Finding Success
In any job, it’s easy to overestimate the value of skills on a resume and underestimate the power of how you show up.
What earns trust, opens doors, and unlocks opportunities isn’t just what you know or what you’ve done – it’s how you carry yourself when the path isn’t clear. The people who succeed over the long haul are the ones who keep promises, follow through, ask smart questions, and build things without waiting to be asked.
In this corner of The Orbit, find advice and insight on the powerful ways to grow your impact at work that don’t always show up on paper. Think, becoming someone others can count on. Staying organized as your responsibilities grow. Taking ownership of your work like you’re the last person who will ever touch it. And building a network of people who’ve seen you deliver and want to see you win.
Spotting Unresumeable Strengths
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Promotions and trust rarely hinge on GPA, fancy titles, or even perfect hard-skill scores. They’re earned by the invisible habits people practice every day: owning mistakes, following through, reading a room, and staying fun to work with. Sarah George-Waterfield sits down with Nikki Galloway, Tim Hanson, Emily Holdman, and Holly Grajera to explore how hiring managers spot these “unresumeable” strengths – and how you can cultivate them long before they show up in a job description.
Listen For …
Trust = bombs on the table. Why showing problems early beats hiding them in a desk drawer
Extreme reliability decoded: transparency + action, not excuses
The résumé red flag that’s really a green light – and vice-versa
“Entertaining & likable” as a legitimate advantage
How smart leaders weigh judgment and risk history more than spotless records
Timestamps
0:00 Intro — Success Starts Before the Resume
1:08 Nikki Galloway — Trust, transparency, and why follow-through > excuses
7:13 Tim Hanson — Likability as human capital; turning interpersonal skill into opportunity
10:05 Emily Holdman — Reading risk history, judging judgment, and why pristine records worry her
17:19 Holly Grajera — Early-career proof that a 95 % performer + great vibe often outruns a 100 % recluse
19:03 Closing Takeaways — Quiet traits that compound over timeResources & Links
Article: Your Greatest Competitive Advantage
Tim’s Newsletter: Unqualified Opinions
The Orbit Talent Network, Personality Test, & Roles: The Orbit
Building a High Say-Do Ratio
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Anyone can promise the moon. Very few people orbit around to deliver it – on time, every time. In this episode, Sarah George-Waterfield talks with Danny Gray, Joe Swanegan, Emily Holdman, and Tim Hanson about the quiet super-power of a high say-do ratio: doing what you said you’d do, when you said you’d do it. From unglamorous spreadsheet grunt work to owning mis-fires in public, they show how extreme reliability compounds trust, unlocks opportunity, and even survives the occasional sideways project.
Listen For …
Why “boring” follow-through beats dazzling ideas that fizzle
Being a good citizen at work (optimism, curiosity, helpfulness) as a career tiebreaker
Distinguishing a setback vs. a true failure and how transparency keeps trust intact
The landscaping lesson that made reliability about serving the customer, not just sweating harder
Timestamps
0:00 Intro — What Is a Say-Do Ratio?
1:26 Danny Gray — Quiet reliability, unglamorous work, and trusting that leaders do notice
3:30 Joe Swanegan — Workplace “good citizenship” and how optimism + help beats raw numbers
6:46 Emily Holdman — Setback vs. failure, judging “is it worth it?” before & during a project
12:32 Tim Hanson — The landscaping notebook story: asking why and serving customers to earn repeat trust
18:29 Closing Takeaways — Reliability that adapts, communicates, and compoundsResources & Links
Article: Your Greatest Competitive Advantage
Tim’s Newsletter: Unqualified Opinions
The Orbit Talent Network, Personality Test, & Roles: The Orbit
Listen For …
Trust = bombs on the table. Why showing problems early beats hiding them in a desk drawer
Extreme reliability decoded: transparency + action, not excuses
The résumé red flag that’s really a green light – and vice-versa
“Entertaining & likable” as a legitimate advantage
How smart leaders weigh judgment and risk history more than spotless records
Timestamps
0:00 Intro — Success Starts Before the Resume
1:08 Nikki Galloway — Trust, transparency, and why follow-through > excuses
7:13 Tim Hanson — Likability as human capital; turning interpersonal skill into opportunity
10:05 Emily Holdman — Reading risk history, judging judgment, and why pristine records worry her
17:19 Holly Grajera — Early-career proof that a 95 % performer + great vibe often outruns a 100 % recluse
19:03 Closing Takeaways — Quiet traits that compound over timeResources & Links
Tim’s Newsletter:Unqualified Opinions
The Orbit Talent Network, Personality Test, & Roles:The Orbit
Adding Value without Asking permission
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“Above and beyond” isn’t code for heroics – it’s the repeatable skill of seeing a gap, fixing it, and bringing everyone with you. Sarah George-Waterfield talks with Permanent Equity’s Brent Beshore, Anthony Alphin, and Bryce Murray about the art (and risk) of acting first, clarifying later. They map a hierarchy of value creation (from executing instructions flawlessly to inventing whole new systems) and share real-life examples of turning accidental successes and messy data into repeatable engines.
Listen For …
Brent’s 4-rung ladder of value creation (execute → improve task → manage system → build system)
Why mastery of your current rung beats premature “innovation”
Anthony’s playbook for “we built something by accident – now what?”
The question Bryce uses to uncover hidden projects: “What do you hate doing?
Timestamps
0:00 Intro — Acting Before You’re Asked
1:22 Brent Beshore — The hierarchy of value creation & cultural awareness
8:01 Anthony Alphin — Turning chaos into systems; shared-services case study
12:55 Bryce Murray — Asking better questions, AI as a force-multiplier, worst-way-first ideation
17:04 Closing Takeaways — Usefulness, not heroics
Resources
The Orbit Talent Network, Personality Test, & Roles: The Orbit
“If you want to build a career in anything, not only should you work somewhere that is doing something different, you need to be genuinely different as well. One form this can take in finance is by being a good writer. It’s conventional wisdom that you need to be at least reasonable with numbers in order to buy and sell things for a living, but it’s one thing to calculate a return profile and another to persuade someone to take the risk of earning it. Another differentiator is to be entertaining and likable.”
— From Tim Hanson’s “Entertaining and Likable”.”