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New AI products are constantly coming to market with promises to revolutionize some aspects of your business and save you time and, ultimately, money. It’s an exciting time, full of promise, but it’s important to sift through the hype and take a hard look at whether the benefits justify the costs.

Take workforce data analytics. Employee dissatisfaction and disengagement, especially among younger workers, have been a hot topic since the pandemic. It’s a critical issue, but many business owners are unaware of just how costly employee turnover can be. A median-size S&P 500 company can lose between $228 million and $355 million a year in lost productivity from employee disengagement and attrition, according to McKinsey research.

Related: The AI Tool Your Competitors Don’t Want You to Know About

Even when companies acknowledge they have a problem, they often create interventions to address the issue with little more than guesswork. AI gives businesses the opportunity to analyze their workforce issues more affordably than hiring a pricey consulting firm. AI data analytics tools can now predict the precise cost of employee turnover, identify the causes and offer data-driven solutions to prevent it.

Just because the technology exists, however, doesn’t mean your company will automatically benefit. You should vet decisions on whether to deploy AI solutions using the same rigorous cost-benefit analysis you use in every other aspect of your business.

Below are six questions to ask yourself before you commit:

1. How many employees do I have? AI workforce analytics typically only starts to pay off once your company has more than 50 employees. That’s because it takes resources to collect and structure the data, and it’s at the larger numbers that analytics become complex enough to justify the costs.
2. What kind of data am I already collecting? For predictive workforce AI analytics to work, your company needs to be collecting a lot of data already, preferably using employee management software. Useful data include employee schedule adherence and variability, employee utilization, sentiment around feedback reviews, employee skill sets, overtime hours and overtime pay.
3. What’s my free cash flow budget to apply to R&D? Even if you’re collecting a lot of data, you still need a robust pipeline to structure the data, and that can mean high upfront costs. Simple descriptive AI tools won’t require as much investment but also won’t deliver the same predictive insights. Be sure you know precisely what your AI tool is offering and what you will need to spend to make those insights pay off for you in the long run.
4. What outside data does my AI tool crunch? A strong predictive AI tool will combine your internal company data with external data affecting employee satisfaction — right down to traffic patterns on workers’ commutes. Ask questions at the start. What data does my AI tool bring to the table that I can’t access on my own?
5. Are my current workforce retention strategies working? If you’ve already tried to tackle an employee retention problem, do you have data to back up the effectiveness of interventions? Or are you flying blind? A good workforce data analytics firm can use causal analysis to determine whether you’re wasting money on solutions that don’t get to the root of the problem.
6. What’s my ROI? You need to calculate the cost of employee attrition at your company, the cost savings from implementing changes to help you retain top talent, minus the expense of implementing AI data analytics. How does it compare to the expense of a consulting firm? A good workforce data analytics company can help you determine whether it’s worth the investment, and an honest one will tell you when it’s not.

Related: What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Here Are Its Benefits, Uses and More

AI workforce analytics tools have incredible potential. They can identify which employees are planning to leave your company — before they even know. New tools give small and mid-size businesses access to information and insights that were impossible to come by in the past. Still, it’s wise to be cautious and to make sure the investment will pay off for your business in the long run.

Entrepreneurship is starting a company. Intrapreneurship is transforming a business from within as an employee.

Elizabeth Funk is familiar with both paths. As an early employee at Yahoo! and Microsoft, Funk helped pioneer services like Yahoo! Shopping and Microsoft Word. After thinking online shopping would be a cool feature, she pitched and wrote the first code for Yahoo! Shopping herself. She was also a product manager on the early team for Microsoft Word and part of the original founding team that created Microsoft Office.

^{Elizabeth Funk. Photo Credit: In Her Image Photography.}

Now, as the founder and CEO of the nonprofit DignityMoves, Funk strives to find Silicon Valley-level disruptive solutions to homelessness, a problem that affected more than 771,800 Americans in 2024. DignityMoves addresses unsheltered homelessness by developing interim housing to get people off the streets as quickly as possible.

Related: Challenges Are Opportunities’: Reebok’s 89-Year-Old Founder Is Launching the World’s First Futuristic AI Shoe

Entrepreneur interviewed Funk about how she displayed intrapreneurship at Microsoft and Yahoo!, her approach to problems, and the lessons that she’s bringing with her to DignityMoves.

You were one of the first employees at Yahoo! and on the early team for Microsoft Office. What was it like working on these products?
At Yahoo! we were making it up as we went along. We had no idea how people were going to use the Internet, or what it could do. I was coming from software (Microsoft), where it would take 18 months before a new feature idea would be in users’ hands (back then we printed the software on CDs and shipped it in packages). At Yahoo! I could come up with a feature, put it out on the web, sleep a few hours under my desk (a frequent habit), and wake up to see that a million plus people had used it, as well as how they’d used it. Trial and error was a fundamental design strategy. There was very little downside risk to putting out a feature to see if it appealed.

How did you approach problems on these teams?
At both companies, it was fundamental that we had very collaborative working styles. At Yahoo!, we tried to do as many meetings standing as possible. Once you sit for a meeting you’re presumed there in that seat for 60 minutes. Who decided that all issues require exactly 60 minutes to solve? Instead, the person calling the meeting would pre-socialize the issue with folks individually, narrow it down to a few choices, and ideally the team would stand in the conference room, debate the pros and cons, and decide. We also did not believe in “democracy” in this environment. If you require unanimity you’ll end up with the lowest common denominator.

What was Yahoo! Shopping’s origin story?
In the early days of Yahoo! I was one of the only females. I kept thinking “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could shop online?” The guys were completely not intrigued. So I went to Barnes & Noble and bought “HTML for Dummies” and wrote [the code] myself. I got into a lot of trouble– clearly, web coding is not my forte, it was terrible. It also only had three to four links (about as many online retailers existed, at the time). But we tried it, and in retrospect, I turned out to be right.

Related: Why Embracing Intrapreneurship Will Cultivate Innovation Within Your Company

What advice would you give people looking to make a difference from within a company?
If your business model can support it, use trial-and-error, “minimal viable product” approaches to experiment before investing a lot of energy in new features or projects.

How do you approach managing people?
As a manager, I believed in giving every person their own area of (almost) full authority. Even the most junior person would “own” their small part of the business. I believe that the entrepreneurial spirit is like a precious elixir — if you could bottle it, you could sell it for $1 million per drop. There is nothing more powerful. As a manager, the secret was to find ways to instill that elixir in every employee. Magic happens.

What lessons from Yahoo! and Microsoft are you bringing with you as a founder?
At Yahoo! we thought that the global internet was going to be too massive for people– they were going to want to stay within their local communities. So we created Yahoo! LA, Yahoo! San Francisco, and so forth. It took us a while to realize that people had only defined “community” by their zip code in the past because that was their only option. Now people could define “community” by a shared love of Beanie Babies. The same seems true for how people use the internet today: they gather in community across zip codes and borders, united by what makes them unique, and what connects them to others.

Related: I Shifted From Founder to CEO 20 Years Ago and Never Looked Back — Here’s How to Successfully Make the Leap

It’s really hard to find a job right now, and the prevalence of “ghost jobs” is not helping.

According to an internal review of data by hiring platform Greenhouse, 18% to 22% of job posts are ghost listings, or roles that companies aren’t actually trying to fill.

Greenhouse has more than 7,500 clients, including Major League Baseball and HubSpot, and found that nearly 70% of the companies using its platform had posted at least one ghost job in the second quarter of 2024.

Construction, the arts, food, and legal were the industries with the most ghost jobs, according to the internal data.

For about 15% of Greenhouse’s clients, posting ghost jobs was a regular occurrence. Half of the jobs listed by this group went unfilled in the second quarter of last year.

Related: AI Can Now Apply to 1,000 Jobs While You Sleep. Here’s How Many Interviews an AI Bot Creator Got in One Month.

“It’s kind of a horror show,” Greenhouse president and co-founder Jon Stross told the Wall Street Journal, adding that “the job market has become more soul-crushing than ever.”

Greenhouse isn’t the first to study the issue. An October analysis from Resume Genius found that there were over 1.6 million potential ghost jobs on LinkedIn in the U.S. alone.

Why Do Companies Post Ghost Jobs?

According to Resume Genius, leaving up dead-end job postings is advantageous to companies because it creates the illusion that the company is growing, leaves the door open to new talent, and allows them to amass LinkedIn followers and emails for mailing lists.

Related: I Quit My Corporate Job to Start a Business. Here’s How I Went From Having $35,000 Credit Card Debt to Making $4 Million.

Clarify Capital, a small business loans site, surveyed over 1,000 hiring managers in 2022 and one of the most common reasons provided for having ghost job listings was to keep current employees motivated by giving the impression of growth.

How to Spot a Ghost Job

According to Resume Genius’ Job Seeker Insights Survey, conducted in August, nearly one in three job searchers were frustrated by ghost jobs.

Resume Genius recommends that job seekers always check the date that a position was listed and pass on applying if it was up for two months or longer. According to the Society of Human Resource Management, the average time to fill open roles was 41 days in 2024, or about a month and a half.

Another way to spot a ghost job from a job board is to cross-check the role with listings directly on the company’s site. Sometimes the company’s site will have more up-to-date information.

Checking the company’s social media and reaching out to the company directly are also options.

Related: These Are the 10 Highest-Paying Jobs With the Lowest Stress, According to a New Report

We’ve all been stuck with a stubborn PDF that just won’t cooperate. Whether you need to edit, annotate, merge, or sign a PDF, those tasks can feel like a nightmare without the right tools. However, there’s no need to stress. The PDF Expert was made to make PDF management much easier.

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It allows you to edit text easily, fill out forms, and sign documents. It’s packed with features that solve the most common PDF frustrations, helping you save time and improve productivity.

PDFs are notoriously hard to work with. You can’t simply click and type like you would in a Word document. Want to update a contract? You usually have to start from scratch or convert the file into another format, which often ruins the formatting.

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UPDF does it all—from editing text and images to adding annotations, converting PDFs, and even chatting with your PDFs using AI. This tool is perfect for business leaders and owners who need to streamline their workflow and handle PDF documents effortlessly across multiple platforms.

PDFs are notoriously hard to work with. Whether you’re trying to edit a contract, add a signature, or convert a scanned document, traditional PDF tools often fall short. UPDF changes the game, offering seamless editing, converting, organizing, and protecting PDFs in one intuitive app.

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As intelligent machines evolve from novelties to necessities, entrepreneurs face a stark choice: Leverage these powerful tools or be eclipsed by them.

In this video, I recommend the top five AI books that every entrepreneur needs to read in 2025. These are not just books about AI — they are also strategic guides to leveraging artificial intelligence for a competitive advantage, with a particular focus on helping your business to thrive in the next phase of AI.

From demystifying complex concepts for beginners to revealing the playbook used by the top 1%, these artificial intelligence books provide the essential knowledge to transform your business. Discover how Phase 3 AI will change your business forever. I’ll also share insights from my own book, “The Wolf is at the Door,” your survival guide for the age of AI, and show you where to access two free chapters.

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.”

A new report by the online career resources platform Resume Genius found that now is a great time to hold an associate’s degree (or begin the path to get one).

The median salary for an associate degree holder ($62,180) is higher than the U.S. median salary ($48,060) and career opportunities for associate degree holders, or those with a two-year degree, are expected to grow by 6.3% over the next 10 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Using the most recent BLS data, Resume Genius compiled a list, the 2025 High-Pay Associate Degree Jobs Report, that showcases the 10 highest-paying jobs that ask for an associate degree.

“In 2025, wages are up across the board for every occupation on our list,” said Eva Chan, career expert at Resume Genius. “It highlights not only growing employer demand but also the potential to earn more in fields like healthcare, aviation, and technology.”

In order to be included on the list, the jobs had to specifically require an associate degree, be projected to either grow (or at least remain steady) over the next decade, and have an annual salary that surpasses the U.S. average.

Here are the 10 highest-paying jobs for associate degree holders, according to the report.

1. Air traffic controller

• Median annual salary: $137,380
• Number of jobs (2023): 24,000
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 4%
• Work experience required: Must pass FAA assessments and training



2. Nuclear technician

• Median annual salary: $101,740
• Number of jobs (2023): 5,400
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 1%
• Work experience required: On-the-job training provided



3. Radiation therapist

• Median annual salary: $98,300
• Number of jobs (2023): 17,200
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 10%
• Work experience required: Licensing or certification may be required depending on state regulations



4. Nuclear medicine technologist

• Median annual salary: $92,500
• Number of jobs (2023): 17,800
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 8%
• Work experience required: Licensing required in all states

5. Dental hygienist

• Median annual salary: $87,530
• Number of jobs (2023): 214,100
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 8%
• Work experience required: Licensing required in various states

6. Diagnostic medical sonographer, Cardiovascular technologist/technician

• Median annual salary: $80,850
• Number of jobs (2023): 143,400
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 3%
• Work experience required: Certification may be required

7. Respiratory therapist

• Median annual salary: $77,960
• Number of jobs (2023): 133,900
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 11%
• Work experience required: Licensing required in most states



8. Aerospace engineering and operations technologist/technician

• Median annual salary: $77,830
• Number of jobs (2023): 11,000
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 7%
• Work experience required: Varies by position

9. Radiologic and MRI technologist

• Median annual salary: $76,020
• Number of jobs (2023): 271,200
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 13%
• Work experience required: Certification is usually required for radiologic technologists; experience may be required for MRI technologists

10. Aircraft and avionics equipment mechanic/technician

• Median annual salary: $75,400
• Number of jobs (2023): 163,300
• Change in pay (2022–2023): 7%
• Work experience required: FAA certification required

Click here for the full report from Resume Genius.

What if AI could apply to jobs for you by crafting custom cover letters and resumes tailored to each job description, and get you an interview?

It might be possible. One Reddit user, who has since deleted their account name after posting about their experiences on the “Get Employed” community five months ago, created an AI bot to automatically apply to 1,000 jobs on their behalf. The bot applied to the jobs—and got the user 50 interviews in one month.

The AI took in the person’s information, like where they worked and their educational background, and automatically applied to jobs by generating unique cover letters, resumes, and application question responses.

Related: ChatGPT Is Writing Lots of Job Applications, But Companies Are Quickly Catching On. Here’s How.

“And all of this while I was sleeping!” the Reddit user wrote. “In just one month, this method helped me secure around 50 interviews. The tailored CVs and cover letters, customized based on each job description, made a significant difference.”

The user didn’t specify the exact job listing sites, like Indeed or LinkedIn, the bot tapped into. They wrote that the unique cover letters and CVs helped them get past automated screening systems and get noticed by human beings.

I used AI to automatically apply for 1000 jobs – and I got 50 interviews!
by inGetEmployed

The Reddit user posted a link to the code for the AI bot so that other people could try it for free. Multiple Redditors have noted that the project is broken at the time of writing and doesn’t work.

Even if the tool was live, it might not be wise to use it. A report released in August by the Financial Times found that though about half of job applicants use ChatGPT and other AI tools to help with job applications, employers can easily tell if an applicant has used AI — and it reflects poorly on the candidate.

“Without proper editing, the language will be clunky and generic, and hiring managers can detect this,” Victoria McLean, chief executive of career consultancy CityCV, told the publication.

The biggest red flag for hiring managers was AI-generated resumes, according to an April Resume Genius survey.

Related: AI Is Changing How Businesses Recruit for Open Roles — and How Candidates Are Gaming the System

Meanwhile, employers are using automated systems to filter out candidates. A Guardian report from March shows that AI is conducting interviews on behalf of companies and shutting out candidates before they talk to a human hiring manager. According to Jobscan research, 99% of Fortune 500 companies use AI technology in hiring.

As the AI revolution accelerates, business owners preparing for an exit can harness this technology to increase efficiency, scale operations and improve profitability. These actions make a company more attractive to potential buyers and ultimately increase its value to new heights.

AI isn’t a single program you introduce to your company, then stand back and watch as it works magic on your processes. It’s a broad term for an array of tools that create efficiency through automation, with different tools designed for the various areas of a business. It takes some training to use it effectively, so before diving into AI, you must identify what areas of your business would benefit the most from it.

Identifying opportunities

Start with repetitive tasks, especially those that add more work as the business scales. AI excels in scenarios where tasks are tedious, don’t scale efficiently and aren’t highly sophisticated. This includes research, marketing and even sales support functions, which are vital to driving productivity and cost savings. These functions are ripe for AI integration because they allow the business to expand without constantly increasing overhead costs.

For instance, some companies have a time-consuming client onboarding process involving extensive research to gather basic background information. Using AI for basic research saves hours for a human employee, who can now manage an AI tool, review the work in a fraction of the time and spend more of their day on strategic, client-focused efforts.

It’s the kind of AI power that can significantly increase the value of a business preparing for sale. Potential buyers look for more than just strong financials. They want to see that the company is efficient and scalable, which is where AI becomes a strong selling point.

Related: How AI Can (and Should) Drive Innovation Across Your Entire Organization

Measuring success

Implemented correctly, AI can improve several key business metrics:

• Revenue per employee: As your team becomes more efficient by doing less of the repetitive work they have been doing, you should see an increase in the revenue each employee brings in. This metric signals to buyers that the company can scale without significantly increasing labor costs.

• Gross and net margins: By outsourcing labor-intensive tasks to AI, you can reduce operational costs and improve profitability. Higher margins make a company more attractive to buyers because they indicate a well-run, cost-efficient operation.

• Capacity: AI can help businesses do more with less. It can assist small and medium-sized enterprises bridge the resource gap when competing against larger companies with bigger budgets. For example, an advertising agency might be at full capacity with its current team. Utilizing AI can save time and resources, allowing the team to take on more clients without expanding headcount. This capacity growth is a strong indicator of future scalability.

Potential buyers will want to see these metrics over time to judge whether they’ve improved and are likely to continue improving.

Resist the urge to make much of the mere fact that you use AI tools. If executed thoughtfully, AI will lead to improvements that speak for themselves. You won’t have to tell buyers you’re AI-enabled—they’ll see the results.

Practical AI tools for small businesses

Once you know your needs, what AI tools should you use? Here are three categories of tools that can increase efficiency and, ultimately, value:

1. Research: AI can automate research tasks, saving employees significant time. For example, AI agents can gather background information on new clients, allowing team members to move directly into the strategic phases of their work.

2. Marketing: AI can automate content creation, copywriting and even video production. By using AI tools for marketing, businesses can produce higher volumes of content without increasing staffing. Marketing can do a little bit more creative tasks, such as copywriting and creating images and social media posts.

3. Sales support: AI can assist in lead generation and prospecting campaigns by compiling lists, writing outreach copy and automating follow-ups. By having the functions automated, the sales team can focus on closing deals rather than spending hours on administrative tasks.

Without AI, you might tell an employee to, for instance, build a prospecting campaign for B2B business owners under $10 million in revenue and conduct outreach to them. They’d have to compile the list, write the copy and then contact them. Now, you can use AI tools to compile the list, write the copy and do the sales outreach on platforms like LinkedIn, even execute the campaign for you. So, then the salesperson can do high-level tasks like managing the campaign and responding to leads.

With AI, we’ll mostly eliminate the upfront boring tasks so we can do the things that really ignite us and drive value in a company. You don’t have to eliminate jobs, but you can upgrade the quality of the projects you assign to your existing teams and keep them engaged and excited.

Related: 5 Ways AI Can Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Journey

A long-term investment

It’s essential to recognize that AI implementation is not a quick fix but requires a long-term mindset. Whenever I’ve introduced any new technology in my own business, it’s taken at least a year to see the full impact on the company.

In preparing a business for sale, the earlier AI is incorporated, the better. Prospective buyers will want to see a clear pattern of improved metrics over time, not just a rushed process with uncertain results. It’s never advisable to sell a company when it’s still figuring out how to use AI, especially since your revenue may dip during the learning phase.

The key is to approach AI strategically, focusing on areas where it can make a difference. When done right, AI won’t just be a trend but a critical tool for maximizing your business’ value.

A first-of-its-kind Costco with 800 apartment units above it is coming to Baldwin Hills, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles that Census Reporter finds has a poverty rate 25% higher than the national average.

The complex includes 184 apartments for low-income households, with the rest of the units offered as a mix of unsubsidized, affordable, and workforce housing. It will also have a rooftop pool and fitness center.

The Costco downstairs will have 185,000 square feet of space and two levels of underground parking. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the average size of a Costco in the U.S. is 146,000 square feet, placing this Costco above average.

Related: This 43-Year-Old Started a Side Hustle at a Farmer’s Market — Then She Quit Her Job and Built an 8-Figure Brand Sold in Costco

Real estate developer Thrive Living is preparing to start constructing the apartment-Costco property in early 2025, according to a report published earlier this month by the Wall Street Journal. When constructed, the complex will be the first residential development in the country with a Costco right downstairs.

^{Photo Credit: Thrive Living}

Thrive Living’s founder Ben Shaoul told the WSJ that Costco will pay rent for the space and the income will help Thrive Living rely less on government subsidies for the complex’s affordable housing units.

If the model works, Shaoul says he wants to use the same concepts to build “thousands and thousands of apartments every year, not hundreds.”

Related: A Popular Costco Section May Disappear in January

The Costco apartment complex will cost $425 million to construct, with work expected to conclude in 2027.

According to a Thrive Living press release, constructing the complex will create thousands of jobs, and opening the Costco will create up to 400 new jobs.

The project is the first to receive approval under Assembly Bill 2011 or the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act. The California law, which went into effect throughout the state on July 1, 2023, speeds up the approval process for projects that meet affordability and labor criteria.

Related: Costco Is Raising Hourly Wages for Employees, According to an Internal Memo from the CEO