Interview with Melissa Church, CEO, Digi-Buzz

(Featured) - Church discusses audience-led channel selection, content calendars and influencer checks that prioritize engagement and local relevance.

Interview with Melissa Church

Edited by Haley Spracale, Editor at Featured News · Oct 6, 2026

As a CEO in marketing and advertising with deep experience in social media marketing, influencer work, and content performance, what perspective do you bring to helping small businesses build a social presence?

I have worked on all sides of social media marketing.

I got my start running a popular science education blog called Bad Science Jokes.

I can test new features, trends, and more with a large audience before testing them on a client's page. I can help bridge the gap between selling and creating a community for a business because I've done it.

What career experiences led you from your background in performing, communication, and marketing into leading a marketing agency as CEO?

Early in my marketing career, I moved from one agency to another. Overall, I found I didn't like how they operated.

I didn't like that clients couldn't speak to someone after 5 p.m. I didn't like the cookie-cutter content style. I didn't feel comfortable working for agencies that took advantage of their clients. I started Digi-Buzz with the intention of doing the opposite of what some other companies were doing.

When you begin working with a small business in the Midwest, how do you identify the social media channels and content priorities most likely to fit its customers and resources?

I ask every new client two questions:

• "What is your ideal demographic?"

• "What is your current demographic?"

This helps me pin down who we want to reach and who we are currently reaching. If our ideal demographic is someone we aren't getting as customers, we can begin a strategy for a social media site that demographic frequents.

How have you helped a Midwest small business turn its local personality or community ties into a distinctive brand voice on social media?

Yes, more than once! It's one of my favorite things to do.

Brand voice is so important. When someone scrolls through social media, they hear a voice in their head as they read. We want people to think of your business as a friend, so we create a specific personality and ensure all content from your business is something that this character would say if they were a real person.

With your background in acting, improvisation, and public speaking, what is one practical way business owners can become more confident and natural on camera?

Practicing in front of a mirror is a great way to get started. Pretend you are speaking to an interviewer and watch how you speak.

Do you move your eyebrows a little too much when you speak? Being mindful of the little things can help you notice them before people start commenting about it online.

For a small Midwest business with limited time and budget, what content-planning habit has consistently made social media more manageable and effective?

For businesses that really need help, I suggest a very basic content calendar. For example, a pizza place that has high turnover of employees and cannot afford a dedicated social media person:

• Mondays: Always talk about your special of the month. One day, take as many photos of the special as possible and schedule them for the entire month in advance.
• Tuesdays: Talk about delivery or takeout. Schedule the whole month, again.
• And so on for the rest of the week—broad topics that are easy to generate content for, so someone can dedicate just a few hours and create a whole month of content.

Also, remind them that taking a day or two off during the week is important. They do not have to post every single day.

What have you learned about using local influencers or community partnerships that small businesses can apply before committing budget to a collaboration?

When working with micro-influencers, always start with a free product to pitch. I have seen many small businesses paying way too much because they do not understand the influencer economy. Someone with 5,000 followers may ask for hundreds of dollars — but what is their engagement rate? Where are these followers located? Sometimes it is far better to give a $50 gift card to a loyal customer with 500 friends and high engagement than to give it to someone with a lot of followers. Speaking from experience, I have had local businesses pitch me because they see I have over 700k followers on Instagram. I tell them there is no way I could be a good investment.

Find someone who frequents your store online. See if they post things publicly or if it's private. Ask if they will make a video or do a post in exchange for a gift card. Many times, you will find they say yes!

• Start by offering free product or a gift card to test interest.
• Check engagement rate and follower location before committing budget.
• Consider loyal customers with smaller but highly engaged networks.
• Confirm whether their posts are public or private and discuss deliverables (post, video, etc.).
• Use affiliate codes: give them a special code for their friends and reward the "influencer" with another gift card for every five sales generated.

Which social media metrics do you use to determine whether a small business’s efforts are contributing to meaningful business results, rather than simply generating attention?

The statistics I focus on are Page Visits and Engagement.

Page Visits tell us how many people are actively looking for something. They may be looking for:

• more information
• a phone number
• a website
• to follow
• to unfollow
• a specific post

This is an important metric to watch.

Engagement shows us if our content is resonating with people. If we keep engagement up, we will show up more frequently and stay front of mind.

What is one common social media risk you see small businesses overlook—such as copyright, brand consistency, or audience trust—and what should they do to avoid it?

I see so many businesses using trending audio when, most of the time, it is copyrighted. AI can scan your posts very easily. There are people actively searching for businesses that use copyrighted material and issuing copyright strikes and lawsuits faster than ever.

Just because "everybody" is posting it does not mean you automatically have the legal right to use the audio. Don't lose your entire marketing budget on something so simple. You can create content without using trending audio.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Social media is such an integral part of marketing your business. Make sure you get the most out of this investment. Utilizing social media to its fullest can give you an extremely high return on investment, but using it incorrectly can cost you your business. Don't lose your page by posting something illegal, such as copyrighted music.

Focus on consistent posting, being personable, and creating content that people want to see, and you will be helping your business.

About the expert

Melissa ChurchCEO at Digi-Buzz

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

My first lead as an independent consultant came from an AI citation

(Anthony Keal) - Ranking first on Google no longer guarantees you're seen, so here's how to track where AI cites your competitors instead of you, find out why and shape how it describes you.

By Anthony Keal

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 8, 2026

Ranking number one organically in Google used to be pretty straightforward – get more links pointing at your website. It wasn’t complicated but it could be time consuming (depending on competition). But with the arrival of ChatGPT, and subsequently Google’s AI summary, can ranking number one really matter when there’s another answer at the top of the page?

My first lead organically after going independent has come from being cited by AI, so it clearly can be done. But how can you get started?

What are AI Citations?

When a searcher lands on Google (for example) and asks a question, more often than not, they’ll see an AI Overview, then the ads, before getting to see the number one organic result. Increasingly searchers will find their answer before getting to the number one organic result.

Those businesses featured in the AI Overview are cited by AI, and that has become pretty valuable real estate.

Not all searches will return an AI Citation but when they do they take prime real estate at the top of the page.

How do I track AI citations?

If you can, I’d recommend pulling a keyword report for the website in question, but I know that’s not always an option. If that’s the case, I’d suggest taking four or five questions a customer may have when in buying mode, and typing them into ChatGPT or Google and seeing who gets mentioned.

If you don’t see your business, then look at the websites linked at the bottom, click through and have a read. What information is on those competitor’s pages that could make AI summarize it in relation to the search term? Does it answer the questions more succinctly? Talk about things that aren’t discussed on your website?

There’s lots of options when it comes to AI tracking and they range widely in cost: Semrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Otterly.AI, Peec AI, Profound to name a few.

I haven’t personally used any of them, so can’t comment on the quality of results, but as above, if the budget’s not there, I’d still recommend manually checking on a monthly basis.

How can I be cited by AI?

Honestly, there’s not a definitive answer yet. We should still avoid keyword stuffing, optimize everything to the nth degree and hope for the best. But I don’t think there’s any hacks or tricks we can play to try and fool the AI (at least in any sustainable way).

Some tactics are old hat: your positioning, whether you include pricing, etc will all still come into play. This is really just being summarized by AI, rather than people landing and reading your website.

So, if you competitors are all getting picked for price, can you pick a lane and shout about quality instead? If your business is actually good value, but doesn’t shout it from the rooftops like others, should you consider changing that?

Write for humans, not for Google

All the normal rules about clear, useful and readable content applies. Write a story that’s likely to answer questions searchers may have. Not a mishmash of text, but something that reads naturally.

About the author

Anthony Keal

Anthony Keal is a Melbourne-based independent digital consultant who started as a designer and spent more than ten years in agency and client-side digital roles. He helps Australian businesses deliver everything from simple websites to complex sites, portals and digital transformation projects, using automation to handle the routine work.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Increasing student engagement using games as the lesson framework

(Robert Watson) - Games, particularly complex ones, can provide a rich structure for student learning in every classroom, and can help integrate complex topics across disciplines.

By Robert Watson

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 9, 2026

Games have evolved to become a huge part of our lives. They are an increasingly important part of educational software, are available on consoles, PCs and phones, and even games like fantasy football or Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) are increasingly part of youth culture. Our students are getting deeply involved and invested in them.

And there is a significant depth of experience to be found here – seeking mastery in what appears to be a simple one-on-one fighting game actually involves calculating where specific on-screen pixels will appear, and comparing that to “hit boxes” on other characters, or counting frames to determine, down to the millisecond, how quick a character moves or attacks.

Students and teachers need no longer be tied to short and simple game structures to find success. Exploring and utilizing more complex, engaging and deep games in classrooms is not only an option, it is preferred. Students respond because they can invest themselves deeply and control their own outcomes.

Framing a lesson in the form of a deep dive into a complex game offers teachers a number of significant advantages in engagement of students.

• Games promote participation – Simply put, you can’t engage students who aren’t present for the lesson either physically because of absenteeism, or mentally because of distraction. Games create motivation and participation where a lecture may not.

• Games provide agency – Students can think creatively, explore possibilities and develop strategies that involve thinking beyond the usual. They will see cause and effect in real time, and get immediate feedback.

• Games can connect all disciplines – There’s a lot of math in games like D&D, but also the opportunity to engage in storytelling and complex problem-solving. You can structure games differently based on the day’s learning objectives.

At the school level, the shared framework of games can support each discipline approaching problems through different lenses, and offer students opportunities to make connections that may otherwise have been missed.

Take, for example, a classroom in which the teacher chooses to frame lessons as a Dungeons and Dragons game. Students show up for the class, and are given a scenario and characters to use to help a town solve a problem. In math, that problem might involve a horde of goblins, and be framed as a fighting scenario, involving the use of coordinate planes, probability, and algebra to determine if attacks succeed or fail. In a science classroom, the town’s well could have been poisoned, and characters need to create solutions that may involve crafting hypothetical experiments or developing feasible environmental solutions to the problem. In an English classroom, the solution may be framed as a mission to collect evidence of the mayor’s corruption, evaluating sources or writing compelling argument for or against. In social studies, there may be competing cultural or community interest that players need to help mediate.

These are typical high school learning objectives, but the game framework asks students to apply skills through creative problem-solving rather than simply learn facts. When an evolving scenario continues across an entire unit—or even across disciplines—it can reinforce concepts, connect learning objectives, and give students a reason to remain invested in what happens next.

About the author

Robert Watson

Robert Watson is an educator who works in a mental health hospital, a longtime board gamer, and the founder of BoardGamingTees, an independent apparel company built around board gaming culture. He writes about how games can bring people together, strengthen family connections, and create opportunities for learning and belonging.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

How business owners become the bottleneck, and how to step back

(Luba Inz) - A COO on handing off the owner's headaches, writing limits in dollars, and what to do with the time you get back.

By Luba Inz

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 13, 2026

When we keep solving problems and don't let our employees make mistakes, or make decisions that are important enough, the owner puts himself in the place of the bottleneck.

And for a long time it can feel like you're helping people and the company moves faster. But this is exactly how owners walk themselves into a trap, where not a single process can move without them anymore, because people got used to asking for an okay on everything. It’s a form of learned helplessness.

I've been on the other side of this.

When the owner's headaches became mine

When I started my career as Chief Operating Officer, I worked out a delegation of authority with the owner. We wrote down the levels where he steps in and we escalate to him, and the levels where I solve things. And we set those limits pretty high. Basically, I was supposed to handle any issue, and the owner could only step in if revenue dropped below a certain number. It was set quite conservatively, and it didn't drop.

What that meant was that all the headaches the owner used to have just moved over to me.

So I looked at the company as an organization and at the resources I had. I drew diagrams of who comes to me, with whom, and with what. I set levels for every person in the company. I had four levels of reporting, and each level could decide up to a certain financial limit.

I estimated the cost of a mistake. I could allow, let's say, the fourth level a mistake of up to $100, the third level up to $500, the second level up to $1,000, and the first level up to $2,500. The cost of a mistake was probably somewhat subjective, I'll admit that. But I said those numbers out loud to people, and I explained that everything you do can actually be translated into money. Say you lost 10 hours, and your rate is, for example, $20 an hour. Then the cost of your mistake is $200, right?

The second thing I did was tracking and reporting. Every week, people at every level answered the same questions: what did you do, what was successful, what was unsuccessful, what will I do next week. At the lower levels it was daily tracking, sometimes even hourly. The higher the level, the longer the time span. Over time I automated that reporting and put AI agents in place to help people do it.

After a while my operating rhythm took shape. My direct reports collected information from their reports, and those from theirs, in a cascade, all on one system. Up top, I only collected escalations. At first there were a lot of decisions, all the time, because I was putting out fires. But at some point it became about one decision a day. Sometimes three decisions a week.

It took around four to five months. Almost half a year. Mostly it's hard because of how people buy into it. It's a mindset problem. People are used to working their own way, and changing their attitude to the work is the hardest part. And if it doesn't work out with some people to work the way the system needs, there are replacements, and that makes the process longer too.

Fires from both sides

The hardest part for me was managing fires from both sides. The owner was letting go of running the company for the first time in his life. That takes courage, and of course he had questions every day. I understood him very well. Answering those questions took up to half of my time. The other half went to actually running the company.

Because once you establish authority, it's not that hard. If you've put the system in place, explained to people how to work, and they're ready to change their mindset, they're motivated and they go. They march along, in step, and happily.

The owner's side is the part nobody prepares you for. It took more of my attention than a team of over 200 people did. And it should. The owner built the company, and his trust is what makes the whole system work.

The decision owners won't let go of

I think the most common decision the owner keeps holding on to is the decision about people. It's practically manual picking of team members, going around the recruiting process.

If the owner wants to close a role faster, he can go around the system and bring in his own person. And then, very often, problems happen. Not because the person is bad. Mostly because when you go around the system, that person's attitude to the work can be different from the people who went through the recruiting filter. Their onboarding gets squashed. And the expectations the owner gives the person he found himself, and the expectations the team has, often don't match.

So this is the hardest decision an owner can hand off. And at the same time, it's the most necessary one. A recruiting system checks not only hard skills and soft skills, but how complementary this person will be for the team. From the top, the owner, the CEO, an executive manager, we often don't see what the team down below needs.

Where to start

Sit down and write down the cost of mistakes. Write the limits for each role, for each level, the way you see it. Feel out where you can start letting go of control a little, and where not yet. And put it in numbers. Not some ghostly concepts. Numbers, so you can see the financial impact on operations.

Then test it. After you've done the delegation of authority, step away from the computer and turn off notifications. I know it's hard. It will feel like everything is about to turn upside down and people won't be able to make the right decisions without you. Start with one hour of deep work with notifications off, so nobody can reach you, and slowly increase the number of those hours.

Move your team from instant communication to structured meetings. Have a weekly one-on-one with your direct reports, even if you talk every single day and sit in the same office. Ask the same questions every time. That's operational discipline, and I've seen in my own practice that only discipline changes our habits. Same as going to the gym. Consistency is the key.

And use those meetings to coach. Ask: what decisions did you make this week? Okay, let's discuss why, and how I would have done it. Write it down: my approach is like this, so next time you'll know how I, as the owner, would make that decision, and why. That's how you shape your company in your own image without being there all the time. In my experience, an AI copy of the owner, a chatbot built on the owner's rules and values, helped too: people got asynchronous access to the owner instead of waiting for him.

Owners see the problem. They're tired. They feel it at the end of the day, or in the morning when it's hard to wake up and there's stress. But it's a question of habit, and habits make our lifestyle.

What will you do with your time?

One of your first deep work slots should go to one question. Imagine your company already runs like a clock, on its own. What will you do? Where's your next step? Where's your dream?

Because operational things can be delegated. But the genius that created your company at the very start, and the grit that only you have as the founder, nobody will replace that. Bring back that motivation, joy and curiosity, and start using it for the good of your team.

About the author

Luba Inz

Luba Inz is the founder of Efficiency Sprint. Efficiency Sprint makes companies operationally ready for AI. She has 15 years in leadership as a COO and a founder. She helps owners hand off decisions, install operational systems, and put AI agents to work inside those systems alongside people. Learn more at efficiencysprint.com.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Interview with Jordan Park, Chief Marketing Officer, Digital Silk.

(Featured) - Park discusses content freshness, audience-specific personalization, emerging-topic research and using AI agents to speed up content work.

Interview with Jordan Park

Edited by Haley Spracale, Editor at Featured News · Oct 14, 2026

As a Chief Marketing Officer in the marketing and advertising industry, how has your experience with brand strategy, demand generation, and AI shaped your perspective on what makes content genuinely valuable today?

We're spoon-fed so much content daily that people are starting to pay more attention to content that's unique, informative, and genuinely engaging.

Throughout my experience, I've learned how branding, demand generation strategy, and automation can shape your content strategy.

Your brand strategy can help you define your unique value proposition, mission, and values, and use them in your content to generate leads and demand.

Of course, AI can automate some content production, but human input remains a valuable element.

Google uses the E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness) framework to assess the trustworthiness of content. Therefore, you should focus on whether your content is original, addresses audience pain points, and is structured properly before publishing anything.

What career experiences led you to your current CMO role, and how did they influence the way you approach content, brand building, and audience trust?

I have over 15 years of experience in performance- and data-driven marketing across various platforms and channels. Working in tech, SaaS, blockchain, and process manufacturing has contributed to my unique perspective and skill set as a CMO.

Marketers, in general, are focused on brand, content, and messaging rather than data-driven metrics. It's important to understand that marketing is based on data; data should define how you approach campaigns and enable you to better serve your audience.

Sales cycles can last anywhere from 3 to 12 months, or even longer, so building trust with your audience takes time.

There is absolutely a place for brand, content, and messaging elements in marketing, but taking a data-driven approach can help you cater to the target audience's needs much more effectively.

Don't get me wrong: good branding and content definitely sell. But if you're investing heavily in marketing and you don't know where it's going, you're missing the point.

As AI makes it easier for brands to publish high volumes of competent content, which content characteristics are becoming most valuable in your work, and why?

AI is a big topic of conversation. I think it’s going to allow companies to create significantly more content than they are currently able to. It can also automate many mundane or manual tasks, which saves a lot of time.

However, a large volume of content doesn’t inherently make it good. Using AI as a tool is one thing, but thoroughly reviewing it and giving it the necessary human touch is the key component.

I’d say there are three main things that make content valuable:

• Original data, such as a survey, benchmark report, or industry insights, that can help you stand out in the sea of fluff and commodity content.
• A very specific point of view. AI tends to produce an average of what’s already published. If you’re opinionated and have the experience to back it up, you’re already at an advantage.
• Freshness—updating your content at least once a year to account for industry changes or new trends, and giving your take on them as you go.

If your content sounds like everything else out there, you’re not providing value to your target audience or to search engines.

You have used AI to adapt core content for audiences with different needs; what is one practical way marketers can identify where personalization will add real value rather than simply create more variations?

Think about your core message and how each audience can benefit from it. Someone who has founded a company only cares about scaling their business and how quickly they can do so. eCommerce businesses care about engagement and conversion, while SaaS brands want more qualified demo and sign-up requests.

There are only so many ways that you can say one and the same thing. You can’t recycle the same content and only briefly adapt it to different audiences, hoping it will work. It needs to have industry-specific issues, regulations, and implementation techniques for it to truly be personalized.

From your experience using natural-language processing to uncover emerging customer interests, how can marketing teams turn audience signals into original content opportunities before competitors recognize them?

The first move, as I see it, is collecting audience insights. You may want to check on-site searches, review sites, Reddit and other forums, social networks, and similar platforms, for example.

Natural-language-processing models can sift through large amounts of data and identify which topics are being discussed most.

Knowing what’s trending can help you tap into potential content gaps that your competitors haven’t explored yet. For example, you can write about which products are creating hype these days or the common problems with a new tool or feature. Treat this as an opportunity to share your insights or tips and establish yourself as the leading authority or expert in the field more easily.

What role do subject-matter experts play in making a brand’s content more valuable and defensible in an AI-saturated market, and how can marketers draw out insights that are not already available online?

We've established this as part of our content process at Digital Silk. Each piece of content we create is vetted based on insights provided by subject-matter experts.

It's far more valuable than the typical AI-generated content because it comes from people with industry experience who can share their expertise. Often, it's information you can't easily find online.

Marketers can draw these insights out by setting up interviews or asking experts for their firsthand stories. In other words, you should take an investigative, personal approach when gathering your insights.

For B2B and B2C marketers deciding where to invest limited resources, what types of content assets—such as case studies, research, tools, video, or community-driven stories—are proving most likely to earn sustained attention and trust?

If you're working with a limited budget, focus on growing trust organically. Paid channels require a minimum spend to see real success, so I wouldn't prioritize them. Instead, focus on content marketing you can create yourself—written or filmed—and share it on your channels.

Prioritize case studies, original research, and expert-led insights. Case studies help buyers assess your track record and whether you're the right fit. Original research and expert commentary build thought leadership and increase visibility.

Our client had a limited budget of around $12k a month, which shaped expectations for the overall strategy. We improved audience matching using Customer Match Lists so incoming leads connected with verified professionals. We also redid their whole YouTube channel and grew it from 650 to over 180,000 subscribers.

In our experience, the assets that earn sustained attention and trust are case studies, original research, and expert-led videos. Case studies demonstrate your track record; original research provides new, citable insights; and videos put a real expert in front of the audience.

Because you work across brand marketing, SEO, and multi-channel distribution, how do you decide whether a piece of content is sufficiently distinctive and useful to publish rather than another version of information readers can get from AI?

It’s tricky when AI can write so fluently on any topic. But it can also say a whole lot of nothing and go around in circles, even when there’s a lot of text. That’s what I think really separates the two: how unique, original, and interesting the information is, and how you package it for different purposes.

Take brand marketing, for example. It makes sense to include some information that’s specific to the brand or to have an expert from the company give their two cents on a topic. Then, for SEO, you can climb the rankings by publishing useful information that actually answers users’ questions.

As far as distribution goes, you can tweak the content a bit so it has its own angle for different channels. For LinkedIn, for example, you can go with an interesting stat; for email campaigns, you can use an expert quote.

Looking ahead, what content capability should marketing leaders begin building now to create a durable advantage as AI-generated content becomes even more common?

Creating AI agents can help smooth out the content-creation process tremendously. You can feed each model the specifics of a particular project and then test and enhance it over time so you get a useful output.

Setting this up now can help with the initial brainstorming and research phases. It can assist with some of the more time-consuming tasks, such as completing SEO checklists. Everyone can use the same models with the core data, expert input, tone of voice, and messaging guidelines.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

If you want to scale your business, don’t underestimate the role that your marketing activities play in it. You should invest about 5% to 10% of your growth revenue into marketing, especially if you’re planning on growing aggressively.

What I would also focus on from an operational standpoint is really tying up your sales and marketing functions within your business. A large portion of your budget will probably go to paid user acquisition, like Google Ads or Bing Ads. Once you’re bringing in those top-of-the-funnel leads, make sure you have an automated lead qualification model in place.

From there, once they hit a certain criterion within your marketing automation platform, your sales team can reach out and qualify those leads. You need to define the process of how your leads move from marketing into sales.

The way I’ve done it in the past for a software provider, I sent them into very specific nurture sequences based on what they showed interest in on our website. From there, when they hit a score of about 45, we had a separate lead generation team call that lead and qualify them.

Only once we defined the budget, the time frame, and the expected deliverables did we pass that on to the sales team. This increased our sales close rate dramatically, so that’s something I generally recommend. If you want more insights like this, I sometimes talk about them live on LinkedIn or the Digital Trends section of our website.

About the expert

Jordan ParkChief Marketing Officer at Digital Silk

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Beyond pizza parties: Do’s and don’ts of building a great company culture

(Gabriel Shaoolian) - By Gabriel Shaoolian

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 2, 2026

According to According to Gettysburg College, people usually spend about 90,000 hours, or a third of their lives, at work. Without a doubt, how things are in the workplace can certainly influence not just our professional trajectory but also who we are as a person.

Harvard defines company culture as “a shared set of values, goals, attitudes, and practices that characterize an organization.” It shapes how you and your people work, and it can make or break your success.

You might have seen the phrase “great company culture” on job posts or company introductions many times. This description has been so overused that most people probably would just shrug it off as fluff. But what makes a company culture great? In this article, we discuss some do’s and don’ts to guide you on how you can live up to this.

Do: Empower people through recognition and autonomy

To build a great company culture, you must start with the very core of your business: the people. Employees do most of the tough work and make up a significant portion of the company. As such, how they are and how they work will affect your business.

The way to employee empowerment is actually pretty simple: recognition and autonomy. People spend most of their waking hours in the office, and this sacrifice alone is enough reason to recognize their hard work.

Most employers might think that giving out free stuff, having an employees’ day, or giving out certificates is effective in making employees feel appreciated. While that may be true to some extent, you should dig deeper and consider other more productive ways that could make them feel valued.

One thing to consider is investment, and I’m not talking about salaries. It’s a continuous process that’s not limited to training and development but also improving their experience and well-being. Here at Digital Silk, for instance, we do regular check-ins to determine the tools employees need and provide training on new trends, especially with all the innovation at the moment. With the right investments, you get higher productivity, better performance, and even bigger savings — up to nearly 13% of the total revenue, a PwC study found.

Even a brief message, a one-on-one, or a well-deserved compliment can turn things around. These simple practices make people feel seen, and they might even be encouraged to pay it forward.

Don’t: Let little problems linger

With how busy the days get, some problems often go unchecked, especially small ones. But be warned: Those issues might lead to bigger headaches if left unaddressed.

Workplace conflict can severely impact a company. In the United States, organizations lose over $350 billion annually because of unresolved problems at work. This is a clear indicator that when the people suffer, the company does too.

As such, prioritizing discussions and problem-solving can improve the general work atmosphere and help prevent such losses. Talk to your employees and leaders, and try to get to the root causes instead of slapping Band-Aid solutions that don’t fix things for the long term.

For instance, if overtime work becomes a concern, don’t just simply increase overtime pay or offer a meal allowance. While that’s great, it may not truly resolve the issue. Instead, look into why this keeps happening: Is it the workload? Is the workforce limited? You might want to offer flexible times or consider recruitment.

These are more concrete solutions that address a small problem in the long run and enhance the company’s habits and culture.

Do: Encourage healthy communication

Communication is the foundation of any institution. When a company opens the communication lines between everyone — from the highest ranks to the most recent hires — the workplace becomes more conducive to innovation, growth, and change.

Encouraging active and healthy internal communication not only increases performance but also positively impacts employees’ attitudes toward work and colleagues. Communication can pave the way for people to advocate for one another and even the company, and this can lead to better performance and a better working atmosphere.

Meanwhile, when management makes an effort to communicate downward, they foster creativity and improve workplace dynamics. This makes leadership worth emulating, and soon enough, you’ll find that the workplace has transformed into a productive space for ideas and development.

Don’t: Just work, work, work

One of the best ways to enhance company culture is to know when to give yourself and your team a break. If people are burnt out, the organization will stagnate, no matter how good the leadership is.

As a manager, this is something you can control. Supporting your staff by encouraging work-life balance can not only boost productivity but also build employees’ trust and appreciation of you.

Work-life balance was found to be an effective mediator between employee well-being and organizational culture. As a policymaker, you can enforce policy changes such as remote work, flexible schedules, and mandated leaves, and directly improve overall employee satisfaction and morale.

When this culture of empathy and care prevails in the workplace, you foster a healthy environment that is driven to succeed but acknowledges boundaries.

Great company culture for greater success

You don’t need boxes of pizzas to cultivate company culture. It only takes some observation, communication, and a little bit of sacrifice to understand what the workplace needs.

Once achieved, the real challenge begins: sustaining this great environment. As the manager, this responsibility falls on you, but for this to happen, you must work together with your people.

Ultimately, great company culture is one where trust and support — not fear and conflict — dominate. It is one where employees are valued, and leaders are in tune with the status quo. Start building your organization’s culture using this guide, and watch it shape your company’s progress in the years to come.

About the author

Gabriel Shaoolian

Gabriel Shaoolian is the CEO and Founder of the award-winning digital marketing agency Digital Silk. With a team of seasoned experts, Digital Silk delivers digital experiences through strategic branding, custom web design and digital marketing services that improve visibility and drive engagement.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Boards Spend Too Much Time Looking at Past Performance

(Luciano De Castro Carvalho) - Boards that focus their time on the few issues that could materially impact a company’s value in the future are the most effective boards. These boards are forward looking and usually make decisions during meetings.

By Luciano De Castro Carvalho

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 7, 2026

I have been an advisor or in management roles for 20+ years and have participated in many board meetings. Some meetings accomplished a lot with very little waste. Others were a big waste of time, even though there were lots of good people and valuable information.

One consistent issue comes up often.

There is too much time spent looking at the past.

There are exceptions, but most of the time the meeting starts with management reporting on the prior month or quarter. There is an analysis of revenues, margin, cash, EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), and other measures. Boards look for variances to the budget and management explains the rationale for the changes. Questions are asked, and sometimes Management needs to come back with more information, or details, to answer the questions. Questions that are asked in meetings often cover the same things that are brought up in the previous meeting.

In the best case scenario, and with any luck, the meeting gets to the good stuff in time. Good stuff typically means: strategy, capital allocation, and the hard decisions.

A board should care about and understand how the business makes its money, and then use that information to help the management team make important decisions.

The issue comes up when the board meeting is the first place directors go to find out what has already happened.

When deterioration in a margin calls for an explanation, I expect directors to describe the major reasons. If working capital consumes cash, they should identify the areas of inefficiency. If a major project is behind schedule, the basics should already be known.

Discussion in the board should start from there.

What effect does this change have? Will a decision be required? Has the assumption behind a certain business strategy become weaker? Should capital be allocated to other opportunities? Is the management, taking into account the strategy of the business, acting with enough urgency? Is there still the right leadership in place?

I think this is where board effectiveness begins.

Governance Starts With How the Board Uses Its Time

Discussion about governance usually focuses on committees, controls, approvals and compliance. Of course these are important. However, I think there is another side of governance that is more practical and deserving of focus.

Who determines what is presented to the board?

This is not a secretarial question.

Time is probably the board's most constrained resource. If the board spends three hours explaining the past, it loses the opportunity to debate the future.

It is my experience that packs become huge because each function wants to show its work.

With so much information, a few key decisions probably deserve the full board's attention.

Those decisions should be the priority of the agenda.

Usually, I wouldn’t expect more than 20% of board discussion time to be spent reviewing performance or exception reports, looking backward. This is of course a rule of thumb. With a liquidity crisis, a significant operational problem, or a material transaction, for example, the board would need to spend more time addressing the exception and the strategy for addressing it, and therefore look forward.

But with everyday operations, most of the time should be spent determining what comes next.

Most boards have an oversight responsibility to ensure the organization is adopting the right strategy, making the right decisions about capital allocation, and is properly managing the significant risks the organization is exposed to.

Exceptions are for dealing with the abnormal. Governance is the operating system of an organization, behind the scenes, defining how the organization operates, especially with regard to decision rights.

It is important for board members to maintain a clear line of sight to the strategy of the organization they govern.

An overly bureaucratic process for strategy development leads to inflexibility of a strategy and rusting of assumptions, which ultimately doesn’t serve the organization.

These assumptions are important regardless of the form the ownership of the organization takes (i.e. publicly listed, privately held, family owned, investment company, etc.)

Names may change. A private equity owner may call it an investment thesis. A corporation may call it the strategic plan. I am less concerned about the naming and more about the testing of the underlying assumptions.

A company can achieve its annual EBITDA target and still be making bad decisions for the future.

It can be losing an important customer. It can be postponing maintenance that will create a bigger problem next year. It can be making the profit number for the year by reducing investments that the next stage of growth is dependent on.

The reverse can also be true. A company can miss a target and still be making an investment that is still justified.

Therefore, I don’t think the role of a board is simply to ensure management is aligned to the budget and to grade them against it.

The board also has to read between the lines of the performance.

Have the strategic assumptions on which the business was built and the rationale for investing changed? Which have been validated? Which have been disproved? What was unknown when the strategy was approved and what have we learned?

I think this discussion is more valuable than spending an additional 30 minutes in a board meeting to justify a variance.

Test the Assumptions Behind the Strategy

Ultimately strategy and return on investment are intertwined.

I think one of the most important conversations the board has to continually have is on the trade off between short-term performance and long-term value.

There always has to be a balance between the two.

There may be some correct decisions. Others simply postpone today’s problems for next year.

The opposite is also true.

I’ve seen management use the word strategic to describe almost anything. After that, normal financial discipline sometimes vanishes. Projects become ongoing, and stopping them, despite adverse changes in the economics, sometimes becomes politically untenable.

I try to make the trade-off explicit.

In general, I think of actions in three groups. There are those that improve cash in the near term. There are those that improve competitiveness in the medium term, and enhance optionality and flexibility in the long term.

I’m not looking for an even split among the three.

A company under financial and time-pressure will likely consider the near term and cash the most important consideration. A fast growing company would likely have a stronger focus on capabilities in the medium term. A more mature company may have fewer justifications for funding something with a long time horizon.

What I am concerned with is whether the management and the board truly understand the time horizon they are funding, and why and what they expect in return.

Strategic choices and capital allocation are one and the same.

Capital allocation extends far beyond making a major acquisition or a large, one-time capital expenditure. Day-to-day choices like working capital, selling and purchasing decisions, and funding research and development are all capital allocation choices. Setting payment terms and deciding how to allocate and fund the firm’s real assets are all capital allocation choices. For a board to truly understand the trade-offs the firm is making, it has to be able to understand the choices management is making, and why.

Costly leadership questions happen when boards fail to act.

Another topic boards can sometimes leave unresolved for too long is leadership.

A board has a unique responsibility in this area. It selects the CEO and assesses the CEO and needs to consider succession planning.

What is dangerous is not the board making a decision to change a CEO. What is dangerous is the period before that decision when there is a sense that there is a problem and that something is amiss, but no one is willing to bring that question to the fore.

It becomes a circle that is repeated at each meeting.

I find that if it is a positive thing to make something concrete, then it should also be positive to make something negative concrete.

What is the deficit that people are talking about? Is it execution? Is the CEO unable to build the required management team? Is there a problem in the commercial area? Is the company growing too quickly, or is the organization becoming too complicated? Is there a financial problem?

What is the board looking at? What is the time frame? What is the evidence?

What needs to improve?

What support does the executive need?

What needs to change to demonstrate that the problem has been resolved? When will the board meet to address this?

Challenge your management team, but don't become management.

I've never agreed with the assertion that boards always operate at 30,000 feet.

There are times when you need to be at 500 feet.

Sometimes cash is deteriorating and you need to understand receivables and/or inventory and supplier terms. Sometimes customer retention is down and you need to get beyond the aggregate churn number. Sometimes the plant keeps missing deliveries.

These may not be micromanaging situations.

The line gets crossed when you turn from understanding to instructing.

It's board work to understand why a plant is missing deliveries and to what extent a key account is at risk.

It is not board work to tell the plant manager to run a certain production schedule to ensure deliveries.

The temptation to cross this line is especially acute for board members with significant operating experience, as they are naturally inclined to want to help the company and/or explain what needs to be done.

You may well be able to help.

But being able to help does not mean you should cross the line. The hard challenge should be at the understanding end, not the instructing end. Management needs to be free to manage. Otherwise, you end up with a situation where the CEO is the formal director of the company, but several board members have essentially removed themselves from governance and are micromanaging the CEO. That, also, does not improve accountability.

Challenge Management Without Micromanaging

Work from the work.

As with the composition of the workforce, I prefer to work from the work rather than the résumés when it comes to the composition of the board.

What does this company have to do in the next few years?

If this company has to combine a number of acquisitions, then there needs to be someone on the board to address that. If the company has to go through a commercial reset, there needs to be relevant commercial judgment. If the balance sheet is under pressure, then there needs to be relevant financial judgment to address that.

Not every well-known person is the right director.

The same is true for the non-executive directors. The right board can change over time.

The chairman is particularly important.

The chairman is responsible for making the difficult issues on the board’s agenda discussable. He/she has to make the board work as a team. He/she has to integrate the views of everyone on the board and prevent any one person from dominating and making the board work a solo show.

Sometimes he/she has to tell the directors to keep their hands off management.

I prefer transparency for the people who are directly and extensively working with the company as advisors, partners and former executives.

We have to be clear about the role they are taking.

We have to be clear about whom they are advising. We have to be clear about the decisions they are making. We have to be clear about who is accountable. Otherwise, additional people can add additional ambiguity.

Build the Board Around the Work

I prefer for the work to be done prior to the board meetings.

Much of what determines whether a board meeting will be useful happens before the meeting.

I’d like the fact base clear. I’d like the decision stated. I’d like the alternatives stated.

Management should not use the board meeting to read the board pack to the directors.

In important decisions I like to see a short paper stating the decision, the main alternatives considered, the recommendation, the economic impact of each, the downside risk, and the impact of waiting.

The rest of the analysis can be behind that.

I like to see important decisions early in the board paper agenda.

I am not a fan of saving the most important decision for the last part of a four-hour meeting.

I like to see an in-depth discussion on one or two topics than eight superficial discussions on “strategic” topics.

In ownership structures where there is a number of joint venture interests, I have found pre-briefs very useful. Pre-briefs can help resolve disputes on issues such as the level of funding, the level of risk, control, and even the facts.

A pre-brief should help surface the issues for discussion.

Discussions should help people come to their own conclusion.

Do the Work Before the Board Meeting

Boards should evaluate the value they add.

Which decisions did we improve this year?

Where did we slow the company down?

Which difficult decision did we postpone for too long?

Did management bring us problems early, or only when there was no longer any choice?

Did we continue to provide funding for an initiative after the original case for support started to weaken?

Did we spend time on things in which management should have made the decision for us?

Those questions tell us a lot about board effectiveness. Attendance statistics don’t.

After almost 25 years of working with boards and executive teams, the boards that I value most, are not necessarily the boards with the best-known names or longest meetings.

They create the most clarity.

They understand the company’s history, but they do not get stuck living in the past.

They understand when to challenge, and when to support management.

When a difficult decision is theirs to make, they take action.

About the author

Luciano De Castro Carvalho

Luciano de Castro Carvalho is a senior transformation and turnaround executive with more than 20 years of experience working with boards and senior leadership teams. He currently leads the Business Transformation practice at Strategy& and has led large-scale transformation programs across more than 30 countries. Previously, he held roles at McKinsey, Alvarez & Marsal, and UBS. lucianodecastrocarvalho.com

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Assessing AI skills is now my life, and here’s what it taught me

(Mr Ozan Dagdeviren) - I built an entire operation from scratch in the last year, solo, and none of it would have been possible without AI; the journey made me better at using it and more convinced everyone should learn it.

By Mr Ozan Dagdeviren

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 9, 2026

My problem with AI

What I find quite sad is that when a space becomes too noisy, it draws out the signal as well. Not the first or last time this happened. Do you remember what a big deal blockchain was? And NFTs? And the internet!Among the noise, it takes real deep expertise, critical judgement and most importantly being an original thinker to tell whether something is hot air or has any lasting substance to it. Some technologies did and some didn't. Anyone can tell with hindsight, but very few have the foresight to guess right.Just like the fact that desire is mimetic, so are most our own opinions. The positive or negative opinions you hold on AI, to a very large extent are shaped by others, without your explicit awareness. Unless you deliberately practice being an original thinker and sharpen those critical thinking skills - and have the self confidence to be okay with being seen as wrong - you will most likely follow the crowds.You'll be likely to be an AI fan - ignoring the real issues around it, or be an AI sceptic, burrowing your head in the sand around the benefits it brings. This is the bifurcated social discourse with many things. It's easier to pick a side as if you are watching a match, then to have the humility and mindset to be able to appreciate the skills and abilities of your opponent, or to criticise the one you support objectively.Same is true for sports, politics, public discourse around gender and minorities, immigration, religion and now, of course, for AI.I have a background in human sciences - I studied the individual mind through psychology and neuroscience and I studied the social mind through sociology and social psychology. I love the balanced perspective this helps me afford, as I can shift seats when looking at a topic and see it through multiple lenses. As such, that's the approach I'm taking with AI. I love it, I fear it, I use it, I am cautious about it.

Love it or hate it. But learn it.

Whatever camp you are in, you would benefit from learning AI. And I’m not talking here about learning about AI, the politics and the economics of it. No, I’m talking about becoming AI literate as a baseline, then getting to AI fluent very soon.

There are multiple dimension of AI Fluency, let me guide you along.

Prompting & CommsFirst, you need to be able to communicate with AI well. This is how you get across what you mean and what you want. Talking to an AI is different than talking to a human. As you talk more with it you'll understand how to engage with it better.Critical ThinkingThis is your evaluation and judgement with AI. Also involves your understanding of it's limits.Technical UnderstandingDo you understand AI fundamentals, memory and context, how LLMs work and why they always guess but never actually "know".Workflow ApplicationHave you integrated AI into a way of working, can you break down a task into components, can you apply it in the right domain whether that's arranging your social life or finances?Safety & ResponsibilityCan you use AI safely, with correct privacy judgement. Can you set reliable guardrails? Do you understand when and how it can go wrong?

Still early days

Clearly, this is a new day for all of us. I like to say it's still day one with this new technology, in the grand scheme of things. (Well maybe now it's day two, but it's still very early days isn't it?)

I'd love to live in a world where more people understand what they are holding strong opinions about.What do you think?

About the author

Mr Ozan Dagdeviren

Mr Ozan Dagdeviren is the Founder & CEO at AISA AI Fluency. He also teaches on creative thinking part-time and has a background in behavioral science. He is the author of 5 books, has reached millions of people with his educational content.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

Forget Aging Gracefully. I'm Aging Out Loud.

(Monica Frazier Anderson DDS, DBA, FICD) - How A K-pop Movie Reminded Me That Confidence Should Never Retire

By Monica Frazier Anderson DDS, DBA, FICD

Edited by Adrian James, Editor at Featured News · Oct 12, 2026

I love my granddaughter, but if she replays that song one more time, she is going to hear exactly what it sounds like when grandma turns into a demon. I’m not proud of it, but that was my thought when my beautiful 10-year-old granddaughter picked up the remote and smiled in my direction. She knows that one-dimple smile is Boomer kryptonite. I sighed, forced my lips to smile, and said yes to her unspoken request.

I was headed toward the kitchen with our empty popcorn bowl when she asked, “Will you watch with me, Memoe?” I almost reminded her I’d viewed K-Pop Demon Hunters twice already that day and at least a dozen times in the past year. But then I realized: I’d never actually paid attention. I’m often advising others to “be present,” to practice intention and mindful listening. Yet, I couldn’t recall anything beyond those six now-famous words “This is What It Sounds Like.”

I set the bowl on the counter, plopped down next to her, and stared at the screen, willing myself to care as much as she. Rumi, the lead character, was only 3 lines into the lyrics when my mouth fell open. She wasn’t singing to the demon hunters. She was singing to me. “The worst of what I came from, patterns I’m ashamed of…” In that moment, she transported me from my cozy den to a painful place I rarely let my mind linger.

In 2012, surgeons removed a large cancerous tumor from my abdomen. The scar extends ten inches from my sternum to below my navel. Initially, I thought of it as a badge of honor commemorating my survival. I overshared my painful journey and displayed my quilted torso to anyone who asked. Years passed, and something shifted. Slowly, unconsciously, I body-shamed myself into thinking my triumphant scar was a flaw, another imperfection I needed to conceal. I stopped celebrating my healing and became ashamed of the man-made evidence of it.

Rumi continued, “We listen to the demons...we let them get between us.” Sometimes the worst demons are in our heads. Think of the hours we waste fighting not monsters with otherworldly powers, but our negative self-talk that incessantly whispers:

· I’m too old.

· I’m too big.

· I can’t do it.

· I don’t deserve it.

· I'm not pretty enough.

· I can’t wear a bikini.

That last one? Totally me. All the magazines, fashion blogs, and filtered reels on social media pummel us with images of blemish-free, perfect people. They don’t have bad breath or bad hair days, let alone an unesthetic mark on their drum-tight abs. Who says overexposure to filtered reality only impacts young people? Even women with decades of accomplishments can be virtually waterboarded into believing those images reflect mandatory beauty standards we cannot reach with a ladder and 6-inch stilettos.

“The truth now?” I didn’t stop wearing sheer blouses, crop tops, and bikinis because I’m old. I stopped because, like Rumi, I was hiding my scars—my truth.

Ironically, I am always impressed when I see a woman with a V-neck blouse exposing the telltale scar of open-heart surgery. I don’t think, “Geez, cover that up. No one wants to see that.” I think, Wow, I love her confidence.

Or, as the Demon Hunters sing, “There’s so much unexpected beauty in broken glass.”

It’s true this long, deep scar will always be part of me, reflecting victory over the hardest battle of my life. And no, I’m not a shero, but I AM a survivor. Survivor means you have lived through something that caused others to die. Whether it’s war, an automobile accident, childbirth, or surgery, we’re still here!! The scars and crow’s feet are reminders of our resilience, not our weakness.

I’m no longer listening to the lies I told myself. There is nothing wrong with my body. My scars are my map. My receipts. The history of a life I fought hard to keep.

So heaven help me, I’m wearing my bikini. If someone sees the truth beneath my sunscreen…good. I do not care.

Sitting next to my granddaughter watching an animated half-demon sing about shame, survival, and self-acceptance, I felt my heart beat a new rhythm. One my cardiologist would approve of!

I hugged myself tight, smiled, and thought, THIS is what mental liberation sounds like!

About the author

Monica Frazier Anderson DDS, DBA, FICD

Dr. Monica “mOe” Anderson is a TEDx speaker, award-winning podcast host, multi-published author, and licensed healthcare professional. Through spoken and written word, she explores personal growth, health equity, and the complexities of modern life. She is a mother of two sons and the proud grandmother of four. She resides in Grand Prairie, Texas.

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.

What my son's baseball season taught me about leadership

(Sue Sweenie) - By Sue Sweenie

Edited by Jenn Moon, Editor at Featured News · Oct 14, 2026

As a mom of an athlete, I have lost track of how many sports my kid plays. Baseball, football, basketball, hockey—the calendar fills up quickly. Between all his practices, games, and the emotional energy that comes with watching him compete, I sometimes wonder what my son will carry with him after the season ends.

A recent baseball season gave me an answer.

My then-11-year-old struggled with his confidence. He had an unusually hard time at the plate and on the pitching mound. Baseball meant everything to him. He was an amazing pitcher, but sometimes just struggled.

As a mom, I lost sleep over it. I worried about what the struggles were doing to his confidence and thought maybe it was time to move from baseball.

But he kept showing up.

He cheered for his teammates. He shared his Big League bubble gum—lots of it! He played with his heart, even when his performance did not reflect how much he cared. He had one particular coach who saw something special in him: He saw him as a mentor to the others. He recognized his ability and perseverance and allowed him to be a role model.

Contribution takes many forms

In sports, it is easy to focus on the players who have the best stats. At work, we often do the same with the person who wins the new account, delivers the best presentation, or gets the highest sales.

I believe a great team also depends on people who keep others motivated, take their role to heart, and remain invested when things get tough. My son backed his team and showed up even when he didn't want to.

That is a useful lesson for managers. Results matter, and so does recognizing the behaviors that help other people perform. Who follows through? Who shares their knowledge? Who helps a colleague after a big setback?

Confidence needs room to grow

Although my son was known for his pitching skill, he wasn't always the best hitter. My very first instinct was to protect him from feeling discouraged with his hitting. I had to take a step back, let things play out, and trust the process.

Leaders face a similar responsibility when an employee struggles. A missed target, in my opinion, should lead to a conversation about what happened and how the employee needs better support next time to reach that goal.

Giving someone room to grow takes patience, which can be hard to give. It also requires paying attention to progress that may come before a visible result.

Leadership is practiced every day

Team sports like baseball can give kids repeated opportunities to practice accountability. They have teammates depending on them, coaching feedback, and quick decisions to make at the plate. They can learn when to ask questions, when to listen, and when someone else is better positioned to lead.

Playing a sport does not automatically make someone a strong leader. For my son, that particular season offered practice in staying committed, accepting help, and finding his place on a team during a difficult stretch. There were days he just wanted to sit out, but his teammates made it fun and cheered him on.

When I think about that season, I think about a great boy who struggled and kept caring. He kept showing up for people who mattered to him. That is something I hope he carries into every team he joins.

About the author

Sue Sweenie

Sue Sweenie is a marketing, PR, communications, and personal branding professional with 20+ years of experience helping organizations and individuals build strong brands, tell compelling stories, and connect with the audiences that matter most. She is the author of "Branding You."

This story was produced by Featured and republished with permission. Experts featured here are members of Connectively, Featured's expert network.