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So, I'm back again recording in the Mazda Miata MX5. As you guys know, I'm loving recording in this space. It just really feels like my own private personal studio, and I absolutely can't get enough of it. And once I get done recording, I'm going to drop the top and take a little drive.
It's a really nice day out today, so I'm going to take advantage of the nice weather and ride around a little bit in the Miata. You know, I've got to drive my Mazda. I love it. So, speaking of what I love, I love how when people are talking about seeking a switch, a pivot, or a quit, so many people now are focused on making social media a really, really integral part of their business.
And it seems like a lot of people are getting this idea that if they can make a successful business out of their social media platforms, then they have a business. It's a viable business. Let's move forward with it. Let's quit our job.
Let's make this our side hustle that we think will allow us to quit our job. Now, don't get me wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with incorporating social media in your business, in your plan, and maybe even starting your side hustle there. But what I want to offer to you is something that I've talked about before on actually Instagram Live, funny enough.
And it's the fact that, you know, let me just play the scenario out here for you. Okay. What happens when you quit your job to do something like, let's say, have a YouTube channel, let's say you've already been working on this YouTube channel, you've been producing content for this YouTube channel, and now you're in a space where you've started to see some success from it and you're like, okay, I'm making money. I'm going to go ahead and quit my job and do this YouTube channel full time or do this whole like indie content creator situation full time.
So then what happens when you look up and you realize you, this job that you wanted to get away from, this nine to five that you wanted to get away from, when you realize that you really now work for YouTube, now you're at their mercy. Because if they fold or if by some crazy, I don't know, just something crazy happens and they decide that they're no longer, you know, going to have the YouTube platform or maybe they shut your account down or anything else like that, then guess what? Your business is done. Your livelihood is done.
Now that makes me like an extreme example, but it's really not in the reality of things because you don't control anything that's happening at YouTube. You know who controls it? YouTube does. You know why?
Because it's their business because it's their company. It's the company that they started. So when you really think about it, if someone said to you, I want you to start a company based off of my company. And if my company succeeds, your company will succeed.
But if my company doesn't succeed, your company won't succeed, you would be like, uh, no thank you because that's very, very risky. And the thought of your success being dependent upon someone else's business success seems almost ludicrous, right? Well, that's basically what happens when people decide that they're going to base their business off of a social media platform. It's scary.
It's tricky. You know, social media is not what it was five years ago. Let's say even, you know, things were very organic then. There were, especially on even on platforms like YouTube, they were at one point they were probably trying to pull people in the door to be content creators to utilize YouTube.
Now they don't have to do that. They do not have to do that. And so what I'm really getting at today is that the gatekeepers are back. A lot of people were talking about, you know, oh, the gatekeepers are gone.
The gatekeepers are gone because of all of the access we felt like we had via social media and via all of these ways to connect with people across the world that we just didn't have before. Well, although it's fine, great and good that we have this access, please do not be fooled. The gatekeepers are still there. There are still ways and they're continuously coming up with more ways day by day to figure out how to have their finger on the pulse of everything that is happening within the world of social media, marketing, digital marketing, online marketing, all of that.
People are trying to wrap the companies are not even just trying. They are wrapping their minds around. They are understanding they are developing new ways to make sure that they have control. One thing I want to offer to you is that, you know, things are changing and it doesn't matter if you're someone who has an online boutique and you're selling clothes or you're a beauty guru on YouTube or if you're a app developer based in Silicon Valley, whatever it is, just know that things are always constantly changing.
And if you're a person that's not paying attention to your industry news, you may miss a vote and end up coming up short like the older people say, you might come up short. You might miss the vote. Pay attention to what's going on. Pay attention to industry trends.
Just like, for example, I don't know if you guys had a chance to check out this Anderson Cooper 60 minute special where he's talking about brain hacking. He's talking about brain hacking and he's talking to Silicon Valley insiders as well as programmers and they are talking about our fascination with our phones. And now while we might think it's our fascination with our phones is a result of like a cultural phenomenon, we just can't put it down. There's so much happening on our phones that keeps us engaged and you know, we're just obsessed with our phones because it's the thing of now.
It's like the trend. But really what they're digging into and what they're talking about and I'll link to this video. It's about a 13 minute video but it's a very interesting watch. So what they're talking about in this video is the different ways that Silicon Valley and all of these different programmers and app creators and tech companies and you know, all the phone programmers and everything, how they are tuned in to ways to get you to be locked into your phone.
They are pretty much saying that they are manipulating things to their benefit to make sure that you're locked in, to make sure that you see what they want you to see, to make sure that you do what they want you to do. They likened it to a slot machine. So when you're playing the slides, you know how that goes, you may lose a little bit of money, but guess what? You stay on that machine if it hits and you at least get $10 out of it.
They give you $10 out of it. You're like, oh, the hope is there. I might win. I might win.
So you keep going, right? That's exactly what they're doing with these programmers and the different apps and stuff on the back end. And that's what they're putting out to us. So now, if you think that you're just putting out content on your social media platforms and you just happen to be so wildly popular or you just happen to be so wildly not popular, if you think that that's all a game of chance, this video is letting you know that it's not.
There are ways to manipulate things to boost your engagement and your interest level. And I'll share this with you. I have no factual proof behind what I'm about to share with you, but I definitely noticed that this probably wasn't a coincidence. So a friend of mine, she has a decent following on Instagram and she fell off, right?
She got bored with it a little bit. She got bored with her engagement and not being as good as she would ideally like it to be. So she stopped posting for a while. She took a little break.
Then she came back. She came back. She started posting more and she started using hashtags and stuff. And she saw like her likes and her engagement, mainly her likes.
She saw them double. And she's like, oh, wow, I'm in love with Instagram again. Like I'm all about it. And the thing that's funny is I told her I said, you know what, what if it has nothing to do with you using these hashtags and everything to do with the fact that you have fallen off of Instagram, you have backed away.
So maybe that more than just the normal Instagram algorithm that we all know about that was highly buzzed about that changed the way that we see things in our feed more than just that. What if there are programming tools working behind the scenes to capture your attention in such a way that if you disappear and then you reappear, your engagement goes up significantly to get you real back in to be a user of the product again? Think about that. Spend some time on that, especially if you're a creator, especially if you're someone who's looking to maybe potentially make a pivot in your career and it involves something with social media or if you're looking to quit and make a significant change in your career and it involves your business heavily having to do with social media and the results that you get based off of social media.
Hold on to all that goodness you're feeling right now. We will be right back after this quick break with more Switch, pivot or quit top. Think about this. When people ran businesses successfully for years prior to now and this time that we're living in now, how do they do it?
They didn't have social media. So yes, social media makes it easier in some respects, but if you're running a business that everything has to be based on your social media platform, that is like a recipe for you to really, really potentially reach some points where that are disastrous and that really impact you in a way that you didn't anticipate. So a business plan should be based on a good idea, not a social media platform. It shouldn't be based on a platform that was really for you designed to enhance your business, or be the foundation of your business.
So your plans for advancement and your career and your professional life, it needs to be based on things that are utilizing tactics, specific tactics, things that are tried and true versus like an expanded social media. That's not a good plan for advancement in your career. It's just advancement or exposure on social media. That's not it.
That ain't the way. The other thing is I get it. So many people are tired of the day to day and the mundane life. So there is a desire to be your own boss and have your own business or have your own thing going, but understand that your entire business can't be based off of a social media account.
It just can't. And then if it is, you'll end up finding yourself spending an unnecessary amount of time trying to figure out the big, uh-huh behind social media. Like do you really have time if you're running a business to sit around and try to crack the IG code? I know I don't know.
There are some other codes that I need to be cracking and it has nothing to do with the IG algorithm, which like I just pointed out to you could absolutely be not what you expect. What you see on face value is your feed changed and the amount of people that you see come up in your feed has changed and it's more similar to like a Facebook feed now, but that's what you see. You have no idea what's going on behind the scenes. You just don't.
So I want to offer this to you. Like I said, please be aware that although it feels like the gatekeepers are gone, the gatekeepers are back and really they may have never left another just two quick examples before I go showing you how everything is not a level playing field. And let me clarify this. When I say the gatekeepers are back.
So when people were referring to the gatekeepers being gone before, it was because you had social media platforms like YouTube and things like that where let's say you were an aspiring actress like someone like shameless Maya, she talks about on her YouTube channel how she was an aspiring actress who just couldn't get the kind of gigs that she wanted to get. So she started a YouTube channel in the hopes of being able to be shameless, share her voice, share her talent and then as a result, um, be able to put the type of creativity and work out there that she wanted to put out there. And I'm sure secretly she wanted to be discovered in some way, you know, she wanted to be able to utilize her voice and her talent and then be discovered. So now she has this huge platform.
I think she's passed a million subscribers on YouTube. So this is great for her, right? People look at that and they say things like, Oh, the gatekeepers are gone. You don't have to jump through all of these hoops.
You don't have to be, um, you don't have to be approved by Hollywood now to be able to get your shine and get your message and your talent out to the masses, right? That's what they say when they say the gatekeepers are gone. There's there's ways that things are more accessible now than they were before. And I agree with that.
There are ways that things are more accessible now and you have more access to things now that you wouldn't have before, even just straight out, you have more access to people that you might not have had access to before. You can, um, and I'll talk about actually, um, PR and some PR one on one tips in an upcoming episode, but just quickly, you can find out who a writer is for a specific magazine, a producer for a show, a, um, a editor of a, of a magazine or a newspaper or something. And you can find them now likely on social media and you can go and engage with them, interact with them. And if nothing else at the bare minimum, you can at least follow them and see sort of what their train of bodies and what types of things they're interested in and, um, and that can give you an edge on being able to pitch them in the right way in a way that will be appealing to them, right?
So in that sense, yes, the gatekeepers are gone. There is more access. But in another sense, the gatekeepers are still there in the way that I just talked about brain hacking in the way that programmers are behind the scenes manipulating things so that you see what they want you to see, you engage the way that they want you to engage. So if you think about this, you think that the Instagram algorithm is just, um, fair and simple as it is, right?
But the reality is if you're someone who is trying to push your messaging or push whatever you have out there and get people to consume it, when you go and hit that publish button, when you go hit that, uh, the, the button that says next go put this out to the world because the gatekeepers are still there, there is absolutely no guarantee that all of these people that you've worked so hard to get you to follow you, that they will see what you just produced, what you just put out there. So then how do you continuously get your message out there? Because now your messaging is being monitored or being held back by the powers that be, you have no control. That's why I say it's not, it's not a good business model to build your business off of social media because you ultimately at the end of the day do not have as much control over social media accounts as you would like, as it would seem that you do.
If you just notice, for example, too, there's layers to things, there's levels to things. Not everybody has the same access on social media. Take again, for example, Instagram, and I talk a lot about Instagram because that's where I tend to hang out more than any other online platform, social media platform. So if you notice that some people have privileges that the rest of the people, and let's, I'm including myself and that, do not have.
If you notice, first it's like, okay, someone has a verified check mark on the account, right? On their account. Now then you notice that some of those people with the verified check marks on their account, when you're watching their IG stories, you can now slide up and they can directly take you to another website or a promotion or this or that. They are influencers on a whole not a level right now.
They're marketers. That's what they're not the same as the little average Instagram account that might have 200 followers. You can't do that. You and your 200 followers cannot tell somebody to swipe up when they're watching your IG stories and go to the link and buy this or check out this or check out that.
No. So in actuality, there's a gatekeeper there. There's a barrier there between you and the people that are at this higher level on that platform. So all accounts are not created equal, honey.
I'm sorry to say it, but they're not. And then I actually just read this article on to filter.com where they reported that recently YouTube will now require channels to have at least 10,000 views before allowing them to run ads for the YouTube partner program. So before it was like anybody could run ads, either, you know, people buy into your ads and you make money off of it or not. Now, if you have a smaller account, you'll probably make sense off of the ads, like since as in pennies off of the ads, but the point is there's now a difference between a smaller creator and a larger creator.
There's all these barriers and there's also access that larger YouTubers have that just the everyday YouTuber with maybe like, I don't know, 500 subscribers, you don't have the same access as a shameless might since we talked about her earlier. You don't you don't have the same access to the tools that she has. You don't have the same access to the people that she may know now at YouTube who are now more so invested in her. And there are certain channels that once they see the growth in that channel, they want to help that channel grow.
I also just read a article about Michelle Fon who is a hugely popular YouTuber that sort of stepped back and walked away. You know, she stepped back and she walked away because she found that, you know, she needed a break and she found herself being depressed and she was she is uber successful on YouTube. She has like millions of subscribers. I think she has like nine million subscribers and billions of views, but she still walked away.
But the good thing for her is that she walked away and she still had money in the bank and she still had a business that lived outside of her YouTube channel. So that's what I want to leave you guys with. If you're thinking about making a switch pivoting or quitting, just make sure that you're being smart about things that you're thinking things through and that you're not hinging your entire business or for that matter, your entire brand, your entire personal or professional brand, your entire existence on a social media platform that you do not own. You can get shut down on any of these social media platforms today or tomorrow.
Now you've created all of this great original content for this platform and where does it go if they shut down your account? Do you have backups? Do you have files of all of this content that you've created so that now if you wanted to repurpose it and bring it to another platform, you absolutely could just think of these things people. I'm only talking to you about this and telling you this because these are the things that I think about and these are the things that I want to make sure that you're thinking about what you have on your radar so that you can be as successful as you possibly can be and you can just continue to walk into your greatness and flourish in this world.
This is challenging. I know it is and I just want to make sure that I'm giving you stuff to think about that will potentially help you be the best that you can possibly be. So thanks for hanging out with me. If you want to check out that link that I mentioned, it will be in the description box for this show, the show notes.
And as always, keep killing it.