228: How I Run My Business Without Social Media

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hello friends. Welcome back. This episode is on social media, as counterintuitive as that is, given that I'm so grumpy and curmudgeonly about it. In fact, I recently promised myself not to bring it up again, not to keep just complaining and venting all the time that whatever issues I have with it clearly are not resolved. Clearly. I don't feel completely at peace with them or I wouldn't even feel the need to bring it up and rant about them at all. Part of that is because social media continues to dangle itself like a sexy should in front of my face as my platform grows or I want things like the podcast to get more traction. I'm always drawn back to this like a moth to the flame of social media. Should I do it? I should be doing it. But it always involves a should. Every single one of the Pivot listener surveys has been so helpful. One of the many helpful responses or questions was from somebody who said, I'd love for you to do one about your approach to social media. I know you've talked about it before, but more behind the scenes on how you make it work not to do it. So curious. Before I get into maybe how I justify not doing it and how I consider or think about growth in the absence of it. So that this is kind of a strange episode about social media in that it's how do I work around or without social media? Before we do that, I also want to play a really wonderful voice message from Cherry in Australia. Now, if you've been listening for a long time, you know that I do not make a habit of tooting my own horn. That is not the goal. However, I have pivotmethod.com ask I have an open invitation for those of you, my beloved listeners, who want to leave me a voice note or whether it's a question or a comment, you can. And if you have taken the time to do that, I want to honor it by replaying it here on the podcast. Of course I'm not going to choose every single one because sometimes I just don't think it would be in service to listeners or to the person who submitted, but 90% of the time they're great. I love the questions, I love the comments. So I'm going to play this one from Cherry, even though it makes me feel a little shy. And thank you Cherry for taking the time to leave a message. Listeners, you can leave one@pivotmethod.com ask over to you, Cherry.

Hi Jenny, this is Cherry Ward and I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I was first introduced to it by my former colleague, the fabulous Leanne Hughes. This isn't a question, but I just wanted to drop you a note to let you know that you've made a big impact to my life in your recent podcast, Deep Souls with Katherine Hayden. It really resonated with me, not just for me personally, but I also realize that my 9 year old son also has many of these attributes and hopefully I can guide, nurture and support him so he can thrive later in life. Thank you for all the additional podcasts during the pandemic. They are also inspiring and uplifting. And you know, I love what you call your fire hose of random stuff because I've been listening to all of your episodes.

When I can and there's always nuggets of gold in there that that I take away. So thanks for sharing. Every episode is so different and I get so much out of it and I love listening.

Jerry, thank you so much for the wonderful message. It really is a joy and a delight to be able to put a voice to some of you who are out there listening. Thank you so much listeners. Again, you can leave a note@pivotmethod.com ask and if you're looking for the Deep Souls episode that Cherry mentioned in the part of her message, that's@pivotmethod.com, 194-deep- souls with Katherine Hayden. Let's dive into how I don't use social media Again, this will not be event session or gripe session, I promise. And I whenever I do vent about social media, I'm never trying to judge any of you who use it and love it. In fact, I really admire those of you who love engaging on social media and getting involved in comments and replying. I I admire it as I shared in episode 227 on Super Extrovert Strategies with Philip, my friend Phil, who's a photographer. I think it's a huge advantage if you get energy from connecting with people and if you can form meaningful relationships and get information and have your hand on the pulse of what's happening in culture and society through social media. Way to go. I am all for it. Go, go, go. Do not let me stop you. At the same time, I know I'm not alone in feeling like it just doesn't gel with my personality or creation style. Part of the reason that I know that is that I just look at my energy and I started to observe that I always felt worse when I would sign off of an infinite scroll session or even if I was entertained, I noticed myself in that passive receiver rather than quiet contemplation, reading, synthesizing and creation mode. A huge part of how I run my business without social media involves the unseen and the seen. The unseen is trust and faith and let's also say, honoring my own inner compass. So I'm going to work backward. Honoring my inner compass means huh? I notice that this bifurcates or refracts my attention in a way that I don't want, so I'm honoring that impulse rather than what I did for many years around social media where oh well, why don't I experiment? Why don't I batch it? Why don't I assign it to someone else? Why don't I just clip articles and then someone else can feed them into buffer and schedule them out? None of that really worked for me because my heart wasn't in it. So at some point I needed to honor how I actually feel and how I am without making myself feel bad. While everyone else is on social media, I should be there too. Well, Jenny, you've chosen to be an author and a podcaster. Duh. You got to build your platform. It's all about the platform. You should be on social media or even knowing that. My platform size combined with my social media numbers have helped me get both of my book deals. So of course I have a certain fear that if I'm not on there, it's going to impede things that I want to do in the future. That may be true on some surface level, but that brings me to the next part of this, which is faith. I have faith in a higher vision. I have faith in my own process, and I have faith that the Things that I am called to create in this world as a messenger, as a channel, will find their way that, yes, social media is very loud right now in terms of this is the way gotta be on here. Wow, look how many millions of people you could have. Or the whole influencer, the numbers, the measurements. I have faith that the things I feel called to create can still transpire, even if on the surface level, my numbers on social media, this one, albeit very large outlet, aren't up to par. Let's say that ties in closely with trust. I trust that I will continue exploring this. What's the end goal? So the for, for me, because social media is not intrinsically rewarding, I need to look at what is social media. It is a means to an end. So those ends could be helping as many people as possible or spreading the good word as far as possible, whatever that word may be. The goal could be helping give a book or a podcast episode or the entire show, giving it a boost of momentum. That might be a goal. Creating connections. You know, I think a lot of people are on social media. I certainly made a lot of friends through blogging, specifically blog comments and Twitter in the early days. And I got on Twitter in 2008 and in 2009, my friend Jamie and I used to host cupcake tweet ups in the Bay Area. It started with two of us meeting in person for the first time over a cupcake. This was back when I was obsessed with cupcakes, which I'm now. I think I maxed out on cupcakes. And even the yummy frosting, which is the ratio of cupcake to frosting, it's just all wrong. I think we need to just peel off the top of the cupcake and that frosting to cake ratio is perfect. Jamie and I would meet up one on one. Then the next time we doubled it. So the next time we had four people at our cupcake tweet up. The next time we doubled it again, we had eight people. The next time we did it even bigger the next time. I was launching my book in 2011 at south by Southwest. The first time that I went and we ordered a whole bunch of cupcakes and invited everybody to this launch. Shout out Betty Jean Bell, who helped with that launch. It was really fun. So I've had a lot of fun. I've made very interesting relationships and friendships as a result of social media. As I share in pivoting, sometimes a pivot involves saying no to something good so that, as John Maxwell says, you can say yes. To the best. Although social media brought me good things, there started to be a decline. Now, I said this episode was not going to be about what I don't want, but I'm, I'm letting you know that. As I paid attention to my energy, I realized, okay, this is not going to be the main channel for me. I'm going to divest my attention and pour the attention that I do have into my books, my podcast, and my Pivot List newsletter. For whatever reason, however, my creative makeup has been constructed. I need a lot of quiet, a lot of alone time. And because I'm running a more complicated business than just a thought leadership platform. It involves consulting with companies, it involves keynote speaking, it involves licensing Pivot programs, it involves managing Pivot coaching, even though I myself am no longer taking on one on one clients. It involves running the private momentum Momentum community. There's a lot going on producing this podcast, so my attention is already divided across other areas of my business. When it comes to social media and the trust piece. I trust that I will find the channels that fit my strengths, that energize me, that don't drain me, that will allow me to work toward those ends that I talked about, toward reaching more people, toward having a greater impact, toward getting the message out of whatever it is that I'm sharing to those who most would most benefit and most need to hear it. Honoring myself, having faith and trusting the process. Those are the three pieces of inner game, if you will, that allow me to shift my attention elsewhere. Now let's talk about what the real question is getting at, which is how on earth do you run a business these days without social media? What does that look like? You may also be interested in following Alexandra Franzen, who is also not on social media. And I've been inspired by her and hopefully vice versa throughout the years. And we've, we've done two interviews together for the Pivot podcast, so I'll put those in the show notes. I'm not on Facebook very often, but when I do go on, it's not to post in my feed and it's not to read the home feed. It is only to check in on niche groups that I'm a part of. Whether it's a group for speakers, for writers, for momentum, the one that I read for heart based business owners, for living outrageously open as Tosha Silver's group Outrageous Openness would have us do in a surrendered way. I love groups that give me very specific tactical information and I'm even part of a group called Podcast movement for podcasters. Anything that involves a blend of practical tactical tips and tools and also being able to connect with people that have direct like minded interests in what I like about private groups, even if they're free to join, but there's a moderator that there are some boundaries around who's in there, what you're posting, what the conversation is about. Connecting could also be with friend tours. Some of the best things for me to come out of this time of sheltering and the pandemic, working from home, I mean that's always how I work is from home. But I've been connecting with people that really inspire me and vice versa. So social. Let's take the social part of social media. Just think about what is your social desire. As I shared in the episode with Phil on being a super extrovert, my desire for connection is so much lower than his and it's important to honor that and then know what kind of social connections and interactions feeds you, what kind of social capacity or threshold do you have that fuels you that isn't exceeding your natural desire in such a way that drains you. So there's the social part of social media. Now let's get to the media part. I do think it's very important if you're building a platform to do what I call public original thinking and to do that frequently or often. Often enough to challenge yourself to rise to that occasion and to put your own original thinking out there in public.

If you listen to episode 196, that's@pivotmethod.com 196 I share my strategies for agile public original thinking. Just because I'm not tweeting or posting status updates on Facebook or posting photos on Instagram doesn't mean that I have not made it a priority to say I want to look at problems that need to be solved with whether they're my own or input from others and help solve them. My husband Michael put it well, he said, your brand is about love and systems. I love that. That's been very helpful for me. So love talking about heart. Heart based business intuition and systems. How can I break something down into a process? And hopefully that's part of what I've done for you here on the podcast. So just because I'm not posting status updates on certain platforms, including LinkedIn, I don't even post there. Even though it's so relevant to Pivot and the whole notion of career change and being agile at work, that doesn't mean that I'm not posting anywhere at all. So the places that I've chosen to invest my time are here on the podcast and my Pivotless newsletter. Those are the two main places that I for free put out my public original thinking. And I do it week after week after week. I started my first website 2005. Many of you know this now if you've been here listening. I started my newsletter in 2010, so since for 10 years now I've had a weekly ish newsletter. Sometimes I need to take a break, but that newsletter has been about curating the best of what I find around the web. What I'm watching, reading, listening to, laughing at the tools I'm using. And my goal is that everybody reading it finds at least one helpful or interesting link every time I send it, whether it's something I created or something that I found. That's how I add value in an ongoing way with something that I enjoy curating. You can sign up for that@pivot method.com pivotlist if you're not already signed up. The podcast involves very deep thinking and deep conversation, which is why I love it. Because for some reason the shorter status updates, even if they have deeply thoughtful content around them, for some reason the format just doesn't fit my strengths. But if it comes to hitting record on a deep conversation with a friend around big ideas, I'm obsessed. I love it. I even love recording solo episodes like this one that pull on my skills and my background in teaching and facilitation and thinking. I don't even consider myself a writer, even though I've written two books and I've had blogs and websites and newsletters and even a background in journalism. The writing is often a means to an end, and for me the end is big, helpful ideas or ideas that are counter to the status quo. Like this episode around how I move forward in my business without social media. So public original thinking for me, doubling down and focusing in on the podcast and the Pivotless newsletter. That's where I put my energy. I'm open to saying yes to being a guest on other people's podcasts, to being a guest on LinkedIn Live. So far, no one has asked me to do Instagram tv, but I could. I would say yes. I'm. I'm generally down to respond to invitations from those other platforms, but I also have a big philosophy of not constantly advertising or trying to build my community on a platform that I don't own. So that gets at a philosophical choice that I've made. I don't want to be here on the podcast telling you, head on over to facebook.com and join my private group. Because every single time I say it, I'm going to be advertising a platform that as of 2016 and the election, like, I feel frustrated with. So I'm glad that I haven't built my platform on someone else's land, if you will. I'm thankful that that through the podcast, it's open RSS feeds, you can subscribe through whatever app you listen to the newsletter, you make the choice to join, you stay and read for as long as it's helpful and you can leave and it's not.

But.

But what I'm not doing is choosing the platform du jour and then constantly sending you there. Oh, now it's here. Oh, now there's a new one and it's here. That game doesn't interest me, but some people are really freaking good at it and I admire the ones who are okay, so no judgment. I just.

I'm just not good at it, and I've given myself permission not to be. This episode cannot stand on its own without me saying, saying with a qualifier, you might experience slower growth in the beginning. You might get rejected. I'm going to say with a lowercase r from certain people or platforms who say your platform isn't big enough. That could happen. So I'm aware that maybe I would have many more people reading if I advertised on Facebook, let's say. Or maybe my platform could grow if I were actively tweeting.

With a caveat, because I remember there was a point of diminishing returns for me on Twitter where, yes, I was actively tweeting, but I wasn't really reading. I didn't feel the energy to respond to tweets and comments all the time. And I noticed that I was not. It was not really affecting whether I would get speaking engagements or bigger clients there. For me, there was not this marked impact or negative impact on revenue in the business when I stopped social media altogether. You can experiment with this and see is there an impact. What happens if you stop for a week, a month, six months? Go with what you're comfortable with at first and see is there a negative impact on your business. There's always going to be opportunity costs. It's true. Maybe I will get rejected for my next book deal because I haven't kept up with the rate of inflation of social media numbers in terms of the platform. And I don't even mean inflation in a bad way. But it's like maybe when I got my first book deal in 2011, it was okay to have 500 newsletter readers. Maybe in five years they want you to have 500,000. I don't know. But what I do know is that if I spend too much of my energy chasing other people's approval or permission, even people I love. Like, I love working with Portfolio, which is division of Penguin Random House, the one that published Pivot. But I can't orient my whole life and business and attention and creative energy toward some future book deal. It reminds me of younger kids orienting their entire life to getting into the right college, or when you're in college, trying to orient to get just the perfect next job. That amount of pressure is so disheartening and disorienting and disengaging. It's depressing because you're living for something you can't control. You're living for this external, outside future state of approval for something you want to do. So if I were to get rejected from publishers based on my platform, it's not very likely that I would spend the next year obsessing over my platform. I would probably figure out a different way to publish the book. The next book, let's say. And then trust that even if it's self published, that must be what I meant to do, and that the book will still find the perfect readers at the perfect time. And exactly who needs to hear it? I believe it was Seth Godin who said, dang it, or he was quoting someone else, that marketing is what gets you. It sells the first X number of books, but the quality of the book, the quality of the product is what sells the next thousand or the next 10,000. I believe that so much. My emphasis for my entire career of public original thinking has been on quality. If I create helpful content that's either helpful in a practical sense, like helpful tools and templates, or helpful because I'm revealing some truth or vulnerability that makes you feel less alone. If I do that, then word of mouth can work. If Pivot, Life After College, my two books, if. If I do the best possible job I can, then when you put that book down, you will recommend it to a friend, even if you don't recommend it that same day, the next time somebody says to you, I just don't know what's next in my job or career or business, then you might say, oh, well, you have to read Pivot. There is that book prescription that I've talked about in the past.

I lean really hard on word of mouth, whether it's listening to this episode and then telling a friend or listening to the podcast and telling a friend. I cherish that. So if it calls to you to do that. Often I take the stance that I don't even need to ask you to do that because I know that the podcast that I love, nobody has to ask me to share it. It is so good that I automatically send that episode or the show itself to three different people or I link to it in Pivot list. And I generally take that stance here as well, that I don't need to harangue you every single episode to say, if did you like this? Please share it with a friend. Because I believe if it's good enough, you automatically will. I'm not saying don't ever ask for favors from your audience. There's an important giving and receiving dynamic that comes into play. Yes, it's important to give and pour your heart into your public original thinking. It is also important to receive. There's nothing more vulnerable for me than launching something big like my books because it's so uncomfortable to ask for help. It's uncomfortable to ask for blurbs from the people I most admire. It's uncomfortable to ask my network, can you please buy the book? Can you spread the word? It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable for me to ask my community, the pivot community, will you buy this book? Recently I was just got inspired to try to tip over 200 reviews on Amazon, and I was a little shy to ask for that because it is this numerical reward or number that I don't usually put much energy into. But every now and then it yes, of course it's okay to ask, and I'm probably too conservative on that front. This is a long way of saying that in the short term you might experience different doors opening or closing or different opportunities from having a larger or smaller platform. I believe in nonlinear breakthroughs, so I believe that even if you're not on social media, if your work is good, you could still find a nonlinear accelerated growth or tipping point or some interesting opportunity, serendipity, synchronicity that that arises even if the numbers don't appear to be what's deemed a success. And none of this is to say, of course, if you, if you are on social media and it helps you build a platform of a hundred thousand people, oh my goodness, there's so much more that is possible in terms of selling products and services and getting the word out and gaining momentum and traction there. Nothing about this episode is to say that having a bigger platform isn't going to swing doors wide open for you it is. I just believe that it's important to think about the process of how you get there. And I believe that the joy and the energy that we infuse into how we work on a day to day basis is baked into the end product itself. So if I were to do things that I hate just to grow my platform, I don't believe in that DNA of whatever it is that I've done. Even if it took five years of grinding and hating the work and then I had just the right platform size. First of all, that feeling would be fleeting. Second of all, I believe that negative energy would be baked into the process and I don't want that. I don't believe in it. I was just reading a feature on Steve Carell in the Office. He has a new show called Space Force that'll be coming out on Netflix. Maybe it's already out by the time that I release this episode.

He says. At the very end of the article. You hope that you've set up the tone correctly, but you never know, carell said. He laughed as he continued, whenever I read or hear people talking about the struggle, he sarcastically stretched out his pronunciation of the word of making a comedy or the nuts and bolts aspect of it. It's just so sad to hear any sort of angst that goes into comedy. It just should be a joy.

I firmly believe that whatever it is you're creating, a podcast, a book, a business, an article, a project.

Can and should be infused with joy. There's a should again. But consider that how you create something is every bit as important as whatever end result you're working toward. Why not create with joy and ease and fun and flow? Imagine what's possible if you do that, even if the numbers themselves seem lower or that you're missing out on something. Consider the opportunities that could open up to you because there's so much joy and good energy that you've infused into the work that you're doing. Honor your energy. Honor what brings you alive. Honor what helps you create your best, most original thinking and work and art in the world.

Thank you so much for being here listening. Have a beautiful rest of your day, everybody.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at jennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.