Episode 547: [PART 4] Power Publishing + Why It’s The Secret To Consistently Posting Content Leave a comment

In Part 4 of this 5-Part Consistent Content Series, we’re talking about Power Publishing – the secret to consistently getting your content out into the world.

If you’re great at creating content but get stuck when it’s time to hit publish, this episode will help you understand why that’s happening and how to move past it. You’ll learn what Power Publishing is, how to create a system that supports consistent visibility and why perfectionists need structure and simplicity to follow through.

I also share how I’ve used Power Publishing to grow my podcast to over 500 episodes and send a daily email for four years straight. Hint: It wasn’t through willpower or working long hours but by making publishing safe and sustainable.

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.

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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
Okay, so welcome to part four of this consistent content series we are getting towards the end of it. So far, I have talked about the importance of creating safe visibility so you feel safe to create content that’s very, very, very important. We want to feel safe to create it, safe to publish it. And that is really what is going to have you creating consistent content with ease in a really effective way. I also talked about Spark content. Your spark content might look very different to mine. But we want to have you identify for yourself what that spark content is, so that you can again, really easily and powerfully create consistent content. We want to have you out of the creative spin where you are questioning your ideas, nitpicking them, judging them, where it’s exhausting to create content and you feel like you’re on this treadmill that’s never ending. We want to have you go into creative overflow.

So I talked about that in part three, about the difference between those two things, and how we want to make that transition across. And then in this part, we are talking about publishing. Because a lot of perfectionists, they can have the ideas, they can create the content, record the video, record the podcast episode, write the Instagram post or the caption, but actually getting yourself to publish it, and not just once as a once off when you’re feeling motivated, but to consistently publish it is where a lot of perfectionists find themselves with their handbrake on, getting in their own way and not being able to do the publishing, even though they’re able to do the creating.

So it’s a very important part of the process, and oftentimes as well, if you are having trouble creating content or trouble, sorry, publishing content, creating consistent content, which is talking about having that content go out into the world, what I see a lot is the advice that is given with consistent content is really heavily focused around content creation, and here’s how to have your different categories and all those sorts of things, but not about what needs to happen to be able to have you published. Because a lot of times, especially if someone is teaching this topic, and they don’t have any emotional resistance to publishing. They aren’t scared of judgment. They aren’t scared of friends and family seeing what they’re doing and laughing at them. They’re not judging themselves. If they don’t have that, then, of course, once you create it, you just publish it and move on.

But if you are a perfectionist and if you relate to what I’m talking about, then publishing can actually be very emotionally hard. And so what we want to do, I’m going to talk about three ways in this episode that we’re going to do it. What we want to have you do is set up a few practical things so that publishing becomes a lot easier emotionally, and you’re able to do it consistently, even if you’re in self doubt, even if you’re not feeling motivated on that day, that you’re not having to rely on yourself always feeling good in every second to be able to have that. So it’s really important. And inside PGSD so for this enrollment, and I’m so excited about it, we’ve already been getting DMS from people who are like, I am inside and I cannot wait to get started and to get in.

When the doors open like they’re just, even though we have an open enrollment, they are already emotionally inside PGSD and ready to go. And of course, it’s a lifetime access program, so those already literally inside will also be able to do this as well. But we’re doing a three month creative cocoon experience, is what I’m calling it, where we are creating the safe visibility, and I’m going to teach you exactly how to do that, not just from a mindset perspective, but practically speaking as well. We’re going to have you creating spark content. We’re going to have you in creative overflow, and we’re going to help you with power publishing and creating a system that really works for you. So that’s going to be in the second half, we’re going to focus on publishing, and I want to talk about it in this part, so you know exactly why it’s so important to really get support on the publishing side of things.

So I’m going to be talking about three things in this episode, as I said, and what I have done throughout this whole series to really come to understand how I personally have created, say visibility for myself, and spark content, and all of these things like this is all born from my own experience. And then I’ve coached so many PGSDers on all of this throughout the years. So happy to be able to now bring it together in the way that I am. And so when it comes to content creation, where. I have been the most consistent, the most prolific, the most in my spark has definitely been my podcast. And so I’ve been studying my own podcast, not listening back to things, but just like studying my experience and thinking about how I have thought about my podcast, that has allowed me, as someone who initially started as I shared in part one, with a crippling fear of putting myself out there and showing up to now be able to have a top rated podcast, over 500 podcast episodes, I have made over $2 million in my business with the podcast really being the main fuel for that, the main engine for my business growth.

And I did that without following the advice that people say you should do for a podcast. You should have a fancy intro and an outro, and you shouldn’t go on riffs and like, just talk about whatever you want to talk about. You shouldn’t talk about yourself. You should be talking about your audience. Like I just, I just really with the podcast figured out, without realizing at the time, how to create safe visibility, how to trust myself with how I wanted to do the podcast, and how to not just mindset wise, but practically speaking, set things up so that it was easy for Me to consistently publish podcast episodes, even though my brain after almost every episode I recorded was like, well, that wasn’t good. Well, that wasn’t didn’t even make sense what you were saying in that but I still was able to get myself to publish it and share it and to create safety for myself in that experience.

So even though my brain didn’t love that I was publishing it, I still felt safe, I still felt supported by myself. I never felt like I was in an emotion that I couldn’t handle as a result of publishing the podcast episodes. It was always something that felt even though it was uncomfortable, something that I could actually do. And that’s of course, why I’ve been able to do it sustainably, because it didn’t create this massive emotional response in myself, and that’s because of the safety I created, and because of the spark content, the creative overflow and the power publishing. So when it comes to the podcast, what I did, and I just want to share the example, and then I’ll break down because I’ve applied this on a lot of other platforms as well, but the podcast is just the best example of this. So when it comes to publishing and publishing of the podcast, what I realized very early on is that I would need support with publishing the podcast, and I would need that in a few different ways.

I would need a high frequency of episodes going out that if I did one episode per week, that felt harder to me than doing two episodes per week, which might sound very counterintuitive, but doing two episodes, I just knew okay, if this one’s shit, and this is literally the thought that built my podcast, if this episode is shit, which it probably is. That’s what my brain was saying. Another episode is coming in three days or in four days. Like another episode is coming very soon. And so this episode isn’t just gonna sit at the top of my podcast feed for long that very quickly, because I am creating a high frequency, a high volume of content, that I am going to have that episode be pushed down the feed, and therefore it felt emotionally a lot safer to be able to be visible.

I was getting my personal need of safety met so the business could get its need of visibility met. That was able to happen because I practically speaking said to myself, I actually need to publish more often, so that I’m less precious about each episode, so that each episode doesn’t feel like such a big deal. And a lot of the advice out there when it comes to content, whether it’s podcasts, YouTube, Instagram, whatever people are like, create less but better. And I already talked about when I was sharing in my other episodes about why a less but better approach doesn’t work for perfectionists, because what we do, and this is that creative spin that we can end up in when we’re in this less but better mindset, we then go into, okay, well, if I’m creating less, it really needs to be perfect is a really big deal.

Everything I put out in the world has a lot more importance than if you’re in creative overflow, where you’re creating so much that there’s room for things to be good and to be bad and to be mediocre and in between, because you’re just creating so much that you’re able to have like, say, for example, if you’re like, in this less but better approach to things, you might be like, I’m going to post twice per week on Instagram, but then there’s going to feel like there’s more pressure on those posts to be good, because they’re going to stay at the top of your feed for longer. And I know with podcasting, I just talked about twice per week, but there’s different cadences. We’re going to talk about this inside PGSD. There’s different cadences, like frequencies, that I recommend for different platforms.

So with Instagram, where it’s that kind of platform or TikTok, for example, if you are creating twice per week, that is going to put more pressure on each piece of content. Then if you, for example, created every day, like, if you had it doesn’t have to create it every day, but every day something was published. Then you could have, for example, in a week, you could have four great posts, two that are mediocre and one that’s not so good. But if you’re trying to just post two, there’s so much pressure on and even if you nail it, you’ve only done two great posts. But if you post every day, and you allow some to be great, some to be not so great, and some to be somewhere in between, you end up overall with more great posts. You end up overall, and I talked about this in part three, with a lot more skill, with a lot more confidence, with a lot more engagement, and, of course, with a lot more of a successful business because of that approach. So what the advice tends to be is less but better, make it high quality. But our perfectionist brains don’t understand, as I talked about in the episode on Spark content.

They don’t understand that if you are creating in your flow, in your gifts, if you are doing that, it’s not actually going to feel high quality to you, because you’re just saying stuff that feels obvious to you or is normal to you, or is like in your zone of genius. If you’re doing something like very creative and artsy or anything like that, we tend to overvalue the things that we find hard and undervalue the things that we find easy, even though, more often than not, the things that we find easy are actually the most valuable things that we have to contribute. So if you’re in this less but better approach, bless you. Liam, if you’re in this less but better approach, where you are trying to create less and have it be high quality, we end up freezing, posting posting and ghosting, we end up getting so busy with the back end of things, or like procrasti-learning and procrasti-researching, and we want to instead have a high volume approach. It’s very important.

So frequency is the first thing, and inside PGSD, when we go through the creative cocoon together, what I’m going to do is lay out the frequencies that I recommend you can adapt them, but I’m going to give you very specific you very specific ones so that you know exactly what to aim for, so that you don’t have to be in this like, well, what is the best for me? Like, I’m going to lay out what I have seen for myself, and then coaching hundreds of perfectionist entrepreneurs on these topics, what I recommend, and also my knowledge of the different platforms and what makes sense where, so that you can really create in a being that creative overflow, without it being a ridiculous amount of volume that you’re expecting yourself to create.

So we want to just have a high frequency, and instead of that less but better approach that people talk about, we want to have you have room to create things and have some of them not be so good, but to still be putting out a lot of great things. It’s kind of I was thinking about this the other day. Musicians are such a great example of this approach that they will have an album. So say Beyonce, who not everyone loves Beyonce, but everyone can agree she is very good at what she does in the world, and they will have so a musician like Beyonce will have albums where they have, let’s say, like 13 tracks. One or two of them will be an absolute banger. They’re, like, the most popular song ever. And then a lot of those songs on the album you will never actually really hear about. It’s only the die hard fans that will know every single song on every single album, but if they were going to say, I’m just going to create one amazing song every year, how much pressure would that be compared to? I’m going to create 13 songs, and from that 13 I’m going to put them out into the world.

Publishing is very important. I’m going to put them out into the world, but I don’t expect all of them to be the number one hit. They don’t all have to be the number one hit. It’s this body of work, and some of it will get more attention than other bits of it will. But I’m going to present this body of work knowing that it’s not going to all feel amazing to my brain as well, like my brain will have its own objections to the work that I’m putting out into the world and be like, Oh, could we really do it like this or like that? But I’m going to put out a body of work. I’m going to know that not everything I do has to be the number one hit, but I’m still going to have that higher volume of output. So that’s what we want to do the equivalent of. And it’s very, very, very important to do that, because it practically creates a lot of safety.

And I’m going to talk about how to have because what we then go to is like, well, that’s going to take so much time. But if you’re creating spark content, and if you’re in creative overflow, it takes way less time. Please hear me on this. It takes way less time to create seven spark content posts for Instagram than it does to create one perfect post for Instagram, and that one post is going to perform a lot worse because a you’re not creating very often, so you’re not nearly as skilled as in the other scenario, also, you’re so in your own head, you’re so polishing and perfecting it that you post. Probably took out the very thing that people would be attracted to you for, that you’ve taken out and polished out your own humanity out of it, the you out of it. You’re trying to do it like someone else and have the right hook and the B roll and whatever else, instead of just doing it, how you do it.

So it’s so much easier when you are creating spark content and when you’re in creative overflow, to have that frequency be possible. And part of it too, that I love about having a higher frequency, a higher volume, is that when you do that, so say, for example, with me and the podcast, and I also took a similar approach to YouTube that I did like seven videos a week, I found much easier than trying to do like one video per week. For example, you don’t have to do seven if you’re on YouTube. But for the kind of video that I was doing and what I wanted to do, it was actually way easier to say, Okay, I’m gonna if I was gonna put out a video every day, what would I have to do for that to be possible? Well, I’d have to not over edit it. I’d have to just trust myself to speak. I’d have to think of it in a way where I’m not, like, this is a perfect summation of this entire topic and every thought I’ve ever had.

And it’s, you know, the complete full version of it, of like, here are three things that I’d say about this thing. Like, I just had to actually shift, because I wanted to make that high frequency, that high volume, because I understood how important that was, so that I could publish that I actually was able to solve for okay, how could I make this really easy? And then I did make it really easy, and then it was so much more engaging than if I’d made it right or perfect, or whatever our perfectionist brain thinks needs to happen for us to be able to be successful. And I think it’s such a beautiful thing that almost always like what our perfectionist brain says is required for us to be able to be successful isn’t actually the things that will have us be the most successful, and it’s definitely not the things that will have us feeling successful.

And so when it comes to frequency and having content go out, we want to have you in that higher frequency, because it helps create safety. It helps remove a lot of preciousness around the content so that you can just show up and share. That’s what we want to have you doing, showing up and sharing, no matter what kind of business you have. We want to have you in that energy where you’re able to do that instead of like, well, here I am showing up in this this video I create, needs to be a complete representation of everything that I think about on this topic, I have to say it perfectly. Oh my god. It’s so exhausting to do that, and very unengaging for the person on the other end of that, because of how tense you will be, if that is the pressure that you are creating in your own mind. So we want to have that frequency, that higher volume, very important. We don’t want to be aiming for a less but better approach that’s going to turn your perfectionism handbrake on.

Before I go into number two, I just want to quickly talk about the importance of publishing. I feel like I skimmed over that, but it’s very important to publish your work. So what I will see a lot of perfectionists do is they will say, Okay, I want to be creating consistent content, particularly if someone hasn’t created a lot of content before. I want to create consistent content. And so what I’m going to do is I’m just going to be practicing. I’m going to practice doing stories and like, talking to camera. I’m going to practice doing a podcast episode. I’m just going to, like, create it, but I’m not going to actually share it out into the world. And then what happens if we take that approach is that we then don’t actually get the real world feedback that our the stuff that we’re doing. So for example, for me, I needed to get the real world feedback that the podcast episodes that I thought were shit were actually really good for the person that I was recording them for, and the ones that I felt were really good. It was mainly just me thinking I sounded really smart. I sounded really articulate. I feel like I got my point across. That doesn’t necessarily make a good episode. I just felt like I was getting it right.

So I thought the content was high quality. But actually, when I’m just doing what I’m doing now, which is just showing up and sharing, even though at the same time as recording any episode like this, my brain is like, Oh my God. This makes my set like, I have this other dialog going on while I’m recording that is saying, This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t any good. You should stop recording. I’ve allowed that voice to be there, and I’ve published out into the world. It didn’t have to be to family and friends when that didn’t yet feel safe for me, not because of them being like, attacking me or anything, but I was just in so much self judgment that it felt too vulnerable to have other people be able to come across it and ask me questions about it, or even give me support about it that felt way too hard.

But being able to publish it even to an audience that I didn’t actually know, I was able to start getting that really important feedback from my brain of like, oh, actually, the things that you think are less valuable because they’re easy for you, they’re actually the most valuable to me. I got that feedback from my audience. And then the things that I thought were the most valuable because they were the most highly polished or perfected, or I felt the most articulate or smart in the creation process, those things weren’t as valuable as me just showing up and sharing. And so whether for you, your spark content, again, is similar to mine or not in pgsd, I will guide you through a process to know exactly what that looks like for you, because I don’t want you to be like, Well, Sam just shows up and doesn’t have notes, so I shouldn’t either you might need to script, and that might be a very supportive thing for you to do.

So we’ll go through that, because I don’t want you to just take what I do and be like I have to do exactly how Sam does it, or it’s wrong, or it’s not spark content, or whatever. We will have you identify specifically for you what that spark content is. But we need to have you publishing that spark content in pgsd. We’ll talk about whether to publish it in front of family and friends or not, and like, practically speaking, different things you can do so that you really feel safe about who is being able to receive what you are sharing. But we need to have you publish it, otherwise we just end up and I’ve again, seen it with so many perfectionists, friends, family, so many clients that have been in this place of just, like, I’m just gonna practice it for me, but then, because you’re not putting it out, it then becomes this, like, Okay, well, I need to get a bit better at this, or I need to get a bit better and, like, it’s how long is a piece of string, we just end up then proving to ourselves that we’re not ready to share it yet. There’s even more pressure to get it right, and oftentimes this is the most important thing.

The things that we end up perfecting were a waste of effort to perfect, that we waste our time polishing things that didn’t need polishing, and in fact, are worse when they’re polished, not better. And so you need to have that ability, emotionally and practically speaking, to publish what you were doing. It doesn’t have to be in front of all of your near and dear people, if that is scary for you, but you do need to do it like for my blog when I first started, didn’t tell a soul about it in my real life, but I did have it go out publicly so that other people in the world could engage with it, and so that I could then begin to see, oh, like when I post like this, I get these kind of comments. I started back when blogs a was still a popular thing and B, you could comment on blogs, so that when I shared this kind of thing, that I thought like no one else would think like this, or no one else would think this is valuable. They said, Oh, my God, tell me more about this. Or what do you think about this?

So I was able to have that feedback going on, even if you publish it and no one else has seen it, there is just a difference that happens when you are actually publishing it on a platform versus when it just lives in a Google Drive folder or on your iPhone or on your computer. When you actually put it together and publish it and you ship it, there is a certain momentum that comes with that. So we want to have you ship it. We want to have, ideally, other people be able to interact with it, even if you just share it inside pgsd, and you know, that’s a very supportive place to share it, and that other people are also going through that same process, that you are able to have it either just shared in front of PGSDers, or in front of PGSDers plus people that you don’t know, or maybe not even in front of PGSDers, if you really don’t want to, it’s totally up to you, what you do.

We will design for you specifically what feels safest to you, but it needs to be published, and not just you then getting in your own head, because you haven’t published anything, and you’re just always getting ready to get ready to publish. Want to just have you publish to see. It’s not such a big deal, but to do it in a safe way with that safe visibility, number two is clarity over exactly when you are posting. So this is really to help you with publishing and having your work go out into the world. So what often happens is people go, I’ll do two episodes a week, or seven posts a week, or one post a week, or whatever it is, and it just stays this kind of vague thing. And this might just seem like a very obvious thing, but I have just noticed in areas where I’ve been incredibly consistent, like the podcast, and then on other platforms where, because I didn’t have the systems in place, showing up consistently, was harder for me.

Like Instagram, I just I it took me so long to realize it wasn’t this mental drama that I had. It was actually just a systems issue that I had with Instagram that I just didn’t have the same system so Instagram, there was so much reliance on me being motivated or feeling inspired to actually post something, or being bothered with all the admin required to put the post in and copy this in and copy that in and whatever. Whereas with the podcast, it wasn’t actually dependent on me for that, so it might be, if you’ve had a hard time showing up on a platform, for example, Instagram, and you keep posting and ghosting, it’s really just this part. And I really want to invite you into pgsd if this is you, because I’m going to be teaching so many really powerful things on this, and lots of practical examples to get you with a system in place that works.

It’s really simple and not over complicated, and like all of that, because with systems, we perfectionists can then go into this like trying to build out this perfect system that covers every situation I can just I have developed some really simple systems for me using air table, I’ll show you exactly how that looks, but some really simple systems to make publishing really easy to do, and on Instagram, I didn’t have those systems set up, but I did with the podcast, and I have with email, and that’s been a big part of why I’ve been able to be so consistent with our perfectionist power up email newsletter that goes out, and so consistent with the podcast, because one of the reasons is that there’s specificity around exactly when I’m going to be sharing. So with Instagram, it was just this vague X number of times a week. And with the podcast, it was 5am Australian Eastern Standard Time on Monday and Thursday. That was my schedule.

That was the exact specific time, not just oh, sometime on Monday, but there’s so much power in being able to say, this is the exact time that it’s going to happen. Bless you, Liam, this is the exact time that it’s going to happen, so that you can plan accordingly. It’s just basically like doing that signals to yourself that you are taking it seriously and that that’s a commitment you’re making. It’s so much easier to solve for a clear commitment than a vague one. If it’s just like, I’ll post three times a week when I feel like it, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so much harder, and I know this might sound really basic, but so much harder than being able to say I’m going to post Monday, Wednesday, Friday, at 5am or at 12pm or it doesn’t matter what time, what matters is that a time is chosen.

So that’s a really important part of power publishing, and something that’s really easy to overlook, because it might seem like, well, what’s the difference? But you need to have that specificity so your brain can solve for it, and it just removes a lot of drama around it, and really makes it so much easier to actually get the posting happening. And the third thing that we want to do, and this is what I’m really excited to be teaching. I mean, all of this, I am so, so happy to be finally teaching this in a proper way, and not just through all the coaching calls on PGSD and all of that. But this in particular is something that I’ve really done a lot of work on behind the scenes in my business that I haven’t really talked about very much, and I’m really excited to be able to teach it. I’m very systems minded.

I’m great at creating this system, simplifying things into systems. I just think in systems. And what’s really important is that we have an actual system for you to be able to get your content published and and I’m going to guide you through this in pgsd, when we do the creative cocoon together, is that you might not be the best person to actually be publishing your content yourself, like being the one to hit publish. So as I talked about I studied my podcast and then other platforms where I’ve shown up. And for example, when I was on YouTube, I was incredibly consistent with I did a daily series, and I did like 140 videos in a row that I was the one publishing that, that I did all of the admin side of that. So if you want to be the one doing the admin side of it, you can do that. And also you don’t have to, and there’s a very affordable way to be able to have someone else publish it for you so that you only have to do the bit that you want to do.

So for the podcast, I wanted to have two episodes per week, and with every episode, there was about an hour or so, and technology has changed since 2017 when I started my podcast, but at the time, there was about an hour or so of back end admin that was required to get the podcast. This was even without editing. So one of the decisions I made was that I wasn’t going to have any editing of the podcast. I was just going to speak and have it go out, because the editing was going to take too long to do, and it made me get in my own head and all of that. So that really supported me again, with the safe visibility. And it’s very counterintuitive, because you’d think, well, it would feel safer to have a script, but what actually felt safer to me was to develop the skill and the ability to just be able to talk and to trust that me just talking like as if you were here in person is sufficient that I don’t actually have to do a script.

And also, this is just me personally. Again, you might be very different to this. I didn’t listen to any podcasts at all that had scripted episodes. I just didn’t resonate with that format of content. That wasn’t why I wanted to listen to podcasts. I wasn’t listening. I didn’t want to have something scripted. I liked listening to people who talked like I’m talking, where they’re just sharing what’s on their mind. And so I wanted to create that for myself. And so even with me saying, Okay, we’re not going to edit anything. If I’m coughing or whatever, like, it’s not this, like, all or nothing thing, but I’m not going to be here saying the same sentence again and again to get it right. As you can tell from this episode, I just keep rolling with it, and that is how I have done it, so that it wouldn’t take ages to edit it. I then didn’t need to have this like we you know, we review it.

Almost all of my episodes, they go out without me having reviewed it. So I record it. I. And then if I had to review it, I’ll listen back in, like, one and a half speed or two speed, to just hear it without, like, hearing it a bit faster made it easier for me to not nitpick it. So occasionally I would do that. It was like, that was a really shit one, but I would not not have a review in my process and all of that, so that I could actually just get it out into the world that was so important to do, from a building confidence perspective, from a building skill perspective, if I’m doing two episodes a week, I’m going to improve twice as quickly as someone who’s doing one episode per week. So just all of that. So when it came to the podcast creation all this to say, I’ve given a lot of background as I go. All this to say there’s about an hour of back end work that I just didn’t want to do. And I did the first 30 episodes myself.

During that time, I actually also had a tech issue that I came up against that I had to reach out to someone to get help with, and that person specifically was like, you know, you know, you could be doing so much better with this podcast, like you need to have this kind of intro and outro. I was just like, Nope, I I know what I love in a podcast, because I’m such a fan, and I’m gonna stick to that. And thank you for your advice, and I just want your help fixing this tech issue that I have that meant things couldn’t get published. So fix that. Stay true to my guns. Stay true to what felt true to me. Even though I was not an expert. I had very little experience, but I had created a safe visibility and self trust. And so excited to teach you how to do the same when it comes to content, so that you’re able to not just do what you want to do, but be able to stand by it, even when someone else is like, I don’t know that makes sense. If it makes sense to you, it can work.

And so we need to have you in self trust about that, and I love being able to teach that, so I didn’t want to do this hour of admin work that came with doing the episode. And what I noticed is that when I was the one required to publish the episode, that my desire to record episodes decreased and I needed to feel a lot more motivated to record an episode, because I had to motivate myself not just to record the episode, which felt emotionally more risky and vulnerable. I’m just showing up and I’m just chatting, but now I have to do this whole hour of click this button and that button, and like, I just didn’t want to do that at the time. I was also still working in a part time job. I wasn’t yet full time in my business. I left my accounting job earlier that year, but I didn’t have endless amounts of time to want to do things and but really, I just didn’t have the desire, and it decreased my desire to do the thing that only I could do, and this is I was not making a lot of money from the business.

I wasn’t in a place where I was like, Oh, look, I have all this money. Where do I invest it? Like, how do I invest it back in the business? I was really like, I was for my business. I always just took the money from my job, and that’s what I invested in my business. And I had to be resourceful. I had to be scrappy. I had to figure it out. And that was such a gift in so many ways, and I love that. Then I gave myself permission, even though I could technically publish it myself, as I had with my YouTube channel, which is what birthed the podcast. I initially never thought I could have a podcast ever. One of my blog readers was like, You should have podcasts. Like, there’s no way in hell. I just like, shut the idea down completely. That was about a year before I released it.

Then I had the idea to do a YouTube channel. I started doing that, and then I was like, it’s just so much easier if I just dropped the video. I still don’t record video for my podcast episodes. You don’t have to do that, but that’s why I ended up having a podcast, and I wanted to just be able to speak, even though I could do this is for perfectionism. I’m like, well, if I can, I should. If I can be the one to publish it myself, then I should do that. But what I was able to see, and I’m so glad I gave myself this gift of hiring someone very affordably, very, very, very affordably. I want to say, like, what was the actual amount I was paying? Maybe it was, like, 20 or $30 an episode. I basically, and I go through the process inside pgsd, but I had, I hired someone to do just what I was doing, and having that so it meant all I needed to do was record the episode, put it in a Google Drive folder, and I kept writing the show notes myself as well.

So I did that, and then off it would go, and someone else would upload it, create the blog post for it, like do all those different things, have the transcript created. I didn’t have to do any of that, and that really helped with that consistency, because then I could really just stay in the spark content with as little admin work as possible. And because for the podcast, then we developed out a system that really had that, again, I already had the volume in place, but having that specificity and clarity and then having this system that means I really can easily hand over to the person who produces my podcast. I don’t need to have this back and forth instruction every time. It’s a very simple system. I don’t even need to literally message anyone about it. So I’m going to teach you in pgsd how to very simply set that up for yourself.

We can get really we can really over complicate this kind of thing and try and figure out, like, the most optimal, perfect way to do it, or like, look at all if you, if you go on YouTube and you look up like content creation system, you will see some of the most beautiful and incredibly overwhelming notion setups, like all of that. I just want it. I want it to be so simple so I actually use the system, and so I could adapt the system, because that’s a very important piece, whether you are the one who is pushing publish or someone else. We want to be able to have publishing not be a thing that if you are then not feeling motivated, you stop yourself from doing it, then if you’re the one publishing, you can just put on your worker hat of being literally, like, there’s a content creator who has given me this to publish out into the world, and you can get yourself to just follow the steps and do it. And it’s very clear, and it’s very easy. You’re not like, oh my god, now I have to go and scroll through my phone and find a photo of this, and now where did I save that file to go?

Like, all of that is just going to create so much friction. What we’re wanting to do is to reduce the friction as much as we possibly can, and have you with your spark content in creative overflow. Then you build up that spark content bank, and then we have you power publishing that. We have you having the high volume. We have you having you do that easily. It’s not it’s going to take less time you’ve been spending on content creation. I assure you, if you have been in creative spin, what I’m proposing to have you create consistent content that you love, that feels like you, that’s sustainable, that builds your business, it will take you less time than what you have been spending on content creation because of the way your perfectionism handbrake will be released when you are doing it this way because of the safety you will have.

Even if it’s still scary, it’s not to the degree that you then freeze. So we want to have you having that high volume, that creative overflow. We want you to have clarity on exactly when you’re publishing. We want you to have a system in place so that publishing happens no matter what your emotion happens to be in that day, or even regardless of that, maybe you’re feeling super motivated to post, but then it’s this whole like, well, now I have to go find this file or this folder, or, like, Where was that again? Like, we just want you to have a really simple system, and I haven’t really shared much about that at all, but I’m going to be teaching that and walking you through my back end setups as well in pgsd, but also teaching you how to set it up for yourself, how to do it in a very simple, free or very, very, very affordable way to do it as well, because a lot of our PGSDer, they aren’t yet making the money they want to be making from their business. That’s why they join pgsd, to get on track for their financial goals, and to be showing up and taking action and putting themselves out there.

So they might have income coming in from a part time job, a full time job, they might be having a spouse, an inheritance, all those different things. And so I know that you want to take an approach that is really going to be not just sustainable, but makes sense from a financial perspective as well. And also I just don’t want you to over invest where you don’t actually need to be. And I’ve just seen a lot of people as well, when it comes to systems and things like that, that it can be a place that we tend to like under invest in our mindset and very important things like that, and then we over invest in having things be set up in this like polished, perfect way that then it actually doesn’t get used. So I really want to have you just have a really simple system that works, that gets used, and allows you to do that power publishing. So your work’s going out into the world. You’re getting the feedback loop in a really supportive, positive way as well that helps you to keep going. It’s just going to be it’s just going to make such a difference.

Because when I really study the podcast, compared to other platforms, with the podcast and with email, where I’ve been very strong in the consistency side of things, having the publishing side, what I’ve talked about in this episode, particularly the system having that in place has made consistency so much easier than Instagram, where I’m able to create spark content easily, I’m able to do creative overflow, but I just haven’t had as strong as systems in those areas, and I’m developing them out at the moment. But I hadn’t even realized. Took me a long time to realize, only recently, I was like, huh, I don’t actually have Instagram drama. I literally just don’t have a system for publishing that I do in the other platforms. So I’m getting that in place at the moment. And even the simple things I’ve been doing with that have been really powerful. And also, I then also get to walk you through the ones I’ve only recently set up as well. Putting all this into practice, so it’s still all very fresh in my mind, and I’ll walk you through what I initially set up as well and things like that.

So I’m again, so excited to welcome those in to pgsd who already know they’re going to be inside. I want to invite you in as well so that we can get you not just with the spark content and showing up and feeling safe to do it, but that can go out consistently into the world, because if you want to build your business, you do need to show up consistently, but that doesn’t mean that you need to be creating every day. And this is another part of having a power publishing system, is that my podcast episodes have gone out very consistently, but there are times I’ve gone more than three months without recording a podcast episode. But having the power publishing system in place meant that I was able to and because of creative overflow and spark content, I was able to batch create in a way that was really aligned for me to do so, and then have that go out in a very consistent way, so that to you, it would look like I’m showing up each week and recording an episode, but in my experience, I have a burst. I record quite a few episodes, and then I don’t record anything for a while, and then when I feel like speaking up again, I record some episodes and like, that’s my rhythm on the back end.

So we also want to this is a really important part of safe visibility. It feels less safe if you feel like you have to be on all the time. You have to be like, every day with something to say. Like, if that was required, I wouldn’t be able to be consistent, because a lot of time I’m like, I have nothing to say, I have nothing to share. I have no insights. I have like, there’s nothing I feel called to say today, but there are times where I have so much to say, and so this power publishing system allows me to spread that out. Instead of having to, like, retain that and hold on to that, I’m able to express it to be in that overflow. And then the power publishing system catches that overflow and distributes it. And also, I don’t have to publish everything I create, which gives me so much freedom as well to just say things and be like, well, if I don’t want to, if I don’t want to share that I don’t have to.

And I share, I create so much that it’s okay if that happens as well, and it’s it’s easy for me to create, and I just create a lot through me creating, I then learn more about what I want to create. I then learn more about other things that I could say and things like that. Through the creation process. I want to have you in that creative overflow, in that cycle, so that you are able to develop yourself as a content creator and not just be in this mentality of, like, I need to post less, but better have it be this perfect post. If it’s not perfect, if there’s just one bad post, it says perfectionist, all or nothing, thinking, if there’s just this one bad post, like, I’ll turn away my whole audience. We want to have you in self trust, in safety, with a power publishing system to really support you with that. So I want to invite you in samlaurabrown.com/pgsd is where you can go to find out more and sign up for the wait list, and that’s where you can go to join us once the doors are open, if you have any questions about it, if you go to support@samlaurabrown.com

Email me there, I will personally reply back to you. If you go to my Instagram, which is @perfectionismproject, and you DM me, I will reply back to you there. So if you have any questions, get them answered now. We are opening doors to pgsd at 6am Eastern Time, so New York time on the 18th of July. So at the time that part five releases, that is when pgsd is going to be opening for enrollment. So you want to get yourself inside, if you can relate to what I talk about in this episode in this series, if you have been spinning your wheels, we want to just look at the three months of the creative cocoon will pass anyway.

And if you have been spinning your wheels most likely for longer than that, you can either have that three month period where you’re just trying harder, trying to be more motivated, trying to do more market research, trying to practice more like all those different things, trying to get it to be polished enough and good enough and all of that. Get the right content calendar where you’re going to end up, because it’s that creative spin. You’re going to be in this place three months from now, probably feeling more defeated than you do right now and feeling less capable than you do right now, because you’ve had even three more months and it didn’t make a difference. Or you can get into creative overflow and be posting and showing up consistently at the end of that three months, feeling safe, to show up as yourself, to be feeling safe, to have your spark go out into the world, and to have a system that supports you to do that, that doesn’t require you to be motivated. It doesn’t require you to be available all the all the time, on every single day, to be able to work on your business. So I’m very excited for that.

So samlaurabrown.com/pgsd, join us inside the creative cocoon. I’ll tell you more about it in part five, but it will be getting started in August. PGSD is a lifetime access program, though, so you can always work at your own pace through everything, but we are getting started together in August to have you have three months, and there’s going to be buffer time within it, because you’re probably going to have vacation or things like that during those three months, life will always be laughing. So we just like, take that into account, instead of being like, well, you know, once you have three months with nothing happening, then join us like, that’s never going to happen. So you need to get inside so that you can start showing up consistently and getting that momentum in your business. So I’m really, really, really honored and privileged to be able to be teaching this and to be able to invite you into the program so you can go to the show notes. That’s the link to go and find out more. DM me. Email me if you have any questions, and I’ll talk to you in part five of the series, and hopefully see you inside pgsd when doors open.

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.