Business

Here’s What Amazon Is Doing To Cut Down On Middle Management

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Amazon announced on Wednesday that it was laying off dozens of workers in its communications and sustainability departments, and earlier this month, the company let go of 200 employees from its North America stores team. It’s only the beginning.

In September, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced that the company would be eliminating excess layers of middle management by the end of March. Now, a leaked Amazon Web Services (AWS) sales team guidelines document, obtained by Business Insider on Thursday, sheds light on how those middle-manager cuts will happen.

The document tells AWS sales managers to increase their number of direct reports, pause hiring new managers, and demote some managers down a level to a non-managerial position of less pay. An Amazon spokesperson did not confirm the internal guidance to BI. AWS had about 115,000 employees out of Amazon’s total 1.55 million.

When it comes to direct reports, the leaked document requires managers to have at least eight team members, up from the six that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos required in 2017.

The AWS sales team guidelines also advised a pause on hiring new managers, stating that the team had hired more managers than entry-level employees in the past few years, driving costs up. Amazon’s structure had become more diamond-shaped than pyramid-shaped, the document stated, referring to the heavier middle management layer.

The final recommendation in the leaked documentation was to move managers down a level to individual contributors, which has a lower pay range. Two AWS employees told BI that this had already happened to several managers.

^{Andy Jassy. Photo by Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services}

These changes arrive in response to Jassy’s September note, which asked each senior leadership team to “increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025.”

A Morgan Stanley note to investors in October estimated that Amazon could let go of 13,834 managers under Jassy’s guidelines, assuming that 7% of Amazon’s workforce is management. Amazon had 105,770 managers as of the second quarter of 2024 and would cut that number down to 91,936 managers by the first quarter of 2025, per the note.

Morgan Stanley estimated that if Amazon’s cost per manager ranged from $200,000 to $350,000 per year, Amazon would save between $2.1 billion and $3.6 billion by reducing its manager headcount.

At a November all-hands meeting, Jassy explained that changes to middle management were necessary to keep Amazon competitive. He had created a “Bureaucracy Mailbox” in September for Amazon employees to email him examples of excessive processes or rules that could be eliminated. As of November, that inbox had received more than 500 emails, with Amazon taking action on more than 150 employee suggestions.

“The reality is that the [senior leadership team] and I hate bureaucracy,” Jassy said. “One of the reasons I’m still at this company is because it’s not a political or bureaucratic place.”

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Business

Your Clients Are Using AI to Replace You — Do These 3 Things Before They Do

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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.”

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Business

The One Mistake Is Putting Your Brand Reputation at Risk — and Most Startups Still Make It

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

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.

Table of Contents

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.

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.

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.

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Business

If You’re Using ChatGPT This Way, You’re Doing It Wrong

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

By now, most marketers have experimented with ChatGPT. You’ve probably asked it to write a blog outline, draft a few email subject lines or generate some Instagram captions. But if you’re still treating it like a vending machine — insert prompt, get content — you’re leaving a ton of value on the table.

The real power comes from what we call “prompt conversations”: a deliberate, iterative back-and-forth between you and the AI, where each response informs your next prompt. It’s not about asking for the perfect output upfront. It’s about collaborating with ChatGPT to create something better, faster — and often, more original than you could’ve come up with in isolation.

Here’s how to make that shift.

Table of Contents

Think in stages, not prompts

Instead of expecting one prompt to give you a finished piece of content, break your process into phases: ideation, structure, drafting and refinement. ChatGPT shines when it has context, and a conversation gives it exactly that.

Let’s say you’re writing a blog post on cybersecurity for small businesses. Don’t just prompt: “Write a 1,000-word blog post on cybersecurity tips for small businesses.” That’ll get you something generic.

Instead:

Start with a role and outcome prompt: “Act as a content strategist. Give me five timely blog post angles on cybersecurity for small businesses.”
Follow up: “Take the second idea and create a blog outline with an intro, three main sections and a conclusion.”
Draft in pieces: “Now write the intro in a conversational tone. Mention a recent news event that makes this topic urgent.”

Each step improves quality and gives you control. Plus, it allows you to correct course if the AI veers too far from your intent early on.

Refine with micro-prompts

Most marketers underuse ChatGPT’s ability to revise its own work. Don’t settle for a “meh” paragraph. Tell it what to fix.

“Make this paragraph more concise.”
“Add a metaphor to explain this idea.”
“Rewrite in the tone of a Seth Godin blog post.”

You’re not starting over; you’re editing collaboratively. This is where the “conversation” really kicks in — and where nuance, style and depth start to emerge. You’ll often be surprised by how well ChatGPT responds to creative nudges.

Use it for strategic thinking, too

Prompt conversations aren’t just for content execution. They’re great for upstream thinking — like naming campaigns, testing messaging or exploring buyer personas.

For example:

ChatGPT will do the heavy lifting, and you’ll spot ideas you hadn’t considered. You can even ask it to role-play as a skeptical customer or a competitor, helping you pressure-test your messaging before going to market.

Build your prompt stack

Once you find sequences that work (e.g., for writing case studies, newsletters or landing pages), save them. Create a prompt stack: your own playbook of step-by-step conversations that consistently produce results.

This saves time and improves quality across your team. Over time, you’ll develop reusable frameworks for different content types, which reduces friction when onboarding new team members or scaling campaigns.

Beware of blind spots

As powerful as prompt conversations are, they come with caveats. ChatGPT’s job is to be helpful — even when that means inventing information that sounds right but isn’t. It will confidently cite fake statistics, create imaginary quotes or attribute real quotes to the wrong people. It’s not trying to deceive you; it’s trying to please you.

Always double-check facts, names and sources. If ChatGPT gives you a quote, Google it. If it cites a study, look for the original. Treat the AI’s content as a first draft that requires human judgment and verification.

Another pitfall: the language itself. ChatGPT has certain go-to phrases that instantly signal “AI-generated.” You’ve seen them:

“In today’s fast-paced digital world…”
“Unlock the power of [insert feature here]…”
“Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise…”

These lines feel stale and generic because they are. Savvy readers (and editors) can spot them a mile away. Train yourself to recognize this filler language — and ask ChatGPT to rewrite with more specificity and originality:

“Avoid clichés. Rewrite this intro with a punchy, unexpected opening.”
“Replace this generic phrase with something vivid or visual.”

You can even paste in your brand’s existing content and prompt: “Match this tone and avoid generic marketing language.”

Another tactic is to proactively set constraints. For instance, tell ChatGPT: “Avoid using startup clichés or overused buzzwords.” You can also ask it to analyze its own writing: “Which phrases in this paragraph might sound too generic or robotic?” It’s surprisingly self-aware when asked.

AI can get you 80% of the way, but that last 20% — the polish, the precision, the personality — comes from you.

The marketers getting the most out of ChatGPT aren’t those who know the cleverest single prompts. They’re the ones who treat it like a junior collaborator: giving it guidance, pushing it to iterate and building on its outputs.

Prompt conversations shift your mindset from “asking” to “shaping.” And that makes all the difference.

Start a smarter conversation. Your content will show it.