I Help My Clients Develop SEO Campaigns That Generate 400%+ Organic Revenue Growth

I started off marketing when I was just 12 years old, running large gaming communities and working with some of the largest YouTube ventures in the world.

I quickly developed my marketing and SEO talents into becoming one of the world's leading consultants in the space today at just 29 years old.

I currently:
- Invest and run half a dozen different industry-leading companies.
- Operate 30+ Websites in multiple languages and differing markets
- I've sold TWO agencies
- I've sold 5 sites I privately owned and 8 in joint venture with other people or organizations
- Top 1% Gumroad Seller
- Published 500+ blog posts, case studies and 20+ eBooks on various SEO topics
- Consultant for Fortune 500 and Inc. 500 companies
- I've ran over 1,000 link building and/or digital PR campaigns, worth well over $25m in combined spend
- I manage the EComm sites and IT for my family business (Valued at $70m)

Charles Floate

Google has a FREE tool that shows you EXACTLY how it reads your content, it was around before ChatGPT and most SEOs have never even opened it..

Go to: https://lnkd.in/gBepG9-V and scroll to the "Try the API" box, then paste in your page content and click "Analyze"

Google will show you:

- Every ENTITY it detected (people, places, brands, concepts)
- The SALIENCE score for each (how important Google thinks that entity is to your page)
- The CATEGORY it assigned your content to

Now do the same thing with the #1 ranking page for your keyword...

Compare the two. You'll see:
- Entities they mention that you don't (add them)
- Their top entity has 0.85 salience, yours has 0.3, you need to mention your primary topic more prominently and earlier in the content
- How Google categorizes the pages (e.g. My piece is categorized as SEO, HowTo/Expert Content, Marketing and Web Design/Dev, I want it to be the same categorization as the other ranking pages.

You can also just save both of the outputs (Save the page or print as a PDF) and ask AI to compare the two for you with recommendations!

This is literally Google telling you what it thinks your page is about vs what it thinks the page that's outranking you is about. The gap between those two outputs IS your content optimization checklist.

You don't need ANY expensive subscriptions, it literally takes a few minutes per page, and it's the closest thing to seeing your content through the eyes of the algo that exists because it IS Google's own NLP model.

I Build The Highest ROI Campaigns in SEO - CMO @ PressWhizz - Search Beyond Blue Links...

For years, Google said: "Anchor text helps us understand what the linked page is about."

What the leak ACTUALLY revealed: Google reads the ENTIRE surrounding paragraph and uses it to augment the anchor signal. It's not just the clickable text, it's the 50-100 words around it.

This is called "anchorContext" in the leaked documents and it completely changes how you should think about link placement.

A link with anchor text "click here" inside a paragraph loaded with entities about "best running shoes for marathon training" passes nearly as much topical relevance as an exact match anchor.
And a perfect exact match anchor inside an irrelevant paragraph about something completely off-topic? Massively diminished value.

What this means in practice:
- When placing guest posts or niche edits, stop obsessing over the anchor and START obsessing over the paragraph the link sits in
- When writing the content for a guest post, load the paragraph surrounding your link with your target entities, related terms, and topical context
- Author bio links are almost worthless because there's zero relevant surrounding context and they're often treated the same as footer/sidebar/menu links, the paragraph is about YOU, not your topic
- Sidebar and footer links have no surrounding context at all, which is one reason they've been devalued for years

Next time you build a link placement, ask yourself: "Is the paragraph around my link going to scream my topic to Google?" If the answer is no, rewrite it before it goes live...

Building AI Visibility, Authority & Links at Scale | CMO @ PressWhizz | GEO, SEO & Search Beyond Blue Links

If I lost everything tomorrow (no businesses, no reputation, no audience, no savings etc) and had to get back to $10k/mo from SEO with nothing but a laptop, time, a handful of dollars and an internet connection..

Here's the exact 90 day plan:

Days 1-7: Foundation
→ Pick a high-CPC niche I know well (iGaming, crypto, legal, finance etc)
→ Buy a $10 domain and set up a WordPress site on cheap hosting
→ Use AI to research and map 500-1,000 keywords with commercial intent
→ Register every free entity/citation platform (Google Business, social profiles, directories etc)
→ Set up GSC and submit sitemap
→ Find and apply to monetization methods (Affiliate, lead gen, ads, infoproduct, service, consulting etc)

Days 8-30: Content Blitz
→ Write (AI-assisted, not powered) long form pages/posts for all of the core topical keywords 
→ Run every page through Google's free NLP API to match entity profiles of what's ranking
→ Build the internal linking and site architecture properly from day one

Days 31-60: Authority Building
→ Start outreach for broken links, building all of our link bait content and picking up any free link wins we can get
→ Publish 2-3 genuinely useful free tools vibe coded with AI (calculators, checkers, analyzers etc) as link bait
→ Start posting on social media (wherever our audience hangs out most) to build a parallel audience and get quick feedback, ideas etc

Days 61-90: Monetization 
→ First top 3 rankings and clicks should be appearing for longtail terms
→ Expand as many of our money pages as possible, trying to get rankable MVPs up for all of them whilst getting the highest potential pages to 100% first 
→ Start selling links on the site as soon as it hits DR20 (list on every marketplace possible)
→ Reinvest every penny of affiliate revenue back into links

By day 90 I wouldn't be at $10k/mo. But I'd have a site with 30-50 indexed pages, 10-20 quality referring domains, early rankings, and a growing personal brand driving attention to it.

By month 6, with consistent execution, $5-10k/mo is realistic.

The real advantage isn't money. It's knowing WHAT to do and in WHAT ORDER. That's the skill that took me 17 years to build and it's worth more than any starting capital.

As someone who makes MILLIONS of dollars per year selling backlinks, I can honestly say it is one of the best business models in SEO and nobody talks about it because it feels "underground", taboo or they don't want Google manually reviewing their sites...

Here's the "secret" strategy:
- You build or acquire a niche site with decent authority (DR20+) for well under $3k
- You accept contextual link placements from agencies and SEOs
- Each placement is worth $100-$900+ depending on metrics and context
- You can sell 10-20 placements per month without degrading the site (as long as you keep up publishing frequency, which shouldn't be hard with the cash flow)
- That's $1,000-$10,000/mo per site in passive income if you setup AI agents to automate the entire process...

Now multiply that across 5-10 sites.

I literally wrote a course called "Selling Backlinks" years ago because the model is that good. The demand for quality link placements has only grown since, every SEO needs links, and most would rather buy a placement on a real site than build their own network.

You don't need to be a client-facing SEO, ecommerce/SaaS founder or affiliate to make serious money from SEO, sometimes the supply side is where the real money is.

Here's a FREE SEO Chrome extension that shows you whether Google can actually SEE your page content.. and it catches an issue I find on about 30% of the sites I audit.

Install: View Rendered Source (free Chrome extension, takes 10 seconds)

Go to any page on your site and click the extension icon.

It shows you TWO versions of your page side by side:
- LEFT: the raw HTML source code (what your server sends)
- RIGHT: the rendered DOM after all JavaScript has executed (what Google actually sees after it processes JS)

Anything highlighted in GREEN exists in the rendered version but NOT in the raw source, that means it only appears after JavaScript fires.

Why this matters: Google crawls in two waves. 

- First wave = raw HTML only (fast, cheap, happens immediately). 
- Second wave = JavaScript rendering (slower, more expensive, happens LATER, sometimes days or weeks later).

If your page's main content, internal links, or navigation only exist in the JavaScript-rendered version, Google might not see them during the first crawl. 

Some heavy JS sites and CMSs end up ranking with HALF the content invisible to Google.

Common things I find hiding behind JavaScript​:
- Entire product descriptions on eCommerce pages
- Internal navigation and mega menus
- Review sections and star ratings
- Lazy loaded content below the fold
- Tab content that requires a click to display

If you check and your raw source matches your rendered source almost perfectly? Great. Your site is fine.

If there are massive green highlighted sections? You've just found why Google isn't ranking you as well as it should, it literally can't see your content on the first pass.

100% FREE, and it answers the question "can Google actually see my page?" which is more fundamental than any onpage optimization you'll ever do...

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If I could only give ONE piece of business advice to SEOs making under $10k/Mo...

It'd be to write down every single task you do in a week. 

Next to each one, write one of three letters:
- A = Only I can do this (strategy, client relationships, creative decisions)
- B = Someone else could do this with an SOP (outreach, content editing, reporting)
- C = AI or a tool can do this right now with the proper setup/pipeline (Basic keyword research, content drafts, data pulling, emails etc...)

Most SEOs earning under $10k/mo are spending 60-70% of their time on C-level tasks, not C-Suite level tasks, that's not working, that's being busy.

Here's roughly how my time breaks down now:
- A tasks: 60% of my time (strategy, partnerships, high level decisions etc...)
- B tasks: 10% (team handles the rest)
- C tasks: 5% (AI handles almost all of it)
- Remaining 25%: creating content, building the brand, thinking

The SEOs who break $20k/mo are the ones who stop doing $15/hr tasks with $500/hr knowledge. 

You can't just purely out grind your way past a certain income level, you have to out leverage.

Write your list, be honest about which letter each task gets, then eliminate every C task this year!

The HIGHEST MARGIN/ROI business model in digital marketing right now is a solo SEO with 3-4 retainer clients, 1-2 sites, a personal brand and a digital product.

No employees, no office (uses private co-working rooms, mostly works from home), and no investors.

- 3 retainers at $3-5k/mo = $9-15k/mo
- 2 affiliate sites doing $3-5k/mo each = $6-10k/mo
- 1 course or eBook doing $2-3k/mo passive = $2-3k/mo
- Total: $17-$28k/mo with 85%+ margins pre-tax

That's $200-$330k/year with no team, no overhead, and the ability to work from literally anywhere in the world...

I know SEOs making more than this who are stressed, burned out, and drowning in staff management, and I know solopreneurs making exactly this who play poker three days a week.

Scaling isn't always the answer, sometimes the best business is the one that doesn't need anyone's permission to run.

Google CANNOT reliably detect AI content, and the leaked documents + DOJ testimony prove they're not even really trying to.

What they CAN detect:
-Thin content with no unique value
- Pages with no entity depth
- Content that doesn't match the topical consensus of ranking pages
- Pages with zero engagement signals (no clicks, high bounce)

What they CAN'T detect:
- AI content that's been properly edited with real expertise
- AI content augmented with original data and screenshots
- AI content that matches the NLP entity profile of top-ranking pages
- AI content on sites with strong authority signals

The "AI content penalty" isn't about AI, it's about QUALITY - The same thin garbage would get hit whether a human or a machine wrote it.

I've ranked thousands of AI-augmented pages, the ones that fail are the ones published without editing, without entity optimization, and without links. Same as any content.

Stop worrying about AI detection, start worrying about your content depth and signals.

Here's how to make FREE SEO create content briefs in 10 minutes that are more thorough than what most agencies produce in 3-4 hours:

- Step 1: Google your target keyword. Open the top 5 ranking pages in separate tabs.
- Step 2: Copy the FULL content of each page (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C). Paste all 5 into Claude or ChatGPT in one message.
- Step 3: Use this prompt:
"Analyse these 5 pages that rank in the top 5 for [keyword]. Create a comprehensive content brief that includes: 1) Every H2 and H3 subheading used across all 5 pages, 2) Every entity (person, brand, place, concept) mentioned by at least 3 out of 5, 3) Every question answered across the pages, 4) Topics covered by 4-5 pages that are clearly mandatory, 5) Topics covered by only 1-2 pages that represent differentiation opportunities, 6) The average word count and content structure, 7) Internal link opportunities based on the topics covered. Format as a content brief I can hand to a writer."

What you get back is a consensus based content brief that reverse engineers EXACTLY what Google is rewarding for that keyword. Not what some SEO tool's algorithm thinks matters. What's actually ranking RIGHT NOW.

Step 4: Now paste your existing page (if you have one) and use prompt: "Compare my page to this brief. What am I missing? What do I have that competitors don't? Prioritize the gaps by likely impact."

The AI does the analysis that used to take a human researcher half a day, and it does it more thoroughly because it can process all 5 competitor pages simultaneously, and the output is genuinely better than what most SEO tools charge £200+/month for.

There's a FREE Chrome extension that lets you see EXACTLY what Google shows for your keywords in any country, city, or language.. without your personal search history, location, or cookies contaminating the results.

It's called SEO Search Simulator by Nightwatch 🦉 

It runs a completely clean, unpersonalised Google search and shows you the REAL results.

You can use it to:
- Check your actual rankings from your target customer's location, not yours. 
- Compare SERPs across different countries for the same keyword. 
- Spot local pack and SERP feature differences by city. 
- Monitor whether your rankings are real or just Google showing you what you want to see.

Every SEO tool shows you estimated rankings pulled from APIs. This extension shows you the ACTUAL Google search results page, exactly as a real user would see it, from any location in the world.

Another deep one from the leak that link builders need to understand..

Google doesn't just evaluate your links, it tracks WHEN they appeared, WHEN they changed, and flags anything that looks manipulated.

There are four separate timestamp fields for every single anchor in the index:
- firstseenDate - the date Google's crawler first discovered the link
- creationDate - the date Google associates with the link's actual creation
- lastUpdateTimestamp - the last time the anchor was updated in indexing
- deletionDate - when a link was removed

But here's the field that should make every SEO pay attention: firstseenNearCreation - A boolean that flags whether Google believes the firstseen date accurately reflects when the link was ACTUALLY added to the page.

In other words.. Google is specifically trying to determine if a link was part of the original content or inserted later.

If a page was published in 2021 and Google first sees a new link on it in 2026, that mismatch is recorded. The link still works, but Google KNOWS it wasn't original.

This alone explains why niche edits on active, frequently updated content perform so much better than insertions on dead pages that haven't been touched in years...

You can write the HIGHEST quality content on the internet and it often ranks absolutely nowhere..

I've seen beautifully written, deeply researched, genuinely useful pages sitting on page 4 with zero traffic, and I've seen AI slop articles on DR80+ sites dominating page 1 for competitive terms.

Here's the uncomfortable truth most white hat SEOs won't admit:

- Content doesn't rank, pages rank, and pages are ranked by signals, and the strongest signals are authority and links.
- A perfectly written page with zero backlinks will lose to a mediocre page with 30 referring domains every single time.
- Google's "helpful content" system doesn't actually measure how helpful your content is.. it measures UNHELPFUL content via engagement signals, authority signals, and whether your content matches what's ALREADY ranking.

The best content strategy in the world is worthless in competitive SERPs without a distribution and link building strategy to match.

I'm not saying content doesn't matter, it obviously does, a LOT, but the industry has overcorrected so hard into "just write better content" that people are ignoring the fact that DISTRIBUTION is the bottleneck, not quality.

Write good enough content, spend the rest of your time and money getting it in REAL traffic and long term links, that's how pages actually rank...

Everyone's fighting over casino terms in English where a single link costs $500+ 🤣 

Meanwhile, I'm watching SEOs quietly make $50k/month in niches like:
- Indonesian casino affiliates
- Turkish cosmetic surgery
- Norwegian finance
- South Korean beauty
- Indian pharmaceuticals
- Brazilian adult
- UAE gold trading
- And forex in just about every country that has people dumb enough to signup for it...

The playbook is dead simple:
- Find a high-CPC English niche
- Research the non-English equivalent
- Check competition (usually 10-20x less)
- Build in that language with native writers
- Monetize with geo-specific affiliate programs

A DR30 site can rank on page 1 for terms that need DR70+ in English, the arbitrage is insane and most English-speaking SEOs completely ignore it.

The best SEO money I ever made wasn't competing in English, it was going where nobody else with my skillset was looking.

If you've actually done SEO for long enough, then you already knew this to be true, but there are still a lot of Google fanboys that will say each page has it's own independent ranking and the algo isn't comparative...

PairwiseQScoringData and PairwiseQVersionedItem reveal that Google runs pairwise quality comparisons, meaning it directly compares pages HEAD TO HEAD rather than just scoring them independently.

Your page doesn't get ranked based on its absolute quality score. It gets ranked based on how it compares RELATIVE to the other specific pages competing for the same query.

This is why you can have an objectively excellent page that ranks #7 while a mediocre page ranks #1. The mediocre page might score higher in the pairwise comparison because of signals the "better" page is missing, whether that's links, entity coverage, click data, or site-level categorisation.

Now here's where it gets interesting for the "topical authority" debate..

A lot of SEOs have tested topical authority and concluded it doesn't exist because they couldn't isolate it as a single variable, and they're right, there IS no single "topical authority" score.

But the leak shows multiple overlapping signals that produce the SAME EFFECT:

- QualityAuthorityTopicEmbeddingsVersionedItem - Google creates vector embeddings of what your site is about at the site level
- NSR (Normalised Site-level Rank) with 63+ fields including NsrChunks that break your site into topical chunks for evaluation
- PairwiseQ comparisons that favour sites with deeper topical coverage when matched against competitors

"Topical authority" doesn't exist as ONE signal. It exists as the COMBINED output of topic embeddings + site categorisation + pairwise comparison + NLP entity coverage. 

When SEOs say "I tested topical authority and it didn't work," they tested one dimension of a multi-dimensional system.

The pairwise system also explains why rankings can shift dramatically between updates without anyone building new links, i Google updates the PairwiseQ model or reweights how comparisons are scored, every SERP re-evaluates simultaneously. Your page didn't change, the comparison criteria did.

This is why ongoing, single variable testing has been so powerful (and reliable) to see what was changed at a granular level.

One of THE most interesting patents in SEO from Google is the "Rank-Modifying Spammers" patent... 

It describes a system where Google INTENTIONALLY fakes your ranking changes to see how you react.

Here's how it works: When Google suspects a page is being manipulated (new links, anchor text changes, onpage updates etc), instead of applying the expected ranking change, it applies a "rank transition function" that deliberately does something unexpected.

Three specific scenarios from the patent:
- DELAYED RESPONSE - Your rankings don't move at all for weeks, even though your "signals" improved. Google is watching to see if you panic and make more changes.
- NEGATIVE RESPONSE - Your rankings actually DROP after building links, not because the links were toxic, but because Google intentionally reversed the expected outcome to see what you do next.
- RANDOM RESPONSE - Your rankings fluctuate wildly and unpredictably for a "transition period" the patent says could last up to 70 days. No pattern!

Now here's the trap:
The patent explicitly states that Google then "observes spammers' reactions to rank changes caused by the rank transition function to identify documents that are actively being manipulated."

So if you see your rankings drop after building links and you IMMEDIATELY remove those links, reverse your changes, or start building different links to compensate, Google just confirmed you were manipulating rankings. Your reaction IS the evidence.

An "innocent" website owner wouldn't react to a temporary fluctuation. They'd carry on because they didn't do anything wrong, but a spammer will panic, change tactics, disavow links, or try something new, and that reactive behaviour pattern is what Google is actually measuring.

Google has literally PATENTED a system for psychologically manipulating SEOs into revealing their tactics, and most people in this industry have never even heard of it...

Link building works. It works incredibly well, but if you build links and then frantically react to every ranking fluctuation in the next 2 months, you are doing EXACTLY what this patent was designed to catch.

Be patient, be consistent, don't take the bait.

AI can now build interactive tools, calculators, and widgets from scratch in under an hour, and free tools are some of the BEST link magnets in SEO, always have been...

The old problem: Building a useful tool required a developer, budget, and months of work, plus continual upkeep.

The new reality:
- Find a calculation or process your niche does manually (mortgage calc, calorie counter, ROI estimator, whatever) 
- Feed the logic into Claude or Cursor with "build me a web app that does X" 
- Get a working tool in 30-60 minutes 
- Publish it as a free resource on your site 
- Outreach it to resource pages and roundup posts in your niche

I'm seeing people build tools that would've cost $5-$10k to develop just 5 years ago.. For the cost of an AI subscription.

The sites that rank in competitive niches almost always have free tools. Check the backlink profiles of any "best [niche] tools" page, the ones with original tools get linked to 5-10x more than pure content pages.

This is one of the very first things I would do for any new niche site with search volume for tools, the quicker they rank, the quicker the ROI from traffic+conversions+links compounds.

This is the best link building ROI available right now and the barrier to entry just collapsed 🙌

These two screenshots will explain more about REAL OnPage "EEAT" (trust signals) than most SEO courses...

This is the PressWhizz footer and the bottom of the Charles Floate Training footer.

PressWhizz: full company address, service categories, case studies, social profiles, careers page, media page, affiliate program. Everything a real business has.

CFT: GDPR, Cookie Policy, Privacy Policy, Modern Slavery Statement, EDI Policy, Accessibility, Code of Ethics, Editorial Policy, Complaints Policy, Disclaimer, Terms.

You don't need ALL of these on day one, though it will help considerably in some niches!!!

Most affiliate and niche sites have "Home | About | Contact | Privacy Policy" and wonder why they can't compete with authority sites for YMYL terms..

This all now only takes an afternoon to implement and costs nothing with AI - It's the easiest trust signal win in SEO and barely anyone talks about it because it's not interesting enough for a conference talk.

Most SEOs can't answer the most basic question a client will ask: "How much money will this ACTUALLY make me?"

Here's the formula I use in every pitch and it wins contracts every time because nobody else shows up with accurate-ish numbers:
Estimated Monthly Revenue = Search Volume × CTR × Conversion Rate × Average Commission/Sale

Example:
- Keyword volume: 20,000
- CTR at position 3: ~30%
- Site conversion rate: 2%
- Average sale/commission: $50
- = $6,000/mo from ONE keyword

Now stack 20-30 keywords and you're looking at $50-100k/mo revenue potential for a well executed campaign that you can show in a proposal, and that looks 10x better than any 6 month content and PR plan...

The SEOs making the most money in enterprise and agency aren't necessarily the best technicians, they're the ones who can translate rankings into revenue forecasts that make CFOs and founders say yes. 

Learn to sell the outcome, not the process.

If you work in SEO or link building, you SHOULD know about this metric, but you probably don't -

Revenue Per Referring Domain.

Take additional monthly revenue generated by a campaign and divide it by the number of referring domains built.

Real example from one of our campaigns:
- +$85,000/mo in additional organic revenue
- 70 new referring domains over 6 months
- $85,000 ÷ 70 = $1,214 per referring domain per month

That means EVERY SINGLE LINK in this campaign is generating $1,214/mo in revenue. And it's recurring. Month after month.

Now look at the cost side: average link placement cost was roughly $900.

$900 one-time cost → $1,214/mo recurring revenue, per link!!!

This is why I find it insane when people argue about whether a link is "worth" $500 or $800. They're thinking about cost per link. They should be thinking about revenue per link.

Not every campaign will hit these numbers. But even at 10% of this, $121/mo per link, most link building pays for itself within 2-3 months and compounds from there.

Stop thinking about links as a cost, start thinking about them as revenue-generating assets, proper maths changes everything.

Tiered link building is STILL one of the strongest techniques to get the highest ROI out of SEO campaigns...

The concept is super simple: Instead of building all your links directly to your money site, you build links TO your links: 
- Tier 1: Your quality links pointing at your money page (guest posts, niche edits, PR placements)
- Tier 2: Cheap links pointing at your Tier 1 links (web 2.0s, cheap niche edits from Fiverr/Legiit, AI content articles on free blog platforms)

Why this works so well:
- It activates nofollow Tier 1 links. Google changed nofollow to a "hint" in 2019 — when a nofollow link gets its OWN backlinks, Google is far more likely to follow it
- It increases the authority of your Tier 1 pages, which passes MORE equity to your money page
- It derisks your direct link velocity. Instead of 50 links pointing at your site this month, you have 10 quality Tier 1 links and 40 cheap Tier 2 links pointing at THOSE
- Google sees a natural link ecosystem, not a one-dimensional campaign

The old school version used garbage automated tools and got nuked, the 2026 version uses quality Tier 1 placements backed by some decent AI generated Tier 2 contents.

Especially if you are spending 4-5 figures on indiviual links, you want to get the most out of them...

Sales and Marketing at CBF Labels

I'm passionate about sharing content & ideas on sales + marketing to help you level up your professional knowledge.

Outside my main role, I've been helping Ecommerce SaaS and AI companies with distribution and promotion.

If you’re looking to advertise to my audience, please send me a message so we can chat further. Thanks!

Jamie Dimond

Many people feel scared when this moment comes:

Someone joins your team who is better than you.

The higher the position, the bigger the fear.

Yes, it can feel like a threat.

But think again.

Having access to smarter people is a blessing.

Which company will achieve more:

The one where the manager hires mediocre people,

or the one that hires just top stars?

Doers, believers, and hungry to learn and work.

The answer is clear.

The top people:

Bring new ideas and fresh perspectives.

Can teach you so much.

Drive companies to new heights.

Their strengths can lift the whole team.

You grow when you surround yourself with talent.

It’s an opportunity to learn and improve.

Embrace their skills.

Together, you can achieve more.

Remember, success is not a competition.

It’s about collaboration and growth.

So, don’t be afraid.
Celebrate their talent.
We’re all on the same journey.
Welcome them with open arms.
Help them thrive; one day, they will help you.

Credit: Igor Buinevici

I’ll choose remote work > higher salary.

It’s really simple.

More rest, less stress.

I’ve been remote ever since COVID but up until that point, I prioritized $.

Now, I prioritize my mental health, peace of mind, and well being. 

WFH has personally made me:

✔️ Richer
✔️ Happier
✔️ Healthier
✔️ More Productive

It’s about flexibility and choice.

Give people an OPTION to choose what works for them.

Credit: Jean Kang

Surround yourself with ambition.

It changes you.

Fast.

The line “Surround yourself with people who have bigger goals than you. Ambition is contagious” is not hype.

It is a career strategy.

Because your goals do not live in a vacuum.

They live inside your calendar.
Your standards.
Your daily conversations.
Your sense of what is normal.

And nothing shapes “normal” faster than the people around you.

When you sit near big goals long enough,

You start to borrow them.

Not by copying.
By upgrading.

Here is how influential networks quietly drive professional growth:

1. Ambition resets your baseline
 → In a low-aim room, average feels safe 
 → In a high-aim room, average feels expensive 
 → You stop asking for permission to grow

2. High performers create healthy pressure
 → Not toxic pressure 
 → Clear pressure 
 → The kind that makes you ship work, not talk about it

3. Mentors compress time
 → Mentorship is not motivation 
 → It is direction 
 → A good mentor helps you skip avoidable mistakes 
 → And raises your standards without raising your stress

4. Peers shape your pace
 → Your peers decide what “normal effort” looks like 
 → If your circle learns, you learn 
 → If your circle builds, you build 
 → If your circle settles, you settle

5. Culture multiplies behavior
 → In ambitious cultures, high expectations are not personal 
 → They are the air 
 → People plan better 
 → Communicate clearer 
 → And take ownership faster

6. Social proof does the heavy lifting
 → Humans copy what works 
 → When you watch someone set a high goal and hit it, your brain files it as possible 
 → You start to act like it is possible too 
 → Because now it feels real

7. Strategic networking opens hidden doors
 → Not “collecting contacts” 
 → Building real relationships with people who move 
 → Ambitious people share opportunities 
 → They spot talent 
 → They connect dots 
 → They pull you into rooms you did not know existed

8. Ambition spreads through language
 → Big-goal people talk in plans 
 → Not excuses 
 → They talk in timelines 
 → Not someday 
 → That language rewires how you think about your own work

9. You gain better feedback, not more praise
 → Influential networks do not clap for everything 
 → They sharpen you 
 → They challenge your thinking 
 → They raise the quality of your decisions

10. You start playing the long game
 ↳ Ambitious circles respect consistency 
 ↳ They reward craft 
 ↳ They build reputations 
 ↳ They understand that real growth compounds

This is the real point.

Your network is not just who you know.

It is what you start to believe is possible.

Choose circles that stretch you.

Because ambition is contagious.

And so is settling.


Image credit: Colby Kultgen

Most people quit right before it works.

Because effort and reward do not move at the same speed.

Years 1 to 2:

You are bad.
You know it.
Everyone else knows it.

Good.

You are building muscle.

Year 3:

You are decent.
Still invisible.
Doubt gets louder.

This is the danger zone.
Most people exit here.

Year 4:

Your skill is real.
Your voice is clear.
Your network trusts you.

Now one catalyst matters.

A post.
A partnership.
A product launch.

And it looks sudden.

But here’s what really happened:

You compressed 4 years of learning into 30 days of output.

Example:

Builder ships 50 small tools over 4 years.
None break 1k users.

Tool #51 solves the right pain at the right time.
Hits 100k users in 2 months.

People call it overnight.

They did not see the first 50.

The playbook:

1. Treat early years as paid training.
2. Ship in public.
3. Build assets, not moments.
4. Stay until the math flips.

The lag is the price.

Pay it.

If you are in year 2 or 3, this is your sign to keep going.

Be delusional about your potential.
Be delusional about your potential.
Be delusional about your potential.
Be delusional about your potential.
Be delusional about your potential.
Be delusional about your potential.
Be delusional about your potential.

Credit: readswithravi on Twitter/X

Toxic workplaces don’t lose talent overnight.

They lose it one person at a time.

At first, the best employees try to fix things.
They speak up.
They work harder.
They try to protect the culture.

But when nothing changes, something else does:
their decision to stay.

People rarely leave because the work is hard.
They leave because the environment makes the work unbearable.

Common warning signs:
• good employees becoming quiet
• innovation slowing down
• high performers burning out
• increasing turnover of your best people

By the time leadership notices the problem, the damage is often already visible in the numbers.

Healthy workplaces do the opposite:
They keep talent by building trust, respect, and psychological safety.

Because in the long run, culture isn’t just a “soft factor.”

It’s a business strategy.

It's pointless spending time and money attracting top talent if you're not considering the work environment they're joining. 

To retain new hires, make sure your company culture is worth staying for.

Your brain is sick and tired of content.

It wants you to be creative.

Over the past 6.5 years, I've written:

- 3,559 LinkedIn posts
- 4,107 Tweets
- 789 Instagram posts
- 456 Threads
- 278 Substack notes
- 266 newsletter issues

And here's what I've learned:

1. The more you create, the happier you are:

On the days I'm sharing my creations, my mood is incredibly elevated. There's nothing better than learning something and sharing it with other people.

2. The more you consume, the more pessimistic you become:

Whenever I go down a rabbit hole on LinkedIn or X, I get bummed out. Culture wars, fighting, lack of empathy for our fellow humans. It's gross.

3. The longer you write, the better at your craft you become:

If you write every single day for a long time, you will eventually become a relatively decent writer. And there's no better way to communicate your thoughts.

4. The more you outsource creative work to AI, the dumber you become:

The more AI does your creative work, the more you forget how to be creative and original. You sound like everyone else. You blend in. You're not interesting.

TL;DR:

1. Create daily
2. Consume less
3. Write until you're good
4. Don't outsource creative


Credit : Justin Welsh

The people you admire didn’t succeed because everything worked.

They succeeded because they kept showing up after things didn’t.

We romanticize success.

We rarely talk about the boring middle:

The failed launches.
The awkward drafts.
The ideas no one clapped for.

BUT

Momentum belongs to those who don’t disappear.

Not every attempt will win.

But every attempt builds skill, confidence, and clarity.

And that compounds faster than talent.

Image credit: WisdomStoics on Twitter/X

Mission statements can inspire.
Core values can guide.
But only your daily decisions build real culture.

Eric Partaker's post on healthy company culture got me thinking about what actually builds strong teams.

I've noticed all 7 of these patterns in teams with healthy cultures:

(Credit: Amy Gibson)

1️⃣ They address toxic behavior, even from top performers

• Talent doesn't excuse toxicity when it harms the team
• One bad person can poison the entire team

2️⃣ They promote based on merit, not politics

• Wrong promotions make your best people start looking
• Performance and values should both matter

3️⃣ They don't play favorites

• Everyone sees it, even when no one says it
• Favoritism makes trust start to break down

4️⃣ They grow people-first leaders

• Technical skills matter but aren't enough alone
• Leaders who can't grow people shouldn't lead them

5️⃣ They make it safe to speak up

• When people fear feedback, problems grow
• Feeling safe to speak isn't optional

6️⃣ They give recognition regularly

• People don't leave because of the work
• They leave when they don't feel valued

7️⃣ They apply values consistently

• Not just to some people but to everyone
• No exceptions for title, time, or revenue

Culture isn't built in the big moments.

It's built in the daily decisions about who you protect, who you promote, and what you tolerate.

That's where trust lives or dies.

One thought that hit me recently:

A lot of people are afraid to spend money on experiences.

Travel.
Events.
Conferences.
Trips with friends.

But they’re not afraid of something much scarier.

Waking up years later and realizing…

the only place they ever went was work.

I’ve noticed this after talking with a lot of founders and marketers.

The things people remember aren’t the extra hours at the desk.

It’s the random trip.
The conference where they met someone interesting.
The event that sparked a new idea.

Those moments change how you think.

They expand your world.

Work matters.
Ambition matters.

But life can’t be only work.

Because time passes faster than we think.

And one day the question won’t be:

“Did I work enough?”

It’ll be:

“Did I actually live?”

Curious to hear from others:

What’s one trip, event, or experience that changed your perspective the most?

What changes when you stop trying to please everyone?

Everything.

Early in my career, I spent a lot of energy worrying about what people might think.

Is this post good enough?
Will this idea look stupid?
What if people disagree?

But something interesting happens when you stop filtering yourself through other people’s opinions.

You start moving faster.

You experiment more.
You create more.
You learn faster.

Because the biggest barrier to progress usually isn’t skill.

It’s hesitation.

And hesitation often comes from trying to satisfy everyone.

But the truth is simple:

If you build something meaningful, someone will criticize it anyway.

So you might as well build it your way.

The most interesting work usually comes from people who stop asking for permission.

Image credit: Mind_Essentials on Twitter/X

There are two types of people: those in marketing and those who give the marketing department advice.

Credit: Jay Schwedelson

What if the real skill isn’t pushing harder…
but knowing when to pause?

For years, I thought momentum meant constant motion.

Post more.
Launch faster.
Reply instantly.
Say yes.

But here’s what experience taught me the hard way:

Burnout doesn’t come from working hard.
It comes from working without reset.

The highest performers I know don’t just grind.

They rest on purpose.
They step back before they snap.
They protect clarity like it’s revenue.

Because clarity is revenue.

When you’re tired, you make emotional decisions.
When you’re scattered, you chase the wrong metrics.
When you’re overwhelmed, you mistake noise for progress.

Rest.
Reset.
Restart.
Refocus.

Not once a year.
Not when you’re forced to.

As many times as you need to.

In business, the edge often isn’t who works the most.
It’s who recalibrates the fastest.

Image credit: WisdomStoics on Twitter/X

Bad marketing:

• Here's my product
• These are the features

Good marketing:

• Here's your problem
• This is how you can solve them
• These are the benefits of using the product
• This is how it can help you
• Here is what you can achieve

Bookmark it and never forget

Credit: pmitu on Twitter/X

The older I get, the less I want to be impressive.

I want to be steady.

Impressive is external.

Peace is internal.

There is a season for pushing hard.
For chasing titles.
For building reputation.

But at some point, the question changes.

Not “How do I look?”

But “How do I live?”

Here’s what shifted for me:

I stopped optimizing for optics.
I started optimizing for energy.

Because energy drives everything.

Energy affects thinking.
Thinking affects decisions.
Decisions shape life.

Example:

High status project.
Big visibility.
Constant pressure.

Versus

Focused project.
Clear scope.
Room to think.

One feeds ego.
One feeds longevity.

You can design a life that does not require constant explanation.

That is real leverage.

Impressive impresses others.

Peace compounds for you.

Choose the metric that lasts.

Image credit: 2lastvibes on Twitter/X

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Charles Floate's LinkedIn Performance

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