🐲 4 myths & a truth about social media for small businesses

[0:03] Off the Grid is a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. I'm Amelia Hruby, a writer, speaker and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio. On this show I share stories strategies and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty.

Download your free leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all off the grid.

[0:32] Music.

[0:38] Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Off the Grid.

I’m Amelia Hruby. I'm a writer speaker and the founder of softer sounds podcast studio, a feminist podcast studio for entrepreneurs and creatives. And as of right now I am not on social media.

Last year I left Instagram I left Twitter I left Facebook long before that, and then I launched a business. And I launched a business that's been very successful so far without a social media presence.

Yes you heard that right my business has been successful on my own terms without social media.

[1:16] On this podcast I'm going to walk you through my journey of leaving social media and share everything I've learned along the way.

If you want to take a shortcut and get to the end of that journey right at the beginning… if you're like give it to me right now I don't want to wait, I completely understand, I'm very impatient.

Anyway I created a free leaving social media tool kit just for you.

You can download that toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig that’s softer sounds dot studio / b y e IG.

The toolkit includes some really great resources like a five-step plan for leaving any social platform reflection questions included, a list of 100 ways to share your work that are not social media, and a very cool - if I may say so myself - notion database that will help you organize Creative Marketing experiments you can undertake as you start to share your work and your offerings without social media.

We'll talk more about all of those tools and this first season of Off the Grid but if you want them right now just head to softersounds.studio/byeig that's b y e IG.

[2:28] For today as we dive into this first episode, we're going to slow things down. If you want you already have all of the tools to leave social media and run a thriving feel good business.

But let's back it up. Let's take this one step at a time. Let’s ease in and start at the very beginning.

[2:49] So in today's episode I want to talk about how we started doing business on Instagram and why we feel like we have to be there.

So we're going to do a little bit of myth-busting around what I like to call that “I have to be on IG” myth.

Now I'll give you a caveat at the very beginning that throughout this episode you're going to hear me talk a lot about Instagram. That's because for me Instagram was the platform where I was doing the most business before I exited social media.

And I'm guessing a lot of you will feel the same way.

Instagram is where many of us went post-Facebook. Instagram is where a lot of people sell their wares and even in Instagram shopping now. So Instagram is kind of my platform of choice, back when I was a social media addict. I truly think of it as addiction a lot of the time but we'll dive into that later.

So you'll hear me say Instagram a lot but please feel free to insert any social media platform that you are struggling with doing business on in place of Instagram. So if you're like Tiktok’s making me feel like shit, every time I say Instagram just hear Tiktok.

If you're like I'm still on Facebook and Facebook ads are ruining my life right now, I hear you. There have been a lot of changes and there probably a lot of reasons for that. We're going to unpack those, but if you hear me say Instagram just think Facebook to yourself.

And if you're doing a lot of business on Twitter I have no idea how but good for you! When I say Instagram just insert Twitter there.

[4:17] On this podcast, as I've already mentioned, I'm going to talk a lot about my experience on social media but that doesn't mean that it's gonna be the same as your experience. It's definitely not.

So I want you to take what you can and leave the rest. Think about how this applies on the platforms that you use and ignore how it doesn't.

This is not a didactic podcast. This is my experience and the experience of the guests I'll have on in future episodes.

It’s meant to be resource, a tool. That doesn't mean it's like going to be your perfect fit or exactly how you experience the world, and that's okay. That'd be boring, truly boring.

Okay so now that I gave you an intro and a giant caveat which is always my tendency let's dive in to some myth-busting.

So today I'm going to walk us through a little Russian nesting doll of myths and I'm going to talk about four myths — or I guess two myths and two experiences — around social media.

[5:13] So we're going to start with the myth that social media platforms tell us as business owners.

Then we're going to talk about the myth that we tell ourselves when we're using social media platforms to sell our offerings or our products.

Then I want to talk about our actual experience of those platforms, and in my fourth one we're going to round it up with the truth about being on social media as a business owner.

So in this episode I'll walk you through those one by one. Let's start with the myth social media platforms tell us.

[5:46] When I think of this I think back to that question I started with — how did I start doing business on Instagram?

Because I got an Instagram in 2011. I'm going to walk us through that whole journey in the next episode but in brief — I joined Instagram because it was like a cool little scrapbook where I could share pictures of my friends and frankly like show off the cool shit I was doing, right. Like I was on Instagram to see what my friends are up to and share what I was up to, and then over time that changed I started being on Instagram to share more of my writing and then I started being on Instagram to sell courses that I was offering and then I started being on Instagram to sell books when my first book came out.

[6:22] And so I started doing business on Instagram little by little and then it really snowballed and all of a sudden I felt like every single post needed to be promoting something, selling something, growing my community, inviting people in so that they would buy something from me and then all of a sudden Instagram had products on it and all of a sudden I was supposed to be selling my products directly through Instagram.

It really is hard to untangle how all that happened when we go back to Instagram before there were ads Instagram before Facebook owned it.

But the myth getting us back to this myth — this first myth, the myth that social media platforms tell us as business owners, is that they are an easy way to sell our offerings,

They’re just like, put your products on Instagram and we'll use our algorithm to help find people who love them and they'll buy them from you it's that easy. That's really I think the myth that these companies are telling us that it is so easy to advertise on social media, and that it's free.

[7:17] Now some of you might be doing Facebook ads or Instagram ads and so you're spending money on these platforms but I think a big part of this myth it were fed is that social media is a free and easy way to market and sell our offerings.

And that leads me to the second myth the myth we tell ourselves.

So we take that myth, you know Instagram says to us I'm a free and easy way to sell your offerings — I don't know it's probably a very different Instagram voice than that that I could get better at if I was a voice actor however…

like all I have to do is make an Instagram post — that's what I tell myself.

Instagram tells me this is free, this is easy, you can sell your stuff on this platform.

I tell myself right now I'll just write an Instagram post. Then maybe I'll tell myself well I guess I'll figure out how to use reels and I'll make a reel. You know it changed things have evolved. Or maybe I got on TikTok and I'm like all right I'm gonna make a TikTok. I'm gonna do a dance and I'm going to put my five favorite products in front of it and I'm going to sell things that way.

We tell ourselves it'll be fun, it'll be easy, it's free! And free is the best when you are trying to start a business with limited capital right?

If you are starting your own business and you don't have a ton of money for marketing or advertising, social media seems like such a great deal.

[8:27] So social media platforms tell us it'll be free and easy. We tell ourselves it'll be free it'll be easy, maybe it'll even be fun.

And we dive right in. We set up our business profiles on Instagram. We work on our content calendars.

I cannot tell you how many people I have seen as early stage business owners who have a beautiful content calendar for Instagram or any social media platform, a gorgeous content calendar, before they even have a website with offerings for sale.

We're in this world now where content comes first before we're even clear on what we are selling or what is the purpose of this business.

[9:02] So that takes us into the third part of these four myths that I'm busting, and that is our actual experience on social media.

I guess we're going to start the myth-busting right now.

[9:11] We tell ourselves that it will be fun, easy, and free to share our work and make sales through social media platforms, but in actuality, I find that most of us spend so much time creating content and posting it and just praying to quote unquote the algorithm — which I feel like it’s capital T Capital A “The Algorithm” at this point right? Like we all talk about it that way like it’s this personified entity we're trying to curry favor with, so that when we do post this thing that we worked so hard on, it will take off. We're hoping that people will see it.

[9:51] But in reality as all of you who might be on Instagram know — if you're listening this and you’re on Instagram I feel positive that you have posted something that did not perform as well as you thought it would or wanted it to.

You have probably posted something at this point that got four likes or 40 likes, you know it depends on the scale of your following what your tiny number is to you, but I cannot tell you how devastating that feels when it happens. I mean I don’t know why I said I can't tell you, because you've probably felt it.

I felt it! Working so hard to write something vulnerable and heartfelt and honest and funny, you know really doing a full emotional journey in one Instagram caption or a 20-second reel, and then I post it and three people like it and nobody shares it and nobody comments on it.

[10:37] And that experience is heartbreaking. I don't want to downplay it. It feels so bad.

And it feels bad for anyone who does that but especially when you're a business owner and that post is meant to somehow tie to something that you're selling for income and that you're selling to make money to pay for your life to have the resources that you need to be happy and healthy in the world.

It adds this whole other layer of like that personal disappointment but also now for me it brings up this economic fear, this anxiety that like oh this post didn't do well so what if I don't sell enough this month.

Well then I need to post more so that maybe more people will see it and I’ll sell more. Or if my post does really well then I’ve still got to post more because I probably need to still be selling more.

I've noticed that in our actual experiences of Instagram the platform, we go back to these nesting dolls & these myths.

The platforms tell us it'll be free and easy to use them to sell our offerings of products.

We tell ourselves it'll be free, easy and fun because we already know how to do it and why can't it be fun to sell our offerings and products in these platforms.

And then in our actual experience, it's really hard. And kind of painful. And we just feel like we always have to be creating more.

The only answer on social media platforms is more and more and more and more. We have to make more posts. We need to be getting more likes and getting more followers. We need to be growing constantly.

[12:05] And some of you listening, myself included, may have done work to unpack that idea of more. You may be able to say to yourself or to me, like Amelia we know that exponential growth is not manageable. I'm not trying to grow a venture capital funded business, I don't need to grow that fast I'm fine with things being slow.

And that's amazing! I agree. Grow slow is one of the founding principles my company.

But I think that even if you have figured that out, the platforms are still pushing it. Everything on Instagram and now especially TikTok is geared toward going viral.

[12:40] Like that's the promise. That's what we're all supposed to be working on, because if we just get something to go viral and do enough numbers we’ll get enough followers and it will transform our business overnight.

And we have that idea because it has happened for people. We have that idea because there have been these select few that we watch just explode overnight. And you know some of them are influencers. We can see like the Charlie D’Amelios of the world on TikTok, but some of them are businesses. You know businesses that are totally created by like making cool TikToks and people find the product and then they just buy it buy it buy it and love it love it love it.

And I don't want to discount that. I know that social media is a game-changing marketing and sales tool for small businesses.

But if you're listening to this podcast I'm guessing that you've hit the point where it feels so bad or so weird or so wrong that you want a different answer, that you feel like you've got to be somewhere else. that this is not working for you. And that's what this podcast is about.

[13:38] Music

Hi Off the Grid friends. Amelia here interrupting myself, because I want to share one of my favorite self-care tools that helps get you off social media.

Have you been listening to these episodes and thinking, all of this is great Amelia but how do I actually stop scrolling?

The instead deck by Inner Workout is for you.

[14:03] If you’ve ever said to yourself, I don't have time for self-care and then found yourself scrolling on social media for hours a day, this card deck is going to be your new best friend.

The Instead deck has 50 cards with bite-sized activities, affirmations, and prompts that will help you infuse self-care into even the smallest moments. Some of my favorite cards say things like — what would you rather be doing? slow down. you don't need social media to be connected. and feel your feet on the floor.

[14:34] When I used to get stuck in the scroll, I loved having the Instead deck nearby. I’d pull out the cards, do a quick shuffle and then I'd pull.

[14:44] Today my card is — document the moment just for you. Off the grid listeners can get ten percent off the Instead deck, using the code OFFTHEGRID. Just head to innerworkout.co/shop to check out, and don't forget to use the code OFFTHEGRID for 10% off.

Let's divest from distraction and reinvest in our self-care, babes. Now we'll get back to this episode of Off the Grid.

[15:16] So this takes me to number four of my four points for today which I like to call the truth about being on social media, which sounds really fancy but it's quite simple —

The truth about being on social media is that it's a choice to be there and that you do not have to be there.

So at the very beginning of this I told you I like to think of these myths as the “I Have to be on IG” myth — just because I like internal rhyme — but the truth about the I Have to be on IG myth that “I Have to Be On IG truth” is that it's a choice to be there and you do not have to be.

[15:48] Now the subtitle of this podcast is leaving social media without losing all your clients / customers which is not there but in my head I say clients slash customers.

So when I tell you don't have to be on social media you might feel a lot of different things you might feel relief you might feel panic, you may feel really annoyed that I'm saying that — like if it was that easy I just wouldn't be there. why are you saying this to me, it just pisses me off. I hear you. I used to feel that way a lot too when I really felt stuck in social.

But the whole point of this podcast, the whole point of the social media toolkit and all of these free resources that I am creating here for us is to help you see the path to leave.

[16:34] Because I think that if you've turned into this podcast you really want to make the choice to leave, you just don't see a way that you can leave. And this first season of Off the Grid is going to help you see the ways that you can leave.

And I want to assure you that there are tons of ways to market your business. There were businesses long before there were social media.

And there will be businesses most likely — barring global climate catastrophe or other apocalyptic event — probably long after social media. There will be businesses or there will be trade or there will be exchange in some way.

I mean frankly hopefully by then we've like crushed capitalism and are no longer using money as our primary form of exchange but barring that there will be businesses.

So throughout the podcast we're going to look to the past and to the future, for creative and exciting ideas and ways to market your business and sell your products and offerings.

I want that sense of possibility to help you feel empowered to choose different ways to Market to make different choices than social media.

And I want to be pretty like radically honest here, like I want to get right to the root of it and say something that I found to be true — which is that when you decide to leave social media you might have to change your business.

It may be the case that you cannot run the exact same business you have right now without being on social media and that's okay.

[18:01] In my experience leaving social media was such a huge moment of growth for me.

And I gained so much by building a business that was not on social media.

You know I started my business on social media, and again I'll walk us through this in the next episode, but I was really selling courses and books and kind of running a sort of influencer educator business on social media. And when I left social media I shut down that business and then I launched this podcast studio months later.

I had to end a business and start a new one to leave social media. But the growth and the beauty in that transition is why I'm here. It's why I'm talking about this.

Because starting a business that was not reliant on social media platforms for clients and customers was a powerful rich juicy wonderful experience that made my life so much better.

[18:58] I'm not saying you have to end your business if you want to leave social media but I am saying at the very beginning of this journey that you might have to change a lot of how you run your business. It might have to change quite a bit, it might not have to change at all. You might be able to run exactly the same business off social that you run on social. But you might have to change things and hopefully we can be open to that throughout this journey.

[19:19] So as I've walked us through we're going to ease toward the end of this podcast. Let's recap these myths that we walked through —

The myth that social media platforms tell us is that we can use them for free and easy marketing and sales for our small businesses.

The myth we tell ourselves is that free and easy marketing and sales will actually be free and easy and maybe even fun.

And that really runs counter to many of our actual experiences, which is that it is time-consuming, draining really hard, and demoralizing.

[19:54] And saying that again I just want to add one more note which is that as I left Instagram I really just started to see how much it runs on this like “cool kids club” model, and how much I was playing into that by being there.

So when you're on social media, I mean you're probably there because you've made friends there. You've made connections there. You've got a cool community running.

But there's still something inherently aspirational about these social media platforms. I think Instagram especially.

Instagram is inherently aspirational. It is always going to keep feeding us the people who are a little bit ahead of us or way ahead of us, and as a result it's always going to make us feel our own lack.

Instagram to me feels like it is designed to keep us chasing something. And it's not just a feeling right? Instagram pays people really good money to keep us on that app like do not leave the screen, do not close out of Instagram itself, and as a result it has to keep us chasing those feedback loops, those feel-good moments, that dopamine rush.

[21:00] But that experience of always chasing makes us feel like we're lacking something. It instills deeper in our psyche I believe, this belief that oh if I'm always chasing it’s because I'm not good enough.

And that ruins our confidence in ourselves and in our businesses. It ruins our belief that we can run a thriving business and that running our business can feel good.

If you're listening to this, I bet that Instagram has made you feel bad. I bet that Tiktok has made you feel bad. I bet that social media at some point has made you feel bad.

Maybe because you posted something that nobody saw. Maybe because you posted something you loved and you got trolled by shitty commenters you had never met before and never talked to since.

Because you saw somebody else post something and it made you feel like shit about something you were really proud of earlier before you saw that post.

The experience of being on these social media platforms it's so often one that ends up making us feel bad.

And I say that as somebody who met some of my best friends on Instagram. I say that as somebody who has had frankly some of the best days of my life on social media, either because I was sharing Amazing Days in the real world on social or because I just had the best day because I made a post that like sparked a conversation that I never would have had otherwise and that I loved and I spent that day in conversation on my phone with people and it was amazing,

I'm not here to discount that Joy, but if you're a feeling like the bad feelings are outweighing that Joy, this podcast is for you.

[22:28] One more thing I want to speak to as we wrap this up is that I think one of the reasons Instagram is so appealing — aside from all of the money and time and energy that social media platforms invest to getting us on them and keeping us on them — I think one of the reasons it's so appealing for us as humans is because we all want to be seen.

Because we all want to share something special that we have to say or do or create or offer with the world, and I think that Instagram implicitly gives us the promise that you can be seen here.

And that promise is so beautiful and like we all want that. We all want to be seen. We all want to be heard, and this platform tells us — look at this beautiful way to be seen and be heard.

And then we get there and then because of our experiences with the way that the algorithm surfaces or doesn't surface posts or doesn't show them to our followers, it's so crushing that you don't actually get to be seen or heard there.

And that was something that I couldn't do anymore. So in the next episode I will talk about the reasons that I left Instagram, which are some of these reasons, they were personal, they were emotional, they were also based on my values.

[23:38] I got to a point in my life and my business where I realized that social media was so misaligned with my values that I couldn't stay there and feel in my integrity.

And if you have a values-based business, if you're leading with your values in your business, I bet it's because you want other people to see and appreciate and reciprocate not only you but also your values.

You want more of those things in the world, and in my experience social media no longer helps me create the world I want to see, and no longer helps me share my values or establish them together or co-create a world where they matter with others.

So I went somewhere else.

[24:15] I left and I started a business that is marketed everywhere but social media … well not everywhere, it’s marketed lots of places but not on social media.

So the first season of Off the Grid is going to be all about all these other places that I took my business and my marketing and my sales and my offerings, and how by making the choice to no longer be on social media, I changed my life.

I’ll say that again — making the choice to no longer be on social media changed my business and my life.

[24:46] So like many first episodes or first pages or openings to a new project or journey, this first episode of Off the Grid is really about a dream, hope, promise or a question.

And that question, the question we're going to explore together, the question I want you to be sitting on & thinking about between episodes & as you listen to episodes while I'm talking or rambling and while you're watching me or listening to me, the question is —

what would your business be like if you were no longer on social media?

What would your business be like if you were no longer on social media?

By the end of this podcast or this first season of this podcast at least, you should have an answer to that question. If you listen & you engage, if you work the toolkit that path will become clear.

And I'll add that if you listen to this and at the end you're like I don't want to leave social media that was silly, that’s great! That's fine. I'm not here to make you leave social media. If it's working for you that's awesome, but if it's not working for you…This is a podcast for you.

[25:49] This is a podcast for people who feel like they want to leave social media platforms and run thriving feel-good businesses but they can't see the path forward. But you can't see the path forward.

And I'm here to help us find the path forward.

Mostly because I'm just a couple steps ahead on it. I don't have a whole highway map of how this is going to go. I've got like a flashlight and I can like look back over my shoulder and see you behind me on the journey. We're in this together.

And I'm going to bring on guests and business owners and service providers and lots of just wonderful brilliant people to help us work through how we might leave social media, and to help you hear different solutions and different experiences that you can relate to as you find your path forward.

So as I wrap up this first episode… I've said that about four times now but we are actually at the end now y'all.

As we wrap up I want to invite you again to go download that leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig

And I want to ask you to subscribe to this podcast and send this first episode to a friend who at some point in time has told you that social media was making them feel weird or bad.

If you have a friend who has ever said to you, I'm taking a break from social media I’ve got to get off here or I really want to leave but I don't know how, please send them this episode. Please open the conversation together, of why you feel like you have to be on social media even if it doesn't feel good.

[27:18] Let this 30-minute podcast episode be an opportunity to have that conversation together.

[27:25] Why do you feel like you have to be on social media even if it doesn't feel good?

[27:29] And then let that conversation lead you to other parts of your life and ask — why am I doing this if it doesn't feel good? why am I doing this if it goes against my values? why am I doing this it makes me feel like shit all the time, or even just half the time?

We're going to start here with social media asking this question of why am I doing this if it doesn't feel good.

But the ripples of asking that with social media go so much farther in our lives. When we practice asking that question here we can start to ask it and bigger and bigger ways.

We can start to change our lives, our businesses and the world. I really think we can do that together.

So now that I've just said we're going to change the world together by leaving social media — big claim bold promise here we go — now I'm going to sign off and let you know…

Future episodes of Off the Grid will come out on Wednesdays while we're in season, and next time in episode 2 I will be sharing the story of how I left Instagram and how you can too.

Until then, I’ll see you off the grid

Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free leaving social media toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That’s softer sounds dot studio / b y e IG.

[28:55] This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by purple planet and our logo is by n'Atelier studio. If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help.

[29:06] Learn more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time we'll see you off the grid.