When Things Get Quiet, STOP Comparing Your Business!

Leads slow down. Proposals stall. And we start convincing ourselves that our whole strategy is broken. In the first ever episode recorded at TSC Studios, I'm unpacking what's really happening when business feels quiet, and why our instinct to scroll social media for answers usually makes it worse.

In this episode we'll chat through:

• Why turning to social media in tough moments turns into comparison, not inspiration
• The difference between an actual strategy problem and a confidence problem
• Why the "highlight reel" we're comparing ourselves to is hiding a much messier reality
• What to do instead when things feel tough

If you've ever panicked when the leads went quiet, this one's for you.

🎧 Listen now and follow along for more from inside our brand new studio.

Links:

• Follow on Instagram: @loren.thesocialcollective
• Find Loren on LinkedIn: Loren Tomlinson
• Visit us at: www.thesocialcollective.co.nz

Loved this episode? Leave a review - it would mean the world!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Grab that morning cup of coffee, turn up those headphones, and let's talk marketing. This is the podcast where we get into the strategy, the numbers, and the conversations shaping the industry behind the scenes. Brought to you by the Social Collective. This is Coffees and Content. Hello, my friends, and welcome to the first official episode of the Coffees and Content Podcast at TSE Studios. I am honestly so excited. I feel like this has been the longest time coming. I am sitting here recording, staring at my studio, thinking, this is insane. Like this is real. I have an actual studio. I have the chairs of my dreams. I'm sitting here with my podcast set up. I'm staring into my camera with my gorgeous tripod with the most insane natural lighting coming from above. And I'm thinking, we did it. This studio actually exists and how good it feels to sit and be recording an episode in a dedicated podcast studio. I am beyond stoked. So welcome to TSE Studios. I know you're only seeing a small snippet of the studio, but go to TSE.studios on Instagram if you want to see more of what the studio looks like. And in the meantime, continue obviously to follow along on the copies and content podcast because this is not the only layout you are going to see. This is one of many backdrops that you are going to get to experience. So I'm going to try and I guess over the episodes take you through lots of different positions and places and spaces inside the studio. So you don't just see one exact spot. But for those of you who have your own podcast or you have a business that needs you to create content from time to time, make sure you go check out Tssstudios.co.nz because this is the place to be. We are the only content and podcast studio in Hobsonville. We come with all of the stuff. So the camera I'm recording on right now, the lighting that we have in this space, the camera, uh the podcast equipment, all of the mixing boxes, all the cords, all the plugs, all the things, all the chairs, all the plants. We have it all. It's really designed to be the space where everything is here that you need. I walked into the studio about 10 minutes ago, plugged all my things in, sat down, and boom, I'm recording. And that is the dream for me. And I know it is for so many others. So if you're watching this thinking, I really want to be doing the same thing, make sure you check out TSEstudios.codo NZ and you two can book to be in this amazing space. But on to today's episode. Now, this is something that has been on my mind for a long time because I have been in the trenches at times in my own business. But it's also been inspired by some conversations with my team, some conversations with some clients, some conversations with people that are not yet clients, and also some conversations at a networking event that I went to. And that is the concept of how we feel when everything goes quiet. Now, as a business owner, obviously life goes up and down. I was even having a chat with someone at a networking event very recently. Some really great advice that she shared was that she's no longer using the excuse of the market being in a tough spot because there is no such thing as like a normal economy or a normal market anymore. It just doesn't exist. Pre-COVID, things were a lot easier to predict. Post-COVID, there are so many more challenges that us business owners have to face. And even marketing managers, when it comes to getting your budgets approved and plans approved, it's just such a different space that we're working in than it used to be. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that it is tough, but we will push through and we will be able to do this. And I really want to touch on in today's episode the importance of really turning inward when times get tough. Because I see so many people, and I will put my hand up and say I'm very guilty of doing this myself. It is really easy to turn to others. And when I say others, I particularly mean turning to social media when times get tough, because we tell ourselves it's a place for inspiration. But really, what we're doing is we're directly comparing. And I want to talk through the importance of that today. Because regardless of whether you're a business owner, you're a marketing manager, you work in marketing, you work in some other field, and you're just tuning into this podcast because you love to learn about marketing. Regardless, this is something that applies to everybody. So what I really want to talk about is what happens when we compare ourselves online when things go a little bit quieter, because we tend to think the problem is our strategy. And in particular, when the leads maybe go a little bit quiet. And I've got so many episodes on like what you can do to drum up brand awareness, to drum up leads. I've got so many more episodes planned for the rest of the season to talk about how we can really make lead gen something that is amazing in our businesses. But what I want to talk about before I even get to that point is when we start to feel like things have gone quiet, and when we start to feel like, okay, I've got my marketing strategy and I've got my business strategy, but leads aren't coming in, or it's gone quieter, or I've got so many proposals out there and they're just not getting signed. Or you have a situation maybe where somebody signs and then they change their plans. I've had all of the above happen to me before. So I know where you've been. And this is something that I think as a business owner too, I've realized that it's never going to go away. There's always going to be moments of stress. There's always going to be moments where it feels like things are going amazing. And then two weeks later, you could feel like you are in the slowest, trickiest, toughest, deepest hole that you've ever been in in business. And it can change on a dime. But I think having that resilience is such an important thing. And also not comparing yourself to what others are doing. So today I want to share an experience that I think is quite a universal one. It's not particular to any client or to myself. It's a combination of so many different experiences for people. And I think the really common one is, like I said, when things start to get a little bit quiet. So imagine you're in a position in your business where I'm sure you've probably been before. It's a little bit quiet. Things aren't cranking like they used to. You're starting to get worried that all of a sudden things are, that things are slower. You're looking at your cash flow, you're starting to panic. You're looking at the months ahead and you're thinking, oh my goodness, am I going to be able to pay my bills? And that worry and that panic and that stress sets in. And don't worry, I know the feeling. And then you turn to the online space. And I know that you've done it. I know you've been there. I too, myself, have been there. Many of my clients have been there. Many of my soon-to-be current former clients. It's a really common thing. And it is one of the realities of owning a business. But I think what happens is I see so many business owners looking at their situations and going, okay, if I could maybe go to social media and I could pick up some tips and tricks on like how to grow leads or how to grow my business or how to grow my brand. Or if I look at what my competitor is doing and I maybe just copy the same thing and I have the same kind of lead magnet, but with a few tweaks, or I have the same ad structure as them, or I use the same wording. And what we tend to do is we go on social media like we're searching for a solution and we're searching for help. But what we end up doing is a direct comparison between us and them. And one of the things that I see that changes the quickest when we start to get into this space of panic is obviously we know who we are and we know what our businesses stand for and we know what we're, what we're doing and what we're aiming to achieve. But one of the first things that I see that changes so quickly with so many businesses is they instantly feel the need to change up their marketing. They're like, oh, well, if something's not working, it's got to be my marketing plan. It's got to be my social media or my ads aren't working, or I need to turn them all off and I need to save money, which gives me the heapy jeebies. But they think that they need to make a quick, instant change so that all of a sudden something is is better and is exponentially better and their business is gonna all of a sudden have these leads coming in instantly overnight. So firstly, it could absolutely be your strategy. And that's where I recommend talking to either your business strategist or your marketing strategist or a coach or somebody around you who can help you really take a step back and look at what you're doing. The second thing is sometimes we overcomplicate it and we've actually made things really complex when they don't need to be. We need it really simple and we need easy, repeatable processes. That is one of the best ways to win at marketing is having something that is easy, something that is repeatable, something that sticks in other people's minds and makes them recognize that it's you. It's like when you see me doing podcasts or public appearances, I'm usually in brown. And that's because it makes remembering me and my business hand in hand a lot easier than if I was to show up in so many different colored outfits. So it's something that I do that a lot of people don't recognize, but it's very intentional. But I think what happens is a lot of businesses and a lot of people feel the need to change up their marketing. And it's actually not their strategy that's wrong. It is that they have all of a sudden started pulling inspiration from other people, from other posts, from other things that are going on online. It's like I see business coaches all of a sudden start creating content just because other business coaches are creating that same content or jumping on trends that they actually don't need to jump on because they think it'll help them be relevant. But I also think one of the toughest ways to overcome this moment of quiet in your business is actually by turning to social media. Because what happens is we go and look at what other people that we think we're pulling inspiration from, but actually we just end up comparing ourselves to what they're doing. We're going, oh my gosh, well, they posted this thing and it got X number of likes. They had this great achievement and it was so good and they did X, Y, Z. For example, within my own business, I've looked at other marketing agencies and I've gone, wow, they made this client X number of thousands of dollars. And then I've reminded myself, hang on a minute, we don't even specialize in e-commerce. So why am I comparing myself to somebody that runs an e-commerce marketing agency? We focus on service-based businesses, and that's what we're good at. Then we also look at how other people's reels have performed. And oh my goodness, they got like a hundred thousand views and I only got 20, or they got 50 new clients that they posted on this one social media post today, and I've only got two. The reality is you have absolutely no idea what's going on behind the scenes in that person's business. And I have the perfect example for this. There is a business owner. I won't say what business or what industry they're in, but if you know, you know. There is a business owner that I have seen on social media that has recently changed the entire structure of their business. And I think it's an interesting journey to follow on social media for a few reasons. But long story short, this business owner for the last six months has been really changing the way that they do things. They have also publicly shared that they had six months where they didn't take a salary this year. They paid some of their staff to leave. They have changed up the way that they do their whole business structure so that they could be profitable because they weren't profitable for a really good period of time. And that's why the founder didn't take a salary out of the business. But in that six-month period where all of that chaos behind the scenes was happening, you would have no idea on social media that this business was flailing around and the business owner was panicking and they weren't taking a salary and things were a bit stressful because you saw them going overseas, you saw them expanding their business internationally, they were at speaking events, they were publicly posting everywhere, their team was singing their praises all over social media. It was looking like it was a really well-hum-drumming machine, and things were growing and expanding and going amazing. And you would have absolutely no idea that this business owner behind the scenes was feeling really stressed and was in a position where they couldn't even afford to pay themselves. And I was very guilty of looking at that business for a hot second and thinking, am I doing stuff right? Should I be following and also doing things like integrating a lot more AI into my business? And should I be copying what this business does and what that business does? And should I hire that same role that that person has? And should I be creating the same kind of content that this one does? And this founder over here that runs this company, they've been posting these types of videos online and they've been going viral and gaining a following. Should I do the same thing? And it just becomes so insanely overwhelming. And the reason that I mentioned that example of that business owner is because recently they have posted that that's all been going on behind the scenes. And it's, I think, because they have such a widespread following. It has really been a reality check moment for so many people, myself included to a certain extent, but I'm relatively good at checking myself these days. But there's so many people that just went, whoa, I had no idea. And I think that's where it's so important to recognize that social media is such a highlight reel. I think when I look at the platforms, they all kind of do different things. We have Facebook, which typically speaking is really for sharing a lot of content to friends and family and connecting in groups and things like that. Then we have Instagram, which for the most part is our most perfected and polished platform. Instagram is typically speaking where we post all of the highlight things. We post the prettiest pictures, we post the ones with the best lighting, we post the best reels, we post the most curated stuff. Then we obviously welcomed TikTok into the space. And TikTok became that platform where people could be a little bit more free-flowing, they could be a bit more raw and honest with their content, they could be a little bit less polished. But also, TikTok is still polished, it just looks less polished, and I'll I'll talk about that in a second. And then LinkedIn came on the scene, and LinkedIn's been around for a long time, but in the last sort of year, it's really picked up in that business owner and employee community where we're encouraged to go on there and share essentially like from the depths of our soul, what is going on behind our roles and our businesses. And yes, we go on there to celebrate, but people are also craving vulnerability. And I did this in my business and it was tricky, or I did this and it it was a pivot, or I did this, and then I went from down here to up here, and that's the journey, and that's my story. And I think that that's awesome to share, but in balance, and I think as long as you're consuming all of this content, recognizing that everything is so curated, the story that you read on LinkedIn was curated. The TikTok videos you watch have been curated. The Instagram content is so heavily curated that when we watch it, that's not real life. And I think there's a couple of things that I find really interesting. One is TikTok, and I have another example that I want to share with you. There's a content creator that I follow in the States, and I absolutely love their content. I think they are awesome at creating content, and it keeps me very well captivated. But when I watch this person's content, it's someone who gets up in the morning, and one of the first things they do, they own a fitness and online fitness community, and I think they're fantastic at creating content for their audience because they show their workouts in the morning, they show them getting out of bed, they show them creating and like a really yummy breakfast and like sort of making a nice smoothie, or and then they weave in different promotions for different brands and different products. But one of the things I find so funny, and it really is my anchor point every time I watch this video to remind myself that social media is not all that meets the eye when we watch this final video, and it's that this particular content creator has three flights of stairs to go down to get from their bedroom to their home gym in the basement. Now, in this video, I watch this content creator walk down all three flights of stairs. What I think so many people forget is that this particular content creator and anybody else that's walking down any staircase is actually putting their phone at the bottom of the stairs and then going all the way back up to the top and then walking all the way back down and then turning their phone off and stopping the recording. And there's a TikToker who does makeup. Her name's Michaela. I'm gonna butcher her last name. It's like Noriega, I think. You probably know her if you're in the makeup community and if you're on TikTok, but she had a video that went quite viral because she was off to divorce court, she called it, which was she was just off to court to finalize her divorce with her ex-husband. And she posted this video of her getting in her car and shutting the door and driving off. And I remember opening up the comments of this particular video, and everyone was just like, oh my goodness, it's so funny because she'll be driving her car back into the garage and getting her phone out and putting it back in the car after she's finished recording. And again, the comment section drew my attention to the fact that, yeah, she propped up her phone on her tripod, got into her car, shut the door, doing all of her I'm on my way type like boss babe kind of attitude, gets in the car, reverses the car out of the garage, then would have either driven the car back forward or just stopped it and got out, walked back into the garage, grabbed the phone, turned off the recording, and then gone to divorce court. And it really just, for me personally, moments like that I find are such a good reality check of the fact that that's not a hundred percent of their day. And unless they do a behind the scenes of a day in my life type video, we're not often privy to those moments once they stop hitting record. And I I see it so much, especially with the younger generation these days. But I mean, to be fair, anyone that's hanging out on social media, I see it a lot because we watch these so-called day in the life videos. And I find what's really, I guess, damaging in a way, is that we watch these videos and it'll be like, come join me on my nine to five or come join me for my five to nine. And you'll watch this person's like entirety of their day because they timestamp it being like at 9.02, I did this, at 11.07, I did this, at 6.05, I did this. But in between all of those, like sort of, I guess, timestampy moments in their day, so many more things are happening. There'll be moments where you get a really crappy phone call, you get a bad email, you have a great moment where you win a client, or you have a sad moment where you lose a client, or something goes really great and you have a win in your job, or maybe something happens to your dog and you have to run him to the vet that day. There's so many things that happen that unless we actively choose to put that on social media, people don't see it. And I just find that a really important thing to touch on because especially when we are in those moments where life is a bit harder or business isn't cranking as well as we would like it to, we turn to social media convincing ourselves that we are going there looking for advice, looking for feedback, we're looking for inspiration, we're looking for a way of doing something when in actual fact all we end up doing for the most part is comparing ourselves. And so what I like to do in those moments when things are a little bit tougher or they're a little bit harder is I actually step away from my phone, I turn off my computer, I give myself some dedicated kind of like no technology time, and I turn inwards and I actually literally, and I did this a couple of days ago, I grab a physical piece of paper and I brain dump any thoughts in my head. I really think about how am I approaching this part of my business or how am I approaching this part of my marketing. For example, we were looking for different ways to generate leads online, and this was a couple of months ago, and I realized that I was churning out these different kinds of lead magnets, trying to find something that worked, because yes, we have to go through a testing period. But I caught myself when I started to look at what other businesses were doing. And I thought, no, because first and foremost, the social collective as a business primarily focuses on service-based businesses. So we specialize in lead generation and brand awareness. So we help businesses make sure that they're getting in front of the right audiences. We basically get you seen, trusted, and wanted. We first get you visible, then we get you being really trusted by your future clients. And then when they're ready, we get you wanted. So they're picking up the phone and they're calling you. And we've implemented that formula within our own marketing and it works really well. And we do it for our clients too. But I started to look at what other lead magnets, other businesses were doing just for inspiration, quote unquote inspiration. And I found myself then going, that's a better idea than mine. Oh, that was way smarter. I wish I'd thought of something like that. And then I thought, hang on a minute, I don't need to be comparing myself to anybody because we have our own individual IP, we have our own individual ways of doing things. When I stopped looking at what other people were doing, we actually came up with the best strategies, the best structures and the best formulas and the best ads that have performed the best in quite some time because we looked at what we are good at and what do we want to showcase and what do we want to tell people. And I think when times get tough and it gets quiet, and I've had clients come to me before going, I'm feeling nervous and like, is this a good investment? Because admittedly, there's always a time when people look at their marketing and go, is it paying off? And in the initial days of running this business, I used to get so panicky because I'd have clients coming to me and like the first month. Month being like, huh, is it working? I don't know. And then I think I should pull the plug because I haven't seen any return on investment. Now we know that it takes a lot more time than that. It takes, on average, three to six months to start seeing things moving, and then from six to twelve months to really get things cranking. And that applies for marketing everywhere. It's not just outsourcing to an agency, it's marketing in general. Things take time. It takes years to build something amazing. And you might have that viral moment of success and that's amazing. But don't compare yourself to the people that do have those moments because chances are things have been going on behind the scenes for far longer. And I want to share one of my favorite things to think about, and this I guess is slightly niche, but she's a lot more well known now. Is if you have ever heard of the singer Sabrina Carpenter, I love Sabrina Carpenter. Sabrina Carpenter is someone who I really admire because a couple of years ago she had this massive blow-up of her music. She kind of changed her image slightly and it it gained a lot of traction and she gained a lot of an audience and and people started to love her music. And she toured with Taylor Swift and now things have blown up and gone really well. And Zara Larson is exactly the same. She's another pop singer who, again, has just blown up now and is touring on her own. She's coming to New Zealand, I think, in a few weeks' time. And it's so awesome to see these amazing moments. But I think so many people have watched the moment of their so-called kind of like internet sensation success, whatever you want to call it. I guess when they became an internet sensation and they blew up all over TikTok and things like that. What I love to look at is because these two singers, I've been following them for the past 10 years. Sabrina Carpenter was a little itty-bitty kid who was on TV on different TV shows on, I think like Disney Channel or something like that. And she came out with a whole bunch of records, and I happened to actually really like her music back then, and I I still do. And Zara Larson was the same. At 16 years old, she's releasing some really great songs. She did an awesome song with Clean Bandit that so many people have heard of, but they never put the girl to the song. They never recognized that it was her in the same way that she's recognized today. And I constantly go back to thinking about these two artists because of the fact that 10 years of hard work went into building these careers that then exploded with one viral moment. It didn't take that long for them to gain this instant success when things blew up. But there was 10 years of continuing to work at it day in, day out. And there'll be so many more examples of this that are people that I've never even heard of or people that don't come to my mind right now. And there'll be somebody that you know that's like this. They've worked, and it might be someone that you even know personally. They've worked tirelessly to get them to the point where things then take off. I was speaking to a business owner friend of mine a couple of nights ago, and she was saying how she's nine years into her business and she finally feels like things are paying off. And it takes time. I'm not saying it takes 10 years exactly, but I think it takes time. And some people judge the fact that certain people have had successes really, really early on in business, and some people take longer. And I think the fact that social media is such an easy, accessible platform for us to be able to go and scroll and compare ourselves to others. It makes us feel at times, especially when we're in moments of feeling a little bit down or feeling a little bit low, that we turn to these platforms and we think, I wish that I was as good as this person, or I wish that I could do this like that person, or I wish that I had the same success or same money. But I want to remind you to keep going. And I want to remind you that it doesn't last forever. And the client that I told you that was getting really nervous, three weeks later, they turned to us and they'd signed five new clients. And in fact, right before I sat down to record this episode, that client messaged me and said they were feeling really nervous at the start of this week. They're wrapping up the week with two new clients signed. And I am stoked, especially because marketing has played such a pivotal role in this particular business owner's world and growing their marketing. Two leads that were from the five came directly from social media, and the others all had some kind of connection to their socials, their ads, or their emails in the process. And so I love being able to go on journeys like that with our clients where we get to see from start to finish how it all comes together. And we work with them to make sure that the leads that we're bringing in and the aligned contacts that we're bringing to them are the right kinds of ones for their business. But I think the thing that I want to wrap up this episode with reminding you is not to compare yourself to somebody's highlight reel. I know it's easier said than done, but I think the easiest way to not do it is to literally take a step back from your social media, turn inwards, get out a piece of paper. First and foremost, I would say go for a walk and clear your head and remind yourself that this too shall pass. It's not forever. I talk to business owners who are like 30, 40, 50 years into owning their businesses, and they say the exact same thing that every day is a roller coaster. Some days you're winning, some days you're losing. It's just how it goes. It's never going to be a perfect, easy ride. And I guarantee you, even people like Zara Larson or Sabrina Carpenter or Ariana Grande, again, I'm naming them because they're people that I can think of that have had really great long careers before they had that kind of big aha moment where they blow up. But I can guarantee you that their lives are not picture perfect now. I think about, I'm a theatre kid at heart. So I think about all of the people that we watch on television who would have had endless amounts of audition tapes and audition processes and times where they got no's before they got yeses. I watch people on Shark Tank who pitch their businesses and they get no's and then they eventually get a yes. It happens every day, but I think we're so used to consuming content with people that are showing us all of those yes moments that we don't see all the moments where they get the no's too. So remembering that there are highs and there are lows, but using social media as a tool to educate yourself, but also always keeping in the back of your mind that this is just a small slither of somebody's daily life and this is just a small experience of what's going on for them. And then really turning inward, getting out that piece of paper and strategizing for you, for your career, for your business, whatever it is for you, strategizing what is going to take you to reach your goals. Don't aim for somebody else's. Aim for the goals that you have because what somebody else's version of success is could be very different to what yours is. So keep that in mind. So to wrap up this episode, I basically just want to remind you that when things go quiet, don't panic. Stay the course. It's really important as well when things feel like they're a little bit quieter. If you know that you have a really solid strategy that you're working with, trust the process. Trust that it will eventually bring you to those aligned clients. Trust that on the other side of every no, there is a yes that is meant to come. It doesn't mean that that not right now is a no forever. It just means that currently it's not meant to be. Things always go on, but there is always going to be a really exciting yes on the other side of the harder no. So on the other side of anything that's hard in this life, I believe that there is a reward. And it's just up to us to look for it when it comes around. So that is everything for today's episode. It's been a little bit more of a pet talk, I guess, than teaching you anything in the marketing space, but I've just had so many conversations about this lately that I thought that it was really important to bring it to the podcast. And I thought, what a nice way for me to kind of sit down in this kind of little therapy chair that I've got going on here in the brand new TSE studios and have a chat with you. So stay tuned because I have some amazing guest episodes that are coming up on the podcast. I'm also heading over to Australia this coming week for the Social Summit where I'm going to be hosting a panel, which I cannot wait for you to hear the guests that are on my panel. We're going to bring that to the podcast as well so you'll get to hear it. The Social Collective team and I are also hosting the networking drinks, which is really, really fun. And we've got some amazing things lined up while we're over in Sydney. So stay tuned to make sure that you're following us all over social media. So we're the coffees and content pod. You can also find me, Lauren.the Social Collective. You can find the Social Collective team under the Social Collective official. And of course, this incredible podcast studio and content studio, TSC.studios. So go follow us anywhere that you want to check out all of our content. Stay tuned because I've got so many more backdrops and setups that I'm going to show you in these episodes. But thank you so much for joining me for the very first episode of the Coffees and Content Podcast in TSC Studios. I will see you all next week. Bye.