Estimated read time: 12 mins

I didn’t post about my business for 5 months and still grew my email list by 1543 subscribers + made over 100k

This is not a braggy email despite the hook that got your attention. I mean, I broke the seal and posted on Instagram. 

I have the same problem most type-B inherently lazy business owners have in that I stop most marketing when things are going well and I’m busy with clients and nurturing the lovely humans already in my orbit. 

I coast when I can. I’ve had many seasons of mini-retirement. Which looks nothing like actual retirement because hello, tiny human tyrants work me harder than any boss ever could, myself included. 

I admit that I have not yet fully figured out how to build a completely social-optional business. But I am deeply interested in cracking this because, well, I can’t explain it better than this guy did (ironically on IG). 

To summarize: The average person spends 7 hours on their phones DAILY. We lose 192 months of our lives to scrolling. 

It’s a conflicting experience when you make a living reaching people through the power of the internet. One that I know I’m not alone in. Hence why I did what I did…

What you’ll learn in this article:

🍵💲The backstory behind my big pivot 

🍵💲The stubborn move no one asked me to make 

🍵💲6 ways I’m personally working to build a social optional business

The tea: 6 ways I’m attempting to build a social media optional online business

THE BACKSTORY

In October I killed my old membership to create space for something new to be born. Enter: KNOWN — a community and program I built devoted to supporting business owners in building the assets and system they need if they want a hope of not having to constantly churn out new content day after day for the algorithm to do with it what it will.

My mission with KNOWN is to help more creators and coaches become known without being glued to their phone. To stop pouring your best energy into platforms designed to siphon it, where nothing compounds and the machine’s hunger is never sated.

One of my superpowers is noticing PATTERNS.

I got so tired of seeing and hearing my community share how they were pouring all this energy into being consistent on social as if THAT is the bottleneck (spoiler #1: it’s not). I was tired of it for myself too. AI aside, most of the business owners I support are doing this solo alongside many other responsibilities and passions. Time is genuinely limited… so why are so many spending it on something that’s kinda rigged against us?

Organic reach is so depressingly dismal. Yet we act as if it’s the only option (spoiler #2: it’s not). It’s also not something I want to ignore completely 😆 Ever the pragmatist (said no one about me EVER) but for real, I know there are real brilliant beautiful humans on the other side of this post. It does feel kinda weird to teach about alternatives without being Tristan Harris level anti-social.

The stubborn move no one asked me to make was to live the teachings and entirely stop posting business content on my own platforms.

I’m feeling out the middle ground… but I’m never again de-prioritizing platforms that actually compound and allow you to go deep. 

If it’s a choice between that and platforms where your wisdom evaporates as soon as the feed refreshes, I’ll choose the former every time.

For me that looks like these 6 things…

1. Knowing what I want to be known for

Knowing what I want to be known for 

So right now there’s this rhetoric rampant in the online space that courses are dead.

“X is dead, do this instead” is a hook older than your great uncle’s entire tackle box. 

Courses aren’t dead. Email isn’t dead. Webinars aren’t dead. The only thing that’s DEAD is the life force energy behind the message. 

Your aliveness, excitement, and enthusiasm is felt in all that you do. When was the last time you clarified what that is? Why you do? Who you do it for? Not the you from 3 years ago but you today, and maybe more importantly the future self and future business you’re working so hard to build. 

Knowing what you want to be known for sounds simple, but it’s the main symptom when things aren’t hitting no matter what platform you’re focused on. 

My future self doesn’t want to be boxed in like my past self was. I want to be known as the interdimensional systems strategist who goes deep and helps you grow in a way that serves your life, your innate gifts and design, and what you’re here on this planet to do. 

Knowing this allows me to make moves that line up with that reality. One of which is speaking to a major drain of life force energy on many business owners, social media, and presenting alternatives, of which there are so many!

What do YOU want to be known for? 

A reminder on this topic: 

“If you want to enjoy the rewards of being loved, you also have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” ― Tim Kreider

2. Owned assets

Despite what the internet keeps telling us, I’m not convinced AI is making us more productive.

I think it’s making a lot of us more overwhelmed and leading to more first drafts and half-baked ideas we can’t fully trust. 

You only get paid for what you SHIP.

& if you’re reading this, you likely don’t ship skincare or bamboo toothbrushes, you ship change. People buy from you to go from A > B. 

You communicate that transformation through your assets. Your website, sales pages, sequences and automations, ad campaigns, content, conversion events, all of it. 

The right asset at the right time can change your trajectory in a big way. 

So what assets are you building? Are you clear on what needs to be created, glowed up, or brought to the finish line? 

IMO your assets should be building you an owned audience (ie. growing your email list) or directly helping you make sales. 

The assets I’m prioritizing in this season: 

→ This evergreen training I developed on how to build a social optional business 

→ Email sequences that capture 99% of people who don’t buy right off the bat and nurture and love them up and immerse them in my worldview before plunking them back onto my main list 

→ A new super stacked low-ticket no brainer Easy Yes offer focused on growth and designed to call in my dreamiest of dream future Growth Partner clients 

3. Nurture and discovery platforms that stack the odds in my favor

Hellooooo Substack, this is where you come in 😅 As of writing this I have 43 subscribers so this guy is a slow burn so far, but the growth paradox is never far from the top of my mind: 

4. Borrowed trust

I remember teaching my oldest bub about the tower of trust when he was little. We painstakingly built a giant lego tower one brick at a time, and then he got to kick it over. I explained that tower was trust. It takes a long time to build and one wrong action can destroy it. 

In hindsight, that’s a bit of a hardcore lesson for a little kid. But it’s one we all learn eventually. 

Trust on the internet is even harder to build and easier to break, which is why borrowing it is #THEULTIMATEHACK. Really though, if you can get in front of someone’s audience that they’ve spent years building trust with, you get to borrow that. And while you still need to prove you’re awesome, you’re starting from 20 instead of 0 which is a major leg up. 

A few weeks ago I borrowed trust from a peer with 90k people on his email list and he shared my training with all of them. I did the same for him with my audience. Win win win, him, me, and both of our audiences. 

5. Pinterest

Back in 2014 I had a food blog and Pinterest was my top traffic source. 12 years later there are STILL pins driving traffic to the site. Which is actually insane as I haven’t posted on it since then. 

Pinterest is a search engine and the average pin lasts 1600X longer than the average IG post. Which is as much convincing as I need to give it a shot for my current business. 

If Substack is a slow burn, Pinterest is a burn through many lifetimes. But it’s low lift, and lucky for me my sister is getting into Pinterest management. 

6. Paid traffic

I got some flack in the comments for running ads to a training on building a social optional business ON social media. But these 2 things are very different beasts. I created an ad in under an hour that drove 800+ sign ups and I didn’t have to be glued to my phone and thinking of fresh creative every day to do it. 

The reality is your people, my people, they still use Instagram, some even still use Facebook (crazy, right?) and our job is to show up where our people are hanging out. 

Meta ads allow you to do that. Do they still require effort? Of course. And that’s maybe the crux of all of this. It all requires effort. It all takes time. But the time passes anyway and we can do things that stack the odds in favor of our future selves and businesses. Part of the siren song of playing the social lottery is that growth and results can happen fast in a way that’s hard to attain with alternatives (apart from borrowing trust, which I teach in KNOWN starting in May).

Sip on this…  

🧋Loved this podcast on how AI is ending the social media era and what comes next 

🧋The best DJ set I’ve heard all year. Press play for instant flow state activation. 

🧋Yep, that’ll be all… 

2 ways I can help you grow

1. If you want to learn more about how you can do the same, click here to grab my Anti-Social Visibility System training for free. 
   
2. And if you want direct support building the invisible sales systems that make social optional possible, let’s partner up.

What’d you think of this issue of Spill the Tea?

• Perfectly balanced – Refreshing, uplifting, informative 🤌
• Like a decent Darjeeling but nothing to write David about 💁‍♀️
• Hot water – Boring, not my fave cuppa 👎