InstaCasualty
Active member
What we are seeing here is something bigger than Sarah. We are seeing the South Sea Bubble of personal brands bursting like a balloon full of piss.
This also shows that concept of personal brand is quite frankly bankrupt. It is a complete conceit. There is no such thing. It’s either business or you as a person. What we are seeing here is an absolute example of how disastrous blurring of these boundaries can be. Imagine another business transaction you were involved in where instead of business communication you’d be receiving a recording of the owner of the business with his/her partner talking (vaguely) about state of their marriage and how they are feeling about things while all you need to know is when you’ll get your refund for services not being as advertised. I don’t know. Imagine getting that from your plumber. Or architect who designed your kitchen extension, didn’t finish and turned out the builder he employed was a cowboy off Rogue Traders. You can’t? That’s because you didn’t buy personal brand there. You bought a service, service wasn’t delivered. End of.
And yes, I do feel for her. I feel for her as she clearly put a bomb under her own life. Very publicly because to date that’s how she created her business. Her business was her. It doesn’t work because you is you and business is business. That’s why limited companies exist. She has one for that reason.
On another note, and sorry for getting philosophical here. What we have here really is a very old thing - the oppression of women under another name. Now that women are working and all research shows that we carry most of the household duties and do majority of emotional labour including being the default parent, rather than addressing the underlying issues that lead to this (patriarchal capitalist bullshit), the myth of mumtrepeneur has emerged. A mum who apparently has a business that allows her to earn excellent money but at the same time gives her all the time in the world to spend with her kids. A mum who is free from the apparent chattel of 9-5, is in a girl gang and is all about women supporting women. Usually by buying things from other women because that apparently is feminism. Go self employed gurl - boss babe it! Anyone (and I speak from experience here) who is self employed or has a small business knows that actually it often means a 24/7 business that has some flex in it but that flex doesn’t come for free. And there is much more risk to it. And that we need 9-5 because you need to be able to call your local council for some paperwork or have a hospital admin who isn’t in insta posting pictures of herself in MAMA sweatshirts for 100 quid while processing vital life saving appointments. You know - ordinary women doing ordinary jobs who need to get paid for them sufficiently, have childcare that works for them and husbands who support them. That’s worth fighting for. Not this fake instafeminism nonsense where apparently if you change your mindset the money will come. That’s why MLMs exist as they peddle the same shite and we all know how it ends.
Note how how the narrative we often see now is that overwhelm caused by unreasonable tangible things like cost of childcare, cost of living and not having a 50/50 divide of home duties is now apparently completely resolved because you need to work on your “mindset”. Go and get that money babe. In her podcast Sarah starts talking about it as women sitting at home and going “ooh I can’t do that” so her solution in her own words is her telling them that they can. And that’s it - all everything resolved. Really? Look how women were asking her mid the mad selling spree she was on how she manages it all? That’s the big question all women are struggling with because of tangible and very real things that are happening around us like gender pay gap, default parenting position, cost of childcare and impact of pandemic where women do most of the homeschooling and housework DESPITE having full time jobs themselves, all amply evidenced by research that shows that women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. And the answer was: work harder babe and deriding 9-5.
You know why lot of these women (I know, not all) defending Sarah are in some sort of “mindset coaching” or equally intangible “products”? If they turn on her it would expose the flimsiness of their own businesses.
There are very few women on insta that actually do work that empowers women. Mother Pukka doing her flex appeal work had done more than most actually. Because she’s tackling a tangible real problem for women and sits at the tables where decisions about it are made. She’s an exception in sea of “personal brand” nonsense and a walking example of how difficult it is to make that work have an actual impact rather than perpetrate patriarchy under another name.
By the way - compare this Live (and all the stuff released to date by SA) to MotherPanic‘s announcement on this. "I had paid money to this coach, he was unethical, stole my money, and now I know he also was inappropriate, unprofessional and abusive to other women. Let's out these guys - these are their names. Police has been notified. Spread the word. The End." That’s how this should have been done plus apologies for having exposed customers and full refunds for all work done with LD. Ask yourself why it wasn’t.
This is bigger than SA by the way. She is bearing a brunt of exposing all that’s wrong with this approach. The question here is: will she emerge having ditched this model or try to continue with the same.i wish her the best. It is a shit show and she must be feeling absolutely destroyed but really, this is business. Treat it like one, set a boundary, cut your losses, refund and work from there.
This also shows that concept of personal brand is quite frankly bankrupt. It is a complete conceit. There is no such thing. It’s either business or you as a person. What we are seeing here is an absolute example of how disastrous blurring of these boundaries can be. Imagine another business transaction you were involved in where instead of business communication you’d be receiving a recording of the owner of the business with his/her partner talking (vaguely) about state of their marriage and how they are feeling about things while all you need to know is when you’ll get your refund for services not being as advertised. I don’t know. Imagine getting that from your plumber. Or architect who designed your kitchen extension, didn’t finish and turned out the builder he employed was a cowboy off Rogue Traders. You can’t? That’s because you didn’t buy personal brand there. You bought a service, service wasn’t delivered. End of.
And yes, I do feel for her. I feel for her as she clearly put a bomb under her own life. Very publicly because to date that’s how she created her business. Her business was her. It doesn’t work because you is you and business is business. That’s why limited companies exist. She has one for that reason.
On another note, and sorry for getting philosophical here. What we have here really is a very old thing - the oppression of women under another name. Now that women are working and all research shows that we carry most of the household duties and do majority of emotional labour including being the default parent, rather than addressing the underlying issues that lead to this (patriarchal capitalist bullshit), the myth of mumtrepeneur has emerged. A mum who apparently has a business that allows her to earn excellent money but at the same time gives her all the time in the world to spend with her kids. A mum who is free from the apparent chattel of 9-5, is in a girl gang and is all about women supporting women. Usually by buying things from other women because that apparently is feminism. Go self employed gurl - boss babe it! Anyone (and I speak from experience here) who is self employed or has a small business knows that actually it often means a 24/7 business that has some flex in it but that flex doesn’t come for free. And there is much more risk to it. And that we need 9-5 because you need to be able to call your local council for some paperwork or have a hospital admin who isn’t in insta posting pictures of herself in MAMA sweatshirts for 100 quid while processing vital life saving appointments. You know - ordinary women doing ordinary jobs who need to get paid for them sufficiently, have childcare that works for them and husbands who support them. That’s worth fighting for. Not this fake instafeminism nonsense where apparently if you change your mindset the money will come. That’s why MLMs exist as they peddle the same shite and we all know how it ends.
Note how how the narrative we often see now is that overwhelm caused by unreasonable tangible things like cost of childcare, cost of living and not having a 50/50 divide of home duties is now apparently completely resolved because you need to work on your “mindset”. Go and get that money babe. In her podcast Sarah starts talking about it as women sitting at home and going “ooh I can’t do that” so her solution in her own words is her telling them that they can. And that’s it - all everything resolved. Really? Look how women were asking her mid the mad selling spree she was on how she manages it all? That’s the big question all women are struggling with because of tangible and very real things that are happening around us like gender pay gap, default parenting position, cost of childcare and impact of pandemic where women do most of the homeschooling and housework DESPITE having full time jobs themselves, all amply evidenced by research that shows that women have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. And the answer was: work harder babe and deriding 9-5.
You know why lot of these women (I know, not all) defending Sarah are in some sort of “mindset coaching” or equally intangible “products”? If they turn on her it would expose the flimsiness of their own businesses.
There are very few women on insta that actually do work that empowers women. Mother Pukka doing her flex appeal work had done more than most actually. Because she’s tackling a tangible real problem for women and sits at the tables where decisions about it are made. She’s an exception in sea of “personal brand” nonsense and a walking example of how difficult it is to make that work have an actual impact rather than perpetrate patriarchy under another name.
By the way - compare this Live (and all the stuff released to date by SA) to MotherPanic‘s announcement on this. "I had paid money to this coach, he was unethical, stole my money, and now I know he also was inappropriate, unprofessional and abusive to other women. Let's out these guys - these are their names. Police has been notified. Spread the word. The End." That’s how this should have been done plus apologies for having exposed customers and full refunds for all work done with LD. Ask yourself why it wasn’t.
This is bigger than SA by the way. She is bearing a brunt of exposing all that’s wrong with this approach. The question here is: will she emerge having ditched this model or try to continue with the same.i wish her the best. It is a shit show and she must be feeling absolutely destroyed but really, this is business. Treat it like one, set a boundary, cut your losses, refund and work from there.