Being brave in business often means you have to show up for your people, online and in person... but how can you do it so it feels good?

In this episode I talk about how to share yourself online whilst feeling safe and I spill some personal secrets of my own.

Sit back, relax and get your dose of courage from this week's episode of Brave In Business!

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9. Being Brave and Spilling My Secrets - Transcsript

Hi, I'm back McFarland from popular business and popular career. In this podcast, I'll be speaking to entrepreneurs who have overcome adversity, made difficult decisions, challenged the status quo and achieved amazing things in their businesses. Welcome to brave in business. Hello, Hello. It is Beck McFarland here helping you do better and be better in your careers and businesses. And welcome to today's episode of Brave in Business. Today I'm talking to you about sharing my secrets, sharing things that I had not really intended to become public knowledge. But I decided to share because they're part of my story and I am now ready before I dive in, though I want to let you know my thoughts on this topic as it is very personal. One of the things I talk about a lot with my clients is personal branding and the importance of developing your personal brand. I have learned over the years that people buy from people, and I honestly just think you are making it so much harder for yourself. If you aren't putting in some effort into developing a relationship with your potential customers and connecting with them on some kind of human level I can almost guarantee, though, that every time I speak with a new client about this, they will say the same thing. Oh, but I don't want to share my life on social media. And every time I say the same thing in response, which is you don't have to connecting with your audience isn't about spilling your secrets. It also isn't about sharing photos of your kids unless you want to. Telling people private information about yourself or your family, taking pictures of your dinner, tagging yourself when you're out and about, or opening yourself up to being stalked. Some people do choose to engage in these behaviours, and there's nothing wrong with that. But you don't need to do any of these things in order to build a relationship with your audience. Over the years that I've been in business, I've shared lots of information about myself, and today I want to share with you some of the things that I've shared with my audience so that you can get a little bit of an idea about what I mean. I love the colour pink. I have a dog and a lizard. My dog's name is Jasper and my lizard is schedules. I am married to a man who was born in India. I love Mexican food. I am absolutely addictive to television. Coconut is one of my favourite things in the whole wide world, and it often features on my gratitude list coconut ice cream, coconut, chocolate, everything coconut. I am highly introverted. I even describe myself as being borderline hermit. I buy a lot of books, but I don't necessarily read them. When I was growing up, I wanted to be Indiana Jones in Myers Briggs. I'm an I N F J. I live in Canberra. I don't like cooking. I do, though, like being at home in my study. I wear sneakers pretty much everywhere. I'm a big nerd and I love everything about business. Just talk to me about automation and I get weak at the knees. Caffeine doesn't agree with me, and neither does gluten or dairy. I don't like mornings, but I do love laughing, and I laugh at myself regularly. I'm pretty used to being the only one who loves at my jokes, and I'm okay with it. It's totally fine. So you get the picture. I have had clients contact me for pretty much every single one of those reasons that I've shared with you. They've connected with me because of the fact that they also love dogs. Or maybe they're in i N f J. Maybe they just love laughing and they get my sense of humour. I even had one client present me with a beautiful pen from Egypt because he had read about my passion for ancient Egyptian history. In one of my bios, right people buy from people or rather, people buy from people they connect with. In all of this, I've never had to share anything personal or anything that has felt like it was compromising my boundaries. And neither do you. In saying this in 2021 I chose to speak more publicly about two topics that I have been keeping very close to my chest. The first is my history with domestic violence. Now I'm just going to drop a trigger warning here. I am going to speak very broadly about my relationship, but I don't plan to go into too much detail. If you think this could trigger a response in you, please jump out of this episode now and listen to something else. In my late teens and my early twenties, I was in a domestic violence relationship. It lasted about three years. During this time, I faced abuse in many different ways and was isolated from my family and my friends. I had never thought of myself as the type of woman who would fall prey to an abuser. But after a long history of bullying in school, I had low self worth and I was vulnerable. I stayed out of fear. To be honest, I feared that I would be killed. I stayed out of fear until finally, the fear of staying outweighed the fear of leaving. I had never planned to share this part of my story publicly. I've shared a little bit very briefly and in small groups, but I didn't really see the point in sharing it more broadly. After all, what does it have to do with career or business coaching? Earlier in my business journey, though, I also just wasn't ready to share in 2021. I made the decision to be a little more open about this part of my history. I still have no plans to give details about what happened. I don't think that is necessary at all. But I do think that being open about the fact that I have experienced adversity in my personal life adds to my story, and it gives perspective about who I am and why I am the way I am. I also think it gives me perspective in the way that I coach and support others and the way that I helped them to build their confidence and self worth, particularly when they've been squashed down in the past. I am definitely not a counsellor or psychologist, and I regularly refer my clients to seek appropriate help when they need to move outside of what I can offer. But I do think this part of my story contributes to my business values and how I can be of service before we continue. If you need to talk to someone after listening to this episode, support is available. Please call Lifeline on 131114 or the National Sexual Assault Domestic Family violence Counselling service on 1 800 respect. I just wanted to take a quick break to tell you about my amazing business community bex business besties. It's a business membership with Mastermind vibes, and it is a jam packed with value. They don't say value is my middle name for no reason. Join us for live master classes, group coaching sessions, online Coworking content creation sessions and so much more. It's without a doubt my favourite place to hang out on the Internet, and I know it could be yours to join us at popular business dot com forward slash BBB. The second big secret I decided to share in 2021 is that I was diagnosed with a D h D at the age of 20. I have since acquired a few other letters, but it is the a D H D that I feel is most relevant to my business. I don't think it ever occurred to me to be secretive about my a d h D, but it also never really occurred to me to talk about it. One thing I've noticed, though, since being in business is that I do things a bit differently to others. I am definitely not an advocate of hustle culture at all, but personally, I don't stop. I actually just don't have an off switch. Unfortunately, this leads me on a pattern of racing around like a bullet a gate until my body physically cannot take it anymore. Crashing, burning, recovering and, well, rinse and repeat. I'm very honest with my clients when I say Do as I say, not as I do, what I do is not sustainable. It is not a good idea. I would love to have a different pattern, and I am working very hard on developing one with my therapist. But I don't find rest appealing, and I am much happier when I'm working. This is really why I decided to talk about my diagnosis. I have received quite a lot of attention for being the type of person who gets stuff done. It generates a bit of commentary in my circle, people saying they wish they could do as much as me or they wish their brain operated like mine, or they wish they could just get into my head for a day to see what it's like. I can tell you what it's like. It's like Grand Central Station. There are a million things happening. So much noise, so many different ideas swirling around. There's music playing horns and buzzers going off and it is very difficult to drown it all out and focus on one thing. Now I joke about this, but it is something that I have definitely had to learn to live with. This is why I move so fast. It's why I get so much done. That's why I have so many ideas. It is one of the reasons that I am so valuable to my clients. But it's also why it took me a year to launch this podcast. Why I have difficulty following through on my ideas. Why I often fig get to respond to emails and texts. Why I can forget to eat and look after myself. Why my house, office, car and handbag are a raging mess and why I experience regular burn out and are not consistent with well, anything. It began to feel a little irresponsible not to talk about it. So I agreed to go on the nurturing neuro diversity podcast and talk about my experience, and since then it has been out in the open. As I've shared in this podcast, you definitely don't have to spill your secrets to develop a bold personal brand or to be brave in business, but sometimes like me, you may find that you want to go a little deeper with your audience, and that is okay. To my best advice to you would be to do so with intention. Get clear about what you want to share and don't take these decisions lightly. After all, once something is out on the Internet, it can never be taken back. That is all from me this week. Let me know if you connected with anything I have shared today, and I will see you next week for the next episode. Until then, have a magical day and remember to be brave in business. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the brain in business podcast. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Leave me a rating. Five stars, preferably and a review. You can also join me over on socials at Popular beers. If you want to hang out with me and my fabulous community of small business owners, you should definitely think about joining bex business Besties. It's an online membership with mastermind vibes and is honestly my favourite place to hang out on the Internet. You can find out more at pop your business dot com forward slash BBB. I'll see you in the next episode