What if social media worked better when we stopped treating people like prospects and started treating them like people?
That's where my friendship with Michelle Berman-Mikel began.
Michelle initially reached out to me from a business perspective. But the message didn't feel cold. It didn't feel transactional. It felt personal.
One message became a conversation.
The conversation became a friendship.
And that friendship eventually became this episode.
Michelle is a keynote speaker, author of The Black Line, founder of Berman Media PD, creator of Beyond The Method and Drivers & Levers, and host of Coffee & Questions.
We talk about how to turn social media from a vanity platform into a relationship tool, why connection has to come before conversion, and why chasing followers and views may be distracting us from the people sitting right in front of us.
But we also go much deeper.
Michelle spent 20 years as a competitive swimmer, including four years at Rutgers. She shares what staring at the black line at the bottom of a pool taught her about discipline, consistency, affirmation and doing the work when nobody is clapping.
We talk about the relationship between talent and discipline.
We talk about healing.
We talk about quiet.
We talk about taking away the phones, headphones and noise long enough to actually hear yourself again.
And Michelle shares deeply personal parts of her story, including loss, motherhood, faith and what ultimately helped her stop trying to fit into somebody else's definition of who she was supposed to be.
This episode is about social media.
But it's really about people.
It's about knowing who you are.
Doing the quiet work.
Building real relationships.
And having enough discipline to keep moving toward what matters even when the applause hasn't started yet.
We all have moments of impact.
What are you going to do with yours?
