Founders who share insights can build industry trust at scale

Everyone knows that press features don’t drive sustainable traffic. But they still matter for one simple reason: sales requires trust. Trust is transitive. And the press is trusted.

Press features validate the legitimacy of a company, lend it authority, and ultimately lead others to trust it more.

I’ve seen this first hand, having gone from being an unknown outsider to becoming the most popular expert in the world in my space — contributing articles to 14 publications and driving more than 37,000 prospective customers per month to my blog.

In this article, you’ll learn the steps I took over the last year to go from being unknown to expert, and how this strategy has helped me open doors and close deals. All from this simple strategy that I used to build my own authority in the industry and leverage the press that people trusted to build authority and build SEO.

I initially discovered this strategy out of frustration. The businesses that I was selling to didn’t trust me because I was an outsider. I didn’t have credibility in my industry. I didn’t have status symbols people associate with trustworthiness.

In fact, I had the opposite. I dropped out of high school in 10th grade. I never went to college. I had never worked for a big company. And our customers in the early days were a few small independents. So people didn’t trust me enough to trust that my technology would work for them. I’d often be denied sales opportunities as a result.

The question was, how could I turn that around and become trusted before the sales process begins? Because that, I suspected, was how I could start closing more deals. This strategy was my solution to those repeated frustrations and it has since lead to deals with billion-dollar brands and small brands alike. It even impressed people who ended up backing my company.