Bret Shuford 0:00
Welcome back to the creative visibility podcast. I'm your host, Bret Shuford. And if you're new here, welcome, I'm so happy that you are listening to this podcast. This podcast is all about helping you wherever you are in your journey. Be more creative and put that creativity out into the world and fearless way so that you can start to make money doing what you love. We all have that possibility. It's 100% possible, I'm living proof of it. And if you want to learn more about how to do that, join us here every Tuesday for creativity Tuesdays and every Thursday for visibility Thursdays. And I'll help you unlock some of these things. And if you're really loving this podcast, make sure you subscribe and leave a review that helps me get more ears on this helped me grow this business get more support. Now, Tuesdays, as I mentioned, is creativity Tuesdays, and that can mean all kinds of things. It can mean just fun, creative things you can be doing to help you build and build more content or just create. But also I think a huge part of being a creative is understanding the mindset and the things that are required for you to bravely put yourself out into the world. And today I want to talk about authenticity. This is a word we hear thrown around, I think it's a trigger word honestly, online, I think for some some people who, whenever somebody says in their bio, or in their messaging, authentic leader authentic in their thing, I I start to have my own doubts that they're really authentic, because if you have to say it, you're probably not it. That's been my experience of working with people who are like, I just like to be authentic. However, I will say that I get this compliment from people a lot that Brett, you're so authentic online, how do you do it? And I don't really consider myself. I don't use the word authentic. When I talk about creating the content I create, I use the word honest, I just use the truth. But I do think that people really yearn to find this way of being authentic online. And what does it mean to be authentic online? To me, it just means being able to recreate the experience that you give to people in real life in a digital form. That's it, you just translate? How do you translate who you are as a person online. And that's hard for a lot of people because we see social media marketing as a means to an end as a result driven activity that's supposed to bring in customers or clients, right? Or it's supposed to help you get notoriety instead of seeing it as a process of an evolution because human beings are not results driven. I mean, result things right like that we are imperfect, we are evolution kneeing all the time, we're evolving all the time. We're always changing. And so if you can start to understand that social media has to be the same thing, in order for you to be more authentic, you're going to actually enjoy it more, you're going to build more of a connection with the people who follow you. For me, you know, I think my journey towards figuring out how to be more authentic online really started with growing up in a very conservative town as a young gay kid who wanted to just express himself and wanted to be seen. And if you follow the broader husband's account and our stories over there, you know, we moved to Texas two years ago, during the pandemic, I never thought I would live here ever again. And I'm being very quickly reminded why growing up in Texas was very traumatic for me. And it was riddled with a lot of shame, and a lot of just really dark days that I carried with me when I moved to New York because I didn't know how to fully be myself. I had people in my life who loved me very deeply. And I loved them to who had no capabilities of being able to support someone who really wanted to express themselves authentically, because in a conservative community, most people are thinking about what other people think of them more than anything, right? How do I get to the Judgement Day?
And instead of how do I feel good about myself today, and that was that was hard. And so that led for me that led to drinking and drugs and eventually getting sober because I knew I had this capability to to reach my potential, but I was tired of always allowing what other people think of me and the shame that I was raised in to hold me back and getting sober was the first step in figuring that out. Now why am I telling you this? Because I think it's super important to understand that getting honest with yourself and whatever doubts and fears and difficulties you are feeling so that you can become the best version of yourself is the start to being more authentic online because you don't care anymore. If a troll writes a nasty comment or because you feel good about yourself. You're not looking for your worth in the posts that you're making. The content you're creating or the clients that you're booking. Now, that has taken years years. I mean, I've been sober for almost 18 years now. Wow. And I think that it's super important that it starts with honesty, honesty with yourself so that you can really show up in a way that is is true to you. So what are some ways you can do that therapy, right? I always think of therapy, not like, oh, I need therapy because I need help. But I think of therapy, like I go to the gym for my body, which I need to go more right now than I been going but I go to the gym for my body, I go to therapy for my mind, it is super important to exercise that that sort of objective point of view so that you can process your stuff, right, getting support, there are groups you don't have to get in like you don't have to go to, you know, 12 Step meeting. But I will say there are groups, there's therapy. There's there's groups and organisations online, of people who are like you trying to get support, knowing you're not alone is huge. Like right now Stephen and I are new parents, we're he's almost six months old. And we're on this Wednesday night parenting group. And it has been such a help to be able to talk to other parents, and be able to just talk through this process. So the thing that happens with honesty is once you're honest with yourself, you then have to decide what parts of that story are helpful. For your ideal audience, we do an ideal audience exercise in the creative visibility programme. That is my mentorship programme for creative entrepreneurs. And if you're interested in learning more about that, make sure you go to Bret shuford.com, forward slash apply. But that is such a key exercise in understanding who your ideal audience is, so that you're creating a message for that person every single day. So when I think about who my ideal audience member is, it's not who you think it is. It's usually a version of myself and not me, but like a version of me maybe 10 years ago, who wants to understand how to grow a business online or wants to build an audience or, you know, fall in love, and have a family. And that person is who I speak to and my content so that I'm showing up for them, whomever else shows up, awesome. And then they're welcome. And I love it. But I'm specifically speaking to this person, because it's easier to show up for one person every day than it is to try to show up for right now. But I have 40,000 people on my Instagram. So that's that's a huge part. So knowing your story, knowing what parts of your story are useful. And then knowing who you're telling that story to, that can help unlock so much of your authenticity. And then the other part of that is stepping through the fear. Last week, we talked about getting uncomfortable, it is so important to get uncomfortable. If you want to grow if you want to have that growth mindset, there's a difference between discomfort and pain, right? I don't want you to be in pain, like I really feel like Texas has been a painful process for me where I'm at. And that is I've had to set some really hard boundaries, harder boundaries than I've ever had to set. Because I think that I had a high tolerance for my, my family's intolerance, when it was just me. But now that I have a child, I no longer want to subject my child to this sort of intolerance and ignorance that is very easily spewed in these conservative straights privileged societies. And that's kind of what I grew up in. So I'm trying to really change that and figure out what to do. And it's okay if you're like, you know what, I gotta make a change, this isn't gonna work, I can't meet my potential if I continue to stay in this environment. So I need to make a change. I gotta set some really strict boundaries, or I gotta change my platform, change my handle, whatever it is, make a change, you know, you need to do it. So just do it. And you don't have to do it forever. You don't have to stop drinking forever. You just have to get through the day. Can you get through today and make a change on one thing today, so that you can start to free yourself from the shame of really revealing who you are so that other people can learn from you. That's what authenticity is all about. How do you put yourself out into the world so
that other people can see themselves through you? I hope that helps. I'll see you Thursday and make sure you subscribe, leave a review and just take a screenshot tag me and let me know if you found this useful on Instagram. by tagging at Bret Shuford inner stories. Talk to you then
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
