29. How to find your people: Part 1. Talk less about the work

Let me help you find your people online (Worksheet included below!)

The biggest mistake I see people making? Talking too much about your work — and not enough about the human being YOU are. This is a huge mistake... but it's one you can fix! 

Stop hiding behind "professional" content (e.g. your expertise, frameworks, tips and tricks) and give people a chance to find out: do I actually vibe with this human being?

Listen to this episode to discover:

• What your brain is really scanning for when someone lands on your feed (hint: it's not your credentials)
• Why your "professional" content might be alienating your potential clients
• The counterintuitive reason you should collect more rejections, not fewer
• The beliefs you're hiding that would make the right people obsessed with you

Unless you prioritize this, you'll keep attracting lukewarm followers who never buy anything.

________________

Worksheet: five questions for leading with who you are

Question 1: What's your natural way of speaking that you edit out to sound more professional?

Examples: Maybe you're naturally blunt and tell people exactly what they need to hear, but you soften everything because you're terrified of being called mean. Maybe you use crude humor but sanitize everything because you're afraid people will think you're inappropriate. Maybe you explain things through weird pop culture references but force yourself to use boring, generic examples instead.

Question 2: What aspects of how you actually work and became who you are, are you hiding because you feel like it's not relevant?

Examples: Maybe you have ADHD and work chaotically, but you're ashamed and spend hours forcing your content into logical order. Maybe you started your business after getting fired for being "difficult to work with" but craft some vague story about turning setbacks into opportunity. Maybe you grew up in foster care and that trauma is exactly what makes you good at helping people, but you never mention it.

Question 3: What part of your personality do you think would make people unfollow you?

Examples: Maybe you're ruthlessly competitive but exhaust yourself trying to sound zen and balanced. Maybe you have a dark, pessimistic outlook that makes you great at spotting problems, but you force yourself to sound positive and sunny. Maybe you're judgmental as hell with strong opinions but act nonjudgmental because being judgmental is "bad."

Question 4: What gets you genuinely excited that you think is too weird to share?

Examples: Maybe you're obsessed with reality TV but fear it makes you look stupid. Maybe you're fascinated by serial killers but don't want people to think you're disturbed. Maybe you're still obsessed with Disney movies at 45 but fear no one will take you seriously.

Question 5: What beliefs do you hold that you intentionally avoid mentioning because it feels like too much?

Examples: Maybe you think having kids isn't for everybody but avoid the topic because you don't want people to think you hate children. Maybe you think most people complaining about being "triggered" are avoiding personal responsibility but don't want to be insensitive. Maybe you believe people who are constantly broke are making terrible financial decisions but won't say it out loud because you don't want to look like an asshole. 

This week's challenge: Pick ONE question and share something real about it in your next post, story, or email. Watch what happens.

Transcript

Hey everyone, you are listening to Liberatory Business, and I'm Simone Seol, your host. Thank you so much for listening. Today we are kicking off the first part of a three-part series about how to find your people on social media—and I say social media, but really anywhere you are marketing.

If you've been struggling to connect authentically online, feeling like you're shouting into the void, and/or wondering why your carefully crafted posts aren't resonating with the right people, this series is for you.

And look, here's something I think is really important: The algorithm changes, social media trends come and go. Even platforms come and go. Internet trends also rise and fall, right? Even the world changes—you know, given enough time, 5, 10, 20 years, we might not even be on the internet in the same way that we know today. We might not be listening to podcasts in the same way that we know today, right? Everything is always changing.

But instead of trying to get on top of whatever trend is trending right now, I want to teach you timeless principles. Because the way the human mind works doesn't change with trends, right? The way people form trust, the way people make decisions, the way people choose who to spend time with, who to spend their money with—that's always been consistent for thousands of years. And I really do think it'll be consistent long after whatever trend right now is trending is over, long after whatever platform you're stressing out about outsmarting becomes obsolete.

My goal is to present you, in this three-episode series, with those timeless principles so that you have something to work with that is really trend-resistant. So that's what we're doing.

The first principle: talk less about your work, share more about you

Today's episode is about—there are three big overarching principles, pieces of advice that I want to offer you when it comes to how to find your people. And I'm going to dedicate today's episode to the first principle, first piece of advice, which is something that might sound totally counterintuitive to a lot of you who are trying to build an audience, trying to build your people, trying to build a business: Talk less about your work and share more about you.

Now, I say this as the first thing because this is one of the most frequent errors, in my opinion, that I see people make. When I scan the feeds of clients who tell me, "I'm doing everything I've been told to do. You know, I'm creating all kinds of posts, doing the right things, but my online marketing is not translating to people actually congregating around them, paying them"—here is something that I consistently see. Their feed, their emails, everything they're sharing is filled with so much information and knowledge and wisdom and advice and tips and tricks—all the stuff about their work, about what they do. And from all of it, I get very little about who this person is as a human being.

Here's what this looks like

So let me paint you a picture of what that looks like. I'll scroll through feeds and, you know, I see posts like this:

• "The exact meditation technique that I used to manifest my dream partner in three days"
• "Why I stopped setting boundaries with toxic family members, and you should too"
• "The weird productivity hack that I learned from my ADHD daughter that tripled my income"
• "How I helped my client go from zero to 10K months by shifting this one belief about money"

Now, when I say these things—these example posts that I just made up—this format feels familiar to you, right? If you've been online, if you've been on social media, you have encountered different variations of this format again and again and again.

And this is all knowledge. This is all valuable information. This is expertise, I mean, probably, right? All wisdom. And the internet is saturated with it. And that's why it's forgettable.

I could be reading the feed of any life coach, any business coach, any mindset expert, any meditation teacher. There's nothing in any of these posts that gives me an unmistakable flavor of the actual human being behind the account.

What's missing: the human behind the content

Like, for example, as someone who has a really crude sense of humor, I don't know if this person would find my sense of humor offensive or hilarious. I don't know if this person has had the kind of life where they have the ability to empathize with my life story as a first-generation immigrant. This person's talking about nervous system healing, and I don't know what kind of life experiences—and I'm not talking about sanitized, packaged life experiences, but real life experiences—they've had that gives them this understanding. And I wonder if that means they would or would not be able to meet me at the level of my experiences, right?

And I'm just giving examples. It's like everyone is hiding behind this wall of helpful content, constantly spitting out helpful knowledge, helpful wisdom, helpful tips, but we cannot get a feel for anyone's personality beyond a kind of carefully curated, pleasant, professional brand.

Why we hide behind professional content

And it makes sense. Makes total sense given the business advice that's conventionally given. We're told to:

• Establish credibility by showcasing our expertise
• Add value in every single post
• Stay in our lane, stay professional
• Only talk about topics directly related to our work
• Be professional and keep personal opinions out of business content for fear that we might offend people or confuse people
• Avoid sharing anything controversial or polarizing because it's going to hurt our brand and cost us potential clients

The entire conventional marketing playbook is built around this idea that you need to prove that you're qualified before anyone's going to care about you as a person—if anyone cares about you as a person at all.

Post case studies, share your frameworks, share your strategies, share your credentials. Demonstrate your expertise. Show them that you have the solution to their problems. Build authority through content that positions you as the expert, the thought leader.

The problem with this approach

And all of that advice makes the critical assumption that people make logical, rational decisions about who to hire based on who seems the most knowledgeable or the most qualified, who speaks the most logically and compellingly about your problems and can offer you the best solutions.

So it assumes that if you share just enough clever tips and tricks and frameworks, eventually someone's going to think, "Oh, that person clearly knows what they're talking about. I'm going to hire them."

But that's actually not how it works, because this way of thinking fundamentally misunderstands how human connection happens.

How human connection actually works

The thing is, our brains are wired for human-to-human connection first. When someone's scrolling through your content, they're not sitting there with a clipboard evaluating your qualifications rationally. They're not thinking, "Hmm, does this person have the right certifications? Do their frameworks seem sound compared to the other person? Have they demonstrated sufficient expertise?"

What's happening is so much more primal and immediate and unconscious. It happens in a split second. Their brain is assessing: Do I trust this person?

Because for thousands of years, humans have had to quickly, in a nanosecond, assess whether another person was a friend or foe, trustworthy or dangerous. And so we have, over so many years, developed sophisticated systems for being able to read personality, intentions, character. Remember, all of this is unconscious. This is not a logical process.

What people are really asking

So here's what this means: When someone lands on your feed, once again, they're not asking themselves, "Does this person's work apply to me? Is this person's work good? Do they have the right framework? Can they get me results?" You can get to that, but that's secondary.

Here's what their brains are unconsciously, in a second, scanning for instead:

1. Do I like this person?
2. Do I connect emotionally with them?
3. Do they make me feel understood and empathized with?
4. Would I actually enjoy spending time with this person?
5. Do we share similar values?
6. Are they someone I could see myself trusting?

The "beer test" - a political example

And before you're like, "Okay, but does all that really matter before someone just decides to hire me for a service? Does somebody really need to like me and connect emotionally with me and feel understood? Is that really important?"

Remember—and if you're old enough, unless you're super young Gen Z, you'll probably remember the elections of 2000 and 2004. Tell me what got George W. Bush elected twice.

If you were around at that time, you know that what got him elected wasn't the best policy proposals. It wasn't his winning debate performances. It was that everybody saw him as the kind of guy you could have a beer with. And whoever he was running against—Al Gore, John Kerry—they were not giving "guy you could have a beer with." But George W. Bush? Hey, you could see yourself having a beer with him.

I'm not saying that's true or not, but that's the impression that he gave. He did that thing where people's primal brains were like, "Ooh, I like him. I feel like I could connect with him. I feel like we could be friends." That won him the presidency. Think about that the next time you think this doesn't matter.

So maybe not beer, but know that when people are looking at your feed, they're asking themselves, "Hmm, would I like to have coffee with this person?" before they start evaluating, if they do at all, "Ooh, does she know what she's talking about? Are their frameworks superior?"

If you are not giving people signals, if you're not giving people lots of opportunities to get to know whether you are or are not the kind of person they'd want to have coffee with, if you're not the kind of person they'd want to spend time with, if you're not the kind of person they like and feel comfortable with, then you are leaving so much connection and money on the freaking table.

Common objections and fears

Before I leave you with some practical questions for how to begin to apply this to your marketing—by the end of the episode I'm going to give you some guiding questions to ask yourself before you create something to share that is going to have you being able to show the full beauty and brilliance of your uniqueness and your authentic personality—I want to go over some of the common objections that I get, some of the fears and reservations that people have when I talk about really leading with who you are as a human being, leading with your personality before you lead with your expertise.

Because people really have fears about this. People have reservations. So let's knock these out one by one.

Objection 1: "isn't this selfish or narcissistic?"

I think the most common pushback I get is people being worried that sharing a lot about yourself and letting people see you, as opposed to leading with sharing about the work, is selfish or narcissistic or self-centered. People say, "Shouldn't it be about helping people? Why should it be about me? Who cares about me? It should be about the work."

Now, I get where this is coming from. I get it. But also, this concern is rooted, I think, in a fundamental confusion about what actually creates effective helping relationships.

Because here's the thing: Healthy relationships, including professional ones, require authenticity from both sides. Think about it. When you hire a coach, a consultant, a service provider, you are not just buying their framework, their methodology—you are entering into a relationship with a human being.

You need to know:

• If their communication style works for your brain
• If their values align with yours
• If their approach to problems matches what you need to be supported

If you are hiding behind a kind of neutral, beige, personality-free, edge-free, professional, likable, palatable persona, you're depriving your potential clients of the information they really need to make informed, good decisions about whether you are the right fit for each other. You are essentially manipulating them into a relationship with someone who is not real. That's not serving them. That is trapping someone into a working relationship that might end up being totally wrong for both of you.

A real example

For example, let's say you are naturally a very direct and very challenging and outspoken person. Like that's the kind of culture you come from, that's the kind of family you come from. You believe in tough love and telling people exactly what they need to hear, even when it's uncomfortable, and the people who are closest to you love you for it.

But you believe that showing too much of your personality is beside the point. Nobody cares about your personality. You've got to keep it professional. So you keep your content very personality-free, very neutral, very professional.

And let's say someone hires you based on your very professional, personality-free content. And let's say that person is going through a particularly vulnerable time in their life and needs some gentle guidance and lots of handholding and lots of reassurance.

And once they actually pay you and start working with you, they find your very direct approach harsh, maybe even traumatizing. They needed someone very gentle who's going to hold space for their emotions and validate their feelings. But guess what? Your content didn't let them know that you are not that person. Your content didn't give them any way to know that that's not how you operate.

So what happens is that both of you end up frustrated and disappointed in a working relationship that should have never happened.

So see how hiding your personality under professionalism does not actually protect anyone. It's not for the sake of the client. It actually sets everyone up for inevitable disappointment.

The trust violation

When you don't show people who you really are, you're forcing them to make decisions without the information they need. And secondly, if you're in business, it really is the highest service for your clients to know exactly who they're dealing with. What will it be like for them to hire you?

Because if you're marketing, the whole point is that you're telling them, "Come closer." You're telling them, "Come hire me, come be in my world. Come join my group. Come download this. Come to my class. Come, let's do this work." What will it be like for them? What can they expect once they get deeper into your world, once they get to greater intimacy with your work?

Being totally honest about who you are, letting people get a chance to get to know you, is to set them up for the experience they're going to have once they get to know you more deeply.

And look, I can tell you stories of people that I know who followed content creators for years—creators who kept their content perfectly free of politics, totally professional. And those followers felt incredibly betrayed later on because they found out that they voted for Trump and supported policies that were horrifically hateful to marginalized groups. And these people had been buying their courses, recommending these creators to friends, and building parasocial relationships with people who later turned out to hold values that were totally opposed to everything they believed in.

That's not just disappointing—it almost feels like a violation of trust. When you hide your real beliefs, your real personality, your real approach to how you look at the world, you are setting people up to invest time, money, and emotional energy in someone that they might fundamentally end up being not only disappointed in, but might actually end up experiencing what feels like a violation of trust. It's essentially lying by omission about who people are choosing to support with their attention and their money.

It goes both ways

And it goes both ways. Maybe you're progressive and you're hiding that because you think, "Oh, politics don't belong in business. Let's be professional. I don't want to turn anybody off, I don't want to start debates." But what happens when a conservative client hires you and then finds out later that your political views are progressive? In the third month of working together, they feel misled. They feel like they were sold something under false pretenses.

And it may or may not be a big deal, but there's something wedged in the working relationship now—a fundamental disconnect that they weren't aware of when they made the decision to hire you.

And please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying at all that people with different political views can never work together, and people should only work with people that they agree with. Of course I'm not saying that. But the thing is, people need to make that choice consciously, knowing what they're signing up for.

Maybe your conservative client specifically wants to work with somebody who challenges their thinking, or maybe they're able to compartmentalize and focus purely on whatever the work is that's separate from politics, or vice versa. That's totally fine. But they deserve the chance to make that decision with full information. And when you hide who you are, you are taking away their agency to choose what kind of working relationship they actually want.

Your personality IS your professional value

And here's the last point—I'm belaboring this a bit because I think it's really important. Consider that the whole "leading with who I am as opposed to just showing the work and being professional is too narcissistic, I don't want to make it all about me" thing comes from the assumption that there's a separation between who you are and how you help people.

When actually, who you are is a huge part of how you help people. Your personality, your unique perspectives, your way of seeing the world, the way you naturally communicate, your sense of humor, your lived experiences—that's not separate from your professional value. That IS a large part of what gives rise to your professional value. That's what shapes and colors your professional value.

There is nothing that I can do, there's nothing in my body of work that can exist without my personality, my very personal perspective, my unique way of seeing the world as a human being—like Simone Seol the human being—my lived experiences. You are only getting this specific transmission because of the incredibly specific life that I lived as a human being.

When you hide who you really are as a human being, you are hiding the very qualities that make you uniquely effective at helping certain people.

Objection 2: "won't I turn some people off?"

Here's another concern that people have about leading with who you are: People ask me, "But Simone, if I show more of my personality, won't I turn some people off? Won't I lose potential clients?"

And that brings me to one of the most important shifts that you can make in how you think about marketing, which is—I want you to think about this as a difference between an approach of expansion versus filtration.

The problem with expansion thinking

What conventional marketing has taught us to think about is an expansionist approach: Appeal to as many people as possible, get as many fish in a net as possible, and then in the sales process you can whittle them out.

This assumption is embedded in the language that's constantly around us: "10x your following," "5x your engagement." Great, let's say you 10x your following—but who are the people that are now in your 10x pool of followers? Let's say you 5x your engagement—but what is the content of that engagement? Is any of it quality? Do any of those people matter? Does any of that engagement matter?

Because the expansionist approach does not care about quality. It's all about quantity. It's about getting as many people as possible to say yes, as opposed to as many of the right people to say yes and as many of the wrong people to say no as possible.

Why filtration is better than expansion

Here's why filtration is a better strategy than expansion:

One person who truly resonates with who you are is worth more than a hundred people who passively consume your stuff.

Because that one person:

• Actually buys from you without negotiating your prices
• Refers people to you
• Tells all their friends about you
• Sticks around month after month, year after year
• Becomes an advocate who champions your work
• Becomes a node in the true community that gathers around your work

The hundred people who passively consume your stuff? They're gone next month, onto the next trending, viral whatever.

And it becomes so much easier to know what to share when you know exactly who you're talking to. Instead of agonizing over "Is this going to appeal to as many people as possible?" you can ask, "Is this going to serve the people who are really going to resonate with me?"

And of course, the right person for your business is the people who are going to resonate with who you are.

Objection 3: "what if I get canceled?"

Another question that I get is, "Okay, I get it, Simone, but what if I share something and it gets taken out of context, or it goes viral in a bad way? What if people get mad?"

I actually recorded three whole episodes on tackling the fear of being canceled, and I highly recommend you go check that out if that fear is something that affects you. I'm not going to rehash all that here, but the short version is this:

If you fear something going viral in a bad way or people coming after you, you are letting an extremely unlikely scenario prevent you from building the business you really want.

The fear of backlash is almost always way worse in your mind, in your imagination, than any actual backlash you might experience. And also, by the way, you can't really build a movement without creating some backlash.

So if you got some backlash in the past, or if you get some in the future, consider that a sign that you're finally actually taking up some damn space like you're meant to. You're saying something of consequence like you're meant to.

Objection 4: "my industry is too conservative"

Here's another reservation I get: Some people tell me, "Simone, that might work for you, but my industry is really conservative. I work in corporate, and showing my personality might be unprofessional."

Look, I'm not saying you need to go out there and run through corporate offices buck naked. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm talking about is allowing people to connect with you on a genuine level within those professional bounds.

And guess what? Even the most conservative industries are made up of human beings. And human beings connect with other human beings. Just because you are a corporate lawyer doesn't mean you're immune to hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution.

Some of the most successful people in conservative industries are the ones who dare to show some personality. They stand out, they're memorable because they're not just another interchangeable suit. And the clients who resonate with your personality? They're going to be so much easier to work with and more loyal to you than the ones who hired you because you looked like another suit.

And by the way, if your industry is full of people hiding their personalities, yours is going to stand out so much more. You are going to be the one that feels like a real human being, not a corporate robot.

Objection 5: "I tried this before and it backfired"

And here's the last one. Some people tell me, "Simone, I tried leading with who I am before, and it backfired. I shared something about my personal life and I got a bunch of angry comments and people unsubscribed, and it backfired. I don't want to do it again."

To which I say: Look, what's the problem? The only problem is that you misinterpreted what happened.

People unsubscribing, people leaving angry comments when you show your real self means your filtration system is working perfectly. Those people were never going to buy from you. They were just taking up space in your audience. Now that they're gone, they made room for the people who are actually going to resonate with who you are, who are actually going to become your fans, who are actually going to buy from you.

What you might call "backfiring" is actually success. The wrong people left so the right people can show up. The only problem is that you stopped.

My philosophy on rejection

What I often do is give my clients a dare: Go collect rejections. You got rejected? Go collect 20 more rejections. You got five unsubscribes and you're sad about it? Go collect a hundred more unsubscribes.

Because every person who says no to you, who rejects the real you, makes space. This is always my philosophy—I don't know how it's true, but I just decided that it's true and I prove myself to be right about this every time: For every wrong person who leaves your world, it makes room for 10 new aligned people to enter your world.

I just decided this is true like five years ago and I have made it a religion ever since.

The goal is never to minimize backlash or rejection. The goal is to maximize rejection or backlash from the right sources. You want to get rejected faster by the people who are never going to buy from you anyway, from the people who are never going to be part of your world anyway. That's how you get to your people sooner.

People ask me, "Simone, how do I find my people? How do I find my people?" The answer is: You have to speed up the process in which the wrong people leave. You are keeping all these wrong people in your world and you're making it really easy for the wrong people to stay, and you're wondering why it's hard for you to find your right people.

Five questions to lead with who you are

Okay, so now let's get to the good stuff. Let's get to talking about how to actually get your right people to find you and get the wrong people to leave, because those two things have to go together.

And by the way, this is going to be like a list, and I am going to say it all out loud. And then I'm also going to leave this list in the show notes like a worksheet. You can treat it like a worksheet, you can refer to it, you can copy-paste it, you can put it in your notes, because I really want it to be useful for you.

So here are the questions to play with when you think about sharing to lead with more of who you are as a human being:

Question 1: what's your natural way of speaking that you edit out to sound more professional?

Here are some examples:

Maybe you are naturally blunt and tell people exactly what you mean and what they need to hear, even when it might hurt, but you soften everything because you're terrified of being called mean or triggering someone.

Or maybe you naturally use a lot of sexual innuendos, or you are a fan of crude humor—that's just how you talk—but you sanitize everything because you're afraid that people are going to think that you're inappropriate.

Maybe you explain things through weird, obscure pop culture references because that's genuinely how your brain works, but you think, "Oh, no one's going to get these references," and so you force yourself to use boring, generic examples instead.

Question 2: what aspects of how you actually work and how you became who you are, are you hiding because you feel like it's not relevant or people don't care?

Maybe, as an example, you have ADHD and work in a kind of chaotic, non-linear way, but you're ashamed of that and you spend hours forcing your content into logical order, but it feels totally unnatural to you.

Maybe you started your business after getting fired from multiple jobs for being, quote, "difficult to work with," but you're ashamed of that story and you're afraid that people are going to think you're a failure. So you craft instead some vague story about turning setbacks into opportunity that doesn't feel true to you.

Or maybe you grew up in foster care or with addicted parents, and you know that trauma is exactly what makes you so good at helping people, but you never mention it because you feel like it's too much or you don't want people to pity you.

Question 3: what part of your personality do you think would make people unfollow you?

Maybe you're ruthlessly competitive and it drives everything you do, but you're terrified that people might think you're too cutthroat, people will think you're a bitch. So you exhaust yourself trying to sound zen and balanced and calm.

Maybe you have a dark, pessimistic outlook on life that actually makes you pretty great at spotting problems and working through them, but you force yourself to sound positive and optimistic and sunny because you think, "Who wants to work with a Debbie Downer?"

Maybe you're actually judgmental as hell and have strong opinions about everything, but you act nonjudgmental and open-minded because being judgmental is bad—nobody likes a judgmental person.

Question 4: what gets you genuinely excited that you think is too weird to share?

Maybe you're obsessed with reality TV, but you think that makes you look stupid and vapid, so you pretend to only consume serious TV.

Maybe you're fascinated by serial killers and true crime because you are really curious about what makes people snap, but you think, "Oh, if I share that, people are going to think I'm disturbed."

Or maybe you're the opposite—you're still obsessed with Disney movies from your childhood, but you're like, "No, no one's going to take me seriously if I confess I'm still liking Disney movies at age 45."

Question 5: what beliefs do you hold that you intentionally avoid mentioning because it feels like too much?

Maybe you think having kids isn't for everybody, but society pressures people into it, and you just avoid that topic entirely because you don't want people to think you hate children (and you don't).

Maybe you think most people complaining about being, quote-unquote, "triggered" are just avoiding personal responsibility and are using therapy-speak to manipulate other people. But you can't say that without sounding like you're a horrible person who's dismissing real trauma.

Maybe you believe that a lot of people who are constantly broke are making terrible financial decisions but won't admit it, and a lot of the talk about systemic oppression is people avoiding personal accountability. But you can't say that because you don't want people to think you're a horrible person.

Everything you want is on the other side

Now, in contemplating this list and these suggestions, you might think, "Oh my God, if I get honest about these, I will alienate everyone."

Well, here's the thing: It's not everyone, I promise you. It's probably a lot less people than you think, if it's anyone at all. And I say this because most of the time I talk to people and they tell me, "Oh my God, I'm so afraid to say this thing. I feel like everyone's going to hate me if I say this thing."

I think like 70, 80% of the time when they say the thing, all they get is love and people being like, "Oh my God, I was waiting for someone to say the same thing." And it's actually a minority of cases that people get the backlash that they think they're going to get. The opposition was just in their mind, it was just in their imagination.

But even if you do get backlash, I want you to know: Everything you want from your business is on the other side of losing those people.

• Every lukewarm follower you're afraid to lose is making space for someone who would become obsessed with your work
• Every person you're tiptoeing around to avoid offending is preventing someone who needs exactly your brand of intensity from finding you
• Every safe, sanitized, professional post you share that's keeping everyone happy is pushing away the person who would become your biggest advocate—if only they could see who you really are

So stop. Stop catering to people who don't want to be there anyway. Stop making yourself smaller for people who will never appreciate you at your full size.

Your homework

Here's your homework for this week: Pick one—just one—of these five questions. And like I said, I'm going to leave them in the show notes. Answer it honestly in a post or a story or email. I don't care what. Don't try to tackle everything—that's too much. Just pick one thing that made you go, "Oh my God, I definitely hide that" or "Oh my God, I definitely shy away from that" and share something real about it.

Watch what happens. I bet you'll be surprised by how people respond.

Now, next week in part two of this series, we're talking about the idea of giving value and how most people are getting it wrong, and I'm going to tell you how to get it right.

I'll talk to you then. Bye!