Just look like you have your shit together
The problem with positioning and personal brand advice is that it keeps confusing the appearance of credibility with the conditions that produce it.
My beef with almost all of positioning and personal brand advice online is simple: underneath the frameworks, scripts, hooks, and templates, the instruction is often the same. Just look like you have your shit together.
- Speak with more certainty.
- Stand a little straighter.
- Find a sharper way to describe yourself.
- Write like this person.
- Present like that company.
- Add testimonials.
- Tell a story about your struggle.
- Have a strong opinion, preferably one that fits neatly above the fold.
Some of this is useful communication advice. I work with words and design. I’m hardly going to argue that presentation doesn’t matter. But there’s a substitution happening that bothers me.
We study what credibility looks like after someone has established it. Then we extract the visible features and sell them as instructions for becoming credible. Someone speaks with conviction, so we teach conviction in the voice. A company has a simple product, so we copy the interface. An adviser commands attention, so we transcribe their opening sentence.
We copy the symptom and leave the cause untouched. Then, when the result doesn’t travel with the template, we assume we need a better template.
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