917: “I Quit Social Media And My Business Grew 165%: Here’s How”

26:59and kind of like what you said where you're like I did the experiment and nothing really changed same for us like our traffic is not dependent on staying on a hamster wheel our traffic is fueled by previous content that is still being found whether it was created a month ago or a year ago right and I love creating that kind of content because you are literally answering people's questions, right? It's not you sitting down at your keyboard and being like, Hmm, what do I have to say today? It is like, what are people looking for? And how can I help? And that is my favorite kind of content to create.

27:37And so as a content creator, you are missing gold in terms of serving your ideal audience. And like Kate said, meeting them exactly where they're at, they are literally finding you because they're typing in the problem that you can help solve. And so I mean, it's just this like very simple thing. So I got into your course, started taking it. I pulled in one of my team members. I was like, we got to like double down on this. Like, here are the things I'm learning. Here's what we've got to focus in on. And it has just been this beautiful methodical work of going through past top performers and optimizing.

28:11It's very small. And I love it. Nerdy work where I'm like, yes, this post from 2022 is still relevant and it is still beneficial. And so I love that. So let's talk about like for an entrepreneur who is burned out on social, but they are intimidated by SEO. What is like a reasonable starting place? Where's the starting line for somebody like that? Like what are maybe three steps they could take to help just build up that organic visibility? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love what you said just about sustainability and shelf life. And that is 1000 % why I love SEO and recommend that it is something that you have.

28:53I always kind of say it as like, in the background of your business, you don't need to be publishing even a post a week, like you can publish a couple posts a month, and they will work for you for literal years. And sometimes based on what's happening in the news, and the you know, like I remember when COVID first hit, I had a blog post on my former blog, I wrote four years prior, So it was in 2016, I wrote this post about organic meat delivery. And that skyrocketed when COVID hit and we earned 50 grand in one month from this post that I wrote four years ago. And so there's stuff like that. Like I have a million stories like that.

29:34And that's why I'm like, you don't need like, so the first advice is you don't have to go dive in with like both feet and do every like do all the things. That's not SEO. Like SEO is much chiller. SEO is just like, this is a sustainable thing. Think of a couple questions that your ideal client asks, whether you are an established business owner and you're like, oh, I could come up, I get asked them all the time or you're brand new, but you can just think about what are the kinds of things I can help people with? What are the questions that they're asking? And now I would say, when you create a post, lead with the answer.

30:12So put that concise, quotable takeaway in the first one to two sentences of the post, and then have the rest of the post, like the headlines, be formatted kind of as question answer, because that is how things are showing up now with either the Google AI generated summaries or in chat GPT and AI tools where people are typing stuff into there. It is the like more Q &A style format that seems to be working best right now. And then the second thing is to lead with your own experience. And this is the thing that like AI is never going to replace true human experience. And so like one of the things I publish every month on my blog is income reports.

31:00And I publish those and I say, this is the experiments that I tried this past month and how they work. And this is how things felt. And I'm also a mom with OCD and a lot of neurodiversions in my family. And we've got, you know, I've got a busy life. And here's how I was juggling some things. And this came up and it's my firsthand experience. It's my case study. I'm sharing screenshots of my bank account. I'm sharing screenshots of, you know, numbers. And AI can't remix that. Like it can't replicate your lived experience. so I think everybody's like oh AI is killing SEO and I'm like no it's not now like we get to write the things that we actually want to write and talk about it from our perspective rather than just trying to keyword stuff and get all the technical stuff you know put in there it's like now we're structuring our content more for humans again instead of the machines oh my gosh I love that I love that so much and you know what's funny too is like I remember the panic of being like oh oh my gosh, we're spending so much time on SEO.

32:03And like, is this like obsolete? And then I remember looking at our GA4 for Google Analytics and ChatGVT was sending hundreds of people our way. Like where it was like, wait, wait, wait, wait. It's not like an either or, it's a both and. And as we learn more, we do more that work for that. But it was like, it's not actually stealing people. People are probably typing in like, what's a great marketing podcast for business owners? And I am probably populating, hopefully, and the result. And so it's like, wait, like, how do we work with it and not be fearful of it or work against it? And I think that one of my favorite things about marketing is that there are so many just tried and true principles at the end of the day that no matter what technology steps in, there is a human nature that only humans can respond to.

32:55And that is like, I have a question and I want to know somebody that's been through it and how to do it, right? Like it's like that cannot be replicated or replaced. And so it's just amazing. I mean, it's phenomenal. And what I think is so fun from a content creation standpoint is when you shift from trying to feel like the most interesting person out there, the most beautiful person out there, or, you know, the most inspiring person out there, and you can just be a helpful human thing. Your content shines, you get found, you actually help people transform whatever it is that they're transforming.

33:31And it shifts your energy around the content creation process from it being a chore or feeling like you just wasted your time because the post fell flat to doing something that you are creating today with the certainty that this will be working for you long after you get published, which is not the case on social media, which is why like I often joke, Kate, I'm like, the only reason why I'm on social media is to meet people where they're wasting their time and get them off of it. Like that, I literally my purpose on being on there because I'm like, there are so many better ways. I think a lot of it is fueled by long form content and long form content is what is found with search, whether it's podcasts, YouTube, blog posts, et cetera.

34:14Exactly. Pinterest. Those are all search. like we had a shift I think of people wanting short firm content for a while now I think it got to this point where people are like there's no depth to this and like I'm exhausting yeah it's exhausting it's a million pieces of content all the time but I get the same thing I actually have an ad running right now that I run on meta and it's basically says you know I quit social media and my business grew 165%, which is true. And then the post, like the caption explains, like, I know you're probably calling me a hypocrite because here I am on social, but this is an ad.

34:53This is different than organic posting and the hamster wheel and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. And the comments that I get on this ad are so hilarious because people don't read and people are hateful online, but then it's like 50, 50 now of people coming in and complaining or calling me out of like, Oh, but here you are. And then other 50 is people like defending this and going, she's here because you're here. And it's trying to help you get off of here, but she's got to reach you where you are. Like this ads are the way for me to meet them on social without me having to be on social. And so I think that's such a good distinction to have like, and that's how I've approached, I guess, is just like, well, if other people are still on social, How can I meet them there?

35:41And for me, the answer has just been I'll run ads and I don't have to do anything where I can't. And get them off of it. I love that. Can you walk us through kind of just like the basics? We've talked about it, but kind of give us like the snapshot of what is like a non-social based funnel strategy? Like, yeah, is it ads to email to sale? Like, what does that look like for you? yeah so I do run some ads but I would say it's not my number one lead gen source it's kind of again something that is like working lever you can pull yeah it's a lever exactly so everything still comes back to my email list in a blog post I'm trying to get them on my email list like that's the goal I sell everything through email like some people call it lazy launching and I'm like that's just launching for me now because I'm not always like, yeah, like it's just effective launching.

36:36And so everything is through email. And I have lots of very different kinds of funnels in my email service provider that are different from what we used to do, which used to work great of like, get somebody on an evergreen webinar, then them through a seven day sales sequence, make a sale of a$2 ,000 course, move along. Like we did that for years and made a lot of money. I mean, especially in 2020 and 2021, which was like, if you were an established course creator during that time, it was like, this was the money printing era. It was amazing. And now things are a little different. So now we have lots of different types of funnels and automated sequences.

37:20Some, you know, they might go into, and it is a concentrated period of time where we're promoting one specific thing. Some are more like I have a long term, like people call it a forever funnel or like a long term sequence. But it's like every Friday, I have a shock now that has 50 plus products in it. And so things only sell if you talk about them. And so every Friday, there's an email that goes out that is promoting something. It's like set up to be like a live flash sale, but it's automated the whole thing. Like they get a coupon code for that day. It's a 24 hour flash sale. And I just, I wrote, you know, 52 emails and now I just don't touch it.

38:03And it just goes out every week. And so every Friday, I know I'm making money because people are going to get the Friday email. So I have funnels like that. I have a lot of funnels that I call like invisible funnels that are more like feedback loops. So I'll have things like Like when you join a program of mine, we'll have you fill out an intake form. And then using some cool AI magic too, we have automation set up where that intake form gets like reviewed by our AI, response is drafted. We have a human touch on the end to make sure that it actually makes sense and is what we would recommend. And then we're starting a conversation with an individual.

38:42And that often leads to more sales, more trust, more relationship with your people. So I have lots of tiny little things like that. And most of them are evergreen and automated. And I only work 20 hours a week myself. So I'm just like the evergreen queen. I rarely do anything live anymore. Oh my gosh. You know what hit me is like, you and I are very similar. Like, I feel like we have very similar brains in like, especially for me, when I became a mom, I was like, anytime that I'm spending in my business, it can't just be like a flash in the Pam. Like I can't create for the sake of creating. It's just not worth it to me.

39:21Like it's not worth it to tell my kids like I'll be with you after I get this post up. That's not worth it to me. Like that is just not worth it. But you know what struck me interesting and I think my business is similar to yours in a lot of ways is that most people don't have time to tinker, to create, to think about long-term funnels to be ideating things that will live on longer because they are so focused on the flash in the pan of marketing. Like it takes time and energy and bandwidth to set up those automations. But I just saw a stat yesterday that said that automated emails generate three times more income than like one-off emails.

40:03And because you're doing it with thought, you're reaching people at a specific time in their journey where the offer makes sense, right? And I feel like so many entrepreneurs are spending so much time on social and creating all these one-off things that they're not even able to think long-term, bigger picture, 30 ,000 feet a year from now. And so it's just fascinating to me where it's almost like we've got it twisted that this is where the time is going when it could be so much value spent. And I was talking to someone the other day and I was like, I could stop creating today and my blog, my podcast and my Pinterest would all live on and probably be generating revenue for years to come.

40:51Yep. And a lot of people can't say the same. A lot of people, if they stopped posting today, their business would stop, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's scary. It's really scary. I took a six-month sabbatical last year. I did zero marketing. I worked less than five hours a month during that time, which was only to serve a couple one-on-one clients that I kept on board. And we made almost six figures on that six-month sabbatical. And it was like, I didn't do anything. And people kept saying, oh, but you had ads running. I'm like, no, there was no marketing. Anybody that found me solely through things I had done years ago, months ago, in the past.

41:33Yeah, it was wild. And everybody's just like, I don't understand how you're doing it. It's like, I'm just not wasting my time on the short term. Like you said, cash in the pan stuff. Yeah. It's just like everything I do is very systematized long term, it doesn't mean there's no tweaking. It doesn't mean like nothing is truly 100 % passive. But yeah, it's just like I stepped away for six months and I was fine. And I don't know that many people could say that. And I think it's solely because they're so focused on social. So I think that's such a good point. Yeah, I just, when I really come to like the heart of my personal entrepreneurial spirit.

42:16It is to have the safety and security to know that things will live on longer than the day they're published. And to have the trust that the work I'm doing today will still make an impact tomorrow. And I feel like those things are like when I distill it all down and like get to a thesis, like that is the work that feels worth being away from my kids. Like that is the only kind of work that actually feels worthy of the call. And so it is a fascinating era where I think we are so attracted to what is shiny and sexy, that we miss the foundational pieces that can be almost that little engine that could that is constantly running.

43:02I often tell this story, Kate, in one of my masterclasses about how when I first had my daughter Coco, which was the same time that you were also having a child. It was like up until that point, I had all the time in the world to like show up on stories every day and to post every day. Like I had just endless amounts of time. I'm like, what did I do at that time for real? And once I had her, it was like this really big shift of like, one, I don't necessarily have the time to I don't have the desire. And I remember doing a very similar experiment to you of like, I am not showing up every day. I can't commit to that and I can't do that.

43:41And the same thing happened for me. All of the other levers were still working. And it really made me realize that like social media is just a lever I can pull when I want to pull it. And if I am struggling to connect it to the results, it's probably not the best place to spend my time. Yeah. It just shifted so much for me because it really made me realize like, I think we are tricked into believing that it is like the gasoline on the fire. But I would say it's not. It's like there's like the wind on the fire. Yeah, it's so true. And I was thinking too, as you were talking, like, it's so much more than the time that you spend on social that you get back.

44:26Like, of course, you get that back when you aren't there anymore. But it's so much more of the like mental bandwidth. And like, we just don't realize how much of our time was going into like, oh, should I take a picture of this? Should this be a post? Should this be like, I got to think about my next post? Oh, how did that last post do? I need to look at the engagement on that. It is constant when you're on, like, that's part of the hamster wheel is just thinking about it. And so I found like, that was almost more like influential for me than just like, oh, well, I was only posting a few times a week.

45:01So it wasn't like it was taking, you know, dozens of hours. But yeah, my brain had so much more white space to think about things that were more important. And, you know, whether it was for work or just life. Yeah, I agree. Real talk. Doesn't your business bestie need to hear this? Share it with a friend who's feeling stuck on the content treadmill or wondering if there's a more sustainable way to grow. This conversation could shift everything for them, especially when you hear Kate's game-changing way to partner with AI to serve your audience even better. Now, a big thanks to the brands who support this show.

45:37We'll be right back. You know I only share stuff I'm genuinely obsessed with, and so when I kept seeing Bolin Brand sheets all over Instagram, I was like, okay, are these actually worth the hype? Drew and I have been using their sheets and duvets for over a year now. And honestly, our bedroom feels like a completely different space. The moment you touch these sheets, you'll get it. They're incredibly soft to start, but they literally get softer every time you wash them. They're made from 100 % organic cotton, so they're super durable. And they're breathable, which is perfect for piling on cozy layers without turning into a furnace at 2 a.m.

46:13This is hands down the best bedding I've slept on and I'm so genuinely excited for you to try it. Start building your sanctuary of comfort this fall with Bowl & Branch. For a limited time, get 20 % off your first set of sheets plus free shipping at bowlandbranch.com slash golddigger. That's bowlandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch.com slash golddigger to save 20 % and unlock free shipping. Exclusions apply. anyone who knows me knows that I'm all about creating spaces where people actually want to be so when we started hosting on Airbnb it honestly felt like the most natural thing in the world and it's turned into one of the best decisions we've ever made over the years we've hosted hundreds of couples in our little spaces we've had so many repeat guests come back and we've created this incredible community not just with our guests but also with the people who help us care for our space.

47:06Whether you've bought properties as an investment or have unused rooms waiting to be shared, hosting on Airbnb is a practical and profitable choice. And just think about it. If you've put a ton of time, effort, and work into your home, someone out there probably would love to experience it while they're traveling. So next time you're planning a trip or want to make some extra income from your spaces, you should definitely host on Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. What is one thing that you wish more entrepreneurs understood about SEO or GEO that could save them months of effort?

47:45Like if we can just like hit the pause button and be like before the end of the year, let's just save you a little bit of the heartache or maybe something that could save them money. Like what is something that you wish people understood about it that there may be just missing. I mean, part of me wants to go back to what I said before, which is like, it's just not that complicated answer questions that people have. Do you have any strategies for finding the top questions that their ideal audience might have? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I've got lots of those. And this is a great way to use AI because you can go in to chat GPT and say, here's my ideal client or like one thing I recommend doing is pick one transformation at one person and then solve one tiny problem for that person.

48:35So if you go into chat GPT and say, I help blank go from this pain to this desired outcome with this method, what should I be blogging about right now? Give me 25 ideas or even say, what are 25 problems? that this type of person has? What are 25 problems this person asks? Then just start writing a post to answer each of those. And if you're like me, if you've been in business for a while, I go often to like, I have people pre-submit questions for our live coaching calls. So I upload those questions and say, I need to make blog posts out of these questions. And so I can actually see these are the questions that people are asking me.

49:18So you can do things like that. Take your existing content, take emails that you've received from people asking questions and repurpose it into blog posts. I mean, maybe that's what I'll say is my like one thing is the repurposing potential is so huge now. And like I have a lot, I do a lot of live coaching calls. And so I'm now taking the transcripts from those calls and using AI to turn them into blog posts. and I've created this custom GPT that's trained on all my SEO frameworks and now GEO and how to structure a blog post, all that stuff. Now I don't even have to really think so hard about it.

49:55I can just go, okay, we have this great coaching call the other day about imposter syndrome. Take what we talked about on here, take some of my coaching, turn it into a blog post and my GPT just spits it out. And it's like, great, there we go, done. And so now blog posts, what used to take me hours is now taking me half an hour. And of course, I'm putting in my own tweaks and edits and things, but like first draft written by AI. Brilliant. Yes. Oh my gosh. I love that. I want that GPT. I think it's so smart. And what's so interesting too, is that one thing that we learned about from you and from other SEO experts is like, we were almost cannibalizing our own content because we were trying to like recreate the wheel over and over again to like talk about the same thing.

50:46And so I have been blogging literally since 2010 and I just kept thinking, well, what's a different way to talk about the same thing? Okay, what's a different way to talk about the same thing? And one of the best things that we've learned is like, instead of trying to come up with something new, let's refresh something old, like let's make it better, let's update it, Let's republish it as new, fresh content as we know more, do more, have more to add to it. And so what's interesting is we've stepped off of another hamster wheel that we were unknowingly on in terms of like, well, we need to be publishing new blog posts every single week.

51:24And it's like, wait, wait, wait. How about this month we publish two new blog posts and we refresh two blog posts that are top performers or that could rank well in search? and so it's even simplified internal processes around content creation and made us like re-look at past stuff that was really good and like how do we make it better and so it's like man you don't even recognize the hamster wheels you are on in your business until you are invited to step off of them and like it's just I think the whole point of this whole episode is like there are different ways there are better ways and when time is your currency and you're creating with longevity in mind.

52:00It just shifts the energy you're creating from and the way that you create. Instead of trying to catch somebody's attention, you get to meet the people who are already seeking out what you know and what you do. And it's like just a whole different energetic exchange, you know? Yeah, exactly. I think that is the biggest thing about interruptive marketing versus, I need a term for it, but like essentially search. Like welcoming. Invitational marketing. invitation marketing yeah like there are rsvp like they already have showed you yeah i'm interested in this tell me more and so yeah it's so much easier and like the quality of traffic that you get you might get 500 likes on some instagram posts but that doesn't really mean anything that they're gonna buy from you that they're gonna work with you it doesn't even mean that they read your posts.

52:52Sometimes it's just scrolling out, cute picture, click, click, move next thing, you know, like, so I think the quality is so much better too. And you'll find it's so much easier to market, to sell, to connect with these people because they're looking for you and they want to be there. Yes. I did this like case study in my masterclass and it was a post that I did that literally went viral, had millions of views. And I think it was like 3.2 million views. And I think total 600 people even clicked to see my profile. Like that doesn't even mean like clicked the link in my profile, but just it was like 0.0001 or something like that.

53:34And then it was like, okay, that post like looks incredibly impressive. I didn't get a lot new followers and nobody really clicked my website. I had no way of capturing that information. It didn't create any sales. And then it's like, Contrary to that, a pin on Pinterest that I posted two years ago that gets less likes, but more clicks. Right. Translates into actual leads or sales. It's like, OK, what is easier to create? A viral reel or a graphic or a piece of content I can live on in search and still be searchable. It's like, oh, yeah, please pivot. Yeah, if it's the whole thing, it really does.

54:13One great post can send leads for years and one viral reel doesn't even send them in the moment that it goes viral. So, yeah, I think we're so conditioned to pay attention to the external metrics that others can see likes, comments, follows. And those just as we all know, like they just do not translate to the actual metrics that matter, which are more the back end. People can't see. Other people don't know how many people clicked our posts. Other people don't know how many people came to our website, opted into our email list, bought something there. Like, but we see that. And it's really all that matters.

54:51If you're in business, the only thing you really care about is are people buying what you're selling. And so at the end of the day, it's just like, it might boost your ego to say, oh, I have XYZ followers or this post got so many likes, but who cares? No, I don't care. Speaking of customers, I am a customer of yours. Can you tell people about the offer that made me beg you to come on this show? And also just to how you're transitioning in this AI powered world to meet people where they're at. If somebody is listening to this and they're like, hey, I want to give this a shot or I have content that I know could be searchable.

55:28Walk us through it. What is it? How does it work? Why am I obsessed with it? I love it. Well, the course that you're talking about is called Antisocial SEO. And so it is a very like stupid, simple masterclass on SEO and all of the different things that you need to know about. We do talk about some of the technical stuff. We talk about schema. We talk about keywords. But it's also been recently updated for GEO and for AI. Again, I really don't think SEO is dead. one thing we know is that even ChatGPT and AI agents, they're looking at search results from Bing. ChatGPT uses Bing. They're all pulling from what's ranking well with SEO.

56:14So even though there's some different things that you can do to rank for each one, they're still working together. And so I think like while everyone else is mourning the death of something that was, I think is just getting its second wind. Y 'all can be learning more about SEO and GEO in this course. And the GPT that I mentioned is included in that course. So even if you're like, I don't even want to learn all this stuff. I just want to be able to write a blog post that is optimized. Great. Just use the custom GPT. You don't even have to take the course. Just go in and it will do the work for you.

56:50And you can make your edits and add in your story, your voice, your experience. because that is going to be the number one thing that matters. Oh, I'm so glad I have access to that because I was going to ask you for that offline. Look at that. Thank you so much for coming on. If anyone wants to check out that course, you can go to jennacutcher.com forward slash SEO. That's jennacutcher.com forward slash SEO. I was going to say, where can everybody find out more about you and learn from you, which is where most people drop their Instagram handles. but give us the real places we can find out more and connect with you, Kate.

57:26Yeah, I love it. Well, I just want to add too that if you use the code Jenna50, you'll get 50 % off the course. So there you go. A little savings for all the Jenna listeners. And yeah, where you can find me, not on social. I mean, technically, I have a profile. I have a static. You still can run your ads. Yeah, exactly. I got to be able to run ads. I've got my static nine grid there. You can see I haven't touched it in years. And yeah, so when you click that link in the show notes to the SEO course, poke around my website from there too. It'll take you back to my shop and to other things that I've got going on there.

58:03There's a bunch of ways to get on my email list. That's where I hang out. I'm really not anywhere else. So I would just recommend signing up for my email. There's a million ways to get on there once you're on successwithsoul.co. Oh, it is such a joy. This has been a long time coming. I remember just freaking out when Amy had you on her podcast and I just feel like you presented a new menu option at the buffet of entrepreneurship that I was hungry for. And so thank you for letting us know that it's possible, that it's real. And I feel like you really did inspire massive action internally within our team and what our focuses are as we continue to kind of poke our heads into this new AI world, but also with like the safety and security of the tried and true principles that have been working and that are still working.

58:51So thank you for that, Kate. Oh, thank you so much. Thanks for having me here. It's such an honor to be here. I can now put Thin Featured on the Gold Digger podcast on my resume. So thank you. I love it. Thanks, Kate. Bye. Oh, this episode is so juicy. And I feel like it's just so important to note there are so many levers we as entrepreneurs can be pulling. And if social media is not resonating with you, or if it feels forced, or if you're just straight up burnt out, I want for you to take from this episode the knowledge that there are other levers to pull. And I remember first hearing Kate and her success without social media and being not only jealous, but inspired into action.

59:34I immediately got her course. Me and my team started moving through the modules and lessons. Even just yesterday, I was asking someone on my team, hey, did you look at this of what Kate teaches? Because it's just become such a pinnacle in our own business and something that we've been heads down focused on while everyone else is focused on cranking out content that is living and dying with the algorithm. So if you want to check out Kate's offer of SEO with soul, go to jennacutcher.com forward slash SEO. That's jennacutcher.com forward slash SEO. I fully back and have loved this system and it really just inspired and lit a spark back into our business of where we can focus and what levers we can be pulling that don't require showing up on social every single day.

1:00:18Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast. If you know somebody who hates social media and wants to run a successful business, send this episode to them. It will be your gift to them for free. And of course, until next time, Goal Diggers, keep on digging your biggest goals. Thanks for listening to the Goal Digger podcast. I hope today left you inspired and equipped with something you can put into action as you build a business that truly supports your life. If this episode resonated with you, here's how you can help the show reach even more entrepreneurs. Hit follow, share it with a friend who's building something meaningful.

1:00:54And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. Those reviews help other listeners discover these conversations when they need them the most. This show has become so much more than I ever imagined. And it's because of listeners like you who show up and share. You are helping build something that will inspire entrepreneurs for years to come. For show notes, links, and resources, head to golddiggerpodcast.com. Keep digging your biggest goals. The world needs what you're building.