The "Former Editor" Credibility Hack

What exactly do you bring to the table, anyway?

The Wink is my weekly free essay exploring thought provoking issues in a quick cut format.

I asked Claude to scan the most profitable and popular Substacks by stylish influencers in their 30s who provide a sophisticated and upscale product, and tell me how often they post, which posts are free versus paid, and what the common themes are.

It told me one of the “recurring content themes” is the “former editor credibility angle, wherein “the most trusted voices aren’t influencers in the traditional sense; they’re editors who use their platform for deep personal reflection” on relevant topics.

This resonated with me because I have adopted the “former editor” voice, myself—not merely in speaking to you here or on Instagram, but in speaking to myself as I navigate my life.

I think you could benefit from this, too. Let me explain.

In my small business of content creation:

Nobody wants to hear from influencers anymore. The landscape shifted from “blogging” (sharing about your experiences) to “influencing” (sharing to persuade) and the plot was lost. But, and this is the important and subtle part, you are welcome to influence me so long as you are coming from a place of credibility. Meaning, please do talk at me about the skincare product you want me to buy, but it has to be within the context of your own experience tackling a skincare issue or searching to better yourself.

At bottom: lean into a former experience to give authority to your current perspective.

I’d intuitively done this when I changed up my Instagram account about three months ago to highlight my unique prior perspective as a native New Yorker and lawyer and how that informs my current experiences as a mom in Charleston. That shift in identity — and I believe you need a “persona” rather than a “niche,” which I’ll dive into separately when I explain the key changes I made to grow my account 90% — re-launched my account in three months with big growth after stagnating for years.

In my personal life:

The way you speak to yourself in your head and frame your experiences to yourself matters. You set the table for yourself. We might be eating leftover Chinese noodles for dinner, but we will be using real plates and cloth napkins. Similarly, we might be spending our days managing nap schedules, camp drop off, and snack rotations, but we will be doing so with the sharp wit, eye for detail, passion for excellence of a New York lawyer.

In other words: cloak yourself in an air of authority when simply going about your day by embracing your own “former editor” voice. Sometimes a physical costume helps: I recently took tennis back up by dropping-in to group clinics at our tennis club, which I found intimidating because frankly some of the women are cool while others are rude, as is the tradition at all clubs. Instead of thinking of myself as “a mom who has not picked up a racket in 12 months,” I thought of myself as “a woman who proudly prioritized time with her child over tennis schedules and is now back, so make way please, in a new tennis skirt and curiosity to see how quickly I get the muscle memory up and on.”

You will see the “former editor” voice pop up constantly now that you know to look for it. Many people online lean into it quite literally: “I’m a former fashion editor and now a mom in Connecticut, so here are my outfit hacks for you that I gleaned from years working in the Hearst building.” Others are picking up the voice more subtly: instead of, “here are the pretty outfits I wore this week,” it’s “as a real estate broker turned blogger, here is what I can teach you about feeling pulled together on the go.”

Which “former editor” voice will you adopt? We all have experiences to draw on, so I’m encouraging you to embrace them and use them as a platform to give more authority and credibility to whatever your current perspective is.