Welcome back to another edition of Unthreaded.
A lot of us have come to believe that staying quiet is a sign of humility.
We tell ourselves the work should speak for itself and that we don’t need to be the loudest person in the room because we don’t want to seem too self-promotional.
But sometimes, that isn’t humility.
We’re just hiding.
And when you run a business, all that hiding comes with a cost.
People can’t hire, refer, or think of you for an opportunity if they rarely hear from you.
So this week, I want to talk about the difference between staying grounded and playing smaller than you need to.
It’s easy to confuse visibility with ego. And if you’re from my generation, you probably grew up being told to stay behind the scenes, remain humble, and never seek the spotlight.
That advice truly came from a good place.
But we're living in different times, and in a lot of ways, it can hold us back. Because if you're building a business and trying to grow it, the people who need exactly what you do have to know you exist.
A lot of us still have hang-ups about showing up online. We think it's cringy or corny. Or that putting ourselves out there means we’re chasing attention, when we’d rather just be about the work.
I've struggled with this over the years, too. But I finally had to accept that there are people walking down a path I have real experience with.
Doesn’t mean I know everything, but I know a lot more than the person who's just getting started. What I’ve learned could change the direction of someone else’s business, and in some cases, how they live.
And the beautiful part is that you don't need to build some massive following to make that happen.
Being visible simply means that when someone goes looking for a solution, there’s a chance they find you.
We're living in a time when people are skeptical and slow to trust. So if you've been tried and tested, and if you've built something that creates real value for people, you need to put yourself out there.
Avoiding that part of modern business doesn’t make you humble. It limits your opportunities and keeps the people you could help from ever knowing you’re there.
You can call it “staying humble” all you want, but at some point, you have to be honest about whether you’re actually just hiding.
This week, you're going to build a ninety day visibility plan around the questions your buyers are already asking, sized to what you'll actually sustain.
Copy the prompt below and paste it into Claude (or ChatGPT, or whatever AI tool you use).
Help me build a ninety day visibility plan.
I want you working like a media strategist who builds around what a founder will actually sustain. Take me through this in four steps, locking each one down before we move to the next.
Step one is my buyer. Ask me who exactly I serve, then help me write out the ten questions they're already asking on the way to a solution like mine, in their words, not industry language.
Step two is my proof. Ask me which of those questions I've answered over and over in real client work, and what results back me up. Cross off anything where I'd be performing instead of speaking from experience.
Step three is my format. Ask me how I naturally communicate, whether that's writing, talking to a camera, or one-on-one conversations, and how much time I can honestly give this each week. Don't let me commit to a version of this that sounds impressive but that I'll quit in three weeks.
Step four is the plan. Turn the questions, the proof, and the format into a ninety day publishing rhythm: what I publish, where, and how often, with the first two weeks mapped out piece by piece. Keep the cadence small enough that missing a week would be hard to excuse.
Begin with my buyer.The expertise is already there. The plan just puts it where the people searching for it can actually find you.
We'll keep building on this next week.
GET MORE FROM UNTHREADED:
Hear the conversations behind the lessons. Heavy on Brand is the podcast hosted by Brian Fitch where he sits down with founders, operators, and people building incredible brands to talk about what it actually takes to grow a business people remember.
Ready to build a brand that works as hard as you do? Carbon Thread is the agency behind Unthreaded. We help companies in the $1M–$50M range build brands, authority, and growth systems that actually move the needle. If you're tired of guessing and ready for a partner, let's talk.
Until next time,
Brian Fitch
CEO, The Carbon Thread
PS: Subscribe to my YouTube channel for videos on how to scale impact and revenue through strategy, storytelling, and media.