79: Ep5: Nobody Told Me No One Is Watching That Closely on Instagram

Episode 79: Why You Think Everyone's Watching You (And Why They're Not)

You've got that post sitting in your drafts. The one that feels a little too loud, too niche, too much you. You keep telling yourself everyone's going to see it and judge it, so you don't hit publish. I've been there more times than I can count, and this episode is for you.

In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I'm telling you about the first time I learned this lesson (a CrossFit gym in 2008, terrified everyone was watching my every move) and the second time it showed up years later, running a business people can actually see. Both taught me the same thing from two completely different angles.

Check out the full show notes for this episode CLICK HERE.

Things I cover inside this episode:

• The CrossFit gym story that taught me nobody was watching me as closely as I thought
• Why the fear of judgment never fully goes away, even at 125,000 followers
• What happened when I called talking head reels "effing stupid" online
• The real reason visibility attracts people who want to knock you down
• Why the algorithm isn't showing your post to everyone who follows you
• What I want you to do with the post you've been sitting on
• A quick preview of next week's episode on messaging

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Transcript

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Post the thing, say the thing, have the opinion. Not because it's not gonna sting sometimes when somebody pushes back, 'cause hello, it still stings me every time, but because your people are on the other side of it, and they're worth saying it Welcome to the Creative Bodega Podcast. I'm Em Connors, Instagram content strategist, one of 43 Canva verified experts worldwide, and a mom of two who is not on Instagram for fun. I'm there to market my business, grow my email list, and get the heck off my phone, and that's exactly what I teach. You can expect simple content strategy, visual systems, and Instagram to email tactics that actually work without taking over your life. Let's get into it Hello, and welcome back to the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you've been following along, I'm doing a little summer series, little shorter episodes, and it is called the Nobody Told Me. Basically six honest truths about building a personal brand. Six episodes about things that nobody told me back when I started the Creative Bodega, it'll be six years ago this October. We're on episode five, so I just have one more after this. It's just six short little episodes. Just a fun way to mix things up and, you know, make it a little lighter for the summer, make the episodes a little shorter, see how that does. Just experiment, right? Because what the heck. What, what, what can it really hurt in the grand scheme of things? And I just wanna take a quick little second to recap where we've been, because if you're jumping in for the first time today, there are four episodes before this one that I really think you should go back and listen to. I kicked off the series talking about how long building a personal brand actually takes. The reps, the consistency, the fact that there is no magic comfortable pill, and there never will be. Episode two was about the visuals, and not the way that you would expect, because we spend most of it talking about your face and your energy as one of your most powerful visual assets. Episode three introduced the concept of a story bank. So your four to five core personal themes that you return to again and again, so you never have to stare at a blank screen wondering how much of your life to put on the internet. And last week, we got into the five habits that I have seen and I have experienced that are keeping you invisible online. Consuming more than you create, following too many competitors, not enough personality, self-doubt, and trying to do it all alone. If any of those sound like something you need, go back and listen to those episodes. They are short. I try to make them under 15 minutes, and this whole series is built for busy ass geriatric millennial female solopreneurs. Okay, episode five Nobody told me nobody was watching that closely. And I mean that in two actually different ways, because this lesson has shown up in my life twice at two very different stages, and they have taught me the same thing from very different angles. So let me start in the beginning. It's 2008. I am brand new to CrossFit. I joined a CrossFit gym because I moved to a new city, and I didn't know a soul besides my sister and her husband, okay? And I was, hmm, 34. So for anyone that doesn't know, CrossFit gyms have a very particular culture. Everybody works out together. Everyone can see everyone. Your time or your reps go up on a whiteboard for everyone to see. Your weights get even called out sometimes. So it's about as exposed of a workout environment as a workout environment gets. I'm actually still shocked to this day, knowing my personality, that I even did this. I'm not even sure what got me to sign up, to be honest. But here I was, brand new, so out of my element. Uh, I'd only ever done, like, spin classes, you know what I mean? And, like, HIIT workouts. So I was convinced that every single person in that gym was watching me, judging my form, judging the weights I was using, clocking how slow I was going, noticing every mistake, and I made so many, okay? I was consumed by it. I would modify a movement and feel so embarrassed, right? I'd finish last and want to disappear. I spent more energy there managing my imaginary audience than I did actually working out. And then at some point, definitely gradually, not all at once, I realized something Guys, no one was watching me. Not 'cause I wasn't worth watching. Well, maybe my now husband was watching me. He was a coach there, and that's how we met. But every single person in that gym was completely consumed by their own workout, their own times, form, their fear of being the slowest or their weakest, what weights they were using, having to scale, whatever. Everyone was so worried about themselves, there was genuinely no bandwidth left to worry about little old M in the corner, which you better believe I put myself in the corner. I put myself as far away from everybody else as possible. And that realization changed a lot, not just about CrossFit, but about life. Like, we walk around assuming that we're the main character in everyone else's story. I hate to break it to you, or slash I'm really excited to break it to you, that we're not. We're barely a supporting role. We are barely a blip on everyone's radar. Most people are so deep in their own heads, in their own feels, in their own insecurities, they barely register ours, and we give ourselves way too much credit assuming that everyone's watching everything we do and judging everything we do, and I mean that in the kindest, most hopefully liberating way possible. So now let's fast-forward today, okay? I'm five and a half years into building the Creative Bodega, over 125,000 followers. A real audience, right? Real community, real ass business. I feel pretty legit at this point. I'm not gonna lie. The fear of what people think has not gone away. I wish I could sit here and tell you it has and been like, "You'll be free one day." It's just, it's just honestly evolved into something different Because here's what nobody tells you about standing up to stand out. The more you do it, the more people you attract who want to knock you back down. The more specific your point of view gets, the more someone's gonna disagree with it publicly. The more personality you bring, the more someone's gonna find it annoying. And the more visible you become, the more you become a target for people who have nothing better to do than to be combative with strangers on the internet, and I hate it. I, I just, I hate it. I want to be really honest with you about that. I hate it. It crushes my soul in a way that I have not fully figured out how to block out. When someone comes for me in the comments or in the DMs and says something that's just straight-up mean, when I share an opinion and someone decides to make it their mission to argue with me about it, it gets to me every time. I am so envious of women who seem to legitimately not care, who can read a nasty comment, shrug, and just honestly call it out, make fun of it, right? Who have fully internalized the whole let them mentality without feeling like a performance. I am drawn to those women. I am... I follow them because I want their energy so badly. I want their mentality. I study them. I want to be them, and I'm not fully there yet, and I don't think I ever will be, 'cause I just don't think that's my personality. But here's what I do know, and this is the thing that keeps me posting anyways, and I'm not even that, like, super opinionated, okay? And my personality is not that strong that I, I don't think I turn many people away, but there have been times when I have said things that have turned people off. That same visibility that attracts the combative stranger also attracts my person. So I put a reel up about yapping. I called it effing stupid. I kind of went off about how they're talking head reels, and we've been doing these since the dawn of time, and like whatever, whatever. I was having a moment, and I, I talked about it publicly I got the most followers from that reel than I have in, in months. I got over 250 new followers, and I also got a lot of hate, a lot of hate, and I guarantee I lost a lot of people too. There is the woman who reads that same post where these women wanted to knock me down and call me jealous and call me insecure. There's the woman that watched it and said, "Thank you for finally saying something. That's exactly how I feel." And I found her, okay? So you can't really have one without the other. The more specific and real and opinionated you get, the more polarizing you're gonna become, and not polarizing in a bad way. To be honest, it's not a bad thing. It just means that you stand for something. You're standing up to stand out. It means you're not beige, okay? It means the right people can find you because you stopped hiding behind content that was designed to offend nobody, and therefore connect with nobody. The nasty comments are the tax that you unfortunately have to pay for being findable. I wish they weren't, but they are. So here's what I want you to take from this episode. First of all, no one is watching you as closely as you think. You're giving yourself way too much credit. The post you've been sitting on because you're too worried it's too much or too niche or too loud or too weird, most people are going to scroll past it in less than two seconds. The ones who stop are the ones it was meant for, so please just post it. And second of all, the fear does not ever fully go away, no matter how many followers you have or how much money you have, for a lot of us, okay? And that's also okay. I'm not gonna stand here and tell you to stop caring what people think, because that advice has never helped anyone, and it d- does not help me at all. What I will tell you is that the cost of staying invisible to avoid that discomfort is so much higher than the cost of occasionally getting a comment that stings. Invisible feels safe, but invisible does not build a business. Invisible doesn't find your people, and invisible doesn't change anyone's life, including your own. Third, we assume everyone sees everything we post, and that we're bothering people with our online presence. That could not be further from the truth. The algorithm is not delivering your post to everyone who follows you. Most people are not sitting there waiting to be annoyed by you. Uh, y- you're not bothering anyone. You're just showing up, okay? And those are two completely different things. Post the thing, say the thing, have the opinion. Not because it's not gonna sting sometimes when somebody pushes back, 'cause hello, it still stings me every time, but because your people are on the other side of it, and they're worth saying it One thing that makes the hard moments easier to deal with is having people around you who get it. When a nasty comment lands and I'm in my feels about it, the first place I go is to my community, people who are building the same way I am, who understand the cost of visibility, and who can talk me off the ledge and remind me why I'm doing this. For me, that's my membership, The Content Coven, and that's what I want you to find, whether it's my community or a different community. If you've been thinking about joining, I would love to invite you in now. We have an incredible lineup of speakers and challenges for the last part of this year, and if you're tired of being invisible and you want people just cheering you on like crazy, it's kind of your sign to join. Okay? So that's episode five of the Nobody Told Me series. I've got one episode left, and it's the bridge. Nobody told me that clear messaging was the missing piece. If you've been doing all the things and showing up consistently and building your story bank and infusing your personality, and it's still not converting the way you want, which I hear from so many of you, and then I go to your feed and I see this thing, this one's gonna be for you. I'll see you in the next episode Thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you loved 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, thecreativebodega.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