Do you ever have a moment where you make a mistake and you want to
clear the air or you want to share your story so other
people can learn from it? Well, today's episode is just like that. I
have Megan Griffith back on the call. She was here
last week, but that episode was recorded 6
months ago, when I was just barely pregnant with my little. And
now that I am, let's see, 8 weeks postpartum at this
point of the episode going live, we wanna clear the air and
kinda give a follow-up, a part 2, if you will, to that episode.
You're listening to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm Andrea
Jones. Before we get into it, this episode
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So Meg, Meaghan, welcome back. I'm excited to
have you back. I'm excited to be back. Thank you. Yes. And thank you for
reaching out and saying, hey, so update. So,
let's let's start at the beginning. Like, rewind 6 months
ago, what happened? Okay. Absolutely. So,
basically, my name is Megan Griffith. I was
creating on TikTok for about 3 years, and TikTok was my
main platform as a business owner. And I grew that platform to
over 300,000 followers. I really loved TikTok. I was
making 3 TikToks a day, almost every day, including weekends because
it's fun to me. Like, short form video is very
entertaining, but it can also be informative and, like, I just I enjoy it. And
so I really that was my thing.
And then I think I think a lot of
things came together to create a lot of problems.
And basically what happened is I made 2 mistakes and I made
them back to back, which led people to the conclusion that these were not
like, you know, bad things that a good person
was doing on accident, but rather bad things that a bad person was doing
intentionally, which was hurtful,
but also understandable, I think. So the first thing was I led a
discussion that I was not qualified to lead at all. So I
create content primarily around neurodivergence, but especially around autism
and ADHD because those are my diagnoses. And
I started talking about whether autism was a disorder or
a disability. And I have very firm opinions on this, but I did not
present these TikToks as my opinion. I presented them as facts
and people who disagreed with me were, like, kinda stupid, which
looking back is just embarrassing, and really rude. I
was very condescending and I really dismissed people who in the
autistic community are already constantly dismissed. I
piled on to people who were already, like, systemically silenced,
people with higher support needs, people autistic people of color, like,
just people really disagreed with me and I didn't take it well.
I didn't handle it well at all. I didn't handle it gracefully and I definitely
didn't handle it with, grace for anyone else. Yeah.
So at what what point in the timeline is this? So I know we we
have, like, a a 6, 7 month gap from when we last recorded.
Like, what month did this happen in? I think January.
Okay. So earlier this year. Mhmm. And so you recorded the video,
and then the pitchforks came out. And then you responded
like, what you said you responded, like, in a not great way. Give me an
example of what that was. Well, I responded in
the comments to some people basically saying, like because a lot of the
pushback was saying that we need autism to be classified as a disorder in
order to get the supports that we need, and we have higher support needs than
you. And so we understand this better than you do, so you should listen. And
I basically said something along the lines of, like, we need to think bigger
than that. Like, I understand the, like, literal
systemic issues right now, but, like, I'm talking
more philosophically and people are, like, with respect, fuck
your philosophy. This is my life. And, like Yeah. I didn't
listen to that. Yeah. I think it's hard
to not only to, number
1, put yourself out there online, but then to get the feedback from people. And
then to be so self aware that you could now,
at 5, 6 months later, look back and go, oh, the way that I
respond to that, you know, maybe that that wasn't the best. Right? Like, I
definitely see my errors. Like like, how long did it take
you to to go from here's my response to, oh, I did
not handle that very well at all? Well, it took me probably
a couple of days of just constant comments, a couple of
video replies, like people really being
upset. It took me a couple of days to be like, okay, this,
I'm not sure how I feel, but clearly I need to apologize for
this. And that's kind of the bent I took, which again is embarrassing.
It wasn't a realization I had done something wrong. It was a realization that people
thought I was wrong, and I should probably apologize in order to at least make
other people feel seen and heard, but not because I thought they were
right. And I think that is a really common white lady
thing. We apologize so that we look good and we apologize so
that we look like we're doing the right thing. And I do think I fell
into that, which sucks. It took me probably another
month or 2. It took the second mistake, I think, for me
to realize, okay, these people
are correct, and I need to
actually apologize. Yeah. Do you think
that do you think that the Internet I feel like this is such
a big question. But I think sometimes the Internet psyche,
like, where we are, is we feel obligated
to speak on things immediately because our silence will then
start speaking for us if we don't. Did you feel that in the
moment? I think so. I felt some
of that, like, pressure to respond, but I think
I created the problem for myself. I don't think it was pressure other people put
on me. I think by responding so poorly and so condescendingly,
I created like, okay, now you really have to apologize
because you were a jerk. And so I do
think that was sort of a mess of my own making. I wouldn't necessarily blame
the in this particular case, but I do think that what you're talking about,
like, at large is totally a problem. Like, creators are
expected to constantly be in the know right away, responding
right away, and that, like, this urgency culture is, like,
not super helpful, I think. Now I think long term silence
on important issues is a different thing. But, like, if it happened
2 days ago, like, give people a minute to breathe maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Because this is a matter of days, which I don't like, I don't I
could not hit. I would be a hot mess. Like, if anyone says anything
mean to me, I would be in bed crying. Like,
so so over the course of a few days, you create this
video, you get the feedback, you handle it poorly, then what
happens? Then I apologized. A lot of
people said my apology was insincere. I think my apology
was as sincere as it could be, but I think they might have been a
little bit right. I think maybe I just
didn't want people to be mad at me. And that's not a good reason to
apologize, and that apology doesn't feel very sincere. So I think maybe those
people were right. At the time, I really resented them. I was like, what more
do you want me to do? Like, I did what you wanted, but that's
exactly the point. Right? I just did what they wanted. I didn't
reflect and, like, think about my actions. And
so I think those people were right on, you know, which is hard.
But, so that happened. And then I think it was maybe a
week or 2 weeks later, I woke up at 6 AM and did not
have this idea. But by 6 pm, I had a fully
fleshed neurodivergent coach course
certification ready to go and I was promoting it and I had
sales by like 6 pm. So So this is
a month after Yeah. The video. Okay. Not a
month. I think it was, like, maybe a week or 2. It wasn't a full
month for sure. So it was pretty close back to back. Yeah. I
had this idea. Somebody asked me, you know, how did you become a coach?
And I was like, it's really, like, not super
duper complicated the way that I became a coach anyway. Like,
I could teach people this. And so I was like, I'll just put
together a course and I'll have, like, an optional add on to do coaching with
me so I can like coach people through the process. And it felt
very much like, looking back, it was very much an ADHD,
like hyper focus thing. I just got the idea and I just got
sunk into it. And I didn't look up
until it was way too late. And there were
100 of videos on TikTok about me,
hundreds of videos. Basically
saying I was a charlatan, I was a snake oil salesman, I was a pyramid
scheme. I was abusing the disabled community by
charging the money to do what I do, which is just, you know,
bullshit. Basically, everybody was saying coaching is nonsense. And
it this one was hard, because I feel like some of the
feedback was valid, and some of it wasn't. And so I had to kind of
sift through that a little bit. Because
okay, here were people's main complaints. Let me go over that. Main
complaint number 1 was the use of the term neurodivergent life
coach because the term neurodivergent is a
very broad term. It is meant to be as inclusive as possible. So it
includes everything from ADHD and autism to Alzheimer's, to
epilepsy, to tic disorders. I am not qualified to
work with people with Alzheimer's at all. And so the idea that I
could teach someone, what if they wanted to be a neurodivergent coach in the
realm of Tourette's? I couldn't teach them anything. And so
that language and this is a very common problem in the neurodivergent
community. We tend language is fuzzy
and a lot of people, myself included, have misused it in a way
that leads it to be even fuzzier, like, needlessly. So
that was problem number 1. Problem number 2 was my use of the word certification.
Life coaching is an unregulated industry, which means it was perfectly legal for
me to call it a certification. But the question was, was it ethical? And I
think the answer is probably no. Because I'm I don't
have a coaching certification from the International Federation of Coaching, the
IFS. I don't. And I'm not part of the IFS,
which granted they're not a regulatory body, but they are kind of the bigwig, you
know? Yeah. When you see certification, I think most people assume
it's IFS certified and I wasn't. And this program I was
creating wasn't. And so that was really misleading and
was a bad choice. So I think those were 2 of
the main issues. I think if we're gonna go with a 3rd issue, people just
didn't like the idea of life coaches at all. And Yeah. That's the one I
kinda had to sift through. Yeah. And it's at
a time too where the life coaching industry is getting a
giant magnifying glass, on it. I know
that because a lot of my clients are life coaches. And so you
have this perfect storm of you've got negative
attention from situation mistake number 1, which is,
in and of itself already a challenge, and then you amplified it
by launching this core certification. So
with these hundreds of videos coming out the same time that you have the
certification coming out, what did you do? Did you move forward with it,
or or what what were your next steps? I think
I saw a couple of the comments. I saw a couple of the videos, and
I thought this is gonna blow over because you can't do
anything on the internet without someone being mad at you. So you can't
listen to every person who's upset.
And then people I knew people who
had direct access to me through email, through messenger,
through all kinds of stuff. They were choosing not to message
me, and they were making videos about me instead. And I think that
was like the wake up call. It was like, Oh, I have offended these people
so deeply. I have done something so wrong, that
they felt they couldn't even talk to me about it.
And that was the moment where I was like, Okay, did I mess up?
And then I started really listening to what people were saying.
And it started to make a lot of sense.
And so what I did is I took the sales page down, took everything down,
I refunded everyone who had bought it with a sincere apology email.
I sent an email out to my list because I had sent an email out
advertising the course. I sent another email out saying I was no longer offering
it, that it was a mistake to offer it, that I was was sorry for
the language issues and also sorry for the entire
concept of like, you know, being
able to teach someone to work with all forms of neurodivergence and all of
that. So, and I got a wide variety of replies.
Some people were like, yeah, this was a major screw up. Like, I'm please unsubscribe
me. Other people were like, no,
I really want the course. Like, I don't care. Let me buy it. And I
had to tell them no because I have to be like consistent and ethical in
how I'm doing this. And then I had other people who were like, you know,
this kind of rubbed me the wrong way, but I'm really glad you apologized. So
I got a whole host of responses via email, but it seemed
like TikTok primarily was it it
was kinda over for me there. Yeah. Over how? Like,
you're done with the platform? Yeah. I haven't created on there
too much since. I created an apology video where I basically
said, hey, I've made a lot of mistakes back to back recently, like
really close to each other. I need to look at why this is
happening. Has this always been happening and I'm just now getting called on it
or has something changed? Like I need to figure this out. And
so I took an entire month off of creating content. I didn't make a TikTok.
I didn't make anything. I did post on Instagram once or twice
to promote a bundle I had agreed to promote. But that was it
for a full month. And how did you feel during that month?
Like, what was your what thoughts were bouncing around in your head? Oh, horrible. That
whole month was really hard. I mean,
I felt bad for misleading people. I think I felt a lot of
guilt. I also felt a lot of shame.
I felt I had to reckon with
some of my, like, privilege, I
think, because I felt very
attacked. And my my body is like my nervous system, as you can tell, like,
I'm splotchy, like, my nervous system felt very unsafe.
And I had to reckon with the fact that,
like, I wasn't unsafe, that these people, most of
whom were not attacking me. And
this is what disagreement feels like. And yes, my personal
history has led me to be very uncomfortable with disagreement and conflict.
But that doesn't mean I'm unsafe. And I had to make sure I
wasn't putting the people who disagreed with me in a position where I made
them unsafe by, like, you know, shouting back at them
or something because I could wield my privilege in a really, really
crappy way. And like, I just I had to be really careful
about that, I think. And so it was better to just make my
apology as best I could, tell people I was working on it, and bounce for,
like, a month. Oh my gosh. I think this is such a
like, it shows your strength in that moment because and I know
it doesn't feel like that probably. Like, I know you probably still feel pretty shitty
about it. But, like, when I like, listening to this
story, I think there are so many people who choose not to do that. And
this is what I mean about, like, the Internet, like, pile of poo that can
happen where it just keeps piling and piling up. And it's like,
the one person disagrees and another person shouting louder with their disagreement and
then the other person shouting back louder with the disagreement and suddenly we're, like,
making it personal, you know, and there's so many things that
happen. We see this a lot with, like, just cancel
culture in general, where there's not
space to breathe and to process, and it
feels like mistakes can't
actually be like, you can't go through the process of fixing it. It's
like you have to immediately know exactly what to say. Don't you
dare get a word wrong. Otherwise, the pitchforks are coming out and we're coming after
you even more. So even though,
you know, in your in your words, you said I made a mistake, you know,
I didn't approach this the right way,
Even despite all of that, like, taking the month off, taking the time to, like,
process it, and then even going, hey. Can I come back on this podcast to,
like, talk about the experience, I think, shows a level of strength
that, not a lot of people would be able to go through?
So after you took your month off so let let timeline wise, you're
like, January, the situation happened. Let's say February, you launched a course and you
take a month off. It's March now. Mhmm. What what are you doing
now? Are you did you switch to a different platform? Are you still, like, dabbling
in the TikTok world? Are people still creating videos? Like, give me the
details. So I the
apology video I made before I left, I turned off comments and
shares and stuff. I was like, let's I this is just me saying my piece.
Like, if anyway. So, and then
after my month off, I came back and made a quick little video to say
like, hey, I just wanna reiterate that I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have done those
things and here's why, here's where I messed up. I
have thought about what you said. I have integrated it and I am gonna
do things differently moving forward. That being said,
I don't really think TikTok is the place for me anymore so you don't have
to expect me hanging around right now at least.
And I talked about this a little bit on Instagram, which is now more of
my main platform. And
I basically just told people that, you know, I have too much
privilege to be unsafe on TikTok, but I didn't feel super
welcome. And I didn't feel that I, I didn't know that my
being there was gonna be helpful to anybody anymore. And that's always been kind
of the point. So I haven't been back
really, at least not on any kind of consistent basis. I have had to
check TikTok once or twice to get like tax documents. And yeah, people are still
commenting and making videos about it. So that's still happening.
But I've done what I can do, I
think. I, during that month, restructured my
entire business. I had to rename my business because I was called neurodivergent magic.
And I realized that that was perpetuating the misuse the word neurodivergent. So
I completely redid everything in order
to try not to do that harm again.
Yeah. So you did the work. I mean, how do you feel, though, about, like,
TikTok your TikTok success up until this point? Because listening
back to the episode that we recorded 6 months
ago, you saw a lot of success on TikTok. It really catapulted your
business. So, there's gotta be, like, conflicting feelings about
the platform. Yes. But also, like
okay. Okay. Let me organize my thoughts. So I
don't wanna be like, I'm so grateful I messed up and hurt all those people
because I learned a helpful lesson. Like, you know, I don't want it to
come off that way hopefully, but if we're looking for silver linings,
like, one of them was I realized I don't need TikTok as much
as I thought I did. I thought TikTok was like the
only platform I could be successful on. When all of this went down, I started
looking for like 9 to fives because I was like, I don't know that I
can keep doing this without TikTok, and I don't think I can do this on
TikTok anymore. And then
in late March, I had a launch
scheduled for my signature program, the Get Shit Done program.
And I decided to stick with it and do the launch.
And it was the most successful launch I've had since I started the program in
like 2021. Oh, wow.
So so and I didn't use TikTok at all. So you
use email, Instagram? Email, Instagram. And,
I don't know if I used this for this particular launch. I don't think I
was on there yet, but I'm currently using YouTube as well and finding a lot
of success through YouTube. Okay. Interesting.
So even though you saw success on TikTok, you took the
learnings from that platform and applied it to other platforms, and you
were still able to have success with this launch. Very
interesting. So YouTube. Tell me about what you're doing on YouTube. Is
it YouTube shorts? Are you doing long form video? I'm trying to do a
little bit of everything. So I'm doing shorts, long form twice a week, and
then a live once a week as well. Okay. Yeah. The lives
on YouTube, I think, do really well. Very interesting.
So now that we're here, this will release end of
May 2024. So we're, like, 5
months after. What's next for you? Like, how are you
I know you made a lot of changes. I mean, you changed the name of
your business. Holy cow. Like, you changed the name of your business.
You had a successful launch. You're now on YouTube and Instagram, and you're
focusing on your email list. Like, what are you doing,
like, what more are you doing to shift things in the future?
So a big thing I did during my month off is I sat down and
I outlined my values as a person and as a business owner.
And I read through those probably once every
2 weeks or 3 weeks, just to like, just remind myself, what
am I doing here? Why am I doing it? What am I trying to stick
to? And that's been really helpful, I think
in because like I said, a big part of my month off was just figuring
out why am I making all these mistakes? Have I been doing this the whole
time? And I think the answer is a little bit of both. Like, yeah, I
was making mistakes that just weren't getting called out as much. And also, I think
I just made bigger ones. And that just happens when you have a bigger platform,
like, things get amplified pretty quickly.
But I think moving forward, I'm
reflecting on my values for sure. I'm definitely
integrating my activism more and more into my,
business, which I love. I was really nervous to start
doing it back in November, because that's
I I started integrating everything that's happening in Palestine into
my content, to speak out against what's happening
there. And I was so nervous and so worried and I
was like, how is this gonna relate? And I've basically just discovered that,
like, if you for
me, for me, if I have a platform,
I want all of me to be on it. And
I don't know. The way I feel about a lot of these things
is, I don't know, part of me that I want represented in my
brand. Yeah. I think values alignment is it's
hard it's doing the work that's hard, but it's doing the work that is important.
I know for me and my clients, we saw this
especially, when the pandemic hit and Black Lives Matter was
happening. There are so many people who didn't take the time to do the work
to figure out what that meant for them. So then when an event does
happen where they do feel like they need to speak up on something, then they're
trying to do the work and process the event at the same time.
And it that is a really hard place to be. And it took
you a month you took a month off to do this work. And so if
the if anyone's listening to this and you haven't taken the time to do your
values yet, I highly and take a look at it regularly.
We just added a value, this year to our business. It's the
spirit of collaboration. Because we were getting a lot of
pushback from our clients about certain topics, you know,
like Palestine, for instance. And they would completely shut down the
conversation before we could even have it. And so we were like, no. No. No.
Like, we need to talk about what this means as a business even if not
posting about it on social media, that's fine. But all of our
clients need to understand, what does this mean for you, your business? How does it
impact you, your clients. Like, if you can't answer those questions, then
as the world is changing around us, it's gonna be so hard to, like,
make a PR statement, like, when the time comes because you have no you
have nothing to make it off of. So I love that you did that for
you. And it helps to have this integrated approach
no matter what happens in the future because life will happen. And then you
can attract people into your world who also,
stand for and stand against the things that you do as well. Yeah. I
think that's been a really big thing recently. And it's been scary, I
guess, because I've always been more of a people pleaser. But then
internally, I just get really angry at everybody for not agreeing with me. But it's
like, but you're doing the people pleasing, like you're creating this problem.
So I'm unlearning some of that. And it's definitely tricky,
but very, very worth it for sure. Yeah. Do you
think that being someone who speaks up
against or for certain topics makes you more
susceptible to get criticism and feedback from community?
Yes and no. Like I said before, I think people get mad at anything on
the Internet, So not necessarily. But I think
I think there are certain topics that are probably more charged, like everything
in Palestine, like Roe v. Wade a couple summers ago, like, you know, there's a
lot of things that are just more charged, often because they
have to do with human rights. And so people who, you know,
so anyway, trying to organize my
thoughts. But I think it does invite some more criticism,
but I think at the same time it's usually worth it
because I it's one of those things
where I'm not people pleasing to make someone comfortable, I'm
standing up because someone's life is on the line. And to me, that's
more important than my own comfort, which I'm often very
uncomfortable or other people's comfort. And so that's
been a shift I've had to make recently is like, what what
do I value? Do I value comfort or do I value rights? And
sometimes they don't always come head to head like that, but sometimes they do, and
we gotta make a choice. Yeah. I like, I'm
curious if this sitting in the discomfort is new for you,
or did it emerge with with the Internet? Because I
like, it it there is the the this I'm
trying to organize my thoughts too because this sitting in the the discomfy, like, it's
just I have to do it so regularly
that I don't know what life was like before this this moment. And
I'm like, well, I don't even know what I was thinking or doing before. But
I just kind of, like, you have to face it head on and you have
to do it. And you, you know, you grit your teeth and we get through
it because we know that these are human rights issues, or
we we know that what's on the other side of this, you know. And so,
yeah, I'm curious for you if you have the same experience. Oh,
yeah. Sitting in discomfort is incredibly new to me.
My personal, like, experience growing up was very,
conflict avoidant, very, triangulated communication,
lots of enmeshment, you know, all kinds of codependency fun stuff.
And so for me, I always prioritize other people's
comfort over everything, over my needs, over other people's needs.
Like, there were certain people I had to make happy and
that was kind of all that mattered. And then I
realized that wasn't a great way to live my life and so I swung in
the other direction and I think I became a pretty selfish person who like, you
know, used, yeah, my trauma kind of broke me in some ways.
And then I used my sharp edges to kind of like stab at people. And
so I think I swung the other direction. And I think now I'm
learning to sort of sit in that middle. It's the worst place to be, like,
comfort wise. Because over here, people pleasing, at least they're comfortable
and you feel like you're doing the right thing. And then over here, at least
you're stabbing and getting your aggression out. But in the middle, you're just sitting with
it and it's miserable. But it's also, like, so
essential. And I think I think it makes me a better business owner. I think
it makes me a better coach. And hopefully, it makes me a better daughter, a
better wife, a better mom. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. I
love all of this in, like, just out of, like, solidarity
because it's so uncomfortable, to be here and the
work is necessary. So as we wrap up today, any final
thoughts on this topic or anything else that you wanna add to the conversation?
I think if there's anyone listening who's maybe newer to business, and you're
scared to put yourself out there on TikTok, or Instagram or YouTube, because you're
afraid of getting canceled, because I would say I kinda kinda got canceled.
Don't let my story scare you because I'm still creating
and I'm safe and I'm whole. And
I messed up very publicly and I will own
my part of it too. You know, like, I did the messing up and you're
gonna do the messing up too. We all are. And people are gonna get
really mad, and maybe rightfully so. But I don't want this to
scare you away from creating because that's the really cool thing about being a
person is that like, you still have worthwhile and
interesting things to say, even if you do mess up. And as long as you
do the work and you reflect and, and apologize as
genuinely as you can and try to move forward in a better direction
with a better way. There's nothing more you can
do. And people still need to hear you. And they still need your
message. And they still need your work. Yeah. I love
that that you said that, and that you're creating in other
places. Right? It doesn't have to be, you know, put your eggs all in one
basket sort of situation. You're you're taking your work and spreading it
around to more people, different communities. And that's great. So for those
listening, if they wanna connect with you, how do they guide you? Yes. Okay. So
I am primarily over on YouTube. It's the neurocuriosity club.
Same thing over on Instagram and my website is also the NeuroCuriosity
club. Speaker one: Perfect. And I'll put all of those links in the show notes
as always onlinedrea.com/306.
Megan, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you so much
for having me back. Yay. And thank you, dear listener. We have another episode
coming out next week. I'll see you then. Bye for now.