Your Fear of Unfollows & Unsubscribes Is Hurting Your Business Growth [Episode 167]

All right, we have to talk about this. Are you someone who is always checking how many people have unfollowed you, or if you email your patient database or do any type of email marketing, you always checking how many people have unsubscribed. This is something that we definitely need to talk about. So if this resonates with you, this is gonna be a super short episode and we're gonna talk about.

Like why? That's like actually like one of the worst things that you can do in your business because, well, anyway, we'll talk about it. Let's go ahead and dive in.

Hey, welcome to Holistic Marketing Simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions. And you didn't go to school to learn how to be a. Full-time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day, every day.

So let's come hanging out while we chat. All thanks. Easy in your marketing and my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote, should to a I get to more dream patients and clients. Yes, please. Hi, I am Dr. Carly, and I am a mentor for other chiropractors from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I listen to holistic marketing, simplified podcasts.

So I am not trying to sound like some mindset guru with a, you know, one of those lavalier mics on stage who is having you call and repeat. Everything from the stage. How's everybody feeling? I can't hear you. Oh my God. I can't stand. I can't be alone. Right? I hate that. I hate it so much. Anyway, that's not what this episode is about.

I am not trying to be one of those mindset gurus who, you know, is like, feels like they're really like gaslighting you from stage about your true insecurities and fears when it comes to your business. Because trust me, I have been there. If you are letting unfollows and unsubscribes and even things like what the practitioner is doing down the street, you know, what are they gonna think?

Oh, I think, I actually was on a, a coaching thing not too long ago that was like, oh, I think the practitioner down the street is buying followers. Like, how would I know? I'm like, why do you care? You know what I mean? Like, that's not, what do you mean? How would you know? Like even if you did know, like what is it, what difference is it gonna, you know what I mean?

Like, what are you gonna do about it, I guess is what I'm saying? I said, you definitely shouldn't buy followers because then you're gonna have 10,000 followers and zero comments on all your content and you'll get like, really diminished reach. Should I do an episode about that? I just didn't know that was a thing anymore.

I didn't think people like still bought followers. If you still see that or you're wondering about that DM me and I'm happy to do a whole episode on that. But anyway, you can't let these types of things have an impact on you still showing up. To help the people who do want to hear what you have to say, who do want and need your services.

That is just, I said this on a reel on Instagram. It's just silly sausage behavior, but like I get it. Right, because that is just like we all want to be accepted and liked and hello. I am a people pleaser myself. I totally get it. Like this is not me preaching at you from a place of like, oh, it just never bothers me.

So I don't know why it's bothering you. That is not the vibe I'm trying to give off at all. I've been in business for seven years. I've had this online business and been putting myself out there and trust me, just last week, I, so first thing to know is I never, we're gonna talk about email. I never look at my unsubscribes.

Now, obviously, if it was some like crazy high number, yes, I would look at it to be like, Hmm, I wonder what's happening. Because randomly, gosh, this was like three or four years ago, I had, um, like a free opt-in on my website. I got all of these mass subscribes of like bots, and then they all went in and marked my email.

When they got the delivery of that freebie, I spam and it got my emails shut down, which was crazy. So that's why there's like one of those capcha, like you have to type in the code or whatever when you're opting into something from my website is because that's how you can stop that mass, like subscribing thing from happen.

So like I said, it's not like I never check my unsubscribes, but like I said, for the most part. Years ago, I used to click every time Who unsubscribe? Why did they unsubscribe? Like if it was a friend or something, I'd be like, Ugh, why did they unsubscribe for my list? Like, lemme just tell you right now, that is the most counterproductive thing you can do for your brain and for growing, like I said, in getting in front of the people that actually want to work with you.

Perfect example. I sent an email out two weeks ago about my one-on-one pick my brain availability. So if y'all don't know, you can jump, uh, jump on a call with me for an hour. And literally pick my brain about anything. Um, except for ads. I don't teach ads. Typically, what I end up doing on these one-on-one calls is like auditing someone's Instagram, giving them like five action items.

Um, sometimes I'll help them with content plans. I'll help them with email marketing. You can just go to molly cahill.com/pick my brain or dm me the word brain and get the link for that. But anyway, I sent an email to my whole list, giving people the times. I only had like five pick my brain calls available for like, for I think it was like April or something.

So I sent out that email and I got 14 unsubscribes. That's like the highest I ever, I usually get like two or three, maybe five at max, like per email. So I got 14. So it was higher than higher than usual. I also had three people book a one-on-one call with me from that email. So a $247 a piece, 741 bucks, and I get to help three people.

So if I had been worried about the unsubscribes, then a, I wouldn't have made that revenue, and b, I wouldn't have gotten to help those three people. Um, like I said, that's, that's on the, the email train. And um, recently I've had my email templates go viral that you can just copy and paste if you want.

Those. They're amazing. And I also talked about it in. Episode 1 59, get patients on your schedule this week with these simple email template. I would definitely go back and grab that or you can just go to molly cahill.com/email. But anyway, my email templates went viral and um, I had a very, very lovely person in my inbox saying she was nervous because she sent it out for the first time and she got two unsubscribes.

And I was like, I know that can feel like such a big deal, especially when it's already hard to put yourself out there. Whether or not you actually got someone to book from that email or not like to unsubscribes, but those people are probably never gonna be on your schedule again, right? So they're just taking up dead weight on your email list that you have to pay for.

And the higher your open rate, the better your sender reputation score is with like Gmail and Yahoo. And so you don't want those people on your email list. You want the dead weight to self, you know, unsubscribe essentially. I actually have an auto pruning sequence on, and y'all don't have to worry about this.

I mean, you could definitely figure out how to do it using AI or using a virtual assistant or some something to help you. But I have an auto pruned sequence for my email list where every quarter it automatically finds everybody who has not opened, I can't remember, I wanna say, hasn't opened an email for me in like six months or three months, I don't remember.

And it automatically sends them this series of like three emails that's like, Hey, you know, noticed you haven't opened any of my emails in a while. No big deal. If you don't take any action, you'll just be automatically removed from my email list. But if they do take action on it, then it keeps them on my list.

And so we do that again, to keep your email list really clean. 'cause you have to pay per subscriber, unless you're on like flow desk, there's no reason to have people on your list who don't wanna hear from you. Right. That's just silly. And so anyways, you want to have people who are self-selecting out.

Right? So that's how, um, like I said, how that came up with email. Another thing to consider is if you haven't emailed your list in a while and you're just starting from nowhere, you're going to have a lot of unsubscribes in the beginning, that's just math, like it's going to happen because maybe they moved outta state, maybe, you know, who knows?

Like there's all kinds of reasons for people to wanna unsubscribe and then now onto the followers. I know this sounds like, I don't know, something nice to say to fit the point of my episode. But I never, ever know on any day-to-day basis how many followers I have or how many people have unfollowed me.

'cause it just gets in your head like it's just, it's not a metric that's worth tracking that does anything positive. Because when you really embrace speaking to the type of patient or client that you truly want to work with, then your hope is the people who aren't. In that ideal world of yours, self-select out because when you know, I can't tell you how much confidence I have now posting because I know that the community that I have are my freaking people.

You know what I mean? So like I have so much confidence posting now way more than I did years ago because I feel like I really have dialed in, like, okay, this is who I am and these people love me, hate me, whatever. It gives you so much more confidence. Also just from a like, you know, technical standpoint, sometimes a lot of unfollows, you can't actually see who unfollowed you, right?

But a lot of the time it's not even real people. So I can't remember the stat. Um, I should have looked it up again before this episode, but there are just like thousands and thousands of bot like robot, uh, Instagram accounts created every day and they get shut down super duper often. So when these robot type accounts are created, they will like mass follow a bunch of people and then mass unfollow people to try to get more followers.

And then they either get caught and they get shut down, which also then becomes an unfollow for you. Or like I said, you're in some mass follow unfollow tactic that these people are trying to get away with. It's not like they're like, Ew, Molly's content. Gross unfollow, you know, is not what's happening. So, like I said, I just wanted to make sure that I pointed this out 'cause I hear it all the time.

I have clients all the time be like, oh my God, I got three unfollows from that post. Do you think we shouldn't talk about that again? And I'm like, whatcha even saying like, no, that's so silly. I also want, like, I'm not a huge quote person. Sometimes I think they can be kind of cheesy, but I saw this one and I thought, well, this was really perfect for this episode.

It's a quote from Michael Jordan and it says, I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I failed over and over and over again in my life, and that's why I succeed. So again, we cannot let unsubscribes or unfollows stop us from showing up for the people who actually want and need us.

And how much more? Beautiful is your day when you are working with patients or clients who truly want to be there and are the perfect right fit. I had a lovely student in my group coaching cohort who was like, okay, I'm not sure who to create content for because you know, the type of patient that makes me more money is not necessarily my favorite patient.

And I was like, well, wait a minute. Like again, not trying to sound like a mindset guru does, but that feels like a limiting belief to me. Like. So what are you just gonna go after the ones who make you more money? Like you're gonna be so unhappy. I was like, how unhappy would you be if five years from now your practice was full of those people?

She's like, I'd be very unhappy. I'm like, exactly. So I think you get to have both when you, like I said, really weed out your audience to be the people who wanna work with you. The energy of your day is just gonna feel so much better. Like even if you don't like listen to me about anything else. So I will leave you with one last episode.

I think you should go back and listen to if you haven't yet. It's kind of on the same topic, but it deep dives into more things that I have found have really like, can like make Instagram feel like a less like energy draining place to be. Um, it's episode 1 47. Hate spending time on Instagram. Try these proven steps.

I would go back and listen to that one. Because one of the main tips I give on that one is to not be consuming content from your colleagues, because that's another thing that's gonna make you feel really crappy and kind of, in my opinion, kind of stops you from showing up sometimes because when you start comparing, you're like, Ugh.

Yeah. I think that would be like a really beautiful addition to this episode is to go listen to episode 1 47. I hope this was helpful. Again, I hope it didn't sound like I was trying to dismiss your very valid fears or gaslight you, because trust me, I am not, but it's just something that I've learned in business that I just can't, you know, you just can't pay attention to.

So if any questions, you know where to find me. And like I said, if you have not yet left me a review, I would be so honored. I literally read them all and I go, thank you. I say thank you out loud every single time. If you haven't let, uh, left me review on Apple Podcasts, um, you can also do it on the other platforms, but Apple's the only one where you can take a written review.

I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. So I hope y'all have a fantastic day and stop looking at your unsubscribes and unfollows. Okay, love you. Bye. Thank you for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified, and hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast.

Well that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce, to bring you free information. So in order for me to be able to continue doing that, we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly a Cahill.

C-A-H-I-L-L-I would greatly, greatly appreciate your support. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.