What Business Integrity Looks Like
Some thoughts on "getting caught."
Before I get to the post, I’m the newest co-host at the #amwriting podcast and we have a new feature we’re launching where listeners can submit first pages for discussion on-air. Would you like to throw your hat in the ring? You’re invited to submit here:
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming….
Several weeks ago, my friend Rachael Herron, who was running a Kickstarter campaign for her new memoir, Unstuck, asked if I had anything I could talk about on a special podcast series related to being stuck. She was doing 15-minute episodes to build interest and excitement for her Kickstarter followers (such a fun idea) and I was at the exact moment so deeply stuck on something that I said, “UGH yes, of course!”
What I was stuck on was finishing my memoir certification course — a year-long curriculum with 11 modules, 141 videos, a transcript of every one of those videos, and a 255-page workbook filled with exercises, examples, downloadable worksheets, and tools. It is a robust course and I was about 78% done and I could not find it in me to finish.
Can I tell you how much time I spent NOT finishing this course? Wringing my hands, making burn charts to help keep me on track, making motivational Post-It notes, wringing my hands some more, complaining to my sweet husband, complaining to my patient friends, scrolling for shoes online and buying many pairs. It was bad.
I thought nothing of hopping on a podcast with Rachael to discuss my pain and suffering and help her get the word out about her story of getting unstuck in her entire life in such a big, bold way (she and her partner moved to New Zealand!) but the conversation got dark fast. Rachael dug into my motivations for making this course in the first place. She had me contemplating not finishing — about just saying, “Nope, sorry, not happening now, not happening ever” — a reality that would shatter every idea I had about myself as a person who gets things done, who is not afraid of hard work, who delivers.
She gave me homework: to write a letter to the ten students in the first cohort going through the course (who had no idea that it’s not finished, because they were way back in modules 2,3,4, which are beautiful and whole and done) telling them that I was returning their money and not finishing. I was to send this letter to Rachael and on the decided-upon date (May 27), she would send it back to me and I PROMISED TO SEND IT OUT.
Integrity is knowing that I would do it. I would comply. I agreed to the rules of the game and I would follow them. So I took this very seriously. I wrote the letter as soon as we finished recording and sent it off to Rachael, and then turned to the work of finishing the course with authority and joy — the criteria Rachael and I set.
It was an intense little episode and I was glad it was so short and that no one I knew would probably hear it — because I certainly wasn’t going to share it with my audience and what are the odds that someone in my universe would also be in the subset of people following her Unstuck Kickstarter journey?
You can see where this is going…
A few days after the episode aired, I received an email from one of the students in the memoir course. She wrote:
Hi Jennie,
I hope you don't mind if I piggyback an email onto the lovely welcome message you sent to me back when I signed up for the memoir course. I just wanted to tell you that I completely randomly heard your "getting unstuck" podcast episode with Rachael Herron--it just crossed my youtube channel even though I don't normally listen to podcasts on youtube-- and it felt important to me to reach out and tell you to please not stress over finishing the memoir course.
I could not believe this and found myself scrambling to remember what potentially damaging thing I might have said in the episode, what kind of trust must have been eroded by whatever wild thing I said.
I read on…
The training is amazing and I can absolutely see why you felt like you had to create it. But if you end up postponing its completion, I want you to know that I will be 100% okay with it. If you end up needing to take a breath and to create some space around the work that you're doing, please know that I will be very, very okay with having more space myself! The main stress for me is the nine month deadline for certification, so I am completely fine with anything that gives me more room to breathe. And if you postpone it indefinitely, that's okay too.
I wanted to reach out and reassure you that your example in this area, just as Rachael said, is invaluable. What you are dealing with and describing is part of the work for all of us. It just so happens that even your mode of working really resonated with me, but even those people who can work in little bites will understand that this course is a mammoth undertaking. I appreciate your courage and willingness to be vulnerable and your interest in sharing the truth about doing good work. It's just hard.
Good luck and please know that any decision you make is the right decision. Rachael is right, you will feel it in your body and it will be the right decision.
Once I finished reading the letter, I felt a huge sigh of relief — and then a wave of gratitude, not only to this incredibly kind, articulate, and supportive individual (you know who you are and THANK YOU!), but to myself.
I imagined the little episode would be secret. (A painfully incorrect assumption, but it’s what I told myself.) I imagined I could tell the truth because I imagined that no one who would be impacted by my words would hear them.
I felt gratitude towards myself because thank goodness my truth is not made up or manufactured or spun in any way. What protects me is my own integrity — not the promise of my words being secret.
I was reminded of something I used to tell my kids all the time: don’t do anything you wouldn’t want plastered on the front page of the newspaper. Don’t do it in secret, or in private, or in public.
It was a lesson about integrity and it’s what integrity looks like in business, too. Turns out that little episode represents me well. I needn’t have worried. I am who am in all parts of my life and my business.
I hope you are, too. It will make so many things so much easier.
Epilogue
Today is May 15. The course is done.
Want to hear Rachael and Jennie?
The Unstuck episode.
Jennie talking with Rachael about centering the memoir reader on Rachael’s podcast
Jennie,
and Rachael talking about memoir and Jennie’s Blueprint method on the #amwriting podcast.KJ and Rachael talking about the Kickstarter campaign — which was so innovative and so successful — on the #amwriting podcast.
You’re the real thing, Jennie. That’s why I signed up, after earning a Certificate in Publishing from Metropolitan Toronto University, working as an editor for 20 years (a second career!), and teaching editing at Queen’s University and Simon Fraser. There were still gaps in my knowledge.
I’m one of your memoir and nonfiction students. I must say that I was surprised that you published the courses (and took my money) before they were completely finished. But then I thought — what chutzpah! Bravo!
I’ve got to say, though, that your program should be more forgiving of students needing extensions. I had to plead my case.
Your authenticity and integrity are what initially drew me to your Book Coach Certification - Fiction program. Listening to this podcast provided the nudge I needed to *finally* enroll!