I'm really famous in a very small corner of the internet.

Here's what that's actually like.

I had a conversation with Mel Barfield on the Indie Business Club podcast recently, and the episode was called Fame Monster. I want to be very clear that I do not consider myself a celebrity. I am recognisable to a specific subset of people who spend time on LinkedIn. That is a significantly different situation to being famous. But it does come with its own particular set of experiences, and some of them are genuinely strange.

Let's start with the toilets. Because apparently this is where it happens.

I was at a conference, in the bathroom, washing my hands, minding my business, when someone came in and recognised me. She'd been following my content since the beginning, she said. She started reciting lines from my posts back to me. Posts that I had, in all likelihood, written in bed at 11pm before the school run, half asleep, that she had apparently memorised. Which is simultaneously the most flattering thing that has ever happened to me and deeply, profoundly strange when you're standing at a sink.

I didn't know what to say. I'm autistic and ADHD and I only know how to behave when I've got a frame of reference, and "someone quoting my own content at me in a public toilet while a queue of people watches" is not a frame of reference I'd prepared for. I stood there like an awkward turtle, trying to be warm and grateful, which I genuinely was, while also desperately wanting to dry my hands and leave.

The thing people forget when they come and say hello

The interactions I love most at events are the ones where someone introduces themselves. That's it. That's the whole thing. Just say your name. Tell me you follow me on LinkedIn and give me something to work with, because what happens when someone walks up and says "hi Lea" and then just stops and stares at me is that I have absolutely no idea what they're expecting. I don't know who they are. They might have been following me for years without ever commenting or messaging, which means from my perspective they don't exist yet, and I'm not being rude about that, it's just the reality.

When someone says "hi Lea, I follow you, I've never commented but I've been reading your stuff for two years, I'm Rachel," that becomes a lovely conversation immediately. When they just say hi and wait, I end up apologising for my own existence, which is a weird habit I've developed, and they tell me I have nothing to apologise for, which is also true, but there we are.

I've also had someone get out of a cab in Manchester, clock me on the street, hold up his phone with my LinkedIn profile on it to double check it was actually me, and then get very excited and ask for a photo. Which was genuinely cute, actually. And I've had a very young, very gay man whose name I never got run after me to say he'd been wanting to approach me for ages, ask if we could get coffee, make me wonder briefly whether I was being asked on a date by someone young enough to be my child, and then immediately relieve the situation by telling me he was about to go on a date with the cutest guy he'd ever seen. I was absolutely rooting for him.

The perks are real and I'm not going to pretend otherwise

I posted on LinkedIn asking if anyone had spare season tickets for Old Trafford because I wanted to take Dexter. A friend knew someone not using their Heritage Suite ticket. Next thing I know we're in the fancy bit of Old Trafford, five-course meal, private stadium tour, eight seats down from Sir Alex Ferguson.

Then a Man City fan saw the post and said, with the energy of someone who had a point to prove, that I hadn't seen proper hospitality until I'd been to the Etihad. He had a box. It was the Manchester Derby. We went. We had to be very careful not to cheer for United, which was genuinely difficult and also quite funny.

We've also done Formula One qualifying days. I flew to the Seychelles for a week, five-star, because I was delivering a masterclass there. There have been a lot of good things that have happened purely because enough people know who I am that doors open more easily. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that isn't real or that I don't appreciate it. I appreciate it enormously.

And the pricing thing is real too. I can charge more because people's perception of someone who is visibly successful at the thing they're selling is that they must be better at it. I'm not saying that's always accurate. I'm not saying I'm a better LinkedIn trainer than someone with 10,000 followers who's been doing it longer. I'm saying that perception exists and I'd be lying if I said it hadn't worked in my favour.

The part nobody tells you about: the more people trust you, the less people you trust

This is the bit that feels uncomfortable to say out loud but is genuinely true. Trust is a currency in business, and the more of it you've built, the more people want to use it for their own ends. Not everyone, not even most people. But enough that you learn to feel it coming.

I know when someone wants lunch because they want lunch with me. I also know when someone wants lunch because they want a photo they can post on LinkedIn before we've even ordered. I know the difference between someone who's genuinely pleased to meet me and someone who's glancing over my shoulder to see if there's anyone more useful they should be talking to instead. I've gotten good at it because I've had to.

The Kilimanjaro trip is the clearest example and I've not really talked about it publicly before. Before we even left, someone took payments from people going on the trip and disappeared with the money. So it was already off to a magnificent start. And then my sister overheard a conversation between one of the other people on the trip and someone back home, where this person was explaining that he was going to befriend me on the trip so they could leverage that connection for his colleague's business. My sister told me. I just quietly avoided him for the rest of it and posted almost nothing about the trip because I didn't want to give anybody the spotlight they'd come looking for. I was there to raise money for the charity. That was it.

I've also, more recently, let someone into The HoLT on a reduced basis because of a difficult situation they described. I believed them. They then went behind my back and tried to get hired by one of my clients. I was properly, genuinely furious. Not just at them, but at myself, for overriding the instinct that had already said something wasn't quite right. I keep saying I'm getting better at this and then I let my empathy override the evidence and end up annoyed about it.

I do things quietly now when it comes to helping people. I don't talk about when I subsidise a member going through a hard time, because the minute I mention it I get thirty more people trying the same approach. Not because they're all like that, but because some of them are, and I can't tell the difference from the outside anymore. My circle is smaller than it used to be and that's genuinely sad. But it's also genuinely necessary.

The viral post, the pro-lifers, and why I don't do political takes

I did a post on Instagram about deciding to go ahead with my pregnancy when Dexter's biological contributor made it very clear he wanted no part of being a father. About people telling me I wouldn't be able to keep travelling as a solo mum, and all the places Dexter and I have since been. It's sitting at around five and a half million views and 170,000 likes at time of writing, which is both wonderful and deeply surreal.

The response from other solo mums was genuinely moving. A lot of them said it had given them confidence, made them feel like they could do it. That was the whole point and I'm glad it landed.

What I hadn't anticipated was the pro-life crowd using my choice to continue the pregnancy as an endorsement of their position. I am, for the record, extremely staunchly pro-choice. My decision to have Dexter was mine, made freely, and has nothing to do with their agenda. I hope that's clear.

The post also triggered a wave of requests to make political statements about various things. This is always the side effect of going viral, and I want to be honest about how I handle it. I don't do public political takes. Not because I don't have opinions, I have plenty. But because I'm not informed enough to have the kind of intelligent debate that would be required if I waded in publicly, and because going down those rabbit holes does something very specific to my brain that I've learned to protect myself from. I do things quietly and privately instead, financially and otherwise, and I don't think I owe anyone a public performance of my values to prove they're real.

How to actually get more well-known in your industry, since Mel asked

Mel asked me at the end of the conversation what I'd recommend for people who are earlier in their visibility journey than I am. A few things have genuinely helped.

Podcasts, especially industry-specific ones, are brilliant for authority-building, but only if you actually use the clips from them afterwards rather than just posting "I was on a podcast" and calling it done. Writing in depth, proper articles and newsletters that actually demonstrate your expertise rather than just hinting at it. Not being afraid to have strong, definitive opinions about your industry and the things happening in it. The content that builds a reputation is rarely the safe content.

Being in rooms, virtual or otherwise, with people who are already well-respected in your field is useful, not so you can hover around them for a photo, but because if they see what you're doing and rate it, their endorsement reaches people yours doesn't yet. That's how Clubhouse worked for me during COVID. I was new, but I was going into audio rooms and having conversations with people who'd been doing this for years, and they started deferring questions to me, and other people in the room noticed.

And the one that's most underrated: make it funny. You have to genuinely know a subject inside out to take the piss out of it accurately. If you can make your industry funny, in a way that resonates with people who work in it, that is one of the clearest possible signals of expertise. My most successful sales post ever was the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme rewritten as an availability announcement for LinkedIn training. I sold eleven slots in one day at the highest price I'd ever charged. From one post. A funny one.

Fame, such as it is in my corner of the internet, has been a luck multiplier in exactly the way Mel described. The more visible I am, the more good things find their way to me without me having to go looking for them. That part is genuinely lovely. The part where you have to guard your trust like a dragon guards treasure is less lovely, but it's the deal. You don't get one without the other.