“With a lot of eyeballs comes a lot of mouths.” – me

That’s what I told my friend the other day, after I hosted a live webinar for 8,000 people and walked away... frustrated.

I’d just made hundreds of thousands of dollars in minutes. Thousands of kind people were grateful and positive. What did I have to be upset about?

(Some) people being people-y.

Rude comments. Impatience. Entitlement.

They weren’t the majority, by any means. But that’s not what it feels like in your brain when you’re the one being fired at.

You think you want to build a big audience: lots of IG followers, a big email list, and loads of customers...

But you don’t think about the fact that with all those eyeballs... comes a lot of mouths. Comments about your hair. People wanting more free stuff on top of the free stuff they got. Insults about your intelligence. Getting called a scammer for selling things online... by people who want to sell things online.

The other day, I watched this 1-hour documentary about the founders of Cakes.

Twin sisters Taylor and Casey started their modernized chicken cutlet (IYKYK) company with just $5k each of their own money. Now, it's worth $100M.

While my business is just a smidge smaller than Cakes (🤣), I could relate to so much of their story.

In the beginning, all their leads came from Instagram and TikTok. Their entire strategy was to create a high volume of content (100 short-form videos per month) and bet that one of them would go “viral.”

By the time they went on Shark Tank and got a $300k investment from Emma Grede, social media was taking a toll on them mentally and emotionally. The sharks were concerned about how dependent they were on unreliable, ever-changing social apps for leads. At the same time, they were selling out of cakes monthly thanks to viral posts.

Taylor and Casey started Cakes to have more freedom and flexibility in their lives. But they were chained to their desks, dealing with constant fulfillment problems and keeping up with their intense self-induced content calendar.

Watching this documentary reminded me of questions I’m asking myself daily these days.

How else can I get leads for my online business besides social media?

Where’s the balance or compromise between “being on social media for my business” and “saving my mental health/living my life”?

What’s the point of building this business any bigger if it doesn’t serve the lifestyle I said I wanted?

It was honestly shocking to see $100M founders struggling with the same questions and problems (albeit on a much bigger scale) as me.

I think it speaks to a larger online business issue we’re all facing right now.

We thought we were just posting about our business on the apps for free.

But we didn’t realize at what cost.

Whether you sell $100/mo or $1M per year, you have to:

1. know where your leads are coming from; and
2. decide how much you’re willing to sacrifice of yourself, your peace, and your sanity to get them.

Even a business like theirs, one that’s so successful in terms of revenue and follower count, is thinking about how else to get leads outside of social media.

I won’t spoil the documentary for you, because I suggest you watch it here. But I think one of the smartest ways they’re moving away from social media is by creating a movement (childcare for all).

By talking about a (much) bigger issue and not just showing how their product physically works (what they primarily did on social), they’re creating a groundswell of real followers. People who agree with and buy into their mission.

Future customers who identify with the brand... because they’re building a brand identity outside of cute, practical chicken cutlets.

To survive the fractured attention economy AND keep your mental health intact...

We all have to diversify how we grow our businesses, like I am here:

👯 Join a mastermind not for the guru leading it, but for the in-person connections and community.
📫 Create a newsletter that’s so valuable people sign up just to get it (not your freebie).
📝 Write long emails in a time when everything's supposed to be quick.
🎤 Make unpolished, rambly Instagram reels that show your humanness.

I never anticipated building a business that had so many eyeballs on it. And I certainly couldn't have predicted how hard it would be to handle all the mouths that came with them.

But after my webinar the other day, I remembered: you get to control how you build this business, where you want it to go, and how you let it make you feel.

Because if you don't, it doesn’t matter if you sell $100M worth of chicken cutlets...

It won’t be worth it in the end.

Oh, and you don't need nearly as many eyeballs as you think you do lol.

Hit “reply” and let me know your thoughts. I want to hear from you, Reader.

Let me know if you liked this bonus essay. I’d love to send them from time to time, if I have something good to share.

xo,

Sam

PS. Ever wish you could login to my Kit account and see behind-the-scenes of my 72k sub email list, funnels, and freebie sequences? I'm hosting a (free!) live walkthrough with the Kit team on Tuesday, November 10 at 3pm ET to show you 'What's In Sam Vander Wielen's Kit'. Replay provided. Sign up here→ $0​