💫 Is this the year you leave social media? [Free 5-Day Challenge]

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Welcome to Off The Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

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Hello and welcome or welcome back to Off the Grid. I'm Amelia Hruby, the founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio, the co-founder of the Lifestyle Business League. And here in this space, the host of the podcast. This is a show about leaving social media without losing all your clients or as I often like to think of it, a podcast about creative marketing practices that will help you grow your business and maybe make a little more money with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty. I am popping on to your pod feed today to say happy new year and to offer you a little gift as we head into 2024. Actually, I think I have two gifts to offer you. One is a free five day challenge to help you leave social media in the new year if you so choose. And the second gift is a very fun announcement that season three of off the grid will be kicking off next week. You heard that right. If you are listening last season, you might have heard me say I wasn't coming back till spring. But here we are my friends. I felt Mercury station direct on January 1, and I was back on the mic ready to go here to record wanting to talk to you beautiful people again. So today's episode is a little mini sowed a teaser, a free gift. And next week, we'll kick off season three. I am so excited are you? Maybe hopefully if you listen to this,

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I really can't wait to dive back into the show. And I have some amazing conversations planned for the weeks ahead. So if you're not already subscribed, hit that subscribe button. Make sure you're getting notified about new episodes, make sure you're on our email list to tune in. How do you get on that email list? Well, you download the free leaving social media toolkit at off the grid dot fun, get the toolkit get some free tools, it gets an email reminders about episodes. It's really just like a whole lot of fun marketing goodness in your inbox in your pod feed every week from next week through the end of June. So lots of good stuff coming up. But let me dive into why we are here today.

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I am here today because I want to ask you a question. And that question is, is this the year that you leave social media is 2024. The year that you exit Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, wherever you might be? That question may feel like a gentle invitation. Or it may feel like an offensive slap in the face depending on your current relationship with social media. But I mean it as an invitation. I want to ask, is this your year? Is it the year that you leave social media? If you're listening to this podcast, I'm assuming that something about social media is not working for you. And you want different paths forward for yourself for your business, for your art practice for your creative work. And so that's why I'm posing this question. Is this the year that you leave? Is it time? Are you ready to be done? And to move on to what's next? So why might you want to leave social media this year? Well, for one, I noticed that lots of people that I admire left Instagram last year. If you listen to the show, you know that I left in 2021. So I'll be coming up on three years without social media in the spring. But I really felt the tides turn last year 2023 lots of amazing people and influencers that I had admired for a long time. Were leaving Instagram. And so maybe you saw some of them leave and you decided you can leave too. Who are these people I'm talking about? While some of them have been on the podcast. Last season I talked to Nicole Antoinette who left Instagram. I talked to Lauren ash, a black girl and ohm who left Instagram. There are also some friends of the pod who have exited Instagram like Marley grace, and if you like me ever hang out on substack there are a ton of writers and artists over there who are leaving Instagram. I think notably Emma Gannon was one of them. But I will link in the show notes, a bevy of essays from people who have left Instagram and are sharing their process and their feelings. So why might you want to leave this year? Well, maybe you're kind of seeing that other people are leaving and you're starting to believe that you can too. That's what this podcast

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says Here are four. But if you need even more examples, I'm going to link some of those essays in the show notes. So you can scroll through and get inspired. And consider if this year is your time to leave social media.

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Why else might you want to leave social media this year? You may be thinking to yourself, Emily, I don't care what all of the other people have done. This is about me and my decision. So let me help you out there as well. Well, I was on break, I read a great little book by Jerome linear called 10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now. It's very short. I don't know that I agree with everything in it, but I found it to be a thought provoking read. And as you might expect, inside there are 10 arguments for leaving social media. So let me just give you the brief outline. I'm reading this right off the back of the book, so I'm not spoiling anything for you. But these are Jerome's 10 arguments. Argument number one, you are losing your freewill argument number two, quitting social media is the most finely targeted way to resist the insanity of our times. Argument number three, social media is making you into an asshole. Argument number four, social media is undermining truth.

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Argument number five social media is making what you say meaningless. Argument six, social media is destroying your capacity for empathy. Argument seven, social media is making you unhappy. Argument eight, social media doesn't want you to have economic dignity. Number nine is social media is making politics impossible. And argument number 10. Social media hates your soul. So that's just a quick list of some reasons that you might want to leave social media this year, to go a little deeper into a couple of those arguments. For me, it was really argument number one, you are losing your free will that got me to step away from social media. I talked about that in the second episode of this podcast, how I left social media and a five step plan. So you can too so if you're curious, for more of my story, head there to listen to the whole thing. But in brief, I could really feel the ways that social media algorithms were changing my behavior. I was buying clothes that were being advertised to me on algorithms, I was reading books, I was listening to music, I could feel the way that the more time I spent on Instagram, the more money I spent on things that when they arrived, I wasn't even sure if I liked them or not. It felt like quicksand. And I really wanted to get out of there. And so for me that first argument you're losing your freewill was a big part of why I decided to leave social media in 2021. For lots of the folks I talked to, it was actually argument number seven, that got them to leave social media. So argument number seven is social media is making you unhappy. It really breeds so much comparison, so many feelings of unworthiness, and insecurity. And I found that often those feelings are what lead people off of social media or get them to step back, step away, delete the app or delete their accounts. So that's another reason to leave social media have you been feeling like shit when you're on it? If so, maybe this is the year that you leave social media. For one more of these arguments. I'm also really convinced by number five social media is making what you say meaningless. So in the book, Jerome talks about how the things that we share and say on social media, lose all of the context that we intend to share and say them with. So I'm going to read a quote directly here, he says, speaking through social media isn't really speaking at all, context is applied to what you say, after you say it for someone else's purposes and profit. Social media replaces your context with its context, that may really resonate for you, or it may feel a little abstract. But what really stuck out for me is that as small business owners, or artists here on this podcast, the whole thing we're bringing to the table is the context, right? Like what we are sharing and selling is the full spectrum of our work and everything that we bring to our work. If you're a painter, you're it's your whole life experience that you bring to the canvas or the wall or the paper. If you're a service provider, like me, it's everything I've ever learned that I bring to every single strategy meeting I have with a client. They're not paying me for a quick snippet of something I can scrape off the internet. They're paying me for the lived experience and learnings that I have. That's the context and on social media. They don't get that context. They get the context of the three posts that somebody put before it and the 10 they read after it, right? They don't get any of my context. So I'm really convinced by that one, it's making things meaningless, and our content needs context. So those are just a few reasons that you might want to leave social media this year. And maybe you have some of your own may

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Maybe you're feeling like you want to leave not because you've seen some of your role models leave, not because of any of these 10 arguments from this book, maybe you have your own really nuanced and specific and full of you context that you think 2024 might be the year you leave social media. And maybe you're listening to this and thinking, I still don't know if 2024 is the year I leave social media. And maybe you're feeling more like a hiatus, or a few weeks or months away is what you need at this time. And that's great. If you listen to this show, you know that I'm not here to compel you to do anything in particular or to judge you for what you are doing or have done. I'm just here to ask questions like, Is this the year you leave social media, and to offer tools, like I'm going to do right now. So if 2024 is a year that you want to consider leaving social media, or that you feel ready to exit one or more platforms, I have created something really special for you. We already offer the free leaving social media toolkit here at off the grid. But in addition to that, this month, January 2024, I have created a free five day leaving social media challenge. So this is five days of free emails. To help you make a step by step plan to exit one or more social media platforms of your choice. It's got a little bit of emotional support to help you get ready to help you feel clear about your decision. And then a lot of a really practical tools, so that you can exit in a way that feels super aligned with your choices, and strategically aligned with your business and what it needs in the year ahead. Because part of what I bring to the table here at off the grid is recognizing that many of our businesses have been built on social media. And we may feel like they need social media to continue growing and thriving, we may feel like they have to get on social media to grow and thrive at all. But I really think that there are other ways we can share our work. And part of this five day leading social media challenge is helping you make a plan for how you will transform and archive any existing social media platforms. And then choose other channels that you will be active on whether that's email without your website, there are all sorts of things that you can be doing that are not social media, and will share your work with new people. So whatever your reason for leaving social media, I want to invite you to head to the show notes and click the link to get the free five day challenge. So this is free for all of January 2020. For at the end of January, it will become exclusively available to interweb members. So if you're already an interweb member, there's a special link in your interweb portal that will get you the five day leaving social media challenge anytime that you want to start it or restart it. If you're just an off the grid listener, you can get the challenge for free this month. And if you're listening from the future, you will have to join the interweb in order to access the challenge. If you're wondering what the interweb is, it's our annual membership for creatives, artists, small business owners, freelancers, influencers entrepreneurs and creators who want support sharing their work and making money without social media. So it's full of on demand courses from me and some of my best friends around the internet. I host quarterly live events for interweb members. And basically when you join, you'll learn foundational business skills and to cultivate creative marketing practices to help your business not only survive, but also thrive without a social media presence. So you can head to the shownotes. To learn more about the interweb annual membership as I'm recording, this is only $129 a year. So it's super affordable. And if you want a sort of preview of what it might be like before you join, go ahead and sign up for the five day leading social media challenge. Along the way, you'll learn a bit more about the interweb and what it has to offer you if you want to continue your journey of doing business without social media.

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So I think that's it for me today. Friends, this mini sowed extended into like a medium, so maybe,

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but I'm gonna keep it tight. Keep it short and sign off here. As I sign off, I have one little request, which is please share this episode, or just send the link to the five day challenge to any of your friends who you think might want to leave social media this year. Anybody who has been complaining to about how much Instagram is getting them down any of your business besties who are like, Oh, I never want to make a content calendar again. How can I quit this? Send them the link to the five day challenge

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To sign up together, get yourself a little accountability. And it'll be super fun. That's like the best way to do things right, open a group chat, get into the work together, make it fun for yourself, make it a community effort. Let's get more of us off of social media in 2024. And to that end, I will be back here next week to kick off season three of off the grid. I am so excited for everything to come. I really appreciate your time and attention. I'm super excited to offer you this free challenge for the month of January. And this free podcast all year long. As always, I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And until next week, my friends I will see you off the grid and on the interweb

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thanks for listening to off the grid. Don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at off the grid dot fun slash toolkit. This podcast is a softer sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of making audio magic and our logo is by N'Atelier studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the interweb.