Tyler McCall  0:00  
We don't take time to be really bad at something and then learn how to get good at it. Like, that's just what we have to do, right? And I think, you know, there come moments in our business where we're like, you know what, this isn't working, I gotta scrap and it goes something else. But I also think that if we stop looking for the quick fix and the next best thing and we stop expecting results immediately, we understand that overnight success takes years, then we can give ourselves a lot more grace and way more space to figure this out and to put in the work.

Heather Sager  0:41  
Well, hey, friend, welcome to another episode of The Heather Sager Show. It's me, Heather Sager and I'm honored to be your speaking coach here today in this episode. I've spent the last 15 years studying and building my communication skills to inspire and teach business owners and their teams from stages around the world. I've had the honor of speaking on more than a thousand stages on topics of leadership, premium brand positioning, sales, and of course communication. And now my focus is helping fellow online entrepreneurs become magnetic speakers, so they can make a bigger impact in the world while growing their income. This show right here was designed to give you a dedicated space each and every week to grow your skills, and keep your big goals front and center. And if you like today's episode, be sure to grab a screenshot and share an Instagram and tag me @theheathersager so I can give you a shout out and celebrate the work you're doing. All right, let's dive in, friend. it's gonna be a good one.

Well, Hey, friend, welcome to another episode. I have a special treat for you today. Back to the show is my friend Tyler McCall and we're talking about so many things today, especially around Instagram, qnd my favorite part about our conversation today was talking about stepping into the role of a creator versus a consumer. Now listen up if you're in the online space, social media, as you know, is it's part of the job but how we interact on social media and how much we consume social media. It can lead you down some rabbit holes. I've had to go through my own cleanses with social media, shout back to the episode where we talked about how to break up with your smartphone. I consistently uninstall social media apps from my phone and take breaks but the reality is being online and being on social as part of it. But the question is, how do you use, especially Instagram, in a more intentional way not just to like show up and also scroll? How do you actually use it with intention to grow your online business, and yes, make sales? So I asked Tyler all the questions. We also talk about, what do you do when you're feeling a little meh with Instagram? Are you going through a slump? I know a lot of people right now are a little burnt out. There's negativity happening online. There's always going to be something going on online, right? And so you go through slumps. We talked about what it looks like when you're feeling in a slump and how do you get back, how do you fall back in love with using the platform? We go into all of this. So I have Tyler come join me on a facebook live here and I wanted to replay this because it is such a good conversation. You need to hear it again. And if you haven't heard it for the first time, in advance, you're welcome. It is so good but I just love how candid Tyler is. Some of these strategies that he shares in this episode, I think we're going to be really helpful. 

And hey, I also want to highly encourage you the time this episode airs on May 12. There's a really special something happening where Tyler is opening the doors to his brand new Follower to Fan Academy. Yup, brand new program. He has retooled his Follower to Fan framework and put it into a new course with some incredible tools and resources to help you, the online business owner, be more successful on Instagram and I want to invite you to participate in one of his live training going on this week. I'm gonna include a special link in the show notes highly recommended. I love it. I have been a member of his Followers of Fan society for a few years and I have adopted so many the training and it's really helped me understand how to use Instagram in a more intentional way, even when I'm feeling a little burned out. I don't want to go on it. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. It is a good one, always a joy to have Tyler on. Please help me give him some love by dropping him a DM on Instagram to tell him how much you liked the show. Alright friends, I'll see you on the other side of the interview.

All right friends, we are live for a special Hump Day conversation with my friend Tyler McCall. Welcome, welcome. How are you doing?

Tyler McCall  5:22  
I'm good. Heather, thanks so much for having me. How are you?

Heather Sager  5:25  
I'm good. I'm good. It's like bridging on the like, edge of summer in Portland but it's the thing that always happens in April where it's like a big tease where the weather's beautiful and we get all excited and then it's gonna start raining ferociously for the next six weeks.

Tyler McCall  5:44  
We've had like 70 and 80 degrees days here in North Carolina and then it's supposed to be like freezing and have frost tonight. So it's just like, we always get that growing up. You know, my dad's rule was, you never plan anything till after Mother's Day because we always get that one rain like freeze and frost at the end of April, so it's tonight.

Heather Sager  6:04  
Yeah, all right. That's like the back and forth. Although random analogy, I do feel like that is a little bit about entrepreneurship, too, is like, we radiate towards, we have our own seasons and weather in our businesses and when like it's sunny and businesses going well. I don't know there's going to be a storm around the corner so you gotta like prep up for the weather change and have some good habits, maybe in time of Mother's Day, things will be good after that in business

Tyler McCall  6:31  
Yes, oh my gosh. I just saw the great posts the other day from Julie from Funnel Gorgeous. I don't know if you know, Julian,  and Julia was saying that. She said, nothing good happens on day three of a launch so never make decisions about your launch on day three. She was like day three, everything will fall apart and nothing will be working. You're not going to get the sales, you're going to want to burn it all down. She said, first of all, that's why you only open your doors for four or five days and then also just get through day three, and everything will be okay.

Heather Sager  7:00  
Yeah, those are the days I always think about this back when I was in corporate and would have really like hard days, or I knew that it was crazy. Those were the days where I would make sure I wear my good bra and my power outfit, at least look like this is gonna be real good. That's what I do on day three of launch.

Tyler McCall  7:12  
Good bra energy, GBE.

Heather Sager  7:28  
Yeah, it's gonna become a thing on my, alright, well, we're not here to talk about the weather or my bra today on our live, although it doesn't surprise me that these things make it way in conversation. We're going to talk about Instagram, because that's, I mean, you and I talk about a lot of things. But this is obviously the thing you talk about, I would say most in your business, right? Well, this right now in this season because lots of exciting things are happening. But selfishly speaking, I have some Instagram questions. We haven't had a chance to connect in a while and I wanted to like toss some questions your way and just talk about how Instagram is working for business right now. And for anyone who jumps in live, if you have questions, don't put them in the chat. We're excited just to have a casual conversation. Tyler and I have no plan today. This is not a like presentation of the five steps to get fancy on Instagram. It's just like a what's going on with Instagram and how can we make it still feel fun and not ebb into that? It's draining and annoying me because I don't know, I feel like that sometimes. And I'm going to confess I'm in a little bit of an Instagram rut. Oh, so maybe other fields or I think we get a little burned out a bit. So I was hoping it could be like a dose of inspiration to help anyone who's feeling in a rut and or they go through that. We can help them kind of ventured back into that and fall in love with the platform again.

Tyler McCall  8:58  
For sure, now I love that. I love that.

Heather Sager  9:01  
Tell me a bit, I know, you may not be allowed to say this but do you go through Instagram moments where you're like, oh my gosh, it's kind of draining and you feel a little bit in a rut?

Tyler McCall  9:12  
Yeah, like all of 2020 I think. All 2020 was that for me. I think it was for a lot of us. No, I go through that too and you know, I think what is cool about being an educator, and a coach, and strategist on Instagram is that I can go through those moments too and then share the the takeaways and share the experiences with my clients and with my community of like me experiencing that too. It would be really disingenuous for me to say like, I love Instagram all the time because I don't. It's just not true so we can totally talk about that. You know, I think for a lot of folks, getting into the rut comes through a little bit of comparison. I think that it can definitely steal a little bit of our shine on Instagram, and then I also think it comes from like forcing the content creation. And the content creation feeling very heavy and very forced, and not genuine or not exciting for us, so I think it's important for us to kind of address where it is specifically that feels rubbish. Is that a word? it is now.  And then, you know, the content creation thing, I think is super important, because I think that's where a lot of folks start to get burnt out. There's something else too that we talked about with our student-clients around the energy you're putting into Instagram as far as the mindset you're going into your Instagram account with, and I call it the creator versus the consumer. I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs, as business owners, as coaches, consultants, whatever you're doing in your business, it's really easy to log on and use Instagram as like a normal every day. I call them like normal everyday civilians on Instagram, like a consumer on Instagram. But what we have to do is we have to switch our focus and instead show up on Instagram as creators. And I think for some folks, that process once they're introduced to this concept, it starts to make sense but it requires you to kind of think about your Instagram account a little bit differently and the energy and the time you're putting into it to make sure it's the right energy in the right time.

Heather Sager  11:29  
Yeag, it makes total sense. Let's ground that a bit because I popped up a couple of these. People are saying, with Melanie saying, I totally agree. I'm in a rut right now. There's somebody in the free Facebook group, I can't see your name here but we see you, totally in a rut. And I was like, is it really possible to fall in love with Instagram? Anna recently fell in love in the pandemic and got married last year so that kind of love, Anna. Business, love for sure. Ashley says yeah, totally all of this. So okay, so this is resonates, we're gonna stay here for a second. So tell me a bit when you talk about this creator and consumer, I remember when you introduced me to this concept. A couple years ago, I was like, oh, yeah, I totally am still acting like the I use Instagram for social because I'm still connected with my personal friends on Instagram. So switching that hat, what are a couple activities or things that you come to mind that would say, oh, this is a consumer behavior versus a creator behavior?

Tyler McCall  12:33  
Yeah, for sure. The consumer logs on Instagram for the sole purpose of watching and looking and consuming the content that others are creating, and I don't want you to think that I'm saying like you should never consume. Content consumption is important. I think as creators and being a modern-day entrepreneur means that you especially in the online business world means that you are a marketer, you're a content creator, you're also HR, you're also the CFO, you're doing like all the things but being online as a modern entrepreneur requires you to be a content creator. That's an important part of the work that we do. So consuming is so important because as creators, we need to fill up our own cup, right? But the content consumer logs on Instagram with a sole goal of consuming content, so it's mindlessly watching Instagram stories. It's mindlessly scrolling through the feed or the Discover page. It is looking at what other people are doing and not taking any action with that information. So the creator person Instagram is very, it's very kind of lazy and I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just kind of like it's very, like sitting back, receiving, watching, consuming. You know, it's like when you're watching that new Netflix series and it autoplay to the next episode, or if you're like me, you're scrolling through TikTok, you get in bed, get on cozy up. It's like 9:17 at night. You're like, I'm just gonna watch a few Tiktoks before I go to sleep and then you know, you look at the clock and it's 1:30 in the morning. Your eyes hurt. You have a stop watching. That is consumption on Instagram, and it's not a bad thing. It's just not the right thing for us to be doing as entrepreneurs and as content creators. 

The content creator logs on to Instagram with purpose. They understand how to get the most out of the time that they have to allocate to Instagram. This is a really important distinction. They understand how to make the most of the time that they have to assign, to decide that they're going to spend on Instagram. I think where Instagram becomes a time suck and where our hatred comes from, is that we, and I hear this all the time. I spend so much time, and if you're listening to the replay of this so you can see me I'm quoting, so much time on Instagram, but I'm not getting any results. But I would wager, I would bet you good money than if I was a little birdie on your shoulder watching over as you spend so much time on Instagram that you may be a little bit embarrassed or you may be a little more honest with yourself about how much time you really spend on Instagram. We teach our clients inside of Followers in Academy, like decide how much time you're going to spend on Instagram every day. It can be 20, maybe 30 minutes a day. And then as a creator, login with a clear plan of attack. Know what you're going to do. This is why content planning is so important. This is why having a strategy is so important. This is why utilizing content themes which is a strategy we teach our students using these strategies is so important because you know what you're posting, having a content plan, schedule in place, you know when you're posting it, you know why you're posting it. When you're really clear on what we call your primary objective on Instagram, you understand how this is contributing to your business goals, so you know what you're doing, the contents ready, you log, in your posts, and then the rest of the time you spend engaging thoughtfully, so responding to direct messages, responding to comments, going out and doing outward engagement strategies. We teach an entire outward engagement process to our students, so going out and engaging, looking for opportunities for collaboration. And then you get in and get out like that, you know, that like mommy toilet time in the evening when you disappear to the bathroom for 30 minutes or when you're sitting in carpool, in the line of carpool or when you're waiting for your Starbucks order. Do set your Instagram time. You're in, you get your stuff done and you're out. And then here's the best part of this, Heather, and then you can go back to actually the business of your business, right? I would bet everyone here watching is not like an Instagram or first as their business, right? We're coaches, we're educators, we're consultants, we're selling services and products. We're trying to build these businesses and being on Instagram seven hours a day isn't the way we're going to do it, so I'm really passionate about helping people create a strategy, implement it, get in, do it, and then get the heck out and go back to your business.

Heather Sager  15:29  
Do you think there's this fallacy because the perception, right, when you have a strategy and you're posting intentionally every day, when other people see that it's almost feels like you're present on social all the time. So especially more business owners are like, oh, I have to be on social all the time. How do you help people navigate that? There's this perception of presence, right, but not actually physically being present? Do you see, especially newer entrepreneurs struggle with that a bit? What are some of your thoughts on that?

Tyler McCall  17:39  
Yeah, I think a lot of folks do. And I think, you know, one of the biggest reasons that we start to struggle with that is because there is so much looking at other people's paper. You know, there is so much observing what other people are doing, and this is why it's really important and something we talk about why inside of our community and just through all my content consistently talking about the concept of putting your blinders on and not looking at what other people are doing. You know, something I've said before is even to the point where if you have someone that's in your niche or industry, a competitor that you can't stop yourself from looking at what they're doing, block them on Instagram not because you don't want them to see your content but it keeps your nosiness away from looking at their content and I think a lot of that comes from that. I also think part of it, too, is this belief that if I do more on Instagram then I will get more results or I will get more followers, more likes, more of the things that we think we need or the things that we think are going to make a big difference for our business but at the end of the day it don't really make that big of an impact. I think this is why it's really important that we have a conversation about being okay with where you are right now on social, being okay with the number of followers you have right now, understanding that the way, the best way to build your following is to focus on creating great content to serve the followers you already have. Stop looking that follower number is the same to like accomplish or achieve instead start looking at it as someone on the other side of the screen where you are working to connect with those people and those shifts that you can make are really impactful in the work you're doing in marketing your business. You know, I've always said that, if you can't be grateful for the followers you have right now, what makes you think that you are even putting out the right kind of vibe or energy to attract more followers, right? It's like the 100 people or 300, 800 people that are following you right now, aren't enough for you, then how do you think that's coming through in your content or maybe in the desperation that comes across in what you're doing? You may not even be able to figure out what that is right now but it does come through. It does come across the way you're doing. Be happy with where you are. Know it's a journey. Every single person starts with zero followers. That's the best thing about social media. And you got to figure out how to do it in a way that makes sense for your business and with your time, right? And so, you know, there's some people on Instagram, that posts three times a day and are doing all this content. But they're single and don't have kids and don't have a team and aren't running, you know, aren't doing all these other things. That works for them. It doesn't work for other people, so you got to figure out what works best for you.

Heather Sager  20:27  
Yeah, I think that's what's fascinating to me is there, I've seen people be very successful doing like, barely any posts and people being successful doing a bajillion posts, right? It all comes back to everyone's defining success differently. So it's like you know what I mean, you got to figure out what works for you. But you know, something that I learned about me and taking some of the strategies that I learned from you inside your programs is this idea of having a daily limit, right, which is something that we all know, even our phones tell us like, do you want to set daily limits which side note, y'all if you have like toxic relationship with your phone and have addiction issues, go back on the podcast. I talked about one of the best books I read last year which was how to break up with your smartphone. It was such a good book. I summarized it in a little book review on the podcast. So go back to that, I'll drop the link into the notes here when we're done. One of the things that I learned was, I was becoming really frustrated with the daily allocation because whenever I would do like an IG live or there was something happening, I would then be like, ah, and then I would start tricking my brain to go, it's okay to like hit the little code and go over the thing. So what I've shifted to is a weekly allotment, kind of like, oh, you know, some financial people teach like an envelope system, where it's like $300 for groceries and when you're done, get what you'll eat. I do that with my Instagram where it's like this week I have this snitch time and I blow it all on Monday and Tuesday, well, screw me for not allocating my time. So that helps me go, do I have a week where I do need to be more engaged? Am I doing a lot more of i don't know, IG Lives or whatever else but that weekly allowance that was a shift that really helped me because the daily thing it wasn't working for me. It was actually counterproductive than helpful. So that's one of the things that I really love about your teaching style is you're not very prescriptive as in like, fill in the blank and do x you're like, let's talk about the underlining strategy so you can determine what success and what things look like in your business. Can you talk a little bit of just about your philosophy around that, in general, because we have a really shared outlook on this?

Tyler McCall  22:45  
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, so if you are a student of mine or if you become a student of mine inside of our program, you'll you'll learn pretty quickly that we are not, as you said, we are not prescriptive in how we teach our Instagram strategy. At the end of the day, what we do inside of our program, Follower to Fan Academy, is not teaching you like fill in the blank, follow the leader do this, do that. We're teaching the concepts and strategies and messaging branding and positioning yourself using your Instagram account and empowering you to create a strategy that makes sense for you, in your particular business, in your niche. The reason that we're not prescriptive on what we do is because prescriptive types of educational resources don't work. They just don't. It's not those types of resources, especially when it comes to marketing. They aren't taking into consideration your unique brand voice, your unique perspective, your lived experience, your values and how you want to showcase those online, the amount of time that you actually do have to spend on social, the amount of energy that need to have to spend on social, your physical ability to spend that time on your Instagram account. There's a lot of things that go into creating great content, showing up on Instagram, having conversations with other people. And I find so many times when you're being educated in such a strict prescriptive manner. It really sets you up for failure because you're never going to be able to do it exactly the way that they tell you to do it. I also think another piece of this is that, and look I don't want to like speak negatively of other Instagram educators or other marketers out there but I'm a firm believer in the fact that we really need to understand how someone built their chops like got their experience, honed their craft for what they teach and understand the lens that they bring into how they teach. For example, I teach what I know for Instagram marketing because I've been doing it for half a decade. I've ran dozens of Instagram accounts. I ran a successful Instagram marketing agency for a number of years that I was a coach and consultant. I work inside of agencies as they're contracted in house social strategists when they didn't have someone on their team. I've worked in all different types of businesses, from hotels, to local gift shops, to restaurants, to wedding businesses, to jewelry design businesses, to startups, to tech companies across the board. And then we created a system for Follower to Fan that we've now talked to thousands of entrepreneurs over the past nearly four years now. We've built all of this kind of body of work and all these skills and honed it through doing this work with our clients where's their other Instagram educators who found success on Instagram through their particular experience as a creator and then started teaching people how to emulate their experience. And I hate to break it to you, but that experience, the skills, the strategies they use to build their presence, they're not transferable and I don't think we talked about that enough because the way that someone builds their presence online, with their unique voice and their unique perspective, no one else can do that. Only they can do that. So it's really important that you, and I think this is, Heather, I think something you and I both share and we're passionate about, it's like the keys to success in your business are to learn the principles and strategies and skills and frameworks but then you got to do it yourself. You can't outsource the doing this in your business. You kind of have to try, you have to fumble, you have to figure it out like right now we're in the middle of a launch and I was just meeting earlier today with my marketing manager. I was telling her, I said I really look forward to after this launch is over for us to do a debrief and a post mortem on this launch because there's lots of stuff that we could have done better and we wouldn't have known it unless we did it. So it's just an important reminder and Instagram is the same thing. You got to get in there and do it. You got to just figure it out and fumble around and have post flop and have live videos that no one shows up for and not worry about it. 

Heather Sager  26:51  
Yeah, it's almost like embracing that, right? You have to skin your knee a little bit. You have to go through those pieces. I'm a big believer of this. I went on a rant on an IG live a couple weeks ago around how I feel like the swipe files, and the templates, and the fill in the blank, are making people not so bright. We're outsourcing our thinking ad I think our best asset as entrepreneurs is our ability to think and be creative to strategize, individualize. And we outsource parts of our business that are true to our brand voice or how we show up in the world, where it's like I always say it's like, I love Siri. Let's go to my cell phone real quick. I love Siri, and I love the fact that I can say hey Siri, give me directions to wherever, right? And then I don't have to think that I can get in the car and have Siri tell me turn by turn how to get somewhere. But I realized years ago that whenever I did that I wasn't paying attention to where I was going so when I would get to the destination, I would have to say, Siri, tell me how to get home because I didn't know how to get back to my own house and I definitely couldn't get whoever to just drove again. For some things, I'm okay with that, right? Like don't I don't need to know certain things around my business but other things that I like, I'm going to own and are going to have outcomes and I'm going to do again if I'm not thinking if I'm outsourcing my thinking and just following someone else's directions. I don't know what to question and when I get frustrated when results are not happening, quite frankly, it's easy to blame other people or easy to get frustrated and overwhelm because you don't know what to do, so then you wrap it and then you go look for the next swipe file or easy thing to go do and then you go through the whole chain cycle over and over again. So we need to put far more value on our own ability to problem solve and be creative and think because that's the asset of being an entrepreneurs. We can do that. I think we need to be comfortable working through that struggle bus a bit to allow ourselves to fail because that's where we learned the most, as you just said, like with launches.

Tyler McCall  28:54  
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I totally agree. You know, I think so much of the marketing strategies that the next best way to launch, the next best way to do this thing, the next best business model, right? Should I have high ticket, should I have a coaching program, should I have a course, should I have a membership, should I have this or that? And the reason people stay stuck in that bouncing from thing to thing to thing is because we don't take time to be really bad at something and then learn how to get good at it. That's just what we have to do, right? And I think you know, there come moments in our business where we're like, you know what, this isn't working. I gotta scrap and it goes something else. But I also think that if we stop looking for the quick fix and the next best thing and we stop expecting results immediately, we understand that overnight success takes years then we can give ourselves a lot more grace and way more space to figure this out and to put in the work. I was just trying to reason with my friend, Jereshia Hawk, who I love and admire the work. 

Heather Sager  29:54  
I love. I love her. I'm like a fangirl from the side that goes into her DMs every once in a while.

Tyler McCall  30:00  
Yes, and we were talking recently about how many online business owners refuse to do the work that it takes to make their programs better, how we allow our egos to prevent us from ever even hearing negative feedback from customers or clients, and that we then won't do anything. And because we don't allow ourselves to hear that feedback, we never take a moment to make our programs better. Just recently, we have someone in our student community saying, I wanted to feature some of my clients and I was gonna tag them in the post where I feature them as a testimonial. But then I got scared that if they decided they didn't like the program, people could find them and reach out and ask them why they didn't like it. I think we need to do more of welcoming that kind of feedback. We need to be okay with people not liking our programs, we need to be okay with things not being the right fit for someone, we need to be okay with giving people their money back when it makes sense to give their money back. And I think if we can get into that place of you know, it's abundance-minded, it's being more empathetic and understanding other people, and it also takes away this expectation that it all has to work, it all has to work right now and if it doesn't work, everything's gonna fall apart part is terrible, awful evil. It's never gonna work. What am I going to do, right? I mean, I took years to learn how to ride a bicycle. When I was a child, my brother, I think it was maybe five or six, probably six or seven years old so my brother was two years younger. He was already on his bicycle at like five years old. At one point, he was on his bicycle and he went into my dad's toolbox to find a wrench to try and take the training wheels off the bicycle himself whereas it took me another probably five years to finally learned how to ride a bicycle. And I had the bruises and the scrapes and the bruised ego to go with not knowing how to ride a bicycle until I was almost a preteen like I said, so many of those years, and you know, I hated Saturdays as a kid because after all of our chores was done Saturday morning, dad mowed the lawn, Mama done things in house. I knew that Dad was going to take me to the elementary school across the street and put me on a bicycle in the field and push me until I just kind of went for a little bit and then fell over. I never understood you actually had to pedal to get momentum and keep going on a bicycle. It's hard. And eventually, I learned because my dad put me on a bicycle in a parking lot at the elementary school one Sunday afternoon. It was actually on Father's Day. And he said, we're not leaving here until you learn how to ride a bicycle. And I said, what if I don't know how? Before the sun goes down, and he said, we're not leaving here until you learn how to ride a bicycle. And I learned how to ride a bicycle that day. And when I tell you, Heather, the rest of my childhood, I was on that bike every moment I could be because I loved it. But if I would have quit, I never would have learned how much I love riding a bicycle. And it took so long. It took so much effort. It took so much messing up. I think I had to like get a new bicycle at one point because I got too big than the one I had when I was younger.

Heather Sager  33:09  
I've seen like your little knees popping up like,

Tyler McCall  33:12  
Yeah, but the key lesson that I finally learned you had to pedal to gain momentum. Yeah. And, you know, something I always kind of believed and understood is like, you can't read a brochure on how to ride a bicycle and then know how to ride a bicycle. You actually have to get on the bicycle and learn how to do it. The same thing is true. You can't take an Instagram course and then know how to use Instagram. You've got to start posting on Instagram and figuring out how to do it.

Heather Sager  33:36  
Yeah, we have that shared thing. I always joke all the time when people are exploring, wanting to learn how to become better speakers that people want to study speaking. But hello, you can't get better speaking until you actually speak out loud. What's funny is we're afraid of our own voices because we don't want to sound dumb or we hear everybody else sounding so great but we're unwilling to struggle and not make sense. And therefore we just kind of like avoid it or we just show up and wing it and then blame it on while I didn't have time to plan like of course it wasn't perfect. I didn't plan for it, next time I'll plan but then we never do. I totally relate with that piece. If  you have to do the work, you have to struggle. Brendon Burchard says all the time, honor the struggle. It's one of my go-to phrases I always embrace around when I'm feeling struggle and I'm feeling resistance or feeling like oh, this is hard. Of course it is, like it's a new skill. It doesn't mean that you're terrible or not smart or that whatever you need another thing. It just means it's new. It's a skill and skills take time to cultivate. I think if we embrace that more of what skills can we learn, I think we would be far less emotional about some of these aspects of our businesses and actually just do the work and plow through that discomfort quicker. 

Tyler McCall  34:55  
Yeah, I totally agree and the emotional component is important there, right? Because I think something else we have to do, especially in our marketing, especially when using a platform like Instagram is we have to separate our worth from the results that we're getting in our business and through our Instagram account, right? The number of likes you get on that post, the number of watchers or viewers you get on that video are not indicative of your worth as a human being. The results, the success you see in your business, or the success you don't see, again, is not indicative of the fact that you are inherently worthy. This is where you know, the self-work is important. This is why entrepreneurship is like self-development on steroids and it requires that focus and that attention to the work that is required of this. And it's also why you never like graduate from entrepreneurship. I have to keep doing it, right? You don't get to a point where you're like, I'm done. 

Heather Sager  35:54  
No, you're just getting started, baby. We're covering so many good things, and by the way, a shout out to those in the comments that this is resonating. So we were talking about Instagram-ish, right? I think all these things really relate back in. Thinking about that piece, let's talk about the identity of a business owner as an entrepreneur as it relates to Instagram. I want to dance in this lane for just a moment because what I think happens, what you were just talking about, right, how people wrap their own success up in the success of their business like if our launch didn't go well or for follower counts not growing or I don't know, whatever thing we put in our head is the next measure of success. If that's not working, somehow we're broken, something's not quite right, people don't like us, we're not enough like all these head games we have, right, that are really emotional based. One of the challenges I see a lot with Instagram is we're on a platform where we're playing with personal brands, business brands, and then people who are on Instagram is their personal account like they don't have businesses or this is not a thing that they're trying to make money from, right? It's a hobby or something different. So with this mishmash of that, I see it's really difficult as a business owner to show up and separate the identity from themselves because in most situations of people who are in my community their brand is their personal brand. There's no separation between their name and their brand. Talk to me a little bit about it because you've been open about this. You've talked about it before, your own struggles. Sometimes being able to separate the two. Can you talk a little bit about how you would speak to someone who maybe is struggling right now with hanging too much of their worth or their identity in not necessarily just Instagram, but their business persona in general? 

Tyler McCall  37:46  
For sure, yeah so I think there's a few things you can do here that can help with this. The first thing is to understand that when you are showing up online as your brand and posting on Instagram, going live on Facebook, writing an email to your community, whatever it may be, you are showing up in the role in serving the business, right? You're showing up as the CEO of your company, as the marketing director, as the content writer, as a social media manager for your company. That's the role that you are serving in those moments and that you have a very specific responsibility to the business to serve the business in that way. What helps me when I think about it this way, it also reminds me that I could be fired from that role if I'm not serving the business in the way that it needs, and I think this is a really important shift. When I started growing my team and hiring employees, I have to understand that I announced it in two seats as the founder of the company and then also as the CEO of the company. As the founder, no one can ever take that away, that will always be my thing. But as the CEO of the company, I have to serve the company in a specific way the company expects something of me. So the same is true for you. Even right now, if it's just you, or you and a virtual assistant or online business manager, the same thing is true. You're just wearing way more hats than you may realize right now and you're serving the business in those ways so I think that's the first thing to understand. You are filling a role in the company, you're serving the business in a specific type of lane. The next thing to consider is your personal brand is it's like a digital record or digital representation of you. It's you alive in the online world but it's not you. At the end of the day, you get to decide where the boundaries begin and end. You get to decide what is off-limits and what is fair play. You get to decide what you talk about and what you don't talk about. You get to decide how you speak, what you say, what you don't say. You get to decide how much of you you want to put in and how much of you you want to hold back, and it's really up to you. Now what I'm not saying here is that when you're online, it's totally fake and phony facade of who you really are. That's not what we're going for here because people can see right through it. I mean, y'all, let's be honest, we've seen the fake and phony facades over the past year come crumbling down as people have really shown us who they are, right? So we're not going to do that. We're not being fake and phony. We're just deciding what the boundary is, right? For example, in my business or on my Instagram account, I talk about myself, I talk about my husband, I talk about the things I enjoy and I even share vulnerable bits of my life. I've talked about my father's death in 2017 and how that impacted my life. I've talked about living with migraines, I've talked about navigating depression and anxiety. I've talked about money stuff, I've talked about all of those things. But I have boundaries to things that I don't talk about. I don't really talk about my family beyond talking about my father's death because there's stuff in stories there that aren't mine to share and that I don't feel like are of value to my community. I don't share every detail of my personal life or like what I'm doing in therapy right now because I'm not trying to make myself feel better by dumping my garbage on strangers on the internet, right? And I also am very clear in saying like, I'm not here to make friends on my Instagram account. I'm building this account, I'm building a business, I want to support you, I want to help you as best I can through my content. But like, I'm good in the friend department, okay, like, I'm not looking for my next BFF on Instagram.  I think being able to have those boundaries and talk about those boundaries is really, really important. You know, I have clients, I've had clients before who say things like, you know what, I'm a mom but I don't want to show my child on Instagram because they can't consent to being shown so I don't feel like I'm gonna do that, or I want to show my children but in this particular way, or I don't want to talk about these components of my life. And I never once said, well, you have to if you want to be successful because I don't believe that you do. So that's part of it too, getting really clear like what's often it's for you and what is fair game that you want to talk about. And then the last thing I'll say,

Heather Sager  41:56  
Can we hold on real quick, because I have, there was something that I had a visceral reaction when you said something, and I had to have a moment where I was like, I want to explore this because I think other people might be too when you said, I don't use Instagram, I don't need more friends. I'm not there to make friends. There is an instant like, that's true and it's a struggle because inherently social media platforms have this built in, likes, friend request, followers, and there is this desire, I think of a lot of entrepreneurs is you want to be popular, we think popular means profitable and there's this pursuit of that and there's a lot of high perceived, I don't know good stuff for networking, right? Build your business besties, build your network of people. Everybody's trying to socialize with one another. And as we've seen a lot of discussions around real friendships online versus facade friendships and just that whole thing I'm really curious about. I want to like, punch right through that piece that you just said in a good way, We're not on Instagram to make friends. We're good in the friend department. I feel like that's an honest question we all have to ask ourselves is deep down, is that true and are we operating in that way right now? Because I'm going oh, I'm kind of guilty of this of I do socialize and build friendships on Instagram and if I want to do that, that's great but is that truly my intention? I think we all need to revisit that. Did you have that outlook from the get-go or do you have to learn that?

Tyler McCall  43:33  
Yeah, I had to learn that. Yeah, I mean, three, four years ago, it was totally different approach. My business was in a different place. I was in a different place. You know, I was looking for something different from my Instagram account so it's something that's changed over time. And look, you may be at a stage in your business or season in life where building relationships, finding friends, finding your besties is important to you, in which case, more power to you like Instagram is an incredible place to do that but you also don't have to want that either, right. And I love this comment from Rachel, Rachel is our marketing manager for a company so she and I talked about this all the time. But yes, the internet may not have boundaries, but I do, which is so true. Yeah. But I think I think Heather, this is where it's really important, again, that you are clear on your objective with your Instagram account. What do you want it to be? I was just talking yesterday, I got to speak to the Rising Tide Society Community for their global Tuesday's together that we were talking about podcasting. And I was saying how your podcast if you want to start a podcast can serve a multitude of purposes like you could start a podcast to sell yourself, you could start a podcast to grow your audience, you could start a podcast with the sole goal of having people on your podcast for interviews so that then you could get on their podcast for interviews and expand your reach. There's no right or wrong answer here but what is your goal? What is your objective with what you're doing? We talk about this a lot in Follower to Fan with Instagram, like, what is the thing you want to accomplish with your account? Then build the strategy from that objective instead of building it backward and saying, well, I need to do this, I need to post this, I need to create reels, I need to go here. No, no, before we ever decide what you need to do, let's figure out what you're trying to do. What the goal is and then allow that to inform everything else that you're doing on the platform.

Heather Sager  45:28  
Yes. Okay, I love, I love that. Okay, I jumped in. I wanted to hit on that piece because I think that's the real things that people, they're embarrassed to say out loud, right? We're embarrassed to say, oh, we know we're not supposed to focus on follower count but we like to know that it's growing. We know that we're not supposed to care about those things but like, inside we do. So I think we have to voice those things and get real honest with ourselves is, if we're not reaching the goals, whatever goals we've set, whatever our level of success if we're not happy with the progress we're making, I think we have to ask ourselves some real and honest questions around, are we living in alignment with the strategies and the objectives that we have? And I love talking about that idea of friends not being there to make friends. That's not an offensive thing to say. Some people might be like, we're in business. We're not there trying to make friends. Although we can be friendly with clients and I have made contacts on Instagram. That's not the goal, right? It's just a beautiful benefit that happens sometimes. I interrupted you. We were talking about this idea around how to maintain boundaries, that separation piece, do you remember the third thing you were going to say?

Tyler McCall  46:34  
I do. Yes, and then I think this has to be my last thing because unfortunately, I have another 

Heather Sager  46:39  
Yeah, you've been so generous with your time so give us that little nugget.

Tyler McCall  46:43  
So the last thing I'll say is really the three concepts that we talked about inside the Follower to Fan which I think really helped with this. One is the primary objectives, so getting clear on what that is. For most business owners, your primary objective is either going to be to generate leads for your business so to get email subscriber leads, to generate inquiries for your services or professional services in your business, or to generate sales directly from the platform. So getting clear on what that objective is and allowing that to inform your strategy. The next thing is the concept of content themes. So coming up with a three to five types of content, three to five core messages that you're going to talk about the most often and then you just talked about those things and you do those things over and over and over again. Repetition is your friend here. Repetition is how you build authority. It's how you build recognition. It's how you establish yourself in your niche so talking about the same things over and over again, helps massively here. And then the last thing is a strategy we teach called shared experiences and this is how we conceptualize the personal things that we talk about on social media. So shared experiences are just the two to three things that could be hobbies, interests, things that you genuinely enjoy and care about, or are interested in doing as a real-life human outside of your brand but you also share with your audience that you can create content around and talk about to establish a relationship and build rapport that is outside of your goal of selling a product, or program, or service, to that person. So things like travel, hiking, fitness, parenting, shopping, home decor, things like that have nothing to do with what you sell. For me, I'm an Instagram marketer, but I talk about my love of Target. That's a shared experience. Yeah, nothing to do with what I sell. So those are just three concepts that you can kind of start thinking about, like, what is my primary objective? What are the three to five types of content, my content themes that I'm going to talk about the most often? And then what are the two or three things, my shared experiences that I can talk about that don't have anything to do with what I sell but that can help me build a relationship with my community.

Heather Sager  48:46  
I love that. I think that ties just things up in a bow around where people can focus on to take action now and just getting a little bit more strategic with their Instagram. Okay, you've been so generous with your time today, Tyler. I love catching up with you. Thank you so much for this. You have a lot of free, amazing content available right now for people to jump up and gobble and continue to learn with you. Where's the best place for people to stay connected?

Tyler McCall  49:09  
Yeah, head on over to tylerjmccall.com/roadmap to grab your free copy of the Instagram roadmap. We totally revamped this free resource for 2021. Inside you'll find information on what's working now on Instagram, mistakes you may be making based on what used to work on the platform, a really cool two pages spread that we did that breaks down all the features of Instagram and when to use them, pros and cons and how to use each one from your feed to reels to live to Instagram TV, whatever it may be, and some other resources in there. And then the doors to our new course the Follower to Fan Academy open on May 10. So you can head over to followertofan.com right now. Hop on that waitlist and we'll let you know when doors open.

Heather Sager  49:51  
Perfect. I can't wait. I already have my access like I don't have access yet but I already like I'm already in the account. Sign me up, this is wonderful so thank you. Thank you. You are just a true master and just an incredible human being. Thank you so much for being here today and wishing you all the luck with your upcoming launch.

Tyler McCall  50:09  
Thanks. Thanks, Heather. Thanks for having me and thanks for watching everyone.

Heather Sager  50:11  
Thanks for joining us live today. We'll catch you real soon.