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Building something from scratch is terrifying.
We pour our lives into our work, only to realize people don't buy "what" we do. They buy "who" we are and why we bother doing it in the first place.
For a CEO, that "who" often gets buried under layers of PR-approved corporate BS.
I’ve seen brilliant leaders lose their edge because their public voice sounds like a legal disclaimer.
And when they eventually start a personal newsletter, they treat it as a dumping ground for company updates. It isn’t.
A personal newsletter is where you share the mental models that helped you scale, the failures that kept you up at 3 AM, and the trends you’re betting on.
That is how you make people trust you. That is how you become the go-to authority in your industry.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
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Narrative Style Content | for Founders, Professionals & Personal Brands
Title: Narrative Sample: Adaptation, Leadership, and the Cost of Ignoring Change
Here’s a sample of how I use storytelling to communicate complex ideas in a compelling, memorable way.
A paleontologist once got lost during an expedition.
He found a cave and slept.
That night, he...
There's a café down the street from where I'm staying in Barcelona. Maybe 12 tables.
The menu, the napkin, the chalkboard outside, the paper bag they hand you the food in, the song that's always on when I walk in, it all feels like the same place. Same opinion about itself, everywhere you look.
Three doors down there's another café. Same croissant supplier probably. Same price. I've been in there twice and couldn't tell you a single thing about it.
You can feel which one's going to still be there in five years.
I think about this a lot when I audit startups. The homepage says "intelligent" The onboarding says "simple and friendly" The sales deck says "enterprise-grade" The careers page says "we move fast and have fun" Four companies stapled together pretending to be one.
The reason restaurants can't get away with this is the customer sees every surface in 90 minutes. Tech brands have months between touchpoints, so the contradictions hide.
Doesn't mean they're not there, thehe buyer feels them but they just can't always name what's off.
So go sitit in a small place you actually like for an hour and pay attention to how it talks to you. Then open your homepage or current site.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about something simple but powerful:
Most experts don’t lose clients because they lack skill. They lose them because there’s no bridge. No way for someone to trust them before committing. No small step before the big one.
Then I came across a post on LinkedIn by Kenny Rueter (Co-CEO& Co-founder at Kajabi) that hit even deeper.
He shared a simple equation:
Expertise × Visibility × Availability = Value
And it made something very clear..
A lot of experts are not struggling because they’re not good enough.
They’re struggling because they’re not findable, not accessible, and not easy to trust.
That “bridge” I talked about? It’s not just nice to have. It’s what connects your expertise to real opportunities.
So here’s the real question: If someone finds you today, what’s the first step they can take to trust you without getting on a call?
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