Today many people wish to break away from their corporate jobs and become entrepreneurs. And apparently they find satisfaction in doing so, because 96% of people who are self-employed have no desire to go back to a regular job.
You promised yourself this was the year youd finally launchand sustainsome sort of side project, be it picking up a few freelance clients, launching a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, or setting up an e-commerce shop. One day in the hopefully not-too-distant future, your side hustle might even grow into a full-time business.
Raising your prices takes courage, but its often the only way to grow revenue when youre a freelancer, solopreneur, or running a small service business. But its possible to do it without losing your clientsheres exactly how.
Within my family, I’m known as the “AI Guy” so naturally, my sister-in-law excitedly told me how she took a photo of her living room, uploaded it to ChatGPT, and saw a photorealistic rendering of her room with specific couches from Kohl’s and Wayfair that she could buy.
While many businesses are encouraging employees to use AI more, they are forgetting that AI doesnt just affect productivity; its also changing how we shop. Had my sister-in-law searched for mocha leather couch, she would have seen a laundry list of options in a Google search; however, she only saw two options through ChatGPT, and this new way of shopping is having a widespread impact on businesses.
According to Adobe research, AI-driven referrals to U.S. retail websites increased more than tenfold from July 2024 to February 2025. Walmart is already feeling this impact, with ChatGPT now its single largest referrer, accounting for 20% of total referral traffic.
How Does AI Know What to Recommend to You?
Like a chef in a new kitchen, I’ve been testing how different AI platforms make recommendations since the release of ChatGPT in 2022. What I’ve found is that each chatbot has its quirks.
Perplexity loves authoritative sources like Wikipedia and CNBC. ChatGPT draws from its training data first, then performs web searches when you ask for something time-sensitive, and Gemini leverages Google’s massive search capabilities.
But despite their different approaches, they all follow the same core principle. When you ask for the best portable speaker under $100, they’re essentially doing what your audiophile friend would do: spending 30 minutes combing through Reddit threads, YouTube reviews, and product blogs, then distilling it into a recommendation.
However, they do it in seconds instead of the hours it takes your friend to text back. Unlike Google search results influenced by SEO and paid ads, these recommendations are purely organic. If a brand appears in an AI search, you know that referral was earned, not bought.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
This AI-powered convenience marks a turning point in online shopping. In my 10+ years as a software engineer, I’ve watched companies obsess over SEO, but AI use is now giving rise to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). With GEO, chatbots don’t care how good your website is; they care how good your reputation is.
Product results are selected independently and are not influenced by ads or partnerships; instead, chatbots like ChatGPT consider price, reviews, and ease of use, pulling real user feedback from public websites. GEO is still emerging, which means early movers have an advantage, so now is the time to act.
How Can You Set Your Business Up For Success?
Measure Your Current AI Referral Rankings
Before investing time into improving your business’s GEO standing, its important to know where you stand in the first place. AI Visibility checkers like HubSpots AI Search Grader, ALLMO.ai, and Trackerly.ai can help. A more cost-effective option would be to run your own tests and search for your product and/or brand across multiple chatbots, tracking the results.
For accurate results, I recommend performing each search in a new chat, similar to using an incognito browser tab. Pay attention to whether you’re mentioned at all, how you’re positioned relative to competitors, and what specific attributes the AI highlights about your business.
Integrate Directly With Chatbots
While experimenting with ChatGPT recently, I noticed OpenAI is capitalizing on the AI referral wave with their new “Instant Checkout” feature, enabling users to purchase recommended items directly within the chat from platforms like Etsy and Shopify.
Perplexity offers a similar feature, and both allow businesses to integrate their product feeds into the AI models with updated pricing, inventory, and checkout options. This direct integration does more than streamline purchasing; it signals to AI models that your business is established and trustworthy.
A customer can go from asking “What’s a good gift for a gardener?” to completing checkout without ever leaving the conversation. If you sell on Etsy or Shopify, setting up these integrations should be a priority.
Keep Your Warm Leads Warm
Building my AI company taught me one thing: past customers drive future sales. In real estate, 82% of transactions come from referrals, yet most agents struggle to sustain manual follow-up, so I developed Compai to do it for them. Follow-up is key because when AI chatbots evaluate which businesses to recommend, they look for consistent engagement, positive reviews, and evidence that past customers come back.
The businesses that nurture existing relationships through marketing newsletters, requesting product reviews, or automated follow-up tools naturally surface in AI recommendations. It’s not about gaming the algorithm; it’s about doing what good businesses have always done, just at a scale that’s actually sustainable.
What Leaders Are Missing
When business leaders ask me about AI, they’re usually motivated to increase productivity. But here’s what they’re missing: AI isn’t just changing how we work; it’s fundamentally changing how customers find businesses. My sister-in-law didn’t Google mocha leather couch and scroll through pages of results. She asked ChatGPT, saw two options, and made a choice. That’s the future of commerce.
GEO is in its infancy, which means businesses focusing on genuine customer relationships have a real shot at becoming the default recommendation in their field. The brands that will win aren’t the ones spending the most on ads; they’re the ones earning authentic advocacy from customers.
Not content with having hundreds of millions of users peppering ChatGPT with queries and conversations every day, OpenAI wants to further embed itself in our digital lives. This week the company released Atlas, an AI-laden web browser it hopes will challenge incumbents and be adopted at scale.
Atlas is one of a raft of AI-powered browsers that have been unleashed on the market in recent months. Perplexity, the AI answer engine, has Comet. Opera, a smaller European competitor to the likes of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Microsoft Edge, released Neon, which has its own AI functionalities.
OpenAI stands a better chance than most of dislodging Google Chrome, which is used by around 70 percent of all web users, according to web analytics company Statcounter. But it’s still hard to see how Atlas will eat into Chromes supremacy. Its hard to get people to change browsers, says Johnny Ryan, a senior fellow at the Open Markets Institute who has investigated how users choose different digital services.
Of course, OpenAI has good reason to feel confident. ChatGPT became a success within a matter of weeks, thanks to its novel interactivity. OpenAI followed it up earlier this year with its controversial Sora 2 video generator, which gained a million users in five days. But for the average person, web browsers are decidedly less sexy.
Unless youre extremely techy, the reality is that a web browser is a utilitarian piece of software, designed to get you from point A to point Bfrom one website to another. Provided it does that without destroying your device in the process, most people are content with how it works.
Over Statcounter’s 15-year history of recording web-browser market share, two browsers have dominated the market. Until 2012, that browser was Internet Explorer, as it had been since around the millennium, when it held a market share of 80% to 95%. But as competitors began offering better features and higher service quality, Internet Explorer’s global dominance began to fade. In Europe, demand for Internet Explorer took a hit following a 2009 agreement with the European Commission requiring Microsoft to offer a “browser choice” screen to users, letting them know that there were alternatives to Internet Explorer. While the company did not immediately comply, around the time it began implementing the change, in 2011 and 2012, Internet Explorer was supplanted by Google Chrome.
Those who do deviate from the mean when it comes to browser choice often do so for moral reasonspreferring, for instance, DuckDuckGos browser because of opposition to what they see as Googles overly draconian data collection on its usersor a personal preference for a different type of browser.
The web browser market consists of the three big browsers that ship as the default on their respective operating systems. Beyond that, there is a vivid market of people who seek a different and better web experience, says Jan Standal, vice president at Opera.
But, barring egregious performance issues, most people stick with whatever theyre given.
I personally hopped around various browsers between 15 and 20 years ago because they offered then-revolutionary tools like tabbed browsing, better multimedia support, or the ability to customize how they worked with extensions. But todays crop of browsers is much of a muchness: Even the vaunted AI integration that OpenAI puts at the core of its marketing for Atlas is common now in many browsers.
If a web browser works well enough, then people tend to stick with it. Thats been true for decades. Internet Explorer was the market leader for years up until the early 2010s because it was bundled into the Windows operating system as the default browser, with no immediate indication to users that there were alternatives.
Ryan points out that Atlas has one thing going for itthe perceived increasing unreliability of Chrome. Many users complain about its CPU-draining draw on processing power, and the way its tabs can quickly use up a devices memory. As Chrome gets worse, the incentive goes up, Ryan says. But he points out that as the general worries around AIs environmental impact mount, users may think twice about adopting a browser so reliant on AI. As unease about AI data centers causing blackouts and water shortages grows, is this really the browser people will choose to move to? he asks.
The FBI dropped a bombshell indictment on Thursday, announcing arrests and criminal charges against dozens of people allegedly involved with gambling and rigging NBA games. The whole thing involved not only some of basketball’s biggest names, but also the mob.
At a press conference in New York, FBI Director Kash Patel announced a historic arrest across a wide-sweeping criminal enterprise that envelopes both the NBA and “La Cosa Nostra, more commonly known as the Sicilian Mob or Mafia. Among some of the high-profile individuals indicted are Chauncey Billups, an NBA hall-of-fame player and current head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, and Terry Rozier, who currently plays for the Miami Heat. Damon Jones, another former NBA player, was also arrested and indicted.
A statement from the NBA, per CNBC, says that both Billups and Rozier have been placed on immediate leave from their teams, and that the league will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities.
The indictments arose from two fraud-related investigations that included sports betting and underground poker games. In the first instance, it appears that insider information related to player injuries (including one involving an injury to LeBron James) was leaked to sports bettors, effectively giving those bettors an advantagean injury to James, for instance, could impact his level of play, and turn the outcome of a game.
The underground poker games, on the other hand, sound like a scheme Tony Sopranos crew cooked up at The Bing.
As alleged, members and associates of organized crime families fixed illegal poker games as part of a highly sophisticated and lucrative fraud scheme to cheat victims out of millions of dollars and conspired with others to perpetrate their frauds, said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr., in a statement.
Well-known former NBA players and former professional athletes, acted as Face Cards to lure unsuspecting victims to high-stakes poker games, where they were then at the mercy of concealed technology, including rigged shuffling machines and specially designed contacts lenses and sunglasses to read the backs of playing cards, which ensured that the victims would lose big. Todays indictment and arrests sounds the final buzzer for these cheaters.
Its a huge shakeup in the world of professional sports, particularly as sports betting has become increasingly mainstream in recent years, and has been legalized in several states and jurisdictions. Since the Supreme Court struck down a ban on sports betting in 2018, data from Goldman Sachs shows that, as of last year, its become a $10 billion industry. Big sports betting companiessuch as FanDuel, DraftKings, and othershave also become seemingly synonymous with names like Wynn, MGM, and Caesars.
Its also another blow to the NBA, which was already contending with the news that superstar Kawhi Leonard, who plays for the Los Angeles Clippers, was using an investment firm to circumvent the leagues salary capan investigation thats also snared Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, and has ties to entertainers like Drake and Leonardo DiCaprio
Late-night talk shows are a uniquely American invention that blend humor, the news of the day, and celebrity guests.
While Johnny Carson was not the first late-night host, he perfected the genre through trial and error during his 30-year tenure on NBCs The Tonight Show, setting the standard for years to come.
As the longest-running host in the shows 70-year history, Carson became a permanent fixture in the cultural zeitgeist and a kingmaker and queenmaker, giving many comedians such as Joan Rivers, Drew Carey, and Ellen DeGeneres their big breaks.
Recently, late-night talk shows have been making headlines for unexpectedand possibly politically motivatedreasons, calling into question freedom of speech and media monopolies.
The announced ending of CBSs The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and the temporary suspension of ABCs Jimmy Kimmel Live! were both controversial moves. (CBS maintains its decision was financial, not political.)
All this offstage drama is nothing new. Carson faced his own dilemmasincluding having a mobster put out a hit on him.
[Image: Penguin Random House]
That’s just one of the many intriguing stories found in the new book Love Johnny Carson (Dutton, 2025) by Mark Malkoff with David Ritz. It was released just two days before what would have been the legendary host’s 100th birthday on October 23. Lets talk about Malkoffs credentials before we get into the Frank Sinatra of it all.
Who is Mark Malkoff?
Malkoffs father first exposed him to Carsons late-night antics. Though my father was just an average fan of the show, like millions of other Americans, when he told me about seeing that taping, it struck a chord somewhere deep inside me, Malkoff writes.
A super fan was created.
A young Malkoff continued his Carson education by recording the seriesit presumably aired after his bedtimeand watching it the next morning while eating cereal. He would also make a pilgrimage to Carsons Los Angeles NBC studio and attend college at NYU to be close to Carsons New York history.
Malkoff began The Carson Podcast in 2014 and spent eight years interviewing people who knew the funnyman. This book feels like a natural extension of the podcast. Malkoffs purpose was to further educate the public on Carsons cordiality, calmness, cool, warmth, wit, and love.
How did Frank Sinatra save Carsons life?
Many different versions of this story have circulated for years. Malkoff spoke to comedian Tom Dreesen to get to the bottom of it all. Dreesen heard it both from Ermenegildo “Jilly” Rizzo, the owner of Jillys Saloon, and Frank Sinatra himself.
Carson was a talented entertainer who also had his fair share of demons, one of which was alcohol. In the spring of 1971, an already intoxicated Carson went out to Jillys with friends, where he spotted a beautiful woman. According to Dreesen, Carson approached her and put his hand up her miniskirt.
This woman was the girlfriend of notorious mobster Joseph Crazy Joe” Gallo, who was known for his bad temper. When Gallo found out, he warned that Carsons days were numbered.
The word all over Manhattan was Carsons a dead man. Hes gotta go into hiding, Dreesen told Malkoff.
Sinatra and Carson ran in similar social circles and had bonded six years earlier at a St. Louis benefit show, according to Malkoff.
The crooner came up with a plan to host Gallo and his family at an unpublicized charity show and make a big fuss over them. Backstage, after the event, Gallo thanked Sinatra and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Sinatra answered: Johnny Carson. While Gallo was not happy about this, he backed off for Ol’ Blue Eyes.
I dont believe anybody but Sinatra could have saved Carsons life, Dreesen told Malkoff.
So while Kimmel and Colberts recent experiences are unfortunate and life-changing, perhaps they can take solace in the fact that it was not a life-and-death situation.
Carson went on to host The Tonight Show until 1992, leaving behind a franchise that lives on today in an increasingly fractured TV environment that has been disrupted by streaming and other forms of digital media.
According to a UPI report at the time, his final episode attracted more than 62% of the television audience, some 55 million people.
Electric-truck maker Rivian is laying off another 600 people, or about 4% of its workforce as the global demand for electric vehicles decreases, the Wall Street Journal reported. This follows a previous round of layoffs in 2024.
Rivian is one of a number of technology and media companies that have seen layoffs in October, including: Meta, Paycom, Charter, NBC News and the Wall Street Journal.
Unfortunately, October 2025 is no outlier. From technology companies to media conglomerates, the layoffs are part of a trend in both the U.S. and Europe as companies start to slash staff and downsize.
Some are blaming artificial intelligence (AI), though critics say it’s just an excuse for companies to trim staff. The layoffs could also be way to hedge against the current economic uncertainty triggered by inflation, tariffs, the skyrocketing cost of living, and now an ongoing federal government shutdown.
Below are some of the tech and media companies that have been laying off workers since the beginning of the month. Fast Company has reached out to all of the companies listed below for comment.
Rivian
On Thursday, there was news that Rivian was laying off about 4% of its workforce, after a previous smaller layoff affecting some 1.5% of the company last month. Rivian, like many EV manufacturers, is expected to see EV sales decline in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision to end a hefty federal tax credit for EV purchases. Rivian is also planning to launch a new vehicle in 2026, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Meta
On Wednesday, Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsApp, said it is laying off about 600 employees from Alexandr Wangs new superintelligence research lab, after hiring the 25-year-old wunderkind and investing $14.3 billion in his company, Scale AI, in June. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social technology company plans to invest between $60 billion and $65 billion in AI capital expenditures in 2025 alone.
Paycom
Earlier this month, Oklahoma City-based payroll and human resources software company Paycom laid off more than 500 employees, citing workforce restructuring due to efficiencies in advanced automation and AI-driven technologies that will impact a limited number of back-office roles.
Charter
Cable and broadband giant Charter Communications said on Wednesday that to streamline operations, it was laying off some 1,200 employees, or just over 1% of its 95,000-person workforce, mostly in corporate management and back-office roles. The roles would not be in sales or service positions.
The company lost 117,000 internet customers in Q2, and 60,000 in Q1, amid growing competition from mobile providers, per Reuters.
NBC News
Meanwhile, NBC News is laying off about 7% of its staff, or 150 people, in cuts that started rolling out last week on October 15. The cuts come ahead of a split and rebrand from cable news network MSNBC, which will now be called MS NOW (which stands for “My Source for News, Opinion, and the World”). The move is part of a larger spin-off from parent company Comcast, which also includes CNBC and USA Network.
The Wall Street Journal
Also this month, the Wall Street Journal laid off a dozen reporters and editors from its education, health, and science news teams, citing structural changes. I recognize that change can be unsettling, editor-in-chief Emma Tucker said in a staff memo. I want to thank them for them for their many contributions to the Journal, particularly Stefanie Ilgenfritz [who] has spent more than 35 years at the Journal and has helped shape distinctive and consequential journalism, including a series on Medicare fraud that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015.
Tesla is recalling more than 63,000 Cybertrucks in the U.S. because the front lights are too bright, which may cause a distraction to other drivers and increase the risk of a collision.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that the recall includes certain Cybertrucks with a model year between 2024 and 2026. The vehicles were made between Nov. 13, 2023, and Oct. 11, 2025, with operating software versions prior to 2025.38.3.
The agency said that Tesla is not aware of any collisions, injuries, or fatalities related to the condition.
Tesla, which is run by billionaire Elon Musk, is issuing a free software update to correct the issue.
Earlier this month, federal regulators opened yet another investigation into Teslas self-driving feature after dozens of incidents in which the cars ran red lights or drove on the wrong side of the road, sometimes crashing into other vehicles and causing injuries.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a filing that it was looking into 58 incidents in which Teslas reportedly violated traffic safety laws while using the companys so-called Full Self-Driving mode, leading to more than a dozen crashes and fires and nearly two dozen injuries. The new probe adds to several other open investigations into Tesla technology that could upend Musks plans to turn millions of his cars already on the road into completely driverless vehicles with an over-the-air update to their software.
In March, U.S. safety regulators recalled virtually all Cybertrucks on the road. The NHTSA’s recall, which covered more than 46,000 Cybertrucks, warned that an exterior panel that runs along the left and right side of the windshield can detach while driving, creating a dangerous road hazard for other drivers, increasing the risk of a crash.
On Wednesday, Tesla reported a fourth straight decline in quarterly profit, even as sales rose. The automaker reported third-quarter earnings plunged 37% to $1.4 billion, or 39 cents a share, from $2.2 billion, or 62 cents a share, a year earlier. That marked the fourth quarter in a row that profit dropped. And even the revenue rise, a welcome relief from a sales plunge earlier in the year due to anti-Musk boycotts, came with a significant caveat: Customers rushed to take advantage of a $7,500 federal EV tax credit before it expired on Oct. 1, possibly stealing sales from the current quarter.
Michelle Chapman, AP business writer
