You’re about to send an email. Maybe it’s to a client, a hiring manager, or a colleague you haven’t spoken to in a while. Reflexively, you start typing, “Hope you’re well.”

While you may genuinely mean it, it doesn’t give the recipient a reason to keep reading — and in some cases, it might even prompt them to skip your message entirely.

As a keynote speaker, LinkedIn Learning instructor, and bestselling author of “Unforgettable Presence,” I help professionals improve how they communicate in high-stakes moments. If your opener doesn’t stand out, the rest of your message might never get read.

Your opening isn’t filler, it’s the first impression, so you should give it as much thought as the rest of your email.

The problem isn’t that this phrase is rude — it’s just forgettable.

“Hope you’re well” has become the email equivalent of boring, autopilot small talk. It’s so common that most people are probably skimming over that line. In some cases, it can even feel impersonal or lazy, especially if you’re emailing someone you haven’t spoken to in a while.

In addition to “hope you’re well,” you should also avoid:

• Autopilot language: If your opener could be copied and pasted into 100 other emails without changing anything, it’s probably too generic.
• Abrupt asks: Jumping straight into a request — especially without a relationship — can feel transactional.
• Empty enthusiasm: “Happy Monday!” or “Hope your week is off to a great start!” often feels like filler, unless there’s a real tie-in. If you do want to use one of these, add something personal to give it weight, like: “Happy Monday! I hope you had a great weekend. I tried [X activity] for the first time and had so much fun.”

A strong opener feels human, specific, and intentional. Because whether you’re following up, making an introduction, or kicking off a project, how you start will influence what comes next.

Here are a few simple but powerful ways to move beyond “hope you’re well” and craft a message that actually gets attention and builds relationships:

1. Reference a shared touchpoint

If you’ve connected before — even briefly — use that. Reminding someone where you left off gives your message instant context.

Try this:

• “Great chatting a few months back at the [X conference or event].”
• “I appreciated your insights during yesterday’s strategy meeting.”

2. Show energy

When you can prime people to think positively using positive words and phrases, it’s a win-win for everyone. This kind of opener is especially effective when you want to feel warm and action-oriented.

Try this:

• “Looking forward to collaborating on this project, and wanted to share a quick update.”
• “I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation and am excited to share an idea with you.”

3. Acknowledge timing (when it’s relevant)

You don’t have to ignore the fact that you’re reaching out during a busy stretch or after some time has passed. But skip the default pleasantries and be more intentional.

Try this:

• “I know it’s a busy season for you; I wanted to make sure this opportunity didn’t get missed.”
• “Reaching out ahead of next month’s deadlines to make sure we’re aligned.”

4. Make it about them

This works especially well in networking or outreach emails.

Try this:

• “Congrats on the recent launch! If it’s helpful, I’d be happy to share what I thought worked really well so you can replicate it for future launches.”
• “I saw your post on [X topic] and it really stuck with me, so I wanted to say thank you.”

Lorraine K. Lee is an award-winning keynote speaker and CEO of RISE Learning Solutions. She’s also the best-selling author of “Unforgettable Presence: Get Seen, Gain Influence, and Catapult Your Career,” which was named a must-read by the Next Big Idea Club. She teaches popular courses with LinkedIn Learning and Stanford Continuing Studies. Past clients include Zoom, Cisco, LinkedIn, ASICS, McKinsey & Company, and many others.

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Five years ago, I quit my unfulfilling 9-to-5 job as a higher education administrator and began selling digital products on Etsy. 

Today, I make an average of $14,000 per month in passive income from seven income streams, including my Etsy store, my blog, real estate investments and stock appreciation. I also recently became a self-made millionaire.

It wasn’t an easy road, and I definitely had a few missteps along the way. But I learned how to find my niche, run a business and build the life I want doing what I love.

Here’s my best advice for starting a successful side hustle:

One common mistake people make is trying to juggle so many income streams that they start to lose focus. But most people I know who’ve built a profitable business didn’t start out creating their income streams all at the same time.

I’ve met many new side hustlers who start dabbling in stocks, launch a Shopify store and then look at real estate — all at the same time. This usually results in burnout, overwhelm and even debt. 

Instead, build one solid stream, master it, then move to the next. 

I started my side hustle in 2010. I made a few bucks here and there, but nothing to write home about.

It wasn’t until nine months after my launch that my Etsy store started making thousands of dollars a month and eventually allowed me to quit my full-time job. 

Success doesn’t happen in a single viral post or overnight launch. It comes from showing up, adjusting and staying in the game long enough to see your knowledge and efforts compound.

When I started learning about business, I tried to DIY everything myself. I would watch free content on YouTube and Instagram, and read books from the library. But after I bought a course about how to sell on Etsy, things started to shift. 

Looking back and knowing myself more, I think “learning the hard way” took too long. I would try to learn, struggle alone, not see any progress, then lose motivation. I didn’t want to keep learning because I wasn’t seeing any results. 

But when I invested a small amount of money into a course and a community of people working on the same thing, I was able to learn, struggle, get help and achieve small wins. My motivation would go up, and I would want to repeat the cycle. 

I’ve met many business owners who have a lot of money, but they don’t have time. It’s important to be strategic in creating the life you want. 

For example, you can sell goods at local farmers’ markets on the weekends. But before setting up that side hustle, it’s important to figure out when those markets are open and ask yourself if you’re willing to give up weekends to sell your products. 

Of course, you can hire employees to help you eventually. But that will also cut into your profits, and might not be possible in the beginning.

The most successful people I know have a growth mindset. They believe that their abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. 

Because of this foundational belief, they aren’t afraid to step into unknown territories and learn. On the other hand, people with a fixed mindset don’t believe in their ability to grow and learn, so they never try, which leaves them feeling stuck. 

Building multiple income streams and becoming a millionaire isn’t about doing everything perfectly. It’s about staying focused, learning as you go, and not giving up. 

You’ll make mistakes (I’ve made plenty), but with the right mindset, each mistake teaches you something that gets you closer to your goals. Keep going, tweak what’s not working, celebrate the wins, even the small ones, and remember: Progress beats perfection every time.

Rachel Jimenez is an entrepreneur, professor and mom of two. She has a passion for helping others achieve their personal, professional and passive income goals. She runs an Etsy store and a blog, Money Hacking Mama, where she shares financial wisdom and practical advice for women navigating their careers, businesses and life.

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Think you know what bosses are looking for? Think again.

Getting hired and promoted used to hinge on traditional leadership traits like executive presence and vision. But in today’s world, those aren’t enough. As a CEO, board member and MBA professor, my research shows that a sharper, more relevant set of criteria is rising to the top. And it’s long overdue.

At NYU’s Stern School of Business, I teach a popular class called “Becoming You.” Students start by identifying their values using a tool called The Values Bridge, then explore careers that match their aptitudes and emotional, intellectual and economic needs. Finally, and critically, they assess their leadership capacity.

I used to rely on old-school aptitude tests for that last part (think: the kind your college counselor used). But over time, I saw that those tools were built for a world that no longer exists. Today’s professionals face nonstop change, geopolitical chaos and ambiguity about, well, everything.

So I set out to identify the traits that actually matter now — and tested them through consulting projects with a dozen companies across industries. Focus groups and manager surveys refined the list. And now, I use these four traits in every hiring decision I make.

When I see all four in one person? I try to hire them on the spot.

The business environment today is fast, unforgiving and always on. Leaders need uncommon levels of physical and mental stamina — and not in short bursts, but continuously. Nerve means making fast, high-stakes decisions with incomplete or conflicting information. That takes real confidence.

It also means having the courage to deliver tough truths with empathy. People who combine candor with kindness are rare — but invaluable. Nerve is courage, clarity, speed, transparency and an unrelenting bias for action.

According to LinkedIn, professionals needed to update 25% of their skills every 18 months from 2015 to 2020. That “skill churn” is expected to hit 65% in the years ahead. So yes, adaptability has always mattered. But today, it’s mission-critical.

Elasticity isn’t just tolerating change — it’s actually enjoying reinvention. It’s a mindset that says, “Bring on the new.” I often look for what I call “irregular relationships”: friendships, mentorships or collaborations with people very different from oneself. They signal flexibility, openness and the social curiosity that underpins comfort with change.

It’s always been important to be steady at work. What’s changed is how rare it’s become. Managers tell me their best people are anxious, withdrawn or just worn out. The pace and pressure of work today are real — and intense.

That’s why managers are putting a premium on soundness: a bundle of traits that includes positivity, accountability, resilience and self-awareness. You can ask colleagues for feedback on the first three. But self-awareness? That’s the only trait on this list you can — and should — test for. If you’re job searching or feeling stalled in your career, start there.

In a world that’s always changing, your currency is your currency. In other words, how “current” you are (on trends, technology, culture and ideas) directly affects how valuable you are to your organization.

Gone are the days when you could stay informed just by talking to colleagues or skimming a few news platforms. The most successful people don’t just absorb what’s next — they share it in-house, sparking fresh thinking across teams. Wonderment is intellectual curiosity, cultural fluency, peer around corners and the proactive instinct to bring the outside in.

Wondering how you would rate on all of these traits? You can find out for free using The Career Traits Compass, which I designed to help both my MBA students — and professionals seeking career growth.

Now, obviously, every role has its own must-haves. Values matter. Skills matter. But these four traits? They’re what every leader is quietly scanning for. And if you’ve got them all, trust me: Someone is already plotting how to hire you, even if they’re not hiring.

Suzy Welch is an award-winning NYU Stern School of Business professor, acclaimed researcher, popular podcaster and three-time NYT best-selling author, most recently with ”Becoming You: A Proven Method for Crafting Your Authentic Life and Career.” A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Business School, Dr. Welch is a frequent guest of the Today Show and an op-ed contributor to the Wall Street Journal. She serves on the boards of public and private companies, and is the Director of the NYU | Stern Initiative on Purpose and Flourishing.

 Are you ready to buy a house? Take Smarter by CNBC Make It’s new online course How to Buy Your First Home. Expert instructors will help you weigh the cost of renting vs. buying, financially prepare, and confidently navigate every step of the process—from mortgage basics to closing the deal. Sign up today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $97 (+taxes and fees) through July 15, 2025.

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Daniel Goetz spent many late nights as a college senior cutting and blending fresh fruits, and freezing them into popsicles to sell to parched customers near the University of Texas at Austin.

The advertising major fell in love with Mexican ice pops, called paletas, while visiting Mexico City with his college girlfriend. Inspired, Goetz started mocking up potential brand names and doodling logos during a class in 2009. He landed on the name “GoodPop.”

Today, the Austin-based organic popsicle and ice cream bar company’s frozen desserts are sold in more than 10,000 locations across the U.S., including Costco, Walmart and Whole Foods Market. GoodPop brought in more than $63 million in gross sales in 2024, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. It’s never taken external funding, says Goetz.

GoodPop has been profitable nearly every year since its launch, with 2024 as an exception. It likely won’t be profitable in 2025 either, following the winding down of an unpopular product line, but is projected to return to profitability in 2026, says a company spokesperson.

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Goetz, still the company’s CEO, built GoodPop with extremely little experience or industry expertise. He “knew nothing” about supply chains or the consumer packaged goods market, he says, and spent years “driving a lot … running around all over Texas, making deliveries.”

He spent his first four years after graduation sleeping “rent-free” on friends’ couches around Austin so he could save money while trying to build GoodPop, he says. He cut fruit and froze 80 popsicles per hour, by hand, in a local paleteria that let him use its kitchen after hours.

“I just knew that we had this delicious pop with lower sugar, real fruit, and there was nothing like it on the market,” says Goetz, 38, adding: “Any opportunity that I could to put these products in front of Austinites, to introduce them and to see if we were on to something, I did.”

Goetz’s family has a history of entrepreneurship: His great-grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Russia over a century ago and “sold consigned ice out of a pushcart,” he says. That great-grandfather then founded a grocery supply business in Houston in 1923, which grew into an operation with multibillion-dollar annual revenue by the time Goetz’s family sold their interest in 2014.

“I’m so fortunate to grow up in a family of entrepreneurs. But, at the same time, I knew that I needed to make my own mark on this world and do it on my own,” says Goetz.

With GoodPop, he spent $3,500 — money he’d saved from a lawn-mowing business he started in middle school — on signage, a pushcart of his own and produce to make and sell his first popsicles.

He sold them for $2 apiece at local music festivals and farmer’s markets, bought more ingredients with his proceeds, and spent three weeks making 18,000 popsicles to sell at the annual Austin City Limits music festival in October 2009, he says.

Then, rain turned the festival into a “mud fest,” he says. “It [was] a cold, sloppy mess … and out of those 18,000 pops, we sold four. I thought that this was going to kickstart [the business] and change everything, and we were left with 17,996 pops that I had to figure out what to do with and [almost] no money.”

Goetz rushed the popsicles to a cold storage facility, paid $50 per month to store them and returned to school “dejected,” he says. A few months later, he cut his losses and handed them out for free at Austin’s annual SXSW festival.

After graduating college, Goetz couldn’t shake the GoodPop idea, he says. But the only remaining piece of the company was its website — so Goetz put his marketing skills to work, maximizing the site’s search engine optimization (SEO). Soon, “when you searched for organic frozen pops or organic popsicles, because none existed at that time, GoodPop was actually the No. 1 result,” he says.

A week later, a marketing agency called Manifold asked GoodPop for a price quote for 50,000 organic popsicles with custom packaging. Goetz put in a bid and won it: Manifold paid him $80,000 for the job, giving him half the money up front to cover his production costs.

“I hand-stamped every single pop stick,” says Goetz.

The second half of the payment was pure profit for Goetz, putting GoodPop back in business. Luck similarly gave GoodPop its first major retail partner: Goetz’s roommate played recreational soccer with a Whole Foods employee, who put him in touch with a representative from the grocery chain’s Southwest regional office.

Goetz brought some samples and got the representative’s approval to pitch buyers at individual Whole Foods stores. As he won buyers over — building relationships and shaking hands, he says — he spent four years sleeping on friends’ couches, staying up late to make popsicles and getting up early to deliver them to Whole Foods locations and other, smaller grocery stores by 6 a.m.

“I put 212,000 miles on my Toyota, running around all over Texas, making deliveries for years,” says Goetz, adding that the hands-on dedication often left him “completely exhausted.”

By 2014, GoodPop’s products sold well enough for Whole Foods to take over distribution for the Southwest and Rocky Mountain regions, meaning Goetz no longer had to make the deliveries himself. That year, GoodPop brought in $1.3 million in gross sales, the company says.

In 2017, Whole Foods expanded GoodPop to national distribution. The brand got into Walmart and Costco the following year.

The U.S. popsicle market was worth more than $1.3 billion in 2024, according to an estimate from Cognitive Market Research. That makes GoodPop a small player in a market dominated by packaged goods giants: Unilever, the world’s largest ice cream producer, brought in more than $9.5 billion in 2024 revenue from frozen dessert brands like Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s and the original Popsicle.

Even among plant-based, real-fruit frozen desserts, GoodPop competes with brands like Outshine, owned by a joint venture between Nestlé and French private equity firm PAI Partners, and New York-based Chloe’s, which sells low-sugar fruit pops in more than 10,000 stores nationwide, including Walmart and Wegman’s.

They all face a tough road convincing more Americans to buy lower-sugar desserts. In January, GoodPop wound down a line of low-sugar beverages — which mixed fruit juice with sparkling water — after customers said their kids didn’t think the drinks were sweet enough.

“We were not willing to compromise on any added sugar or any additional sweeteners,” says Goetz, adding: “We have some tough times ahead, as far as continuing to reset those taste buds. But it’s a worthwhile cause.”

Ultimately, Goetz’s goal from college remains roughly the same: get GoodPop’s desserts into as many new hands as possible. In February, the company landed a licensing deal with The Walt Disney Company, adding “Star Wars” and Mickey Mouse-themed products to GoodPop’s offerings — a new strategy for the company to catch shoppers’ attention.

“The future looks like doubling down on what makes our products great,” Goetz says.

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Congress will soon begin a reconciliation process for the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act — President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax reform and spending bill, which Republicans hope to bring to the President’s desk by July 4.

The bill promises continuity for taxpayers by permanently extending the cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as well as a raft of new cuts, including breaks for tipped and overtime income.

Both the House and Senate versions of the bill also include a throwback: an above-the-line deduction on charitable contributions.

The House version allows taxpayers who don’t itemize to deduct $150 ($300 for joint filers) in charitable contributions from their taxable income through 2028 — a tax rule you may remember from a similar provision of the CARES Act, which expired in 2021.

The Senate version is even more generous, with permanent deductions of up to $1,000 for single filers and $2,000 for married couples filing jointly.

“This could provide some tax savings for folks,” says Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation. “That could be something unexpected if you’re not currently deducting charitable giving.”

Most people don’t deduct charitable contributions — and it’s not because they’re not generous or don’t want a tax break. Other than under the Covid-19 relief bill, taxpayers generally have had to itemize deductions in order to get a break for charitable giving.

For most people, that doesn’t make sense. Some 9 in 10 taxpayers take the standard deduction, which in 2025 is $15,000 for singles and $30,000 for joint filers. You’d typically only itemize if the sum of your deductions would save you more money than just taking the standard deduction.

In short, the legislation currently bouncing around Congress would, at least temporarily, allow anyone who donates to charity to get a tax break — not just the mega-philanthropists among us.

Because these deductions reduce your taxable income, they’re the most beneficial for people in the highest tax brackets. A $1,000 deduction from income is effectively worth $100 to someone in the 10% tax bracket. The same deduction is worth $350 to someone in the 35% bracket.

Should some version of the provision become law, you’ll still have to follow the IRS’ rules on charitable giving. Donations must be made to qualifying charitable organizations — donations to political campaigns, crowdfunding efforts and, in the case of the proposed tax break, donor-advised funds won’t be eligible.

Before you make a donation you plan on deducting, check the IRS’ search tool to make sure the organization is tax-exempt. And be sure to get a receipt for your donation; the IRS generally requires written acknowledgement of any donation in excess of $250.

Are you ready to buy a house? Take Smarter by CNBC Make It’s new online course How to Buy Your First Home. Expert instructors will help you weigh the cost of renting vs. buying, financially prepare, and confidently navigate every step of the process—from mortgage basics to closing the deal. Sign up today and use coupon code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off $97 (+taxes and fees) through July 15, 2025.

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