When Your Internet Presence Doesn't Reflect Your Reality

I quickly realized that I was in a very different space in my entrepreneurial journey than these women were.

I remember vividly the first time I realized that I was running a successful business (or, in the very least, more than many people were portraying online.)

I was two and a half years into running my B2B consulting business full-time and I was finally making a steady income. It wasn’t a ton, but I was doing well on my own and able to pay my bills and even add to my savings. My first book was helping me gain traction in my industry, and my publisher had pitched a second book for me to write.

Things were going slowly, but they were moving forward, and I felt the sense of possibility in the air. I was still attending networking events on a regular basis, and I’d agreed to meet two women for lunch who I’d met at one such event, who were also running their own businesses.

I was excited: It had been hard to make friends in my same situation or even find people to grab lunch with. This was pre-COVID, where just about everybody went into offices from nine to five. I’m what I call an “Extreme Extrovert,” as in, I require very little alone time (a few hours is enough each day) for me to recharge. In the very early days of working for myself, I felt especially lonely.

Photo by Amir Hossein Kargaran on Unsplash

People like me—Extreme Extroverts—thrive on conversation and being around people, so I was thrilled when I was headed to lunch with whom I was sure would be my new “entrepreneur friends.”

Lunch did not go the way I anticipated.

I quickly realized that I was in a very different space in my entrepreneurial journey than the other two women. One—who I had just the day before caught bragging online about her “business” and how “successful” it was—said candidly, “I’m at a point in my business where I need to change what I’m doing because what I’ve been doing hasn’t really been working.”

I was confused. “Don’t you have a bunch of clients right now?” I asked, thinking back to her Facebook humble-brag I had just seen, perhaps days prior.

“No, I don’t have any clients right now,” she admitted.

The other woman chimed in, her smile growing wider. “I’m in the same boat, but I know that the Universe has put me in this boat for a reason.”

The first woman beamed. “I agree! I know destiny has plans for me,” she exclaimed, “And I can feel the change coming for me and my business, to bring amazing things to people who need it.”

“It does! You’re doing such amazing work…” the second woman began to gush.

I spaced out and sunk in my chair. What the hell is happening right now? The two women completely diverged from the “entrepreneurial” conversation and launched into talking about “The Universe.”

This had not been my plan. I wanted to talk about work and business with two women who projected that they were on the same level as I was.

I sat, eating my way-too-expensive salad, brainstorming an excuse to leave early.

I was conflicted because, in one way, I was proud of myself for having a real business and not some half-baked LLC I boasted about on social media, but I was also completely deflated from this lunch meeting. I had been so hopeful that these two women would bring interesting business ideas to the table. I really wanted and needed people to talk to about work as a solo entrepreneur.

In my mind, we’d all been dealing with similar challenges and growing pains, but this was based entirely off of how they’d represented themselves at the networking event and then on social media. In reality, neither of them had actual income coming in from their “businesses.”

I felt like I’d been tricked, and, to make matters worse, I had to pay for my lunch when I could’ve simply eaten at home. Wasting both time and literal cash. Maybe I was doing okay, but I wasn’t comfortably at the “$25-lunch” level yet.

I kicked myself for having been duped by their false bravado. “Hey, I just realized that I have a meeting coming up in about 30 minutes,” I said in a fake-rushed tone. “So sorry I have to leave early!”

Years have passed since that meeting, but I still frequently see both of these women posting on social media channels about their businesses.

There’s never any actual proof of what they’re doing.