Hackers recently exploited Anthropic’s Claude AI chatbot to orchestrate “large-scale” extortion operations, a fraudulent employment scheme, and the sale of AI-generated ransomware targeting and extorting at least 17 companies, the company said in a report.

The report details how its chatbot was manipulated by hackers (with little to no technical knowledge) to identify vulnerable companies, generate tailored malware, organize stolen data, and craft ransom demands with automation and speed.

“Agentic AI has been weaponized,” Anthropic said.

Related: Instagram Head Was the Victim of an ‘Experienced a Sophisticated Phishing Attack’

It’s not yet public which companies were targeted or how much money the hacker made, but the report noted that extortion demands went up to $500,000.

Key Details of the Attack

Anthropic’s internal team detected the hacker’s operation, observing the use of Claude’s coding features to pinpoint victims and build malicious software with simple prompts—a process termed “vibe hacking,” a play on “vibe coding,” which is using AI to write code with prompts in plain English.

Upon detection, Anthropic said it responded by suspending accounts, tightening safety filters, and sharing best practices for organizations to defend against emerging AI-borne threats.

Related: This AI-Driven Scam Is Draining Retirement Funds—And No One Is Safe, According to the FBI

How Businesses Can Protect Themselves From AI Hackers

With that in mind, the SBA breaks down how small business owners can protect themselves:

• Strengthen basic cyber hygiene: Encourage staff to recognize phishing attempts, use complex passwords, and enable multi-factor authentication.

• Consult cybersecurity professionals: Employ external audits and regular security assessments, especially for companies handling sensitive data.

• Monitor emerging AI risks: Stay informed about advances in both AI-powered productivity tools and the associated risks by following reports from providers like Anthropic.

• Leverage Security Partnerships: Consider joining industry groups or networks that share threat intelligence and best practices for protecting against AI-fueled crime.

As a 3X founder and veteran book publisher, I’ve brought thousands of authors to market, including several that climbed the New York Times bestseller list. Like most publishers, I always relied on traditional channels to handle sales and distribution, including, of course, Amazon. It always worked for me, but it’s expensive because you lose more than half the retail price to the middleman.

Frustrated with the business model, I decided to cut both the retailers and wholesalers out by selling directly to consumers through my ecommerce platform. I became both a publisher and an ecommerce seller.

While I experienced some success, going from zero to more than $1 million in revenue in less than one year, the transition also caught me off guard. I discovered that what looked straightforward from the outside was far more complex in practice. The highly competitive world of online retail is a minefield of logistical and financial challenges that can derail even the most prepared.

Here are five things I wish I had known before leaping into ecommerce. These factors may determine whether you can build a thriving business or not.

Related: How to Build, Grow and Make Money With Ecommerce

1. Your competition is all the other online sellers

Unlike traditional retail, your ecommerce business doesn’t just compete with the store down the street. You’re competing with sellers worldwide. It turns out there are millions of them. There are an estimated 4.82 million live Shopify stores worldwide — and that’s just one platform, and each is competing for the same dollars.

This reality requires a fundamental shift in how you think about the products you’re selling. Success in ecommerce isn’t just about having a good product at a good price. It’s about finding unique angles that give you a competitive advantage. Whether that be your brand story or how your shopping cart works, the entrepreneurs who succeed in ecommerce are those who find ways to compete on factors other than product and price.

2. Customer acquisition costs can make or break your business

One of the biggest shocks for me was discovering how expensive it can be to acquire customers. I learned the days of “build it and they will come” are long gone. With iOS privacy changes, rising advertising costs and increased competition for consumer attention, many ecommerce businesses spend between $30 and $50 to acquire a single customer.

Before launching, you need to understand your customer lifetime value (CLV) and how much you can afford to spend on acquisition while remaining profitable. If your average order value is $40 and your profit margin is 30%, you can only spend about $12 acquiring that customer while maintaining profitability, unless you have a strategy for repeat purchases.

The math is tricky, and your excitement about your top-line revenue can quickly become a nightmare if you’re not careful. So, calculate these numbers early and build your business model around sustainable acquisition costs.

Related: How to Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs with SEO

3. Operations and fulfillment are more complex than you think

Managing inventory, processing orders, handling returns and shipping products efficiently requires systems and processes that I underestimated. What seems simple when you’re selling a few items per week becomes overwhelming when you’re processing hundreds of orders.

I tried to save money by doing it myself, but soon discovered that the hidden costs were costing me more than they were saving. Fortunately, I decided to hand it off to a fulfillment company before it got too late. Consider using a third-party logistics provider (3PL) or leveraging services like Amazon FBA. Each option has trade-offs in terms of cost and scalability. Remember, while self-fulfillment gives you control, it also costs you in space, time and systems.

4. Cash flow management will test your business skills

Ecommerce creates unique cash flow challenges that catch even the best entrepreneurs off guard. You typically need to purchase inventory before you sell it, and payment processing companies often hold funds for new businesses. Add in the costs of advertising, website hosting and fulfillment, and you can quickly find yourself cash-strapped and underwater.

You can plan for these realities by maintaining adequate working capital and understanding your cash conversion cycle, which is the time between purchasing inventory and collecting cash from sales. If you’re not careful, you can run out of money during growth periods. This can be especially stressful.

Try to avoid risking too much by oversizing your inventory. It’s tempting because your cost of goods is lower, but the trade-off in terms of your cash position can derail your business. As you grow, you can transition to holding inventory for better margins and faster shipping times.

Related: How to Properly Manage the Cash Flow of Your Startup

5. Social media is your lifeline, not just marketing

In traditional publishing, I could rely on established channels and industry connections to reach readers. In ecommerce, social media isn’t just another marketing channel. It’s everything. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Facebook are the primary discovery mechanisms for many consumers, and not just younger demographics anymore.

I quickly learned that treating social media as an afterthought or delegating it entirely to agencies was a mistake. Social media drives your brand’s awareness and traffic to your online store. It enables direct customer engagement and provides social proof through user-generated content. So you have to own it.

The key is consistency and authenticity. Customers detect when brands are simply pushing products versus genuinely engaging with their community. Invest time in understanding each platform’s culture and create content that is appropriately relevant. One viral post can save you multiple times what you’d have to spend on equivalent advertising.

Ecommerce offers tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs willing to approach it strategically. But it’s not a magic wand. Success requires more than just a good product idea. It demands understanding of digital marketing, operations management, financial planning, and yes, sometimes nerves of steel.

As AI technology continues to grow in capability and popularity, the online search landscape and search optimization are rapidly changing. AI search engines, including Perplexity, Google’s AI mode, ChatGPT Search, Gemini, Arc Search and others, are competing for their share of searches and are quickly catching up to traditional search engines.

In fact, one study projected that AI search engines may have more users than traditional search engines by 2028. These constantly changing search dynamics have many businesses wondering whether their current SEO strategy is sufficient or whether they need to adapt to stay relevant. While many SEO strategies can help businesses rank in both traditional and AI search engines, there are some key techniques businesses can implement to ensure that the evolution of AI search engines does not leave them behind.

Related: Want to Be Discovered in AI Search? These Are the Sources That Matter

The increasing popularity of AI search engines

AI search engines are generative AI platforms that create answers to queries entered by users. Rather than simply presenting results, like traditional search engines, AI search engines summarize and present information pulled from multiple sources. AI search engines are quickly becoming the first choice for many users.

Rather than using a traditional search engine, people prefer to use AI search engines for more specific, conversational queries. AI search engines consolidate and summarize information, which appeals to many users, particularly when they have a longer, more specific search query or are researching a new topic. Users can also utilize AI search engines to compare products or generate a list of multiple service providers without needing to visit various websites.

4 strategies for ranking in AI search engines

AI Search engines cite the websites they pull information from. Having your website cited as a source is an effective way to generate organic traffic and increase leads. Fortunately, many of the SEO strategies that are effective for ranking in traditional SERPs remain effective for ranking in AI search engines. Additionally, search engines pay attention to ranking positions when they select websites to pull information from and cite. However, for businesses looking to stay ahead of their competition, here are a few strategies that we implement at Outpace SEO to make sure our clients rank in AI search engines as well as traditional SERPs.

1. Audit your strategy

AI search engines prioritize credibility and relevancy. Before you begin, audit your current SEO strategy and identify its strengths and weaknesses. Who is your target audience, and are they likely to use AI search engines? Are you hoping to rank nationally or locally? Answering these questions can help you adapt your strategy for continued success.

2. Ensure visibility

It’s essential to make sure that AI search engines can index your website and easily understand the context and relevance of your content. In-depth technical SEO is crucial to ensure that your website is visible to the relevant search engines. Some search engines have specific primary crawlers that need to be enabled in your robots.txt file. Make sure that your pages are indexed by Bing, not just Google. Your site should have a simple and easy-to-understand site architecture that allows AI engines to navigate it effectively. Other technical strategies include optimizing alt text, URLs, meta titles, page speed and internal linking to enhance your website’s visibility.

Related: How AI Is Transforming the SEO Landscape — and Why You Need to Adapt

3. Create concise, organized content

AI search engines summarize information in conversational language. This means that they can more easily extract information from websites that provide clear and concise content. Answering questions clearly in a sentence or two increases the chance that AI search engines will cite your website in answers to search queries. Creating content that is clearly organized with header tags is an effective way to make sure that users and search engines can easily skim your content and identify its relevance. Using high-volume, long-tail keywords as titles and headers also increases the chance that AI search engines will use your content when they generate answers to popular questions. How you write your content can significantly increase your chances of ranking both in traditional search engines and AI search engines.

4. Build online authority

Both traditional search engines and AI search engines are more likely to rank your website if it has a strong online presence. AI search engines pay particular attention to websites with regularly updated content and a strong off-page authority. The type of brand mentions and backlinks you acquire is also significant; backlinks from websites in your industry with strong domain authority will do more to boost your website’s profile than links that are irrelevant or appear untrustworthy. By consistently creating on-site and off-site content, you can establish authority and credibility within your industry, resulting in increased rankings, leads and traffic.

Final thoughts

As more people use AI search engines, it may not be enough for businesses to simply rank on SERPs. If your target audience is likely to use an AI search engine to find businesses, information and products, then it’s essential to adapt your SEO strategies to rank in AI search engines as well as traditional search engine results pages. By creating content strategically, implementing technical optimizations on your website and developing your online authority, you can provide your business with a competitive edge and keep up with rapidly advancing AI technology.

A logo rebrand not going so well is not uncommon — just ask Jaguar, or GAP, or Facebook in the aughts. Now, Cracker Barrel is in the middle of a viral controversy over its latest redesign. Last week, the company unveiled a new logo with a cleaner-looking font that removed the old man and the barrel from the design. The phrase “Old Country Store” was also removed. It’s Cracker Barrel’s fifth rebrand in its 56-year history.

Naturally, social media has not been kind about the rebrand, and everyone has seemed to weigh in, from President Donald Trump to rival restaurants like Steak ‘n Shake.

Still, Cracker Barrel is staying the course. On its website on Monday, the restaurant chain issued a statement that said: “You’ve shown us that we could’ve done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be.”

Related: Struggling to Explain What You Sell? This Beverage Brand Was Too — Until It Tried This 4-Step Fix

^{The new logo. Cracker Barrel}

The company noted that the “logo and remodels may be making headlines,” but many things aren’t going away, including “rocking chairs on the porch, a warm fire in the hearth, peg games on the table, unique treasures in our gift shop, and vintage Americana with antiques pulled straight from our warehouse in Lebanon, Tennessee.”

“If the last few days have shown us anything, it’s how deeply people care about Cracker Barrel,” the statement said. “We’re truly grateful for your heartfelt voices.”

The “old timer,” Uncle Herschel, however, might be gone from the logo for good, but he’s “not going anywhere — he’s family,” the statement said. “He’ll still be on our menu (welcome back Uncle Herschel’s Favorite Breakfast Platter), on our road signs, and featured in our country store.”

^{A Cracker Barrel restaurant, featuring the company’s old logo, in Sterling, Virginia, US, on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025. Al Drago/Bloomberg | Getty Images}

Related: Gwyneth Paltrow Closes the Loop on the Astronomer, Coldplay Concert Scandal

The change was part of a wider, forward-facing company update.

Cracker Barrel has updated the interior of many of its restaurants, which previously displayed antiques in a maximalist design, and now features more neutral paint colors and modern furniture. A company representative told Country Living last year that 25-30 stores would be getting the refresh.

“We also want to be sure Cracker Barrel is here for the next generation of families, just as it has been for yours,” the statement continued. “That means showing up on new platforms and in new ways, but always with our heritage at the heart. We take that responsibility very seriously. We know we won’t always get everything right the first time, but we’ll keep testing, learning, and listening to our guests and employees.”

As we race to our social media channels to recognize and honor Women’s Equality Day, let’s not forget the daily struggles women continue to face both at our kitchen tables and at our conference room tables.

In our workplaces, the everyday bias women face on how we speak, how we look and how we act can slowly chip away at us. And sometimes, these comments and actions that may be categorized as “innocent mistakes” impact performance reviews and advancement and promotion opportunities. All of which hits our paychecks, ultimately contributing to widening the gender pay gap.

In my book, The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn From Bad Bosses, I share that my former boss, whom I nicknamed The Cheerleader, always wanted me to be happy. He wanted me to be smiling big like a Cheshire Cat or The Joker.

“Why aren’t you smiling? What happened? Don’t worry, be happy!” The Cheerleader would always say this to me, pointing to his mouth and making a hand gesture for me to smile. And most of the time when I received this feedback, nothing had actually happened. I would be just at my desk diligently working, focused and apparently, not smiling. But he wanted me to always be smiling and always be projecting happiness, no matter what the circumstances were. This left my cheekbones sore and me feeling exhausted from the pretense of always projecting a positive, can-do attitude instead of just doing my work.

So on this Women’s Equality Day, stop asking women to smile at work. Instead, here are three things leaders should focus on to break the bias in our workplaces.

Related: 3 Ways Female Entrepreneurs Can Shatter Stereotypes While Also Empowering Others

1. Focus on performance, not if they are smiling

According to one study, 98% of women reported being told to smile at work sometime during the course of their careers, and 15% said the request to smile on demand happens weekly for them, if not more frequently. Of course, individuals who smile may be viewed as happier, likable and approachable.

“Smiling is very much associated as a gender marker,” says Marianne LaFrance, a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University and author of the book Why Smile? “It marks one’s femininity and a more communal stance toward life. Though smiling is generally a positive characteristic, it falls to women to do more of it because we want to make sure women are doing what we expect them to do, which is to care for others.”

Telling women to smile may seem harmless in the workplace. And it reinforces the societal expectation that women should be cheerful, approachable and make others feel more comfortable with a simple smile.

Don’t use “the smile” as an indicator of whether women are performing or not on the job. Rather than focusing on their facial expressions, focus on their performance. Ensure all employees have clear goals and metrics and they understand when and what they are expected to deliver. And take the time to evaluate them fairly based on their work, and not based on how often they smile.

Related: If You Want to Honor Women’s Equality Day, Start by Re-evaluating the Performance Feedback You Give Women at Work

2. Recognize and respect how individuals express emotions

I enjoy smiling. But when my former boss, The Cheerleader, would tell me to smile on demand, that’s when I started to dislike smiling. At times, I would shoot a quick smile back just to appease the situation. And when I am doing work at my desk, I am concentrating on completing the task at hand. I am not focused on how I look, if I am smiling or not. I just want to do the best work I can.

For women, smiling on demand in the workplace can seem more like a requirement. According to Harvard Business Review, “This pervasive stereotype not only characterizes Black women as more hostile, aggressive, overbearing, illogical, ill-tempered and bitter, but it may also be holding them back from realizing their full potential in the workplace.”

Let’s recognize and respect how women, and all individuals, express emotions, especially being content or happy at work. Depending on the culture and environment you were raised in, a smile doesn’t always equal happiness.

For some, a smile without clear context or reasoning may seem suspicious, even a sign of weakness or dishonesty. For some, smiling constantly may be a way to mask how they are truly feeling. For some, they may not smile freely at strangers and only smile with close friends or family members where they feel comfortable. Remember that smiling is not the only way to determine if someone feels they are content and doing well at their job.

Related: Men Are Seen as Experts More Often Than Their Women Counterparts — and It’s Time to Break Those Gender Biases.

3. Challenge the idea that smiling is part of the job requirement

As leaders, do we ask women to smile more than men? And if we do, why is it a job requirement at all to be ready to flash a smile on demand? Here’s how we can respectfully challenge and break through the bias:

Do we ask Jeff to smile more often, who is also up for a promotion? Why is this feedback we are specifically giving Mita, to smile more and be happier in the office?

Mita has gotten strong performance ratings the last two years in a row, and this year, she has exceeded all her goals and has received positive feedback from her team and peers. Can someone help me understand why we need her to smile more?

Why do we need Mita to smile more often? What makes us uncomfortable about her not smiling? Is her lack of smiling impacting her performance?

Next time you have the urge to ask a woman to smile more at work, stop and pause. Why does she need to smile to be successful and happy at work? Help yourself and others move beyond how she looks and focus on how she drives business results to help break the bias in our workplaces.

Every era of innovation is shaped by the assumptions it inherits — and those it dares to challenge. Today, a profound transformation is underway. It’s not just technological or economic; it is philosophical. We are moving from a world of institutional dependency to one of personal responsibility, and this shift is not abstract — it is architectural. It redefines markets, recasts the role of government, and perhaps most significantly, reshapes the landscape of entrepreneurship.

At the center of this change is a simple but powerful idea: When people know, they are responsible. The democratization of information, powered by real-time data, AI-driven personalization and platform accessibility, is rewriting the logic of service, value and ownership. The entrepreneurial question is no longer, “What can we do for people?” but, “How can we equip people to do more for themselves?”

Related: 3 Business Models That Will Shape the Future of Entrepreneurship in 2025 and Beyond

From intermediaries to enablers

Entrepreneurs have historically built businesses around solving problems on behalf of others. This often required serving as intermediaries: interpreting complexity, managing risk and navigating institutions. Insurance companies pooled risks that people couldn’t calculate. Financial advisors made sense of markets that most couldn’t access. Schools and training institutions curated learning for people who lacked the means to direct it themselves.

That model made sense — in a world where information was scarce, and institutions were necessary proxies for knowledge.

Today, individuals have direct access to tools that allow them to manage health metrics, compare investment options, acquire in-demand skills and even simulate career outcomes. Platforms like wearable health tech, robo-advisors, skill-based microcredentials and AI tutors mean people no longer require a professional class to tell them what is best. They can see it — and often predict it — for themselves.

The businesses that merely stand between the individual and their decision are now obsolete. The businesses that thrive will be those that build systems of empowerment — platforms that provide clarity, customization and capability.

The new architecture of value

In this new environment, value is not in provisioning; it is in enabling autonomy. Entrepreneurs must now ask: How do we help individuals unlock and apply their own potential?

Consider healthcare. Traditional insurance operates on the premise that people must be protected from risks they can’t predict. But as personalized health data becomes ubiquitous, people can now monitor, manage and reduce their own risk. The value chain shifts from claims management to wellness optimization. The opportunity? Build ventures that help people interpret their health data, make daily behavioral choices and invest in long-term vitality. It’s no longer about coverage — it’s about capability.

Or look at retirement planning. Where institutions once prescribed investment strategies, today’s individual can model their financial future in real time. Startups are emerging not to sell products, but to build dashboards of decision-making — offering tailored insights, adaptive risk modeling and lifestyle-based financial strategies. It’s not about controlling assets; it’s about translating knowledge into confident action.

The same transformation is visible in education. Institutions designed to certify are giving way to systems that verify. Competency-based portfolios, credentialing ecosystems and industry-aligned learning platforms are making degrees optional and demonstrable ability the currency of success. Entrepreneurs here aren’t building new schools — they’re building knowledge markets.

Related: How to Keep Up With Customer Expectations

Entrepreneurship in the age of awareness

This is a new age of entrepreneurship, one where success is not about scale alone, but about aligning with the informed individual’s journey. It demands a shift in mindset from ownership to stewardship.

Startups in this era must reflect three core design principles:

1. Empowerment over dependency: The most valuable businesses will not do things for people — they will build tools that allow people to do them for themselves. Think: platforms that help users self-diagnose, self-educate or self-direct their economic strategy.

2. Personalization over prescription: Generic offerings will fade. What succeeds now are systems that adapt: financial plans tuned to personal goals, wellness programs that respond to biometric feedback, education pathways shaped by live career data.

3. Transparency over authority: The informed individual does not tolerate gatekeeping. Businesses must offer clarity, not control. Whether in pricing, outcomes or decision logic, transparency builds the trust required for responsibility to flourish.

These principles aren’t trends — they are structural requirements. They arise because the individual now sits at the center of the value chain. And that individual is not passive. They are informed, engaged and increasingly aware that they are the product, the platform and the producer of outcomes.

The collapse and creation of value chains

As this shift accelerates, entire industries will be restructured. Wherever value was created by managing people’s ignorance, that value will collapse. Legacy insurance models, credential-based hiring systems and one-size-fits-all service providers are under existential pressure.

But with every collapse comes creation. As individuals become responsible for their own outcomes, they will seek trusted systems, smart tools and tailored insights. They will invest in products that respect their intelligence, reflect their uniqueness and respond to their goals.

The next wave of unicorns will not be service providers — they will be agency platforms. They won’t just deliver — they will activate.

A new kind of entrepreneurial ethic

This is more than strategy. It’s a new entrepreneurial ethic. It is grounded in a respect for the individual not as a target market, but as a fully capable actor. It sees people not as consumers of systems, but as participants in outcomes.

Entrepreneurship, then, becomes a civic act. It helps rebuild the social contract — not by promising care, but by equipping individuals to care for themselves and their communities. The goal is no longer centralized service. It is distributed capability.

Related: How to Use AI to Increase Business and Make Customers Happy

Build for the informed individual

The real revolution is not in technology. It’s in structure. Technology simply enables what is now structurally necessary: individual ownership of wellness, finance, education and life itself.

Entrepreneurs who understand this will stop building for passive users and start building for informed owners. They will not design systems of support; they will design systems of self-determination.

Because in this new world, when people know, they are responsible. And the businesses that thrive will be those that help them own that responsibility — with clarity, confidence and capability.

I’m sure you’ve heard these comments before: “The youth today are addicted to their phones.” Although there are plenty of stereotypes about the youngest generations, some of these common assumptions are not always true.

Recent studies have confirmed that Generation Z, aka Gen Z, aka Zoomers, the oldest of whom are 28 this year, are turning the corner on their “always on” reputation.

New research shows that 81% of Gen Z adults (and 78% of millennials!) often wish they could disconnect from digital devices more easily, and 74% of them feel real-life experiences are more important than digital ones. Another study showed that nearly half (46%) limit their screen time in some way, with 17% saying they limit their screen time on all or most days.

Even more telling: Searches for “digital detox ideas” and “digital detox vision boards” are also up by 72% and 273% respectively.

In a quest for balance, people are looking to get offline. This is why it’s increasingly important to get creative with your marketing tactics, something I’ve leveraged successfully to build a $100 million business from nothing, without any capital injections or funding.

Gen Z may not be the largest population in the U.S., but they have real buying power. Studies show that these young trend-setters impact family spending habits as much as 77%.

So here are two ways to connect with Gen Z on their terms and generate more revenue for your business.

Related: 5 Simple, Science-Backed Ways Entrepreneurs Can Connect With Gen Z

Use the offline tactic that led 91% of Gen Z to make a purchase last year

Gen Z was the first generation to grow up fully online. As a result, offline marketing is novel again. Whether this is radio, print magazines or even in-person marketing, 74% of Gen Z consider real-life experiences as more important than digital ones.

Research shows that direct mail, in particular, works well with Gen Z. In fact, it’s reported that 72% of the Gen Z population said they would be disappointed to no longer receive mail, and that they look forward to receiving it every day.

Not only does this generation appreciate mail, they respond to it — 91% of Gen Z say they’ve made a purchase as a result of mail they received.

This is something I’ve seen firsthand in my own business. We analyzed 115,393 leads generated in 2024 — the sum of all our direct mail and digital leads, no cherry picking whatsoever — and discovered that we made $253.54 per direct mail lead and only $41.60 per digital lead. That’s over a 500% difference!

Even though direct mail has been around for decades, that doesn’t mean it’s without newfound bells and whistles that will help you appeal even more to today’s generation. Digital printers have made highly personalized mail pieces possible. Today, it’s easy to include eye-catching personalizations on individual mailers, like a recipient’s first name, a stock image of someone in the same demographic group or even product images related to past purchase behaviors and more.

Another modern-day trick is direct mail automation, which allows your business to tap into unique events along the customer journey with trigger-based mailings. The carves out a highly personalized experience for prospects and customers alike. For example, imagine visiting an ecommerce website and shopping around without making a purchase. If you received a postcard a couple of days later featuring the product you were looking for with a 15% discount code, would you be tempted to go back and buy? I know I would!

Direct mail automation like this is still a relatively new technology, which means you have time to jump on it and run a few tests for your business to see if it works — likely before your competitors do the same.

Related: How to Boost Your Business With Direct Mail Automation and Retargeting — a Detailed Beginner’s Guide

Attention is worth its weight in gold, so diversify your marketing to boost attention on your campaign by 39%

Gen Z loves video — whether they are actively trying to reduce screen time or not. From TikTok to YouTube, they love short- and long-form video content. Research confirms that more than half (60%) of all TikTok users are Gen Z, and 51% visit YouTube daily. So, including video content in your marketing strategy is important.

In my business, we’ve capitalized on this by including more video in online marketing. We took some of our video case studies and shortened them for social media ad content. As a result, our average number of social media leads per week doubled from 174 in 2022 to 356 in 2023! That’s a 105% increase, and it’s held steady since then.

Yes, Gen Z is limiting screen time, but that doesn’t mean they’re eliminating it. I advise you to make the most of the hours they spend scrolling — or even sitting on the couch watching Netflix.

The best part about leveraging video ads on popular platforms as well as on TV is that you can target the same groups of people on your mailing lists. It’s a great way to stay in front of your most qualified leads and keep your business top of mind.

I recommend obtaining a list of your ideal prospects and targeting them with direct mail and video ads on Facebook, Instagram and even ad-supported connected TV (CTV). When they wake up and check their phones, they come across your video ad on Instagram, then in the afternoon they receive a postcard from you, and in the evening they see a CTV commercial about your business in between shows on Amazon Prime.

This creates an effect where prospects feel like they are seeing your business everywhere. I even created a service to do exactly this, called Everywhere Small Business, in case you want to try this approach without managing all of the ads on separate platforms yourself.

Related: I’ve Helped 124,393 Entrepreneurs With Their Advertising — Here Are My Top 3 Secrets Proven to Generate Results

Studies show that this type of multi-channel, integrated approach garners 39% more attention than single-media campaigns. That’s the kind of lift in response that could be the key to shortening your sales cycle and boosting revenue — and it’s even more effective when it runs on autopilot while you focus on more important things.

In my 27-plus years of experience in marketing, I’ve learned that these tactics will help turn heads both online and offline. Whether it’s for the youngest or the oldest generations, these strategies will deliver real results.

You made it. After years of building, optimizing and scaling to the nth degree, you’ve earned a seat at the table in the C-suite. Not just a C-suite title, still reporting to another executive who makes the real decisions; you are actually in the “situation room.” You bring a deep understanding of the technology that powers your business. You celebrate. You update your LinkedIn. Then day one arrives.

And you realize something: People are a bit skeptical of you, and it isn’t just the people below you. People above you, your peers and the investors all seem to have a certain take on you.

You learn quickly that a title alone doesn’t build trust. Your technical brilliance doesn’t move your team, your peers and your executive counterparts. They’re looking for leadership that values business outcomes rather than just technical best practices. This is why you’re the CTO/CIO, not the IT person.

In an article he co-authored, Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg said, “Technical skills are merely a starting point, the bare minimum. Requirements for all the C-level jobs have shifted toward business acumen and ‘softer’ leadership skills.” This next stage is about blending driving value with your expertise, rather than just explaining how things work.

Let’s go over some of the roles you need to fill and milestones you need to hit in your first year on the job.

Related: I’ve Managed 260 Employees — Here’s How to Tell If Your Leadership Style Is Actually Working

Day one: Everyone is going to lie to you (unintentionally)

On day one, you’ll ask questions and hear confident answers. But most of them will be incomplete and even sometimes completely inaccurate, but hold your judgment initially.

It’s not deception. It’s diffusion. In any organization of scale, no single person holds the full picture. Documentation is outdated. Systems are interconnected in convoluted and undocumented ways. History is buried in inboxes and hallway conversations. Late-night crises solved by sleepless IT staff have gotten the company back up by morning, but only by a patchwork that makes little sense.

The instinct, especially as a first-time leader, is to clean house. To draw hard lines between what’s broken and what’s working properly and who’s to blame. Trust me, resist that.

Why? Because if you say, “This is all bunk, we’re starting over,” or we are in the mess because the last guard was incompetent, you’re not leading; you are actively setting yourself up for the same demise. As The Who once sang, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Instead, don’t give in to the easy blame, trust that there is always context and be the empath in your organization. This means active listening without judgment, understanding how and why decisions were made before assuming they were wrong and recognizing that institutional constraints often explain more than incompetence ever could.

When you seek to understand, not audit, you become the kind of leader people trust with the truth.

Week one: Start speaking in business, not just systems

The fastest way to lose trust in your first week is to speak in technical jargon and expect others to keep up. They won’t. And they shouldn’t have to.

Your job now is to be the translator. That means reframing technology conversations into business impact.

Saying, “We need $250,000 or we risk being hacked,” might be true. But it sounds like fear-based budgeting. Instead, say, “This investment reduces our incident response time and enables faster feature delivery, which directly affects our speed to market.”

You’re not dumbing it down. You’re tuning it up. You’re connecting the dots between what the system needs and what the business values. That’s leadership.

And if you can’t do that yet, now’s the time to learn.

Quarter one: Deliver value that ripples across departments

You don’t need a moonshot in your first 90 days. However, you do need a win, one that demonstrates your understanding of how the business operates, not just how the tech stacks up.

Pick a persistent pain point that cuts across teams. Fix a bottleneck in onboarding. Streamline reporting. Solve something people have silently suffered through.

This is where the operator shows up, a role that combines execution with empathy. You’re proving that your leadership isn’t just smart. It’s useful, visible and repeatable.

And just as important: make sure the win isn’t just yours. Highlight the teammates who made it possible. Trust builds faster when people see your leadership as expansive, not self-serving.

Year one: Don’t demand the seat — earn it

There’s a common refrain among technical leaders: “We deserve more authority.” You want to report to the CEO. You want a louder voice in strategy. You want influence.

If you want to be at the table, learn how that table works. Understand margin pressures. Know what drives your CFO’s decisions. Learn how compliance constraints shape your CMO’s roadmap. Understand how product timelines interact with hiring cycles.

A real executive doesn’t just ask for influence. They wield it responsibly, cross-functionally, and with context.

Related: Want to Be a Better Leader? Show Employees You Care.

Create a space where tech leaders can thrive

If you’re already in the C-suite, part of your responsibility is to make sure your technical leaders gain buy-in and succeed.

That doesn’t mean coddling. It means creating clarity.

• Invite them early. Don’t bring your CTO in at the end of a strategy session to “weigh in.” Bring them in when the goals are still being shaped.
• Set expectations. Don’t just ask for deliverables. Ask for insight. Ask them to explain how tech can enable outcomes, not just avoid outages.
• Eliminate the silo. Technology touches every department. The org chart should reflect that.
• Reward translation. The best CTOs turn complexity into clarity. They make everyone around them smarter. That’s the leadership skill we should be measuring.

When technical leaders fail, it’s rarely a failure of intelligence. It’s a failure of integration.

If you’re seated in the “big chair,” you can’t expect people to intuit where they need to go. You need to build the bridge. You have to make everyone around you smarter, more capable, and more confident in their decisions because you’re part of the conversation.

That’s what makes you trusted. And that’s what makes you dangerous — in the best way.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are getting married.

The entrepreneurs and superstars posted photos from the engagement on Instagram in a joint post.

“Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” the couple captioned the post.

Related: Taylor Swift Just Made a Surprise Announcement, Revealing the Marketing Genius Behind Her $1.5 Billion Fortune

The proposal took place under a rose-covered trellis.

Kelce plays tight end for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and has an estimated net worth of $52 million, per Forbes. He also owns a steakhouse with his NFL teammate, Patrick Mahomes, called 1587 Prime, and hosts a podcast with his brother, Jason, who retired from the NFL last year.

Swift has a net worth of $1.6 billion, making her the wealthiest female musician in history.

The couple has been dating for about two years.

Related: Taylor Swift, UFOs and Football — Travis and Jason Kelce Score $100 Million for Their Podcast. Is It Really Worth That Much?