75. I Got a "Work Phone" — An Experiment with Social Media Boundaries

Have you ever wanted to just delete all your social media app and never look at your phone again? Well, that was me last month. 😅

And I actually did (for about two weeks) and now I am sharing what I learned and how I am stewarding my time (and technology) moving forward in this episode!

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 1:31

Welcome to the Virtual Assistant School Podcast. I'm your host, Kate, a teacher turned entrepreneur, mom of two, and I teach women how to use the skills they already have to make money from home as a virtual assistant. Every Tuesday and Thursday, you'll get step-by-step strategies, behind-the-scenes insights, and hear honest, unfiltered conversations about making money and growing an online business so you can stop feeling stuck and start taking action toward your goals. Whether you're looking for a flexible side hustle or want to take your business full time, this podcast is for you. Building a business or starting something new can be super overwhelming at times, but here you don't have to do it alone. So grab your coffee or make another cup and let's dive into this week's episode.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Hey Kate, just wanted to send over a quick testimonial about my experience with the Beginner to Book VA program. I took the program two years ago. At the time, I was a stay-at-home mom and trying to find ways to create extra income that wouldn't take away from me being at home with my little ones, as that was super important to me. And now, since then, I run a six-figure business and I also... this year have grown my team to three other stay-at-home moms who are able to support me as my business has scaled and grown and so now I have such a beautiful opportunity to be able to empower other moms to do the same thing as me and fun fact all of those moms are graduates of the Beginner to Book to VA program as well that I've hired on and I just wanted to say thank you because I Without the Beginner to Book to VA program and without your coaching and your encouragement that I could do this, I wouldn't be where I am at today. Being able to run a successful business while not having to choose between being the mom that I want to be and contributing to my family financially. And also... being able to have a life first business. I'm a homeschool mom, so I'm able to still homeschool my little ones while also running a successful business. So I just wanted to say thank you and give you an update on life. And for anyone who has been thinking about joining the program, it was one of the best decisions that I've made for myself and for my family.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Wasn't that testimonial so freaking cool? Like that is what this is all about. This is exactly why I became a VA and why I now have our signature program, Beginner to Booked VA, to help other women do exactly what Kiara was saying in her testimonial. Okay. And that's just one of the stories that has come out of the 500 women that have graduated beginner to book VA. And now this episode that you clicked on to listen to, it's all about social media boundaries and kind of an experiment with getting a work phone. Okay. But I don't want you to miss out on enrolling in beginner to book VA if that is something you want to do. So I want to make sure to take a little bit of time before the episode to let you know that doors are opening to beginner to book VA for our fall cohort on Monday, August 25th. All right. This is the last live cohort we are having in 2025. Okay. We obviously have our self-study option, which is going to be an option for you to enroll at any time. But if you are someone who really thrives on accountability and community and you want me in your back pocket for six weeks to make sure that you are taking all the steps that you need to to launch your business as a virtual assistant and start booking clients, then you are going to want to enroll in our live cohort. Kiera, the testimonial you heard at the beginning of this episode, she did one of our live cohorts. And she will tell you that the coaching and the accountability that comes through the weekly calls, the group chat support, and just having access to not just me, but also the other gals in the cohort are so, so valuable. So if you are wanting to jump in to Beginner to Book VA, make sure that you join our waitlist so that number one, you could get early access. If you're listening to when this, if you're listening to this episode, when it was released, there's a couple of days left for early access for our waitlist, which means not only can you sign up early and snag your spot, but you also get a hundred dollars off by being on the way And then doors open to the public on August 25th. So if you're listening to this after that date, then the doors are open and they are ready for you. So make sure to go to www.yourbtsbff.com slash beginner dash two dash booked in order to look at all the details and snag your spot. And I hope to see you inside. Okay, so in July, I was feeling really overwhelmed. with life. And with that overwhelm came a lot of checking out with social media. Okay. I know that a lot of people can relate to this, but when I get stressed or I am overwhelmed, I usually just try to like disassociate, um, by doom scrolling. And that could be like doom scrolling before bed. It could look like filling every pocket of white space that I have by checking my phone, checking my apps, my email, all that kind of thing. Always having my phone in my hand. And I just got really sick of it back in July. A little backstory is that Over the last few months, ever since we moved, we just had a lot of changes and a lot of transitions and we're just kind of falling into this pattern of like lacking a routine. And I'm someone who's very routine oriented, really thrive on routine. And so not having that caused a lot of stress in my life. And Not even to mention the stress of going through a home transaction and trying to sell her home back in Arizona. And my husband's starting a new job and us trying to find a new preschool for the boys. It's just a lot. So there's a lot going on. And so I had this realization that I didn't want to feel that way anymore. Okay, so I deleted all of my social media apps off my phone for two weeks, and it really changed the way I was feeling and how I wanted to steward technology and my time moving forward. So... This is the start of a little experiment and I'm hoping you're going to come along for the ride. I've shared a little bit about this on Instagram and people have been very interested in kind of my thoughts and what I want it to look like moving forward. And I just want to put the disclaimer that I am able to change my mind at any time. Okay. What I think right now is may not be what I'm going to think in 30 days from now or six months from now. How I do things right now, it might look different in a little bit, just depending on how it goes. And so just giving myself permission to change my mind. And I hope that as you are trying to find maybe more boundaries with social media or trying to figure out how you can steward your technology and your time better, you allow yourself to change your mind too. Like if you think like one thing is going to work really well, and then you just find that it doesn't, or, you know, you want to try something else, then that's okay too. Okay. So I am starting out with a specific method and I'm going to share that with you at the end of this episode, but I want to talk a little bit about my background in social media and like how I kind of got to this point. Um, I have been chronically online since 2017 because that's how long I've built an online business. Okay. I would say, you know, 2017, 2018, my usage wasn't terrible because I was teaching still. So I couldn't like be on my phone during the day. Right. Like I was on my phone, like, you know, maybe a little bit before school, maybe a little bit after, but there wasn't like a lot of time for me to even be on my phone. Um, but I had started building my business online in 2017 and my first business. Um, and so that's when I started really utilizing social media, you know, as a habit and like a part of my daily routine. And then 2019 came around and I feel like this is also, I mean, what reels came out and probably like 2020, 2021. Um, You know, the scroll wasn't so bad still, like back in 2019, because I mean, at least from what I can remember, like I just never really scrolled my feed. Like maybe I watched stories here and there or whatever, but I just felt like I wasn't spending a lot of unintentional time on my phone. I still was just, you know, using it for work, using it to create. I didn't really struggle with like my relationship with social media. It felt really good. I also wasn't a mom then. And so I had a lot more capacity and had a lot more time both like mental capacity, but also, you know, capacity in my day to be on my phone more if I needed to or wanted to. And so I don't really remember, you know, having like any kind of feelings towards it back then either. But 2020 came around. And 2020 was the first time that I felt like I wanted to delete all the apps and just disappear off the Internet. And I'm pretty certain that I was not the only one who felt that way. I was so overwhelmed by everything. I was also pregnant with my first baby and really struggling with like the consumption of content online. Right. Like just consuming the 24 hour news cycle, consuming like other people's opinions, consuming, you know, what other people think or even like think that you should do and like their their judgments or their opinions or even like their posts that are intended for inspiration. But I think sometimes we can get a little lost in that, which I'm going to talk about a little bit more. It's just I felt like I was being inundated with content in 2020. And I think we probably all felt that way. So 2020 was like a whole thing. And then in 2021 was actually the first time that I had taken a really like solid break from social media and from my phone. And it was in the summer of 2021 when I was really starting to think about wanting to pivot into a new business. And I took two weeks off social media and I remember it so vividly because it was actually – we traveled to my friend's wedding in Tennessee. Luke was like 10 months old at this time. So we traveled with him for like one of the first times. I think he had gone with us to Colorado maybe once or twice before then. But this was like a much bigger travel situation, like connecting flight. We ended up losing our bags and like it was actually a travel nightmare. But – That was during the time that I took my two week break. And so we went and celebrated my friend and her getting married. And then I came back and I was still offline for a few days. And then I got back on and I kind of had this like good reset. And that's the only other time that I've taken a break from social media. And I would like to say that. That it's – like I could use the excuse like, oh, well, like my business is online and like I use social media to run my business. But I don't know. I struggle with that because I'm like, yes, to an extent, but also there's other ways to run a business and there's other ways to – do things and that I really think I should have been taking breaks more often than I have been. So that's kind of like lesson number one that I've had because this break that I just took last month, me being worried about, I actually did a reel about this, that I was all worried about like my business burning to the ground and like me becoming irrelevant and like all these things, but knew I needed to take the break. And I ended up having sales over the time that I had. taking the break, I ended up with more podcast downloads than ever before. And even more email subscribers. And so it's just crazy the things that we tell ourselves, especially as business owners, when it comes to marketing tools. We are also told all the time, this is like a side tangent, that... you know, you have to show consistently and you can't like take a break and like, you know, the algorithm and like all this stuff. Right. Um, but I think that's just like bogus. Like, I think this is not true. Um, and so that's something that I'm just like kind of working through or kind of my thoughts around that. But anyway, um, 2021 was the last time I had taken like a good solid break. It was two weeks, just like this last time was. And, um, This last time I just, I kind of went into it really unplanned. Like it was just not planned at all. It was a Friday afternoon. We were getting really close to closing on our house and things were really stressful. And I was feeling tired, honestly, like just tired and overwhelmed. And I could feel myself like not being really present, like in my day to day and in my life. And I was feeling really unmotivated and really uninspired and just kind of like blah about everything. And so I just decided, you know what, like there's one thing I can control. There's a few things that I can control. But one thing that I can control is I can delete all the apps off my social media or sorry, I can delete all the social media apps off my phone and I can just take a break until we get into the house. So that was kind of like my thought on a Friday afternoon. I just had gotten to this point where I was just so sick of consuming. I was so sick of trying to just fill white space. I was so sick of having my phone in my hand all the time. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to take a break. I didn't announce it. I didn't say anything about it. I just decided to take two weeks off. And so I deleted all the apps. I decided I'm going to come back after we get into the house and Um, maybe, maybe not. We'll see. I, I wasn't really sure at that point. I knew I wanted to at least stay off, you know, until we got into the house. So that's what I did. And honestly, like the first two days, it felt kind of weird. Like, I'm gonna be totally honest with you. And I think that's like what happens when you are kind of like detoxing from so much phone usage and like consumption and all that kind of stuff. Um, And so it felt a little weird. I did still find myself like picking up my phone to like go check Instagram, but like I didn't have Instagram anymore. And so I realized that and be like, oh, I don't even have it. So let me like not do that. You know, let me just sit in this moment and not do anything. Just sit here or just, you know, walk to Instagram. wherever I'm going or if I'm standing in line somewhere, like I couldn't just like pull out my phone and check it because there was nothing really to check. And so the first couple of days were a little weird. But by Sunday night, I took the break Friday, started the break Friday. By Sunday night, I felt really good. Like I remember telling my husband, I was like, wow, like I could do this forever. I don't want to go back. Like I just was straight up like I – want to figure out a way to run my business without social media. And that was kind of the thought at first. I was like, what would that look like? And I kind of worked through some of that. Um, and like I said, that first week I was just, I felt so good. I felt so like free. I felt so present. I felt, um, yeah, just like really great not having it.

UNKNOWN 17:38

Uh,

SPEAKER_01 17:39

And then the next week – so that was like the first full week of me being off. And then the next week was the week that we were moving into our house. And that week I started to just feel a little bit more inspired. I felt a little bit more creative. Not even a little bit. I felt a lot more. I felt a lot more creative. I felt a lot more inspired. I started coming up with content ideas like nobody's business. I actually mapped out all of our podcast episodes from – this point in July, so all of August, all of September, all of October, podcast episode topics. It was just flowing through me. And I started to realize that I wasn't burnt out on creating content. I was burnt out on consuming it. And this is the moment when I really started to realize I actually don't hate being on social media and hate showing up and sharing and creating content and educating people on becoming a VA and like that kind of thing. I actually, I just don't like getting sucked into the trap of consuming the content from other people, especially when it's just unintentional and kind of just in a like very mindless fashion. You know, like if I'm being intentional about it, I want to go like see what my friends are up to and watch their stories, engage on people's posts, whatever. Like that's one thing, but it's another thing entirely to, you know, Just mindlessly get caught in that trap. And that's what I didn't want to do anymore. So I just noticed that I felt so much better. I was sleeping so much better because I wasn't on my phone before bed. I felt more present. I felt more patient. I was, like I said, way more creative. I actually felt more inspired, which I think is really interesting because I think a lot of times we go to social media to get inspired, right? Like we want to feel inspired. We want to be inspired to cook a recipe or, you know, do some kind of like workout or we want to be inspired about, you know, the things in our home and like how we should decorate. Like we're looking for inspiration sometimes. And I started to find that I was actually more inspired being off of it and like actually kind of looking within myself for inspiration. Like I found that I was relying so much on social media and for other people to tell me what I should be inspired about instead of me finding inspiration like in my own day-to-day life or in like my own opinions and like what I thought was inspiring. I found myself actually when we started looking at stuff for the house. So we had moved into the house and we needed to order a few pieces of furniture and get some stuff for the house. And at this point, the first couple of days, I still was off my phone. And I literally just started ordering things that I loved and not because someone on Instagram told me I should love it. And I don't know. I kind of feel like I've been finding my own style again, especially in terms of decorating my house versus it looking like everybody else's. I don't know if that makes sense. I hope that makes sense. But I just think sometimes everyone has all the same stuff because of social media. Yeah. I'm really pleased to announce that my desk for my office and my chair in my office were things that I just found on my own. No one told me I should buy them. I've never seen them from other people. They were just really awesome finds. And they're totally my style. And so I just think that's really cool. Because I think in a world where we are, we can find... you know, inspiration. And I'm not saying like I'll never buy something that's recommended by someone else or isn't like a popular item because I actually have my eye on a couple of chairs that are from Walmart that I really want for my office that are like viral on social media. But I am saying that sometimes I think we can look outside of ourselves for inspiration and creativity when really all of that's like within ourselves. And if we just get quiet and like, you know, kind of Cut out the noise. We can find that within ourselves. So all of this to be said, and I still feel like I'm unpacking like a lot of my feelings around this. And so I think there's going to be a follow-up episode. I know one of my friends, she also has a podcast and we were like, we should just do an episode together on this. She actually took like an extended break off social media, like over a year off social media. And I think that'd be a really interesting episode. But coming back, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. There was a part of me that didn't want to come back, like I said. But because I do value social media in a marketing tool kind of way, I didn't want to totally give up on it. I also really enjoy social media for connecting with other people. There's people that I would have never met in my life or become friends with or have really awesome relationships with if it weren't for social media. So I'm not anti-social media. I'm just anti-overconsumption of social media and figuring out what that looks like for each individual person. But at first, I didn't really want to come back. I then started to... when I kind of had that realization of like, Oh, I'm actually not burnt out on creating and showing up online. I'm burnt out on consuming. I decided I wanted to set just some boundaries in place to help me with that goal in particular, to focus on the creation, to focus on the education, to focus on, um, how I can, you know, put what I do out into the world and help other women make money through becoming a through just me sharing different things about my life, like me sharing about this on social media and hopefully inspiring other people to have a little bit more intentionality behind their time and their technology, whatever that might be. I just, I wanted that to be the priority. And so I decided that I'm going to make the podcast kind of my main place that I create content, okay? That's why we've started putting out like one to two episodes a week instead of just like one a week or one every couple weeks or like once a month. Like it kind of being the thing that goes on the back burner. Now the podcast is more of a priority over social media. Also my email list, same thing, like getting emails sent out to my email list more often than I am even like creating on social media. But also I decided to do something a little radical. And I got a work phone and I am so excited about it. So a lot of people recommend like certain apps for like time, um, like putting your apps in timeout and like that kind of thing. And I think those are really great. I think they work really well for people. Um, I actually really like the brick so if you haven't heard of it you can like brick your phone I had it when we were living in Arizona so I got mine at like the end of last year and I kept it on my fridge and I would brick my phone and what you can do is you tap it to this like little square and it locks you out of the apps that you decide you want to be locked out of and you cannot unlock those apps until you tap it to that square again so like if you're in a different room you have to get up and go to the other room to unlock it and so it keeps you from that like mind mindless scroll and like opening of apps, because if you're just doing it mindlessly, then you're not going to want to get up and go, you know, tap it. And so I actually really loved that. And I found that that was really helpful. But in the move, I lost my brick. I lost the square. And so I haven't been using it. And so I thought about getting another one and just doing that. But then I wanted a little bit more of like a physical boundary. And I decided that I wanted to get a separate phone for all of my social media apps, all of my work apps, including email, including Slack is something that I use for chats with people, with work, with my clients, with my students, that kind of thing. And so we had an iPhone that was broken. And I was like, you know what? I should just take this phone in and see if we can get it repaired and I can use this as my work phone. So I did. And it turns out AT&T, because we have insurance on our phones, They replaced the phone with a brand new iPhone 16 Pro, whatever, brand new phone for $150. And I was like, that's a steal. So we got the phone replaced, got a new phone. Actually, as I'm recording this podcast, I got the phone yesterday. And what I did immediately is I uploaded all of my social media apps, all of my work apps onto the work phone. And I deleted all of them off my personal phone. And the goal, oh, and then also with my work phone, it's only, there's no like cellular line to it. I didn't get another phone number or anything. I just created a new Apple ID with my work email. So it's a separate Apple ID. And then we're just using it on Wi-Fi because it's just something that's going to stay in my office because I don't need it. The idea is that I don't need to be doing work things and checking, you know, the apps and whatnot when I'm not working. and really having more intentional time around how I utilize social media and for me I want to prioritize its use for work and for um I still want to use it to like connect with you guys and like share parts of my life because I do enjoy that like you guys are following along on like a health journey that I'm on um I like sharing you know just fun things that happen in my day-to-day my hobbies me baking sourdough even though I can't eat it because now I'm gluten-free like all that kind of stuff um but I'm sharing that very intentionally like in a specific window that I'm in my office with my work phone you know And so the work phone is staying in my office. I have a charger set up for it in my office. There's like a little spot that is going to stay. And basically like there's this physical boundary of everything is on there versus my personal phone. And I'm really excited about it because I think Again, it's going to help with that intentionality. Like, of course, I could come into my office and get the phone if I need to and do something on it if I have to outside of my work hours. And that's fine. But I think just that additional accountability of like, OK, do I want to mindlessly scroll or do I actually need to do this right now? Just being able to ask myself that question. It's similar to the brick, which I'll link the brick for you guys in case that's something you're interested in. Because I think that's a really, really great option if you don't want to get like a separate work phone if you're in business and you're thinking about doing something like this. But if you have an extra phone on hand, I think it's really valuable. Another thing that I've heard a lot of people talk about is getting like a – a different like personal phone that isn't like a smartphone. It doesn't have apps or anything like that. And I totally see the value in that. However, I love my iPhone. I'm like an iPhone ride or die. And I love it for taking videos and pictures of my kids. And so I didn't want to get like a flip phone or like a different kind of phone that didn't have all the apps and like technology and stuff that iPhone does, because I love taking pictures of my kids and videos. And I take a lot of that kind of stuff throughout the day that doesn't get shared to social media. Um, And I didn't want to miss out on that. So I decided I didn't want to do that route either. But I know a lot of people that have done that, too. So that might be something you're interested in. But yeah, that's kind of like where I'm at. That's kind of what I'm thinking. I am going to do like a 30 day experiment with this. Hopefully it works really well and it lasts longer than that. But I kind of want to do 30 days of just like updating you on how it goes, you know, kind of telling you, you know, how it's been kind of. what the pain points may have been or if like everything just feels really good and solid and how I feel with it, how it impacts my life in like a positive way, how maybe it makes things more difficult. I don't know. So this is, you know, technically day one because I just got the phone yesterday. So this is day one. And in 30 days, I will do a check-in and let you know a little update if it's something you're interested in. But I think that any way that you – you know, try to be more intentional with your technology is good. Um, I started reading the book, the unplugged hours. Oh my gosh. I can't remember the, uh, the author. Her name's Hannah. I don't remember her last name though. Um, I'm going to look it up unplugged hours. I should have had this. Oh yeah. Hannah Brencher. Um, I started reading that before bed and like when I'm in the bath and like winding down for the day and I love it. So it's the unplugged hours, cultivating a life of presence in a digitally connected world. And I would 10 out of 10 recommend that book. I'll link it for you guys. And she talks about just like turning off your phone for an hour a day and like totally unplugging and what that looks like. And so I would really recommend that book. If it's something you want to do, you want to start kind of maximizing your presence and being more present and starting to disconnect from, you know, being so connected online, right? So that's a little update. I promised I would give one. I would talk a little bit about this journey. Like I said, I reserve the right to change my mind at any point on how I handle this, but hopefully, you know, I know I'm not alone. And it feels like kind of a vulnerable topic because no one likes to say that they spend too much time on their phone and that it affects their mood or it affects how they show up in the world. But I just really started to notice how much the input of technology was affecting my output in my day-to-day life. And I want to change that. And so hopefully this inspires you to change it if it's something you struggle with too. And I would love to hear if this episode resonated with you, if it's something that you are trying to do more or be better at. And you can send me a message over on Instagram and we can have this conversation because I would absolutely love that. But that's it for today. I hope you have a great rest of your day and just always know that I'm rooting for you. Bye.