137: Attracting Clients Through TikTok (without Letting the Algorithm Drive You) with Inna Aizenshtein

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Hello, Hello Free Timers. I am so delighted to be here today with an IRL friend of over a decade of living in New York, Ina Eisenstein. Ina is such an incredible person. I interviewed her more about her pivot process and her story about moving from being a creative director in fashion to what she's doing now as a hypnotherapist and coach. Check that episode out if you want the full background scoop in this conversation. We are going to dive into how she's attracting clients through TikTok as her number one channel for bringing people into her business. So you know me, grumpy social media curmudgeon that I am, I wouldn't know the first thing about attracting clients through TikTok, but I really admire what Ina's doing and what she has created. So she's now helping people work through and release outdated subconscious blocks so they can reclaim their worthiness and become more magnetic. She does these awesome TikTok shorts. They've evolved over her time on the platform. She has over 1.5 million views and she also works one on one with clients. So Ina, welcome to FreeTime.

Thank you so much. Here we are again.

I know. I'm really excited to dig into it. TikTok experiments. How did you get started on TikTok? And I know you said in the pivot conversation, you're a very visual thinker. How did you decide to really go all in on TikTok compared to, say, Instagram or even Pinterest?

The reason I got started out with TikTok was when I graduated from my hypnotherapy school, the Divine Feminine School of Hypnosis.

Amazing.

I really didn't have a business plan for how to find clients. I made a website and I sent out the link to my friends, and then I was like, all right, what do we do from here? I don't know. There was no sort of business planning part of that training. So a friend of mine had been talking to me about TikTok for years. Just even as a consumer of the platform, she's like, please, go on and watch it. It's amazing. It's so fun. And I was like, I don't need dance videos. I'm good. I have Instagram. That's more than enough addiction for me of social media stuff. And one of the conversations that she and I had, really, she was like, I just need you to go on. It's not dancing. It is educational. And I said, all right, let me try it. Honestly, I turned on or I got the app with the intention of being like, all right. No one I know is on TikTok. It's much less scary than going on Instagram where people know me. I have some followers, some people from the gym, some people from a past job that all felt too vulnerable, honestly. And going on TikTok, where I knew that I didn't know anyone, that was really freeing and just saying to myself, okay, I'm gonna try it out. I'm just gonna see how it goes. I have nothing to lose. I have nothing to lose because I have no clients.

See, I find the format of TikTok intimidating. I hate being on video. I don't wanna be on video. I don't feel I have that kind of concise way of communicating or even thinking in that sense. Were you intimidated by the format? Because it feels like so many TikToks are really sticky and people are really talented or really beautiful. You are really beautiful, exquisitely beautiful. And I having your background in fashion and just being the cool, tattooed, Brooklyn fashion friend. So I feel like you do look really TikToky. You have a very visual aesthetic, which I don't. But were you intimidated by what? Or how to even create those first posts?

I was very intimidated. Years ago, maybe around 10 years ago, when you and I started hanging out, I tried to have a blog and on that blog I tried to make videos and it was awful. I think I made two videos, maybe three, but I literally was drinking alcohol while recording those because I was like, I cannot speak into a camera. I can't get however many takes it takes. I can't get myself to loosen up or to feel comfortable. And that's actually why TikTok is very different in that way, in that what works or what seems to work for people because everyone has such short attention spans, is a lot of my videos, if you go back several months back, I could only say a half of a sentence at a time. Everything I do is scripted. I can only sometimes, depending on how my brain is working that day, get four words out at a time. So you have to make it very snappy. That approach just happened to work really well for the way that I am able to get my information across and out. So it has never felt comfortable. And in fact, I had my past experience, my limiting beliefs from before of being like, are you ready to do this again? You're doing this thing again, right? You're going to do the thing where you can't do it and you're sitting there for hours and nothing's coming out and then you don't even want to publish it. So that was something I had to get over. I think I kind of hung out on the app for a week to two weeks, kind of tried to play around with some of the buttons a little bit and be like, okay, what is this? This is a filter. This is a whatever. It's different than Instagram, which is what I was comfortable with. And then I ended up taking one of those, you know, five day challenges where they sell you a program at the end. And I was like, all right, just somebody teach me what is happening here. And on the first night, I remember texting my boyfriend and being like, our homework is to make a video and post it.

Can you believe it?

And he was like, you're gonna do it, you're gonna have to do it. And that was it. So, yeah, the first. I don't think anyone should scroll all the way back, but if somebody does, you can watch. Really, the transformation of it started out very timid and very slow. And it evolves as you evolve, it evolves with you.

When were those early posts? Do you remember?

It was a year and a few months ago.

I think May, maybe or mid-2021. Ish.

Yeah.

And it seems like pretty early on, at least one or more went viral in some way or hit traction because you started attracting clients pretty early on, right?

Yeah.

How did you know? What was your first signal? This might work. That's one signal. And then what was your other signal of? I can get better at this, I can do this. Compared to the video blogging of yesteryear.

Before I started making the videos, I had been obsessing about all of the things that I love to talk about and that I love to think about. And I had a bunch of things written out, so I knew the types of things that I would like to work with people on. And a lot of it was nervous system regulation stuff, you know, a tapping video, just showing people how to tap and explain why it works and how it works and that. And I think one of those videos was one of the first that did well.

And when we say doing well at that time was at a couple hundred thousand views. Right.

I remember this was maybe a week or two weeks after I started. So I recognized that I got very lucky. I know that I got lucky in the first two weeks. I remember texting my boyfriend and being like, look, there's 29 people who follow me and they don't know me. They just decided to follow me based on the things that I talk about. And that was very exciting to me. And I was waiting for the subway to come get him from the train station, and I opened TikTok and I'm seeing the notification number just changing every second, and I was like, oh, my God, something's happening. That was very exciting. I think that video got maybe 20,000 views or something like that and a lot of likes. And that was the first I went from, you know, having 29 followers to having several thousand followers. And to me, that was just mind blowing. And.

And that's one of the big stories of TikTok, is that you can build a following quite quickly. And TikTok, I know, I read this article, for better and for worse, they do ensure that every few posts get seen quite broadly because that also encourages the creators to keep creating. How quickly did you notice from that? What was the correlation between a video doing well to clients actually knocking on your virtual door and reaching out and saying they want to work with you?

I think it was probably maybe a month or two months after that. By the way, at this point, I was super, super ready to see people. I had seen a few clients in person from just connections of People I know in real life. But I was very, very ready to have clients. And I realized that I need to start making the types of videos. Some of those series, like I mentioned before, like the habit change, I need to start making videos that speak to the type of clients, client, the type of person that I want to work with. And it was always tuning into my strengths, so talking about something that I was very comfortable talking about. And once those videos get a couple hundred thousand views, I remember after a few months, I literally was like, I think I have to put a hold on my consultations because I was doing four consultations a day and I would be booked out. Like people would try to book a consultation with me and I would be booked out for months in advance. It was a lot.

And that's surprising because you had a new business. Yeah, the business. You had just left fashion at the end of 2019. So within two years and after just a few months on TikTok, to have a wait list essentially is really interesting. Were you giving calls to action in the videos, like get in touch, book a consult, or they just found their way to your website, they clicked on your profile, went to your website, and that was just happening almost organically as a result of them watching?

Yes. So whenever I hear these TikTok how to videos, I don't know how much to trust them because it seems like the algorithm changes all the time. What I heard and what actually really makes a lot of sense to me is that when you give someone a call to action, click on my blah, blah, blah. TikTok doesn't like that because you are taking their viewers off the platform. So when they notice that someone's account starts moving eyeballs away from them, they're like, no, no, no, we're going to slow this down and not show it to as many people.

Wow.

And I honestly, that type of call to action never felt authentic to me. I make content because I want to help in whatever way I can help people. And organically, what that translates to for me, and that is still the strategy that I employ. What that translates to is when people go through my stuff, if somebody watches a video and they're like, oh my God, who is this? They go back and they watch a bunch of videos, and if that resonates for them, then they're like, okay, let me see what this person has to offer. Because when I see someone's video on TikTok, then I'm like, that was a really great point. I go and see what they offer immediately. Is there a course? Is there a one on one? Are you selling something? Can I buy that T shirt? That's how it makes sense to me. So I personally don't need a call to action and I never put a call to action out except for when I tried to create a course last summer. And I don't know that.

So many things online paint the picture that courses are a panacea to growth and a recurring revenue evergreen, robust business. They're hard. Launches can be hard. You know, I don't like to always label something as hard capital H, but it's not as easy. You put in all this work and then sometimes if the launch doesn't go well, doesn't fill up, it can be very discouraging.

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You mentioned in there the algo, the TikTok algorithm, which is famous. The TikTok algorithm is epic because it's so good and it trains itself so well to what each person secretly likes to see, even if they don't manually go follow these accounts kind of intelligently knows what to show people. But you said that when you try to follow what you hear about the algorithm, you get burned out and that you've learned to work with the algo on an energetic level. What does that mean? What does it look like to work with the algorithm on an energetic level?

Yeah, maybe I can talk about my dip.

Please do, because I Think we had brunch when you were in the dip. I hate this. I don't want to post more videos.

Yeah. So what ended up happening was the early success that I had with getting a lot of views and having a lot of clients translated in my mind to, when you make a TikTok video, that's exposure, and that is exposure that will lead to people hiring you. Which unfortunately turned my mind from the I'm doing this to help people to the I need to stay on people's radars. And the energetic behind that is very, very different for me. Right. So there's a difference in energy between how can I provide the most support to someone who probably can't afford to work with me? Right. Because I want to. Because I think it's important to talk about these things because I see so much TikTok is contributing to this unfortunately, too. It's like you don't know who is licensed or who has the right information. If they look cute enough and if they say something that resonates with you enough, you're gonna go with it. So I see a lot of very bad advice on there as well. And maybe someone is saying that about me. You know, I'm sure somebody is saying that about me. But it turned my attention from how can I put out the best content and be the most impactful? To what can I do in order to get people to book with me? And what that translated to was me posting every day, whether I was on vacation, whether I was really taking time away. If I didn't have a video that was prepared, I would make a silly little video of they do this thing where it's a stitch where you interacting with somebody else's video. You're literally side by side. There's someone's face and they're talking about a thing, and you're just sitting there pointing, or maybe you add a little bit of text and you're like, yeah, go follow this creator. Like, it's just right. Over time, it really, really, really burned me out because it felt like I was chasing a thing and receiving very diminishing returns. The consultations went down, new clients went down. It felt like I was kind of chasing a thing of an algorithm that I don't understand and no one understands. I'm sure that TikTok understands their algorithm, but they change it every week, or it sounds like they do, you know, so that is kind of a losing battle. And I ended up taking three or four months off. It wasn't a, I'm going to take Three months off, and then three months from today, I'm gonna be back better than ever. It was a. I'm just not interested anymore. Honestly, it was kind of an experiment for me to see what happens if I don't keep feeding that beast. Do people still find me? Are people still watching my other videos? Do I still get client referrals? What does that look like? And I realized that the time that I took away, not only were people still finding me, of course not at the same pace that they were in the early days of success, but actually I was getting more clients than I was when I was working very hard at keeping up the facade of constantly tiktoking.

That's so interesting. And when you were on a break, where were the clients coming from? Was it word of mouth primarily, or were they still somehow catching the archives?

They were catching the archives. How?

Because it feels like TikTok is so of the moment. How would they have been exposed to the archives?

Yeah. So it's kind of like what you described earlier, where the algorithm knows the type of thing that you're attracted to. This is my understanding. If there is someone hot and new out there who is making videos about inner child healing and you go through their thing and the algorithm is like, oh, you like inner child healing stuff? Let me show you other inner child healing stuff. And they start to show you things that either the people you follow have liked or the people somehow is adjacent to what it is that your mental health. Whatever. Right. It will pull up sometimes. I've heard of this. I don't know that it's true for me, that it has been true for me. But people will say, a video I posted two months ago is going viral all of a sudden.

Oh, interesting.

And it happens because the way that the interaction works is if somebody watches your full video, that gives you extra bonus points. So if you watch my entire two minute video, front to back, start to finish, they will send that video to 100 people. Those 100 people, if one or two of them watch it, it goes out to another hundred or thousand people. So it really is. You could have just somehow found one of my videos from months ago because somehow it's related to something else that you're interested in. And from my understanding, one or a few people can actually get that kind of thing going again. And interaction, if you leave a comment, that's more bonus. If you share it or you save it, that's more bone. And I think that's the same on Instagram.

It gets that snowball.

Yeah. A Little bit of that snowball.

That's so fascinating. And that how they leverage the archives and probably having really specific content like you do. Inner child healing is so specific. That's so interesting because you're not just dancing. I mean, you could be a great dancer on TikTok, but there's a lot of those. But there might be fewer people. It's always this business cliche, but the riches are in the niches. But actually, by creating niche content that there might not be as much of yet, I could totally see how yours would be the perfect PB&J sandwich, which Europeans don't like. They think it's disgusting. So champagne and strawberries. I don't know. Okay, so you're at this dip. You're in the plateau. I've done that so many times, especially with the Pivot Podcast or my newsletters. I mean, I've been creating content for 17 years and there have been times where I think I'm taking a week off and next thing I know, it's been six months.

Yeah.

So what got you to get back on TikTok and was there a part of you that thought, well, what if I never go back on what reignited your energy?

Yeah. So I'm really lucky in that I have a lot of tools. Like this inner healing work that is just part of my regular routine, I think has been really helpful in getting me through and saying I have to be okay with never going back. Like, when I stopped, I was like, I don't know if I'm going back because it feels really draining. It's obviously not getting me what I'm hoping to get out of it. So I just won't. And working energetically on what Ina Eisenstein, coach hypnotherapist, looks like without TikTok and being okay with that. So that was one part of that. The thing that actually got me back is many, many months ago, I watched a video by Gary Vee. I mean, first of all, I knew about Gary Vee a long time ago, but you become obsessed with a creator and all of a sudden you're watching all of their stuff. People do that with me. I do that with other people. It's just natural.

It's fun to go on a binge. You find someone that resonates and you just.

And TikTok is amazing because they're so short. You're watching 30 second videos. You can get so much information in a very short amount of time. I can also see how it's very addictive. It's two Sides of the same coin.

When I had that, an hour would vanish in a blink. It was wild. That's why I had to remove it. It was so addicting. It was so compelling. I removed it.

Yeah.

I just didn't trust myself.

Yeah. So one of the videos from Gary Vee that really resonated with me was he was talking about people who just get on TikTok. When you don't know what kind of content to create, you want to go viral. You have something to say. His advice was take two weeks, post nothing, and just interact with the platform. Literally. Watch videos. Watch the kind of videos you like to watch. Comment on things. See what happens when you comment on things. Notice how does sound work? Is it more compelling to you when there's an audio in the recording? Is it more compelling to you when there's special effects or what's exciting for you? And I realized that there were some energetic things that made my early success happen, and that was stepping through fear like we talked about before, allowing myself to be the version of myself that I saw in a future version of myself.

You're smiling. There's something almost mischievous or delightful about that.

For Pivot, we were talking about your.

Future self and your future self specifically. You blew my mind with creating a memory of your future self. I just love how you phrase that.

Yeah. And so being able to kind of embodying that version of myself through the fear, that was at least partially why I was successful initially, because I was like, I have to do this, I have to do this.

Let's just say for listeners the decade prior that I've known you, you were much more behind the scenes by nature of your day to day work. Your full time job in fashion was not platform building. You're not the person that grabs a mic and is jumping on stage. This is maybe your first or second podcast ever. It's not like this is your comfort zone of just hitting record and hitting publish. I know. It was something you had to dig deep to show up in this way. Very, very deep.

Yeah.

And it's amazing to see because you're.

So good at it.

That's what blows my mind and why we're here talking about it is Ina's videos are so compelling. So, okay, tell us after you did this inventory, Gary Vee's advice of taking in content and seeing what resonates.

Yeah.

How did you then translate that to the style you have now? Which I won't give it away, but I'd love for you to tell us.

Yeah. So what happened was I realized that I wasn't creating the kind of content that I like to watch. So initially the reason why it worked is I was stepping through fear and I was sharing things that felt uncomfortable and felt necessary. And by the time that things fell off, I was creating just content for the sake of creating content. I realized, okay, this is no longer scary to me. Making these videos is no longer scary to me. What would make it scary to me? Because that is part of the magic, that's part of the juice of stepping into the next version of yourself. And to me, that was always the types of videos where there's a conversation between two people and it's much more acting. And I'm not an actor. And as we've mentioned several times, it's scary for me to be on camera. But to actually do this back and forth feels a lot more like acting than just me staring into the screen and just being like, here are the five things you should do, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so not only was that the type of content that I enjoyed, it would also be very scary for me. And it would also be, I have to kind of bring this up again, is that the intention behind creating that video has to be not what does it get for me, but what does it give to others? And so knowing that the reason that things stopped working for me on TikTok, how is this happening for me? It happened for me to show me and to make me pause and be like, hey, you're just going on autopilot right now. And it's not autopilot that's getting you anywhere good. So let's step back and let's reexamine and see what, what's exciting for you to watch because you're gonna be much more likely to make those more compelling. And what's like, your values? I have my authentic codes. They're called. These are the four things that are really important to me and are important are my drivers behind everything that I do in my life. And so going back to my authentic code, having people looking at my videos is not part of my authentic code. Part of my authentic code is how can you contribute to someone else? Just having people looking at me, lip syncing things isn't contributing to anything. Having people hear themselves in a conversation where they're like, oh my God, that's a thought that I've had. And having me as their coach or hypnotherapist or friend respond to that in a way that makes them feel seen or makes them feel like they have another solution. Or there's something else for them to try here that feels soul aligned and so creative and helpful. And that's what I'm here for.

They're amazing. I was having so much fun today because as previously mentioned, it's not like I'm on the platform day to day, but preparing for this. I was watching them. They're so catchy. And it is these quick cuts of Ina talking to herself as Ena but wearing different outfits and one of them voicing concerns, like really putting yourself in the client's shoes. And I think that's such a powerful format because why do we like any movie? Why do we like anything that we read? It's often when we can put ourselves in those shoots or we feel seen and they are so compelling, but they're quick. I want to ask you how much time it takes to create what turns out to be a 90 second video. First, can you share your four authentic codes?

Okay. My first one is creativity and expression. Second one is relationships and connection. The next one is contribution. And the final one is self inquiry and spirituality. I use this exercise with my clients as well when things actually feel stuck or bad. What about this bad situation is fulfilling one of these codes and what about it isn't? Because everything that we do in some way is trying to fulfill a need. So these are my needs right now. So again, me having eyeballs on my videos is not one of my codes. I don't have attention on my codes, but I have contribution. Right. That's a completely different way of approaching content creation. Right. I'm trying to contribute to someone else's life.

Does each video ideally bring in all four codes or it just can connect to one at a time?

Yeah, the contribution is the one that I mostly like. Everything that I do that's client facing.

Or what I call public original thinking. But that's a long term opat. Ongoing public original thinking.

Yeah. All of that stuff is contribution.

Yeah.

And all of these things are for me and creativity expression is also part of that connection. But I'm not focusing on these things. I just know that that's now part of my equation.

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You mentioned that all your videos are scripted and everyone does do things so differently. But how long does it take you? Can you walk us through your process of posting your next video?

Yeah, I definitely pre script everything just because my ADHD slash who knows what else there is in my brain.

Your unique beautiful mind.

Thank you. I agree. Thank you.

I have a very hard time sort of carrying a thought out to completion in some ways, especially when there's a screen staring at me. It's very different than a relaxed conversation and knowing that you only have 60 seconds or you only have two minutes or you only have three minutes, whatever it is, that is very stressful. And actually when I first started on TikTok, that was the scariest part is that I kept following all of these people who are amazing at just speaking into the camera. One take, they can just rattle off their opinion about a thing and it's very compelling and seamless and I'm like, holy, yeah, I am in there with you. But I knew that I couldn't do that so I had to sort of fix it up the way that makes sense for me. So I sometimes, a lot of times will get ideas for script for things that I want to talk about after my meditation in the morning or after my morning ritual. Sometimes while I'm in meditation, I'll crack open an eye and grab my notebook and write things down for ideas. And then when it's time to sit down, I just go through my little notebook and see. A lot of what I'm doing now too is when there is good engagement on a video, people will comment. So I just respond to those comments or I make the comment as the starting off point. I was always really bad with hooks. People would be like, you need a hook to get this video to blah blah. I don't know how to do that. It's just too hard for me. But someone literally giving me their thought. That's the hook I need because I'm trying to hook in a person whose thought aligns with this thought. So that is also really helpful.

And I like too how sometimes that goes into the thumbnail. So I'm seeing one, a comment someone wrote. I think there's a difference between a child making a mistake and a grown adult failing to show you basic respect. And you took that as a starting off point for this fascinating dialogue of. Oh, I remember this one line where you were acting as the inner child and you're like, how come you're so mean to me? You know? And it's like you promised me that we were going to go to the gym and then you just kept working and it was like, oh, my heart broke in that moment for the inner child that we sometimes steamroll as our adult self. And it was so cool how you investigated this thought the person had that it's okay for kids to make mistakes, but as an adult, oh, you should be punished. And you talked about the difference. You said punishment is not actually an effective motivator. No, but a lot of us grew up kind of self punishing and self flagellating. If I'm just mean enough to myself, I'll improve. Yeah, I did that for so long.

Yeah, I think we all do that. And it becomes this thing where now I mean, we're going off topic. But I actually love talking about this stuff is that especially with self punishing, first of all, we don't recognize it's very hard for us to catch our inner monologue or inner dialogue, whichever. That's why journaling is amazing. Everybody should journal. But it's very hard to notice that what you're doing is you're actually being hard on yourself when what you need is acceptance and love. And because we're hard on ourselves, it's so easy to be hard on other people. It's easy to not give people a second chance. It's easy to assume that someone is trying to make you feel bad or is disrespecting you when in fact maybe you didn't explain yourself effectively. Right. That's very possible. When you're like freaking out, you're probably not saying things the way that you want to say them. But yet in your mind it sounds like, wow, this person's really disrespecting me. They didn't hear me. They're not doing the thing that I asked them to do. The end. All of this is self punishing behavior that we learned via being punished in our childhoods and it's now becoming a normal thing. You punish yourself so that you can learn to be better. How about let's compare be nice to yourself and encourage yourself to be better versus punish yourself. Research and studies have been done that the love is a much more resourceful approach.

Absolutely. I mean this is Kristin Neff, her book on self compassion. My sister in law's sister Marissa Knox Shout out she studies this studied under Kristen Nonviolent Communication. That book was so powerful for turning this around. It's interesting too because we can hear that intellectually. But when you illustrate and demonstrate the dialogue in these videos with your new format, it really resonates. So I kind of cut you off on the process. But okay, you get the ideas Sometimes in meditation. How long does scripting take? And walk us through then the rest of the steps.

Yeah, sometimes scripting will be for a video, you know, if I'm really lit up on it, maybe 30 minutes, sometimes many hours. I really struggle with verbal communication, verbal expression. So for me a lot of it is sitting there with thesaurus open and just being like, how else can you say knee jerk reaction? What else can we say here? And how do I make this actually sound like something that relates to the image of this conversation in my mind? So sometimes it takes longer. I definitely have a lot of documents with half finished things that if I don't have something fresh and I feel like I want to create more content, go back and look at the half baked ones and then just be like, okay, here's a different way to look at this. Or here's maybe if I can change this one sentence, it can take me in a different direction. I haven't mentioned this before. I definitely mentioned my issues with language, but I think that's actually one of the strengths of the content that I put out is that because I have a very challenging time expressing or remembering fancy words, the way that I explain some of these concepts seem to resonate with a lot of people that maybe the same type of video might resonate less if it's expressed in a more cool way. And people leave me comments all the time where they're like, I have never thought of it this way. This makes so much sense. And I want to pat myself on the back and say, cool. Using short sentences and small words really helps.

True. But the studies do show that if you write at a fifth grade reading level, the most popular novelists and the bestselling books have a lower quote reading level. That is what lands and short punchy sentences are what create the mega bestsellers. Writing coaches will recommend picking up James Patterson or the guy who did the Jack Reacher series, Lee Child as examples like Pick up a pulpy paperback that's a mega bestseller and it has short, simple sentences. So bravo then how long does filming take? How many cuts?

So I feel like I've perfected now this new way of filming. When I first restarted, which was about a month ago, making one video took me like three hours. Very hard to just get switch back and forth. And I think I was just a little bit out of practice. Now my new strategy is recording each clip separately without even looking good or looking into the camera. And then in the editing process doing it that way. I'm cutting out any of the sort of little breaks where you're like reaching to tap the thing on the camera where later you're gonna have to cut that out. Now not only do I give myself a little bit more space to create a slightly longer video, because those things are already cropped out to begin with. The short answer now it's maybe an hour, an hour and a half.

And how long is the video, the final output?

Under three minutes. Three minutes is the longest that they let you have. It's always been under three minutes for me because I've never utilized this new process where there would always be. Each take basically would have a little clipping out in the front and in the back. So it would always be around two minutes. I have now a few videos that are three minutes long. And this is another thing. When you listen to the algorithm, the algorithm is like make videos are less than 20 seconds, just put text up, blah, blah, blah. That's what gets the most engagement. Or you could engage people by what you're saying. I'm willing to watch a three minute video when I'm actually following the dialogue.

Are you recording person A dialogue, rough cut, person B in response, rough cut. Then cleaned up with your outfit person A. Cleaned up outfit person B.

Yes, I first record. This is why I like recording in the app, even though the app is very glitchy in a lot of ways, is that they have the capability of pausing a video and then restarting it. And it's one long video just with those little breaks in between. Or you can edit each one of the little cuts. I don't know if that's the right word. But each little segment you get to then go back and rerecord it. So that's how I do it.

This is a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Cause I've seen how many switchbacks you have.

Yeah, there's a lot of switchbacks, but once you get going, and especially if you Keep it to like a sentence. You know, each person just has a sentence. It could be much faster.

Well, kudos to you because this is often attributed to Mark Twain and then some say it was someone else, but he said, I would have written a shorter letter but I didn't have the time that being concise is the hardest thing to do. So for you to create a one sentence TikTok and still have it, be good and still have over a million and a half views, probably 2 million by the time this is out, it's just so impressive. So we'll wrap up here in a moment, but I always ask this question at the end of a free time conversation. If you could give fellow business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

I think my best advice is to drop whatever shame or fear you have around creating something imperfectly and truly stepping into the fear and just being like this is actually my superpower. The thing that makes this so scary is what's going to make it really impactful, even on a personal level, even just going through the exercise and doing something that's really scary and making it really low stakes. I'm just doing this and let's see what happens. Not I'm doing it because I need a hundred clients, but I'm doing it because this is another way for me to express or another way to reach out to people. And especially on TikTok, if you go on TikTok, you will see how many different people are on there, how many different styles of communication exist and what you were saying, Jenny, earlier, about you have to look a certain way or whatever. I feel like TikTok is the one platform where that has actually been proven to not be true. Like people will resonate with you and you don't know why. So you go fucking out there and do it. I love it.

I love that advice and thinking of what scares you as your superpower for the very fact that it's edgy and puts you at that stretch zone, as I call it in pivot, that stretch zone of stretching. But then having that aliveness. So beautifully said, Ina. Thank you. Where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

You can find me at my website, inaisenstein.com only if you can spell it.

It's the only way you're allowed to get there.

And on TikTok Enaisenstein, I will put.

Those links in the show notes. If you haven't checked out the pivot conversation with Ina, definitely do that as well. It's just so interesting and illuminating to hear your story and your journey and to keep following along on your new adventure because she's leaving New York City after 20 years, so we'll have to catch up again for another conversation. Thank you for being here and stepping into your fear to do a podcast with me.

Oh my God, you did it. Thank you so much.

Thank you, thank you Ina. And big thanks to everybody who's here listening.

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