📈 Creating Your Credibility Ladder

Read time: 4 minutes

When I first started posting on LinkedIn, I looked at the greats and felt "welp".

“How can I possibly talk about what they're talking about?“

I felt like I didn’t have the credibility. The experience. The results.

But as I did more research, I discovered something:

The entrepreneurs who are known today for their big brands often didn’t start out talking about what they talk about now.

There's a progression.

A natural evolution as you develop new skills, start new businesses, gain real credibility.

And once you understand this, you'll know exactly what to talk about, regardless of where you are in your journey.

Let me show you what I mean.

The Hidden Evolution

When people look at successful accounts, they see:

• Hundreds of thousands of followers

• Sky high engagement

• Career highlights

But they see the end result. Not the journey.

Justin Welsh is the $10m solopreneur now. How can you compete?

But he started talking about sales leadership because he ran sales teams.

Then he talked about LinkedIn growth after he built a large brand.

• Stop Selling. Start Solving Problems (Sales)

• $10.618M Revenue. 45,719 customers. (Solopreneurship)

Chris Donnelly is now talking a lot about SEO because he just started Searchable, an AEO/SEO business.

But he started talking about marketing and leadership as he ran Verb Brands, an 80-person marketing agency.

• Email Like A Boss (Leadership)

• Old SEO vs. New SEO (SEO)

The pattern? Their content evolved with their experience.

As they gained new experience, started new businesses, and developed new skills - their topics changed.

How This Plays Out

When I started posting, I couldn't talk about building a 7-figure business. I hadn't done it yet.

But I could talk about career development and job interviews - I'd built an organization that helped over 1,000 people get jobs, worked at Goldman Sachs and in private equity and gotten into Stanford business school.

• Things Not To Say In A Job Interview (72,348 likes)

• 10 Phrases That Kill Work Conversations (39,152 likes)

Those topics got me my first viral posts. Built my initial audience.

Then I grew my following to 400,000 and built Saywhat from $0 to >$500k in revenue with just 2 people. Now I had credibility to talk about audience building and solopreneurship - a smaller audience, but the right one for my business.

• Turn Your LinkedIn Profile Into A Landing Page (1,132 likes)

• LinkedIn Power Hour (1,101 likes)

As Saywhat is an AI business and I use AI daily, I became able to talk from experience here too.

• 12 Laws of ChatGPT Prompts (900 likes)

• How To Create An AI Agent In Minutes (750 likes)

Today? I work with CEOs whose companies have collectively raised over $2bn, helping them grow with CEO branding. From that, I’m developing new frameworks that I’ll turn into content.

Each evolution unlocked new opportunities, revenue streams, and clients.

The Credibility Ladder Framework

Here's how successful creators actually evolve their content:

Level 1: Share what you're learning "Here's what I'm trying this week" / "I just discovered this approach" / "This mistake taught me something"

Credibility source: You're doing the work

Level 2: Teach what you've proven "Here's the exact system that got me X result" / "This is how I went from A to B" / "My step-by-step process"

Credibility source: You've done it successfully

Level 3: Build universal frameworks "After working with 50+ clients, here's the pattern I see" / "The 3 principles behind every success" / "Why this works (and when it doesn't)"

Credibility source: You've proven it works for others, not just you

You don’t need permission to start and you certainly don’t need permission to evolve.

Your content journey isn't a straight line - it's a ladder. And you can only climb it one level at a time.

Start climbing today.

See you next time,

Will

P.S. Two things:

• I just dropped a new YouTube video on the 5-step framework to quadruple your impressions in 90 days. Watch it here.

• If you still want to grab the Q3 LinkedIn Algorithm report - grab it here.

Will McTighe

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