I heard the title of this post on a recent episode of “The Long and The Short Of It”, and I’ve been pondering it ever since then. Here is the full text of what Pete said on the show:
It was in the health and fitness space, there was a strength coach that I follow that said something like, “The best coach in the world probably has less than a thousand Instagram followers.” And that really resonated with me for many, many reasons. But just that, if you’re the best strength coach in the world, you’re probably not spending your time scrolling social media because you’re reaching the people that you need to reach in other ways.
When I first heard it, I completely agreed. His logic made sense. However, I think there are some amazing coaches and thinkers that have huge social media followings without spending time on it. If your ideas are solid, they’ll spread on their own.
I think a great example is Seth Godin. He’s famously not on social media, other than a Twitter account that auto-posts his latest blog entries. It follows two people and never interacts in any way. By all measures it’s a “bad” Twitter account. Despite all of that, he has 785,000 followers on there.
Great coaches
Ultimately, I agree with the premise of what Pete said. A great coach isn’t spending time scrolling social media, but rather they’re learning and teaching and working to become better.
That said, if they’re indeed a great coach then they likely have amazing insights to share, and many likely have huge followings with just a modest amount of effort.
