I last spoke to Janet in episode 25 about her business as a divorce coach specialising in narcisstic abuse and why she has now decided to close her business. She explains that having reached a milestone birthday that she feels she is in the 'departure lounge' of life, but absolutley not ready to board just yet, so wants to make sure she makes the most of it and has the time to do what she wants.
We chat about the pressures of the type of coaching she has been doing and that she was doing it more to help people and get information out there rather than build a six figure 'Instagram' business. She felt the constant pressure of being told that as a business she 'had to be' on social media and show her face and how that really wasn't for her. She uses a good anaolgy for Instagram as it does have some good content on there but it's like looking for a needle in an ever growing haystack.
It leads us into a discussion about the changes we see on social media: the increase in adverts and posts selling things, pyramid or MLM (multi-level marketing), the one model fits all type courses, the 'acting' in posts, why people mute rather than unfollow and how we prefer more authentic accounts. Janet also raises the point that it's impossible to stop the 'cold calling' type messages from people who bombard you with the: buy now, early bird price, only 10 places left, offer ends, last chance to sign up!
Janet explains why there are a lot of covert female narcisist hiding out on Instagram / social media and how important it is to them to get a constant supply of attention in what ever way they can.
We both agree we're not in favour of membership groups for various reasons and how important it is to constantly review the groups you belong to and what you get from them. We are both surprised how little due diligence people do these days before signing up to something or someone and simply believe what they see on the person's social media output.
We acknowledge that we're all different and as Janet says it's about finding the needle [or our needle] in the haystack of social media that we like.
Lastly we chat about YouTube, (as I've started a channel for many reasons), is it or isn't it social media? What makes it different and the reasons we are both using it far more these days.