I’m a late-to-the-party big believer in taking a break from the normal routines and structures of life to gain fresh perspective. This year, I took about five weeks off from Substack and client work over the summer. The intention was to create space to move out of the home we’ve been in for 28 years so we could radically downsize and try a completely different lifestyle.

We’ve left the gorgeous wildlife corridor and serenity of Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills and are now renting a super cool loft in the Brewery Artist Complex right next to the 5 freeway in Los Angeles. I’ve gone from solo nature walks to a vibrant, dynamic community of over 200 artists.

My mind, body, and heart are adjusting to the vibe and energy, but my gut says that it’s the right move, especially when I sit on our porch with my cup of tea and watch folks hauling creations, walking dogs, and bartering for goods and services. It’s magical in a whole new way.

The stress, though, of the amount of change has got me down to my high school weight. Seems I’m purging more than old clothes and tschotchkes and notebooks and toiletries from fancy hotels. I never thought I was a hoarder until it was time to move.

What I’ve also realized is that it’s time to let go of a part of my coaching identity: Moonshot Mentor. It was a name that a former client pitched me, and I felt honored that she would see me in that way — and I really do love helping people go after their big dreams.

But what I’m seeing more and more, and what’s really calling out to me, is how every moonshot comes with some form of attachment –- to what achieving that moonshot means to your identity, your purpose, your sense of belonging, your legacy, financial security, recognition. You can’t care about something and not be attached. So when something matters, losing it matters too.

I’ve heard from so many people who have experienced professional loss that they’ve felt traumatized, or punished, or left behind as a result of what happened. They’ve felt angry, confused, adrift, and despondent. They’ve lost confidence, their sense of self, stability, or a future. They swing back and forth between “this is all my fault” to “these things happen.”

I too have felt all these things. And I got stuck for a decade because I treated speed bumps as evidence that I’d done something horrifically wrong, or that I was unlucky, or that I just wasn’t good enough. When I gave myself permission to grieve and took stock of the meaning I’d created from what happened, I was able to course-correct and stop making decisions from a place of fear, feeling less than, and proving myself to others. And I’m not the only one who had to grieve an attachment …

* The lawyer who hated his job with every fiber of his being and had to grieve the identity he had established as someone with status and stature before he could become a therapist.

* The creative executive who was laid off and couldn’t get a single interview, who grieved the career dream she held since she was a kid. Through mourning, she realized that what she now loved was salesmanship, and that created a new dream.

* The director who was publicly fired and grieved the loss of confidence and her belief in fairness. Through mourning, she regained her footing and a fresh set of beliefs before becoming the artistic director of a major theatre.

And so, Moonshot Mentor is becoming This Is Grief Too.

This Is Grief Too is a reader-supported publication. Subscribe for new posts about professional loss, career grief, and what’s next.

While mentoring moonshots will always be a part of my work, I’m shifting the primary focus to helping people recognize grief in all forms, not only related to the loss of life. I don’t want anyone to suffer because of unacknowledged loss. I want us to get better at recognizing grief when it shows up outside the places we’ve been taught to look for it. Because when we can notice and name what we’re experiencing, we can stop trying to solve the wrong problem.

If you’re already a Moonshot Mentor subscriber, there’s nothing you need to do. You’ll continue to hear from me here, just under a new name, with a broader focus and a new rhythm:

* Instead of a long-form piece every week, I’ll send a weekly newsletter with shorter insights, practical tools, career strategy, and cool stuff I find along the way.

* Career Conversations is becoming This Is Grief Too: Live. Twice a month, I’ll talk with special guests about the highs and lows of their careers, as well as loss, change, and what comes next. Join us live on Substack, with replays available for paid subscribers.

* Paid subscribers will get 1–2 deeper dives each month—in writing, audio, or video—with journal prompts to help you reflect on your own experience. You’ll also receive weekly meditations and Solid Ground, my ongoing guided practice for working through career grief. Each Solid Ground lesson focuses on one piece of the process, with practical tools to help you understand what you’ve lost, make sense of what it stirred up, and move forward with more clarity.

I’m still in the early days of adjusting to my new life. I miss the sweet quiet of Laurel Canyon, but I’m learning to love the noise and creative energy of my new home. Apparently, you can grieve what you’ve left behind and be excited about what’s next at the same time.

Welcome to This is Grief Too.

Join me Friday, September 18th for This Is Grief Too: Live with Stanley C. as we talk about creating a mourning playlist.

Have a question you’d like us to answer? Feel free to send it here.

Before you rush to figure out what’s next, ask yourself what you’re actually grieving.

These three pieces explore some of the places grief can hide – in our identities, our ambitions, and the feeling of being stuck.

Is Grief Holding Me Back?What happens when grief keeps us from moving forward?

How Your Identity Is Stopping You From Achieving Your GoalsWhat if the identity you’ve built around your goals is part of what’s keeping you stuck?

What to Do When Stuck at Work?Sometimes being stuck isn’t a career problem. It’s a purpose problem.

This Is Grief Too is a reader-supported publication. Subscribe for new posts about professional loss, career grief, and what’s next.

Journal Prompts

Here are 3 journal prompts for Solid Ground members. Let’s explore what letting go might help you see about what matters, what you’re grieving, and what wants to change.

I’m in a contorted cat-cow pose holding a toothbrush with my right hand, leaning heavily on my left to take the pressure off my legs, wondering if this is a good choice at this moment in time. The white tile I’m scrubbing is pretty, but man, it is unforgiving on my bones, especially my knees, which are already showing signs of bruising.

When I was in high school, I cleaned houses for a summer to make extra cash. Hated it. I do love cleanliness and organization, but don’t love wearing plastic gloves, chipping away at other people’s … stuff.

But here I am saying goodbye to 28 years in this home. Getting it ready for our first open house. Will anyone walking through know that we raised our two daughters here? That I spent most of my Hollywood career celebrating and retreating to this oasis during the inevitable turbulent highs and lows?

The last several months have been a fugue state. Shadows, echoes, the smell of roasting chicken, far-off laughter haunt and delight me. Why do these particular memories bubble? I do not know.

Prepping the house to sell, purging what I thought were treasures, and now I can’t remember why I kept the stuff in the first place: a Russian urn, a tattered white t-shirt, and oh my goodness, so many books. I’ve forced myself to give them away and radically accept that I will not be reading them a second time.

After I clean the bathroom, I tackle the window sills. Then the oven. Then a super deep clean of the fridge. I check every nook for cobwebs and wash the kitchen windows a fourth time because I just can’t get those streaks out.

I’m saying goodbye.

Cleaning my house with a forensic eye for detail is part of my mourning. It reminds me of how, after death, a body is cleaned in many cultures: Muslims practice ghusl, the Jewish tradition of taharah, or the Ancient Egyptians. It’s bringing devotion and sacredness to what might be considered an everyday act.

In each room, in every corner, I whisper, “Thank you.”

Memories drop in and out, not fully formed, more like pieces of potato chips at the bottom of the Ruffles bag. Wearing onesies on Christmas Day. Rocco running through the living room at full speed. Chuck melting the toaster in the oven (don’t ask). Pizza parties. Pool bar-b-ques. Sunrise walks. The day Roo arrived during lockdown.

Mourning is the visible, outward expression of loss. Grieving is the internal response to losing something that we are attached to. Mourning takes many forms. It can be a funeral or a memorial service or planting a tree. Or it can be cleaning the grout in the bathtub.

When my mom died, we knew what to do. There are rituals. But there are so many other endings we’re expected to glide through because they’re just a normal part of life — even endings that we have control over.

Despite selling our home being my choice (and my husband’s), I still grieve. I was attached to the safety and security of having a house to live in and build a family. I was attached to the serenity and beauty of having a home in the Laurel Canyon wildlife corridor. I was attached to the privacy of living at the end of a long single-lane road.

I’m grateful that I can have a good goodbye: one that I get to have agency around and make choices about what that goodbye will look like even if it’s me on my hands and knees scrubbing every inch of the house that has taken care of me for the last 28 years.

Maybe someday, I’ll take a drive into Laurel Canyon, and I’ll think, “There was a woman who lived in a house at the end of Crescent Drive. She had a pretty good run.”

If you want to dig a bit deeper, check out some previous posts regarding “letting go.”

Thanks for being here. I’d love to hear what you think of today’s post, so if you have a question or comment, please share it below.

If you’re grieving a loss and could use some support, Solid Ground is my paid Substack subscriber community. It’s a place to make sense of what you’re experiencing, find ways to mourn, and be met with compassion and encouragement.

For paid subscribers, I’ve included five journal prompts below to help you dig a little deeper.

See you next week!

Hi friend.

When I was fired from a job I cared about deeply, I was devastated.

At the time, I didn’t have language for what I was experiencing. I thought I needed to get back on the horse, get a thicker skin, and get over it. It took me ten years to realize that I was carrying grief.

Career grief.

Once I understood that, I got unstuck. I gave myself permission to mourn what had happened and all that had been lost alongside my job title.

Today, I’m writing a book with the working title This is Grief, Too, and am fortunate to be represented by awesome agents at Peters Fraser + Dunlop. The book draws not only from my experiences but also from the hundreds of clients, students, and professionals I’ve met over the years who have experienced their own forms of professional heartbreak.

Now I’d love to hear from you.

I’m looking for stories about career setbacks, disappointments, endings, mistakes, missed opportunities, layoffs, firings, failed projects, dreams that didn’t unfold the way you hoped, or any professional loss that still lingers in your heart and mind.

The ones that changed something.

The ones that you think about from time to time. Or all the time.

The ones that shaped how you see yourself, your work, or your future.

If you’re willing, I’d be grateful if you would complete a comprehensive questionnaire and share your story with me. With your permission, portions of your experience may be considered for inclusion in the book and related research. You can participate anonymously if you prefer.

After reviewing submissions, I’ll invite up to twenty people to participate in individual 90-minute recorded coaching and research interviews. These one-on-one conversations will help inform the book and may, with your additional consent, be considered for inclusion in future book or audiobook materials.

More than anything, my hope is that this work helps us become grief literate.

Because what happens to us at work matters.

The losses we experience matter.

And learning how to acknowledge and mourn professional heartbreak may be one of the most important skills we can develop for a long and meaningful career.

Questionnaire Link

Thank you for considering it. I’d be honored to hear your story.

The gremlins tend to get loudest when we’re standing at the edge of change.

That’s why this month’s Solid Ground lesson is called Meet Your Gremlins. We’ll explore the inner voices that fuel self-doubt, second-guessing, and hesitation, and how to keep them from making decisions for you.

Solid Ground Community is my monthly practice for people navigating career transitions, setbacks, and stretch seasons. Paid subscribers receive a video lesson, worksheet, and live coaching session each month.

The week I got fired from a job I loved, I kept opening my laptop and staring at a blank screen.

I didn’t know what to update. I wasn’t sure who I was updating it for. My job title had been the answer to so many questions, including, it turned out, the question of who I was.

That’s the thing nobody warns you about: career disappointment. The professional loss is real. But the identity loss is the one that knocks you sideways.

And somewhere in that fog, a question surfaces. Usually in the middle of the night. Usually, when you’re too tired to push it away.

What is my purpose?

Here’s what I’ve learned — both from living through it and from walking dozens of clients through the same fire: that question isn’t a crisis. It’s an invitation. And career disappointment, as brutal as it is, might be the most direct route to your answer.

Why Career Disappointment Hits So Deep

Most of us have been quietly, unconsciously answering the purpose question with our job title for years.

I’m a producer. I’m an analyst. I’m a director of marketing.

When work is going well, that answer feels sufficient. But it was never really the answer. Your job is not your purpose — it’s a manifestation of it. And when the job disappears, what’s left is the real question you should have been sitting with all along.

That’s not a failure. That’s a reckoning. And reckonings, handled right, can change everything.

The Three Questions That Find Your Purpose

I use a three-question framework with my clients, and I’ve come back to it myself more times than I can count.

The questions are simple. They’re not easy. There’s a difference.

Question 1: What brings you joy or flow?

Not what you’re supposed to love. Not what looks impressive on a LinkedIn summary. What actually lights you up — where do you lose track of time? Learning something new? Creating something from scratch? Solving a puzzle no one else could crack? Supporting someone through something hard?

Don’t overthink it. Write whatever comes up first.

Question 2: What are you good at?

Here’s a pro tip: don’t answer this one alone. Ask three people who know you well. We are chronically blind to our own gifts, especially the ones that come naturally. They don’t feel like gifts — they just feel like us.

When I did this exercise, I was surprised to learn that people experienced me as a strategic organizer and planner. Those things came so easily to me I’d never counted them as skills. I thought everyone did that.

They don’t.

Question 3: What breaks your heart?

This is the one people rush past. Don’t.

What feels intolerable to you in the world? What injustice makes you angry? What gap keeps pulling your attention? What do you find yourself saying someone should do something about this — because, yes, that someone might be you.

Purpose lives in the overlap of these three things. And career disappointment has a way of stripping away the noise so you can finally hear them.

Gigi’s Story

When Gigi came to me, she had just been laid off after 18 years as an analyst at Boeing — a job she’d landed right out of college. She was devastated. Her career had been a source of real pride, and her goals had always centered on stability: building a family, saving for retirement.

But when we started working through the three questions, something shifted.

What brought her joy was solving unsolvable problems. What she was good at was long-term data analysis and pattern recognition. And what broke her heart? The idea of leaving the world worse than she found it for her kids.

Those three things pointed somewhere she hadn’t been looking: sustainability. Helping companies reduce their carbon footprint. Using her skills to address something that mattered to her at a gut level.

Job security, she realized, had never been her purpose. It had been her strategy. Once she could see that, she stopped grieving the job and started building toward something real. Last I heard, she was interviewing for sustainability analyst roles and interviewing like someone who knew exactly why she was in the room.

The disappointment didn’t take her purpose. It introduced her to it.

How to Write Your Purpose Statement

Once you’ve sat with the three questions, the next step is to put it into words. This is where a lot of people stall, so I want to make it as simple as possible.

A purpose statement has three parts: what you love, what you’re good at, and what you’re called to change or contribute. You’re looking for the thread that ties all three together.

One essential instruction: write it in the present tense. Not I want to, or I hope to. Declare it as if it’s already happening — because at the level of purpose, it is.

The difference matters more than it sounds. “I want to help people tell their stories” keeps you in aspiration. “I help people tell their stories” puts you in motion.

Here’s one of my favorite examples from a client:

I am a warrior of freedom, nourishing and protecting my community through my talent as a chef and futurist, emboldening people to trust their gut.

Read that, and you can feel the person behind it. That’s the goal. Not a job description — a declaration.

Your first draft will be imperfect. Mine has been rewritten more times than I can count. The essence stays constant. The words get sharper over time. What matters is that you start.

The Hardest Part

The real barrier to writing a purpose statement isn’t the framework. It’s the fear of owning what you find.

Owning your gifts means being responsible for them. Claiming your purpose means you can’t keep playing small and pretending you don’t know what you’re here for.

That’s terrifying. It’s also the whole point.

Bottom Line

Career disappointment is not the end of your purpose story. For a lot of people, it’s the beginning of it.

When the job goes away, so does the easy answer. What’s left, if you’re willing to look, is something more durable and more yours: the overlap of what you love, what you’re good at, and what you can’t stop caring about.

That’s your purpose. It was there the whole time. The disruption just made it visible.

Thanks for reading Career Strategy with Laverne McKinnon! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Robert got the call on a Friday afternoon. After trying to find a job in his industry for eighteen months, he faced the hard truth that for someone at his level, there were no viable openings. So he pivoted to Pharma doing sales. A far cry from Vice-President of Marketing at a film studio. He would start the new gig in two weeks.

Robert was elated to have a gig, but he was dejected because his degree, his experience, and his wins didn’t translate to the new role. He would be starting in a sales training program with a “bunch of 20 year olds.” He confessed he was embarrassed and anxious to be a newbie.

If you’re mid-career or later, and you’re stepping into something unfamiliar, you may feel horribly destabilized. Because knowing your stuff has always been your anchor. And now it’s not enough.

Here’s what I want you to know: your credentials are not meaningless. But they’re not the whole story either. In new territory, something else takes the wheel. And most high achievers are the last to figure out what that something else actually is.

The Default Move That Backfires

When accomplished people step into unfamiliar terrain, they almost always do the same thing: they double down on what got them here. More preparation. More credentials. More proof that they belong. It’s the only playbook they know, and it’s worked for a long time.

But in new territory, that strategy can work against you.

The pressure to perform expertise you don’t yet have when you’re someone who typically hits it out of the ballpark can be debilitating. Instead of projecting competence, you end up projecting effort, which reads very differently in a room.

Why This Happens

Your identity has been wrapped up in being the expert for a long time. It’s what happens when you’re good at something and build a career around it. You’re rightly proud of those achievements.

But when you’re no longer the expert, your nervous system reads that as danger. So you over-prepare. You over-explain. You puff up with overcompensation.

Or you go the other direction and withdraw, waiting until you feel ready enough to show up. Observing the situation, taking notes, plotting and planning.

None of these responses is what the new territory actually needs from you.

The expert identity that protected you in your old lane becomes a kind of armor that keeps you from learning what you need to learn in order to succeed again.

What Actually Moves the Needle

When Robert completed his sales training, he told me he almost blew it. He was irritated with the pace of the program, he already knew what he was being told, and he was being trained by someone 15 years younger than him. After the second day, he went home and vented over dinner.

Now, Robert’s a terrific dad, and his parental wisdom came back to him at the right moment. His 16-year-old son said to him in mid-vent, “Dad, I thought you said attitude is the best strategy.” Those words stopped Robert in his tracks. He knew he was impatient and didn’t “suffer fools.”

But he also knew that attitude was the difference between a door opening or closing, a brief stint or a place to grow, and his own mental well-being.

Robert thanked his son, told his family to throw marshmallows at him if he started complaining again, and course corrected his attitude. He started the third day of training with a beginner’s mind and brought cookies.

What Attitude as Strategy Actually Looks Like

Let me make this concrete, because “show up with a good attitude” is advice that sounds nice and means nothing without specifics.

* Ask more questions than you answer. A friend of mine struggled with this early in her career. She had so many thoughts she wanted to share in every meeting that she started keeping a notebook just to get them out of her head. What she discovered was that writing things down calmed her nervous system. It freed her to actually listen. She stopped needing to show she knew everything and started learning more by asking. The relationships she built that way turned out to be some of the most valuable of her career.

* Name what you don’t know before someone else does. Early in my time as an executive overseeing primetime programming at CBS, I was given a role that was a significant stretch. On my first set visit to a show that had already been on the air for two years, I said to the production team: you know more than I do. I’m here to learn and be a fan. The room shifted immediately. People who had been braced for a network executive to come in and assert authority instead opened doors they typically kept the suits out of. Naming a gap honestly is a form of leadership.

* Let your enthusiasm be visible, and be specific about it. This one is genuinely underrated. Enthusiasm that is vague feels performative. Enthusiasm that is specific feels real. Show up on time or early. When something impresses you, say exactly what impressed you. Look people in the eye. Say hello. Say thank you in a way that names the thing you are grateful for. None of this is complicated, but it lands differently than people expect.

* Protect your energy from the things that spiral you. Robert deleted social media during a stretch when he noticed he was using it when he felt bored. That was an important strategic decision because boredom for Robert meant he believed he knew everything he needed to know. Your attitude is an asset. Anything that drains it is worth taking seriously.

The Nuance Worth Naming

Focusing on attitude is not an argument against skill. You need a baseline. You need to be able to do the work at a competent level before any of this matters.

But past that threshold, what differentiates you in new territory is relational and energetic, not just technical. The people who are deciding whether to bring you along, collaborate with you, or invest in you are asking a very human question: Do I want this person in the room when things get hard?

That question is answered by how it feels to be around you.

Bottom Line

Robert finished his sales training. Turns out he didn’t know everything. But with his son’s reminder, he showed up curious, asked questions, and let people teach him. And that attitude shift made the training a pleasant experience.

Your expertise is real. Your accomplishments are real. But in new territory, the thing that earns trust is how you show up with grace and interest.

Ask more than you answer. Name the gap before someone else does. Let your enthusiasm be specific and visible. Those aren’t soft skills. They’re the strategy.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this, please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have.

This Week

One of the many things I respect about Courtney Romano is that she is not asking for permission in her career. She wears many hats: writer, director, producer, strategist, consultant and is a champion for Non-Dependent Filmmaking.

Let’s find out how she does it.

Journal Prompts

Here are four journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor subscribers. These questions are designed to help you examine the role attitude has played in your career and what it might look like to lean into it more deliberately in a pivot.

I asked a room full of smart, ambitious professionals to rate how important relationship building is to their careers right now. On a scale of one to ten, the answers came back: Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

Then I asked a follow-up question: how does that actually show up in your day-to-day? My favorite response: “Actual importance: ten. How I’m treating it: three.” We all laughed. Because we recognized ourselves.

It may seem like that gap between knowing relationships matter and actually building them is an issue of will-power, discipline or follow through, but it’s actually more interesting than that.

Close the Relationship Gap with Timing

Here’s what’s really going on. We build relationships reactively. We reach out when we need something like a referral, an introduction, a favor, a job, an investment, an opportunity to pitch. We fumble the ask, not knowing how assertive to be or we over index on small talk. We feel like imposters despite our knowledge, training and experience.

The problem isn't the ask. The problem is your timing.

When you reach out before you have an ask the whole dynamic changes. You're not a transaction. You're a person.

Ditch Networking. Build the Relationship.

Relationship building isn’t networking. Networking implies a transaction with better branding. Relationship building is different. It’s deciding, in advance, who matters to your work and your life, and getting on their radar.

That shift in framing makes the energy of the outreach about building rapport. You’re not trying to extract something. You’re trying to meet someone and build a mutually beneficial relationship that doesn’t have an immediate timeline.

It’s so simple, right? But why don’t we do it?

The Five Things That Actually Stop You

I’ve had versions of this conversation with a lot of clients. And the reasons people stall on relationship building tend to cluster around the same five things. You may recognize a few as your own.

1. The fear of doing it wrong. When the fear of a bad outcome feels bigger than the cost of no outcome, doing nothing feels like the safer choice. But silence doesn’t advance your career.

One client said, “If I do it the wrong way, I’m going to sabotage a potential relationship before I even have a chance to have one.”

It’s paralysis masquerading as caution.

You know this: there’s no perfectly worded email that guarantees a response. There’s no flawless DM that removes all risk. There’s no single phone call that converts a stranger into your bestie.

Practice courage over perfection.

2. Waiting for the right moment. Another person described her pattern as this: “I love sending emails when I feel like I’ve just had a win and I’m like, yeah, let’s go. But on days when I’ve had a setback, I put that off and wait for the magical day to arrive when the sun is shining on me and no one can say no.”

If you’re only reaching out from a place of momentum and confidence, you’re leaving most of your calendar year on the table. Relationships get built in the ordinary weeks, the in-between moments, the days when you reach out anyway.

3. Never having your ducks in a row. This one is sneaky because it sounds responsible. “I’m just being thorough. I want to have something to offer. I want to be ready.”

But ready for what, exactly? A first email isn’t a pitch. It’s an introduction. You don’t need a portfolio, a deck, or a fully formed ask. You need a sentence or two and a genuine reason you thought of this person.

Real life example: I got a cold outreach from someone over LinkedIn who wanted to zoom for 15 minutes to swap stories from the front line as grief workers. There was no ask, but we shared enough information that we’ve agreed to chat again down the road.

You’re reaching out “early” as part of getting your ducks in a row.

4. Believing every reach is secretly transactional. This one hit me hard in a recent conversation. Someone said: “I feel like there’s always an ask, Laverne. I don’t know. It’s eventually… there’s always something.”

And they’re not wrong. Eventually, most professional relationships do involve an ask of some kind. That’s how collaboration works. But “eventually” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

The goal of early relationship building isn’t to pretend you’ll never need anything from anyone. It’s to build enough of a real connection that when the ask comes, on either side, it lands in a context of mutual trust. That context takes time. Which is exactly why you start before you need it.

5. Needing a reason to reach out. You don’t need an excuse. You need a sentence. And that sentence can be easy in the form of a low hanging fruit request.

Something like: “We haven’t met, but [mutual connection] speaks so highly of you. I’d love to grab five minutes to learn more about what you’re working on.”

Or, if you have no mutual connection at all, you can take a humorous approach by making the problem the solution: “We don’t know each other and I have absolutely no one in common with you, but … “ It’s amazing how owning the elephant in the room can create rapport.

Try It. One Move. This Week.

The practical version of this: keep a short list of people you want to build relationships with. People whose work you respect, whose path intersects with yours, who you’d genuinely enjoy knowing. Reach out to one of them this week.

Phone calls, by the way, are making a comeback. People are less inundated with them than they were six years ago. A short call can do more relationship work in fifteen minutes than months of email threads.

DMs are working too. More than you might think.

So pick one person from your list or make the list right now if you don’t have one. Write them a three-sentence note. The first sentence introduces you or reminds them who you are. The second says something specific and genuine about why you thought of them. The third could be an ask so small it barely counts like five minutes, a quick question, a resource swap. Or it’s simply a note of respect or appreciation.

Bottom Line

If relationship building is a seven, eight, nine or ten on your scale of importance, take one teeny-tiny step. Make the list. Even one name.

If it’s not a priority, then give yourself permission to stop thinking about it. Put a note in your calendar for three months down the road to revisit whether it’s the right time for you to invest in relationship building.

You’re not a transaction, you’re a person. Relationship building allows you to be that person.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this, please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have.

Longing To Feel Lighter?

Professional heartbreak can leave you spinning. You replay what happened, question your judgment, get stuck in indecision, and worry you’ll never get your mojo back.

Solid Ground is the paid member program inside the Moonshot Mentor Substack community that helps you move from spinning to forward motion.

Paid members tell me they feel less weighed down. Empowered. Relaxed for the first time in a long time. Here’s the thing. It’s not because they got a pep talk. It’s because they finally got an accurate explanation for what’s happening and a way through it.

You’ll get monthly video lessons with a guided companion to help you apply the work, live coaching for real-time support, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to rebuild confidence and make decisions without panic.

Become a paid member to access Solid Ground, stop misdiagnosing yourself as broken, and start moving again.

I asked a room full of smart, ambitious professionals to rate how important relationship building is to their careers right now. On a scale of one to ten, the answers came back: Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

Then I asked a follow-up question: how does that actually show up in your day-to-day? My favorite response: “Actual importance: ten. How I’m treating it: three.” We all laughed. Because we recognized ourselves.

It may seem like that gap between knowing relationships matter and actually building them is an issue of will-power, discipline, or follow-through, but it’s actually more interesting than that.

Close the Relationship Gap with Timing

Here’s what’s really going on. We build relationships reactively. We reach out when we need something like a referral, an introduction, a favor, a job, an investment, or an opportunity to pitch. We fumble the ask, not knowing how assertive to be, or we over-index on small talk. We feel like impostors despite our knowledge, training, and experience.

The problem isn’t the ask. The problem is your timing.

When you reach out before you have an ask, the whole dynamic changes. You’re not a transaction. You’re a person.

Ditch Networking. Build the Relationship.

Relationship building isn’t networking. Networking implies a transaction with better branding. Relationship building is different. It’s deciding, in advance, who matters to your work and your life, and getting on their radar.

That shift in framing makes the energy of the outreach about building rapport. You’re not trying to extract something. You’re trying to meet someone and build a mutually beneficial relationship that doesn’t have an immediate timeline.

It’s so simple, right? But why don’t we do it?

The Five Things That Actually Stop You

I’ve had versions of this conversation with a lot of clients. And the reasons people stall on relationship building tend to cluster around the same five things. You may recognize a few as your own.

1. The fear of doing it wrong. When the fear of a bad outcome feels bigger than the cost of no outcome, doing nothing feels like the safer choice. But silence doesn’t advance your career.

One client said, “If I do it the wrong way, I’m going to sabotage a potential relationship before I even have a chance to have one.”

It’s paralysis masquerading as caution.

You know this: there’s no perfectly worded email that guarantees a response. There’s no flawless DM that removes all risk. There’s no single phone call that converts a stranger into your bestie.

Practice courage over perfection.

2. Waiting for the right moment. Another person described her pattern as this: “I love sending emails when I feel like I’ve just had a win and I’m like, yeah, let’s go. But on days when I’ve had a setback, I put that off and wait for the magical day to arrive when the sun is shining on me and no one can say no.”

If you’re only reaching out from a place of momentum and confidence, you’re leaving most of your calendar year on the table. Relationships get built in the ordinary weeks, the in-between moments, the days when you reach out anyway.

3. Never having your ducks in a row. This one is sneaky because it sounds responsible. “I’m just being thorough. I want to have something to offer. I want to be ready.”

But ready for what, exactly? A first email isn’t a pitch. It’s an introduction. You don’t need a portfolio, a deck, or a fully formed ask. You need a sentence or two and a genuine reason you thought of this person.

Real life example: I got a cold outreach from someone over LinkedIn who wanted to zoom for 15 minutes to swap stories from the front line as grief workers. There was no ask, but we shared enough information that we’ve agreed to chat again down the road.

You’re reaching out “early” as part of getting your ducks in a row.

4. Believing every reach is secretly transactional. This one hit me hard in a recent conversation. Someone said: “I feel like there’s always an ask, Laverne. I don’t know. It’s eventually… there’s always something.”

And they’re not wrong. Eventually, most professional relationships do involve an ask of some kind. That’s how collaboration works. But “eventually” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.

The goal of early relationship building isn’t to pretend you’ll never need anything from anyone. It’s to build enough of a real connection that when the ask comes, on either side, it lands in a context of mutual trust. That context takes time. Which is exactly why you start before you need it.

5. Needing a reason to reach out. You don’t need an excuse. You need a sentence. And that sentence can be easy in the form of a low hanging fruit request.

Something like: “We haven’t met, but [mutual connection] speaks so highly of you. I’d love to grab five minutes to learn more about what you’re working on.”

Or, if you have no mutual connection at all, you can take a humorous approach by making the problem the solution: “We don’t know each other and I have absolutely no one in common with you, but … “ It’s amazing how owning the elephant in the room can create rapport.

Try It. One Move. This Week.

The practical version of this: keep a short list of people you want to build relationships with. People whose work you respect, whose path intersects with yours, who you’d genuinely enjoy knowing. Reach out to one of them this week.

Phone calls, by the way, are making a comeback. People are less inundated with them than they were six years ago. A short call can do more relationship work in fifteen minutes than months of email threads.

DMs are working too. More than you might think.

So pick one person from your list, or make the list right now if you don’t have one. Write them a three-sentence note. The first sentence introduces you or reminds them who you are. The second says something specific and genuine about why you thought of them. The third could be an ask so small it barely counts, like five minutes, a quick question, a resource swap. Or it’s simply a note of respect or appreciation.

Bottom Line

If relationship building is a seven, eight, nine or ten on your scale of importance, take one teeny-tiny step. Make the list. Even one name.

If it’s not a priority, then give yourself permission to stop thinking about it. Put a note in your calendar for three months down the road to revisit whether it’s the right time for you to invest in relationship building.

You’re not a transaction, you’re a person. Relationship building allows you to be that person.

Journal Prompts (for paid subscribers)

Here are 4 journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor members. Use these to get clear about your relationship-building patterns and take one step forward.

* Who is one person you’ve been meaning to reach out to for months? Sit with that for a second. What’s the real reason you haven’t?

* Look at the five blockers. Which one feels most familiar? What story have you been telling yourself to make the stall feel reasonable?

* Think about a relationship in your life that started with no agenda, no ask, just genuine curiosity. What made it feel easy? What would it look like to bring that same energy to someone new?

* Write down three people you want a real relationship with in the next year. Now pick one and write the first sentence of the note you’d send them.

If you want to know where you stand with someone, don’t listen to what they say. Watch what they do.

It’s taking me years to learn this. And I got a great reminder of it a few weeks ago. It was late afternoon in Mammoth Lakes, California, fifty degrees with a little cloud cover, and the trails near our favorite place to stay, Tamarack Lodge, were enticing. I mean, the mountain looked absolutely pristine, birds were chirping like they were auditioning for Pitch Perfect, and there was hardly anyone around. Ideal conditions.

So I’m about a quarter of the way up the mountain, and I notice where the snow has melted there’s a line where reality begins. One side looks composed in gorgeous white. The other side is real life.

Broken branches. Dry brown scrubs. Rocks. Dirt. Dead trees.

It was the perfect metaphor for the disconnect between what someone says they’ll do and what they actually do.

And then I thought about all the people I know who are job hunting.

The follow-up that never comes

How many times have you refreshed your inbox over and over after a submission or an interview?

They said I’ll be in touch by Friday. Or the colleague who said I’d love to read it, send it over. Or the boss who keeps promising you’ll have that conversation next week. And then, crickets.

When the follow-up doesn’t come, most of us wonder what we did wrong. We debate whether to send a nudge. We tell ourselves the silence might just mean they’re busy, swamped, or traveling.

Hard truth: the silence does mean something. You just haven’t been trained to hear it.

The problem with words

If I could turn back the clock on my career, one of the things I’d do differently is stop listening so hard to what people say, and start paying attention to what they do.

We’re wired to take people at their word. It feels respectful. Optimistic. Generous. And words are data. Just the least reliable kind.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe: most people aren’t lying. They’re doing their best, and they’ll often tell us what we want to hear to reduce tension in the moment. Aren’t we all a little bit people-pleasers on some level? Words are easy to give. They cost nothing.

Actions, on the other hand, take effort and investment. They reveal someone’s true priorities, capacity, and intentions.

Words are the snow on top of the mountain. They look perfect.

When the words melt away, you’re left with what’s really there.

Part of why we over-index on words is that we don’t want to seem cynical. In professional settings, especially, it’s not cool to challenge someone’s promises. We prize harmony over honesty. We’ve been taught to respect hierarchy and not to question it. So if you’re job hunting, hoping for a promotion, or trying to get funding, the last thing you want to do is treat someone’s words with skepticism.

And so we wait. And refresh. And wait some more.

What it looks like when you ignore the actions

My client “Mary” spent 18 months putting a deal together. It had nearly fallen apart half a dozen times, but she always managed to pull it back. Until she was one deal point away, and the investor walked.

She was stunned. Then outraged. And when we finally unpacked what had happened, the signs had been there for a long time. The weeks it took him to respond to a single negotiating point. The pouting and obsessing over minor issues. The questions he’d ask during their calls revealed a naivete about how their industry worked.

Mary had heard his words — I’m committed to this, let’s make it happen — and held onto them. She’d overridden what the actions were consistently telling her.

She missed the signals because she wanted to believe what he said.

Four ways to start listening to actions instead

I’ve been there countless times. It even happens to me at home when my teenager says, “Yeah, sure,” when I ask her to pick up her dishes. Every time I choose to listen to the words, and then I’m shocked the next morning when I find a dry, crusted bowl of pasta lying on the living room floor.

Inspired by mothering two teenage daughters and a few decades in the entertainment industry, here are four ways to better listen to the actions, not someone’s words. They’ve helped me figure out who my people are and, most importantly, protect my self-esteem.

Look for the pattern, not the single miss. One unanswered email? Things happen. A consistent pattern of not following through? That’s your track record. That’s your data. Once you see the pattern, you’re no longer Charlie Brown waiting for Lucy to hold the football. You know how this story ends.

Take your emotions out of the analysis. This is hard, but important. Strip the words away entirely and ask: what did this person actually do? What specific actions have they taken? What have they made time for? Be fair, sometimes there are steps that need to happen before a promise can be fully delivered on.

Grant grace, and keep your side of the street clean. I’ll be honest: I have historically pushed aggressive, arbitrary follow-up timelines, and it has not served me well. A polite question about timing is always appropriate. Granting people grace when they miss a target date is a relationship-building move. Ask when you should circle back and then do exactly that. What you’re looking for isn’t just a response. It’s information about how this person operates.

Use follow-up as data collection. One client of mine will follow up nine times if someone told her they’d get back to her. Another follows up exactly once. My rule of thumb is twice after the initial conversation or submission. Choose your own adventure and stick with it so you are in integrity. Their response, or non-response, is now your clearest data point. Act accordingly.

Bottom Line

We’ve all been there in some form. Someone tells us what we want to hear, we believe it, then we’re gutted when the snow melts, and we discover there’s a different reality.

I don’t want to encourage you to write people off. I want to help you protect your energy and base your next move on actuality. Not on what someone said to you on a Tuesday.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this, please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have.

Journal Prompts

Here are 4 journal prompts for paid Moonshot Mentor members. These questions will help you get honest about where you’ve been listening to words over actions and what it’s been costing you.

* Think of a situation where someone’s words and actions didn’t match. What did you choose to believe, and why? What were the actions actually telling you?

* Where are you currently waiting on a follow-up, a promise, or a commitment? When you strip the words away entirely and look only at the actions, what do you see?

* What makes it hard for you to trust what actions are telling you? Is it hope? Not wanting to seem cynical? Hierarchy? Something else?

* Think about your own words and actions. Is there a place where they aren’t matching up? What is that costing the people around you? And you?

Rebecca, a senior executive at Warner Bros., just wants to know the truth of what’s going on with the Paramount merger and when she’s going to be axed. The uncertainty is “killing her.”

She’s not alone. Not even close. 2026 is packed with mergers and consolidations across industries: Devon Energy and Coterra. SpaceX and xAI. Engie and UK Power Networks. Tens of thousands of people going to work every day inside organizations mid-transformation, wondering the same thing Rebecca is wondering.

Am I going to be okay?

And here’s the thing: she’s not being dramatic. The waiting — that particular brand of not-knowing — is one of the most exhausting places a career can put you.

What Rebecca is experiencing has a name: anticipatory grief. It’s the grief we feel before a loss that hasn’t fully landed yet — when the change is coming but hasn’t arrived, when the future feels like it’s being written without you chiming in.

And the reason it matters — the reason I’m writing about it — is because of what happens when it goes unrecognized.

The Thing That Will Trip You Up If You Let It

Most conversations about job uncertainty focus on the practical stuff. Update your resume. Build your network. Stay visible.

All good. All useful. But they skip the thing that’s going to trip you up unless you recognize and take care of it now.

When anticipatory grief goes unnamed, it tends to seed apathy. A low-grade helplessness. A “why bother” feeling that creeps into the edges of your days and makes it hard to invest in anything — your work, your relationships, your future — because some part of you has already checked out.

This is you protecting yourself from a disappointment that hasn’t happened yet.

I see this in high performers especially. They keep showing up. But their spark has gotten a little dim. Their tolerance for staff meetings is zero. The projects they nurtured now feel abandoned.

Here’s why: they haven’t named what they’re actually afraid of losing.

The Scariest of All Roller Coasters that No One Warned You About

Anticipatory grief is like riding the Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey (RIP) — supposedly the scariest roller coaster in the world. You wait for the big drop and it turns out to be a gentle twist. You think you’re entering a flat run and suddenly you’re weightless and upside down. The not-knowing when and how is its own particular torture.

And then hope climbs into the car beside you. Maybe you’ll dodge the restructure. Maybe your team won’t be gutted. Maybe it won’t be as bad as you fear.

That hope is real. And it makes the lurches harder, not easier — because every time you exhale, the next one catches you off guard again. The stomach drop. The pounding head. The heart beating like a hummingbird.

With “typical” grief, we’re reacting to what happened. With anticipatory grief, we’re responding to something that hasn’t happened yet. And might not.

Which makes it especially hard to sit with.

The question worth asking — gently, with real compassion for yourself — is this:

What are you actually afraid of losing?

CASE STUDY: WHAT REBECCA WAS REALLY AFRAID OF

When I finally sat with Rebecca and asked her that question, here’s what came up, which surprised her because it wasn’t really about anticipating the loss of income or title.

What Rebecca was actually afraid of losing was the dream of retiring by 60 and sending her two kids to the colleges of their choice.

Her job was the how to a future she’d been building for years.

Here’s what happened when she named it out loud.

She felt relief.

The merger news didn’t change. Her job was still uncertain. But dissecting the fear allowed her to question it: is this truly something I need to be worried about right now? And if it is, what can I do now?

Once Rebecca saw that she was truly trying to protect a dream, she got clear. She and her husband made an aggressive savings plan that would account for a greatly reduced salary and still keep them on early retirement track. She also had a conversation with her kids to find out if they were aligned on the college dream. Turns out they didn’t want Ivy League, nor did they have the grades.

She couldn’t control the merger. But she could tend to the dream.

Here’s what I know to be true: naming your fear doesn’t make it worse. It makes it workable. A spiraling thought that lives in your body at 3 am is a lot harder to respond to than something you’ve put words to on a page.

The path to getting more comfortable with uncertainty — and there is a path — starts here. With being willing to sit with and dig around for what’s driving the anticipatory grief. What are you afraid of? What are you trying to protect?

That part takes time. It takes more than a blog post. It takes space, language, and usually other people who understand what this particular kind of loss actually feels like.

Which is exactly why I built what I built.

If someone came to mind while you were reading this, please send it their way. You never know the impact a well-timed message can have.

Longing To Feel Lighter?

Professional heartbreak can leave you spinning. You replay what happened, question your judgment, get stuck in indecision, and worry you’ll never get your mojo back.

Solid Ground is the paid member program inside the Moonshot Mentor Substack community that helps you move from spinning to forward motion.

Paid members tell me they feel less weighed down. Empowered. Relaxed for the first time in a long time. Here’s the thing. It’s not because they got a pep talk. It’s because they finally got an accurate explanation for what’s happening and a way through it.

You’ll get monthly video lessons with a guided companion to help you apply the work, live coaching for real-time support, and weekly meditations and journal prompts to rebuild confidence and make decisions without panic.

Become a paid member to access Solid Ground, stop misdiagnosing yourself as broken, and start moving again.

Journal Prompts

Here are 5 journal prompts for paid Solid Ground members. Use these to begin naming what’s underneath the uncertainty. There’s no right answer — just ones that help you learn something new about yourself.

* When you look at your current work situation, what are the visible losses you haven’t fully let yourself name yet?

* Now look underneath the headline. What is the dream, story, or future that actually feels threatened right now?

* Where has the “why bother” feeling shown up lately? What might it be protecting you from?

* If you named your real fear out loud — like Rebecca did — what do you think you might feel? What might become possible?

* What is one thing you could do this week to tend to what you’re trying to protect, regardless of how the uncertainty resolves?

I was having lunch on the patio at Kiwami with a long-time colleague — we'd served together on the board of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment — and we were debating whether to order the Kiwami tray or go à la carte. 

And then, I felt the energy around me shift. I didn’t turn my head, but I could see her outline in my peripheral vision. The boss who fired me. OMG, she was seated close enough to hear us order, and I was close enough I could smell her perfume. 

My first instinct: pretend she doesn't exist. Keep smiling. Keep chatting. Keep still. But the light-hearted parley about omakase was now nausea inducing and there was a buzzing in my ears.

My boss, no, my ex-boss flagged a waiter and asked to move inside. I can't remember anything that happened after that. 

Here's what I know now that I didn't know then: what happened in my body had a name. My nervous system registered a perceived threat and responded accordingly — heart rate, shallow breath, the works. I was in a fight / flight / freeze / fawn moment — and caught between freezing and fawning. Why not do both when I’m under threat? 

What's interesting is that the threat wasn't real. I wasn't in danger. But my nervous system treated my ex-boss’ arrival as if something horrible was about to happen and I would be blind-sided all over again. 

Reader Question: Should I Reach Out to a Former (Not Awesome) Boss for a Job?

I was reminded of this Kiwami experience recently when a reader sent me a question I suspect a lot of other people have too. He'd just learned that a former boss had landed a senior role at a new company. This was someone who had been skilled at managing up and promoting himself, but less focused on developing and advocating for his team. Now that this person was back in a leadership position, my reader found himself wondering: does it make sense to reach out? And if they ran into each other at some random place, what exactly should he do?

We all know how important it is to maintain business relationships, but what do you do with the professional relationships that were genuinely complicated and triggered you into fight / flight / freeze / fawn mode? Thank you reader for such a powerful, timely question. 

The Tool: Friendly, Not Friends

Earlier in my career, when I was a “baby” network executive, some of the senior executives I worked with were … well, I just have to say it. They were mean girls. When I would walk on set, they literally turned their backs and formed a circle. It was the kind of thing that makes you feel like you're back in junior high.

My first response was to shrink, you know a kind of freezing. I started showing up at the last minute so I wouldn't have to stand on the periphery. I avoided the spaces where they gathered. I got smaller and smaller until one day I realized: their behavior was changing mine. And I hated it.

I love having authentic conversations with people. I love collaborating and solving problems together. I love being nice because I know you never know what’s going on behind the scenes with someone. So I made a different choice: treat the mean girls the way I'd treat any stranger.

Friendly, but not friends. 

A few months later, the ringleader pulled me aside and said: I don't know how you did it, but you did it. Everyone likes you now.

It was a little crazy to hear that because my goal wasn't to make everyone like me. I just didn't want other people changing my behavior or my values. I didn't like who I was becoming.. 

Should You Reach Out? My Honest Answer 

So back to my reader's question: should you reach out to the former boss who wasn't great to you, now that they've landed somewhere new?

My honest answer: only you know. What I'd encourage you to do is get clear on which value you're honoring with your choice — whichever way you go. 

I'll be transparent though: if it were me today, I would not reach out because I now prioritize a flat hierarchy and working with people who are willing to have hard conversations in a grounded manner. But I also don't know what's happening behind the scenes in the reader’s life. Financial pressure, health insurance, a shrinking market — these are real considerations that can make pursuing every opportunity not just reasonable but necessary. There's no shame in that math.