OG Tuesday Issue #309

💻 Work smarter from home with these productivity-boosting tools.

💰 Your financial to-do list for 2026, the moves worth making before year-end.

👩🏻‍💻 Why women are leaving the workforce, and what companies can actually do about it.

☀️ Summer wellness basics that are easy to actually stick to.

A manager sends a Slack message on a random Tuesday: “You seemed a little off in that meeting. Everything okay?” Maybe the person was up all night with a sick dog and it had nothing to do with work. The fact that somebody noticed is the part she’ll still be telling people about in five years.

Be Kind to Humankind Week runs August 25 to 31, and it started back in 1988 as a nudge to be more considerate, one small act at a time. Most of us file kindness under things that happen outside the office, with the neighbor who grabs your packages or the stranger who lets you merge. Work is where it does some of its heaviest lifting.

Trust gets built in thirty-second moments, the ones that signal I see you as a person, not a line item. Here are five worth carrying into this week. None of them require a title.

The “you seemed off” check-in

When someone goes quiet, gets short in emails, or seems not-quite-themselves, say something. Privately, no agenda. “Hey, you’ve seemed a little quiet this week, everything alright?” Half the time it’s nothing. The other half, it catches a person on the worst day of her month and reminds her she isn’t invisible.

The specific shoutout

“Great job team!” evaporates on contact. Name the moment instead: “The way you handled that client’s pricing objection, calm, clear, no overexplaining, that’s exactly how it should be done.” Specific praise proves you were actually watching, and it tells people what to do more of. Say it in a channel or a meeting where other people can see it.

The unprompted DM

Send the article that reminded you of someone’s project. Drop a “hope the move went okay” the week a teammate relocates. Follow up on the thing she mentioned once about her kid’s recital. Remembering the small stuff people volunteer about their lives is one of the highest-trust moves available to anyone, at any level.

The credit redirect

When leadership praises something your team did, name names. “That was all Priya.” “Marcus drove the whole thing.” It costs you nothing and buys enormous loyalty. It works sideways too: if a peer saved you in a cross-functional meeting, say so in front of her boss.

The “how can I help” that means it

Anyone can say “let me know if you need anything.” Almost no one follows through. The people who stand out say “I’ve got 20 minutes, want me to take the deck off your plate so you can focus on the numbers?” A specific offer, at a specific time.

Why the small stuff wins

Culture is whether people feel noticed, backed, and treated like humans on a random Wednesday when nothing special is happening. The colleagues you’ll still remember at the end of your career are the ones who saw you having a bad day and bothered to ask. This week is as good a time as any to be one of them.

94% of sales leaders say their teams are using AI. Which sounds like progress, until you ask whether it’s actually working.

HubSpot talked to over 1,000 sales and revenue leaders to learn more.

The State of Sales in 2026 report looks at what’s driving pipeline today. Where buyers are pushing back. And what the gap looks like between teams that are ready for the AI era, and teams that just think they are.

Download Now.

“My biggest work challenge, I’d have to say is having the confidence in myself to be able to clearly speak to leadership effectively. My numbers speak for themselves — I just get tongue tied when I talk to leadership.” — Courtney

You already have the receipts. The data is there, the results are real, and somewhere in your brain you know you’ve earned your seat at that table. The hard part is the translation, turning everything you know into words that land confidently in a room full of leaders.

That’s a skill, and skills can be built.

Start by asking yourself why

Before you prep a single talking point, get curious about what’s actually happening when you freeze. Is it a specific person in the room? A fear of being wrong in front of the wrong people? A deeper belief that your wins weren’t really that impressive? A worry that speaking up will somehow expose you?

Keep asking why until you hit something that feels true. The freeze is never random, and once you know the root, you can actually address it instead of just trying to push through it every single time.

Pack your credibility backpack

Your credibility backpack is a living document of your wins, your metrics, and your impact, the concrete proof you can pull from any time you need to remind yourself (and a room full of leaders) of what you bring.

For leadership conversations specifically, pack it with:

• 3 metrics with real numbers: “Increased pipeline conversion by 18% in Q2”
• 3 wins you can describe in one sentence each
• Your repeatable line: “I lead X so we get Y. I’m known for Z.”

Review it before every leadership meeting so you walk in already knowing your evidence.

Let the numbers lead

You said it yourself: your numbers speak for themselves. So let them go first. When you feel yourself getting tongue-tied, anchor back to the data. Numbers are objective, credible, and hard to argue with.

Instead of explaining or justifying, try simply stating: “Here’s what we did and here’s the result.” That structure keeps you grounded and keeps the conversation focused on outcomes instead of opinion.

Build a few power phrases and practice them out loud

Having language ready in advance means your brain doesn’t have to generate it under pressure. A few worth keeping handy:

• “I want to flag something I’m proud of…”
• “The data shows…”
• “Here’s what moved the needle…”
• “I led this and here’s what came out of it…”

Practice them out loud. The more familiar they feel in your mouth, the easier they’ll come out when it actually counts.

Remember why you’re in the room

You were hired because someone looked at your experience and said yes. Leadership already believes in what you bring, otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting across from them. They’re waiting to hear what you know.

Walk in with that. Your numbers are already doing the work. Now it’s your turn to own them out loud.

Your dog eats something he shouldn’t. Six hours later you’re at the emergency vet at 10pm, holding a shaking animal in one arm and a credit card in the other, and the number on the screen has four digits in it.

Lemonade Pet covers accidents, new illnesses, and the hereditary and chronic conditions a lot of policies leave out. Plans start at $10/month, there’s no network to check first, and any licensed vet or emergency clinic counts. Riley’s broken leg ran $5,391, and $4,248 of it came back.

Two things worth knowing before you enroll:

1. Illness coverage starts after 14 days and orthopedic conditions after 30.
2. Pre-existing conditions aren’t covered at all.

Both are reasons the useful week to set this up is a week when nothing is wrong.

Lemonade Pet is currently available in 43 states.

👉 See your pet’s price in under a minute.

👉 Deploy AI agents without the compliance nightmare. Free session, Sept 11. RSVP here.

🪜 The Hustle is the daily business read for 1.5 million ambitious people who actually want to understand how the world works.

🍄 The NOTOC mushroom lamp Kristel won’t stop talking about.

🔌 Kristel’s recommended charger swap: Anker’s 30W Nano folds flat and fits in every bag.

 Upcoming Events

• TODAY 8/25 @ 10AM PT: Prompt Engineering 101 (SGS Only* | Join the waitlist)
• Thurs 8/27 @ 9AM PT: The AI Workflow Map: Find the Repetitive Work AI Can Handle and Get 5+ Hours Back Every Week
• Thurs 9/3 @ 9AM PT: Resilience Workshop with NextArrow (SGS Only* | Join the waitlist)

* Smart Girl Society is our private community for women who want deeper conversations, accountability, and tools that actually make life easier. Join the waitlist to get in the next round.

 Work Wisdom of the Week:

“Volunteer outside of work. It changes your focus from budgets and deadlines to building community and making a difference. You become part of something greater, and it nourishes your soul in the process.”

Heather H (Program Manager)

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