11. Incongruence Part 2: The third way between strategy and soul

In this episode, I’m sharing the second part of my series on incongruence in marketing — why it happens, how it became the norm, and how to build a business that works AND actually feels good to run.

Listen to hear more about:

• Why modern marketing is built on insecurity — and how we got here
• How to spot incongruence in your own business without shame or blame
• What I call “the third way”: a path that’s both soulful and skillful
• Four key elements of aligned business: self-knowledge, craft, feedback, and real timelines
• What to do when things aren’t working — even when you’re doing everything “right”

This episode will help you stay grounded, skillful, and true to yourself — even when results are slow, and the noise of the industry gets loud. 

Transcript

Hey friends. Welcome to Liberatory Business. I'm your host, Simone Seol, and today I'm giving you the second part of my two-part series on incongruence in marketing—what it looks like, why it happens, and how to heal it. Today we're talking about why incongruence is so common in marketing, and more importantly, how to build something different—something sustainable, aligned, and effective.

And we're gonna talk about finding what I call the third way. But first, let's go back and look at history for a little context on how we ended up here, in a place where incongruence in business is the norm.

And again, this is the second part of this series, so if you didn't catch the first episode, it was probably the one right before this—so make sure to go back and listen to that.

Understanding history helps because it gives us context for where we are now. It helps you put your own experiences into perspective. And if there were any places where you were feeling shame or guilt or confusion about why you've been doing certain things a certain way—or why you have some of the knowledge that you have—this will help shed some light on that.

So, think about this: marketing didn't used to be this emotionally loaded. Once upon a time, like in the first part of the 20th century, things were more straightforward. It was like, “Here’s a hammer. Do you need to hit nails? You should buy it, because this hammer hits nails.” Simple, honest, functional.

But then something happened. As you know, newspapers and radio and TV came along. Corporations gained the power to reach a lot more people, and they figured out it was way more profitable to sell to people’s insecurities than to their actual needs.

That’s when things got murky.
 Soap stopped being about just getting clean—it became about being a good mother.
 Cars weren’t just about getting from A to B—they became about your status, and what that said about where you were in life.

Even water became a lifestyle flex. Like, what kind of water you drink is supposed to say something about your morality and your standing in the world.

Across the marketing of consumer goods, the same message gets repeated:
 Without this, you're not enough. Without this, you won't belong.

And that’s a powerful message. It grabs our primal brains—because we all want to feel like we’re enough, like we belong, like we’re worthy.

Then came social media. And with that, the message didn’t just come from giant corporations—it started coming from our friends. We started feeding it to each other.

What your social media posts look like became proof of your worth.
 Where the algorithm places you on TikTok started to say, “Are you in? Are you enough?”

That’s the ecosystem we’re doing business in.

So no, you’re not crazy for feeling like something is off.
 You’re not bad at business if participating in this kind of marketing feels inherently icky—and no matter how hard you try, you just can't make yourself feel excited about it.

You’re responding to a system built on making people feel insecure, so they keep chasing the solution to that insecurity through more and more consumption.

But once you see the system for what it is—and what it's inviting you to do by participating in it—you can choose to do things differently.

Now, that brings us to what I really want to talk about in this episode, which is what I call the third way.

So I'm going to name the two extremes that a lot of people bounce between. On one side, you have the hustle-type bro marketing: urgency, pressure, manipulation—"I gotta get the dollar from you at whatever cost."

But on the other extreme, there's something like soulful, heartfelt invisibility. You have integrity, but not clarity. You have depth, but no reach.

The third way is the middle path. It's not “just be authentic and wait for the world to come to you.” And it’s not “perform and do the song and dance the algorithm wants, just to get attention and prove your worth.”

The third way is the path of aligned, congruent action—where your values shape your direction, and you follow through with skill, thoughtfulness, and a work ethic. Because you want business to be soulful and skillful.

So I’m going to offer you four really important components of this third way of soulful and skillful business.

First: you have to know yourself.

That’s the foundation—self-awareness. Because when you know yourself deeply and practically, that becomes your internal GPS for all kinds of business decisions. Not just big-picture ones, but small everyday choices, too.

Some questions to guide your self-knowledge:

• What do I need to honor for my business to actually feel good?
• What’s the deeper why behind not just my business overall, but this platform, this campaign, this offer, this audience?
• What energizes me? What drains me?
• What kind of rhythm supports my creativity?

And also:

• What does success look like on my terms?
• When do I actually feel successful, and what does that look like in concrete terms?
• Who am I really here to serve—not just in demographics, but on a heart level? Who’s a good energetic fit? Who will get the most from my work? Who’s going to be an ally in the kind of world I want to help build?

These are the questions that lead you to alignment. It’s like a compass.

And once you have that clarity, you can answer things like:
 Do I say yes to this collaboration?
 Do I launch or rest?
 If I'm feeling static during my launch, do I push through or pause?
 Is this goal coming from fear, or from alignment?

That clarity will save you time and energy—and it’ll stop you from trying to copy someone else’s path when that’s not actually for you.

Second: you study the craft.

This doesn’t get said enough in some parts of the business world: skill matters. Learning business skills is not the same as selling out.

I call this part “technical soul work.”
 Because your skills are the bridge between your inner clarity and the work you put out into the world.

It’s about learning the tools that help your soulful work actually reach people and make a tangible difference.

That includes:

• What you say and how you say it.
• How your offer is structured.
• How you talk to potential clients.
• The systems that make your work findable.
• How you talk about money and make exchanges with integrity.

These aren’t hacks. They’re genuine skills.
 If your congruence is the medicine, your skill is the delivery system.

Third: you build the capacity to refine and pivot through feedback.

This means letting go of perfectionism and the belief that “if I did it right, it would’ve worked instantly.” That’s just not how it goes.

Business is a living thing. It’s a relationship—between you, your work, your audience, your process, yourself.

Even when you’re aligned and working hard, things will go wrong. You’ll face disappointment. And that’s not failure—that’s just business.

The more success someone has, the bigger the pile of failures they’re standing on. You can launch something from your heart and get barely any signups. You can write an email that feels electric and no one opens it. You can create something the world needs and the timing just isn’t right.

None of that means you’re doing it wrong.

The goal isn’t perfection—it’s responsiveness.
 It’s curiosity.
 It’s the willingness to learn from everything, even silence.

Ask yourself:

• What landed?
• What missed?
• What drained me more than I expected?
• What gave me more energy than I expected?
• What assumptions didn’t turn out to be true?

This is how discernment sharpens.
 This is how resilience builds—not by pushing through at all costs, but by adjusting while staying whole.

And this is also how you let go of shame. Because you realize that results don’t define your worth. You stop abandoning yourself when something flops. You make room for both the data and your humanity.

Refinement isn’t the thing you do after you get what you want.
It’s how you create what you want—sustainably, and in alignment.

Fourth: You’re on a real timeline, not a fantasy one.

If you’ve thought, “It’s taking too long,” or “If I were meant to do this, it would’ve worked by now,” I get it.

That thought was on loop in my head during the early years of my business—when no one knew me, and not for lack of trying.

Let me tell you:
 You are not doing it wrong.
You are not behind.
You are just on a real, lived timeline.

People who found me after I gained some visibility didn’t see the nearly 10 years where I was mostly invisible—often because I was hiding, or because when I was showing up, I did it so apologetically. Like, “Look at me—but don’t really look at me.”

It took me years to stop contorting myself to what I thought would impress people. Years to build the inner alignment to show up without flinching.

Then it took more years to learn strategy—not just to follow advice, but to understand what mattered to me, and to test, integrate, and make it mine.

Figuring out how to serve joyfully, sustainably, and in a way people wanted to pay for? That took trial and error. And once I figured it out, it kept evolving—because I’m evolving.

This work is not clean or convenient. But it’s true.
 And it leads somewhere real.

Business is hard either way. You’re either doing the hard work of showing up, or the hard work of hiding.

So if it’s taking longer than you thought… if it’s still quiet even though you’re aligned…
 You’re not broken.
 You’re not bad at this.
 You’re just on a real timeline.

Alright, my friends. I hope this offered encouragement, grounding, and inspiration to keep going—to keep showing up and working hard from your deepest integrity.

This is the third path—not choosing between congruence and strategy, but building strategy from your congruence.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.