no matter how much you might have been bracing for this, or trying to mentally prepare yourself, no one wakes up thinking today is actually going to be their last day. even when you know it’s a possibility—even when you know, logically, that this is something that is likely to hit everyone at some point—it is still a shock to the system. It is heartbreaking, disorienting, and honestly, humiliating.

right now, you are probably doing your absolute best to put on a brave face. maybe you’re telling your friends and colleagues that you’ll be okay, or spinning it as a good thing—a chance to finally pursue that project you actually care about or take the time you’ve wanted to take. you’ve likely had to handle the heavy burden of internal comms with your family, reassuring them that you’ve been responsible and that everything will be fine. and if you haven’t told anyone yet, you might be rehearsing the exact words to say.

layoffs have become such a normalized practice in our society that we forget that even our own department of labor calls it one of the most traumatic experiences you can go through in life.

i want you to know that in the last month alone, approximately 1,720,000 people were laid off. this means that every single day of the year, about 56,500 people are let go. that breaks down to roughly 2,350 people per hour, or nearly 40 people every single minute. it is roughly equivalent to laying off the entire population of Philadelphia every single month.

for context, this is about six times more than what our parents had to deal with. it’s very hard for them to understand our reality today. in their day, layoffs were concentrated shocks—rare, seismic events that felt isolated. today, layoffs are constant background noise.

i’m telling you this not to minimize what you are feeling, but because i want you to see the sheer scale of this inhumane practice.

you didn’t do anything wrong. this isn’t a reflection of your work, your value, or who you are. you didn’t fail. the machine is broken.

but how you process this moment right now is going to dictate how the next decade of your life goes. when a traumatic event isn’t properly processed, it acts like a compromised lens through which you view the entire world. it changes how you look at opportunities, how you trust people, and how you see yourself.

when our brains experience trauma, they instinctively look for someone to blame. if we don’t understand the real, external reasons behind a crisis, we unconsciously turn that blame inward. we start making up stories that aren’t true. but when you actually understand how the machine works, you see that the problem was never your worth.

why layoffs actually happen.

we obviously live in a capitalistic society, and the true engine of capitalism operates on a doctrine that the sole purpose of a business is to maximize profits for its shareholders, and nothing else. economist (and one of their kings) Milton Friedman explains, there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game…

because a company is an artificial entity and not a person, it doesn’t have human responsibilities. Friedman believed that anyone who works for a corporation is contractually bound to serve the owners and shareholders above all else. the painful truth is, they never will and they can never, ever put you first. you are not their key stakeholder. you are just a tool and a vehicle for the real job of the business. and when the machine is done using you, it discards you.

this is why companies build sophisticated culture decks and write beautiful value statements telling you how much they care, how much they value people over process, and how they want you to do the best work of your life. they will use polished phrases about an unusual company culture focused on excellence or creating an environment where talented people can thrive. they have to say whatever it takes to convince you to give everything you are to them so they can get what they actually need for the person they actually care about.

in the same way big pharma is forced to list terrible side effects in tiny print at the end of a commercial, there should be a warning label on culture decks that says: results may vary. your livelihood will be terminated at any moment to protect a spreadsheet.

i personally don’t understand why the actual human beings who make up a company — pouring in their time, talent, and life savings of energy — aren’t considered of equal value to an outside shareholder. but whether we agree with it or not, every for-profit business leader has to subscribe to this doctrine without question.

the math behind layoffs.

they are always just figuring out how to maximize profit margins. profit margins are just a measure of how much money a company keeps after subtracting its costs. when a company is in a growth phase, they will happily pay top dollar to hire the best talent so they can leverage your skills to build their business. but once the business is successful and growth slows down, they immediately look to cut expenses to artificially pump up those margins. it’s a giant bat-signal to wall street to make the business look healthy for the next quarter.

in a healthy or traditional version of capitalism, a company grows by investing in its people, improving its products, and expanding its reach. employees are seen as the fuel and the builders of that growth. but in this modern, late-stage capitalism version of the game, the system has run out of normal ways to grow. to keep making stock prices go up every single quarter, companies have to start turning inward and destroying the very things that made them successful in the first place—their culture, their institutional knowledge, and their loyal, experienced talent.

and because human talent is usually a company’s most expensive line item, it always gets targeted first. and often, they’ll cut the most expensive, tenured talent (except themselves, of course). if they do hire people back later, it will likely be younger, cheaper and less experienced talent just to keep those margins high. maybe they over-hired, or maybe ai is encroaching faster than we thought. but in either case, the underlying question driving their boardroom decisions is always the same: how do we maximize shareholder value right now?

or, to put it more accurately, how do we manipulate our numbers this quarter to make a group of wealthy strangers feel better about our business?

why layoff communication sucks.

the reality is, they aren’t actually writing those emails to you. they are physically incapable of telling you the truth. remember, you don’t matter to them. they are writing to Wall Street. they know the memo will leak, or they will upload it themselves to their investor relations page, because the whole point is to assure their first love that they are taking decisive action to protect profits.

the best kept secret in corporate america is that leaders want you to think they know what they’re doing. but we all know that the they literally have no idea. you are the one doing the work, bringing your wisdom, expertise, relationships and actually making things happen. while a CEO is measured on their ability to maximize margins, they are equally measured on their ability to perform certainty. they are paid millions of dollars to convince the public, the board, and the team that they have a grand, flawless strategy, even when they are just flying completely blind. they are not allowed to be seen not knowing.

this is incredibly disorienting for you as an employee. you show up every day and see firsthand that the company is a total shitshow mess. you see the incompetence, the chaos, and the constant pivots. yet, when you get laid off — the person who actual did the work — you don’t get any real clarity because they can never break character. they are compensated for how tightly they maintain the illusion of control. they are paid actors.

so, the email they sent about why they’re laying you off this has to be fundamentally dishonest to you because they aren’t talking to you even though they claim to be. it probably contains the same soulless script every single time: decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take this lightly. but the truth is, these decisions are easy and light for them because not only do they not face the consequences, they make more based on how convincing they can be.

instead, they gave you some ambivalent corporate speak about how the business is strong and growing, or how they are going to handle you with care in the transition or that they have to make hard choices across the organization to keep delivering for customers, partners, investors and employees. notice the order of the stakeholders.

and then there is the absolute brutality of how it ends. one minute you are in the middle of a project, joking with your teammates on slack, and the next, your screen goes black. your email is cut off and your access is revoked. in a matter of seconds, years of your hard work – your blood, sweat and tears – your relationships, and your digital footprint are just erased.

this sudden digital exile is a deliberate corporate tactic disguised as security protocol. it is designed to isolate you so you don’t talk to your colleagues, stir up dissent, and more importantly to remind the remaining staff of how expendable they are too. but emotionally, it feels like being ghosted by an institution you gave your life to. it makes you feel invisible, like you never mattered.

this sudden silence isn’t a reflection of your worth; it’s just the final, cowardly act of a machine that doesn’t know how to look a human being in the eye when it breaks a promise.

why layoffs are so traumatic.

society has become completely numb to the real human story behind it all. the truth is, this moment is a catalyst for exponential levels of stress—the kind of prolonged stress that can lead to deep depression and even trigger physical cardiovascular or autoimmune responses in your body. it feels almost like a death that brings overwhelming grief – because it is – but it’s uniquely cruel because it is coupled with an immediate assault on your self-esteem and self-worth. it mixes up a potent, distressing psychological cocktail. and when you combine the financial uncertainty with a shrinking job market, the reality is that while it takes time to find a new role, it can take vastly longer to recover emotionally from the upheaval.

unprocessed trauma robs you of your agency. instead of making choices based on what you want for your future, your brain begins to dictate your life based entirely on what you fear from your past.

it changes your relationship with risk. your brain starts to misinterpret the unknown as inherently life-threatening, which can cause you to systematically avoid normal, healthy risks—passing up advancements or creative opportunities because staying small feels safer. or, if an opportunity feels too good to be true, you might subconsciously self-sabotage it, choosing chaos over peace because chaos is what you’ve been trained to expect.

it bleeds directly into your career choices, creating a layoff mindset. you might find yourself staying in a toxic or abusive job because you fear the unknown of a new company, or conversely, you might start quitting jobs at the first sign of minor tension just to leave before they can fire you. or you might swing the other way entirely, throwing yourself into unsustainable workloads and burning out, driven by a desperate, underlying belief that you are only safe if you are constantly producing.

it distorts how you handle your security and your money. it can trap you in a state of hyper-scarcity, causing you to obsessively hoard resources and deny yourself basic comforts or even medical care out of a terrifying feeling that total ruin is always just around the corner. or, it might push you toward impulsive, high-risk financial choices as a desperate way to self-soothe and regain a fleeting sense of control.

worst of all, it bleeds into your relationships and your boundaries. to avoid conflict or abandonment—which your brain now associates with danger—you might start people-pleasing, tolerating mistreatment, and saying yes to toxic demands because saying no triggers intense survival anxiety. or you might do the opposite, cutting people off and completely severing ties at the first sign of a normal disagreement, choosing to hurt others first before they can hurt you.

this is what is at stake. this is what that one act yesterday just triggered and initiated. while the machine may have taken your job yesterday, if you’re intentional, you don’t have to let it take your worth, your future or your power.

what you should do right now.

first, you sit with it. i know every survival instinct inside you is screaming at you to open LinkedIn, fix your resume, and start blasting out applications. your brain wants to fix the danger immediately. but i am asking you to just slow down for a second. sit in the quiet. let yourself be mad, let yourself grieve, and let the shock move through you. if you try to build a future today, you will build it out of fear. give yourself at least a few days where your only job is to simply exist.

second, you need to care for yourself like someone who has actually been through a traumatic event. because you have. this isn’t just unemployment—it’s a sudden, violent disruption to your safety. treat your body with immense gentleness right now. sleep when you are tired. drink water. step away from screens. do not treat yourself like a broken worker who needs to be optimized back into the labor market. treat yourself like a human being who just survived a crash.

and finally, remember that while the company and the culture of work is physically incapable of telling the truth, you can. you don’t have to carry their script anymore. you don’t have to pretend anymore, or that this is a blessing in disguise. when people ask you how you are doing or what’s next, give yourself permission to say the truest, most liberating words in the human language: i don’t know.

saying i don’t know is how you break the illusion. it’s how you tell the system that you refuse to perform certainty for them anymore and create room for something better to flow in.

you don’t know what’s next, and that is completely okay. the future will come, and you will prosper. but for right now, know that you are loved, you are not alone and you will be ok.

sending u so much love,

m

p.s.

1. if you know someone who’s been impacted, one of the kindest things you can do is help them understand it wasn’t about them. pls share, text, dm with the people you love.

2. we love and recommend our Substack friend, ’s newsletter Laid Off. she’s built this cool space that demystifies the whole layoff culture by profiling all of the cool and wonderful people (like you) who get laid off every day.

3. thank you to my friend for being my thought partner on this 🤍

we were sitting in the dark red theater room, completely in awe and gushing over every detail. the storyline. the references. the music. the hair. the clothes. the pacing. we could feel the intentionality emanating through the screen.

the sheer level of detail they put into this is insane, Kevin remarked.

as the facetime ring chimed into the empty room, i asked, what are people saying on Threads?

Threads is the ultimate, unapologetic court of public opinion, governed exclusively by Black culture. it can be a brutal place for content. but as Kevin scrolled, his face lit up. my timeline is completely eating it up, he said, surprised and delighted. i’m only seeing great things.

Jasmyn didn’t pick up, so i fired off a text instead: bravo, Jas! so, so, so well done.

we walked out of the screening room and into the bright morning light of the kitchen to start breakfast. it was still early on a Saturday, but the anticipation to watch the show had been building for months.

our friend, former coworker, and—for me—former employee was now a powerhouse Netflix content executive. she had just released her most daunting project to date: reviving A Different World, a crown jewel in the Black television archives. working alongside the legendary Debbie Allen and showrunner Felicia Pride, Jasmyn had taken a massive risk. in the streaming era, it takes years to lovingly develop a series, but only a few seconds of viral critique to kill it.

because we’ve walked alongside Jasmyn since her early Netflix days in 2017, we were fiercely rooting for it to succeed. not only was it a triumph, it was a certified hit. in less than a week, the series pulled off the ultimate streaming miracle: a Season 2 renewal in a landscape where almost everything gets canceled.

laying on the couch in our pajamas, coffee mugs in hand, we had an absolute post-game debrief about what we’d just witnessed, completely beaming with pride.

man, she killed it, Kevin said. she did it again. she’s just a hitmaker. taking on a legacy title like that, with audiences as brutal as they are today? it’s a spectacular feat.

we’ve both borne witness to her genius for years. we saw it first when she was building Strong Black Lead, and later when she made an unprecedented leap from Netflix’s marketing and social teams straight into the white tower in the sky—the actual content team. it was a corporate crossover virtually unheard of in Netflix history.

yeah, but she’s always been entirely clear about who she is and what she’s here to do, I replied. she knows her voice. i remember when we first interviewed her years ago; she had a literal checklist of things she was going to accomplish. right at the top of that list was making comedies.

Kevin smiled, tossing a glance over his coffee mug. well, look at it this way—she’s actually been making comedies this entire time. it just started with six-second gifs at GIPHY. now, she’s just doing it in long-form.

it was October 2017, and i was sitting in a window seat on a flight from Los Angeles to Portland. a dear friend had asked me to give a talk at the Adidas Black ERG (employee resource group). i turned it into a day trip to fit my chaotic schedule, eager to see the Adidas headquarters, make good on the favor, and hopefully score a couple of hard-to-find pairs of Yeezys that were popular at the time.

looking out at the blue skies and an infinite floor of puffy clouds, i was grateful for the rare space to think. i was nearly six months into my own role at Netflix, and it felt like drinking from a fire hose. as I finally took a minute to breathe, the mandate became clear. i needed to make one of my first key hires to prove out a brand-new approach to marketing and storytelling. the company was scaling rapidly, growing its slate of original content at an unprecedented pace. when i started, Netflix produced maybe 20 new originals a year; that number was projected to balloon to 1,500 titles annually within four years.

after embedding with our content, research, data science, consumer insights, product, and leadership teams, we developed a strategy that had never been executed in entertainment. we were going to build an internal editorial function— Condé Nast meets BuzzFeed built for social—and create distinct audience verticals to support the business.

we decided to start with black culture and our vertical Strong Black Lead. our data showed that while Netflix actually hosted more Black titles and talent than the rest of Hollywood combined, Black audiences didn’t view the platform as their cultural home. we needed to build a space that changed that perception—a place to find best-in-class representations of their stories. that was pretty much all we knew. we knew we couldn’t be purely editorial, nor could we be aggressively brand-heavy. we had to live somewhere in the middle, where the storytelling was powerful enough to stand on its own, yet subtly and seamlessly tied back to Netflix.

our recruiting teams began building a pipeline of potential candidates, and i started taking introductory calls. nobody moved me. none of them felt like the visionary this effort demanded. i was looking for a rare hybrid: someone who could act as equal parts editor-in-chief, creative director, and cultural strategist. and most importantly, someone who was obsessed with tv and film. it was a massive, almost unfair ask. we needed someone to invent a completely new model of entertainment storytelling from scratch and have the confidence and conviction to make me believe they could actually pull it off.

before boarding, i had grabbed the latest copy of Fast Company—my favorite magazine at the time and a staple for my travels. somewhere over the clouds, as I flipped through pages covering the intersection of tech and media, a photo caught my eye. it was of Jasmyn Lawson. at the time, she was GIPHY’s Culture Editor. the profile highlighted her work driving original content and curation. she explained that she saw a massive, ignored opportunity to put Black faces, voices, and humor at the forefront of digital expression. because no one else was doing it, she just took it upon herself. GIPHY ended up creating the Culture Editor role just for her, where she was essentially clipping six-second Black stories and shaping the internet’s cultural vocabulary.

my eyes lit up as a wave of gut confirmation hit me: this is our girl. she looked cool, she looked fun, and she was obviously brilliant. i took a photo of her page in the magazine and fired it off to our recruiting team. they were the CIA of talent—if you existed, they could find you. when they finally tracked her down, we discovered a fascinating detail: Netflix had already reached out to her twice for traditional creative marketing roles, and she had turned them down both times. in an era where Netflix offered legendary compensation packages to new hires, saying no twice spoke volumes about her clarity and self-worth. we found one of her tweets, had the main Netflix account publicly engage with it, and then slipped into her DMs with a simple message: someone wants to meet you.

when we finally got on the phone, the conversation just flowed. it didn’t feel like an interview; it felt like catching up with one of my homegirls. Jasmyn was hilarious—the kind of funny where she isn’t even trying to be, but completely knows she is. we were laughing hysterically as she walked me through her work story. when she got to GIPHY, she explained how she had noticed GIFs becoming the new universal language, yet no one was clipping the most iconic moments in Black television and culture. she walked me through one of her very first viral clips: Issa Rae at the Emmys saying, i’m rooting for everyone Black. it was a moment i used constantly; i had even bought a sweatshirt with that exact phrase. Jasmyn hadn’t waited for permission. she just started finding moments she loved and wanted to share with her friends. and of course it worked, and her vision changed the trajectory of GIPHY and they built a role and team around her. it was brilliant.

the deeper we got into her work, her clarity was striking. i’m here to make comedies, she told me. to make people laugh and bring us together through content. she explained that as a kid, she watched an inordinate amount of television. but while most parents would have restricted that screen time, her mother, Patrice, recognized something deeper at play. this wasn’t passive consumption; Jasmyn was studying the craft. it never slowed her down academically, either. a straight-A, star student, Jasmyn eventually took her talents to Spelman College before breaking into the entertainment industry almost immediately after graduation.

i had an overwhelming feeling that she knew exactly where she was going. i realized that if i gave her the right context, the proper resources, and unwavering support, i could simply follow her lead and together, we could build something extraordinary.

after a grueling gauntlet of eight interviews across multiple departments, the feedback on Jasmyn was mixed. some flagged a lack of experience. others argued we needed someone with a track record beyond tweets and GIFs. but the ultimate decision rested with me, and I completely disagreed with them.

my conviction was solidified during one of our final conversations. we were discussing her vision for the content she wanted to create, and she brought up The Crown—Netflix’s flagship drama about the British royal family. it was one of her favorite shows. she explained that on Sunday nights, her ritual was to draw a bath and do her full, hours-long wash day routine while watching the series.

that would be the first video I’d make, she told me. she wanted to show exactly how Netflix inherently fit into the intimate, real lives of Black women.

it was the beautiful simplicity of making something that reflected the absolute truth of her life. she wasn’t trying to engineer content that a generic audience might love; she was making things she loved, rooted in her own lived experience. that single concept didn’t just reimagine what we could build for Strong Black Lead—it redefined the boundary of what was possible for all of Netflix’s brand and editorial work.

from that moment on, it became our ultimate creative filter: is this the truth of your story? does this represent your real life experience? if not, it’s not yours to make.

that video inspired by The Crown became our first massive breakthrough. from there, Jasmyn didn’t just manage Strong Black Lead; she built it into the definitive cultural blueprint and one of the most coveted platforms on the internet for Black talent to be featured and celebrated. she created iconic series like Strong Black Legends, Hey Queen and the popular podcast, Okay, Now Listen.

but her influence stretched far beyond social media. recognizing a gaping demand, she collaborated with the acquisitions team to license the legendary UPN library of Black sitcoms. The Parkers was one of her favorite shows growing up that reminded her of her relationship with her mom. she said, i wanted to rewatch it, saw it was available and asked if we could buy it and the content team said yes. that acquisition, that included Moesha and Girlfriends, was a pioneering masterclass in content acquisition, proving once and for all what happens when you build for the audience first and curate the things you love.

after a few years with us, Jasmyn’s trajectory shifted again. she had masterfully scaled her work from six-second loops at GIPHY to Instagram- and YouTube-length original series. one day, while presenting the Strong Black Lead strategy to cross functional teams, history repeated itself. just like that afternoon over the clouds when i stumbled on her photo in Fast Company, Jasmyn was discovered all over again. this time, an exec on the content team took notice. she needs to be making shows for Netflix, they realized.

with that, she made an unprecedented leap from marketing and social straight into series development. suddenly, she was championing and shepherding full-length scripted comedies, managing massive titles like Michelle Buteau’s Survival of the Thickest, The Vince Staples Show, and Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever.

despite the massive scale of her new domain, her creative compass and process never drifted. she still filters every project through the exact same thesis she pitched to me all those years ago: making comedies rooted in the absolute truth of her lived experience.

back on our couch, Kevin set his coffee mug down as Threads continued to overflow with praise for her latest masterpiece. the entire show just felt so unmistakably like Jasmyn. you could see her essence all over it, clearly influenced by her own days walking the yard at Spelman College and navigating the AUC. every single thing she loves is baked right into the screen: the specific nuance and perils of modern dating, the meticulous casting of fine men, the cultural shorthand. it was handled with the exact same hyper-specific care, love, and intention as when she was clipping six-second GIFs at GIPHY.

as her practice deepens, her stage just gets bigger without her ever having to chase the spotlight. she showed us that the real masterpiece isn’t the hit show or the rapid Season 2 renewal—it’s her unwavering process. she gave us a blueprint for how to build a career on your own terms, showing everyone that when you anchor yourself in the absolute truth of who you are, the world will always follow your lead.

go Jas, go.

sending u so much love,

m

this email is exclusively for those of you who opted in to be part of the conversation club—including everyone who joined us for Careless People in September, and those who opted in for Colin Kaepernick’s The Perilous Fight for October.

the size of our club doubled this month from 24 to 50 members! we are so excited to have more voices in the mix because more people means richer conversations. please bear with us as we grow; we’re figuring out the best ways to keep this space deeply engaging, close-knit, and useful for everyone involved as we scale up.

inside you’ll find everything you need to get started:

• October pick: a quick look at Colin Kaepernick’s powerful memoir

• monthly cadence: the weekly rhythm and our Sunday group chat details.

• guest curator: meet our co-pilot for the month—she's a massive Colin K fan, Niner Gang, and an absolute powerhouse who is going to help us dig into deeper truths (scroll down to meet her!)

• book request: how to grab a copy this week if you need one.

October pick: Colin Kaepernick, the Perilous Fight

it’s a powerful, uncompromising blend of personal reflection and social manifesto that explores the true cost of his convictions. the book charts his life from growing up as a Black child adopted by a white family in California, navigating constant resistance to his identity, to using sports as a safe proving ground that ultimately led him to the Super Bowl. it builds toward his pivotal September 2016 decision to take a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality, pulling back the curtain on the ensuing corporate and political backlash from the NFL that ultimately exiled him from the sport. this memoir provides an ideal foundation for discussing the intersection of institutional power, professional sports, the heavy emotional and career toll of civil rights activism, and what it truly means to stand up for systemic change.

weekly conversational rhythm

We love keeping the conversation warm all month long. and we’ll be chatting in the private substack group chat, ftl convo club. the ftl team and our guest curator will be dropping casual prompts into the chat to spark sharing and keep us connected.

every Sunday at 9:00a est, the group chat officially opens up for everyone to chat freely about that week's recommended reading segments.

here’s the recommended weekly reading guide to help pace the book, but remember—it’s entirely a recommendation. life happens, so please go at your own pace, read whenever fits your schedule, and just jump into the conversation whenever you’re ready.

the live discussion will take place on wednesday, October 28, at 7:30p est. it should be on your calendars!

October’s guest curator

we’re trying something new and adding a guest curator to the mix. they are chosen for their deep passion for the month’s theme and commitment to our space. partnering with the FTL team, they will drop weekly prompts, share real-time reflections to help us all get vulnerable, and co-host our live meetup at the end of the month.

meet Halleemah Nash, our guest curator for the month! if you caught our last live meetup, you already know she completely lit up the room—especially when we announced we’re diving into Colin Kaepernick’s memoir. as a massive Kaepernick fan and proud SF niner gang member, Halleemah brings the perfect energy for this powerful read.

by trade, Halleemah is a heavy-hitting social entrepreneur with 15+ years of experience leading talent initiatives for the NBA, Nike’s Jordan Brand, PUMA, Savage X Fenty, and icons like Nipsey Hussle and Kendrick Lamar. but if you ask her, she sums it up best: i do cool shit in cool spaces with cool humans.

underneath the impressive accolades—including being named to Forbes’ The Culture 50 Champions—Halleemah is fundamentally a strategic incubator of human capital. she builds the communal infrastructure for anyone who has ever felt like they didn’t belong or had to shrink their truth to fit in. she is all about creating safe spaces, navigating the costs of authentic expression, and helping us show up as empowered, honest people.

we are sending books out this week…

if you need a copy of The Perilous Fight to participate, we’ve got you covered. this is a needs-based opportunity, and because we operate on absolute trust, there is no verification required—if you need a book, we will happily send you one. to receive your copy, please fill out your delivery info in this Google Form by this Friday.

see u in the chat!

sending u so much love,

m+k

that’s what this moment feels like.

at the beginning of Sept, we were obsessing over Careless People and how crazy of a story it was. we asked if anyone else wanted to read along and 25 of you said yes. so we created a reading guide, threw together a group chat, mailed out some books and just started talking about it.

when we hosted the Careless People live virtual meetup earlier this week, we realized we were just doing what Kevin and i have always done: finding an intriguing story about work, obsessing over it, and breaking it down. only this time, we invited you into the room.

for those who were there, you know that it just felt refreshing to see each other’s faces and not have these parasocial relationships (thank u for this Johanna) where we put out all this content, talk in the comments, but we don’t really get to know you and your story.

it just felt like a rich space where to reflect on this insane work story about the Meta and also hear your work stories, what you’re wrestling with and laugh together.

in a world with so much content…it was refreshing. It felt like water.

so, we are going to keep doing it.

our official October pick and more details are at the bottom but first, we wanted to tell you a story about how we got here…

i was smoking a joint, reading the bible when…

there is no one I have talked to more in my life over the last five years than Kevin Stuckey. we consume a massive amount of content together—books, culture, conferences, documentaries, competition shows and the bible. if it’s based on a true story, we love it.

Kevin and I worked together at Netflix, but we didn’t actually spend much time together until I was leaving in 2021. after I left, we started catching up casually on the phone. at first, we just talked about content. we read the same books, loved the same authors, and attended the same conferences. we quickly realized we shared core values and saw the world through a similar lens.

for instance, when The Last Dance came out in summer 2021, everyone was obsessing over Michael Jordan. but he was the only other person who shared my exact hot take: Phil Jackson was the real star of the show. he’s the ultimate common denominator. he coached both MJ and Kobe, and he's the only one with eleven rings. we got so passionate about it that we actually hosted a Clubhouse room to discuss it.

the more we talked, the more we realized, we don’t just have the same takes, but we share similar pain, frustrations, disillusionments, work and hope for the future.

by August 2022, it had been about six months since i left Clubhouse. i was deep in seeking mode and could not imagine going back into corporate but was unclear of what i was building towards and what was coming next. i was in the thick of my divorce. i was living off savings. my daughter and i had just moved into a house in Atlanta with my mom after my parents’ divorce. some of my deepest and core friendships were falling apart. everything that felt familiar and that i knew was gone.

Kevin was in a completely different world. he was in LA, surrounded by people but also lonely in a way. he was praying for community. and not just people to hang out with, people who were willing to actually go there. people who would sit in the real stuff, not just skim the surface.

Kevin and I had been talking every single day by then. he’d call me before work on the west coast — him still in it, me freshly out of it — and we’d just talk. about what it felt like to be under suppressive leadership. about the weight of it. about how wrong it all felt. he was contemplating his next move. i was on the other side of the country, freshly out of the system, and we were both realizing we were going to need community in a different way than we ever had before.

we didn’t know it yet — but we were each other’s answered prayers.

on a hot day in August, a week before my birthday, i was home alone. my daughter was away at summer program and my mom was traveling somewhere. i was smoking a joint, reading the bible when I got convicted to call Kevin to check in.

he said he was on vacation. but he hadn’t gone anywhere. he needed the week to catch his breath from the chaos at work.

and so we did what we had done for the last 18 months. we just started talking. and something about this call that just lingered. we were laughing until we cried. we were feeling something we hadn’t felt in a long time — connected. alive. reminded that this is what life is supposed to feel like. and somewhere in the middle of it all, it came out of both of us at the same time. we spend 70% of our lives at work. and there’s no way God designed this for us to suffer like this or to feel like we need to constantly escape our lives. there’s gotta be a better way.

so we made a decision. right there, on the phone, we decided we were going to leave everything we knew behind. we were going to stop complaining about what could have been and see what it felt like to live and work according to God’s design.

that became the start of everything we’re existing in now. in our ignorance, we thought it would be fast. we thought we’d just go and arrive. but what unfolded was a journey — a long, disorienting, sometimes punishing journey that neither of us had a name for yet. it felt like being in a car driving somewhere we couldn’t see, with no destination on the screen. just us, the road, and our faith. we didn’t know what was coming next. we didn’t know if what we were feeling was supposed to happen or if something had gone terribly wrong.

but we had each other.

we need to talk it out…

our deep friendship grew out of a specific season of disruption. and none of our growth would have happened if we hadn’t been talking so intensely and so frequently. there is something miraculous that happens when you have a safe space to process your thoughts, have your experiences mirrored back to you, and tell the raw truth about what you are feeling.

and as people start leaving broken systems to make the journey toward their best work—toward their metaphorical and literal promised land—it gets incredibly lonely. the sheer amount of structure and people that get pulled away from you is the most underestimated part of the transition.

some of us are choosing to leave the old model of work and others are being forced out. remote work culture means the casual hallway chats with colleagues you love are gone. and we’re not going back because we refuse to subject our bodies and minds to toxic work environments anymore. but in protecting ourselves, we accidentally lost the community part.

to make it harder, when you are in motion and evolving, you lose people you love. and it’s not because they are bad people, it’s usually a timing issue. you might be ready to move into your next before they are, or they might prefer to stay safe where they are.

and when you are forced to process historic, systemic trauma entirely inside your own head, you can’t heal alone. but the good news is that when you are willing, and in motion – no matter how small the progress – new people show up to meet you exactly where you are.

and we hope our container, this conversation club, can be a place to meet your person or your people. people who hold space for who you were, honor who you’re becoming now, who deeply care about serving and solving problems, are on the same journey and walking at the same pace.

it’s the thing that made the difference for us.

welcome to the ftl conversation club

ok, so here’s how we’re going to turn the comment section into a monthly meetup…

monthly cadence. every month, we will curate content for us to consume together. we are looking for true stories about our work and they can come from any industry. it could be a whistleblower story like Careless People, a documentary about an iconic sports coach, a podcast about the state of work, a scripted comedy from the past. anything. but the goal is to talk about our universal human experience through the lens of our work.

guest curators. we will be looking for people in the community who care and are well versed on the topics we choose to help us curate the conversation for the month and help lead the conversation.

the group chat. leading up to our live meetup, we will host a private, ongoing substack group chat where we drop clips, thoughts, and real-time reflections as we discuss together. this will only be for people who have specifically said they’ve opted into wanting to be a part of the club. we also will have a separate email list (they’re called substack segments) where we can send more information if we need to.

the live meetup. once a month, we’ll do a face-to-face gathering to unpack the topic, tell our truths, and connect live with each other. right now, our meetups will be virtual, but we hope it grows into something that can start being irl. who knows, maybe at some point the subjects of the stories will join us.

so if you are interested in being added to the group chat and the separate club email list, comment below, “add me to the club” and we’ll get it handled from there.

October ftl pick

in September, we dissected the toxic corporate environment of Careless People, watching Sarah Williams navigate a broken system. in October, we are pivoting to study the exact opposite energy. someone who looked a broken system and injustice in the eye and gave up everything for his beliefs.

our official October pick is Colin Kaepernick’s new memoir, The Perilous Fight.

over the course of the month, we are going to study what it actually looks like to walk away from a structure to stand up for what you believe in. because he was just on a major press run, we’ll be using our group chat to curate his latest interviews, break down his Netflix series Colin in Black & White, and share a recommended reading guide to anchor our thoughts. it all leads up to our live face-to-face gathering on Wednesday, October 28 at 7:30p est.

we’ll officially kick off next week so let us know by the weekend if you’re down to join this month.

we are so grateful for to the 25 of you who first said yes and for those who joined the meetup this week.

can’t wait to keep chatting.

sending u so much love,

m + k

and i say we because this is a collective celebration. nobody does anything alone. i am so grateful for Kevin—my best work and journey partner—we do all of this work together. i am also incredibly grateful for my dear friend, workmate, and the subject of this article, Lexi. lex and i have worked together for nearly a decade, and i am so happy i got to share a part of her iconic story. to our friends and family, our support system, walking with us as we attempt to do things differently, serving as our listening ears and thought partners.

and to all of you who take time out of your busy and burned out days to read this, comment, engage, share, and talk about it with others: thank you. we know we have a community of the most amazing, purpose-driven, service-oriented, and visionary leaders who are here to help shift the world for the better. those of us who know there has got to be a better way.

i know we are celebrating this like we just found out we were a first-round draft pick in the NFL, but let me tell you something: on this journey of becoming – this journey of doing work and life a new way – you have to stop and celebrate your progress. build a pillar of remembrance for how far you’ve come, because no one else will do it for you.

so yes, WE are live on The Cut.

and as thrilled as we were for this to happen, we were as equally, if not more, thrilled to tell you the story behind it…

ok, so back in the 2023 / 2024 timeframe, we had (what i’m now referring to) as a venture-backed startup studio to build tech products that would help us better understand each other at work. and in fall of 2024, we had hired this incredible woman and friend, Jennifer Pauline (JP), to help us build out an events based go-to-market strategy for the app we were working on at the moment called, why?! (rip). it was a cross between we are not really strangers meets Hinge but for friends and coworkers.

JP is a master curator, intimate events producer, and the coolest girl ever. she had lined up all of these creator-led brands – like Hike Clerb, Alex Hill from Food & Feelings and WeTheUrban – events for us to integrate our app and to sponsor the events. JP was also hosting her own event in Toronto, called Women In Charge that would feature a panel of amazing women including Natalie Manuel-Lee, Sandrine Charles and Lindsay Peoples (EIC of The Cut).

so, in October 2024, we flew up to sponsor the event and hang out with the crew. jp had organized a dinner, and it was my first time meeting these incredible women. as you all know, i’m super awkward and always at home these days, so i was just thrilled to listen to their conversations and learn more about them, their work, and their lives.

midway through the dinner, jp says, maya, tell Lindsay about your mission to change the culture of work.

jp is the ultimate wingwoman. i caught the unspoken look she gave me, which basically said: hey babe, be ready to pitch, because who knows—the app you’re working on could get featured. which obviously would’ve been huge for us.

and for everyone who is building or trying something new, you quickly realize that every single conversation is an opportunity to pitch. it’s so incredibly cringe and awkward to figure out which version of your elevator pitch you’re going to give. you often stumble over your words, overthink your phrasing, second-guess yourself in real time and pray it lands. i did none of it gracefully. so, after what felt like 10 minutes of me rambling, Lindsay simply responded, ok, nice.

of course, i immediately spiraled, thinking: that was terrible, maya. why didn’t you say this? why didn’t you highlight that?

but i let it go, reminding myself that we were really there to support the event anyway.

later that night, i can’t remember who, but someone wanted to explore the nightlife in Toronto. we ended up at this cool lounge and club. which, by the way, was the last time i was in a club. but it was a fun girls’ night out where we were dancing, having a few drinks, and genuinely having a good time.

maybe an hour into it, Lindsay approached me to ask more about what we were working on, how it worked, and the vision behind it. i immediately felt like: ok, this is my redemption moment from the dinner earlier. so i sobered up out of my tequila haze and just started going in on the problem we were trying to solve. i talked specifically about all the ways work is failing us, why the system is broken, and how our app was just one attempt at solving it. i explained that this was life’s work for us, and on and on.

i got to know her better that night and was so impressed by her worldview, how she approaches her work, and everything she has to navigate every day. to me, the cut has become the gold standard of editorial, and she has shaped that publication into an absolute force, leading the critical conversations we need to be having around work and power.

the next day, the event was amazing and we all left and went our separate ways.

since then, we have spun up and spun down ventures, with each one hoping, this will be the thing. and this summer, i surrendered deeper into this journey. there have been many yeses. yes to leaving corporate. yes to following God with my whole heart. yes to committing my life to the mission. yes to a lot of things. i’ve learned God wants perpetual yeses.

so this summer, the yes was letting go of how it’s going to happen and releasing myself from the outcome. instead, it was a yes to focus on falling in love with the practice and the craft that’s being developed in me right now that’s meant to help advance the mission.

and one of the ways i’m being called to advance the mission is through storytelling. while i have been on Substack for a couple of years, i’ve been very inconsistent. i’ve had seasons where i’m all in. and seasons where i’ve convinced myself it doesn’t matter. the truth is, i didn’t fully see myself as a creative, a writer, or a storyteller. so, on June 22, i wrote i’m so tired of being disappointed, where i shared out loud this new direction from God—that we were going to write a true story about work every single week, and that i was going to finally come into full agreement with this identity.

on July 7, after just two weeks of a consistent writing practice, Lindsay dm’ed me this:

and then it went quiet… and it was like, ok, maybe that was just a wink from God to say, keep going, you never know who’s watching.

but on August 5, nearly two years after the awkward conversation in Toronto, i got an email from her that opened with:

I was reading your Substack and kept thinking about our conversation from a while back, and I wanted to ask whether you’d have interest in writing for The Cut more formally.

and Sept, 22, our first piece went live.

we have had so many wonderful discussions with her team about writing about the culture of work, and specifically, newly hired culture and essays editor Lauren Puckett-Pope, who’s here on Substack y’all. they are looking for writers and Substack is a well of talent, ideas and wisdom. hopefully this will continue to become a rich relationship and collaboration. i’ll share more details as we have them.

i’m convinced everything we desire is on the other side of cringe—and on the other side of practicing through the cringe. i have written about so many cringe things: friendships that failed, my period, being humiliated at shiny sisterhood fest, my body raging against me…

i am not a formally trained writer. i have never worked with a publication like this before. i’ve never received a pitch to write. i’ve never pitched in my life. all of this is new. and it all feels cringe, again. just like everything else on this wild and crazy journey.

but we’ve been in practice. and they wouldn’t have been able to see us if we weren’t in the gym, practicing out loud.

so surrender. surrender to God, to your mission. focus on the practices and allow yourself to feel all of the messy, uncomfortable and unbearable feelings that come with letting yourself be seen in the work…seen trying, the best, most exciting things are on the other side.

to climbing cringe mountain!

sending u so much love,

m

we are now in an era that we call the trust economy. because we’ve been lied to everywhere – at work, by the government, technology, friends, relationships, etc… – people don’t trust each other. so as you’re building towards something, radical honesty and transparency become your most valuable currency to build relationships with those you are meant to serve.

for those that are new or maybe don’t remember, i made a commitment 12 weeks ago to be in consistent practice of writing the truth of my work story. this began June 22, 2026, with this essay…

long story short, we ( and i) are on a journey to live and work according to God’s design. so far, following the world’s way of work and life has led to burnout, chronic disappointment and un-fulfillment. so we gave up the world’s way and left corporate in 2022 to follow God with our whole heart and whole life. we sold everything, downsized our lives and started to ask vigorously, what are our lives an answer to?

over the last four years, we’ve discovered that we are here to help change the culture of work. which means telling the truth about the current state of work, helping more people recover from their workplace trauma, helping them understand what their real work is and helping them get into expression by focusing on the practices (not outcomes) that will get them there.

one of the things i’ve discovered on this journey is that i’m a writer and a storyteller. hence, i’m the current narrator of ftl. i finally claimed my new found identity and Substack has become our “gym,” a space to practice radical honesty, build my creative endurance, and rawly process my journey in public every six weeks or so.

the last update was July 21…

here’s what’s happened since then…

latest stats and milestones

the only focus to date has been to be consistent in writing. and i’m happy to say we’ve done that! i tend to be someone who has big vision and because of that vision i do too much too soon. so i’ve had to really restrain myself to not worry about distribution, or metrics or even care if the writing is good yet. what started as a once a week practice has increased to writing twice a week. we’ve stayed consistent despite traveling, visitors and all the distractions.

and a reminder, we’re not optimizing for growth, we’re optimizing for consistency of practice.

what we’re learning about substack

substack continues to be one of the more interesting platforms i’ve played on. we like substack because there’s a great return on your investment here. good writing is good thinking. so being in practice of writing grows you while you grow your audience. plus, you get to own your audience through subscribers that you can reach directly. and there’s built in discovery to grow on the platform with the 35m+ people who are active here.

1. 70% of our subscriber growth comes from notes. substack is like a neighborhood. notes is like being outside of your house and hanging out with your neighbors having casual conversations. and articles are like the unique interior design of your home. people meet you outside first and then come take a peek at your house to see if they want to stay awhile. don’t expect massive subscriber growth off of your articles. i think this will change when we really start thinking about external distribution, but we’re not there yet.

2. there’s a massive delayed gratification and response to content here. when you post something on other platforms, you will know within the first 10 min or hour whether or not it has “heat” and will travel. on Substack, there are notes i’ve posted that have taken off 5 days later, 10 days later or 15 days later. this is really important to understand because you can’t get discouraged if you don’t see engagement right away because we’ve been conditioned on other platforms to know if something “worked” immediately. here, it’s really interesting to think about what you want to say and then let it go. it changes your orientation with content to not perform for other people’s response, but to really just explore your own thoughts and creativity. i think it’s a really good thing.

3. many people will come and go on substack. i can feel the waves of energy on the platform. substack is not a passive platform like the others. to do well here, you’ve got to really know where you’re going, what you’re in practice of and the thing you could talk about forever essentially. for us, that’s work and workplace stories. so there are an infinite amount of ways to keep exploring. but committing to a long-form platform requires discipline and investment that most aren’t willing to make. so keep going because the difference between you being successful or not is your consistency. that’s really it.

what we’re learning about the practice of writing

i’m so grateful that i focused on the practice and not what you all think about the writing because i would have stopped by now if that was the case. 12 weeks ago i didn’t have a consistent writing practice. now i’m writing about 5000 words a week.

4. the high is gone. the newness has fallen off and it feels like a memorialized discipline now. it doesn’t feel as hard anymore. it’s still torturous in the way writing is. but after writing so many truths about myself outloud, i feel myself becoming more brave and courageous in the creative process. i also find myself being way more honest in all conversations in my life. but there’s an empty void that happens after you release and birth something true about yourself. which is why you cannot be attached to the outcome. that’s not what you’re measuring yourself against. the only measurement that matters is, did you do it? and did you tell the truth?

5. writing more is causing me to want to study writers and storytellers. in addition to reading books i’m genuinely interested in, i’m currently reading books by Maya Angelou, Stephen King and Joan Didion. in the last month or so i’ve watched docs on Toni Morrison, Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Andre Leon Talley and The New Yorker. I’m fascinated by people’s approach to storytelling.

6. writing has reminded me that i wanted to be a journalist when i was younger. in high school, i said that i wanted to be the EIC of a magazine and own a production company one day. i was managing editor of the high school newspaper and i went to a journalism program at Northwestern when i was 16. it was so intense that i decided i didn’t want to do it anymore. and i wonder if that was just fear or a bad experience. regardless, there’s a childlike joy that comes from learning this space that feels nice.

unexpected things the practice has produced

7. we started a conversation club here on ftl. this was not planned at all. but after obsessing over how crazy Careless People was, we asked if anyone else was down to join. we now have a group chat of 25 ftl’ers who are reading together and preparing for a live virtual meetup later this month. it’s been so fun to get to know people on a deeper level. it made us think, what could happen if we did this monthly? we’re already eyeing the conversation content and topic for October. more to come there.

8. stories matter more than coverage. as part of experimentation, we started playing around with roundups and covering the news around the culture of work. turns out if you’re not breaking news or saying something that other people haven’t said, it doesn’t matter. it’s also not what you all are responding to. the true stories about work are what matter, build engagement (literally 10x more) and help people feel the most seen. so we’re probably going to stick to the personal / cultural essays as the main focus while allowing for more room to experiment with other formats.

9. we’re in deep discussions with a really cool editorial outlet. i mentioned this before, but you don’t know who’s watching what you’re doing. and actually, 95% of people are watching without commenting. so that EIC i mentioned before followed up and we’ve been talking with their team for something really fun. and the beautiful part is they are interested in what we are already doing. and regardless of what happens, the exercise and journey with them has reaffirmed that the practice is the point.

what we’re focused on next

10. getting better at headlines. slow and steady wins the race. the first focus was getting into a rhythm of writing and publishing consistently. now, the goal is to focus on better headlines. you can write your heart out but if you don’t have headlines that grab people or are relevant to them, they’ll never see it. so i’m tapping my editorial friends to do some headline writing bootcamps and noticing what headlines are most intriguing to me the most. thennnn, after headlines, we’ll think about broader distribution. but no sense in trying to share what you’re doing offline if you haven’t mastered the best way to frame the story.

11. start telling other people’s work stories. every time i share my story, someone else shares theirs. we have all experienced so much trauma and pain and work. and we need to share them out loud with each other so we can start healing collectively, know we’re not alone and learn new ways to overcome and be in expression.

our hope is that follow the leader continues to be a place where we can talk about the universal human experience through the lens of work, the thing we all most have in common and where we spend the most time. we can never say it enough, but we are so grateful you are here – reading, commenting, sharing and encouraging us in our journey. it means everything.

until the next update…

sending u so much love,

m

i’ve committed to writing twice a week. and i’ve set an expectation for myself that these articles need to go out early in the morning to hit your inbox. to arrive as you awake so you can have food for your soul before you begin the day. it’s actually a ridiculous thought when i write it on paper, but nonetheless that has been the thinking. and there’s also all the email optimization bs too. you know all of the experts who say people don’t check their email in the middle of the day, they’re working, busy or distracted. i don’t think that’s true.

but idc, y’all are getting this midday snack instead.

i’m an early riser most days. like, i’m a before 5a gal. and on writing days, i naturally wake up around 3:30a. Toni Morrison was right that the best writing happens early. so this morning, i naturally woke up at 3:42 am. but not with any enthusiasm or desire to write. i was bone tired. you know that kind of groggy tired where it feels like you are tossing and turning in cement? it was like that. so i said, ok, 30 more minutes. I woke up thinking it was 30 minutes, but now it’s 90 min later and now it’s 5:27a. at this point, i’m doing complex math in the dark. ok if i get up 15 minutes, i can get an outline done, take out the dogs, feed them, come back and shower and then bang something out by 8:30a. good plan, i think to myself. apparently, i dozed back off to sleep and when i woke up and grabbed for my phone buried in the blanket, the clock now said 7:14a. shoot! i missed the window. you know what, we’ll just skip today. nobody is checking for what we’re saying anyway. we’ll just get back on schedule on thurs.

at this point, i have been wrestling with myself for 3 hours.

so i sit up in bed and wonder, what is going on? i’m experiencing a level of resistance and fatigue that’s not normal. then i check my calendar. it’s day 26 of my cycle. which is my new day 28. which means that my hormones are at rock bottom. my uterine lining is experiencing a cellular death. my inflammatory chemicals are rising. my serotonin is at the lowest point of the month. i have elevated cortisol and histamine and my brain is literally experiencing neurochemical withdrawal. i feel like i’m hanging on by a thread. and everything requires extra effort.

but yes, let me please push through all of this to get a substack out by 9a.

i will be brief because i’m in late luteal…

this January, Kevin and I were on a work trip in LA. it was a big deal for us. and because we don’t get out to the west coast as often, we decided to pack it with dinners, gatherings, friend catch ups, the works. travel takes a lot of out of me these days. it gets me out of my rhythm, i eat foods i don’t normally eat, i’m up later than i like. and when you add in the time change, it’s not as exciting as it used to be when i was younger in my career.

by the last day, i was so overwhelmingly tired, bloated and irritable that i couldn’t wait to get home. which made me feel worse because i should have been enjoying this first-of-its-kind trip in our new venture. after our 8 hour travel day, we got back to the house, ordered Chipotle and decided to watch something on HBO Max and crashed.

the next morning, with every fiber of my being, i got up and told Kevin we needed to talk. and that despite having one of the best work trips we’ve had in our time working together, i told him that i was done. i couldn’t keep working like this anymore. that it had been great working with him, but it’s over. you could see the shock and dismay in his eyes because he could see the fury and seriousness in mine. i don’t remember the exact sequence of events or what exactly triggered me, but it didn’t matter.

i remember him being calm and saying, ok…

i then went into my room, shut the door and burst into tears watching the movie Rudy. i checked my period app and realized i was on day 2. i realized that this epic work trip happened during my monthly rock bottom.

i got up, told him i didn’t mean any of it. and i was sorry.

mind you, when i asked him earlier today what he remembered about the story where i said i couldn’t do this anymore and wanted to quit everything, he said in the most genuine and pure way, which time are you talking about?

every single system and every single workplace is designed around man’s 24 hour cycle. i got my period when i was 11. so that means for essentially the last 30 years of my life, i have been working against my inherent design. do you realize how insane that is?

we are expected to exist by their rules that ignore our biology. this is one of the primary reasons the workplace has to be reconstructed. because it asks 50% of its workforce to betray itself every day.

no but seriously, i should be able to sit in a meeting, and look Bob from accounting dead in the eye while he’s asking me to make major 3-year budget decisions, and just say:

sorry Bob. i’m on day 28 and in late luteal. the progesterone has left the building. i am experiencing severe cognitive decline and the tone of your questions is actively triggering a rage blackout. i’d be much better suited to answer this question in two weeks when I’m ovulating, full of estrogen, and at peak creativity and power. let’s reschedule for then, okay?

anything less than that is denying the truth of myself.

power comes from alignment. and if i’m asked to operate out of alignment with myself most days, then I’ll never, ever be able to experience true power.

imagine a bird who is designed to fly being reduced to live on the ground its whole life. it can never live up to its potential if it has to force itself to crawl, and then blame itself for not being fast enough.

and i think that’s what i was saying to Kevin that day… i can’t do it like this anymore.

i’m no longer willing to work against myself. i have to work in flow with myself.

since then, i’ve been aggressively and intentionally cycle syncing. not just the foods i eat, but also the work i do. there are some weeks that are great for creation. and there are other weeks that are better suited for reflection. and there are some days where i shouldn’t be talking to anyone. and i want to know what it feels like and what’s possible when i honor that and don’t push through anymore.

so i made a guide for Kevin and all the other men i work with at bestworks. it’s called, every 28 days: a field guide for men who work with women. i let them know that i’m going to be more honest and outspoken about my cycle because it impacts how i work. i have my cycle days on my calendar. this morning, we were on a call and i opened by saying, heads up, i’m on day 26.

he laughed, and said…ahh, ok. because he knows what it means.

if you want to send the guide to the men in your life, comment “every 28 days” and i’ll dm it to you.

the future of work is not about kicking men out of the workplace. it’s about reimagining one where both of our designs are honored and accounted for. we’re trying to build that at our company bestworks. will keep u posted on how it goes.

and before you make big life decisions, make sure to check the calendar.

sending u so much love (from bed),

m

this week, Jacob Coxon, a tech researcher who has worked at both Open AI and Anthropic, sounded the alarm that both companies are essentially gambling with our lives and that the technology could kill us all in the next 10 years.

it’s giving doomsday.

on one hand, thank you Jacob for speaking up. we need more people sounding the alarm on AI. i’ve still to yet to really see its benefits. so far, it’s causing unemployment, mass illiteracy, loneliness, depression, deteriorating the environment through massive energy and water use and now potential human extinction. but let’s please give it up for the ability to make a website in a single prompt.

on the other hand, i miss the days where there was a kind of blissful ignorance in not hearing about how horrible everything is, every single second, on every single platform. sometimes i wonder if we’re contributing to it too. here on ftl, we talk pretty frequently about how horrible the workplace is and all the ways it’s made us suffer.

but our real goal is not to just interrogate the suffering. while it is important to create space to mourn and grieve all the ways it harmed us, lamenting without a plan to step more boldly into our purpose just produces hopelessness. and we certainly don’t need more of that.

our real intention is for each of us to step into work that we were chosen and called to do. to ultimately not worry about what everyone else is doing, even the tech oligarch ai people.

that’s not your work. let God do what God does with people like them.

the real question is… are you in your work?

it was March 16, 2022, and i had just finished crashing out. the kind of hysterical, emotional breakdown where your whole body feels like it’s collapsing. i was sitting on the edge of my bed wondering how much more i could take. and then, because i had learned to betray myself in the name of professionalism, i wiped my tears, straightened my face, and pulled myself together just enough to hop on a Zoom call with a potential candidate for a company that i wasn’t sure i cared about or believed in anymore.

the candidate wasn’t even for my team, but leadership asked me to do whatever i needed to do to get him to join. Maya, you’re the closer! you’re SO good with people.

and they were right. i could make a skeptic believe. i was extraordinary at helping to align the mission of the company with the mission of the person. i’ve always believed work was so much more than just work. in the best-case scenario, work should be a calling. but after looking up the candidate and seeing he was Black, i realized this time it was because they thought i could relate to him better than the rest of the interview panel.

i had just crossed over my one-year anniversary at Clubhouse and posted a celebratory post on LinkedIn. i had moved from LA to Atlanta after a brutal divorce—the kind when your becoming threatens the person who promised to love you—still raw from the quiet gutting of my personal life. i was rebuilding a world i didn’t ask for while trying to hold together a career everyone expected me to thrive in. i had finally received my dream role: chief marketing officer of one of the fastest growing social media platforms in the history of tech. we were the leader in social audio, the new hot trend and tech invention of the moment.

when the founder and CEO slid into my DMs at the beginning of 2021, i didn’t believe it was real. the company was on a rocket ship type of trajectory and valued at over $4 billion. he was looking for someone to build out the marketing side of the business. i wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. something in me didn’t feel fully settled about the opportunity, but it also felt too big, too rare, too historic to pass up.

i happened to be friendly with one of Clubhouse’s leading investors, who told me on the phone, this is the fastest-growing company i’ve ever had in my portfolio. this is like Mark Zuckerberg calling you up in 2007. do you want to be employee number ten at Facebook?

i wasn’t sure I did, but how do you say no? every mentor I talked to confirmed that this would set me on a trajectory for the rest of my life. one, i guess, i should want to be on.

i was optimistic about what I thought Clubhouse could become. a platform where anyone, anywhere, could pick up a microphone and be heard. i imagined us becoming the YouTube of audio, a democratized stage where people could share their wisdom, their voice, their story, and build something meaningful from it. i’ve always been drawn to work that helps people operate in their genius and power, and at first, I felt like it might be the perfect vessel for that kind of purpose.

when the opportunity came from Clubhouse, i was also ready to leave Netflix, where I had spent the last five years. the streamer was one of the most formative chapters of my career. but over time, it became clear that while I loved the company, it didn’t love me back. I thought I was making a difference. I became known as a truth teller. people would joke, don’t invite Maya into the room if you don’t want to really hear the truth.

i took that as a badge of honor. i wasn’t afraid to call us out on our hypocrisies, blind spots, and the things i thought were getting in the way, because i wanted us to win. i loved it there. i would joke that I bled Netflix red. it was one of the most exhilarating and fulfilling work experiences i’ve ever had. it pushed me. challenged me. it expanded what i even knew was possible for myself. i always told the truth because it’s who I am, and because it was also a part of the culture. they said they wanted radical candor and real-time feedback. but at some point they stopped listening and didn’t want to hear it anymore. and it broke my heart because I really cared.

the growth opportunities I needed from them for me to stay kept being deferred. I was told again and again that my elevation into the highest levels of leadership was coming but the promises always had a caveat: not yet, not now, not quite. at one point, i was told i needed a master’s degree before I could get the promotion.

i replied, calmly, that I already had one, from Northwestern nonetheless,—a requirement none of my peers seemed to need. all while leading the highest-performing team in marketing, a category-defining, culture-shifting group that changed how entertainment marketed its work. we had the receipts, and the results were undeniable.

but the truth was, something else was stirring in me. marketing, storytelling, brand building was what i was known for. but the thread that had always run through every role, every team, every chapter of my career was the people part. i had noticed for years what felt like an epidemic of leaders in companies who simply didn’t care about the people doing the work. leaders who saw the people on their teams as machines and not nuanced, complex, beautiful humans with unique designs and gifts. it baffled me because great work can only happen through the people. if people are clear, aligned and cared for, the work will inevitably be great and everyone wins. i was grateful that early in my career I had been given leaders who saw me, nurtured me, and helped me grow. i never forgot what that felt like. and i never forgot what it cost when it was missing.

at Netflix, that awareness became something i lived out daily. seventy percent of my team were internal transfers. people found a home in the space I created. people would come to me with what was really going on in their lives. leaders from across the organization and around the world would find time with me, not for work strategy, but for something deeper.

i was listening. i was coaching. i was honoring their experience and also that the pain they were feeling was real. i was helping people understand who they were and what they were actually here to do. i had even begun quietly coaching executives inside Netflix outside of office hours and was building a steady conviction that most of our problems are connected to us not knowing what real our work is and leaders who don’t care about people.

i was being pulled or as some would say: called. and I was starting to see something. a vision. what if we built a new kind of place for leaders? a culturally forward, modern Aspen Institute. what if we could change the way people are led? what if everyone had access to a great leader? what could the world look like if everyone knew what their real work was?

but instead of answering the call, i let someone else’s vision become my own, again. i didn’t have language for what i was feeling—just a quiet, unfamiliar pull toward something I couldn’t yet trust. i could kinda see it. but, it felt too big, too ambiguous and too far away. and when something loud and shiny showed up and promised me everything i thought i’d been working toward and wanted right now, the whisper lost. Clubhouse swooped in and wooed me when i was most uncertain and most vulnerable.

it did mean so much to me to get that CMO offer after years of grinding and hustling to get to the mountaintop. it was rare to see a Black woman and single mother rise to those kinds of ranks. the modern workplace isn’t designed to see us thrive, so i knew what this meant—not just for me, but for anyone coming up behind me. this was supposed to be my big break. proof to myself that I was worthy. proof to everyone else that I could lead at that level. proof to the system that it couldn’t break me.

ultimately, i got seduced by the title, the money, and the possible mythology. the valuation was obscene. the numbers were wild. the chance to make generational, life-altering money was real. and the title was everything I thought I’d been working toward. i told myself this was moral work that aligned with my mission. i convinced myself I’d be making culture better, not just a tech product. but if I’m honest, alignment wasn’t the leading factor. it was the thrill of finally being chosen, validated and seen.

i knew immediately it wasn’t the right choice. but i was determined to make it into the best work of my life. i had to. i’d come too far, sacrificed too much, and the world was watching us. the first thing was to hire the dream team. we attracted top corporate athletes from Instagram, Spotify, TED, NPR, and Nike. the announcements shook the internet and we had what every brand desperately wants: attention. we were working seven days a week, doing way more work than i imagined or was used to. as employee number thirteen, there was no infrastructure or base operating system. everything had to be created from scratch.

when the panic attacks started, i knew i was in trouble. my body was screaming at me that this wasn’t right. this isn’t good for us! this isn’t what we were meant to do! but I didn’t listen; i kept trying to push through. i was breaking out in hives. i remember thinking, i didn’t even know Black people could break out in hives. my migraines got so bad I even had brain scans done because i was worried i had a tumor. i remember my parents saying to me, i don’t think you should want to be pushing through panic attacks. that’s not normal, Maya. something is off. something is wrong.

there’s a particular kind of heartbreak that hits when you finally arrive at the place you thought you always wanted to be. you get the title. the salary. the recognition. the seat at the table. and then you realize… you can’t even breathe. you did everything the right way. you kept your head down. you worked hard. you did what they said would pay off.

i was good to people. a safe space for everyone else. i gave generously, often at my own expense. i believed that if I followed the path long enough, i would finally feel unleashed—powerful, purposeful, fully expressed. but at this moment, at the height of my career, i felt small, suppressed, and sadly... shame. how did this happen? what did I do wrong? and I was furious.

i’d always been the strong one mentally, emotionally, spiritually. resilience was my story and my brand. i could pray through anything. push through anything. solve anything. but not this. this time, nothing was working. and I remember begging—begging God, begging my body—please, not now. don’t let me break now. not after seventeen years of grind, of sacrifice, of fighting for this moment.

even though i was hanging on by a thread, i mustered up the energy to put on that happy, serial-killer-like smile for Zoom for the candidate that day. i knew how to look convincing, even when i was falling apart inside. what i didn’t know was that this call—this small, ordinary, inconvenient call—would change the trajectory of the rest of my life.

hey, Carl, nice to meet you. can you hear me okay? great. so happy we could have this time together, I said as the Zoom window opened. my voice sounded steady, practiced. you’d never know i’d been crying ten minutes earlier.

great to meet you too. i’ve heard amazing things about you, he said, smiling warmly.

so, at this point, you’ve talked with everyone on the interview panel, i said, slipping into my well-rehearsed rhythm. i’m hearing you’re right on the edge of saying yes. talk to me… what’s keeping you from making the leap from Meta? anything I can help with or add that would help in your decision?

he took a deep breath. listen, he said, i think the work you guys are doing over there is great. i’ve loved meeting everyone on the team. but I just recently had a baby, and i’ve been thinking a lot about how much time we spend at work and how important it is in our lives. I give everything i am to it, which means spending a lot of time away from my family. for that to be worth it, it has to deeply align with who I am and what I’m here to do.

he paused. i have to know that this is my problem to solve. i have to feel like i was uniquely designed to tackle this issue. and to be honest, Maya… I don’t know if this is my problem to solve.

i was taken aback by his honesty. and by the simplicity of his thought process. he left me speechless. i just stared at him, genuinely confused about whether this was a candidate call or an intervention. i had never heard someone articulate a feeling I didn’t even know i’d been searching for language for.

and before i could gather myself, he asked me: how did you know this was your problem to solve?

the question hit me hard. because at that moment, i didn’t have an answer. and the truth was, by then everything around me was already collapsing. the company that had risen at a meteoric pace was struggling to hold itself together. the momentum had stalled. the identity was unclear. i was working around the clock trying to steady something i couldn’t see clearly, let alone stand behind. i was depressed. drinking every night. struggling to get out of bed. praying for a way out.

something finally broke. the emotions didn’t just ease their way in; they burst to the surface. everything i had been suppressing came rushing up at once. the exhaustion of daily warfare against a system designed to crush people like me, the impossibility of surviving that fight without knowing what my work truly was.

Carl had his answer. i didn’t have mine. i was fighting without an anchor, sacrificing without my deeper sense of why, ignoring every warning my body was screaming, and suppressing the truth i could see but wouldn’t say out loud: this isn’t working. and without that anchor, the resistance was destroying me.

his question gathered all of it into one inescapable truth: this isn’t my work.

Carl! no one has ever asked me that before, i blurted out, still wiping tears off my face. this is why i hate it here. it’s not the product; it’s not the people. it’s just… not my problem to solve.

he leaned back, eyes wide. oh wow, i didn’t know you hated it there. i thought you loved it.

we both broke into this deep, uncontrollable laughter.

Carl, I said, if you know this isn’t your work, you absolutely should not come here. and you don’t even realize it, but you just set me free. this conversation changed my life.

and it did. that day, on that Zoom, with this beautiful stranger named Carl—a man who worked in finance at Meta, who I was supposed to be closing— spoke a truth that opened up everything for me. his question suddenly became a doorway and a mirror all at once.

because two days later, a year after starting at Clubhouse, i called up the CEO and quit.

but you just posted on LinkedIn about your one-year anniversary and how much you love it! he said, confused, blindsided.

I know, I said softly. that was a lie. i’m sorry.

there is nothing that’s more important than getting into your work. it’s why you’re here on earth at this time. it’s why you were created. you were not created to just exist. that would be a waste of God’s genius, time and energy.

to be human is to be in suffering. but there are two kinds of suffering. one that aids in your growth. and one that is unnecessary. one that is connected to your work. and one that is not.

if the suffering you’re experiencing produces a better, higher version of you… more faith, trust, excellence, courage, wisdom, discernment, discipline, emotional maturity, resilience, grit, reverence, respect, care and compassion for others, love and radical selfless generosity…that’s good suffering that’s worth enduring. it’s the refining fire. this one happens when you are in the work you were created to do.

if the suffering produces a darker, lower version of you…cynicism, deep-seated doubt, suspicion, mediocrity and moral decay, cowardice, willful blindness, recklessness, instant gratification, addiction, depression, childish outbursts, fragility, quitting when things get hard, mockery, jealousy, envy, contempt or indifference towards others or toxic selfishness… that is unnecessary suffering. this one happens when you are not in your work and deeply out of alignment.

if you believe that we should not suffer at all, then you are in big trouble.

so based on what you’re currently experiencing… are you in your work?

sending u so much love,

m

usually, i wake up and write before 9a. i find the hours before the day starts are the most clear and where i experience the most flow. but this morning, i let myself sleep in and i missed the window. so i wrote what i could this morning. and then put it down.

we had a great Labor Day by the pool, with some organic red wine and wings, and started rewatching the Elizabeth Holmes show on Hulu thanks to that a24 trailer. then finished the night watching Coco kill it at the US Open.

apparently September is the month where everyone decides to lock in and get super focused. every year i feel like I see this trend on tiktok where people are like, hey, i’m about to lock in for the next 8 weeks and my life is going to be changed forever. it operates almost like a second new year for folks who need an external, seasonal motivation to get going.

and listen, i am a lock-in, double-down kind of girl. if you know me, you know i prefer to be at home, in my pajamas, hair in a bun, tinkering in my lab on ideas that will change the world.

but i’ve learned you can’t out-hustle your pain. you can’t out-work your trauma. and you can’t out-focus the truth.

and the truth is, you have no idea the damage the workplace and work culture has done to you.

work is the longest running relationship in our lives. and up until this point it’s probably been the most abusive. but so many of the day-to-day practices have been normalized, we don’t even realize how bad it’s really been. what we accept, participate in and endure at work are things that would never be acceptable anywhere else.

so the good news is you got out. and no matter how you left – whether they broke up with you or you broke up with them – please take time to process everything that’s happened before you get into a new relationship with work.

we work with the greats in their time of transition. and one of the biggest things we have to work with them on is deconstructing from the pace we learned in the workplace. we have to constantly remind them to slow down and reaffirm that they’re not going to be left behind. and that actually by doing more and moving too quickly, you just reinforce and reproduce all the things you don’t want and all the things you were frustrated by that creates a more devastating cycle of burnout and disillusionment that’s even more difficult to recover from.

oftentimes, the work you were doing prior to leaving is not actually the great work you’re meant to bring forth. but these revelations aren’t possible while you are in constant motion. you need space. you need time. you need to breathe. and you need a very specific kind of work therapy.

and because you are one of the greats. and we need you to be operating and expressing from a place of wholeness.

so in a world that is operating at an unsustainable pace, the most radical thing you can do is not lock in, but intentionally check out for a min.

quick story….

i historically have been the person who rolls quickly into the next thing.

my last day at Harpo / OWN was a Friday and i started at Netflix on Monday.

i gave three months notice at Netflix and started working for Clubhouse at night. my official last day of Netflix was a Friday. my official first day of Clubhouse was a Saturday. i know, i’m insane.

although i didn’t get asked to leave Clubhouse, my body was the one who pulled me out. it was spring of 2022, i was beyond exhaustion, in the midst of a wild divorce and knew it was time to leave. i also knew that i wouldn’t be looking for another job because nothing else was interesting or aspirational for me. i knew enough to know that my great work would somehow be connected to our work, the workplace and work culture. but that’s all i knew because i didn’t have any time to really contemplate anything else because i was working around the clock.

but just like i had done before, i just kept rolling into the next thing.

you know the question people ask, what would you do if money wasn’t an option? my answer was always to gather people for immersive experiences and retreats somewhere beautiful, like Maui, where we can collectively heal, tell the truth and figure out our real work and our lives. and before i had even left the virtual hallways of Clubhouse, i started planning to bring those dreams to life.

i assembled a small team of trusted people, hired a retreat producer and started planning late at night. we created an S-Corp, pulled together some branding, bought a domain and booked this gorgeous venue in Mexico. we laid out an intention, an agenda and i posted on IG stories in Feb 2022 that our first experience would be in June. within a week, the whole thing was booked. my last day of Clubhouse was June 3. a week or so later, i flew to Sayulita, Mexico for our first immersive experience. it felt like a dream came true.

so we quickly booked the next one for fall 2022 and that one sold out too. so i built a p&l, a pitch deck and built a 3 year vision for the company. we were going to be miraval, meets aspen institute, but for the culture. i had outlined our next wave of facilitators and all of the different experiences we would have. at one point i was looking at land for our first physical location. mind you, i had only hosted two retreats with approx 30 people. but you couldn’t tell me this wasn’t going to become the biggest thing ever.

one day, i was on the phone driving through Decatur and one of my dear friends at the time called me to check in. now, she was one of the people who i had been confiding in for the last couple years about how tired and exhausted i was. i told her often, i just need a break. i just need a minute to breathe. so she knew i had just left the company and probably figured that i’d be relaxing somewhere.

all i remember was rambling in what must have been a manic way about all of the plans i had. i was running her through the vision, the profit margins, how i was thinking about hiring the next round of facilitators…all of the things.

she interrupted abruptly and said, maya…what are you doing? you sound crazy right now. do you even know why you’re doing all of this? have you taken a second to breathe and process everything?

i assured her that i was ok…and that it was all good…and that things were working out well…and that i had a bias to action that was natural for me…and i learn best through doing…and the data was showing me… and i needed to capitalize on the momentum we had…and it’s what people really need right now…and…

she said calmly, you know… it’s ok to go off the grid for a while. it’s ok to not be seen for a minute. it’s ok to take a break and come back with fresh eyes and a clear heart.

i sat in silence for a minute. my first inclination was to say thank you for saying that but i’m good. but as the silence lingered, a deeper truth emerged.

i think i’m afraid of being left behind. i think i’m afraid of losing relevance, i replied.

the wild part was i truly didn’t even know those were feelings that existed in me until someone i deeply cared about, cared enough to ask me.

over the last four years, there has been a depth of processing and excavation that i couldn’t see coming. the layers are still coming off. the conditioning is still being deconstructed. i’m both grateful and angry. grateful to have found the truth of myself again. angry about what the workplace stole from me. and what it tried to kill in me.

i know there are real burdens, barriers and obligations to taking the space you need. if i could go back, here’s what i would’ve done (and some of the things we did do)....

1. move in with somebody. we need a safe space to tell the truth about what happened and ii don’t think we’re meant to live alone at the rate that we do. Kevin and i moved in together in 2023 and it made all the difference for me to have someone i love and trust to tell the truth to. we talk constantly about everything. and part of processing is saying the thing out loud. the other part is to both cry and laugh uncontrollably at it all. it’s part of the somatic processing experience to get it out of your body. i also think it’s more fun to do life with someone. we now live in what i call an intergenerational compound with my mom, my dogs, and a revolving door of family and visitors. we’ve alleviated massive financial burdens so we can feel free to explore and create on this side.

2. sign up for boring work. don’t jump into your life’s work yet. don’t launch the great grand business. this is not the time to build out the big vision. do boring work. get the consultancy off the ground. take another w-2 job where you can phone it in. sign up and drive Lyft. do something that you don’t care about so you save your virtue for the healing process. the foundation of success is conviction. deep belief in what you’re doing. (this is good and evil agnostic). operating in the gray area won’t work today. and you don’t want to produce out of survival or desperation. you want to produce from a place of conviction and power.

3. limit social media intake. this is self-explanatory. social media is the devil. the worst thing you can do is be online watching everyone else pretend like they got it going on. it just perpetuates the feeling that you’re going to be left behind which is absolutely not true.

4. get into a therapeutic practice that specifically targets work trauma. we do a lot of facilitated sessions with folks and we are so surprised that a lot of the work stories they share don’t come up in regular therapy for them. they also cite that they don’t have people in their lives they feel like they can really tell the truth too. but because we spend 70% of our lives at work, it’s the epicenter of our lives. and we’ve been so conditioned to perform, there are so many masks we don’t even know we’re wearing. it’s also the place where people are most triggered and retraumatized. we did a therapeutic practice nearly 4x a week for 2 years straight.

if you want a version of what we did, comment “work therapy” in the comments and i’ll dm you a pdf you can use in your journaling practice.

the retreats were epic. and we’ll probably end up bringing them back soon. but i know if I kept going at the pace and rate i was going i would’ve ended up somewhere that wasn’t the truth of who i was.

the last thing i’ll say is that if you believe in God, you will never be late when you operate on His timing. He has grand plans for us. He also asks us to rest in Him. to cast our burdens on Him. and to start speaking our truth, because the truth is what will set us free.

and you deserve to be free and express from that freedom.

sending u so much love,

m

(finished at 11:43p est. no time for spellcheck or editing. pls forgive if this doesn’t make any sense!)

it frustrates me so much because my mind and body are recovering from coming into agreement with the artificial hustle. we call it the pace of unbelief, this idea that if we slow down, everything everywhere is going to fall apart, and things won’t work out. this lie and their operating system runs entirely on our exhaustion.

after nearly four years of being independent, i still constantly have to unlearn and deconstruct from this everything is crazy, everything is urgent, everything matters pace that we were indoctrinated into.

whenever I feel that old panic energy creeping back in, I have to remind myself of my peak corporate insanity: the time that i rescheduled my brain scan to moderate a Clubhouse room with Reese Witherspoon, Zoe Saldana and Tiffany Haddish.

ok so, it was November 2021, i was working at Clubhouse and we are hanging on by a thread and working 24/7. but it wasn’t necessarily because leadership was being all maniacal about working us to death, we just had a super unique situation going on.

Clubhouse is an always-on social platform with users all around the world. so there is always something happening. good, bad and ugly. because we were a live social audio app, the only way to experience the community was through active listening. it’s not like Twitter or something where you could passively scroll through tweets and see what’s going on. when you are on Clubhouse you had to be present in the room and really listen. and there were so many eyes on us everywhere…from competitors, to press, our creators, and everyone watching to see what would happen with us. at the time, we were literally the most written about startup ever. but we were also just a startup. so everyday we did everything we could to build new systems, infrastructure and solve new problems that were coming up as fast as humanly possible.

it created this lethal around the clock work schedule for us. i was fortunate because i had just moved to Atlanta and was now on est. and since we were a fully remote company, hq was SF based in pst. my day looked something like…wake up at 6a, help my daughter to get to school, have an undistracted work block from 8a to noon, be in back-to-back meetings until 7p est and then moderate, host, participate or listen in rooms until midnight. and sometimes be woken up in the middle of the night with news of a crisis in South Korea. oh, and we also hosted a townhall on the app with thousands of people on Sunday morning. so of course, we needed to prepare throughout the weekend and Saturday night. it was crazy.

and so over time, that schedule is going to start to wear down anyone. but when you think about the compounding nature of 15+ years of working in high performance, we-needed-that-document-yesterday kind of cultures, single momhood into bad marriage back to single momhood, and working and leading through a pandemic. i shouldn’t have been surprised when my body was like, girl, no.

i distinctly remember driving through Atlanta after having lived there for about four months. as I was driving, i had this almost hallucinatory moment where reality suddenly hit me that i actually lived in Atlanta. prior to that, i must have been in some cortisol induced transient state, like I was only passing through. I remember thinking, oh my god, i live in Atlanta. how did I even get here?!

for the first time in my life, i started getting the most debilitating migraines. and i was not a migraine person. and these were the can’t-open-eyes, can-stand-any-light, hiding-under-the-blanket, edm-rave-throbbing migraines. my eyesight was blurry. i couldn’t eat. i couldn’t sleep. nothing. this went on for days.

i’m the kind of person who refuses to take over-the-counter medication because i want to feel the intensity of my symptoms to know where i really am in my medical crisis. i was still leading the Zoom meetings camera off from bed, looking at my laptop screen with my sunglasses on, under the covers, still pushing through.

we came up in a time where we just normalized all of this stuff. emailing and slacking at all of the hours of the night was normal. waking up to 13 unread text messages from your boss on Monday was normal. emailing from vacation was normal. and pushing through the feeling of being deathly ill and saying it’s fine was also normal.

at some point, i start to realize ok maybe this is really bad and went to the urgent care down the street. the kind folks there were able to prescribe me something decent to reduce the pain, but it was short lived. when i called back to update them, they recommended i get an MRI because i never had a history of migraines. they emphasized how important it was to check for masses and increased intracranial pressure. so ofc, i go on webmd and convinced myself that i have a tumor, potentially brain cancer and might die. i was able to get a scan scheduled for the next day at an outpatient imaging center near the urgent care after begging the front desk lady and pleading with her that i might not make it.

later that night, i get a call from Chelsea, our entertainment partnerships lead. she is this brilliant British gal whose job it was to convince interesting people in Hollywood to promote things and have conversations on Clubhouse. and the platform was struggling. these were the real headlines at the time:

Inside the Rise and Fall of Clubhouse, a Pandemic Poster Child…

Twitter Spaces, Facebook, and Spotify Are Eating Clubhouse’s Lunch…

Clubhouse Co-Founder Opens Up on Growing Pains…

growing pains was an understatement. the team was starting to lose morale and we could sense that we didn’t have much longer before our top players started looking for other jobs. so when an opportunity came through that could combat the narrative and prove our relevance, we did everything we could to maximize it.

hey, i need you moderate a room tomorrow late afternoon with Reese Witherspoon, Zoe Saldana and Tiffany Haddish, she said. we’ve been working on this one for awhile and it’s locked in. we need a strong host to facilitate and hold court with them… you are the only person who can do it.

when someone says, you’re the only person who can do it, it is the equivalent of professional foreplay.

it never even occurred to me to say, no i’m sorry. i have a medical emergency. i think i have a brain tumor. and i’m not available. the automatic corporate conditioning and urge to sacrifice myself at all costs for the company kicked in and without hesitation i said, yes ofc. i’ll be there. add it to my calendar and send me the talking points.

i had to do it for Chelsea. for our team. for Clubhouse. i had to be there for Reese.

in the middle of another migraine haze, i called the outpatient imaging center back. i got the same lady at the front desk that i begged to prioritize me only a few hours earlier. with a laughable level of seriousness, i said back to her, hey i’m sorry, i need to reschedule my MRI because i have to host a Clubhouse room with Reese Witherspoon tomorrow.

the corporate workplace maintains its power through an operating system of fear, chaos, and an unrealistic pace. it does this incredible job of seducing us into believing we are indispensable, while simultaneously reminding us that we are completely disposable. this produces a perpetual panic loop. it preys on our work ethic, our innate desire to be great, and need to be wanted and valued. the system has mastered telling you two conflicting messages at once: only you can do your job, and anyone can do your job. to resolve that inner tension, we willingly agree to a frantic, inhumane pace just to prove we are needed and that we won’t be thrown away.

for me, the panic sounded like if I don’t do everything i possibly can with every hour available to me, Clubhouse will fail, and it will be my fault. which is crazy. there were a so many forces at play determining whether we would survive. but the truth is, I was too terrified to say I wasn’t available. and that fear was entirely internal. when I actually did bring it up, my boss was usually great. he’d say things like, take the day, it’s okay, we have your back.

work is the leading cause of stress. stress is the leading cause of disease. and work is where we spend the majority of our waking hours. so if we spend the majority of our lives in a chronically stressful, frantic environment, sickness becomes inevitable.

the system wants us to believe we can’t slow down. because if we ever paused, even for a moment, we would realize just how crazy, wasteful, and ultimately unimportant so much of this really is. because the system isn’t going to change, you have to change.

you have to realize that your health is your most important currency. without a healthy body, you can’t do anything of things you desire or hope for. you have to believe in your own talent, your own capability, and trust that you will always be okay, even inside a system that is actively trying to convince you otherwise.

so please, pause. slow down. get the MRI scan. go to the doctor. take the mental health day. book the therapy appointment. turn off your phone. and go on that vacation. use up all of those premium benefits. because they will have no problem using you up. the company will survive without you, but you can’t survive without you.

sending u so much love,

m

i can feel the fall weather slowly making its arrival. Kevin and I got caught up binging Million Dollar Nannies on Hulu on Friday, thanks to a rec from my daughter and Hulu dropping straight into it after the last episode of Project Runway. has anyone seen it? it follows a group of elite celebrity nannies setting up an agency in Ibiza for the world’s 1%. it is unbelievably ridiculous, and a juicy workplace drama with all the works.

also, still can’t believe Dolly is gone 😩

this week, it’s been rough for brands. it just feels like everything is getting way worse, which maybe means it’s darkest before dawn?

it is really hard to watch Target, one of my favorite beloved brands, become a leading candidate for a Harvard Business Review case study about the cautionary tale of the financial, socioeconomic and cultural impact of betraying black consumers who once loved you.

i have some thoughts for the current Target CEO, Michael Fiddelke, but first…

five things you need to know right now about the culture of work…

• Karen Attiah got her job back after being fired by The Washington Post for having an opinion as an opinion writer, an independent arbitrator just ordered the paper to reinstate her immediately with full back pay. we wrote about the implications her win may have on the future of unions.

• to stop the trial over the child and teen tech addiction, Meta abruptly agreed to pay a historic $17b settlement with 47 states. this massive deal forces major changes to FB and IG, including mandatory nightly access blocks and strict two-hour scrolling limit for teens.

• Lovesac foolishly clapped back at its own customers after the CEO posted a sarcastic video mocking someone who complained about the grueling assembly process for his $7000 couch. then the brand account doubled down, triggering a massive PR disaster that ended with deleted videos and a public apology.

• Golf giant Callaway completely imploded its lucrative partnership with Good Golf after greenlighting an ad that depicted a male golfer physically shoving a female player to the ground. major retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods and Target (ironic) instantly pulled all co-branded merchandise from shelves, forcing Callaway to cut ties and pledge $1 million to women’s safety organizations to stop the bleeding.

• the high-profile female exodus continues at Open AI. Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser and robotics head Caitlin Kalinowski bring the total number of prominent women departing the company’s top ranks to six.

dear Michael Fiddelke... (the current CEO of Target)

you know things are bad when Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis is screaming at you on the internet. God bless the comms person who crafted the apology and said, guys, we cannot even skate around this, we just have to own it and say, ‘we know we messed up.’ that was very wise and i sincerely hope they didn’t have to fight to get that approved.

this is the part that is so hard for me to reconcile… Black people universally loved you. and it is so rare for a brand to achieve that status within our community. we gave you the nickname tar-zhay. we had so much pride in wearing the classic red polo as a first job. and as the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the world, it was a badge of honor for Black women to get partnerships and distribution inside Target. you were a north star.

you were a fundamental part of our weekend routines. some of my favorite memories as an early mom were getting up and going to Target with my daughter and grandmother with no other intention than to just browse and wander. every weekend. for hours. spending money we didn’t need to spend. the holy grail of retail.

i’m not sure if you fully realize that Minneapolis has become a political mirror for the country, representing exactly where America stands today. growing up there, i always loved the city’s underrated superpower…a fierce, underlying political current that most outsiders didn’t notice until recently.

since 2020, our hometown has become the epicenter of national activity. when the crisis of police violence reached a breaking point, Minneapolis became the powder keg with George Floyd, sparking a global reckoning. two years ago, Governor Tim Walz was chosen as Kamala Harris’s VP pick in one of the most consequential campaigns of our time. last year, when a radicalized gunman targeted our state leaders, tragically killing Speaker Melissa Hortman and severely injuring Senator John Hoffman, it exposed the terrifying reality of incited political violence. and earlier this year, after Renee Good was shot and killed by ICE agents, protests erupted with Minnesotans marching in sub-zero weather to fight for justice.

and Michael, i’m not sure if you know it, but you all represent something politically too: the cowardice and lukewarmness of our corporate leaders in this political era.

there are only really three kinds of people: the fearful and insecure who are deeply afraid of progress, the brave and courageous people who fight for progress and the lukewarm people who just pretend none of it is happening and are too paralyzed to pick a side.

now your predecessor, Brian Cornell, clearly picked a side. the second he experienced even an ounce of political pressure to rollback dei stuff, he was quick to be like ok, we’re done! we all saw what happened next, you lost billions in market cap and bore the brunt of one of the longest Black boycotts in modern history. his actions produced results that proved he chose the wrong side because it literally tanked the business. so he had to go, and you got appointed.

and since you’ve been in office, it’s clear you’re trying to engineer a corporate turnaround by avoiding the so-called political stuff. so you don’t mention the dei policies at all. you stayed completely silent when your own employees and the teachers’ union demanded answers about ICE operations on Target properties. instead, you stick to the script, repeating corporate talking points about reclaiming your “merchandising authority,” elevating the guest experience, and driving efficiency.

but this is what i don’t understand… your moat and competitive advantage has always been your brand and your reputation. you don’t have a supply chain advantage or a proprietary technological innovation. your value is determined by how we feel about you.

while Black consumers may only represent 10% of your customer base, we control over $2 trillion dollars in purchasing power and hold the keys to the brand and cultural relevance kingdom. we are the cultural gravity that makes Target cool to the other 90%. and because brand reputation is your only real differentiator today, a betrayal like this is a lagging indicator. it won’t immediately show up in the hard metrics. constantly focusing on short-term quarterly targets like comparable store sales, guest traffic and inventory turns won’t fix a broken brand. it’s a critical blind spot. and i’m sure your CI and brand teams have been desperately trying to flag to you.

in order to maximize shareholder value, you have to regain the trust and love of the Black consumer. and because Black people, and particularly Black women, are currently under political attack, trying to remain neutral is a wild strategy. you have to take a stand. even Milton Friedman would tell you that if your brand relies on cultural trust, protecting that trust isn’t a political distraction, it’s your fiduciary duty.

idk, business leaders have convinced themselves that dei is just a warm, do-gooder feeling. but it’s not. it’s an economic advantage and multiplier. just look at your competitor Costco. they doubled down and the stock has gone up, been up and stayed up. and their CEO has publicly declared that their decision to double down is the reason they’re experiencing explosive growth, unprecedented employee retention and deeper trust with their customers.

by acting as an apolitical operational corrective you are actually being fiducially irresponsible and leaving money on the table for shareholders, yourself and your employees.

and the most devastating, unspoken tragedy of this story is the deep loss of morale and faith your employees must be experiencing.

there is no greater joy than waking up every day to work for a company you love. one that genuinely stands for something good in society. it is the very thing everyone is searching for: a place you can be proud of, an identity you are excited to share out loud with friends and discuss in private moments with your family. our work sits at the absolute epicenter of our lives. it is where we spend the majority of our time, and the experience we have within your walls dictates and determines the quality of our lives outside of them.

when Target turned its back on dei efforts, leadership unknowingly shifted the entire life trajectory of its workforce. over the last eighteen months, your Black employees, especially, have had to bear witness to something they love turn into something they hate. that shift manifests in heavy, deeply personal ways.

it starts on Sunday evening. where employees used to look forward to the week ahead, they are now consumed by an intense, paralyzing anxiety as they think about re-entering your environment tomorrow. all week, they have to walk through your hallways while your white colleagues stare at you with immense guilt in their eyes. the nausea, the sleepless nights, the dread of logging onto a meeting just to navigate the gross negligence of their peers and leaders is exhausting. and because the job market is incredibly difficult right now, they cannot afford to leave. they have to grin and bear it.

and then when they are looking for relief on the weekend, they have to figure out how to cleverly withhold where they work, because the brand has become an embarrassment and a public joke. they are forced to actively manage crisis communications in their own personal lives, fielding texts from relatives and family members wondering what the hell is going on over at Target?!

the feeling of being trapped and contained in a place they were once so enthusiastic to sign up for has turned a dream job into a psychological prison.

now you haven’t asked for my advice, but i’m going to give it anyway. here are 5 things i would do immediately to start the process of repairing trust with the people who matters most right now, which are your employees…

1. fire Cara Sylvester immediately and every single person within the merchandising org that could’ve touched this project. including by not limited to the agency or internal person who pitched it, the person who over saw product details, the creative marketer, the comms lead the hr person attached to the org, everybody. has. to. go. now. i don’t care that Cara is a longtime Target employee who rose through the ranks. there had to be at least 10 levels of approval internally for this and every single person missed it. someone at the very highest levels needs to be held publicly accountable. any other employee would be fired for less.

2. after firing the people involved with the project, then care for the family that is the victim of this project. personally call the Black family who’s child that was, apologize and give them a ton of money for the present and future damages this has caused. there is real emotional damage and distress this family is experiencing right now. i’m not sure if they knew what they were signing up for. but even if they did, they should not have been put in that situation in the first place.

3. once, everything on the project has been handled, halt anything and everything Black from going out the door until you’ve personally been able to review it. this should feel inconvenient and impractical, because it is. the best way to learn what’s really going on is to get your hands in the work immediately. this means any image, product, partnership or campaign that’s in the works. you cannot afford another misstep, Michael. since you all stripped all dei infrastructure, you do not have the internal mechanisms and you do not have the right people in place you can trust. trust is built on character and competence. somewhere along the line, the character of the people in your organization decided this was okay, and there was absolutely zero competence to stop it.

4. only after you have taken those first three actions can you gather your Black employees for a genuine apology in both word and deed. prove your apology is real by offering your salaried Black employees a minimum of three months of paid mental health leave, and give immediate hazard pay to your Black retail staff on the store floors. do not look them in the eyes and apologize if you haven’t properly handled firing the people on the project and caring for the family involved. and do not make them do the labor of submitting FMLA leave on their own. do it for them. they don’t need any more gaslighting. and hope and pray they aren’t gathering their collective therapist and doctor notes to file a class-action lawsuit against you for the hostile work environment they’ve had to endure and exist in.

5. begin the process of pulling together the definitive business case for your board on why you’re going to reinstate some kind of effort to double down on Black employees and Black consumers. make it clear that this is the most viable option to continue to generate billions in market value over the next 10 years. this should include everything from hiring Black executives at the highest levels of leadership, to launching authentic partnerships, and heavily investing in targeted marketing and brand protection. let them know at the next vote you are going to vote on issuing a transparent public apology for the harm Target has caused and then, you are going to get to work.

Michael, don’t just be the CEO that just manages business metrics. be the one who builds a legacy that’s worth being remembered for. a turnaround is possible. nothing is ever too far gone. you can keep playing it safe. or you can choose to save your brand. but you cannot do both.

sending u so much love,

m

it’s so rare that there is a public figure that is so universally loved by all ages and all races. she felt like a living embodiment of joy and kindness. and in an era where keeping our own spirits bright feels like a daily battle, her departure is more than a loss of life. it feels like the loss of a guiding beacon of light. imagine living life in such a way that when you go, the world feels a little darker. i think it’s the delicious, satisfying fruit of a life well lived and doing what you came here to do.

we immediately started playing 9 to 5 on the speakers yesterday. Dolly was lethal with her pen. a master storyteller dripped up and draped down in rhinestones. this is the supremacy of the written word. whenever we need to feel her warmth, match her grit or experience her love again, we can always return to her words.

and her words in 9 to 5 feel more relevant than ever:

workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’

barely gettin’ by, it’s all takin’ and no givin’

they just use your mind and they never give you credit

it’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it

9 to 5, for service and devotion

you would think that I would deserve a fair promotion

want to move ahead, but the boss won’t seem to let me

i swear sometimes that man is out to get me

…speaking of men out to get her.

this week, we’ve been celebrating journalist ’s victory over The Washington Post. Karen is an opinion writer. and if you haven’t been following the story, last year in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, Karen essentially posted her opinions about it all. WashPo got upset and didn’t like her opinions. so they found just cause and fired her because they said she violated their social media policy. everyone, everywhere said, wait… you’re firing the opinion writer for her opinions? it felt unjust. because it was. and the uproar was immediate. and she fought back.

The Golden Hour by Karen Attiah

The Washington Post Fired Me. I Fought—and Won My Job Back.

Last spring, I was sitting on the couches on the 7th floor of the Washington Post, fighting back tears…

Read more

2 months ago · 1326 likes · 184 comments · Karen Attiah

and, almost a year after her sudden firing, Karen announced she won and got her job back. The Washington Post has been ordered to reinstate her immediately with full back pay and benefits. they also don’t realize that their attempt to silence her only produced a bigger platform. over the last year, she’s gained nearly 60,000 subscribers on Substack, launched courses and has continued to uplift her voice and bring light to issues that matter most. the literal definition of preparing a table in the presence of your enemies.

Karen was able to win this fight because she was a part of a union. and in today’s climate where the modern workplace is breaking and there is so much cultural intimidation, lack of accountability and obsession of power and money from our leaders, it made us think, should we be pushing and pursuing unions more aggressively?

i dropped the question into our ftl subscriber chat to get some thoughts from our community, and the brilliant NY attorney, , confirmed our thinking. she said, I used to practice employment law and I honestly think, in today’s world, unions are one of the last pieces of protection employees have.

now unions are something that historically have had old school, blue-collar connotations. originally created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were there to protect employees from crazy workplace conditions. and were used to equip workers to demand a better living wage, 8-hour workdays and basic workplace safety.

today, the number of unionized workers has jumped to nearly 15 million people, the highest raw count in over 15 years. and the people driving the change are young people.

the kids are alright

gen z is the most pro-union generation in decades. and historically, young people were the least likely to care about unions. but today, 88% of adults under 35 approve of labor unions, the highest of any living generation.

and of course they would. they are entering a broken job market. they are existing in skyrocketing housing costs, student loan debt and flat wage growth. so many young people are finding themselves either unemployed or trapped in jobs that aren’t working. they are realizing faster than us that the social contract we have with work is broken and the promise of work hard and you’ll be taken care of is bullsh*t a myth.

they are organizing in the most modern, cool way. unlike the old folks who waited for a top-down union rep to save them, young people are like, hold my beer. they are using platforms like Signal, Telegram, Slack and Discord to share salary data, organizing templates and communicate outside of corporate structures. they are galvanizing and breaking down labor laws on TikTok.

this generation actually believes in the power of dei and workplace fairness is not just about higher wages and better benefits for them. they feel like it’s a necessary, legal check on corporate power that has gotten out of control.

when unions come to the valley

the place unions haven’t quite taken hold of yet is silicon valley, but it feels like they could be next because tech employees realize there is no loyalty and no mercy there either.

Kickstarter became the first prominent tech company to unionize. this happened in 2020. when their initial contract expired, they went on a 42-day strike to protect the 4-day work week and block leadership from deploying unvetted AI tools and they also secured higher base salaries.

companies like Google and Apple have not been as supportive when they hear their employees start to organize. this might be part of the reason everyone wants to start monitoring all employee communications. we’ve seen tactics where they will find convenient reasons to fire staff who are leading pro-union discussions. or try to delay, delay, delay and drag their feet on contract negotiations for months, even years trying to kill momentum.

but we shouldn’t be surprised to see far some of these companies will go to avoid unions. companies like Spacex and Amazon (no surprise) have faced so many unfair labor practice charges that they are attempting to dismantle the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) itself and deem it unconstitutional.

because they know if we realize the leverage we actually have, their era of corporate dominance becomes compromised.

we are at the mercy of at-will

today, about 80% of us are at-will employees, which means that our bosses can legally fire us for any reason without a single day of warning or severance.

we talk about this all the time here on ftl, but so many of modern workplace practices were created in the 19th century, back around slavery y’all. and at-will is another of them.

manufacturing and railroad giants wanted total flexibility to scale-up and downsize overnight. so they worked with judges to come with the concept of freedom of contract. which essentially means that it is fair for workers to quit whenever they want and bosses should also have the freedom to fire whenever they want. but it COMPLETELY ignored the obvious power imbalance, leaving us to fend for ourselves unless we had a private union contract.

ironically, the only state in America where this isn’t true is Montana. which happened in 1987 because courts were handing down massive payouts to wrongfully fired workers. so companies were like, hold up. we don’t want to keep paying this much. so they created a good cause job projection and probation period for workers and businesses got a cap on how much they could be sued for. as a result, managing employees in Montana is completely different than the rest of the country.

and btw, we are the only country in the world that operates like this. in almost all of Europe and the most powerful countries in Asia, at-will employment doesn’t even exist. once we again, we are on the global stage looking crazy.

i’m not saying you should start a union…

but let’s just say you were interested in starting one…

1. you form a secret organizing committee with trusted coworkers, maybe on Signal or Telegram or Substack dm’s…not on company tech.

2. you quietly collect signed Union Authorization Cards until you hit at least 30% of the staff.

3. once you have the cards, you ask management for voluntary recognition. when they inevitably say no, you take those cards to the NLRB (praying it doesn’t get dismantled) to schedule an official election.

4. finally, a neutral secret-ballot vote is held, and you only need a simple majority of whoever actually turns up to vote to legally unionize the whole workplace.

so for instance, if your company had 100 employees, 30 people would need have Union Authorization cards. but let’s say only 20 people showed up to vote, you only need 11 people to vote yes for the entire place to be unionized.

ok… too much too soon?

to support the modern labor movement, vote with your wallet and support unionized shops. respect picket lines when workers risk everything to go on strike. vote on the ballots for policies that actually protect the person over profit. practice quiet, powerful solidarity at work. talk openly about your salary. transparency is the first thing corporations try to kill because they know information is power. when you see a manager unfairly targeting a co-worker, don’t look the other way. and if you are an entrepreneur, prioritize generous and healthy workplace policies from inception.

because the truth is, we are not protected in the workplace. and as the power imbalance continues to widen, the small protections we have are at risk.

not to get too deep, but i sometimes forget MLK jr was assassinated once he got deeper into the labor movement. isn’t that interesting?

i’m so so deeply grateful that Karen Attiah had a union contract protecting her when Jeff Bezos The Washington Post tried to silence her voice.

it’s not lost on me that Dolly Parton was singing about the literal plight of the everyday worker in one of her most popular songs that won two Grammys and was nominated for an Academy Award. maybe it’s so popular because it represents one of our greatest universal pains. our workplace pain. we will always love you, Dolly.

idk, if they don’t feel the need to protect us, maybe it’s time we start protecting ourselves.

just a thought.

sending u so much love,

m

sources:

https://postguild.org/faq/

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

https://www.epi.org/publication/workers-resolve-drives-increase-in-unionization-in-2025/

https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/social-media-0

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/washington-post-ordered-reinstate-columnist-karen-attiah-nyt-reports-2026-08-24/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/technology/kickstarter-union.html

yesterday was my birthday. 41. a dear friend said over facetime, you are now officially in your 40s. grateful to be here and reside in this decade for a min. until recently, i hated my birthday. it always felt like something to get through instead of something to look forward to. but that’s changed because i’ve finally got the people part of life right. had a gorgeous day celebrating and felt deeply loved.

last week, we heard from dozens of women in response to our essay about the cautionary tale of the well-intentioned manager and how important it is to not surrender your psychological sovereignty at work. and while it’s validating to know we’re not alone, the resounding chorus of i’ve experienced this many, many times leaves us with a more sobering question: if this exhaustion is universal, what is the way forward?

well, we have to get really real. and talk about how women everywhere are systematically being evicted from the workplace. but first…

five things you need to know right now about the culture of work…

• nearly 25% of US workers are functionally unemployed. this includes people who are looking for a job, involuntarily working-part time and are earning poverty-level wages, or less than $26k annually before taxes.

• 58% of Americans would turn down a promotion that required them to be available outside of working hours or interfered with work-life balance, even if it came with a bump in pay.

• Eleven years after Hayden Panettiere was retaliated against for disclosing her postpartum depression, Neutrogena admitted they made her feel unsupported following intense public backlash surrounding the actress’s death.

• P&G is the latest company to bet on employees as creators. Chief Communications Officer Damon Jones hinted at the cultural shift following the Cincinnati Music Fest. after showcasing internal talent, Jones openly questioned whether employees are actually an organization’s greatest creative asset.

• Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing, a new Netflix documentary from Rory Kennedy, examines the devastating consequences of prioritizing profit over the safety of people. the film highlights the immense courage of today’s modern heroes — workplace whistleblowers, offering a devastating, enraging yet inspiring look at those risking their careers to expose corporate greed.

women are being evicted out of the workplace.

last Thursday night, i chose violence i was scrolling on LinkedIn and commented on a post by the CEO of Chief, Alison Moore, that agitated me. she posted the alarming stat that’s been circulating this month, women accounted for 100% of the labor decline in July.

my first reaction was to double tap in solidarity. but as i kept reading some of the supporting text that accompanied the perfectly polished graphic in Chief’s green and light gold branding, i felt a divine agitation.

…the report doesn’t explain the 100%...it’s helpful, but stops short of naming root causes....we must better understand root causes...I wish I had the answers. But I do know it’s exactly why the work we do at Chief matters more than ever before right now. Networks. Encouragement. Support. Partnership…

by the end, that thing activated in me where i have to say something. this is the same trait that got me in trouble most of my career. so i asked…respectfully,

i’m curious what chiefs mission is right now. what is the job to be done with the organization today for the people it serves and society in broader terms. not the subscriber number that drive your growth…

and because i was fueled by the exhausting cocktail of late-luteal hormones and early-perimenopause insomnia, i woke up at 1a to a pitch-black room, reached for my phone and to my delight and saw Alison responded:

maya watson I appreciate the question- and will give you the short answer— Chief has and will continue to evolve to meet our women leaders where they are. Right now, our focus is on keeping senior women’s expertise in the workforce by helping them navigate through ( increasingly!) non-linear career paths. That shows up in many ways: coaching, community, connection and more. 💚

for the next 45 minutes, i fired off three additional comments that began with, i say this with deep love and respect… idk, maybe it was the hormones. maybe i was tired. or maybe it’s the fact that women at work are facing a structural emergency and we’re not ringing the bell loud enough.

we are in a full blown crisis.

and the July jobs report was just icing on an already disgusting cake. what worked for women’s advancement in the last season is not even going to come close to cutting it in this season. let’s paint the picture of the moment…

the systemic eviction began in earnest last year with a coordinated attack on Black women, who were pushed out by the hundreds of thousands, a number that has since increased to over 600,000 (i think it’s much more than what’s being reported). corporate America quickly took that as a cue to admit they ever cared and companies everywhere actively eliminated their once earnest DEI commitments, that we sometimes forget included female mentorship programs, formal sponsorships and career pipelines we’ve been building since the 70’s.

then they faked us out with the return-to-office mandates, that were framed as neutral corporate policies but operated as an effective mechanism to evict moms. i hate that i’m quoting Sheryl Sandberg’s organization (especially after just finishing Careless People), but the data proves that only half of corporate America even pretends to prioritize women’s advancement anymore. the other half are actively stripping away the flexible and hybrid structures that allowed us to survive (not even thrive) while also navigating the dissolving societal safety net.

then, the government allowed billions in federal pandemic-era childcare stabilization funding to expire which meant that thousands of daycare centers were forced to spike tuition or close their doors overnight, forcing parents into an agonizing choice between a paycheck and care. the fallout was immediate: the labor force participation of mothers with children under five fell by 2.8% in a hyper-compressed timeline, marking the sharpest mid-year decline in over 40 years.

and if you think HR or federal agencies are coming to save us, which i don’t think anyone does, the recent policy shifts have weakened enforcement bodies like the EEOC, making it exponentially harder to resolve systemic cases of workplace harassment, wage gaps, or pregnancy discrimination.

so, naturally, we’ve tried to pivot and upskill in the AI wave, only to find the oligarch bros blatantly defaulting to its gold old boys’ club settings. women currently account for less than 26% of hires in the booming AI sector, with top female executives leaving the prominent firms en masse. nbd, we’re just actively being locked out of the most consequential, highest-paying tech revolution of our lifetime.

ok, fine, we’ll try to build our own tables. but, the already ridiculous 2% of VC funding allocated to women-led startups has shriveled to a miserable 1%. left with absolutely no choice, we are migrating to the creator economy in droves, constructing our own monetization loops and digital ecosystems because traditional infrastructure has evicted us. it’s why nearly two-thirds of all content creators today are women, according to Goldman Sachs creator research (i pray the Substack founders don’t hate women too).

the deeply frustrating part of this reality is that women are more educated and possess more degrees than men today, making up the majority of the U.S. college-educated labor force. but despite our academic dominance, we still we still hold a pathetic 10% of CEO positions across the Fortune 1000 and less than 29% of leadership roles in the entire corporate C-suite.

and because we are smarter, we can see it all so clearly. it hurts. it’s not fair. and it’s not right. the pain we are all feeling right now is the price of our collective brilliance. no matter how many times we adapt, we are still bargaining with a corporate architecture designed by men who never built it to hold us, never wanted us there, and never imagined we would survive it.

also, this is just work. we haven’t even begun to open the other tabs of modern relationships, marriage, motherhood or the crushing mental load of caring for aging parents.

but there’s a massive flaw in their master plan. we are brilliant, resilient, and everything of value gets birthed through us. we are the mothers of revolutions.

just last week, Fast Company highlighted 21 Black women who are actively pivoting, reinventing themselves, and finding entirely new ways to express their ambition. they are proof that you cannot kill a force that is designed to create life.

for years, organizations have been laying the groundwork, probably unaware they were mobilizing for this moment. they built the infrastructure, gathered talent-dense circles of brilliant women and created sustainable business models. and that should be celebrated. from the Female Quotient to historically Black sororities to communities like Chief. but massive rosters and exclusive membership clubs mean absolutely nothing if we don’t organize and show up when the city of women has been lit on fire.

i can promise that all of these brilliant and capable women who are being evicted out of the building don’t need more content. they don’t need more panels talking about what could happen, or safe conversations about the pain of what’s currently happening, or encouraging pats on the back to stay in the fight. we need brave, strategic and stealth coordinated effort to initiate an entirely new revolution—one designed together by women, for women.

rome is burning, and we are the first burn victims. and I guess what i really wanted to say on that LinkedIn post last week is that we are dealing with structural rejection. and wrapping this rollback in polite phrases like pivots or non-linear journeys trivializes the damage. we aren't voluntarily shifting. the architecture is breaking under us.

we need leaders of these female-led orgs, like you, Alison Moore, who are sitting on top of resources and powerful networks to recognize that they maybe they were placed at the helm for such a time as this. maybe they are meant to be the brave women who stop managing the decline, step out onto the ledge, and build something that has never been done before. we don’t need them asking for answers. we need the people running them to realize they are meant to become the answers they seek.

sending u so much love,

m

p.s. we will be sending out information this about our first monthly virtual meet-up, book club, conversation club thing around Careless People. if you are interested in joining, hop in our subscriber chat and let us know so we can add you to the private chat and email list so we don’t spam everybody else.

it's brave. beautifully written. it's relevant. and i believe her. and it must be legit because why else would Meta take unprecedented legal steps to silence her?!

we are kicking off our first FTL book club with Careless People. if you’re interested in joining, hop into our subscriber chat for more info.

as i was convincing Kevin to start reading immediately, we started talking about those of us who are reimagining their social contract and agreement with the workplace. no longer are the days to just get a job and be happy to be there. these hoes workplaces aren’t loyal. the future of work belongs to those who are clear on who they are, and the work they are truly called and designed to do and move with a different kind of authority and knowing. the ones whose career is going to look less like a straight line and more like a diversified portfolio of personal brand, consulting, entrepreneurship and the occasional residency inside a corporate workplace.

we’ve been noticing this pattern with those who first start as independent freelancers and pick up work and projects with incredible brands. and because they are amazingly talented people, they end up delivering incredible results and completely wow the teams they’re working with. of course then they get offers to come in-house. and btw, this is an incredible way to land a w-2 gig because you get to test drive company culture, see how the teams really operate and build super healthy boundaries from the start. the independence produces a natural authority of someone who’s operating with a strong self-leadership ethic and you are completely detached from the internal politics and immune to the usual workplace chaos.

but the transition moment back in-house is critical. because that natural authority that you carried as an outsider is at risk of eroding. if you are not clear and intentional, it’s easy to succumb to the corporate gravity and get sucked into the collective inertia of the office. while you absolutely must honor the people, the place and the practices, you cannot surrender your psychological sovereignty. while you are a w-2 employee again, you must refuse to come back under their authority. you must fight to keep your light bright. and you must remain a master of your craft.

here’s a story that explains why…

what does this even mean?!

it was July 2019 and we were walking along the scenic waterfront path, making our way from our hotel to Harpa, the main concert hall and conference center that sits on the harborfront in Reykjavík, Iceland. Harpa is an architectural masterpiece. it’s dramatic, sculptural form and its iconic, jewel-like glass facade inspired by basalt rock columns was glistening and reflecting in the sun. the weather was a perfect combination of cool and crisp and the cold air felt refreshing on my face. i can’t believe i’m in Iceland, i thought as i walked with a crew of Netflix employees to our first set of meetings in the morning.

the occasion was our annual quarterly business review (qbr) where Netflix flew in their leadership team for 3 days, to go over the state of the business. normally these meetings were somewhere near the LA campus. but Reed had a long-held dream of bringing everybody to Iceland one day. i have no idea why Iceland, but i was so so grateful to be there.

as i was in line to grab breakfast, my phone started vibrating like crazy. as i pulled it out the pocket of my shiny black, puffy NorthFace, there were a stack of notifications from Slack and Google Chat. our editorial team had migrated onto Slack. but most of netflix was still on google chat.

holy sh*t, a brilliant creative woman on my team said in a slack dm. have you read the opening of the qbr memos?! Ted just said we’re the future of everything! what does this even mean?!

i have absolutely no idea what she’s talking about. i put my plate down and pull up my email to see that the July qbr memos have just dropped. these memos are sent to everyone across the entire company. it’s a way for Netflix to make good on their promise of keeping a transparent culture where all the information about everything is available to everyone all at once. VP’s of each department draft a summary of what happened in the last quarter, how they’re tracking against the broader strategic bets, and what they’re focused on for the next quarter. then the C-Level team pulls it all together and builds a cohesive narrative about where Netflix is. it usually opens with a letter from Reed (CEO at the time) or Ted (Chief Content Officer at the time). this one had an opening letter from Ted.

essentially it said that the work we were doing on the brand and editorial team – launching things like Strong Black Lead, Netflix Film and all our audience-focused editorial-first storytelling – was the future of all marketing and publicity. that the work he had done to build an in-house media and storytelling team – like Conde Nast meets Buzzfeed but built for Netflix – was working, having a big impact and should become the blueprint for how we storytell around Netflix in the future. he said it had implications for the product team, that soon we’d be booking Netflix talent on our own editorial formats and our dependence on external media hits like the Today Show or Hollywood Reporter would become less important because we would have our direct-to-consumer way to talk our audience and fandoms.

it was a stunning admission of the success of our efforts. when we took this direction in 2017, we were laughed at by the broader and more “serious” marcomm teams who didn’t understand what we were doing. if you’ve ever worked in social, you know how hard it’s been to gain the respect of your “traditional’ marketing peers. we were this rag tag team of misfits who believed we could build something meaningful and now Ted just said we were the future of everything. he encouraged all teams around the world to deeply understand who we were, how we were doing it and to find ways to collaborate with us.

hence, why my phone started blowing up from different people all over the organization who now wanted to set time with me.

i remember texting my well-intentioned manager. they were responsible for writing our section of the memos. did you all discuss this? did you tell him to write this? i asked, curious why i was just finding out about this monumental news at the same time as everyone else.

no, they said. Ted gave me a heads up yesterday that he was going to mention something about us. but i had no idea it would be to this extent. how do you feel about it? you should be thrilled.

i paused for a moment to really glean my true feelings. on one hand, it felt incredible to be seen and celebrated. a massive validation that our instincts were right. on the other hand, it just put a huge target on our backs. in saying our team was the future, he just rendered the rest of marketing irrelevant, single-handedly putting everyone else on the defensive. it’s also ironic because i was in the trenches fighting for more headcount and higher pay for a team that was already drowning.

i think it’s good news, i replied. i know the team is excited. i have no idea how we are about to handle all of this incoming, but we’ll figure it out back in LA. drinks to celebrate tonight?

i hear you, but…

a week later, back in LA, my assistant and i huddled to figure out how to navigate the sudden influx of interest. when Ted says something is a priority, the expectation is to move quickly and show results. and it felt like moths to a flame. we had received over 30+ meeting requests. managing that volume manually would take forever. i refused to add more pressure to our core team, who needed to stay focused on executing and scaling our editorial footprint.

i would build the updated pitch decks, outline our frameworks, and define the clear rules of engagement for how other teams could collaborate with us. but as we mapped out the math, it became clear that the individual roadshow and the inevitable follow-ups would take up multiple quarters of work.

in my next 1:1 with my well-intentioned manager, i knew we needed to come up with a strategy that could scale and i had an audacious idea. instead of meeting with everyone individually, what if we hosted the first-ever internal editorial summit?

for three days, we would lay out our entire ecosystem: our origins, the business case, and the initial experiments that proved the model. it would be an opportunity to feature each of our verticals, we had 9 or 10 at this point. every editorial lead would get the chance to present, giving them a high-visibility in front of important internal stakeholders. we would invite teams from around the world, livestream the sessions, and record everything. it would give us a permanent asset to direct people to, providing a library of foundational materials to distribute afterward. we had already checked: the big studio on Lot 8 was available in a few weeks on the dates we wanted.

my well-intentioned manager had always been incredibly kind, creative and supportive. they advocated for our work. but in that room, something felt off. all i remember was the feeling of hesitation and doubt and saying all the reasons why we shouldn’t do it. they raised concerns about the timeline, the sheer scale of pulling it off, and the risk of inconveniencing cross-functional partners by asking for so much of their time and not thinking it was a plausible idea.

i pushed back, citing how much of my own time would be cannibalized if we didn’t do it this way. if we were publicly deemed the future of the company, we shouldn’t be playing small or apologizing for taking up space. I empathized with my well-intentioned manager because i know over time after being at the company for so long, they had been slowly conditioned to play it safe, stay practical and keep the peace. but that’s not who i am or how i move.

so like most things during our time together, i told them, i hear you, but we’re moving forward. that was the beauty of the Netflix culture. i was empowered to make that call and disagree with my well-intentioned manager. that freedom is what turned us into a powerful player in the company in the first place.

that’s super weird

over the next few weeks, we hustled. we built out beautiful presentations, and held grueling rehearsals in studio 8. i felt like Matthew Knowles, demanding that our team of Beyonces run on the treadmill at full speed while singing. after they would practice presenting, i’d say, do it again. that transition was weak, or i don’t feel your conviction when you’re speaking. i don’t feel like you realllyyyy believe what you’re saying.

we needed to be flawless. we cut sizzle reels, built out surprises, walk on music…the works! when we sent out a comprehensive agenda of what to expect and a detailed run of show we received hundreds of rsvp’s, with notes saying, this looks exciting, can’t wait and things like, will be tuning in from Spain, Brazil, Japan.

the summit was a massive success. for three days, they laid out our mission, our why and the vision they had for their editorial outlets. where we could integrate with product, where we could collaborate with content and how we could work with publicity to get talent to do more exciting things. it was truly one of the greatest moments of my time at Netflix because of how they each shined. masters of their craft in full expression.

toward the end of the day on the last day, a brilliant creative man on my team asked, where is our well-intentioned manager? they haven’t been here any of the three days.

i hadn’t noticed until he mentioned it. i was so swept up in the moment, logistics and conversations with our cross-functional partners, that i hadn’t noticed that my well-intentioned manager hadn’t made an appearance at what was a landmark event for our team.

hmm, that’s odd, i told him. maybe they’re out of town.

he said, um, they’re not. they’ve been in their office this entire time in the other building.

wait, they’re here on the LA campus?! i said, confused. that’s really weird.

brilliant creative man on my team replied, yah, that’s SUPER weird.

“i feel competitive with you”

a few weeks later in early September, we were in Amsterdam at a global offsite for our org. we were staying at the swanky Soho House, and my well-intentioned manager asked us to go for an extended walking 1:1 along the canals. things were moving so quickly, that this was the first real quality time we were getting in weeks.

we grabbed coffee, a pastry and began to take in the gorgeous scenery. i could feel the tension starting to leave from my shoulders and felt a hint of relaxation coming through. they said, get me up to speed on everything i’ve missed, and i started to rolling through all of the updates on our conversations post summit. commitments that had been made, open tabs and interesting insights about what could be possible for us.

i felt an opening, and decided to pivot the conversation. i noticed you were absent at the summit. brilliant creative man on our team told me that you were in your office the whole time in the building across the street. is that true?

well-intentioned manager, said yeah. it is true. i couldn’t watch it.

i already knew it was true, but i still couldn’t believe it. i felt a massive wave of disappointment and sadness. and instantly had so many questions. why wouldn’t they want to come and see what we did? how we were advancing the mission of our team? to see and support our rag tag team of misfits shine so bright in front of hundreds of people from around the world? i didn’t understand.

and before i could speak, they continued, listen, Maya. you’ve been able to do things with this team that i’ve never been able to accomplish. it’s hard to watch sometimes how you’re able to bring all of this to life. and at times, i feel competitive with you. i’m not saying it’s right, but it’s the truth of how it feels watching someone like you crush it like this.

wow. it was like getting punched in the gut. i felt blindsided.

they hired me. i am a reflection of them. if i succeed, we succeed. what coach or leader wouldn’t want to support their star player? but corporate leadership isn’t the NBA, and my well-intentioned manager wasn’t Phil Jackson. they were just someone trapped in their own conditioning of a corporate ecosystem designed to breed scarcity, where people are subtly trained to view someone else’s brilliant light as a threat to their own survival.

I let out a soft, humorless laugh to keep the dam of my emotions from breaking through. well i guess that means you’re not advocating for me in rooms i’m not in or fighting for my promotion?

as we kept walking and talking, the picturesque Amsterdam backdrop suddenly felt dreary and dreadful. the tension in my shoulders hadn’t left after all. i immediately armored back up, letting the full weight of the blow land silently inside of me, and came to the profound, undeniable realization: i was officially on my own.

the limitations of the well-intentioned manager

the workplace is inherently designed to be dark. it’s in it’s roots. it was built into the very foundation and roots of corporate architecture. it’s an ecosystem that doesn’t want you to shine bright. in fact, it’s proactively trying to strip you of your light.

a well-intentioned manager is a leader who genuinely wants to be supportive, creative, and kind. but their leadership is ultimately capped by their own corporate conditioning. they will happily champion your work when it is small, safe. but the moment your output crosses into true brilliance (i.e. gaining high visibility, scaling rapidly, or outshining their own accomplishments) that supportive nature morphs into professional jealousy, self-preservation and fear.

do not, under any circumstance, mistake titles, hierarchy or tenure with real authority. workplace authority is make believe authority. if you allow yourself to be led by someone’s perceived power, there is a limit to what will be possible for you.

not everyone is going to have a culture like Netflix that empowers and encourages you to disagree with your well-intentioned manager. but you have to remember that your well-intentioned manager is just a person, who has insecurities, doubts and fears too. and it’s likely, because they are human, they will at some point express from their humanness (as will you).

so this is why it’s not good and not worth the time to please anyone. you can honor the institution and the norms of the culture without surrendering your personal authority or your light.

the truth is, you are not and will not be a permanent resident there. your job is not to get comfortable and appease the powers that be. your job is to come in and do the work that you have been called to do and the highest level of excellence you can do it.

because you can do all the things, like produce a world class summit and change the trajectory of marketing at Netflix, and it’s still not enough. the workplace will still try to dim you even though you are actively advancing their mission and their goals.

so, don’t wait for their permission to do your work. just do it. you are building a portfolio of the best work for your life, not for their comfort.

love them, but don’t follow them. and fight to stay bright.

sending u so much love,

m

the Harpo reunion continues as we write to you from the road. today we are in Palm Beach, FL hanging with my dear friend, . it feels so good to see a palm tree and stare at the ocean. still learning how to stay consistent in writing as we move around.

thank you to everyone who reached out, commented and were moved by Tyrone in this week’s essay that detailed how the epic Oprah show reunion came to be. he is deeply moved by the messages and feels greatly seen. if you haven’t taken a read, we hope it inspires you as much as it inspired us.

Erik was the person who officially hired me at Harpo back in the day. he bacame President of Harpo when he was only 37 and went on to lead the most powerful media brand through the ending of The Oprah Show into the first struggling and then triumphant Oprah Winfrey Network. we’ve always been close. and he’s been a fierce mentor and friend to me. he most recently was hired as the President of Tony Robbins companies. so now at this point, Erik has served as top leader in the two biggest personal brands in the world, putting him in rare air.

as we were texting about the Harpo reunion stuff a week or two ago, i asked how things were going with Tony and if we could shadow him to see what his life looks like today. and he generously invited us to come to one of Tony’s signature events, Business Mastery, as his guest and to show us how it’s done. so we said bet, hopped on a plane to see for ourselves. we love a spontaneous adventure to learn from the greats.

i’ve encountered Tony a couple times in the Oprah world. she interviewed him on her show Oprah’s Next Chapter where she attended his conference, Unleash the Power Within and fire walked lol. he was also a guest teacher on our show Oprah’s Lifeclass when we were on tour in Toronto. but this was the first time coming into his environment. he and his team have always been lovely. and while there has always been controversy around Tony, we are the kind of people who look past noise to study the mechanics of why he’s successful.

and after immersing ourselves in his world, talking to attendees (we met one guy who had attended 26 events!) and listening and learning from Erik, we walked away concluding that Tony is in the business of belief. so is Oprah. in fact, the world’s greatest companies, creators and personal brands all share this foundation. before they can sell a product or service, they must first must build a business rooted belief.

as we leap out of the system into our individual promised lands, it got us wondering if we've taken the time to look beyond what we think we're offering. beneath the surface there is a deeper question we must answer: what is the unspoken conviction and belief that we're actually asking people to buy into? and more importantly, what do you really believe about yourself and your life?

conviction is what people actually buy

i know this to be true based on my experience in the venture capital space. i was always told that investors were investing in me based on the conviction i expressed, not what was on the page. yes, investors care that you’re building something thoughtful and something that has potential to succeed and make money. but ultimately, they want to believe that you believe you’re the answer to the problem you see. the idea is going to change a thousand times. and normally what you pitch and share is not what the business ends up becoming. it makes sense. who’s realistically gonna put money in your hands if you don’t believe?

the economy runs on belief

ok, consider this. the S&P 500 represents roughly 80% of the entire stock market value. well today, 92% of the S&P’s total market value consists of intangible assets, which means the modern stock market is literally powered by what people think, design and believe instead of what they build physically. a massive portion of assets belong to tech and software, whose value is created through multi-trillion dollar valuations based on what society collectively believes is their future utility. other assets have huge brand premiums that are tied to the emotional relationship and trust with consumers. brand equity is just the shared belief that a product is better. isn’t it wild that over the last 50 years we’ve gone from a physical assets economy to essentially a belief economy?

we don’t have a belief problem, we have a remembrance problem

the system and the powers that be are not going to help raise your belief. if anything, they’re going to do everything in their power to strip you of any sense of belief you have. as we make the journey to become the best work of our lives, we have to cultivate a remembrance practice.

the fastest, most effective way to build belief is to look backwards, not forward into the future. looking into the future is actually what produces anxiety. the unknown scares us. and it should because we are not in control of it. but the antidote to anxiety and worry is remembrance. stay focused in the present moment and relentlessly study the past. study the patterns of your life, track evidence of what’s been true. what is the thread you can pinpoint that can raise your belief in who you’re becoming? live and reside there. we are so quick to forget all that’s happened. and to be honest, if you’re sitting here reading this right now then that means you’ve always had what you’ve needed, exactly when you’ve needed it. and that alone, should raise your belief.

the most common barriers to belief

1. a lack of clarity and no clear why. purpose is born from our deepest pain. our work is to take the pain we experienced and use it productively to help others. Tony is clear that his why is to alleviate suffering for others because of his own unimaginable suffering from childhood. Oprah’s why is to make sure every person knows that they matter because she knows the pain of not experiencing it. when you know your why, you can endure any how and convict and attract others with similar beliefs.

2. environments of disbelief. if you get into a pool, you’re going to get wet. we could feel our belief rising in the room of 3000 people at Tony’s event just through sheer osmosis. where are you spending your time right now? what environments are you in? are you spending time in digital spaces filled with fear and fighting? are you surrounded by family who doesn’t believe in the path you’ve chosen? or are you isolated and alone letting dark, intrusive thoughts become the water you’re swimming in?

3. drainers. one of the things we noticed is how frequently Tony asks people to speak what they believe out loud to the people around them and then to have those same people mirror back if felt true or not. he essentially has people practice being in expression of belief for 5 days. often we are surrounded by people who love us, but still fail to raise our belief. we call them drainers. start tracking your inner circle. do the people around you raise your belief in who you’re becoming and how you’re moving or do they insert doubt, fear and confusion. based on the results, move accordingly.

permission to believe

we love Serena Williams. and we love a great doc. and Serena: In the Arena is an eight-episode ESPN documentary series that offers a deeply personal, chronological look at Serena Williams’s 27-year career. from the public courts of Compton to her ascent as one of the most dominant athletes in history. but the series is far more than a mere chronicle of dominance, it's a profound witness to the rise of unwavering belief. In the first episode, she says, I finally gave myself permission to be great…to be Serena. and to believe that i might be the greatest tennis player of all time.

say it with your chest Serena! you're able to watch what a pivotal psychological shift looks like, capturing the exact moment she embraced her destiny as the greatest tennis player to ever play the game.

belief is God's currency

without faith it is impossible to please God. God allows us to live based on the level of our belief. small faith, small life. big faith, big life. faith without works is dead. our convictions are measured not by what we say, but by the momentum and consistency of our actions. or the paralysis or lack thereof. true faith demands a choice. it is the willingness to step out into the unknown and force your hands to match your heart. look at how you're moving right now. based on your actions, what do you actually believe?

this last week raised my belief. inside the Harpo reunion. spending time with Erik. being in Tony’s environment. walking this path with Kevin. we are beginning to see how our lives are lining up with what we believe is true for ourselves and the work we’re meant to do.

each of us has to realize how important we are. how needed we are. we have to really believe that we were created for such a time as this. and there is something so special, so distinct and so necessary we are meant to share with each other. our work is to come fully into agreement with it. to believe that is true. to understand the power of a contagious and magnetic underlying current of belief is not just a nice-to-have, it is the prerequisite for the economic abundance and freedom we’re all searching for.

sending u so much love,

m & k

Lauren, my friend, former Harpo colleague, and forever found family from the trenches, texted at 7:47a on Sunday morning.

i replied, omg, i’m so tired. how did ur night end?
i’m exhausted, she said. i stayed until they kicked us out.

as women in our early 40’s, we were both recovering from the sensory overload of joy from the massive Harpo Studios reunion the night before at Art Smith’s – Oprah’s former private chef – restaurant, appropriately called Reunion on Navy Pier in Chicago.

we were having a digital post mortem over text. our thumbs were flying as we recounted the night’s wildest events, pointed out familiar faces, and traded epic, nostalgic stories. ugh, why is so and so from x department is still SO hot.

as i exhaustedly stumbled out of bed to make coffee – and for the record, i only had two glasses of wine – i was now actively engaged in seven text threads with Harpo family. being in the silence of the morning away from the noise of Navy Pier brought up a swell of emotions that had been impossible to access during the actual chaos of the event. i just kept thinking, i can’t believe we got to be a part of something like this.

Kevin walked into the family room in his pajamas, and we cozied up into our normal positions across from each other on the couch, hot coffee cradled in our hands.

i can’t believe I was at the Harpo reunion with you last night, he said, laughing softly as he took a sip. you’ve talked about how special the culture was for so long, and last night was evidence of how real it was. i mean, i can’t believe Tyrone, the garage guy, organized the whole thing.

Tyrone Owens, 63, the man who used to manage the Harpo Studios parking garage, was the one who pulled off an epic event that brought an entire legacy back to life.

i know, i said, getting emotional, it’s so special.

and almost as if we had spoken his name into existence, my phone vibrated again. it was my former boss, mentor, and surrogate work mom texting me back about what she had found most profound about the night: the Tyrone story—that he is not well and wanted everyone to be together, moves me beyond.

Tyrone, also known to all of us as Big Ty, didn’t just organize a party, he brought the family together at a time we all needed it most, reminding us exactly who we were to each other.

we’ll make room

the texts started flying last week with the same question: are you coming to the reunion?

i’d heard about it a few weeks prior. i wasn’t sure how legit it actually was. it was being organized in a facebook group and since i can’t remember my password, i was asking other people for details who had access.

i wanted to go. but i also wasn’t sure if i wanted to go. the idea of seeing so many people from the past felt overwhelming and angsty. i had stayed in touch with a core crew that had transitioned from working on The Oprah Show in Chicago to working at the Oprah Winfrey Network in Los Angeles. but it had been more than 15 years since the original daytime crew had been back together after the show ended its historic run in 2011.

i first walked through Harpo’s iconic doors back in 2007. i started as a 21-year-old intern. in a very real way, i had grown up inside that building among the greatest team in the history of television. i’ve never felt more alive, inspired, and a part of something so special in my entire life. but i’d also grown up. i’m just not that same person anymore. i’m different. i’ve gained weight, been married, divorced, and had a new lifetime of experiences. i’m perimenopausal and my edges are thinning.

the thought of the reunion brought up all of these insecure feelings: will people remember me? will I recognize them? what will i say when people ask me what i’m up to? and after all this time, was the magic we felt back then even real, or did we just manufacture it in our heads? but how could I not go. it was rumored that over 200 people were coming, people flying in from all over the country – New York, LA, Nashville, Georgia – to be part of it. and it was probably the last time we’d all be in the same place like this again.

Is everyone putting up money? can I bring a friend or a plus-one? what time does it actually start? i asked to different people with knowledge. the guidance was consistent. you gotta call Ty. here’s his number. coordinate with him since he’s the one organizing it.

so on Saturday morning, the day of the reunion, i called.

whose Minnesota area code number is this, Ty answered shortly without saying hi or hello.

Ty, it’s maya watson from harpo. i heard there’s a reunion tonight. i was calling to get the details.

you rsvp’ed too late and we’re at capacity, he replied sounding like an irritated uncle who was overwhelmed on the day of a big event.

oh no, i didn’t know there was a limit! i said disappointed.

hearing the sadness in my voice, he said warmly, no, no, no. c’mon. we’ll make room. we’ll figure it out.

Harpo Studios was a different kind of place

for the last five years, it’s been on Ty’s heart to get the gang back together. Ty started at Harpo in 1990. he was friends with Tom Stacker, Harpo’s head of security. he bought Tom a new bike and came to deliver it to the studio one day. as they struck up conversation as friends, Tom mentioned that he was looking for someone to paint the parking garage for $20,000. Ty’s ear perked up at the opportunity and he said, i’ll do it for $5000. Tom said deal. and after completing a couple more projects with other people on the maintenance crew, he landed a full time position in the garage.

Harpo was just a different kind of place, he said in a phone call with me on Monday. it just always felt like family. i was so blessed there. everyone cared about me. and Oprah spoiled me.

Ty lost his mom at six and his dad when he was twelve and became homeless around the age of sixteen. he understood the profound, visceral pain of not having a family you could depend on. so as a young boy who grew up without an anchor, Harpo Studios became his sanctuary and the home he never had.

the hardest part of my job was waking up! he said laughing.

he clocked in early. every morning, he had to beat Oprah to the studio, arriving by 7a to ensure he was there before her 7:15am arrival. he greeted her each day with a new name: Oprah, Miss O, Winfrey, Miss Oprah, OW, the boss. for over twenty years, Ty was the bookends of her day—the first face she saw arriving, and the last one she saw leaving. he witnessed it all: two decades of the highest highs and the lowest lows of leading the most powerful show in the world.

Ty approached his job with a relentless spirit of excellence. parking every car with care, shoveling snow during the bitter Chicago blizzards, and spending his day detailing vehicles. the studio garage was a sanctuary where the world’s most famous people would pull up away from the paparazzi. Ty became a vault of secrets, overhearing the most intimate, private conversations. as nervous guests arrived to share their deepest vulnerabilities on television, he was the first touch of the Harpo culture and the first line of comfort. when the cameras were done rolling, he was there to welcome them back, witnessing the flood of relief, joy and triumph on their faces.

by day, Ty became the producers and staff confidante. the garage was one of the few places on the property people could smoke, making it the ultimate corporate confessional. he offered a non-judgemental ear as they brought him everything – problems with spouses, parenting struggles and the day-to-day stress of working on the world’s biggest show.

people told me everything, he said. and they knew i wasn’t going to tell anyone.

beyond the day-to-day operations, Ty felt deep gratitude for the culture of hospitality Oprah created.

when I first started, i couldn’t believe that everything I needed was provided for, Ty reflects. breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. it was all free. i started out homeless, you know? because of Harpo, i ended up with a beautiful wife, four kids, a nice home, and a nice car. i got to see the world with my family.

Oprah cared about the sacrifices her team made. the late nights. the early mornings. and grueling production schedules meant time away from their families and kids. to make sure everyone understood how grateful she was for that, she organized multiple all-expense-paid legendary vacations around the world for the team and their families over the course of the show. because of her, Ty was able to experience a luxury cruise to the Mediterranean and travel to Hawaii with his wife and kids.

it was everything. there’s nowhere else i wanted to work. i couldn’t work for another company. and i would’ve worked at Harpo for free, Ty said. we are a family. anytime anyone called for anything, day or night, i was coming.

it’s time to get the family back together

on February 5 of this year, Ty underwent open heart surgery. he claims he’s had a bad heart for a while. since the show days in the early 2000’s.

he had three surgeries in one day, his wife Jeanine shared. and when he woke up, one of the first things he said was ‘i need to get the Harpo family together.’ after years of attempts, he knew he wanted to make it happen. Jeanine said, ok, let’s do it.

he first created the design for the flyer and helped locked down the location with Art Smith. then the private Facebook group became the source of truth. within weeks, rsvp’s started flooding in. one by one, the word was traveling from Harponian to Harponian that Ty was getting the gang back together.

most of us have deeply missed the feeling and experience we had there and have either been chasing it in other places or quietly grieving that we may never get to experience it again. we were part of this rare alchemy of purposeful, intentional, ambitious work with a group of people who were great and loved what they did, that also had an impact and made waves around the world and had a blast while we did it. it is the workplace equivalent of heaven on earth. and with the current state of the world and the current culture of work, the time felt right this time and we all desperately needed a touch.

on Friday the day before, people from all parts of the company, from research to booking to finance, were sharing photos that they were on their way.

organizing it was a lot, Ty shared. but i woke up on saturday and thought, ‘it’s showtime.’

the day of, Ty’s phone was ringing like crazy with last minute confirmations, like me, saying they were pulling up. he arrived at the restaurant at 4:30p, 30 minutes before the event was meant to start and it was empty. he had the pre-event jitters of wondering if people would actually show. but he laid out the Harpo Studios reunion t-shirts, bags and lanyards he had ordered at the front entrance with a crew of people who were helping him get set up.

by 5:30p the patio was full and nearly at capacity.

the sound of the event was a combination of deep felt, it’s soooo good to see you, and high pitched shrieks of ahhhhh, omgggg, it’s soo good see youuuuu!!!

everyone, including Ty, admitted to feeling a bit overwhelmed and overstimulated by the experience. it was surreal and felt like we were time traveling back in time to the most special time in our lives. when you saw people, some names slipped our minds. but it didn’t matter because you hugged everyone, knowing there was unconditional love as family. by 7pm, the atmosphere was electric with people walking on the street wondering what in the world was going on because the joy, jubilation and celebration permeating the air was palatable.

as the night lingered on, we fell back into our groove as a crew like no time had passed. and at 8p, someone came up to Ty and said Oprah’s here.

i didn’t believe it, he said.

that same person pulled up their phone and showed him a picture of her from the other side of the patio and as Ty looked up, Oprah was standing there, flanked by her best friend Gayle and long-time partner Stedman.

Ty got choked up and couldn’t hold back the tears.

i can’t believe you’re here, he said to her.

she had flown back early after a trip to South Africa to surprise everybody and personally come hug her Tyrone. on a perfect summertime Chi night under the stars, with the breeze from Lake Michigan, he stood up from his scooter, still weak from the surgery with help from Jeanine and one of his sons and posed for a picture with Oprah amidst the rest of his 300+ family, completely surrounded by love.

she whispered in his ear, job well done, Ty. job well done.

on Sunday as we slowly regained our energy, Lauren and I continued in our text reflections from the night:

me: there is no workplace where people would get on the plane and use their own money to reunite with their team.

Lauren: no, and it wasn’t to get a chance to see Oprah.

me: right, no promise of Oprah. we showed up because of Ty. that is just amazing. think about that!

Lauren: truly amazing. a family people felt a part of. an opportunity of a lifetime to do meaningful work. and only those who are a part of it will understand it.

me: idk, it makes me emotional. that is what work is supposed to feel like. i wish this for everyone. that they get to feel a part of something so special with people you love.

Lauren: you spend over half your “life” with these people too. your other family. not everyone is that lucky.

me: 70% of our lives are spent at work. we got the best family.

Lauren: totally.

Ty, we are so, so grateful for your big, beautiful heart.

sending u so much love,

m

p.s. Oprah posted a recap of the reunion on her Instagram.

more essays about the culture of work from Follow the Leader:

this week in the house we’ve been meditating on the the massive, underemphasized skill and competitive advantage that comes from mastering pace.

rush is not our portion. the glamorization of hustle is evil and it’s just another way to keep us in bondage and too tired to take what’s ours or make any meaningful progress. burnout is robbing us of our birthright and the grind is a liar.

our obsession with faster is not a new phenomenon. we Americans love a diet. a get rich quick scheme. and convenience at any cost. this urgent energy is built into the foundation of our workplaces that are designed to keep us confused and in constant motion. because they know if we are able to slow down long enough, we’ll realize just how wonderfully wasteful everything really is.

so we gotta be as obnoxious about slowmaxxing as the manosphere is about looksmaxxing.

slowmaxxing is the intentional trend that rejects hustle culture by intentionally slowing your pace. instead of rushing through everything, it’s the mindset and daily practice of savoring ordinary moments like drinking coffee, walking without multitasking and bringing our full attention to simple acts. together, these acts aggressively crush chronic cortisol levels to help reboot and restore our collectively nervous systems.

so, how might we start to get into practice of slowmaxxing?

tell the truth about the cost of chaos.

in this week’s essay, Maya shares the true story about her body being so addicted to cortisol and adrenaline that it led her to choosing a chaotic environment instead of a calm one (literally) in a major turning point of her career. everyone struggles in making hard career decisions under pressure or chasing the validation of sexy career opportunities. many of us have gotten it wrong and shared practical ways we’re learning to trust ourselves again by learning how to create a life that honors the beauty of the slow.

don’t believe them.

by them, we mean out of touch, greedy tech oligarchs like Marc Andreesen who essentially said that building an interior life is a waste of time and how we should never slow down to reflect in an interview with Ezra Klein (thanks jp). they are financially incentivized to force AI and the stronger, faster, quicker narrative down our throats. and although they may speak with authority, it’s not truth. don’t believe them.

many are coming to the realization of how the culture of quick is a dangerous illusion that’s not producing any real fruit. this week in the NYT, Julie Averill, former Chief Information Officer of Lululemon, called the AI revolution a hot mess and a show. Substack and Linkedin have admitted that the rush to make content using AI is ruining their platforms and recently taken action against it.

understand the why behind the trend.

Jasmine Bina from the Concept Bureau is one of our favorites to read here on substack. she wrote a great piece about how we’re being forced back into our bodies. she illuminates that this deeper somatic and slowmaxxing movement beneath the modern wellness industry is a necessary and deeper desire to reconnect to ourselves. she successfully argues that when everything we know becomes a lie and trust is drastically collapsing everywhere, the body is the last real thing we can trust.

breathe, baby.

if you exist in a modern work environment then you’re probably shallow breathing most of the time which triggers more stress responses. you may even be clenching your jaw, have your tongue pressed against the top of your mouth or hunching your shoulders as you’re reading this. the world wants you to believe that you need all of these expensive supplements, apps or gadgets to calm down when in reality, God built the cheat code directly into your ribcage to calm your vagus nervous system. which is the information highway to your entire physiology, instantly signaling your brain to switch from survival mode to absolute calm.

grab Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor that shows you 10 different ways to breathe and that the most powerful human hardware is something you already own.

invest in hard data.

Jen Randle wrote on substack about how a saturday lunch with friends and a few folks she wasn’t as fond of seemed harmless at first. the stress her body was under would have gone unnoticed if she hadn’t checked her oura ring and noticed an elevated heart rate and suppressed variability – a pattern you’d expect during a hard meeting or deadline sprint.

investing in hardware like oura rings or cortisol tests from everlywell forces you to confront your baseline stress data so you can stop wondering how bad it is and start to build a practice and plan to improve (this is not an ad, btw).

use substack notes to practice rebuilding trust.

the goal is for there to be total congruence between your internal boundaries and your external speech. if your gut says no, your mouth must say no. over-explaining, over-performing, and saying yes to appease others introduces chaos into your life. when we write, we are not just recording our thoughts, we are actively organizing chaos. which leads to stress reduction through cognitive offloading. it specifically helps eliminate the mental loop cycling of thinking about things over and over again.

thankfully substack is not like every other place on the Internet. this is genuinely a community who’s becoming out loud (at least for now). practice working out a decision, sharing something you think that might be controversial, weird, or interesting. the goal is to get in practice of writing about what’s true to you so the next time you’re faced with having to make a decision, you know what truth feels like in your body.

operate in low-power mode.

if you’re already running on empty, adopt a strict 80% low-power mode protocol. stop performing at your usual people-pleasing 110%. don’t volunteer to take additional tasks, stop fixing other people’s problems and give up trying to save the day. you must prioritize radical energy conservation.

this helps creates the capacity to be around your kind of people and do the things that deepen the truth of who you are which actually energizes you. whether it’s a hike club, making homemade cards, being in your garden or working on puzzles.

for example, we’re doing a slow August where we turn down the volume on external meetings and conversations. you can borrow our language if you want when people reach out asking for your time:

hello! thank you for reaching out. i’m in what i call a slow august, intentional time i take each year to rest and restore. that means no additional external calls or meetings, and no work outside our core expression of [writing and engaging with our community online].

i’m holding this one firmly, even for people i’d love to say yes to. the whole thing falls apart the moment i start making exceptions. that said, if there’s something i can answer in a note, send it over and i’ll get to it at a slower pace. anything that needs a real conversation, let’s find time in september.

wishing you some slowness of your own this month.

some people will honor your boundaries. other people might be annoyed. either way you get data round those who support your regulation and those who intended to extract and drain you.

adopt a rest ethic.

isn’t it crazy how we exist in a modern workplace that is designed to prevent rest but elite athletes treat recovery as a non-negotiable strategy? Kevin is the king of rest and has taught so many the power of a rest ethic, where we work from a place of rest and don’t work to earn rest.

we promise we’re not that obsessed with LeBron, but he is one of our muses on rest. in Starting 5 on Netflix, he talks about how much he invests in his rest and his commitment to naps. it’s not lost on us that one of the greatest living athletes of our time, with one of the longest-running careers in modern sports history, openly cites an obsession with rest and recovery as the definitive secret to his unmatched longevity.

…and don’t forget the tortoise wins the race.

sending u so much love,

m & k

p.s. what are your must-have and go-to slowmaxxing practices?

but when we would go to our anything-goes-kind-of-friends houses, they would have a pantry full of contraband. their parents would joyfully ask, are you hungry? go grab a snack! have whatever you want! make yourself at home. opening up their cupboards was like finding a chest of forbidden riches. double stuffed oreos. little debbie zebra cakes. and all the cereals we couldn’t have.

without any hesitation, we would devour 3 bowls in a sitting. eating as fast we could, slurping the sugary infested milk in paranoia to erase any evidence. always to our surprise, the sugary puffs and bold artificial flavoring never satisfied us. no matter how much we ate, it never left us feeling full. but it always, always made us feel worse. and of course when we got back home, we would have crippling stomach aches that gave it away. what did y’all eat over there? in the midst of our sugary crack crash, somebody (aj) would always cave and confess, we had some of their cereal. my mom would dig deeper asking, what kind? and in unison we’d say, they had Trix.

this maladaptive compulsion would repeat over and over again.

do you love sleep?

in October 2020, i had made the painful decision to let Netflix go. i loved it there. and was proud of the work we had done. but i couldn’t keep eating off the empty promises. the resentment and frustration i harbored was becoming louder than my desire to want to do great work there. i knew it was time to move on. i believe you leave a job three times. first spiritually when your soul realizes it can’t fully express there, then emotionally when you stop caring about it all, and then eventually you leave physically. i had left emotionally.

weeks after letting go, i received a call from the head of HR at Calm, the leading app for sleep and meditation. we knew each other from Netflix and he said they were looking for someone to come in and lead marketing globally. they were experiencing exponential growth as a result of the pandemic. with unprecedented levels of anxiety, insomnia was on the rise and people were turning to Calm for relief. he talked about the founders and how they weren’t perfect, but genuinely good people and they were assembling a solid team. they needed to take the brand and the company to the next level. they needed it to break through culture. and he thought of me.

where are you right now, he asked. are you ready to leave to Netflix?

i am, actually, i responded. but i don’t use Calm. and you know i only consider places where i genuinely feel connected and passionate about the product. i can’t build a brand around something i don’t use or care about.

he said, do you love sleep?

i chuckled, i LOVE sleep. i LIVE to sleep.

he played his hand, then you already love Calm. at least do an intro call with their chief strategy officer to get a feel. if you’re down, i’ll email intro you.

i trusted him. and his approach delighted me. i agreed to an intro.

take a deep breath.

over the next month, we started our top secret work affair. i was taking calls after Netflix hours to get to know the team. i began studying everything about them in between meetings and when i was bored on Zooms. i was observing their consumer touch points, taking stock and trying to understand what was there. i continued reading up on all the news of the company, reviews in the app store and the origin story of the founders. more and more, i was imagining myself in the role. which is usually a sign that i being called toward something. i started thinking about the kinds of people we would need to hire, the first moves we would need to make and the kind of culture we would need to create to take the company to the next level.

on election night in November 2020, i remember siting on my couch in Sherman Oaks, with tequila on the rocks, watching CNN. John King and his interactive map was detailing the digital battleground between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. the race was too close. every update from the anchors felt like a sudden drop on a roller coaster. you could feel the thick cloud of anxiety hovering over the country and the pit in everyone’s stomach.

in the midst of the chaos, a :30 ad from Calm appeared that instructed us to take a deep breath with gentle, soft rain falling on green leaves. no words. no voice over. just an invitation to breathe. i thought it was absolutely genius. i could viscerally feel the positive impact of the brand. we needed more of this right now.

i emailed my contact there and said, i’m no longer just curious. i want the job. let’s take things to the next level.

i’m going to do the best work of my life.

by Jan 2021, i had met with all the key players inside of Calm. the head of product. the head of content. the existing team and multiple calls with both founders. i had even done mock strategy sessions with the head of strategy. i was into Calm and they were into me. and i kept waiting for them to put a ring on it, but there was always one more thing.

the last and final request was for me to put together a presentation of a vision for the brand with some hypothetical ideas that gave them a sense of my thinking. i thought it was a bit much and that i should probably be paid for it, but if this was their process i wasn’t going to fight it. what i did know was i was going to put together something so spectacular, it would be undeniable. i had a week to pull it together.

i called up a friend who was a freelance creative director and briefed him and said that i wanted to build a custom animated deck, create a mock harry styles ad (they had just signed him to do a sleep story) and a few other creative beats. while they started on the creative, i started outlining the vision.. i explained how we needed to shift Calm into a lifestyle brand. live events, annual festivals, high fashion pajama collabs, more disruptive ads wherever there was chaos. a list of new voices, faces and partnerships that would help elevate us in culture. how we could reimagine the branding and become synonymous with the sound of a deep breath. we would eventize sleep and turn the sleep stories into netflix title level trailers and promotion.

as i worked on the presentation, i realized how connected i actually felt towards the mission. my background working in personal growth, SuperSoul at OWN, and working on the meditation business was flowing through seamlessly. my entertainment culture experience at Netflix helped me see the sleep stories as our content driver. and i generally had so much reverence for sleep my whole life. as a kid, i used to put myself to bed because i loved it so much. so the idea of helping the world stress less and sleep more felt like important work that i wanted to be a part of and that was good for society. and it was something that i needed to personally really embrace in the midst of the pandemic, after recently separating from my husband and decompressing from everything i experienced at the big red N.

unsurprisingly, i crushed the presentation. so much so, they applauded at the end. i knew i had the job. the next Monday i got an offer over email with everything we had discussed. i called founders and verbally committed to them. i’m going to do the best work of my life. i told them i needed a week to review the paperwork for myself and with my divorce attorneys to prepare for any implications it might have on our settlement.

i was grateful that i was finally getting everything i wanted–the opportunity to shape a global brand in the top marketing spot. real equity in the company. but most importantly, being surrounded by a great group of people to do work that mattered and helped people around the world. i had gotten to know them over the last five months and i felt the goodness and the calm in the air. i could finally exhale.

lust at first sight.

on Wednesday of that same week, the CEO and founder of Clubhouse slid into my Linkedin dms saying they were looking for a marketing, comms and content leader for the company. it was the same day Elon Musk had just agreed to hop on the app with Kanye West.

it felt surreal. Clubhouse was the hottest app in the world at the time. i had been invited to join the social audio experience six months prior and felt like i was part of this exclusive club that millions had been waiting months to join. it was what everyone was talking about. i had said to my team at Netflix that we needed to be a first mover and start figuring out our Clubhouse strategy. i had no idea i was even on their radar. i had no idea that i would even be considered for something like this.

we got on the phone immediately and talked for four hours. it was lust at first sight. the founder was this overly energetic, almost toxically optimistic guy. i had never heard or met anyone like him. he painted this picture of coming in as one of the early employees to build out the next great social platform in the world. they had just been valued at $1B and received hundreds of millions to keep growing. at the time, it was the fastest growing app in the history of tech both in user growth and valuation. he was selling me on the opportunity to be part of it’s rocketship trajectory, to shape the future, to make generational shifting money and to be a part of history.

i told him that i had just committed to Calm two days prior and needed to get back to them by Friday. he replied, then we better move fast.

over the next 24 hours, i cleared my Netflix calendar (i had not told them about Calm) and we organized 15+ hours of interviews and conversations. i wanted his references and he needed mine. we talked all day. and all night. throughout the discussions, i wasn’t even sure what i should be asking about. the job felt so big and ambiguous. i didn’t even know where to start. everything just felt like hype, energy and excitement. i can’t remember the details of any of it. it was just happening to me suddenly.

i knew one of Clubhouse’s leading investors, who told me on the phone, this is the fastest-growing company i’ve ever had in my portfolio. there will always be a Calm, but there may never be another Clubhouse. this is like Mark Zuckerberg calling you up in 2007. do you want to be employee number ten at Facebook? i wasn’t sure i did, but how do you say no?

am i about to be the Black Sheryl Sandberg?! i thought.

every mentor I talked to confirmed that this would set me on a trajectory for the rest of my life. one, i guess, i should want to be on.

during that sprint, i never really felt any depth of connection to the people i talked to or what the company was becoming. they didn’t really know what the company was becoming because everything was happening so fast. but they did know that every other tech giant – Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn had declared war on them to build similar technology. they needed to hire and build fast. and they needed an answer by Friday.

i had the worst stomach ache.

Clubhouse made me offer that was almost identical Calm, except the potential financial upside was insane and the status and level of visibility i would get could change my life forever. on our final call Thursday late night before i had to make a decision, the Clubhouse founder said, listen, i’ll be in Santa Monica on Friday afternoon with my family. if you say yes, we can meet in-person on the strand and celebrate.

i remember laying on the couch curled up in a ball with crippling anxiety. i had the worst stomach ache of my life. i was completely and utterly overwhelmed. i think i may have even had a mild panic attack. i couldn’t distinguish if the angst and crushing weight i was feeling was the fear of stepping into the unknown or if it was my body trying to tell me this wasn’t right and i should run. i was tossing and turned all night. to soothe me, i flipped on Idris Elba’s sleep story on Calm to help me relax.

on Friday morning, February 12, 2021, i woke up way before the sun. i quietly went downstairs and made a perfect cup of coffee. i sipped it slowly. i prayed that i had made the right decision. in the light of the dawn, i looked at the clock and it wasn’t even 7a yet. but i wanted to get it over with. i grabbed my phone to make the call. on the first ring he picked up.

what time should i meet you in Santa Monica to celebrate, i said.

what i didn’t know then but i know now is that my body was so burned out and depleted from battling for my worth at Netflix, numbing myself from the pain of being abandoned in divorce, working and mothering through the pandemic, plus the years of exhaustion of just existing as a Black woman that i had conditioned my body to ignore red flags. in my state of depleted willpower, i mistaken chaotic environments for familiar comfort and lost the ability to distinguish real, intuitive danger from chronic anxiety. my nervous system steered me back into a toxic situation because it had become addicted to adrenaline, cortisol and chaos. when your house alarm has been ringing for months, you get used to the noise. a healthier, calm environment actually felt boring, unfamiliar and unsafe to me.

when i walked with the founder on the strand in Santa Monica that day, i knew somewhere deep down it was the wrong decision. but i was locked in. i had signed the paperwork. and i had to force myself to believe it was the right call. the people at Clubhouse were good people. they just weren’t my people. and after less than two years there, the stress and anxiety from that job nearly destroyed me.

i had to first forgive myself for moving too quickly. i let the pace and haste of the situation deterimine my decision making timeline instead of asking for more time to process. i had to apologize to my body for betraying her. for not honoring the truth of what she needed at the time. and putting her through so much stress because of my trauma and people pleasing nature to be seen, validated and chosen. in the thick of it, i had to reframe why i was there. i can still learn a lot. i can still contribute to the best of my ability. i can still take care of the people on my team. but i have to protect myself. but i also had to understand that my best work wasn’t going to happen there. and that was ok.

over time, i’ve had to recondition myself about the truth of who i am. and what my real work really is. i’m not the type to chase money. i sign up for missions. and choosing Clubhouse was the first time i chose a role because of the opportunity to make money. and i can promise you if it worked out i’d be on a yacht somewhere next to Emma Grede in the South of France, not writing the truth of my story to you all.

we didn’t have a common goal. we had a common enemy. and in my experience it’s always better to be for something than against something. and the connection i feel with people in the work really matters because that is core experience. that is the real work. i cannot compromise on that.

even years later, when i think about the decision, i still sometimes beat myself up and wonder what could have happened if i would have chosen Calm. but i’m learning to give myself grace, stress less and to sleep more and to stop chasing the sugary, bright boxed packaged cereal that’s no good for me.

sending u so much love,

m

p.s. talk to us in the comments. how does your body communicate with you in the middle of a tough decision?

if you enjoyed this, more work essays from Follow the Leader…

we’re glad you’re enjoying it with the intent it was written.

must-read: Life is In the Transitions

we shouted out our boy in this week’s essay and he is one of our favorite non-fiction writers. he really doesn’t get the flowers he deserves, but his book Life is in the Transitions is a must-read for all of us in this time. someone gave it to Maya during peak Covid when there was so much chaos in her life personally. it gave her clarity, made her feel less alone, empowered and equipped her to help find her way out.

if you are navigating any kind of transition — job change, divorce, a move, marriage, becoming a parent, navigating loss + grief… pretty much everything, this is an ESSENTIAL book. here’s what you’ll learn:

1. context on why transitions are so messy and uncomfortable and how long they last + why

2. historical context that illuminates why we are dealing with so many more transitions than generations past

3. the sequence of a transition so you can find your bearings in it

4. great guidance on how to be super intentional in the transition

5. relatable and relevant stories to underscore each principle

mastering transitions is the most essential skill for our generation because we literally are in perpetual change. it’s a practical, fast read that you can reference over and over.

future of work: either become a creator-led brand or work for one.

in a world where every piece of information is available but the traditional system of work is fundamentally broken, the new economy belongs to those who build their lives and businesses on the truth of their stories. our real, lived experiences and perspectives are our most valuable assets, our original ip, our ultimate point of connection and the only reason people will care.

• a few weeks ago, Starbucks just made an epic move to empower and pay their baristas to grab the mic on behalf of the company. in this first-of-its-kind deal with TikTok, the company will select certain employees and send them content ideas to turn into TikToks and earn money.

• last week, Gap Inc. just announced that they too are creating a creator program for employees that gives them a way to become influencers, earning commission and product while sharing what they love and bringing the Gap brand to life through authentic storytelling.

• here on Substack, Kevin discovered this GenZ phenom book publicist,

  Abigail Monti and her stack Unsolicited Manuscript. she writes her observations from inside the publishing industry and her company Penguin Random House actually supports her becoming a known creator because they get what we get… if we fall in love with Abigail’s story, we’re more likely to buy their books and support their authors.

the truth will set us free.

the future belongs to those who are willing to share both the torturous and triumphant journey of their stories out loud.

this week we were inspired by Jarrod at Craft & Capital.

Jarrod is an attorney and tech policy advisor who is becoming a leading creator in the business of high fashion. this week, he relaunched his substack and shared his emotional story about being laid off by Amazon and how hard the shift has been as a husband, father and the truth about building outside the w-2 system. we loved his declaration at the end, I will be successful, but I will definitely make mistakes along the way. But I’m done building in silence and only showing my wins. That’s not real life. That’s reel life.

we look forward to hearing you share more on the necessary tradeoffs of becoming a craftsman in this longer format, Jarrod.

permission to… not have a plan.

we love talking to and hearing from people who create safe relational environments for people to tell the truth of their stories. and last week, we caught up with one of our readers who’s a therapist (when ya’ll reach out, we respond btw). we asked her, what are you hearing from your clients in broad strokes. she answered, mass disillusionment from what they thought their lives were going to look like.

so when we saw, Myliek’s article, Permission to Not Have a Plan, we knew we had to share. she succinctly sums up the existential feeling of those who are making the transition from corporate athlete to creativeprenuer: i don’t know what’s next.

she affirms that the answers we’re so desperately wanting come from allowing time and space to do its work. she writes, so much in your life is going to change, and the goal is not to get rid of uncertainty. It’s learning not to confuse uncertainty with incompetence. You don’t know yet, and for now, let that be enough.

thank you for the permission, Myliek.

the latest on the stack: is your writing 100% human?

the Substack streets are at war over the new collaboration with Panagram and their feature that lets readers scan text over 100 words to determine if there is any AI assistance in the writing. some think it’s a great addition to keep Substack a more human place on the internet and not let it become ai drenched like LinkedIn. others believe it’s a witchhunt, an inaccurate tool that’s going to make great writers question themselves. Aurora James wrote about this in her latest, Did I write this?, where she admitted to questioning [her] own sanity, and the validity of [her] words.

here’s our take on this: stop worrying about what people think and start focusing on your intent. this isn’t about the tool. you can disable it and it not be a thing.

this is really about the trust you’re building between you and your readers. you can obsess about what people might think or you can focus on how to cultivate a transparent container where you reveal and are honest about your intent with your writing.

if you use ai to write, tell them and explain why. if you are committed to writing 100% human, let them know why that matters to you and your work. if you decide to turn off the tool, reveal your thinking behind it. ultimately, your readers just want to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. this is how trust is built over time. and trust is your most valuable currency, not a Panagram scan.

for example, in this week’s article, we were honest that we used ai to help organize the thoughts in the last section in how i did this, because it’s the truth of how we got there.

you ask, we answer.

Lauren W. from South Carolina asked, I’m leaning into my path as a documentarian in South Carolina and really designing what this looks like for me--with intention this time, not in a reactive way like before. Your writing has helped me see that everyone isn’t going to understand my vision because I have to carve it out first--and even then it’s only for those who are assigned to it. Now that I have overwhelming evidence I’m on the right path, my question is how do I really talk to my audience?

before you start thinking about how to talk to your audience, our first question is, do you know the pain points of who you’re meant to serve and how your work is designed to help bring restoration in their lives? we often see people jump into content without having a clear understanding of this. a great way to approach this is to examine your own life and interrogate your own pain first, or talk with someone who’s been impacted by your work to get to a deeper understanding. you could ask yourself, what’s frustrating me right now and why does it bother me so much? or ask someone you’ve impacted, without using words from my actual job, how would you say i’ve helped you?

we believe that our pain used productively is the pathway to our greatest purpose. once you are clear on that, then start writing to that person, singularly. when we write here on FTL, we think about one person we know in real life and we only write to them. when you write to an audience, you’re not really writing to anyone. but when you write to one person, you’ll end up writing to many.

if you (or anyone) is looking for help on how to start thinking about your work, your story, who it’s here to serve and the pain they may be experiencing, book a session with us. we’d love to serve you.

sending u so much love,

m & k

p.s. we are looking for a kind, people-first, innovative, creative genius to help us distribute Follow the Leader content across platforms.

someone who loves storytelling, is a visionary creative producer and executor who can translate an idea into many formats. someone who knows the pain of work and is on the courageous journey to becoming their own best work and wants to be a part of our mission to change the culture of work, one visionary creator at a time.

essentially, you are like the Law Roach of social content development + distro.

if that’s you or someone you know, email us at maya@ourbestwork.co or kevin@ourbestwork.co. we want to hear your story and see evidence of you in expression.

we were starting to relax into the weekend while we waited for Chipotle to arrive. we don’t cook on Fridays. as we walked out of our meeting room, i overheard Kevin playing this clip of Ryan Clark getting emotional talking about being fired by ESPN. I asked what happened, but Kevin was still gathering the facts and wasn’t sure yet.

when we got to the family room, Kevin sank into the couch while i started impatiently grazing for snacks in the cabinets.

did you see LeBron is going to Philly? he asked.

ugh, he’s so lame to me! why in the world would he go to another team? and why Philly?! i said so annoyed.

Kevin started reading some facts and commentary he saw on Threads about the move. $8 million contract. 24 months. the team with Jaylen Brown, Joel Embiid, and Tyrese Maxey. And a chance to win another championship with yet another team.

it’s so interesting, I said. Lebron might be the first NBA great that’s not associated with one franchise. there’s Jordan and the Bulls. Bird and the Celtics. Magic and the Lakers. Tim Duncan and the Spurs. i don’t know if there will be one team we’ll remember LeBron for.

Kevin said, yeah that’s right. i think that’s the point. we’ll remember him as Lebron, inc.

i stopped eating the handful of cashews i had grabbed and suddenly remembered that we are supposed to be employee first, and in this instance, player first. my disdain with LeBron stemmed from an old construct and the outdated mindset that to be great it meant you stayed with a franchise and they built the team around you. you didn’t leave when things got hard or through losing seasons. you stayed, endured and your ability to win at one place is what made you a legendary player.

and then Kevin said, Lebron is just the Bozoma Saint John of the NBA.

i looked at him wide eyed and said, we have to write about this.

we have good news

it was a hot July summer day in 2020 and i was anxiously pacing back and forth trying to stay in the light that was shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows inside my Sherman Oaks house waiting for the two highest ranking Netflix executives to call. i had just returned to work after taking two weeks off after a deeply visceral and unpleasant encounter.

we have good news, Reed Hastings said over the phone to me. thank you for your patience over the last couple weeks. we want you to know we really value you and want you to know how much we really believe in you and your future here. we took action and let what’s her name go. it was clear she was struggling and it was unacceptable how you were handled. the good news is we hired Bozoma Saint John. she starts in September. you now report directly to her. you now report directly to a Black woman. isn’t that great news?!

i paused in shock. uh…yeah…wow. i didn’t see this coming.

Ted added, she’s been briefed on your situation. and even though she doesn’t officially start for a couple months, she wants to talk to you today in the next hour if you’re available.

yes, of course. tell her i’m free. I said back. i’m really grateful you all took action on this. it means a lot to me. i really love this place. i was waiting to see how you all handled this over the to see if i was going to stay. and based on this, i’ve made the decision to stay. thank you.

we hung up the phone and i immediately texted one of my trusted work besties who knew the details of everything that had happened leading up to this.

me: they fired what’s her name. And hired Boz.

trusted work bestie: alkdafljhdsfy!! what?! omg. how do you feel about this?

me: i don’t know how to feel. i’m talking to her in an hour.

trusted work bestie: what are you gonna wear?

me: idk yet.

her image rewired my imagination

i had followed Boz’s career for years. i distinctly remember being mesmerized by this image of her in Fast Company after she demoed Apple Music at Apple’s iconic developer conference in 2016. who was this gorgeous, glamorous, dark-skinned, big hair, don’t care Black woman in marketing? i thought. i immediately looked her up to learn more about her journey and resume. Spike Lee. Pepsi. Beyonce. wow. impressive.

when I was still at OWN, i had bumped into her a couple times when she was one of our VIP guest for the irl experiences we were producing at the time. we always did that Black woman i see you thing from across the room. we only spoke in brief sentences. she was always kind and polite when i saw her backstage at SuperSoul Sessions and The Life You Want tour.

her presence was a physical force. you couldn’t look away from her if you tried. it wasn’t just the sheer height, the kaleidoscope of colors she wore, or the majestic crown of her hair. it was her posture. her poise. she carried a laugh so resonant and a confidence so thick it permeated the air, giving it no choice but to settle directly on you.

i had never seen anyone who looked like that, and definitely anyone who looked like me, occupying the exact rooms i desperately wanted to enter. before her, my ambitions were theoretical. her image alone rewired my imagination, fundamentally shifting the boundaries of what i believed was possible for myself. i didn’t just respect her; i looked up to her as a blueprint.

since then, i tracked her every move through Instagram and industry chatter. i vividly remember her breakthrough Apple Music campaign. the one with Kerry Washington, Mary J. Blige, Taylor Swift, and Drake. iconic, I thought. i had just started at Netflix in 2017 when i watched her sit down with Gayle King on CBS This Morning in a bright red blouse, gold hoops, and braids, thinking, man, she is bold. she had just moved to Uber, stepping in as the face of the brand in the thick of all the misconduct allegations surrounding Travis Kalanick. i knew what that meant: a massive job, a massive check, and massive pressure.

as i learned more about her personal history, my reverence deepened. i was a single mom myself, fiercely determined to climb the corporate ladder and make a name for myself. finding out that she had ascended to the absolute highest echelons of corporate as a single mother was profoundly comforting. it felt like a direct validation: if she could do it, I could do it.

less than a year into her time at Uber, she announced she was leaving for WME. with every rapid pivot from company to company, the narrative around her seemed to change. it felt like she was transitioning from a corporate executive deep in the daily execution to a corporate influencer. my admiration started shifting into suspicion. why was she jumping ship so often? i prided myself on being in the trenches, doing the actual heavy lifting. for me, leadership wasn’t about optics or the spotlight. it was about moving the needle and taking my responsibility seriously both to the internal teams I led and the external audiences we served.

on Instagram, her feed became a parade of famous faces and luxe experiences. it started to feel like her real work was simply being friends with celebrities and getting paid millions to do it. it felt insulting to those of us who kept our heads down, focused on the business, and did the real work. to make matters worse, the rumors started circulating: chatter that she would slide into a company, shake up teams and leave without ever executing the work. watching her get celebrated for optics while we bled for results turned my skepticism into resentment.

so when Reed and Ted told me they had hired her as our new CMO, it felt like a slap in the face. Netflix wasn’t a playground. we were a real company with massive deliverables and non-stop pressure. and after cycling through two CMOs in two years, our department was running on fumes. we needed a stabilizing force, a leader to anchor the ship. instead, it felt like we were getting a celebrity figurehead hired to pose for the cameras.

why are you still here?

but regardless of how i felt, she was the boss now, and our first meeting was minutes away. i was about to log onto a Zoom with one of the most blindingly glamorous Black women to ever scale the corporate ladder. i swallowed my resentment, grabbed my makeup bag, brushed my hair, and put on a red lip.

when the Zoom window popped open, she was smiling radiantly, her porcelain-white teeth flashing brilliantly against her rich, dark skin. she was in immaculate, full hair and makeup, looking every bit the icon she was. when she gestured, I noticed her long acrylic nails, adorned with intricate, colorful artwork. she was completely, unapologetically flawless.

she said, i’m so happy to see you. they told me what’s going on. then with genuine concern in her voice, she asked, sis, are you ok?

and i lost it. i just completely and utterly lost it. the unexpected softness and genuine care of a Black woman asking about my spirit completely shattered my hardened corporate shell. i couldn’t stop the tears if I tried.

as I choked back the tears and fought to steady my breath, the floodgates opened and i laid it all at her feet. i told her how I’d been at Netflix for four years, fed a steady diet of empty promises about reaching the next levels of leadership. i told her about the team I built, one of the most wildly successful marketing engines the industry had ever witnessed. a team where 70% percent of the talent fought for internal transfers just to work under me. everyone wanted in, but for leadership, it was never enough. i was invisible when it came to promotions, while my peers, who hadn’t delivered a fraction of my results, were constantly elevated.

the words just kept coming. i told her how i realized i was only valuable to them when the company was on fire with Black shit. when Black talent had a problem or Black employees demanded accountability or when our CCO was fired for saying the n-word, suddenly they needed me to play shield. i told her about the unimaginable names I’d been called, and the final, crushing blow two weeks earlier: being asked to co-lead the company’s Black Lives Matter task force, only to be called angry and militant and humiliated by another leader, in front of the entire executive team.

i told her i was done. that I’d threatened to walk, threatened to sue. threatened to burn Netflix to the ground. that the frustration from this place had bled into my home, leaving my personal life hanging by a thread. it felt like the walls were caving in, and i was suffocating. i was overwhelmed. and i was tired.

then, my voice shifted from a plea into something else. i began rambling about how grateful I was for her, how her very existence given me life at a time when i needed it, and how I couldn’t even fathom the horrors she must have survived to reach her heights. i see you too, I told her, the tears still falling. we’ve all been watching you, Boz. we had never seen anyone like you. thank you for being who you are.

in that space sat two Black women, stripped of our armor, recognizing the same battle scars on each other’s skin. i wasn’t just crying for myself anymore; i was honoring what it took for her to survive, too. the gravity of that mutual recognition, i watched her eyes start to water too.

she held my gaze, looked me in my eyes and said so beautifully calmly, if you’ve done all of that, and experienced all of that and they still don’t see you, why are you still here?

the ultimate permission

the silence that followed her question was deafening. it was the exact moment the old construct died. i realized then that the resentment I had harbored toward her wasn’t actually about deliverables, corporate stability or her fancy life. it was envy. i was bitter because she had a freedom I didn’t think I was allowed to possess. i had been trapped in the toxic ideology of the loyal employee, while she and LeBron were operating as players who owned the game. she wasn’t just a corporate executive; she was an enterprise. LeBron wasn’t just a basketball player; he was LeBron, Inc. they didn’t belong to the organizations; the organizations should feel blessed to have them.

her question forced me to look at my own hands and realize i held a power i didn’t know i had. that it was possible to be great, to deeply care about the work and the people and to stop waiting to be seen, waiting to be promoted, and start playing for myself. in that one sentence, Boz gave me the ultimate permission: the permission to leave.

i started interviewing for a new team two months later. six months later i left and became a CMO.

work isn’t working

we are living through the most disruptive generational reckonings the workplace has ever seen. we are the most conscious we’ve ever been, armed with therapy, coaching, and unprecedented access to information. we’ve learned how to name our triggers, regulate our nervous systems, and advocate for our needs. this deep self-awareness makes it impossible to tolerate what isn’t right. we can see toxicity clearly now. We can name burnout, manipulation, and dysfunction. so when we say a corporate system isn’t working, we are not being dramatic; we are being honest.

the pandemic accelerated this shift. it forced a global pause that allowed everyone, everywhere, all at once to get quiet enough to hear the truth: work isn’t working for me anymore.

our parents and grandparents survived under a different blueprint. for them, a linear path existed. you clocked in, kept your head down, and trusted that institutional loyalty would reward you with stability and a pension. the system was flawed, but it was functional enough to build a life around.

but our societal contract with work is broken. and as author and workplace researcher notes in Life Is in the Transitions, that linear life is dead. Feiler’s data reveals that modern lives are strictly nonlinear, unfolding in unpredictable chapters, disruptions, and resets. we are changing industries, identities, and values multiple times over a lifetime.

the crisis we feel is that while our lives have become nonlinear, our corporate systems are still built for linear humans. companies have no sense of loyalty, commitment and decency to their people. the jig is up. our parents survived by staying put. but we have to imagine a new way. one where we move with a different kind of intention, authority and agency.

no one is coming to save you

if you are still waiting for a company, a title, a promotion, or a manager to save you or to see how great you really are, you are waiting for something that is not coming. excellent work will not insulate you from a broken system. just look at Ryan Clark, pulled off the air mid-broadcast by a network he gave a decade of his life to for no valid reason.

the ground is moving under all of us. this is the moment our parents never could have prepared us for and the moment the modern corporate athlete must learn to lead themselves. so let the franchise keep its old playbook. let the traditional corporate map burn. the true measure of a legendary career is no longer how much dysfunction you can quietly endure for a title or a logo, but how fiercely you protect your own value and how much you deeply understand your own worth.

sending u so much love,

m