The Role of Vulnerability in Business Growth
the Role of Vulnerability in Business Growth: A Path to Connection
In the world of business, vulnerability can often be misunderstood. Many view it as a sign of weakness—something to avoid at all costs. But what if I told you that embracing vulnerability could be one of the most powerful tools in your entrepreneurial toolkit?
Over my eight years in business, and through my journey from corporate America to coaching, I’ve discovered that vulnerability is not just about showing your human side—it’s about fostering deeper connections, authenticity, and real growth.
My Journey to Embracing Vulnerability
I remember the first time I realized my greatest strength was "people development." At the company I worked for, I helped others access leadership potential, find balance, and activate their next level of productivity. I held lunch and learns, offered advice on work-life balance, and coached colleagues.
Yet, when I transitioned into entrepreneurship, vulnerability became a personal challenge.
Like many new entrepreneurs, I was terrified of being seen. I didn’t want my photos online. I worried about judgment, about not being perfect, and about whether people would accept me in this new role.
But here's what I've learned: Vulnerability, when used strategically, can become your biggest asset.
Vulnerability Is Not Weakness
One of the biggest misconceptions about vulnerability is that it’s about revealing your flaws and weaknesses. In truth, it’s about authenticity. It’s about sharing your challenges, yes—but more importantly, it’s about showing how you overcame them.
When done thoughtfully, vulnerability allows you to connect with others on a deeper level. You’re not just presenting a glossy, perfect version of yourself. You’re showing your audience that you understand their struggles because you’ve lived them too.
How Vulnerability Helped Me Navigate Challenges
In the last few years, I faced some unexpected challenges in my business—marketing strategies stopped working, we overspent on advertising, and our team went through significant changes. I had to get vulnerable with myself and others about the reality of those challenges.
I shared my struggles with my team and my network, and while some people distanced themselves, I found that more people were willing to step up and offer support.
The Business Case for Vulnerability
Even large corporations use vulnerability to their advantage. Personal brands within companies help build stronger, more genuine connections with customers. In coaching, especially, showing your authentic self can make all the difference.
Potential clients are more likely to choose someone who is real and relatable over someone who seems perfect and unapproachable.
But here’s the key: Vulnerability doesn’t mean oversharing or seeking pity. It’s about demonstrating growth and resilience. It’s about showing others how you navigated through difficult times and came out stronger on the other side.
Practical Tips for Embracing Vulnerability
If you’re ready to start using vulnerability to your advantage in business, here are a few practical tips:
Start Small – Share stories from your past where you've learned and grown. These don’t have to be recent or deeply personal to resonate.
Let Go of Perfection – You don’t need everything to be perfectly polished to share your message. Start where you are, and trust that your audience will appreciate your authenticity.
Lean Into Conversations – Some of the best coaching moments come from sharing personal stories that reflect real challenges. These moments create deep, lasting connections with your clients.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, vulnerability is about being real. It’s about showing your audience, clients, and network who you really are and what you stand for. When you do this, you’ll not only deepen your connections but also inspire others to pursue their own authentic journeys.
So, I challenge you: Where can you be more vulnerable in your business? Whether it’s in your social media posts, during coaching sessions, or in a keynote speech, there’s power in sharing your story. Take that step, get real, and watch how your vulnerability becomes your greatest strength.
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📌Timestamps for Key Moments:
00:00 – Intro: Why Vulnerability Matters in Business
01:45 – Amanda’s Background: From Corporate America to Coaching
04:20 – The Struggle with Being Seen: Fears of Judgment
07:05 – What Vulnerability Really Is (Hint: It’s Not Weakness)
09:30 – Overcoming Business Challenges with Vulnerability
12:55 – Why Authenticity is Critical in Today’s Business Landscape
15:10 – Practical Tips for Embracing Vulnerability
19:00 – The Role of Self-Awareness and Self-Compassion
22:35 – Final Thoughts: Turning Vulnerability into Your Greatest Asset
Full Transcript
The Power of Vulnerability in Business: Amanda Kaufman (00:00)
So this week, I thought I would just share a little bit with you about my thoughts on embracing vulnerability in business.
Well, hello and welcome back to the Amanda Kaufman show. And this is my thoughts on a Thursday. So this week, I thought I would just share a little bit with you about my thoughts on embracing vulnerability in business. So I've been in business for about eight years. If we haven't met yet, hey, my name is Amanda Kaufman. I'm based in Fort Worth, Texas, and I am a relocated Canadian.
who has lived here in Texas for like 14 years, so I guess that makes me Texanadian. Anyway, I started my business after being in corporate America for 10 years in a corporate strategy type role where I was working with governments and Fortune 500 companies and various different industries. And after really spending like 10 years in my career, I learned that my
greatest strength was my people development. So at the company that I worked for, they had a way that they assessed your performance and they looked at things like your aptitudes and your skill set. And I can't even remember the full heuristic, but I will never forget the first time I heard the term people development and I asked, what's that?
And from there, I started doing lunch and learns and volunteering extra time to help people to access and activate their next level of leadership, of authenticity, of productivity, of being able to balance. As a young mother, I was hosting lunch and learns on how to balance your family time with your commitment to doing an excellent job at work.
And that all basically evolved to my consulting style, which included quite a bit of coaching. Now at the time, coaching was a really new idea for me. Coaching itself has been around since, well, probably earnestly since the 1960s. And it's really grown in popularity over the last couple of decades, and especially as social media has exploded onto the scene.
the idea of somebody having a personal coach or a career coach or a business coach or a fitness coach has become ubiquitous. It is everywhere. And as that opportunity has expanded and grown, and by the way, the market is growing like crazy, so if you're listening to this and you're thinking, gosh, should I get into the coaching space?
Well, I mean, do you love coaching? And is this where you want to go? Because there's a ton of opportunity here. All of that to say, all of that to say, I was so used to the first 10 years of my career kind of following a company culture and following what are we supposed to do and what are the policies and what is the direction here. And it was quite a curated.
kind of an experience that makes sense for a very large corporation. The thing is, is the more I got into personal development and growth, the more I learned that authentic expression, you know, your authenticity, is a really important aspect of your full realization of self. And the more I looked at like who I really was and what I really wanted and I was really
that and doing the work as we like to call it, I realized that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I wanted to be an entrepreneur because I wanted to have time control. Like I wanted to have more of a choice about what went on my calendar, where I went in the world, the decisions I made. I didn't want to be beholden to a larger organization or to, you know, people that I didn't feel huge affinity with.
I wanted to do great work for great people that I really enjoyed having relationship with. And I wanted to also create. I wanted to be able to create something from all of these things that I had consumed and I had digested and I'd implemented and I'd tried this and tried that. I had all of these ideas for what I could create or what I could become if I just had the time freedom.
So that was my first real reason for becoming an entrepreneur. Now, fast forward to when I finally did make the leap, I hired coaches, I took courses, I read the books. I've always been kind of a get ready and get prepared A plus type student, but I really struggled with vulnerability. And I struggled specifically with...
I didn't want any photos of me to be on the internet. I was so afraid of the judgment I was gonna get for my videos. I knew that I wasn't a perfect speaker yet. I knew that I wasn't a well-established and renowned speaker or coach or author. I didn't have any of that credibility. And I struggled with being seen. And so in today's episode, I wanted to just
have a little bit of a solo riff to talk to you a little bit about embracing vulnerability in business because it can be such a powerful tool. Even really large corporations will use personal brands to build a deeper relationship and effect with their market base. So, you know, what I'm talking about here is not unprofessional, but rather a really important strategic conversation. And
Thanks for joining me for it. And this is, by the way, my first solo episode on the Amanda Kaufman show in quite some time. So bear with me. If you have any questions, if you have things that you would love for me to cover in greater detail on a future Thoughts on a Thursday, I'm super happy to share it with you. Okay, so let's get started with, you know, the moment that I got it, that I understood the role that vulnerability has.
You know, first off, I'm just going to say it. And I know a lot of coaches say this that have coaching services for sale. So I'm just going to preface. Yes, people hire me as a coach. Yes, I have products and services for coaching, but I'm also doing the show and producing my content for free consumption. know, anybody who decides that they want to work with me in a closer way, I hope that you're doing it because you're really excited about your goal and you're looking to.
You're looking to lock arms with somebody that you trust, that you like, that you connect with. And that's like the whole piece here, but I'm gonna come back to it and I just want you to know that when I say what I'm about to say, it's true whether you ever hire me, ever or not. And here's what it is. If you have mentorship, it will speed you up. If you have mentorship, it will speed you up.
and it'll speed you up because it'll help you to hone in on what matters and what has worked and what is the truth about the industry and what you may be making as assumptions and so on. So mentorship has played a tremendous role in my own growth, but also in the growth of all of my clients. I've played the role of mentor, but also I'm a big believer in patchwork mentorship. So.
What I mean by that is that you don't necessarily just try to conform or copy to one particular individual, but rather find multiple mentors that are exciting to you, that have features and traits that you really enjoy, and then pull their best from them, and then combine into something that is your own, right? But...
I'm saying this because on the subject of vulnerability, I was so blessed that I had a mentor who had attracted millions of people online and had built like huge masterminds, coaching programs, scalable coaching companies. And so I knew right off the get go that I needed to be present and visible in front of people on social media and on YouTube and on email and so on and so forth.
I knew that like from the word go. But. Big but. But I was still so afraid of vulnerability because I was actually confused about what vulnerability actually is. So I was scared of being seen online because I knew I wasn't perfect. P.S. I'm still not. But.
Back then I knew I wasn't perfect and I confused vulnerability the way that a lot of people really do, which is I thought of vulnerability as demonstration of weakness. You know, like if I share with you this insecurity that I've had, or if I share with you this place where I'm not perfect, then you're going to shun and judge me and you're gonna cast me aside and you're gonna just like, yeah, you're gonna drop me like a bad habit. And the thing is is that,
is true, actually. That is true for like maybe 10 % of the people who actually see this. They're going to be somehow offended by my content and they're going to look at it as like, she's weak. She doesn't have what it takes. You know, and they're going to just like render all this judgment. And you know what? Maybe for some of the things that they really care about, they may even be right. They may even be right. My weaknesses may actually be a feature that they find repulsive.
But for like 90 plus percent of people, they're either going to be indifferent or they're gonna relate. They're gonna relate to the humanity, to the struggle, to the growth. And here's the big key with vulnerability and effectively sharing it is share it in a way that reveals how you overcame it. Like I'm talking about vulnerability for business purposes. Yep.
Because why are we talking about authenticity so much online and in programs and in coaching circles so much? Because people are sick and tired of being told how they're not perfect, but then they're also kind of reprojecting in all these insecurities the way that I did, thinking that to share vulnerability means to disclose like these weaknesses and to show up as a lesser than version of ourselves.
I think that the the thing that can be really powerful about vulnerability is that when you share from a healing place When you share from a healing place You sharing how you were flawed and how you did mess up and and and and and like owning the insult if you will It empowers someone who who?
Resonates with this story because maybe they're experiencing that very thing right now It empowers someone who's maybe working through Looking for solution to that same challenge and when you reveal what that solution is It's intoxicating because it's like my god You're not just giving me some sort of steps that you got out of some AI chatbot You're actually telling me like what really happened for you and that is so
factually powerful. mean you go into a bookstore or to Amazon and you look at the top performing books in personal growth space. They are biographical. They are they are storytelling and but their stories paired with lessons. So I think like in a business concept we understanding that vulnerability is not the same as weakness.
but rather it's an exposure of your humanity. And when I got more connected with it's okay to be me and to take that risk, I mean, my life changed. Like even in the last year and a bit, I've had a lot of challenges show up in life that I really wasn't anticipating. And I kind of got in this place where
I had no choice but to get vulnerable. And just to give you a little bit of context, we had marketing things that were working that stopped working. We had an over-expenditure in our agencies and our advertising and hiring and firing sales team. It was nuts. It was chaos. And we were trying so hard to get it together and to get it to work.
And it was working, but it wasn't working well enough. And I think that's big challenge of business is that sometimes you can get something to work, but it's not working well enough. And you have to decide what to do with limited resources. That's the whole freaking game of business. So what happened was when I realized, my gosh, this ship is striking a freaking burg, or there's an iceberg ahead. And I got vulnerable.
And I shared that with people I Did lose friends You know and and and I realized that people who were keeping me in there in their circle It was very conditional love like it was very like you know You're allowed to be here if you make us look good by extension because of your high performance but if you encounter a struggle or you encounter a Challenge or a danger. I'm gonna drop you like a bad habit
Right? That did happen. But you know what happened more? People actually stood up and said, you know what? I get it because I've actually been through challenge myself and I'm willing to support and help you. And that is actually what helped us to navigate the storm through that season. So vulnerability isn't just a marketing move. Vulnerability is also like
How do you connect authentically with people in your network, with your mentors, with your coaches? And like I said, the risk of it is that you're going to get what you're so afraid of that's preventing the vulnerability in the first place, which is you will get rejection. But you're going to get rejection from people who were never really all that invested in the first place. I have a little man to mantra where it's like, hey, if it takes very little for the cookie to crumble, how good's the cookie?
You I like my cookies kind of chewy and kind of malleable, but you kind of get the point. Vulnerability in business, I think, is incredible for making sure that people know exactly where you stand, exactly where you've been, exactly where you're going, and exactly how they can help. And by the way, it engenders a reciprocal response. So if somebody is being vulnerable with you about exactly where they've been, exactly where they're going, exactly what they...
want to do, it really empowers you to be able to serve them in a really authentic way. I think one of the reasons why a lot of people don't move forward or go as fast with business is because they're not being real about it. They're not being real about what the challenges are and they're not being real about what they are doing actively toward a solution. So, you know, it's just a bunch of like lobbying offers at each other and pumping messages out there and
and not really sure where it's gonna land and nobody really cares and it's like, slow down.
Tell the truth. Get humble about your journey. Get grounded in your journey. like, get real about what is it that you're so, so worried about or worried about risking. You know, when you are able to tell like a very authentic truth about what the struggle is, you have some hope of actually solving it.
But if you don't, if you always have to put up this facade that everything is perfect, that you've got everything all shiny and everything is amazing all the time, it eats at you from the inside. Now, one thing I'll say on vulnerability is do be mindful of who you're being vulnerable with. Because there are people that are going to use it against you, and they're going to use it against you in really unproductive ways.
So don't feel that you have to spill your soul to absolutely everyone just because you're trying to do a better job of being authentic. I produced this content for the top 10 % of my audience. I'm super clear about what some of the things are that challenge my clients and my dream community members and all of that.
know it because we talk about it. Like that vulnerability piece once again, I know that this is a thing because it's something that we talk about privately as well. So when I'm producing this content, this podcast, this YouTube, you know, for the listener or for the viewer, you know, I'm the person I'm thinking about is the person that I'm the most equipped to help. I am not producing this.
thinking about the troll that's gonna come along and say that they have a problem with my lipstick, or they have a problem with my hair, or they have a problem with my level of success or status, that they have issue with my sound quality, or they have an issue with the number of views that I get. I don't care. And I think that getting to a place where it's like, I actually really don't care about that lower 10%.
but I really care about serving that upper 10%, that was an evolution that sprung from practicing vulnerability and getting to experience the negativity of someone not responding well to that vulnerability and experience the incredible connection and the incredible progress of relationship as a result of doing it.
You know, so if you've been very like buttoned up or you've been very like scared to share or you're not sure what to share to be vulnerable, I want I wanted to offer you some actionable tips in this episode. So the first one is to start small, you know, so you can share simple stories or moments that are way back in your history and you've resolved it and you can share what the resolution was. That's a great place to start.
You know, you can share stories even from when you were growing up. You know, you can share stories from 20 years ago. It's all good because as long as the story serves your person that you really want to help, that's all that is needed to qualify as a great story for your content and for your connection. The second thing is I would actively make a point of letting go of perfection.
So where are you feeling like I can't say my truth or I can't say this because what if so and so sees it or I can't, you know, I can't do this until it looks like this standard XYZ. Like, let that go. You know, I'm always encouraging my clients like just serve, just help, just turn the camera on. You know, did you know you can start a YouTube channel from your phone?
You know, I was at a very fancy and very expensive mastermind at a lovely resort when I learned from Evan Carmichael that you can literally start a YouTube channel from your phone, like right then and there. And in my mind, I had had it super complicated with all these different bells and whistles to be able to start a YouTube channel. And, you know, I'm not coming at you from an Evan Carmichael level where he's like this genius of YouTube video promotion.
I'm coming at it from a person who went into entrepreneurship to find more and greater alignment. And I'm saying that if you're letting the tools and the tech and the SEO and the graphics and the Canva and the descriptions and the links, if you're letting like all this stuff get in the way of you starting to speak your voice and share your truth and be vulnerable with people, stop it.
And by the way, if you are on YouTube, check out Bob Newhart's Stop It video. Hilarious. It's so funny. But my point is, that if you're letting dumb stuff get in the way of you doing your work and your craft, it's time to let that go and like add things in, you know? So this is the very first time that I'm using Riverside.fm, not an ad, just telling you what it is. This is the very first time I'm using Riverside to shoot a...
Thoughts on a Thursday episode, a solo episode. And I'm just thinking about all the ways that I've done videos and uploaded them to the YouTube. And the thing I'm really proud of is that I have not allowed the tech to get in the way of delivering the message. And when I was darn well ready, and today being in October of 24, when I was darn well ready to go to an upgraded platform,
and upgrade my workflow, I did. I did. How do you like them saucy apples, right? The third piece of advice I'm going to share with you since you're listening to the episode is to lean into conversations. You know, the reason I'm talking about all this vulnerability stuff is I just want you to know that like the best coaching sessions that I've ever had, I revealed a story.
about myself that a former version of me would be so embarrassed to even admit. And
that.
gets fed back to me in conversation as, my God, it's so relieving to hear that you have had these struggles or that you experienced these same resistances and that these things are real for you. I think something I didn't really appreciate until a little later in my journey was that when people see you on social media,
and they see you in their inbox or they see you on the YouTuber listening to the podcast, they're getting like this keyhole view of you, right? They're getting like this little tiny visibility of you. And then they're piecing that together with other keyhole little pieces. And then there's like this mortar that goes in between all the pieces of assumption, you know?
And one of the assumptions that I learned that a lot of people had was that I just didn't, because I was so consistent, didn't ever have any kind of emotional suffering. Or that I had just figured it out. And I've had people make assumptions about my backstory and about my motives and about this and about that. And vulnerability is the literal cure.
You know, when you can just tell people in the right context, like, hey, here's what really happened, or here's something else that you may not know, or here's a little more behind the scenes, it helps kind of set that record straight because it's only natural for the people who know you to make assumptions kind of based on other things that they know from other places that may not actually have anything to do with you and your reality.
And the final piece here on vulnerability is it's awfully difficult to get vulnerable if you're not self-aware. So I recognize a lot of my audience is coaches and entrepreneurs and you're into personal development, but I have to tell you, there's so many people who don't have a journaling practice, who don't take the time to meditate, who don't take the time away from screens, away from consumption, away from the tasks.
lists to get to know themselves and to be able to say like with a lot of conviction, this is me, this is what I'm here to do, this is what I'm growing for. And when you have that self talk and that self awareness, I would also say it's super important to have self compassion. Because I think it's hard to know yourself unless you're also looking at, but how do you feel about yourself?
How do you feel about what you've done? How are you talking to yourself about that? And I think having a greater compassion for where you have made mistakes or where you were maybe not operating as your best self yet because you didn't know yet and all of those kinds of things, like have compassion. I shared earlier on this episode some of the challenges that we had in our business last year and you know.
I had to do a lot of work to identify like, where was I feeling guilty about that? Where was I feeling shame about that? And was that actually warranted? Like if somebody else, if I knew somebody else that went through that exact same scenario, like would I assign the same feelings to it? So again, like that self-awareness and that self-compassion piece actually allows you to be vulnerable because you realize that you tend to be
the harshest critic, but that doesn't always have to be the case. You don't have to be your harshest critic. You can be somebody who is self-compassionate and demonstrates self-love and loves to learn as well. So remember, vulnerability is a strength in business. It fosters deeper relationships. It really helps people to choose you, Pikachu.
And it also helps you to overcome your imposter syndrome. I didn't spend as much time on that, but I think it's really worth noting and it's kind of related to what I was saying about knowing yourself even better. And so I would love for you from here to just reflect on what is one area that you would love to be able to get more vulnerable and you could be sharing this on social media, you could be sharing inside of your coaching containers, your coaching calls.
or you could even be writing it in a book, putting it into a speech, putting it somewhere that it's really going to serve someone else in their authentic growth. So those are my thoughts on a Thursday. Thank you so much for joining me. And if you love this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share this with three friends, because when you do those things, it helps people to discover the show and to continue to grow. All right, my friend, take care. It was really nice.
hanging out with you.
