Lessons from the Year That Rebuilt My Career

In January 2025, I launched my coaching practice.

I brought 25+ of leadership experience at Slack, Adobe, and Salesforce and a methodology I had been refining for decades.

Eleven months later, the results surprised even me.

The scoreboard

Every client who followed the program and was actively job searching landed a new role. Many had multiple offers on the table.

Cross-industry moves became normal: a long-time founder into Solutions Engineering, a product marketer pivoting into HealthTech, a lawyer into legal AI, and more.

One client went from a 2 percent response rate on applications to nearly 100 percent after we tightened his narrative and targeting.

On the promotion side, clients secured skip-level advancements, landed roles after being passed over multiple times, and created new positions on their own terms rather than accepting misaligned offers.

Across these moves, clients who changed roles saw meaningful compensation jumps, including significant base increases and substantial equity packages.

More than 200 interviews at companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, Adobe, Microsoft, Anthropic, Databricks, Harvey, and Charlie Health.

High-engagement corporate workshops for teams at Docusign and Microsoft that led directly to new opportunities.

Matt's story

When Matt reached out, he had just come off a startup.. He was frustrated by constant rejection and unsure which path to pursue: stay in law, move into strategic ops, or pivot into AI.

On his intake, he rated his career clarity as a 2 out of 5 and his decision-making confidence as a 1 out of 5.

In our first sessions, we unpacked why previous roles had left him drained and clarified the kinds of problems he actually wants to solve. We built a narrative that finally connected his legal training, in-house experience, and operational skill set into something coherent, instead of positioning him as "a lawyer who can do anything." Then we prepped for two high-stakes interviews in the same week.

By late November, he had an offer in hand: a Senior Counsel role at a fast-growing AI company with a title step up, a meaningful base increase, and equity on top.

He had been stuck for months. Same resume. Different story. Different result.

Sarah's story

Sarah came in after a stretch of feeling stuck in product marketing. Through the work she realized she wanted to be all in on women's health. This week she shared publicly that she finally feels clear, energized, and aligned with the direction of her career.

There are more stories like these, but the pattern matters more than any single win.

What this year taught me

The people who move fastest are not the ones with the prettiest resumes. They are the ones who get specific about the story they are telling, pick a focused set of roles and companies instead of playing the volume game, and stop waiting for permission to ask for what they actually want.

Another pattern from this first year: referrals.

Nearly half of my clients came through someone I had already worked with. An old colleague sends a current teammate. A client finishes the program and immediately emails a friend who is stuck.

In one chain, Sarah referred Beth. Beth did the work, declined two misaligned offers, expanded her role after a reorg, then came back months later for more. After watching that transformation, Sarah became a client herself.

That is not marketing. That is trust traveling.

What's next

My 1:1 practice now has a waitlist. Good problem. But something important surfaced.

I kept introducing clients to each other.

The person pivoting into AI met someone already working inside an AI company. A founder moving into corporate compared notes with someone who had just made that leap. Clients rehearsed their narratives with each other and swapped real interview intel.

Those conversations quickly became one of the most valuable parts of the work.

So I built The Stand Out Advantage group program.

It includes the full methodology my 1:1 clients use to land roles and promotions, live group coaching and Q&A with me, guest experts, and access to my client community so you can learn from people who are already in the kinds of roles and companies you are targeting.

The frameworks give you clarity, positioning, and a concrete plan. The relationships help you execute that plan faster and with more support.

If you want 2026 to be the year you stop spinning and start moving, this is your window.

Let's build your plan.

Ready to go.