You don't have to be famous to win.
Hello Friend!
Let me tell you something I don’t say out loud much.
Being a public figure kind of sucks.
Now, before you roll your eyes, let me be clear about where I sit on the celebrity food chain.
I’m a bestselling author.
Which means... roughly nobody recognizes me at the grocery store. I’m the bottom of the barrel. The tide pool of fame.
And even from down here, it still stings.
Here’s what my week looks like on paper.
I’ve posted on LinkedIn every single day since March 2023. I write two newsletters a week. My stuff gets around a million impressions every seven days.
Sounds like a dream, right?
Here’s the part nobody posts about.
People drop into the comments to say genuinely shitty things. (For sport, I think.)
I’ll ship a newsletter I’m proud of, one I poured myself into, and watch it earn me the highest unsubscribes of any week all year.
When I pitched my forthcoming book, I sent it to 108 literary agents. Seven showed a flicker of interest.
More no’s than yeses. Every single week.
I’ve had a therapist for over two years. This anxiety is basically the only thing we talk about.
So no. The public figure thing is not the glamorous part of building something of your own.
But here’s what a decade of running my own business has actually taught me.
I could do this whole thing without the public figure part.
When you do good work, word of mouth becomes the lifeline of your business. Not the algorithm. Not the viral post. The quiet referral from someone you helped.
There’s just one catch.
If you want people to talk about you, you have to do something worth talking about.
And that’s bigger than a post with a thousand likes or a guest spot on somebody’s most-downloaded podcast.
I’m telling you this because I know some of you are standing at the edge.
You’re thinking about leaping. Building the thing. Designing a life with more freedom in it.
And what’s holding you back is a story you’ve told yourself:
I’m not comfortable on stage. I’m not a writer. I’d rather chew glass than post on LinkedIn.
Good news.
None of that is required.
Here’s what is.
1. Build your work around your signature strengths.
Mine are creativity, curiosity, and a love of learning. When my work runs through those, it barely feels like work. When it doesn’t, I drag.
This greatly impacts the quality of your output.
Most people have never actually named their strengths. They’re guessing.
Try this: Take the free VIA Character Strengths assessment (viacharacter.org). Fifteen minutes, and it hands you the language for the things you’re already great at.
2. Fall in love with a problem.
Not a business idea. A problem. The kind you’d happily wrestle with every morning before your feet hit the floor.
Fame fades. A problem you love solving doesn’t.
Passion leads to more time and focus. More time and focus leads to developing your craft.
Try this: Write down the problem you can’t stop thinking about. Then ask yourself: would I still care about this if no one clapped?
3. Get ruthlessly clear on your offer.
Your offer is simple to say and hard to nail: what outcome you help someone reach, in what timeframe, at what cost.
People don’t refer “a really smart person.” They refer “the one who fixed X in 90 days.”
Try this: If you want to work this out in a room with people doing the same thing, the next Unignorable Offer Sprint kicks off October 6th. Patricia Wooster and I run it live, and you’ll leave with an offer you can actually say out loud (save your spot).
That’s it.
Not a stage. Not a following. Not a face people recognize.
The public figure part is optional. (And some days, genuinely painful.)
Doing work worth talking about is not.
So if the only thing standing between you and your next chapter is the fear that you’re not loud enough...
let that one go.
You don’t have to be famous.
You just have to do something worth talking about.
Your coach,
Chris
P.S. Two years of therapy, and I can tell you the anxiety was never about whether the work mattered. It was about being seen doing it. Those are two very different things. Build the work first.
