Welcome back to Dear EverMore, and to a whole new year of being authentically ourselves + taking ownership of our career story!

In this episode, Courtney sat down with our cofounder and CTO, Scott Hertel, to walk through his career story — from coming up in the dot com era to becoming a 3x founder, and now part of building EverMore.

This felt especially timely as we kick off 2026. Instead of the antiquated "new year, new you," we're leaning into our "new year, be you" mindset. Scott's story is a masterclass in staying true to yourself while being intentional about where your career goes.

A few things we talk about:

• The dot com crash — tying your identity to your job is a warning sign. Instead, Scott shares advice on how to own your career instead of letting it happen to you.
• Career-as-a-product — keeping it simple, running experiments, acting on feedback, and knowing who to go to for mentorship. Scott shares ways to use the scientific method to find out what excites you and helps you grow.
• Why engineers plan everything except their careers — and why your story (the business impact you've made) matters more than the tech languages you know or what you’ve shipped.

Resources we shared:

• (article) Scott Hertel On Failure, Freedom, and Being a 3x Founder
• (book) The One Thing by Gary Keller
• (book) Essentialism by Greg McKeown
• (app) EverMore as your Career Companion

If you’re looking to take ownership of your career, navigate a transition, or want to be a better leader, EverMore is a space built for reflection, growth, and career storytelling. While we’re in our early beta, we’d love to have you try it out and invite others with your very own referral link 💚

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Welcome to the last episode of 2025 from Dear EverMore!

Before we get started, we want to fully acknowledge that 2025 was a doozy and included a lot of great things (like us creating + beta launching EverMore), as well as heavy events all over the world. We know how difficult it is to come to work and exist in the every day like everything’s a-okay when the world is heavy around us. So, if you’re feeling that, too, please know you’re not alone 💚

In today’s episode, we discuss how politics is in everything — at work, we rely on our employers and our jobs financially, emotionally, and socially (especially with work now taking over the 3rd space) — and how it’s really difficult to separate politics from our work.

A few specific things we talk about:

• How hard it is to speak up in the workplace when you’re early in a career, often out of fear of losing your job.
• How layoffs affect our local communities, as well as the global economy
• How our societal norms and biases impact opportunity and compensation
• How it can be difficult to work for a company that uses unethical or questionable practices, like child labor overseas

When big (and small) injustices are happening around us, silence feels like agreement.

We believe it’s important for leaders to say something when a difficult event occurs (either nationally or locally), as well as be conscientious of how the work itself could affect their employees, workers, or society at large. Especially now as more companies are taking hard stances on “no politics at work,” it can make some feel unseen, or worse, feeling unprotected.

If you’re a people leader or manager, here’s what we recommend:

• Even a “today might be a tough day for some of you” can help someone feel seen + understood. You can show empathy for others without sharing your personal or political views.
• Sharing resources, like Telehealth counseling (if it’s something offered as an employee benefit) if they need to talk to someone outside of the company.
• Adding “please be conscientious of others today” since we all have different opinions, perspectives, and beliefs — these differences make us better, but can make it difficult to have understanding + empathy.

EverMore is a space built for reflection, growth, and career storytelling. We built EverMore to help others figure out what to do when they encounter ethical quandaries at work + how to authentically drive their career forward. We’re invite only right now, but we’d love to get you on our waitlist!

Helpful resources

• The Little Lies That Keep Work Unfair
• I Don’t Know How to Be Apolitical at Work
• The Future Is Already Unfolding: How Work and Society Evolve by 2030
• Subscribe to the EverMore Edit (our monthly newsletter)

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Have a burning question you'd like answered on the pod? We'd love to give you advice! Submit your anonymous question.

Welcome back to Dear EverMore! In this special bonus episode, Courtney and Kelsey answer your questions around feedback and how to tackle all too common situations at work.

The TL;DR — we tackle several community submitted questions:

• Someone who's been managing an entire department for months just had leadership hire someone else over them
• A person who keeps receiving feedback that isn't curious and comes loaded with "shoulds"
• A manager who's been asked by leadership to deliver feedback they don't agree with or own

This episode builds on our previous conversation about what's wrong with feedback at work, but this time we're getting practical with real-life scenarios that are far too common in the workplace.

Resources:

• we've officially launched our beta to folks on our waitlist! For now, we're invite-only while we make EverMore the best it can be. Join the waitlist for early access.
• previous episode: What's wrong with feedback at work
• article: The death of honesty - do you have any feedback for me?

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Have a burning question you'd like answered on the pod? We'd love to give you advice! Submit your anonymous question.