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