she’s building a personal brand. More broadly, the biotech market is also suffering from a downturn that began in 2022.

September 18, 2024: In a shocking turn, the entire board of 23andMe resigns on the same day, explaining in a public letter that its members felt they had few other options. The group—which included luminaries such as Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, and Roelof Botha, head of Sequoia Capital—wrote that while they “wholeheartedly” believed in the company’s mission to personalize health care with genetic data, they disagreed with Wojcicki’s strategic direction.

March 24, 2025: 23andMe announces it’s entering bankruptcy, prompting data privacy concerns. Anne Wojcicki steps down as CEO but says she will still make yet another bid to buy the company.

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When it comes to making decisions, human beings have built-in biases. So do companies and other organizations. In any number of ways, these biases can stall, skew, or deny the kind of clear-sighted decisions that are at the heart of strategic management. To effectively tie strategy to value creation, management should make tangible efforts to overcome these biases.

The late Nobel Prize–winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman laid the foundation for what we now call behavioral economics and behavioral finance. Drawing on Kahneman’s insights, a group of McKinsey colleagues has proposed (or adopted from others) a number of techniques to help organizations understand and improve their decision-making in resource allocation. In this article, four common biases that can affect organizational decision-making, along with some potential remedies are discussed.

1. Groupthink.  Groups of decision-makers tend to engage in groupthink, an overemphasis on harmony and consensus. This can get in the way of examining all the options objectively, leading to weaker—and sometimes disastrous—decisions.  A variation of this bias occurs when participants don’t speak up because they feel the subject under discussion does not fall under their area of responsibility or expertise.  The weight of evidence strongly supports that decisions are better when there is rigorous debate.  The key ingredient is to depersonalize debate and make it socially acceptable to be a contrarian. Here are some useful techniques:  Assign a devil’s advocate.  Bring diverse perspectives to the discussion.  Encourage debate with secret ballots.  And set up a red team–blue team activity for large investments.
2. Confirmation bias and excessive optimism.  Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence that supports your hypothesis or to interpret ambiguous data in a way that achieves the same result.  Overoptimism is the tendency to assume that everything will go right with a project, even though past projects tell us that such smooth outcomes are rare.  Some of the techniques used to overcome groupthink, such as the use of opposing red and blue teams, can help here. The simplest approaches are to avoid developing hypotheses too early in the process and to actively look for contrary evidence. Other potential correctives for confirmation bias and overoptimism include the following two methods:  Conduct a premortem.  And take the outside view.
3. Inertia (stability bias).  Inertia, or stability bias, is the natural tendency of organizations to resist change. One study found that spending allocations across business units among the companies it studied were correlated by an average of more than 90 percent from year to year. In other words, the allocation of spending to business units essentially never changed.  The solution to inertia bias is relatively straightforward. Rank initiatives across the entire enterprise by potential value creation. In addition, ensure that the budget you are building is rooted in the current strategic plan, not last year’s budget.
4. Loss aversion.  Research shows that most executives are loss averse and unwilling to undertake risky projects with high estimated present values. The primary solution to overcoming loss aversion is to view investment decisions based not on their individual risk but on their contribution to the risk of the enterprise as a whole.  To be most effective, companies also should encourage middle-level managers and other employees to propose risky ideas.

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The long-term success of any organization increasingly depends on authentic leadership. When leaders show authenticity—along with transparent and ethical conduct—they create a culture where trust thrives. They also enable teams to achieve peak performance.

Unfortunately, when Gallup looked into the question of trust in organizations, they found that only 21 percent of employees strongly agree that they trust their organization’s leaders. That’s a really poor showing, and it indicates that much work remains to be done. Here are five ways to be an authentic leader and build trust in the process.

1. Practice radical transparency.  Authentic leaders recognize that information is a valuable asset within their organization. By openly sharing important information about both successes and challenges—along with strategic decisions that need to be made—you demonstrate your trust in your team’s capacity to deal with reality.  Transparency doesn’t mean indiscriminate disclosure of information—it should instead function as the foundation for a working environment in which information circulates freely.  Workplace happiness heavily depends on transparency from leadership, and understanding the reasoning behind decisions helps teams better align with the organization’s objectives while enhancing their sense of value as company stakeholders.
2. Demonstrate consistent accountability.  The quickest path to destroying the trust built over many months or years is when you ignore the standards you establish for others. This means not walking your talk. Authentic leaders prioritize self-accountability above all else. This means:  Admitting mistakes promptly, Taking ownership of both successes and failures, Following through on commitments, Accepting criticism gracefully and acting on feedback.  Leaders who exemplify accountability ensure the organization is psychologically safe, enabling team members to take calculated risks and innovate without worrying about repercussions for making honest errors.
3. Lead with empathy and emotional intelligence.  Employees expect leaders to recognize that they have personal lives outside of work—they shouldn’t be expected to be available 24/7. Authentic leaders build strong emotional intelligence abilities while showing true empathy toward others. Effective approaches include:  Actively listening to others’ perspectives before proposing solutions, Recognizing and validating team members’ emotions, Showing appropriate vulnerability about your own challenges, and Customizing your leadership approach to match what each team member requires.  Research shows a direct link between empathetic leadership and improved employee effectiveness and increased trust and collaboration on their teams.
4. Align actions with stated values.  Authentic leaders understand that values hold no significance unless they are demonstrated through consistent behaviors and decisions. The consistency between your words and behaviors establishes the core of leadership trustworthiness. This alignment requires:  Making sure to clearly express your core values, Using these values as decision-making filters, Recognizing team members who exemplify these values, and Making challenging decisions that remain faithful to your declared principles instead of choosing easier options.  When you practice what you preach, you’ll earn team members’ trust through consistent and principled decision-making.
5. Invest in meaningful relationships.  Consistent and high-quality interactions throughout time lead to the development of trust. Authentic leaders consider relationship building as an essential leadership activity instead of treating it as an optional extra. Effective relationship building includes:  Creating regular opportunities for two-way feedback, Demonstrating real engagement with your team members by supporting their professional growth, Celebrating individual and team achievements meaningfully, and Finding the time to build one-on-one relationships even when you have a busy schedule.  As you can see, being an authentic leader offers all sorts of advantages, so do everything you can to ensure your actions are consistent with your words.

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Avoiding assumptions helps us all learn more and avoid misunderstandings. That said, here are some assumptions that might actually help us remain more open to the ideas and comments of other people. At the very least, they will make your day easier and less stressful.

Assume positive intent. You share an idea in a meeting and your colleague pushes back and challenges your analysis, how you framed the argument, or your conclusion. Your instinct might be to think you are being attacked. You might suspect colleague’s motive, especially if you and he/she doesn’t have a relationship built on trust. This will cause you to become defensive and possibly angry. Instead, train yourself to assume a positive intent behind such questions and comments. Assume the colleague is just genuinely curious about how you reached your conclusion and has authentic concerns about the issue. By ascribing positive motives to the question, you’ll remain calm and be better able to respond.

Assume gratitude. You’ve just sent an email responding to a colleagues’s question. You were thoughtful and deliberate and spent a decent amount of time and energy to get the answer. You receive back…silence. You expected at least a quick “THX” but got nothing. Don’t get frustrated. Just assume the colleague has a lot on his/her plate at the moment.

Assume exclamation points. Believe it or not, some of your colleagues save their excitement for things other than receiving your weekly report. When Chris sends a perfunctory “Thanks,” in response to your email, he’s being genuine. He’s grateful, not ecstatic. Exclamation points seem to be the new, “Awesome!” that became a stock response to everything a few years ago. If you have a heavy need to see “!!!!” after every mundane correspondence, just tell yourself that Chris is storing up his enthusiasm for when he talks to you on the next Zoom call and can properly thank you directly.

Assume courtesy. Some people are just plain abrupt in their emails. They leave out all of the pleasantries. It’s up to you to decide if you read their messages as barking orders at you or as trying to be helpful by minimizing the volume of content you have to read. Instead of reading the note as jarringly blunt, assume the other person’s “love language” is efficiency. Offer them some grace in terms of how you read their message, whether they deserve it or not. (And we ALL need to be extended some grace every now and then, regardless of whether we deserve it.)

And on the Flip Side:

Assume more “Thank You’s” are warranted. Emails and texts are devoid of all the subtlety of in-person communication. Your reader can’t know your mood or tone. As a result, they “fill in the blanks,” and decide whether you are being sympathetic or snarky, compassionate or callous. A few extra niceties are helpful to both your reader and you.  Say “thank you” more than you think you need to, in life as well as in emails.

Assume it won’t hurt to say “Please.” This goes along with saying, “Thank you.” The added courtesy language is important.

Assume “Fast & Furious” can be offset with the occasional “Would love to catch up.” Work relationships are still relationships. They are organic and need to be nurtured. We often email a colleague or client on a transactional basis, to simply get something done and crossed off the TO DO list. We would be better served to remind ourselves that there is a person on the other end of the exchange, someone who has valued our services and responsiveness, and who wants that human connection as much as we do.  When was the last time someone emailed you to say, “I value you and would like to know how you are doing?”?

As leaders, our jobs are to make it easier for our teams to remain productive despite turbulent times. In short, assume kindness is always in order. The assumption puts you in the right frame of mind. Then, it’s time to ask questions and listen to understand.

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According to the author, as a former small business owner and now Chief Customer Officer at BILL, she is constantly inspired by the entrepreneurs she meet. Their creativity, resilience and drive to innovate never cease to amaze her.  Here are some of the most powerful lessons she has learned from women business leaders who exemplify what it means to build with purpose and resilience.

1. Stay grounded in your mission and values.  Bee Nance exemplifies what it means to align professional excellence with personal passions. With her experience in accounting and financial management, she chose to combine her financial expertise with her passion for education and community impact and focus on a career in nonprofit accounting.  Success comes from aligning your expertise with a clear sense of purpose. When you know your “why” and let it guide your decisions, you can create a lasting impact that extends far beyond the bottom line.
2. Use your disadvantages to your advantage.  According to the author, when she connected with Courtney Spritzer and Stephanie Cartin, co-founders of Socialfly and Entreprenista, she was inspired by how they transformed challenges into opportunities. Courtney and Stephanie encountered the unique obstacles that women entrepreneurs often face — from accessing capital to building the right networks — while they focused on building their businesses.  Instead of accepting these disadvantages, Courtney and Stephanie identified a gap in the market and turned it into an opportunity by founding Entreprenista. What began as a podcast in 2018 has evolved into a thriving community of over 2,000 female founders where women entrepreneurs can share advice, build connections and amplify each other’s successes.  This approach is applicable to any business leader. When faced with barriers, ask yourself how this perspective can be used to identify market gaps and what solutions would have been most helpful in the moment.  Entreprenista’s extraordinary growth shows the potential power of turning obstacles into innovation.
3. Be resilient — but don’t be afraid to pivot.  Brittany Malidore exemplifies what it means to transform adversity into purpose. Her professional mission at Ledgerly Consulting was already impactful: providing high-end accounting services to nonprofits and small businesses that desperately needed them but couldn’t afford them at traditional costs.  Then, one year ago, she nearly lost her life in a devastating car accident that caused her to have to regain and rebuild her memory, voice and ability to walk. During her road to recovery from a traumatic brain injury, Brittany didn’t just rebuild herself — she refined her vision.  Brittany developed an even deeper commitment to helping organizations that, like her, faced obstacles that seemed insurmountable. Her experience and her determination offer a valuable lesson: Resilience isn’t merely about enduring difficulty but being open to changing your perspective on what truly matters most.  When faced with obstacles in your professional or personal life, remember that pivoting isn’t a sign of weakness – it can often be the pathway to your most meaningful impact.
4. Value community and harness the power of your network.  If you’re looking for an example of how powerful community connections can be when building a business, just ask Claire Coder. At age 19, Claire dropped out of college to launch Aunt Flow, a company that supplies businesses and schools with menstrual products to businesses and schools so they can offer them for free, just like toilet paper and soap.  Claire faced the dual challenges of (1) marketing menstruation — a topic still considered taboo to an audience of mostly male decision-makers, many of whom had never experienced it and rarely discussed it; and (2) securing funding in a landscape where women entrepreneurs receive less capital. To help overcome these challenges, she built bridges with other entrepreneurs who shared growth strategies and experiences that could only truly be understood by other women.  With this guidance and through the valuable relationships she fostered, Claire grew Aunt Flow from a one-woman startup into a company with more than 1,000 customers, including 21 of the Fortune 500. The company is stocked in over 60,000 commercial bathrooms across the USA, UK and Canada and has donated over 7 million menstrual products to nonprofits, helping fight period poverty.  Claire’s story reminds us of a valuable lesson: business success is rarely a solo achievement. Instead, it’s built on a foundation of meaningful connections and being open and willing to ask for help when needed.