A lot of people in my orbit hear the word marketing and freeze up.

It’s understandable. If you’re the only one working on your business, side hustle, or cool project, you only have so many hours a day you can work.

Marketing and sales take time, and they take time away from the work you actually want to be doing.

That’s part of the pickle of being a creator, or making up your job from scratch: in order to get paid to do the thing we’re good at, we have to do a LOT of things we aren’t as good at or don’t enjoy.

Marketing, sales, social media, bookkeeping, knowing which tax paperwork to file, learning how to use a bunch of software apps, cleaning the bathroom… the list goes on.

I understand not wanting to spend time marketing, especially on social media. Social media is a wildly unpleasant place these days. Not only is it a doomscroll through as much disaster as you can handle, but trying to get your content seen by even a measly 2% of your audience is difficult. Ugh.

I’ve been super inspired by the folks in my Social Media Dropouts cohort lately. We’re spending 3 months together in a peer mentorship container, learning how to do marketing without social media platforms.

Lowering the stakes with little experiments

Many of us are recovering perfectionists and hesitate to put something into the world until it’s absolutely perfect. Sometimes that looks like:

• Editing an email too many times (and not sending it, in the end) because you don’t sound right
• Turning down an invitation to connect with a friend or colleague because your hair is a mess
• Hesitating to share a link to your thing because you don’t like your own graphics compared to the 7-figure business coaches
• Talking yourself out of making a video because you’re not camera-ready

We’re all sitting on our ideas, overthinking, making stuff too big, which means it scares us, which means it just never gets done.

So in this group, we are learning to lower the stakes. I often share this framework in my workshops and trainings:

The idea is to experiment with your work, listen to your people, and make little changes based on what you learn. Then repeat that process again and again.

High stakes: You plan a perfect, overstuffed content calendar that you can never live up to: blog posts, social media content, email newsletters, a video channel, and beautiful graphics (and now you don’t have any time to create the actual content)

Low stakes: You keep a running list of “stuff I’d like to share” and put together a newsletter once or twice a month to share those great links, plus a personal note from you

High stakes: You think you need to add 1000s of email subscribers to be successful

Low stakes: You write down a list of 10 past clients, reach out to them to let them know what you’re up to and ask to reconnect

Marketing can be simple. It doesn’t have to feel sleazy or fake or high-tech. In my experience, the best marketing feels like friendship.

• It’s talking to friends and colleagues at in-person events
• It’s making a point to send a text to 20 people who are interested in you or your work and letting them know your availability and what you’re up to
• It’s going to coffee with a colleague, hearing that her team needs a morale boost, telling her about a workshop that you lead that would be perfect for her team, and she says yes and you book the gig. (This actually happened to one of my cohort members this week!)

Actual small experiments from Social Media Dropouts cohort members

Experiment 1: Melanie is the owner of Puzzled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a brick & mortar shop that sells wooden brainteasers, jigsaw puzzles, games, and more. Here’s what she’s doing:

I’m experimenting with a simple, joyful way to build community offline: Puzzle Night at Lost Cultures Tea Bar. Twice a month, we bring our handcrafted wooden puzzles and invite people to sit down, slow down, and connect — no agenda, no sales pitch, just shared play and presence. It’s low-stakes and high-reward: people linger, talk, laugh, and leave knowing about Puzzled in the most organic way possible.
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For me, this is marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing — and that’s the point.

Experiment 2: Kathy is an Austin, Texas-based dietitian who helps her clients to find a calm relationship with food and body without focusing on weight. She started a size-inclusive, diet-talk-free community space out of her office. She’s hosting a free, monthly arts & crafts group to bring new folks into the space. Here’s what she said:

I didn’t have an email list 7 weeks ago. But now I had something I wanted to share. I put together a list of my clients (old and new) as well as clients who see my employees. I asked folks to sign up so I could make sure I had seating. All 5 spots sold out in a day.
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Two former clients attended, one brought a friend, a client of one of my employees came and brought a friend. That’s two former clients and two new people in my pool. At the second event, I also had 2 new people attend. My hope is that they will be interested in attending my other workshops and retreats or sign up for 1:1 work with me or one of my dietitians.
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I also put up a flyer of upcoming events and someone asked about the retreat so I was able to talk that up as well as gauge interest in a local retreat.

Experiment 3: Another participant shared this:

I just want to thank you for your offerings on marketing without social media. I seriously thought that I couldn’t get my business going without it! This week, because of your class, I had the courage to ask people to get on my email list. And I have had positive feedback that people want more offerings — virtual classes and workshops! So this was really mind-changing for me!
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I was about to give up because of how scared I was… but doing experiments and just seeing how they go instead of attaching outcome has really surprised me at how much I’m learning and growing! It’s also revealing my boundaries and values and showing me not to undersell myself. What I have to offer is valuable and I am worth it!

Amazing, right? These small experiments let us learn something, which points us to the next right move with our projects. The more we experiment, learn something, and iterate, the better we get at being of service and creating cool stuff in the world.

Need a group of people and peer support like this in your orbit? I’m announcing the next Social Media Dropouts cohort soon. Get on the hotlist and be the first to know when enrollment opens. I am limiting this to a group of 12, so I expect it to fill quickly!