You are all liars and that's a problem!

As I scroll through LinkedIn so few people seem to be working in the same market as we are. The one where recruitment has slowed, decisions delayed and redundancies are happening.

On LinkedIn I am seeing success after success tangled in with posts of people admitting mental health issues that are all in the past of course! The time they burned out, but all is good today.

Do I think I am the only business looking at the P & L and wishing that the effort we are putting in would be rewarded with more revenue? Of course not.

Why do we create an illusion of grandeur and consistent achievement and never admit that sometimes times are tough?

In marketing there is a starting point. A persona. Who is your customer and what is important to them? Perhaps we naively believe that if we show we are struggling people will see us as weak failures. They will take their business to the big shot who is showing the big BMW they’ve just ordered on the back of last years commission.

We create personas of ourself.

Mental health issues have never been higher profile. Our children are depressed, self harming and withdrawing from the world. Why? Because now they are creating persona’s. They are surrounded by friends with active social media pages showing their exciting, positive lives with not a care in the world. Instead of being honest our children begin a life long habit of competing and they create a persona to hide behind that is far from reflecting their inner self.

What is the answer? Whether LinkedIn or Facebook we all create a version of ourselves and compare our work, our life and our values negatively to others. The truth then becomes something we have to hide from the world.

I call on you all to think about balancing your feeds to offer a true picture of what it is like to be a business owner, a sales person, an adult!

I try so hard to share honestly what my life is like on my feeds. Each time I have something to say that is negative I sugar coat it because I don’t want my peers or competitors to think I’m failing or more importantly a failure.

Perhaps there are too many caricatures on social media and networking platforms and that is why there is a prevalence of mental health issues.

I’m not expert. Just an observation.