Girl, Stop Apologizing: A Shame-Free Plan for Embracing and Achieving Your Goals(7)

As I started to narrow my focus and get more consistent with my content, a theme for my blog—and ultimately my business—began to emerge. I wanted to focus on the pursuit of a more beautiful life and a happier existence. I started to gain a small following and garner some attention. Then I received a few offers. Could I talk about decorating for Thanksgiving on the local morning news? Of course I could! Would I consider incorporating this brand of eggs into a recipe on my site for $250? You’re darn right, I would! Could I wear those shoes in an upcoming Instagram post in exchange for a $100 Visa gift card? Absolutely!

The offers came in steadily, and even though they were nowhere near what I was making as an event planner, there was gold in them there hills! Brands had money to spend, and they were looking to spend it with people like me. Slowly but surely, over the next nineteen months, I grew the revenue stream for the blog and took on fewer and fewer event clients until I could make the transition completely. By then I had scaled back to a part-time intern as my only source of help, and when I decided to focus on the blog completely, I knew I needed some professionals. My goals for myself have always been lofty, even if I didn’t feel comfortable telling people what they were. I have no idea how to play small at anything. An excessive imagination plus a lifelong desire to prove my worth through achievement means I’m always aiming for the sun.

You know that expression “Go big or go home”? I never go home.

If you give me a wiener dog puppy for my birthday, I’m going to . . . well, number one, I’m going to be surprised. I’ve never asked for a wiener dog so I’m not sure what this gift even means, but I’ll embrace it wholeheartedly. I’ll name him something elegant, like Reginald Wadsworth, the eighth Duke of Hartford, and it won’t be long until I’m imagining building a small farm outside Phoenix where I can raise my championship dachshunds for competition.

The point is . . .

As soon as I decided to grow the blog side of the business, I knew I needed staff to help me do it. I hired editors to help me write and photographers to take gorgeous photos and an assistant to run my office. As our content grew, so did the fan base. We worked hard and paid attention to trends, and as the audience grew so did the revenue. It was fantastic. It was a company built on my reputation and, ultimately, the ideal that these fans had created about me.

Allow me to take a side step here and explain something about celebrities or social influencers that I didn’t understand at the time. Right now, while I’m writing this book, I have just over a million fans on social media. But at that earlier point in my business history I probably had ten thousand fans on Facebook, and Instagram didn’t exist yet. Regardless, the deal with any sort of fame is just as true today as it was back then, and here it is: You don’t know me. You only know your perception of me. The same is true for The Rock or Oprah or a Kardashian or the president. Even when someone is as transparent as possible—and I would argue that, between pictures of my stretch marks going viral and my last book where I admitted everything from abusing alcohol to being bad at sex, I lead a very transparent public life—even then you don’t know the actual person. Not because they’re necessarily secretive, but because you perceive them through the lens you’ve created.

So, for instance, if you first started following me on Instagram because of a picture of me looking extra stylish, you might think of me as stylish and on-trend. If you came on board during the aforementioned stretch-marks photo explosion, then you might identify with me as a mother or someone who has battled with body-image issues. Whatever you perceive about me (or anyone you don’t truly know) has way more to do with the box you’ve put us in than who we actually are. This is all totally natural and fine, unless that person you admire steps outside the lane you put them into.

For me, that lane was motherhood. And here’s where the whole double-life thing I mentioned earlier comes into play.

I had a legion of fans who were moms (and I still do to this day), but at the time I hadn’t publicly talked about my company. It wasn’t that I was ashamed; I was simply so focused on creating content that I never stopped to explain how it had all come into the world. I assumed everyone would realize I must have had help. I was creating six intricately produced blog posts every single week, and I had two small children. Of course I had help! But for whatever reason, that wasn’t apparent to most people, and when they realized the truth, some of them were pissed. And ruthless. I don’t even recall what it was for, but I know it was a Facebook post where I talked about being a mom. In the comments someone asked when I had time to “do it all.” It didn’t even occur to me to lie.

“Oh, I don’t do it all,” I blithely typed back. “My husband is really involved, and we have a nanny who helps with the boys while I’m at work.”

The internet exploded.

“What kind of mother lets someone else raise her children?”

“Only a selfish bitch would choose work over family!”

“Must be nice to lay around all day while some other woman raises your kids.”

The vitriol was immediate and intense. Some fans were disheartened to learn that I had help in producing the content. Many women were very upset that I had a job outside the home. Others were apoplectic that I had a nanny. I can understand in retrospect that they had perceived me to be a stay-at-home mom, likely because that’s who they were. We tend to see people not as they are but as we are. When I stepped outside the lane they had built for me, they felt cheated or lied to.