Welcome to Work Tip Wednesday, where every Wednesday I get ready and share one lesson I've learned about career, leadership, and success from working at some of the world's biggest brands.
Everyone is happy to tell you how to grow on social media. Almost nobody talks about the thing that actually stops people from ever starting. It is not the algorithm, the equipment, or the strategy. When people tell me why they have not begun, the number one reason, by a wide margin, is some version of "I'm worried about what people I know will think." I get it, because it is a real fear rather than an imagined one. Here is how to get past it.
The Real Challenge
Creating content is hard in a way most goals are not, because you are learning in public. If you decide to become a chef, nobody watches the meals you burn while you learn. You practice in a kitchen with the door closed and emerge once you are good. Building a personal brand does not work that way. People see the first awkward videos, the posts that do not land, and the moments where you are visibly figuring it out in real time.
That is genuinely vulnerable, and pretending it is not does not help anyone. The professionals who eventually build something did not skip that feeling. They found a way to keep going while feeling it. The tools below are the ones that worked for me, and they are less about erasing the fear than about putting it in its place, so it stops making the decision for you.
1. Fast-Forward to 2046
When the fear of judgment has me frozen, the most useful thing I do is zoom out, way out. Picture the year 2046. Work out how old you will be. Now ask yourself what you will wish you had tried.
Almost nobody, looking back across twenty years, wishes they had been more careful about what a former colleague might think of a video. The regret runs the other direction. It is the thing you wanted to build and talked yourself out of, the platform you never started, the voice you never used because a handful of people you had half-forgotten might have an opinion. When you hold the decision up against a twenty-year horizon, the audience you are actually afraid of shrinks to its real size, which is small and temporary.
This is regret minimization, and it is one of the most clarifying questions in decision-making for a reason. The discomfort of being seen while you are still learning is real, but it is short-term. The regret of never trying compounds for decades. Line the two up honestly and the choice usually makes itself.
2. Give the Vote Only to People Who Have Been Where You Are Going
The second tool is to get deliberate about whose feedback you actually let in. Everyone has an opinion about you putting yourself out there. That does not mean every opinion has earned the right to influence what you do.
Here is the filter I use. Do not take direction from someone who has never been where you are trying to go. The person who has never created content, never built an audience, and never put themselves out there is not the person who should decide whether you do. Their opinion is not coming from experience. It is usually coming from the same fear you are working to get past, and taking cues from someone else's fear is a poor way to build anything.
This is not about ignoring all feedback or surrounding yourself with people who only cheer. It is about consciously separating the people whose input is informed from the people whose input is just reflexive. Find the two or three people who have actually done the thing you want to do, and weight their feedback heavily. For everyone else, you can hear the opinion without handing it a vote.
3. Expect the Awkward Reps and Post Anyway
The last thing that helped me was accepting, up front, that the early work is supposed to be rough. My first videos were awkward. Some of my early posts landed with almost no one. That was not a sign I had chosen wrong. It was the visible, unavoidable version of the burned meals every chef cooks before the good ones.
The trap is treating the awkward phase as evidence you should stop, when it is actually evidence you have started. Nobody's tenth post looks like their two hundredth. The only way to reach the reps that feel natural is to move through the ones that feel clumsy, in public, where people can see. That is the tax on learning this particular skill, and everyone who has built anything worth following has paid it.
So lower the stakes on any single post. It is not a referendum on you. It is one rep. Your future is built out of the things you are willing to try before you feel completely ready, and the willingness to be a visible beginner for a while is the whole price of admission.
The Bottom Line
The fear of what people will think is real, and it is also the single most common reason talented people never start. You get past it by shrinking the audience you are afraid of down to its true size against a twenty-year horizon, by giving a vote only to the people who have actually done what you are attempting, and by expecting the early reps to be awkward and posting anyway. Give yourself permission to begin before you feel ready. That permission is the thing you will be grateful for in 2046.
Ready to build your brand without leaving your career? Working After Work is Jeanelle's framework for building a personal brand alongside a full-time job. [Learn more →]
