In this episode, I share how to embrace your so-called personality flaws to create a business and life which feel aligned with your true desires.
F**k what the experts say you should be doing...
What do you want to do? And how can you spend more time in your unique lane of genius?
**All my fellow mamas out there: I am a potty-mouth, so you may want to listen with headphones on!**
If you found this episode helpful it would mean the world to me if you could share it with a friend or screenshot this episode on your phone, upload it to Instagram stories and tag me (@designingvibes). This podcast is not monetized, so spreading the word is the best way to "pay me back" for my time and wisdom- so to speak.
Welcome to the introverted influencer podcast. I'm your host Erica van. Like my soul's mission on this planet is to help fellow introverts grow their online influence and estate, a feminine flow and ease while battling the lows of depression, anxiety, and even mom guilt. I've somehow managed to build a six figure blog without the use of social media and without sacrificing my mental health, if I can do it, you can too. Hey, y'all welcome back to episode of the introverted influencer podcast. So my kids are home from school today with me, and I'm having a bit of a hard time focusing, but nonetheless, I still wanted to drop in briefly and share a message with you. I was trying to figure out what topic to, into this week and this morning, I just felt particularly inspired to share with you some of the ways in which I have basically embraced my so-called personality flaws to create a business and a life that support my unique preferences instead of making myself wrong in regards to the ways I like to work or the manner in which I like to show up in my business. My intuition has guided me to embrace these so-called shortcomings as parameters for my business. And that's, it's been through a lot of self-actualization meditation spirituality that has just allowed me to be comfortable going about life in this way. And don't get me wrong in the beginning. I felt crazy for going about my blog and my career, such an ortho unorthodox way, being the introvert that I am so many people didn't and probably still don't understand why I put more focus on my actual blog than my interior design business, no one and got the whole blog thing. So in many ways I felt like people were patronizing me, especially when I first started off and, and I wasn't making much money. People would try to give me like interviews for jobs or give me leads for design work, but I basically just ignored them and politely declined. I know it was probably in a loving way and I just tried to shrug it off because I was dead set on how I wanted my life and my business to fill freedom, artistic expression and passive income were like my three main pillars. I had worked for someone for years and I never felt valued and I couldn't stand the nine to five hustle. It made me feel like an animal in a cage. And so I knew this time, what I wanted out of life and I was going for it, truth of the matter blogging and having the artistic freedom of selecting topics and design style. I feel more passionate about, feel much better to my soul than having to network with strangers and waste my time on free design consultations with potential clients only for nothing to come of it. And same with social media. All of the so-called experts say that you have to show up on social media every single day, pumping out all this content that you don't even, you can't even necessarily freaking monetize. If you wanna be a successful blogger or influencer, that social media never felt authentic to me. And so I just decided I was going to pour my energy into actual content creation for my monetized website. And I would spend my time on platforms that I actually enjoyed. So I would Mo my work on Pinterest because I naturally love Pinterest. If I didn't have a blog, I would still pin on Pinterest. And then given that I had the background in search engine and optimization, Google was another way for me to promote my blog. That was natural. And guess what? Even though I really neglected social media, traditional social media, I've still made it as a blogger because I chose to dedicate myself to the things that felt sustainable and natural to me. If I wanted to cram myself into a little box, can constructed by someone else's standards and shoulds, I would just go work a safe stable nine to five for someone else. And there's nothing wrong with that at all. If that's your thing, I don't believe we all are all constructed to be entrepreneurs, but at the end of the day, I have a rebel personality type. And I know that I do not do well working for other people, period. And that's why blogging and being a digital creator, even though most people won't freaking ever get it because it's such a new industry that has what I have found through experience lights me up the most because I don't like dealing with people. I'm an introvert. And this is to say that everything is rainbow and butterflies and that everything feels good to me because it doesn't. I still have to demonstrate self discipline every day. As I said, even over this podcast, I'm not comfortable with it. Public speaking is like my number one fear. And I still haven't gotten used to recording these podcasts. So every time I sit down and I'm about to record, I wanna chicken out and give myself an excuse, not to do it. And even as for my blog, even though I am a natural writer, I always dread having to sit down and, and write out that first sentence. It's like the most painful thing. It's like writer's block kicks in as soon as I have to sit down and, and write out that first paragraph. But afterwards I, I, a high it's sort of like going to the gym, you dread the workout, but then after you complete it, you feel all those good endorphins and you leave with a sense of accomplishment. And it's the same thing with my blog and my podcast. So my question to you, where are some of the ways you are making your inherent preferences and personality wrong? If you're into like the Wu thing, law of attraction, or even if you've studied quantum physics, you'll know that the basic energy of making yourself wrong will reflect back to you and your results and manifest in your business with lackluster revenue or lackluster growth. So you've gotta be really careful because it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy making yourself wrong. Can you delegate some of the activities you dread or can you reorganize your business by doing more of the things that you're aligned with and focusing more on your strengths and maybe you phase the other out, just remember this is your business and you alone. Get to decide what it looks like and how it feels. the supposed tos and the vanity ma metrics. At the end of the day, are you making a sustainable income? And do you love what you do? That's all that matters. Everything else is noise, and don't get me wrong. This podcast, this episode is not me giving you permission to stay in some sort of comfort zone. It's about being self aware of your strengths and weaknesses and playing more to your strengths versus beating yourself up over your weaknesses. So my kids are probably gonna come down, banging the door, um, for some more snacks. So I better just go ahead and wrap this one up today, but I hope you found this episode helpful. I make no money from this podcast. So the best way to pay me back is to leave this episode of five star review on whatever, uh, podcast platform you use and share this with a friend or on social media by screenshotting the episode on your phone and uploading it to your Instagram story and tagging me at designing vibes, sending you my love.