Want To Get Ahead In Business? These Must-Reads Have The Scoop.

Business is booming. Across small businesses and big businesses, Washington state and the Puget Sound are doing well. So much so that recent research comparing 28 key indicators of economic performance across all 50 US states and the District of Columbia placed Washington state in first place for economic strength and stability.

But ask any business owner or manager and they’ll tell you that behind every boom is work. Lots and lots of work. Not to mention trial and error, failures, and situations they wish they could redo. There’s no yellow brick road for plotting out business success, but two Seattle newsletters, Underwire and The Bent, are helping lay the concrete and street signs needed to at least get the semblance of a road going, tackling both ends of the business leader spectrum.

For women founders blazing their own trail and starting up companies, there’s Underwire. A weekly newsletter sent every Monday, Underwire cheekily asserts that it will help readers “lift and separate” their way into controlling their business destiny. Its founder, Britt Stromberg, was frustrated by regularly seeing women take second stage to men across professional arenas and vowed to be part of the solution.

Stromberg explains, “I was horrified and sad about the election of Donald Trump. A grossly unqualified, and frankly gross individual beat one of the most well-prepared, qualified candidates we have ever had, who happened to be a woman.” She then points to Geekwire, a local publication focused on start-ups, similarly underrepresenting women. “Reading GeekWire every day, my anger started to build about their gender representation. It’s getting better but their very limited features that included women were fluff pieces or they would focus on firings or closings. Locally and nationally I saw women getting the short end of the stick time and time again. I vowed to use my skill set and talents to make the world a better place for my daughter.”

From this frustration, Underwire was born to support female business founders and leaders focused on building organizations that support both their professional ambitions and their lifestyles. According to Stromberg, “I want women to believe that they can raise money if they want to, but not not feel afraid or guilty for bushwhacking an alternative path.”

With this goal in mind, Underwire curates business founder profiles, resources and updates on funding, mergers and acquisitions, empowering women business owners to lay their own business path and also assuring them that they are not alone in their journeys. Stromberg notes that any Underwire businesswoman profile, “...needs to show a level of vulnerability because that helps us to feel less lonely on this crazy ass journey. It’s always the personal stuff—family, illness, failure, insecurities—that resonates best with readers. It’s reassuring to know that we all experience those same situations.”

As serious as Underwire’s mission and content are, the newsletter makes a point of covering these topics in clever, funny ways. Stromberg points out that, “Reading Underwire is like sitting on a barstool next to a trio of female CEOs. It will be equal parts loud, bawdy, insightful, funny and maybe a little angry at times. If men want to understand how we really talk and think about business issues, they should read Underwire.”

But not everyone is looking to start their own business, at least not yet. For newer of managers trying to figure out how to get work done while managing a team for the first time, there’s The Bent. A weekly newsletter sent every Tuesday, The Bent is written by Andy Anderegg and Emma Thesenvitz, former co-workers determined to guide new and aspiring managers through the complex and often lonely challenges of leading teams.

“There's so little infrastructure built around first-time managers," Thesenvitz explains. "When there is leadership development at an organizational level, it's almost always dedicated to C-level officers and proven managers rising through the ranks. New bosses fly and flail pretty much under the radar. We wanted to create the resource we both wish we’d had on tap: easy to turn to, fun and funny, smart, someone who 'gets it' because they'd been there before.”

The Bent covers details every new manager has to tackle, but has little to no experience doing firsthand. This includes how-tos on hard topics like coaching underperformers and driving much-needed business results. But the writers also surface seemingly little and sometimes hyper-personal tasks—delegating, writing and replying to angry emails, supporting team members going through major life events—that can make or break a team’s loyalty, confidence and cohesion.

While targeted to new managers, Anderegg points out that The Bent is really, “aimed at anyone who needs to communicate to be successful. Whether you're an artist, a freelancer, a volunteer, a community organizer, a person who has an email account—we're all trying to work with other people to get the job done. All the skills we discuss in The Bent will help you do it better, with less anxiety and more confidence."

With its fun, conversational style and comfortable banter between the writing duo, The Bent leaves nothing off the table, acknowledging what any professional knows but doesn’t always say: no problem dealt with at work stays at work. As Thesenvitz puts it, “In our experience, becoming a better boss—just getting better at your job in general—impacts everything: your problem solving, your confidence, how you communicate. And that stuff affects your relationships outside of work." Anderegg agrees: "The Bent is a huge community of people who are becoming confident and great at their jobs—and in five years they'll all be there to support the new managers trying to figure it out.”

To subscribe to Underwire, vist: https://www.underwire.works/

To subscribe to The Bent, visit: https://thebent.co/