Transparency means telling the whole story.

Transparency means no hiding truth behind bullsh*t.

But does transparency mean full disclosure of everything?

There are parts of my life that I do not blog. That I do not tweet. That I do not share as part of my public persona.

And I’ve been struggling with whether living my truth – creating a public persona that’s the real me – requires the disclosure of everything.

And if it doesn’t require complete transparency of all aspects of my life … why not?

It can’t be just because full disclosure would be uncomfortable.

It can’t be just because I have some theoretical right of privacy.

It can’t be just because people don’t need to know.

So, to figure out what I think, I outlined this blog post on the 45 bus in route to pole dancing class. Had an #lytchat to get some the tribe’s thoughts on this subject. Revealed my raw thoughts in my last email to the raw truth newsletter list. Of course.

And this is what I learned.

The Reasons Why EPW Does Not Reveal Everything:

1. To create a place of safety in my relationships, a sanctuary from the judgement of the world.

I don’t blog about why my marriage failed. About my current love life. About misunderstandings I have with my best friends. About the inner workings of my family. About other people’s confidences.

Because all relationships require sacred space.

That’s what relationships are, a place of safety to create with another human being.

A sanctuary from the insanity and inspection of others who may not have our best interests at heart.

And to violate that privilege, the sanctity of space created between the two souls … would hurt us. Would rip out part of my integrity. Would violate the honor of everyone I love.

Now don’t get me wrong on two points.

I have screwed this up. I have violated what I didn’t realize was a confidence. And let me tell you, I took that stuff offline as fast as it could be deleted.

And, I do share where my relationships fit into my live your truth journey. I don’t share the story of the relationship itself, but just how it fits into my understanding of my life.

2. To avoid contributing to more negativity by the unnecessary naming of names and throwing of gauntlets.

Ah, the juicy stories I could tell you that would curl your toes.

The snarks I could snarks. The sh*t I could throw.

The bullsh*t being sold and lies being told. The mean people spreading rumors. The trolls. The betrayals.

The truth I could speak that would cause you all to rise up and attack.

But as temporarily fun as that would be, most of the time, naming names is not productive.

Most of the time, no one really wins when one starts a war.

It just ends up in people taking sides, everyone being defensive, nothing of substance being discussed, and the conversation turns into the conversation of the war … instead of the conversation of the truth.

My exception is to name names to protect my people. I’m not going to let people get misled because I don’t have the guts to open myself up for a response. Occasionally starting a public debate is the only way to free the truth for everyone.

3. To avoid #gross and #ahem and #tmi

Um, let’s just say there are places I’m just not going in public.

I’m not blogging about bodily fluids or bodily functions or regularness or lack thereof.

No kiss & tell or sext & tell or what people do when they are alone & tell.

No “things that I’ve done that are technically illegal but really shouldn’t be because no one is getting hurt anyway” & tell.

Not that there is anything objectively wrong with sharing that stuff.

Twitter & blogging are opt-in. If you want to go into that much detail, party on. There is an audience for anything.

But dude. That ain’t my gig.

Bottom Line: Transparency does not require full disclosure.

We don’t have to tell every story.

Transparency simply means telling the whole story for the stories that we choose to tell.

Where do you draw the line between transparency and privacy?

How do you decide what is kept private?

Do you have different rules for twitter vs blog vs facebook?

I’d love to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Related posts:

1. (whine) I don’t wanna write a blog post!
2. Living My Truth: Taking Uncomfortable to the Next Level
3. Ramifications of a Transparent Life

I was going to write a blog post about my last relaunch (for 4 Weeks to Video).

How unlike every launch I have ever done, for the very first time, I met my membership goals. Actually, I surpassed my goals.

I was going to share the strategies I used in creating buzz, crafting the offer, the timing, the freebies. How I put the opt-in and the sales page on the same page, even when the program wasn’t open. The beta test. The limited time lower price. What went in the emails and the ustream classes. Those last few email blasts and tweets.

And how I was going to use these tactics on my next relaunch (for 6 Weeks to Live Your Truth).

Then I realized I couldn’t.

I couldn’t use these tactics because I backed myself into a corner in The Live Your Truth Project.

And I couldn’t write the blog post because the launch didn’t work because of tactics. It worked because of something else.

Here’s my truth.

For a long time, I was taught the nasty sales strategies of never taking no for an answer. Pushing. Closing.

I had upsells. Annoying popups. Big red headlines. Results based testimonials. Automatic recurring charges. Tricky subjects in the email blasts. Hype.

I scared the crap out of you. Told you that if you didn’t buy this, it would ruin your life. You would fail.

If you didn’t buy this, you were wasting your time. You would be a fool.

Then … I got religion about this selling stuff thing.

Selling is bad. Taking advantage of people. Short-sighted. Old fashioned.

Thank god, because I hated selling. Ick.

Now it’s about …

“Sharing Amazing Content!”

and

“Building the Relationship!”

That’s the big movement, the big shift that’s happening in our industries, in social media, in business. Right?

Yes. No. Well, not exactly.

By themselves, sharing content and building relationships are just more pillars to hide behind.

Another way to keep us from fully realizing our brilliance. Another oversimplification distracting from why were are really here.

Dude. This is not a freaking nonprofit.

If I can’t make money, I can’t do this anymore.

As much as I would love to live off of blog comments and emails and @replies, …. well, you get the point.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Actually, it’s a good thing.

The Work that we are doing here is not about one extreme or the other.

It’s about balance. The third tribe. Finding a way to create something amazing and change people’s lives while building a real business.

It’s about transparency. Being completely honest that the reason I’m giving away all this content is so you can try it out to see if you want to buy the thing.

It’s about caring. I want you to succeed. I want you to learn this stuff.

If you have this problem, if you resonate with me, if you know this is the right solution for you, then damnit, buy this!

And, if you don’t have this problem right now, if you’re not quite sure about me, if you don’t feel in your gut that this is right for you … then damnit, don’t buy it.

That’s why the 4 Weeks to Video launch worked. Not because of how I did it. Not the steps. Not the tactics. Those were all just natural expressions that flowed from the real reason this launch worked.

The launch worked because I cared. But I didn’t just care about you. I also cared about me.

I cared about me being compensated for the work I do, for my expertise, for my brilliance, for what I love to create.

I cared about making money to pay the rent. I cared about being able to eat. I cared about being able to pay for the stuff my kid needs.

I cared about going on crazy new adventures and traveling to hang out with my best friends.

So I’m ripping apart the launch plan for 6 Weeks to Live Your Truth.

I’m making every decision, writing every piece of copy, making every video, scheduling every ustream … from that place.

From the place of caring about you. And the place of caring about me.

I’ll let you know how that works out.

–

I teach that we should always put a call to action at the end of every blog post to get people to comment on the post. Asking a specific question, what you think about xyz, what was your experience with this situation, whatever.

I don’t know what to ask you today.

So, if you like, please answer the question you wished I had asked.

I really love reading your comments and want to hear from you.

#thatisall

Related posts:

1. Sucking, Simplicity, & Selling: The Truth Behind the Relaunch of EPW
2. The Real Secret to Get 12K Followers on Twitter

I always wanted Friends.

Every Thursday night in my Junior year of college, a group of us girls would run back from night class to gather in Mindy’s dorm room, drink illicit margaritas, and revel in the details of a romanticized version of New York City life.

The scenario portrayed on the 1990s TV show “Friends” seemed perfect.

A group of singletons living in the big city. Alone, but together. Always someone to share the events of the day, have a drink with, or support you when your non-secret lifelong crush didn’t love you back or when you were giving birth to your brother’s triplets conceived by artificially insemination.

But that never really happened when I got out into the real world.

Yes, obviously I had people I hung out with in law school, work friends from the law firm, and acquaintances here and there from my daughter’s playgroup or the local business networking event.

But I never really found my people.

People where I didn’t have to play a part. Where I was not restricted to doing just what I “should” do. Where I didn’t have to hold back a part of my insanity so I fit into the norm of the group. Where I could share not just the positive stuff, but also all of the crap of my life.

So, I figured that the magical support structure I had envisioned was just that. Fiction. A fantasy.

Fast foreward to one week ago from today.

I was home alone, chatting on Twitter & Skype, working on some tasks for The Live Your Truth Project 2 and planning a weekend of untold productivity & video creation.

Then the phone rang.

It was my ex-husband. Our 4 year old daughter had suffered second degree burns on her leg from scalding hot water at a KFC and was being transported via ambulance to the Regional Burn Unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

So before I ran off in a frenzy to meet them at the ER, I invoked my support structure.

No, I didn’t run over to a neighbor or call a family member.

I updated my Twitter account.

“going to the ER: ex called to say that my daughter has 2nd degree burns from hot water spilling on her. will update.” 12/4/09 7:55 PM

Over the last 7 days I live tweeted my entire experience as the mother of 4 year old who has 2nd degree burns over 10% of her body.

Almost fainting as they cleaned her wound. Her refusal of pain medication, flabbergasting the hospital staff. My sleeping on the worst bed that had ever been invented. Her grilling the surgical resident on the risks of waking up during the procedure. Our nightmare of her needing surgery to attach fake skin to her wound, and relief when we found out three days later that the surgery worked. And our joy a few hours ago when she took her first post-burn steps down the hospital hallways.

The amazing thing is that I didn’t have to do this alone.

As soon as I sent that first tweet, dozens, hundreds of @ replies, DMs, and text messages immediately came in offering prayers, energy work, and positive thoughts … and asking how they could help.

And these were not empty offers.

I had Allison Nazarian (@allisonnazarian) on permanent text message alert, available for constant updates & to vent every untwitterable compliant, doubt, internal struggle, and self-punishing thought.

Sarah Robinson (@sarahrobinson) recruited a San Jose local Karmen Reed (@kickofftopic) to deliver my much missed Starbucks mocha to the hospital. Total surprise. And, they got the order right.

Balloons delivered to the hospital from Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) & Alison Kramer (@nummiesbras), providing decoration, floating punching bags, and a discussion starter for my 4 year old to entertain her guests (aka hospital staff).

Ori Bengal (@couchsurfingori) texting with original offensive-to-normal-people jokes about burn units to distract me that first long night.

And that’s just the beginning.

Hundreds (by now, thousands) of well-wishes & thoughts & offers for help via Twitter @ reply and DM, Facebook comments & wall posts, multi-day Skype conversations, emails, blog comments, text messages, flowers, gifts, offers to run errands or pull strings. From clients, friends, family, readers, followers. People I’ve known for decades and people with whom I have never directly communicated before this week.

And almost all of these people I either met for the first time this year on Twitter or they were casual business colleagues who became real friends via social networking.

Yes, I’ve got new clients using social media. Yes, I’ve got speaking gigs and joint venture opportunities from blog and Facebook posts. Yes, Twitter has been my ultimate business  mastermind.

But it is the deep personal/business relationships I’ve developed using Twitter, Facebook and blogging that are profound.

It’s been where I found my people.

It’s been where I brought my Friends fantasy into reality.

And it did not happen by accident. It did not happen overnight. It did not happen using some magical strategy taught by the leading social media gurus.

It’s actually just simple common sense.

But while we were all born with common sense, somehow it was socialized out of us along the way.

So here are 11 reminders as you navigate the mysteries of the social media revolution to get you back into living your truth. So you can find your people.

1. Give a sh*t about people.  If there was nothing else that you take away from this post, this is it: care. Really care about people. Who they are. What they want. Their dreams. Their problems. Their greatest fears. What makes them excited. What rocks their world. If you really, really give a sh*t about people, you will never go wrong. In social media. And in life.

2. Treat your “friends” as if they were your friends. When we crossed the line from having prospects & leads to having friends & followers, some marketers continued to market in their slimy way and others stopped marketing entirely. Obviously, neither extreme is effective.

Here’s the social media promotion test: if your “in real life” friend had a problem that you knew you could solve, would you tell them about how you could help them, or keep silent? Of course you would tell them.

If that’s the energy your self-promotion comes from, then tweet/post/email it. You’re not shamefully (or shamelessly) promoting yourself. You’re making sure your friends are aware that you can help solve their problems. You do us a disservice by hiding your brilliance. Let us know how you help.

3. Let them know you’re listening. The difference between 10,000 followers and 4 million followers is irrelevant. Seriously. It’s all about the relationship you have with your followers. Or friends. Or subscribers.

Ask questions. Answer @ replies. Reply to blog comments. Join the Facebook comment stream on your recent status post. Reply to emails. Let people call you. People want to feel like they are being heard, that their opinions, their stories, their passions really matter. But make sure that you’re not just listening in silence … to develop a relationship, they must know you are listening.

4. Join the conversation. So what if you don’t already have a bunch of followers/readers/friends? (don’t forget, *all* of us started with 0 followers on twitter.) What you do is join other people’s conversations. What are they tweeting about? Where is the debate going on in blog post comments? Who posted an interesting link on Facebook?

And these conversations don’t all need to be about business. Actually, most of them won’t be. They’ll be about regular life, the stuff you would talk about if you were meeting for coffee or having drinks in vegas. About travel. Kids. Dogs. News. Coffee. The latest preparation strategy for bacon. Creative uses for duct tape. Methods for killing ants using all organic ingredients. Share your resources, stories, opinions, laughs. Join the party.

5. Speak the things that everyone thinks but no one says. Everyone is walking around with a thousand things they are thinking but not saying (tweeting, blogging) out loud. And I know this because, for some reason, people tell me about their unspeakable things. And while I would never reveal any one’s unspeakables, when I see a trend, a common internal conversation, one of the reasons I’m on this earth is to bring that conversation into the open.

Not only is entering into the conversation in people’s heads a brilliant method for writing great copy, it’s also a way to skyrocket to leadership of a conversation — simply be the first to say what everyone thinks. People will be grateful & empowered to speak their own truth. You will be a nexus for a movement, an influencer of the big idea.

6. Be vulnerable. There’s a lot of talk about being authentic and transparent. And yes, I try to be both of those things. But so many people resist authenticity as a cliche & transparency as sharing too much information, I want to give you another way to think about sharing enough to bond you to your community.

Share the whole story about something. The bad side of what didn’t work out. The truth of the project that failed. How your business is great but your personal life has gone to heck. What’s not working in your business. And of course, share how you are turning it around, the lessons you have learned, what you are changing for next time.

My videos sharing how my business did not make a profit & how I was getting divorced, and my blog posts on being a crazy person and the bad side of transparency, were the most commented on & read of anything I have shared. Everyone has stuff that does not work out. There is always a “whole story” … sharing yours builds trust & endears you to your audience.

7. Tell a story. Every communication you have should tell a story. Every blog post, podcast, video … and even every tweet. The collective work of all of your content should share the story of you, and your business.

Yes, you can tell a story in 140 characters.

Not the whole story, of course (and besides, telling only part of the story creates a great cliffhanger). But you can share how the smell of these cookies baking remind you of your great-grandmother. The fact that you are not just buying shoes, you are buying your 45th pair of shoes. How you are not just hiking, you are climbing your 27th peak and can’t wait to read the peak log to find out who has gone before you.

Everyone loves a story. We as humans have been bonding over stories since we first sat around the original campfires. That’s how we bond with our children, and what we love to hear from our grandparents. Share your stories, and we will listen.

8. Don’t believe your own bullsh*t. When I go on someone’s bio or twitter profile and it says “social media expert” or “social networking guru” I involuntarily cringe. Why? Well, either they are trying to B.S. that they are an expert (when they are not), or they have some expertise but have lost touch & become lame know-it-all’s, unable to learn or listen.

Stay humble. No one knows everything. We are all still learning. And besides, everything keeps changing.

Find people who know something you don’t. Share when you screw up. Acknowledge when people with less experience or notoriety get it right (sometimes newbies have perspective we don’t, anyway). Be open. Pay attention.

9. Have fun. This is real life. And real life is pretty freaking ridiculous. Real people are ridiculous. Every kind of human, opinion, race, religion, political party, business model, theory, lame marketing campaign, and insanity is rampant through the social media universe.

So instead of spending time being offended or getting into a hot debate, have fun. Laugh it off. Share your own ridiculousness. Tell us how you are an idiot. Get over yourself & get real.

10. Be patient. The above “going to the ER” tweet was about my 19,000th tweet. Assuming around 100 characters a tweet, that’s over 300,000 words. Enough raw content to fill at least 6 or 7 books.

You will not get profound results from being on twitter for 5 minutes a day. You will not develop relationships from a few weeks of implementing a social media plan. Building relationships takes time, energy, and effort. Adjust your expectations. Make the investment.

11. Take it to the next level. Chat on skype. Talk on the actual telephone. Text message. Email. Have coffee, drinks, lunch. Connect at seminars. Tweetup.

Social media is a low transaction cost, highly scalable method to start a conversation and create a bridge between your other connection points.

But only by connecting in real life (IRL) can you feel the energy of the other person, who they are being, their presence. That next level is where life long friendships and business partnerships are made. Connecting IRL is what has changed my life (… and that’s a story for another blog post).

So has social media worked for you? Are you getting any results from Twitter? Are you still looking for your people? Please, share your story / questions / comments / feedback below!

Related posts:

1. My Fake Friends
2. EPW Live Ep2: Launch Strategies & Lessons Learned
3. Speaking, Bullsh*t, and Billionaires: Post-#Shine Wrap Up pt 2

Yesterday I tweeted: “transparency is a profound freedom”

… meaning that sharing all the good & bad of our lives, dropping the mythological veil of privacy, releases us from having to hide.

So we can become truly free.

And this tweet got a bunch of affirmatives and hell yeahs! and retweets.

Because transparency sounds romantic.

Uplifting. Interesting. Powerful. Like living your life in the open, tweeting, facebooking, blogging your truth for the entire world to read is a way to a life of effortless attraction & flow.

But that’s bullsh*t.

Because sometimes, transparency freaking sucks.

Last summer, when I started my adventures in living my truth, I began by speaking the truth about business. What’s really going on in internet & information marketing. The truth of what’s happening behind the scenes, the lies that have been sold, the backchannel discussions that needed to be brought out into the live conversation.

And then I was hit in the face that I was speaking only one part of my truth.

Because during that same summer, my then-husband and I separated & decided to divorce.

And not sharing that story felt dissonant with the rest of my message.

And that dissonance was devouring me.

So after sharing with my then-husband how much it meant to me to be able to share my story (and that it would be my story, not the story of the relationship or a reflection upon him), I got his go-head for making the “Divorce Is Weird” video.

What a relief.

Now here I am again, 6 months later, with that same feeling that I’m out of resonance.

That while I’ve been kicking butt in blog posts about bullsh*t in business & committing to be a crazy person, I omitted part of the story.

And speaking only part of the truth … well, for me, that feels like a lie.

So here’s the whole truth about truth.

It’s easy to speak the truth to the people in my tribe. I’m preaching to the choir. You are either already thinking the same thoughts, or identify enough with my underlying message that while you may make difference choices in your life, you wholeheartedly support mine.

And, it’s somewhat easy to speak the truth to people who are totally & completely on the outside of my life. People who can excommunicate themselves when they don’t agree. People who can leave a snippy tweet or blog comment as they leave, but once gone, never come back to face me. The trolls I can (somewhat) easily dismiss.

The test comes with the third category.

People who have the ability to make my life suck if they don’t like what I have to say. People who may get hurt. People whose opinions I think I should care about. People who knew a version of me, and don’t understand what I have “turned” into.

That is where transparency gets messy.

And with them, I constantly, constantly!, chicken out on speaking my whole truth.

I could say it is because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

But that’s just another level of bullsh*t.

Because really, what I’m worried about is me.

I don’t want to have anyone think that I’m a bad person. I don’t want to lose anyone that I love. I don’t want to be uncomfortable.

And I would much prefer to jump out of a freaking plane than negotiate that particular kind of conflict.

Which brings us to today’s story.

In two weeks, I’m going on another one of my multi-location trips to both San Diego & Austin, Texas. Driving down to San Diego to finalize an apartment for the January move to San Diego, and then flying out from there to Austin to go on a crazy yet-to-be-determined adventure with my friend @CouchSurfingOri.

And since I’m also a mom, one of the first steps on any such trip is to arrange custody & childcare of my daughter with my former husband.

But instead of sharing what I’m doing & asking my former husband for his help, I just told him that I’m going on a trip and he gets our daughter for 5 days.

Because the idea of letting him in on who I really am feels like an epic risk.

Now some of this is completely unreasonable on my part. While he is not going to understand why or what I am doing, he does want me to be happy (if for no other reason than that the mother of his child being happy will increase the likelihood of his daughter being happy).

He’s not a bad guy, by any means. And he knows I no longer need his permission (if I ever did) to find an apartment or go on an adventure.

And of course, since I will be posting the whole time, the truth of my trip will out. He will find out what I’m doing. Well, at least if he checks my twitter feed.

But the idea of him knowing who I really am puts me on the defensive.

Remembering all the ways I sucked at being married to him. All the choices I made over the last 9 years that were inconsistent with myself. How the person I thought I “should” be and was trying to be for years was, in some ways, polar opposite to who I am today (and who, fundamentally, I always was). How much power he has to make my life suck if he wanted to fight me for custody of our daughter.

And here we come to the real choice.

Transparency, living my truth, speaking the things that everyone thinks but no one says, is not just for when it is sexy and controversial and fun.

It’s also for when people may find out the truth they were not expecting. When there’s something to be lost. When people may leave.

Living a transparent life is everything. Or, it’s nothing.

Now I understand that for some of you, you have chosen to draw the line in a different place. You only are transparent about your business. Or you don’t share information about your children. Because of personal belief systems. Privacy concerns. Legal issues.

But for some, yet unknown reason, I’m incapable of drawing a line and still have it be my truth.

For me, it must be 100% all in or I can’t play the game.

And damnit, that freaking sucks.

#thatisall

Not only was this post inspired by today’s events, it was also inspired by my BFF Allison Nazarian’s post The Truth About The Truth and CouchSurfingOri’s post No more dancing…. (re the side effects of having a transparent life).

So how’s transparency working for you? Is there only one “right” way to be transparent? Where do you draw the line?

Related posts:

1. Finding Ecstasy in Ordinary Life
2. In My Life
3. The First Day of the Rest of My Life