Katie McManus tells small business owners that fear of standing out is learned, not real. She does the math: 100 views a day for 30 days reaches 3,000 people who might need your help. Hiding your business to avoid criticism is selfish.
The common thread is that calling attention to yourself is borderline evil. If we're not acknowledging where these seeds got planted, we can't rip the tree out. And actually, I say tree. It's more of a Jack and the giant beanstalk kind of plant going on here. I don't believe that there's a naturally born this way mean child. It's behavior that's learned. And unfortunately, those of us who naturally kind of stick out often become the targets of that. We can see other people getting torn down for how they're different, for how they put themselves out there, for how they call attention to themselves. And we learn very quickly that if they're getting torn down, I'll probably get torn down if I do the same thing. There are always going to be haters online. There are always going to be people who see your stuff and are like, they're just miserable fucks. Do you want your life to be run by miserable fucks for the rest of your life? They're always going to find something to tear down about other people. The reason they're so miserable is because they will never tackle the fear that keeps them small, that keeps them quiet, that keeps them hiding. Just because you're putting yourself out in the public does not mean that you have to accept whatever attention is sent your way. It's what you do with that attention that makes you good or bad. If with that attention you're like, come on guys, let's go gather rocks and throw them at small children at the playground. Yeah, you're a terrible human being. You should be put in jail. There are so many people out there who need your help because you and they have some kind of connection. You have things in common. You have a shared sense of humor. You might come from the same background, whatever your personality, your sense of humor, your background, whatever, all that makes you the perfect person to help a certain set of people out there in the world. And without you, they will not be able to accomplish whatever it is that's possible for them. And so if you're not willing to put yourself out there, if you're not willing to be brave and deal with some potential haters online, some potential trolls whose voices don't matter anyway just because you're afraid, you're actually being incredibly selfish because you're robbing them of that future they could have access to if they work with you. Here's the truth is that it got me clients. Even the bad cringe, embarrassing, not well written, crappy content that I did when I first started doing this that still got me clients. Because people can't hire you if they don't know that you exist. Cool. Now, I mean, even if you only get 100 views on your post and you're posting every day for 30 days, for instance. Yeah. That's still 3,000 people who now know that you exist. You're doing it to help people, and you're doing it to help yourself so that you can have a successful business, so that you can have a life that you actually enjoy, where you have control over your time and your freedom.
