You're Going To Get Caught Being Yourself

Experiment, make sure you're being you and be okay with the negative feedback as you go through that transition of saying, here's who I fully am. Here's what I fully represent. Here's what I fully speak.

And we're back with another episode of He Said, she Said.

Coming at you live from New York City, the Big Apple.

If you hear sirens or profanities, it's just the normal backdrop.

Oh, my God.

That was so fun.

I hear you getting used to this, Lori. That was the segue, yelling profanities. You want to be able to yell profanities, and you feel like you pigeonholed.

I mean, I guess. I guess if we're saying it like that, I don't know if I wake up every day saying, God, I just want to yell profanities. But this is the conversation that we are having today.

Yeah. And before we have that conversation, I just want to remind you guys real quick, there's two great opportunities to come hang out with us, learn from us, and make some really valuable entrepreneur connections in September. First one is I've got just a couple of roundtable spots left. I should have said November. Go to Chrisharder Me Roundtable. It's you and 14 other entrepreneurs literally strategically working together with my input over the course of 48 hours in person to plan out your set of tracks to your goals for 2024. It's incredible. We've done these roundtables. People loved them. This is a 2024 planning edition of it. So go to Chrisharter Me Roundtable if you want to grab one of the last couple November spots. And in September, you can come hang out with Lori and I at Girlfriends in Business.

I think that's the new theme song and the walk on song.

All you have to do is go to girlfriendsandbusiness.com I think you have, what, two seats?

I have three.

Three, three. Three seats at the time of this recording. So I don't even know if they'll be there. But hit pause and go to girlfriendsandbusiness.com and come see us in September. Well, here's what's interesting. I just got out of a business meeting. We're in New York, and we're half having fun with friends. We came here to meet friends of ours that were passing through that live in Italy now. And we've got this group of friends. We all travel together. So we all literally impromptu said, let's meet up in New York. And we did so in a day's notice. We all came out to New York or decided, I'll come out to New York and we've had the best time ever. So that's the first half of the reason of the trip. The second half was I'm pitching right. We're about halfway through the fund for Frello, my peer to peer lending app that we're building. And we are pitching strategic investors, people that we think can bring a lot of good knowledge and expertise to the table at the same time as investing in it. And I just got out of a pitch meeting and this investor, potential investor, was just so New York. He was so direct, he was so himself. He was so like bull in a china shop. And I really admired the fact that he didn't do that volley back and forth. He just said, let's get down to brass tacks and was just truly the brash, bold, loud version of himself. And it got Lori and I to talking and it's probably the second or third time we've talked about this about man. There's a whole nother side of us that we want to let out, that we want to show or display, but we've built Personas, you want to say, where we're a little bit more calm or a little bit more reserved. Reserved. And that's actually not who we are.

Okay, so this all came from in the past. I feel like we've actually been having this conversation for a few years now. I feel like, especially this last year, I have been seeing different models of people where I'm like, oh my God, I would love to be able to show up to my podcast, to my email, writing to events, and really, really just fully be me without editing. Now, of course, there's certain things where you're not going to intentionally offend people and there's always going to be parts of you you're not going to want to share parts of your story that maybe are just really sacred to you and private to you. But for the most part, like really being that person that you are with your best friends. And I see other people doing this out in the world now because I think it's just so much more accepted and it's easier to start showing your authentic self in different modalities. But it is scary and I want that freedom that they have. But I know that that took work. I know that that probably took a lot of negative comments underneath posts. I know that probably lot of feedback of I don't like that you're this way or I used to respect you, but I don't like when you swear. I don't like when you say this or do that or share this opinion. So I know that that is what is keeping me from truly being 100% myself now. It's not like a totally different version of me where it's like, oh my God, I don't even recognize this person. It's just like me, I guess, more on blast or me with, if I'm being honest, like more raw, more just saying exactly how I feel.

Let me sum up this way. We swear way more when we're hanging out with our friends than we do, let's say, on these shows or if you see us at an event or something like that. And I think we're a couple of perverts when it comes to our humor.

I am a 12 year old boy.

You are trapped in a hot woman's body.

It's just, you know, that is my.

That's so 2023, isn't it? Okay, wait, we're not going there. But all joking aside, we have this really fun sweary side to us that is us when we're at home and us when we are with our friends and all that stuff. But then when we're on a stage or when we're doing our podcast, we're a bit more reserved. And I've been struggling with this because I don't quite get my passion across sometimes. And I wonder to myself, am I being professional or am I being inauthentic? Am I being professional or am I being too reserved? And I don't know what that right answer is because there is no right way to be other than being yourself. And here's what happens when you have a show for six years. Me, you what, seven or eight years now. And you've done it one way. It's not that you weren't being authentic, is that six, seven, eight years ago.

That's what we saw.

That's what we saw. And that's who you were. And then, you know, you change over six, seven, eight years. But if you don't bring your listeners along or just say you're a speaker on stage, if you don't bring your viewers along, oh my God, all of a sudden they're like, who is this person? And I liked you better when. And it's horrible reading the I liked you better when comments. But you're like, but wait, don't you really want to know me?

Right? So you were having a conversation with Nick, my brother in law, your brother. And we were discussing this like because Chris is kind of like a little bit of a Gary Vee. And he always is like, man, sometimes I just want to, like, give it to him straight. Like, he's just very direct. And sometimes it. Sometimes it hurts. But it always is done with the intention of, like, let's just get you there immediately. Like, why are we cutting around or giving all this fluff? And that's just how he is. And Nick said something that I thought was just so profound. He said, it's not that people will be mad about who you really are. They're upset that you made them believe you were someone else.

Yep.

And so it's not even that that should bother you. Like, if that just hit you, like, oh, God, I've made. I've led people on. I've made them believe I'm someone else. You did this because you thought that's what we were supposed to do, and this was professional. And I think in the beginning, that's kind of what you have to do to roll yourself out there to see what works and what doesn't. But there are those people who come out from the beginning guns blazing. They're just like, this is who I am, and that's what works. But if you haven't been able to do that, maybe in your family life or even around your friends, you're certainly not going to be able to do that with the Persona that you're putting out there. So I believe that this is going to be kind of a practice, kind of a like, bringing people along. That's why I believe we're doing this podcast, is to say, you and I want to be more of ourselves, and this is what it's gonna look like. Maybe it's not all at once, because I even feel myself editing myself already on this podcast. So I think it's a slow process of more and more saying, how does this feel? What does this look like?

Yeah, it's interesting. What Nick said was really profound. Nobody cares who you are, whether you're super sweary or whether you're the church mouse. Hey. What bothers them is that they thought you were one thing and suddenly you were something else. And here's where I struggle. I'm like, but we're always changing over time. So aren't we allowed to change? Aren't we allowed to become somebody else? Isn't it naturally set up so that people, if they know you over a long period of time, they're going to know you as one person? And years later, all of a sudden, you're a different person? And what does that balance look like? How do you walk that line. How do you say, hey, here's who I really am, here's how I really talk, here's who I really want to be without causing that type of resistance. And as I say that out loud, maybe that's the problem. We're trying to be authentic and please everybody, and you can't, because you will never please everybody. You have to choose which side, which half of the pie you're going to please. Right? If you walk down the middle, you please nobody. But if you say, this is the side I'm on, this is who I am, this is what I believe, this is how I speak, then half the people will really gravitate towards you. Oh, that's my guy. Oh, that's my girl. Oh, you're like me. And the other half will say, that's not for me. And that's actually the job in life is to make it very easy for people to say, oh, you are for me, or, oh, you are not for me, instead of trying to make people guess, are you for me? Are you not? Because now nobody actually feels, like, truly pulled in by you.

I always think about the fact that sooner or later, you're going to get caught being yourself.

Oh, great saying.

And I just would rather have people see me for who I am now than say, oh, my God, she's putting one thing out there, but this is really how she is. And I'm not ashamed of the person that I am. I think I am trying to figure out how to unlock myself from these handcuffs that I have put myself in of maybe showing up as somebody different. And a couple things that I'm doing to do that are even in, like, events. I even feel like I'm more myself on stage. I feel like recording some different podcasts, like, the Living Room Sessions, where we're in small groups with one of my best friends recording, and we are just real and raw. Like, you can go and listen to one of those episodes, and you'll probably hear a very different version of me because I'm trying to figure out how to capture that in these other episodes by myself and with you, Chris. And it's like, you're gonna have to try on a bunch of different ways to see what feels good to even be yourself. Because, to be honest, like, I can hit record by myself and be like, okay, Lori, like, be yourself. Like, 100% permission. And I can feel myself holding back in this weird awkwardness where I don't even know what it looks like to be myself. So I do think it's this dance of okay, I'm gonna put a post out on Instagram. How would I actually talk and like put it out like that and start trying little things like that.

Yep, yep. I guess that's it. Like experiment. Make sure you're being you and be okay with the negative feedback as you go through that transition of saying, here's who I fully am, here's what I fully represent, here's what I fully speak.

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So I don't even know if we got anywhere in all of this rambling other than if you struggle with this too. You're not alone if you struggle with like, hey, how should I show up? What's professional? What's muting myself because I'm trying to be professional. We're all just trying to figure that out together.

Well, you guys, I hope this gave you a little bit of permission because honestly, continuing to show up to all of the things that you do as somebody else is exhausting. That's why I want to talk about this is you can have a lot more fun, you can be a lot more you. You can talk about the things that really matter. It is going to come with some, but I don't think that backlash lasts a very long time. It's just when it's kind of weeding out those people who were more attracted to who you were pretending to be. And I think that those people don't necessarily really connect with you. Anyway, I don't really know if they're your die hard audience and I think that the more that we can be us, the better we're going to do. And we're also going to enjoy our life a lot more.

Yep, agreed. So come find us at next Perverted Joke Square Fest. We'll see you there.

Bye everyone.

We'll see you next week.

Thanks for listening.