Being Recognised Matters More Than Being Right

We can flip the switch from sounding more knowledgeable to showing up as someone.

It doesn’t mean making everything structured to the hilt, or pushing your work to feel more polished.

I watched the Paul McCartney and Chevy Chase documentaries last week. What stood out was their lack of embarrassment about stepping forward and creating what felt right to them. 

They experimented without worrying about the repercussions, even in the public eye. They did what felt right, with no compromises. Everything was led by who they were, not what the world of entertainment wanted them to be.

We’ve made it incredibly easy to produce good work. Better still, you can publish something that reads well in minutes, rather than hours.

I know I feel it, and maybe you do too, where a lot of what we now see feels like it could have come from anywhere, or just lacks any heart. A good example was the avalanche of AI April Fools posts recently. For some reason, 2026 was the year when the easy route exploded.

What has always been tricky is that when your point of view sits in the middle, you don’t give someone a reason to come back.

So the gap is no longer about the quality of our work, but whether it can be recognised.

When everything starts to blend, people don’t look for better, they look for something they can recognise.

It’s not about positioning, it’s about being a person people can recognise.

This is where I became confused and had to figure it out over time. There were two key pillars for me:

1) It’s easy to be swallowed by an industry and try to look worthy to someone else. I wanted to sound knowledgeable so people would choose me over someone else. That meant I stayed in the middle and fought over the same turf as everyone else.

2) You can also take things too far in shaping an identity. I went off on a tangent that people couldn’t associate with. The shouting and erratic behaviour were something I was comfortable with, but it put people off. I had a viewpoint, but it wasn’t easy for people to connect with or want to join in with.

Would you want to come to this….me neither

What changed was finding a space I cared about and could build from. This was centred around finding your voice, growing your audience and learning together. The identity of being a professional misfit followed.

That meant I could still be me, while people could find something they felt part of and connected.

I’ve always approached things with curiosity, which is why You Are The Media is still here. I’m figuring it out alongside you. I’m part of this with you and in turn, that helps me to feel more settled, as I don’t want to create a hierarchy.

That’s what people respond to.

The more you start to be yourself and connect with people, the more you enjoy what you do.

I’m comfortable that while we have a serious side to our events, there’s also space for people to let their guard down and have fun. That creates looseness in what we deliver. It shows that what we’re doing hasn’t been over-managed.

When people see that sense of enjoyment, things start to open up. If you can signal that what people are part of isn’t something to watch, but something to be in, it stays with them and you can build on it.

For people to buy in, they need to see the heart behind it and your reason for doing it. That’s how they see the person behind the work.

This is where credibility actually comes from. It’s not from wanting to sound right, complete or considered. Credibility comes from being recognised over time. It’s built through repeated exposure to something people can recognise, connect and know what you stand for.

The more you show your perspective and way of seeing things, the more trust is built. The reason I create live events is so I can show you how they work and the tweaks we make, so they stay relevant and part of our lives.

The alternative is not to do, but to share from safety. That is pushing us into places where we can tell others what to do, but with no evidence and that is a dangerous place to be. It also means that if everyone has the answers, there’s nothing to recognise.

If there’s nothing to recognise, there’s nothing to return to.

There will always be a trade-off. If you show more of yourself, not everyone will get it. I know this from experience.

I also know what it’s like to try your hardest to fit in, but being acceptable puts you in the middle.

Back in 2018, I thought a conference had to deliver a business return, leads, sales, growth. What I was really doing was making something that looked like everything else. It was also trying to make a fledgling event worthy for other people. That just made what I wanted to do, easier to ignore.

You don’t have to edit out how you’d normally speak, or remove phrases that feel like you. You don’t have to hold back the post that feels slightly off compared to everything else.

It’s about finding a space you believe in, that other people can connect with, and over time, bringing more of yourself into it. It’s your message and who you are that makes the difference.

You don’t need to reinvent yourself. It’s the small decisions and adjustments you make. I’ve found it works to share a thought before it’s fully formed, as long as it’s something to return to and build on.

You’re not lowering your standard. You’re just not over-correcting in the pursuit of being accepted, or worse, editing so much that your work becomes invisible. The work is finding the line where it still feels like you.

Good is now expected, but being recognised isn’t. It’s not “does this sound like ChatGPT or Claude?” It’s “would someone know this was me?”

When everything sounds right, people don’t choose what’s best. They choose what they recognise and someone who feels good to stand alongside. 

Recognition is what makes someone remember you and what they remember is what brings them back. 

If you can stay at the wheel long enough for people to make that attachment, it’s easier to create work that has a role to play for other people. Not just once, but again and again.