I Didn't Know You Did That

Most of us have had some version of this happen. You spend weeks trying to find someone to sort out your website, or your taxes, or the leak under the kitchen sink. You read the reviews, compare a few quotes, and eventually hand the job to a stranger and hope it goes well.

A month later it comes up over coffee with someone you’ve known for years, and they look almost hurt. “Why didn’t you ask me? That’s what I do.”

The only honest answer is the one in the title. I didn’t know you did that.

Nobody was hiding anything. Your friend just never brought it up, probably because they’ve sat through enough family dinners with the relative who steers every conversation toward whatever they’re selling this year, and decided that saying nothing was better than becoming that person. It’s an easy choice to understand. It still meant the work went to someone else, and nobody came out of it better off.

Plenty of people building a business online make the same choice. Week after week they turn up in the community, answer questions, cheer other members on and build relationships that are completely real, yet somehow never get round to saying what they actually offer. That can feel like good manners, maybe even like the whole point, since a lot of them came looking for a community because they were tired of being sold to.

The trouble is that the need doesn’t go away when you keep quiet. Somewhere in that same community is a person with exactly the problem you solve, and sooner or later they’re going to pay someone to fix it. If it isn’t you, the person they’ve come to trust, it will most likely be a name they found on page three of a search, and your silence will have made that choice for them.

Trust Isn’t Meant to Sit on a Shelf

Trust isn’t meant to sit on a shelf.

Much of what’s been written on this blog argues for patience: don’t push, let trust take its time, and only recommend what genuinely fits. None of that has changed. The reason you earn trust in the first place, though, is so your word carries some weight when the right person finally needs help. Building the relationship and making the offer were never two separate jobs, and the first is what makes the second worth listening to.

Telling people what you do doesn’t have to turn you into the relative at dinner, either. Say it once, in plain words, somewhere people will come across it again, like your profile, your introduction post or the short line under your name. Say what you do and who it’s for, and skip the part where everyone needs it, because everyone doesn’t.

Then carry on as before, showing up and helping where you can. Most people will read that line and keep scrolling, which is fine, since it was never written for them. The one who needs it will remember, and given the choice, most of us would rather hire someone we already know than take a chance on a stranger.

They just need to know you do that.