 A reader asked me how to get started creating content when they feel like there's so much, so many ideas they want to talk about, so much material they could share. How to make the first video. So hopefully this video will inspire you to get going if you're in that situation or maybe you're in the middle of your content creation process and you still have so much you want to share and what do I, what do you do then? So I'll tell you how I first got, got going on this stuff. I got going in about 2015. With content actually I would say about 2014 was when I, when I started I had a podcast for about a year and then 2015 I started to do videos regularly and to write regularly. So what kind of inspired me got to get going was I had this question somehow come to me that I couldn't let go of and the question was what if I only had six months left to live? So this was in 2014 I, I, this question just was very heavy on my heart. I don't know why that question came to me. Maybe I averted some, you know, life-ending illness who knows or life-ending accident I don't know. That just, that, that question got me going and who knows, maybe if I didn't get going I would have died. I don't know, but it just said if I had six months left to live I would want to tell the world everything that I've learned. I, because every one of us who dies is like an entire library being burned. Your experiences are unique in history. Do you realize this? Your, the company, the exact combination of all the different modalities you've learned or all the books you've read, all the conversations you've had, all the people you've helped and the skills you've learned. That combination is completely unique in the history of man and woman. History of humanity. So when you die, if you didn't put that down in writing or in video format or whatever content format, that those skills, knowledge, experiences and that combination of all that and the personality that you've developed, all that dies with you. So I said if I, if I had six months left I would create as much as possible and put it all out there. And so that's what I got going with. That's what I started doing. I said I'm going to say the most important things I could say. The things that I've learned in my industry that, you know, that I think are really important that I think would help other people, I'm going to talk about that. So that got me going and maybe that saved my life. I don't know. I wasn't dealing with any particular illness back then, but I just, I don't know, that was a question that I, that was very impactful for me. And here's the truth. You don't know if you have six months left to live. You don't even know if you have six days left to live. I don't know if I have six days left. I could be walking out today on a dog walk and get run over by a truck. I don't know, right? Or some weird illness could suddenly develop and I could be dead in a month. How will I feel on my deathbed? At this point, I would feel pretty good because I've shared so much information and shared so much of my personality and all of my earned life wisdom experiences on the internet. So much of what I say now is kind of a repeat of what I've said before. I don't know if you know this, but I create, I create four pieces of content per week Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. So I create, I create on those four days. Wednesday is my online course that I teach. So that's new content to essentially a Saturday and Sundays are interviews with other people. So other people's content, but I create four pieces of content per week these days. And do you know how many of those are original now? One. So I only create original content on Fridays now, Monday, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm repurposing stuff, stuff I've written a year or two ago. I'm just taking the best of what I've written in the past. And like this piece of this blog post that I've written in relation to this video, that was written a few years ago. And I'm just rerecording a new video now talking about that. So this is eventually we all create so much content that eventually you'll be able to do the same thing and just keep looking back and taking the best of what you created before and just editing it, resharing it, maybe making a video from a blog post or making a blog post from a video that you made before, whatever it is, you're just, you're resharing it with some improvements, with some updates maybe. And you'll still want to create something original occasionally. I do it once a week. But so at this point, if I were to die, I would feel quite satisfied because I feel like I've sung my song. I'm only in my 40s, so hopefully there's more original content coming. But you see, I'm so much more satisfied with my life now. And I feel like I fulfilled my life's purpose to be honest with you. I feel like I fulfilled it. And the life's purpose isn't about the information they put out there. I think it's more about how we grow as people, how loving we become, how kind we can become, how honest with ourselves and one another. We can, you know, it's courage, all that stuff. But in terms of work purpose, in terms of career purpose, I feel like I fulfilled my career purpose. I can die now. And now that I fulfilled my career purpose, I'm just going to keep amplifying all these good things. And maybe who knows, maybe in five, 10 years I'll have a different career. Who knows? But I want that for all of you. I want all of you to share so much of the wisdom you have learned, whether it's in blog posts, videos, online courses, books, however you want to do it, that you can feel like, yeah, I've given everything and I can die and feel happy. And I'm just going to keep making it better for the rest of my life and maybe create new things, experiment, try new things. But don't let what you've already learned stay within you. Let it out. Let it out. Share. Now, for the person who's saying, well, I'm stuck. I have so much I want to say, but how do I make my first video? How do I write my first blog post? Here's what I'll say. It's not the first. If you think of the first, first ever video I'm going to make, you're going to scare yourself and you're going to intimidate yourself. I would be intimidated on my first video, my first blog post, my first Instagram post, my first tweet, my first book, my first course, my first whatever is so scary because you feel like, OK, history is going to somehow judge you by that. Or your friends and family are going to judge you by that. No, they won't. That's the secret. The secret is history will not judge you by your first. History will judge you by your last. Well, actually, I'll tell you the history will judge you by your best. And your first is not going to be your best. I don't know. Look back at my first video. It's not my best. I don't know. Maybe I've deteriorated over time. Maybe I used to be better. I don't know. But I don't think it's my best, at least in terms of ideas. I think my ideas have improved. I don't know. My delivery has improved. Maybe I've gotten more lazy over time. That could be the case. I used to do videos on my dog walks. Some of you remember. And those videos were probably more entertaining, more fun to watch. Because sometimes I show up with my dog and it's in nature. It looks nicer. I got lazy over time. And now I do it in my office. When I'm on my dog walk now, I want to be fully there on my dog walk. And I don't want to be thinking about making a video. That's why I stopped doing that. I want to be there. And I want to be thinking about whatever I'm thinking rather than, oh, I've got to make a video. I've got to have a task to do. So that's why I stopped doing that. Because for my mental health, for my health, I stopped making those videos because it was too much trouble. Now I can be here. But part of the reason why I can do this, I can be less entertaining nowadays, because I already have your attention. I already have your, I'm sorry. I already have your attention regularly. That's why I can be less, like I used to have to be more entertaining because I was still trying to build an audience. I'll say this, I think it is true. If you want to build an audience, being more entertaining is helpful. Because then you build an audience. But it's not super sustainable, right? Because it's not personally sustainable. Because if you have to always try to be entertaining to build an audience and to keep your audience, you're always putting on a front, essentially, kind of like that. Whereas if you can be authentic. So I really, I feel like making those dog walk videos wasn't really authentic to me because I still felt like it was a chore. I still felt like it was a task. I couldn't really be there. While making this video is still kind of a chore, kind of a task, because like I said, I don't want to make any of my videos. If I, if I, there's different ways of saying authenticity. I think there's a higher authenticity and a lower authenticity. I think for the lower authenticity, I would be on the couch eating potato chips, watching Netflix or playing video games all day long. That's the lower authenticity. The higher authenticity is stepping into the best of what we can deliver to the world. And I feel like I can deliver my best here in the office like this with you, even though it's kind of boring. Hopefully you're getting entertained by the ideas and my energy, my presence in front of you. So anyway, so back to the topic at hand. Stop thinking about making the first video, making the first, writing the first article, writing the first book, making the first course. First is intimidating. So instead, think about the first of many, the first of many. History judges you by your best and your best is not going to be your first. Your friends and family are judging you by your best and your worst, maybe. Home friends and family, some mean people will judge you by your worst, but most of your audience in the future, right? The people who are going to be watching your video now are not your main audience in the future, because your audience is gonna be way bigger in the future. Maybe you have 300 friends and family and colleagues right now and you think, oh, I'm so scared of making something in front of them. Who cares about them? You care about them personally, but in terms of content, who cares about them? In terms of your audience building, who cares about them? Because your audience is gonna be 3,000, 30,000 people, maybe 300,000 people in the future. Your 300 friends, family and colleagues now, just a drop in the bucket in terms of your bigger audience in the future. So in terms of audience building and content creation, who cares about your friends and family and colleagues and classmates and who could judge you right now? Don't care about their opinion. Care about the 30,000 audience members who will follow you because they really resonate with just who you are. You can be real, just who you are. So don't think of the first, think of the first of many and don't worry about the order of your content. You got all this material to share, right? You got put into this order? No, people don't consume content based on the order. They consume whatever pops up in their social media feed that day, okay? They consume whatever shows up in YouTube that day. They're not gonna read, oh, let's go back. Oh, I've never heard of George Cowell. Let's go back to the very first thing he wrote. Nobody does that. Everyone reads just whatever the latest blog post is. They go to your website, they're gonna look at the latest one. They're not gonna scroll back and look at your first one and no blog, you know, when you go to someone's blog, no blog starts from the very first one. All blogs are reverse chronological. So your audience will judge you by your last one, not your first one and history will judge you by your best one, not even your most recent one. And your best one will happen over time as you get more skillful, okay? As you get more skillful in creating and publishing and posting and recording, you're going to create your best over time. It's not gonna happen in your first, probably not even in your first 20 or your first 50. It might be video number 87 or video number 870. That's the best one. So I hope this incur and I'll say one more thing. Some of my clients can't get the energy to create little small pieces of content. Some of my visionary clients, they have this interconnection of ideas within them and they say, I can't see myself just writing a blog post or making a video here. There I have to make a whole series to make all the connections so I can feel satisfied. I'm inspired to make the whole video series. I'm inspired to write the book. Now, if that's true for you, that's not me, but if that's true for you, then go and write the book, then go and make the video series, then go and create the online course. And as you create the whole video series, share it along the way if you don't mind doing it. It'll be beneficial for your business if you share it along the way rather than waiting until the whole book is published. If you're gonna write a book, you might as well share excerpts of the book along the way as you, because then you'll build an audience who is gonna be really looking forward to reading the whole book eventually. So if you're gonna create an online course, if it's gonna take you a long time to create it, try to share excerpts along the way as free content. So it builds interest in your full final product later. So that's the way you think. If you think in terms of big picture, you can't create a single thing, then create the whole thing. Take your months to create it, but share excerpts, share little pieces along the way from the big thing so that you can start building an audience and building interest for the big thing later. So I hope this helps and please let me know if this helps to unblock you from creating content consistently, okay? Cause that's my aim, that's my goal when I make videos like this. So if you aren't getting going on creating content or continuing with your rhythm of content, if you're still blocked by something, I would love to know what your block is. Where are you scared? Where are you not so sure about? Let me know below, all right? So while I'm waiting for you to add your comment or your question, let me know if this is helpful, by the way. While I'm waiting, I'm gonna go check out any of the comments from the live Facebook people. Okay, let's see here. There are, looks like there are four comments. Let's see if I can find all four comments to share with you here. Okay, so yes, Miriam, thank you. Anna Maria, thank you. Miriam says, I'm not sure about the topic for a post. All right, Miriam, let's take on that challenge. What do you know? Now, that's a funny question, but let me ask you this. What would you like to have a business helping people with? Please comment below. What would you like to have a business helping people doing? What would you like to do for other people and earn money doing? What is that? Okay, talk to me about why that's important. Why is that work important? Or what's one of the most important lessons you've learned about that work? Or what's a question that you've gotten from people about that work? So there's your next piece of content. All right, I hope this helps. And I look forward to seeing your comments and your questions and what else is blocking you. I would love to know what is keeping you from making content consistently. All right, take care.