In this week’s podcast episode, I’m thrilled to be speaking with Diann Wingert, a fellow female solopreneur with ADHD.
Diann Wingert became a business strategist, coach, and mentor after a 20-year career as a psychotherapist. Her mission is to help ambitious outliers with big ideas and busy brains get focused, fired up, and flame retardant. Diann is the creator of The Boss Up Breakthrough, host of The Driven Woman Entrepreneur Podcast, and an expert on creative female entrepreneurs with ADHD traits.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Therapy vs. coaching: What’s the difference, and which one should you seek out?
- Why the shift from a social media-based marketing strategy to an SEO-based marketing strategy may be the exact thing you need and why many female solopreneurs are afraid to make this switch
- Rejection sensitivity, confidence, and fear of failure
- Social media and mental health
- How ADHD and giftedness in women can be both challenges and advantages in self-employment
Relevant Links:
- Learn more about Diann Wingert
- Connect with Diann on LinkedIn
- Listen to The Driven Woman Entrepreneur Podcast
Read the full transcript
Diann Wingert 0:00 I would say 100% of the people that have worked with me in the last several years are aware that the reason why they are not progressing toward their goals at the rate that they want to be is not only because maybe there are some skill gaps, the people that tend to hire me are the ones who know on some level, it’s not I don’t really think of it just as mindset. Meg, I think of it as the way we look at ourselves, the way we look at the world, what we think is possible, what we think is possible for us, your age, your stage of life, your ethnicity, your socioeconomic status, your health status, your cultural environment, your religious beliefs, each individual person is this intersection, and constellation of all of these different variables. And then there are the unconscious biases, like privilege, heteronormativity, and all of these other things that we don’t even realize we’re bringing to the table. Meg Casebolt 1:00 You’re listening to social slowdown, a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. I’m your host, Meg Casebolt. And I have a new book coming out called Social slowdown. It’s taking all of the 80 plus interviews that we’ve done so far in this podcast series, and turned it into something that’s a little bit more easily digestible. It will be available on July 27 2023. And it’ll only be $4 on Kindle and $9. On paperback. So I would love, love, love. If you could support the podcast by going on Amazon and buying the book. If you preorder it, I would especially appreciate that because that would help us get to a best seller status. Even if you don’t read it. That’s okay. So if you want to get your copy of the social slowdown book, head on over to social slowdown.com/book and get that today. And now let’s get back to the podcast, which is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lip sync, send cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7. Let’s get started. Hello, and welcome to the social slowdown podcast. I am your host, Meg Casebolt. And I’m here today with Diane WINGERT. Hi, Diane, Diann Wingert 2:19 I’m so glad to be here. I’ve been really looking forward to this Meg. Let’s just Meg Casebolt 2:23 leap into this and get started because we both have ADHD. So we just start the conversation wherever it happens. I don’t do bios. But if you want to give me like a quick, one minute origin story of how you started your business, I’d love to start Diann Wingert 2:37 there. Yeah, absolutely. I was a psychotherapist for over 20 years, the last five of which were in private practice. And I reached a point in working with people, which I love, that I was getting a little bit impatient for them to want to move to the next level, what I found is that many people go to therapy because they want healing. And if what you need is healing, it’s the place to go. But once you’re healed, if what you want to do is pursue goals and make meaningful changes in your life from a healed perspective, that’s really more of a coaching role. So I shifted into that, and then we left California, so I wouldn’t have been able to be a therapist anymore anyway. And it’s just continued from there. And I have helped my current and previous husbands start and grow their businesses. So I like that sort of thing. Meg Casebolt 3:28 That’s a really interesting adjustment of like, I helped people heal. But then I wanted to know what they did after that, you know, so much of therapy is that healing process? But then what do you do once you’ve gotten there? Like, what are the sorts of things that you found people wanted to pursue? After going through that process and feeling better about their mental health? Diann Wingert 3:51 You know, make what I found, and I’m gonna have to tell you like the story of how I broke up with my therapy practice, because this will answer your question. I realized that I was ready to start shifting the conversations I was having with people from talking about their problems, to talking about their potential and possibilities, I realized that I wanted more for people in many cases than they wanted for themselves. And what I’ve come to understand sense is that because of my brain, I’m both gifted and ADHD, my brain is all about generating possibilities and seeing things are at their best. So I’m always going to want to keep moving towards what I think is a more evolved state of things. What I realized is that not everybody wants that. And not everybody. Like I was like, felt like I was trying to sell a better version of their life to them. And a lot of people frankly, weren’t buying and when I decided it was time to say okay, I’m going to close the practice. And let me be very clear, I think I love therapy. I love therapists. I think it is absolutely the modality of choice for addictions, trauma, abuse, you know, loss, serious stuff like that I do not believe people should be going to life coaches for these things. However, once you’re basically healed, I think if you keep going to see a therapist, because you’re worried that you’re going to lose those benefits. And a lot of therapists tell their clients that when the client say, you know, I’ve reached my goals, I think I’m kind of ready to like, fly solo, they’ll be like, well, you know, we’ve worked so hard to get you here, it would really be a shame. If you slid back down the hill. I’m like, oh, no, darlin, that’s more about maintaining your source of income than it is about concern for this other person. But I digress. A lot of people have never really considered how much better their life could be other than like, when they’re watching a rom com or, you know, going to a Tony Robbins situation, I think it’s something that many people will think I could imagine my life better my relationship better my health better my mental health better, my my business better. But it’s a big leap between being able to kind of imagine that in a vague sense, and what is actually required of someone to make a plan to implement that and to deal with all the obstacles and fears and uncertainty that come up along the way, you have heard it said, I’m sure that entrepreneurship is the ultimate path of personal development. I believe it’s true. Because saying, I want to have a million dollar business or I want to have a business period. And then actually knowing what is necessary to commit to that, to pursue that and to deal with everything that happens along the way. Especially if you have ADHD, because let’s face it, we are much better at starting things then finishing them. So that’s why I work with people like us almost exclusively. Meg Casebolt 7:07 Yeah, I think, you know, when you were talking about the difference between therapy and coaching, what came to mind for me, which may not actually be accurate, so I’d love your feedback on this is like therapy is almost like exploring the past. Versus coaching is more like visioning and stepping into a better future. And almost like you have to resolve some of those past traumas and situations in order to be able to step into into a brighter future sometimes, but you don’t want to always be looking backwards either. Diann Wingert 7:35 I have a little bit. Well, Meg Casebolt 7:37 I’d love to hear the nuance of the React. Yeah. Diann Wingert 7:40 Because Because I think because I had been a therapist for over 20 years, and I’ve been a coach since 2015. I think I’m uniquely qualified to respond to this. Yeah. And and it’s, that’s why I wanted to ask, yeah, it’s because but I think it’s, it’s, I want to make it simple make, I would love to be able to agree with you that yeah, therapy is about dealing with the past, and coaching is about the future. But what I believe about human beings, human nature, human development, is that instead of it being kind of like a ladder, or, or stairs, which is how most psychological models are presented, it’s really more of a spiral. Because as we, I’m sure you have experienced this in your own business, as we continue to evolve, we have to do the following. We have to do things that we’ve never done before. We have to be willing to face fear, doubt, uncertainty, risk, rejection sensitivity, we have to be able to continuously address those things as we progress. Or we can have a business that is absolutely flat. And there’s nothing wrong with having a simple, sustainable business. But even then, because the climate around us is always changing politically, financially, culturally. Our ability to have a simple sustainable business is often compromised. So I think as we are dealing with fear, uncertainty and doubt, at every different stage of business, the old stuff has a tendency to resurface. Now, okay, you’re laughing because this is true, right? Meg Casebolt 9:33 So sure, I’m laughing and nodding. I’m laughing in factly. Yes, now Diann Wingert 9:37 does that. Now, does that mean that we need to go back to therapy every time we are facing a new level of challenge? Of course not. But I think working with someone who really understands human nature as well as business development is important and I think why I’m kind of on a little bit The iceberg at this point because I’m too interested in business to fit with most of my therapist colleagues. But I know too much about mental health to fit with most of my business coaching colleagues. So my answer to almost every question I’m asked is, it depends. And that’s super annoying. Meg Casebolt 10:21 But it’s true. I say it so often that my team actually made a GIF of me shrugging and going, Oh, it depends, because I just everything is so conditional. Exactly. And anybody who tries to sell you a framework that any single person will fit into, like a cookie cutter, it’s gonna break. Diann Wingert 10:41 The only one that benefits from that is the person selling it, Meg Casebolt 10:45 the creator truly 100% True. So the, the thing that I’m hearing, when when I hear you speak about this is like some people are more willing to, to risk, more interested in changing and evaluating what’s working and adjusting and pivoting. And some people want stability. And I think to an extent, entrepreneurs have to be less, they have to be a little more risk prone risk tolerance, maybe I should say, Yep. And so do you find in your practice, when people are finding you and thinking about the ways that you can help them? Do you find more entrepreneurs, or I should say, do more entrepreneurs find you, because you’re looking at some of these abilities to change and need to be more nimble. Diann Wingert 11:36 I would say 100% of the people that have worked with me in the last several years are aware that the reason why they are not progressing toward their goals at the rate that they want to be is not only because maybe there are some skill gaps, because we all have skill gaps, or we could be shown ways that we could do things more effectively or more efficiently. So I think of that as a skill issue. Most of us have gaps in our knowledge and our experience and our awareness of things. And we may or may not be aware of those. But the people that tend to hire me are the ones who know on some level, and they get to know much better once they’ve worked with that it’s not I don’t really think of it just as mindset, Meg, I think of it as the way we look at ourselves, the way we look at the world, what we think is possible, what we think is possible for us, some people would call these things limiting beliefs. But I’m a I’m trained as a social worker, which means the framework that I learned is person in situation. So that means it takes into account, your age, your stage of life, your ethnicity, your socioeconomic status, your health status, your cultural environment, your religious beliefs, it’s literally all that of course, my ADHD brain frickin loved all this, right, it’s just the juiciness of it. But each individual person is this intersection, and constellation of all of these different variables. And then there are the unconscious biases, like privilege, you know, heteronormativity, and all of these other things that we don’t even realize we’re bringing to the table. And I like to look at all of that, and helping a person figure out not only what’s holding them back, but what is exactly the right business for them. And not just their clients. I think a lot of people have become successful, at least by conventional norms, in creating a business that fits a market need. But they end up hating it, because it doesn’t meet their need. It is not, it doesn’t fit them. And especially people with ADHD. Like what what keeps us going and not fizzling out, is how well what we’re doing fits who and how we are. And I think that almost inevitably takes another pair of eyes and ears because we don’t know one is as self aware as they need to be including myself. Meg Casebolt 14:15 We’re all inside the jar. We can’t read exactly another one of my favorite slogans, right? So these folks who are needing these services who need this outsider perspective, from both business and mental health, and you know, all of these pieces of it, how are they finding you? Typically, Diann Wingert 14:35 through something like what we’re doing right now? Meg Casebolt 14:38 Yeah, Diann Wingert 14:39 they hear me on someone’s podcast, someone’s podcast that they follow. And then they say, Huh, then they find out I have a podcast, so they hop over there. They’ve been through a few of those episodes, and if they can get past my directness, my sense of humor. My what my favorite client calls my Being the speaker of uncomfortable truth, and my swearing, then they’re like, I think this could work. And then we get on a call, and then I assess whether they’re right and ready because I don’t think everyone is right for me. And not everyone is ready for me. And I only want to create incredible outcomes. So I turn away probably half the people that would like to work with me, and I tell them to come back when they’re ready. And this is exactly what you need to work on in the meantime. Meg Casebolt 15:28 That’s pretty fantastic. So what are the view said, things like this podcast interviews, where you’re borrowing someone else’s audience, what other sorts of collaborative opportunities do you create for yourself? Diann Wingert 15:39 I get invited to speak. That’s been more online than in person, but I love speaking, you know, I have a weekly blog, I write on medium. And unlike you, who has a book, I’ve been circling around that for the last couple of years, and that’s probably going to be in my near future. So that will be another avenue. Meg Casebolt 16:02 You and I can totally geek out on that. Oh, absolutely. I’ve learned so much in the process of writing a book in the past six months, that I will, I mean, I’ll be sharing some of that on the podcast. But I think you know, just like, just like everything, it depends, you know, it depends who your audience is. And do you want to go traditional or self published? And who are you trying to reach and what needs to be included? And how do you market it? And all of those pieces are? Diann Wingert 16:28 It depends, right? It’s all those things. Meg Casebolt 16:32 And now, it’s kind of funny, because I have several people who’ve reached out as part of my like promotion teams and said, Can I ask you a bunch of questions about the book? And I am like, oh, I hadn’t even thought about that. Thank you for asking, because that gives me so much more to consider in terms of the way that I market, how I talk about it. So I think everything is sort of this feedback loop. But yeah, when you want to talk about the book, let’s let’s hop on a call. So how since we’re since we’re in social slowdown, how does social media fit into the ways that you’re marketing yourself? Because I feel like you and I were on one of Michelle’s marketing retreats, and I heard you say, Well, fuck this shit. There was like, Okay, Diann Wingert 17:08 that’s it sounds like me. Well, you can’t make this shit up. Okay, honestly, because actually, something I’m doing the very month of this recording is and this, you are partly an influence on me for this. You’ve been influencing me longer than you know. Okay. Just just put that straight up. Meg Casebolt 17:32 And the beautiful thing about these businesses that have invisible audiences? Yes, absolutely. You feel like you’re speaking into the void, but people are hearing it, and they’re not letting you know. And so just love that. Thank you for that feedback. Diann Wingert 17:44 Yeah. Not at all. I mean, we have ADHD, that’s what we do. But I also think it’s that, okay, I mentioned earlier that half the people that get on a consult with me, I ended up inviting them to be a client, and I tell them how that would work and so forth. When I turn someone away, it’s often because they’re not where they need to be. And they have no idea what that means. So being able to meet people where they are, and also being able to say, you’re not where you need to be, is a really important thing for me. Because I can’t work with everybody. I’m not going to work with everybody. And if I’m only interested in working with people that I am convinced in advance, I’m going to have an amazing outcome with it just makes everything about my life so much easier. All that being said, I’m now several years into this business. And I think you probably hear this from a lot of people you talk to, I heard about SEO. In the beginning. I actually even worked with someone for a minute, on creating the SEO for a website. That’s now I don’t know, five websites ago. And I found it to be confusing, complicated. My website ended up being excessively wordy. And the feedback I got was nobody’s going to read all this not from the person who convinced me to do it that way. Well, no. But because I attract a lot of people like us, people who kind of want you to get to the point as fast as possible. They’re not going to wade through all that. So that was what my initial understanding of search engine optimization was. And that was not an understanding that was just an impression. I did not pursue it make because I drank the Kool Aid that is being served in mass quantities to just about everybody in the online world. From the folks that Michelle calls the web celebs and the Internet gurus and all that I drank the Kool Aid that the way to grow an audience for a Business is through social media. And I got a combination of good advice and bad advice. And some of the good advice I sent. Even though I knew it was good advice, because I think maybe like you, I’m one of those people who has to learn for myself. I even when I’m hiring someone to help me, I kind of have to make it make sense to me. I never just blindly follow anyone’s advice. And that has made me difficult to be an employee for anyone, because you’re Meg Casebolt 20:38 not difficult. You’re just a Ravenclaw. You just ask a lot of questions. Diann Wingert 20:41 Yes. And I found out thanks to Gretchen Rubin. I’m a questioner. So that helped me understand I’m happy to do whatever you ask of me. But first, I have to get my questions answered. That’s not a stalling tactic. I’m not oppositional, I have to work it through the algorithm upon which my brain functions, and then I’m happy to do it. Well, I got the advice, I started doing the things. The more I got into it, the more I started resenting it, the more I started feeling exhausted by it, the more I started thinking is pointless. And here’s the painful part. I couldn’t walk away from it. That is the definition of of either an abusive or at the very least, an unhealthy relationship. When you realize you’ve invested a lot in it, it is not meeting your needs. You frickin hate it, but you can’t leave. However, thanks to you. And just my own decision not to tolerate this much suffering. Oh, my gosh, I this month, I switched to the nine grid. And just today, believe it or not, this is so auspicious. Just today, all the other posts on my feed were archived. And I’m like, holy crap. This looks so bare. It was kind of a shot. I knew I decided to do this. I asked my assistant to do it. We created the nine grid and all the things. But when I first saw it, it was like, Well, I’ll tell you what, exactly how it felt. It felt exactly like seeing the divorce papers. For a divorce I initiated and still feeling like I’d been sucker punched, which is kind of weird. But it sort of that’s what finally made it real. And I think that’s the visual part of how I function. As long as it’s an idea. As long as it’s a concept. I can see what Andrea Jones has done. I can see what Jordan has done, I can see what you and it’s like, okay, okay, I get it, I get it. But then what was my feed? It was as though it was the sunk cost fallacy. Bottom line. Yeah. Bottom line, it was a sunk cost fallacy. I literally have spent the last several years slaving away for Mark Zuckerberg at very little benefit to myself, and I just decided, okay, I’m, I’m divorcing this guy. Period. I don’t know what’s going to come of it. But I’m committed to continue moving forward from that place. Meg Casebolt 23:24 And I think like the flip side of the sunk cost fallacy, or maybe not the flip side, but like a desparation. out a word might consider to where now I’ll put it in is the opportunity cost, right? Absolutely. The economic theory of the opportunity costs of if you are spending years and years and years building up this feed, and you have this sunk cost of here’s, you know, years of archives, images and captions in your feed that nobody’s looking at, but you you feel like you’ve invested so much time and energy and emotion into those. And now they’re just kind of sitting in gathering dust, but they couldn’t be found to they could go look it up. So you keep doing it. Because you have the systems in place and you have these processes, and you have an audience that could maybe still want to go take a look at that even then they’re probably not going to go back in the archives, but they could be curious about it. So you are spending your time investing in that platform which may or may not pay off and you’re taking that time investing it and not spending it on your own podcast, your email marketing your relationship building working with the client, right like or, or going for a walk or taking a nap, right? Like it doesn’t always have to be that the opportunity cost is within your business or, or just the time. And I think that’s the thing that’s been coming to light with me in a lot of these conversations. And in the process of writing the book has made me get super clear about the patterns that I’ve seen and the trends that I’ve had in these conversations. And a huge part of it is like I was just spending so much time and not just even time but like mental energy and capacity holding space for what are people going to say in response to this? What do I need to do in order to react to somebody else’s? Is it enough that I just double click it to get the heart do I need to also write a caption, the caption should be more than just the three fire emoji, like the energy that goes into that relationship, building a very shallow relationships, not knowing whether or not that time is going to pay off can be incredibly, like it can induce anxiety, because you’re like, Well, I can’t walk away. But I don’t know if it’s working. Diann Wingert 25:34 I don’t know if this is healthier than anxiety. But I was getting angry. I was I was getting annoyed. Okay. It’s not that so much that it wasn’t working. It’s that I would rather be interacting with people in another way. And now that I’m just really starting to appreciate what search engine and search intention and all that can do for me, it’s like Diane, for crab sake, wouldn’t? Aren’t you smart enough to figure out that you could have been attracting the fish that were already swimming towards your boat? Instead of standing on the beach, waving your arms and say fisheries? Are there any fisheries? I was like, I got some big for you. What do you think about this? And like, what a frickin waste. And I think sometimes I need to get angry. Not at the people who I think owe me something because that’s ridiculous at myself for hopping on the bandwagon and ignoring my own intuition and instincts for so long. Because everybody else is doing it that many people can’t be Oh, yes, they can? Oh, yes, they can. If you look at human nature across history, huge percentages of people can be incredibly wrong, and all following each other like sheep with no insight or reflection on why they’re doing it to begin with. So I don’t think I’m unusual in that regard. But I think for me, I happen to have had an abusive childhood. So I think my pain tolerance works against me. Because I can tolerate a lot of frustration and aggravation. And I think I need to reach that inflection point, sooner, intentionally. If it doesn’t feel good, it isn’t. don’t negotiate with that. Don’t talk yourself out of that you’re being abusive to yourself, it doesn’t matter who else is doing it, or whether it appears to be working for them. Because I’ve come to understand that a lot of what appears to be working for people really isn’t. You get these all of a sudden announcements that so and so is closing their highly successful million dollar program. Hmm. You know, maybe Meg Casebolt 28:06 you shouldn’t, but they’re not closing it. They’re going on sabbatical. Diann Wingert 28:09 Right? Yeah, they’re probably going into rehab. It’s like some kind of, you know, like, because it’s, I want to be more discerning the way I have been in other areas of my life, and I think this is one of the bigger lessons is that, and Tara Newman talks about this terrorist, the best about this, she’s awesome, is that so many of us when we’ve had a successful business IRL, and then we decide to take our business online. We disavow ourself of everything that we’ve already learned about business. And we hand ourselves over to all of these people who claim they have all of the answers. And we follow them because we think she’s got a good talk, I mean, the sales page and the testimonials, and she must know. And at the end of the day, if you know how to run a successful business in real life, you know how to run a successful business. And maybe I shouldn’t have been so willing to set all of that aside to embrace all of these tricks and tools and hacks and all that. It would have made more sense, considering what I do, to have been doing search engine optimization from the beginning, because I work with a very specific type of person who has the ability to self reflect and have self awareness about what they need. I am not interested in working with the people that are like, just take my money and tell me what to do. If someone shows up to a consultation with me like that, and this has happened. They say, Okay, I’ve listened to you, and I really think you’re really smart and you really have your shit together. So I just want you to tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. And I said, Yeah, we’re done. Like I don’t, I don’t want to work with someone who wants to give me that much responsibility, because that means they will put 100% of their expectations on whether it’s successful or not on me, instead of on themselves, like I can tell you what to do, but I can’t make you do it. And I’d rather not tell you what to do. I’d rather help you decide what you want to do, and then help you create a plan to do that. I’ve already raised kids, I don’t I don’t want to do that. I don’t want that much responsibility. And I think for someone who is that willing to give up that level of responsibility, and says they want to be a business owner, that’s a decision they should reconsider? Yeah, there’s so much the risk tolerance, he talked about make, like the number of decisions we have to make, and how more than anything else, we really have to tap into our own intuition about those decisions. And whether the decisions we’ve made are still serving us or maybe they never did, and then being able to, you know, pull up your boxers, or bikini briefs or whatever, and say, you know, what, I’m not doing this anymore. Unapologetically. And with confidence, like, I don’t regret the time I spent on social media, per se. Because now I’m really, really convinced that it’s not for me, not in the way I’ve been doing it. And I had to have that firsthand experience. You could have told me three to five years ago, Diane, girlfriend’s, like, Come on, don’t do that. That’s gonna be a huge waste of time, energy, effort, focus, opportunity and dollars, do this, I would have said, maybe, I think I gotta check it out. Meg Casebolt 31:48 I think I just checked it out. You have to try things for yourself in order to figure out whether or not they work. And I think that there is something really valuable to being able to see what what seems to be working for anybody else and try it out. You know, I think about like my kids going to the YMCA, sports samplers, and being like, I’m going to try soccer and basketball and football in this thing and see which of them I like doing. I don’t think that that’s wrong to sample and test. But then at the end of that sports sampler, we say, alright, kiddo, like, Do you like baseball? No. Okay, then you don’t have to play baseball. Right? Diann Wingert 32:23 It’s not eating and treating it as an experiment. Yes, treating Edie Meg Casebolt 32:27 and you know, we’re in Michelle’s Michelle masers community and she treats everything like an experiment. I think that’s so healthy. And Tara McMullen is the same way. I think, I think Michelle maybe took it from Tara to where it’s like, you have to figure out what you want to get out of the time and the energy, the inputs that you’re putting into it before. So that way you can evaluate whether or not it is meeting or or not meeting your expectations. And I’m thinking about Tara McMullen. Now, she had a really great article about inflation in marketing, where, you know, you were saying that, when you first got went online, you were hearing all of these people who had very successful online businesses say, like, Look, I just grew this audience using Facebook ads, or look, I had a podcast, and I had this big growth, you know, and it’s like, Amy Porterfield and Pat Flynn and Chris Guillebeau. Like, they started their businesses 20 years ago, yes, when Facebook was subsidizing ads, when Instagram was still a nascent platform. And so those platforms, the taro talks about this a lot in the article I’m not, I’ll link it in the show notes. But those platforms were subsidizing by venture capitalists to help grow these businesses. So that way, they could have these big outcomes. So that way, they would continue to live on the platform. So that way, they could start to grow and invest more into ADS, right like, and that is no longer the conditions of these platforms, they are no longer providing this much. Low Cost traffic, yeah, or organic reach to creators. But those names still exist, because they have established themselves and they’ve diversified to being able to say, well, I also have this podcast, I also have this affiliate relationship with a software company that’s paying me I have these digital courses. And so I can continue to market on these platforms, because I have this baseline income coming in from having established myself 20 years ago. We don’t have that luxury. No. Diann Wingert 34:27 And I think, to your point, it’s fundamentally dishonest to keep presenting an opportunity to people who are at the very beginning of making the decision to be self employed. They might have gotten pushed out, they might have aged out, they might have been part of the great resignation, they might have taken one look at what’s going on in corporate life right after college and said No, thank you. People become entrepreneurs for all kinds of reasons. But something that really Leave sticks in my cries to haven’t feared anatomically exactly where that is, but, but the promise that’s being sold by all these big name people, and how it’s just being lapped up by 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of people, if they, it’s maybe in the Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine print that you’d need a microscope to read, like, not like Results may vary kind of wording. But the vast majority, more than 90, upper 90s percent of people who buy these courses, because they have been told, it’s easy, fast, fun, lucrative, almost effortless, and anyone can do it. I’ve known women who have lost their home, and even lost custody of their children, because they bought this bullshit. And when they didn’t get the desired result, they bought the next level, of course, from these people at an even greater financial investment. They did all the things they were told to do. And it wasn’t working. So they got the next course. And the next course, the fundamental difference is the opportunity has changed. So the same exact efforts will never yield the same results. Because the opportunity has changed. The market Meg Casebolt 36:33 has become saturated, the algorithms have shifted. The societal reaction to this is more skeptical because more time has elapsed, more people have been burned. It’s not as easy as it used to be. And now people are burned out. Yeah. Yeah, by the way, we all went through traumatic situation for two years. Hi, no lie, and it’s still ongoing. Diann Wingert 36:53 I have a question for you. Why do you think SEO is like the best step for growing an online business? It’s almost and maybe it maybe it’s me. And I may be completely out of line here. But it almost feels like we all think that social media is the way I now call anyone that selling you the way for anything, is treating it like religion. And I’m calling it the magic pill because we all want things to be easy, fast, fun, lucrative overnight, and anyone can do it. We want that we really, really want that. And we want people to tell us that because we want it to be true. Eventually, we realized it’s not true. And usually we’re flat, broke and completely heart broken by that time. But why do you think more people don’t gravitate towards the logic of using terminology that attracts people that are already looking, instead of having people stumble across your stuff when they just want to see funny cat videos? Meg Casebolt 38:01 I mean, I have several theories about this. I think one of them is that people have been conditioned to believe that it is too difficult, or too complicated. I think especially for those of us socialized and raised as women, it is like, Oh, well, there are numbers involved. And I wasn’t good at math. And I’d rather just post pretty pictures. And that’ll be easy, right? We’re told that social media is easier. And you know what social media is easier, the barriers to entry are lower. But the feedback, the I should say the long term outcomes are also lower the shelf life is lower, because you’re not putting as much into the inputs of it. And there’s a longer term turnaround on this. Well, it’s it’s very much you know, do you take your $5 and put it in a bank? Or do you put it you get yourself a latte, right? Like the delayed gratification, right? How many people and when you’re in and a cultural environment or an entrepreneurial environment where people are saying, if you do this, you will have fast success. You can become a millionaire by next year versus an SEO person saying, well, six months isn’t traffic. Right? It’s gonna take six months to start seeing some results, but I can’t guarantee how much that’s going to be or whether you know, and yep, the people have absolutely made false promises with search. Absolutely. I’m not saying that’s not true either. But the promise has never been speed. And we are an impatient group of people. Especially those of us with ADHD. I’m just thinking oh my goodness, things are not great it follow through Diann Wingert 39:37 and, and being impulsive about making decisions and having difficulty waiting for results and prioritizing any offers and immediate gratification. You Meg Casebolt 39:51 know, if you don’t know if your business is going to be existing in a year, you don’t want to invest in a strategy that’s going to take a year to see any reaction. It doesn’t always take a year. If you’re smart about it, I would say three months for most people, but you know, it’s it’s a harder sell. It’s not as it’s it’s not a sexy marketing technique. And I would even say to people who are getting started, this might not be the place where you want to start depending It depends, it depends on your business model depends on your existing network, it depends on your brand authority depends on so many other things. You know, it depends on how you want to work with people where you want to work with people, maybe you do a lot of local SEO, which isn’t running an online business, it’s still tapping into your local community, but it’s showing up in Google Maps. And people who are online are like, well, that’s, you know, that’s not a real online business. If you’re getting traffic from people in your community. Now, it’s still it’s still humans who want to give you money. But I would say if you’re just getting started, maybe SEO still isn’t the right choice. Because I want you to get such a tight product market fit to really understand your audience so well. And the way to do that is to talk to people and to work with people and to have conversations with people. And I think sometimes we can use whatever our digital marketing strategy of choice is, whether that’s, you know, blogging, or social media, or whatever that is to hide from me, yes, it’s all about sale. Yeah, we don’t, we don’t want to do discovery calls, we don’t want to sell things. So we’re just gonna go post and feel like we did something good today. And if you don’t want to sell, maybe you think about whether or not you want to run your own business, Diann Wingert 41:28 praise age, because no matter what you’re selling, if you’re self employed, you’re in marketing, you may not like that. Meg Casebolt 41:40 But not just marketing, sales, sales, sales, Diann Wingert 41:42 marketing, and sales. And if you don’t want to do that, if you resent doing that, if you despise doing that, if that makes you throw up a little in your mouth, just thinking of the words, please go get a job. Like, because you have to wrap your mind around the fact that you’re never going to be found by any means. If you’re not willing to market, and once they are attracted, you gotta close the sale, you got to Meg Casebolt 42:09 if you’re running a service business, if you’re running a product business, if you’re going to be an influencer, then you have to market larger, you don’t have to sell as hard because you might be able to sell something like sponsorships or ads, which are going to be lower per volume, you know, there’s, you have to find a business model that works for the way that your brain works. But thinking about whether you’re a traffic based business or a relationship based business, it can help you make those decisions about how you want to start. Diann Wingert 42:33 But you’re making my point that most people start a business without really thinking about who they are, and how they are and how they need to work. Because we’ve been conditioned to think it’s easy, fast, fun, lucrative, overnight success, anyone can do it. Meg Casebolt 42:53 And if you automate it, never have to think about it again. And you’ll just make money in your sleep. And if you just write the ebook that’s up plus upsells, to the course that upsells to the mastermind that upsells to the one to one you have the escalation ladder, it’s we’ve been we’ve been spoon fed, a lot of incorrect information will say, Diann Wingert 43:13 duped and I think you probably attract the type of people that I do the people who are more established, who have made the mistakes, who have chased things in the wrong direction. And who have realized, okay, I do want to stay in my own business. I am entrepreneurial. And I just need to be more strategic and more discriminating about where I spend my energy, time, effort and dollars. Absolutely. Meg Casebolt 43:46 I think a good place to wrap it up you just choose my mic drop. I think I need to shut the EFF up. Oil. All right, Dan, if people want to apply to work with you, or if they want to listen to your podcast to get to know you better give me some links drop Absolutely. Diann Wingert 44:05 The one social media platform it’s not really social media but networking platform that I am more active on these days is LinkedIn at coach Diane WINGERT. My website is Diane winger coaching and if you like the sound of my voice and what I have to say with it, you should absolutely check out the driven woman entrepreneur podcast. Meg Casebolt 44:24 And at some point in the near future, you will hear me as a guest on it. So if you’re on my email list and you forget Diane’s name, you can go listen to it when I promote it Diann Wingert 44:32 will be tagged him in in the very near future. Exactly. Meg Casebolt 44:34 Dan, thank you so much for being here and sharing your brilliance and expertise with us. Diann Wingert 44:39 I loved every minute of it. Meg Casebolt 44:43 Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list. You never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown.com slash review or grab that link in our show notes for easy access we’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media Talk to you then.
Please forgive any typos or errors, as this transcript was automatically generated by Otter.ai