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370: Why I Shut Down a 10K-Member Facebook Group

I want to take this opportunity to talk about a big decision we made recently to shut down and archive our 10,000-member STC Facebook group. In this session, I intend to pull back the curtain and give an authentic glimpse into the thought process and motives behind this move. In early August, about a month ago, we made this decision concerning our Facebook group that has been in existence since 2015. I never expected the group to grow as it did, and it required a great deal of time and energy to maintain the group at a high level of engagement. The reality is that decisions like this are multi-layered and complex.

Join me in this episode as I discuss the factors in this decision. 

You’ll Learn:

The six major considerations in making this decision:

  • The impending season of caregiving for aging parents and the role of business in my family life
  • My original goal for STC and my changing definition of success (“Do I want the successful version of this?”)
  • The sustainable cadence and level of social engagement I’ve found with the STC podcast, YouTube, and the STC newsletter
  • Managing a large Facebook community takes a lot of emotional bandwidth and leadership.
  • The realization that I can’t be everywhere on social media and need to “do less but in a better way”
  • My manageable strategy and goals for social media posts on discovery platforms and relationship-deepening platforms

I’m still alive, well, and active on social media! Please find me on YouTube and LinkedIn!

Resources:

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About the Podcast

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Selling the Couch
Impact And Income Beyond The Therapy Room

About your host

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Melvin Varghese, PhD

Hi. I'm Melvin. I'm a psychologist, girl dad, and online creator living in Philadelphia, PA.

In 2014, I began to think about how to use our therapist skillset in different realms besides clinical work (e.g., podcasting, consulting, online course creation, writing, etc).

This allows us to serve others on larger scales while diversifying our income beyond 1 to 1 work.

I make podcasts and videos about business, tech, productivity, and lessons I'm learning from becoming the CEO of a lean, mean 5 person 100% remote team (we're not really mean..it just rhymed =P).