Rural Leader Magazine FEBRUARY 2025 by Rural Leader Magazine

FEBRUARY 2025

Cover Story

One Woman’s Journey Navigating Weight Loss & the Procedure that Helped Her Find Success, pg. 13

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Contents

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Kuanita E. Murphy, PhD Rural Leader Magazine, LLC is a digital publication that highlights every day people doing extraordinary things nationally and abroad. www.RuralLeaderMag.com www.GetRuralLeaderMag.com

About Us

6 Sixty percent of Americans feel confident about reaching their financial goals 9 LinkedIn’s top 3 hiring tips for small businesses in 2025

COVER STORY 13 One Woman’s Journey Navigating Weight Loss and the Procedure that Helped Her Find Success

16 Take care of your vision to invest in your overall healthanesthesiologists and patients should partner to protect brain health 18 LinkedIn’s top 3 hiring tips for small businesses in 2025

Launched in March 2014, Rural Leader Magazine, LLC is a digital publication with a mission to highlight every day people doing extraordinary things in business, education, music, community, art, sports, and leadership nationally and abroad. Rural Leader Magazine honors exemplary individuals on a variety of levels, such as the 20 under 20 Honors, 40 under 40 Honors, Best Small Town Restaurant, Small Town America’s 100 Most Influential People, the Scholars of Collegiate Distinction, Fifty under Fifty, and the Eagle Elite Club.— Reproduction in any manner, in whole or in part, in English, or other languages, is prohibited without written consent. Send editorial ideas to Kuanita Murphy, PhD, Editor-in-Chief editor@ruralleadermag.com Contact Us info@ruralleadermag.com editor@ruralleadermag.com ruralleadermagazine@gmail.com

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Tell us what you think about our publications, if you have a great idea for a story, or to just share. We may print your comments in Rural Leader Magazine. By sending us your comments, you’re giving permission to call you for an interview. Please be sure to include your name, address, email address, and phone number so we can reach you. Write to us at info@RuralLeaderMag.com—

Editor’s Note Dear Readers, Inside this issue, there are a number of great articles about leadership best practices, building positive self-esteem and productivity! We hope you enjoy this issue. As always, I hope you enjoy this issue and continue to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Thanks again for your continual support! Sincerely, Kuanita E. Murphy, PhD Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

What you do matters. @RuralLeaderMag

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60% of Americans feel confident about reaching their financial goals

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Retirement is a journey, and every milestone counts: New Empower research shows that Americans across generations are making progress toward retirement, from building emergency funds to paying off debt. While each generation faces unique financial challenges, many share a strong sense of optimism about their financial futures. Key takeaways * Optimism prevails: 60% of Americans feel confident about reaching their financial goals, with Millennials leading at 63%. * Money moves: Nearly half of Americans (47%) have successfully paid off their debts, 40% have achieved homeownership, 39% have established an emergency fund, and 32% have started securing retirement savings. * Retirement reality check: Americans aim to retire at 62 but expect they may work until 70. Rising living costs (70%), insufficient savings (50%), inflation (48%), and unexpected financial emergencies (39%) are among the common factors contributing to adjusted timelines. * Through the ages: Americans aim to purchase a home by 38, build an emergency fund by 40, pay off debt by 42, achieve financial independence by 46, and accumulate retirement funds by 47. * Planning for success: Nearly half of Americans (49%) have a clear financial plan to meet their money goals. Progressing toward financial goals. Unretired Americans are making headway on key financial goals, with nearly half (47%) having paid off debt and 40% achieving homeownership. Many are also building a financial cushion - 39% have established an emergency fund, while 32% have started securing retirement savings. For those still working toward these milestones, optimism is high. Sixty percent believe they will reach their goals, with Millennials (63%) being the most confident. On average, Americans aim to accomplish their financial milestones at specific ages: purchasing a home by 38, building an emergency fund by 40, paying off debt by 42, achieving financial independence by 46, and securing retirement funds by 47.

Nearly half of Americans (49%) have a clear financial plan to meet these targets, including 49% of Millennials and 50% of Gen Z. Still, 32% recognize they need a structured plan, particularly among Gen X (37%). Planning for retirement. Some 73% believe they’ll retire at the age they envision, although 27% still express concerns about timing. This sentiment varies slightly by generation, with Gen Z (28%) and Millennials (27%) most likely to feel this uncertainty, followed by Gen X (26%) and Baby Boomers (11%). To bolster their retirement plans, most Americans (67%) are focusing on reducing or eliminating debt, and many (63%) are supplementing their income with multiple jobs. Among younger generations, 68% of Gen Zers have taken on side hustles to help save for retirement, while 24% of both Millennials and Gen Zers are considering job changes for higher salaries. Almost half of Americans (48%) are confident they’ll maintain their current lifestyle in retirement, with Gen Z (51%) being the most optimistic. Setting realistic goals and making intentional financial decisions - like minimizing debt, pursuing additional income, and securing higher wages - can empower Americans to retire on their own terms and enjoy the lifestyle they envision. Navigating retirement setbacks. Most Americans (54%) are on track to retire as planned, though some feel they have to delay an average of 6 to 8 years due to economic factors like rising living costs (70%), insufficient savings (50%), inflation (48%), and unexpected financial emergencies (39%). On average, Americans are targeting an average retirement age of 62 but anticipate they may work until around 70. For those concerned about the potential impact of job instability, 49% are mindful of how an unexpected layoff might affect their retirement plans. This concern is shared across generations, with Gen X (52%), Millennials (48%), Gen Z (47%), and Baby Boomers (26%) reporting varying degrees of worry. Building an emergency savings fund, regularly reviewing your retirement plan, and adjusting your budget as needed can help you stay on track. Seeking advice from a financial planner can also offer extra security and flexibility to navigate unexpected challenges. Methodology. Empower commissioned a survey of 1,006 Americans in September 2024.— RO4003342-1124 GetRuralLeaderMag.com | FEBUARY 2025 7

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LinkedIn’s top 3 hiring tips for small businesses in 2025 If you’re a small business owner, you may be looking for top talent in the new year. A new survey by LinkedIn finds 66% of small businesses in the U.S. are planning to hire more in 2025 than they did in 2024. It signals good news for the market, and for your business, but with an increase in hiring comes increased challenges. That’s because hiring the perfect fit for a small company is crucial and time consuming. It’s not just about finding the right skills and experience for the job, but culture fit, too. It takes time to source candidates, sift through resumes, schedule and conduct interviews, and handle all hiring-related tasks, on top of managing the day-to-day demands. As a small business owner, you know that on any given day, you can be operations manager, accountant, marketing pro and one-person HR department all rolled into one. “We know every hire a small business makes is critical to their business goals,” says LinkedIn’s Director of Product Management Andrew Chimka. “They need simple, time-saving solutions that are intuitive to use and help them find qualified candidates fast, and with confidence.” Here are LinkedIn’s top tips to help small businesses find the right candidate so they can focus on doing what they love most: growing their business. Showcase what makes your company unique:

Showcasing your brand is critical to attracting top talent. Emphasize why job seekers should choose to work for you by highlighting your unique company culture, flexible work hours, or perks like employee discounts. You know what makes your company a great place to work. Potential hires need to know it, too. Demonstrating benefits like skills development opportunities or online learning programs will also help hirers attract candidates in the new year. New LinkedIn data finds opportunities to learn new, in-demand skills is the #1 factor professionals say will help them grow in their career. One of the ways you can stand out is through LinkedIn’s new Premium Company Page offering, which helps small businesses grow their audience and credibility on LinkedIn. Premium helps companies like yours grow page followers 6.7 times faster to stand out to prospects. Consider a skills-based hiring approach. Today, the skills needed to do many jobs are changing. More businesses are recognizing the need to adopt a skillsbased hiring approach: hiring for skills and abilities, not only degrees and past job titles. A skills-based approach allows you to widen your pool of applicants to include candidates that may have slipped under the radar due to factors like whether they have a degree. This allows you to find GetRuralLeaderMag.com | FEBUARY 2025 9

new, untapped talent, lessening the need to compete with other companies for the same candidates. Taking a holistic approach to skills by hiring for technical expertise and soft skills, such as communication and collaboration, also enables small businesses to identify well-rounded candidates who can support various business needs. Just because the size of a business is small doesn’t mean its talent pool needs to be. Use new LinkedIn AI hiring tools to help post a job and hire! LinkedIn finds that 72% of hirers at small businesses in the U.S. say they are spending up to 15 hours a week just sifting through applications. That’s a lot of time not devoted to growing and running the business. This is where AI can come in - as a tool to take on some of the heavy lifting that comes with hiring the right candidate. LinkedIn is launching an AI-assistant within LinkedIn Jobs, built on its unique professional platform insights of over 1 billion members, 69 million companies and 41,000 skills. Hirers can get help with tedious hiring tasks using the AI-assistant, such as

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drafting job descriptions, posting a job, identifying qualified candidates and inviting them to apply. The AI-assistant then helps evaluate applicants based on the hirer’s qualifications and creates a shortlist of the most qualified candidates for the hirer to review so they can make the right hire with confidence. Small businesses like Hestus, Givers, and Part and Sum are already using it today. Interested? Visit linkedin.com/smbhire to express interest in joining LinkedIn’s beta program. In today’s fast-changing work landscape, small businesses face numerous challenges - but hiring shouldn’t be one of them. LinkedIn, with the largest engaged professional network in the world, is uniquely positioned to help. In fact, 86% of small businesses globally get a qualified candidate within 24 hours of posting a job on LinkedIn. By leveraging innovative strategies to attract top talent, from highlighting your brand to using new AI tools, your small business will be better positioned to thrive in 2025.—

•Eligible employers can apply for funding for up to ten (10) apprentices •Contract completion award $5,000 per apprentice, regardless of the length of the RAP

Connect with us to learn how a Registered Apprenticeship Program can help serve your workforce development and hiring needs! CareerRise is hosting one-on-one exploration meeting to explore the value of Registered Apprenticeship Programs (RAPs), an employer-led workforce development model and strategy designed to provide employers with additional support to train skilled workers and meet growing workforce needs. Questions? Contact Keren Cadet kcadet@careerriseatlanta.org GetRuralLeaderMag.com | FEBUARY 2025 11

COVER STORY

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One Woman’s Journey Navigating Weight Loss and the Procedure that Helped Her Find Success

Kyra Williams is a wife, mother of two and English professor who leads an active life in Baytown, Texas. However, this active life took a backseat when she moved from Little Rock, Arkansas, to Texas in 11th grade. At the time, the move to a new town and high school left her feeling down and stopping some activities, like dance and cheerleading, that she once enjoyed. “The first time I tried to diet was that same year, when I was hoping to fit into a dress for my school’s homecoming dance,” recalled Kyra. “It didn’t work because I was so inactive. That’s when I thought, I need to lose weight.” This began years of diet and exercise that left her with few lasting results other than feelings of disappointment and gnawing hunger. In college, Kyra gained about 50 pounds. Throughout her adult life, she tried numerous fad diets and workouts, starting a cycle of weight loss and weight gain. After the birth of her son and daughter, Kyra struggled even more to lose the weight she gained during her pregnancies. It was around this time that Kyra started looking at options beyond diet and exercise for weight loss. Knowing that she wasn’t interested in bariatric surgery, Kyra spent the next seven years researching alternatives that might help address her weight loss challenges. Kyra is not alone in her struggle to lose weight. Forty-two percent of American adults live with obesity, a complex condition that can lead to health issues such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and some cancers.1 The FDA approval of GLP-1 receptor agonists for weight loss has prompted much-needed conversation around the nature of obesity, reframing it not as a stigmatizing issue of “willpower” but as a medical problem that can require medical approaches. “It’s not that I ate horribly, I would just eat too much, and I felt like I was always hungry,” explained Kyra. “So, the idea of limiting my stomach capacity was very appealing.”

While searching online, Kyra came across an innovative new approach called endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG). Like the more traditional bariatric surgery, ESG significantly reduces the size of the stomach. However, unlike bariatric surgery, ESG is an incisionless endoscopic procedure. It does not involve any external incisions or leave scars. In a clinical study, patients returned to normal activities within a few days.2 After talking with her doctor about ESG, Kyra decided to move ahead. “This was exactly what I’d been looking for,” she says. She had her procedure in August 2020, using the OverStitchâ„¢ Endoscopic Suturing System, a small suturing device attached to a camera that is passed through the patient’s mouth and into their stomach while they are asleep. A specially trained doctor sews the stomach into a smaller shape, reducing its capacity by 70% to 80%. The procedure helps people eat less and feel full faster to help them achieve significant, lasting weight loss when combined with diet and lifestyle modifications.2 Kyra was able to return home the same day. Along with a healthy diet and exercise program, Kyra lost 110 pounds in her first year.* “I made up my mind that ESG was going to work for me, and I was going to do everything possible to get the results I wanted,” explained Kyra. “I can still eat what I want, but I exercise and am conscious of what I eat. When I eat too much now, I feel a tightness in my stomach that serves as a helpful reminder not to go back to my old habits.” Now, four years later, Kyra continues to keep the weight off. “One of the most important lessons I’ve learned through this journey is that you have to be willing to assess and adjust based on your evolving lifestyle,” she said. “Balancing the needs of my two teenage children along with my own can be a challenge. Since my procedure, I have been able to maintain a routine when it comes to my diet and model healthy habits to my children.” While exercise continues to be the biggest chalGetRuralLeaderMag.com | FEBUARY 2025 13

lenge for Kyra, she motivates herself to prioritize movement almost every day with activities that include step aerobics, walking, lifting weights and riding her indoor cycling bike. “I didn’t realize how bad I felt until I started to feel better,” said Kyra. “By losing weight and changing my diet and exercise routines, my energy levels are way up, and I have much more stamina than I did before. ESG has been, hands-down, the best decision I’ve ever made for my health.” Kyra now shares her advice and insights with others who may be considering the ESG procedure. “Losing weight - even with ESG - is both a physical and mental battle. Even though it’s hard, try not to compare yourself to others and their successes - focus on you and your own personal journey.” To learn more about ESG or to speak with a doctor in your area, visit ApolloEndoSurgery.com. *This patient testimonial is sponsored by Boston Scientific. Individual results may vary. In a randomized study, patients with class 1 or class 2 obesity (BMI 30 to 40 kg/m2) who underwent ESG in conjunction with prescribed diet and exercise counseling achieved an average of 13.6% total body weight loss at year one, compared to 0.8% with lifestyle modi-

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fication alone. In that study, 64.7% of patients who underwent ESG in conjunction with lifestyle changes lost at least 10% TBWL compared to 4.5% of patients with lifestyle modification alone. Approximately 21.2% of patients lost more than 20% of their body weight. Optimal results were achieved when patients committed to long term lifestyle changes around diet and exercise. All procedures have risk, including endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty. Patients should consult with their doctor to discuss risks and benefits of any medical procedure.— * “Fast Facts: Health and Economic Costs of Chronic Conditions,” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 2024. * Abu Dayyeh, BK, et al., “Endoscopic Sleeve Gastroplasty for Treatment of Class 1 and 2 Obesity (MERIT): A Prospective, Multicentre, Randomised Trial,” The Lancet, July 2022.

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Take care of your vision to invest in your overall health A new year is a great opportunity to develop better habits and improve your health and wellness. Perhaps that involves revamping your workout routine or investing in a skincare regimen. As you start to think about the new year, make sure to include a comprehensive eye exam at the top of your list. A normal part of aging. Just like the rest of your body, your eyes change as you age, and you may find it harder to see. You’re not alone. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than two billion people around the world suffer from visual impairment, a number expected to double by 2030.1 While these numbers may be concerning, take heart. Many vision conditions are treatable. A step you can take today to assess and preserve your vision 16

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- as well as your health - is to schedule a comprehensive eye exam. Your eyes are windows into your overall health and wellness. An eye care professional can do much more than assess your vision. Your eyes can actually reveal many details about your overall health and wellness. A comprehensive eye exam can help detect over 270 different medical conditions, from diabetes to heart disease.2 Despite its importance, many adults over 40 around the globe tend to prioritize staying active, maintaining a healthy diet or skincare over regular eye exams in their journey to aging well. “Not only can an eye exam assess the health of your eye,” said Dr. Christi Closson, Associate Di-

rector of Professional Education, Vision, Johnson & Johnson, “it can do so much more, such as providing insight into your overall health and well-being as you age.2 It is critical for everyone to stay on top of their vision and eye health, and make time for an annual comprehensive eye exam.” Presbyopia and cataracts: Common age-related vision conditions If you’re over 40, it’s critical that you’re aware of common vision conditions and their symptoms. Presbyopia - another name for age-related farsightedness - describes a person’s decreased ability to see nearby objects, especially in low light.4 For example, you may notice that it’s become more difficult to read texts on your phone, so you hold it at arm’s length. “As you age, the lens inside your eye becomes more rigid, making it difficult for your eyes to focus on text or objects that are up close,” said Dr. Closson. “However, presbyopia happens to everyone and is easily treatable. In fact, there are multifocal contact lenses designed to help with this vision impairment without invasive interventions.” Another condition to be aware of as you age (especially if you’re over 60) is cataracts. A physical sign of cataracts is clouding in the eye that makes it hard to see. However, you may also notice that lamps, sunlight and headlights seem too bright or that colors look faded.5 If left untreated, cataracts can lead to blindness. Modern technological advancement has made cataract treatment a minimally invasive out-patient procedure that typically takes 15 to 30 minutes to complete, depending on the severity of the condition. Cataract treatment* can also improve other eye conditions like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism.6 See clearly now and beyond. If you want to live your best while feeling your best at every age, it’s time to get serious about your eye health. To find an eye doctor near you and schedule a comprehensive eye exam, visit ClearVisionForYou.com/Find-A-Doctor.— References 1. World Health Organization. Increasing eye care interventions to address vision impairment. Available at: https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/ increasing-eye-care-interventions-to-address-vision-impairment#:~:text=Globally%2C%20at%20 least%202.2%20billion,%2Dincome%20countries%20 (LMICs).

Picture of Your Health with an Annual Comprehensive Eye Exam. Available at: https://www.aoa.org/ healthy-eyes/caring-for-your-eyes/full-picture-ofeye-health?sso=y. 3. Mayo Clinic at: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/presbyopia/symptoms-causes/syc20363328 4. National Eye Institute. Cataracts. Available at: https://www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/ eye-conditions-and-diseases/cataracts. 5. American Refractive Surgery Council. Cataract Surgery. Available at: https://americanrefractivesurgerycouncil.org/cataract-surgery/#:~:text=Vision%2DCorrecting%20IOLs?-,Cataract%20 surgery%20removes%20the%20clouded%20natural%20lens%20and%20replaces%20it,nearsightedness%2C%20farsightedness%2C%20and%20astigmatism. 2025PP04024 * RISKS There are risks to routine cataract surgery. This is irrelevant to the lens you choose. The problems could be minor, temporary, or affect your vision permanently. Complications are rare. These may include worsening of your vision, bleeding, or infection. Pre-existing diseases or conditions may place you at higher risk of experiencing complications (e.g., more difficult recovery) after routine cataract surgery. Examples of pre-existing diseases or conditions are diabetes, heart disease and previous trauma to your eye. With some IOLs, you may experience some loss in the sharpness of your vision, even with glasses. With these IOLs, you may have more difficulty driving at night or in poor visibility conditions. This can affect your ability to detect road hazards as quickly at night or in fog. You may also experience halos (rings around light), glare (reflected light, making it difficult to see) and starbursts (rays around light). A small number of patients may want to have their IOL removed. This can be due to lens-related optical/ visual symptoms. You should discuss all risks and benefits with your eye doctor before surgery.

2. American Optometric Association. See the Full GetRuralLeaderMag.com | FEBUARY 2025 17

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can be operations manager, accountant, marketing pro and one-person HR department all rolled into one. “We know every hire a small business makes is critical to their business goals,” says LinkedIn’s Director of Product Management Andrew Chimka. “They need simple, time-saving solutions that are intuitive to use and help them find qualified candidates fast, and with confidence.” Here are LinkedIn’s top tips to help small businesses find the right candidate so they can focus on doing what they love most: growing their business. Showcase what makes your company unique: Showcasing your brand is critical to attracting top talent. Emphasize why job seekers should choose to

work for you by highlighting your unique company culture, flexible work hours, or perks like employee discounts. You know what makes your company a great place to work. Potential hires need to know it, too. Demonstrating benefits like skills development opportunities or online learning programs will also help hirers attract candidates in the new year. New LinkedIn data finds opportunities to learn new, in-demand skills is the #1 factor professionals say will help them grow in their career. One of the ways you can stand out is through LinkedIn’s new Premium Company Page offering, which helps small businesses grow their audience and credibility on LinkedIn. Premium helps companies like yours grow page followers 6.7 times faster to stand out to prospects. Consider a skills-based hiring approach. Today, the skills needed to do many jobs are changing. More businesses are recognizing the need to adopt a skillsbased hiring approach: hiring for skills and abilities, not only degrees and past job titles. A skills-based approach allows you to widen your pool of applicants to include candidates that may have slipped under the radar due to factors like whether they have a degree. This allows you to find new, untapped talent, lessening the need to compete with other companies for the same candidates. Taking a holistic approach to skills by hiring for technical expertise and soft skills, such as communication and collaboration, also enables small businesses to identify well-rounded candidates who can support various business needs. Just because the size of a business is small doesn’t mean its talent pool needs to be. Use new LinkedIn AI hiring tools to help post a job and hire!

LinkedIn finds that 72% of hirers at small businesses in the U.S. say they are spending up to 15 hours a week just sifting through applications. That’s a lot of time not devoted to growing and running the business. This is where AI can come in - as a tool to take on some of the heavy lifting that comes with hiring the right candidate. LinkedIn is launching an AI-assistant within LinkedIn Jobs, built on its unique professional platform insights of over 1 billion members, 69 million companies and 41,000 skills. Hirers can get help with tedious hiring tasks using the AI-assistant, such as drafting job descriptions, posting a job, identifying qualified candidates and inviting them to apply. The AI-assistant then helps evaluate applicants based on the hirer’s qualifications and creates a shortlist of the most qualified candidates for the hirer to review so they can make the right hire with confidence. Small businesses like Hestus, Givers, and Part and Sum are already using it today. Interested? Visit linkedin.com/smbhire to express interest in joining LinkedIn’s beta program. In today’s fast-changing work landscape, small businesses face numerous challenges - but hiring shouldn’t be one of them. LinkedIn, with the largest engaged professional network in the world, is uniquely positioned to help. In fact, 86% of small businesses globally get a qualified candidate within 24 hours of posting a job on LinkedIn. By leveraging innovative strategies to attract top talent, from highlighting your brand to using new AI tools, your small business will be better positioned to thrive in 2025.—

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