The Creative Bodega | Content Marketing and Instagram Growth for Solopreneurs

44: Botox, Burnout & the Real Reason No One Was Engaging With My Content

• Emily Connors • Episode 44

Share episode

Ever feel like fixing your face (or your feed, or your strategy) will magically fix your engagement? Yeah… I tried that. Spoiler alert: it didn't work. 

In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I'm sharing a story I honestly never thought I'd tell on the internet—about Botox, burnout, and what really happens when you try to control your appearance instead of addressing what's actually broken in your business. If you've been in that place where your engagement tanked, your confidence is shaky, and you're wondering if changing something external will fix the internal chaos, this one's for you. Let's talk about what actually moves the needle (hint: it's not your face).

*Check out the full show notes for this episode HERE

Things I cover inside this episode:

  • Why I got Botox during a business breakdown—and what I learned when my engagement didn't magically improve
  • The real reason behind algorithm dips and engagement drops (and why beating yourself up about it won't help)
  • How acceptance is different from giving up—and why showing up imperfectly is better than hiding until you're "ready"
  • My simple visibility checklist: color analysis, natural lighting, and the smoothing filter I actually use (zero shame)
  • Why your face is your biggest brand asset—not because it's perfect, but because people connect with real expressions and authenticity

Resources & Links mentioned in the episode:

Connect with me:
🫶🏼 Follow me on Instagram for daily insights
🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

Be sure to hit "Subscribe" or "Follow" so you never miss an episode!

People want connection. They want your eyes, they want your smile. They want your lines, they want your expressions. The things that my frozen brows temporarily took away from me. Welcome to the Creative Bodega, a podcast about content marketing, Instagram growth, and personal branding for female service-based solopreneurs who wanna grow their business without letting it take over their lives. I'm your host, EM Connors, and each week I'll share actionable tips, expert advice, and unfiltered truths to help you create engaging content, connect authentically with your audience and turn followers into loyal customers, all without the burnout. If you're ready to simplify your content creation, navigate the ever changing trends and build a business that works for you while staying sane in this. Crazy season of life, then you're in the right place. Hello my friend. Welcome back to the Creative Bodega Podcast. Today I'm sharing a story. I honestly never thought I'd put on the internet. I'm not gonna lie. I've actually, this is something I've never talked about and, and I talk about a lot of things with a lot of. People in my stories, in my membership, I'm very much an open book. I've just always been like that. But last August, so this would be August of 2024, I was in a very dark place. You may remember if you followed me closely, I hit a serious wall, and maybe you can call it burnout. I just, I had to stop a, a lot of things. I took two weeks off of Instagram. I've never done that before. I had to hire a therapist slash business coach for a good amount of money, but I was desperate for some piece. Honestly, I. Basically Instagram shifted Instagram, the algorithm shifted and my engagement honestly tanked. Tanked beyond words, and I full on panicked. And in the middle of that panic, burnout breakdown, I booked an appointment with my dermatologist to get Botox. And let me just set the scene for you. I went in hoping to feel refreshed, and I came out feeling. Not like myself at all. My one eyebrow. Basically fell like, I don't even know what the terms are, so don't even come at me like I, I don't know what happened, but I have pretty hooded eyelids to begin with, and what I learned is that I basically hold my eyebrows up a lot to make my eyes look bigger. And I couldn't do that anymore. And so my eyes looked even smaller. So my one eyebrow like kind of like fell and my eye looked droopy to me. And I couldn't raise them. I had a pounding headache on the left side of my face for days, and the worst part. I mean, I didn't like the way I looked like, and I know some of you love Botox. I've talked about the concept of getting it. I've gone in my stories before and been like, should I, shouldn't I? And it was so split down the middle, like half of the women were like, oh my gosh, I love it. You're never gonna wanna go back. You're gonna, you're just gonna love it. And then the rest were like, don't put toxins in your face. Like you don't need it. Don't do it. It was. There wasn't much in the middle. I'm not gonna lie. No shade to anyone who loves it, you guys. I mean, so many of my family members do it. So many of my friends do it. I mean, so many. It's actually pretty wild how common it is at this, but for me, the way that my face changed and didn't move made me feel like. I'd traded my actual expression for like a screenshot version of myself, and I just did not, I did not like it. Why did I even do it in the first place? Like I said, I was in a really bad place and looking back, I'm like, wow, anyone who's giving somebody that much Botox and filler should really like fill out like a mental assessment. Like how are you doing in life? Are you stressed? Are you happy? Are like, are you crying often? I mean, I was. Not do, I was crying a lot. I mean, my husband was very concerned and you know, all sort of, because my identity was really wrapped up in my Instagram engagement or lack thereof. I went from my reels regularly hitting 50,000, 75,000. I mean, 30,000 would've been like a low view for me a year and a half ago. Hundreds of likes, hundreds of likes. Two about, I don't know, 3000 views. I hope for 5,000 these days. I'm like, if I could just get above 5,000, that's great. And like 40 likes, you know? And I mean, that's. It's an eighth of the engagement that I was used to seeing, and it scared the living. You know what outta me? Because, hi, like I am the main earner for my family, and if I'm not making money, we're in big trouble. And I've talked about that before. It's a pressure that I don't love, but it is my reality and it's fine. And. I made it mean something about me. I told myself that I'd done something wrong. I felt like an imposter. I felt like a loser. Like here I am trying to tell people how to show up and how to grow on Instagram and like my. Engagement looks terrible. You know what I mean? And because I couldn't control the algorithm, I tried to control, you know, my face and how I looked. And about a week and a half later after getting this Botox and filler, and let me just tell you, I went in thinking I'm just gonna get a little Botox in between my eye. And like around my face bothers me. Like my smile lines are so deep. They are so, and I look at other women my age and I'm like, why don't you have smile lines? Like my smile lines? And I don't know, I guess I smile a lot. I think that's the problem. And I know I do, I, I know I do. It's almost like my resting face is a grin. And is that a bad thing? No, it's really not. But. I went in expecting to get a little bit and I ended up, I was like, I'm in this chair, let's just do it. And I basically gave the doctor a free range to just do what she needed to do to make me look 10 years younger. And it turned out being an absolute ton. What, what felt like to me, a ton of Botox and filler and. Everywhere you guys around. My eyes all around, my eyes around. I mean, I had to get a couple around my nose, around my smile lines, around my jaw, like I, I, in my chin, it felt like it was everywhere, and I, it gives me chills thinking about it because it hurt so bad. Like, I remember just like sitting back in that chair and thinking. I'm never doing this again. It was almost like when I had my last baby, my last baby, Reese the contractions. I looked at my husband and I said, I'm never doing this again. Like, I hate this. I, I, I don't like pain, I don't like being in pain. And that's how I felt. Not that I can compare it to childbirth,'cause I can't, but it hurt so bad. I just wanted it to stop. And the filler, especially like the filler went in around like my jaw area, and that was all in an attempt to like lift that skin to kind of go away from my mouth. I don't even think it worked. I, I really don't, but. I heard it snap, crackle, and pop. I'm not kidding.'cause it's like going into your muscle and it, Ooh, I never wanna hear that sound again. I just didn't like anything about it. If anyone actually gets Botox often, they're probably laughing at me right now. But I, I hated it. I hated it. And about a week and a half after getting it all, I didn't tell my kids. They didn't notice. And we actually had a family party like a week later and I was like, oh my God, my mom, my sister-in-law, my brothers like, they're gonna know and they're gonna call me out. And they didn't, which actually shocked me, which just shows you. How well you know your own face and what you think is so drastic and dramatic and other people have no clue. I mean, the fact that my mom didn't pick up on, I was like, what? Anyways, I was driving my kids to practice about a week and a half after it, and we're in the car and my son and my daughter are behind me in the back and my son asked, mom, can you raise just one eyebrow?'cause I can, and you need to know. This was my party trick. Like in high school, in college, I can raise one eyebrow and I can do both. So I'm not just, most people can only kind of raise one. Well, I can do both, you know, alternatively, right? I can do them up, down, up, down. So I've been able to do that trick forever, and he can do it. My son can do it, which I thought was pretty awesome, and I'm pretty sure it's probably hereditary and he wanted to see me do it. I can't do it. I literally could not raise my eyebrow. My, you know, my left side wouldn't go up and my stomach just dropped, and I clearly didn't wanna explain why. I'm just. I just, I didn't in that moment, I just decided I am never changing my face again. Not because it's morally bad or anything like, please do not let me come across that way because I lost something I loved about me that my little baby was now showing me that he could do and I couldn't do it back. And my facial expressions. Which I've always been told, I have so many since I was a little kid. People have always said, your face is so expressive. It's part of how I communicate, especially online and especially even with my kids. And here I couldn't do it. So. That's where we're going today. This episode, I, I think I'm gonna be calling it like fixing my face. Didn't fix my engagement. So if you're a service-based solopreneur, especially my women who've been in business one to two years, and you're feeling that algorithm whiplash, this one is for you. But before we jump into the lessons, a quick flashback, because I've said this in, I even think I use this as an email subject and I know I've said it in my emails years ago when I lived in New York City. So I lived in New York City for 10 years. My best friend and I would go to dinner with her brother, who we absolutely adored, and we would like beg him to take our picture after dinner, right? Like cute shot in front of the restaurant. We felt cute. Whatever. He'd take one, we would run over, look at it. And we'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. Do it again. Do it again. Back, back up, right? Like get on a balcony, like get up. And after like the fifth round, he would literally look at us and be like, you guys, that's what you look like. That's, that's what you look like. And it sounded so harsh, but it was oddly grounding, right? The camera wasn't the enemy. We were, we, we kept trying to argue with reality. And remember that line? That's what you look like because. It's what's gonna keep us honest today. Okay. So lesson one, fixing my face. Didn't fix my engagement. And I have to laugh a little because the marketing math doesn't math here. I changed my face and my numbers didn't move. And it's not that, that's the only reason I did it, but I certainly was feeling that like. What's happening, what's happening to my engagement? Like maybe if I feel better about myself, I'll be, feel better about showing up, like if I, you know, look younger, but nothing changed, my comments didn't revive my views, didn't, you know, go five x my saves didn't suddenly triple the thing that did start to move again. Slowly was my clarity and when I came back to the work that I love doing and I recommitted to my business, everything just began to feel better. So. I think that's really, really important. And just to drill the point home, my engagement dip was real again, I mean, 50,000 views on average for reels went down to 3000, hundreds, and hundreds of likes to, I was lucky to get 40. I'm not pretending that didn't happen or that didn't hurt, but the fix wasn't cosmetic, right? The fix was me, honestly, going through some therapy and getting some clarity. Uh, I think that rhymes. That's actually pretty good. Okay, lesson number two, so here's the truth, I got Botox because I was feeling really ashamed. And the burnout, plus the shame was a spicy mix. I'm not gonna lie. And in that head space visibility feels really dangerous. And you look at your own face, or I did. And I think. If I look different, if I sounded different, if I were 10 pounds lighter or 10 years younger. And then you pause your marketing while you negotiate with your reflection and like, that's, that's really not okay. And I wanna. Draw a hard line between acceptance and neglect, right? Acceptance is not giving up. Acceptance is choosing presence over perfection every day. It's saying, I'm gonna show up safer, but I'm not disappearing until I look like a filtered statue of myself, right? I'm allowed to be seen. As a work in progress if you are working towards some type of goal. And I asked my audience once I made a post, a carousel post, I said, do you judge women who show up on Instagram without makeup? And the responses and my comments exploded, and the overwhelming answer was no. People want connection. They want your eyes, they want your smile, they want your lines, they want your expressions. The things that my frozen brows temporarily took away from me. And it doesn't mean makeup's bad at all, and it doesn't mean using a filter is bad at all. And I wanna be explicit. I use a smoothing filter in my stories and in my reels. I have wrinkles. I am 44. I'm almost 40. Well almost, I mean, I'll be 45 in April. I've got lines. I have acne scarring. I have struggled with adult acne the majority of my life until the last couple years to be honest. My chin is a battleground and it shows, and that smoothing filter really helps me get on camera'cause otherwise. I probably wouldn't. I'm not, I'm really not, and I know that's dramatic, but it allows me to show up without a second thought, and that's what I need to hop on and record stuff. I don't wanna spend or waste my energy. Analyzing the way I look and bashing myself, right? And I have no shame in that. It's a supportive tool to me. And the difference is intent. And the intent is to show up and not hide. And I am fully gonna share the filter with you that I love. Just know that you've gotta click on that link in the show notes. Uh, when you're on your phone, it will not work on a desktop. So I'll share my favorite filter. Lesson number three, let's talk about identity and analytics. Okay. In 2024, algorithm changes had a lot of us questioning everything. Honestly, from 2023 on, for me, it was, ah, if I'm being honest, it's probably spring of 2023 when things started really dipping, and my brain wants to look. For the reason, I wanna find the reason I wanna, what, what is happening? What am I doing wrong? And of course, I go to myself first, right? Like, what am I doing wrong? Preferably a reason you can control immediately. That's ideal, right? And your face is the most immediate thing, but your face is not the problem. Okay? But in 2025, I'm telling you, connection is gonna beat anonymity any day of the week. You are the star. People hire the person, right? Your face is part of your brand asset, not because of it's symmetry or it's perfection, but because recognition, trust those micro expressions that really touch people and pull people in. So your visuals really do speak before your caption does, and the most trustworthy visual in a business is your actual perfectly human face. Okay, so let me just come back to that car moment with my son where he asked if I could raise one eyebrow. It's a silly thing, but it's my silly thing that is a party trick that I've been proud of forever. I try, nothing moves. I honestly panic. I forgot that I even had Botox in my face and, and suddenly I'm this version of me that can't do that thing that I've always done and that tiny loss was the mirror I needed not a moral revelation, just a practical one. And if something takes me away from myself, it's not for me, right? And in, in business, when I follow strategies that pull me away from my voice or my values. I can't sustain them. And the same went from my face. So I decided no more altering my face. Right. That's just, it's just what you see is what you get. You know? My husband adores me, my kids love me. They don't even see it. Okay. If you're listening, you're thinking, okay, but how do I actually show up? Right without feeling, meh. I just wanna give you a, a simple, simple little checklist of things to do. Number one, and this probably is not what you're expecting. Get your colors done. I'm gonna link it in the show notes. I had my colors done. I know exactly what colors make me look beautiful and radiant, and exactly which ones. Do not. And I swear to God, since I had this done, my confidence has soared. My family looks at me differently when I actually wear black now, which is a horrible color for me. They all look at me like a ghost. Like they're like, get, please go change. Please go change Mom. Like so have your colors done. Try to find some natural light. I think that that really is gonna help you look your best on camera. Uh, use my go-to Smoothing filter, turn it on Zero. Shame. I use the same one every time. It also helps all my stuff look really cohesive. Remember that like, honestly, you don't have to put makeup on. I really don't. I don't worry about that anymore. If I have a couple minutes, maybe I'll do my browse and put on some of my like favorite lip stuff, but if not, it just is what it is. Again, I know people are listening to my message more than like judging my face. And let's see. I really would love to challenge you to one forward facing post at a minimum and one forward facing story once a week, maybe five days a week at a minimum. This really is a non-negotiable for service providers. You. Need to be seen, like you just do. You just do and then just test and tweak. Watch your stories back, watch your reels. What could you change? What do you think better lighting? Do you think the angle that you're holding your camera might not be best? I do watch some people who hold their camera like way below their face and they're like looking down at it. It's not a good look. So either go right at eye level or a little before, and I'm telling you, even that one tweak will help. A ton. Okay. This is a little like random off topic kind of, but I know that confidence is a big deal for a lot of us, and especially as we're kind of aging, right? My main followers my age, if not older, I think. So people buy services because they believe that you understand their problem. You have a path they can see themselves following, and you feel like a safe guide. Them. Your face communicates all three of these faster than any caption. Your micro expressions signal empathy, your tone is gonna signal safety and your consistency signals reliability. So the more you show up as you, the easier it is for the right clients to say, I can trust her. Right? So that's what I got for you this week. Kind, it's kind of random. I'm not gonna lie, but I'm, I'm here for it. I, I've wanted to tell you this Botox story for a really long time. I just had to think about how to weave it right and it's a scar at this point. It's over a year, and I needed it to become a scar. It felt too real for too long and too, uh, painful. L. Literally and figuratively. But anyways, all right you guys. I love you. If you get Botox, I'm here for it. If you don't, I'm here for it. I'm not here to judge anyone. This is my personal experience. Okay? I'm proud of you and I'll see you on the next episode. Thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you love this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur. Who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode to help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, the creative bodega.com, or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next episode.