THE VISIBLE ENTREPRENEUR

406 | What Entrepreneurial Leaders Are Doing WRONG in Our Industry | The Visible Entrepreneur

May 17, 2021 Michelle Lewis - Visibility Vixen® Season 4 Episode 6
THE VISIBLE ENTREPRENEUR
406 | What Entrepreneurial Leaders Are Doing WRONG in Our Industry | The Visible Entrepreneur
Show Notes Transcript

If you've ever thought that you might be doing something wrong when looking at your industry leaders' perfect and successful lives, you're not alone.

We're all guilty of letting flawless and carefully-curated social media feeds trick us into thinking we're the only ones that struggle.

In this podcast, let's chat about the importance of showcasing your failures as a leader + giving back to the world.

Remember, We have to be able to teach our audience how to morph and transform, and fall down and get back up again.

P.S. Wondering what the best brand color to attract your ideal client is? Take the COLOR QUIZ here!

Hey there, and welcome back to the visible entrepreneur. I'm happy you're here. I hope you've had a good couple of weeks. I have been in Los Angeles for the past six weeks, as I'm sure you heard, especially on my noisier episode. But now I am back up here in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and enjoying the beautiful spring weather. I want to get started talking a little bit about leadership today, because I think there are a lot of misconceptions. And my hope is that we will have a different perspective on what it is to be a leader that we will set an incredible example for our clients and students, and that we will actually all move forward to making this world tangibly a better place. So if you're new to me, my name is Michelle Lewis, I'm the founder of visibility vixen, we just did a website overhaul. So if you want to check that out, go to visibility, vixen, calm, and you're going to see all the different ways that we can work together. And if you have not decided on your primary brand color, or you really want to know is it subconsciously attracting my audience, please go to the website visibility, vixen, calm and take the color quiz, I think that you will really enjoy it. So let's dive into the meat of today's episode. I think leaders are doing it wrong. Here's what I mean, scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through Facebook, I can't tell you how frustrating it is. To see entrepreneurs presenting their life as this ideal situation and I get it, we have to make sales, we have to set goals for ourselves, we have to hit those goals. There's nothing wrong with that, when I was able to get a car because of my affiliate income. I shared that absolutely. But what I'm talking about is when you're going on vacation, when you are in the Lamborghini or in the bikini, you're doing all these things, and making it seem like you have the perfect life. I understand the impulse to share that and to pretty much only share the positive things that are happening in your business. But I believe that it causes our audience and our students to really emotionally and mentally suffer. Because if all they're seeing being proclaimed is the perfection that you've achieved, then they feel like they can never ever hit that if they can never see the struggles and some of the ugliness of your business growth. Then when they encounter obstacles when they see some ugliness or some stagnation, they think that they are doing it wrong. Now I'm not saying that we have to verbal diarrhea, our life, please don't we can't go online and just be really nasty, are really negative. Or, you know, you've seen those posts. And I don't think that that's a healthy way to do it either. But what I'm saying is this, if you had a challenging team situation, and maybe you had to fire someone, or maybe you're really searching to hire someone, maybe you had a little bit of a betrayal or something bad happened, we've all had those things happen. I'm not saying that you need to air all the dirty laundry online. But how inspiring would it be to our audience, if we said, Hey, you know, I'm going through a team transition. And I've never felt so vulnerable or so insecure. Because you know, this, I just started hiring a team in the last year. And so I'm learning how to lead my team. And there are some things that I failed that and here's a couple of them that I'm going to be adjusting for the next time that I hire, that's inspirational that shows someone like wow, like I have that goal that I want to hit. But it's okay. If I make mistakes along the way. I don't think that it's okay. If we're constantly presenting the perfection. If every Instagram story, Instagram, real Instagram post is us at our best. And I get that to a certain degree, we have to showcase the winds, we should do that. That's our responsibility as leaders, but we can't make it this attain an unattainable level of perfection, that people automatically feel discouraged and disqualified whenever they see us. So I think that that is a fine line that a lot of entrepreneurs have failed at because they've shown things as too perfect. And this can actually backfire, as we've seen with a lot of well known entrepreneurs this year, because when they say something that's a little bit uncouth, a little bit, you know, maybe rebellious or not politically corrected, they get attacked. And I think it's because they've spent so much time cultivating this perfect image that when it's jeopardized a little bit and the humanity comes through people cannot handle it. So what I've tried to do, and I'm still learning this process as well is show the good showcase the great absolutely, but also show the process of getting there show the wins and the losses. Show the failures show people how How to get back up because that's the most valuable skill. One of my friends posted on Facebook the other day, and she said, what's the most important skill that you think you've brought to your business. And I said failure, because we have to become excellent at failure to survive not only this business, but the world, the jobs that were secure a year ago are no longer that so much more has moved online, things are so much more volatile, we have to be able to teach our audience how to morph and transform, and fall down and get back up again, we can't just say, I made a million dollars with this, I made 500k. With this, my funnel brought in this and not show the process, people want to see the behind the scenes, they want to know that they can do it too. And I think that that's something really important that we have to get across in today's society. Because I'm telling you, if I see one more picture of someone that is in the Caribbean, in their bathing suit, living their best life, it's going to drive me a little crazy. And I'm not saying that you can't go and enjoy a vacation, but also showcase the transformation that you are going through, don't hide that from your audience. Just be a little bit on the other side of it before you share so that your post doesn't get to, you know what I mean? too crazy. Okay, so I really wanted to get that off my chest. And I wanted to transition that into as leaders. If you're called to this business, if you're wanting to make money with your message, if you're wanting to be seen and be visible, we are past the time in the world where you can just be seen make money and run, right. And a lot of people say, Well, I want to, you know, I want to hit this income for me, I want to prove all the haters wrong, but at it, we are also energetically past that time. The time now that I think I've learned throughout this past year of pandemic, and political craziness, and just everything going on in the world is that if you're called to this industry, if you feel called to lead to move forward with that mission, and to make a difference, and accumulate that wealth, it also has to go back into the world to help the world. There's so much going on right now, homelessness in America, all the different animals and wildlife in the ocean that are washing up deceased, all the different natural disasters that are happening, the cyclone that just happened in Indonesia, the earthquake that happened in Pakistan, like things are accelerating, and they are hard and challenging. And I know that that can take an energetic toll. Of course, all of us are dealing with fatigue, or stress or whatever. But if you're going to be in this business, if you're going to keep inside of this space, I'm going to challenge you to police start portioning 1% 5% 10% or more of your monthly revenue, to go back into the world to help make it better. We have to be called to this business for a reason, right? We're not just getting on camera, because it's fun, or we like the way we look or we have this perfect manicure or whatever, we're just going to showcase how much money we're making, doesn't really matter how much money you're making, if you're not giving back if you're not trying to help the planet, because I believe right now we're called as leaders to do that. So whatever's been put on your heart, homelessness, planting trees, bees, maybe you have a huge passion for bees like I do, I just literally set up a beehive in my backyard last week. Maybe you want to help mothers that are suddenly single parents, maybe you want to help people in you know, the prison system, whatever is put on your heart, please start putting a little bit of your revenue into that cause I don't care if it's $1, even that energetic act will do something. And I think this is what's so important. And it's really hard for me because as you know, I sell press page templates, you can just import it in and fill in the blanks. And at the bottom, I have a where I give section, because it's on my press page. And I want to encourage every leader to give back right? And a lot of people, they delete that part of the press page because they don't give back and they don't want to highlight that. And it bothers me because it's like, okay, but you're highlighting yourself through this whole thing. Don't you want to inspire others by showing them where you give and show hosts and editors and publicists and stuff? Don't you want to be that inspiration? And the answer is always Oh, well, I'm not giving yet but I plan to do that in the future. It's like please do it. Now. We can all afford $1 right? No matter where it is just that energetic act as so much and you will see growth whether it's personal or financial. For me it was really really scary to start giving money every single month. I personally give to Samaritan's Purse, and it was terrifying. It's like but like I worked for this, and I don't know if it's gonna be coming back to me or not. But I had to put my money where my mouth was right, I did want to help impact the planet. And so I just started doing it a little bit at a time. And I'm so glad that I did. Because it makes a difference. You know, every month, my visibility lab students vote for where they want the money to go. And so we've been able to give to all these amazing places all over the world and see that impact. So wherever you feel burdened, I just highly encourage you, since we're talking about leadership today, start giving back. Maybe you go, you know what, I don't have any money right now. But I can be a mentor, or I can, you know, take on an intern and show her the ropes. However, it is just that energy. I think if we all focus on that, it's going to change things. And maybe we have a fighting chance to make an impact across the world where it's needed the most. So I know that I'm a bit ranty today. But this is something that I've been processing the past couple of weeks that I felt I really needed to speak up about, really needed to put my voice out there. Because, you know, we're so inundated right now, and we need to be able to have the strength and the fortitude and the scrappiness and grip grits to be able to get up and show that example to the world. So maybe you've been putting up perfect posts. And that's because the people that came before you put up perfect post, and you're thinking you know what, maybe I'm going to talk a little bit today about my transformation, or talk about that, when I lost everything in my business. And what I did to get it back maybe just a little bit more honesty, is what you're taking away from this conversation. Maybe you're realizing like, Hey, I have had this passion for months about giving back to this place. And now I'm going to actually go and do it. Any of those takeaways I think are just absolutely incredible. And I would love to continue this conversation outside of this podcast. So feel free to message me on Instagram, send me a voice note on Facebook, let me know what has struck you most about this episode and what is on your heart and what you're thinking about and processing. I would love, love, love to hear it. And the meantime, this isn't going to be a super long episode, I'm going to be wrapping it up here in the next few minutes. Just because this is what I felt called to talk about today, leadership and giving. And I think we need to have a much stronger voice in this business, to have the accountability of saying like, I'm gonna work on my authenticity, I'm going to inspire people to replicate what I'm doing. And I'm going to show them what giving back is like so that they will feel inspired to give back. I think that would be the most incredible thing if you got anything from this conversation. So in the meantime, like I said, a website overhaul just happened at visibility, vixen, calm, and a lot of different things are coming up changes are happening in the business, which I'm really excited about. So one of those changes is I am developing a color course. That's right, all the annoying podcasts and blogs, you've been reading for me on color, my TEDx talk, all of that stuff, I've decided it's time to really shape out that knowledge and wisdom and put it into my color course. So if you're interested in getting on the waitlist that will be coming out in the next month, you can feel free to go to the website, scroll down to the bottom and you will see a join the waitlist. So really excited about that. In the meantime, I want to send you out there with inspiration. I want you to have a wonderful, healthy week. I hope you are treating your body well. I hope that you are rejuvenating your spirit. It's so important to do self care right now with all the pressures going on in the world. So I just wanted to send that that little love note you're waiting in the meantime next week bringing in another amazing guest so stay tuned. It's going to be a really fun season here at the visible entrepreneur and I am honored and grateful that you are here. So I will see you next week.