The very best kind of name calling

How would you feel if someone called you “unapologetically courageous”?

If you have a hard time imagining that, I’m right there with you. Or at least I was there right with you until this past Monday.

That’s when I had the most amazing, surprising, delightfully uplifting start to my week. Here’s what happened.

I offer several marketing products on Fiverr, and I saw I’d gotten an order from an early riser. (She placed it at 7:15 a.m. Seriously?) Since “early riser” is a phrase that never has and never will be applied to me, I had to do a bit of scrambling to acknowledge her order within 90 minutes.

And since I’m generally primed to notice what people do well, I included some kudos on the pre-work she sent me. That’s when the high-test fun began, because this is how the client responded to my response:

“Your profile spoke to me!!! I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT and I was saying, ‘This woman is a gem who needs some love!’ I felt goosebumps reading your profile and knew I was talking to kindred folk. LOL immediately! YOUR profile brought that out of me. I said, ‘This woman is unapologetically courageous.'”

Yes, I ended up sniffling over this.

What prompted that kind of response? Was it just this client’s excellent taste and great powers of perception? ☺ Or was it the way I had chosen to be 100% who I am in my promotional video, and she resonated with that authentic presentation?

As I’ve mentioned before, authenticity has no competition, but it does take some courage to bring your real self to the table.

We’ve probably all had experiences of trying to please everybody, only to end up pleasing nobody. That’s not only emotionally trying, but can also be financially devastating. (There’s a reason entrepreneurs are encouraged to know their niche.)

Take the risk to acknowledge that some prospects will think the authentic you is fabulous, while others will be totally turned off. Be okay with the latter result, because those aren’t the people you would (or even could) joyfully serve.

Put the real you out there and trust that you’ll attract the people for whom you’ll enjoy doing your best work. Then you’ll be able to look in the mirror and do the very best kind of name-calling:

“YOU are an unapologetically courageous gem.”

(BTW, thanks to Carlos Lorenzo for posting the gems image in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.

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