GameStop Corp. is forging ahead with efforts to reduce its physical footprint in the first weeks of 2026.
The video game retailer is closing stores in numerous states this month, according to local media reports, and emails and store signage shared by customers on social media, part of its ongoing effort to reduce costs and adapt to changes in shopping habits.
The closures are not completely unexpected. In its third-quarter earnings report on December 9, GameStop said it had already closed 590 stores in the United States during the previous fiscal year as part of a “store portfolio optimization review.”
In a December filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the retailer reiterated its plan to shutter a “significant number of additional stores” during its 2025 fiscal year. GameStop’s fiscal year ends on January 31, 2026.
GameStop reported net income of $77 million on revenue of $821 million for the third quarter, but the latter figure was below a consensus estimate cited by Reuters.
The retailer’s shares have sagged since their heyday at the center of the 2021 meme stock frenzy, when retail traders bought shares en masse, causing losses for short sellers who had bet against the stock. Over the last 12 months, GameStop’s stock (NYSE: GME) has declined roughly 36%.
Which GameStop stores are closing in 2026?
The retailer has not provided a list of stores that are expected to close and did not respond to Fast Company‘s requests for additional details. We’ll update this story as we learn more.
GameStop customers have been sharing emailsostensibly from individual locationsand signage on some stores that indicates imminent closures. The communications have included various closure dates throughout this week and next.
Local media outlets have also reported on individual store closings, in locations ranging from Topsham, Maine; to Ann Arbor, Michigan; to Topeka, Kansas, and beyond.
At the beginning of last year, GameStop reported 2,325 stores in the United States.
This story is developing . . .
Popular cryptocurrency XRP had a lackluster 2025, starting the year at around $2.32 per token while finishing at around the $1.84 mark.
But in the past 24 hours, the price of XRP has jumped more than 11% to $2.37 per coina price not seen since the early part of November.
So whats driving the rise? Here are the two strongest factors.
Spot ETF inflows are rising
XRP is the native token of the XRP Ledger from Ripple Labs.
Like some other well-known cryptocurrencies, XRP tokens are available to purchase directly or through exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Traditional retail investors tend to prefer to invest in the token through ETFs for convenience and tax advantages.
And recently, the money being put into spot XRP ETFs is rising. (Spot means that the ETF holds the asset directly.)
As noted by CoinDesk, spot XRP ETF inflows reached $48 million on Monday alone. An inflow refers to additional money being put into an ETF. This money comes from investors, and the ETF fund managers then use it to buy more of the asset.
Increasing spot ETF inflows suggest that investors have a growing appetite for the assetin this case, XRP.
Mondays inflow volume, combined with the inflows of spot XRP ETFs over the past two months, means total inflows have now exceeded $1 billion during that timeframe, indicating that investors are bullish on the crypto.
Exchange availability is dropping
At the same time that spot XRP inflows are rising, the availability of XRP on traditional cryptocurrency exchanges, where crypto investors can buy and sell the coin directly, is falling.
CoinDesk says XRP availability on crypto exchanges has dropped to multi-year lows. What this means is fewer crypto investors are moving their money to exchanges, where a coin must be if it is to be sold, and instead keeping XRP in their personal wallets.
Investors typically hold an asset when they believe its value will increase, or there will be more demand for the asset in the future.
And by keeping XRP in their wallets and off exchanges, there are fewer tokens available to buy, which increases demand. When demand increases, prices of an asset tend to rise.
Cryptocurrencies are seeing a broader rebound this week
XRPs spot ETF inflow growth and reduced exchange availability likely arent the only two factors behind the tokens 11% surge these past 24 hours.
The first week of 2026 has seen a crypto rally of sorts since the year began, with many major tokens, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, up over the past five days.
During that time, Bitcoin has risen nearly 6%, and Ethereum is up nearly 8%. XRP is up nearly 26% during the same timeframe, its growth likely helped by broader crypto market optimism.
This comes after many tokens struggled to gain ground in December.
Yet despite XRPs recent growth, the coin is still down about 2% over the past 12 months. It is also down significantly from its all-time high of over $3.65 last July.
With 2026 just beginning, it remains to be seen whether the new year will bring a repeat of 2025s calendar-year lackluster performance or if XRP will continue moving toward its previous all-time highs.
A new year, a new quantum computing breakthrough: D-Wave, one of the quantum industrys rising stars, announced an industry-first breakthrough on Tuesday as it works to make quantum computing commercially viable.
The company says it has demonstrated scalable, on-chip cryogenic control for gate-model qubits, claiming it is the first in the industry to do so, and that the breakthrough helps overcome a long-standing obstacle to building commercially viable and scalable gate-model quantum computers.
The issue, as Trevor Lanting, D-Waves chief development officer, tells Fast Company, is that adding qubits to a quantum system requires additional resources, such as control lines. That involves more space, material, and an overall increase in complexity for the entire system. But D-Wave has found a way to reduce that complexity, opening the door for scalability.
You can think of it as a chip in your phone or laptop, Lanting says. The CPU has transistors in it, and there are billions in a modern CPU or logic chip, but only a small number of connections that go from the motherboard and get the information on and off the chip. You dont have individual wires going to each transistor; you need to multiplex that control.
That, in a corollary to classical computing, is what D-Wave is claiming to have demonstrated. Again, this means that additional quantum computing power can be controlled with fewer resources, or scalable control, as Lanting puts it.
For D-Wave, its the latest major announcement among several over the past year, as the company continues to push the envelope in the burgeoning quantum computing field. Last March, the company claimed to have achieved quantum supremacy after it was able to successfully simulate the properties of magnetic materials using its Advantage2 annealing quantum computer. In October, it struck a $12 million deal to bring its computers to Europe.
All of that has sent D-Waves stock to the moon. Over the past year, shares have increased by more than 200%. Two years ago, shares were trading for less than $1; as of January 5, they were trading at nearly $31.
Lanting, who has been with the company for nearly two decades, says its been a long time coming. Weve been intensively investing in this technology for a decade, and now weve been able to harness it for a gate-model program. This was the step we needed to get the control technology working, he says, adding, Were very excited. This really is a differentiating technology for D-Wave. [And] our customers are excited because they get to work on cutting-edge hardware.”
Organizations are increasingly turning to “Culture Coaches” to address workplace challenges that traditional management approaches can’t solve. These specialized professionals bring outside perspective and emotional intelligence strategies to help teams build stronger communication patterns, employee engagement, and alignment. In this article, experts share insights on how culture coaching is reshaping the way companies approach employee growth, leadership development, and organizational success.
Leaders Shape the Operating System of Business
Companies are hiring Culture Coaches because many leaders are finally recognizing that culture is not a perk and not a mood. It is the operating system of the business. Most cultural breakdowns start in leadership behaviors: how decisions are made, how conflict is handled, how communication lands, and how trust is built or eroded in daily interactions. A Culture Coach gives leaders the mirror, structure, and practice to strengthen those patterns so teams can collaborate with clarity instead of confusion. When leaders shift their habits, the culture follows.
The impact is tangible. Engagement rises when employees feel seen, heard, and supported. Alignment improves because leaders stop sending mixed signals. Collaboration improves because teams feel safer challenging ideas and offering better ones. And performance improves because clarity reduces rework and friction across the system. Companies with coaching-supported cultures consistently see stronger engagement, stronger retention, and better performance outcomes.
A concrete example from my own experience: At a high-growth company I worked with, the leadership team was deeply capable but stretched thin. Decisions were made reactively, communication was inconsistent, and the team began losing trust in one another. A Culture Coach helped the executives slow their reaction cycle, name the patterns, rebuild communication agreements, and establish clear decision ownership. Within months, the shift was visible. Meetings became more honest, tension eased, and teams had clearer direction. Leaders modeled steadiness instead of urgency, and that stability cascaded into the organization. Culture did not shift because of a program. It shifted because the leaders did.
Culture Coaches do not fix culture. They strengthen the leaders who shape it every day. And when leaders have more awareness, more clarity, and more skill, the culture becomes a competitive advantage instead of a liability.
Lena McDearmid, Founder, Wryver
Culture Lives in Daily Feelings at Work
I am seeing more companies look for Culture Coaches because they are finally admitting something important. Culture does not live in a policy manual. It lives in how people feel day to day at work.
I often step into an informal Culture Coach role for my clients. I sit with senior leaders and ask very direct questions. How does it really feel to work here? Who is thriving and who is quietly checking out? Where are your values visible, and where are they only marketing language? Those conversations are where the real culture work begins.
A Culture Coach makes it safer to name what is not working. My role is to translate what I hear from employees into language leaders can act on. Sometimes that means rethinking how feedback is given. Sometimes it means changing who is in the room when decisions are made. Often it is about slowing down long enough to listen before launching the next big initiative.
Inside my company, my team holds me accountable in the same way. We are a lean, mostly remote group, so I invite honest feedback on how our workload, communication style, and tools actually feel in practice. If something feels heavy, confusing, or unfair, I want to know. That input shapes how we set expectations, run meetings, and protect rest.
The impact of a Culture Coach is not just a nicer atmosphere. It is clearer decisions, fewer unspoken tensions, and a workplace where people feel safe enough to tell the truth. When that happens, engagement and performance follow, but they grow from a real foundation, not from a slogan.
Alysha M. Campbell, Founder and CEO, CultureShift HR
Emotional Intelligence Builds Thriving Workplace Cultures
Right now, company culture is one of the most critical prerequisites for multiple younger generations. They are no longer willing to work in a hostile environment controlled by micromanagers. Companies are losing their top talent due to leaders with low emotional intelligence.
My work has involved working with companies for over two decades, teaching emotional intelligence and building thriving cultures. In the last year alone, there has been a sharp increase in the desire and need for outside expert support.
Creating a thriving culture is not a quick fix; it requires courageous and dedicated leaders willing to address their own shortcomings.
In one such company that hired me, turnover was constant! They were losing enormous resources with this one challenge alone; yet, the backbiting and lack of safety made it miserable even for employees who stayed. Now, employees love coming to work and remain loyal, even during tough economic times.
During the process, leaders were incredulous at first, until results began to show. Workplace gossip plummeted; employees worked through their own conflicts; leaders’ transparency increased; employee drama decreased; and a foundation of trust and open communication rose dramatically. Leaders went from disbelief to “hmmm” to “wow,” then relaxed into “ahhh.”
Nothing beats a workplace where people love coming to work!
Jennifer Williams, Executive Coach & EQ Leadership Trainer, Heartmanity
Adaptive Leadership Shifts Patterns Through Behavioral Experiments
Companies are turning to Culture Coaches because they’re finally recognizing what many of us in adaptive leadership have known for years: you can’t delegate your way out of a culture problem. Culture is the lived patterns of behavior a system rewards, tolerates, or ignores. And those patterns don’t shift because a CEO announces a new initiative; they shift because someone is helping people see their system clearly, experiment with new behaviors, and stay in the discomfort long enough for real change to take root.
A clear example stands out for me. An international institution brought us in to conduct listening sessions and map a plan to reengage critical staff and signal a more collaborative and accountable culture following a change in leadership and direction. Traditional consulting had handed them a tidy road map, which did not adequately incorporate staff input, nor did it account for the loss and frustration they had experienced. With groups of key staff, we facilitated a gap analysis of where the organization was and where they wanted to be. Small groups, each working on one theme, then identified behaviors to bridge that gap and plotted the impact of each idea as a function of their difficulty to implement. Six months later, staff reported feeling heard, retention stabilized, and the system could better focus on their core mission.
That’s the tangible impact: a culture where people are not managed into compliance, but coached into capability.
Kirsti Samuels, Founder, Women Igniting Leadership Lab
Coaches Provide Safe Space for Employee Growth
Companies that hire Culture Coaches are finding that their employees are increasingly happier, less overwhelmed, have tools to navigate growth and performance better, and create strategies to be more visible and relevant. This equates to better retention, work, and outcomes for overall company goals.
Seldom in our adult lives do we have a space to talk openly about our fears, imposter syndrome, and what’s holding us back, and doing it with key relationships in the office can be terrifying because of optics and the stakes feel too high.
Employees who have this type of coaching opportunity are supported in positive regard, free of bias, find strategies to overcome these fears, and champion more productive conversations with leadership or their direct reports while quietly and powerfully making a positive shift in culture through each and every conversation.
If every employee is on autopilot on a never-ending hamster wheel working, there is no pause for reflection, to find ways to navigate friction, or the pieces of the work experience that don’t feel right. Being able to work with a coach can help address these in the most positive ways and keep an employee from being disconnected, resentful, or lost. It also might keep them from leaving and help them be more productive!
As a coach that works for a Fortune 100 tech company, I’ve supported my clients in finding strategies to:
Onboard more successfully by working on tools for mastering their line of business and building key relationships, so they more quickly become comfortable in their role as well as valued team players.
Have conversations with leadership that are more productive and drive visibility and relevance for the employee.
Ask for what they want. Everyone in the workplace is human, never mind leaders, and finding the language and the ask that feels best has elicited the best outcomes. One of my clients finally asked for a promotion, and his manager’s response was, “I had no idea you wanted more.” They are now working on what’s next collaboratively.
Be more authentic with their team and leaders, leading to less overwhelm even though the amount of work didn’t change.
There are dozens more examples, but all these moments have made my clients more hopeful, confident, and excited about their roles. Many have gone from, “I want to leave this place,” to, “I found tools to address my needs and I like it here; I want to stay.”
The benefits are endless, and an amazing tool for organizations to harness.
Shannon Bloom, Leadership & Transformation Career Coach & Founder, PCC, Radiant Firefly
Outside Perspective Reveals Gaps Leaders Miss Daily
Companies are turning to Culture Coaches because they’re finally realizing that culture isn’t a poster on the wall or a gorgeous websiteit’s the day-to-day habits, decisions, and communication patterns that shape how people feel at work. Most leaders weren’t trained to spot culture issues early or to talk about them honestly, or they are so busy with the day-to-day that they are unable to diagnose culture cracks. Having someone who can name the gaps, coach leaders through them, and build simple systems for consistency makes a noticeable difference. A Culture Coach brings outside perspective without the baggage of internal politics, which helps teams move faster and with more clarity. This is especially true when an organization scales and the informal ways of working that once “just worked” start to break down.
In my own work as a fractional people leader, I’ve stepped into this role many times. In one organization I supported, the team had expanded but the culture hadn’t kept pace (though in fairness, there hadn’t been intentional thought here). Staff and mid-level leaders (especially those who had recently joined) were reporting low levels of inclusion, while senior leadershipwho were the same founders who built the organizationwere both surprised and confused. What we uncovered was that the values were still deeply held by senior leaders, but they hadn’t been translated into clear, consistent practices consistently communicated as the organization grew. Without that structure, opportunities for growth started to feel subjective and political. Together, we mapped out key priorities and a road map to define organizational competencies and pathways for growth. We also communicated this to the organization as a whole so that everyone had visibility into the findings and the new direction.
Lisa Friscia, President and Founder, Franca Consulting
Intentional Culture Supports Ambitious Startup Goals
Companies are increasingly hiring Culture Coaches for a few different reasons.
1. They have the resources and foresight to plan ahead, likely startups with funding trying to become a venture-scale business that recognize the importance of developing an intentional culture to achieve challenging goals.
I have hired Culture Coaches for this purpose at past startups I have worked at, including Patreon and Clara. At both of these companies, the founders understood the importance of an intentional and aligned company culture from the beginning. They were aiming to grow rapidly and disrupt a traditional market. To do this, you need more than a basic business model; you need a team intrinsically motivated behind your mission and work. You need the company culture (i.e., actions and behaviors or DNA) to align with your ambitious goals. A Culture Coach in this setting comes in to help you refine vision, mission, and values and integrate those things into daily systems and practices.
2. The company has received feedback via engagement scores, performance reviews, or retention data and exit interviews that the culture is causing a problem, a “toxic” culture. This may be on a specific team or within the org as a whole. For this example, I have joined as the external “culture” coach. Here, you take a similar path, learning about the company’s goals and vision, and from there, develop the behaviors needed to be successful, and then, using listening tours and 360s, observe the culture and behaviors that exist today. You prioritize adjustments based on impact and begin intentional changes with feedback loops in a design thinking model to slowly adjust the culture over time.
3. The company may be preparing for rapid growth or another big change. In this example, the company may be aware, advised, or dealing with some early indicators of rouble with the culture. Regardless of the impetus, the company will pursue a “culture” coach, also a role I have taken, to support identifying the culture that exists today and the culture that will be needed throughout and after the change. This can be very helpful in undergoing a merger, international expansion, or dramatic shift in product/service offering and market.
Chelsea Seid, CEO & Founder, Talent Praxis
Regulate Nervous Systems to Transform Workplace Behavior
Companies are bringing in Culture Coaches because they’re realizing something fundamental: you can’t create a healthier workplace by only teaching leadership skills. You have to teach leaders and teams how to be regulated humans first.
A large portion of what’s labeled as “performance issues” is actually nervous system dysregulation showing up as reactivity, tension, poor communication, and burnout. A Culture Coach helps shift the internal state that drives external behavior, and that’s where culture genuinely starts to change.
One of the clearest examples of this comes from my work with a construction company whose owner, Jac Ryan, later wrote about their experience. She shared that what immediately stood out was that my approach wasn’t the traditional top-down leadership training they were used to. Instead of piling on more skills or telling people how they should behave, we focused on helping their trainers and field teams understand their own nervous systems, how their state, presence, and energy were shaping every conversation on the job site.
As Jac put it, the work was “refreshing, insightful, and deeply human.” Once their trainers understood how to center themselves, everything shifted:
They communicated more constructively instead of reactively.
They reframed tough conversations instead of escalating them.
Their attitude set a steadier tone for the whole team.
The entire field environment became more collaborative and less chaotic.
What impressed leadership most was watching their team open up, make honest shifts, and actually want to show up differentlynot because they were told to, but because they finally understood themselves.
Jac described the shift as “noticeable and inspiring,” calling it a true top-down change that energized their entire company.
That’s ultimately why Culture Coaches are becoming essential.
They don’t just improve performancethey transform the internal capacity of a workforce. And when people feel regulated, safe, and centered, culture improves organically. Companies feel that immediately in engagement, communication, retention, and the overall human experience of work.
Karen Canham, Entrepreneur/Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Karen Ann Wellness
Clear Communication Norms Eliminate Expensive Business Obstacles
A Culture Coach is someone who comes in and translates the values, practices, and desires of a business into what happens on a day-to-day basis, then moves pieces into alignment with that vision. When we think of culture in a global sense, we think about the physical spaces, language, customs, laws, foods, slang; we think of the lifestyle. A company has a culture as well. It can go badly when the culture is not tended or respected, it has evolved but not well, or it was not established clearly at the start. When I was a classroom teacher, my first few years were rough: I did not know how to create a classroom culture so everyone felt they belonged and knew what to expect. Once I got this down to a science, students excelled, even ones who struggled in other places.
When you are part of a strong culture, it signals to your human brain that you belong there, you are part of something, and you are safe. From there, from that psychologically safe place, you are more likely to take risks, which leads to vulnerability, connection, innovation . . . these are things that eliminate expensive business obstacles, like disengagement and talent loss.
I have a client that recently scaled from a four-person team to a 10-person team. They are in the business of social support, so everyone has a big heart, but you have, for example, legacy members who hate tech, newbies without experience, misunderstood neurodivergent staff, seasoned but overwhelmed leaders . . . and no one has established lanes of function, communication norms, or respectful discourse. No one has talked about why huddles and retrospectives matter.
We started simply: list everything the company does and where everyone fits. Then we explored why overwhelm was predictable and how it shows up for different people. From there, we defined what requires permission, how communication should happen, and how to escalate something. They chose their norms and scheduled trainings on the tools (Slack, email, request forms, etc.). Everyone left with a communication chart and escalation map.
In one month, the CEO’s time opened up dramatically. He could actually lead instead of putting out fires. Duplicate efforts disappeared. People understood each other better. Communication became clearer. They estimate a 600% ROI based on time gained, fewer bottlenecks, and the overall improvement in how it feels to come to work.
That’s exactly why Culture Coaches are on the rise: when you fix the culture, everything else starts working again.
Sandra Bean, Founder + Strategist, Global Girl Boss
Mirrors Normalize Healthy Behaviors and Team Alignment
Culture Coaches exist to ensure that the workplace is a good place to be, because if it isn’t, great employees quickly exit, and for those who do stay, their engagement and performance will decline. What does a good place to work look like? It looks like a space where healthy working relationships are expected, where work-life balance is the rule, not the exception, and where individuals treat each other with kindness, whether they are in the room or not.
When I serve in the role of culture coach, I exist as the mirror. I model what it looks like to be a team player, a listener, an advocate, and a clear communicator. My role includes validating the great work that many staff are doing, and simultaneously motivating those who are not in alignment with our company culture to explore opportunities that are more aligned with their own core values.
Sometimes, employees are asked to schedule a meeting with me. In this meeting, I get to wear my coach hat, which rotates between life coaching, career coaching, and leadership coaching. Some staff are elated to have an hour dedicated to their professional success. But not everyone welcomes having the support of a coach. Some staff have the complete opposite reaction and do everything in their power to avoid spending one-on-one time with a coach. This galvanizes an organization. Staff with a growth mindset get supported and increase their performance, and those with a fixed mindset realize somewhere else would be a better fit for them.
Having the right culture coach in your organization is a huge win for your staff. They get supported, healthy behaviors get acknowledged, and a trusting, effectiveteam gets built that can crush business goals together and celebrate each other’s wins in the process.
Kate Vawter, Founder and CEO, Ascent Solutions
Gen Z Demands Purpose Beyond Competitive Salaries
It’s because leaders have finally figured out that employees need more than free coffee and monthly lunches to fix team culture. Especially with Gen Z entering the workforce, and how much they care about having a sense of purpose more than a competitive salary, you definitely need a professional who’s solely dedicated to making teams open up and work together honestly. That’s how you build trust between employees and give them a sense of belonging.
Unlike HR, Culture Coaches are a lot more hands-on, and they work with everyone, both the employees and the managers. That’s the crucial part because if your employees are making an effort but your managers are still aloof or don’t know how to tackle things like burnout, then the whole exercise is redundant.
I think they’re incredibly valuable, but even more so in tech startups, and I’ve seen how these coaches remove all sorts of blockages that get in the way of innovation. They’re really great at helping founders spot which old-school habits are killing creativity.
Mario Hupfeld, CTO and Cofounder, NEMIS Technologies
As a child growing up with his grandmother in Haiti, the artist Wyclef Jean developed an early appreciation for the idea that any worthy pursuit requires a blend of agency and preparation. On the day I spoke to him, Jean recalled a time when a missionary visited his village. At five years old, a car pulls up and a man gets out and this was like my first time seeing a white person ever. I looked at my grandma and I said, Do you know who this is? And my grandma was like, This is Jesus Christ.
Later, Jean came to understand this man was a missionary, bringing rice and beans to his village. When he’s leaving, I look at my grandma, and I’m like, Yo, how come Jesus didn’t leave us the seed?
Even at that young age, Jean knew the visit may have meant a meal for one day, but without the seeds to build a farming practice, little could change for him and his community. Ever since, Jean has been looking for opportunities to leave the seeds, not just the rice and beans, as a way to cultivate creativity.
Wyclef Jean [Photo: Felix Glasmeyer]
While hes best known as a founding member of the iconic hip hop group the Fugees, Jean has an extensive resume: Hes produced music for Shakira, Whitney Houston, and Santana; composed music for movies like Hotel Rwanda; won multiple Grammys; ran and lost a remittance business; launched a music publishing company in Africa; and even made a run for president of Haiti. Jean is boundlessly curious, and his career is a mashup of hustle and hunches. He isnt afraid to name what he doesnt know, or fumble in the process of sorting it out.
Here, he shares how he frames his relationship to music, when he feels most inspired, and the value of nerding out.
When I’m creating, I create in two spaces. Sometimes I like it super loud. I like people coming in and out while I’m vibing. Creation is like the pulse of the human. Humans don’t hear music. They just feel music. So that’s one part. The other part of me: When Ive gotta nerd out, I want complete silence. My inner me, my engineer, is asking, How can we take Shakira up? You know, what are we missing? To do that, it has to be, like complete silence. Its two parts of the madness, you know?
I wake up and I’m a coffee head. I gotta have my Bustelo. If it’s really hot, I would go for a walk; if it’s kind of cold, I go downstairs. I like the treadmill. I just put the headphones on my ears for like an hour and a half, and literally just walk. I do very light weights, just to keep my gymnastics ability going. Then I take, like, 10 or 15 minutes to surf the net on world news. Two hundred days out of the year, I’m traveling, and I’m going to all parts of the world. and I always want to know the pulse. Whats the energy? Whats the culture? After that I hit my recording studio in the back. I’m recording, writing, looking at films, you know, building my ecosystem.
I do it all at once. I could be making music, but then I have an idea for a place that I’m thinking about opening up in three years. And I’m like, what do I want that place to be like? So I could be doing the music, and then I stop. And then I start writing a little bit, put it on Chat GPT, and then get back to the music and keep on boom, boom, boom. So that’s sort of like what my days are usually like. I live in a space of creativity, day and night.
My best input for output is when I travel. I’m a local head. My greatest input is the human; and not the human through any form of technologythe human touch. Last week I was in Brazil. The first thing we do, you know, we go to the local spot, and they’re doing capoeira. Then we go to another spot, you know, there’s like four or five different local liquors theyre having, and Ive gotta taste it. We went shopping. I went to the place where Michael Jackson did They don’t really care about us. Now, I could have looked at that online, but physically being there is going to do something to my brain. I call it like cultural currency, but it’s the idea of the human. My whole connection, my juju and my magic is the human connection.
I couldn’t imagine someone not listening to music. Anyone who tells me they dont listen to music, I have to touch them to see if they have a heart.
I always tell people, Man, tell me whatever you want about America, it’s the greatest place in the world. This is the only place I know where Wyclef could come from a hut. Snoop Dogg can come from where he comes from; 50 Cent could get shot nine times in Queens. Shakira could come from Colombia, and the next thing you know, we can appear in the forefront. And in the forefront, we get these tools, and once we get the tools, we become invincible. So whether it’s music tools, economical freedom tools, or culture currency, these tools work together and what they help us do is it helps us literally inspire and deliver an entire new generation.
You get stuck because you need that pause time. You could be writing, writing, writing, writing, writing, and then all of a sudden, now you’re going into a state of forcing. So, whenever, like, I run out of it, I literally just chill. I don’t stress, I don’t be like, “Yo, whens the next bar gonna come? When’s the next idea? I feel as if it’s the universe that’s like, Just calm the fuck down. Like, chill a little bit. You have to reboot. It’s hard for people to understand that, and I’m telling you, we all have writers, block. It used to freak me out. So now if I have the block, I just chill, smoke a joint, relax, you know, play my piano, take time.
On December 1, podcaster and venture capitalist Harry Stebbings posted on LinkedIn that candidates were 200 times more likely to get into Harvard University than they were to get a job at the $6.6 billion valuation AI startup ElevenLabs. According to his statistic, out of 180,000 applicants in the first half of the year, only 0.018% were hired by the AI voice agent platform.
That figureextrapolated from a July spike in applicationsmay have been hyperbole. But it still went viral. And out of tens of thousands of applications, just 132 candidates eventually got the job at ElevenLabsindeed, much lower than Harvards 3% to 4% admission rates.
On average, were seeing more people apply every quarter, says Victoria Weller, VP of operations at ElevenLabs. I hope that the high number of applicants motivates peopleits inspiring to work somewhere thats hard to get in. Its like Harvard: once youre in, you know youre surrounded by the best people in an inspiring environment.
In-demand companies are reinforcing their recruitment to cope with a volume of applications that often runs into the six figures. For example, ElevenLabs has tripled its recruitment team this year. Coinbase, which has a 0.1% hiring rate according to the company, has added AI tools to reach more candidates, surface stronger ones earlier, and support decision making.
The crypto exchange, which has a market cap of approximately $70 billion and is in the process of expanding into a financial superapp, has been long renowned for its stringent hiring process: candidates can expect six stages over 60 daysif they make it that far. And that was before a 2025 surge and a 45% year-over-year rise in applications, totaling in the hundreds of thousands.
The size of the applicant pool doesnt determine the quality of your hiresthe rigor of your system does, says Greg Garrison, VP, talent at Coinbase. Our core process is largely the same, but the system has simply become more efficient and calibrated.
Amid greater competition for fewer roles, and applications made easier than ever thanks to LinkedIn and generative AI, vacancies can receive hundredseven thousandsof résumés within hours of going live. While this makes recruiters jobs harder, it also works in companies favor: high demand and low hiring signals prestige to the labor market; only the top 0.1% make the cut.
Beating the bots
Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University, believes companies eye-popping application numbers are largely bot-driven. I know a Stanford undergrad that wrote code to apply to every job advert on a job board, and told me his friends use it too, he says. The big issue is this actually crowds out serious applicants. If you actually are in the 1% that applies by hand you have little chance of making it through.
As a result of such intense demand, candidates can expect greater scrutinyparticularly at the earlier hiring stages.
In many cases, candidates will have to impress AI first. With a deluge of résumés in the inbox, ElevenLabs uses data-driven applicant tracking software Ashby to help sift the best candidates. We have website fields asking applicants why they want to work with us and how our mission excites them, says Weller. That means you can identify whos autofilled their details, and clicked submit versus those that took the time to answer thoughtfully.
It means quick-fire applications are unlikely to make it through to the next round: the screening call; the first round where candidates meet someone in the hiring position. So even when the acceptance rates are so tiny, ensuring to do the basics, like thoroughly answering questionswithout the help of ChatGPTcould make a difference.
Beyond assessing candidates experience, the onus is on testing cultural fit. There are certain types of questions that map to our values, says Weller. For example, we look for candidates with low egos, so we ask for feedback theyve recently receivedtheir answer can indicate their personality. It means that the bragging LinkedIn posts arent perhaps a fair reflection of what hiring managers actually want from applicants.
While ElevenLabs has up to five assessment rounds in total, Coinbase candidates face the prospect of four interviews in a single stagebookended by assessments and work trials before a potential offer is made. Experienceand persistenceseparate the top 0.1% from the top 1%. The best candidates tend to stand out, says Garrison. What separates them isnt polishits evidence. Their track record speaks louder than their résumé.
But given the glut of applications, some of the best may slip through. Others might not even be seen at all.
Publicly posting near-zero acceptance rates is a marketing tactic, says Bloom. Some companies love to flex on how hard it is to get a job with them. Its a big show-off, just as colleges love tons of applications to flex on how low their yield rate is, so do some companies.
Standing out from the crowd
Bots or not, with so many applications for the most coveted roles, its harder to get your résumé read by the right person.
Thats why networking becomes essential, says Mathew Schulz, founder of procurement newsletter Pennywurth. His own LinkedIn post comparing hiring rates at Ramp, the fintech that hit a $32 billion valuation last November, with Harvard admission rateswith just 0.23% of engineers hiredalso went viral this year.
Its becoming even more difficult to submit your résumé and move along the processa vacancy has hundreds of applicants within 24 hours of going live, ays Schulz. So having a mutual connection, reaching out to contacts, and actively following up on LinkedIn becomes more important.
With more top talent to choose from, companies can often afford to be pickier. Hiring managers are increasingly looking for candidates who are comfortable beyond their niche.
More companies are looking for builders and creators who can do new things, are entrepreneurial-minded, and are highly skilled, says Schulz. Theres a lean towards being a generalist now versus a hyper-specialist.
In practice, that can mean increasing a skillset, taking courses, and becoming adept at new tools that vacancies demand. Its like what they say: looking for a job becomes a full-time job, says Schulz.
Getting through the door might be a bigger challenge than before. But once candidates are finally opposite a hiring manager, the fundamentals remain the sameno matter how low the acceptance rates.
Good recruitment is still finding out, What drives this person? What are they good at? Are they a good fit for the company? says Weller.
That will always stay the same, regardless of what the process looks like.
Five years ago this month, Kia took what seemed at the time to be a sledgehammer to its brand in the form of an inscrutable new logo. Today, its U.S. sales have never been higher.
Kia America announced a 7% sales increase in 2025 after selling a record 852,155 units in the U.S. last year. It’s the third consecutive annual sales record for the South Korean automaker’s U.S. division, and the feat was driven by strong sales growth for vehicles like its K4 sedan and its Sportage and Telluride SUVs.
Kia’s U.S. market share has never been greater. North America CEO Sean Yoon said in a news release that the numbers indicate “the strength of the Kia brand and the competitiveness of our models.”
[Photo: Kia]
It also goes to show that the knee-jerk reaction to a rebrand is no indicator of future success.
In January 2021, Kia dropped its old logo, which spelled out its name clearly in all capital letters inside an oval badge, and replaced it with its current mark, which writes out Kia in sharply angled letters.
At first, consumers found the new logo confusing. As vehicles with the new badge began hitting the roads that year, online searches for “KN car” spiked. Some motorists seemed to mistake the futuristic-looking cross-bar-free A in the new mark as part of as a backwards N, or they assumed it was a new brand.
Even if people didn’t initially get it, Kia’s new logo at least succeeded at looking future-forward. And indeed, it was meant to represent change and innovation, the company said at the time. Kia’s rebrand came amid wider rebrand efforts across the auto industry during the late 2010s and early 2020s.
[Photo: Kia]
With the rise of electric vehicles and competitors like Tesla and Rivian increasingly crowding the market, car companies over the past several years have rebranded with flat logos suitable for digital screens or have used fonts designed to look futuristic.
“The automotive industry is experiencing a period of rapid transformation, and Kia is proactively shaping and adapting to these changes,” Kia CEO Ho Sung Song said in 2021 about the company’s rebrand.
Among the auto rebrands of the early 2020s, the backlash to Jaguar’s dramatic logo rebrand in 2024 seemed like the canary in the coal mine after the luxury British automaker introduced a sans serif wordmark. Kia’s success, however, should be a lesson.
Kia’s rebrand was dramatic, too, but its growing sales show the company has delivered for its customers. The brand ranks above average on the 2025 J.D. Power U.S. vehicle dependability study, and the company offers models for less than $25,000 at a time when that’s now the price floor for new cars. In a time of rising car costs, it’s a recipe for success.
The founder of Slack once deemed email the cockroach of the internet. He wasnt the first to lament the extreme survivability of our inbox. From text messages to social media to office messaging platforms, all sorts of communication technologies have teased the promise of killing email by connecting us to others in faster, richer ways.
And yet, more than 50 years after its invention, ye olde email is more popular than ever. Some 1 billion people spend three hours a day in emailadding up to more than a trillion hours collectively per year, according to the email app Superhuman. And theres no sign of this slowing down. More people use Gmail every single month than ever before, says Blake Barnes, head of Gmail product, who oversees the experience of more than 2.5 billion users on the worlds most popular email platform.
To some, email is an endless guilt machine: The average person receives dozens of messages each day but takes action on fewer than five, according to Yahoo. And the range of emails we receive is wild to comprehend: personal notes. Newsletters. Amazon package updates. Dinner reservations. Jira tickets. LinkedIn invites. Passwords weve sent to ourselves. Strange conspiracy theory chain letters forwarded along by a second cousin once removed.
Email has become the junk drawer for our digital lives. A catchall for intimate and automated messages, our inboxes contain too much information for most people to process. Your last 100 emails are more unique than your fingerprint, says Anant Vijay, product lead behind the encrypted-email platform Proton Mail. Even if youre using another app to do something, theres an imprint left in your email.
And therein lies the opportunity. Not only is email refusing to go away, its becoming more important than ever in our new, data-hungry world. And startups and incumbent tech companies alike are vying to control it.
A slew of email apps have launched in recent yearsincluding Notion Mail, from emerging productivity giant Notion, and the organization-minded Shortwaveeach with a different set of handy UX features for juggling your inbox. At the same time, giants like Yahoo and Google are racing to maintain their dominance. But nowhere is the value of email more evident than writing-assistance titan Grammarlys acquisition of email startup Superhuman for an undisclosed amount over the summer. (Superhuman was last valued at $825 million, in 2021, according to PitchBook.) In October, Grammarly rebranded itself as Superhuman.
Ultimately, these companies arent so much betting that email will be the future of communication but that its treasure trove of data contains all the information needed to create the personalized AI systems of tomorrow. By owning email, they plan to claim your whole life.
The ‘Overwhelming’ inbox
The promise behind most email platforms is sanity. The average person faces 400 unread emails at any given moment. And given that the subject and first few lines of any email tend to be generic, it can be hard for people to extract insights at a glance.
Its just overwhelming, says Kyle Miller, GM at Yahoo Mail, the worlds second-largest email platform, with hundreds of millions of users. Some users dont see [inbox zero] as a goal, and thats okay. What were trying to do is help them get out this clutter so then they dont miss the stuff thats important.
To help users tackle the mess, Yahoo recently started gamifying the task with a daily Inbox Challenge that gives users trophies for triaging their messages. Other email platforms are supercharging the auto-sort function. Eleven-year-old Proton, which relaunched its security-focused email app earlier this year, not only compiles your newsletters into one stack, it also displays your average open rate for each, so you can decide if its time to unsubscribe.
Notion Mail, launched in April, distinguishes itself by letting you sort email by any content criteria you can think of. For instance, you can ask Notion to label incoming job applications as Job Candidates or have your home renovation emails sorted to Home Improvements. Superhuman offers similar features, along with an auto-reply service that drafts responses tailored to recipients and in your own voice and tone. All you need to do is hit send.
Modern AI makes these advanced features possible. When Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra was fundraising 11 years ago, an investor asked him how he planned to realize the magical interactions hed teased in his investment deck. Frankly, I dont know, Vohra said at the time, though he, like many, trusted that the technologies would eventually arrive. Today, Superhuman says that its users reply to 72% more emails per hour after signing up, thanks largely to a combination of auto-sorting and auto-writing tools.
[Email has] always had all this data, but up until large language models, there was no way for the computer to access that information, says Andrew Lee, who launched the email client Shortwave in 2022 to pick up where Google left off when it folded its short-lived Inbox app (which bundled messages into categories and allowed you to snooze messages). You can go through and read [your emails], but its a huge amount. We have people with 10 million emails in the system. And now the computer can just go and read 10 million emails!
Email apps are going beyond mere sorting to use LLMs to extract data and surface insights that allow users to make faster decisions. In the case of Yahoo Mail, that means emails now have action buttons placed right below the subject line. Those actions might be copying a security code or RSVPing for a birthday party or paying a bill, so you dont even have to open the email, Miller says.
Superhuman and Shortwave, meanwhile, let you manage the deluge by querying your mail directly. You can ask the AI straightforward questions (Where is the Q1 off-site? or What time is my flight to Denver?), and these services will analyze your email for the answers, much like Perplexity will hunt for information across the internet.
Proton Mail, which encrypts email to offer a higher level of security, is the rare exception: The company sees cloud-based LLMs as an inherent security risk. But product team lead Anant Vijay believes that within a few years, high-quality AI models will be able to run on your phone or computerallowing them to analyze your emails securely.
A growing number of email users, however, seem willing to hand over their most precious data in the name of unlocking new efficiencies. To set up a new Shortwave account, for example, you first have to copy over your inbox for analysis on the companys servers. Shortwave, which has enterprise plans for teams of 50 or more, explains the security risk to prospective clients.
I have calls with people at investment firms and Fortune 500 companies. I see the concern on their faces. And then theyre like, Nah, but I want it! says Lee. Theres a lot of pressure in these companies for security, but theres even more pressure to figure out a [corporate] AI strategy.
Agentic for email
While some of these email services can be used for free, all of them reserve their best features for people willing to pay for a subscriptionup to $40 per month for a Superhuman business account. But those initial dollars arent the endgame. Modern email apps are positioning themselves at the top of the funnel to pull you inand offer agentic services that go well beyond managing your correspondence.
Yahoos first salvo will be connecting your inbox more directly to your calendar. The company is working on a product that could take information out of your email and offer it back to you as a listand then pin the items to suggested dates on your calendar. Yahoo plans to further build this out, so its AI agent will eventually handle many of these to-dos for you.
Google is thinking along similar lines. In the future, you can imagine a world where [your] calendar understands you deeply, says Google VP Barnes. It knows when youre eating dinner with your family. It knows when its best to meet a new prospective client, when youre most fresh.
Vohra from Superhuman envisions a future where an AI agent is ccd on emails, allowing it to take over tasks, like scheduling a meeting. Our two AI agents can find time and book meetings for us despite neither of us actually having access to each others calendar, he says.
Indeed, AI is rapidly breaking email out of its inbox. Shortwave recently launched a spin-off platform, called Tasklet, that lets users program background agents that connect their email and calendar to more than 3,000 services via APIs. For heavy email users, these agents hold a lot of promise. Real estate agents could use plain language to program a daily search of new homes for a prospective client. Meanwhile, product developers could use agents to track updates from disparate apps and correlate them into a dashboard that tracks bug reports and patches.
As for Gmail, Barnes says that not only will it get the power of the AI Overviews weve seen in Google Search, but Google Search will get the knowledge of your email to personalize its results: What if Gemini could help you plan a vacation with all of the context Gmail has? Imagine that experience. We know what kind of places you like to go to. We know the budget you usually spend. We know how many people youre traveling with. Eventually, this could evolve into more than a shopping assistant. Its like having your own personal chief of staff, he says.
In a world ruled by AI, most tech strategists believe well no longer be managing our lives by juggling individual apps or even platforms like Slack or Teams. All of this information and communication could sit largely out of sight, most of the time, while an AI with the most intimate and complete portrait of your life helps to make decisions on your behalf.
Thats as exciting for a big data player like Google as it is for a newer startup like Superhumanbecause the first challenge is being adept at wrestling that treasured email junk drawer into shape. We actually feel really great about this, says Vohra. Primarily, because we have a massive head start.
Michael Jordan is widely recognized as one of the best basketball players to ever live. In a recent interview, Jordan revealed one of the secrets to his success:
His love of the game.
Jordan says he loved the game so much that he made sure to have a special clause included in his contract when playing with the Chicago Bulls, one which hes positive players today dont have: the love of the game clause.
If I was driving with you down the street, and I see a basketball game on the side of the road, I can go play in that basketball game, Jordan told NBCs Mike Tirico. And if I get hurt, my contract is still guaranteed.
Jordan went on to explain that constant practice, not just doing drills but playing real games, helped him and other NBA players like Larry Bird master their craft. It was playing in games that helped players develop their love of basketball, and helped them remain passionate about the game, rather than just viewing it as a job.
I love the game so much. I would never let someone take the opportunity for me to play the game away from me, Jordan said.
Jordans love of the game clause teaches us an important secret to finding career success, namely: To truly become the best at what you do, you have to love it.
This secret is related to emotional intelligence, the ability to understand and manage emotions to reach a goal. How can you leverage emotional intelligence to master what you do? Lets explore. (If you enjoy this article, consider signing up for my free emotional intelligence course.)
Leveraging your “love of the game”
To clarify, Jordan wasnt speaking about becoming the best basketball player ever.
Although countless fans and analysts alike have pegged Jordan as the GOAT (greatest of all time), Jordan typically steers away from that conversation, saying that title disrespects the basketball legends whove come before him, and the players who play today.
Rather, Jordan was primarily interested in reaching his full potentialand his love of the game fueled that drive. Basketball was that type of love for me, Jordan said. I had to find a way to make sure I was the best basketball player I could be.
Jordans success led to his becoming the wealthiest professional athlete in history. Most of his earnings didnt come from his playing contracts, though. Rather, they resulted in multiple business ventures and branding deals, most notably the Jordan brand with Nike.
But Jordan says that for him, the brand never affected what he was going to do on the basketball court. I put the work first, and then the brand evolved based on the work, Jordan said. We would play this game for free. We did. And now we just happen to get paid for it.
So, how can you apply this to your own work?
There are several reasons business owners run the businesses they do. You may have taken over a family business. Maybe you dabbled in the world of self-employment and discovered you enjoyed the freedom it offered. Other entrepreneurs become so out of necessity: Mark Cuban started his first business after getting fired.
But regardless of how you got into the business you now run, the secret to mastering your craft is to develop a love for what you do.
Ask yourself:
What aspects of my work do I really love? The things Id do for free?
How can I practice those things as much as possible?
How can I further leverage that love to master my craft?
As you answer those questions, and as you put in the work, youll find yourself constantly improving, continually growing, and consistently becoming a better (work) version of yourself. Because if theres one thing that Michael Jordan taught us, its that natural ability, talent, and skill will get you far, but love is what makes you the best.
Justin Bariso
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
McDonalds limited-time McRib sandwich is a cultural icon. And like any item of its ilk, its divisive. On the one hand, the saucy, vaguely rib-esque boneless pork sandwich has a fan base so dedicated that its inspired its own Reddit megathread, merch, and a website called the McRib Locator.
But on the other, the McRib has long been critiqued for its off-putting form factor and dubious ingredients. Now, a new class action lawsuit is asking the question thats always plagued the sandwich: Is the McRib actually rib?
The lawsuit, which was filed on December 23, 2025, in the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that McDonalds has purposefully been misleading customers with the name and shape of the McRib. The four plaintiffs who jointly filed the suit claim that the sandwich is advertised to resemble a rack of pork ribs, which McDonalds does despite knowing that the sandwich in fact does not contain any meaningful quantity of actual pork rib meatindeed, none at all.
Ultimately, this lawsuit is all about marketingand how we define deceptive marketing practices. Does a rib-shaped seasoned boneless pork patty, as McDonalds describes it, a rib make? Or is the McRib a mere imitation of a true rib sandwich, masquerading as the real thing to allow McDonalds to jack up its prices?
While most Americans probably have their own knee-jerk reaction to these questions, the official answer will be left up to the court. For now, here are the facts.
[Images: United States Department of Justice]
“The name McRib is a deliberate sleight of hand
The crux of the new lawsuit rests on proving whether the McRib can definitionally be called riband, as it turns out, thats easier said than done.
According to the filing, McDonalds has cultivated a scarcity mindset around the McRib by only releasing it for a brief time each year since its 1981 debut, using annual anticipation to drive sales. Its authors suggest that the term rib refers to a more premium cut of meatgenerating an expectation of quality that allows McDonalds to price the sandwich at up to $7.89 in some regions, making it among the most expensive single-item options on the menu.
Further, they argue, McDonalds purposefully misleads customers by calling the sandwich a McRib and shaping it to resemble a rack of pork ribs. This mislabeling rests at the core of their claim that the McRibs status as a fleeting hero of McDonalds menus nationwide rests on an inherently deceptive premise.
The name McRib is a deliberate sleight of hand, the suit reads. By including the word Rib in the name of the sandwich, McDonalds knowingly markets the sandwich in a way that deceives reasonable consumers, who reasonably (but mistakenly) believe that a product named the McRib will include at least some meaningful quantity of actual pork rib meat, which commands a premium price on the market. Instead, it adds, theyre actually eating a “reconstructed meat product.
Yikes.
[Source Images: United States Department of Justice]
To rib, or not to rib?
To understand the difference between a pork rib and a reconstructed meat product, the filing dives into its definition of actual pork rib meat. It says pork rib meat refers either to spare ribs, a cut at the bottom of the rib cage, or baby back ribs, located at the top of the rib cage. Both cuts, it explains, are consistently priced higher than lower-quality cuts like loin or butt.
Compare that definition to the McRibs contents, and things get a little dicey. Per the filing, the McRibs meat patty is constructed using ground-up portions of lower-grade pork products, such as pork shoulder, heart, tripe, and scalded stomach.
In an email to Fast Company, McDonald’s wrote that the lawsuit “distorts the facts” with “meritless claims,” adding, “Our fan-favorite McRib sandwich is made with 100% pork sourced from farmers and suppliers across the U.S.there are no hearts, tripe or scalded stomach used in the McRib patty as falsely alleged in this lawsuit. Weve always been transparent about our ingredients so guests can make the right choice for them.
Already, an army of McRib fans are rising to defend the sandwichs honor on Reddit. Do people have nothing better to do or have no shame? one commenter wrote. Who really really thought the McRib was meat from ribs?
Another added, Dumb. . . . Imagine all the there was a bone in my McRib post if it was actually ribs.
Whether you believed McDonalds nebulous meat slab was made of real ribs or not, t remains to be seen whether this case will impact the McRibs future. Regardless, its a good day to be a vegetarian.
