[00:01] Katie: Welcome to the Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.
[00:32] Katie: Welcome to the Focus B show. Today I'm here with Sam Jones, who's a life and business coach. Sam works with influencers, business owners and major brands. Thank you very much for being with me today, Sam.
[00:46] Sam: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
[00:48] Katie: My pleasure. So let's dive straight into the topic. Because you work with influencers, I'm really curious what's your take on social media? Do you feel it impacts our performance? Does it benefit it or does it hinder our performance?
[01:05] Sam: It's a fascinating world when you start to work with influencers and you tend to almost peek behind the curtain of how social media works, both for performance mentally, how it affects people, and when I say influencers, just to really define that straight away. These are people that tend to have a bit of a platform or they have a community, but it's also people that have their own business, so they have a cause that they're building towards or they have something for profit. It's all along that sort of side. And the basic answer to the question is that it can either hinder you or it can catapult you into phenomenal success. And success is very determined by the individual because it can hinder you as far as it can lower your performance. It can make you worry about things you didn't worry before, like the whole comparison problem. It can make you see the other business owner out there that might be doing it this way and make you feel terrible about yourself and your position if you've had a bad day. It can add to all of those and hinder you and hold you back, but it can also really push you forward whereby you get inspired by what other people are doing. You're able to spread your message, you're able to build a big reach. And the thing that I think people forget, because they're so focused on numbers and we'll probably get into this, is that you can connect with not just thousands of people and getting hundreds of likes and all those things, which is what people tend to focus on when they think of social, they think of big numbers. It's actually about connecting with the individual. So having those few really loyal people that are following what you're doing, interacting with them and building a real core, following off that. And from that, you learn so much about yourself. You learn so much about your business, which, in turn, can be massively important for how you shape your work in the coaching world, about what people actually want, what actually works for them, how they talk. Just not talking in coaching language, actually talking as we do when we're feeling a bit rubbish or we're not feeling as good about our life. So social media, as far as performance and even well being is all about the choice of the individual. And hopefully we'll get into today some practical things that you can do to deal with all of that now you can make it work for you versus what's happening a lot now in the modern day where it actually makes people feel worse and it probably holds them back a little bit.
[03:17] Katie: Yes, it's such an interesting take to actually see all the benefits of it because a lot of the time we read about all the negative effects on our well being, the comparison issue that you mentioned. But like you just said right now, also all the connections we can make and all the really connections like we met on LinkedIn, sam and I right now talking. And so there's a lot of potential and possibilities out there, but it's how we use it. So what have you seen works well to help people to really leverage social media to grow their business, but without going into the comparison game, without it being detrimental to their well being?
[03:53] Sam: Absolutely the key thing that makes it work well. And it's very core fundamental or the fundamentals of this or the foundations of how to do well on social. And again, when we're saying well, it's performance and well being. It is really communicating fully transparently who you are and that requires you knowing who you are. How much of a challenge is that? Especially if you think about a lot of people that use social. So sort of the 18s up into the late twenty s. Thirty s, which is maybe the bulk that's probably wrong on a lot of platforms now. But think about your Instagrams, your TikToks now and things like that. A lot of us in that time I know I'm kind of just past that now, unfortunately. But in that time we're really confused about who we are, what's important to us. We're unsure of maybe our traits and how we work, our strengths, what direction we want to head in life. It's a confusing time, right? And then when you put that into an environment whereby it's asking you to sort of share your world with the world, it can be quite intimidating, right? And almost to start with, what goes wrong is people don't actually know who they are at the very beginning when they're doing stuff. So I would ask people to do a lot of work offline as much as they do online on social first. That's the first thing. If I'm working with, whether it's an up and coming entrepreneur or a big influencer that say, got like millions of followers, it still comes down to who are you? What do you want to share? And how can you do that in an honest and transparent way as possible? Why that's important is social has caught up. The social community is caught up. Now you can't really fake and lie to people and sort of get away with it. Unfortunately at the beginning in a lot of business to get ahead, people would sort of manufacture what they did and they would sort of look at or share at least with the world, what may look like it's real but actually wasn't real. And things like being fake vulnerable and all these different things out there where they try and show these things but deep down people then they know that's not really who I am or that's not really how I feel or that's not really how I think and that messes you up. And I've seen a lot of people that I've either worked with or I was maybe going to work with, but it didn't quite work out or people that I just know in the community, that's their sort of hidden secret behind that. A lot of what they do, they kind of don't share who they really are. They share who they think they should be online and that can be a really big problem and hinder how well you do in different areas, why that's more important than ever is everyone is a lot smarter on social now. You could probably yourself and people probably listen to this, could go online out and tell the people that are genuine and can tell the people that aren't genuine. So the first thing that I do with people with social straightway is get them to know who they are and really just start to share that. And don't try and fake it. Don't try and fake it and manipulate what you say and do. And it's not because they're bad people. It's not because they're some evil genius that just wants to make a profit or just wants to grow. It's never to do with that. It's because it's a very strange world, social media, where it's very open. You're very open to attacks from a random John 368@gmail.com who attacks you because he doesn't like your video or says or criticizes something and that hurts. So you want to try and protect yourself and put your best foot forward. The key thing, as I said, again, knowing who you are and putting that best foot forward and not sugarcoating it and really documenting your journey for who you are, sharing the flaws, is one of the best ways straight away to help your performance because people connect and relate to you and also your mental well being. There's nothing worse. And I have done this and this is why I'm so passionate about it in my early career where I maybe egged on a little bit that I was maybe doing a little bit better than I actually was at the beginning, okay? And it wasn't a really bad extent, but I knew deep down like it wasn't right. And so many business owners and entrepreneurs do this. They try and show themselves to be way ahead or way more competent maybe than they are without thinking what I am right now is enough and I'm learning and I'm growing and I'm making mistakes, which is, guess what, the constant journey to entrepreneurship. So first thing straight away is to really work on that stuff offline and then gradually, if you can share it online, I think it's so important for the soul, so important for business as well.
[08:18] Katie: I really, really love this. I think it's a fascinating topic and it's so, so true that if we try and fake who we are, not only will it be hard for us to catch up with this constant sort of fake display, but also internally welcome to impostor syndrome comparison. And by being authentic and just being who you are. Not only do we all have things to share because we're all highly individualistic people and so we have our own sort of abilities and strengths, but also it's easier because you're not trying to think, what would the ideal version of myself or the version of myself that I'm portraying out there say? You're thinking, how do I feel about this? Does this resonate?
[09:02] Sam: And so important to that as well. What this requires and what people don't understand is that in order to do that effectively, as in to be really transparent, is you have to really put the work in behind the scenes. As in you have to work hard. And people don't like hearing that because we want to look to how do I get to the thousand followers? Or how do I get to the ten K? Or how do I increase my engagement in order? Or why people maybe overemphasize things that they are doing or maybe are pretending to be vulnerable, pretending to be open because they know, oh, that makes me look vulnerable and then I'm going to get more likes from that. You see the type of posts online, right? Okay. And by the way, this is a disclaimer for this whole conversation. I have made all these mistakes because I was young and it's a weird environment on social and it's what happens. We don't like to talk about it because people think, oh, people are going to think we're wrong or bad, but we do that. It's okay. It's correction of the mistakes. Anyway, in order to really thrive on that social and to be transparent is you have to work hard behind the scenes. One of my mentors said to me the other day, which really struck a chord with me and said it in a beautiful way, was in order to play good piano, for example, you need to do the scales behind the scenes. There's a time to do the scales, but then the best playing actually comes from then improvising and improvisation comes from somewhere a bit deeper, right? You're sort of feeling around and you're playing and things like that. It's the same as social. You need to do the hard work, seem to be working hard so you got something to talk about. So you're growing your competence. So you're growing your ability to give value to your following and connect with people. But then when it's time to actually post, it's more of an improvisalization. This is where you get people that overly edit what they say online or try and get the perfect picture again, I've done all of these things. So you do all of that, and people now more than ever can see through that. And even though you may grow your following through these tricks because you might post picture of your ABS out or your *** out or like you looking really vulnerable because people really like people that are vulnerable, but you're actually faking it and you're being genuine with that vulnerability. I can go into that and what that means in detail. But if you do all of that, people will know. They sense it. It's like an unspoken or subconscious feeling that they think there's something not quite right here about that individual and therefore they won't engage. And the big thing for people listening to this, or entrepreneurs, is they want to grow a community because hopefully they'll buy something from them of which they have a value. There'll be something from there. So you've got to build that up. But it all comes from that hard work. You've got to be working hard so you've got something to talk about.
[11:39] Katie: Yes, I think something to talk about, but also knowing deep down how you feel about different topics, for example, and how different things resonate with you and your strengths and your weaknesses and find it that sort of integrity within. Because I think if you're not aligned and you don't have that integrity, it's very hard to know where you place yourself on social media, what you say, how you comment, how you engage. So tell me a bit more about this general vulnerability.
[12:12] Sam: Yeah, so the algorithms on all platforms are similar, and then they're also slightly different. So maybe some types of content work better on, say, LinkedIn. Some other types of content works on Instagram. And you know, when I say you, I mean people that are trying to grow their accounts know if they post certain things, they're going to get a better response from it. Okay? Part of that is good because it's understanding the game of social media, if you will. It's understanding what does and you want to make sure that you have exposure and people can see you. Right. So it's doing that. However, where it becomes wrong, and this is mainly in the fitness influencer space, this is very common, to give an example, is that they'll know that maybe mental health is a big subject, okay? And we all should. And it's amazing what's happened with mental health. And people talking about it is to talk about that and explain it. But what happens is you get people with the wrong intentions that know they think about it this way. They think mental health is a good way for me to garner attention and therefore to further my own cause. So what they'll do then is they'll talk about it. I'll do a post that is very highly edited, very carefully vulnerable. As in they're not just being open and speaking from the heart. They've thought it out very, very clearly because their end goal is to gain more lights, gain exposure. Okay, again, these are not bad people. These are not bad individuals. This is because social media environment is very strange. As in you're exposed to a huge, often invisible audience, is that it puts a lot of pressure on us to change what would be normal behavior. And what it creates then is a cycle of that fake vulnerability or it rewards us to fake our vulnerability instead of being genuinely vulnerable where it's like I've had mental health struggles. I think a lot of coaches out there who are in the game have actually struggled in some way. We've all had these parts of us that are traumatic because that's why we care so much to do this work, right? And it's being able to share that in a way that is not editing it fully out. I'm really uncomfortable putting it out there and I'm not thinking ahead of thinking, right, this is a mental health post or this is a post about myself image or whatever and therefore I'm probably going to get more likes from it. It's a very fine line. It's often I suppose what I'm saying is this is do with the intention of why you post. And a great way to do this and a great tip for people is when they post is saying, can I genuinely look myself in the mirror and be proud of what I posted there? Not that it's perfect and it's technically perfect and it gets all this attention or whatever else, but can I stand behind there and say I'm proud that I posted that? And that's a great marker for people and business owners to really look at their content because it's a long term game. You want to build a brand here. You want people coming back to you for 20 years, not just a year, because you've done a quick post and then you've manipulated them into doing it. You want to really build something over a period of years and people don't like that because it requires patience, unfortunately. But that's the way it does work. That's where people are winning.
[15:12] Katie: It does require patience. And then also it's the sort of long term game instead of the short term win. And people are really attracted by short term wins. They think they can grow a long term business through short term wins and it doesn't work that way, right? I'm curious because we're talking about social media and it's very interesting also this topic of vulnerability. But what I'm also thinking is in performance, one of the main areas is productivity. And so how we spend our time. And I think we both know how time consuming social media can be both with the content creation and with the engagement. So how do you think we can use social media best and still have great levels of productivity and not fall down the rabbit hole?
[16:00] Sam: The first thing to do straight away is define what productivity will mean to you. So what do you need to be doing in order to be productive? For example, I need to spend a lot of my day on both LinkedIn and Instagram, responding to questions, responding to reach out. So I do reach outs on Instagram and LinkedIn. I need to spend a lot of time on that in order to gain consultations with clients and then they become prospective clients in order for them to become clients. So I'll spend I'm given a rough figure here. It's probably about 3 hours, I'd say on average every day on those platforms. Okay? Now if I was on there for 3 hours and I'm scrolling through boxing posts or things like that, which set me in, or I'm on all these different YouTube videos, or I'm on LinkedIn and I'm just trying to look into things that aren't productive, then that's not being productive. So you've got to define what productivity means for you on social media. I'm a big proponent, even for business owners and entrepreneurs, is that it's okay to have a bit of time where you're just doing some mindless scrolling. It's when it becomes over and above and you're not in that bracket of I'm working hard enough at what I care about in order for myself to grow, then you know that on the inside. Okay? The key thing to this and what I ask people to do, and I ask some of my influencer clients to do also my entrepreneur clients to do is to don't look at this over a period of one day. Look at this over a period of, I'd say a week, but I would say a month. If you can say over a month that you've had a pattern of not using social media effectively for you, as in you've not been putting out valuable content, as in you've not been trying out different things and taking some risks. Have you not been reaching out to people, you've not been connecting with people that are engaging with you? You've not been loving your fans, so to speak, and doing all that sort of stuff? If you know that's not the case, then you've got to make some changes. And then that's a case of I turn off notifications on my LinkedIn Instagram and what I do is I have it 09:00 A.m. Every morning and about 05:00 p.m.. It's around 05:00 p.m. Because I shouldn't have clients at that time. I answer my messages and do things like that. Okay. Every now and then this is the human side of it. Yes, I'll log in at 12:00 or 01:00 and do that, but I don't beat myself up and be like, oh, the business is going to fail. I'm so unproductive. It's like if that becomes a pattern over a period of a month, then there's something not right and I need to rel look at it. Okay? And that's very important. But the notification thing is great. I only keep notifications on my emails just because I'm quite bad with emails. I emailed you about three days, four days late, didn't I? So there we go. So I try and put my notifications on to stop that. But that's a great way that you can look at, first of all, defining what productivity is for you on social media, doing those things that are productive. You may be someone if you're like, all of your business is social media. You may have to be on social media 10 hours a day at the beginning or in a product launch. You might need to be on all the time. Everyone is different. Somebody else, they may need to be on there for an hour a day where they're just posting and they're not looking at what other people do that. You may be somebody that is really struggling with comparison at the moment. So you're looking at all the other people out there. So you will have to have a six week and eight week period where you don't look at any other post because you're just not ready to do that. Everyone is different. And that's why you can't put a blanket statement to everybody, as in, like, what's right for Katie, what's right for Sam, what's right for Jim, Bob, whoever. It's an individual by individual case. And that all comes back to what we're talking about in the beginning, which is that real honesty and transparency and being like looking in the mirror. And it's so easy because we're in a world where we need to survive, we need to pay rent, we want to grow our businesses. We're all ambitious. We have high expectations of ourselves that we want to over egg and say, here's what we're doing, here's what I'm doing for that. But it's very easy. And I have been there, where you get into that place where you start sharing a few things that aren't almost like overstating where I am or over egging out where I am and things like that. And that's not easy because you've got to look at yourself in the mirror and be like, that doesn't sit comfortably. But it will help you build an integrity, as you talked about earlier, which I think is so important, and it will make people think, okay, I feel a sense of honesty and genuinity. I don't know if that's a word, but a real truth in that person. And then the right people then will connect with you and buy from you.
[20:16] Katie: I love what you said about defining productivity and what that means for you and also seeing the pattern. Because like you said, if one day you're off or if one day you're scrolling for a bit longer, that doesn't matter. That if it becomes a habit and every hour you find yourself taking a break for 15 minutes or 20 minutes scrolling, then it's something to do, something needs to be done about it. So I think exceptions don't matter, but the overall pattern and routine that you put in place matter. What I'm also wondering though is having a place where it's both where you reach out to potential clients and you do a lot of work, but also can be a massive pool of distractions in many way. I think it probably has quite a toll on the willpower. So if for example, you're writing to lots of potential clients, you're answering lots of messages and then you can also, just as soon as you lose a bit of energy, go to the home page and see lots of different posts and get lost in that. How do you think we can optimize how we use our willpower in those moments so that we don't get caught up in other things when we actually are trying to do something productive?
[21:25] Sam: You need to be accountable to numbers, okay? The problem with social media, especially for entrepreneurs or influencers that are looking or are making a living off that, is that they can make it very, very personal and they can forget that business is about building an entity that you care about, that you build a lot of value from, and then sharing that value with the people that need it. And people then what they tend to do, because social is a very emotional place, or it can be a very emotional place, is that we forget about some of the basics of our business. So for example, the core of my business is very very core at least is about the number of consultations I have with individual clients, the amount of those clients that I convert, so new clients per month basically and then the total revenue of the business. So that's from those clients, but it's also from other activities that I do. I know if I know those three numbers inside out and that those numbers are moving in the right direction for my targets, then I know if I'm on path or not. And then all the inputs that come into that to do with my productivity. So for example, if I'm getting distracted too much or if I'm spending time on things that aren't good for those numbers to improve, there's something off and I need to rejig that and relook at it. So one thing to answer your question would be you've got to make sure that you've got numbers or accountability to why you're doing what you're doing. So you can see if you're getting x amount of number. Every business will be different. Revenue is going to be important for most people, I imagine. Like sales meetings, probably because most businesses have some sort of sales funnel or whatever, or amount of new people in your email list or amount of people maybe on your Instagram following it's very important you can see more followers tends to equal more sales in some businesses. Fantastic. Then if you know those numbers and then take the personal side out of it as far as, like, it's about me or there's something wrong with me or I'm not doing good enough and make it a little bit more objective, I suppose is the word. I'm struggling with my words today. But hopefully you get what I mean. It's like you can see that and then you can make adaptions and then you can think, okay, how can I adapt there? Instead of going into that story mode that people do on social media a lot that post wasn't quite good enough, or I didn't look as good in that picture, or that caption. The words probably made me look stupid. Or that guy John nine, six, eight, or wherever we said earlier, criticized this video, didn't like it. It takes the power away from that a lot more in that story. More because we're looking at what are the important numbers for my business? It's going to grow, it in value. It's going to make me more competent in what I do and then build this entity for whatever your business goals are or whatever the vision for your business are very important to get some specific numbers behind things so you can almost connect the dots between them.
[24:06] Katie: Yes, you need to know what you're measuring and how you measure it and see the results. Totally agree with you on this. And I also think it probably is something that speaks to a lot of entrepreneurs who have their own business because a lot of them will have potential clients and then will have clients and then have revenue. So they're probably all sort of numbers that other people also measure in their business. So I think that makes perfect sense and that's a way of seeing. Are you being distracted? Another way I've found is also tracking the time spent, but of course you need to know what you're doing during that time. So I think I have different ways of tracking it in my Outlook calendar, and I'll either call it lead generation if I'm contacting people, or I'll call it like LinkedIn scrolling or just going through LinkedIn and then I know, is it time that I've spent productively efficiently, or if it was just I was engaging. But that's also not a waste of time. So it's interesting how we measure what's productive and what isn't right. So to sort of summarize what we've discussed because we've touched on a lot of different topics already, what would you say are like three key tips so people can leverage social media for their business and not get sucked up in. It and it become a time waster.
[25:18] Sam: Yeah. So obviously there's been a few different tips throughout the whole process, but let's try and look at some, maybe other ones that we haven't talked about as much. I think the first thing that people to leverage social media is to be patient with it. We touched upon it earlier. But to be patient and think of the long term game. Why I'm repeating that is that is the biggest thing that messes a lot of people up that are hoping to grow social media and grow community. You've got to be patient. You've got to look at the long term game and not just do that quick post because it's going to make you that quick burk okay. It's massively important. There's so much information out there about how to do good social media posts and what works and things like that. Just go and google it. There's no way that nobody should know how to do good social media. As in the strategy of it. The real magic comes down to it, which I suppose is .2 here. The real magic comes down to is are you speaking from I don't want to say soul, because it sounds cheesy, but are you speaking from within? Are you like saying something that you really believe and care about and that requires you to move away from the perfectionist idea that you have to put out the perfect post and then also have to take the power away from how many likes things have got or how engaged different things were. Because in order to be not perfect, in order to really put out your best work, you need to have a few flops along the way. As in things that don't quite work, a post that doesn't quite work. Or you do it like every now and then you'll do a post and you'll think, why did I do that? That doesn't really fit or whatever. That's all normal because that's just the human experience. But it's so important to be able to do that. And the final thing I would say as well, for people looking to grow their social is to really build connections with people, not just online. So to reach out to maybe people that are a little bit ahead of you, look for collaborations, these things that you should know about but hopefully you know about anyway. But to do that and to reach out and have chats and be looking to learn all the time, but it's also taking connections that you make offline sorry, online and take them offline. I've always thought of social media like this, is that social media is a bridge to connection. As in it's not connection itself, but it's the bridge to connection. So what I want to do is I want to make sure that even though I think let's use Instagram, I think there's about 9800 say on my Instagram community, it's impossible for me to know, like 9800 people in depth. But maybe out of those 9000, there's 50 or 100 who say aren't friends directly that have engaged in my work. They may be past clients. They've come to talks, they comment, a lot of things that I really get to know, okay? And I'll see a lot of those, and I have seen a lot of those offline. So as in in person, gone for a coffee or whatever else like that, don't forget that you want to. Social media is about building connection with people. And people and people are consumers, people are buyers, people are clients, of course. But looking at people because that is such an amazing way to learn, everyone listen to this. Where do you learn best? It's not usually from a textbook or it's not whatever that it's conversations. When you have a coffee in London and you're chatting to someone that you've, let's say, met online or met on an app or introduced by somebody, whatever, and they teach you something, or they say one sentence and you think, why did I not think of this? Whatever else like that. And that is everywhere online. It just requires that bit of humility. It requires you to really appreciate and love. Even if it's 50 followers you've got or 100 followers, appreciate those and nurture those. You don't have to have like 100,000 followers, 1.5 million followers, any of that to really build a successful life in your terms. If you want to build a huge social following, those are your numbers, okay? But most people's idea of success, it's surprisingly challenging and difficult a life to lead with anything over 100,000 followers. You are criticized massively. A lot of the people I work with that are one hundred K and above, they have massive criticisms from people. A lot of negativity, a lot of toxicity. A lot of our work we do is getting them bulletproof to that sort of stuff. It's a difficult gig doing that. If I was you, I'd be happy with your few hundred, few thousand followers that you really nurture. Give a lot of value to them. Explore, play around, express yourself, be creative, and then build a good business, whatever that is for you. Whether that's making 30 grand a year, 300 grand a year, 3 million a year, it doesn't matter. It's all down to the individual.
[29:45] Katie: I love this definition and this view on success and how it's especially in terms of social media, and how it's not a number game, but more linked to how well we get to know these people. I've met a lot of people through LinkedIn that like you said, I've taken offline just like you right now. And so much more value from that than just having a big number of followers. That doesn't mean that much if you're not actively connecting with these people. I think that's a wonderful place to finish. We began with authenticity. We finish with the connection and authentic connection with people offline before we leave. Where can people find you, Sam?
[30:23] Sam: So, on Socials, it's at Sam Jones Life Coach on Instagram, and then the same thing as well with LinkedIn, it's under that, but if you type in Sam Jones I know it's the world's most common name, but I should come up fairly I've been told to come up fairly high. So if you just look down, you see a guy that looks like me, that should be me, but feel free to reach out then on my website, which is WW Twentysomeone Co UK. That's got all my coaching stuff on there and it's got a few bits of advice and videos and things like that that are quite useful as well.
[30:51] Katie: Thank you so much. Thank you for being with me today, Sam. Thank you for this conversation and for sharing all of this. Thank you.
[30:57] Sam: My pleasure.
[30:59] Katie: Bye.
[31:02] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.