From Invisible to In-Demand: How to Get Visible Without Selling Out with Goldie Chan

You don’t need to fake confidence or chase followers to grow your visibility. In this episode, Allison talks with Goldie Chan, author of Personal Branding for Introverts and often called the “Oprah of LinkedIn,” about how to show up online in a way that feels genuine, warm, and sustainable.

They discuss the difference between reputation and personal brand, how to communicate your expertise without ego, and why imperfection makes people trust you more. Goldie also shares how introverts can find their rhythm on LinkedIn – posting content that feels natural and engaging while still expanding their reach.

Grab Allison’s free guide: “7 Shifts to Build Real Authority: without playing the influencer game”: https://lanelit.com/authority 

🎧 Whether you’re preparing to launch your book or simply ready to stop being the best-kept secret in your field, this episode will help you show up confidently and communicate your value with ease.

Watch now to learn how to:

• Define your personal brand without overthinking it
• Show confidence without sounding self-promotional
• Use LinkedIn to attract opportunities naturally
• Share personal stories that build real connection

👉 Watch the full conversation and start shaping a brand that reflects who you really are.

In this episode, Allison and Goldie discuss:

• [00:01:00] The truth about personal branding vs. reputation
• [00:06:00] How to show up online authentically
• [00:10:00] Why visibility starts with confidence, not ego
• [00:14:00] How to find your content sweet spot
• [00:18:00] Blending personal stories with professional credibility

Resources Mentioned:

• Allison’s “7 Shifts to Build Real Authority: without playing the influencer game” free guide: https://lanelit.com/authority 
• Goldie Chan’s Book: Personal Branding for Introverts: https://bookshop.org/a/55773/9781541705463 
• Connect Goldie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/goldie/ 
• Goldie Chan’s website: https://www.goldiechan.com 

If you loved today’s conversation with Goldie Chan, please take a moment to rate and review The Author’s Edge on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your reviews help more authors discover how to grow their visibility with integrity and impact.

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Transcript

Goldie: 0:00

Reputation is the story they tell about you when you're not in the room. And personal branding is the story that you tell when you are in the room.

Allison: 0:12

Welcome back to the Author's Edge. I am your host, Allison Lane, and I am here for you because I know everything you're doing makes you uncomfortable. If you're a seasoned author, maybe now you are speaking on a national stage and you've never done that before. If you are just getting started, you're like, how do I brand my LinkedIn profile when I don't want the company I work for to think that I don't love them anymore, or the hospital where I serve patients to think that I'm going out on my own and I'm leaving my practice? Nobody thinks that, but it is hard., You're doing the thing that you're meant to do and now you want to broaden the ripple effect you have in the world. I'm going to lay a little glossary term on you that we're going to be talking about today. It's called personal branding. And that's why Goldie Chan is here because it's hard to figure that out for yourself. Goldie, thank you for being here.

Goldie: 1:15

Well, I'm so glad to be here. Being an introvert for my entire life. I myself have built my personal brand as an author, as an introvert. So, I'm excited to talk more about that.

Allison: 1:28

Let me just lob some objections at you right away, Everything we get told sounds like personal branding sounds inauthentic. And I've even heard people say, I don't want to build a personal brand. How can we change people's minds about what it is we're talking about? Can you just start by defining what we're talking about?

Goldie: 1:51

Absolutely. So, I like to define personal branding in the context of a question I always get, which is what's personal branding versus reputation, right? I think a lot of people use these two terms interchangeably. So, to me, reputation is the story they tell about you when you're not in the room. And personal branding is the story that you tell when you are in the room. Personal branding isn't the scary in fact, if you have social media, if you're on LinkedIn, or Instagram, or any of these social platforms, you probably already have a personal brand and don't even know it. Why wouldn't you want to take control of that and be the person telling that story? We live in a world where we have a personal brand. It exists both online and offline.

Allison: 2:41

And what I see people say, I wouldn't call myself an expert. And I said no one's going to drag you out of your basement and then put you out and we've branded you because that's not anyone else's job. when people tell me I'm not comfortable saying that. I think to myself, but that's what you want people to say. And if you are not comfortable titling yourself, leading voice on AI and motherhood, then who else is going to say it?'cause it's not someone else's job. Or they might say it not in the most powerful way.'cause they're not giving that much thought to it. So, how can we change people's minds about taking the time to just create that nugget of how you introduce yourself

Goldie: 3:37

so, I think it's such a common thing for introverts to be the quietest person in the room and I don't want to be perceived as having an ego. If you spent any amount of time on LinkedIn, you've seen the posts that look like they're pure ego on LinkedIn. I love to define, ego versus confidence. Ego is when you just shout who you are in the room. Confidence is when you are who you are in the room. People don't always want to start with saying, oh, I'm the number one expert in this field. I also ask you to think about how many years you've worked in the industry that you've worked in. How many years have you spent on your subject matter expertise? Narrow that down on just the stuff you know, the stuff you know at work. But I think that it's so important that you know, that you're good at what you work on. And that's as simple as it gets. And if terms like expert are scary, you just need to know, okay, I've had so many years of experience. For example, wrangling cows. So, I am in expert cow wrangler. But if the word expert is scary, just know that you are in your universe, a very seasoned cow wrangler.

Allison: 5:03

Accomplished, right. There's so many words you can use.

Goldie: 5:06

There's so many synonyms. And if you're writer, I hope for you that there's many words that you can replace with expert.

Allison: 5:13

Go to word hippo.com, you'll figure it out. That's where all the synonyms live. Now, Goldie, you're so funny expert cow Wrangler. I actually have gone to a working cattle ranch four times and wrangled cows. And if I wasn't doing this and I didn't have a family, I would be doing that. Because I love some horses and some big Montana fields. What you're saying really speaks to me, especially because when I realized that you have been dubbed the Oprah of LinkedIn. You're so warm. And you're not doing all the like, promotion and look at me do this and I'm selling that. It's, I know so much more about you,

Goldie: 5:58

Right, so you're an author and author has to sell books. It has been a wild journey being an introvert selling a book for introverts to introverts.

Allison: 6:08

Every author wants to hide in a groundhog hole until their book comes out, and then they want to come out and just sell it. What you've done is allow people to know you before you're promoting something. Yes. And that is different. And for those who are saying, I want to get that book. Just check the show notes. And we will give you your opportunity to get personal branding for introverts. I know from LinkedIn, what a green thumb you have. That's just different. And it points to the fact that you can be on LinkedIn or you can be on Instagram, you can be a writer or be a keynote speaker. But you're also showing us how to be a human and show warmth and vulnerability without feeling like you have to package everything. Make it polished and you make it look so easy.

Goldie: 7:07

I think since you've worked with so many authors, I'm sure that you know this, imperfection, which makes us human is so delightful and so attractive. And I don't mean just attractive in the romantic sense, but attractive in the friendship and the colleague and the, I want to hire this person sense to have that imperfection is nice. And in the advent of ai, as a writer who actually writes, I think that it's fascinating to see there's things that are too perfect now. I'd rather see that spelling error every once in a while. I'd rather see that slightly misused phrase.

Allison: 7:48

We can sniff it out too. Sometimes we don't know why we like a post versus not like one.

Goldie: 7:57

We need to make words really valuable. I think that the best kind of posts on LinkedIn really value words. And it's not that they're even succinct, but I'm sure that you've also read long posts that are full of actual value, that are genuinely interesting, that you learn something or you learn something about that person and they're longer, but they're densely filled with value.

Allison: 8:23

I saw one yesterday that this could have been an hour long workshop. I'm cutting and pasting into my calendar a whole hour to do what this person said to do. Yes, because it's so, So incredibly generous. My biggest pet peeve when someone's headline still says what their job title is, like lawyer, which we don't know what kind of lawyer you are. Right? Maybe you are a mob lawyer or maybe you're defending the rights of children. Right. We don't know. So, job title is not a good headline and that is the first step to understanding personal branding is to know what a bad personal brand is. And it's when you allow laziness, it's like your lack of attention to something is allowing your busyness to sort of default to a personal brand that you really wouldn't choose.

Goldie: 9:26

Yeah. without intention, we have bland, right? We have whatever is the first word that comes to your mind. But if you are thinking about, and personal branding is a scary term to you, or it feels like a cringe term to you. I want to replace that instead then with how are you wanting to be perceived in the work world or how do you want clients to find you? And chances are, if you are thinking about writing a book, especially a non-fiction business book, you probably have five years, 10 years. More than two decades worth of expertise that you're bringing to the table. So, I hope that you sit with more confidence knowing that you know a lot just by the number of years that you've worked in your field.

Allison: 10:13

I want to talk about the type of person that is at that crossroads in their career, where they're usually my age, which is older than dirt. I'm older than you. And that person is in the career that they've chosen. And they're not changing careers unless you do want to go be a cat whisperer, highly recommend. They have a lifetime of wisdom. And they feel a responsibility to share it. They're not going to retire, but they do want to do something as well and bigger. So, if you do want to do that, you need to expand how you describe yourself. Goldie, what you said earlier struck with me. You said you have to make sure that people know what they're getting when they find you. I want to rephrase that because it's not someone else's job to come and find you. We want someone to notice you, but it's your job to be noticeable. And if you are that person who is ready to do more, you have to establish that personal brand so that you are noticeable.

Goldie: 11:31

you don't have a personal brand unless you have an audience and you aren't able to communicate whatever delightful, beautiful, amazing, et cetera story with your infinite years of wisdom to an audience if the audience doesn't exist. I do hope that you begin to think, where do the people I want to connect to live? And how can I start to be part of that community? How can I start to be in conversation with those people who are in that community that I want to be part of? And sometimes it's as simple as starting to join online groups.

Allison: 12:09

When someone introduces you to another person and you think, oh, that was so nice of them to say, write that down. What people don't know and is what is obvious to you, that's what people need is connection and informed education. They need what you can provide. If you're a psychotherapist, don't put psychotherapist in your headline. Put helping people heal from anxiety. Or move confidently through life, even though they have anxiety. We want to know what you do and Goldie, what should people be posting because we covered what they shouldn't.

Goldie: 12:46

There's a couple of steps to get to the posting point. One is to know what audience you want to speak to. And then, the other one I think that is helpful is to know how do you like to post? So, I am a writer, so I love text base. So I am pretty active on threads now because it's very text-based. I also like video um, and I make video on one of the most uncool platforms on the internet, and that's LinkedIn. Part of how I got the Oprah of LinkedIn moniker is so I was one of the first people on the platform to create LinkedIn video. And I did over 800 daily consecutive videos. by posting very consistently about my subject matter expertise, which is marketing and branding. People started to reach out to me to say, can you consult on marketing and branding? Because I was talking about marketing and branding without trying to sell them something for a very long time. So, I would say, first of all, what is that idea that you want to be known for, or that area that you want to be known for? Is it waste management product manager? Then, that's a incredibly narrow field that you can start creating content around. And then, the second thing is, how do you like to create content? Do you like writing? Do you like making videos? And if you like writing, do you like to do short form? Do you like to make newsletters? Or maybe you really want to do long form videos. One of the best ways to think about it is how do I like to communicate? And I will actually go one step farther than that. How do I love to? And the closer you can get to love, the closer you will get to doing something that is sustainable too.

Allison: 14:23

If it feels like agony, you won't do it. What you love doing is easy.

Goldie: 14:31

Yes.

Allison: 14:31

And if you feel like, oh my God, now I have to learn about video and editing, and I'm not sure how to put the captions on. And it feels like a surprise pop quiz in calculus. Then you're not going to do it because you're always going to feel like you're failing. We want it to be easy, and we also want the people who are looking for your support to see that you are joyful when you're giving it, which means it doesn't have to be perfect. We don't need you to hire a copywriter. We do need you to show up.

Goldie: 15:09

You do still have to post, right? You do still have to create content. But the other one is, I saw someone the other day say that they didn't want to get into commenting, responding to comments on their post because it was beneath them. And this is the post that they wrote on LinkedIn that went viral and they were very pre post. And I think that to me at least, that's a really interesting place to come from. That feels really privileged in some ways because so many. In

Allison: 15:40

all the ways. In all the ways. In all the ways.

Goldie: 15:43

And I think first of all, if you are getting comments on your posts, please respond to those people who are commenting on your post because they will comment more on your posts that they know that you'll respond. But secondly is to go out there and to, and I will just give some homework to identify three to five interesting people on LinkedIn that you want to get to know more and to make this easier maybe have them be people who have 10,000 or less followers or 30,000 or less followers. There's a chance that you will actually start to converse with them. And the reason why you want to pick someone at that level is you want to start to appear in their feed too. So, the more you start commenting on other people's posts, the more you just start popping up in different feeds outside of yourself, and then you start getting that exposure and people start discovering you and the LinkedIn algorithm, which always changes over time and is different as we speak. It will hopefully start to favor you. When I first started to blow up and do well on LinkedIn, I was taking meetings with a bunch of different people and this one woman I took a meeting with, I remember that at the time I had done maybe 150 daily videos. So, that's over three plus months of daily videos without stopping. Yes. And she told me she had done three videos. And she said, why am I not getting this? I want to get the same level that you got. And she's, like, I'm going to do two more videos and I better get it. And it was that same attitude. That her expectation level set was if she did five videos, suddenly all the doors had opened, everything would magically change for her. So, it's helpful to also expectations set that you need to do this consistently for at least three to six months, if not more than that, preferably a year or two to start really growing traction, especially on a platform like LinkedIn.

Allison: 17:48

nobody's going to buy your book if you don't also have a digital presence. So, you have to give people, a sampler platter before they want your book. Imagine Goldie, if you didn't create this massive success for yourself on LinkedIn and you just came out with a book, people would be like what does she know? Because there wouldn't be trust there. But of course now there is because you're providing so much value. Can you give folks a sense of how they can weave in some personal, so that it's not always, here's a tip, here's a tip, here's a tip.

Goldie: 18:23

I think that it's such a fine dance to weave in your personal story, especially on LinkedIn. So, on other platforms like Instagram, it's a little easier to show your personal life because that's what we expect. Expectation on LinkedIn is really career focused. And so, that's how I filter in the personal news that I share. Is this personal news that affects or has had a deep impact on my work or on my career? And for me, my cancer journey did because I had to take off really close to a year off of work and not work at all. And so, it had such a deep impact on my work. And it's also a struggle that I know so many people do in private because it is, especially in American culture, considered pretty shameful to talk about cancer and to talk about chronic illness and to talk about all of these big scary health things. Because of that, I actually really wanted to be personally very vulnerable and share about it very publicly. I think that's a great way to think about, should I share this personal story on LinkedIn? Does it tie into your work? Does it impact your career in a significant way? And then, maybe that is something that you want to share. I think it also comes back down to that. Will this be an interesting story to share that has meat on the bones, that has substance, that has context? And if so, if you're checking off all these boxes, then yes, share that story.

Allison: 19:59

See, there's your introduction, your invitation, not that you needed one. Do not wait for an invitation or permission. But if we all agree that we are serving and not just advertising. Yes. A story makes your service memorable. Yes. It's hard to remember all the tips. But a story, we get it. Goldie, where do you want people to find you?

Goldie: 20:24

so, either my website Goldie chan.com or on my LinkedIn linkedin.com/slash Goldie. Yes, I know the URL because I say it all the time.

Allison: 20:33

Goldie, you're so helpful because we don't hear enough about what to do when this doesn't come naturally. Every author is expected to be their own marketer, but they're not told this is your responsibility. Or even how to go about it. So, you're really doing everyone such a service and a generosity by not just showing them, but writing the book that gives them the methods that have worked for you. And I really appreciate you.

Goldie: 21:10

I am so excited that we got to chat today. And that I hope that some introverts who are in the corner with me petting the dog, that you bravely go out there and start with one. Try to do one piece of content. Try to make one new connection. Try to leave one comment on LinkedIn. The moment you start with one, you're already one step ahead of where you were before.

Allison: 21:34

So true. And remember, you can do this. You don't have to wait for when you're on sabbatical and you can really pay attention to it. You can get really clear on your activities, what you plan to do. You can go to my website and get a guide for how to do it, how to build real authority without playing the influencer game. Keep showing up for your people'cause they are looking for you. If you are not willing to show up, someone else is going to step in. So, you have to be the one who steps forward, no one's coming to drag you out the shadows. We will see you next time on the Author's edge.