30. How to find your people: Part 2. Decolonize the idea of giving value

You've probably heard this advice a million times: "give value." 

Offer something helpful, useful, desirable... so that you can build trust, establish authority, and strengthen relationships. Sounds good, right?

Well, weirdly enough, this popular advice might just be exactly what's keeping your people from finding you.

Listen to this episode to explore:

• Why the ubiquity of "giving value" makes your shares invisible
• Why this framework sets up an impossible mental calculation that drives good-hearted people crazy
• How conventional marketing advice is literally built on colonial thinking
• The one simple question that changes everything about how you show up

Transcript

Hey everyone. You are listening to Liberatory Business, and I'm Simone Seol, your host. Thank you so much for listening, and this is episode two of our three-part series about finding your people.

Last week we talked about talking less about your work and sharing more about you—letting your humanity show through everything that you do. Today we're diving into my second principle, second piece of advice, which might sound even more heretical, which is to stop obsessing over giving value in the conventional way that you've probably been taught about it.

The problem with "give value" advice

Every marketing guru, every social media expert, every business coach probably told you that the secret to building an audience is to give value. Provide something useful, educational or entertaining. Share tips. Tell people about your framework. Prove your worth through what you know.

And here is what I have observed: This preoccupation with giving value has created a massive problem, and today I'm gonna share with you why I think this advice is built on a fundamentally extractive mindset and is ultimately ineffective for business—and what to do instead.

The commoditization problem

When everyone is desperately trying to quote-unquote "give value," the market of attention gets flooded with the same recycled advice. "Three breathwork exercises to release stored trauma"—how many posts like that have you seen? Right, across different niches. That sounds exactly like 500 other people posting similar content in similar formats.

The thing is, there's only so much knowledge to go around. And when hundreds of people are posting—hun, hundreds, thousands, millions of people are posting nearly identical content using the same formulas, the same hooks, the same frameworks—it's not just oversupply, it is just blatant commoditization. And when something becomes a ubiquitous commodity, the value approaches zero.

Now the problem isn't that trying to create quote-unquote "value" inherently makes you sound like everybody else. It's more nuanced than that. The real issue is that the dominant interpretation of quote-unquote "giving value" has become incredibly narrow and formulaic, right?

When everyone is told to give value, most people default to the exact same playbook:

• Share tips and frameworks
• Use proven content formulas like listicles and how-tos
• List with educational hooks
• Package everything into bite-sized actionable pieces

And so advice of giving value has been reduced to information sharing. And the commoditization that this creates reduces all of this to zero value because everyone is competing in the same lane—the lane of information—at a time when the value of information is rapidly approaching zero.

The impossible calculation that drives you insane

That's one layer of the problem, and here's a deeper layer of the problem with the "give value first" mentality, which is that it creates an impossible calculation that's going to drive you insane. And I constantly coach my clients on this.

You're constantly asking yourself: Is this too much? Have I given away too much? Am I giving away the secret sauce? I don't wanna give away the farm. Why would they still need me if I share this? Why would they still hire me? Why would they still join my course if I tell them what the solution is, if I solve all their problems with this valuable content?

And you are forced to become this paranoid gatekeeper of your own knowledge, measuring out tiny portions like you're rationing food during a famine—making sure that people don't die and stay around, you know, but not giving them enough for them to actually be satiated. Like you have to keep people not dead, but hungry. That is literally the mindset that conventional marketing teaches you about giving value.

And I think that's fucking terrible.

If it's ever felt terrible in your body to be told "give them value, but not too much," and you drove yourself crazy trying to guess just how much value that is, it's because it is a terrible way to think about everything.

Why this approach is fundamentally extractive

The scarcity mindset this is based on trains you to see your own brilliance, your own creativity, your own intellectual output as a finite commodity. It trains you to see your audience as potential thieves who might steal away your ideas and cash out and run away without paying. Every person becomes somebody who might take your best stuff and never give you anything in return. You start hoarding your knowledge like a dragon sitting on a pile of gold.

And here's what this creates for you: You end up filtering everything through the lens of "how is this gonna contribute to my bottom line?" You filter human relationships through "is this gonna contribute to my bottom line?" You're constantly calculating what to give versus what to hold back. You're performing helpfulness instead of actually helping.

The result is that your audience becomes passive consumers rather than true connections because the entire relationship is built on the assumption that they are here to take from you.

The colonial mindset behind conventional value

The standard framework of giving value is built on a colonial mindset. The same extractive approach that colonialism used to break down living systems into sellable parts is exactly what this marketing advice does to you and your relationships.

It treats knowledge as extractable and finite resources—like your wisdom is oil to be drilled, packaged into courses and lead magnets and marketing assets, right? You start separating yourself into the professional version of you versus the personal version of you. And you treat your expertise like a finite resource to be mined and sold off piece by piece.

And it treats all communication as bait, right? Where every post, every story, every vulnerable share is calculated to hook someone, reel them in and convert them. Once again, you are performing connections instead of actually connecting. You're performing help instead of helping. And all relationships become sales pipelines.

This is how colonialism works: It takes living interconnected systems and breaks them down into extractable parts so they can be commodified and sold for profit.

The decolonized version of giving value

So what's the alternative? Because if you wanna be in business, I still agree—yeah, you do need to give value. That's what makes people wanna be around you. Give value, absolutely. Except I mean the decolonized version of value.

And here's what I mean by the decolonized version of giving value, and it's beautifully simple: Leave at least one person a little better off than you found them.

That's it. It is not about proving your expertise. It is not about optimizing for engagements and shares. It's leaving one person better off for having interacted with you or your shares.

What does this actually mean?

Maybe it means someone feels a little less alone today 'cause you shared something that was true about your experience being human. That's value.

Maybe someone feels seen because you articulated something about what it means to be human that they couldn't put into words. That's value—the value of being understood.

Maybe someone feels encouraged because you said something that reminded them of something they already knew but had forgotten. Or maybe someone felt inspired because you showed them a new way of thinking about an old problem. That's value.

Maybe someone was having a bad day and felt a little lighter because you made them laugh, put a smile on their face. That's value.

Maybe someone feels a little braver because you did something vulnerable and it took guts and you went first, and it made them feel like "maybe I could be brave too."

Maybe someone feels more hopeful because you shared your perspective on something difficult.

Maybe someone discovered something new about themselves because of the way you framed a particular question.

Maybe someone was feeling alone, but now feels like they're part of something bigger because of the community you are building around your shared values.

Maybe you saved someone time by curating some things that matter to you.

Maybe you said something that gave someone permission to feel what they're feeling.

Maybe you modeled a way of being that they themselves want to embody, and it's just how you move through the world that showed them what that means. And that's value.

Maybe you shared something that created a moment of beauty in their day.

Maybe you shared something that gave someone else a moment of thinking, "Huh, there's someone else who thinks like me. Wow, that's amazing."

Or maybe your very being offers a consistent calming presence in chaotic times.

A totally different orientation

This is a totally different orientation in terms of thinking about value. Instead of asking "What value can I provide?" you are asking "How can I be present with care for whoever might encounter this?"

The difference is everything.

Quote-unquote "giving value" in the colonial sense assumes that you have something others lack, and therefore others are gonna come to extract it from you, and then you'll be left with less.

"Leaving someone better off"—the decolonized definition—assumes that you are sharing in the human experience and you have something to offer from that shared ground. That when you share it, both of you are left richer.

And the thing is, you don't have to manufacture ways to come up with this kind of thing to share, right? Just when you're living life and responding authentically to what you are noticing, what moves you, what strikes you as interesting or beautiful or curiosity-inducing or even frustrating—when you share that from a place of care, someone will naturally be better off.

Why this approach requires courage

And here's something important that I think needs to be talked about more, which is that this approach actually sometimes really requires courage and emotional risk-taking. It's not always comfortable or safe to share what's really alive in you, even when you know it might serve someone.

Sometimes what wants to be expressed through you will cost you followers. Sometimes it'll disappoint people who expect you to be a certain way or stay in your lane. Sometimes people might think it might make people think that you are too much or too political in the wrong way, or too raw, or too much of whatever, too little of whatever for their comfort.

But you are gonna do it anyway because you know there's someone out there who's gonna be left a little bit better off for having encountered it.

Real examples from my own sharing

Like sometimes I want to rant about politics 'cause something pisses me off, and I know that not every single person is going to resonate with my perspective. But I also know that my rant is going to help at least one person out there feel seen and really relieved because they were feeling the same anger but were feeling alone. You know, it really helps so much to feel like "oh my God, I'm not crazy. There's someone else out there who gets it"—especially in a world that really punishes emotion, right? And that day, my rant is for that person. My rant is going to leave that person a little bit better off than I found them 'cause they're gonna empathize with my rant, right? They're gonna feel a little bit relieved, a little bit emboldened.

Another day, I might tell a story about how—and this is from my actual life, right?—I might tell a story about how I caught myself saying something ableist and I didn't even realize it, and someone told me about it later and corrected me, and I got humbled. And let's say I'm sharing that story on social media, and I'm sharing that story for at least one person out there who maybe made a similar mistake and felt like they were a bad person, or maybe felt like "I'm the only person who made such a mistake," and maybe sharing this post is gonna help them feel a little bit less ashamed, less like there's something wrong with me. Or maybe I'm sharing that for that person who is afraid of making a mistake like that in the future and letting them know, "Hey, guess what? If you make a mistake like this, it's not the end of the world. You can learn. You can correct yourself. It's okay. It's okay to grow."

That is valuable, right?

And on a different day—I do a lot of this too—I might share a win that I had, something I'm proud of. Sometimes it's just as emotionally difficult to share wins as it is to share losses or failures because of that whole tall poppy syndrome thing, right? The tall poppy gets cut first. I think especially when it comes to women, especially when it comes to people of color, our society says "who are you to take up a lot of space? Who are you to win? Who are you to succeed?"

So I talk to a lot of clients who say, "I feel scared to talk about actually how successful I am and how accomplished I am." And I often think about those clients when I share my own wins. Because when I do, even though it feels scary to me too 'cause I am anticipating in my mind all kinds of criticism that could come like "oh, who does she think she is?" or "she's so full of herself," or blah, blah, blah—I know that when I share that, there's at least one person out there who is gonna feel safer celebrating their own success and owning their own wins because they see me doing it. There's someone out there who needs permission to feel proud of their own wins, and I'm doing it for them.

And each of these choices requires courage. The courage to be disliked, the courage to be misunderstood—which by the way is one of the most painful things, I think, at least to me, right? The courage to be judged, the courage to prioritize that one person who needs to hear what you have to say, the one person whom you are aiming to support that day, over the comfort of staying safe and universally palatable, over the illusion of safety that comes from leaving no one bothered.

How this works in practice

And let me be clear about this because sometimes this gets confusing for people. When I say "leave at least one person better off than you found them," it doesn't have to be the exact same person each time, to be clear, right? Because of the examples that I just gave—today might be somebody struggling with anger about politics. Tomorrow might be somebody who made a mistake and feels ashamed. Next week it might be somebody who needs permission to celebrate their wins.

You are trusting that different expressions of your authentic experience is gonna reach different people who need exactly what you're sharing at a given time. But what all these people have in common is that they're part of your community.

Not everyone needs to resonate equally with everything you're sharing in order to be part of your community. If they did, and if everyone agreed a hundred percent with everything you said, if everyone resonated equally with everything you said, that would be like a crazy cult. It wouldn't be a community, right?

I'm not saying never share knowledge

So I know that I just talked about a lot of examples about sharing from what you naturally notice, what emerges naturally from you, from these small moments in life—sharing as a response to life as opposed to something that you are trying to manufacture and produce, right? But I need to be clear: I'm not saying never share actual knowledge, never share tips. I'm not saying never share your expertise. I'm not saying never do teaching. I am not saying only share what spontaneously, organically arises.

What I am saying is: Release the need to prove your expertise or provide some kind of commoditized form of value in a forced way. I'm encouraging you to trust that the knowledge and the wisdom and the teaching is going to naturally emerge in a way that really serves people rather than doing a performance of serving people.

What happens when you make this shift

When you trust that being yourself is the greatest value, when you do this, several wonderful things happen:

You stop calculating and you start actually caring. Instead of asking "is this gonna get engagement or is this gonna get sales?" you ask yourself "is this gonna help someone feel less alone?"

And you start showing up from a fullness, an abundance of spirit rather than scarcity. You're not rationing your wisdom and you're not hoarding your best insights like they're gonna run out. You trust that when you give and share freely and generously from care, more and more comes to you.

You create real relationships instead of transactional ones. People feel genuinely cared about and helped and served, not just marketed to and sold to. And you're gonna see people responding with their own truths and their own vulnerability, not just likes and comments.

And doing this, you're gonna feel more energized instead of depleted 'cause caring for others from your authenticity is renewable energy, unlike performing value.

All right, so that's it for today, and I want to give you this homework for this week: Before you share something for your marketing, ask yourself, "Hmm, how might one person be better off from encountering this?" and share from that place of care and see what feels different. Okay?

And next week we're diving into the third and final piece in this series of how to find your people. And we are talking about why to stop asking yourself "what are people gonna like?" and I'm gonna tell you what to start asking yourself instead.

I'll talk to you then. Bye.