“I’m Jesse, by the way,” 

I reached out mid-sentence to introduce myself.  It was the kind of party where you get caught talking before you remember the formalities. 

But he looked surprised when I kept hanging on with weird eye contact, waiting for his name.  

“Larry,” he said, “Larry Page.”  

“Nice to meet you, Larry! What kind of work do you do?” 

Did I mention I was VERY green? 

“I work at Google,” he said, to which I rightly said wow and asked if he knew my friend Andrew.  

Extremely green. 

And this kept happening. All night. The strange look while I waited for a name—“Richard.” “Branson” said the charismatic funny guy. 

Just typing this I have that embarrassed feeling like a middle school memory. (Can’t say cringe anymore)

Meanwhile, my boss’s client held court in another corner. “Wow,” I thought, “I wonder if [Redacted] knows he’s talking to someone famous? That’s Goldie Hawn!”  You've already guessed I found out Redacted was the famous one. 

(Also, for NDA reasons, some details of this story have been changed or omitted). 

The next day, my boss said something that I’ll never forget. She said: 

“Do you know why those people didn’t mind having you at that party?”  

I admitted I didn’t. I hardly knew that the champagne cost more per bottle than my bike.  She said:

This was life-altering, but I didn’t know why yet.  At the time, all I really took from it was my career path of rock climber turned academic turned junior speechwriter finally had at least one thing going for it.  

Over the years, that boss has given a lot of us this speech, after a lot of parties like that. What I learned is an easy lesson we can all follow: care without pretense. For me, care about what people are TRYING to say, because only then can you help them say it best. Listen, learn, crystallize. 

This matters because people who achieve things ONLY do it by saying things. You have to get the ideas in your head into the actions of others. We call it communication. You have to say something. 

By now, I’ve written for a lot of the redacted names at that party. And many, many more. Their speeches, their op-Eds, their layoffs, wedding vows, and sadly more than one eulogy. I feel old. 

I run the executive communications firm Publera. We specialize in the kinds of things leaders have to say when they have big ideas, big problems, or big decisions. We help leaders say something.  

And not all leaders are in the c-suite. Maybe they’re on their way, though. And some are just founders, greener than I was in 2007. But all C-somethings  have big responsibilities, and they all make big decisions. That's their job, whatever the title is. 

So at some point, I started to just call them “C-somethings.”  You could be the CEO, could be the CFO, could be anything. What you all have in common is you lead people. You have high responsibility. You have to say something thousands of times a day.

Communication has become the main way you achieve things. 

That’s where I come in. 

A lot of times, when I do come in, I sit on what they call bench seats.  Every corporate boardroom in America has them: benches along one wall. It’s where the admins sit, the chiefs of staff, and the writers sit. 

What do we do, sitting there? We take notes. 

This newsletter will come from those notes. It’s going to be about lessons I’ve learned from the bench seats. Watching some of the world's most interesting c-somethings face big decisions. From unprecedented situations to common corporate problems.  

From the bench seats, I’ve served as a political campaign strategist for C-suite infighting. I’ve served as a thought partner one minute and a Diet Coke fetcher the next. I’ve been the note taker, the bad news writer, the outside perspective-er, and honestly a lot of times, some leaders just want to know what other leaders did because no one is allowed to talk about doing it. 

Helping people say something, I made a career turning wrenches on the inner workings of making your ideas and your self succeed. 

This newsletter is going to be just a few of the lessons and takeaways I’ve learned along the way.

1. To share some of the stories (anonymized of course), lessons, and wow’s I’ve had the luck of being in the room for. This newsletter is to help anyone else who is a c-something, or becoming one, do the main thing all c-somethings must: say something. To get things done. 

2. The second goal is selfish: I want to get out of my comfort zone. I’ve been writing as a ghost with my name on nothing for almost 2 decades. I just love it, helping ideas move people. But the only way I can help more people’s ideas win is if I start sharing a few of my own. Here we go. 

So here’s what to expect:

1. I’ll send an email every Wednesday at 10:45am.

2. I’m going to limit this project to about a thousand people, and 52 weeks. If we go beyond any of those, I’m going to ask you first.

If I were going to share a story or case about one problem you’re currently working on, what would it be? 

Reply to this email. All emails to me are confidential.