More Being, Less Being Seen KDS: 038
I’ve been thinking about balance in business and where I spend my time and energy quite a bit these days. In fact, it’s probably safe to say this has been bubbling up for a while.
My business has shifted and grown significantly in the last few months. I have another brand (Content Creators Planner), I’ve added services back into my business (content marketing), and am hiring team members again.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done any service work, and I was adamant that I didn’t want to do services again… ever. Until the right service work came along (content marketing). I’m excited about this new part of my business, but I’m also not in a mad rush to sell this and bring on tons of clients. At least not until the systems are running like a well-oiled machine (or quite possibly ever).
I should probably clarify what I mean by ‘tons of clients’ because truth is, I want to scale this to a comfortable and manageable level and see where that takes me.
I have zero desire to create and scale a huge content marketing agency.
Where I’m at today, I see scaling this to 10 or 15 clients max… and doing it one client at a time, with 4 or 5 people on my team. Period.
The reasons I said yes to this offering is simple:
I believe in content marketing 100%, love doing it, and want to help people get results.
It also allows me to master my craft, create a great stream of recurring revenue (this is done on a monthly retainer and minimum of 6-month contract), and keep space within my life to serve people at a higher level.
The cash flow also allows me to re-invest back into my business with paid traffic.
None of which is the point of this post.
The point is that as I step into this new offering, work on growing the Content Creators Planner brand and keep my Kim Doyal brand going something is going to have to give.
I had a friend reach out on Facebook recently to see if everything was O.K. because I had been a little M.I.A.
Here’s the thing…
Everything is great.
I’ve simply been doing the work. Adding services to my business initially requires much more involvement on my part while everything is being set up before I can be in more of the consultant role.
Surprisingly, it’s been hugely liberating.
I spend way too much time scrolling on Facebook. I love my Facebook group (Content Creators) but am wondering how to keep that flourishing while I invest my time in my business (the keyword there being ‘mine’, not Mark Zuckerberg’s).
Which leads me to the title of this post.
More ‘Being’ and less ‘Being Seen.’
There is an obscene amount of pressure to be seen everywhere (especially as a content marketer).
And before I go any further, this isn’t a rant about hustling, doing too much, too little, whether or not you have a morning routine, or how productive your days are.
This is truly coming from a place of wondering how to navigate all of this.
We have access to what people are doing 24/7.
I love technology, social media, and all that the internet has allowed me. But for the love of all that is good in the world, I do not want to feel like I’m falling behind because I’m not recording and documenting every damn thing I do.
I think the cause of this is a mix between self-responsibility (or lack thereof) and the culture we live in.
I have nieces and a nephew that are younger than my kids (one finishing elementary, one finishing middle school, and one in high school). When I watch some of the things they go through I honestly thank God that I didn’t have social media growing up.
Between 7th and 9th grade I spent a combined total of 15 months on crutches for hip surgeries. It would have been 10 times harder to manage that time if I had access to see everything I was missing out on or all the fun other people were having (because let’s face it, social media is the highlight reel. We see what people want us to see).
O.K., that went a little sideways… back to the business side of things.
There are probably only a handful of people I follow that I envy from a business perspective.
And it’s not because of their income.
It’s because they run very successful businesses simply.
They are absolute masters of their craft, work with great clients (not all the time, but most of the time. When you have clients some will be numpties. It’s just a numbers game), live life on their terms, and don’t spend inordinate amounts of time on social media, launching courses or products all the time, or living with expectations and pressure.
Keep in mind this is all my perception… that’s not to say their lives are always a walk in the park and they don’t feel the pressure.
I’m stating all this as the observer.
I’ve become much more conscious of where I’m spending my time and how it relates to my energy.
The desire to write and record this came about after having a conversation with my daughter. It was about an hour and a half call, but I had this epiphany as I was talking to her.
She’s a very independent, ambitious, and driven young woman. She works hard and tends to make the most of every opportunity, At the same time, she’s human and was feeling some pressure and frustration with what she is and isn’t doing with where she’s at in her life (I don’t know that it helped, but I assured her it’s certainly not something that only young people question).
My epiphany was about the process as opposed to accomplishment.
What if what she’s experiencing right now is about getting clearer on her path as opposed to ‘doing more things’?
There’s a fine line between pursuit of work you love and having that fit into who you are and how you want to move through the world.
There's a fine line between pursuit of work you love and having that fit into who you are and how you want to move through the world. @kimdoyalAs an example: I know that if I were to live stream a few days a week I could probably blow up my business.
The problem is that I don’t want to.
I truly enjoy live streaming, but not that often. It takes a different level of energy to show up and do that. I also don’t like random live streams where people just go live to hear themselves talk.
My friend Maritza Parra wrote a great article on creating more white space in her life.
If I could have done a backflip I would have.
As I’ve gotten older I definitely require more white space in my life. In other words, less scheduled, structured time with expectations of what productivity will produce.
Recently I had to remind myself recently on a weekend day that just because I could work doesn’t mean I had to.
In fact, it was probably much better for my business that I didn’t work (I didn’t, I went and saw Aladdin, which was fantastic). I enjoyed my time away from the computer and came back to work with a clear mind. My goal is that the ping pong discussion in my mind about whether or not I should work stops (or at least lessens).
What This All Means for Business
In the last couple of days since I started working on this post/podcast, I’ve had a couple of discussions about this topic.
With social media pivoting to more of a “pay to play” model (it is what it is, right?), many people are finding themselves spending less time on social media, both posting and engaging.
I don’t think less posting and engaging is the answer. I think it’s about getting creative, innovating, and testing what works.
That being said, there are only so many hours in the day.
How do you decide where to put your energy?
The old mantra of being seen everywhere, while probably still valid, is way more of the long game than a viable strategy.
As an example: 
I recently posted in my Facebook group about the nonsense that is the ‘follow-unfollow’ crap that happens on Instagram. Why the hell people spend energy doing this is beyond me. My guess is it has something to do with appearing more like an influencer because your follower count is so much higher than your following count, but c’mon… does this shit really work?
Most of the time these are random brands or businesses.
To my understanding (and I’m not even remotely schooled on how the social algorithms work), engagement is way more important than your counts.
And if you game the system like this, the quality of your followers will drop significantly and your content won’t be seen anyway.
What if the “Being” part of this idea was about “being present”?
Or, as the song goes, “Love the one you’re with.”
If you have a list, followers, likes, and subscribers, why not engage with the people who have already told you they like you and value what you’re doing?
If you have a list, followers, likes, and subscribers, why not engage with the people who have already told you they like you and value what you're doing? @kimdoyalAll of this sounds easier than it is, trust me, I know.
I’d love to tell you that I don’t have FOMO, but it creeps in every now and then.
The other piece of all of this is that I have friends I like to connect with on social media (primarily in my Facebook group or on Facebook). This is how we stay in touch and check in.
Moving Forward
I’ve decided I’m going to set a goal for myself for the month of June.
I may run this as a ‘challenge’ in my Facebook group, so if you’re in the group look for that, if you’re not in the group, join us here.
I’m going to keep this as simple as possible.
Pick 3 things that will help me reach my business goals, as it pertains to all of this, create a schedule and stick to it.
The three things that will be most helpful to me would be:
- No social media until my email is sent out (this can be for Kim Doyal OR the Content Creators Planner, but either way, I want to get my emails back on a regular schedule).
- Schedule in creation and promotion time: what I do when (my friend James Rose, who is great at all this, showed me how he uses Trello for this. I’m pretty much all in with Asana now so I’m going to create a Trello-style board for myself).
- Batch things: also schedule in these blocks of time. It might be batch creating social images, scheduling them, writing, or recording, either way, focusing on what type of task when I’m in a groove.
There are a few reasons I want to do this (and need to do this):
Now that I have clients for content marketing, making sure my time is allotted to the right activities is going to keep me from letting my own brands get lost in the shuffle. This happened quite a bit when I was doing websites. I know too much to let that happen again.
The other big thing is that I have some big changes happening in my personal life.
My son is graduating high school and moving out of the area at the beginning of July and I’ll be moving out of this house at the beginning of August. My goal is to move out of the area, but I have a few events in August and September so will probably be moving out of the area for something permanent at the beginning of October (I’m actually looking at Boise, Idaho. I’ll keep you posted!).
Not only am I moving, but I’m going to get rid of a lot of stuff as well.
I went through this when I sold my house a few years back so it’s not too bad, but my plan is to get rid of way more stuff.
It’s a super exciting time but it’s also going to be busy.
Having a clear, simple plan for my business will help me achieve all this.
Staying present and choosing to focus on who is in my world right now is what will make this possible.
I’m curious to know how all of this fits into your life and business?
Leave a comment, let me know what you think!
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