Be the Signal

A few winters ago, I was driving down I-29 in a brutal Midwest blizzard.

The kind where you can’t see more than a few feet and you’re just praying you can make it to the next exit before you slide off the road, or worse.

In those moments, you don’t look around — you look for the white line. That single white line on the edge of the road becomes your focus.

As I’ve reflected lately in leading a professional services firm, our current business environment feels a lot like that. And I know in talking with many C54 members, I’m not alone.  

The blizzard we’re living in isn’t snow — it’s noise. Speed of updates. Conflicting advice. AI-generated content. Clients unsure of who to trust. Teams overwhelmed by change. And just like that blizzard, we’re all searching for guides and signals to help us navigate growth.  

So, in a world where the noise is constant, how do we become that white line, or signal, for the people who count on us and our team?

How Did We Get Here?

Over the last decade, firms like mine (and yours) built credibility through content, referrals, and reliable sales processes. Platforms like HubSpot and firms like Gartner championed the era of inbound marketing, promoting “lead magnets” and funnels featuring whitepapers, ebooks, guides, videos, all meant to earn attention and trust.

But those assets, once hard to produce and quick to create trust, are now created at scale and in a matter of minutes. AI has taken what used to be differentiators, and made them the same for everyone. You used to have advantage if you had a lot of content. Now that’s just expected.

As firm owners, we’re not just navigating a marketing and sales shift. We’re inside a full-blown trust crisis.

The Client Mindset Has Changed. So Must We.

Today’s B2B buyer is cautious. Whether they’re buying products or hiring service providers, it’s buyer beware at every turn.

They’re discerning, guarded; they don’t want to be “sold to”. Quite the opposite – they want to feel seen, understood, and equipped. The last thing they want is to be burned, tricked, or surprised.

A recent report from Pew Research sums it up nicely: “People learn to trust based on how they themselves have been treated.” Even if you haven’t burned a bridge, there’s a good chance your competitors have, and ruined trust building for everyone else in the industry.

When trust feels scarce, humans turn to what they know: People. Communities. Firsthand experience. Self-education. Quiet learning.

That means your next client is:

• Lurking on LinkedIn
• Reading a book about how to tackle their problem
• Watching YouTube late at night
• Listening to podcasts about a strategy or organizational change
• Asking peers in Slack
• Asking questions or browsing responses on Reddit (Reddit is seeing an 39%+ increase in daily active users thanks to the macro environment!)
• Bookmarking what feels human — and skipping the rest

They’re not waiting for a discovery call. They’re figuring it out before you ever know they’re looking.

If your firm isn’t showing up as a trusted voice during those quiet moments of consideration, you’re out of the running before you even knew there was a race.

As Founders and Service Providers, What Can We Do?

Here’s what I’m telling my team and my clients right now (and reminding myself in the process):

1.Be the signal, not the noise.

Post less, say more. Speak plainly. Deliver value that feels like it came from a human, not a prompt. Be a guide. Share the wins, and make sure to caution the pitfalls.

2. Get clear on what you stand for.

Your voice should attract the right people, and gently repel the wrong ones. The definition of noise stems from irrelevance. This means one-size-fits-all messaging needs is out. Specified relevance is here to stay.

3. Design for trust, not traffic.

Your content, sales process, and brand touchpoints should lower fear and raise confidence, but that’s not always correlated to traffic numbers. If trust is the currency, it’s built one piece at a time, in the form of conversations online, within text messages, social DMs, even video views and podcast listens.

4. Create from lived experience.

This is your differentiator now. It’s what can’t be copied, cloned, or ChatGPT’d. Your past is your IP. Don’t be afraid to use it and lead courageously based on your battle scars.

Be the Signal

As Reddit recently put it:

“Conversations are the new discovery. People are turning to platforms not for polished ads, but for personalized answers and genuine discussions.”

And I believe that’s the signal cutting through the storm. Real people showing up in real ways.

At SimpleStrat, we’re shifting our strategy a bit to accommodate this, but it’s also forcing us to have more strategic one-on-one conversations with clients and double down on studying behavior of how and why people search for and buy our services. We’re a HubSpot services company and we’re seeing an influx of potential clients – at a time that HubSpot themselves are putting out so much content, it’s no longer “how to do” something, but in what order, and which resource is the “best”?

It’s exhausting, so we aim to be the signal clients seek.

I hope you’ll be inspired to do the same – and be the white line for your clients in this blizzard of change