You market yourself without becoming a hype account by showing real results in plain language and balancing them with real life. The uncomfortable part is that you still have to show the highlight reel, because modest doesn’t stop the scroll.
What keeps you from becoming a fireworks-and-confetti account is that your results are true and you let people see the human being behind the work. This question came into the Small Business Owners Community, and I took it on Businessing with Pat Miller.
Why does promoting myself feel so gross?
Because you’d rather be liked than loud, and that’s a decent instinct. The question was: I scroll past posts where every result is amazing and every graphic has fireworks on it, so how do I market myself without becoming that?
I feel that objection personally. When you’re building something and you watch people online hyping themselves nonstop, the reaction is “I don’t want to be that guy.” You want people to work with you because they think you’re good at this and good to work with. You don’t want to be bombastic and you don’t want to spike the football. Nobody grows up wanting to be the person declaring their own greatness into a phone camera. That discomfort is normal, and it’s also the thing standing between you and the customers who have never heard of you.
Do I actually have to show off to get attention?
Yes. Getting attention for a small business means showing your highlight reel, and that’s the job. Think about how much content is competing for the same eyeballs you want. Why would anybody stop scrolling unless they saw a result that caught them? “I helped 15 business owners get B-plus results” isn’t going to do it. “I helped this business owner change their life, and I can change yours too” makes somebody stop and go, “okay, tell me more.”
That second sentence is uncomfortable to write. It’s uncomfortable for me too. But uncomfortable isn’t the same as wrong, and the market doesn’t hand out attention for being humble about work you actually did.
What if I don’t have a highlight reel to show?
Then that’s the real problem, and it’s a fixable one. You’re getting results for your clients or you wouldn’t still be open. So the question is how many of those stories you’ve actually captured. If the honest answer is “not enough,” you have a collection problem, not a marketing problem.
When you finish with a client, are you asking for a Google review? Five stars preferred, thank you. Are you doing any kind of exit conversation where they tell you in their own words what changed and where you went past what they expected? Inside my Claude training I use a skill that crawls my email for the nice things people have already said about my work and drafts a note back asking if I can quote them. They almost always say yes. Capturing the stories is half the battle of telling your story online.
How do I balance results with being a real person?
You don’t soften the results. You surround them. The results have to be declarative. You have to be able to say “here’s what changed for this client, and here she is saying it in her own words.” Don’t water that down. But a feed that’s nothing except testimonials starts to feel a little creepy, so mix in the rest of your life as an owner. What are you doing on a Monday morning? What’s a conversation you had with a client this week that stuck with you? What are you reading?
Letting people in a little is what keeps the results from reading like an infomercial. Who you are and what you get done are two different things, and you need both. If you only ever post relationship and purpose content, that won’t stop the scroll either.
Questions owners ask
How do I promote my business without sounding arrogant?
Let the client do the talking. A specific result in a customer’s own words reads as evidence, not bragging, and it does the same job without the fireworks.
How do I ask a client for a testimonial?
Ask right after the win, while it’s fresh, and name the outcome you want them to speak to. If they already praised you in an email, ask to quote that line.
Do Google reviews still matter for a small business?
Yes. They’re still one of the first things a prospect checks.
How much personal content should I mix in?
Enough that people can picture the person behind the work. It’s the counterweight to the results.
Here’s the homework. Ask every client relationship that went well for a testimonial, and go get Google reviews while you’re at it. If posting the results still makes your skin crawl, have one business friend say the declarative sentence out loud for you, or hire it out. I did that, and it helped, because my marketing team has no problem saying the conference is the best of the year or the community is the only one that does what it does. Those are the sentences I get too aw-shucks to say about my own work, and somebody has to say them. Watch the full episode for the rest of it.