Hey, it’s Tara, and I wanted to come in here and personally invite you to hop on a call with me. A free consultation call where we can decide if the Bold Profit Academy is the right program for you right now. And here’s one of the ways that you’ll know that you need to hop on a call with me.
Alright, we are focused on implementations. So if you’re not getting things done in your business or you’re not focused on the right tasks, you’re not maximizing your time. Then you are going to want to join the Bold Profit Academy because our core focus is implementation. We do that by giving you guides, and worksheets, and calculators, and frameworks that you can use in your business.
We just run through our offer creation curriculum, and we had a participant go through it. She created a highly leveraged offer at a premium price. But the way we created the resources for her to do that, allowed her to take everything that she put together and then write her sales page with ease.
That is called implementation, and that is called efficiency because we want you to have more profit while working fewer hours and using the simplest, most effective strategies to do that. So if this sounds like something that you desire, that you’re struggling with, and you need support with, I want you to book your call with me over at theboldleadershiprevolution.com/academy. So I can help you decide if this is the right time for you to join us.
Hey! Hey! Everyone! Welcome to the Bold Money Revolution podcast. I am here today with a guest who I’m excited to bring to you, Eli Trier. She is someone who I’ve met online on Instagram. We’ve connected a few times for Zoom coffee. And we just have so much in common. We have the most enjoyable conversations. And so, that’s what I was looking to bring to everybody today.
Now, Eli is in marketing. But what I love about Eli’s approach to marketing is she’s about going deep and not wide. She is coming from her experience, which is tremendously in-depth. Being in the hospitality industry and marketing in the hospitality industry, she is what she calls a “serial entrepreneur.” So, like me, she has had many businesses. This isn’t her first shot at this.
She just brings such a depth of— not just experience. But where I think Eli and I want to have this conversation that we’re going to have today is some of the places where we have a lot of common ground. Around being introverted, around being highly sensitive, and being neurodiverse, which we are going to talk about.
And what we want to share today is something that we’ve been jamming on personally in Instagram DMs and on our Zoom coffee chats. Around reimagining marketing in the day and age of social media. But social media is not feeling so social these days, Eli?
Eli Trier: Absolutely. Yeah. it’s a…
Tara: I think we’re more disconnected than ever.
Eli: Yeah. Definitely. I know you and I was just talking before you started recording. Having a similar experience in terms of not having the capacity to take on everybody else’s life. What they’re talking about; what they’re doing. And also, not wanting to particularly share what’s going on for us either. It feels more invasive than it ever has before. I feel the pressure to be like, “This is my private stuff.” I’ve never liked sharing that stuff.
Tara: Yeah. I’ve been digging in a lot to cults, and…Also, the Fire Festival with the influencers and everything. And I think it was in the Fire Festival that they were talking about… where they defined an influencer as someone who monetizes their identity.
Eli: That just gives me the shivers.
Tara: Yeah, that concerns me. I remember when I heard that… I talked about this on the podcast before. But that just really concerns me from a psychological perspective for humans. That doesn’t feel like something that’s necessarily a natural place for us to be where we’re monetizing our identities.
I know for me, it’s been always a challenge on how do I utilize social media because I’m here to monetize my service, my business. That’s how I want to use it. And I don’t want to monetize my identity. I don’t want to have that level of influence over people. I want to teach people how to influence themselves.
Eli: Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I think that’s so important when it comes to the landscape of marketing that we’re seeing at the moment. It made me laugh when you talked about cults because that’s what happened. There’s been this trickle-down effect of these cultish followings of gurus, and influencers, and seven-figure business owners.
They have this. They struck upon something that worked in terms of marketing. And they’ve taught it to their followers. And then their followers have taught it to their followers. And their followers have taught it to their followers. I don’t know if anybody has stopped to question both the ethics and the humanity of it. But also, the fact that we are living in this digital age where everything changes at a hundred miles an hour. And what worked in terms of marketing 3, 4, 5 years ago doesn’t work now.
Tara: Yeah. That’s huge. So I’m naturally curious. I’m an Enneagram 5. So I get into the deep thinking of things. Probably about 6 or 9 months ago, a colleague/friend of mine was talking about her launch and how her organic traffic was down, and that was impacting her launch.
She was thinking about like, “What have I done wrong?” That’s the immediate place where she was going like, “What have I done wrong? Is it something that I’ve said? Is it something…?” And I was like, “You know what? I just don’t think people are navigating social media in the way that we think they are anymore.” And I did some surveying on my Instagram. And what I found was that over the last year— now we’re talking 2020 COVID, racial reckoning, the U.S. 2020 election cycle…
Eli: That was not all that happened as well, didn’t they?
Tara: Yeah. I know, right? Well, the whole world was watching our election cycle, withholding their breath. And our poor Canadian neighbors who are sharing a continent with us. But as I said, “Are you using social media less or more?” And the majority of people said less.
Then I got really curious about the people who said more. So I said, “Out of those of you who said you’re using it more, are you intentionally using it more?” Because maybe we’re in our homes, and we’re seeking that connection. So we’re using it intentionally to reach out to people, connect, and build relationships. Or, are you doom scrolling? Right?
Eli: Yeah.
Tara: The majority of them were just scrolling. There wasn’t any intention behind it. I think 25% said that there was some intentionality behind their increase in usage. But 75% who were using it more were or just scrolling.
I remember being on the train going into New York City, pre-COVID. This is probably 18 months ago, watching someone on Instagram. And it was just their thumb scrolling fast and making these very fast hearting pictures. But they weren’t consuming the content.
I was like, “Okay.” So from my perspective as a business owner, who’s looking to gain attention, capture somebody’s attention, and make a difference in that person’s life. What do I need to do to get somebody to stop the scroll and read my content?
Eli: Yeah. Which is then only shown to people… It’s only shown to a fraction of the people who follow you. And it’s only relevant for what? Twenty-four hours, I think, is the life of an Instagram post before it’s just buried. So you’re putting all of that thought, all of that energy, all of that creative juice into something that is just going to vanish within a day. And hardly anybody is going to see it anyway.
Tara: Yeah. And then I think, for me, it was a combination of that. Remember when Instagram decided that they were going to prioritize reels?
Eli: Oh my god! That was it for me.
Tara: Because it is their new thing. That was it for me, too. I think that’s around the time where we had this conversation. Because I was watching people create reels that weren’t even in the spirit of what a reel was supposed to be.
First of all, I don’t understand why we have it. If it works on TikTok, why can’t we just leave it on TikTok? Why does it then have to get added to Instagram? But, whatever. And then I’m watching people spend so much time trying to learn these reels and create reels. It’s driving their followers up. But I want to know how that’s converting to a sale. It felt like it’s just one more hoop that, now, women have to jump through to feel successful.
Eli: Yeah. And it is predominantly women. It’s described as a platform that is marketed to women. Right?
Tara: Yeah. So I felt played with. I don’t know if you’ve seen this. But on HBO Max, do you get HBO Max? You’re in Amsterdam.
Eli: Denmark, Copenhagen.
Tara: Denmark. Okay. So on HBO Max, there was a show, ‘Fake Famous’. I had no idea that not only can you— I understood that you could buy followers. I didn’t realize that you could buy likes and comments.
Eli: Yeah. Oh, wow!
Tara: And they showed how influencers create these accounts and create this virality with buying followers and comments. Then I was like, “What is actually— this isn’t real?”
Eli: It’s all nonsense. It’s all nonsense. I think most of us knew that. You can see accounts that have had hundreds and thousands of followers, and then no engagement on their post whatsoever. We’ve seen the accounts.
Tara: Yes. I always look at that.
Eli: Yeah. You’ve seen the accounts which look real. But then they’ve got something really weird in their bio. Like, “Hang on a minute. Is this is a bot? This isn’t even a person. What the hell?” That stuff is happening more and more and more and more and more for those of us who have worked hard on building relationships and connecting with people.
I mind if I put out a post on Instagram and it doesn’t get seen by anybody. I have, I think, just over a thousand followers. If I put out a post, I get maybe 30 people to see it, which is— what is the point? When you can have an email list, for example, and you send out an email, everybody sees it. Everybody has the opportunity to see it.
Tara: Yeah. So I think this was starting to be the shift. And so at the end of last year, I was diagnosed with ADHD. And it made me take a look at how my brain works differently. And how some of the things that I’ve been struggling with, particularly online business tactics, haven’t always felt assessable to me.
I started to look at my social media habits, behaviors, how I show up, and why some of the things on social media have felt particularly hard for me. I’ve always primarily used Instagram stories more than anything else. But then, what turned me into this was when story views went down dramatically because they were prioritizing reels.
I was like, “All right, I’m out. I’m just out. I’m not interested in playing this game anymore. It’s too exhausting for my brain to engage in this.” And I think for me, with ADHD, trying to get my words together in 15-second increments, and remembering to smile, and not look too serious.
Because this is the feedback that people send me in my DMs when I do stories is, “You should smile more. You come across as so serious.” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, my brain works differently, and for me to concentrate on seeing myself on the screen, delivering a 15-second clip that has value, and smiling… I’m seriously concentrating.” Right?
So it taxes the way my brain works. And so, there was something around my diagnosis that felt very permission-giving for me to say, “You know what, I’m not sure this is assessable to me. I’m not sure this feels good. I understand that people like seeing my face, and I’ll do that.”
But also, where are my sales coming from? Are they coming from the people who are DMing me? Are they coming from the people who are watching my stories? What is the purpose of my putting a story out there? Unlike you, because I’m introverted, and because I’m highly sensitive, and because my brain works differently, I too have migrated toward email for very specific reasons. So, tell me what’s worked. Tell me how you’re doing this, and what’s working for you, and how you’re using social media, if at all.
Eli: It’s a really interesting thing because I’ve always had social media accounts attached to this business. But they were always there as the cherry on top of the cake. I’ve never used it as a way for lead generation for driving sales, or anything like that. I’ve put stuff out on Instagram as a way to just like, “Here I am. This is my face.”
When I was starting, telling people what this business was. There’s a lot of education around what I do because no one’s ever heard of it. So I need to explain it a lot—that morphed into just using it to promote my clients and catch up with people individually.
I saw my Instagram usage moved very quickly just into the private DM messaging space, which is how you and I met. Just reaching out to people I thought looked interesting. So I was using it more like a search engine, and a way to just quickly message people.
It was very handy to just watch someone’s stories. They were starting the conversation. You could jump in like you’ve been there for years. It would kick off a whole… potentially a relationship. And I love that ease of it. As you said, when story views went down, when the reel thing came in, I had a last hurrah of just posting consistent content, and I got absolutely nothing from it. Even people who’d followed me for years were not seeing your stuff anymore.
So for most of this year, I think I’ve posted maybe twice on Instagram. It hasn’t had any impact. My email list is where the majority of my digital product sales come from. My primary lead generation is either recommendations and word of mouth or doing stuff like this, doing podcast episodes. Or finding people using Google or another search engine, and reaching out to people I think look interesting.
Expanding my search for cool people away from social media and into the other places that they’re hanging out. So there are other business communities that I lean on quite heavily to find people. And again, it’s personal, it’s relationship building, it’s finding my kindred spirits and the people I think look cool. Reaching out to them, having the conversation, building a relationship.
Some of them become clients. Some of them become collaborators. You know how it works. But social media has always been nice to have, and these days I’m feeling like, “Actually, it’s just not very nice.” So my accounts are just dormant right now and have been for about six months.
Tara: Yeah. I think that you bring up something though that’s so important. That I’m not always sure people understand, and that’s the relationship piece. Right? The relationship building. So, if you’re going to be on Instagram and you’re just going to post and run, or you’re not going to welcome people into having conversations. If you’re like a “Don’t DM me” person. Again, I think that’s going to be hard.
So, if you’re going to use social media, how are you using it to build those relationships with people to take them offline? So that you can create mutually beneficial opportunities or things like that. I do get curious around that. I get a lot of people as a business coach. I get a lot of people who come to me for help because they have large social-media followings, but they’re not making a subsequent amount of money.
And it’s like they were told that if they build this audience, the money will come. But it doesn’t because it doesn’t always translate into converting a sell. I think that I also want to just differentiate that. I think it works for selling some things. But I work with service providers who are selling a premium service, and that’s not always the best way to sell a premium service as a service provider.
Eli: Yeah. Absolutely. And you don’t need a massive following if you’re selling a premium service. You don’t need a massive following if you’re just selling average middle bracket service, either. You just need the right people, and you need to have conversations with them. So once you get good at figuring out who those people are, you can just go and find them. And say, “Hey! Let’s have a chat.”
Tara: Yeah. So it’s interesting because of the way we’ve shifted and are shifting our Instagram. Facebook, for me, was always like a wasteland. I don’t touch Facebook. I know it works for some people. But I don’t particularly use Facebook. Right? Because your reach on your page is terrible unless you have ads.
So then it’s interesting because people start posting on their pages, their profiles. I just went, “I’m so hacked off at this point with social media.” By the way, I’m just going to say something to my listeners. Don’t do what I do. This is coming from a very personal place.
So I just did something very extreme. And that’s why I want to preface that. I’ve been deleting my profile. It’s still there. I’m not deleting it, taking it down. But I’m deleting the content that’s on there. I know that they say, “Once it’s there, it’s there forever.” But I just don’t want that much of my personal life out there that’s immediately searchable. If somebody is going to go through the effort of combing the dark web for my shit, fine. But I don’t want it to get easy for them.
So I’ve been deleting it, and it’s really interesting because I very rarely, if ever, used my profile to promote my business. That never really felt great to me. So I’ve built this entire business without using my personal Facebook profile to promote my business. And I was like, “Okay. That’s interesting to me. That’s interesting data.” Right? So we don’t use Facebook, but we do use Instagram.
And so, what I’m doing on Instagram is I’m using it as a relationship-building tool. I’m using it to outreach, to DM people, to say hello, to see how people are doing. If you land on my Instagram because you have found me there, you can easily identify who I help, how I help them, and what my thought leadership is. So what are the things that I talk about that might be interesting to you? So more like the grid, like a magazine type of a thing.
But we’re started to…and we’re using it to drive traffic to our email list and to promote the podcast because we can. And that’s really how we’re using it. I much rather people be on my email list because I could then have better data and assessability to my email list. And I outreach directly to my email list as well. I don’t just send mass emails. I’ll send, and I’ll be like, “Hey, it’s Tara from the Bold Leadership Revolution.”
Eli: Yeah. This is the one thing I am astonished at how few people realize that you’re not just collecting people to mass broadcast them every 5 minutes. These people have already opted in. They’ve already said, “Yes, I’m interested in this enough to have it in my inbox.” Those people? They are ready to hear from you. They are ready to build a relationship with you. But hardly anybody does that.
Tara: Yeah. I always say like, “If somebody has joined your email list, they are looking for you to solve a problem that they have. They’re ready.”
Eli: Exactly. Exactly. When I first started my mailing list, for the first 18 months, I sent a personalized video welcome message to every single person who subscribed. It got me so many clients. It built my business. It was fantastic.
Tara: So, I have a remarkably small list compared to— One, I think my business looks like I have. And two, what most people would deem good enough. But that is a highly engaged active list that I am putting a lot of personal effort and energy into. And the reason why I’ve done that for me is, one, I like to write. I enjoy writing.
So I put my effort into sending those emails. They do wind up directly in people’s inboxes. I do have data around what topics maybe got better opens than others. I can see who’s clicking on links, who’s interested in the program. I can make some assumptions.
I do encourage people to respond to my emails, and people do respond to my emails. And there are some people I’ve built long-term relationships with who have responded to my emails. Some of them buy from me, some of them don’t. I have people who email me all the time. They’re like, “We love your emails. But we know that we’re not your ideal client.” And I’m like, “That’s fine. I love you. Enjoy.”
Eli: Yeah. This is for you. Yeah.
Tara: And the benefit of having a smaller list is exactly what you said. You were sending individualized welcome messages. So, here’s how I look at an email list. Some people call it “email marketing.” And it’s not. It’s email sales. So think about it if you owned…I always say, “Business doesn’t change that much. The things that worked centuries ago will still work today.”
And I always say, “Think about the apothecary shop on the high street in London from maybe the 1800s. How would they do business? Someone walks into their shop. They greet them. Someone joins your email list. You greet them.” They would probably take the address information for their customer, so they have a way to deliver packages or reach out to them in some way. So, an email list, essentially being a list of your clients or potential clients, is something that’s been around forever.
Eli: Yeah. I think the piece of business advice— I’ve been doing this for over 15 years now. One form or another. Pre-internet as well. The piece of business advice that I give almost everybody is like, “Go and learn what a business is. Go and read a business book that was written before the internet was invented, and learn the fundamentals of sales, marketing, all of that stuff. What a business is and needs to function. And then come back to the internet and go, “Oh, I can use that tool to meet that need.”
Tara: Correct. Correct. I say this all the time. I say that traditional online business coaches, influencers, web celebs, I don’t know what to call them. They are teaching tools before the process.
Eli: Yes.
Tara: So, what is your sales process? Most people don’t understand what their sales process is. And then how do you use the tools that you have access to, which are wonderful and amazing. Having the ability to automate a webinar is amazing, having the ability to be a speaker on a Facebook Live, or an Instagram Live, or something if that’s what your audience likes, without having to go and stand on the stage, it is amazing.
Being able to be a speaker and have a podcast, and have a platform that way. These are all amazing tools. But how are you using them to align with your sales process? Because it’s not good enough to just generate a lead. You have to be able to convert that lead.
Eli: Yeah. And if people don’t understand what that process looks like and what they’re supposed to be doing in each stage of the process, and what people go through logically, emotionally. What do they need during that thing, you can’t give it to them, you’re not going to be able to do that.
But you can’t do that until you understand a basic thing like a buyer journey, for example, which is much the same thing, the sales process. What do they need at this stage? What do they need at this stage? What do they need at this stage? Do you have those pieces of the puzzle in place to get that person from “All this looks like it might solve my problem.” to “Take my money.”
Tara: Right. And so, you said something really interesting. Where you were talking about customer education. And I think that people don’t realize that, I remember being pissed off that I had to educate customers. Why can’t they just know what I do and want to work with me? Why do I have to educate them?
But obviously, we do. And once I realized that, it changed everything in my business. You were saying you were using Instagram to educate your customers, which is a really important part of guiding them in the buyer journey. So, how are you doing that now?
Eli: A lot of that comes from— I have a lot of content that I’ve generated over the last three years. Educational stuff, breaking down the nuts and bolts of my primary thing that I do, which is community projects. I should probably explain that first.
Tara: Yeah. Tell us.
Eli: What I do with people is I help them run what I call a community project, which is I suppose the easiest way to give people an… let’s just say it’s a bit like a summit if a summit was completely different. You’re gathering together a bunch of people to talk about a thing in the same way that you would with a summit, for example. But when it comes to a community project you’re looking at… I call them “quiet revolutions.”
So you’re looking at gathering people around an idea that fucking matters. Whether it’s, “I’ve got somebody who’s working on a project at the moment about exactly what we’re talking about in this conversation. We know what the problems are with the online coaching industry, the online business industry, the online marketing industry.” Great. Where do we go from here? How do we craft the next iteration of online business?
And it’s a combination of content delivered by email and then a place to come and discuss and talk about it with everybody who’s participating, everybody who’s in the audience, everybody’s opinion is valid and welcomed. They’re long, they last about a month. They’re in-depth. When you said about, “Going deep, not wide.” This is exactly the essence of that.
It’s a brilliant opportunity. It covers your market research. It covers your marketing. It covers your, “Who do I want to build relationships with next?” It covers everything. And I’ve had clients who— that’s all their marketing outward-facing stuff they need to do in a year. They can fill their client docket, they can have all their content taken care of. They’re really powerful.
But they’re very unusual. There’s nobody else that I know of who’s doing anything like that. So, I have to go right back to the beginning and not only tell people what the benefits are, but also, what is this thing? How it works, what it looks like, what it can do for your business, why it’s a good thing.
Taking it back to being a human being in business, and having a business driven by your values and what you care about, and working with people who share those values. People who you get on with. People who aren’t going to make you see their name on your calendar and make you want to stab your eyes at the thought. We’ve all been there.
Tara: Yes, we have.
Eli: So there’s a lot of educational stuff that goes along with that. Every time someone has asked me a question about it over the last three years, I’ve developed that into a piece of content or part of a piece of content, which I can then guide people where they need to go once they’ve heard about me.
So, the first touchpoint would be something like this. They hear me on a podcast. They might come to my website. Immediately they see, “What is a community project? What is the framework that I’m operating in?” What it looks like. They can see what it does for other people. If they sign up for my newsletter, they get pointed in the direction of those key articles. If they sign up for the waitlist to work with me, they get more stuff.
And it’s just this drip, drip, drip of depending on where people are in their acquaintance with me. How much they know, where they’ve come from, they get different pieces of information going all the way through to an exploratory call where we sit down and we talk about what it might look like for them and their specific business. But usually, by the time people get to that stage, they’re just ironing out details. I never have to sell on a sales call.
Tara: Yeah. I don’t have to do that either.
Eli: Because my content does the job for me.
Tara: Correct. Because your content follows your sales process.
Eli: Exactly.
Tara: I think people would have more success on social media if they created content that aligned with a sales process and with their buyer journey.
Eli: Yeah. Absolutely.
Tara: And I think that, again, that’s not being taught. It’s just, “Use social media.” And people don’t understand necessarily why they’re using it. They think they’re using it to get followers or get some engagement through a like or an emoji, or something like that. But that’s typically irrelevant. I don’t care so much about that.
I would much rather people feel comfortable DMing me or emailing me, signing up for my email list, or listening to this podcast than anything else. So I’m hoping… Also, the other thing is, I’m a little concerned about where we’re going in general with big tech and being regulated. That’s also been like a piece to this.
Eli: Yeah. And I feel like we are slowly or we have already… it’s already happened. We have let 4 or 5 corporations control our entire existence to the point where I hate Facebook. It doesn’t do anything for me. I don’t use it socially. I have a Facebook page, but I never post on it. And yet, I’m still hesitant to just deactivate my account and walk away.
Because there are so many things that are fundamental to life as we know it now that just don’t exist anymore because Facebook has stepped in and filled that gap and pushed out anything else that we could have used. Off the top of my head, for example, is something like Facebook events. It used to be that you could sign up for individual venues, and they’ll let you know when that stuff was happening.
And now, all the time, it’s “Follow our Facebook page to use a Facebook event. Here are all the details.” If you don’t have Facebook you can’t see that information. It’s a tiny thing. But it is like death by a thousand cuts. That’s one thing. Then there’s something else. Then there’s something else. And what they’ve done is they’ve tentacled their way into every part of our lives. We’ve allowed it because it’s been so incrementally useful and convenient a lot of time.
And now they’re influencing our elections. They are driving people crazy with the QAnon stuff, over the terrifying article about the far-right incel movement, which is influencing young boys and things like that. The whole anti-vax information that’s out there in the world. Do whatever you want with your body, but maybe don’t believe an article you read on Facebook on the toilet. You do some proper research.
There’s all this stuff. And then monitoring everything. It’s terrifying when you stop and you look into it. But at the same time, how on earth do we even extricate ourselves from that? It’s not even possible in the first place.
Tara: Yeah. So I’m with you. I’m with you and I think that’s part of why we’re having this conversation around, “How do we take control back of our businesses?” How do we take control back of our lives from these companies that have infiltrated and have manipulated the algorithm, manipulated what we see. If you haven’t watched ‘The Social Dilemma’—
Eli: Go watch that.
Tara: Go watch ‘The Social Dilemma’. Just a genuine concern from me around business owners being heavily reliant on these other companies. Even to the point where I’ve heard the amounts of money that people put into Facebook ads. It’s like, at that point, they’re not profitable. They’re sinking all this money into Facebook ads. They take home so little in actual pay and profit from their businesses, that they’re almost like a glorified marketing assistant from Mark Zuckerberg.
And so, I’m just asking people… I think what I’m asking people is to think differently about how you market and sell your business. I’m asking women to unhook themselves from the complicated tactics and belief systems that we need to grow our businesses that we have to jump through all these hoops. And if you are going to use these tools, how can you intentionally use them. And that you are at least monitoring the return on your energy, the return on your time, the return on your mental health when you’re on these tools.
And I hope that maybe a takeaway that you got from Eli and me today is that we’re not putting all of our eggs in this social media basket, and we’re still successful. We are curiously investigating other strategies. We’re testing things. We’re falling back on just good old-fashioned business fundamentals. We’re committed to building real relationships with people.
I have clients, or I’ve had clients in the past who are just so not willing to be in a relationship and to start a conversation and to talk to people. That’s not how business works. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t hide behind your laptop. I know we’ve made it look that way, but it’s not true.
Eli: No. No. There are so many people. Like the people that you admire in business, the people who seem to be the most successful, most of it is happening behind the scenes. They’re making friends with people. They’re helping each other out. They’re going on each other’s podcast and guesting on each other’s things.
Tara: Doing the scary thing and saying, “Hey, do you want to have this conversation? Do you want to connect this way?” Or, going to a conference or something where they can meet people. So that’s really how I’ve been using social media for my entire business. It’s going behind the scenes. You don’t often see the time that I’m spending there doing those things.
So, I want to end this on a positive note. We don’t want to— I get that people are— But I think, listen. I think a lot of my listeners are with us. And by the way, I want you to reach out and let me know. You can DM me on Instagram, @thetaranewman. I want to know what you think about this topic. Are you with us and looking for a way to reimagine marketing outside social media?
I know a lot of people that listen to this podcast do wind up working with me and saying, “Oh, I hate social media.” And we give them sales skills that they can use with or without social media. So what do we want to leave them with? What’s the take? What’s the silver lining?
Eli: Well, first of all, I do want to say that it’s not necessarily about demonizing social media.
Tara: Right.
Eli: It’s still a fantastic tool. I think we’re probably going to see it decline over the next 5-10 years, and something else will come and take its place. But at the moment, if you’re enjoying it, if you’re getting what you want out of it, if you enjoy dancing around, pointing at things on reels, then knock yourself out. Have fun.
Tara: I say that all the time.
Eli: Do what works for you. However, if you’re feeling like, “Oh my God, social media and marketing are just synonymous. And If I want to market my business, then I need to be on social media.” Then, oh my god, no you don’t. And also, if social media is the only way that you’re getting clients or customers, then please build something of your own because you need something.
When these companies do whatever they’re going to do, you don’t have any control over that. So you need something that you own, like an email list, blog, website, or something where you can at least control how you’re communicating with people.
Tara: Yeah.
Eli: Leave them with something positive. Oh my God. There are a million. A million, billion, squillion ways to get into conversation with people, which is ultimately what’s marketing boils down to really. There’s a whole—
Tara: So true.
Eli: You need to know what you do. You need to have an offer. You need to know who you are messaging is. All of that. But basically, a lot of that you can just figure out by being in conversation with people. You can research by being in conversation with people. You can sell stuff without even trying by being in conversation with people. So as long as you have a way to do that, it doesn’t matter what that way is. It cannot even be on the internet. Oh, shocker!
Tara: This is true too.
Eli: You can talk to people in real life as well.
Tara: This is very true.
Eli: As long as you are in conversation with people, that’s enough.
Tara: Yeah, I second what Eli said around, “If this stuff works for you and you love it, and it lights you up, and there are people— I always say that. I said, “Listen. If you love launching, if you love doing this, and it takes your personality, do it. I’m not here to tell you not to do it. I’m here for the 80% of the people looking for a different solution and maybe feeling alone out there like, “This is the only way it has to be.”
So I just want to provide a different level of conversation around that. And I also want to say that, “Just remember, how much time you spend on social media does shape your beliefs, your attitudes, what you think is possible, what you think is available to you, in great ways.”
You can find that mentor where you’re like, “Oh my God, she’s showing me what’s possible for me,” and this is amazing. And it can do it in ways that become limiting and confining. So, with Eli, get into conversation with people and crossover, step out and be curious for sure. Eli, tell them where they can find you.
The best thing to do is to come over to my website, elitriercommunities.com, and sign up for Sunday letters. They’re on a little bit of a summer break at the moment, but they will be back fairly soon. I haven’t got the exact date yet. They’re great. That’s where all my thought leadership, all my original thinking, everything goes into that.
I am also on Instagram. I’m not posting very much. But my DMs are open. I’m @EliTrierCommunities over there. And I do just want to say, I do have an offer. If you’re curious about what Tara and I have been talking about today with using social media as a search engine to find your ideal people and starting up conversations in DMS and that thing…
If you look on my website for LoveNumbers Shop, there’s a whole workbook there that will guide you through how to find people, how to recognize your people, how to talk to them, what to say. There are all sorts of stuff.
Tara: That’s an amazing offer. I love that.
Eli: All sorts of things explained. You can come and take a look at that.
Tara: But what I want everyone to hear… what I want everybody to take away is, Eli is an introvert. As someone with highly sensitive energy, she is proactively engaging and starting people in conversation. Just because you’re an introvert doesn’t mean that that’s not available to you. It 100% is.
Eli: Absolutely. And it’s just about finding the right equal. A lot of what I teach people is how to identify what I call their “kindred spirits.” And those are the people that you just click with. You just know they’re going to be— you’re going to have a chat with them. You’re going to be tired because it’s tiring. But it will be that “lovely day at the beach” tired, rather than “Oh my God, kill me now I’m tired.”
Once you can identify those people, it gets a lot easier. You can just spot them. Then you’re not having conversations with people that aren’t the right fit for you. That makes you feel drained and exhausted. That is key because we have limited social energy, and it has to go on to the right people.
Tara: On that note, Eli and I are going to say goodbye. And then we’re going to do all the introvert things to restore our energy after having this conversation with all of you. True?
Eli: True. Yeah.
Tara: All right. Thanks for coming on, Eli.
Elie: Thank you so much for having me.
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