In this episode, I talk about using the emotion of cringe as a content strategy. You have to embrace feeling cringy if you want to grow your business.
Learn 3 ways to use the cringe challenge to embrace newness in your business so you can find creativity and freedom in your content creation.
Join the Webinar: Increase Your Sales & Audience By 25% Using Profitable Content, happening Tuesday, June 4, 2024 at 5pm Pacific Time. Click here to sign up for free.
Transcript:
What is up, y’all? If you haven’t signed up for my upcoming webinar, I want to invite you now. I’m going to teach you how to increase your sales and audience by 25% using profitable content. Learn why great content doesn’t always equal sales and the simple steps you can take to shift your content from being likable to profitable.
Creating content that actually gets sales calls and signups is simple. It’s not tedious, it doesn’t have to be mind-blowingly creative, and you don’t have to hire a team to help you. What slows down your process from generating revenue is overthinking, overanalyzing, and trying to get it perfect.
Sign up for my webinar where I’m sharing the simplest content creation strategy in the industry. I’ll be teaching you how to build trust, create more effective calls to action, and build an audience that wants to buy. Inside my free training, you’ll learn:
- How to shift your mindset away from metrics and focus on conversions.
- The difference between audience-building content and revenue-generating content.
- My four-step process to create profitable content quickly that feels honest, authentic, and you.
This masterclass is happening June 4th at 5 PM Pacific Time. Sign up for my webinar.
I cannot wait to see you there.
Speaker: [00:01:00]
My name is Catalina Del Carmen, and I am a wife, mother of two, daughter of immigrants, and a rule-breaking business coach for women of color, coaches, creatives, and service professionals. I spent years trying to figure out the online business game, creating fashion blogs, YouTube channels, Instagram pages, email lists—all the things—with little or nothing to show for it. Now, I run a growing multiple six-figure coaching business, keeping things radically simple so I can spend more time with my babies than my business.
Inside my programs, Show Up Real and Show Up and Lead Mastermind, I teach my clients how to build an online community using authentic, revenue-generating content that doesn’t require them to be everywhere. Whether it’s your first four figures in business or six figures in my mastermind, less is more when you are committed to growing your impact and revenue at the same time. In this show, I tell the whole mother-effing truth about what it takes to build and scale an online business. I don’t gatekeep. I don’t tell you half the truth. I keep it real, and I will challenge you to do it as well.
Welcome to Show Up Real podcast. [00:03:00]
Speaker: [00:03:00]
What is up, y’all? Welcome back to Show Up Real podcast. I am still getting used to saying Show Up Real podcast, but I’m so excited for the change. It’s been a long time coming. Y’all, I’m really excited about today’s episode. I want to talk about using cringe—the emotion of cringe—as a content strategy.
I’ve found, by coaching a lot of women and coaching myself a shit ton, that we have to embrace feeling cringe. If you want to grow your business, if you want to scale, if you want to really just grow, you have to embrace feeling cringy.
The reason I really started thinking about this episode was because we have a challenge inside my group program called Show Up Real. Show Up Real is my content marketing program, and inside that program, we do a challenge called Cringe Challenge. It’s a challenge where I basically challenge my clients to do double, or sometimes triple, or even quadruple the amount of content they typically put out in a very short period of time.
We usually do something around 40 to 50 pieces of content in two weeks. That’s a whole lot of fucking content. The point is for you to be stunned and be like, “What the fuck? I cannot do this,” but we’ve done it inside the program so many times. I’ve done it even inside my mastermind, and people love this challenge. I love this challenge.
I use Cringe Challenge in my own business for a variety of things. Today, I want to talk about really helping you embrace cringe and helping you embrace the emotions of feeling embarrassed, vulnerable, and awkward, right? Because that is what it feels like when you’re doing new things in your business. When you have never done a strategy and you’re going for it, it is normal and natural for you to feel cringe.
In this podcast episode, I really want to take my stance and invite you to embrace the mother-effing cringe. Okay? Alright. So, let’s start with what is cringe? What the hell do I mean? I get this question a lot.
When I say cringe, I mean a mix of vulnerability, awkwardness, and a little bit of embarrassment. It’s the feeling you get when you make a joke, and nobody laughs. That’s awkward. That doesn’t feel great. It’s the feeling you get when you share something vulnerable with someone, and you’re not sure how they are taking it.
It’s this mix of, “I feel a little exposed.” It doesn’t feel great, but it’s more from this awkward, embarrassed place. When we’re talking about content, what I want you to imagine is a lot of the reasons why people aren’t consistent with their content. A lot of the reasons why people create content that doesn’t work and aren’t willing to try new things or stick with one type of format for a very long time.
Even if it works, it will only work for so long, and you’re going to have to evolve. You’re going to have to change things. When you do, that cringe feeling comes up. When I talk about cringe, I really want you to consider that. Today, I want to share with you how to use Cringe Challenge in your business.
I want to explain how to use it because we have this incredible challenge. We launched with it the last time I opened up the doors to my program, Show Up Real. We had over 150 people join this challenge. It was incredible, and I got an amazing amount of feedback. My clients love it. They get results with it. I get results with it. What I want to talk about today is how to use it in your business.
I’m going to share how to use Cringe Challenge in three different ways for three different types of entrepreneurs, wherever you are in the journey. I’m going to share three examples of how to embrace newness in your business using Cringe Challenge.
The first example I want to share is embracing cringe. It is highly valuable when you are a new marketer. When you are a new marketer, it feels awkward as fuck. You feel like you just don’t know what to say. You’re not sure what you’re supposed to do. You feel like you need to be professional. You feel like you need to look this way and talk that way. The whole thing just feels awkward, right? Because you have this identity of who you are, and now you are a business owner, and you’re supposed to go out there and talk about your business. It can feel awkward as fuck. It’s not natural for us to sell.
Number one, the way to embrace cringe challenge is to post and publish your first idea quickly. If you have an idea to post something and you have time to create it quickly, make that process from idea to publish fast. What stops people from doing that is they will say it feels unintentional, messy, they’ll talk in circles if it’s videos, or they don’t have makeup on—all these reasons.
What I want you to embrace is that’s not the fucking point. The point is you need experience. As a new marketer, you need to go up there and market your business, post things, and practice. Your number one job is to get the word out about your business. That’s your number one job.
The vessel I want you to use is Cringe Challenge. Do your own mini Cringe Challenge with yourself if you have to, and just tell yourself, “I’m supposed to feel cringe. This is going to feel cringe.” Give yourself an amount of time, even if it’s one week, even if it’s three days. For the next three days, allow yourself to throw out all the fucking marketing rules and just experiment.
That’s what we do inside Show Up Real with Cringe Challenge. The point of it is to throw out all these rules in your head of what makes marketing correct, and you just create your own space to feel cringe, play around, and try new shit. I promise you, once you do play around, once you really engage in Cringe Challenge, it feels like freedom. It feels like you can do whatever you want, and it just feels so fun.
As a new marketer, I want you to use Cringe Challenge as an opportunity for you to experiment, to play, to let go of the narratives you have in your head of what you’re supposed to look like, how you’re supposed to sound, what you’re supposed to talk about, and all the rules of what you’re supposed to do.
During Cringe Challenge, you just fucking serve. You just share your wisdom. I don’t care if you’re doing it with a face mask on, on an Instagram Live, or if you’re showing up to LinkedIn with a photo of your kid talking about the importance of—depending on your niche, but it doesn’t matter. The point is that you’re getting out there and getting used to feeling cringe.
That’s the first example I want to share, an
amazing way to use Cringe Challenge for a new marketer. It really helps you evolve quickly, and when you get through that initial new marketer stage, you get to this place where you actually want to show up and market your business. It doesn’t feel as awkward, and you actually embrace it because now it’s fun.
Let’s talk about example number two. This is for an entrepreneur who has been doing this for a minute. Maybe you are consistent with your marketing. Maybe you already have a strategy that is working for you.
You’re in this place where you need to be able to evolve and do new things because you’ve already learned this part of marketing, and now you need to try something new. That is where Cringe Challenge comes in again. As a new marketer, it’s very normal for you to try different things. This is when you feel comfortable enough to say, “Alright, I’m going to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I’m going to challenge myself to feel cringe.”
For example, if you have been doing a lot of lives on Instagram or Facebook, I want you to switch it up and do something that feels different for you. Maybe you need to try more video content that feels unplanned. Maybe you need to do something that you’re not used to doing. If you’re always on Instagram, maybe it’s time to go to LinkedIn. Try a new platform.
One of the best ways to embrace cringe challenge is to embrace new platforms and start over with them. I want to challenge you to try new things with different platforms. For example, if you are a coach who has been on Instagram for a long time, I challenge you to go on TikTok and just be a beginner there. That’s where Cringe Challenge comes in. It’s a great place to be a beginner.
My third example of how to use Cringe Challenge in your business is to try something you haven’t tried before. One example I have is someone who has never done a launch. You’ve never done a challenge or anything like that. You’re always one-on-one. One great example of Cringe Challenge is to launch a new product in a way that feels very cringe.
Try something completely different. If you’ve never done a webinar, do a webinar. Try something that feels awkward. When you try something new, you’re going to feel vulnerable. You’re going to feel awkward. Embrace those feelings and get comfortable with them because that’s what’s going to get you to the next level.
Okay, I hope this was helpful for you. I hope you embrace the cringe. I hope you join my free webinar. I cannot wait to see you there. Alright, y’all. Have a great week. Bye!
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