Intro: We Should Be Friends (Successful Women Building Businesses and Unbreakable Bonds)
If you know you were born to serve others, this book is for you.
As servants, the problems we face always stem from not knowing what to do or create next for the people we were born to serve. This is always because one or more of the following are happening:
We don’t know exactly who we serve
We don’t know what our community needs from us right now
We don’t know how to communicate with them effectively on social media
The exciting news is no matter which one of these is true for you, you’re going to learn my proven strategies and steps you can start taking TODAY to be a better servant. Through being a better servant, your community will naturally grow.
Once I figured out who I was born to serve, female entrepreneurs, I offered them something I knew they needed: six weeks of group and one-on-one marketing coaching that was completely free. I knew they needed it because I could see their marketing efforts on social media. I knew they didn’t have the secret sauce. They were where I had been a few years prior, travelling the bumpy road to figuring our what works, and I wanted to help them get through the confusion faster than I had. It became clear I was born to serve female entrepreneurs. How did I know this? Because more and more of them asked me for help with packaging and marketing their ideas.
If you’re reading this, you need to be open to learning new ways to serve. You will use the information in this book to consistently create new offers and experiences, mostly free in the beginning, for your niche audience. That’s how I continue growing my community and it’s how you will continue to grow your community.
How to use this book
This book is divided in two sections:
Born to serve (part one) contains the concepts and real life examples of how and why the concepts, when combined with action, will work for you.
The seven essential steps to growing a community of women (part two) contains the action steps, the blueprint of how to implement my proven community building strategies.
You can use this book by flipping straight to a topic you are curious about or want to tackle specifically, or you can read it cover to cover. However, I suggest completing all the writing assignments in section one before moving on section two.
You will also find it helpful to read my other two books, both available on Amazon:
Money & The 39 Forever Mom - a book about how to create good money habits for moms who want to be more financially savvy when it comes to earning, saving and investing money.
Find Your Voice on Social Media - the six week guide to confidently sharing your message with those who need it most. This book is the manual and workbook for my six week course called Fempreneur Marketing School.
What motivates you?
Why do you want to build a community of women? In your notebook right now, write your reasons, only the ones that truly motivate you at your core.
What motivated me to write this book for you is the fear that you will miss out on the beautiful feeling that comes from knowing, trusting, caring for and being cared for by thousands of women who you SHOULD BE FRIENDS WITH. The thought of you not having that makes my heart sink. And because I know I can help you avoid missing out on the friendships and fulfillment that come from building your community, I have a moral obligation to share the information in this book with you.
The fact that you are reading this book means I want to be friends with you! You are about to learn some things about me that were deep, dark secrets for most of my life, stories of how I came to be the way I am. I want to know your secrets and stories, too.
Please get in touch with me to let me know you are reading this book and let me know some of the reasons you wrote in response to my question, why do you want to build a community of women?, by sending me a message on Facebook or Instagram @yycfempreneurs. I am excited to meet you!
Another fear that motivated me to write this book is this:
I’m afraid that those of you reading this who have walls up because you've been hurt will never open up.
If you're someone who opened yourself up to new friendships and was betrayed, I know how you feel. My fear is that you will continue to believe new people aren’t trustworthy and are likely to hurt you, feeling a false sense of security in your blocked off world. Not sharing my stories of being hurt and overcoming the fear of being hurt again would result in me losing sleep at night. One of my favourite authors and podcast hosts, Tim Ferriss, says you should only set out to write a book if it keeps you up at night, if the fear of not writing the book is so great that it causes you to feel pain. One of my hopes in writing this is that I will feel more joy and at peace because I did my part to help thousands of women get out from behind their walls.
What will happen if you keep protecting your heart from the risks involved with opening up to your current and future community members?
It depends.
If you are like I was five years ago, trying to build income streams from doing things you love, I believe you’ll eventually quit if you don’t learn how to open up, love and be loved.
If you’re already earning a living doing things you love and you want to grow a community because you see it as another income stream, if your number one motivator is money, you’ll definitely quit. If you don’t open up your heart to the women you are trying to serve, it will be too hard. You won’t do the work. Plus they’ll figure out what really motivates you (money) and that your community is not actually about them.
You have to love it, actually LOVE it. Because it will be hard at times. And there will be a period of time in the beginning where you won’t make much money from being an awesome community leader. It has to be about building real friendships and life-changing solutions for those friends who are all struggling with a common problem. There is money in being a community leader for sure, but it comes after a lot of hard work, and I’ll say it one last time, money can’t be your #1 focus. Plus focusing on the money takes most of the fun out of it, at least it does for me.
Being a true servant for the long run involves accepting the risk that you will get hurt, that someone you love and serve won’t love you back. People will say mean things about you behind your back (or maybe more publicly). Accept that not everyone will like you because the reward far outweighs the little bit of pain you will feel to get it.
You are lovable
The last fear that drove this book to completion is that too many women will continue to feel unlovable. Too many women think they can't build a community or a business because of who they are or who they are not. They haven't been told often enough how incredible and talented they are. They lacked people in their childhood pointing out their strengths. They worry constantly that people won’t or don’t like them. They have tried to disguise their lack of confidence in their abilities with slick (sometimes slimy) sales strategies. I've done this too.
I've learned that in order to overcome any fear, to not let it control you and hold you back from achieving your dreams, you have to hear someone else you can relate to share a similar story. You need to hear, You can do it, too, from someone you can relate to. For example, I used to think I wasn’t lovable and that I lacked the gene or natural talent that makes a person lovable. I believed people acted like they were attracted to me to get things from me. I told myself I’d better get used to being self-sufficient because I’d always be alone. Guess what? I learned how to re-route the neuropathways in my brain away from thoughts like that. It took a team (literally, it took teamwork - this story is coming in the book) and being focused on positive change, but I did it and you can, too.
Thanks for reading this raw excerpt from my new book released in September 2021, We Should Be Friends!Thanks for your support!
~Lyndsie Barrie
