Why High-Achieving Entrepreneurs Secretly Hate Promoting Themselves
That subtle ick under your marketing?
It's not "mindset." It's not something you need to push through.
It's misalignment.
The cesspool of ick
Let's talk about something that lies beneath the surface for a lot of entrepreneurs when it comes to building, scaling, marketing, and selling.
You have this dream—recurring income, scaled offers, helping more people, making more money. But underneath that goal, underneath that vision, there's this whole cesspool of ick.
And here's the most common reason I see entrepreneurs struggling to scale, market, and grow:
They're performing as an entrepreneur rather than being themselves.
They're trying to show up, talk about their work, sell, and create content in a way that isn't actually who they are.
I'm talking no layer of shmoo. No layer of inauthenticity. No layer of performance. No layer of "this just doesn't feel good for me."
This requires work. It requires you to fully understand what your voice is, how you naturally like to talk about your work. And if you don't know that? Welcome to the club. You're like one of everyone who was never taught this.
Why performance feels like lying
"Authentic marketing" has become such a buzzy thing over the last decade. We started learning that people connect more with people than they do with businesses. Marketing took a giant turn.
We saw corporations hiring influencers. Then micro-influencers with even smaller communities. And it worked—because you don't need a huge audience to be trusted. What you need is a consistent voice. An authentic voice. Conversation. Trust.
This tells us something important: personal brands are powerful.
So if you're marketing and selling your services without leveraging the personal elements of who you are—if you're performing, copying old sales tactics, forcing urgency, nurturing more than you should be—the ick factor is high.
And here's the problem:
When you're operating from a place of ick, it's not just a feeling for you. You're actually—and I'm going to sound dramatic here, but I want this to land—you're actually lying to your audience.
That's why it feels yucky.
You're trying to be someone you're not. And that feels like you're trying to pull the rug over someone's eyes to get them to buy something. That's not in integrity.
And when we operate out of integrity, it's really hard to keep momentum. Really hard to feel genuine excitement. Really hard to keep showing up—because you're trying to keep up a lie.
A subtle lie. But a lie.
Your body knows this.
Why the cesspool keeps growing
So many people I work with have implemented the high-level funnels. They have the ads. They're posting daily content. They have offers. Client testimonials proving their offer works. They're in a good situation.
But because they're perpetuating an ongoing persona that isn't actually who they are, the cesspool of emotions only continues to grow. It continues to fester. It continues to feel yucky.
From that place, it's going to be very hard to scale.
Impossible? Probably not. There are business people who operate this way. Who fall asleep at night knowing what they're doing isn't entirely aligned—but they do it anyway.
That's not you.
Heart-led, soul-embodied, passionate, creative, impact-driven entrepreneurs have a really hard time keeping up the facade. They have a really hard time performing over long periods of time.
Because when you're operating out of alignment—when you're not marketing in a way that's authentic, natural, honest, and easy for you—you will burn out.
100%.
You will hit a wall. And when you hit that wall, you'll have a day where you're like: I just can't do this anymore. This is not available for me anymore. This feels too yucky.
The cesspool gets bigger than the payoff. And when that happens, you stop. You ghost your audience. You stop selling. You ditch the launch.
What sustainable marketing actually looks like
What we want is to learn how to market in a way that feels deeply aligned, deeply in integrity with who we are—so we can sustain it.
Scaling, growing, long-term success requires sustainable marketing efforts. And sustainable marketing is marketing that feels effortless. Natural. Like who you are.
You might be someone who's naturally wired for direct selling. Fast-paced. Get it done and dusted. Close the deal. In that case, long-form nurture sequences and novel-length sales pages are going to feel like torture.
If you're a direct seller, over time you'll be like: If I have to have one more drawn-out sales conversation, I'm going to go float in that cesspool and that will be my new me.
Or maybe you're someone who thrives on connection, relationship building, nurturing, trust, ongoing conversation. In that case, direct sales are going to make you run away and consider getting a nine-to-five job every other week.
Either way, you're performing. And performance leads to burnout.
The moment I chose integrity over income
This happened to me.
A lot of you know my story about closing my seven-figure coaching business. I want to take you down this road because it was a defining moment in my journey.
I was running a seven-figure coaching business with one of my best friends. It grew really fast. At first, it was a dream come true—the messaging, the community we were building, everything I ever hoped for in supporting female entrepreneurs.
We were diving into the deeper layers of entrepreneurship as a multi-dimensional, creative, energetic being. More than numbers and data. Who are you?
And then, over a couple of years, the messaging started to shift. I started getting really into branding work. Moved a little away from the energetics. The coaching industry was booming in 2020-2021. The messaging got skewed from where it started.
I started feeling this ick. This layer of insecurity.
But here's the fascinating thing: the insecurity wasn't in myself. The doubt wasn't about whether I was doing my best work or providing value or being capable. It wasn't imposter syndrome. It wasn't self-sabotage.
It was this feeling of: something is not right here.
When you get that feeling in your brand or business, your responsibility is to ask: What is it?
Is my messaging off? Am I creating content in a way that's not true for me? Do I like this content? Would I watch this content? Am I proud of this content?
For me, the answer to those questions started being no.
And I acted on it almost right away. When it fully landed, I was like: That's it. I'm out.
Rebuilding from full integrity
What a lot of entrepreneurs do is push through instead of acting on it. Because there's a lot on the line—income, community, followers, impact. And pivoting to get back in integrity can feel like a lot of work.
But what I did was create a personal brand that was authentically, genuinely, 100% rooted in my truth. My strengths. My message. My voice. My energy.
Every word I use. Every reel. Every message I share. Everything went through a sieve: Is this my intention? Is this in integrity?
No settling. No crossing my boundaries. No doing things to perform because they'll get likes. Nothing.
And what happened on the other side was pretty fucking amazing.
I met myself as the entrepreneur I want to be. No more cesspool. No more doubt. No more lack of integrity. No more misaligned values. No more languaging that didn't feel like me. No more hesitation in my voice, my marketing, my sales strategies.
Because I was operating as who I am.
All of the stress and anxiety I had carried in my business was suddenly gone. Just gone.
Authenticity doesn't require you to think
Here's what I love about authenticity: it doesn't require you to think. You just be.
When you're marketing from a place of full authenticity, there's literally no extra effort.
Yes, you still have to record the podcast. Record the reel. Write the caption. There's still a doing involved. But the marketing itself becomes being.
How do I want to say this? What value do I want to provide? What do I want people to know? How do I naturally show up to connect about this service I'm providing?
When you let go and surrender everything that isn't you, your brand clicks into place. It starts to represent who you are—which is so magnetic.
There's this thing that happens when the performance falls away. People start feeling you. Resonating with you deeply. They trust you faster when they can tell you're a human being a human on the other side of the screen.
They don't want you to act like a business. People connect faster with people.
You started this business to have freedom. Keeping yourself locked in a jail cell of how you "should" be doing things is only restricting you. Holding you back from the magnetic marketing, connections, trust, and growth that happens only when you're yourself.
A note for empaths
If you're an empath—absorbing information, content, other people's strategies all day long—you're becoming a sponge to everything around you.
You need to become so discerning about what you let in.
Because anything that you let in—if it's not you, if it's not authentic—is going to add to the cesspool.
Every strategy you try. Every sales tactic. Every viral reel you try to mimic or replicate. If it's not fully aligned with who you are, it will add to the restriction, pressure, and performance you experience.
And that reduces your ability to connect with your audience.
We want to eliminate as much restriction, pressure, and performance as possible so your audience can connect with you in a millisecond. So they can feel you. Hear your truth. Feel the genuine you in all of your messages.
Build from the inside out
Building an authentic personal brand isn't about trying on guru strategies that seem to work for other people.
It's about building from the inside out.
Based on your strengths. Your behavioral patterns. Your communication style. Your decision-making style. Your leadership style. Your energetic capacity. Your connection style.
When we tap into the truth of who you are and build from that place, the performance and restriction and pressure go away. Because suddenly you have a clear picture of who you are—and you can build strategy from that centered, true, authentic place.
Here's what happens when people come to me: they get their Identity Report because they want to move to their next level. Grow. Scale. And that cesspool of emotions from restriction, pressure, and performance is holding them back. It creates a literal barricade.
And 100% of the time, it's a misalignment with authenticity. They're lacking something that's true for them.
As soon as they turn that switch on, something shifts. Their message lands. Content becomes easier and converts better. They get higher visibility because they're speaking in their voice. Selling the way they're meant to sell.
The barrier is gone. Connection is faster. Trust develops faster. Conversion happens faster.
More you is always the answer
Is it easy to build an authentic personal brand? No. Especially not today when we're bombarded by so much information.
But my advice to every entrepreneur ready to scale is this: get more you.
Tap into even more of your authentic voice. Even more of your strategic sales strategy. Use it, leverage it, amplify it, double down on it.
Don't go try something that someone else did that worked for them—because that's going to create pressure, restriction, and performance.
More of you is always the answer.
Particularly at a moment in time when AI is doing so much of the creation for us, I really believe your voice, your true authenticity, is your edge.
We all have a different approach. A different set of behavioral patterns. A unique operating system that drives success most effectively for each of us.
And that requires us to tap all the way in to who we are—and get strategic from that place.
The question I'd leave you with
Am I being my real, true self in my brand and business?
Am I in 100% integrity?
Am I being as much me as I can?
And what's in my cesspool over here? What are the feelings that are making marketing and selling feel uncomfortable?
More you equals more of all the things you want.
I know that's scary. But I need you to believe that you are enough. That the real you is exactly what your business and your clients want.
Go deeper
Get your Identity Report — Remove the question marks. See exactly who you are, how you're meant to sell, market, and connect—with an immediate action plan you can implement right away.
Work with Robyn — Build a brand rooted in full integrity with your authentic voice.
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