When You Don't Want To Post On Social Media

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories. It's about the grit it takes to get there. Hey everyone, this is Julie.

Welcome back to Million Dollar Grit. I have to admit, I'm having a little bit of trouble getting my regular podcast episodes out because I am deep in recording the private podcast for my upcoming book, Million Dollar Grit. So I just want to take a quick minute to share that, and then we're going to dive into some tough talk about social media. So Million Dollar Grit is the book that— my first book that I am releasing October 26th. It'll be available for free in ebook format at milliondollargrit.com. And like I said, it's going to be free, but I am doing a paid private podcast that is me reading the book and also offering commentary and insights that didn't make it into the book. So that will be— I'm not totally sure on the price yet— somewhere between $9 and $12. So I have been recording and recording and recording. It's about 16 chapters, plus commentary, so we're talking over 30 episodes of content, and so my voice is kind of shot, but I wanted to come on here today and talk about social media from a business perspective, specifically people who are struggling to show up on social media and they know it's important for their business. And I think this is an interesting time to talk about this because if we just kind of go back in time to, let's just say 2019, you know, before COVID before the 2020 decade hit and everything went sideways, showing up on social media was hard enough as it is because there's a lot of things that you have to do, right? It's, it's writing, it's video, it's graphics, it's, um, you know, social interaction where people are commenting, replying. There's already a lot of pressure on social media. There's, you know, fear of, you know, what people are going to think. Perfectionism shows up, you know, what if, what if my video's not good enough? What if my, you know, my audio isn't good enough? There's also a lot of decision fatigue where you're just like, oh my gosh, what channels should I be on? What, what trends should I follow? Should I not follow? Right? So there's a lot of that sort of cognitive overload. There's some social comparison, right? I gotta be like them, which then adds pressure to you to either change your lifestyle or change your values. And so there's already so many things that we sort of attach to social media posting that it's very easy to just kind of give up and say, you know what, I'm not going to do that. But if we fast forward and we come to 2025, the fear of social judgment is so intense now because we're watching as there are— I mean, there are a lot of worldviews, but there are two specific worldviews coming into play, at least in the United States, right? There's the more sort of pro-capitalist, pro-America type of worldview. And then there's the, oh my gosh, our republic is falling, you know, our economy is collapsing, we need to adjust, we need to go more socialist, right? And so there's two— there's these two, you know, competing worldviews. And so whereas before you might fear social judgment if you posted something polarizing Now social judgment is like almost guaranteed, baked in. Like, you can't even say the sky is blue without people arguing with you. And so the neutral topics are just like getting eviscerated. So if you're finding yourself wanting to get off social media, not wanting to post on social media, it's totally understandable. Completely understandable. And then there's just like one more little factor we're gonna throw in here. And you might be like, well, Julie, you're not telling us anything we don't already know. But the influx of like AI-generated content means that about 50% of what you're seeing in, at least in like written form, especially on like sites like X, are bots. They're not even people, you know? And AI accounts that are, you know, designed to inflame and designed to, you know, cause, uh, you know, wreak havoc. So it's no wonder, right? All right, so now that I've just like given you the bad news, let's talk about the reality though as a business owner and why shrinking into the, you know, the sunset and never showing up on social media is is not a good idea. Number one, the bots, the robots win. The algorithms that are pushing completely ridiculous content are going to win. And we are going to perpetuate the problem by removing our voice of reason, our voice of empathy, our voice of truth. And I'm speaking, you know, primarily to business owners who are very impact-driven, you know, business owners that really do want to make a good difference in the world. And it's kind of like— don't, don't come for me, but I guess you can come for me— it's kind of like the people who say politics is so broken, so I'm not going to vote. This line of thinking, uh, number one, assumes like a level of privilege, because okay, that's fine for you that you want to just like wash your hands of it and not vote, but you realize that if we all took that line of thinking, that we would be in like anarchy and dictatorship if we all took your line of thinking and nobody voted. And so just by its very nature, by its very definition, the belief is not grounded in like good logical principles. So if you say, well, I'm just going to get off social media and I'm never going to be on social media, okay, now imagine all of us did that. I mean, maybe, maybe the world would be a better place. I don't know. But what would happen is the opportunists, the bad guys, the bots, the whoever, would flood it, right? But you might say, well, if no one's on social media, then there's nobody to listen. And that's true, but I think that's, you know, the reality is that this is our primary mode of communication. And so if we stop posting on social media, it's very unlikely that we will also not be on social media at all. Right? And so by not posting, you are making room in the feed for something nefarious. Okay. Maybe I've like stirred you up to be like, okay, I need to show up. So here are some tips that I want to give you if you are struggling to post on social media. So the first is reframe your mindset. Instead of posting for performance reasons, right? Like, likes, shares, saves, growth, even business, even clients. Reframe it so that you are posting as connection. This is going to reduce that social judgment or fear, because if I put something out there and I am in a performance mode, then I am getting graded, at least in my head, right? I'm like, oh, was that good piece of content? Was that a bad piece of content? But If I think of my post or my social media as just a breadcrumb of connection, I can think of it like if I were walking in the woods, you know, my woods around my house has tons of wild animals. And if I was leaving breadcrumbs for, say, a fox, I would just drop the breadcrumbs. I wouldn't be grading myself, and the hopes is that when the fox comes along, he accepts my breadcrumb of connection. And so when you reframe your mindset like that, all of a sudden that performative energy really falls. Like, I'm going to post this. It's a bid for connection. A lot of people are not going to take it, but there might be some people that do, and those are the people that it was intended for. So that's first, reframe your mindset. Number 2, I would suggest that if you feel like the only way you can post on social media is if you do it in a certain way, like You know, it's gotta be a certain production value. It's gotta, you know, I gotta get systems in place. I have to, you know, hire VAs. I, you know, you have this like idea of what posting on social media means. You're, you're making it bigger than it needs to be. And I would say, you know what, more now than ever before, AI, not as a replacement for your voice, but as a support, can absolutely reduce a ton of cognitive overload and those perfectionistic tendencies. People are shocked when they hear that I do all my own social media. I have never hired for social media. I never will hire for social media. Maybe I shouldn't say that. Maybe someday I will, but probably not, because I see social media as an extension of my voice. And so for me, and this really, I mean, unless you're building some like nameless, faceless brand, if you are a personal brand, your social media is the reflection of you. And so I always think it's very hard to get somebody else to reflect you, especially with tools— I mean, with platforms that where you're required to show up on video. And yes, I know AI can do all of this, and I think that you should absolutely leverage AI for support to make it so that you can do this with less, like, overload. And you don't have to spend tons of money. You don't have to spend, you You know, 'cause once you spend money, now you're like, oh, now I need to see an ROI. Now I need to make sure it's worth my time. Right? And you just kind of get spun into that hamster wheel. I don't really measure the ROI of my social media. Like maybe I should, but I don't. I really just show up. And so far, all I've done is continue to grow an audience and build customer loyalty. So I think I have a reasonable track record here. So number 1. Reframe your mindset. Think of it as connection, not performance. Number 2, reduce the cognitive overload and the cost that it takes to do this by using AI support so that you can just get it out there and get it done, right? I'm not baking a beautiful loaf of bread so that I can leave breadcrumbs for the fox. You know, I'm just literally taking my leftovers and putting them on the rock. Okay. Number 3. Simplify your focus. Okay. So I know that sounds like very generic, but I see people that think, okay, well, I have to be on all the platforms, or I have to, you know, build my YouTube channel and run my podcast. And I'm going to put this YouTube channel and then I'm going to cut everything up and then I'm going to put it on every platform. And they, they get into this sort of like content wheel. They see people like Alex Hormozi and others who have like huge teams. And they try to replicate that. And what I would suggest is that one, one platform that you are consistent on will outperform all of that other work. And, you know, my husband started a channel, a YouTube channel about 6 weeks ago, and he decided that he was going to do Instagram and TikTok as the two channels to kind of push people over to YouTube because YouTube algorithms, you know, sometimes can take a little bit of time. And so, but he was so, he was so focused. He's like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and it's going to push to this. So he set up his Instagram and TikTok and he just started posting once a day on each. He'd post on Instagram on day 1, and then on day 2, he took the video from Instagram and posted on TikTok. So it's always like an alternate And his simple focus on exactly what he was going to do made it so much easier to do it consistently. Okay. So better to be on one platform consistently than 17 platforms inconsistently. Okay. So that's number 3, simplify your focus. Number 4, which is very closely related, is to build consistent habits. Okay. You want a posting routine that's doable on a daily basis. And, uh, you know, I might get some hate for this and I understand both models. You have to figure out what works for you. What works for me is a habit of posting that is short enough that I can do it once a day. Not on every platform once a day, but once a day I can just, I can get something out the door. Now, some people say, no, no, no, that's not how you do it. You spend one full day, you batch all this content, you get it all done, then you schedule it out. If that works for you, great. And there are times when I can see how that would work. For me right now in this stage of my life, without any assistance, uh, on social media, that doesn't work for me. That feels like a big heavy lift. It's way easier for me to say I can take 15 minutes and post something on social media versus I need to take one day a quarter and do, you know, my makeup and my hair and I do all my things like If that works for you, great, stick with it. But I'm specifically talking to the people who are not showing up on social media right now. And, um, for me, that's a big, that's a big lift. And I have to like self-correct right now. I just realized that I said I've never paid anybody for help with social media, and that's actually not true. So I need to correct myself. I did pay for some help with social media in the past in two ways. One, which I thought was decent and one which I regret. The first is I had a videographer help me with a YouTube channel back in the day. That was a good purchase, and that did help me keep up with my YouTube channel because I have not kept up with YouTube ever since I stopped that. So I'm correcting myself. The second way that I hired— I hired someone to help me grow my Instagram account. Highly regret that. That was not good. They used some gray hat tactics that took me a long time to, like, recover from. Okay, just had to make myself feel better here. Okay, so number 1 is reframe your mindset from performance to connection. Number 2 is to leverage AI support and reduce cognitive overload. Number 3 is to simplify what you're going to focus on. Number 4 is to build a consistent habit, and I would argue once a day, 15 minutes a day, is going to be easier to implement than batching, but you do you. Number 5, Lower the stakes. It's really important that you think of social media as documenting versus production and creation. It is so difficult to get on social media if you feel like you're not a big timer and you're like, well, why would anybody care? Because people care about watching other people's journeys. And again, I'm going to reference my husband here, you know, so he wants to be an NFL card breaker, like, uh, you know, he wants to have a big YouTube channel. Well, the big guys on YouTube are breaking boxes that are like $10,000, and he doesn't have that to do that with. And so I said, well, let's, let's just do what you can. And so he set up this idea of like $5,000 in 12 months. Like, this is how much I'm going to spend on card breaking for 12 months, $5,000, and I want to see if I can collect enough cards that get me how much money back in return. Okay, so he has to be a little creative. And so rather than trying to pretend that he's the number one NFL card breaker, which he's not, he's documenting the process. And so once a month he goes on his channel and he says like, here's how much I spent and this is what I got so far. And so it reduces pressure for him to feel like he has to compete with the big guys. And lots of people like to watch somebody's journey. You know, we'd love to root for the underdog. So lower the stakes on your social media and that will help. And then number 6, reward process over outcome. So oftentimes we set goals rather than create systems. Here's what I mean by that. The goal is like, okay, I want 10,000 followers on Instagram. Well, I hate to break it to you, but you don't really control whether or not you're going to get 10,000 followers on Instagram. So we reward goals and we reward outcome, and we feel like failure when we don't do it. But if we reward process or systems, then everything changes. So instead of saying, I'm going to get 10,000 followers on Instagram, we're going to say, I'm going to create a system whereby I post 1 reel a day and 5 stories a day. Okay? And when that system gets put in place, that's where you get rewarded for doing the system and consistently doing the system. The outcome will prove itself, right? And again, I look at my husband. He started about, you know, almost 2 months ago, not quite. He's up to like 500-ish followers on TikTok. He's got 300 followers on Instagram. He's got like 60-some-odd subscribers on YouTube, you know, within his first month. And this is all organic. You know, he's not using ads. I helped him out a little bit by sharing some of his posts and stories on my channels, which are big, but let's be honest, I don't have a lot of NFL card breaker people following me, so it wasn't like it was a great audience necessarily. But he's rewarding the process, the consistency of what he's doing. He's posting 2 YouTube videos a week and 1 reel a day and 1 TikTok a day, and he's seeing those results. So These are the 6 tips that I'm going to give you if you are struggling on social media. You know, I kicked off this episode by saying it is totally, totally valid that you feel like it's a toxic place. But if you can reframe your mindset to connection, not performance, leverage AI support, reduce how much it's costing you, as well as the cognitive overload to actually get social media out there, simplify your focus. What are you going to focus on and not try to be everywhere all the time? Number 4, build consistent habits, right? Yes, if batching works for you, great, but 10 minutes a day is going to work better, or 15 or 20 minutes a day in my opinion, than batching. Number 5, lower the stakes so that you are documenting rather than having to be a production or a creative artist. And number 6, reward process over outcome. Another way to say that is reward the system that is installed rather than the goal. So I hope that helps, and I'll talk to you soon.

And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit. I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, harness your grit, and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.