MBA901 Why I Quit Social Media

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Even though this was my own personal decision, I do believe this decision has greatly affected my business in a positive way. Now, this may not be something you choose to do, but I do feel obliged to share with you my experience and what led me to this decision so you can make your own decision. I want to make a quick disclaimer before we get into all the nitty gritty of this episode. I do not believe that social media by nature is evil or there's nothing good about social media, nor am I against the technology itself. But I will explain to you why I got off of it, why it was the right decision for me and why now? Why did it take this long for me to make this decision. What prompted the decision? And it's still early days. It's only been a few weeks. I want to share with you what I hope this will generate in my business. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So why did I quit social media? Well, there were three main reasons that led me to this decision. And then I want to discuss some of the benefits or some of the experiences I've had since quitting it. It's been about three weeks now, but I still remember exactly what led me to that decision. Now, the first reason is focus. I feel like when I was on social media or I was checking social media throughout the day or even just once a day, it was really fracturing my focus. And to be quite honest with you, right before I made this decision, I was rereading Deep Work by Cal Newport. Now, Cal is a big proponent against social media. He just feels like it's just bad for productivity. I highly recommend this book. If for some reason you can't read the book or don't have time, even though I highly recommend it, I would check out his TED Talk where he really gives his reasons why he's not on social media. So I'm coming off the back of reading this book again, and I'm also coming off the back of a huge launch at Webinar Ninja, where we launched 5.0. I am extremely stretched. I'm working hard. I'm juggling all these things and on top of it, I'm trying to, you know, keep up my social presence, you know, post on social media, answer questions that people have. And my day really was in disarray. I was really not as focused as I should be. And I'm not only talking about time, but I'm also talking about just mental space. It's very hard for you to answer a question or reply to somebody on Facebook, for example, and then switch gears and start scripting an episode or a video that I'm going to be shooting for Webinar Ninjas blog, I'm still thinking about what I just did. Shifting gears is a big time waster. And that's what he talks about in the book. And you really work efficiently when you work deeply on things for a long period of time. So the first reason is I felt like it wasn't helping me focus, it was distracting me, really. And I'm not on a lot of social media. I was really just active on Facebook and Twitter and a little bit of LinkedIn. But I'm not on Instagram. I'm not on Periscope or Snapchat or any of that kind of stuff. But even with my limited social media presence, I still found it distracting. Another reason why I wasn't focused is because I had all these notifications going off my phone, whether it was Facebook messenger or people adding me on Facebook, Facebook, or people tweeting at me. You know, this was really breaking up my day because, you know, those notifications make you feel like it's urgent when really it's probably not. And that leads me to the second reason why. The constant interruptions of the day was not allowing me to have any downtime. Even when I wasn't working, where my laptop wasn't open, when I was just enjoying something on tv, social media became sort of like an invisible person next to me, nagging me, hey, did you hear about what this person said? Hey, check out this thing. And I felt like I was being consumed with this other world that wasn't really relevant to my real world. And I never had a chance to really diffuse. So I would go day in and day out feeling completely wired, because even in my downtime, social media was kind of playing a role. And the funny thing is that social media is this weird hybrid of, you know, things that have to do with business and some things that to do with your personal life or people pinging you on personal stuff, like your family. It's a blurry line. But regardless of what you're getting pinged on or what you're getting notifications for or what you're getting interrupted for, it's a distraction and it's breaking up your downtime. Even so, it was causing some stress for me. And the third reason why I quit social media is because I was very curious about how much it really affects your business and how much being on it really matters. And I wanted to experiment. I wanted to go for a long period of time where I'm not on social media, where I'm not posting, where I'm not comment, where I'm just not on the platform at all. Would it allow me to really focus on the real goals of my business? And I took a look at our goals as entrepreneurs, me and Nicole, and I said, you know what? This has nothing to do. Social media has nothing to do with our goals. It's not gonna make us attain these goals any faster. Taking a break from it is really not gonna affect us. I can achieve these goals without it. Now, this is my theory. I'm gonna find out very soon if it's really affecting me or affecting the business. But so far, so good. So far, it's been very positive. I feel a lot more calmer. I feel a lot less. I mean, one of the things I did when I made the announcement, I got on, you know, Facebook, I got on Twitter and I made a post. I said, hey, I'm taking a hiatus and taking a break. Don't expect anything from me in terms of replies to ads or anything like that. Just want to make sure you know that so it doesn't seem that I'm being rude and not replying to you. And as soon as I put those posts up, I deleted the apps from my phone, all the social media apps from my phone, and I haven't visited since on my computer. And I've been very diligent about it. First few days was kind of rough because it's a habit, you know, it's a force of habit, checking Facebook or checking, you know, Twitter or whatever you're on. But, you know, I broke that. And a couple weeks in, I'm feeling really good about it, because when I have downtime, even if it's just a few minutes, like we're at a restaurant and Nicole gets up to go to the bathroom and I'm sitting alone at the table, most people in this scenario pull out their phone and check social media instead. I don't. I just sit down, I look around, I look at other people that are enjoying their dinner, think I have some stillness in my life. And that's something that I really missed. And I didn't realize how much I missed it until I got it back. You may not notice it, but I did. When I had those first feelings of, oh, let me check something on my phone, let me check my phone for notifications for social media, it really made me question things like, wow, I'm really addicted to that. And there's a sense of urgency and anxiety. So when I didn't do that, when I said, hey, there's nothing for me to check, apps are deleted. Let me just sit here and just enjoy a few minutes alone, just looking around and just wait. There's nothing wrong with that. And it felt great. I was in control and I felt present. I felt like I was actually enjoying my outing because I wasn't preoccupied with what's going on in my pocket. So it's helped me personally and as the leader of our company, I really feel like by having a more calm state, by being less anxious, less stressed, it's going to help me make better decisions in our business. And I really, I've already felt that now it's too early to tell to see if being off social media has really affected our bottom line and our business or our goals. But it's allowed me to really focus on trying to get our audience in other ways that are more sustainable to me. That's email. I want to get my audience's email address so I can have an ongoing relationship with them. I can send them our newsletter, I can email them, I can get their opinion, I can have contact, I can have access to their inbox. Email is the modern day phone number, so I want access to that. I want to build on my own ground and not on somebody else's platform like Facebook or Twitter. And allowed me to focus, hey, I don't have social media anymore so I have to focus on building this platform, building my subscriber list so I can communicate with my audience this way. And it's been great. It's really, you know, allowed us to focus on that. We're doing a whole lot more content now. We're building more content marketing strategies to attract people via email addresses, to attract people via email opt ins. So that's really been our focus. Now I do have to say we do use Facebook ads still. It's part of our business. But we have Andrew on our team who takes care of all of our digital marketing. I don't get on social media, I don't look at social media, I don't do the ads. He does, he has access to our business account. Again, the strategy is to get them on our platform on our email list so we can build relationships with them. Now I have to say this wasn't easy. It's been more challenging than I thought. I had to tell all my friends and family that, hey, I'm not on social media, so don't try to speak to me on social media because I won't reply. They're like, why? And they're like, well, it's, you know, it's easier for me. Can you just, you know, reply to me? No, I can't, but it's fine. And that worked out and it's over now and everybody gets it. And if I had to take one big takeaway, it really just simplified my day now and I get to work out my list of to do's. I conquer my to do's. I'm not distracted. I'm not, you know, you know, fractured with every little notification, really limited distractions. When I cut out social media now, there still are things that you're going to get pinged on. Like I still get pinged within Basecamp, which is our project management tool, or Slack, which is our communication tool. But they're all within the business. This is my team. This is like my team calling me up on the phone in a physical office. And I'm fine with that because I have, you know, our hours and it allows me to really communicate with only the things that really will help our business, which is our team, and again with our customers via email. So this is how it's going for me. I hope that the experience continues to be positive and I I continue to feel good about this decision. I'm not really sure how long I'm going to be doing this for, but I said to at least the end of 2018 and we'll take it from there. I am taking some personal notes on this experience. I might want to write something up, at least a blog post or something that may become something bigger, but this has been a very interesting experiment for me. It's still early days, but I'm really happy with this decision Within Mustache A taco in one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back Nice. Get up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on your favorite brands when you pay with your Venmo debit card. From takeout to ride shares, entertainment and more, pick a bundle with your go tos and start earning cash back at those brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Max $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo. Introducing Fidelity Trader plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. Customize your tools and charts and access them seamlessly across desktop, web and mobile for faster trades anywhere you go. Try the all new Fidelity Trader Plus. Learn more about our most powerful trading platform yet@fidelity.com TraderPlus investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC Member NYSE SIPC so you want to experiment and you want to see if this is right for you. You might be saying to you, hey, I use social media just for, you know, with my friends and family and it's just a whole bunch of fun. It's not distracting for me. I'm cool. I'm good. Now let's see if that's true. Challenge yourself. Are you really addicted to it? Are you really finding yourself distracted by it? Are you having anxiety with what's in your pocket? Right. We're going to test it out. So what you're going to do is you're going to do a three day experiment and I would split it up maybe two days in the weekday, one day weekend, three days in a row. And you're going to get on your phone and you're going to delete all your social media apps. You can install them again later on. This is an experiment. It's going to require a little effort to install a few apps. If you know, you discover that you're fine and you don't need to quit social media. But this is just an experience just so you can learn about yourself. Delete your social media apps and do not go on social media on your laptop. Got to delete your apps because that way you're not tempted it to look on your phone in downtime and see how it feels for three days. See how productive you become. See how many times you feel like you want to reach for your phone to check something or look at social media. See how it feels to not do that and just enjoy the day, enjoy the moment. I feel like three days is a good amount of time to get a taste. You can go a week if you like. We'll keep going on. We'll still spin without you on social media. And don't worry, I know what's going on in the world still. I still read the news. I still get updates. I'm just not on social. I'm not getting it from social. So give it a try. Give this experiment a try. See how you feel. I'd love to hear about how it went. Let us know in the comments once you've tried it. When I say comments, I mean just leave us a review on itunes and let us know how this episode influenced you, how implementing what you learned has helped you if it did. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in the next episode. But before that, I want to leave you with this. There's something I say all the time. I say that business is not done on social media. It's done where your business is, whether it's an online business or your physical store. That's where the transactions happen. That's where you make the sales. A lot of people feel like if I'm off social media, then no one's going to know what I'm doing. Your Facebook page is not NBC News. Right? It's not being broadcasted to millions of people. The algorithm doesn't work that way. You might think that there are more people reading or looking at your updates than they actually are. One of the things that I noticed is that we use a tool called Buffer, which, you know, actually allows us to schedule posts on social media, and it gives us detailed stats of how many people liked it, how many people actually saw the post. And the stats are quite shocking. People don't really see it as often as you think it is or like it or comment on it. Yes, there are some anomalies, but most of the time, no. And There's a great YouTube video by Noah Kagan on this topic. He did an analysis on his own account and he shows that, hey, social media is not as powerful as you think it is unless you're paying for ads. So business is not done on social media. Done where you do business. All right, I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care. 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