Polyamory, Cancel Culture & the Content Creator's Survival Guide w/ Amanda Bucci

You guys might remember that back in 2017, I invested in myself for the very first time. It was a 30-day challenge with Danette May with delicious healthy recipes, workouts, meditations, and mindfulness practices. I thought about making that $50 investment for days, but I'm so glad that I ultimately did because that challenge was one of the major catalysts in guiding me back to a loving relationship with my body forever. So of course, when Danette launched her podcast, I was super excited to get on board and share it with you. It's called Manifestival, and it's hosted by Danette May, one one of the world's leading transformational coaches. The show is dedicated to helping you expand your mind, harness your energy, and unlock the infinite possibilities within your own life. Danette literally teaches you how to live out your purpose and create your dream life, all through manifestation and wellness practices. Immerse yourself in extraordinary interviews with accomplished individuals who have mastered their mental strength to achieve extraordinary things. People like Darren Olien, Anita Moorjani, Mike Dooley, Krista Williams, Danielle Canty, and so many more. You are learning from the best. So if you're ready to realize your purpose and the infinite possibilities surrounding you, search Manifestival, like manifest and festival, Manifestival, anywhere you listen to podcasts and press play. Your dream life is calling. Welcome to the Makeshift Happen Podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Daly, entrepreneur, life coach, and your no BS bestie here to bring you all things mindset, manifestation, and personal development. This podcast is designed to help you expand your mind and uplevel your life. So turn the volume up and roll the windows down if you're coming along for the ride.

Let's go make shift happen.

What's up, you guys?

Welcome back to the podcast. I've got a super special guest. Joining us today that I am so excited about. I'm really just so happy that I finally get to connect with you, Amanda. Amanda Bucci is a business consultant. She's an energy and alignment coach and influencer, and she's the founder of the Entrepreneurial Archetype Quiz. If you are one of my students, you probably took the quiz. I'm obsessed with it. I share it with so many people. So I love that. Thank you for that. Yeah, amazing. People come to Amanda for her experience and expertise in the convergence between business, personal branding, emotional intelligence, transformational healing. But she also just has an epic personal brand where she shares so much of her life, relationships, um, humanity. She's a great person to follow online if you guys aren't familiar with her, and I'm excited to introduce you to her. If so, she's certified in spiritual psychology, she's a trauma-informed life coach, and an incredible resource for anyone who's desiring to step more into their growth, leadership, visibility, authenticity, and fulfillment in your work. So welcome to the show, Amanda. I'm so excited that you're here.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to connect and connect with your community and have a great conversation.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I, I am obsessed with the Entrepreneur Archetype Quiz, like I mentioned, and I do share it with all of my business clients. So I really am a fan of that that part of your work and what is your archetype breakdown.

Yeah, I'm a teacher.

I'm a teacher coach.

Cool. Love that.

Amazing. Yeah. And that was actually— that was like actually so helpful for me to figure out because like a lot of coaches, you start out mainly in like the 1-to-1 space. But I was starting to feel this like disconnect or like just desire for something more different and really understanding the teacher archetype. Made so much sense to me. And it makes sense why I love podcasting and why I love, you know, retreats and, you know, guiding experiences and having group programs. So it really like did truly help me a lot in my business and understand what the best way is for me to operate.

I love that. Yeah, teacher coaches too. Like, you're so special because you, you know, like you pour so much into people and you pour so much into making sure that the experience for the person is the best experience, most educational experience. Like, when you pour your energy into those areas, you really can't go wrong. So I'm so glad that helps you so much and it helps your people.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, so I feel like a good place to start— you have a new book out called Followed, which is a beautiful segue into this idea of social media, being a content creator. So can you maybe give us like a background story of how or why you first started posting online and how you amassed such a large following.

Yeah, yeah. I started posting back in the very early days of social media when people didn't post because they wanted to be a content creator or a coach or an entrepreneur or an influencer. They posted because that's what people did on social media. It was like, here's what I'm doing today, here's what I'm interested in. And it slowly obviously snowballed into people recognizing like I can build something called a brand and I can organize versions of myself and my personality that I feel comfortable sharing online with people in a way that's organized that they can get benefit from. So my early stages were in the fitness industry, and I was, you know, in my early 20s, I was figuring out myself. I was getting a lot of value from my fitness journey, sharing all the things online. I was sharing my workouts. I made those little like side-by-side where there was like a video and then like a recipe or a workout on the side, like all those funny things to look back on in the way that Instagram was kind of set up. But I also really prioritized YouTube as well. And again, it was early stage of social media. Things are— the landscape is a lot different now, but I, I really did everything right in terms of social media growth things. And I had time on my hands and I was excited and I was building community myself and I was getting so much value out of just the experience of sharing my process with people. So I, I did the whole YouTube vlog thing where I would do, be doing fitness competitions. I created, you know, um, like series for, this is my 6-month long competition series and I'm gonna make a couple videos every single week and let you in on my process and what I'm eating and all of that stuff. And again, it was that time online where people were still new to figuring out like who I want to follow and what is available online. And back in those days, it's like so funny to even talk about back in the day because it's not that long ago.

It's like, I know, but it feels archaic.

But it's— things go so fast, like, especially with AI now, like things are moving so fast. But back in that time You know, the things were a lot less specific and a lot less niched, and people came online and there were these kind of versions of what a successful brand looked like. And there's still that today, but there's a lot more, um, models for what success can look like today that don't always look the same as everything. So back at, in that time, the models of success that I saw in my industry were fitness influencers who had sponsorship brand deals. They, if they wanted to expand even bigger, they started a clothing line, a supplement line, or a gym. And those are like the 3 entrepreneurial options that I saw as a possibility beyond influencer stuff, brand deal sponsorships and all of that. And, you know, fitness coaching, which was very kind of basic in my, in my view. And one of the biggest things I've ever done was to leave the fitness industry entirely And I write about that, you know, one of my biggest pivots in, in the book, and just talking to people about how to pivot, why it is a choice that a lot of people need to make to kind of create that congruence with their personal brand, with their personal journey. Not everybody does that, but I felt like it was so necessary because as a content creator, you pour so much energy and attention and love and artistry and creativity and skill building and all these things into your content. And depending on what kind of person you are, the archetype quiz is, is really helpful to kind of unpack that. But depending on where you like to put your energy and what your core focus is and your core drivers are for social media, you're gonna have a different, you know, approach to what it does for you. If you're more of an entrepreneur and you really are using social media primarily to build your business, it's gonna feel a little bit different. Or it's gonna have a different texture to it. But throughout my whole social media career, I've always really loved the feeling of I can post whatever I want that feels really true and authentic to me, and my business will follow along behind that. Like, that has always been a priority to me. I'm a creator coach archetype, so the creator within me always needs to feel free and as, as free as possible. So you know, I moved from fitness to business because I was starting to feel rigid. I was starting to feel closed in. I was starting to feel like people had this expectation of me to be this fitness influencer, Amanda. And I remember the day that I took Fit off of my Instagram name and it was Amanda Bucci Fit, and then it was just Amanda Bucci. And I just remember that feeling of like, I am going to be more versions of myself on here now. And if you don't like it, that's okay with me. And thousands of people have left, thousands of people have come, and it's been, you know, this interesting process to kind of watch what happens when I've evolved and grown as a person into more versions of myself and tapped into areas that I didn't even know existed, whether it's in, you know, my relationship stuff that I talk about now, or just self-development, or, you know, whatever kind of areas I'm I'm working on in my personal journey, it's been cool to see how things adjust when I bring that to the social media space. And that's true for every content creator. So essentially the idea for Followed came because after 10 years of being online, I think it's really interesting that there isn't actually like a book or something physical that kind of points to, this is the journey that you can expect to go on as a content creator, especially. You know, those of us that are going to be online for years and years to come, if you're going to hang out and you're going to stay, maybe you're going to come, maybe you're going to go, but a lot of us are, you know, here every day. It's our job. It's the thing that we do. It's the way that we show up in the world. It's the way that we make an impact in the world. And we're learning about ourselves all the time. And I think it's really important for people to have a guidebook on how to navigate some of the most, you know, tricky, complex psychological identity and emotional experiences I think you can really possibly have.

Yeah, it's so true because content creation— well, I mean, like you said, everything's moving so quickly, so it's kind of become this new career path and there's so many of us that are in it. And I feel like these are the conversations that we're having with each other in certain spaces, whether you're like in masterminds or working with a coach or you just are meeting like-minded people and that are also content creators. These are the conversations that we're having with each other. But you're right, like there's not really something out there that's like the guidebook or the survival guide. I think that's a really good way to look at Followed. It's kind of like the survival guide for content creators. And I love that. I also want to circle back to this idea of pivoting because I know so many people in my world— students, clients, friends— we really struggle with this idea of shifting, whether it's in a niche or completely changing the direction of that you want your business or your brand to go in. And I think what it really comes down to is this idea of validation, because we've gotten so used to being validated for being a certain way or showing up as a certain thing. And it's really hard to face the uncertainty of like, are people still going to like this? Are people still going to like me? And I think that's really what the fear of pivoting comes back to, is this idea of of validation. And in your book, you talk about like the human desire for validation. Yeah, cuz we all want it. Even if you're not a content creator, like we source validation externally in so many different ways. But I think sharing your life online can really exacerbate that need for external validation. Um, how specifically has that shown up for you in your journey as a content creator? This like relationship with validation and maybe needing it or reconciling with not needing it and just doing what you want anyway? What has that been like?

In the earliest stages, it's one of those things that you don't realize is happening, especially if you start building. And, you know, my experience was tons of positive validation, like everyday comment section validation. People are just saying, you know, I like you, I like what you're putting out there. And that feels so good if you're not careful and aware of how that can affect you. It's just, it feels so good, and it still feels good all the time when you post stuff and people are like, I like this. You're like, okay, I'm okay. Like, people, people understand me. And, you know, there's, there's so many things that can come up. And I think some of the biggest things for me in the beginning, um, was getting some of my first negative feedback and the first feedback that people, you know, reflected back that they, they didn't like what I was putting out there, or they had judgments or criticisms. And that really affected me. And the process of really looking at the fact that positive validation affected my emotional state and my mood and my sense of self, and the negative validation really did as well. I— it wasn't a very obvious moment of like, I have work to do on this part of myself, but it was almost this kind of automatic process of recognizing that I had work to do on myself in that arena. And I think we all do because It's, it's insidious. It's kind of like this underlying thing that you don't really realize is happening until something comes in and it really emotionally sways you from your center. And that can be really impactful as a content creator. There's so many actually opportunities to be swayed from your center as a content creator, whether it's just consuming too much of somebody else's content and comparing yourself too much, or some sort of negative feedback you get, or some sort of like work that you put into a piece of content that didn't land, you know, there's so much reflection of like, does this mean something about me? Does this mean something about me? Does this mean something about me? And the truth is, it means whatever you're making it mean about you. And it also is just a reflection of your self-image. And we all have plenty of work to do on our self-image. So in my personal experience, some of the biggest stuff that I've worked on in my journey as a content creator and like getting feedback and having people perceive me is letting myself be misunderstood and letting go of that fear of people will never understand me. And I have had plenty of— so many times where I've like over-explained myself, and that mirrors very perfectly with my own personal patterns of people-pleasing and fawning and you know, my, my journey in therapy, my journey in my self-development work has really all been kind of around that response pattern to my relationship to other people. So social media is really just this extra space that you have mirrored back how you react to the way that people react to you. And over time, if you— there's so many great exercises in the book to support you along this journey, but over time, if you view social media in that way, as it's reflecting back to me what I feel about myself, essentially. How can I create a stronger sense of self and a stronger self-image? And how can I validate myself? How can I look at someone not liking what I'm doing, or something being obsessed— someone being obsessed with what I'm doing? And if I'm gonna— especially if I'm gonna pivot, it's like, how can I allow myself to do what I need to do for me? What's going to be best for me? How can I— even if you're thinking about in a one-on-one relationship, there's so many things that we don't say because we avoid hurting other people or we're scared of someone's reaction. If you look at your one-on-one relationships, it's also probably mirrored in the way that you show up online as well. And they're, they're two totally different places, but they're all really the same patterns. So those have been some of the biggest patterns that I've worked through, and being able to view it that way has allowed me to continue pivoting my brand to ultimately feeling really free in my brand as, as a person who evolves and changes and grows. And I love the freedom to be able to do that and express whatever's happening for me in a way that, you know, still makes sense with my business. And there's always going to be that relationship to how does this make sense for other people? How does it make sense for my brand? How do I keep creating cohesion with everything so it doesn't feel so you know, disconnected and distracting or confusing. But it's been really freeing to trust myself and to validate myself and my own process, knowing that some people are going to come along and like it, some people are going to leave and not like it, and allow all of that to be okay.

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I love what you said about being okay with being misunderstood, and I think one of the, one of the most interesting things I've heard is that if you allow the positive feedback to mean something about you, when you start to get the negative feedback, it'll also mean something about you. And so it's like this weird journey of trying to find neutrality in all of it because it is really hard to love and need and desire the positive and then to just totally be able to shut off and not get affected by the negative. I feel like those two things like don't work. Like if you're, if you're allowing validation of any kind to feed you, then you're going to need that or you're going to have like a reaction when the negative one comes through. So that's super interesting. And I think it's, it's hard. It's hard to go on that journey without experiencing it. I don't know if you, if you think that that's true, but I would— I don't know. I just think like because people always want to get ahead of the problems, right? And like, how can I prepare myself or like grow to a level where like this isn't going to impact me? And I don't know, I just kind of think like you have to— you have to like roll with the punches and like take it as it comes. Like you're not going to become invincible to negative feedback until you start to experience negative feedback and figure out like how you work through that and what your actual response is. Like you mentioned fawning, but somebody else might have a different response and doing work on your nervous system to help regulate that. Like, I think we do kind of have to go through these challenges to truly be able to figure out what is the work for us to do in that arena in order to feel better and to be able to operate at a higher capacity.

Yeah, I think it's an interesting thing on social media where people have so much access to information and coaching. And I think that there's so many things like coaching. As coaches, we help people minimize their problems or avoid problems or minimize this. Amplify that. And there's so much that I think people feel like they have awareness that they can be prepared for now because there's so much information and podcasts. You're like, okay, I have to be aware of my attachment style and I have to be aware of my potential validation. At the end of the day, theory and practice are two totally different things. That's right. And in the, in the practice of what you're going to do on social media, leaning into being your biggest, brightest, best self is where you're gonna be in the arena of having stuff rub up against that. So you can totally be prepared and get coaching and listen to this podcast and be like, okay, I am prepared for when this happens and I have to practice neutrality. The truth is, in any self-development journey and anything that you're working through, in the actual practice of it is when you like really forge those skills, and you really feel and experience what lives in your body because it's actually hitting up against the activation or the unresolved emotional material or the trigger. And just because you have awareness that it might come doesn't mean that you actually have the embodied knowledge of how to work with it when it does come. So let it come. And the, the whole practice of that is going to be leaning into being your biggest, brightest self, leaning into sharing that story that you feel like you kind of want to vomit when you start talking about that thing and checking in and being like, how is this serving me to be able to move through my own shame or self-judgment or feelings of cringiness to allow for my expression to come online and to feel into what actually happens for me? And that's where I think you get free, is when you play the game and you experience and you feel, and then you actually like work with what comes up. And the whole thing you said about, you know, feeling like you can become invincible to it, that's definitely not the case. There's just more skill that you have in navigating the space. And there's more— I forget if I saw like a meme or something about this once, but there was this visual I remember where, you know, the trigger or the activation or the thing doesn't necessarily get smaller. It's that you get bigger around it. And you have more space to be with it, and it doesn't, you know, pull you so far from your center that you have to do so much work to come back. It's more like, oh, I can see that that's happening, definitely feel stuff about it, definitely gonna have a process, but I trust myself to move through it, and I'm not going to shrink and hide, or I'm not going to have as big of a reaction that's going to take me away from being in my center again.

Mm-hmm. One of the, one of the biggest questions or challenges that I see come up for a lot of like early coaches or content creators is around the idea of being seen. Yeah. So I'd love to unpack this like weird duality where we so desire to be online and we like, all we want is like more visibility and more engagement and more eyes on our stuff because that's gonna help us grow. Yet simultaneously, we might be kind of sabotaging that by hiding or performing like a role of ourselves rather than showing up really authentically because of this fear of being seen. It's like we want to be seen, but we also want to hide in some ways. And it kind of reminds me of, you know, in NLP when you talk about like towards values and away values, it's like we have the toward value of success or achievement or whatever it is. But we also have the away value of like, I want to avoid rejection and failure. And so it's those two things like pulling against each other. I just wonder like what your thoughts or experience experiences are with yourself or with clients around this fear of being seen.

Yeah, you know, I think, I think it's such an important thing to talk about because it's very easy to talk about here are the steps to get successful on social media. Here are the steps to go viral, here are the steps and you can follow them and you can study how it works. But one of the biggest things is you don't, you do not anticipate how you're gonna feel in your body when it happens. And I think one of the coolest parts of that conversation is being able to like really be aware that you gotta integrate how it feels in your body every time that you gain more visibility. And what that really means is like, let's just say you have a small amount of followers and then a video goes viral and then you get a bunch of new followers and you're like, oh, maybe I'll be successful. And like it creates this whole slew of like emotional processing that you have to do and it can start to affect your, obviously like your emotional state. Um, it can feel really kind of like activating and fast and it can feel a little unstable because you're now creating more room for more people and more eyeballs and more perception. And you have this, like, in the back of your mind awareness that there's all these new people that don't know you, and there's all these new people that, you know, haven't been in the realm of, you know, what you've been talking about and all the conversations you've been having already. And with your current audience, you get to feel cozy, you get to feel like you know, all these people, I've already told them all the things about myself. Like, you know, they get me, they agree with me, whatever. So when a bunch of new people come, you have to now manage like, these are the people that get me and these are all of the new relationships that I have to navigate. These people don't know me yet. They might judge me, they might have differences in opinion. They might not be the ideal clients for me because they came from a viral video that was like more whatever. So just being aware that you're going to have different feelings in your body every time you gain more visibility, I think will change a lot of people's perceptions of how quickly they feel like they need to go in order to create the, the visibility that they really want. Something that I've even been working on, I've had a lot of visibility for a long time and I grew my audience really quickly in the early stages. I grew 100,000 YouTube subscribers in less than a year, and I was 23, which is so young. And it's so, you know, you don't know so much about yourself. And there's so many things that I had to navigate as a very young person who was figuring myself out in front of so many people that now, as an almost 30-year-old person, there's so many things that I would never do now and I would keep more private. And I wouldn't be processing so much in front of so many people because I just don't really have the emotional space to do that anymore. And I have the wisdom now now to know that that requires a lot of emotional space. But it's interesting because, you know, that created a lot of attention, that created a lot of eyeballs, and it created a lot of vulnerability and a lot of connection. But it also brought a lot of other stuff at the same time. So just being aware that there's going to be challenges that come with more visibility, but also, you know, owning the fact that when— like, so many of us want that And it's a great thing to want, especially if you have a mission, especially if you, you know, are ready to be seen in your self-expression. Don't hide from it. Keep showing up in a way where you're pushing against your edges and you're like creating a connection with what lives at my edge and how can I soften into my edge, how can I nurture the stuff and the material and the emotions that live at my edge, but also how can I nurture that part of me that wants to hide too. Like really let that part of you that wants to hide have some place to go, whether that means being able to take a vacation, a social media detox, get offline a couple times a year. And also keep things private, keep certain things to yourself, that you don't have to have obviously everything on display, but choose in your own time, in your own personal process, what am I going to share now and how can I like emotionally kind of get behind this new expansion of me so I can feel stable and grounded in it.

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It's so interesting that we're having this conversation because I'm in the middle of my very first ever social media break, which is so crazy to me because I've been on social media for like over a decade.

And first break.

I know. Isn't that crazy?

Congratulations.

Yeah, it's been, it's been interesting. I've been off for like 7 days and I really, I really love it. And it's like way less dramatic of a thing than I thought it was going to be. Yeah, I worried that I would be like— I feel like I suspected that I would be more addicted to opening it or checking it than I truly am. Once I decided that I was off of it, I just realized how much less I use my phone or even reach for it. It's just been like an interesting experience. So I love that you mentioned taking breaks because I'm probably going to implement that more now.

A couple of times a year sounds like a 2, 3 times a year is, is a really great thing. And it just like, I'm sure you're experiencing this, it just brings you so much awareness of how much social media can affect our mental and emotional state every day. Just this, like both the scrolling and like what that does to your dopamine system, but also just the consuming and like the reading and the, the passive consumption that can happen. Even if it's self-development stuff, it's like, okay, there's a lot of self-development work that I have to be aware of all the time and it just brings so many things to your energy field that you don't really need every day.

Yeah. Okay. So you talked about a little bit, you sort of hinted at not processing things emotionally in front of your audience as much anymore or having this discernment of like what, what goes online and what stays private. And in the book, you kind of talk about this idea of like performative vulnerability or, or maybe it's not always performative, but it's a feeling of like, I owe the expression of my vulnerability to this audience so that they can feel like they know me more and so that my engagement is better. Because like you said, it works. Like, it just works. So what is this line between authenticity and transparency and performative vulnerability, and how does that get blurred?

Yeah, it can, it can get really blurry. I've had plenty of experiences where it's been blurry myself, and it's such a, it's such an interesting thing to talk about because, you know, as I have gone through my personal processes, let's just say within my relationship, for example, a lot of people think that my husband and I, John, we talk a lot about our polyamorous relationship and our marriage and various different things that we've learned, and people think that we share a lot and we share plenty, but there's so much that doesn't get shared and doesn't necessarily need to. And it's been a great practice to keep so much private and to even discern, you know, as a, as a life coach, as like a, a person that shares wisdom online based on life experiences and like has that kind of awareness that when I do share those things, people get a lot out of it. I have to, for myself, recognize there's a few things that I feel like add to this feeling of, okay, this piece feels ready to share within myself. And one main one is really feeling like I've owned that thing. So if I'm still in process with something, that's fine. But if I feel insecure, or if I feel like I'm going to be judged, or if I feel like I don't feel like I would have the resiliency or the emotional tools or bandwidth even, or I just don't want to deal with all of the, the potential judgments because it's still tender for me. It's not time. That comes with wisdom. That comes with having done that and then recognize like, okay, I didn't really have the tools to process this. It's still pretty tender. It's still something that I don't have all the answers for yet. And also I haven't like fully owned it yet. There's— and what that really means, like fully owning it, um, if you've ever seen someone online, like I love when people do this and it's such a good model to witness someone do this when they're talking about like, okay, so you know, I'm a person and I know this is like the mental health thing that I have and this is how I process through it. You're listening to them speak and they don't have an insecurity or they don't have this like underlying shame or judgment about themselves for how they look or how, you know, what they're going through or what they're experiencing because they have owned it. They don't think it's wrong. They express it with freedom and authenticity. And it feels so beautiful to witness that because you're like, oh, you, you don't actually judge yourself for this. You don't think it's, it's wrong to just exist as you are. You own it even if you're in the middle of a process. So to me, that's like a really good indicator of when it's kind of a, a good time to share with your audience, whether it's a story that you've been going through or something you've been processing that you wanna also provide wisdom for. There's some indicators of when, you know, you, you might not be ready and readiness is so subjective, but you know, for your own personal sanity, for your own personal peace. If you are still in tenderness with yourself, if you still feel like even sharing with your therapist or your partner or one of your really closest friends still feels, you know, tender, it still feels emotional, it still feels vulnerable, you do not have to share that with everybody online. Just thinking about all of the people that you do not have trust built in that relationship. You really have to have so much trust within yourself to share something vulnerable with a bunch of people you don't trust ultimately. And it can feel like dissociative because you don't know who is in your audience, but ultimately you do not have like that reciprocal, I trust you to not hurt me, I trust you, or I trust you to, um, you know, show up well in this conversation. Trust is really more about I trust myself to handle whatever comes at me, positive or negative. So if you feel like you can trust yourself to handle whatever, you know, these, these people who— some people that you know really well because you talk to a lot online, but you don't really know them. And then there's people that like are just following you probably because they don't like you and they're ready to hate you and they're ready to just take something that, you know, you share vulnerably and make fun of it or whatever. If you trust yourself, if you own your experience, if you take responsibility for yourself, That is a great opportunity to share.

Mm. Yeah, I heard Aaron Dowdy said something recently of like, if I say I hate your orange shirt and you're not wearing an orange shirt, it means nothing to you. And it's the same thing with like the negative feedback. And exactly what you're saying is when you've owned something and you know what's true and what's not, someone throwing like an insult or a projection or whatever it is at you can't hurt you in the same way as if you were still in that tender place of not really knowing where you stand or feels like things are really unfinished or super tender, then you might be like, oh my God, you hate this thing. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is bad. Maybe I'm not processing it correctly. And yeah, I think that's a really, really, really helpful way to think about it for people that are trying to discern what gets shared online and what stays private with me and for how long. So I love that.

Yeah.

Speaking of this idea of kind of the fear of, you know, how people might take things or this negative feedback that we can get online, you have this experience that you talk about in the book of getting canceled. And I'd love for you to kind of just describe that experience and how it impacted your relationship with social media, because you talk about this connection between trauma and social media. Yeah. What was that like and how did you move forward?

Yeah, yeah. I've had, I've had a few like large-ish social media conflicts with strangers. And the first time I talk about it through the lens of like conflict resolution and having a conflict with someone because you can really apply a lot of conflict resolution skills to the social media realm as well. So the first time that it happened was, was a big surprise. It was right in the very early stages of when I pivoted from fitness to business, and I learned a lot of business tactics and marketing tactics and sales tactics that, you know, from a person that I feel like I've always been very genuine and very kind. And when you're an influencer, you don't really do a lot of marketing things as much. You just kind of exist, and then you're like, here's my discount code if you want, like You don't do any direct sales and marketing in that way. So doing that for the first time was jarring for a lot of my audience, and they were just kind of processing like, this feels manipulative, this feels— and like, it makes sense because if you don't speak in the copyrighty kind of way at all and then you start doing that, it's, it's strange for people. So I ended up meeting this really great guy who's a good friend of mine now. He actually officiated at my wedding. And his name's Dan. Yeah, him and his other friend Dan, two of my good friends, they co-officiated my wedding. So it's a funny story because we're still really good friends. And he had a health coaching business back in that time. It was probably like 2018, and he was doing a webinar about how to heal your relationship with food. And at the time, that wasn't a super popular conversation online. It was still kind of early stages to talk about food and emotions beyond eating disorders. And, you know, the, the spectrum of like how deeply that experience can impact you. And there was some copy on his website through the survey that went out that a lot of people felt like was problematic. And I didn't see that copy initially. Like I didn't comb through all the copy to make sure that it was, you know, minimizing harm. I didn't even have the awareness to do something like that at the time. I just felt like this seems like it could be a great, you know, supplement to my audience. A lot of people could use support on this. And for 3 days, one person— one person started it, and for 3 days straight, I would refresh Twitter every like 20 minutes, and there would be like threads and threads and threads of multiple people having huge conversations saying like, Amanda's dangerous. She's trying to profit off of people who have eating disorders. She is— she should go to jail. Like, who is this guy? Like, this is so unethical and it's so bad. And I was 24 at the time. I was so jarred. It was so dysregulating for my nervous system. I had no idea what to do because it just— it like wouldn't end for a couple of days. And my core response was very much so to like really shut down. Like, I just felt like I wanted to hide in a hole. It just— it's, it's like that feeling of embarrassment but not being able to get away from it. Like, if you ever feel like you've done something a little embarrassing or cringy and you're like, ah, and then you just try to, you know, run away from the situation or whatever and like not look at it because you feel cringy about yourself, it was like take that but amplify it and make sure that everybody on the internet knows about it and is talking about it. And, you know, as a young 24-year-old, I just felt so bad, and I was like, maybe I should just quit YouTube. I have not been back on Twitter since, by the way. I just— that's not going to be the place for me. It's a traumatic platform. But it really did feel like it very much so impacted me in the long term. Like, in the, in the moment emotional experience, um, if anyone's ever had an online conflict in— maybe it wasn't that big, but like in a way where you feel like people are watching this online conflict unfold and you don't really feel like you have the authority or the autonomy to defend yourself. And even so many things can happen, you know, with people online. There's so many people that will say just you defending yourself says a lot about you, and Deleting comments means you have something to hide. And there's so many, like, little things that people will interpret as guilt.

You just— you can't navigate it in the right way. There's no right way because at that point people just are really loving to hate you. And anything that you do is going to be spun in that direction of like, oh, well, why did you do that? And you shouldn't have done that. And if you come out with an apology, it's like it wasn't good enough or you shouldn't have said anything. Or if you stay quiet, it's like, where are you? Why aren't you answering everybody's comments? And if you are answering everybody's comments, it's like you're totally guilty because you're trying to resolve everything.

Yeah. Yeah. I follow this really great content creator. Her name's Clementine Morgan, and she has a podcast called Fucking Cancelled, and it talks all about cancel culture. And she basically says when we have this kind of public forum and we don't allow someone the dignity of innocent until proven guilty, like, who are the people that are trying to prove guilt and how do they get managed? Like, people who kind of engage in these campaigns and who, you know, participate in the conversation in that way, there's no real consequence for how they show up, right? So often what happens is that people will, you know, generally obviously feel really connected to a certain cause that some person who has a platform is representing. And there's a huge issue because there's a power dynamic to anybody that has a bigger following, right? There's someone that has power and then people that have smaller followings that have less power. So there is this obvious sense of like, we have power in numbers and we can take this person down. But the biggest issue is that there's not like room for like a real dialogue to happen and for the person to be seen as a person who made a mistake. Like, we're not really there as a society yet to the point where we can recognize like, oh, you know, there's these celebrities and this one cheated or whatever, and we don't have the emotional capacity yet collectively. Many people do. I know I have built it for myself because I feel really passionate about this, to look at someone, see their mistake, and not run it through our personal lens of like, well, they're just a bad person. I'm going to put them in the bucket of irredeemable, they suck, and like I'm not going to give them any room to express what their experience is. And in the— in that chapter, I really kind of outline how we can do better as creators and how we can do better as consumers as well, because it is a relationship between, you know, one person and many people, but ultimately you and one other person times however many people are processing the thing that you did and how they feel about it and how they're going to decide to change their relationship with you. It's not fair in many ways to kind of both sides. So I really walk through like how you as a creator can sit with what's happening and ask, is there anything that I need to take from this? Is there any way that I can apologize for my ignorance or for creating harm in ways that I wasn't aware of that I am now aware of at the time. 2020 required that from a lot of us and a lot of different people in different ways. There's no longer space to hide your beliefs anymore because so many people required and requested transparency from companies of where you stand so we can vote with our dollars and really understand who we're following. How we often can pedestalize content creators and brands and people in positions of power. So it's important to understand that, yes, there is a power dynamic, and also understand there is such an unfairness to how these campaigns end up happening because it leaves room for so many people to just decide something about you without you ever getting to explain yourself or without you ever even give— being given the chance to like express your whole experience. And if you've ever been in a healthy conflict with one person, like, I know I, I get in conflicts with my husband, not regularly, but when we're in conflicts, sometimes we talk for hours to like really understand each other and like unpack like, what's here for you? What's here for you? And imagine that that's exactly what's happening, but on a mass scale with so many people, which is why I, I I will never participate in anyone's cancel campaign. Generally, when I see something happening online, I'm like, there's probably a lot that I don't know and that's not my business. And I can look at it, but ultimately I try to look at everything through the most, like, nuanced lens possible and just recognize, like, I don't have all the information. There's probably a lot going on in that person's experience. There's obviously so many reasons to hold people accountable. I just don't think it's it's the best possible way to have people actually heal. I think shaming people doesn't help with healing and doesn't help with repair. Um, ultimately people want changed actions, which comes from like a deep place of actually wanting to repair them. And I don't think shaming people in that way helps at all. I think it just makes it worse.

Yeah, Brené Brown talks about that in, in the research. You know, it shows that you can't affect change in someone by shaming them. So if the goal is to get someone to change their behavior or to apologize or whatever, and the way that we're going about that is trying to, you know, rip them down off their pedestal and shame them and talk about how horrible they are, like, that's not actually going to help that person change. So it's so, so interesting. I also think it's so relevant, this piece of the power, because you see even like there's certain TikTok stars that, like, they rise so high, and it's almost like the higher that they go, the more inevitable that fall is. Because how there's such an extreme power dynamic where the people that supported them at one point, as soon as they do something that is seen as a mistake, they're like, you have so much freedom and so much money and so much fame and all these things that we want, and I don't know how to navigate this emotionally, but you fucked up and I'm going to make you pay. And it's truly the power dynamic that makes people want to rip them down. It's so, it's so fascinating and also terrifying, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah, terrifying, because like you said, there's no consequence. There's really truly no way to defend yourself or to have the conversation that needs to be had in order for people to understand or have all the details or the context. So I wonder from your perspective, like, is it even worth people worrying about getting canceled? Because I've got— I've had people ask me before, like, I'm scared of being canceled. Like, I'm growing a following and it's getting bigger and I'm really worried about, like, is it even worth our time? Because like you said, a lot of times there's no real rhyme or reason. Like, someone will just find some random thing and then it spreads like wildfire. Like, is it— should we even be focused on how to not get canceled, or should we just be our fucking selves?

There's really no way that you can hide from it at the end of the day because someone's gonna hate something. Like, there's— it's like when you're fully expressing yourself, at the end of the day, even if you're the most kind person in the world, someone who has not owned whatever that is within themselves will feel activated by that because it will be a reflection of where they're not owning themselves in their own way. There are certainly so many things that people experience that activation or that trigger around that are actually about the other person. It is a behavior that shouldn't continue. It is kind of representing this— like, there's obviously so many people on social media that have conversations that are like misogynistic and this and that, and it's very valid but people still get to have that, you know, conversation and dialogue about you. But yeah, you're right, as you're growing a following, it's going to happen one way or the other. And I think that, you know, everyone's nervous system is different in terms of like that anticipation of judgment and criticism. But if you can, you know, the book is a really great resource. If you can just recognize and remember that people will experience you as some sort of reflection of themselves and their own belief systems, their own relationship to themselves, their own relationship to— like, let's just say you're super sexual— your own relationship to sex. That's going to really activate someone that hasn't really owned that within themselves yet, and it might not feel super comfortable for them to follow or be around or listen to or look at. And that doesn't mean that you should be any less of that thing. It means that we all have different gifts to share with each other. And not everyone's going to view their social media journey of following people as a self-development journey. That's not going to be everyone's thing. Plenty of people will still project. Plenty of people will still, you know, kind of make you the target of their emotional experience, sometimes for decent reason and very often for no real reason at all. And for you, the creator, something I try to do is I always try to look and see if there's anything valid in what someone's saying beyond my own, you know, and not allowing it as much as humanly possible to diminish my own sense of self-worth. There's been so many times where I still feel like, oh, I could share more of that, but I know that this person's saying this thing about me over here, and like, I don't feel super comfortable yet because that feels unsafe in some way. And ultimately you get to decide for yourself, like, how much of other people am I going to let take my power away in that, in that space? And how long will I let that go on for? And how long will I allow that to hurt me and to keep me small and to keep me away from what I, what I get to do in my birthright, which is literally to be myself?

Yeah, yeah, that last piece is really important, understanding that trying to hide from it or prevent it or not have anyone hate you or say anything negative about you is ultimately you, you know, giving your power away to random strangers on the internet. Yeah. And taking that back and really standing in the truth of who you are and just riding the wave. And like we said earlier, you're going to learn how to navigate things as they come. And kind of that's part of the journey of just being open for what's to come and what unfolds. Yeah. So you are quite open. You've kind of mentioned, you know, your relationship with your husband about non-monogamy and also known as polyamory. For some people that might not be familiar with this style of relating or being in relationship, can you explain it a little bit and then tell us how this way of loving or relating was first presented to you, because I presume that you didn't grow up in a family with polyamorous parents. Like, so when was it first presented to you, and why did you— what made you decide to go, I'm gonna try that on?

Yeah, yeah. So non-monogamy is a really good umbrella term for a lot of different ways of really existing and navigating relationships. There is— if you Google, one of my favorite things to show people is something called the Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord. It's a fun word. And if you go, you can just Google it and it basically comes up with all of these different elements of how we can relate to one another, whether it's like domestic cohabitation or, you know, finances or power dynamic or romance or sexuality. Or companionship or business. There's all these different, you know, ways in which we can relate to any given person. And society teaches us romantic relationships are supposed to look like this. They're supposed to be monogamous, exclusive. You're not supposed to look at any other people or care about anybody. You found the one when they don't even want to look at anybody else except for you. And, you know, that's just how it's going to be for the rest of your life. And that's it. And non-monogamy is really the practice of being able to, or open to loving, or being in some sort of style of partnership, whether it's like simply sexual or more romantic and deep and emotional with more than one person. And the real core thesis or philosophy around that is that there You know, if you are in a relationship and you honor the fact that everyone is a free and sovereign person, some people, when you really find like what is true for you, what you really truly want, if you unpack your societal conditioning and like the monogamy conditioning of this is how I have been taught it's supposed to work, and you unpack that and you decide this is actually what I truly want Amazing. And some people unpack that and they're like, actually, that's not what I truly want. I truly want the ability to love one person, be in commitment to one person, but maybe right now I want that main person to be myself, and I want to be able to date multiple people and let them all know about one another and see what's available with this person, and then create honesty and transparency about what we both want, figure out a relationship structure that works, and also let them know there's another person that I'm seeing and this is what we have over here. And if everyone is a consenting adult to be able to be okay with that, then it can work. So many relational and emotional things to navigate within that. It's not like a, it can work and then we just do it. It's let me work on how I feel, the emotions that come up, the triggers, the jealousy, the the, you know, varying emotions that can come up with like different feelings of attachment and fear that this relationship is going to end, or insecurities around how I look, or, you know, what this person has more than I do. And there's so many things to navigate. Um, I first got introduced to it when I started dating my husband John. He actually was already openly polyamorous on social media, and I had, I had known him for about a year. We met through mutual friends. We were both in different relationships with other people at the time when we met. We developed a bit of a friendship, and then we both went through some things in our life where, you know, we were— we ended those relationships. Um, he was in a relationship with another person when we started talking, actually, but he had been making content about polyamory online for a little while, so I assumed— and we had talked— that it was okay for us to explore with one another. He already had told his partner at the time, um, that you know, this was something that was going to happen. And I have always had a very open mind. Um, I also didn't have betrayal or cheating trauma in my past relationship history to overcome, which I think can be like a huge thing to overcome for a lot of people in even considering polyamory, because there's so much nervous system activation around trust and around, um, feeling safe in your body. So I didn't have that to overcome, but I also had a very open mind. And I also got an astrologer reading one time that they were like like, yeah, it makes sense that you're polyamorous as a person because it's in your chart somewhere. And I was like, oh, that's funny, because as a, you know, in my process— so we started dating, um, that relationship that he was in with the other person had ended on its own kind of accord. But when we first started dating, we were like, oh, we're each other's person, like we're gonna get married. And we knew that very quickly. And Ultimately, my personal process, and the thing that a lot of people have actually judged me for, is that they think that I have been, um, I'm just doing this for him. And this is like a typical kind of trope or judgment that people have around a woman getting into a relationship with a man that wants to be polyamorous, especially because there's so many, I think, people nowadays that use it as a way to like skirt responsibility around what you actually have to do to create safety in a relationship for it to even work and for it to not be this like extremely tumultuous, awful, traumatic experience for people. They call that polyfuckery, which is not great. And there's obviously so many ways that you can be really out of integrity in that relationship style as well, just like there is for monogamy. But my— both for both of us, John was in a marriage and he got into that marriage because he was like, I think I need to, you know, grow up and stop kind of acting out in my relationships. And he, in his experience, was like, I just have to end these patterns of infidelity with other people and I will be married and I will be right with myself. And it wasn't available in his marriage to be polyamorous. And he is like fully full orientation polyamorous person. And he— that marriage ended. He cheated and he's talked about it online on a million different podcasts and he attempted suicide multiple times as a result of feeling so restricted in his life and not feeling like it was ever safe to be himself. And it's really painful for him. So when we got into our relationship, he was like, I really want to be with you, but I will not be with you if you also don't want this for yourself, because I can't change for any person anymore. And I've never been a person to mold myself to another person, but I was very, very dedicated to figuring out the truth and my truth and figuring out, like, can I do this with, with myself? Not just for this person, but do I want this for me? Do I want this style because it actually works for the way that I want to love and the way that I want to navigate life. And the— for the first like 3 years of our relationship, I didn't have an answer for him. I was like, we're gonna try it, we're gonna be going from theory to practice, and we're going to practice in these different ways. And we unpack so many things and learned so much, but I ultimately did learn the truth for myself that this, this does actually really work for me. It is actually really what I want. We operate in different ways, but we've found so much alignment together. We found so much compatibility together in those areas and from a place of like deep, honest truth about ourselves, not from a place of people pleasing for the other person.

Wow. I'm really glad that you touched on that piece about, yeah, being like persuaded into it or how that might look to other people. And the fact that there are some people out there using polyamory as a way to just be hurtful when it's not truly, you know, what's best for them or their partners. It's really unconscious. And it's kind of just this label that they're using as a way to, like you said, skirt responsibility or just be able to do whatever they want without consequence. In a way, I think that's probably something that a lot of people wonder about. Yeah, I'm— I can imagine. And most people listening, I'm sure they can— they're also thinking in their minds like, I don't know how I would ever navigate witnessing my partner being in another, like, relationship of sorts with someone or loving someone else and telling me that, or, you know, having a sexual relationship with someone else. For you and your experience, what, what have been some of the hardest parts? And was there ever a time where you thought maybe this isn't for me, or maybe I want to tap out because this is like a lot?

Yeah. Yeah, there have been those times. And ultimately, so like those fears are super real and super valid. And I have like such a— I have like such an interesting relationship with this question because I truly don't think that there's a clear answer that just says like, well, this is how you navigate that emotion or whatever. Because ultimately it's really like, what is the, what is the material between you and your partner? What are the deeper patterns that you're working through together as a couple? Or how are you navigating your own personal patterns? Because ultimately Yes, if you're seeing your partner with another person, it's going to bring up potential insecurity, potential jealousy, and also that potential fear of like, will this person leave me for that other person? Am I actually safe in this relationship? That's the biggest question. Am I actually safe with this person in this relationship? And something that you can ask yourself in a monogamous relationship is, what makes me feel safe in this relationship? Is it that we have this agreement that none of us— neither of us are going to break up, neither of us are gonna meet another person that we're more in love with, or whatever? Ultimately, in a, in a container like that, you can feel the sense of like, not false security and safety, but you don't have to navigate those feelings on the regular because you've decided we're not going to deal with those feelings. But ultimately, so many people in monogamous relationships, there's people that end up cheating, there are people that end up meeting someone else and actually starting to date them instead, and that happens anyway. So in a non-monogamous relationship, you essentially get to a lot of those answers more quickly. So John and I have both actually had, uh, connections with other people. That were deep and were emotional. And we both had to kind of face those fears of, are, are we gonna make it through this? And there, for both of those people, um, that we, we were connected to, we had to end those dynamics because it felt— there's so many different reasons, you know, emotional things to navigate, everyone's patterns. And, you know, you know, you have your patterns with your partner, and then you have another person that comes in, and then there's the patterns between them too, and their patterns between the three of you. And there's lots of different, like, complex emotional things to navigate. But in my own experience, we have both gotten to that place where we had to actually answer that question of, are we going to leave each other for someone else? Is there something better on the other side? And what keeps us together? What is that true sense of trust that we have both within ourselves, which is really like, I trust myself to be okay if this relationship doesn't pan out, which is really attachment stuff. It's like, I am staying in this relationship because I'm scared of what it's going to look like if I'm not in it, which is different than I'm staying in this relationship because I'm choosing to be in it and I will be okay if it doesn't pan out. And then there's the stuff around what, what else keeps us in this relationship. Like, what about this relationship is going to last in the long haul? And for John and I, we figured out We have built something so strong together. We constantly pour into our bucket of love together. We actively have built a foundation of trust and structure and support with one another. And we've, you know, moved through so many things together, and we've figured out that we want the same things. We have the same vision for life. We have the same values of how we navigate life. We ultimately together are stronger together than we are individually, and we're both very strong individually. And again, we had to really like look that in the face and ask ourselves that question. And I think that's just made us stronger. But for so many people in open relationships, a lot of the kind of judgment of it is like, oh, that's bound to fail. And I think that there are relationships that aren't going to work out in the first place or bound to fail anyways. This is just going to be faster. You're just going to kind of move through and get those answers a lot more quickly and It's definitely more emotionally— I don't know if I would say it's more emotionally volatile, but it's really going to test you on your emotional maturity. It's going to test you on your, um, like, conflict resolution skills. It's going to test you on how well you can show up on a really difficult triggering day, and it's going to test you in a lot of different areas. And not everybody has to opt in to like doing all of that. It's, it's the same thing with the emotional labor and the privacy on social media. Like, do I want to opt in to all this work? Maybe not. For some people like myself and John, we're like, we, we see the, the value and the benefit to it, and it adds more to our lives than it does take away. But that's because we've both built our personal, like, code for how we show up in the conflict and also how we've, we've navigated feeling safe within ourselves and feeling safe in our relationship.

I can imagine that it it allows you to really strengthen your communication skills because so much has to get communicated in order to stay in integrity with one another and with the agreements that you have and with your other partners and just letting everybody know everything. And, you know, I don't know, like, I can imagine that there must be such massive growth in the communication piece. But yeah, I love what you said about like what What about this relationship makes me feel safe? Or why do I believe that this is a safe relationship? Because I even had a conversation with my partner recently. We were just kind of thinking about what is the reason why we trust each other so much? Like, where does that come from? Can you teach that? Where— how is it cultivated? Is there something unique about our relationship that is a reason for why we trust each other so much? And he said something really interesting to me, which was like, Well, we both love ourselves and it's kind of exactly what you were saying of like, I'll be okay no matter what happens on the other side of this, whether me and my primary partner choose to stay together and end these other relationships or whether, you know, we continue those other relationships and they have a deep connection with somebody else. Like, whatever happens, you know that you're going to be Okay. I think it's relevant with whatever style of, you know, romantic partnership you choose in your life is having that sense of, of self and self-trust that actually creates the safety. Because like you said, nothing is guaranteed. We make these promises in marriage or even just in monogamous, monogamous relationships of like, it's just going to be you and me and we're exclusive. We're not going to see anybody else. But people break those promises all the time. So where's the sense of safety in that? It really has to come from within.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think it just really— I think the whole conversation around non-monogamy is just helping everybody ask themselves that question is, how do I actually feel safe in a relationship? It's when I trust myself and when I feel like the other person trusts themselves as well. Because when you have a part of you that you don't trust yourself, there's this like feeling that you get from that person. You're like, there's something a little shysty about that person, or like, I feel this energy, or I feel this this, you know, way that you behave that like you're unconscious of and you're not aware of and you're not taking responsibility for. And that makes me question how much you trust yourself in situations when I'm not there. So if you feel like someone has like a strong and is willing to build a strong sense of self-ownership and radical responsibility— and there's also, I think there's like initiating the the way that you can add to someone else's feeling of safety as well. Of like, someone that, you know, you're in a relationship with, if you initiate and you're like, how can I help you feel more safe? Is there anything that I can do to make you feel more comfortable? Is there anything that I can support you with that'll allow you to just like sink into being yourself more? Is there any way that I can nurture this part of you a little more? Like, if someone is actively working to pour into that bucket of love and connection and, you know, trust and support, those behaviors are really great green flags or indicators of this is a person that is open and willing to keep helping me open more as well. And I'm going to reciprocate that back to them.

Mm. Yeah, I love that. I love that so much. Thank you so much, Amanda, for this conversation. I've enjoyed this so much. I can't wait to get this in everybody's ears. Can you let everyone know where they can, first of all, find your book? That's out and available for preorder now and how they can connect with you online and where the best place to find you is.

Yes, find me on Instagram @amandabucci. You can find me on TikTok as well. It's Amanda Bucci Official. Book, you can get local bookstores, Barnes Noble. Everyone's going to go to Amazon, so you can find it on Amazon. It's just called Followed: The Content Creator's Guide to Being Seen, Facing Judgment, and Building an Authentic Personal Brand. And you can also go to amandabucci.com/book. Followed to get all the information about it.

Amazing. Thank you so much. We will link everything for you guys in the show notes if you want to go connect with Amanda or snag the book. It's a really good one. I've enjoyed reading through it so much. Like you said, there's, there's nothing really out there. There's no survival guide for us content creators. So it's really beautiful to finally have one and to feel really seen and heard in everything that you share inside of that book. If you guys enjoyed this episode, please take a screenshot, share it to your Instagram stories and tag both me and Amanda so that we can see that you are listening. If you had any takeaways, feel free to shoot us a DM. We love you so much, and I'll talk to you next week.

Bye.