She asked me how to show up confidently, this is what I told her
She asked me how to show up confidently, this is what I told her
If you’ve ever held back from posting for your business because you were worried about what your mum might think, obsessed over the photos to share cuz your ex follows you, or avoided talking about your offers in case your old colleagues saw it (#cringe), then this is the episode you need to listen to.
The people you love aren’t bad people, but they could be costing you business growth.
This isn’t the “work on increasing your confidence, stop worrying what others think and don't care about their opinions” advice you’ve heard 100 times before.
Ready for the permission slip that’ll help you ditch their (perceived) judgement and see you showing tf up for your business like never before?
Press play now to hear:
00:00 Setting the scene in Shoreditch where this episode was inspired
01:46 Forget the trolls, being judged by your faves is the scariest thing
03:28 The moment my fear my friends were laughing at me became reality and not just a story I was telling myself
06:11 Are your friends your target audience? Are they paying your bills?
07:11 “how do you show up confidently?” The advice that shocked my friend
09:01 Your permission slip…you’re welcome
11:17 The question to ask yourself any time you spiral into “what will they think”
12:28 Becoming the person who posts confident content consistently
14:17 If it’s good enough for Beyonce….
16:44 You have no idea who’s secretly supporting you and cheering you on
21:38 Not posting consistently? This is the answer to your prayers
Links mentioned in this episode
Done for you content with a twist (the twist being you) that’ll help you build (or rebuild) the consistent posting habit you need to start growing your business and making those steady sales.
Try before you buy vibes with a two-week version of The Robin Intensive. Perfect if you’re not ready to commit to a 90 day strategy or you wanna test out what it’s like to have a content plan to follow.
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Okay, so I'm sat in Shoreditch, although it's actually the Grind at Broadgate Circle, so is that classed as Shoreditch? I'm not really sure, but it's that kind of area, Liverpool Street area in London. Anyway, I'm having brunch with a friend when we get talking about content, obviously, it’s my favourite topic, and she tells me that she's feeling really self-conscious about the content that she's putting out there because her friends and family don't understand what she's doing, and they've made a couple of comments to her about the posts that she's putting out, right?
So by this point, I've been uploading content regularly for, I don't know, like the last seven years. So she asks me, "How do you show up confidently without worrying what other people think? How do you deal with friends or family making comments about your videos or laughing at what you do?" And then she told me later that day that she was shocked by what I said in response to that question, and she was not expecting that answer.
She genuinely thought my response was gonna be, "Work on increasing your confidence. Stop worrying what others think. Don't care about their opinions." But that was not what I told her.
And before I tell you what I did tell her, we just need a little bit of context.
So if you have ever held back from posting something because you were worried about what your mum might think, or you've obsessed over the photos that you were gonna share because you know that your ex follows you and you're worried about him looking at you again or judging you or laughing at you with his new girlfriend, or perhaps you've avoided talking about your offers because the thought of your old colleagues seeing it kind of makes you cringe, then this episode is for you. It's especially made just for you.
Today we're gonna talk about the people who could be costing you consistency, confidence, clients, and sales. And although the thought of being judged or trolled by strangers on the internet can be terrifying, there is nothing scarier than thinking that your friends and family are watching, judging, and laughing at you just because they don't understand what you do.
So following on from our last episode, we are becoming the kind of person who posts confident content consistently. And to do that, we really need to overcome this fear of being judged by our favourite people.
Going back a few years now, I was out to dinner with a group of friends, and friends that I'd had at this point for maybe a decade, and we were chatting about what we'd been up to, and then we got onto the subject of Kirsty. Kirsty isn't her real name, but she had been a part of our friend group, and then had kind of disappeared off the face of the earth.
Now, I myself am shocking at keeping in touch with anyone, so if we weren't chatting in the group chat, as in if somebody hadn't started a conversation in the group chat, or we weren't catching up in person, we weren't catching up. Like, I'm, I'm not a texting in between seeing each other friend. I am the sort of friend, and I mean, thankfully, thank God, most of my friends are the same, like if we, we don't chat in between seeing each other. We might send out each other like a link every now and again, but typically I'm not somebody that's always messaging their friends. If I'm not catching up with you in person, there's a good chance you're not gonna hear from me until we see each other in person or until we're planning to see each other in person. That's just how my brain is.
So anyway, we start wondering about how Kirsty is, and we're still all discussing about how confused we are that she stopped responding to the messages, didn't come out with us anymore. And then one of the girls was like, "Oh my God, did you see her video?" And I was like, "I don't know what you're talking about. No, I didn't see a video." And apparently she had been cooking, I think. I think she was cooking on a live stream. So she'd kind of propped her phone up on, I think it was Facebook maybe. This is going back, like, eight years now. So she'd been cooking on a live stream. She'd been doing something, right?
So it was like content creator-esque, building a personal brand before it was called that type content. Literally everything you see online nowadays, but eight years ago it was a lot rarer, right?
So long story long, a couple of the girls then started laughing at what she'd been doing and really, like, taking the piss essentially. Taking the piss out of what she was doing. Like, "Oh my God, did you see her on camera?" Not in an intentionally nasty, bitchy way but you know when you can tell somebody doesn't understand what somebody else is doing, so the easiest thing is to laugh at it rather than be like, "I don't get it." It's like, "Oh, well that's different to what I know, so I'm just gonna laugh at it."
Anyway, they were laughing about it, and I sat there quietly, like, not saying anything. Just, you know when you give a bit of a like, "Oh, right," like you're awkward as fuck. I sat there and I was like, in my head, I've started going live recently. I- I've just started my business as a social media manager, or I think actually I'd moved into confidence coaching at this point 'cause I was a couple of years into freelancing. So I was like, "I'm being visible in this way. I'm going live. I'm putting videos of myself out on the internet. I'm sharing my story on the internet all the time." And all I could think was, "If they're laughing at her, chances are they're laughing at me," because I was doing what she was doing, but on a much more frequent scale because I was growing my business.
And let me tell you, this made creating content from then on very tricky. Because up until that point, my fear of judgment was imaginary. It was in my head, and I could tell myself, "You're just thinking this. This is a limiting belief. You're making these stories up in your mind." I had no proof that people were actually judging me, so I could talk myself around that fear of judgment.
But now I had evidence that people I cared about were likely laughing at me in the same way that they were laughing at my friend, and that made it really tricky from then on. Because all I could think every time I came to press the go live button or went to record a video, all I could think was, "Oh my God, my friends are gonna be laughing at this."
But, but, but, but I got myself over that because what I realised was they're not my target audience. My friends were working nine to fives. They weren't business owners. They weren't people that I was trying to sign as clients. They were never going to hire me because they weren't my target customer. So I wanna ask you the same question. Are your friends and family your target audience? Like, genuinely, are they your ideal customer? Are they paying your bills? Are they helping your business grow? If that answer is no, then their opinions, their judgement, their thoughts on your reels or your content or your live videos are completely irrelevant.
If they are not contributing to your life in that way, if their opinions are not contributing constructively to your life and are actually holding you back, their opinions aren't relevant.
So when my friend asked me over that brunch whilst we were in Broadgate Circle in the Grind, when my friend asked me, "How do you show up so confidently without worrying about what people think? How do you deal with friends or family making comments about your videos or laughing at what you do?" I said to her, "I block them”.
Because I know for me, knowing that they can see what I'm doing impacts how confident I feel. It impacts how consistent I am, and I know my consistency and my confidence in my content directly, uh, impacts the sales that I make. I know if I'm not showing up regularly, and if I'm not showing up confidently, I'm not making sales. And if I'm not making sales, my business isn't growing. If my business isn't growing, I'm not paying my bills. I'm gonna have to sack things off and go and get a nine-to-five, which is not what I want to do.
So why would I keep people in my online space who are negatively impacting the way that I think, act, and feel about myself and about my business? You don't have control over other people's thoughts, or perceptions, or opinions, or judgments of you. But what you do have control over is the way that you allow those judgments or perceived judgments into your space. Because let's be honest, it's not always their direct judgment. A lot of the time, it's our perception of how they would judge us. So if they've never outrightly judged you or you've never seen them outrightly judging anyone else, and we're gonna do a whole episode on judgement 'cause this is a great topic that's coming in a few episodes time, but if you've never seen that, then the sto- you could be telling yourself a story in your mind that people are judging you, when in actual fact, reality, they could be watching everything you're doing, and admiring you, and feeling proud of you, and wanting to celebrate you and cheer you on.
So this is your permission to block the people who are holding you back from growing your business, whether it's their intention or not. And that doesn't mean you need to block them from your life, not in any way, shape, or form. And this isn't about them. This isn't about them being a bad person or you having a bad friendship with them. This is about you protecting your space so that you can show up in the way that your business needs to, in the way that the potential clients need you to. And anyone who is a true friend, anyone who truly loves you, will understand this, if they even notice in the first place.
And you don't have to announce it to them. You don't have to send them a message and go, "Oh, by the way, I'm gonna block you because you seeing my feed is making me not show up." Like, you don't have to tell them. You can just do it. It's your space. Your socials are your space. You get to decide who is in that space.
And it's the same with trolls, right? Like, block people that are leaving shitty comments on your posts. I know this, this is quite con- controversial because a lot of people will say, "Leave the trolls there, it creates engagement. Blocking people is bad for business. Deleting comments is bad for business" But if someone is harassing you, if someone is leaving you abusive comments, if someone is affecting your mental health or the way that you're growing your business, it's okay for you to remove them from your space.
And if you decide to let people back in later, so not the trolls, but if you decide to let your friends back in at a later date, then you can do that. If you get to the point where you're so consistent with your content, you've, you're in the flow of it, you're feeling a lot more confident about what you're putting out there, you're seeing the results because your sales are increasing, your enquiries are, are increasing, your followers are increasing. When you get to that point, if you're like, "Fuck it, I can let them see now because now I feel like I'm at a place where I'm confident in what I do," you can unblock them.
Doesn't mean you're gonna remove them from your life. It doesn't mean you're not gonna be friends with them anymore. It's just about you protecting this space so that you can grow in the way that you deserve to grow.
And one thing that has helped me more than anything when I get stuck in this worrying about what people think pattern is asking myself, "If I get to 80 years old and I look back on my life having not done the things that I wanted to do because of what other people might have thought about me, how would I feel?"
And this question does something to me that makes me go, "I'm not letting anyone stand in my way," because I don't want to be in my 80s or my 90s reflecting on my life full of regrets.
And however painful it feels sometimes, I would much rather sit in the cringe, squirm my way through the discomfort, knowing that older me would be able to look back on my life with pride. It is uncomfortable. The discomfort is horrendous. The cringe is horrible. But through the cringe, through the discomfort, is where you actually want to be, and I don't wanna let someone else's opinion or judgement or perspective of me be the reason that my business doesn't grow, be the reason that I can't pay my bills, be the reason that I regret my life choices in my 80s. I don't want that to happen.
And this is what becoming the kind of person who posts confident content consistently looks like in practice. It's not about no longer worrying what people think, it's about removing the opportunity for them to think anything at all, therefore clearing space mentally and energetically for you.
So you can know that people will judge you. You can move about your life knowing that people are gonna think certain things, they're gonna have opinions. They're going to form opinions about you based on their lived experience. And this is something I talked a lot about in my coaching business. You could say the exact same thing to five people or to 10 people in a room. Every single person listening to this podcast right now is going to interpret it in their own way based on your own lived experiences, based on your mindset, based on the lessons that you've learned, based on what you've been taught throughout your life. I'm saying the same thing to every single person that's listening. Every single person is gonna take away something different in their own way based on their own opinion, uh, based on their own lived experience.
So whatever somebody's opinions about you doesn't matter. You can continue living your life knowing that people are gonna judge you, knowing that people are gonna have their own opinions about you, and knowing that that's okay. And if you can do something that removes that obsessing about the judgment from your, from your space, then blocking them is, is how you're gonna do it. So an exercise I used to teach as a confidence coach, and one that is in the confidence course, is creating your confidence persona.
So let's talk about Beyonce because I don't think anybody doesn't know who Beyonce is. But Beyonce, when she first started out as a performer, would always get really bad stage fright. And so to overcome that, she created her alter ego, Sasha Fierce, and I'm pretty sure she's got an album called I Am Sasha Fierce as well. So she created Sasha Fierce, and Sasha Fierce was the alter ego who loved performing, didn't get stage fright, and this ultimately helped her to perform more confidently. And now obviously she's done it so many times, I can't imagine she's nervous, but you know, maybe she is.
But you can use this exact same exercise to help you show up confidently and consistently. Instead of thinking of yourself as Barbara, who's scared to post because of what her friends are saying, you can create a confidence persona who loves to show up, gives zero fucks about what anyone else thinks of them, blocks people knowing that it's self-protection, and finds being consistent comes naturally to them.
So you can just give them a name so that when you sit down and you're anxious about posting, when you're ready to hit publish and all those thoughts in your brain are going, "What if this person thinks this?" Or, "What if so-and-so judges me?" You can say to yourself, "Right, that's it. Bella is taking the reins right now. I'm shifting into this identity instead. Bella's in the room. We don't care about this. We're publishing." So does that, does that make sense? I would love to know if that is actually helpful for you because it has changed the game for me.
It also helped me a lot. I've done this... I've had many confidence personas. I had one when my imposter syndrome was especially bad early on in my coaching business. And what did I call her? No Fun Nora. She- I called her No Fun Nora because she would tell me things like, "You need to be professional. You can't swear. You need to do all these things," that were taking me away from who I actually was, and I'd be like, "Shut up, no fun Nora." So that was more of a negative persona that I kind of personified to help me move through the imposter syndrome. Anyway, give this exercise a try over the coming weeks, and report back to me in my DMs on Instagram. I know that so many of my clients have really benefited from this exercise in the past, so I would be really keen to hear if this has actually helped you as well.
So you don't have to block people from your life entirely, just from your marketing efforts if they were never your target audience anyway. And one thing I will say is when you feel confident enough in yourself and your content that you no longer care about what they think, do consider unblocking them because you never know who they may know.
So when I lived in Thailand, I worked on the Koh Tao Pub Crawl, and I met a friend who is a DJ now, and I think it's mostly drum and bass. But anyway, he's a DJ, he's moved to Canada, and a few weeks ago, he came up on my Facebook feed and was promoting a new record that he was about to launch. So I pre-saved it, and I have been listening to it ever since it landed on Spotify, very much on repeat, 'cause it is very much the sort of music that really gets me in a great head space. And I haven't told him this, and I probably am not gonna d- like, tell him. We literally haven't spoken for years. Nothing dramatic, like no falling out or anything, but just, you know, general not staying in touch because of life. And my ADHD is also like, "Why would you message him?" Because, like, why would he give a fuck that you're listening?
But my point is when you are talking about your business, when you are promoting something that you're selling, or you're telling people about what you do, you have no idea who is listening to you and who is quietly supporting you from the sidelines. I went and pre-saved the record because I knew that it would be helpful for him, even though we haven't spoken for years, even though, as I said, I'm not gonna, like, tell him that I have.
You don't know who's standing up in rooms you're not in to tell other people how great you are. You don't know who is sending the link to your website or to your socials or to their friends because they loved what you had to say. Your brain might be telling you that your mate is laughing at your silly little videos on social media, when actually they might be telling their colleagues about the product that you've just launched or your new offer or the content you're sharing because it's so freaking good. So that's just something else to bear in mind.
And I've actually got two other examples that I'll share with you quickly. One example is my mum works with someone whose friend has recently launched a, a walking group. It's like an ADHD or neurodiverse walking group that's local to my area. If my mum's friend's friend who launched this group wasn't showing up on social media or had blocked all her friends from social media, then my mum's friend wouldn't have known about this, this group that she started, and she wouldn't have told my mum about it, and then my mum wouldn't have told me, and then I'm now considering going on these walks.
So you don't know what rooms you're being spoken about in and what rooms are actually growing your business without you being there.
Likewise, I recently downloaded a book on Kindle. My... I think she's my second cousin-in-law. I don't know. Anyway, a member of my family, a member of my extended family is an author, and I recently downloaded one of their books on Kindle. And I didn't tell her I'd downloaded it initially because we just didn't have that conversation. Also, it's like a... What's the correct terminology? They're like smut books, I guess, like romance smut. I don't know. Anyway, very sexual. But I downloaded the book, read it, thought it was amazing, and then I recommended the book to someone that I was following the other day because they'd said that they really liked that kind of novel. So I was like, "Oh, check out this book by the author."
And again, if she hadn't posted so openly, if she hadn't talked about her business so openly, despite the content, obviously the books are very sexual, that's not something that you necessarily tell all your family. But because she went out there and was like, "Fuck it, I'm just gonna talk about what I'm doing anyway," now I've been able to, for a start, buy the book to support her, and enjoyed the book, but then I could also tell other people about it.
So lots of people want to support you. Sometimes it's in your head, sometimes it is reality and people are gonna laugh at you, but you can ... Yeah, just some- just something else to bear in mind, just another perspective.
So anyway, quite a waffley ending, but that's fine, that's who we are. I am very excited about the next episode because I'm gonna walk you through the five-step framework that will make it so much easier for you to take action when it comes to posting consistently. So that is a full-on strategy episode. Get ready to wave a big bye-bye to overwhelm and posting exhaustion. Very excited for this. I actually have used the content for that episode in a talk that I gave at the Mums in Business event recently, or a couple of months back. So I'm expanding on what was at that talk, and it w- it went down really well when I did it in person, so I'm hoping that you are going to enjoy it just as much.
And before I go, I wanted to remind you that if you are not posting consistently because you don't know what to post, then The Robin Intensive is the answer to all of your prayers. This is done for you content with a twist, and the twist being you. So I'll create you a 90-day content strategy and plan, complete with hooks and calls to action, so all you need to do is fill in the bit in the middle and post the content. If you'd rather a smaller scale version that allows you to try before you buy, then you can also check out The Mini Robin, which is a two-week content plan, and includes a co-working session to make sure that you actually get the content created. So the links to both of those are in the show notes. Go and check them out, and I will see you in the next one.
The Art of Confident Content is planned, edited and produced by Rebecca at Robin Rose Creative. If you've been thinking about launching your own podcast and want support bringing it to life, email hello@robinrosecreative.com. I would love to hear about your idea and discuss how I can help you with the concept, episode ideation, and launch content.
And when you're finished leaving me a five-star review, don't forget to check out The Robin Intensive. This is done for you content with a twist that will help you post consistently for the next 90 days at least. The link is in the show notes.
Oh, and one last thing. If you made it here, DM me the word gift, that's G-I-F-T, on Instagram because I've got a little something special just for you.
The Art of Confident Content is planned, edited and produced by Rebecca at Robin Rose Creative (that’s me in the pic!). If you've been thinking about launching your own podcast and want support bringing it to life, get in touch here. I'd love to hear about your idea and discuss how I can help you with the concept, episode ideation and launch content.
You’ll find previous podcasts planned, edited and produced by Rebecca here:
