Girl Gang Craft Podcast Episode #63 “Maximize Your Business by Minimizing Your Time (on the gram!)”

Phoebe Sherman interview with Manu Muraro of Your Social Team

INTRO
Phoebe Sherman:

Welcome to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast where we dive in deep to all things business wellness, creativity, and activism for artists and entrepreneurs. We talk with impactful female driven companies and founders for an inside look at the entrepreneurial experience where you'll come away with tangible steps to elevate your business. Are you ready? I'm your host, Phoebe Sherman, founder of Girl Gang Craft artist and designer, and marketing obsessed. We're here to learn together how to expand our revenue, implement new organizational techniques, and cultivate best business practices as we work towards creating a life doing what we love. Let's get started.

00:44.00
Phoebe Sherman:

Hello, hello creatives! Excited today to bring Manu from Your Template Club on the podcast, we have a really good conversation about social media and you know, all the mental health around that and we talk about posting and ghosting and some unpopular opinions so, we really get into it. But before we get into it, I just want to say that if you're interested in having your work on our Holiday Gift Guide, having your brand, having your business on our holiday gift guide, the deadline to apply is October 26. And that's the last day to apply. So make sure you get your information in. You can apply on our site at girlgangcraft.com/holiday-gift-guide-apps. If you don't know what that is, and that's too much to type in, I get it. We're gonna go to girlgangcraft.com and click apply and hit that drop down menu apply to holiday gift guide. So especially if you want to be a part of the Girl Gang Craft community, and maybe you're not located near any of our cities that we have in person crafters at, this is a great way to be a part of the Girl Gang Craft community. This is a great way to get your brand in front of small business lovers, those folks who really want to support the small business community during the holiday season. Those folks that really want like special unique gifts. This is the way to get your brand in front of those folks. So all the information’s on the site, go ahead and make sure you get your application in before October 26. And we will go ahead and hop right into the episode.

02:38.00
Phoebe Sherman:

Hello Creatives. Welcome back to the Girl Gang Craft podcast. Today I have Manu on the podcast and we're gonna chat all things social media. Welcome to the podcast!

Manu Muraro:
Thank you, Thank you for having me Phoebe.

Phoebe Sherman:
Thank you so much for being here. I've followed you for a bit now, I mean a few years, so I'm really excited to talk with you face to face.

Manu Muraro:
Awesome! Thank you.

Phoebe Sherman:
Can you tell our community a little bit about what it is that you do?

Manu Muraro:
Yes I help small business owners and entrepreneurs just to get a little ahead with their business. My main focus is to help them actually grow their revenue. Social media is just a vehicle that I find to do that, but I will go beyond that we'll talk about like, you know, email marketing, prioritizing your mental health things like that because this is all a big part of how it all fits together. Um, so what I offer to people now is coaching Instagram especially. Um, and then lots and lots of templates for social because I feel that doing part of the work for people that are busy and overwhelmed helps a lot more than teaching and all that. So, focusing a lot on templates and then for you services.

Phoebe Sherman:
Cool, I Love that you made the distinction about social media being a vehicle to get revenue because I think a lot of us can get really stuck in the social media, hamster wheel if you will, and like all about the numbers and getting followers and it's like well, are are we converting these these communities that we're building into money because if we're a small business owner our job is to make money. So I Love that you have that distinction and I love that you mentioned some of those other things like mental health and that's why I've been drawn to you because I feel like you have this very holistic practice and I appreciate that and I know our community appreciates that. So thank you.

Manu Muraro:
Yeah, now it's a huge part. It's so important to everybody because like you said so many people just get stuck on the hamster wheel of social media and then they're like spending 5 hours a day on Instagram and it's like come on guys. You'll have to do other things in your business. Even if your business is Instagram like mine, you shouldn't be spending too much time there you know. It's a– it's a task and I always tell people that like posting on social is the task, not going viral or get tons of engagement. Posting and moving on to other parts of your business is the task.


Phoebe Sherman:
Absolutely and like what are we doing to actually move the needle forward instead of just waiting for people to come to us. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about how you got started in social media. I know you have like a super different background than social media.

Manu Muraro:
Yes, well when my background started social media didn't exist so I'm 46 years old right now, so I've been doing communication marketing strategy for a really long time. I have right out of college, and this is the reason I moved to the US from Brazil, I worked for Cartoon Network as a creative and I was in their in-house agency just creating like promos for all the cartoons and creating little like short form video content which is so funny because now it's all the rage and that's what people are trying to talk about you know? um, but so I had a ton of experience on that like over 20 years working at all that stuff and then, for the past nine years I've been focusing on social a lot and first was through startup where I worked at and then after the startup in my own business, just trying to teach people how to be more creative and getting all this background that I have writing communication and how to talk to people that are on the other side. How to consider it. And the strategy tying that up to like why am I going to do another dancing reels, but what does that message take people after you know? So I felt like there was a big disconnect on social as I was starting which was a lot of people at that point in time this is changing as, you know, the platforms get older but in the beginning, Either, There are very young people that knew the platforms but didn't know strategy, or seasoned people that knew strategy but got really overwhelmed with the platforms. And I guess I was lucky enough to be able to combine those 2 things. So that's where I decided just keep going in that route and just really focusing more on Instagram marketing until today even though there's platforms that are like Tiktok or something that are kind of surpassing Instagram in a lot of people's interest and especially influencer marketing, but, to me if you're a small business owner and you have to sell things, I still think that Instagram is still unbeatable today.

07:09:00
Phoebe Sherman:
And so what kind of um creative entrepreneurs Do you help? Are you helping both product and service-based businesses?

Manu Muraro:
Yes I help both. A lot of times more like social media managers. So the thing is the point you will help social media managers, they manage every type of account, so I can’t just say like, “this is just for services,” because if I'm helping a social media manager, I need to do it all. So I don't niche down super small, although most of my audience are female or female identifying business owners, so this would be my sweet spot, and even like the way my brand looks and everything– that's kind of what the audience that it attracts anyways, and I also need– I'm really really passionate about the mission of helping women make more money and have financial freedom because we have a lot of our rights taken away from us. So financial freedom and financial, you know, literacy, is like a huge part of being able to take that power back. So I'm really here like trying to empower women to be salesy. I really don't care which area they are if they're just a public speaker or they are making, you know, ceramics or they are social media manager or coaches, like all my advice helps at all. I have a slightly unpopular advice and I don't think that strategy changes depending on the niche. What you say what you're pushing for is going to change. But, if I'm scrolling on Instagram and I'm here Manu scrolling down, I don't look at Instagram and my behavior doesn't change if I'm looking for a contractor for my business, or if I'm looking to buy a beautiful piece of ceramics for my house. I'm scrolling the same way, I'm engaging with content the same way. So that's what I think that strategies are a lot more, you know, interchangeable depending what niche you are then you know– “oh what do you post if you're a realtor? What do you post if you're an artist? What do you post if you're a coach?” Like I don't really believe in that. I believe in content delivered to everybody. You always will need a variety of content for people not to just get bored, you know. I don't say “always always” I know I have seen people that do the same type of content nonstop and that's their signature– it works for them. But honestly, it's a small few that come up with something very creative and it becomes their signature. Most of us need to do different things to attract the different people in our audiences. Yeah, so I don't niche down too much as far as like no matter what you do, if you're a busy small business owner– like, my contents for you.

Phoebe Sherman:
So can you tell us about your offerings currently?

09:41.00
Manu Muraro:
Yes, so the main offer that I have in my business today is Your Template Club. That's our template membership for mostly Instagram, of course we have like these gorgeous templates that you can resize, reuse for any platform. But, Instagram is the main reason, you know, that we create those templates for because we put so much content out there. So we make like beautiful reels like carousels. Everything is really well designed, but it starts from the strategy and. All our content comes with all the text prompts you need. So if it's a carousel, I'm telling you like just enter here you know something your audience needs to know or whatever that is but I have I've been leading you on the whole cadence of what goes in each page or the CTAs at the end or the “Calls To Action” like what people do next. So we, we design our templates a little differently. It just starts with the content and then we go to design and we hire professional designers. I have a lot of experience and design really good eye for design, but I'm not a professionally trained designer. So we hire all women you know, diverse group of professional designers, very experienced, and they bring our vision to life, you know, but they are all created from content first. So we're jumping ahead on trends. Sometimes we're creating trends, you know, I come from a very creative background for many many years, so we're putting all these into the templates. And that's a membership, usually for social media managers or for small business owners that post a lot. I wouldn't say that membership is for people who do like 2 posts a week or one post a week, but if you're creating a good amount of content that's a really good one for you. I also have another offer that is called, “Month Of Content” and that's where I create all your content for a month and that includes Stories, includes Reels, includes captions, includes carousels, posts, everything you need even and we you give you a list of hashtags. And all that content I create based on your Instagram right now. So this is for people that have fallen off the wagon or they're spending much more time than they need on Instagram like we talked before, and the beauty of that service which I love about it is that it's once a month like it's just a 1 time service. It's not like you do that with me every month. If you want every month you'll have to keep buying it. But um, you don't have to fill out like really long forms or give me all your design elements– I'm just gonna go to your Instagram and I'm gonna make like, for example, I'll get someone's long caption and I make it into a very beautiful visual carousel. You know. For example, we'll pick up someone else's really long caption and we'll make this a beautiful well-designed carousel and that's an easier way for people to consume that information and we'll write another caption for it. So we're just really getting like because most people already have all the content they need, but they don't have the time or they don't have the design skills. They don't have the strategy to know what's the best way to reuse content. Most people have all the content they need already on their Instagram accounts and we come in and just kind of help them like reuse that, and the beauty of that is that you get a month of content ready to copy and paste. We deliver in Canva in case you need to do any tweaks ,and then you're done. You don't need to overthink it. And then we also have a very like I love it like it's a great coaching membership, but it's very simple and it's low ticket. So it's like $17 a month and just ask us questions because me and my team like we have so much experience. And we think people don't need to be paying for another course when they just have a quick questions about it and also like, we give you information that is specific to you as opposed to generic information that may work for someone else's business but not yours.

Phoebe Sherman:
I think, I mean you mentioned off the call too about people getting so overwhelmed with all the classes. On a personal note, we're really finding that too especially in the post like pandemic world. People are not wanting to be on a Zoom call and they do want personalized help. So I think that sort of Q and A style membership is a really awesome idea and a way to get the community more invested in showing up to ask their questions.

13:46.00
Manu Muraro:
Yeah, for me the coaching membership I actually– I even wrote about this, but I decided to lower the price of my membership, lower the offer. Even though that would be like a huge cut for me in revenue because it used to be $67 a month and we went down to $17 a month, but we were offering an hour classes every month and then I realized that a very few people could actually show up to the classes and then a lot of people couldn't catch up to the replays and then I was just adding to that overwhelm so I didn't want to add to the overwhelm and I also didn't want people to pay for classes they might not need and definitely don't have time to watch. And I also think that too much education is overwhelming and I think that's another like you said it's a post pandemic situation. It kind of sounds like we're talking about a movie like “the post pandemic” But it is a post-pandemic situation because people dove into learning online learning for especially digital businesses or businesses that sell digitally, and we learned too much and it got to a point that people were hoarding courses and they're hoarding memberships. But they're not having the time to either consume the content that they're buying and definitely not implement. So I'm like “I don't want to be part of this” I want to lower the price. So I want people to have me on their back pocket whenever they need me. I also wanted the price to be so low that if you don't use it for a few weeks it's not a big deal, because you know that that resource is there for you when you need it. And that's how we changed that membership and we just went down to you know, just the questions and answers and we go deep like we can answer with a video tutorial if needed. We'd like we've go really deep and ask you more questions and just come up with a strategy for you and things like that.

14:09.16
Phoebe Sherman:
I Love it. So Let's talk about your templates and for those listening you have seen her templates on our feed. We use the templates. So, I mean from personal experience, it's been very, I think it's really nice to not have to think about like which template to use, and like okay “this template's beautiful. We know it's gonna be beautiful. We've used it before.” It just like streamlines the process for us, for me for me personally. So I would love to hear a little bit about how you talk about maybe that pain point about people being like “Okay well we already have Canva templates.” From a marketing perspective that's very interesting.

16:08.00
Manu Muraro:
Yes. I'll give you an example because I talk about this in my marketing. I tell people this because sometimes people be like, “but why would I pay for Canva templates if Canva has a lot of templates already?” Yes, you don't need to. What comes from us is like you're getting someone of lots of experience. I personally come up with all the ideas for the template packs and kind of the flow of content and what I want to accomplish. And we have this whole idea like some of your stuff needs to be very simple and easy to read and people just need to see that right away, some of your stuff should be more complex, some of your stuff should be more detailed, some should be like a quick hit, so we put all that kind of mix and match strategies in the templates. But mostly, we look at how it's viewed on the platform as well. So I'm going to give you an example, if you go to Canva and you search for Reels templates. You find a bunch of graphics there. Lots of them have information right on the bottom of the templates and you can check that out in Canva– no matter which view you are on Instagram, whether you're scrolling, whether you're on the feed, whether you're on this the Reel scroll, the explore page– you're never going to be able to read that information because your handle and the sound you're using and all that stuff is right on top of it. So there's a lot of designers that are Canva partners, but they're designing for everything, right? So they'll do like “Oh this is a banner. This is a website page. This is this and that, a booklet.” I focus on Instagram how things look on Instagram because designing for Instagram is not only putting like the Canvas the like the page size in Canva and start doing it. You really have to see how people see it on Instagram. Another really common mistake people make is sizing of things because. Your phone is tiny. But then people design in a big screen on their computers and then no one can read, no one can see it. So we are really like focused on things that work for Instagram. Another huge part of it is time because yes, you can find amazing, even with all the things I said you can still find amazing templates in Canva. You can look and you're gonna find it, but how many hours do you want to scroll for the good ones? So there's the curation thing as well that you’re getting because it's like, you get like clothing memberships like subscriptions, right, and you get that box. You're like saving all that time from curating it yourself having someone curated for you. So that's also huge. And then we also use graphic designers that are super experienced which not all everybody in Canva is, so a lot of times we have kind of styles that don't really go together and things like that when you see the free templates. Um, but our templates I like to think so, and I think you’ll like them too because they look great on your page, but we really make sure that things are like, you know,
trendy, but also classic, beautiful, like fun and easy to look at. So we just put a lot of effort there into the design as well and we use like really good experienced designers and we pay them well. We're not like designing with people out of Fiverr which, no shame, but it's a sub par quality and you're paying very little and that's not what we do here. We actually want to empower the community, so there's a whole ethics behind it as well.

19:14.00
Phoebe Sherman:
So yeah, tell us a little bit about starting to develop your team and what that looks like. Maybe what those early days look like as you started to build.

18:17.60
Manu Muraro:
Yeah, Yes. So you know, it's not an early day anymore. We've been doing this for 7 years in Your Social Team, but my business is constantly evolving and changing and that doesn't always mean like growing. Like at one point I had a team that I had 10 people that were all contractors that are working for us every week, right? Now I have a team of 4 people because there's Ken and my husband is also like the CFO. We've been joking about the Barbie movie with him lately, but we have a team of 4 people. I'm the only one that works full time in the business. I have a content director that works with us like 30 hours a week so that's still like you know, almost full time. And we have an amazing also online business manager that manages the business, and she's also a contractor, but those are the people that are working on the business constantly. But then we have maybe like 10 designers that we kind of swept, you know, mix and match during the designs. Usually when I create a design I'll be like oh this would be really good for this person. This would be very good for that person and maybe I want to try someone new. So I come up with an idea and give it to them, so, we're always like working with new designers. But we have a big group of very, very skilled designers that we work with on and off. And then we have all their contractors like the first person I ever hired on my business was a bookkeeper because I'm really bad with finance and I'm like “I'm gonna be sued and go to jail if I don't hire a bookkeeper,” so that was actually the first hire date of my business and for those of you that are listening to us that have a small business that are like, “oh I could never afford it” I'll give you a tip here– If you're not making a lot of money your bookkeeper is going to be very low in cost so you can afford it. The less complex your business is and the less money you're moving, the less work for them, so you can definitely afford it and that's the literally the first thing I invested in my business. We have a writer that sometimes we use. I'm a really good writer, I mean I'm like “I'm a really good writer,” but you know as part of my background I'm very comfortable writing. I enjoy doing it so I do a lot of the writing myself, but then when I'm a little too busy we have this other person that we hire which my friend Liv is amazing. So I think just growing your business depends on your goals, but also depends on your personality, right? I'm a very creative person. I'm not a very structured or a very analytic, or not very organized person even in my business. For me to be mentoring people, to be growing, you know, getting interns and then mentoring them into like professionals– I cannot do that. I don't have the time, the skills, or the will to do that. So I had to set up my business in a different way so instead of hiring, you know, maybe a team of 10 people that are more entry-level, I have people that are as experienced as I am. I'm paying the big bucks for them, but I'm telling you that for me that works really well. It's a lot less managing time, like there's things that are happening and I don't need to be on top of every single detail in the business. So that has worked really well for me and I kind of want to keep the team very small. As long as I have time for myself, you know and we're having fun. That's all that matters.

22:31.00
BREAK
We'll just take a moment to hear from our sponsors.

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25:05.00
Phoebe Sherman:
I Love that. Yeah, I really identify with growing the team and I know a lot of people out there have this big fear of growing the team and like what, that looks like and “how I can afford it.” I mean, I just hired 4 people, so I'm really in it right now, and yeah, I think that like baby step for contractors can be really helpful too and you get that time back. You get that time back, you get that revenue back. You can, you know, work on, you know, filling in the spaces that you have– the holes.

Manu Muraro:
I usually tell people that you know, revenue is not everything because we need revenue. We want to grow revenue. I'm really passionate about helping women do that. But sometimes, you're at the verge of burnouts at all times and that's, you need to step back. Like at that point, revenue is not the priority anymore in your business, like I did a hire earlier this year that was like a huge investmentment for me, you know, and definitely cut off my revenue because I was making this investment, but it freed of my time like I was dealing I had cancer in the end of last year. I’ve been in treatment. I'm doing great right now, but I just like, I needed my time back, you know, and I have two little kids. I want to be with them. I want to be present with them. I took a month off with them this summer and I didn't have to think about work. I did because, I couldn't avoid it after like the two week mark I'm like, “oh I want to create stuff!” But I could not have, you know? So I think money is not the only currency that we need to look at in our businesses, especially as so many people burn out these days and your business is going to suffer a lot more if you burn out. Then if you take care of yourself and maybe it's low down the revenue a little bit.

Phoebe Sherman:
Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about your cancer and how you sort of you know, balance your time and balance your business and all that?

Manu Muraro:
Yeah, so um, last year I was in like right on Thanksgiving I found out I had breast cancer. Um, for those who have had breast cancer or have any kind of cancer any health issues they might agree with me that a lot of times not knowing and all the tests you need to do in the last months can be even harder than when you're in treatment or when you know what's going on, you know, so, mine didn't really drag that much but it still was several months until I found out that it was very early stage. We knew kind of that it was early stage but until you have surgery and you test everything you don't really know. This is where I also remind every woman to advocate for themselves. You know, do yourself exams like if there's anything odd with your body, go check it out. Don't wait three months. I found a little something odd under my armpit right here on the top corner of my breast and it wasn't really what you would think would feel like for a lump, you know, it was more like a rough patch than a lump, and it was breast cancer. It turns out that it was 1A which is the best stage you can have. But, I didn't find that out like, I found out on Thanksgiving, I didn't find that out that I was 1A until like February after my second surgery, you know, and that the results came back. So, it's definitely a big– I got it off really well, I have to say, like if you think of all the cases of cancer I didn't need chemo. I had radiation and hormone therapy but I didn't need chemo. I hadn't had it spread, I didn't have any genes for it so I didn't need a big surgery. I just had a lumpectomy which is like they removed the lump and that's about it. So, and even still with that like if you think about it, you don't have a plan for your life– just your business and your life– you're like, “what do I do now?” Like, you know, I feel and since we're talking about business, of course at that point in time in your life business is not the most important thing. I have two little kids and they're so young they're even too young to like be supporting me or going with me through this. So I explained to them very matter of factly what I had and they didn't know the gravity of it, you know, but in a good way, my husband and I just kept going and doing fun things and taking them out because you can't just sit in a corner and cry with like a four year old and a seven year old, so but in that I think because I think that was a good thing. But if you think about the business like, we are working on our small businesses and we are thinking like “oh what are the things I don't have time to do and someone else can do it,” right? I think a lot of mistakes that I see a lot of people making, and I made it myself because it took me a little too long, although I've tried that a little before, is to replace ourselves in the business. Like if you have a business that you need to be involved in every single aspect of the day to day or nothing else happens. You actually don't have a business, you have a job, right? Because something happens to you, god forbid, your family can pick up your business and continue making money off of it. Like if that's your family livelihood. It's not safe, you know what I mean? So I highly think that as soon as people because women talk so much about getting to 6 figures and this and that, like to me of course that's not something when you have a small business that you're making like $50000 a month and then you have to take taxes out and expenses and all that. You're not gonna hire people that do what you do, you're gonna keep going for a little longer, but I would say like when you're getting to that point and each person is gonna have to know when their point is, when you're getting close to like 6 figures or something like that, try to find or a little past that because I know people that get to multiple 6 figures and they still do all the work. So, find the person who can take your load in, and even if they're contractors that you just hire here and there, start a busy relationship. Have them know your business. Create your SOPs like Standard Operating Procedures. That's when you say, “okay I'm gonna create my new side of the templates.” These are all the tasks that go in it. Some are videos then you create the video and say here is where I put this and that this is what I do this and this is when I do that, or the most simple tasks can just be a bullet point like send the email out or something like that or the link to where that email template is.

28:10.26
Manu Muraro:
Like if you have your business organized, people can pick it up if you get sick or if you burn out you know or something happens, god forbid it doesn't, but you know, if something happens to you, your business is safe. So I think like thinking when is the time since we're talking about growing your team, when is it time to get their help on people on things that you don't do like to me would be my online business manager– she does all the project management that I don't really do. I have in the past, I don't do it well, but I could do it. But she's doing that. But then when do I get the other Manu like which I got it this year you know and that was so funny because even before I had cancer, it was in the books because I was working too much last year. I'm pretty good about my vacations and my nights and weekends, but, I was still working too much. So, that was in the you know in the stars anyways and then when I had cancer I'm like this is happening now. I'm getting fast and I'm going to do it. So, just think about replacing yourself, not replacing, but adding on, because if you want to have a business one day, or if you want to sell your business, you need to have a business that runs without you.

Phoebe Sherman:
Well I'm sorry you went through that and I'm so glad you're okay.

Manu Muraro:
Yes, thank you.

Phoebe Sherman:
And, yeah. I mean I think that's a really fascinating, from a business perspective, this idea of, yeah, that the business should run without you. I think that's really interesting. How would you sort of balance that with this idea of, for example, you're the face of your business, also. Yeah, how would you sort of balance this sort of having your team take over your well, at least your manage– I don't know taking over your job basically, but also still remaining the face and what happens if you don't want to be the face or you can't be the face?

Manu Muraro:
Yeah, so I don't have a problem with the face like to me, it's not a like an ego thing at all. It's just that I was a 1 person business I kept being the face, I continue being the face. I think as an educator it helps. It makes it actually easier, you know, that I just go there and record something. But for me when I hired Amber who's our content director, I told her I'm like hey I'm hiring you. I trust you. If you want to use your voice, if you want to use your face, and sometimes she does. I still do my Your Social Team Instagram by myself mostly, she will help sometimes if I need it and she's ready to jump in anytime, but I usually do that one myself because also I enjoy it I don't want to take away the part of the job that I enjoy the most. It's also like my testing playground. You know, my Instagram accounts when I'm testing new designs, templates, new ideas because that's kind of how I start perfecting it to become a template if it does well or if it looks good if I'm happy with it. But I have no problem with her and I told her that I'm like put your face in there. Put your voice in there. I don't care if it's me, if it's you, if it's both. So if you look at my Tiktok, there's a lot of stuff that she has done and she has created. We always work together on the creation. We like have an aligned strategy, but I also completely, and that's the other thing I was telling you about, about the advantage of hiring people that are more senior– I'm like, post whatever. I trust her judgment, you know, and we have lots of videos that she can work with so she can create stuff with my face that I'm not recording anything. We have a bank of videos that we do sometimes. Every photoshoot we do, we do like some several videos but we also just shoot here and you know, anywhere I am like quick videos or something that can be reused, and even before having her I was reusing all that stuff anyways. And if you look at my Instagram @YourTemplateClub, you're also gonna see a little more of her voice, her face sometimes. So we kind of mix and match and you know and I'm happy to have more people in. I– I don't feel like the message that is coming out is still my message you know, but as opposed to being my message coming out just from me. It's just coming from different voices sometimes and I think that's just fine.
34:49.00
Phoebe Sherman:
I like how you said “testing playground.” I think that's really important because I also sort of preach that, not those exact words, but I think it should be fun. I think it should be play. Especially if you're, I mean, I think everyone should find a way to have fun with it.
I understand if you don't, but especially if you're predisposed to having a little fun with it, like, how can you sort of keep that energy? How can you really like keep posting without, you know, without letting the algorithm get to you? Like how can you really like be aligned with your messaging and create content that fulfills you and your audience?

Manu Muraro:
Yeah, no I think it's a lot about mindset and I think like here we're here for business. This is one task of your business. You're not really a very savvy business owner if you're putting all your time into Instagram trying to get a bunch of followers from a viral video. Those followers might not even be your audience that will ever buy something from you. You know? So I think if we let ourselves go through that like tunnel, It's really just not a good idea. I think one thing that we are 100% responsible is the content we consume, especially if you consume a lot of educational content. A lot of educators I see today they are giving you tips as if that you had no other job than Instagram. They don't consider the context. So they tell you things like, “oh when you post engage 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after with accounts that follow you or don't follow you,” whatever depending on the people they'll say different things. So what happens is that that's an hour of your day. Your work day shouldn’t have more than 8 hours ever. You know, and hopefully less because we're business owners, so we're trying to have more freedom than we had in our full time jobs. So let's say 7 hours a day, 8 hours a day should be the max you're working a day, and one hour of that is going to just engaging so 10 more people like the post that you did at that point in time? Like it's so counterproductive. Does it make sense? Yes, if all the person did was sit in front of a computer or with their phones and Instagram is their whole thing– They don't have a life. They don't have friends. They don't have like, needs. They don't have a business to run? Then, yes it makes sense if you engage for 30 minutes before 30 minutes after. It's not an algorithm by the way, it's just normal human behavior that if you engage with me, I'm like, “oh I haven't seen Girl Gang Craft post lately, let me go check out their profile.” People do that. But, it's gonna be maybe 10 more people that are gonna like the post you just did. That's completely counterproductive. So I feel like 95% of the advice that is out there is just advice that are like this. They don't consider the background. They don't consider who they're talking to. It is just things they repeat because they saw another educator that is not that savvy talk about it, and I think for you to work on that mindset and not let yourself go through those you know tunnels, as I said, curating who you follow is huge even if you're following 20 people that are good and trustworthy. If you are, like send me send me their DMs because I need to still see like so many– I mean I mean I've had a good amount of people that I follow that I agree with and I trust and I you know, admire. But, so many of the people that are out there they just go viral because they travel the world or they're gorgeous or they're really good with cameras. And then they decide because they gain 100,000 followers that they are qualified to teach small business how to do it. But they don't realize that they grew because they're in Bali or whatever and you were just sitting in an office creating a little product there. And these are the people that everybody's listening to and that's why everybody's just getting into this, you know like, trip you know, that you know looking at followers and numbers and things like that. So, I think when you really think of your business, “I'm doing what I love,” like, if you're spending more time on Instagram then you are doing what you sell– I don't care if it's a digital course about Instagram, you need to spend more time with that digital course on Instagram than on Instagram. And I think the points that you just get so hooked that you're moving away from other things and you don't even have an email list, and you don't have other things, I mean– I was just locked out my Instagram account, you know like, people can lose their accounts. I see happen every week. So if you lose your account then what? Like you haven't worked on your business. You haven't worked on your email list. Um, how are you gonna reach people then you know? So I think just being very like mindful and if that's something that is hard for you to do or, you as in like a collective you, um, put yourself– like put timers. 30 minutes of Instagram that's plenty for you for the day you know? Some people say to be doing stories throughout the day, again like, do you really have time for that? Honestly I don't even think it's a smart strategy because I think you need to have a big space between stories and, you know, the more stories you do, the less engaging those stories are going to be so for most of the time unless you're doing like a Q and A or you're covering an event or something that is very exciting, and for some people, again I don't think any strategy works for everyone. I have some people I follow and they do like a hundred of stories a day and I love their stories and their influencers– that's what they do, but for the most people and for brands, you shouldn't be just putting a story up every 30 minutes all throughout the day. You're not going to get anything else done. And the more time we spend on Instagram what happens? Our brains get even more and more obsessed about the numbers, about the performance, about this' and that– your job and your task on Instagram is just to post the content that promotes your business. That's it, then move on. You know, it's so important and um, even I, I even talked about the benefit of “posting and ghosting” that no one talks about because everybody's like “Don't post and ghost! Don't post and ghost!” and I'm like if your mindset is that you're so hooked on numbers and you're so worried about Instagram and you do, you know, spend 5 hours to create one Reel– Post and ghost. That's the best thing you can do. Step aside, like take care of yourself. Go do something else, I don't care what it is, but just like, if you think of, for the most people the amount of time they put on Instagram is not coming back proportionally in their business, so that's when you know that you need to tone it down.

Phoebe Sherman:
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes.

Manu Muraro:
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Phoebe Sherman:
Yes, no I so identify. Even last night I was like just scrolling and I was like, “Wow I need to be making more money like blah blah blah” and then I was like, “I need to get off Instagram!” Like okay, so I can go do something about it, or I can go rest and do something about it tomorrow. But like me scrolling and seeing other people's content– while I want to support them and I think there's a time and a place for being on Instagram, right? Often, we go into an unhealthy mindset where we're there, and it's literally made to make us addicted. So it's, you know, how? how can you, like as a business owner, as a human on this Earth– we have to set up boundaries between like how we're spending our time and really prioritizing, you know, the things that make you happy in the real world. You know and if you're someone who, you know, is addicted to these social media apps, like bring in the tools, you know? put it– I saw someone who put it in like some lockbox and like it's a timer and you can only get it out if the timer goes off or you smash the box, but like do that put it aside put it in your charger.

42:18.00
Manu Muraro:
Yeah I mean also like I think we're all addicted and, like you said, those platforms are made for that dopamine hit you know, but the thing is like I love your example that you're like oh I'm thinking like I need to make more money in my business and I start scrolling. And, I am a person that helps people make more money using Instagram as well, But I'm like, the amount of extra time you're putting there– You know how you make more money on Instagram you create a really really awesome offer and then you do a whole campaign on Instagram. I have something that we didn't talk about. It's called the “Eight Day Campaign.” It's a whole campaign set up for you– all the emails you need, all the captions, all the templates for, you know, including reels like you just go there, you set it up, and you post once a day like exactly how I tell you and it's pretty easy. That's something that can make you more money on Instagram. Scrolling forever and engaging with people for hours doesn't, you know? So I think the actions that we are taking on Instagram that are taking all our time are the things that are not helping us, so I definitely think that you know curating who you follow is huge, putting limits, following more people in general. And I also have an unpopular opinion– I always have unpopular opinions. I have many opinions that are different than most people. But, you know, when we see– and I understand the creator side, I'm not here to like say that this is wrong– but when people say, “how to support creators that doesn't cost a thing” and it's like, “like their post, comment, share with a friend, do this and that, do this and that, do this and that–” To me, those type of posts are very tone deaf, and I know that people don't understand that and they're not doing that, you know, they have all the good intentions when they're posting this, but people repeated it so much that people kind of put on the autopilot, but what people don't think that what's most– especially if we’re talking to an audience of, you know, women female like identifying like business owner entrepreneurs that use instagram digital product, you know, coaches things like that– Our mental health is really suffering for spending so much time on social media. When every creator says that you should support creators by doing this and this and this and it doesn't cost a thing, maybe they can say it doesn't cost any money, but it costs your mental health because you're saying like, “I want to so I want to support everybody.” I honestly want to support everybody, I think my mental health is in check when it comes to instagram because I'm so, I'm older, I'm like very experienced and I worked with my mental health and mindsets so hard, that I support a lot of the people that I see, that I create community, and a lot of names of my followers and what they do and I am able to do a lot of that, but most people aren't. And most people again are on the verge of a breakdown, so burnout.

Phoebe Sherman
Most of us are on the verge of a breakdown and burnout. Absolutely. Yeah.

Manu Muraro:
I mean, all the memes about women is about that right? Like we are, so like we're hanging by a thread and then when you tell people that you guilty them into supporting everybody in their communities and their neighbors and everybody else. Yes, it costs something. It does cost your mental health. So I think people can go a little bit without that extra like that you would be doing to support them if you take care of your mental health and you're able to be here for longer. You know, as opposed to like, shut down completely for months and months.

Phoebe Sherman:
I Love it. I love– what a hot take. I love your unpopular opinions. Well this has been so amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us, your tools, and your programs, and your unpopular opinions.

Manu Muraro: I have a lot more where they came from.

Phoebe Sherman:
So where can people find you?

45:45.00
Manu Muraro:
You can find me on Instagram @YourSocialTeam. You do not need to support me or or like or anything if you're in the verge of a breakdown.

Phoebe Sherman:
You don't need to like you don't need to like her posts.

Manu Muraro:
Or if you’re too busy or your mindset's not right, you don't even need to follow. But I'm there, when you need it. We also make it fun because I want people to have a fun experience with Instagram, so through our products, through our emails, like everything we connect you with your– when you're looking at our Instagram, you're going to have that element of fun. So hopefully that is counter balancing a little bit of the negativity and all the stress. You can also find me on Instagram @YourTemplateClub. At @YourSocialTeam, I talk more about Instagram strategy mindset. At @YourTemplateClub, we talk more about design, content creation, content tips, and at Tiktok @YourSocialTeam we also talk a lot more about like content ideas and things like that. So, anywhere that you prefer I'm also on Threads @YourSocialTeam. So anywhere that you like the best you can go check it out if it helps you, but take care of yourself first. And if you need to step down and do less on social, do less, follow less people and all that.

Phoebe Sherman:
And we'll drop all those links in the show notes and on our website. Well thank you so much.

Manu Muraro:
Thank you. Phoebe it was nice to meet you.

END INTERVIEW

46:55.00
Phoebe Sherman:
So if you're interested in checking out Your Template Club, you can go to bit.ly/GIRLGANGCRAFTYTC that’s all caps GIRLGANGCRAFTYTC we’re gonna drop that link below in the show notes. And that is an affiliate code so we get a little bit of the proceeds from that and that’s also a really good way for Manu to see the conversions from our podcast. That’s really helpful if you go to the links that we provide you. And, if you’re interested in the 8 Day Instagram campaign that she also talked about, you can go to bit.ly/GIRLGANGCRAFTYTC8

OUTRO
47:35.00
Phoebe Sherman: Thank you so much for listening to the Girl Gang Craft Podcast. Head to Girlgangcraft.com/podcast for shownotes and more. See you next time.