If you're a recent grad who's been job searching for months—or a parent watching your graduate collect rejection emails—this message is for you. Maybe you're over 50 and getting passed over yourself. Maybe it's your kid who can't land that first role despite a stellar GPA. Or maybe (and this is the brutal reality for some families) it's both. You've sent out dozens, maybe hundreds, of applications. You've tweaked resumes. You've applied to jobs you're overqualified for and jobs that are...
5 months ago • 2 min read
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. What would you have me do for you? What problem would you want me to solve for you? How could I help...
5 months ago • 1 min read
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. What would you have me do for you? What problem would you want me to solve for you? How could I help...
5 months ago • 1 min read
They're not ghosting you. They just don't see you. A 50-year-old exec posted this on Reddit after months of job searching: “154 resumes sent. 48 rejections. Nothing from the rest.” If you’ve felt that silence, you know how brutal it is. But here’s the truth most career advice won’t tell you: 👉 It’s not your age. It’s your positioning. You’re fishing with 2015 bait in 2025 waters. And that’s why you’re invisible. The good news? Visibility isn’t luck. It’s a skill. And you can fix it. Here are...
7 months ago • 1 min read
They're not ghosting you. They just don't see you. A 50-year-old exec posted this on Reddit after months of job searching: “154 resumes sent. 48 rejections. Nothing from the rest.” If you’ve felt that silence, you know how brutal it is. But here’s the truth most career advice won’t tell you: 👉 It’s not your age. It’s your positioning. You’re fishing with 2015 bait in 2025 waters. And that’s why you’re invisible. The good news? Visibility isn’t luck. It’s a skill. And you can fix it. Here are...
7 months ago • 1 min read
I've done a terrible job of getting to know you... After more than a year of sending this newsletter (admittedly, sometimes sporadically), I realize I know almost nothing about who's reading it or what you actually need. That's on me. So I took a course from Jason Resnick, who helps service providers build better client relationships through strategic email sequences. Jason's approach is refreshingly direct: Stop guessing what people want and start asking them. New subscribers will get a...
9 months ago • 4 min read
“Is my room still available?” That’s the text a client’s mom got this past spring. Her son—brilliant kid, stellar GPA from a top university—has been job hunting for six months. Zero offers. Soul-crushing rejections. Or dead silence. But here’s the twist that made this story stick with me: Mom was dealing with the exact same problem. At 54, freshly “restructured” out of her VP role, she was getting the “overqualified” brush-off from every company she approached. Two generations. Same family....
10 months ago • 6 min read
What's your biggest challenge with defining or consistently communicating your personal or company brand? All you need to do is hit Reply and start typing. If you know someone struggling with this topic, please consider forwarding it to them. As thanks for responding (or just opening up this email and considering it), here's a link to a Proofreading Tips document I created a while back. I welcome your comments or suggestions for future issues. Drop me a note here. If you found this on...
about 1 year ago • 1 min read
Is your "brand garbage" piling up? Statistics show most people land on home pages to get their questions answered, not to be inspired. That's a great reason to review your website and digital profiles in a disciplined manner to dump the brand garbage and be helpful. "Brand garbage" refers to the accumulation of outdated, inconsistent, and irrelevant content across your digital presence. I'm not talking about visual brand identity issues – this is about content that's past its expiration date....
about 1 year ago • 3 min read