Kind, Curious, and Talented Human Beings,

I need to tell you something honest.

When All Pride, No Ego came out in hardcover, the world felt like it was moving in a direction. Imperfect, uneven, sometimes frustratingly slow. But a direction. Companies were having real conversations about belonging. Leaders were starting to say the quiet things out loud. There was momentum.

The paperback enters the world on May 11. Though the world looks different these days.

DEI has become a political acronym instead of a human commitment. Programs have been gutted. Language has been sanitized. And a lot of people who were loud about inclusion three years ago have gone very, very quiet.

I get it. The headwinds are real. The fatigue is real. The fear of saying the wrong thing or being the wrong target is real. But here's what I keep coming back to. All Pride, No Ego was never a DEI book. It was never a Pride book. It was a book about what happens when a person decides to stop hiding. What it costs to perform a version of yourself that isn't real. And what becomes possible when you finally stop. That message doesn't expire. If anything, it's more urgent now. Because when the institutional language retreats, what's left is personal courage. When the programs disappear, what remains is how you show up. When the world gets louder, the question gets quieter and more important: Are you proud of who you are?

That's all pride. No ego.

I wrote this book thinking about my own journey. A kid from Toledo who spent decades building a career at Disney, DreamWorks, Gap, Claire's, and Fox while hiding a fundamental part of who he was. The cost of that hiding was enormous. And the freedom that came from stopping was the most important leadership lesson I've ever learned.

But the book stopped being mine a long time ago. It belongs to the readers now. The woman who told me she read it three times before she had the courage to have a conversation with her boss. The father who bought it for his son who had just come out. The team leader who said it changed how she runs meetings because she finally understood that psychological safety isn't a buzzword, it's a practice.

Those stories are why the paperback matters. Not because the format changed. Because accessibility changed. A lower price point. A lighter book to carry, to gift, to leave on someone's desk with a note. Getting it into more hands was always the point.

And the timing feels right in a way I couldn't have planned. The paperback arrives as Pride 2026 begins. It arrives alongside the launch of The League of Radical Kindness, the community I've been building for leaders who believe that kindness and capability aren't opposites. The philosophy that started as a book is becoming a movement. And this paperback is the front door.

If you've already read All Pride, No Ego, thank you. You are the reason it earned a second life. If you haven't, this is a good time to start.

And if you know someone who needs this book but would never buy it for themselves, this is your nudge. Pre-order a copy for them. That's radical kindness in action.

Leave your corner of the world better than you found it.

In Community and Conversation, Jim

Every few weeks I am going to tell you what I am actually reading. Not a list. Not a roundup. One book at a time, and only when I think it earns your attention.

This week, the book is Valuable & Visible by Vanessa Errecarte. It publishes today.

I have coached Vanessa. I watched her write this book while running her business, teaching at UC Davis, and being a wife and a mother to two young kids. There were a hundred reasons the manuscript could have stalled. Some of them tried. Most of them lost, because at some point in our work together, Vanessa said something out loud that changed the way she carried the project.

She said, "I am a writer with something to say that will help people."

That is the sentence. That is the moment a book becomes inevitable.

Not when the draft is done. Not when the agent says yes. Not when the cover gets designed. The book becomes inevitable the moment the writer claims the work. Everything before that is hoping. Everything after is building.

I think about that line often, because most of the leaders I coach are sitting on something they have not claimed yet. A book. A talk. A point of view. A company they want to start. A truth they want to say out loud at work. They are waiting to be chosen, or credentialed, or ready. None of those are coming. The unlock is the sentence Vanessa said. Whatever your version of it is, you have to say it before the work shows up.

The book itself argues something the personal branding category mostly gets wrong. Most advice in this space tells you to talk about yourself more, post more, optimize more, perform more. Vanessa argues the opposite. The strongest brands do not perform. They contribute. They simplify problems for other people. They share what they know in plain language. They become memorable because their ideas are memorable, not because their headshots are.

In a market where AI can generate polished-sounding content at infinite scale, distinction is the only thing the algorithm cannot fake. An original point of view, built on real experience, delivered in service of someone else, is the thing that compounds. Vanessa names that directly, with no hacks and no chasing.

If you are tired of personal branding advice that feels like performance, read this one. It will change how you think about visibility, credibility, and what it actually means to be chosen.

Congratulations, Vanessa. You claimed the work. The book proves it.