How to UnMarket Your Business With Stephanie Benedetto

Are you tired of social media and frustrated with all of the marketing tips and tricks out there, but you still keep doing them (begrudgingly) because you think it's the only way to grow your business

Well, do I have good news for you! On this episode of the Book Your Dream Clients podcast, I'm chatting with Stephanie Benedetto all about how she teaches (Un)Marketing without social media so you can breathe some life back into your business, align with your business's true journey, and feel inspired to help your dream clients.

Stephanie Benedetto at The Awakened Business helps transformative coaches, healers and entrepreneurs tap their heart’s message to attract soulmate clients without the hustle, hype or endless social media posting. She's a coach, storyteller and (Un)Marketer who uses curious questions, stories, and play to inspire joyful creation in all its forms. She approaches business as a game played by your rules, and believes you can PLAY your way to a thriving, profitable business that changes the world.

Website: https://www.theawakenedbusiness.com

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Lindsay: Stephanie thank you so much for being on the book your dream clients podcast. I'm so excited you're with us today. 

[00:00:58] Stephanie: Oh, I'm thrilled to be here, Lindsay. Thanks for that. 

[00:01:01] Lindsay: Absolutely. Stephanie’s going to chat about UnMarketing and that made me really curious because we don't hear a lot about that. So why don't you go ahead and tell us about what you do, Stephanie, and we will get the conversation 

[00:01:14] Stephanie: rolling. So I work with. Primarily coaches, healers therapists, entrepreneurs who are really here to serve and create change in the world.

[00:01:28] So these are the change-makers and these are people with a big vision and a big heart, but they don't particularly like this thing called Martin. And a lot of what they've been told they have to do to have a successful business. And what I do with them as I've really helped them to find their way in it, to really play and have fun in business.

[00:01:50] And I talk about this thing called UnMarketing because when I started talking about it a couple of years ago in this way, people immediately perked up when they heard like, like I don't like mark. I can do UnMarketing I can unmark it. What does that mean? Tell me more. And so that's kind of evolved into a really playful and fun way of simplifying that thing that we call marketing.

[00:02:14] So it doesn't feel at all like marketing, it's simply doing what you love and finding really joyful ways to. 

[00:02:23] Lindsay: The biggest problem with marketing when you're just starting is you're hearing all the really loud voices out there. So how did you even decide that? How did you even figure out that this could work for 

[00:02:35] Stephanie: you?

[00:02:38] There are so many loud voices and it's not just from the outside. The loudest voices are in our own head about what we should do and what we shouldn't do. And a lot of that is our things that we've learned from others, but we've taken it into our own. Mind. And so our poor little minds are screaming at us all the time, judging ourselves, comparing, am I good enough thinking about, oh my God, who am I to share this?

[00:03:05] Right. That's where the real noise is happening because it's awfully hard to shut that off. If you don't know that that's what's happening. And the voice that I'm really interested in listening to both for myself and my clients is that. Soft voice inside of what we might call your inner guidance or your intuition.

[00:03:26] And so I did a lot of that following what I was taught and yes, many of my mentors in internet marketing, when I started studying it years ago, it was probably 15 or 20 years ago now more men and it's described as masculine, but oh, there are women who are doing it too. And teaching the same thing because it's really.

[00:03:49] About sheds and push and force. And it's very mental. It's very intellectual. It's very about the willpower and you have to make things happen. And if you don't, nothing's going to happen because secretly inside, we're all. Lazy. And, you know, we just sit on the couch and binge watch Netflix all day. If, if we, if we were left to our own devices.

[00:04:10] And so we have to get out the whip and make ourselves do things and push harder and harder. And so I learned those strategies and I learned how to do the hype and I learned how to hustle and I never could do it that well, honestly, Lindsay, because I need a lot of sleep. So, but, but for me, I was up late into the evening and it was like, my mind was always going.

[00:04:32] And seeing when, when did this start to, I just knew I wanted to do something different. And at the time I was in a different business than I am now. And I realized that the majority of my time was spent with things I didn't love. And so I started shifting and asking myself for the first time, really, what do I want to do?

[00:04:53] And I realized I started to see that. The way creation really works and a is creation, right? Just as creative as painting a photo or cooking a meal or raising children or having a garden, like all these things that we do, our creative is very organic. It's in the moment, it's not like following a blueprint, which is what we're sold in the marketing universe of, you know, follow my proven formula steps one through five, and I guarantee you clients and money.

[00:05:26] It's here's what to do now. And just, as you said, try this, get the feedback. And then the next thing occurs to you. It's very real time and in the moment, and if I'm stuck in the noise of my thinking, I can't hear that so well. And I miss out on the opportunities and the, the things that are opening up right in front.

[00:05:49] So I started talking about UnMarketing a couple of years ago, because, so, so the way we make up marketing, I'm going to say that specifically marketing, what does that even mean? So there are certain activities that we could probably agree our marketing, but the kind of marketing that people don't like, it's not the activities.

[00:06:08] It's how they're thinking about. Right. It's what they're making up about what marketing means and what it means to post on social media and what it means to ask for a sale and what it means to put myself out there. Right. We make all this stuff up. So I said, guess what? You don't market anymore. You don't want to do it.

[00:06:28] Don't that's what I call UnMarketing. And it's like, what, what do you mean I can stop marketing? I'm like, yeah, you can, let's bring it back to the simple joy of what you love. What you love to do who you are naturally, and how's, how is it? That you love to share what you do. So for some people, it is as simple as just, they talk a lot.

[00:06:50] My ex-husband was like this. We had so many business opportunities come our way. So many clients, because he just talks all the time and he just talks to everybody. And that was natural for him. There was no strategy in it. There was no artifice, there was no promoting. He just did what he did now. That was not my style.

[00:07:08] My style is much more I love coming into spaces where. I can help people. I can coach people. I can sit with people so more one-on-one, but when I used to be on social media, because I'm not now, but when I used to be there, I would love going into the groups where I could answer questions for people and just serve and just give.

[00:07:29] And I also love creating content because I'm a writer. And so for me, I do things like I take client questions and I turn them into blog posts and share. I know a little bit just enough about SEO to get some, some ranking by using keywords. So there's a bit of strategy behind it, but it's so natural for me.

[00:07:49] I've even found clients by telling stories that have nothing to do with business. I have their sort of spiritual teaching stories and they end up getting shared in random places and people will follow me back and then see what I do with the awakened business. And I get clients that way. It doesn't make sense.

[00:08:07] But it's perfectly natural because this is who I am expressing, what I do in a way that is authentic for me. So there's no formula for that. I can't turn around and teach that to someone else. But what I can do is help them begin to have the adventure, the experiments, the, and start testing, as you said, like things that they think might be fun and not.

[00:08:31] Notice what it's like and recognize that when something isn't fun, it really doesn't have anything to do with what we're doing, but the experience that we have in our thinking about it, why do you 

[00:08:44] Lindsay: think it's so hard for people to tap into what they want to do instead of follow the blueprint and the five steps 

[00:08:54] Stephanie: part of it is where it's conditioned out of it.

[00:09:01] And when we're feeling a lot of fear and a lot of insecurity, it's really very normal to want to do what everybody else is doing and find an authority figure. And go with what they say, because they must know what they're talking about. And in the beginning, this is not a bad thing, by the way, I'm not saying it's ever bad.

[00:09:24] And I still take courses from other people and learn other people's ways of doing things. It can be really helpful to have a template to plug your stuff into when you're just starting out, especially makes it so much easier than, than reinventing the wheel. But I'll tell you there's something really fun.

[00:09:45] Showing up with yourself and your business fresh and new and inventing something every time you do it when you're not afraid. And I think that's what it is. If you're feeling fear, it's going to be really hard. But if you know that you're okay, you can go on adventures anywhere and try anything and know that you've got the resilience and the resources inside of you to navigate it.

[00:10:09] Lindsay: The fear of taking the reigns and deciding I'm going to run my business in a way that feels good for me can really overcome. Every single morning when you wake up knowing like, okay, if this, I know there are students who will of mine, who will hold conditions for themselves and say, if I don't book a client by this time, then everything I do is w it was a waste.

[00:10:33] And it's hard to talk yourself out of those conversations. And I know we've all been there. How do you get to. When someone is feeling so way down in the hole and like, they can't even see the light yet. How do you get them out of there so they can run with what they really want to 

[00:10:49] Stephanie: do. So the very first thing is to just help that person settle.

[00:10:58] So I know that there's only ever one thing that's going on when somebody is wound up like that and they feel like they're in a hole and they can't see the light. They're really, really overthinking. They're really stuck in their head. And so I help them get out of their head and into the moment. That's the very first thing, and this is not a fancy meditation technique.

[00:11:19] It's just, oh, you can listen to my voice right now and become a little bit more present. You know, what to do, you know how to do this. And as soon as they stop listening to the noise of their thinking, they immediately feel better for no reason. And in that state, in that quiet, when you have a quiet mind, you can hear what, you know, cause there's always something that, you know, it's kind of like, well, either, you know, or you don't because there is a time sometimes when I don't know yet that's okay.

[00:11:51] So quieting down is really the first thing. And then. I look at what's already happening so many times, like this is creation. Life is happening through you all the time. Your business is already growing. You just don't see it. So I'll ask questions like, so have you had any clients, how did they find. And I'm like listening and feeling for the, the things that tell me how they love to relate to the world naturally.

[00:12:23] So for example, it might be oh, it was, you know, my family member and this person, and then that person came through a friend. Okay. Tell me, who are they? Where do they hang? How did they hear about you? What were they talking about? You know, there's something or they'll say, well, I did a talk at this place, or I just happened to strike up a random conversation at the yoga studio and I'm like, okay, cool.

[00:12:45] It's all, those are like little clues or maybe they'll say I've always wanted to, I always wanted to write something about this. Hmm. You know, what have you considered? What seems like fun? Like that's, that's a place to start from. Creating from, from joy, from, from your, your sense of inspiration instead of being in that darkness of, oh God, I've got all these pressures and deadlines that they're self-imposed creation has its own timeline too.

[00:13:21] It's like you've planted a seed with a new business. And you don't know what it is when it's, what does throws up. You don't know quite what you've planted. You just have to show up with it and talk to it and see what it needs and water it and give it sun and notice what's happening in a sprout comes up and, you know, you see where it's, where it's headed and you notice that it, it knows what to do like a plant.

[00:13:47] Does it, it follows this. And there's, there's not a lot to it. You just have to show up with it and it will show you. And I know that sounds overly simplistic and it is very simple, but that's, that's how it begins to show you. And what you said earlier is key. You're going to need to try stuff and there's no guarantee.

[00:14:09] That's why I would come back to this. It's really important to have the sense of safety within yourself. And to know that you're okay, whether your business idea skyrockets or it flops because there are going to be things that flop that's how it goes. You got to try stuff and get the feedback. And every time you learn.

[00:14:31] Did I answer your question? Cause I kind of said a lot of things there, Lindsay, you 

[00:14:34] Lindsay: did. And I love the garden analogy. I use that as well. I love gardening and I, I love using the, you know, if you plant a tomato or you plant beans, they're going to sprout a different times. And if you don't know what you planted, it's always exciting to see what's coming and every plant needs it's.

[00:14:54] Care. It has its own care plan and every person has their own care plan. And every business it's never going to be the same, but I think we get so wrapped up with our results or lack there of, because we're scrolling through social media constantly and listening and we have now we don't even have barely have a choice where.

[00:15:17] You know, everyone's yelling at you when you go through the feed. If your sound is on it's constant and yelling at you, and as the queen of the introverts, it's really overwhelming. It's overstimulating. And it feels like everyone's yelling at you yelling their strategies, their wins, and all of these things that.

[00:15:37] Yeah, I didn't have those wins today, so I must be doing something wrong or, you know, she did this and I didn't, and it's just constant. It's a constant pressure on you if you allow it to push on you. So I have a lot of students who say, okay, I want to. I, I know I could do this. I know I could have a business, but I don't want to be on social media.

[00:16:00] Is that even possible? And they say, yes, absolutely. What do you 

[00:16:04] Stephanie: say to them? Oh yeah. Yes. Hell yes, you can. Now if you're not going to do social media, so it's kind of interesting. Cause I thought about this a lot. I'll tell you a little bit about my journey. It was about, I think it was almost two years ago now I had just had the.

[00:16:24] Hmm. And what would it be like? Can you have a successful business define success for yourself, right. Without social media. That would be really cool. Wouldn't it be cool if there was. And in fact, I was thinking about an agency at this time, there was an agency that helped you to promote your business and share what you do that didn't use social media, because I saw the, the rise of people just getting frustrated and, you know, in the coaching communities in particular, you've got all these heart-centered entrepreneurs and coaches and they're like, I suck and it just got louder and noisier the last couple of years.

[00:17:00] And so I started talking to people who. Using social media differently or who had left it entirely and just exploring and writing some articles and, and just thinking about it. Cause I didn't have anything really against social media. I still don't. It's a tool. You can use it to build your business or you can use it to beat yourself up with like, like, like any other tool, like a hammer, right?

[00:17:25] It does what it does. You know, Facebook X like Facebook, Instagram, X, like Instagram, you know what you're dealing with. It can be a game and it can even be a fun game to use it that way. But when you get sucked into that noise, and again, like the noise that you're really getting sucked in by unknowingly is inside your head.

[00:17:47] Because we don't have to take it on. We can use social media in ways that are empowering by limiting. Like there are tools like what is it called? Facebook eradicate, Facebook news, eradicate or newsfeed Eradicator. You can block your entire newsfeed so that you go onto Facebook. You can go to groups, you can go wherever you want.

[00:18:06] And there's no new. I don't have to look up. Yeah, you don't have to look at it. There are people who one, one gentleman I talked to he, how did he do it? He basically curated his whole feed so that he doesn't follow anyone and they can only follow him. So he turned his Facebook feed, his personal Facebook feed into a one-way broadcast methods.

[00:18:33] And it's like, you can do creative things like that. If you really don't want to look at those things. So, so what I would tell someone, first of all, is that you don't have to give it up to, you can use it your own way, and you can investigate some of these tools or create limits on it for yourself. So you don't get sucked into the black hole of.

[00:18:54] You know, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling for hours, you can block the scroll entirely and still use it. You can schedule your posts with things like HootSweet or I can't remember all the names. I'm not really using them now, but there are tools that lets you schedule your posts in advance. You can limit your time so that you only go in there an hour a week, who says you have to be on there every day.

[00:19:14] Who says you have to be in groups, you don't where you can pick and choose the groups. You can go directly to them by having a. In a document so that you don't have to get stuck in the feed and then find things you can just go right there, do what you're doing and leave now. So there are ways to use it in a way that empowers you, but if you don't want to use it, you just will be doing something else instead.

[00:19:39] So coming back to my, my journey, eight months ago, I came across a gentlemen named Bradley Morris. Of magic media. And he did a presentation with tad Hargrave of marketing for hippies, both great, great people by the way. And men, right. We were talking about masculine stuff. They show the, they still show up with that of a very male strength, but they're also very heart-centered.

[00:20:07] And they don't do any of that. Hypee pushy crap. So Bradley has been off of social media entirely. In fact, he deleted all his accounts four years ago and has quite a successful business. And he did this presentation called a life and business without social media. And it just inspired me. I said, okay, now is time for me to stop.

[00:20:30] Thinking about leaving social media and really experiment with it. So I said, I'm going to do an experiment. I'm going to leave for one to three. So that felt like a good little test run for me. And I didn't make big fanfare about it, but I did tell people on social media, Hey, I'm not going to be here anymore because I was quite active on Facebook in particular, if you want to follow me, come over to my email list.

[00:20:53] And I actually had a bunch of people jump on my email list because they actually liked hearing from me, which is kind of cool to see. And so then I freaked out, oh my God, what did I do? Is my business going to dry up? I didn't follow any of the advice from the people who I had been talking to and study.

[00:21:11] I just did it because I was following that inner nudge and the internet said, see what happens? Try it now. And within a week I had, I quieted down and I had all these ideas start coming to me. I revived my podcast. I discovered something called hub marketing through tad Hargrave, which is all about connecting with influencers and people.

[00:21:35] Have communities where your target audience hangs out and creating relationships with them. So there's a way to, instead of trying to be heard in the noise on social media, in a very general audience, you can just develop relationships with real people. It's what you and I are doing here right now, Lindsay, you know, we're, we're both serving coaches.

[00:21:58] And I'm coming in to create, hopefully some content that's really useful for your audience and maybe they follow back and they find out about me, but I don't care because I love helping people. It's just natural and we're building a relationship. And then you might come into my audience at the awakened business and maybe you create something with me or come on my podcast, or maybe we do a workshop together.

[00:22:19] I'm not making any assumptions here, Lindsay, but I'm just using it as an example, we become friends. And we create together and that's how we promote our businesses. It doesn't have to be this kind of cold mechanism on social media. We can do it the way we used to back in the day before we had Facebook, before we had YouTube before we had Instagram.

[00:22:42] And so it's just finding different ways to connect with people because that's all we're doing in business. That's all marketing really is just. Connecting with people, the people in particular, that you're here to serve with a message that says, Hey, I see what you're going through. I can help you get what you want.

[00:23:02] That's it it's that simple. Everything else has made. It 

[00:23:07] Lindsay: feel alive. It is that simple. It really isn't. It's so refreshing to hear someone who has said, okay, I don't, I don't need this. I'm gonna, I'm going to play over here and I'm gonna make it work. And that's so inspiring for so many people to hear who don't want to dive into social media.

[00:23:25] And my husband just asked me the other day, he said, Would you have Instagram, if you didn't have a business. And I said no. And he was of surprised at how quickly I answered. And I said, I like it. I think it's fun. And I like to share and help. I always say it's kind of my way to educate entertainment and inspire that's my thing, but I don't use it to showcase every moment of my life.

[00:23:47] And, and I don't feel like that's what I need to do at this time. There are so many, like you said, we're on a podcast together. We're chatting with each other. We've never spoken to each other before, and we never know what can happen from this recording, right. Between us or between the people who are listening.

[00:24:07] Social media, I feel like is such a, is like you're at a you're at you're checking out. You just got like. All of these healthy ingredients to make like the best supper ever. And you're in the checkout line and you're like, oh, maybe I'll grab this, this candy bar and a big attendance. We're on the way home.

[00:24:26] And it's like a quick hit and then you eat it. You feel like crap. And then you forget about it. I think that's how social media is. What, what do they call the checkout line stuff like impulse buy impulse them it's so quick and nothing is really, I didn't meet the best client ever on social media. And we had this long conversation.

[00:24:46] You don't hear those stories as much anymore because everything's so fast. And I think people are really craving connection right now, more than ever. And like you said, like we did back in the day. I just use that story. I said, I've been, I've been doing this before. Pinterest. You could even get on Pinterest.

[00:25:05] You had to request access to get on Pinterest. I've been doing this for a long time. It's come so far and so fast that we almost forget that there's people 

[00:25:14] Stephanie: on the other side of this screen. Yeah. And what if we just come back to the simplicity of that and for coaches forget about all the, I have to do this so that I can.

[00:25:26] Get clients, you can dial it down and make it so simple as I'm just going to have conversations with people. That's it. I'm going to invite people to conversations where I help them with something and I, and see where it goes. That's it. You don't need social media for that. You might use social media for that, but you really don't need it.

[00:25:49] Lindsay: No. If I think of the current clients that I have right now, None of them have come to me from social media. In fact, most of them have come to me because of podcasts and hearing me on other podcasts. So if people want to hear your voice, you know, they want to see you and that makes people feel close to you and trying something else.

[00:26:12] If you don't feel comfortable with social media, you just don't want to play there. You don't have to. I think that is a huge sigh of relief for people who are just starting or people who are just burned out. And they want to just focus on writing a book or focus on videos or whatever they want to do.

[00:26:30] You don't have to do all the things, especially when you're just starting. I think this is a great conversation. It made me feel better. I think everyone else probably feels okay. Maybe that was a little bit of a permission slip, slip through your earbuds to do what you want to do. And the joke between my students is whenever someone asks me something, I always say, well, how does that make you feel?

[00:26:54] How do you feel about it? And they're, they're so disappointed secretly because they want me to tell them what to do, but I just won't do it. But that is the best business tool you can. Tune into how you really feel about it. What will the future Lindsay say? What would the future Stephanie say in a week or tomorrow after that decision is made and think about that and go with that good feeling.

[00:27:15] That one that makes you excited and gives you some butterflies. Stephanie, how can people find out more about you and learn a little bit more about the awakened. 

[00:27:25] Stephanie: Well, the easiest way to do that is to come to my website@theawakenedbusiness.com. And since I am not active on social media, if you like following this, you can jump onto my email list.

[00:27:36] I share a lot of, I have a podcast myself and I also share stories. A lot of them are about business, but they're also about my spiritual journey in business. So if you're into that kind of thing, I think you would really enjoy my wild Spire. Awesome. 

[00:27:52] Lindsay: I love this conversation. Thank you so much for giving us all these gems.

[00:27:57] I think everyone's really going to take them. I think you should take them to heart and know that you can do everyone can do this and you just got to have faith in your own way. Cause it will, it will work out for you. It just. The internet with your own journey and be okay with how long it, how long it is and how many twists and turns it involves.

[00:28:13] No one is the same. Thank you for spending time with us, Stephanie and I am really grateful for everything you've shared with us. 

[00:28:21] Stephanie: I pleasure and keep, keep preaching the truth, Lindsay. This is great. Follow your own way. I'm I'm with you on that too.