Hey Reader!

Do you ever see those posts that start:

Vulnerable share… ??

Sometimes those words make me roll my eyes like I’m a thirteen year old at a family dinner, but I like that people feel free to be vulnerable in public spaces.

I’m all for consensual exposure. I value privacy - and I’m open to giving it the heave-ho pretty often.

Openness and authenticity are things you hear a lot about when it comes to ‘putting yourself out there’ in business.

Am I pro-vulnerability? I am.

Do I think you need to spill your guts in service of attracting customers? I do not.

When I think about some of the “vulnerable posts” I’ve read, there are those that have been deeply touching, others that felt like TMI, and a few that felt merely performative.

To my mind the point of vulnerability is to let your audience know that you are a real human; you experience doubt, you have moments of fragility, you make mistakes, and you persevere.

I think we call that resilience, which is generally considered a good trait in an entrepreneur.

A more patriarchal style of Being In Business is to present yourself as an expert and basically let everyone know that you are not just a safe pair of hands, but a faultless source of unmatched genius who never so much as wobbles.

If you’re a hedge fund manager this might make a whole lot of sense.

But if you’re a healer or a coach or a writer or an artist or a gardener, your customers don’t need you to be a perfect mix of intelligence, strategy and infallibility.

They want you to be relatable.

They need to know that when they fall you'll catch them in mittens of soft compassion, not iron gloves of judgment.

Opening yourself up doesn’t mean you have to tell stories of failure, unless you’re comfortable with that. It does, however, mean admitting to doubt, or fear, or dissatisfaction, or confusion.

But if you like to maintain your privacy, how do you thread that needle?

You could tell the story of how you came to be doing the work you do. For many of us that includes struggling with something and then finding or creating an answer.

Or how about a story about how you did NOT help an early client as much as you’d have liked, and what that taught you.

Or maybe the tale of trying too hard to please all the people all the time and how THAT turned out.

You could even tell your readers about “what keeps you up at night.”

(I put that in quotes because I hear this phrase all the time and honestly the only thing that keeps me up at night is an uncomfortable bed. 🤷🏻‍♀️

But please, if your sleep is disturbed by anything relating to a newsletter or other form of business communication please tell me about it! This is just the kind of thing I want to help you with.)

Ideally, your readers will want to get to know you better. Give them a taste! And make it full of flavor.

If it makes you nervous to admit to your perceived shortcomings, just think about the people you know and ask yourself if you’d like them half as much if you thought they were perfect.

I’m guessing not.

Yours in telling it like it is,

Julia

PS - having trouble deciding whether your story is the right amount of authentic and relatable? Send it to me! I'll steer you right.

​John Prine & Iris Dement know that perfection is beside the point, and so does this newsletter. Forward it to someone you like in spite of it all.

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