What If You Never Posted on Instagram Again?

When I show up in person, and I meet people and

I create connections in that actual, in real life environment

that contributes

This is the entrepreneur school podcast where we believe you can

run a thriving business and still make your family a

priority. This show is all about supporting you, the emerging or

early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur to CEO

while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is

Kelly Sinclair, and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who

started a business with two kids under three. I'm a corporate PR

girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life

is too short to waste doing things that burn you out on this

show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business

owners on their journey and learn strategies to help you

grow a profitable business while making it all fit into the life

that you want. Welcome to entrepreneur school.

So for those of you who don't know, who might not be on my

email list already, this summer, I tried an experiment, I quit

social media like zero posting. I'm talking, no Instagram posts,

no stories, no LinkedIn, no Facebook. I didn't post anything

personally. I don't really use my personal channels anyways,

but I've shared insights from this experiment to my email list

over the course of the summer, and today I am unpacking it all

the impact on my business and my personal life. My advice for

you, if you are thinking about doing a social detox and the big

question, will I be rejoining the world online? So stick

around until the end, because I think my answer might surprise

you.

So welcome back to entrepreneur school. I am really excited to

share this episode with you. I want to give you a little bit of

context before we get into it. I mean, if you've been here for

any length of time. You know that I always talk about

visibility strategies that don't rely on social media, and that's

because, for me, social media has never been my primary source

of leads or sales. I just don't get clients from there. I don't

focus on content creation for virality reasons, for algorithm

feeding for that kind of thing, it just doesn't align with how I

want to show up, and therefore it doesn't work as a strategy

for me. What I've used it most for is to amplify other things

that I'm doing. So I look at social media as a communication

channel where I have an additional opportunity to

leverage and talk about what's happening elsewhere. So I'll

share my podcast episodes, repurpose content, and also the

one thing I do like about it is the ability to stay connected

with people, and for me, that's mostly collaborators and peers

and less so clients and potential clients. So I knew

going into this that stepping away wasn't about cutting off my

main pipeline. It was just about testing whether social was

really contributing to anything measurable or just eating up

time and mental energy.

So I want to share a little bit about, like, some of the

personal wins that I've had over the summer. Which PS, how was it

over how were my kids back at school? How has the sun stopped

creating that lovely heat that we only have for like, six weeks

up here in Alberta. It always goes by too fast, right? We say

that every single year. But here's my big accomplishment,

everybody, are you ready? I read five books. I read five books

this summer on my new Kindle, which is my current new

obsession. I learned how to wake surf like, actually, without the

rope, like the feeling when you are being pulled behind a boat

and you got like that floating on water thing going on. It's

just next level fun. And I don't know I I dream about that. I

dream about next summer when I can go back and do it again. I

also played more golf, which was a goal that I had. I sunk a 50

foot birdie putt last week, which was really amazing, mostly

because my husband had the same shot as me, and he did not sing

his poet. So I will be rubbing that in for probably the rest of

time. Yeah. And I got out on my bike. I got myself a new

bicycle, a gravel bike to ride more like distances to go out

riding in the mountains, like not trail riding, but like paved

pathway riding in the beautiful mountains. And I'm really

excited about that. So all of these things have contributed

to, just like more living, more happiness. And I mean, watching

my kids enjoy themselves, doing things that they love, going to

camps, learning and getting better at the skills that has

really been so fulfilling. And this sense of ease is just

really carried into how I'm showing up for my business. I

think you know, one of the things that I have been sticking

to for this year is that I'm only doing things that feel like

a hell yes. And that was why it was easy to say no to social

media, because it just doesn't feel like a hell yes for me. Mm,

for me, and that's in part because of my what I know about

myself and my human design, and how this affects everything else

that I do within my business, and the overall energy

frequency, like vibration, that I have because I've been able to

focus more on these fun, exciting, personal things for

the summer, it's just spilling over into some amazing ways, and

I just let that ease and alignment follow through with

everything that's been happening in my Business.

So let's talk about the business impact. Honestly, it's wins,

wins, wins, wins all around this was my best summer income in

four years. It's not like a six figure summer, anything wild

like that, but for me, I've had a lot of transitions and shifts

happening in the last four years, and this has been the

I signed two private clients to do visibility strategy and AI

integration with I hosted a very successful AI workshop

showcasing my new tool, the brand calibrator, which is the

system and process for creating extreme clarity for yourself,

but also training AI to understand your brand so that I

can represent you better and sound more like you when you're

using it to create content or build out business strategies or

whatever you're using it to do. And that was amazing. And also I

have to, I'll speak more to that. I think I'm gonna do a

whole episode in the future about that workshop and the

brand calibrator process. But when I think about how ease and

alignment have showed up for this summer, and how leaning

into the enjoyment side of things flowed into my business.

This was a perfect example. It was a request that came from a

speaking opportunity that I did in May. And I said, Yes, I would

love to do that. And she said, Okay, let me go and find all the

people for you to do this workshop together so that we can

sort of collaborate and split the fee. And I was like, Great,

that sounds easy. I didn't have to market it. I didn't have to

sell it. I got E transfers from them. It didn't even pay a

credit card processing fee and set up a checkout like. I was

like, let's just let this be literally as easy as possible,

and it was, and it evolved into the perfect thing at the perfect

time. And it was just incredible, honestly, and I got

some amazing testimonials and feedback from all of the ladies

who are health and wellness practitioners. So shout out to

all of you, if any of you are listening from that workshop.

And it was just so fun.

And honestly, being in person with people, you can hear it in

my voice right now, really ignites me. It gets me so fired

up, and it is a total perfect fit for me and my energy. And

another one of the wins was speaking at a conference in

person in July. I love it. I just love it. And I know that

when I show up in person, and I meet people, and I create

connections in that actual, in real life environment that

contributes to moving the needle so much faster, like creating

that trust, building relationships and having

creating opportunities way faster when I do that. So I know

the ROI is way higher for those types of visibility activities

for me. And then some of the other things that I was able to

secure. I have a paid speaking opportunity coming up in the

fall that I created this summer, I secured two exciting

sponsorships for upcoming events that are happening. Learning

that you'll hear all about. And then I also just kept staying

visible in my other usual ways, booking podcast guest spots,

being confirmed in bundle collaborations and summits, and

keeping networking conversations moving, keeping building

relationships with people, and all of that happened without

Instagram.

So, yeah, let's talk about the challenges, though. Because, of

course, there were some challenges, or even just like

sticky feelings. I guess I felt the pull to check in a little

bit, especially at first, because I was like, did anybody

even see that I was going off social. Like, what I did was I

put a big three grid up, like pinned post that just said,

sorry I missed you. I'm not here right now. And I didn't even set

up any automations to be like, here's where you can find me. It

was just like, look at my links. Like, I just kept it so simple,

honestly, but one day was featured as part of other

collaborations, like podcasts that I had been on that went

live this summer. I did want to make sure that if they had

tagged me or added me as if collaborator on their post, I

did reshare that, because that's not about me, that's about them,

and I want them to get the exposure that they deserve to

get. So that's where I was feeling a little bit more of the

like, this is the gray area. Is this cheating? I'm not cheating.

I'm just going to re share this post. I also still used IG for

DMS here and there, when I was starting to build my bundle

that's coming out here on September 12, I needed to find

contributors, and a lot of the time that's just the main and

most easily accessible contact for people. So I was using DMS

to do some of that outreach, and then occasionally jumped on

Instagram for entertainment purposes and scrolled some

reels, and I actually found it a little bit like research. I was

doing some personality infusion into my brand calibrator, and I

was like wanting to remember some of the like experiences and

things that are clearly relatable to me as a millennial,

so nothing like a good scroll through Instagram reels to

really feel that.

So I pulled a couple of stats to share. I don't know if these are

super relevant without a lot of context, especially considering

I never really look at my Instagram stats. I since I

didn't post anything at all since July 1, and I just pulled

a like views statistic from July 1 to August 26 which is the date

content. And I don't know to you, you're like, that's not a

of something. So I'll take it. I don't think that's terrible, but

overall, the profile activity, of course, went down. It does

say that profile activity was down 44% from the previous

period. So honestly, I don't even know how to feel about

that. I just wanted to openly share the numbers because, of

course, there's going to be, like, a negative impact for me,

algorithm perspective, right? And I don't know if I do go back

on social media, I'll be curious to compare these numbers a

little bit and look a little bit more at the data. But

essentially, the experiment was to confirm my own hypothesis

that the real needle movers in my business are not social media

related. So it definitely did that so advantages that I

noticed, the pressure, the feeding the algorithm that just

went away. I was not like, Oh no, it's Tuesday. I have to make

sure that I post my podcast social media post, which is like

part of my normal habit, or Wednesday I need to do this, or

whatever I need to do this, like there was just so much less I

have to, or I need to, or I should pressure on so many

things because of making this decision, and I replaced my

entire like device habit, actually.

So because, like I said, social media isn't something that I

really do personally, like, I only have social media accounts

for the purpose of, you know, having an online presence for my

business. I don't use my personal Instagram. Gram ever

like the last picture on there is from over six years ago, and

so therefore I associate it for myself with work, right? So

whenever I'm like, Oh, I have to go on social media, that's work.

And that's me working at all kinds of hours of the day, and

having really a lot of boundary slips around that. So what I

found that I did this summer was, instead of picking up my

phone to look at social media and check Instagram, I just

picked up my Kindle. And that's why I read five books, because

clearly the the habit is already there to pick something up to

like fill a void of time. But if you read 10 minutes, however

many times a day you might pick that device up, you can read a

lot of books, and I feel so much happier having read books

honestly than having spent time scrolling. Because you know that

guilty feeling once you're like, Oh, I just lost an hour of my

life to Instagram reels. That's great sometimes. If, if you want

to do that, that's cool. But like, if you're finding yourself

feeling that addiction, which I know is definitely something

that happens with a lot of people a lot of the time, then

the whole idea of, like, replacing a device with

something else that you have handy, like a book or a Kindle,

amazing. And so honestly, everything just felt easier,

like I said, getting new clients felt easier, setting up, making

things happen like it just felt easy. And I leaned into letting

it feel easy, which led to more things feeling easy. And it just

has had this amazing positive ripple effect of ease

everywhere. And I am not even joking, it's just so good, and

it was a good reminder, of course, that the real traction

for me comes from the other visibility strategies that I

consistently do.

So let's just talk about like, what did it actually look like

for me to be continuing to make progress, move the needle and

get visible and create new opportunities for myself over

the course of the summer without using social media? So this is

my 10 minute a day visibility habit. I've been doing it for

years. It continues to stay simple. It's not fancy. It's not

about batching giant campaigns and scheduling out a whole bunch

of things for all these platforms, but it's about

spending 10 minutes a day doing something that actually makes a

difference and makes an impact for you. And now I, of course,

am using AI in a lot of ways to make it faster and easier, and

so some days that means writing a quick email draft with chatgpt

that is customized to me thanks to my brand calibrator, or

creating an event speaker pitch in half the time. So things like

I said, I know if I go speak in person or even do a summit

presentation, that is huge for being able to create

relationships. So when an opportunity comes up and there's

like, all these all this paperwork or these big forms to

fill out, I can do them so much faster because I have built in

systems within AI to help me do that. So it's not taking me

longer, just because it's a bigger visibility opportunity,

it's taking me just as long as it would have to write a social

media post, but I'm going to get more value out of it in the end.

And the other things that I might be doing are drafting

collaborator outreach messages without overthinking. And it's

just 10 minutes a day consistently, and that's what

keeps me visible without overwhelm. And if you want to

try this for yourself, I want you to go and grab the 90 day

visibility sprint starter kit. It is the link in the show

notes, and it's free AI powered, and it will help you pick the

kinds of activities that will have the biggest ROI and impact

for you in your business. Because, again, this is all

about what's aligned for you. If you are into speaking, let's get

you some more speaking opportunities. If you like

networking and meeting people in person, let's make sure you're

getting into more rooms. How do you do that? Right? Focus on the

things that move the needle for you. I've never written the same

visibility strategy twice in over 15 years of writing these

kinds of plans for clients. So it needs to be totally

customized to you.

All right, so let's wrap up with my advice, should you try going

off social media? Maybe that's the answer. Maybe, here is my

thoughts. First, be honest about whether social is already a core

drive. Easier for your business. If it's your top source for

clients, don't cut it off. This is not an all or nothing

solution. This is if you are already noticing that social

media is not producing the kinds of results that you want it to

for the effort that you're putting in. Let's look at other

options. It's kind of like if you're not sure it's really

working, then treat it like an elimination diet, right? Remove

it, and you'll quickly see if it makes a difference. It's worth

considering as well. If social feels more like an obligation

than a driver for you, and you suspect that your time could get

higher ROI elsewhere. So those are kind of the check marks for

you to think about as to whether or not you want to continue on

the platform. And you don't have to go all or nothing either,

right? Like, there's no rules. I could have said, I'll just post

whenever I want in the summer, and call that an experiment, but

I thought, you know, as somebody who talks all the time about

visibility without relying on social media. What better way to

really prove my point and do an experiment than to just cut it

off entirely?

So so now for the big question, Will I go back on Instagram?

Dun? Dun, dun. My answer is probably, but definitely

differently, like I now know for sure that social media is a

nurture channel. For me, it is a place for repurposing content,

so stuff that I'm already doing elsewhere, that I can easily use

AI to convert into a different format so that I can post it and

share it in another medium. I don't see a downside to that.

It's also a great place for me to connect with collaborators,

peers, people who I want to stay top of mind with, and stay like

knowing what's going on with them in their lives, but it's

not where I'm putting my growth energy. My growth comes from my

10 minute a day visibility habit with my AI supported systems,

and doing the things that I know move the needle, like speaking

and being on stage and the thought leadership that I can

create through this podcast, even so, I will remind you again

my big lesson, my big mantra and philosophy is that visibility is

not about volume, it's about alignment, relationships and

consistency, and you can build that in as little as 10 minutes

a day.

So don't forget to go and grab the 90 day visibility sprint

starter kit. You will also find from me. Soon as of September

12, I'll be launching the ease in alignment with AI bundle,

which is a collaborative effort of 30 plus contributors bringing

their very best AI supported tools and systems for you to use

to simplify and create more ease and alignment in your life. And

I can't wait to talk to you soon about my brand calibrator, and

how using that in your AI versus prompt roulette, basically will

help you to make AI sound more like you, not like chatgpt on

shuffle, and so that you can start using AI in way more

advanced and effective ways than simply polishing an email to

sound more professional or just editing something that you've

already written like let's get you 90% of the way there on the

first prompt instead life changing. So excited. Can't wait

to tell you more about it, as with anything AI related, it's

always very time changing, right? Like in the week before

my workshop, chatgpt launched an entire new model, and it changed

how everything worked. So I'm keeping this very like in the

moment, sharing with you what the updates are, so that you'll

hear what's most relevant based on the actual timing of what's

available on the tools that we have for us right now. So can't

wait to talk to you again next week. Bye for now.