Tennessee Watt

Three schools rejected me before Wharton said yes. Stanford first. Then Columbia. Then NYU Stern. Three polite versions of "we appreciate your interest" in one spring. Round 1 closed last week, so I know exactly who is reading this. The woman who hit submit and is now refreshing her inbox. And the one who didn't, because she wasn't sure enough yet. The most important thing business school taught me happened before I got in. I applied without being certain. I had a good job at Google, a good title, and a list of reasons the MBA was a luxury I didn't need. I applied anyway, because the alternative was ten more years that looked exactly like the last ten with slightly bigger numbers. Here's the rule I took from that spring, and it's the one I use on every decision now. You can always decide no once you have an offer in hand. You can never decide yes on an application you didn't submit. Certainty is not a prerequisite. It's a thing you buy with the offer. Two years later I'd finished the first AI cohort Wharton ever ran, and I'd started a community of 850 women on the side of my degree. Neither would exist if I'd waited to feel ready. Round 2 closes January 5. If you're the one who didn't submit, that's your date. Where are you in the process right now? Drafting, waiting, in school, or quietly thinking maybe one day? #LinkedInTopMBA

Kinda chic to get invited to LinkedIn's Next Gen creator cohort. A private Slack with other creators, mentoring from people who've built much bigger audiences than mine, and exclusive resources on what's actually working on the platform right now. 𝗜 𝗱𝗶𝗱𝗻'𝘁 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗲. Which is funny, because I've broken every rule the LinkedIn playbooks tell you to follow. I don't post motivational quotes. I don't do engagement pods. I've never commented "love this" on a CEO's post hoping they'd notice. 𝗜 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗮 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁. What happens when women stop treating their careers like a single bet. Portfolio careers, optionality, the gap between what senior women actually want and what every brand assumes they want. That's all I talk about. I wasn't trying to go viral. I was trying to figure something out in public. Turns out that's enough. 850 women joined the Moonlight Club waitlist because they recognized themselves in what I was writing. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝘁 𝟭,𝟬𝟬𝟬. If you're new here, I'm Tennessee. I write about portfolio careers every week. Get on the list before Founders closes: LINK IN THE FIRST COMMENT 🌙 What's the thing you keep wanting to write about but haven't posted yet? #PortfolioCareer #WomenInTech #MoonlightClub

I tripled my following in the last year by writing for one woman. 5,300 to 16,000. I'd been writing here for years before that line moved at all. Compounding is boring right up until it isn't. The woman I write for has a job she has not quit and something of her own she has not announced yet. She is good at both. She is tired of pretending only one of them counts. Before that, I was writing for "professionals." Nobody has ever described themselves that way. So here is the test I run now, before anything goes out. Can I name the person this is for, out loud, in one sentence, without using a job title? If I can't, I don't post it. Job titles tell you what someone is paid for. They tell you nothing about what that person is doing at 6am before work, and that is where the real audience lives. The whole shift was moving from the first thing to the second. I narrowed the audience and the audience got bigger. That still sounds backwards to me, and I have the analytics open in front of me. This week LinkedIn's Creator team invited me into their Next Gen Voices cohort. It's a twelve week, invite-only program spent building the platform for the next generation of creators. Thank you Lucy Quick for the invite. We start later this month. The line in the email was "we've been following your content." Not a post. Content. They weren't following a spike. They were following a position, held long enough that it became legible. Who's the one person you're writing for? Say it without using a job title.