Love The Organic Growth Episode

[MUSIC] Welcome to "Love You To The Core Podcast," hosted by Zanthi and Frank Applayard, where the boundaries between business and pleasure simply do not exist. Every episode is your permissions left to bring your whole self to the table, trusting your community to love you, anyway. We'll go first. [MUSIC] Hello and welcome back to "Love You To The Core Podcast," who is Zanthi and Frank Applayard. >> Hello. >> Hello. So glad to be here. Another rainy day in Barcelona. >> This is rainy day. Oh, I don't know. 90 out of 93, it feels like. >> Yeah, but we actually had a really beautiful week. We had a beautiful week. I shouldn't complain. We had such a nice week. We had a friend visiting. It was really lovely. I feel like it really reminded me that the work week is a construct. Like, there's no day that you can't go and have fun. There's no day that you can't work if you need to. >> Because I've been grabbing pockets to be able to do certain things, because I wanted to be very present with Ashwood shoes here. >> The real words to live by there. There's no day that you can't work. >> Which means there's no day that you can't play. >> Yes. >> It's very important. It's like that, the quote that's like the Jackville trades master of none. It's like that's only half the quote, but everyone remembers just the part that's negative. Do you know it? >> I think we've talked about it a lot. >> We have spoken about it. >> Jackville trades master than none. Something better than. >> Master one. It's often him better than the master one. >> Yeah. Anyways, everyone's always like, Jackville trades master done. It's like, no, it's actually supposed to be positive. In that case, any day can be a play day. It was actually what I was going with that. >> I like that one. >> If you quote me, quote that part. But we are in a really exciting episode. We're in the episode right now. >> We're in it. >> You're here. >> We're in it. We're going to talk about organic growth. The reason why I wanted to share this with you in this format is because I have a lot to talk to you about it. I actually started to write a post last week on this experience that I've had over the last couple of weeks, which is that of pretty substantial growth through my Instagram account. >> What's been really interesting about that growth is that there has been no catalyst for that growth other than showing up and creating good content. That's never happened to me before. I will say all the other growth spurts, I shouldn't say that's never happened before. All the growth that I've experienced has essentially been through the same method. But what I've noticed in the past is usually when there's a big spike in following, it's because there's been some kind of virality. Even if you're posting and you're showing up, things are going really well to receive five thousand and 10,000 followers at once is probably because something out of the ordinary is happening. >> Yeah. >> That has been true for me in the past for sure. I definitely have grown from viral posts. I've also grown from strategies. >> Challenges? >> Well, the challenges. Actually, taking a hands-on approach to growth strategy, which still I would say is organic, but it's very much more like the intention was growth. I think what's been interesting about this season is the intention was not growth, but the growth happened anyways. So I've been looking back at like, okay, why is that what's been happening? I was going to write a post about it last week. As I got to writing, I was like, this is way too long for a post. There's so many things I want to say. I think there's a lot of nuance to it that's important to explain. There's actually a lot of things that I want to share with you from my perspective, but also invite you to reflect on for your own content. Because this is obviously, yes, it is an experience that I am uniquely having. But all of this is super replicable. However, the actual way and the method that you do it will probably be different than the method that I did it, which I'll explain why that is, but I'm also going to help you to figure out how to do it. So it's going to be a really good conversation, but also another reason why we wanted to cover it on the pod is because this follows in a thread of conversation that we've been having on this podcast over the last couple of years. We've been doing it for one year and a bit. As you hold up two fingers. >> Not two. >> Say one and a bit. >> One and a bit. >> It is not two. >> No. >> But needless to say, the last time, several, while, the last several while that we've been doing this pod, we've been talking about these topics. And one of them is the idea of paid advertising through meta, like meta ads, as something that is like kind of questionable, ethically, for a lot of reasons. >> Meta and questionable ethics, you say? >> Well, so. >> I know. >> So we've talked about that on the podcast. Before, we've also talked about the implications of AI and our feelings about that. And what's interesting is I just came across an article a couple of days ago about how AI, it was like an article about someone who quit working for AI. Like they were working for AI and they left seemingly because the morals were questionable. I'm not sure if that's exactly why. But the conversation that they were having was so interesting and was very parallel to what we gleaned from when I read "Careless People," which was basically that the data that these companies are using, whether it's through the AI channels or the, and I say AI channels, it's like the data that they pick up is based on what you're searching, or sorry, what you're using ChatGbT4 or whatever, like if you're typing into ChatGbT saying like, hey, I'm worried that my husband is cheating on me, like blah blah blah whatever, whatever, draw my ear like, hashing out with the fucking robot, they're taking that. And they're then using that data to sell you ads. Of course. And the same thing goes for social media, which we learned about through "Careless People," one of the things that I highlighted when we did our episode around that was like basically teenagers, young girls, young, I mean, any gender, but I think young women was the stat that they were specifically pulling up. And like the kind of beauty and body insecurities that they have that they're potentially searching for or you know, following people in reflection of is basically being used to sell to them, right? So like if you are looking up like, I don't know, plastic surgery or pro-Anna, like any of those types of things, you're going to then be targeted for we loss or you know, any of these types of things. And so the thing that's sticky about that is like, yeah, obviously that's really fucked up on the half of the corporation. But if we buy ads, if we use ads, we're buying that data. Like we're buying access to that data and that data is being mined from people's insecurities. I don't really want to pay for that. I would really prefer if everything that happens within my business and everything that happens within my socials is, I mean, as close to my personal ethics as it possibly can be, which means that like any data I'm using is data that I'm learning through relationship, through connection, through trust, you know, not through spying. You know what I mean? Because ultimately that's what it is. And so I always do kind of like struggle to have this conversation, not struggle, but I understand the nuance. I can understand that paying for advertising is something that can make a break of business in some circumstances or at least that's something that we've been led to believe. But I want to basically be evidence of the opposite. So I, we've never sold a product through paid ads to this day. We dabbled in ads very, very, very, very briefly and we didn't see any return. Like, actually zero, which isn't to say like it was it was it was very much like let's, you know, let's just see whatever. This was before I kind of had all this understanding of like how was working behind the scenes and basically as soon as we kind of learned more about it through, you know, these articles and whatnot. I was like, you know what? Let's just not go down that path. Yeah. And so anyways, we haven't been. But what's interesting again is when we comes to growth, right? When it comes to actually seeing audience growth, especially on Instagram, a lot of times ads can help with that, right? Because you're driving traffic to your page. Other things that can help a lot with that are trial reels and a lot of people are kind of calling trial reels like free ads. Like it's like it's kind of like running ads for your business for free, which I'm not against. I actually think that's kind of cool. Mind you, of course, like the new ones of that is like they're using the same fucking data, but you're not paying for it, which is different. So all that is to say, there is no trial real strategy happening here. I don't use trial reels, not because I think there's anything wrong with them, but because I just do not have the time. And it's not that I don't have the time is that I don't want to give my time to that. And I say I don't want to give my time to that. I mean, I don't want to give my time to creating pounds and pounds and pounds and pounds of content just to see what sticks. I like a focused strategy. I like to feel like I'm very confident every piece I'm putting out. I think there's a lot that we have to learn about what our audience wants. And yet takes time. And yet, perhaps throwing spaghetti at the wall for months and months and end could give you that information or you could learn it from somebody who can help you. Okay, me or anybody, anybody else. And but I have that information. I have that knowledge. I've been doing this for such a long time that I feel equipped to kind of create the strategy I want to create within the capacity that I have, which is also what I teach. And so it feels very like in integrity to me to be able to say like, look, you can grow. And you don't have to post more than you have capacity for. You don't have to take on any like wild banana strategy. You don't do anything different. Like the strategy that I'm care that has carried me in the season of growth is the strategy that I will continue to do because it's a strategy that I have time for. And I always will have time for I can assume like, you know, barring any kind of like illness or anything like, you know, really substantial change within my lifestyle, but like within the current lifestyle I have within the current schedule I have. I can sustain this. And I wanna know that the growth I'm receiving is sustainable, right? I wanna know that I can leverage this or I can lean into this anytime that I want to have those boosts or I want to have that, even just a steady influx of new people over time, over years. Totally. So all that is to say, that is what the strategy is about. There's no ads involved, there was no trial, reals involved, and I didn't even have any post go viral. And the results were within 30 days exactly. I gained 1,700 Instagram followers. So that's organic. And I know it's funny because we hear people say, "Oh, I gained 6,000 followers in this much time," or whatever, "Those are big numbers for sure." But growing, almost 2,000 is significant and it hasn't stopped. So actually now at the time that I'm having this conversation with you, it's been about six weeks and it just keeps growing. Like every couple of days, I like, it's 100 more, 100 more, 100 more. And I mean, not surprising because the strategy's not changing, right, I'm just sticking to the plan. Just continuing to show up in the same way. You can assume that perhaps that growth will continue happening. And even if it doesn't, that's fine, you know. Even if it slows, it's still significant boost and it's a significant shift in energy, which you can really feel when you have new people coming into your space. And so anyways, we're going to talk about how I did it and we're going to talk about how you can do it too. Me? You. Frank's going to play the role of listener. Yes. A.K. I am you. I'm an audience member for the purposes of this. Yeah, because Frank's not sharing it. Do you know what I'm going to say? Would you like my organic growth tips? Let me tell you everything. No, but you can. Yeah. So Frank's going to kind of like MC and ask questions, potentially. Choice moments throughout this combo. Yeah. OK, so just to rehash the numbers as we get into it, 1700 brand new people found their way into my online space. Since since. Well, within 30 days. OK. And the dates that were like, it was like January 2nd to February 2nd. Great. So January pretty much. Yeah, exactly. And so zero viral posts, zero trial reels, zero ads. Oh, sorry, January 2nd February 1st. So literally January. OK. Yeah, the month of Jan, excluding the holiday, New Year's. So this is that these are the numbers that I actually did post, which I think is interesting. 20 posts total. So that averages to about four a week. Yeah. And it wasn't always four a week. It was like sometimes more sometimes last like there was one week where I think I did two. There was another week where I think I did six. So that's beside the point, but total 20 of those 20, 14 were carousels, six videos. OK. And I thought that was particularly interesting because I do think there's still a ton of conversation around like video is the only way to grow. No. Obviously, no. The interesting thing is my videos almost had very had very little to do with. It's about to ask what in terms of performance, how did the videos rank versus the carousels? Yeah, low. Like I went through and I looked at all of the different, I looked at all the different posts, like the individual ones and the actual spectrum of growth was, I wrote it down here, I think I'm going to see it. I'll find it later. But I'll say it will come up throughout the conversation. But it was something like around, yeah, I'm actually going to pull it up right now because it's going to annoy me if I don't have the stats. It was basically, I think 300 was the highest and one was the lowest. And there was only one post where it got where I actually got zero, which was one of my reels. That was like over three minutes, which is funny because Instagram says like, we don't push your reels over three minutes to new followers or whatever. And it's like, yeah, they do not. No, they don't. So now we know. But with that said, six videos, yeah. And the videos themselves were quite low on the growth spectrum. But the interesting thing is like out of those 20 posts, every single one except that one video resulted in at least one follower. It's amazing. And I think that's something that's so interesting to note, right? It's like persistence, like just keep going. You will see people come. And obviously there's ups and downs, but we'll get to that. Okay. Those are kind of the numbers. And like I said, I was doing an average of four a week, some less, some more. But I wasn't thinking about quantity as a benchmark. Like my goal was never to post a certain amount. It was just, what do I have the capacity to create this week? And basically making that decision and then executing on that decision very quickly. So for example, I would actually look up and say, okay, this week, I have the capacity to create four great posts. And I'm going to be able to create those four great posts within the next day or two and then just roll them out throughout the week. But some weeks I was like, oh, I have the capacity to create two right now. So I'll just create two really good posts, roll them out. I obviously was traveling during that time, went to their treat. So that was one of the times that was a little slow. I also did have that there was the one week where everything was going on in Minnesota. And so we kind of had a bit of a pivot. Like it was just like, you know what, I'm actually going to create content that I hadn't planned to create, which is a pork folks with that. But other than that, it was pretty consistently just like, here's what I have capacity to create this week during the time that I've given myself to batch. And batch, I say like, I prep, you know, all my captions at once. And then usually I'll edit or I'll like design my carousels kind of throughout the week as they're happening. Sometimes I'll prep them, just depends. But point is, I was judging myself based on what quality I could produce, not what quantity. So not like I have to get five out every week, but I have to get good posts out every week. Yes. If you're proud of these, I have to know that they're going to do their job. And so if for some reason that quality piece was going to be jeopardized, then I would space things out to maintain the momentum. And this is something that I always have done, but it's like for some reason it's clicking in my mind like far, far more powerfully this year, where, and I think it is because I'm giving myself a little bit more of that prep time where I'll look and say, okay, I have three really good posts prepared right now. I could post them all Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And then suddenly be like, oh, I have to create more or a few like, I have to create more. Or I could say, okay, I have three really good posts. I'm going to do two this week. And then I'm not going to even post that third one until I've prepped more. Like I'm not going to let myself run out of content. Yes. That has been a really big shift. Now, does that have to do with growth specifically, not necessarily, but that process is what maintains the momentum. And I know for sure that the momentum is what's kind of having an influence on that growth. Yes. One thing that's really interesting too is that I think folks would potentially argue or be keen to explore whether or not very niche content is kind of a catalyst for this, right? Because a lot of people are like, oh, well, if you only create one niche, you're going to grow faster whatever. No, because I had some posts about random shit. Like I had a personal style post. Like I had posted it wasn't all social media posts, right? Any means. And even those ones I saw growth on. So it was really interesting. Like there was no, no, like you wouldn't look at one carousel about personal style and another carousel about social media. Either one of those was significantly like more or less engagement, more or less say it was all about what the post itself was giving to the person. Which is going to be my first phase. We'll get there though. Okay. I'm giving a lot of build up. We're on a journey. We're on a journey we are. So this is one thing that I just wanted to kind of preface the conversation with which is organic growth, hates rules. I know these are fact organic growth hates rules. Forced growth doesn't hate rules as much, right? When you are forced or I say forced. What do you mean forced? I mean, I think trial reels is forced growth. Okay. I think trial reels is like you are like you must post a hundred bajillion trial reels. You want to grow because you have to more is more because you need to make sure that at least one sticks, you know, right. But with organic growth, it's not about how many. It's about how well, right? And so forcing a specific cadence, making unsustainable commitments, that's usually what keeps me from growing versus saying like I almost holding myself to like a standard and making commitments based on again, quality, how I want to feel on creating how I want other people to feel on creating like there's other things that come first before like five times a week. Like it's not about quantity at all. So here's what I actually did. These are kind of like the three main pieces that I'm going to go deep on each one of them. The first one is I focused on one specific metric, but I know yields growth for me. Okay. So I wasn't focused on growth. I was not creating any post with the goal of growth. I did not say, hmm, will this get me more followers? I said, will this get me blank, which I'll tell you about in a minute. Drinking me along. I am. The next one was I created in response to what my audience actually needed. I wasn't guessing. And I also wasn't pivoting randomly because I think what happens a lot when we're trying to grow is we see a post that does well. Like we see, oh my god, that post got me like 300 followers. I have to create my next post. Yes. Just like that. Yes. And I was like, no, I don't give a shit what happened to last post. I give a shit what I know my audience needs next. Not about what just happened, but what about what is like currently presently required? Yep. The third one was I kept going. Like I just prioritized my momentum within my capacity, which is sort of what I was speaking to before, but again, I'll get a bit deeper into it. So prioritizing momentum within my capacity. So I was like, I'm going to just continue. I'm going to persist. And I'm not going to stretch myself too thin to do that. I'm not going to sacrifice anything to do that. If anything, I'm going to like start squirreling away content so that I can prepare. So those were the three pillars of the strategy that really mattered when it came to these results. And so that's what we're going to talk about. Okay. Okay. Number one. Number one. Growth was not the goal. it was a byproduct of a different goal. Which was. So I mentioned that we all have a metric that fuels growth. So if you look back at your most popular posts, like your posts that resulted in the most growth, you will find out what that metric is. And so if you look at the posts that have resulted in the most follows, the question that I would have you ask is what was the outcome that that post was offering to your audience? So for me, that metric is action. I know that as long as I'm creating things that give my people something to do, growth always follows. I have tons of data to support that. But I have a lot of clients where that's not necessarily the case. I'm touching the pillow. I'm self-susant. I don't know if touching is the word soothing with my fuzzy pillow. Yeah. So for me, the metric is action. And I know that for some of my clients, that's not the case. So for some clients, it's mindset, it's inspiration. It's like sometimes it can be a motivation. So it can be any number of sensations, emotions, whatever. But what is the connection? Can you go back and find that connection? If you've seen, whether even if it's through virality, even if it's through fucking ads, whatever, any post that you've ever created that you've seen, people actually click follow because of what do they have in common? And so with this in mind, we can think about what metric represents that. So for me, action, that's what I want to create. I want people to be able to take action from my post. I can track whether or not that's be effective through saves. So for example, I could track it through people telling me, but that would be harder to quantify quickly. So I said, when I started the month of Jan, I actually posted on threads. You can find, you can fact check this. I posted on threads. I said, I'm only focusing on one metric. It saves. If I create something and you want to say, like, if I create anything, it has to be saveable and I have to know exactly why someone would save this. And I'm going to check with every single post only on my saves. I'm not looking at my shares. I'm not looking at my likes. I'm not looking at my comments because I got an answer. But I'm not quantifying them dramatically. I'm not looking at followers. I'm just looking at saves. And the thing that's crazy about that is like the frame, even just having that reference point, like, you know, we might think, let's say for example, right, on the spectrum. For me, if I'm getting like in at the likes around like hundreds, like 100 ish, that's pretty low. Like that would be to meet for my standards because of the size of community I have, that's low. But if I'm getting 100 saves on something, that's significant. Yeah. And so it's interesting, right? Because we start to be able to look for the metrics that actually matter and like kind of ignore the ones that don't. So yeah. A question for you. So you're focusing on saves, saves being the thing that is most related to action in this sense. Why not shares? Like because I would have thought that as a growth tool, if someone's seeing your post and sharing it to with their friends, like DMing it to someone else, that is what is actually expanding your audience or your your viewership, right? Yeah. So that's so funny because it's literally a next point, which is saves don't influence the algorithm or lead to more views in the same way that shares do shares do influence the algorithm. Like there's like Adam Mocey area has said many times, like shares are what drives reach. Yes. I wasn't trying to get reach. So I was not focusing on reach. I was out focusing on growth. If I said I want, if I was, if I had set forth and said growth is my goal, then I would be focusing on shares through the lens of like like like tactic, tactically or technically that there's a relationship there. But I don't necessarily believe that shares result in the most organic growth for me because that's not necessarily the type of content that converts quote unquote people into my audience. Right. So for example, like, okay, I'm going to use lowest in my as an example because they've had so many incredible viral carousels about creative living and about their perspective around creativity. And it's very, very mindset shifting, very perspective shifting. So I would say for someone like that, the outcome that creates growth for them is this feeling of holy fuck me to I believe in this. Let's go. And then the action that they usually take in connection to that probably is sharing, but also commenting and then just following regardless, right? And your post doesn't have to get again, doesn't have to go by her filter resultant follows like many, many, many posts that they share, you know, through they have like a whole system where they share tons of different posts and a lot of them go viral, but some don't, but either way, the resulting in growth because people are seeing it and they are experiencing whatever it is that they need to experience to be sort of like invited into that world. Right. And for me, it's actually education that advice people into my world. Like it's when people see and they can learn from me and they see how I teach that's actually what converts them versus with my and Lois. It's like, we want to hear people need to see how they think people need to see kind of like what they believe in because they're creating more like of this movement, right? Where for me, I'm not creating a movement so much as I'm creating like a tangible result. And so we all have different levers. We can pull right like it just has to be one or the other. And yes, if I wanted to create a movement, I would be checking on shares because that's a sign that you're doing it, right? But for me, this content education wise, why would someone share it? Like it's not for sure. There's no need for that, right? Like they would save it because they want to use it. So it's understanding what each metric actually means and then focusing on whatever you want to focus on. So, so this is what's interesting, right? It's like I was focusing on the metric that leads to growth, but I was not trying to grow. Like that was not my point. My point was I want to create as much useful content as possible. I want to get as many saves as possible this month. Like that was all I set forth to do. I didn't know growth was even going to be a byproduct. Like I'm just saying that now in retrospect, I realize what happened. I mean, like in my novice head, there isn't a connection between saves and new followers. Like, yeah, I wouldn't make that link of like, oh, if more people are saving this, then obviously more people are going to be following me because how do you get from A to B in that sense? Yeah, yeah. And it's trust, right? It's like building. It's like someone says, oh, wow, this was so useful. Oh, wait, all our posts are so useful. Oh, I want to say. Yeah. And it also is really interesting because it very much brings in a certain type of person, which is someone who wants to learn and wants to expand their skills, right? Totally. Which is like my person. Like that's who I want to be bringing into my world. And I also think just in general, like in any education space, social media, especially, like we really do see a lot of like homogenous means of sharing, even just like even visually things look really similar. And I think that because the way I create is unique, visually unique for my industry. I think a lot of people are like almost like kind of surprised by that. And so I think that that element of creating that impression through something that's inherently useful to them, but then them kind of doing a little bit more digging and exploring and realizing like, oh, I already know I want to learn about this thing. Or I already know that this is a topic that's interesting to me. And I like the way she's doing it. I'm going to stay, which is, I mean, now we're talking about the fully ecosystem, right? Like this is exactly what I support with in life of the party is this idea that like you are calling people into your community. What are they finding there? Like how are you building that trust? So that doesn't matter what or how they find your posts. They want to follow you regardless. Exactly. The metric should lead to growth. Like honestly, that's how it should go, right? But like every metric has the potential to lead to growth, I should say, because it's giving them you and you are what they need for whatever reason. We can only assume. So with all this said, I was very, very focused on tailoring all my posts to this purpose of saves. And it also gave me this metric to almost like help me stay the course with that without focusing on reach. So I didn't care how far my posts were going. I didn't care how many people were liking them. I wanted to know where they're getting saved. And that was how I was able to know like, yes, my mission is complete. I'm doing what I need to be doing. And so I knew that as long as people were seeing it, saving it, my mission was on track. We were making our way. So I don't necessarily say this, you know, with like I don't say from an ongoing perspective, you have to only focus on one metric. Like I don't feel that's realistic. Every single post, every single type of post that we create is connected to a different metric. And in life of the party, I talk a lot about like this equals that kind of thing. Like if you want this metric, here's what you create. Or if you're creating this type of thing, here's what metric to look at. In this case, if you do want to reverse engineer this growth strategy and you want to focus on growth, then find out which metric is most connected to growth for you, not growth in general, but growth for you. And then double down on that. Yes. I feel really comfortable now having worked in this field for so long and knowing the type of content I prefer to create, the type of content that works for me, saves are going to be it. And I'm just educating, I love educating. The occasional thought leadership piece, awesome, cool, but I don't feel like I need to be throwing those out as much as I used to. Like I don't feel like I need to be sharing my perspective as much in that way because I feel like my perspective becomes very clear when you learn from me anyway. For sure. So all that is to say, there's a lot of different ways to go about it. But this was the number one. This was point one of my organic growth lesson for today. Okay. So point two was I responded to my audience, not my analytics. Right? So as I mentioned, it can be very easy to get derailed when a post does or doesn't do well. And we start to make assumptions and guesses about why people are reacting a certain way, almost like too soon, without actually reading the room to kind of find out. So I say too soon in the sense that like if you posted something right now and all of a sudden, you know, you got half the views that you usually did, you would start thinking about oh my gosh, why didn't it work out? What was going on? Whatever, right? But. It's not enough data. Like it's not enough information. Whereas if we think about reading the room, we're thinking about like a collection of information that's not just coming from our own content, but coming from the content that we're seeing out in the world. So we, I think, over-emphasize our own metrics and under-emphasize the collective in the sense that like the content that's doing well, as a whole in your industry, or as a whole in the online space period, in the online entrepreneurship space, let's say, is telling us a story. The trends that people are following, it's telling us a story. The things you see people complaining about, it's telling us a story. Anything people are posting about in their stories, about how they're feeling, their emotions, what they're watching, that's all telling us a story. That's gonna help us to decide how and what we post, and whether or not that post performs well, actually better than the post we have already shared. - 100%. - So that's the thing that I think gets missed a lot. When I was prepping all my content from the through the lens of this strategy, and this is my method, I continued to do this, I was really listening to what my audience was experiencing, and thinking about how I could support them, not through the lens of how did my content do last week, but more so through the lens of what do my people need next week? Like what do my people need next? So I'm looking forward, and I'm grounding in the present, and if I'm taking any data from what's already happened, it's more so around what they're saying, but they're sharing what they're seeing. And of course, yes, my posts may emphasize that, there might be a post that I shared, for example, that I got a ton of questions about. In that case, yeah, I would use that information to say like, okay, I think I want to create something else, but I will not create a post based on data, that's not human to human data. Like I will only create a post if someone asked me, like a human being said, I love this, please expand on this. I'm not gonna assume that because they shared it, didn't save it, didn't share it, didn't engage with it, I'm not gonna make any assumptions, unless I have evidence of a conversation that told me to continue. - Super smart. - Or I have external evidence, like I've seen people post about it or share about it. - Sure, sure, sure. But some sort of reinforcement that isn't just a number. - That's right, the numbers don't give me shit. I really feel strongly about that. - Okay, apparently. (laughing) - So I knew, anyways, I knew with this method, I knew that no matter what I was posting, it was gonna matter to my audience. And even if that only meant 10 people saw it, I could say for sure those 10 people, they needed it. - Absolutely. - So it also helps on the front end, right? It's like you create and you think, you know, whatever I post this week, I don't, it doesn't matter how many people see it. What matters is that it was the right thing to post. - Yes. - Like I was making the right choice because I was informed. Like I knew how to make that decision. And a couple of things that I do that helped me with this, in case you're like, well, how the fuck do you know, Lee? - My weekly AMA is a big big tool for that. - Of course. - So my public community literally tells me what they need support that per week. I'm very lucky that I decided to do that. Anyone can do that, by the way. It's not just anything. - Yeah, I mean, you're just, you're asking, you're soliciting that-- - I'm literally soliciting the input, exactly. And so I know, and it's not that I like take AMA questions and turn them into content, it's more like, I'm like, oh, I see where everyone's heads at. Like, I might get like-- - It's this is a check. - Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's crazy because the themes, like they do emerge. Like, I'll see like, whoa, everyone asks me about sales this week. Or, whoa, everyone asks me about, I don't know, whatever, posting about politics or all those things, systems. Like, all of a sudden, and the thing that's really funny, of course, is that a lot of those questions are informed by what I've been creating. So if I'm posting a bunch about, I don't know, travel or whatever, I'm gonna get a bunch of questions about that. If I'm posting a bunch about growth, I'm gonna get a bunch of questions about that. Like, so you kind of like see how conversations can continue within your own community because of on both sides. Like, I can see, oh, these are things that they are kind of organically bringing into the conversation that I haven't been posting about. And these are the conversations I'm having that they're now interested in and want to expand on. So you can kind of like see both, you know. - For sure. I mean, ultimately, it's just remembering that it's humans that are using the platform, right? - Correct. - Like, everyone focuses on like the algorithm and like the data and all of this. At the end of the day, you're speaking to fucking humans. Humans are speaking back to you. - Yeah. - And if you're not creating with that in mind, then you've kind of lost the plot. - Yeah, the algorithm doesn't mean shit. - It doesn't mean shit. (laughing) - Okay, so that's my one, AMA helps a lot. Second one that helps a lot. So my culture shift, which is funny because though the culture shift is a piece of content that I create on Fridays that I send out to my mailing list. And it's designed to give you the information that you may need to create your content. But in my practice of collecting that information, I am obviously learning a lot as well. So I actually have a folder on Instagram. That's titled Culture. And whenever I notice a trend or a conversation or a news article, like a big story, a big controversy, whatever, right? Influencership, right? Like if there's some kind of, like there's a controversy with like set active balance a drop, exactly. Things like that. So I will save those to my culture folder. And I just keep them there like for the week or as I'm going. And then when I go to sit down to create my culture shift, is when I actually look through them and I start identifying the themes. I start thinking about, ooh, okay, like, okay, there's been a lot of conversations around like this one thing. Here's like four posts I saved that all kind of speak to that same theme. So I'm kind of like collecting, like putting them into like buckets or like bundles almost. And then I send the email out. So you can sign up for a mailing list, you'll get it. But that process obviously helps me a lot. And of course, I give it back. So read the culture shift period. It will help you a lot. And then my client support, this is the other thing, right? Like we are working with people. Again, we're working with people. So I have my mentorship crew. I have my social life crew. Social life, I'm meeting with them twice a week on a live co-working call. They're asking me questions. They're sharing what they're working on. I check in with them every day in circle. Like I'm literally so, I'm so plugged into it. My people are doing just because my offer is like, have our design that way. Like your design for me to be in constant witness and in constant support and offering feedback. And answering questions and stuff. So I use that information. When I didn't have those spaces, when my offers were a little bit different, I would be looking at what's coming up on my coaching calls, my one-on-one calls, right? I used to do one-on-one strategy calls. So I would look at what's coming up on those calls. The themes over time. I would look up what's coming up on kind of program conversations. What inquiries am I getting? Like all those things give you a lot of data. What are you getting in take forms? That used to be super huge. I don't have those as much like for all my programs now, but I mean, actually that's not true. I do actually have I/O. There is some kind of onboarding for everybody. So whatever's coming through on your onboarding, then that's going to be a ton of insight. So yeah, all those things, very, very important to look at. And so like I said, right, some of my posts got a lot more attention than others, but I didn't let that influence my strategy in the moment because I knew why I was creating every single post. They were optimized as best that they could be. So even if the views were lower, I didn't break out into this spiral of like, oh my god, what am I doing wrong? I just moved on to the next thing. Like, okay, that went to this job moving on. And my focus was just on staying committed. Quality content, trusting more in the collection as a whole. So this is the thing, right? When we're not creating for virality, one post doesn't really mean that much in the great, great, great, great scheme of things, right? It's an adding up to a whole, creating 20 solid posts gave me as much as, you know, one really, really successful post could have. But the thing is is that you cannot predict a really successful post. You can control creating 20 pieces of really good content. Of course. Maybe one of them does go viral, awesome bonus, right? But it's nothing but bonus. So less pressure on each individual post, but lots of focus on making each post kind of as good as it can be and then letting it lie. Like once it's out there, right? Rather than like looking at it after the fact and being like, oh my god, what can I tweak? What can I do wrong? Again, it's just not enough information. We can make those assessments at the end of a month, right? Like at the end of a month, let's look at the whole. Let's see what the strongest post were. Let's decide what we can learn from them. But a single post when we're in it, like when we're actively kind of like, this stopgomentality is so detrimental. So now that I'm done and I'm doing this assessment, I'm looking back at my evaluating, look how much I'm able to learn. I know exactly why this happened. I know exactly what worked. I know exactly what I'll do next. And also, I'm not going to bypass what I know my community needs just to create more content like the stuff that did good. Yes. Because that's that again, like that's where we get stuck, right? Like I could look back and say, oh well, this specific format did super well in January. Only going to create things like that in February. But that might actually require me to kind of ignore what's true, which is that my community needs something different now. Like it's always changing. So we can't be looking back and saying, well, this posted well, it will 100% do well again, because it could be right time, right place, right conversation. So yeah, that's number two. Number three, do you have any questions, Frank? I'm good so far. Okay, I've been hopping in. No, no, no, for sure. Okay, so the third one was I committed to consistency within my capacity. So like I said, right? I didn't post the same amount every week, but I kept going. I stuck to my systems. Yes. I stayed the course. I didn't fuck with it. I didn't say, oh, actually, maybe this week I'm going to try something new. I just said, you know what, for 30 days, I'm going to do exactly what I said I'm going to do. I'm going to focus on saves. Yeah. I'm going to prepare my content one week ahead of time, not one week ahead of time, but like at the top of the week at the beginning of each week. And I'm just going to like go for it. But I then like let my output have been flow without ever coming to a full stop. Yes. And that's where that I what I kind of said at the beginning, which was I get in and let myself run out of content. [BLANK_AUDIO] I did, I prioritized getting another set ready, rather than just like ad hoc, well, I got to get one out, I got one out, I got one out, kind of like getting back into that very reactive energy. So I really, really, really want to emphasize, like persistence is the most reliable growth strategy that there is. And we don't need to be in such a fucking rush to see results that we sacrifice our sanity in the process, right? Totally. Just don't fucking blow your load, 100,000 million posts, and then have to be laying dormant for a month. Yeah. Because that's the thing, like that's, I say, I really truly think that that is one of the most damaging things that I see people doing in online space is going so hard, because they want fast results, and then completely ghost, or completely burnout, or completely stop. And they say, well, I got all these amazing results, but I had to work so hard for them. And then that creates this thought process, where we're like, I have to work hard to get these results. And then we hate socials, because we think the only way to grow is to continue working that fucking hard. And we bypass so much. So like the thing that's been super interesting actually about this whole process that I've noticed in myself too, is that I have never been so good at replying to comments. Oh, interesting. I've responded to almost every comment within the week. My rule is kind of like within the week I'm responding. I'm not necessarily going to go back to post that like, you know, I posted like two months ago if a comment comes through, like I'm not, my notifications are way too hectic for that. But I try to like the comments that come in the quickest and the soonest I'll like follow up on. And that yeah, has been easier than ever, because I'm creating with my capacity. Thank you for your comments, everyone. And now you know that if you comment, you're likely to get a reply. And if you comment a month after I posted something, just send me a DM, because I'll answer that for sure. I'm not going to comment on my Nazi. But yeah, no, 100%. I think, yeah, so that that is just like so important to remember. And like I said, every single time I posted, I got a new follower, every single time I posted, I got a new follower. Sometimes it was just one. Sometimes it was hundreds. I think that most that I got from a single post was like around 400 maybe, which is bananas. Mm-hmm. That way. And one thing that's really interesting, not a huge relationship between reach and follows. So the post that got like the most reached wasn't the post that resulted in the most follows. Interesting. No, it is interesting, isn't it? It's finding the right people. Because it's not necessarily, yeah, exactly. There's not necessarily a relationship between that. And the only post like I said that resulted in zero was the over three minute real. Right. So I think what's interesting here right is I could look at this and say, well, every single time I posted, I got a new follower. So I bet our post even more because every post counts. And that's potentially true, except for that I know it's not true because I know for me. No, I'll tell you, I know it's not true because I know for me. This was the most easeful, fun, relaxed approach to content creation. It's my best version, like my best version of my creative content self. And the fact that I can be in that and it can feel that good and I can still be experiencing growth. I'm obviously going to choose that above forcing myself to produce to the point of overwhelm. But the thing is is that even if I said, you know what, I'm going to double down just to just to spike my growth, like just because I want to get the double the amount of followers or whatever, there's no point because I know for a fact that we're going to end up in a law of diminishing returns, right? There's going to come a point where I cannot produce at the same caliber, of course, and sustain. So right now between four, let's say, let's say average four post a week, that is going to be where I can be at this really beautiful kind of like line, right? I'm towing that line of my quality is the best that it can be and it's resulting in growth versus let me double that then diminish the quality of content because I cannot create at that caliber and get like I can't create that quantity at this caliber. So then my following is going to dip like my the actual return is going to dip. I'm not going to get more followers from post that on as good. So you want to kind of find that sweet spot, right? I have like, I only have so much energy to give. And so at what point does up in my output dilute the quality and lower the growth overall anyway? And I feel that I am at the place that I would like to be like I would not I do not want to be creating more because I like the quality of what I've been creating. I'm proud of this output and it's getting the results. That's enough, right? Okay. Because we have so much fucking time. I think that's the thing, right? Like there's no rush. What are you going to do with like, okay, no, no, for real. If I think about this, if I think about this 1700 new people came into my space within 30 days. I don't have a single program that could hold that many people. I don't have an offer that like, okay, sure, you could all buy leisure. I think template. That'd be great. Go for that. You know, that's my passive product. But otherwise, like social life would be far beyond capacity. Life at the party only holds 20 people a season. Like of course, I want volume of course growing more people into my community does mean that my offers over time will sell more, you know, like more units. And there's more people coming in and like, you know, my business grows and scales in kind of a sustainable way. But not all at once. Not all in one month. Like, so that's the thing is it's like, now they're here. Couldn't put them anywhere anyway. No, couldn't put them anywhere. And that's like, I have a pretty volume focused model comparatively too. Like a lot of folks actually have even less people that they can kind of touch and support within a certain timeframe. Like if you focus on one-on-one work or even project-based work and you don't have a massive team, what are you going to do with all those people? Well, exactly. And so now it's like, okay, they're here. Now I want to nurture them. Now I want to get them excited. Now I want to give them things to do like down on my freebies, join my mailing list, like kind of keep sinking and listening to this podcast, you know what I mean? Like, there's all these new things that they get to do that eventually lead them into my offer kind of when the time is right. But there's actually no legitimate reason why we need these massive influxes of people, these massive spikes in following, why it would be any different than receiving those same results over the course of six months or a year with a strategy that actually felt good to be in. Like duh. So yeah. Duh. In summation. In summation. In summation. Duh. Yeah. Okay, so kind of like wrapping up and just giving some context to this. We are seeing so much content telling us to post hundreds of trial reels a week, but I actually decreased the numbers of videos that I was sharing and I posted zero of them to trial reels wild and I still grew. Okay. Okay. The most okay. Okay. The most common online success story that we hear is that a few viral posts basically carry community growth, right? I saw firsthand that we can scale without a single one, significant scaling in my community without a single post going viral. Amazing. Thumbs up. We love to hear it. Obviously, we've been said pay to play is the future. You have to pay the algorithm if you want to work in your favor. I didn't spend a dime to get these results, right? So no virality, no posting hundreds of trial reels and no paid no money. And the most beautiful thing and the reason why I wanted to spend so much time talking about this is because there's no fucking mystery. There's no mystery. There's no gambling, right? We've talked about this before on this podcast. I think ages ago, but this idea that virality is actually like a form of gambling. Like you are just paying for that. 100% you just hope you hit it. You hope you hit it. You hope that fucking 21 black comes up that one time. Yeah. I'm like, amazing. Yeah. Thumbs up at it all in one place. Exactly. And there's no mystery in this case. There's no mystery. So we don't have to over intellectualize the algorithm, right? We're not trying to make sense of like, why did this post do well? And this one didn't. We don't have to question whether we're not, whether we're going to be able to upkeep this momentum, right? Like we aren't going to question of like, well, I did really well in January, but I don't know if I can post fucking 80, 80, 100, real, 80, 80, 8,000, 800 reels in February because I'm going on fucking vacation or like, you get sick or all these things, right? So we don't have to have these feelings of like, oh, no, I won't be able to sustain it. This is fundamentally, and I'm going to draw comparison here that ages meet significantly. But this is based at the same approach that the wealthy barbers guide to investing advocated in which the brief summary of this book, which was like a very prominent personal investing book from the 80s, early 90s is like, you don't need to hit a stock big. You don't need to like hit like any one big return to get yourself rich. You just have to take things slow and steady and consistency consistently. You will see that growth and whether it's like producing dollars in your bank account or producing followers, it's the exact same approach. Like, you don't have to try crazy new things that are just being pitched and are going to be like the next big thing. Nope. Just tried, tested, true, always works. Also, I have one question for you. Okay. Because there is one big thing that changed in the month of January. And I want to ask you, did it have any impact? Because that was the new aesthetics that you rolled out. The new style. Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay. I don't think that the aesthetic is growth specific. I don't think that you need to have a certain look in order to grow. However, having a new brand made me excited to create carousels, which I actually had stopped doing for quite some time. So it's interesting in that way where it's like, I feel like I had not gotten my branding updated or like started creating the new aesthetic. I don't think I would have been able to create as many carousels. And I think that actually. for me and what I'm learning here is that like that's a very effective tool, not necessarily because I think carousels equal growth. I don't, I truly do not believe there's one medium that's better for growth. I think it's whatever works for you. Like your audience, there will be a medium that's better for your growth. And a medium that's good for my growth is carousels because I can create more educational content in my carousels within the capacity that I have. So for example, if I said, oh, I really want to show you my system for how I choose. One of the posts I created was I want to show you my system of how I choose visuals for my every post, how I choose visuals. I could have done a real with that. I could have explained it. I could have showed behind the scenes. That probably would have done really well. It would have been really supportive, really educational. However, I fucking hate creating reels like that. I do not like creating educational reels where I show you step-by-step. Like that's not my bag. If I'm creating a real, it's a vibe that's going to be the visual. Like that's the way that I'm going to do it or it's going to be vlog. And if I'm educating and I want to show you step-by-step and show you screenshots and all that shit, I'm going to do it in the carousel format. So what I'm noticing is like my decision of like how what I wanted to share and then creating it in the medium that I wanted to share it in was easier for me because I had I now have like a format. Like I have graphics that I actually want to do and I actually enjoy doing. So anyways, I do think that having an aesthetic having it's more of like having a consistent visual language and knowing like what styles you can lean on and knowing what styles are going to be effective for you and having then that consistency is a huge, huge factor. And I will say I do think that the aesthetic I felt really proud of it. Like I knew that energy behind what I was doing was like, hi because I was like, this is good. I'm really pumped about this. I used a lot of photos of myself. I used a lot of photos of my life. I think what we were saying, well, so what I was saying before we were saying, Frank is here too. What I was saying a little bit earlier was I think that people are drawn to my aesthetic. Like my people, the people who I want to work with, we share a vibe, like, which is the point, right? Like any aesthetic, any branding that you developed should be attractive to your audience. So like, yes, having a brand that attracts my audience is key. And I think that's always been true. Like we've always taken care to have a very kind of distinct brand and a distinct aesthetic. But I think that the pride and the excitement that I feel around having having new branding made the momentum a lot easier to sustain for me because I was like, fuck yeah, I love creating this. And I know exactly like it takes away having all those like, you know, templatized ways of creating just takes away decision fatigue. It takes away so much of the of the stress or like the the the deliberation that can cause overthinking. It's just removing decisions you have to make. So yeah, I think it definitely did have a, it definitely did have a impact. But I think the impact was almost more on like me, which is what totally made this all possible, right? Okay. Thanks thumbs up. So for some action steps for you, if you're thinking about all of the above and you want this, the first one, the first thing for you to do is look at what is the connection between growth and the impact that you're that your content has made in past. So any of the things you've seen success growth around, what was the what was the outcome? Like what was the impact that you were creating there? Were you giving people something to do? Were you giving them a new way to think? What does it look like? Were you starting a conversation? Were you sharing something about yourself? Like it could be anything, right? And what would it look like if for 30 days, maybe you said, that's the only metric I'm going to focus on. I'm just going to create content that gets me that. What would that look like? And and it say gets me that because it's actually what you're getting them, it's about what you're creating for them. It's not about what they are doing for you. It's what you're creating for them. So are you giving them something they can do? Are you giving them something new way to think? Are you sharing something about yourself that you know impacts them? Like what is it? What is that metric that connects with growth? Focusing on that. And then what's going to be your system to read the room and continue to respond to your audience to make sure that you are creating for them ongoing. And it can't be day by day. I'm sorry to say it cannot be how I wake up today and I know what they need. There's got to be a little bit of foresight. Next three posts. What do they need? Have a little bit of that foresight. Give yourself that that that that boundary that sort of like that rule around momentum, which is like I will not post my last thing. Like I will keep something in the tank. I will always keep something in the tank. I'll always feel like I'm a little bit prepared because that's what momentum looks like. And can you trust and allow yourself to have been flown? Not saying I post five times a week saying I post as much as I can this week at the capacity that I have with the time that I want to give this period. And I always have something in the tank. So what does that actually look like? And can you just commit? Yeah. And not get and commit not get distracted and not get distracted. Yeah. Not chase the shiny thing. Which is fucking hard. Like I know it's hard. Like I am number one. You're a chase for the shiny thing. I love a shiny thing. Like oh my God. But I do feel that forcing myself to I removed actually a lot of distractions too. And I will say I stopped using threads almost for the entire month of January. I didn't post on threads. I didn't really lurk threads. I did post like a couple random random things, but I kind of stopped like mid months. But I didn't like I was not to the degree that I had been in the past participating threads completely diminished. Stopped looking at other people's. Entirely like I do not look at threads. I no longer scroll threads. And I do really think what's interesting about that is I will look at it only for the purpose of helping me read the room. So like when I'm saying like figure out what your people need this week or whatever. That's a good opportunity to scroll threads. But from a pleasure standpoint or almost from like a mindless consumption standpoint. The distractions exist in those moments. They exist when you let your guard down. You know. And so like when I'm scrolling threads or when I'm scrolling TikTok or even when I'm reading Substack, I'm very intentional. But like what am I here for? What am I seeking in this space right now? And on threads, I know I'm seeking information that will help me to create content that my clients want not to get distracted by conversations. I think I should be having to feel like I'm behind or whatever those things are. Whatever it is that that that threads does to you. Same with TikTok. Like if I'm going on TikTok, it's because like I want to watch a bunch of beauty tutorials because I'm going to place a new makeup order or whatever. Not because I'm going to watch a bunch of threads that tell me I need to become a beauty creator tomorrow. Like it's just I'm sorry threads, TikToks. Like it's just really understanding like why am I using the space? And that's something that I got super clear on. Like why do I use TikTok? Why do I use threads? Why do I use Substack? And I don't post on Substack anymore. Like that was a conscious choice that I'm not doing that. And threads I'm like I just don't really feel like this is a place where my energy needs to go right now. So focusing energy and being really thoughtful about what distracts you. And you might say none of that distracts me. It's fine. Then not some go for it. Right? Lurking and scrolling reals doesn't distract me at all. Like I never see a real and it makes me feel like oh no my strategy's bad. Like I just I'm not affected by the platform in that way. Yeah. For whatever reason, right? And it's different for all of us. You might find Instagram really triggering in that way. And in which case I would definitely lighten the load like reduce the amount that you're that you're scrolling and consuming. But that makes a huge difference. So be very aware of how you're using platforms and what they're doing to you so that you can keep your blinders on and so that you can stay focused on what you're actually trying to create. Stay the course. Go through the motions. And yield the fucking results. Baby. Yield the fucking results. Okay. If you have any questions about this, reach out. I would love to chat with you. That's it. That's it. Okay. Yeah. Stop draining. It did. This is a magical podcast. It is such a magical podcast. The clouds parted on organic growth. Exactly. And the skies of a Barcelona. Literally how magical. We got to go do some errands. Frank's going away for a long time. He is going away for a long time. Not to prison. No, no, no, no, no, no, just going away for a long time. Just for a couple of weeks. Just just just what are you doing? Well, I've had this trip planned for quite a while. I'm going back to Canada. I'm going to pop in. See some family and friends in Hamilton for a few days. And then I am off to Nova Scotia to go finish getting layover seaside ready to rent and be shared with the world. And but I also last minute added a fun little side quest onto this trip. So tomorrow I'm flying from Barcelona to Munich. I am catching a connection to Charlotte. And from Charlotte, I am flying to Antigua for three days. All inclusive. All inclusive with a friend. Who is randomly going to be in Antigua and I'm following him there to go hang out for a few days. I'm so excited for you. Caribbean Frank is a very important avatar in your in your Lauren and you're just like heart. And we haven't seen him in a while. It's true. It's been length or mint. It's been more than a year. No. Yeah. I guess so. I mean, Puerto Rico. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm very excited to bring him back even if it's only for 72 hours. That's all he needs. You know what I think that's true. We got all his matching sets. All them ready. Little Caribbean Frank uniform. They don't even matching sets. They're just there's a little. This little says just a little outfits. Just a lot of it's a lot of it. Anyways, so thanks to me. And I'm going to be here. So in Barcelona alone for like two and a half weeks, which is really fun. I'm so wild. I'm so wild. But it's wild. Not your oil. So it gives you a big brain from being wild. That would be great. I don't be too wild. I'd like to come home to a domesticated wife and partner. I can go for it all. No, it'd be great. I will be having a blast. But we'll be back with another episode when you return. Yeah, we will. Okay. Love you to the core. [BLANK_AUDIO]