"If you don't toot your own horn, don't complain that there's no music." — Guy Kawasaki
How to share your wins without feeling braggadocious or cringey, and why you should (hint: it's not about you).
A friend of mine recently spoke at an event and crushed it on stage. The only speaker to get 5/5 stars. He wanted to share this win on LinkedIn, but hesitated because he didn't want to feel like he was bragging.
Can you relate to this?
He knew the numbers were good. He knew sharing them could book his next talk. But posting about it felt cringe to him, so he almost didn't post it.
I get it. When it's time to talk about myself, I freeze up too.
Here's what took me years to learn: When shared the right way, your win does more for others than it does for you.
Back in 2014, a reporter wanted to interview me. I didn't want to do it. The stories he was after were the messy ones: being the trash boy at a nightclub, getting carjacked, struggling in business. A friend pushed me to talk to him anyway.
Two weeks later I was on the front page of the AJC business section, in a column called Secrets to Success. I had no creative liberty over the article at all. I didn't even know there was going to be an article. The headline: "Entrepreneur had an epiphany at gunpoint." I never would have picked that. But those stories I was too embarrassed to tell later ended up in my books and on stages around the world. Because it helped people. I made the front page of that business section three times that same year, and not one of those wins started with me feeling comfortable.
Years later, the reporter told me something that stuck. Out of every story he ran in that column, mine got shared the most. My read on why? Not the highlight reel. The struggles.
Lessons for you:
There's profit in sharing your pain. The stuff you want to hide is often the exact thing someone else needs to hear. When you share a win or a hard lesson, you hand the person on the other side two things: proof that this works, and permission to try it themselves.
You need social proof. Before anyone chooses you, they want to know other people already did. Nobody wants to be the guinea pig. Your reviews, your results, your testimonials answer the quiet question every prospect is asking: can I trust this? So stop hiding your proof.
Real beats perfect. A flawless five-star record makes people suspicious. A 4.7, with a couple of honest bumps, feels human. And human is what earns trust now.
The tactical move that changed this for me was building a testimonials vault. One place where every kind word, review, and result lives. You can do this for your business too. When I ask AI to find patterns in my keynote reviews, one phrase repeatedly shows up: "mind blowing." So I stopped reaching for my own adjectives and started using my audiences' own words. Their words carry a weight mine never could.
Start your proof file this week. Open a new document, and every time someone says something kind, leaves a review, or sends you a result, drop it in. Screenshots count. Do it for a week and watch it fill up. That file is the start of your own testimonials vault.
Then, the next time you have a win, you won't sit there debating whether to post. You'll open the file, grab one real quote, tie it to a quick lesson, and share it. The hard decision is already made for you.
One shared win, framed as a gift to the reader, beats a hundred you kept to yourself. That's the manual start. If you want to automate this process, keep reading
The real block is overthinking, so put your overthinking on autopilot.
I don't sit and stew over self-promotional posts anymore, because I hand the mechanics to AI. It turns my testimonials vault into content and finds the patterns in my reviews faster than I ever could, and it is deeply trained on my voice. My hack is simple: let someone or something else publish, so I don't talk myself out of it.
And don't limit your agent to a tidy list of quotes. Feed it everything:
Podcast and video transcripts
Your Google, Yelp, and Amazon reviews
Screenshots of texts and DMs
LinkedIn recommendations
Your email inbox (let it scour years of "thank you" and "that worked" messages you forgot were sitting there)
Survey answers
Zoom and call recordings
Client Slack messages
Comments under your posts
Dump it all in one folder and let your agent pull the patterns you'd miss by hand.
Open your main AI assistant and give it something like this:
"Look at the most recent testimonials and reviews about my business. Find the exact words and patterns people repeat. Then take my recent win [describe it] and write a short, value-first post that teaches the reader one useful thing and works the win in naturally. Keep it in my voice. No bragging, no hype."
Let the machine handle the words you'd agonize over. You just show up and hit publish. Or better yet, connect it to your accounts so it can auto-publish for you.
IMPORTANT: Make sure your AI tools are deeply trained on how to speak and write in your voice, otherwise you risk sounding like generic AI slop. I teach how to do this in depth in my books and workshops. So if you're reading this, you probably already have this covered, but just a reminder.
This week on King Moves (How to Brag About Yourself Without Sounding Like a Jerk | Ep. 138), Justin and I unpack how to promote yourself when tooting your own horn makes your skin crawl, why social proof does the selling for you, and the small mindset shifts that make sharing your wins feel natural instead of gross.
If you've ever buried a good result because posting it felt like bragging, this one is for you.
Stop playing life on hard mode. Automate your success.
Until next time,
Ethan King
A.I. Automation for Business Growth
Keynote Speaker | Author | CEO | Strategist
ethan@ethanking.com
P.S. This whole issue told you to share your proof. So here's me doing it, even though I hesitated at first.
Atlanta News First had me on to break down how to actually make AI work for you. If you know someone asking "is AI coming for my job?" or "where do I even start?", send them this news clip.
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P.P.S. I practice what I preach. My testimonials vault has 1,635 entries in it right now. Three of the most recent:
"It honestly changed my life off the rip. Out of the whole entire everything I paid for the whole course, your session alone was worth it for me... I really feel like I can take this information, apply it into my own life and really grow."
— Salaar Khan, Founder, Gas Bros
"It's truly inspiring. I leave energized and I look forward to learning more and connecting with you and seeing how you can help our company."
— Larry, CEO and 30-year EO member
"If you ever get the chance to attend one of Ethan King's keynotes or bring him in for a workshop, do it. It is super cool and easily contains $50–100K of real applicable business value."
— Samir Patel, Professor, Real Estate Entrepreneurship, Georgia State University
How can I help your business, association, or organization? Let's talk.
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