In Part 2 of this 5-Part Consistent Content Series, I’m sharing what Spark Content is and why it’s what you need to be creating if you want to easily create consistent content that’s valuable.
If you find content creation exhausting instead of energising, let me show you an easier way to do it. It’s all in this episode so hit play and get ready to hear the easiest – and most effective – content strategy you’ve ever been taught. The Consistent Content Series will teach you how to create consistent content without burning out. Then join us inside Perfectionists Getting Shit Done (aka PGSD) to do this work with structure, support and a like-minded community. Doors open on 18 July for one week only. To find out more about the program and sign up for the waitlist, visit samlaurabrown.com/pgsd.
Listen To The Episode
Listen to the episode on the player above, click here to download the episode and take it with you or listen anywhere you normally listen to podcasts – just find Episode 545 of The Perfectionism Project Podcast!
Subscribe To The Perfectionism Project Podcast
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts (iPhone only)
- Google Podcasts (Android only)
- Stitcher
- Castbox
- TuneIn
- Overcast
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.
Sam Laura Brown (Custom Introduction)
This is part two of my five part series on consistent content creation. You might hear little Liam in the background. He is joining me in my office as I record this. But I just wanted to give a quick intro. So this episode is all about the creation side of content creation and sharing specifically what I recommend focusing on when it comes to content creation, we can get very caught up on trying to create valuable content and professional content. And while, of course, it is important to create things that are valuable, sometimes in the pursuit of that, we actually end up creating things that aren’t as valuable as if we just trusted ourselves and created content that has spark. So that’s what I’m sharing in this episode, all about Spark content and how it will help you feel alive in your business, feel connected to yourself and grow your business through content creation. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I want to make sure you know that on the 18th of July, for one week only, we’re going to be opening enrollment for my program, perfectionist getting shit done. And inside the program, we are going to be doing this work together on creating consistent content.
So it’s a lifetime access program, but for the first three months after you join. So from August onwards, we are going to be doing a creative cocoon together as a community to help you trust yourself to create content with ease and build your business with that content. So to get off that content treadmill and having all of the dread about what to post and when to post it, and I don’t know what to do, and all of that, and just having that feeling of like I know I could be posting, like my business would be so much more successful if I could just show up consistently, but I can’t, even though I technically know how to do that, but I can’t get myself to do that, at least not sustainably, because I burn out or exhaust myself or just want to hide, if that is you come and join us inside PGSD, it is going to be incredible. You’re going to have structure. You’re going to have support, you’re going to have a like minded community. It is going to be incredible. So samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, is where you can go to find out more about the program and join the wait list so that you can get ready to join us inside as soon as doors open. And I hope you enjoy part two of this five part series on consistent content creation.
Sam Laura Brown
Okay, so this is part two of the consistent content series. I’m just on a walk with Liam, baby Liam and cotton, my dog. And I love that I get to just record this series this way. It’s such an embodiment of what I’m talking about that I can just go on a walk. It’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and I recorded part one this morning just sitting in my office, and now I want to get my walk in and just chat to you about some really important things when it comes to content creation. So in this part, we are going to be talking about Spark content and why. I’m going to make a case for why you want to be making spark content instead of having professional content or valuable content. So I hope this is recording I’ve got, and I just want to share this setup with you as well, because when it comes to content, we really can, often, as perfectionists, want it to be really professional and valuable, and we have all sorts of ideas around what has to be the case for that to happen, particularly just to speak on podcasts for a second, that you need to have a great mic. You need to be in a studio because, of course, you have to record it for YouTube, and of course you have to make it into reels as well.
And that’s the only way for you to have a legitimate podcast. You should probably be interviewing guests as well. Like, that’s how it should look. And I just have a little lav mic, which is attached to my shirt. I got it from Amazon. I didn’t do a whole lot of research into it. I just picked one. I have that, and that’s it. I don’t have any notes. I just have my expertise and some self trust with the with it as well. And I’m just walking along. I’m not recording it. I don’t have to film it. I am recording it. I mean, I’m not filming it. And it gets to be easy, it gets to be how I want it to be, and it gets to be really effective and play a really important role in my business, without it having to be really, really hard for me. And often, what I found is, the easier it is for me, the more valuable it is for me. So I want to make the case for Spark content. I’m going to be teaching you exactly how to identify for you what that means, what spark content is, because it might be very different to what it is for me, which is what I’m doing right now.
This is spark content, but you’re a different person. It might look different. So I’ll be guiding you through inside pgsd, a process for how to identify for you what that spark content would look like or sound like or feel like. But I want to talk about what we’re not wanting to do, which is to create valuable content or professional content, and I know that as perfectionists, we want it to be valuable and professional, but here’s why we don’t want to focus on those things. The beautiful thing about Spark content, though, is when you do it, it comes across as professional and it comes across as very, very valuable, which is the most important thing we get hung up on, like I don’t feel legitimate. So I want other people to think I am so I have to have a business card and all of this, when really what’s most important is it’s valuable. And I’ll start with that one, because with content creation, what’s commonly said is that you want to create really valuable content.
I’ve heard my clients say this. I’ve heard a lot of content teachers talk about this, and it is true you do want to create valuable content, but when it is said that way, what a perfectionist hears is not okay. So let your natural gifts come forth. Just create, freely, share it with the world. What we hear is that it needs to be perfect. It needs to be and this is where the curse of knowledge comes in, particularly if you’re speaking about or talking about creating, about something that feels really easy to you, that you undervalue what comes easy to you because it comes easily, and therefore you don’t actually see the most valuable thing that you could be doing. You don’t see that as valuable because it doesn’t feel valuable to you, and you are projecting that onto your audience, and instead of thinking about what you’re actually good at, what you want to do, what you feel pulled towards, what you feel called towards, instead you find yourself thinking about what does what do people want?
This general like people, what do they want? And then this is where we tend to get into as well, like, all the niche drama and like, or if it’s like, you have a physical product, like, product drama, like, what so many people are doing this thing? Or, like, I need to find the gap in the market. I need to, you know, figure out what people want. Which like people, there are billions of people, they don’t all want the same thing. So we get so stuck with like, well, people don’t want to spend money on this, or people don’t like content on that. Like, actually, there’s lots of different kinds of people, and that’s another important thing, that your content isn’t for everyone. And you’ve probably heard that said before, and yet you still think in this terms of, like, what do people want? Which is you trying to create for everyone? So when it comes to this question of value, and what is actually valuable for you to create, because of the curse of knowledge, because of perfectionism, that has us really not actually acknowledging ourselves, giving ourselves credit, we think if we don’t know every single thing on a topic, then we know nothing about a topic.
That’s that imposter syndrome that we then don’t actually really do the thing where we’re best at doing. And I have seen this with so many people, that from the outside, it’s very obvious what they would be amazing at doing, because it comes so easily to them that they don’t let themselves do it because, well, if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it. Well, it’s not that easy for everyone, is it? It’s just that easy for you, and because we then overvalue the things that we find hard. So whether that’s having an Instagram reel where everything’s edited to perfection with all this B roll and the perfect hook. If you find that hard, then you might think that is more valuable than you just talking and sharing something that you know, and that is really important to start to understand why it’s not that we don’t want to trust our perfectionist brains view on value, but when we think about value in a certain way, it can make us actually create the least valuable content.
So another example of this with what I do and what I share, so much of the stuff that I share that I get amazing feedback on and people saying that changed my life forever. It’s me sharing the thoughts that feel obvious. It’s me sharing insights that feel like everyone has had that insight before. It’s me talking about things that I think other people will probably find boring, like what things. Like behind the scenes when I’m going through a launch or different things like that, that, like, if I was thinking, the only content that is valuable is content that’s highly prepared. It’s fully scripted, it’s perfectly polished, it has the right hooks. It’s ticking all the boxes. Then what I would create in your experience would actually be less valuable than me sharing what is just easy to me that might not feel valuable to me because it’s easy, but it is valuable. So if you have been thinking about, well, how do I create valuable content, and then trying to maybe even use AI. And I love AI, I love chatgpt and in pgsf, and in this series as well, I’ll talk about like, where I believe AI fits in with content creation, and where it isn’t needed or can be can make it harder to create, but we want to have you actually be able to not be like, Okay, I need to have AI identify.
Here are all the things that you know if you’re talking about this certain topic or you have this certain product, here are all the things you should be doing in your content. Or here are all the topics that you could talk about. And then if you have, like, I was watching this video the other day, that was like, this software, and it looked incredible, but I felt so overwhelmed just watching them, like, Okay, pull in all these content creators that you like what they create, so we can have that be in there and then, like, all the different hooks and whatever, and it just generates all this stuff for you, and that’s great, but ultimately, you’re probably not going to feel very satisfied while creating that kind of content, and a big part of what we want to have you do is feel safe, not just being visible, but actually being visible as you and everyone doesn’t want to have that kind of business, but that is the kind of business that I want to have, and that I want to help other people have as well, where their business is part of their self expression.
So what I propose, and this is how I have built my business, and I’ve made over $2 million from the content that I’ve created by talking about business and perfectionism and productivity and those different topics that it really isn’t a helpful question to be asking yourself, what is going to be valuable. But instead, and this might be controversial, but instead, to think about yourself and so often, and I found this really hard, especially in the beginning, people would say things like, well, you know, I just knew if my content helped just one person, then it would be worth it. That was not true for me. I was so scared of putting myself out there that it would not be worth it. I didn’t feel safe enough to do that, and so if it helped one person, it was for sure not going to be worth it. Not to sound rude about it, but I just actually, I wasn’t in a place where I could think like that. I actually wanted to like as much as I do care about people, about my clients, 100% I care so much that I want to help people.
And also, when I was in this mindset of, like, I have to think about what other people want from me, and then meet that. It becomes very stressful to try and get it right. And this is when we get into this, like, trying to say the right thing and trying to look right and sound right. And it takes us out of creating the most valuable things that we can actually create. And so for me, what really helped me to release my perfectionism handbrake when it came to creating content and to create this safe self expression and safe visibility was to say I’m allowed to not think about my audience. I’m allowed to not be the person who is like I you know, it’s worth it, if my content helps this one person I’m allowed to actually be like this content needs to serve a certain role for me, and that’s okay, and for me, that was I just wanted to be able to show up and share things that I personally found interesting, that I wanted to talk to, and I trusted that if I did that, and not just like if I did that for a week, but if I did that for a longer period of time, that I would naturally attract other people who resonated with me and were interested in the same things as me, and because I’m talking in first person, like the number of people who have said to me, I feel like you’re in my brain.
It’s not because I’m telling you how you think. It’s because I’m sharing with you how I think, and that is resonating, and that’s insanely valuable. So I noticed this with my clients as well, and with myself anytime I try to think about what would be really. Valuable. My perfectionism handbrake comes on. I’m trying to tick all these boxes and meet all these criteria and be good and be better. And when I think about what do I want to share, and I have content that has Spark, then that is when my content actually becomes effective. It actually becomes engaging. It actually becomes inviting. When I’m thinking about trying to be valuable and whatever the hell that means, I then go so much flatter. I’m so much more stiff and rigid and in my head and out of my body and just not in flow. And so I just want to propose that naturally, if you are creating spark content, where you have self trust, where you are allowing yourself to be and to create and to put it out into the world, that you will create more valuable content than If you are directly trying to create valuable content or trying to meet. If someone says, here’s what valuable content looks like, there’s a hook, and there’s the first paragraph, and then there’s this, and then there’s a CTA and whatever. Oh, my God, nothing turns my perfectionism handbrake on like that kind of criteria I’ve just found for me and for so many of my clients.
Structure is very helpful and supportive. I love it, but when it’s done in a way of this is the right way and the only way to do it, it turns out, perfectionism, handbrake on. So spark content, which is what I do, is I’m just here, showing up and sharing. That’s what I’m doing. That looks different for everyone. Again, in PGSD, I’m going to walk you through a process to figure out exactly what that is for you and to really create safety around that. Because again, when we’re told, like all these stories of overnight success with content, of I just created, you know, a few videos, and on the seventh one, I got a million views. When we have that, then we get disheartened, when actually we have created something insanely valuable, but there just needs to be a certain volume of it before it can actually find its right audience, and before you can develop your voice enough so it’s a gift that it’s not going to get instantly so many views, because you then have this period of time to really create and to explore and to find your voice without the pressure of people looking on.
I know that we can think when other people are watching like if I had 10,000 followers, or 100,000 followers, or a million dollar business, or whatever that is for you, then I would be so much more motivated to create content, then it would be so much easier to stay consistent, then it would be so much easier to believe that what I do is valuable. But actually, that’s not what happens, and this is why so many content creators, if you watch anyone on YouTube or follow anyone on platforms like Instagram, there are so many content creators taking sabbaticals and saying that they’re burned out. And that is because when you get a big following, you don’t just magically start believing in yourself and magically start seeing your own value. Instead, it becomes this fear of finding out of other people, finding out that you don’t know what you’re doing, and it then goes into this like over functioning, performing, perfecting, polishing, more pressure rather than the less that we think we will have.
There’s more pressure now because there are people watching on and because you’re trying to please all of these different people. And so we want to have you really find your spark with your content, and to know that that is not only what does create success, but also what will have you feeling successful. Because that’s a really important thing to me and to my clients as well, is to feel successful as you build your business, not just outwardly achieve success. And so we want to have you having that spark in your content, having you in your content, having your humanness in your content, especially with AI create, being able to create so much content, especially like information content the world needs and wants humans that human touch to things, and so this is a time more than ever, to have spark in your content, to have it not be polished and perfect, and have all of your own little quirks and everything edited out, because AI can do that much quicker than you and much better than you.
But what it can’t do is really have that spark, have that connection, have that realness, and it doesn’t mean you have to do the kind of content I’m doing, where I’m sharing my own stories with how I’m building my business and my mindset and things like that, no matter what you do, having that spark that connection like you can tell just the next time you’re scrolling through Instagram or Tiktok or if you’re listening to a podcast or watching a YouTube video, you can tell and just ask yourself, does this have a spark or not? And what you will find is that the people you love watching and just want to watch or listen to everything they create, other creators who have Spark, other creators who bring their humanness and their own individuality into what they create. And that is magnetic. That is what people want. That is what you want. And other people want that from you. They don’t want the polish professional version that you think they want. They actually want you in your gifts, you in your flow, you sharing the things that only you can share that feel so obvious and boring to you to share, but to others, it isn’t obvious and boring at all.
And I know that this could all sound very well and good, but okay, how will I actually have a successful business? Like, isn’t that too good to be true? I could just show up how I want and it work. First of all, we talked about, yes, when you’re in that state of mind, you’re much more relaxed, you’re much more magnetic, your content is much more engaging than when you’re trying to get it right. You’re in your head. You’re wanting to be perfect and professional. But I also just want to share a story about Spark content from my own business. There are so many to pick from, but this, in particular, for me, was such a big one, and it also relates to this podcast series too. So in 2020 well, the end of 2021, so just after I had my daughter Lydia, I was wanting to do a launch for PGSD. So PGSD I’ve been running since 2019 we have done many launches, and I tried different ways of launching.
So we’re talking about content that sells right now. That’s what we’re talking about. And we can be in this mindset of, I have to do, and this is, if you have the kind of business that I have, it can be easy to be in. We’ll have to do this webinar. I have to do this perfect presentation, or have this like, beautiful sales page. Like, no matter what kind of business you have, you have some kind of criteria in your head for how polished and professional and right content has to be to be able to create a sale. But what I found was, at the end of 2021, I had tried lots of different things, and they had worked to some degree or other. I was successful in my business at that point, but I didn’t really feel like me doing them. There was so much pressure, there was so much dread around it, and the realization I was able to have was, oh, anything can work if I trust it. And so why don’t I actually do the launch in a format that’s super easy for me, instead of trying to have this perfect webinar? And like I, over the years, have developed the skills and the emotional capacity to be able to talk to camera and have that be really easy and flowy.
So I have developed that initially, I definitely was not that person, but I have been able to become that person through the work that I’m talking about here. But also there was still this, like, you know, here’s what you should have on the first slide, and like all of these rules around it, and it just felt like a test, a test of, was I good enough? Did anyone like me? Was anyone gonna buy it was all very stressful. And so what I did was I said, Okay, what is the easiest thing for me to do? Like, what if it was easy? One of my favorite questions from Tim Ferriss, what would this look like if it was easy? And my answer to that was I would record a five part podcast series, much like this one, and I would talk about something that I really wanted to talk about. So for that series, it was power planning. You’ll learn that in PGSD, but that was the planning method I developed after years of trying to figure out how to be productive as a perfectionist and wanting to have a calendar, but then finding myself with time blocking, not being able to stick to it, and I love to do lists, but they weren’t working for me because I’d just be so overwhelmed.
So I’d figured out about planning. I had been doing it at that point for quite a while, so I was like, I really just want to teach about this. Like I had that desire. I want to teach about this, and we teach it inside PGSD, but I want to do a whole series just on that. I’m going to trust myself with that. I’m not going to over prepare all this perfect content. I’m not going to have a script, because how I create best for me is when I just have a few dot points, and I trust myself to riff, and I let myself do that, and I don’t then get in my head about it and nitpick it and edit out all the things, but I just let myself be me. And so I did the five part series after I recorded it, and I’ve documented all this on the podcast. I can go back and listen, but after I recorded it, my brain. Was like, Oh my god. That was so bad. That was so bad, like I had this, like vulnerability hangover, essentially from just showing up in such a real way as myself, and also in my expertise, but as myself, being in my expertise, not being this polish professional, and still, I released episodes, and we had the biggest launch we’ve ever had.
At that point, we had, it was over a six figure launch. We had 50 people sign up for PGSD, and that was after so long, trying to figure out what the best way to launch it would be. And when I got out of that question of, like, what’s the best content, what’s the right content, and got into like, what would be really easy for me, and what if I trusted that could work, because there are so many ways it works. Or what if I just trusted the way that’s easy for me, it could also be effective. I then was able to have that be my reality. And now I do these five part podcast series. They’re very easy for me. I still have emotions around them, and it’s so important to acknowledge that, because I think you could listen to this and be like, Oh, of course, like, you’re probably looking forward to recording it, I was, and also my brain is like, but you can get judged and like, it might not work, and like, all of that chatter that’s still there, but it’s not loud, and I don’t react to it, and that’s just from having a really deep level of self trust that I have developed, and also just knowing that ultimately, for me, and I talked about this in part one, for me, a successful business is, yes, successful by, you know, outside metrics and revenue and things like that, but I want to feel successful, and I feel most successful when I’m self expressed, not when I’m repressing myself, not when I’m trying to fit myself into a box and be good, because even then, when we get the validation from other people, like if you create a piece of content, but you did not feel like you at all while creating it, because It just isn’t what you want to be doing. It’s not like you want to be doing it, but you just haven’t got the skills.
You literally don’t want to be doing that. And then people say, oh my god, that was amazing. Then it’s like, okay, great. You’ve just gotten all this validation for something you’re not and that doesn’t feel right. That really doesn’t help you feel more safe. It actually makes you feel less safe to be yourself because you not being you get so much validation. So this is again, about safe visibility, safe self expression, and knowing that you can do that and have a really incredibly successful business. And if you look at as well, like YouTube’s such a great example. I love podcasts. I’m also a massive fan of YouTube. And a lot of the youtubers that got really big, especially before YouTube was monetized, were people who were just showing up and sharing. There literally wasn’t any kind of benefit in terms of business and revenue to be had from YouTube. It was like, literally this people who are like, I want to talk about how I do my makeup and send a video to my friends, and here’s me doing it that has spark that works, and then a lot of times, once it becomes successful. And I’ve definitely made this mistake of becoming successful with Spark content and then being like, Okay, well, that got me here, but that can’t get me there, instead of like, actually, that is the engine. The spark content is the engine of everything.
And even though it feels easy to me, and of course, it feels easy to me, even though sometimes it’s emotionally hard, but I love doing it, even with the hardness of it. That, of course, that’s the thing I need to keep doing and double down on. Is something like, well, now I need to be this polished person with a script who’s so much more articulate, like that isn’t the answer, and I think it’s quite easy to see that from the outside. And you might have followed people who used to really resonate with what they do, and then they lost their spark. They didn’t have that spark in their content anymore. Maybe they professionalized it so much that it lost to them. And I just want to wrap up by talking about having professional content, because this is a big trap for perfectionists. Thankfully, I was able to sidestep this for the most part, but I have seen so many perfectionists get stuck in wanting it to be professional, but then either they don’t have the finances for the professional setup, or there’s just so many tech options.
So if we’re talking about with a podcast, for example, or YouTube, you need to have this studio, you need to have perfect audio, perfect lighting, you need to have the best camera, you need to have the script. You need to have a business card. You need to have the best business name that you want to have forever, like all of this kind of professionalizing. We’re doing that to try and create safety for ourselves. So what we want to do instead, and again, this is what we’re doing in PGSD with the creative cocoon. What we want to be doing instead. Is creating safety in a much more direct way, so that when we do want to professionalize anything, we’re doing it from a place of want, not from a place of insecurity, not from a place of feeling inadequate, and therefore trying to look professional. So hopefully no one else realizes that we’re inadequate. So when it comes to professional content. And again, I think the YouTube example is the best one of this. For this that so many YouTube creators who had Spark, then tried to get very, very professional about things, and it lost the spark, and then they had to go through this whole journey.
So many of them that I followed have been through this that they then had to go back through finding their spark, and this is what I had to go through recently as well. So just want to share about that, and then I will wrap up this part about why spark content is what you want to be focused on creating not valuable content, though, your spark content is insanely valuable, but not content that you’re trying to think is valuable or think is professional, but your spark content, that is the base, that is what we want to have you doing. That’s where you’re going to feel safe and successful and be able to build a business. So we’re going to be doing that in PGSD, so it can look not just like how it does for me, but how it does uniquely for you. But what my experience was with losing my spark, and I actually recorded an episode on this a couple of months actually, maybe not even that long ago, like a month ago, about my PGSD launch and how after my launch debrief, what I realized was missing from the launch was my spark, and so it has been for me, and this is why it’s been so important, and this is why it’s what I really want to get across to you, and like what I really wish my past self had known is that that spark is so valuable. So here’s what happened with let me just think where to start this story from.
So after that launch that I told you about in 2022 then I was kind of like at the like, upper limits of where I felt safe to be in terms of success. And I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Gay Hendricks and talk about the upper limit problem, but we all have this amount of success that we feel is safe, and then once we get above that, we then start to feel unsafe. We start feeling like the other shoe is going to drop. We start feeling like other people aren’t going to love us anymore. And so we always are trying to just like be successful, but not too successful. And so with that launch, and with that year, we ended up making 600k I was at the upper limit of where I felt safe to be. I was about to have twins. So we have four little ones now, but I was about to have my twin sons. I had a toddler. I didn’t feel like I could keep holding the success that I had created. And so I made a few really important decisions that in hindsight, were decisions that I made to slow down the success I was having. So what I did was I decided to close PGSD for enrollment, even though that was the way that I had created success, is having a really valuable program that people get great results in, that I love talking about.
I stopped having that being open, and I said, I don’t know when we’re going to launch it again. It’s currently closed. We’re going to have something new. So then that had to be busy with that the power planning course, which is also an amazing course, so there’s lots of great byproducts from this, but then we’re also going to have this new thing to figure out selling. And I also hired a marketing manager, and this is where the spark comes in, that I without realizing it, because I didn’t realize how important spark was. I then took myself out of being the leader of marketing, and then I then made it a lot harder for myself, because now I had to create with someone else having their voice in it as well, and having that collaboration, and like needing to have them have something to do with their full time hours, that it was a lot harder for me to create spark content. And it wasn’t anything to do with my marketing manager.
It was to do with me stopping trusting myself to do it at the end of 2022 right before all of that happened, I made those decisions because I said to myself, and if you go back and listen to old episodes where I talk about this, you’ll literally hear me say it, that I felt like my belief was I had gotten us as far as I could get us, in terms of the business, like, great. We’re here. We’re at 600k That’s amazing. But I and I hadn’t even hit the 600k yet then, but I could just feel the trajectory I was on. I could feel the momentum. I didn’t have safety around the momentum, and so I decided that I was. Wasn’t going essentially, I wasn’t going to let myself keep creating content in such an easy way for myself, because that year, especially, I had the easiest year I’d had in business. I love that. It was such a successful year, and it was so easy. It was a really important lesson. But I was just recording podcast episodes like this, a lot of behind the scenes stuff, I was really just like showing up on Instagram and sharing. There wasn’t a lot of pressure on myself to have to have it be perfect, or for me to have to say it better.
And I then decided that’s not going to work anymore. It needs to be more professional. I need someone who actually knows what they’re doing to be in charge of the messaging, to be in charge of the selling, to be in charge of the marketing, because I can’t be that person anymore. I’m not good enough at it, totally disregarding my own expertise, my own spark, and so then after that, the content, and it’s like it’s not a night or day thing. It’s just like over time, with me feeling less and less trusting in myself, with me getting more and more in my own way, and that perfectionism handbrake coming on from me saying I’m not good enough to do this anymore. I can’t get us any further. I have big goals and big dreams, and I’m not the one to take us there. Then my content lost my spark, and I’ve talked about this on the podcast. In case you don’t listen to this often, I document a lot of the behind the scenes. And so there was a time, this was towards the end of 2023, so I had twins who at that time, my memories, this was in November that so my twins would have been nine months old.
I also have a toddler, and I hired a babysitter so that I could record a podcast episode on a day that Steve was working, and normally, when I’m in self trust, when I’m in my spark, that episode would take me, however long the episode is, plus about 10 minutes in total, to get it done. So if it’s an hour episode, it would take me an hour 10 or if it’s a 30 minute episode, then it would take me 40 minutes, 10 minutes to jot down some points, and then the rest of the time to record it. So it takes 10 minutes for me to outline it, and then the rest of the time to record it. And what happened on this day, and it was so frustrating was I was trying to create valuable professional content. So I had told myself, I want to be more articulate. I need to not ramble and not riff and, like, not essentially let myself be me. I need to actually be more articulate and more together and clear with my ideas that I’m sharing. And basically, I need to not do it like me. And also I need to really just present this, like, general overview of the topic.
So I did an episode. You can go back and listen. I did an episode on the growth mindset, and, like a perfectionist guide to creating the growth mindset. It’s a topic I could teach you in my sleep, but it took me. It was so frustrating. I didn’t even get it done on the day that I planned to do it because I recorded I got like, 15 minutes in, and then I got so in my own head that I stopped it. I restarted and I was like, you know, maybe I need to outline it again. I think as well, I went to a cafe. It took me, like, an hour and a half to outline the whole thing. I was just like, so disconnected from my own spark and so frustrated that I couldn’t even see myself and like what I have to offer that I was like, No, I need to do it, not like me. And then, of course, that’s way harder.
And of course, that episode is so much less valuable, not only because I’m teaching perfectionists how to self trust and I’m not in that while recording it, but also because I don’t have to be perfectly in self trust to be able to teach you that, but also it is less valuable if I’m having such a hard time recording an episode and I’m so in my head and I’m so disconnected, I’m not gonna say the like side tender. That would have been the exact thing that you needed to hear. I’m not gonna say that because that wouldn’t be the professional thing to do, whatever that means. I need to be more articulate. I need to not ramble or, like, go on a side tangent, and especially with the podcast I have so I have over 3 million downloads. I have reviews that are positive and negative reviews as well. And I think I’d done under this guise of, like, I need to create a more valuable and more professional podcast instead of the reality was, I need to get me just doing my thing in front of more people. I don’t need to be better. I just need more people to see me that. What actually happened was that I sent out survey to podcast listeners.
If you’re listening, then you might remember it being like, give me feedback, because I want to be better. And so. And it’s not just enough to get feedback, but the thought driving that had me not actually do something helpful with the feedback that did come. So it was great in a lot of ways. A lot of people being like, oh my god, obsessed. Love it. Every episode, you can do no wrong. Other people being like, Oh well, you know you’re going so many side tendons. And can you just, like, summarize it at the end and like, maybe you need to have a voice coach or a speaking coach and like, so from the place of mine, I was in I read that I was like, oh my god, I like. The issue is I am not and the issue was I wasn’t in my spark. But I thought the issue is that I’m too in my spark, and that I need to button it up, be more professional, articulate, whatever. And so that episode, the growth mindset, one, I recorded it. I tried to record it that day. I didn’t get a data. I then had to have another go at it the next day.
And then we were going on a holiday at the coast, and I was like to see, let’s, can we listen to it in the car? Like this episode, and I normally don’t do this, this, to me, was like a red flag that I’m not trusting myself is having someone else who’s not my ideal listener trying to give me feedback and asking for it in a really vague, what do you think kind of way. So Steve was like, Oh yeah, it’s great, but this bit and this bit could be improved. Anyway, I that it was such it was so hard, such an effort, to get that episode done, when really I could have recorded a much more compelling, a much more alive, a much more connected episode on that topic, because I again, I could teach it in my sleep, about creating a growth mindset as a perfectionist. And yet it became so hard for me because I was trying to make it valuable and professional, instead of trusting myself being in my spark, even though, to me, that makes my experience of this is I’m saying things that probably don’t make sense.
I feel like and as well, because I’m walking, I feel like I’m talking fast because I’m a bit more puffed and all of this that I’m like, my experience isn’t like, Oh my god. This is amazing. Typically, when I’m in the creation of my spark content, sometimes it feels flowy and like, Oh, that’s really good. A lot of times it doesn’t feel like that. And so this is why, in part four, we’re going to be talking about publishing this is why publishing your work, publishing your creations, is such an important part of this, because if you just create in a vacuum, you don’t actually get to see what your spark is. You don’t actually get to really create in a way where you’re going to have others receive it. So we tend to create differently. But the most important thing is, over the years of following the process that I’m going to be teaching you inside PGSD, over the years of doing that, I came to see the episodes like similar to this one, my experience with this, the episodes where I felt like, oh my god, that makes zero sense. I should probably re record that like my perfectionist brain is having a conniption about it, because it feels so vulnerable to share something that feels so imperfect to me.
I know through the act of publishing and creating a way for it to feel safe, for me to publish. Through doing that, I have been able to see the episodes where I talk like this are the most loved episodes. They’re the episodes that get shared. They’re the episodes that have someone be like, Oh my God, I feel so seen by what you’re saying. The episodes that I’ve recorded over the years, the ones where I haven’t been in my spark, I haven’t been in self trust. Instead, I’ve been trying to get it right, say the right thing, hit the hit the right line at the right time, or whatever that when I have been in that those are so rarely the episodes where people give the feedback of like that was amazing for me, so rarely, even though, in that creation process, I felt good, because this is the key thing, and then I will wrap it up, because I felt like I was getting it right, but I know that I wasn’t actually getting it right for me, because I didn’t feel like myself in that process. And I can still be myself and be scared.
I can still be myself and be doubtful, but I am so willing, even at the moment, I’ve been writing these handwritten quotes, like taking the perfectionist power ups we’ve sent out over the years that I’ve written and writing them handwritten and posting them on Instagram, and they are getting a lot of engagement, and I know that it is the right thing to do, and that it will lead to something really incredible for my business. I don’t know yet exactly what that will look like, but I have the safety to say, even with a large following, even with an already successful business, I’m willing to experiment with this, and even though it’s not successful in terms of engagement or whatever, I feel successful in the doing of it, and I know to keep doing that, and it will evolve. That’s how I did my podcast. That’s how this podcast came to be known. Was listening in the beginning, and it wasn’t like and I did three episodes, and then the listeners came like I did a lot, a lot, a lot of episodes, and I already had an audience as well, but I had for me to be able to sustain it and do it consistently. It had to feel like me. It had to have that spark.
Otherwise, if you create content that’s valuable and professional but doesn’t have the spark, then when you get low engagement, and that will inevitably happen when you’re doing anything new for longer than you want it to as well. Then if you aren’t creating spark content, that feedback from the world of low engagement, low downloads, whatever that looks like for whatever platform you’re on becomes so disheartening. But when it’s Spark content, when it is you creating as you it is so much easier to get through that inevitable dip and to get to the point on the other side, which does come, but not as soon as you want it to, but it does come. It is so much easier to get there and have it be consistent and have it be sustainable when you are creating spark content. So in PGSD, when we go through the creative cocoon together, which I will share more about that in part five, like what that’s going to look like and how that will work.
But in PGSD, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done. You will be in a creative cocoon, and I will guide you through how to identify for you, what spark content looks like, how you might create it, what platform it’s on. We’ll also be looking as well, because we want to create safe visibility. There’s going to be quite a few important things that I just don’t have time to talk about in this series. I’m trying to give you all that I can, but we’re going to be talking about things like, Do you share on your personal profile with your friends and family, or do you have a separate business account? Like, all these different questions, practically speaking, that tend to come up when it comes to spark content, should I be paying attention to the algorithm at all, or just a little bit? Or, like, not at all. Like, what is that? So we’re going to be answering all those questions. And have you have the spark content plan that feels like you that is sustainable for you, that you’re like, oh my god, I would actually be winning the lottery.
Like, that would be my experience of winning the lottery experience if I could have a successful business by creating content in that way, like it feels too good to be true, that’s what we want to have. You have the experience of with your spark content, and create safety around that so you then don’t try and professionalize it, because while it feels too good to be true, that I could just go on a walk with my eight week old baby and my dog and record a podcast episode and have a really successful business. But I hope that by me literally doing that, it helps your brain to also see like, well, if Sam could do it, and is doing it, and if she is someone who had so much fear of visibility, of putting herself out there like I was not the confident out of the gates person in terms of business, like I’m just going to create it and share I talked about that more in part one. That was not my story whatsoever. And so being able to do self trust marketing is really what we’re talking about here, it’s being able to have that spark content. In the next parts, we’re going to talk about editing and we’re going to talk about publishing, and then we’re going to talk about the creative cocoon experience inside PGSD. But spark content is where you want to be focused. So I will talk to you in the next part, where we’re going to get talking about editing and how to not get stuck in the editing phase of content creation.
Outro
If you can relate to what I share in this episode, then I want you to know that this is the exact work that we are going to be doing inside my program, Perfectionist Getting Shit Done, aka PGSD. So from July 18, which is very soon, from July 18, for one week only, PGSD is going to be open for enrollment, and during this opening, those who join and those who are already inside will be going through a creative cocoon experience together, which is a three month process where you’re going to rebuild your relationship with content. Stop ghosting yourself, stop ghosting your followers. You’re going to be finally able to show up consistently in a way that feels natural and aligned and sustainable, you’re not going to burn out. This is the answer if you’ve been spinning your wheels, if you have been feeling so guilty all the time that you aren’t showing up consistently, even though you should be doing that, even though you technically know how to do it, that you just can’t get yourself to do it. This experience inside PGSD, the creative cocoon, it is exactly what you have been missing. We’re going to have you creating safe visibility and safe self expression so that you can show up the way you want and have it create the results that you know it can. So I want to invite you inside samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, is where to go to find out more about the program and join the wait list so you can join us inside as soon as doors open on July 18.