 When you are beginning your content creation journey, you probably don't have a huge audience that is ready to receive and engage with your posts. And you might find yourself in this dynamic of what one of the members of my ADC program said, playing ball by yourself kind of situation. What that means is like, if you've seen the kid, whether they're on the playground or playing some game by themselves, that's a pretty brave kid to keep doing that, right? Because I know when I was doing that, I felt really embarrassed and I quit after two minutes of playing by myself. Cause look at the other kids, they're over there, they're playing and I want to be whatever it's like, but this is what content creation as a journey is. It's in the beginning because we're doing authentic content, we're not just copying other people and trying to like use memes to build an audience, which you can do if you want to, but we're learning and practicing how to share of our soul and to practice expressing authentically something that maybe not in the world yet, at least not from our point of view. So therefore you're gonna feel like you're playing ball by yourself. Maybe you're playing some ball or some game by yourself and then there's just traffic driving by and they're looking at, look at that weird kid, right? Doing that by themselves until you get so good at doing it that people stop and you become a busker, you know? You're actually putting on a show and people are paying you money to say, please continue that juggling, it's amazing, right? Something like that. But in the beginning, everyone's just driving by, everyone's just walking by and maybe occasionally someone looks at you kind of weird, right? So how do we, first of all, do you feel like that right now? You make a post, whether it's on Facebook, LinkedIn, you know, YouTube, media, wherever you're posting and you're like, nobody's engaging. What's the point? Why bother? Do you feel that way? Well, I felt that way. When I first began, some of you, I don't know if any of you here or some of you watching this may remember my early exploits in content creation. I started in 2014. I started my business in 2009, not knowing about content creation. I was just hustling and trying to get people to buy my stuff and never building an audience and always having to work so damn hard to get enough clients, 2009 to 2014. It was that kind of a salesman type of experience. It was very, I didn't like it. That's what made me wanna quit my business. But then 2014, I got inspired. 2012 to 2014, I started getting inspired and I started in 2014. Took me two years to commit to it. And I created something called Our Highest Work. It was a podcast and a YouTube channel. It's still there, the YouTube channel and YouTube channel podcast and a Facebook group, a private Facebook group. Well, I don't know what's public or private, but I basically invited some of my friends to support me as I created this. And I didn't wanna play ball by myself. So I asked my friends to at least watch me play. They wanna play with me, that's fine. You don't wanna comment, that's fine. But at least watch me play and learning how to play by myself. So I dedicated myself to this and I said, I'm gonna do this even if there's no comments. And most of the stuff I posted even in the Facebook group didn't get any likes even if my friends were there. A few of them got likes, maybe like I had like one or two friends who always liked it, but I don't know if they watched it at all or read anything, right? Just like, like, like. So I did that for 70 episodes. Not bad, 70. Well, I want you to get to that number two. And then in 2015, I dedicated to my own brand, George Cow, and I said, I'm gonna go for 100 this time. Not just 70, 100. Cause I burned, I kind of like petered out at 70. And I said, I just wanna build my own brand now. So I said 100. I'm not gonna quit until I get to 100. And it's daily, Monday through Friday, every single day until I get to 100. You don't have to do that. But I felt I needed to do it to not have it be a question at all whether I was gonna create something and post something that day. There's no question. I'm just gonna do it. There's no question. It's 11.50 PM. It's almost tomorrow. And I'm gonna do a three minute video and write two sentences. Cause every, all 100 is gonna be a video and a written something. Doesn't have to do two sentences, three sentences is just fine. So anyway, the takeaway from this, you don't have to play ball by yourself. You can start a private Facebook group so that it's not public. And you can invite a few supportive friends and say, will you watch me play? Will you support me? If you see my post just like that, you don't have to read it. You don't have to watch it. I know we're all busy. But if you happen to see it, just give me a like or look. And knowing the group is there. So I know that I'm actually putting it there for someone who might see it. Okay. So that's one possibility. Another possibility that those of you who can afford it joined Soul Gym. Some of you are watching this who are a part of Soul Gym. Some of you who are watching this are not part of Soul Gym. But Soul Gym is the program I created cause I wish I had that myself to have this kind of loving community to support me in playing ball by myself until I was good enough where I could play ball and have people pay me to play ball. So you don't have to play ball by yourself. That's takeaway number one. Number two though, and this is maybe even more important. Even if you create a Facebook group or even if you join Soul Gym, you're still gonna have the experience where you post something and you don't get the feedback quickly, right? Like you post something and we're like, how many of us are like, okay, I posted something. Now I'm gonna go ahead and wait 72 hours to see if there's a like. No, we wait 72 seconds. We checked the notification. Wait, I just posted this 70 seconds ago. There's no like yet? Check another 30 seconds later. There's no comment yet, right? So no matter what, you're still gonna have that window where you feel like you're playing ball by yourself. You have a little bit of visibility hangover. And so I want you to practice in that moment until you get your first like, if ever on that post. Know this, it is a spiritual practice of strengthening your internal locus of motivation. Let me impact that just a little bit. You have two motivations when you post something, when you create, okay? Most of us are creating like on social media or newsletter or website or whatever. We have two motivations, very simple. One is internal and one is external. When we're refreshing our notifications to see if there's a like or a comment, you are essentially giving your power over to the external motivation. You are saying external validation, please show me that that was worth doing. What I just spent time doing was worth doing and that I should keep doing this in the future. I need external validation for that. Understand this is what's happening. So do you want to keep giving your power over to external validation or would you like to practice your internal power to say, no, no, no, I'm creating this for me? Yes, I'm creating it in service to some ideal reader and ideal client in my mind. Yes, that's just a technique that I use to just be able to have a voice or a writing style that speaks to that person. Yes, but the discipline of showing up and posting and creating and posting, that's for me. That's for me. That's for my creativity fitness. That's for my dedication to my higher self and the unfolding and the flowering of my authentic power, it's for me. And so therefore I'm going to post and I'm not going to check the notifications every 72 seconds. In fact, I'm not even in the check until the next time I post or maybe not the next time I post, but I'll check in a few days, just maybe I'll check once a month or once a week for data collection purposes only. I have a spreadsheet where I log the data and go, okay, that post got zero likes, moving on, moving on. So maybe check once a month. You log data once a month. We will talk more about the data logging later on in this course because I think that's pretty important. But set that aside. If you don't do any data logging, I just want you to know that when you resist checking the notifications, see if you got any likes, you are practicing your internal locus of motivation. And you are becoming stronger and you are growing your authentic voice and power and confidence. And that is worth everything because that spills out to everything. And so let's go on from here. There's lots of things we'll talk about in this course about actually getting engagement from people, but this lesson, I wanted to emphasize this because this shift of perspective about why you're doing it, it will hopefully, as you practice this, keep you going past 70 episodes or posts, even with no engagement, past 100. And at some point, the trickles of engagement start coming in and then you just, but by that point, it doesn't matter anymore because you're doing it for your own growth. And by sustaining that, the floods of engagement come in eventually. I look forward to seeing your comments below. This is helpful. How will you deal with this syndrome, this experience of playing ball by yourself?