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Walmart may have generated the most revenue of any other company in the S&P 500 for the past 12 consecutive years, but another e-commerce giant is coming for its crown.

Amazon reported revenue of $187.8 billion in its latest earnings release for the fourth quarter of 2024 after market close on Thursday, which is more than the $180 billion in revenue Walmart is projected to report for the same quarter on February 20, according to a Thursday report from CNBC.

If the Walmart projection comes to pass, it would mark the first time in over a decade that another company has usurped Walmart as the top revenue-generator on the S&P 500. In 2012, Walmart took the top spot from Exxon Mobil, per CNBC.

Related: Walmart Is Laying Off Hundreds, Relocating Others as the Company Closes a U.S. Office

“The holiday shopping season was the most successful yet for Amazon and we appreciate the support of our customers, selling partners, and employees who helped make it so,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated in the earnings release.

Amazon’s online shopping business has skyrocketed since the pandemic. The company’s annual sales in North America have grown by more than 100% since 2019, per CNBC.

Amazon’s successful cloud business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), also contributed to its revenue growth. Revenue in the division has swelled in the past few years, growing from $45.37 billion in 2020 to nearly double that amount, or $90.76 billion, in 2023, according to Statista.

^{Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

In the third quarter of 2024, AWS revenue increased 19% year-over-year and contributed to 17% of total sales.

Amazon also hit a milestone for its revenue for the full year of 2024. The company crossed the $600 billion mark for the first time in 2024 with a record revenue of $638 billion.

In this measure, Amazon isn’t expected to surpass Walmart, which is predicted to report full-year revenue of $681 billion for 2024 and has already exceeded the $600 billion mark in 2023 with revenue of $611.3 billion.

Related: Top-Performing Walmart Managers Can Now Make $620,000 a Year

Americans can’t get enough of side hustles — the gigs allowing them to earn extra cash outside of their 9-5 jobs — and young entrepreneurs are especially keen to start their own. These days, 44% of millennials and 48% of Gen Z have a side hustle, according to Bankrate’s Side Hustles Survey.

However, millennial and Gen Z side hustlers are no longer the newest on the scene: Gen Alpha, born between 2010 and 2024, might be between the ages of 1 and 14, but many of them are already taking control of their financial futures.

Related: Move Over Boomers and Millennials — Here’s How Gen Alpha’s Top Entrepreneurs Are Printing Money

A staggering 69% of Gen Alpha say they’ve started or plan to start a side hustle, according to the Acorns Money Matters Report™ for Kids.

Acorns’ report, which surveyed more than 60,000 6-to-14-year-olds and 2,000 of their parents, explores Gen Alpha‘s financial planning — and their parents’ own financial concerns.

An “economic powerhouse” with an estimated $11.3 billion spending power, Gen Alpha is getting proactive about their personal finances: They’re planning or starting side hustles to earn additional spending money (58%) or save funds for the future (31%), the report found.

Related: ‘My Schedule Is Mayhem’: Nearly 50% of Parents Now Have Side Hustles, According to a New Survey

“It’s encouraging to see how mindful Gen Alpha already is about financial security,” Acorns CEO Noah Kerner says.

What exactly are these young side hustlers saving for? According to the report, 19% are already saving for college, 24% for their first car, 11% for their first home and 6% for their retirement.

What’s more, Gen Alpha’s parents might be contributing to their children’s money mentalities.

Most kids and teens aged 10 to 14 (63%) hear their parents talk about money often, and among children in that age group who associate stress with money, more than three-quarters of their parents report feeling the same way, Acorns’ research revealed.

Related: ‘It Was Taboo’: Parents Shape Their Children’s Relationship With Money. Here’s How to Set Kids Up for Long-Term Success Instead of Struggle.

Northwestern Mutual vice president and chief portfolio manager Matt Stucky told Entrepreneur that parents can instill strong money management skills in their kids like any other good habit.

“It just takes a lot of repetition — things like saving, investing,” Stucky says. “I’m not going to teach my 4-year-old about investing, but just the idea of if I save a dollar, that means I can spend it down the road on something that I really want. That takes a while to sink in.”

This article is part of our ongoing Young Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of being a young business owner.

Citigroup isn’t following fellow Wall Street banks like JPMorgan and implementing a strict return-to-office policy. According to recent reports, Citigroup has decided to stick with its hybrid schedule which allows staff up to two days per week of remote work.

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told managing directors on a quarterly call in mid-January that the bank will continue to have a hybrid work schedule, The Financial Times reported on Tuesday. Per the report, Fraser said that Citigroup’s hybrid work policy gives it a competitive advantage by allowing it to recruit talented staff.

The majority of Citigroup’s 210,000-person workforce is on the hybrid schedule now, with only traders and staff at bank branches expected to be in the office five days per week.

^{Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images}

Fraser has taken measures to help Citigroup’s workforce establish a measure of work-life balance. In March 2021, she sent a memo to the bank’s staff creating Zoom-Free Fridays, where employees were not required to take video calls on Fridays. She also encouraged staff to keep their work to working hours and take their vacation time.

Related: Remote Walmart Employees Question Return-to-Office Policy, Some Opt to Quit Instead of Relocating

“When our work regularly spills over into nights, very early mornings, and weekends, it can prevent us from recharging fully, and that isn’t good for you, nor, ultimately, for Citi,” Fraser wrote in the memo.

Fraser’s stance on hybrid work, as giving Citigroup an advantage over the competition, contrasts with that of other banks on Wall Street, like JPMorgan. Last month, JPMorgan asked all of its 300,000-plus employees to return to the office five days per week by March. Employees pushed back almost immediately on a company post announcing the mandate, with over 300 comments explaining that the policy would affect their childcare costs, commute, and work-life balance.

Other Wall Street institutions asked employees back to the office even earlier. Goldman Sachs told its U.S. employees that they had to be back in the office by June 2021.

Meanwhile, several major companies have decided to stay with more flexible schedules. Starbucks has maintained a hybrid schedule with two days working remotely for its corporate employees while Spotify has a work-from-anywhere policy.

Related: ‘Retiring the Hybrid Policy’: Dell Issues a Strict Return-to-Office Mandate for Most Employees

I am competitive, and I hate to lose. When I feel like someone is going to be better than me at something, it flips a switch somewhere deep inside of me and puts me into overdrive.

This isn’t limited to the work I do at FutureFund, my free fundraising platform for K-12 school groups. I want to be the best athlete, coach, family man and software engineer that I can be. And for the most part, this works. It motivates me to strive for excellence and keep challenging myself instead of becoming too comfortable and stagnating.

But the same tendency that drives me to excel at these things can sometimes become counterproductive. My dislike of losing is actually so strong that I often hate playing board games. As you can imagine, that can really put a damper on family game night if I don’t keep it in check.

Lots of people in tech are like this because it’s a competitive landscape. Maybe it’s the same for you: anything you do, you have to do 100% — and because you put 100% of yourself into something, it’s almost impossible for your success or failure not to feel like a reflection of who you are. Like me, you have a brand, and that brand is: when you do something, you will succeed.

The trick is to keep your sense of competition healthy so that it serves your work and personal goals instead of getting in your way. Here’s how I do it — and how you can, too.

Related: Stop Bossing Your Team Around — How Coaching Can Remove Your Blind Spots and Transform Your Leadership Style

The way you respond to competition is a choice

Not everyone responds to competition in the same way. People tend to fall into one of two groups when they witness someone else succeeding at a goal they have for themselves.

The first group tries to sabotage the success they see in others. They ask how they can shift their competition’s reputation so that it’s negative. This is more commonly accepted than you might assume. We tend to look down on brands who run obvious smear campaigns against their rivals, but lots of companies get away with writing press releases that favorably compare their products or services to those of their biggest competitors.

The second group tries to improve themselves so they can match and surpass the success they see others experiencing. They become motivated to better themselves instead of casting aspersions on their rivals. This approach can feel like a lot more work, but I have found that it’s also frequently much more rewarding.

The first group’s approach might work at first — but there are obvious risks. Not only can this blow back on you if you’re too heavy-handed, but it can also provoke your rivals and motivate them to work harder against you than they normally would have. But the biggest problem is that focusing on others doesn’t do anything to improve your abilities.

The second group’s approach requires you to be unflinchingly honest with yourself and your team about your strengths and weaknesses, which can be challenging at first. But it also pays dividends. You learn where to invest your time and effort for maximum gains. You become more efficient and less likely to blame others for your mistakes, and you ultimately get closer to becoming the best you can be at what you’re doing.

Related: Why You Have to Let People Fail Now So They Can Succeed Later

Wanting to win vs. hating to lose

Once you’ve chosen to motivate yourself instead of tearing down your competitors, the next question is how to do it. Here’s one way to think about it that’s always helped me:

It’s not just about wanting to win; it’s about hating to lose. If you’re anything like me, the disappointment of losing is usually stronger for you than the joy of winning.

This doesn’t permit you to be a sore loser on those occasions when it inevitably does happen — you don’t want to ruin family game night. But making it a priority to avoid unfavorable outcomes is often helpful because it makes you more likely to fix the kinds of things that people might let slide if they’re too focused on their wins.

One of FutureFund’s major competitors ultimately went out of business because their support team routinely took weeks to get back to people. This issue would have been easy to correct, but they let it become their Achilles heel. Although it might not have felt important enough for them to fix, it turned out to be important for their users.

So we decided that one of our non-negotiables would be to answer support tickets in a reasonable amount of time — a couple of hours or less. That was easy to commit to, but it had a profoundly positive impact on our success.

Think about this in the context of your startup. Staying competitive means celebrating your wins, but never letting yourself be complacent about where there’s room for improvement.

Related: 4 Coaching Stages Every Leader Should Master to Help Others Grow

You define what winning is

Finally, you need a healthy way to quantify and acknowledge your wins. That can be difficult because, in business, it’s not always clear who’s winning. There are no universal goalposts that everyone can see.

Here’s my rule: competition is healthy when you decide what success looks like instead of letting others do it. Measure your progress by how far you’ve come in relation to the goals you’ve set instead of letting your competitors control the narrative and always being one step behind them.

Success, for me, is about being a little better than I was the day before. When you’re in a startup, your product won’t be perfect at first — or maybe ever. But you work to make sure it’s better today than it was last month — or last week, or yesterday. This way, you can at least make sure you’re heading in the right direction.

If you’ve chosen your mission carefully, this kind of progress becomes a much better benchmark for success than what some other company is doing. You can read more about that in my next article below:

I travel a lot for my job, and although there are many downsides to being on the road, there is one significant benefit: it gives me time to think.

When you travel — particularly when you’re solo, as I oftentimes am — you have a lot of time to think. In the Uber. In security. Walking through the airport. Waiting for your flight. Being on your flight. Doing the reverse at your destination. Some people listen to music or podcasts during this downtime, and there are occasions when I do the same. But most of the time, I’m thinking. What are my thoughts?

Same as you, if you’re a business owner. I’m thinking about things going on in my life and my company. A new product we’re working on. A sales campaign I want to try. A challenging client situation. A difficult employee. Whether the Phillies should trade Alec Bohm. Why the guy sitting next to me is wearing sandals. Lots of thoughts are going through my little, silly, pathetic mind. But that’s fine. Thinking is good. And when I return from a trip, I usually have new ideas, different approaches to a problem — brilliant thoughts to share.

When I travel, I’m not on the phone as much as when I’m in the office. I’m also not sending as many emails or attending as many meetings. I’m doing less, but actually, I’m doing more.

Back in my office the next day, I’m completing tasks. I’m reviewing contracts. I’m working on a proposal. I’m on Zoom. I’m messaging an employee. I’m calling a contractor. I’m running to a client meeting. I’m doing a lot. But am I doing the right things? Am I really contributing to the long-term profitability and growth of my business? Am I acting or just reacting? I think you know the answer.

As business owners, we all spend too much time doing too many irrelevant things instead of what’s really important: thinking. Thinking about the future. Thinking about how to make our customers delighted, our products better, our employees happier. We should be thinking about the economy, regulations and new laws that may affect our business and how we’re going to deal with them. We should be thinking of our cash flow, our investments and how to increase the value of our businesses. But what about all the daily minutiae we have to deal with? I need to do less of them. So, I accomplish more.

Here are some actions I’m going to take this year so that I can accomplish more by doing less.

Related: 10 Growth Strategies Every Business Owner Should Know

Outsource to experts

I should not be doing my own payroll, creating quotes, researching issues or sending out bulk emails. This year, I’ll outsource these tasks. I’ll pay accountants, salespeople and outside marketers to do this for me. This will save me hours of time. And yes, it will cost, but the cost-benefit ratio will be much higher.

Force myself to get out more

I will leave my desk, play squash or ride my bike in the middle of the day, visit more clients, and have lunch with people I should’ve had lunch with years ago. The more I’m out, the more I leave my business to be run by my talented people, and the more time I will have to think about the business and how to scale it.

Join a CEO group

There are many great organizations around the country that assemble local groups of CEOs and business owners who regularly get together to discuss their businesses. They discuss their problems, share their financial information, offer guidance and ask for help. If I were to take the time to be with them and listen to what they have to say, I would benefit and grow. I may even have a few thoughts to help them, too.

Follow the 80/20 rule

It is amazing to me how much time I spend on clients that generate so little profit. Like many, I just want to please people. I realize that every client is important, and I want a client paying me $100 to be just as satisfied as a client paying me $10,000. But come on, does that really make sense? This year, I’m going to spend less time agonizing over small, marginally profitable accounts and focus on the clients who are truly the most valuable to my business. I’m not going to ignore the smaller clients. But I’m going to have a limit as to how much time I’m going to spend on them. I’ll do the same with our products and services. Do we need to have so many? Can we get more done with fewer offerings?

Related: 5 Innovative Ways to Create Growth Opportunities for Your Employees

Finally, I’m going to lean more into tech this year

I will look at every task I perform during the day — responding to emails, following up on opportunities, sending bulk messages, attending meetings, reviewing invoices, and writing proposals — and ask myself how this can be done quicker with technology. My company uses a great CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software application that comes with many workflow and automation features that are beginning to leverage AI, all designed to get more things done in less time. I will speak frequently to this vendor and ask how I can be doing things quicker and better with their software.

2025 is when I will do less. Less busy work. Less micromanaging. Less detailed tasks. That’s what my smartest clients do: they make the time to think. They accomplish more by doing less.

This Black History Month, we can learn a lot about how to move through challenging times by looking back at leaders who have experienced their fair share of challenges, too. It takes bravery, stamina, guts and a vision to move through dark eras and emerge victorious. As a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) consultant, I spend most of my days helping companies big and small navigate challenges, and I often look to Black leaders like Frederick Douglass as examples of what resiliency looks like.

Here are three lessons that all entrepreneurs can learn when navigating trying situations in their professional and personal lives.

Choose the path of self-development

In challenging times, sometimes our best teacher is ourselves. And no one knows that better than Frederick Douglass. Despite being born into slavery, Frederick Douglass knew his ticket to freedom was through education. At the age of 6, Douglass moved to the Wye House plantation, where he was looked after by Lucretia Auld, the wife of a recently deceased slave overseer. Later, she sent him to serve her family members, Hugh and Sophia Auld, in Baltimore. When Douglass was about 12 years old, Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet. However, her husband Hugh strongly disapproved as he felt that literacy encouraged enslaved people to seek freedom.

In secret, Douglass would teach himself to read and write and once said, “Knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.” Douglass taught himself how to spell from Webster’s spelling books and began to read and write with inspiration from posters on cellar and barn doors. In his later years, he went on to write three bestselling biographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an enslaved American (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).

The lesson is this: When it’s time to evolve and change, choose the hard path of self-development for long-term growth and success. Whether it’s getting an executive coach when you’re feeling stuck, honing your fundraising skills, or implementing a new DEI program that stakeholders are skeptical about, do the hard thing that you know will pay off later.

Related: The 3 C’s That Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Can Teach Us Today To Advance Workplace Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Do and say what’s right — even if no one’s listening

Douglass was known worldwide as a vocal abolitionist. He spent two years in Ireland and Great Britain, delivering lectures on the need to eliminate slavery in the United States. Sympathetic Europeans donated money to buy his freedom from the Auld family. When he returned to the U.S. in 1847, he started the first abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, where he advocated the abolition of slavery in writing.

Here’s the lesson: Say and do what you know is right. In business, we often follow our competitors, copy what they do, iterate on it, and try to outdo them. But some of the best entrepreneurs I know chart their own paths, often swimming upstream, innovating along the way, and doing something that no one has ever done. In challenging times, these may feel like risky moves to make. But, these entrepreneurs focus on their vision for the future and do what they think is right, even if others aren’t bought in.

Related: From Faith to Politics: How to Navigate Difficult Conversations in the Workplace

If you’re feeling alone, build coalitions

When you’re stuck in a challenging situation — whether fighting to keep your business afloat or navigating an uncertain market — you can weather the storm by building coalitions and partnerships with those around you. Frederick Douglass did exactly that but with the women’s suffrage movement.

In 1848, Douglass was the only Black person in the room as he attended the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention in New York. When others couldn’t see the connection between women’s suffrage and abolition, Douglass spoke firmly in favor of a woman’s right to vote and equated the rights of Black men with the plight of women to vote. He often said that the world would be a better place if women had the right and power to participate in politics. For this era, this kind of partnership was revolutionary. Douglass wouldn’t be alive to see the 19th Amendment passed, but his allyship and advocacy for civil rights and liberty for all will never be forgotten.

The lesson is this: Build partnerships. No one in business can survive alone. If you haven’t built as many partnerships, alliances, and relationships as you’d like, now’s the time. Douglass understood that by leaning on a community of people who shared similar values and goals, he could elevate his cause and create collective growth. When times get hard in business, it’s the strength of your partnerships that will see you through.

Related: It’s Black History Month. Here’s How to Show Black Employees You Care.

Final thoughts

Sometimes, it’s helpful to look back in order to move forward. Looking to leaders like Frederick Douglass is not only an inspirational choice but a smart one. He was a man who struggled to navigate life in the era of slavery and rose to the occasion to teach himself how to read, write, speak, and eventually become a vocal advocate for freedom and liberation. You can’t help but feel that Douglass would be someone you’d reach out to in need of advice if he were still alive. He’s one of many figures in Black history who can provide us with a guiding light in times of uncertainty and turmoil and can be a model for moving through challenges with fortitude, confidence, and hope.

Entrepreneurs — take note: 39% of your current skills will be obsolete within 5 years, but this AI revolution is your biggest opportunity yet.

In this video, I’ll reveal how Phase 3 AI, specifically the rise of AI agents, is driving this massive shift and why mastering new skills is no longer optional; it’s critical. I’ll share insights from the Future of Jobs Report, highlighting the six key skills you need to thrive in an AI-driven world and how embracing analytical thinking, resilience, flexibility, creative thinking, motivation and self-awareness will be crucial. You’ll also learn how my new book, “The Wolf is at the Door,” predicted this skills revolution and why entrepreneurs are rushing to get their hands on it to prepare for 2025 and beyond.

This isn’t just about surviving the AI revolution; it’s about thriving in it. Discover how to leverage AI agents to your advantage, creating new opportunities and transforming your business.

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.”

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.”

Related: ‘Not a Cost Play’: Amazon CEO Clarifies Why Employees Have to Come Back to the Office

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.”

Related: I Tried Buying a Car on Amazon. Here Are the Pros and Cons.

Real estate entrepreneur and long-time “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran says she’s hired thousands of people during her career—including hiring (and firing) her own mother.

Now the 75-year-old investor and mentor is sharing her advice when it comes to what to look for when hiring. And if you think you need a strong resume to work with Corcoran, you’d be mistaken.

Related: This Is the Most Important Part of Starting a Business, According to Daymond John, an Entrepreneur Worth $350 Million

“I’ve hired thousands of people over the years and this is the No. 1 thing I’ve learned,” Corcoran says in a video posted to Instagram. “Always hire attitude over experience.”

“You have someone with the right attitude, you can teach them anything!” Corcoran continues. “Forget about the resume.”

“Think about their attitude and their willingness to learn,” she adds. “That’s what I’ve learned.”

Commenters mostly agreed with Corcoran’s thoughts, with one writing: “The best advice!!!! Agree 1000%; makes work and team environment so good too!”

Related: Barbara Corcoran Only Flies Coach. Here’s Why.

Others said they were applying her advice to their company’s hiring processes.

“Cheers to this. I just interviewed some people and this is what I pay close attention to!” a user added.

Though not everyone said it works in their field.

“I feel like it’s been the opposite recently within the design world,” one user wrote—before asking if Corcoran was hiring.

Related: Barbara Corcoran Says This Is the One Question to Ask Before Selling Your Home