The Relatable Exec

Social Operating System

365 pieces. Seven a week. Built to produce conversations and leads, not followers.

Internal · not for distribution

Who we are talking to

Frontline workers and early-to-mid leaders. Warehouse, retail, care, logistics, service, and first-time supervisors through middle management. Operations and HR watch second.

What we are selling

The book, the workshop, the stage. Written for the employee, paid for by the employer. The content never turns toward the buyer.

The one rule

Name the feeling before you teach the lesson. Open on recognition. Close on instruction. Never open on the credential.

Four parts below. Open one at a time.

The frame

Why the rule is the rule, the three doors we are actually selling through, and who this is and is not written for.

The one rule

Name the feeling before you teach the lesson.

Recognition first. Instruction second. Every time.

David's instinct after thirty-five years is to lead with the framework. The audience cannot hear a framework until someone has said the thing they have not been able to say themselves.

What that sounds like. Not "the Job Joy Formula has two variables." It is "nobody is happy at work right now, and the reason is not the economy" — and then the formula, thirty seconds later, to a person who is already leaning in.

The corollary matters as much: never open on the credential. Thirty-five years and a C-suite title are the reason someone believes the second half of the video. Lead with them and you have become the executive talking down, which is the exact thing the brand is named against.

What we are actually selling

Three doors, and they do not all open to the same person.

Door one

The book

Job Joy: Solve the Riddle. Launch list now, sales from launch. Lowest price, widest audience, and the thing that makes the other two doors credible.

Door two

The business

JJFF delivered inside a company — workshops, cohorts, leadership-team coaching. The largest check and the longest sales cycle.

Door three

The stage

Speaking and facilitation. Fastest to book, compounds fastest, and every booking seeds the other two.

The tension, stated plainly. The content is written for the employee. The money comes from the employer. That looks like a contradiction and it is not — it is the mechanism. An HR director watching David explain her own workforce's experience better than she can is not being marketed to. She is watching a demonstration.

So the content stays audience-facing on every platform. The business and speaking asks live on separate surfaces — the site, the LinkedIn page, the speaking page — and are reached by people who came in through the content. Never pitch a workshop in a TikTok.

Who it is for

Two audiences we speak to, one that watches.

Primary

Frontline workers

Warehouse, retail, care, logistics, service. Working hard, no map, and never once had anyone senior explain how the decisions get made.

Primary

Early-to-mid leaders

First-time supervisors through middle management. Promoted for output, never taught judgment, now stuck on the second rung.

Secondary

Operations and HR

The people who recognize the problem being described and have a budget. They are the audience for doors two and three — watching, not being addressed.

Not for: executives looking for peer content · people who want resume templates and nothing else · anyone selling job-search hacks · students with no work history · people who want to be told the system is fair.

How it gets made

The register each platform runs on, what David has that nobody else in this category does, the retention numbers to aim at, and the shoot-day pipeline.

The register map

Same idea, seven emotional registers.

A post that works on TikTok and is copied straight to LinkedIn fails on both. The clip can be the same file; the first three seconds and the caption cannot be.

Platform	Register	Opens on	Ask
TikTok	Recognition, edged with anger	The cultural moment. "Nobody is happy at work right now."	None. Comment bait only.
Reels	Reassurance	The same clip re-hooked toward "this is fixable". Saves and sends, not rage.	Link in bio, once a week.
Shorts	Curiosity	An open loop the long-form closes. Shorts feed the channel, not the funnel.	Watch the full one.
YouTube	Taught, calm, specific	The problem named in search language. The lesson actually lives here.	Assessment or launch list, in the description and at 80%.
LinkedIn	The practitioner	The room. "I built layoff lists. Here is how they are made."	The only place a business or speaking ask belongs.
Facebook	Plain, warm, generational	Older skew and the audience most likely to be mid-search right now. Get hired lands hardest here.	Book and launch list.
X	Compression	One line from the video, no setup. Lowest priority; a holding pattern with a pulse.	None.

The one thing that never changes register: the slogan. Get hired. Stay hired. Get promoted. Same words, same order, everywhere, forever.

David's advantage

What nobody else in this category has.

Career advice is the most crowded content category on the internet. Almost all of it is made by recruiters, coaches, and people who were laid off once. Four things separate this.

He was in the room

Not adjacent to it. VP and Chief People & Culture Officer — the person the recruiters reported to. When he says "here is how the list gets made," he made lists.

The scale is verifiable

1,700 employees relocated after Katrina. Over $1M saved averting a strike. 46,000 co-workers through a talent redesign. A PBM scaled from 1,400 to 4,200 people.

He is not selling access

He is out of the seat. Nobody is being flattered and no current employer is being protected. That is why he can say the parts other people cannot.

There is a framework underneath

Most career content is a pile of tips. JJFF is a structure — define, diagnose, solve — so every video has a place in something larger and a book to land in.

Use the numbers sparingly and never as a boast. A proof number belongs at the moment the viewer starts doubting, roughly forty seconds in — not in the first line, where it reads as a resume. One per video, maximum.

The mechanics

Retention targets to aim at, not platform averages.

A 45% average watch is a failure on a 15-second video and a good result on a three-minute one.

Length	TikTok	Shorts	Reels	Strong
Under 15s	60%	60%	55%	70–75%
15–30s	50%	50%	45%	60–65%
30–60s	40%	40%	40%	55%
60s–3min	30%	—	—	45%

Reels sits lower on purpose — shares and saves carry real weight there, so watch time is one signal among several. Completion targets on Shorts: above 40% under 15s, 30% at 15–30s, 25% at 30–60s.

LinkedIn, and why the page is not the engine. Company page organic reach fell roughly 60–66% between 2024 and early 2026, and pages now make up about 1–2% of what appears in a typical feed. A company page post is first shown to only 2–5% of its own followers, and the first hour decides the rest. Personal profiles are reported at around 5× the engagement and 2.75× the impressions of pages.

So the rule is: David posts, the page reshares. The Relatable Exec page exists to hold the name, carry the mark on his experience entry, and give a booker somewhere to look him up. It is a credential surface, not a channel.

How it gets found

Titles, thumbnails, captions, filenames.

YouTube titles: Under 60 characters so nothing truncates. Lead with the problem in the words a person would actually type — "why you got ghosted", not "navigating recruitment silence".
Thumbnails: Three or four words maximum, cream on field green, Archivo at the widest weight. David's face at 40% of the frame when he is in it. Readable at 210px wide.
Descriptions: First two lines carry the hook and the link — everything after is collapsed. Assessment link, then book link, then chapters.
Short captions: One line. The hook again, not a summary. Three hashtags at most, and only ones a human would search.
LinkedIn openers: The first 140 characters decide whether anyone hits "see more". Put the confession there, not the setup.
Filenames: tre-s1e04-two-questions-short.mp4. Season, episode, slug, format. A year of files needs to be findable in year two.

One shoot, five assets

Shoot the face, skip the photo shoot.

David is on camera. His resistance is to posed portraits and stock staging, not to talking to a lens about work — and in this category his face is the credential. What makes "relatable" land is a person, not a wordmark.

Script the long-form. Hook, the room, the lesson, the proof number, the correction, the ask. Six beats, six minutes.
Shoot in one block. Six episodes back to back. Same wall, same shirt family.
Cut the long-form first. YouTube is the master. Everything else is an extract of it.
Pull two verticals. The strongest 25 seconds and the strongest 40. Re-hook each one; never reuse the long-form opener.
Re-register the verticals. Same file, two caption sets and two on-screen first lines: one edged for TikTok, one reassuring for Reels.
Write the LinkedIn post. Not a link drop. The same story told in text, in the practitioner register, from David's profile.
Build the thumbnail. The headline generator checks it against the small crop.
Cut one carousel. Five frames from the lesson for Instagram and the Facebook Page.
Log it. Piece number, date posted per platform, and delivery hours. The hours number is what tells the studio when it can hire.

The kit. Phone camera on a tripod at eye height · wireless lapel mic · a window on his left · one plain wall in a color that is not brand green · a lamp behind him for separation. Audio is the only place worth spending more. And do not put the badge behind him — a mark over his shoulder in every frame reads as a set.

How it turns into leads

The week either person actually owes, the five-rung reply ladder that turns a comment into a conversation, what we count, and the brand rules nothing may break.

The week

What each person owes, and nothing more.

David · 2 hours, once a fortnight

Shoot block

Six long-form episodes in one sitting, scripts already written and on a prompter. That is his entire production obligation.

David · 20 minutes, three times a week

Reply block

He answers comments in his own voice. This cannot be delegated — it is the thing the whole system exists to produce, and it is where the leads come from.

Ant · 3 hours

Edit day

Long-form, two verticals, thumbnail, carousel. Batch the whole shoot block at once.

Ant · 1 hour

Ship and log

Schedule the week's seven pieces, write the caption variants, update the log with delivery hours.

If a week collapses, protect the reply block. A week with no post and full replies is survivable. A week with seven posts and no replies produces nothing — no conversations, no research for Book 2, no leads.

The reply engine

Nobody skips a rung. Nobody gets pitched before rung four.

Reply with something only David could saySpecific to their situation, from the room. Never "great point" and never an emoji alone.
Ask one question backWhich of the three beats are they actually stuck on. Their answer is the diagnosis.
Name the blockGive it the framework's word. This is the moment they feel understood rather than answered.
Point at the free thingThe assessment, or the launch list. Only after rungs one to three have actually happened.
Move it off-platformEmail. And only here, if they run a team or an organization, does a workshop or a stage get mentioned.

The four replies to have ready

The fixed line on fees. When someone asks in public what a workshop or a talk costs, the answer is always the same and never a number: "Depends on the room and the length — send me a note at david@therelatableexecutive.com and I'll give you a straight answer." Naming a price in a comment thread sets a ceiling in front of everyone else reading.

Measurement

Followers are not on this list.

Number	What it means	Source
Conversations	Comment threads that reached rung two or higher. The leading indicator for everything else.	Counted by hand, weekly
Launch list	Emails captured. The only owned audience — everything else is rented.	Book site form
Assessment starts	People who spent six minutes on it. The warmest signal short of an email.	Apps Script log
Inbound asks	Speaking and workshop inquiries. Small numbers, large checks. Log every one with its source.	Inbox, tagged
Retention curve	Where people leave. Not a goal — a diagnostic on the scripting.	Platform analytics

The honest warning. Doors two and three are slow. A speaking inquiry that arrives in March may trace back to a video posted in October. Judge the system on conversations for the first two quarters, and on bookings only after that.

Staying one thing

The rules nothing may break.

Color: Green #42621A · Cream #F5F0E0 · Ink #1A1A1A · Field #3E4A2D for dark grounds. The rise tints color surfaces, never type.
Type: Archivo throughout. Widest weights for headlines and thumbnails.
The mark: The box is the logo — square, accessible through various openings, and the gaps are intentional. Never closed, evened up or redrawn. Compact badge below 180px.
Names: "The Relatable Exec" on every public surface. "The Relatable Executive®" is legal and formal only. JOB JOY™ and JJFF™ carry ™, not ®.
Handle: @relatableexec everywhere. Display name The Relatable Exec on brand accounts; David's own profiles keep his name and his face.
Link: relatableexec.com in every bio. Never the long domain.
Voice: Declarative. Short sentences. American spelling. No hype, no exclamation marks, no "game-changer". He is the calmest person in the conversation and that is the whole appeal.
Never: Trains, tracks or stations — the train is a metaphor in the book and must never be illustrated. No stock handshakes. No posed portraits.

The year, and all 365

Six seasons plus the Bank, the full library filtered and paged twenty-five at a time, the day-by-day calendar, and four generators.

The year

Seven pieces a week, fifty-two weeks, nothing repeated.

Three of the seven are filmed — six seasons of twenty-six episodes, shot in fortnightly blocks. The other four come from the Bank, which needs no camera and can be written in a sitting. 156 filmed + 209 written = 365 distinct pieces.

Season one is the runway to Book 1 and is the only one with a fixed date attached. Seasons two through six alternate between the framework and the three beats, so the audience is never more than eight weeks from something immediately useful.

The 365

Library, or day by day.

Library is every piece, filtered by season, theme and format. Calendar puts one on each day from 7 September, assigns its platform, and marks whether it needs a shoot day. Twenty-five to a page — no endless scrolling.

The generators

These compose rather than shuffle.

Hook

YouTube title60 char limit

Thumbnail headlinereads at 210px

Caption, per platform

The Relatable Executive® · JOB JOY™ and the Job Joy Fulfillment Framework™ are trademarks of Simrock, LLC · Internal working document — not for distribution. Retention and LinkedIn reach figures are 2026 third-party benchmarks, not measured TRE performance.

The episode packager

Pick any of the 365 and get the whole package in five tabs — shoot card and script, thumbnail prompts for every canvas, YouTube, the platform posts, and the ask. Record, upload, post.

The thumbnail system

One master prompt. Five things you swap. Nothing else changes.

Adopted from the Own Craft thumbnail pack and re-tuned for TRE. Three things are different, and the third is the one that matters.

Changed · ground

Field green, not near-black

Near-black is the most crowded ground in this category. Deep olive is almost unused in career content and it is already the brand. #3E4A2D edge to edge, cream words.

Changed · object

What the viewer owns

A lanyard, a time clock, a hi-vis vest, a resume face-down on a table. Not what launched this week — TRE has no news cycle and does not want one.

Changed · accent

The frame is the accent

One word circled in the hand-brushed frame, in Rise 1 #8CA85E. A generic colored rule would work; the brand's own device works harder and nobody else can use it.

Taken straight across: repetition. The same verdict lines recur on purpose — You are not in it. Already decided. That is the block. Not the interview. Seeing a phrase twice on a channel front page is not laziness, it is how a viewer learns the shape of a channel in two seconds. And David is in half of them — every long-form thumbnail carries his face.

One thing not copied: Facebook stays in the package. The Own Craft build dropped Facebook and X because its buyers are not there. TRE's are — the register map puts Facebook among the primary surfaces because the older skew is the audience most likely to be mid-search right now, and get hired lands hardest there. X stays too, as one compressed line; it costs nothing and holds the name.

Pick a piece

Everything below rebuilds for whatever you choose.

The size table

Only the canvas line changes between platforms.

Where	Canvas	Watch out for
YouTube thumbnail	1280 × 720	Timestamp sits bottom right — keep that corner empty
YouTube banner	2560 × 1440	Safe area is the middle 1546 × 423
Shorts / Reels / TikTok cover	1080 × 1920	Words in the top third — the bottom is buried under caption and buttons
Instagram feed	1080 × 1350	Grid crops to square, so words must survive the center 1080
Instagram square	1080 × 1080	Every carousel frame uses this
LinkedIn / Facebook post	1200 × 627	Feed shrinks it hard — three words maximum
Facebook Page cover	1640 × 856	Separate from the post image
Pinterest	1000 × 1500	Tall crop; move the face lower
Google Business Profile	1200 × 900	Center-crops in search