Update 5/24/26: Check your AmEx Offers section for an upgrade offer to change the Blue Cash Everyday to Blue Cash Preferred and get $150 after spending $1,000 within 6 months, plus waived $95 annual fee for the first year. That one is highly targeted. There’s a more broadly available offer for $75 after spending $1,000 within 6 months and without the waived annual fee. (ht Celia)
Update 3/25/23: Some are seeing the better offer in-app (I’m not sure where to check to find it, perhaps in the Amex Offer section). Also interesting: some people are seeing upgrade offers for other cards at the same link, such as the Amex Everyday > Everyday Preferred. Open the below link, login and click on each card to see the available upgrade offers. (ht San_K) Some people are also reporting higher upgrade offers of $300.
The Offer
Direct Link to offer (YMMV, login to see if it works for you)
American Express Blue Cash Everyday cardholders can upgrade to the Blue Cash Preferred and get their $95 annual fee waived for the first year.
They’ll also get a $150 statement credit after spending $1,000 within the first 6 months.
Others are seeing just $75 statement credit. And some are not getting the annual fee waiver.
Our Verdict
The offer link works for me only partially – it’s showing the $75 bonus, but not the $95 fee waiver. Personally, I’d go for an offer for $150 or $75 with a waived annual fee.
Oil dropped as the US and Iran edged toward a deal, although President Donald Trump said that Washington’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz would remain until an agreement was completed.
Global crude benchmark Brent fell as much as 5.2% to $98.12 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate was near $92. Trump said in social-media posts he wouldn’t “rush” into a deal, which “isn’t even fully negotiated yet.” Any final approval may take several days, according to senior US officials.
Still, it remains unclear how key differences, including the fate of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, will be addressed. Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the draft agreement could still collapse because the US was obstructing some key clauses, including a demand that its assets be unfrozen.
Global energy markets have been upended by the crisis, which began in February when the US and Israel attacked Iran. The conflict spread rapidly across the Persian Gulf region, forcing producers to shut in millions of barrels of daily crude supplies. Hormuz — which links the region to global markets — has been subject to a double blockade by both Tehran and Washington.
A full reopening of the waterway — which in peacetime typically handled around a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies — would be a relief for energy importers across Asia, including China, Japan, and South Korea.
“A lot of oil was trading on worst case assumptions for weeks,” said Haris Khurshid, chief investment officer at Chicago-based Karobaar Capital LP. “But once it became clear talks were still alive and escalation wasn’t accelerating, a chunk of that fear premium comes out pretty fast.”
Trump has been facing growing domestic political pressure to end the conflict, particularly ahead of the November midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. The war has boosted the cost of fuels, with average US gasoline prices hitting the highest since 2022 this month.
Kevin Hassett, Trump’s chief economic adviser at the White House, told Fox News on Sunday he expects energy prices to drop once there’s a deal, which could then create space for the Federal Reserve to cut rates. “We expect energy prices, as soon as there’s a deal, to plummet,” Hassett said.
Trading in oil may be lower than usual on Monday, with some traders away from their desks for public holidays in the US and the UK.
“This is the biggest risk I see in the future of AI: capture of information by a small number of companies through proprietary systems.”
For states, this is a national security concern. For investment managers and corporates, it is a dependency risk. If research and decision-support workflows are mediated by a narrow set of proprietary platforms, trust, resilience, data confidentiality, and bargaining power weaken over time.
LeCun identified “federated learning” as a partial mitigant. In such systems, centralized models avoid needing to see underlying data for training, relying instead on exchanged model parameters.
In principle, this allows a resulting model to perform “…as if it had been trained on the entire set of data…without the data ever leaving (your domain).”
This is not a lightweight solution, however. Federated learning requires a new type of setup with trusted orchestration between parties and central models, as well as secure cloud infrastructure at national or regional scale. It reduces data-sovereignty risk, but does not remove the need for sovereign cloud capacity, reliable energy supply, or sustained capital investment.
Hilton Honors “More Nights, More Points” Promotion
Hilton Honors has launched a new global promotion for summer 2026 called “More Nights, More Points”. Registered members can earn up to 4,000 Bonus Points per stay on eligible stays completed between June 1 and August 15, 2026. Let’s go over the details.
Offer Details
Register for the “More Nights, More Points” promotion
Stay between June 1 and August 15, 2026
Earn:
2,000 Bonus Points on stays of 1 to 3 nights
4,000 Bonus Points on stays of 4 nights or longer
No limit on the total Bonus Points you can earn
Valid at participating hotels and resorts within the Hilton portfolio worldwide
Hilton Honors members must register before completing an eligible stay during the promotion period. Stays that begin before June 1 can still qualify as long as checkout occurs on or after June 1 and by August 15, 2026.
Bonus Points are earned in addition to regular Hilton Honors points, elite bonuses, and Hilton credit card rewards. Bonus points do not count toward elite status qualification.
Important Terms
Registration is required
Promotion valid for stays completed June 1 through August 15, 2026
A “stay” is defined as consecutive nights at the same hotel, even if you check out and back in
Offer is not valid for groups
It may take six to eight weeks from completion of your stay for Bonus Points to appear in your account.
Guru’s Wrap-up
This is a fairly standard Hilton promotion, but at least it’s simple and easy to maximize. The sweet spot is clearly stays of four nights or longer, where you’ll earn the full 4,000 Bonus Points.
That said, Hilton points continue to lose value as award pricing keeps increasing at many properties. So while free bonus points are always nice, these promos are not nearly as exciting as they used to be. Still, if you already have Hilton stays planned this summer, there’s no reason not to register and earn some extra points.
If you’re looking to earn more Hilton points, check out these new credit card offers that are available through NLL links.
Canadian retail sales continued to rise last month after a solid first quarter, but skyrocketing gasoline prices appear to be increasingly eating into household budgets.
An estimated 55% of Americans don’t feel prepared for retirement. That may be one of the reasons so many older individuals have chosen to remain in the workforce. Whether they work for someone else or run their own business, staying on the job longer has its perks.
For most Americans, full retirement age (FRA) is around 67, and that’s the point at which you’ve earned full Social Security benefits. As long as you still have the physical, mental, and emotional stamina to stay on the job, here are some of the advantages of working beyond your FRA.
Image source: Getty Images.
No earnings limit
The earliest you can claim Social Security benefits is age 62. While it works out for many people, it’s important to remember that making a claim that early permanently reduces your monthly benefits by 30%.
In addition, if you continue to work between 62 and FRA, there’s a limit on how much you can earn before the Social Security Administration (SSA) begins withholding part of your Social Security checks. While you’ll get that money back once you reach FRA, not having access to it when it’s earned can be a hassle.
Continuing to work once you’ve reached FRA means you can earn as much as you’d like without anything being withheld from your checks.
Additional benefits
Consider just a few of the benefits associated with working past FRA:
You have extra income to help offset inflation’s impact on your budget.
Whether you work for a company that offers an employer-sponsored retirement plan or you’re self-employed and have a solo 401(k), remaining on the job gives you more time to build your retirement account.
There’s increasing evidence that working past FRA can help you maintain better health and even live longer. A 2016 study found that working even one year beyond retirement age is associated with a 9% to 11% lower risk of dying during the 18-year study.
Time to reconsider
Let’s say you’re 67 and claim Social Security. As you continue to work, you realize that you could get by without your Social Security benefits. As long as it’s been less than 12 months since you became eligible to claim them, you can request that the SSA suspend your benefits until a later time.
While you’ll have to pay back the money you’ve received up to that point, it may be worth it for you. That’s because once your benefits stop, you start earning delayed retirement credits. When benefits automatically restart at age 70 (or earlier, if you decide to restart them), you’ll find yourself with a monthly Social Security check that’s higher than the one you received at age 67. In fact, if you wait until age 70, your benefits will be roughly 24% higher.
Not everyone wants to work past FRA, but if remaining in the workforce sounds good to you, it’s nice to recognize the ways it can be beneficial.
Scaling too fast kills companies. So does scaling too slow. But most business owners never stop to ask whether they have actually earned the right to scale at all. In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, John Jantsch sits down with Mark Roberge, co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, founding CRO of HubSpot, and author of The Science of Scaling, to unpack one of the most misunderstood decisions in business growth.
Mark helped take HubSpot from zero to IPO, then spent years at Harvard Business School teaching founders why so many fast-growing companies implode. His framework asks a different question: instead of “how fast can we grow,” ask “have we proven we deserve to grow?” The answer requires evidence, not instinct, and not pressure from investors.
This episode is for small business owners, agency owners, and entrepreneurs who are thinking about adding headcount, launching new channels, or entering a new stage of growth. If you want to scale without destroying what you built, this conversation is your roadmap.
Guest Bio
Mark Roberge is the co-founder of Stage 2 Capital and the founding Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, where he grew the company from zero to IPO. He later joined Harvard Business School as a senior lecturer, teaching founders and operators how to scale with discipline. He is the author of The Sales Acceleration Formula and The Science of Scaling, and has spent the past decade as an investor, board member, and advisor helping companies navigate the gap between early traction and sustainable growth.
Key Takeaways
Product-market fit is not a revenue number. It is a retention metric. If customers are not staying and using your product, you do not have it yet, regardless of how many you have signed.
Go-to-market fit is the second gate before scaling. It is measured by unit economics, specifically whether you can acquire and serve customers profitably.
Scaling revenue too fast is a structural problem, not a motivation problem. Hiring 27 reps when you only have one requires 270 qualified interview screens, management infrastructure, and demand generation that most companies simply do not have.
Build a monthly hiring pace instead of a January 2nd headcount dump. Steady, intentional growth gives you time to build the systems that support each new hire.
The CRM funnel should not end at closed-won. Retention, engagement, and expansion are stages, not afterthoughts. The Marketing Hourglass is the right model.
Leading indicators of retention can be defined simply. Slack tracked whether 80% of customers sent 2,000 team messages per month. You do not need a data science team to build a version of this for your business.
A feature is not a moat. If a competitor can replicate your advantage in six months, it is not long-term defensibility. Founders need a vision for what makes them unbeatable over time.
The ability to up-level the executive team around you as the company grows is one of the strongest predictors of a successful exit. It is also one of the hardest skills to develop.
Sometimes the business outgrows the founder. The COO or president model is not failure. It is graduation. The reframe: someone else does the work you hate so you can focus on the work you love.
AI is accelerating faster than society can adapt. Mark is donating book proceeds to McLean Hospital for mental health research, because the people building this technology have a responsibility to help manage its consequences.
Great Moments (Timestamps)
[00:02] — The opening question that reframes every growth decision: are you betting on a business that is not prepared to win?
[04:04] — Mark defines what it actually means to earn the right to scale, and why most founders get this wrong from the start
[06:25] — The two-step framework: product-market fit and go-to-market fit explained clearly
[09:51] — Half scale too fast, half too slow. Mark explains the Groupon and WeWork examples as two failure modes
[11:40] — How to measure product-market fit without a data science team, using Slack and HubSpot as real examples
[13:29] — John and Mark align on why retention and advocacy belong inside the customer journey, not outside it
[16:31] — Why a feature is not a moat, and what long-term defensibility actually requires
[17:43] — The London School of Economics study on what predicts a strong startup exit (the answer will surprise most founders)
[20:33] — The mental health connection: Mark shares why he is donating proceeds to McLean Hospital and what the AI era demands of technologists
Memorable Quotes
“The decision on when to scale is usually when someone hands you a fat check, which doesn’t sound that strategic.” — Mark Roberge
“Do not let the dashboards and sales funnels in your CRM end at closed-won. That is literally step four of seven.” — Mark Roberge
“A feature is not long-term defensibility. If your competitor can build it in six months, you don’t have a moat.” — Mark Roberge
“We’re basically offering to pay for someone to do all the work you hate so you can do the work you love.” — Mark Roberge on helping founders let go
“We as technicians need to diversify our efforts away from just building and profiting toward helping society adapt to this new world.” — Mark Roberge
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![[Targeted] Upgrade To American Express Blue Cash Preferred, Get $150 Bonus + Waived Annual Fee](https://globalinvestmentstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2023-03-24-at-11.43.57-AM-1024x337-768x253.png "[Targeted] Upgrade To American Express Blue Cash Preferred, Get $150 Bonus + Waived Annual Fee")
