On Being Brave In Your Work

This post is based on, and follows up, June's Monthly Mail.

In the middle of June I went to the Blogtacular conference in London, an opportunity to go listen to some talks and meet some online chums. As always, in the break after sessions people ask what talk you’ve just been to and whether it was any good. Having been to a session about pitching to brands my answer to this question was: “it was good, but I realised the answer is that I just need to be more brave, and that’s what my problem is”. I said this, separately, to a good handful of people, and they all said the same thing: “but you’re so brave!”.

And so started the cogs turning about what ‘brave’ is. I know I must look confident and brave: I can leave a job with no safety net or backup plan, I can go Live on social media without make up or batted eyelids, I can go down to London on my own to go to an awards do. I know that these things are generally seen as markers as confidence, and that’s largely because they tend to fill people with fear. But it’s not me being brave; it just happens to be that these are the things I find easy. I tend to operate within my comfort zone. Somethings, like going to an awards ceremony on my own in a room of people that aren’t exactly my people, are close to the edge, sure. They’re right out there in the suburbs, but not outside the city limits. If I’m confident enough in what I’m talking about and what I’m doing, I can go for it, hammer and tong. Yes I’ll crack on and start that podcast because it’s within my comfort zone to create content about marketing and talk about it – because that’s what I do every day.

And luckily for me, my comfort zone is fairly sprawling compared to others. It’s not a tiny little hamlet, but a modern city that’s seen a lot of recent development on the outskirts. So I can get quite far in my business and what I want to be doing without ever leaving it. But only so far.

And this is where we get back to bravery. Where I need to be brave is pitching. In getting people who don’t know me, who haven’t been following my journey, who don’t know that I’m a well-meaning hardworking little soul, to believe that I have value to give them. I am burning to write more, and not just on my blog, not just on channels I own. I want to be in print, with my funny little name spelled out in ink above an inspiring article, and I want to be online, with pieces that friends send to friends saying "read this, you need it, it’s possible". But that means leaving the comfort zone and getting into a territory where I don’t know the laws, rules and customs. It means rejection, confusion, lack of control, silence. It means bravery. And no, I’ve not yet managed to be brave. I’ve not yet managed to pitch one of my ideas, because I don’t know where to start, and because I’ve not plucked up the courage to find out where to start. What I feel at the prospect of doing this is what others feel at the prospect of showing their face on Stories, or putting a course on sale, or going on a podcast: pure terror.

And that's where we finished last month, with my admittance that I don't quite know how to be brave yet. But I've made a few small steps. No, I haven't yet pitched - and yes, obviously this is out of fear and all those things I listed. But I also know myself and how I work well enough now to know what I need to put in place to get me to do stuff - goals, know-how and accountability.My planner prompts me to make three big goals per quarter, and for this quarter one of my goals is to have a piece accepted by an external publication. For some reason, having it down in writing and as something to tick off makes it more real for me than if it was just 'something I want to do' - I know that if I get to my quarterly review and haven't achieved this then I'll feel disappointed, and that spurs me on.

My know-how and accountability come in one bundle as I've signed up to Laura Jane Williams' course about getting published. The structure of the course is going to give me accountability because I won't be able to put off doing the work - something I'm exceptionally good at when the work is something just for me. And yes, probably I could work out how to get published on my own, but I'd always be worrying I was missing something, doing it wrong - having someone teach me this stuff makes me feel a bit more legit, which makes me feel more confident.Here's a big note to acknowledge - the only reason I knew about this course was because I'd talked about wanting to write. In the newsletter and to my friends, and it was one of them who forwarded the details to me and therefore gave me the structure and impetus to start working towards this dream. So talk about the thing you want, yes for accountability, but also for support.