Tim Denning's Recent LinkedIn Posts

Natural talent is the biggest scam in self-improvement. The people you think are gifted just failed more times than you've even tried. My first 100 essays were garbage. I'm not being humble. They were objectively terrible. Weak ideas. Clunky sentences. Zero engagement. I'd spend hours writing something I thought was brilliant, hit publish, and watch it disappear into the void. Nobody read them. Nobody shared them. Nobody cared. I kept going anyway. ━━━━━ I've been writing online every day for almost 12 years now. Over 7,000 essays published. Millions of readers. A business that lets me work 4 hours a day and be there for my daughter's random Tuesday afternoons. None of that existed at essay number 100. Or 500. Or probably even 1,000. What existed was a guy who had no idea what he was doing, making the same mistakes over and over again, slowly getting slightly less terrible with each attempt. That's the part nobody wants to hear. We love the story of natural talent. The prodigy who was born to do this. The overnight success who just had "it" from the beginning. Those stories are mostly fiction. Or they leave out the thousands of hours of invisible work that happened before anyone was paying attention. ━━━━━ I've coached thousands of business owners now. The pattern I see is always the same. People quit after attempt 10 because they're not good yet. They compare their beginning to someone else's middle. They assume the gap between where they are and where they want to be is evidence that they're not cut out for this. It's not evidence of anything except that they haven't done it enough times. The people who succeed aren't smarter at the start. They're just willing to be bad for longer. They're willing to publish the terrible essay, make the awkward sales call, launch the product that flops. They understand that competence is built through volume, not inspiration. ━━━━━ I look back at my early writing and cringe. The ideas were shallow. The hooks were weak. I used words I thought sounded smart instead of words that actually communicated. But each bad essay taught me something the previous one didn't. Each failure narrowed the gap between what I was trying to say and what actually landed on the page. 10,000 attempts later, people call me talented. They don't see the 7,000 essays that came before. They just see the ones that work now. Talent is just failure that refused to quit. Stop waiting until you're ready. Start being bad at something on purpose. The version of you that's good at this is waiting on the other side of a few thousand attempts. P.S. What's something you got dramatically better at just through repetition? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

It took me 10 years in corporate to realize this and I'll tell you in 30 seconds (from someone who walked away): 1. If you stay in the 9-5 world too long, you end up being immature about how the world works. • You can't think for yourself.  • You're blind to bigger opportunities.  • You think you need a strategy. • You over-communicate.  • You sugarcoat your words.  • You can't be direct or assertive. 2. Loyalty to a company that would replace you in 2 weeks is insanity. They're incentivized to NOT give a f*ck about you. That's capitalism. Yet people treat a job like a safe income stream. 3. Build a side project • Creates joy • Uses your creativity • Gives you a Plan B • Builds new skills Yet employees don't. They think it'll get them fired, although they don't see an issue with driving Uber on the weekends. 4. You'll never get rich off a salary. Climbing the corporate ladder makes you think you will. Even if you reach CEO-level you'll have no free time, which is worse than bankruptcy. To get wealth + free time you must work for yourself 5. True freedom is not being told what to do by a micro-managing boss. You've gotta experience it to understand it. 6. An employer pays you the least amount possible so they can profit from your skills. Your skills are always worth more outside of a job. Sell them online and see for yourself. 7. Don't piss your pants about non-competes. They're just there to scare you. A judge is highly unlikely to say: "You worked at a bank and now you're barred from working for another one for 5 years." Smart people know this. Immature people don't (not legal advice) 8. Post on social media. You've got the right to free speech. Unless you're being racist it'll probably be fine. Being too scared everyone is watching is holding you back from your potential. Social media elevates your brand. It's not a fireable offence. 9. Never make friends with your boss. The workplace isn't your family. If you underperform you're out the door. Everything you say to the boss can be used against you when redundancies hit. 10. If you get sick and can't work, an employer will be nice for a few months. Then they will fire you. Make sure to have an emergency fund. 11. Most corporates move too slow and will be disrupted in the coming AI age. Choose an employer wisely if you decide to stay. 12. The average job is boring Not because of the office or social activities. But because you don't get to use your creativity. Email forwarding, meetings, and spreadsheet hell get tiring, fast. If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Stop planning for retirement. You might not have enough summers left to enjoy it. You only get 80 summers. That number should terrify you into action. I first heard this concept a few years ago and it wrecked me. If you're lucky enough to live to 80, you get 80 summers total. That's it. 80 chances to feel the sun on your face. 80 chances to take a vacation. 80 chances to watch your kids run through sprinklers. Most people have already used up 30, 40, maybe 50 of them. Count how many you have left. Write that number down. Now look at it and tell me you have time to waste. ━━━━━ I spent years in banking watching people postpone everything. They postponed the trip. They postponed the career change. They postponed spending time with the people they loved. They all said the same thing. "Next year." "When things settle down." "Once I hit this milestone." Next year became five years. Five years became a decade. A decade became a lifetime of waiting for a moment that never arrived. The math doesn't lie. If you're 40, you have 40 summers left. If you spend 50 weeks a year grinding at a job you hate just to enjoy 2 weeks of vacation, you're trading away the only resource you can never get back. ━━━━━ I quit my banking career in 2021. I've been a full-time entrepreneur for about 5 years now. I was there for my daughter's first steps. I'll be there for my second daughter's first steps later this year. I don't have a yacht. I don't have a mansion. I don't have most of the things people think they need to be happy. But I have my summers. All of them. Every single one I have left belongs to me. ━━━━━ The "80 summers" concept isn't meant to depress you. It's meant to wake you up. Because most people live like they have unlimited time. They tolerate jobs that drain them. They stay in situations that make them miserable. They keep telling themselves they'll start living eventually. Eventually doesn't exist. There's only now and the rapidly shrinking number of summers you have remaining. Stop acting like time is renewable. It's the only thing you spend that you can never earn back. So what are you going to do with the summers you have left? P.S. How many summers do you have remaining? Does that number change how you see your current priorities? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Most depression isn't caused by tragedy. It's caused by staying the same for too long. I watched it happen to a guy named Mark at my old banking job. When I met him, he was sharp. Hungry. Had ideas about where he wanted to go. 5 years later he was doing the exact same job, making the same complaints, telling the same stories about what he was "going to do" someday. The light in his eyes was gone. He'd stopped growing. You could see it in everything about him. The way he talked. The way he moved through the office. The way he'd check the clock at 4:30 waiting for permission to leave. I remember having lunch with him one day. He was complaining about his manager, his salary, his commute. Same complaints he'd had for years. I asked him what he was doing about it. He just shrugged. "What can you do?" That question haunted me. Because I realized I was settling into the same patterns. Showing up, doing the minimum, going home, repeating. I was becoming Mark. ━━━━━ When I got fired, it forced me to confront something uncomfortable. I had been coasting. Telling myself I was being strategic, waiting for the right moment. Really I was just scared to admit the path I was on wasn't leading anywhere I wanted to go. Getting fired was brutal. But it was also the push I needed. I had to start over. Learn new skills. Build something from nothing. The first year was hard. I made mistakes constantly. Felt stupid most days. But I was growing again. That feeling of getting slightly better each day changed everything about how I experienced life. ━━━━━ I've helped 1000s of people trying to build businesses. The ones who struggle most aren't lacking talent. They're stuck. They've convinced themselves their situation is permanent. It's never too late. But you have to force yourself to start. Nobody is coming to push you. You have to manufacture your own momentum. Force yourself to get better. Even when you don't feel like it. That's how you avoid ending up somewhere you never wanted to be. What's one small thing you're doing today to move forward? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Most people spend their careers chasing a promotion they'll hate when they get it I figured this out the hard way. I spent over a decade in banking watching people fight for management roles. They wanted the title. They wanted the corner office. They wanted to feel like they'd made it. Then they got promoted. Suddenly their calendars were filled with back-to-back meetings. They stopped doing actual work and started managing people who didn't want to be managed. They became babysitters with business cards. I watched a guy I respected get promoted to senior manager. Within six months he looked ten years older. He was in the office before anyone else and left after everyone else. His job was now making sure other adults did their jobs. He told me once, "I used to love what I did. Now I just schedule meetings about what other people do." That stuck with me. ━━━━━ I never wanted to climb the ladder. I wanted to be good at my actual work and then go home to my actual life. That made me weird in corporate. People assumed something was wrong with me. They'd ask about my "career goals" and I'd say I just wanted to do good work without being responsible for managing a team of adults who should be managing themselves. They looked at me like I was broken. But I watched the climbers. I watched them sacrifice their evenings, their weekends, their relationships. I watched them trade their freedom for a slightly bigger salary and a lot more stress. The ones who made it to the top didn't seem happy. They seemed trapped. ━━━━━ I got fired in 2019. At the time it felt like failure. Looking back, it was freedom. I stopped playing a game I never wanted to win. I started building my own thing instead. Now I work 4 hours a day. I was there for my daughter's first steps. I'll be there when my second daughter is born later this year. No meetings about meetings. No micromanaging adults. No pretending I care about climbing a ladder that leads somewhere I don't want to go. ━━━━━ The corporate ladder is sold as the path to success. Nobody mentions that each rung comes with less autonomy, more politics, and responsibility for other people's output. Some people genuinely want that. Good for them. But if you're sitting in a cubicle right now feeling guilty because you don't want to be a manager, there's nothing wrong with you. Maybe you just figured out what most people don't realize until they're already stuck at the top: the climb isn't worth it if you hate where the ladder goes. Do your job. Do it well. Go home. That's not a lack of ambition. That's clarity. P.S. Anyone else feel zero desire to climb the corporate ladder?

You're scared to post online. But nobody's watching. I had a coaching client tell me she couldn't use social media. Too risky. People would judge her opinions. Her reputation was on the line. She was preparing for fame before she'd written a single word. ━━━━━ I finally convinced her to post something. Just one piece of content. Put yourself out there. She spent a week agonizing over it. Rewrote it five times. Asked three friends to review it. Lost sleep over what her colleagues might think. Then she hit publish. The result? Three comments. From strangers. Her family didn't see it. Her coworkers didn't see it. The millions of judgmental eyes she'd been hiding from? They were busy scrolling past. ━━━━━ This is the lie that keeps people stuck: They think posting online means instant exposure. They imagine crowds gathering to critique their every word. They prepare for a spotlight that doesn't exist. The reality? You're shouting into an empty room. And that's the best news you'll hear today. ━━━━━ Obscurity is a gift most people waste. When nobody's watching, you can: • Post something terrible and learn from it • Test ideas without consequences • Find your voice without an audience judging every stumble • Fail forward without anyone keeping score The people who build real audiences understand this. They used their invisible years to experiment. To get reps in. To figure out what they actually wanted to say. ━━━━━ I've been writing online for 12 years. The first few years? Almost nobody read my stuff. That silence gave me something invaluable: permission to be bad. I wrote garbage. I tested ideas that flopped. I found my voice through thousands of posts that disappeared into the void. By the time people started paying attention, I'd already done the hard work of figuring out who I was. ━━━━━ You're not scared of judgment. You're scared of a judgment that doesn't exist yet. Stop preparing for an audience you don't have. Start using your invisibility while you still have it. The spotlight comes later. Right now, the empty room is your advantage. What's stopping you from posting? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Most depression isn't caused by tragedy. It's caused by staying the same for too long. I watched it happen to a guy named Mark at my old banking job. When I met him, he was sharp. Hungry. Had ideas about where he wanted to go. 5 years later he was doing the exact same job, making the same complaints, telling the same stories about what he was "going to do" someday. The light in his eyes was gone. He'd stopped growing. You could see it in everything about him. The way he talked. The way he moved through the office. The way he'd check the clock at 4:30 waiting for permission to leave. I remember having lunch with him one day. He was complaining about his manager, his salary, his commute. Same complaints he'd had for years. I asked him what he was doing about it. He just shrugged. "What can you do?" That question haunted me. Because I realized I was settling into the same patterns. Showing up, doing the minimum, going home, repeating. I was becoming Mark. ━━━━━ When I got fired, it forced me to confront something uncomfortable. I had been coasting. Telling myself I was being strategic, waiting for the right moment. Really I was just scared to admit the path I was on wasn't leading anywhere I wanted to go. Getting fired was brutal. But it was also the push I needed. I had to start over. Learn new skills. Build something from nothing. The first year was hard. I made mistakes constantly. Felt stupid most days. But I was growing again. That feeling of getting slightly better each day changed everything about how I experienced life. ━━━━━ I've helped 1000s of people trying to build businesses. The ones who struggle most aren't lacking talent. They're stuck. They've convinced themselves their situation is permanent. It's never too late. But you have to force yourself to start. Nobody is coming to push you. You have to manufacture your own momentum. Force yourself to get better. Even when you don't feel like it. That's how you avoid ending up somewhere you never wanted to be. What's one small thing you're doing today to move forward? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Stop trying to get rich. Start trying to get free. I spent 10 years watching people sacrifice everything for money. They worked 60-hour weeks. They missed their kids' school events. They skipped vacations because they couldn't afford to be away from the office. And the ones who finally made it? They bought the fancy car. Posted the private jet photo. Got the watch that costs more than most people's annual salary. Then they kept working the same brutal hours because they were terrified of losing it all. That's not wealth. That's a prison with expensive furniture. ━━━━━ When I lost my job, I had a choice to make. I could chase the same version of success I'd been sold my whole life. Climb back up the corporate ladder. Buy the status symbols. Impress people I don't even like. Or I could build something different. I chose slow mornings with coffee on my porch. I chose going to the gym in the middle of the day when it's empty. I chose taking walks with my wife and calling them "strategy sessions." I chose being there for every single moment with my daughter. Her first steps. Her first words. The random Tuesday afternoons that nobody photographs but everyone remembers. ━━━━━ I've worked with thousands of business owners now. The ones who burn out fastest are always chasing the wrong definition of rich. They want the revenue milestone so they can finally relax. They want the exit so they can finally enjoy life. They want the number in their bank account that will make them feel like they've made it. But they never get there. Because the goalpost keeps moving. $100K becomes $500K. $500K becomes a million. A million becomes ten. The chase never ends if you're running toward the wrong finish line. ━━━━━ Real wealth is having complete control over your time. It's waking up without an alarm. It's not asking permission to take a day off. It's being present for the people who matter instead of constantly apologizing for missing things. It's building a life where Monday feels the same as Saturday. I don't have a G-Wagon. I don't post photos from private jets. I don't own a watch that costs more than a car. But I was there when my daughter took her first steps. I'll be there when my second daughter is born in a few months. I work four hours a day and spend the rest doing whatever I want. That's the version of rich nobody talks about. And it has nothing to do with impressing strangers on the internet. Stop chasing a lifestyle designed to make other people jealous. Start building one that actually makes you happy. P.S. What does being rich actually mean to you? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Stop planning for retirement. You might not have enough summers left to enjoy it. You only get 80 summers. That number should terrify you into action. I first heard this concept a few years ago and it wrecked me. If you're lucky enough to live to 80, you get 80 summers total. That's it. 80 chances to feel the sun on your face. 80 chances to take a vacation. 80 chances to watch your kids run through sprinklers. Most people have already used up 30, 40, maybe 50 of them. Count how many you have left. Write that number down. Now look at it and tell me you have time to waste. ━━━━━ I spent years in banking watching people postpone everything. They postponed the trip. They postponed the career change. They postponed spending time with the people they loved. They all said the same thing. "Next year." "When things settle down." "Once I hit this milestone." Next year became five years. Five years became a decade. A decade became a lifetime of waiting for a moment that never arrived. The math doesn't lie. If you're 40, you have 40 summers left. If you spend 50 weeks a year grinding at a job you hate just to enjoy 2 weeks of vacation, you're trading away the only resource you can never get back. ━━━━━ I quit my banking career in 2021. I've been a full-time entrepreneur for about 5 years now. I was there for my daughter's first steps. I'll be there for my second daughter's first steps later this year. I don't have a yacht. I don't have a mansion. I don't have most of the things people think they need to be happy. But I have my summers. All of them. Every single one I have left belongs to me. ━━━━━ The "80 summers" concept isn't meant to depress you. It's meant to wake you up. Because most people live like they have unlimited time. They tolerate jobs that drain them. They stay in situations that make them miserable. They keep telling themselves they'll start living eventually. Eventually doesn't exist. There's only now and the rapidly shrinking number of summers you have remaining. Stop acting like time is renewable. It's the only thing you spend that you can never earn back. So what are you going to do with the summers you have left? P.S. How many summers do you have remaining? Does that number change how you see your current priorities? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

It took me 10 years in corporate to realize this and I'll tell you in 30 seconds (from someone who walked away): 1. If you stay in the 9-5 world too long, you end up being immature about how the world works. • You can't think for yourself.  • You're blind to bigger opportunities.  • You think you need a strategy. • You over-communicate.  • You sugarcoat your words.  • You can't be direct or assertive. 2. Loyalty to a company that would replace you in 2 weeks is insanity. They're incentivized to NOT give a f*ck about you. That's capitalism. Yet people treat a job like a safe income stream. 3. Build a side project • Creates joy • Uses your creativity • Gives you a Plan B • Builds new skills Yet employees don't. They think it'll get them fired, although they don't see an issue with driving Uber on the weekends. 4. You'll never get rich off a salary. Climbing the corporate ladder makes you think you will. Even if you reach CEO-level you'll have no free time, which is worse than bankruptcy. To get wealth + free time you must work for yourself 5. True freedom is not being told what to do by a micro-managing boss. You've gotta experience it to understand it. 6. An employer pays you the least amount possible so they can profit from your skills. Your skills are always worth more outside of a job. Sell them online and see for yourself. 7. Don't piss your pants about non-competes. They're just there to scare you. A judge is highly unlikely to say: "You worked at a bank and now you're barred from working for another one for 5 years." Smart people know this. Immature people don't (not legal advice) 8. Post on social media. You've got the right to free speech. Unless you're being racist it'll probably be fine. Being too scared everyone is watching is holding you back from your potential. Social media elevates your brand. It's not a fireable offence. 9. Never make friends with your boss. The workplace isn't your family. If you underperform you're out the door. Everything you say to the boss can be used against you when redundancies hit. 10. If you get sick and can't work, an employer will be nice for a few months. Then they will fire you. Make sure to have an emergency fund. 11. Most corporates move too slow and will be disrupted in the coming AI age. Choose an employer wisely if you decide to stay. 12. The average job is boring Not because of the office or social activities. But because you don't get to use your creativity. Email forwarding, meetings, and spreadsheet hell get tiring, fast. If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Natural talent is the biggest scam in self-improvement. The people you think are gifted just failed more times than you've even tried. My first 100 essays were garbage. I'm not being humble. They were objectively terrible. Weak ideas. Clunky sentences. Zero engagement. I'd spend hours writing something I thought was brilliant, hit publish, and watch it disappear into the void. Nobody read them. Nobody shared them. Nobody cared. I kept going anyway. ━━━━━ I've been writing online every day for almost 12 years now. Over 7,000 essays published. Millions of readers. A business that lets me work 4 hours a day and be there for my daughter's random Tuesday afternoons. None of that existed at essay number 100. Or 500. Or probably even 1,000. What existed was a guy who had no idea what he was doing, making the same mistakes over and over again, slowly getting slightly less terrible with each attempt. That's the part nobody wants to hear. We love the story of natural talent. The prodigy who was born to do this. The overnight success who just had "it" from the beginning. Those stories are mostly fiction. Or they leave out the thousands of hours of invisible work that happened before anyone was paying attention. ━━━━━ I've coached thousands of business owners now. The pattern I see is always the same. People quit after attempt 10 because they're not good yet. They compare their beginning to someone else's middle. They assume the gap between where they are and where they want to be is evidence that they're not cut out for this. It's not evidence of anything except that they haven't done it enough times. The people who succeed aren't smarter at the start. They're just willing to be bad for longer. They're willing to publish the terrible essay, make the awkward sales call, launch the product that flops. They understand that competence is built through volume, not inspiration. ━━━━━ I look back at my early writing and cringe. The ideas were shallow. The hooks were weak. I used words I thought sounded smart instead of words that actually communicated. But each bad essay taught me something the previous one didn't. Each failure narrowed the gap between what I was trying to say and what actually landed on the page. 10,000 attempts later, people call me talented. They don't see the 7,000 essays that came before. They just see the ones that work now. Talent is just failure that refused to quit. Stop waiting until you're ready. Start being bad at something on purpose. The version of you that's good at this is waiting on the other side of a few thousand attempts. P.S. What's something you got dramatically better at just through repetition? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Being called crazy is a compliment. It means you're finally thinking big enough to make normal people uncomfortable. The people who change the world look insane until they don't. I've finally figured out why. In my 20s I co-founded an eCommerce business that hit $50M a year. Everyone around me thought I was crazy. My parents worried I'd wasted my education. My friends thought I should get a "real job." Even people inside the company questioned whether we could actually pull off the targets we set. We had over 100 employees. Investors who wanted results yesterday. Goals that seemed delusional when we wrote them down. I remember sitting in a meeting where we committed to a revenue number that made half the room uncomfortable. Someone actually laughed. Not because it was funny, but because they thought it was impossible. We hit it anyway. ━━━━━ I've written online every day for over 12 years now. When I started, people told me I was wasting my time. They said nobody reads long-form content anymore. They said the market was too crowded. They said I should focus on something more "realistic." I ignored all of it. Now I have over 300,000 email subscribers and millions of followers across platforms. Not because I'm more talented than the people who gave me that advice. Because I refused to accept their version of what was possible. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary isn't intelligence or luck. It's the willingness to chase something so hard that other people question your sanity. ━━━━━ I've helped 1000s of business owners now. The ones who break through are never the most qualified or the most connected. They're the ones who operate with a level of obsession that makes normal people uncomfortable. They think about their business in the shower. They wake up with ideas at 3am and write them down. They keep going when everyone else would have quit. The ones who stay stuck are the ones who play it safe. They want guarantees before they commit. They want permission before they act. They want certainty before they take the leap. Certainty doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is the choice to go all in or stay where you are. ━━━━━ I'm now 100% convinced that the key to being extraordinary is to simply act delusional and chase your obsession to the point of insanity. Not reckless. Not stupid. But so committed to your vision that you stop caring whether other people understand it. The world will call you crazy right up until the moment you prove them wrong. And then they'll pretend they believed in you all along. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for the perfect moment. Stop waiting for someone to tell you your dreams make sense. They won't make sense to anyone but you. That's the whole point. P.S. What's something you're obsessed with that other people don't understand? If you want to level up your career, join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Most people have no idea what they're capable of. Business will show you. In my 20s I co-founded an eCommerce business that hit $50M a year. We had over 100 employees. Investors breathing down our necks. Aggressive targets that seemed impossible until we hit them. I had no business experience. No degree. No clue what I was doing when we started. But I learned something that changed how I see human potential forever. ━━━━━ Before that business, I thought I knew myself. I thought I understood my limits. I thought I had a decent sense of what I was good at and what I wasn't. I was wrong about all of it. Business showed me I could handle pressure that would have broken the old version of me. It showed me I could learn skills I never thought I'd need. It showed me I could lead people, make hard decisions, and recover from failures that felt career-ending at the time. It also showed me my weaknesses in brutal detail. The ego I didn't know I had. The fear of conflict I'd been hiding from. The tendency to avoid hard conversations until they became impossible ones. No self-help book could have taught me any of this. No personality test. No amount of reflection or journaling. Business is the ultimate mirror. It reflects back exactly who you are, including the parts you've been avoiding. ━━━━━ I've worked with thousands of business owners now. The transformation I see in them has nothing to do with revenue. It's watching someone who thought they couldn't sell discover they're actually great at it. It's watching someone who thought they weren't creative build something from nothing. It's watching someone who thought they needed permission realize they can just go do the thing. The people who stay stuck in life are often the ones who never put themselves in situations that demand growth. They stay comfortable. They stay safe. They stay exactly who they've always been. Business doesn't let you do that. You either grow or you fail. There's no hiding. ━━━━━ I left that $50M business at 26. I hated the complexity. I hated having investors. I hated what I'd become chasing someone else's definition of success. But I don't regret a single day of it. Because it showed me capabilities I never would have discovered otherwise. It proved to me that the limits I thought I had were mostly imaginary. If you want to find out what you're actually made of, start a business. Not because it's easy. Because it's the fastest way to meet the version of yourself you didn't know existed. P.S. What's something business taught you about yourself that you never expected? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

The bonus system is rigged. I watched it happen from the inside. Nobody in HR will ever admit this. I spent over a decade in banking watching how the system actually works. I sat through dozens of performance reviews. I watched managers rank employees. I saw how budgets got allocated. The whole thing is rigged from the start. ━━━━━ Every year, companies set aside a fixed pool of money for raises. Usually around 3-4% of total payroll. That number gets decided months before your review even happens. Your manager doesn't walk into your review thinking "what does this person deserve?" They walk in thinking "how do I divide this fixed pie among my team?" You could have the best year of your career. You could exceed every target. You could work weekends and holidays. It doesn't matter. The budget was set before you did any of it. ━━━━━ The rating system exists to justify decisions that were already made. In banking, we had a forced distribution. Only a certain percentage of people could get the top rating. Only a certain percentage could get the highest raises. I watched managers argue in calibration meetings about who to bump down. Not because someone underperformed. Because the numbers had to fit the curve. Good people got average ratings so the math would work. The system required it. ━━━━━ Performance reviews also create a paper trail. Every comment your manager writes becomes documentation. Every "area for improvement" is evidence they can use later if they need to let you go. Every goal you didn't quite hit is ammunition. You think you're having a conversation about your growth. They're building a file. ━━━━━ The timing is designed to trap you too. Reviews happen once a year. Raises get announced months later. By the time you realize you got lowballed, you've already missed the window to negotiate. And if you push back? They tell you to work on those "areas for improvement" and try again next year. Another twelve months of waiting for someone else to decide your worth. ━━━━━ When I got fired in 2019, I stopped playing this game. I started building my own business. Now nobody reviews my performance. Nobody decides what I deserve based on a budget that was set before I did the work. The market decides. My results decide. And there's no artificial ceiling on what I can earn. ━━━━━ Performance reviews aren't designed to pay you fairly. They're designed to control compensation and make you feel like you earned whatever scraps they give you. The system works exactly as intended. It's just not intended to work for you. P.S. Have you ever felt like your performance review didn't reflect your actual work? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Waiting for a promotion is the dumbest career move you can make. The system is designed to keep you waiting forever. Corporations run on fake emergencies. I spent over 10 years in banking watching this play out. Every week there was a new crisis. A client needed something yesterday. A report had to be finished by end of day. A meeting got moved up because someone important was flying in. Everyone ran around like the building was on fire. But when it came to your career? Silence. Your promotion request would sit in limbo for months. Your manager would say things like "let's revisit this next quarter" or "the timing isn't right." HR would ghost you. Leadership would act like you were being unreasonable for wanting to grow. I watched talented people wait years for promotions that never came. They hit every target. They stayed late. They took on extra work without complaining. They did everything right. And the company rewarded them with vague promises and annual reviews that said "meets expectations." ━━━━━ The hypocrisy used to make me angry. Now I just see it for what it is. Corporations are designed to extract maximum value from you while paying the minimum possible. Your urgency serves their goals. Your growth does not. When a client threatens to leave, that's an emergency because it affects revenue. When you threaten to leave, they'll just hire someone cheaper and younger to replace you. I remember asking my manager about a promotion I'd been promised for almost a year. He told me to be patient. Two weeks later, he asked me to work through the weekend on a "critical" project that turned out to be a PowerPoint presentation nobody ever looked at. That was the moment I realized the game was rigged. ━━━━━ I got fired. At the time it felt like the worst thing that could happen to me. Looking back, it was the push I needed. I stopped waiting for permission. I stopped expecting corporations to care about my growth. I started building something of my own. Now I work normal hours. I was there for my daughter's first steps. I'll be there for my second daughter's birth in a few months. I have complete control over my time. None of that would have happened if I'd stayed in corporate waiting for someone to finally approve my promotion. ━━━━━ If you're sitting in an office right now waiting for your turn, understand this: your turn might never come. The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. Your career is only urgent to one person. You. Stop waiting for a company to prioritize your growth. They won't. Start building something on the side. Start betting on yourself. Start treating your own future with the same urgency they treat their quarterly targets. The corporate world will keep manufacturing emergencies forever. Your life won't wait that long. P.S. Have you ever been stuck waiting for a promotion that never came? Join my Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Hard work in your 20s is a scam. Those who told you to grind & climb are the same ones stuck in cubicles at 55. At 26 I got my first office job. I thought I'd made it. Suit. Lanyard. Desk with my name on it. I felt like a real adult. My parents were proud. My friends were impressed. I was doing exactly what society told me to do. So I kept doing it. I showed up early. Stayed late. Said yes to everything. Took on projects nobody else wanted. I thought if I just worked hard enough, something good would happen. Years passed. I got promotions that came with fancier titles but barely any more money. I sat in meetings that accomplished nothing. I watched people twice my age still grinding away in the same building, counting down the days until retirement. I told myself it was temporary. I told myself the next role would be different. I told myself I was building toward something. I wasn't building anything. I was just existing. ━━━━━ The worst part wasn't the wasted time. It was the wasted energy. I spent my 20s optimizing for someone else's goals. I learned skills that only mattered inside those four walls. I got really good at navigating office politics and really bad at figuring out what I actually wanted. I remember sitting in traffic at 7am thinking about spreadsheets. I remember checking emails on weekends because I was afraid of falling behind. I remember canceling plans with friends because I was too exhausted to do anything but collapse on the couch. I gave the best years of my life to companies that would have replaced me within a week if I dropped dead. ━━━━━ I'm 39 now. I can't get those years back. I quit my corporate career in 2021. I've been an entrepreneur for about 5 years. I work 4 hours a day. I was there for my daughter's first steps. I'll be there for my second daughter's first steps later this year. The freedom I have now makes me angry at the freedom I gave away. Not because I needed to be rich in my 20s. Because I needed to be building something that mattered. Something that was mine. Something that would compound over time instead of resetting every time I changed jobs. ━━━━━ If you're in your 20s reading this, understand something: the corporate ladder is a trap disguised as a path. It looks like progress. It feels like safety. But it's designed to keep you climbing just fast enough that you never stop to ask where the ladder actually goes. Most people figure this out at 40 or 50, when they've already traded their best years for a title that means nothing and a retirement fund that might let them finally start living. You don't have to wait that long. Take the risk now. Build something now. Fail now while the stakes are low and your energy is high. The corporate world will always be there if you need it. Your 20s won't. P.S. What would you tell your 20-year-old self about career choices? Join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Your manager doesn't decide your salary. Here's who does. You do. I spent years in banking believing my income was controlled by someone else. I thought if I worked hard enough, stayed late enough, impressed the right people, they'd eventually reward me. I was wrong. My manager had a budget. HR had salary bands. The company had policies. Everyone pointed at someone else when I asked for a raise. The system was designed to keep me waiting. ━━━━━ I watched colleagues play the game perfectly. They hit every target. They got glowing performance reviews. They did everything right. Their reward? A 3% raise that barely kept up with inflation. Meanwhile, the people who left? They jumped to competitors and got 20-30% increases overnight. Same skills. Same experience. Different leverage. That's when I realized the truth: your salary isn't decided by how hard you work. It's decided by how replaceable you are. ━━━━━ The market decides your salary. Not your manager. Your manager can only pay you what the company allows. And the company will pay you the minimum they think they can get away with. The only way to change that equation is to have options. Real options. Other companies that want you. Skills that are in demand. A reputation that precedes you. When you have options, suddenly that salary conversation changes. When you don't, you're just hoping someone decides to be generous. ━━━━━ When I got fired, I stopped waiting for permission to earn more. I built skills that the market valued. I created assets that generated income whether I worked or not. I stopped trading time for money and started building leverage. Now I make more in a month than I used to negotiate for in a year. ━━━━━ Stop asking your manager for a raise. Start asking yourself a different question: What would make me impossible to ignore? The answer to that question is worth more than any performance review. P.S. Who do you think really controls your salary? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

I watched 3 layoff rounds from inside the bank. Here's what nobody tells you. The meetings happen weeks before anyone gets told. Executives sit in conference rooms with spreadsheets, not people. They're looking at headcount numbers and salary bands. Nobody says "let's fire Jenny from accounting." They say "let's reduce headcount in that cost center by 15%." That's the first thing nobody tells you. You're not a person in those rooms. You're a line item. ━━━━━ I sat outside those meetings for years. I watched who walked in and who walked out. I learned to read the body language. When the CFO started showing up more often, layoffs were coming. When HR suddenly needed "updated org charts," someone was getting cut. When your manager stopped making eye contact, you were probably on the list. The second thing nobody tells you: your manager usually knows weeks before you do. They just can't say anything. ━━━━━ The word "restructuring" is corporate theater. It sounds strategic. It sounds like someone has a plan. In reality, it usually means the quarterly numbers looked bad and someone panicked. I watched entire teams get eliminated not because they were underperforming, but because their department was easy to cut. Customer-facing roles survived. Back office got gutted. It had nothing to do with talent. The third thing nobody tells you: performance often doesn't matter. Politics and timing do. ━━━━━ The people who survived weren't always the best performers. They were the ones who had relationships with decision-makers. They were visible. They'd grabbed coffee with the right people. The quiet workers who just did their jobs? They were the easiest to cut because nobody in the room knew their names. ━━━━━ I got made redundant. After watching three rounds of layoffs happen to other people, it finally happened to me. I'd given that company 8 years. I thought I was safe. I wasn't. Looking back, getting pushed out was the best thing that happened to me. I stopped being a line item on someone else's spreadsheet and started building something of my own. The final thing nobody tells you: job security is an illusion. The only real security is becoming someone who doesn't need permission to earn a living. P.S. Have you ever survived a layoff round? What did you notice? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Your manager doesn't decide your salary. Here's who does. You do. I spent years in banking believing my income was controlled by someone else. I thought if I worked hard enough, stayed late enough, impressed the right people, they'd eventually reward me. I was wrong. My manager had a budget. HR had salary bands. The company had policies. Everyone pointed at someone else when I asked for a raise. The system was designed to keep me waiting. ━━━━━ I watched colleagues play the game perfectly. They hit every target. They got glowing performance reviews. They did everything right. Their reward? A 3% raise that barely kept up with inflation. Meanwhile, the people who left? They jumped to competitors and got 20-30% increases overnight. Same skills. Same experience. Different leverage. That's when I realized the truth: your salary isn't decided by how hard you work. It's decided by how replaceable you are. ━━━━━ The market decides your salary. Not your manager. Your manager can only pay you what the company allows. And the company will pay you the minimum they think they can get away with. The only way to change that equation is to have options. Real options. Other companies that want you. Skills that are in demand. A reputation that precedes you. When you have options, suddenly that salary conversation changes. When you don't, you're just hoping someone decides to be generous. ━━━━━ When I got fired, I stopped waiting for permission to earn more. I built skills that the market valued. I created assets that generated income whether I worked or not. I stopped trading time for money and started building leverage. Now I make more in a month than I used to negotiate for in a year. ━━━━━ Stop asking your manager for a raise. Start asking yourself a different question: What would make me impossible to ignore? The answer to that question is worth more than any performance review. P.S. Who do you think really controls your salary? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

I watched 3 layoff rounds from inside the bank. Here's what nobody tells you. The meetings happen weeks before anyone gets told. Executives sit in conference rooms with spreadsheets, not people. They're looking at headcount numbers and salary bands. Nobody says "let's fire Jenny from accounting." They say "let's reduce headcount in that cost center by 15%." That's the first thing nobody tells you. You're not a person in those rooms. You're a line item. ━━━━━ I sat outside those meetings for years. I watched who walked in and who walked out. I learned to read the body language. When the CFO started showing up more often, layoffs were coming. When HR suddenly needed "updated org charts," someone was getting cut. When your manager stopped making eye contact, you were probably on the list. The second thing nobody tells you: your manager usually knows weeks before you do. They just can't say anything. ━━━━━ The word "restructuring" is corporate theater. It sounds strategic. It sounds like someone has a plan. In reality, it usually means the quarterly numbers looked bad and someone panicked. I watched entire teams get eliminated not because they were underperforming, but because their department was easy to cut. Customer-facing roles survived. Back office got gutted. It had nothing to do with talent. The third thing nobody tells you: performance often doesn't matter. Politics and timing do. ━━━━━ The people who survived weren't always the best performers. They were the ones who had relationships with decision-makers. They were visible. They'd grabbed coffee with the right people. The quiet workers who just did their jobs? They were the easiest to cut because nobody in the room knew their names. ━━━━━ I got made redundant. After watching three rounds of layoffs happen to other people, it finally happened to me. I'd given that company 8 years. I thought I was safe. I wasn't. Looking back, getting pushed out was the best thing that happened to me. I stopped being a line item on someone else's spreadsheet and started building something of my own. The final thing nobody tells you: job security is an illusion. The only real security is becoming someone who doesn't need permission to earn a living. P.S. Have you ever survived a layoff round? What did you notice? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Frugality is a poverty trap. The people who taught you to save money are the same ones who never built wealth. I spent years in business making almost no money. I thought I was being smart. I negotiated harder with vendors. I refused to spend on advertising. I did everything myself because hiring someone felt like throwing money away. Every dollar that came in, I held onto like my life depended on it. I was so focused on not losing money that I never made any. ━━━━━ In my banking days I watched people earn good salaries and still feel broke. They clipped coupons. They drove old cars. They skipped vacations. They did everything the financial gurus told them to do. And they stayed exactly where they were. Because you cannot save your way to wealth. The math doesn't work. If you earn $5,000 a month and spend $4,500, you can optimize your expenses all day long. Maybe you get it down to $4,000. Congratulations, you saved an extra $500. But that's the ceiling. There is no ceiling on what you can earn. ━━━━━ When I started my first real business, I operated from fear. Fear of losing money. Fear of making the wrong investment. Fear of spending on something that didn't work. That fear kept me small. I wouldn't invest in ads because what if they didn't convert. I wouldn't hire help because what if they weren't worth it. I wouldn't buy better tools because the free version was good enough. I was building a business with one foot on the brake. The shift happened when I stopped asking "how do I spend less" and started asking "how do I make more." Different question. Completely different results. I started investing in things that could multiply my income instead of just protecting what I had. Some of those investments failed. Most of them paid off many times over. ━━━━━ I've worked with thousands of business owners now. The ones who stay broke are almost always obsessed with cutting costs. They spend hours finding cheaper software. They do $10/hour tasks themselves to avoid paying someone else. They're so busy saving pennies that they miss the dollars sitting right in front of them. The ones who break through think differently. They spend money to make money. They invest in growth before they feel ready. They understand that frugality has a floor, but income has no ceiling. Scarcity thinking keeps you trapped in a game you can't win. Abundant thinking opens doors you didn't know existed. Stop trying to save your way out of money problems. Go make more money instead. P.S. What's one investment you made in yourself or your business that paid off way more than expected? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

The bonus system is rigged. I watched it happen from the inside. Nobody in HR will ever admit this. I spent over a decade in banking watching how the system actually works. I sat through dozens of performance reviews. I watched managers rank employees. I saw how budgets got allocated. The whole thing is rigged from the start. ━━━━━ Every year, companies set aside a fixed pool of money for raises. Usually around 3-4% of total payroll. That number gets decided months before your review even happens. Your manager doesn't walk into your review thinking "what does this person deserve?" They walk in thinking "how do I divide this fixed pie among my team?" You could have the best year of your career. You could exceed every target. You could work weekends and holidays. It doesn't matter. The budget was set before you did any of it. ━━━━━ The rating system exists to justify decisions that were already made. In banking, we had a forced distribution. Only a certain percentage of people could get the top rating. Only a certain percentage could get the highest raises. I watched managers argue in calibration meetings about who to bump down. Not because someone underperformed. Because the numbers had to fit the curve. Good people got average ratings so the math would work. The system required it. ━━━━━ Performance reviews also create a paper trail. Every comment your manager writes becomes documentation. Every "area for improvement" is evidence they can use later if they need to let you go. Every goal you didn't quite hit is ammunition. You think you're having a conversation about your growth. They're building a file. ━━━━━ The timing is designed to trap you too. Reviews happen once a year. Raises get announced months later. By the time you realize you got lowballed, you've already missed the window to negotiate. And if you push back? They tell you to work on those "areas for improvement" and try again next year. Another twelve months of waiting for someone else to decide your worth. ━━━━━ When I got fired in 2019, I stopped playing this game. I started building my own business. Now nobody reviews my performance. Nobody decides what I deserve based on a budget that was set before I did the work. The market decides. My results decide. And there's no artificial ceiling on what I can earn. ━━━━━ Performance reviews aren't designed to pay you fairly. They're designed to control compensation and make you feel like you earned whatever scraps they give you. The system works exactly as intended. It's just not intended to work for you. P.S. Have you ever felt like your performance review didn't reflect your actual work? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 187K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Hard work in your 20s is a scam. Those who told you to grind & climb are the same ones stuck in cubicles at 55. At 26 I got my first office job. I thought I'd made it. Suit. Lanyard. Desk with my name on it. I felt like a real adult. My parents were proud. My friends were impressed. I was doing exactly what society told me to do. So I kept doing it. I showed up early. Stayed late. Said yes to everything. Took on projects nobody else wanted. I thought if I just worked hard enough, something good would happen. Years passed. I got promotions that came with fancier titles but barely any more money. I sat in meetings that accomplished nothing. I watched people twice my age still grinding away in the same building, counting down the days until retirement. I told myself it was temporary. I told myself the next role would be different. I told myself I was building toward something. I wasn't building anything. I was just existing. ━━━━━ The worst part wasn't the wasted time. It was the wasted energy. I spent my 20s optimizing for someone else's goals. I learned skills that only mattered inside those four walls. I got really good at navigating office politics and really bad at figuring out what I actually wanted. I remember sitting in traffic at 7am thinking about spreadsheets. I remember checking emails on weekends because I was afraid of falling behind. I remember canceling plans with friends because I was too exhausted to do anything but collapse on the couch. I gave the best years of my life to companies that would have replaced me within a week if I dropped dead. ━━━━━ I'm 39 now. I can't get those years back. I quit my corporate career in 2021. I've been an entrepreneur for about 5 years. I work 4 hours a day. I was there for my daughter's first steps. I'll be there for my second daughter's first steps later this year. The freedom I have now makes me angry at the freedom I gave away. Not because I needed to be rich in my 20s. Because I needed to be building something that mattered. Something that was mine. Something that would compound over time instead of resetting every time I changed jobs. ━━━━━ If you're in your 20s reading this, understand something: the corporate ladder is a trap disguised as a path. It looks like progress. It feels like safety. But it's designed to keep you climbing just fast enough that you never stop to ask where the ladder actually goes. Most people figure this out at 40 or 50, when they've already traded their best years for a title that means nothing and a retirement fund that might let them finally start living. You don't have to wait that long. Take the risk now. Build something now. Fail now while the stakes are low and your energy is high. The corporate world will always be there if you need it. Your 20s won't. P.S. What would you tell your 20-year-old self about career choices? Join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Most people have no idea what they're capable of. Business will show you. In my 20s I co-founded an eCommerce business that hit $50M a year. We had over 100 employees. Investors breathing down our necks. Aggressive targets that seemed impossible until we hit them. I had no business experience. No degree. No clue what I was doing when we started. But I learned something that changed how I see human potential forever. ━━━━━ Before that business, I thought I knew myself. I thought I understood my limits. I thought I had a decent sense of what I was good at and what I wasn't. I was wrong about all of it. Business showed me I could handle pressure that would have broken the old version of me. It showed me I could learn skills I never thought I'd need. It showed me I could lead people, make hard decisions, and recover from failures that felt career-ending at the time. It also showed me my weaknesses in brutal detail. The ego I didn't know I had. The fear of conflict I'd been hiding from. The tendency to avoid hard conversations until they became impossible ones. No self-help book could have taught me any of this. No personality test. No amount of reflection or journaling. Business is the ultimate mirror. It reflects back exactly who you are, including the parts you've been avoiding. ━━━━━ I've worked with thousands of business owners now. The transformation I see in them has nothing to do with revenue. It's watching someone who thought they couldn't sell discover they're actually great at it. It's watching someone who thought they weren't creative build something from nothing. It's watching someone who thought they needed permission realize they can just go do the thing. The people who stay stuck in life are often the ones who never put themselves in situations that demand growth. They stay comfortable. They stay safe. They stay exactly who they've always been. Business doesn't let you do that. You either grow or you fail. There's no hiding. ━━━━━ I left that $50M business at 26. I hated the complexity. I hated having investors. I hated what I'd become chasing someone else's definition of success. But I don't regret a single day of it. Because it showed me capabilities I never would have discovered otherwise. It proved to me that the limits I thought I had were mostly imaginary. If you want to find out what you're actually made of, start a business. Not because it's easy. Because it's the fastest way to meet the version of yourself you didn't know existed. P.S. What's something business taught you about yourself that you never expected? If you want to level up your career faster, then join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9

Being called crazy is a compliment. It means you're finally thinking big enough to make normal people uncomfortable. The people who change the world look insane until they don't. I've finally figured out why. In my 20s I co-founded an eCommerce business that hit $50M a year. Everyone around me thought I was crazy. My parents worried I'd wasted my education. My friends thought I should get a "real job." Even people inside the company questioned whether we could actually pull off the targets we set. We had over 100 employees. Investors who wanted results yesterday. Goals that seemed delusional when we wrote them down. I remember sitting in a meeting where we committed to a revenue number that made half the room uncomfortable. Someone actually laughed. Not because it was funny, but because they thought it was impossible. We hit it anyway. ━━━━━ I've written online every day for over 12 years now. When I started, people told me I was wasting my time. They said nobody reads long-form content anymore. They said the market was too crowded. They said I should focus on something more "realistic." I ignored all of it. Now I have over 300,000 email subscribers and millions of followers across platforms. Not because I'm more talented than the people who gave me that advice. Because I refused to accept their version of what was possible. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary isn't intelligence or luck. It's the willingness to chase something so hard that other people question your sanity. ━━━━━ I've helped 1000s of business owners now. The ones who break through are never the most qualified or the most connected. They're the ones who operate with a level of obsession that makes normal people uncomfortable. They think about their business in the shower. They wake up with ideas at 3am and write them down. They keep going when everyone else would have quit. The ones who stay stuck are the ones who play it safe. They want guarantees before they commit. They want permission before they act. They want certainty before they take the leap. Certainty doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is the choice to go all in or stay where you are. ━━━━━ I'm now 100% convinced that the key to being extraordinary is to simply act delusional and chase your obsession to the point of insanity. Not reckless. Not stupid. But so committed to your vision that you stop caring whether other people understand it. The world will call you crazy right up until the moment you prove them wrong. And then they'll pretend they believed in you all along. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for the perfect moment. Stop waiting for someone to tell you your dreams make sense. They won't make sense to anyone but you. That's the whole point. P.S. What's something you're obsessed with that other people don't understand? If you want to level up your career, join my unconventional Substack newsletter with 186K others: https://lnkd.in/gMkRFmj9