I read a LinkedIn profile last week that stopped me cold. It belonged to a woman building the exact thing I want to build. My first thought was the worst one: there’s no room for me.

I read a LinkedIn profile last week that stopped me cold.

It belonged to a woman building the exact thing I want to build. Same kind of audience. Same promise. A headline so clear it read like she had reached into my own notebook and tidied up my handwriting.

I sat there with my coffee going cold and let the spiral take me. She’s ahead of me. She’s better at this. The seat is taken. There’s no room for someone like me, especially someone starting a next chapter at this stage instead of her first.

I would love to tell you I’m above this. I teach messaging for a living. I am not above this. I closed the laptop and sulked for a solid afternoon.

But when I decided my pity party wasn’t doing me any good, I remembered something I read six years ago. Seeing someone already doing it is the best news you can get.

The line that taught me that went like this. If nobody else were doing this, how would you know anyone wanted it?

Six years ago, that line is the only reason I became a LinkedIn trainer. In a sea of LinkedIn trainers. Everywhere I looked, someone with a bigger audience was already teaching the thing I wanted to teach. I almost talked myself out of it before I began.

That landed six years ago. It landed even harder this week.

Because the woman whose profile gutted me wasn’t proof there’s no room. She was proof there’s demand. She had already done the expensive work of showing that people will pay for this. The lights were on. The conversation was already happening. All I had to do was walk in as myself.

And the spiral makes you forget the one thing that matters most. You are not her.

You carry twenty-plus years she will never have. Different clients. Different scars. Different stories about what actually works when the room goes quiet and everyone looks to you. That lived experience isn’t a footnote on your About page. It’s the whole asset. It’s what makes your version land for a completely different person than hers ever could.

This is where so many of us in our next chapter get it backwards. We treat someone else’s success as a door closing, when it’s really a sign pointing at an open market. The fix is rarely to find some untouched corner no one has noticed. It’s usually a few honest tweaks to your message, so the right person hears the thing only you would say, in the words only you would use.

Same market. Different doorway. Yours.

So no, you haven’t missed your window because someone got there first. They turned the lights on for you and saved you the cost of proving the room was full.

Think about the profile or the post that made you quietly close the tab this month. What if that wasn’t a stop sign, but a green light?

P.S. The Next Chapter Visibility Collective is where we do exactly this work, turning your twenty-plus years into a message that reaches the person only you can serve. The doors are open for limited spots this summer.

Cheers,
Leanne

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