As Soloists, we want to be seen as credible. But the conventional ways of building credibility often make us anxious, forcing us to be who we are not. We focus on sounding more confident, sharpening the argument further, and having a certain charisma.
All of these are important. But are we missing something a lot more fundamental?
It all starts with Instagram
I was wasting my time on Instagram when a video stopped my scrolling. A girl was talking about a 60-day video challenge to improve her public speaking skills.
Every day for 60 days, she would pick one specific skill within the broader topic of Public Speaking, record a video demonstrating that skill, and publish it on her Instagram.
I was pulled in…
Public speaking fascinates me. I daydream of a day when I would be on stage, with the audience in the palm of my hand.
But that wasn’t the reason. There are a ton of resources out there that help you become a better public speaker. Most of those influencers and speakers are much more popular than this account. For context, she had a few hundred followers.
A simple Google search reveals entities such as the TED Speaking Course, the Dale Carnegie Course, and so on. On Udemy and Coursera, the resources are endless.
So why did I feel a sense of trust developing for this particular account?
Clearly, there was something else at play here. Something that a lot of us are missing in our marketing.
Credibility matters
Whenever anyone comes across our content (or even talks to us virtually or in person), they ask themselves a simple question. Are you even legit? Why should I ignore all the noise out there and take you seriously?
Sure, they might not say it this way. In fact, they may not even know they are thinking of this. It’s subconscious. But getting past their BS filter is the real challenge.
So how do we do that?
We think about populating our website and socials with testimonials, logos, and so on. We work on developing storytelling skills, sounding smart, making our argument stronger, and obsessing over what we say. And most importantly, we try to say it confidently.
Because confidence builds credibility. Subtly (or in some cases not so subtly), we strive to sound smarter, grander, more confident, and bigger in every way.
Because that is what will make us trusted.
And if we don’t have any of that? No million-dollar logos. No bestselling book. No 20 years of experience. The pressure gets worse. We start to overcompensate and try even harder to sound like we belong.
All of these things are important, by the way. If you have clients that you have helped, you better have testimonials on your website. If you have interesting logos, put them up. But these approaches by themselves don’t seem enough. There’s something missing.
Copying my heroes
If you know me at all, you’d know that I am a Seth Godin fanboy. It’s no surprise that I would want to emulate him and create content that sounds like his.
These are a few blog articles that Seth Godin published recently.
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Content like this is about opinions, broad principles, and general overviews.
So I take inspiration and create content like this. These are a few LinkedIn posts I published recently.
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Do I like what I have published?
Sure. I will leave my modesty aside and say that these are legit insights. But they still wouldn’t bypass the filter that asks, “Who are you, dude? Why should I trust you?”
I am calling this type of content “Podium Content”. This is when I stand behind an imaginary podium, talk about principles and broader themes, and teach people. Again, this is not bad. But incomplete.
So then, what is the missing piece?
To solve this mystery, we need to look at places where credibility is actually working. And no, these are not people who have built billion-dollar companies.
The best anti-smoking campaign
If you had to design the best anti-smoking campaign, what would you do? Have medical professionals share their opinion? Publish stories of smokers who struggled to quit? Show a tour of a factory where cigarettes are made?
According to the book “Made to Stick” (highly recommended), one of the most successful anti-smoking campaigns was led by a woman named Pam Laffin. Was she a scientist? Had special credentials? Nothing.
She was a smoker who got into it when she was 10 years old. Years later, she had to pay the price. Her health severely deteriorated. When she appeared in anti-smoking commercials, her credibility was inevitable. When she talked, people listened. Her experience couldn’t be faked.
A client who hired me
I was recently talking to one of my clients who hired me to work through his Big Idea. I asked him, “What was going through your mind when you hired me? What made you trust me?”
Was it my awesome storytelling skills on LinkedIn?
My thoughtful emails?
They may have contributed. But the main driving force was that I was wrestling with interesting questions about the topic of Big Idea. I was sharing what I found on the way, asking questions, and sharing my confusion in public.
I wasn’t trying to sound credible. I was just visibly doing the work. And that, apparently, was what made me credible.
A friend on sabbatical
A friend of mine took a year-long sabbatical in Goa and started documenting his journey. These are a couple of his LinkedIn posts.
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Clearly, people were resonating.
He wasn’t a travel company publishing “5 things to do when you visit Goa.” He wasn’t giving sabbatical advice from a distance. He had actually taken the sabbatical. He was living through it and sharing what it was really like.
That’s what made it land.
Can you spot the pattern?
Pam Laffin. The Instagram girl. My client’s reason for hiring me. My friend in Goa.
In every case, the person wasn’t projecting credibility. They were producing it. through evidence that was hard to fake.
Coming back to Seth Godin
So why doesn’t podium content work for me the way it works for Seth Godin?
The reality is that I am confusing the context of my business with Seth Godin’s current brand. We are at very different stages.
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Seth Godin has launched companies, shipped projects, written bestsellers, and failed publicly over decades. He has done a massive amount of visible work. His audience already trusts him. He has earned the right to write in principles because the evidence is already in the room.
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Me copying his current style without having done any of that visible work? It doesn’t land. The trust isn’t there yet.
The shift
Credibility is not something you project. It’s not a costume you put on before stepping on stage.
It’s something you produce through visible action.
You don’t project credibility. You produce it.
You don’t try to sound interesting. You do interesting things and share what you learn.
You don’t say “Here is what I know.” You say, “Here is what I’m trying to figure out.”
You don’t say “Here is what you should do.” You say, “Here is what I’m doing.”
The keyword is “doing”. Present tense. The Instagram girl wasn’t looking back on a journey she completed. She was in the middle of it. That’s what made it real.
The way to build this evidence is to embody your idea and share it. Not from the top of the mountain, but as you run the experiments.
So where does all this lead us?
Think of building credibility using four concentric circles.
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Your own work is the innermost circle. How does your idea apply in your own life and business? What did you try this week? What failed?
Your client work is the second circle. Same questions, but in the client’s world. What specific moment in a recent client engagement brought your idea to life? (You can keep the client’s name anonymous. The specific story is what matters, not the name.
Your field is the third circle. Who else in your domain is proving the same idea, even if they don’t know it? You didn’t do it, but you spotted it. This is the work of a curator and it builds credibility because you are doing the generous work of spotting patterns elsewhere and helping the audience see things differently.
Outside your field is the outermost circle. Where does the idea show up in completely different worlds? Music? Travel? Parenting? Sports? When you can pull an example from an unrelated field and make it click, you show that the idea is bigger than your niche.
One final thing: be concrete
None of this works if it stays vague.
If you are a data consultant, show them the actual dashboard you are building. If you are a productivity coach, share a photo of you and your client taking a walk in the woods because you realized she needed to get away from the noise to think clearly. If you design pitch decks, show a specific slide and talk about the decision behind it.
And don’t just share what worked. Share what didn’t. Share the experiment that flopped, the assumption that turned out to be wrong, and the thing you tried that embarrassed you. When you admit what you’re bad at, what you actually got right becomes a lot more believable.
This is how we build evidence that is hard to fake.