How to Thrive When the Internet Breaks: Surviving the AWS Outage Without Losing Your Chill
Practical, Calm Strategies for Business Owners to Handle Outages, Soothe Customers, and Get Proactive—Even When Their Software Goes Dark
Anyone else feel like they’re living in “The Internet Hunger Games” lately? This week, AWS (yep, Amazon Web Services—the cloud backbone for half the internet!) decided to take an unexpected vacation, leaving businesses and apps from coast-to-coast in digital darkness.
Emails bounced, websites froze, and backend automations took a nap for half the day. If you tried connecting with clients, running your launch, or just saving a file in Kajabi—well, you know the pain.
What Happened with AWS This Week
AWS, the behemoth cloud platform powering countless sites and services, experienced a massive outage that started at midnight on October 20th and major issues weren’t resolved until 7 PM ET that day. If your business relied on sending emails, payments, or backend workflows—chances are, at least part of your day felt like a tech ghost town.
Even the Click Tease crew almost had a podcast lockdown: “There’s a pretty good chance if we had tried to film this episode on Monday, we would’ve been blocked from being able to use our software because it wouldn’t be functional.”
How Should Business Owners Respond When the Internet Goes Out?
Let’s break down the most powerful moves when tech fails:
1. Don’t Panic!
When the internet goes dark or a tech disaster happens, some business owners panic. They get mad and expend lots of energy complaining or yelling at their tech service providers.
Instead, take a beat—breathe!
The entire nation is probably wrestling with the same chaos. Freaking out helps no one, especially you.
2. Skip the Victim Card
Business owners have choices. They can get into a tizzy… get into that victim mentality, or they can be the CEO of their business. Step up. Fix the problem, respond, and maybe actually gain bigger fans in the process.
Don’t waste time feeling doomed—focus on what you can control, like communication and clean-up.
3. Handle Customer Service Quickly—and With Heart
If customer orders or experiences get tangled, here’s your playbook:
Acknowledge their feelings and validate them
Let them know you will remedy the situation as quickly as possible
Go above and beyond—comp something, give them a special perk
Responding like that will dim the fire and decrease the rage response. Be genuine, never defensive. Fix issues and communicate—especially personally if it’s just a handful of people. Your fans will love you more if you solve problems like a pro.
4. Get Offline and Do What You Can
When the internet is just broken... maybe you take a walk that day because the internet just is broken.
Use this forced break as a window to update your order logs, brainstorm, work on your next product, or just take care of yourself. It might just be the universe telling you to pause and reset, rather than spiral.
5. Communicate Fully—Update Customers Fast
If an outage impacts orders, don’t be afraid to send your customers a personal email, or pick up the phone. Apologize for the delay and tell them when they can expect their order.
If it’s more widespread, email everybody. But, don’t mass-send apologies without specifics—address their actual concern, make it easy to reach you, and keep it transparent.
Next time AWS (or Meta or Cloudflare) throws a curveball, keep your cool, stay out of victim mode, handle your customer service with care, and treat dead time as an opportunity (even if it’s just for a walk or a fresh notebook brainstorm).
The strongest brands are built during the rough patches and outages where leaders show up and make people believe in the business—rain or shine, online or off.
Ready to turn business hiccups into hero moments? Subscribe to keep getting our irreverent, real-world market updates—and keep your brand thriving, one outage (and mushroom immunity bevvy!) at a time.
💋Stay Clicky,
Joanna & Michelle