Latest / The Life-First Solopreneur / 74. How Solopreneurs Can Fall In Love With Using Social Media with Shelley Goldstein
Transcript
- Shelley Goldstein (00:00): Having a conversation is the first step. I'm not developing content to make a video, to write the clever post, I'm having a conversation with my audience. Intro (00:13): Welcome to the One Person Business podcast, the show for solopreneurs, consultants and contractors who are ready to take charge of their business and reclaim their freedom. Join us as we bring you inspiring stories, invaluable insights and practical strategies from successful solopreneurs and industry experts, empowering you to create a thriving business that aligns with your unique goals and allows you to live life on your own terms. Here are your hosts, Joe Rando and Carly Ries. Carly Ries (00:43): Welcome to the One-Person Business Podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Carly Ries. Joe Rando (00:47): And I'm Joe Rando. Carly Ries (00:48): We have kind of a funny topic today because we have been told time and time again that this is very relevant for solopreneurs, myself included. I am a millennial marketer, so in theory, I feel like I should love social media and I cannot stand it. However, our guest today, Shelley Goldstein, is going to show me how to embrace it and like it and do the same for all of you. Shelley is a keynote speaker and corporate trainer who trains global audiences how to powerfully command executive presence and master the art of powerful speaking. She understands the demands of the evolving workplace with its increased emphasis on communication skills, which I feel like we might get into today, and has helped hundreds of people in over 40 countries across a wide variety of industries to develop the skills necessary to be empowering, remarkable speakers and lead with more impact. (01:39): Shelley shares her expertise as a frequent podcast guest like she is today, speaker and presenter. In addition to that, she leads interactive webinars and corporate training and is a gold tier facilitator for Google's, #IAMRemarkable Global Initiative. Now, how does that all play into today? We are transferring all of her skills and expertise to discuss how to confidently communicate in the world of social media and like I said, "like it". She is a recovering marketer, so she feels my pain points there and a current business owner, so she's applying all of this to her own life and with that, Shelley, welcome to the show. Shelley Goldstein (02:17): Well, Carly, I do empathize with you and maybe not even like it, but love it. How can we embrace everything? I'm so excited. Joe Rando (02:25): I am so waiting for this. If you can make me love social media, you're a genius. Carly Ries (02:30): I feel like I have to say it because it's baby steps. but I just can't fathom how I'm going to love it by the end of this conversation, but I do know that you'll get us there. Before we talk about how we can love it, let's talk about why we don't love it. Why do so many solopreneurs struggle or why they're hesitant with social media and implementing it for their business? Shelley Goldstein (02:50): If I speak from personal experience, it's an overwhelming sensation to have all the emails coming into your inbox, all the text messages, all the feeds just populating, populating, and I shut down. I think some people share that as well. We're just trying to run our businesses. I want to do my coaching. I don't want to sit there and try to find out where the information is. If I'm to answer that from my personal experience, it really is about are we in a sea of data and trying to find our way to the information that best serves us or that we're even interested in, how do we get past all the cat posts and whatever else that may or may not interest us. Carly Ries (03:41): I'm so glad you said that because I think something that people struggle with is just getting seen. I feel like Facebook, Instagram, the metaverse, it's hard to get seen. Their algorithms are constantly changing, so how can solopreneurs adapt to the ever changing algorithms and do what's right for their business? Shelley Goldstein (04:01): That's a really difficult challenge. Back when MySpace was the big deal and people had a splash page for a website, it was easy. We had very few options and we could sort of dig in and we were learning how things were applying as more people got online. Now there's just so much. With myself, I actually hired a social media manager, not necessarily to write posts for me, but to keep up on these things about the algorithm, search engine optimization. It's gotten so nuanced and so specific and specialized. It changes every day, and the cyst of the algorithms are being designed to algorithm the algorithms. So you can do a search today and an hour later or the next day, it'll be a completely different result sometimes. You almost need somebody to be that person to constantly be searching and up to speed on how the algorithm is shifting, where the keywords are. For me, I want to focus on writing posts that are meaningful. If I can add some keywords and know what people are looking for, then yes, let somebody help me get that information. But it's impossible to do it all yourself, at least for me. Joe Rando (05:22): That's an interesting point because you're right, the algorithms are constantly being tweaked and they are not the same. Every platform has a different algorithm. There was a time when the advice was, "well, if you do social media, just do it on everything." You can go into these tools, you can Hootsuite, and you can just put it on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it now, and Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. Yet it seems to me that if you're doing that, then you're not figuring out any particular algorithm. Does it sense to you anymore to do that or should we be focusing on one platform? Shelley Goldstein (06:00): I think we need to focus on the platform where our audiences live. That's what's happening. There are many, many options, but one size does not fit all. For me as a coach, LinkedIn serves me really, really well. Much better than Instagram. So that's where I need to focus. My customers are there. I am able to do business. That's where I focus. So that's the algorithm, that's the platform I'm going to dive deep into. I keep my finger in the till into Instagram and even looked at Thread because it's good to see as things change, maybe I need to engage in a conversation there. Maybe I need to move over here. So it's not, again, one size fits all. You kind of have to be up to speed and willing to change and move because technology is moving faster than the speed of light at this point. Carly Ries (06:56): Shelley, I'm so happy that you mentioned a different way to use the social media manager because I think solopreneurs, the third thing, aside from the algorithm changes and just not really knowing what they're doing to begin with, I think people struggle with time. They're like, if I don't get the visibility, why would I put time towards this? I think when they think of a social media manager, they think, oh, well, they're going to write the posts and then I'm going to have to review the posts, and then I'm going to have to tweak the posts. I should have just written them myself, but you brought up a great way to use a social media manager where you still create your content, but you take away all the other stuff. I just so appreciate you saying that. I think that it would be beneficial for businesses, but also such a huge time saver, which is a huge thing for solopreneurs. So I just want to thank you for saying that because I'm in marketing and I haven't even really thought about that. I guess we've addressed a lot of the pain points so I'm very intrigued. The challenge for you by the end of this episode, no pressure, is to convert Joe and I into people that love social media. I want to know, are you up for the challenge? Are you ready to dive into this challenge? Shelley Goldstein (08:05): Challenge Accepted! You brought up a good point, Carly, about how I handed off, so to speak, some of the statistical work of social media. If we can find people to help us do the things we're not good at or we don't like to do, hey, that's step one, right? I personally enjoy creating content. I'm a speaking coach. I like speaking. I really enjoy creating videos and I want to do that. I also enjoy conversations I have with people. Many of us are introverts, many of us are extroverts. I'm an ambivert. We go back and forth and we don't necessarily want to shine, but there are conversations we enjoy, we enjoy meeting people, whether it's a business or personal. If we take that into account and hang out in that idea of a conversation and not about a post to splash all the time, and we give the stuff we don't like, the algorithms and the keywords to an associate that could help us put it together or a manager, now we have a team. Now we're working together to build something. I hope as we dig deeper into this, that it is starting to resonate with either one of you. How does that sound as a baseline? Carly Ries (09:33): It's good. My next question, if you're okay that I cut in here, is I'm so happy you love creating video content that I'm very happy for you. Joe and I have tried to create video content and aside from these podcasts, we have some work to do. It's not our natural. It's funny, I love public speaking. I used to do standup comedy, I love getting in front of groups of people, but for whatever reason, when I have my phone right here, the number of takes I have to do would absolutely blow your mind. So if you are not a content creator, what can you do? Shelley Goldstein (10:09): Well, you could hire me. That's what I do. I help people get past that fear of doing a 30 seconed video with one take. But I am you. I was that person who didn't want to do videos. I'm a perfectionist at heart. Had to be perfect. An hour later, 30 second videos, I was not getting anything I liked. I don't like this, I don't like the way I sound. It's not perfect. All that aside for a second, go back to the conversation. We're having a conversation. It's not asking me the perfect question or I'm sitting here worried. Am I going to give the perfect answer? I'm sharing my experiences. Because I'm an entrepreneur and I believe I share something with you and the audience that we're all trying to build our business and we're all together and facing these challenges. So having a conversation is the first step. I'm not developing content to make a video, to write the clever post. I'm having a conversation with my audience. "Hey folks, what do you think of this? This is on my mind today", That takes the pressure off because there's no right and wrong. You want to know something. Again, you're at the dinner table with a friend. There's no right or wrong conversation. You're just talking about a great meal or the last trip you had or who saw the Barbie movie or whatever it might be. It's a conversation. Joe Rando (11:38): Now, I'm assuming the conversation in this context should be somewhat related to what it is that you do. Since you're trying to build a business, Shelley Goldstein (11:47): We're having conversations with people that we want to help and that potentially need what we have to offer. However, there's nothing wrong with having a conversation on somebody else's post or just about some point of interest that also works to bring people in on the conversation to be topical. There's a lot going on there. I mean, I'm here talking about social media. As Carly pointed out, I'm a public speaking coach. I'm talking about something that's relatable, that's a different area, but we could all connect to. So going on somebody else's post and responding in a conversation. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. And not to say, Hey, that's cool, or Wow, congratulations really as if you're sitting at a cafe or a pub and you're like, "that is really fascinating. I had no idea that that's what people did. Dah, dah, dah, dah. How did you get there" and start that dialogue. Now you're conversing on somebody else's post, but you're building a relationship because step two of the conversation, the point of it is to build relationships. That's how we do business. Carly Ries (13:09): I like this because it takes away the intimidation factor of social media. If you just get it down to the basics of, "hi, let's be friends". To piggyback off of that, if I'm not mistaken, you two met on LinkedIn. And the conversation just started from there. It's not like Joe was, "Hey, I'm building an app and I want you to do this." And I'm assuming, Joe, just because I talked to you, you didn't just dive into "this app that we're building", and Shelley, I am assuming you weren't like, "Hey, do you want to do public speaking? Call me, book your discovery session here." It started as a conversation. I'm warming up to the idea of it just being a conversation as opposed to a post per se. Shelley, take it from here. You said building connections and then building conversations and then relationships. Shelley Goldstein (14:05): I'm going to take the next beat on that. I was doing these perfect posts. I felt this pressure as you're saying, this anxiety, it's got to be a great post. I got so hung up in that, it was excruciating. Part of why I really disliked doing any kind of posts. One day I just got so exhausted, I said, you know what? You've got 30 seconds. Just talk about something. I happened to be doing a workshop on self-promotion for job interviewing, and I just got on the video, I turned it on and I talked about getting laid off, a shameful experience, a humiliating experience. I just said, if I'm going to connect with these people, they're looking for a job. They've gotten laid off. This was a couple of years ago when the sweeps were happening. I'm like, share your moment. (15:00): I started talking about, it was a very sloppy video. I didn't even have a good camera at the time. I just talked about getting laid off and how I actually got empowered from it. I shared that moment. Again, it was a sloppy video, bad quality. Well, that was one of the best posts I ever done as far as getting interaction. People came out of the woodwork. I relate to you. I'm sorry. That's incredible. You're inspiring, it went on and on. More hits, more views, more everything, more comments, more shares. Sit with that for a second. I'm now talking in a conversation to people that are going, I can relate to that. I was being honest and fair and I wasn't being all high glossy. There's nothing wrong with glossy videos. They're terrific. I love doing those too. But to get out of our own way, we could just be ourselves because I'm hoping people want to work with me because they like me and they want to see who I am and what a better way to show myself. Joe Rando (16:08): You basically were yourself, but you were also very vulnerable in that video. You were very vulnerable. And I think people respond to that. That's something I'm kind of coming around to. You can be professional and you can do all these things, but boy, when you're human as George B. Thomas, our most of the time host of Solopreneur Problem Solvers event says, "be a human". That's what he means, just being yourself, being a little vulnerable, being honest about your feelings and your strengths and weaknesses really resonates with people. Shelley Goldstein (16:48): Absolutely. Many of us have heard or listened to a lot of TED Talks. They are all about people who are overcoming an obstacle, some kind of amazing hurdle, some experience, a lesson learned, a failure to a win. All the TED Talks, the majority of them, are all about people going through some challenge and getting to the other side and sharing that vulnerability, sharing that humility, those softened moments to say, I didn't start out great. Nobody starts out great. We were all connected to the story and the journey. The end result that Elon Musk became a billionaire is the end result. The journey is what we want to see. The struggles of how Microsoft was built. Apple started in a garage, two guys, college dropouts. That's what we connect to, not the fact that they were major successes so much. And Ted talks are all about that. So if we're so entrenched and attracted to storytelling and the Ted Talk journey, there might be something to it in our own journey. Joe Rando (18:10): Are you saying that we should all develop a backstory like it would for a character in a movie? Shelley Goldstein (18:15): No, we have a story. It's not to be developed. We've lived it and just share our experience. I got laid off. Joe Rando (18:23): But to kind of understand what that story is. We've lived it, but I don't necessarily draw upon that as part of who I am on a regular basis because I've never kind of sat down and thought through what is my origin story. I love origin stories. I always loved the first one of a trilogy. I love the first Star Wars. I love the first Lord of the Rings. I am a geek. Those origin stories are the best but I've never thought through my origin story. Shelley Goldstein (18:53): Well, you can do that. There's a journaling technique that I usually walk people through that's called a story sprint. There's a way to literally journal these moments. It's not only your origin story. It's I'm living in southern California, and this last weekend we had a hurricane warning and we had an earthquake. That's a story to talk about. It's not the origin of my life or career, but it's a story. How does that fear, how does that anxiety relate to perhaps some of the fear and anxiety that some of my clients might engage with? Is there an opportunity there to say, Hey, wait, that kind of takes me down a path. I wrote about Paul Rubin's, Peewee Herman, when he died. I saw an interview with him, and quite honestly, I never really followed him at a great stride. (19:52): I knew he was there. I saw some of his stuff. But in seeing an interview about him, he talked about how he created Peewee Herman, and it was because he couldn't remember his punchline. He couldn't remember the joke. He would get on stage and he would fail miserably. And he at one point said, my character, my comic story is a really bad comedian, one who can't do anything. So he started goofing around pulling props out of his bags. That's the creation of PeeWee Herman Genius, right? I took that idea and honored not only his genius, but also talked about how that really is finding our own. Embracing our own mistakes and things we don't have instead of worrying about what we are missing, work on what we got, take the little that we got. If we don't have our lines, how could that mistake turn into something fabulous for ourselves? And that's a story that just happened a week or two ago, and it was interesting to me. Carly Ries (21:02): So let me ask you this, because okay, you're kind of moving the needle with me. I love the interpersonal relationships that we're talking about here, but we're also talking about solopreneurs who are trying to grow their business. How do you transition from, "Hey, Joe, hey Shelley, this is awesome. I really like talking to you. Come on our podcast." That's great. But how do you transition with it? What if that's still not moving the bottom line? What if you're doing all of this? I think what's happening is I do think a lot of solopreneurs try to be active in social media, but it doesn't pay the bills. You know what I mean? How do you go from just enjoying yourself on social media to actually making an impact for your livelihood? Shelley Goldstein (21:53): I think we need to think about the strategy of anything. Everything we do, or at least what I've learned to do in my business, has to have a strategy. Moving the needle. What does that mean? What is your needle and where is it moving? What are your goals for that? There are people that sell products and social media. They could say influencers could definitely click and connect and they sell products and they make money. There are all different ways that people want to build their business or move the needle. I don't sell a product, I sell a service. For me, my strategy is that the exposure of it, if I'm out there talking and people engage with me and they see what I'm doing, I get calls to say, be on my podcast. I get calls saying, can you speak at my conference? (22:49): I get calls. Can you coach our team? I really like what you said. How does it work? So I'm actually showing what I do. Because it's something that I love to do and there are interesting ways that I see this business, it takes me away from trying. Every post has a strategy, but I'm not trying anything just to say, "Will I connect with somebody". My strategy is to connect, engage with people and have visibility. Therefore, the type of work that I do on social, the conversations really play into that. And over time it can build into something and it does. Carly Ries (23:41): Can I ask you how, because you said LinkedIn is your platform of choice, how you use it to connect with people? Do you just do organic commenting? Do you use InMail? Do you use Sales Navigator? We love Sales Navigator. We've seen great things with it, but there's definitely a business tone just by the fact you're using Sales Navigator. What do you use to make these connections that has been so beneficial for you? Shelley Goldstein (24:07): I schedule a certain amount of time during the week to just go on LinkedIn. I look for interesting posts. I scroll the feed. I scroll and stop on something that really stops my attention and I make a genuinely conversational comment. Occasionally it's, "Hey, great" But I try to avoid that. I try to really engage because it's interesting to me. I'm being honest about it. Truthfully, that's been successful for me. I know Sales Navigator works for a lot of people. Again, it kind of has to be your strategy and how it works, but you could probably massage some of the dialogue that's used and make it more conversation. An old boss of mine said, "usually you have to date somebody before you ask them to marry you". In business, it's the same thing. We talked about relationships. (25:14): How can we relate and connect? Can I trust you to help me speak better? Can I trust you to learn marketing or take over my marketing channel? We have to build that relationship. Once the trust is there and the honesty and we feel we know the character of who we're talking to, and that could be a week, a year, a month, who knows, then all of a sudden we could say, Hey Joe, I need that thing you've got. And to me, that's honest selling or exchange of businesses. So moving the needle might take a little bit of time, but if you really want to build clients that are going to trust you, like you and come back, the relationship I think is the key. Carly Ries (25:58): Can I circle back to the very beginning? I am trying to take an approach of, if it wasn't me asking you these questions because I'm extroverted. So getting on LinkedIn, there are some people that are running these businesses and having natural conversations doesn't come naturally to them. They're great at what they do, but reaching out to others isn't their expertise. What should they do at the beginning to build these relationships if that's out of their comfort zone? Shelley Goldstein (26:45): That's a great question and another opportunity for a shameful plug. But as I said earlier, I'm not good at the SEO and the algorithm things so I bring somebody in to help me. Sometimes we need coaches, we need training, we need to get past certain fears about why we can't have a conversation. Maybe it's a deeper issue. I'm not saying here's a magic pill, it's going to work for everybody, but it's important to know what we need to work on as well. And introverts, I work with quite a number of them, there is a way to get past these labels because they're just labels. They're just stories we're telling ourselves or ways we're holding ourselves back. And it's not true. What we think is not necessarily what the rest of the world thinks. Joe Rando (27:44): I'll give a great example. Dharmesh Shah, who's the co-founder of HubSpot, and when you go to the InBound conference, he speaks every year and everybody loves him and he's such a self-professed introvert, but he's just got this kind of great, very low key, but very great personality and people love him. But introverted doesn't mean that you don't like people or you don't like even speaking, but it means that it costs you energy. I go to a party and after the party, I'm tired. Carly's probably wired up. Shelley Goldstein (28:18): Yeah, there's different ways to manage energy, and believe it or not, in speaking, it's all about repurposing that energy. There are ways to do it. People do breathing exercises, but we can take that energy so you're not depleted and you're using it to serve you to the best of the ability. It's not a cure all, but it certainly can help..If you take it in little baby steps, as Carly was saying earlier, the like to the love, you've got to start somewhere. We all have to start somewhere because there's a part of us that got us to be very successful, and there's a part of us that's holding us back in every other areas. So there's always work to be done, myself included. Carly Ries (29:03): I don't really want to admit this, but I really want to just go start posting. I want to see if I can get to where I want to be with social. You've done it, Shelley. Joe and I keep saying we're going to allocate X amount of time a week to just blasting, not blasting, that sounds impersonal, but to posting on LinkedIn and engaging on LinkedIn, and we've been saying that for a while. We have a lot going on, but LinkedIn is the stuff that keeps getting pushed. And when I say LinkedIn, this is for anybody, whatever platform of choice you're using for Lifestarr, our company, LinkedIn is where we try to focus our efforts, but we've been dragging our feet with it just because we've had higher priorities. (29:50): This conversation has made me want to go in now and actually see if I can move the needle for my personal profile and share lifestarr and everything because I've had that dragging my feet feeling for so long. This has kind of reduced the intimidation, reduced the, "I don't want to do this", Now I'm just curious to see if I can love it. I guess I'm going to say maybe I don't love it quite yet. I'm going to stick to my guts, but I want to love it and I want to try everything that you're telling me to do so that I can, Shelley Goldstein (30:29): I've got a tip for you and everybody listening on that. A first step. You're in the market, you're in the grocery store. There's a person next to you online, look in their cart, pick out a product and ask them about it. Hey, is that chocolate ice cream really as good as they say? Start the conversation about the littlest thing. Maybe the person will start, "I have it with strawberries and hot fudge and it's really amazing". Or "I don't even eat this. I'm buying it for my husband." Whatever the case is, you're starting that conversation, and it doesn't have to be huge. Before you post, go out there and comment on somebody else's. How do you really feel about it? What's your honest opinion about the statement somebody's making? What's your input? Wow, I really appreciated that comment. I didn't know that. How fascinating. I'm going to look deeper into this. Thanks for sharing that. Those are baby steps in building up to where you get more comfortable about, I have an idea this morning. Now I'm going to go on and create a little video or write a little post. The ideas start flowing in once we let go of that restriction. So maybe that little tip helps. Carly Ries (31:46): You did it. I mean, I'm speaking for myself. Joe, do you have anything? Are you convinced? Joe Rando (31:52): Well, I'm really intrigued with the conversational approach. I guess I wasn't thinking about it quite in those terms. Not that I was the type that wanted to just go blasting out stuff, because I do that sometimes. You just go and you see somebody and they post something, "oh, that's really great. I'm really glad to hear that your kid is doing well now after surgery or whatever it is". But I never thought about that as being what I was supposed to be doing. I thought that was what I was doing because I wanted to as opposed to what I was supposed to be doing. So this kind of reframes a lot of things for me at least the interaction aspects of social media. Reducing the content, got some work to do there. Carly Ries (32:41): I think more than anything, Shelley, you've gotten us excited to test this new approach, and I think for that, you have fully succeeded in your challenge today, and we so appreciate that. Just talking to you, this is the first time we've spoken. It is so clear to me that you're a coach, that you are empathetic, you understand where people are coming from, you dedicate your life to others finding success, and that's how you find success. So what is your favorite quote about success? Shelley Goldstein (33:12): Favorite quote about success? I think something that I've actually said, I don't know if it's my favorite quote, but I do know that people respond, is that "we can prepare for who we think is going to be before us, but we have to listen for who's actually there" which kind of ties it to what we're talking about today. Carly Ries (33:50): Absolutely. I love that. We actually, sometimes we have repeat quotes from people, and that is definitely one we haven't heard before. So we appreciate that. Joe Rando (33:59): I want to say, that is probably one of the best quotes on success I've ever heard for salespeople. I have worked with them over the years, and they often have a habit of going in and giving the presentation that they think they should be giving. And if you're listening as I have, thinking "no, no, this is not where we should be going". So that's a great quote. Is that your quote? Shelley Goldstein (34:28): It is, I do say it a little better. It's somewhere on my website, but yes, it is my quote. Joe Rando (34:36): Send it to me. I think that's a great one for salespeople because they sometimes forget to listen and not just do what they were planning on doing. Shelley Goldstein (34:48): You said something, Joe, earlier. You said want, I want to, and I think Carly said want, and I think that's a really important thing. Part of enjoying it and loving social media is you start really enjoying it, that you want to do more of it, as opposed to have to or should. Those are very pressure type words. So continue to want. Carly Ries (35:10): I think that's the transition that happened with me today. I continue to feel like I have to now, I want to. I also just want to piggyback off of what Joe was saying for salespeople, newsflash, if you are a solopreneur, you are also now a salesperson or you're contracting with a salesperson. So definitely take note of that. Shelley, this has been so wonderful, probably actually one of my favorite episodes we've done just from a transformation standpoint, on my end. If people want to learn more about you, Shelley, where can they find you? Shelley Goldstein (35:43): I am on linkedin@shelleygoldstein.com or LinkedIn, what have you, but you can find me@shelleygoldstein.com, but remarkablespeaking.com, which might be easier to spell. That is the name of my company. Carly Ries (36:01): Great. And all of that will be in the show notes. Well, Joe, let's go crank it on the LinkedIn and listeners, please go choose your platform where your audience is and get cranking there. Shelley, thank you so much for coming on today. Shelley Goldstein (36:16): It was a lot of fun and I really look forward to engaging with you and having conversations with you off and on LinkedIn. Carly Ries (36:23): Likewise and listeners, good luck in your social media endeavors and we will see you next week. Thanks for tuning in. Closing (36:34): You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone. In fact, millions of people are in your shoes running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures. At LifeStarr, we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com