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Pack Light Live Full with Carmen Van Kerckhove

For those no longer chasing someone else's version of success. By Carmen Van Kerckhove, author of The Slingshot Effect (Crown Currency)

carmenvankerckhove.substack.comSource feed ↗20 episodes

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10 new rules for building a career in a broken system

What actually works now that the playbook has changed, but nobody will admit it

It's time to become your own nepo baby

How to reverse-engineer their head start and build the career they never had to earn

What if Zohran Mamdani’s embarrassing rap career is actually the key to his success?

How a shirtless halal-cart music video—and every “off-brand” job you’ve ever had—might be the very thing preparing you for your next big leap.

How to pivot your career when you can't afford to fail

What reinvention looks like for those of us without safety nets

The career ladder is broken. It's time to build a ramp.

Rethinking what progress looks like when the old playbook no longer applies

Sometimes you actually should work for free

A practical checklist for figuring out when doing unpaid labor can advance your career—and when it’s just exploitation.

The power of going quiet

Why the best creatives know silence is strategy

Stop romanticizing your twenties

How AI videos are selling us surrender disguised as comfort

There's a difference between using a city and loving it

The heartbreak of watching your city become someone else's stepping stone—and what it really means to belong to a place, even temporarily

The quiet death of workplace friendships

How AI and gig work are dismantling the last place human connection happened by accident

Nobody loves a city like someone who wasn’t born there

The particular intensity that comes from falling in love with a place instead of being born into it.

Your white-collar job is about to get gig-ified

CEOs aren't just predicting the future of work—they're programming you to accept what Congress is about to make inevitable.

You believe college taught you critical thinking. It actually taught you not to question.

Inside the prestige trap: how elite education manufactures conformity, repackages it as critical thought, and sells it as superiority.

College sold us a dream and delivered a generational nightmare

How college became a rigged game that charges luxury prices, delivers less, and keeps families afraid to opt out

College is preparing kids for jobs that won't exist

Before you mortgage your family's future on a college degree for your child, ask yourself if it's still worth it

Remember who you were before the world told you to forget

How chasing the wrong success makes you a stranger to yourself

I thought I was pulling back. But I was actually launching the slingshot.

I'm so excited to share what’s coming next

You can't future-proof your career by playing yesterday's game

Everyone knows the tournament is over. But no one wants to be the first to leave the court.

Your job used to impress people. That era just ended.

You've built your life on a version of work that no longer exists—and everything you thought you knew about success is about to flip.

You're allowed to travel without transformation

The hidden pressure to make every trip meaningful (and why it's okay to just enjoy yourself)