Who Wants to Marry an Entrepreneur?
Almost two-thirds of business owners say they prioritize business success over their romantic partners.
Good Morning!
Here are today’s highlights:
How many of your employees came down with the ‘Super Bowl flu’ today?
A TV critic ranks the best Super Bowl ads.
One social media influencer altered the trajectory of a cleaning product.
A proposed rule would greatly expand pay transparency.
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL LIFE
For many entrepreneurs, romance is a challenge: “It’s no surprise that entrepreneurs—in the hustle of meeting payroll and growing their business—find that personal life takes a backseat from time to time. However, when romantic relationships can’t endure, business owners face professional and financial setbacks in addition to emotional ones, according to a new survey from Clarify Capital, which provides loans to small business owners. For business owners experiencing divorce, 57 percent say their company has taken a financial hit, and 70 percent couldn’t focus on their work the same way.”
“Three in five reported decreased mental well-being and motivation at work, and 35 percent of owners had to rely on outside help, such as family and friends, to keep their business afloat. And during divorce proceedings, owners faced an average $4,000-a-month revenue decline.”
“It’s clear from the survey of 1,000 Americans, who are either business owners or have dated them, that entrepreneurs are struggling to maintain healthy relationships. Nearly half of entrepreneurs surveyed said they have a ‘poor romantic life.’”
“Due to stacked duties and late-night meetings, business owners say the primary reason for a poor love life is a lack of quality time with their partner. At the same time, they are 64 percent more likely to prioritize their business successes over their romantic partners.” READ MORE
21 HATS PODCAST: DASHBOARD
Learning from Boeing’s Mistakes: This week, Shawn Busse, who soon will be boarding an Alaska Airlines plane made by the Boeing Company to attend the 21 Hats Live event in Fort Worth, finds lessons for smaller businesses in Boeing’s struggles. For one thing, there’s always danger when combining the cultures of two companies. Plus: Shawn, whose company, Kinesis, has been a certified B corp since 2016, talks about whether the certification is losing its luster.
You can subscribe to the 21 Hats Podcast wherever you get podcasts.
MARKETING
Here’s how the Pink Stuff went from obscurity to virality: “In 2018, The Pink Stuff was little more than a home cleaning product with a cute name. ‘The miracle cleaning paste,’ as it said on every container, was sold by just two retail chains in Britain. At a factory near Birmingham, The Pink Stuff line operated for about two hours every month. That was plenty. ‘It was a brand with a lot of uses,’ said Henrik Pade, a managing director at Star Brands, the company behind the product. ‘But nobody used it.’”
“There was Mrs. Hinch, as she called herself, using a toothbrush to scrub the grout in her bathroom. Here she was polishing her candlesticks. If it were stained, The Pink Stuff would clean it, she told her small but growing audience. Don’t buy new tiles, she advised. Spend 99 pence and restore the old ones.”
“By the time that ‘hinching’ became a verb — defined as ‘to vigorously clean’ — in Britain, The Pink Stuff’s days of obscurity were over. Stores that carried it found customers waiting for restocking carts to roll by so they could snag all the little tubs they needed. Or more. ‘I was like, Guys, what have you done? I can’t get hold of any!’ Ms. Hinchliffe said in a video interview.”
“Ms. Hinchliffe, who has 4.8 million followers on Instagram, never jumped to TikTok — ‘I struggle to keep up with one platform,’ she explained — but The Pink Stuff did. Pink Stuff-related videos have been viewed more than two billion times on TikTok, Star Brands says.”
“Sales have quadrupled since 2018 to about $125 million a year, a modest sum compared with giants in this space, like Clorox, which has annual revenues that exceed $7 billion. But nobody at the company’s headquarters in Leeds thought this number possible a few years ago. The factory now runs three Pink Stuff lines, all day long, with a workforce that has more than doubled. The product is now sold in 55 countries and available at Walmart, Home Depot, and Amazon.” READ MORE
A TV critic ranked the Super Bowl ads (not to quibble, but isn’t being clear about what’s being advertised kind of important): “In the spirit of ‘Who actually watches the game?,’ here is our ranking of Sunday night’s Super Bowl commercials, from best to worst. Ground rules: Only ads shown on the national CBS broadcast during the game were eligible. Not included are some non-commercial (religious, political, social advocacy) spots and most movie trailers and promos for television and streaming broadcasts.”
“BMW: Christopher Walken makes fun of people making fun of Christopher Walken, with a cameo performance by the Super Bowl halftime star Usher. As always, he walks the walk.”
“Mountain Dew: Aubrey Plaza flat-affects her way through life with the help of a carbonated citrus beverage. Plaza is reliably droll, and there’s a late ‘Parks and Recreation’ homage.”
“Squarespace: Aliens (a theme in this year’s ads) come to Earth and can’t get our attention until they figure out how to get on the internet. It is handsomely directed by Martin Scorsese (working with the ‘Barbie’ cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto), though it’s not at all clear what’s being advertised.” READ MORE
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI is starting to threaten white-collar jobs: “The list of white-collar layoffs is growing almost daily and includes job cuts at Google, Duolingo, and UPS in recent weeks. While the total number of jobs directly lost to generative AI remains low, some of these companies and others have linked cuts to new productivity-boosting technologies like machine learning and other AI applications. Company executives and management consultants are also signaling that generative AI could soon upend a much bigger share of white-collar jobs. Unlike previous waves of automation technology, generative AI doesn’t just speed up routine tasks or make predictions by recognizing data patterns. It has the power to create content and synthesize ideas—in essence, the kind of knowledge work millions of people now do behind computers.”
“That includes managerial roles, many of which might never come back, the corporate executives and consultants say. They predict the fast-evolving technology will revamp or replace work now done up and down the corporate ladder in industries ranging from technology to chemicals.”
“Meanwhile, business leaders say AI could affect future head counts in other ways. At chemical company Chemours, executives predict they won’t have to recruit as many people in the future. ‘As the company grows, we’ll need fewer new hires as opposed to having to do a significant retrenchment,’ said Chief Executive Mark E. Newman.”
“As AI adoption grows, it is likely to reconfigure management hierarchies, the Oliver Wyman study projects. Entry-level workers are likely to bear the initial brunt as more of their duties are automated away. In turn, future entry-level work will look more like first-level management roles. The cascading effect could flatten layers of middle management, the staging ground for senior leadership roles, according to the analysis.” READ MORE
HUMAN RESOURCES
There’s no vaccine for the Super Bowl flu: “This year, over 16 million U.S. employees plan to miss work on Monday after the game between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs, according to a new survey conducted by the Harris Poll for the Workforce Institute at UKG—a think tank associated with the HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions company. Around 10 million of those workers have already requested the day off, and over 6 million plan to skip but haven’t requested a formal absence. To put that into perspective, that means around 14 percent of U.S. workers plan to miss at least some work on Monday.”
“The cost of those absences can add up for employers. This year has the same number of expected Monday absences as 2021. That year was estimated to cost businesses more than $6 billion in losses, according to HR consulting firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, and UKG believes the losses this year will be similar.
“The Super Bowl flu extends beyond absences alone—about 28 percent of workers polled believe they’ll be less productive at work that day, according to the UKG survey.” READ MORE
REGULATION
A new law mandates more transparency in credit card charges: “A new law [which took] effect on Sunday will require businesses in New York to clearly post the cost of purchasing items with a credit card, including any surcharges being imposed, for customers before checkout. The law, signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in December, also prevents businesses from imposing more in credit card surcharges than what they are charged by processing companies. Businesses can choose either to solely display the higher credit card price for the products or services they sell or to list both the credit card price and the lower cash price for the items.”
“In New Jersey, Gov. Philip D. Murphy signed a similar law last year requiring merchants to notify consumers before checkout about the amount of any credit card surcharges to be applied. It also prohibited merchants from charging consumers more than the processing fee the businesses paid.”
“A national law prohibiting merchants from charging consumers extra for credit card purchases expired four decades ago. Since then, many businesses have come to rely on so-called convenience fees as a way to offset what they are charged by credit card processing companies.” READ MORE
A proposed rule would expand pay transparency: “Tens of thousands of businesses that work with the federal government would be required to list pay in job postings under a potential new rule. The rule, proposed by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, calls for federal contractors and subcontractors to disclose pay information in any postings for open jobs and would bar them from seeking and considering a job applicant's compensation history when making decisions about hiring in connection to federal contracts. The reason? The Office of Federal Procurement Policy, which resides within the Office of Management and Budget, said the changes would promote the economy, boost pay equity and promote the effectiveness of federal procurement efforts.”
“Any comments on the new rule need to be submitted by April 1 to be considered. Those comments would shape any final rule crafted by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, should it opt to proceed. There’s no set timeline for how long that process might take. Some final rules take more than a year before they’re produced; others come more quickly.”
“While there is a carveout for the smallest of contracts, under $10,000, the proposed rule states that it considered but decided against excluding small businesses or agency purchases of services under $250,000 for fear of employees at small businesses receiving disparate treatment.” READ MORE
California’s war on plastic-bag use seems to have backfired: “It was a decade ago when California became the first state in the nation to ban single-use plastic bags, ushering in a wave of anti-plastic legislation from coast to coast. But in the years after California seemingly kicked its plastic grocery sack habit, material recovery facilities and environmental activists noticed a peculiar trend: Plastic bag waste by weight was increasing to unprecedented levels. ... The problem, it turns out, was a section of the law that allowed grocery stores and large retailers to provide thicker, heavier-weight plastic bags to customers for the price of a dime.”
“‘It was a conscious decision to create a pathway for a type of reusable bag that barely existed,’ said Mark Murray, director of Californians Against Waste, an environmental organization. ‘It was just emerging in the marketplace, but it happened to be made by a couple of California companies ... which the manufacturers claimed they could certify as being reusable.’”
“He said the bags were made of 20 percent recyclable material and the manufacturers said they could be recycled at the end of their ‘useful life. ... So we said, all right, fine. We’re gonna put that specific criteria into the law.’ ‘That experiment failed,’ Murray said.”
“Now, California legislators are hoping to correct that error by passing a law that closes that loophole and bans those thick plastic bags offered at the checkout line.” READ MORE
THE 21 HATS PODCAST
Why Would You Want to Own a Business? This week, Shawn Busse, Jay Goltz, and Jennifer Kerhin respond to a somewhat depressing view of business ownership offered by an investor who buys businesses for a living. That view, essentially, is that for most owners, building a business is a daily knife fight of long hours, unexpected risks, slow growth, and meager returns. In this episode, I read most of the investor’s observations to Shawn, Jay, and Jennifer, and get their reactions, which hit upon a bunch of issues that are not widely understood—including how fast growth can destroy a business, how even a profitable company can go bust, and why a good metric to assess the health of a small business might be how many people have been crying in the bathroom this year.
You can subscribe to the 21 Hats Podcast wherever you get podcasts.
Thanks for reading, everyone. — Loren