Public Enemy Number 1

 How my innocuous “motivational” video turned me into Public Enemy #1 and made the Internet mad at me.

So, the other day I made a short video pretty much the same as all my videos about mindset. I meant it to be inspiring and motivational. Instead it brought an army of YouTube trolls down upon me. Actually it was only like 5, but since I never get any engagement on that account it seemed like a ton. The reason I only just started my YouTube account is this is how YouTube always used to be; no matter what you said every jerk on Earth would come out of the woodwork to try to own you. Recently YouTube added a filter to turn off negative comments but it’s apparently on the fritz. You can watch my oh-so-controversial video here.

My video is about mindset and people who are so entrenched in their own distrust and negativity they’re actually trapping themselves in a miserable life. I touched on this a few months back in my blog post about the customer who got BIG mad at me for sending her a free tutorial link to complement her purchase (like, what). She kept sending me angry messages telling me she wasn’t paying for looks even though I explained over and over her physical product was on the way and this was just a free extra gift.

Around the same time I was hosting a free challenge (again, FREE) about how I made money and started a business after my husband’s accident and a person ~ on YouTube of course ~ told me I should stop “preying” on people by telling them stuff that’s “too good to be true.”

Now, if you know my story you know my business emerged from my frantic nighttime side hustles after my husband, Jerry, was disabled in a near-fatal work accident right after we bought our first home and became pregnant with our first child. I had NO money, NO experience running a business and I was pregnant and then had a newborn, working full time, and for a few months I had to help Jerry with basic care, like washing his hair.

If I can start a business in that situation anyone can ~ it’s why I work so hard to communicate the importance of mindset in my messaging and why I made the YouTube video in the first place. What if I had just told myself this is how my life would be forever, that there was no escape from poverty? What if Jerry just signed up for disability and parked himself in from of the tv for the rest of his life? He could have; his hands are pretty significantly disabled now and he can’t go back to his former job as an electrical lineman. And I know a lot of people who did make those choices and their lives are pretty grim compared to ours.

Instead, Jerry was a rock star. He went back to school with his GI Bill (he’s a veteran of the first Gulf War) while working full time and now he’s a very successful electrical engineer. He inspired me to work nights and weekends on side hustles until I could afford to quit my corporate day job and work from home.

Was any of this fun? Hell no! It took Jerry seven long years of days starting at the crack of dawn and ending at 10PM to get his degree. It took me 18 months of near-constant work while I was pregnant and then with a newborn to make enough to quit my day job. Now we live in a lakefront neighborhood with an average $1.2 million home value, our own dock on the lake, we have a tiny cabin on an acre of waterfront property in the mountains, and we spend a week at a super-fancy Hilton Head Island resort every year ~ it’s a life I couldn’t EVER imagine back in 1998 when I started my business.

Now, I never pretend I did this on my own. Jerry makes a lot more money than I do. But of course most families nowadays need two earners in the household. My business pays for extras like beach vacations and international adoptions but most significantly for me it allows to stay home with our children and take them wherever they need to go. I’ve been out of the shop almost this entire day because our youngest’s pollen allergy turn into walking pneumonia so I’ve been at the doctor’s office, the grocery, and the drug store (twice) getting everything he needs. Back in my corporate days I would’ve been an hour away from home with about 30 minutes to get all that done!

I’m passionate about helping women, especially mothers, in similar situations find more time and freedom through entrepreneurship because I know it’s NOT too good to be true. It can happen for anyone! It’s why I’ve spent the past 13 years writing my free blog. Although it’s a pain to wade through all those posts you could literally learn to start your own doll hospital and shop without spending a dime!

I guess what triggered everyone so much was some tough love I threw in when I said if you find yourself sinking into a poverty mindset you need to stop and apply all your energy to pulling yourself out of it, because if you don’t you’re never going to get anywhere, and if you don’t trust anybody the same thing’s going to happen. It took me 20 years to pay money to hire some business coaches ~ I was the Queen of teaching myself using free content. You can totally do that; I didn’t spend anything years and just used all the free platforms instead of buying a website or anything.

Guess what? THAT’S why it took me 20 years to be a real business and not just a side-hustle odd-jobber. You get what you pay for in business just like everything else. And the reason a lot of people are sitting around in someone’s basement being YouTube trolls is their crappy scarcity mindset is keeping them from living the life they want. I know it’s easier to call other people scammers and shady and liars than it is to acknowledge you might be the person holding you back. It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn for myself, often painfully, many times over the years.

The crazy thing is, I’m not selling a course or anything right now. I am working on one (so stay tuned if you’re interested) but I’m really just trying add value to people’s lives. And I have to thank my haters because, though they think they’re attacking me, they are actually telling YouTube my video is getting a lot of engagement, which means YouTube will show it to even more people. That’s more people I can help!

I used to delete hateful comments but now I know (thanks to my business coaches) they drive engagement. I just try not to read comments unless I’m in a really good headspace. Other comments veered off into weird territory attacking my Pixie Dust filter and MLM business (um, my business is not an MLM!). So about the filter, which is supposed to make you look like the animated Tinker Bell… I LOVE it because it applies perfect fake makeup. Look, I’m gonna turn 50 in a couple months, I’m a mom, I run 14 online stores… I don’t have time for makeup a lot of days. Most of the other people making video content online are literally young enough to be my children and I often feel less than confident about my face. HOWEVER, as a woman I’ve spent my entire life comparing myself with manipulated photos of women that are made to look real. So I don’t use realistic makeup filters because I want it to be very obvious it’s not how I really look. No one old enough to be online is going to believe my face sparkles and has animated eyelashes and that’s why I use it.

As for the current trend of hating on MLM (multi-level marketing) companies, I have some thoughts. While I was learning doll repair so I could start my business I worked for an MLM and I was really good at it. I rose to the top 5% of the company, worldwide, but then the founder died and it was sold to L’Oreal, who shut it down. I decided to start my own business rather than do another MLM but I know my success has been largely due to the skills I learned from my MLM business. I learned essentials like public speaking, email marketing, team leadership, customer service, and bookkeeping. The trick with MLMs is to pick a good one… I’ll talk more about that another time.

So what do you think? Do I deserve all the hate for my video? Does talking about mindset anger you? Have you ever held yourself back because you were stuck in a victim mentality?