#Day2 of Winnie's #YourTurnChallenge on Blogging

Dear Winnie,

I'm not doing very well at this, which is why I was reluctant to post my #Day1, and now my #Day2 of your #YourTurn blogging challenge. First of all, I watched your video a couple of times, which was very clear. However, I can't seem to be sure of the hashtags to use and for some reason am too lazy to go back and check. (Wait, now that I'm thinking about this more, I think it was Winnie's challenge that was one month and she put us to a one WEEK? blogging challenge. Ugh, this is going south faster now.) So, I hope I got them right. Now to catch all of you up on who "Winnie" is, she is like a right arm for straightforward business/all around guy, Seth Godin. I was moderately challenged yesterday, and the day before, to say the least, read this blog for more on that, and after exhausting Pinterest, I decided to start reading. I went to Seth's blog, found the whole Winnie Failed/Didn't Fail post and decided to participate in the blog challenge because I've been doing a LOT of research on blogging lately, and I do think it is one of the fastest ways to take your business to the next level.

Why? Because blogging forces you to pick a target audience, speak to them about what they want to hear (if you hope to be successful), sharpen your marketing muscles and really hone in on your writing skills, which most of us could use a little practice in. I'm totally behind the concept. In fact, if you want another great resource besides Winnie and Seth, check out the 30 Day Blogging Challenge, by another super smarty, Sarah Arrow. I've researched my target audience for The Profit Goddess! enough, via every form imaginable to know that my audience's top three "keep me up at night points" are as follows:

1. How can I get more customers?
2. How do I price?
3. How can I take my business to the next level?

In the surveys, people respond to my:

• Direct approach
• Snarky style
• Slight devil may care attitude (although I'm realizing I'm more sensitive than even I thought. See below for more on that)
• Honesty when it comes to my massive failures and what I've learned, because I in turn teach you how to not make the same mistakes

Therefore, blogging on my Profit Goddess! site is the perfect way to address my audience's top 3 areas of desired assistance, and do that in their 4 favorite ways. (Note: I intentionally didn't number the 4 points because they aren't really in any particular order, whereas the top 3 areas of struggle are actually in order.) So, I have researched and played, and read, and studied, and set goals for this blog. (In case you care, I'd like to be among the top 100 small business bloggers by 12/31/15, and preferably not make the #100 slot on December 30. But I'm digressing, and that's kind of the point of this whole blog post.)

I like to write. I can crank out stuff pretty fast because I know my voice, audience, and right or wrong, what I want to communicate. But, I've stumbled in the last 24 hours. As soon as I loosely said I'd do this, because I'm kind of only half committing to blogging every day, I got really anxious. Now this could be because of too much caffeine this morning (although I really haven't had much, by anyone's standards, let alone my own), and it's caused me anxiety. This is really weird. So instead of writing in my journal, I'm blogging, and hitting my Day #2 quota. Here is what it's brought up:

• I feel self conscious. "Huh? YOU feel self conscious?" Yes, super, actually. All of a sudden I feel like I'm putting myself out there more than ever before. This is a JOKE, considering I'm the girl who has Tweeted about the unfairness of women having to endure not only childbirth, but also bikini waxes. I have not exactly been shy about my viewpoints, my quite severe lack of sound mothering skills no matter how hard I try, and my genuine desire not to offend people. I know, sounds contradictory. As soon as you state any kind of opinion, which, by the way, we all need to do very clearly in order to develop a target audience and stay in business, I all of a sudden feel skittish.
• I'm doubting myself: Should I have put the word "S--ked" in the title yesterday? See, I'm second guessing it so much that I don't even want to type it here. Next, maybe I shouldn't have put that whole example about Ceci and her client interaction in there. (BTW, if you don't mind, sign up for CeciStyle here, because if I am in the doghouse, I'll be less so if she gets a few new subscribers. 🙂 ) Maybe she's peeved. After all, I didn't ask permission first, although she has shared that story publicly on more than one continent multiple times.
• I tossed out the link for feedback and then wished I hadn't. A few of my friends were in the "What's up, girl? Where are you?" zone yesterday and I didn't feel like playing. I was second guessing myself from the run-in with one of my associates and just felt icky. So I tossed out the link to my blog "explaining" my state so they would "get it", and one person, to whom I tossed it out, didn't respond. One person, big deal. In fact, I have told myself all morning that I don't really care. Evidently, I do, because I'm now blogging about the lack of mention about my blog. Now this person is quite busy, with a very full life, and probably hasn't gotten around to it, but somehow, I want to go all Swingers' movie style and call and say, "Oh my gosh, I've left you ten messages, I hope you're not upset, but I..." and just keep putting my foot in my mouth, making it worse. Imagine, someone might have something better to do than read I link I shared with them. OR, wait!...
• I'm worried. I'm worried, because maybe they're furious! Furious at what? Who knows, and really, what's the worst that can happen if they are? Not much, really because it's not like I blogged someone's social security number and posted the nude selfie taken when sleeping. I didn't, but my imagination is running wild.

Net/net: I'd like to blame Winnie for this. Ha, it has nothing to do with her, except in the positive sense that I'm actually doing something that I normally really like doing. Nor does it really have that much to do with blogging. However, this is the place where I like to get real about small business. This is the spot where my coaching clients and potential coaching clients get to see the underbelly. And maybe I'm drinking too much of my own Kool-Aid, but I have never been able to relate, learn, grow or been motivated to change when I thought someone was too "perfect" or too "together." (No worries about that here!)  It makes me feel stupid and like I'm too far out of their league to even get help from them, so I show you that even me, 5 million celebrity clients, 4 kazillion mentions in all kinds of "real" magazines and newspapers and on national and international tv shows, and I still get super self-conscious.

So there you have it. The true story of a real-life woman in business, entrepreneur, mom, significant other, friend, daughter, etc trying to find her way, just like you. Let me know your thoughts, because I just might use you as an excuse to write a blog, and maybe help a few other people in the process.

xoxo and Happy Saturday! M

PS - Thanks, Winnie, for getting me off my duff.

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