The Vulnerability of Marketing
Hi Brittany,
Do you ever feel so exposed when you post things on social media?
Do you feel like everyone is judging you?
Do you fel like you say things that "have already been said" and you don't know what you're doing?
If so, today's podcast is for you. Episode 137: The Vulnerability of Marketing
Listen here on Apple Podcasts.
Here is the transcript:
You are listening to the Estheticians Earning More podcast with Brittany Hagemann episode number 137.
Hello and welcome back. Happy Monday. How are you doing? I hope you had a great week. I want to talk about something today that I think a lot of people struggle with and it ties into a lot of things that I've been talking about lately on Instagram and obviously here on the podcast.
And that is...
Being vulnerable? No.
And that is how marketing feels very vulnerable. Now I recognize that some people, this is not a thing. So this is like, you're not, you don't feel this way. Amazing. This episode probably isn't that helpful for you.
But if you want to grow your business, you want to show up more on social media, whether that be Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, threads, X, I really hate calling it X, I just want to call it Twitter, whatever it is, however you want to reach out to potential clients.
But you just kind of hate how much it puts you out in the world in a way that feels like you are, as my client said this last week, naked, standing in a sea of people. And it's just kind of, the chance of being judged and the chance of your message being taken the wrong way, or people just not liking what you said, or maybe even like a crazy random internet bot troll. It's just too much. You're like, I can't do it. It's too much. You kind of just are in your head every single time you go to post. And then if you do post, you are, you know,
analyzing whether or not people are liking it and if they don't like it in the way that you hope they should, you don't get enough likes and you're like, yeah, people think I'm lame. And it just kind of like this mental game that you play with yourself over and over and over again. And it is exhausting. If you are in this like, cycle of exhaustion when it comes to marketing, then this episode is for you. I, first of all, most importantly, I want to tell you that if you feel this way, this is so normal, this is just like normal human brain things, right? So your brain is, its job is to protect you and to keep you safe. And if it feels like there's a threat by going on social media, then it's going to do everything it can to convince you not to. It's like, okay, this is, this is not a good idea we aren’t going to be safe. And the way that we are safe is by not doing this. And it's just gonna tell you that over and over again to really make sure that it keeps you safe.
So if this is you and you were feeling that you're a normal person, okay, does it mean that you're not a good business owner? It doesn't mean that you're not good at marketing. It doesn't mean that you can't be good at marketing. None of those things are true. So I think just acknowledging that is super helpful here.
Mm -hmm.
Secondly, I really want you to think about why you are marketing and who you are marketing to. And what I mean by when I say why, are you trying to grow a really big Instagram that you have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers following you from all over the world?
And you are, you know, an Instagram aesthetician influencer or a TikTok aesthetician influencer. Let me just tell you right now, if that's your goal, that's so amazing. And I love that for you. And I know other people are out there. That's been their goal. There's no part of me that thinks that's not a good path for people. But that is you don't need to do that to be a successful aesthetician and make money and market well on Instagram. If I had to guess, most people listening to this podcast have no interest in being like a viral, highly shared account, aesthetician account. And again, if that's your goal, amazing. If I had to guess, the reason why you want to market your business is to grow your business, to make more money, to be more well -known in your area.
So having said that, if the why is not to be Instagram famous or have thousands and thousands of followers, but it's just to grow your business, you keep putting yourself in that Instagram influencer place and you just aren't gonna be there. That's just not gonna be a thing.
You don't, if you have 400 people following you or 50 people following you, it's, you're not reaching 200 ,000 people when you post. It's just not going to happen. The chances of what you post going viral to that many people is pretty low. And if it goes viral and you get a bunch of crazy people, then you can just always delete that post. I've actually had some random posts go not viral, but they've gone to people who are not aestheticians that get all mad about what I'm saying.
Because they think, you know, they misunderstand what I'm saying. So I just delete this post or just hide them or whatever. I'm like, this is this post is not serving me. This person is not serving my clients. This is not serving people who could potentially be clients. This is just random internet people don't like what I'm saying. So I'm just not going to like I'm just going to leave it. Right. So if that's the rare thing that happens, you can do that. But if I had to guess, you just want the people in your area to know that you're there.
And people in your area, just regular old people, not necessarily the people that are really interested in beautiful, perfect, curated, professional feeds. These are just regular people who need a service. They want to… get eyelash extensions, they want to get rid of their acne, they hate their wrinkles, they want their eyebrows waxed, they want to try sugaring for their Brazilian, they want a lash lift, they want services.
And they want to see who around them does these services and the person's work and what the person is all about.
And I think if you look at it from that perspective, you realize that it's very simple marketing and you don't have to be vulnerable. You can just be yourself and share your work and share what you're about to people who may be interested. I also wanna encourage you, let's say you have 400 followers.
As a solo aesthetician, you cannot accommodate 400 clients, right? That's a lot of people like my BLH beauty account. I think maybe it's now at a thousand, but it was like at four or $500 followers when I was doing well over $100 ,000 in business. Because again, I didn't have that many clients. I had maybe 100 clients. They didn't even all follow me. So there were people following me that were never gonna buy from me. They were never gonna come in. They didn't live locally to me. They maybe were friends or people who never once had a pimple and never once were gonna come in to get that treatment. So if you're if your goal is to grow your business, you only want people following you who really could want to use what you do.
I know followers feels kind of like we're back in school and it's like a popularity contest and followers kind of feels like friends and like you're, you're wanted and people think that you're important, right? But what if that just like doesn't have anything to do with how you grow your business? Like if that's important to you and you want that and that feels really great, then like don't have a business, Instagram or TikTok.
just like do a fun silly one that people will like and think that you're funny. And then also you'll get a lot of hate comments too, because all those popular accounts get those hate comments. But like a business is not, again, if you have 200 followers, you can't accommodate all of them.
So you really want followers who are people who are coming in or people who are potentially coming in. You want it to be a small group of people who you really connect with and can help. And I know it feels like when you're posting people from high school or your previous jobs are judging you, friends, family, and...
And I mean, unless you are in a very small town and only will follow you, people who are never going to be your clients. I just don't think that that is at all what's happening. I have very few friends that follow me on my business accounts and they are anything but supportive. I don't have any like former people in my life that I used to know following me. And you know what? If they do, I can just block them if I don't like them.
Like that's my choice, right? Like I don't have to have people following me that I don't want to because my content is super boring to people who don't, who aren't an aesthetician or don't care about acne. Like they don't, it's like not interesting to them. They aren't judging me because they aren't paying attention. I know we've been told this since we were kids, like.
Everyone's worried about if someone else is judging them and they're not judging people But of course we know people who judge people so they're more like but that's not true, right? That's like we get into our heads of like this like panicked Lee like cycle but like again and left you unless you were like a big big Online presence where you have like thousands and thousands of people following you no one's judging you because no one's really paying attention and The people who are paying attention. This is like the most important part. I people who are paying attention are the people who really need your help.
Maybe it's just like five people this month that are paying attention. Those five people are maybe new clients that can make you a lot more money by coming in this month if you connect with them and teach them stuff and give them great tips and make them feel welcomed and have them understand what you're doing. That's all that matters is those people. I know I've had people when I was doing acne in San Diego and then also here with my esthetician business and people have been like, yeah, I followed you for X amount of time and then I decided to book with you or work with you or whatever.
So I always think about those people when I'm posting. Like, how can I help this person that I haven't met? How can I give them better results? How can I make them feel seen?
How can I give them a tip that would change their experience?
I'm not thinking about, oh my gosh, I wonder if so -and -so is judging me or wow, I posted that. And that obviously means no one likes what I said and they all hate me and I'm really bad at this. Of course I'm human and I have a brain that wants to protect me. So if I don't get a lot of engagement when I post, sometimes I'm like, oh, that didn't work. That's annoying or that's frustrating or that's disappointing or like whatever that a hundred percent. I'm not, I'm not at all saying like.
I don't ever have those thoughts. But more often than not, my thoughts are like, how can I help? How can I help?
And if I take myself out of the equation, like, what are people thinking of me? And what if people judge me as opposed to be like, how can I help my people? It's a totally different way that I show up.
And I've seen this with my clients that I work with, my one -to -one clients, especially if we're working on marketing. And I'll see this shift of posts that they make about themselves and their business and what they do and what they can do for people. And they start posting about what their clients are thinking and needing and wanting. And their engagement goes up, they get more clients and they find social media so much easier.
Because you're right, if you make it about you and your business and what you do and who you, you, then it does feel vulnerable because you're putting yourself out there again and again and again.
But if you make it about your clients then it's not that scary. You take yourself out of the equation. You realize that it's actually really easy.
That is it for today. I hope this helps, especially if you feel like you've been in a rut and you just have a hard time because you just feel really vulnerable every time you go to market. You can do it. I believe in you. I'll be back next week. Have a fantastic week. Bye for now.
