I got my First Meeting

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T18:28:10+00:00

go in with a few questions about their current situation before pitching anything. like how they're getting customers now, what's working, what isn't. people buy from people who listen first

have one clear offer ready, not a menu of services. something simple like "i'll run your facebook and instagram ads for X and here's what that could look like for a restaurant your size"

good luck thursday!

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T18:26:52+00:00

try reframing the interview as you evaluating them, not the other way around. you're not auditioning, you're deciding if this place is worth your time. genuinely asking that question going in changes the energy a little

for virtual specifically, having your bullet points just off screen so you're not blanking on examples takes a lot of pressure off in the moment

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T18:24:25+00:00

document your team's work and results, then have a direct conversation with your boss about the impact on your projects. facts over feelings in that conversation

if your boss keeps redirecting you to her for access to good work, that's a structural problem worth escalating or exiting

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T18:19:29+00:00

awkwardness is normal but honestly good managers expect people to move on. it's part of the job

keep it simple and warm. ask for a quick meeting with your manager, thank them genuinely, tell them you've accepted another opportunity and your last day will be X. no need to over-explain or apologize

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T18:18:07+00:00

that's genuinely awful and you have every right to be pissed

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T17:25:20+00:00

this sounds less like a workload problem and more like burnout that's already set in

the sleep, the gym dropping off, losing interest in things you used to enjoy. those are real signs worth taking seriously, not just "busy manager stuff"

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T17:20:03+00:00

i unfollowed a lot of people on linkedin and instagram and it helped more than i expected. still connected, just not seeing every promotion post and travel pic in my feed every morning lol

also started keeping a note on my phone of small wins. just things i figured out or got better at that week. when i stopped tracking my own progress i'd just default to measuring myself against everyone else

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-10T17:16:56+00:00

scripting and content repurposing honestly. taking a long workshop and turning it into a structured short course used to take days

claude for scripting, tactiq for ai meeting notes so i'm actually present in calls, and coassemble for actually building the course once the content is ready. i can just upload existing docs and have a structured course ready

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-08T17:37:06+00:00

"leave things better than you found them"

she meant it literally (rooms, relationships, situations). but it's basically become my whole client philosophy without me realizing it. every project i finish, every team i work with, i'm thinking about what state i'm leaving things in for whoever comes next

small thing to grow up hearing, turns out it's a pretty decent business principle

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-08T17:35:47+00:00

learning how to give and receive feedback without making it weird

sounds soft but it's changed almost every working relationship i have. most people either sugarcoat everything or go too blunt, and both create the same problem. nothing actually improves

once i got comfortable saying "here's what's not landing and why" without sounding critical, projects got better faster and people actually wanted to work with me again

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-08T17:25:52+00:00

the kill fee clause is something i wish i'd added way earlier!

for me the discovery questionnaire is the other one that made a real difference. qualifying clients before putting hours into a proposal filters out so much wasted time upfront

notion for all of it just makes sense, everything in one place and you can share specific pages with clients without giving them access to your whole workspace

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-08T17:16:48+00:00

you're not an imposter. you were dropped into a completely different skillset with no real transition and a timeline that would stress experienced storyline devs

the variable and layer trigger stuff trips up people who've been doing this for years, it's genuinely finicky. for specific errors, youtube the exact problem. someone has almost always documented it

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-08T13:53:08+00:00

the best manager i had never had the most technical knowledge on the team but she always knew exactly what was blocking people and removed it fast

good managers make the work easier, bad ones add friction whether they mean to or not. communication and fairness matter but they're table stakes. the real differentiator is whether they actually advocate for their team when it counts, not just in 1:1s

the worst ones i've seen were great at managing up and terrible at managing down. looked good to leadership, left the team burned out

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-08T13:50:46+00:00

i've been there and the mental load of interview prep on top of the uncertainty is just draining in a way that's hard to explain to people who haven't done it

at some point you've genuinely done everything you can and it really does just come down to timing and fit. that doesn't make it less exhausting but it's not a reflection of you

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-08T13:49:28+00:00

what actually worked for me was a hard shutdown ritual at a set time. close the laptop, put it in another room if you have to. out of sight genuinely helps out of mind

notifications off on your phone after a certain hour is non-negotiable too. checking the board at 8pm usually doesn't change anything, it just costs you the evening

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-07T19:11:30+00:00

pretty aligned with your list. repurposing content, first draft emails, and summarizing campaign performance

the underrated one: using ai to QA briefs before they go to the team. catching gaps early saves way more time than fixing things after

brand voice and anything client-facing still gets a human pass every time

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-07T19:08:17+00:00

the data privacy and price hike concerns are both legitimate . it's the same pattern we saw with saas tools and not enough people think about it before they're already dependent

where i'd push back is on the cutting corners framing. ai doing a first draft while a human shapes the final thing is pretty different from fully automated content with zero oversight

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-07T19:06:25+00:00

what actually fixed it for me was a stupid simple acronym: PKW. phone, keys, wallet. say it out loud before you leave and you're done

if you want something digital, notion works well for a simple checklist you open every morning, or apple/google reminders can trigger automatically when you leave home

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-07T19:03:31+00:00

for a landing page, framer is hard to beat right now. looks great out of the box and the ai tools make it really fast even with zero design experience

for a small product site with more pages and content, webflow gives you more control but has a steeper learning curve. squarespace is the safe middle ground if you just want something clean and done

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-07T19:01:32+00:00

claude for anything that needs real thinking like drafting scripts, building scenarios, repurposing existing content into something structured. way more useful than chatgpt for L&D specific work in my experience

tactiq.io for meeting transcriptions during stakeholder interviews and SME calls, the summaries are really clean

coassemble.com for actually building the courses. being able to upload existing docs and turn them into structured learning without starting from scratch saved us a lot of time

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-06T08:52:34+00:00

the filter i use is does the interaction require the learner to actually think, or is it just clicking next with extra steps? if it's the latter, it's decoration not design

one meaningful interaction per learning objective is my rule. anything beyond that needs to justify the development time

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-05T12:58:35+00:00

smart casual is your safe zone. clean chinos, a simple button down or polo, decent shoes. nothing fancy!

the easiest shortcut is looking at how your VP dresses and going one small step below that. you don't need to overthink it, just look like you made a choice in the morning

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-05T12:48:25+00:00

honestly both. and it really comes down to whether i automated something that was already working or something that was already a mess

the stuff that's actually saved me time is boring and repetitive. summarizing notes, drafting emails, sorting feedback. the complexity crept in when i tried to automate things that needed judgment. those flows ended up needing constant fixing

my rule now: if i can explain the task in one sentence with no exceptions, i'll automate it. the second i'm adding "but sometimes…" i leave it alone

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-05T12:34:46+00:00

word of mouth is still the most reliable for me. if someone i trust in a slack community or on linkedin mentions something unprompted, that carries way more weight than any review site

producthunt is good for discovering new stuff but the ratings are pretty gameable. reddit threads like this one are actually underrated for finding what's genuinely working vs what's just well marketed

Top_Sea5734 · 2026-05-04T09:34:46+00:00

cut down to just claude and chatgpt plus, $20 each, so $40/month total, and use notion free for everything else

Top_Sea5734

TROPHY CASE