Overcome Fear of Being Yourself on Social Media and Anywhere Online

A candid conversation around the fear of being judged when you put your authentic self out there on the internet.

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Overcome the Fear of Being Yourself Online

In this webinar, Chris Badgett of LifterLMS sits down with Harry Spaight of Selling With Dignity for a candid conversation on why so many coaches, course creators, and business owners freeze when it comes to putting themselves online. You will learn how introverts can build an authentic presence, how to move past impostor syndrome, how to handle judgment and hate, and how to use the alter ego effect to step into your best self on camera.

What You’ll Learn

• Why the first sale you ever make is the sale to yourself, and why nothing works before that sale lands
• How to reframe judgment from old friends, family, and strangers so it stops holding you back from publishing
• The FAQ content strategy that turns twenty short videos into a search-friendly foundation for your business
• How the alter ego effect helps introverts and creators step into their best self on camera
• How to build a community that defends you rather than an audience that drains you

Key Takeaways

• Write down the ten questions your market asks and the ten they should be asking, then record twenty short answer videos as your first content engine
• Build a physical or ritual cue that signals your brain to step into your on-stage alter ego before recording or presenting
• Use the mental delete button on negative comments so your creative energy stays with the people who value your work
• Compare yourself to your past self rather than to celebrities in your niche, and celebrate the wins already stacked up behind you
• Imagine the future version of yourself twenty or thirty years out, then let that vision pull today’s decisions forward

Frequently Asked Questions

Full Webinar Transcript

Meet Chris Badgett and Harry Spaight

Chris Badgett: Hello and welcome to this live stream about overcoming the fear of being yourself online in social media, or really anywhere online. This is going to be a candid conversation around the fear of being judged when you put your true authentic self out there on the internet. I am joined with Harry Spaight from sellingwithdignity.com. I am Chris Badgett from LifterLMS, which is a learning management system for WordPress for creating courses and coaching programs and things like that. I have done a lot online. I work with many thousands, tens of thousands of people who create content online, and this is an issue that does not come out and get discussed enough. So I am really excited to have this conversation with you. Harry, tell us a little bit more about you.

Harry Spaight: All right, cool. So this is going to be fun. I love the topic. People do not often think of me as an introvert, but there is that side of me, and I actually score higher on the introvert side than the extrovert. But having been in sales and doing mission work, I have really had to just deal with the fact where I was and kind of come out of my shell, so to speak. We did not really always have these conversations about introverts and extroverts. It was like, just get out of your shell, come out of your shell more. So I slip back to what I used to say years ago. What I do is I help people to grow their sales without the pushy, slimy tactics.

Why Introverts Freeze on Social Media

Harry Spaight: Being an introvert, a lot of business owners and coaches thrive in doing what their actual work is. What they do not often thrive in is putting themselves out there on social media, or online, or doing video. I hear people say this quite a bit, like, I know I should, or I know I need to do more, and they view it as this monumental amount that they have to do. But they are virtually doing nothing today. Just a little bit will help get the real voice out there. My belief is that that voice is what is going to draw people to them. What is your thought on that, Chris?

Your Vibe Attracts Your Tribe

Chris Badgett: One hundred percent. There is this saying I heard once that your vibe attracts your tribe. In order for you to put your vibe out there, you kind of just have to be your authentic self. One of the biggest compliments I ever get is, hey, you seem exactly like the same guy that I see on the internet. And I am like, yes. Except you probably think I am extroverted because I am in all these videos and webinars and podcasts and things, but I am actually an extreme introvert.

Chris Badgett: To your comment about sales, I used to not think I was a sales person or a marketer, and over time I really embraced those things and learned to love them, and became obsessed with it, because really, sales is all about helping people, and that is what lights me up and creates impact in the world. So I am excited about this conversation. I have definitely been through a lot of the pain, especially in the early days.

Naming the Pain of Putting Yourself Out There

Chris Badgett: Maybe we can stay there for a little bit, Harry, and talk about the pain and what it feels like. I will throw a few things out there. There is anxiety. There is impostor syndrome. There is procrastination that happens and you just push things off. Sometimes you may feel inclined to present yourself in a way that you are not actually, and that is very taxing on you from an energy perspective. I have been in all that. But what kind of pain, let’s talk about the pain a little more. How do you see it, Harry?

The First Call of the Day Is Always the Worst

Harry Spaight: I love what you just said. It brought back memories. In sales, when I got started out in corporate sales, a lot of the activity was on the telephone. When you mentioned procrastination, it is like you looked at that phone and it was just horrifying, for people like me, because I am service-minded, but calling people to interrupt them and not see their faces, I was petrified of the idea of dialing and making these dials and doing it for hours on end.

Harry Spaight: In order to succeed though, I knew that this was something I needed to do. By making the first call, when you are doing this daily, that first call, I used to joke around that I need to start a whole new territory of all the people that I called the first time in the day, because that call, 99 out of 100 times, was terrible. It was me stammering and stuttering, not feeling comfortable with what I was doing, and not giving those people a real opportunity to hear how I could serve them. But you get through this. That is just one aspect of it, the procrastination. I knew I needed to make phone calls, but I am telling you, how many times I got up to get a cup of coffee, how many times I had to read the script, how many times I needed to use the restroom, all of this is like, really the reality was I just did not want to sit down and make the calls. So what about you, Chris?

The First Sale You Make Is to Yourself

Chris Badgett: I have been there. When I look back at an earlier version of myself, I see how inefficient I was, and I do not want to discount the learning curve and the growth that happens as you start getting out there on the internet, because it is painful, it is anxiety-producing, you have a fear of being judged, and people will judge you. Old people from your former lives are going to see stuff, and it is impossible to not get negative comments, or a little jab from the side from a cousin, a brother, an old friend, or whatever.

Chris Badgett: One of the things, there is this key idea that really opened it up for me, which is the first sale you make is to yourself. So when you really believe in your product and your service, if that is not there, nothing else is going to work, and this problem is going to persist. That is like the core of it. But I remember even just making a YouTube video in isolation, alone in my house, I was super nervous. I learned lots of tricks, and over time, it is just kind of like a muscle. You do it enough times, you make those calls, or you send that cold email, or you go to a conference. I think the first time I went to a conference, I think about how nervous I was, and then when I go to a conference now, my nerves still get up, but it is nothing like it used to be. That is just part of the growth of becoming comfortable in your own skin, and in your business, and being on the public stage, or the court of public opinion.

The Old Friends You Are Worried About Are Not Watching

Harry Spaight: One hundred percent. When you were doing these YouTube videos years ago, I am really impressed how you got started. You mentioned that you have been doing content for 10 to 15 years, and I am thinking back, what did 15 years ago look like, in 2009? A little bit different than today, right? There were not nearly as many people doing it. You are a bit younger than me, so I look back and think about the people I knew in high school, which is a hundred years ago, that they somehow would be judging me. It is like, they do not, I mean, they have not done any of this, and it is like, oh, they are going to think I am an impostor or something. It is like, they do not care. They have got their own lives. They have their own grandchildren, for crying out loud. What am I worried about? But you are younger and you are closer to that age bracket. So I am curious, what was going through your mind those first times you started putting yourself out there on video?

Layers of the Onion and the Boxes People Put You In

Chris Badgett: For me specifically, I never really fit in a box. There are all these layers to the onion, and I think all people are really like that. But what happens is, people kind of have a caricature of what a person is, and they put them in a box, and you are aware of those awarenesses around you. It is really just human nature, because the brain does not like to be busy and have uncertainty, so it classifies somebody. This is where stereotypes come from. It just lets the brain put that individual in that box.

Chris Badgett: When you change and you evolve a lot over time, and you have lots of different interests and things that you do, it is really only your super close friends, and your partner, and whoever, that really sees the layers of the onion, and even still, they may not see all of it. So part of it is just being okay with being judged, because people do that, and perceptions are all over the map, depending on their influences and where their ideas are coming from. A lot of it is just about letting go and just doing you.

You Are Not the Same Person You Were in High School

Chris Badgett: The other thing I find that happens a lot, that happened to me, is I realized later in life that I was an entrepreneur, in my 20s or something like that. I developed all these new skill sets, different ways of thinking, being, starting companies, growing teams, and doing all these different things. That is just not the same person that I was in high school, and that is okay. That was a snapshot in time, and I am different now. Not better or worse, just different. People are in a constant state of becoming and evolving. So really, it is about letting go. I think that is the key.

Hitting Post on the First Video

Harry Spaight: Oh my goodness. Yeah, it is. I think of the first video that I did. It was not great, okay? I was looking at the video, and here I was on LinkedIn, I believe, and the question was, do I hit with my finger, do I hit post? I could easily have not done it. I could still be laboring over putting up my first video. But eventually, if you know it is what you need to do, and you are promoting your business, you are promoting your ideas, you are promoting how you make the world better, not necessarily yourself, but you are promoting what your gift is. When you remove yourself out of it and you just say, you know what, I need to do this, I want to do this, I am just going to do it, like you said, let go of all the fears and so forth.

Harry Spaight: I remember looking back at that first post. I did this relatively recently. There was a ton of positive reactions. There was not one reaction in that post that said, Harry, you are an impostor, you are such an impostor, Harry, how can you put out this video, you crazy impostor, you. All these fears, it was ridiculous when I look back at it. Those fears prevented me from doing something for quite a long time. I do not know if it was a year or a couple years, but I had wanted to put out, I knew I needed to put out a video, I just did not have the guts, or could not let go of the pride, or let go of the ego to actually do it.

The Internet Is Bigger Than Your Brain Can Picture

Chris Badgett: I totally get that. The crazy thing that happens is, there is this whole concept of finding your tribe and your people and your market, your industry. The idea that everybody is your customer or content consumer is not a healthy one. When you find that tribe that appreciates you and values you, and even sometimes sees more in you than you see in yourself, then it becomes like a positive feedback loop.

Chris Badgett: The crazy thing about the internet is, it is really hard for the human brain to understand how big the internet is, and how we can be in these tribes all over, spread across billions of people. There is this little teeny thin slice that is perfect for you. Once you find that, and you realize that your product or your service or your work or your art is doing good in the world, and these people really appreciate it, then all that selling and marketing and content stuff just becomes a lot easier. But in the early days, before you have that tribe, and you have that email list, or that customer list, or your client list, it is a really lonely place. Which is why finding a tribe of similar entrepreneurs on the journey is very healthy and helpful, so that you do surround yourself with support. We often feel more alone than we are, because we have not, quote, found the others yet. That does not mean they are not there. You just have not connected and found them yet, and the only way to do that is to get out there.

If Three People Liked Your Post, Three People Liked Your Post

Harry Spaight: If you are, and I say this to people that are hesitant, I ask, do you have friends? And everyone says, yes. No one has said, I have no friends. So everybody has some friends. So what do your friends like about you? Like you said, the internet has almost a billionfold of that number of friends we have that really like us, because of our sense of humor, because of the way we ask questions, the way we show interest in them. There is a lot of that multiplied. I do not know what the number is, but it is a big number.

Harry Spaight: If you are thinking, well, I put out this post and only 17 people liked it, or three people liked that, whatever the number is, if those three people were in the same room as you, and said, Chris, great post, nice job, I am celebrating it, you say, cool, three people, these are my friends, like it. But we get caught up because someone else has 872 likes and 300 comments, and we say, well, I am not popular enough. We look inward and say, this is not working. We say all of this negative stuff about ourselves. I do not know if you have ever done that, Chris, but if you have, what do you do about it?

Comparing Yourself to Others Is a Status Game You Cannot Win

Chris Badgett: Comparing yourself to others is common. It is just human nature. There is the whole status game that is just baked into our DNA as humans. What I have done with that is, it is like a snowball that you start pushing, and then one day you wake up and you have 10 people on your email list, or 100 people, or a thousand. One day you wake up and you are like, holy cow, if there were this many people in a room, that is a lot of people that care about what I have to say.

Chris Badgett: In entrepreneurship, I call it the valley of despair. When you start something new, or you switch careers, you have to kind of go through this lull, where you are starting at the bottom and you are trying to figure things out. And also just kind of letting go of comparing yourself to celebrities in your niche. It is just not worth it, and it creates more pain than it is worth. Instead of, when you feel that, instead of having jealousy or envy, think of it as more like appreciation. Wow, they are doing really good, I could learn something from them.

Reach Out to People More Successful Than You

Chris Badgett: The other crazy thing with the internet is, depending on the person, it is very common to reach out to somebody who is, quote, more successful than you, and engage, and have a conversation, ask for help, maybe try to give to them and help with no expectation in return. You can develop this huge web of relationships. It is not like everybody, it is not like school where, okay, we are in second grade now, now we are in third grade. You can have friends of all kinds of different levels of popularity and status.

Chris Badgett: One of the tricks I use when I am creating content, or networking, or doing a presentation, is I kind of just let the whole world disappear. I heard this from podcaster Lex Fridman, where he pretends like the end of the world has happened and all that is left is just him and his guest, and they are talking. You can do that with content too. When you are making videos for courses, or whatever you are doing content marketing, just, there is this advice to imagine your ideal customer avatar, your perfect fit customer. Give them a name, give them an identity, maybe it is a real person, and just act like you are just talking to that one person, and everything else around ceases to exist. I still struggle with all this too. For me, I am really good at that online, because I have been doing it for over a decade, and there could be a thousand people in the webinar or whatever, but I am fine. Put me on a stage in a room with a thousand people in the audience, I am still not ready for that. I still struggle with all this stuff too.

What Impostor Syndrome Really Is

Chris Badgett: We had a question in the chat from Hank. I just want to speak to you real quick about impostor syndrome. So what that is, is basically like when you are going on stage, whether that is on a video, on a real stage, on your website, or wherever it is in the court of public opinion, feeling like you are not qualified to be there. The internal head talk is, who am I to do that? Basically what it boils down to in psychology is, I am not worthy, I am not good enough, I am an impostor, I should not be here. It is just negative self-talk that comes in. That is why I go back to that point about the first sale you make is to yourself. You do not have to be the best in the world at it. There is only one you. We are all on a growth path. It is all about just starting, and starting from a place of service.

Get Out of Scarcity and Into Service

Chris Badgett: I know that is really hard, especially in the beginning of an entrepreneur journey, when you might be focused on scarcity. Like, oh, I really need this money, I am getting behind on bills, I need clients, I need customers, I need cash flow. You can get your head in a real scarcity place, and that is where impostor syndrome lives. But when you can get over into the abundance place, and coming from a place of service, I will just tell a really short story. Earlier in my marketing agency days, I would have multi-millionaires hiring me to do this marketing work, website design, development, helping them build their online platforms up. I am just a guy living in Montana with two young kids at home, without much money. I am like, who am I? Why are these people even talking to me? I did not really realize my value. Over time, when you find your skills and passions and everything, people come to you. But it took me a long time to be like, you know what, I am pretty good at this thing, and I do care about my clients and my business, and yes, I need to make money, but let’s just build some cool stuff and do it from a place of service.

I Am Not an Impostor, I Am Just New at This

Harry Spaight: Great stuff, Chris. This idea of being an impostor, I was listening to Mel Robbins’ podcast, and I compare myself to Mel Robbins. She has millions of listeners, I have got 11. Just joking. I mean, I listen to these great podcasts, I am not saying they, I am terrible and I am an impostor. It is just, I am where I am in this journey. I get inspiration from other podcasts. Mel was talking about this with impostor syndrome. If anyone does not know Mel Robbins’ backstory, I highly encourage you to look her up and see where she was just a little over 10 years ago. Her journey from where she was in her mid-40s to mid-50s, with issues with alcohol, feeling like she is purposeless, not the person she wants to be, to becoming a bestselling author, selling millions of books, listen to her podcast now, she is this motivational and inspirational individual. That, to me, is phenomenal.

Harry Spaight: What she had on her show recently, her daughter, and her daughter is a young musician. She got invited backstage into a tent area where she could grab food and hang out with other musicians. She had nothing recorded yet, nothing published. So she is around all these musicians who have recordings, who are performing live on stages, making, having fans and so forth. She realized, as she was going through this and talking to people, she felt like such an impostor. She had an awakening moment, an aha moment, where she said, you know what, I am not an impostor, I am just new at doing this. Man, that just puts it in perspective, when I think of, well, I am not Zig Ziglar, I am not, you name the sales rock star coach, author. I am not any of those people, and I would be somewhat intimidated by them, even around them, just in the same sentence. I remember sending out my book to get endorsements, and I was just quivering. I was afraid that they would come back and say, Harry, this is terrible, what are you doing writing a book? Instead, I got these incredible endorsements from people I really look up to.

Harry Spaight: It is Humanity, right? We have got to give people a chance to be good. I think in general, the majority of them by far are. If you look at yourself as being someone that is new in what you are doing, or newer, then that is okay, because everyone had to start somewhere, and the rock stars had to start at the beginning.

Sometimes the Better You Get, the Worse It Feels

Chris Badgett: I love that. It reminds me, there is this funny thing that happens too, that sometimes the better you get, the worse this problem becomes. Just a story from my past life. I used to run sled dogs in Alaska. I was training with an Iditarod sled dog musher, and when I first got on the back of a dog team, I was like, how hard can this be? You just stand here and you do the commands, and you steer the dog sled. But as I got better and better, the more I realized what I did not know, the more I could see the real skill, and all the decades of training that the top dog mushers in the field had. And then I am sitting in a room at a race, right before the race that I am in, I am surrounded by some of the best in the world, and I am like, oh my God. So it can get worse the better you get, the more humble you get. But that is part of the journey. I am just adding that little nuance there, that like you said, even if you were in a room with some of the top salespeople in the world, all that stuff would flare right back up again. It is just kind of part of the journey.

The Growth Mindset Is What Broke Us Out

Harry Spaight: It really goes into the growth mindset. I get, because I have said all the things that everyone else says. You and I are saying the same things about our past. There is a lot of commonality in this. But the thing is, we broke out of who we were at that time, and that was because we took action. We could have stayed where we were. Like you mentioned, your journey from where you were in high school to becoming an entrepreneur, a dog musher. I mean, I am not sure what you call those people, but that is a pretty cool story I would love to know more about sometime.

Harry Spaight: These are things that are brand new to us. It is the journey. So we could say, I am just going to stay where I am, because I do not like people that much, I am really best behind my computer, I am best when I am writing, I am not great at video, why do I need to do that, why do I need to post about myself? The answer is, you do not. But if you want your message to reach the masses, you are going to have to make the changes. You can settle in and say, well, I just do not have the personality for it, or you can learn to grow out of it. What helped me was the book Mindset by Carol Dweck. I used to think, Chris, I do not know if you ever thought this way, but if I started out in a sport and I was not very good at it, I would say, well, I am just not good at this sport, and move on to something else. Or if I played a game that I was not good at, I would say, I am not good at this, so I moved on to something else. I had this fixed mindset, which I did not understand in certain areas, that if I would have worked harder at it, I could have gotten better. But instead I had this thought that I was not born good at lacrosse, for instance, so I must not be a lacrosse player.

Harry Spaight: Everybody who does something had to start somewhere, and they worked through the trials and issues that everyone has in the beginning, to get better. Stories of Michael Jordan not making his high school basketball team, and eventually becoming the greatest player that ever lived, according to some. That growth mindset, I think, is super important in getting us out of where we are today, and being the person we really want to be.

Find Your Ikigai and Point the Growth Mindset At It

Chris Badgett: It makes 100 percent sense. I think that is one of those essential ingredients, to have or develop a growth mindset. Of all the people that I know that are successful and happy and doing great things in the world, that is a characteristic that they all have. Part of it is to really believe in yourself. At its core, there is this belief that you can do anything, you just have to decide. We do have physical limitations, like you may not have the right build to be a Michael Jordan level basketball player, and that is okay. It is not like you have to be good and exceptional at everything, but you have to find your passion.

Chris Badgett: That whole ikigai thing, where your skills, market opportunity, passions, and all these line up, focus that growth mindset energy within that. That is the most important personal development work you can do. Of course, you can apply it to business, but also to your life, to your relationships, to your health. Time on this Earth is limited. Why be static? If you are heading downhill in some regard, try to get back to static. Once you are static, try to get it pointed in the upward direction.

The FAQ Content Strategy That Started My Video Engine

Chris Badgett: Margaret had a comment here I wanted to get into, about being judged and dealing with haters on social media, and she mentioned it in the context of being a woman getting negative comments. This is an exercise I would encourage everybody to do, that helped me get over my impostor syndrome and start an engine of creating video content and content marketing.

Chris Badgett: Back when I was in Montana with a web design agency, I heard this strategy, it is called the FAQ strategy. What are the 10 most common questions that your market asks? Make a short video about that. Which teaches you about SEO, basically, in search intent. People go to the internet with a question, they are looking for an answer. So you write down that list of 10 questions, and then you write down a list of the 10 questions they should be asking but are not. That gives you a list of 20 little short videos you can make.

Chris Badgett: So Chris in Montana took a lawn chair, drove out to a fly fishing spot in the middle of the woods where nobody is around, had a TV dinner tray and my laptop, and I recorded those 20 videos. I got home, edited them up, chopped them up into the various videos, put them on YouTube. The title of the video was the question, the video was the answer. One of the first comments I got, I was in the woods talking about how to accept credit card payments through the internet, back longer ago when it was harder to do than it is now, but it is still hard. The first comment I got was, I just cannot take you seriously, sitting in a chair with a creek behind you, you do not look like a business professional, something like that. At the same time, remember earlier I was talking about having these millionaire clients from countries on the other side of the earth hiring me. Who do I want to listen to, and who do I want to give my energy to?

Everybody Has a Delete Button

Chris Badgett: One more thing I learned from being a sled dog tour guide on a glacier in Alaska, that people could only get to by helicopter. When you work with hundreds or thousands of people in a service profession, sometimes people are rude, impolite, or unkind or whatever, and it really can rub off on you, especially if you are sensitive. So what I learned back then, the skill I learned, is that everybody has a delete button. That is not just like hide this comment, or unfriend, or block, but also in your own emotional impact, you can just tell your subconscious, you know what, just delete that, I am not giving any more energy to that, and moving on. That delete button is really powerful, because haters will come up. You will find tribe, and you will find people that like you, but you will get negative comments from friends, family, strangers on the internet. I would encourage you to not let that hold you back.

You Can Put Yourself Out There Without Publishing Everything

Chris Badgett: Another thing you can do too, is if you are truly concerned about your safety and stuff like that, you can be on the internet without disclosing your location, or you know. I know people that are really successful in business that have a different name in real life. They have literally crafted it, just because they really value privacy. There are ways that you can make yourself, put yourself out there, even really hard, but at the same time not publish your home address and everything on the internet. You can do that.

Empathizing With Women Dealing With Creepy Comments

Harry Spaight: Those are really good. I cannot relate to what women feel, honestly. I am a male, and I empathize with anybody who has to deal with creepy stuff. I do not see it in my life really. I cannot say, oh, I understand, because I do not. But I would not let that block you from making the impact you want to make. There are a lot of women out there. I mentioned Mel Robbins, Carol Dweck, there is a ton of them that are making a difference, and I am willing to bet they have the creeps that show up on their feed, that their team is probably deleting.

Harry Spaight: My wife has said to me, she says, who is this person saying all these things to you? I am thinking, that is a bot, but I mean, I delete them. I do not know where these people show up. But again, the percentages, like you mentioned, Chris, is that the vast majority of people that show up and like our stuff and comment and will show up are generally good. But those couple of people here and there, we have to dismiss it. For me, I take it as a challenge. When someone busts my chops because they do not love my video, or they think what I say is stupid, I say, I will get better, thanks for the comment, give an old guy a break, I promise I will keep improving. I do that, just not because of me feeling like I have to improve to please that person. I want them to see that what they say can make a difference in people’s lives, and it is just a wake-up call for them. But I am not saying, hey, nasty person, I am going to do my next video better so that you can like it. It is like, hey, nasty person, wake up, because what you said is nasty, and maybe if you hear something nice in response instead of more nastiness, maybe you will wake up. So that is my little way of dealing with it.

Build a Community, Not Just an Audience

Chris Badgett: One of the cool things that happens when you build a community, you can build a business, but I encourage everybody to build a community more than just an audience. One of the signals that I like to look at, that you are kind of making it, or it is an important milestone, is when your community jumps out to defend you. Maybe they see a nasty comment, and there are levels of nasty. There is some stuff that is just bad trolling and needs to go away. People will defend you. You will get private messages like, hey, I think this person is a troll in your group, you probably want to remove them from your Facebook group, or whatever. Your community, that is part of the whole community aspect, will help protect you, as you help protect them. Because part of building an audience, or a community, or a tribe on the internet, it is about building a safe place.

Chris Badgett: But when you go out into the world and platforms you cannot control, like YouTube comments as an example, are notoriously full of trolls and negative stuff. I know a lot of YouTubers that just say, I do not even read the comments, I do not read it. Sometimes that is where people get to. Your attention, as a creator and a creative person and an entrepreneur, is valuable. It kind of goes without saying, but you want to give that energy to the people that respect you, value what you are doing. But you do have to deal with the real negative, and there is real evil in the world, and that is part of our journey as well.

Your Brand Is What People Say When You Are Not in the Room

Harry Spaight: The sensitivity that we have, as people who are more introverted, we are probably a little more sensitive than many. Sometimes it is acting a little bit, right, where we have to put ourselves in a place where we are on stage. Like when you go out and you speak publicly, I know I do this, I have to listen to the right music to get me fired up, I put myself in a different zone. Sometimes the people that will see me on stage, will see me off stage, and say, what is wrong with you, are you okay? I am like, yeah, this is me normal. This is me in my relaxed chill state, versus me being hyped up and getting on stage. Sometimes you have to do this on social media, if you are doing video.

Harry Spaight: The whole idea of being your genuine, authentic self in sales. People do not want to do business with people who are, let’s see, what is the word, where they are miserable, they do not love life, they are complaining all the time. Nobody wants to be around those types of people in business. When you are authentic, you are going to have days that you are not great and you are not feeling great, and you can mention it a bit, but you still get beyond that, because your brand is important. If people say, well, your brand is, Jeff Bezos says your brand is what people say when you are not in the room. What do people say about you when you are not in the room? If you are coming across as a Debbie Downer, or you are always miserable, I would just encourage you to get the gratitude going, put yourself in a different zone, and say, yeah, my business, my mission depends on this, I have got to step up my game. Because we are going to have these moments in life where we do not feel our best, but we can get past that. And again, I think that is part of the growth mindset.

The Alter Ego Effect Is Not Being Fake

Chris Badgett: There is a really good book I would encourage everybody to read, called The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman. It speaks to this idea a little bit, and this ties into impostor syndrome. But the alter ego effect is essentially like an identity in a persona that you have when you are on stage, like at work, or in your business, or as a parent, or as a friend. There are lots of famous examples of famous athletes who have this routine and ritual of becoming their alter ego to go out on the field and perform at their highest level. Which sounds like being an impostor, but it is not. It is actually kind of calling on the best parts of yourself, given the context that you are going into.

Chris Badgett: Like you, Harry, for example, I am standing up, which helps me step into my online Chris making content Chris. Later today, I will be on the couch with my laptop, doing something with like a quarter of the energy. Alter ego effect. There are lots of cool tricks you can do as well. Like you have a uniform as an example. This is common. It is why doctors wear a white lab coat, and police officers wear what they wear for respecting authority and stuff. When you go in, you will see some of the best YouTubers, they are wearing the same outfit all the time. It is literally their uniform for, all right, I am stepping into my content creator on stage persona. Which is not about being fake, or being an impostor. It is about showing up and bringing your best self.

Cues, Rituals, and Being Present With Your Kids

Chris Badgett: This becomes much more clear and easy to see if you are a parent. Sometimes parents, especially ones that are working really hard on their business, as an entrepreneur, you are dealing with all the struggles, and you get home and you just have nothing left for your spouse or your kids. If you can figure out how to step into, and there can be literally cues in your environment, like, when I walk through this door, or I put my laptop bag down, you develop this routine to step into present father, technologies away, super focused on the kids, being your best self in that context. I would highly recommend you check out The Alter Ego Effect, the book. There are many videos with Todd about that and examples. It helps you, and it is counterintuitive. You are not becoming a fake person, you are actually just bringing the best parts for that context.

Do We Even Know Our Authentic Self?

Harry Spaight: I love that. As you are saying this, I am thinking, do we really know our authentic self? Because when you do the work on yourself, and you find out that we shut down for certain reasons, we get discouraged over things, we give up on other things. A lot of this can be traced back to preteens or childhood. Then there is a whole other ton of stuff that can be traced back to way people responded in school, our formative years before we are seven years old, and then the years in high school, where there is so much peer pressure going on, and we are trying to make life decisions.

Harry Spaight: Do we really know who we are? I can tell you, I did not. I mean, I am 62 years old. I have done more work on myself over the past three or four years than I ever even knew people did. I did not know people worked on themselves. But when you start reading, and you understand and learn more about the subconscious mind, and you trace back and listen to a lot of Wayne Dyer on YouTube, and I just try to go back to my childhood, to my young age. I think about, wow, I was so different back then. Then you look at the transformation throughout life, and say, that was not me, that is not who I really was in high school. I was trying to be someone else to get along with my peers.

Harry Spaight: I encourage you, what you just described, this alter ego, I wonder if the alter ego is who we really are. It is like, this is our best, right, where we can say, I am going to be my best parent, the best leader I am going to be, the best employer I am going to be, the best speaker. Maybe that is who we are supposed to be, versus, well, I am kind of grouchy today, and I am really soft-spoken. We can trace a lot of this stuff back, folks, because our parents or older generations may have said, kids are to be seen and not heard. If we grew up in that environment, and we were told to be quiet all the time, then we are naturally quiet. We may not be naturally quiet. We may be different than who we are.

Visualization, Eulogies, and the Person You Want to Become

Chris Badgett: We are human becomings. We are not static human beings. There are some tactical exercises you can do to work on this. If you have been in personal development for any amount of time, you have probably heard the advice that it is a good exercise to write, pretend there is your eulogy at your funeral, what would people say. The reason that exercise is helpful is, it allows you to imagine the ideal life and impact, and how you will be remembered. It gives you a concept of the person that you want to transform or become into, that is already like an acorn inside of you, you just have to grow the oak tree.

Chris Badgett: Another way you can do it, that is a little less morbid, is you can do a visualization in a meditation or whatever, and think about 20, 30 years from now, the future version of yourself. You go to that person in your visualization, and you picture what that is like, you ask that person for advice. If we do not have a destination, we go nowhere. Even to take a moment to put the pressure to conform aside, put that old baggage of not being heard and stay in your place, and follow the script, and do the American dream, or whatever the path that you are quote, supposed to be on, just let all that go and imagine that ideal future version of yourself. Not just what you look like, how you feel, what is in your life, what are your relationships like, all that stuff that is all inside of you. But it gives you kind of a visual and a destination.

Vision Boards, Authenticity, and the Highest Form of You

Chris Badgett: That is why those vision boards and things like that are important. It is not just about manifesting fancy cars and houses. It is about making the space to think about who you want to become. It is not, you are going to fake it into that person. It is like, you are literally on a journey to become the best version of yourself. That is why we like the word authentic, because it is not just your authentic self, it is like the highest form of that. What does that look like? You can be authentic and miserable, but what would authentic and happy, and successful, and healthy, and in relationships look like? Just realize that there is a lot of struggle, ups, it is not like a line that goes straight up. There will be setbacks. It will be pain in your life. But visualize what you want to become, and try to get outside of the boundaries of your programming.

You Have People in Your Corner

Harry Spaight: You are a deep thinker, Chris, and this has really been a blessing. I love the conversation. I just say that for those, where we started off talking about being your genuine, authentic self online, and where you are trying to make the impact that you were born to make. That is the vision that you have. Then just recognize that you have people like Chris and me, and many others, who are in your corner. If you are posting and you are not 100 percent sure that you are going to get a like, you can tag either one of us, I bet, and we are going to give you a reaction. We are going to give you a like, we will give you a comment, because we have been there, right? When we are tagged, we know that you are calling on us to say, hey, we need some love, we need some support here. We are there for you on that. You will find that there is a big community of people, once you show that you are stretching, getting out of your comfort zone, even if it is your alter ego. You may have a challenge with that, but that may be your best self. We are just here to help you, to give you that nudge, so that you can do what you are meant, what you are born to do.

Overestimate the Day, Underestimate the Decade

Chris Badgett: I love those closing thoughts, Harry. I just want to add this idea that we overestimate what we can do in a day, but we underestimate what we can do in a year and decades. It is not about pulling your future self that you want to become to tomorrow. It is going to be a journey. Take some time to reflect back and see what you have already accomplished. Maybe getting your first paying client, launching your website, going through a career change, taking some risks. There are all kinds of little wins to celebrate along the way.

Where to Find Harry Spaight and LifterLMS

Harry Spaight: So good. This has been a blast, Chris. We could go on all day. But this truly has been a real blessing to get together with you and have this conversation, and hopefully a few of our listeners who joined in with the comments will have massive benefit from this.

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Harry, if somebody is new to you who is watching this, where can they find out more about you?

Harry Spaight: Best place is sellingwithdignity.com. They can download a few chapters of my book, and see, not just see what this is all about. Really, my mission is to help people in business to grow their business without the pushy, slimy, salesy tactics. You get a free download of the book, or a few chapters anyway, at sellingwithdignity.com. What about you, Chris, where can people find more of your brilliance?

Chris Badgett: I just want to say sales is a super skill. It is super important. Learning from somebody like Harry, learning the real deal, the holistic view, the introverted non-pushy way, is a skill that everybody needs. I am really easy to connect with on the internet. You can find me on Twitter at Chris Badgett. My software is called LifterLMS, which is a learning management system. If you are creating courses, coaching programs, or a membership site, that kind of thing, that is what LifterLMS is. We have a super powerful free version, so you can literally get started for free. You can find all that at lifterlms.com.

I want to thank everybody for coming. Thanks for those of you who are here live, engaging in the chat. We really appreciate you. Thanks for dropping those comments. It means a lot. This is a little different type of content than we do, but I just want to say, this is like that piece where we are working with you as peers on the journey together. This is part of the community and that whole tribe aspect of, surround yourself with positive people, and have that growth mindset. With that, thank you for coming. Thank you, Harry, and I hope you all have a great rest of your day.