The Unwritten Rule Your Customers Are Sick Of

This one's for the business owners (and aspiring ones), especially the experts and artists who struggle with the "social media thing." It's also for my friends who wonder, what the hell can an I-O psychologist do for you?

I keep getting asked the same question lately, by people doing genuinely impressive work.

This past year, networking with people from China to England, I've met business owners and Ph.D.-level experts who want to know exactly one thing: how did you pull in almost 12 million social media views on my business pages this year?

It always surprises me. Partly because I still think of myself as an I-O psychologist, not a content creator. Partly because these are genuinely brilliant, accomplished people, and the question feels backwards coming from them to me.

While the honest answer is always partially LUCK, I think there's something else here. I believe the same skills that make good I-O psychologists also make good business marketers, but something stops us from seeing the transferable skills (also quite ironic for our field).

So when a founder or a researcher asks me how I built an engaged audience, the honest answer isn't a tactic. It's that the day job and the content are the same skill, pointed in two directions.

The Same Skill, Pointed in Two Directions

If you read my piece on the promotion pipeline problem, you already know I think about this from the organizational side constantly — the mechanic who gets promoted and suddenly can't talk to customers, the manager whose read on the floor never survives the trip up to leadership. The short version: many struggling organizations expect the translation to run one direction, and only one group ever gets asked to change.

And it hit me recently, this same problem of cross-group translation, from bottom to top, is the same thing happening to experts and founders with their content and marketing. Just in reverse.

People who are experts in something — especially if they come from a family of professionals — often have a genuinely hard time explaining their expertise in a way regular people understand and can use. And if people don't understand how something applies to them, they don't buy it. This is famously called the Curse of Knowledge. When you are an expert in something, especially after a while, it's hard to connect with non-experts about it. Because you forget what it was like to NOT be an expert, so you don't know where to start.

My Redneck Ass Background

I think I make good content, because I have a redneck ass background.

You heard me. I have built my career around translating the unwritten rules of work for the working class. I have collected data from hundreds of people who have experienced social class mobility, and I have asked them "what were the unwritten rules as you moved up in your career, which nobody told you but they expected?" Consequently, I have been able to take an evidence-based approach to helping people translate specific, ground-level experience into language powerful enough to be heard by leadership, and how to translate their experience into what they bring to the leadership table.

The PhDs and founders showing up in my inbox have the opposite problem: language powerful enough for a boardroom, and no idea how to make it specific enough for a stranger scrolling at 11pm. Same skill. Opposite direction. Most people only ever get taught one side of it. And it's costing them bottom-up communication (the number one predictor of the top-performing firms in the S&P 500), and for new business... I think it's costing them customers.

People who've crossed class lines already have this skill built in, for what it's worth. They've been doing this translation, in both directions, their whole careers. It usually gets filed under "code-switching exhaustion." A cost. Something to manage, or recover from.

So how did I achieve 12 million views (and counting) for my business? As a solopreneur? My inner redneck, darlin'. Every time I have explained what I do to a younger brother. Every time I have visited my rural hometown and gone to the mechanic who said, "Your daddy was in here last week, sayin' you got some kind of master's degree or somethin' now? Congrats darlin'!" Every time I have spoken with a client who is relieved to finally not have to mask how they actually speak at work. I have practiced this skill over and over again. The skill of not getting "too big for my britches." The skill of speaking to people who have different areas of expertise, from medical knowledge to why the hell my car is making that funny noise.

This experience is not unique. Researchers Sean R. Martin and Caroline Newman at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business have found that class transitioners have unique cultural skills. They can relate to people who are different than them, making them very valuable employees. They are an asset to the flow of information in an organization. Yet, they are often exhausted. And socially isolated. Because nobody is doing the same for them.

This has been the purpose of my research and business for ten years. To collaborate with organizations and witness the business gains they experience by having a healthy work environment that includes people from working-class backgrounds. Social class is rarely talked about at work, which is ridiculous because it is inherently baked into work relationships. Without collaboration between owners, leaders, and workers, the business will not be as effective. It's like an Olympic swimmer wrapping themselves in carpet before a swim, instead of shaving and slathering on oil. There's just too much friction.

There are inherent assets to having a promotion pipeline that makes sense and is well-developed. There are also opportunities for us as experts to make sure we don't forget what our customers want, need, and understand.

What This Means for You as a Founder

So if you are a founder who is struggling with media marketing, I challenge you to spend more time away from your peers. Have conversations with people who are different from you. Don't just talk, listen. What do they think you do? How did they come to that understanding? What would help clear that up? What do people find interesting about your work? And start there.

And it doesn't have to be perfect. You can re-record and edit (don't force yourself to go live right away, be kind!). Some of it, like any other skill you learned, comes with practice. I see videos of myself from two years ago, and I think "Why did anyone listen to me? I sound so timid." (Which, btw, is something I've NEVER been called in real life, but cameras can be funny that way.) It'll be a good track of your progress, and you can always delete it later.

Let your inner redneck out, baby.

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This same translation gap — expert language on one side, everyday language on the other — is exactly what I help organizations fix in their promotion pipelines too. Take the 2-minute quiz → if you're wondering whether it's showing up on your team, or book 20 minutes → to talk it through.