We labor in the secret place so we can birth something valuable that benefits the world. When you live from the stage, you have to perform, but when you live from the secret place, then the stage just amplifies everything you've been working on behind the scenes. Most of your business is built when no one is looking. It is built when you are away from your devices, you're off screens, you're away from other people, you are in your own space, and that is the time where you're really being refined as a person. You're being built up. You're being expanded as a leader. That's also where your message really comes to life, and you create something that doesn't just blend in with everything else out there in the ether, but you create something that is set apart because you are so firm in who you are, what you bring to the table. That's also really where the meat and the substance of your work is created, like, the depth and the excellence behind your work that really anchors your work. All of those things are built when no one is looking. It's away from the screen, away from applause, away from the glory and the accolades. Essentially, just away from social media, away from other people. It is in your own space and in your own time. That's where everything really comes to life, and that's where the, the potency and the power actually comes forth in your work. It's in the secret place. It's away from everything, everyone else, away from all of the noise. And you might be thinking, yeah, that self—that sounds self-explanatory, but truly something I've observed, not only in myself, but in people around me, people on social media and just e—our generation at large, we do not know how to enter into the secret place. We do not know how to shut off noise. We do not know how to enter the secret place, but beyond that, actually dwell there, actually rest there. Think about your day-to-day life. I mean, most all of you use social media either just for enjoyment, but a lot of times for your business. Many people use social media to, like, decompress. It's like, some people grab a glass of wine at the end of the day. Some people open up their phone. I've even caught myself doing this. After, like, a really long hour of, you know, my baby just having a tantrum and I'm just stressed and frazzled, I will go to my phone to try to decompress, and I'm like, "Am I doing?" "I did that the other day." We go to our screens. We go to noise. We go to other voices, and we've gotten to this place where we don't know how to be alone with our thoughts. We don't know how to enter the secret place and dwell in that place. We constantly have a podcast on. We're decompressing watching TV. We're listening to other people, what gurus are saying, coaches in the industry. We're constantly listening to other voices to the point where we don't even know what ours sounds like anymore. And I would propose that that's one of the reasons why everything looks and sounds the exact same when you go on social media. But we've gotten to the point where we aren't really leading. We're following. We're listening to what everyone else has to say. But your ability to enter into and actually dwell in the secret place when no one is looking, that's gonna be the thing that determines the staying power of your business, not necessarily how you look today, how many followers you get, how much money you make this month, but it's gonna determine the staying power of your business. And for those of you who aren't familiar with that concept, staying power is the capacity for continuing. Think about existence, influence, popularity without weakening. So when your business actually has staying power, there isn't going to be a trend, a platform, a dip in the market, a competitor that can shake you because you built such a strong foundation. It's like when you build a house. No matter how beautiful that house is, if the foundation is weak, it's not going to stay in place. It can look beautiful. It can have the best materials. It can look amazing from the outside. It can be gigantic. It can be super modern and have all of the cool fixtures, but if it's built on a weak foundation, it will not stay standing. It will be rendered useless. So, we really have to figure out, how do we get to this place in the hustle and bustle, the chaos of building our business and also doing that online? We have to get to a place where we can separate ourselves from that long enough to actually dwell in the secret place, to develop our own leadership, our own wisdom and intelligence, and I would argue that the people that do that are gonna be the ones that are growing and flourishing one year from now. So this is really a skill that we need to master today. This is a skill that is more important than ever. As AI comes on the scene, as more and more people are creating content, more and more people are online, we have to know who we are, what we have to say, what we're meant to bring and contribute. And you don't discover the depth of that and the fullness of that unless you know how to be alone with your thoughts, be alone with yourself in the secret place, and build something that doesn't just make an amazing amount of money this month, quarter, or year, but something that actually stays standing, stays thriving, and is sustained for 10 plus years.
Man, that is so good. There's so much goodness in that. Dwelling means to reside in, to live in it, to remain there. And instead of dwelling in the secret place where we are formed, we've made social media our permanent residence, where we're not only sharing things all the time, most of the time maybe from an empty cup, and we're just sharing things just to say something 'cause we feel this compulsion to, but we're also consuming what everyone else is sharing all the time, and filling our minds with what everyone else has to say, what everyone else has to say about how you should approach marketing, or how you should run your business, or, you know, that you need to create all this content to remain relevant, or what have you. You're hearing all of these narratives pushed at you all the time to where you can't really make an informed decision yourself from the secret place. Take time away from the stage of social media and actually start filling your cup off the screen. And it's not only that. It's not only the growth that we experience off the screen and how we're filled, but it's the work we're doing behind the screen and off the screen—Mm-hmm.—the work we're doing in our business, for our business, for our clients, in support of our people. Like, that work is done actually off the screen, but so often, we're just on social media all the time, wanting to talk about what we're doing or trying to make ourselves look good or feel good because we're so focused on perception. And we're not focused on actually serving our people well and filling up our own cup so that we can overflow, so that that overflow can flow into our people and, and their lives. And actually, from that place, that depth that you get from going there, it will touch other people. Whereas if we're trying to just share all the time from an empty cup, we're not really doing much of anything.
Yeah. Yeah, I was reflecting on the fact that before social media existed, you actually had to put in your dues, and work, and create, and build something before you were invited to speak on the stage about it, right? You weren't gonna be invited to speak and deliver a keynote on a stage in front of an audience somewhere if you hadn't spent time putting in your dues elsewhere—Mm-hmm.—actually putting in the work for your work. You couldn't just jump on the stage anytime you wanted to. But today, the stage, many times, is social media, and we can get on there every single day, and what a blessing that is, right? I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but because it is so easy to get on there every single day, it is also very easy to get on there and share nothing of substance, nothing of meaning—Mm-hmm.—nothing of value. And I love that distinction that you just made about it isn't necessarily about just filling up your cup by taking time off, right? We're not just saying to take some time away of, from social media, go take some time off, go fill your cup by taking a vacation, although yes, ma'am, go do that if you need time off. That's a beautiful opportunity that you have as someone who runs your own business. But what we are talking about is don't go take the vacation, don't be on social media, but, like, go get to work when no one is looking. Mm-hmm. And we experienced this firsthand when we took our summer sabbatical. We took 6 weeks off of most of our content, and let me tell you what, I've been sharing content consistently since 2017? I think. It, it amounted to, like, 7, 7 years. And I have taken a week off here or a week off there for holidays, for trips, but never a, a longer period of time that was also dedicated to putting my, my mind and my creativity elsewhere, like, other parts of the business. Mm-hmm. Social media can be such a distraction. It's so—it's just so full of noise, so full of what everyone else is saying. You can kind of just get in this mindless cycle every single day, getting on there, consuming, putting your content out to the point where you're kind of not sharing anything meaningful, meaningful. We're not seeing many results. We're just going through the motions. We're just doing the thing. And I would even say if you're someone who's getting on social media right now, you're having a really hard time thinking about, "What am I gonna share this week? Oh, man, it's time to create content again. What the freaking crap am I gonna share? I, I literally don't know. I'm out of ideas," or, "All of these ideas don't excite me. This is just boring. This is nothing, nothing new. There's no life on this." It is probably because you have not spent enough time putting in the work in the secret place, getting clear on your message, getting clear on your value, expertise, how you are here to serve, getting clear on your convictions, what it is that you're meant to share, the calling behind your work. Those are things that will light you up so much to the point where you cannot stop talking. You have so much to share. And that's another big difference I've seen even in myself after taking those 6 weeks. We put in the work, and sometimes just, like, intensive work over one particular thing. Like, we really sat with things. We labored over them. We played around with them. We tinkered with them, as Jordan says, and we created something really beautiful, specifically with our messaging. And that anchored me so much in what it is that we do, how we are set apart, and man, the content has just really flowed from that place. Y—yesterday, I created an entire month's worth of content, which is crazy. And all of it, I'm really proud of. I feel very, very proud of it because I've done the work behind the scenes before creating and stepping on that stage. So, I love that distinction. It isn't just about taking time off. It's actually taking time away from the screen to put in the work because the real work takes place off the screen. And it's not just about taking one break to get to the secret place, although that's helpful maybe to pause what you've been doing so you can kind of reset and recalibrate. And that's kind of what happened, I think, with us when we took a, an intentional pause from content creation. We were able to kind of go to that secret place and reset so that we are living, leading the business from the secret place and that that overflows into everything else that we're doing, like content. But it's also a call to live from the secret place moving forward in your business, that you're not just taking one break for however many weeks or however many days to get back to this place and, and live from the secret, secret place for like 30 days. It's like this is a call to, like, change, to reset, so that moving forward, we actually lead from the secret place that we are working, actually working and using our brains, our God-given minds to, like, put that to work and get off the stage of social media. Like, we don't need to reside there. We actually need to reside in the secret place and remain there, and then we'll actually have something worth sharing. We'll actually have something to say, and like you just said, you'll actually have something you're proud of. Like, you can feel proud of the work because you've actually put in the work behind the scenes. We are too focused on perception and just showing up online and posting all the time because whatever. We're trying to remain re—it's what they said to do.
Yeah.
We're trying to remain relevant. It's what everyone says to do. That's part of the problem for me, is that we have started to just follow what everyone else says to do without really questioning it for ourselves, without really questioning, "Why am I doing this for my business?" Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you get that answer away from the screen, away from other people, in your own time—Yeah.—in the secret place. So, this is an entire conversation about shifting where we are living from and what we are living for. You are, are not living for how you are perceived, and what people think about you, and how much of an authority you look like on social media, or how much of your work you shared on social media this week, although use social media as a tool. But if you want substance behind your work that creates fulfillment for you in your work, impact on the people around you, creates true wealth over a long period of time, we have got to learn how to think for ourselves. We have got to learn how to lead, and you don't learn how to do that on your phone, on a screen, by watching TV. Mm-hmm. You learn how to do that in the thick of your work in the secret place. And you don't do that all from the stage either, because when you're on the stage, then you're just performing basically. Mm-hmm. You're performing all the time, and you're not learning or growing or laboring over anything. You're just up there feeling good about yourself. If we're on the stage too much, I feel like—I'm feeling, like, a call back to, like, humility of, like, we're not actually maybe called to just be on a stage. We're, we're called to serve people. And I feel like we need to get back to a humble place of, like, "I'm actually here running a business so that I can serve people." I'm not here to be on a stage, or be on the stage of social media, to say things, uh, just say things out of my you-know-what, but I'm actually here to help people. Like, getting back to that place, that is the biggest thing that I want all of us moving forward to settle into, is, like, the heart of the servant. That I, I am here to serve people. I'm here to serve my people and what they need help with. Mm-hmm. And let that be our foundation.
Wow. When you live from the stage, you have to perform, because you actually don't have any authority. You don't have the expertise that's been developed. You don't have the leadership that has been grown. Mm-hmm. But when you live from the secret place, then the stage just amplifies everything you've been working on behind the scenes. That is where we need to get to, because we know that you aren't here to just, like, look nice on social media. Like, you actually care about what you're building, and you actually feel a call to the work that you do to some capacity. You actually care about the clients that you serve, about your community, on your social media, through your marketing, and the best way to serve is to, to learn how to lead yourself from the secret place.
Often, we are spending truly, like, 80% of our time on our market, and you need to do a personal assessment for yourself and, and actually audit the time that you're spending. But the clients that we work with, without a shadow of a doubt, the things they spend the most time on would be, number one, their client work. Important, absolutely, want to serve them. Number two, marketing, content, all social media platforms, all the things. And both of those things, mind you, are really important. Marketing, social media, in general, is a tool for your business, and your clients, they get, you know, priority, right? Because you're here to serve them. But my question is, if you are always marketing and you're always serving your clients, first of all, like, when are you actually building your business? Because a lot of the clients that we work with, they, they want to grow beyond their current client roster, or they want to grow a passive income division, or they want to diversify. Well, you don't have any time to work on that when you're spending all your time on either your current client work or in this endless hole of content creation. Because remember, content and social media, that is one piece of the strategy. It's not like we're gonna go use AI to create 30 days of content for us and pump out 2 Reels a day for a full month and then you're gonna magically have a full roster of clients. There are more levels and more layers to your larger marketing strategy. So, that's a note to, to take as well.
But we actually have gotten to a place where we don't labor over the true meat of our work. We don't know how to. We don't actually know how to labor over something because we're so used to convenience, and we don't care what it costs us. Mm-hmm. Laboring over something requires sacrifice. Like, it—it's a process. Going and, you know, purchasing something overnight from Amazon, very convenient. Going and creating your, you know, month's worth of content using ChatGPT, very easy. Having an idea for an offer and then just launching it, literally no sacrifice. Just, let's just, like, roll with the punches. And I think sometimes there is a, there's a time to move quickly, because we're, we're not—we're not recommending that you move from a place of being a perfectionist and trying to, like, harp on everything all the time, but there is something to this concept of laboring over something. It really is a lost art in our society today. Like, we get a revelation for something, and instead of actually sitting with it, we just go and, like, post it on our stories. We just go—everything is turned into something. It's like we have an experience, and instead of being in the experience, we go and turn it into a marketing moment. And I'm sure you've seen, like, 8 of those at least this week, where it's like someone had an experience, they created a spin, and it's all of a sudden, like, a marketing moment. That is so exhausting. And also, does that really serve, like, your community? I guess it depends on the nature of the, the content. But the true meat of what I'm trying to get at here is that we have to, to learn how to actually labor over our work, to actually create space and time to, like, pour into our work. When we're creating an offer, when we are wanting to add something into our client's experience, when we're—anything that we're doing, we need to actually spend some time on it, right? Like, we need to actually labor over it, because that is what delivers true value and true impact to the people around you. And what does it mean to labor? Yes, it means to work hard. Yes, it means to put forth effort. And typically, labor has to do with some level of difficulty, like having difficulty in doing something despite working hard. So there is a level of difficulty in laboring over something, and I think childbirth is a really beautiful example of what laboring really looks like. In childbirth, it means to engage in a sustained, exhausting effort toward bringing something into existence. Mm. And I think that's the definition I'd like for us all to take away from this today, is that I think being in business and moving forward in this new season, I think we are being called to this type of laboring, like engaging in a sustained and maybe sometimes exhausting effort so that we can actually bring something of substance into the world. Mm.
We labor in the secret place so we can birth something into the world, not to bring us glory, not to make us look good, but to add something valuable that benefits the world. Mm. It's the same case when it comes to laboring for the birth of a child. The mother doesn't do it for her sake, for her glory. She does it to bring this child into existence, who will contribute and add value to the world. How powerful is that? And I think nowadays, we really don't know how to labor. We don't know how to sit with things and take our time with it. And I think part of that is because we have let the culture guide how we move, the culture that moves so quickly, the culture that thrives off of convenience. And we've allowed that to affect how we lead and how we show up. And we move quickly because everyone else is moving quickly, and we feel like we have to keep up with everyone else. But what if we're meant to do things differently? What if it would actually be better for us and for our businesses and for our people if we moved differently and if we were set apart? What if we're meant to shift the tide and not ride the wave that someone else has created? We wanna rush the labor process, but I actually would think that's a dangerous thing to do, because if we're going back to the childbirth example, if a baby comes too soon, she typically has to stay in the hospital, in the NICU, for however long, m—m—maybe a long time if, if she comes too early. And then you have to stay in the hospital as well with your baby, and you have to wait to be able to take her home, because she didn't s—stay in the womb long enough to really grow to full development—to develop to her fullness, to be able to be birthed. And she c—she couldn't survive in the world, so she has to stay in the NICU, in the hospital. And that's kind of, I think, what we are struggling with, is we're not laboring in the secret place. We're not laboring over something. So we're bringing things to the public or to the stage of social media too soon when they're half-baked and they're not ready to stand on their own two legs yet. Mm-hmm. That's like, "W—we shouldn't be doing that." We might need to actually slow down, slow down so that we can be intentional. I heard this quote recently, and I'm trying to remember it. It, it said something like, "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." Mm. I heard that in one, in a f—over a few days, I heard it two different times on these shows that I was watching, which I was like, "That's weird, 'cause I've never heard it before." But I feel like that is just something I just wanna give to you today to think about, "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." So what if we just slowed down? What if we slowed down our pace and allowed the labor process to take shape so that whatever we're laboring over comes into full growth and full development so that it can stand on its own two legs in the world and benefit the people that you want it to benefit? Good lord, what if we just slowed it down? Like, slow your roll. It's like—everyone's moving so fast. And then we see this person doing that thing, and then there's this new feature, and then there's this new trend. And it's like we're always, like, trying to keep up, and it's why we're always so tired, and it's why things aren't working. Because surface-level effort on, like, a million things will give you surface-level results. Mm-hmm. But if you actually decide to go deep with one thing and own your expertise, own your edge, own your message, do the work for that particular thing and allow it to take shape over time, you will go so much further and so much faster than trying to do all the things—all the time as fast as possible. And that is the industry right now. Mm-hmm. That is what, that's what we're doing.
I love the analogy of a woman laboring, and I—I even love to zoom out a little bit more and think about when you, before you bring a baby into the world, you dream about—uh, many, at least I did. You dream about getting pregnant, and you dream about your family, and you envision it before it ever happens. And for some people, it's a process of continuing to try and try and try to conceive, and eventually, you do conceive. And then you have to carry that baby for nine months before you get to meet it, before you get to put it in its cute little nursery. You carry it for nine months, and then before you get to meet it, you've got to labor over it. And I had to labor over mine for like 3 to 4 days. And it was the most exhausting thing that I've ever done in my entire life, and then my baby's here. And then guess what? After your baby's here, it's the most exciting, the most rewarding, the most fulfilling thing. You are on a high. And then you come home, and then you're in postpartum, and then you're like, "I have to take care of a being," but like, "I don't even feel like an adult, but I have to take care of this being and I have to pour into this child. I have to make sure its needs are met." And then the older that they get, those needs start to change a bit more, and you have to really think about how you're pouring into them, the mo—the example that you're modeling, and it is a never-ending process. Yeah, eventually, they turn 18, they turn 21, whatever the age is, and they move out, but that child changes you forever. They're forever a part of your life. But there is a long period of time where, yeah, you're laboring, but then you have the baby, and then you've got to raise that baby. And that's another thing, another part of the process that we—we don't hone in on. We like launch the thing that has no—barely any substance. We think it has some. I think we have great intentions, but we're just moving a bit too fast. We launch the thing, and maybe it's like a short-term success. Maybe things go well, but for a lot of people, the launch kind of falls flat because it hasn't been labored over. The—the thing hasn't been labored over before it was launched, but then you launch the thing, and then it's like, we're like, "Oh, I'm kind of bored now." Mm-hmm. "I kinda want to do a different thing. I kind of want to like hop over to this other thing that everyone else is doing." So then that doesn't ever get to take on its full form. It doesn't ever get to fully develop because we don't stay committed to one thing. We're always jumping around to the next thing because we're not entering and dwelling in the secret place, and we're always looking at everyone and showing up on the stage of social media.
Mm-hmm. Amen, man. That was good. Our industry really knows how to keep you busy laboring over how you are perceived. So they know how to keep you obsessed with how you look, how many people are seeing you, and again, this kind of fuels that fire of like, "I need to be on social media every single day. And then if I miss a day, oh my God, like I'm gonna die." "My people are going to forget about me." But your brand perception will never matter as much as your brand equity. Brand perception is how people see you right now in this moment today, but brand equity is earned value of a meaningful contribution over time. So if we unpack that a little bit more, brand equity is the accumulated value of trust, loyalty, and credibility your brand earns over time by consistently delivering real, meaningful value—Mm-hmm.—to your audience. How is real, meaningful value created? With you in your own time actually working on it, actually laboring over it. And then the beautiful thing is that wealth follows value. The more value that you create for your people, and the more valuable your offers, your products, your services are, the more people will want it, will need it, and the more money and wealth will come. But ultimately, our obsession with perception, which is really about ourself, it has outweighed our commitment to bring lasting value—Mm.—to actually serve our people, and it's the reason why we never stop chasing the next marketing trend. We're obsessed with learning the new trends and sharing the same exact way that everyone else is, is sharing and showing up the same way and being so consistent all the time. We're so concerned about how we look, what people think, how much of an authority we seem to be in the online space, and we've actually forgotten our assignment, which is to serve. If we focus on ourselves, we will always have to chase the next trend to prove ourself, to get in front of more people. It's all about us, it's all about the self. But if the focus is on service, then you will run straight to the secret place, because that is where true value is created. That is where you get the full, clear picture of how you're meant to serve, at what capacity, what that looks like, in and through your business.
I really love that idea that brand equity is earned. There was, like, a word in some definition you, you read off that, that use of the word earn. Your brand earns trust, loyalty, and credibility over time by consistently delivering real, meaningful value. I just think that's powerful. I wanted to, like, harp on that so that we really, like, take that in, because I think that that idea of earning it, that just points back to, like, we gotta be willing to labor over it and pour into it, because that trust and that credibility is earned over time. We don't just magically get it overnight. Mm-hmm. I think that's really powerful.
Love that. So true. Yeah.
Overall, this conversation, I don't really want it to be like, "this is a call to just get off social media," "just spend less time on social media," 'cause like, yeah, that's part of what I would love for us to take away from this. But I feel like, ultimately, this is a call to reset our approach, to reset, to recalibrate, almost like, I'm picturing the, uh, like a, a bone that has been, or, or like a bone that has been broken or something, like, in your arm, res—you have to reset it. That painful process of resetting something that has been out of alignment, we need to reset right now, to stop leading from the stage of social media and to start leading from the secret place, 'cause if we lead from the stage, then we're just here for our own glory or our own vanity or what we get out of it, 'cause we're so concerned about perception instead of equity. But if we lead from the overflow of the secret place, our impact will be greater than it ever would have been from the stage, and we'll serve at a deeper and truer level than we ever could have from the stage. And that is ultimately what I wanna call us into, is just deeper service—Mm-hmm.—that we're here to serve, and it's not about us.
So, let this be a time that you reset and recalibrate and remember why you're here in the first place.
