Author: openjargon

• My mother's husband died, so she's spending the holidays with me for the first time in years.
• I have to be there for her emotionally and financially this Christmas, but I'm already at my limit.
• I'm trying not to buckle under all this pressure.

I have not spent Christmas with my mother in more than a decade. We have spent our Christmases apart simply because of geography. We've been living on opposite sides of the country: a five-hour flight or a 26-hour car ride through unpredictable weather.

So, she's kept to herself for the holidays, and I've become the keeper of Christmas for my immediate family. Even as my sons grew up and moved away, taking on their own roles to make our holidays special, I'm still the list-maker, the "don't forget" reminder, and the decider in all things.

My four sons, all between 25 and 31 years old, have helped lighten my load over the years, especially as their partners have come onto the scene. Christmas was just starting to take on a new, easier shape.

But this year, my mother lost her husband of nearly 40 years, so she's coming to visit, and I'm realizing how far I will need to stretch my budget.

I have to be my mother's Santa this year

At first, I didn't really think about how my mother's arrival might change my own role for the holidays. I just thought about my mom, exhausted and heartbroken and unmoored by the loss of the husband she has lived with for more than half her life.

But as she gets ready to fly to me for Christmas, I'm realizing she's going to need me to be her Santa.

My mom needs a Santa. She has suffered this year in a way I cannot even imagine. She needs soothing; she needs to be reintroduced to a big family Christmas. She needs a stocking filled with fun, thoughtful trinkets. She needs me to make this year extra magical, and honestly, I'm worried I'm not up to the task.

I'm struggling to keep up with everything this Christmas

I'm finding this Christmas overwhelming because everyone in the family needs me for different reasons. My kids need me to bring them together, to cook for them and bake for them, and organize a big rental space for the group of us.

I'm also paying attention to everyone's finances, thinking about who is doing well and who is not. I'm thinking about who might need a bit more and how I can give a bit more without playing favorites. How can I afford a bit more?

This is, perhaps, the crux of Christmas this year. The weight of giving to my children and my mother when they all need more. Whether it's holiday gifts, time, or food, everyone needs me to be their person this year.

Even though everyone in the house will be a grown-up, I'm left feeling, for all intents and purposes, like the only grown-up for the holidays.

I'm struggling financially

I'm worried that I simply cannot afford to be Santa for everyone — not this year. Like many others, I have lost job after job in 2025. I am swimming just below the surface of losing everything, and I can't seem to come up for air.

I know that no one in my family expects a lot for Christmas, but even a little something to make the day special for each person who so deeply deserves it will be a struggle. There are 10 people in our family, and $100 each means $1,000. We all know that $100 each is next to no budget at all.

And so this year, I'm getting creative. I'm buying secondhand gifts. I'm trying to become a crafty person to create something meaningful for all of my loved ones. I'm wishing I had helpful elves to take on some of my Santa tasks. I'm actively choosing to leave the stress of trying to find work at the door until after the holiday. I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm trying.

I'm focusing on giving my mother support

My mother's first Christmas as a widow can't be consumed by my own stress. She needs comfort. She needs family. She needs joy. Luckily, all of that is free.

She needs me to be the grown-up in the house. She needs me to be Santa. They all do, and I refuse to buckle under the weight of it.

Instead, I'm going to choose to feel grateful that I have all of this love in my life.

• Much of the AI-discussion, both hopes and fears, centers on efficiency and cost-cutting.
• At buyout firm Tide Rock, there's a "mandate" to not use AI resources to cut costs, says its CEO.
• Ryan Peddycord walked Business Insider through how the firm uses AI to grow businesses.

Most fears and hopes surrounding AI center on its ability to save on labor costs. Whether it's Jamie Dimon predicting a three-and-a-half-day workweek, the chorus of CEOs saying that AI will help its workers get more done, or the research predicting potentially catastrophic white-collar job cuts, the focus is on efficiency.

But at one investing firm, cost-cutting is practically a forbidden word.

"The mandate across the company is don't talk about using our resources in AI or tech to cut costs or create efficiencies," Tide Rock CEO Ryan Peddycord told Business Insider.

The firm has had AI engineers for two years, but they're aimed at growing business, not cutting, said Peddycord.

The San Diego and New York-based firm, which invests in smaller businesses than your typical private-equity giants, does not use debt to finance its acquisitions. It manages $1 billion, including its current investments and dry powder. It has done over 50 acquisitions, with growth, not just financial engineering, as its goal.

"Our foundation is, and our principle is, that we are focused on being growth engines for these businesses, and that's where we want to focus our resources," Peddycord said.

Peddycord spoke to Business Insider about how the firm's use of AI fits into its business model and gave some real-world examples of where it has made an impact.

Tide Rock's model

The company buys founder-run businesses when founders have "a catalyst to change," like their own looming retirement or an illness in their family, which means they're much more protective of the asset they're selling than your typical financial investor.

They then focus on growing those companies, which means Tide Rock hires chief marketing officers and chief revenue officers "who know how to run businesses" instead of your typical private equity partners, Peddycord said.

The firm's companies have seen organic revenue growth of 24% a year since Tide Rock was launched 13 years ago, said Peddycord. (He also said the firm has only lost money on one deal over that time period.)

They're looking for a way to monetize what they built over time, but really just as important to them is for their brand and their legacy and their employees to be able to kind of continue on without them," Peddycord said.

For founders like this, the story of growth is an essential reason they'd choose to sell to Tide Rock. As such, any discussion of using AI to cut employees or costs is anathema to their sales pitch, whereas AI for growth is a selling point.

AI is becoming an integral part of the firm's strategy, but they've been doing this for years before the advent of LLMs some operational best practices in a library of over 100 videos and 500 pages of documentation.

"A CEO of a portfolio company has access to certain information, a controller has access to a different set of information, a VP of sales has access to information," Peddycord said.

AI tools have become another operational best practice that the firm shares across the companies it manages, which it tracks in a library of 100 videos and 500 pages of documentation.

The firm also has other centralized resources in-house, "as a bridge" to get the businesses to a place where they can operate on their own, including a centralized talent acquisition team and centralized chief marketing and revenue officers.

This has led to a world where the firm has, for example, been able to integrate a customer relationship management system in "30 to 45 days" instead of "12 to 18 months," said Peddycord.

How does AI fit in

The company is happy to use third-party applications that can cut costs, but it's a waste of their own resources, said Peddycord.

"I have a belief that everybody's so focused on cost-cutting that third parties are going to pick off all the low-hanging fruit there," Peddycord said. "So us trying to invest our dollars to go create things that other people are creating and probably investing more dollars to do isn't the right place to spend our money."

The first tool they invested in was finding companies to purchase. The data on platforms like Pitchbook and Crunchbase is "very, very incomplete" at the sub-$10 million EBITDA level the firm invests in, said Peddycord, so the firm first invested "heavily" in ways to find these companies and start pitching them.

Soon, the firm realized that this ability to find a lot of "non-public information" about companies and then reach out to them would also be "super relevant" for their portfolio companies when they're looking for new customers, Peddycord said.

Peddycord provided the example of identifying potential customers for its manufacturing portfolio companies that sell to the government, aerospace, or defense industries.

"When Blue Origin wins a large contract, there is some public information that we are able to gather to identify what it is that they won the contract for, and we can even reverse engineer what sub-component parts and services are going to be necessary to then go create that," Peddycord said.

From there, the firm's portfolio companies could "get in the door earlier" to offer their sub-component manufacturing help, Peddycord said.

"In those high-growth areas like aerospace and defense, they are working as hard to find new qualified suppliers as we are to find new customers," Peddycord said.

• Jane Post, 81, lives in a small mobile home that she calls "The Teapot."
• She lives on her younger daughter's land and enjoys freedom and independence with family close by.
• Though her home is small, she has everything she needs, and shares it with her animals.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation between writer Jennifer Jane and her mom, Jane Post. It has been edited for length and clarity.

After moving out of the home I loved and lived in for 31 years, it took me a few years to settle on a housing situation that suited me. I was used to living alone and liked it, but my home became too much work and responsibility once I reached my mid-70s, and I needed something different.

I lived with a friend for a few months, then moved across the country from Florida to New York in 2020 to live with my older daughter for a couple of years. However, neither of those arrangements was the right fit for me.

I call my small mobile home 'The Teapot'

I left New York and moved back to Florida without a plan. My younger daughter offered me a mobile home on her property to stay in while I figured it out. I moved in and didn't move out. It felt just right. It is small and easy for me to take care of. It's the perfect size to fit the things I hold dear. I call it "The Teapot."

I have always loved teapots. I once read a story about a retired Colonel who bought a very tiny cottage in England that had belonged to a little old lady who used it as a tearoom for walkers that wandered by. It was so small that it had just one tiny table and two chairs. The Colonel said it was like living in a teapot. I recalled this story when I stepped into the mobile home, and I knew I had at last found my home sweet home…The Teapot.

I like nearly everything about living in my Teapot. Old people often have balance issues… if I lose my balance, I always have a nearby wall, table, or counter to bounce off of. The only thing I don't like is that there aren't enough electrical outlets.

I share my home with my animals, and everything I love is close by

I share my little home with a cast of characters: Penny, the tubby brown mystery mutt mix; Choccy, the chihuahua who has difficulty walking due to old age; Little Thing, a three-legged tiny chihuahua mix; Pinkie, the cat; Agatha Raisin, the bantam chicken; Sarose, her evilness, a seabrite chicken; Jaeger, the barn cat; and then there's me, the human who does their bidding. My animals bring a huge amount of joy into my small space.

My day begins around 5 am when I start taking care of my animals. I take the ones with special needs outside one by one. I feed and water them. I make my tea. I take Penny for a walk, then put the chickens outside in their pen. I make more tea. I feed and water the wild birds.

I spend the afternoon doing whatever I want. It's heavenly to sit and watch the birds at the feeders, just six feet away, and sip tea. Everything I want is close by and easy to reach. There is a stack of books sitting on a table to be read.

There are shallow boxes of fossilized shells on top of the two chickens' indoor overnight pen. I love looking through the shells, thinking about how to make them into lovely works of art. I can't do that if they are in a box out of sight. I have made many beautiful things in my small world. I think the smallness helps me to focus and be even more creative.

I love that my two great-grandsons, ages 4 and 8, who live nearby, enjoy visiting my little enchanted world. They pop in and out to spend time with me and my collection of little creatures. They feel the magic and love the Teapot as I do.

My home makes me feel happy, even in difficult times

I was very ill recently, and all I could manage was to feed all my animals and get them in and out, then I had to go back to bed, too sick to read or watch a movie. As I lay there, I really felt as if the Teapot was giving me comfort like a warm hug. I could look around and see, with one glance, all the things I hold dear that bring me happy memories.

When you get old, the list of things you'll never get to do, have, or own might seem never-ending, and past memories are your lifeline. Every memory I've fit into my little home brings me happiness and comfort.

Living in a small space is not for everyone, but for me, the Teapot is heaven on Earth. I'm in my 80s now. My younger daughter is nearby if I need anything or want company, but I am able to live independently in a way that works for me. I can have everything that's important to me at this time of my life — family, freedom from the responsibilities and demands of home ownership, my animals, privacy, peace, and most everything I love at my fingertips.

• Earlier this year, I was seeking new routines to help boost my mood.
• I realized that if I stopped pressing the snooze button, my mornings would feel less rushed.
• My morning routine has become my favorite part of the day, and I've become a morning person.

At the start of the summer, I was desperately craving some new routines to propel me into a new chapter. I wanted to create some scaffolding in my daily life that would help hold me up during a difficult time. I didn't intend to become a morning person in the process, but that's what happened.

I realized that if I wanted to change the way I felt throughout my day, the best place to start would be, well, at the start of it. If I could get myself into a better headspace as close to when I woke up as possible, maybe that good mood would be more resilient, and so would I.

I decided to ditch the snooze button

By waking up with just enough time to walk my dog Rooney and hop on my computer to work, I was starting my days feeling rushed and cranky; that needed to change. So, I started getting up so we would have enough time to take a more leisurely stroll and go to the dog park in the mornings.

I didn't even need to change the time my alarm was set for — I just needed to stop pressing snooze.

When I thought about it, I realized that I'd never been glad I pressed the snooze button; I'd never thought to myself, "I'm so glad I got that extra seven minutes of sleep." Instead, I often woke up after a snooze — or series of snoozes — feeling more groggy and disoriented than had I just stuck to the tiny promise I made myself the night before when I set the alarm and put my feet on my floor when it first went off.

Over time, both Rooney and I started to love the dog park; not only did it become part of our routine, but we both made friends. He is learning how to play with other dogs — he used to just make the rounds from person to person, enjoying getting pet — and I enjoy starting my day talking to other people, rather than staring at screens.

After the dog park, I also have the energy to exercise

I also realized that by waking up earlier and starting my day with something I actually enjoy, it's become easier to exercise in the morning afterward. I've tried — and failed — plenty of times to be a morning exercise person, but it's never the first thing I want to do when I open my eyes.

By doing something I actually look forward to first, it eases me into my day, and I'm awake enough to then get some intentional movement in when I get home. And if I still don't feel like it, I still get on my yoga mat and do a very gentle video that basically amounts to a nap with a stretch, just so I don't get out of the habit of doing something.

I feel more grounded since starting my new morning routine

Starting my morning like this has a few benefits. I feel less rushed and more productive by the time I sit down to work, which sets me up to feel more positive throughout the day. Overall, I feel less anxious, and I've been sleeping better, as well.

It also means I've barely looked at my phone for the first couple of hours that I'm awake; for some reason, this has translated to less mindless scrolling throughout the day. I feel more grounded, calmer, and more mindful, and though I rolled my eyes at them before, I'm now a proud member of the morning person club.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Burnout is common. For $130,000 a week, this burnout clinic treats CEOs, founders, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals who require discreet and private care. Included: medical treatments, a midday IV, a personal trainer, and a private chef.

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On the agenda today:

• How America became a nation of small-time scammers.
• The year of Big Tech's no good, very bad job market.
• The CEO of HR giant SHRM responded after a "nuclear" $11.5 million employee discrimination verdict.
• A day in the life of the former WeightWatchers CEO-turned-professor.

But first: The new wave of leaders is young.

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If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider's app here.

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This week's dispatch

Tomorrow's leaders are here today

Forget big lecture halls, dream internships, or comfy full-time jobs.

There's a growing cohort of young professionals who are approaching their careers differently. They're torching the traditional playbook and doing things their own way in an effort to reshape industries and solve global challenges.

We've spent the past year interviewing "young geniuses" — the next wave of leaders, innovators, and builders who are taking unconventional approaches to work, some as early as high school.

These folks aren't just making a living, either. They're earning serious dough at a young age by building AI tools, moving fast, and raising money from investors willing to bet big on the AI race.

Business Insider spoke to 16 young founders this year who have collectively raised over $100 million. They're under the age of 27. Many are even teenagers.

Here are some of their stories and advice for others.

Zach Yadegari sold his first app at 16 and cofounded an AI-powered nutrition app while he was still in high school. It's generating around $30 million annually. "My advice to anyone would be to get started. Ignore the noise, ignore the people telling you that it's impossible to do it at a young age, and ignore the people trying to push you down a specific path to accomplish your goals."

Christine Zhang turned down an internship to spend two months building an AI startup with her college roommate. By the end of the summer, they raised $1 million. She's taking a gap year from Harvard to focus on the startup. "I had to delete my Instagram during the first week of classes so I wouldn't get FOMO. However, I don't regret my decision, and the feeling of missing out has definitely improved over time."

Arlan Rakhmetzhanov dropped out of high school to launch an AI coding agent startup that's raised $6.2 million. Both of his parents are entrepreneurs. He taught himself to code and founded his first company at the age of 15. "Being young gives you a head start. There's still time if you fail, which is why young people try crazy things."

Are you a young genius? In awe of what the kids are doing these days? Drop me a line and let me know what you think — srussolillo@businessinsider.com

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The United States of Fraud

What are the values that define America? Liberty, patriotism — and thievery, as it turns out. From petty shoplifting to return fraud, everyday Americans are becoming small-time scammers.

They're not stealing from everyone — just the companies they deem big enough to weather the loss, or those they think are making money off their backs. But too much Robin Hood-ing could have unintended consequences for small businesses … and the rest of us who are still paying for things.

Is it getting out of hand?

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Big Tech's tough job market

While much of the broader labor market has been marked by slow hiring, it's also been cushioned by low levels of firing. That's not the case for the tech industry, though.

US tech companies have announced roughly 154,000 layoffs through November, according to Challenger. That's a 17% increase from the prior year and the most of any private-sector industry. These cuts have fueled fierce competition for roles. BI spoke to more than 20 tech professionals who are struggling to find work.

"It feels like recruiters are looking for Superman."

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After the verdict

When a jury returned an $11.5 million verdict to a former SHRM employee who sued for racial discrimination, CEO Johnny Taylor sent a clear message: The fight isn't over yet.

In a video seen by Business Insider, Taylor said the case lacked merit and would go down as "just a blip in the history of SHRM." The company said in a LinkedIn post that it planned to appeal the decision.

The saga continues.

Also read:

• 'Entitled,' 'complacent,' and 'sloppy': Inside the workplace tension at the world's largest HR organization

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A CEO-turned-professor

When Sima Sistani left her role as CEO at WeightWatchers, she called Oprah for advice. She told Sistani to take a year to say no to everything. Now, Sistani is an adjunct professor at Duke University, teaching a course on women's leadership.

For BI's Power Hours series, Sistani shared what a typical day in her life looks like — from reading a physical newspaper and prepping talking points for her class, to ending the day with a romance fantasy novel.

Daily affirmations and less time on phones.

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This week's quote:

"It's a zero-sum game they're losing, and it's only going to get worse."

— Doug Shapiro, a media analyst and senior advisor at BCG, on media companies struggling to get people to engage with their content following Disney's deal with OpenAI.

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BI rode a Rivian spin-off e-bike around New York City

Bike fanatic and BI correspondent Jack Newsham took Also's TM-B e-bike for a spin around the city. Here's what happened.

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More of this week's top reads:

• Inside Scale AI after Meta.
• Exclusive: Disney employees describe its internal AI strategy, from "DisneyGPT" to a new "Jarvis" tool in the works.
• Wall Street is starting to worry about a "lost decade" for US stocks.
• Welcome to the golden age of employee monitoring.
• Exclusive: Nvidia staffer called Microsoft's cooling system for Blackwell GPUs "wasteful," internal email shows.
• Google stands to make $111 billion if SpaceX goes public at a $1.5 trillion valuation.
• Warren Buffett's deputy goes to JPMorgan: What close watchers say about Jamie Dimon hiring Todd Combs.
• What does Apollo CEO Marc Rowan want for Christmas? To define private credit.
• Instead of applying for jobs, this AWS exec writes proposals for new roles she wants to create.

• Exclusive: Meta plans price hike for its virtual reality devices, internal memo shows.

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  The BI Today team: Steve Russolillo, chief news editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

• Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg said the fundamentals of being a good lawyer aren't changing.
• Weinberg's startup, Harvey, creates AI tools for lawyers.
• Harvey just hit an $8 billion valuation.

AI won't change what it takes to be a good lawyer, according to one industry leader.

"So I actually think a lot of what makes an incredible lawyer today is still what will make one tomorrow," Winston Weinberg, Harvey's cofounder and chief executive, wrote during a recent Reddit Ask Me Anything chat.

Weinberg, whose AI startup is already disrupting Big Law, said the best partners Harvey works with understand their business needs.

"I've found that the best partners are the ones that are incredible at understanding what the actual business needs are and framing an agreement based on that," Weinberg wrote. "Same goes for litigation, it's who can come up with the best arguments/story not who is the best at going through emails in discovery."

Overall, junior partners should try to get "as much client experience as possible," Weinberg said.

"That's actually the main thing I pitch to firm leaders – they should focus more on giving juniors client experience, and be okay with them making some mistakes – that's how they become the best partners in the future," he wrote.

Last week, Harvey reached a valuation of $8 billion, thanks to a recent funding round led by A16z. Weinberg said that no single company, including Harvey, will own the legal tech market.

"I don't think a single player is going to capture all of the pretty enormous amount of value that will be created in the next 10 years in this space," he wrote in the Reddit chat.

As for lawyers who want to follow in his footsteps, Weinberg said they need to get used to failure.

"Junior lawyers are often practiced perfectionists, and startups are all about risk, reward, and resilience," Weinberg told Business Insider after his Reddit chat. "So I meant what I said–the biggest thing a lawyer who wants to work in the tech space should do is build up tolerance for failure."

• Affiliate marketing is on the rise, driving $216 billion in sales this year.
• Using platforms like ShopMy, influencers and publishers can suggest products and earn a commission.
• These are the best-selling brands on ShopMy this year.

Influencers have changed the way we shop, quite literally influencing the trends that hit, the brands we buy, and the items we covet.

Affiliate marketing — a way to drive sales through links posted by creators or publishers — is expected to drive $216 billion in US e-commerce sales this year, according to data from EMARKETER.

These links are a direct way to track the shopping that is actually inspired by influencers.

ShopMy, a social commerce platform, enables creators to build shoppable landing pages and earn commissions from sales driven by their links on social media.

More than 185,000 creators use the platform, and their recommendations drive more than $1 billion in sales annually, according to the company. In October, ShopMy raised $70 million in a Series B funding round, a testament to the belief that the model will continue to grow.

"Affiliate has become a core part of brand building," Tiffany Lopinsky, cofounder and president of ShopMy, told Business Insider over email. "The top brands now treat creators as cultural partners."

A total of 1,200 brands use ShopMy.

The platform gave Business Insider an inside look at the best-selling brands on the platform this year as part of ShopMy's year-end report.

1. J. Crew

At the end of last year, retailer J. Crew named a new chief marketing officer, Julia Collier, who previously built out clothing brand Skims' very successful influencer marketing arm. She has made creators a key part of J. Crew's strategy; its holiday campaign featured popular influencers, like "Subway Takes" host Kareem Rahma and TikToker Delaney Rowe, who created shoppable wishlists on Shopmy.

2. CurrentBody

Redlight masks are all over social media, and CurrentBody has won customers through influencer partnerships.

In job descriptions, CurrentBody's parent company, The Beauty Tech Group, has said influencer marketing is a "growth engine." Its masks are featured on the ShopMy profiles of reality star Bethenny Frankel and fitness instructor Melissa Wood-Tepperberg.

3. Tory Burch

Fashion brand Tory Burch's social media marketing has stood out this year. In addition to being a best-selling brand on ShopMy, it had the most engagement of any brand at New York Fashion Week earlier this year, according to social analytics firm ListenFirst. Its social posts featured influencers like TikToker Alex Consani and celebrities like Sydney Sweeney, Lana Condor, and Chloe Fineman.

4. Tuckernuck

A multibrand e-commerce retailer, Tuckernuck's executives have discussed the importance of creators to its brand. Cofounder September Rinnier Votta told EMARKETER last year that the company looks for influencers who are already touring Tuckernuck, as well as microinfluencers with an authentic following.

5. Veronica Beard

Women's contemporary label Veronica Beard is favored by big-name influencers like Tinx and Valeria Lipovetsky, who have posted in the brand's clothing for years. Long-term relationships with creators are key to the company's strategy, Veronica Beard execs have said in multiple interviews, and the brand brings them in to launch products and at other key moments.

6. Jenni Kayne

Direct-to-consumer home and apparel brand Jenni Kayne understands the power of influencers. Its first hit product, a pair of flats, went viral thanks to one. Now it has a large and eclectic influencer network; Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Richie Grainge, and Gucci Westman feature Jenni Kayne products on their ShopMy pages.

• Recruiters say hiring doesn't stop in December, and some managers need to fill roles before budgets reset.
• Many job seekers pause their searches anyway, leaving less competition for those who continue to apply.
• It's a good time to ask for job-search help because people tend to be jollier, career advisors say.

If all you want for Christmas is a job, don't let the holiday fanfare slow down your search.

Recruiters and hiring managers say a common misconception is that employers pause interviewing at the end of the year because decision-makers are all on vacation. In reality, they say hiring activity tends to hold steady, and in some cases, managers are pressed to fill openings before their talent-acquisition budgets reset in January.

They need to "use it or lose it," said Nicole Fernandez-Valle, lead talent acquisition partner at Miami-based Royal Caribbean Group. "This is still a pretty hardworking time for our recruitment teams."

Brian Fink, an independent recruiter in Georgia, said he's helping an AI startup in Atlanta find two managers and six software engineers to bring on board before 2025 comes to a close.

"Employers want to start 2026 ready," said Fink. "They don't want to start recruiting in January. They want to start running a race."

Lighter competition

While other job seekers put their searches on hold, take advantage of the lighter competition to submit applications, said Aaron Roberts, a hiring manager at commercial real-estate company JLL. He has more than 50 openings he's looking to fill in California, including ones for administrative assistants, facilities managers, and producers. He anticipates filling at least a third by New Year's.

"You might miss an opportunity if you put your job hunt on hold," he said. "Keep going."

Roberts knows from personal experience. He applied for his current position as vice president of operations at JLL just before Thanksgiving in 2019 and did several rounds of interviews in December that year. The last one took place five days before Christmas.

Seize the holiday spirit

Since people tend to be jollier around the holidays, it's a good time to reach out to folks who could potentially help with your job search, said Julia Levy, an independent talent-acquisition executive in Memphis and author of "From Hi to Hired: Your Insider Guide to Internships." They'll be more likely to take your call, she said.

By contrast, if you hold off networking until January, your odds of getting a meaningful response — or any at all — will be slimmer since this is when people tend to be busy starting new projects, Levy said.

Competition for jobs will also likely intensify in January, she added. People who put off their searches for the holidays return, and those resolving to find a new job in the new year enter the market, Levy said.

Yes, this is tough

Job hunting during the winter holidays can be more mentally challenging than at any other time of year. Your family and friends may be shopping for gifts, decorating the house, and baking sweet treats, while you're still at a computer searching for newly posted job listings.

And if you're a parent, your kids are likely off from school and may be eager for your attention.

"It's so hard," said Helene Vo, a career strategist in Los Angeles. "You're almost going against the grain of what the holidays are about."

But this is also why competition for jobs dies down — and why it can pay off to stick with your search routine. When you're used to applying to five or six jobs a day, "it's much easier to override" all of the holiday hoopla around you, Vo said.

When Netflix executives first saw a glimpse of "White Horse" in 2018, they were blown away.

Cindy Holland, who at the time oversaw the streaming service's original content, read the script sitting in Keanu Reeves' home, she said in court testimony earlier this month. "White Horse" was the brainchild of Carl Rinsch, who had previously directed Reeves in the big-budget "47 Ronin."

At the time, Rinsch had already created a trailer and six preliminary episodes of "White Horse," funded in part with his own money. Holland testified she found the footage "stunning" and the script "really impressive."

"I believed we should pursue the project," testified Holland, who is now an executive at Paramount.

Netflix agreed to pay tens of millions of dollars on the project, but "White Horse" was never finished. Instead of premiering on the nation's biggest streaming platform, "White Horse" has become the subject of legal disputes, news articles, and, finally, a criminal trial against Rinsch in Manhattan federal court.

It culminated in a guilty verdict on Thursday, where a jury found Rinsch guilty of defrauding Netflix by using the $11 million on a personal spending spree.

Over the years, the public has seen very little of the sci-fi passion project that wowed Netflix executives into shelling out $55 million for the project — until now.

"White Horse" depicts a world with artificially created "Organic Intelligence" beings, which resemble humans. When the world discovers they're not flesh-and-blood humans, the artificial beings create their own private cities, walled off from the rest of the world, and form their own society.

In 2018, Netflix agreed to pay $44 million for Rinsch to deliver about 13 episodes, ranging from about four to 14 minutes and totaling about 120 minutes. It gave Rinsch an additional $11 million in March 2020 to finish "White Horse" — money the jury found he spent on luxury goods instead of finishing the show.

The lack of public images has made it difficult to understand why a major entertainment company would agree to spend $55 million on "White Horse" and why Netflix continued to infuse cash into the project after Rinsch exceeded his initial budget.

Netflix even gave Rinsch coveted "final cut" privilege, effectively giving him ultimate creative control over what "White Horse" would look like, despite "47 Ronin" flopping at the box office.

Some of the work that went into the production made it into the evidentiary material for Rinsch's trial, including six episodes that Rinsch created with his own money, before Netflix agreed to invest in the project.

Prosecutors played the trailer for jurors, then asked former Netflix executives about their high hopes for "White Horse" — and the disappointment and anxiety that followed as the production fell apart.

Peter Friedlander, another Netflix executive, testified early in the trial that he was "blown away" by Rinsch's "visionary" footage.

"The visuals were something that I had never seen before," Friedlander said.

Rinsch's defense lawyers showed jurors concept art that Rinsch and his production team created to illustrate the elaborate sci-fi world the director had built. Rinsch — a protégé of "Alien" and "Gladiator" director Ridley Scott — described "White Horse" as a potential franchise on par with "Star Wars" and "Game of Thrones."

After Netflix agreed to pay Rinsch for the project, the writer-director-producer spent months filming hundreds of hours of footage in Brazil, Uruguay, and Hungary, using the production codename "Conquest."

According to federal prosecutors, Rinsch "abandoned" "White Horse" after running out of money in the fall of 2019. He swindled Netflix out of the additional $11 million the streaming service agreed to pay him the following March, prosecutors said.

During closing arguments, Rinsch's attorney Daniel McGuinness urged the jurors to watch the six episodes — which totaled about 40 minutes — while they deliberated the verdict.

It was absurd, McGuinness said, to think that Rinsch planned to scam Netflix through the production of the project when he had put so much creative energy into making it a reality.

According to Rinsch's defense attorneys, the director believed that the bulk of the $11 million March 2020 payment was meant to reimburse him for cost overruns he had paid out of his own pocket.

Rinsch continued to work on "White Horse" throughout 2020 and in 2021, his lawyers said.

To demonstrate this, the attorneys pointed to additional concept art that he had commissioned and created himself.

The artwork featured architectural and costume designs, which Rinsch said would go toward a potential second season.

Much of the concept art depicted scenes in a castle. Trial records showed that Rinsch booked Palais Liechtenstein, a castle in Vienna. Rinsch testified he wanted to film additional scenes there, but he believed Netflix decided to scrap "White Horse" altogether before that could happen.

According to one draft of Rinsch's screenplay, two twin-like "Organic Intelligence" beings would rule over their society and then betray each other in a Shakespearean fashion, legal records show.

The concept images for the unfinished scenes, entered into evidence in Rinsch's criminal trial, depict an apparent murder, with one of the beings lying on the floor in a pool of golden blood. The scene is not included in Rinsch's preliminary episodes.

Prosecutors said Rinsch's concept art was a fig leaf. Pointing to an agreement between him and Netflix, they said Rinsch was supposed to spend the entire $11 million infusion on finishing the first season — not just a small fraction of the sum for concept art. One prosecutor described the funds Rinsch paid to book the castle as "a $30,000 down payment on an $11 million fraud."

One of the prosecution's arguments centered on Rinsch's purchase of multiple Rolls-Royces.

Rinsch testified that the cars would be used for what he called the "Calvacade" — a procession of cars that shuttled diplomats through the "no man's land" between the "Organic Intelligence" beings' independent cities and the human world.

In closing arguments, Assistant US Attorney David Markewitz turned the concept art against Rinsch.

He pointed the jury to planning documents that showed he had planned to shoot the "Calvacade" scenes in Brazil in 2019 — two years before he purchased the Rolls-Royces under his own name. On insurance records, Rinsch had said the cars were for himself, not for a Netflix production.

"At an even more basic level, you know it would make no sense to actually buy five Rolls-Royces just to shoot a few scenes with them," Markewitz told the jury."

Shortly before a sober-faced jury walked out of the deliberation room and announced they found him guilty of all counts, Rinsch said he was happy a journalist at Business Insider had watched the six preliminary episodes and understood his vision.

"I'm glad you watched it," he told Business Insider. "It means a lot to me."

• After multiple tech layoffs, Kelly Withers focused on her yoga mat startup, Carmu.
• She had intended for the company to be a side hustle, but doubled down on it after the layoffs.
• Withers is reluctant to seek outside funding because she doesn't want to give up control.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kelly Withers, 36, who lives outside Detroit and is the founder of Carmu, a yoga mat startup. The following has been edited for brevity and clarity.

About seven years ago, I was in my 20s and getting divorced. I was a single mom to a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old, with no outside help. I had no place to live and no full-time job. So I started coming up with ideas as fast as I could. How am I going to take care of these two kids? I felt alone.

At that time, I was doing photography to help restaurants build their brands. Then I went to a yoga class. When I walked in, every person had the same mat and the same outfit. I started thinking about my mom and how she raised us to be individuals and stand out. I had this idea that since I was designing so many things already, I would go home and try to design a mat so I could feel more like myself when I went to class.

About a week before I went to place my order for all the mat designs, the pandemic hit, and I was back to square one. I also lost my photography clients, because restaurants were shuttered. I panicked because I had two tiny humans relying on me.

So, I started teaching myself design for tech, because it seemed much more lucrative. From everything I've ever heard, you go into the corporate world — that's how you have a comfortable life.

I got a syllabus from an online boot camp, but I couldn't afford it. So, I bought a book on every topic. Then I hired a tutor for 30 minutes at a time to go over my work and my portfolio, to make sure I was doing it right. He worked at Microsoft. He told me how much money I would potentially make as a junior designer. I remember thinking, "Well, I'm going to have to pretend I'm a senior designer."

Pretty much on my first interview, I got a corporate job doing UX design as a lead designer. I was bullshitting, so it was a little nerve-racking. Whenever I had a project, I'd run it by the tutor, just praying that I didn't get busted. I caught on quickly, and it was fine. I did that for a couple of years.

The layoffs

Eventually, there was a lot less work. So, I started panicking.

I found another job, so then I had two. Sure enough, about a month later, layoffs hit, and our whole team from the first job got wiped out.

People talk about corporate life and how that gives you security. In my experience, you're handing over your control, your finances, your future — and it's still a gamble. I can't live my life constantly betting on somebody else and somebody else's company.

I've always been into design. I want to build something tangible. I ordered about 250 mats to start. The idea was that I would continue working in tech, and then I would soft-launch these as my side hustle. That way, if I ever got laid off again, I'd have some security.

The day my yoga mats got delivered to my house, I got laid off. I looked at it as a sign: Go all in. You have some savings. See what you can do. Within about a month, I sold out.

I was like, "Now what am I going to do?" They're made outside the US, so it takes a while for them to get here. I took the few mats that I had left and reached out to style editors.

Doubling down

I took the rest of my savings, and I bought 1,000 mats. It was a scary moment because I was living off those savings, too.

People talk about entrepreneurship and say, "Oh, it's so risky." Well, it isn't. If you have the product, I like to think of it as a calculated risk. At this point, if I'm being honest, it was the only way I could think of making money, as I could not get a job interview.

The company is named after my mom, Carolyn Mulligan, who passed away 10 years ago after she was hit by a car on her bicycle. She had just been on my mind, and I'm convinced that because she was so strong, she has something to do with how this is working out.

The day I launched, in May, I sent out this post on Instagram to announce it. My friend called me and said to open up Vogue. Hailey Bieber was on the yoga mat in the magazine. About a week later, GQ wrote about Carmu. From there, it was just enough leverage where I could take it all over the place. We got into Goop, and we got into Anthropology in Europe. It's just crazy because it's been such a little amount of time.

When I got the next shipment of mats, I hadn't had an interview in tech for a year. With my business, I was profitable from day one.

The big question now is whether I want to have outside investment or do it myself. I believe I could find outside investment. Have I been traumatized in handing over control of my life to other people? Yeah. I don't know if I'm ready to give up control of anything right now, just because of how everything has gone.

Do you have a story to share about your career? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com.