Could you imagine how invasive it’d feel if you were walking down your local high street and every shopkeeper stood outside shouting about their latest offers? Tugging at your jacket, forcing flyers into your hands, and trying to drag you into their store to prove why you need what they’re selling.
You’d be screaming and running for the hills, wouldn’t you? 😱
Now imagine walking down that exact same high street, and instead, each shopkeeper gives you a warm smile, offers you a comfy seat, and asks if you’ve got time for a proper chat over an icy bev.
You’d be taken aback, and your heart would feel a little fuzzy, wouldn’t it?
So why on earth is everyone treating social media like that high street horror show?
Lately, connecting online’s starting to feel like a cold, transactional rat race. I keep getting bombarded with sales pitches, and treated as though I’m being ticked off someone’s daily outreach checklist. The reality is that female founders like us are busy. We’re navigating all sorts: mental health, neurodivergences, family life, and the general madness of being human. We don’t want a megaphoned offer stuffed down our throats, we want heart, soul, and authentic connection.🙅♀️
How do we stop screaming at people and start building real relationships that turn into dream clients?
Before I get into it, let me remind you who I am and why my insights are worth your time!
👋 I’m Danyel, founder of Reign Virtual PA Services. I’m the creative mind and operational backbone who helps founders just like you bring ideas to life, build the systems and processes that keep everything moving, and tell emotionally intelligent brand stories that actually connect. With almost 7 years of partnering with health and wellness pros, neurodivergent specialists, coaches and financial experts – I know what it takes to make a biz run smoothly and how to ensure the amazing person behind your brand is at the heart of everything you put out into the world. 🙌
Okay, enough about me. Over to you.
Are you using your content to open the door to your virtual store, or are you just blasting offers at passersby?
We live in a time where everyone’s tired. Not just physically, but emotionally, mentally, and sensory-tired in a way that means the moment something feels transactional or pushy, we’re gone. 😑
Yet, the DMs keep arriving. Connection requests flood in from people who’ve clearly copy-pasted a list of interrogation-style questions with zero interest in the actual human on the other end.
📢 What’s your big fat hairy goal? Where do you see yourself in 3 years? What does client acquisition look like for you right now?
Ahh, eff off, mate! 🤣 I connected with you because your content spoke to me! I didn’t advertise a need for a coach or a job interview!
This approach doesn’t just feel uncomfortable, it actively erodes trust before it’s had a chance to form. Trust, especially for female founders building service-based businesses, is everything. It’s the foundation of every strong collaboration, every long-term client relationship, and every referral that finds its way to you.
What does building a connection before anything else actually look like?
Social media was built for us to be social, it’s literally in the name! It’s about pulling back the curtain, welcoming people into your world, and sharing a real part of who you are while taking the time to invest right back into them. Friends and connections come first, and anything that comes off the back of that is an awesome bonus. The strongest collaborations are always built on a solid foundation of trust rather than a pushy sales script.
The most powerful thing you can do is let people in. Share real-life stories about you. 😁 Really – share all of it! The madness, the sweat, the tears, the lessons learnt, and the behind-the-scenes reality. Share the reason you know how to teach topic X is because you’ve actually lived through experience Y.
When you’re brave enough to share that, people stop seeing you as just another service provider and start seeing you as a person they actually want to work with. 🙌
Remembering our humanness matters more than ever right now!
Over the past few months, I took a little step back from active biz growth to navigate a wild relocation and some personal life changes. During that downtime, while life was still very much wilding out, I focused on my own needs and reflected on where I’m at, what’s working, and what isn’t.
In that space, I discovered something huge. Like so many women are realising right now, I found out I’m AuDHD.🥲 And just like that, everything clicked into place.
For many neurodivergent people, whether that’s autism, ADHD, dyslexia, sensory processing differences, or any of the many other ways our brains can be wired, connection isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the whole framework through which trust gets built, decisions get made, and relationships become sustainable. Pattern recognition, consistency, authenticity, real warmth over fake warmth – these things massively matter to us.
In fact – they matter to most people, neurodivergent or not. We’re all, at our core, wired for human connection. We can feel the difference between someone who’s actually interested in us and someone running through a script.
So many people right now are navigating a lot. I’m talking about mental health challenges, burnout, and the relentless pressure of running a biz while trying to show up in every other area of life. The last thing any of us needs is to hop onto our socials and feel like a prospect rather than a person. We want warmth, realness, and someone who pulls back the curtain to let us see they’re navigating the same beautiful, exhausting, ridiculous ride.
What difference could it make if you stopped asking what to post and started asking what to share?
Those are two very different questions.
Posting is broadcasting. Sharing is opening a door.😌
Think about the experience, moment, or realisation that shaped the way you do your work. The thing you went through that means you understand your clients’ challenges from the inside out. Write that down exactly as you’d tell it to someone you’ve just met at a dinner party, with the detail, the emotion, and the bit where it didn’t go the way you planned! Then tie it to the insight it gave you and what that means for the people you serve.
This is the content that makes people feel seen. This is the content that gets saved, shared, and replied to with paragraphs instead of a thumbs up. This is what builds the kind of trust that means when you do talk about your work, people are already leaning in rather than scrolling past.
How do we fix this and bring the human back into our brand?
It comes down to 1 very powerful thing: unfiltered, personal storytelling.
I worked with a fab neurodivergent career coach who helps corporate execs transition into purpose-led entrepreneurship. She was so focused on looking professional that her content was coming across cold and clinical. No lie, even a well-briefed AI draft would’ve had more warmth and personality than what my client was sharing.🥴
I asked her why she wasn’t getting deeper and sharing her real, lived experiences, to which she revealed she was terrified that showing her true self would turn people off.
I explained the necessity of pulling back the curtain, inviting her audience closer and welcoming them into her world. This gave her the courage to drop her stiff messaging and rebuild her content approach around her actual story, the experiences that led her to create a space specifically for neurodivergent and introverted women in biz, and the moments of isolation she’d felt herself that made her understand exactly why that space needed to exist.
We mapped out her content pillars around her lived expertise, reframed her client wins into relatable brand narratives, and created a simple workflow so she could share her thoughts without feeling overwhelmed.
The response from her audience was immediate and emotional! Her DMs and comments completely lit up. People weren’t just reading her posts, they were replying with heartfelt messages, booking discovery calls, and telling her she’d put into words things they’d never been able to say themselves. This is what real connection looks like, and what can happen when you stop pitching and start connecting! 🫶
When you drop the sales facade and lead with emotional intelligence, you build an audience that totally trusts you before they’ve even looked at your services page.
How’s your current connection strategy feeling right now, and are you ready to swap the high street megaphones for real, human conversation?
If you’re not connecting the way you know you could with your audience, let’s change that. Book a free 30 min consultation with me – no icky sales talk and absolutely no intense follow up newsletters, just a human chat (with a little banter!) about where you’re at and how I could support you. 🫶
Not ready for a call yet? No problemo!
💃 Find out more about me and my offerings on my here, or come and connect with me on LI or on IG where I share marketing and operations tips and insights that’ll help you strengthen your content and biz strategies. I’m looking forward to learning more about you and your biz journey!
