There’s a shift happening in content creation.

Not everyone wants to learn from a polished expert.

More and more, people want to learn from someone just a few steps ahead of them. You see it across LinkedIn, Substack, TikTok, or wherever you scroll. People aren’t waiting until they’re successful or “qualified enough” to post.

They’re sharing in real time — lessons, mistakes, their first wins, and the strategies they’re testing.

And audiences are here for it. This kind of raw, honest, in-progress sharing hits different.

“Hey, I’ve only done this once or twice — but here’s what worked and what didn’t.”

That sentence captures the essence of the new personal brand movement and exemplifies why this content style performs so well.

The key is that it signals lived experience.

It’s not positioning or overly branded messaging. It’s honest reflection that feels human and builds trust at a time when AI and content volume are clogging our feeds.

The sign of credibility: context > credentials

There’s a reason someone with one year of experience can go viral breaking down what they learned while someone with 10 years of experience struggles to gain traction.

It’s why there are product marketing managers with more followers than their CMOs.

The playing field has changed. Authority online is no longer built solely on credentials. And personal brand credibility isn’t reserved for seasoned executives or popular influencers.

It’s built on relatable context — your lived experience, your observations, and your ability to package them in a relatable manner.

This doesn’t mean deep expertise isn’t valuable. But it does mean you don’t need to be a self-proclaimed expert to contribute something valuable and make connections.

Some of my favorite recent examples of transparent, vulnerable, build-in-public-style posts:

• This post from marketing leader Christina Le where she owns that she’s still learning the best product marketing formats. Throughout her impressive career, Christina has positioned herself as a self-taught head of marketing — an honesty that earns respect and trust. She isn’t afraid to highlight her lessons-learned right alongside her wins and progress.
• This post from venture studio founder Kyle Jackson where he shares a progress update on his new company in real-time. He’s not waiting six months or one year to reflect on a curated success story. He’s sharing along the way to show others how to get there.

Sometimes we learn more from someone who’s a few steps ahead than someone who’s 100 steps ahead. Because their experience is still fresh and they present it in a way that makes us feel like we aren’t hopelessly behind.

That we can do it, too.

Michell C. Clark put it perfectly in a Substack note:

“Point me to the people who don’t position themselves as all-knowing experts or oracles, but instead as vulnerable human beings using their capacity for observation and introspection to figure things out in real time.”

The internet is full of self-proclaimed gurus.

What stands out is someone who says: “Here’s what I tried. Here’s how it went. And here’s what I’d do differently.”

That mindset is fueling the personal brand boom we’re watching unfold right now. More people are becoming content creators and sharing their journeys with transparency — including plenty of people who are just getting started or starting again.

My own evidence

When I first got back into posting on LinkedIn in 2024, I tried to let my job title do the talking.

I was a startup VP of Marketing transitioning to a corporate product marketer. With that, I thought I could start sharing the strategy frameworks and marketing campaign tips that helped me get to where I was in my career.

They flopped.

Seven likes and 100 impressions later, my polished “this is what a marketing leader would post” takes had failed.

I kept at it. But things didn’t turn around until I took a different approach.

I shifted my tone and took the guardrails off.

I started treating LinkedIn like my work journal and let a few messy, reflection-style posts fly. I wrote about the struggle I was feeling as a marketer in today’s environment and shared some of my hardest lessons-learned.

• Like this post about how I regret keeping my career to myself over the years instead of sharing transparently — missing out on celebrating my wins or finding connection through my failures.
• Or this one about the unique challenge of building a personal brand as a marketer because of the overlapping nature of the work both pursuits require.

These posts didn’t go viral. However, they were the first posts I’d shared that started real conversations.

They were also the first posts that felt therapeutic to write because they weren’t performative. They were honest, vulnerable, and perfectly imperfect.

And that’s why people related to them.

People couldn’t see themselves in my overly-branded marketing executive frameworks. But they could relate to the messy path I took along the way to my career milestones.

Not only did creating content and building my personal brand start to feel natural — so natural it didn’t feel like building a “brand” at all — but the engagement and connection my posts generated noticeably improved.

Ever since, I’ve been challenging myself not to fear sharing my story. Especially the aspects of it that didn’t go as planned, seemed like failure, or could have been better.

It turns out that stuff is the most real. And it’s exactly what people are looking for.

Your story might be the thing someone else needs to hear

The next time you hesitate to post because “you’re not an expert” or “you haven’t figured it all out yet,” remember: that might be why someone wants to hear from you.

They’re looking for something relatable:

• That blog post about your messy creative process.
• The LinkedIn carousel walking through what worked and what didn’t during your first year freelancing.
• A quick video explaining how you prepared for your first speaking gig.

Sure, these takes might not be the most polished. But they could be what gets someone else started.

And that’s exactly what the creator economy is about right now.

Derek Hughes said it best:

Why did readers devour it instead of following six-figure experts? Because those who’ve earned $0 feel paralyzed by the gap between themselves and the masters. They crave guidance from someone just a few steps ahead who can reach back and pull them forward.

If you’ve got something to say, even if it’s still a little messy, just say it.

There’s someone a few steps back on the same journey who needs to hear from you.

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