Ep 21. Why education isn’t the only way to provide value

Hello and a very warm welcome back to Quiet Confidence with myself, Anita Popat.

Today we’re gonna talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, and that’s value.

I think sometimes we get all caught up in what is actually valuable and it stops so many of us, including me from showing up in a way that we actually want.

So if you’ve ever looked at your content and thought, is this even valuable? Or if you’ve held back from sharing something because you didn’t think it was educational enough or profound enough, then this episode is definitely for you.

If you’re new here, hello and are very warm welcome to Quiet Confidence with myself, Anita Popat. This podcast is for introverts who want to market their thing without changing who they are.

So the whole perception of value, thing’s been on my mind lately because recently I was asked to attend a networking event as a speaker and usually I like to teach something at these things.

So I asked the organiser if there was any subjects she wanted me to talk about, and she came back to me and said, the ladies are actually interested in your business journey and your why, and I was like, what?

If I’m being honest, my brain went into, oh shoot, my story’s not even that interesting. Like, who the hell wants to hear my story? Because there’s literally no dramatic moment in it.

You know the kind of stories I’m talking about, the ones where someone loses everything and then they hit rock bottom and then they make their way back to six figures.

That’s not my business journey at all. My journey into what I do now literally started with ah, okay, let’s try it and see what happens moment.

Mine starts with getting married like 15 years ago now, and being bored in the evenings because suddenly there was no wedding planning to do.

And I wasn’t gonna sit there and watch Sky Sports all evening with my hubby. So I became a henna artist, which meant going to lots of henna parties in the evenings and later started making personalised wooden gifts and hand lettered prints for friends who were having babies.

I just put them on Facebook and then later Instagram, and without really trying to build a business, I ended up with a product range and thousands of loyal clients throughout the years. So that was my side hustle, five to nine.

Meanwhile, at the day job as a marketing manager, I was hosting networking events, and these social media consultants would kind of pop up and start talking about their work, and I’d listen, thinking, oh my God, that would be my dream job.

And I left it at that, because even though I’d been doing all my online business stuff for a good 10 years, I obviously thought I didn’t have the qualifications to do it because I didn’t have anything on paper.

And yes, I’m that old, like social media only just came out as I finished my marketing degree, 

It wasn’t until I hit like 13 years at the company I was with at the time, and I literally had a, if I don’t leave now, I’m gonna be here for the rest of my life moment. So I left with absolutely no backup plan. I went to a business planning workshop the following week, and I obviously ended up helping everyone there with their social media strategy and when we had to go up and present our business plan.

At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I thought, okay, I’m just going go full time with my side hustle and see what happens. So I started presenting that and the workshop leader looked at me and said. This needs to stay as a side hustle. You need to be a social media trainer ’cause this is your calling.

I looked at, her, like what? But me being me was like, okay, let’s give it a try. And literally in that moment I changed my business plan from making personalized prints, to doing personalized social media strategy. Six years later, here we are.

Honestly, looking back, it feels like the most unremarkable journey ever. Like there’s no rock bottom moment. There’s no dramatic pivot. Just one thing naturally leading to another while I was living my life.

So when I was prepping for this talk, I kept thinking, oh, it’s not interesting enough, and I kept questioning whether anyone would really want to hear this.

But then as I was working through my own kind of story anxiety, something clicked I started to wonder, what if I’ve been looking at this all wrong?

What if the thing I’m worried about, the lack of drama is exactly what makes it worth hearing.

Because let’s be real, most of us don’t live those Hollywood transformation stories that we see, splashed around social media.

We have moments of clarity that happen in random workshops on a Tuesday morning, we build businesses from evening boredom projects and side hustles that accidentally become our main thing. And we make decisions not from desperation, but from knowing that it’s time for something different.

That’s everything I did. And maybe just maybe that quote unquote boring evolution is exactly what someone needed to hear to [00:04:00] finally give themselves permission to value their own winding path.

The talk sold out in two days, which tells me that people did actually want to hear what I had to say. 

On the day, I have to say I really loved it. It reminded me of the power of in-person connections and the q and a at the end was brilliant.

I always leave time for that because I secretly love the thrill of not knowing what you’re gonna get.

This group of ladies actually asked some really thoughtful questions around things like imposter syndrome, how to know if for potential client isn’t gonna be a good fit.

How I plan my week to fit my own marketing in. Um. Top three things people should focus on in marketing and lots of other like really juicy topics to get our teeth into. And honestly, I could do q and a all day. I love it.

What I want you to notice about the questions that are being asked is that none of these questions were actually about any tactical steps that I took to build my business.

They weren’t actually asking for a roadmap or a framework or a checklist. were asking me about all that human stuff, the confidence stuff, the how do you actually do this stuff? All the messy, uncertain, am I doing this right? Stuff that we’re all dealing with. 

And that’s when it really hit me. Some of us have this set idea of what value actually means. I think most of us, myself included, have been conditioned to believe that value equals education and that every time we show up we need to be teaching something.

We need to be dropping those knowledge bombs, sharing frameworks, giving people something that they can implement. And don’t get me wrong, education is definitely valuable. Of course it is. But it’s not the only way to provide value.

But value can show up in so many different ways.

Yes, there’s educational value, and that’s the stuff that gets saved and screenshot and implemented and that’s brilliant when you’ve got something tactical to share.

But there’s also inspirational value, which is when you share your story, your journey, your perspective, and this kind of content makes someone think, oh, maybe I can do this too. Or, oh, maybe this path is okay, even though it doesn’t look like everyone else’s. And that’s what I think my talk provided, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.

There’s also entertainment value, and don’t worry. That doesn’t mean like you gotta dance around or be a comedian. sometimes people just need a break from all the [00:06:00] heavy stuff they need to see your personality, your humor, the way only you can tell a story that makes ’em smile or relate or feel something.

And then there’s a value of connection. So that’s when you’re vulnerable enough to share all those messy bits, the things that you’re actually experiencing, which mean that when someone reads it they feel like, ah, I’m not navigating this on my own. There’s someone else who gets it.

There’s permission value as well. So that’s when you share your choices, your boundaries, your way of doing things that goes against the grain.

Like when I talk about not posting every day or choosing energy over reach, it gives someone else permission to make different choices too, even when everyone else is saying something different.

I think what happens, especially for us introverts, is that we look at all these loud people sharing their stories and personalities and big energy, and we think, oh, well I can’t do that. I’m not interesting enough, I’m not entertaining enough. So we end up defaulting to education because it feels safer, right?

I mean, we can hide behind teaching. We can show up as the expert rather than ourselves, but all of those amazing stories. The reflections, the messy human bits that don’t fit into a neat of process. That’s often the most valuable stuff because it’s real, it’s relatable.

It’s the thing that’s gonna make someone stop scrolling and think, oh my gosh, she really gets who I am. 

And if you look at your own stats, I bet the posts that get the most engagement, the most saves and the most dms aren’t your educational ones.

They’re probably the ones where you’re just being real about your experience and sharing what you are going through.

Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is show up as a human who’s figuring it out along with everyone else.

Your ordinary moments, those little shifts, they actually resonate more than the big dramatic transformations anyway, because most people’s lives look more like yours than they look like a Hollywood movie.

So if you’ve been holding back from sharing your story, because it’s not quote unquote dramatic enough like I was, or if you’ve been overthinking your content because you don’t think it’s inspirational enough, I want you to ask yourself this. 

What if value isn’t just about what you teach, but also about how you make people feel like,

do they feel seen when they read your content?

Do they feel less alone? Do they [00:08:00] feel inspired to keep going?

Do they feel like they found someone who actually gets it?

Because that’s value too.

That’s actually some of the most important value you can provide

The thing about different types of value is that different people need to see different things at different times. So for example, someone who’s just starting out might need educational value.

They’re obviously gonna need the how to, the frameworks, the step by step guidance.

But someone who’s been in it for a while and is maybe feeling burnt out, they don’t need another framework. They need inspiration. They need permission to do things differently.

They need to hear like your story about building a business that doesn’t follow the rules.

Same as someone who’s maybe having a wobble about whether they’re cut out for this entrepreneurial world. They don’t need tactics at that time. They need connection, and they need to know that it’s okay for them to feel like that and that you’ve got through it so they can get through it too.

[So if you’re only showing up with one type of value, and I’m guessing it’s educational, you’re missing out on, connecting with so many people who probably need what you’ve got to offer, just not in the way that you think they need it. 

But the longer you are in business, the more you start to think, ah, I need to show up as the expert, and I need to share more educational content. I feel like that’s what happened to me in the middle anyway.

And then slowly without you even realizing it, you start to edit out all the bits that actually make you you and really relatable, all of those amazing bits of inspiration, connection, and permission giving value that your people are actually craving.

And this talk really reminded me that what you might think is gonna be valuable to your audience might not be that and they might be craving something else. 

So here’s what I want you to take away from this episode. Firstly, expand your definition of value. So it’s not just education, it’s inspiration, entertainment, connection, and permission to, and all of these are equally important.

Secondly, your origin story is really valuable and your audience want to see it. They want to see how you got to where you are now so that they can support you going forward. thirdly, pay attention to what people actually respond to, not what you think they should respond to.

And lastly, just give yourself permission to show up in different ways. You don’t have to be in teaching mode all the time.

Sometimes the most [00:10:00] valuable thing you can do is just to be human and share what’s on your mind.

Easy, right? If you’re sitting there thinking, okay, Anita I get it, but I still need to know exactly how to translate this into my marketing.

Luckily for you, if you’re listening to this in real time, I’m actually starting a new group of Silent Storm on Monday the 13th of October, and this is exactly the kind of thing we work on inside. It’s my signature experience where we get really clear on who you are, what makes you different. We map out your trust bridge so that your audience know exactly what they need to hear at each stage.

We create a content rhythm that feels sustainable for you, but also attracts your sweet spot clients. But more important than that, we work on your quite confidence.

It’s really important for me that you leave with that inner belief that what you have to say matters in whichever way you want to say it.

Because the truth is the strategy is a easy bit. I can give you frameworks and content plans and all of that, but if you don’t believe that your version of value is actually valuable, then you’re never gonna show up consistently in a way that connects.

And Silent Storm is about both. It’s about the strategy and the confidence, the what to say and the belief that is worth saying.

So if that sounds like something that you need right now, I’ll pop a link in the show notes

You can find all the details there. I would love to work with you.

Honestly, if you’ve been holding back from sharing content because you don’t think you’re interesting enough or you’re overthinking every piece of content you create, then this is definitely for you.

Because I’m telling you, you’ve got so much value to offer. Maybe you just need someone to help you see it and then show you how to share it in a way that feels like you. And that’s exactly what I’d love to help you do.

I hope this episode has shifted something for you, and more importantly, I hope it’s reminded you that your ordinary, unremarkable, no big dramatic moment story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear.

So share it. 

Until next time, keep building your quiet confidence so you can make a loud impact with your work. Speak soon.