How to Grow Your Business Without Social Media

Welcome to She's Crafted to Thrive, a globally ranked podcast for women living with chronic illness and creatives in business. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, chronic illness warrior and photographer turned digital marketer turned award-winning coach. I love helping chronic illness warriors and creatives to live with their chronic illness and creativity as their superpower in life and business. On the show, you will hear the very stories that helped our guests, my clients, and myself to define our dream way of making money with proven strategies and marketing and mindset, all to grow a business that thrives without sacrificing our health. So stay tuned because you'll find the inspiration and tools and the resources you need to craft a life and business that thrives. Welcome back to She's Crafted to Thrive. I'm your host Nikita Williams, and this episode is just going to be me and you having a real conversation. So this month, if you're listening to this at whatever time of year or date or time frame, is all about endometriosis. We— the day I'm recording this is literally March the 2nd, and it is Endometriosis Awareness Month. And I have found talking about endometriosis during this time of month and during this awareness month has been really helpful for any of you who are specifically living with endometriosis. There's tons of content out there right now. So if you're like looking and you're listening to this in the, in the month of March 2023, go on any platform, um, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and wherever else you are, you'll find tons of people talking about the nails and bullets. Um, nails and bullets. Nails. The nails and bolts. There you go. Of what is endometriosis, what does it look like. It's not just a female, like, bad periods. It's a whole systemic, um, chronic condition that affects the whole body. And so many different things to learn about that. So I will have a couple of links to all of those details um, in the show notes. But what I wanted to share from a different point of view, because I've done multiple episodes— I'll also link in the show notes other episodes where I've had guests on the show and we've talked specifically about endometriosis and what it's looked like for us and our different challenges and journeys living with it, and also like growing a business. But this episode, I specifically wanted to do a little bit different because I've been doing this for a while now. I've been doing this, like, this podcast for a while. And what many of you may or may not know is that I actually started this podcast literally after my hysterectomy, which was a choice that I chose to make because of the kind of pain I was having with my cycle and like not even on my cycle because of my endometriosis. And it does not cure, like, you know, a hysterectomy does not cure endometriosis, but it definitely did for me made a difference in the context of my pain level. It also helped me have a better quality of life. I feel like, um, in a lot of different ways. I didn't feel drained all of the time. I didn't have to take iron infusions, like literally intravenously, because I was just having such a hard time with my cycles. And then after and before, and I exhausted so many other things before. We are now hearing so many new things about excision surgery, and there's like endometriosis specialist doctors. I didn't have all of that when I started. I was diagnosed back in 2010 and— or was it 2009? Anyway, 2010 or 2009 was when I was actually diagnosed with endometriosis. And so that was before it was like all of this popular rave. And then I don't mean rave in a positive way. I mean, like, you see tons of content about endometriosis at this point. There's a new movie out talking about Below the Belt. You see more and more famous figures coming out and talking about specifically about living with endometriosis and how it has not only affected their new ability to have children, but how it has affected pain, how it has been also one of the leading chronic illnesses that have led other women to have more chronic illnesses like myself, where it has to do with your bladder and gallbladder, kidneys, all of the different things, right? And so I'm saying all that to say this podcast started during a time of my life where endometriosis— I felt I was at my wit's end. I was at the worst of the worst. I was exhausted. I was tired. And I wanted to share with you what can come out of like something I think about back now, like was such a hard time. For me to know what to do. Like, I couldn't work at a job job because I just couldn't know whether or not I would be able to stand or, or like not pass out or be in so much excruciating pain that my employee, my people that I work with would have to like take me to the hospital. I had to call my husband, all of these crazy things, right? And so I have learned how to leverage my quote unquote weaknesses in a way that has helped me to have a business throughout this whole over a decade and a half of living with endometriosis and other chronic illnesses. And so that's what I wanted to talk to you all about in this episode. And I wanna talk about it from the context of visibility. There's a lot of different ways we can talk about how you can grow your business living with endometriosis visibly, right? We always hear things like, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all of these things where you post content. But you know, one of the best ways for some of that content to get found is to show up live, do videos of yourself. Like literally, statistically, in marketing, when people see people's faces and they see you, things convert better or a lot quicker usually. And so those are all great things. But what if you are at home like I was when I started this podcast after surgery? Looking a hot mess and a lot of different kinds of pain, a lot of different kind of medications that would create brain fog and exhaustion and fatigue like I've never experienced before. How do you grow your business with those challenges, those things? How do you leverage, quote unquote, that circumstance? And I learned this kind of by trial and error. And this is something that I really work with my clients to find for themselves. One of my really core beliefs as far as growing your business with any kind of chronic illness, and for me, a lot of what I do stemmed from like trying to figure out how to live my life and make some money living with endometriosis without working for somebody else. So one of the things that I had to really learn was how to leverage the little bit of strength and cognitive ability that I have. And also I had to figure out how to also leverage my strengths that didn't feel so strong. When you feel like crap, like, just to be honest, like you don't feel that strongly. The things that come easy to you don't even come easy to you when you're in this kind of pain. And so I was thinking about this, about different ways to grow your business without having to be physically visible. This is so important, especially for my chronic illness warriors, my endometriosis warriors out there. So I thought of 4 different ways, and obviously I'm going to really lean into the one that you're listening to me on now, is because that's the thing that helped me really kind of find my lane and also helped me get found. Now I'll explain that a little bit more. So obviously, like I was mentioning before, we have the traditional— and I say traditional marketing as far as social media. We know a lot of us know and hear a lot about growing your business with social media. Um, I just posted a reel actually on social media commenting and joking around, like, the fact that you can grow a business and make money without social media. Oh my gosh, what? Like, that's crazy. And I actually did that with one of my clients, Shaylee. We were talking about that because she's not very comfortable. She's an amazing, um, photographer who loves I'm helping people like recall and experience, um, the environment, the world, planets, and the animals in a way that is really, um, beautiful and also sustainable for the planet. And so that's her goal, right? Is to have that in her life. But she finds social media very challenging. And I'm only sharing this openly with you that it's Shaylee, because you can literally just go on my Instagram page and we've talked about this openly. Um, and one of the things that we've worked on definitely is like really leaning into what are her strengths, even though other things are happening. So that's what I want you to think about. Like, even when you think about all the things that are your strengths when you're not in pain, that's what I had to do when I was in pain. So what I had to think about was like, how have I, one, gotten jobs that I probably shouldn't have gotten jobs for? How did I get promotions? Or how did I find my corporate experience at different things and get hired for positions sometimes that I was like, I'm just kind of winging it based off my own experience and my intuition and all of the life skills I've learned as a volunteer ministry minister that I've just like, I'm so thankful for that. I got training on that was free. And so that most people have to go to school and pay thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars for. I got that free. So a lot of those different things were my strengths, right? How to have communication, how to have conversations with people, how to connect people, how to reason with people, how to ask questions. And plus, I'm an extrovert and I love doing all those things. So I really, during the time of like being at home after my surgery, because I had some challenging after my surgery experience, with my hysterectomy, it flared up other things that had nothing to do with my endometriosis, but kind of did. I was at home and I couldn't like really get out and about, and I wasn't supposed to. I healed very slowly from that surgery. So here's a girl who loves being around people. I also had just moved to Florida and I was like, I have nothing. I don't know what to do. Like, I have nothing. I don't know what to do. How do I grow a business? And I can't do what I would normally do. And then I had— I started thinking, well, I just can't, right? What I challenge you to do, that's where you are, or if let's say you have most recently got diagnosed with a chronic illness in the middle of growing your wildly successful business and you're looking at things and being like, things are gonna have to shift around as far as priorities are concerned about me and my health, my time, my energy. If you don't already have systems in play. So what I like to tell people is like, think about what you were all— what you were and quote unquote still are good at regardless of your pain, right? And so for me, that was connecting with people. Literally, I've gotten paid by people to network and connect with people. I got a job working at Sam's Club as a membership person, like selling memberships, and that was me going to other like membership places, like other networking things, the chamber, any kind of events and things like that to connect with people and have them buy a membership, right? I've also had my real estate business where that's what I learned, how to sell homes and how to connect with people and find buyers and those who wanted to sell their homes. Also, when I was a teenager, I used to work for a photography, um, sports photographer. Obviously I was a photographer then, but I was working in the sales department of selling selling the pictures to moms and the kids and about all those different kind of things, right? So I've always in my whole life, and at one point I did Mary Kay for a long time because I was part of my, my, my, my family history, if you will, with my mom. And I've always been in some kind of way of relationship marketing always. And I have seen how that has literally gotten me jobs. I literally have had opportunities to do that in so many different ways because of the training of being being able to speak and ask— answer questions and ask questions and really hear between the lines of what people are actually saying and what they're not saying and give them what they want. And even though I'm sitting at home and all I have is a computer and in a state that I don't really know anybody, those skills definitely could translate into online. And so through my pain, what I did was leverage my weak circumstances, AKA at home in bed, not able to drive, not able to go anywhere, and a computer, and leverage my strengths at the same time. So this is something I like to call like leveraging part of the real you. And this is all a part of a framework that I work with my clients with, and it works in such a beautiful way. It's very intertwiny, but specifically in this episode, I want to talk about how you can do that as far as visibility. So at first I thought I would write a blog, right? I thought I would interview people that I would connect with on social media and write blogs. And I'm not a writer. That's one of the skills that I would consider a challenge for me. And it's one of the skills that I continue to work on. Um, I actually work with kind of an email writing coach at this point. But it's just one of the areas in my life that I want to get better at. I'm— I can write. I do know how to write. I used to— I mean, I wrote tons of letters and things like that for my ministry, but it's different when it comes to business. And so for me, because I'm a very people-in-your-face, like, talk to you, be like, go to a networking event, connect, connect. I had to learn how to do that in a way that would translate online. So I started by like interviewing people on Zoom calls and like writing up a blog post. That's literally the first thing I did. So for all of my writers out there who think that you have to be on social media and actually market and have your face on there, I'm here to tell you that's not true. You can start a blog post, you can interview people, and you can leverage their social media on your post, on your website, in order to create some visibility and awareness of who you are and what you do. So that's tip 1, leveraging other people's audiences to your strengths. So for you, if you're a writer and you love it, then go ahead, go ahead, start writing blogs, inviting guests to be guest writers on your blogs. And that is a way where you physically don't have to show up with your face and like be there, like be on, quote unquote. So the next thing that you can leverage for all my endometriosis warriors and chronic illness warriors is Pinterest. So Pinterest is not a social media platform, okay? So if you're writing blog posts, this is, this is your jam. Like, Pinterest is your best friend since cotton candy, okay? It is. So if, if you're writing blogs, this is great. If you're not writing blogs but you're creating content in some other platform, you have found some way to be visible on social media, you can use those links on Pinterest. Maybe you don't want to be on social media and all you want to do is have people like um, sign up for emails, and that way you're sending emails to people and you're communicating and building a tribe that way. Pinterest will be your friend. Use Pinterest to create little pretty little graphics. If you don't know of a program called Canva, check it out. C-A-N-V-A. Canva is like Photoshop on steroids. Super easy, simple for anybody to use, and you can create little, um, like facts, um, images or videos or whatever, so that when you are wanting people to learn more about what you do, you can ask them to opt into your email list and then you can send them an email. This can also work for your blog. You can like do little pins that you pin on boards and then you engage with other people's pins and things like that. I'm not a Pinterest expert. I actually have that inside of the portal. That my clients get access to. Um, when we work one-to-one, there's training in there for that because that's not my expertise. But that's another way where you don't physically have to do, like, physically be on camera. Your voice doesn't even have to be involved. All you need is an ability to write, type, and pen. Okay. So that is, I don't know the next, I don't know what number I'm on. Sorry guys. It's one of those weeks. I'm kind of brain foggy. The next thing is email. So I, I know I just kind of talked about email in the context of using it for Pinterest, but email is another great way. So even if you are on social media or if you have a website, having people sign up for your email to receive the free content or free, um, kind of view it as a lead magnet, your email, use that as a way for people to come share information with you. So my coach, um, Kirsten Rodan. She is an email coach. She's amazing, and her program is called Million Dollar Emailers. Um, and so what I love about her program is that she does not talk about anything like free, like no freebies. The freebie really is your email series. So if you're in my tribe, you know I have Create Your Clarity Mondays, which is an email series that I send out every Monday that talks about how to have clarity so that you can have confidence so that you can sell your business while living with chronic illness with ease. So if you're on my email list, you learn about those different things that I share, and I sell in that email. I sell in my emails on almost every email. When I say I sell, I just let you know what it is that I do, how you can work with me, and where to go to do that, right? That is another way that you can market your business, give value, and still be found. What I love about this is that people, you know, people will share your email list with other people, like your email link with other people because they really enjoy your content. And so they start creating community within your community, which is amazing, right? That's another way of doing it. So that is another tool for you to grow your business with endometriosis without technically having to like be physically seen. It's all about writing. So The next one I would say is about networking, is collaborations. So this is a little different, and I, I like to talk about this in the context like collaborations can be forward-facing or back-end. So I kind of alluded to this earlier where you could have a blog post where you're a guest blogger on someone else's blog, you could be a guest on someone else's podcast, you could be a guest on someone's YouTube where Um, maybe you're sharing some tips and tools. Maybe you're going to record a Loom video where you don't actually have to be on the camera, but you're showing your screen of how to do something. Um, that's another way to market your business. One of the best ways that I've learned throughout my business, the reason why I think I've continued to grow this podcast is because I really do lean into lead generation or visibility as a strategy, which means I'm leveraging other people's audiences to connect with other people that are looking for me, are looking for someone who can understand what it's like to grow a business while living with chronic illness and how to do it when flare-ups happen, new diagnoses happen, brain fog happens, flare-up happens, all of those different kind of things. And that is how I have really leveraged, um, other people's communities, is by really giving value, because not a lot of communities are talking about specifically what to do when you are diagnosed with a new chronic illness, like, how do you even deal with, um, people who come to you who are you're working with who are like, I'm sorry, I know I paid for this program, but now I have, you know, a new diagnosis that's going to take up half of my time and I want my money back, or I need to figure out, like, can I come back to this? All of those different kind of things. I've had literal consultants who have multi-million dollar, you know, companies ask me those kinds of questions because that is my, that's my lane. That's who I talk to. That's how I work. And I've been in those circumstances. And so for you, that could be an avenue for you collaborating, giving your expertise to other people's audiences and asking them to join yours, whether that's on email, whether that's on Pinterest, whether that's a blog, whether that's on your website. And lastly, whether that's on your podcast like this one. So let me tell you, about my favorite one to leverage as a chronic illness warrior and an Indo warrior, literally, because this is what I did to start my business, like really to connect with other women and to be seen and be heard and to be found. So what I love about podcasting is that it's voice only, right? It's voice only if you want it to be. I know there's a lot of people, especially nowadays, say that you need to have a video component to your podcasting, but that's if you want to. Like this if you want to, you can still be found. It is still search engine friendly and all of the things. You can even add it to YouTube and it not necessarily like be a video video. It could be one of those what they call audiograms and you could be found on YouTube from your podcast. So what do I love about leveraging podcasting as something that leans into my strengths and also leverages a week quote unquote situation or circumstance. So when I started this podcast, I didn't like doing my blog post because it took so much energy and brain capacity. And so for me, I knew all I needed to do was write a couple notes down, and then also I could connect with other people and leverage their audiences while still serving them with valuable content. To me, podcast is the money pot, right? Like all those other different things that I just talked about, um, email, blog posts, Pinterest collaborations, literally can all be leveraged even more so through your podcast. I can use my podcast to connect with people on a blog post. I can use my podcast to connect with people and let people know where they can find more information about living with chronic illness and growing a business. On my podcast. I can create pins that tell people like on specific topics, on different things that they might be thinking about to go and listen to these different podcast episodes. And the other thing I love about this is like it's, it's dual purpose. Like it helps you to grow and it creates a revenue stream that is long-term, right? So not all of you have been listening to me forever. Some of you just found me probably recently when I did the summit that I did recently. And you're like, oh my gosh, there's someone who does, you know, works with people who live with chronic illness and is growing a business. I like been, never knew that was a thing. And now I know that. And you're probably binge listening to all of my episodes. I actually just signed a new client from literally that same situation. They heard from me on a summit or another podcast episode I was a guest on. And they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't know that existed. And now she's my client. So podcasting to me is just one of the, the, the juiciest ways that you can grow your business in a way that you don't physically have to be visible. The reason why I love podcasting is because there were days where the only thing I could do was press record, right? Like that was the only thing I could do. And the editing and all of that stuff in the beginning, since I was just starting, I DIY'd it. I learned how to do it myself. And when I couldn't do it by myself, I got somebody on Fiverr to do it, right? So like it was such a low lift way for me to serve my community, to be found, to, um, expand my community. It's one of my favorite things that I probably don't talk about enough, but I have like systems now of how I get these podcast episodes out. I remember when I first started, I was like so in fear of not having like enough guests. And then that's when I started sharing my story and that's when I started sharing my tips and my thoughts on how you can grow a business with different challenges. Right. And The other secret sauce to this is if you have guests on your show, you start building a network of people that you can rely on and connect through and like share referrals back and forth. Some of these people who have been on the episode on this show have been clients, have come, come, I've invited them to be on because I love what they do and they have become my clients. Right. So it's just been one of those amazing tools where I did not have to be on social media. In order for me to create growth in my business. And I, I felt like literally in that, I don't mean I didn't really do this, but if you really wanted to record the episode from the bedroom, from the bathroom, from the hospital room, from wherever you are, from the car on the way to the hospital, like it was just such freedom to be able to use this medium. I could record it on my phone. There's just so many different ways that you can create content. To grow your business, to attract people into your world. And for emails, it's even greater, right? So your audience can connect with you, you can keep them up to date on— you're giving them valuable content week after week or month after month. You can vary the amount of times you want to post every month. So for me, I started off by at first doing every week, then I went to biweekly, then I went to once a month, and then I'm back to every week. And so like It was just very flexible, very flexible. Okay, so these are some tools that you can use to help you grow your business living with endometriosis. And I want to talk to the people who are listening to this who may have not had a chronic illness before they started this, their business, and now you do. I want you to start thinking about what ways, right, what ways can you start leveraging what you're good at and this new circumstance to actually create a new opportunity for you. So maybe you weren't doing podcasting. Maybe you were always forward-facing. Maybe you were always doing videos. Maybe you were always on YouTube. How can you turn some of that content and repurpose that into podcasts? Right? So if you're listening to the show now, you'll also probably hear, if you listen back, I take some of the lives that I do now that I'm a lot more healthier in a sense of like, I have more capacity to do that. Sometimes I take those and repurpose them and put them on my podcast. Think about that for yourself, for your business. What kind of systems can you put in your— in place that allow you to show up differently but still create amazing results in your business? These are the kind of things that I work with my clients, um, on. And it looks different, like the way I do it, the way I even shared all of these general things with you guys looks a little bit different depending on the circumstances of of who you are and what you're going through right now. But I thank you for listening to this because I didn't have this. I like didn't have someone telling me, like, at the time when I had started my business, all I heard was like, you have to be on social media, you have to be posting content. And that was scary, and that was hard, and that was difficult, especially when you're recovering from a surgery and not really knowing why all those horrible things were happening, right? And so that's something to think about Now, if you are in that situation, how can you make it easier for yourself? I can guarantee you that you can make it easier and still make money and do less of what you're doing already, right? That's one of my new things this year. I've just been like, you can do less, be more you, like be more with you, be more gentle with you, be more soft with you, be more kind to yourself, be more practical. And, and holistic and sustainable with how you want to live your life and make money. Like, they can all coexist. And that is what my clients are doing when we work together. Like, they're always surprised and we're like, Nikita, I can't believe how we got here. I'm doing half of what I was doing, or I'm doing half of what I thought I needed to do, and I'm seeing results. So that's a little bit about this, this is— it was supposed to be a short episode. It might be after I like chop it up and clean it up a little bit, but this episode was literally for all my endometriosis warriors and chronic illness warriors. Like, you can grow a business without being visible, like quote unquote seen online with your face in a video. You don't have to be dancing in cameras, and you don't have to be like doing lives all of the time. Like, you can do it through all of these other ways that I just mentioned. Pinterest, email, blog post, website, and podcasting. So I hope that was helpful. And let me know if you want to hear more content like this on the podcast. And in the meantime, please know that I know that you're crafted to thrive. You, you have all the goods, no matter what's going on in your life, no matter what circumstances are, you can make it work if you want it to work for you versus thinking that you have to sacrifice yourself to make a business work, right? I think you definitely can prioritize what you need and what other people want to create the business that you dream of. I currently, right now, if you're listening to this in March, I have 2 spots left for one-on-one coaching and soon coming as a group thing at some point, but let's not even, let's just leave that on a, that's a surprise. That's like, whew, just keep that in mind. But I have a couple of slots left for one-on-one coaching and you can just go to the show notes. And hit the link to book a call with me to learn more about how you can feel more clear, confident to make your next $100,000 with ease, or your first time ever easier than you ever thought. So in the meantime, remember that yes, yes, yes, you are crafted to thrive.