Welcome back to Dear EverMore, and to a whole new year of being authentically ourselves + taking ownership of our career story!

In this episode, Courtney sat down with our cofounder and CTO, Scott Hertel, to walk through his career story — from coming up in the dot com era to becoming a 3x founder, and now part of building EverMore.

This felt especially timely as we kick off 2026. Instead of the antiquated "new year, new you," we're leaning into our "new year, be you" mindset. Scott's story is a masterclass in staying true to yourself while being intentional about where your career goes.

A few things we talk about:

• The dot com crash — tying your identity to your job is a warning sign. Instead, Scott shares advice on how to own your career instead of letting it happen to you.
• Career-as-a-product — keeping it simple, running experiments, acting on feedback, and knowing who to go to for mentorship. Scott shares ways to use the scientific method to find out what excites you and helps you grow.
• Why engineers plan everything except their careers — and why your story (the business impact you've made) matters more than the tech languages you know or what you’ve shipped.

Resources we shared:

• (article) Scott Hertel On Failure, Freedom, and Being a 3x Founder
• (book) The One Thing by Gary Keller
• (book) Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• (app) EverMore as your Career Companion

If you’re looking to take ownership of your career, navigate a transition, or want to be a better leader, EverMore is a space built for reflection, growth, and career storytelling. While we’re in our early beta, we’d love to have you try it out and invite others with your very own referral link 💚

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Welcome to the last episode of 2025 from Dear EverMore!

Before we get started, we want to fully acknowledge that 2025 was a doozy and included a lot of great things (like us creating + beta launching EverMore), as well as heavy events all over the world. We know how difficult it is to come to work and exist in the every day like everything’s a-okay when the world is heavy around us. So, if you’re feeling that, too, please know you’re not alone 💚

In today’s episode, we discuss how politics is in everything — at work, we rely on our employers and our jobs financially, emotionally, and socially (especially with work now taking over the 3rd space) — and how it’s really difficult to separate politics from our work.

A few specific things we talk about:

• How hard it is to speak up in the workplace when you’re early in a career, often out of fear of losing your job.
• How layoffs affect our local communities, as well as the global economy
• How our societal norms and biases impact opportunity and compensation
• How it can be difficult to work for a company that uses unethical or questionable practices, like child labor overseas

When big (and small) injustices are happening around us, silence feels like agreement.

We believe it’s important for leaders to say something when a difficult event occurs (either nationally or locally), as well as be conscientious of how the work itself could affect their employees, workers, or society at large. Especially now as more companies are taking hard stances on “no politics at work,” it can make some feel unseen, or worse, feeling unprotected.

If you’re a people leader or manager, here’s what we recommend:

• Even a “today might be a tough day for some of you” can help someone feel seen + understood. You can show empathy for others without sharing your personal or political views.
• Sharing resources, like Telehealth counseling (if it’s something offered as an employee benefit) if they need to talk to someone outside of the company.
• Adding “please be conscientious of others today” since we all have different opinions, perspectives, and beliefs — these differences make us better, but can make it difficult to have understanding + empathy.

EverMore is a space built for reflection, growth, and career storytelling. We built EverMore to help others figure out what to do when they encounter ethical quandaries at work + how to authentically drive their career forward. We’re invite only right now, but we’d love to get you on our waitlist!

Helpful resources

• The Little Lies That Keep Work Unfair
• I Don’t Know How to Be Apolitical at Work
• The Future Is Already Unfolding: How Work and Society Evolve by 2030
• Subscribe to the EverMore Edit (our monthly newsletter)

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Welcome back to Dear EverMore! In this special bonus episode, Courtney and Kelsey answer your questions around feedback and how to tackle all too common situations at work.

The TL;DR — we tackle several community submitted questions:

• Someone who's been managing an entire department for months just had leadership hire someone else over them
• A person who keeps receiving feedback that isn't curious and comes loaded with "shoulds"
• A manager who's been asked by leadership to deliver feedback they don't agree with or own

This episode builds on our previous conversation about what's wrong with feedback at work, but this time we're getting practical with real-life scenarios that are far too common in the workplace.

Resources:

• we've officially launched our beta to folks on our waitlist! For now, we're invite-only while we make EverMore the best it can be. Join the waitlist for early access.
• previous episode: What's wrong with feedback at work
• article: The death of honesty - do you have any feedback for me?

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Welcome back to Dear EverMore! In today’s episode, we’re talking about what’s wrong with feedback at work, and how EverMore is on a mission to make this better (for everyone).

If you want the TLDR, we discuss how:

• a lot of people are being polite at work and avoiding the hard conversations — sometimes too late, sometimes not at all
• feedback often tends to be projections of how others are feeling, what they would do differently, or the feedback they’ve received themselves
• important it is to understand your “why” when asking for feedback — by knowing this, you then know who to go to, what you’re looking for, and how to ask for it
• establishing relationships and knowing someone’s values + who they are make it much easier to accept and give feedback to one another — this is doubly true when reading for their reactions or non-verbal cues since those are not universal

Naturally, Courtney + Kelsey go into some tangents in this conversation (which are always fun!) — one of which goes into some of their recruiting practices, like knowing when we (or their team) is having a bad day so it doesn’t affect a candidates ability to be successful. We also share the importance of candidates being able to have bad days, too.

With what we’re building at EverMore, we want to help you know yourself better so you can bring your fullest, most authentic self to everything you do. Whether you’re looking to get promoted, become a better manager, or accomplish big goals — we’re building for you in mind, a tool we’ve always wanted ourselves at work.

Resources:

• want to work with our AI coaching tool? Join the waitlist!
• article: The death of honesty - do you have any feedback for me?

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Have a burning question you'd like answered on the pod? We'd love to give you advice! Submit your anonymous question.

Welcome back to the Dear EverMore podcast! We’re your hosts, Courtney Branson + Kelsey Peterson — cofounders of EverMore.

In today’s episode, we talk through our career experiences and how they’ve shaped our growth, identities, and why we’re building EverMore with you in mind, dear human.

Both of us strive to be fully authentic, expressive, and creative in everything we do. So, in the conversation, get ready to hear all about:

• why + how we need to bring more creativity to our work
• why we both love “Big Magic” (Elizabeth Gilbert) and how it brought us together years ago
• how a career is no longer a ladder — instead, we like to think of it as a jungle gym, teaching us more and more about ourselves
• how important it is for leaders (and everyone) to welcome the wacky ideas, otherwise, people won’t bring them to the table anymore
• and as always, so much more!

With EverMore, we’re building the tools we’ve always wanted to support (and own) our careers. Whether it’s working toward a promotion, seeking a new role, becoming a manager (or getting better as a leader), or needing help with hard conversations — we’re building for you!

If you’re looking for a personal AI coach that cares about you + where you’re heading, we’d love to get you into our upcoming beta launch before the rest of the world has access.

• Join our waitlist (launching in a few weeks!)
• Read: Courtney’s career story
• Read: Kelsey’s career story
• Read: The Work Breakup — Making Space for Grief

Next week, we’ll see you for our topic: what’s wrong with feedback at work? (a lot)

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Welcome Scott! In this episode, you get to meet + hear from our CTO + cofounder, Scott Hertel, the powerhouse behind the product we’re launching. He shares his mission with EverMore, what makes him excited about what we’re building, and his career horror story as well (super relatable, btw).

Like past episodes, we first go through and answer last week’s reflection prompt: “What do you want to leave from this week in the Haunted House behind you?”

This is a special, but longer, conversation, chock full of people + culture experiences, like intuitive leadership advice to making choices with your energy during your career to being blindsided by managers about OUR careers.

If you want to skip ahead, we have plenty of chapters to choose your own adventure — here are the various career horror stories:

• Being forced to change our expression to keep a job
• Lunch with a manager turns into a formal performance review data collection
• Leadership decides on a career path for an employee
• Working towards a promotion, hitting all development goals, but someone else gets the promo?
• Vampire bites multiple people in the office and finally gets let go —
• Fired employee brings their emotional support toucan to the office to try to get their job back
• and more!

Interested in having an AI coach at your fingertips to help you track your impact, progress, and career goals?

• You can join our waitlist + get first access to what we’re building with you in mind!
• Plus, you can choose “River” (the coach Courtney uses) or the other personalities depending on what you like best.

Other Helpful Resources

• [article] The story about an intern who was let go after biting several people
• [blog] The Death of Honesty — do you have any feedback for me?
• [form] Join our waitlist for early access to our AI virtual coach
• [form] Got a burning question or need advice? Submit your question(s) for us to answer live on the pod!

Until next time, have a great + safe Halloween 🎃

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Hello listeners, Kelsey here! We're back for another fun conversation on life + work, this time talking further about why performance needs to be untangled from compensation at work. 

First, like usual, we openly share what came through for us from the October full moon (the Hunter's/Harvest Moon), like releasing the need to control everything or be everything to everyone all the time - it's definitely exhausting. Before we dive into the topic, we also talk about attachment styles and how this isn't considered enough (or at all) at work; this can show up as managers avoiding the hard conversations and employees feeling anxious when they don't know how they're really doing. 

For the topic, Courtney shares how she's successfully untangled performance + compensation at previous startups by:

• Making compensation 100% transparent (yes, 100%!), where employees can see the market data for their role, how a role's level was determined, and a full spreadsheet of everyone's compensation
• Being purposeful with how career growth + development occurs (vs using performance reviews) to get the honest take from an employee and their manager
• Establishing automatic annual raises and sharing a calculator so employees know what they should expect with each anniversary

Of course, there's so much more we could've talked about and we plan to have a future session to talk through the mechanics of building a compensation philosophy and process. 

Additional resources:

• [blog] The Death of Honesty - Do you have any feedback for me?
• [form] Submit Your Own (anonymous) Career Horror Story
• [resource] Rockstar vs Superstar from Radical Candor

If you have any burning questions around performance + compensation, or any feedback on the episode, let us know at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you!

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Welcome to episode 3 of the Dear EverMore podcast, where we dive into our experiences with cults + company culture, especially as People + Culture leaders. Courtney specifically brings her experience growing up and later as a culture designer for startups. 

Before the topic, we go through our weekly reflection with you, this time answering:

• What’s one tether you’re still carrying (a role, a story, an expectation) that no longer reflects who you are? 
• How might you loosen or cut that thread so you can move forward with more authenticity?

Disclaimer: we do touch on religious indoctrination and the harm it can cause. However, anything we do or say does not criticize or demean religious congregations, especially those that emphasize community, critical thinking, meaning and belonging. 

If you're looking for regular reflection prompts, we post these each Friday on LinkedIn and Instagram. 

p.s. we'll also be crowd-sourcing "career horror stories" for an upcoming October, spooky-themed podcast conversation where you can share our own. 

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Welcome to episode 2 of the Dear EverMore podcast! 

Today, we go through our weekly reflection live with you, answering:

• what did this past week teach you?
• what new energy do you want to call in?
• how can you keep growing?

p.s. normally we journal through our prompts ahead of time, but in the vein of being transparent + messy, we wanted to carry this out live with you!

Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram to see each Friday's weekly reflection prompts.

Afterwards, we talk through what we plan to personally learn over the fall and how you can also build your own personal curriculum. At EverMore, we're all about growth, regardless if it's work-related or not, and how getting lost in our curiosity only makes us better humans. If you want the TLDR, here's what we decided to pursue:

Courtney: the concept of beauty and how it relates to "camp." She references a plethora of books + movies (below)

• Books: 
  • Kant on Beauty and Biology (Interpretation of the Critique of Judgment)
  • Essays by Susan Sontag (incl. Notes on Camp, Against Interpretation, On Style)
  • Art on My Mind by Bell Hooks
• Movies: Drop Dead Gorgeous, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands
• TV shows: Pushing Daisies, The Summer I Turned Pretty

Kelsey: the concept of past lives and how hypnosis + psychic readings could help her tap into her past lives.

• Books: 
  • Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss
  • Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore (formerly read, not mentioned in the episode)
  • Journey of Souls: Case Studies of Life Between Lives by Michael Newton (added later)
• Past Life Regression Therapy (hypnosis therapy Kelsey is going to try)

Are you interested in a tool that helps you reflect on

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Welcome to Dear EverMore, a tool for the performance glow-up!

This has been a dream of Kelsey + Courtney's for years now, and we're finally here with you. As we're developing EverMore (a tool for the performance glow-up and helping individuals own their career story), we'll be letting you into our conversations, what we're building, why we're building it, and how to do the best work of your life. 

During this intro episode, we talk about our September full moon reflections, what we took from the summer, our beef with performance reviews (and how they help no one), as well as what's to come in future episode (like ep. 2 where we'll talk about building our own curriculum for the fall). 

If you want to jump into specific topics:

• 1:26 - our full moon reflections, what we experienced during the summer, what we're building + for whom (check out Kelsey's full article, too)
• 23:29 - finding people who will give you the honest depiction + why we need to spread more positive gossip at work (and in our lives)
• 29:50 - why reflection (and apologizing) is needed more in leadership
• 35:10 - our beef with performance reviews + how they don't help anyone involved
• 40:00 - an intro to "building your fall curriculum" which will be our topic for ep. 2 (so make sure to follow / subscribe!)

Are you interested in a tool that helps you reflect on your wins, feedback, learnings over time? Are you looking for a way to take your career to the next level?

• Join the EverMore waitlist and be one of the first to get access to the tool we're building with YOU in mind. 
• Follow us on LinkedIn + Instagram for more updates and resources

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Have a burning question you'd like answered on the pod? We'd love to give you advice! Submit your anonymous question.