WHY THINKING OF YOURSELF AS A PERSONAL BRAND IS HANDCUFFING YOUR GROWTH
I think that the personal brand ‘industry’, if there is such a thing, has created a Facebook playground bubble which is TRAPPING a lot of natural born leaders, visionaries, transformational authors, messengers and speakers born to share their gifts with the world.
Let’s just cut straight to the chase today – if something inside of you just went oh DAMNNNNNNNN, then you know I’m talking to you, and that also?
I’m right.
I don’t know if you know this – but before we all hang out all day err’ day on Facebook, mouths eagerly gaping like well-trained house dogs as we wait for our treat, that hit of dopamine when somebody hits like, or love, or comments, or ‘hell yes-es’ on our latest rant or download –
there was a time when people built businesses as messengers and artists WITHOUT EVEN USING FACEBOOK AT ALL.
I know! It’s C.R.A.Z.Y; it doesn’t bear thinking about, and perhaps you’re suspicious that I’m even making it up! But –
I was there.
I did it.
I built my first online business – a personal brand Fitness business – to nearly a million dollars a year in income WITHOUT BARELY USING FACEBOOK AT ALL. This was largely because, for the first few years I was online, I wasn’t ON Facebook! I hadn’t even signed up yet, and when I did, probably like a lot of people back then, it was because I wanted to reconnect with friends from high school. I’d heard about this whole Facebook thing and I was curious to see if people were really using it!
Of course slowly but surely I figured out what a powerful tool it could be, and also FUN. My fit biz ‘Woman Incredible’ (fitness, fat loss and motivation for driven women who just want MORE … more of what? EVERYTHING!), was successful, I believe, in large part because I knew nothing about online marketing and selling and it was just based on conversation, communication, connection … like … I dunno … listening to people, having fun with them, building relationships, and creating products based on what they seemed to need and want?
It seemed to work 
Anyway, of COURSE I used Facebook to further this, once I clued in on it. Largely though, this was on my business page. My personal page was completely separate. It never occurred to me to try and mix them. The biz page had HUGE engagement … it was all based on a very genuine sharing of value, and from time to time I would also share about new products and programs I’d created. I hadn’t learned about online selling (an early mentor sometime not long after this said it was ‘so cute!’ that I didn’t have sales pages, and quickly compelled me to uplevel my shit … I look back now and think that well, it may have been CUTE, but it was cute to the tune of a multiple 6-figure biz which mainly took off in the 15-minute pockets of time I had in between being pregnant while working still 50 hours a week as a Personal Trainer, and then during breastfeeding etc.
If that’s cute, I think a lot of people will take it!
It’s a bit of a tangent from what I really want to talk about today, but honestly – the time I spent trying to ‘fix’ my DIY cute lil homemade online biz by being a proper online entrepreneur was time which took me OUT of alignment and pretty much BROKE me and my business! I hadn’t learned yet that why I was so naturally successful was because I didn’t know to ‘do it right’, and I was simply communicating and sharing value.
It’s exactly why I ended up UN ‘fixing’ my biz around late 2013 / 2014, and going back to the bare bones basics of just being me! With or without a sales page
Somewhere along the way, the lines became blurred.
People had naturally started to friend me on my personal page, and this was a good thing, something I was happy about! So cool! To see the online world start to mesh with my ‘real’ world, to slowly let them completely blend together, and to realise that the whole damn THING was real.
I don’t know when it happened, but those lines blurring eventually translated into posting some business content, and then, well – all of it – on the personal page. At first this was ‘as well’, but later, as is the case with a lot of us, it became that the personal profile felt more like the REAL place.
This all coincided of course with the online coaching world blowing up, so many people trying to brand themselves online, Facebook apparently showing biz page posts to way less people (I do wonder if that was real, or if it was just that we all started putting our best content on our personal page!), and with the eye-opening revelation that posting biz shiz on personal just seemed to WORK better … it felt, well – more personal. And people like personal! I remember that at first when I was posting biz related messages or offers on personal it felt so bizarre … wrong … was this okay? Then bit by bit it became the norm. I remember also saying, well – what else would I post on my personal profile anyway? My business is by choice enmeshed in every part of my life! They blend together! It IS reflective of my personal life to post about my business!
This is all true.
And I’m not trying to imply I want to try and completely separate them out again.
But here is where I think we lost our way:
We are the ones who were called to impact the WORLD.
We’ve known we were born for more since almost before time began. Heck, of course it was before time began! We were literally created as a vessel to allow high level consciousness and spirit through for others.
Our work is TREMENDOUS.
It IS and always HAS been about not only making millions AND millions (such a surface based way to reflect the true depth of what we’re here to do, but every little million is nice enough as a measurement, sure … !) and to also IMPACT millions of people.
Can you do this on Facebook? Hell YEAH, of course.
Is the Facebook bubble, this little fishbowl we’ve created for ourselves, the world we were actually meant to unleash in?
Uhhhhh – NO!
Or at least, that’s how I feel about it, and also my highest-level visionary clients and friends.
This conversation has been coming up a lot lately.
There’s a feeling of frustration that runs alongside it.
The overall vibe is essentially something like this –
“I know I’m meant to be out there in a bigger way! I know my next level is SO MUCH GREATER than this! I know that SO many more people are meant to know who I am, and hear and see me! I know that online coaching will always be part of it but it is not meant to be the WHOLE DAMN THING! And I just don’t know how to get there …”
Let me tell you something:
It is not going to happen just because you keep intending, manifesting, journaling on being that next level visionary, leader, YOU.
As I’ve said a million times or so, just because you HAVE a destiny, doesn’t mean you will EVER fulfil it!
But if you want it? You have to MAKE it happen. You have to LET it happen, sure, but when you do that from alignment, and from a place of already BEING there, then that indeed means also taking action.
What action do you taken then, to escape your little Facebook Nemo-land, to swim with anticipation, nervousness and excitement, heart beating oh-so-fast, into the vast uncertainty beyond?
It’s VERY freaking simple.
You simply shift your focus.
Let’s be honest –
Right now, a significantly scary portion of your day is spent CHECKING IN TO SEE IF THE STATE OF THE WORLD HAS CHANGED ON FACEBOOK.
Checking in for validation.
Checking in for that dopamine hit.
Checking in ’cause resistance has got you by the short and curlies, and you haven’t trained yourself yet to respond to the feeling you get by DOING THE REAL WORK; instead you’re hooked on AVOIDANCE.
Checking in just in case somebody posted the meaning of life and you missed it!
Checking in because maybe there’s stuff you need to know, maybe other people are doing things that you should be doing!
Checking in because … because … because … ugh, you don’t even know WHY most of the time! It just happens!
And say what you will, but a LOT of how you’re creating and showing up is based on looking for that instant feedback on a platform which is NOT yours, will never BE yours, and is HANDCUFFING you from being the true world-famous transformative leader who you’re meant to be!
If you want to escape the Facebook bubble, it’s NOT about going dark on it. It’s an EXCELLENT tool, why would we not use it?!
But it’s just that – a tool.
Not the whole world.
When was the last time you consistently, with even half the energy and emotion you put into this one platform, focused on being heard and seen on –
– Syndicated platforms
– Podcasts or shows
– In relevant media publications
– Google, with quality long-tail gettin’ content
– Your own damn website
– Showing up organically in search
– Being featured as a go-to expert in places with huge audiences
– OTHER social media platforms
– Physical books or other publications
– Video, even live video, OFF Facebook (it’s a thing!)
– And a thousand other places besides
Look, maybe you’re all over this and you give Facebook only an amount of attention equal to other places which matter equally and perhaps more!
But, maybe not. Probably not, or you wouldn’t still be reading!
The solution here is SIMPLE –
Freakin’ DIVERSIFY. See this one place as A place, a tool, a resource, not THE ENTIRE WORLD.
Fast forward into the vision of you, the founder, director, creator, and sure, face of an international COMPANY –
Where would your time and energy be?
What would have been attended to and built up in order to take your message to the WORLD?
What would the ‘bubble’ you live in be?
Because if it’s anything other than the bubble of your own SOUL, and remembering daily that that soul was incarnated into this body in order for the whole world to see and hear from it …
Then you’re going to need to change things.
Or you will never BECOME that you.
Having a personal brand is a great thing, an awesome thing, a thing we all naturally gravitated towards because we know we are meant to be seen and heard.
Our businesses ARE an extension of who we are, and this is also a great thing!
But the vision was never to spend our days focused on having people react to our day to day lives … and it was never to get caught up continually in what on earth everyone else is up to. Yes, even our own amazing communities!
This was meant to be ONE STREAM OF IT.
And it’s time to own that, and then do something about it.
If you want to be owner of an 8 or 9-figure empire (and I know you do … those of you who I am writing this for, anyway!), then you’ll need to BE THAT PERSON.
And you’ll need to let go of living your life for a freakin’ like on Facebook.
In the end, it’s very black and white –
You’re either living for likes –
Or you’re head down and hot booty up, building the vision of the company and empire you’ll lead when the whole world is waking up every day and looking to inspiration and asskickery from YOU.
I’ll finish with this:
If you’re meant to speak to the whole world –
And you keep on doing it the way you’ve been doing it –
It doesn’t matter HOW loud you shout gorgeous. Your powerful truth is still just an echo reverberating off the sides of a fishbowl you never even wanted to live in,
And yet somehow built around you.
Wake up.
The next level is now.
\
Leave a Reply