How to de-influence your business

A few weeks ago I formed a simple hypothesis: If I don't have to be right all the time, my life would drastically improve. That one idea cracked open a dam - and what came flooding out was an honest inventory of everywhere I'd been performing a version of myself I didn't actually choose.

In this episode I get real about what it means to de-influence your life and business - not just your content strategy, but the deeper stuff. The ideals you absorbed. The positions you never consciously took. The version of success you've been chasing that someone else built.

In this episode:

• The hypothesis that changed everything (and why "not having to be right" is actually the most intuitive move)
• The corner-of-the-house IG live that made me think "this is f**king ridiculous"
• What I actually want my life to look like — and why I'd been squeezing my life into a brand instead of the other way around
• How the influencer era sold coaches and healers a very specific (and very fake) ideal
• Why authenticity isn't a trend — it's the only response to a world that feels unreliable
• What de-influencing your business actually looks like in practice

Links + Resources:

• Read the full essay this episode pairs with: Read HERE
• Learn more about working with me: jenliss.com
• Follow along: @jennifer.liss_

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, and welcome to Fuck Around and Get Paid, the podcast that's here for people who want to have fun, make money, and make a big ass contribution while you do it. If that's you, welcome. I'm your host, Jennifer Liss, and in this episode, we're gonna talk about the art of de-influencing your business. Let's dive in. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to the podcast. What do I mean when I say de-influencing your business? Well, I'm gonna tell you what I think I mean by it, and I'm gonna tell you my own path and what I think I'm going to be learning on this journey and what I think I'm gonna be doing on this journey. And maybe, just maybe, you might, if you haven't already done this, want to come along on this journey with me. Okay, so let me tell you what happened. A couple of weeks ago, in the expansion room, we did this thing called the possibility experiment. And in the possibility experiment, we all formed a hypothesis, a uh an educated guess. If I do this, then I think that this will happen. The hypothesis that came to me was not what I expected to come to me at all, but it is what happened. And this is the hypothesis. It is if I don't have to be right all the time, my life would drastically improve. If I don't have to be right all the time, I was terrified of this hypothesis, but I knew my friend that there was something good that was in it for me. And let me tell you what happened. A lot of things happened. I feel like this cracked open a damn. It revealed so much to me. It revealed places where I was definitely being bullheaded for no reason. I have to be right in my arguments with Joey. I have to be right when I read something that somebody said on Facebook. I have to be right about where we go to eat or what time we go and do something. I had to be right about anything and everything I noticed. And, you know, I I work, I'm so passionate about curiosity and my whole self-development journey. I don't know if I've said this on this podcast or if it was just on my previous podcast. My self-development journey began when I went back to college. I'd been a hairstylist for 10 years. I went back to college, I did a strengths finder test in my public speaking class. In this strengths finder test, my number one strength was judgment. And I was like, what the actual fuck? Judgment? You're telling me that's my number one strength, is that I'm a judgy bitch. And that led me down all kinds of things. I did eventually realize that judgment is actually a really good strength and how it can be leveraged for good. I was not necessarily always using it for good. So when this hypothesis came up, if I don't have it written here on my piece of paper, but it was late at night scribble when this dropped into my head. If I didn't have to be right all the time, my life would drastically improve. And so I know based on my judgment, my deconstruction of judgment for myself, I knew that there was something in this for me. It was very loud and clear that there was going to be something that was here for me. But I noticed where I was holding positions on things that maybe I hadn't even consciously chosen, or where I was holding positions on things that really don't matter. And for some reason I have a really strong opinion about this. I noticed the places where I do actually have a very strong thought on something and where I do feel really clean. So that was an interesting thing that it was revealed to me where I actually do have a very specific perspective. I did a video inside the expansion room to everybody about here's what makes my perspective possibly different. And this is where I stand right now. That happened because of this hypothesis. But another thing that happened because of this hypothesis is something that really pinged my intuition. And guys, I trust my intuition above all else. Before I even knew that I was trusting my intuition, I've been trusting my intuition. I have made decisions that anybody else who looked at it could say, that is crazy. And my whole life, I've built my life, I've built my business, my education, everything that I have done, my decision about not having children, everything has been intuition, my decision to leave my marriage last year. All of it has been based on my intuition telling me what to do at any given time. So my intuition definitely has a very strong sense of what is right for me, wrong for me. I suppose you could say good, bad, but what I really say is my preference. What is my preference? What is going to be the outcome that will create the best preferences for me? I listen to my intuition. And this hypothesis revealed to me a place where I have been without my knowledge fully, sometimes a little bit with knowledge, where I'm like, that maybe doesn't feel good. I slowly was influenced over time into performing a version of myself that wasn't quite true, that wasn't quite me, that felt misaligned, all in the really under the guise of becoming something better, becoming some new version of me that really didn't feel that good to me. It brought a lot of cool things, but it really didn't feel that good. And so I want to make a line in the sand for myself. And I wrote a Substack article about this the other day, and I think we might pop this video from this podcast up on Substack too. That I don't want to do many of the things that I feel pressured to do right now. And I don't want to do many of the things that I actually have been actively doing right now because they are misaligned with who I am, what I truly believe, and the direction that I feel like I am going and that the world is going. And this is where why I want to share this with you. And I'm going to loop back around to this, okay? Where the direction of the world is going and why what I'm about to share with you, I really think business owners listen up, or anybody who wants to enjoy your life, wants to enjoy making money, wants to live in an abundant era in the next so many years in this new AI era, I think you need to hear this because things are changing. And I have not been quiet about this, but things are changing. And I think that this hypothesis that I come up came up with and the subsequent feelings that I had that led to this decision are a result of my intuitive sense of what is happening in the world. And me, like you, probably, if you're listening to this podcast, you're an early adopter because I speak from a place of seeing things before the rest of the world is ready, almost always. So, you too, I want you to understand you're a person who is seeing things before the rest of the world is ready. That does not mean hesitate. That means go. That means start educating yourself, which you're doing by listening to this podcast. Start implementing some of these things now because the people who are at the head of the game are the people who are going to pan out in a in a positive way when in terms of income. And I'm speaking, you guys, I'm speaking specifically through the lens of business here on this podcast. So there's always this income spin. Know that this also just will improve your life in so many ways, okay? Because it's all connected, none of it is separate. So here's my confession: I do not want to be an influencer. I do not want to be a person of influence. I do not desire to paint some perfect picture of myself online. I do not desire to tuck myself into specific corners of my house so that I can go and do videos so that my house looks prettier than what it actually is. I do love my house and I have designed my house in such a way that I love most corners of it. However, I do not want to do that ridiculous shit. I do not want to see many of the things that I see my colleagues doing online. I don't want to go to influencer parties where we record content together that we put out onto social media. It just does not feel good to my soul. It just does not ring true in my heart of how I want to be spending my time, how I want to be contributing to the world. And so when I realized this, now notice, know that this is not like a reeling railing against things that anybody else is doing. People can do what they do, and I recognize that there is much success in terms of followership when you do these things online, and that there's many very, very good, strong business reasons to do it. So it might be that you don't want to do this either, or that, but it might be that you do want to do this, okay? But for me, this influenced version of me, this version of me who felt like I had to put on some kind of show in my own home, this version of me who could not show up as real and authentic. And real and authentic, by the way, is me desiring to 100% go stay at the Ritz-Carlton hotel and freaking wake up with those sheets and have the welcome tray when I stayed there, the welcome tray that they gave me that had figs and all of these beautiful fruits on it. It was like, ugh, it was the freaking best. I desire to stay at as many Ritz-Carleton hotels as I possibly can. So I'm not saying that I don't desire to have a beautiful big life. I also like to sleep in a tent. I like to go to Mount St. Helens and go climbing with my husband. I love to have s'mores on a campfire the very next day. I might want to go stay at the nicest freaking hotel in town. I want to go eat at In N Out Burger sometimes. I also want to go eat at Conn here in Portland, which is a Michelin, not maybe it's not a Michelin. He's a James Beard award-winning uh chef who was on top chef. Like, it's amazing food. It's an amazing experience. I want all of it. I want to have many experiences in this life. I want to have a lovely, beautiful home that I love waking up in every morning with gorgeous sheets, and it just feels so good to wake up every day knowing that I have work that I'm contributing to the world with. That's what I want. I don't necessarily want to have a house with a butler. I don't want another random person living in my house with me. But the interesting thing that I realized in this, if I didn't have to be right all the time, my life would drastically improve. Like I had made myself, I put myself in this corner with my business and with my work and work as a life coach at some point. I called myself that. It's like coaching, whatever. In this work, I put myself in this corner mentally of having to continue to somehow uphold some ideal that I felt like I was constantly not quite living up to. And it was leaving me in a space of feeling like an imposter or like I had to put on something. And I say all of this one because it's just setting me free. And I want to say it and I I because I'm feeling it, and I always know when to trust my intuition to share something out loud. And so I feel like this needs to be spoken because I'm not the only one. I know I'm not the only one. If it's happening for me, it's happening for somebody else. And there's other people who feel like in this social media era of getting all the followers, we got to put on some show, we got to pretend that we love that we're dancing in our kitchen on a day when we are literally crying into a plate of mashed potatoes because it feels like everything's fucking falling apart and the sales aren't going well, or whatever's not going well, or we, you know, don't like the job that we're doing and we're trying to get out of it or whatever. But then there we are, just fucking dancing on social media. Woo! Shaking out my nervous system, baby. Yes, I do shake out my nervous system all of the time. And I I love that stuff. And I dance a lot, my husband will tell you. I dance through the house all the time. I do all of my nervous system practices. But that whole performative thing, I'm fucking done. I am not doing it. I'm not doing it anymore unless it genuinely, it's gotta be genuine. It's real or bust for me. And that's just the truth of it. And of course, there were moments where it 100% was real. It was the experience that I was working toward, and it was really good. I I did all kinds of fun things in the past few years, and I loved it, and I want more of some of those things. But I also now have new knowledge. That's the with this. If I didn't have to be right all the time, I'm like, oh, I'm trying to prove myself right about things that I don't actually care about anymore. I did. I did there for a while. I thought I was striving for that, but then I had it, and I was like, dude, how annoying. You've got like five people constantly in your house all the time. Are you ever alone? That is not for me. I am a cave dweller. Do not have, I do not want people living in my house all the time. I do not want this experience. This does not feel good to me. This is not for me. So, all this to say. How did we get here? You know, like how do we how do we get here? How did we get to this point of feeling like we have to uphold this picture of our lives, especially this is in the coaching industry, but this can be in other things too. Many people who are doing many things online are feeling like this is what you have to do if you have an online business, this it's just what you gotta do. Just buck up buttercup, put on your dancing shoes, go shake your hips for the camera, go pop your boobs out so that you get more views. The influencer era has sold us this very specific ideal. It's like this millionaire lifestyle, this perfectly healed nervous system, this optimized body, this way of working toward being 200 years old. I don't know that I really I don't really desire. Do I desire to be 200 years old? Do I want to optimize my health to that point? I guess maybe, but not if everybody else isn't there with me. That's like, I always think about vampires, man. That's like a miserable life. You're just watching people live and die. Those are destinations that somebody else chose that isn't even real. The point is not to optimize your nervous system so that it's perfect. The point is to create a beautiful window of tolerance that you can dance in. Anyone who studied with me, you know that. You know this. You know that I believe this. The whole point of life is so that we experience contrasts, so that we experience the fun, the play, the joy, the ease, which feels even more playful, more joyous, more easeful when we experience the things that feel a little bit harder, that feel like a little bit of a struggle. We want both. We do not just want one of those things. You would be miserable. Studies prove it. If you just float through life, you will become miserable. It's not what people, that's not what people want. And when I say fuck around and get paid, and when I talk about like having being joyous and having fun and just living your life with ease, you're gonna, you're gonna want to find some struggle. Like we do want that. We want the challenge. We want to work toward excellence. You want that. Your soul wants that. It didn't come here. Maybe some people did just come to be a fish, but I don't think that most of us did. Most of us came because we want to experience what it's like like to be on this earth, what it's like to be in a human body. So I think that in particular, the wellness industry, coaches and healers and fitness, we all really got swept up in this moment. And you can see it in the technology that we created. We created the aura rings and the Apple Watches and all of these biometric tools to try to optimize our health. That's a reflection of our consciousness, guys. So is social media. This optimal number of followers, I gotta get to a million, now I gotta get to four million, now I gotta grow it. That constant striving, that ideal is a reflection of our consciousness. We created that because we felt like we had to be better. But here's what I want you to hear: this is what's changing, and it's gonna be big and it's already happening. But again, we're futurists, so we're a little ahead of the game. The tide is turning because once everybody is thinking something and once everybody is doing something, something quietly starts to shift away from that because the pendulum is always swinging and it has swung. Could it get any further to the influencer side of things? Seriously, the ideal that you're living up to is can I get to a million followers? What the fuck? Like, and it's great, by the way, people who do, and it's really, really great. And would I love that if that was me? You know, I might we might be having a different conversation, but that's not been my life path for a reason, right? The tide is turning because people don't want that anymore. It's not even, it's almost becoming for the people of influence, of influence, it's becoming almost a commodity. It's like, so it's gonna swing back. It's gonna swing back, and it already is swinging back. People are tired of it, they don't want the fake ideal anymore. And the people who are who have been striving for that, they already did it, they've done it, and they're gonna come start doing something else. And everybody's gonna follow along with them too, because they're tired of it. They did it, it's done. Let's go do something else. So here's where it's all going. And again, I'm predicting based on what my intuition is saying, that the world feels really unsteady right now. We are in this big moment of change. We've got AI coming in. There's this whole AI is taking our jobs. By the way, AI is not taking your jobs. Your jobs are getting replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI. So if you're afraid of AI taking your jobs, go learn AI so that you can be one of the people who uses AI to replace the jobs. This has been happening for all of human history. It happened with the printing press. It happened with the plow. It happened with the it happened with the internet. It will continue to happen throughout all of human history. So you can cry all day about your jobs being taken away, and or you can just go learn the tools that are replacing the job and be ahead of the game. Choose your path. Choose your own adventure, my friends. But as when things are in this moment of incredible unsteadiness, which I predict will be quite a stint here. We're gonna be in a stint of unsteadiness for a while. People are going to begin to reach for things that feel true. And so that's already happening. Astrology is booming, booming. Go look at social media. It's filled with astrologers, witches, psychics, anything that helps people to understand what the F is going on, anything that can bring people an understanding, help them feel some peace, help them feel some ease, help them feel some safety. And when you can't trust the outside sources, all of the things that we felt like we could trust before, from our government to our jobs to all of the things we suddenly feel like we can trust nothing. There's only one place that all of those are eventually going to go. So now, right now we've got astrology and all of those, which I'm telling you, if you teach any of these things, go make your bank because people are looking for it right now. If you're not, uh, that's a missed opportunity for you right now. After that, what is next? What is next for all the people who think that they can find their answers in astrology that think that they can find all of their answers in a psychic reading? All of the people who are really good astrologers, who are really good psychics, who do any human design work, what do you? You know what? Do you know? It's not about the tool, it's about the person using the tool. It's about intuition. It's about the source. It's about humans learning how to trust themselves. Authenticity is going to be the most valuable. I'm I will stand on this all day. Authenticity is not a trend. It is the re predictable response to a world that feels unsteady. So helping people to listen to themselves, helping people to know themselves, helping people to trust their intuition, create intuitive development, that's gonna be the next wave. Because what is the opposite? If the pendulum's always swinging, what is the opposite of being influenced? Ooh, could that be what uh all of us women know? Sovereignty. Sovereignty, self-trust, listening to self, intuitive knowing. We are returning back to, away from this influence, and we are returning back to a collective way of communicating. You're seeing people starting already to get back into groups, getting back in person. All of that happened, and we are swinging right back to that. So here's what I want you to think about. And don't freak out, because this is not about blowing everything that you everything that you have up. It's not about completely shifting every single thing about the work that you do. And maybe it is if you're if you're like, oh my gosh, my work is all in influencer stuff. I'm teaching people how to grow on social media. Sure, that's going to be okay for a little while. I really think that, and maybe, maybe it stays around for a long time, perhaps, but I think regardless, it's going to change. The way that we're communicating on there is rapidly changing. The things that people are wanting are rapidly changing. What I really think is that this is about understanding the stance where you are moving from with your offers. So it's more about are you creating from a place of supporting people in using their discernment and knowing their power and moving from that place and really understanding who they are, what they do, what they want from the world? Because think about people who are losing their jobs. That's what they're going to need, is an understanding of what's my value in the world separate from this job. So where are you personally? It's going to be your orientation as a human, your orientation as a business owner. Am I doing things so that I look smart, so that I look like I have it all figured out? Am I doing things that I look like an influencer and leading in that way? I would consider maybe possibly starting to deconstruct that because people are going to be looking for less performative and more from somebody who is in it with them, somebody who truly understands. And so I think a lot of you who listen to this podcast and who are kind of floating around in the world that I have been in, the healing world, self-development, I want you to really see what a leg up you already have on so much of the world and how you have gifts that can be given right now in this moment and be really thinking future forward. So stop selling the optimization of a perfect life because one, it doesn't exist. And two, people are going to want it less and less and less. They want to love the life that they have, which is what you have already learned and all your self-work, right? We've already learned this. Like that's actually what matters. Oh, I never wanted that at all. But we're about to see a big ass wave of people who wake up to that. And they're gonna need you. They're gonna need you. So start offering something that is very real, that is very tangible, a sense for people to feel something that is real and true. The world will always need coaches and healers and creatives. It's always going to need you. That is always going to be needed. People thought that all of that was going to go away. Creativity, all of the creatives were going to go away back at the advent of the internet. Well, then we had graphic designers. And now graphic designers are crying, AI is taking my jobs. Well, you didn't even exist before we had the internet. Everybody was crying about taking their paintbrushes. So just understand that the next wave is always there. Human creativity will always be there. And what is, I mean, do you want to use your creativity? Here's a real question for you. Do you want to use your creativity to paint a perfect picture of a life that you have to continuously strive for and go put yourself in a corner of your house so that you can do a perfect Instagram live or do you want to get to live your actual life and support people from that place? So this hypothesis of mine, it really deconstructed a lot of things for me, has had me thinking a lot about this, and will continue to have me thinking a lot about this and how I want to build what I am building, where I am building from, who I am inviting into this experience with me, where it is that I am contributing, how I'm saying this out loud in the most open way possible so that I can free myself and untether the name of my previous podcast. I can untether myself from any and all expectations because some of my clients won't come with me on this. Some of my clients will continue down that journey because it's the journey that they might desire to be on. That might be the right place for them right now. And that's great. We've all got our place where we want to be, but that's not what feels true in my heart. It's not what feels true in my soul. So my version of a good life continues to evolve, just like it will continue. It has always continued to evolve. What feels good to me right now is being so real and so authentic and sharing everything that I learn along the way with this community and in even closer proximity and teaching the things that I've learned inside of the expansion room. So I love that you're here with me. I love that you're learning along with me. I'll continue to share from this very true and real authentic place. As honestly, I always have. It's so funny too when we have these aha's, and then we look back and we're like, I was just saying the same thing all along, but it felt like this, it always feels like this big, whoa, that's happening. So I know you know what I mean. So there's also a full article on Substack where I outlined some of my thoughts here. And I'll continue to write in that space. And we are always deep diving on these things in lives inside of the expansion room as well. So my number one message to this podcast is trust yourself. Listen to yourself. And if you want to make money in the coming five, 10 years, start teaching other people how to do it too in your very special, unique way, and you're gonna thrive. I truly believe that you're gonna thrive. If you learn some marketing expertise, again, that's what I'm so passionate about teaching it in the expansion room. Learn a little marketing expertise, get a little sales under your under your belts, start to feel safe in those areas where you don't, whether it's marketing or sales or the tech, and you will soar in this era. And I want that for you in whatever way you want it for yourself. Sending you so much love. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, go leave me a review. Go to Apple Podcasts, scroll all the way down to the bottom and leave me a special note. You don't actually have to have, by the way, an Apple phone in order to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and it would be the greatest gift in the world for me. If you want to join me in the expansion room, you can go to genlist.com slash expansion and hop in. I would love to see you in there with us. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.