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Hi there. You're listening to the Leading Lady Podcast. I'm your host, AliceAnne Loftus, and I'm a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let's transform your life starting now. Lead yourself. The rest will follow.

Hi there, Leading Ladies, and welcome to today's episode where I am going to challenge you to really be thinking about how you are showing up as an empowered woman who empowers other women.

Launching Something Vulnerable

AliceAnne Loftus:
So the last couple weeks have been super exciting for me. I have been cranking out some pretty powerful stuff that I've been working on over the last couple of months. I was super excited to launch my first mini digital course on Confronting Confrontation: Finding the Diamond in Rough Conversations. It's a comprehensive four-day mini course on how to really value—or find value—in those difficult conversations and create a win-win situation that not only benefits you, but can actually strengthen the relationships that you have with others, either personally or professionally. And it's moving all parties involved toward solution, focus, and cooperation together.

So it's been a wild couple of weeks as I was preparing for the launch, getting myself ready, making sure all my copy was locked tight. I don't know—I'm a recovering perfectionist, so I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I wanted everything to be perfect, and I wanted my clients and my community and the people who were buying this digital course to see the level of quality that I was putting out there. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least.

And as the days and minutes were counting down to the launch, I felt myself really feeling the pressure, the fear, the imposter syndrome creeping in. I felt the doubt kind of lurking over me—oh my gosh, am I really doing this? Am I really ready?

When Feedback Hits Differently

AliceAnne Loftus:
Then finally hitting send and the launch begins. And let me tell you, after hitting that send button and putting it out into the world—that I had created this project and it was now available for all the world to critique—was just about the scariest, most vulnerable thing that I think we can do as coaches and entrepreneurs. Especially when we don't necessarily have a product—we are the product.

So the launch happened. I did my Facebook Live videos, I had my ads running, my emails were going out in their sequence. And then it happened. I started getting comments, messages, Facebook messages, emails responding to my email sequence. And they were not exactly the responses that I was expecting.

Most of them were pretty positive, but then there were some that—I don't know if it was just triggering to me because I felt so vulnerable and because I am a perfectionist—but it was really jarring.

I had women messaging me telling me that I used the wrong word, that I should have used this word instead of that word in my explanation. That there was a misspelling. That a picture wasn't the right picture. I mean, they were just nitpicking things.

And I was really starting to understand why so many women entrepreneurs, especially coaches or creatives—where you're putting yourself out as the product—why it's so hard to take that step, to push that button to launch. Because you're immediately opening yourself up to criticism and feedback where people are going to point out all your flaws.

The “Pimple at the Party” Moment

AliceAnne Loftus:
In that moment, I felt like I had just shown up to a party and I was as beautiful as I possibly could have gotten myself. My hair was great, my dress was great, my makeup was great. And this girl walks up to me and says, “Wow, AliceAnne, you look great, but you have a huge pimple on your face.”

That’s what it felt like as women were pointing out the errors in my messaging. And they weren't glaring errors. I have copy editors. I have a team that worked with me and looked through all of this content and all the pictures. This wasn't something that I just whipped up and threw out.

We had a complete team of people working to really create a quality product. These were very, very minor typos and mistakes that obviously slipped past several people. So to get that feedback was a little disheartening.

I felt like, oh, you know, they're right. For something like this to go out, I should have been more careful. I wasn't ready. I should have looked it over more thoroughly. How did this get past my team? How did this happen? Why did I put anything out there that had any mistakes in it at all?

And I realized as I was saying this to myself that it was really quite ridiculous.

Perfection Isn’t the Standard

AliceAnne Loftus:
I can't think of a single person who has never had a typo or an error or had autocorrect change a word they meant to say. It's real. And especially in a digital world where we rely on spellcheck and other tools, sometimes those mistakes come through. Sometimes those blemishes pop up. Sometimes something goes out and it isn't airtight, locked, sealed, perfect.

To have that expectation of myself was unrealistic. But for others to have that expectation of me was also unrealistic and actually not fair.

I am a single person. I am human. My copy editor is human. My digital course team is human. We’re not robots sitting in a room cranking out perfect material.

There is vulnerability in putting your product out there, putting your message out there. And there are going to be mistakes. But as long as the content is authentic and quality, and you're doing your best—not the best, just your best—that has to be enough.

I’m often reminded of something my son’s third-grade teacher used to say to him all the time: “Christian, your best will do just fine. Just give your best. We don't expect perfection from you.”

Queens Fix Each Other’s Crowns

AliceAnne Loftus:
Then I was reminded of this quote that’s been circulating for a long time. You see it in women’s empowerment books and artwork and everywhere else: “Real queens fix each other's crowns, and they don't tell the world it was crooked.”

While these messages were private to me, I also see this behavior publicly—especially in my large Facebook group of over 5,000 women. I often see women pointing out other women's mistakes in ways that are not kind.

Now, the group is shielded from a lot of that because I have moderators and I remove anything unkind or unprofessional as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t mean I don’t see it.

And I often think to myself, this is not the point of Leading Ladies at all. Queens fix each other's crowns, and they don't tell the world that they did it.

Intentions Matter

AliceAnne Loftus:
It’s one thing to privately tell someone, “Hey, you’ve got lipstick on your teeth.” It’s another thing to say publicly, “Yeah, her makeup looks great, but I had to tell her she had lipstick on her teeth.”

If we are expecting perfection of one another rather than providing support and encouragement, then no one is winning.

So how do we, as Leading Ladies, show up and help fix each other's crowns without telling the world that we did it? That’s a question I’ve been sitting with.

Some of the feedback I received wasn’t helpful. Some things couldn’t be changed. An email had already gone out to my entire mailing list—there’s no retracting that.

I really try to think about intent. What was her intention in letting me know? And have there been times when I have pointed something out that couldn’t be changed?

That’s where the real work is.

The Takeaway

AliceAnne Loftus:
I’m not upset. Truly, I’m not. What this did was give me an opportunity to reflect on how I show up and how I empower women.

So my invitation to you is this: think about your intentions when you give feedback. Ask yourself—is this helpful? Is it welcome? Is it necessary?

If you’re helping another queen fix her crown, are you doing it in a way that’s supportive and behind the scenes? Or are you letting the world know it was crooked?

That’s my challenge for you today.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of The Leading Lady Podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode on the website. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. If you have a moment, leaving an honest review would mean the world to me. Until next time, ladies—take the lead.

Author: AliceAnne Loftus

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