Embracing the Vulnerability of Digital Leadership
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To put yourself out there and lead in any capacity with integrity takes SUCH vulnerability. People will prop you onto a pedestal and rip you off of it without batting an eye.
You’ve got to face the mess. Face your shame. Face perfectionism. Face your privilege and/or ALL of the systems of oppression that aren’t in your favor.
You’ve got to face fear. Face your trauma. Face your childhood. Face your body.
Sound like fun?
In order to hunt down the scary monsters of the ego and lead with integrity, you’ve got to get deeply connected to and keep coming BACK to your WHY.
Why do you care? Why do you want to serve? What do you want to see in the world?? WHY?
What really pisses you off? Why?
Keep coming back to your WHY until you are crying. Literally. Crying, with tingles all over your skin. Crying from the depths of your being and feeling like magic, fury, and possibility are waking up every one of your cells, and they are DEMANDING you to show the fuck up or it would be dishonoring yourself, humanity and the earth.
How you lead will change, what you share, will change. It needs to change, as you learn and unlearn.
Your why, the real depth of it, is something no one can take away from you. You know it’s your why if it feels like a whole body kind of yes.
The words to my WHY change, but what remains is a feeling. A felt sense. A noticing connection and meaning that is so hard to put words to.
It’s remembering why you are human and why the fuck you are here on this planet.
With that said, let’s get down to business and address some of the vulnerability places that are inherent in the leadership of running a business.
1) In Business, Your Ultimate Goal is to NOT Be Needed
Making money doesn’t make you a monster. Exploiting, enslaving, and manipulating folks is monstrous though.
Maybe what is holding you back from stepping into the leadership of running a business and asking for money is comparing yourself to monster billionaires, who have had to use these tactics to reach a billion. There is a huge difference between asking for money for your services that help people, and straight up exploitation.
The difference is…help people solve problems, not create problems, in this colonized white supremacist world. Ideally, your work helps people solve some of their problems and get to the root cause as much as possible. Consequently, if we met our deepest and biggest goal…it would be to put ourselves out of business. It would be to no longer be needed. Otherwise, we risk forming co-dependent relationships with our clients.
Yes, there is a hugely important place for INTERDEPENDENCY, but, that’s a nuanced and beautiful conversation that feels like too much of a divergence from my point of getting clear on your business goals. Especially with my speciality of selling digital products.
For example, I want to help people heal from trauma, love themselves, and make decisions from an embodied place, which naturally causes a ripple effect of these humans wanting to do the same, in their own unique way, with their own unique lens, for others. If this works, eventually, totally theoretically, no one would need me anymore. My ultimate goal is tied up in our collective liberation and that would put me out of business.
Now is that realistic? FUCK NO. More traumatizing horrors happen every day, and I’m fighting against white supremacy and billion dollar businesses that are determined to get you to hate yourself so you buy their weight loss drama.
This is how many monster billionaires work. They cause the problem AND sell you the solution. Also, they often make it REALLY easy to subscribe and REALLY freaking difficult to walk away. This is co-dependency at its finest.
We all have some kind of traumatizing experience around money while living under capitalism so it makes a whole lot of sense to be afraid to ask people for money. The thing is, by playing small and shrinking your existence, you’re doing people a disservice. You have an individual gift and the sooner you start embracing it, the more and more it can be nurtured and can grow.
2) Ask for Help
As a culture, we need to shift our relationship around leadership. There is this deeply embedded idea in capitalism that we need to do it all alone. We are not allowed to ask for help or if we do, we have failed in some way. or we are weak. Oh, and weakness and failure are BAAAAD. Pfft.
Yes, many of us have hurts around asking for help, myself included.
If we grew up in co-dependent households, asking for or receiving help can feel scary because, in the past, help came with hidden expectations, manipulation and control. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been impacted by a codependent relationship in some way. The thing is, sometimes we worry so much about being manipulated and controlled that we learn to manipulate and control our surroundings. Or we FORCE things to work in our business. We become the very thing we are afraid of #starwars.
Start practicing asking directly for what you need, regularly, because otherwise, you’re adopting some pretty sneaky, manipulative tactics to get by. Working with others takes more time, but in the end, it’s more sustainable.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” - African Proverb
Another side to this is asking how to support other community leaders. Instead of giving all of our power away by putting leaders on a pedestal and expecting everything from them, start asking leaders how you can help. Be an active client, participant, student. Let’s be critical thinkers and take responsibility for collective healing, and see that we need each other to make liberation and healing work sustainable.
3) Face the Shame of Perfectionism
To be a good leader, but really get anything we want out of life, we have to address our perfectionism. Which really is just about addressing our shame.
Perfection is, without a doubt, a social construct…and it’s a trauma.
Many of us live in a punishment-based culture, and many of our ancestors have lived in those cultures before us. In these cultures, when we fuck up, the punishment is extreme. That is a lot of compounding trauma.
For example, for white people’s ancestors, silence has helped some of them survive, which is why it’s such a freaking thing even to this day. But it’s no longer serving us. We have to face the shame and this trauma.
Perfectionism is needing to be liked, to create and perform flawlessly, so that we can ignore and deny our humanity. Perfectionism says there is NO PLACE for our messiness, that it, and therefore we, don’t belong.
We are human, we will make mistakes, and it is, in fact, okay to not be liked by everyone. So much so that I encourage you to sit with the idea of someone not liking you.
Just notice what it feels like in your body when you think of someone who doesn’t like you.
Where can you feel the response to that thought in your body?
Where do you go numb?
If we go way back to our ancient ancestors, shame had serious importance and in many cultures, it still does. If you weren’t liked by others, you got kicked out of the community, which meant death. But for many of us, that’s just not the case anymore. Sure, a little bit short lived shame make sense, so we don’t do or say heinous things to one another.
But it’s the chronic shame, that makes us make chronic shame based decisions that lead to paralysis, isolation, silence, dissociation, violence, punishment, dehumanization, policing one another and so much more.
Please, I beg of you, don’t get caught in analysis paralysis. Just start. Take baby steps. You will make mistakes, but that’s how you learn. Putting your work out into the world also isn’t about the white feminism idea of always being unapologetic. When you mess up, it’s also about owning your mistakes and how you respond to them.
But you don’t learn in a vacuum, no matter how alluring that sounds. If you are open to listening, you will learn quickly and not make really big mistakes. Take a deep breath in to your belly and just start, leave the nest.
You need to be a little embarrassed of your first offering. Just like you need to be embarrassed of yourself from a year ago, or the kind of hair you wore in your high school yearbook. It’s a good sign you are learning, and expanding.
But it takes starting now.
4) Build a Brand, Not a Business
You want to build a brand not a business and that means: Share YOURSELF, not just what you sell.
Why does this matter? A few reasons:
You can pivot. If you share about yourself, people will be drawn to YOU, no matter what you are offering. If you switch from talking about sex toys to starting to talk about healing developmental trauma, to how to dissect ethical shopping habits, people will make that transition with you, because they are mainly there for you. If you are just talking about the specific thing you sell, it boxes you in, and it limits the ways in which people can continue to connect with you (especially if what you are selling is not relevant to them right now).
Build the know, like, trust factor. If you are only focused on selling, it’s hard for people to know, enjoy, trust you, which is what it takes for them to buy from you. If you are JUST talking about your product, there is no reason for people to connect. You will be just as irksome as the pop up add before you can watch the next video on YouTube. People don’t buy products, they buy experiences and new versions of themselves. As a leader in business, it’s your job to guide them to see what they may need to get where they want to go.
Diversify What You Show of Yourself and your Business. Now, how do you all this? I learned the next strategy from Jenna Kutcher, and it’s based on sharing different aspects of your personality AND the different types of topics you want to talk about, and then rotating between those.
For example, I address many different topics across my business, such as unpacking privilege, sensuality, relationships, connection to the earth, somatics, leadership, gender, etc. When I rotate between these topics regularly, I am connecting to different people in my community. In addition to these topics, I also share little things about myself to make me more relatable, like that I’m a Virgo, that I love dancing, nature, and that I am a recovering people pleaser. I share about all of these things consistently.
Sharing to Attract, Not to Manipulate. At the same time, as leaders, we got to do a lot of inner work and check our inner manipulator, because we all have the power to manipulate. Manipulating isn’t inherently a bad thing, but we’ve got to be responsible with this power. For example, we need be ourselves AND enjoy serving our clients. If either of these are missing, it’s a huge red flag we need to dramatically shift our work. Otherwise, we risk acting like the creepy business in your DMs, the modern version of the sleazy door-to-door sales folk, that will say and morph into WHATEVER the client wants, but then doesn’t deliver. Or their offer gets them co-dependently trapped in some way. When we share about ourselves, we are ATTRACTING the people who want to work with us and we don’t have to “chase anyone down in their DMs.” Plus, guilting people into buying from you, just isn’t a sustainable practice. I can still share consistently and may I say, even aggressively, on my own e-lawn because I know my offerings are supportive and that by being myself and sharing myself, I am attracting the people who will most resonate with my offerings.
5. Be your god damn divine self. JUST LIKE I AM WITH THIS POST, it’s my first solid business post, but it’s still from ME, Luna. I’m still going to continue talking about my kinky relationships and my love for my fat cat, Patricia, and how I like to shake my ass and worship trees. You are still getting moi.
5) Consistent & Boundaried
Show up. Consistently.
This takes boundaries and practice. This isn’t about burning yourself out and/or dissociating from your body. First of all, this isn’t sustainable, so it’s impossible to stay consistent and more importantly, YOU ARE NOT A MACHINE. You are deserve deep rest and big joy. Your worth isn’t dependable on how much you produce. Honestly, this is something I still am working on.
Showing up with consistency in your business is about boundaries. No matter if you blog, vlog, post on social media, or whatever, you need to practice saying “NO” to anything that doesn’t feel like a “hell yes.” Honestly, if you want to get anywhere, you’re going to need to say “no,” more than you say “yes.”
Yes, you have every right to experiment and mess up, but/and practice getting really good at one thing before bouncing around to the next. Otherwise you might over promise and under deliver, losing your community’s and your own trust.
Consistency starts with small steps and figuring out what you can do that isn’t too much, too soon. It requires that you build layers of systems that allow you to show up with ease and with regularity, over time. Go as small as you can/want to and grow your consistent habits from there.
For example, 3.5 years ago or so, I committed to posting on Instagram almost every day, and it has completely changed my life. Back then, that felt doable for me. I’ve started takign breaks on Saturday’s and I’ve been able to build new habits from there.I wouldn’t be able to do this if I said “yes” to most of the opportunities that land in my inbox. But saying “no” has become pretty easy, I feel my feet, check in with my gut, and if it’s not a “hell yeah,” it’s a “no”.
Figure out what is a doable step for you and practice committing to it. This will require saying “no” to other habits and opportunities, but it’s so worth it. This practice builds self trust and confidence and just makes you feel damn proud of yourself.
6) Focus on the Outcome, Not the Product
It makes sense that when you get all caught up in and excited about creating a new offering that you want to nerd out about all the little details and mechanics of that product. To some extent, yes, share about that! Document your process, but it needs the right timing.
When you really go to SELL the product and create a sales page, facebook even, or start posting about it on social media, you want your efforts to center what the fuck your offering will DO FOR PEOPLE.
People want to know that you can show them how they will feel worthy of receiving epic, hour long orgasms and how that can impact their whole life. Sure, they want to know they will get 3 different videos that give them specific belly and pelvic floor breathing techniques, but if this is all your saying, why would they care?
You need to educate your community on why they would care. Sure you want to give them the specific details of what the heck you are offering and share your process with them. For example, when I am building out a course or even working on a blog post, I like to share some of the behind scenes, through my instagram stories. Also, a part of any sales page is sharing the nuts and bolts of exactly what I am offering. Again, it’s a balance. I just make sure to CENTER what is possible for people.
What is the transformation, what is their return on investment, what is the answer to their,
“Who will this help me become? ”
7) Be EXCITED to Sell
You have to believe in what you are offering. You have to believe that it can change people’s lives, or at least make it better. And you have to believe that the right people, those who are drawn to your medicine and work, will WANT to buy from you. Otherwise you are going to feel embarrassed about selling. And, honestly, this is one that still trips me up.
I have to coach myself that it’s okay to ask for money. Capitalism is heartbreaking, but like I said before, there is a difference between selling a solution to someone’s problem, while trying to get to the root of it and creating, enabling or perpetuating the problem.
As you learn more, keep changing your offers. You can give access through scholarships and sliding scales, and/or donate a portion of the money to organizations you believe in and for reparations (if you are white and/or have a lot of privilege and/or just feel that is something that feels right for you). Again, the foundational intention of my work is to empower others and theoretically go out of my business. I know that’s a super white saviorism way of thinking about it. It’s reductionist, like with anything, there is more nuance and dialogue needed.
I think you get my point though. I believe in and back up what I’m offering with integrity, and this makes me excited and proud to sell. Makes me WANT to sell.
I realistically know I can’t help everyone, but I want to do my part and do what I can. And a part of that is putting my work out there.
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This is not a class about making as much money as possible, at any cost. It’s not a step by step guide on how to join the ranks of men while wearing pink. Although, pink is really fabulous.
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