Author: wildgreenquest@gmail.com

During the Pandemic Housing Boom, many publicly traded homebuilders achieved record profit margins as home prices soared and homebuyer demand ran red hot. Once the national housing demand boom fizzled out in the summer of 2022, many large homebuilders compressed their margins in order to do affordability adjustments where and when needed to maintain their sales pace.That includes giant homebuilder PulteGroup, which reported on Thursday that it compressed its Q1 2026 gross margin to 24.4%, compared with 27.5% in Q1 2025 and 24.7% in Q4 2025. While that’s still one of the stronger gross margins in the sector, it’s well…

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. In my years working in public relations, the most painful conversations I have aren’t with companies in the middle of a crisis. They’re with companies calling two weeks after one — when the damage is already baked into Google search results, employee morale has cratered and customers have already made up their minds. The pattern is almost always the same. A small problem festered for weeks or months without anyone paying attention. By the time leadership noticed, the window to contain it had closed. Here are five reputation crises I’ve seen play…

First TACO, and now NACHO. The acronyms created for a snappy way to denigrate President Trump’s actions are starting to sound like a menu.By now, Americans might be used to the idea of TACO, or “Trump always chickens out.” Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined the term in May 2025 to describe how investors could anticipate market rebounds, even as Trump announced (and took back) tariffs. The strategy was to buy into the market after a tariff announcement, with the expectation that Trump would call it off soon after.Nearly two months into the war in Iran, some might be wondering…

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. I’ve walked into boardrooms where the energy is high, the budgets are approved and the ambition is clear. Everyone is talking about AI. Very few can answer the one question that actually matters.Not “What can we build with AI?”Not “How do we keep up with competitors?”But this: What problem are we actually trying to solve, and for whom?The question sounds simple. It isn’t. It forces precision in environments that reward momentum. It shifts the conversation from excitement to accountability. And it quickly exposes whether you are building something meaningful—or simply reacting to…

Ask any C-suite leader if AI is a priority in their organization. The answer is yes.The numbers back it up. Menlo Ventures reports that companies spent $37 billion in 2025 on AI. But spending does not guarantee success, and many companies are now coming out of major rollouts with little to show for it.Adoption is low, productivity hasn’t increased, and ROI is still an idea on a slide because organizations handed AI to their IT team like it was new software to install and called it a rollout.Deploying AI is a workforce strategy that demands behavior change and a new…

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways The era of the “perfect” brand is ending. People want rawness and authenticity — they want to see the person or people behind the business. “Low-effort” marketing is the secret weapon for modern growth, so put down the professional lighting kit, pick up your phone and start showing the world the messy, honest and exciting reality of your business. Stop spending thousands of dollars on professional camera crews. You might think a big budget makes your brand look better. Actually, it might be hurting your sales. For a long time,…

Updated April 30, 2026 06:10PMIn a tiny island village in the Mediterranean, a senior man makes the 15-minute walk to the market to fill his bag with artichokes, olives, and tomatoes from the local, sprawling farms. Heavy produce slung over his shoulder, he navigates the cobblestone streets, hills, and steep stairs to his friend’s home to spend the afternoon chatting. On the way, he passes portraits of community elders on the building walls, which honor the exceptionally large population of folks in the area who’ve lived to 100 and beyond. This is life in Sardinia, Italy, which is one of…

An opportunity for more Americans to save for their retirement may be on the way. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at expanding access to retirement plans for workers whose employers don’t provide one.The order, first reported by Semafor, will direct the Treasury Department to launch TrumpIRA.gov, an online marketplace where workers without employer-provided retirement plans can select a private-sector one. Here’s what to know.How will the plan work?The new site will launch in January 2027, timed to align with the start of Saver’s Match, a federal program enacted in 2022 under President Joe Biden to match retirement…

Key Takeaways Skims chief product officer, Emma Grede, calls working from home “career suicide.” She links widespread remote work to social problems like loneliness, declining marriage rates and falling birth rates. She believes close, in-person relationships are key to a long and happy life. Emma Grede says employees are overlooking the hidden cost of working from home. The serial entrepreneur, worth a reported $405 million, is the co-founder and CEO of denim company Good American, which did $200 million in sales in 2022, and the chief product officer and founding partner of Skims, a $4 billion shapewear brand. In a…

Chipotle Mexican Grill needed to do something. In February, the fast-casual restaurant brand reported that traffic to its restaurants fell for the fourth straight quarter to end 2025, and it was projecting flat same-store sales growth for 2026. At that point, the company’s stock had dipped by about 33% over the last year. The brand needed a boost, and it just made a major move to get it. Chipotle named award-winning marketer Fernando Machado as its new chief brand officer. Machado’s last CMO role was with plant-based food company NotCo, which he joined in 2023 after two years as CMO at Activision…