April 2025

Most entrepreneurs and business owners understand they need a comprehensive communications strategy to reach their target customers. However, all too many think that only means branding, marketing and advertising and forget to include public relations (PR). In particular, many small businesses and startups neglect this part of the communications equation.

This has always been a mistake, but that’s even more true today. Here, I explain how PR impacts brand credibility and customer trust, as well as how those seemingly ineffable factors connect to your hard revenue numbers.

The problem with investing solely in marketing

Investing only in marketing and ignoring PR is a problem because marketing drives awareness, but PR builds trust — and without trust, awareness doesn’t convert.

One study has put the number of consumers who believe advertisers have integrity at 4%. Customers’ trust in conventional advertising is also plummeting, especially for members of the younger generations. As Wharton Magazine reports, 84% of millennials not only dislike traditional ads but also distrust them.

Research also shows people don’t pay attention to ads and actively avoid them. According to consumer research firm Bulbshare, 63% of Gen Zers use ad blockers, meaning they don’t even see ads online. If they do come across one, 99% say they hit “skip” when given the choice.

In short, today’s consumers are savvy. They know how to follow the money trail and identify conflicts of interest. Indeed, the Content Marketing Institute has found that 80% of corporate decision-makers prefer to glean information from articles that are more objective rather than ads, which are recognized as biased and self-interested.

Meanwhile, today’s consumers increasingly prioritize ethics. B2B services company BusinessDasher explains that 84% of customers weigh companies’ ethics and values when considering a purchase, and 63% say they would like companies to adopt more ethical practices.

For companies that would like to expand their market reach, these statistics send a clear signal. Investing only in advertising and marketing is unlikely to move the needle. To develop a good reputation for your brand, you need to do PR.

Related: How to Make the Most of Your Public Relations

PR: Ethical strategic communications

PR differs from other communication strategies like branding and marketing because it specifically focuses on developing your organization’s positive reputation and earning consumers’ trust. While ads and marketing campaigns may attempt to tell people about the business’s great reputation, good PR shows them. It enables the business and its spokespeople to demonstrate ethical conduct rather than just making claims to this effect.

For instance, while a top PR team will draft and release press releases and media advisories on a company’s behalf, they will also seek out opportunities for the company’s leadership to serve as expert sources in the media. When the public needs help understanding current events and a journalist turns to a company’s spokesperson for expert analysis, the viewers understand that this person and their company are trustworthy. In addition, they come to rely on and appreciate the spokesperson’s valuable advice.

In the course of such an interview, the company’s representative may never even mention their product or service. By demonstrating their willingness to share important information, however, they signal their care for the greater good, their own sterling character and that of their company. This forms positive connotations in viewers’ minds. People come to associate the spokesperson and company with credibility and garner their trust.

Behaving in an ethical manner and showing goodwill tends to be more convincing than merely claiming to be good. This is how strong connections with customers can still be forged despite today’s cynical environment.

Related: How You Can Leverage These PR Strategies to Build Your Company’s Credibility and Trust — Even When Under Attack

How PR contributes to revenue growth

To be clear, PR is not a direct method of boosting sales or generating leads. Instead, it works in the background, burnishing your brand’s reputation and predisposing people to think highly of your company. This can pay off in the end, however.

Take Sears, Roebuck and Co. as an example. When the brand partnered with The Oprah Winfrey Show to provide Christmas gifts for 100 foster children, the results were staggering. After the episode aired, customer surveys showed an 11% jump in positive sentiment toward the brand — and people said they planned to spend 39% more at Sears.

The final impact? That single PR moment helped generate $13 million in new revenue.

In addition, father-daughter co-authors Al and Laura Ries studied 91 launches of new products in their book “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR.” Those campaigns that incorporated PR were more successful than those that only deployed marketing approaches. Indeed, they conclude that PR is a better investment than advertising for most businesses.

In my own experience leading a PR firm, I can attest that campaigns sometimes generate so much new business that clients can’t scale fast enough and have to pause our services while they catch up with demand.

Enter the limelight with PR

Hiring a PR firm, especially one that can show a track record of success in your particular industry, is indispensable to make your brand image shine. This strategic communications approach avoids the common missteps of advertising and marketing while aligning with today’s customers’ preferences for ethical business practices.

For these reasons, more businesses should consider taking PR firms up on their offers of a free consultation call. There’s nothing to lose and the limelight to gain.

If you think using AI to save time is enough — you’re already at risk.

Your clients aren’t just admiring your efficiency. They’re studying it to replace you. AI now delivers 80% of what most service providers offer — at a fraction of the cost. Freelancers, consultants and agencies are getting blindsided as their clients quietly build AI workflows that eliminate the need to rehire. In this video, I’ll show you how to flip the script and become irreplaceable.

While most professionals are still stuck using AI for content drafts or task automation, the smartest entrepreneurs are repositioning themselves as designers of outcomes, not just doers of work.

Inside, you’ll learn the three steps to audit, evolve, and future-proof your offer — before your clients replace it.

• How to spot the hidden weakness in your offer before your clients do
  If you don’t audit your service, your clients will — and when they realize AI can do it faster and cheaper, it’s game over. I’ll show you the first move to make now.

• Why “doing the work” is making you replaceable — and what to do instead
  Execution used to be enough. Not anymore. Discover how to shift into the only role AI can’t automate (and clients will actually pay a premium for).

• The one thing AI can’t replicate — and why it’s now your greatest asset
  It’s not your skills. It’s not your speed. Learn how to turn your story and perspective into a positioning moat that makes you untouchable — even if AI clones your voice.

Whether you’re a solo consultant or leading a lean team, this is your blueprint for staying one step ahead of AI — and 10 steps ahead of your competition.

Download the free “AI Success Kit” (limited time only). And you’ll also get a free chapter from my brand new book, “The Wolf is at The Door – How to Survive and Thrive in an AI-Driven World.”

In today’s high-stakes business climate, being a founder isn’t just ambitious — it’s brutal.

You’re managing more capital, facing fiercer competition, navigating tighter fundraising criteria, and are expected not only to win the initial success sprint but also to continue to complete the marathon at record pace.

The truth? Founders today are expected to perform like elite athletes — and yet far too many are competing without a coach.

Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, once described entrepreneurship as “throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. That’s terrifying enough. But even more terrifying is the fact that you’ve convinced an entire community of people you care about to throw themselves off the cliff with you.”

It’s lonely. It’s scary. And it’s exactly why founder coaching isn’t a luxury — it’s a necessity.

Related: Why Real Mentors Don’t Just Give Answers — They Ask the Right Questions

Why coaching is a strategic growth lever

In a world of pitch decks, burn rates, and blitzscaling, “coaching” may sound like a nice-to-have. But business leaders who treat coaching as an early-stage line item, rather than a mid-life correction, are playing a smarter long game.

A founder coach isn’t just a sounding board. They’re a pressure release valve, a pattern recognizer, a strategic challenger and a partner in emotional resilience. In the founder role, your clarity, confidence and consistency impact every key business decision. Coaching multiplies that impact.

Would you bet millions on an athlete without a coach?

No serious investor would. So why are we still betting on founders to outperform — often at the cost of their mental health and long-term clarity — without that same level of support?

If you’re serious about building something that lasts, then investing in coaching isn’t just good for you — it’s good business.

Ready to take coaching seriously? Here’s your playbook.

1. Budget for it — and talk about it openly

Set an annual budget for coaching from day one. Share that plan with your investors and advisors. Doing so signals strategic foresight, not weakness — and they may even help you find the right coach through their network.

2. Vet for real-world experience

Choose someone who’s been in the trenches. A coach with actual founder experience will have the scars and stories that resonate. Academic degrees and fancy titles are nice — but insights from someone who’s scaled a company (or failed and learned from it) are invaluable.

3. Find someone who balances strategy and humanity

Business is personal. A good coach can navigate both spheres, helping you manage the inner game (mindset, fear, identity) while guiding the external one (team, fundraising, scaling). You need someone who gets that it’s all connected.

4. Align their ‘superpower’ with your growth gaps

Ask bluntly: What’s your superpower? Great coaches have one. Maybe it’s helping high-performers avoid burnout, guiding first-time CEOs or scaling culture across continents. Their strength should directly align with what you need most right now.

5. Prioritize the work

This isn’t a “fit it in when I can” relationship. Coaching works when you consistently show up, prepared to be honest, vulnerable, and accountable. Put it on your calendar like a board meeting — because that’s how valuable it is.

6. Be patient — Growth isn’t instant

You’re used to chasing fast wins, but coaching is a long game. Emotional rewiring, perspective shifts and sustained behavior change take time. Progress may be invisible at first — until it becomes undeniable.

Related: Mentorship Isn’t Enough — Leaders Need Executive Coaching, Too. Here’s Why.

The founder advantage: Why coaching creates a ripple effect

In a world of AI automations, pitch-perfect branding, and venture-backed pressure, the most undervalued asset in your business is your own clarity and conviction.

When founders are supported, grounded and guided, everything improves — culture, retention, leadership, decision-making, fundraising. The returns compound. And in the age of burnout, founder breakdowns, and quiet quitting at the top, mental resilience is your most defensible edge.

Make coaching a non-negotiable

Founders pour everything into their companies — time, money, sanity. But if you’re not investing in yourself as a leader, you’re putting all that effort at risk. In this market, the strongest competitive edge isn’t just product or funding — it’s founders who are mentally equipped to weather storms and make clear, confident decisions.

Coaching helps you become that founder. Start treating it like the growth engine it is.

That $10 monthly fee for Microsoft 365 might seem harmless until you realize you spend $120 every year just to keep using apps you’ve relied on for years. For entrepreneurs and everyday users alike, the idea of renting software is starting to wear thin.

There’s actually always been a smarter alternative that’s only now gaining serious traction as subscription fatigue is wearing people down: Microsoft Office lifetime licenses. Priced at $49.97 through April 27, these software bundles pay for themselves in just five months if you cancel your 365 subscription today.

Microsoft 365 vs. Office lifetime licenses

You’re not just buying software but investing in tools that power your days. Whether you’re drafting proposals in Word, tracking financials in Excel, building decks in PowerPoint, or managing email through Outlook, Microsoft Office apps remain a staple for serious productivity.

With this lifetime deal, you’ll get access to:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• Teams
• OneNote
• Publisher
• Access

Once you buy, you’ll receive an email with your download link and software key. Just install and activate the apps on your PC, and they’re yours for the life of your computer. No subscriptions. No auto-renewals. No chasing promo codes every month.

While Microsoft 365 does include extras like mobile app access and cloud storage, many simply don’t use them enough to justify the ongoing costs. If you’re working primarily from your desktop or laptop, the lifetime license offers nearly identical functionality.

Why this deal is worth it

Most people don’t think twice about renting software because that’s what they’ve gotten used to. But when you stop and realize you’re paying Microsoft every single month for the same apps you’ve used since high school, it starts to feel like a trap. This Microsoft Office deal isn’t just cheaper, it breaks that loop. You buy it once, it’s yours, and suddenly, you’re not budgeting for Word and Excel like they’re Netflix.

Download Microsoft Office for Windows while it’s down to $49.97 through April 27 at 11:59 p.m. PT with no coupon needed (reg. $219.99).

Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows: Lifetime License – $49.97

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StackSocial prices subject to change.

As an inclusive leader, here’s one thing you can remember amidst the swirling controversies around diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI): It’s always legal and a good idea to understand and reduce bias in the workplace. Consider this functional definition of bias as “actions that produce advantage for some people or ideas and disadvantage for other people or ideas.”

Sociologists have identified dozens of types of bias, and all are worth understanding. But right now, there are three particular biases that cry out for reduction:

• From win-lose to competition and collaboration

• From diversity vs. merit to differences as qualifications

• From DEI uniformity to respectful conflict resolution

Related: If You’re Not Aware of These Common Biases, Your Entire Leadership Strategy Is at Risk

1. From the win-lose bias (or zero-sum beliefs) to competition and collaboration

Research shows that those who have more to lose are more likely to adopt win-lose biases. A current wave of loss aversion can be seen in the assumption that undocumented immigrants take the jobs of American-born people, in the argument that equality and equity are not compatible and in the presumption that learning about human differences is inherently discriminatory.

Inclusive leaders recognize this tendency to win-lose but do not accept its dominance. And the way forward is not to blithely assure people that it’s all really win-win. While there are synergies and “rising tides that lift all boats,” it is not effective or truthful to counter win-lose narratives with simplistic “we all can win” platitudes.

Why not? Because there are winners and losers in corporate life. Some people get the project assignment, some don’t. Some earn a larger bonus, some receive performance improvement plans. Some get the promotion, some don’t. We compete, and that’s okay, as long as it drives excellence and is fairly practiced (no small feat). Inclusive leaders acknowledge the challenge and opportunity in both competition and collaboration, on their teams and with customers.

As an inclusive leader, are you talking out loud about how competition and collaboration co-exist as success factors, specifically to counter the win-lose bias?

Related: 5 Examples of Unconscious Bias at Work and How to Solve Them

2. From the diversity vs. merit bias to differences as qualifications

Another well-worn bias on the loose is diversity vs. merit — the reality that those who differ in identities from established “norms” face persistent doubt that they are “qualified” and that they deserve or earned the job or assignment. The current shorthand for this bias is “they are a diversity hire.”

Inclusive leaders diagnose and respond to this bias efficiently because presumed and ill-defined “merit” hurts the organization.

• The diversity vs. merit bias reinforces that “different is bad,” when the research is clear that well-managed diverse teams innovate and produce more than homogeneous teams.

• This bias fuels the internalized self-doubt of those who are “different.” Such an impact causes some to avoid applying for positions and can isolate the “only ones” who try to produce and advance in such low-performing environments. Know this: Claims of merit and meritocracy are not credible among those whose parents taught them “you have to work twice as hard to get half as far.”

• One of the most troubling expressions of this bias shows in performance appraisals. To be specific, Black and Hispanic employees may receive lower performance ratings than they have earned. This can impact their work assignments, compensation, productivity, promotion and eventually their retention.

As a corrective, inclusive leaders can define “merit” in a more rational way. Merit is the demonstrated and rewarded pattern of high performance, in a combination of individual effort, team success and positive results.

The Society for Human Resource Management puts it another way: “Merit-based frameworks prioritize inclusivity and belonging, ensuring that everyone has the chance to contribute, develop, and succeed, shifting the focus from traditional measures of ‘most qualified’ to fostering environments where all talents can be discovered, nurtured, and valued.”

Inclusive leaders know that talent is distributed relatively evenly across populations. The way forward with equitable hiring is to focus on the market availability of the mix of talent, which is not discrimination. Thoughtful, fair-minded leaders don’t need quotas or targets or any other representational method that runs the risk of unfair preference when applied to individuals.

When we are positioned to compete for our fair share of market-available talent across relevant identity points, it brings “excellence” and “well-qualified” into focus. We steer away from bias inclined toward or against anyone primarily on the basis of their identities, so we can direct our decision-making toward competing for the mix of talent we need to succeed.

When it comes to development opportunities and advancement, rather than diversity vs. merit, we can move toward differences as qualifications. In this construct, diversity may include aspects of identity like race and gender, when, for example, the HR team is composed only of women. The new discipline is to analyze the relevance of any identity point and consider all manner of distinct abilities and transferable skills in the definition of qualifications.

One of my favorite examples: The tech company that always has a sentence in a management promotion announcement explaining how the rising person is skilled as an inclusive leader. When the promoted person is a white man, announcing his inclusive leadership capabilities sends three important messages: 1) all leaders are expected to lead inclusively, 2) white men observing the announcement discover that white men can also be rewarded for leading inclusively, and 3) it rightly pressures the rising leader to get even better as an inclusive leader.

Many DEI leaders have missed a key theme in this meritocracy mess. To focus on merit and qualifications is not only a risk for bias — it’s also vital to excellence in the organization. We should not abandon the pursuit of quality because the idea of merit has been used to abuse. So, we don’t shy away from the discussion of qualifications, but instead we reduce how bias creeps into decisions via assumptions of merit, and we join our colleagues in committing to what is truly meritorious in past and expected performance.

Inclusive leaders need to get clear about merit and meritocracy in their own minds, understand the coded bias of this language for many and then redefine diversity vs. merit to differences as qualifications.

Related: 7 Ways to Check Your Bias When Evaluating Your Team

3. From DEI uniformity to respectful conflict resolution

There is no question that inclusion has fallen short of including many, and I say that as a white guy who has been developing inclusive leaders for more than 40 years. To the degree that leaders claiming to be inclusive have permitted DEI to operate coercively, perhaps pushback can be seen as a reaction to being pushed.

When we evaluate the current controversies around DEI, we can see the aversion to losing in the win-lose frame. Inclusion fails anytime the tone of an interaction, program or policy comes across as “It’s our turn now, you’ve had your run, so sit down and be quiet.” When white men worry about their white son’s opportunities, responding only with data to counter the concern is tone deaf and uncaring. There’s fear to unpack, and scared colleagues to care about.

I realize it’s easy for me, as a person with much accumulated advantage, to point out the problems with “It’s our turn now.” However, as inclusive leaders, we have a decision to make: Are we going to coerce or influence? The recent election offers up the data: Requiring uniform acceptance of a progressive DEI agenda is not working, and it’s unscalable.

Inclusive leaders now must open the door to anyone feeling excluded by inclusion, marginalized by equity work or stereotyped by “diversity.” This opportunity calls us to depressurize DEI by connecting it to the company’s core values, by equipping colleagues to try on how inclusion helps them succeed and by inviting people in but not mandating this learning.

Obliging employees to “get with the program” is not scalable, but it does fuel conflict. So, it’s also time to tune up policies and practices around conflict resolution. The years ahead will be filled with opportunities to equip your culture to identify and resolve conflict driven by differences. Two vital resources to support this:

Inclusive leaders, right now, are finding the courage to reduce bias in their organizations. Be one of them. It’s a powerful moment to lead your teams beyond:

• Win/lose assumptions to embracing collaboration and competition

• Meritocracy as an argument to diverse excellence as an expectation

• Respectful learning and dialogue that can navigate conflict

It won’t be easy, but it will be good, when you lead more inclusively by reducing bias.

As the cost of rent has increased by more than 50% over the last decade, some popular cities like Miami are becoming less and less affordable.

To find the most affordable cities for renting in the U.S., financial site WalletHub compared the median annual gross rent to the median household income in 182 cities, ranking them from most to least affordable.

Related: Here’s How Much a Family of 4 Needs to Live ‘Comfortably’ in Every U.S. State, According to a New Report

The most affordable city was Bismarck, North Dakota, where the median annual gross rent is around 15.3% of the median annual income. The average salary in Bismarck is $69,989 per year, according to ZipRecruiter. The average rent, meanwhile, is $1,023 per month, per Apartments.com.

The second most affordable city was Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The mean annual gross rent there costs around 16% of the median income. Cheyenne, Wyoming, came in at a close No. 3 — residents spend 16.1% of their earnings on rent in the city.

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Fargo, North Dakota, rounded out the top five most affordable.

The bottom of the list featured Glendale, California (No. 178), followed by Detroit, Michigan; New Haven, Connecticut; Newark, New Jersey; and finally, in the last spot (No. 182), Miami, Florida, where residents spend 33.48% of their income on rent.

In Miami, the average salary, according to ZipRecruiter, is $55,183. The average rent is $2,950, per Zillow.

“In the most affordable cities for renters, the median cost of rent is as low as 15% of the median income, compared to more than 33% in the most expensive cities,” said WalletHub Analyst Chip Lupo. “This gives people in the least expensive cities a clear financial advantage; the money they save on rent could go toward their emergency fund or savings for future home ownership.”

View the full list of all 182 cities, here.

Related: Here Are the Best and Worst States for Retirement in 2025, According to a New Report

At the end of the first quarter in 2025, now is a good time to reflect upon the recent updates from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to their services that provide data and AI capabilities to end customers. At the end of 2024, AWS hosted 60,000+ practitioners at their annual conference, re:Invent, in Las Vegas.

Hundreds of features and services were announced during the week; I’ve combined these with the announcements that have come since and curated five key data and AI innovations that you should take notice of. Let’s dive in.

The next generation of Amazon SageMaker

Amazon SageMaker has historically been seen as the center for everything AI in AWS. Services like Amazon Glue or Elastic MapReduce have taken care of data processing tasks, with Amazon Redshift picking up the task of SQL analytics. With an increasing number of organizations focusing efforts on data and AI, all-in-one platforms such as Databricks have understandably caught the eyes of those starting their journey.

The next generation of Amazon SageMaker is AWS’s answer to these services. SageMaker Unified Studio brings together SQL analytics, data processing, AI model development and generative AI application development under one roof. This is all built on top of the foundations of another new service — SageMaker Lakehouse — with data and AI governance integrated through what previously existed standalone as Amazon DataZone.

The promise of an AWS first-party solution for customers looking to get started with, increase the capability of, or gain better control of their data and AI workloads is exciting indeed.

Amazon Bedrock Marketplace

Sticking with the theme of AI workloads, I want to highlight Amazon Bedrock Marketplace. The world of generative AI is fast-moving, and new models are being developed all the time. Through Bedrock, customers can access the most popular models on a serverless basis — only paying for the input/output tokens that they use. To do this for every specialized industry model that customers may want to access is not scalable, however.

Amazon Bedrock Marketplace is the answer to this. Previously, customers could use Amazon SageMaker JumpStart to deploy LLMs to your AWS account in a managed way; this excluded them from the Bedrock features that were being actively developed (Agents, Flows, Knowledge Bases etc.), though. With Bedrock Marketplace, customers can select from 100+ (and growing) specialized models, including those from HuggingFace and DeepSeek, deploy them to a managed endpoint and access them through the standard Bedrock APIs.

This results in a more seamless experience and makes experimenting with different models significantly easier (including customers’ own fine-tuned models).

Amazon Bedrock Data Automation

Extracting insights from unstructured data (documents, audio, images, video) is something that LLMs have proven themselves to excel at. While the potential value borne from this is enormous, setting up performant, scalable, cost-effective and secure pipelines to extract this is something that can be complicated, and customers have historically struggled with it.

In recent days — at time of writing — Amazon Bedrock Data Automation reached General Availability (GA). This service sets out to solve the exact problem I’ve just described. Let’s focus on the document use case.

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) isn’t a new use case for AI — it existed long before GenAI was all the rage. IDP can unlock huge efficiencies for organizations that deal in paper-based forms when augmenting or replacing the manual processes that are performed by humans.

With Bedrock Data Automation, the heavy-lifting of building IDP pipelines is abstracted away from customers and provided as a managed service that’s easy to consume and subsequently integrate into legacy processes and systems.

Amazon Aurora DSQL

Databases are an example of a tool where the level of complexity exposed to those leveraging it is not necessarily correlated with how complex it is behind the scenes. Often, it’s an inverse relationship where the simpler and more “magic” a database is to use, the more complex it is in the areas that are unseen.

Amazon Aurora DSQL is a great example of such a tool where it’s as straightforward to use as AWS’s other managed database services, but the level of engineering complexity to make its feature set possible is huge. Speaking of its feature set, let’s look at that.

Aurora DSQL sets out to be the service of choice for workloads that need durable, strongly consistent, active-active databases across multiple regions or availability zones. Multi-region, or multi-AZ databases, are already well established in active-passive configurations (i.e., one writer and many read-replicas); active-active is a problem that’s much harder to solve while still being performant and retaining strong consistency.

If you’re interested in reading the deep technical details of challenges that were overcome in the building of this service, I’d recommend reading Marc Brooker’s (Distinguished Engineer at AWS) series of blog posts on the topic.

When announcing the service, AWS described it as providing “virtually unlimited horizontal scaling with the flexibility to independently scale reads, writes, compute, and storage. It automatically scales to meet any workload demand without database sharding or instance upgrades. Its active-active distributed architecture is designed for 99.99% single-Region and 99.999% multi-Region availability with no single point of failure, and automated failure recovery.”

For organizations where global scale is an aspiration or requirement, building on top of a foundation of Aurora DSQL sets them up very nicely.

Expansion of zero-ETL features

AWS has been pushing the “zero-ETL” vision for a couple of years now, with the aspiration being to make moving data between purpose-built services as easy as possible. An example would be moving transactional data from a PostgreSQL database running on Amazon Aurora to a database designed for large-scale analytics like Amazon Redshift.

While there has been a relatively continuous flow of new announcements in this area, the end of 2024 and start of 2025 saw a flurry that accompanied the new AWS services released at re:Invent.

There are far too many to talk about here in any level of detail that’d provide value; to find out more about all of the available zero-ETL integrations between AWS services, please visit AWS’s dedicated zero-ETL page.

Wrapping this up, we’ve covered five areas relating to data and AI that AWS is innovating in to make building, growing and streamlining organizations easier. All of these areas are relevant to small and growing startups, as well as billion-dollar enterprises. AWS and other cloud service providers are there to abstract away the complexity and heavy lifting, leaving you to focus on building your business logic.

In today’s age, most professionals and business leaders understand the importance of backing up their devices—files, contracts, and documents are routinely stored in the cloud. However, one critical area is often overlooked: emails.

Email isn’t just communication, it’s your paper trail—your record of deals, invoices, approvals, strategy, and client history. A crash, deletion, or security breach could erase years of essential communication.

That’s why Mail Backup X has become the email backup software trusted by more than 42,000 businesses worldwide. For a one-time $49.99 payment, ensure your emails are backed up for life (reg. $179).

How Mail Backup X works

This powerful software makes it easy to back up, archive, and restore emails across platforms like Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Exchange, Office 365, and more. Choose whether to save backups locally or use your preferred cloud service.

All files are compressed to save about three times the usual space. Everything is also secured with AES 256-bit encryption, so nothing is vulnerable to prying eyes who want to get hold of your information, the company says.

When you eventually need to retrieve information, you can rest assured that you took precautions before disaster struck. Need to recover a lost thread from two years ago? Or keep tabs on multiple business accounts from one place? Mail Backup X offers a searchable archive that lets you manage and retrieve emails quickly.

Why this deal is worth it

In a world where clients expect instant answers and flawless records, saying, “I lost that email,” just doesn’t cut it. Mail Backup X is the kind of email protection software that serious professionals use—one that shows you’re organized, proactive, and prepared. It’s not just about recovering data—it’s about maintaining trust, control, and continuity.

Get your Mail Backup X lifetime subscription here for $49.99 (reg. $179).

Mail Backup X Individual Edition: Lifetime Subscription – $49.99

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StackSocial prices subject to change.

Zoom is down for tens of thousands of people, according to Downdetector. Users have been reporting outages since 2:38 p.m. ET.

More than 60,000 Zoom customers had logged issues with the video conferencing service by 3:08 p.m. ET. Nearly half of users reporting problems (46%) experienced issues with the website, while 38% encountered problems with the app.

Zoom’s status page also appears to be down at the time of writing. The company previously indicated through the page that it was aware of the outage for Zoom meetings and was working to resolve it.

Zoom’s investors page also appears to be down at press time.

Related: Amazon Is Replacing Chime, Its Proprietary Video Conferencing Software, With… Zoom

Zoom has 300 million daily active users and 192,600 business customers as of the fourth quarter of 2024. Companies like Capital One, Glassdoor, and Dropbox all use the company’s videoconferencing service.

With Zoom down, users turned to social media. Some X users asked if Zoom was down for anyone else. Others expressed joy, frustration, and panic through GIFs.

Is Zoom down for anyone else? pic.twitter.com/G0ohPTb0ld

— Benji Hyam (@benjihyam) April 16, 2025

Zoom appears to be down? pic.twitter.com/K7tySTCcya

— Kristen Soltis Anderson (@KSoltisAnderson) April 16, 2025

Zoom’s down.

Remote employees everywhere: pic.twitter.com/As0Yx93oGH

— JSONP （╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ (@palmerj3) April 16, 2025

Universal is opening its long-awaited Epic Universe theme park to the public on May 22 in Orlando, Florida. The park was first announced in 2019 and cost around $7 billion to create, per CNBC.

Casandra Matej, CEO of Visit Orlando, told CNBC the new park is “the first major, entirely new theme park in the U.S. in 25 years.” Research seen by the outlet from Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting, found that within one year of opening, the new park could generate around $2 billion for Florida and create more than 17,500 new jobs across the country.

At 750 acres, it’s the largest of all of Universal’s properties and features five themed worlds: Celestial Park, Dark Universe, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, Super Nintendo World, and How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk.

But don’t worry, Harry Potter fans: This is the third Harry Potter-related theme park Universal has in the area. Nearby, Explore Hogsmeade is still open at Universal Islands of Adventure, and Diagon Alley is also open at Universal Studios Florida.

Related: Disney World Is Adding New Attractions and Themed Lands in a Massive Expansion — Here’s What to Expect

^{In Super Nintendo World, guests with Power-Up Bands can hit the familiar question-mark boxes of the Mario universe, track their Mario Kart score and play drums like Donkey Kong to unveil hidden effects and Easter eggs. (Adrian Ruhi/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)}

Although Epic Universe is less than 10 miles down the road from Walt Disney World, industry experts expect the new park to lift up the entire area, from hotels to restaurants to even more attendance at Disney-branded parks.

“It’s a rising tide that lifts all boats,” Matej said.

There are multiple roller coasters, restaurants, and three new hotels. There are also several boat rides.

^{Guests ride Stardust Racers, a new dueling roller coaster ride in Celestial Park, during a preview day for Universal Epic Universe on April 5, 2025, in Orlando, Florida. (Patrick Connolly/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)}

^{The How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk area, at the Epic Universe theme park in Orlando, Florida, US, on Saturday, April 5, 2025. Photographer: Thomas Simonetti/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

^{Atlantic is a waterside, seafood-centric restaurant with a mostly glass exterior meant to resemble a giant aquarium. (Adrian Ruhi/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)}