Hey!
Cancel culture is a modern phenomenon. Only this week a business owner friend of mine asked me to meet and help her get ahead of any potential cancelling. She's witnessed many other brands go through troubles at the hands of social media and wanted to see what she could do to prepare for such a fate.
So much came up via our conversation. How sometimes the things that kick off a cancelling might not even be true, or are twisted out of context. How small business owners are often not prepared or trained in any kind of way to handle such a public scandal, and how there is absolutely NO blueprint or special advisor for this. Traditional PR doesn't quite understand how fast the world of social media works or how it feels to be a founder led company enduring it's first public fallout.
Mostly, we spoke about the mental health impact it has.
Basically, you can feel like you're out on your own. I think a lot of business owners have this in the back of their mind as something that they hope and pray doesn't happen to them but, newsflash, everyone used to have their 15 mins of fame, now everyone is likely to have their 15 mins of being cancelled.
You might have seen this on my insta this past week, but if not, here are 15 things I learnt from being cancelled.
Last year me and my business went through a public scandal and I was cancelled. I lost an almost million pound turnover business, had numerous bad press articles and a nasty gossip thread created that still rages a year later.
15 months on, here’s what I learned...
I’ll just start this by saying I made a lot of
crappy mistakes during that time and I own it. I’ve learnt and grown a lot.
1.
I’m happy I didn’t disappear from socials. I took a couple of short breaks but overall I didn’t want or need to. I knew how much harder and mentally heavy it would be to come back after a prolonged period - I’ve seen this from other people I know who have been cancelled and struggling to make their ‘Re- entry’ into public profile.
2.
When I was in it, it felt like everyone hated me / was against me. My emotions took over and I could only see the bad, instead of realising a lot of the support I had. My core audience are and we're still there, the ‘cancelling’ just flushed out those who didn’t really get me or want to take the time to understand. and so weren’t my ideal audience anyway. I’ve learnt to trust the data instead of emotions.
3.
I learnt that silence isn’t the best policy - it really depends on your audience. I’ve always been super transparent and open with you guys, so making drafted statements etc felt weird. Everyone at the time advised me not to share what was really going down but over a year on, this is I hear repeated back to me over and over again - most fo you respected the brutal honesty.
4.
On reflection, I wouldn’t have given any statements to the press. At the time I wanted to clear the one sided narrative that they had, but of course it was mostly ignored or taken out of context as it detracted from their initial takedown pieces. No comment would have been fine but I was worried it would make things look worse because I hadn’t stood up for myself.
5.
In retrospect, I probably didn’t need to close my business as a result of the scandal, the support and customers are still there. But I’m happy with my decision as the mental load was too much and it’s made way for a new challenge (don’t know what that will be yet!)
6.
The most long living problem with being ‘cancelled’ is how much noise it put into my head. I didn’t ever second guess decisions before or how it would look ‘optically’ but now I do. Maybe that’s good, maybe bad, not sure!
7.
The hardest part of being cancelled is feeling like my career trajectory may never be what I thought it would. That’s been the hardest part to accept. Again, could end up being better, who knows!
8.
I was surprised at the lengths people went to cause me distress. I had the council sent to my house, my children spoken about online, brands I worked with contacted to drop me, attempts at taking me to court. People can be very vindictive if they feel that they have been wronged.
9.
On the brand side - they would all hear the story and say they were happy to work with me despite it. They would all go on to go back on their word. They don’t want or need the drama so fair enough, I still got paid!
10.
Being cancelled and enduring a public scandal has made me super resilient. I’m much more willing to talk about my views and opinions now because I’ve been through the worst of it. I guess this could have had the opposite effect but now I’m like feel free to cancel me, this ain’t my first rodeo!
11.
It made me a lot more open minded and less affected by headlines. People tend to not care about the nuance or context of a situation, they will take it on headline only. I now take everything with a pinch of salt and I wouldn’t ever call for someone to be cancelled. We all have things to learn and we all
duck up.
12.
There is a secret society of people who have been cancelled who all reach out to each other to provide support
13.
No amount of finger pointing at others will save you from being cancelled. You can’t build up a bank of being ‘woke’ and think it’s an armour. If people decide they’re coming for you then you’re done, regardless of how many other people you’ve called out.
14.
I learnt to trust myself and my decisions on how I handled it. I knew what was true to me, even when I had my closest telling me I was doing it all wrong. I’m happy with my decisions, it would have cost me more in the long term to handle it the ‘correct’ way to hate myself for it.
15.
There is a lot to learn about yourself from being cancelled! I’m a better person as a result and I learnt some really valuable lessons. Some of the people in the cancel gang actually have a point, so it’s good to listen to it and see if they have fair criticism.
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What do you guys think about cancel culture?
Is it really holding people accountable, or just a way to virtue signal?
Do you fear being cancelled in your business?
Hit reply - I'd love to know your thoughts.
S x
mothersundertheinfluence.substack.com
