🏡 Do your home work

Plus: How egg companies lie to us, a polarizing marathon medal, a marketing faux pas, and more. View Online The Webby Awards, AKA the online Oscars, are an annual celebration of the internet's finest, such as… us?! The Hustle is nominated for top business and tech newsletter, but we can't bring home the hardware without your vote. If you're so inclined, please do that right here. You'll need to enter your email address to vote, so keep that old Yahoo account you only use for junk emails handy. In today's email: WFH levels up: Home design that works for you. Eggs: About those "cage-free" cartons you're paying extra for… Maybe don't? Weird patents: The perfect ice cream cone for lazy customers. Around the web: Find lost Myspace Music songs, get entranced by Waffle House, and more. 👇 Listen: Robots are making fast food. Are you eating it? The Big Idea Working from home — only better The newest trend in interior design might work for you. 2024-04-04T00:00:00Z Sara Friedman When pandemic lockdowns began in 2020, employees logged in to work from their beds, couches, and dining room tables. Now, those who still work remotely have upgraded to standing desks and ergonomic chairs, but some have ascended to an even higher level of WFH: interior design built specifically for work. It makes sense given that, in 2023, 40% of US employees still worked remotely and ~25% of workdays were completed outside of the office, per The Wall Street Journal. Plus, home modifications can make working easier: Flexible rooms and features allow spaces to switch between office and home. Think: outdoor patios with strong WiFi, home theaters with soundproof walls and large screens that could double as meeting rooms, or Dutch doors to connect spaces. With the time saved on a commute, remote workers are looking to fit more wellness into their workdays using tech like sun-tracking skylights, WiFi-enabled meditation gardens, and air purification systems. Home and interior design is catering to Zoom calls by curating work-appropriate backgrounds — even murals — and camera-ready lighting. Furniture is also playing a big role, as consumers reach for pieces that are both functional and flexible. Brands are already replacing traditional office furniture with more homey, aesthetic versions that retain necessities like cable management and storage. And just because you're home… … doesn't mean you're alone. Residential coworking is becoming an increasingly popular option for remote teams — whether it's a media room or detached garage in a home, or the common area of an apartment building. The trend is likely to stay put: Offices were mentioned in 11.5% of all Zillow listings in February 2023, up 4.5% YoY, per Business Insider, and listings that mention a home office can sell for 1.6% above asking price and six days faster than those without. So, in the future, forget about monsters under the bed — you'll need to check for board members in your basement. Free Resource The 2-week plan to unplug from tech Is it time to revise your relationship with screen time? If the answer is a humblesome "yes," take the jump with hundreds of hustlers. Here's a sensible two-week itinerary for getting back to balance and bliss. Detox your digital palate: 14-day planner + ideas for daily growth For journaling, reflecting, and manifesting peace With many links to recommended apps, tools, and blogs Your boss won't blame you for banning any blue lights after 6pm. They get it. Reset → TRENDING "This isn't a turkey trot" — the wise words spoken by one Boston Marathon runner to express disappointment over the new medal design. It's the first time that the marathon is displaying a sponsor logo — Bank of America for the 2024 race — on the medal itself, much to the dismay of this year's runners. SNIPPETS Disney leadership scored a decisive win in its bruising battle against activist investors. CEO Bob Iger's preferred board will stay in place while billionaire Nelson Peltz, who spent ~$25m campaigning for board seats, got less than one-third of the vote. Elon Musk's X has a new head of safety for the third time in less than two years. Kylie McRoberts was promoted to lead the company's global safety team, almost a year after its previous executive lasted just seven months. Amazon is calling it quits on its Just Walk Out technology and removing it from Amazon Fresh stores. The company will replace the tech with smart carts that track spending in real time and still allow customers to skip the checkout line. Speaking of Amazon… Jeff Bezos just joined the $200B club. The founder, who is worth $85B more than he was one year ago, is the only American with a net worth surpassing that milestone. Let's make it three in a row: Amazon also laid off hundreds of AWS employees. Its cloud computing division remains massively lucrative, though sales have slowed in recent quarters. Facebook's got a new full-screen video player that will default to showing videos vertically. Gotta give them credit: It's a great idea, one someone else really should've thought of before. Costco is rolling out a weight loss program with health care marketplace Sesame. The three-month program — which includes a video consultation, ongoing support, and, if needed, a GLP-1 drug prescription — costs $179 for US members, not including the cost of the medicine. Dynamic pricing is coming for your suitcase. JetBlue is rolling out baggage pricing that ranges from $35 to $50, taking into account peak and off-peak travel dates and other factors. Chipotle gave out $1m+ worth of burrito coupons — acquired through an interactive game in which customers cracked open a virtual "burrito vault" — to celebrate today's National Burrito Day. (Happy NBD to all who celebrate.) Don't miss this... Working on marketing alignment? How about pointing South by Southwest? If your 2024 plan includes live events, check out these tips from SXSW co-president Hugh Forrest. A practical yolk Paying top dollar for eggs? They may not be all they're cracked up to be Cage-free. Free-range. Hormone-free. Pasture-raised. Natural. Organic. It's gotten more and more challenging to keep track of what all the egg cartons at the supermarket even mean. Consumers want to feel like the chickens producing their eggs have been humanely raised, and they're willing to shell out cash to anyone who can tell them that's the case. But here's the thing: Some companies are simply getting better at carefully wording things on their packaging to make it seem like their chickens are living better lives. So, which labels should you look for? And which labels are just clever marketing designed to trick you into paying more for your eggs? 🐔 What's the catch? → FIT THE BILL There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today's billion-dollar brand? Clue 1: Its eponymous brand's first language was Dutch, but now its services can be accessed in 42 other languages, enabling its mission statement: "Make it easier for everyone to experience the world." Clue 2: If you ever trademark a website name like [insert word here].com in the US, you've got this company to thank — it won a 2020 Supreme Court case that allowed online businesses to lay partial claim to generic words. Clue 3: This holding company brought together several brands that were made for each other, like Priceline, Kayak, Agoda, and its namesake site. We'd tell those brands to all get a room, but they'd turn around and say they already have 28m+ of them. 👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇 Weird Patents Cone on the go: Licking an ice cream cone can get exhausting. But if you want a frozen treat without all the effort, inventor Richard Hartman from Washington patented a motorized ice cream cone in 1999 that does the heavy licking for you. The "novelty amusement eating receptacle for supporting, rotating, and sculpting a portion of ice cream" is meant for "rotationally feeding its contents against a person's outstretched tongue." Necessity really is the mother of invention. AROUND THE WEB ⚾ On this day: In 1974, Hank Aaron finally tied Babe Ruth's record with his 714th home run. Throughout his career, he hit 755 total. 🎼 That's cool: A music player that contains 490k+ lost Myspace Music songs. 🎧 Marketing Against the Grain: Kipp and Kieran dissect the marketing faux pas that could spell disaster for even titans like Starbucks. 🧇 That's interesting: This Waffle House training video is oddly mesmerizing. 🐸 Aww: Everything you needed to know about rain frogs. SHARE THE HUSTLE Hey. Don't keep us a secret. Refer just 3 people and we'll send Hustle essentials as a thank you. Share this custom referral link: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Your referral count: 0 Today's Fit the Bill answer is Booking Holdings, AKA Booking.com (Market cap: $123.84B) Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Sara Friedman. Editing by: Ben "Can come up with Webby nicknames all day — the E-mmys? Compulitzer Prize?" Berkley. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. PODCAST JOBS CONTACT US The Hustle, 2 Canal Park, Cambridge, MA 02141, US. Never want to hear from us again? Break our hearts and unsubscribe.