139, Why I Quit Social Media (and still grew my business 165%)

Hey, y'all, welcome back to the successful soul podcast. I'm your host kick korsmeyer. I don't know why I felt like singing that. And we're going to do a solo episode today. So I'm going to start off with the big news. I'm going to start off with like the end of the book, and then we're gonna go back to the beginning to figure out how I got here. So the end of the book goes like this. I quit social media in November 2021. So two years ago, and my business grew by over 165% in the first year that I was social free. You do not have to be on social media to have a successful business. Okay, I say all of that. And now, let's work backwards to figure out how how do you not post on social media when everybody is there? How do you get to a place where you can truly quit? Like, I don't scroll. I don't post I don't have the app on my phone. Nothing. I am off social. I've never been on Tik Tok, not one time, Instagram is the main platform that I'm talking about quitting. We've even moved our client Facebook groups over to Slack channels. So we can be a social media free community.

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And I have no script. So this is why I'm kind of pausing a little bit and stumbling over my words a bit. I just kind of want to talk about this. So yeah, the only thing I use social media for now is, I should say two things. One is I do still log into Facebook to go to Facebook groups for courses and communities that I'm a part of, even like my kids school has their parent group is a Facebook group. So I check that out. And then I also occasionally run social media ads. But that's it. So let's rewind. This is not going to be an episode that talks about why SEO is better than social media. And while we are going to talk about some of the things that came up for me, that led to my decision to quit social, which will you know, kind of cover some of the ills of social media so to speak. I've already done so many podcast episodes, and webinars and guests trainings and things like that about, like 10 reasons why you need to have a blog. And you know, the problem with social media, and we actually, I'll send you to a blog post, if you haven't seen it yet that kind of detail some of this in more in more detail. So if you haven't seen any of those, at least this will give you kind of the rundown. Okay, so first of all, we have a blog post, I'm gonna link it in the show notes here, but it's on success with soul Dotco. If you look up how to quit social media forever and still grow your online business, that's the name of the post. And in it we talk about like the ugly truth about social media as a business and marketing tool, the even uglier truth about social media and your well being and then kind of a roadmap for how I quit social media forever. So this podcast is going to be somewhat similar to that but I'm just going to go so much deeper and give you more of like my personal story and journey into how I got to this decision. And what's happened since then. Because yes, in that first year, my business did grow.

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Oh, but that is not true for my second year of being off social, and I want to talk about how I think social might have impacted that. The one other blog posts that I would recommend y'all checking out if you haven't already is also unsuccessful sold out CO, of course, how to get traffic to your website without social media. And this is kind of those 10 great reasons your business needs a blog, I'm just going to like breeze through those super quick, just so that you all understand kind of this is where I kind of came from when I was even using social media and seeing like, Man, this is blogging is so much better. And when I say blogging, I actually mean blogging, or podcasting or YouTube, like free content on your website. So number one, blogging is the fastest way to show up. And Google is the fastest way to get found by your ideal clients when they are actively searching for you. It's relatively passive, it has a much longer shelf life. Like actually HubSpot did a study and they said that the average lifespan of a blog post is around two to three years, compared to the average lifespan of a social media post, which is only three hours. Okay. So it has a much longer shelf life, you can monetize the platform itself with ads affiliate sponsors and your own offers, compared to ads, which can be expensive and unreliable. Blogging is free and much more stable. It helps you grow your know like and trust factor, which also shortens the sales cycle. Of course you own it. So if anything ever happens, you have all of you like nothing could really ever happen, right? As long as you have your site backed up, it's your site, you own it, if Instagram shuts down, if you get hacked, if they block you, or shadow ban, or whatever they're calling it today, you're out, you know, you should out of luck, right? But here you own it. So when people say don't build your business on rented land, that's what we're talking about. Blogging also helps you get more leads. Again, I'll share one more quick stat. So organic search, first of all drives over 53% of website traffic compared to only 5% from social media, because social media is designed to keep you on the app, it's not designed to drive traffic off of the app, those creators want you there, right. So it's not a great traffic driver. And then, in addition to that organic search actually has an average conversion rate of 16% compared to social media, which only has an average conversion rate of less than 2%. So that's just kind of the quick overview of like, here's the quick and dirty of why I like SEO over social media from just like a practical logistical standpoint. Plus, there's so much repurposing potential. So like what I'm doing right now is recording a podcast with the video turned on, then I'm going to publish that video to YouTube, then I'm going to embed all of that into a blog post with SEO friendly show notes. So I'm going to have a blog post with written content that is the show notes for this episode, then there will be the YouTube video embedded into that post plus the podcast player. And now I've created three pieces of content doing something one time, and I'm hitting all the different formats. So if some people prefer listening, they can do that. If some people prefer reading, they can do that, as some people prefer watching, they can do that. So those are the main reasons that I love Seo. And yes, a lot of those are reasons that I decided to quit social. But that's not the whole picture. And that's like an oversimplification of it because it actually was a much more emotional decision for me. And what actually led me to quit came from some sources that you would never expect. Like the thing the last like nail in the coffin for me it was actually reading a mystery novel. So I was reading it's like a psychological thriller, my favorite genre called Pretty Things by Janelle Brown. And this book is such a page turner. And it's just telling the story of two women, one of which is a con artist, and one of which is an Instagram influencer. And yeah, the plot was thrilling, but the book actually highlighted the safety issues of social media. And that was one of the Yeah, that was kind of the final straw for me. So I'm going to share this story and then I'm going to go back to what some of the not final straws were what some of the earlier straws work that got me to this point. So in pretty things, Janelle dives deep into the world of social media, and she just reveals like the dangers of trusting strangers online. This is nothing new, like catfishing has been around forever. I mean, I grew up I'm like one of the older millennials, right? And so I grew up with like aim and AOL was first coming out on the scene and there were chat rooms and stuff like that. And it's always been a vulnerable place and especially

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Dangerous like for children. But what this book really did is it exposed the vulnerability of personal information and the ease with which someone could be impersonated. So it kind of as I was reading it, and you're reading the stories about the Instagram influencer, I was thinking about, like the pressure to maintain this image perfect life. And also that like, just we're constantly trying to create that facade of a perfect life. And for what like to impress people, we barely know, it's absurd. And it just is like this addiction that, like social media has become such a part of our daily lives. And we just are sharing everything there now from our personal opinions, just to our daily activities. And while I think that can be a great way to connect, and really get to know people on a more personal level, I also think I mean, a it's a breeding ground for identity theft, cyber bullying, and poor mental health. And it also is kind of crazy what people can figure out about you like, where you live, what you're doing now, if they wanted to find you in some way, which of course, this is, like, kind of an extreme example, but this is what what was hitting me from this book, that there's so many ways that they can see like, Oh, she posted that she was, you know, out of town. So that means that her house is currently empty. And what could I do if I was somebody who wanted to rob her, or scare her or do something, you know, like that. So that was part of it. And I think it also just really revealed to me like the risks of oversharing personal information. So again, like the danger of sharing your location, posting too many personal photos, I mean, some of this also comes up with kids, and like, how many pictures of your kids do you want there to be out there, they don't actually, you know, have consent, or they're not giving you their consent. I mean, they can't as a child, but to, to post about them. And so there's some of that and just revealing too much about your personal life. It just showed, this book just showed how easy it was for strangers to find and use that information against you. And again, I can't emphasize this point enough, just the book has shed so much light on the pressure to maintain that image perfect life. And I just think it leads to such severe mental health issues, like depression and anxiety, and it's such a vicious cycle, it's just not worth sacrificing your mental well being for the sake of likes and comments. So reading pretty things definitely made me realize like, more from a safety perspective, it gave me a perspective that I wasn't thinking about before, and made me realize that we need to be so much more cautious about what we share on social media, being aware of the privacy settings, limiting the amount of personal information that we're sharing, being cautious of who we accept friend requests from, or if we have a public account, knowing that like literally anybody in the world could see everything we're posting. And once we post something online, it's out there forever for the world to see. So it just made me realize how much personal information I was sharing and how easily someone could use it against me. And it just made me feel like I needed to take some steps to protect myself. So that was a surprising thing that I didn't expect to come from reading this psychological thriller was like, Oh, now this is the final straw. For me, this is such an unsafe practice, right. But that is truly what was the I can't I'm just a broken record. That was what the final straw was. So, of course, it wasn't the only thing. And I had read a couple of books that were a little bit more specific to social media, they were nonfiction first of all. And then I also had watched the documentary, the social dilemma. And a lot of what I learned in these books, and the documentary also made me really wary of being on social. So if you haven't seen the social dilemma, I think it's on Netflix. But it was amazing. And the social dilemma really takes this idea further, and just exposes the dark side of social media and how social media companies are tracking our every move, and they're using our data to manipulate us. You know, of course, it showed how social media is affecting our mental health and democracy. I mean, just like the very fabric of society. And one of the things that was really interesting was that the social dilemma interviews, a lot of the creators or higher up execs from these companies like Mehta and Pinterest and whatever. And so the documentary really exposes how these companies use algorithms and AI to manipulate user behavior and maximize profits, how these platforms

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are designed to be so addictive and exploit our vulnerabilities and human psychology to keep us engaged. And it was just so interesting to me to hear from the people who literally designed these platforms that like, they won't even let their own children use them because they know how dangerous and harmful they can be, and that they're not on them personally, because they know what's happening behind the scenes. So that definitely made me think twice about what I was, and why I even say like, it's not just that I'm not posting on social anymore, like I am not scrolling, I'm not using it at all, because it's not just about like, what I'm sharing, but also about just what I'm consuming. And you know, of course, we know that social media can have really negative impacts on our mental health. So I quit and 2021 Right, the pandemic was 2020, Trump was president, there was a lot of turmoil and just bad shit happening in the world. And the documentary really showcased how social media also has contributed to the spread of misinformation, too polarizing and really making it feel like it's us versus them and keeping us in our own little bubbles, where it's like, if you are somebody who clicks on a lot of progressive liberal, you know, content and engages with that, it's going to show you more of that. And so it continues to make it just so one sided. And so sometimes when you think like, how could they think this? Aren't they seeing this? Aren't they reading the news? Aren't they seeing what I'm seeing? And it's like, no, they're not. Because if they've engaged differently, they're seeing different things that are just like reinforcing that confirmation bias, basically. And of course, conspiracy theories and all that. And so it just felt like it just something that I just didn't really want to participate in knowing that it was causing so much harm to the entire world.

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Okay, so that was kind of intense. One of the other things I want to share is about the book called do nothing. And this book is one of my favorite books of all time, do nothing great title. And it's not about social media. It's really more about America's obsession with productivity. And, but it talks about social media in it and it made a lot of points that were just really profound to me. So in do nothing, the author is Celeste Headley, Healy. I'm probably not pronouncing that right, but it's H EA D, L E. Alright, so the author, Hedy Headley, she argues, we need to reclaim our time and stop the endless scrolling on social. And again, she talked about how social is designed to be addictive, and it uses the same techniques that slot machines and Vegas use to keep us hooked. And so it's just this time sink that takes away actually from our productivity, and creativity, and leaves us feeling really unfulfilled. So when I'm also when I was on social, and I was having thoughts, like, there's just not enough time in the day, or I'm never gonna get everything done. It was like, I wonder how much time I'm spending, just Mindlessly scrolling on social media. And the book talked about how social media can create that constant sense of distraction. And it makes it really difficult to focus on important tasks, which leads to a decrease in productivity. So if you're somebody that's just been struggling with productivity with getting the most important things, and you know, on your to do list done is an interesting experiment. And that is always how I like to approach things. It's just an experiment. Like when I first quit social, it wasn't with the idea that I was quitting forever. It was kind of the digital detox idea, you know, like, I'm gonna take 30 days off, delete it from my phone, and just see, see what happens and see how I feel. What happens in my business? Does anybody even notice? And then how do I feel mentally, because of course, then, in the book, and every US Social, you can definitely relate to this. I mean, social media creates that sense of FOMO, that fear of missing out, and it makes us feel like everybody else is hanging out without us or doing all of these cool things. And we're just sitting at home. And there's all that social comparison, which obviously negatively impacts our self esteem. And I think that the research that Celeste shares in the book really just showed that social media use leads to increased feelings of loneliness and isolation, even though like the illusion of it is that it's supposed to connect us all together. So I think if any of this is resonating, I would just encourage you to think about taking a break and cultivating some mindfulness around your social media life and

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focusing on some of those present moment experiences instead and just see what happens. And it could be a break for a week, a month, a year, whatever feels right to you. But it is a really, it's an interesting experiment to try.

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So I was reading all of these books and watching these documentaries over the last, you know, couple of years in 2020 2021. And feeling just this growing sense of like, what am I doing? And reading that pretty things book. Also, I forgot to mention this. And I don't say this with judgment for anybody who's posting like I have gone through phases in my life where I was on stories every single day sharing, like the most boring minutiae of my day. So there's no judgement. But when I was reading it as this like, somewhat objective third party of just like watching this character in a book and seeing how like, what she was posting, and what what she was thinking about as she was posting things and what her thoughts were as she was scrolling. I just had this sense of like, This is so fucking stupid. This is so silly. What are we doing? Like, I think we might look back in 50 years and be like, remember when we all just uploaded our entire lives to social? Isn't that the weirdest thing? We're thinking about? Like, what would you have 20 years ago? Think about this? Or what are your grandparents think about this? I mean, I think it is so interesting to talk to, you know, my grandparents are in their 90s now and to talk to them about social and they just don't get it. And my grandparents are actually very tech savvy, like they're on email. They're playing games online. Like, it's not like they're not using the internet, and they don't understand the Internet. But it is just interesting to see that perspective. And it just makes me wonder like, I don't know, is any of this worth it? What are we doing? Alright, so all of this led up to my decision to take a break. And like I mentioned, it was never intended for it to be a full break. And so one of the things that you'll see if you go to my Instagram account now, which I didn't delete it, and I'll talk about that in a second. But one of the things that you'll see is that my last post was in April of 2022. And I actually had to like go back to my own Instagram to see some of this because I'm like, when was the last time I posted before that, because I did I remember specifically that I quit the week of Thanksgiving. And that's when I deleted it from my phone. But I think I had some posts scheduled to go out already when I had made that decision. So there's a handful of posts. I mean, even when I was on social, that's the other thing, even when I was there, I was always there begrudgingly. And so I posted very infrequently. And I just hated every moment of it. And I think that that comes across to your people, like people can sense your energy and the vibe you're putting out there. And if you are there, against every fiber of your being, your posts are probably not going to work because the thoughts and the beliefs that you have about being there. They're what's going to create your results. And so I have tried so many different things over the years with route and rebel, my former blog, and with with the success with soul brand, and I have never enjoyed any of it. Even when I was outsourcing it to somebody else and somebody else was doing all of the posting for me. I still hated it. And it still affected my mental health because I'm the type of person that's like, well, if I'm going to pay somebody to do this, I want to make sure I'm getting my money's worth. So I want to log on and see what were the likes and comments like on these posts who shared it who respond

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undid, who clicked and how many, like clicks back to the website did we get and so I was still looking at the data. And the data always made me feel like shit, always. And so I've tried doing that I've tried just only posting when I feel inspired to I hear this a lot from people that are like, Okay, I might not have to be there, I get that. But, you know, I'll just only post when I feel inspired. And that is just still a slippery slope, I think. Because

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unless you are so self aware, I think you can't help but feel like you should be there if the option is available. And this is very black and white thinking. So I would love for y'all to respond. And let me know how I could think about this differently. But my personality type just felt like I'm either gonna be there or I'm not. But this middle ground of like, maybe I'll be there a little bit. It was like the miserable maybe, and just being in this limbo. And so it was not serving me at all. So going back to when I officially quit, so I quit in November, we had a handful of posts that were pre scheduled continued to go out, I never saw anything that happened with them. And then I just had this idea in the start of 2022. That was like, what if you know, people are still on Instagram, okay, I might not be there. But other people are, people are going to look me up on Instagram to decide like potential clients are going to look me up on Instagram to decide if I'm legit. If I'm somebody they can trust, if they resonate with me if they like me, whatever. And so I don't want to have no presence there because I'm still living in this society. So I had this idea to essentially create, like a portfolio that I would have nine posts that take up, you know, the first nine that you see when you look at somebody's profile. And they would basically be what do I need people to know about me? What do I want them to know about how I can help them? How can I give them a sense of both what we do and who we are and what our values are just kind of like almost making it into a website. And so that's what I did. And we posted these in April. And then on our last post, I'm just going to read it here. It says it has a caption or has a graphic with a picture that says how to grow your business to multiple six figures without social media. And then the caption says you might be thinking, if she says I don't need social media, then why the heck is she posting on social media? Fair enough. Here's what I invite you to do. Look at the date of this post or any of them. Notice how much time has passed come back in four weeks or four months, the posts will be the same. I want to have a presence here so that if someone like you comes looking for me, they'll find a friendly face and a warm welcome. Instagram is my welcome that but it is definitely not where I live. And the time that's passed. Since I posted this, I've taken days off lots of them. I've made money while I slept thanks to Evergreen funnels. I've spent quality time with my kids and my partner. I've said no to things that didn't feel aligned and yes to things that did. I've connected with friends and the amazing women inside the incubator program. And if you leave a comment here, I probably won't see it. But I still want to hear from you. So you can text me at this number, you can email me at this email address. And I will respond because in the ecosystem of support and presence we care about and reply to emails and texts. And we want to get to know you as a person. So that's our last post. And again, this was posted April 2720 22. Since then, I have actually come across something called the Instagram like the static nine grid on Instagram. I had no idea that I was kind of doing this already inadvertently. But there's a few people going ultraviolet, the the DNC more sorry, I'm like reading these as I'm, I don't know who these people are, I just see that. If you Google Static nine grid on Instagram, these people will come up they have like Canva templates that you can buy and like little mini courses to teach you why the strategy is great. Meghan Dowd is another one. And essentially what they're doing is like archiving every other static post on their account. And then they create this Instagram nine grid that does exactly what I was intending to do with mine was basically like turn it into a welcome mat, a portfolio of version of your website. And so this is like a thing now, which I love. I think it's so great. And so I also always say like, if you love social media, if it is bringing you joy, if it is bringing you clients, if you like being there, then this isn't for you. Like that's okay, keep doing it feels aligned for you. But if you're like me, and you're somebody who really hated the experience of being on social, this is a way that you can at least be there a little bit less

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that you can remove the pressure of feeling like you have to post all the time. And still know that you have this presence there that if somebody finds you or looks you up, that you will seem like a legit business, and somebody that could potentially help them. So I love this strategy. And if y'all want, I'll do another episode about how to get clients without social media, I actually just gave a guest lecture about this in QCD, which is where I got certified as a life coach last year. And there's so many other ways to get clients without social media, obviously, you know, SEO is one of my favorites Funnels is another. But there are so many other ways to to get clients and to make money without social media. I mean, I always remind myself that Instagram became Instagram without Instagram, right? Other businesses before whatever your Instagram was created, were able to grow to multimillion dollar billion dollar businesses without social media. And so there are ways to do it. Some of them might feel old school, but I promise you, they all still work. And they all for me works so much better. So let me know if you want me to record an episode about that a would be happy to. Okay, some final thoughts. Since I quit, let me share some of what has happened. I mentioned that in that first year, my business boomed. In fact, in that first year, I was only selling the incubator, and we grew the incubator by 865%. And I didn't post on social media once except that one day that I put that nine grid up. So totally did not affect our revenue. Now in 2023. And if you're on the whole soul list, you probably have heard that 2023 has been the hardest year in my business ever. And our revenue is down quite a bit. That being said, and I have I've asked myself many times do I think being on social media would change this, and I've talked to friends, I've talked to my, you know, one of my great friends, Molly Cahill, who runs an Instagram agency, and she's even been a client of ours. And I've talked to people, other people who aren't on social, other people who are killing it with social. And ultimately, I think it's one of those things where it's like, well, you'll never know. But I just have to believe that it wouldn't change anything, that ultimately one of the reasons I left social media was because it wasn't giving me the results that I was looking for. And so while I am tempted sometimes especially when we're doing like a live launch, or a big promotion for something like Oh, man, I kind of just want to go on and just like do a quick story or something. And I could, it's my business, like I can do whatever I want. But ultimately, I've decided not to, because I've just thought, No, I think it feels a little disingenuous to kind of my whole ethos. And now we really help people grow their business without social. So it would feel a little hypocritical for me to you know, then go back and start posting on social. And ultimately, like, those kinds of posts are never what got me sales in the past. And we all know that even if you're on social every day, if you're only doing promotions, that's not going to be useful either. Like you have to give a lot of value. So that's kind of where my head's been at with some of that stuff. That being said, one of the things that Molly and I talked about, and I do think that this is true, is that social is a really good way to build more of a community and connect with people, especially just the casualness of it, I think when you can just like turn your phone around and talk to people from your house, they see so much more like the I mean, social is the opposite of like real and raw. It's all you know, perfected and filtered and all of that. But that being said, I do think that there is maybe it's both right, but it's both and it is all those things. It's filtered and perfected and unrealistic. And it can be a good way to connect in a more personable way when they can really see your face and see more of your life. And so I have wondered, like, I wonder if not being there has disconnected me a little bit from my audience only being you know, having the podcast and the blog and email and stuff. Maybe like there's a little of the cape magic has been lost. That's what my CFO calls it the cape magic. I wouldn't ever call myself that. But I know the sentiment behind it. And I do think that maybe that is true. But ultimately at this point in time, and as I always say I reserve the right to change my mind. At this point in time, I've just decided that the risk is not worth the reward for me. And so I'm staying off of it for now. Now how has the decision to quit impacted my brand and my reputation? I mean, I think of anything, it's mostly been really inspiring to people. I've heard from a lot of people who were like, Oh my God, how are you doing this without social life?

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That's so inspiring. And it's like a permission slip for people, when you see other people doing something that you think you can't do. And you're like, well, they're doing it and things are working out for them. Like, maybe I could do this too. So I really love being that permission slip. And I love that I am creating a brand, that I'm growing a brand that is all about agency and making your own choices and doing what's right for you, and redefining success on your terms. And so I think of anything, it's been great, and it definitely is super aligned with my values and what I believe in. Okay, on a personal level, being off social, I do miss things, sometimes like friends, post baby announcements, or vacation pictures and things like that, and what the way that I have gotten around that is a couple of things. One is I've always had a shared Apple photo album, that I've invited my friends and family to as soon as I had kids, and we just post everything there. And so it's really only like our friends and family that we're closest with, that we care about sharing those things with, and they can just see it there. And we don't have to worry about likes and comments. I mean, generally, it's basically all of the grandmas liking and commenting on anything anyway. And it's a way for me to still feel like people know what's happening in our life. And then sometimes we're just I'm texting with my friends, I'm texting them photos, I'm sharing that way. So I think for my closest friends, it really hasn't been too big of a deal. Like even the other day. And one of my group texts, one of my friends was like, Oh my gosh, you know, your daughter looks so big to one of the other girls in the group. And I'm like, oh, post the photos here. Obviously, I can't see them. And then she just posted them there. And it was great. So I think for your closest people, if you make an effort for the people that you actually care about, nothing will really change, you won't miss the big things because you'll be actually talking to these people. So it also has made me feel more connected to the people I care most about. And also a lot of my friends who I'm closest with, like they're not not on social, right. They're not antisocial, like I am, but they're not really posting anything like I went the other day, I would say since I've quit, I've probably logged on to Instagram on my browser, maybe five times in the last two years. And a couple things happened. One is I went to like my best friend's page to see what's going on with her. And she hasn't posted in two years, either. I'm like, oh, so I'm definitely not missing anything from you. Maybe stories she's posting too, I don't know. And then the second thing that happened is I got sucked down the rabbit hole as one does. And I ended up feeling like shit, because I saw something that one of like a colleague of mine was doing, and it hurt my feelings. And I ended up being like, this is why I'm not on Instagram, like I was perfectly happy not knowing any of this was going on. And ignorance really can be bliss in some situations. And so I think it was just like proof to me, like, Oh, you don't need to be here. One of the other times I've gotten on and like, again, I just type in instagram.com into my browser. I'm like, I'm not downloading that app. And I go down the rabbit hole. And I spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes or something just scrolling, looking, seeing what's happening. And even if I haven't left feeling bad about myself, what I've ended up leaving is like, Well, that was a giant waste of time. I don't feel like I accomplished anything during that. Like, I don't really feel like I learned anything. I don't feel more connected to people. I don't know what the point of that was. So that was kind of an interesting experiment too. And then I guess the other thing is, like, I have felt sometimes like, I don't know what's happening with like, you're not your B list friends, that sounds so mean and clicky. But like those people that you're that are more like acquaintances or their friends, but they're not people you would talk to on the phone or that you really see a lot or maybe there are people that like, yeah, I catch up with them a couple times a year max, those people I do feel like sometimes I'm like, Well, what's happening with them, because I'm not seeing it anymore on Instagram. It's like the people you went to high school with, right that you probably shouldn't even be looking at what they're doing. Those are the kinds of people that have made me kind of miss Instagram in a way. But ultimately, again, the like, what I come to is like, well, if I don't care enough to just send them a text and say, Hey, what's going on with you? I miss you. Let's catch up, then I probably don't need to know what they're doing on social media either. So yeah, that is the story of how I quit social media and what has happened since then. Some of the ups and downs some of the decisions that led me there a little unexpected, I'm sure. And so here we are today. I'm recording this. It's August 31. This is probably going to come out in September, and I have no plans to get back on Instagram. I do think that I need to update my nine grid because we've made so many

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He changes in the business. And it feels like really nice to know that like, I can just spend an hour one day updating the grid, and then never think about it again, until the next, you know, two more years pass. And it's like, oh, this gives us a refresh. So that feels really good. If any of this is feeling really good for you, too, I would love to hear more, I would love to inspire you to try at least a digital detox of some sort. And I just love to hear from you. And see, like, what came up for you? And this, why do you feel like you should be there or you have to be there. I mean, if I had a nickel for every time somebody said, if I didn't have to be on Instagram, I wouldn't be be extremely wealthy. And it just it makes me sad, because it's like, who says you have to be there? Just because everybody is doing it does not like reason enough, right? We all have learned that growing up. If everybody jumped off a cliff, would you that's kind of how it feels to me honestly, when I said that as a joke at first, but now I'm like, that is how it feels everybody is jumping off this cliff. And I don't want to, it's not safe. So that's me. I hope that gives you some insight. I would love to do any follow up episodes on quitting social media and what it's like running a social media free business. So send in your questions, you can send them to hi at success with sol.co. And we'll put those links to those blog posts I mentioned in the show notes. And that's it for me. Have a good day, y'all.

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