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Because | Fortune

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Paris Hilton, who reigned over the 2000s with an iron fist, or rather, a small chihuahua, welcomes back the Y2K resurgence with Motorola's latest Razr.

Paris Hilton says Gen Z loves flip phones ‘because they love things that are iconic’

Tech

I am so excited to be here tonight. It is 20th anniversary of the Razor phone. And tonight we're announcing the new Motorola Family of Razors and I love this phone. It is so iconic. So it's just special to be here tonight. I'm gonna be T Jing and it's gonna be so much fun. I've been a fan of the Motorola Razor for 20 years. I remember when I first got it. I was so excited because it was pink and I just thought it was the perfect accessory. So now I'm so excited that they are launching it again. It's so nostalgic. I love it. It's like flip phones. It's so cute. It looks like a little compact. You can take selfies, you can text this way. It's easily fits in your purse. I just think it's amazing. I think that flip phones are making a comeback right now because people want to flip the script, do something different. It's nostalgic. It's iconic and it's Motorola. I feel like Gen Z loves flip phones because they love things that are iconic. I invented the selfie and I love the new Motorola Razr because it is the perfect phone to take the perfect selfie with loves it. To me, success is about doing what you love and using what you have to make a difference in others lives and about spreading love and kindness and being an inspiration to others. The best business advice that I ever got was to make sure to surround myself with a team that I could trust and I'm so proud of my team at 1111 media because we're like a family and everybody just loves and supports each other. And it's such an amazing environment to work in and it just makes everyday feel, not like work because we're always having a great time. I'm so excited for everything that's happening and just been amazing. All the exciting things that I've been a part of and Nicole and I start shooting this Friday. So I cannot wait. It's gonna be so iconic and tonight is going to be a blast because we are celebrating this icon right here.

Jim Rowley has spent over a decade at the helm of gym chain Crunch Fitness, which operates over 400 locations. Rowley maintains that the trappings of modern work—work-life balance, life hacks, corner-cutting—are illusions. He works on nights and weekends, and he tracks the granular details, because he insists that hard work doesn’t come to those who aren’t serious. 

Crunch Fitness' CEO is a Marine vet with a rock-solid resolve who believes work-life balance is a myth

Features

Crunch Fitness' CEO is a Marine vet who believes work-life balance is a myth

Jim Rowley has spent over a decade at the helm of gym chain Crunch Fitness, which operates over 400 locations. He also believe work-life balance "is for somebody who's not committed."

I don't know that there's ever preparation to become a chief executive officer. But along the way you find different skill sets. And to be honest with you, most of those skill sets I learned in the Marine Corps. It's some of the best training in the world because you're really working with their physical, you're working with their mental, but you're working with their belief and a shared sense that we're here to really help each other. If you can take some of those things and transfer that into business, it works. My name is Jim Rowley. I'm 57 years old and I am the Chief Executive Officer of Crunch Fitness. I generally wake up at 630 in the morning and I try to reflect a little bit on either the day ahead or just be somewhat grateful. Right? For, for the opportunity. It's not lost on me that I get to lead this organization. Like I don't have to lead this organization. I get to because my partners, my, my team, uh my investors, trust me with that. It's not lost on me. I take a lot of responsibility with that. So I want to show some gratitude in the morning after I use the bathroom and so forth, I will go turn on Fox business. I want to see how the markets are doing. I'm an investor. I always have one cup of coffee in the morning. I'm on email by 7 a.m. So I'm I'm checking my email because I live on the west coast and my home office is on the east coast. It's already 10 o'clock to them. So I'm usually, I've got quite a few emails to catch up on and then usually by 9 a.m. I'm in meetings the rest of the day. I zoom a lot. I do work from home. Yeah, I have an office in New York City. So I come here every six weeks for a week and, uh, but I work from home the rest of the time or I get, or I get out to my gym. So I'll go to Texas, I'll go to Florida. We've got gyms in California that I drive to. I can be there in three hours from 9 to 1230. It's usually zoom after zoom after zoom at 1230 on Mondays. I change into my T shirt and my shorts and I had to Pilate, which is like a five minute drive. It's also, it's the greatest blessing in the world because I've been married for almost 30 years. We met as teenagers. So, in the middle of the day it gives me great joy to take a Pilates class with my wife and then I'll come back and then I'll shower and then I'll eat protein. Generally a protein shake, some chicken, some tuna salad, whatever it might be. I don't eat a lot of breakfast in the morning anymore. I follow kind of a modified, uh, low carb diet. I wouldn't say it's keto. But I try, I feel like I do better with less carbohydrates. But I also know that when you're training, you need carbohydrates, you need macronutrients, you have to have protein fat and carbs. But I am a uh protein aholic like II, I really, I try to get, I weigh £230. So I try to get plus 200 g of protein a day. And sometimes that's like I'm just shoving eggs down at the end of the day. I love cheat days because it looks like a cheeseburger and I love cheeseburgers. I'm not a massive like cake pie, cupcakes, candy person. That's not a big deal for me. Like if I'm going to cheat, it's going to be, you know, a smash burger or a cheeseburger or whatever it might be. That's joyous for me. And then the rest of the day from 215 is when my assistant starts booking again. So from 215 till 536 o'clock, um I'll continue on and then I'll take a break. Usually go for a walk. We live right by Lake Tahoe. So I get joy in going down to the lake and, and, uh, kind of having sat in an office all day. It's good to get outside and breathe some fresh air. We eat dinner somewhere around 7 p.m. And then I'm back on email from usually eight pm till 9915. Before I go to bed. I usually catch a little bit of sports or the news. Uh, I try to read as much as I can. I, I mostly find I'm reading on the weekends, not work days. I still work. Iii I do, I'll do emails till 11 o'clock at night. My mind continues like even when I'm in shutdown mode or trying to be more passive. Look, I love business. I love it. It fuels me. It's not my entirety. My family is like my world and I love fitness and I love exercise, the team building and winning, man. I just, it just, it fills me, it fills my cup to be honest with you. So I'm, I'm, I'm relatively consumed by it, to be honest with you. So, for fun in my free time, I'm an avid snow skier, not a snowboarder. I'm a snow skier. Keeping it old school during the summer. We jet ski, we wake board, we wake surf. We're out on our boat as much as we can on the weekends. And, uh, if I have a light day, my wife and I will sneak out on Lake Tahoe and go, go for a jet ski ride when nobody's out on the lake during the week.

Jeff Harmening says General Mills had to raise prices for popular brands like Cheerios, but consumers are still buying because "food at home is a really good value".

General Mills CEOs says "consumers are feeling the pinch"

Leadership

Jeff Harmening says General Mills had to raise prices, but consumers are still buying because "food at home is a really good value".

Jeff. So good to see you again to talk about general mills and let's begin by talking about food prices, everybody is complaining about their grocery bills and the latest reports do confirm that prices are high up 13% over the past 12 months. So far, people are still buying your cheerios and Pillsbury baking goods, snacks and a lot more from General Mills. Tell us why consumers are still buying General Mills products and food products at home because they represent a great value. And even though the costs have gone up because inflation has gone up about 14 to 15% for us. Um This year consumers are shifting their habits two at home eating from away from home eating and the reason they're making that shift of food at home is that it really costs a lot less than eating out. And so when economic times get difficult as consumers are feeling the pinch right now and they really are feeling the pinch. What we saw during the great recession about a decade ago was that the same habit Of consumers shifting their spending from away from home and eating at home eating. It took place in the Great Recession as well, because food at home is a really good value, but you have raised prices right? We have increased prices because our costs have gone up by 14-15%. And so we've raised prices, we've raised prices less than our costs have gone up because we've had productivity gains and and we know that consumers are feeling pinched right now. And so the first thing we always try to do is become more efficient ourselves, but when we see record inflation, which we are right now in our cost, um the prices, the prices do go up, but it's still, even then it's still a great value for consumers to eat food at home and specifically general mills brands than it is eating out well as you're looking for value, you know, a lot of people are talking about this so called shrink inflation where the package is smaller of, let's say cheerios, but the price is the same. What do you say to that? You know, shrink inflation gets a lot of media headlines, but it's not something we spend a tremendous amount of time with for us, the you know, when people talk about string inflation at the end of the context, we're trying to trick consumers somehow and that's absolutely not the case, consumers are very smart and so when, when we want to make sure that we offer them real value. So for example, um you know when people are living paycheck to paycheck, sometimes they want a smaller box of cereal, if if they can only afford that. Other times they may have three teenagers at home, they need a big box for the price per hour. They may shop at different locations, they may shop with coupons. And so it's really incumbent upon us to add to add value in the best way we can and consumers define for themselves what makes value for their family and that's different from household to household. You recently told investors that you expect strong revenues and earnings going into 2023 and the chances are that inflation will contain to rise. So I'm guessing that you are going to continue raising crisis by, how much can you quantify? We did say that we're going to see inflation throughout this throughout our fiscal year was started in May, but we also told investors that most of the pricing that we would need to accomplish what we needed to this year was already in the marketplace or announced retailers. And so it's not necessarily true that prices will keep going up from here. It really depends on the landscape itself. But you know, as I mentioned, we've seen 14 to 15% in inflation and our prices have gone up, but even then, not as much as inflation has gone up well, you know, as you know, there are many forecasts that were either in a recession in the US or there's a risk of a recession over the next 12 months, you've been through many of the These down cycles in your, in your career. How do you see this one playing out right. I've been, I've been in the food business for more than 28 years now and you know, a couple of things I will tell you first is that whether we're in a technical recession or not. You know, consumers are feeling stretched and I think that's going to continue. One of the things I can also tell you is that no matter what one of the lessons of the last few years, if you don't know exactly what's around the corner. But for general mills we've been able to pivot quickly, whether it's a pandemic or George Floyd's murder or whether it's war in Ukraine, we've been able to pivot quickly and I'm confident as a company will continue to do that no matter what the economic cycle ahead of us, can you still grow general Mills even in a slowing economy? You know, we we can and we were we were even growing general mills before the pandemic yet. But one of the things I'm most proud of is over the last few years we've become a better company and none of it had to do with the pandemic or inflation or or covid what, what it really had to do with is we've we've made significant changes over the course of the last few years we've changed our portfolio, We've had a blue buffalo pet food. We we have divested things like you play in europe and dough in europe and hamburger helper here in the U. S. We have changed our organizational structure to become a lot more lean and we've invested in data and technology and and investments in consumer marketing, they're going to help us go forward. So we're we're highly confident that an environment, post covid post war, post recession General Mills will be a stronger company that was coming in is because we've made a lot of significant changes along the way. Well, Jeff you've come up with some very innovative and successful strategies in dealing with these things that you're talking about, soaring prices for ingredients. The scarcity of ingredients tell our view how you reformulated the recipes of one of your very popular snacks to Tina's Pizza Roll. It was a very successful change that you made. It has been successful and Latinos, Pizza Rolls, one of General Mills, $9 billion brands. And and we've kept it on store shelves because we feel like we owe that to consumers. But it hasn't been easy. In fact, there are a couple of ingredients we haven't been able to get for Latinos and as a result we reformulated pizza rolls and pizza about 25 times over the last year. Just in an effort to keep it on shelf. But also make sure we maintain the quality of those products that consumers are expecting. And I'm happy to say that even given all those changes, the business continues to grow. In fact, we're going to invest about $100 million in our manufacturing facility in Ohio to to expand the capacity of that business. But it's a great testimony to the, to the engagement and working skills people of general Mills and our consumers have benefited as a result. What are some of the lessons that you learned from that whole experience and all of the reinvention. One of the things we we've really learned is that the engagement of our employees is key because it takes a team of people coming together to make things like that happen, diversifying our supply change is becoming increasingly important and just the ability and willingness to pivot. We've been a great company for 100 and 55 years, but before the pandemic, probably no one considered us to be very fast. Now. We're both fast and I still think we're pretty good company after 100 and 55 years and we've learned the value have been able to change quickly. So what do you think has been behind the success of General Mills over all of these years? I think we've been successful because we've been willing to change, Not because we've resisted it and that's important for a company that has been around since 1866. We've changed our portfolio, added brands like blue buffalo and divested businesses like you play. We've changed our organizational structure become faster. We have invested in data and technology, but also consumer marketing to make our brands more and more relevant. And those things are important because we talked about all the changes that have happened pandemics and wars and social unrest and now, you know inflation, we've been successful through all that and we think we'll be successful after that, not because we resisted change, but on the opposite, we've actually leaned into change. And those are the kind of things that kind of spanned the arc of time and make a company successful no matter what the current situation they find themselves in.

You're having trouble falling asleep and reach for the tried-and-true trick — melatonin. But is melatonin healthy because it's natural? Sleep scientist Dr. Rebecca Robbins explains the potential risks and benefits of melatonin, and offers alternatives for people struggling with sleep.

Fact or Fiction: Is melatonin safe because it's natural?

Health

Is melatonin healthy because it's natural? Sleep scientist Dr. Rebecca Robbins explains the potential risks and benefits of melatonin.

Is melatonin safe because it's natural?

Dr. Rebecca Robbins of Harvard Medical School explains.

is melatonin safe because it's natural melatonin tablets are increasingly widely used in our society research published in the journal of the American Medical Association this year showed that melatonin use increased more than fourfold in the past decade. One of the things with melatonin is that the patter and the prevalence of use of melatonin, our society has outpaced our ability scientifically to understand its implications. Melatonin is a hormone that's secreted in the brain in a tiny region called the super aqui asthmatic nucleus and simply the presence of darkness around us or absence of light allows for the secretion of melatonin. We also refer to the substance in the brain as the dracula hormone as it is associated with our sense of sleepiness and ability to fall asleep. This is what we call an endogenous process where melatonin is secreted within the brain. Melatonin is also available widely in tablet form and this form of melatonin is something called exogenous melatonin. It's a form of melatonin that is exterior to the brain and to the body. What we're seeing is shelves are ripe with products that have higher levels of melatonin doses 15 20 mg gummies tablets, et cetera. The problem is we really don't know the consequences of these higher levels of melatonin in humans. So we strongly recommend keeping an eye on dosage and keeping the levels as low as possible. One of the other things about melatonin tablets is it's an industry that's widely unregulated. And so unfortunately in laboratory studies when we compare the melatonin that's on the label of a tablet with the actual components of those tablets, we see that those two things are very different. The amount of milligrams that are shown on the label and the amount of melatonin that's present in the tablet. The risks when it comes to melatonin are still relatively unknown. But generally what we do recommend is to always talk to your health care provider. They will be the best source of information as to whether or not melatonin is a good fit for you. Now, melatonin is a substance that does have antioxidant and anti inflammatory properties. Those have been demonstrated in the scientific literature and shed light on the importance of this vital hormone. What we do know that in small doses and we're talking 12, maybe five mg. These smaller do have been shown to be effective in helping aid our transition to a new time zone, which is fundamentally a question about our circadian rhythms. The use of melatonin has been shown to be effective in treating circadian rhythm sleep disorders. These are individuals who struggle to fall asleep because there's a mismatch between their desired sleep wake times and their internal biological clock times. Now, small doses have been shown in the short term to help those individuals better match those external and internal times. It's important to realize that our sleep is really influenced by things that happened over the course of our day and amidst our COVID-19 pandemic and all of the crazy events over the past few years, we've seen an increase in sleep difficulties and those difficulties could be broadly to Find as difficulty falling asleep or difficulty falling back asleep after you wake up interrupting sleep interestingly it takes even the well rested person about 15 or 20 minutes to fall asleep. Now it's completely normal for all of us to experience a little difficulty falling asleep from time to time. So if you find yourself tossing and turning before bedtime taking longer than 30 or 40 minutes to fall asleep, get out of bed ideally keep a notepad in your bedroom, slip out of bed and write down on that note pad, anything that's going on in your mind, other strategies that can help us fall asleep faster are reserving the time before bed for relaxing and soothing activities and really cultivating a different mindset before bed of you know this is time for me to rest and repair and ease into sleep. There are other natural homeopathic remedies when it comes to sleep. The first are herbal teas. There's also evidence that magnesium salt baths are soothing and relaxing and can be part of a healthy sleep routine. Melatonin importantly is not a sleep drug, it is not going to put you right to sleep. Whereas the pharmacological sleep intervention has a very different set of outcomes and use cases the next time someone tells you the melatonin is safe because it's natural. Remember that that is fiction

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