OM DENNE EPISODE
Your Network Read is a tool Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas built to help people show up correctly on LinkedIn — whether they're actively job searching, building a personal brand, or selling into their network. This episode of The Missing Manual is what happened when Jenny Cotie Kangas stopped building it and actually ran it on herself.
The output was immediate and specific. Skills tagged as Microsoft Office that hadn't been relevant in years. An industry classification left over from a previous role. Gaps that were invisible until the tool named them. JCK walked away with a clearer LinkedIn and a sharper reminder of why they built Your Network Read in the first place: most people don't know what's working against them until something shows them. The tool shows them.
Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas also talk through what it actually looks like to bring a product to market when it's just the two of you — no marketing team, no launch playbook, no blueprint to follow. The mindset that's making it work: stop asking what could go wrong and start asking what if it went right. Julia brings in a parallel reframe she used with job seekers in graduate school, and JCK shares the free two-part prompt she posted on LinkedIn this week to help people define their version of good before they start a search. It's been tested across industries and career levels, and the feedback has been consistent: people hadn't thought through this before.
Life has also been a lot. Julia's dad had open heart surgery. The Missing Manual missed a week. Julia Levy and Jenny Cotie Kangas showed up anyway. Find Your Network Read and the free job seeker prompt on JCK's LinkedIn. Find The Missing Manual wherever you listen to podcasts.
