Today’s blog is straight from the heart today.
We need to talk about creating supportive environments and following your dreams. Is it gonna get ~woo woo~? Probably. But do some of you need it? Also probably.
I don’t often get personal on the ~internet~, but in order to talk about today’s topic, there are a few things that you’ll need to know about my life and where I grew up.
While fuckarounditis has been a well-known disease in the fitness industry for a long time, there is no doubt it bleeds into every other creative or entrepreneurial endeavor as well.
For years (and still on and off to this day), I break out with fuckarounditis.
Gary Vaynerchuk talked about this recently: Every single one of us is a media company.
Over this past summer, I tried this theory out.
Last week one of my clients launched her first e-course.
About 72 hours before the first launch, we were on the phone and she asked me, "When did you know you were an expert?"
I had to take a moment to think about it, and I realized that the feeling of "expert" never really comes.
I easily have the 10,000 hours under my belt (also the bad eyesight that comes with staring at paper/computer screens for that long), I have my degree in writing (and the loans to prove it), and I my adult career is as a writer.
Your branding has nothing to do with you.
That's right. I said it.
I wasted so much time trying to "brand myself" and "position myself as an expert" and blah blah blah. Believe me, they're semi-important, but not as much as the marketing revelation my brain finally cracked.
First, a little background story.
When I hiked a fourteener last summer, I literally thought it was going to kill me.
In case you don't know what a fourteener is, it is a mountain that goes above 14,000 feet in elevation.
Although that experience was dreadful while it was happening, there are a lot of things I learned after completing it that relate to writing:
1. The journey up is the hardest part.