No Social Media for 30 Days. Breaking Up With Your Phone!

Hey girl!

In today’s interview, we talk about social detoxes, breaking up with your phone, and more. I chat with my previous client and sweet friend, Sara Jane Ladums. We talk about her holy spirit-led social media intervention. How it happened, what she did, and how it went. SJ laid down social media for 30 days and her results and revelations were mind-blowing.

We will share them all with you.

The biggest question is… since SJ is new-ish in business, did deleting social media hurt her business? Did her downloads go down? Did her income crash? Find out!

We hope this episode blesses you!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(01:14):
I’m so excited to be sitting with you SJ. I call her SJ, but you guys, this is Sara-Jane Ladums. Welcome to the show!

(01:23):
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so blessed to be here. Thank you!

(01:28):
Welcome. So you just got out of Podcast to Profit with me. And what was that like for you? And then I actually brought you on for another reason, which we’re going to talk to all of you guys about, but talk a little about your experience there. Why did you join?

(01:45):
Why did I join Podcast to Profit? It wasn’t something that I set out to do. I started my podcast January 2019, a long time ago. And it was like a little passion project that was just on the side and it was something that I did and it was fun. And I had like my mom and my friends listening to me, that kind of thing. And I don’t know how I found you Stef, in all honesty, I keep thinking about like, how did I find your podcast? But I did. It was God.

(02:18):
God helped me find you. And I’ve binged listened to all of your episodes while I was walking my dogs and driving in the car. And I was just okay, I get what you’re saying. And then I did Clarify Your Calling course and your Podcast to Profit. No, your Podcast Pro University, PPU course. And I was like, okay, this is really great, but I knew that I needed some accountability and I knew that I needed somebody to push me that little bit. I’m quite driven myself to do things, but I knew that I needed like a bit of coaching. So I loved the business model that you were talking about as well.

(03:01):
And the idea of having like a passive income and hanging out in my well, not my PJ’s, but I spend most of my time in workout clothes, teaching workouts, or if I’m not in workout clothes, I’m in wellies on the farm. So I don’t really have time to like, make my hair look beautiful and that kind of thing. And you would just like, PJ’s all day and I’m thinking, yes, this is my woman. So that is how I found you and why I jumped.

(03:31):
Well, first of all, can we just get a moment of silence for wellies on the farm? That’s the cutest, oh my God. You guys, what time, like we have a time difference, SJ and so you were showing up at a crazy time and I love that. Like your daughter would be with you on so many of our P2P calls, like you made that work. So what value did you get from P2P? Cause you already had a podcast and you had already taken PPU. So you had some of those foundational things kind of set up. What changed for you? Like what were your tactical outcomes because of the program?

(04:14):
Like I said a minute ago, I know that I needed accountability. Like I’m a fitness coach and I knew that if I am expecting people to pay me to coach them, I needed to invest in myself and have somebody who was, you know, steps ahead of me, showing me how to do things. In terms of the value, like the group coaching was the key thing for me, I’ve done your courses, they’re amazing, but I needed that extra accountability.

(04:43):
And in terms of like actual, like tactical staff, I ranked which was really surprising. Cause I said to you earlier about how I had like 30 people listening to my podcast. And then all of a sudden, once we put in some of the strategies that you had taught us, like the SEO and everything, I have like 500 downloads a week. So going from 30 to 500 a week, which was crazy, I ranked in random countries.

(05:15):
I ranked number 38 in New Zealand for nutrition, number 96 in the UK for nutrition as well, which I was really pleased about. And the biggest impact was actually having like people reach out to me from completely random countries across the globe and say, I love your podcast. It’s been so helpful to me. And that just shows that all of that SEO stuff that you were teaching us just really worked.

(05:42):
Oh, so good. And tell everyone, what’s your podcast called and what do you teach?

(05:49):
My podcast is called The Productive Mum and I help driven mompreneurs retain their and time by cycle syncing their nutrition, fitness and their to-do list. So really ensure it’s about helping people firstly find the time to prioritize themselves and then actually to look at how their health and fitness they can come at it from a different way that they work in tune with their body rather than against us.

(06:19):
I really believe God has given us this incredible body that we should be celebrating and not actually, you know, punishing ourselves by doing exercise. So that’s what I do. My clients are always saying to me, I never have the time to do these things. So I help them find the time. And then I show them how to lose weight or whatever their goal it is. And in a way that works for their body.

(06:44):
That’s so good and so needed. And I think what happened that I think was so transformational, I’m gonna have you share the story, but you know, SJ was hustle, right? The hustle mode, trying to build and scale this podcast, trying to do it your own way, without understanding how to optimize, about understanding how to get it, to go from side hobby to a big fruitful business and you have a little and a farm and you’re trying to run this fitness business and do all these things. And so what you had been taught was social media. That’s where you go, that’s where you hang out. That’s where you need to build and talk to us about what happened in one of the very first P2P coaching set or P2P trainings, I guess it was a training.

(07:36):
I think I’m probably going to cry as we talk about this. So I’m just going to give you a heads up, but yeah. So as you said, the hustle mentality and my background is network marketing, so we’ve always been towards social media, get on reels, get on TikTok, get on Facebook. And it was just like, oh my goodness, I can’t do all of the things. And this was the great thing that I loved about you from the start was you don’t need social media.

(08:06):
Like you absolutely don’t need to be on social media. And there was one of the first trainings, as you said, where we were talking about making the podcast, the thing and not getting distracted by the other things that are out there because you go onto the social media and you’re down a rabbit hole and that’s it, your time’s gone.

(08:27):
And I just remembering, you said, I’m speaking this to somebody and somebody is sat there, squirming. And I was squirming and I was in tears and my doors to a sat next to me and I was just crying. And that was really like, I’ve got the holy spirit goosebumps right now, as I’m talking to you about it, it’s just massively impactful.

(08:46):
Just to pause you right there, like that, sometimes it’s that realization, that something isn’t right. And we’ve known it. And we’re stuffing it away. You know, SJ, it’s like this doesn’t feel right. Why am I not looking in my children’s eyes more than this screen, but you can’t seem to shake it. And like, we just stuffed away the guilt and we keep doing it over and over again. And this is not you. This is all of us.

(09:14):
This is every single woman who’s been told that she has to do that to have success. And that’s the lie that’s been spoken over us, especially as entrepreneurs and in this space. And so, and you guys know me. I was like on another level on my soap box and holy spirit was like, keep going, like keep drilling them. And I was like, oh man, someone’s supposed to hear this right now. And it was SJ. So what happened next?

(09:40):
Well, I think it was you and I we had a conversation about it and I’d heard you talk about, you know, taking it off your phone and that sort of thing, but it was really like the validation, hearing it from you, somebody who had been there and said like, you know, I have a successful business. I am showing you that you don’t need to have social media. And you just gave me the nudge and the evidence that I needed to take that step. And I tookb it was Instagram for me, Facebook, wasn’t an issue Instagram for me.

(10:13):
And I took it off my phone completely for 30 days and that was hard and it was really good. And this was one of the great things about doing this during P2P was I had you. And I also had the girls in my pod and I shared that with them. And I said, look, this is what I’m doing. Can you check in on me? And they did. And they supported me. And they were just like, have you still taken it off your phone? Yes, I haven’t gone back to it. So I had their accountability as well, which was super, super helpful.

(10:43):
What happened in the first few days of you deleting that app? Did you feel like withdrawal symptoms from it? Did you continue to want to touch your phone and the app and like, what was that like?

(10:55):
Oh my gosh, it just shows how addictive it is because you’re just thinking, oh, am I missing something? Is somebody messaging me? You know, what am I missing out on? Am I missing a business opportunity? I should be in my DMS, like making sure that I’m getting back to everybody all the time and being available to all these like strangers, basically you’re making yourself available to strangers all the time.

(11:20):
But actually it’s about the people that are there, in your life who wants to look in your face and see you and for you to be present with them. And that was one of the first things that I sort of really noticed was that I looked up from my phone and I looked around more and my daughter who’s four, Kirby, you know, she was always saying to me like, mommy, mommy, mommy.

(11:46):
And she’s always trying to get my attention. And once I took Instagram off, she stopped that because I was there with her. And when I was working, I was working, she was okay with that. But she wasn’t having to always be vying for my attention with this like piece of metal I had in my hand. And that was one of the biggest differences that I noticed probably like within the first week.

(12:10):
And it really strengthened my bond with her and my relationship with her. And it also helped to take away some of the anxiety that I had too. So I struggled with anxiety and I started to sleep better because I wasn’t on my phone, like just before bedtime. And I talk about this all the time, like putting your phone away and that sort of thing, but you don’t always follow your own advice so sleeping better, which was amazing.

(12:36):
Oh my goodness. So looking around being more in your present moment, did you, I feel like whenever I delete them on the weekends and I’ve actually been feeling the tug to do an extended fast like that too, to do like a 30 day, I think the longest I’ve ever done is five days.

(12:52):
And I’m like, I’m so feeling that too SJ cause it feels to just look around more. That’s one of the biggest things I sense when I delete Instagram on the weekends as well is it’s like this veil is lifted from my eyes. Like I see God, like in the trees and I’m so present and it’s like, you’re living in this fuzzy fog cloud. And I’m like, how does an app have that much power over us?

(13:22):
Affecting the way that we see it’s affecting the way that we think and feel, and even love. And then to hear that your daughter stopped having to say, mommy, mommy, mommy, all the time it proves it. You know, that’s just evidence that it was stealing from you guys as a relationship. And like these years that we have with our littles are so fleeting.

(13:49):
And you know, I know for me, the first three years of Miles’ life, I was totally, you know, immersed in my work and my phone and I’ll never get that time back. I’ll never get it back. And so the best thing I can ever say to anyone listening is if you’re feeling that tug, that social media is a prison and that you can’t break free, it is as strong as a drug addiction. It has been proven, right? Like go watch that. What is it? Social something documentary.

(14:18):
Yeah. Yeah. I did watch that one. I can’t remember what…

(14:23):
Social dilemma. It’ll prove it to you. Like the addiction is absolutely real. And then the fact that your anxiety and your sleep, and it’s just, it’s so interesting to me how we are allowing ourselves to stay in the prison of this little phone. Like it’s a prison and the walls are invisible and we’re choosing to stay there and we have this freedom that we can break free from that.

(14:46):
And I’ve been feeling the tug to do an extended social media detox as well. Like the longest I’ve ever done is five days. And I think it would be so freeing to do a month and even to delete it completely, like when we really think about SJ, what you were missing in that 30 day period, like what actually happened when you silenced all that noise, like, did it hurt your business? Were you missing out on everything? Like what happened when you came back? What did you have a billion messages to answer?

(15:21):
I think, I mean, just to go back to what actually happened within those 30 days with some really impactful things. So we’ve spoken about my daughter, but actually some of the things that I had some time back. So first of all, I was able to start doing some more of the things that I used to really love, I used to compete in competitive road cycle races.

(15:45):
And I hadn’t been doing that since I’d had Kirby and I found that I had some time and I then entered myself in some competitions and I was doing the training. And one of the other things that happened during, I think it was about two weeks after I’d taken Instagram off my phone, I had a dream about my podcast and I had a dream about the name of my podcast and the colors, which I shared with you and we tweaked it.

(16:13):
And then I spoke to the girls and in my pod about it as well. So that was, you know, it had cleared my head and it had made space for God to give me these amazing downloads. And for me to get really clear because I knew who I was talking to, I didn’t know how to kind of package it. And then the other thing that also came from that as well was one day I’d got up really early and I was on my bike and I would, I did my usual training road and I came home and I just had the inspiration of what I was going to put in my course.

(16:46):
So you’d been teaching us how to map out our course and everything. And I just got off my bike. I sat down at the kitchen table with a pen and an old envelope. And I just literally wrote out my course from that. And it was just amazing, like just the headspace to be able to do something like that. And then I took that and then typed it out properly. And I remember one of the girls on my pod saying to me, wow, SJ that so detailed. How did you do that? And I said, honesty. Like it was just off the back of I’d come back from a ride and I did it. And that was just amazing. Just absolutely amazing.

(17:23):
I hear so many similarities to what happened for me. Like the dream of revamping the podcast, the colors from God, and then CYC, when I created that course, SJ, that was coming off of a social detox as well. And I literally sat with my notebook and God downloaded the entire course of CYC in 30 minutes in my morning routine. I know I’m like, it’s just so good. And he’s so faithful.

(17:50):
And here’s the thing. When you lay something down in obedience at the feet of Jesus, you give something up, God has something better to give you in return. He’s not going to make you give something up and give something away that wasn’t from Him and then not refuel it with something that is from Him because of your obedience and your faithfulness. So look at all that fruit that you got in 30 short days, like it’s so beautiful.

(18:19):
Just so powerful. And I’m so grateful that I had that nodge to do it and that I listened as well.

(18:30):
You guys are probably listening right now. Like, oh yeah, I should try that. And then you go straight back to Instagram. Like that’s not the point. The point is we have to do hard things in order to be free. Like nothing that Jesus or the disciples or any of, you know, kingdom women who are building kingdom businesses, any of you, none of this is easy. Like we are the outlier.

(18:55):
You will be the only one without social apps on the weekends. You will be the only one that just maybe deletes it completely. You’ll be the only one. And that’s okay. And that you have to take your life back. And it’s ridiculous that we are willing to let an app and a little hunk of metal control our lives and our hearts and steal from our time like SJ found the time to get back to biking again.

(19:22):
Would you rather stare at this little piece of phone or this little metal hunk? I like that you called it that and look at strangers wives that have no relevance to you. Don’t add value in your life. Don’t make you feel good or hop on a bike ride for an hour and experience God’s incredible presence in the wind, in the trees and come back refreshed and rejuvenated and ready to pour into your family like duh.

(19:46):
But yet we still choose the metal. Like that’s what I can’t understand. And I guess all I have to say to those of you in that seat right now is like, you have to make the choice to break the addiction. That’s where it started. Like I made the choice to break the addiction, then you were obedient to it. Why 30 days? Cause you brought that to me. You were like, I’m feeling like I need to get rid of it for 30 days.

(20:15):
I guess, I think it’s because of the way that I work with the cycle syncing. So a lot of things that I kind of monthly or weekly basis, so it was kind of like, I think it was the relation to that that made me think right. A cycle of 30 days.

(20:33):
So how did you feel coming up to the end of the 30 days? Were you anxious about getting back on? Did you not want to get back on, like what were all of those emotions coming nearing up to the end of that 30 day fast?

(20:50):
I found a way through Facebook basically to still give an Instagram presence. After that 30 days, I could still find a way to put things onto social media that didn’t require me to actually be there. And now it’s treating that app, like a business tool. And it’s something that I actually use on my laptop and not on my phone.

(21:21):
So it’s like I sit down to do Instagram in the same way as I would sit down at my computer to answer an email or write or record my podcast or something like that. It’s part of my business now and taking it away, gave me the space to then find a different way of having it as part, because the way that you talk about it, you know, and this is what I love is like the podcast is the thing.

(21:48):
The podcast is completely the thing. And I love that because it’s mine. Nobody else owns it. Nobody else can close my podcasts down. I have complete control over my podcast and my blog and all of those things. And social media is just a tiny weeny little add-on to the whole process. And it’s an add-on that is lovely and great, but you don’t need it because as you say, coming back to that first thing that you said to me, it didn’t impact the people that were listening to my podcast.

(22:16):
It didn’t impact my business, not having social media at all. So I would absolutely say to anyone, if you are listening to me, almost cry on Stef’s show, just do it because you’re being nudged by the holy spirit for a reason and listen to it and just be obedient. Because I think as you said, if you take something away and you give something up, your reward is going to be incredible.

(22:43):
So I thank you for that. And I think maybe they’re thinking cool, but I have to use social to build my business. So SJ, what happened to your business? Did it crumble? Like, was it gambles because you deleted Instagram? Like what happened in that month?

(23:02):
It didn’t make any difference. And you know, you’re going through Podcast to Profit at the same time as I gave up Instagram, my podcast grew, it didn’t, you know, the downloads increased, people didn’t disappear. I had, you know, incredible engagement, I have people reaching out to me and messaging me and saying, thank you for your episodes. So you don’t, it just shows you don’t need Instagram. It’s not everything. It’s not, it doesn’t define you. It doesn’t define your business. It’s a tool, a business tool if you want to use it. But if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.

(23:40):
And I questioned those of you thinking like, oh no, I love it. Like I do want to be on here all the time. I challenge you to really take a look at that and really evaluate, I think most of you listening don’t want to, you’re like, I’m so done. I’m tired of this. I can feel the addiction and I need to break this. I just don’t know how.

(23:58):
And so I’m going to talk about that in a second, but those of you thinking, I don’t think I need to get rid of it or I’m fine with it. Great. Just inventory that, take a look at the hours you’re spending on your phone. And then in those hours, which apps are they, I will put money on it that it is a social app of some kind that has alerts and dings and you know, hits to your, to your brain saying like, look at me.

(24:25):
Like there’s a reason that there are billions of dollars poured into these apps to keep you there. And the most brilliant people in the world working 24/7 to figure out a way to make you stay in that little prison, but you do have a choice. And here’s the beautiful, most incredible thing that we can stand on and we can lean on and know for sure is that God wins, right? Jesus wins.

(24:51):
And He conquered the world already. And if we are his, all we have to do is say, God free me from this addiction. I am ready to be free from this. I am ready to break the bonds, the chains that the world has placed on me through this phone. I need you to give me the desire to break free from this and the belief that I can be without it. Give me the strength. Give me the courage. Give me the resilience. Give me the accountability, Lord.

(25:16):
You guys get fierce with your prayer life. We have to find his strength because we are not strong enough. Now SJ she wasn’t strong enough that day to be like, well, that sounds like a great idea, Stef. Cool, I’ll go delete it for 30 days and never turned to the Lord for strength to get her through that. Not only the first decision to do it, but the whole 30 days that she had to come through and get through. So get fierce there.

(25:41):
And then tactically, this is just my advice, tactically if 30 days scare you, which I think is phenomenal because it would really break the addiction and then you can come back fresh with some boundaries. For me, those boundaries are, you know, I’m so in control of it now, but before I wasn’t in control, I would have a timer in my calendar in the time block where I had 15 minutes a day I’d re-install the app I’d turn on the timer and for 15 minutes I had to answer DMs.

(26:11):
I only had 15 minutes. I had to answer the DMS, post the stories that I prerecorded the day before, answer the comments and be done. And now I’ve just outsourced Instagram. Like I don’t even care about it. I don’t have to get in there. It’s amazing. I know not everyone’s at that point, but you will be. And it’s so freeing. So tactically it’s that timer of yourself. And then also I’d love to hear SJ if they’ve added stories to the computer function, but deleting it off your phone and only accessing Instagram from your computer. That was game changer for me. Did they add that capability?

(26:47):
Yeah. So, if you’ve got your Facebook linked up to your Instagram account, you can schedule stories. You can share your posts all through there, you can pick up all of your messages. You can access all of the comments in your Instagram and your Facebook posts everything through the Facebook business suite. And it’s just super, it makes you, as you were saying about boundaries, it makes you treat it as a business tool. And not as something like some kind of escapism.

(27:17):
Exactly. Oh my gosh. I’m so excited about that. I just realized that you could access your stories through there and you just post them up through the Facebook story then and it shares. You guys, cause that’s what I would hear. Oh, but we can’t do stories. I mean, you guys, how many people are really watching your stories anyway? Can we just be honest?

(27:36):
Like I have the same hundred and 50 people that watch and they’re already worked with me for hundreds of years. Like they’re all my friends, my prior clients, it’s not growing my business. It’s just cultivating and engaging. So if you get in there twice a week from the Facebook end on your computer, I guarantee you that it’s going to be the same type of breakup that we’re talking about then having it on your phone.

(28:02):
And this goes for anything that’s bringing you an instant gratification on your phone. So all notifications off, every single one. If you want to know if someone texted you go look at the text app, okay. If you want to know, if someone answered your DM, you have time scheduled in your planner to get into your DMS Monday at three, right? Like start taking control of your life.

(28:24):
You don’t need to be reminded and prodded of something happening infinitely immediately. All notifications are off on my phone. Now every social apps getting deleted because now I just learned from SJ that we can schedule our stories from our computer. Amazing, deleting, I delete every weekend, get on some type of deleting ritual. Okay. So are you going to delete every day and you get in for 30 minutes, if you’re not going to go through the computer, like we’re mentioning, do you get off every single weekend? That would be a bare minimum for me.

(28:57):
Do you get off once a quarter for a month? Do you take a sabbatical in the summer? Like when are you going to delete this app? Because if you’re not willing to delete it, I’m really sorry to tell you, it could potentially be an idol in your life. And we were called to cast down idols and we are called to replace those with, you know, fruitful things and good things. And then the final thing to think about here.

(29:18):
And then I’ll see, SJ if you have any advice here too. But the final thing that I want to say is why are we even in here if we don’t feel good when we are. So looking at the emotions, your physical surroundings, your feelings, your demeanor, your mental state, when you are in and getting off of these apps and taking a look at, is that how I want to feel on an ongoing basis for me, I would just feel comparison, defeat, disappointment, frustration, overwhelm.

(29:55):
If I had too many things to reply back to, I’d also feel like I had to be there. I hate the feeling of addiction. I hate the feeling of being forced to do something like I don’t think so, you know, the only person that forced me to do anything is the Lord Jesus. So I’m not here for that. So it was like all these emotions that were clues. And then my kids, like you, acting out, trying to get my attention, my sweet four year old being like mom and I didn’t even hear him until the third time he said it.

(30:27):
Something wrong with this, guys. We have to wake up and take our lives back. And you have the power within you. I’ll pray with you guys at the end of this to give you that belief and that trust and for us to activate God’s hand in this and help us. But SJ, is there anything else you want to say about those women who just want to have this freedom? They want to have that courage to do what you just did and they want to take their time, their life, their presence back.

(30:56):
I think it’s a little bit of tough love about actually my reflection was that me being on social media and me wanting to see, you know, how many DMs I had and how many people had liked my post and how many people had watched my stories. That was all about me. It was like, I needed other people to make me feel good, like to make me feel that I was, I was worthy, but you don’t need that.

(31:22):
You get that from God’s already like that’s a given and you clean on him and your worthiness and who you are in this world is going to be more impactful to the people that are next to you. And what you were saying about your children and that mommy, which I was getting from Kirby all the time. I feel so awful about that now that I really, really do. And I look back and I think, oh my gosh, I was missing so much with her and now I’m there. And it’s just amazing. Just the transformation and just getting over myself in all honesty, getting over my ego.

(32:09):
Amen. Amen to that. Well, you guys join Sara and I in prayer. We invite you to pray with us. If you’ve been feeling like it’s time. And I think I’m going to do a 30 day social. I’ll do Instagram social detox, just cause we have our Facebook group, but I’m going to run that through the computer. And we invite you to join us on a 30 day social media detox.

(32:30):
And if you want to do that and you want to keep only Facebook on your computer and use my Facebook group as accountability, join us. Like I think that this would be such a great opportunity for us to break up with it together, to have that encouragement, then to find that strength and that accountability that you need. Father God, I lift up every woman, person, man, whoever’s listening to this podcast right now, or we’ll listen in the future. I lift them up to you.

(33:01):
And I ask you to break the chains of addiction over our lives, specifically when it comes to social media and our phones. I ask you to give new eyes to see, new ears to hear, new mouth to speak, new lives to live when we are freed from this addiction in the name of Jesus. I ask you to give us the power and the strength and the resilience to make this decision.

(33:25):
And I ask you to put into us a fierce belief that we can, and also just the action, pour the action into our hands and the discernment into our minds of not picking up the phone of not turning away when we make the decision to do this because you are our strength and you are the way, and we are called to live present lives and to till the soil, with our hands and to raise kingdom kids.

(33:50):
And we cannot do that Lord with these phones in our hands, with these apps, stealing from our every single day and our every moment and our every thought, God. I ask you to give us strength and resilience. Every woman listening and pray. I just pray over them that if this is the time that you would give them that holy spirit confirmation, and they would join us in social free September. And God just give us that clarity.

(34:17):
If now is the time to do this and to break free from these chains, these invisible chains that we are bound by, and that through that experience, I ask you to anoint them with fresh revelation. God give them gifts, give them fruitfulness, give them miracles that you replace what they’ve laid at the feet of Jesus with something better, something true, something real and something full of purpose for their lives, God.

(34:42):
We can’t wait to see the miracles that are born after this social detox is done and that maybe it is extended and who knows, who knows what’s going to happen Lord, but that at least a new experience will be born. We are so excited to see what you’re going to do through this time in Jesus’ name. Amen.