For a long time, social media has proven to be an effective marketing channel for celebrities. Whether theyre announcing concerts or just trying to stay relevant, posting on social gives them direct access to their fans.

Take Cristiano Ronaldo, for example. With over 400 million followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, he can reach millions of fans within minutes. His social strategy has been so successful that hes earning more from Instagram than his salary at Juventus. It was reported last year that he earns an average annual income of $47.8 millionfrom Instagram alone.

So, why would anyone leave? Well, there seems to be a new trend in town. Lots of popular celebs are now taking an old-school approach by sending SMS (text) messages to their fans. Theyre sending breaking news, providing daily updates and asking questions. A recent campaign saw Jennifer Lopez asking fans to text her with their song requests for her Super Bowl LIV halftime show.

This is all done via a company named Community, which provides celebs with a platform to log in and send messages in bulk. They can then view replies and respond if necessary. Some of the celebs who have already signed up reportedly include Paul McCartney, the Jonas Brothers, Diddy and Mark Cuban. Ashton Kutcher is also both an investor and user of the platform.

At Reach Interactive, we arent surprised by this new trend, as consumers are striving for personalized content. As a result, users of our SMS marketing platform are beginning to adapt. Rather than sending out generic campaigns, they are sending targeted messages that attempt to build personal connections with each recipient.

Whats up with social media?

Its becoming more and more difficult for celebrities to get their content seen on social media. On average, only 8% of a pages total likes will see any given post on Facebook. That means that a page with a million likes will only have 80,000 views on any given post. Flip that around, and you have 920,000 missed opportunities.

Its the same on Instagram and Twitter, too. As followers rise, engagement falls. The average engagement rate for accounts with less than 1,000 followers is 7.2% on Instagram and 1.4% on Twitter. However, when accounts have over 100,000 followers, those numbers fall significantly, as engagement is just 1.1% on Instagram and 0.3% on Twitter.

Theres also the issue of internet trolls. Its pretty common to see jokes in the comments section of celebrities posts. While some of those messages are light-hearted, others can be malicious and personal. With platforms doing very little to combat this problem, its no surprise when celebs call it quits. Just last month, Lizzo left Twitter due to trolling on her account.

Why SMS?

A big benefit of using SMS is that it is direct. Celebs can send messages that go straight to their fans inboxes. Those messages arent going to be missed. Theyll sit there until they are either read or deleted. This is a big benefit because it means that fans no longer have to refresh their social feeds to read updates.

Texting is also personal. Fans can receive direct messages from their heroes. Imagine sending a message to a local fan that says Concert announcement in your city. Id love it if youd be there, Jodie. That message is much more personal than a generic tour poster that is published on every social channel possible.

Finally, texting doesnt have to be in bulk. It can be as simple as arranging numbers based on area codes or geographical location. Then, if celebs have any upcoming events, they can target fans in that town, city or state.

How can businesses benefit?

Itd be naive to think that celebrities would completely ditch their social channels and focus solely on SMS. Instead, theyre now able to utilize both platforms when communicating with fans. There is no reason businesses cannot use a similar strategy. All you need to do is grow your list.

Your business may not have the same number of followers as the celebrities mentioned, but growing your SMS list can still be easy. You just need to let your existing channels do the work. Easy wins are to include your number in email campaigns, publish it on your website and post about it on social channels. Budget dependent, you can also use traditional methods such as direct mail, billboards and TV ads. And you could even get creative and run podcast ads or use influencers.

The key to growth is to offer an incentive. For celebrities, thats easy. Theyre providing fans with an opportunity to receive a direct response. For businesses, youll get more opt-ins by offering a monetary discount. Send a welcome offer such as 20% off or buy one, get one free. Also, try to make it clear that your SMS subscribers get exclusive access to discounts and products.

Consider your messaging strategy.

Once you have a sizable list, its all about strategy. Firstly, your content needs to add value. You can send texts that are informative, such as appointment reminders or delivery notifications. Or, you can send marketing messages that include calls to action, such as discounts and product launches. Then, consider timing. For example, a fast-food chain would have more success on a Friday evening than on a Monday morning. Finally, avoid bombarding your customers, as this will undo all of your hard work. Further, giving out too many discounts can hurt your brand.

This strategy can also be implemented across all of your other marketing channels. Whether youre sending a text, sharing a post or sending an email, think about your content in terms of value added, timing and consistency. As a result, youll be able to develop a successful multichannel strategy that targets unique customers across each platform.

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Why Celebrities Are Texting Their Fans, And What Businesses Can Learn - Forbes

Ed Fletcher, CEO at Fletchers, tells Legal Cheeks Aishah Hussain how he took the firm from fledgling high street practice to featuring in the UK top 100, and the tragic motorcycle crash that spurred him on, ahead of tomorrows Secrets to Success event in Manchester

Fletchers is going places. What was once a small high street firm in the seaside town of Southport is now one of the countrys biggest medical negligence law firms.

Its wonderful to have grown exponentially, particularly in the last five years, to become a national leader in personal injury law, says Ed Fletcher, chief executive officer at Fletchers, and the man behind the firms impressive growth story.

Ed studied law at Aberystwyth University where he was a stalwart of the first XV rugby team. His interest in personal injury took hold when one of his teammates suffered a neck injury and pursued a successful claim against the Rugby Football Union. I saw first-hand the fantastic contribution lawyers can make to rebuilding lives, he reflects.

He went on to complete the Legal Practice Course (LPC) at the College of Law in Chester and joined Fletchers as a fresh-faced trainee in the summer of 96.

Then, when he was one year qualified as a solicitor, he severed his spinal cord in a motorbike accident which changed the course of his life. He dealt with the initial trauma and spent six months at a rehabilitation centre. Once that had subsided, he found a renewed enthusiasm and greater clarity on the direction of his career: he was going to develop a specialism in motorbike accidents representing individuals suffering from injuries similar to the one he had experienced and help them rebuild their lives.

His most memorable case was Donaldson v Wilson involving a motorcyclist who rode into a cow. The case ended up in the Court of Appeal but interestingly, Ed tells me its the little victories Im most proud of. He continues: Its a blessing to be involved in cases that although arent setting legal precedents or breaking new ground but radiate fortitude from our lawyers digging deep in times of darkness.

The opportunity then arose to not only rebuild individuals lives but to build teams and departments, and then a firm with this ethos in mind.

The civil justice reforms beginning with the 1998 Woolf Reforms, the Jackson Reforms and then the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO), shook the personal injury market. Law firms costs and style of serving their clients came under great scrutiny while the government enacted changes that favoured larger legal service providers. Fletchers embarked on a strategy to scale-up.

Now listed in the top 100 UK law firms by revenue, Fletchers employs 470 staff (or Fletcherians) across the Southport mothership and since 2017, its new Manchester office. The decision to set up shop in Manchester was the obvious next move, says Ed. We had drained the local region pool of talent so it made sense to move to the capital for our type of work. Possible expansion to Leeds and London is also on the cards, he tells me.

In the time Ed has been managing the firm he has introduced flexi hours and remote working policies as well as embraced technology to boost efficiency. Fletchers has partnered with the University of Liverpool and Innovate UK to develop artificial intelligence technology to support decision-making within the firm, and is looking at ways to improve access to justice from its digital disruption lab in Manchester.

The recruitment of trainee solicitors is a core component of Fletchers growth strategy, and it takes on a total of eight trainees each year. They complete the LPC part-time alongside training a nod to flexible learning arrangements, a burgeoning trend in the legal industry and, as one of the Trailblazer law firms, Fletchers onboards a number of solicitor apprentices each year. There are currently 19 apprentices but the firm is looking to grow this number once the Solicitors Qualification Exam (SQE) kicks in from next year.

Some students can be so set on corporate law they seem to forget there are firms such as Fletchers offering interesting alternatives. Ed thinks this is a great shame. He says:

You see it a lot I certainly have among my former classmates an exodus of corporate lawyers five to ten years from when they qualify because they havent effectively explored other areas of law.

And while doing deals and drawing up commercial contracts is okay for some, others, Ed explains, are in search of emotional gratification. He continues: You get that almost every day working as a personal injury lawyer. We support customers when theyre at their lowest providing hope and guidance with real, tangible and personal outputs. If that sounds like something youre interested in then you ought to come and speak to us at Fletchers.

Future Fletchlings should also know the three skills Ed thinks all personal injury lawyers should possess. They are tenacity, the ability to collaborate with others, including opposition, to reach the best possible outcome for the injured customer, and making decisions in a wise, kind and strong way.

Ed Fletcher will be speaking alongside lawyers from Freshfields and Pinsent Masons, and a careers expert from ULaw at tomorrows Secrets to Success event in Manchester. You can apply for one of the final few (and free) places to attend.

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How a life changing accident as a junior lawyer gave me the drive to succeed - Legal Cheek

Intuit's (NASDAQ:INTU)acquisition of personal finance site Credit Karma, announced Monday alongside its fiscal second-quarter 2020 earnings, is a pretty sizable deal: Intuit will fork over total consideration of $7.1 billion, funded equally between cash and Intuit stock, to fold in the popular finance destination.Per CFO Michelle Clatterbuck in the company'searnings conference callon Monday, Intuit will supply the cash portion through existing resources and by utilizing its $1 billion unsecured revolving credit facility.

How can shareholders determine whether this princely sum is appropriate considering the assets being acquired? Intuit relayed that Credit Karma's revenue, based on unaudited results, expanded by 20% in 2019, to $1 billion. The company didn't provide any insight into Credit Karma's profitability, but we can make an educated guess that it's unlikely to enjoy a profit margin anywhere near Intuit's high annual net profit margin of 23%. This is because management expects the transaction to be "neutral to accretive" to Intuit's non-GAAP(adjusted) earnings per share in the first full fiscal year after the deal closes.

This leaves investors with a single yardstick to gauge the deal's reasonableness: Intuit is buying Credit Karma at a multiple of seven times its annual sales. This seems a steep price on the surface, especially since management doesn't project an immediate, quantifiable impact on 2021 fiscal earnings per share.

Yet, as a strategic acquisition, the hefty purchase size may be warranted. Intuit has a long history of attempting to extend beyond its tax and small business accounting base into personal finance, from personal bookkeeping product Quicken (which it sold in 2016) to net-worth tracking platform Mint, to its relatively new Turbo offering. Turbo combines income data gathered from Intuit's TurboTax users (with their consent) with credit scoring to generate offers for home, auto, and personal loans from financial service providers.

Turbo seeks to add incremental revenue to Intuit's coffers in a manner quite similar to that of Credit Karma's primary offering: linking customers with service partners to help optimize their finances.Credit Karma has over 106 million customerson its Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered platform, which acts as a personalized financial assistant. According to Intuit's press release on the transaction, Credit Karma owns the "largest engaged member base in consumer digital finance." The company boasts an extremely high rate of engagement: 37 million of its customers use the platform more than four times a month. And Credit Karma works with a plethora of service providers, teaming up with more than 100 partners that offer home, auto, and personal loans, as well as high-yield savings accounts and insurance products.

Image source: Getty Images.

Credit Karma's reach helps illuminate Intuit's willingness to front the large purchase multiple. The transaction will roughly double the tech giant's total addressable market (TAM) in personal finance products from $29 billion to $57 billion. Yet access to Credit Karma's customers also introduces cross-selling opportunities, reducing Intuit's cost to acquire customers for its tax and small business products while opening a new avenue for Credit Karma to amplify its own user numbers. I presume that in its pre-deal due diligence, Intuit ascertained that the two companies don't have a huge overlap in existing customers.

Perhaps most importantly, Intuit may be able to significantly boost Credit Karma's value proposition to its customers by linking income data from TurboTax (as Turbo now offers) to their existing shared credit information, potentially exposing Credit Karma's customers to better offers from service providers.

Intuit states Credit Karma will continue to operate under its own banner, and I expect that at some point, Turbo will be folded into Credit Karma's brand. Given Intuit's deep pockets, the long-term opportunity to scale the Credit Karma brand after a one-to-two year integration period likely shows a high internal rate of return in management's calculations. Over time, then, the massive price tag may not seem so luxe.

Of course, the FinTech space is highly competitive and prone to disruption -- there's no guarantee that Intuit will see resounding success from attaching Credit Karma to its portfolio of brands. But overall, the purchase multiple, although high, isn't egregious. In fact, over the last two years, due to its stock price ascent, Intuit itself has traded at well over seven times sales -- it currently sports a price-to-sales ratio of 10.5. So, viewed through this lens, Intuit is purchasing Credit Karma at a discount to its own market pricing. Smarter yet, it's using its own, higher-priced equity to fund half the deal.

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With a $7 Billion Price Tag, Is Intuit Overpaying for Credit Karma? - Motley Fool

Dear Annie: I am a 65-year-old woman who suffers from insomnia. I exercise regularly, limit my caffeine intake and try to wind down at the end of the day with more relaxing books or TV shows. However, there are still a couple of nights a week when I simply cannot fall asleep.

Im retired, so I dont have to worry about going to work in the morning, but its still very frustrating to lie awake for hours, tired but not sleepy. I feel lousy the next day, too.

Which is worse for you, lack of sleep or sleeping pills? Both are said to increase the chance of dementia. If both carry the same risk, then Im inclined to pop a pill to at least stop the tossing and turning, and drop off to sleep. Does anyone have the answer to this? -- Sleepless in Roanoke

Dear Sleepless in Roanoke: There might be a third option here. Melatonin is a natural sleep aid that is considered safe, with few side effects. Couple that with some breathing techniques and you might find yourself dozing off in as little as five minutes. Heres how to practice the 4-7-8 breathing technique, as reported by Healthline:

"1. Allow your lips to gently part.

"2. Exhale completely, making a breathy whoosh sound as you do.

"3. Press your lips together as you silently inhale through the nose for a count of 4 seconds.

"4. Hold your breath for a count of 7.

"5. Exhale again for a full 8 seconds, making a whooshing sound throughout.

"6. Repeat 4 times when you first start. Eventually work up to 8 repetitions."

Continue your routine of winding down and limiting caffeine, but substitute just reading instead of TV. Any electronic screen can affect your quality of sleep. I also open this up to any readers who have had success falling asleep naturally.

Dear Annie: A few weeks ago, a letter ran from a person who seems to have tried everything to get in shape, from gym memberships to personal trainers, and asked, How do people stick with it?

I dont know how others do, but Im willing to share how I have. I graduated from high school nearly 50 years ago at 98 pounds. I now weigh 127 pounds. I had a baby in those years, too. So, how have I managed to only gain 29 pounds in 49 years?

Lots of small things: Walk for a mile every night after dinner (its good for your waistline and your marriage). Park toward the back of the parking lot and walk all the way in. Dance (think The Twist) while watching an entire 30-minute television program (its hard to eat while doing this, and it burns a lot more calories than just sitting there). Think just five minutes of exercise: Do situps, jumping jacks, pushups, toe touches or rope skipping for just five minutes. Its not a major commitment. ... Think of it as I deserve this five-minute break for a tiny bit of exercise.

At a restaurant, ask for a box when your food first comes. Put half of your meal in right then. Once its in the box, even if youre tempted to clean your plate, you will have only eaten a healthy portion. Get a watch that gives you stickers for physical activity. Yes, I know, it sounds silly, but I really wanted those stickers on my paper as a child, and I enjoy earning stickers on my watch now.

None of these are big things. But lots of small things do add up. -- Still Slender 50 Years Later

Dear Still Slender 50 Years Later: Congrats on your continued health. Just about anyone could use your suggestions to jump-start their wellness routine. That they are playful and provide opportunities to connect with others is especially beneficial.

Ask Me Anything: A Year of Advice From Dear Annie is out now! Annie Lanes debut book -- featuring favorite columns on love, friendship, family and etiquette -- is available as a paperback and e-book. Visit http://www.creatorspublishing.com for more information. Send your questions for Annie Lane to dearannie@creators.com.

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Dear Annie: Is it better to toss and turn all night, or just pop a sleeping pill? - oregonlive.com

Bill Gates has ordered the first hydrogen-powered super-yacht to support clean energy technology and speculation that Google could potentially buy Tesla. FOX Business Lauren Simonetti with more.

Bill Gates, most famous for being the co-founder of Microsoft Corporationand one-time richest man in the world, has gone from tech wizard to billion-dollar philanthropist. With so many contenders on the billionaires' list, how much capital does Mr. Gates have now?

Gates along with childhood friend Paul Allen founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975. Originally basedin Albuquerque, New Mexico, it eventually relocatedto Washington state in 1979.

Microsoft, specializing in computers and supported software, grew to become a major multinational technology company. One of the biggest leaps on the ladder of success for Microsoft came on Nov.6, 1980, when IBM made a contract stating itwould pay Microsoft $430,000 (around $1.5 million today, inflation-adjusted).

The contract agreed to Microsoft putting itsDisk Operating System (DOS) on IBM's new Personal Computer.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. ( Doug Wilson/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

WHO IS THE RICHEST BILLIONAIRE IN THE WORLD?

The key point in the contract was one that enabled Microsoft to license the operating system to other manufacturers, a nonexclusive agreement that IBM agreed to in part because it wasembroiled in years of ongoing antitrust investigationsand litigation.

IBM's loss would be Microsoft's greatest gain, allowing the company the capacity to grow into one of the biggest tech companies of the 1980s. This opened the door to partnerships with Tandy and Commodore, which further boosted both Mircosoft's market dominance and brand awareness.

It was this period of the decade that Microsoft saw the biggest increase in revenue, rising from $16 million in 1981 (about $45.5 million today) to $140 million in 1985 ($335.5 million today).

On March 13, 1986, Microsoft wentpublic on the Nasdaqstock exchange, selling 2.9 million shares at $21 each, raising $61 million. Shares closed at $28 on first day of trading, making a 31-year-old Gates and his 11.1 million shares worth $310million, marking his debut on the Forbes 400 with $318million.

By 1987, Gates was officially declared a billionaire in Forbes' 400 Richest People in America issue, just days before his 32nd birthday. He was also officially the world's youngest self-made billionaire with a net worth of $1.25 billion, over $900 million more than he was worth in 1986.

Bill Gates attends the Telluride Film Festival 2019 on Aug. 31, 2019, in Telluride, Colorado. (Paul Best/Getty Images)

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1994 was a landmark year for Gates, who at the age of38 becamethe richest man in America with a wealth of $9.35 billion. It's around this time that his company began to enter the commercial consumer market, with Microsoft Windows as the flagship productwith sales reaching $3.7 billion,making it a household name.

1995 was the year that Gates entered a new stratosphere of wealth and success. Not wanting to miss the boat, Gates prepared staff via an internal memo for an "internet tidal wave." This move was made in hopes for Microsoft to place itself at the forefront of theworldwide web industry.

It was also in 1995 that Gates was named the richest person in the world, with a fortune of $12.9 billion. After the release of Windows 95, Microsoft sales reached $6 billion.

Bill Gates and wife Melinda in Paris, April 2017. (Getty Images)

In 2008, Gates decided to step down from his senior role at Microsoft, instead choosing to put his energy into philanthropy, along with his wife,Melinda.

Despite now owning just 1 percentof Microsoft shares - which is around $7.3 billion - he is still one of the richest people on the planet with a net worth of around $108.4 billion.

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What is Bill Gates' net worth? - Fox Business

Combat Sports

He may be marooned in Texas, but Joseph Parker is closer to a return to boxing's big time than you'd think.

Joseph Parkers road back to boxing relevance wont ever lead to the now fully resurgent Tyson Fury.

But that doesnt mean the Gypsy King wont be a key figure in the Kiwi heavyweight recapturing a crown of his own.

Fury, who produced a tactical and psychological masterclass to fully unmask the huge punching but technically bereft Deontay Wilder to claim the WBC title on Sunday, has categorically ruled out fighting his Kiwi brother.

The reasons are straight forward enough: Fury has no desire to fight a mate, and feels no competitive compulsion to prove himself against a boxer he believes he would defeat without breaking a sweat.

Even if the second part of that equation were to change which would only occur should Parker recapture a heavyweight championship belt the first part likely wouldnt.

While Parker is certainly hard-headed enough to put sentiment aside to focus on business inside the ring, Fury is clearly a different kind of beast; the type that wears their heart on their sleeve, and isnt much for turning.

Fury has pledged never to fight his Kiwi mate, and that'sthat.

But Fury could well still play a key role in Parkers return to relevance.

Boxing journeys are seldom, if ever, tales of uninterrupted pugilistic perfection and personal success.

Parkers fight this weekend, against 39-year-old never-wazzer Shawndell Winters in Frisco, Texas, is about as far removed from a world heavyweight unification fight against Anthony Joshua at the Millennium Stadium as it's possible to be.

A main event fighter for pretty much his entire career, this weekend Parker isnt even the main undercard fight on a card headlined by Mikey Garcias clash with Jessie Vargas for the vacant WBC Diamond welterweight title.

Heck, Parkers tune-up is not even the third-ranked attraction. With three world title fights to follow his scheduled 10-rounder against Winters a fighter with losses to fellow nobodies Brian Howard and Nikodem Jezewski on his resume - the reality is that Parker will enter the ring before most of the fans atFord Center at The Star have even pondered taking their seats.

And hell be showered and back at his hotel long before the real contests begin.

The last time Parker was such an irrelevance on a boxing card was his pro debut, when he subdued Huntly PE teacher Dean Garmonsway on the undercard of Shane Camerons shock victory over Monte Barrett in 2012.

Being so far from the limelight will likely be a sobering experience not a bad thing for an athlete who has experienced his sports pinnacle but is yet to realise his full potential.

For a lesson on what can be achieved from his less than lofty current station, Parker need look no further than his gypsy mate.

Just 20 months ago, Fury entered a boxing ring in Manchester to face the less than well-performed Albanian Sefer Seferi. That contest deservedly had fifth billing on a card whose star names were Turbo Terry Flannagan and Maurice Mighty Mo Hooker.

That was Furys comeback fight after spending the two-and-a-half years following his victory over Vladimir Klitschko transforming himself from an elite athlete into a 175 kilogram human fatberg.

The linear world champs subsequent physical metamorphosis and re-accession to his throne shows what can be achieved in little more than the blink of an eye.

With Anthony Joshua and Wilder both having tasted defeat, the undefeated Fury is now the one calling the shots in the division.

While all roads would seemingly point to a unification showdown with fellow Brit Joshua, it aint that simple.

Fury is two fights into a $NZ163million five-fight contract with ESPN. Joshua is signed to US-based streaming service DAZN, while Wilder, who has a rematch clause, has a contract with yet another US broadcaster, Showtime.

Thats not a dynamic that lends itself to an all-British megafight.

Before his victory at the weekend, Fury said a showdown with Joshua was not an option until at least the end of his ESPN deal.

Throw in the factboth Joshua (who has more belts) and Fury (who is undefeated) have strong claims for a bigger slice of any pie and the odds of any deal being reached lengthen.

In the event of a stalemate, its a stone-cold certainty one or more of the four main sanctioning bodies will order mandatory title defences based on their rankings.

That, as it happens, is precisely the scenario that led to Parker capturing the WBO title in 2016.

Faced with a mandatory rematch against Klitschko, Fury vacated his WBA and WBO titles in favour of battling his cocaine addiction.

Then ranked two and three by the WBO, it was Parker and Andy Ruiz who found themselves in line for a shot at the WBO strap.

Parker claimed his sliceof history in Auckland, with Ruiz following suit with a shock victory over Joshua in New York last year.

Both Ruiz and Parker have since faded but, as Furys resurrection shows, the bright lights are far from out of reach for former champs.

The recipe for Parker is obvious. Get back in the ring, stay active and keep winning and his shot will come.

First things first he needs to get the job done this weekend. And then get the hell out of Texas.

Steve Deane has contracted to Duco Events, the company owned by Joseph Parkers manager and advisor David Higgins.

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Parker's plan: win - and get the hell out of Texas - Newsroom

Stem CEO and 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Music alumna Milana Rabkin introduces Scale by Stem.

Beginning today, music artists and indie labels have access to a new stream of funding. Stemdistribution and payment platform invested in bythe likes of Mark Cuban and Scooter Braun (with clients Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Kanye West and Usher) is providing more than $100 million in advances each year via Scale, its newly-launched financing product supported by a capital partnership with CoVenture.

Scale is led by Stem CEO and 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Music alumna Milana Rabkin, who, with co-founders Tim Luckow and Jovin Cronin-Wilesmith, launched Los Angeles-based Stem in February of 2015 to help artists establish sustainable businesses. Stem provides creators with tools to streamline music and video distribution, royalty splits and data tracking. Scale promotes further independence among creators by providing an alternative to traditional means of funding and empowering them to own their own music.

Scale felt like the natural next step for Stem, says Rabkin. We had figured out how to simplify splits and handle royalties, but wanted to help independent artists leap to the next stage of their business since day one our focus has been on empowerment and clarity.

Early payments from Scale are made in the form of a revolving credit line with the ultimate draw limit and fee based on net share of income. Unlike most other industry advances, Scale offers artists more flexibility with repayment, meaning that they choose what percentage of their earnings are contributed to paying down the advance each month. The product also offers all content shareholders access to capital.

Creators using Scale are not required to report how advances are spent. The company also does not perform personal credit checks or collect interest, minimum monthly payments or finance charges. Before launching Scale, Rabkin started Stem Check, a service that helps artists evaluate the financial viability of a prospective deal with a label or distributor.

The workings of Scale by Stem.

Music producer and artist Billy Lemos is among the first artists to use Scale to finance future projects and says, Scale has allowed me to fund my ideas without signing to a label. I have full control and freedom with my music and dont need to worry about any deadlines.

While labels can provide benefits for some artists, standard record deals tend to favor the company and place operating, marketing and distribution costs on creators. As an increasing number of music performers today choose to work independently, Rabkin hopes that Scale will drive financial literacy and empower them to think more like entrepreneurs with an understanding of the value they are bringing to the table. She also thinks that it will raise the bar for the industry to be truly transparent.

Success in the music industry I think will come when we can dispel the notion of the starving artist, says Rabkin. All of the new emerging platforms are really important they are so heavily dependent on music as the media that drives engagement yet, the people creating music have no way to understand the value of what theyre creating.

With more than 40,000 new songs released a day on Spotify alone, Scale enters the market at an opportune time. According to Rabkin, independent artists are the fastest growing segment of the music business, and growth within the music freelance economy is expected to continue as the industry expands. Artists have aired their grievances about the increasing pressure they feel to sell their rights for a paycheck, and Rabkin says Stem is a viable alternative to lease, not sell.

I personally believe that as more services and labor work is automated, more humans will be driven to creative work, says Rabkin. Days of doctor, lawyer or accountant versus creator are going away, and I hope its tools like Stem that allow creators to create sustainable careers and businesses recognized by society I never want a parent to tell a child that they cannot be a creator.

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Artists, Labels Scale Business With Advance Capital From Stem, CoVenture Partnership - Forbes

Amid herculean competition, Saturday, February 22, 2020 will probably go down in history as one of the strangest and most embarrassing dates in the history of cable news. While the symptoms of a full-blown media crackup have undoubtedly been festering for weeks, Bernie Sanderss overwhelming victory in the Nevada caucuses turned out to be the proverbial levee-breaking moment, especially for the talking heads who populate what is supposedly Americas liberal cable network.

In a medium not exactly renowned for offering wisdom or insight, MSNBCs marathon coverage felt like a broadcast from another dimension; a parallel reality with a peculiar metaphysics of its own. At once painful, hilarious, and downright appalling, the networks unhinged response to Sanderss win doubled as a master class in everything wrong with cable news from reflexive deference to the corporatist center to pathological hatred of populist candidates who refuse to accede to the arbitrary rules set down by elite politicians and media executives.

Over the course of a single afternoon, or so it seemed, the self-serving narratives and rhetorical shibboleths that sustained an entire era of liberalism came crashing down, leaving many of MSNBCs star personalities and talking heads to respond with a mixture of denial, anger, and fear. As Risings Krystal Ball described it:

Faced with a choice between the man they have loudly proclaimed to be a cross between Hitler, Mussolini, and Benedict Arnold and a man who threatens the very lifeblood of their access journalism, personal self-conception, and class interest, what would they choose? ... As caucus after caucus turned in overwhelming results in favor of Bernie Sanders, the flummoxed anchors were left to cope with this singularly myth-exploding event in their own ways.

Thus, an incensed James Carville, somehow looking even more cadaverous than usual, came on to announce, The happiest person right now ... its about 1:15, Moscow time? This thing is going very well for Vladimir Putin, before waving hysterically at the camera and barking, How ya doin, Vlad? Reporter Chris Jansing could be heard audibly sighing as she reported with unconcealed frustration that the predominantly Latino voters caucusing at a location near the Bellagio were going overwhelmingly for Sanders. A furious Joy Reid, meanwhile, declared, No one else is as hungry, angry, enraged, and determined as Sanders voters before urging the Democratic establishment to sober up and figure out what the hell theyre gonna do about that.

In a rare moment of clarity that inadvertently seemed to sum up the whole afternoon, former George W. Bush communications hack Nicolle Wallace was finally forced to concede, I have no idea what voters think about anything anymore. The days undisputed champion, however, was MSNBCs carnival-barker-in-residence, Chris Matthews, who, fresh from imagining an alternate reality involving his own execution by Cuban communists in Central Park a few weeks ago, managed to outdo himself by equating Sanderss victory in Nevada to the Nazi Blitzkrieg of France in 1940.

Justifiably under fire for the remarks, Matthews has since apologized. But the moment may nonetheless be symbolic of something larger than the deranged outburst of a septuagenarian TV host raised on a noxious diet of Cold War propaganda.

Matthews is, after all, a creature of cable news to his very bones emblematic of a modern infotainment culture that has long prized deference to orthodoxy, empty provocation, and branded personality over any particular desire to enlighten or inform. A veteran of what is laughably called Americas national conversation (in practice, a hollow pantomime of political engagement in which overpaid people who are mostly neither very curious nor very bright theatrically spar for the cameras before meeting up at the bar a few hours later), hes been a fixture of the Washington political scene since his days as a staffer for Jimmy Carter and Tip ONeill.

Boorish, ill-tempered, and punctuated by a particularly repugnant streak of old-world misogyny, Matthewss schtick is virtually unwatchable unless youve already pickled your brain with a million or so hours of cable news. Having been described by one profiler as soothing like a blender, his voice sounds like a balloon perpetually stuck in the act of trying to deflate and never quite succeeding. The same writer would diplomatically call Matthews a whip-tongued, name-dropping, self-promoting wise guy of the sort you often find in campaigns, and in the bigger offices on Capitol Hill or K Street that is, one who graces interlocutors with incandescent insights like, Barack Obama is Mozart and Hillary Clinton is Salieri.

His biggest intellectual contribution, such as it can be called one, has been to articulate the art of Beltway social climbing as a kind of public philosophy: breaking through with the best-selling 1988 book Hardball (described by New York Times Magazine as a how-to guide to social and career climbing in Washington). Though Matthews got his TV start courtesy of Roger Ailes, it would be the 1997 debut of his show on CNBC (which carried the same title) and the ensuing Clinton-Lewinsky scandal that put him firmly on the national cable news map. As MSNBC attached its brand and its business strategy to the rise of Obama its prime-time audience would rise a whopping 63 percent in 2008 he would enter his heyday as a fixture of Americas media establishment.

Though a long-form profile published that same year tries its absolute darndest to find virtue in Matthewss loutishness and personal ambition (There is a level of solipsism about Matthews that is oddly endearing in its self-conscious extreme, even by the standards of television vanity), the portrait that emerges is largely that of a man obsessed with hollow status-seeking and the pursuit of fame for its own sake:

Matthews has an attuned sense of pecking order at MSNBC, at NBC, in Washington and in life. This is no great rarity among the fragile egos of TV or, for that matter, in the status-fixated world of politics. But Matthews is especially frontal about it. In an interview with Playboy a few years ago, he volunteered that he had made the list of the Top 50 journalists in D.C. in The Washingtonian magazine. Im like 36th, and Tim Russert is No. 1, Matthews told Playboy. I would argue for a higher position for myself.

None other than Jon Stewart exposed the moral vacuum at the core of Matthewss personal philosophy in a 2007 grilling of his book Lifes a Campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success (which channeled similar themes to 1988s Hardball). Catching Matthews off guard, Stewarts opening challenge was both pointed and lethal:

What you are saying is people can use what politicians do in political campaigns to help their lives? It strikes me as fundamentally wrong. It strikes me as a self-hurt book. Arent campaigns fundamentally contrivances?

Matthewss response, justifiably met with a bemused stare, amounted to a naked defense of amoral ladder-climbing coupled with the idea that everything about life should be treated like a campaign qua sales pitch:

Yeah, campaigns can be. But the way politicians get to the top is the real thing. They know what theyre doing. I mean, you dont have to believe a word they say. But watch how far they got. How did Clinton get there? How did Hillary get there? How did Reagan get there? They have methods to get to the top, and you can learn from those methods ... Do you wanna succeed? Do you wanna have friends? ... Everything about getting jobs is about convincing someone to hire you, right? Its about getting promotions. Its about selling products. Its always a campaign. Its a campaign to get the girl of your dreams. Its a campaign to do everything you want to do in life.

This strikes me as artifice, replied Stewart. If you live this book, your life will be strategy.

In an eerie parallel, Matthewss personal philosophy mirrors the acquisitive, market-centric amoralism of the modern Democratic Party with which hes become so intimately aligned. Albeit in different ways, both are products of a hollow liberal culture that values individual success over collective solidarity, toasts the endless triangulation of its elites as a marker of enlightened realism, and allows the twin idols of wealth and celebrity to be its lodestars.

In Bernie Sanders, this ecosystem and the apparatchiks who populate its gilded hierarchies have met their first real nemesis in decades: a figure whose popular support owes itself to explicit rejection of the politics of triangulation and craven self-interest they have so voraciously embraced. Thanks to a social and ideological base outside the clutches of the elite media, Sanders and the millions of people who comprise his movement may be totally alien to Chris Matthews and the culture that has produced him, but they also represent an existential threat to its primordial rites and sacraments.

Ever partisan for personalities rather than policies or principles, the Democratic Party and its media surrogates plainly expected a traditional primary contest auditioning competing centrist brands ahead of Novembers scheduled season finale. In Nevada, both collided suddenly and violently with the realization that their world may in fact be coming to an end; that huge numbers of Americans find their self-serving narratives unconvincing; and that their expectations of deference are now largely being ignored.

The cable news crack-up that crescendoed in Matthewss splenetic outburst was thus something more than a manifestation of conservative Democrats frustration at the prospect of a socialist insurgent winning his third electoral contest in a row. Beneath the layers of ugliness in the Hardball hosts execrable analogy could be heard the anguished cry of an elite liberal culture jarringly coming to terms with its increasing isolation and utter remove from the people for whom it has long claimed to speak.

In the weeks and months ahead, expect it to reach a fever pitch.

Luke Savage is a staff writer at Jacobin.

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The Agony and the Ecstasy of Chris Matthews - Jacobin magazine

In just five short months, the 2020 Olympics will get underway in Tokyo. While the mainstream news agenda will have its eyes on the medal haul of Australias Olympic hopefuls, success or failure at the Games will run far deeper for the sports themselves, where the consequences of under-performance, and failure to keep the pipeline of future fans and supporters stacked, could be felt long after the closing ceremony confetti has been cleaned up.

Right now, Olympic sport communications departments and social media teams are busy working on their Tokyo content plans, internal resource allocation and on-the-ground logistics mapping. A large part of that thinking will be spent figuring out how to make sure that if and when their medal contenders step onto the podium, the whole world will get to hear about it through a flurry of posts and press releases.

These comms strategies revolve around a legitimate compulsion to service a sense of community and belonging that permeates sport. But the Olympics is unlike every other major sporting event in the calendar. Rather than only watching a favourite sport, viewers abandon preconceived affinities in favour of whatever is being played or broadcast. In other words, most people drawn to the Games this July will be interested in the Olympics first and its composite sports second.

National sporting organisations that only have eyes for existing fans and followers will be missing a crucial opportunity to grow their numbers, and in turn increase their future revenue potential from both the Australian Sports Commission and lucrative sponsors. In other words, any sport walking away from the Games with the same type and tally of fans they arrived with will have failed.

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At the 2020 Olympics, news will find its audiences faster than communications departments will be able to serve them.

Being able to accept that the news will take care of itself, and fans will self-serve with updates, brings with it the potential to liberate comms teams from resource-heavy, reactive tasks, and in turn, provides them with the freedom to explore more constructive and ambitious brand and communications strategies.

The Olympics isnt business as usual. For anyone involved in the business of promoting the sports represented there, that means following a different set of guidelines, adjusted to meet the behaviour of a special kind of sports fan that emerges only once every four years.

Theres no silver bullet for achieving that and every individual sport needs to consider its unique DNA carefully before deciding whats best, but they should start by considering the benefits of occupying a space at the heart of the Olympic party, instead of a single-minded focus on trumpeting personal success.

That means finding a way into other peoples conversations and the special Tokyo Olympics zeitgeist. No matter what individual sports have to say about themselves, it will only ever represent a tiny and transient percentage of what the rest of the Olympics-invested community is talking about. So instead of expecting new fans to come to them, sports communications specialists should find ways to embed their brand with potential new fans on their home turf.

No matter what their podium presence proves to be, after the high of the Olympics, many Australian sports will be facing an almighty comedown as they return home.

How long that hangover lasts and what the future looks like in the sober light of day will depend on how well sports win not just in the medal tally, but in their comms strategies.

Lee Robson is founder and chief storytelling officer at Istories, with two decades experience working with sports brands and elite athletes in Australia and the UK

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To win at Tokyo 2020, sports need to look beyond the medal tally and at their comms strategies - MuMbrella

Kate McKenna and her Grampy Jack Wedge, circa 1992.

To know my Grampy was to love him.

My grandfather, Jack Wedge, died from cancer in 2016. He had been omnipresent in my life, never missing a graduation, holiday or birthday party.

I travelled home to Prince Edward Island from Quebec for his funeral.

I figured it would be a small gathering to celebrate his life. Instead, there were hundreds of people, from many walks of life.

I was amazed. I asked my mom who they were. Many of them, she guessed, knew him from Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) a fellowship he'd been part of for more than 30 years.

It was then that I realized I had only known a small part of my grandfather.

I made a mental note and filed it away for the next two years.

In 2018, I quit drinking.

I was nervous about my relationship with alcohol. I had started noticing I'd go out with friends and have three pints while everyone else was having one. I'd work till midnight, then stay out till morning. I felt myself slipping into a bit of a spiral.

I swore off booze altogether in May. The watershed moment came after a brutal professional disappointment. After that bad day at work, my first impulse was to crush a bottle of wine. Such a blatant urge to self-medicate set off alarm bells in my head.

The next morning, I woke up and emailed two close friends, saying I was finished with drinking forever. I said it kind of flippantly, but their earnest reaction made me think that maybe my drinking had worried themtoo.

My dear friend Dave Atkinson persuaded me to find a therapist. I followed his advice. After doing a questionnaire-style test, the therapist determined that yes, my drinking was probably problematic, and yes, I should probably stop drinking forever.

Lord, it was brutal, but I did it. I slipped up once, a month in. As of writing this, I've been sober for more than 19 months.

Nobody warned me, but my body reacted when I quit drinking. I was not a vodka-on-my-wheaties-type drinker, but I still noticed changes.

Some good better sleep, weight-loss and clear skin.

Some weird. People in early recovery will talk about the vivid dreams they have, where they relapse in some way. I didn't know that was coming and would wake up in a cold sweat.

I also felt my emotions thawing. In my job and in my life, I had a reputation for emotional toughness. In hindsight, I had medicated away any bad feelings with alcohol.

Once the booze was gone, I'd feel random spurts of intense sadness or happiness. Once I was walking to the bus stop and started weeping because of some long-buried memory of high school gym class.

But I kept going with the sobriety, numbing my body into submission with a punishing regime of very early rising, CrossFit and marathon training. Those activities, combined, gave me a good excuse to skip out on after-work drinks. I artfully dodged further questioning by telling people I was on antibiotics and couldn't drink.

And it was fine. Until I hit the worst realization of early sobriety.

As someone recently said to me: a drunk horsey is still a horsey. You can quit the booze, but it doesn't magically fix all the parts of you that you don't like.

All of my pre-existing bad habits I could be selfish, inconsiderate, and an impulsive ass at times stayed with me. And what do you do when you have nothing to blame?

Despite my best efforts, I couldn't hide from this question. Faced with no options, I was dragged into introspection.

That's when I started thinking about my grandfather again.

I wished I could go back in time and ask my grandfather for his advice on sobriety. But since he was gone, I decided to do the next best thing: speak with those he had helped, glean his wisdom from beyond the grave.

Taking a break from my Montreal life, I flew back to Charlottetown for a month. I wandered around, feeling raw and uncertain.

The obvious place to start was with my grandmother, Phyllis Wedge. We call her "Mama."

Mama loves to talk about her family. She can rhyme off her children's birth weights and her grandchildren's occupations, beaming, as though they're markers of her own personal success.

While she raised eight children, Grampy worked as a garbage man. They didn't have many extras, but they were upright and proud.

She told me about his drinking. One night, she told him not to come home because he'd had too much. The next day, he quit outright.

He was sober for 36 years.

Mama knew Grampy attended Alcoholics Anonymous a few times every week. But, like me, she didn't realize just what that meant until his wake. Over and over, strangers came up to tell her stories of how Grampy had helped them. He even did things you're not supposed to do in AA, like loaning them cash.

She didn't know many of the people, given that AA is anonymous. But she did have two names for me: Margaret Arsenault and a man named Greg.

Margaret and Grampy worked at a home for people with addictions later in my grandfather's life. His job was to hang out with the patients, playing cards and helping them with their day-to-day activities.

When we met, Margaret said Grampy loved hanging out with the people staying in the home.

I pressed her for any advice he may have dispensed at that time.

"Mostly, he listened," she said.

She said he only really had one piece of advice: show up to AA meetings.

I had hoped for something more specific, maybe more philosophical, but I filed that away and went to meet Greg.

Grampy met Greg soon after Greg first got sober.

Thirteen months later, Greg fell off the wagon and somehow landed at the local Legion.

Grampy showed up and hauled him out of there. Greg said Grampy had a look in his eye that told him not to fight.

Grampy put him in the back of his truck and drove him to a meeting; then he drove him to detox.

Greg said it was one of the first times anyone had ever shown him unconditional love. For him, it was a defining moment.

Greg has been alcohol-free ever since more than 30 years.

I wanted to know: what was it about Grampy's intervention that was so compelling that Greg quit drinking for good?

"It was the meetings," Greg said. "Just go to the meetings."

Working the program was the most important thing to my grandfather.

I'm not sure what I was hoping for, advice-wise, but it wasn't that.

Lord, if there's one thing I didn't want to do, it was AA. To me, AA meant cold black coffee and despair, in a church basement.

In my early days of sobriety, my therapist suggested I try it.

I looked up meetings in Montreal. My work schedule is weird and none of them were convenient. Once, I walked around the block near a meeting location, willing myself to go inside, but I never did.

I just felt I didn't need it. I quit by myself, white-knuckling my way through it. Honestly, I've never been much of a joiner.

It may have been a case of cognitive dissonance, but I told myself I had a bit of a drinking problem, but I wasn't a problem drinker. I didn't want it to become my identity.

But now I had no choice. I was on the Island, with the sole purpose of seeking out and then applying my grandfather's wisdom. I had to attend a meeting.

I still didn't want to, at all. So I called my buddy Dave to discuss.

"It's almost so obvious that it's unglamorous," Dave said.

Yeah. That's exactly it.

"You sought lessons from your grandpa expecting it was going to be X and it ended up being seven," he said. "He was like, 'No man, go to the meetings. There's some community that can help you out.'"

As usual, Dave was right.

This whole journey was inspired by my want or need to connect with my grandfather on this thing we had in common sobriety.

His ghost dragged me across the country so I could find some community and walk this road with some support.

The obviousness of the whole ordeal smacked me in the face. Grampy came through for me. Of course what I needed was community, and AA was it.

Now all that remained was to attend a meeting.

The first two attempts were a wash. There were a couple of brutal snowstorms. I waded through a metre of snow, knocked on the church door and walked away when I found it locked.

When I was 20 metres away, a nun poked her head out the door and yelled "YOU LOOKING FOR ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS?"

"Jeez," I thought. "Cool it lady, now all of Charlottetown knows."

I attended and introduced myself as an alcoholic. It was one of those surreal life experiences you don't ever really think will happen to you when you're sketching out your five-year plan.

The meeting was good. People were nice. A woman roughly my age followed me out and welcomed me, giving me the low-down on which meetings were the best and letting me know she was around if ever I wanted to talk to somebody.

Leaving the meeting, I wondered if I'd been dishonest with myself about the extent of my problem. Maybe it was worse than I thought. Maybe I was still a "horsey" who had quit drinking through sheer will but never dealt with the underlying reasons for why I drank in the first place.

I resolved to attend a few more meetings and see if it stuck. To date, my attendance has been spotty because life is bouncing me around to different provinces and countries.

I will, eventually, go back.

My grandmother told me that near the end of his life, Grampy worried his alcoholism would be passed down through the family. To some extent, that has proven true.

But that's not his legacy.

Through his quiet patience and unconditional love, he taught us that life is easier and better when you work through it with others.

He taught us that letting people into your life requires courage, but it will pay back dividends.

Something my grandfather understood better than most is that we are put on this planet to relate to and serve others.

And if I take anything from this experience, it will be that.

Kate McKenna is a Montreal-based journalist and author. She's been reporting for CBC News for the last six years and has covered major stories including the Quebec City mosque shooting, allegations of sexual misconduct at Concordia University and the 2019 federal election. Her work has aired on the BBC, NPR and CNN. Kate tries to tell complex stories with simplicity and humanity.

This documentary was produced and edited with Kent Hoffmanand made through theDoc Mentorship Program.

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How my Grampy is helping me stay sober from beyond the grave - CBC.ca