When the Presentation Becomes the Substitute
So it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. And with that the posts haven’t been all that much. And this was a chat I had with a friend last week that got me thinking on this piece of writing.
There’s a reason for not posting frequently. In my opinion, the world is full of people who want to talk about what they’re going to do. (and a lot of it is also generated using AI and you end up with I think the term is AI slop) Then there’s another group of people who are fearful to even talk about what they would like to do, and they shut themselves and their dreams down into a very minimal, managed existence of living.
And even going back to those who talk about what they’re going to do, a lot of people talk, but they don’t take action.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t understand how easy it is to get swept up in the world of social media, because it can give a false sense of progress to people especially if you’re building a business. And I’m not excluding the fact that it can indeed deliver tangible progress, but I think it’s a very careful line that an individual must walk.
Several years ago, I was involved with some very high-profile people who had social media accounts with a couple of million subscribers. To cut a long story short, between helping them with their social media and producing my own content at the time, I saw and experienced firsthand how content gets produced when you start leaning into your audience.
I was part of that ecosystem for about a year, and I understand it as a business and brand model and I don’t want to come across as criticizing the people who do it, because as the old expression goes, needs must sometimes, and I get all of that. But the older I get, the more I realise that it’s categorically better to be authentic than to engineer yourself for the appeal of other people.
I think there’s a difference between presenting yourself professionally and deliberately becoming something you’re not because you believe that’s what an audience wants to see. For me, I suppose the way I’d measure that distinction is by asking whether my words and actions strengthen me or weaken me. Do they add to the direction I’m trying to go in, or take away from it?
As long as what I’m saying is something I honestly believe to be truthful, and I’m choosing that over leaning into an audience or saying something cliché that I know is deliberately pretending otherwise, I think that’s a reasonable measurement.
Another way of recognising when the line has been crossed is when presentation becomes the substitute for substance. When you’re making more of a show out of something than actually doing the thing you’re trying to show.
And I think that’s where the problem starts.
So over the last couple of months, I’ve decided to opt on the side of caution. Rather than talk about doing something, I thought it was more important to go away and do the things. And that’s what I’ve been doing.
I’ve been attending and teaching martial arts seminars. I’ve been sparring against K-1 world champions. I’ve been in the United States of America. I also appeared on the Tier One podcast (Hosted by Brent Tucker) alongside Dale Comstock, who was the main guest, and joined the conversation as a guest contributor. And I was featured as a guest on another podcast with Wisenuts.
Even in those circumstances, people would ordinarily produce a considerable amount of content as a spinoff from having done those things. And apart from perhaps mentioning it here, I haven’t really done that. Because I think it’s important that an individual does things for themselves and not for the showmanship of other people.
We live in a world today where there are people with the mentality that if they saw somebody walking on water, they’d criticise them for not being able to swim (I heard that quote from Goggins). And you have to understand something about that mentality, that is that no matter what you do, you cannot please or satisfy those people. So that should never be the aim.
What I believe is a healthy use of social media is to go away, do the things you say you’re going to do for yourself, and leave some breadcrumbs and trails for those who have an interest in following. That’s where posting on stories might come in, rather than constantly making hero content for your main feed.
Those who are on the same wavelength will understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it when they see continuous posts of your training and work seven days a week.
Sometimes I put up a still image of a barbell or kettlebells. You can’t see the volume of work that’s been done from a still image, but the point isn’t necessarily what you’re doing. It’s the underlying principle.
For example, if I ended up bound to a wheelchair and couldn’t, God forbid, be physically active, I’d probably become disciplined as an academic. The point is not what you do, but why you do it, and that you exercise those principles every day.
There are several reasons why I still believe it’s important to have an online presence, though. If you’re going to be taken seriously in a business venture, or somebody is thinking about giving you an opportunity, whether that’s business, personal or leisure, you need to have an account of who you are somewhere that can be reviewed and demonstrated in a relevant way. If you go for a job interview, you have a CV. It’s a summary of who you are.
At the end of the day, I’m building a brand around farrier work, teaching martial arts and craftsmanship. If none of that is capable of being viewed anywhere, how is somebody supposed to know what the brand is about, or who the man behind the brand is?
I look at social media a little like the old days when somebody would nail a board in a field with a sign saying, Gas station, two miles on the left. That was how you drew attention to your business. The digital world is simply an evolved version of that.
I’m not going to pretend that I don’t appreciate modern conveniences, medicines, foods or the ability to access an enormous amount of knowledge at my fingertips. Nor am I going to adopt the attitude of some of these influencers who promote an unrealistic idea of living an ancestral lifestyle at one with nature, while using all the conveniences of modern technology to promote it.
I understand that social media is part of the modern-day audience ecosystem, and that it can open doors and create opportunities behind the scenes. But I’ve made a deliberate choice to be a producer of social media rather than a consumer of it.
There’s another element to it as well, which is leading by example. When I think about martial arts, I continue to learn and train, learn new techniques and do new things because I believe that as a teacher, you should never stop being a student.
So with that in mind, I think there’s value in showing somebody who’s thinking about getting on the same path as you, but who’s perhaps not as far down that road yet, what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it. We all need some form of motivation, inspiration or a North Star to look towards from time to time.
I also understand the marketing argument that you are not your audience. And I’m doing these things for myself, not for the approval of other people. But the breadcrumbs I leave are for those who have come from a similar pathway to mine, or who want to know whether there’s a way to develop a brand and put themselves out there without falling into the typical traps, ploys and pitfalls of the content creation world.
I know that the game is often to produce large volumes of content, and I understand why people do that. But I’d much rather do the work in the background, connect with influential or well-known people because I’m actually doing something, and then build an audience from those experiences and the opportunities that come from them.
Rather than set out with the primary desire to build an audience and end up bypassing the things I believe in doing in the offline world. And I suppose that’s what it comes back to for me. Whether the things I’m saying and doing are taking me in the direction I want to go, or whether I’m starting to engineer myself around what other people want to see.
Because once the presentation becomes a substitute for the substance, I think you’ve lost sight of what you were supposed to be doing in the first place.
For anyone interested, I’ve put together a short video showing a little of what I’ve been doing over the past few months, from craftsmanship and farrier work to martial arts and podcast appearances.
