We recently connected with Brooke Thomas and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Brooke thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Some of the most interesting parts of our journey emerge from areas where we believe something that most people in our industry do not – do you have something like that?

You truly don’t need to be on social media (at all) in order to have a successful business. There are some exceptions, two to be exact:

1. Your business model is the influencer business model (meaning all revenue is a direct result of the content you produce on social media).
2. Your business produces a physical product(s) which is new or emerging and does not yet have shelf-space in a major retailer.

If you are a service-provider of any kind you can ditch posting if it doesn’t bring you any joy.

I provide strategy and design services for businesses, schools and organizations in the healing arts space. So in my case, my business is 100% service-based, and the clients I work with are 100% service-based. I ditched social media in 2020 and it’s been both more delightful than I could have imagined, and also more profitable for my business!

I’m a one-woman show, and so don’t have a social media team. That means when I wanted to stop posting, I had to think about what I’d be losing. Turns out not much! And what I gained was the ability to think about marketing via relationships again.

Social media posting can feel very satisfying in that “check-box” way that makes you feel like you’re doing something. But I find that for myself, and for nearly all of my clients, it isn’t helping them to more strategically connect with their right clients and to develop and rich and robust network in the real world.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I provide strategy and design support to tiny (but mighty!) healing arts businesses, schools and non-profit member organizations.

I work holistically by connecting the strategy piece to the design piece. For example, what I primarily deliver to people is a brand identity (this includes their written copy) and a website. Sometimes cornerstone marketing materials are also delivered in the project.

In order to deliver that in a way that fully represents the business I’m working for, we first zoom out and talk about where they want to be strategically. From here, any larger branding and website project can evolve from a de-cluttering place; When people are in business for themselves, they often have too many offerings they have collected along the way, or they are sorting through various business models and ways to earn- if we just right in on design and copy it reflects this clutter and their voice, mission and unique way of helping can’t come through. I think of this process as first “Marie Kondo-ing” their business, and from there determining how best to present their work in their new digital home.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

I work with folks in the healing arts because I have been in that field as well. For 23 years I ran a private practice in Rolfing Structural Integration (a form of manual therapy).

Like many people in the healing arts, my school did a great job of training me to be a good practitioner, but a not great job of preparing me to be self-employed. I really struggled for about 5 years to figure out how to grow and manage my practice.

Once I did learn how to be a small business owner, I discovered I loved the business part of it! And I began a training that teaches people in the healing arts the kinds of self-employment skills they will need. Things like how to know what you need to earn (and how to get there), and how to grow your practice.

This started as a side hustle in 2009, and now has been refined many times over and makes up a significant chunk of my income.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

For me, being a part of the market that I serve is invaluable. Nothing I am teaching people or providing for people is theoretical for me- I’ve worn all the same hats that they have!

Contact Info:

• Website: simpleprospering.com

Image Credits
photo by Rachel Liu Ballard