015 How Not to Give a F**k and Start Living for Yourself + Wall of Hate Comments at 3am on a Sunday Morning
In this episode, we dive into the art of building a personal brand that reflects your values while ignoring the naysayers and managing online hate.
Quirky Quiz Time 🥳
What is the primary reason for deleting toxic comments from your social media platforms?
A) To increase engagement metrics.
B) To create a safer space for your community.
C) To avoid reading negative feedback.
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B) To create a safer space for your community.
Building a personal brand is not just about self-promotion; it’s about aligning your values with your audience's needs while establishing boundaries that protect your peace. This episode underscores the importance of creating a brand that reflects your authenticity, allowing you to connect with your clients and community genuinely.
Navigating the digital world comes with its challenges, especially when dealing with online hate. Through a candid story of confronting negative comments, we learn that removing harmful content is not just about self-preservation but fostering a welcoming and safe space for your audience. Setting boundaries and maintaining control of your platforms ensures your brand's integrity and helps your community thrive.
At the heart of it all is a reminder: your personal brand is more than a logo or tagline—it’s a reflection of your purpose, values, and mission to serve others. If you’re ready to grow your brand or pivot your business, reach out to Zoë Wood of the Video Confidence Coach for tailored guidance and support. Together, let’s create something remarkable.
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00:00 – Introduction and acknowledgment of recent challenges; updates on the Video Confidence Coach website and community plans.
09:22 – Discussion about the Australian social media ban for under-16s and its implications for marketers and online spaces.
19:40 – Reflecting on government regulation of social platforms and how marketers can adapt.
23:59 – Storytime: How to stop seeking external validation and start building a business for yourself.
33:53 – The foundations of personal branding: serving your audience and protecting your authenticity.
43:52 – Dealing with online hate: A real-life experience and practical strategies for managing negativity.
55:50 – Why deleting harmful comments isn’t just about self-protection but also safeguarding your community.
1:05:49 – Encouragement to persevere despite trolls and focusing on the positive impact of your brand.
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Zo, good day everyone, and welcome to the video, confidence, connect with your host. Zoe wood, the video, confidence coach, alright, let's get you a little bit higher up so you can see my full hair. It is very big today. Zo,
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and make sure that you don't need to see my my whiteboard in the corner. There we go. Gotta make sure that you're already centered. Yes. Thank you everyone. So much for your patience. Over the past couple of weeks, it has been a roller coaster ride of sickness, and I thank everyone for your patience with me over this period of time. So I think we've got everything ready to go. I'm awesome, beautiful. So let's get started. Welcome to this weekly video, confidence, connect with me. Your host, Zo Wood the video, confidence coach, building a building the personal brands of women and non binary people using the power of video of using the power of video marketing strategies. I might need to work on that a little bit with the power of marketing coaching and mentoring, speaking and marketing direction. You can check out all the details at Vcc dot training. You can also watch this live stream or watch the replay hashtag replay squad on LinkedIn or YouTube. We're looking to explore other avenues as we get there, so make sure that you comment any of your questions or your thoughts or any ideas that you're having for topics that you want us to talk about on the video confidence, connect. This is a chance to get your questions answered. Anything about personal branding, about video marketing, I am here for you, and you can find out more information about podcasting, live streams or events again at my website, VCC, dot training before we continue with the presentation today, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the watarung people of the Kulin nation, the traditional custodians of the land in which I conduct my business. I pay my respects to the elders past and present, and I stand with the traditional custodians of these lands in working towards a more equal future. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to face discrimination due to our country's colonial past. I stand with them in their fight against injustice. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. And in regards to what we've accomplished this week, before we get into the community, questions and recording of the unborn your brand podcast, hint, hint that I'll explain that in a sec. We have essentially just been sick over the past two weeks. I apologize that last week we did a best of mainly just because I did not have a voice, and I was also coughing all over the place, so I probably wouldn't have been that great. And the week before that, I was completely flat out sick. And now you might be able to hear a little bit of sickness in my voice, and I think it's probably coming out a little bit in how I look, but honestly, I'm just here. I want to help you. I want to serve you. I want to work with the customers and clients and people who I have have reached out to me regarding my live streams and saying, Hey, I missed you last week or the week before. Don't worry. I'm here now, and I thank you so much for your patience during this time. Speaking of which Happy Holidays and New Year, for everyone who I've seen this year, who have met this year in 2024 Happy Holidays, and please enjoy yourself during the festive weeks over this new year period, whatever you celebrate, please enjoy time with family or friends, or if necessary, time by yourself. It is that is allowed, and taking time for yourself is really important at this time of year, because there is a lot of focus on family and friends and being around other people. And sometimes you don't, you want the opposite of that, and then it's okay too. Want to let you know that we are taking off the 27th so we're not going to have a live stream or a video confidence connect next week, because it is, it is, yeah, just the end of the year. I think everyone's tired, and we're going to take the opportunity to do, maybe do some rebranding, and maybe make these live streams a little bit more slicker for you, and an opportunity to maybe open up some places where you can write down your questions on the website, because the website, speaking of which, that's we'll move into. The next thing is, is officially up. So the website has been up for a while, but what I mean it is now like ready, ready to go. So scrolling down, you'll be able to see this. This is the main page. And of course, as a website is always up to there's always to be. Updated, and apologies for my face, just it's going to be right. But scrolling down, you'll be able to see the branding that we've done, and hopefully you'll feel a little bit more closer to the work that we do. And of course, there will be plenty of things that I've been meaning to update regarding the website and my brand, but the point is that now, instead of just going to a nebulous spot or following links in the description, you can follow the UN boring, your brand podcast. You can follow the Geelong podcasters. There will be news in the New Year regarding that. And you can follow the weekly live streams here of the video confidence connect. So we've got all our details here. And, of course, guest podcast Week, Week, nudge, nudge, 2025, that will be happening. So I will leave this up here. So if you want to check it out, you can check it out at VCC, dot training. Yes, that is the full domain v cc. So the letters Victoria, confidence, confidence, dot training, and you can find that full website there available however you like, however you need. And yeah, I'm just honestly very proud of myself for actually getting this out. I did have a little bit of a speedy one that I put together that lasted me a couple of months. But now we're fully out there ready to go. Looks nice enough, and I'll get ready to start working on new projects in the new year, using the website as a base. So I'll get rid of that for me, and as I mentioned, alluded to in that website, guess what? There's going to be big changes for the Geelong podcasters. So if you are unaware, Geelong podcasters is a group of lack minded podcasters who are based in the Geelong and Bellerin region, FYI there might be slightly changing in the new year. So keep an eye out. You can join us on Facebook, LinkedIn, or on our email newsletter via the website, again, VTC, dot training. I am plugging the website a bit too much today, but that is all right, and you can find out all the details there regarding our events, our workshops, our communities. We're looking to update people regarding grants or anything that revolves around podcasting that helps you, maybe fund your endeavors in the work that you do. We're looking to have that opportunity available and digestible for people, so looking forward to that in the new year. So what I'm going to do quickly is I've implemented a new section of the live streams. So usually by now, we would move straight into podcast episode recordings. And today I wanted to do something different I'll start a new trend, which we'll be carrying on into the new year. Of course, is commonly asked or community based questions, so I do get a lot of questions, not necessarily on the streams themselves, but usually either after the fact, via replays or sent to me via DMS or via emails, via the community here that we are fostered on, either on LinkedIn or YouTube, if you're watching this live, or if you're watching this on some of the shorter live streams that we have throughout our social media, and asking questions about personal branding, video podcasting, live streaming, all the things that we do here at the video confidence coach and I've started to take upon myself, to start implementing it into Our weekly video confidence connects to start answering those questions then, like packaging them up and putting them on all of my social medias and in my email newsletters, to start better answering people's questions in a straightforward manner like this. So what I want to do is it's going to so on the screen, it's going to say next episode, but that's just because I don't currently have a got a stop gap between these things. I will definitely be doing that as a new that's what. That's what next week is for, for me to work on some rebranding and some new assets, which is going to look all nice and pretty. I know, as a marketer, I am very much visuals first, so don't, don't hate me for that one. But I'll get on to a question that a lot of people over the past couple of weeks have been asking me, and of course, I've been a bit too sick to be able to give him a proper answer. But hopefully this is better late than never. So this is all about the Australian ban on social media. I know you're interested, so Let's have an answer next.
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You And we're back to it. Thank you so much for your patience. There had a little bit of a coughing fit, so I didn't want to get that on camera for you. So the question I've been answer I've been asked commonly over the past couple of weeks, and I want to answer now in a nice direct format for you, is my opinion on the Australian ban on social media for kids under the age of 16, and how that will affect the landscape of Australian social media usage going forward. And all in all, for those who may be unaware of and I little bit doubt it just because of the amount of impact it's had on the international as well as local news here, essentially in the last weeks of Parliament, the Australian Parliament pushed through a bill that as of this time next year, we are going to have a stringent ban on some social media channels to make sure that kids under the age of 16, or say, 16 and below, aren't able to access social media. Now there's a lot more information you can get into it. You can get into this bill. I am not a politician. I am not a politics journalist. I do not have the full breadth and scope of everything to be able to drill down to all these minutia bits, but I have done a lot of research in regards to it, because at the end of the day, this is going to impact the work that I do. Though I do bemoan social media and I don't entirely like it that much, it is still part of the marketers playbook, and it's still part of my list of tools that I use for myself and my clients to be able to put in context what our next activities are. Yes, social media may be at the bottom of my priority list, but it is still on the list. So, okay, best way to put this is, the reason it was pushed so heavily is because, for those who are outside of Australia, we are due to have an election some point early next year. It hasn't been called just yet, but it's going to be pushed eventually, and of course, especially at the end of the year, and when you're about to go into election next year, and that's pretty much what they're mainly going to be focused on. Because as a politician, your entire time is spent getting re elected. Their focus is to push through bills that make them look really big and proud and make it look like they're making an impact on the families and the kids of Australia, without really thinking about the implementation process of how they're actually going to do this. And of course, it doesn't matter, because this time next year, they're probably not going to be in power anyway, so they don't care. And even if they are in power at the end of the day, they are not the ones responsible the social media platforms, the ones that they have dictated are the ones that go are going to have to be the ones to implement this type of restriction and ban to stop kids from under the age of 16 joining these platforms. So to do that, they're going to need to have a way of identifying us, of a way being able to decide somehow whether or not someone is a child or an adult. And along with the Tick Tock ban that has happened in the US. So this, that happened earlier this year, in 2024 and then, so I think there were memories in 2023 official ban, 2024 and then it's going to be kicking in the day after inauguration in the US, which we'll see how that goes. Things might change between here and now, but ultimately, governments are starting to take action against social media giants and these larger media corporations, too little too late, to be perfectly honest, because they've had such an impact on the way that Australia and of course, I'm talking as an Australian here has been run for so long, and they're just making changes and movements now, because government is very slow to upkeep and make these drastic changes. And of course, as you can probably imagine, the Australian government and a lot of politicians have a lot of vested interest, a lot of vested interest and paid interest in legacy media, be this, your newspapers, your radio and your television people that have been paying these politicians and giving them extra money on top of it for decades now, and also social media is now impacting their kids, their. Grandkids, their nieces and nephews, because it's becoming, you know, it's all of a sudden, getting to this tipping point where we must make a change. Now, despite the fact that they've always had the power to make the change previous to this. I digress. So the effectiveness of this action and this legislation is going to be questionable. I am still a bit skeptical on how they're actually going to start implementing this, and how much reach that the Australian government and other governments who have seen what Australia has done and going to follow suit, has much limited reach over these international companies. That is my concern. Now, of course, I'm on the opinion that something needed to be done 1015, years ago, but we are here where we are now, sure, yes, kids are very impressionable. Kids are shouldn't have access to tools that are going to, you know, impact them psychologically and socially to the extent that social media has and these bigger giants have for again, decades now, my issue is that kids and also adults are smart enough to bypass these restrictions because it's only on a limited amount of social media giants or groups. They also use the they can also use VPNs and other things to circumnavigate any of these bands. And also the one of the bigger factors, which a lot of people, I think, kind of forget when it comes to kids and social media usage, is there is no other place, realistically, for kids to go on the internet. Most of the locations that were available maybe 20 years ago for kids in a safer environment, for online spaces, for limited for the limited usage that they had, are all gone now because they weren't profitable, because capitalism. And now we're in a situation now where, say, for example, a very popular platform, which is not exactly a social media platform, so it's not going to be impacted by this ban. Is Roblox. ROBLOX is a platform that is more of a sandbox that you can build different projects in different worlds, very much like a Minecraft esque type project. But as you can imagine, this is unrestricted. Kids move through it at a speed of light. The chat and social functionality of that platform is not moderated in any format. I think the platform itself is based somewhere overseas, so there's even less regulation to be able to curtail any of that impact that it has on these kids, and again, at the end of the day, they at the end of the day that these kids are always going to move to alternative platforms, the government is never going to be fast enough to curtail and make changes to these platforms. Now, of course, as I mentioned in my video and my podcast a couple of weeks ago, about my 3030 predictions, we are moving back into more forums, more siloed ways of using social media for both kids and adults, and I think there's going to be more both places for kids to flourish and learn and be wholehearted humans, but also opportunities for them to be put at great risk in these siloed environments. What I mean is like your forums, your discords, your slacks, your platforms that are like your own community. Community run platforms, as opposed to these open social media platforms that we've had over the past 15 years or so, and these major platforms, as you may have guessed, over these past 10 years, have been moving towards heavily censored, heavily family friendly. Gotta make sure it's okay for, you know, the public standards, the public standards being kids, you know, making sure that everything is okay for them, even in platforms that are designed for adult spaces, adult conversation and such, is still very much being pushed, because there's a possibility that kids could be here. I think you're getting what I'm putting down there. And also, with the siloed opportunities, as I mentioned before, there's a lack of safety and support for these kids online. So yes, having a ban from the Australian government is trying to control an issue that is like controlling the trying to get the cat in the bag when the cat is way down the street, maybe in a different suburb at this point.
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And my concern is someone who is in the marketing fields, not because it may impact my business or impact the work that I do, I do believe that with these bans that the government is going to take more opportunity to be able to control the way that people socialize and market and disseminate information, because, again, those legacy medias aren't due. Doing that anymore, the newspapers, the radio, the televisions, they are pushing. They are paying the politicians a lot of money, and they're not seeing much return in it. So I understand from that point of view that they're going to try and make a change, but I don't think that getting banning these social medias and forcing us to say, for example, use IDs or using myGov to access that, to access our social medias, we're just going to find alternatives. We're going to find other places where people are finding community and interacting that are outside of those once designated by the government that goes for both kids and adults. And making these changes. Yes, it's good that you're taking notice of it, but it's bad that you've rushed it through, legislation wise, within a week or two at the end of the year, like a kid rushing at the start of a date at like the end of the year, to get their homework in on time so they don't fail a class, I guess, in all, in all to say, and I know I dropped a lot of information over these past couple of minutes, is that I don't know where this will bring all I know is that it's not going to be good. I do hope that this legislation and it's probably going to be truthless again by the time that it actually becomes into power. Because, of course, it is. It's a government legislation. I do hope that the kids are safe, that the kids have the opportunity to the kids that are affected by this legislation are able to find you know, solace in their in person, real friends, that they can talk to their parents, that they can seek the kids. I want the kids to be all right. And I also don't want to have adult lives affected or jobs being taken away because of legislation that was rushed and wasn't really thought through on the implementation side of things, yes, the heart. Because, of course, it wouldn't have got through Parliament if there wasn't a we must think of the children type of mentality. I just don't know where it's going, and I don't think the politicians do either. And of course, it's now being left up to these social media platforms, these big behemoths, to come up with a solution, because, of course, the politicians have done their job, so we're just going to leave it up to you now, and they are going to do the most minimal thing that they could possibly do that could annoy the crap out of us. So Google a VPN, start learning how to do that and start coming up with multiple different social media platforms and forums and other communities, because we're going to see a very big change over the next year, and I'm not sure if it's going to be good or bad. That wasn't exactly very positive, was it? That's my opinion on the social media ban. I would love to check on this in 12 months and see how poorly, also how well, or maybe Even Toothless, the entire endeavor was. Wish us luck.
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You fantastic.
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How to not give a fuck with purpose. As you can guess, today's podcast episode is going to be a little bit on the sweary side. So if that's not for you, feel free to catch me on the next one. See you on the next and boring your brand. But for the rest of us who are adults and are okay with a minimal amount of swearing, we are going to touch on a life, life journey. Lesson from me Zo Wood, the video confidence coach and my experience in running a business for the past 1516, years now. So I'm going to start with a story, and we are going to buckle up and start talking about how to build your personal brand, your backbone and building your business. So for those who may be unaware, I started my first business when I was 14. Yes, I started quite young. The reason I started my business initially was because I couldn't get a job because no one would hire me because I was E. Too young and inexperienced, because I was 14, and I was also at school because I didn't have enough time, because I was 14, and also I didn't have the connections because I was 14, but I also didn't grow up in a household that had those connections to secure me a job in any sort of job or field, and at that time, when I was in high school, I had a lot of downtime. I would get to school incredibly early and leave incredibly late every day. So I had a minimum of an hour or two every morning and evening to spend the time doing my homework, which, of course, I did rather quickly, and I spent the time hanging out in the library thinking about what exactly do I want to do? I did very a couple of projects here and there, and then I found my interest in media and utilizing Photoshop and other tools like that. And I thought, and I saw some people starting businesses, not in my school, but I saw it out in the zocast on YouTube. So I decided, hey, I've got time. I got the energy, and I need to keep myself entertained. And also, I need money for food. I need to feed myself. So the most productive way I thought about doing that was to start a business. And it worked. I had the drive to self educate, and I dove into everything about business. I very much took whole line and sinker, the whole hustle mentality. And for those who have been in business for long enough, or maybe you've heard about it in the past, the whole girl boss, I very much was on just the CUSP before that, and that sort of mentality drove me, burned me out so heavily, but it got me started, and I want to stress now that hustle is not something that I would advocate for, for anyone and also for my mentees. If you are listening, I do mentor. Mentor a lot of younger kids who are under the age of 18, who are exploring entrepreneurship. Hustle culture is not real. It is not sustainable. Don't do it. Do as I say, not as I do. Thank you. I'm here all week. I started networking around about that same time, about 1415, and because I was younger, but I also looked quite a lot older, I was able to get away with just, you know, turning up to networking events, and I would start networking as a teenager, rocking up with my business cards in a room full of adults and getting asked, whose kid are you? Fairly consistently, because I would get there, I would appreciate and I would start talking to them, and then they would realize, Oh, you're Oh, you're in university, no, you're in high school. And they would start looking around, going, whose child are you? And I found at those times, and of course, I would network like maybe once every couple of weeks, because, of course, I had to deal with school and running a business and a couple of other things as well as as I was networking at the same time, and people did not take me seriously, because I was young, I was a woman, and I was focusing on wet business video for online people still had the mentality that, oh, so you work for television, oh, you work for the movies. And I said, No, all of these platforms want video. They're going to need video over the next however long you need a video on your website. It is the easiest way to communicate information, video is the way to go. And that took a lot of time of educating a lot of these people in this space. And as you can imagine, it was a very fun combo, and it required a lot of effort and time of me both educating but also just keep turning up and going along that keep showing up, keep turning up. Mentality, I found myself networking, having to drop a couple of names here and there just to get people to actually pay attention to what I had to say, and to prove that I belonged there, even when they didn't think I did, I still had to keep proving myself every time I rocked up. And as I was reaching almost a decade of networking, so I was reaching around 2627 I had done a network. I had done a decade of networking, of hustling, of burning myself out again and again, like, to the point where I was doing three networking events a week. I know that this seems like a lot, and at the time, I don't, I didn't realize it, but it's it's I had a realization. It kind of hit me like a brick wall, or I hit it like a brick wall, that no matter how hard I worked, no matter how hard I hustled, no matter how no matter what rooms I was in, I was never going to be at the table. I was never going to be taken seriously. Why? Because I was young, because I was a woman, and because some people suck, and especially in the Geelong area which I was born and put. It Geelong is very hard to change. We are a lot more accustomed to seeing someone from Melbourne coming down and giving them all the praises and revering them like gods. But if someone's from Geelong, or from Ballarat or from Melton, from, you know, a another country city. We turn our nose at them. We don't look highly on them. What? Oh, you haven't made it at Melbourne. And again, I promise I'm not going to be grabbing this entire podcast episode. But what changed for me was talking to a wise business associate who laid it out for me, who ultimately said, it's not going to change. You being young, you being a woman and people sucking is not going to change. Instead of fighting for their approval, start doing business for you. So I started taking risks that I was too scared to take. I started learning to stop caring about what others thought in my general vicinity. Now, of course, it was great to network with people and talk and not take on board what the trolls, doubters and naysayers would say to me, because they could kindly go themselves, but also they weren't doing what I was doing. They weren't trying to serve their community. They weren't trying to grow their clients. They weren't even running a business. They were just poo pooing, because, of course they can. And when talking with other people in that zo log space, I found a lot of people were just happy to do the status quo because it's what kept them safe. Sure, then I need to move to rooms where I will come across people who are ready to take those risks and protecting your peace well. Being yourself is incredibly important, especially here I am wrapping it around now, around growing your personal brand, and that's why I started the video confidence coach, because I spent most of my time in my first business, just coaching people to be in front of the camera, to be authentic, to stand there looking at this, you know, little piece of plastic or a little piece of glass, and being able to treat that camera like a human being, like I am now, like like we are now, and I spent 80% of my time coaching people, getting them ready, getting the best performance I could out of them, but I wasn't being paid for that. I couldn't support myself with that, so I created the video confidence coach to focus on personal branding, to being yourself, but also protecting yourself at the same time. And that is what I want to do when I work with my clients, when I work with my clients on anything that is, you know, marketing coordination, which is a lot of different things, or just mentoring, or just coaching in general, or specifically going into things like podcasting and live streams, keeping in mind that those are tools of a larger process, I spend my time working with them to grow their personal brand, but making sure not to delve the best way to your personal brand is how you want to present yourself out into the world. And this goes with both the bad and the good, but at the end of the day, you're there to serve your customers. Your customers are first. So even though it is a personal brand as it is, you
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the advocacy, the messaging and the work that you can do to together with your clients and customers, because you're doing it for them. It's not just all about you and your ego. It's about supporting them with the power and the knowledge and the messaging and the wisdom that you have. Now you don't owe everyone your life story and your private details, which may seem a bit counterintuitive when talking about personal branding, but sharing what makes you comfortable on your own terms, because your personal brand is you, but sharing what you want to ultimately get people on board, let them know, know, like and trust you so that you can help them grow and be better humans at the end of the day, people outside of your sphere of influence. Now, for those who may not know what I when I say sphere of influence, I usually mean, yes, the people that you communicate with and you talk with, and the people that you can influence to do things positively, hopefully not negative. Lee, but outside of that sphere or that niche, people are not going to understand what you're going to do. People don't understand, you know, why do you need to advocate for insert your messaging here? Why do you need to even do that? We have plenty of people who do that in the world. Well, it's clearly not making a difference. Brian, so we're going to make a change, and to do that, we need to, like, start thinking about things, start doing the work, staying smart, while also doing our best to put ourselves forward. Because if we don't put ourselves forward, no one else is going to and that is why building your personal brand is really important, finding a balance in your business and in your personal brand. Because, again, the reason that I work really heavily with business owners and personal brand builders is because they're ultimately, they're the same thing. There's just a slightly different focus, as opposed to purely, like, it's all about the profit or it's all about the income. When it comes to your personal brand, there's the reputation side of the work that you do, and that is why I like working in that in this particular nation space for my own bring me back to my own story and journey. I realized I wasn't here just to hustle and burn myself out on a three day, three month time cycle I wanted to entertain, to educate and to enjoy the process of both building my business, but also building other businesses. And these days, I run my business in a way that feels authentic to me and to the brand that I want to create and the community and clients that I wish to attract. It's still me. I still have to work at it, and it's still fairly flexible enough to be able to suit however I want to present myself out in the world, but I actually enjoy the work that I do. Can you say that the can you say that the same about your own business, and if you don't have a business, can you say that about your own brand, the way that you present yourself out into the world? And if you don't care about that, can I ask why? Maybe you feel like that's not in your control, and at the end of the day, that's okay if it doesn't feel like it's in your control, but if you want to start taking that control, that's what we're here for, subtle plug there. This may be a poignant thing to say, but my business saved me. I started my business at first, to make money to survive. You know, food is very nice to have. It helped helped me get through high school. It helped me make my way through life. It helped me get connections, and it started to give me purpose. Now, of course, I went a little bit too far in the linking my business to myself, and when my business failed, I failed, and that took a little bit of while of dissecting that and pulling that apart for my own benefit. But I now have that experience to be able to help and coach other people to not do the same, but it gives me a reason to keep going, because I need something outside of myself to give me the confidence to keep going to believe in myself, and Even when I felt overwhelmed to know that I have a community, that I have clients, that I have even potential clients, people that I haven't even met yet who need my help. Give me that fire and that strut and that striving power to keep going, because it's not just for me, it is for them that it dictates everything that I do in my business and everything that you should do in yours, no matter what type of business you run, be it a small business, be it a personal business, be it a combination of the two, or even if you are a large, multi conglomerate business, you are not doing it for you. You are doing it for your customers, but at the same time, you are allowed to have the business serve you as well, and I'm not talking just profit or keeping a roof over your head or keeping you fed. A business is allowed to give you purpose, and that's a real win for me. I've built a life I love, and I'm this is starting to sound a little MLM, I want to stress that, but I'm surrounding myself with people who support, support and respect me, because I have chosen them to be there. Is my choice at the end of the day. I can push people out, keep people in, and I. Done that because of the power of my business. I haven't had to work with people that I don't like. I've had to fire a few people. Why? Because it's my own business, and I have the choice at the end of the day, I am not just representing myself when I represent a personal brand. I'm representing everyone that I have worked with in the past and everyone I plan to work with in the future. Because my personal brand is not just an embodiment of me and my values and mission. It is the values and mission and the work that I do that transpires onto my clients, work into the stuff that I put my time into. And if that doesn't come across that I'm not doing my job right, and in the event that you want to do that too, we can always work together. You can always reach out to me, just have a little bit of a chin wag. I like to call them my I've even forgotten the name of my product, a one off session where we have a chance to talk a bit more about what even the possibilities are and what options are for there for you in whatever situation you're in right now. Because at the end of the day, if you want to start pivoting from maybe working at a nine to five moving into a business, there is a very different mindset that you have to work with. But having that those details ahead of time will give you at least some confidence in your own self and your own abilities. Let's be real, but in saying that building a business is never easy, but it's one of the most empowering things that you can do for yourself, and it was one of the most empowering things things I could do for myself, having a project, having a scope that is bigger than you, like building a community, supporting friends, family or clients, it is bigger than you, and it gives you something to strive for, which I wholeheartedly enjoy, whether you're trying to prove something to yourself, when You're trying to build a life you want to live, or simply needing something to focus on when life gets messy, business gives you that purpose and power, but only if you let it. A business can be a form of transaction at the end of the day like anything else we are in the world of capitalism at the end of the day. But if you want to give yourself that purpose and using your business to do that, using your personal brand to do that, the only thing that's stopping you is you. And in closing thoughts today, I want to stress that you don't need to burn yourself out for the approval of others. People don't matter if you do not give them matter. Surround yourself with a supportive community of mentors, of friends, of even mentees, your clients, your supporters, your referrals, your suppliers, people who love you and you the work that you do, are the people that you want to keep around, and even people that may be a little bit hostile to what you do, if they still come from a place with a good heart, that's okay. You just might get into fights every now and again and have you, but most importantly, don't be afraid to tell the doubters to fuck it, because at the end of the day, your brand is you, and if I don't treat my haters nicely, well, Too bad, because they certainly don't treat me nicely. So why should I have to treat them nicely? It's not like we have a school principal over us trying to correct our behavior. Bring it.
43:52
So thank you everyone for joining me on this little bit of a referential podcast, but I wanted to give you guys a little bit more of a nebulous idea of what, well, business and personal branding means to me, but also what it can mean to you and your journey and your growth on the way of personal branding and branding yourself. You're doing this for yourself as much as you are for anyone else. Stay unapologetically you. Thank apologies. My desk went down, and of course it did. So thank you so much for joining us on the UN boring, your brand podcast. You can check out all the details on the show notes along with this podcast, or you can check everything out on the website at Vcc dot training, you will hear more from me in the future. Look forward to seeing you then, and I am going to take a break you.
45:57
Let's talk about haters. Let's protect your sanity, your business and your message out into the world where the internet loves to throw tomatoes at people minding their own business. Welcome to the unboring, your brand podcast, where we're going to touch on maybe an experience that may be familiar to you or maybe something that you dread or have nightmares about in the middle of the night. I want to take you on a little bit of a journey. So come with me on this little story. So it is a Sunday morning. It is the morning after a birthday party that I attended. So I am teensy weensy, hung over and a little bit tired, but I wake up and I check my business check my personal phone, all good there. Check my business phone, and I have hundreds of notifications, which is interesting, considering that I've turned most of my notifications off because I honestly don't want the stress, and nothing is life or death, usually on the social media platforms. But of course, I managed to get hundreds of the notifications, considering I don't have a lot of them on. So I click on one of them to see what's going on, and it is one of my shorts, one of my reels, one of my skits, one of my vertical, long form videos. It's about 35 seconds long, and it's promoting the upcoming Geelong podcasters event, and it had blown up like a ridiculous amount, and instead of celebrating this, I just found a flood of hateful comments. These comments were targeting my weight, despite the fact that the shot that I filmed it at using a hand, and this was in front of the restaurant or cafe that we hold our beds at, I only shot from the boobs up. I like to call it a boob shot, where they couldn't see my, you know, full body. But a lot of the I'd say a good 50% of the comments were about my weight. Comments were about my makeup and how trashy, clowny, slutty. You know, all the adjectives or description, descriptive, words, verbs, forgotten. Which those are we're all about like so my makeup, I talked with my hands too much, despite the fact that I only made two hand gestures in the entire video, because I was holding the camera with one of my other hands, and I was doing my best to keep that still none of the post except for, like, two comments out of these, honestly, 100 200 I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention too much attention too much attention to the numbers. Only two were about what I was saying. And even then, it was all incredibly unclear, because they didn't even listen to the message that was in the video. They didn't even mention the the event that it was promoting the work that I was doing, or about the message of the entire video itself. It was just cheap, nasty shots about my appearance. And of course, this is weird, because most of the time I get maybe no comments, or maybe a couple of comments here and there, and in specialized groups that I have about the Geelong podcasters, soon to be Vic podcasters, usually, that's where we get most of the interaction I just share on social media, using the video confidence coach channels as a way of, You know, getting the word out about this community of like minded podcasters in the Victorian region. So I was trying to think of, okay, what could cause this? It's going through my mind. I didn't say anything offensive, I didn't say anything untrue. I didn't magically say, you know. Anything that could have been even construed that way I was thinking. Is it just the magical algorithm gone rogue? Possibly. But what is more likely is that someone stumbled across my video and then shared it on either a red up thread, a Discord server or some sort of private group online where the trolls then proceeded to in go into my video and proceed to just leave various comments, and especially a lot of service level comments, because I didn't actually look at any of the content. And of course, my initial reaction, as you can imagine, as I'm sitting there on my bed with my phone in my hand was that it felt like a gut punch. It brought up a lot of old wounds that were reminiscent of insults I had faced growing up and were often tied to physical harm. And there was my initial reaction, this initial gut reaction of fear and self protection, that even though I knew they were just words on the screen at the end of the day, that I felt like I had to take evasive action now, or my physical body would be in threat, that I would be in some sort of danger, was the initial feeling, and honestly, this is a feeling, and the worry of backlash is a fear, a very big fear for a lot of my clients, because a lot of my clients are women or non binary folk, as you can imagine. There's a lot of areas of the internet that I have stumbled into in this story where they just want to be hateful because they can, because they've got the power and the time. So what I did next was I didn't panic. I didn't sat there. I didn't sit there deleting the comments, and I didn't throw across I didn't throw my room, didn't throw my phone across the room, which is progress, I must say, in the past, I would have definitely done that. I took a time to breathe, put my phone down, and started my day like normal, made my breakfast, checked on my partner, giving them some water and some panel to take the edge off, show some love. And when I took my time, I went into my office, because I work from home, and then took my time addressing the comments. So I decided to take the evasive action. Now, a lot of people, what you can do is leave the comments there. Engagement, very much like press, good or bad press is still press is the mentality that is a very old adage, but still the mentality that a lot of people have, and when it comes to your personal brand or your small business, yes, that feeling of any engagement is good engagement. But at the end of the day, I want to think about your customer like I always do, like think about your client. Think about your customer. If they stumbled across your content and they resonated with anything that you said in your message, or maybe they just like the look of you, or maybe they just thought, Oh, this is you know exactly what I want. They go into the comments and they see this vitriol aimed, yes, of course, it's not aimed at me, so it is aimed at the comments are aimed at me. But what about people like me? Maybe my client likes having dyed hair, or maybe likes to wear bold makeup, or maybe likes to wear bright colors, or maybe is overweight or is a woman or is non binary. Those comments may be aimed at me, but at the end of the day, they are hurtful and toxic to my community. And of course, I must stress, there is a little part of me that goes, Yeah, this is about me. I want to delete it, and I can understand that wholeheartedly too, but I did my best to try and separate myself from what was being said, to not have it be about me. But if this was a client of mine, what would I recommend? And my recommendation would be to do the following. Would be to either Now, if you're too close to this or feel a bit too soft or a bit too like at in that moment, I can't do this, handing it over to either family or a friend or a business associate, or even at the end of the day, just handing it over a phone to someone who is not you, who is able to objectively able to look at these comments and decide whether they are hateful, toxic or cruel, and decide to either delete them and block so block the person sending those comments and delete them or leaving them up at. And I wouldn't recommend responding to these comments, because you can just feed a loop of toxic hate. And usually there's not exactly a lot of response either. If you've got the time and energy to respond to people like this, I take my multiple hats up for you and totally give it within your control and your energy. But some of us, and including myself, I just don't have the time and energy to deal with that. And again, thinking of my client like I always do when it comes to any business decision I make, I do my best to put my client first, and how would they feel sorry they would not feel great seeing those type of helpful comments. So I took the objective thing and started to delete those comments and block those users that were, you know, spooning those hateful things. I did leave the constructive criticism,
55:50
even though there wasn't much of it. Honestly, there was, like, maybe two or three posts, and honestly, there was about five to six posts that were just emojis and not entirely very clear as to what was being inferred by them. So I just left them because, well, they weren't saying anything negative. So doing my best to do that, there was a couple of constructive criticisms. Say, for example, talking about my hands again, two hand gestures means that I'm a wacky inflatable tube. Man, sure, whatever you say, and I left those comments there because they were constructive criticism at the end of the day. And I even replied to a few of them, and just say, you know, a couple of them mentioned how, where is Evan zo because I definitely noticed from a lot of these comments, and because they were being posted at 3am my time on a Sunday morning, I definitely got the impression that, oh, most of these people who are commenting are in America, not entirely sure which coast, but in America. So this localized podcasting group for people of Geelong and the bellerine in Victoria Australia isn't exactly going to resonate with these people, so I did my best to educate and just said, Yeah, mate, we're down in we're down the bottom of Australia, in the bottom of the island. Bit, come around. You know, come join us next time you're down, or something along those lines, trying to make it a bit more light hearted. Because when I am responding these comments, even though I did mention just before, to do your best not to respond, because usually you're in a state of emotional turmoil, not to respond is probably the best way to go about this. But for some of the criticism and some of the comments that I didn't feel was being too much hate. I thought, Okay, I'll take this opportunity and time to just let it go and let it relax. So I culled a fair bit of those comments, blocked the ones that were spewing most of the hate. And you may ask, why do you delete them? Because, as I said, it is not for me. It is for the people who resonate with my content, who are my potential clients, who are my clients, or people who would find me as an influencer, or the personal brand that I put out there as to be influenced by. They shouldn't have to walk into a toxic swamp of comments and feel the need to avoid my comment section when engaging with my content, because I do my best to have a, you know, opportunity, a place of learning and of growth for people who engage with my content. And yes, not everything that I do is going to be the best thing ever, but I want people to know that they can grow and learn about their personal branding and small business from me, not to just avoid my comments because of situations like that. And I am not going to be the only one who experiences this. As I mentioned, I have clients who have that very in depth ingrained fear of backlash, because at the end of the day, backlash or a negative response meant that they got physically assaulted, and meant that they got ridiculed, they got bullied, that they it didn't just stop with one comment. It always ended up being more handing up, having a hate campaign, which then, you know, affected the way that they conducted themselves or conducted their business, or the way that they make decisions in their day to day life. I understand that innate feeling of I do not want this to happen to me again. Therefore I'm going to do my absolute best not to expose myself to this. I completely understand where you're coming from, but if you want to make change, you have to be seen making change. V BE that via your small business, via your personal brand, however you are doing that change and bringing in that community and making change. You're going to have to be seen doing it, and there are not always going to be people who care enough to give you either that benefit of the doubt or who are going to ultimately treat you poorly, because what else have they got to do with their time? Like I said, I had a bunch of Americans commenting on a post that was not for them and was never going to be for them. I don't exactly make content for men, and I want to stress that this experience should not mean that if you are experiencing the same thing, do not beat yourself up about it. Do not internalize any of their comments or their vitriol or any of their trolling, you should not post differently. You shouldn't have handled it different, faster, better. Hate is not your fault. You are only responsible for how you respond and how you act, and if you take that time to delete hateful comments. Sure. If you hand it off to again, a family member, a friend, someone who has your best interest in heart, then sure do that. And if say, for example, you are not in a position mentally to handle that type of online hate, then don't take that action straight away the way that I like to my little checkbox, or this little mental checkbox I have for when dealing with online hate, is to first step away. I understand that in the heat of the moment, your gut reaction is to react, but being able to breathe ground yourself. Maybe go for a walk and take time to deal with it when you're ready, because the world is not exploding, not yet. You can take that time to breathe, then the first port of action is to remove those toxic comments and block harmful users. Because, again, it's not just about you, it's about the community and the clients and the community that you're fostering anything that is harmful or is threatening or has is full of hate on your platform, is your rules. So at the end of the day, yes, say, for example, you may be on X or if that's still a thing, you may be on a platform that has a lot of turmoil. Your platform at the end of the day is still under your control. And if there are actions that you can take later on that is for future, you to think about making sure that you separate your emotion from your actions, even though it is I want to stress. It's okay to feel hurt. It's okay to feel like, Oh, I've done something trying to better people, or trying to better the world, or trying to better my community, and it has backfired. Gotta tell you now that's not going to happen a lot. There's going to be a lot more people who care about what you do and want to uplift you, compared to people who just are going to be haters. Gonna tell you that now you may not feel that in the moment. That is why I recommend checking out love and hate lists. So if you want to go back to my previous podcast that I have linked in the show notes about love lists, you can check that out, and that is a useful tool that I always go back to in moments like this, when I feel very soft, like I'm Oh no, I've been hurt. Being able to look at my love list and just see the evidence of people who I have helped, who I have served in my community reflect that back at me. Is just a nice feeling to get you feeling ultimately, feeling better, feeling grounded. And then when making these actions, you can feel a little bit more little bit more detached and a little less angry or a little less like poignant, because you need to make a decision right now. And if someone is leaving a valid critique, let it stay. And if they're just being a clown, Delete it now. Of course, there is a very big, wide margin of what could be a valid critique or not, which is why, if you are feeling very sensitive, and again, that's not a negative thing, I want to say feeling sensitive is a is an okay feeling to have, but in those moments, feel free to just hand it over to someone else and Just take that time to breathe and let their objectivity help filter out the garbage for you so that you can leave useful feedback. If that is so, your decision at the end of the day, why you shouldn't hide, don't let the trolls, the haters or people silence you. Don't let their actions have you turning off comments or hiding in, you know, back in a hole, even though it may feel tempting, it doesn't solve your problem. At the end of the day, your message. Your value deserves to be heard, and some people aren't going to like it. I'm going to tell you now you are not going to be liked by everyone. I'm hated by so many people. Why? Because I work with who I work with. I put my focus where I put my focus. I talk loudly. I use my hands a lot. I have bold, colorful hair, and somehow that annoys people that feels like a them problem more than anything, and I want to stress to you, it is always a them problem. Now, of course, if there's something about say, for example, oh, your lighting is a bit off, or I can't hear you, or maybe you need to be a bit clearer. That is valid critiques. Totally understandable. I waffle on a whole lot, and maybe I don't get to the point clear enough. Totally understand, totally get it.
1:05:49
And that is critique. That is valid critique. I'm going to take that on board. I'm going to make changes to improve myself, to improve my message, and to do a better job, to be able to disseminate my brand and to help make sure my business can help more people, but hate doesn't define you, and hate doesn't help you. Your business, your work, is not just a reflection of you, it's a reflection of your community, and anything outside of that is just noise, taking that time to take perspective, and people leaving those helpful comments are likely just keyboard warriors with too much time on their hands. They get a thrill out of leaving negative comments, because, I don't know, I'm sure there's plenty of reasons and their opinions don't pay the bills, and they also don't shape your life. Being able to move on and keep building what matters to you is more important than listening to a handful of hateful comments and in moments like this, and from a story like this, being able to think of the wider picture of why this story matters in general is to remind myself and to also remind you, as I'm telling the story is that it's not about You, it's about your your community. It's about your clients. Yes, you faced online hate, but it's not a reflection of your worth or the work that you do. You are actively doing the work and putting in the hours and putting in the time, and all you can do is control your response, your platform and ultimately your boundaries. And if those comments you know go through your boundaries, delete them pixels at the end of the day, and if that requires you to take that time to remove them, then so be it. If you do not have the stamina, energy, time or focus to do so, hand it over to someone who can. Because again, it's not just for you, it's for the people that enter your comments who may be aligned with you, or maybe people who aren't a fan of you. They still don't need to see death threats and hate comments and misogyny. All of the ogenies. They honestly don't need to see that. There doesn't need to be more of that in the world. So deleting it is a decent response at the end of the day. Don't take it personally. I know it's easier said than done, but not don't take it personally. Protect your space and protect your peace. It is okay to block and delete just protect your space, protect your peace. Keep showing up no matter what they say, because again, you are not doing it for them. You're doing it for your community. The people who are giving you positive feedback, the people who are giving you critiques, be them positive or negatives. Want to see you grow as a personal brand, as a speaker, as a auteur, as a MC, whatever you are doing in the work that you're doing. They want to see you grow so focusing on the voices that matter and taking that time to actually sink in what they are saying is more important than a one off drive by trolling. There are also comments are just a blip on the radar. They don't dictate your success, your value or your impact. The power that you've got over your platform is the power that you have to protect your energy and protect your boundaries. Poor. Thank you so much for this a little bit of a darker podcast episode. But if you have ever experienced that, or are worried about your the backlash that you may possibly receive, I'm going to tell you now, since that story so this is about.
The above livestream episode description and transcript were generated together human knowledge + ai.
Listen to the edited livestream in a podcast episode
Who is your host?
Zoë Wood, your Video Confidence Coach connects the dots between personal branding and video marketing. Helping women and non-binary folk in small business, find their way in the world of marketing their passion without the energy drain.
Find out more about how to grow your personal brand with the power of video right here on vcc.training
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