PPB August 2019

feedback have you received, both from members and nonmembers of the industry? Hasseman I have worked hard to be a positive person, and it can be really hard. Studies tell you that nearly 90 percent of what we see every day is negative. If that’s the case, we need to be intentional about putting positivity in our brains. When you do that, you’ll start to see it. There really are lots of good things going on in the world. I have just decided to be someone who points that out. From a business perspective, it makes sense to me, too. If 90 percent of what your customers see is negative, being positive will make you stand out. In the mind of your customer, better isn’t always better: different is better. As for feedback, it’s been, well, positive! What is interesting to me is you don’t really know who is reading or consuming your content. I will go a stretch and feel like no one is watching or reading or listening. Then at some social event, a person will come up to me and thank me for lifting them up, and I had no idea they knew who I was. That is incredibly rewarding. PPB In your book, Fan of Happy: Life Lessons For My Daughters , you mention 110 life lessons. Would you mind sharing a few with us? Hasseman Absolutely! I wrote the book Fan of Happy because I had some “lessons” I wanted my daughters to hear. Unfortunately, when they became teenagers, they did not always want to hear my “wisdom,” so I started writing it down to give to them later in life. Then I realized there might be something in here for others, too, so I turned it into a book. Here are a few from the book that stood out to me. Be More Grateful: We have the formula all wrong. We think it’s hard work + success = happy. That’s not the case. It’s more like happy + hard work = success. Happiness actually helps you succeed. If you want to be happier, start to intentionally be more grateful. You can’t be grateful and negative at the same time. Give Others A Chance To Grow: When I look back at myself at 16, 18 and 21, I often cringe, but I give myself a break because I have learned and grown up. But we often look at others as if they are the same as they were 20 years ago. Give them a chance. They might surprise you. Give Out Good, It Comes Back: It’s an old lesson, but we often need to be reminded. Being a good person and doing the right thing pays off. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if you give out good, it comes back. MARKET SHARE Smartphones Becoming PreferredMedium For Web Surfing With the rising popularity of smartphones, more Americans are using them to access the internet, and some exclusively so. It’s not just an assumption that “everyone has a smartphone” nowadays, because almost everyone does. According to the Pew Research Center, 81 percent of Americans own a smartphone, a steep increase from just 35 percent in 2011. But this marked growth has changed how Americans access the internet: 17 percent of adults exclusively surf the web using their smartphones, and nearly half (46 percent) mainly use their device to do so. One of the reasons attributed to this change, according to Pew, is the rising cost in broadband services, with 27 percent of Americans opting out of a subscription. Of those who don’t subscribe to broadband, nearly half (45 percent) say it’s because their smartphone allows them to do everything they need online, and 80 percent are uninterested in having high-speed internet installed in their homes. Through a national telephone survey of 1,502 Americans, Pew found the percentage of those who exclusively access the internet through their smartphones (17 percent) is reflective of all ages, though with a greater percentage of African Americans (23 percent) and Hispanics (25 percent) than Caucasians (12 percent). The majority of these users have a high school diploma or less (26 percent), 16 percent have “some college” and four percent have a college degree. Twenty-six percent have an annual income of less than $30,000, 15 percent have an income of $30,000- $74,999 and six percent earn $75,000 or more annually. Accessing the internet via desktops, laptops and/or tablets, in general, has decreased. Thirty percent of Americans primarily access the internet using one or more of these three mediums, a drop from 53 percent in 2013, while 46 percent mainly use their smartphones to browse the web, up from 34 percent in 2013. Today, about one-fourth of smartphone users (23 percent) use both their smartphone and desktop, laptop and/or tablet to access the internet equally, up from 12 percent in 2013. Across the board, 60 percent of Americans ages 18-29 only use their smartphone to do so, followed by 51 percent for ages 30-49, 34 percent for ages 50-64 and 28 percent for age 65 and older. | AUGUST 2019 | 59 THINK