Ep. 081: Talking About Politics in Business

I was recently asked if I could record an episode addressing speaking out about political things publicly in my business. So I figured the day after the election would be a very fitting time to release this. In this episode I share the story of how I ran for office and lead with authenticity, and what I learned along the way. I apply these same principals in how I show up in my business too. Since we all get to vote with our dollars and with who we refer others to, I want you to have no doubt in your mind about my values.

LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED TODAY:

• Your Next Big Thing Intensive: http://bit.ly/nbt-intensive

• Want to read a transcript of this episode? Click here!

  This episode of the sell it, sister podcast is going to be airing on the day after election day in the U S in 2020. And you might be listening to it on the day. It comes out live, or you might be listening to it in a few weeks, months or years from now. And things might be pandemonium. You might be like, I don't have the bandwidth to listen to any podcasts today.

  I'm just gonna practice some radical self-care and lay in bed and watch parks and rec for the a hundred and 50th time. which sounds like a perfectly amazing idea. if you ask me, but I had asked recently on Instagram for some ideas of things that you wanted to hear about on the podcast and a friend of mine had said, No.

  Why don't you talk about talking about politics in your business? And I thought, wow, what a great episode to error during a really politically charged time when, you know, I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that as of the airing of this, as, as of the debut of this episode, we probably won't have any answers on.

  who won the election just because of everything this year and with mail-in ballots and all of that. So, so yeah, I feel like this, this is a good time to talk about it. and, and, you know, you can refer back to it in the future because regardless of how things go, it's not like everything is just going to be.

  sunshine and roses, like at least in America, there's a lot of stuff that we, we still need to work on. so I wanted to start this by, talking about something from about three years ago, almost four years ago now. So at the time of the 2016 election, obviously when, when we found out who was going to be the next president, it was, you know, if you, if you know me, if this is not your first time becoming acquainted with me, You probably know that I was very, very upset and dismayed, much like many, many Americans and people around the world.

  And a few months later, in the tiny village that I was living in at the time and upstate New York, we had our, our village government and, I was part of the democratic caucus there. And interestingly, our village elections take place in March. So this was January. And so, you know, the same January that, Trump was inaugurated and, and everything.

  And I had gone to the women's March in DC and, and I've been very like politically active and involved, pretty much since high school. So none of this was. Completely new to me or anything. I know there were some people who it was like, Oh my gosh, I have kind of been ignoring this or not paying a lot of attention.

  And now I'm scared I'm going to get more involved. and that's great that more people got involved. But for me, I have just been very open about my, my opinions since I was probably about, I don't know, 14, maybe even earlier than that. so. In our, in our village, we had lived there, for many, many years at that time, I think, gosh, about seven, eight, something like that.

  and the democratic caucus was running two guys for, the village board. So two trustee positions, and then there was the village justice position. Which, unlike the trustee positions only came open every four years and it happened to be a year that it was open and they wanted to run a full ticket.

  So I had actually been at the, New York state. I forget what it's called. I think it's called like family planning, advocacy day, something like that. But it's basically this big, event that is. I want to say it's like co-sponsored by, planned Parenthood, but also some other organizations that work with, reproductive health and reproductive rights in, in New York state.

  So I live near the capital of New York Albany. And so I went there, for the day for like, for this, you know, kind of like half day, this big half day event. And it was that night that we had our caucus meeting and some of the members who had known me for years. They had said, you know, Hey, we want you to run for this position.

  And I was like, I have no legal training whatsoever. I can't possibly be the village justice, but thank you. and they said, Oh, actually, no, in upstate New York and small towns and villages, You don't, you don't actually need any, which was, you know, shocking, but it was, like it came from a point in time when way back in the day, when you might not have like an actual practicing attorney, in your super small town or.

  Village. And so it came with some training and stuff that would, would help you. but I was like, okay, I, I guess, I guess I will, right. I guess if other people have figured it out who have like less formal education than me and everything, like, I know I'm a smarter person. I'm, well-educated like, I I'm good at learning that new things.

  I am terrified, but sure. So that night, the caucus, Nominated all three of us, we were going to do a full ticket run and we had a bounce seven weeks to, campaign in freezing cold in upstate New York in winter. So for the next seven weeks, my husband and I, and many other people who we knew. Started knocking on doors and talking to our neighbors and letting people know, Hey, the election is coming up.

  And for the first time, in a long time, the Democrats are running a full ticket. So, if you are sick of the status quo, you actually have, you have options this time. And most of the people were like, I didn't even know there was an election coming up and that's like a whole other story, basically, our village just for years and years, had not been advertising the election because what they would do is, like.

  You know, a few days before they would just call all their friends and say, Oh, Hey, don't forget to vote on Tuesday. And it would be same old, same old. Like the mayor would just kind of put people on the board who, you know, were kind of like, yes, men and yes, women. And it was just really a mess. And so we were like, you know what, no matter what happens, we just want to get out the vote.

  Right? Like that was more important. We wanted people to be able to be empowered, to know that an election was happening and, you know, even if they didn't vote for us, that they could at least exercise their right to vote because nobody else who was running the village was going to be, notifying them of the election.

  I don't remember the exact numbers, but like voter turnout in the past had been terrible and we maybe doubled it, something like that. Like, it was a lot, lot, lot more. I wish I could remember the exact numbers, but, in the end, the two trustees, that I was running with, they won, I came very close. I was like 69 votes away.

  I didn't win. I'm actually. Truly clad. I didn't win. I wouldn't have even been able to fill my whole term because we ended up moving, at the end of last year at the end of 2019. So I would've had to give up my term early and, it would have been a huge, huge time commitment. but it was more of, you know, I was just proud that we, we got those two guys on the board cause honestly the justice can't really do anything political or in terms of, You know, like w village legislation or like anything like that, like the justice literally just like tries people in village court.

  So I wouldn't have actually been able to be super, politically active had I got it anyways. but all of this to say, the reason why I'm setting this up for you is when I was asked to run. I said flat out, I was like, I am going to do this my own way. I am going to show up as myself as the Erica that people already know.

  I'm not going to sanitize my image. I'm not going to scrub my Facebook page. I mean, even though it was, you know, set to private, whatever, but like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to go back through and take things down that could be potentially used against me. If people are going to vote for me, they will vote for me, like real true, authentic.

  Me. And they were like, okay, you know, that's fine. And I was like, okay, good. Cause that's, you know, that's what you're going to get. And lo and behold, I had some old, roller Derby headshots on there and somebody who was obviously friends with me, cause again, my account was set to private, had gone through and downloaded some of them.

  And then given them to this, brother and sister who were just. True, true adult bullies, in our, in our village. And, I won't even go into like all of the other stuff with them, but basically what they were doing is they were trying to discredit the three of us with just like really ludicrous stuff.

  And what's funny is that they couldn't really find any dirt on me other than these pictures. And in one of them, I'm like, I have like my middle finger in the air and I have like a very like tough looking scowl on my face. And it's a picture that I love w one of my best friends and took this picture of me.

  It was like some of my earliest headshots, in 2010 when I was playing roller Derby, before I came back and, was a referee in years, like later. and. The interesting thing is, is a lot of the people in the village knew that I had played roller Derby. And, even when I had taken a bunch of years off, they still all assume like that I was still actively playing roller Derby.

  And whenever I would bump into people around town, they would ask me about it. And these were like, a lot of these are like older people, like people who you might not assume. Would know or care at all about roller Derby, but they like, they, they loved it. They loved talking to me about it. They'd be like, Oh, are you going to, you know, play again?

  When are the games, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and it was great. It was not something I ever felt. On proud of, right. It was never anything I felt ashamed of. In fact, just the opposite. It's it's one of the things that, you know, even though I was not phenomenal edit, I'm still really proud that, that I did it.

  Cause it was, it was very, very, very hard. And and so this brother and sister, these adult bullies. Yeah. We're trying to say like, is this the person that you want, like, look at this, this is profane. Is this who we're going to have representing our village, blah, blah, blah. And my mom was like, yeah, I don't.

  I don't care at all. And at the time I actually was back in roller Derby as a ref, and I had these, I've used gorgeous, shots from our annual league photo shoot of me in like my ref outfit. And again, I look super tough and I just. Booty shorts on and like fishnets and, and everything. And I love, love, love this picture.

  So on my Facebook page, like, so I had created a separate page that was like Erica Kevin's for village justice. And so it actually put up that picture and I spoke right to it. I was like, Hey. Yeah. Like, you know, some people online, I've been talking about like my involvement in roller Derby. And I, I no longer play.

  I, instead I ref I'm a skating Raff and here's a recent photo of me. And like, let me tell you about, you know, roller Derby and how much I love it and what it signifies to me and how proud I am and just all of this stuff. It was a very like honest, authentic post. and then the, the brother was like, I don't know, it was commenting, stupid shit on it and whatever, but I just put it out there, like.

  You you think that you are trying to drag me, but I am not ashamed of this. In fact, I will openly post updated photos of myself in booty shorts on my page that says I'm running for office because. I don't care. This is who I am. And yes, if you are voting for me, I want you to know this about me. And if you are going to judge me negatively because of this, then that is up to you.

  I can't control that. And I'm not going to try to change your mind. Like you get, you have autonomy, you get to do what you want to do. Right. So all of this to say that. In my own business where I'm essentially asking people to vote for me with their dollars or with their referrals to other people. I want people to know what they are voting for.

  Right. I don't want someone who is, you know, aggressively anti-choice and like, You know, anti LGBTQ rights and, you know, his hashtag all lives matter, whatever. I don't want someone like that to come into my space and pay me their money and have to, you know, like, and I make like emotional and energetic and mental and physical time for this person who fundamentally.

  Has a value system that is in direct opposition to my own. I D I don't need that because there are billions of people in this world. There are so many people who are a perfect fit client for me. Right. And this doesn't mean that all of my clients are, you know, identically aligned in every belief with me.

  In fact, like many are not, But I don't have a problem leading with my values and openly sharing what could be viewed as political content, like in my, you know, on my social media and in my emails and things like that, because I've said it before and I I'll say it again. Our job in marketing is to attract the best fit people and repel the people who are not a good fit.

  And I choose to approach everything in my business as often as possible with an abundance mindset and sort of a lack mindset and a lack mindset would say, Just be very vanilla, be very neutral. You don't want to offend anyone because, you know, if you're more neutral than you could potentially get more clients and have more money and more success, yada, yada, yada.

  And I'm like, okay, well, if there are millions and billions of people in the world, and then like lots of those who have businesses too, and also have a similar value structure to me, them. Like awesome. Like then I am looking at it from the point of view of there is no shortage of perfect fit people for me out there.

  Are there hundreds of thousands who don't yet know I exist and might never know I exist. Sure. But I am choosing to believe that there are enough other people who feel similarly to me who are going to like. Vibe well with me that I don't need to worry about the other people that I might be offending.

  And to me, this is not about like, Oh, like, you know, being more like divisive or like polarizing or, or like, or like pulling people, you know, in opposing directions and, and all of that. Like that is actually not how I am like, interestingly enough, for even as like, Liberal and progressive as I am, our son's godfather might not really like a godfather, cause it's not like a, it's not like a Christian thing, but whatever the like non-Christian version of godfather, the person that you would like will your child to, to take care of in case like Chris and I both died.

  he is one of our best family friends. He's my husband's best friend. He's a lifelong Republican. We get along super well. We've had some of the best discussions ever. I have other clients as well, who like we might have opposing viewpoints on some things like not. Not from a values space, not like a deep values place, but just, you know, like topical things that might be a little different.

  We end link. These people are my friends and like we have great discussions, right? So this isn't about just being in an echo chamber and more of the same and pulling people further, further apart.

  That's not it at all. Because I view it as there's a difference between like surface level politics between being like, you know, I think that the zoning laws should be different or that, you know, the tax codes or this or that or whatever, and my actual core values.

  And if you. Have values that directly say to my values or to me as a human, I don't think that you should have the same rights as other people or as me, or, you know, whatever. I don't really, I don't, I don't need you. I don't need you in my space. I don't need you in my orbit. I don't need you on my calendar on don't need to be taken their money.

  Right. Cause there were other people who you are probably going to like. You know, click with better than me. And I don't need to be worried that every time I like speak my truth on Instastories, that I'm going to like piss you off. And you're going to come to me and like asked to break your contract and ask for a refund or whatever.

  I don't, I don't need that in my life. Right. There's enough other people that I know are on the same wavelength with me. I'm not going to sweat the people who aren't. So that is why I really. I don't have a problem speaking about my truth in my marketing, because I'm trying to attract the best people for me and repel the people who are not the best for me.

  And just like I did when I was running for office, you know, and again, I lost right. I lost, Which ultimately was truly fine with me. but it's, it's just, you know, it's the truth. I lost. Maybe I could have done some things different and swayed, you know, 70 more people to vote for me, but I didn't.

  But at the end of the day, I was proud because I did what we set out to do. Got the trustees elected. Informed more people about the election so they can exercise their right. And I stayed true to myself. So if you vote for me with your dollars, with your referral, with your time that you spend here each week, listening to my podcast, I appreciate you.

  And I also want you to vote for me because you know, the real me and not a watered down sanitized version of me. That is not actually aligned with your, you know, you, you assume, you assume I'm aligned with your values and then you get blindsided later and find out on mat. I don't want that. There's enough other people in the world for me, for you, for all of us.

  So, yeah. So thank you. to my friend, PECI for telling me, for, you know, suggesting that I, that I do this, who knows what is happening in our world this week at the time of this airing. But I hope that this encourages you most of all, to speak your truth in your marketing and trust your truth and trust that it will bring the best people to you.

  And as always happy selling.