Finding Your Voice

I started my business in January 2019. My business has reached the ripe old age of four months. Boy have I learned a lot in those 16 weeks. I naively thought when I first started out that it would be enough to know how to deliver my service. I write for a living, I only need to know how to write, right? People will pay me to write for them. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Wrong.

You need to know everything. Or at least that's how it feels sometimes. You're the marketing expert, in charge of accounts, customer care and complaints (not had any of those yet). You need to network, do all the social media, bookkeeping and most importantly you have to do the client work. A huge learning curve but nothing a bit of planning and outsourcing can't handle.

The biggest learning point for me so far has been the mindset stuff. A friend of mine who encouraged me to go self employed in the first place told me the biggest thing I would need to take care of when I started my own business was my mental health. I honestly didn't know what she was on about. I had visions of sitting in cafes, sipping cappuccinos whilst tapping away on my laptop. I was going to be choosing my clients, picking my projects and setting my own hours. Then I actually went self employed and came crashing down to earth with a bump.

Every day is a roller-coaster. There are huge highs and deafening lows. Its been the biggest journey of self discovery I've ever been on. I've learned more about myself, my beliefs and my boundaries in the last 16 weeks than I have in the last forty years.

For me the absolute hardest thing to deal with has been the negativity I've encountered with an increasing online presence. When you're a big fish in a little pond you rarely encounter any negativity. Until I started my own business the only people I ever interacted with where my close circle of friends. People I knew in real life. When I started my business I needed to start growing my network and increasing my connections. It stands to reason that the more visible you become the more attention you attract and not everyone is going to love you. That, I found difficult.

I love praise. We all do. Negativity not so much. I'm not stupid enough to think I'm going to be everyone's cup of tea but the level of aggression I have experienced online took me by surprise. What shocked me more was how I reacted.

As the product of an abusive childhood, for years I had no-one to confide in, I had no voice. When I joined Facebook in 2008 suddenly I could speak. I had an outlet. I loved it. When I started my business my voice got louder and stronger and my confidence grew. Then I started being shot down. Getting into online arguments with, in most cases, men, who I felt were trying to put me in my place and shut me down. Men who would never agree with my point of view. Mansplaining at me. Demanding that I justify my opinions and perspectives in order for them to grant me permission to hold those opinions and beliefs. I was massively triggered and feeding into the negativity. I felt like they were trying to take my voice away from me. The voice that I had fought so hard for.

Not all men are behave in this way, I know that. Some of my biggest supporters have been men I've made connections with and they've been kind and willing to share their expertise and experience with me.

What I realised, was that although I wanted to challenge these negative, sexist behaviours and attitudes what I was actually doing was pouring more fuel on the fire. Worse still, at the same time I was pouring water on my own fire. I don't need to use my energy to fight these misplaced battles. It doesn't serve me. I need to keep my energy and my voice for the people who want to listen to what I have to say. Those are the people that deserve my attention.

Learning not be to baited by strangers on the internet is a daily practice and one I'm still working on. Its hard not to take it personally and it can be hard not to respond. But ultimately I'm here to do business and serve my clients. I can hold myself to account for my behaviour even when others cannot.