In today's fast-paced digital landscape, consultants and coaches work hard to get attention and gain market share. In her recent reflections on content creation and community building, Zoetica Media founder Kami Huyse sheds light on why she refuses to take a “survival of the fittest” approach, instead preferring to let her work speak for itself and create a collaborative environment with her clients and even her competitors.
Create a Mutually Beneficial Relationship with Your Audience
“One of the things that I've heard a lot of ‘gurus’ talk about is don't give away too much because people won't pay for your paid product, and that may be somewhat true because there's a little psychological piece to that where, you know, if you leave a little piece out then people are wanting more,“ she says.
But rather than look at her interactions as purely transactional ones, she decided to take a learning-and-teaching approach that would benefit everyone.
“One of the things that I tried to do early on is to learn and teach. So I would learn something and I'd teach it pretty quickly after I learned it, like, as soon as I felt like I was getting a handle on it, I would teach it. Learn, teach, learn, teach,” she explains. “[What] I Immediately learned from that is that the law of reciprocation is so strong with most people. If you are giving, then people want to give in return.”
Embrace Ethical Business Practices
This shifted her mindset from one of scarcity to one of that “just made me understand that there was enough for everyone.”
This doesn’t mean everyone else shares this approach, Kami acknowledges. “Let me just tell you, there have been people and situations that… stabbed me in the back, absolutely.”But that didn’t dissuade her from doing what she felt was right.
“I just realized very much so, that by lifting other people up, you know, you get what you receive,” she says. “That's really the thing that changed my mind, was just understanding that it was all about the community, it was all about growth.”
Don’t Let Comparison with Others Derail You
Similarly, don’t let comparisons between you and others derail your trajectory.
“Our first propensity – and mine is too, I'm a human being like anybody else – is to compare ourselves to somebody else. Our first inclination is to compare ourselves to other people, how well they're doing,” she explains. “Here's the problem with comparison, ‘comparison-itis’ is what I like to call it.”
“When you compare yourself to somebody else, that only elicits fear. That is going to bring the feeling of fear into your world and then you will do everything – all of your tactics and strategies and everything that comes out of that comes – out of fear.”
Kami’s approach is to focus on the things she can do well. “I do what I can do. So I only
do this one live stream per week, roughly, and I put that together and then I use that to [create additional content].” Contrast that with friends who do record four or five livestreams a week, something she openly admits she can’t do.
However, she doesn’t let her smaller output impact how she regards herself or the value she provides others. “I don't worry that I can't keep up with them because, here’s the thing, I know that if I keep putting out into the universe, if you want to call it that, what I can offer to people, then I will attract the right people, the people that I need to attract.”
Banish Your Fear
It’s easy to get sucked into a spiral of fear if you’re hyper-focused on what everyone else is doing. It’s something that Kami intentionally fights against.
“I'm not going to be sane if I'm, like, operating out of this state of fear all the time,” she says. Instead, she recommends “you banish the fear and you just start to put out the positive things that you're working on, that you're thinking of, and…start to share them without fear…”
It’s also true that “in a marketplace, if something is working, other people are going to adopt it. And that's actually good for you. And it won't feel good for you at the time. It'll give you a little bit of pause sometimes, you'll have to come up with what your angle is versus what their angle is, but sometimes you can also work together to make all boats rise.”
Build Your Personal Brand
Finally, even if you’re unwilling to be a cutthroat competitor, it’s important for your audience to know who you are and what you stand for.
Coming from the public relations industry, Kami recalls how in the early days of blogging, she was afraid to share her opinions and details about her life online.
“I still remember that first [blog] post, how scared I was to put my opinion online,” she says. “I just really was, like, terrified to put my opinion online because I'd grown up in PR, and in PR we always learned that if you become the story you've failed.” That’s why, she explains, “I really resisted the idea of really building a personal brand.”
Over time she started to see things differently. “Obviously everybody has a personal brand these days, and you kind of have to have some kind of personal brand, if you will, to really have an edge… in the marketplace.” Today, Kami is known for using social media to nurture strong connections and build community in a way that benefits everyone.
To hear more of Kami insights, watch her full livestream.