Doing something out of FOMO is always a bad idea... but in communications, testing can teach us alot
Hi Reader,
Tell me honestly if something similar to this happened to you..
A few years ago, I was scrolling through LinkedIn, morning tea in the other hand (yes, I'm a tea drinker), when I saw that an industry conference had announced one of its keynote speakers.
I knew the person. I knew their capabilities and their success rates and I was shocked.
The first thought that went through my head wasn't a generous one tbh. It was something close to "How the heck did that happen?" And then, almost immediately, a second and much more polite thought arrived to tidy up after the first: "Well, I'm just not the type to shout about myself."
I sat with that second thought for longer than I'd like to admit, because it might sound like a value, but it was honestly a conditioning that I knew well.
Yes, it sounded like humility, and humility is something I'm proud of. But, the more I thought about it (and as the anger subsided), I knew it had nothing to do with being humble, and more to do with culture and conditioning.
That happened in my early years of being an entrepreneur, where - other than cultural conditioning - so much of the corporate world psychology still persisted in me. It took alot of work (especially mental work) to remind myself that self marketing is a long and never ending game in business.
I remembered this story few weeks ago when my client was telling me about a similar experience. Although my experience was years ago, it is still a familiar and repetitive experience for many entrepreneurs till this day.
That's the reason why this week's episode of Let's Make Waves was called Too Humble to Be Found, where I go through what the research says about modesty, bragging and the humblebrag, and why praise tends to land better when it comes from someone else (with a little help from Keanu Reeves).
You'll find details to listen to the full episode at the end of this email, but there's one part I wanted to spend more time on with you, because I think it's the part where experts, founders & entrepreneurs resist the most, and that's actually coming out and talking about their wins.
Your work is a song only you can hear
In 1990, a Stanford psychology PhD student named Elizabeth Newton ran a deceptively simple experiment, where she asked one group of people, the "tappers," to pick a well-known song like "Happy Birthday" and tap out its rhythm on a table, while a second group, the "listeners," tried to name the tune.
Before the listeners guessed, the tappers were asked to predict how often they'd be understood, and they estimated that it will happen about half the time. However, across 120 songs, the listeners correctly named three.
That's a success rate of 2.5% only 😬
Funny enough, the reason is simple: this gap exists because the tapper hears the whole melody in their head while they knock, and it becomes almost impossible for them to imagine that the person across the table is hearing nothing but a series of knocks.
Chip and Dan Heath made the study famous in their book Made to Stick, where they describe it as the curse of knowledge: once you know something, it's very hard to remember what it was like not to know it.
I remember this experiment often, especially when I hear another entrepreneur tell me their work speaks for itself... and I hope you'll keep it in-mind if you ever have those thoughts.
To you, your track record is a melody. You remember the client who was about to shut down before you stepped in, or the team that finally stopped losing good people, or the launch that sold out because of a decision you helped make.
So when you write a line like "I've worked with family businesses for twelve years," you hear all of that behind it. But the stranger reading your profile, the conference organiser shortlisting speakers, or the journalist looking for someone to quote, they all hear a knock on a table.
This is why staying quiet about your wins doesn't come across as modesty to the people who don't know you yet. You're basically asking them to guess the song from the rhythm alone, and most of them, understandably, won't.
Talking about your wins is information, not ego
Many of us hold back because somewhere along the way we starting to believe that "sharing a win" was self-promotion, bragging and an act that is improper. Self-promotion in some cultures can be things 'decent people' don't do.
But as entrepreneurs, we have to try looking at it from the other side of the table. The person deciding whether to book you, quote you or hire you is trying to reduce their own risk. They want some evidence that you've solved this kind of problem before and that you're likely to solve it again.
When you tell them what you did, for whom, and what changed, you aren't asking to be admired, but instead, you're giving them the information they need to make a good decision, information that most of them would be glad to have.
Seeing it this way also changes what a good win announcement looks like.
As I mention in the episode (it's a good episode, you gotta listen to it), research led by the behavioural scientist Ovul Sezer found that a specific type of humblebrags, the "so humbled and honoured" posts or the complaints that are "secret boasts", leave people liking you less and rating you as less competent than if you had simply stated the win outright.
What earns trust is sincerity, and sincerity, in practice, tends to look surprisingly plain. Let me give you an example. Compare these two ways of sharing the same result:
1- "Honestly can't believe I get to do this work. One of my clients just opened her third location and I'm so humbled to have played a small part 🙏"
2- "Two years ago, a client of mine was seriously considering closing her first location. Last week she opened her third. The turning point was [the one specific decision you made together]. If you run a service business and feel stuck at one location, that decision is worth thinking about."
Number 2 doesn't contain a single boastful word, and yet it's far more convincing, because it says what happened, it's specific enough to be believed, and it gives the reader something they can use in their own business.
That's the structure I'd love you to borrow: what happened, for whom, what changed, and why it matters to the person reading. The last part is what turns the win outward, because you're no longer saying "look at me," but instead you're saying "here's what's possible, and here's how it happened."
A small exercise for this week
Before you close this email, think of one result from the last ninety days that you haven't mentioned to anyone outside the client relationship. It doesn't need to be your biggest career milestone, just one real and specific result.
Write it in three or four sentences using that structure, and then share it in one place this week, whether that's a LinkedIn post, a line in your next proposal, or the case studies page on your website. If it feels uncomfortable to publish, that's completely normal, and it's often a sign you've written the sincere version rather than the performative one.
And if you'd like a second pair of eyes on it, hit reply Reader and send it to me. I'd genuinely love to see what you've been keeping quiet about.
When the harder question is why you're holding back
Sharing a win is the visible part of the work. Underneath it sits a harder question, which is why the evidence of how good you are hasn't travelled beyond your inner circle in the first place.
For some people, it's positioning that's too vague for a stranger to grasp. For others, the proof exists but lives in a WhatsApp thread or a folder where no decision-maker will ever see it. And for some, it's a long habit of reading every room as one where modesty is expected, even when the room has changed.
That's exactly what I built Brand Beyond Social™ to diagnose. It's a masterclass and a self-assessment workbook that takes you through the five pillars of the TRUST Method™ in one sitting, so you come out knowing which part of your reputation to work on first instead of throwing more content at the problem. It's $37, and you can start here.
Have a great week. Keep making waves. You've got this.
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PS: NEW EPISODE ON LET'S MAKE WAVES PODCAST: This week's episode, Too Humble to Be Found: Why "Letting Your Work Speak for Itself" Stopped Working, is for the founders and experts whose clients rave about them but whose reputation stops at the edge of their referral network. I go through what the research says about modesty and bragging, who gets taught to stay small, why praise lands better when someone else says it (Keanu Reeves makes an appearance), and three practical ways to build a reputation that travels further without becoming someone you're not. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
