The Gist
You want to grow your business online. You also want to, you know, run your business. Eat dinner. See your family. Maybe sleep.
Here’s the good news: consistent social media does not require you to live inside your phone. It requires a plan, an hour or two of focused work, and one very underrated tool. That’s it.
Story Time: “You Must Spend So Much Time Online”
I get this one a lot.
Someone will catch me at a trade show, or on a call, or in a DM, and say, “Laci, you must spend so much time online.” Because they see The Grit Game posting. They see Johnny posting. They see my personal accounts posting. They see me commenting, replying, showing up. Daily. Across platforms.
It looks like I never put my phone down.
But here’s my secret weapon: I’m on social media maybe 10 minutes, once a day.
I’m running a business. I’m on the road. I’m training teams. I’m at industry events watching Johnny field compliments on his pants. (If you know, you know.)
So how does the feed stay full? One word: scheduling.
And now I’m going to tell you exactly how I do it so you can do it too, because rising tides raise all ships and we’re not about gatekeeping around here.
The Hack: Batch It and Schedule It
Here is the actual workflow for those taking notes.
I sit down once, at the end of a workday or a chunk of a Saturday afternoon, and I bulk schedule two to four weeks of content in one sitting. I pour myself a glass of something delightful. I put on music. I get in the zone. Then I line up my posts, caption them, pick my times, and hit schedule.
Then I close the laptop.
For the next two to four weeks, my brand is posting without me. People see the content. They comment. They engage. They show up at trade shows and say, “Hey, I saw your post this morning!” — and half the time I have to pause and think, which post?, because the last time I saw it was when I scheduled it three weeks ago.
That’s the magic. You get the visibility of someone who “lives online” without actually living online.The 10 minutes I spend on social media each day? That’s replying to comments.
Typically 5 minutes at the start of my day and 5 minutes at the end. That’s it.
And before we get too far down this rabbit hole: You don’t have to post every single day to be consistent. I talked about this with Dewey Case on CMAHC Unfiltered, Episode 4: consistency can be three times a week. It can be once a week. What matters is that the algorithm can count on you in a predictable way. What matters is that you don’t disappear for two weeks and then come back surprised the algorithm forgot your name. (It will. Ask me how I know. It was painful.)
“Okay Laci, But How Do I Actually Schedule Stuff?”
Glad you asked.
If You Already Have a Fancy CRM
If your company is running a high-end CRM like HubSpot, you may already have a content scheduler baked in. Ask your favorite A.I. or go log in and poke around. It’s probably right there waiting for you. Use it.
If You Don’t Have One (Most of Us)
This is the tool that changed my whole operation and gave me as a business owner HOURS back every single week. Are you ready?
Later. (Don’t go there yet! I’ve got a promo code for you down below.)
Heads up: Later’s referral program gives me a little credit when you sign up with my code — and gives you $20 off. Win-win. I only recommend tools I actually use, and Later is literally how I schedule my own content even when we had Hubspot. I still preferred Later.
Later is a social media scheduling platform built for people who have better things to do than manually post on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and also weekends. It connects to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and a whole lineup of other platforms, so you can schedule everywhere from one place.
Here’s what I actually love about it:
Visual content calendar. You see your whole month laid out like a grid. You drag. You drop. You rearrange. If you’re a visual thinker (most pool pros are — you literally design outdoor spaces for a living), this is going to feel natural. I mean, just LOOK at all of the accounts and posts that I don’t have to individually manage but can see at a glance.
Cross-platform scheduling. Write the post once, tweak it per platform, schedule it everywhere. One post on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok in the time it used to take you to do one.
Auto-publish. You set the time, Later posts it. You don’t have to be awake. You don’t have to be at your desk. You don’t have to be anywhere.
Link in bio tools. Later has a built-in link-in-bio setup so people clicking from your Instagram actually land somewhere useful instead of your homepage’s contact form from 2019.
Analytics. You can see what’s working, what’s flopping, and what to do more of. Because if you’re going to spend an hour scheduling, you may as well schedule the stuff that actually performs.
Which Plan? Here’s My Take
Later has a few tiers. The free tier is great for my smaller companies that are really just looking for breathing room. For pool pros looking to really grow and are managing a company account — and probably your personal brand too — you want the Growth tier. Scale tier is really only for franchises and agency friends.
Here’s why:
Growth gives you multiple social sets (helpful if you manage both your company and your personal brand, which you should since a personal brand is easier to grow than a company. Use both to grow.), more scheduled posts per month, analytics, and tools that actually move the needle. If you’re a solo operator or a small team, this is your sweet spot.
Scale is where I’d send you if you’re managing multiple brands, have a team member helping you, or you’re the agency/rep group running content for several partners. More social sets, more users, more posts, deeper analytics. Definitely not required for most pool pros. This is my franchise owners that are running multiple locations. Other Rep Agencies that support their partner’s social media platforms. The serial-entrepreneurs juggling multiple businesses at once.
The free Starter tier will technically work, but you’ll outgrow it in about six weeks and be mad you didn’t just start on Growth. I’m saving you the trouble.
Your Discount Code
Here is where I do my favorite thing, which is save you money.
Use this code LATER1444HA when you sign up and you’ll get $20 off. (update: only available when signing up on desktop.) NOW go explore Later here and use your referral code at check out.
What to Actually Put in All Those Scheduled Posts
I’m not going to leave you hanging with “just batch your content” and no content to batch.
Here’s the framework I gave Dewey on the podcast, and I’ll give it to you now:
Know your audience. Not who’s scrolling. Who do you want to find your stuff? Moms looking for swim lessons? Commercial operators? Custom pool buyers in your zip code? You probably have one to five avatars. Make a list.
Know their pain points. What problem do you actually solve? Write that down.
Give, give, give, give, then ask. Most businesses post ask, ask, ask, ask. That’s why nobody engages. Value first. Sales pitch sparingly.
The three E’s. Every post should do at least one of these: Educate, Entertain, or Evoke Emotion. The more you can stack, the better that post will perform. When The Grit Game posts something silly, it’s not because we ran out of product pitches — it’s because silly keeps people on our feed long enough to remember who we are when we do pitch something.
Keep it simple. If drunk grandma can’t understand the post, you haven’t simplified enough. I’m serious. I write things out how my weird brain spits them out, then I ask AI to rewrite it at a third-grade reading level. Not because my audience is dumb — because my audience is busy. Smart people appreciate simple.
Hook in the first three seconds. After three seconds, attention drops off a cliff. Edit off the “Hey everyone!” part. Nobody needs it. They can already see it’s you. The point of your first three seconds is to give them the reason to stay longer.
The Secret Nobody Talks About
Here’s the thing I really want you to walk away with.
You do not have to be online all the time to be online all the time. You just have to sit down once, concentrate for an hour or two, and let the tools do the rest.
I schedule my content weeks in advance. People come up to me at events referencing posts they saw that morning, and I’m sometimes genuinely clueless because the last time I looked at that post was when I queued it up at 9 PM on a Sunday three weeks ago.
Your business is not your social media. Your social media is the billboard for your business. It’s supposed to drive calls, leads, relationships, and brand recognition — not eat hours out of yor day..
So if anyone tells you they’re “too busy” for social media, or looks at you sideways because your brand is everywhere, you now know the answer: you work smarter, not harder, and the tools do the heavy lifting.
Your Homework
- Block two hours this week. Put it on the calendar. Treat it like a client meeting.
- Pour yourself something nice.
- Decide your posting cadence. (Three times a week is a beautiful, sustainable starting point.)
- Sign up for Later with code LATER1444HA for $20 off if you pick Growth or Scale.
- Schedule out two to four weeks of content.
- Close the laptop.
- Go run your actual business.
That’s it. That’s the whole system. Welcome to the other side.
Want to go deeper on social strategy for pool pros? Catch my full conversation with Dewey Case on CMAHC Unfiltered, Episode 4: Social Media That Actually Works for Aquatics. And if you want a one-on-one social audit for your business or to learn how to get even more online presence — reach out. Not sure what content to build or not finding enough time to make content. Reach out. It’s our job to connect you to the right people and tools that solve your business problems.
