Ep. 84: Discovering Your Unique Voice By Going Live (solo episode) [Stepping Into Your Authenticity Series]

I initiated a self-imposed challenge for my Stepping Into Your Authenticity series to set a good example for my audience. I committed to going live on Instagram for 45 days in a row.  My mission was to inspire others, as I tackled my own fears and anxiety.

The results after one week were surprisingly liberating. Not only did I discover my unique voice, but I felt empowered through the process. I quickly became comfortable in front of the camera, by letting go of expectations. Although the activity did not lead to additional followers, I found it to be extremely therapeutic. 

This episode includes a recap of what I learned in the first week, along with sound clips from the various days.  I hope you find the content inspirational. Besides the lessons I learned,  I  explore examples of others who are true to themselves in the public eye. 

SHOW NOTES:
Contact Heather: Instagram - LinkedIn
Get the Balance Right Coaching: Website
Book a Discovery Call (via Zoom) - Click Here
Heather & Get the Balance Right - Link Tree
Zeitzwolfe Accounting: Website - Facebook

Episode 83 with Elaine Williams on embracing video to grow your profits

Show Mentions…

Boy George: Instagram - Crypto Queenz - Time (Clock of the Heart - Kissing to Be Clever
Gary Coleman film: On the Right Track
Trixie Mattel: Website - Instagram - Book

For the full show notes, please visit the website here: https://www.getthebalanceright.net/blog/episode84

Contact Heather: Instagram - LinkedIn - Email: heather@GetRadBiz.com
Get Radical With Your Business: Facebook - Website
Book a Discovery Call (via Zoom) - Schedule
Zeitzwolfe Accounting: Website - Facebook

Transcript

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Hello and welcome to Get the Balance Right podcast! I am your host, Heather Zeitzwolfe. 

This has been a really wild week for me. I decided to go live for 45 days in a row on Instagram. I've never really tried live before, I did it once with a friend of mine. And oh my God, this has been such a great transformation for me! And I really encourage you to try this as well. 

So I was really kind of panicked about the whole idea of going live. Like I felt it was self-indulgent, I thought people would think I was like being self-indulgent. I had all these voices in my head, like: “who is gonna even gonna watch, who cares?" all the things. 

You know what? The thing is people don't really care. People don't really watch and some people might watch. But it doesn't really matter. 

The whole point of doing this is not to be self-indulgent, but instead to spread your wings and figure out that yes, you could fly. You can actually do Instagram Live. It's not going to kill you, you might find it slightly embarrassing. But in the end, it actually makes you feel kind of proud inside. 

At least that has been my experience that I've been like: “wow, I got over my fear of doing this, it’s not so bad. You press a button, you see it says “LIVE” and you go”. If people show up, they show up. And it has been so fun. And I want to encourage you to try this as well. 

So if you've been nervous about doing video. Please know that I was nervous too, and this has been so much fun. And I figured out a lot of things about myself just by doing lives. 

Today was my eighth day and I've really enjoyed it. Like it's actually like the thing I look forward to the most in my day is going live. Who would’ve ever thunk that? 

For today's podcast, I'm doing something different. I actually went back and I looked at some of those lives and I extrapolated some of the stuff that I talked about. 

I think I have maybe like three or four days worth of content that I just kind of edited together. You might hear some differences in the sound because they came from different days and you'll probably be like: “oh yeah, this is a different take”. I'm not doing the whole shebang from each day. I'm just taking little segments from it. So it might not flow the way a normal podcast might flow. 

The recordings that you hear today are from different segments from the different lives and I'm talking about a variety of things. 

The whole idea of this live thing kind of stemmed from one: my guest last week was Elaine Williams and she talked about getting comfortable with video and just the whole thing of talking to her, interviewing her and then going through and editing the podcast, hearing it over and over again was like the gods were telling me: “Heather, you need to go out and do video”. 

And she really inspired me to try it out, you know? I've tried Reels before. I'm like: “I'm going to try live” and so I'm just sticking with Instagram live for now. And then when I'm done with my 45 days, I'm going to try going live on YouTube! You know I wanna to keep this train moving. 

In this episode, you will hear some different cuts from the different days, but if you want to see the unedited versions of where all these came from, just go to my Instagram and you can watch the videos. And I hope I'm inspiring you to be authentic too.

Check me out live. If you find me, if you see a little live thing and I’m going live, hey, come in them room and say hi and hang out with me. I would love, love, love for that.

So today we are talking about authenticity and that's what this whole series is about, is being authentic, stepping into our authenticity.

Each day I'm learning more and more about myself, about the process. This is all about me stepping into my authenticity. And I'm trying to inspire others to try this as well. Because it's such an interesting learning experience. And it's kind of cathartic, these ideas that you have about being in front of people, maybe saying the wrong things. Whatever your hang-ups may be, you start to kind of work through them. It's like therapy almost, just being here. It doesn't even matter if there's an audience or not. It's just this act of turning on the camera and seeing this live thing in your face.

And you're like: “oh my God, I have to do something in front of this camera”. 

I do have kind of an outline of what I want to talk about today. And I want to reflect on how the last eight days have gone and what I've learned from the whole process, and maybe you can learn as well.

 What I've been discovering is that when I'm going live, I'm able to talk off the cuff and I'm coming up with things that I would have never come up with, if I was just sitting there at a computer typing things - trying to be all clever with my words and, you know, be word-smithy and all that. But just being natural on camera things pop into your head that it's like when you take an improv class. You just never know where inspiration is going to come. Maybe it's just somebody saying something, it could be somebody walking by my window. I've got a window that's right outside my office here. So all of those things. 

I've been journaling my adventures in 45 days of going live. I’ve taken some notes and put them down there and then I'm not editing this. So that in itself, it makes me nervous because, I'm saying: “you know”, I'm fumbling with words. And I really want to be able to edit things. But this is part of this like learning experience is: letting go, allowing yourself to make mistakes, be scrappy.

And it's, it's permanent. I'm going to put this up on the internet and people can see all of my mistakes and I have to be okay with that. And it makes me nervous. It does make me nervous, but I'm getting over it. In the whole scheme of things, people really don't care. They're going to maybe watch this. Maybe not.

I have found that going live, having an outline is really, really important. Knowing what you're going to kind of talk about, but just making it loose. Like we want to make this as fun as possible, no pressure. Going live is fun. This is fun. 

Now at first when I went live I thought: "oh, this seems so self-indulgent to just be put a camera on and go live and expect people to show up, like, it seems really, really self-indulgent”. And in a way it sorta is.

But it's cathartic, as I mentioned earlier. I want people to step into their authenticity. In order for me to preach that I have to do it myself. So I'm being authentic by trying this out and doing it being myself on camera. And I hope that I inspire you to do the same. 

Because the thing is, we all have a message that we want to give to the world. And if we don't get comfortable on camera, well, man, we're missing out on one of the most impactful ways that we can deliver a message - and that's on video. 

If you want to try a 45 day challenge like I'm doing, I would love that. Let me know if you do this challenge. Now, this was not a challenge that anybody put me up to. This was my own decision to do 45 days live. 

So number one: going live is fun. Have fun with it! You could go live and you don't even have to keep the video. You can just toss it away. You don't have to share it with anyone. But if you do share it, it's kind of fun to just see: “did anybody watch it? Does it have any impact on my followers?”. It's kind of an experiment. This is an experiment - I'm experimenting. 

Okay, number two: don’t have any expectations. I've pretty much don't have any expectations. I don't know what's going to happen. I have an outline. It is kind of important to jot down what points you want to discuss. But don't worry about messing up, it’s part of the process. People relate to you more when you're not perfect. I'm not perfect. I'm telling you, I'm messing up all the time. There'll be words that I, couldn't remember you messing up on camera. That is just part of the process. Allow that to happen. Plus we're being authentic. This is part of being authentic is just allowing yourself to mess up. 

Allow yourself to play and have fun. And that's what I'm doing. I just find that when no one's in the room, I can really like step into my funny and be authentic. Cause I'm not worried about being entertaining or all those thoughts have gone out of my head.

I'm feeling more authentic though, as the days go on. And like right now there's people in the room - at least I think you guys are in the room - and I'm feeling myself. I'm not feeling like I'm having to put on a performance I'm just being relaxed and on camera. And this is really great. If you go live and no one shows up it's okay. You're just learning about this process. It's a muscle and you're exercising this muscle of going live and experimenting, and just seeing, how does it feel seeing that “LIVE” button up in the corner?

It's kind of unnerving, right? But it's just a word. It's “LIVE” in a red box, white letters, all caps. “LIVE” it can be intimidating, but once you start seeing that day after day, it's not so bad. 

Okay. And it actually, it shows you that: “yeah, I think this is actually recording”.

Another thing I've learned is: hats. Oh, I brought on a hat one day. I was like doing like a Bob Fosse kind of thing with the hat. It makes it fun, you know, power prop have a costume, do things like that. It gives you something to interact with, especially when you're on stage by yourself, you know, it just gives you something to do. So the hat was great. It was actually something that sparked a whole rift for me that I went down a rabbit hole. I would've never done had I not had the hat. So try different things like that. 

Going live can give you a lot of content if you want to use it in the future. So as long as you figure out how you're going to download the video or the audio or whatever you want to use, then you can repurpose it.

Maybe I said something brilliant, I dunno, maybe I did? I could go back and listen to it and be like: “that was a really good thing that I was talking about, I could take that little snippet of sound and make something on social media” or whatever. So this gives you a lot of content and it's not like you have to sit there at the type writer and bang out sentences and think about how is this going to sound, and am I using the right words, and all that kind of stuff. It's so like off the cuff and, and once you start to get comfortable, you're going to start building content. So try it, try, try, try it. And I want to know how it goes. 

So let's go on to the topic catch phrases. Why catch phrases? Why are we talking about catch phrases?

Because yesterday I had Elaine Williams on who is a comedian and she is a coach for getting comfortable on video. She was saying that we should all have catchphrases. I hadn't really thought about that. Like on my website, it does say: “get radical with your numbers”. And I don't mean like radical like: “protests radical”, I mean like radical like: “cool, totally awesome dude”. Like, um, that, that wasn't really good valley girl. That was horrible. That was like: “um, gag me with a spoon, totally awesome, get radical with your numbers”. 

Okay, that needs some work. Okay. Valley girl, do you remember though, remember there was that song, Frank Zappa, the valley girl song? And then they made a movie called Valley Girl. (And it had Nicholas Cage in it.) Wait, was Nicholas Cage in it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He played the punk rock guy. Yeah. It was a fun movie. I have the soundtrack. The soundtrack is good. 

All right what are we talking about here today? We are talking about catchphrases. The kids from full house it was like: “hey dude”. The twins, but they were really twins, but they just had one of them, would just play one of the kids, the youngest kids: “hey dude”. Okay, I think that was her catch phrase.

Spock: “live long and prosper”. So I noticed when I was writing down my catch phrases, then most of them are seventies references. So depending on your age you may or may not get these okay. Mork was: “Nanu Nanu”. Oh and I actually mentioned that when in my last podcast, I'm not sure if people understood that.

Fonzie was: “ayyeee”. And I remember when I was a kid, people would be like: “sit on it, ayyee”, and that was like a thing to say. One of my other favorites was “Dy-no-mite”. That was JJ Walker from Good Times, “Dy-no-mite”. And I used to have a sticker it said: “Dy-no-mite” and had JJ Walker on it and I had it on the side of my chest of drawers when I was a kid. I loved, oh my God, I loved him. I think he's still alive. 

And then, Horshack , remember Horshack? He was from Mr. Kotter, Welcome Back Kotter. He was like: “Ooh, Ooh” I used to have a Horshack t-shirt cause I'm an, I was always nerdy, okay? “Oh, Oh Oh, Mister Kotter” it was something like that. It was like some kind of inflection like that.

He had the scarf, I think I have a scarf that's kind of looks like Horshack. 

Okay, what other ones? Of course, Gary Coleman. See, I had to write these down cause otherwise I would have forgotten them. “What'd you talking about Willis?” Oh God, I love Gary Coleman.

He was actually born in the same year as me, 1968, and I felt so bad when he died. Oh, I really loved Gary Coleman. He was so awesome. He was in a lot of movies, like back in the eighties for a little while he was in that movie called ‘On the Right Track’. I think that's what it was, where he was, he played this kid that lived in a train station.

I don't even know if you can find that movie anymore. It was called I'm pretty sure it was called ’On the Right Track’. Gary Coleman, it’s almost like they remade it with Tom Hanks, but he was in an airport. It's like a remake. That's like a reboot of the one where Gary Coleman is living in the train station.

I don't remember which train station it was, but, okay. So other ones that I thought of was, I tried to think of something that was more like now for catchphrases. I couldn't really think of anything, but South Park did have: “they killed Kenny”. That was just kind of like a catch phrase.

I was trying to think in the business space of people who had catch phrases. We got Dave Ramsey that says: “we're debt free”. But he doesn't say it, it’s his fans who say: “we're debt free”. 

And then, my friend Adam from podcasting business school, he does have a catch phrase and I'm probably going to screw this up.

Cause I went by memory instead of looking it up. But I think he says something like: “love your podcasts, like a hobby, but treat it like a business”. I might be paraphrasing, I think that's kind of what it was. 

So I've been trying to think of what I want my catchphrase to be. Now, a catchphrase could be just like: “hey!”. But I don't think that that's going to work for a business like me, plus it's been taken. 

So folks out there, please help me with a catchphrase. It sounds something like me and, you know, get radical with your numbers.

Definitely does sound like me because that is something that I would say like: “awesome, totally”. Because I grew up in the eighties and I'm stuck in that time period. But, here's some notes that I wrote down for myself: “Let go of your fears” or “let go of your money fears”. 

People come to me and they're like afraid of looking at their numbers. They are stressed about their numbers. They have fear and anxiety and feel shame and all those things that I want people to let go of. Maybe I should just read the whole thing first before explaining each little piece:

“Let go of your fears. Be yourself, have fun with your numbers. And see your profits soar." Okay, so here's another: “And watch your profits soar” or “let your profits soar”. So I'm noodling around on some of those: “let go of your fears” or “let go of your money fears,” and really money fears is what I'm talking about. But I'll also want to talk about authenticity.

So I think we're being authentic, right? I am completely afraid of driving. I've been trying to get myself to drive. I've had a learner's permit that I have been renewing since I think 2010. I think that was when I got my, I passed the written test and I got, my learner's permit.

And like every like year and a half, I have to renew my learner's permit. I don't have to take the test anymore. I mean, I passed the test. It's the driving tests that I haven't. And I'm not a fan of driving. My husband wants me to get over my fear. I've been trying, to get over my fear and I do drive to Costco.

I'll do that and park and all those kinds of things. So telling people to get over their fears, a hundred percent, I'm trying to get over that fear. But I'm not sure if I want to tell people to get over all of their fears, just the fear of their money. So, and getting over their fear, being authentic and all that kind of stuff.

So I need to whittle this down and have more clarity on what it is I want to talk about because like, I don't want to be telling people to jump out of airplanes. If that's their fear, please stay in the airplane. I don't think that's a good idea because you just never know when the parachute might not open.

I don't want to be responsible for that. Let go of some of your fears, be yourself. I would say that one hundred percent, all the time. I'm going to say, be yourself, be yourself, be yourself because nobody can be you as much as you can and you should be you. 

You know, I remember when I was a kid, people would say like: “if you could be anybody, who would you be?”You know, you're supposed to say like somebody that's rich and famous and somebody that maybe has a lot of power or whatever. I would always say, like: “I don't want to be anybody else, I want to be myself”. But I used to always say if I could trade places with anybody, it would have been, I think her name was Andrea McCarthy? Andrea, the one that played Annie, she was the first Annie on Broadway, Andrea McCartney? McArdle? Andrea McCartel? And she was, I'll have to look this up, she was the first one that played Annie on Broadway. And I think we were around the same age and I could have been her, but of course I don't sing.

She had a fabulous voice. I don't know if she still does Broadway or even Broadway is even open right now with COVID. But anyways, Annie, I would have loved to have been her. Red wig and all. And that dress, I should just get myself an Annie dress and just wear it. I think that would be really be fun because I did talk about this on an earlier one of these, about costumes, wearing costumes.

And I think being yourself, you can be yourself in a costume. Like, cause it brings out a different side of you. I think that wearing that Annie costume, or maybe just the Annie costume, just with my regular hair on, I think that would be great. Or maybe do like a mash-up of like zombie Annie or… Annie, what else would be good with mashing up with Annie?

Hm, goth, Annie? I, I guess it's kinda like un- dead, Annie. Hmm. Annie maybe like Annie is older, pregnant, Annie? That would be good. Pregnant Annie. I like that idea. 

Okay. So we're talking about catchphrases. Okay. So let's go through it.

So let go of not the ones about flying, getting out of airplanes with parachutes and all that stuff. Be yourself, have fun with your numbers. So when I say: “have fun with your numbers”, I don't mean like let's get a calculator out and woo, like that. No-no I mean, like, look at your numbers in your business and gamify it. 

Look at it and be like: “okay, so my profits were down by 3% last month, I'm going to make it go up 10% the next month” or whatever. Whatever you have to do to make it fun and exciting. There's so many things you can measure in your business. Just make this like a game, pay attention to it more and put more emphasis on that. But know what happens is if you're afraid of your numbers, you're not looking at that stuff, then you're not even paying attention to the stuff that really means so much in your business.

So having fun, would, I think, make it more fun. Right, okay. I'm not really selling that and, you know, working on my spiel for that, but okay.

So if you, like, if that resonates, resonate, that resonates, resonate, not resonate. I don't want that. If it resonates, if that resonates with you having fun with your numbers, let me know, because maybe that will be my catch phrase. 

All right, and I also want to say: “fabulous” I love the word fabulous.

I love drag Queens. They're always fabulous. Right? So fabulous fun with your numbers. Okay. Fabulous, fun, financials. Don't take that. I'm going to use that fun fab. Fabulously fun financials. Don't take that! That's mine! I said it here on camera. Boom. Mic drop. Okay. So it's locked in. And no trying to steal it.

This is timestamped. All right. So what other catch phrases I'm looking at on my notes? Oh yeah. The last part: “and see your profits soar”, or “watch your profits soar” or “let your profits soar”. What is most inspiring here? I don't know. Like, I guess, watch and see as exact same thing. It's this watch or you're seeing watch watches, like watch.

Maybe that's more like you can't see, but my I'm stamping my foot. Like that's what I'm watching and nothing's happening. So maybe that's not a good one. Like, okay: “any day now my profits are gonna soar”. Where are they? Maybe I don't like that one. Maybe let or allow? Something I need some word, please help me out people. What do you guys think out there? Can you give me some feedback and let me know, watch, let, see. What's some other words? Let's get that thesaurus out, let's get that thing working.

So we're talking about stepping into our authenticity and dressing is a big part of it to me.

And it's not just about how your appearance look to be authentic. It's you know how you come across your mannerisms, the tone of your voice, the speed at which you speak. All these things will impact you coming across authentic or not authentic. And also I think like if you're too much in your head, you don't feel comfortable.

And I would say right now my authenticity level is pretty, pretty high. I feel I'm just being me. You know, there is the pressure of the camera and all of that. And I must admit this morning, my sister said to me: “oh, what time are you going live today?”, and this little ping of anxiety kind of went through me thinking like: “oh, if my sister's watching, then I have to be funny”.

Like you have that pressure. And I want to say: “no” to pressure. I just want to be here. Be real. If I'm funny, I'm funny. But if I'm not, maybe at least this is educational, entertaining or whatever. 

Drag Queens - I've talked about drag queens a lot you know? You’d say like: “oh, okay, a drag queen, are they authentic? Or they're dressing up in a costume?”. They're maybe pretending that they're a different gender than they are all that kind of stuff. I think you can be very authentic as a drag queen, just because you're wearing a costume doesn't mean that you are somebody else. There's an essence of you in there. And sometimes when you wear a costume, it brings out something in you very authentic that you didn't even know was there.

So one of my favorite drag queens is Trixie Mattel. That name is just really funny. Cause Trixie is kind of like: “my name is Trixie”, you know, it's like kind of like, that funny kind of name. Like a waitress at a diner. And if your name is Trixie and you're not a waitress at a diner, I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend you or anything like that. It's just a, kind of a cutesy name. And then Mattel, of course Barbie is made by the company Mattel.

So that's where Trixie Mattel got her name. And I thought this was really interesting in their book. Trixie Mattel talks about when he is himself and he puts on high heels he can't walk in high heels. But once he gets into the character of Trixie Mattel, he's able to walk in heels fine. And it's still him. There's an essence of him in there. 

So I love this idea of wearing a costume. But being yourself and this whole discussion about this came from me thinking about like, as an accountant, I'm a CPA, that like the costume of choice for CPAs is a suit.

And I was talking about how I never really felt that comfortable in the suit. It felt like a costume to me. But then when I brought out some of my ensembles, I think it's probably like day three or day two or something like that if you want to go back and watch it, I had some lovely suits. And some of them I felt really authentic in. Because it really brought out my personality where other ones seemed a little bit kind of confining and a little bit too, buttoned up for me. You can tell I'm not a really button up kind of person.

I'm just going to read from the book, it's a comedic type book. In here is this whole thing about make-up. This little part right here, it's called: “The mirror has two faces, who are you, Trixie Mattel? When you put your makeup on you're deciding less about how the world sees you and more about how you see yourself”. Makeup doesn't change people's minds. It changes our minds and makes it possible for us to project who we are that day. I love that. so Here's some of Trixie Mattel's inspirations for makeup choices.

 When I created my look, these are the icons I threw into my creative blender. And if you know anything about Trixie Mattel, these will completely make sense. So here's where she drew inspiration for the makeup that she wears: Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors, oh God. I love that, suddenly Seymour right? Miss Yvonne from Pee-wee's Playhouse. Oh God. I love Miss Yvonne, Peggy from Married with Children, Dolly Parton, there’s a lot of Dolly Parton in Trixie Mattel. Dusty Springfield, oh yes, the go-go boots, Trixie Mattel is all about the go-go boots. Barbie and Skipper, Polly Pocket, that’s cute. My Little Pony, the Power Puff Girls Lady Bunny, that’s another drag queen if you don't know. Amanda Lapore, was part of the nightclub scene in the eighties and probably still is today. Really groundbreaking. And Hedwig, oh God love me some Hedwig, Elvira and Divine. Oh, these are all great inspirations for makeup. I think maybe I might use some of these. That's what Trixie Mattel uses as inspiration to do his makeup.

I have to say that when I was in design school, so this is back in the eighties, I went to fashion design school in 86. I graduated from high school, I was 17 and I went off to college. When I think about like young people today, like a lot of kids it's expensive, they stay at home, they don't go off on their own, but I was able to do that at a young age. And I loved my parents, but I could not wait to just get away and be on my own and just move to the city. And I moved to Atlanta. It was a wonderful time. 

But I was very goth and I had a lot of goth inspiration. I loved Siouxie Sioux if you don't know who she is, she had really big eyebrows she'd be like, really do her eyebrows up. The black hair and, oh, I just love Siouxie Sioux. She was part of my makeup blender, and I would draw on these huge black eyebrows. Now I'm not talking about like right now, I filled in my eyebrows with a little bit of black. I'm not talking about that. 

My father called em’ Groucho Marx eyebrows. I would take black eyeliner pencil and literally draw on these eyebrows. They were rectangular in shape, so they were like very big and thick and, would take a while to color them in. And I did not wear a lot of makeup, I did not pluck my eyebrows or anything like that. I was in college, I couldn't afford to have someone wax my eyebrows and I never did that until like later on in my life. 

I would draw these on, so I would have to kind of diminish some of my regular eyebrows so that I could draw on these big, giant black eyebrows. Came pretty close, but it was definitely not a unibrow. It wasn't like Frida Khalo. It was, these big black chunks. It almost looked like I was wearing duct tape above my eyes. And at the time I was wearing contact lenses. So you could really see my eyebrows. 

And then I shaved my head. I had a Mohawk for a while. And then I would take the eyebrows and draw them all the way around the side like part of the head. Sometimes I would do something else. When you have a shaved head, you got a lot of space to work with. So you can do all kinds of fun things like that. And then you can extend the eye shadow out as well.

My dad was like: “oh, you look like Groucho Marx” or whatever. Okay, yeah, I loved it. Makeup can bring out so much of your personality because, as I've quoted RuPaul before: “we are all born naked and the rest is drag” and it's fun to dress up and have fun with our clothes.

Fashion is just one of those ways that we can express ourselves and be authentic. Part of it, sometimes is wearing some kind of costume. It may seem like a costume. Would you say that Trixie Mattel is a costume? I don't think so. I think this is like another side of Trixie Mattel, it’s not a costume to me. This is someone expressing themselves in a creative way that just happens to be with makeup and hair and clothing. And I think it's awesome, I just love drag Queens. 

I remember as a teenager, people would tease me about liking culture club or liking Boy George, he got a lot of flack for being who he was. You know, it was part of that eighties, gender-bending thing. Like Annie Lennox had it going on from The Eurythmics. It was pushing the envelope and people did not like it at all. 

Men started wearing earrings - and they didn't even have ear piercings, a lot of times they had those things that fit on the side of the ear lobe that would hang down with a little chain. So it was like a part-time earring kind of thing. You didn't have to commit to the hole, it just clipped onto your ear. I think they still have those. I don't know if they still have those or not, that was a time when, like you didn't see a lot of tattoos. Or piercings were like: “oh, that's weird”. Piercings are weird. Gender bending was, you know, parents were like up in arms over it. Like: “What is going on? My son is wearing makeup!” It was a different time.

 Now, there's a lot more awareness around that and thank God things are changing. They're not changing fast enough, but at least they are going in the right direction. I'm referencing a book that came out in the eighties called Boy George. This is not written by Boy George, it’s by Scott Cohen. Who knows if he even met with Boy George, to write this? There was a lot of these types of books back in the eighties. These you'd find in one of those spinning racks in maybe the drug store or something like that. 

So this is from this book, Boy, George was in Weekly World News. Remember that? That's like where the bat boy was on Weekly World News, all of that kind of stuff. So it's a trashy kind of, I think it's still around, Weekly World News. It's not really news at all. It's just like trash it's all sensationalized.

Boy George, of course he's an easy target because he is being authentic to himself and that's going against the grain of society and they want to pick on him. Cause that's what people do when they come across something different.

They don't understand it. Instead of being like: “hey you are being original, you're being yourself, you’re being authentic”. Instead, they try to tear you down for your authenticity because you don't fit into societal norms. It's horrible, horrible, horrible.

It says: “the impact of Boy George following the show was like a seismic shock” - I’m not sure which show it was but - “British mums and dads are having fits because the bizarre lead singer of chart topping rock group is a boy, screamed the Weekly World News on November 30th” and a story titled: “Is it a her, a him, or is it neither?”.

Okay. times were different. “Boy, George, as he likes to be called”, the story went on, “sickens adults by parading around like a floozy. His face painted with makeup and his shoulder length, black hair braided like a Bo Derek”. Okay well, if you don't know who Bo Derek is, you'll have to go look that up.

This is from the Weekly World News one parent was quoted: “It wouldn't be so bad, but my 16 year old son finds him attractive and America is next for this kind of punk rock sickness. It's spreading into other parts of Europe already. It's horrible”. Right. Let's go, just go back to the other sentence.

Parents saying: “sickens adults by parading around like a floozie”. That is not a word I would ever describe. Boy, George a floozy? Floozy to me is like someone who's dressed like a prostitute or something. Like I could see maybe like Prince's backup singers or something maybe they could be called floozies? They wore the fish nets and all that kind of stuff. 

But Boy George, he was so covered from head to toe. He had the really long shirts, pants and there was no skin, there was barely any skin. It was like his face, and then he had his hair and floozy is not, no, that does not come to mind.

 And then it said he had shoulder length hair braided, like a Bo Derek. Okay. So if you remember, Bo Derek was in that movie 10, she had the braids in her hair. He did not have braids like that. Never had braids like that. He had dreadlocks, he had hair extensions, they were not braided. They, they don't even know what they're talking about. Okay: “Parading around with the punk rock sickness and spreading it to other parts of Europe already”. Okay. Said an upset mother: “He's not just a bad example. He's disgusting. That thing's got all of our children walking around wondering just which sex they are.”. 

Okay, kids back then struggled with their sexuality. Kids today struggle with that. And Boy George was actually doing a service to these children by like being authentic and being like: “Hey, you know what? If you want to dress like this, you can, no one's stopping you. And in fact, I became famous”. 

Of course people were being mean to him, but so sad. And then it says: “Boy George was described as liking to lounge around in a silk kimono and with ribbons in his plated hair”. I don't know what that means. He said he didn't think it was something to deny or be embarrassed over.

Yeah. He likes to wear kimono. So what? Cause that's so weird how people are just so unforgiving. And they have such opinions that are ridiculous about people just because they're being authentic. 

Okay, so Boy George, like I said earlier, there was a time when people would make fun of you if you like Boy George, but I was authentic and said: “no, I like, I like him, I like what Boy George was doing”. 

Later on, you know, unfortunately he did get into drugs. And that was probably because people were giving him such a hard time and his music kind of went downhill for a while. But then he came back, you know, and of course they loved to tease him. 

There was that time when he was caught with cocaine in his house. And then he had to do like civil service. And so he was having to, I think sweep the streets or something and empty garbage cans and TLZ or TMZ or whatever it's called was like around with their cameras catching it. And poor guy is just trying to do his, civil service because he had been arrested or whatever.

Leave the guy alone. Now though, Boy George is a vegan, which is super cool. He's not on drugs. He doesn't do any of that. He's feels comfortable again in his own skin. And I just love him. I just think he's just so awesome. Boy George! And for those that are out there that have no idea who Boy George is, you can look him up and Time, that's a great song. The Kissing to be Clever was the name of the album. 

All right, I would love for you to try this with me. Contact me and let me know that you want to go live and we'll set up a date and time together. DM me? It's @zeitzwolfe. That's my last name. You can look me up as Vegan CPA. 

So, I'm being flexible about the time of the day that I do this. I'm just kind of fitting it in when I can, between appointments and when my makeup is nice and fresh, that sort of thing. Just hit me up and let me know. I want everybody to kind of try this and get comfortable with this, because this is the future.

The future is video, right? We're going to be on video constantly and God with this whole COVID thing, who knows if we'll ever get to be in in-person again? Well, that would be horrible. 

The last thing I wanted to talk about was, my inner critics and all of that. Like the voices in my heads that make it so that I'm not comfortable with all the things that happen when you get in your head, you cannot be comfortable.

And it's like this little voice saying: “oh, you just screwed that up and you just said, ums and AHS. You're a Toastmaster, goddammit!”, like all these things. 

Okay. So check that out, it’s episode 83, I believe. The first one in the series of : Stepping Into Your Authenticity. 

I'm not crazy about that title. Authenticity is so overused. That is the right word, but it's so played out. Uck! Get out your thesaurus. If you got a better word for me, let me know.

Doin’ it liiive! Living the little Lofa? No, wait, the Lita, Lofa the meta, Lofa the M live in the B2B to low, low time.

The live live in the vita loca… Vita loca! I think that's the word I'm looking for. I need to work on my foreign languages. See you on the flipity flip side. 

See you later!”