Martijn Holtes
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In 2016, I bought a personal development course for €497.

The creator had thousands of followers, huge engagement on every post, comments full of praise. The classic “three bonuses worth €1000” were thrown in.

I thought I was buying from an expert.

Halfway through, I asked a question in the Q&A that went a bit beyond the course material.

I got a vague answer that repeated what was already in the modules. I tried again with a different question. Same thing.

The coach couldn’t answer anything that wasn’t already scripted. That’s when I realised I hadn’t bought expertise or experience. I’d bought good marketing.

The course itself? A patchwork of ideas from other people. Nothing wrong with the content, but nothing original either.

The creator had built a big audience. They hadn’t built deep knowledge. No experience of their own, either.

Being seen isn’t being trusted

I’ve thought about that course a lot lately, because it captures something I see in almost every professional I work with.

They’re told visibility is the goal. Get more followers. Get more leads. Go viral. Be everywhere. So they chase the numbers game.

But being famous and being an authority are not the same thing.

Famous means being seen by many. Authority means being valued by the few who matter.

Social platforms are designed to make you chase the first one. They’re built for dopamine, not decisions. They reward reach and impressions, not relevance and trust.

And if you work in B2B, or you want to grow your career, that’s a problem.

Algorithms don’t sign contracts. Humans do.

You don’t need to be famous to the world. You only need to be the obvious choice in your network when a specific problem comes up.

Not “sort of known.” Not “one of the options.” The first name that comes to mind, before they even start searching.

Some people call it thought leadership. I call it being the obvious choice.

Chasing virality is like trying to be heard in a stadium. You’re competing with everyone and reaching no one in particular.

Being the obvious choice works differently. It’s a room, not a stadium. A room full of the right people, the ones who care about what you know and have the specific problem you’re good at solving.

In that room, you don’t need to shout. You need to be useful.

What this means for you

Take a hard look at your positioning and your content. Ask yourself this:

Does your LinkedIn profile scream “looking for a new job” or “pay attention to my hobby”? Or does it make clear: this is what I know, this is who I help, this is why it matters.

Are you trying to appeal to everyone? Or have you made the hard choice to focus on one audience and position yourself on one, two, maybe three topics?

  • Instead of appealing to everyone, you write for the people who matter.
  • Instead of surface-level advice that sounds smart, you go deep on the problems you understand.
  • Instead of chasing trends, you develop a point of view.

The stuff that scares away the general public is often what pulls in your people. Because it signals you know what you’re talking about. You’ve become the obvious choice.

What’s worked for me is letting go of the endless chase for more. I stopped measuring success in impressions, though some days that’s still hard.

I started measuring it in conversations and replies from people I respect. In opportunities that came from someone saying, “I thought of you because of…”

So if you’re posting and nothing’s happening, if the likes don’t come and the followers don’t grow, if you’re starting to believe you’re not cut out for this, consider this:

Maybe the problem isn’t your content. Maybe you’re optimising for the algorithm instead of the people who matter.

The answer is to become the obvious choice for the few.

Category: Articles

  • You don’t need to go viral. You need to be the obvious choice.

    You don’t need to go viral. You need to be the obvious choice.

    In 2016, I bought a personal development course for €497.

    The creator had thousands of followers, huge engagement on every post, comments full of praise. The classic “three bonuses worth €1000” were thrown in.

    I thought I was buying from an expert.

    Halfway through, I asked a question in the Q&A that went a bit beyond the course material.

    I got a vague answer that repeated what was already in the modules. I tried again with a different question. Same thing.

    The coach couldn’t answer anything that wasn’t already scripted. That’s when I realised I hadn’t bought expertise or experience. I’d bought good marketing.

    The course itself? A patchwork of ideas from other people. Nothing wrong with the content, but nothing original either.

    The creator had built a big audience. They hadn’t built deep knowledge. No experience of their own, either.

    Being seen isn’t being trusted

    I’ve thought about that course a lot lately, because it captures something I see in almost every professional I work with.

    They’re told visibility is the goal. Get more followers. Get more leads. Go viral. Be everywhere. So they chase the numbers game.

    But being famous and being an authority are not the same thing.

    Famous means being seen by many. Authority means being valued by the few who matter.

    Social platforms are designed to make you chase the first one. They’re built for dopamine, not decisions. They reward reach and impressions, not relevance and trust.

    And if you work in B2B, or you want to grow your career, that’s a problem.

    Algorithms don’t sign contracts. Humans do.

    You don’t need to be famous to the world. You only need to be the obvious choice in your network when a specific problem comes up.

    Not “sort of known.” Not “one of the options.” The first name that comes to mind, before they even start searching.

    Some people call it thought leadership. I call it being the obvious choice.

    Chasing virality is like trying to be heard in a stadium. You’re competing with everyone and reaching no one in particular.

    Being the obvious choice works differently. It’s a room, not a stadium. A room full of the right people, the ones who care about what you know and have the specific problem you’re good at solving.

    In that room, you don’t need to shout. You need to be useful.

    What this means for you

    Take a hard look at your positioning and your content. Ask yourself this:

    Does your LinkedIn profile scream “looking for a new job” or “pay attention to my hobby”? Or does it make clear: this is what I know, this is who I help, this is why it matters.

    Are you trying to appeal to everyone? Or have you made the hard choice to focus on one audience and position yourself on one, two, maybe three topics?

    • Instead of appealing to everyone, you write for the people who matter.
    • Instead of surface-level advice that sounds smart, you go deep on the problems you understand.
    • Instead of chasing trends, you develop a point of view.

    The stuff that scares away the general public is often what pulls in your people. Because it signals you know what you’re talking about. You’ve become the obvious choice.

    What’s worked for me is letting go of the endless chase for more. I stopped measuring success in impressions, though some days that’s still hard.

    I started measuring it in conversations and replies from people I respect. In opportunities that came from someone saying, “I thought of you because of…”

    So if you’re posting and nothing’s happening, if the likes don’t come and the followers don’t grow, if you’re starting to believe you’re not cut out for this, consider this:

    Maybe the problem isn’t your content. Maybe you’re optimising for the algorithm instead of the people who matter.

    The answer is to become the obvious choice for the few.

  • Your work isn’t the problem. Your audience is.

    Your work isn’t the problem. Your audience is.

    I’ve always struggled with things that seem obvious to everyone else. Simple instructions confuse me. Standard processes feel like reading a map upside down. In meetings, people explain straightforward concepts and I’m the one asking the “dumb” questions.

    For most of my life, I thought something was wrong with me. Turns out, I was playing in the wrong rooms.

    I see patterns nobody else sees. I connect ideas from completely different fields and find something new in the middle. I pick up on things that are invisible to others. And I do that because of how my brain works, not despite it.

    Two years ago I got diagnosed with ADD, and something clicked. Your value isn’t inherent. It’s defined by context.

    A violinist in a metro station

    In 2007, someone ran a social experiment with Joshua Bell, one of the finest violinists alive. He plays with the world’s best orchestras. His performances sell out concert halls where tickets cost hundreds of dollars. I’m not much into his music, but that doesn’t matter.

    For the experiment, Joshua took his $3.5 million (wtf) Stradivarius into a Washington D.C. metro station during rush hour and played for 45 minutes.

    Same piece he was going to play at a concert a few days later. Same instrument. Same skill.

    A few people paused briefly. Some dropped pocket change. Most walked right past without a second glance. Total earnings: around $32.

    Three days later, the same Joshua played the same music on the same violin in Boston. Tickets sold for over $100 each. He sold out the theatre.

    Quality doesn’t speak for itself

    I think about this experiment a lot, because it captures something I’ve experienced myself, and something I see in almost every professional I work with.

    We want to believe quality speaks for itself. That if we’re good enough, people will notice. That expertise rises to the top on its own. But it doesn’t work that way.

    Joshua’s genius didn’t change between the concert hall and the metro station. The notes were identical. But in one place people paid $100 to hear him, and in the other they threw quarters.

    The difference wasn’t him. It was everything around him.

    When I got my ADD diagnosis, I started looking at my own career through the same lens. I’d been playing my violin in a metro station.

    My ideas weren’t bad, or at least not all of them. But I was in rooms full of people rushing to get somewhere else. People who weren’t looking for what I had to offer. People who valued things I wasn’t good at and overlooked the things I was.

    The problem wasn’t my brain. The problem was the room.

    If you’re struggling in your business, or to get recognition for what you’re good at, I want you to consider something.

    Maybe your problem isn’t quality. Maybe you’re a genius playing the wrong room.

    The context

    Where are you presenting yourself? Joshua Bell, in the metro station, was surrounded by rushed commuters. The environment said: this is background noise, keep moving.

    The concert hall said something else. Elegance, comfort, a program explaining what you were about to hear. Pay attention. This matters.

    Are you trying to build authority in spaces designed for quick consumption and endless scrolling? Are you pitching to people who are mentally rushing somewhere else? The same message gets a completely different response depending on where you deliver it.

    The packaging

    How are you presenting yourself? In the metro station, Joshua’s music was free, so it read as worthless. No ticket, no program, no seat assignment. Nothing that said “this is premium.”

    The concert hall had a ticketing process and a dress code. People were probably excited for days. So by the time Joshua started playing, everyone was ready for something special.

    Are you selling your work, your services, your expertise as a commodity? Are you interchangeable with a dozen other options, or worse, with AI? Or have you thought hard about your own point of view, the thing that says: this is worth your full attention? The packaging tells people how to see you before you say a word.

    The audience

    Who are you presenting yourself to? The metro commuters were in a rushed mindset. Get to work, hurry up, don’t be late. They weren’t in the market for what Bell was offering.

    The people going to the concert had planned their evening. They’d bought tickets, dressed up, maybe booked dinner nearby. They showed up wanting to be moved.

    Are you pitching to people hunting for the fastest, cheapest option? People who want to tick a box as quickly as possible? Or are you spending time with people who want exactly what you’re best at?

    I’ll admit, coming to this realisation sucks. Sometimes we’ve spent years building relationships in rooms that will never value what we do best. Some people even feel disloyal walking away. But staying in the wrong room isn’t loyalty. It’s a slow professional death.

    Find the concert hall

    The answer isn’t to get louder. It isn’t to dumb down what you do. It isn’t to compete with people who don’t have half your skill. The answer is to change rooms.

    Looking back, I spent years trying to position myself in rooms that weren’t meant for me. Rooms where I was constantly trying to fit a brain that works differently into processes built for brains that don’t.

    Then I figured out there are other rooms. Yes, you’re right, I’m a bit slow getting this at 44.

    Rooms where the “weird” questions were valued. Where connecting unexpected dots was the whole point. Where “how does your brain even work?” became a compliment instead of a criticism.

    The internet is full of these rooms. Heck, even on LinkedIn there are tons of them.

    There are audiences waiting for exactly your perspective. Spaces where your kind of genius is precisely what people are hungry for.

    Don’t make yourself smaller. Find the concert hall. Build one if you have to.

    The people who need what you do are out there. They’re not the ones rushing through metro stations.

  • Buyers don’t pick the best. They pick who they trust.

    Buyers don’t pick the best. They pick who they trust.

    It doesn’t matter if you run your own business, sell for someone else, or you’re after a new job. The psychology of selling and persuading is changing fast.

    Ten years ago, you could get by with a Twitter account and some smart, informative tweets. Today that barely works, because AI chatbots hand people tailored answers on demand.

    But that doesn’t mean content is irrelevant.

    So instead of chasing likes, reposts, and comments, build your personal brand as someone people trust. When it’s time to make a real decision, people still want human insight, not a chatbot’s summary.

    Six reasons becoming a trusted authority is the best move you can make in 2026 if you want to sell anything.

    You put a face on the logo

    Big companies feel faceless, cold, interchangeable. Even if you work for a major, trusted brand, people still buy from people they trust.

    By building your personal brand and authority on LinkedIn, you give buyers the human face they want to connect with. You become the specific, trustworthy person inside the bigger machine. Your credibility does more than any corporate campaign can on its own. You make the company’s resources feel reachable through a person people trust.

    You warm people up automatically

    Daniel Priestley taught me that to win a new client, they usually need to spend about 7 hours with you, have 11 touchpoints, and see you in 4 different places. You can’t physically do that with every prospect.

    A trusted authority automates it by posting consistent, useful content. Your prospects are reading your ideas and meeting you digitally long before you ever get on a call. By the time you speak, they’re warmed up, familiar with your thinking, already half-sold. That shortens your sales cycle and makes the first conversation a partnership, not a pitch.

    You become vital, not optional

    An “optional” sales rep follows a script and talks about pricing. Easily replaced. A trusted authority brings something the script can’t: a point of view and a reputation of their own.

    By building your own point of view, your audience, and a recognised authority, you become someone the company can’t easily replace. You’re the source of opportunities others can’t reach. That gives you job security and a stronger hand in your career, whatever the market does.

    People come to you

    Most people spend their days chasing others who don’t know them and don’t want to be sold to. A trusted authority works the other way.

    They share their own insights, trends, and fixes for the small problems in their industry. That pulls in pre-qualified people who already value what they know and reach out first. Instead of hunting targets, you curate the questions that show up in your inbox.

    You stop looking desperate

    When you’re visibly active and respected on LinkedIn, you look confident and successful. You don’t look desperate for a single deal.

    People want to work with someone who’s clearly up to something, moving forward, with a steady stream of opportunities. It flips the power in a negotiation. Instead of you needing them, they want in.

    You own your audience

    Your employer owns the CRM, the product, and the client list. You own your reputation and your connections.

    Build yourself into a trusted authority, and your influence, your community, your authority belong to you. That’s real career safety. If you ever move to another company, or start your own thing, your influence and your audience come with you. You control where your career goes.

    Becoming a trusted authority is the clearest way out of the sales grind, and the way to build a career that holds up. You stop being a temporary resource and become a long-term partner.

    Start today. Share your insights consistently, and turn your LinkedIn profile from a résumé into a platform that builds your authority.

    P.S. Who’s a professional you follow because you trust their perspective?