126. Why You Don’t Need Social Media to Start a Business
If you’ve been putting off starting a business because you think you’ll have to become a social media person, I have good news: you don’t. Social media can be a useful tool for some businesses, but it isn’t the price of admission to entrepreneurship. When you’re just getting started, there are other things that are much more important than likes and followers.
In this episode, I talk about why we’ve started confusing being good at social media with being good at business, and how easy it is to mistake looking like you’re building a business for actually building one.
You’ll hear what actually matters when you’re starting a business and why experimentation can be so much more useful than trying to find the perfect path. I also share when social media can make sense for a new business and the simple thing I want you to try this week if social media has been keeping you from getting started.
If you're looking for the right environment to start your networking journey, look no further than my group, the Mom Entrepreneur’s Circle. Sign up here for mutual support, advice sharing, and the tools you need for both you and your business to thrive.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why social media is not a requirement for starting a business.
How we can confuse being good at social media with being good at business.
What matters most when you’re starting a business before you worry about building an audience.
How experimentation and real conversations can help you learn what people need and what they’re interested in.
When social media can be a useful business strategy.
The simple action I want you to take this week if social media has been keeping you from starting your business.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Episodes Related to Why You Don’t Need Social Media to Start a Business:
81. From Employee to Entrepreneur: Overcome the Corporate Habits Holding You Back
98. Why I Wasn’t Getting Clients (& What Changed Everything)
Full Episode Transcript:
If one of the reasons you haven't started a business is because you think you're going to have to post on social media all the time, I have really good news for you. You don't. And actually, I think trying to start with social media is one of the best ways to make sure you spend a whole lot of time feeling like you're starting a business without actually starting one. Because you don't need followers right now. You need people. And those are two very different things. And that's what I want to talk about today.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. This is episode 126 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast. Today, I want to talk about social media. I haven't talked about social media in a while. And for all my newer listeners or those who haven't gone way back and listened to the episode I did on this a while ago, I think we need to talk about it again. I did an episode back in 2025, January 2025, Social Media Myths, episode 36. So definitely check that out if you want to dive deeper into social media.
But social media has shifted in the last couple of years. It's changed. It's tempted us in different ways. And I think we really need to regroup. Specifically, I want to talk about why social media is actually not that important when you're starting a business. So for all my people who are sitting there thinking, I don't know if I can start a business because I hate social media. I'm going to put you in a little bear hug here. It's okay. Stick with me.
Because by the end of this episode, I want you to have a true relief of an exhale. I want you to feel some relief that you can do this because you do not need social media to start your business. And actually, if social media is the thing that's keeping you from starting, I want you to put it away entirely. Okay.
Let me tell you why. I was talking to a client the other day. Actually, she was a potential client at the time. And we were talking about some of her ideas for a business. This wasn't someone who had been dreaming about one particular business her entire life. She didn't have this one calling that she'd been waiting 20 years to pursue. But her priorities changed when she became a mom, her career goals changed, which love to hear it, right? That happens to so many of us. We didn't necessarily know these little humans were going to change us as much as they did. And then they get here and suddenly we're looking at everything differently, especially our careers.
And we want to keep our babies. We love them. We also want to keep our careers. We want to use our brains. We want meaningful work. We want to make money. All those things are important to us. And we're trying to figure out how to do all of those things without losing our sanity, our identities, or our souls in the process. Okay?
So I asked her, what kind of ideas do you have? Right? She knew she wanted to start a business. She wants to be more flexible. She wants to be there for her family. She doesn't know what to do for a business. So she gave me a couple of ideas that she had been noodling on. There was one idea that I actually really loved. And then there was another idea that was basically built around social media. Kind of like lifestyle blogging, business on social media.
And I asked her, "Okay, well how do you feel about social media?" And she said, "I hate it. I hate social media. I don't like posting." And then and then she said something to the effect of, that's why I don't think I'll be good at this business stuff in general, because I don't like social media. And I thought, oh, because this isn't the first time I've heard that. Somewhere along the way, we've started confusing being good at social media with being good at business. And those are not the same thing, not even close.
I think a lot of us have accidentally started believing that starting a business means starting an Instagram account. It's like you have an idea, so what do you do? You come up with a business name, you make a logo, you start an Instagram account, you figure out your colors, you make some graphics, you stare at Canva for three hours. Maybe you write a post for Instagram, but you delete it, and then you rewrite it. You wonder whether you should make a Reel. And suddenly you're starting a business. Except not really, okay?
You're performing what you think a business owner is supposed to look like, right? The social media, the visibility, the putting yourself out there. But the two things are so different. And this is especially important if you've spent most of your career in a traditional nine to five. Okay?
It's easy to think that some of the first steps of starting a business are creating that social media account and creating all the things that look good. We want so bad for somebody to tell us what the path is to starting a business. And again, this is especially important if you've spent most of your career in that traditional role or in that corporate role, because in your career, there was probably a path that was given to you. There were expectations and a job description. Your boss was telling you what to do and what needed to get done. There were performance reviews that gave you clarity. There were deadlines. Some version of do these things, do them well, and this is how you'll know you're succeeding.
And in entrepreneurship, suddenly nobody is handing you a curriculum of what to do and when to do it. Nobody's telling you what the next step is, and that is so uncomfortable for us ambitious overachievers. Especially when you're used to being really freaking competent in what you do for your career. You're used to knowing what you're doing. You're used to hitting those deadlines. You're used to being an expert. And suddenly in entrepreneurship, you're a beginner again.
So we are yearning for a curriculum. We look around for a curriculum, and social media appears to be that curriculum because that's what we can see. We're scrolling and we see businesses, we see ads, we see people selling things, we see people talking about their businesses. We see somebody posting five times a week, somebody making a reel, somebody telling you that the algorithm has changed. And because that's what we can see, our brain goes, oh, this must be how you build a business.
It isn't. It is one way some people market a business, and that's it. So please hear me when I say this, you are allowed to be a beginner in entrepreneurship. Okay? You were allowed one day a long time ago to be a beginner in your career. And you're allowed to be a beginner here too. The difference is that your career gave you a curriculum. They gave you steps on how to succeed, how to get the next promotion, how to move to the next level. Entrepreneurship doesn't give you that. But it does give you space for experimentation. Okay? And this is where it can actually get pretty fun.
Because your first job as a new business owner is not necessarily to jump on Instagram and start building a brand. Your first job is to collect data, to ask questions. What are people struggling with? What are they willing to pay for? What are they willing to pay to solve? What am I really good at? What kinds of problems do I enjoy solving? What happens when I explain my idea to somebody? What questions do they ask? What lights them up? What lights me up? What doesn't, right?
What are you trying that feels like it's working? What am I trying that's not working? All of that, that is business. So instead of thinking I need to post, I want you thinking I need to experiment. Don't post. Experiment. Okay?
And that might mean you try something and it doesn't work. Good. Now you know something you didn't know before. You try something else. You explain your idea to five people and all five of them look confused. Okay, interesting. That doesn't mean your idea is bad. That's just data. Maybe the idea isn't clear yet. Maybe you need to explain it differently. Maybe the problem isn't compelling enough, or maybe you're just talking to the wrong people. It doesn't have to be, I'm bad at business, or I have a bad idea. If you are learning things, you are moving forward, I promise you, even if it feels like you're taking a step back.
This is what I really want you to understand because so many of you are incredibly accomplished women. You know how to do really hard things. But when you've spent years getting really good at your career, being new at something again can feel awful. You're not used to not knowing the answers. You're not used to trying something that doesn't work. And you're definitely not used to having nobody there to tell you what the right answer is. There rarely is going to be a right answer here. There's going to be an answer you try or a hypothesis you try to get an answer on, and you see what happens, then you make the next decision. That's entrepreneurship. You are a scientist now.
Now, let's come back to social media. If you're struggling to post, if you're struggling to keep up, if you're struggling to put together that account, if you're judging yourself because you're inconsistent, please do me a favor and put social media on pause. Especially if you haven't even really started the business yet. Do not make social media the first thing you do.
Sometimes we think social media is this low-hanging fruit. It seems easy, right? I have some things I want to say, I have some ideas, I have some pictures. Maybe I'll make some graphics and put them out there. Oh Lord, this is what I did. Okay, so like speaking from experience, I spent so much time in Canva at the start of my business. I was so proud of all of the things that I did. I spent hours trying to bring certain ideas and content to life. I made so many graphics. I changed the font to make it beautiful. Oh my gosh, I rewrote captions so often, right? Spent so much time in this world behind our computer screen. And when I was doing that, I was not signing clients. I was not talking to people. I was not putting my business out there.
Right? We can spend a lot of time rewriting captions and deciding we need better pictures and researching hashtags or whatever we're researching these days, and all of that takes time and energy, time and energy that could have gone toward actually building the business. I wasted so much time and energy on things that were not actually putting me in a position to create clients or to share the actual value that I brought to people.
I've done a couple of episodes on this concept, the concept of focusing on revenue-generating activities, okay? Believe episode 81 from employee to entrepreneur, overcome the corporate habits holding you back and episode 98, why I wasn't getting clients and what changed everything. All of the episodes I'm mentioning will be in the show notes. Go to jenna.coach/126 and you can bookmark those, you can go back to those.
But the short of it is, there are activities in your business that indirectly generate revenue. They're valuable. They support the business, they build your brand, they help people know who you are. But nobody can pay you in that exact moment. Then there are revenue-generating activities. A revenue-generating activity is something like making an offer to a person who has a problem you can solve in the moment. You say, "Hey, I can help you solve that problem. Here's how. Here's what it costs." And in that moment, they can say yes. They can literally pay you. That's a revenue-generating activity.
Social media, most of the time, is very indirect. You're playing a longer game. You're building your brand, you're putting your ideas in the world, you're sharpening those ideas, you're building credibility. Those things are all valuable. Don't get me wrong. But if you are brand new and you're already nervous about posting, you can spend a month thinking about one post. I know from experience. And now a month goes by and you haven't told anybody what problem you solve. You haven't talked to any potential clients. You haven't made an offer. You haven't learned anything about whether people actually want what you're thinking about creating. You have spent a month preparing to start.
And this is where I think social media can be so dangerous for new entrepreneurs. It can make you feel productive, but it actually is allowing you to hide. Okay? So here's what I want you to do instead. And I hope this isn't a surprise for anybody who has been listening to this podcast for any amount of time. I want you to go out and talk to real people. I want you to get out into the world. I want you to have coffee with your best friend who supports you no matter what and tell her what you're thinking about. Tell her, "I think I want to start a business," or "I have this idea," or "I don't even know what the business is yet, but I know I want to leave my job," or "I want to redesign my life, so I have more time with my kids while they're young."
Start with your safe people. Let yourself say the thing out loud that you want, the crazy thing or the thing that seems crazy right now. Then I want you to expand the circle. Who do you know who started a business? Who do you know in the industry that you're interested in? Maybe it's someone you used to work with. Maybe there's someone from a conference you went to three years ago who you met and thought was fascinating. Maybe it's a neighbor. Maybe it's someone at your kid's school. Or maybe you just go to a networking event in your area. I want you talking to people. I want you talking about your ideas. I don't care if you're an introvert. I'm an introvert too. Okay? Talk to one person, text one person. I want you to connect with people, not because every conversation needs to turn into a client. It doesn't, and that's not the point. I want you to talk to people because you're collecting data.
And at the beginning of your business, that's what's important. We want to collect data, we want to build confidence, we want to process out loud the things in our head. When we're talking to people, we're noticing which ideas get more traction, which are more interesting. What are the ideas also that are completely falling flat? When we're talking to people, real people, instead of talking to the internet or posting things on social media or thinking about posting things but not actually posting things, like when we're talking to real people, we're hearing questions that maybe we hadn't thought about. We're meeting people who know other people. We're allowing the business to come into contact with the real world.
Social media can make us forget that business is about connecting directly with people. Social media makes starting a business look like a broadcasting problem. It's not. At the start of a business, it's always a relationship problem that we need to solve. Who do I know? Who can I talk to? Who has a problem that I understand? Who knows someone with that problem? Who can I help? Who can introduce me to someone? Your business needs people, especially at the beginning. Even if you're building an app or a product that feels very isolating from people, eventually you need people. At some point, another human being has to want that product. So involve humans now at the beginning.
And here's the best part, talking to people gives you the information you thought you were going to get from social media. You don't have to sit on Instagram trying to figure out what your potential clients want. Just go talk to them. Ask questions, listen, pay attention. Okay? Social media can feel like you're shouting into the abyss. Okay? Not only does it take a ton of energy to come up with posts and to have the courage to post them and to share your thoughts. But then what happens next? We judge ourselves if people don't interact with it, right? We feel like it must not be a good idea if people aren't interacting. It's just a very big waste of time at the beginning of a business, especially at a part in our life and business where we have so much mental drama.
Now, I do want to give you one caveat here because I have had one client, one in more than five years, who got on social media very early in her business, and it worked really well for her. Okay? When she told me she wanted to start posting, I had questions and challenges, right? I said, "Okay, do you like social media?" She said, "I don't mind it." I said, "How do you feel about posting about your business?" And she said, basically something to the effect of, "Yeah, I have ideas. I think it'll be easy." I was like, "Okay, let's see how this goes." And you know what? She posted consistently. She had plenty of things going on in her life. She had very little time for posting, but she still posted consistently because it wasn't a huge emotional drain for her. She had ideas. She liked sharing them. She didn't spend three weeks agonizing over one caption. She just created these posts and she posted it. It was not a lot of time that it took for her.
And she started getting clients in her inbox almost immediately, or in her Instagram DMs almost immediately. Now, you might think that story proves the exact opposite of everything I've been telling you. It does not. Because the lesson isn't social media works, so everyone should do social media. The lesson is the strategy worked for her because she would actually do it and it didn't exhaust her. Okay? There was no mental drama for her. She enjoyed it. She had energy for it. She did it consistently and it did not consume her. Great. If that's you, go for it.
I'm not anti-social media, and I think it can be a great tool. Absolutely. It puts you in touch with so many people. It can really send out your message. It is a beautiful time that we are living in that you can, there's a platform for you to connect with millions of people. I love that. I'm not anti-social media. I am anti you believing that social media is the price of admission to entrepreneurship. And then that belief stopping you from actually starting the business. Okay?
Five years plus into business, I still have mental drama around social media. Okay? And if you've checked out my accounts, you'll see that I'm not consistent. So if you're sitting at your desk right now thinking, I could never be one of those people who's posting every day, great. Don't be. You don't need to become an influencer. You don't need to become somebody who has thousands of followers. Okay? You need to or want to become a business owner, and those are not the same job. I want you using strategies that get you into action, not strategies that keep you preparing to take action, but never actually doing it. Okay?
So please, if social media has been stressing you out, if you don't like posting, if you don't like the platform in general, I want you to put it away. And instead, I want you to tell three real people what you're thinking about building or your ideas. That's it. Just three people. Please don't start an Instagram account if you fall into the category of somebody who hates Instagram. Don't even make a logo. Don't order business cards. Don't do the whatever you're trying to do on Canva for four hours. Okay? Instead of all of those things this week, I just want you to talk to three humans, and I want you to tell them what you're thinking about.
If you are in the process of talking to people, if you've been networking, I want you to find three new people. And I want you to introduce your ideas in a different way. Okay? You don't have to sell them anything. You don't have to know exactly what your business is yet. I just want you to get talking about it. Okay? I want you to get out from behind your computer, your laptop, and I want you to talk to people. You don't need followers to start a business. You need people. You need conversations. You need a problem you're interested in solving. And eventually, you will need the courage to make an offer and say, I can help you with that. But you don't need thousands of followers first. Okay? You don't even need one follower. You don't even need an Instagram account.
So, again, if social media has been the reason in the back of your mind that you've been telling yourself, maybe business isn't for me, I want you to let that go. You don't need social media to run a successful business. Businesses existed well before social media existed. Okay? You just need people and connection. So go out and find those people to connect with. And if you're looking for more people to connect with, as always, I have a mom entrepreneurs circle that we meet every other week. The time and day just recently changed. So make sure you sign up. You'll get the reminder emails. Go to jenna.coach/126 to sign up and be a part of that group.
And absolutely do the thing, start the business, and don't worry about social media. Follow the podcast. I release a new episode every Wednesday, and if you follow the podcast, you will get a little ping and it will download, and it will be a reminder to keep going after your dreams. I will see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
Hi, mom friends. This is episode 126 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast. Today, I want to talk about social media. I haven't talked about social media in a while. And for all my newer listeners or those who haven't gone way back and listened to the episode I did on this a while ago, I think we need to talk about it again. I did an episode back in 2025, January 2025, Social Media Myths, episode 36. So definitely check that out if you want to dive deeper into social media.
But social media has shifted in the last couple of years. It's changed. It's tempted us in different ways. And I think we really need to regroup. Specifically, I want to talk about why social media is actually not that important when you're starting a business. So for all my people who are sitting there thinking, I don't know if I can start a business because I hate social media. I'm going to put you in a little bear hug here. It's okay. Stick with me.
Because by the end of this episode, I want you to have a true relief of an exhale. I want you to feel some relief that you can do this because you do not need social media to start your business. And actually, if social media is the thing that's keeping you from starting, I want you to put it away entirely. Okay.
Let me tell you why. I was talking to a client the other day. Actually, she was a potential client at the time. And we were talking about some of her ideas for a business. This wasn't someone who had been dreaming about one particular business her entire life. She didn't have this one calling that she'd been waiting 20 years to pursue. But her priorities changed when she became a mom, her career goals changed, which love to hear it, right? That happens to so many of us. We didn't necessarily know these little humans were going to change us as much as they did. And then they get here and suddenly we're looking at everything differently, especially our careers.
And we want to keep our babies. We love them. We also want to keep our careers. We want to use our brains. We want meaningful work. We want to make money. All those things are important to us. And we're trying to figure out how to do all of those things without losing our sanity, our identities, or our souls in the process. Okay?
So I asked her, what kind of ideas do you have? Right? She knew she wanted to start a business. She wants to be more flexible. She wants to be there for her family. She doesn't know what to do for a business. So she gave me a couple of ideas that she had been noodling on. There was one idea that I actually really loved. And then there was another idea that was basically built around social media. Kind of like lifestyle blogging, business on social media.
And I asked her, "Okay, well how do you feel about social media?" And she said, "I hate it. I hate social media. I don't like posting." And then and then she said something to the effect of, that's why I don't think I'll be good at this business stuff in general, because I don't like social media. And I thought, oh, because this isn't the first time I've heard that. Somewhere along the way, we've started confusing being good at social media with being good at business. And those are not the same thing, not even close.
I think a lot of us have accidentally started believing that starting a business means starting an Instagram account. It's like you have an idea, so what do you do? You come up with a business name, you make a logo, you start an Instagram account, you figure out your colors, you make some graphics, you stare at Canva for three hours. Maybe you write a post for Instagram, but you delete it, and then you rewrite it. You wonder whether you should make a Reel. And suddenly you're starting a business. Except not really, okay?
You're performing what you think a business owner is supposed to look like, right? The social media, the visibility, the putting yourself out there. But the two things are so different. And this is especially important if you've spent most of your career in a traditional nine to five. Okay?
It's easy to think that some of the first steps of starting a business are creating that social media account and creating all the things that look good. We want so bad for somebody to tell us what the path is to starting a business. And again, this is especially important if you've spent most of your career in that traditional role or in that corporate role, because in your career, there was probably a path that was given to you. There were expectations and a job description. Your boss was telling you what to do and what needed to get done. There were performance reviews that gave you clarity. There were deadlines. Some version of do these things, do them well, and this is how you'll know you're succeeding.
And in entrepreneurship, suddenly nobody is handing you a curriculum of what to do and when to do it. Nobody's telling you what the next step is, and that is so uncomfortable for us ambitious overachievers. Especially when you're used to being really freaking competent in what you do for your career. You're used to knowing what you're doing. You're used to hitting those deadlines. You're used to being an expert. And suddenly in entrepreneurship, you're a beginner again.
So we are yearning for a curriculum. We look around for a curriculum, and social media appears to be that curriculum because that's what we can see. We're scrolling and we see businesses, we see ads, we see people selling things, we see people talking about their businesses. We see somebody posting five times a week, somebody making a reel, somebody telling you that the algorithm has changed. And because that's what we can see, our brain goes, oh, this must be how you build a business.
It isn't. It is one way some people market a business, and that's it. So please hear me when I say this, you are allowed to be a beginner in entrepreneurship. Okay? You were allowed one day a long time ago to be a beginner in your career. And you're allowed to be a beginner here too. The difference is that your career gave you a curriculum. They gave you steps on how to succeed, how to get the next promotion, how to move to the next level. Entrepreneurship doesn't give you that. But it does give you space for experimentation. Okay? And this is where it can actually get pretty fun.
Because your first job as a new business owner is not necessarily to jump on Instagram and start building a brand. Your first job is to collect data, to ask questions. What are people struggling with? What are they willing to pay for? What are they willing to pay to solve? What am I really good at? What kinds of problems do I enjoy solving? What happens when I explain my idea to somebody? What questions do they ask? What lights them up? What lights me up? What doesn't, right?
What are you trying that feels like it's working? What am I trying that's not working? All of that, that is business. So instead of thinking I need to post, I want you thinking I need to experiment. Don't post. Experiment. Okay?
And that might mean you try something and it doesn't work. Good. Now you know something you didn't know before. You try something else. You explain your idea to five people and all five of them look confused. Okay, interesting. That doesn't mean your idea is bad. That's just data. Maybe the idea isn't clear yet. Maybe you need to explain it differently. Maybe the problem isn't compelling enough, or maybe you're just talking to the wrong people. It doesn't have to be, I'm bad at business, or I have a bad idea. If you are learning things, you are moving forward, I promise you, even if it feels like you're taking a step back.
This is what I really want you to understand because so many of you are incredibly accomplished women. You know how to do really hard things. But when you've spent years getting really good at your career, being new at something again can feel awful. You're not used to not knowing the answers. You're not used to trying something that doesn't work. And you're definitely not used to having nobody there to tell you what the right answer is. There rarely is going to be a right answer here. There's going to be an answer you try or a hypothesis you try to get an answer on, and you see what happens, then you make the next decision. That's entrepreneurship. You are a scientist now.
Now, let's come back to social media. If you're struggling to post, if you're struggling to keep up, if you're struggling to put together that account, if you're judging yourself because you're inconsistent, please do me a favor and put social media on pause. Especially if you haven't even really started the business yet. Do not make social media the first thing you do.
Sometimes we think social media is this low-hanging fruit. It seems easy, right? I have some things I want to say, I have some ideas, I have some pictures. Maybe I'll make some graphics and put them out there. Oh Lord, this is what I did. Okay, so like speaking from experience, I spent so much time in Canva at the start of my business. I was so proud of all of the things that I did. I spent hours trying to bring certain ideas and content to life. I made so many graphics. I changed the font to make it beautiful. Oh my gosh, I rewrote captions so often, right? Spent so much time in this world behind our computer screen. And when I was doing that, I was not signing clients. I was not talking to people. I was not putting my business out there.
Right? We can spend a lot of time rewriting captions and deciding we need better pictures and researching hashtags or whatever we're researching these days, and all of that takes time and energy, time and energy that could have gone toward actually building the business. I wasted so much time and energy on things that were not actually putting me in a position to create clients or to share the actual value that I brought to people.
I've done a couple of episodes on this concept, the concept of focusing on revenue-generating activities, okay? Believe episode 81 from employee to entrepreneur, overcome the corporate habits holding you back and episode 98, why I wasn't getting clients and what changed everything. All of the episodes I'm mentioning will be in the show notes. Go to jenna.coach/126 and you can bookmark those, you can go back to those.
But the short of it is, there are activities in your business that indirectly generate revenue. They're valuable. They support the business, they build your brand, they help people know who you are. But nobody can pay you in that exact moment. Then there are revenue-generating activities. A revenue-generating activity is something like making an offer to a person who has a problem you can solve in the moment. You say, "Hey, I can help you solve that problem. Here's how. Here's what it costs." And in that moment, they can say yes. They can literally pay you. That's a revenue-generating activity.
Social media, most of the time, is very indirect. You're playing a longer game. You're building your brand, you're putting your ideas in the world, you're sharpening those ideas, you're building credibility. Those things are all valuable. Don't get me wrong. But if you are brand new and you're already nervous about posting, you can spend a month thinking about one post. I know from experience. And now a month goes by and you haven't told anybody what problem you solve. You haven't talked to any potential clients. You haven't made an offer. You haven't learned anything about whether people actually want what you're thinking about creating. You have spent a month preparing to start.
And this is where I think social media can be so dangerous for new entrepreneurs. It can make you feel productive, but it actually is allowing you to hide. Okay? So here's what I want you to do instead. And I hope this isn't a surprise for anybody who has been listening to this podcast for any amount of time. I want you to go out and talk to real people. I want you to get out into the world. I want you to have coffee with your best friend who supports you no matter what and tell her what you're thinking about. Tell her, "I think I want to start a business," or "I have this idea," or "I don't even know what the business is yet, but I know I want to leave my job," or "I want to redesign my life, so I have more time with my kids while they're young."
Start with your safe people. Let yourself say the thing out loud that you want, the crazy thing or the thing that seems crazy right now. Then I want you to expand the circle. Who do you know who started a business? Who do you know in the industry that you're interested in? Maybe it's someone you used to work with. Maybe there's someone from a conference you went to three years ago who you met and thought was fascinating. Maybe it's a neighbor. Maybe it's someone at your kid's school. Or maybe you just go to a networking event in your area. I want you talking to people. I want you talking about your ideas. I don't care if you're an introvert. I'm an introvert too. Okay? Talk to one person, text one person. I want you to connect with people, not because every conversation needs to turn into a client. It doesn't, and that's not the point. I want you to talk to people because you're collecting data.
And at the beginning of your business, that's what's important. We want to collect data, we want to build confidence, we want to process out loud the things in our head. When we're talking to people, we're noticing which ideas get more traction, which are more interesting. What are the ideas also that are completely falling flat? When we're talking to people, real people, instead of talking to the internet or posting things on social media or thinking about posting things but not actually posting things, like when we're talking to real people, we're hearing questions that maybe we hadn't thought about. We're meeting people who know other people. We're allowing the business to come into contact with the real world.
Social media can make us forget that business is about connecting directly with people. Social media makes starting a business look like a broadcasting problem. It's not. At the start of a business, it's always a relationship problem that we need to solve. Who do I know? Who can I talk to? Who has a problem that I understand? Who knows someone with that problem? Who can I help? Who can introduce me to someone? Your business needs people, especially at the beginning. Even if you're building an app or a product that feels very isolating from people, eventually you need people. At some point, another human being has to want that product. So involve humans now at the beginning.
And here's the best part, talking to people gives you the information you thought you were going to get from social media. You don't have to sit on Instagram trying to figure out what your potential clients want. Just go talk to them. Ask questions, listen, pay attention. Okay? Social media can feel like you're shouting into the abyss. Okay? Not only does it take a ton of energy to come up with posts and to have the courage to post them and to share your thoughts. But then what happens next? We judge ourselves if people don't interact with it, right? We feel like it must not be a good idea if people aren't interacting. It's just a very big waste of time at the beginning of a business, especially at a part in our life and business where we have so much mental drama.
Now, I do want to give you one caveat here because I have had one client, one in more than five years, who got on social media very early in her business, and it worked really well for her. Okay? When she told me she wanted to start posting, I had questions and challenges, right? I said, "Okay, do you like social media?" She said, "I don't mind it." I said, "How do you feel about posting about your business?" And she said, basically something to the effect of, "Yeah, I have ideas. I think it'll be easy." I was like, "Okay, let's see how this goes." And you know what? She posted consistently. She had plenty of things going on in her life. She had very little time for posting, but she still posted consistently because it wasn't a huge emotional drain for her. She had ideas. She liked sharing them. She didn't spend three weeks agonizing over one caption. She just created these posts and she posted it. It was not a lot of time that it took for her.
And she started getting clients in her inbox almost immediately, or in her Instagram DMs almost immediately. Now, you might think that story proves the exact opposite of everything I've been telling you. It does not. Because the lesson isn't social media works, so everyone should do social media. The lesson is the strategy worked for her because she would actually do it and it didn't exhaust her. Okay? There was no mental drama for her. She enjoyed it. She had energy for it. She did it consistently and it did not consume her. Great. If that's you, go for it.
I'm not anti-social media, and I think it can be a great tool. Absolutely. It puts you in touch with so many people. It can really send out your message. It is a beautiful time that we are living in that you can, there's a platform for you to connect with millions of people. I love that. I'm not anti-social media. I am anti you believing that social media is the price of admission to entrepreneurship. And then that belief stopping you from actually starting the business. Okay?
Five years plus into business, I still have mental drama around social media. Okay? And if you've checked out my accounts, you'll see that I'm not consistent. So if you're sitting at your desk right now thinking, I could never be one of those people who's posting every day, great. Don't be. You don't need to become an influencer. You don't need to become somebody who has thousands of followers. Okay? You need to or want to become a business owner, and those are not the same job. I want you using strategies that get you into action, not strategies that keep you preparing to take action, but never actually doing it. Okay?
So please, if social media has been stressing you out, if you don't like posting, if you don't like the platform in general, I want you to put it away. And instead, I want you to tell three real people what you're thinking about building or your ideas. That's it. Just three people. Please don't start an Instagram account if you fall into the category of somebody who hates Instagram. Don't even make a logo. Don't order business cards. Don't do the whatever you're trying to do on Canva for four hours. Okay? Instead of all of those things this week, I just want you to talk to three humans, and I want you to tell them what you're thinking about.
If you are in the process of talking to people, if you've been networking, I want you to find three new people. And I want you to introduce your ideas in a different way. Okay? You don't have to sell them anything. You don't have to know exactly what your business is yet. I just want you to get talking about it. Okay? I want you to get out from behind your computer, your laptop, and I want you to talk to people. You don't need followers to start a business. You need people. You need conversations. You need a problem you're interested in solving. And eventually, you will need the courage to make an offer and say, I can help you with that. But you don't need thousands of followers first. Okay? You don't even need one follower. You don't even need an Instagram account.
So, again, if social media has been the reason in the back of your mind that you've been telling yourself, maybe business isn't for me, I want you to let that go. You don't need social media to run a successful business. Businesses existed well before social media existed. Okay? You just need people and connection. So go out and find those people to connect with. And if you're looking for more people to connect with, as always, I have a mom entrepreneurs circle that we meet every other week. The time and day just recently changed. So make sure you sign up. You'll get the reminder emails. Go to jenna.coach/126 to sign up and be a part of that group.
And absolutely do the thing, start the business, and don't worry about social media. Follow the podcast. I release a new episode every Wednesday, and if you follow the podcast, you will get a little ping and it will download, and it will be a reminder to keep going after your dreams. I will see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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