What SocialBoom 2017 Taught Me About Mental Health: NO ONE Does it Alone.

And that’s a relief!

Note: Scroll to the bottom to get a copy of my personal notes and takeaways from SocialBoom! They’re typed just for you :)

I just got back from SocialBoom 2017, which turned out to be a pretty dope meetup of some of the best minds across marketing.

The best part was probably going with awesome people from the Symphony team :) I had a blast spending it with my talented and passionate friends, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to have joined you!

Check ’em out, they don’t bite: https://symphonyagency.com/

Although SocialBoom was billed as being a social media conference, I think that Kim Garst did a great job packing it full of insightful cross-disciplinary speakers.

Instead of just being back to back social tactics, SocialBoom left me with plenty of insight for life, business — and yes, marketing.

For example, Kim is a pretty dyed in the wool social specialist and most of her value was dropping some tactical knowledge about the newer features of Facebook, Instagram, and livestreaming as a whole.

But Kim mixed it up by also bringing in cool business development and conversion oriented speakers — like Nicole Walters. Nicole is a fabulous, badass income strategist who dropped a TON of knowledge about business development, and email marketing during her time on stage.

By hearing the “coming up story” of a variety of people in different industries like coaching, tech, speaking, consulting, and on and on it opened my eyes to something incredibly important.

Something even more important than the individual tactics, I think.

Not everyone is a speaker, author, web developer, accountant, lawyer, or EVERYTHING. Nobody does it alone.

So I definitely enjoyed my time at SocialBoom and got a ton of value from it. With that being said…

All of us are marketers, and we KNOW when we’re being sold… There were definitely a few straight up sales presentations there.

I don’t mean the speaker promoted an offer at the end of a speech you took several pages of notes on — that’s fair enough.

I mean you’re sitting through a 1 hour sales presentation that goes over time…

But even this is a learning opportunity. I was able to get something very valuable from this (HARD) sales pitch.

The presentation was by a foreign-based (American owned) outsourcing operation, kind of like the one Chris Ducker has. The firm that presented at SB17 pairs business owners up with virtual assistants who are based in the Philippines.

The extent of the “tactics” was essentially “Here are all the things we’ll do for you when you’re a customer”…

But the cool part was when the speaker pulled up his HR manager on Skype, and basically did a live demo of their product.

As much as I didn’t enjoy being “sold”, seeing the humans on the other side and hearing their story was pretty neat.

And it taught me an important lesson:

Nobody does it alone.

Sometimes even if it seems like this is a one man show from the outside, the person probably does not run their entire business by themselves.

Some types of help are more visible than others, and sometimes you might be comparing where you “should be” (on your own) to some“one” who is further ahead of you — but they may not have visible help.

Understanding the different types of help that entrepreneurs get is incredibly important.

Having “a team” doesn’t always look like a fancy office with employees.

It’s important, so that you can set realistic expectations for yourself. Mainly so you can take the pressure off.

It’s helpful to look to other business figures for ideas, but a lot of the time this “viewing” can turn into pressure that you’re putting on yourself.

“Why aren’t I there yet? She has a 6 figure business, shouldn’t I too by now?”

Understand that you’re probably not seeing their whole picture, but if you’re still comparing yourself to them in an “apples to apples” way you can develop stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout.

“If you want this, you need to understand that there’s a LOT of stuff that people are not talking about. Nobody in my tech/startup world is talking about the suicides when kids fail. This is happening every day.” — Gary Vaynerchuk

Mental health is not discussed enough in the business space.

“The Media” loves to run story after story on the winners, but the winners are just the tip of the iceberg.

What gets forgotten, or never printed, are the losses we’ve had to suicide.

Even when literal famous people take their own lives from mental health distress, it’s hardly covered — and quickly overtaken by the avalanche of IPOs and funding rounds of the next day.

Second lesson that goes hand in hand with this, Nicole Walters reminded me that everyone is a human.

Maybe you have a hardcore business crush on someone (or a few people 😅). Sometimes when your brain is doing that it can freak you out a little bit at the same time though — the distance between you and them.

I definitely get it.

By remembering that everyone, no matter how awesome they seem, is a human you can steer yourself through the moments when you don’t feel good enough.

Remember that no single person possess the skills, and time to execute every business task perfectly.

Business owners use tools like virtual assistants, employees, interns, Fiverr, professional services (like marketing agencies), and freelancers to delegate their weaknesses, and focus on doing what they do best.

During a panel discussion, Nicole mentioned that there is a misconception about revenue. When you hear that someone makes 7 figures like Nicole, maybe you think that she has ONE million dollar stream of revenue.

That’s how it can look from the outside anyway.

But it’s mostly a myth.

Does Nicole really get a million dollars from one source of revenue? NO!

Her 7 figure business is a combo of her speaking, her products, her inner circle, her affiliate business — all of these come together to make her whole 7 figure business.

I know that that revenue streams need to be 6 figures to add up to 7 figures.

And maybe you’re freaking out right now.

Like “Hey whoa Jamie you lost me, I’m definitely never going to be in a place where that’s relevant to me — flattering you think I’ll have a 7 figure business though, but uh…”

Nicole’s boss example numbers might freak you out, but that’s not the point.

You can look at building your personal income in the same way to set realistic expectations.

Maybe one day you hope to earn $X00,000’s instead.

It works the same way. Building ONE $100,000+ revenue stream can feel pretty scary. Maybe it even seems impossible.

Instead, you can put together a mix of revenue streams that total your goal revenue.

Gary Vaynerchuk did the math in Crush It and Thank You Economy: basically every niche is big enough to build a hustle of $10,000-$50,000/year with dedicated work.

Even if your passion is something very obscure, with a small community like chicken farming. (Yes, it’s been done.)

Instead of thinking to yourself “WOW Nicole has this 7 figure business, and I’ve got to grow to her level in the first year or two??”, doesn’t this seem like a much more reasonable approach?

Figure out where you want to be at the top of your career.

Work backwards.

Try creating new revenue streams.

If it seems like the revenue stream will be small, you’re working on it for 3 months and it’s not made $10,000 — understand that maybe that isn’t the strongest pain point for your market. Keep exploring, when you identify the revenue stream won’t grow to a size you need — attempt a new variation or idea.

If you go into creating products to serve, and to give back value — the rest is trial and error, and learning how to identify the losers and move on from them.

If you’re working on it for a year and it doesn’t make $10,000 it’s definitely a loser.

Otherwise, what constitutes a winner and a loser will depend on your goals.

If you want to make $100,000, you’re looking for 2, 3 or 4 sources of income that total around $25,000-$50,000.

How can you give a part time job’s worth of value to people in 3 or 4 ways?

Maybe you’ll get lucky, or you have an audience whose pains you know well and your first try will get that revenue stream to $20k by June. If that’s the case, you can estimate it will be a $40ker.

You’re most of the way there, you also have a profitable market you can probably assist further.

Look, even Kim Garst started off making only a few hundred bucks per month — just enough extra cash to cover her car payment.

It’s taken her at least 5 years to build Boom! Social to where it is now.

It’s so important to NOT freak out, and to set realistic expectations because the truth is that a fully functioning million dollar business definitely does not pop out magically overnight.

You’ve gotta be in it for the longggggg haul, baby!

We’ve talked about mental health and business before, but I wanted to hit on it again. It’s so important to keep your focus on because business people are burnt out, stressed, and suffering high rates of depression — and we’re just not talking about it.

If you feel like this is you, please know that you’re normal.

The worst part about the silence, is that you feel like a weirdo — and you absolutely shouldn’t.

If you’re struggling with burnout and depression please know that we take you seriously. No one will think you’re weak for reaching out.

I encourage you to grab a trusted mentor, friend, stranger, your mom, your dog, your girlfriend — even a therapist if you don’t feel close to anyone but I implore you to please talk to someone about how you’re feeling. Especially if you’ve thought of taking your own life.

The first step to feeling better is going to be to not bottle it up.

Keep in mind that when you feel really lousy, you might feel like you want to “pull away” from people. Going out to dinner, or having a chat with your friend isn’t relaxing anymore — it’s stressful.

If you’re feeling like this, you should know that the times you want to pull away are often when you need to move towards someone the most.

What you’re feeling is normal.

It’s scary.

But nobody does it by themselves.

You’re only human.

I’d like to leave you with this final thought on “invisible help” from a recent #AskPat episode:

“Reinvesting in my business, I’ve found to be really important lately. I used to try and see how little I could spend on my business to keep it growing, but I realize as I’ve shifted from scrappy entrepreneur to now CEO of my company, I’ve found that when you invest in the right things in your business — THAT can help you exponentially grow.

I’ve been able to invest a lot of my profits from my business back into my business in several different ways like hiring a team (to) edit my podcasts, show notes, publish on Wordpress.

All of those things I did myself, and now I have other people do them for me so I can focus more on the bigger level things, and the things only I can do.” — Pat Flynn

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