Sound like yourself. Get heard where it matters. Frictionless is a twice-monthly newsletter for leaders who get judged by what they write: founders, executives, and anyone whose words get read by boards, investors, reporters, and prospects. Each issue gives you practical ways to clear the Brand Garbage from your writing so you sound like yourself and get heard in the rooms that decide careers, deals, and reputations. I'm an executive ghostwriter and award-winning business journalist who spent decades in boardrooms and newsrooms helping leaders say what they mean. You'll get templates and scripts you can use today, stories I usually save for private clients, and a few curated reads worth your time.
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I'm shamelessly stealing from Chris Orzechowski for this quick post (with a tip of the hat to Josh Spector for sharing this idea). I'll have a meatier post on conducting a quick review of your website and/or LinkedIn profile in the next few days, but I'd love to get feedback from each of you today. Imagine you could hire me to help you with your individual or corporate brand messaging for $0.
I'm trying to do some market research here and create some terrific YouTube videos or Playbooks/Workbooks like the ones you can find here on my website. Among the things you can download (no email required) are Proofreading Tips, 10 Ways to Stop Being Overlooked, a Case Study Builder Worksheet, and a workbook for Communication Project Postmortems. Just hit Reply and answer one or more of these questions if you've got a few minutes. And if you're in a hurry to address some of these issues, let's talk. THE BEST THING I READ THIS WEEKEthan Mollick writes what he calls "An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now" and updates it every few months. The newest version is well worth the time if you're struggling to figure out which AI to use in the last few months of 2025, given all the updates and new releases we're seeing. I welcome your comments or suggestions for future issues. Drop me a note here. If you found this on LinkedIn or had it forwarded to you, you can subscribe by clicking the button below.
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Peter Osborne
Sound like yourself. Get heard where it matters. Frictionless is a twice-monthly newsletter for leaders who get judged by what they write: founders, executives, and anyone whose words get read by boards, investors, reporters, and prospects. Each issue gives you practical ways to clear the Brand Garbage from your writing so you sound like yourself and get heard in the rooms that decide careers, deals, and reputations. I'm an executive ghostwriter and award-winning business journalist who spent decades in boardrooms and newsrooms helping leaders say what they mean. You'll get templates and scripts you can use today, stories I usually save for private clients, and a few curated reads worth your time.
STARTING LINE LinkedIn told me that a quick "newsjacking" post about amusement park ticket prices had reached more people than anything I have written in 40 years. Then I scrolled down and found out what it was worth. On the day Dolly Parton died, Hersheypark replied to a stranger's post praising Dollywood for keeping ticket prices low. The reply was about Hersheypark's own pricing. Wrong conversation, wrong afternoon, and the internet noticed within an hour. This is not rare. Neutrogena did...
STARTING LINE One of our credit letters opened with “Dear Valued Customer.” The news in the second paragraph was that we were cutting her credit line. Nobody at MBNA wrote that letter to be cruel. Somebody wrote it years earlier, ran it past Legal, dropped it into the system, and moved on. Then the company built a brand promise on top of it and never revisited it. One of our “computer-generated” letters ended up in front of our CEO after one of his close friends called to complain. It’s an...
THE LINE THAT MOVED MY STORY TO PAGE 1 March 2022. I was a business reporter at the local daily, and the head of HR at DuPont handed me a front-page story in one sentence. We were talking about an upcoming downsizing. He was calm and matter-of-fact, walking me through the business logic the way you would with a trade reporter who covers this company every day. Then he said it: “DuPont can no longer afford to be paternalistic.” I had my lead. What was shaping up as a business page item ran the...