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A friend once asked me how I could be a marketing executive, a fragrance influencer with over 400,000 followers, and a paid public speaker all at once. Dont those things live in different worlds? she asked. My answer was simple: Its the only way to survive. In todays career landscape, having just one title, one path, or one platform isnt safeits risky. We have all heard the clarion call about AI rapidly transforming the workforce. Its no longer just about skill; its about diversifying and leaning into your identity as your moat. What were living through is a strategic career inflection pointa moment where the rules of the game change so dramatically that the old playbook becomes obsolete. When I was earning my MBA at Stanford a decade ago, one of my favorite classes was called Insight to Outcome taught by Thomas S. Wurster. To this day I think about the concept of strategic dissonance, as outlined by Michael Tushman, Charles OReilly, and Andy Grove in their legendary paper from 30 years ago, which I read as part of the class. This wisdom from 1996 is still applicable today. In a business context, strategic dissonance is what happens when a companys actions no longer reflect the changing external environmenteven if they keep doing what once worked. When applied to careers, I think of it as career dissonance: when what were doing day-to-day doesnt get us to the life we actually want because the rules have changed. And right now, AI is the change that is accelerating that dissonance. People are talking about AI replacing jobs and we need to focus on what to do next in a strategic way. According to McKinsey, nearly 12 million U.S. workers may need to change occupations by 2030 due to AI and automation. Thats not hypothetical. Thats an inflection point. What to do So how do we not crumble? We need to understand inflection points. In class at Stanford I remember learning that at every strategic inflection point, three things happen: 1. The degree of difficulty of evolving increases. Getting to your new goal gets harder. The path becomes steeper. 2. Only a few strategic actions move the needle. Not everything will work. You have to make sharper bets. Focus on what matters. 3. Resources are even more constrained. You need to think about more efficient ways to use your time and energy. If you keep doing everything the way you used to, youll burn out. Yes, these challenges feel uncomfortable. But theyre also invitationsto focus, experiment, and grow. So what do you do in this moment of massive shift in the workplace? These are the three things Ive found that worked for me and people I admire to address the challenges brought on by the advent of this specific career inflection point. 1. Use the tools to become more of yourself Instead of fearing AI, leverage it to ease the degree of difficulty of building your “portfolio” career. This way you can address the first challenges of strategic inflection points. When LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude dropped, I didnt use them to replace my voiceI used them to refine it. I used AI to launch my podcast (Not Just One Thing), structure my content, and sharpen my public speaking. People say AI tools kill creativity. In my case, these tools didnt diminish me. They revealed more of me. 2. Build your calendar like its your portfolio and buy back your time Each strategic inflection point forces you to get sharper about where your energy goes. And the good news is, constraint breeds clarity. Only a few things are going to move you forward. People get stuck trying to master prompt engineering by never starting. You are better off testing, measuring, and iterating. You dont need to master every promptjust experiment out loud. Thats how you find the next version of you. When you find out whats working, focus more on that. This helps you address the second and third challenges of strategic inflection points. You will no longer need to waste all your energy on low-impact actions. Use AI to automate your logistics. Reclaim that hour to work on your side project. Book time to journal, plan, or build a content system. According to a RescueTime study, the average knowledge worker spends just 2 hours and 48 minutes per day on productive tasks. That means youre not just fighting burnoutyoure fighting wasted energy. In my case, I used tools to streamline my work and double down on my fragrance content. I tested ideas, launched small, and iterated fast. You can build a micro business, pitch yourself for speaking, or start developing a productall with the tools already at your fingertips. 3. Make your story your competitive advantage One of the most powerful ideas from the strategic dissonance paper was that most companies keep expanding their existing competencies instead of evolving with the market. The same is true in our careers. We double down on what weve already done, instead of asking what will matter next. Whats the best way to do this? Whats your everlasting competitive advantage? Your real edge in this new world isnt technical. Its personal. Your personal story. I was born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa. I started out in accounting, but I always knew I wanted to be a creator. I made YouTube videos. Then pivoted into tech. I joined musical.ly, which became TikTok, and spent years helping creators find their voice. I was using my own passion of wanting to be a creator and my analytical skills from my time as an accountant. This use of my authentic story allows me to stand out and build a career. People call me multi-hyphenate. I just think of it as an integrated portfolio career. In a world built for sameness, difference is your power. I learned that from another class at Stanford that was taught by Allison Kluger and Tyra Banks. Your background is your moat. Its the thing that no prompt can generate, and no algorithm can replace. In this new world, your hybrid path isnt a hurdle, its your blueprint to success. We are not at the end of work as many peope fear. Were at the beginning of becoming. As Maya Watson said on an episode of my podcast, Not Just One Thing: Its not about what you do. Its about who youre becoming. Thats the work. Shes right. And youre going to need more than one title to get there. Being multi-hyphenate isnt indulgentits how you stay employed, inspired, and in motion. The people who will thrive are the ones who use the tools, manage their time like a portfolio, and tell the truth about who they really are. Thats how we build careers that are dynamic, fulfilling, and truly human.
Category:
E-Commerce
Maybe you’ve noticed it while driving down the road. The chrome logos. The sleek sans serif fonts. It can be hard to tell one electric vehicle brand from another. Theres a reason EV brands like Tesla, Rivian, BYD, Neta, Jaguar, and Zeekr have become a sea of sameness, and it all comes down to a single influence: Many of todays most technologically advanced cars owe their aesthetic to a decades-old vision of the future. Most EV brands use a font that includes cutouts, slashes, or entire missing segments. This is a font style called stenciling, and if it looks inherently futuristic, thats because its most often used in science fiction media. It’s shorthand for the future, says Stephen Coles, editorial director and associate curator at Letterform Archive in San Francisco, who also authors a blog called Chromeography about the history of car branding. What Tesla has in common with Blade Runner The classic 1982 film Blade Runner, set in 2019, imagined a dystopian version of Earth threatened by intelligent humanoids. It didnt get a whole lot right about the modern day, but it turns out that some of the films aesthetics were pretty spot-on when it comes to predicting the branding of EVs. Blade Runners original poster sets the films title in a stenciled font. Stencils are typefaces with slits in their letters that make them appear as though theyve been cut, and they represent a printing technique that dates back to prehistory. Historically, stencilings ease of replication has made it ideal for uses in the military, transportation, and poster design. But in the late 20th century, it also became a hallmark of science fiction. [Images: Tesla, Warner Bros.] Dave Addey, an Apple engineer and author of the book Typeset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies, runs a blog where he analyzes typography in iconic science fiction films. Stenciling comes up constantly. In Blade Runner, its used in the logo for the evil Tyrell Corporation. In 1979s Alien, it appears in the films opening sequence and on the back of Captain Dallass jacket. Later, in 1989s Back to the Future II, it pops up multiple times, including as a hypothetical logo for USA Today and in the branding of a Texaco gas station. Back to the Future Part II, 1989 [Images: Universal Pictures] If you look at the typography of those films, [stenciling] is something you see over and over again, Coles says. Stenciling is so ubiquitous in science fiction media that in a blog post titled How to Make Your Text Look Futuristic, Addey includes it as one of the key steps. Rule 5: Remove an entirely pointless and arbitrary segment of the text, he writes. Among EV brands, Rule 5 appears to have become branding gospel. Blader Runner, 1982 [Images: Warner Bros.] Tesla was one of the first brands to set the stenciling trend, but it was quickly followed by competitors like Chinas BYD and Neta. Jaguars new branding has a bit of stencil in it, while the luxury EV brand Rimac takes this strategy to the extreme, erasing almost entire portions of each character. It looks like it could be on the side of a spaceship in a sci-fi movie, Addey says. [Collage: FC] The great blanding of the automotive industry Its no surprise that the style is pervasive, says Terrance Weinzierl, executive creative type director at the tye foundry Monotype. One of his theories for the connection between sci-fi and EV branding is that the automotive industry is really a copycat industry. Just look at the most divisive EV brand of our time as proof. In November 2024, the legacy brand Jaguar announced that it would be shifting its focus away from gas vehicles and transforming into a luxury all-electric company. To usher in this change, the brand traded its iconic leaper cat logo for a thin, sleek, sans serif wordmark. Just a month later, Audi announced its own line of EVs in China, ditching its iconic four-ringed logo for, you guessed it, a thin, sans serif wordmark. The general trend in graphic design logo types maybe 15 years ago was to start going more geometricthe blandification, Coles says. Theres been a move away from serifs and other kinds of expressive type, which happened in the tech industry first. It seems like the car industry is 10 years behind that. [EV branding] feels to me like it’s a second phase of that general trend. [Photo: Jaguar] This flattening was a precursor to stenciling. Weinzierl notes that legacy brands including Kia, Chevrolet, Subaru, Porsche, Lexus, Infiniti, Mazda, Hyundai, Dodge, Lincoln, and Acura have all opted for flattened sans serif wordmarks in recent yearsa sharp contrast from the early days of car branding, when loopy scripts were everywhere. Just like the blanding trend of the 2010s, if one successful EV brand (like Tesla, for example) sets a certain typographic tone, others might feel compelled to follow. Coles believes that brands are also using this technique to appeal to millennial nostalgia for retro-futuristic aesthetics. If you think of who would be buying cars now and what influenced their feeling of what is futuristic, a lot of the films that [Addey] talks about in his book are from that periodthe 70s, 80s, maybe some early 90s, Coles says. Of course, some brands stand out as exceptions to this general rule. The EV company Scout Motors uses a wordmark that pulls inspiration from the script automotive logos of old. Other luxury brands, like Bugattis Tourbillon model, are doing something similar. [Collage: FC] Weinzierl says its important to remember that compared to the traditional automotive industry, EVs are still almost entirely new. As the category exits its nascent phase, we may see an increase in experimentation and brand differentiation. What I love about the EV industry is that there’s so much innovation and so much overhaul that’s happening, Weinzierl says. It reminds me of smartphones in 2008 or 2010year over year, the products were just dramatically different, and there was so much competition and so much innovation happening really fast. I see the blossoming EV industry as a mirror image of that.
Category:
E-Commerce
This week, Rothy’s launches a new collection unlike anything we’ve seen before from the shoe brand. There are burgundy kitten heels, stacked leopard-print booties, and comfy olive clogsall made from velvet fabric. At first glance, you’d think the cozy-looking shoes were made of cotton or wool. But in fact, they’re made from the same recycled water bottles that Rothy’s uses for its classic flats. When the company launched in 2016, it quickly developed a cult following for its simple ballet flats made from a textured knit material. Over the past nine years, Rothys has grown quickly, going beyond flats to create sneakers, loafers, heels, and even handbags that feature its distinct, easily recognizable recycled plastic fabric. Now the company has a fleet of 26 stores, is profitable, and generated $211 million in revenue last year, a 17% increase from the year before. [Photo: Rothy’s] Rothy’s original materialthe textured, woven knitcontinues to be popular. But to keep growing, the company seeks to innovate. Its in-house team of material scientists and product designers have been tasked with developing new fabrics that meet the brands sustainability and durability standards but that look distinct in a wide range of styles. This new material, which its calling ReVelvet, does just that. “We built our reputation on the original [recycled plastic] material,” says Heather Archibald, Rothy’s chief product officer. “But we don’t want to be limited by it. We want to be able to create any shoe you could possibly imagine.” [Photo: Rothy’s] An Iconic Material In 2012, Stephen Hawthornthwaite and Roth Martin had the idea to create a sustainable footwear startup that would produce a more feminine shoe than the sneakers that were coming onto the market (think: Veja or Allbirds). They spent four years working with manufacturers to develop a fabric made from recycled plastic bottles. Then they built a factory in China that would knit the shoe uppers at scale using a zero-waste 3D knitting machine. It turned out that all of this groundwork was well worth the effort. When Rothy’s launched in 2016, its $129 shoes were a hit. Women loved that they were comfortable, eco-friendly, and durable (the shoes are machine washable). As the shoes became a status symbol that telegraphed the wearers values, the instantly recognizable upper became a key selling point. Rothy’s designers used the recycled material to create everything from sneakers and clogs to heels for women, and driving shoes and loafers for men. Over the years, Rothy’s has dipped its toes into other materials. Felice Gunawan, Rothy’s lead material developer, says it is possible to create different textures by incorporating other materials into the recycled polyester. By weaving in hemp and organic cotton, Rothy’s developed a linen-like texture for summer sandals and slides. By weaving in merino wool, it created a warmer texture for clogs and boots. But these were fairly subtle changes. “We wanted to challenge ourselves to create something that looked even more distinct,” Gunawan says. [Photo: Rothy’s] A Two-Year Quest For two years, Gunawan scoured the market for textile manufacturers who were creating interesting sustainable materials. The good news is that there’s an abundance of these companies in operation. “There’s a lot of innovation happening now when it comes to sustainable materials,” Gunawan says. “It’s happening both at small startups and in large companies.” For Gunawan, it was important to find a material that would meet Rothy’s rigorous standards. It has a lab in its China factory that is devoted to durability testing. And it also needed to work with a company large enough to produce the material at scale. Eventually, Gunawan found the material that would become ReVelvet, and ensured that the fibers would work seamlessly in Rothy’s 3D knitting machines in China. [Photo: Rothy’s] Archibald and hr design team then set out to create silhouettes that would work well with the ReVelvet. Since velvet can have a more formal aesthetic, they created a pointed slingback that looks nice with an evening dress, and penny loafers that pair well with office wear. And since velvet can also look cozy and warm, they created a clog style. As it turned out, the companys timing was perfect: Velvet is having a moment. This fall, you’ll find it in blazers, evening dresses, and even trousers. “It was entirely luck,” Archibald says. “We had no way of knowing these shoes would be so fashionable right now.” That little bit of luck has emboldened the team to innovate further. Gunawan is constantly keeping an eye out for new eco-friendly materials coming on the market that can be used in shoes. And Archibald is excited to transform these materials into new styles. “For a while, Rothy’s was associated with a very particular aesthetic,” Archibald says. “But as we’re evolving, we want to be known as a brand that creates sustainable, durable shoes that come in all kinds textures and silhouettes. One day, we could create our own version of a leather shoe or even a satin wedding shoe.”
Category:
E-Commerce
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