Hi Playmakers,

Happy New Year! I hope you blow it out of the water this year.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with my mother-in-law. I’m lucky for a number reasons but one of them is that my mother-in-law is a jeweler (peep today’s IG story for a shot of my engagement ring). Occasionally, when she visits, we’ll do some window shopping together. We recently popped in to visit a jeweler here in Calabasas while we were out for coffee. I looked down at a necklace and the man behind the counter spoke up, “Don’t worry, those are natural diamonds. They’re not lab-grown.”

“What’s the difference?”

Turns out, there isn’t one. Let me explain.

Lab diamonds are identical in every single way to natural diamonds, except they didn’t take billions of years to form and they weren’t dug out of the ground by a person. Like a Star Trek replicator, at least for diamonds, we’ve solved the scarcity problem. Yet here I stood, looking at “natural diamonds” with six-figure price tags in a jewelry store that clearly hasn’t gone out of business. What gives?

So I dug a little deeper…

As it turns out, natural diamonds are also not rare. We’ve found them pretty much everywhere on Earth. And it’s one company who started it all. The De Beers corporation was formed by Cecil Rhodes after a giant (like, market-destroying giant) mine was found in South Africa.

Rhodes bought up 90% of the total diamond supply and coined the popular phrase “A Diamond is Forever.”

De Beers created artificial scarcity and ramped up the marketing machine. And thus, the birth of the modern diamond industry. Classic.

So, let’s get this straight. People all over the world spend their hard-earned money on diamonds to “show their love” and “flex their status,” but diamonds are not only extremely common in nature, but we can also make them perfectly in a lab for a fraction of the price?

Playmakers, society has been duped. Natural diamonds are actually abundant, and lab diamonds are now pretty cheap to make, about $300-$500 per carat. It should be said, however, that the cheap cost may also come with a steep environmental bill. One lab-grown carat can generate up to 500kg of carbon emissions (potentially exceeding the cost of a mined diamond), though efforts to become renewable are increasing.

Nonetheless, the lab diamond trend went from 1% of the industry to 20% by 2024. A big reason? Social media’s impact on relationships and the pressure to show off online.

I can’t help but look at everything through an investor lens, so while the lab-grown boom might sound too good to be true, there’s one important thing to remember: a lab-grown stone is not an investment. Though natural diamonds aren’t good investments and often sell for only half their original price, lab-grown diamonds can resell for pennies, sometimes as low as 10% of their original price. Keep that in mind before you start tapping that credit card.

Put bluntly: your ring’s value is likely dropping as fast as the latest iPhone. But, like the latest iPhone, we all keep buying ‘em. So, what do you think?

Have you bought a diamond for someone you love… or has someone bought one for you? Share your thoughts.

Jenny

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Born in Jacksonville, Florida and raised by a single mother, Kat Cole started her career as a waitress at 17 and rose to Vice President by 26 as a college dropout.

She went on to lead some of the most iconic global food brands before taking the helm of AG1, now generating roughly $600 million in annual revenue.

Meet Kat Cole.

Our diamonds are fake. Social media is fake. Let’s focus on doing something real to kick off 2026.

Your mission is simple this week: do something authentic in front of others.

Maybe it’s being honest with a friend. Or maybe you need to take off your mask and be yourself in a social setting. It’s a new year, so let’s focus on being our genuine selves.

My good friend Joanne is pretty famous for her cooking, but what you probably don’t know is that she’s actually a total legal shark. Before becoming a professional content creator, she was a corporate attorney, representing major clients. This week, she hopped on IG to share a treasure trove of legal tips.

Every single one of you need to watch this quick video. I promise you will learn something.

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