Full Transcript: MOTM #629: Getting Back on the Instagram Wagon

[Transcript starts at 1:14]

Hello, friends, Maestro here, and look at this fucking guy.  If you are listening.  Whatever player you can't see but if you're on YouTube and this is a little soft suggestion a little hint hint to go to YouTube You can see this guy this guy right here is my best friend. This is Rupert  I moved my office around a little bit so I could have the nice chair behind me.

So I actually use it he's sitting on the nice chair now and pawing at my laptop  And now he's just laying down there. So that's Rupert, my best friend, making a cameo. Welcome to the show, Rupert. Uh, if you are listening, tuning in on the days that it drops, this is Monday, November 4th. We're talking about getting back on the Instagram wagon.

Welcome to November. Happy November. Uh, first things first, Go vote if you didn't vote early, okay, then I don't know if you still can, but then vote tomorrow. Right? Yes. I am voting for Kamala. Like if you didn't know that, I'm not sure how you didn't know that, but no, this isn't a political podcast, but y'all know my mere existence is political.

Look at me. Just look at how I look. My mere existence is political. So there's that. Uh, the other day I saw a post from a comedian.  And he had said that no presidential election had ever, like, done anything for him. It never hasn't changed anything for him. It hadn't impacted him. And I was like, well, good for you, sir.

That is a super privileged thing to say. And no, he wasn't a white guy. Actually, he was a black man. And I was like, very interesting, sir. I think it's a bit of a bad take. So the rest of his audience, but  if that's you and you feel that way, you know, let's take a moment and recognize our privilege. And let's vote to make that privilege a reality for other people.

Right? I I'm voting so that things don't get worse. I really don't think that anyone is going to save me ever, ever for anything. I don't think any one single person is going to come in and save any of us.  But I do fully believe that people can make things worse and a single person can make things worse.

Trump objectively made things worse and I don't want that shit to happen again. So I'm voting to make things not worse. Right? I  think that we have an opportunity. If we do have that privilege and in many ways I have that privilege of being like,  no matter the outcome, it probably won't affect me that much in my day to day.

I should knock on wood. I live in a very affluent town. Uh, it is very, I live in a blue state. I'm in SoCal.  People have money here. Like it's, it's, I feel very safe here. I think people are very accepting here. And so I do not think that if things. You know, irrespective of the outcome, I don't think that my day to day would be that affected.

Same thing happened during COVID.  That in mind, I think that I have an opportunity. And if you're like me, you have an opportunity as well to do one of the most powerful things that we can do when we have power, which is to give it to those who have less power than us.  I, some people that are disabled, they're lower income, less income, people of color, that's myself, right?

So that's, that's a lateral move there. Gay people. That's myself as well. Trans people. That's not me.  Females, that's me as well,  right?  We stay talking about, I stay talking about how we are a social species and we can't survive without each other. As much as I just like want to be alone and hang out with this guy here with Rupert, right?

We are a social species. We need each other to survive.  To that end, now is the time to remember that.  All right. I do understand. I do understand the desire to vote based on personal interests, largely around personal financial interests. I get it. Money's a resource. I talk about it a lot on this podcast. 

But I also ask that, you know, you take a moment, we all take a moment and reflect on whether personal financial interests and personal interests infringe on someone else's basic rights and their human rights,  this whole narrative around we can still be friends and we can agree to disagree, no, not about this. 

If we're talking ice cream flavors, sure, strawberry is objectively disgusting, but I don't have to fucking eat it, but it's fine. But to quote James Baldwin,  we can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.  I do have a ton of privilege.

I really, really do.  And like I said earlier, my day to day likely won't change too radically, regardless or irrespective of the outcome of this election. Again, I got to knock on wood.  Because of where I live. And where I choose to stay living and the resources that I do have and the resources that I have access to.

And, and one of those resources being my health. I have bad knees, but that's about it.  I,  when Trump won in 2016, I canceled some of my work and some of my plans, uh, in terms of as I traveled for work. And I was like, I do not feel safe going to certain places. I still don't feel safe going to all places. I don't just go anywhere.

Uh, but you know, as currently I, I have, I do avoid going to certain places, but  I know that this privilege.  That I have and that I don't have to go to those places where I don't feel safe. That's not the case for some people live in those places.  They can't leave. They don't have the resources, the money to leave, to leave those places. 

And one of the most powerful things that we can do as folks who do have privilege and power. It's to give it to the folks that don't have it  and help those people out. So  I have the, the privilege of having the brain space to record this, this podcast episode while I know some folks are legitimately fearful right now for their lives, they're fearful for their future and rightfully so.

It fucking sucks. Joel. I'm going to use the privilege and the power that I have and dedicate this, you know, dedicate that beginning part of the episode to speaking about this, these things. All right. So  there's my, my thoughts.  Happy to discuss. Where does it say discuss? Don't come yelling at me. Be blocked, be blessed.

Uh, but  I don't know who sees this podcast. If you listen, my guess is that we have a lot of shared views. Uh, if you're watching and this just got served to you on YouTube, well, hopefully be nice. If not, I'll just delete the comment. It's fine either way. I don't, I don't really care. But speaking of the podcast, the main talking point of today's episode, which is, uh, getting back.

On the Instagram,  this is a question that I do receive pretty often. And it's largely how to take, how to get back after taking a long break or, you know, being away for whatever reasons, the long and the short, the simple, the difficult, the answer is just fucking start literally. Yes. Obviously, obviously it's best to have not fallen off in the first place, but just fucking start.

You don't need to apologize for being gone. Just come back, just get started, make a post. If you want to say where you were, what you were up to, you can. You can, but you don't have to. I'm thinking about UC right now, Dr. Dr. Uchina Osai. She stays, is going away from Instagram and comes back and is like, okay, look, it's another time for Bourbon Tales, which I mistakenly and erroneously said Bourbon Tales.

I did not read it correctly, obviously, but  you don't have to say where you were. I think like let's humble ourselves a little bit and manage expectations with this and I see this because I think that there is some underlying, you know,  people, Come back to Instagram being like, Oh, people know that I'm gone.

Cause they were like waiting for me. And I'm like,  maybe like, I want to highlight this, the positive of social and that some people do know that you're gone or they do notice your absence. But also some people don't, it's not because they don't like you. It's not because you don't matter. It's because they're busy with their own lives, but perhaps more than that, they just Likely assume that you didn't leave and they just weren't seeing your stuff, right?

Cause Instagram doesn't show everything to everybody by any means. So  you can say where you were, you can say you were gone and you could do it if you want, but honestly, just get started. So what to post? It doesn't matter. Literally anything. You're just looking to build momentum and get over that initial activation energy hump. 

Something to note here.  That's important for me to say. I had this discussion the other week on my Instagram intensive call. If you find yourself constantly taking a break from Instagram,  perhaps this is a good time and now you're thinking about coming back to it, perhaps this is a good time to examine the relationship that you have with the platform.

Right. I am all for boundaries and I'm all for, you know, being in the moment, you know, some people are just like, you know, I don't want to be on my phone right now. I'm like out with my family. Cool. That's totally fine. But if you're like, I constantly have to like delete it from my phone. It's like very draining for me.

It's very toxic for me. I'm like, just don't use it at all. Like life is too fucking short  to me or just in general. When I teach the goal with using Instagram is sustainability and longevity. That's how you give yourself the best chance at actually winning. So to show about a frequency, you know, the goal there is to show up at a frequency or with a frequency that actually allows for that sustainability and longevity, right?

I'm thinking about, you know, on the Instagram intensive,  this crew is great. By the way, they're all, they're all great. This group is great. And I got a woman in there right now. And she's like three times a week works great for me. And I'm like, amazing. Yes. I preach and teach every day, but only if that's sustainable and feasible, right?

You will build a habit way faster and you'll build proficiency way faster with increased frequency. Yes, 100%, that is objectively true, but that frequency is also impacted by and determined by overall longevity. So if posting every day means that you can only be on there for two weeks consistently, and then you have to take fucking two months away, that is objectively worse than posting once a week and never needing to take that time away. 

Last point here is that, uh, and this is a quote from Jade Teta, that, uh, Jill's ex husband that I use quite often. Uh, easy is earned.  All right, easy as Zerms. So that means if you've built the habit of posting and showing up and you've built the trust with your audience and you've been showing up regularly at whatever cadence for years, taking time away is far less detrimental than, and I'll say detrimental, nothing's like that fragile, but it's far less detrimental than if you had just started a month ago, right?

Because you're not trying to build the habit still. Yes, from an audience perspective,  from the audience trust perspective, it's less detrimental, but. Namely and largely from the habit formation, um, and ease of resuming perspective, it's just easier if you've been doing it for, for a longer time. I am fully saying this, like speaking from experience and talking to myself here, I haven't posted for like  the past week or so, it feels like it's been longer than that, um, but I was launching.

So I was posting things about launching and then Lex's parents came into town, uh, and we were launching. But when we launched Lex, remind, it's like more of a pocket launch, what I call a pocket launch. So it's not like a lot, it's not like super front facing. Um, so I don't do a ton of posting around it.

When I post, when I.  When I launched Legacy, that is, that has a big public component, but  Luxury Mine, not so much. So I just really haven't been posting, uh, and I'm going to post again today. I'm going to make, I'm making this video, this video. Wow. I am recording this podcast episode right now. Uh, and then I'm going to go record a video and put it up on Instagram.

I'm just like, get fucking started again. That's it. So if you like me have fallen off the Instagram wagon, just get back on, just get right back on. Get back on the wagon, the horse, whatever the phrase is. It doesn't matter what day you do it, what time you do it, what you post about. It could be in the middle of the night, it doesn't matter.

It could be on the middle of the night, on Thursday, it doesn't matter. Just look to get over that activation and just activation energy and just get started again. I know that this is unstructured advice, but it's the honest truth. If you know that you personally need more structure, then go ahead and plan a content calendar.

But. I have honestly yet to find someone who actually, you know, that content calendar approach actually works for them. They actually stick to it.  I do realize that that could largely be in part to the fact that largely be due to the fact that  we attract what we are. And I am not that super structured person when it comes to content creation.

I love having the freedom to just create what I want when I want based on, you know, whatever's in my head.  And so I think I attract people that like that as well. I do think that most folks. Who look to create these content calendars do have good intentions, but they stray from that content calendar pretty quickly.

And then soon enough, they're off the wagon thing. Cause they're like, I don't really want to post this. And they don't post and they're like, oh, but I took you back on it. And they're like shooting all over themselves and shooting, shooting all over themselves. Uh, and then they've stopped posting again.  Or I see the type of person that enjoys the planning.

But not the execution. So they make this like beautiful content calendar and they're like, okay, the thrill is gone, the excitement is gone. And then they don't actually post. So  all that to say, lean into whatever works for you. Um, I know some, you know, Annie Miller is a good example of someone who really does like creating content, a content calendar, uh, and kind of sticking to that. 

But. She also has two kids now. And like, I, I would, I have to ask her, but I think probably before she had kids, she's a little bit more like free with it. Um, but either way, it's her personality type. It fits her. And she knows that she's, she thrives with that and she can stick to it. So all that to say, figure out the approach that works best for you, but please, if you've fallen off the wagon. 

Just get back on post anything  and also last things last if you haven't already make sure that you go And  that's all I got for you Keeping this episode short so you can go and vote so you can go do the things and if you got any questions comments concerns Or requests namely for episodes would love to hear would love I welcome them welcome them I'm like, I'm able to come up with content, but I'm also like, you know, what  I need some some assistance So any thoughts you got any suggestions would love to hear them text me You 310 737 2345.

Shoot me a DM at The Movement Maestro and a big thank you in advance. Until next time, friends.  Maestro! 

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