Four Exits and a Job Search

I've been part of four exits. I've led growth at companies you've heard of. I've got 4,000 LinkedIn followers and a bio that reads well.

And right now I'm job hunting like everyone else. Applying. Following up. Watching the inbox.

I want to talk about what having "exits" on your resume does and doesn't buy you when you're the one looking for work — because the gap between the story people imagine and the reality is wider than you'd think.

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What it buys you.

It buys you the first look. Recruiters open the profile. The headline does its job. You get past the six-second scan that kills most applications. That's real — in a market where most resumes die in an ATS, getting read by a human is an actual advantage.

It buys you credibility in the conversation. When I tell a hiring manager what I'd do in the first 90 days, they believe I've done it before. Because I have. The stories land. The pattern recognition is real. Four times through the cycle teaches you things you can't learn any other way.

It buys you a network. Former colleagues, founders, investors — people who know the work. Warm intros beat cold applications every time, and exits build the kind of network that picks up the phone.

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What it doesn't buy you.

It doesn't buy you a pass on the process. I still do the recruiter screens. I still answer "tell me about a time you..." like everyone else. Nobody's skipping steps because of what's on my LinkedIn. The machine processes everyone.

It doesn't buy you leverage when you're cash-tight. This is the part nobody posts about. Having exits in your past doesn't mean having money in your present. Equity is a lottery ticket that already paid out — past tense. The market doesn't care what you did in 2019. It cares what you can do starting Monday.

It doesn't buy you immunity from the numbers game. Job searching is a funnel. Applications in, conversations out, offers at the bottom. My conversion rates are better than average — the background helps — but it's still a funnel. Still a grind. Still the daily discipline of putting things into the top and working what comes out the bottom.

And it definitely doesn't buy you the luxury of prestige. I'm looking at senior marketing roles and hourly work in the same week. Anyone who tells you to protect your "positioning" during a job search has never been broke during one. Income is income. Pride doesn't pay for anything.

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What I'm actually doing.

Running it like a pipeline. Because that's what it is.

Top of funnel: applications, recruiter outreach, warm intros, direct messages to hiring managers. I'm tracking what's going out and what's coming back. Not obsessively — just enough to know what's working.

Middle: the conversations. Recruiter screens, hiring manager calls, the homework assignments. I treat every one like it matters, because it does. The market is small. People talk.

Bottom: decisions. When something's real, I go deep. Research the company, talk to people who've worked there, figure out if the role is set up to succeed or set up to fail. I've walked away from enough bad engagements to know the signs. Desperation doesn't mean saying yes to everything. It means being honest about what you need and moving fast on what fits.

The target I set for myself: signed offer by late October. Not because the date is magic — because open-ended searches drift. A deadline forces the daily action. Some days that's ten applications. Some days it's one good conversation. Every day it's something.

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The honest part.

Job hunting with a good resume is still humbling. You'd think the credentials would make it easier emotionally. They don't. Every non-response still stings. Every "we went another direction" still lands. The only difference is you know it's not about your ability — it's about fit, timing, budget, the hundred things outside your control.

What the exits actually gave me isn't advantage. It's perspective. I've seen enough cycles to know that this part — the uncertain, uncomfortable middle — is temporary. That the work compounds. That showing up daily beats waiting for the perfect opportunity.

And one more thing the exits taught me: the best roles I ever got didn't come from applications. They came from being visible, being useful, and being known for something specific. So I'm writing. Building in public. Putting the thinking out there where the right people can find it.

The funnel works. But the signal — the thing that pulls the right opportunity toward you instead of you chasing it — that's the work that compounds while you sleep.

Keep the pipeline full. Build the signal. Don't let pride narrow the funnel.

That's the whole strategy. It's not complicated. It just requires doing it every day.