Newsletter 88: Find the missing piece of your author self. Plus, business books jump the shark, AI threatens our humanity, three people to follow, and three books to read. What is a fractional author? There’s an huge pool of editorial talent now working freelance. Like many of those folks, I’ve filled varied roles working with…
This April Fools’ Day brings the revealing news that Hooters, the instantly recognizable and “delightfully tacky” (their brand statement, not mine) restaurant chain is declaring bankruptcy (New York Times, gift link). This bankruptcy will end the cleavage between franchises owned by a group of the original founders and locations owned by the company. The original…
We rarely record meetings we have in person with others. But based on my experience, lots of people record their online meetings by default. This is dumb. Please stop. Please don’t record your meeting with me I am very precise when I communicate in writing. Whether it’s an email or any other textual communication, you…
This is the best part about working for a long time (or if you prefer, being old). There are a thousand people who will respond to my informal request for help. I know experts in social media, venture capital, digital marketing, finance, health care, retail, taxation, artificial intelligence, publishing, television, statistics, brand licensing, home efficiency,…
Most experienced businesspeople have a T-shaped knowledge and skill profile. Here’s how that looks: For a writer and editor like me, the deep part is knowledge of what works in business writing and business book publishing. The broad part includes the topics I’ve ghostwritten or edited books about, including AI, marketing, PR, social media, management,…
Newsletter 87. While life is an unending battle against chaos, chaos is where all creativity comes from. Plus, Meta rips off every author on the planet, AI “insights” are anything but, three people to follow and three books to read. Chaos in perspective Do you love chaos? Of course not. No one wants to be…
My company WOBS continues successfully in 2025, ten years after I started it. Many things about what I do have changed, but others have remained constant. I thought it might be instructive to describe my journey as a freelance writer, editor, and ghostwriter. Fundamental principles When I started, I had a clear idea of what…
Ten years ago, WOBS was born. WOBS LLC is the name of my company. The first blog post on bernoff.com (which at that time was called withoutbullshit.com) was ten years ago. Today I’ll talk about how I went from a senior executive at a respected research company to to a 56-year-old freelancer with dreams to…
Yes. For the most part, my clients are my friends. This philosophy goes against most people’s advice. We freelancers are told that we have to maintain a professional distance. That we have to ask for money, which you don’t do with friends. That we might even have to our your clients — or they might…