Resume Worded Coached Weekly newsletter

real career strategy for ambitious people [First name] — this is your second Coached Weekly. Quick refresher: it's your career strategy email which contains the tactics, tools and hacks that I've seen work in real careers. My goal is to make this the highest ROI thing you read each week. It takes just 5 minutes to read but it’s the kind of stuff you’ll reuse for years. I’ve coached people for over a decade — this is the best of what I’ve learned, distilled into a short tactical email. The 20-second Career tactic A tactic you can use today. I teach it in 20 seconds. How to write with authority Surprisingly, simple words in our emails can subtly undermine our authority. Phrases like 'I think', 'sorry', or 'maybe' might sound polite, but they actually project uncertainty, not confidence. Here are some before-and-after examples to illustrate: Projects uncertainty: "I'm no expert but I think we maybe should do..." Confidence: "We should do..." or "I recommend we do..." Overly apologetic: "I'm so sorry for the delay..." Just right: "Thanks for your patience" Before: "Just wanted to check in, how is everything going with X" After: "Checking in — what's the status of X?" Before: "Apologies for [missing your email / an error / contacting you]" After: Pay attention to the times you say sorry for things that really aren't your fault. Then, try to actively reduce them. Remove those phrases from your everyday vocabulary — and start being more direct — and you'll start to appear more confident in your communication. Mentor's Corner Insights put together by me. One practical lesson a week that will make a measurable impact on your career, delivered right to you — for $0. Why I think “leaving a legacy” is just BS Something I like to ask people who ask me for career advice is, “what motivates you?” And a common reply I get is: “To leave a legacy.” And that’s when I stop them. Not because leaving a legacy is “bad”. It’s not. (I think it’s good to have a moral compass, and think, “would future generations approve of what I’m doing?”) But as a primary motivator? I’m not a fan. Today, I’m gonna explain why, and share what I think is a far more “fruitful” thing to focus on instead. Here we go. 🤥 Is it even possible? I read somewhere that the 5 inventions that’ve had the biggest impact on human history were: fire, gunpowder, the transistor, the condom and the Internet. Probably true. And yet, I don’t know who invented any of them! (Can you?) If people who permanently changed humanity have been forgotten, how realistic is it for us to expect our careers to leave lasting legacies? 🤔 Who’s “they”? “I want people to remember me when I’m gone,” we tell ourselves. But who exactly are these “people”? Case in point: Back in 2014, the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey team played a game on “Giants of Africa Day” to honor the great Nelson Mandela. Post-game, the interviewer asked the goalkeeper, “What does Nelson Mandela mean to you?” He has no idea and responds: “Obviously, he was one of the most known athletes in history… A great person, both on and off the ice.” 🤦♂️ If an athlete doesn’t even know who Nelson Mandela is… at an event to honor Mandela’s legacy… a year after Mandela’s death… then how can we expect the average person scrolling TikTok in the year 3000 to remember who we were? It's worth considering: You do so much in your career and make a ton of sacrifices. But who are you really doing it for? Is it for yourself and the people close to you, or for random future people who won't even remember you when you're gone? 🫣 “Legacy” is a cop-out Marketer Seth Godin makes a brilliant (yet uncomfortable) point: Day-dreaming about “changing the world” (or leaving a legacy) is just an escape from doing the hard, dirty work of changing just one person’s life in the present. And I think that’s spot-on. It’s kinda like reading self-help books as a way of avoiding the boring reality of building our skills, or brush