Season 2: Episode 007

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Script*

*Note: The script has been edited for readability and will stray from the original audio recording.

Welcome to the Plan for Wonder podcast. I'm Crystal, founder and creator of myLife Planners. We're back this week with Robin Joy.

Welcome back, Robin.

It's great to be back. We're going to talk about a monster of a topic: content creation. This one topic is always on my mind. Time is finite and limited.

I almost get overwhelmed because I know all the steps of everything that needs to get done. So, even before I start, I think too far forward. And then the other end of things, perfection, can be the villain in our own content creation stories. So what's your solution? What's your first step or thing for you when you advise your clients?

The first thing is that there's a shift in the way we think about our content.

And it's a shift that I made. There are two shifts. Oh, okay. First, you have to acknowledge the importance of communication in your business. Ongoing, consistent, trustworthy communication, whatever form that takes, is the key.

There are many ways to achieve business success, no matter how you approach it. But the key is that you need to communicate in some way about what you do, tell people about it, and ask them to buy things from you. That's well, in a thing, you think I'm a business of one.

No, you're not. You're a business of one in many.

You have to change that. That is the mindset, right? It's not just me.

I have others to include in my things and my process. So once you realize the secret, we're all looking for it; what is the secret to success in my business?

It is truly just showing up without fail. And really being clear about what you're saying—that is the secret. As long as you do that consistently over time and you have a proven offer that, like, just one person's bought it, that's a proven offer, your business will do well.

And there are lots of factors that go into that, but that's generalizing. That's pretty good. So, the one shift is acknowledging that you must do this. The second piece is that you can ignore everyone telling you how.

Oh, yes. Because guaranteed, if you go on Instagram and you scroll through all of the content creators that are advising on how to do Instagram well, how to do social media well, chances are you're going to get so many conflicting viewpoints and ideas and, different ways that, you should be doing that.

Should you use hashtags? Shouldn't you use hashtags? Do you need a hook on your reel? Should you make reels? Should you make carousels? There are so many conflicting points of view, and what that does to most people is it puts them in a bit of a freeze state: I don't even know where to begin.

And then it zaps their creativity. And so the. If you can just shift and be like, okay, this is a space where I get to be creative and create, the short-form video is fun for me. I can shoot a B-roll, which is artistic in my mind. I can learn how to use CapCut, edit cute little videos, and make little memes together. I can get on Canva and play and create, and I can learn to hone my writing skills.

I want to learn how to communicate in a way that is authentic to me but also very persuasive. There are so many aspects to the art and the craft of content creation that you can explore as an entrepreneur. And if, as soon as you can see it as an art, as a creative expression, it just changes the game in terms of feeling that, I feel that pressure to get it right because this is just never really right.

What goes viral is totally random, and going viral doesn't guarantee that your business will grow.

If it's a product, you may see it change. You can only serve so many people if you're a service provider. Exactly.

Exactly. What you're looking for is to connect, build relationships, build trust, and be yourself. That's how you're going to do that.

You'll connect with those who are the right fit for what you want. So you talk about when it comes to online business management, one of those things, those SOPs, how can that play a part?

So, a standard operating procedure (SOP) is just a step-by-step instruction for performing a repeatable task in your business.

Content creation is a task that you'll repeat over and over again. So, you need a way to do that, and it's as simple as a checklist, right? It's 100 percent like a checklist, a recurring task on your project management system that reminds you. Okay.

Today is the day that I batch-create some B rolls for my reels or whatever. It's just okay; this is the system that I follow. Again, the key to a system and any sort of SOP being successful is that you look forward to it and you enjoy doing it.

And then it's okay. Today, I have to do this thing.

You talk about one of those things, creating pillars.

What is that? These are your core brand messages that will weave in and through every kind of communication in your business. Your offers will have echoes of these content pillars within them.

You share all of the content. For example, as I've been talking to you, I've mentioned several of my content pillars in this conversation. The only one I haven't talked about, which I'm sure people have heard in the background in past episodes, is my cats running around in the background playing.

But, these are what you become known for. Okay. That is so key because your referral game is on as soon as people immediately associate a thing with you. People are like, they'll be in conversations with someone, and they'll be talking about something you do that you talk about all the time.

And someone says, "Oh, I wish I knew where to end up." I know. I know the person, and they send you directly to them because you've been so clear in your messaging. So I have a system in which I help come up with their content pillars. And I always say this is something that works for me, and it's worked for a lot of my clients, but it's not written in stone.

Your content pillars can be any kind of bucket of content that encapsulates and discusses your work. They should also fully represent who you are.

Howw do you go about creating that core messaging for you?

So, I always include five pillars that I discuss or that I encourage others to develop their pillars around.

The first is your framework. The framework is essential; this is how I do what I do. So, for me, my framework is the six-step creation process, which includes all of the steps that I take all of my clients through when I'm working with them and all of the touchpoints that we hit along the way.

That's my framework, my personal pillar. This is like parts of you that relate to the work you do. Mine is cozy and my cats. Because the cats live in the studio, we're in the office. So I have six cats in here, and we just hang out, and they're always in my videos. I would say that I call myself a totally sane cat lady.

I don't like the trope of the crazy cat lady. I don't think that's really relatable anymore. It was exactly derogatory. And also, they're all rescues. So they're all found cats from our neighbourhood. We have a bit of a stray problem, so I've just taken them in and taken them to the pet store.

They always have one cat right by the front door. I saw one the other day, and I was like, "Oh, you're cute." But I have too many. Look away.

I know. It's tough for me because I see them around town. After all, there is a stray problem. And I'm like, no, I'm doing what I can.

I have to remind myself I'm doing as much as possible, and that's good. But it's part of my brand now. If you watch my videos, you will see a cat. So that's how you can bring aspects of your personality. I even put a little cat in my consistency catalyst, like brands, like image, because that's just part of my brand.

So the other one is like the image. Oh, another one is the outcome. So, what is the outcome when people work with you? What is the result? So mine is well-resourced, having a well-resourced business. CoreCore values for your North Star are as follows: When you wake up in the morning, what gets you to your desk?

What is it like? The core value that motivates you. And for me, again, every business owner deserves to feel well-resourced in their life and business. And that's what gets me out of bed. Then, the final one is niche-specific. So that's like who you work with. So, I work with online business owners, and it's just things that are related to them.

I help my clients find related content based on those pillars, and they work well for me, too.

When we talked, you mentioned something about creating rooting in your own power. How would you do that? What does that mean?

Oh, that's part of the six-step creative process, which makes power a central piece of our work.

When we feel—and it's not necessarily that we feel powerful—deep within our bones that the work that we're doing is good, that we're in integrity with our work, and that this work is Serving the world in a particular kind of way, we believe in that intuition.

It's deep within us that, okay, I know, and if you don't feel that. It shows in your content, in your offers, and everything. So when you settle into that deep knowing that there is value in this and that this is what I'm meant to be doing, I think that there's something that translates into quite magnetic work.

So, creating content, really honing in on that element of what you know to be accurate, but then also affirming it with what you hear and sharing that is suitable?

And you hold yourself differently when you know your work is good.

So, in our special collaboration tool, we're going to have some worksheets, and part of that in the SAP has some structure. It can be overwhelming because you break it down into yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily.

When you're starting and building out that, where do you start? , or the daily or depends on. It's nice. I think most business owners have already probably figured out their goals for the year, and so it's just tapping into what that is. So, the yearly planning is just looking at what are actually my goals.

And then you can think about how my content serves. So that would be the yearly planning. The quarterly planning is just a check-in: Am I on track, and what do I need to focus on? Do I have a launch this quarter? Do I have something where my content actually needs to be targeted?

So that's the quarterly, and that's just a check-in, but the monthly one is the big one.

Is that because that's where, and it depends on how often you want to do brainstorming? So I do like a quarterly brainstorming refresh, but monthly is when you plan.

We build out the content.

So my monthly workflow is reaching out to people who comment and like your posts all the time and saying, "Hey, thanks so much for engaging with and liking my posts." What do you want more of? What would you like me to post more of? What are you curious about?

Do you have any questions? That's your first line. Then, look at your metrics, see what did well, take note, and say, "Okay, I'm going to make more of that." Then go to your brainstorming worksheet and create content based on what you've learned and what you know.

And that's a great way. As you said, you start with creating stuff based on what you know, utilizing that data of the reaction and outcomes of what you put out there, and refining how much is too much and how much is too little. I go through seasons where I'm consistent, and then life happens, and I've given up on stressing about it because I really try to say, and I'm going to share something that's going to be good.

Suppose I'm forced to share something just for the sake of it. It's not worth it, and it's a waste of space. Why clutter the feed? It's tough to share.

I would argue that you probably have good stuff to share all the time. If you were to take time to do content brainstorming at the beginning of the month or once a quarter, you would have this list of really great ideas that you could tap into anytime.

No matter how inspired you feel, the key to consistency is planning. But on the flip side of that, to answer your question, how much is too much? Too much is when you're overwhelmed, and all you can think about is content. That's too much.

There's always a little that you can create and put out there because the more you make, the more attention you'll get. Like I, and there's a particular sort of like capacity. If you want to create a ton, like, you can post ten posts on Pinterest a day, three posts on Instagram a day and a post on LinkedIn and, if you, there's not too much, but it's like, what are, what do you have the capacity?

And if you're consistent, like, Overcapacity in your creation process, that is not sustainable, and you will end up with that kind of like feast or famine situation wherein, like you are, people are getting used to seeing you, and Hey, I love this. I like digging into what this person has to say.

And then, all of a sudden, you drop off, and the trust is broken. Because you're not there anymore, right? And then it's what happened? Cause I was digging this, and now they're gone, and then they forget about you. And then you come back, and it's not; the trust is less, right? Consistency is about maintaining that trust and letting people in and staying at the top of their minds so that when they think about the thing, they're like, Oh, that person is the thing.

And they look for you.

There's not, so again, it's about understanding your capacity. And too little is. You can post once a week, and that's fine. That's better than doing five posts and then none for two weeks. It's that consistent. Spread them out. It's really just about being consistent.

So we're coming back to that theme of time. What is reasonable? What is your capacity for investing and working within that? Because I know I can get caught in a deep, dark rabbit hole sometimes or a hamster wheel where I'm just inventing the wheel. So, not just creating the content, but the brainstorming, which is more strategic and gives you a storyline.

There's so much to content creation. I know that we have an amazing little collaboration tool that people can purchase at mylifeplanners.ca/RobinJoy. And I think we're going to end that there.

We'll be back next week. Thanks so much for listening to Robin and me as we Plan for Wonder.

Remember that the space you take up in the world matters to me, but even more importantly, you matter the most in your own life.