I am small, but mighty.

Warning: swears ahead.

Over on Instagram, I have something like 300ish followers right now, and it's something I've felt a lot of shame about in the past.

I grow other people's accounts for work and I get results, I've built up @alongcameloni's Instagram account to a solid place over the last year or two. I mean, something like 2100 people are signed up to get notified about when I sporadically post here. You know, if we want to get super humble-baggy, I used to have over 10,000 Tumblr followers. Eye-liner and side fringe included.

I know that I can do the thing, but still, I've not really done the thing for my own social accounts. Why is that?

I think the shame comes in for me because I do this for work but if you looked at my accounts, I feel like my profile doesn't 'prove it'.

And yet, a few weeks ago, I came up with a little content strategy for myself, started to implement it and I've seen the metrics go up as a result, so it's not like the method I apply to client's social accounts doesn't work for mine. I have just been historically a bit inconsistent with doing the work ON my business, as well as IN my business.

However, yesterday afternoon I noticed that shame creeping in and I asked myself: does it actually matter that I only have a limited amount of followers when the stuff I do works?

Of course it doesn't matter. It's about quality, not quantity.

I get leads and connect with my audience through what I post on social, when I remember to remind people that you can book me for work, I get enquiries. I start conversations, I have IG friends and connections, people tell me that the information I share on here is helpful and useful when they see me irl. Why am I carrying around this shame?

It doesn't do me any good, if anything it just gets in my head and makes me doubt what I'll post because no one's reading anyway. If I had 3000 followers but no one engaging with what I was doing, would that make me feel better about my social media channels? Probably not.

So nah, no more shame poncho for me. I'm throwing that shitty feeling that's been weighing me down in the bin.

Goodbye heavy, itchy, suffocating shame poncho. If you've got some business shame weaving it's way around your shoulders, creating a little shame poncho to weigh you down, I recommend you throw it away, unwind your shoulders and unclench your jaw - you'll feel a lot better for it, I promise ✨