You know those mindset exercises we’re given via voiceover Reels about behaving like our future self to become her?
Since it’s homework without a deadline for me to ride until the last minute, so there’s no way I’ll ever do it BUT…
Future-Emelie is doing eeeeverything I do now, but… funner?
Past-Emelie made wild choices, from leaving home as a young teen to becoming a mom shortly thereafter to chasing away everything that smelled like stability.
*sniff, sniff*
Is that… reliable? YUCK!
This month, I turned 27 and celebrated the 10 year anniversary of when my fight-or-flight survival instincts kicked in full-gear.
(And I’m a fighter.)
I became serious about EVERYTHING – and because I’m comedic-at-heart, my humor became sharp.
I made my own mom cry with my “jokes.”
Being funny stopped being playful and became hurtful.
Laughter turned from joy to deflection and coping.
I started hating one of my best qualities.
Until I started to heal. gag
I don’t know how the process began or how to map it out for ya, but I reckon it has to do with making different choices and making hard ones to leave situations I put myself in.
Who woulda thunk.
I’m still figuring it out, so enjoy my divorced-in-my-early-20s jokes until then.
Humor is actually a healthy mechanism for working through the kinks of life, according to Edwin Catmull. (That’s the former president of Pixar btw)
Ed says having a sense of humor doesn’t punctuate and offset the seriousness of life – it allows the meaning to come through.
“That’s exactly what a good Pixar protagonist does. They adapt, they change, they fix the problem. In our movies, they do it with humor. When there is serious work punctuated by levity–that’s where we find meaning.”
And no, I didn’t randomly know that about Pixar. I’m reading “Humor, Seriously” by Jennifer Aaker & Naomi Bagdonas – a book about humor in business and life.
It’s reaffirming everything I’ve been doing to behave like future-Emelie.
Look at that. Full circle.
My mom saw my new website and said she loved it, but the “DDAAAYYYUUUMMM” on the homepage wasn’t very professional.
Yesterday, I spent an hour using DALL-E to craft a tatted, skeleton on a motorcycle to use for an Instagram Story about my new program.
Take a peek:
Humor is big component of my branding philosophy.
It makes us human and helps us connect with others, so yeah – I think everyone is born funny in some way. And we should bring that into our businesses.
When I work with folks to brand-ify their offers or add personality into their copywriting, we gain 3 things:
Creativity
Creating a theme or dialogue around your brand creates a play space. When you sit down to write a sales email, you’re actually sitting down to create a story in the universe you made for your offer. And you’re just inviting people in.
Resilience
I don’t care if someone is reaching for their first $10k month or trying to push past their $70k plateau. Business is hard for us all. Deploying humor and fun doesn’t make light of the struggle, but helps us move forward in spite of the hard.
Money
Like Pixar, we can use humor to connect with people on a fundamental and emotional level. Your offer exists for a reason – to solve a legit problem. Maybe it’s so hard to create “problem aware” content and avoid pain point marketing because we’re NOT using humor.
The delivery is too on-the-nose and lecture-y.
Funny fixes all of that.
