Youth 4 Youth was built by players who are currently living the journey. We're taking the doors we've walked through and holding them open for the next generation.
HousingWire's 2026 Rising Stars honor industry leaders age 40 and under who are making an impact across mortgage, real estate and homebuilding. The honorees represent a range of roles and are recognized for driving innovation, supporting their organizations and contributing to broader industry progress.
According to the Registered Agents Inc. December Business Formation Report, more than 5.9 million new businesses were formed in 2025, an 8% increase over 2024 nationwide. And sure, it's easy to point to the usual heavy hitters, states like Florida and Texas, which posted another standout year and outperformed 2024 month after month.
In places where inclusion is part of the infrastructure of their economy-supply chains, procurement processes, capital access, or business ownership-people thrive. Inclusive economies create more resilience by expanding the base of potential business owners who can build, own, innovate, and hire. They allow more opportunities for homeownership and investing in the longevity of communities. As our economy becomes increasingly stratified and volatile, we need as much resiliency as we can get.
But if you're innovating within your industry, it's a problem you should expect and prepare for because it means having to operate in two realities-the internal reality where you know the challenges in your industry and how you're going to solve them, and the external reality where nobody else has recognized the problem that needs to be solved. In a highly regulated industry like healthcare, safety, and stability create an inertia that often works against innovation.
Does the strength of relationship between marketer and agency correlate with more effective work? Using two unique and robust sets of data we have, for the first time, answered this question with an emphatic 'yes' The implications of our latest report are profound for marketers and their agencies, and arguably for any business relationship. Our analysis of winners of effectiveness awards over a 9-year period discovered that award-winning client and agency teams had better relationships than the average.
Winning a prestigious award, such as our recent Gold at The Drum Awards for PR in the Entertainment category, is always a proud moment for us as an agency. It validates our expertise, builds credibility, and sets us apart in a competitive market. We leverage awards as a key part of our marketing and business strategy in various ways. Sharing the win with clients reinforces their choice to work with us - after all, everyone wants to partner with a winner!
Traditional thought leadership is losing impact. Long reports and gated content no longer capture attention in today's zero-click world. As a result, thought leadership is entering a new phase - experiential thought leadership. Engaging formats like interactive webinars, immersive events and podcasts make ideas felt and memorable rather than just consumed. Success depends on cross-team collaboration, testing and building experiences around real audience understanding.
Start-up founders often underestimate the power of public relations, but doing so comes at a cost: at best, missed opportunities; at worst, a crisis that spirals out of control without a lifeline. PR is not a glossy "top coat" applied to a finished product or milestone. Entrepreneurs would do better to see it as a foundational tool that creates organizational wins, not just announces them.
