Running a business when you'd rather not be seen

You don’t have to be the loudest person in the room to run a business. I’m living proof, and it took me a while to believe it.

I’m a Yorkshireman, an introvert, and a father of three. On paper I’m the last person you’d pick to do new business for a living. Yet here I am, running the agency and winning the work myself.

The bit nobody warns you about

Put me on a call with a business owner, walking through what’s wrong with their account, and I’m completely at home. No nerves, no act. I know the work and I enjoy explaining it.

Ask me to post about it in public and something tightens up. The writing feels unnatural. I read it back and it sounds like someone trying to sound like me, which is worse than saying nothing.

For a long time I took that as a flaw to fix. If I could just be more comfortable showing off, the business would grow faster. So I’d try to write the way I thought I was supposed to, and it always came out a bit waffly and a bit cheesy.

What actually changed things

I stopped trying to perform and started trying to just talk.

The voice I use on a client call is the real one. Direct, warm enough, evidence first, no buildup. The version I’d put on for an audience was the fake one. Once I worked that out, the answer was obvious: write the way I’d speak to one person, not the way a feed expects you to shout at a crowd.

It’s slower. I’m sporadic at best, and I’ve made my peace with that too. I’d rather put out something honest now and then than churn out noise to stay visible.

If you’re wired the same way

A few things I’ve landed on, for what they’re worth.

Lean into the part you’re good at. For me that’s the one-to-one. The work and the conversation sell better than any clever post ever could, so I put my energy there and let it do the talking.

Honesty beats showmanship every time with the people I want to work with. Owners of real businesses can smell a performance. They respond to someone who’ll give them a straight answer, even an inconvenient one.

And accept that quiet isn’t the same as absent. You can build something solid without being everywhere all the time. It just takes a bit longer, and it’ll actually sound like you.

Being an introvert isn’t the handicap I once thought it was. Most days it’s the reason people trust what I tell them.