On Content, Personal Brand, and Your Own Absurdity
Content has become one of the most powerful channels for building and expanding your network in the modern world. A single post can reach far more people than you could meet in person over years of conferences, dinners, and networking events. What’s interesting is that it also works on a delay - a post can come back months later in the form of leads, partnerships, and unexpected calls from exactly the kinds of people you’d hoped to connect with but never got the chance to.
And yet, most people I respect still don’t post. So I’ve been thinking about why.
The stories we tell ourselves
Many friends and colleagues ask me how to start building their brand and producing content. When I try to understand what’s actually stopping them, it almost always traces back to something absorbed early, not a decision, more like a rule that never got questioned. Don’t brag. Don’t overshare. Don’t make yourself a target. The underlying message we absorb is that being visible is dangerous. Say something good about yourself and you’re showing off. Share something useful and someone might just run with it.
But in practice, it doesn’t work that way. Knowledge and experience almost always only produce results in combination with context, with trust, with the relationship that forms when someone reads your thinking and recognizes something true in it. Sharing a framework doesn’t hand over the years it took to build it. If anything, it demonstrates them.
The deeper fear: looking ridiculous
One of the most paralyzing fears isn’t failure, it’s actually embarrassment. The fear of looking ridiculous. Its roots often go back to childhood: bullying, the perfectionism of always needing to get it right before raising your hand, the social cost of being “that person” who overshares.
Where is the line between sharing and embarrassing yourself? Honestly? Nobody knows. And that uncertainty is exactly the problem. In language learning, the people who progress fastest aren’t those who study the longest before speaking. They’re the ones who start speaking before they’re ready, absorb the feedback, and adjust. Content works exactly the same way.
I’ve seen this in clay pigeon shooting, which I’ve practiced for years. When I was teaching a friend recently, his first rounds were rough, almost no hits. But I could see the real progress: better stance, smoother gun movement, cleaner tracking, more deliberate preparation before the shot. The clays weren’t breaking yet, but the mechanics were improving with every round. That’s not empty encouragement, that’s a coach’s eye recognizing that micro-shifts predict outcomes, even when the scoreboard doesn’t show it yet. When everything finally came together, the clays started breaking consistently.
Content is no different. The early posts feel clumsy. The engagement is low. But something is happening under the surface: you’re developing your voice, learning what resonates, building the habit. Most people quit before the clays start breaking.
The trap of two attempts
I’ve written about this before - the mistake of judging a strategy by two attempts. You go to one conference: “conferences don’t work.” You send ten LinkedIn messages: “LinkedIn doesn’t work.” But someone did reply. Someone did read your post. That’s a signal that didn’t exist before you tried. These are small but real shifts. In business, we often cut too early, right at the moment when the mechanics are starting to click.
The same logic applies to content. Meaningful skill: in shooting, in archery, in writing, in building comes from repetitions plus attention to small changes. Not from two tries followed by a verdict.
What actually works
If you’re not confident enough to share your own ideas yet, start by sharing opinions on other people. Become the person others come to for a take. Engage with people you respect - comment on their posts, ask a real question, enter their orbit. This is low-risk, high-signal activity. It builds your presence without requiring you to claim expertise you don’t yet feel.
And then: post the thing that scares you a little.
Working on content daily for a couple of years, I’ve noticed that the strongest responses never come from the polished, carefully reasoned posts. They come from the ones that contain a contradiction, or an acknowledged vulnerability, moments where I admit I don’t have it figured out. Half the readers like it. Half react negatively. But that generates far more resonance than posts everyone simply nods at and scrolls past.
Training the muscle
In sports psychology something I’ve read extensively because shooting and archery have taught me a great deal about mental performance: there’s a lot of emphasis on neutral response after a bad shot. Don’t grimace. Don’t sigh. Don’t curse under your breath. Each of those small reactions trains your brain to expect failure. Instead: neutral face, calm body, attention immediately to what’s next.
The same muscle applies to content. I deliberately put myself in situations where I might look ridiculous, because the fear of embarrassment, left untrained, will quietly veto every idea you have before it reaches the page. Looking stupid isn’t the worst thing. Never starting is.
Like any skill, this gets easier with repetition. Entrepreneurs I know who are also serious amateur athletes tend to understand this intuitively. The ability to absorb a loss, extract the lesson, and focus on the next attempt is exactly the same in business as it is in sport. And it’s exactly what content creation requires.
One post this week
Start with one post. Maybe the one that feels uncomfortable to publish. The one where you’re not sure how it’ll land. That discomfort is information, it usually means you’ve said something real.
Personal brand isn’t built in a campaign. It’s built in the reps. And the people who seem like they “got lucky” with their audience? They made a hundred attempts, paid with time and effort, survived dozens of misses, and kept going.
The clays eventually start breaking. But only for those who keep shooting.