had a neat experience this week: got salesy enough that I got a bit of pushback from my friends! this is a huge win, since I'd previously been kind of holding back in a fearful unable-to-play kind of way. movement that never finds the real limits.
Getting salesy enough to get pushback, and rethinking teacher status
16 tweets · May 2024 · 114 likes · 0 retweets · read on Twitter
as I started getting into posting about my course last week, I noticed flashbacks to middle school when I didn't know how to flirt and felt uncool, in relation to feeling like I didn't know how to sell even tho I've gotten first customers many times!
and the voices in me were saying: "I shouldn't even be here" "I shouldn't be trying to get sales" "...it doesn't feel like a safe learning environment, for some reason" but then I noticed that in naming that, it shifted. like "oh, my twitter scene is actually pretty safe"
and so then I fucked around... and I found out! and I feel SO GLAD! to have stopped holding myself back, so I could find the actual limits in the environment.
here's what happened: one friend, who I'd already been thinking seemed maybe a good fit for the course, DM'd me saying she felt like I ramped up from "nothing" to "pay $200" too quickly, without really building credibility first with lower-cost offers, writing, etc
and in particular, that I was making a claim to teacher status, more than my actual credentials. rather than more like "hey I'm going to create a learning context for this and share some stuff"
I reflected on this and noticed a few things. one was that I was getting a bit of... audience capture? no, algorithm capture? sort of 🤔 my dating/courtship takes fairly readily go viral, compared to other stuff that I tweet about. but so far virality ≠ sales anyway so 🤷♀️
the conversations also prompted a shift in the course framing. it's not really about being graceful. if anything, skillful Mating Dancing is about being willing to be awkward rather than going along with something that doesn't feel right to you. hence:
I also reflected on my qualifications. They're a bit patchwork, and have very different flavours. I have a few experiences of my own (janky and beautiful) and a few from talking to friends, but it'll be decades before I could even possibly say "it lasts"!
until I have 100 more of these conversations and see how things play out over years... with regard to my experience re courtship, my current role is less like a teacher, certainly not an elder ...at best, more like an older brother. a bit ahead on a similar path
but in parallel, I'm also wearing my "Non-Naive Trust-Dancing" hat, where I do feel like a spiritual teacher: I'm conveying a deep insight that I've had that has transformed my relationship to almost every interaction and made me dramatically more sane.
it's a weird mashup, especially because the NNTD framework is stuff I'm very confident about in part because a bunch is grounded in self-evident tautologies of how trust necessarily works (but that most memeplexes/cultures constantly implicitly deny)
anyway, recognizing this tension is helping me see why it's been confusing to figure out how to talk about the level of experience I'm bringing but inspired by the convo with my friend, I added a paragraph to the site making it clear I don't have impressive results yet!
and I'm going to experiment with more sharing my story and confusions and where I'm at with all of it, and what I'm hoping to learn from working with people, and so on ...and less guru vibes (but still a little, as a treat)
huh, as I say "guru", I'm reminded: this course is definitely about learning self-trust but one of the main guru traps is averted because the feedback loop for whether the person is in touch with their self-trust doesn't go through me. malcolmocean.com/2024/01/guru-d…
but also key to avoiding guru dynamics is A) having friends who will call you on your bullshit and (can't skip this step) B) listening to them so thanks friends 🙏