Working Out Loud
Invisible work loses to visible work — narrate your output before someone else defines it for you.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Working Out Loud is Courtney Johnson's core career cheat code: the deliberate, routine narration of your work to the people whose decisions affect you. It rests on the claim that opportunity flows to visibility, not effort, because decision-makers choose whoever is top of mind and easy to justify. Internally that means posting wins in Slack, updating your boss, and hosting sessions across departments. Externally it means posting on LinkedIn about what you are learning, even when you can't share the work itself. For entrepreneurs the same mechanic applies to clients and users, who will otherwise construct their own — often more negative — narrative about your value. The habit costs minutes and shifts who gets remembered when opportunities are handed out.
Origin
Johnson traces the idea to a bar where she saw a genuinely great band, asked where she could follow them, and learned they were on no platform at all — only playable at that bar every third Thursday. Everyone agrees that's an absurd way to build a music career, yet it is exactly how most professionals treat their own: reps put in internally, zero visibility externally. Coming from what she calls a B-player background, without dinner-table access to the unwritten rules, she had to reverse-engineer what A players did instinctively.
Core principles
- 01Opportunities go to the most visible person, not the hardest worker.
- 02Nobody will search your Google Drive to discover your good work.
- 03If your work is not online, it does not exist (Austin Kleon).
- 04Decision-makers pick the easiest, most obvious choice — make yourself that choice.
- 05Visibility is not vanity: staying silent robs the people your work would help.
How to run it
- 1
Post your wins internally
When a project finishes, say so in Slack, Teams, or your company wins channel. Credit the team and name your specific contribution.
Pro tip Frame it as team pride first, contribution second — it reads as generous, not self-promoting.
- 2
Share what you're learning publicly
Most people cannot post their actual work, but everyone can post what they are learning. Publish it on LinkedIn.
Watch out Mix company content with content about you — books, mentorship, lessons — so your brand isn't pinned to one employer.
- 3
Take the hosting and speaking reps
Host a tutorial for another department, record a Loom about a conference you attended, volunteer to present. Internal stages count.
- 4
Build a trail with your boss
Regularly tell your boss what you did and accomplished, so an accomplishment record already exists when promotion conversations happen.
Pro tip A visible trail also makes bosses trust you and back off, buying you your time back.
- 5
Work out loud with clients and users
For entrepreneurs: continuously remind clients and users of the results, time saved, or money made. Text them the screenshot of the compliment.
Watch out If you don't craft the narrative, clients build their own from fragments — and it is usually more negative than the truth.
In the wild
Johnson saw a great band at a bar and asked to follow them on Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, or Instagram. They were on none of them — you could only catch them at that bar every third Thursday — while saying their dream was to share their music with the world and get a record label.
→ The band had no path to their stated dream, illustrating that reps without visibility produce no opportunities — the exact trap most professionals fall into with their careers.
Hala Taha started posting on LinkedIn while working at HP and became a bigger influencer than the company's CEO. Peers questioned why she was doing it, but executives treated it as a strength.
→ She was pulled into conferences, asked to interview the CEO at town halls, and asked to train the sales team on LinkedIn — opportunities generated purely by external visibility.
Common mistakes
Hiding behind humility
Saying 'my work speaks for itself' or 'I don't want to make it about me' does not make you noble, it makes you invisible. Johnson notes humble literally means low to the ground — nobody looks up to someone low to the ground.
Assuming best work wins
Quality helps but is not the differentiating factor. Mediocre performers routinely win promotions and deals because their work is easier to see.
Is it for you?
Best for
Corporate professionals and founders who are strong at the craft but quiet about it.
Not ideal for
People whose actual output is weak — visibility amplifies whatever is really there.
From the transcript
“The opportunities do not go to the hardest worker. The opportunities go to the person who is most visible.”
“Austin Kleon says, 'If your work is not online, it does not exist.'”
“It's not the best, most talented work that gets the promotion or gets the opportunity, or signs the deal. It's the one that's easiest for…”
From the episode
Courtney Johnson: Career Cheat Codes to Stand Out, Get Promoted, and Win at Work
Courtney Johnson