The social media landscape is increasingly fragmented, a result of both regulatory changes and evolving algorithms. This is fueling a race among brands to establish equity and relevance in emerging digital spaces, a prospect that understandably worries social marketers. For most of them, their biggest fear is their audiences migrating to private, closed, or niche platforms.
Kevin O’Leary, the famed investor and star of “Shark Tank,” urged students at Harvard to forgo the traditional consulting route and instead establish their own businesses.
What Happened: In his role as an Executive Fellow at the prestigious Ivy League school, O’Leary expressed his belief that dedicating two years to a consulting firm could result in a mediocre career.
He suggested that consultants are often viewed as indecisive, which could hinder their professional growth.
O’Leary, who is also the founder of the $4.2 billion company, SoftKey Software Products, is committed to motivating his students to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset. He acknowledged that his teaching method involves revealing some hard truths about the consulting sector.
“Look, if you want to drift into hell on Earth, stay 24 months in a consulting firm and you are tainted meat for the rest of your life. No one’s going to hire you to make a decision because you never have made one,” O’Leary told Fortune.
Also Read: Kevin O’Leary Told Student To Pick Business Over Fiancée: ‘She’s Easier To Replace’
“Why would anybody burn all those hours while someone else makes money, and you do nothing of consequence? I respect all the consulting firms that are out there, but I’m going to do my best to keep people from going into that,” he added.
Despite the appealing starting salaries ranging from $250,000 to $350,000, O’Leary cautioned that consultants frequently work long hours without creating anything of their own. He went on to say that consultants are unlikely to attain financial independence while working for someone else.
O’Leary’s advice comes at a time when many students are grappling with career decisions. His emphasis on entrepreneurship over consulting reflects a broader trend in the business world, where innovation and self-starting are increasingly valued.
His course, The Founder Mindset, could potentially shape the next generation of entrepreneurs, steering them away from traditional career paths and towards creating their own ventures.
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Image: Shutterstock/Vivvi Smak
July 18, 2025
Protests were held July 17, honoring the memory of the late congressman and civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis for “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action.
Protestors honored the memory of the late congressman and civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis by protesting President Donald Trump’s controversial policies in the streets for “Good Trouble Lives On” national day of action held July 17, NBC News reported.
The peaceful protests and events were held along streets, courthouses, and other public spaces in cities throughout the U.S., including cities targeted by Trump ICE raids like Atlanta and St. Louis, Missouri. Organized by a coalition of nonprofits like Public Citizen, co-president Lisa Gilbert said, given the state of the political climate, showcasing the grievances of the country on a national day of action is necessary. “We are navigating one of the most terrifying moments in our nation’s history,” Gilbert said.
“We are all grappling with a rise of authoritarianism and lawlessness within our administration … as the rights, freedoms, and expectations of our very democracy are being challenged.”
Lewis, who was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists — a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr — passed away in 2020 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Efforts from King and Lewis led to then-President Lyndon Johnson pressing Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965, just days after Lewis and 600 protesters were beaten by police while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, a day now known as Bloody Sunday.
Before his passing, Lewis was able to commemorate the 1965 voting rights marches. “Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” Lewis said.
The “Good Trouble Lives On” protests are added to the growing protests across the country amid Trump’s policies. In early July 2025, federal law enforcement and protestors engaged in a tense standoff due to a chaotic raid and arrests of immigrants on two Southern California marijuana farms, resulting in one farmworker dying after falling from a greenhouse roof, according to The Associated Press.
As demonstrators labeled Trump as a dictator and wannabe king for honoring his birthday with a military parade, “No Kings” demonstrations launched protests with millions of people marching in cities like New York and Charlotte. Thousands of people took over the streets of Los Angeles in early June 2025 after Trump sent the National Guard against them for taking a stance against illegal deportations.
Members of Congress like Rep. Raphael Warnock took to social media to remember their legendary colleague, saying he hoped Lewis’s memory prompts everyone to “continue getting into #GoodTrouble.”
RELATED CONTENT: John Lewis Honored With Forever Stamp, Ceremony
ChatGPT can now create a PowerPoint presentation or make purchases online for you — with just a prompt.
OpenAI released the new ChatGPT agent on Thursday, a general-purpose AI tool that can complete complex tasks on a user’s behalf, like searching the web, running code, and creating slideshows and spreadsheets. The AI agent can click, type, and submit forms on its own based on a natural language prompt, and users can interrupt it at any time. It’s part of OpenAI’s effort to make ChatGPT more of a tool capable of handling autonomous tasks instead of just a chatbot that answers questions. As of March, ChatGPT had over 500 million global weekly users.
ChatGPT agent can also act as a virtual assistant, connecting to apps like Gmail and Google Calendar to carry out tasks like drafting emails and making appointments. It completes tasks using its own virtual computer and shifts on its own between reasoning and action to carry out instructions.
OpenAI says the new tool can “analyze three competitors and make a slide deck” — the agent will chart out a course of action, go through websites, and create an editable slideshow.
It can also create editable Excel spreadsheets by taking in a prompt like “make a spreadsheet based on the San Francisco annual comprehensive financial reports (ACFR).”
The agent can also shop online for users, though it will always ask for approval before carrying out a sensitive action, like entering personal information or making a purchase.
OpenAI is embedding the agent within ChatGPT and allowing paying users to access it immediately by selecting “agent mode” in ChatGPT’s dropdown tool menu. The agent starts rolling out today for Pro, Plus, and Team users, with plans to become available to Enterprise and Education customers over the summer.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
OpenAI says the agent could help workers, like financial analysts, complete tasks more quickly.
“We think that this model is actually going to be quite good at low-level, first-, second-year, financial analysis type work that might have taken someone a night to do if they’re getting pinged by their boss late at night,” ChatGPT agent product manager Neel Ajjarapu told The Wall Street Journal.
Related: ChatGPT Can Now Complete a Major Task That Would Take a Human Up to 30 Days. Here’s How it Works.
ChatGPT isn’t the first AI tool to be able to make PowerPoint presentations, but it is the most mainstream AI product to offer the agentic capability. Other AI presentation tools include Microsoft Copilot, which is integrated into PowerPoint and can generate presentations from prompts, and Google Workspace add-on SlidesAI.io, which converts any text into a Google Slides presentation.
Meanwhile, other companies are leveraging internal AI tools to create slide decks. For example, McKinsey consultants are using an internal AI tool to create PowerPoint presentations, taking over junior employee tasks.
OpenAI was valued at $300 billion in March following a $40 billion funding round.
ChatGPT agent is a combination of two other agents OpenAI released earlier this year: Operator, which can browse the web to fill out forms and take action like a virtual assistant, and Deep Research, which searches the web for answers to research questions and presents the findings in a paper with citations — though it far exceeds the capabilities of both.
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ChatGPT can now create a PowerPoint presentation or make purchases online for you — with just a prompt.
OpenAI released the new ChatGPT agent on Thursday, a general-purpose AI tool that can complete complex tasks on a user’s behalf, like searching the web, running code, and creating slideshows and spreadsheets. The AI agent can click, type, and submit forms on its own based on a natural language prompt, and users can interrupt it at any time. It’s part of OpenAI’s effort to make ChatGPT more of a tool capable of handling autonomous tasks instead of just a chatbot that answers questions. As of March, ChatGPT had over 500 million global weekly users.
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What do Tom Hanks’s Captain Sullenberger, Sarah Connor, Mad Max, and email marketing all have in common? They’re survivors that defy extinction against all odds.
Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) has issued a forceful rebuke of two proposed cryptocurrency bills, known as the CLARITY Act and the GENIUS Act: she warned their passage would “open the floodgates to massive fraud” and repeat the deregulatory mistakes that led to past financial crises.
What Happened: In an opinion piece published on Monday, Waters, who represents California’s 43rd congressional district, argued that the crypto bills represent a direct threat to consumer safety, financial stability, and national security.
“What we’re witnessing isn’t just unethical,” she wrote. “It’s the largest fraud and abuse of power in modern history.”
The House is expected to vote on the bills this week. Proponents argue the legislation will create a pro-innovation regulatory framework for digital assets.
But Waters dismissed those claims, contending the bills were “written by and for the crypto industry” and likening them to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, which dismantled banking safeguards and was later blamed for exacerbating the 2008 financial crisis.
Waters sharply criticized how both bills would constrain regulators from acting preemptively against fraud.
“The CLARITY Act handcuffs the Securities and Exchange Commission,” she warned, claiming it would leave investors exposed until after collapses like FTX have already taken place.
The GENIUS Act, she argued, offers “weak consumer protections” for stablecoin users and provides no meaningful funding for oversight.
She also warned that its provisions enable foreign-controlled crypto operations and fail to guard against national security risks.
Why It Matters: Waters linked the bills to President Donald Trump, claiming they “would legitimize and legalize the unprecedented crypto corruption by the president of the United States.”
According to her statement, Trump has allegedly used his office to strike crypto deals abroad and personally benefited from “shady” ventures, adding $1.2 billion to his wealth through digital assets.
Democrats had proposed several amendments aimed at limiting presidential overreach and improving regulatory safeguards during committee discussions.
Waters said each one was rejected by Republicans.
“These bills will only strengthen Wall Street’s dominance alongside Big Tech, while squeezing out smaller innovators,” she wrote. “They give megabanks and Big Crypto the green light to consolidate control.”
With the 15th anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act approaching, Waters warned that lawmakers risk repeating history. “Passing the CLARITY and GENIUS Acts would prove that we learned nothing from that disaster,” she said. “If these bills become law, America will eventually face its first crypto financial crisis.”
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Image: Shutterstock
July 12, 2025
Spelman and Morehouse alums, Reagan Fresnel and Brian Wright, are introducing students to higher-ed through “Camp HBCYouth.”
HBCU alums are giving Atlanta campers an early taste of college life at an HBCU-led summer camp, Capital B Atlanta reported.
Camp HBCYouth was designed to spark interest in historically Black colleges and enhance academic skills. The program offers affordable access and “camperships” for underserved families, said Reagan Fresnel, founder and Spelman alum.
Fresnel recalled attending a summer program at Morgan State and wanting to bring that experience home. Along with Morehouse alum Brian Wright, that is exactly what she did.
“Only 5% of Black children attend summer camp, so we are carving out space for our students,” Fresnel said to Capital B Atlanta.
She described the camp as a pipeline into HBCUs. HBCYouth strives to instill college values like legacy, community, and excellence in students early in life. To that end, the camp currently serves elementary school students.
Camp counselors are current HBCU students or graduates. At a July 3 field day held at Morehouse’s football stadium, campers took part in tug-of-war, water games, and football training led by NFL cornerback A.J. Terrell Jr. of the Falcons, sponsored by his foundation.
At the West End Spelman campus on July 9, elementary-aged girls painted a mural under the guidance of HBCU students. The camp integrates STEAM, Black history, wellness, sports, and academic enrichment aimed at preventing summer learning loss. Campers received lessons in budgeting, literacy, and tennis lessons licensed through a partnership with the USTA. Each site serves 60 to 70 children, and organizers say nearly 1,000 students have participated since the program began.
Lauren Reed, Camp HBCYouth’s director of marketing, said that hiring HBCU students provides younger campers with mentors who look like them and reflect college success.
“We want them to see people they can look up to,” she said. Spelman senior Skylar Sanford, working as a counselor, said she saw her role as mentorship and sharing joy.
Supported in part by Walmart and Amazon Access, Camp HBCYouth also offers meals to combat food insecurity and maintains a tuition of around $250 per week. Fresnel said the founders are exploring expansion to all HBCUs, extending programming from elementary to high school age to build a sustained pathway into college.
Founded in 2021 by Spelman alums Fresnel and Wright, Camp HBCYouth offers a seven-week day camp on four HBCU campuses—Spelman, Morehouse, Tennessee State, and Clark Atlanta.
Atlanta’s robust HBCU presence—driven by the Atlanta University Center, the nation’s largest HBCU consortium—provides a rich cultural backdrop for this initiative . Camp HBCYouth aims to reinforce that legacy and ensure Black youth have early exposure to environments that reflect their potential and aspirations.
RELATED CONTENT: Georgia HBCUs Are Helping Displaced Students Impacted By Job Corps Shut Downs
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Your business reputation is more than a feel-good factor — it’s a strategic asset that can propel or derail your growth. One misstep, like a scathing review or a breach of trust, can erode customer confidence, weaken your search engine rankings and stifle referrals.
Conversely, a reputation rooted in integrity can attract loyal clients, inspire your team and fuel organic expansion. As a business owner, actively shaping a trustworthy reputation isn’t just wise — it’s essential for long term success. Here’s how to build a reputation that opens doors and creates opportunities.
Related: The One Mistake Is Putting Your Brand Reputation at Risk — and Most Startups Still Make It
A strong reputation starts with values that guide every decision. At my digital marketing agency, our commitment to integrity shapes how we operate, even when it demands tough choices. For instance, we once ended a contract with a high-paying client who consistently disrespected our team, violating our principle of fostering a positive workplace. The financial hit was significant, but the decision strengthened team trust and reinforced our culture. By defining clear values — such as respect, honesty or excellence — and consistently upholding them, you signal to clients and employees that your business stands for something enduring, laying the foundation for a respected reputation.
Encounters with dishonesty, like a client dodging payment or a partner undermining your business, test your commitment to integrity. Early in my career, I connected a client with a contact who later took their business without acknowledgment. Instead of reacting with anger, I chose to move forward, trusting that new opportunities would emerge. This approach, rooted in an abundance mindset, preserves your professionalism and safeguards your reputation. When faced with betrayal or conflict, prioritize your values over short-term wins. By taking the high road, you earn respect from peers and clients, enhancing your standing as a principled leader.
Related: How to Better Manage Your Brand’s Reputation in the Digital Age
Referrals are a powerful driver of reputation, turning satisfied clients into advocates who bring in new business. Delivering exceptional service to every client maximizes the chance they’ll recommend you to others. Equally important is referring prospects to trusted colleagues when their needs don’t align with your expertise.
For example, directing a client to a better-suited provider may forgo immediate revenue, but it builds goodwill and often leads to reciprocal referrals. Cultivate a network of reliable partners to create a mutually beneficial referral system. This approach not only strengthens your reputation as an honest business but also fosters a cycle of trust that fuels growth.
Online reviews shape how customers and search engines perceive your business, directly impacting your SEO and credibility. Proactively encourage satisfied clients to leave detailed Google reviews, aiming for at least two per month to maintain a robust online presence.
Providing a direct link simplifies the process, and asking clients to describe their experience incorporates keywords that boost search visibility. Respond to every review — express gratitude for positive feedback and address negative ones with a sincere apology and a commitment to make things right. This engagement demonstrates your dedication to customer satisfaction, reinforcing a reputation for responsiveness and care.
A stellar reputation isn’t built overnight — it’s the result of consistent, value-driven actions across all facets of your business. From treating clients with respect to fostering a supportive team environment, every interaction contributes to how others perceive you. Upholding integrity, even when it requires sacrifices like turning away a lucrative but toxic client, creates a ripple effect of trust. This trust translates into loyal customers, motivated employees and a stronger online presence, all of which drive opportunities. To start, choose one actionable step — requesting a client review, refining your referral process or clarifying your values with your team — and implement it this week.
Your reputation is a living asset that grows with every principled decision. Begin by integrating these strategies into your daily operations: define your values, handle conflicts with grace, nurture referrals and prioritize reviews. These steps don’t require a massive overhaul, but their impact compounds over time, positioning your business as a trusted leader.
Tech companies like yours must move smart today to meet customers’ expectations of instant, seamless interactions across SMS, voice, video, and chat. (more…)
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