• Kyle Ray turned his window-cleaning side hustle into a six-figure business.
• Ray, lacking a business degree, used books to gain knowledge and grow his business.
• He incentivizes himself to read a book a month, thanks to his $100 bill bookmark hack.

Kyle Ray never felt comfortable in the classroom.

“I didn’t do great in school, and I was basically told, the best you can hope for is to be a manager of a restaurant,” he told Business Insider. “That’s just been an internal driver — like, ‘I’m going to prove this person wrong.’ And that still drives me really hard today.”

The entrepreneur, who turned his window cleaning side hustle into a six-figure business that services hundreds of clients across Houston and Austin, leveraged books to get ahead.

“I didn’t go to college and get a business degree, so I read a lot of books,” said Ray, who spent years bartending and waiting tables to pay the bills while slowly building Geek Window Cleaning. It took about seven years until he started earning enough income from his side gig to quit his service jobs.

Today, Ray reads at least a book a month — and he has a strategy that holds him accountable.

“My hack for reading is I put a $100 bill as my bookmark, and when I’m finished reading the book, I get to spend it,” he said. “It’s a good motivator.”

He can spend it on anything he wants, as long as it’s not work-related. Sometimes, he’ll add the bill from a book he’s just completed to his next book and save a couple of hundred dollars so that he and his wife can splurge on a fancy dinner.

Ray, who now manages a team of employees, credits much of his business’s success to principles he’s picked up from various business and leadership books. His top picks are “Drive” by Daniel Pink, “Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown, and “Beyond the Hammer” by Brian Gottlieb.

He’s most looking forward to reading Phil Gilbert’s “Irresistible Change,” which will be released in late 2025.

Ray wants to develop his team as much as he does his business, and part of the promotion process requires finishing specific books.

“We’re not a window cleaning company; we’re a training facility that develops people,” he said. “My main goal is to make anybody who comes to work with us really successful.”

A key to success, at least in his eyes, is self-education.

“Every business owner should just be reading as often and as much as possible.”

• Apple’s former CEO, John Sculley, said OpenAI represents Apple’s “first real competitor” in decades.
• Speaking at a conference, Sculley said AI hadn’t been Apple’s strong suit.
• He said Apple needed to shift from the apps era to the agentic era in the AI race.

Apple is facing a tough new rival in the era of AI, according to the company’s former CEO.

Speaking at the Zeta Live conference in New York City on Thursday, Apple’s former CEO, John Sculley, said OpenAI represented “the first real competitor” that Apple has had “in many decades.”

“AI has not been a particular strength for them,” Sculley said of Apple.

Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.

On some counts, Apple does appear to have fallen behind in the AI race, lacking the consistent product updates that have become customary at companies like OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Meta. It has experienced product rollout setbacks, like the delay of a planned overhaul of its AI-powered assistant Siri earlier this year.

Sculley ran Apple from 1983 to 1993. He applied his marketing experience from over a decade at Pepsi-Cola, where he launched the “Pepsi Challenge” campaign, to help popularize the Mac brand. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs had a tense relationship with Sculley and the board throughout his tenure. Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985 before returning in 1997 and later becoming CEO.

Speaking on Thursday, Sculley acknowledged speculation that current Apple CEO Tim Cook might be considering retirement soon. Sculley said whoever replaces Cook would need to help Apple transition from the apps era to the agentic era.

“In the agentic era, we don’t need a lot of apps, it can all be done with smart agents,” Sculley said. (Agentic AI refers to technology that’s capable of performing agent-like behavior and autonomously accomplishing complex tasks on your behalf.)

Sculley, 86, who recently retired from his role as cofounder and vice chairman of the marketing tech company Zeta Global to become vice chairman emeritus, said agentic AI will help knowledge workers automate the heavy lifting of their workflows. That’ll shift more technology companies to subscription-based business models, he said.

“When we had apps at the center of everything, it was selling tools, selling products,” Sculley said. “When you think of subscription, it’s about people paying for something as long as they need it.”

Sculley said subscriptions offer a much better business model.

Meanwhile, a familiar face from Apple recently turned up at OpenAI: former design chief Jony Ive. OpenAI acquired Ive’s device startup earlier this year for more than $6 billion.

Ive said this week at OpenAI’s DevDay conference that he hoped the devices his team is working on would address some of the issues that smartphones and tablets have caused since their launch.

“He’s the one who actually designed and built the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad,” Sculley said of Ive. “If there’s anyone who is probably going to be able to bring that dimension to the LLM, in this case OpenAI, it’s probably going to be Jony Ive, working with Sam Altman.”

• Wall Street heavyweight JPMorgan will kick off bank earnings season next week.
• What they say could offer a clearer read on whether borrowers are still holding up.
• Banks may also shed light on how much of the economy is being propped up by the AI boom.

There’s a lot of jargon in the average bank earnings call — net interest margin, capital markets, credit quality. But if you cut through the noise and know what to listen for, you can learn a lot about the state of the economy.

Next week, many of the nation’s biggest banks will report results for the three months that ended September 30. America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase, kicks things off Tuesday, alongside Wells Fargo and Citi, followed by Bank of America on Wednesday.

Thanks to the government shutdown, which has halted a slew of economic data, these earnings calls could shed light on the health of both the American consumer and businesses. They may also offer insight into the AI boom and its role in the economy’s growth.

“You can think about banks as being thermometers of the economy,” said Nathan Stovall, head of financial institutions research at S&P Global Market Intelligence. The question people will be asking, he said, is: “Are we starting to see any real cracks in the armor?”

Here are three key indicators to watch:

Credit quality

Credit quality is a way of assessing whether customers are making good on their loans or missing payments because money is tight.

Stovall said Wall Street “is really divided” about what credit quality might look like this earnings season, with some predicting deterioration and others forecasting continued strength.

“People are going to be listening closely to earnings and asking, ‘Is your customer base really holding up?’ he said, adding that he expects “a little bit of slippage,” but not much change from the previous quarter.

Last quarter, banks told Wall Street analysts that their data suggested the economy was chugging along despite concerns about tariffs slowing business and increasing costs for consumers.

“We continue to struggle to see signs of weakness,” JPMorgan’s CFO Jeremy Barnum said. “The consumer basically seems to be fine,” he added.

Loan growth

Bank loan growth indicates whether consumers and businesses have sufficient confidence in their future earnings potential to borrow money to purchase homes, expand their companies, or start new businesses.

“Are borrowers’ risk appetites going up? Are they borrowing more?” Stovall explained, adding that Federal Reserve data that tracks commercial bank balances suggests some softening in new loan demand in the third quarter.

“I think that’s going to be a little bit softer. And we have some data that supports that,” he added.

Softness may also be due to increased competition from non-bank lenders. Issuing loans outside the traditional banking system has become a driving growth model for companies like Apollo Global Management, which once primarily specialized in corporate buyouts.

Further complicating matters, the industry’s loan growth has been increasingly linked to the money banks lend to nonbanks, which in turn use that money to lend to companies, acquire businesses, or finance residential and commercial mortgages.

“When you look at loan growth for across the bank space, 60% of it year over year has come with loans to non-depository financial institutions, which includes private equity, private credit firms,” Stovall said.

The AI arms race

The AI arms race has become one of the economy’s biggest boosters — and banks are, in many ways, at the center of it.

Major lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, have helped provide billions in loans and other financing to AI firms such as CoreWeave and to companies building the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence.

What investors will want to watch for is how much of the industry’s business will eventually be tied to a sector with great potential but whose business model has yet to be proven. Additionally, what are the risks associated with the ballooning demand for AI investments, including through bonds?

“The good times are when the future bad loans are made,” said Mike Mayo, a veteran bank analyst at Wells Fargo.

Banks could also shed light on corporate spending tied to the technology. Mayo said he believes Wall Street has little choice but to invest aggressively in AI to stay competitive — even if some of that spending won’t pay off.

“A lot of projects are not going to bear fruit, he said, adding, “That’s the cost of admission to the AI world.”

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• For Love & Money is a column from Business Insider answering your relationship and money questions.
• This week, a reader worries that his girlfriend expects him to be a stepdad figure to her daughters.
• Our columnist suggests he reflect on whether he’s willing to make compromises, given their different life stages.
• Have a question for our columnist? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.

Dear For Love & Money,

I recently moved in with my girlfriend of three years. I am 29 and she is 35. She had a previous marriage and has two daughters; this is my first long-term relationship. Before we moved in together, she was careful to limit my relationship with her daughters. I understood she was trying to protect them from getting too attached, but now that we’ve moved in together, I guess she trusts my commitment more, and it seems like she expects me to go from a fun guy she brought around once in a while to their stepdad, including financially supporting them.

We agreed to a financial arrangement that worked for both of us before we moved in. We split the rent, utility bills, streaming services, and other expenses evenly. We should have discussed groceries, but didn’t. I planned to help out now and then, but mostly only pay for my own. She wants me to split the food costs, even though there are three of them and only one of me. She’s also put me in a position to pay school fees, take her daughters out, and cover other things that leave me paying for them. Her ex also pays child support.

I really like this woman and want this to work out, but I have goals, and I’m not yet financially or mentally ready to be a stepdad. Is it too late to set those boundaries?

Sincerely,

Too Fast

Dear Too Fast,

It’s clear that you and your girlfriend are at very different places in your lives; this is your first serious relationship, while she has already lived through a marriage and divorce. While this gap isn’t insurmountable, closing it will inevitably entail a great deal of compromise. And as your girlfriend’s life is shaped by the responsibilities that come with being a parent in her mid-thirties, that compromise will mostly have to come from you.

Whether or not you feel ready to be a stepdad, any time you pursue a serious relationship with someone who has children, it’s a package deal. Kids are powerless in their parents’ love lives but unavoidably impacted by them. This becomes even more true when you decide to join households and move in together. As an adult who has committed to a relationship with a woman with two daughters, you have a responsibility to make sure that impact is, at the very least, minimally harmful. This means figuring out how sure you feel about your partner — and the two children who come along with her — as soon as possible.

It’s fair that you feel thrown off-balance by all of this. Going from your girlfriend’s daughters being minimally present in your life due to her protective instincts to suddenly being expected to treat them like your own children is quite an abrupt adjustment that most of us would struggle to navigate. However, it’s also understandable that, now that you’ve decided to join domestic lives, your girlfriend doesn’t feel it’s possible or desirable to coexist separately anymore.

So, to answer your question, “Is it too late to set boundaries?” I have to be honest: In this situation, setting strict boundaries isn’t really the answer. I can see what you may be imagining — grocery shopping for yourself, quietly stepping aside while your girlfriend pays for her daughters’ ice cream, and not being bothered with the tedium of her children’s administrative needs, let alone their school fees.

The problem, though, is that your girlfriend is a mother, and her girls are a significant part of her life and her identity. Erecting boundaries that separate your relationship from those other parts of her would effectively communicate that you’d prefer to avoid half of who she is and how she lives her life.

None of this is to say you must either completely finance her and her children’s lives or end your relationship. Talk to your girlfriend honestly about what you need and what you’re willing to give. Share your own financial goals with her, as well as your concerns. Perhaps there are some shared bills you’re willing to split without getting into nickels and dimes, but others, like their school fees, that you’d prefer not to be responsible for.

However, also be prepared for her potentially having different expectations. With open communication and a mutual commitment to supporting one another’s dreams, conversations about how much you want and can afford to spend will help you both get more clarity on whether you can make this work.

However, this issue goes beyond just spending money; as you said, you don’t feel mentally ready to be a stepdad. That may be the case, but you must recognize that your girlfriend’s life is a one-way train that has already left the station, and her daughters are her priority. You’ll either need to hop on board or find a different route to your destination.

In other words, you can’t just be the shadowy boyfriend figure hiding in the back bedroom until the girls are with their dad for the weekend. Joining lives with your girlfriend requires you to participate in the household as another adult, even if not necessarily as a full stepfather figure. Sometimes this will mean grocery shopping for the whole family, giving the girls a little spending money because you’re the only one with cash on hand, or simply joining in on family game night.

If anything about that description made you wince because it sounds boring, expensive, or annoying, examine that reaction with nonjudgmental curiosity. Maybe you aren’t ready to sacrifice your young adult years for someone else’s family. If so, not only is that understandable, it’s perfectly OK. Sometimes what people need from each other just isn’t compatible, and it’s no one’s fault. But if you look into your girlfriend’s eyes and realize being with her (and her daughters) is what you want, it’s important that you talk to her and figure out how you can make that work together.

No matter what you choose, you may always wonder about the road not taken — what if you leave and she was the one, and you could have settled into a cozy family life with the woman of your dreams? Or if you stay, what job opportunities might you have chased if you’d left? Who else might you have met? What family could you have built from scratch?

The key is deciding which “what if” you can live with, and which you have to experience for yourself.

Rooting for you,

For Love & Money

Looking for advice on how your savings, debt, or another financial challenge is affecting your relationships? Write to For Love & Money using this Google form.

• Ian Carter has been looking for work since being laid off by Microsoft in May.
• If he doesn’t find a job soon, he’s planning to move across the country to live with his family.
• Carter is among the many tech professionals who have struggled to find work amid a hiring slowdown.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ian Carter, a 33-year-old job seeker in Redmond, Washington, who previously worked as a technical program manager at Microsoft. It has been edited for length and clarity.

On May 13, I was getting lunch at a Panera Bread when I just happened to check my email. When I read it, it felt like a gut punch. I’d been laid off from my Microsoft job.

My mind started racing. Could I have done something different? Could I have been better? However, I eventually realized it was simply a business decision. I’d seen the company lay off a lot of people in recent years, and it felt like it didn’t matter if you were a great worker or not — everybody was at risk.

When I was laid off, I was on medical leave for a personal health issue and had been planning to return to work in the coming days. I collected my last paycheck in mid-July and then received some severance pay, but I started applying for jobs almost immediately. My mindset was “I can cry while I apply.”

I decided to share that I’d been laid off on LinkedIn, and the post received over 115,000 impressions. I began receiving messages from recruiters about opportunities, and I’ve landed interviews at companies that include Disney and Nintendo.

But it’s now been five months since my layoff, and I’m still looking for a job. I’ve been drawing on my savings to pay the bills and renting my one-bedroom apartment on a month-to-month lease for about $2,700 — all while crossing my fingers that I land a role soon.

My lease ends the week of October 20, and if I don’t have a job offer by then, I’m planning to move across the country to Florida to live with my family and save money until I find a job. Rent is expensive, but rent without income coming in is doubly expensive.

The job market feels daunting

If I had to guess why I, along with many others at Microsoft and other Big Tech companies, have been laid off in recent years, I’d point to two factors: overhiring during the pandemic and massive investments in AI.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear that finding a job in tech has become significantly more difficult. Before my layoff, I regularly heard from college students struggling to break into the industry. The market already seemed tougher than when I graduated — and now, I’m seeing that firsthand.

I’m in a spot where I have nearly four years of full-time experience — not quite a new grad, but not senior level, either. I think some companies are looking for one or the other, which has made my search harder. Others are seeking very specific skill sets, while mine can sometimes be viewed as more generalist.

As I’ve searched for work, I’ve been trying to develop my AI skills, as job postings suggest that companies are increasingly valuing this expertise. Working at Microsoft also gave me insight into the value of AI skills. During my last year, I didn’t personally feel that my performance expectations had risen too much, but I did feel some pressure to find ways to incorporate AI into my work.

My networking strategies are creating opportunities — but not job offers

During my job search, I’ve tried to replicate the strategies that got me to this point in my career.

I dropped out of high school in 2009 for health-related reasons, but I eventually earned my GED and enrolled at a community college, where I earned my associate degree and then went on to attend Florida State University. During this period, I built my network on LinkedIn — I now have more than 8,700 followers — which helped me secure interviews and ultimately land an internship at Salesforce. A company recruiter reached out to me, which is how I learned about the role and landed an interview.

Having the internship on my résumé helped me land full-time interviews after graduation. I had a list of dream companies — including Microsoft, Amazon, and Netflix — and I applied to a program manager role at Microsoft without a referral. After an interview, I eventually received a job offer. In 2021, I graduated from Florida State with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and began working remotely for Microsoft due to the pandemic. In 2022, I moved to Redmond, Washington — where the company is headquartered — and before I was laid off, I had a six-figure salary.

As I’ve searched for work — targeting program manager, project manager, and product management roles — I’ve tried to rely on my existing network and make new connections.

When I see a role that interests me, I reach out to the recruiter or someone with a similar job title at the company and ask what they think their company is looking for in a candidate. I then tailor my résumé accordingly.

Since I have a LinkedIn Premium account, I have more visibility into who views my profile. If they have an interesting job title, I’ll send them a message. Most of the time, they respond because they recall visiting my page, which leads to a conversation.

When I connect with people, I usually ask for advice rather than a referral. But if someone offers to give me one, I gladly accept.

While these connections have helped me land some interviews, I’m still looking for a job offer.

Layoffs can take a mental toll

Going forward, my plan is to continue doing what I’m doing — applying for jobs, networking as much as possible, and developing my AI skills. However, if my job search drags on, I might consider pursuing a graduate degree, such as an MBA or a degree related to AI.

In addition to networking for job opportunities, I’ve also reached out to others who’ve been laid off to discuss our shared experiences. Layoffs take a mental toll, and it’s nice to talk to people who can relate.

I sometimes visit the private “MSFT Survivors” Facebook group, which includes people who’ve been laid off throughout the company’s history. It’s always interesting to read about what others are going through and their stories. It makes me feel like I’m not alone.