Business

Beyoncé just reached billionaire status, and her advice for success starts with saying ‘no’ more

Published

6 hours ago

December 30, 2025

Beyoncé’s new status as a billionaire is the ultimate endorsement of an idea she came to later in her career: stop overworking and start working smarter. Her evolution from 24/7 grind to boundary-setting strategist tracks directly to what workers and executives are discovering about burnout and sustainable success in today’s economy.

From grind to billionaire

In late 2025, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter joined Forbes‘ billionaire ranks, becoming one of only a handful of musicians—alongside Jay-Z, Rihanna, Bruce Springsteen, and Taylor Swift—to cross the 10-figure threshold. Her wealth is built on stacked revenue streams: blockbuster tours like Renaissance and Cowboy Carter, high-margin merchandise, an owned catalog valued in the hundreds of millions, and Parkwood Entertainment, which lets her keep control of the products she creates.

That portfolio is the compound interest on two decades of disciplined reinvention—from Destiny’s Child to solo superstardom to entrepreneur—each chapter designed less around being everywhere and more around owning what matters most.

Her pivot: working smarter, not harder

Beyoncé has been candid that the early years of her career were defined by saying yes to almost everything: nonstop tours, red carpets, awards shows, and press that eventually led to insomnia, exhaustion, and deteriorating mental health. She has since told GQ in an interview that she draws a hard line: if a project doesn’t obsess her when she wakes up and follow her into her dreams at night, she passes—even if it is lucrative.

That philosophy extends to her calendar. She structures touring around her children’s school breaks and disappears from public events between major projects so she can recover, create, and be present at home. The result is fewer appearances, but each is bigger, more meticulously produced, and more profitable—culminating in tours grossing hundreds of millions and films that extend the earning life of each era.

What leaders can learn about burnout

Beyoncé’s shift mirrors a broader reckoning. In 2024, roughly 82% of knowledge workers surveyed across North America, Asia, and Europe reported at least some level of burnout, even as 88% also described themselves as highly engaged. That “burned out but locked in” paradox—employees simultaneously exhausted and deeply invested—creates a dangerous incentive to push hardest on the people already at their limit.

For HR leaders, the warning is clear: relying on a small cadre of “work horses” risks a toxic cycle where top performers quietly hit a wall and leave as soon as the job market improves. Beyoncé’s own playbook offers a lesson for business leaders: define the culture you actually want, clarify strategy, and invest in what you’re already good at instead of layering on more work for the same people.

The year of “no”

If the early Beyoncé era was about never saying no, today’s workforce is moving the other way. Roughly 65% of employees now feel empowered to decline additional responsibilities, with workers 25 and under the most likely to say no to extra tasks. That resistance is not laziness; survey respondents describe it as a survival strategy against chronic burnout, even as many still feel guilt when they set boundaries.

The most effective employers, research suggests, are those that normalize these boundaries by redesigning roles and workloads rather than glorifying the martyr who always says yes. Beyoncé’s refusal to trade her time for every opportunity—even when demand is virtually unlimited—is a high-profile version of the same move.

A billionaire blueprint for sustainable ambition

Taken together, Beyoncé’s trajectory and recent workplace data point to a new blueprint for high achievement:

Own the leverage, not the hours. Beyoncé’s billionaire status flows from asset ownership—catalog, company, creative IP—rather than simply stacking more tour dates or endorsements. Workers and executives alike gain the most when they move away from performative busyness toward roles and projects where their unique skills compound over time.

Make boundaries a performance strategy. Her choice to tour around her family’s schedule and to vanish between eras is not a luxury; it is why each launch lands as an event, not just another release. Fortune’s reporting shows that companies that build similar space—by empowering employees to say no, rebalancing workloads, and focusing on results rather than constant availability—are better positioned to retain engaged, high-performing talent in a tight labor market.

Redefine what “hard work” looks like. Beyoncé has said she has already “worked harder than anyone” she knows—now the challenge is to work smarter. For ambitious professionals, that means trading the visible grind of late nights and endless emails for the less visible work of prioritization, creative focus, and long-term bets that, like hers, can eventually be measured not in hours logged, but in enduring value created.

For this story, Fortune journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.

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Business

‘Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts’: Kennedy family mourns yet another tragic death

Published

15 minutes ago

December 30, 2025

Jace Porter

Environmental journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, one of three grandchildren of the late President John F. Kennedy, has died after she was diagnosed with leukemia last year. She was 35.

Schlossberg, daughter of Kennedy’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and Edwin Schlossberg, revealed she had terminal cancer in a November 2025 essay in The New Yorker. A family statement disclosing her death was posted on social media Tuesday by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation.

“Our beautiful Tatiana passed away this morning. She will always be in our hearts,” the statement said. It did not disclose a cause of death or say where she had died.

Schlossberg told of being diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in May 2024 at 34. While in the hospital for the birth of her second child, her doctor noticed her white blood cell count was high. It turned out to be acute myeloid leukemia with a rare mutation, mostly seen in older people.

In the essay, “A Battle With My Blood,” Schlossberg recounted going through rounds of chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants and participating in clinical trials. During the most recent trial, she wrote, her doctor told her “he could keep me alive for a year, maybe.”

Schlossberg also criticized policies pushed by her mother’s cousin, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in the essay, saying policies he backed could hurt cancer patients like her. Her mother had urged senators to reject his confirmation.

“As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers,” the essay reads.

Schlossberg had worked as a reporter covering climate change and the environment for The New York Times’ Science section. Her 2019 book “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have” won the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award in 2020.

Schlossberg wrote in The New Yorker essay that she feared her daughter and son wouldn’t remember her. She felt cheated and sad that she wouldn’t get to keep living “the wonderful life” she had with her husband, George Moran.

While her parents and two siblings tried to hide their pain from her, she said she felt it every day. Her siblings, Rose and Jack Schlossberg, are JFK’s other grandchildren.

“For my whole life, I have tried to be good, to be a good student and a good sister and a good daughter, and to protect my mother and never make her upset or angry,” she said. “Now I have added a new tragedy to her life, to our family’s life, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

Schlossberg’s mother Caroline was 5 years old when her father, President Kennedy, was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. She was 10 when her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1968 while he was running for president.

Caroline’s brother, John F. Kennedy Jr., died in 1999 when the single-engine plane he was piloting plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, also died in the crash.

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Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Brumfield from Cockeysville, Maryland.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Business

Meta claims ‘no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI’ after reported $2 billion deal to shore up in AI agent race

Published

46 minutes ago

December 30, 2025

Jace Porter

Meta is buying artificial intelligence startup Manus, as the owner of Facebook and Instagram continues an aggressive push to amp up AI offerings across its platforms.

The California tech giant declined to disclose financial details of the acquisition. But The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta closed the deal at more than $2 billion.

Manus, a Singapore-based platform with some Chinese roots, launched its first “general-purpose” AI agent earlier this year. The platform offers paid subscriptions for customers to use this technology for research, coding and other tasks.

“Manus is already serving the daily needs of millions of users and businesses worldwide,” Meta said in a Monday announcement, adding that it plans to scale this service — as Manus will “deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including in Meta AI.”

Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, added that joining Meta will allow the platform to “build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made.” Manus confirmed that it would continue to sell and operate subscriptions through its own app and website.

The platform has grown rapidly over the past year. Earlier this month, Manus announced that it had crossed the $100 million mark in annual recurring revenue, just eight months after launching.

Some of Manus’ initial financial backers reportedly included China’s Tencent Holdings, ZhenFund and HSG. And the company that first launched the platform — Butterfly Effect, which also operates under the name monica.im, which was founded in China before moving to Singapore.

A Meta spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that there would be “no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI” following its transaction, and that the platform would also discontinue its services and operations in China. Manus reiterated that it would continue to operate in Singapore, where most of its employees are based.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been pushing to revive its commercial AI efforts as the company faces tough competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. In June, the company made a $14.3 billion investment in AI data company Scale and recruited its CEO Alexandr Wang to help lead a team developing “superintelligence” at the tech giant.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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Business

‘I opened her door and the wind caught me, and I went flying’: The U.S. Arctic air surge is sweeping northerners off their feet

Published

1 hour ago

December 30, 2025

Jace Porter

A surge of Arctic air brought strong winds, heavy snow and frigid temperatures to the Great Lakes and Northeast on Tuesday, a day after a bomb cyclone barreling across the Midwest left tens of thousands of customers without power.

Blustery winds were expected to add to the chill, with low temperatures dipping below freezing as far south as the Florida panhandle, the National Weather Service said.

The wild storm hit parts of the Plains and Great Lakes this week with sharply colder air, strong winds and a mix of snow, ice and rain, leading to treacherous travel. Forecasters said it intensified quickly enough to meet the criteria of a bomb cyclone, a system that strengthens rapidly as pressure drops.

Kristen Schultz, who was heading home to Alaska, said it took her four hours to get to the Minneapolis airport on Tuesday.

“Just give yourself plenty of extra time and that way, even if things go smoothly, you don’t have to be stressed out,” she said, “and you’re ready in case things don’t go so smoothly.”

Nationwide, more than 115,000 customers were without power Tuesday morning, around a third of them in Michigan, according to Poweroutage.us.

As the storm moves into Canada, the frigid air trailing behind it will spread across much of the eastern two-thirds of the country, the National Weather Service said, powering the lake-effect “snow machine” in areas downwind of the Great Lakes.

Some areas in western and upstate New York saw a foot or more of snow Monday and their totals could reach up to 3 feet (91 centimeters) this week, forecasters said. Strong winds on Monday, including an 81 mph (130 kph) gust in Buffalo, New York, knocked down trees and wires across the region, the weather service said.

“At this point, the worst does seem to be over, and we are expecting conditions to improve especially by later today,” said Andrew Orrison, a weather service meteorologist.

Videos on social media show people struggling to walk in the windy conditions and a waterway in downtown Buffalo clogged with tree branches and other debris stemming from a windblown surge from Lake Erie.

Just south of Buffalo in Lackawanna, Diane Miller was caught on video being blown off the front steps of her daughter’s house and landing in some bushes. She wasn’t seriously hurt.

“I opened her door and the wind caught me, and I went flying,” Miller told WKBW-TV.

Whiteout conditions were still possible in some areas, forecasters said, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned people in impacted areas to avoid unnecessary travel.

The fierce winds on Lake Erie had sent water surging toward the basin’s eastern end near Buffalo while lowering water on the western side in Michigan to expose normally submerged lakebed — even the wreck of a car and a snowmobile.

Kevin Aldrich, 33, a maintenance worker from Monroe, Michigan, said he has never seen the lake recede so much and was surprised Monday to spot remnants of piers dating back to the 1830s. He posted photos on social media of wooden pilings sticking up several feet from the muck.

“Where those are at would typically be probably 12 feet deep,” or 3.6 meters, he said. “We can usually drive our boat over them.”

Dangerous wind chills across parts of North Dakota and Minnesota plunged as low as minus 30 F (minus 34 C) on Monday. And in northeast West Virginia, rare nearly hurricane-force winds were recorded on a mountain near Dolly Sods, according to the National Weather Service.

On the West Coast, strong Santa Ana winds with isolated gusts topping 70 mph (112 kph) brought down trees in parts of Southern California where recent storms had saturated the soil. Downed powerlines forced the shutdown of a freeway north of Los Angeles for several hours on Monday. Wind advisories had expired by evening, but blustery conditions were expected through Saturday, along with thunderstorms.

Rain on New Year’s Day could potentially soak the Rose Parade in Pasadena for the first time in about two decades.

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Associated Press writers Julie Walker in New York; Leah Willingham in Concord, New Hampshire; Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia; and Susan Haigh in Norwich, Connecticut, contributed.

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