Latest news with #Glantz
CNBC
2 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
37-year-old 'bridesmaid for hire' has been in over 100 weddings: Here's the No. 1 thing she's learned about relationships
When Jen Glantz, 37, graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2010, she didn't know what she'd do for a living. She tried consulting for sororities, doing public relations for Jewish nonprofits and copywriting for startups. By 2014, Glantz picked up on a pattern in her personal life: Her friends regularly asked her to be their bridesmaid. And she was good at it. Glantz posted an ad on Craigslist as a "bridesmaid for hire" to see if she could get paid for her unique skillset and within days, she'd received hundreds of requests. Glantz ultimately founded her business, Bridesmaid for Hire, where she offers an array of services from helping couples write their vows to being a bridesmaid. Bridesmaid for Hire services include phone calls, texts and in-person meetings with local clients. Glantz says she works to build a "foundation of friendship" and helps to guide her brides "through the drama and the chaos" that comes with planning a wedding. Glantz has now been part of over 100 weddings and says the No. 1 thing she's learned so far is that "people are inherently lonely." The people who hire Glantz don't want for close ties in their lives. "[They] have tons of friends," she says. But they don't seem to have anyone they feel like they can be honest with. Glantz has observed that it can be difficult to open up, even to the people who are closest to us. "We're scared of how they're going to react," she says. "Or we're scared that they're going to remember what we said for years, and the relationship will never be the same." And so in this flurry of excitement, stress and high-stakes decision making, Glantz becomes the unbiased outsider and the listening ear her clients need. "They tell me their deepest and darkest secrets," she says. Her clients have shared that they're getting married because they want kids and feel like they're running out of time, or because they want the financial stability. One person even confessed that they weren't interested in getting married at all. "She sat down and said, 'Jen, I didn't hire you to be my bridesmaid. I hired you to help me end my engagement,'" Glantz says. "She knew she didn't want to marry her person, but knew if she told her friends, they'd talk her into it, or if she told her parents, they'd remind her how much money she spent on the wedding." Glantz can relate to feeling that loneliness and the want for someone she can just be honest with. "Sometimes it's easier to talk to strangers about really serious, tough things," she says. But she's working on it. Her advice to anyone who feels like they don't have someone they can truly talk to in their lives is to ask "what parts of yourself can you open up to different friends about?" and to remember that you don't have to tell everyone everything. You might also want to consider reaching out to a professional, like a therapist, who you can spill your inner most secrets to and who can help you work through whatever feelings that brings up. "It does make a huge difference in your mental health and also [gives] you that safety you need as you go through life," she says.
CNBC
27-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
4 AI tools to help with your side hustle: One ‘increased my website traffic by 30%,' says expert
Summer's here and with it opportunities to earn some extra cash. You could rent out your home to travelers on Airbnb or Facebook, pet sit for families going away, create social media content about your job — the opportunities are endless. If there's a chore that needs doing, someone could very well pay you to do it. And there are tools to streamline and make your side hustle easier once you've gotten started. That includes various AI tools introduced in the last few years. Here are four to consider using according to side hustle experts. Claude is a generative AI tool built by Anthropic. Like ChatGPT, you can use text, audio and visual prompts to create various written content. Jen Glantz, founder of Bridesmaid for Hire and the creator of the Monday Pick-Me-Up and Odd Jobs newsletters, uses Claude "to write out social media strategies and posts," she says. "I will share my own social media pages as well as other people's content I admire. I'll ask the tool to generate a 30-day plan for me with captions, posts, hashtags, and more." There are three plans for those interested in trying out the bot: a free plan with basic capabilities like analyzing text and images and creating content; a $17 per month plan, which allows for access to research and connecting to Google Workspace; and a $100 per month plan, which offers early access to advanced Claude features. Swiftbrief is an AI tool geared toward improving SEO strategy. "The tool helps me identify topics I should focus on by analyzing my website and competitors and then writes the blog posts for me," says Glantz. "This has saved me thousands of dollars and increased my website traffic by 30%." Subscriptions cost $12, $119 or $239 per month, depending on the amount of insights you want to derive from the bot. This tool allows you to create and manage automatic messages with people who interact with your social media platforms. "You can program it to answer direct messages and also to share links with followers if they comment on your posts asking more about products, outfits, or items that you share," says Glantz. "It's like having a social media assistant on-call 24/7." If you've seen a call to action on Instagram like "comment 'toast' to get the recipe" and gotten a DM with that recipe, that could have been Manychat at work. Subscriptions range from free to "customized to fit your needs," according to its website. Manus is an AI tool designed to do complex tasks like create websites, analyze stocks and build itineraries. Side hustle expert Daniella Flores has used Manus to build a Pinterest schedule for the month, including images and descriptions they could post, for example. "You can tell it to do, like, 20 different things if you want to in one message," they say, adding that "it'll show the windows that it's browsing, what it's doing behind the scenes." You can tweak your ask even while it's working to ensure you get the results you're looking for. There's a free version of Manus, as well as versions that cost $16, $33 and $166 per month, depending on the amount of video generation, slide generation and other capabilities you want to use and unlock.
CNBC
27-06-2025
- Automotive
- CNBC
British cars are being stolen and shipped within a day, fueling a multi-billion-pound crime bill
Cars are being stolen and shipped from the U.K. within 24 hours, according to a new report which found thefts are costing British consumers and the economy billions of pounds. Organized criminal gangs are driving the surge in car thefts in the country, the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defense and security think tank said in a report published Thursday, with U.K. vehicle theft rising by 75% in the past decade to about 130,000 vehicles a year. The cars that are being stolen are not just high-end vehicles like Range Rovers or Rolls-Royces, but everyday models like the Ford Fiesta or Focus and Volkswagen Golf, according to data on the most stolen makes and models. They can be relatively easily snatched by organized crime gangs who use and adapt sophisticated vehicle theft technologies, which are quickly adapted when car manufacturers roll out anti-theft countermeasures, to steal cars. Organized crime groups' techniques, networks and tried-and-tested smuggling routes mean that cars are "stolen, loaded and taken out of the U.K. within a day," RUSI said in its analysis, noting that vehicle theft is no longer a low-level, opportunistic crime, but rather a high-value, low-risk form of serious and organized crime with domestic and international dimensions. "What we really stress in the findings is the fact that it's a certain make or model today, but if that gets engineered out [with technological advances to counter theft], or the demand shifts, it will be another tomorrow," Elijah Glantz, a research fellow for the Organised Crime and Policing Team at RUSI and one of the report's co-authors, told CNBC. Criminals have become emboldened and better organized, able to relatively easily supply markets where vehicles are expensive or in short supply, and where demand is high for parts or entire vehicles. Some key export markets for stolen high-value cars were said to include the United Arab Emirates, Georgia in the Caucasus, Cyprus (which, like the U.K., has left-hand drive) and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The overall increases in the cost of parts and vehicles and shortfall of supply in those markets "drive people to look for the cheapest alternative, which in many cases might be sourced from the illicit market and originally stolen off a drive," Glantz said. CNBC has contacted the U.K.'s National Crime Agency, an agency that investigates serious and organized crime, about the findings of the report. Aside from the personal costs of stolen cars for owners, vehicle thefts are having a significant impact on U.K. drivers and the wider economy. "Vehicle theft now costs the U.K. economy about £1.77 billion [$2.43 billion] a year and has driven an 82% increase in car insurance premium quotes since 2021," with the costs compounded by increasing repair costs, vehicle prices and wider economic pressures, Glantz and RUSI co-authors Mark Williams and Alastair Greig found. The estimated £1.77 billion refers to a social and economic "cost of crime" metric, based on data collected by the U.K. Home Office and refers to the money that goes into prevention of crime, the economic damage caused to the victim, whether it's a commercial business or individual, and the cost of remediating the theft. "The cost of vehicles has gone up, the cost of insurance has gone up. Vehicle manufacturers have poured an enormous amount of money into safeguarding their vehicles, so the cost of the crime has gone up, and the overall volume of crime has also gone up. So that 1.77 billion really is a very lower bound figure," he said. Of course, car theft and illegal exporting isn't confined to the U.K. — Canada, for example, has seen an increase in stolen cars being sent to Central and West Africa— but there are some specific problems that make the U.K. more vulnerable to such crime, such as its geographical location, the fact it's an island, and the prioritizing of violent crime by its budget-constrained police force. "The U.K. is obviously a global trading partner that has many, many interactions and trade relationships with the UAE and Africa and elsewhere, and there's also a point of vulnerability in ports," Glantz said, with port officials spending a lot of time checking what's coming into the ports, but not a lot of time checking on what's going out. "As a result, the systems are quite vulnerable," Glantz said.
Arab News
08-05-2025
- Arab News
New York man charged after nearly 70 live cats and two dozen dead kittens are found in his home
NEW YORK: A suburban New York man has been charged with animal cruelty after authorities say they found nearly 100 cats in his home, including about two dozen dead kittens in a freezer. The man, 75, surrendered Wednesday to detectives with the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at a local police precinct, the nonprofit organization said. He was charged with 18 misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals and animal neglect and ordered to appear in court on May 23. His house, which is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Manhattan, also was condemned as uninhabitable because of overpowering odors of feces and urine, authorities said. Suffolk County SPCA Rescues 50 Cats from Bohemia Home, Urgently Seeks Vets and Donations for Emergency Care — Long Island (@longisland) May 4, 2025 The man didn't immediately respond to a Thursday phone message seeking comment. Court records don't list a lawyer for him. Authorities found 69 living cats, many of which had medical ailments including respiratory infections and eye disease, and 28 dead cats at Glantz's home on Saturday while investigating a complaint about dozens of cats living in squalid conditions, the county SPCA said. About two dozen dead kittens were wrapped up in a freezer and the other deceased animals were found in other parts of the house, according to the group. Three of the living cats taken from the home later had to be euthanized because they were in such bad shape, the SPCA said. The surviving cats are being treated at the Islip town animal shelter with the help of the SPCA's mobile animal and surgical hospital. Officials are working to find new homes for them and seeking donations to help pay for their care. More than two dozen will be brought to upstate New York to be made available for adoption, the SPCA said. 'The house was in absolute deplorable condition,' said Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County SPCA. 'Feces covered the floors, sprayed on the walls, saturated in urine. The floors were spongy, most likely from the urine. And the ammonia was so extremely high — the ammonia smell from the urine — that the town of Islip fire marshal condemned the house.' It isn't clear why the man had so many cats. Gross said the man's wife died last month and they had lived in the home for more than 30 years. It has been a busy and trying month for the animal welfare organization, which also has been helping to care for dozens of cats that were injured in a cat sanctuary fire in the nearby hamlet of Medford on March 31. The shelter's owner was killed in the blaze.
Associated Press
08-05-2025
- Associated Press
New York man charged after nearly 70 live cats and two dozen dead kittens are found in his home
BOHEMIA, N.Y. (AP) — A suburban New York man has been charged with animal cruelty after authorities say they found nearly 100 cats in his home, including about two dozen dead kittens in a freezer. The man, 75, surrendered Wednesday to detectives with the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals at a local police precinct, the nonprofit organization said. He was charged with 18 misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals and animal neglect and ordered to appear in court on May 23. His house, which is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Manhattan, also was condemned as uninhabitable because of overpowering odors of feces and urine, authorities said. The man didn't immediately respond to a Thursday phone message seeking comment. Court records don't list a lawyer for him. Authorities found 69 living cats, many of which had medical ailments including respiratory infections and eye disease, and 28 dead cats at Glantz's home on Saturday while investigating a complaint about dozens of cats living in squalid conditions, the county SPCA said. About two dozen dead kittens were wrapped up in a freezer and the other deceased animals were found in other parts of the house, according to the group. Three of the living cats taken from the home later had to be euthanized because they were in such bad shape, the SPCA said. The surviving cats are being treated at the Islip town animal shelter with the help of the SPCA's mobile animal and surgical hospital. Officials are working to find new homes for them and seeking donations to help pay for their care. More than two dozen will be brought to upstate New York to be made available for adoption, the SPCA said. 'The house was in absolute deplorable condition,' said Roy Gross, chief of the Suffolk County SPCA. 'Feces covered the floors, sprayed on the walls, saturated in urine. The floors were spongy, most likely from the urine. And the ammonia was so extremely high — the ammonia smell from the urine — that the town of Islip fire marshal condemned the house.' It isn't clear why the man had so many cats. Gross said the man's wife died last month and they had lived in the home for more than 30 years. It has been a busy and trying month for the animal welfare organization, which also has been helping to care for dozens of cats that were injured in a cat sanctuary fire in the nearby hamlet of Medford on March 31. The shelter's owner was killed in the blaze.
