Can an organizer survive and even thrive without any social media? Amber Ehrlich of The Tidy Bungalow in Phoenix, Arizona is here to talk about her experiment in saying goodbye to Facebook and Instagram.
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Amber's organizing business, The Tidy Bungalow: thetidybungalow.com
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A little taste of the show:
Melissa Klug: absolutely. Well, so one of the things that's really important, and something that you said is you have been doing this business full-time since you started, that's over five years ago. And so you're pretty experienced, but you and I also were very fortunate that we were able to build our have them be true full-time businesses pretty quickly.
And so the way we did that was by using social media, right? That's how we solely built our businesses.
Amber Ehrlich: No, I, I've had a client, I know a client has verified who I am on Instagram like four years ago, but I've never, no, I did. I got one client, I got one client that did one session from Instagram. Okay. Once
Melissa Klug: congratulations.
Well, all joking aside, what we want to talk about today is Amber undertook are we gonna call it an, I don't know if we call it an experiment or just a lifestyle change? It was an experiment. Yeah. Okay. So what I wanna talk to Amber about is, she and I have been aligned from the very beginning that social media is just a tool that you use in your business, and it is way down the list, like at the bottom of the list of what we did to grow our businesses or to get clients.
Right. But what I want to talk to you about today is you just very boldly over a year ago, undertook an experiment and I wanna hear all about it.
Amber Ehrlich: Okay. So, social media causes me like a lot of performance anxiety and comparative anxiety.
And as a recovery perfectionist, that's really the last thing that I need. Doom scrolling. Definitely. A thing and, well, I'm definitely, you know, was the person that was the top of my game and had confidence. I just, whenever I'd scroll through, I would just get angry. And I think one of the reasons I would get angry, You see what you see online, but then you know the real story behind things and that kind of drives me nuts.
And I just, I was over it. I was also over computers in general. Actually, today I had to reinstall Zoom because apparently I haven't been on a Zoom since I bought a new computer. Fascinating. I love that. So, yeah, it was the end of November, 2021 and I was just like, I hadn't posted on Instagram for six months, not like I did much before.
Hadn't shared anything on Facebook for quite a long time, and I just made a post. I was like, so we're coming down to the end of 2021 and I'm just gonna not do any social media whatsoever in 2022. So I was like, you can find me in real life. Here's my phone number, here's my email address, here's my website.
And I said, I'm gonna go all of 2022 with no social media and. Maybe I'll return and maybe I won't. And of course it was weird at first but oh my goodness, by the end of 2022, like no need, no
Melissa Klug: need whatsoever to return. So you, you not only didn't post, you didn't go on at all, is that correct?
Amber Ehrlich: I didn't go on, no. I, before I quit everything, I did go into all the Facebook settings and I downloaded every single picture that I had ever had. And then I did try to go on mid 2021 to completely deactivate and delete everything. Okay. But since after you are inactive for so long, you can't even get back on.
I don't even know how to verify. I am who I am. So it exists out there. People can find me with my last message ever, but, yeah. I don't even know how to get on at
Melissa Klug: this point. Now you were never a huge Instagram person. , you weren't on it all the time anyway. But when you first started, did you have any sort of like, fomo, what have I done? I miss it. What was the first month like?