Welcome to Issue 73 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about telling better business stories. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.) (Miss past issues? Read those here.)

Hello Reader,

I'm trying to get a grip. I'm trying to focus on what's working, what I like, and what I can control. But, no matter what I do, I can't seem to stop fantasizing about a full change in career.

I'm good with people. Maybe I could become a therapist? Or what about something outdoors? Perhaps a landscape architect? People say I'm great at creating beautiful spaces! What if I do interior design? I do teach an afterschool cooking class. (It's fun, as long as I don't have to deal with the kindergartners.) Should I just become a full-time teacher? They do get entire summers off…

While I understand that all jobs have their tradeoffs, the reason these and other potential careers are speaking to me is because—unlike what I do now—none of them require you to spend the majority of your life on the internet.

Maybe it's that I turned 40 this year and I'm tired of keeping up. Or maybe it's that the internet, thanks to AI, has become the absolute worst.

Either way, for research this weekend, I asked my buddy Nate, a successful therapist who's been practicing for nearly 20 years, what it takes to get into his line of work and what it's really like.

While he warned me that therapy would require a lot of schooling and unpaid hours to get started, he confirmed that once you're credentialed, spinning up a private practice is pretty straightforward. The best part is that the work allows you to actually focus most of your time doing the thing you love doing, without worrying a smidge about marketing or sales or operations or pipelines or distribution channels or offer ladders or whatever it is we entrepreneurs get our panties in a wad about.

As a therapist, posting thought leadership content on LinkedIn and dancing on TikTok is entirely optional. You don't even need a website if you don't want one.

"Dang," I thought to myself. "That does sound dreamy."

But then when I asked Nate, who clearly loves his job, not just how he got into it but why, the reason he gave me made me reconsider the source of my unhappiness.

"I got into therapy because I'm obsessed with human connection, I care about creating spaces that allow people to heal, and I wanted to be in service to my fellow human," he said.

"Me too!" I emphatically responded.

"Well," he asked, "I get to help about 20 people a year. How about you?"

I had to think about it.

In small groups, which I'm always curating, it's about the same. But when I speak or do workshops or write something that really resonates, hundreds of people reach out to tell me how I helped them—and that's all thanks to the stupid internet.

"Seems pretty impactful," Nate said. "So, do you think you can find a way to make it work within that world?"

That, I suppose, is the question.

A Good Reframe

I once heard someone say that people who obsessively travel will tell you that humans are overwhelmingly good, but people who obsessively scroll are convinced that humans are overwhelmingly bad.

It's not hard to see why.

Online, the algorithms confirm our worldview and skew toward fear and the negative. Clickbait and rage bait fuel our engagement, and then we just get fed more of what we want to see.

But travel expands and challenges our worldview. It exposes us to all ways of thinking and being. And, more often than not, it helps reminds us that good people with good intentions willing to help are more common than grifters and haters.

For instance, did you see this story of how perceptions of Americans changed after the World Cup? So heartwarming.

The original promise of the internet was that we could find interesting people and places without leaving the comfort of our homes—that it could be our window to the entire world.

But now, bots officially outnumber humans online, AI creators have reached peak levels of convincing, and there's seemingly no regulation or penalty for scammers and brands who pay people to make up stories to sell stuff.

We're so lost and confused that we've resorted to policing each other's content.

It's a devastating dissolution of trust.

So now, not only do we have to work extra hard to convince buyers that we're not out to swindle them, we have to convince them that we have a heartbeat.

As a result, cold pitching—no matter how human you are—doesn't work any more. Neither does just creating content or showing up in search. You have to work at building trust and relationships like never before to get someone on a call with you.

And the problem doesn't just impact sales. For me, my peers, and all the people who are just trying to do good work and build sustainable businesses, the problem of a corrupt and bot-filled internet is much bigger than that.

We're all on here trying to build our businesses, learn from the right people, get the best resources, keep up with what matters, find our communities and ignore or avoid the rest. But with an ever-growing avalanche of crap content and fake operators, it's getting harder and harder to sort through the noise for ourselves.

It's confusing, entirely overwhelming, and disheartening.

It makes you want to retreat into your safe little world and swear off social media or the internet altogether and consider alternative careers like therapy. (Or landscape architecture. Or interior design. Or teaching.)

But then, just before you're about to log off forever, you get invited to give a talk in Atlanta, because that person you reached out to on LinkedIn a year ago simply because you admired her work had a consistent way to keep up with yours.

Or you discover an online networking group through another entrepreneur with beautiful, interesting humans who specifically aren't there to pitch you.

Or you find a creator with your same first name who makes you laugh out loud and reminds you that no, the entire world has not gone insane.

And you think, okay, if I can just keep showing up as myself and telling my story and connecting with the right folks and building relationships with other people who give a damn and want the same things I do—who both expand my worldview and provide guidance through it—then maybe I can work within this world.

Or, at least, I can make it work with me.

A Good Takeaway

I keep hearing a lot of people say that the best solution to online fatigue is to simply take your business offline.

Attend more in-person events, they say. Network, speak at conferences, join communities, build relationships with referral partners, and get on podcasts.

And yes, all of those things are good and great. They all provide opportunities to learn, connect and tell your story face-to-face to bridge that trust gap and drum up business.

I do all of these things. I even host my own. And the more I do them, the more opportunities and work I get.

A the same time, the more I focus on the connections, communities and content that both share and exapand my worldview online, the more I'm reminded that internet isn't fully dead—yet. There are still plenty of opportunities if you're willing to put yourself out there in an honest, vulnerable and strategic way.

And there are still plenty of people to learn from and lean on if you focus your attention on finding and nurturing them, with fewer, deeper connections.

Because when you do that, you build loyalty and relationships that fortify you against all the fakes and scammers. You also create a signal that attracts all of the other living, breathing, caring humans who not only need what you have to offer but can help you find and attract the opportunities meant for you.

I'm not saying a world of screen-free bliss isn't still attractive to me.

But the more I think about it and spend time both seeking out and being a force for actual human connection across the vast world wide web, the more motivated I am keep doing good, impactful work.

And if not, there will always be a job in therapy.

A Few Good Resources

1. If this resonated and you're still looking for that community of real humans who can help you sort through the noise of how to build, how to grow strategically, how to tell you story, and where to focus your attention, there are 9 out of 15 seats left in New Narratives cohort kicking off this September. Learn more and apply here. (Readers of my newsletter get $400 off with code "co-create" if you apply before August 9th!)
2. And that conference in Atlanta I got asked to speak at? It's a retreat for social impact entrepreneurs. Check it out if that's you, and if it's a fit, you can use my code DGXMastermind10 for 10% off the registration.

Hope you have a good one,
Renee