 To grow an authentic business, there is one thing that I recommend everybody do which is to get into a rhythm of consistent content creation. It's like exercise. If you want to be fit physically, you can't expect that if you don't have some kind of consistent exercise. Same thing, if you want to be fit in your business and growing and becoming more authentic, becoming more confident, growing an audience that trusts you and is learning from you, well then the one thing is a rhythm of consistent content creation. So let's talk about that in this video. So the example I want to give you first is from one of my heroes, Seth Godin. He is one of the most well-known, respected people in the content creation industry. And let me tell you his history. He has been blogging consistently since 2002, before blogging was even that big, 2002. Now it's 2019. So he's been blogging consistently for 17 years. Now what happened was from 2002 into 2004, very few people read his blog post. For two years, he blogged consistently. Now back then, he was blogging only a few times a week. He wasn't blogging every day yet. That didn't happen until, I think, close to 2010 anyway. For two years, he blogged consistently without anyone really, now relatively few people reading his blog post, very few people sharing them forward. And then you'll notice you can look at his entire archive of blog posts at his website. 2004, which is two years after he'd been blogging consistently, he finally started getting some people to share his blog posts and to like them and et cetera. He doesn't allow comments on his blog, so we don't know how many comments there would have been, but two years before some consistent likers and sharers. And then it wasn't until eight years later, 2010, eight years after he started blogging, he really got big. He really became well-known and the household name that he is among content creators. Eight years of consistency. So what about you? How long have you been doing consistently? And are you willing to do it not for the praise and the fame, but for other reasons that allow you to keep going? So that's my question for you right now is what will allow you to keep consistent with your blogging or with your videos or whatever content you're creating? If it's not immediately within the next couple of weeks or months or years, that's the fame and the praise and the sharing and the likes, et cetera, what's going to keep you consistent? So let's quickly review the reasons to create content. It's not, you know, number one reason isn't because I'll make money, because I'll get clients, because not even because I'll make an impact, because making an impact assumes that there's enough people reading or watching that some of them will make an impact. You'll make an impact on it, OK? Long term, fine. But you have to have reasons that get you to the long term. So what are your reasons? So my reasons are I create content because it is essential for my self-expression, for my self-exploration. I mean, as you could probably tell, these are live videos I'm making. So I'm kind of making some of the stuff up as I go along. I'm not just making it up. I'm figuring out what I'm trying to say. If it's writing, then you could explore that way without having to be live on video, right? But with this writing, you're exploring what you really think, exploring ideas that are combinations of things you've read or things you've thought about. So content is incredibly useful. Creating it is essential, I think, for essentially the self-creativity, the generation of generating new way of being in the world that will bring you a new life, a new business, et cetera. But it's really at first about self-exploration. And then it's also about potential impact that you'll make on other people. But again, you set that aside for the short term. You might not be read by anybody. But you have to do it for the self-exploration and for the finding and cultivating of your authentic voice. So exploring ideas is one thing, hugely important. But cultivating your authentic voice and self-expression is a whole other thing. And you can't really cultivate that in the closet when you're just doing it for yourself, journaling, making your own videos, that's fine. But it's a whole other thing to be in front of others, potentially in front of others, cultivating what is the authentic way that you're going to engage in the world. And you'll find that the articulation of your ideas within the potential community will transform you. It will make you into a more confident and authentic helper in the world, essentially. So you have to have your reasons for creating content before anybody even sees it. And you have to put it out there so that people could potentially see it. And of course, once people start to see it, you start to have the potential of more and more people seeing it, because people start to like it, comment, share, you know, whatever. You'll start to be able to make an impact and then be able to get clients and make an income and all that good stuff. But you first have to have your own sustainable reasons first. Without that, how are you going to get through? How are you going to get through the dry periods? It's always going to be the dry periods. Some people have a beginner's luck and that's great. But even with beginner's luck, there's going to be a long dry period before you get the next, before you become famous or before you come well-known. Remember Seth Godin, even Seth Godin, who's already one of the most brilliant people by the time you started blogging, took him two years to start getting some consistent likers and sharers. What about you? Have you been consistent for two years yet? You haven't. Okay. Well, if even it takes Seth Godin two years, how long will it take you? It took me, I was consistent in 2014, really, already with a podcast and video channel called Our Highest Work. That was 2014. I did it for 75 episodes. Okay, so it was a lot. It wasn't totally consistent yet. But 2015, I got consistent, not very much traction. 2016, not very much traction. 2017, I started getting some traction. So it took me like maybe three years, four years before there was enough traction where I feel like I was making an impact and not just an impact, but clients, income, et cetera. Actually, I would say mid to late 2016, I already started getting, I think, enough clients to make it worthwhile. But you could say that I was starting to do it in 2014. So four or five, part of six, took me almost three years to start of making it kind of worthwhile to continue doing this. So how will you do it for three years without getting much impact, without getting much likes and shares? Now, if you take my Facebook ads course, if you know how to do Facebook ads or other type of ads, you'll get impact sooner. You'll get number sooner. But still, in terms of the consistent people, in terms of the, oh, yes, I recognize Captain and Laura, et cetera. And I recognize, let's see, who else is joining me here for this? Jason and Elizabeth. So you'll start recognizing some names that might take you two to three years to start recognizing the regular names. Now, with advertising, maybe it'll take you six to 12 months before you start recognizing names. But whatever it is, you have to make it through the dry period. So you have to, oh, the other major reasons, a reason besides exploring ideas, besides practicing expression within the community, within the potential community, practicing, expressing myself publicly, even if nobody's watching. Besides those ideas, another really important reason for creating content is the practice of discipline. The practice of discipline. Whether it's a musical instrument, whether it's some other hobby, or whether it's exercise, or whether it's whatever thing you don't have to do, but gives you more discipline, you might as well make content, one of those things that is practicing discipline. Because discipline will serve you in so many other ways in your business and your life. And I know a lot of you need more discipline. I certainly needed that. For many years, I needed the practice of discipline to then find the character of discipline, which then spills into the many, many other benefits in business and in life. So you might need more discipline in your life. Almost certainly you could benefit from it. And content, consistent content creation is one of the exercises that will give you more discipline for sure. So let's talk about what you might create for your consistent content creation. What rhythm might that be? If you are not sure, if you need some guidance, here is a couple of things you might consider. If you have a full-time job and or you're taking care of young kids, captain, then I would say once a week, one blog post a week, and if possible, one video a week, but even just one blog post a week, you could commit yourself to that discipline of consistency. One blog post a week, if you have a full-time job and you're taking care of kids or you're taking kids like a full-time job each, totally acceptable and I think that's a good rhythm, okay? If you don't have a full-time job, you're not taking care of kids, okay? Every single day is what I recommend. I don't see what excuse you have. You have kids, you have a great excuse. Full-time job, great excuse. Even a full-time job is not that great of an excuse because you can always do it for half an hour in the evenings or an hour, an hour a day, okay? Half an hour a day. Half an hour a day I think is a good minimum if you're wanting to commit to a daily process. An hour a day would be even better, okay? If you're doing it once a week, probably one to two hours once a week is very reasonable even if you have kids and a job, okay? You could still carve out one to two hours a week for your consistent content, okay? So if you don't have kids, 30 to 60 minutes a day, please, okay? The discipline of, I have a full-time job, my business, okay? And I commit to one hour a day of content creation. Now you could take the weekends off, so I'm giving you that out. So you could do whatever days you work every week. You work four or five days a week, 30 to 60 minutes each of those four or five days a week as a discipline practice, which has so many benefits, all right? Self-exploration, you're getting smarter. You don't get smarter by reading. You get a little bit like it's like, getting smarter by reading is like getting more fit by reading about running. Yes, you'll learn about running and you'll imagine it and maybe you'll walk in your house with a bit more better posture or whatever and you'll get more fit just walking in your house a bit more, but you can't get smarter by reading or by watching videos or by taking courses. You get smarter by creating. That's really how you get smarter. Just like how you get fit, you get fit not just by walking to the grocery store and walking around your house. You get fit by exercising, doing some deliberate exercise. You get smart. You actually get smart in your field by creating content in your field. I promise you, that's really how you get smart in your field, okay? So you get by committing to the discipline of content creation, you get smarter, way faster. You practice the confidence and voice and self-expression of being public with your ideas and with yourself, okay? And then you get the potential of making impact in the world when people start to watch you eventually, give yourself a couple of years, right? When people eventually start to watch you, read you and start to apply the things that you're talking about or to start benefiting from your stories. Couple of years, discipline. If you're willing to do that, you will change your life. You will change your business. I promise you, you will build an authentic business. Okay, that's at least the start of that, okay? So, daily minus weekends if you wanna take, some people don't take weekends off. Seth Godin, let me, okay, so let me complete the Seth Godin story. Seth Godin now has been writing daily, every day he's been publishing something since at least 2010. So at least for about 10 years, 10 years. And you know how busy this guy is? This guy is way busier than me, right? He has a staff, he has many other projects, keynote speaking, he's way more busy than me. And another guy, well-known, well-beloved content creator, Gary Vaynerchuk, has multiple things every day that comes out and he is so, and he makes content every day, being way busier than me, okay? And way busier than any of you, right? So if even the busiest people are committing to this discipline of content creation, why aren't you and I? What is our excuse? Oh, it doesn't work? Well, of course it doesn't work. If you haven't done it for two to three years consistently or if you haven't done Facebook ads in a very effective way yet, of course it doesn't work. What do you think this is? This is kind of like, we're not in kindergarten anymore, okay? All right? You're gonna have to be disciplined and then you're gonna have to learn how to distribute your content. Then it's gonna work, okay? But even without the distribution, you're still getting the benefit of your self exploration and your practicing of being confident in public, confident in front of others, which is gonna benefit you in every single other way in your business. So, will you do it? Will you commit to the discipline? Please say yes. Don't say it to me. Say it to yourself. Go to the mirror and say yes. Yes, I will commit to the discipline of content creation, knowing that it has up-team benefits, especially for your business, but even for your own self exploration and creativity. Gotta do it. You gotta do it. There's one thing. If there's one thing you do in your business, that's it. Okay? So, commit yourself to a rhythm. And later when I finish this video, I'm gonna put the blog post up associated with this video, which is gonna give you my current rhythm. But my current rhythm is not gonna be your rhythm. Just very, very simply start with, are you gonna do videos? Or are you gonna do writing? Are you gonna do both? Make a decision. Doesn't have to be complicated. You can always change later. And by the way, your rhythm can include vacations. I just took a two week vacation, or 10 days, or how many days I've been off of content. No content. I didn't even schedule anything to go out. It's just nothing. And then I just come back. It's okay. It's okay to do that. It's okay to take breaks. But the danger with breaks is it's harder to come back to it. It's actually harder. It's actually easier to keep going even during vacations than it is to come back after vacation because you have so many excuses now why you're not gonna do it. Oh, it's not gonna work. Oh, people aren't reading. Oh, but remember, it's about the discipline that there is no excuse there. There's a discipline here. The discipline serve you in so many ways. So commit to this. Okay, commit to it. And do it no matter what. Discipline equals no matter what. No matter what. Now you can take planned breaks. It's okay, but don't do it because you don't feel like doing it. You don't feel inspired. I've done so many other videos about why you should keep doing it even when you don't feel inspired. But it's so important. The discipline is so important. All right, I hope this helps. And thanks for those who are joining me live here. Dorota, Sabine, Hiski Ali, Jason, Elizabeth, Harturan, Captain, Laura, Sharon. Thank you all for joining me live. And Dorota wrote, I'm beginning to experience what you said by writing regularly will have more and more ideas and more flair for writing. So I'm grateful that I'm discovering this principle. So yes, you don't think you have any ideas until you start creating and then you'll have more and more and more ideas the more you create because your well of creativity is actually unlimited. Your potential for generating stories, concepts, examples are unlimited, but you only discover that the more you create. Blessings to you. Blessings to your discipline. They're joyful and beneficial discipline of creating content consistently. And one day may you also create a greater and greater positive impact in the world. Take care.