Laser, 30, is a licensed clinical social worker in Chicago who runs his own center Special training, created TikTok less than a month ago to post videos about the kinds of things he focuses on with his customers: self-esteem, body image, anxiety. Then, last week, he got a comment on one of his videos.

“At that moment, my blood was hot,” Laser told BuzzFeed News.

Laser, who now has nearly 31,000 followers on the app, said he never thought of a different reading of the words when he did the math, and in his job he sees the word “therapist” so often that he never thought of another interpretation.

Several commenters have pointed out that it looks like a joke in a Saturday Night Live Sitcom “Celebrity Jeopardy” featuring Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery:

“I will never put rent on my credit card,” said M, a 26-year-old in Boston. She’s been trying to pay off the credit card debt she’s had for about a year She asked that her full name not be used. “I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable—or, to be honest, trust myself—to try this tactic.” She lives paycheck to paycheck and fears she will forget to pay her card for a month or fail to set aside that portion of her paycheck if her rent goes to a credit card. “It looks like a rabbit hole waiting for me to fall into,” M said.

“Credit card companies make money off people who don’t pay their bills on time,” said Lamarre. “Credit card people, like me and my friends, are at least getting rewards for using the cards responsibly. … It’s not something that I control, that people aren’t responsible for, but I try to tell people how to work within the system and not be a victim of it.” .

the Average credit card balance Among Gen Z consumers last year it was $2,854, according to Experian. LendingTree’s Channel predicts that Gen Z consumers’ credit card use will increase as they age, as did millennial consumers. Many of them are still not fully financially independent. When the pause on student loan payments is lifted, and more Gen Z adults are coming out restrictions Which makes it difficult for people under the age of 21 to get a credit card, their dependence on this type of debt is likely to rise.

As credit card companies develop new incentives, the channel has encouraged caution. “I certainly wouldn’t invite Gen Z, or anyone else, to come out and say, ‘Gee whiz, I have to start making my car payments with my credit card now, because I’m going to get more points,’” the channel said. For most people.” ●

Jesse Thorne has built a huge audience with his Maximum Fun podcast. His NPR interview show, “Bullseye With Jesse Thorn,” has had guests including Jonathan Majors, Tom Hanks, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

But over the past few years, he said, running the business at MacArthur Park has driven him to the breaking point. The father of three struggled to balance his work life with his home life. He suffered from split migraines.

“You have to take a step back from this,” his wife, Teresa, told him at the dining room table in 2018. “I’m afraid you will die.”

Then things got worse. Pandemic struck. The podcast industry has been consolidated by big tech companies like Amazon and Amazon.com Spotify Startups picked up In the field of audio and advertising technology.

Amidst personal and industrial turmoil, Thorne was faced with a choice: maintaining the status quo, which was unsustainable; Or sell a company that was not doing well.

“I’ve been trying to circle around how I can undo this stuff without selling out my fellow performers or friends,” said Thorne, 41.

Instead, he chose a third option: making the company an employee-owned operation.

On Monday, Thorne — who has co-owned Maximum Fun with his wife since founding it in 2011 — announced that his company would become a labor co-op, a business model new to the podcasting industry but one that has been tried by several small businesses including bakeries and pizzerias. The company said the ownership would be shared equally by at least 16 people, including Thorne.

Thorne said the process of turning Maximum Fun into a co-op took about a year and a half.

Thorne said he would receive an advance and a percentage of the company’s revenue for a limited number of years. The company obtains a loan from the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.

Employees choose to become owners in the co-op by paying hundreds of dollars, which go into a trust, which they take back with interest when they leave the company. Workers’ owners are also entitled to vote on the company’s board of directors. The new board oversees the management structure, which is expected to remain the same, Thorne said.

Thorne declined to divulge more specific details about the financial terms of the deal, or how much money he would get from the purchase. He said the amount he gets is much less than he would have if he sold it to another company.

Several companies have expressed interest in buying Maximum Fun—a large radio company, mid-sized media company and television company—but Thorn declined to be named.

Selling would have presented its own problems. Thorne was worried about layoffs in areas such as bookkeeping under new ownership.

Eventually, Thorne began considering alternatives, which led him to the Oakland-based Equity Project, a non-profit organization that helps companies transition to employee ownership.

“Ultimately, this is the way to do it that won’t ruin everything and allow the company to be owned and operated by people who I trust are doing it for the same reasons I was,” Thorne said.

Other businesses also operated as worker-owned co-ops include Atwater Village Proof Bakeries. In recent years, companies, including Great Lakes Brewing Co. and Taylor Guitars, transferring ownership to workers through what is known as an employee stock ownership plan.

“The advantages of employee ownership is that you can elicit greater dedication from the company’s employees,” said Alec Levinson, senior research fellow at the USC Marshall School of Business’ Center for Effective Organizations. “They really feel like it’s theirs.”

Thorne said he never imagined how big his company would grow.

He started podcasting as a college student and turned to the format after he couldn’t find traditional media jobs. Thorne later became the youngest national host on public radio when his show, “The Sound of Young America”, was syndicated by Public Radio International. The name of the show was changed to “Bullseye” in 2012, and it has been distributed by NPR since 2013.

On “Bullseye With Jesse Thorn”, Thorn interviews innovators and cultural icons including actor Eugene Levy, rap group the Little Brothers, and music artist “Werd Al” Yankovic. The tone of the interviews is conversational and personal, like the Millennium version of “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross.

In the early days of his company, Thorne said he was focused solely on helping pay the rent. Today, Maximum Fun generates millions of dollars in revenue each year, with 37 shows and 24 employees. Financial details have not been disclosed.

About 70% of the company’s revenue comes from membership, Thorne said, with the remaining amount coming from advertising and live events.

He said the company is profitable. But it never aspired to dominate the podcast space or put exclusive programming behind a paywall. The podcasts associated with Maximum Fun are owned by the creator and are widely available on multiple platforms. “Bullseye” is broadcast on public radio stations including WNYC in New York and WBEZ in Chicago.

“We weren’t in this to grab market share, build and scale and lose money until we dominated our opponents,” Thorne said.

The podcast industry has gone through a head-turning cycle over the past few years.

For example, in 2019 Spotify announced its plans to Increase footprint into podcasting through acquisitions, fundamentally changing a landscape that was previously a fragmented market with many independent podcast production companies. Over the years, Spotify has bought podcast studios parrot And ringer And signed deals with high-profile celebrities including the company of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Archewelto.

But this year, Spotify has been under pressure to cut costs. In January, the CEO of Spotify announced that the company would do so layoffs 6% of its staff and CEO Dawn Ostroff, one of the main architects of podcast strategy, was departing.

“There was a lot of speculative money in podcasting and it sort of led like hiccups in the ad market, to all these layoffs,” Thorne said.

Now, there are ramifications for the many companies that have poured resources into the space.

“There was just no way all these people who knew nothing about audio production, spending all that money so big, could sustain their operation,” Thorne said. “They were all mainly gamblers. They were all spending other people’s money hoping to get lucky.”

Despite the changes, Thorne said he believes the podcast audience continues to grow and Maximum Fun is in a good position. Even in today’s market, he said, there are small to mid-sized TV production companies that are thriving, and his company continues to produce great value content.

“Ultimately, we were making something that was intended to be really valuable to the people who consume it, and if we did that, there are a lot of ways we could make money,” Thorne said. “It has to be a certain number of people, but it doesn’t have to be an infinite number of people.”