How to Get People to Follow, Accept, and Love You (Pride Month Special Episode)

What are you doing to gain followers and customers, to get people to trust you so that they'll buy from you and to feel like you're showing up authentically as an entrepreneur. Today, I want to dedicate a special episode in honor of Pride Month to entrepreneurs who are looking to show up more authentically and to create brands and businesses that are accepting and embracing of all types of people. Whether you're an entrepreneur or simply here to listen to my podcast as a supporter or friend, the topic of authenticity is fundamental to human success. Let's talk about how we are creating our business and our life to be an authentic reflection of who we are in order to have the greatest impact on ourselves and those we serve. You're listening to the Universe has yous Business. It's the podcast for rising entrepreneurs, coaches, and change makers who are here to achieve more while letting the universe do the heavy lift. And I'm your host, Andrew Donovan. Well, hey, hey, hey. Happy Pride Month, and welcome to this special episode. Now, of course, you know my show is not about activism. It's not about political agendas. None of that. However, as a gay man, a gay male entrepreneur, I thought, you know, I'm gonna spend an episode talking about the subject of authenticity, sexual. So that's why it says Pride Month special Edition in the title of this episode. Now, wherever you are, whatever your religious background, your sexual orientation, whether you're an entrepreneur or not, I invite you to join me in this conversation of authenticity, because I think that authenticity is truly at the root of human success. And I titled this episode how to Get People to Follow and Accept and Love You. Because it doesn't really matter if you're an entrepreneur trying to get more Instagram followers or more sales for your coaching program or to sell more of your product, or if you're a human being who just wants to gain more trust and genuine connection with the people in your life, the relationships around you, I think that authenticity is at the root of all of this. So, as per usual, I've chosen a potentially controversial topic to discuss here. But, you know, I hope that you'll bear with me because I think that showing up as who you are is foundational to authentic entrepreneurship, period. And this is really how the right people are able to find you, to follow you in the business world, online, wherever. This is how the right people are able to connect with you and buy from you. As the entrepreneur, authenticity is where it's at. So that's really what this subject is. Now, I want to give you a little bit of A I'm going to pull back the curtains behind my personal life and share a little bit about my journey toward authenticity. And it's an ongoing journey, just so you're aware. But I feel like I've come a really long way and my journey has absolutely affected my ability to grow multiple thriving brands, to be able to grow audiences online and in person. It's impacted my ability to connect with potential customers, to turn them into buyers. And it's also had a total impact on the way that I enjoy my life, the way that I liken, perceive and relate to myself and other people, too. So I have now been married for 10 years. I came out as gay when I was 22 years old. I didn't think I was gay before then. And I grew up in a very conservative religious environment. So my home was religious. My entire neighborhood, my whole high school, there were five people in my entire graduating class who were not of the same religion as me. So it was very, very religious. And I just posted on Instagram, on my Insta story yesterday, a graphic that it's about the human sexuality spectrum. Because a lot of times we say, like, gay, straight, or bi. And when we're talking about ourselves and our identity, we can oversimplify things. And hang tight with me, because I know you're wondering, what the fuck does this have to do with entrepreneurship? You're going to see, and it's gonna make absolute perfect sense with you. For now, just enjoy a story with me. Okay, so this post that I put on my Insta story, it had several criteria for defining human sexuality, and of course it had gender identity. So for me, that's male. I identify as a man. And then it had gender intensity. So there's like hyper masculinity, hyper femininity. And in the middle, it said androgynous. And I was kind of in between hyper masculine and androgynous. I'm not hyper masculine, but I'm not like super, super feminine. But, you know, so I'm kind of in the middle there. Ish. And then it had other things, like sexual preference. So there's like gay and there's homosexual or heterosexual. In the middle, you've got bi or pansexual. I'm closer to the middle. And. And then you've got like, sexual intensity. For me, that's hyper, hyper sexual. And then there were a few other criteria. But I really enjoyed filling this out because I sat there for several minutes just reflecting on each of these criteria, thinking, wow, there's so much that goes into making up a human being. There's so much that goes into the person who's behind the brand. And so that's you the entrepreneur, you're the creator, you are the brand. And in most cases, and I guess some of you have businesses where you're not the face of your own business, but you are at the heart of your business. And so your ability to connect with who you really are and then show up as that is, I mean, what a sacred thing to be able to connect to a sacred place to be that authenticity. So the place where this topic came from is just recently someone was talking to me about sexuality and they said, that must have been so hard for you to make that choice because I grew up so religious and my religion definitely did not agree with any kind of non heterosexual monogamous lifestyle. And my answer was, you know, to be totally honest, I don't really remember it being hard. Like the pain isn't there for me. I don't have any trauma from that and what I said, and I'm glad that I'm talking to you about this so that we can get this recorded. But my answer was, I don't think that choosing your sexuality is difficult. I think that learning to accept yourself as who you are is something that most of us are never taught. And for me, I can tell you, I was taught the exact opposite of self acceptance. My religion did not teach me to accept myself. My religion taught me to conform to a set of criteria that was deemed moral or virtuous or righteous. I was taught to conform to the expectations of other people. And so I was not taught self acceptance. And that's what was really difficult for me. I remember a couple of really hard days. One day I was at my college, my university in Provo, Utah, and I remember I cried for 13 hours. I was so torn because I finally came to the realization that I was attracted to men. But I had spent my entire life on this steadfast trajectory toward living a very specific kind of heterosexual lifestyle. That wasn't something I desired anymore. And I had a lot of intense belief tied to that too. My ability to be close to God, my worthiness as a human being, my worthiness for other people's love, my ability to go to heaven. So all these things were so emotionally close to me. And I literally cried for 13 hours straight. But my choice was not do I sacrifice this in order to have this other thing? The thing that was so emotionally trying for me was just the fact that I had not been taught to actually love myself. I had not been taught to accept myself. I had been taught very conditional love. And I'm not here to talk about religion or to slam on religion at all. I. I'm here to talk about authenticity. And I'm going to tell you right now, most organizations, most parenting styles, most. I mean, so much of the world does not teach authenticity. It teaches conformity. It teaches show up as how these people expect you to show up or show up as how this influencer or this author or this religious leader or this interpreter of ancient scriptural texts and expects you to show up. And if there's one principle that I feel like I successfully shed from this upbringing of conformity and conditional love, it's this principle. There is a right and wrong way of doing things. Our job is to discover the right way, to agree upon it, and to enforce it. And there's probably people listening to this podcast that are like, curling in their, cringing in their seats because maybe you came from this same religious background as me. I'm going to tell you right now, I have yet to find anything in my religious upbringing that didn't have what I just described at the fundament. And if you need to hit the back button to listen to that principle again, I encourage you to, because I also observe a lot of parenting and a lot of coaching, a lot of teaching. I watch tons of entrepreneur coaches who operate from that assumption that there's a right and wrong way of doing things, and they've discovered the right way, and now their job is to encourage you to do it the right way. And that is so far from authentic living. That is the polar opposite of authentic living. And so I got to this point in my life where I realized that I had spent my entire youth and young adulthood trying to conform to outside things and trying to earn the approval to earn my worthiness, to earn love. And ironically, everything in my upbringing was packaged under the label of unconditional love. But it wasn't unconditional love. Unconditional love means there are no conditions. And my whole upbringing was, if you do all these things, then you get paraded in front of the congregation and announce that you're worthy of. I'm literally the opposite of unconditional love. And so it took me quite a while to sit with myself, years of meditation. I mean, even just a few weeks ago, I had a whole new internal shift where I discovered a new level of authenticity, a new space within me where I could feel the beingness of who I really am, where I could really sense how special I am as an Individual and as an expression of divinity of the universe. And I know I can totally sense that I'm not done. But every step along the way is so special to me. So what I want you to take away from this conversation is that you're not here to please anybody. When you pause and think, should I post this? Are people gonna accept me for or, you know, are they gonna reject what I have to say or should I make this life decision? Is my family going to be disappointed? Is my mom going to be upset? Is my public influencer or the neighbors or the person at church going to reject me for this? Those questions, I wish that we didn't have those going through our minds because how are you supposed to have a whole and complete relationship with yourself if you're splitting your energy and your focus when with you and trying to please the world around you? Now, as an entrepreneur, as a creator, as a content creator, as an influencer, as a coach, whatever you are, as a marketer, this might sound contradictory to your whole creative process because you know that you want to produce stuff. You want to have messages and sales pitches and content online that is consistent with your brand, that that's what your audience wants to hear. And you know, it's not wrong to ask, is my audience gonna accept this? I mean, I suppose I still do that. I still ask, is this the message that they're looking for? Am I speaking in language that they'll resonate with? But I will never publish something that isn't true to me. And the marketing teams that I work with, the people that I've hired, my staff, they all know this. They. They all know that Andrew Donovan will. He says fuck because he loves the fuck word. So he's not gonna filter his language to please other people. I used to, and that felt inauthentic. And ultimately I decided, you know what? I freaking love that word. I like swearing. So if people don't like that, they can unsubscribe from my podcast, alright? They don't have to follow me. And I used to filter my content. I used to avoid subjects that I thought would be controversial. Are there subjects that I don't include because they're not relevant to my platform? Totally. But. But like this conversation, I'm not. I mean, again, like I said at the beginning of the episode, my podcast is not about. It's not about activism, it's not about political change. That's not what I do. I teach law of Attraction based entrepreneurship. But my story as a human being is so closely related to my progress as an entrepreneur. And that's why I felt so. I felt really excited to have this conversation with you here. And those moments when you realize that you're not here to please anybody, you're here to be authentically you and to broadcast that to the world. And the clearer your focus, the clearer your authenticity is, the easier it is for people who resonate with you, to identify you, to find you. In fact, you know, as much as we like to bitch about the ever changing algorithms on social media platforms, those algorithms help the right people find you. So if you're walking around trying to be someone you're not, and you post inconsistent content, incongruent messages, I mean, the algorithm gets confused and it doesn't know who to show your stuff to because you're not consistent. But if you look at those accounts that have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers, they. Those people, there's common threads through everything. And I know you've got some exceptions. You've got some people who are like big movie stars. And so they have a big name. And because they're a big name, they can post, you know, all kinds of shit and people will still follow the name. For most brand influencers, most content creators who gain viralosity, who gain momentum, they've got just hyper focus on their message, on what they are all about, on what their mission is, on what their character is, on what their personality is. And it's fun to see those people because it's cool to see the complexity of their brand and the consistency of who they are and how they show up in their brand. Does that encourage you to be reminded that you get to be you, that you're not here to be someone, that you're not. You're not here to fit a mold. So when I look at Pride month, there's a few things that run through my head. One is I think I wish that we would change the colors of the Pride flag because I think that they could be more vibrant colors, just me personally. Two, I think, you know, there's a lot of stuff online that I don't know if it sends the message that we're really intending to send here. There's a lot of, like, showing people at circuit parties and, you know, people running around the streets in feathers and high heels and sparkles and all that stuff. And for someone who doesn't get the message of pride, you might think, who are all these flamboyant human beings? What the heck is this about? And when I say, ask myself, what is really, the message here, the message is authenticity. Why do young boys like to put on high heels and sparkles and parade down the street? It's not to. It's because the message is, be whatever you want to be. Be whoever you want to be. And if you want to try a few things on, try them on. You're not trying them on to please anybody else. You're trying them on because maybe it feels interesting or compelling or intriguing or inspiring to you to try something on. And I'm not just talking about high heels. I'm talking about what your brand is about. I'm talking about things you want to sell. I'm talking about your messaging. I'm talking about how you present yourself to the world. Are you seeing the common thread here? I decided a few years ago that my sexuality is one of the best things that ever happened to me because it is the biggest catalyst that ever caused me to challenge my expectations of me, that ever caused me to challenge how I expect myself to show up and to challenge how I allowed myself to be so heavily influenced by the opinion of others. And jeez, I am so glad that I've gone on this journey. Not just because I think that it's fun to be a gay man. I mean, I feel so sad sometimes for people who are just, you know, regular old heterosexuals because I think that my life is so fun. But I know you love your life too. And really, there is no way to simplify things here. It's not gay or straight, just like it's not entrepreneur or employee. There are spectrums across the board and you, you're made up of a trillion different qualifiers, characteristics, traits. And so the opportunity here is not to find the perfect box that you fit in. I mean, no box can contain you. You're the goddamn fucking universe. And you are perfect and uncontainable and uncontrollable. And that's why it feels so wrong when you allow yourself to be controlled by outside influences and opinions. Because you're here to create, not to conform. You're here to influence, not to be influenced. And there is a line that has stuck with me. Years ago I was doing this group meditation and I was. In this meditation, I was greeted by my five year future self. And I was gifted a little. My five year future self gifted me this little scroll and I unraveled it and there was one line written on this scroll. It said, you are your whole truth. And at the moment, I didn't quite know what that meant for me. I didn't. I had to percolate on it for a while. But I felt. I felt the magnitude of it. I knew that that was profound for me. And what came to me in the months to come was that I had spent my life looking for the truth outside me, looking for the religious truths, the spiritual truths, looking to find God through the mouthpiece of other human beings. I had spent my life as an early entrepreneur, looking for the truth from other entrepreneurs. What's the correct way to do things? What's the right way of going about growing a business, growing my influence about messaging things, whatever. What's the right way to show up? And this sacred moment was when I realized that I my whole truth. And as an entrepreneur, the fundamental reason why entrepreneurship is so sacred to me is because I see my business as a vehicle to amplify my truth. I see my brand as a way to give context, to give voice to my truth, to be able to express my truth. And I do that online through my brand. But ultimately, I am my whole truth. The being that I am being, that is my whole truth. So, friend, how does this. Where can this take you? How does your brand reflect your truth? How does your business get to be the vehicle to amplify your truth to the people who are looking to resonate with something, to the people who are looking to connect with something that matches that. That matches that you are your whole truth. And with that, I will wish you a happy pride and I will mostly wish you a happy, authentic life. Spend your days creating content that is, you spend your years creating business, businesses, products, offers that are gonna make you money. Yes. That are gonna resonate with your audience. Yes. That have clever, creative messaging 100%. That try new things out that are maybe gonna fail and maybe you'll learn from it, and maybe you'll do something better the next time. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. At the end of the day, though, you get to be the truth. And anything that you're doing is just an expression of that. But it's not the truth. And you're not looking for the truth, and you're not looking to collect the truth, and you're not looking to find the truth outside of you and then to conform to it, or to be it, or to match it, or to earn it or to be worthy of it. It's you. It's all you. And when you start to spend more time connected to the whole of who you really are, boy, your magnetism for the lifestyle you want, the people you're gonna enjoy, the growth opportunities, the connections, the income, the money, the freedom, the options. You become unstoppable because all of a sudden there is no way for you to not receive what is meant for you. Because you are being you and you must, in those moments, match up with everything that matches who you are being. Alright friends, much love to you. Do me a favor. We thrive off of ratings reviews for this platform. So if you have learned something from this, if you have resonated with this or any previous episode, do me a favor on Apple Podcasts, spend 30 seconds rating and reviewing it. Just drop a quick line sharing what you've learned or what's been valuable to you. If you're on Spotify podcasts or any other platform, subscribe download the episodes there. But the ratings and reviews really are how we thrive and how this message gets shared with more people. And if you have someone in your life that you know would really benefit from this, hit that share button, send it through text or a direct message and help us get the word out. Thank you for being here and I will see you on the next episode.