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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, everybody. I hope you guys are having a great week. It’s my birthday week. So yay for that. I don’t have any crazy plans this week. My husband actually has to do this whole like five day training thing. He is going through a certification, um, related to like holistic health practitioner and his deal.So it’s like a four year kind of basically like going back to college, but it’s kind of a private program. That’s really cool. He actually, unfortunately, has Wednesday through Sunday this week, like all day booked, so we celebrated my birthday the weekend before, and it’ll be a low key birthday, but that’s okay. I’ll get some quality time with my kids and work and have a little bit more chill day. I think I’m getting a blow up, stand up paddleboard. That’s what I wished for, so I’m super excited to use that in Austin, and go out on the lake with it. So yeah, it’s birthday week. 

It’s October, my favorite month who had took the kids to the pumpkin patch and did all the fall things. We are also enjoying our new house. It’s been really fun buying new furniture, getting all reset up and reorganized. We basically re-moved out of our whole bottom of our house, which is the majority of our house. The upstairs is just a playroom, and so then putting it back in, you get to like organize everything, throw away all the old stuff. I love throwing away stuff. My husband likes to keep things because, he’s not like a hoarder at all, not even close to that, but he definitely does keep things that I’m like, why are we keeping this and this random place? I like to have everything like, just throw it away. If we needed to get in three years, we’ll just buy it again but right now, we probably will never need it. Everything needs a place, not anything in random drawers. I’m very organized, so it’s been fun to put it all back. 

But today I wanted to talk about just the overall feeling out there that it’s just exhausting right now. It’s exhausting to keep up with your marketing, to keep up with your content and how, not only how fast everything is changing, but how much content you have to produce and how quickly it goes stale. So how much new content you have to produce? I’ve been talking, I did two guest trainings recently, and then I have been talking with people and the kind of the overall theme that I’m getting is a couple of things. One, people are like, “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can keep up with all these trends. This is exhausting.” And then the second piece is people kind of doubt their own content because they see other people doing so much more faster than them and better than them. Then I guess there’s a third, which is people experiencing what used to work isn’t working anymore, or the feeling of, “I’m working 3, 4, 5 times harder than I used to and I’m getting less results than I used to.” That’s a common theme across different industries, different niches, people selling different products, people selling services and products, and e-commerce. That is the common theme.

All platforms, digital marketing as a whole is in a massively changing volatile space. I’ve been talking about this for a while. You guys know this is not new. I think that the reality is we kind of have to dig into that and step up into it and you can absolutely still be successful. It’s kind of like, you can either choose to be like, “this is the new reality and I’m going to make this work for me,” or you can throw a big temper tantrum and not do anything and then be in the same place in three or four months from now. So I want all of you guys to be empowered and we can be like, “yeah, this sucks, and here’s where we are, and I have to create all this content, and I’m overwhelmed, and I’m behind.” Or we can say, “how do we make this work?”

So I’m doing a free training this Thursday, if you haven’t signed up yet about the Era Of The Creator. I’ve teased this a little bit in the podcast, I talked about it on last month’s monthly Round Up, but I’m going to go all in on this training, talking about the fact and the bold statement that if you want to market your business online, if you want to be the face of your brand, you have to now become a creator. So whether you want to or not, you have to. That is the reality. That’s how you’re going to attract an audience with, and an audience is how everything starts. That’s how you get leads. That’s how you get sales. That’s how you get a following who will buy anything you put out. in order to attract that audience, you have to become a creator. So what does this mean for your business? 

I’m going to walk through what it means for you and your business. Then what I’m going to share with you guys is the process that we’ve been kind of perfecting and working on internally in our own marketing and then we rolled it out to clients at the beginning of this month, to help them with their content. All around how do you become that creator without it taking up your life? We are in a hard place as CEOs right now because we have to be a creator and we have to look like we’re creating content all day and we’re always on, but we can’t be always on because we’re not creators. We’re CEOs. We have teams to run, we have products and services to deliver. We have other obligations and a business to run. So we can’t be a creator all day, but we have to look like we’re a creator. So I’m going to show you guys our process and how we do that and walk you through that.

So you can save your spot at notforlazymarketers.com/creator. So I’ll see you guys there live. If you show up live, it’s this Thursday, October 21st at 3:00 PM Eastern time. If you show up live, we’re giving away the coolest bonus that we have ever given away, which is an entire resource packet, basically of trending audios and then our exact process walking you through step-by-step written for how to find trending audios, and then how to take those trending audios and videos and tie them back to your own content and your own business so you’re providing value to your audience. I asked a lot of people, “what’s your biggest struggle with content content in marketing right now?” and it’s coming up with ideas and finding the time to do it. That’s everybody’s issue, mine included. So I’ve created a really awesome process, and you can save your spot for that training, notforlazymarketers.com/creator

Back to the tuning to the regular tune today of, “it’s so exhausting”. I get it, and that’s probably why I’m doing this training on Thursday, but I want to talk about this first. I want to explore someone asked me this question in interview the other day, and she said, “let’s just forget that this is the reality for a second. Why? Why are we having to create so much new content at such a fast frequency and step into that?” And here’s my thought. Here’s kind of what I shared about that. Number one, I think it’s the platforms, it’s the algorithm, and it’s the way the platforms have set up their content and we’ve slowly been moving to this place over the last several years. So we first started with Facebook live, right? That was, I don’t know, five, six years ago when it was a huge deal that you could go live on video and you could share this real time, unedited, unscripted, really authentic content because before it was just prerecorded. 

If you remember like six years ago, people would massively, now it seems like overproduced, but produced their videos. They’d have teleprompters and it was in a studio and nicely recorded. So Facebook live kind of shifted that to being off the cuff and you just go live from your desk or you go live in your car or you go live at the park and or on your walk. That was the start, and then we had Instagram stories was the next really big shift, which was kind of inspired from Snapchat. So Instagram stories became even more scripted real-time throughout your day, documenting your day, really short highlight reels of your life and your behind the scenes. 

That became such a massive thing people were consuming, which was, I believe, why stories were so successful and are so successful is because it’s not scripted. People want to see the emotional component, the behind the scenes that they don’t get from a post, they don’t get from a highly recorded podcast or, you know, scripted bull, you know, at least planned out YouTube video stories is real and it’s, it’s very casual and it’s still someone’s highlight reel. Let’s not forget that, but it is very real time and casual. Then we have Instagram Reels and TikTok that kind of started the more recent trend, which became entertaining and entertainment. Now you have to step into this silly and how do you get across a message in 15 to 30 seconds? That is a challenge in how do you continue to provide value, but also capture your audience’s attention? 

I think number one, the reason we’re in this place as the platforms have pushed towards it. But the other reason is the only reason the platforms have pushed towards it is because the audience has pushed towards it. Their users have pushed towards it. And people’s attention span is diminishing. Like, that’s the reality. When you look at like when Facebook and Instagram shut down that day, like a couple of weeks ago, how many people jumped over to Twitter or jumped over to clubhouse? It’s like, they’re addicts, we’re all addicts to social media. And we need this like fix all day of content content. And we’re bored really fast. It’s gotta be new, refresh the feed, watch the news story. If it’s a longer than two minute video, I’m clicking off of it. Let’s be real. Like that is how we’re behaving myself included. It’s actually crazy. I cannot sit there and read a long blog post. I can listen to a longer podcast episode or a book while I’m doing something. I could not just sit there and do nothing and do it. Our attention span.

We’re standing in line at the grocery store. We’re sitting at a traffic light. It’s sad. It actually is sad. It makes me sad, but it is the reality is that we are needing constant news stimulation. And it’s going to be interesting, like at some point this has to break, right? Like how stimulated can we be as a society? But because of that, what that means for content creators is they have to feed that stimulation, which means new, fast, quick, shiny, entertaining, engaging, catch your attention. You’re fighting for that. You’re literally fighting for that every day against all the other businesses, all the other influencers out there trying to garner that attention. So that’s the why, and that’s the reality, and you’re not going to change that. And the other piece of it is it’s just going to get worse. I think that there’s gotta be a breaking point at some point, right?

We’re down to like 15, second videos. Like you can’t get much shorter than that and still provide content. But what’s happened is the actual content creators who do this. Full-time have created these incredible entertaining, engaging videos from their house with no production, but themselves edited them. And they’ve set this bar for us as business owners, because that’s the content that we are competing against to get our audience’s attention. Because I don’t care if that content creator is selling something or not. They’re still getting your audience’s attention when your audience is sitting there at night, scrolling, Facebook or Instagram, they’re getting the attention. So if your content doesn’t rise to that level, you’re getting out done by them. And so now we have to step into that. 

That’s the why, and my opinion on this is that everybody, the sooner you lean into this and you lean into this fact that you’ve got to become a creator, that you’ve got to come up with new content and you have to do it in a way that works for you, that’s authentic to you. The sooner you do that and accept that the faster you’re going to move forward to results versus deny it and just be like, well, I won’t, and I am not saying statements. That’s like, you have to do reels or you have to record these certain videos. I do not believe in template and marketing. I don’t believe in like bold statements like that. But what I do believe in is you have to become a creator and that’s going to look different for you than it is for me. And this is one thing I’m going to go into on my training on Thursday is it’s not black and white in like, this is what everybody has to do, except for that. Everybody has to become a creator. And so what you have to get clear on is what is your values? What are you willing to do and not willing to do?

Me, I’m not willing to be on Instagram stories all weekend and all day. I never will be that, that goes against my values. I have kids, I started my business, so I could be a present mom. And I believe in my health and wellbeing, both of my body and my relationships, I won’t do it. Maybe it would make me more sales. Maybe it would help my marketing, but I won’t do it. That crosses the line. I will not go on clubhouse, which is kind of lost. It’s I think it’s big, you know, um, what’s the word, but it’s lost its initial excitement from it, but that was it from the beginning. I was like, I won’t do it. And so you can think through like, what are your non-negotiables and then still make this work for you. So that’s what I’m going to show you how to do on Thursday, but you’ve got to lean into this.

You’ve got to lean into the fact that you have to become this creator. And I think at the end of the day, the key behind this is first of all, leaning into it and understanding that the constant need for new is the new reality. And then second equipping yourself with both process and a team to be able to rise to this kind of level is the key. And so there are definitely ways to still batch content that doesn’t look like you’re batching content. I don’t even have social media on my phone. I will download it for like certain things. If I feel like I want to do a story really fast, or I want to post it’s deleted off my phone. It has been for a year, almost two now, and I’ve put it back on and I take it off. And I, you know, I’m definitely struggle with addiction, but it doesn’t look like that.

When you go to my feed, it looks like I’m there all the time. I’m consistently posting, I’m creating content, I’m creating reels. And that’s because of the process that I’ve created and the team and support I’ve surrounded myself with. And you can meet yourself at the level. I’m not saying you need an entire marketing content team. I don’t have that either, but I’ve equipped the bare minimum for our clients with a creative director and some copywriter designer, like that’s the bare minimum. And so I’ve created a process to do that. And I think the way to having still the freedom and flexibility in your life as a CEO, but also being a creator comes down to your process and your team that surrounding you in achieving these goals. Now, the other piece to think about here, that’s really been interesting. And I’ve been kind of pondering this for the last several weeks.

I saw somebody, an influencer who I do with the information that they put out and he talked about how quantity is now trumping quality. That bothered me for a second because I was like, no, I have preached quality over quantity all the time, because I don’t think you should just put out content to check the box of like I posted seven times a week and I was able to accomplish X, Y, Z. I think that you should be very intentional with the content that you put out there and it should be quality. But with that said, I thought about what he said for several days, it was in the back of my mind. And I do think he has a point because the reality now is that if you sit down and you say, well, in order for me to post something of quality every week, I can only post two times a week and like two reels or videos a month. I can’t be on stories. You will struggle to get your audience’s attention because you will not be in the feed very much. So there is some value and validity to saying quantity does sometimes trump quality. 

Now I still don’t think that you should put out posts that it’s like, if someone read this, it just sounds like everybody else. That’s like a big note for me. I still have the rule on my team that we are not going to post. If that post itself doesn’t make an impact, doesn’t go, oh, that’s good. Or like, oh yeah, that made me stop and think that’s still my rule. But what we have upped our quantity because the algorithm it wants that it wants one, two posts a day, it wants you to pump it out. It’s going to reward you for that. And that is kind of the reality because people want new, they want new, new, new.

So if you’re putting that out there, you’re kind of achieving that in the algorithm and with your audience. So I don’t think it fully like quantity is more important than quality. I don’t want you putting out, you know, poor quality content, but that’s more in like the value of the content. That means if you record a reel and you don’t have perfect lip sinking with the audio who cares, like post it, or if you, you know, create a post and it’s like, it’s a seven out of 10, it could be better post it like that still. That is true that you don’t need extremely polished. And I think that, I understand that a lot of you out there are perfectionist and you worry about that. And here’s the, here’s like the hard truth and the reality for you guys, what you post tomorrow, pretty much, nobody’s going to remember the next day.

They’re going to have that initial reaction with your brand and with that post. And you’re like, oh, that was funny. Or like, that was a good idea. Or that was cool. They might click and look at some more. They might follow you. They might go do the action you’re taking, but they’re not going to remember like, think about it. Can you remember like one video that you saw someone do recently in detail? I can. And I go on Instagram and look at reels and look at stories and I can remember vaguely, but not the details to even come to knowing if someone messed up or didn’t do something well. So the reality is like, we stress so much as perfectionists over. Like, did we time that right on our real and the lip sinking. And like, do we look silly doing that dance? You’re gonna have to stretch your comfort zone a little bit, but also just keep in mind, you’re paying attention to those things 10 times more than anybody else’s going to, they’re not even going to remember what you posted tomorrow because it’s new stimulation, new stimulation filling our brains as your audience.

Just remember that because I know a lot of you guys are perfectionist myself included, and it is putting yourself out there in an uncomfortable way. If I was to go back and look at the first few reels that I posted, prob I think it was like a year ago that they started coming out. I mean, they’re embarrassing, they’re so dumb. Like I was like dancing, like what was I even doing? But I did it. I posted them. And I’ve evolved since then. And so you’re going to have to start there and keep moving towards your next level, which you’re always going to be moving towards your next level. 

The other piece I want to talk about around this is tying it back to results. And one theme I’m seeing in our clients and their strategies and in our own strategies in what we’re doing is unfortunately gone are the days of having a killer lead magnet or an awesome webinar title or a great funnel that you can just set it up, and it runs for months and months and months. I think the lifespan of a webinar title or a lead magnet is about three months. I think if you can get it to convert both leads and sales for three months, it’s doing great. That doesn’t mean you have to constantly change the backend of your business, but you do have to put new wrapping paper on what you do. This is, again, feeding into that like exhaustion, and I feel it. It’s like for us, if we don’t do a live event or if we don’t do something new and exciting, we have lower sales months, we have lower application months and I’m still constantly working on like, how do we have the evergreen piece dialed in? I think you can, and we have lots of clients who are doing that, but you also need to kind of pair that with the new and exciting components of your marketing strategy that are like a live webinar.

When I say new wrapping paper, I mean, maybe you have a great webinar or you have a great lead magnet and it it’s really valuable content and it works on the backend and it converts people on that webinar, but you need to redo the title. You need to redo the promise. You need to redo the positioning of that offer and tie it with new wrapping paper. And I think that when you go to launch there’s, there’s other people out there who have kind of the business model where you launch a couple of times a year, or maybe even once a year, something big. If you keep doing the exact same thing that you did before, it will impact your results. You have to have elements of new, you have to have elements of new wrapping paper. And when you look at that from the standpoint of like, oh, it’s so exhausting, like to keep on doing this, I get it.

I think that, again, it comes down to the process and going into it, knowing that you have to do that is actually less exhausting than resisting it, not putting something new out there, not putting new wrapping paper on it, and then watching it kind of not do well. And then having to come from behind and make it new and exciting. You’ve got to have that element and kind of ask yourself every time you put something out there, if it’s a funnel or a new ad or, you know, a new lead magnet or a new sales page, like, how am I standing out with this? Because that’s the kind of reality is the level of competition that’s happening out there. 

So in conclusion with this, it is exhausting right now to try and keep up with marketing and content. I get it. I hear you. I’m on the same page as a creator and CEO myself, but that is also the reality of how you’re going to capture your audience’s attention. So looking at your business and saying, okay, how do I not make it exhausting? How do I make this sustainable for myself? I think one thing I’ve learned myself in this process is not like saying, “okay, yeah, I need to do that. I’ll figure out how to do that. Oh, okay yeah, I’ll fit it in my schedule to try to please my team,” or whoever is telling me like, this is a good strategy. 

But instead, really stopping when I have a moment where I feel stuck or I feel like that doesn’t feel quite right to me and figuring out why, and then figuring out how do I make it work for me? So not just being a yes woman and saying yes to everything, but instead knowing, “okay, I have to become a creator now, how do I make this work for me? How do I create a process so I still have my life, so I still have my time, and so I am a creator and I can show up online?” And then stepping out of my comfort zone just a little bit. I mean, nobody is fully like their first time or even first 20 times comfortable doing reels or doing entertaining type videos. 

That is the direction we’re going in. It’s kind of fun. It’s kind of a challenge of asking yourself, how do I lean into my personality a little bit more? How do I lean into some humor and some entertainment, and still connect that to value and still connect that to how I’m trying to attract my audience and being consistent with that? Leaning into that and figuring out how do I make this work for my business is the big question, because it is exhausting. It is demanding a lot of you, but it is still possible. I’m going to talk deeper about this on Thursday. I hope to see you guys there. You can again, go to notforlazymarketers.com/creator to save your spot. I hope to see you guys on Thursday. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll talk to you soon.

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