You started your business because this is your life’s work.
You’re not here to just make money. You LOVE what you do.
You love talking about this thing with your friends.
You love speak with your clients, especially if they ask you deeper questions about how it all works.
Since that is all true, it’s time to remove the concept that your content or marketing is anything different than talking about what you love.
Yes, we all know there are nuances that comes with short form content. Yes, it can be valuable to create a better hook, have a tighter structure, get more clear, and create more engaging visuals. However, ALL OF THAT comes AFTER your excitement for what you are talking about.
You have allowed yourself to get caught up in so much nuance, you forget to let yourself just flow with the work you love.
Get this…. 100% of the time when I speak to clients on a call and I get curious with them on their work, they eventually say something that is so fucking mind melting I end up shouting, “THAT! THAT! JUST SAY THAT!!!”
I know you have it, you simply need to allow yourself to give it.
Let yourself be obsessed
I love this dialogue comedian Jerry Seinfeld has with Howard Stern (you can watch the entire 3 minute clip here)
STERN “Can you go to a Chinese restaurant and not sit there and work on material?”
SEINFELD “I’m never not working on material. Ever… Every second of my life I’m thinking, ‘Can I do something with that?’”
STERN “That sounds torturous?”
SEINFELD “Why?”
STERN “So if I came over to your house and we’re hanging out, you’re kind of really looking for material?”
SEINFELD “Not kind of. I’m looking for material.”
STERN “That’s working 24 hours a day. It’s neurotic.”
SEINFELD “Making jokes is not work, it’s a gift.”
STERN “That’s your day, you memorize this material?”
SEINFELD “Howard, what else do I have to do? You say to Tiger Woods, ‘how do you remember what club to use?’… what else does he have to do?”
STERN “It sounds like a tortured life”
SEINFELD “It is, but the blessing in life is finding the torture you’re comfortable with… Find the torture you’re comfortable with and you’ll do well.”
STERN “Do you ever dream of the day where you could go to your wife with a Chinese restaurant and not think about [material]?”
SEINFELD “I’d shoot myself in the face. What fun is life if I’m not making jokes all the time?”
Personally, I find that everything is a story. I think about the story of things constantly. I want to hear people’s story. It’s so so fun. Everyone has a story to tell and it brings me giddy excitement to ask someone about their story and get curious about it.
When you love your work, it’s a fucking beautiful thing that it occupies your brain constantly. There’s no need to shame it. Lean into it like Jerry did.
This is not about over working yourself.
This is not about working 7 days a week.
This is not about the grind.
This is about allowing yourself to LOVE what you do.
I am willing to bet if you calculated Seinfeld’s time spent on stage, it’s less than 1% of his time spent working. That’s what gets to be fun!
The fun part of being an entrepreneur or a coach isn’t just working with or for clients. It’s spending time in your journaling wondering how you could have done it better. How could you have communicated better? Is the way your coaching the best way? If you’re an artist, is the way you’re writing music or painting the best and only way. Could something work better for you? Does that mean it would work better for your clients or create a better piece of work?
I look at like this.
If someone found me and wanted me to get on stage in front of 2,000 people and didn’t tell me who I was speaking to, I wouldn’t care. I am confident I have the skills and tools to speak to any demographic or niche about how powerful storytelling is for them. That’s because I have put in thousands of hours thinking (and talking) about it.
My 1:1 calls might add up to 300-400 hours a year.
But when you add up the time I spend working on how to become a better marketer and storyteller each week…
- Journaling – 5 hrs
- Scripting, filming & editing Reels – 7 hrs
- Writing this Newsletter – 4 hrs (sometimes more)
- Scrolling, seeing something I like and thinking about how I can make a version of it – 2 hrs
- Reading books and savings quotes and thinking on them (part of the journal practice)
- Ideas pop into my head on walks, workouts, meditating, in the shower, watching a movie, hanging with friends, dinner with Natalie – constantly
It’s in incalcalacable
Like for real. What else do I have to do?
Most things in business are a distraction and are keeping you safe (I am very guilty of this).
- Market your services and dominate ONE platform (talk about the thing you love without spreading yourself thing trying to be everywhere. It’s wasted energy not focused on the thing you love)
- Sell your services (selling is just getting curious with someone about their life and because you see the world the way you do, you eventually tell them about the thing you love and (if it makes sense) how it would help them get what they want)
- Serve your clients (do the thing you love)
The rest of the time, go live your beautiful life! But you experience it from the identity of the thing you love. It’s unavoidable. I experience life as a storyteller. I fucking love it.
Thinking and Writing
Earlier in the interview Howard ask, “What’s your process like?”
Jerry replied with, “It’s the exact same process now that I did when I was 21 in 1975. I sit, I play with ideas. This is funny, I wanna talk about the stickers on the back of the mini van…”
For almost 50 years he’s been:
- Sitting.
- Observing.
- Having an idea.
- Working through an idea.
- Going to a comedy club to try out that idea.
- If it bombs, he works on it some more.
- If it gets laughs, he uses it for over and over until it’s run it’s course.
- Repeat, repeat, repeat
He doesn’t wake up on a Thursday and think, “oh shit I have a set tonight, let me scrap together some jokes.”
He spends most of his time thinking and writing.
Thinking and writing.
Thinking and writing.
The only way I get comments and DMs like this one
is because of all the time I spend thinking and writing.
There is no going to Google to look things up to see what everyone else said. Then I’ll just be saying what everyone else said. I take time to understand what I thought of, what I just read, what I just liked, and what it means to me, then I sit down to see if it makes any sense at all.
Now, just as I am sure is true for Jerry Seinfeld it was not all rainbows and butterflies.
As much as he loved it, he wasn’t a great comedian when he started.
And why would he expect to be? There’s no degree in stand up comedy. Even if there was, a degree doesn’t actually make you any good at anything.
Getting in repetitions of the work over time does.
Just the same, there’s no reason you should be expected to be any good at distilling your expertise into 90 second videos (aka making content).
Here’s what actually works.
🧃 The Juice
In everything I’ve ever done there either comes a point where I love it and reach a flow state or realize this just isn’t for me.
- When I rode my bike across America. I loved training around NYC but it was no comparison to riding the Appalachians and Blue Ridge Mountains. Those were so fucking hard. But by the time I got to the Rocky Mountains I had no problem riding 100 miles in a day including a trip up Mount Evans (14,265’ summit). I was in flow.
- I have been lifting since I was 14, but when I started CrossFit in 2017 it took me 4 months to really start to enjoy it. I still wasn’t that great at some of the olympic lifts and technical gymnastics, but I looooved the improvement. It got easy to show up. I found a flow state.
- When I finally pulled my 10 year old DSLR camera out of my closet, my brain would break trying to shoot in manual while I tried to find the right settings and understand all those buttons. It would take me forever to get the shot right (my photographers remember what it’s like trying to understand aperture, shutter speed, and ISO). Now, changing my settings is muscle memory and I don’t have to think about it. It’s fun and I easily get into flow state when shooting.
The Testing Phase
The starting point of this graph begins at macro level. You make a big decision to begin something new (macro) and you then take actions to actualize that thing (micro).
Macro: Career Change
I quit engineering to be a personal trainer. At some point I love it and it’s easy and fun or maybe the whole career path of personal training isn’t the right fit. This will take me to the inflection point.
Micro: Maybe it’s just how I am training people.
Do I train moms who want to become body builders? Do I train high school athletes? Do I hate coaching nutrition?
You start with a macro decision and refine the micro in the testing phase.
When you start new activity there is an unknown amount of time and an unknown amount of repetitions to take before you have any idea if this is something you will enjoy longer term.
The amount of time and reps is different for everything and everyone.
Sadly, most people quit things too soon while they are in the testing phase.
The truth is, you aren’t really good at this thing yet and you don’t truly know if it’s for you or not.
In the testing phase, you must allow yourself to suck at something but also be energized by the learning. You also must allow yourself to adjust and tweak.
Just as the time and reps differ for people. so does the how. How you take action.
Let’s take Jimmy who is trying to learn how to do a 360 on his snowboard.
If Jimmy learned how to do a 360 on his snowboard in 3 months after 200 attempts, that means nothing for how long it may take you. However, we can theorize that if Jimmy did 200 attempts in 1 month, he may have nailed the 360 sooner.
Also, Jimmy learned by going full send off a jump and went for a 360 without ever learning how to do a 180 on flat ground. Maybe he could have gotten a 360 faster if he practiced his 180 first. We won’t know. But this ain’t about Jimmy, it’s about you.
If Jimmy taught you how to do a 360, he’ll probably only teach you how he did it. What if you don’t feel safe enough to go full send off the jump like him? You will probably only try a few times, be too scared to keep trying, and give up too soon even though you REALLY want to hit a 360.
You watch Jimmy who is now effortlessly hitting 360s on every jump he sees. You’re envious. You want it bad. What if there’s another way?
How open are you to uncovering a new strategy to get what you want?
Find a new coach. Try a new method. Read a new book.
Just don’t quit… yet…
Inflection Point
As I mentioned, there is always an inflection point, but we don’t know when that is. Nobody will know when that is except you. This takes radical honesty.
When you allow yourself to get to the inflection point 2 things will happen.
The obvious circumstance is Flow. You know when you’re here. This is when it gets really easy and you get into a flow state. Meaning, you don’t even have to think about what you’re doing, it comes naturally, easily and it’s fun.
The less obvious circumstance is Draining. This is when you have seen improvement and you’ve given yourself so much time and have put in lots of reps but now it just ain’t that fun and it’s really hard to get yourself to want to continue putting in the reps.
You might even find that you can do the 360 now, but keep taking the lift to the backside of the mountain to hit the glades (riding in between the trees). You have now gotten to a point where you can do the work, but it just isn’t energizing you. You have found something that energizes you more.
It’s not that you dislike snowboarding. You just don’t want to go to the park and do 360s. You much prefer dodging trees. Will you give yourself permission to do more of that?
Oftentimes, we don’t.
Here’s the problem…
Draining
First of all, congrats. You didn’t quit early. Celebrate yourself for the reps you’ve put in. Maybe you never actually hit the 360, but you can confidently go to your grave saying you put in the time, the reps, you tried a few strategies and it just ain’t for you.
This is a great time to let it go.
Once again, it’s not a waste of time. Now you know!!!! Knowing what you don’t want is just as good, if not better, than knowing what you do want.
The other side of the coin is never really going for it and spending so much of your life wondering what it would be like. You’d always be half-in half-out on the current thing you’re doing because you’d have regrets about the other thing you only gave 10% effort.
If you truly and honestly feel complete at the inflection point, give it up and give it up fast.
Sadly, most people hang out in draining too long. It makes sense because you have just put all this time and effort into doing this thing, but now you dread it. It’s pissing you off. It’s really not fun at all and it is not easy to get yourself to do it.
At this point you will be wasting a lot of resources (time, energy and money) on forcing something that just ain’t for you. As shown in the graph, you will notice you spend a lot of time getting less and less done. The only thing to do here is to get radically honest with yourself as soon as you can.
- Have you spent enough time and reps here to know if it’s actually for you, or is it still new?
- Have you exhausted all the strategies and resources available to you and given them a fair attempt?
- Am I satisfied and if I choose to move on, can I fully move on?
If you decide you are complete, spend some time to honor this process. Write down all the things you’ve learned about yourself—what you like and dislike—so you can take these lessons into your next adventure.
Flow
Ahhhhh remarkable flow state. Where time slows down and you are fully present 😌
The work is now easy and fun. You’re excited to get to it and have fun when you’re in it.
There is an important distinction to understand and it’s about “work.”
Work is not bad. Work can be fun and easy. Even hard work can be energizing. Like an intense workout or cooking a delicious meal.
Work can also be draining (see above).
As the graph indicates, when you are in flow you get more done is less time.
More doesn’t always mean quantity.
You may also be getting better quality work done is less time too.
Content Creation and Storytelling
Everybody knows everybody loves talking about themselves.
You already agree that you love what you do.
You’re the one human on earth who struggles to talk about themself.
Haha I’m only teasing. Come onnnn relax.
Maybe you’re taking this all a bit too seriously, eh?
I am 100% sure you can find a style of content creation you love and can get into flow with. If you are truly honest with yourself, I bet you’re still in the testing phase but feeling a bit drained (but not fully tapped out). This is great. That means it’s time to start trying new ways of creating content (check out this Low Effort Strategy if Content Drains You)
One aspect of creating content I would double down on is to create a safe and fun environment for yourself to think, write, and create. Put your phone in another room. Disconnect your computer from wifi. Slow the fuck down. (maybe you can take your journal outside and listen to the wind blow. maybe this requires you to do some breathwork before (I highly recommend this))
When you think, write, and create in a safe place with no distractions you will find yourself opening up a little more. When you feel safe and you’re enjoying what you’re writing, POST IT!!
Take the camera out, record. Speak form the heart.
Or re-write what you wrote onto your phone, make a carousel, whatever… post it now when you feel safest.
I promise you when you post what you really want to say and no matter what happens, you’ll be okay. You have handled some serious shit in your life. I’m quite sure you can handle a little feedback on the internet.
When all else fails look up at the stars tonight and remember, none of this really matters. With enough time nobody will remember you and the world will keep spinning. How fucking cool is that? That means you get to go buck wild. Create something truly memorable, because this mediocrity BS ain’t doing it for ya.
If you really want to learn how to create a memorable brand by uncovering unique perspectives only YOU could bring to this earth. Check out The Brand Framework. It’s a $97 mini course designed to help you pull the genius out of your head and into beautiful content.
The Lifelong Process
If you’re lucky enough to be Jerry Seinfeld, you figure out what you love by age 21, create the most popular TV show of all time and build a network just shy of $1 billion.
I have no doubt Jerry has many iterations of coming up with jokes.
He clearly had a big yellow pad to keep his notes on and work through (he actually made a book on this called, Is This Anything?). But maybe he blasted music while he played and that didn’t work. Maybe he tried writing in silence, maybe at the beach, maybe in his car…
Maybe there was something a year before the legal pad. I wonder if he even tried to move away from the legal pad and maybe onto a computer, but hated it so he went back.
He no doubt had iterations of telling his jokes. Even a completely different style at one point, until soon enough he found his flow in the cadence, length and presentation of his jokes.
Even the Unicorns have a process of elimination until they find flow.
Most of us are not Jerry Seinfeld (though you are all beautiful unique unicorns)
I have had many career changes. I have had many iterations of those careers. I have found a beautiful place in storytelling right now. Is it the end? Will I become Seinfeld and create the most unique thing ever and make millions? Who knows. I could well be onto to something else in 3 months. I will just have to be radically honest and patient with myself if the work ever becomes draining.
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