If you want people to read and engage with your posts, ads, and offers, you have to make them feel connected to you. They have to feel like you’re talking about and to them, and hit them in an emotional place that pushes them to respond. The best way to do that is with polarizing content that will turn some people away and others into die-hard fans. Polarizing content can expand your mind and make things feel good for you so you can connect with your audience even more. Check out this episode to find out what kinds of polarizing content we love to use, how to find your own, and how to use it to get people screaming YES to working with you.
How Letting Your Freak Flag Fly Could Make You Rich
We’re going to talk about something. It’s a little polarizing. In the last episode, we were talking about how being polarizing online is important, not just for your business, but also for you. How it can expand your mind and how it can make things feel good for you so you can connect with your audience even more. In this episode we’re going to go into one of my favorite things to be polarizing with because as I see it, there is a divide in professionals and business owners. There is one camp that I see is being led by Gary Vee. If you’re not familiar with him, his primary message is hustling all the time. If you already have a job, you want to be a business owner, you have a job, you want to make more money. Work your full job, come back home, eat dinner with your family and then stay up until 4:00 in the morning working on whatever it is, selling your shit on eBay, making money and building your business. Get as little sleep as possible and then go and start it again. That’s one which is let’s make as much money as possible, as fast as possible by working as hard as possible.
The other camp is where I stand, which is absolutely not. Life needs to be enjoyed right now, but sometimes people go a little too far in that direction, so they don’t work as much. It’s about enjoyment, not enough about business-building and legacy-building or future-building, retirement-building or contribution. You see these people falling way too much into that fun, YOLO mindset and you got people caught in the middle, who are more into what we’re going to get into a little bit and the problems and solutions that you’re going to see in your business as well.
I’d like to consider myself slightly in the middle. Which side is going to be which, Dan? Is the right side the more chilled out loving life or is it the left side?
I didn’t know about going left and right. Let’s say left side is hustle as hard as you can, the right side is enjoying as much as you can.
I would say I’m probably in the middle closer leaning towards that right, but I can definitely get a little hustle going. We’ll share with you our philosophies and our beliefs on this. I know for me personally, I’ve gone on all ends of the spectrum. I think you have too. We’ll share our experiences with that, what we’ve taken away and how those different mentalities have worked for us. One thing I’ll preface here is everyone is different. It is figuring out for your personality type what resonates and what feels juicy for you. Maybe you’ll change, maybe you won’t and maybe it works for you now. It’s recognizing what actually works for you and we’re going to share what’s worked best for us and what we believe.
That’s an important thing right there. Remember through all of this that there isn’t necessarily right or wrong way to go about this. There’s just a right or wrong way for you in where you are right now because that might change. I definitely tried the hustle as hard as you can and I’d burn myself out every other week and I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it. It sucks the life out of me. For me, it’s important to bring in beautiful energy from my personal life into my business because it fuels me. I need to have fun at what I’m doing. I need to have fun in my life. That’s why if you see my brand, a lot of it is about living your life right now and not because it’s a great thing to go on vacation. I actually use it as a tool. I use self-care, use fun, use love, use sex and use all these amazing elements of life to funnel back in. Sophie, you do the same thing. It’s not to say that our way is right but you’ve got to find out what’s right for you.
It’s pretty fucking pleasurable. We’ll just preface that. It’s a good way of living.
[bctt tweet=”Business is not stable no matter how good your business is.” username=””]
You’ve got to feel it out for yourself. What are your real goals? I think it starts there. Understanding that just because it’s working for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. It’s because you’re making a lot of money doing what you’re doing doesn’t mean that’s working for you. You can make a lot of money and be miserable. I live in LA. There are tons of absolutely miserable millionaires here because they have prescribed to a model that doesn’t work for them. They’re holding onto a model that no longer works for them. You’ve got to make that difference between what is it that people had told you should be important to you and what actually is important to you. Do you want to be a billionaire?
I know a lot of people would say, “If you gave me $1 billion, sure I’d say yes.” Do you want everything else that comes along with it? Not just the money, or do you want a different kind of lifestyle? That’s okay. What’s important is for you to look at the future and assess. What is going to make you the happiest? Not just in your business, but in all different areas of your life. Your friendships, intimate relationships, spirituality, health and wellness. You’ve got to look at it all. From there, find a model of business or a model of lifestyle that will allow you to get there in a way that feels the best.
Basically, what we’re touching on here is you either building your business around your lifestyle or building your lifestyle around your business. I think the trap that I know I’ve fallen into and I know a lot of people when they first start is similar to what Gary Vee preaches. Sacrifice everything to build a business. You sacrifice your relationships, your hobbies, your self-care, your health and all with the intention. All your intentions are great. Your intentions to build this incredible business, so then you can have the financial freedom and the money and the time to go and have these amazing relationships and health and travel and all the experiences. What’s interesting with this philosophy or this way of being is it’s like you’re putting your entire life on hold, trying to build the business to get to a place and then at that point when the business is built, you’ll be able to have all the other things.
What I love to preach and I know Dan this is similar to your philosophy where instead of building your lifestyle around the business and hustling 24/7 and sacrificing everything. It’s moving into a space where it’s, “How I can build my business around my lifestyle?” Meaning how can I recognize that I’m worthy and deserving and I actually am allowed to experience all of the bliss right now? Even if I only have X amount of dollars in my bank account or if I’m only making this much money per year. Recognize that me taking care of my self-care, having amazing relationships, having incredible friendships, having amazing experiences is what allows me to build a business that’s going to be incredibly successful. Maybe it might take a little bit more time or not, who knows. In saying that, the business then becomes such a much more fluid experience where you get to enjoy the entire process of building it versus spending three years hustling, burning yourself out, getting adrenal fatigue and then realizing that you can enjoy the business.
We’re not making that side wrong, we’re presenting a different way of viewing it so that you have a full menu. For me, there’s a lot that I disagree with in the hustle all the time and sacrifice everything like Sophie was saying because let’s take a look at it this way. Let’s say you sacrifice everything in the name of your business. Where does your worthiness come from? What makes you feel like you’re enough? Where does your confidence come from or the good feelings that you have? At that point, you have nothing else in your business. It’s only your business. When you have a good month, you feel great. When you have a bad month, you feel like shit. The way that you feel about yourself goes at the mercy of your bank account. Maybe it’s the number of followers you have or some other vanity metric that sure it helps, but it shouldn’t be the only source of things.
When you externalize your confidence locus that where if you’re putting your validation from outside of you, so you need something outside of you to tell you that you’re good enough, you’re already at risk. A business is not stable no matter how good your business is. It’s not perfectly consistent. You’re going to make bets and you’re going to take risks and they’re not all going to work out. If the business is the only thing you’ve got going for you, when you make those bets and they don’t work out, that’s going to hurt a lot. If you have a full life and you have friends or you’re dating or you’ve got family in your life or whatever you’re doing is making you feel happy and you’re doing it. You’re creating a lifestyle that allows you to feel valued, worthy and confident because of who you are from inside of you. When things go sideways in your business or you take a risk and it doesn’t pan out, you’ll be okay. You’ll be able to support yourself emotionally, maybe another way as well because you have a full life and you have other things going for you to support you and keep you afloat.
I love the concept of making your business a pleasure practice. It is going on this philosophy of how can I actually enjoy every single step of the way. What’s funny is when I start to have this conversation with clients and we get into this conversation, content is usually a big thing and marketing. They’re like, “I need to force myself to write all of this content and to do all of these training and to do all these things.” I’m like, “You’re coming at it from this place of feeling frustrated. You’re coming at it from this place of feeling tired, burnt out and exhausted and you’re not excited about it and that’s the energy that you’re putting into whatever it is you’re creating.” That’s the energy of your content at that point.
Do you feel like that’s going to be more magnetic than you taking the time to take a day off? Go and spend it with your husband, with your boyfriend or with yourself and have incredible sex. Take a walk in the park or to go and do something that makes you feel good and get lots of sleep. Eat yummy food and then come in the next day and write a great piece of content that’s coming from this wholehearted, genuine and loving place. You’re so relaxed and your energy when you show up in your video, in your stories or in your life and that’s the essence behind it. I can guarantee and speaking from firsthand experience, you’re going to be so much more magnetizing from the quality and the energy of the content, the copy and the marketing that you’re doing. When it’s coming from that much more aligned place than when it’s coming from this place of hustling and trying to force yourself to get it done and you’re not actually loving the process of doing it.
[bctt tweet=”A lot of us are addicted to achieving. We live in a very achievement-addicted society where we’re rewarded for being busy.” username=””]
Another thing there is that as you’re out there doing these things that Sophie is recommending, anything like that and I love that. Taking some time off to chill out or do something that makes you feel good or whatever that is. You’re going to have more to write about. You’re going to have more to share about. In the last couple of episodes, we’re describing how important it is to show up authentically and let people see who you are. Let people see that you’re this multidimensional being with all sorts of interests, hobbies, positions and things you have to say. Some of them are going to be polarizing, some of them are going to be super weird, and some of them are going to be quirky and funny, but if all you’re doing is hustling, what do you have to talk about?
How are you going to interest people in this day and age where professionals are becoming less professional? We’re all talking about more personal elements of our lives. If you’re going to be the only person who’s like, “I’ve got nothing to talk about except for hustling.” You’re a one-note performer and that’s not who you are. I don’t know a single person who is actually a one-dimensional character. You’ve got so much more in you and people want to see that. People love that. They’ll connect with it. The weird thing is if you’re trying to hustle and make a hell of a lot of money, what better way than by attracting tons of people because you let them see who you are.
Just to lean into this a little bit more. The other piece when it comes to clients and making this pivot from being in that constant hustle, get shit done and work hard mode to this relaxed, more pleasurable practice. There’s this piece where we start to lack trust with ourselves or we feel like we don’t trust ourselves to get the things done. There’s this program that my clients will run when I tell them to take time off or only to work when they’re feeling great. What if I never actually worked or if I never get things done? They’re running this program of feeling they have to force themselves to work. That’s when you’re coming more so from this place of pressure and force versus this place of pleasure and flow.
That’s what I love teaching my clients. You’re going to be in so much more of a state of flow because when you’re coming from this more energized, more loving, more embodied state of being and everything flows so much more effortlessly. Versus when you’re sitting there trying to write a sales page copy and you’re frustrated, you’re tired and you’re burnt out, it takes you so much longer and it’s so much more exhausting. Versus when you sit down and you’re blissed out and you’re so in your body and so in love and so grateful for life and you can get it done in an hour. You’re actually so much more effective and efficient when you’re living in this state of joy, flow, love and pleasure than when you’re hustling and burning yourself out and working super hard and doing all the things.
It’s like this paradox. You actually get to work a hell of a lot less, make a hell of a lot more and feel a hell of a lot more enjoyable in the process. What’s interesting is the program that then runs, what comes up for a lot of clients is almost feeling guilty because they don’t have to work as hard. It’s interesting because then we get into this whole process of where’s the guilt coming from? Oftentimes, what we discover is there are a lot of us who are addicted to achieving. We live in a very achievement-addicted society where we’re rewarded for being busy. Not for loving and enjoying our lives because that’s looked down upon and it makes other people feel bad.
It’s because, “You’re working hard, so let’s reward that.” It’s interesting to become aware of, “Interesting, I’m getting a lot of my self-worth or a lot of my feelings of being enough or feeling like I’m loved or whatever it is by doing all of these things.” What happens when I stopped doing all the things? Do I still have the sense of embodiment, self-love, worthiness and enoughness like Dan was talking about? If not, how much of my self-worth and who I am is attached to or associated with all of these states of doing? How can I start to bring all of that back and have it be an embodiment of who I’m being that I can then lace into what I choose to do? Not from the place of trying to meet the need of being enough, but from being enough, I’m able to do the things from a place of pleasure and joy, which makes it so much easier to do.
Throughout all of this, there is that message of looking at it and saying, “Is the model that I feel like I’m trying to fit, mine?” You’re celebrated for being busy. Do I agree with that? Do I feel that’s how I want to live? Work is work, it shouldn’t be easy. Says who? It’s such a 1950s mentality. You’d see that shit in the 1950s TV shows. That’s why they call it work because it’s not fun. You wake up miserable every morning but keep that to yourself. I don’t want it. That’s your model. Let that be your model. You get to wake up exhausted and burnt out every day valuing money over all other experiences. You get to have that. For me, it’s something very different. What I want you to do is ask yourself, who am I when I think these things or when I say these things? I’m feeling guilty because I’m taking three-day weekends every week. Who am I being when I’m feeling guilty?
Do I actually agree with that? Am I breaking a rule? Have I done anything wrong? You challenge these things, challenge these feelings and challenge these thoughts. That way, you’ll be able to build a model of your own that’ll allow you to feel empowered, free, successful, fun and things will flow. When you’re in this, everything flows so much easier because it’s coming from a place that’s truly you. You’re not trying to be someone else. You’re not trying to force yourself into anything. When you do something out of fun, it’s very different than when you do it out of obligation. When you have more fun, when you have more flow in your life, everything works even better. Start figuring that out for yourself. It will change your entire life.
[bctt tweet=”That’s why they call it work because it’s not fun.” username=””]
I think this is the biggest thing in all of us. It’s discerning for yourself, “What have you been trusting in? Has it been working?” That’s the key of like, “What is your definition of success and of something working? How are you defining whether or not something is working or is successful? Are you defining it by the money in your bank account? Are you defining it by your overall level of joy and fulfillment, by the time you get to spend with your loved ones, by the quality of your relationships? What are you defining it as?” Is that the way that you want to continue to experience life? Is it possible that you can actually experience it in a whole different way and then it could be even more amazing than it already is?
That’s going to be your task for this episode is start challenging. Challenge everything. “You’ve got to do this.” “Who says?” “I have to post this number of times.” “Who says?” “I need to post at these times.” “Who says?” “I need to post about this.” “Who says?” Keep on asking yourself and challenging these thoughts. “You’re not allowed to have this business model.” “Why?” “You can’t become successful if you don’t do this or if you do.” “Why? Whose model are you prescribing to? Where are you,” and really feel into that. When you think your way through, you may convince yourself as something that’s not true and aligned with you. Feel your way through it. Allow your emotions to be your barometer and start figuring out your own model of your business and your lifestyle. If you can, start adapting things so it fits even more into this way of being.
Just bring some more pleasure into your life, whatever that means for you. That’s my loving encouragement. With all that being said, we hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, if you know someone that needs to know this, this is a pretty potent message. Share it out. Send it to them, share it on Instagram, tag us in it, @IAmSophieKessner and @DanMendilow. We would love to see what you guys are feeling, leaning into and thinking. Feel free to reach out to us. If any of this is making you question something or you’re not sure or you’re not certain, we love hearing from you and responding to your messages. Feel free to shoot us a DM. Otherwise, I’m sending you all so much love and have an amazing day. We’ll talk to you soon.
I love you.
Important Links:
- Past Episode – How To Smoothly Evolve Your Biz When It’s Time To Change
- @IAmSophieKessner – Instagram account
- @DanMendilow – Instagram account
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