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Every organization that produced an Epstein-related villain once called him a leader. Peter Attia. Larry Summers. The head of the World Economic Forum. HR statements issued. Leadership transitions announced. The story told as if it’s over. It isn’t. Not for the women inside those organizations, who are right now having a single quiet thought: Ah. That explains everything I’ve experienced. The subtle dismissals. The closed doors. The invitations that never came. The jokes that weren’t funny but nobody challenged them. The way one man’s voice filled the room and everyone else just . . . made room. And not for the rest of usbecause the real scandal isn’t what these powerful men did. It’s what we accept as normal that made it possible. We didnt build this city. We inherited it. And until we see how it confines us, well keep calling it home. If you’re a leaderor in HR, or in communications drafting the familiar “we take this seriously” memothe real question isn’t What did he do? The real question is What did we normalize? Here are three places to look. Entitlement: The Monologue Someone arrives at a meeting where the agenda has been planned for weeks. They take the floor and slip into a monologuea story about their cab driver, a stray shower thoughtand just like that, the shared agenda vanishes. And the room lets it happen. Whatever, he’s just doing his thing. But monologues aren’t harmless. They’re a quiet power play. They hijack the room. They take all the oxygen as if no one else needs any. Every time we let a monologue run, we trade what we could have made together for one person’s need to feel important. Monologue cultures don’t just reward the person taking up spacethey teach everyone else in the room to compress themselves into the tiny amount of area thats left. They make dissent feel risky. And eventually, they teach the room that one, and only one, voice matters. Control: The Data Demand This one sounds responsible. Analytical. Rational. But in practice, demanding data before considering an idea is how you control what gets considered at all. Quantitative data is inherently backward-looking. To build what comes next, we have to explore the quality of ideas, develop insights, and tap imagination. If you require solid, confirmable data before entertaining anything new, every new idea gets killed before it breathes. It’s also a dog whistle. When we define intelligence as purely rational and severed from emotionstrictly intellectual, detached from intuitionwe don’t just narrow the definition. We narrow ourselves. We strip the teams intelligence of its full power, reducing it to something cold, calculable, and incomplete. The narrowness, it turns out, is very convenient for the people who already control what gets measured. Denial: The Label When someone brings up something uncomfortable, the easiest response isn’t to investigate the issue. It’s to label the person. Too demanding. Too sensitive. Too negative. Too emotional. Not a team player. Labeling people as the problem is how defensive people go on the offense. The moment the messenger becomes the issue, the actual problem disappears. No investigation needed. No change required. In fact, research shows that if you just call someone emotional, not only will everyone in the room discount what they say, but the speaker will too. The system stays intact. Which is, of course, the point. Dozens of norms These are three norms. But there are 21 more just like them. I’ve spent years studying what stops us from doing our best workand found 24 specific, concrete norms that, in both subtle and significant ways, keep us stuck. I write about them in my new book, Our Best Work: Break Free From the 24 Invisible Norms That Limit Us. When I share this, people almost always ask me to simplify it. To reduce the list to something smaller. I get it; 10 would be more manageable. But we miss a lot when we oversimplify things. It’s like looking at just part of a cage and wondering why the animal inside doesn’t escape. If you studied any one wire, up and down its length, you might believe the animal could simply push past. If you see just some of the wires, you’d wonder if the beast actually wants to stay where it is. But until you see the whole, you miss the point. And that’s when it hits youhow the wild thing is fully ensnared. Caged. Trapped. Not because it chooses to be. Not because it lacks power. And certainly not because it doesn’t try hard enough to escape. The power of these norms isn’t how persuasive they are. It’s how persistent they are. It’s not just one, five, or ten things that trap us in placeit’s the way those things intertwine and twist together, a tangled network of systematically related barriers. It is their relationships to each other that make the seemingly lightweight barriers as confining as a cage. Our complicity So many of us shrug at the monologues. We kludge together data when asked, even when we know it’s the wrong question. We stay quiet, go along, get alonghoping to affect change without ruffling feathers. And we become complicit in our own oppressionlimiting our own freedom without ever seeing the bars we built. This is how a cage works. We don’t see the bars. We just find ourselves not going certain places, not saying certain things, not becoming certain people. And we tell ourselves that’s just how it is. By allowing entitlement, control, and denial to be acceptable, we create an operating system that makes the Epstein Island visitors feel right at home. We participate in it. We perpetuate it. Things will change only when we name what’s limiting us all. Not the villainsthe norms. Their own institution Meanwhile, founders like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Casey Wasserman largely remain in place. They are, in effect, their own institutioncontrolling the companies, capital, and networks around them so the usual mechanisms of social accountability never quite apply. We pushed out the ones we could reach. And called it done. But here’s the harder questionthe one that actually leads somewhere: What are we still normalizing that will grow the next set of villains we call leaders? The cage doesn’t care which warden is in charge. It comes down only when we stop building it.
Category:
E-Commerce
A middle manager sits in a 1:1 with their boss. They nod along to strategic priorities they already know are unrealistic. The deadlines dont match the staffing plan. The new initiative competes with the last top priority. The team is already stretched thin. But the manager doesnt say itnot plainlybecause honesty can be misread as incompetence, negativity, or a lack of readiness for the next level. Two hours later, that same manager is in a team meeting projecting confidence about those same priorities. They translate contradictions into something coherent, reassure direct reports who are already anxious, and say, Well figure it out, while privately wondering how. Later, at lunch with peers, they compare notes on workload and shifting expectations. Everyone laughs in that awkward were fine way. No one admits theyre drowningbecause even peer relationships can feel political when resources are scarce. Heres the question were not asking: Who can middle managers actually be honest with? In too many organizations, the answer is: no one. Thats not a personality problem or a resilience issue. Its a design issueone I call Organizational Latchkey Syndrome: a workplace reality where middle managers are handed responsibility and expected to figure it out with limited authority, limited support, and limited psychological safety. As a licensed psychotherapist, I see this pattern constantly: organizations demanding emotional intelligence from people inside emotionally unintelligent systems. Its like asking someone to practice healthy attachment in a relationship that punishes vulnerability. And because middle managers are the emotional and relational bridge between strategy and execution, Organizational Latchkey Syndrome doesnt just burn people out. It quietly breaks culture. Why middle managers cant be safe in any direction Middle managers are often told they need more EQmore empathy, better communication, stronger coaching skills. And yes, EQ matters. But middle management already demands a high level of emotional intelligence. The problem is that many organizations ask for high-EQ performance from managers while building systems that make it risky to tell the truth. This is a high-EQ role inside a low-EQ system. Upward: They perform competence Safety is conditional. You can raise concerns, but only if theyre packaged correctly. You can push back, but only if you already have political capital. You can speak candidly, but only if you can guarantee a solution. In many work cultures, the emotional subtext of leadership is: Bring answers, not complexity. So managers learn to manage impressions instead of surfacing realityand self-protection replaces reflection. Downward: They perform steadiness Middle managers are expected to provide stability for their teamsespecially during change. Theyre asked to maintain morale, protect psychological safety, coach performance, and hold space for stress. But many managers dont have full information, which means theyre asked to create clarity they dont possess. So they buffer uncertainty, absorb pressure, and make it make sense. Thats leadershipand its costly. Emotional labor without recovery becomes emotional depletion. Sideways: They manage scarcity In a healthy organization, peers are where managers can exhale. In many organizations, scarcity activates competition. When budget, headcount, or executive attention is scarce, peer relationships become strategic. Managers perform camaraderie while privately feeling isolated. Everyone says theyre busy, but no one says, Im not okay. Put those directions together and you get the most under-acknowledged reality of modern middle management: they are organizationally isolated in the role designed to connect everyone else. Organizational Latchkey Syndrome is an execution problem If we treat middle management isolation as a wellness issue, well respond with wellness solutions: a workshop, a coaching module, a reminder to take PTO, encouragement to set boundaries. Those supports can help individuals. They dont fix the system. When people feel psychologically unsafe, they shift into self-protective mode. They share less, ask less, challenge less. And when your middle layer goes into self-protective mode, the organization pays the price. Heres what breaks: 1) Feedback stops traveling upward. When managers cant be honest about capacity, risk, or contradictions, senior leaders make decisions on partial information. Risks surface late. Surprises multiply. 2) Innovation stalls. You cant access your most creative, strategic thinking in survival mode. And managers cant model psychological safety they dont experience, so teams learn to keep their heads down. 3) Execution quietly breaks. A manager gets handed three top priorities, each requiring full-time focus. They know the team can realistically handle one, maybe two. So they say well figure it out and watch their team burn out trying to deliver the impossible. Execution erodes in missed deadlines, quality slips, and people quietly opting out. As one reader put it in response to my last article: being in the middlemanaging up, down, and sidewayscan make psychological safety nearly impossible when each side has competing priorities that weigh you down. That isolation isnt a side effect. Its a design flaw. What manager-safe spaces actually look like If middle managers are isolated by design, then support has to be intentionalnot assumed. A manager-safe space is any structure where managers can tell the truth early without it becoming a performance liability. Heres what works in practice: 1) Peer cohorts that are truly confidential. Same-level managers (not direct competitors), clear confidentiality norms, a consistent rhythm, and facilitation. The goal is simple: a place to say, I dont know, before that becomes burnoutor resignation. 2) External coaching that doesnt report back. A protected space to process the role and name what cant be said inside the normal system. If coaching feeds into evaluation or succession planning, it stops being safe. 3) Executive sponsorship that actually covers them. Cover means a senior leader who protects the messenger, backs early risk-flagging, and names tradeoffs publicly so managers arent left absorbing the fallout alone. 4) Clarity on decision rights. If managers dont have authority, stop evaluating them as if they do. Define what they own, what they influence, what requires escalationand commit to not second-guessing decisions after the fact. The litmus test Can your middle managers tell the truth early without consequences? Can they say This isnt resourced, I need help, or I dont agreeand still feel trusted afterward? If the answer is no, you dont have a training problem. You have a design problem. Unil middle managers have real coverclarity, capacity, and communitymany will keep doing what latchkey kids do best: theyll figure it out alone. This is Organizational Latchkey Syndrome in full effect. And its entirely fixable.But survival shouldnt be the standard for your culture. And it cant be the foundation for your leadership pipeline. The question isnt whether theyre resilient enough to keep going. The question is: how much longer can they sustain it? And what will it cost your organization when they cant?
Category:
E-Commerce
Spend any time on social media, and its only a matter of time before one genre of content starts hitting your timeline: Someone telling you they make a fortune by doing something that sounds absurdly easy. (And that you can, too.) Maybe they (kind of) show you how to design and sell your own sweatshirts or notebooks, a venture that supposedly earns them five figures a month. Or maybe they tell you about how they started a $100,000 business with no inventory. Whatever the enticing story is, the ending is usually the same: they offer to teach you how to do the same. And who would say no to easy money? Get-rich-quick how-tos have existed foreverand more recently, side hustles have become a hallmark of American existence. According to SurveyMonkeys 2025 Workplace Culture and Trends survey, 72% of U.S. workers either already have a side gig or are considering picking one up. That might explain why the past few years have flooded platforms like Instagram and TikTok with get-rich-quick guides, many of which seem to carry nearly identical talking points. These social media solopreneurs supposedly make incredible money by working only two to three hours a day, and theyre generous enough to share their wisdom with you. But how is anyone supposed to separate the legitimate techniques from the scams and the flops? Enter: the side hustle reviewer. A TRY GUY FOR SIDE GIGS The stated purpose of side-hustle review accounts is simple: they test out money-making schemes so you dont have to. The people behind them are basically business guinea pigs who flip phones on Facebook marketplace and design T shirts that are print-on-demand (in which a third party creates the shirts the side hustlers design after a customer makes the purchase) on platforms like Redbubble and Shopifyall to see if they can actually make a buck. Other side hustles could include posting product videos on Amazon, or starting a newsletter. Often, theyll break down how much money they made, and sometimes, theyll even walk you through the fine print of the trade. This might sound altruistic on its face, and it can be. But in a way, its also its own kind of side hustleone that, like all the others, comes with its own business incentives. Few people know this better than Ryan, the 40-year-old tech worker behind Side Hustle Review. (He keeps his surname private to protect his full-time job.) Thanks to his 229,500 followers on TikTok and 473,000 on Instagram, Ryan says that sometimes, side-hustle platforms approach him with a simple offer: if he promotes their ecosystem, theyll give him a cut of every paid sign-up he generates. Unfortunately, he adds, many of these platforms take would-be hustlers money without ever actually making money for them. In light of these offers, Ryan openly admits he could start an evil arc, exploiting viewer trust for personal gain by endorsing bogus money-making platforms. I’m not saying I would, he says, but the fact that that could happen makes me go, I do have something very precious here. Thats why he always turns these offers down. Its not just sketchy courses, either. When asked to name the weirdest side hustle hes ever tried, Ryan dished on one he actually hasnt tried: selling images of his feet. (Although hes never uploaded a foot photo himself, he has received emails from less-than-ethical platforms asking him to share an affiliate link with his users in exchange for a cut of their sign-up fees.) [Users] pay the money to post their feet pictures thinking they’re going to make the money back, and they never do, he says. At the same time, some of the ideas floating around on the internet are totally legitimate. SEPARATING WHEAT FROM CHAFF The demand for the kind of service Ryan and other side-hustle reviewers provide is clearly there. The internet is rife with online courses and guides that claim to explain how to set up various businesses in exchange for a few hundred (or thousand) dollars. Ryan says he receives 80 to 90 DMs per day from viewers who want him to review this or that course, which is part of why hes begun work on a site called review.courses. He hopes the site could grow into a sort of Yelp! for side hustles, where users can post their own reviews. As Ryan points out, the price tags some courses carry are incredibly high, especially for a product with no real regulatory body. Some can range from $5,000 to $8,000. When you go to buy a $2,000 laptop, how many reviews do you watch? Ryan asks. Ten, 15, 20 before you make your purchase? None of this exists for courses that teach you how to operate an online side hustle, and the ones that tend to go viral the fastest offer people what they most want: easy money. Some of these courses are complete cash grabs, Ryan saysthey could be extremely vague, AI-generated, or copied straight from a guide the creator themselves previously purchased from someone else. Once you buy the thing, it’s trash course, trash content. WHEN SIDE HUSTLE REVIEWING BECOMES THE SIDE HUSTLE With the right strategy, Ryan says, you can make good money by creating, say, a print-on-demand T-shirt empire. Same goes for dropshipping, where you sell products without any actual inventory by purchasing the items from a third party after someone hits Place Order. When asked which side hustles viability actually surprised him, Ryan called out user-generated content: brand-related media created by social media users instead of the companies themselves. This could include product review videos, including Amazon on-site videos (product videos that anyone can post onto product pages in exchange for a cut of the commission if a customer makes a purchase after watching). Ryan was also pleasantly shocked by how easily he found success creating a newsletter, a scheme hed thought for sure must be a scam. I get a 40% open rate, he says with audible surprise. I guess people do want more emails. And yet, it turns out that reviewing side hustles is more profitable than the hustles themselves. While Ryan cited $5,000 in gross revenue from testing in 2024, he made $35,000 from Side Hustle Review. That said, 90% of the latter income came from sponsorships, a revenue stream hes since ended to preserve editorial independence and trust. I find every sponsor comes to me with desired sales outcomes, he says, which really easily pushes me into becoming more of a salesperson. Given the direction corporate America has taken side hustles seem bound for continued expansion, and their growing popularity is an ever-present sign that many workers, mistrustful of large companies, are bracing for a big shift. While some side hustlers are hedging their bets against an uncertain economy, others might be working to compensate for the bite inflation has taken out of their pockets. And the rest, Ryan figures, probably just want some disposable income. Regardless of the reason, he says, I think were all feeling a bit of a squeeze.
Category:
E-Commerce
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