Business News: Railroads Merge, Prebiotic Pepsi Pops Off, Real Estate Investors Surge, and Chicago's Sports Collectors Convention Heats Up

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Corporate megastores are spending millions lobbying DC politicians on one-sided policies that send small businesses tumbling. They want to enact harmful credit card mandates that take resources away from your local credit unit and community bank. Leaving Main Street businesses with less access to credit, making it harder for your family to pay for everyday goods like gas and groceries. Tell Congress to guard your card and oppose the Durban Marshall credit card mandates. This is right about now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over 1 million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now. Marketing guidance that helps you get your business ahead or keeps you a little entertained. We try to do a little bit of both here. We want to entertain you, bring you the news, and make you think about what matters. At least it matters to us. Today, we're going to run you through eight stories that are sending ripples across retail, freight, busy drinks, influencer marketing, housing, sneakers, soda brand storytelling, and the booming world of cardboard collectibles. I won't spoil the details just yet, but think AI cash years, cost continental freight, colas that claim to help your gut, a new shortcut for brands that want culture on speed dial, investors scooping up homes. You thought you might bid on 3D printed air max prototypes. You can design from your couch, TikTok, long form video, and NFL quarterback turning sprite into social media fuel in a Chicago convention center that's becoming the hobby's Las Vegas this weekend. You ready? Let's roll. First up, Shopify's twice a year update landed with a third. More than 150 new features bundled into what they call the summer 25 edition. Is this a playlist? I don't know. The headliner is Sidekick, an AI assistant that lives in the admin dashboard and answers in 20 plus languages. Merchants are already asking it to draft product descriptions, suggest bundle discounts, surface low stock alerts, and compose email campaigns. Two beta users reported to Shopify's community forum that Sidekick caught variant mislabeling mistakes before customers saw them. And one store owner said the bot suggested moving a slow selling item into a buy one get one flow that bumped conversion three points overnight. On the physical front, the point of sale app now prints receipts three times faster and finally supports split shipments with one tap. A godsend for omnichannel shops trying to juggle inventory across a main warehouse, a pop up, and a partner 3PL. Where Shopify used to sell tools is now selling a copilot that keeps clicking even when you're sleeping. All right, switching from digital checkout counters to the little tracks that move from those packages. Let's talk railroads. While digital retailers tinker with smart assistance, America's two biggest eastern and western railroads decided the 19th century map wasn't big enough. Union Pacific will pay roughly 85 above billion dollars in cash and stock to acquire norfolk southern norfolk. You know them northern folk southern nothing confusing there is creating the first coast to coast railroad. The combined network would stretch about 50,000 route miles and touch every major American port. Executives say it'll shave two days off transcontinental shipping for commodities like grain, autos, and crude oil. Regularators are worried, of course, the surface transportation board. Ironic hasn't approved a class one deal this size in decades, but shippers are salivating. One west coast produce exporter told market watch that if the merger closes, he could get lettuce from Salinas to Boston and under 100 hours without a single handoff. Hey, we got to get those salads. Chooking firms dislike the math and union's fear job losses, but early modeling says the blended company could find nearly three billion dollars in annual savings. If your supply chain relies on rail dust off the contingency plans now, because whether the deal sales or stalls price sheets and transit times are about to shift. If coast to coast freight sounds heavy, let's lighten things up with something bubbly and surprisingly healthy. At the grocery aisle PepsiCo is betting your pay for bubbles plus benefits. Is that like friends with benefits? It's bubbles with benefits. Me Pepsi prebayotic cola. That cola ask me what is this thing? Original and cherry vanilla shelves next month with 30 calories, five grams of cane sugar, three grams of chickery root fiber, all in one 12 ounce can. Pepsi's R&D lead told reporters they rift on the company's bubbly bounce line to find a formula that supports good gut bacteria. Good grief. Without the metallic echo of artificial sweeteners. Yuck. Early samplers say it tastes like a lightly sweet craft cola with a subtly earthy note. Just wine or Pepsi. Marketing leans on TikTok challenges dubbed Better Fizz featuring side by side burp tests. Yes, really burp tests. Between traditional cola and the prebiotic version, retail buyers we spoke with think Pepsi's move, pressure's coke to expand beyond Coke zero and into functional ingredients territory. If the Fizz meets the fiber promise, we could see the Cola warship from sugar counts to symbiotics in record time. Now that you've got a chilled gut frilly cola in hand, you'll need some fresh content to sip along with it. Brands looking for fresh storytellers may not need to hunt on their own much longer. Live nation urban just launched its creator network in partnership with platform breaker. That's B-R-E-A-K-R. No we are. Unlocking a roster of 75,000 mostly black creators sorted by engagement metrics, genre and audience demos. The goal is to let a brand or an artist on tour, book micro influencers, bid tier personalities or stadium level stars with the same ease you reserve a plane ticket. Need a dance challenge seated ahead of a festival drop. The dashboard shows cost expected reach and even a content approval top line. Live nation urban's president says marketers kept asking for culture in the box. So we built one. For creators, the pitch is standardized contracts and transparent pay rates. The pain point in past brand campaigns. If you handle sponsorships, you might soon buy audience segments the way you buy ad impressions. Only this time the target is a human with a ring light. If you're finding value in these weekly business news, run downs, make sure you don't miss our Tuesday deep dive episodes. Every week we're sitting down the founders, see sweet leaders and investors who are reshaping their industries. These conversations drop right here in the same feed. So follow right about now on Apple podcasts or Spotify. Let the app do the remembering for you. Join us and get the kind of practical playbooks and insights you can't get anywhere else. Switching to housing, the Wall Street Journal reports that investors now account for about 30% of single family home purchases. The highest share in 14 years. The shocker. It isn't black stones swooping in. It's smaller players, each holding under a hundred homes, especially markets like Dallas and Tampa. High mortgage rates pushed first time buyers to the sidelines, but local investors with cash or low LTV loans are pouncing. Sometimes negotiating bulk discounts from builders eager to meet quarterly targets. One developer in Houston admitted offering a five house package at 10% below lists to clear inventory. Economists warned this micro landlord wave could tighten rental supply and keep prices high for would be owners policy makers to bait rent caps. Investors counter that they provide needed rental stock. Either way, the line between mom and pop landlord and say what you want about AI, but it's here and it's helping businesses get more done in a day. Wix's website builder is infused with AI so you can stay ahead. Create a beautiful functional website just by describing your idea. Track how your site appears in AI search results. Create custom images on demand or launch an entire campaign in a matter of minutes. Wix gives you AI wherever you need it. Try it out for yourself at wix.com. If you're shopping while working, eating, or even listening to this podcast, then you know and love the thrill of a deal. But are you getting the deal and cashback? Rakuten shoppers do. They get the brands they love, savings and cashback. And you can get it too. Start getting cashback at your favorite stores like Levi's, plow on hearth, Adidas, Sephora, and Neiman Marcus. Stack sales on top of cashback and feel what it's like to know you're maximizing the savings and it's easy to use. And you get your cashback sent to you through PayPal or check. The idea is simple. Stores pay Rakuten for sending them shoppers and Rakuten shares the money with you as cashback. Download the free Rakuten app or go to Rakuten.com to start saving today. It's the most rewarding way to shop. That's r-a-k-u-t-e-n. Rakuten.com. Institutional buyer is blurry. And if you're house hunting this summer, know you may be bidding and gets a neighbor with a private LLC and a spreadsheet model. Speaking of big purchases, let's lace up and see how Nike is shrinking sneaker design and prototyping for months to minutes. Over in Oregon, Nike opened the Air Imagination Lab. Air Imagination Lab. I feel like I needed to say it that way. The hybrid design studio and 3D printing warehouse where fans craft custom air max sneakers. You type a prompt, say Northern Lights gradient, icy outsole, bamboo heel logo, and an AI trained on decades of Nike sketches returns four designs in under 30 seconds. Damn. Pick your favorite and a robotic arm prince, the midsole layers from temperature stable TPU fuses them to a knit upper and delivers a fully wearable sample in about two hours. Nike insiders claim the process slashes concept of prototype from six months to a single afternoon, freeing designers to iterate before factory orders lock. Long-term Nike sees hyper limited runs. A YouTube creator could drop 50 pairs tied to a stream or an eSports team could sell branded air max for tournament merch. For now, the lab is invite only. You ain't getting one. But public pop-ups in New York and Tokyo this fall complete with live stream design battles judged by sneaker influencers and shoe culture scholars. And while we're talking soda and sports, let's look at one quarterback who's about to turn a soda into a weekly highlight reel. Sports marketing keeps stacking crossovers. Sprite just signed to Eagles quarterback Jalen Hertz to front its first league wide NFL campaign. Gone are the slow motion courtside of Bayer Thur spots. Sprice new era leans on TikTok ready shorts with Hertz miced up at practice remixing classic slogans into refresh your game limited cans shipped during preseason each with an NFC tag that launches an AR drill challenge complete the moves upload the video and you can win signed game day gear or a sideline pass. The campaign doubles as a content factory. Coca-Cola calls it player led storytelling and wants weekly micro drops instead of one super ball splash. If it works, expect other legacy sodas to borrow the blueprint and chase that Gen Z highlight scroll sweet spot. Next up TikTok. It's quietly running a limited test that lets a small invitation only group of creators upload videos up to 60 minutes long for beyond the current 10 minute ceiling. The pilot spans both mobile and desktop uploads and according to company insiders has meant to see whether users will stick with deep dive tutorials mini docs and shopping replays on a platform famous for quick swipes. Product manager say the experiment will run for several weeks. Air quotes before TikTok decides whether to expand the feature platform wide. If the test graduates to a full release, TikTok could challenge YouTube for premium ad dollars and long foreign sponsorships. Longer uploads would allow mid roll ads, detailed product placements and full event recaps. The kind of inventory that commands higher CPMs than TikTok's current 15 second pre rolls. Creators would gain one more venue for courses, episodic storytelling or extended live shopping edits while brands could package longer demos and how to content without forcing viewers to leave the for you feed action step marketers who rely heavily on YouTube or Instagram for long form content should earmark a small test budget now. Repurpose a top performing tutorial or a product review for a vertical 10 to 15 minute TikTok cut then monitor watch time completion rate and cost per view. If early metrics hold you'll be ahead of the rush when the 60 minute door opens to everyone. If scrolling those best plays of the wee clips put you in the sports mood wait until you hear what's happening right now in Chicago. By the time this episode hits your feed I'll be on the floor at the 45th National Sports Collectors Convention at Chicago's sprawling McCormick place. It's a half mile long haven packed with more than 100,000 collectors and 600 dealers. You don't want to miss it though. Tons of fun. Tops is here cracking open. It's brand new Premier League set live spotlighting gold lion foils and one of the Premier polls. That's just one per 25 hobby cases. Check this out. Every card packs a tamper proof QR and NFC tag that links to a block chain certificate and an AR replay of the goal or save on the front. Old school cardboard meets next gen tech. PSA has 48 hour onsite grading while Beckett counters with a 36 hour fast pass rumor has it fanatics might reveal an acetate showtime parallel and you can only pull with a VIP page pays to be VIP I tell you what here's a veteran tip to bring cash those mobile card readers can easily crash during peak hours web traffic can be heavy internet light where comfy shoes just places huge oh and watch those eBay prices they tend to spike during the show so time your rookie card hunt wisely we'll see you on the floor if you're here comes check me out did I mention starting to collectibles on SI podcast in August that's this month yes that that that SI you know sports illustrated ever heard of them only one of the most iconic brands in sports so I'm here at the national sports collectors convention interviewing all the big names and securing those ever important sponsorship dollars you know you want in and yeah me and the boys might rip a pack or 300 keep your eyes peeled for updates collectibles dot show not dot com collectibles dot show it's all you got to do hit that you can see how you can catch the first episode sign up for newsletter and get all the goodies on in a billion dollar industry and growing quickly so where does that leave us each of today's stories is really about closing the distance between an idea and its execution Shopify hands merchants an AI assistant so routine tasks take minutes instead of hours the coast to coast railroad promises freight that moves and days rather than nearly a week Pepsi infuses cola with functional benefits giving consumers more than just flavor for all those calories they're consuming by nation's creator network lets marketers book authentic voices without months of outreach local investors streamline the path from for sale to for rent reshaping entire neighborhoods you don't think you like your neighborhood now wait till you got 20% of them renters Nike compresses sneaker prototyping into a single afternoon while sprite turns an endorsement deal into a steady flow of micro content even trading cards now come with instant blockchain verified authenticity if there's a common lesson it's this audience customers and partners increasingly reward the companies that remove friction first get rid of friction take a look at one slow moving step in your own process set a goal to cut the time in half and you'll be following the same flowbook that's driving the week to this week's biggest moves that's to take away for the week hunt the gap move first shape the conversation keep that in mind as you plan pitch and pivot don't forget to follow right about now on apple podcasts or Spotify say hello on LinkedIn Instagrammer X and sign up for the newsletter that's right visit Ryan is right.com put bash flash newsletter you can sign up for that or just stay right down Ryan is right I like to ring to that at least in my own head my wife might disagree hey I got to get back to trading cards rip and packs and talking to the biggest names and sports we're always bringing the heat baby right here right now right about now we'll see you next week we're out this has been right about now with Ryan Alfred a radcast network production visit Ryan is right.com for full audio and video versions of the show or to inquire about sponsorship opportunities thanks for listening no one knows your business better than you so who better to create your website than well you wix's website builder puts it all in your hands create a beautiful website just by talking with AI or choosing from thousands of templates customize every detail with simple drag and drop tools and get everything you need to start running business your way build more think bigger and do it all yourself on wix go to wix.com finding great candidates to hire can be like well trying to find a needle in a haystack sure you can post your job to some job board but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along which is why you should try zip recruiter for free at zip recruiter.com slash zip zip recruiter doesn't depend on candidates finding you it finds them for you it's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience and actively invites them to apply to your job you get qualified candidates fast so while other companies might deliver a lot of hey zip recruiter finds you what you're looking for the needle in the haystack see why four out of five employers who post a job on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day zip recruiter the smartest way to hire and right now you can try zip recruiter for free that's right free at zip recruiter.com slash zip that zip recruiter.com slash zip zip recruiter.com slash zip