Latest news with #Phoenix-based
Cosmopolitan
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Cosmopolitan
Cierra from Love Island USA's Instagram Has a Secret Weapon—Her Best Friend
There's an almost inconceivable amount of trust you need to have in someone to give them your Instagram password. There's an even higher amount of trust you need to have in someone to give them your Instagram password in order to manage your account while you're across the globe in Fiji, with zero access to your phone, participating in season 7 of Love Island USA. And it's the kind of trust that Cierra Ortega has in her best friend MJ Hedderman, whom she granted the honor of running her socials while she stars in arguably the summer's biggest show. Cierra tapped Phoenix-based MJ for this task during the 48 hours she had in between finding out she would be on the show and the moment she walked into the villa. Since then, MJ's posts on Cierra's account, which range from reaction memes to impassioned takedowns of a man who's done her dirty, have gone viral for their wit and honesty. And they read as a departure from the inoffensive 'Watch Love Island USA on Peacock tonight' posts that many contestants' social media admins rely on. MJ and Cierra, both content creators, originally met through a mutual friend four years ago and have now reached that classic stage of friendship when you help your pal's IG grow from 32k to 634k followers in four weeks. (One that I have yet to experience but would very much like to, @ all my friends.) And MJ is taking her role incredibly seriously. She knows she isn't just posting but also managing her friend's public perception and laying the groundwork for post-villa business opportunities. These efforts all come from a place of deep love and respect for her bestie. We caught up with MJ about her approach to making posts go viral, why she doesn't regret throwing Nic shade, and the famous fans who are now following Cierra's journey. We knew in March that she was interviewing, but our friend group has known for years that she'd be perfect for the show. The second she told us she was interviewing, we were like, 'Oh, so you're going on Love Island.' She's like, 'Girl, I literally won't know until two days before I have to leave.' Every time she met with the producers, they didn't tell her to get her hopes up. Then, literally on a Friday afternoon, she texted our group chat that she was leaving the next Monday. I knew she was going the whole time. I was like, 'Oh my god, pack your bags, pick your outfits, start buying your jewelry,' because she loves to accessorize. She's literally a walking Pinterest board. And I just think she's the best-dressed on the show ever. But I'm also so biased. It was super casual. She had brought it up a few months before, and then a couple of days before she left, she got an email from the producers asking who was going to run her account when she was gone. And I was the first one to respond to her ask in the group chat. I'm also chronically online, so our friends were like, 'You know what? You have fun. We'll be here if you need us.' They've been very supportive. We have a group chat called 'Got a Text,' and I send them anything I think might be slightly problematic. Like, 'Hey, how do you feel about me calling Nic 'Boo Boo the Clown'?' They're like, 'Go for it!' But yeah, no one was clawing for it. On TikTok, I've been getting comments from people being like, 'I would kill to do this.' And I'm like, girl, I'm doing an unpaid internship. But I'm having such a blast, so I can't complain. Honestly, I didn't go into it with any social strategy whatsoever. For the first post, I screenshotted some things from the Love Island Instagram and was like, 'Who do we think the hottest in the villa is?' Then my emotions got involved when I saw that Nic was treating Cierra like an option. My first thought was like, Girl, we need to hire an Etsy witch to find her real man. It's exactly what I would text in the group chat to my friends. And then it snowballed from there. I watch each episode fully locked in, with captions and everything. Then I rewatch the episode with the captions off, and I try to find the perfect screen grabs. The way I get all these perfect photos of her is that I sit in a completely dark room so there's no reflection on my screen, and I just zoom in and take pictures. It's hard when someone's talking to get the perfect image, so I have to go back five or six times to get the perfect frame. So now my entire camera is just pictures of Cierra's face. But I go through all of them, find the best ones, and then if any of them call to me, like she's making a funny face or something, I'm like, 'Oh, this could be a funny meme.' There was one where she was looking surprised, and I said, 'Me acting surprised when I already went through his phone' or something. There's not much strategy. It's more just the first thing that pops into my head, and whatever I would text in our group chat. I've noticed with a lot of other islanders—because I've been checking out their accounts—there are no opinions. It's more like, 'We love our girl! Watch Love Island.' Honestly, even though I'm an influencer and it's my job to tell people to buy stuff, as a consumer, I hate being told what to do. If I'm following someone on Love Island, it's probably because I'm already watching the show and I'm already invested. So I did not feel the need to add hashtags or to tell people where to watch it because people are already doing that. And I honestly think the content has engaged better by not doing that. I'm also very opinionated, so it's been very hard for me to, like, not put my opinions in the posts. But I could be a lot more opinionated, which is exactly what I'm doing on my own TikTok. I also wanted to create a space on Cierra's account that she would also find funny, because she has an incredible sense of humor. Before she went to the villa, the only thing she texted me was, 'Have fun. Make memes. Be silly. You can make fun of me!' I think it's working because people see how much love is going into the post. Every time I'm writing these, I'm literally pouring my heart out. I've been a full-time influencer since 2021. So this is not necessarily easy, especially given the number of followers that she's gained in the past week—she's gained, I think, 100,000 in less than eight hours—but it helps. Like, knowing how to block certain hate words and block comments. The second I see any type of hateful comment, I take all the keywords and I put them into the hidden word option on Instagram, so then no one can comment anything terrible. The beauty of working in this industry is that you kind of become numb to it after a while. You realize that the people sending hate aren't saying that because they genuinely hate you. Maybe they do, but it's probably because they don't love themselves enough. It's definitely challenging at times, dealing with the influx of people, but it's manageable. Granted, I've been focusing 100 percent more on her Instagram than I have mine, but I know that she has so much potential for growth while in the villa, so I might as well focus on this for her for six weeks and set her up for life. That's what I'm saying. There are a lot of people on the show, like Huda for example, who could be getting a bad edit. That happened to Cierra in the beginning, with the whole Bell-A and Nic situation. Cierra was literally getting death threats in her DMs. I feel like one way to combat that beforehand is by creating a good perception on her Instagram. Her DMs are insane. Half of them are fans; a portion are athletes. And then there's the famous people, like Julia Fox followed her. I've been texting her updates every single day, like, 'You just hit 600k, Julia Fox just followed you, Kim Kardashian just reposted your Skims ad on her story.' [Editor's note: Cierra won't be seeing these texts until she's out of the villa because, again, she does not have her phone.] I just know she's going to freak out when she's out of the villa. Our friend Johnnie, who was on the show a couple years ago said, you really have no idea what the public thinks. That's the scariest part. But Cierra's in good hands. What was your relationship to reality TV like before this? I've never watched Love Island USA before. Cierra's the one who got me into reality TV. She got me into Big Brother, she's been begging me to watch Love Is Blind for years, and she forced me to watch the Vanderpump Rules finale where Ariana rips Tom a new one. And she kept pausing it to provide context. I look at them occasionally just to see what the vibe is. But honestly, I'm booked and busy with this account. I do check them out to see where they are growth-wise. It's not a competition, but I am a very competitive person, and since it's not my account I'm very much looking at it like a business where I'm like, 'Okay, how much growth can we get in six weeks?' Especially because, when the whole Huda/Jeremiah situation was going on, Cierra wasn't getting any screen time. So I was like, This is my time to shine. If I can make posts go viral, she'll gain followers from just existing on Instagram. Granted, when she has screen time, she eats it. Everyone's like, 'She's been coached. She's media trained.' No, she is just genuinely that eloquent and witty in real life. She's a Libra. If they do end up together, I will own it! I'm not deleting any of the posts—I called him Boo Boo the Clown for a reason. I will stick to my guns. But I don't think he's a bad guy. I'm looking at it from a best friend's perspective, not from objectively watching the show. When I see her crying about someone who can't commit, it literally makes me see red. But in the context of the show, I do think they are a good couple. They both have weird interests. I just think he needs to get his head screwed on straight and realize the gorgeous goddess that he has in front of him. But I have to remind myself, it is just a show.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Commonwealth Recruits $430M Phoenix Practice From Osaic
You can find original article here Wealthmanagement. Subscribe to our free daily Wealthmanagement newsletter. Commonwealth Financial Network, which penned a deal in March to be acquired by LPL Financial, has added Patrick Funke & Associates, a Phoenix-based team with about $430 million in client assets. The firm, run by advisor Patrick Funke and his wife, Jennifer Funke, was previously with Osaic. Prior to that, they were affiliated with Securities America, one of the broker/dealer entities that was consolidated into Osaic. Patrick Funke has built up his book of business over 25 years, focusing specifically on small corporate retirement plans. 'Oftentimes, a workplace 401(k) meeting can be the first interaction an investor has with an advisor,' he said in a statement. 'This provides an opportunity to make those meetings a gateway to making a genuine difference in people's lives.' Jennifer Funke said she likes that when they call Commonwealth, someone picks up the phone or calls back promptly. She also found the transition process was smooth. 'Now that we've transitioned, we're finding that opening a new account takes five minutes. The system generates all the forms, and it's easy for clients to approve via DocuSign,' she said in a statement. 'When we last changed our partner firm, it was for additional size and scale,' Patrick Funke said. 'That's not enough, though, because relationships are the lifeblood of our firm. The Commonwealth model means partnering with a high-level, professional team that's relationship-focused, not transaction-oriented. Looking ahead, Commonwealth and LPL will give us the foundation to grow our practice.' LPL announced plans in March to acquire Commonwealth for about $2.7 billion in cash, linking the country's largest independent broker/dealer with one known for its small cultural feel. Since then, several large broker/dealers have been more aggressively recruiting Commonwealth advisors. Just last week, Cetera Wealth Management President Todd Mackay made the case in a second open letter to Commonwealth advisors that Cetera could help them avoid some of the pitfalls they might find in a move to LPL. This letter follows one Mackay sent in April, imploring Commonwealth advisors to consider Cetera—a call made by other advisory firms, including Osaic, Raymond James and Kestra. During an earnings call in May, LPL CEO Rich Steinmeier expressed confidence in his firm retaining 90% of Commonwealth advisors, noting regular engagement and retention discussions with those advisors. On that call, Chief Financial Officer Matt Audette added that, despite the competitors vying for Commonwealth advisors, he didn't see many 'credible players' that could poach them. LPL expects to close the transaction in the second half of 2025 and finish converting advisors to its platform in early 2026. Sign in to access your portfolio
Business Wire
5 days ago
- Business
- Business Wire
Jordan Leclair Joins Alliant Insurance Services in Phoenix
IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Alliant Insurance Services continues to grow its Employee Benefits team in the Southwest, hiring Jordan Leclair as Vice President. The Phoenix-based benefits consultant joins Alliant with a multifaceted background spanning healthcare, HR technology, and employee benefits, delivering strategic, data-driven solutions that improve plan efficiency and cost management for his clients. 'Jordan has a strong ability to connect strategy with execution, helping clients streamline their benefits programs while delivering tangible results,' said Kevin Overbey, President, Alliant Employee Benefits. 'His broad perspective and analytical mindset make him a valuable asset to organizations navigating the modern benefits landscape.' Leclair has extensive experience supporting a diverse range of organizations, ranging from local and regional businesses to large national organizations. Throughout his career, he has proven highly effective in collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to help organizations increase efficiencies, drive value, and optimize long-term outcomes. Prior to joining Alliant, Leclair served as Vice President at a national insurance brokerage and consulting firm, where he led benefits consulting efforts for a broad portfolio of clients. Leclair holds dual degrees in business marketing and business law from Arizona State University, where he also competed in collegiate hockey. About Alliant Insurance Services Alliant Insurance Services marks a century of success as the nation's leading specialty broker. We operate through a network of specialized national platforms and local offices to offer our clients a comprehensive portfolio of risk solutions built on innovative thinking and personal service. The business of managing risk is complex, and Alliant meets this complexity head-on with creativity and agility. Alliant has changed the way our clients approach risk management and benefits, giving them complete access to our resources and expertise—regardless of where the resource is located—to capitalize on new opportunities to grow and protect their organizations and their people. Alliant is recognized as a leading destination for top-tier brokerage talent in the U.S., attracting brokers and specialists across a diverse spectrum of disciplines who are eager to advance their careers. With the advantage of being majority employee-owned, professionals choose Alliant for autonomy, unparalleled resources, and a unique equity ownership opportunity. As a testament to our commitment to excellence, Alliant maintains an impressive 99% producer retention rate and has earned Forbes' prestigious title of one of America's Best Large Employers. Visit us at
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Jordan Leclair Joins Alliant Insurance Services in Phoenix
Leclair brings cross-industry experience in healthcare, HR technology, and benefits consulting IRVINE, Calif., June 24, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alliant Insurance Services continues to grow its Employee Benefits team in the Southwest, hiring Jordan Leclair as Vice President. The Phoenix-based benefits consultant joins Alliant with a multifaceted background spanning healthcare, HR technology, and employee benefits, delivering strategic, data-driven solutions that improve plan efficiency and cost management for his clients. "Jordan has a strong ability to connect strategy with execution, helping clients streamline their benefits programs while delivering tangible results," said Kevin Overbey, President, Alliant Employee Benefits. "His broad perspective and analytical mindset make him a valuable asset to organizations navigating the modern benefits landscape." Leclair has extensive experience supporting a diverse range of organizations, ranging from local and regional businesses to large national organizations. Throughout his career, he has proven highly effective in collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to help organizations increase efficiencies, drive value, and optimize long-term outcomes. Prior to joining Alliant, Leclair served as Vice President at a national insurance brokerage and consulting firm, where he led benefits consulting efforts for a broad portfolio of clients. Leclair holds dual degrees in business marketing and business law from Arizona State University, where he also competed in collegiate hockey. About Alliant Insurance Services Alliant Insurance Services marks a century of success as the nation's leading specialty broker. We operate through a network of specialized national platforms and local offices to offer our clients a comprehensive portfolio of risk solutions built on innovative thinking and personal service. The business of managing risk is complex, and Alliant meets this complexity head-on with creativity and agility. Alliant has changed the way our clients approach risk management and benefits, giving them complete access to our resources and expertise—regardless of where the resource is located—to capitalize on new opportunities to grow and protect their organizations and their people. Alliant is recognized as a leading destination for top-tier brokerage talent in the U.S., attracting brokers and specialists across a diverse spectrum of disciplines who are eager to advance their careers. With the advantage of being majority employee-owned, professionals choose Alliant for autonomy, unparalleled resources, and a unique equity ownership opportunity. As a testament to our commitment to excellence, Alliant maintains an impressive 99% producer retention rate and has earned Forbes' prestigious title of one of America's Best Large Employers. Visit us at View source version on Contacts Nick KopingaFirst Vice PresidentCorporate Marketing and Communications(949) 260-5004nkopinga@ Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Miami Herald
14-06-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Popular beverage chain franchisee files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
The Covid pandemic resulted in a massive shutdown of restaurants in March 2020 that led to 1,000s of dining establishments closing permanently. Most restaurants that survived the pandemic closures and reopened needed to adopt Covid policies and procedures for health safety, which included social distancing. Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter The fast-food industry wasn't hit as hard by the pandemic as the casual restaurant sector, since many chains were already designed with take-out and drive-thru systems that were utilized by restaurants when they reopened after the pandemic subsided. Related: Popular local Dairy Queen rival files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Casual restaurants did their best to offer limited take-out and curbside pick-up systems, but some restaurant concepts, such as buffets, were not designed for such systems, did not adopt them, and many went out of business. The fast-food sector, however, has faced financial distress since the Covid-19 pandemic subsided. Restaurants have encountered rising labor and food costs driven by inflation, debt payments have significantly risen as interest rates increased, and consumers have re-evaluated their priorities for dining out. Popular burger fast-food chain Jack in the Box has felt the impact of a pullback by diners since Covid and in April launched its Jack on Track plan that calls for the closing of 80-120 underperforming restaurant locations by Dec. 31, 2025. The company said it would eventually close another 70-80 underperforming stores thereafter, based on respective franchise agreement termination dates. The fast-food chain has already begun the process of closing restaurants, as it in May closed its three remaining Jack in the Box locations in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Economic problems have forced some fast-food restaurants to file for bankruptcy Frozen beverage fast-food chain Egees in December 2024 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed five of its locations, four in Tucson, and one in Phoenix. The company blamed lingering effects from the Covid-19 pandemic for its financial distress. Another fast-food restaurant owner, Rita's Italian Ice franchisee Greene Family Enterprises LLC, which owns a St. Johns, Fla.-based franchise, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 9, seeking to restructure its debts. Finally, Tropical Smoothie Cafe franchisee JND Tropics LLC, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, seeking to reorganize its business. Related: Popular nationwide beauty chain files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy The Phoenix-based restaurant franchisee filed its Subchapter V petition in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Arizona, listing $1 million to $10 million in assets and $1 million to $10 million in liabilities, including debts owed to creditors Applepie Capital, Arizona Department of Revenue, and the Tropical Smoothie Cafe corporation. More bankruptcy: Iconic auto repair chain franchise files Chapter 11 bankruptcyPopular beer brand closes down and files Chapter 7 bankruptcyPopular vodka and gin brand files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy The franchisee indicated in its petition that funds would be available for distribution to unsecured creditors. The debtor qualified for a streamlined reorganization as a small business debtor with debts under the statutory threshold of $3.424 million. The franchisee did not indicate a reason for filing for bankruptcy protection. Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which was established in 1997, offers a variety of smoothies, including Fruit Blends, Super Veggies, Tropical Treats, and Balanced Fusions; several breakfast items, wraps, flatbreads, sandwiches, and salads. The Atlanta-based smoothie franchise chain has over 1,500 locations in 44 states and Washington, D.C. The chain opened 161 new cafes in 2024, with 70% launched by existing franchisees. Tropical Smoothie Cafe also signed 247 new franchise agreements last year, according to a January statement. "This past year proved to be an incredible year for Tropical Smoothie Cafe, and I couldn't be prouder to be part of this brand," Tropical Smoothie Cafe CEO Max Wetzel said in a statement. "Reaching 1,500 cafes open is no small feat, and the remarkable growth driven by the brand is a testament to our entire team and franchise network," Wetzel said. Related: Major trucking company files Chapter 11 bankruptcy The Arena Media Brands, LLC THESTREET is a registered trademark of TheStreet, Inc.
