How To Get Vulnerable on Social Media Without Sharing Your Dirty Laundry – Episode 13

One of the most effective ways to attract your tribe, is to get vulnerable on social media! But there is a right way, and a wrong way to do this! In today’s episode of The Boss Life Podcast, Miguel and Erin Carrasco give the inside scoop!

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Three Key Boss Points From Today’s Podcast

• Don’t share your vulnerability until you are through the mess!
• Share what you learned from the experience.
• Never share other people’s dirty laundry because they were involved in your story

How To Get Vulnerable on Social Media Without Sharing Your Dirty Laundry

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to get vulnerable on social media without sharing your dirty laundry.

Dirty laundry?

Ew.

That’s gross.

And nobody wants to see it.

And I do most of it in this house.

No, no, we’re not going to go that far.

I’m totally kidding. I don’t, but let’s talk about getting vulnerable on social media, and how we can do this effectively. Because this is really one of the most powerful things that you can do to really amplify your message and connect with your true audience. I don’t know if you ever notice, but most of the posts that tend to go viral on social media, or tend to do very, very well are with people get vulnerable. But there is a right way to do it, that’s going to attract the right people to you. And there’s a wrong way to do it, and I think if you listen to this episode, I think you’re going to learn how to master this skill. So let’s get into the first one.

And I think that maybe we should just start with why would you want to get vulnerable on social media? Because I think that that prefaces everything that we’re going to talk about today. And I think that what Miguel kind of touched upon is that if you’re building a business on social media, part of sharing who you are, is sharing things that have changed your life.

Oh, things that have changed your life.

And usually those things are hard things, usually those things are parts of you that you’re kind of scared to share. That’s why Miguel was talking about being vulnerable in social media, and how those stories on social media usually do so well, for people, is because they enable your audience to connect with you, and connect with the pain points in your life, and maybe the pain points in their lives.

Yeah, like so sometimes we’ll do exercises with our clients and we’ll say, “Let’s stop the fluff,” right? Because if you’re Instagram, or your Facebook isn’t blowing up, it’s because you’re not being vulnerable enough. You’re not sharing great stories, right? And so you’re probably just sharing the surface stuff. You’re sharing, here’s what I had for lunch, here’s what I had for dinner, here’s my workout, here’s how I grow my business, here’s my podcast, go check that out, go listen to it.

Yeah, like the highlight reel, right? And I think that when you see someone sharing those kind of stuff, you’re like, yeah, yeah go you, right? And if you’ve ever seen someone share just that stuff, you are probably thinking, “Wow, their life is just so perfect, they don’t struggle like me.” And it just makes that person unrelatable. And we want you to be relatable, when you are building your business on social media.

So let’s talk about one of the big points about sharing an experience. You got to make sure that you’re on the other side of that experience. And what do we mean by that? If you’re currently going through a tough time, we’re not saying not to share that. That’s not what we’re saying, but what we are saying is, that the powerful impactful post, when you get super vulnerable, like when you’re about to share something that really impacted your life, you have to make sure that you’ve already come out with a lesson. Like something you can teach people. And again, I want to be clear, we’re approaching all of this as building a business using social media, right? So I’m not giving you advice on your personal Facebook that you share with your family. By all means, share whatever you want on there.

Well this could apply to that too.

But yeah-

We were just talking about that.

But if you’re trying to build a business, I always say, we always say, and we’re going to do an episode on this, the second you leave your house, like personalize, right? Like if you’re building a business, you’re in business mode. You can’t leave the house wearing pajama pants and whatever, if you’re building a boss life business. That’s just not-

You can’t?

You can’t. That’s not … I mean the second you leave the door, you’re in business mode. And the second your online, same thing, you’re in business mode. If you’re building a business, you have to look into that. So let’s take the first rule here. So if you’re going through a tough situation, Erin, why don’t you set up a tough situation, because that way we can play into the next portion where we tell them a story.

Sure.

We’ll explain how to share that. So what’s a tough situation that they’re dealing with right now?

Well, let’s look at this. So maybe you start on a fitness journey, and you are doing really well, right? So you’re excited about it, and maybe it’s not your business, but maybe it’s just something you’re really excited about. And maybe it is your business, that’s cool. But if you are starting a fitness journey and you start sharing it because you’re excited. You’re sharing your post workout selfies, you’re sharing your food, you’re sharing your personal best with your run. And all the sudden you get, remember when we did that little haters episode a while back? You get someone commenting that maybe you shouldn’t lose any more weight because you’re too thin. Or maybe you shouldn’t build any more muscle because you look like a man if you’re a woman. And that can be really, really hurtful for a lot of people when they are building their business.

What if your neighbor Joe Smith comes out, and literally every day you’re going for a run, he starts yelling at you, and putting you down?

Right, and so what if that was your life, right? And so you’re frustrated, and we totally get that, and you’re like, I’m going to show Joe Smith, or I’m going to show Uncle Sam that he can’t talk to me like that. And so you make this post on social media, you’re like, my neighbor Joe Smith he was coming out at me today, and he was yelling at me as I’m getting ready to lace up for my run saying that he’s really annoyed with the stretching that I’m doing out front in the lawn, and he’s embarrassed for me. And who talks to someone like that? So you’re ranting and raving on social media.

And then you got a picture of him.

Yeah, right.

And showing his house number.

Yeah. I mean obviously we’re giving an extreme example, but I have seen some of your extreme examples on social media, you do it.

You do it.

You do it. And I’m not saying that you’re not going to feel justified.

Well first let’s go back to the first plan, like really, so what Erin just set up there is perfect, right? So right now, first of all, right now, lesson one is, you shouldn’t be sharing anything yet.

Because you’re frustrated.

You’re frustrated, you’re going through it, you still got the 40 pounds to lose. Point on is that’s not a time to share that yet, right? It’s not a time to share the most vulnerable parts of your life when you’re still going through it, because there’s no lesson yet.

You’re just frustrated and you’re venting, right? And I think that that’s where this comes from for a lot of people. You’re frustrated at the situation, and you decide to use Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram as your venting playground. And so when you’re trying to build a business on social media, and you start to infuse your personal frustrations as vents and not as lessons in your business and in your life, you’re going to attract a completely different tribe to your audience. And I think that that is one thing that people don’t actually realize they’re doing. Most people are like, I’m frustrated, I’m going to share that I’m frustrated, and people are going to show me support. And I think a lot of the times why we do these posts on social media is because we’re feeling endangered from these attacks and we want to feel support. And it’s just the wrong place to get support.

Yeah, because ultimately, what that’s going to do is it’s going to attract more negativity, and negativity attracts more negativity. And I’m a full believer, and so is Erin that positivity attracts more positivity, right? You can’t control what other people do, you can only control what you do, right? And so ultimately, like if you shared the story that way, and too early, prematurely, there’s no lesson to tell. But now, let’s take a different scenario here, let’s say that now you’ve gone through it.

And you’ve listened to our podcast episode about how to deal with haters.

Yeah, and now you’re at the other end, and you’ve lost the 40-50 pounds, and you enter a marathon and you end up finishing the marathon. And while this whole thing is going on you’re still getting all the haters, you’re still getting people saying you can’t do it. You’re still getting your neighbor every single day laughing at you, maybe he’s even texting your spouse saying, “Hey, you should tell them to stop running, like he’s going to hurt himself, he looks like a beached whale running down the street.” Just the meanest things ever. I know you guys are laughing, but this happens, right? If you share all that, and now you finish it, and now you’re done, and you’ve read personal development throughout this process, now you’re ready to go. Now you’re ready to go. So should I give them an example of maybe how they should share?

Yeah, I think it’d be helpful for a lot of people. Maybe they’ve gone through situations, they’re not really sure how to share it.

So I’ll be really quick here. But so, as an example, now that you’ve gone through it, and you’ve succeeded, and you’ve got lessons to tell, here’s how you should share it without airing your dirty laundry, right? I would start something really simple, I’d say, “Yes, I can’t believe I did it. Today was the big day, and it was bigger than you may have known. Let me just share with you my quick story.” And then you start sharing right? And you start sharing, you say like, “Six months ago I embarked on this journey.” And you go into detail and tell them about how you were trying to workout, and everyone was against you, and it wasn’t working out. And the people that you thought would support you the most, just weren’t. And at some point even, people really close to me started coming to me and saying, “I should stop, I’m going to hurt myself, I should focus more on my family and my business. My business is going to fail because you’re putting too much time into this running thing, and losing the weight. And you should be more focused on these things.”

“And people keep saying all these things to me, and you know what I did? I chose to ignore it. I chose to realize that this was my thing to make happen, and I pushed through and I persevered, I did personal development, I listened to podcasts, I started reading running books, I started learning why this was so key to me. I started realizing through this process that by working out more, I actually had more time in the day. I had more time to spend with my kids, my family, I just felt so much better. And today was the big day, and for me, as I was doing this run, it was quite interesting, I started thinking of all the things that happened throughout this process and how many times I could have quit.”

“And my ultimate message to you is to say this, is to say if you have a dream, and you got a purpose, and you got a vision, and a mission for something, don’t expect other people to cheer you on. It’s nice if they do, but they don’t need to. It’s your dream, it’s not their dream. And what they think of you, and what they think of other things, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you complete this journey. I want you to understand that if you’re someone out there reading this message that was maybe against what I did, and you know who you are, I want you to know, that I wanted to say thank you. And thank you for encouraging me. And maybe you didn’t realize it, but you were encouraging me, and I hope that you go after your dreams as well,” right?

So that’s, what do you think of that? That’s a really good way I think, to share and getting vulnerable. Maybe you can point out the differences between the two.

Yeah, and I think that’s really important that one thing that Miguel did at the very end, and I hope you go back and you pause this, or you rewind it, and you re listen to the way he setup his story, right? And we’re going to do a whole podcast about story telling, because it’s a really, really amazing way to help your business explode, right? Instead of just selling, you’re going to be sharing stories. And if you look at one of the most important things that he finished with, in his story, was gratitude at the end. Gratitude for the people who were calling him out, right? Because that is going to do more good in your life than kind of exposing the hater, and saying, “You block this from me,” and “You took this from me,” and “You’re hurtful words, they didn’t do anything to me.” And I think that is one of the biggest things that we can do when we’re trying to work through some of the hard changes in our life. And being vulnerable about it, is having gratitude at the end.

And one of the biggest things that I can say about all of this is that, if you notice when Miguel said that he went through it all, right? And he was on the other side, he had a learning experience, he had something to share about the negative experience, and what he did because he was on the other side, he had something valuable to give people, right? And we’re giving people valuable lessons. And when we do that, it’s because we’re sharing from a place from a scar, and not a wound. Now if he had-

That’s really good. I like that, share from a place of scars not wounds.

If he had done this post while he was going through it, he would have been in a place of a wound where it’s still really fresh, and it’s fairly painful. And when you do that, you’re opening yourself up to have any kind of negative feedback from people. You’re having that basically put right into your body. At least with a scar, the wound is closed, and all that negative stuff can bounce right off. But as a wound, if it’s open, and you get that negative feedback, and someone gives that to you, it kind of has an easier way to get into your psyche, right? And into your head, and into your heart. And so it’s really important for us to learn to share from that place of scars and not wounds.

I love that. That’s so huge. Let me summarize really quickly what we’ve talked about today. And then we will go into the challenge. I think the biggest thing I can tell you is, and maybe we didn’t say it strongly enough in the beginning is, it is so important for you if you’re building a business to get vulnerable with your story. Because I really believe that many businesses, especially entrepreneurs that are excited about building their own business, it’s because they have a story inside of them to share. They have a calling, somehow all of you have a calling, something you want to create with this world, and chances are that happened because something bad happened to you.

Right.

You went through an experience, that hurt you, that maybe made you feel like you were knocked down and you couldn’t get back up, but you got back up, right? And that is the story you share. The more vulnerable that you can get, without hurting other people, the more your business will explode exponentially.

Yeah, and I think that one key thing that you just said there is that you didn’t make that learning experience necessarily about that other person hating on you. You made it about yourself.

Yeah, and that will really, when you look at, I mean, let’s be honest. We’ve all seen those posts that are really negative, right? About maybe horrible things that happened, but they’re just so negative.

Right.

That you’re like, I-

You just got to back away, right?

Yeah, you back off.

It’s like … and I know a lot of you are making those posts because you want the support, or you’re craving that attention because you’re feeling really low in your life.

But who do they want support from?

They’re wanting the support from people who are going to support on the negative stuff, right? And I think one of the things that you have to be really aware of and be honest with yourself with, is that, if you’re sharing that stuff on social media because you’re having a hard time, I highly encourage you to go get a therapist.

Yeah, and really, like being negative will just attract more negativity. You’re going to get the negative people that really aren’t going to want to lift you higher, they’re going to want to pull you down lower, right? That’s just how it works. And so you want the positive stuff, that’s what you want. You want the positive surroundings. And so once you have all that, sharing that story effectively is key. And then ultimately, I love what Erin said, sharing from a place of scars and not wounds. I think that that’s so key. Because if you’re sharing from wounds, like Erin said, you’re just going to lash out, right? It’s still fresh, and lashing out never helps, right? It always makes things worse.

Yeah, you’re still angry, right?

Right, when has lashing out ever helped your situation?

Right.

I don’t think ever.

No, and I think that’s one of the things that you have to be aware of your own situation, right? I think that even if you have done this in the past, we want to be really clear, if you’ve done this in the past, like accept it, learn from it. Remember if you’ve listened to our podcast about learning from our failures. You just have to relabel it as a learning experience, and how can I move forward and get better?

I mean even I’ve lashed out, and it’s never worked out so well.

Really, you have?

I never do, I’m always perfect.

You’re perfect?

Yeah. I never lash out at anybody.

Never, no.

Everything’s great, sunshine and rainbows.

Totally.

But yeah, so let’s move onto the challenge. Why don’t you give them the challenge, Erin?

All right. So I think most of you have had a learning experience that’s changed you as a person. And some of them have been pretty traumatic, and so obviously if you need help working through that, definitely reach out to the right people who are experts at doing that. And the people who are experts at doing that, they’re not your buddies on Facebook, right? So, make sure that you’re reaching out to the right people. But what I want you to do, is that when you spend the time working on yourself and working through that change, and that hard time. So you realize what the lesson was for you, what I want you to do is, to spend the time developing it into your story. Because that’s going to be part of your story. A lot of you are like, yeah I don’t want to share that on social media, nobody wants to know that I drink too much, or I drank too much, or I ate too much, or I did this in my life. Nobody wants to know that, except everybody does. Everybody wants to know where you struggle, because that’s where they’re going to relate to you.

So what I want you to do is, spend the time to develop that part of your story, and weave it into your social media presence. Notice I didn’t say, “Just like open up the wound and dump on people in social media.” I want you to weave it into part of your story, right? Because once we start weaving in those important vulnerable parts of ourselves, into our social media presence, we’re going to find those people out there, who are so connected with us.

That’s huge. I think that’s great. So hopefully we’ve put a nice little bow on that, and you got a great challenge to go move forward and crush it. So with that we wanted to just remind you, because I will say one more thing, right? The employee mindset thing again, like this is really the employee mindset is to share the dirty laundry, right? That really is. The water cooler gossip, that’s the dirty laundry.

Totally, yep.

That’s the employee mindset. Bosses get vulnerable, and lift others higher.

Totally.

There’s an interesting quote that says that, “There are two ways to have the tallest building in the city, the first way is to build the tallest building. The second way is to burn down everyone else’s building, and now you have the tallest building, but you got nobody to live with.”

So which way is better?