Serena Williams’ “Evolution” from Tennis

Serena Williams is a GOAT and she announced this week she’s ‘evolving’ from tennis i.e. retiring. She launched Serena Ventures a while back and has now been syndicating a fund to fund projects led by women and POC. What got her started in this space?

She heard at a conference that just 2% of funding went to female founders and she literally didn’t believe the statistic at first, “There’s no way that 98 percent of that capital is going to men.” Now she’s working to change that dynamic and she’s had some great wins like MasterClass, Tonal, Noom, Impossible Foods, and more. 78 percent of her portfolio is companies started by women and people of color. And SV just made their first diversity hire – their first guy!

Serena is a fascinating person for reasons beyond her skill on the tennis court. It’ll be fun to see what impact she continues to make as she moves on from her sports career.

Grow with a Growth Mindset

On vacation last week, I finished Carol Dweck’s Mindset, a perennial best-seller since she published it in 2006. What a great book, I love this type of book that blends personal development with psychology and even ventures into the philosophical at times. The TL;DR is people can either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, the former is a belief in permanent traits and attributes success or failure to qualities one either has or doesn’t have, while the latter is when one enjoys challenges, learning, development, and believes in their potential to develop new abilities and further skills.

This HBR article from 2014 ‘How Companies Can Profit from a “Growth Mindset”‘ is a good shorter read to get you up to speed and see how a growth mindset can apply to business.

Warning: Dweck’s message is so popular that there are a lot of false growth mindsets out there now, so you have to really think about the concept and be fair when you look at yourself about which way you think when it comes to different domains.

Labor issues for businesses loom large…

21 percent of small business owners rank “Labor Quality” as a top business problem, second only to 37% choosing “High Inflation” according to the National Federation of Independent Business’s monthly survey.

25 percent of the U.S. workforce quit their job in 2021.

87 percent more employers changed their benefits in 2022 than in 2021.

45 percent of employees cited salary or employee benefits as their top reason for leaving a job.

One industry example is teaching: “70 percent of Texas teachers want to quit their jobs” according to the Texas State Teachers Association. The article specifically cites increasing health insurance premiums offsetting any pay raises over the last few years.

Amazon gets Mental

We’re keeping an eye on Amazon Care because it’s Amazon – they’re huge and if they decide to enter a market, you better pay attention. Enter Behavioral Health with Amazon Care, which is a partnership with Ginger and an optional add-on to Amazon Care’s platform (press release here). This fits into our thesis of where health plans are headed, as COVID unlocked a rapid adoption of telehealth that we think is here to stay in some form moving forward.

Learn More about Gen Z

If you’re hiring, you’ll be hiring more and more Gen Z as time goes on. So let’s get to know them beyond “OK Boomer” and TikToks. This piece form Gen Z Health is chock full of good info like:

• They are more comfortable and accepting of diverse identities, with more than 20% identifying as LGBTQ
•  80% choose to work for an employer that aligns with their personal values
• 55% of Gen Z uses their smartphone for more than five hours per day (nearly 100% own a smartphone)
• They are known as the “lonely generation” based on their high rates of reported loneliness

And some health-specific stats:

• Only 55% have a primary care physician
• Only 45% report having very good or excellent mental health
• Projected to make up 30% of the workforce by 2030

Interesting Reads from RAND

Microbiome R&D may lead to a number of therapeutic breakthroughs, but how does regulation of these products work?

South Korea recorded the lowest fertility rate in a developed nation, ever. What’s causing this? The answer includes a complicated history of family planning, along with a number of socioeconomic and political issues. But there are lessons here because most OECD countries, US included, are struggling with fertility and a rising average national age.

A falling birth rate and an aging population have implications on like, everything, so we need to pay close attention to this issue and figure out what to do about it.

Until next week! Click here to chat about anything above.

Posted by John Hansbrough in Behavioral Health, Business Strategies, Digital Health, Economy, Employee Benefits, Fertility, Generations, Health Insurance, Healthcare Innovation, Healthcare Spending, Human Resources, News, Research, Self-Funding, Telehealth