Stop hiding behind credentials #substack #shorts

You know, I have credentials in that I have a BA, you know, in history, American studies, and education. That got me my first job as a teacher teaching history at some pretty famous private institutions, which was all well and good. Turned out to be not the thing that I was really meant to do at that point in my life. And, you know, to your point, you're, you know, credentials can be useful and helpful for sure. They can also be— chasing credentials can also be a seductive way to hide. And for the most part, nobody's going to actually hire you because of your credentials unless it's to create deniability if things don't work out. One of the things that happened to me when I first started was because I was a coach and a head coach in Seth Godin's programs during the pandemic. Because we had already been doing a lot of online meetings, communications, teaching, and so forth. I would get asked by organizations to teach them like, how do we do what we do online now because we can't do it in person? And I would, you know, respond like, oh, I'm happy to organize a Zoom and walk you through the things that are working for me and working for us. And then they'd ask me for my credentials. And I'd say, I don't have any credentials. My credentials are you called me because I work for Seth Godin. And if that's not good enough, go find somebody else. Because if, if you want to, when you say, let me see your credentials, you're saying I'm going to hire you because you have a piece of paper so that if things don't work out, I can say, well, we hired the guy with credentials and it didn't work out. Not my fault. Um, put yourself on the hook, you know, is, is what I would essentially say. Like what we do works and it'll work for you if you do the work, but if you're not going to do the work, then it won't work. But that's gonna be on you, not on me.