For My Skimmers 👀
- Monthly free coaching call this Friday
- Issue 2 of The Honest Feed is here! Today: The influencer era is quietly ending…
- Helpful things I stand behind
✨MONTHLY FREE COACHING ✨
On Friday I am hosting Unmuted, my monthly free coaching call where you come, ask questions around what you’re currently working on or the next phase that you’re looking to get to and I give you unfiltered coaching with clear next steps.
This group is small enough that everyone who wants to ask a question will get their time.
Join our next call here.
| THE HONEST FEED 🗞️ Issue 2: November 2025 For people thinking deeply about the future of online business, social media culture, audience behavior, and ethical monetization. |
Issue 2 of The Honest Feed is here!
The Honest Feed is my newsletter about what’s dying, what’s emerging, and how to build an online presence that isn’t dependent on virality, trends, or being “on” all the time.
After 11 years working online, these are my honest takes about the patterns I’ve watched rise and collapse, to the strategies that continue to work quietly and consistently in the background.
Each issue breaks down what’s happening on social (with a key focus on Instagram), how it impacts the way we sell, and simple ways to grow without losing your voice (or your sanity).
Free readers will still get updates and big news, but The Honest Feed will eventually be moving to the paid side on Substack so I can keep it honest, sustainable, and community-driven.
You can subscribe to my Substack free here.
| The influencer era is quietly ending… |
We’ve normalized buying from people we relate to and not from people who are building something with ethics, depth, or real community impact.
We buy because we like someone.
Because they feel familiar.
Because proximity feels like proof.
Because they have something we wish we had.
Because they’re thin/beautiful/hot/rich/celebrity.
Parasocial closeness has become a currency that influences what we purchase far more than value does. While that works brilliantly for influencers, it creates a problem for everyone else. In a world where popularity becomes a business model, visibility becomes the product instead of credibility, impact or work that actually solves problems.
As the founder of an online marketing business, I’ve built my career helping entrepreneurs communicate with clarity and yet online, I’ve wrestled with the same line many of you likely have.
There have been seasons where I’ve kept my personal life fiercely private, especially when my children were born. And there have been others where I’ve found myself slowly drifting toward the influencer model — where visibility became the metric I measured myself against.
It’s not that sharing personal moments is wrong. Sometimes it does create connection, spark opportunity, or open doors that strategy alone might not, and I’ve experienced that firsthand.
But there was one word I couldn’t shake:
Exposure.
Exposure felt like trading something sacred: My family, my stories, my children – for attention, awareness, or even revenue…and once I noticed that, it was impossible to unsee.
What really started to bother me was that I noticed I wasn’t standing in my truth around what I teach my clients: that you don’t have to post like an influencer to be successful on Instagram. I don’t believe anyone needs to.
Yet I noticed moments where I was doing exactly that — sharing because it performed..
That was my wake-up call.
Influencers — as mascots of consumption and visibility — are losing cultural appeal and people are waking up.
People are tired, more discerning, less hypnotized by the feed. They’re not looking for glossy access to someone’s life! They’re looking for leaders who think deeply, create thoughtfully, and build sustainably.
Which means the real opportunity isn’t in exposure at all. It lies in depth, discernment and in less performance and more presence.
I recently asked a friend of mine who is an influencer if she thought I should lean into that model.
She didn’t even blink. “Don’t do it.”
She knows the burnout, the commodification, the pressure to feed a machine that always wants more. Once you build your identity on being seen, stepping back feels dangerous. Irrelevance becomes a fear instead of a neutral state.
Another friend of mine works behind the scenes planning private, ultra-exclusive events for people like Beyonce and Jay Z— the parties you’ll never see online.
A third friend was invited to Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding in Italy.
Phones confiscated on arrival. No Stories or photos. No proof of attendance.
The new luxury isn’t access, it’s privacy.
As @themerceredition put it so perfectly: “The new cool is not needing to be seen.”
This is exactly what I meant by Authentically Observing
Back in January, I coined a term for what I was seeing on Instagram: Authentically Observing: The shift from performance to presence.
Over the last year, we’ve watched collective behavior change:
The world keeps warming, warring, and dividing.
People are online constantly but trustful rarely.
The feed is loud, frantic, and transactional.
In response, two movements are emerging:
1. Nostalgia
Not solely as an aesthetic, but as a coping mechanism. People want safety, familiarity, a pause and return to what they knew.
2. Private Spaces
Substack groups, Paid communities, Email, DMs. Places where you choose who witnesses you.
Adam Mosseri, the CEO of Instagram even acknowledged this shift, admitting that more photos and videos are shared in DMs than in Stories.
The real social interaction is happening off the main stage and the parasocial loop is changing, if not breaking. We’re collectively less willing to be watched and more interested in being understood.
What this means for you — the entrepreneur, the coach, the builder
→ Stop aiming to be an influencer.
Influence dissolves, relationships convert.
→ Design for depth, not display.
Instagram is your entrance and Email + community is the house.
→ Honor what stays private.
→ Create for people who want to feel, not just consume.
Audiences are not craving another tip thread — they’re craving meaning.
The influencer era is quietly fading and what’s emerging is something deeper, more durable, more human.
Fewer idols.
More leaders.
Less spectacle.
More substance.
If you want to build something that lasts, build for the future that’s forming, not the era that’s ending.
That was my wake-up call.
Because what’s declining isn’t content, it’s exposure as a business model. What people want now is depth, context and discernment. They’re not after a front-row seat to someone’s life, but a front-row seat to their thinking.
And that’s where this work is headed. Over the next few months inside The Honest Feed, I’ll be writing about exactly that, the quieter evolution happening beneath the loud internet.
If you’ve felt this shift too — in your own business, in your feed, in your attention span — then the paid Substack is where we get to go deeper. You can support my writing by joining the paid edition on Substack (there are perks too).
Not for more content, but for better content.
| Helpful things I stand behind |
Email: I trust Flodesk and actively use it for my email marketing. The founders truly care about their users and appear to be building something worth sharing.
It’s your last chance to lock in their unlimited email plan for 50% off your first year before it ends this in a few days using my code here.
Gorgeous Photos & Videos: My friend and Founder Rachel Rouhana really created something special. Haute Stock provides you with beautiful video, imagery and templates to help you get out of the content creator ferris wheel. I’ve been an affiliate for a long time and stand behind them.
➡ Use my affiliate code to get 15% off your subscription here.
21 Days to Growth + Sales: Imagine if every email you sent built trust and moved people one step closer to paying you… without feeling salesy. That’s exactly what you’ll get with the 21 Days to Growth & Sales Challenge.
My proven challenge gives you one daily prompt for content, one action for selling, and one prompt for email so you stop second-guessing what to post and start generating responses, leads, and sales.
Get it for just $37 here
Social Media Templates: My friend Manu is a genius when it comes to marketing. She has Canva Templates that make you look like a designer & the first to every trend. Get instant access to 3,000+ Canva templates, monthly content calendars, and spontaneous Trend Drops — fresh templates designs inspired by the newest and best viral trends, so you can post early and stand out.
Join with my affiliate here.
