Execs and the City Is Now Predetermined

Why the newsletter finally shares a name with the question it's been asking—and what we're building next.

I named this newsletter over five years ago on a Sunday night.

It was a riff on Sex and the City—not that everyone catches it.

For reasons I need not explain, I’ve seen the HBO series 4 or 5 times over. Maybe more. As a man, I’m not embarrassed by that, I just caught myself thinking.

And when I decided that I was no longer interested in being perceived as employable in corporate America, I decided to start bitching about what I’d seen.

Sorta like Carrie Bradshaw.

Simply calling the plays like I saw them unfold, because it sometimes seems like people are unwilling or afraid to talk about the bs we encounter publicly during our careers. Probably for fear of retribution.

We’re long past that now.

Execs and the City was born.

Clever enough, and it made people smile when they said it out loud.

I’ve kept it for years because it seems to work, and because the name of the thing rarely feels urgent when the thing itself is already making an impact.

You don’t stop to repaint the door when people are finally walking through it and sharing it.

But as the writing and strategies evolved, so has the vision.

Welcome to Predetermined.

The Gap I Felt

For over a year, every article in this newsletter has circled a single question.

You’ve felt it even when I didn’t say it outright.

• Was your last offer calibrated before you ever saw it?

• Was the salary band a law of physics—or just a story someone repeated until everyone believed it? A habit, not a steadfast rule.

• Was the ceiling you were told about real, or inherited?

The question underneath my mission has always been the same.

What is predetermined in your life?

Or do we too often cap our own lives by thinking we’re limited by a predetermined outcome?

At its most fundamental level—isn't that what every negotiation actually is? A refusal to accept the predetermined?

And all the while, the masthead at the top of the newsletter said something about an early 2000’s TV show.

Meh.

Side note, comment on whether you think I’m Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, or Samantha. And for the sake of ego, I’ll take Aidan or Mr. Big — but if you say Berger or Trey, you’re disowned.

Our work has been pointing in one direction. But the newsletter’s name has been pointing to another.

You can run that way for a long time, perhaps into perpetuity, but you shouldn’t run that way forever if you plan to continue to impact more people with your biggest life lessons.

It’s time I bite the bullet. Thank you for understanding.

The Rename Isn’t Branding. It’s Alignment.

So as of today, execsandthecity.com is predetermined.com.

Still me—and vetted guest publishers occasionally.

What changes is that the address bar now asks the question instead of describing the crowd. And that provides clarity on our direction.

Type it in.

Predetermined.

Every time you do, you’re asking exactly what the work has been asking you to ask. That’s the whole point. The name and the thesis finally live at the same address.

And it organizes the vision for the next several years.

I’ve said before that the practice stays small with ThinkWarwick Global, and the ideas go wide with Predetermined. The representation work serves a few dozen high profile deals a year where the stakes are measured in millions—and tens of millions more recently.

The ideas—the writing, the frameworks, the question—belong to everyone, at every altitude.

Predetermined is the name for our movement.

Just because it’s always been done a certain way doesn’t make it true.

Be the one who proves it isn’t.

A Quick, Boring, Important Note

Nothing you rely on disappears.

Every old link still works—bookmarks, the pieces you’ve shared, the URLs buried in your sent folder. They forward automatically. Your subscription, free or paid, carries over untouched. The full archive is intact. You don’t have to do anything.

If you catch a bug, please let me know so I can ask AI how to fix it.

If you’ve recommended this newsletter to someone using the old name, it’ll still find them. And you get bragging rights—you knew it back when. The Execs and the City days.

So trendy. So hip. You first mover you.

Now—the part I’m most excited about.

What’s Next

Here’s what Predetermined clears the runway for.

More analog. More in person.

There’s something the inbox can’t do. So I’m hosting more workshops on the road, more live sessions, more cities—small rooms where we work the actual conversations you’re walking into—your board presentation, your comp negotiation, your exit—in real time, out loud, with other people who operate at your level.

The first of these is already on the calendar in July.

More dates are coming, and subscribers here will always hear about them first.

The monthly AMA becomes a fixture.

I run a live open session for paid subscribers—office hours, no agenda, no slides—bring whatever’s on your mind.

I send an email just to you the first week of every month with a new Zoom link.

Whether you’re sitting on an offer at 11pm or just trying to think through your next move, that’s what it’s for. I’ll keep the format simple and I’ll keep showing up.

Consistency is the entire value—so I’m treating it that way.

More of the work, shown openly.

A lot of you are here because you’re building something too—a practice, a career, a business—and you’ve told me that watching how I build mine is part of why you stay.

I’m leaning into that, not away from it.

That means more of the real mechanics. The deals I’m learning from at this new altitude. The pricing calls and why I made them. The services I walked away from. The misses, not just the wins. The tension between wanting to serve more people and knowing the work gets better when I serve fewer.

It also means the bigger swings are still coming.

Guest appearances on other people’s stages.

A podcast tour.

Then our own podcast.

Then the book.

And a portion of everything this body of work produces goes to the Cody Dieruf Foundation and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

That’s the version of predetermined I care about most, and we’re baking it directly into our founding documents and structure.

What You’ve Taught Me

I don’t say this enough.

You’re the reason any of this exists—but it’s more than that. You’ve taught me what’s worth writing about.

Every reply that told me I’d named something you’d felt for years but couldn’t say. Every note from someone who walked into a negotiation different than they walked out of the last one. Every story you’ve trusted me with—the offer you turned down, the title you stopped defending, the room you finally stood up in.

All the times I heard, “Jacob, your voice has been in my head this whole time and it’s changed the way I value myself and others.”

That’s where the ideas come from.

Not from me, alone at a keyboard. Though, I’ll admit, it used to be like that.

Rather, my best ideas all come from you, telling me what actually matters when the stakes are real.

You’ve made the work sharper than I could have on my own. You’ve kept me honest. And every time you forwarded a piece to someone who needed it, or quietly became a paid subscriber because you wanted to bet on the work, you didn’t just support me—you widened the room.

Thank you. For reading. For sharing. For teaching me what’s important.

The newsletter grew up. It needed a name that told the truth about what it’s been trying to say all along.

It’s not Execs and the City anymore.

It’s Predetermined.

And the only thing that question has ever asked of you is that you refuse to assume the answer.

Work with me directly. Every session credits toward representation.

Stay fearless, friends.