103: How to Build Trust and Show Up with Confidence on Social Media with Chelsea Peitz
Showing up online can feel vulnerable, awkward, and emotionally exhausting.
If you have ever questioned your confidence, your relevance, or whether social media is even worth it anymore, this episode is for you.
In this conversation, I’m joined by Chelsea Peitz, keynote speaker, author, and one of the most thoughtful voices in personal branding and human-centered marketing. We talk about why visibility feels so uncomfortable, what is actually happening in your brain when you post online, and how social media has quietly shifted from connection to consumption.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
00:00 – Why showing up online feels vulnerable and emotionally charged for most creators
02:19 – How Chelsea accidentally built a personal brand without trying to be an influencer
07:30 – Why the brain builds trust through screens the same way it does in real life
10:24 – The most common limiting beliefs that stop people from posting consistently
18:35 – How Instagram shifted from connection-based content to entertainment and discovery
21:54 – Why traditional engagement metrics are no longer reliable indicators of success
27:55 – How long-term growth comes from consistency, relationships, and not quitting
33:57 – Why Instagram works best as a relationship-building tool rather than a content machine
Key Takeaways:
Visibility is not neutral and often triggers fear and self-doubt.
Your discomfort with social media is a human response, not a personal failure.
Trust can be built through a screen when communication is human and consistent.
Engagement has changed because people consume content like television.
Silent viewers still build connection over time.
Traditional metrics can undermine confidence and motivation.
Creating your own success metrics builds self-trust.
Long-term growth comes from relationships and consistency, not trends.
Links Mentioned:
Free Resource: Monetize Your IG Guide
A Truth You Need to Hear:
“Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s meaningful.” — Chelsea Peitz
Guest Bio
Chelsea Peitz (rhymes with lights) is a coach, author, and keynote speaker who helps people show up online with confidence, clarity, and authenticity. With a background in real estate and marketing, she teaches creators and business owners how to build an irresistible personal brand on social media using simple, human-first strategies that actually work.
When she’s not on stage, coaching clients, or creating Reels, Chelsea spends her time with her son, her husband, and their two rescue chihuahuas. She believes connection always comes before content and that being human is still the most powerful strategy there is.
S3 Ep103 Transcript: How to Build Trust and Show Up with Confidence on Social Media with Chelsea Peitz
00:00
Today on the show, I'm joined by the incredible Chelsea Peitz, a keynote speaker, author, and total powerhouse when it comes to understanding the science of connection online and how we can leverage Instagram to grow our brand. Chelsea brings such a refreshing and grounded perspective to the world of social media. And honestly, this was one of my favorite interviews ever. We dig into why showing up online can feel so hard sometimes.
00:29
the limiting beliefs that trip us up and how to actually build self-trust as a creator. She also shares with us her neuroscience take on what's happening in our brains when we're online and why it suddenly feels weird or vulnerable. Plus how our content consumption habits have totally shifted in the last few years and what that means for you as a marketer.
00:53
Whether you're a solo creator, a small business owner, or a marketer leading a team, this conversation will change how you think about showing up online. It's time to redefine your own metrics of success, create from a place of alignment, and start enjoying social media again. I hope you're excited. Let's do it.
01:15
Welcome to Strut It, a podcast about creating bold visibility on social media with zero apologies. I'm Elizabeth Marberry, your host and Instagram marketing coach. I help small business owners get seen on Instagram and monetize their offers so they can make more money doing their sole led work. If you're tired of spinning your wheels on Instagram and you're seeking simple, proven Instagram marketing strategies that actually work, you're in the right place.
01:44
Let's dive in.
01:54
So happy and honored that you have joined me today because I brought on a very special guest. Her name is Chelsea Peitz and she is an expert in helping people build their personal brand on social media. Chelsea is one of those creators that I have followed for years. I save her content. I like it. I share it. I'm obsessed with her.
02:19
And one day I saw that we were both on the social media marketing talk show and I was like, okay, this is my in with Chelsea. I'm going to reach out to her. I'm going to DM her. I'm going to say, hey girl, do you want to come on my podcast? And she was gracious enough to say yes. So I'm so thrilled to bring her to you today. Chelsea, welcome to the show. Yay. Thanks for having me and thanks for having the courage to send me that direct message. I mean, that's a lesson itself is
02:48
Have the courage, take the chance and send the message. So, so excited to be here with you to talk all things social media, personal branding. We're gonna talk a little bit about neuroscience and how our brains connect to people through screens. So I can't wait. Yes, I'm super pumped. Let's do this. Okay, so if people have never heard of you before or they've never seen your gorgeous rainbow office, by the way, she always has the most epic rainbows in her.
03:14
videos. Tell us who you are, what you do, and how did you land in this space of helping people to build their personal brand on social media? Well, I want to let everybody know that's listening. Once upon a time, which wasn't that long ago, I had no idea how to build a personal brand that I even had a personal brand. I did not grow up with social media or the Internet of Things. I had the old encyclopedia like a lot of people listening probably did. I had a whole adult career before using social media. And by the way, social media didn't exist in the same way that
03:44
It exists now. And the idea of meeting strangers online was kind of scary to me. So if anybody's thinking, you have that sounds familiar to me. I never intended to be in this world of social media. I never intended to write a book. I never intended to be on stages speaking. I actually really consider myself a teacher. I have a teacher's heart. I have a teacher's spirit. And before I got into what I'm doing now, I actually went to school to be a therapist. I wanted to be with people and help them.
04:14
and serve them. And I realized, ooh, you know, after I got that degree, I'm highly emotional and very sensitive and a little bit empathic and figured that probably may not be the best thing for my nervous system. So I went into marketing and sales and I ended up sort of accidentally, if there's no accidents, fate, you know, brought it to me. But I ended up interviewing for this position a number of years into working in sales and marketing, specifically in the real estate world.
04:41
And I guess I interview really well because I landed this job as a marketing director and I had zero experience. And this was like a fortune 250 company. So again, take the chance. Even if you don't think you're qualified, you can learn while you do. And it doesn't matter what your degree is in, or even if you have one, because you're going to learn on the job. So I started learning how to do marketing. When I say learning, like I literally had no one or nothing. And really YouTube was kind of there.
05:08
But there was no class like marketing classes back then were very different. You friends, we didn't even have Instagram stories. Okay. So it was a very different world. And so I simply just started, you know, I was listening to a podcast. You guys probably know of a guy named Gary V, Gary Vaynerchuk, big fan of his. And I started listening to a podcast while I was standing in the room, making my coffee, getting ready for my big girl marketing job. And he was like, Hey, there's this app called Snapchat and everybody should get on it. And here's what people are missing. They're missing that.
05:37
It's the only app where people pay 100 % attention because once you open it, it's gone. Now it's different. But back then it would disappear after you looked at it. And I thought, you know, there's going to be something to that. So I decided to jump on it. I'm playing around, right? I don't know anything. And I ended up meeting somehow, I don't even know how I started following him, some people that were in my industry. And we started talking. And then we started talking a lot. And then we started talking every day.
06:02
And then I felt like I knew these people and it was kind of weird. And I thought, why do I feel like I know these people? Like I've never even met them and this is so strange. And why do I feel so connected? Wow. And this is all through Snapchat. It's all through Snapchat, right? And you got to remember there was no live video back then. People were not making Instagram stories. There were no TikToks. were no vertical videos. This was super weird because Snapchat opened up to a camera. So you had to make something with you in it, right? It was very, very weird at the time.
06:32
And so it was the first time we were really just talking to our cameras, right? We didn't know what we were doing. We had no clue. And that was beautiful. It was so brilliant that we had no idea what we were doing and we were totally learning out loud. And we were sharing everything we knew. We weren't gatekeeping because there was nowhere to go to find out anything. So it was this really beautiful experience. And it reminded me of going back to like the 90s when I was a little kid watching the real world. And I was like, why?
07:00
Why do I feel like I know these people? Why am I watching people just like living in their home, right? Oh my God, I used to watch the real world. of course you did. Everybody did. And it was truly humanity thing. This feeling of we want to be connected with other people. And I know we're going to get into this a little bit later, but what happened was I ended up having this mastermind where I met with about 25 of these people that I've been talking to for years, right? We all got together, we met in person and it was phenomenal. And I still talk to a lot of those people every single day. And this was like 15 years ago. And
07:30
There was something that struck me to the core. And I got back on that plane and I said, gosh, there's something here. So I went home and went back to my roots in psychology and behavior. And I studied brains, biology and human behavior for a year. Ended up writing my first book. And it was all about how our brain really has no idea that there's a difference between seeing someone face on the screen and seeing it in real life, the same neurons fire and wire. So you actually can accelerate and build trust through a screen. And let me tell you,
07:59
Nobody wanted to book that keynote until after 2020, when all of us were like, oh yeah, so we're going to have to do Zoom. So we're going to have to do Teams meetings. So we're going to have to be on FaceTime, right? So that's how I ended up here, but I've been talking about human centered communication and marketing and how to use technology to be more human for literally years before it was a thing, before there was AI and people thought I
08:29
was crazy. Oh my gosh, I love this perspective. And I'm sure so many of our listeners are nodding their heads because a lot of clients come to me, you know, I'm in my mid 40s, I just turned 45. And a lot of them are around my age, some of them older, some of them younger. But there's always this kind of interesting shame, like, oh, I'm just like so far behind. And I just, I'm just not good at this. Right. I just don't know how to do it. I'm like, of course you don't know how to do it. Like,
08:58
This didn't even exist in this form five years ago. You could have gotten your masters in marketing a decade ago and it's so much of it is different. Yes, there's a hundred percent crossover, right? But please be gentle with yourself. Like you're not too late. You can do this. So I just appreciate you giving us that kind of zoomed out perspective because I think it's so easy to lose touch with that in this world, right? Like it feels like it's always existed like this.
09:27
I'm curious because you talk about this a lot in your content and I always resonate with this and that is you really highlight like the limiting beliefs or the things that are keeping us stuck when it comes to creating content for our personal brand. So what are some things that you see that are common struggles or roadblocks that people have that kind of trip them up? Yeah, absolutely. I've talked to and coached
09:55
I don't count anymore. I'm sure it's, you know, the tens of thousands of people that whether it's on a stage or on a Zoom call or one to one. And what's interesting is no matter what industry, no matter what generation, by the way, I'm a Gen Xer, it's all the same because it's a human experience. And really what it is is, you know, innately, and you might have seen this in a psychology class in high school or college, know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs where what do we need to survive and thrive? Well, to survive, we need food, shelter, water, et cetera, but to thrive.
10:24
we need to feel affirmed, we need to belong, we need to feel that we're loved, right? And so that part doesn't get talked about when we're creating content. But what happens is visibility isn't neutral. It's actually quite vulnerable. So imagine you putting yourself out there and making a piece of content and the whole world can see it. Now you imagine putting your personality and your perspective in that piece of content and now you've upped another layer there of vulnerability because if you have a perspective,
10:50
not everybody shares the same one and what if they actually tell you in the comments, right? So, you know, video and content with us in it, a personal brand can feel like exposure. It can feel like visibility. It can feel like the possibility of judgment. Some are positive, some are negative, right? So it's ultimately fear. Pretty much everyone has it.
11:15
And so we come up with these limiting beliefs or things that hold us back, or if you want to just simply call them fears. And I want to share some of the common ones. And of course, you know, we all have heard the, just do not like being on camera or seeing myself back or hearing my voice. That's a bit, we're not even going to get into that, but I'm just going let you know that's a big one. Everybody thinks that. It's very actually scientifically normal. And just a really quick sentence. One,
11:42
We see ourselves in a reverse image. So we get ready in the mirror, right? We don't have people filming us all the time. We're not watching footage of ourself and how we emote when we talk to people. So the very rare opportunity we have to see ourselves, we're like, wait a minute, that's me, but like, it doesn't quite look like me, right? So it could be the lighting, it could be the lens length that could change.
12:03
You literally are a reverse mirror image and we're not symmetrical on our faces. Nobody is. And so our brain goes, wait a minute, that's me, but it's not quite me. And I can't quite figure out what it is. So there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that's happening subconsciously very quickly. And also we have different acoustics inside of our skull. Yes, your voice sounds normal to me. It does not sound normal to you. And that's just how it is. So there's a lot of science that goes into that. Okay. But let's talk about some of the other ones. So.
12:30
Sometimes we have fears and self doubts about relevance and effectiveness, right? Whether your work actually matters and how does that come out? That sounds like, I don't really care what somebody's having for lunch. How's showing that gonna help me get more business? Or Chelsea, I'm a private person. I don't wanna become one of those annoying over-sharers and cringe out my family. No, thank you. I was raised that you keep business over here and personal over here. Or I hate sales content. I don't wanna come across as a pushy person. Or social media feels over-saturated.
12:59
for my industry? How would I even stand out? Has everything already be set? Ultimately, these are all fears around, is my content and message actually gonna matter? Do I actually matter? You might call it imposter syndrome. My life isn't aesthetically pleasing enough for content. Everyone seems to have a niche. I don't even know what that is. What if people see through me? What if being myself actually doesn't work, right? So there's...
13:28
so many internal human things. And the list goes on and on, right? Like I have an entire chapter in my book about limiting beliefs. And so I'm sharing that because you're 100 % normal. If you didn't have limiting beliefs, I'd be a little bit nervous. So those are the things that I look at and we work through and say, okay, what is that fear really about? By the way, I don't just rip off the band-aid. You know, there's so many fears about
13:56
being on video, there's so many different ways to baby step your building of your self trust. I know we're going to talk about metrics and that's going to be a baby step of building your self trust. But those limiting beliefs really are never about how we look or sound. It's about how we might be perceived or the feeling of, you know, not necessarily being seen, but being seen. Those are the things that we all have, whether it's on a video or off a video, whether we're standing in front of our
14:26
company meeting, whether we're raising our hand in class to give an idea, it's all the same. It's just a whole lot easier to say, don't really like social media or hiding behind these things. It is a challenge. And a lot of people think, oh, social media is so easy. You just get on there, make a video. No, it's not. It is a human experience and it is very vulnerable. Yeah. Thank you so much for normalizing that. And I couldn't agree more.
14:54
the most vulnerable when you're putting your face out there, your thoughts, your lived experience, your opinions, your expertise. One of the things that I tell people when we talk about fear of judgment is it's true, you are going to be judged, right? Like we can't control other people, but I always think about like, who is that one person I want to serve? I love to think of Instagram as this mirror, kind of like our businesses are a mirror.
15:20
where they reflect back to us our wounds and our shadows. And what I'm hearing you say, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, one of our common collective wounds as humans is a sense of I'm not enough, right? Or I don't belong. And so if you're operating and creating content even, like you're trying to do the things like, Elizabeth says, I just have to do this and this and, but I still feel horrible, right? It's like,
15:50
we're seeking that validation outside of ourselves. Yeah. I mean, this is like a perfect segue into one of the ways that we were talking before we hit record on, you know, I always tell people just because you can measure something doesn't mean it's, you know, meaningful to your business or your nervous system. And a lot of us, you know, are out here saying, oh, the algorithm and it's all changed. And ultimately, it's probably not an algorithm problem. It might be.
16:19
a self-worth in finding more validation from metrics. And what happens is those metrics, just like getting on the scales, I don't get on the scale every day. Okay. I just don't because I know myself. I'm really self-aware. I, for a long time, never looked at metrics. I never watched my own videos back for five years. I don't recommend that, but I was very self-aware and I knew that if I watched my videos back, I was not going to make another video. So there are levels of self-awareness, right?
16:47
And some will say, well, that was fear. Yeah, absolutely it was. And I kept going. Survival. It's not like saying, oh, you're fearful. So we're just never going to do it, right? There's ways to do it. Now, I wish I had the ways I have now back then. But ultimately, I tell people, you know, there's so many things and this kind of ties into a couple of things that I know you wanted me to talk about. One, I just want to make everybody feel better and give them a little bit permission right now that they're listening. How we consume.
17:15
and engage with content is totally different now than we did even two, three, certainly 15 years ago. Let me tell you what I mean by that. Everybody here listening understands Facebook. Everyone listening has either had a Facebook account or still has one, even if they never go there, right? Because that was like what we had. That was how we started. And you will recall a decade ago, which isn't that long ago,
17:42
you wouldn't accept a friend request from somebody on Facebook you didn't know in real life. That would have been weird. You would have been like, who is this person? That's why they started adding, oh, well, you have these friends in common. You both know Elizabeth. Oh, okay. Well, great. I'll accept this friend request. So we lived in a world of social media where it truly was keeping up with people that we knew.
18:05
And we've slowly gotten away from not we, but the platforms and their goals and their business goals have gotten away from who do you know, connection based content to what can we show you that you might like? What can we show you that's sort of like a TV show and entertainment? So I want you to imagine now, because this is the world we're in. And specifically when we talk about Instagram, I'm going to give you some stats. It's going to blow your mind. Some recent stats from Meta, they were at an FTC hearing in April of this year, and they showed their own internal data.
18:35
and their own internal data show that on Instagram, regular users like you and me are spending approximately 7 % only of our time with friends content. Only 7 %! Why is that happening? Because now we have so many recommendations. We have the Reels feed, which is primarily all recommendations. We are seeing people we have never seen before. A couple of things happen when we do that. One, we don't engage with people we've never seen before.
19:05
That's just not maybe we'll give it a like. That's a big deal. So what's happening now is I want you to imagine if you went home tonight and you decided to go to Netflix and you're like, I don't know what to watch. Just randomly pick a show. Let's have fun. We'll make it a game. We randomly pick a show, but we don't start on episode one. We start that random show that we have no like context about on episode nine. Can you imagine? And then let's say you finish that and you're like, I'm not really sure what was happening. That was kind of interesting. Then you're like,
19:34
let's do it again. Then you pick a completely different show. Maybe this one's a comedy and the other one was like a mystery. And then you're on episode five. That is what our feeds are like. Random episodes of shows we've literally never seen. And so we have to understand that we are now consuming silently like TV in many cases. Like we're just like consuming. We're not engaging. Our engagement is silent watching. And if we're really lucky, a like or a share to a friend in the DM.
20:02
So what's happening is everybody's like, oh my gosh, social media doesn't work anymore. This darn algorithm. it's like, I make this content, and it's crickets. Now think about how you consume. You probably don't jump into conversation and follow somebody and start DMing them if you've never seen them before. It takes some time for them to connect with you. Number two is that we get so darn used to watching it like TV when we go down the rabbit hole and it's like dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. Ah, this is so relaxing. Where did my last two hours go?
20:31
get to engage with the people we actually know because we're not intentional. So we've moved from connection to entertainment, connection to discovery. And so your content is not broken. What's happening is everybody's out there consuming and not engaging because that's how it's kind of changed our behavior and our interaction with content. And we also are seeing less of the people that we signed up to follow.
20:57
Yes. That's what's happening. people, when they see you, are probably like, oh my gosh, Elizabeth, I'm like, I loved your video that you posted the other day about your like, whatever you were making your recipe for fall. And you're like, really? Because I don't recall you commenting on it. Nope. We're just out here silently connecting while we're consuming, right? But people are watching. And so we have to let go of the traditional metrics. Because if you are wrapped up in views, if you are wrapped up in comments, number one,
21:25
It's really hard to get comments now because we are so used to watching it like TV, right? So engagement has changed and it's not that your content is ruined or terrible or like engagements dropped off the cliff. It's changed. And so if we're chasing those kind of metrics, we're going to get really disappointed and burned out and you're going to start changing your content. You're going to start chasing a trend. You're going to start chasing a new edit, a transition, trying to make your content look like someone else who appears to be doing well.
21:54
We don't exactly know what they're doing well. Maybe they hit the wave of the algorithm when they hit it. Maybe it started two years ago. Maybe they're speaking on 50 stages a year. And that's how they're getting many of their people. We just don't know, right? Oh, true. It's so challenging to look at these metrics. And so my answer is, how do we start building trust with ourselves? We make up our own metrics. And what do I mean by that? Well, maybe for 30 days, your metrics are something like,
22:24
Did I make something I really wanted to? Like we were talking about me making my Halloween DIY costume. That was fun and creative for me. It has nothing to do with what I do for work, and that was enjoyable. And that was for me, okay? Because I was like, I had fun making this, I like it, and that's what mattered. So maybe your metric is, did I make something for me? Maybe your metric is, did I actually use my voice and face in a video? Because that's hard. That's hard.
22:52
And that is enough of a metric. Guess what? You control both of those. We do not control anything once we send it out to the world. Maybe your metric is, did I not consume at all? Did I talk to people first in the DMs with intention and create those relationships and help them feel seen in a very
23:16
what I call can be an emotionally intelligent database or CRM called social media because it's got a lot more data on that human and context than your email when you send it over. And did I start conversations with people I care about past clients, current clients, referral partners, et cetera, em first, then create and maybe not even consume. That's a metric. Yes. So you got to make up your own metrics because you're going to get really
23:44
really discouraged. And I even know this and I still get discouraged. Like I was on the call with a client and they're doing everything right. And I go, oh, and by the way, I'm the client. And I'm like, what's happening? Yes, no, exactly. And I love this validation of we don't control the algorithm. Like I'm not working at Metta behind the scenes pulling the strings. But what do we have control over? And yeah, I love that idea of
24:13
those different ways that you could set your own metrics of success. Because one of the things that I have learned as a creator and marketer and business on Instagram is that you have to be willing to play the long game, right? And I'm always talking about sustainability because what can happen is
24:39
Oftentimes people get excited when they first start doing Instagram, like sometimes, right? People are like, I'm gung-ho, I'm gonna do this. And maybe their views are even like reflecting that, right? Like, oh my gosh, I even have clients who'll be like, oh, my views are going up, what you're telling me is working. But I'm always coaching them to say yes and no, that growth on Instagram is not a linear thing, right? Like it's not like your views,
25:08
start to go up and then they're just gonna forever keep going up forever as you're posting content. I can tell you as a person who has been posting consistently for at least four or five years now, I have months where I'm gaining followers, I have months where I'm losing more followers than I'm gaining. My views are up, they're down. It is a freaking roller coaster, right? Which also, again, Instagram is a mirror. I say this with our business, being an entrepreneur for 15 years, this is business ownership too.
25:37
When you're building your own brand, growth is not linear. So to me, there's this mindset play of if you want to be successful, you have to be in it for the long haul. And to your point, Chelsea, how do you do that? How much more empowering is it to create your own metrics of success and say, I did it. I am proud of how I showed up versus
26:04
being at the whim of something you have no control over and riding that emotional roller coaster, your nervous system is like, it's no wonder that people are like, I hate Instagram, I hate social media, I wanna burn it all to the ground. Like you can see how they would get to that point. Oh, for sure, absolutely. And, you know, I don't know this will help anyone out there, but I was just thinking about this, I'm doing a keynote in a couple of weeks. And ironically, the...
26:31
people that I started with, told the story about Snapchat and I was listening to Gary V's podcast. And so I wrote the book. Eventually I got an email in my inbox a few years after, maybe it was about a year after, Gary V's team was inviting me to speak at his event. I was like, well, this is a full circle moment. So I, you know, go, course, and it's amazing. And I meet Gary, who was a lovely human being, and I ended up meeting some people there.
26:58
And we were all in the same spot. were all just being kind of, we didn't really know what we were doing. This is just when Instagram Stories came out. So was actually asked to talk about Instagram Stories as they were brand new. They were handing out guides that they made on how to make an Instagram Story, because that's how new they were. Oh, wow. In November of this year, I'm stepping on stage with all of those people that I met there that now host their own event. And last year had Gary speak. Wow.
27:26
What really brought this full circle to me is that the key, yeah, some of us hired full-time videographers after the years. I didn't, right? Yes, a lot of us got better on camera, but like my content isn't that drastically different. I'm still using my phone. I'm still talking to it like a story. The success code was we just didn't quit. Yeah, it's been years, years, and we're still here. And it wasn't like I want to tell people,
27:55
It's not like I became infinitely exponentially better at editing a video. I didn't hire a team. Now, some of my friends hired me. Yes, they have. That was right for them, but you don't have to. But we all literally just kept going. We went from Snapchat to Instagram to TikTok. That's it. That's the hack is like, don't give up. Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to do that.
28:22
They really want the template and the checklist and that's fair, right? You know, the blank page is overwhelming. Do you need some ideas? Do you need some guidance? And ultimately, you know, I just look back and think, wow, that's wild how full circle that came. And it was purely because of sticking with it. And of course, creating the relationships. Like I literally text those people, talk to those people. I refer those people business. Those people refer business to me.
28:48
And it always has been and always will be the relationships. I don't care if it's you met somebody at a networking meeting in person, like a BNI meeting 20 years ago, or you meet someone on Instagram, nothing has changed. The only thing is we have different tools, but everything still works. Being a human still works. And literally talking to people. It's funny when you think about it, like everything has changed, but ultimately nothing has changed. Yeah, totally.
29:17
I want to go back to one thing that you said when you were kind of talking through like your process of when you go on to Instagram. I guess you were saying this from a standpoint of this could be a metric of success for you as the creator is maybe instead of consuming you log in in your DMs, you're responding, you're getting into conversation. You said another thing that I want to highlight, which is that you are using the direct messages to build out your referral network.
29:47
your client or customer database. This is one of those pieces of Instagram that I feel like we don't really talk about enough because we're so focused on content. I got to create more content. I got to create more content. And I teach a lot about leads and sales because my people, they don't want to just grow a community or grow visibility to grow visibility. They want...
30:15
actual leads and sales from their efforts. And we talk a lot about customers come from conversations and how to create content that ignites conversations, right? That's one piece. But the other piece that you said that I just wanted to highlight for everybody, because I do this and this is literally the strategy of how I got Chelsea, who is a really big deal on my podcast, is I sent her a voice memo
30:44
on Instagram, okay? So think about that. We have people at our fingertips that we could just connect with. You know, I'm in the wedding industry. My second business is a wedding dance studio. And when I'm speaking to wedding industry professionals, I'm like, you know, if you work an event with a planner, what if after that event you message them and said, hey, Chelsea, I loved working with you. I loved how you did this, this, and this.
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Just so you know, I do have availability. Like how many of us go that extra step of building those connections yet we're constantly spending our time honestly distracted by our content, I would argue, when Instagram is so beautifully positioned to help us build those relationships. So I wanted to highlight that because you said that as like a metric of success and I'm like, ooh, that could be a really new idea for someone listening. Cause I haven't really talked about that a lot on the podcast.
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Is that something that you do a lot of, like where you're messaging people or like how have you? Yeah, so I have a very specific way that I look at how do we leverage not only specifically DMs, which I will talk about, but social media. And this goes hand in hand with how a lot of us, and you mentioned, you know, I'm a little bit older than you, but same age. And we have a lot of people that are probably listening that know life before social media as it exists now.
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And it's important to remember that the same brain that builds trust offline, we build trust the same way online. But a lot of us who didn't grow up with social media don't believe that social media is real life. And because we don't believe social media is real life, we start doing a whole bunch of weird stuff we would never do in front of someone. Let me give you an example. Oh my god, this is so interesting.
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I don't like how my voice sounds, so I'm not gonna make videos. It's cringe, right? Or I'm gonna apologize when somebody watches my video or I'm gonna, you whatever it is. It's like if you were going to Starbucks to go meet with somebody and a client asks you a question, of course you know the answer. I want you to imagine like literally diving under the table and furiously writing on a notebook and you just like plop it up on there and it silently slides across the table. It's like, listen, here's the thing. I've heard my voice on video. I have learned it is cringe. How about you talking all right? Of course you wouldn't do that.
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You also wouldn't run into someone at Target that you know by first name, like, know, and trust, your neighbor, or whatever, and be like, oh my god, Elizabeth, how are you? Are you guys getting ready for Halloween? Okay, what are the kids going as? And then all of a sudden I'm like, by the way, here's my business card if you ever need it. It was fine until it got weird. I'm over here holding my frozen pizza in the aisle and we were just having a conversation as humans and then you had to throw, that's for you. That's not for me. That's not small talk. That's not rapport building. That's not connection.
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So what happens is we do a whole bunch of stuff because we think social media isn't real. So we can copy paste the message and send it to 50 people. But who is that for? That's for you to say, oh, all my engagement is done today. I did my prospecting. It only took me two minutes. We're so busy trying to get seen that we forget we have, I'm going say the only tool, the best free tool ever on the planet we've ever had in our entire lives where we can make other people feel seen.
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So let me explain how I use, this is for my people too, who are like, yeah, you're not gonna get me to do a video. Here's the thing, you don't have to post on social media. Posting is optional. Shocker, I know. But let me tell you how you can start using it as an emotionally intelligent CRM, a database, customer relationship management. We all have those, we're in business. Maybe it's a Post-it note, maybe it's an Excel spreadsheet, but we've all been told day one of business, you have to get a database. oh So what's the downside of a database? oh
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I have any idea what's going on in your life if I send out my Halloween email tomorrow, right? I don't know if you're going trick or treating, if you've made your own DIY costume, if you've turned into a complete chaotic crafting mess like mine did. I don't know if you're sick. Anything, right? Those emails that we send also are often for us. It's about us to market our brand. Of course we're going to give value in those emails. We're going to give updates and it's also for us.
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So let's take it to social media. I go to social media, I hop on Instagram, and I see that you've just tried to create a costume last minute. It did not go well, but it was very funny, right? And so now I have context about Elizabeth. I don't have any context about Elizabeth on the other end of my Gmail or my flow desk or whatever it is, right? So social media allows us to see what people have decided to share and
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we now have context. And so when you and I get on a podcast call and you go, oh my God, I love that Halloween video you made, it was hilarious. How would you know that? You have context, right? Now you can have a conversation with me about me and I get to have an experience with your brand on my terms. You are paying attention to me. You are making me feel seen. You have made me noticed. And so imagine leveraging a tool and
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Maybe you don't even do anything online. Maybe you use online information and you make an offline experience. For example, like maybe you lost your dog this week. And so instead of me sending a comment or sending a DM, I send you flowers to your house. If you're my client, I probably know that if you're a friend, right? I'm not talking about strangers. I'm talking about your database, your community, your people. Maybe you never post a video.
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That's cool, but it doesn't give you an excuse to not use the most powerful context machine on the planet to make people feel seen. And let me tell you, when you do something nice for someone, when you give them a compliment, when you share their stuff, when you check in on them, when you say happy birthday, when you say thank you, you feel good. And they feel good. And people don't remember your posts. They remember your presence, just like in the offline world.
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That is the key to all the things. Like, I don't care if you're posting every day. If you're not talking to people and you're not making them feel seen, it's just like 1982 when we would go to the B &I meeting and that one person would come and stand in the corner and eat the lunch and never give a referral. But the other person would come in and they would meet everybody and chit chat and know their kids' names and give referrals. Who got the business? Nothing has changed.
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But if that B &I person goes in there and talks about themselves and how wonderful their business is and PS and can I give you this and all that. So I don't sell in the DMs. I get the most sales in my DMs. My content does the selling. My DMs are for me to make other people feel seen. Now, when do I sell? In your content. Then what happens? Oh my gosh. I feel like I know you. I've never even met you.
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The sales come to you, which is wild. And you don't believe me until it happens. And then one day it happens. You're like, OMG, you were right. I literally just make this content and nobody comments on it. I went to the grocery store, ran into someone. like, oh my gosh, we love your videos. We see them all the time. Actually, you know what? I was thinking about reaching out to you. I can't measure that because they never left me a trackable metric. I can't measure an aha moment. I can't measure when someone says, dang, that is what I needed to hear today. Thank you. Can't measure it.
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You can't tell me those aren't the most meaningful things. That's way more meaningful than views. So that's what I mean by are you talking to people and not are you giving them a PS at the end about you? That's for you. We don't need your phone number. We don't need your email. I don't even hear your address. Guys, 25 years ago in sales, busy day for me was like three humans. That's all I could get to. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. And then I was driving.
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I had to call you and leave a one minute voicemail and you would listen to it, unhinged behavior, and call me back wild. We don't need any of that now. And so we don't want to abuse it. I want to always make it about us because that's a sacred space. As odd as that sounds because it is so open, but for me, that's my sacred space. And so if you want to connect with me, you got to make some effort.
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a little bit, you know, get to know me, build rapport, because my brain is the same brain online as it is offline. And if you skip the small talk and go right to the big talk, it's weird. And I don't like it. We don't do that in real life. We talk about the weather. We talk about what you do. Do you have kids? Do you have a dog? We don't jump into, so what do you think about the financial crisis that's happening? Or, you know, who did you vote for in the last election?
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That's big talk, right? Sales is big talk. That's a big ask. And so the mindset reframe for a lot of the people I work with is this isn't just a numbers game. It's literally people. And yeah, sure. You want to do a numbers game because everything works. There's no rules. You want to copy paste and automate and do all that. Guess what? You're going to get people responding. You're going to get closed deals.
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I would venture to say though, I wonder where the percentage is, right? Like I've never actually personally looked at it. But if my percentage is that a hundred percent of people that I direct message, direct message me back versus two percent of people in a cold like outreach spam, they might say, well, I still get numbers. Okay, so you got two percent, I got a hundred percent. Yeah. How's your rate going right now? They're talking about sales, but yeah.
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It's just like real life. Like I'm not going to meet you at the Halloween party tomorrow and be like, Hey, do you think you want to work with me? Well, I literally just met you. I don't know. That's kind of weird. Like maybe we should have like coffee and like at least get to know each other. I love this reframe because sometimes when my clients are posting their content and of course we know I'm teaching them about how to create the content to.
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build connections with their audience and serve their audience and help their ideal client feel seen with their content. They'll do it for like a month and be like, it's not working. And I'm like, sister, you're highlighting that, right? I love that reframe, Chelsea, of like, and I'm gonna use this now with my clients, I'll give you credit.
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Imagine if you met me at a party and then I'm talking to you a couple of times over the next few weeks and then I'm like, do you want to come to my wedding in a month? You're not going to want to come to my wedding. That would be weird. Exactly. So I love that idea, that reframe, because we often talk about like, oh, I'm overthinking my content, right? But what's underneath that? You know, it's because we've lost touch with the fact that there's a human on the other side of the phone, like consuming it. Wow.
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Your most impactful content and honestly your most original content is your conversations. It's not what you're posting in the feed because that is content and like nobody thinks that's content, but that's what's getting the sales. That's what's building the trust. That's what actually algorithmically, if we're going to go talk about the algorithm, the more I talk to someone, the more likely they're going to see my future posts because the algorithm is putting my content in front of the people that I talk to and engage with.
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You're saying when you talk to them, you're talking about talking to them in the direct message. Yeah, and the DMs and commenting on their stuff. And a lot of people are like, yeah, but like engagement is so low. I'm like, well, friend, how well are you engaging? Mm-hmm. Yeah, if you want to get more engagement, you better be a good engager because people aren't going to see your content. The algorithm is showing it a whole bunch of other stuff. So if they still only have 10 minutes to scroll through the feed, but 78 % of their feed is random people,
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they're probably not going to see you. It's not like they're going to increase their time to be like, well, I'm seeing all this recommended content and I still want to see my friends content. They're just going to not see you unless you're talking to them. So the age old strategy in sales and marketing is how many people are you talking to? How many people are you connecting with? How many people are you making feel seen? Still applies. Just can do it a whole lot easier on social media than anything else. Oh, absolutely. Chelsea, this has been so
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I want to say mind blowing, okay? Like so refreshing your perspective. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. And I know that people are listening and they're thinking, okay, I need to go follow Chelsea. I need to scoop up any resources she has. So where do you want people to go if they want to learn more about you, get your book, all the good stuff? Yeah. So no surprise. Find me on Instagram. It's Chelsea.
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It's P-E-I-T-Z. And you'll find me, yep, there's a little blue check mark there. And my latest book is coming out in May of 2026. It's going to be called Uncopy Pasteable, How to Build a Trusted Personal Brand on Social Media. So everything we just talked about, but like deep dive, lots of exercises on it too. So yeah, I'm excited for that.
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Oh my gosh, I am definitely going to be purchasing your book. I cannot wait to get it. And we will make sure we link your Instagram and all of your resources in the show notes. Thank you, Chelsea, so much for your time today. Thanks for having me. I hope that you feel so seen and validated. I'm so grateful that you took the time to be with us today. If you loved today's episode, please share it with a colleague or friend.
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who is also trying to figure out the mystery of Instagram. We hope that we were able to simplify it for you today's. And may this be a reminder that you get to just be a human online. How refreshing is that? So I hope that as you walk into your week that you're able to show up in a way that feels good for you. And I just hope that you love today's episode. If you haven't already, please take.
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30 seconds to rate and review the show that really helps us with the podcast algorithm. And I cannot wait to strut it with you next week. Thank you for listening to strut it. If you're ready to start leveraging Instagram to grow your business, then you're gonna wanna grab my free monetize your IG guide where you'll learn seven simple and proven ways to finally make money on Instagram.
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You can grab your guide at ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies. That's ElizabethMarberry.com slash freebies to get my monetize your IG guide. If you got some incredible value from today's episode, be sure to leave a review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. And I cannot wait to start it with you again next week.
