The ‘Experts’ Lied to Us

And why they are too scared to tell us the truth...

For over 20 years, I've worked with Fortune 500 companies and startups to help them build better customer engagement, acquisition and retention strategies. Every issue of Backstage Pass pulls back the curtain and shares what I've learned, and teaches you how to apply these same concepts to grow your own Substack into a sustainable business.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One…

You’re scrolling the Home feed here, when you see it. A Substack ‘expert’ is explaining how they figured out how to get thousands of subscribers, or how they figured out how to make hundreds of dollars. Every month. It’s always some version of they figured out the secret to accomplishing X and will sell you a system for how you can replicate their success for the low, low price of…

They are selling you the highlights. Or rather, their claimed highlights. If you’ve ever felt like you’re failing because your numbers don’t match the highlight reels, you’re not alone. Even Fortune 500s deal with this daily, and I’ve seen it up close.

To attempt to add credibility, some ‘experts’ will add details on how they faced some setback, but overcame it. Often by using the same ‘system’ that they will happily sell you.

And that’s the issue. We almost never hear about the setbacks as they are happening. We only hear about them after the fact, after the setbacks have been overcome.

But that’s not how reality works. We don’t get to just ignore setbacks because they may not fit nicely in a sales narrative we want to create.

The reality is we have to deal with setbacks constantly. All of us do. Yes, even the Substack experts.

How to Tell a More Trustworthy Story

When I started writing here in June of last year, early on I got the bright idea that I would post a monthly recap of what I had learned in growing my Substack over the previous month. My initial thought was “This will be great! I will be able to share all I am learning about Substack. It will be content that will help others, plus it will be popular content that will help raise my awareness.”

Then I had my second thought: “Wait…that also means my first few months in particular are really gonna suck. And if I do this, I’m gonna have to talk about it”.

And they did, and I did.

The ‘experts’ would say I can’t share the setbacks. Because they seem to think if you share your mistakes, it undermines whatever credibility and expertise you are building with your audience.

But it doesn’t. Sharing your setbacks as they happen makes your story more trustworthy.

Research backs this up: Harvard Business Review found that more than 80% of consumers consider trust a deciding factor in buying decisions, while Marketing Charts reports that 69% of consumers say a brand owning its mistakes is very/extremely effective in building trust. When you combine these insights; 80% buy based on trust, and 69% trust brands more when they admit mistakes, the strategy becomes clear.

Sharing your mistakes as they happen also makes your story more relatable.

I asked Claude about the psychology of why sharing mistakes actually builds trust. Here’s what it said:

“When competent people like you share harmless mistakes, it creates:

• Relatability: "They're human like me"

• Authenticity: "They're not trying to be perfect"

• Safety: "If they can admit mistakes, I can trust them to be honest about everything else"

• Credibility: "Someone this accomplished being vulnerable? That takes real confidence"

I can’t relate to the guy that joined Substack last month with 0 subscribers, and today has 5,000 subs, and made $7,000 in the last month. That seems so amazing to me that I find it hard to believe.

But if a guy tells me he joined Substack last month with 0 subscribers, set a goal for having 500 subs today, and making $100, I can relate to that. If he tells me he only got 87 subs and made $14, I can totally relate to that story.

Will I buy his course on how to grow his Substack? Probably not today.

But what if that same guy has 3,000 subscribers 6 months from now, and is making $1,500 a month?

Honestly, I’d view his story as being far more trustworthy cause he shared ALL of it with me. The ups AND the downs all along the way.

When I only hear about the good times, it actually makes me less likely to trust the story.

If you are telling your story, tell the whole story. Warts and all. Sharing the bad with the good doesn’t make you less credible, it makes you more trustworthy.

Ready to Grow Your Substack Into a Sustainable Business?

For 20 years I’ve helped everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies design strategies to acquire, retain, and delight customers. Now, I’m sharing those same proven strategies with you here.

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Together, we’ll turn your Substack into a business that lasts.

Mack

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Backstage Pass teaches you how to better connect with your customers, readers, clients, or donors. The lessons shared here draw on my experience over the last 20 years building customer engagement strategies for companies like Adobe, Dell, Club Med, Ingersoll-Rand, and countless others. I give you real-world research, examples and tactics that show you how to create customer engagement efforts that drive real business growth.

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