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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. The corporate response to the Trump administrations immigration enforcement actions has been muted at best. After the killings of two U.S. citizens by federal law enforcement in Minneapolis, the CEOs of more than 60 Minnesota-based companies issued a carefully worded letter calling foran immediate de-escalation of tensions. Targets incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke sent a video message to employees calling the events incredibly painful. Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was lambasted for attending a White House movie screening hours after protester Alex Pretti was shot and killed, said he was heartbroken. Few executives have been willing to criticize ICEs sweeping clampdown, which has also resulted in the detention of U.S. citizens, refugees, and others legally in the country. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman came close, saying in a note to employees: Whats happening with ICE is going too far. There is a big difference between deporting violent criminals and whats happening now, and we need to get the distinction right. Corporate tepidness is strategic and, according to those who work with CEOs, unlikely to change. Whether they are willing to admit it or notsee this exchange between JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon and Zanny Minton Beddoes of The EconomistCEOs are afraid of retaliation by the administration and backlash from activists who may feel statements in response to current events are either too woke or not full-throated enough. As a result, many companies are staying on the sidelines. Fear and chaos Communications experts say CEOs will never go back to the volume of commentary or commitments companies issued in the wake of George Floyds murder and the racial justice marches that followed. In 2020, clients frequently asked us how best to weigh in on these kinds of issues, says Jim OLeary, North America CEO and global president of communications firm Weber Shandwick. Today, there is a greater focus on assessing the risks of engaging. Another CEO adviser I contacted, who asked to remain anonymous so he could speak freely about a topic that many deem sensitive, says corporate leaders can and should speak out on issues that impact the overall standing and reputation of U.S. businesses, and affect employees, customers, and shareholders. The goal for businesses in these moments should be to talk to their stakeholdersemployees, customers, investorsnot to garner headlines, he adds. It is about corporate and leadership values, not scoring points. Lets be clear: The events unfolding in Minneapolis and other cities around the country are impacting businesses. Silence isnt neutral. Its expensive, says Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Moms First, which held a virtual call after the killing of Alex Pretti that attracted thousands of moms who discussed grassroots responses, including national strikes such as the one organized last Friday. Letting this chaos continue is fiscal malpractice. Everyone I know is distracted. People feel scared. Workers are disappearing. Productivity is dropping. Local economies are taking a hit.You cant run a healthy economy based on fear and chaos. CEOs may or may not wish to speak out about the killings of Pretti and Renee Nicole Good or the clashes in the street. But executives at every level need to be willing to support civil liberties and the rule of law, which are the very underpinnings of democracy and capitalism. If more CEOs rise to meet this moment, we may see what true leadership looks like. Taking a stand Has your company responded to the ICE crackdowns, and if so, how? Send your responses to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and well publish excerpts in an upcoming newsletter. Read more: CEOs speak out. Or not. CEOs who shy away from defending voting rights do so at their peril E.l.f.s Tarang Amin is doubling down on board diversity We asked Minnesotas biggest companies about ICE
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E-Commerce
Staying focused for an entire workday can feel like a losing battle. Between constant notifications, shifting priorities, and mental fatigue, even the most disciplined professionals struggle to maintain momentum from morning to evening. To understand what actually helps people stay in the zone, we turned to experts who study attention, performance, and productivity. They shared nine practical, research-backed strategies for sustaining deep focus and getting meaningful work done throughout the day. 1. Reset With Box Breath High performers don’t usually lose discipline. They lose regulation. When your body flips into fight-or-flight, focus gets choppy and your thinking narrows. The fastest lever you control is your breath because it shifts you back into a more focused state, the zone. One technique I use to regulate is box breathing. It’s widely used by elite performers, including military and athletes, and is also recommended by medical practitioners to reduce stress and restore calm. Here’s my exact reset with box breathing. When my nervous system starts running hot, or I notice I’m rushing when I have to present, I pause for two minutes. I close my eyes and mentally put my inbox and to-dos into an imaginary jar outside my door. Then I breathe in a simple cadence: inhale four counts, hold four counts, exhale four counts, hold four counts, for four cycles. That small sequence restores presence, focus, and clarity fast, so I’m not stumbling through on adrenaline by the time I reach my audience. With self-regulation, I have full attention and get full results. I’m in the zone. It works so well that I also teach it to my clients. One CEO I coached had three back-to-back calls immediately after our session, followed by a high-stakes pitch to his board. We practiced four cycles together before he started his day. Later, he told me he used it twice. First, right before his second call, when he noticed his pace speeding up and his thoughts scattering. Two minutes of box breathing helped him slow down, speak with intention, and stay on message. The meeting ended 10 minutes early, decisions were cleaner, and the team left with concise deliverables instead of a vague “we’ll circle back.” He repeated another four cycles right before the board pitch, not as a “calm down” trick, but as a performance switch: nervous-system reset, remarkable clarity, and executive-level delivery. The result was a tighter presentation with a more confident ask, which shortened the Q&A and increased alignment in the room. The CEO told me the biggest difference wasn’t just that his message landed better, but that he felt in control of his narrative. That’s why I love this tool. It’s fast, repeatable, and portable. You can do it at your desk or in an elevator before any high-stakes conversation, mid-day, or anytime your attention scatters and your energy dips. When you box-breathe back into regulation, you trade adrenaline for authority and get back in the zone on demand. Shelley Goldstein, Leadership Development Coach and Corp Trainer, Remarkable Speaking 2. Cycle Dopamine With Structured Focus Intervals Unlike traditional productivity advice that focuses on time management or motivation hacks, I target the neurological substrate where sustained performance actually lives: your dopamine regulation cycle. What I have found working with Fortune 500 executives is this: high-performance states are not willpower; they are dopamine availability. When your prefrontal cortex has optimized dopamine, you stay in flow. When dopamine depletes, you cannot force focus. The technique that produces the most consistent results is strategic dopamine cycling through 90-minute work blocks with complete neural reset intervals. Here is how it works. Your brain can sustain peak dopamine availability for approximately 90 minutes before the prefrontal cortex starts losing executive control. Most executives push through this, not realizing they are operating on progressively degraded neurological capacity. I coached a hedge fund managing director who was working 12-hour days but losing decision quality after hour four. We implemented strict 90-minute work blocks followed by 15-minute complete disengagement: walking outside, no screens, no cognitive load. Within three weeks, he reported that his decision speed improved 40% and he was leaving the office two hours earlier while producing better work. The mechanism is straightforward: during the 15-minute reset, your brain clears dopamine metabolites and restores prefrontal capacity. This is not a break for rest; it is a neurological recalibration that makes the next 90 minutes as sharp as the first. The key insight most people miss: productivity is not about working longer; it is about protecting the neurological windows when your brain actually performs. Sydney Ceruto, Founder, MindLAB Neuroscience 3. Set Tomorrows Three Clear Tasks One technique I use to stay in the zone is a three-task reset at the end of each day. In my coaching practice, my to-do list is always long. If I start the day reacting to everything on it, I end up busy but not effective. To avoid that, I spend the last 30 minutes of each workday reviewing everything on my list and then narrowing it down to three small, specific tasks that will genuinely move my work forward the next day. Those three tasks go on a sticky note that becomes my only priority list the following morning. When I sit down to work, I’m not deciding what matters as I already decided that the day before. This removes decision fatigue and keeps my attention on progress rather than activity. Since adopting this approach, I start my days with clarity, stay focused longer, and avoid the trap of spinning my wheels on low-impact work. It’s simple, but it consistently keeps me operating in a high-performance zone. Brandi Oldham, Career Coach, Talent Career Coaching 4. Honor Your Energy and Pace In 2025, I wrote a book. As a first-time author, I was barraged with advice: write X number of words every day, write first thing in the morning, set a timer and write until it rings. I quickly realized that while those techniques might sustain high writing performance for others, they did not work for me. What did work was to write when I was excited to write, when I wanted to write. When my brain overflowed with ideas and insights itching to translate to fingers on keyboards. And to stop writing when my brain stopped generating, my back started aching in my chair, and my fingers cramped. My recommendation for staying “in the zone” is to identify what this zone feels like and to recognize when you enter and leave it. Make your zone real for youand ignore everyone else’s advice for maintaining high performance throughout the day. If you’re energized early morning but need a break by 10, own it. If you rev up after lunch, terrific. If your juices flow when the sun goes down, optimize the evening. Manag your time as the gift that it is. Tina Robinson, Founder and CEO, WorkJoy 5. Design Intentional Work Windows We should abandon the myth of all-day “peak performance” and replace it with what I call “designed performance windows.” Most high achievers believe that staying “in the zone” from morning to evening is a willpower and/or discipline issue. It isn’t. It is a biological and cognitive impossibility, and treating it as a goal impacts judgment. The creative and emotional processes are also affected. I work with clients to structure their day around intentional performance cycles, rather than continuous intensity. This is how the technique works in practice. With each client, we identify three separate windows: One primary high-intensity 90120 minute block used exclusively for work that requires analysis, synthesis, or decision-making. No meetings. No tasks reactive to external impulses are allowed, including meetings, emails, and SMSs. One secondary, lower-intensity window, used for either preparation or refinement/execution work that needs less focus. Deliberate recovery and low-stakes periods. These are not “breaks” in the motivational sense. They are important periods necessary to reset to consolidate insight. One senior executive was trying to maintain the same level of intensity across 1012 hour days toward the end of a particularly difficult quarter. The result was predictable, with slower, more conservative decisions, and a more burdensome management of emotions. We redesigned his schedule so that: All critical analytical work happened in the protected morning window. Meetings were clustered after that window, when relational and operational skills mattered more than analytical thinking. End-of-day work was intentionally lighter and reflective. Within weeks, decision quality improved because he worked better, rather than simply more. His best thinking happened when his mental system was capable of it. This technique rests on a simple but widely resisted idea: Long-term high performance comes from respecting natural mental fluctuation, not fighting it. It is not about staying activated at all times. It is about timing effort, accepting limits, and preserving long-term capacity. Federico Malatesta, Founder & Executive Coach, FM Transformational Coaching 6. Block Time for Top Priorities Staying in the zone requires being realistic about what you can actually achieve in a day, particularly when you’re a high-performing senior leader. It’s common to overestimate daily capacity and then feel defeated when tasks inevitably spill over. Instead of attempting to conquer a massive to-do list, clarify the top two to three priorities that would make the day a success. Here’s the critical part: realistically estimate how long each will take and deliberately block that time on your calendar. My executive clients who consistently map their highest priorities are recognized for their ability to deliver sustained, repeatable value. And remember, two to three completed priorities per workday add up fast. That’s 10 to 15 per week, 40 to 60 per month, and 500 to 700 meaningful wins per year. Kyle Elliott, Tech Career Coach & Executive Coach, CaffeinatedKyle.com 7. Integrate Brief Meditation Sessions One technique I rely on to stay in the zone and sustain high performance throughout the day is meditation, practiced consistently and intentionally integrated into my daily rhythm rather than treated as a one-time fix. To begin, I set a clear eight-week commitment. For me, the goal is not to “clear my mind,” but to strengthen focus, emotional regulation, and self-awareness. I choose a realistic structure: 10 minutes of meditation at the start of the workday and five minutes midafternoon. Framing it as a leadership practice, not a wellness add-on, helps me to stay consistent. During a demanding eight-week stretch involving overlapping deadlines and stakeholder expectations, the afternoon meditation is essential. Instead of pushing through fatigue, I used those five minutes to reset attention. As a result, late-day meetings are more focused, communication more thoughtful, and the end-of-day fatigue that previously affected my performance is mitigated. Simone Sloan, Executive Strategist, Your Choice Coach 8. Name Triggers to Regain Control The real productivity killer is not your phone or overflowing inbox. It’s the background anxiety, the tension you can’t quite put your finger on, or the boredom that comes from being stuck on a challenging problem. In the early days of my business, I was reactive to every ping and distraction. I was hopping from one priority to the next, and it seemed like no matter how disciplined I was, the overwhelm always managed to shatter my attention span. But then I learned to treat distraction as an opportunity to pilot my attention instead of treating it as an adversary. Now, whenever I have the urge to check out from whatever I’m supposed to be doing, whether it’s writing our crisis playbook or mapping out narrative threats for one of our clients, I make it a point to first pause and write down on a physical piece of paper the internal trigger or thought that makes me want to break focus. It could be, “I’m anxious about my presentation next week,” or simply, “This work is hard and challenging.” It sounds trivial, but doing so gives me control over my itch to escape. Instead of running from it, I’m now using my internal discomfort as a launch trigger to bring me back to what I should be doing right now. Confirming and tracking your internal triggers when you want to chase distractions will give you data on what exactly causes you to want to break focus so you can do something about it. If you keep a log for a week, you’ll have enough data to uncover a pattern about your attention escapes. For me, capturing that thought in that time of itch revealed to me that the best way to manage it is to reframe and treat the discomfort as a trigger to perform on the hard, high-value task I should instead be doing versus an escape to a lower-value one. Adrienne Uthe, Founder, Kronus Communications 9. Estimate Durations to Reduce Friction Managing my cognitive load and staying “in the zone” as much as possible is essential. My biggest win is a technique I call Time-Tagging, where I assign a specific duration to every item on my to-do list. I found that when a task lacks a time estimate, my brain perceives the effort required as infinite. This ambiguity creates subconscious resistance and fear. When every task has an estimated duration, like 15 minutes, I can easily scope theproject and jump in. This approach boosts the total amount of time I spend in the zone because I simply start with a task labeled 10 minutes or less. This low barrier to entry allows me to generate immediate momentum. I complete that first small win and use the dopamine hit to roll right into the next larger task. I have tracked my output on days using this method versus days I do not, and the increase in deep work is significant enough that I now do this every single day. Phil Santoro, Entrepreneur and Cofounder, Wilbur Labs
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E-Commerce
In my suburban Boston Ulta, I’m sitting with my hand in a little box. I’ve been promised that in roughly 30 minutes I’ll have nails that are shaped, buffed, and paintednot by a human, but by an AI-powered robot. It feels like an episode of The Jetsons come to life, but the truth is that the AI boom has officially entered the physical world. Most of us interact with artificial intelligence through screensGemini drafts our emails, ChatGPT summarizes our docsbut behind the scenes, engineers are racing to give AI hands and feet. Robots already pack boxes in warehouses and make guacamole in fast-food kitchens. Soon, they will be washing dishes, taking care of pets, and performing your manicure. Here at Ulta, the robot holding my hand was built by Boston-based startup 10Beauty. After six years of R&D and $50 million in venture funding, the company has created a machine meant to replicate the entire manicure process: polish removal, shaping, buffing, and painting. The company plans to roll the robots out to Ulta, Nordstrom, and high-end salons later this year. The manicures will be priced at $30no tipping required. [Photo: 10Beauty] But first comes the beta test. Ulta has agreed to pilot the machines in select stores, where customers can get free manicures while 10Beauty gathers real-world data. Human nail techs stand by to fix mistakes, ensuring customers still leave with salon-worthy nails. Weve done more than a thousand manicures on real people already, says Justin Effron, 10Beautys cofounder. Thats how we’ll figure out exactly what works and what doesnt. Were cocreating this with customers. The Benefits of Being an Early Adopter Kecia Steelman, Ultas CEO, says the retailer is now on a mission to weave AI into nearly every corner of the businessfrom experimenting with agents like ChatGPT to fine-tuning its inventory management. “None of us have figured it out,” she says. “But youve got to start moving in that direction and pivot as things continue to change. Thats whats going to separate strong retailers in the future.” The robot manicures are an example of one such pivot. The 10Beauty team reached out to Ulta, whose leadership team was intrigued by the way the technology fuses AI with a service that customers are asking for. The nail salon industry is expected to hit $14 billion by the end of this year. Ulta already differentiates itself from rivals like Sephora by offering in-store beauty services, often in suburban strip malls. But rising labor costs and finding skilled nail technicians can make it challenging to meet the demand. [Photo: 10Beauty] Ulta has agreed to buy hundreds of 10Beauty’s machines when they officially launch this summer. But it has also taken the bold move of allowing 10Beauty to test the service with customers. “This pilot allows us to learn alongside [10Beauty], gathering real guest feedback, understanding how the technology performs in a retail environment, says Amiee Bayer-Thomas, Ulta’s chief retail officer. “We can shape what the future of tech-enabled beauty services could look like.” The Robot Manicurist I’m among the group of early testers. The robot works on one hand at a timeintentionally. In focus groups, 10Beauty found that users wanted to be able to continue using their phone with their other hand. I slide my left hand into the machine and try not to move as seven cameras scan my fingers, creating a precise 3D map of each nail. Then a robotic arm gets to work, tackling one finger at a time using tools far smaller and more precise than what a human would use. [Photo: 10Beauty] Instead of cotton pads, 10Beauty designed a star-shaped sponge that glides over the nail to remove polish. Instead of clippers, it uses a crystal file to shape the nail safely. And rather than cutting cuticles, it applies a softening serum and gently pushes them back with a brush. That part, Ill admit, didnt quite work. The brush barely touched my cuticles at all. Then came the moment of truth: painting. A thin brush applied delicate layers of polish to each nail. This is where things went sideways. Some nails had bare gaps along the edges; others overshot the mark, leaving polish on my skin. Effron wasnt surprised. Were working on a software update that should fix this, he says. And even after launch, well keep improving it based on how customers use it. A human nail tech quickly stepped in, cleaned up the polish, and applied a top coat. From start to finishincluding dryingthe whole process took under 40 minutes. Eventually, Effron says, the goal is to do both hands in about 20 minutes. The Future of AI Is Physical Walking out, it was clear the robot still isnt as good as a human manicuristyet. But the appeal was obvious. The machines dont depend on skilled labor, which means manicures could become cheaper, faster, and available 24/7. You could imagine them popping up in airports, hotels, coffee shopsor, one day, even your own bathroom. Ulta believes that by being an early adopter, it might be able to influence how these manicure robots evolve. “We saw this as an opportunity to bring something entirely new into the store experience,” says Bayer-Thomas. “Piloting early allows us to help shape the experience, ensure it meets our guests expectations, and continue delivering newness and excitement.” Effron argues that the beauty industry is full of tasksblow-drying hair, dyeing roots, plucking browsthat could be easier with machines. The challenge, of course, is proximity to the human body. Beauty requires precision and gentleness. My manicure made that tension obvious: The robot was so careful with my cuticles that it barely touched them at all. Still, 10Beauty is betting that rapid improvements in software, sensors, and robotics will soon close that gap. If my slightly imperfect robot manicure is any indication, the future of beauty isnt flawless yetbut its already here, humming quietly inside a little white box at Ulta.
Category:
E-Commerce
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