#112: How to Self-Promote Without Burning Trust | Mallory Contois & Hilary Gridley

What if the thing holding you back from posting isn’t laziness or a lack of ideas, it’s that nobody ever told you the cringe feeling goes away, and what it actually looks like to build trust with an audience without burning it?

In this special episode of Supra Insider, Ben Erez sits down with Hilary Gridley, creator of the Maven course “How to Become a Supermanager with AI,” and Mallory Contois, former VP of Growth at Maven and founder of The Old Girls Club, for a candid conversation about self-promotion, audience building, and the surprisingly practical mechanics of showing up consistently online without losing yourself in the process. Hilary published a guest post on Lenny’s Newsletter the same morning this was recorded, and that pipeline, from writing to course to full-time career, is exactly what the conversation unpacks.

They cover why trust is the most durable professional asset you can build, how to think about the value exchange between creator and audience, why the psychology of “doing work in private and handing in the final product” makes content creation feel so unnatural, and what both of them actually do to stay consistent without spiraling into algorithm-chasing. Mallory drops a deceptively simple Apple Notes system for never running out of ideas. Hilary makes a sharp case for starting with a talk instead of a newsletter. And both of them are refreshingly honest about the fact that posting still feels mortifying sometimes, and why you should do it anyway.

If you’re a PM, operator, or founder who has been sitting on the sidelines of content creation because it feels cringe, trying to figure out which platform to start with, or building an audience and wondering how to grow it without compromising the thing that makes your voice worth following- this episode is for you.

All episodes of the podcast are also available on Spotify, Apple and YouTube.

New to the pod? Subscribe below to get the next episode in your inbox 👇

Want company-specific interview intel?

If you’re preparing for PM interviews at Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Stripe, DoorDash, Uber, or Figma… we think you’re going to love Insider Loops. You can read about it in Ben’s LI post, Marc’s LI post or check out the site directly below.

In this episode, we covered the following topics:

* (03:35) Hilary’s background: from music blogging to Maven to going full-time after maternity leave

* (06:18) Mallory’s background: The Old Girls’ Club, being an 87% introvert, and experimenting without a grand plan

* (15:15) Why trust is the most durable professional asset, and how content creation builds it at scale

* (18:44) The value exchange principle: give more than you ask for, measured across a year not a single post

* (20:47) “You wanna be a magnet for the people you most want to work with” — Hilary on her core motivation

* (23:22) Overcoming cringe: why it still feels mortifying every time, and why that doesn’t go away

* (27:00) Mallory’s framework: why we were trained to do work in private and why that makes content feel unnatural

* (29:47) What happens when you post publicly: the community you find by being brave enough to start

* (31:26) Hilary on being misunderstood: simplify, accept the trade-off, and learn from the rude comments

* (36:31) Mallory’s Apple Notes system: the messy backlog that keeps content ideas authentic

* (39:12) Live Q&A: which platform to start with? Hilary on using Substack as hub and LinkedIn as distribution

* (43:06) “Please, for the good of society, change the composition of voices on these platforms”

* (48:00) Live Q&A: Hilary’s advice on starting with a talk as your first content format

* (49:01) Live Q&A: networking as a byproduct — content as a bat signal for the right people

* And more!

Links:

* Mallory’s Substack: https://www.readgoodwork.com/

* The Old Girls Club by Mallory: https://www.jointheogc.com/

* Building a Personal Brand (Course by Mallory): https://maven.com/mallory/building-a-personal-brand

* Hilary’s AI Guide: https://couchto5k.ai/

* Hilary’s Substack: https://hils.substack.com/

* How to Become a Supermanager with AI by Hilary: https://maven.com/hilary-gridley/ai-powered-people-management

* Mallory Contois: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallorycontois/

* Hilary Gridley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hilarygridley/

* Marc: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbaselga/

* Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benerez/

If you’re a new subscriber, we encourage you to check out some of the recent episodes you might have missed:

To support the podcast, please check out the links below:

* Check out Ben’s AI Practice Copilot and top-rated Maven course: Self-Paced PM Interview Bootcamp: Product Sense & Analytical Thinking (selected by Lenny Rachitsky as a top course 🔥). Get 25% off the course with promo code suprainsider (auto-applied here).

* Supra has teamed up with Maven to bring you something special – courses that our own community members have personally curated. And because you’re part of the Supra family, you can get up to 35% in some of these handpicked selections with code SUPRAxMAVEN.