The Power of Starting Over
The Amplified Impact Podcast
May 13th, 2023
Hey folks, it’s time for an exciting story about my buddy Renee Rodriguez, the public speaking extraordinaire who decided to do the unthinkable: delete his Instagram account and start over from scratch.
I know, I know, you’re probably thinking “What?! Is he crazy?” But hear me out.
Renee had a bunch of followers on his old account, but the majority of them were fake accounts and spammy bot responses.
He had apparently bought followers in the past (bad move, guys!), and it was starting to hurt his credibility.
So, Renee said “adios” to his old account and started fresh.
And guess what? In just six months, he gained over 100,000 subscribers on his new account…that’s TEN TIMES more than before!
The moral of the story is simple, folks. Sometimes you gotta take a step back to take two steps forward.
Scaling the mountain of success can be tough, and sometimes you need to go down before you can go up again.
It’s not easy…but it’s necessary if you want to achieve greater success in the long run.
Don’t be afraid to start fresh and take a chance. Who knows, it might just be the best decision you ever make.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“The real secret here is when you get to the top of that peak, you’re going to now, from your new vantage point, see that it is also just an intermediate peak…you never get to the top. The mountains just keep getting bigger. And so I encourage you, never settle. Progress is the goal, not perfection.” – Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
So a couple months back, one of my good friends, Renee Rodriguez, who you’ve probably heard me talk about on this podcast before, see, he’s a public speaker, and he puts on these workshops that helps other people like you and me learn how to speak from the heart, how to connect and speak more influentially, more impactfully. And he was a he was a great mentor, really great friend, really enjoy being around him. Just really kind, brilliant human being. And about a year ago, he published a book called Amplify Your Influence, I think. Amplify your influence. Yeah, that’s the one. And it made it onto the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, which is awesome. Fantastic.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:39]:
So all that has to say, this guy’s a stud, he’s a badass, and I recommend you go check out his content if you’re at all interested in learning how to become a more impactful communicator. But that’s not the lesson here. There’s all the things that he’s done that’s really cool. One of the things that he did six months ago I found really, really interesting. He took his Instagram account and he deleted it, and he started a new one. And what was interesting about this is that he had a pretty decent sized following on Instagram at the time. I want to say he probably had like 20,000 subscribers or 20,000 followers on Instagram, which is pretty good, all things told. And he was getting good engagement on his posts.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:23]:
So when he told me that he’s deleting his Instagram and starting a new one, I was like, Why would you do that? That’s really weird. I don’t understand. Well, in talking to him, here’s what happened. He was getting so many fake accounts and so many spammy bot responses to his post that they were just filling up with noise, and they weren’t really connecting with his intended audience because of this. His account just looked so spammy, despite the quality of his content being very, very high. And the reason for this was really many, many years ago, when he first started his Instagram account, he did things the wrong way, and he bought some followers. And in the beginning, I don’t think he bought a ton. But really, buying any amount of followers, any amount of engagement on social media is always problematic because you’re really buying bots and really low quality accounts, and that’s really not going to help you in the algorithm in the long run.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:22]:
So all that to say, a lot of people will do this. They’ll buy followers and engagement so that they can kind of boost their numbers initially so that they can look more legitimate, more credible than they really are. And you see this all the time, people who have like, 100,000 subscribers or followers on Instagram, but then you look at their posts and they have, like, five likes. That’s really weird. They clearly bought those. Now. All that to say, Renee was making really good progress and he’s getting traction with his account and actually had solid engagement on his videos and on his content. And so it kind of seemed to me as like, well, why bother at this point? You’re growing and you’re actually getting through to some people.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:06]:
But he thought that he could be growing a whole lot faster if he wasn’t weighed down with kind of those sins of his past account. So he decided that he was just going to delete that account and he’s going to start all over. And in the last six months he has, I think, gained like 100,000, 110,000 subscribers on Instagram. So he ten X pretty much from where he was, which is phenomenal in a very short period of time. And he’s finally getting the engagement and getting the traction that he deserves. And the lesson here that I find really interesting to take away is that sometimes you need to take a step back to take two steps forward. And it can be really hard to do that when you’re already realizing a little bit of success in the direction that you’re going. Right.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:48]:
The way that I think about this is a lot of people, as they’re scaling the mountain of success, they get to a point where they’ve put in so much time and energy to get halfway up the mountain and they can see where the peak is, but where they’re standing on is its own little peak. And now the only way to make forward progress is to go down the peak that they’re on so that they can get to the base of the bigger peak and eventually start trudging backwards back up. So the only way to make progress is to go down. And because it can be so difficult just to get to that first peak and it can be so mentally overwhelming to think, oh, now I need to go down and then I got to retrace all this progress to just get back to where I was and then have the hopes of keep going higher. Most people just can’t muster that type of grit and determination. And so what they’ll do is they’ll camp out on that first peak that they hit, they’ll plant their flag and they’ll say, this is good enough. The problem with good enough is when you’re living in the shadow of the greater mountain of success, you’re always going to be aware of what could have been, the life that you could have had. And this is where the idea that good is the enemy of great.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:03]:
Or how the golden handcuffs or the comfy fuzzy handcuffs of life where you have a good job but not a great one, good relationships but not great ones. A good hobby life or a good fitness level, but not a great one. Good. Being the enemy of great is true in the sense that you will always realize you’re not living up to your capacity, to your potential, which is such a foundational principle of this podcast and such a big driver in my own life is just recognizing that I’m at my most fulfilled and engaged. Not when I’m moving upwards on the mountain, but when I’m making progress. And sometimes that progress requires you to go back down before you can come back up. And I want to share that with you because regardless of where you are on your journey, it’s not a matter of if you will eventually have to start coming back down before you can go back up, it’s just a matter of when. That’s the process that we all have to go through.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:02]:
And so I encourage you to make that step, to commit to it as soon as possible rather than camping out unnecessarily on that first peak that you find and saying good enough because it’s not good enough. It’s only good enough for now. And eventually you will build with resentment and frustration and disappointment in yourself for having settled. And you will either then look back on your life with regret when you’re too old and tired to be able to now tackle that mountain, or you will eventually get off that peak and you will start making progress and you will look back with regret that you just didn’t do it sooner. So in either case, you’re going to look back with regret. So I encourage you just to take the action necessary. Now, if there’s an area in your life that you know, like, I need to take those steps back. And that could look like maybe you’ve worked your way up in an organization and you have good managerial responsibilities, people that look up to you and you’ve kind of peaked out the skills that you’ve maxed out, the skills that you’ve acquired in that role.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:03]:
Well, you’re never going to move beyond on that, let’s say. Or like, the roles that you could move into are fewer and farther between. And really they’re not even all that interesting to you in the grand scheme of things. Well, you might need to make a pivot, and it might not just be a Pivot to another company with the same skill sets and everything because you’re going to hit the same glass ceiling. It might be a Pivot to go back to the beginning, learn new skills, build new networks so that you can take those new skills, apply them in conjunction with the old skills, and build something even bigger and better in the future. And that’s a really hard step, right? Like, if you’re 42 years old right now and you’ve been doing pretty well for the last decade and you’re like, I know. I have so much more capacity inside of me. It might mean taking a big step back and pay cut and to go work at a company or go pursue an opportunity and an entrepreneurship entrepreneurial endeavor where you are, by definition, going to have to pull back on your quality of life in the way that you’re living or the status that other people have for you.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:02]:
Because now you’re no longer the manager of this thing or like the president of this thing. Now you’re starting this baby company and nobody believes that you can do it. And so that’s the reality of this journey towards the big peak of success. And the real secret here is when you get to the top of that peak, you’re going to now, from your new vantage point, see that it is also just an intermediate peak and that you’re going to have to come down the backside of that mountain that looked like it was the only one, and you’re going to have to start going up the one that’s even bigger behind it, but that you just can’t see because of your perspective and where you’re standing right now. So all that’s to say, you never get to the top. The mountains just keep getting bigger. And so I encourage you, never settle. Progress is the goal, not perfection.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:50]:
There is no done. There is no best. There is only better. And better has no finish line. So I hope this brought you some value. As always, I adore you for being here, for taking some time to join me. I’ll see you guys back here tomorrow. Until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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