• Hong Yea spent 10 years as a trader but always had dreams of starting his own business.
• Yea quit his director job at Goldman Sachs to start a crypto company, just as the industry tanked.
• He had doubts, alongside everyone else, but a Korean proverb spurred him to pursue his startup.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Hong Yea, a 36-year-old CEO and cofounder of GRVT. It has been edited for length and clarity.

In 2018, after five years of working in security lending at Credit Suisse, I started pondering what I wanted to do with my life. I was 30, living in Hong Kong. Did I want to keep working as a trader or do something completely different?

Around that time, a Goldman Sachs recruiter in Hong Kong approached me to work for them. After an interview, they offered me a job. I wasn't convinced I wanted to stay in banking, so I declined.

I took a two-week trip to Canada to meet with a good friend who worked at Amazon. If I was going to leave trading and start something new, I needed to be convinced by an idea or industry I could immerse myself in.

After two weeks of brainstorming with my friend, I didn't love anything we came up with. Luckily, Goldman hadn't filled the role, so I started working for them in November 2018.

Working at Goldman Sachs would always be limiting

I liked working as a trader at Goldman, but it wasn't fulfilling. I had this passion to start a business I couldn't let go of.

I worked at Goldman from November 2018 to July 2022. During that time, I started several side projects, including a restaurant and a home import service. I slowly realized that working for Goldman or any company, the end goal is limited to possibly being a partner. There's a cap.

I was promoted to executive director in 2019. The next step at the firm was managing director, a role with significantly more responsibility and compensation. I knew I'd struggle to walk away from my team and the money.

If I wanted to build something of my own, I needed to leave before reaching that point.

The 3 essentials for leaving my job

By 2020, I was seriously considering leaving my job to start my own business. But before I went out alone, I needed my new venture to be positioned in a fast-growing industry, have a business idea I knew I could contribute to and excel at, and have good co-founders to help me run the business.

I started researching crypto and blockchain in 2021. I'd invested in crypto since 2018 but wasn't that into it. But in 2021, the market was booming. I looked at the technology more closely, and it seemed applicable to the financial systems I was familiar with.

I booked a ticket to a crypto conference in February 2022 in Barcelona to learn more. The conference convinced me this was the industry to be in. There were many "crypto natives" there, but I saw a lack of traditional finance expertise. It felt like was a big opportunity for me to get in early.

When I got home, I spoke with two friends, Matthew and Aaron. Matthew was a trustworthy friend with a strong blockchain background. He'd introduced Aron to me as the best engineer he knew. I suggested we look into the decentralized finance space and see what improvements we could make, and they were on board.

I had all three requirements I'd set out to leave Goldman.

We started a crypto company weeks before the crash

By April 2022, we all decided to quit our jobs and dive full time into creating GRVT (pronounced gravity).

GRVT would be a self-custodial cryptocurrency exchange designed to give users complete control over their assets. Basically, it would be a system to create more secure crypto trading and protect investors from third parties defaulting on their payments.

I had enough savings to cover my rent and living expenses for a year and other non-cash assets that I could leverage if needed.

For me, it didn't matter how much I'd saved. The key was having a team and project I felt confident could raise sufficient funds. Now we had that. There was no turning back.

I was working from Singapore in early May 2022. I emailed my boss in Hong Kong to say I was resigning. When I followed up on the phone with him, he said he was coming to Singapore a week later and wanted to talk with me in person.

At the same time all this was happening, Luna Crypto, followed by the crypto market, crashed.

The crypto industry had been decimated, and I'd lost around two-thirds of my savings in cryptocurrency. I couldn't help questioning my decisions. It was a really fragile time in my life.

When I told my parents and friends I had resigned from Goldman to start a career in the cryptocurrency industry, they were concerned. Many people asked why I'd leave Goldman for crypto during a crash.

"It is the best time to build when things are crashing as long as you have the conviction that industry will grow because it's the time when the fewest others will be building," I said in response to their worried questioning.

A Korean proverb inspired me to stick to my guns

My boss flew into Singapore and met with me. "Are you sure you don't want to come back," he asked me, half serious, half joking.

But after talking to my fiancé, I decided to stick with my plan. She reminded me of a Korean proverb: "If you've drawn your sword, you need to slay something before you put it back." I'd been careful and made all the right assessments. Even if the markets were tanking, I was committed.

In the following months, we focused on building and getting investor funding. It was the worst time to raise because no one was looking to crypto. It was daunting, and stressful, and required a lot of self-convincing.

In October 2022, we pivoted away from lending toward building a safer hybrid trading platform: a crypto derivatives exchange. That's when we started receiving our first proper investments.

It felt like the industry was entering a no-return stage after FTX

When FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022, it confirmed that we were building something the industry needed.

If you trust your funds to an exchange, they have full control over their management. GRVT solves that problem. User funds are never controlled by a third party. You always have control of the funds in your own wallet and trade through your own wallet.

After the FTX crash, there were moments when I thought the industry was entering a no-return stage because the sentiment was so negative.

The technology we believed in — blockchain and smart contract-based risk management — could be the answer to preventing future incidents like this. That conviction kept us going through the toughest times.

Since the FTX crash, things have gone up for us

We've raised about $9.3 million, which is pretty decent for seed rounds at the worst time. We're a team of 26 building what I think is the future of exchanges. We're looking to launch in the next two months. Over 2 million people are registered on our waiting list, and we have 500,000 followers on X.

Achieving these milestones step by step is exciting for myself and the team, even if we've built it through the worst times.

I wanted to dream up something big enough that when I fulfilled it, it felt so much better than working for a company. We weathered the storm, and it feels incredibly rewarding.

• Here's how much you need to make to be considered upper class — and what percentage of each state is.
• The upper class in Washington, DC, starts at $202,000, while in Mississippi, it's $105,400.
• Over 21% of DC residents are upper class, compared to just 14.4% in Alaska.

This map reveals just how much Americans in each state need to make to be considered in the upper class — and what percentage of residents fall into that demographic.

A Business Insider analysis of 2022 US Census Bureau data, the latest year for which data is available, revealed that 21.1% of Washington, DC, are considered upper class with household incomes above $202,000. Meanwhile, just 14.4% of Alaskan households are upper class, earning above $176,000.

That's based on the Pew Research Center's definition of upper class, meaning you earn at least double a state's median income. This means that states with households with more income dispersion may have more people in the upper class, even with a higher income cutoff.

The Census Bureau notes the real median household income nationally was $74,580 in 2022, ranging on a state level from $52,700 to $101,000. This means that the upper class in one state could still be considered middle class in another.

Even so, being upper class may not feel like swimming in wealth. For instance, some HENRYs — or high earners, not rich yet — previously told BI that even with household incomes clearly landing them in the upper class, they're still worried about retirement, buying a home, having kids, or going on vacations.

DC has the highest cutoff, followed by New Jersey at nearly $192,700 per household. Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii, California, and Washington all have cutoffs in the $180,000s per household.

When looking at the share of households in the upper class, the top 10 shifts. New York has the second-highest share in the upper class at nearly 21%, even though the cutoff is $159,100. Louisiana, with a cutoff of over $110,800, was ranked third.

Nearly every state in the bottom 10 for upper-class cutoffs was in the South. To be upper-class in Mississippi — which 19.3% of the population is — households must make a bit over $105,400. West Virginia comes in at $108,650, while Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Alabama, and New Mexico were all below $120,000.

The list of states with the lowest shares of people in the upper class also doesn't correspond. Alaska, Utah, and Idaho have below 15% of their populations in the upper class, while Wyoming and Delaware are in the 15% range.

Do you feel upper class? Did you move to another state where you could feel more financially secure? Tell this reporter why or why not at nsheidlower@businessinsider.com.

This month, residents of the island of Nantucket, a storybook New England coastal retreat located 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, gathered for their annual town meeting and quietly acknowledged a mounting eco-crisis.

Erosion, which is typical for most islands, is now increasing in severity, threatening to reshape Nantucket's downtown and wash away the homes sitting on its edge. Permanent residents formally approved the designation of the entire island as an "Islands Coastal Resilience District," with hopes that state-backed help could follow.

A lot of real estate value is at stake. Over the past two centuries, Nantucket has gone from a whaling town to a hippie refuge to a holiday hot spot for billionaires. Its year-round population hovers at about 14,000, but over the summer, it balloons to 80,000 as the likes of Blackstone's Steve Schwarzman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who own picturesque grey-shingled mansions lined with blooming hydrangea, descend on the island in their private jets, sporting Nantucket red and boat shoes.

But a changing climate is exacerbating the ever-present threat of erosion, and it's claiming more victims. Last month, real estate investor Barry Sternlicht had to demolish his home to prevent it from falling into the ocean; others with valuable beachfront properties have paid millions to move their houses further away from the sandy coast.

And it's only expected to worsen in the "foreseeable future," C. Elizabeth Gibson, the town manager, wrote in the 2021 Coastal Resilience Plan. "The risks for Nantucket, a maritime community, are significant."

In total, sea level rise, coastal flooding, and erosion are estimated to cause over $3.4 billion in cumulative damages to Nantucket over the next five decades, according to the plan.

But demand for properties has remained sky-high on the idyllic island. Last year's median home sale price was $3.2 million, up from $1.9 million five years prior, according to data from local firm Fisher Real Estate. Twenty-seven percent of the homes sold cost more than $5 million.

"The concentration of wealth is quite stunning on Nantucket, and it keeps escalating," Bruce Percelay, a real estate developer and the publisher of the island's N Magazine, who has been vacationing on Nantucket for nearly all of his life, told Business Insider. "To use a well-worn phrase, come hell or high water, people are still buying multimillion-dollar homes on Nantucket."

The Grey Lady is only getting greyer

Year-round Nantucket resident and real estate broker Edward Sanford's family has been visiting the island for generations, starting in the 1920s. As a child, he'd visit his grandfather's cottage on the south shore, which has been prone to erosion for hundreds of years.

"We called it the shack. It had a handpump for plumbing and no electricity," he told BI. "That building today is probably two or three hundred yards into the ocean."

It seems that everyone with a connection to Nantucket knows someone who knows someone who has been affected by erosion or rising sea levels. The island is, as residents like to remind you, nothing more than a sandbar, and erosion was causing destruction long before terms like climate change were part of the common vernacular.

"If there was no global warming or there was no rising sea levels, storms happen, and waves lap against the land," Percelay said. "When the land is made of sand, it erodes, and it is hard to tell whether this would happen under different circumstances, but it is not a new condition." (Last year, Percelay garnered attention for clashing with a climate protester at a Nantucket cocktail party, something for which he has since apologized.)

Still, all signs point to destruction intensifying with the changing climate.

Downtown's Easy Street flooded an average of six days a year between 1965 and 1972. From 2013 to 2020, that increased to an average of 37 days a year, and in 2023, it flooded 75 days, according to the town's coastal resilience department.

By 2070, over 2,300 buildings — 84% of the homes — on the island will be at risk of coastal flooding or erosion, according to projections from the Coastal Resilience Plan, created by the town in 2021 to outline the risks and propose interventions. Between 2030 and 2100, the number of structures exposed to coastal erosion is expected to go from 113 to 860.

Increased erosion puts multimillion-dollar homes at risk

Several expensive oceanfront neighborhoods — and the multimillion-dollar mansions within them — are particularly vulnerable.

"They're not your classic beach house. They're much more substantial," Greg Mckechnie, a real-estate agent who has lived on the island for 25 years, told BI. "When I was a kid, if a house flooded down on Hulbert Avenue, you'd go get a broom, sweep the water out, and wait for it to dry."

In the quiet area of Cisco, Sternlicht's home was recently demolished before it fell into the water. In nearby Madaket, famous for its untouched acres and beautiful sunsets, a number of houses have also suffered that fate.

Real estate broker Shelly Lockwood, who's lived on and off the island since the 1970s, recalled a client's parents being forced to tear down the home they'd lived in for decades.

"He was like, 'When we bought that house 47 years ago, my wife told me I would die before the house went in, and I'm still here,'" she recalled. "It's heartbreaking."

On the island's eastern side, Siasconset, called Sconset by locals, is known for its expensive homes and well-heeled inhabitants, and it's similarly in danger.

People buying on the area's Baxter Road often purchase property on either side of the street, with the parcel further inland serving as a sort of insurance policy — a place to move their homes if erosion comes for their beachfront. If a Baxter Road lot becomes completely inhabitable, one can do as a former Sconset resident did in 2010: cut the house into six pieces and move it to a completely different part of the island.

"Without erosion, this would be an extremely valuable area," Baxter Road resident Joshua Posner told BI. "With erosion, it's volatile."

Sankaty Head Beach Club in Sconset — part of a golf club where Jack Welch routinely played in tournaments and which reportedly counts former Patriots coach Bill Belichick as a member — received a demolition permit last month in the face of continued erosion. Real estate broker Sanford, who is the vice president and treasurer of the club's board, said the permit is more about preparedness and that the building won't be destroyed right away.

Still, a demo permit is notable. Demolition on the island is seen as a last resort. Legal measures ensure an owner has exhausted all other options — and indicate that if a structure stayed in place, it would actually be harmful.

"Once it's in pieces all over the place, and — pun intended — but once the septic falls in, it's a pretty shitty situation," Lockwood said.

'Leases with Mother Nature'

In February, a home on Madaket's Sheep Pond Road made headlines for its sale price: $600,000, down from its original price of $2.3 million. Sanford said the ranch-style three-bedroom property could have gone for as much as $12 million if not for the erosion that recently destroyed dozens of feet of its shoreline.

The house, Sanford added, "is not long for this world."

That's something its buyer, New Yorker Brendan Maddigan, seemed to be OK with.

"I'd like to think that it'll be there for a while, but I was definitely aware of the risk of any particular storm causing a problem in the future," Maddigan told The Boston Globe.

"Those are properties we refer to occasionally as leases with Mother Nature," real-estate agent Mckechnie told BI.

A few other sellers have similarly cut their listing prices. A nearby house on Sheep Pond Road is now going for $2.995 million, down from $3.998 million, and one on Sternlicht's street saw its price go from $5.6 million to $5.1 million earlier this month.

Some areas that are more impacted by rising sea levels than by erosion — like Brant Point, whose properties have pristine lawns and views of the Nantucket Sound — have become more expensive. In October 2021, Schwarzman bought a home in the neighborhood for $32.5 million. Last year, an unknown buyer purchased a house nearby for $33 million.

"When it comes to rising sea levels, the trade-off for the amenities, location, and often views, people are willing to take on the mitigation that needs to be done," Mckechnie said, like building at a higher level and adding storm panels.

Lockwood has made it her mission to ensure that homes on the island are priced fairly, in part to protect clients and in part to protect brokers' reputations.

"Some of these homes are extremely overvalued," she said. "We as a profession need to get in front of it, or we're all going down as sleazebags."

She's helped develop an education module for real estate agents on coastal resilience so they can fully understand the dangers of erosion and rising sea levels; once they know the risks — or "material defects" — agents will be obligated to disclose them to clients.

"I was watching people invest multi-millions of dollars on waterfront property, and I was like, 'Why? It's going in,'" she said.

Still, some wealthy people simply don't care to see the signs.

"Ultimately, the market makes the decision, not the real estate brokers," Percelay said.

Case in point: Last year's median home price in Madaket was $2.7 million — 39% more than the five-year average median price in the area, per Fisher's data.

Spending millions to keep erosion at bay

In Sconset, a group of neighbors have mounted a plan to buy themselves more time — and they are personally spending millions of dollars to do so.

With homes that hang precariously onto the edge of a 60-foot bluff, the residents of Baxter Road can't put their heads in the sand when it comes to the issue of erosion. Many, like housing developer Posner, have already spent tens of thousands of dollars to move their homes from their original positions.

"We're kind of sticking out farther into the Atlantic Ocean than anybody else," Posner, who moved his house back 50 feet 15 years ago, told BI.

Though the bluff has been eroding "irregularly" for the past 20 to 30 years, Posner estimated that sea level rise has accelerated the process to two to three feet every year.

So, he's taken action.

In the last decade, Posner spearheaded the implementation of anti-erosion technology called "geotubes." These large, cylindrical bags of sand that look like giant slugs are placed strategically on the shore to act as a defense barrier. The hope is that these structures will keep Baxter Road intact for decades.

The geotubes don't come cheap. Posner says current members of the Sconset Beach Preservation Fund, which manages the tubes, donate anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 each year to the project. Not every resident of Baxter Road currently contributes, though Posner believes that will need to change if the plan is to be successful. Eventually, he estimates every owner will need to spend around $30,000 annually to keep the tubes operational.

"It's not inexpensive, but it is worth doing," Posner told BI. "It's like another tax bill."

Hedge fund pioneer F. Helmut Weymar, a Baxter Road resident who helped Posner research the geotubes, hopes they'll preserve the value of his five-bedroom home, which he spent $300,000 moving away from the bluff's edge six years ago. Purchased in the 1980s for $800,000, he believes with a successful geotubes project, the home's price could rise to $1.5 million.

However, the project has not been without controversy.

Advocates of the geotubes have been in a yearslong battle with the Conservation Commission of Nantucket, which says the tubes disturb the historic character of the beaches.

"Any attempts at delaying the impacts of erosion should rely on nature-based solutions," Coastal Conservancy member D. Anne Atherton told The New York Times in 2022.

To Weymar, the shorefront properties — which he pointed out supply the town with quite a lot of tax dollars — are as intrinsic to Nantucket as the beach is.

"The nature of Nantucket, to a significant degree, is the role of the summer community living on the shorefront," he said.

Posner, who said he believes an agreement will be reached with the Conservation Commission, is unwilling to wave the white flag to Mother Nature.

"If you have a chronic disease and the doctor tells you there's some things that can give you another 20 years," he said, "most people will take that."

• Kabosu, the Shiba Inu who became the face of Dogecoin, has died at the age of 18.
• Her quizzical expression went viral in 2010 and was later used as the cryptocurrency mascot. 
• Elon Musk was one of Dogecoin's biggest fans, and Kabosu briefly became the Twitter logo in 2023.

A diminutive Japanese dog who became the face of Dogecoin has died.

Kabosu, who inspired the viral Doge meme and became the face of the satirical cryptocurrency championed by Elon Musk, passed away on Friday at the age of 18, her owner said.

The Shiba Inu had been seriously ill with liver disease and leukemia since 2022.

"To all of you who loved Kabosu — on the morning of the 24th of May, Kabosu crossed the rainbow bridge," Kabosu's owner, Atsuko Sato, wrote on Instagram.

"She went very peacefully without suffering, as if falling asleep while feeling the warmth of my hands petting her."

"Thank you all so much for loving Kabosu all these years. I am certain that Kabosu was the happiest dog in the world."

Kabosu was adopted by Sato, who works as a teacher in Japan, in 2008 after she was abandoned by a puppy mill.

The puppy, who is named after a type of Japanese citrus fruit, shot to internet fame as a popular meme in 2010, before Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer decided to use her famously quizzical expression for their satirical cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

Despite starting out as a joke, Dogecoin saw a stratospheric rise in value during the crypto boom of the early 2020s, becoming one of the top 10 digital coins by market value in 2021.

The Shiba Inu-themed digital currency attracted some famous fans, including Elon Musk. The billionaire joked about Dogecoin on "SNL" and even briefly changed the Twitter home button to an image of Kabosu after buying the site in 2022.

• Apple's WWDC will begin June 10, and fans are hungry for any news on its generative AI plans.
• Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have all given impressive AI demonstrations in recent weeks.
• Analysts weighed in on what else Apple will have to do at WWDC to satisfy investors.

Apple has some ground to make up at its much-awaited annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Big tech names like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google have all hosted events over the last three weeks where artificial intelligence was the main topic of discussion, as well as attention-grabbing new advances in their technologies. Not only that: they've been showcasing their products for quite some time — OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot was launched in November 2022, for example.

That's made Apple's lack of a big generative AI announcement so far particularly noticeable. In fact, analysts told Business Insider that the tech giant will have to talk about AI at WWDC if they want to keep investors happy.

WWDC, which Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives called Apple's "most anticipated event in a decade," kicks off on June 10 and lasts four days at Apple Park in Cupertino, California. At the 2023 WWDC, the big reveal was the Apple Vision Pro headset.

The conference comes hot on the heels of Apple's "Let Loose" event on May 7, where the company introduced new iterations of the iPad Pro, iPad Air, and compatible accessories — but didn't go into its AI plans. However, one big sign an announcement may be coming at WWDC was the unveiling of its M4 chip, which Apple described as an "outrageously powerful chip for AI."

Tim Cook was also vague about AI strategy during Apple's earnings call on May 2. The CEO spoke of "big opportunities across our products" for generative AI and promised that Apple is "well positioned" to take on the space. That's all left investors hungry for more details.

"We think investors will take any generative AI announcement positively," Morningstar tech analyst William Kerwin said. Morningstar has a two-star rating on the stock, with a fair value estimate of $170.

One option for Apple could be teaming up with another company. Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, told BI that Apple is "so far behind" that he's expecting a partnership with OpenAI to bridge the gap between it and the competition. Bloomberg reported last month that the two firms have been discussing a possible business alliance that could bring OpenAI's technology to iPhones. Apple is also in talks with Google about licensing its Gemini chatbot, Bloomberg said.

Munster also told BI that he expects big upgrades to Siri to bring about a more helpful and conversational voice assistant through the power of AI.

Although Apple may be late to announce its plans, analysts said it still has firepower in the AI arms race — if it does announce anything.

"Apple doesn't have to be first, but it can't be on the outside looking in when it comes to AI," Ives, who has an "outperform" rating on the stock with a $275 price target, told BI.

Its current lineup of products may help get consumers using Apple's offering instead of competitors', Deepwater's Munster said. He identified Apple's "seamless" continuity between devices and privacy as assets for the company in the battle to be the top player in AI.

"Apple's primary advantage is its massive installed base of devices and sticky, dedicated users," Kerwin at Morningstar told BI. We'd expect any new-gen AI announcement to see strong adoption when released."

• Quentin Latham transitioned from an accountant to a YouTube content creator in 2011.
• He struggled in accounting, got fired, and decided to follow his passion for entertainment online.
• Latham now earns over $500,000 annually from YouTube and has plans to retire in radio.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Quentin Latham, a 40-year-old accountant turned YouTuber from Miami. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I run the YouTube entertainment news channel Funky Dineva, but I started my career as an accountant after graduating in 2005 with an economics degree.

I worked my way up to a leadership role as a senior accountant and stayed until 2011. Early on, I realized that I hated it.

Now, as a YouTuber, I brought in over $500,000 last year through content creation alone. I'm never going back to accounting.

I always imagined myself as a corporate go-getter

I always thought I wanted a huge corner office, to win awards at my job, and to go to black-tie affairs.

Once I entered the workforce, the thought of doing that for the rest of my working life chipped away at my soul. I have a creative personality, and I found the routine and confinement of accounting to be painful and unbearable.

My boss could tell I was unhappy and underperforming. I was fired in February 2011.

With only unemployment benefits coming in and no major money saved, I could no longer afford my apartment, so I started scaling back my lifestyle. My fraternity brother was gracious enough to let me crash on his floor while I figured things out.

I had a YouTube channel that I decided to start taking seriously

I decided that moving forward, I would do what's authentic to me: entertainment. I was already spending hours on social media indulging in what was happening on reality TV and in the celebrity world, so I knew I could make content about it.

I launched my YouTube channel in December 2010 but didn't start treating it like a job until I was out of accounting. I created content around things like the Montgomery Riverfront brawl and Kanye West running for President. People seemed to like it, and my subscriber count grew.

Six months into focusing on YouTube, I got a call from Mona Scott Young and VH1 to appear on the first "Love & Hip Hop Atlanta" reunion. I interviewed members of the cast backstage, and the content was used as digital assets for the brand on its website. The response was incredible, and my following kept growing.

I now have 432,000 subscribers on YouTube. The bulk of my revenue comes from views on videos and live streams. I post five to nine videos and work roughly 10-15 hours a week.

I exceeded my accounting earnings within 1 year

After my first year on YouTube, my earnings exceeded $70,000, which is what I was being paid at my last accounting gig. I was able to get my own apartment and regain total self-sufficiency.

Initially, I knew nothing about financial planning for business owners or the resources available, such as business credit. I hired a CPA to help structure my business and file my tax returns. My 2017 tax returns revealed I had made $230,000, and I was shocked because I still felt relatively broke.

I realized I was spending the money as quickly as it was coming in, and I needed to regroup and start saving and investing. I got everything on track. Last year, I made $523,000.

YouTube has zero barriers to entry

It costs nothing to go through a trial-and-error period on YouTube. You don't even need a camera — I only used an iPhone or iPad for my first few years.

As a podcast or show creator, your main focus is producing good content in your niche. I suggest joining a local community-based organization that provides aid to content creators to build up your skills.

You can also hire an intern. College students always seek relevant experience to add to their résumé. Contact the mass communication and marketing departments of a college near you, or you can find someone virtually by searching on LinkedIn or Upwork.

When all else fails, Google is your friend.

One mistake I made when launching my business was only creating perishable content

I used to make videos on topics like Cardi B filing for divorce from Offset and then canceling their divorce. I was trapped in a cycle where I had to turn out content quickly and constantly versus my counterparts who were doing evergreen material. With evergreen content, the information will always be fresh to whoever is consuming it. Since then, I've learned to create both.

My immediate plans are to move into the product space. I've also recently started planning to open a content creation studio where other creators can access audio and video equipment to bring their ideas to life.

Long-term, I plan to stay current and keep my skills sharp, so I'm well suited to move in whichever way entertainment and pop culture reporting goes. My vision is to retire in radio because you can do it until you're 90 — as long as your voice isn't cracking.

• Work-from-home Fridays are becoming popular among white-collar laptop workers.
• Offices get fewer bookings on Fridays, and leisure businesses are seeing a Friday bump.
• Some workers told BI they use the day to do spa treatments and eschew on-camera meetings.

For Hannah Kristin, the last day of the workweek has a new name: Hair Mask Fridays.

Kristin, 25, started her career remotely after graduating in 2020. Now, she goes into her Chicago office Monday through Thursday — but never on Friday. It's sacred.

She often starts the day with a boutique fitness class or long morning walk, grabs coffee from a little shop near her apartment, and gets laundry started, all before the workday begins — things that would be far more difficult to do on days she needs to commute. She said she often has no video calls on Fridays, so she can put in a leave-in conditioner hair mask to rejuvenate.

"I truly love going into my office Monday through Thursday," she said. "I think at my age it's really important to be in the office. It's a great way to make friends."

But the flexibility of work-from-home Fridays is a nice counterbalance to the bustle of in-office work.

"Being able to be remote is something I value so much just for that one day," she said.

Kristin is one of many white-collar workers contributing to the growing work-from-home Friday economy. As hybrid work has cemented for a certain segment of white-collar workers, Friday has become the de facto day for staying home, according to ongoing research from the Survey of Working Arrangements and Attitudes.

It's not great news for all businesses. Downtowns that rely on lunchtime food traffic have been forced to limit hours, cut staff, and in some cases, shutter completely. Still, interviews with owners and managers of cafés, bars, gyms, and beauty salons show that businesses are seeing an uptick in earnings during Friday work hours nationwide. Plus, workers say that the day is now "for the girls" — a time to unwind and let loose.

A break from work island

At Burly Coffee, a local coffee shop in New York City with two locations in Brooklyn, Fridays are "definitely the busiest day of the week," according to co-owner Tom Colella.

Importantly, Burly is far from the epicenter of where most New Yorkers work: Manhattan, or, as it's known to some, "work island."

"Wednesday is our slowest day. We have long hypothesized that Wednesday is the day with the most people commuting to work," Colella told BI.

He's right that office visits peak midweek and taper off on Fridays. In April, an average of 24% of total desk bookings at offices happened Tuesday through Thursday, 17% on Monday, and just 10% on Friday, per hybrid workplace management software company Kadence.

Whether they're technically working from the office or not, people seem to be out and about more on Fridays. Data shared with BI from Placer.ai, a foot traffic analytics platform, shows that many chain businesses see more foot traffic on Fridays compared to the rest of the workweek — second only to Saturdays.

Friday was the most popular day for spa and salon appointments booked on ClassPass in 2023, according to data the company provided to BI. The top time for fitness classes on Fridays in 2023 was 12 p.m. — perhaps indicating a rush of lunchtime exercisers. Meanwhile, the top time to hit the salon or spa was 5 p.m. on the dot.

Upticks in foot traffic at Starbucks, Sweetgreen, and Panera Bread, per Placer.ai, could suggest people are more frequently treating themselves to lunch or coffee out, working at coffee shops, or signing off earlier from work on Fridays.

Indeed, whether or not workers are going into the office on Friday, they're signing off at about 4 p.m. that day, compared to 5 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays, according to an ActivTrak analysis of 75,000 workers.

That's a shift from pre-pandemic, where every day "was pretty much the same," Stanford University economist and leading WFH researcher Nicholas Bloom told BI. Sure, there were spurts of relaxed Fridays in manufacturing and Friday after-work drinking culture, but since the 1990s Fridays have been pretty much like every other day, according to Bloom.

"And then from 2021 onwards, it started to become the WFH day. As a result, Thursday night is the new Friday night — the night to go drink with colleagues," Bloom said.

Master colorist Michele Allard, the owner of Mint Bklyn Hair Studio, told BI that Fridays tend to book up more — and clients will sometimes bring their laptops with them to appointments. Otherwise, they'll usually come in during their lunch hours.

"The workload seems less on Fridays," she said.

'The world is my oyster after 2:00 PM on a Friday'

Sara Daigle, 25, works hybridly for her merchandising role in Dallas. During the pandemic, her whole firm was completely remote; now, they're three days in and two days at home.

"Personally, I don't mind it, but driving in rush hour traffic every day twice a day is just not my favorite thing," she said.

By contrast, Fridays are her favorite day, she said; she works from home and still has a special pandemic perk — year-round summer Fridays. That means she's able to log off at 2 p.m and enjoy more time for herself. Like other remote workers, that means a lot more spending for Daigle.

"Really, it's kind of like the world is my oyster after 2:00 PM on a Friday. If I were to look back at all of my credit card statements, it would be Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then nothing all week," she said.

Daigle also represents the next generation of workers, who might codify WFH Friday into a new standard. After all, she said, she's part of the generation that graduated into pandemic WFH and never had to work in-office on Fridays.

"That very rigid regime of working, I think that's getting pushed out as everyone's getting older and moving up, she said. "Now, Gen Z people have been out in the workforce for four or five, six years now. Everyone's kind of either in a management position or on their way there."That goes hand-in-hand with a permanent WFH Friday and a more flexible schedule.

"Work-from-home Fridays are for the girls. That's my closing remark," Daigle said. "It's for the girls and for the happy hours."

Are you completing side quests on WFH Fridays? Contact these reporters at jkaplan@businessinsider.com and nsheidlower@businessinsider.com.

• Google Translate supports 133 languages and can translate text, audio, or images.
• You can type or speak into the Google Translate app, or even take a picture of foreign text.
• Google Translate uses a system called Google Neural Machine Translation, which learns over time.

When you think of traveling, a number of Google services come to mind — you might use Google Maps to plan your routes and Google Flights to book your trip. But it's Google Translate that will help you communicate.

With the ability to translate dozens of languages using AI within seconds, either through text or voice, Google Translate is one of the OGs of translation apps and certainly one of the most popular. 

Google Translate was first launched in 2006. It's been widely reported that the software was born out of a disastrous translation of an email a South Korean fan had sent to Google's founders. The company was licensing a translation service at the time, which translated the message as, "The sliced raw fish shoes it wishes. Google green onion thing!" The frustrating experience compelled Sergey Brin to lead the company in creating a product that could do better.

Now, nearly two decades later, Google Translate supports a whopping 133 languages, is used by millions of people every single day, and its Android app has racked up over a billion installs from the Google Play Store. In a 2018 Google earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said Google Translate translates some 143 billion words every single day.

Google Translate is powered by a system called Google Neural Machine Translation, which translates whole sentences at a time and contextualizes the words and phrases. GNMT is also an end-to-end learning system, which means the system learns and improves upon the process over time. 

In 2023, Google announced that Google Translate will use AI-powered features to further improve its services, such as offering context options during translations and incorporating Google Lens to translate images.

Here's everything you need to know about Google Translate and how to use it.

Is Google Translate an app? 

Google Translate is available as an app for both iOS and Android devices.

You can type, write, or speak into the Google Translate app, and it will provide translations within seconds. Additionally, the app uses Google Lens image-recognition technology to translate text from images — just point your smartphone's camera at text in a foreign language (like a menu or a sign) and get a translation instantly.

Here's how to use it: 

Translate text

1. Download the Google Translate app on your iPhone or Android.
2. At the bottom of the screen, select input and output languages.

3. Type the phrase or sentence you'd like to translate into the text field. The phrase will be translated in real time below.

Translate Images

1. After choosing the languages or selecting Detect language, tap the Camera icon in the lower-right corner.

2. Point your camera at any text you see so that it can be translated in real time.
3. Tap the Shutter icon to take a picture of the text you would like translated. 
4. To translate text from an image you've taken previously, tap the Gallery icon and select the photo from your iPhone's gallery. Google Translate will superimpose the translated words over the text in the image.

Translate with audio

1. Tap the microphone icon at the bottom of the screen and dictate your sentence or phrase into the app.
2. Wait a few moments for the app to translate your dedicated text and select the Speaker button to hear the translated audio.
3. Tap the Speaker icon to hear the translation.

1. As another option, tap the Transcribe icon and start speaking. You can then select and copy the transcription elsewhere. 

Quick tip: Offline translations are also available for many languages. Plus, you're able to save translated words and phrases for future use.

Is Google translate 100% right? 

Google Translate is not 100% accurate, nor is any other automated translation service. Google Translate has made some major mistakes, sometimes due to technology glitches and other times due to nuance or ambiguity in languages.

Google's accuracy can also vary greatly depending on the language pair. Research has indicated that Google Translate had a 94% accuracy rate when translating between English and Spanish but only a 55% accuracy rate when translating between English and Armenian. Research has also shown that Italian and German are among the hardest languages for Google to translate.

Can I use Google Translate to translate a name? 

Google Translate may help you translate a person's name — for instance, the name "George" plugged into Google Translate returns the name "Jorge" in Spanish — but use caution. Translations may not be contextually accurate, and rarer names may not be recognized.

Is ChatGPT or Google Translate better?

Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have translation capabilities already and may well overtake Google Translate in the future. 

Early research has indicated that ChatGPT translations have better terminological accuracy than translations from Google Translate, however, Google Translate tends to be better than ChatGPT at translating less-common languages. Either way, both ChatGPT and Google Translate tend to be much less accurate than actual human translators.

• The average Croatian leaves their parents' home at 33 years old — the highest age in the EU.
• It's expensive for young people to buy or rent in Croatia. BI visited Dubrovnik to investigate.
• Millennials there described feeling like teens in their 30s, despite being business owners and parents.

Lukša Malohodžić is 27 and runs a successful business — life ought to be going his way. But he still lives with his mom and dad.

He runs boat tours for wealthy tourists showing off the stunning Adriatic coast — keenly aware that he can't afford life there.

Like vast numbers of Croatian millennials, he's yet to fly the nest, and doesn't see it happening soon.

Seated at a café in Dubrovnik's Old Town in mid-April, he reflected on the situation.

"There comes a point where it starts to weigh on you," he said. "You begin to think, 'I really ought to change this,' but what can you do?"

According to Eurostat, the EU statistical office, the average Croatian leaves their parents' home at over 33 years of age, its highest figure.

For men, it's even higher — at just under 35.

In the US, almost everyone has moved out by then. US census figures say only 16% of Americans aged 25-34 live with parents.

BI visited Croatia in April, the start of Dubrovnik's tourism season, to hear firsthand how it's affecting millennials there.

They spoke of feeling stuck and infantilized: a woman of 35 whose relatives keep reading her mail, a grown man whose grandma kept track of his dating.

Based on the data, Malohodžić can expect to live under his parents' roof for another seven years, but it could be even longer.

"It's hard to buy anything or even rent," Malohodžić said. "It's just crazy."

Eurostat notes that house prices in Croatia have consistently climbed over the past decade. Last year, Croatia had the highest annual increase in the house price index among all EU member states.

Malohodžić says a "big majority" of his friends are in the same situation as he is, with only a fortunate few having inherited properties.

Property prices in Dubrovnik, a picturesque UNESCO World Heritage Site, are especially high.

According to news outlet Total Croatia, the average purchase price for an apartment or house in the city is slightly above 3,600 euros per square meter, equivalent to roughly $335 a square foot.

The US figure is roughly $230 a square foot, with much bigger salaries to buy it.

The average salary in the US is more than triple Croatia's, $59,000 or so to $18,500 in Croatia.

"You can't make the kind of money here that you need to buy properties," says Ivan Vukovic, a tour guide who has lived in Dubrovnik since he was born in 1981.

Vukovic has lived through Dubrovnik's various transformations over the years — from the bustling crowds during the Yugoslav tourism boom of the mid-1980s, to the devastation of the War of Independence and the subsequent return of cruise ships in the postwar era.

Today, he finds himself part of another tourism boom — fueled by tourists eager to see the city that served as King's Landing in HBO's "Game of Thrones."

While tourism brings economic opportunities for Vukovic and many others, he says it has also worsened the already dysfunctional housing market.

The surge in foreigners wanting a slice of Dubrovnik has driven up the demand for vacation homes, he said, and local entrepreneurs are increasingly flipping properties into Airbnbs to make money.

AirDNA, a short-term rental data analytics company, told BI that Dubrovnik, which has a population of about 41,000, has more than 5,500 properties listed on Airbnb or the Expedia-owned Vrbo during the summer months.

"Both foreigners and wealthy locals mainly use these properties as investments because the return is very good," Filip Brkan, a member of the Real Estate Business Association of the Croatian Chamber of Economy, told BI.

For renters, this can make finding a place for the whole year nearly impossible. The money that can be made from short-term rentals also drives up the price of buying vacant properties.

"What needs to be done in Croatia is to increase the housing supply," said Brkan.

But in parts of Dubrovnik, Vukovic explained, that's not feasible.

"We cannot expand," the tour guide said. "It's a small city protected by UNESCO, and the price has skyrocketed because somebody always wants to buy real estate in Dubrovnik."

For Josip Crncevic, 34, prices feel far out of reach.

"I always like to tell my guests on the tour that, right now, it will probably take two lifetimes to buy something within the walls," he said.

Even in Dubrovnik's suburbs, Crncevic said homeownership is unattainable for him.

For now, he lives in a multi-generation, three-story family house about seven miles outside the city.

His uncle's family lives on the top floor and his grandmother below, in a setup Crncevic describes as three distinct apartments, each with a private entrance and lock.

While it's not the situation he dreamt he'd been in at 34, he said there are some positives.

Crncevic enjoys helping his grandmother with daily tasks, though the proximity has posed challenges in the past, especially when it comes to dating.

"My grandmother is the best CCTV in the area," he said.

Establishing boundaries

Privacy is a recurring issue for many millennials living in similar conditions in Croatia.

Marija, a 35-year-old who asked to be referred to only by her first name in order to speak candidly about living with her in-laws, said the decision was born of necessity.

Marija and her husband moved into his parents' home in 2019 because they couldn't find affordable rent, and buying was not an option.

Although it seemed like a sound financial move, Marija said she now views it as a big mistake.

"We would like to have some kind of privacy, and not to be interrogated on a daily basis," she said.

The biggest problem is establishing boundaries "like not reading our mail and not entering the home without knocking," she added.

Sanja Cikato, a 47-year-old who lives with her husband and two teenage children above her mother, said setting those boundaries took patience and perseverance.

"It wasn't perfect in the beginning, but later, with time, we simply learned how to live together in this house," she said.

Cikato said achieving this required open and honest conversations, but that her mother still occasionally eavesdrops on the couple's quarrels.

Despite the difficulties, she said the benefits, such as help with childcare, outweigh the drawbacks.

When her children, now 12 and 14, were younger, her mother was a live-in babysitter, enabling Cikato to work longer hours during the tourist season.

Diana Marlais, another working parent, echoed this, telling BI that multi-generational living is a life-saver for working parents.

Cikato also said the setup creates a special bond between her mom and her kids, and that she wants to replicate it when her own children are adults.

"You have to understand that was something really normal before," she said.

But Malohodžić, who represents the younger cohort of Croatian millennials, sees it as being "purely economic" rather than a tradition worth upholding.

He said he wouldn't choose to live this way if finances weren't such a factor.

He wouldn't choose to be in his late 20s and to still "sometimes feel like a teenager."