How To Cut Through Corporate Nonsense | Whitney Wolfe Herd’s $1.6 Bumble Fortune | Some Small Business Superstars | And More

Plus: how to juggle two big career passions

I’ve got small businesses on the brain this week. I mean, I’ve had small businesses on the brain most weeks since the pandemic began—like so many, I've worried about the survival of everything from my beloved neighborhood coffee shop to the privately-owned dance studios around the country—but this week they’re getting a special focus, thanks to the release of the first batch of the Next 1000, the Forbes list of small scale super-achievers.

As the first 250 entrepreneurs illustrate, this list is not about wealth or whopping venture investments; it’s about bootstrapping and commitment and hard work. It’s about the businesses fueling the American economy—businesses that, as list editor Maneet Ahuja writes here, “are mostly funded from savings, credit cards, and loans from family or friends, with approximately $80,000 in startup capital for men and $54,000 for women.”

You can check out the full list here, and you can find my roundup of some of the standout women of the list here. Among those women are a former investment banker, a philanthropist, and a Dreamer; their stories are as diverse as they are inspiring, and I hope you enjoy reading about them as much as we did writing about them. 

Cheers to the small businesses!
Maggie

P.S.: Tied to Presidents’ Day—a day which, by definition, has never celebrated a woman—this week’s Over 50 spotlight with Morning Joe and Know Your Value looks at some of the women who’ve run for president after the age of 50, including former senator Carol Moseley Braun who in 2003 famously said, “It is time to take the ‘Men Only’ sign off the White House door!”

ICYMI: Stories From The Week

Remember when the Tokyo Olympics head, Yoshiro Mori, sexistly huffed that women talk too much at meetings? He's out of a job now, and taking his place is Seiko Hashimoto, a former Olympic medalist and Japanese cabinet minister in charge of the Olympics and gender equality.

Los Angeles-based wine company Bev, which was founded by 30-year-old Alix Peabody, signed a deal with E.J. Gallo, the largest-family-owned winery in America, that will help get its canned wine an expanded presence on the shelves of Target, Albertsons, Total Wine and more starting next month.

Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was appointed Monday as the director general of the World Trade Organization, becoming the first woman and the first African national to lead the global trade body.

Daytime talk show host Jeannie Mai, born to a Vietnamese mother and a Chinese father, is speaking out against the recent violent and racist attacks against Asian Americans in her native San Francisco Bay Area. “We have to work together to dismantle a system that suppresses us all,” she recently told Forbes.

In August, Dawn Davis was appointed as editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit. The announcement came after a tumultuous summer of racial reckoning for the brand, and Davis—whose first issue as editor about to hit newsstands—has a new recipe for success at BA.

Gimme more: last week, we told you about Britney Spears’ $60 million estate. This week, we’re diving into why it is that her fortune is less than that of her pop peers, including Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Lopez, and Taylor Swift. 

Check List

#1: Offer a virtual handshake. The pandemic has changed the ways we make introductions and start meetings, but that doesn’t mean you can’t set the tone through your computer screen by leaning in or away from the camera to convey a sense of casualness or seriousness.

#2: Get your team emotionally engaged. Emotion drives attention (as we all know from the moments we’ve ruminated over a thing that stresses, angers, or even enamors us), so to get your team more focused and committed, foster an emotional connection to the task or project at hand.

#3: Notice the friction. Bureaucratic red tape and corporate nonsense can seep into any organization, but you can bring common sense and efficiency back if you start by pinpointing a point of friction (say, people getting too many emails) and an easy fix (eliminating the “cc” button).

Across Forbes