The New York Times emailed me (pinch me now)

Find Your Superpower newsletter 139

Read time: 4 minutes

Topics covered: Personal branding, 2h LinkedIn storytelling mini-bootcamp 

The strangest thing happened to me.

I opened my inbox and found an email from a reporter at The New York Times. 

Her name was Isabella Kwai and she wanted to interview me. About LinkedIn.

Let me rewind, because if you had told 20-something me (a biology PhD student hunched over a lab bench, pipetting late into the night in a Boston snowstorm) that I would one day be quoted in The New York Times, I would have laughed you out of the room.

I was a biomedical scientist working on nanoparticle drug delivery. Then a medical school assistant professor. Then, somewhere along the way, a media entrepreneur and a LinkedIn coach. Not exactly the résumé you would bet on for a NYT feature.

And here is the truth I keep coming back to: none of this happened because I was the best LinkedIn coach out there. 

The detail that still makes me laugh is what appeared at the top of that New York Times article: A 30-second parody video my daughter filmed in my home office in Singapore in December 2024, poking gentle fun at the way people talk on LinkedIn. I gave that language a name: LinkedInese.

I almost did not post it for fear it would not be taken the way it was intended.

Imagine filming a 30s reel with your daughter and seeing it at the top of a New York Times article.

The tiny stories did the heavy lifting

When I started out posting on LinkedIn in January 2020, I thought I needed big, important, impressive stories to be taken seriously.

Grand career highlights. Big and bombastic stuff. 

But they went nowhere. They were too polished, and too far removed from anyone’s real life.

The stories that actually built my brand as a LinkedIn coach were kinda embarrassingly tiny:

• Seeing snow for the first time at 18. That remains one of my most viral posts to date.
• My mother’s work ethic after nearly 40 years in retail sales in a 500-square-foot basement shop.
• A 30-second parody video I filmed with my kid and almost deleted in embarassment.

They were small stories, but each one was uniquely mine, and nobody else on earth could tell them. They were my signature stories, stories that separated me from a hundred other LinkedIn branding coaches.

They turned out to matter far more than any credential on my CV or award that I could receive.

A message I left on LinkedIn editor in chief Daniel Roth’s LinkedIn post.

One door opens the next

I could not have planned any of this.

LinkedIn editor-in-chief Daniel Roth once featured me in his newsletter. I was named an inaugural LinkedIn Top Voice from Singapore. That same parody humor grew a 100,000-follower channel on Instagram, and one post even drew comments from Microsoft and a like from Adam Grant himself. My posts landed me a keynote at Harvard Business School’s Connext 2026 conference.

And now, an interview with The New York Times featuring my parody reel right at the top.

I never knew any of those doors existed, and could not have planned for them.

I just kept showing up, told stories only I could tell, and built what I call a "category of one" brand.

Here’s what I mean. I could describe myself as a LinkedIn branding coach. But there are hundreds of those. When I say "MIT-trained scientist turned LinkedIn Top Voice who helps industry experts build powerful personal brands," now that’s a category of one.

This is especially powerful for career changers: The instinct when switching industries is to hide your previous life, scrub your resume clean and start fresh. That’s exactly backwards.

Don’t lead with your job title. Lead with your origin story.

"Former biomedical researcher turned marketing strategist" is infinitely more interesting than "Marketing executive." That unusual combination of experiences is precisely what makes you a category of one.

Own your career pivot, and defend it with confidence.

If it worked for me, it can work for you

I am a scientist turned professor turned media entrepreneur turned LinkedIn coach. If tiny and relatable stories worked for someone with a career path that messy, they can work for you too.

You do not need to be the best in your field. (I am certainly not.) You just need to show up, tell stories that are uniquely yours, and let them compound.

So let me pay it forward: You have tiny, mighty stories worth telling.

This Saturday, 13 June 2026, I will show you how to tell them well.

Join my public LinkedIn Storytelling 2H Mini-Bootcamp on Saturday, 13 June 2026, 9 to 11 AM (GMT +8) on Zoom.

You will get stronger hooks, practical storytelling frameworks, 3-month replay access, and free ChanGPT.ai Pro access.

Your full US$99 fee credits toward joining my 12-month Brand Builder Mastermind, the community where senior leaders and industry experts build a brand, speak and write better, and make money from it.

Secure your seat for my 2h storytelling bootcamp on Saturday, 13 June!

Telling stories with you,

Juliana, your rocketship captain 🚀

P.S. The parody video that landed in the NYT cost me 20 minutes to film and edit, and zero budget. Your next door-opener might be the small story you are currently talking yourself out of posting. Join me on Saturday, 13 June 2026 and learn how to tell better stories on LinkedIn.