Featuring my conversation with Kinsey Streib of Feel Good Social on trading burnout for boundaries! Episode 70 of Cash in on Confidence.

How did you get started in this space and what led you to having this mindset around social media?

I help down to earth entrepreneurs, market your biz on social media in a way that feels good to you. That’s going to get you the best results without wasting your precious time or making it feel like it’s sucking your soul. I feel that so deeply in my own soul, because it’s been my own experience with it.

I Kind of had this social media marketing business plop into my lap in a way. I wasn’t very good at social media, probably like seven years ago. I didn’t really know much about it. I actually remember the moment that one of my friends who is like a pro snowboarder, she looked at me like seven years ago, you know, being like “Kins, don’t post that way. Don’t post 10 posts at once and like, what are you doing?” She’s like, you need to use social media to build your own brand and to say something. And I kinda looked at her like, what are you talking about? Marketing on social media??

Fast forward a little bit, my now fiance and I, um, we met each other six-ish years ago and we decided to do the whole quit your job and travel through Asia for six months thing. That was super fun. We were like, we’re gonna become travel influencers and all that. I had big dreams for that trip, but guess that didn’t happen. It was fine, but I was just like, this is taking up way too much time. And I feel like I can’t pend time on my trip, enjoying it and stuff. But it kind of opened me up to the world of social media marketing.

So then when we got back from that trip, I found a job at a restaurant serving tables to make some cash. And the woman there knew that I had been doing social media stuff and doing the blogging stuff for our trip. And so she’s like “You know how to do this? Why don’t you do this?” and I was like, sure. Yeah. And, you know, it’s kinda this backward way of coming into social media marketing, figuring out, figuring out this world.

I ended up being pretty decent at it, gained some clients and all that stuff. But then I went through that journey of trying to create a business like everyone else had online. Really trying to create that social media agency doing what you should do, and all that different stuff. It affected me in my business and it also affected me personally, feeling like I was trying to be someone all the time. It was super frustrating and exhausting. And finally, like something clicked to where I was like, “NOPE I’m just gonna be me and I’m just gonna create a business with like my own opinions and lean into what feels good in social media” and everything kind of snowballed from there.

 

Now that you have gotten into this space on social media, what does social media look like for you now?

There’s so many changes in the platforms and all the different things. And so really the background of my business, and I work with a lot of different types of entrepreneurs and in a lot of different industries. Everyone says “niche down, niche down, niche down on industry, and I feel like I’m kind of, niche-ing down more on values. Wanting to create a plan of attack that’s actually doable for you. So you don’t always feel like you’re running behind on this content creation hamster wheel, setting boundaries that are healthy, like healthy scrolling habits. Not only for your business, but also personally. Taking the urgency out of things is a huge cornerstone of the way I approach social media and life in general now. I think a lot of this too stem from me hearing all of these marketers online and really going through that journey of being a new entrepreneur, myself, as I was creating my business, having people tell me, “consistency is key. You have to show up on social media every single day. You have to show up on all the platforms in all the places you have to be available, be on call to answer DM within five minutes or else..” like NO!

So now I kinda like do the backwards approach. I also really believe in my values. I believe that the values that I use to approach social media marketing and the ones I teach my people is actually the best way to do it, honestly. In order to create a sustainable business for yourself that you don’t hate your life and that you’ll be able to continue for the long term. I promote a lot of like showing up really authentically online, like purposefully telling personal stories that are gonna connect on that deeper, genuine level with your ideal customers and, building relationships with people. I kind of take the word of mouth approach to social media marketing in a way where it’s like, I don’t care how many likes you get, I don’t care how big your following is. What I care about is are you having conversations with people that are connective and genuine. THAT’S how you’re gonna see the best results long term.

Don’t show up on social media to be liked, show up to make connections.

There’s a big difference between trying to create content for people to like you and trying to create content for connection and to build relationships and to add value to people. Those are two completely different things.

It’s natural for us to be sucked into the numbers, right. To be sucked into the things that boost our ego online, just in general in life and all that different stuff. But that’s not truly what’s going to get you the sustainable, concrete results that last.

I was actually having a conversation with one of my one on one coaching clients yesterday, and we were talking. She’s always felt kind of icky when it comes to selling and stuff. So we’ve been doing a lot of work when it comes to like reframing. It’s not you going up on a big stage, promoting your own agenda. It’s you being helpful to people who you can help. It’s just taking the ego out of it. Like reframing that stuff instead of feeling like you need to look all cool. And you’re trying to sell your offers from a stage to people. It’s like no. Having one-on-one conversations and trying to put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes and understand like, how can I best serve them?

You’re not shouting. You’re not speaking to people from a stage. You’re not speaking at people from a stage. You’re speaking as if you’re sitting next to one of your ideal customers in a coffee shop. So maybe you’re like whispering something into their ear. Maybe you’re like joking about something like that man in the corner has like a funny hat on or something. You know what I mean? It’s more connective and personal and it also takes the pressure off of yourself.

I have a coaching client, Tanya, I’ve actually been working with for two years now. And it’s insane, the transformation she’s made from being afraid to post on Instagram because she doesn’t wanna look dumb or show up as unprofessional or she felt like all the eyes were on her. Like that’s literally how it feels and how it felt for her was like, she’s gonna hit that post button and everyone in the world is gonna see this post. Okay. Let’s talk like reality. Let’s give a little reality check here real quick. You post on social media and especially when you’re starting out, very few people will actually be seeing your posts, you know?

So you’re not as in the spotlight as you think you are. And also we’re all the stars of our own lives. Literally like we’re all just on our phones. If you think about it from your ideal customer’s perspective, who you’re posting for, they’re just scrolling through their Instagram every day. And if they land on your post sure. They’ll probably connect with it and love it and all that stuff, but they’re also just scrolling on to the next post. They’re not judging you as much as you’re judging you. Right.

We’re just so caught up in our own egos that we just think that everyone is as worried about us as we were worried about us. And so you have this mindset that if you create something and you put it on social media and someone doesn’t like it, that they’re going to be thinking about that thing for weeks. And it’s just, NO. They might have a thought for a second, but then they’re moving on.

It’s not a big deal for them and you’re making it a bigger deal than anybody else would ever make it. You just need to kind of start putting things out there, really navigate that line between trying your best in doing your best work.

But also just like remembering this is just social media. This is just one Instagram post, like just post it and you’ll get better with practice. You know, you really do.

Setting Boundaries

(Tiffany:) I have my one year old is home with me during the day. And I have a four year old that goes to school. But she is home with me for a lot of the day and my husband’s work schedule is crazy. So there’s a lot of days where it’s just me and I’m running this business and there have been times prior to me really just taking this complete shift around how I see social media and building my business that I have had extreme burnout periods where I have been just completely wanting to just be like, “okay, I am completely done” because I was so exhausted. And I felt like I was on my phone constantly. And I remember the moment for me when I was like, “oh my gosh, this like, this really is not good.” is when my husband told me, “I don’t care how much money you’re making on social media. I want you to pay attention to our family.” Because my head was constantly in my phone. Like you were saying, feeling like if I got a message, I got a DM that I had to respond immediately, or that person would be like no longer interested. Or they would forget about me. I just felt like I needed to be constantly engaging with people, like constantly trying to be on the go and productive.

If I wasn’t working on social media, then I was wasting my time. So I know I have had to set a lot of boundaries around social media, in my business, and just really navigating those values, not just in my business, but in my life and what that looks like as putting my family above everything else and all of those things.

Can you give us some tips on setting boundaries when it comes to social media?

I very deeply feel how easy it is to get sucked into social media. I know that feeling of thinking you need to be on call to stay relevant, always be active to stay relevant and all that different stuff. Actually recently I kind of went through this experience in February of this year because I decided it was finally time to attack reels. I have stayed off the reels train or like babbled in the reels train for a hot minute, just because sometimes you have to choose when it comes to content creation, what content you can create and what you have time for and what you don’t, and all that different stuff. February, I decided I was like, I really want to tackle reels spend 30 days doing reels.  I heard a lot of people shouting like 30 days of reels. And I was like, I’m gonna do this and I’m going to really pay attention to what’s working and what’s not working and just kind of analyze and see what’s happening on the platform and all that different stuff.

But up until then, I had definitely gone through all of those things where I was scrolling too often. I felt like I always needed to be commenting. I needed to post every day, you know? So last June actually, I had decided, okay, I’m only going to post five times a week for social media for feel good social, and I’m gonna take the weekends off, right?

So up until February, I had set those boundaries for myself. Taking the weekends off social media and I was loving it. You know, it was weird and hard at first but then I did it. But then in February, I started up again with the daily reels and I literally could feel throughout the month, my mental health going downhill.

It’s insane. It’s crazy. Just feeling your energy depleting. Buuut I enjoyed the creation process of reels more so than I thought I would. I thought, oh, this is gonna be annoying. But I actually had fun. But just paying attention to the insights, doing Reels research, spending so much time on there for that. I felt myself really starting to get sucked into making the numbers mean something about me, you know? Comparisonitis when it came to seeing other people doing really well with their reels. And then me being like, well, this one flopped, you know?

Give yourself permission to not post every day if you don’t want to.

You’re allowed to take the weekends off social media. Also what I always like to say is if you end up like slipping up or if you end up accidentally scrolling on a Sunday afternoon or something like that, it’s OKAY. The thing about Instagram and anything really is if you fall off the horse, you can always hop back on it and it’s fine. Don’t put extra guilt on yourself for not doing it perfectly. Set intentional boundaries for yourself, but if you don’t always make it happen, that’s totally okay. Scrolling limits for yourself is I think important as well. I don’t think we realize how mentally exhausting it is for us to scroll on social media. I would rather you binge a Netflix TV show than scroll on social media, habitually, you know what I mean? Because you’re scrolling through 500 to 5,000 different topics and different ideas for content every day. And not only can you be sucked into comparisonitis, not only do you not have control over what you’re consuming, right?

So you might be having a good day, then all of a sudden a post that pops up, that totally wrecks you emotionally. It happens and your brain can’t navigate that. You’re overloading your brain with information without giving your brain enough time to process it. It’s so exhausting. So that’s definitely one of those things.

We confuse business with binging on social media

A lot of times, we confuse working our business with just binging and just vegging out on social media. A lot of my clients are like “I’m working my business, I don’t understand. I’ve been on social media. I’ve been so consistent” I think a lot of times too, people confuse consistency with value. I think having actual potent time on social media is more important than being consistent.

If you have that boundary of having 5 days on social media, if those five days are really potent, then those two days that you’re going to be off aren’t gonna make that big of a deal. Whereas if you’re posting everyday because you feel like you have to, and you’re just slapping up anything just to say that you were there because you’re trying to be “consistent” then like what’s the point? A lot of times people will feel like they’re working on their social media, but really they’re just scrolling or they’ll be like “no, I was engaging.” Like they say that that’s their engagement time, engaging with other people.

Like, no, you were just scrolling and you lost track of time because you. Trapped in the mindless holes being on social media. One of the boundaries that I’ve been trying to set lately is I don’t pick up my phone and get on social media until after I have done like my morning routine and like done my journaling and my devotional and things like that.

If you don’t have the awareness of how social media is affecting your thoughts, your mood, and your energy, it is very easy to see a post that maybe triggers something in you. And you might not even realize that it was that post that triggered something, but you just know, all of a sudden you feel anxious or all of a sudden you’re sad, mad, angry, or just in a bad mood. And you’re like, I don’t even know where this came from, but it was because you were just vegging on social media and saw a post that triggered something in you.

Maybe you saw someone and you have that comparisonitis. Then now you’re anxious because you’re not where she’s at or don’t have what they have, and this and that. And now you feel all icky and weird and just in a bad energy now. And you don’t even know why. It happens all the time. And so I think just having that awareness is the first step. And the more you’ll start to realize how you were feeling so good this morning. And then all of a sudden you’re in a super crappy mood, like what happened? So now you’re more aware that in the future the post of someone doesn’t make you feel good, so you can totally mute or unfollow someone, set the scrolling limitations, turn off notifications. It’s just understanding you’re human nnatural tendencies, right.

That we all have the instinctual things where we can’t really stop ourselves from comparisonitis, you know. It’s super instinctual for us to see a notification on our phone and have to check it, you know? They’ve kind of trained us to do that at that point. So how can you fix that? Stop yourself from getting notifications when you need to focus.

It has really helped me to set a time limit on social media each day. And so I have mindset for a certain number of hours a day, and I thought about how long do I think it’s actually going to take me to do all the things each day that I need to do for my business. And once those hours are up for the day, those social media apps black out on my phone. I would have to go in and change the setting if I wanna try to get back in them. But more than anything, it’s really helps me to be aware of how much I’m using social media. Because when I first did that, it would be noon and it would already be blacked out. And I’m like, “WHAT I’ve already been on social media for this long?!”

I don’t think people really realize how much time they’re actually spending on social media. So even if you’re not gonna stick to it, I think it would be so awesome if people just tried that and just set it for a certain number of hours, like three hours. And I feel like that’s even being super generous. If social media is not your full time job, that’s a lot of time on a social media in one day. Just think about how much time you actually spend on social media in a day. If you think you use social media for only 2-3 hours a day, then I encourage you to set it for that time and then just actually see, just actually see how long you’re actually spinning on there. I think a lot of people will be surprised that you’re spending a lot more time on social media than you actually think you are.

Be really intentional. I dedicate specific time to Reels research. So if I’m scrolling through reels, I’m sure enjoying the hilarious content that I’m seeing, but I’m also thinking, “is this an audio that I could recreate for Feel Good Social? How can I use this? Could I send this real as inspiration to one of my people?”

Sometimes if I’m really getting hard with the boundaries, I’ll just make a list of my most ideal customer type of people. And I will just go to their accounts for 15 minutes. Five days a week or something. Just go down the list of my intentional ideal customers, go to each of their accounts and leave a comment on one of their posts or respond to their Instagram stories. Or if I’m scrolling, anytime one of my ideal customers pops up in my feed, I will pause and leave a genuine comment on their post. So it’s just like being intentional with the way you’re using the platform so you don’t get sucked into the mindless scroll.

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Kinsey helps down-to-earth entrepreneurs market your business online in a ways that feels good, without wasting your precious time or making you feel like you’re losing your mind. She focuses on your authentic brand vibe, purposeful storytelling, creating content from a place of joy, and genuine marketing tactics that don’t make you feel icky. She’s host of the Feel Good Social Podcast and hosts a super rad online membership The Feel Good Social Club for down-to-earth entrepreneurs who want to create content with ease.

Connect with Kinsey:

feelgoodsocial.com

instagram.com/feelgoodsocial

feelgoodsocial.com/podcast

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