July 23, 2020
Today’s episode is a TREAT for you. We chatted with the incredible Quigley AND her husband Alex!
Quigley, aka Casey Goode, is a digital content creator based in Los Angeles, CA. Her mission is to inspire mindfulness in human relationships through a vibrant and exciting visual narrative of lifestyle driven content. In 2019, she launched her first online class, Soulcial Media, a self-care and mindset class for content creators. She also recently opened her Soulcial Store, which includes her long-awaited Posing Guide. Quigley and her husband Alex are expecting their first child in October 2020, and wow they’re gonna be the cutest parents ever.
We sat down with Quigley and Alex and talked ALL about social media. We focused on creating viral content, how to stand out and be yourself, how to avoid burnout, creating content with a soul-focus, how to stay inspired while creating a lot of content, and how to say “GOODBYE” to the comparison game. We even dived into TikTok, whether or not you should be using it as a content creator (hint: you should!) and how to harness the power of viral videos on the app to grow your audience and expand your marketing. Quigley and Alex chatted about working together as a couple and how they’ve navigated that journey. This episode is PURE gold in every possible way, we are stoked about all the free knowledge these two dropped.
Quigley, also known as Casey Goode, is wife to Alex Goode and they are both content creators. Quigley started her blog back in 2015 mostly as a source of sharing outfits and fashion inspiration and it has now grown to be a lifestyle blog with the categories of fashion, beauty, wellness, and relationships. At first, Quigley was focused on what she thought others wanted to see, which was fashion and beauty, and then started to explore the topics of relationship and psychology. This really set her apart as a content creator and as her relationship with her husband developed, he became more of an integral part of her brand. Their wedding content is what really started to put them on the map and made their Instagram take off.
They have been exploring the education world for the first time in the past year and launched an online class. This has been their new endeavor in helping others do what they do by sharing their art through social media.
Alex is the other half of Officially Quigley and their educational company, Soulcial Media. Alex was a fulltime corporate guy for the past eight or nine years and traveled the world with Casey creating content and working together as a husband and wife team. Quigley has been begging him to go full time with her but Alex was never sure what it would look like. When the pandemic hit, it was a blessing in disguise for Alex. They were discussing certain things with the educational aspect of the business and he was given time during the lockdown to nurture those ideas and whittle away at the concepts. He spent the majority of lockdown coaching a lot of people within his company on public speaking. Alex has been both in front and behind the camera and giving speeches since he was in grade school. He always thought about becoming a speech coach so he began doing that, especially since there is a huge pivot in this digital age towards digital experiences.
We find ourselves, more often than not, having to speak to a camera because that is how you engage with your followers. A lot of people are building their brands on social media and realize they need to talk to the camera! They say that public speaking is one of the number one fears. Alex began coaching and really enjoyed it.
They decided to pull the trigger and work together full time! They really think even though Alex was experimenting with coaching people how to speak to the camera within his own company, the “AHA” moment was really when they realized they could open that up to the Officially Quigley audience and offer it as a service.
While they may have different voices and different perspectives, they both have incredibly similar morals, values, and driving factors in their lives. Everything they are doing together, they may have a different approach, but they have the same desired outcome.
Alex is more of the patient one and adopted the philosophy of “happy wife, happy life”. A lot of the times, it ends up looking like Quigley has a creative vision for a shoot and Alex comes along to be supportive and bring the shoot to life.
Of course, working together also comes with challenges. Both Alex and Casey are extraverts and so when they get on set and are around other people, their energy gets heightened as well as their stress levels. There have been scenarios where something went wrong while shooting and they get really frustrated. They both have to work on staying calm for each other.
There is a tendency to look at what is put on Instagram and take those images and captions at face value. Quigley has always taken a beautiful image and matched it with a caption that doesn’t necessarily say how perfect the shoot was. The shoot days are almost NEVER perfect. They strive to show both sides of it. Yes, they have an incredible job where they get to travel around the world, take beautiful photos, and have incredible experiences, but there is a lot of work that goes into creating those images and experiences. The work is often fun, but it is also work. As a couple traveling together, there are natural stressors that occur. They try to be as honest as possible about those stressors even though their feed is so jampacked with them laughing, smiling, and giggling. Casey uses her captions as a space to show the behind the scenes.
The biggest challenge for a lot of people is that there is so much pressure to be unique and to stand out. We’re told to create a voice that is no one else’s. That can sometimes be a bit debilitating. Something that has really helped Quigley is to let go of the ownership of ideas or uniqueness and consider her art more of a compilation of all of her influences. We don’t own ideas and we don’t own styles. We don’t have to try to be unique at all! There is literally no one who is us. Relieving yourself of the pressure of trying to be different is great. Acknowledge that you are different no matter what. No one has grown up the way you grew up. No one has the influences that you have in your personal life. No one is inspired by the exact same books and movies as you are. You don’t have to try. All you have to do is look at those influences and combined them. That is your unique voice! If you apply the things that really excite you about other people’s work to your work, it is going to feel good. It’s going to feel exciting for you and in turn, your audience will be exciting because it is a mixture of all the different things.
If you want to be exciting, just be exciting. If you are making content that excites you, that is going to translate to your audience and they will be exiting as well.
Quigley started her Instagram for fashion and to share outfits. It was more of a social profile for people back then, but it became a place to share outfits. The emphasis was really on imagery since Instagram was the first photo-sharing platform. This was what she originally focused on in the beginning. At this same time, Casey was pursuing a career in the music industry and didn’t think she actually wanted to be a fashion blogger. She was simply doing it as a hobby. As a musician, she was thinking about how she could create a brand and a way to market her music. She began to work with different photographers to create content as Quigley, the artist. She was so busy exploring how everything looked that she got to a point where she forgot her why behind why she was writing music and growing her blog. Her blog was in full swing and she didn’t understand what her purpose was. She knew it was because she wanted to share outfits, but she didn’t make the connection that every idea that she was writing about in her songs, she could also apply to her blog. When she started to explore the topics she was writing about in her music and share them on the blog as well as share more personal writing on Instagram, that is when the growth occurred. Instead of taking a photo, posting it on social media, and thinking of a caption that she could put up with it that was often just a short witty caption like the rest of the bloggers, Quigley started to take excerpts from her journal or a song that she had written and turn it into a caption. She reverse-engineered it. She started with the caption and then thought about how she wanted to visualize it and how it should be represented from an artistic or symbolic perspective.
When Quigley started to let her message lead the content rather than the visuals, that was when the big transition occurred. That being said, now, things flow both ways. She may have an idea for a visual she wants to get or an outfit she wants to shoot and that will inspire a message. It was really important for her to realize that Instagram is not just a place to share photos.
Quigley has been working on her personal account for quite some time. Her audience has been curated by her efforts and one of the first things they talk about in their Soulcial media class is that you need to listen to your audience. Your audience is going to tell you what they want more of. Casey’s audience is captivated by her images and messaged and they are groomed to want to read the captions.
Think about what categories your audience responds to. Experiment with your audience to figure out what they engage the most with. It takes a bit of patience and experimentation to figure out what works. If you are just starting out, don’t be afraid to experiment. See what works and what doesn’t work and lean into what your audience wants to see.
It has been a journey of letting go of her perfectionism and letting go of having to show up 100% every single time. When Quigley first started, she constantly felt like she had to one-up herself. That pressure was debilitating and sent her into multiple phases of burnout where she was uninspired to create anything for months. She had to work on not necessarily making consistently beautiful content, but rather figuring out a structure that cold maintain longevity with creative output. A lot of this had to do with coaching she had received from her friend who is a life and business coach. They worked on figuring out the energy input versus the energy output and taking a pulse on this every week. Quigley worked on figuring out the things that were draining her, the things that were fueling her, and how she could delegate things. Essentially, she needed to make sure she wasn’t so attached to the idea of perfectionism that she was completely depleting herself over and over again.
What Quigley does to continue to stay motivated is to first off, remember her purpose and remember why she is doing what she is doing. Then, when she can hone in on that she can then look at her schedule and figure out what she can create, what she doesn’t need to create, and what can she let go of. If something is not serving her, she can let go of it. Every single day doesn’t need to be 100%. Quigley has learned that not every picture needs to be a full-fledge photoshoot, sometimes it can just be a selfie in the kitchen. People are showing up for her and her story and they don’t always need the crazy beautiful imagery. This has helped so much to avoid the breakdowns and burnouts.
There has been a difference between pre quarantine and post quarantine in Casey’s workflow. Before this year, it was generally two or three photo shoots a month and they would batch the content in those three days. The content was generally driven by a campaign they were doing. They would hire a photographer for that campaign and then they would attach on organic content to shoot while they had the photographer.
Every day they film stories as they go and those are all in real time.
This would all vary if they were traveling. If they were traveling they would shoot almost every day.
Since the quarantine, things have completely changed. They don’t do real photoshoots anymore. Instead, they will randomly take photos when they are dressed and ready!
For the most part, if Quigley is getting ready for the day she tries to shoot some content so she is able to take off other days.
Quigley recycles content a lot! There is no shame in that! A lot of people have fear of reposting something. If you’ve got great content, feel free to stretch that out as long as you can! The number one thing that will help you grow and expand your reach is consistency. Focus on that! Show up!
Creators are also starting to post more iPhone content. This takes the pressure off of feeling like every post needs to be a fully produced photoshoot. The in the moment shoots can really add to the message you are trying to send. There is a lot of freedom that comes with not having to map out these massive shoots. It’s more about embracing the inner creative and seeing how you can weave the narrative that ties into authenticity and real life.
Think about the story you want to tell and what your objective is.
The secret to Tiktok is being wrong. If you spell something wrong or say something wrong, your video will go viral.
Quigley was a skeptic at first. At first, she figured it was just for children. Then, she was on a trip with H&M and Brittany Xavier was there as well. Brittany is one of Quigley’s favorite content creators and has a daughter who is a teenager. Her daughter was telling them all about TikTok and showing them how to make it. It was a bunch of very influential influencers crowded around a table as a teenager showed them the new platform. The people in the room all started a TikTok account and Quigley was one of the last ones to jump on board. After about six months of watching Brittany and her daughter create amazing content and grow over 1 million followers, Quigley started to keep tabs on others who were consistently showing up on TikTok. Their numbers were skyrocketing. That was when Quigley learned that it was a platform that you can grow your platform really fast. It was something worth checking out.
For so long, Quigley was excited about Youtube but was never consistent with it. Long-form video intimidated her and she was already spread so thin. The idea of making snippets of video seemed more digestible to do on an everyday basis. She started experimenting with TikTok and watching other people’s content and noticed how the algorithm worked. The reason Quigley loves Instagram so much is because she loves psychology and how the human brain works. She loves analyzing why people click on things, absorb certain content, and click on things. This is similar to TikTok. She was immediately trying to figure out how it worked. It was a fun challenge for her!
Quigley began researching how the algorithm worked and how people grew their accounts so fast and applied those strategies to her own videos. In one day she grew 30k because of one viral video. She started in January and her account now has over 113k followers. It took her five years to grow that on Instagram.
On TikTok, the hashtags are actually relevant. It’s a very marketing-centric app. TikTok is a much more technically and formulaic to grow your account.
What makes a great Instagram account is also what makes a great TikTok account. It all comes back to quality content. The word quality is subjective, but if you are putting out good content that people respond to, that’s what is going to make a great account.
If you are creative in any way shape or form and have a message to share with the world, be on the platform. Because of its novelty people, aren’t afraid to follow people right now. They aren’t over-saturated with content so they will follow whoever they want. Because of the nature of the algorithm and that the For You page is the main way to scroll your feed, you are actually scrolling through people you are not following. This makes it easy for your videos to get more views even if you don’t have followers. There is no other platform where you can have 0 followers and get a million views on a video.
It’s fueled Quigley’s creativity on other platforms. She is thinking about content in more of a narrative way. On the other hand, on TikTok, it is almost encouraged to copy people. The whole point is that a trend kicks off and everyone tries it. It’s really encouraging as a creator because it’s not so possessive. People get so possessive on Instagram about their ideas and don’t want people to copy them. We don’t own our ideas. On TikTok people want you to use their audio, try their dance, and do their thing. This takes the pressure off of always being the one to come up with ideas.
Overcoming the hurdles of being a content creator has been like navigating a maze. It was all about figuring out her perfectionism, comparison, her relationship with technology and how this affected her, and growing a business. Quigley explored all of these things from an emotional and psychological standpoint and wasn’t sharing it with her audience. Once she started to share those things it felt like all of these people could relate to those topics. She started to connect with her audience on a deeper level and understand deeply what her purpose was on the space. This is why she tries to lead everything with soul forward intentions.
Quigley had a huge transition moment with this in her content. A lot of the anxiety for perfectionism came from looking at other people’s content and asking herself why they had such a big account, why they were getting brand partnerships, how they could afford to travel, and how could they avoid the expensive outfits. As Quigley was asking herself those questions she realized that it didn’t feel good to consume their content because it was making her feel insecure. She also wondered that if she was feeling that way about other people’s content how did people feel about her content. That sat with her for a while. Quigley realized that she wasn’t showing the full picture and did not want people coming to her page and feeling those same feelings. She didn’t start her account to make others jealous, she started it to inspire people.
Quigley decided right then to stop with the perfectionism. She had to figure out a way to be more transparent and show the big picture of the highs and lows as well as the ups and downs of being a creator.
During this same time, a post came up in her feed of Becca Tilley’s. Quigley was still in a time where every single one of her photos in her feed had to be perfect. Becca posted a photo of her in her bedroom with no makeup on in front of a white wall explaining how she was so sick of the comparison game. Becca went on and on how she was enough just the way she was. Quigley’s immediate thought was that she could never do something like that. She asked herself “Why?” Why could she never do what Becca did? She also asked herself why she was inspired by Becca’s post. It was because that post made her feel empowered.
It was a turning point for Quigley. Quigley realized that if that was the type of content that empowered her, maybe she was doing it all wrong. Maybe she wasn’t creating the content that she actually wanted to make in order to inspire people. She started to experiment with what that meant.
Some of the posts she did were her showing up without makeup and showing up in her backyard. She was exploring the topics of feeling like she was not enough and her perfectionism. She was exploring things that people could relate to and that is what ended up catapulted her into her new direction of transparency and authenticity.
It’s hard to differentiate between the desire of jealousy and the feeling of inspired. Sometimes the line isn’t very clear. At the end of the day, the only person you can be responsible for is yourself and the content you are creating.
Alex has learned to just go for it and Quigley has learned that you have to take a chance on yourself and take a leap of faith.
If you don’t go for it and take a chance, it’s not going to happen. Period.
Once you are in the midst of it, you have to use that muscle to push past the fear and the doubt. The fear is always the strongest right before you are about to breakthrough. If things get hard you’ve got to remember that it is going to get scarier and scarier before you get to the next peak. You have to have the faith and grit that pushes you on to the next thing.
If something is worth doing, you are going to have to fight through some hell to get there. Anything worth doing is going to take some work. There is no magic pill or short cut to take you there.
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WASSUP FRIENDS. We’re Evie + Lindsey, co-founders of this wild partayyy called The Heart University. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurs to kick freaking BUTT in their businesses, dive down into the heart of their why and how, and serve you with all possible tools you’ll need to up-level your business game and CRUSH those goals of yours.
Whether you’re coming to an in-person workshop, joining our online course, or soaking up all the strategies via this blog or our podcast, we’re STOKED you’re here + can’t wait to see you out there kicking butt.
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