I don’t want to be a f*cking Influencer

So here's the plan...

I’m someone that can confidently say that I’ve quite literally fallen into every job I’ve ever had.

In high school, I was a waitress and I loved it. I kept that job while I enrolled in college but when I got pregnant, I dropped out and got a big girl job that a friend connected me to.

I worked in that call center job until I was mid-pregnancy with my second child and because I hated it so much, I quit and decided to open a daycare in my home.

One of my daycare kids’ moms introduced me to the world of phlebotomy and I ended my daycare to work for ExamOne doing drawing blood and doing insurance exams.

With the work experience in phlebotomy, I applied later for a position with a children’s hospital in Kansas City, and got the job in their outpatient lab, eventually moving to the floors.

I then retired myself and gave a stab at being a stay at home mom. When boredom hit, I got creative and started making scarves and jewelry from home that I eventually started to sell on Etsy.

This was the first time I worked as an entrepreneur, depending on sharing my products and myself on social media in order to make sales.

In early 2013, an opportunity was presented to me to work with in Network Marketing with a fitness company. I had just started to give a shit when it came to my health and it felt like the accountability would be important. I was taught to post on social media 3-5 times a day to share my story and allow people to get to know me.

From the beginning, I shared open and vulnerably.
I posted to Facebook and Instagram 3-5x daily.
I collaborated with all kinds of companies from workout clothes to CBD, sharing their products and links, in addition to my own, to earn a buck.
When stories were introduced (damn, that makes me sound old), things went to the next level as I shared it all - my food, my kids, my relationships, my ups and downs, my traveling, my surgeries, my illness, my divorce, my dating, all of it.

Well - if you read my book, you know I shared most of it.

In 2020, I felt the shifts. Things happened that caused me to build a wall between versions of myself. The wall separated my shadow self from the me I wanted to be, even though I had no idea who she was.

Social media became harder. I felt resistance to posting, to sharing my voice, and to showing up the way I always had.

Because of this, I started to write.

While I continued to show up on social media, I think that for the last four years, there’s been such fear for me in that space.
I don’t enjoy posting like I used to but I’m shaky in what I want to share now, fearful that people won’t relate.
I don’t want to share a coupon code or my favorite leggings because it no longer feels genuine, it feels salesy and tacky.
The thought of selling something for someone else makes me wince and in the same breath, selling myself makes me wince.