Who is your business for?
In the realm of visibility, a really important focus is: who are you when you’re marketing your business?
Are you “polished you”? “Professional you”? “Some hacked together persona you think you should be”?
Do you feel exhausted having to keep up the façade of this persona?
Because this is what I’m hearing from small business owners lately. A lot.
“I’m so sick of pretending.”
And sister, don’t I know it!
When I first started ubu skills in 2018, my Instagram was a very different place. I hadn’t begun newsletters yet, but if I had, they would have said:
“Good morning, Megan! Did you know that you could boost your professional impact by 30% just by speaking in a lower tone? Most of us do not realize how much our speaking voice makes an impression, but let’s dive into the metrics.”
I was scared as shit to get on Instagram video, because as a speaking coach, I was sure everyone would judge me. And if I wasn’t a Barack Obama level perfect, I’d get zero clients.
By the way, Obama is my GOAT.
Anyhow, somewhere around the Autumn of 2020, I started to use tarot cards more for my own personal shadow work as well as building my business. (Cuz if there’s one thing we entrepreneurs know - it’s alllllllll inner work.)
And I sort of wanted to put that out there, but was petrified of losing potential clients who might think I was a big flake.
Did I think tarot reading was flaky? Hell no. In fact it’s one of the best tools I’ve ever found to deepen my relationship with myself (which again, only helps to build your ability to run a business).
But I was afraid of what people might think. Or say. Or whisper. Or blacklist me…
And now, honestly, it’s so funny to me. Literally nobody cared. Not one person. I slowly started to post tarot spreads, and waited for the mass exodus of Instagram and newsletter followers and…
…nothing happened.
And when I realized that? I knew I could start to be more my actual self in my marketing, instead of whatever polished and professional persona I thought I’d developed.
And you know how it felt?
Freeing.
And you know what happened?
I started to get more clients.
Instead of putting limits on my behaviour, which limited my creativity, I chose expansion.
But I’ll say this - it wasn’t easy. It took a lot of shadow work, journaling, working it out with different business coaches (I’ve had the privilege of working with some phenomenal coaches, and wouldn’t be where I am without them.)
And also - the more shadow work I was doing with myself, the deeper I was building my relationship with myself, and then I could actually show up as myself because I finally knew who that was!
Important Question
And so I want to ask you this important question: who is your business for?
And if your first answer is to give me your ideal client blueprint, then just take a quick pause.
Why are you doing this?
Do you want to wear a mask forever?
Do you want to pretend to be somebody that you’re not?
How would it feel to be unencumbered by what you think everybody else wants you to be, and instead just be you. You be you.
Who is your business for? You.
If this all sounds like hot fire to you, join us this October for free visibility work for small business owners. We’re meeting every Wednesday from 12pm-12:30pm Eastern time, via zoom. We’re gonna get back the passion, air out the murkiness, get unstuck and get energized. We’re going to work on how to show up, how to ditch the fears of what everybody will think, brainstorm fresh ideas and paths forward, and all within a kickass, supportive community of amazing small business owners like you.
Oh yeah - it’s FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Grab your spot here! We roll on Wednesday!
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