the old girls club digest

October 10, 2025

Author

mallory contois
October 10, 2025 • est. reading time:8 minutes

Happy Friday, OGC ❤️ 

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The list

The community-recommended good stuff. Never sponsored.

Member recs: this desk chair for sitting all sorts of ways, this customizable tote perfect for schlepping, this extension to organize the many, many browser tabs we know you have open right now now, this heated muscle scraper to address a sore neck, these digital photo frames for loved ones, this creamy keyboard to make typing more pleasant, this brand for monogrammed towels and robes, this hair mask for low porosity hair, this product for documenting workflows and processes, this app to make your computer light warmer toned, this app for meal planning and grocery shopping, this app for coordinating caregiving amongst families, this AI video editor.

Some resources: This advice on creating a sustainable and trusted brand, this service for support with government benefits, this free guide on AI search optimization and this podcast on AEO vs SEO, this study we did on consultant rates a year ago (new data coming soon!), this free 30 day program to learn AI, this podcast episode on mindfulness for kids, this video on the latest updates to GPT, this calculator to see how much independent healthcare premiums might be next year, these pricing and selling resources, this marketplace of notion templates to get organized.

A good read: ‘An Existential Guide to: Making Friends’ by The Shadowed Archive

Tolerate untelevised time.
A friendship is mostly b-roll. Errands, waiting for buses, being wrong about directions together. If every meeting requires a highlight, you’re dating the spectacle, not the person. Share a silence without leaping to fill it with facts about magnesium. If you can be boring together you can be alive together.

Practice asymmetry without accounting.
You will text first, often. Later they will. Then you again. If you keep a ledger, you are an auditor, not a friend. The universe does not balance; the kindness must.

Be a small mirror, not a full-length one.
Reflect a little. Don’t cosplay them. Keep your colours. Friends do not fuse; they braid. Allow difference to survive contact: their football; your medieval heresies; their tarot; your taxidermy. The aim is not to be two halves of one person but two complete people orbiting a third thing that neither of you owns.

Speak plainly when hurt; briefly when angry.
A clean wound heals; a theatrical wound becomes a career. Name the specific sin, propose the small repair, and do not forward the minutes to the group chat. Apologies should be nouns (“I was cruel”), not weather reports (“things were said”).

Do not interview; notice.
The questionnaire kills warm-blooded animals. Come on! Instead: observe how they treat the waiter, how they talk about people who are absent, whether they slide their chair back when a toddler wobbles past. You are selecting a co-witness for the apocalypse. Choose for gentleness.

Enemies of Friendship

Self-optimization. Professional networking. Status anxiety disguised as taste. The algorithm’s sweet narcotic drip that replaces “we” with “for you.” The contemporary delusion that intimacy must be hygienic, that it should smell faintly of eucalyptus and good lighting. Friendship is not spa water. It is the puddle you step in together and then name.

Most dangerous of all: Narrative. The minute you decide what this friendship is, you have given it a plot arc, which is simply a schedule for death. Let it resist articulation. Let it be the thing that only explains itself while it is happening, and even then only in a dialect the air forgets at once.

[read the full essay here]

A newsletter or podcast rec: Concept Bureau by Jasmine Bina

A deeper level of cultural intelligence and strategic foresight you won’t find anywhere else. Nothing generic. Always high value.

Open roles w/ warm member intros available

If you’d like to hire from OGC, share your open roles using this form!
Details on how to apply for these roles can be found on the OGC job board here.
All roles below were shared in the past 14 days.

  • Head of Finance @ Sunfish [JD]

  • Product Design Lead @ Haven Headache and Migraine [JD]

    • $165k - $195k

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    • $225k - $250k

  • Founding Engineer @ Lyv Health [JD]

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    • $110k - $170k

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    • $100k - $130k

  • Director of D2C Marketing @ Folia Health

  • Business Intelligence (BI) Analyst @ Flash Pack [JD]

  • Senior Software Engineer (Backend) @ Corpaxe [JD]

  • VP of Marketing @ Media & Events Firm [JD]

    • $150k - $200k

  • Growth Marketing Manager @ Cornbread Hemp

    • $120k-$140k

  • Head of Finance Operations @ Genius Unlocked Coaching Institute [JD]

    • 72k - $80k

  • Community & Creator Acquisition Manager @ Skillshare [JD]

  • Performance Marketing Lead @ Understory [JD]

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  • VP of Growth @ Understory [JD]

  • Founding Engineer @ Rosie [JD]

  • Founding Growth Lead @ Rosie [JD]

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Thanks for reading!!

❤️ Mallory & the OGC team