If you guys have noticed, I rarely make
any YouTube videos about TikTok
or Instagram Reels, which I know are
super trending right now. And the reason
for that is because I don't use any of
them for any of my businesses.
And you know what? I can still make
a combined over a million dollars in
sales across all of my businesses
every single year.
Hi. My name is Mei Pak, and I help
makers, artists, and designers create
a profitable handmade business without
relying on social media.
If there's one takeaway I want you to
have with this video, it's that social
media is not the only thing that
can bring your shop traffic in sales.
I am well aware that my channel
could be growing so much more and
I'd be getting a lot more views if I
was always making content around
social media. Like, around their
algorithms or how to get more followers
or how to do TikTok or Instagram Reels.
Every other business-related channel
on YouTube does this.
It's what watchers are searching for.
But the reality for me is that I don't focus
on using social media to get traffic
in sales for any of my shops and I still
make a lot of sales. Here's why.
Social media is time consuming.
There's always some new thing you
have to learn how to do and,
you know, learning curves take time
and effort to go through. And by
the time you're settled in, another
new thing happens that you have to
learn all over again. So it feels like this
constant hamster wheel that you cannot
stop because if you get off that wheel,
the traffic stops and the sales stop.
To me, that's not a recipe for a long
term sustainable business that's
successful that builds upon itself.
To me, this means you're still trading
time for dollars and when you're not
posting a Reel or a Story, you're not
making money. And I know a lot of
you guys will resonate with this,
especially if you say have a full-time
job that you're juggling or you're a
stay-at-home mom or a parent and you
have to take care of a family and a house.
For me, I don't have kids or another job,
but I am pursuing my other childhood
dream of being an actor here in
Los Angeles, and I have to do auditions
and go on shoots and go to classes
and that's like a part-time job.
There just isn't enough time in the day to
run your business on top of all the effort
social media requires of you in order
to succeed with it. So I'm not saying
social media is ineffective, but as
someone who's had a business for
16 years now, I have tried many
different ways of marketing my shop.
I have tried it all. And what I've seen
is social media is not the best investment
of your time and you get a poor
ROI from it. What this means is,
say for every hour you spend on
social media, you get a lower
dollar amount back,
then say if you did something like
networking in forums. Now, as you may
know, one of my favorite ways to grow a
business is with using media outreach.
So getting your products featured
on other people's social media or on
a magazine or web a site or TV show.
If you spent an hour doing that,
your time is going to go so much further
for your business than building your
own social media audience up
one person at a time. Now, I think
one big reason I see so many
people still doing social media
is because it's the obvious thing to do.
It's in front of us every day and
everyone is talking about it, so it's
hard to see that other solutions exist.
But that's also exactly why it's so hard
to get social media to work. It's
so competitive. There are 1,159
Instagram posts uploaded every single
second. It's so hard just to be seen
and to stand out to your potential
customers and to get the algorithm
to favor your account. So your post gets
shown to your followers, right?
That's a lot of content created
every second. Not to mention, it's easy
to feel productive for your business
when you're working on social media.
But I also want you to think of your
time as two separate categories,
right? There's creating and then
there's outreach. Anytime you're
spending building or creating something,
whether that's designing a new product
or making a Reel, you're not
doing anything that's actually putting your
name out there. Creating content
alone is not what will get you
eyeballs seeing your work. It's the
act of outreach, going out there and
talking to people about your work.
That's going to get you traffic and sales.
And it's easy for us creative people to
stay stuck in creation mode all the time
because it's relatively easy and a
lot more comfortable than doing
what you really need to be doing,
which is reaching out to people.
I catch myself all the time.
When I find myself avoiding something
in my business, I usually default
into creation mode. So this is something
I want you to be very aware of.
Social media can make you feel
like you're doing something for
your business. But if you look at
your numbers and test different ways
of promoting your shop, you might find
that social media is the least effective
thing you could be doing for sales.
And there are only so many hours
in the day and life is short, so why
spend it on things that aren't going
to move you forward quickly.
Now, I'm not saying don't ever
do social media, but it shouldn't be the
main focus of where all your time goes.
If you're a part of my community,
you'll know that last year, my Instagram
account from my jewelry business got
shut down without any reason why.
This happened a few months before
the holiday season, which as you
know, is where gift sellers like
me make most of our sales.
And I still managed to make over a
hundred thousand dollars selling
my handmade jewelry that year.
That is such a huge testament in my
opinion that it is very possible to still
make sales even if you don't have a
social media account. You might be
wondering, then how did I still make
all of that money without Instagram.
Well, over the years, I have done a
lot of media outreach. And as a
result, a lot of people out there know
about my shop. I wouldn't be
total strangers and they would
know about my business because
they saw me on someone's blog or
a magazine or in a YouTube video or
their friend told them about my shop.
Word-of-mouth is the most powerful
form of marketing that exists.
And outreach is a great way to get this
going because it's essentially
the same thing, right? Someone else is
telling their audience about your shop
and how cool your products are.
There's so much more weight to that
and people trust that more and you're
more likely to make sales from that
then the shop owner themselves
saying nice things about their product
on social media because which shop
owner wouldn't when you think about it.
We're always hyping up our own
products and customers know this,
so they're less trusting of our word.
If all you did with your time was
media outreach, I can promise you your
business will be in a very different place.
Maybe a challenge for you is to
monitor how much time you're putting
towards social media every week
and then shift that time into doing
outreach instead. And just like with
social media, do it consistently.
And remember that it's also a numbers
game. A lot of people who do
media outreach give up after only
getting one or two mentions
and if it didn't work for them.
Like, you don't stop posting on Instagram
if you had one or two posts that
flopp, right? I also invest in
email marketing. And this is something I
know very few shops are working on.
It's so important because unlike
social media, you actually own the list
of email subscribers you build over time
and no one can take that away from you.
But like me, if Instagram decides to
take your account away, you lose
all those followers that took
you forever to get.
If you're like me and you're just not
interested in using social media
for growing your business, I do have a
free workshop that talks about all
of this in way more detail.
It's about an hour long and you
can sign up to watch in the link
in the description below.
One of my students who came to
one of my free workshops talking
about media outreach grew her
business to seven figures solely
from doing her own outreach.
And she's just one of the many
people who've had success with this,
so I know it works. Join the workshop
using the link below and if you
enjoyed this video or if you
found it eye-opening, which is my
hope, then give this a thumbs up.