27 | DIVULGE: Vulnerability and Transparency in Building Trust with Your Community and Passion for your Purpose

Check out this weeks podcast as Heather continues the conversation from episode 21 surrounding taking a break from social media and the five steps. This weeks step, divulge, dives into how vulnerability and transparency creates trust in your business. How showing up authentically and transparency about the hard feelings regarding social media can inspire others. Heather also touches on the principles of know, like, and trust and how that relates to taking time off social media. 

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Episode Highlights:

・Whatever your decision on how long to step away from social media, the next step is to divulge

 ・How vulnerability and transparency create trust which can help build your business 

・Heather shares her story about how she shared her plan to step away from social media

・How showing up authentically and transparency about the hard feelings regarding social media can inspire others

・The principle of know, like, and trust

・Are you sharing in a way that’s going to impact and serve their lives?

・The unique power of vulnerability 

・Heather encourages you not to look at these concepts through the lens of strategy and instead through the focus on introspection

・Homework: Go listen to Brenne Browns Books through Audible!

Episode Resources/References:

・Episode 21

・Brené Brown | Dare to Lead

・Brené Brown | Daring Greatly 

・Podcast Pro University

・Easily Edit Your Podcast

・Get 50% off Stunning Emails

Connect with Heather:

HeatherKBurge.com

[email protected]

You can text (912) 405-892 any of these keywords to learn more:

ARTIST (to learn more about what I do selling the makeup)

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COLORMATCH (to get a free custom color match for the Seint Makeup)

VIP (to get a link to my VIP makeup channel over on Telegram)

Transcript:

27 | DIVULGE: Vulnerability and Transparency in Building Trust with Your Community and Passion for your Purpose

Hi, friends. And welcome back to the Scale Without Social podcast. And, oh my goodness. I just want to give a huge, big welcome to all of the new listeners and followers as the last few weeks, and in particular, the last month this podcast has just exploded. And I'm just so beyond grateful for so many of you who have reached out to me and who've joined the Scale Without Social for female entrepreneurs, community over on Telegram. 

And who've texted the word podcast to my business cell, which is 912-405-8912. It's just really cool to see this community growing. And one of the most common things that I'm hearing right now is people just being inspired to shift the way that they build their business on social media, whether that's in small ways or big ways, it does not have to look like you deleting your accounts permanently right?

And you certainly don't even have to look like the decisions that I have made in my business, but essentially what I'm trying to do in this current series right now is just help guide you through a five-step process that can help you step away from leaning so heavily on social media. 

And so last week we talked about the first D, which is decide, and the decision around what's right for you in terms of building your business. And today we're going to talk about the word divulge, which is a weird word, but again, I love alliteration and I had to come up with something that started with a D. And I'll get into why and what it means specifically in this episode. 

But it's really my mission today to just help you focus in on the importance of vulnerability and transparency. And how they can impact one of the most important factors in building your business which is building trust with your community and so I hope this message is to you today. Let's get into it.

Okay. So today we are going to be taking a bit of a deep dive into step number two of the five step break down that I shared in episode 21. On, if you are looking to take a detox from social media, whether that's permanently, whether that's a certain app, maybe it's just for a month or for a week or for a certain day of the week. 

Whatever your decision, that was last week's episode was talking about the importance of deciding, which if any platforms are right for you in building your business on social media. The next step is going to be divulge. And it's kind of a weird word, I tried to find another one that started with a D. 

But, essentially what it means is just sharing your heart, vulnerably and transparently with your following on why you want to step away from social media. And your purpose for wanting to do things a little bit differently and to step outside the box. And so today we're going to be diving a little bit deeper into the concepts of vulnerability and transparency and how they can build trust within your community. And how that will translate into growth in your business.

So I'm going to start with a little bit of a story of what my initial inspiration, in just the seeds that were planted of, what my strategy was in terms of building my business on social media. So about a year ago, I came across a post from Jennie Allen. She's amazing. She actually has a fantastic podcast you can listen to. 

And I think I've shared this on, on the podcast before, so I won't go too deep into it, but essentially Jennie's post was her divulging her heart for her taking a break away from her entire business for a month. And when she came back to social media, she, again, she divulged and shared her heart transparently with her followers with her community of which I was apart of. 

And essentially what's kind of wild is my inspiration and the action that I decided to take from that inspiration, from her post. In my mind, it was making the same decision as her, but in reality, it was just her words and her heart. And that vulnerability of her sharing, and the courage that it took to really address the fact that she, maybe wasn't getting some things right in her business. And she wanted to be honest about that. And she wanted to be honest that it would be different moving forward. 

And I just remember being so inspired by her message and, you know, being drawn to her even more than I had been before. But ultimately her message was inspiring to make some changes for me and my business. And so I did take a break from social media and I divulged my reason for that month long break, before I took the break. When I came back, I also shared another post on some of the things I had learned. And I essentially shared that I was done being that strategic person. I by nature high achiever. I, like, strategy is my passion. 

I, you know, tend to look at something like my social media platform as a strategy, which can be a good thing if you are literally using it as a business. And again, we've talked about on this podcast, that there are 10% of you that that probably need to not use social media at all. There's another 80% of you that need to use social media for what it was intended for. Which is staying connected with your community and using it for your person, right? Like for your friends and your family and staying connected with them. 

And then there's 10% of you who have the desire and the passion and what it takes to truly build a business based off of social media. So that's again, looking like online influencer-ship or affiliate marketing, or, you know, building a massive following online and treating it like your business. 

And so I've done an entire series on that. You can go back and listen to some of the past episodes specifically with that. But for me, I realized that I was not in that 10%, that, was going to solely focus on building a massive social media following. I wanted to use my social media less from a place of strategy, more from a place of community and connection to the people that I have met along the way. 

And so essentially just to kind of summarize that little story and how it's relevant to today's episode. There were two factors that Jenny's post had on me personally, as a consumer of the things that she has to offer. She's an author. She has a podcast. She is the founder of the, If Gathering. 

And she's just essentially amazing and has a lot of different business models and revenue streams. So for me, number one, my trust in her as a person, because she was so vulnerable, makes me more driven to seek out these products. Right? It made me want to seek out her podcast or recommend her to a friend. To be not only just a fan of hers, but to be a raving fan. 

And because of a post like that vulnerable one that she shared and because of her honesty, I would be more likely to make a purchase from her in the future. So that was the first step from it. And then the second part of it was her vulnerability was so inspiring to me, that it was a huge part in the bigger purpose and passion to serve others through this journey of ultimately a year later now, helping all of you guys who want to do the same in building your business offline.

So the ripple effect of that action that she made and that courage that she took not only impacted her business by connecting with, and serving and building trust with the community that she had built on social media through the honesty. But also think of how many people like me that were inspired to do things differently and to dive into their purpose and their passion in their business. So imagine if she had not shared that experience. Imagine if she had just kept it to herself or imagine if she hadn't been transparent in those, those hard feelings. Right. Or imagine if she hadn't had the courage to admit that she was doing it wrong and didn't have it together, because that was kind of, that's always the perception, right? For someone who's got the type of following and the type of business that she's built. 

So I want you to think about that as you take the steps that are right in your business. And again, we've got those five steps. That all start with a D. For how you can take your business offline. And I want you to focus on the importance of the communication of what you're sharing to your following, as you share with them, how and why you want to do things differently and how you want to show up differently. 

So, I'm gonna share just a couple of principles as we talk more about this. And the first one is built on something that you've probably heard before, but it's worth repeating because essentially the way to build your business is to build trust. So, essentially the goal of social media when we were all trying to use it, to build our businesses, especially at the very beginning. It was for our followers to get to know, like, and trust us. So the principle of know, like, trust. And that essentially just means that you've got to be honest about who you are, right? Like you've, they've got to get to know you as a person, the weird little quirks that make you, you, right? They need to like you be a likable person, a likable positive person. And then of course the trust factor, which again is tied into just, do they believe what you're saying? Are you sharing a way that's going to impact and serve their lives? Or are you sharing something because there's something in it for you, right? There's some sort of transactional element. So when it comes to know, like, and trust, how and where can you build that? 

And for some of you that will be on social media and that's awesome. So you need to focus on what it is that you're sharing and the way that you're showing up and coming from a place of that transparency that is going to build that trust with your following. Because essentially that's, what's going to make them purchase from you and make them want to choose you because they have so many different options. 

That's the one thing about social media right now, or one of the many things is it's just crowded, right? Any time you hop on the platform, there's someone begging for your attention. Whether it's from an ad, from a company, whether it's from, you know, for example, the company that I'm with, Seint makeup, is absolutely exploding on all of the different platforms. So the thing that's going to make someone purchase from me. 

Or from you for your product is building that know, like, and trust factor. And so the messaging that you put out there, especially if you are going to take the step to pull your business offline, is gonna really impact that know, like, and trust factor, when you can just be honest with how you're feeling. And you've heard me say, and be honest with you guys that I don't have it all together, I'm kind of figuring this thing out as I go. I just got off social media six months ago, right? Less than six months ago. 

And so that's one of the purposes of this podcast is to share my journey alongside that. Which hopefully in turn that vulnerability, transparency, and quite frankly, the courage to dive into the fears of putting this out there. Right. That is what hopefully is going to build trust with you to continue listening to my podcast. Right? So the first principle for today is that know, like, and trust factor. 

The second one is something that. Nobody teaches on better than Brené Brown herself. You've probably heard of her. You've probably read some of her amazing books. And I have kind of a funny story about her book. So one of the primary things she teaches about is the power of vulnerability. And kind of eliminating things like shame and really addressing the hard things in your life and facing them head on and really rumbling with the way that you are feeling and the way others might be feeling about your words. 

And her books, they're just fantastic. But the first time as a high achiever that I read her book Daring Greatly, and I learned about the power of vulnerability. I'm going to be totally honest with you, in that I saw that as an opportunity to leverage to build on social media. I can't even believe like I'm mortified in saying this, but here, this is me being vulnerable and transparent with you. 

And especially those of you who are high achievers, to say that when I read her second book on this topic, which is called Dare to Lead, and I got to the chapter on the different myths centered around vulnerability. I was hit dead on in the heart with conviction, when she talked about a gentleman that came up to her after one of her speaking engagements. And said, "oh, okay, I've got it. Now I know in order to build a following, I've got to just be vulnerable and just share the hard things. Right. And, you know, just tell everybody everything." And she was like, okay, first of all, if you are that excited about being vulnerable, you don't get it. Because vulnerability is hard and making decisions like going against the grain and taking your business off of social media. It's not easy. 

I say this to say that whether you are, you know, a high achiever like me and you had that tendency to want to lean into that vulnerability as a strategy of some kind. I highly invite you to read that book Dare to Lead cause it is a fantastic chapter and it dives into all kinds of different myths around what vulnerability is and what vulnerability isn't.

Now essentially Brené describes the definition of vulnerability as uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. And one of the biggest myths is that vulnerability is a weakness. And especially as leaders, if you've got a team, you can tend to want to show up as a strong person. Or, in this environment of this, you know, the uncertainty of our economic situation, right. 

All of these factors, absolutely can make you want to lean into just being strong. And, you know, putting on this big, happy face, right. But business is tough and being a business owner is tough. And so being vulnerable, isn't a weakness. It's actually the most accurate measure of courage according to Brené. And I love that. So hear me when I say that as we talk about this step, this divulge strategy, if you will, in sharing your heart and transparency in your business and how that can build trust, which can build your business essentially.

I don't want you to look at this through the lens of strategy. I want you to look at this through more, the lens of introspection. And what is your purpose? Like, what do you feel like you are called to do? What are you call to exemplify? 

And if you not being on social media is a, is a factor in that. You being bold and sharing that and kind of going against the grain, even if it feels a little scary or feels awkward. Or just unnatural cause, you know, that's exactly what it is for me. It's like, okay, this is not typical. Right? But yet moving forward anyway, and being bold enough, to be honest and transparent about those decisions. 

I'm telling you that freedom when you bring that, that darkness into the light and bringing that fear and facing those fears. It can make all the difference for you because you're going to feel free. And it can make all the difference for your community because they're going to feel more connected to you. 

So the last concept from this vulnerability and transparency that I think is a fabulous example, that Brené also shares in both of her books is the concept of the marble jar. So, what that is, is like, imagine you've got this jar of marbles, and basically what it is, is like every time you build trust with your customers, your putting marbles in the jar. Every time you break that trust, maybe you don't get back to them quickly, or you drop the ball on something or you know, maybe say posts that they don't connect with. Or maybe they don't fully agree with the transparency that you put out there. That can be taking marbles away.

And so when you show up, whether it's consistently on social media or in this particular post that you're telling your platform that you're stepping away from social media. When you focus on the marbles that make you, you. So that's your values, that's your purpose, that's your beliefs. 

And be honest and transparent about how that's factoring into the decisions that you are going to make for your business. I promise you, those words are gonna flow. Just take a deep breath. You will be given the information that you need and the inspiration to share what's on your heart in a way that's going to set you up for the next step. Which is going to be to direct. We'll do the next episode on that. So stay tuned for that, but it's going to be to direct the following that you've built on social media to an alternative place to contact you.

Especially again, that could be stepping away from the platform for a week a month, a year, a season, or it might be forever. So, I hope this is helpful for all of you guys. And I want y'all to kind of take these concepts, the simple aspects of the know, like, and trust factor. The vulnerability, what it is and what it isn't. Maybe go, listen. That's your homework, is to go listen to some stuff by Brené Brown. I love the Audible app to listen to books. And like in preparation, even for this episode, I went back and listened to that chapter in Dare to Lead on my Audible account. It was awesome. 

I'll make sure to link in the show notes to the Dare, to Lead book in Audible for you to go and listen to you. And then finally, what are your marbles that you can convey to your customers? And how can you build that trust with them through the honesty and transparency of those beliefs, values, and purpose. Essentially, how can you divulge more of who you are? So, whether you're leveraging social media or not, or trying to craft that perfect exit post. 

Be honest, be transparent, and most of all, be vulnerable. And you will build relationships based on trust, which is always going to lead to increased business. So thank you guys so much again for listening today I hope this is helpful y'all have a great week!