Latest news with #Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
3 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Get This $200 MacBook Air Laptop
Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you'll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. Lugging around your $2,000 work laptop on every flight, through every hotel, and across every unfamiliar city? Stress levels: maximum. Business travel is chaotic enough without worrying that a spilled coffee or housekeeping mishap could ruin your most expensive device. That's why this refurbished MacBook Air, now just $199.97 with free shipping, is catching attention as the ultimate backup laptop for entrepreneurs who work on the go (reg. $999). If it gets a scratch going through TSA, temporarily misplaced with your lost luggage, or stolen, at least it wasn't your expensive, main laptop, right? Here's what this MacBook Air can handle This MacBook Air isn't a powerhouse, but it doesn't need to be. It's ideal for email, light web browsing, spreadsheets, document editing, and streaming on the go. With a 1.8GHz Intel Core i5 processor and Intel HD Graphics 6000, it handles essential tasks without lag. The 13.3-inch display features a 1440×900 resolution, making it sharp enough for Zoom calls and Google Docs while also conserving battery life. Speaking of which: the 12-hour battery means you can work through long layovers or client meetings without hunting for a charger. And, since it weighs under three pounds, it's a great model for travel or hybrid work. It's a grade "A/B" refurb, meaning it may show light scuffing or signs of wear, but that also explains the deeply discounted price. This is a backup laptop that's designed to be used, not babied. A 90-day parts and labor warranty is also included with your purchase. Take advantage of this refurbished MacBook Air deal, now $199.97 with free shipping while supplies last (reg. $999). Apple MacBook Air 13.3″ (2017) 1.8GHz i5 8GB RAM 128GB SSD Silver (Refurbished) See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entrepreneur
6 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Listen up: Sony WH-1000XM Headphones
The headphones allow you to listen and charge all at once. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur Middle East, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Sony is back with premium upgrades to its WH-1000XM wireless noise cancelling headphones. With processor speeds seven times faster than its predecessor, the HD Noise Cancelling Processor QN3 fine-tunes 12 microphones in real time, delivering a dramatic leap in noise cancelling and sound quality. The precise detection of the twelve optimally placed microphones allow the noise cancellation to adapt more precisely to fit you and your environment. Whether you are looking to block out noise on a busy commute or stay focused in the office, your sound experience will be seamless and powerful. The iconic design of the WH-1000X series has been taken to the next level with an elegant, soft fit wider headband infused with vegan leather ensuring a pressure-free fit. Image courtesy SONY Plus, the asymmetrical headband design makes it easy to identify the left and right side with just a glance. The earpads are designed for all-day wear thanks to stretchable material that provides a secure yet gentle fit to reduce pressure whilst blocking external noise. The headphones allow you to listen and charge all at once. Simply plug in the USB charging cable and keep listening to your favorite tunes. On the go? Even quicker charging is possible, with three minutes giving you up to three hours of charge. Related: Speak Up: Sony ECM-L1
Entrepreneur
9 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Designing AI Products that Enhance Rather Than Replace Human Connection
"To ensure AI is used for good and does not exploit or alienate users, we need to ensure ethical considerations that focus on data privacy and reduction of bias," says Beerud Sheth Co-founder and CEO, Gupshup Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. AI has advanced from a developing technology to a significant part of today's marketplace. Businesses across the world have embedded AI in many of their offerings to meet the existing and growing consumer appetite. Virtual assistants and customer service chatbots have become an integral part of our daily interactions. However now the challenge for businesses is to ensure AI is enhancing processes, not replacing them with humans. Although the automation of many tasks has shown to be productive and time saving, it is human relationships built on trust, empathy, and meaningful engagement that businesses rely on for true communication. The advancement of AI is not intended to replace human interaction but rather use technology to augment, strengthen, and enhance human interactions to create personalized experiences, and develop more authentic connections. The Initial Shift Toward Human-Centric AI Looking back, the devel opment of AI has primar ily focused on efficiency i.e. reducing human labor, cutting costs, and optimiz ing productivity. However, this generally sets the human at an almost transactional level with AI often being over emphasized on interaction rather than real interaction, thus leading to impersonal experiences that lack warmth and understanding. As AI becomes more advanced, businesses are recognising the need for designing AI driven solutions that are intended to complement human emotions and social subtleties, rather than replace them. Human centric AI involves moving beyond transactional interactions. It is about allow ing AI to create meaningful in teraction rather than respond ing to queries or automated processes. For industries such as healthcare, customer ser vice, or education, AI can act as a disruptor if designed carefully to incorporate empathy and emotional intelligence and enabling deeper and meaningful relationships. Augmenting Emotional Intelligence With AI Incorporating emotional intelligence is one of the key ways that AI can help bolster human connec tion. There have been use cases of chatbots blending emotion with intelligence, such as Hume AI which is designed to recognize and respond to a wide range of human emotions. AI has the ability to understand a person's emotional state by assessing a person's reaction based on tone of voice, facial expressions, and language patterns and respond appropriately. Hume's audio responses exhibit human emotion to its voice tonalities, its pauses in speaking, and sometimes an openness to admitting to feeling guilty for its limitations. In the business land scape, it's all the more important to embed this emotional understanding in AI Agents. Imagine that a user is experiencing tech nical difficulty and feeling frustration. An emotional AI chatbot like Hume could quickly pick up on the user's tone of frustration, and respond in a calmer and more patient tone, and perhaps marginally more human-like than a typical error message, and offer reassurance or apologize for their inconvenience. This would feel more hu man and less robotic than a standard error message. It can help complement human empathy rather than replace it, ensuring that appropriate and com passionate responses are provided to users. Personalization: Key to Meaningful Engagement Personalization has become one of AI's most powerful capabilities. Businesses are beginning to understand that hyper personalizing their ap proach can make for a much closer and more meaningful interaction with their audi ence when they analyze user preferences, behaviors, and past interactions. For instance, think about when you listen to music, or watch a movie. Services such as Netflix and Spotify know exactly what to recommend to you, not just because there is a predetermined algorithm but mainly because of AI that makes specialized recom mendations based on specific tastes. In the same way, your shopping experiences on an e-commerce site are enhanced with AI powered solutions. This entire model of personalization enhances the experience, brings famil iarity, and connects the user in a way that goes beyond a program of machine gener ated responses and appears to be more similar to that of the interaction with humans. AI driven personalization can also disrupt spaces such as education and health. In online education, adaptive AI tutors personalize lesson plans taking into consider ation a learner's progress (on adaptive assessments) and learning style to elicit a more effective and engaging learning experience leading to better learning outcomes. In hospitals and healthcare, AI assistants provide resources to doctors to enhance patient care by examining medi cal histories and using AI to derive insights as needed to personalize care to the individual patient. By making experiences more human centered, AI enhances rather than diminishes genuine interactions. Avoiding The Pitfalls With AI, the possibili ties are endless, but it's important to find the right balance between human oversight and automation. Thoughtful implementation is the key to ensuring that conver sations feel genuine and meaningful and that users stay engaged. A balanced approach works best where AI and people work in tandem, allowing a seamless user experience. Another key aspect to keep in mind is transparency. Users should know when they are interacting with AI, and should have the option to escalate the conversation to a human when they deem neces sary. A simple message of 'This is an AI assistant. For human support please type 'help',' adds that transparency and gives users options. To ensure AI is used for good and does not exploit or alienate users, we need to ensure ethical consid erations that focus on data privacy and reduc tion of bias. AI Should Strengthen Human Connection As AI continues to ad vance, it will play an even more vital role in enhanc ing human connection. The future of AI signifies the growth of enhanced connections based on our inherent social tenden cies. Businesses embrac ing human-centered AI, will form stronger relationships with their customers, employees, and community mem bers. By creating AI systems that make use of contex tual awareness, emotion recognition, and person alization of experience, companies can develop technology to support and complement our hu man interactions, rather than diminish them. The key to success lies in using AI as an enabler to develop meaningful relationships, and em power people to connect, collaborate, and commu nicate on a deeper level. AI should not seek to re place human connection but amplify it, ensuring that technology remains a tool for bringing people closer together rather than driving them apart. The question for business is not whether to adopt AI, it is how to leverage it to enhance clarity, foster human connection, and bring empathy to every interaction.
Entrepreneur
16 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
17 Surprising Ways 7-Figure Solopreneurs Are Using AI — And You're Not
Uncover 17 high-leverage AI strategies designed to scale your solo business, increase profitability and eliminate guesswork. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. If you're still using ChatGPT to write Instagram captions or answer surface-level questions, you're leaving serious growth on the table. In this video, you'll uncover 17 high-leverage AI strategies designed to scale your solo business, increase profitability, and eliminate guesswork. You'll discover how to: Audit your website and landing pages using Google AI's Realtime Feedback — like having a 24/7 marketing analyst Analyze your last six months of email campaigns to uncover revenue leaks and performance goldmines Write higher-converting subject lines, sales pages and ads — based on what's proven to work Reverse-engineer viral competitor content, pricing models and bonus stacks Perform deep market research without paying $200 per month for bloated SEO software Extract customer pain points from Amazon reviews and turn them into powerful marketing angles Automate onboarding, voiceovers and short-form content using tools Streamline your business using pre-built GPTs and personalized AI workflows to save hours each week These are the same tools and tactics I've used to dramatically boost conversions, free up time and run a lean, high-impact business. No tech skills required — just a smarter way to grow. This isn't about saving time. It's about gaining leverage. If you're ready to turn AI into your unfair advantage, this video is your roadmap. Save it for later — and let's dive in. The AI Success Kit is available to download for free, along with a chapter from my new book, The Wolf is at The Door.
Entrepreneur
a day ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Your Diversity Statement Isn't Enough — Here's What You Need to Do as a Leader to Drive Real Change
Want to be a more inclusive leader? Start by creating real opportunities for your team to grow, thrive and lead with you. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. As a manager, you're not just responsible for engagement, productivity and retention — you're responsible for creating opportunity. That's the heart of inclusive leadership. The data has been clear for years: the relationship between a manager and their employee is the most important driver of performance. As a leader, your role isn't just operational — you are the connector, advocate and catalyst. You don't just include your employees on the team — you equip them to belong. The number one inclusive leadership behavior? Creating opportunity for and with your people. Don't let the noise around DEI distract you from this truth: when we generate opportunity, we scale inclusive leadership. Employees begin opening doors — not only for themselves, but for each other. This kind of leadership is collaborative, contagious and culture-defining. Creating opportunity is about more than offering new tasks or promotions. It's the discipline of making new things possible for every employee, based on who they are and what they need to thrive. Here are seven powerful ways to lead more inclusively by creating opportunity: 1. Hiring and onboarding Hiring with equity in mind means proactively sourcing diverse candidates and reducing bias at every stage — from how job descriptions are written to how interviews are conducted. Inclusive leaders work with cross-functional hiring panels, ask consistent questions and focus on qualifications, not assumptions. Once hired, onboarding becomes the first real opportunity to demonstrate belonging. That means creating space for employees' full identities — including preferred names and pronouns, accessibility needs and personal strengths — so they can contribute with confidence from day one. Related: 11 Mindset Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs 2. Defining and living organizational values Company values shouldn't live in a handbook — they should be reflected in how strategy, culture and people decisions are made. Leaders are responsible for helping their teams connect the dots between the work they do and the values the company claims to uphold. This includes defining what inclusive behavior looks like in action: showing respect for different identities, actively including underrepresented voices and holding people accountable when values are compromised. It's about building a culture that's not just high-performing, but values-driven. 3. Developing people intentionally Inclusive leaders don't just assign tasks — they create opportunities for meaningful growth. That starts by understanding what motivates each team member and leveraging tools like AI and collaborative learning to meet individual needs. It also means recognizing that younger or less experienced employees often have more to contribute than they're given credit for. Development should be a two-way street, with mentoring, project ownership and cross-level learning all part of the equation. 4. Giving feedback that builds trust Feedback is a core leadership skill — but inclusive leaders go further by adapting how they deliver it. They know what works for one person may not work for another, and they take the time to learn each team member's preferences around recognition, coaching and critique. They also prioritize feedback as a system, not just a moment. That includes following up with internal candidates who weren't selected for roles and giving them actionable guidance to grow. Feedback becomes not just a tool for accountability, but for opportunity. 5. Mentoring and sponsoring across lines of difference Mentorship opens doors. Sponsorship pushes them open. Inclusive leaders provide both — particularly to those who are underrepresented or less likely to receive informal advocacy. That might look like matching mentoring pairs across levels, functions, or backgrounds. Or speaking up for an employee's promotion when they're not in the room. Sponsorship is especially powerful when it's intentional, consistent and tied to performance, not proximity. It's how high-potential talent rises — and how inclusion moves beyond intention to action. Related: How to Revolutionize Your Organization Through the Power of Inclusive Leadership 6. Designing workplaces that engage everyone Whether hybrid, remote or in-person, employees want balance and purpose, not just policies. Leaders set the tone by building cultures where flexible work is respected and connection isn't left to chance. That includes creating intentional forums for engagement, like skip-level meetings and cross-team collaborations. Employees want to feel seen by their leaders and connected to their organization's mission. It's not about checking boxes — it's about cultivating energy, clarity and trust. 7. Advancing and promoting with equity in mind Most employees define opportunity through growth. For some, that means promotions. For others, it's added responsibilities, increased influence or specialized assignments. Inclusive leaders ensure that advancement isn't left to chance or informal networks. They evaluate whether internal opportunities are being equitably offered — and whether expectations around readiness, time-in-role, or leadership style are fair. In today's workplace, especially with younger generations, long waits and outdated hierarchies won't cut it. Opportunity has to be both visible and viable. A new model for leadership Inclusive leadership doesn't belong to a single department or job title. It's a mindset and skill set every employee should be invited to develop. Encourage your team to explore what inclusive leadership means to them — and create a culture where participation is welcomed, tracked, and tied to real results. The more we build systems that equip every employee to lead inclusively — regardless of level — the more opportunity we generate across the organization. Because the best leaders don't just open doors. They teach others how to do the same.
