Be Vulnerable
“The world always connects more with your grit than your shine. They might show up for the shine, but they will stay because of your grit.”
— Joshua Medcalf
Jake Karls, co-founder and chief hype-man behind Mid Day Squares, an innovative functional chocolate start-up, has no medium-scale ambitions. “Chocolate is a ~150 billion dollar industry, but there haven’t been any huge companies emerge since Hershey’s, Cadbury, etc. We want to change that.”
What differentiates the company — besides making mind-blowingly cool products — is their unique approach to storytelling. As Jake tells it, they’ve just decided to share all the details of start-up life (“Think Kardashians meets Shark Tank meets Elon Musk. That’s what we’re trying to do.”), which has resulted in an incredibly loyal fan-base.
“We give the behind-the-scenes view on everything other than our recipes. Fund raising, founder issues, you name it. We share it all on social. Our customers feel like they’re supporting their friends when they buy our products.”
Scott Galloway recently mentioned (on his Pivot podcast, with Kara Swisher) that he gets the most engagement on posts that are personally vulnerable. This makes him look for opportunities to mention his family, personal struggles, and other vulnerabilities.
I’ve noticed the same thing: of all the posts I write, the most popular ones (in terms of shares, comments, views, etc) are the ones where I share personal stories (the data was so compelling that I created a tag to make it easy for me to find those posts myself!).
The quote at the head really struck me in this connection — “The world always connects more with your grit than your shine” — as a student, I’m drawn to the shiny stories of other innovators; but for whatever reason, “my people” tend to be most interested in my modest personal disclosures, especially when it’s admitting a failure.
I hadn’t thought much about vulnerability as a tactic until I spoke with Jake and heard from Scott, and my honest fear as I think about the implications on my own practices is, “Is it just a ploy?”
Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Related: Paint & Pipette Presents: Mid-Day Squares
Related: Personal Stories
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