The final week that Inside Tabernacle is on PTO - that means I'll be publishing as usual, but the Paywall is Turned Off until August 23.
If you need to get in touch with me, email erica@jagoyoga.com.
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I was folding laundry last week listening to a podcast, and by the end of it I wanted to hire the woman speaking. And she had never pitched me!
What she was doing was a live audit. A woman had volunteered, and she listed everything she thought was wrong with her business. Her messaging, her audience, she was giving too much away...
The woman listened to all of it and then told her the bottleneck was none of the things she'd just named.
I sat down on the floor with a laundry basket in front of me. Because that's the job!! Not answering the question somebody brings you. FINDING THE THING UNDERNEATH they can't see, because nobody can see their own.
So I did it to myself this week. And I'm going to show you, because the finding is not flattering.
Here are my real numbers from the last ninety days.
My best performing post did 12,600 views. It's me talking to camera in front of my vision board about how to become magnetic and let your belief do the work. Nothing designed. Nothing for sale.
Second, at 6,800, is fearlessness is not something you teach. Third, a prediction about where personal branding is headed. Fourth, me asking who else is gagging over the AI generated artwork.
Now here are the ones at the bottom.
How I'm filling my masterclass on social media in August. 786.
My Sacred Side Hustle announcement. 772.
How to build a personal brand that looks as serious as your work. 513.
That last one is the actual title of the class I'm teaching on Wednesday inside the mastercalss, and it is one of my worst performing posts of the entire quarter.
For a while I told myself this was about polish. That my design was getting in the way and I should stop making things beautiful.
That's not what the data says. Some of my most art-directed posts did just fine. The birthday carousel did 3,400. A fully designed piece about the process being the same every time did 4,200.
The line isn't polished versus plain.
The line is whether I had something to sell.
Every post where I was thinking out loud went far. Every post where I was selling something went nowhere. And I have been sitting here for three weeks trying to "fix my hooks".
I'm in a content strategy mastermind at the moment, and this week my coach put a name to what I was looking at.
I had two completely different kinds of content on my feed doing two completely different jobs.
1 WIDE
For people who have never heard of me.
2 DEEP
For people who already have and are deciding about me.
They are not supposed to perform the same. They're not even supposed to LOOK the same.
And I had been holding both of them up against one number, which is how I ended up concluding that my best work was my worst work.
Which is exactly what happened with Ashley, who wrote to me last week to say she doesn't even "like" my reels. She just watches. Then her psychologist, who used to be a graphic designer, looked at my page and said "she's the real deal," and followed me.
He didn't decide that from a reel. He decided it from the whole page, held together, looking like one person made it on purpose.
The design isn't what's costing me reach. It's what's doing the quiet work on people I can't see yet.
So here's what I want you to do tonight, and it takes about ten minutes.
Open your last nine posts. Sort them into two piles: WIDE // the ones made for someone who has never heard of you, and DEEP // the ones made for someone who already has.
Most people find they have eight in one pile and one in the other. That alone will tell you why nothing's converting, or why nobody new is arriving.
Inside the Masterclass on Wednesday, I'll show you what to do with each pile, and how the design work changes depending on which one you're making.
August 26, one free hour, called Sacred Side Hustle. It's the designer's version of all of this. How a personal brand actually gets built, piece by piece, so your work looks as serious as it already is.
There are gifts too for all who attend LIVE.
Come sit with me. jagoyoga.com
Inside Tabernacle paywall is off for one last week. Back to normal next Sunday.
For a Limited Time, subscribe for $56/year
What I'm working on:
Two client projects that have nothing to do with any of this. Labels for a candle line, and a logo for a medical transport van, which is so far outside my usual work that I've started noticing every van on the road. Twelve years in and I'd never once looked at how a van is branded. Now I can't stop.
What I'm sitting with:
How much of my own belief gets passed straight to Noa without me saying a word about it. I think the most useful thing I can hand her is that anything is possible and the resources are there. She's watching how I act, not what I say.
✿
Being found and being chosen are two different jobs. Stop asking one piece of work to do both.
Until next Sunday,
Erica
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September 4: Tabernacle Creative Residency begins
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