Uncover the truth about AI in marketing and why it’s a ticking time bomb for unprepared businesses! As AI revolutionizes the marketing landscape, understanding its long-term impact is crucial.

In this video, I dive deep into the reality of AI marketing, exposing the myths and revealing strategies to stay ahead of the curve. Learn why AI might play in your favor for the next 3 years, but could spell trouble if you’re not prepared for what’s coming. Discover how to leverage AI tools effectively while developing a future-sighted approach that will keep you competitive in an AI-driven world.

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

In 2024, organizations faced an average of 1,308 cyber attacks per week in Q1, a 28% rise from the previous quarter and 5% year-over-year. And what’s even worrisome is that cybercrime losses reached $12.8 billion in 2023 and are expected to hit $23.84 trillion by 2027.

Undoubtedly, securing your business in today’s digital business landscape isn’t just about protecting against cyber threats — it’s about resilience.

You can always fall for the latest threats since cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated while sneaking into business networks. Hence, you need a more robust cybersecurity plan backed by cyber resilience that goes beyond conventional cybersecurity strategy.

Cyber resilience isn’t a buzzword; it’s a necessity and a proactive approach that goes beyond conventional security. It ensures your organization withstands and recovers from potential threats without much impact on your business.

In a nutshell, cyber resilience is about building walls of protection and having the resilience to bounce back stronger.

Let’s discover why embracing resilience should be a top priority for businesses to ensure continuity and future success in the ever-expanding cybersecurity landscape.

Related: There’s No Margin for Error in Cybersecurity — Here’s How to Build a Strong Online Defense through Everyday Habits

Why your business needs cyber resilience

Cyber resilience is your organization’s ability to prevent, withstand and smoothly recover from various cybersecurity incidents. Cyber resilience isn’t about preventing cyberattacks — it’s about ensuring your organization can swiftly recover and continue to operate after an incident.

Nobody can predict the next threat to your organization and customers, especially in an era where machine learning and artificial intelligence have broadened the horizons and increased threat vectors.

Hence, a robust incident response plan is undeniably the need of the hour for businesses that are about to reinvent their cybersecurity posture.

Remember, a cybersecurity strategy lacking a robust incident response plan is good for nothing since cybercriminals are already exploring new ways to target end users and customers to exploit their personal information and gain access to sensitive business details.

On the other hand, cyber resilience not only ensures stringent cybersecurity against immediate threats but eventually mitigates long-term costs. Hence, investing in cyber resilience would surely safeguard your business from financial devastation and ensure smooth continuity.

Now that we’ve learned about cyber resilience and its importance, let’s emphasize how you can incorporate it into your business.

Related: 3 Reasons to Increase Your Cybersecurity Protocols in 2024

Is your organization truly protected?

Most businesses mistake cyber resilience for cybersecurity. However, they are pretty different and hold their own importance at different levels.

Securing your organization against modern threats is crucial, but it’s also important to prepare for the worst. For example, you must have a plan to deal with a data or privacy breach.

If you wish to protect your organization from the latest threats, your cybersecurity must include a comprehensive cyber resilience checklist.

Whether it is regular audits, employee training, or advanced threat detection through technology, you must always be geared up to handle any cyber incident.

Your cybersecurity checklist to supercharge your cyber resilience

1. Regular security audits

Scheduled audits are crucial to uncover potential threats and vulnerabilities before cybercriminals can exploit them. Addressing the issues well in advance can help you prepare a solid plan for the worst-case scenario and bounce back stronger.

Here’s what you can do:

• Look for outdated software: It’s crucial to check and update your defense software and firewalls since outdated software is more susceptible to ransomware attacks and other threats.
• Incidence response drill: Organizing an incident response drill will help identify gaps in your communication protocol and eventually help you overcome the delayed response time during a cyberattack. Hence, scheduling quarterly incident response drills is crucial once you’ve completed the security audit.
• Engage third-party experts: Involving third-party cybersecurity experts can provide an unbiased evaluation of your security measures and help create a robust cyber resilience program. Experts can uncover vulnerabilities your internal teams might overlook and help prepare an action response plan accordingly.

2. Strengthening your human firewall through employee training and awareness programs

Human error leads to cybersecurity breaches. Ensuring your employees are well-trained to handle any vulnerability is critical to building cyber resilience.

• Regular training sessions: Regular training and updating your employees on the latest threat vectors and best practices are essential. Using real-world scenarios to illustrate various threats and their corresponding responses would shield your organization from potential threats and minimize losses during an unforeseen event.
• Phishing simulations: Implementing phishing simulations to test your employees’ ability to recognize and respond to phishing attacks is crucial for safeguarding sensitive information. Using the results to identify improvement areas will help tailor training to minimize human error.
• Clear policies and procedures: Establishing clear cybersecurity procedures and policies within your organization is crucial to building resilience. Ensure the policies are easily accessible and understood by everyone in the organization.

3. Building a robust incident response team is your frontline defense

A dedicated incident response team is all you need for swift and effective action during a cybersecurity incident. This will help minimize the impact, leading to fewer financial and reputational losses.

• Define roles and responsibilities: You must clearly define roles and responsibilities for every team member regardless of their job title and experience. It’s crucial to ensure that everyone knows their duties and responsibilities promptly during an incident and the situation.
• Invoke the potential of modern tools and technologies: Using threat intelligence tools, data encryption, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and Zero Trust architecture can reinforce your overall cybersecurity resilience program.
• Continuous improvement: Conducting a thorough review to identify areas for improvement after every drill and incident. This will help you continuously update your incident response plan based on the recent findings.

Final thoughts

In this modern digital business landscape, the increasing cyber threats and sophistication of cybercriminals demand next-level security — cyber resilience.

Cyber resilience is a vital strategy for businesses to ensure they stay up and running even in the event of a cyber incident and can quickly contain a breach without financial and reputational losses.

Hence, embracing cyber resilience shouldn’t be a luxury; it must be an essential pillar of your cybersecurity foundation.

Managing travel expenses is a crucial aspect of running a cost-effective business. And if you travel often for work, it could be helpful to add a support tool to help you cut costs and streamline the time spent searching for flight deals.

Matt’s Flights Premium Plan offers a unique and affordable solution to significantly reduce travel costs while providing personalized service. This lifetime subscription is currently just $79.97. It can save you up to 90% on domestic and international flights, which can be a terrific way to ensure your business travel budget goes further.

Featured in the New York Times and Kind Traveler, this service alerts you to reduced-price deals and mistake fares at your selected departure and arrival airports. All you do is sit back and wait for the deals to roll into your inbox.

While the automatic alerts are a great way to save, Matt’s Flights takes things a step further. Simply send Matt your departure and arrival cities along with your available dates, and he’ll personally find the cheapest flights for you. And you get unlimited amounts of these custom searches, which is a more hands-on approach to meeting your unique travel needs.

Expert support is also available to you 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in case you have questions. Updates are included. However, this offer is only available to new users.

One five-star reviewer named Rey raved, “This is a great product! So many deals and Matt is super responsive. This was an excellent purchase!”

For a one-time low price, you can secure lifetime access to exclusive flight deals and one-on-one planning assistance, making it an invaluable way to cut costs and save time when traveling.

Don’t miss the chance to get a lifetime of affordable flights with a Matt’s Flights Premium Plan subscription for just $79.97 (reg. $1,800).

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Your burrito bowl might be getting bigger.

After uproar from customers alleging that Chipotle was serving smaller portions, the company’s CEO is addressing the concerns.

During a Q2 204 earnings call on Wednesday, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol emphasized to investors that “generous” portion sizes are a “core brand equity” at Chipotle and the complaints are being addressed.

Related: Wells Fargo Analysts Tested 75 Bowls at Chipotle — the Portion Sizes Were Wildly Inconsistent

“There was never a directive to provide less to our customers. Generous portion is a core brand equity of Chipotle. It always has been, and it always will be,” Niccol said. “With that said, getting the feedback caused us to relook at our execution across our entire system with the intention to always serve our guests delicious, fresh, custom burritos, and bulls with generous portions.”

Niccol added that the company is working on retraining employees at Chipotle locations where “outlier” customer satisfaction scores were received on portion sizes to ensure that all restaurants and employees are “consistently making bowls and burritos correctly.”

“Our guests expect this now more than ever, and we are committed to making this investment to reinforce that Chipotle stands for a generous amount of delicious, fresh food at fair prices for every customer visit,” he said, on the call.

Chipotle reported strong quarterly earnings, with an 8.7% increase in restaurant traffic and a net income of $455.7 million, compared to $341.8 million at the same time last year.

Related: Chipotle’s Robots Can Make Almost 200 Burrito Bowls an Hour

Last month, a report by a group of Wells Fargo analysts went viral after they ordered 75 burrito bowls the same way at eight different locations and found that portion sizes and weights of the bowls were wildly inconsistent.

“The portions have not gotten smaller,” Niccol said during an interview with Fortune in May. “We always want to give people big portions that get them excited about the food.”

Chipotle was up nearly 23% year over year as of Thursday afternoon.

For founders, building the right team is critical to lasting success. But the right one isn’t always what we assume it to be, and choosing wrong can prove detrimental at best to a start-up and ruinous at worst. In fact, in his 2021 Harvard Business Review article “Why Start-Ups Fail,” Tom Eisenmann, Howard H. Stevenson Professor of Business Administration, notes that “a broad set of stakeholders, including employees, strategic partners and investors, all can play a role in a venture’s downfall.” Put more bluntly, a “dream team” may end up being a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

A critical component of this group should be a war chest of related experience, along with a high degree of self-awareness, emotional intelligence and on-the-ground maturity. Strong advisors will also integrate well with the cultural and leadership dynamics of a start-up — keeping it consistent with founders’ visions — and provide a non-biased and knowing perspective when offering direction on integral decisions.

For founders, the need for strong advisors early is more pronounced today than it was even five years ago. A quick look at Forbes 30 Under 30 Venture Capital 2024 makes it clear that many founders are now being funded at notably early stages of their careers, without a host of prior ownership cycles to reference. And there’s much on the line: According to Carta, the median early-stage seed check from venture capital firms in 2023 was $3.1 million, requiring greater founder-led financial responsibility earlier. Products, meanwhile, are continuing to become more specialized and complex, requiring a heightened level of subject matter expertise. All of this can increase the progress-based burn rate while shortening the time horizon for success.

All these dynamics make it even more imperative for founders to identify and hire advisory boards early on, and when they do, they must get it right.

Here are key ways of attracting, hiring and retaining the best.

1. Understand the puzzle and identify missing pieces

Every company is unique, with its own strengths and weaknesses. A 20-year-old founder may sport a high level of intelligence yet lack a track record of creating multiple companies and the necessary years of subject-matter-related development. An industry veteran, meanwhile, may be less in touch with next-gen consumer behavior. As a founder, it’s vital to assess your company’s early-stage landscape — identify areas of strength (the same qualities that likely led others to invest in you), spot the gaps, and hire advisors with particular relevant expertise to address them.

2. Develop an advisor-specific compensation system

A founder’s inclination may be to formalize an advisory team only when a company is big enough or far enough along and instead be inclined to form an informal team of familiar colleagues early on who offer services and support free of charge. While this may buy time and save money/dilution in the short term, the reality is that it will ultimately amount to a lower value-added during a critical period of early development. A better move is to create an advisory compensation system — from the start — so that a team feels truly invested in the company and, in turn, can be held accountable. That can include a percentage equity grant and associated timeline (usually one to two years). The amount to grant depends on two factors: the value-add of the advisor (time and expertise) and the stage of the company (the earlier on, the higher the grant).

Related: Why Every Entrepreneur Needs a Board of Advisors

3. Create a mutually agreed-upon goals list

As a founder, the more clarity you provide to an advisor, the more empowered they will be to add value. So, before signing an agreement, you and a prospective candidate(s) should create a set of goals and expectations. The latter can include an estimated number of hours dedicated per month, required percentage of attendance at meetings and general availability for advice and reference calls. Outlining goals will be more akin to a high-level job description or a position overview. It will also identify critical areas where a candidate plans to add value, along with a map of how they intend to execute accordingly.

4. Introduce advisory team members to each other and communicate frequently

Once your team is identified and hired, it’s essential to then host a meeting that allows members to get to know each other. The more each person feels a part, the more they will operate with investment. In addition, it’s important to remember that the sum is greater than its parts: a multi-member brain trust usually results in members devising better solutions than if they worked independently.

Also, provide regimented communication cycles (with updates) that offer realistic assessments of the current state of company endeavors. Sugarcoating a challenging experience will only hinder an advisory team from adding critical value.

Related: 5 Tips for Finding a Great Advisor for Your Start-up

5. Continue to evaluate your team, and don’t hesitate to make changes

As founders, we can become emotionally attached to advisors; after all, they are mentors, advocates and stewards who helped raise and nurture our “baby.” But as that infant grows, needs naturally change. A company may increase in size, pivot product category, or align with a new partnership vertical. Some advisors may be capable of growing with you throughout, but others will not, so they need to be assessed on a regimented basis. The right team is not always simply the available one.

As we view today’s founder through a 21^st-century lens, we are reminded that no one founding person or group of people can do it all. That doesn’t change the market demand and associated expectations, however. With make-or-break nearly always on the line, a properly established advisory team is often a foundational ingredient to lasting success, provided it’s built the right way.

Money can often be the barrier between being stuck where you are or breaking through to the next level. This includes having or not having a budget, using it properly, hidden revenue or even misaligned goals — all of which influence your growth trajectory. These four common secrets have helped my company elevate our clients to the next level.

1. Financial transparency for ROI

The first blindspot we often notice with new clients is not having a clear reporting connection between your tools, like ads and a CRM like HubSpot, to see which channels drive the most significant return on investment (ROI). Do you know your best-performing channels? Or your best-performing piece of sales copy? What is the most opened document that leads to a closed deal?

And we’re not just talking about marketing and sales; this applies to many connected platforms — for example, the closed-loop revenue or your ERP systems. When things are not connected, they are disjointed and siloed. You end up flying blind. Without connecting your marketing tools with your revenue tools, and with that being CRMs, finance platforms, or ERPs, to name a few, there is a disconnect, and the arms and legs end up moving in different directions.

Here’s a simple example we see all the time: If you knew that one channel drove more deals by a 75% faster conversion rate, wouldn’t you invest more time and energy in that channel than one that only had a conversion rate of 10%? Many people don’t want to share the revenue numbers within the company, but all of that information informs the other departments; without sharing these revenue numbers, your money secret is keeping it in hidden silos.

Related: I Hit $100 Million in Annual Revenue by Being More Transparent — Here Are the 3 Strategies That Helped Me Succeed

2. Strategic investment for avoiding blind spots

Another financial blindspot is not investing in marketing. We have had prospects come in with no budget and no internal marketing team, but we want to grow by 150% and spend a total of $1,000. I wish achieving growth like this was possible, but unfortunately, it’s not. The old adage that you get what you pay for, or it takes money to make money, speaks the truth. Your investment goals should match your growth goals. The amount of money invested should be measured not just by short-term, quick wins but also by looking at long-term investment to growth.

You would never measure an HR department strictly on the number of hires. However, looking at the whole picture of longevity amongst many other important KPIs, You would not use an HR department for a few months. It is something that is constant and needs care and attention. Marketing is no different — if you strictly only measure marketing by the number of leads, you are missing out on the full picture. Marketing helps push leads through nurture campaigns, creates automation, leads scoring, builds new campaigns and tests, supports sales enablement activities and many other components. A buying cycle is rarely a straight line to click and buy unless we’re discussing Amazon.

That said, everyone has budgets, margins and bumper lanes they need to stay in. I am by no means saying throw your budget to the wind, but your goal should match your budget. If you have modest growth goals, be realistic about the budget needed to get there. Set incremental micro goals but stay the course for long-term growth.

Related: You Won’t Have a Strong Budget Until You Follow These 5 Tips

3. Data-driven decisions to save money

Another money secret that costs companies is spending without the data to back it. We had a company inquire about a new website, a full blow-up, new navigation, new content, new page layouts, migration onto a new CMS, a new theme and the works. They said they had a $75,000 budget for the whole project. In theory, it sounds great, right? Willing to invest? Check. Has a budget? Check. Know what they want the end result to be? Check. But when we asked them the next question, they looked at us like we were crazy, “Do you have data that backs the changes you are looking to make?” Are you running a tool like Hotjar to see real user data behind how these proposed changes will impact your existing inquiries and the only source the sales team was currently using for leads?

The answer was no. When the heat map was overlaid, do you know what happened? Well, they were looking to build that new navigation out and replace the old one — nearly 90% of the traffic was going to two pages of their site directly from the navigation, both of which they had originally wanted to remove. In this case, it wasn’t just about having the money but also about making sure the decisions you make with the budget are informed by real data: user data, sales data, marketing data and more. The more informed you can be by closing the loop on your data, the better your end result will be.

Related: Want to Be Better at Decision Making? Here are 5 Steps to Better Data-Driven Business Decisions

4. Modern marketing channels to drive growth

What is likely costing you the most is using old-school channels without the ability to measure. Companies have spent the last decade on traditional marketing channels and are switching to digital. The company’s historical growth has relied on things like trade shows, print, postcards and online magazines. We ask what the ROI you have seen by each channel is, and rarely can they share a specific revenue number and say it is for brand awareness. Some of the budgets can be over 50 to 100 thousand dollars spent on these traditional methods, but there is no ROI attached, yet they continue them.

When the pandemic happened, we saw a massive influx in businesses shifting from once only boots on the ground to digital. The lockdown changed everything; there were no more trade shows, no more door knocking and no one picking up their mail or faxes daily. It made traditional selling channels challenging and obsolete and forced a new level of openness to try new ways to get the job done. In the example of running online magazine ads there are lots of ways to capture them, we can use UTM tracking, referral analysis or create a custom landing page for the offer and capture the leads directly. Without running them to a landing page or form, you rely only on the online publication for leads and analytics. We’ve had people show a list of just names, no emails to follow up with, or only show a random number of visitors to the page, not a single name. It’s important to know what they will provide for reporting and tracking when you publish or use traditional channels. The rule of thumb is to use connections and tools that leverage old-school methods into technology and not blindly spend on channels that cannot be measured.

Stop wasting time, energy and revenue on these blind spots. They have easy solutions, so you can avoid them and focus on growing your business!

Most businesses today believe that having a good manager is the only way to improve performance within a team and reduce turnover. This article presents five important skill sets for leading people that will enable you to achieve these goals while giving practical advice and examples of how to do this.

Once cultivated, such abilities will result in a motivated workforce always ready to give its all.

1. Create a culture of engagement

Creating a work environment where employees feel engaged with their jobs is key for both performance and retention. Engaged workers are more productive and innovative and, hence, likely to stick around longer. One way of promoting commitment is by encouraging joviality or active participation in all undertakings at work.

For instance, Google allows its staff members to spend 20% of their working hours on personal projects they are passionate about; thus far, this has resulted in the creation of game-changing products like Gmail and Google News, among others. This policy not only increases employee involvement but also fosters creativity and innovation throughout the company.

Foster team spirit through team-building activities and recognize achievements made, as well as provide opportunities where individuals can work on what interests them most.

Related: Why Everything You Know About Employee Engagement Is Wrong

2. Implement effective staffing strategies

Keeping a competitive edge requires effective staffing. Businesses can employ offshore and nearshore staffing strategies to achieve substantial savings (about 60% in contrast to domestic staffing). Cultural fit and close proximity are additional benefits of using nearshore staffs. You don’t only get top talent and savings, but also some staffing firms pay the staff competitive wadges generating a low turnover rate, while your company still saves around 60% that can be invested towards adding more people, marketing, research and development, etcetera.

For example, a US-based technology company can set up a development team in Mexico, which can cut costs by sixty percent without compromising on quality or increasing employee attrition within such teams.

Review your staffing requirements and consider near-shore staff options for hiring skilled professionals with maximum cost efficiency. Aim to foster a strong internal team culture based on shared values and goals.

3. Use AI for strategic staffing and reducing turnover

Generative AI has revolutionized business operations through tools that optimize decision-making and increase efficiency. Generative AI has significantly impacted HR and staffing departments, offering sophisticated tools to predict employee turnover rates accurately. These tools analyze a wide array of data, including employee engagement scores, performance metrics, and even external factors, to estimate the likelihood of an employee leaving the company. By identifying potential turnover risks early, HR professionals can implement targeted interventions to improve retention.

Efficiency and accuracy have greatly improved among companies that use generative AI for decision-making. For example, a company utilized AI to analyze staff satisfaction data and predict potential churns. After dealing with those highlighted issues, the entity managed to bring down its churn rate by 15%, hence increasing overall employee satisfaction.

Make decisions based on data when developing your staffing strategy by incorporating artificial intelligence tools. Predict which employees are likely to leave using predictive models that algorithms provided by AI powers. Also, find out who among all applicants would be most suitable for the job through analyzing their details using these same systems. Train your human resource personnel well enough so that they can effectively utilize such resources while keeping abreast of current developments in the field of artificial intelligence. This will ensure better engagement levels among staff members as well as lower staff turnover rates.

Related: 6 Steps to Building a Strong Company Culture

4. Create a shared reality for team collaboration

Collaboration and productivity can be enhanced if team members have a common perception of things. Cohesion and performance in teams can be improved by leaders who put into place measures to promote shared understanding as well as vision; such measures may include frequent team meetings, joint tools and collaborative software with goals that are aligned to the organization’s strategic plan.

For instance, Slack promotes shared reality within its widely dispersed teams through its communication platform. Regular updates, collaborative channels and clear objectives help keep everyone aligned and engaged.

Related: 7 Ways Collaboration Can Create a Successful Team

5. Promote work-life balance to boost employee well-being

Maintaining a life balance between work and other aspects can only ensure the health of the workers, job satisfaction and retention. Such leaders foster a supportive environment that makes employees feel appreciated and reduces stress levels.

Allow for flexible working arrangements, have regular breaks and help employees manage their workloads. Create an atmosphere where personal life is valued, which greatly boosts staff morale while still retaining them.

Conclusion

To achieve a business that is both resilient and innovative and ready for growth, pay attention to these five leadership skills as well as management trends.

Employing such tactics in your leadership style will improve your team’s performance and reduce turnover, which will lead to sustainable growth and innovation in your organization.

Mark Zuckerberg may be the founder of one of the biggest tech companies in the world — with a bank account to match — but that doesn’t mean being a public figure has been easy for him.

On the Meta-owned platform, Threads, Zuckerberg replied to a post that called out his age (19) when he founded Facebook in 2004. The now-billionaire said that, at the time, he was “awkward” when learning the ropes.

Related: Mark Zuckerberg Calls Out Apple, Outlines Meta AI Strategy

“I was 19 and didn’t know anything about running a company, communicating publicly,” he wrote.

“Being awkward and getting negative feedback on how I came across definitely made me more careful and scripted,” Zuckerberg added. “Still not my best thing, but getting a bit more comfortable just being me as I get older.”

Zuckerberg’s followers applauded his honesty on the social platform in response.

“It feels like we’re growing up together,” one user said. “It’s both heartwarming and inspiring in a way.”

“You’re doing a great job,” another penned. “Every CEO can learn something from your experience in publicity.”

In 2018, Zuckerberg told Freakonomics Radio that he never intended to build a company and that he “was just trying to help connect people at colleges and a few schools.”

Related: Zuckerberg Sweeps Up $17 Million Estate in Hawaii

Meta’s CEO has made waves over the years with his changing public persona as he ages, which now includes a passion for MMA fighting, watersports, and being a father of three daughters.

Zuckerberg’s net worth as of Wednesday morning was an estimated $174 billion.

Delta’s CEO Ed Bastian is speaking out after thousands of flight cancelations left passengers stranded, delayed, and without luggage.

In a memo early Wednesday morning, Bastian told customers that he was hopeful the worst was over and systems should be up and running after last week’s CrowdStrike outage that affected one of Delta’s key crew tracking-related tools. Bastian also said in the memo that he’s read customers’ frustrated emails and apologized to those impacted.

Related: Delta Is Now Under Investigation as the Airline Continues to Cancel Flights After Mass Outage: ‘Lost a Customer for Life’

“While our initial efforts to stabilize the operations were difficult and frustratingly slow and complex, we have made good progress this week and the worst impacts of the CrowdStrike-caused outage are clearly behind us,” Bastian wrote. “We anticipate cancellations Wednesday to be minimal. Thursday is expected to be a normal day, with the airline fully recovered and operating at a traditional level of reliability.”

As of Wednesday afternoon, Delta had canceled 41 flights — just 1% of its total flights for the day — and delayed 513. In comparison, on Tuesday, the airline had canceled 511 flights and delayed a whopping 1,685.

On Wednesday, the same day his memo was released, Bastian arrived in Paris ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics, where Delta is the official airline for Team USA.

“Ed delayed this long-planned business trip until he was confident the airline was firmly on the path to recovery,” Delta told CNN in a statement. “As of Wednesday morning, Delta’s operations were returning to normal. Ed remains fully engaged with senior operations leaders.”

Related: CrowdStrike CEO Responds to Its Update Largest IT Outage in History

The airline said it has continued to provide affected customers with meals, accommodations, and ground transport in addition to vouchers, reimbursements, and SkyMiles.

Delta was down over 9% year over year as of Wednesday afternoon.

A decade ago, Nvidia was a major graphics card maker, vying with competitors like AMD and Intel for dominance. Now it’s an AI giant with 70% to 95% of the market share for AI chips, and the brains of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s also the best-performing stock with the highest return in the past 25 years.

Why did Nvidia invest in AI chips over 10 years ago, ahead of the competition? CEO Jensen Huang and board member Mark Stevens, Nvidia’s two largest individual shareholders, talked to Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha to explain what Botha called “one of the most remarkable business pivots in history.”

Nvidia’s original product was 3D graphics cards for PC games, but company leaders noticed by the mid-2000s that the PC market was hitting a growth limit.

Related: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Turned Down a Merger Offer in the Company’s Early Days, According to Insiders. Here’s Why.

“We felt we were always gonna be boxed into the PC gaming market and always knocking heads with Intel if we didn’t develop a brand new market that nobody else was in,” Stevens explained.

^{Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia. Photographer: Lionel Ng/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

That need for a new market intersected with a product Nvidia already had on hand: its graphics processor unit, or GPU, which could be used to power tasks outside of gaming. Researchers at universities across the world began exploring the graphics cards, eventually building advanced computers with them.

Related: Is It Too Late to Buy Nvidia? Former Morgan Stanley Strategist Says ‘Buy High, Sell Higher.’

Huang recalled meeting a quantum chemist in Taiwan who showed him a closet with a “giant array” of Nvidia’s GPUs on its shelves; house fans were rotating to keep the system cool.

“He said, ‘I built my own personal supercomputer.’ And he said to me that because of our work… he’s able to do his work in his lifetime,” Huang said.

Other researchers, like Meta AI chief Yann LeCun in New York, began reaching out to Nvidia about the computing power of its chips. Nvidia began considering the AI market when AI had yet to enter the mainstream and was a “zero billion dollar market” or a market that had yet to materialize.

“There was no guarantee that AI would ever really emerge because, keep in mind, AI had had many stops and starts over the last 40 years,” Stevens said. “I mean, AI has been around as a computer science concept for decades. But it had never really taken off as a huge market opportunity.”

Related: Nvidia Is ‘Slowly Becoming the IBM of the AI Era,’ According to the Leader of a $2 Billion AI Startup

Huang and other company leaders still believed in AI and decided to invest billions in the tech in the 2010s.

“This was a giant pivot for our company,” Huang said. “The company’s focus was steered away from its core business.”

Huang highlighted the extra cost, talent, and skills Nvidia had to account for with the pivot, as it affected the entire company. It took 10 to 15 years of effort, but that business decision led to Nvidia powering the AI revolution with an early ChatGPT partnership.

“Every CEO’s job is supposed to look around corners,” Huang said. “You want to be the person who believes the company can achieve more than the company believes it can.”

Related: How to Be a Billionaire By 25, According to a College Dropout Turned CEO Worth $1.6 Billion