Derek, thank you so much for this article. Sometimes there are articles that you stumble upon at the right time. And this is one of them. I've been holding back so much on selling myself. Because I believe it's often such a sleazy, "I'm full of myself" approach to get attention. But what you mentioned here, that people need to trust you, before they can accept your help, for some reason it helped shift something in me. It suddenly made click. I feel I now have the confidence to promote myself more. To help others see what I'm great at. To make them understand where I can unique contribute and improve their lives. And that is something I need to share. I need to help them see what I see.
Hi Derek! This one hit deep.
When someone calls your work “fake,” it doesn’t just challenge what you do. It challenges whether you belong at all.
Here’s what I’ve learned in years of storytelling for real-estate pros: trust isn’t handed out. It’s earned.
And you earn it not by defending every accusation. But by showing up, again, and again, when no one’s watching.
By sharing the drafts, the doubts, the “half-done” you. Because real work is messy.
Real trust grows in the small stuff:
- “Here’s what I experimented with this week.”
- “Here’s what I noticed changed.”
- “Here’s what I screwed up, and here’s what I’ll try next.”
When you build that rhythm, sudden accusations are just part of the noise. They don’t stop the proof you’re quietly delivering.
Thanks for being real enough to write this.
— Delroy A. Whyte-Hall
Founder, Whyte-Hall Communications Network | ThePRwriter
Thanks for sharing your experience Delroy
Derek, thank you so much for this article. Sometimes there are articles that you stumble upon at the right time. And this is one of them. I've been holding back so much on selling myself. Because I believe it's often such a sleazy, "I'm full of myself" approach to get attention. But what you mentioned here, that people need to trust you, before they can accept your help, for some reason it helped shift something in me. It suddenly made click. I feel I now have the confidence to promote myself more. To help others see what I'm great at. To make them understand where I can unique contribute and improve their lives. And that is something I need to share. I need to help them see what I see.
Yeah it took time for me to grasp this too. Seeing it as helping rather than manipulating was a gamechanger for me.
Trust takes time. I’m often connected to people for two or three years before they call to work with me
Yeah and I think this is increasing