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Foreign. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Kate Show. My name is Kate, and today I have a big announcement. Some of you might have already known this if you are on my email list, but I have deleted my business social media profiles. They are gone. It's amazing. It's so, so freeing. And I want to explain why I did it and how it has impacted my business thus far. So I started 2025 knowing that a few things needed to change in my business, even though innovation and invention are so intoxicating. And of course, I have loved doing those things since I started my business back in 2014. But this year, I had a feeling, a conviction really, that God was calling me to shut down several things. And at the time, I was not sure why. But it's become clear that he intended to trim wasted time and effort from the agency while increasing the value of client relationships. Because, after all, isn't that what matters most? And it's pretty genius stuff, actually. And I know a lot of this came from kind of a domino effect of me realizing probably a year ago, year and a half, almost ago, that really, I'm not the CEO of my business. I mean, technically, sure, but when it really comes down to it, I want God to be the CEO and some of you be like, oh, my gosh, he's going off on one of these sermons again. Well, I am. So deal with it. I have found so much peace knowing that God gave me my business to. To manage it, not to ensure its success or to be completely responsible for its demise. I am being this business to steward for however long God decides. And he keeps blessing it, and he keeps asking me to do things that are unconventional and uncomfortable. And I'm getting quite used to people looking at me and being like, are you sure that's a good idea? And then later, having that turn into, oh, can you teach me how to do that? Because I want to do that. I want what you have. And I wish I could say that it was easy. It's not. You know, just because I believe that God is the one in control of my business doesn't mean that he just makes things happen for me. And he makes it all very simple. I mean, there's. There's a lot of work, a lot of physical work, mental work, a lot of strategy that has to go into it. But yet, at the end of the day, I have the piece of knowing that I'm gonna have this business for however long or short God decides. So he has allowed me to meet and bless so many wonderful people and so many of those people have blessed me. My clients are such a gift and my team is amazing and I'm just so grateful for all of that. So I just want to preface that with the fact that, yes, I have deleted my business social media. So that means Facebook and Instagram and I had thousands of followers, so it's not like I didn't have an audience. However, I was not having any impact on them. They were not having an impact on me. And generally, I find social media to be a toxic place. And it's interesting because there's a lot of subliminal messaging, even just through the advertising on social media that will put ideas into our heads that we never would have had otherwise. Such as the fear of missing out because you see your colleagues or your friends doing certain things, maybe in their businesses, maybe in their personal lives, and then suddenly you go from being content to being discontent. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, it's psychologically bad for children, for teenagers. Honestly, it's been bad for me too. It's trying to sell you on things that you don't need. It's trying to tell you certain things, certain belief systems about yourself or other people that are completely unwholesome. And I was like, you know, when you add all of that on top of it's really not meant to be a place. Social media is not a place to sell high end custom services. And that is what my agency sells. It's also what my clients sell. And there is a reason why after doing this for well over a decade, I have seen time and time again that the most successful business women are not getting their clients or their projects from social media. In fact, most of them have very lackluster social media accounts because it just really has no bearing on their bottom line. So in place of social media, I created a non business mailing list entitled Just Kate where I connect with my email subscribers in a much more personal way. It's once or twice a month. So if you want to get on that list, go to kait the socialite.com just hyphen Kate. You can expect things like silly stories about my kids, photos of my family, and I. I actually became uncomfortable posting any photos of my kids quite a while ago on social media. So that's the only way you're gonna see them. They're pretty cute. My. I'm also gonna be talking about my politically incorrect rants. So if you tend to be easily offended or if you are not open to other viewpoints, don't get on the list. Otherwise it'll. You'll get stressed out. And in my intention is not to stress you out, but you can also hear all about what I'm currently struggling with, which is like always something, right? As well as life hacks that I only just learned because parents apparently I've been living under a rock. And of course pregnancy and baby updates. So basically it's girl talk in your inbox. You can go to Kate the socialite.com forward/just-Kate to get on the list. And I don't know if I gave a lot of detail about the pregnancy, but yes, I am pregnant with my third. It's a boy. He's due in mid June. So exciting stuff. I got large very quickly. The bump showed up so fast with baby number three. And even though it was a completely surprise pregnancy, I am on board with. Took me a little bit to get over the shock, honestly. But everything is great. He is healthy. I'm feeling much better. It's been great. So, all right, today let's dive into how social media or the lack thereof has affected my business thus far. And then I'm also going to get into ways that you, as a professional in the home industry, can cut the fat from your own business. Because I really see deleting social media as cutting the fat. It had to happen. Feels so good. All right guys, so without further ado, yeah, I deleted my business social media in early March 2025. Full stop. It's gone. It's amazing. My video podcast is thriving on Spotify. It's in the top 20% of all video podcasts on the platform. So hey guys, thanks. And also it's on YouTube. We won't talk about how it's faring on YouTube, but I also don't really care because again, like, yes, YouTube is a social platform. I get it. So technically I do have some social media, but I just put it out there so that it shows up in search results. I put it out there because I'm already putting it on Spotify. I wouldn't ever just be creating content solely for YouTube. It's just not my thing. And here's the thing. Socialite is an online business. And one would think that an online business, especially even more than an offline business like say like traditional interior design firm or home staging firm, would need social media. However, it doesn't. My online business and so many others does not require social media to be successful. So instead of social, I did create that non business mailing list that you can certainly sign up for. But it's been great because now I can control who sees the message. I know who opened the message. Whereas with social media, I can. I used to see like, okay, so many accounts were reached and that kept getting lower and lower and lower, even though my follower count was going up. Like, this is so dumb. I am not interested in playing this game with you meta anymore. I also made quite a few other changes that I'm going to run through. But I just want you to know that deleting social media has not hurt my business on a personal level. It's taken a lot of stress away from me that I didn't even know I had. I was just so used to dealing with it. And then it also cut down on busy work for my team of like, creating posts and graphics and whatever. It also attracted more clients to me because when people started to find out, wait, that's the marketer who doesn't believe in social media, who doesn't use social media herself. Wow, she must be onto something. So I've been talking to some people who are very excited about that and it's interesting because, like, that's why they chose to work with us. So there is that. The other thing is, and these are just moving on to some big changes. I removed over 250 blog posts from my brand's primary website. And you guys know how much work blogging is. I mean, that was years and years and like thousands of hours of work on behalf of myself and my team. But I decided that I needed to readjust my own SEO. So I sorted through my long, prolific posts and released certain high quality posts with modifications. And going forward, rather than blogging two to four times a month, I'm just gonna release one blog post a month because more isn't always more and quality is everything. And that whole readjusting my SEO and diving into it in a different way also led to me reshaping our agency's offerings. I officially dropped things like Pinterest Management. Now, if you're a client of ours and you're like, wait, but you manage my Pinterest? Yes, we do. And we're going to continue doing that, no problem. Existing clients have nothing to worry about. But we dropped offering things like Pinterest Management to new clients because as the industry shifts, marketing strategy needs to shift with it. And I'm always looking at what are the, the best places for us to be helping people, how are they going to get the most roi? And truthfully, you're going to get the most ROI from things Like Pinterest, if you have a lot of blog posts and or a lot of portfolio images, and if you don't have those things, then it's going to be hard to gain a ton of traction on Pinterest. And instead I'd recommend that if you're just blogging once a month like I'm about to do, just pin each post one time on Pinterest, knowing that people aren't necessarily going to find you because of Pinterest. But Google is a search engine and Pinterest is a search engine. They talk to each other and a pinned blog post will likely rank higher in search results than that same blog post will on your own website. So there is some strategy to that, but it doesn't necessarily require full management. Okay, so I dropped that service. But then in its place, we're now leaning hard into deep on site SEO services for past and new website clients. I have been asked for this for so long and I can say, guys, finally there's a marketing agency that specializes in both website design and SEO and the greater sales funnel exclusively for home pros. So usually people have to piecemeal that out. They get one person to do their emails, they get one person to design their website, they get one person to do SEO. And they just have to hope that those puzzle pieces all fit together and work together nicely. It ends up being expensive, it ends up being time consuming because you're having to work with so many different vendors. But now you can get all of that done here at socialite. And if you want more info on that, info on that, just go to my website. I'm not going to start pitching you stuff, but just FYI, we made some big changes. Also, I stopped gatekeeping my facetime with clients now because my agency has been blessed to serve many clients all at once. I've had to be careful with this or I'd spend all my time on video calls. As a solution, I've leaned into monthly marketing masterminds. The masterminds have taken on a life of their own. It's been great. The attendees look forward to the group calls with some of them saying things like, I didn't know a group like this existed. I'm really looking forward to it. What if I'm no longer a client? Can I still join? It's, it's been fun because basically a bunch of us hop on a call and we go around the room virtually and, and say, here's what feels easy right now. Here's what we're struggling with as far as Marketing. Does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone else dealt with this before? Contractors aren't calling me back. I don't know how to find a good referral partner, what's a good lead magnet idea? And most of the time I'm going to be weighing in. But the truth is I don't know everything about marketing. But there are a lot of my other clients in the group who've been in business for decades longer and they are like, oh yeah, I dealt with that situation. Here's what you need to do, or here's why you don't even need to worry about that situation. It's not going to help you as much as we thought it would anyway. It's been really invaluable and it's a great feature of those who work with Socialite that they get to be part of the marketing Mastermind if they choose. Also, the marketing Mastermind is not recorded. It is a live call, there's no replay, and everyone who attends the call is expected to participate. So it is definitely a hands on you. You can listen to it while you're driving if you want, but you'll actually want to be sitting at your desk because this is where things happen, things get done and questions get answered. Another big change I made is I parted ways with longtime sponsors of the podcast. You might have noticed that it sounds a little bit different. Most of the sponsors were and still are great relationships, but things were starting to feel stale and it was time for a change. And really I feel like that was mutual. And this has freed up the podcast to become more strategically monetized. So again, leaning into what works. And for me it's, you know, my agency gets clients mainly from the podcast and from past clients or current clients referring other people to us. So leaning into the things that are working is like one of the top rules of marketing. Why would you go dig up a new lead source and then try to force it if you already have systems that are working well and you just need to emphasize them more? Lastly, I finally set up a Google Business listing and I asked clients to write some killer reviews. So thank you guys so much for that. I really appreciate it. You've got a great rating on Google Business listings now and if any of you have worked with us and you'd like to write a review, please go. Go do that. If you're trying to write a podcast review, you can do that through Apple Podcasts. Don't do that on my Google Business listing just because, like that's a place to rate services, not the podcast, just so there's like, a little delineation there. All these changes that I've been making have allowed my business to scale upward rather than outward. And I'm able to focus on running the business in a simple and efficient way. And I've even started mentoring a few other CEOs who are trying to do the same thing. Now, my advice for cutting the fat from your own business, especially if you are in the home industry, really boils down to, like, I'm looking at my notes here. Oh, eight different things. Okay, Number one, get clear on what type of projects you really want. Not the type of projects that you're being told you should take, not the type of projects that you think people will buy, but the actual things you want to be doing. And the more detailed you can be on that, the better. You should remove everything from your website that does not support this vision that you have and make sure your SEO is aligned with that specialty. Now, I had an interesting conversation with a client yesterday who is like, well, my business advisor is saying that I need to shift my focus from trade only to include retail because I need more small projects to fill in the gaps to help with cash flow. And I could just tell from the tone of her voice, it was just a phone call that she was so deflated. And I was like, hey, client, do you really want to do that? And she said, no, I don't. I've worked so hard to focus my business on trade only projects, and it's been working really well. And yeah, some projects, they take longer. They're longer lead times, but this is what I want to be doing. And then she pretty much solved her own problem. And she said, oh, what if I actually also included this other thing for trade only? That would increase my buying power with my vendors and it would actually really help my B2B client even more. And I was like, yeah, exactly. You were given those instincts for a reason. Lean into that. Now I can see why someone like a bookkeeper or a business advisor would say, hey, let's fix the immediate problem here, which is cash flow, and let's go with the first solution I think of, which is basically it was. It was going to be a dramatic shift in her marketing, because if you're trying to market to trade only, but then now you're also trying to do retail. Whoa, that. That's. A lot of things have to change. Website has to change, blog, email, like even some branding has to change. It ends up being quite a bit. It's not that simple. But if all you're doing is adjusting your offerings to your current audience, it's a lot easier and it's more scalable. So I want you to make sure that you are clear on what you want to offer and that you're offering it because it makes sense to you that it's something you will enjoy doing so you don't build a business that you hate. Because what if my client had said, no, I'll do retail, even though I don't want to? Well, she'd end up resenting her business. And she's smart. She is a smart CEO and she is not going that route after all. And it's really cool to. To see that and to see her come to that realization or hear her come to that realization on the phone. But this also brings me to the next point, which is stop assuming that your inner circles know what your business offers. You need to be reminding your past clients about what your specialty is. So in the example of the client I just spoke of, she should be focusing more on the email marketing to those past clients, or the leads that hadn't converted yet, or her colleagues in the industry and just say, hey, did you know I offer this as well as X, Y and Z? And here's how that works. Because there are so many times when one of my clients will say to me, I didn't know you also offered that. And I'm like, oh, crap. That means my marketing messaging had a gap in it, so I go fix it. But there are plenty of times when my clients are also like, yeah, so my client hired me to do her kitchen and bathroom, but she didn't realize that I also do a window treatment. So she got someone else to do window treatments, and I lost out on tons of revenue. And she's. And they usually say, at that point, I know it was me. I know it was my messaging. I know that I should have been emphasizing that. And I just thought she knew because it's on my website. But people don't know because they don't read. They just don't. Okay? So you have to make sure that you're telling them, put it in a video, put it in an email. I said, they don't read. They do read, but you have to, like, you have to spoon feed them. And that's the beauty of sending out an email newsletter because it's short, it is hopefully helpful and pretty to look at. And you can say, hey, I offer this. Did you know that you can click here for more information? And then people will be like, oh, I did not know that or I forgot that you offered that. I have someone who needs that or I need that. So there's just a lot to be said for staying top of mind with your contact list. Number three, to cut fat from your business, stop wasting money on client gifts. A job well done is a gift itself. Now, I know some people are like, well, it's just like, it's part of my special signature touch. It's my signature process. I give my client a bottle of wine and a little gift basket at the end of the project. Okay, but how much is that costing you and does it have any impact? Like, would the client feel poorly taken care of or be unhappy with you or the project? If you didn't do that step, you have to look at the cost benefit analysis and typically those gifts are just an added expense on your business that really aren't doing anything to move you forward. Number four, and you knew I was going to say this, but consider deleting your business social media, if it's sucking time or money from your bottom line. Basically, if you cannot draw a line from a new client back to social media, it's not doing its job. Now you could say, well, I'm on social media for the exposure, or I need to be on social media because people might Google me and want to check out my Instagram. If that's your feeling, if that's your instinct for your business, then fine, maybe just post a couple times a month. But if you're like, you know what, I am done. I am so done with social media. And believe me, there are plenty of very successful women in the home industry who run businesses without social media. And you could be one of them, but you don't have to be. But you could be because it would save you stress and time. You don't have to worry about hiring someone to do your social media or creating content for it. You can focus on other marketing measures that actually do impact your bottom line. Which brings me to point number five. Make your email marketing consistent and always have at least one thread in that email that leads back to the type of projects that you want. So consistent email marketing looks like at least once a month, not once a quarter, not once a year, not once a week, because that's too much. But once or twice a month is ideal and that's backed by data. That's not just my personal opinion. And as far as the content, having a thread that always leads back to what you do. Let's say you do kitchen and bathroom models, but that doesn't mean you talk about kitchen and bathroom models every single newsletter. That's redundant. But you could talk about different tile patterns, you could talk about different bathroom styles, you could talk about the difference between designing a bathroom for ADA versus for children or you know, whatever. There's a lot that you can say about it. You can just talk about color, you can talk about texture, you could talk about fixtures and like, and like plumbing and like, whatever. There's a lot that people don't know about what you do. So dive into that. Number six is if you blog, make sure the blog posts are not date specific. So you shouldn't be writing a blog post about awards that you've won or events that you've hosted or attended. You shouldn't be focusing too heavily on short lived trends because evergreen content performs best and blog posts can take months to gain traction and then they keep that momentum for years. But things that don't gain momentum are things that are completely irrelevant. You know, they've aged out. Like, oh, I won this award five years ago and it stopped. Still the latest post on my blog. Eek. Yeah, don't do that. Number seven, Stop pressuring yourself to attend networking events and just start socializing again. Now of course, that's me assuming you've stopped socializing. But if you're type A, you might have. You might have gotten so sucked into your business and your family life that you've kind of stopped going to the things that you wanted to go to just for you. But the thing is, the non professional relationships you build there are the ones that can lead to great clients. You don't have to walk into an event and hand out your business card to every person you see. Meet a bunch of people you're never going to remember and they're never going to remember you. But you could invite one person out for coffee if they look like a good referral partner. You could just meet, as you know, one businesswoman to another with no expectations whatsoever. You don't know where that's going to lead. The final step is to stop panic strategizing if business feels slow for you right now. Do not dump hundreds of dollars into a digital ad campaign if you don't already have a sales funnel to support it. And don't do something crazy like rebrand your business just for the heck of it. Now rebrand if that was your intention and you finally have time to address it. But rebranding or tweaking your logo at random will not make more clients contact you. Also, don't add more services if you're already struggling to sell the ones you currently offer. Most often, panic strategizing occurs when you're just looking for a way to stay busy because you have anxiety and you want to feel productive. But you're likely just wasting time and money if business is slow. Double down on your marketing. Schedule out more blog posts to post when you know you're going to be busy or send an extra email newsletter. Go socialize. Invite a potential referral partner to have coffee. All these things will have a real impact on your business, much more than panic strategizing ever will. All right, guys, that is what I have for you today. As a reminder in place of social media, you can connect with me in my Just Kate email list by going to katethesocialite.com forward/just Kate. You can expect silly stories, what I'm struggling with, life hacks that I've just learned, and pregnancy and baby updates. Basically, it's girl talk. In your inbox. Go to katethesocialite.com forward/just hyphen Kate to get on the list. And until next time, guys, keep your marketing simple, your message clear, and I will talk to you soon.