The confidence of earned scars
Why your failures and the things you learned are your true credentials
Gary Bloomer | SHAKING THE TREE # 286
Can we agree on something?
Someone else’s mid-point isn’t anything you ought to be comparing with your beginning.
Someone else’s pristine portfolio, or their slick reel, or their flawlessly curated LinkedIn profile—they’re all just pages in a brochure.
They’re the polished, honed, airbrushed version of a story that, if it’s worth anything at all, is written in ink made from sweat, tears, and the occasional spectacular face plant.
The truth is that as content creators, we’ve all been sold a dangerous lie.
The lie that authority comes from an unbroken chain of high profile wins.
The lie that credibility is a castle to be defended, and that its walls are high enough and thick enough to hide any evidence of a past siege.
So I’m calling BS on the whole idea of the perfect outcome, on the notion of everyone else’s content being so much better or sharper simply because they’re better than I am. They’re not. They’ve simply been at it longer and if they’re honest, they’ll be open about the number of times they’ve screwed up.
True, the idea of unshakable authority—the kind of presence that lets you create, lead, and speak from a place of unforced confidence—that sort of presence doesn’t come from a string of victories. It’s forged in people’s failures and the sooner you get used to that idea and accept it, the sooner you’ll brush off the inevitable failures coming your way.
The lessons are not in the failing itself, but in the learning as you drag yourself out of the wreckage.
Your past failures aren’t skeletons in your closet; they are your earned scars. And they are the only credentials you will ever truly need.
Think about the most compelling people you follow.
The creators, the founders, the artists who have your real respect.
Why do you admire them?
I doubt it’s because they’re perfect.
It’s more likely that you admire them because they’ve proved themselves.
They have the grit in their voice that only comes from having their best idea laughed at. They have the calm in their eyes of someone who has stared at a blank screen at 3 AM after a launch cratered and wondered why they bother.
That texture? You can’t fake that. It’s the patina of experience.
Here’s the critical distinction that changes everything: It’s not the what you got wrong that makes you better. It’s the why you uncovered afterward and how quickly you got back up and out there..
Anyone can fail. Failing is easy.
It’s passive.
Learning though is an act of brutal, deliberate creation.
Learning is the active, often painful, process of conducting the autopsy on your own ambition. You have to ask the awful questions:
“What did I believe on this one that was false?”
“Where was my judgment clouded by pride, fear, or shiny-object syndrome?”
“What did the audience, the market, the data tell me that I was too deaf to hear?”
That scar from the email campaign that got a 0% open rate? It taught you more about subject line psychology than any course.
That burn from the collaboration that blew up in public? It gave you a doctoral-level understanding of clear expectations and communication.
That knot of tissue from betting your reputation on a trend that fizzled? It rewired your intuition to listen to signals over noise.
When you stand up to build your next thing, you are not a rookie hoping for the best. You are a veteran operating from an embedded intelligence.
Your scars are a living database. They twinge when you approach a familiar pitfall. They steady you when the path gets uncertain.
This isn't theory; it's embodied knowledge. It’s why you can move with authority—because your direction is corrected by the wisdom of past collisions.
So, what do you do with this?
First, stop hiding your scars. Start curating them. Don’t just list your failures in a faux-humble “fail fast” trope. Explain the learning. Articulate the principle it embedded into your process.
I’m quite open about the failure of my first stabs at content creation. They flopped because I wrote articles for myself instead of for my audience. The scar this realization left is my ‘Audience First’ filter, a filter I now run every idea through.
Second, lead with your healed scars, not just your shiny trophies.
Your audience is exhausted by perfection. It bores them. They don’t care about it.
Instead, they are drawn to the healed brokenness. of people who got stuck in and who got knocked down before getting up again. They trust a guide who has been lost in the same woods. So share the story of your scars; you don’t just share a mistake—you share a compass.
Finally, understand that this is a compounding asset.
What I mean by that is that every earned scar, properly learned from, makes the next win more meaningful and the next potential failure less frightening.
You stop being afraid of being wrong, because being wrong is just the tuition you pay for being right later with more conviction.
Your certificates can be framed.
Your degrees can be listed.
But your earned scars?
They are lived. They are felt.
They are the proof that you didn’t just study the map—you helped draw it by walking through the thorns, getting cut, and learning the safe path for everyone behind you.
That is authority. Not granted by an institution, but earned by experience.
Now, go create something.
You’ll probably earn a new scar.
Good.
That means you’re growing.
As always, thanks for reading.
—Gary
Feel free to follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn
P.S. If you found this useful, share it with another creator who needs an ego check (in a nice way). Want more unfiltered takes on content creation? Join my newsletter. No fluff, just the stuff that works.
Next time on Shaking the Tree: The power to delete …
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Originally from the U.K., Gary Bloomer is a writer, branding advocate, marketing specialist, and an award-winning graphic designer.
His design work has been included in Creative Review (one of the UK’s largest design magazines). Since 2009, he has answered over 5,000 marketing and business questions in the Know-How Exchange of MarketingProfs.com, placing him among the top 3% of contributors. He lives in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.