This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 094 / Struggling With A Decision

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

As a business owner I have to make some tough decisions where there is no way to be absolutely sure if I’m making the right one when I’m making it. This can lead to over-thinking, increased stress, and even looking for signs or someone who can just tell me what to do… because like so many people, I don’t love uncertainty. On today’s episode I share about a dilemma that I’ve been working through the last few months (if I’m being honest the last few years) around social media. I open up about my doubts, my fears and ultimately the steps I decided to take to get out of my comfort zone, and get into action. But this episode really isn’t about social media at all, it’s about listening to your inner voice, choosing an empowered perspective, deciding for yourself, getting clear on your boundaries and getting into action towards what REALLY matters to you. And if I’m going to encourage you to do all that, I better do it too! Because the woman I am becoming and the woman YOU are becoming will cost us… but we should choose her over everything. That is woman’s work. To learn more about what we are up to outside of this podcast, visit us at NicoleKalil.com

Hey friends, Nicole Kalil here to share with you a dilemma that I've been working through the last few months, and I'm being honest, more like the last few years. The dilemma is whether or not to even be on social media. Let me first acknowledge that this is definitely a first world problem and not by any means at the top of the list of things that are weighing heavy on my heart right now. It's not even close. But it is something I think a lot about as a business owner with goals and also as a woman who's obsessed with confidence. I want to explore with you in this episode of This is Woman's Work, the thought process I've been going through and ultimately my

decision on whether or not to be on social media and also whether to post or not to post. So before I go into my pros and cons, let me share a little of my story. So you get an idea of what has me or what brought me to this point. I have been late to the social media game on all platforms. So when I joined LinkedIn, it was late and it was mostly, you know, because somebody at work told me to, and I never updated my profile. And then when I joined Facebook, it was for the same reason that everybody else did, which was to stay connected with people from your past and stay up to date and also to be able to check in on ex-boyfriends and borderline stock, any guy that I was into at the time.

You know you did it too, so don't judge me. And then many years later, I finally got on Instagram. And that was a little bit more because of wanting to be more business focused. It shifted to being about branding and marketing and building a community and finding the people that I could best serve. And also borderline stalking people with big businesses and millions of followers to figure out how in the hell they were doing it. There was about three years in that time where my team and I followed every formula focused on content and strategy,

tested out all the best practices in every effort to make the Instagram algorithm like me and to see that huge boost we were looking and praying to the social media gods for. Within that about three years, my followers grew from about 300 to 3000, which left me feeling like all our efforts were creating results about as fast as a sloth working at the DMV. And let me remind you that while patience is a virtue, it is not one of mine. And this became

a source of frustration and also some doubts and some fear. Maybe I don't have a message that resonates. Maybe I'm not impacting anyone at all. What if I'm fundamentally unlikable? I mean, I went real dark at times. Now let's add into the mix all the research I've done, all the focus and the learnings about confidence. And I began feeling like I was at a crossroad because I had yet to find anything that said social media is a great place to build confidence. And I had found a ton

of evidence that said social media was a place that triggered judgment, comparison, head trash, perfectionism. And these are things I know to be big confidence derailers. So it became a challenge to see social media as a healthy place for me to be. So in September of 2021, I took a month off completely. It was a social media detox and it was wonderful. It allowed me to see what I liked about social media, what I didn't, where I was addicted or where I was doing things by default. And after that month, I only posted things that made me laugh or I felt were really important and predominantly in the stories. And that landed me in a really good place. I've been happy in what I consider my healthy space in the last eight months. So why am I talking about this? What is the dilemma?

Well, because like all choices, my choice to not focus on social media comes with consequences. The bulk of the work that I do is in speaking engagements. And while I have great success when I'm referred into a company or an event, and I also have many companies bringing me back for repeat engagements, not having a strong social media presence is working against me for big events, big opportunities, especially those coming through speakers agents, or really any time I'm considered for an opportunity where they don't know me. Because they're doing what we all do when we've never heard of someone. They're checking me out on social media. And what they find isn't helping me. It's hurting me in both booking

engagements and also in impacting how much I can charge for those speaking engagements. So again, maybe not one of life's greatest problems, but of course, something I need to consider as a business owner. On a separate but similar note, I wrote my first book, which has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. And while I'm incredibly proud of Validation is for Parking, which is being released in September of this year, my publisher, my marketing team, and pretty much every single author I've spoken with says it's imperative that I be active on social media if I want to have any hopes of people actually reading it outside of my circle. And while I didn't write the book with any income goals or sales goals in mind, I definitely wrote it because I want women to read it. And I want nothing more than for it to be a tool for more women to connect with and choose confidence. So here I am asking myself, do I get back in the social media game? A game I remind you that I have mostly felt like I've lost up to this point. Or do I stay in my comfort zone? Trust me, I've thought through

all the pros, things like the impact and the reach that I can have, more women connecting to their confidence, bigger and better opportunities. Again, that greater reach, new connections, capitalizing on a few different amazing moments and events and friendships that have given me a big boost in followers the last few months. It was literally the perfect storm I needed to see an almost 10x increase in followers than I had the three years prior. So a pro was feeling like, gosh, I need to capitalize on what's going on. And I've also thought through all the cons, the judgment and comparison that happens on social media to me. And I know everyone else and that it's a huge confidence derailer. I don't consider

it a very healthy place to be. I've literally never heard anyone say they hope their child will go on social media. And I certainly am trying to keep JJ off it as long as possible. That to me tells everything I need to know about we all believe this isn't really the most healthy place to be. It's also a huge investment of time, energy, and money to do it right. There are haters and naysayers and negative commenters and the worry that I'll annoy the crap out of the people who actually like me by showing up on your feed so much you get sick of me. So yes, I thought through the pros and the cons, but ultimately I needed to make a decision. And for me, it hasn't been an easy one. So how did I do it? How did I make this decision? Well, the same way I make most of my decisions, or at least the good ones anyway.

The first thing I did is I got quiet and checked in with myself. I listened for my inner knowing, that inner voice that never steers me off track. And sometimes it's hard to hear with all the noise and the head trash, but it is worth spending the time to get quiet and listen for it. I asked myself, what's the worst that could happen? And I let myself go down that road. But I also asked myself, what's the best that could happen?

And I let myself go down that road. And then with all that information and knowing full well that it's very unlikely that the worst case scenario would happen and probably unlikely that the best case scenario would happen, I asked myself what it would look like somewhere in between. And of course, I checked in with my vision and my goals for myself. Does this choice align with what I ultimately want, what I'm trying to accomplish, the vision of my future? I journaled, I looked back on my things I know to be true about me list. I did all of the exercises, the internal work that I know to do whenever I need to make an important decision. Then the second thing I did is I discussed it with a few people I trust that have relevant experience and knowledge. So let me be clear, this is not about stockpiling opinions. I did not reach out to 50 people. I didn't post on social media and take a poll. This was really talking to a few key people that had insights and knowledge in this space that

were relevant. So on this note, I've made this mistake a lot in my past, and I see a lot of other women do this. I did not reach out to just my closest friends or the people I love or trust the most because as much as my mom adores me, she doesn't have relevant experience in this space. She might not be the best person to tell me what I need to do as it relates to publishing a book or booking speaking engagements. I have the best of the best, best friends. I swear they would jump in front of a bus for me and I would do the same, but not every one of them were the best people for me to turn to, to get their opinion. So I had to be really clear about who I was talking to and whether or not they were in a good position to give me feedback,

to give me advice or opinions on this particular challenge. And again, let me be clear. This is not about having somebody else decide for me. It's about collecting outside perspectives, having people ask me really important questions and share really valuable insights. So a couple of things that came from that, I got asked the question, what would be your biggest regret? If you think towards the end of the year and you're past book launch and you're looking back on the year and looking forward in the next year, what would you regret the most? This is an important question because a couple of things became really clear for me.

What I would regret the most is feeling like I didn't do everything it took to make this goal a reality. I would regret most what I didn't do, not what I did. My coach asked me, is this a forever decision? And it became clear to me that it's not. This is something I can test out in a six-month period of time or a three-month period of time or a one year period of time. This is not a forever decision. And I was treating it like it was. And then Jay, who I always ask his thoughts and opinion, and is one of my go-tos, asked me a question that really was a game changer for me. It's like, is it really all that serious? Is this really about your integrity or about your confidence? Does it need to be that big of a decision?

And that was such an important question for me because I do have a tendency to sometimes make mountains out of molehills. And I realized that I was interacting with this as if it was a vital integrity oriented decision versus a business decision and strategy that I wanted to test out. So, okay. I talked to some other people, which is basically my second step. And then my third step is to decide, knowing that there is no way for me to be absolutely sure, knowing that I'll never feel 100% ready and knowing that confidence is only ever about trusting myself, I decided. And that decision for me was to know that I was leaving nothing on the table, to not have any regrets at the end of the year when I look back over this very important

period of time. So I decided I'm going to get back on social media and I'm going to do it right, which leads me to my fourth step, which is to determine and communicate my boundaries around this decision. Just because I'm deciding to be on social media and deciding to post doesn't mean that it's a free for all. I still get to have boundaries. So I thought about what are the boundaries for myself? For example, not getting sucked in and checking my phone every single minute, not starting my mornings on social media, not increasing my screen time, which by the way, I can check on a weekly basis. So that's going to be a little bit of an accountability to me to make sure that my time on social media

doesn't increase just because my posting does. I considered my family and my privacy. I determined my boundaries with my team. For example, I'm not going to post every day. I have no interest in that. I want to focus on providing value and not be focused on promotion or aggressive sales. I hired a team of people, which by the way, was an 8,000 a month decision, but well worth it because I don't want to be the one doing the work. I want to be the one managing the work. I want to own the result, not spend all my energy and time each week on the creation of, which has been an incredibly freeing decision.

And I decided my boundary around how long to test it, which for me is going to be six months. At the six-month mark with more data, more information, more results, I'll be able to determine whether or not I want to continue forward and how I want to continue forward. And finally, step number five, and really an important one as it relates to any decision, but also in confidence building is getting into action. I got into action. I made the investment. I said yes to the team. I started prepping and planning, and we've been doing weekly calls and bi-weekly calls and sending information and creating content. And it's been really incredible behind the scenes. And it's built my confidence around what we're about to do about the decision that's about to go live here in the next few days. And so here we are, you are

about to see my face all over your feeds. And for those of you that support me with likes, comments, and shares, I am beyond grateful. And for those of you who might find it annoying, I would just ask that you mute me versus unfollow me, but I respect your decision regardless. So I am going to test this out because I want to know in my soul that I gave my book launch and my business everything it needed to succeed. I want to look back and learn what I could have done better or differently because I know there will be plenty of those things. But what I don't want to do is look back and have regrets. I don't believe social media is the place where confidence is created, but I do know that trusting myself is what confidence is made of. So I'm going to post, I'm going to post my face off, but I hope you know this episode really isn't about social media at all. It's

about listening to your inner voice, choosing an empowered perspective, deciding for yourself, getting clear on your boundaries and getting into action towards what really matters to you. Because the woman I am becoming and the woman you are becoming will cost us. It could cost us people, relationships, spaces, and material things, but above all else, choose her over everything because that is woman's work.