g’day
there’s a tax people are paying without realising it.
not GST, not income tax.
the invisibility tax.
it’s incurred when the only person that knows you’re any good… is your boss.
no market signal. no surface area. no proof you exist outside an org chart.
and you pay for that invisibility every year in slower salary growth, weaker options and a career that feels like a hollywood actor waiting to be discovered.
this happens because the world has changed.
the old deal – do good work, be loyal, keep your head down – is dead.
today, hiring and promotions works differently.
corporates optimise for safe personalities. the whole system is built to weed out risk, maintain optics, not to truly understand your best work.
i’ve skimmed thousands of applications where this hurts most:
smart people. boring resumes. no proof of work. no links. no examples.
from the outside, they look identical to everyone else.
the real game is not impressing hr.
it’s creating enough surface area that the wider market can compete for you.
you want 50 people in your industry to know “you’re the one who does x” and profit from the resultant FOMO.
step 1: pick a lane
be recognisably “about” one thing.
fleet optimisation for trades companies. staffing for hospitality venues. fixing broken analytics setups.
it doesn’t have to be forever, but it must be specific.
step 2: turn work into proof
you already have the raw material in internal decks and projects, just strip out the most sensitive bits and make it public.
back when i worked in advertising, portfolios of actual work were common for creatives.
this proof-of-work underwrites your whole public persona.
short case studies, screenshots, retrospectives of how you solved something. they just need to see you’ve actually shipped.
step 3: one visible home
put your proof in one obvious place: simple personal site, and a tight linkedin with featured links. set up more social media if you want to push it further.
buy a domain and use a custom email; a small cost for massive signal.
step 4: stay in the feed
attention cycles are short.
if you show up once every 18 months, you’re basically invisible.
sopublish once a week.
(this is not about being loud. it’s about staying just present enough that people remember who you are).
because the tables have turned.
and the new world belongs to those who make their employers feel lucky to have them.
not the other way around.
ps – my new vid just dropped. in australia, property investing is our national sport and so i’ve been excited to call bullshit on how we think about wealth. check it out:
charlie
