I Started to Treat my Social Media Feeds like a Business and Here is What Happened…
🗓️ Jaclyn Johnson POSTED TO THE GROUP CHAT Mar 31, 2026
Community, Networks, & Social Capital | Career & Personal Branding
I lost followers—and it was a good thing
One of the first things that happened when I started treating my social feeds like a business was that I lost followers. And not a small dip—enough that I noticed. A few year ago, that probably would have sent me into a spiral. But this time, it didn’t.
Because when I actually looked at what I had been posting, the answer was obvious. I was leaning heavily into the founder- aspirational, lifestyle-driven content because thats what everybody else was doing. And while that might feel more natural to share, it’s not actually what my audience was there for.
What they wanted—what they consistently responded to—was business. Insight. Perspective. A point of view.The ratio was off.
I was giving them something closer to 80% my life and 20% business wins, when in reality they wanted 80% business takes, 20% personal glimpses. And once I corrected that, the people who weren’t aligned naturally filtered out. What I lost in follower count, I gained in clarity. The audience didn’t disappear. It sharpened.
I actually started enjoying making content again
The bigger shift wasn’t external—it was how I felt creating.
When I moved back into talking about business and sharing my hot takes, something clicked. I wasn’t forcing ideas or trying to keep up with what everyone else was posting. I was speaking from experience, from pattern recognition, from things I actually think about every day.
And I realized something else: I had been sitting inside the same narrative for too long.
I’ve told the Create & Cultivate story in a lot of different ways, but it’s still the same story. This pushed me to expand beyond that—to talk about investing, capital, power dynamics, how deals actually get done, what I’m seeing right now.
I also started challenging myself creatively. Not just to show up, but to actually say something original. To avoid the copy-paste content that floods every feed and instead develop a real point of view.That’s when it got fun again.
Not because it was easier—but because it felt like building.
I’m enjoying my life offline more than I have in years
The part I didn’t expect was how much this would impact my life outside of social media.
When I stopped treating every moment as potential content, I started actually being in those moments again.
I don’t feel the same pressure to document everything. I’m not thinking about how something will play online while I’m experiencing it in real life. I can go to dinner, travel, spend time with people—and just be there.I still share parts of my life, but it’s intentional now. It’s not constant.
And the irony is, the less I feel the need to prove I have a full life online, the more I actually feel it offline.
