Approaching Instagram As An Outlaw

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Hey friend, thanks for tuning into episode number eight of Entrepreneurial Outlaws. Today I want to have a conversation about how we, as empathetic small business owners, can become untouchable on Instagram; how we can start to approach our content and our creative process; how we can shift our language and our approach to our content creation and how we can really start to harness our outlaw power and approach our social content in a way that feels aligned, joyful, easy, and purposeful.

We hear a lot about providing value in the online space. But what does that mean? As far as I'm concerned, most content I read is valuable because I choose to consume content from people who provide consistent value. I choose to consume content that as far as I'm concerned is valuable, it's helpful, and if it's not, I'm probably going to unfollow them. But I think as content creators, as small business owners, as creatives, we can get really stuck in this spiral of what is valuable and how do we know if it's valuable and where do we draw the line between what is valuable and what we actually want to say? So we're going to dive into that today. We're going to talk about how to approach Instagram as an outlaw.

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You're listening to Entrepreneurial Outlaws, a podcast for creative introverts and impacts and spiritual folks who want to grow a sustainable and impactful business on their own terms together. We are paving the way brand new normal in online marketing and business. One that allows you to lean into what makes you and your business unique. And I'm your host, Melanie Knights storyteller, Pinterest strategist visibility, coach and CEO of content are, can be marketing or non-traditional marketing agency for creative business owners who don't want to compromise the creative integrity to make money, get ready because each week we're having the messy, honest, and transparent conversations about entrepreneurship, the kind that's missing from the highlight rails of our social media feeds. And you'll learn how to create intention and connection behind your content marketing so that you can sell without selling out. We're uncovering the real stories behind what it takes to run a sustainable online business. The highs, the lows, everything in between, ready to break the rules and become an entrepreneurial outlaw. Let's do this.

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Okay. Before we stop talking about Instagram and diving into that good stuff and helping you to find your kind of untouchable side on that platform. I wanted to share with you my outlaw moment of the week, because just like all of you, I'm doing this walk, I'm going through this process. I am every day, every week, every month, I'm leveraging and harnessing the full potential of being an entrepreneurial outlook. And I'm very self-aware. My friends would say that I'm, self-aware almost to a fault. It is true, but I still catch myself. I catch myself following the rules. I catch myself making decisions from a place of fear or from a place of scarcity. I catch myself making decisions because it's the, it's the entrepreneurial way. It, it, it fits a box. It checks off a box it's it's part of the entrepreneurial checklist or to do list.

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And I find myself still sometimes slipping into that. And so I want to share with you my outlook moment of the week. Can I encourage you to come over to Instagram and let me know what your outlook moment of the week is? Because I think it's so powerful when we can hear each other's stories. When we can share our outdoor moment of the week with each other, when we can realize we're not alone, when all the only ones feeling this particular way or struggling with this particular piece of work or approach. So come on over. I encourage you to find me on Instagram and share you out. Well, moment of the week with me, the mine is all around my email marketing.

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I have been saying for a very long time that's I don't enjoy writing my emails. And when I'm really honest with myself, I haven't enjoyed writing my email marketing for years, years. I've done it, done it pretty consistently. I have checked off entrepreneurial checkboxes. I'm a very good entrepreneur that way, but haven't enjoyed it. And I don't have time for that . I do not have time or energy in my business personally, or professionally to be doing things I don't enjoy. So I took a step back for a number of weeks. I used my super special tool of re-purposing for about nine weeks, stepped away and realized that I was not being myself. When it came to email marketing, I realized that I was still following all the rules. I was still following all the tactics and strategies that I have adopted over the years with my email marketing, I realized I was still telling myself that no one would care.

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No one wants to hear from me in an informal setting. No one wants to hear from me unless less teaching them how to do something. These were the stories I had been telling myself, and I get emails from people that I read every week. And these emails still teach. It's still really useful and supportive and helpful, but they don't look like everybody else's emails. I was like, what the hell? Like it just, it was a sudden realization that I was still trying to fit my personality and my business into this email marketing books. It's not the email's fault. It's not my subscribers fault. It's no one's fault really. But I realized that for me to enjoy sitting down and writing an email for me to enjoy the process, I needed to create my own roles.

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And that has been really liberating. It's been really enjoyable, figuring out what I want to put into my email newsletter from now on and giving myself a permission slip and saying, here you go, I'm going to do it this way. So if you're on my email list, you're going to see some really exciting changes. If you not come and join, you can download a copy of outlaw manifester in the show notes. And the outlaw manifesto will add you to my email list. And you can, you know, you can say, what's up. You can see how I'm harnessing my outlook energy. So that was my album moment of the week, realizing that I was still trying to fit myself into books. I said, that. And here we go. So come over to Instagram and share with me your aloe of the week, use the hashtag Outwell moment.

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And you can either send me a message or you can post it on a latest outline moment post in the feed. But let's get in today's episode. So today we are talking about Instagram and we're talking really about how we can approach Instagram as Outlaws. How do we, how we become untouchable on this platform? How do we stop trying to fit into a box? Right? Similarly to the way I was trying to fit into this email marketing box, how do we move away from fitting in to this Instagram books and start to create content that feels purposeful and valuable. And

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Yeah,

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We do that in a way that doesn't spend it. Doesn't have us spending so much time spinning our wheels, questioning ourselves and just going to stay of self doubt. So I want to start by asking you a question. What if your struggles or feelings around Instagram right now had nothing to do with your ability to write? That's the fast thing. It has nothing to do with your ability to write. What if it has nothing to do with the graphics or the images you choose? Cause like

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You can

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Find a photo, right? It doesn't have to match the caption that would go, right? You can, that's your permission slip. You can find an image or a graphic. What if it has nothing to do with how many emojis you use or the spacing in the post or how frequently you post you see? Well, we typically focus on these really small things. We focus in on my graphics. Aren't good enough. I don't know what colors to use. I should use the spawn. We focus our time and our energy and even on money, right? We S we spend a lot of money over the years, downloading PDFs or joining courses or memberships trying to improve our hashtags or lining the secret to Instagram, trying to figure out how to engage with other accounts or trying to beat the algorithm.

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But as

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A human being, who is having a human experience,

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You know

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How to engage. Now, if you are introverted and the idea of sitting on Instagram each day and trying to find accounts to engage with is just, just the idea of it exhaust you. Well, first don't do it. Secondly, there are other things you can be doing, and

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It's just

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A, it's just another rule, right? It's just another rule. It works for some people and it doesn't work for all of us. We focus on these small things and we spend our time and our energy and money trying to improve these things. We'll figure out these things find the secret, but what I'm going to, I'm going to say something, which is probably gonna upset a lot of Instagram people right now, but I don't think those things matter in the bigger picture, right? Sure. Hashtags improve visibility. I get that. But does spending hours of your time and your day does spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money, trying to figure out hashtags, going to grow your business. Is that going to move the dial? That type of energy and money could probably be put somewhere else?

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And the reality is, if you are feeling misaligned with your social strategy or your creative process, or you feel really vulnerable on the platform, then none of that stuff will matter. Okay? So if you are trying to fit your, your creative self, your empathy, empathetic self into a strategy for social media that does not fit your personality, it doesn't fit your, your lifestyle or the way you create, or even your mindset or your values. If you're trying to fit your content into this box, then none of the other stuff will matter. It won't matter which hashtags you use, because every time you create a piece of content, you're going to feel like you're losing a little bit of your joy, your purpose, every single time you put pass, publish every time you, every time you post, every time you share.

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And what I think is really, really important to remember is that Instagram is not the end of your creative process. We put a lot of, we give away a lot of our power to various places in the online space. We give away our power to Instagram, Facebook groups, hashtags, even EMA marketing. We give away our power and we need to take that power back because Instagram or any of these other places, they're not the end of your creative process. And then not the place that make or break your business. Instagram is not the place that's going to make or break your business. Just the same way for me, my email marketing, wasn't going to make or break my business, but not finding my, my true voice or squishing my creative process into these rules that will make or break me or my business. Because the farther I fall out of alignment with my content, the less creative I am.

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And I, I feel as though we, we really blame ourselves. We tell ourselves that we aren't motivated, right? It's, it's almost like that proverbial diet cycle, right? I'm going to get back on the wagon on Monday, right? We've all probably had that voice. And I saw know, I heads at some point, you know, we say to ourselves, right, this week, didn't go to plan. I'm going to get myself really organized. I'm going to create little structure. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to stick with a routine. I'm going to make sure I put my phone in airplane, but we're going to do all these things, right? All these external things that we tell ourselves are going to help us be more motivated. And that motivation is what's going to get us through. And maybe it does for a little while.

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What if

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We need inspiration instead of motivation,

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Right?

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What if, what we need as empaths as creative folks,

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Six

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In inspiration, not motivation.

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One of the things I learned back when I,

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The health and fitness coaching is that motivation is like a battery, right? It's like a battery. You, you have to charge up your motivation, your willpower, you have to charge it up.

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And most

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Of us don't want to hear that. My hand is raised too, because the way we charge our motivation, motivational willpower battery is through rest. Through taking time off, through sleeping, through self-care

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Inspiration is always around us.

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It's not a battery. It's always there. We always have the ability to feel inspired, but so much of what we do in our day to day lives

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Is

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Taking us away from that inspiration. We stuff ourselves into these boxes. We put labels on ourselves. Our inner critic gets super loud. We hear from her or him or them on a regular basis. They step in and they challenge us and they try to keep us safe. When we're looking for that motivation to sit down and write. When I'm looking for that motivation to create a content, to plan our content, to whatever it is, it's not motivation that we're looking for

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It's inspiration.

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And that comes from being kind to ourselves, stepping back and questioning where the, what we're trying to do is in alignment with our values with ourselves, is this how we want to show up in the world? This is how we want to remember our legacy in our businesses. Is it going to matter in three months, time, six months time? How is it going to matter tomorrow?

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Yeah,

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I, I, I wanna say I get it right. I'm known I don't sit here and say this lightly. I don't sit here and say this as if I've never struggled in this way. I still do. I still do. I still find myself trying to put labels on myself, or I hear myself saying things. And I'm like, where did that come from? That's not, that's not how I approach my business, but you don't need to fit into a platform. Instagram is not the end of your creative process. None of these things are, and you don't need to take yourself your unique and wonderful self and fit it into a platform. And that is what most people teach. Right? Most people teach. Here's this thing. This is what you need to do to succeed here. These are the rules you need to follow works. For. Some people doesn't work for most. You are allowed to make these platforms fit your process. You're allowed to take what works and leave the rest.

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You don't

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Have to follow the rules. And that's what being an entrepreneurial outlook is all about. That's how we can approach our social content or any aspects of our content as an outlaw, take what works and leave the rest. Don't lose your creative integrity or your values, or the bigger impacts and vision that you want to make in the world. Don't put that side just to fit into this platform or this place.

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Yes,

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Because so often when we try to do them, we tried to take ourselves and then put ourselves somewhere else and try to mold ourselves into, you know, the Instagram pass and the Instagram fashion of ourselves. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable because we're not being true to our story, to our vision, to the impacts we want to make. And over the last little bit, few weeks, I guess I have been hearing from so many of you on Instagram, I've had conversations that your email, so many of you have been telling me how misaligned you feel with a majority of the strategies and tactics that are out there. First of all, I want you to know that I am so appreciative of you reaching out to me. It's it means the world. And also want you to know that you're not alone.

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That's one of the reasons why I wanted to record today's episode, because over the last few weeks, since we launched the podcast, I have heard from so many of you in this, this feeling of this need to, to grow, to expand your visibility, to expand your business without the labels, right? Without it being put into a six figure book or a five figure a month, because guess what? That shit's hard, but the expansiveness that you need to figure this out to say, this is who I am as an online business. So Anna, this is how this works for me. And it's okay. And this is my permission slip.

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And over the last few weeks as I've listened and I've had, I have realized that part of this process, part of this journey for me is to help you do that. To help you through this podcast, through my content, to help you figure out your space, how to become an entrepreneurial outlaw, how to become untouchable when you come on to Instagram, because sometimes we get on that platform and all of a sudden, no matter how much mindset work we do, we lose that. Suddenly we lose ourselves in the platform. We lose ourselves amongst the noise, and I'm not perfect, but I want to help you avoid the vulnerability of that. And step into your power, reclaim your power from these platforms, reclaim your power from the marketing tactics and strategies that are not working, but that was so terrified of breaking or avoiding, because what if there is so much fear behind this? What if it doesn't work? What if I'm wrong? And I want to help you explore that.

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So

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I want to share with you a, a shift. It's a language shift, really a way in which we speak to ourselves a way in which we approach our work, including our marketing. And I wrote this out, it actually came up for me on a journaling session with my coach. And I said it, and I had one of those moments where it's like an outer body experience. And I was like, Oh, that was really powerful. And I wrote it down today and realized it's part of my mission.

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It's part of my mission. So

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The shift is that so much of our time is spent saying, I have to, I have to write an email, right? I have to go on Instagram today. I have to post, I have to do a story. I have to write a blog. I have to pin. Sometimes we say, I need to, but I bet if you really listen to yourself was saying, I have to a whole lot, have to, The reality is we don't have to do these things, but that's the language we using. I have to write an email. I have to create my social media posts. I have to plan my content.

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Okay.

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What if we shift those? I have dues too. I want to, and I get to isn't that so much more powerful to shift a language from. I have to write an email to, I want to write my email. I get to write my email.

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I want you to practice that you can practice it. Now, pause me and practice it now, or practice it later. I want you to practice this. The feeling that I get when I say I want to, and I get to, instead of I have to, or I need to, it gives me chills. I can feel it in my body. I can feel it in my soul because the very act of getting to do something or wanting to do something is powerful. It feels a little bit uncomfortable. It feels a little bit like who the hell am I to say this, but we're going to go with it anyway. We're going to do it together. Right? I want to fill in the blank. I get to fill in the blank. What is it? What is it that you want to do? What is it that you get to do? This came up for me, as I said, on a journaling session with my coach

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And how questions hit us as a group was how are we measuring our joy? And when will I know when I've got there? Like, what am I waiting for? I keep asking myself is like, what the am I waiting for? But when will I know? And I said to myself, and I wrote down, I will know when I'm in my joy, when my half twos and my need twos are replaced by, I want to, and I get to, it makes me really emotional. And every single day, I'm practicing that. And I encourage you to practice it to your catch yourself, listen to your language. And if it's, I have to all the time, are you misaligned with what you have to do? How can you shift that so that you can say, I want to do this and I get to do this.

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And one of the things has really been

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Happening for me behind the scenes, as I've been working on the podcast, speaking with all of you shifting this language might have to. So I want to

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Is

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Realizing that

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We get to do exactly what we want in our businesses.

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When we choose it's a choice, right? It's a choice. And we tell ourselves that we are not ready, or we tell ourselves that we have to wait for something else to happen before we can do X, Y, or Z. And I tell myself this all the time, and one of the things I want to do, and I am doing, and I'm sharing this with you. Fast,

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His mentor, mentor, some wonderful, wonderful, powerful

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Outlet humans, small business owners who want to shift from my half to two. I want to so full transparency. Hadn't planned to tell you about this, but you know, we're going to go with it. I have been cooking this up in my business for a few weeks. It's actually only been a couple of weeks, but it's something I realized has been on my soul to do for a really long time that I've been putting all of those checkboxes in place, telling myself I'm not there yet. I'm not ready. I can't do it. So it was kind of quietening that noise. And I'm letting you know that this month in November, for listening to this life, I am going to be introducing you to a mentorship program, a mentorship program, where we will step in to your trust, entrepreneurial, outlaw self, a mentorship program that is going to support you, hold space for you and help you find your place so that you can navigate your business, but hold onto your vision.

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It's not my vision. It's not about a framework. There isn't even a framework. It's supporting you to ask those questions to make this transformation from, I have to, to, I want to, and my mission with this is that every single person who comes into this program is able to sit down at their desk or their laptop, their kitchen table. I don't know wherever it is that you work from. And when they open their laptop, they're saying to themselves, I want to do this today. Or they're saying to themselves, I get to do this today. I want every single person who comes into this to leave with that feeling with that guidance and that transformation, because my God do we need this.

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We need more Outlaws in every industry. In every niche, we need more Outlaws and we need to unpack a lot of stuff to get that myself too. I've been unpacking this for a really long time. I'm not there yet wherever there is, but I want to do this with you. I want to help you to unpack the noise, unpack the rules, the strategies, the fear, the what ifs, the inner critic, and the self doubt that you have to wait to be able to say, I want to do X or I get to do Y because there is no waiting. This is it. And

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Well, the idea of having a mentorship program without a framework, without load of stuff is very vulnerable for me and very uncomfortable. It's exactly what it has to be. So I'm going to, I'm telling you this right now. I don't have a sales page. I don't have any of those things right now. But in the next couple of weeks, I will be letting you know how you can get more information about this mentorship program, how, what, what we're going to be doing, or how I'm going to be holding space for you. I'll of course be letting you know how much it is and how you can join. But I wanted to share that with you because the program itself is all about this transformation from, I have two 21 too. It is about the Johnny, right? It is about the journey. We're never done with a lot of this stuff, but getting curious, asking questions, challenging what we see and just knowing that we have people in our corner and having the opportunity to open up this conversation in a bigger way is hugely powerful. So

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I'm going to let you know, in the next couple of weeks, all about the mentorship program, but what I want you take away from today's episode is this language shift. I want you to look at where in your business, where in your day are you telling yourself I have to, and I want you to get curious. I want you to say, really do I have to, is that true? And maybe sometimes is right. I have to eat. I have to sleep. So those things are really important, but where are you saying I have to in a really negative way or a way that makes you feel just really frustrated or overwhelmed by your business. And how can we switch that to, I want to, maybe this is a great channeling question for you. How can you switch this to, I want to, and maybe there are things that you want to do that you're not doing through some of those reasons. I mentioned fear. What-Ifs waiting for the right moment, or I'm not successful enough or wealthy enough, whatever it might be.

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And this is a heavy episode, there was a lot there. And I want you to invite you to come over to Instagram. And if you need to send me a message, if you want to stop this conversation, do it right. Come on over. I'm a human being, come over and say, hello, and let's unpack it together. Like, let's unpack this because this is it, right? This is it. Ah, this has been a really heavy and powerful episode. I wasn't sure where we would go in today, but this is where we've come to. So hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it has really encouraged you to think differently about your platforms, new content and and yeah, come over, show you out. Little moment of the week with me, let's unpack this together and I will see you next week.

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Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode of entrepreneurial outdoors. If you see yourself as an entrepreneurial outlaw and enjoyed this episode, but you feed me a favor, it would mean the absolute world to me. If you could take a moment to subscribe to the show and leave a rating and review by leaving your review, you were helping me to grow out little community and together we can show other entrepreneurs that breaking the rules can actually be good for business. Don't forget. You can find the show notes for today's episode, along with any of the links that I mentioned on my website@melanienights.com forward slash podcast. And if we're not already virtual busters, you can come and hang out with me on Instagram. I am the one with the country music, playing the coffee in my hand, and I'm dishing the doubt on how we can make entrepreneurship more inclusive and transparent. Plus I'll probably send you some fun gifts. So until next time Outlaws.