Hello, I want to talk to you today about authenticity and being authentic. It’s not an expression that I’m really comfortable with.
I tell you for why? Because I don’t think that’s how we really talk. I don’t think that’s how we really want to project ourselves. It’s too corporate for me, but the ethos behind being authentic is absolutely something I stand by completely. It’s about being true to yourself. It’s about attracting the right kind of people to your business so they’ll buy your product or service.
It’s about letting people in and sharing a little bit of your life online. The reason that I’m such a believer in that particular ethos is that you’re good at being yourself more than anything else you can ever be good at in your entire life. We can’t be anything other than ourselves. I don’t know why when we go online, when we start to share things on social media, we certainly try and become someone else. We try and be a shining, a polished version of ourselves.
We try and project a different lifestyle of the one that we have or the life choices that we make. There’s absolutely no reason that we should do that. We should be proud of who we are, because if we weren’t us, we wouldn’t be offering the services that we are and changing business owners lives or we wouldn’t be delivering the products that we do and making people’s lives that little bit better. If one thing that lockdown and this interesting year that we’re having has taught us, it’s that it’s okay to do things online.
It’s okay to be on a Zoom call in a sweatshirt rather than a suit and tie. It’s okay to go straight to the conversations rather than doing all the formal corporate nicety nonsense that goes with that world so much. By letting people in and by being authentic, if that’s the word that you choose to use, but by being good at being you and projecting that, then you will get to speak to the right people. You will get to start the right conversations.
Don’t be afraid of that. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s okay to not be shiny and polished. People will trust you so much more for that. I for one, I’m really thankful that I’ve realised this myself and I’ve been to the corporate world and now I’m here in my house with my cat. That’s okay, because in no way does it diminishes my skills, my experience, my knowledge, what I deliver to my clients.
It’s easier for them to start a conversation with me because they know a little bit more about me. You all know a little bit more about me and not everything. I love it and I love the conversations that come as a result of that of knowing more about the people. So please share a piece of you, please be the you that you are, and make sure that the conversations that you start are ones that you’re genuinely interested in with people that you’re genuinely interested in talking to.
