Hey, badass. Let's talk about how freaky it can be to show up on socials, how In your head, we can get about content and creating content, posting content, staying consistent with content. If perfectionism has been getting in your way of creating content and showing up online, if you struggle to see yourself as someone who can even build a personal brand based business like this and create content at all, because it's not something that comes naturally to you, we need to chat.
Thank you so much. Bye. Because honestly, I love when people say, Oh, it's easy for you. It comes so naturally to you. I'm still working on this. Like I see myself as the example of the person who had no natural gifts or talents, but worked her way into being good at it. And even now I'm not great. I'm not top tier.
I'm not the most excellent content creator, but am I good enough of a content creator to run a multimillion dollar business? Yes. And so I am, and I'm going to acknowledge myself.
[00:01:58] The Power of Personal Branding
Excellent at understanding the psychology behind personal branding and what people want and the content you need to create.
But it doesn't mean that this will ever feel a hundred percent easy and natural and All good in every single respect what I can promise you is that it feels way better and I don't overthink it and I enjoy it and I have fun with it and all of those good things and I'm so glad I felt the fear and did it anyway.
I'm so glad. I hated how I looked, how I sounded, how I, and did it anyway. And I pushed through because now, honestly, I couldn't give a fuck what people think, like I am here in service of my people, I'm building my business. I'm doing my thing and I'm having fun while I'm doing it. So even if. I can't promise you that one day you'll feel a hundred percent confident and you'll look at your content and say, Oh my gosh, I'm so perfect.
Now as a content creator, while that's not the end stage that we're gunning for, I can promise you that it can feel good and it's really something to commit to because becoming a content creator is the most valuable skill you can build. This will serve you forever in your business, not just in social media.
The process of becoming good at content creation, at forcing yourself to articulate a message very quickly, to use the language that your people use and make them feel like you're in their head. Being able to get creative with expressing a point or a message in a different format, a different style, being good.
At owning the fact that you will teach the same things and similar principles over and over again, because there'll always be more beginners coming into your audience. All of that mindset, that strategy, those skills, they will help you. With things like going live, with running masterclasses, with launching, with running trainings, with doing keynote speeches, it will help you to create really efficient and impactful course modules, and it will help you to, of course, find your voice.
And really hone your personal brand and really get good at selling yourself just because you're able to articulate who you are, what you do, the mission you're on and who you serve so well, so naturally that it doesn't even feel like selling yourself. You're just really great at communicating what you do.
[00:04:32] Building a Content-Driven Business
And what's also really exciting about content is that it enables your business to grow without limit in the badass empires framework. What we essentially do is we build your business home. We build your business foundation. So we refine and hone in your niche. Your messaging, your personal branding, and we use this to develop an incredible offer and sales system and nurturing system and lead magnet and all of the assets to welcome and invite in and onboard and nurture people into your world.
Have them understand what you're about. Have them have those important. Educational and mindset shifts so that by the time they're making a decision as to whether or not they're going to go all in and work with you, there's no selling required. There's no pitching required. Like they've been able to do the work to make a really empowered decision to be like, yeah, this is exactly what I'm after.
And it's my time. And I'm making an empowered decision as an adult that this is what I want. And I'm so excited to make this investment in myself. So we build this foundation in this home that works for you. And then you've got content. So once you've got this incredible system that works for you, let's do the math.
Just say for every 100 people who go through your lead magnet, just so you have a mini course, four of them apply to work with you as a coach. Then you just need to turn on your content machine. And get 200 people through your lead magnet. What would happen if you had 800 people through your lead magnet?
What would happen if you had a thousand people for your lead magnet? And over time, as the content works for you in this audience grows, that's how you can go from being a private coach to having enough people in your community. And enough leads to be able to do group coaching and eventually be able to sell.
If you want to lower price point courses and self study courses. So content is the fuel to this incredible sales engine that's working for you. So once you've built it, that's what I love about a model. Once you've built it, you're done. You might be done for two, three, four years, however long you want to keep this exact lead magnet and this exact offer in place.
But then you just turn on that content machine and it's about eyeballs. And that's what enables you to have this insane amount of exposure and impact and ability to work, not just with 10 people, but with a hundred people with a thousand people. And it comes from. The traffic you're getting in your content.
So that's really cool. You build your business well, and you build it anchored in these real six figure business foundations that will absolutely work for you to make your first six figures and beyond. And then the only things you need to focus on from that point are content and client work, content and client work.
And it just makes the whole thing so enjoyable. As you can imagine without the content, without the traffic, without the visibility, you're going to get stuck in that. Space where you are making okay money working with a handful of clients every year, but you can't quite figure out how to take it next level.
And you don't have the numbers to be able to work less. So your calendar is full with one to one coaching calls or one to one client work, but you don't have the numbers or the scale yet to be able to go into, for example, a group format where you have one or two calls per week and you're coaching multiple people on those calls.
And it really will make or break your ability to take this business as far as you want to take it essentially and give you options when it comes to your business model. So content really is the make or break factor around options in your business as well. So it's so important, not only is it the most valuable skill you can build, but it's strategically.
One of the most important things you can do for your business. Once you've got the mechanics working super beautifully on the backend for you.
[00:08:45] Mindset Shifts for Content Creation
That doesn't take away from the fact that content can feel terrifying. I have been absolutely terrified, petrified of putting myself online. I know the feeling.
My first YouTube video about French culture, it was about 15 minutes long by the time I cut it down. It probably took me two and a half, three hours just to film that thing. I was stuttering. I was sweating. I was absolutely terrified. terrified. And I remember for not even French for the first, I think six to eight months, I couldn't watch my videos back.
Once I had put them online, I couldn't stand seeing myself. So I get it. I know how it feels to be in your head, to hate the idea of putting yourself out there, hate the idea of your colleagues saying that of people from your high school. Girl from your university, from your hometown, seeing it hate the idea of that random cousin or that random uncle seeing it and making jokes about it at the next family event.
I get it. And I'm also on the other side now. And I can see how, just by taking the action and doing the thing and building that muscle and making it something that came easily to me, it's a million dollar skill. And I'm not letting anyone take that away from me. Okay. The thing is when you're putting content out there, you can say, Oh, I'm just a perfectionist or I'm overthinking it, or I'm struggling to stay consistent because I don't have the time or whatever it is.
But usually behind all of those limiting beliefs and all of those excuses, you're worried about being judged. You're worried about what people are saying about you, what they're thinking about you. And it can be either people you already know, you're worried about them talking about you behind their back.
You're worried about people you don't know and them leaving mean comments and trolling you and wondering if you have the emotional capacity to handle it. You're worried about not being good enough for the people you desperately want to help. And will you inspire them? Will you educate them? Will you help them?
You don't want to feel like a failure. So there. There is a lot going on and it's natural to feel scared of doing the thing and putting yourself out there because from an evolutionary perspective, your brain wants to keep you safe. Your brain has evolved to protect you from pain and that pain can be physical pain and it can be psychological pain.
It's very difficult for the brain to actually differentiate between those Formats of pain, the same areas of the brain will light up on imaging tests when it comes to psychological and physical pain, right? The same pain centers of the brain are lighting up. Okay. So your brain can't really differentiate between the two.
And so with whatever kind of pain it is, it's pain, it's a threat. It could lead to death. It's scary. And so your brain wants you to survive. Your brain wants to keep you alive. And when we have strong emotions related to things like social rejection, being the out group, there's in group and out group.
In group is what everyone's doing, the status quo. Out group is when you step away and do something different. If you're the first person you know who's creating content online, if you're the first person you know who's putting yourself out there on the internet, and you're worried about how that will make the in group feel about you or perceive you, back in the day, that was a very real threat to your survival because that social rejection being the outgrowth, you could have been left behind.
They might have left you behind and moved on, and you would have been left alone and you could have been at very real risk of dying. Being different could have literally have had you killed. So this is very real for your brain. It's very scary, putting yourself out there and becoming the outgrope and doing what others won't do.
It's very scary, the idea of social rejection, even if You don't know these people and I want to walk you through some of the mindset tools or shifts that have helped me because one of them may work for you or several of them may work for you. And sometimes you just need to be able to cling on to a couple of these concepts, these mental concepts or frameworks that help you to get out of your own way and make this dream future of yours a reality.
To get to the point where you've built a successful business and they've gone from being like, oh my gosh, who does she think she is? Is she like an influencer or something now? To saying to you, wow, you're so lucky. How did you do it? You're so lucky that you get to work from home. Oh, you're working part time with your baby.
Lucky. Oh my gosh. You've paid off your house. Lucky. And like many things in life, no, it's not luck, it's hard fucking work, and it's really important that you can think about what could go right if you show up and create this content, and all of the good that can happen, and The brain, because it does have this threat bias, this negativity bias, because it wants to keep you safe, it's so easy to focus on all the things that could go wrong, all the things that could happen to you if you put yourself out there on the internet, all of the pain that you might be exposed to.
But please hold on to the possibility that one day, If you're consistent and you're showing up and all these cool things are happening for you, they'll be asking you how you did it and they'll be asking you how you got so lucky.
[00:14:31] Practical Tips for Content Success
I've got six of these mindset shifts for you or ways of viewing the world, ways of viewing the topic that might be really helpful for you.
I know they were for me and I'd really love to hear from you. Please send me a message on Instagram over at badass empires, underscore, which of these resonated the most. Okay. So let's dive in. Number one surprise. It's my thing. The best way you can get over yourself and show up online, despite how scary it can feel.
Is having a big why. So my advice to you is get a bigger purpose. If it's too scary for you to show up online, if you're feeling frozen, if you just will not do it, get a better purpose. Because if you can hear the haters, your purpose isn't loud enough. When we build a purpose driven business, it becomes a mission.
That's bigger than you. And that allows you to show up. And what you realize is that even though it is you and it's your face and it's your personal brand, ultimately, what we're building here at Badass Empires are personal brand businesses that aren't actually about you. It's about them. It's about how you can help them.
Because we are working on topics like helping people in their careers, helping people in their finance, helping people in their health, helping people in their relationships. Helping people in play and creativity, helping people to achieve things that they want to achieve in life faster. And when you have that click that your content isn't about you and how you look and how you sound.
And that it's about helping and inspiring or educating someone else today. That can be one of the most powerful concepts to grasp onto. It's not about you. It's about them. What a gift. How generous of you, how amazing of you that you are creating this tips video today that someone might see and they will have a shift.
They'll think about something differently. They'll take action today on something and they will start making progress towards their goals in life. Like how good is that? And so when you realize that coaching others can't be about you and imposter syndrome and whether or not you're good enough, and it has to be about how you can serve this person, how you can get them results, that's when it gets exciting.
And when you realize that if this takes off, you could be making such a big change to the world, such an amazing impact on the world. That's so motivating. It's motivating to get over the fear. I've got clients working on things like. Intergenerational poverty. So taking people who are usually the underdogs when it comes to financial education and going from intergenerational poverty as their story arc to wealth creation, empowering them with the tools and conversations that they would have never had around finances.
I've got clients working on things like helping people to have really healthy, positive, empowering experiences, navigating open relationships. I have clients working on things like helping women to heal from heartbreak and unravel all of the meaning that they've made that mean about who they are and how good enough they are and thrive.
And feel whole and secure in their single life so that relationships can just be a bonus. I have people teaching things like how to show up confidently in real life French or real life German. Okay. So language empowerment to help people go from being stuck as this textbook based intermediate learner to actually being able to converse and connect with people and maybe even land job opportunities in a foreign language.
I have some clients who are career coaches, helping people to make incredible career moves, get paid more, feel more fulfilled, right? And so when you're working in these kinds of spaces, you've got to keep that in mind that your purpose and your mission that you're on and helping others is worth the ego of putting yourself out there.
So that helps a lot. And in addition to the purpose of your business and your mission. It's also important to understand why this is personally meaningful for you. How will your life change when you can out earn what you're making in corporate, when you can work from anywhere, when you can be working with these incredible people all around the world and helping them to win in life.
What's going to change for you? For me, it was in marrying a French guy that I realized that Corporate will never be able to give me the exact mix that my dream life Required which is being able to live between two countries New Zealand and France, even if you have remote jobs They always have like time zone limitations on them.
It would never be able to give me unlimited vacation time Because even if it says so in the company policy, there's what's written down as unlimited paid time off. And then there's the reality of actually having your leave approved and how much leave people take. So there were many things that I craved in life that I knew that my business was going to be the vehicle that got me there.
And so make this personally meaningful as well, visualize what life will look like and feel like when you hit your dream state, which might only be a few years away. It was for me. And tap into that feeling before you get started. Tap into that feeling before you start filming. Because if I told you that to get from where you are today to your dream state of amazing money, working 30 hours a week, from home, living between New Zealand and France, and being able to 10x how quickly you're able to pay your home off, or invest in rental property, or whatever it is, If I told you that between where you are today and that dream state was just 150 reels, would you do it?
Just have to make 150 reels and you could very well be there. Of course you would, right? Of course you're going to. So tap into the vision, both of your business purpose and why it's personally meaningful to you because there are 8 billion people on this planet. And you best believe I will not be letting the 23 people that I know or knew back from university or high school or anything like that, tell me that I can or cannot have what I desire in life.
Like sometimes I don't even know these people that well, like colleagues. That I worked with five years ago and they come to mind, right? Cause they're like that kind of character, that kind of person. I'm not going to let Susie from accounts take that dream away from me. So it's a really powerful thing to look into that vision of yours as well.
The second mindset shift that I find really helpful is that this is not the last piece of content you will ever create. So it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't even have to be good, because you get to go again. And it's only in the process of creating, editing, posting, and going again.
So view it as a game. Set yourself a goal. I'm going to post 50 pieces of content until I even ask myself the question, was that good? And, in the process, you'll become good. Of course, you can always archive it or delete it if you want to. I wouldn't recommend this, because you don't want to train yourself to hide.
You've got nothing to be embarrassed of. You are showing up for other people, not for yourself. And you're trying to help and you're trying to get a message out there and you're trying to get education out there and you're trying to get tools out there. Okay. So I wouldn't train yourself to hide away and to be ashamed, but it's an option for you.
You can archive or delete it if you want to. So again, you get to go again, you get to focus. On just getting 1 percent better each and every time it's that 1 percent rule from Atomic Habits by James Clare. It's about just focusing on getting 1 percent better with each and every content pace. And one day you'll wake up and be really good at it.
So again, it's not the last piece of content you ever get to create. This is not going to be the piece of content that is immortalized for all time and representative of who you are and the content creator you became, no. It's a piece of content. It'll probably last for about 24 hours on the algorithm.
Move on. Mindset number three is detaching from the outcome. So what I really suggest is trying to move your focus in content creation away from The vanity metrics. How many people will like this? How many people will comment on this? How many people will validate me? That's the outcome of your content.
And the best piece of advice I can give you is to learn to enjoy the process for yourself, regardless of what other people think, and regardless of the outcome, because you will have posts that tank, they won't perform. It's going to take a lot of posts. To put out there to get out there before you have the data to understand what's working and why or why not.
And so if you tie up your self worth or your ability or your future potential into the results of those first 50 posts, then you're going to be in for a rollercoaster of emotions. Even today, I have reels that get 1 million views and others that get 4, 000 views. It happens, but I don't make it mean anything about me because you cannot let the results break you.
And instead I'm focusing on what I get out of it from a process standpoint. So in the process of being a content creator, I get immense learning and growth. I get to research and communicate on my topic all the time on a topic that I'm passionate about. I get to challenge myself to be creative. I get to learn about filming and speaking and always try to get 1 percent better with each and every content piece.
I have an opportunity to. Educate to inspire to help someone to make them think I have an opportunity to feel more confident in my abilities Feel more confident in my ability to speak and get my message out there and to help people I get to gamify the process and think about again, not Without obsessing about the outcome, but understanding through the results and through the data and what it tells me, I get to analyze human behavior and kind of reverse engineer why did that work?
And why didn't that work? And might it have been the text placement or may it have been the. Word that I used or that really sticky language that I use for my ideal client, or what is it about that content piece that worked? I wonder, and it's not about me and how I looked or how I sounded or what I said.
It's about what is it about the psychology of human behavior and the way they like to consume content that made this work. And I get a kick out of trying to figure it out and analyze it. And then of course, with each and every piece of content, I get to become a better content creator. I've been a coach because I get my point across quickly.
I have to think about the most powerful questions or the most powerful things to say or mindset shifts to offer. And I get to become a better business owner. I get to gamify. I get to figure out what works and why from a business standpoint, from a content consumption standpoint. I let the data drive my decisions, not my emotions or insecurities about how making content makes me feel.
Mindset shift number four is to stop focusing on the bigger picture. Sometimes people really freak out about posting online because They're actually scared of success. And what I mean by that is it's actually really overwhelming for people. The idea of this content potentially being seen by hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people.
And the reality is that the human brain finds it really hard to comprehend the numbers, the size, the scale of the internet. Because our brain was only ever used to having groups and tribes of people up to, the early hundreds, research shows that the human brain really does find it hard to visualize and truly understand anything beyond kind of 500 people.
We can't actually compute that. And the idea of our face and our voice and our ideas being exposed and reaching so many people can be very overwhelming and very frightening. And so one really concrete tip that I have for you is rather than thinking about if this works and it gets seen by hundreds of thousands of people, like there's a subconscious fear wow, that's really intense and that's really scary.
What if I get haters and the trolls come for me, or I didn't nail the delivery of the message in the way I would have liked to, instead of thinking about what could happen if all of these people see this content. Really pretend that you are speaking to one person. For me, I like to visualize when I was making my YouTube videos that I was chatting to a specific friend.
For you it could be a friend, it could be an ideal client you have in mind, it could be a made up person who is the representation of the person that you so badly want to help, but I really recommend when you are creating content, To imagine that you're creating almost just a FaceTime video or a voice note like you'd send to a friend, but you're creating a video just for one person and don't think about how many people may end up seeing it and it's not as vast and big as the internet.
You're really creating the video just with one person in mind. That was super helpful for me.
[00:29:19] Dealing with Haters and Criticism
Tip number five is not to give headspace to the haters. So we talked about the brain and how it's wired and how it is geared towards scanning and picking up on negative things because they could hurt you. They could threaten you.
And this was really helpful from an evolutionary standpoint. Of course, if you are in a field of beautiful flowers and smelling the flowers and enjoying them, and then you have a saber tooth tiger, who's crouching in the field, ready to pounce on you and eat you, your brain had to be wired to be able to pick up on that feeling, to be able to pick up on the threat, because as nice as joy and pleasure and enjoyment are.
What's more important than survival and what this means is that when we're looking at our content, we could have 100 lovely comments, messages saying, thank you. I can relate. This was so well explained. I really appreciated this. I needed to see this today. And then you'll get one comment that says, this is such generic advice.
You could Google this. This person doesn't know what they're talking about, whatever it is. I've had every comment under the sun. Especially on YouTube, I get comments about how ugly I am, my appearance my stupid accent, my voice, what else that I'm some sort of snob who doesn't know anything like.
I've had it all. Okay. And then from the career's perspective, like just a lot of attacks on my methodology, on my experience saying that I'm lying just all sorts of stuff. I've had it. And what will happen is that your brain will hyper focus on that. It will see that almost like a red flashing warning signal and you will obsess over it.
You will think about it. You will ruminate on it. You will screenshot it. You will share it with a friend. It will get you down. If you don't put up your walls and really understand that these people do not deserve your mental real estate. And something that really helped me to land this concept. Is that you will never have people who are more successful for you, or more content with their life, or at peace, or so secure and so whole in who they are, you will never have people like that making shit comments like that.
You will never have successful, wonderful, kind people. Taking the time out of their day to go and leave a hater comment on someone else's piece of work. Constructive criticism is fine, right? That's a completely different category. I'm talking about just shit talking you. And that really helped me because I realized that these people Weren't the kind of people I wanted to have approval from because I didn't want to become them.
They weren't my role models. They aren't people that I strive to impress. If you met them in real life, you wouldn't think twice about them. And so just remember that The people who are doing better than you and are more at peace than you and are winning and getting results and designing their dream life and making it happen.
They don't have time to do stuff like that. And so it's never going to be a comment from someone who deserves your energy and your headspace. And the other thing that someone said to me, which is very true is that If you weren't putting yourself out there and getting the views and getting the numbers outside of your followers and exposing yourself more widely and getting that traffic and getting that exposure, that visibility, you wouldn't have hate comments.
And that's very true as well. So it's actually a by product of your success. It means that your content has been seen more widely by more people. It also gives you free engagement, which is great. Like every comment that they leave and then when other people start fighting with them or your reply to them or whatever, like it's more brownie points for the algorithm, because it's like, cool, thanks for the engagement.
But it is a good thing in that. It means your content is going out more widely. And if you have been brave enough to be a bit polarizing and think differently and bust some myths and raffle some feathers, you're going to get these comments as well. And honestly, it's a good thing. So look forward to hearing from these people because, it does remind you of quite a lot of good things as well.
Like for me, I get the backs up of resume writers quite a lot, because I tell people you should never pay someone to write your resume, they don't know you, they're going to use generic language, and then you don't have the skill to do it again for the next job, and so it's just going to be wasted money, and so I talk about that, and resume writers don't like it, and they put me down, and then they get nasty, but also, I'm not going to stop sharing that message to protect them.
I'm protecting the people that I want to help. So it's going to happen. You will get hate comments. It's really important not to give them headspace. And hopefully some of these ways of framing it have really helped as well. And then my final tip for you, my final shift for you, if all else fails and you can't quite I guess trick yourself or gaslight yourself into being like, Oh no, it's okay.
I feel confident creating content. It's good enough. I can go for it now. This is early stages. You're really struggling with, how insecure you feel self worth and that, that confident side of things. It's just not clicking into place. A couple of things. Especially if you are a perfectionist, a high achiever, you've been very hard on yourself your whole life.
Sometimes you just need to step into a zone, whether you like it or not. I'm sorry, this is a bit of a tough love moment, but of just fucking do it. Even if it feels like shit, if you want that dream, if you want that thing to happen, if you want this business to work, it's you're just going to have to fucking do it and show up in any way.
And sometimes it may not feel very good. For quite some time and it eventually will kick into place. And even just knowing that can help. So how can you get into the zone of, what, I know you don't want to do this today, but we're going to, so how can we make this as enjoyable as possible? Blast some of my favorite music while I'm getting ready.
Have a nice snack, have my water bottle next to me, set the scene, feel good about it as good as you can. And just fucking do it. Sometimes you just need to call it and be tough with yourself and get it done. Now, if there are really deep rooted issues stopping you from showing up to the point where it is causing extreme anxiety or panic, also therapy's great.
Recommend 100%. And there might be a deeper root cause or issue that you want to work on that you need to unblock before any of these mindset shifts are going to do anything. anything. You might have something at the core that's impossible right now, and that's a separate conversation. Therapy's amazing.
Build up your self worth, your sense of self, your identity, your deservedness to have an amazing life in parallel to doing the thing and getting into the just fucking do it mode as well.
[00:36:33] Final Thoughts and Encouragement
So if this has helped you, please share it with me. Please chat to me, please message me. I do try to get back to every single one and I love to get to know you as the real human beings out there with big missions, building these empires and doing the thing.
And it just makes me feel so good when I realized that you're here along for the ride and that this podcast is helping you to show up and take action. So I'd love to hear from you and hear your ideas as well for how you can help Feel the fear and then show up anyway. What gets you into the zone of just getting it done and doing what you need to do?
Until you get to the place where you don't fear it anymore. I would love to hear from you and I'll share some of my stories as well so that we can help each other out and ideate together. So until next week, stay badass, keep building those empires. So proud of you. And I can't wait to hear from you over on Instagram.
Cool. See ya. A shit ton of income, crazy impact, a business that you love. Just by listening to this episode, you are one step closer to your very own badass empire. Now I want to hear from you. Tag me in your stories or send me a DM over on Instagram so I can learn what resonated with you most. Oh, and if you're the kind of badass who is willing to help us out big time and take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast, Make sure you send us a screenshot of that review at helloatbadassempires.
com so I can send you a juicy freebie to say thank you. Until next time, keep showing up for your future and we'll keep smashing goals in the next episode.
