Today on the show, Nick shares about how he recently left social media and how it took years to get to this point. It took that long because of the story he was telling himself about who he was with or without social media and how he couldn’t imagine what life could look like without it.

What to listen for:

“I think the first time I was able to get onto any sort of chat room or anything like that I was maybe 12 or 13 and there were a handful of different websites like early dating sites and just connecting sites, communities, and stuff like forums for different bands I’d listen to, regional bands or big national acts”

“It felt like social media was fun and playful at that point. I also didn’t try to make any money off of it. I didn’t try to do anything that was business related or anything like that, especially in high school.”

“About a month and a half, two months ago at this point, deactivated all my social media accounts and it’s been beautiful. Well, correction, it’s been fucking beautiful. It’s been a lot less noisy. I’ve been able to work on my business, work on myself, work on my relationship, work on my internal world, read a lot more, work on my music, work on my hobbies, work on my tiny home, work on so many different things that I wanted to be able to do instead of just doom scrolling on Instagram or just getting sucked into something or feeling like I have to do all these things to produce all these different pieces of content or have my team produce different pieces of content.“

About Nick McGowan

I’m Nick McGowan, entrepreneur, podcaster, and mental health advocate, and I’ve been on a 20+ year journey of personal development, learning to master my mindset, emotions, and the art of living with purpose.

As a Mindset and Self-Mastery Mentor, I work with ambitious men and women who want to live their most authentic and joyous life, by helping them master their mindset, emotional awareness, and authentic communication. My mission is to empower people to lead lives that feel aligned, grounded, and truly their own.

Throughout my career, I’ve built teams, streamlined systems, and improved client experiences across SaaS, media, marketing, and personal development spaces. Whether I’m leading cross-functional projects, optimizing SEO, Podcasting, designing strategies, or guiding clients through transformation, I bring a hands-on, solution-focused approach to everything I do.

I’m also the host of The Mindset and Self-Mastery Show, where my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, challenge us, and ultimately guide us back to who we are at our core. On this show, we uncover the secret gems others have discovered through trial, error, and breakthroughs so you can fast-track your growth, and master your mindset on your pursuit toward self-mastery. 

With years of podcasting and two decades of marketing experience, I’ve mastered the storytelling, interview flow, strategy, and technical production that elevate a podcast from “just content” to something truly impactful. Whether you’re a leader looking to amplify your message, or a seasoned speaker and podcast host looking to sharpen your edge or even a beginner who is wondering how to share their message, I mentor thought leaders through every step of having the conversation they’re here to have on this planet.

So, what message are you here to share?!

Resources:

Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? Send Nick an email or schedule a time to discuss your podcast today!

[email protected]

Thank you for listening!

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

(00:01.742)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And today on the show, I’m going to share about how I’ve recently left social media and my God has it been fantastic. It was one of those things that for the longest time, I thought this is just nonsense, this is bullshit. I don’t feel like any of the stuff that I’m posting, any of the stuff that I’m seeing is really worthwhile.

(00:31.254)
And even those times when I’m posting things that I feel like I’m really proud about this, or I wanted to share this, like specifically with the podcast, being able to point out that we have great guests on the show, we talked about these great life-changing topics, and feeling like this shit was just getting nowhere. And then realizing that there are different people that are shadow banned because you said something weird. And I know there’s some weird shit that we’ve talked about on this podcast. There’s some really deep, deep stuff.

(01:00.438)
that we’ve talked about, that a lot of people have a hard time working through, and that’s why we talk about it. So I want to take a little bit of a step back and let’s talk about the original social medias. So I’m 38, I was born in 84, so I think that I’m considered to be a geriatric millennial, which is fucking humorous. The fact that there’s geriatric in it.

(01:30.366)
I’ve heard that there are a few different ways to be able to put the, I guess it’s like 82 to 84, 85, something like that, millennials. But either way, geriatric millennial, that works for me. That’s good. We are the first ones from what I understand to really have the internet as a major part of us growing up in our formative years. I-

(01:57.806)
I think the first time I was able to get onto any sort of like chat room or anything like that I was maybe 12 or 13 and there were a handful of different websites like the things that come to mind for me I guess were like I guess like early dating sites and just connecting sites, communities and stuff like that like the forums of different bands I’d listen to, regional bands or big national acts or

(02:28.114)
Face the jury comes to mind. I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that in a long time but how they were different ways that we would be social with people online and as a Middle school and high school kid. I remember thinking how fucking awesome is this I get to talk to people all over the world About some awesome band. I love or some regional band or I get to meet people in different States or different countries and we talk about whatever we want to talk about

(02:57.898)
and how the world had kind of opened up at that point. But that was the early stages of social media. I also remember at one point, a friend had told me you should get onto Facebook. I think they’d said, my space is dead, Facebook is the next place to go, you need to be on there. And at that point, you needed to have an education, like a.edu email to get onto Facebook. I think it was probably the first 10,000, 20,000 members, whatever it was.

(03:28.234)
when I first learned about it and wasn’t able to get on. But I remember seeing it and I was like, ah, it’s kinda cool. And then as soon as the doors opened for us regular folk who didn’t go to college or whatever you wanna say, I was able to actually get into it. And I remember how cool that was, being able to be on social media and Facebook specifically, being able to meet different people and talk to different people just like I was a handful of years before that in different chat rooms and.

(03:57.87)
talking to people about things that I was interested in, different musical gear, different bands, or skating and things of that sort. And it felt like social media was fun and playful at that point. I also didn’t try to make any money off of it. I didn’t try to do anything that was business related or anything like that, especially in high school. I guess if the only thing you’d consider business related was relationships or like.

(04:26.958)
trying to meet different girls or different band members or just different cool people and I did. I also met some really strange people, some in person some just online and I’m glad that it stayed that way and the early stages of social media seemed again fun and exciting but it wasn’t until a handful years after high school that I really started to think about

(04:56.482)
there are ways to be able to build a business with this. And I remember when the movie, The Social Network came out, I was blown away and inspired by the movie. I know it wasn’t all 100% accurate and all of that, but it really wasn’t even the story and situation as much as it was the inspiration of, there was this idea and this dream.

(05:23.794)
and it was created and turned into something massive. Now, I personally think at this point, it’s become a bit too massive and has grown some crazy legs, which is part of the reason why I’m no longer on it. But I remember getting really excited and inspired, and that led me to start my own company with some friends where we had social media marketing services. We had social media marketing specifically for small businesses.

(05:52.142)
trying to do the right thing to be able to help people. And it was one of my entrepreneurial experiences that was both beautiful and disastrous. But social media was at the core of it. And a lot of people knew of me as the social media guy. But I remember thinking, I don’t really like social media. It makes sense for people to be on it that are in different sort of industries. Even us as a company, we needed to be on it. Or so I thought.

(06:22.622)
And I bought into, I think the unwritten rule that a lot of people don’t talk about, but they feel is there, is if you’re not on social media, you don’t have a business. And I’m here to tell you that’s absolute garbage. It is not true at all. There are tons of businesses that don’t have a social media presence at all. And they’re doing just fine. Now, I know what you’re saying.

(06:52.53)
I said the same shit. They’re also businesses that don’t have a social media presence and they aren’t doing fine. In fact, they’re doing terribly and there are some companies that don’t have websites and As a company who creates and develops brands and websites It hurts sometimes when I think about that, but it doesn’t hurt me as much When I know that these people are actively doing the best that they can to be able to help

(07:18.946)
their clients or their customers or whatever they’re doing. And that’s something that somebody like ourselves can help with or somebody who they know can help them with it. But that is besides the point. There are certain people that feel like people themselves or brands or companies or whatever, they feel like they need to be on social media. And if they’re not, they’re missing the boat. They’re not in front of people. They can’t tell people what they’re doing because nobody will know because they’re not on social media about it. And that’s where everybody’s at.

(07:48.462)
It’s not really true. But I believe that to be true a number of years ago. Remember in 2012, 13, when I had that company and we were starting to build it, I started to talk to people. It felt prime. I know now, and I think I knew it then, just didn’t wanna fuckin’ say it. But we were late. We were late to the party of really being able to, let’s say, cash in and be able to help a lot of people and make a good amount of money on this wave that we knew was inevitably going to crash.

(08:17.27)
But we kept writing it, trying to do the right thing to be able to help specifically small businesses. But I remember when we only had our social media service, there was a piece of me that was like, there’s got to be more than this. Now, we as a business expanded, we started to offer websites and SEO and PPC and other ads and copywriting and all of that. But social media was still at the core of what we did.

(08:47.526)
And we, I believed that was a major part of it. And therefore I needed to be part of it. But I remember thinking like, I don’t want to be a part of it at all. I get at all. It sounds noisy and there’s craziness and just a lot of bullshit that’s going on. And over the next handful of years, I realized that there was a lot of, again, shadow banning and different things that were happening that the algorithms weren’t actually working in our favor. And you couldn’t just put.

(09:16.71)
some ads up and drive some business to your website and start to sell things anymore, it was getting more and more difficult because there was more and more of a population, but really there was more and more noise that was happening. Not just the people that are on it. The barrage of all the different people that aren’t part of your circle, that the ads were coming your way. The

(09:44.842)
you may be interested in was coming our way. There was so much that was coming at us. And as it just got noisier and noisier and noisier, I remember thinking then, 2015, 16, whatever it was, this is getting a little out of hand and I really don’t want a part of it. There are times where I think about podcasting even, and I’m jumping ahead, but thinking about podcasting where there’s a lot, where there are a lot of people that have podcasts and a lot of people do them different ways.

(10:13.006)
But you can tell when the people actually care about what they’re doing. Or at least I would hope that you could. But I hope that you can tell that I give a fuck about what I’m talking about. Then there’s some people that just strictly do it just because they’re told they can make some money off of it. Or it can scratch a niche of significance for them. Or whatever. Name something else that’s part of ego or whatever you want. But you can tell the good ones. And you can tell the ones that actually care. Just like with businesses. You can tell the good ones. And you can tell the ones that actually care.

(10:43.07)
And if they’re not on social media, that’s totally fine. But that took me a long time to be able to realize that. And when I got honest with myself and realized that not only is social media noisy, but it’s actually a deterrent to me as a business owner. And something that takes so much time for me to do something with such a little return and such little.

(11:12.43)
promise that I needed and wanted to be able to step away. So I think about a month and a half, two months ago at this point, deactivated all my social media accounts and it’s been beautiful. Well, correction, it’s been fucking beautiful. It’s been a lot less noisy. I’ve been able to work on my business, work on myself, work on my relationship, work on my…

(11:41.234)
internal world, read a lot more, work on my music, work on my hobbies, work on my tiny home, work on so many different things that I wanted to be able to do instead of just doom scrolling on Instagram or just getting sucked into something or feeling like I have to do all these things to produce all these different pieces of content or have my team produce different pieces of content. I still gotta pay for it at that point to hope that a handful of people maybe see the stuff.

(12:11.286)
Now granted, I’ve had different times where people have messaged and they said they’ve gotten different beautiful things out of podcast episodes or something I’ve written and I’ve got friends and family and loved ones that have experiences like that as well. My partner, she has had tons of those over the course of time. But those people are going to be able to find you different ways as well. And we as a

(12:41.69)
within the agency that we have within Choose Your Calling, we understand that right now, people are more getting back to, let’s say the basics of being able to just search things that they specifically want. When people haven’t gotten away from Google, we all know that. But SEO is more of a thing now than it had been in the past 10 years, because I believe people are starting to get away from social media. Even if they’re not deactivating like I did,

(13:07.886)
they’re still stepping back from it a bit. And if they have a specific question, yeah, they might ask somebody on social media a friend or shoot a message to somebody. Or they’ll probably ask somebody local, an actual friend, somebody they talk to often. The human-to-human interaction and referrals will always be a thing. But people are actively looking for what they want and doing the research off social media. And why put all that content on there? Put all that effort?

(13:37.662)
if it’s not gonna get you anywhere, but also when you just don’t want to feed the fucking machine anymore. And I don’t want to feed the machine anymore. I didn’t want to. And I’m glad that I had my partner in with that as well. She actually was the one who brought up the idea, and I had kicked it around for the past, I don’t know, six months, a year, something like that, but remember thinking, that’s crazy. I couldn’t do it. Because of who I was before.

(14:07.202)
how I was the social media guy, and how people knew that I had social media services, and that I was on social media and all of that, and I bought into that, but no longer. And I didn’t want that anymore. And I remember taking a step back and thinking, yeah, this needs to be different. This needs to be changed. And that was a piece that I changed. So I guess in some ways this episode is more of a, oh, hey, by the fucking way, I’m no longer on social media, I’ve stepped out of the…

(14:36.534)
the noise and out of the machine, and I suggest you do the same thing. You’ll see with my podcast, with my partner’s podcast, with our client’s podcast, then with everything we do with Choose Your Calling, it’s not going to be on social media. At some point, we may have teams work on different pieces on social media, but those will be highly strategic, and those aren’t just going to be shotgun blasts out to the masses, hope that…

(15:06.506)
somebody understands and wants to do something with it. Because I feel like social media has gotten to the point where, think about any message that you want to share. It’s kind of like you walking into a 30,000 person filled room and just yelling at the top of your lungs that whatever your idea or business or whatever it is, but trying to get that through all those other people. And you and I both know.

(15:35.362)
that there’s a lot more people than 30,000 on social media, on any platform, at basically any moment. So feel free to let your mind run wild with that, but you just stand in there yelling about the thing, no one gives a fuck, because they can’t hear it, or they’re too busy watching something else. And without going down the path of how social media is potentially a tool to be able to kind of control the minds of people.

(16:04.63)
or at least see how they worked with different things. I’m not gonna go down that path in this episode, but I’m gonna talk about how important it was for me to actually be able to step outside of it, and how I think for you it may be the same. I would challenge you, take a break. Take a three day break, take a two day break. Fine, take a few hours even if you need to. Take a month, or see how long you can go just by getting away from it.

(16:34.302)
and how you feel not being a part of the machine and the noise anymore and what you do differently. Like I’ve rattled off in the beginning of this. I’ve done a lot of different things and some things were things that I was already doing but I just sunk more time into it. And if you’re feeding the machine and adding to it, you’re not able to actually live your life or go do the things that are important to you. I get that having.

(17:03.842)
downtime and being able to learn different things and you know checking off all those different boxes that social media can give you Can be important at times but there are also different ways to go about it Like if you want to learn different things there are specific sites that you can go to for great news If you want to learn about specific topics again, just Google it and kind of work your way through that Some of the things that we’re focusing on within our business is YouTube and Pinterest

(17:32.878)
because those are both additional search engines. They’re not just a social media platform. I don’t really consider them to be. Some people would with Pinterest specifically, but I don’t, I don’t really consider it like that. If you do and you have a reason why, message me and let me know. But either way, being able to understand when you get sucked into those things and how those things interact with you and your being,

(18:03.202)
positive thing for you or not. And there are some people I talk to that are like barely on social media, but when I am I find it enjoyable. You could probably switch out their phone with a book and they would feel the same way or even TV or a movie or whatever or going for a walk outside. But ask yourself what would you do differently if you weren’t on social media? What would your business look like if you weren’t on social media?

(18:33.982)
And if that freaks you the fuck out, ask yourself why. And ask yourself what could you do differently? What could actually happen if you didn’t have social media? In fact, yeah, let’s play that game. Let’s pretend it all went away. All the social media went away. What do you do? What do you do for the two hours? Hell, what do you do while you’re sitting on the toilet? What do you do with your business to talk about whatever new promotions are coming up or…

(19:02.126)
new hire or the new client you got or anything fun and exciting you want to talk about personally on what you would have posted on social media what do you do if they’re no longer there if that freaks you out keep asking the questions keep going deeper with it and finding out why that freaks you out for me i knew stepping away would be uncomfortable and felt strange because i’d built a lot of the network and

(19:30.294)
I’d done all these things and checked out all these fucking boxes. But being able to take that leap of faith and stepping away felt crucially important. And it’s something that I think about every so often. But I more so think about how impactful and intentional I am now because I’m no longer on that. And how it’s removed stress from myself and my team.

(20:00.346)
how I don’t have the just influx of all this information, good, bad, indifferent, whatever. And I get to choose what information I ingest in my being and what I get to do with it at that point. So, again, I suggest you do the same. I guess a challenge from this is to take a few hours, take a day, take a couple days, take a few weeks, whatever you’re going to do. But my challenge to you would be to step out of the noise, step out of the machine.

(20:28.31)
and to think about and feel into what you want to do instead of that and what would be more beneficial for you to do. Hell, even if it’s like, you know what, instead of on social media, I could take a nap. Beautiful. Siestas are necessary. If you feel like you want to do something with a hobby or with a relationship that you have or business or whatever, be able to shift your time and effort into those things that are actually real life things instead of just wasting your time on social media. I feel like I might get some messages from people that

(20:58.486)
boohoo the things that I’m saying with this and I’m sure we’re gonna get some of people that are excited and like yeah man rock on I’m doing the same thing. Either way if you have any questions or any thoughts or anything you want to talk about let me know. If you’re in a spot that you know that you have things that you’re going through and you’re unsure of how to get away from social media because of other traumas or experiences that you’ve had then you may need to go through my program the reset button program to be able to help you actually reset.

(21:27.638)
Recalibrate and figure out where you’re going next or you may just need to have a quick conversation to be able to talk about Why you have that? May not be an addiction But the urge to be on social media and other things that are like that if you have questions send me a message But I really appreciate you being with me today and thank you for listening to the episode