From the Back of the Class to Podcast Guest: Catherine's Story

The Back of the Class

I remember when I first started working with Catherine. She'd sit in, take everything in, say very little. She wouldn't publish anything. Not because she didn't have things to say - she had plenty. She just wasn't sure it would come out right.

That's not unusual, by the way. I see it all the time. The most reluctant people to post are almost always the ones with the most to say.

When she finally started publishing on LinkedIn, it was tentative. She'll tell you herself - she wasn't happy about it. But she did it.

That's the thing I've noticed with experts who've been sitting on their knowledge for years. The content doesn't create the confidence. But having a mechanism that gets it out in a way that sounds like you on your best day - not like something a robot assembled - that does. She kept going.

Then Something Unexpected Happened

When I rang her this morning after seeing that LinkedIn post, she told me how it had come about.

An expert in alcohol - a counsellor, prominent in her space, someone with real standing - had found Catherine on LinkedIn. Read one of her posts. Contacted her directly.

Wanted her on the podcast.

So Catherine - the woman who wouldn't publish anything, who sat at the back of the class, who'd told me the whole idea made her nervous - said yes.

Thirty-five minutes. Recorded. Live audience.

"I wasn't happy about it, I've gotta say," she told me. "But yeah, I did it."

What Actually Got Her There

Here's the bit that matters.

The podcast host didn't find Catherine through an ad. Didn't come through a referral. Didn't stumble across her website.

She found her through a LinkedIn post. One of Catherine's own posts, in her own words, on a subject she knows inside-out.

I said to Catherine: "That shows you, doesn't it?"

She laughed. "Yeah. Yeah, it does."

That's what this is really about. Not content for content's sake. Not posting because everyone says you should. It's about getting your actual expertise out into the world in a way that the right people can find, recognise, and act on.

Catherine wasn't a good podcast guest because she learned how to perform. She was a good podcast guest because she knew her subject - and she'd already been putting that knowledge out publicly, in her own voice, long enough that the right person noticed.

The Part That Didn't Surprise Me

When I asked her how the interview went, she was brutal about herself. Hated the sound of her voice. Cringed at the "ums." Thought she'd gone on too long about certain things.

I'd listened to the whole thing before I called her.

"After about ten or fifteen minutes," I told her, "you relaxed. And it got really nice."

She went quiet for a second. Then: "She did put it out, though."

Yeah, she did. If it was bad, she wouldn't have. That's the thing about experts - when they get going on something they know, really know, it comes through. The nerves settle. The knowledge takes over.

That's exactly it. It's always been in her head. That's never been the problem.

She Also Used It to Renegotiate a Contract

Not the headline of this story, but worth a mention.

A 16-page agreement came in from an Indian company offering subcontracted vessel testing work. Catherine went through it herself first, made some notes, then ran it through Decodefy.

It picked up things she'd caught. And a handful she hadn't - clauses that weren't sitting right, wording that didn't feel reciprocal, things that looked fine on a quick read but weren't. She went back with changes. They accepted most of them. She's about to sign the third version.

I asked if she'd have caught all of it on her own. She was honest. She'd got some of it. But not all of it. And having it laid out gave her the confidence to push back on things she might otherwise have let slide.

Where She Is Now

Catherine hasn't become a different person. She's still the same straight-talking, no-nonsense woman from Hull who'd rather get on with the work than perform online.

But she's posting. Regularly enough that people in her space are finding her. Expert enough that one of them wanted to interview her. Confident enough that she said yes.

"I don't care what I sound like particularly," she told me near the end of the call. "I am what I am. The people that know me and that would wanna work with me would take me for that."

She's right. That's always been true. The difference now is they can actually find her.