Hey
Reader —
When I worked in radio, the scariest job on the whole rundown was writing the copy that went under somebody else's voice. You'd hand a page to a host who had fifteen years more experience than you, and they'd take it into the booth, and whatever you wrote either landed or it didn't — live, on the air, in front of everyone.
I've been thinking about that this week because we crossed a milestone that feels the same. Eleven real people loaded their real bios into a real website. Each one is going to be read by somebody trying to decide whether to trust them with their mental health. That's a different kind of proof. Nothing you put on a page stays theoretical for long.
3 Things I'm Thinking About
One Thing I Learned This Week
Copy that was "approved" isn't approved until you've read it inside its template. I've been doing this work for decades and I still caught myself this week assuming a bio was ready because a client had signed off on the Google Doc. Then I put it next to a headline and a call-to-action and watched the whole thing shift. Good work doesn't survive the jump from document to page on its own. Somebody always has to make it land a second time.
Links That Made Me Stop Scrolling
On the Podcast
The Transparency Tax. The newest Marginally Better is about the companies that published everything — salaries, supply chains, decisions — and what it actually cost them. There's a version of "transparency as a value" that's real, and a version that's a liability. I spent this episode trying to tell them apart. Listen here →
New on My Blog
I teased this one last time. It's now live. What started as a thought about the "what were you like in the 90s" meme turned into a reflection on thirty-five years of helping other people show up online — and why I finally started showing up on my own site again. Also: the cobbler's kids, caregiving, and what the next fourteen years are shaped to look like.
Read the post →I'm Writing on My Own Site Again
After a few years mostly quiet on joetaylorjr.com, I'm back to posting regularly. Essays about the work, the industry, and the long arc of a career spent helping other people find their voice online. If that's your thing, the blog is where to find it.
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