Stop making excuses to avoid being seen. You're as ready as you'll ever be.

If you're planning on showing up in a bigger way this year, committing to more visibility, a regular publishing schedule, and all that jazz, and yet you've got this giant list of things that you need to get completed before you can finally show up, things like finishing the website, mapping out the perfect marketing plan, nailing your elevator pitch, updating your LinkedIn profile, figuring out your next career move, getting your brand photos, finding your life purpose, little things like that, then hi. I'm really glad you decided to hit play because we need to have a quick heart-to-heart. And yes, there may be a little bit of tough love involved, but only because I want you to knock it out of the park this year. And we need to talk about how some of those things you're wanting to get done before you put yourself out there could be the very things that get in the way of your success. So, I think one of the biggest traps that we can fall into is seeing that content creation and us committing to this regular schedule of publishing is almost like a destination. We think, "Okay, as long as I can have everything else together, like I figured out my business, da da da da, as soon as I start creating, huh, I've arrived. Everything is going to fall into place now. Like the the clients are going to magically come, the visibility is going to be there." And for this reason, we can delay our visibility journeys for far too long, only to then get to the point where we're finally publishing, and that is when it hits us, "Oh, this is a long game." Nothing has magically happened overnight or even in a month, sometimes even in 3 months because the thing is content takes time to build momentum for so many different reasons, not just because of the results that need to come in as in momentum with the algorithm and momentum with people talking about us and that increased visibility. But often, one of the issues is that if we haven't been creating regularly, either ever or it's been a really long time since we've been regular. It's your own journey that you realize needs to take time because while we might have all these great ideas, and in theory our content strategy is solid, once you start doing the process of creation, you realize, "Oh, my skills have limitations. My knowledge has limitations. The algorithm and the platform that I'm using doesn't work the way it used to. It takes me far longer to sit down and create a video than I thought it was going to. Oh, I poured all of this effort into this thing and no one seems to be resonating with it in the way that I thought they would." And so, we need to understand that when we are on this content creation journey, we are not only working with what needs to happen externally for all of that momentum to build, but we also have personal momentum that needs to build. We have skills we need to develop, strategy that we need to refine. And that strategy only comes once we start getting that feedback. So, what tends to happen with most of us when we finally do commit and start publishing regularly is that we regret that we didn't start sooner. The thing is, that list you have of things that need to be in place before you start creating, you will always find something else to add to it. So, my recommendation here, me paying forward what I learned from my own mistakes, treat content creation as an ongoing commitment. Don't see it as this project that you're going to tackle and it's one and done. I want you to schedule your week accordingly. So, make time for the ongoing process of content creation, and then set aside time for those one-off projects, and allow them to be moving in parallel to each other. Now, another trap that we can fall into is assuming that we need all of these projects to be finished and finalized and perfect in order for us to have the clarity to then show up and create content. But, believe it or not, it actually works in many ways in the reverse. The act of showing up regularly and sharing your ideas, and by the way, I'll include a link to a recent episode where I talk about this in more depth. It is going to lead to the kind of clarity that does not come from you working in a silo, from you staying behind the scenes. And again, take my word for it as someone who has been sitting behind the scenes for the last few years and realizing that progress was painfully slow. And yet, once I finally committed to showing up daily for 30 days, I think this is what This is day 20 at this point. Would you believe that I have had more breakthroughs in my own strategy and clarity around my direction for my business than I'd had in the 2 years prior? And that is because creation leads to clarity and action leads to answers. There is only so far we can get when we are sitting navel-gazing in contemplation mode. Because sure, a lot of great ideas can come to us. A lot of things that could potentially work well, but until we get ourselves in the outside world and interacting with other people, interacting with our ideas, having feedback loops created, we don't get the clarity on which of those ideas are truly viable, which truly light us up, and are going to really take off, and which ones sounded great in theory but now just don't make sense in practice. There is a bit of a caveat here though, because I don't believe that simply showing up is going to magically lead to all the answers. There is a level of intention and discipline that is required in order for us to really leverage the clarity that's coming from all of that movement. And this is where I want you to see that you have got some long-term things that you are working on and they require regular nurturance. You're not going to be able to just publish, publish, publish for the next couple of months and then magically have that curriculum come to you or suddenly be ready to start applying for new roles. That will mean that then you have these giant projects still in front of you where you feel like you're at the bottom of the mountain and and haven't started climbing. However, if we can see that what we're working on, even if it's way in the future, we can start chipping away at it now, grabbing those glimmers and those sparks and documenting them for ourselves, we are going to be building this other kind of momentum. It's more of like an internal momentum that allows us to have these ideas and these projects take shape before they have to be shared with the world. And so this was a big shift that I had to make for myself. I used to think that if I was going to work on something big, I needed to clear my schedule and just be focusing on that thing for 3 months or whatever it was going to be. And yet I noticed I was at a massive disadvantage when I sat down to do this work because again, it felt like I was starting from scratch. But today what I do is I have a system set up. I use Obsidian but you can use any sort of note taking app where I have these buckets that I'm collecting ideas for. I've already set the intention of what I'm working towards. They don't have to have a deadline yet but what I'm going to do is every time an idea comes to me or I'm thinking about something, I'm like, you know what? I'm going to write that down. And maybe once a week I will do a review of all these different buckets that I have set up in the note taking app and I will do some extra writing and update myself on where I'm at in my thought process. What I'm really saying here is that if you can allow projects to run simultaneously, so not just have your content creation as as this ongoing thing but also these other projects you're working on. For instance, your website or your office or whatever that thing is that is really on your mind right now. Can you allow yourself to chip away at it as you go trusting that the process of creating, showing up every day is going to keep giving you more ideas. As long as you can have the discipline to sit down and document some of those ideas, you are going to build momentum so much faster than if you wait till last minute to sit down and finally try and eat the elephant in one bite. I want to finish off on a gentler note and acknowledge the fact that there could be another reason playing out why you keep adding to this to-do list before you show up and start publishing consistently. And that is because there is probably a lot of fear involved, and that is perfectly okay. What you are choosing to do by committing to this visibility journey, it's a really big deal. It is scary. You are expanding beyond your old comfort zones. You are probably going to be facing some really deep fears and wounds that don't get touched on as long as you're living a safe life. So, feeling all of these fears is completely normal, and yet we have to be really careful about letting them play out unconsciously and then having our mind create all of these ways of avoiding facing the fear. For instance, saying, "Oh, I can't start sharing consistently until XYZ." Steven Pressfield in The War of Art says, "The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear, then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome." In other words, ready is a choice, not a feeling. So, I want you to acknowledge and welcome those feelings. I want you to feel them fully when they come up and then commit to taking action regardless. A reminder that courage is about taking action despite fear. It is not about the lack of fear itself. All of that said, there is a difference between the fear that comes from expanding beyond your comfort zone and a fear that comes from a much deeper place that needs acknowledging and potentially working through. To know the difference and to make sure you are really looking after yourself throughout this process, I recommend listening to the linked episode next. Thank you for watching and I'm wishing you all the very best.