A few years ago, a leadership coach told me something I wasn’t ready to hear.

We were talking about career growth, influence, the usual stuff. Somewhere in the conversation, she said, “Brian, I think you have a limiting belief about being visible.”

I pushed back. Told her I didn’t have a problem with the spotlight. I just didn’t need it. I preferred doing great work and letting the results speak for themselves.

She smiled. The kind of smile that says, “That’s exactly what I mean.”

She was right.

That instinct — I’ll just do good work and stay in the background — probably hurt my career more than it helped. Every opportunity I didn’t get, or room I wasn’t invited into. Every client who hired someone louder instead of someone better. Those were the receipts.

And I know I’m not alone.

You may feel the same tension. You’re scrolling LinkedIn and see the selfies, the humble brags, the “so grateful for this journey” posts. You can’t bring yourself to do it. So you stay invisible. Not by design. By default.

Studies show imposter syndrome hits roughly 70% of people at some point. But here’s what nobody tells you — it gets worse with expertise. Practitioners who work with senior executives see it constantly: people who dazzle entire conference rooms still privately feel they’ve fooled everyone.

The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. So you stay quiet. Meanwhile, someone with half your experience and none of your self-doubt posts confidently every day.

That gap — between what you know and what you’re willing to share — is where opportunity goes to die.

I built something to close that gap. The Authentic Authority Framework — a three-step approach to building visibility that prioritizes substance over self-promotion, using a 90/10 ratio of teaching to personal content. No selfies required. No performance. Just presence.

Visibility vs. Cringe: Why You Think Those Are Your Only Options

Most people believe visibility lives on a spectrum. On one end: invisible. On the other: cringe.

So they park themselves at invisible. Because the alternative feels gross.

Their instinct isn’t wrong, either.

Harvard researchers studied humblebragging — bragging disguised as false humility — across nine experiments. The finding? Humblebraggers were liked less and seen as less competent than people who just bragged openly. Audiences don’t just dislike performative self-promotion. They see through it. And they punish it.

Edelman and LinkedIn found something even more brutal: poorly executed, self-promotional thought leadership caused decision-makers to remove companies from consideration entirely. Performance doesn’t just feel bad. It costs real money.

So your cringe radar is working perfectly. Performative visibility is a problem.

But cringe and visibility aren’t on the same spectrum. Cringe is performance. Visibility is presence. Different things.

You don’t have to choose between invisible and insufferable.

Do You Need Selfies to Build Authority? (Short Answer: Not Really)

I’ll be honest. One of my least valuable posts recently got way more reach than anything I’d written in months. The difference? It had a selfie.

That stings when you’ve spent real time crafting something that actually teaches.

The easy explanation: the algorithm is broken. But that’s not what’s actually happening.

Your brain has a dedicated region — the Fusiform Face Area — that responds more strongly to human faces than anything else. Face processing is fast, automatic, and hardwired. You literally can’t turn it off. (Thank neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher for that one.)

Studies on LinkedIn show that profiles with photos increase perceived credibility and attractiveness compared to text-only profiles. Seeing a face makes you trust someone more. That’s not an algorithm trick. That’s a hundred thousand years of evolution.

And then there’s the parasocial effect: when you see someone’s face repeatedly, your brain creates a sense of knowing them. That’s why face-forward creators build loyalty faster. Not vanity. Connection.

So I can’t blame creators who lean into selfies. They’re tapping into real human psychology.

But if you’re anything like me, you have zero desire to be a skin influencer. You don’t want to sit at a coffee shop in your big shades and call that content. You want to share the stuff people actually need.

The answer isn’t to fight biology. It’s to work with it. Show your face sometimes. Make the substance the main event.

The Real Cost of Staying Invisible

While you’re avoiding cringe, something worse is happening.

Research on hidden labor shows that when professionals’ work stays invisible — buried behind brands, uncredited — it gets systematically devalued. Less recognition. Fewer opportunities. Less leverage. This isn’t opinion. It’s documented.

And imposter-driven under-communication makes it worse. Capable leaders who downplay their impact are consistently underestimated — not because they lack talent, but because someone louder took the spotlight.

Here’s the thing. There’s a concept in psychology called the mere exposure effect. People develop preference for things they see repeatedly. No persuasion needed. No viral moment required. Just consistent presence.

That’s how trust works at scale. You show up. People see you. Familiarity becomes preference. Preference becomes trust. Trust becomes business.

The Edelman-LinkedIn thought leadership study confirms it: decision-makers said quality thought leadership increased their respect for an individual. Many awarded business because of it. Visibility isn’t vanity. It’s how people decide who to work with.

One more cost nobody talks about. Research from Frontiers in Psychology found that scrolling LinkedIn without posting increases career frustration through social comparison. You’re not avoiding pain by staying quiet. You’re marinating in it.

By staying invisible, you’re deciding your audience doesn’t need your help. That’s the actual cost.

The 90/10 Rule: Substance Over Selfies

You don’t have to choose between invisible and insufferable. There’s a third option.

I didn’t find it by falling in love with visibility. I found it when I realized that staying invisible meant not fulfilling my purpose — helping people become their best. If nobody can find you, your expertise dies with you.

Chris Do talks about this well. Get comfortable with who you are. Lean into the intricacies that make you you. That’s what creates differentiation — because nobody else sounds like that.

And the Edelman data backs it up: educational, insight-driven content is seen as more trustworthy than self-promotion. Substance-first isn’t just more comfortable. It’s more effective.

I call it the 90/10 ratio. 90% of your content teaches, shares frameworks, and makes people smarter. 10% shows you’re human — a selfie, a story, a real moment. That balance builds trust without crossing into performance.

Honor the biology. Drip your humanity in. Don’t flood it.

Here’s the framework that makes it work.

The Authentic Authority Framework

1. Share What You Think, Not What Performs

Stop reverse-engineering the algorithm. Start with your actual perspective.

Contrarian beliefs are magnetic. “Experience is the multiplier” lands harder than another generic AI listicle. “Consistency beats frequency” hits different when everyone else is screaming “post every day.”

The Harvard data backs this up: audiences reward directness. People can smell calculation. They can also smell conviction.

Simple filter. If you wouldn’t say it at a dinner party, don’t post it. If you would say it at a dinner party — that’s content.

Try this: Write down three things you believe about your industry that most people would push back on. Those are your next three posts.

2. Teach What You Know. Don’t Claim What You Don’t.

Authority comes from demonstration, not declaration.

“Here’s what I learned building X” beats “I’m an expert in X” every single time. One is proof. The other is a claim. People trust proof.

Edelman found that decision-makers award business based on quality thought leadership — and that poorly executed self-promotion actually costs you the deal. So the strategy is simple: make the reader smarter.

Test every post: Does this make them smarter, or does it make me look smart? If it’s the latter, rewrite it.

Try this: Take one problem you solved this week. Turn it into a lesson. Share the thinking, not just the result.

3. Be a Real Human — Interests, Failures, Quirks Included

Substance over selfies doesn’t mean personality-free.

Your pop culture takes. Your dad stories. The fact that you once wanted to be an astronaut and now you help people launch their own reinventions. That’s not a distraction from authority. That is authority — because nobody else sounds like that.

Humans are wired to connect with people, not profiles. Honor that with 10% of your content. Not 100%.

And if the imposter voice is loud — start a wins journal. Write down what you accomplish each week. It recalibrates how you see yourself. When it’s time to post about your work, you’ll have receipts that quiet the doubt.

Try this: Add one human detail to your next three posts. Not a selfie — a reference, an aside, a real moment from your actual life.

What to Remember

• Cringe is performance. Visibility is presence. They’re not on the same spectrum.
• The 90/10 ratio: 90% substance (teaching, frameworks, insights), 10% human (selfies, stories, personality).
• Your brain has a dedicated region for processing faces — honor the biology with 10%, not 100%.
• Imposter syndrome hits hardest in people who actually know what they’re doing. Don’t let it keep you quiet.
• Substance compounds over time. Performance decays.

From Invisible to Inevitable

That conversation with my leadership coach happened years ago. I still think about it.

I still strain to put myself out there. That hasn’t changed. What changed is my understanding of what visibility actually requires.

It’s not selfies every day. Not humble brags. Not manufactured enthusiasm.

Substance. Consistency. The willingness to be a real human in public.

The imposter voice telling you to stay quiet gets louder the more you know. Don’t let it win.

The people doing visibility well aren’t louder than you. They’re more useful. And you can be too.

Presence without pretense. Substance over selfies.

It compounds. Performance decays. Ship one post that teaches something real. Then do it again next week.

That’s how you go from invisible to inevitable — without ever becoming someone you’re not.