The Story
BEFORE
When Tracy came to us, she had every credential you could want. Former CIA officer, former FBI officer, national security expert, author, professor, and regular national news contributor.
She had every credential you could want, but credentials and content are two different things. The trap most highly credentialed experts fall into is leaning on authority as the whole strategy. They post when there's a headline to react to, a credential to mention, or a hot take tied directly to their expertise, and the second none of those are in front of them, the content dries up.
That was Tracy. Anytime something hit the news cycle, she had plenty to say. The second the news quieted down, she had no idea what to post. The deeper issue underneath was that her content was leaning on her resume instead of connecting her expertise to what her audience actually wanted from her. Authority was doing all the talking, and the audience couldn't connect to it.
The parts of her experience that would have actually pulled people in stayed completely off the feed:
She was sitting on a goldmine of authority and using maybe 10% of it. Producers who could have been booking her had no way to see the full picture of who she was, so when they needed an expert, she wasn't the name that came to mind.
She had every credential you could want, but credentials and content are two different things. The trap most highly credentialed experts fall into is leaning on authority as the whole strategy. They post when there's a headline to react to, a credential to mention, or a hot take tied directly to their expertise, and the second none of those are in front of them, the content dries up.
That was Tracy. Anytime something hit the news cycle, she had plenty to say. The second the news quieted down, she had no idea what to post. The deeper issue underneath was that her content was leaning on her resume instead of connecting her expertise to what her audience actually wanted from her. Authority was doing all the talking, and the audience couldn't connect to it.
The parts of her experience that would have actually pulled people in stayed completely off the feed:
- The lived experience of being one of very few women to serve at both the CIA and FBI
- Years of training and threat assessment knowledge
- Her perspective on safety, being one of the only women in a male-dominated field, and parenting
- Behind-the-scenes of what intelligence work actually looks like
She was sitting on a goldmine of authority and using maybe 10% of it. Producers who could have been booking her had no way to see the full picture of who she was, so when they needed an expert, she wasn't the name that came to mind.
