Building in Public

I’ve been thinking a lot about Kaiju Coaching this weekend, and something I’ve come up with is that I’ve been pretty unclear about who I serve specifically. 

“Leaders” and “those with impostor syndrome” are pretty general, and since I’ve also been reflecting on copywriting (probably because I’ll be head coaching Margo Aaron’s The Copy Workshop soon), I’ve realized that people who identify with one, probably don’t identify with the other.

“Leaders” are probably too hung up about admitting they have impostor syndrome, even though I’ve yet to meet a leader who doesn’t have it. 

“People with impostor syndrome” probably don’t identify themselves as a leader, even though I define leaders any anyone willing to support and create other leaders (also general, I know, I know).

So being that I’ve totally failed at reaching those I seek to serve, I’ve taken a page from the “customer research” book (I dunno, is there a book? It’s a metaphor) and asked around what people think I’m good at enough to teach.

What I heard back: 

-Being authentic and “real” on social media

-Being a feminist man

Okay, cool. While there’s an obvious disconnect from what I do to what people think I’m great at, at least there was a lot of consistency in what I heard back from my limited sample size of my friends on Facebook. 

Buuut, this data rang a bit true when I was thinking about the fact that there seems to be a lack of non-shitty coaching services aimed specifically at men.

All the stuff I see is goddamn awful pick-up artist trash, or “reclaiming masculinity” stuff that reeks of toxic masculinity.

CAN I PLEASE BE A MAN WHO DOESN’T WANT TO LEARN HOW TO CATCH AND KILL MY FOOD? I LIKE VEGAN TACOS, GET OFF MY BACK. 

I myself, as a “non-bro dude” now wonder if there’s a market for helping men who are sorta dude-like, but not bro-like, embrace more of their whole selves and focus less on codeswitching into bro-culture and more on being themselves.

I wonder if even more niched down would be men with a non-dominant identity who are looking to be themselves more. Sooo, we’re talking cis-white straight dudes but who didn’t finish college, or queer guys who like football but also like reading, or college educated cis-hetero men of color (like myself).

Sidenote: after writing that, I love the idea of looking at identities that are not related to what we think of as traditional identity politics that defy the stereotypical toxic masculinity ideal that the US holds. NOT LIKING SPORTS IS SACRILEGIOUS IN SOME GROUPS OF MEN. 

Anyway, I have a feeling like this could go on for a few pages, so I’m going to finally go to sleep and we’ll revisit this in my next post.

Also, if you’re reading this, Margo, I apparently now write in all caps. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?

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