Being kind is my job

Yo, yo, yo I can taste yo, yo, yo, yo I can taste yo, yo, yo. Hello, and good Sunday morning to you. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, coming to you live on the Facebooks, LinkedIn and YouTube. And I'm coming to you live with a different topic than I nor I normally talk about on here. If you haven't noticed, I have stepped back from doing lies of late. I, I never believe, and I've explained this in the post, I never believe that anyone owes any explanation for why they stop or pause doing a certain kind of social media. You know, we all need breaks. We all need moments or weeks or months to be in our own heads and to take care of ourselves and to create and kind of get realigned and, you know, to a degree, that's kind of what I've been doing in the last couple months. But I, I'm a big believer of transparency in what happens when you start a business. And I never want to pretend like running a business online is always going to be, you know, like roses and daisies and rainbows and unicorns, because it's not. There's a lot of running a business that isn't great. There's a lot of, like, bullshit work that you have to do. There's, you know, sometimes the occasional difficult client dealing with some vendors who don't fulfill on their contracts. And there's also people on the interwebs who can make you feel uncomfortable. And that's something that I was dealing with late last year. I didn't share about it at the time. I was actually incredibly afraid of one individual who obviously perceived a deeper relationship than what this medium is. And I debated for a really long time whether or not I should speak openly about it. Because a. I think as women, you know, when someone makes us feel uncomfortable or unsafe, we have this perception that if we pretend that it's not happening, if we pretend like it's not impacting us, we don't call it out. Like it'll go away. And, and also that if we were to call it out, if we were to name it, that it may make the situation worse. And I even, even as I was writing up the post with this, and even as I talk through this, I wonder if this particular individual is seeing this because I've blocked him on numerous platforms and he, I think, was making new accounts. I'm hoping the pause that I gave was enough for him to move on to someone else, but I just don't know. I don't know. And I wanted to come on and explain this part of it to you, because if you're a woman, I want you to know, like, you are supported. You know, one of the things that I did with my team with this individual was we took screenshots, we archived absolutely everything he was sending me. All. We also kept track of all the different usernames, all the different, like, first and last names that he used on his account because he was changing those. And that's incredibly important if you're posting online, if you're, you know, creating content and you're getting that kind of attention back. It's just the reality of what we need to do to keep ourselves safe. It also made me do some really deep thinking about the content that I create and how much I share about my personal life. Because I think on one hand, I love. I absolutely love that when people come to me and they talk about their businesses, they, like, know enough about me that they feel so comfortable sharing things with me. I love that. I love that. I think when my clients are able to start with me already knowing a bit about me, they're able to relax into doing the work because there's trust there. And it's one of the reasons why I am so open about different parts of my life. I think it's really important to have that level of vulnerability out there, and also it can have this dark underbelly. And so I wanted, before I dive back in completely into doing lives to promote my business, I wanted to create something to give you some insight as to what goes on in the background. Sometimes for women who are running their businesses online, I don't see this problem going away. I don't. I think we're in a time where there's just incredible amount of loneliness and there's a great deal of work that needs to be done to support people who have mental illness who don't necessarily have a support system in place for themselves. And I want every woman out there, and men as well. If you're creating content and getting this kind of attention, I want you to be really smart and careful about what you put out there. Be careful when you're creating content in places that you spend time in. You know, it's amazing what people can discover through using, like, a reverse image search. And it can be really easy to identify where you are. And I don't say that to scare you. I say that because I want you to be safe. And maybe it's okay for us to be a little scared. You know, one of the Things that I absolutely love about running my business is that I get to be myself, I get to have fun. And I can tell you, there's nothing that quite throws. Throws a wet blanket over that fun than seeing messages coming through while you're going live. I don't know, if you do go back a couple lives from late last year, you'll notice there's a moment where I see a comment come through and, you know, sometimes I. I don't realize it's the individual. And then you'll notice, like, it hits me and I very quickly wrap up the life because it's just like, oh, God, he found me again. And yeah, so anyway, so that's what's going on in the background. It's why I've taken a break from going live. You know, I was debating. I was debating honestly giving up lives altogether. But it's a part of my business that I genuinely enjoy. And I kind of have this you mentality of, you know, I refuse to let people who are, who are toxic like this. I refuse to let them win. I refuse to let them impact how I run my business. I refuse to let them force decisions like that on me. Okay. I'm not okay with it. And so you'll be seeing me go live back in my normal cadence very, very shortly. It's gonna be. I don't know if I'm gonna be going live every single day, but I'm decided that this chapter is behind me. And I want to name that if any individuals come through who are one of these people, I will be outing them while I go live if I. If I realize who they are. So fair warning. Anyway, with that, wanted to keep this short and sweet. Um, and you know, and I know, I know some of you, you know, I have some really incredible men who follow me and who interact with me on live. You know, if I haven't given you it like a cease and desist message, if I haven't blocked you and you're seeing this, you're not, you're not the person. If you cannot access certain plat me on certain platforms, then yes, you're who I'm talking about. And I do not want to get further messages from you, but to everyone who's like, okay, good, like, that's not me. You don't need to check in on me. You don't need to, like, send me a DM and ask how I'm doing. I'm doing fine. I'm doing absolutely fine. You know, this is just something that we have to deal with as women, and it's so sad that I have to say that. And also, you know, thankfully, there's ways to collect receipts, and, you know, here's to. Here's to hoping it's enough. Anyway, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Thank you for joining, and I look forward to going live with you this week. All right, have a good day, everyone.