Business Burnout: How to Grab Back Your Marketing Mojo

[00:00:00] Hey, Hey, Hey. Hey, welcome to Women Conquer Business. I'm Jen McFarland joined by Shelley Carney. And this week we're gonna talk about business burnout and how you can get your mojo back for the fall push. Like I think it's summer is sadly coming to an end and, but we still have a lot to do school's back in session.

[00:00:22] Many people who are parents have. Now that are also balancing raising kids. Like they have more time. Business is back in session too if you took a little time off this summer, so this new girls talk about burnout boundaries and getting your mojo back in time for the last quarter of 2022. And before we talk about that how are you doing Shelley?

[00:00:45] I'm doing really well. After having surgery a couple weeks ago, it's just rebuilding back. But every day I feel stronger and I'm getting better sleep. I was sleeping in my recliner for a while in the bedroom for about two weeks and wearing. What they call a binder. It's like a thing you wrap around your waist and just keep everything in.

[00:01:06] Now I've taken that off and I'm more comfortable and I'm able to get in and outta my bed so I could sleep in my bed. So I'm having great week, doing that. I also had a great week because I had another podcast episode with another podcaster that came out on your podcast coach, which was a lot of fun.

[00:01:24] So that's out. And then I did an interview. Yesterday, yeah. Yesterday on another podcast. So I'm really loving that. That's so much fun for me to have those people come to me and ask me questions about live streaming and podcasting and blogging, and how do you get it all done and how do you be consistent?

[00:01:41] And I get to just really, I'm having such a great time with it and they're always really appreciative of it. So that's a lot of fun and SCLC is back. I spoke with a friend this week. Leslie and she is, has decided to start helping people grow their YouTube channels and she wanted to experiment.

[00:01:58] So she asked me, [00:02:00] can I work with you? And I'm like, sure. So we had a zoom call and she gave me some tips of things to try. And these were things that I knew about, but I just wasn't focusing on them. So it was a great opportunity for me to go, oh, let me focus again on growing my channel and some of the things I should be doing.

[00:02:18] So I looked at my channel Shelley Carney livestream, coach SCLC, and I thought, what I need to do is I need to. This five years of content of coaching, relationship, coaching, transitions, coaching meditation, videos, storytelling, videos, all of these things and put them under one umbrella of my personal brand.

[00:02:37] I am Shelley Carney livestream coach, and I am a coach and I livestream and I talk about all of this. Stuff and it's all me and it's under my brand. So I'm bringing it together with a new show that I'm putting out on Wednesdays at four o'clock. I go live, of course, then I put it up as a podcast and then transcribing it into a blog.

[00:02:56] So all of the things, and I'm really excited about it. It's a lot of fun and I already have this technology. I already have the stuff. So why not use this stuff to to. Other people and maybe hopefully grow my channel and my community as well. So that's what I'm up to. And

[00:03:13] I think that's, I appreciate that you're sharing this because you help people get started on YouTube.

[00:03:17] You help them grow, but as marketers, as. People building businesses. It's really important to talk to other colleagues and that's what we do on this show, but it's also good to go out and be like, oh yeah. Oh, I remember, I know I'm supposed to do these things. That's part of the magic when you're in business.

[00:03:35] And I was having a conversation with a colleague yesterday and I was, we were talking about. We both know Nedra and Nedra and I are friends here at Portland and she's written blog posts on my website. It's a really great blog post about LinkedIn. We send each other people and we just don't have that scarcity.

[00:03:54] Like we're both in marketing. I cannot possibly serve every person on the planet. [00:04:00] and I can't remember everything even with copious notes. So one of the things that I love about what you're saying, two things, one you're super excited. And I love seeing that energy. I can tell you're feeling better getting some sleep and that you're excited to do this and you're bringing somebody else in to be like, okay.

[00:04:15] Sure. I'll let you help me. It's so great. Yeah. Good reminders. I think that's, what's so cool about it. Yeah. It's

[00:04:22] it's all, it's always good to have somebody to bounce your ideas off of, and to just look at things together. Okay. Let's look at this YouTube channel.

[00:04:30] What can make it better? I could do that on my own, but it's, I don't, I just don't find the time. So having somebody come in and say, let's do this. Yeah. It gives you that motivation to

[00:04:42] get it done. Another set of eyes is always important. I, I. Yes. And sometimes it feels really lonely. That's one of the things about making content and sending it out into the world is it can feel very lonely.

[00:04:54] That's true. And that's one of the reasons why we have this show is to help all the view feel less lonely, too. yeah, fair.

[00:05:01] Yeah, I have another friend. Who's a content creator. I bring him up every now and then he's got 3 million followers on TikTok he's he does a weekly live show and I am always well, I'm not always, I am very often there to watch his show to comment.

[00:05:16] And sometimes we'll talk during the week and we'll discuss being a content creator. He just changed. His personal podcast to reflect. Here's what I'm going through as a content creator. And that also inspired me. I was like, oh, I love this hearing from him about all the things he goes through, all the, using Patreon or trying out stanstore or different things that he's doing as a content creator what's working and what's not.

[00:05:42] So I told him. More of this, please.

[00:05:46] well, and that's the thing. So I talk to business owners all the time and they say I don't have anything to share. I don't have any content I can share. And I'm like, the best stuff that you can do is that behind the scenes stuff, don't give away your secrets.

[00:05:59] And at the [00:06:00] same time, people love to see how the sausage is made, yeah. For lack of a better term. Yeah. And I just think it's great. I'm really excited for you. I think this is wonderful and what's

[00:06:09] going on for you, Jan. Me,

[00:06:11] me. So one thing, if you have been following on social media, we've talked about a little bit on the podcast here.

[00:06:19] She Podcasts Live has been postponed. It was due to be in about a month and it has been postponed until June. 19th through 22nd. I don't really know the backstory behind it. I will let Elsie and Jess tell it, we'll put the link in the chat or in the chatter, or at least in the show notes. So if you're interested in why it got postponed, and I think it's also about not losing your hair, planning an event.

[00:06:44] I think it's been a big deal in planning the event. For me, it was a challenge because we had, we were gonna go to DC. For almost two weeks, my husband is from the DC area. So we had booked tickets to stay longer. My mom was due to come over and babysit the dogs. we had all kinds of moving parts that we had to handle.

[00:07:05] Ultimately all's well that ends. We, I will be speaking still in June, so I'll. Continuing to do and fulfill my commitment. It means we get to spend time with John's family in June, and then we are now set to go there in December. And so my in-laws are very happy cuz now they get all of us at Christmas and that's so everything worked out for the best.

[00:07:28] Yeah. It was hairy for us for a couple of days just over here because we had so much going on, but then everything's fine. Just roll with it, that's right.

[00:07:38] Scrolling when life hands, your lemons make lemonade.

[00:07:44] and that's what you did. I was watching last night, but it's oh, I know what it was, this documentary and the guy's I'm the lemons and she's my sugar together.

[00:07:51] We make lemonade. And I was kinda like, oh, That's really cool. so kinda funny to me. Yeah. So yeah, so we made lemonade out of it and it was pretty [00:08:00] cool. The other thing that I've done is I have, when you were talking about what you were talking about, starting the channel and everything reminded me that.

[00:08:11] I have all this new gear I had told Shelley last week that I had this camera that I wasn't using. I, so the camera's different, there's more depth of field and everything. And it's because I'm using a DSLR now for YouTube, I'm gonna start doing more videos as well. And I'm describing some of the software I like and things like that.

[00:08:30] And so I'm using a lens and a camera, like all this stuff has been sitting around. I'm finally just saying, okay, I'm gonna use the stuff I'm gonna use all the fancy stuff that I. The end. So that's the other thing that's happening over here. Other than that

[00:08:43] technology can become a hurdle. Even if you have it, you're like ed, do I have the time and the energy and the brain space to set this up and a DSLR requires an additional in inter interim piece.

[00:08:58] Between your computer and your camera. So you have to be a techie to understand it well enough to use it, which is why I always recommend start with a webcam. But if you are a techie like Jen, you

[00:09:10] can make it work well. So to be fair, I'm not using the cam link. That's the techie bit. I am using a USB cable.

[00:09:18] The cam link is here. Anyway, it's a big nerd talk. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. But eventually I'll be doing that. So enough about gear. We're not really here to talk about gear. Although if you have gearheads, if you have questions, please make a comment or email me. We will talk about, I'm happy to talk about any gear that you want.

[00:09:36] If you wanna know exactly how I mapped all of this. Hit me up. I'll let you know. That's right. Are you ready for some breaking news? Oh, breaking

[00:09:44] news.

[00:09:46] You betcha. All right. So our friends over at near media, they have an analysis up about recess. Recession, proof your brand with local marketing. Now we had an earlier [00:10:00] video where we talked about recession, proof, your business.

[00:10:02] We hit on a few of. We also have last week's show, which is marketing without social media, where we hit on a few of these. So this is taking all of those pieces and putting them together for you. I have long had a philosophy that you conquer Women Conquer Business. You conquer your local community first.

[00:10:24] Even if you have an online product. that is one of the things that they're talking about here in this article, about 70% of people think that a recession is imminent. So here are a few things that you can be doing. We've talked again, we've talked about bits and pieces of this throughout the show for a long time.

[00:10:41] It doesn't hurt to keep doing it. So if there's. If a lot of people think there's a recession, how do you recession proof one, you do SEO. We talk about search all the time. That search engine optimization, it means write about things that people are asking you. It means talk about it in a way that people are likely to search for and you do it over and over again.

[00:11:04] There's a lot of technical things about SEO. But it's an investment. I told my business partner at epiphany that SEO is like putting money in a savings account and it will pay dividends eventually and in the future. So it's really important to invest in some SEO. Talk about things that people care about.

[00:11:26] The other thing that's really interesting is, we know that on social media and at all kinds of places, people are searching local people care about what's going on in their local communities and how they search on social media. What they're looking for, everything is in the local community. So you start with local first and we know that Google business profiles.

[00:11:47] They're responsible for 70 to 80% of local conversions. So have that Google business profile, get up there where, and put your specials up there. So people know exactly what it is that's going on with your business. [00:12:00] A lot of this is about communicating, right? That's. Philosophically, what marketing is how do you communicate?

[00:12:05] The next piece is making sure that you have reviews and ratings that people, so make sure that you're also asking people, Hey what do you like about the experience? Would you mind sharing that? Here's a link make it really easy for people to share their experiences, collect those reviews and then share those.

[00:12:23] You can share those on social media. You can share them. Certainly if they're on your Google business profile, let people know about it. I used to put reviews in my proposals when I was doing marketing proposals. let people know that other people think that you're awesome. Just make sure they're legit reviews and not something that somebody made up because

[00:12:42] that's terrible and not a cool way to run your business. So get those reviews share deals so you can post. All of your deals on social media, you can also do it on your Google business profile. Make sure people know that things are on sale. It's an important part of it. These are ways that you are.

[00:13:01] I think that when we talked about it in recession, proofing your business, notice that this is all top of the funnel stuff. And that's exactly what we talked about on our show, which is, you're not, you're focusing on your retention of your current clients, but you're also focusing in preparation of an economic downturn on the top of the funnel of letting people know that you're there letting them know what it is you're offering.

[00:13:23] And then the last but not least, cuz you might be looking at this and thinking well I don't really see how last week's show about marketing without social media fits into this. It absolutely does. You wanna have integrated online and offline marketing? Meaning if I go to your storefront, if you have one or if I meet you on the street, I am seeing the same things.

[00:13:45] I'm hearing the same things as when I see your website and your business on social. And I love this analysis. I felt I was reading this morning and I was like, I feel seen, . And I think that's why we share things from near media. [00:14:00] Often it's run by my colleague, David Mihm and a couple of other people that I know like and trust.

[00:14:05] And so I'm always happy to share things from them and that is the breaking news. All right.

[00:14:10] Here's some related episodes recession, proof your business, and that's a YouTube video and there's the link and marketing without social media. And that's also a YouTube video and there's the link and those are ours, right?

[00:14:24] Yeah. Those are ours. Yeah. Those are our videos. So go check out the, uh,Women Conquer Business, the YouTube channel, and you can see some really great related episodes. Yeah.

[00:14:36] Are you ready for some training? Are you ready? Are you ready for some training? It's kinda like Monday night football.

[00:14:45] you're ready for some training. Yeah. Again, I do some great training today. I was singing in the car all the way over. See I from my house to Toby's is about 10 minutes and I was singing in the car all the way over because sometimes I get in like this funk where I get self-talk going in my head and I'm like, oh yeah, I don't need that today.

[00:15:04] So I'll just start singing and it stimulates the vagus nerve, which you. It helps shake you out of that feeling. And then it also, you sing this silly, weird song that you just make up and it makes you laugh. And then that raises your endorphins. So say to yourself in the

[00:15:22] car, I didn't know that was a thing.

[00:15:24] My husband and I make up silly songs all the time.

[00:15:26] absolutely. It is. It is great for your health. So do it. That was our tip for the day

[00:15:34] tip. I think it's also good if you're feeling burned. Or if you're absolutely. It's not just when you're tired, it's when you're burned out. And I, this is so funny that this, so today I'm really tired.

[00:15:44] I'm not I just, I'm really tired and it might be a sign of burnout. I've been working really hard on some things. And so it's so funny that I would be like, coming up, I came up with this title that I'd be like, let's talk about burnout, yeah. And I'm at the same time,

[00:15:58] oh, I'm [00:16:00] experiencing burnout.

[00:16:00] How can I help myself?

[00:16:04] so let's talk for a minute about some of the signs of burnout. I would say for me, I get a little irritable. I get tired. I think that. There are, it's a very anxiety inducing feeling when you're burned out. Itty typically shows up in people who, when they're feeling very anxious about things, when maybe it's that sense of overwhelm that can just come and just be like so heavy.

[00:16:34] Yeah. And I think it's there's frustration and there's that last straw. You're just like, you're on the edge and then one tiny thing goes wrong and you just lose it. You're ah, people are like, just this tiny thing. Why are you

[00:16:50] so upset? It's

[00:16:53] final, tiny thing that, that just, that's all I can handle.

[00:16:58] Yeah. It's like that. That's. I've always hated this thing. And like it's not, it's, , it's that all or nothing feeling. And I think that's what we need to, it's the zero sum game. It's like saying things are a hundred percent good or a hundred percent bad. And I think in burnout land that's what happens.

[00:17:16] And then it turns out that if something goes just a little, a skew unexpectedly, then everything is bad. Yeah. Does that resonate with

[00:17:27] you? Yeah. Yeah. Cuz like you're the disappointment that you faced last week when they canceled. Or when they postponed the the event that you were counting on and you were planning on and you were working towards, and then all of a sudden, eh, it's gone and it's gotta be very disappointing and upsetting, but you found a way to come back from that.

[00:17:46] Had you been completely burned out and upset? You might have just said. Everything is over and I'm doing nothing for the rest of the year. So there

[00:17:57] taking my toys and going home. [00:18:00] yeah. I will say that when the email came, I was I was mad, like for two minutes and then I was like, no, I get it.

[00:18:07] I get it. It's cool. It's unfortunate. I was excited. I bought stickers. I was very excited about my stickers by the way they come. So I was disappointed. And then I was like, oh, okay. I can, whatever, we're gonna find a way to give away those stickers and as somebody who was borderline burned out, when it happened, I was like, I get 10 days back.

[00:18:28] There you go. Woo. And I knew that I had more time. So yeah, I think that when we talk about the signs of burnout, one of the things to really acknowledge about is about ourselves is that we need to. Take a step back and rest. If you start to feel like you're getting angry about everything, if you're starting to feel like nothing is working out, , it's all or nothing, it's a good time to, or forget that

[00:18:51] feeling like I just wanna go to bed, pull the covers over my head and stay there and not come out because it's too overwhelming.

[00:19:00] That's how I can, but sometimes that's okay. I'm a big believer in naps. I know a lot of people aren't, but I do, it was something that we did was a coping mechanism in Peace Corps because when you live in a foreign land that everything is so different from what you've ever experienced. One of the ways that you can conquer that overwhelm, one of the ways that you can take yourself out of that situation is to give your brain a rest.

[00:19:24] So one of the ways that you can, step back from burnout. And I think that when you're burned out, you're not as good at marketing your business. If you're thinking like this has nothing to do with marketing, why are they even talking about it? It absolutely does. You have to be out there and on your game, that's a big part of marketing.

[00:19:42] So we're talking about this because it very much affects what other people see.

[00:19:50] Yeah, and sleep is a big deal because I know there's times when Toby and I are trying to make a decision and we're talking through it and it's getting laid into the evening [00:20:00] and he'll say, let's sleep on this. And especially if we're getting emotional in any way, that's not right.

[00:20:07] Just getting emotional. We'll say let's sleep on this because when we get tired, We get more emotional. We can't, we don't have that, that, that governor in our minds that keeps our emotions under control has just worn out. It's I don't have any more energy. So that's, when you say let's go to sleep.

[00:20:25] We'll have more energy in the morning and things will be clearer. Plus your mind has all night, your subconscious can work on it all night long and you'll feel stronger and more decisive in the morning. So give yourself that sleep.

[00:20:38] Yeah. I think that when you get a nap and it's the same thing, when you go for longer, like there's certain amounts of time, you can take like a nap for 30 minutes and you've given yourself a cycle and then if you don't wake up at that point, in order to still feel better at the end of the nap, you have to give yourself, I think 90 minutes so you, if you're going to take a nap and get some rest, it has to be like a little chunk of time.

[00:21:02] You can't necessarily get up and be like, oh, just a slip. I took a cat nap for five minutes. Like it's, you're not gonna feel better, but it also is a way to rest your mind. And I think that's the power of. The power of walking around the block. Yes. That can be rest from work. There's all these block there.

[00:21:22] Types of rest.

[00:21:23] If you're blocked creatively, get outside, go for a walk. Breathe. Yeah. It makes a big

[00:21:31] difference. Yeah. And when you get tired, I find anyway that your boundaries start to get a little lax too. So if the governor's gone. Yeah. If the governor inside is saying I'm tired, I'm going to I have left the governor's gonna sleep at year on your own.

[00:21:48] So that means it's like the guardrails, the first time I'd ever heard governor used us like boundaries was when I drove that Lamborghini and they said, these cars don't have any [00:22:00] governing. And I was like, I don't know what that means. It must mean. I can go as fast as I want. And that was absolutely what it was like, they hadn't adjusted it for road travel.

[00:22:08] It was adjusted for racing, so if you don't have those it's like when you filter up your computer, right? Yeah. You don't have those filters anymore because you're burned out then. Your boundaries are gonna be eroded too, cuz you're not gonna have that way of saying okay.

[00:22:24] That's not a good idea.

[00:22:25] Yeah, nothing good ever happens at two o'clock in the

[00:22:28] morning. that's what I say. When I give my marketing talks, I'm like at two o'clock in the morning, watch cat videos do not work on your marketing. Don't buy any software don't, make any major decisions. Yeah. During the two, put your credit card away, your credit card away, you don't need all of the things.

[00:22:46] And I think that is. A really important part of this. , if you're feeling burned out, if it's, if you're, if you had a really busy summer, maybe you're down because there was another round of COVID now there's, monkeypox like, it's just been really chaotic for the last two plus years.

[00:23:04] And you're like, I don't even feel like getting stuff done the rest of the year. It is time to take a step back and it's time to rest before you make any major decisions, because marketing again is that outward facing piece. It's the customer facing piece of your business by and large. There's very little in terms of outreach and marketing that isn't public to somebody it's external to your organization.

[00:23:33] Yay. So after we rested. What do we

[00:23:37] do next? You have to set aside time to consider what your priorities are for the rest of the year.

[00:23:45] Yeah. In, in listing is good because it gets it outta your. Messed up brain onto a list that you can then, oh, that's what I had in my brain. And you can see it and then you can start to implement it.

[00:23:59] One of the major [00:24:00] things for me to keep consistent with content creation is I have to have a minimums framework. I do this minimum stuff every week and then. I have a schedule that I follow to get it done. And then everything else is just gravy. It's if I get more done, that's great.

[00:24:18] If I don't that's okay. I got my minimum almost done.

[00:24:23] and I think that's perfect. You should have that. Everybody needs to have something like that. And so listen to Shelley . Yeah. And that's how it works with your marketing. If you need to have some sort of checklist running checklist for what needs to happen every week.

[00:24:39] Bare minimum. Okay. And understand as something we've talked about over and over again on this show that every marketing action you take is tied to a broader business goal. So how are you gonna make money from say, sitting on social media all day? You're not. So come up with the ways that you can amplify your voice and your impact for these.

[00:25:07] Maybe three or five priorities you have between now and the end of the year. , what's the minimum it's gonna take for that. Yeah,

[00:25:15] we should discuss that. now that you have 10 more days what are we gonna do for Women Conquer Business and ? We,

[00:25:23] so that's, it's an interesting thing because we have made a list of all the episodes.

[00:25:29] One of the episodes was scheduled to be. Connected at least broadly with she podcasts. We have a, their theme this year for the conferences. Undeniable, right? Isn't that? Isn't that what it was. So we have an episode that was set to run at, in October. mid-October about undeniable and we were gonna talk about women in podcasting.

[00:25:52] We've had some phenomenal guests on this show over the last four years. We've had. We've you and I have had a lot of conversations and then [00:26:00] we've met a lot of people. So there was we were gonna do something with that. Yeah. And then now I'm like that was one of the first things I thought of was like what are we gonna do about that?

[00:26:09] Cuz that was part of the plan too. And there's just a lot that goes into it, but we do have a basic checklist for how the show gets out. That's the bare minimum, right? Yeah. And the extra stuff is how we do more.

[00:26:24] Yeah. If we free download or if you have additional materials, people can get resources and that sort of thing.

[00:26:30] Those are gravy. Those are extras. Yeah. Slides are extra

[00:26:35] slides are extra I didn't have time this week. I've been really busy. That's okay. So

[00:26:41] people in the podcast world can't see them anyway.

[00:26:44] That's right. If they're listening, they're like, we can't see your slides anyway, although I do post them. Yeah.

[00:26:49] On the website and you can always find them. You can always find them. The other part is, and this is so I think that when it comes to coming up with your priorities for the rest of the year, we're really talking about a brain dump. Like you need to get all of the things that you want to do. Out of your head first.

[00:27:05] And so brain dump is when you're just like free writing all of the stuff that you need to get done. And then guess what, you're gonna go through that list and be like, yeah, that's really not that important because I, yeah. I want you to get down to three things that you need to do between now and the end of the year.

[00:27:18] That's really gonna help you focus on your priorities and get your mojo back for the end of the year. That's right now, you've still gotta do stuff to make those three things happen.

[00:27:32] Yeah, absolutely. And you can do the Stephen Covey thing. Is it urgent and important? Is it not urgent and important?

[00:27:38] Is it urgent and not important or is it not urgent and not important? And you can categorize those

[00:27:43] things. Oh, the Eisenhower matrix, Steven Covey got that from oh, Eisenhower. All right. Who I believe is president before Steven Covey. Yeah. Yeah. Steven Covey like still alive and stuff. Yeah but that's absolutely.

[00:27:55] I was gonna, that's funny, you said that, cuz I was gonna mention that so well, there we are. It's a grid, right? Is that [00:28:00] how it's presented in Covey and. I actually have a worksheet somewhere. Yeah. That you have those four items and then throughout the day you can write in them and keeps you, when you think of things, it gives you a place to put all of the priorities and all the ideas that you think of throughout the day and then the things that come up, you can categorize it and then it keeps you out of the things that really aren't important.

[00:28:25] Yeah. Yeah, you gotta take care of what's important first and yeah. Important and urgent, and then important and then not urgent, but that's, what's gonna keep you going.

[00:28:38] That's what's gonna keep you going. And if you wanna get your mojo back. I it's really about bringing in revenue. I think about getting some payoffs, whatever that payoff is, it might be revenue. It might be something else for most business owners. It's about getting more money, more clients. So all of your marketing efforts need to be geared towards that in one way or another.

[00:28:57] All of your goals and deadlines need to be geared toward that. And that's why they need to be things that are achievable. We're talking about like smart goals also that you want to, that you can measure that are achievable. These don't need to be big things. So when I say three priorities between now and the end of the year, I'm not saying launch three programs.

[00:29:17] That would be crazy. Yeah. That would be crazy. Yeah. And honestly, if you have a program launch that you wanna do in November and you haven't done anything, you have to push it out. You have to you, correct. It's not gonna happen. So you have to have those honest conversations with yourself so that you can set those reasonable goals and deadlines that are manageable.

[00:29:43] So you know how to chip away with weekly tasks. Focused on priorities. Shelley said,

[00:29:48] Yeah, I've been going through this thing where I've been trying to get this course out for like months and it seems every time I go to do something on it, something else goes wrong. Then I have to [00:30:00] fix that before I can move forward.

[00:30:01] Like I wasn't able to get into stream yard on my home computer. And because I just got this new computer. Because the old one died. That's right. So I had a new computer and it's awesome. But something was keeping me from using stream yard and I couldn't figure it out. And I was working through it and I was calling Toby, what do I, how do I fix this?

[00:30:19] And I was, yeah. But then the other day I. My husband needed to do a a video call with his nurse. That's doing his palliative care and I had figure it out now because it was happening and he was on the phone and she's are you coming? Are you coming? And it wasn't working with her program either.

[00:30:37] So I had figured out. Now I did figure it out. So now I'm like, okay, no more excuses is, let's get this course done. I was like, everything keeps popping up to slow me down. Frustrating.

[00:30:51] Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes it's legit. Like your husband's healthcare is more important than the course. Yeah. Okay. But other times it's not, we create barriers and boundaries that make it impossible for us.

[00:31:08] To finish things sometimes sometimes it's fear sometimes it's fear. Yeah.

[00:31:15] it's perfection is, oh, it's not

[00:31:17] perfect. Yeah. You can perfection. Yeah. Perfectionism. Yeah. All of these different things. Usually it's tied back ultimately at the end of it to some sort of fear barrier that you have.

[00:31:27] Yes. And we call it all these different things, but it really comes down to what's gonna happen. Nobody cares or whatever nobody dies. And the truth is like, what's the worst that could happen. Nobody takes the course. Yeah. But it doesn't mean it's not valuable. It means that you have more, you just, it's gonna take more time to get people to it.

[00:31:46] Yes. But all of it, honestly, you're not gonna die. She just,

[00:31:51] she just told you my life story. We're like, ha killing me softly with her words. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:59] no, [00:32:00] it's just interesting. I worked when I was still at the city of Portland working, there was a woman who came on right before I left, who had worked at the nine one one call center.

[00:32:09] And. I would get stressed out at work and she would get stressed out too. And one day we had this talk and she was like, look. I just try to manage it because it's not like the 9 1 1 center. We're not, we're working on projects, but nobody's gonna die here. Nobody's gonna die

[00:32:28] shooting at you. what this Toby always said.

[00:32:31] And nobody's shooting at you. It's a good day. yeah. Yeah. We're not gonna die here. Anybody who's been in a war zone will tell you

[00:32:37] that. yeah. It's easy to forget though. Yeah. It's easy to forget. Sometimes as business. And that's one of the things we have to do is manage our expectations, manage the things that we have immediate control over and realize that, I guess it depends on your business, but for the most part nobody's gonna die here.

[00:32:55] Yes, it's true. It's okay.

[00:32:58] Just your ego might die a little that's okay.

[00:33:03] Who needs the ego?

[00:33:05] It just gets in the way.

[00:33:06] Do you wanna talk about getting support.

[00:33:07] Obviously Jen and I are here for each other. It's not hard to do. You look out at who, and who you've met and who you resonate with and who offers as much value to you as you offer to them.

[00:33:23] And then you reach out and you say, I need you in my life. What can we do to make that happen? And then you do it, you make it happen. But you have to actually take some action and you have to get over the fear that she might say. And then what do I do, it's important. This is something that we have to work at every day.

[00:33:43] We have to build our relationships to a point where they are supportive and we can count on them. Should we need them? And we, on the other side of it have to give as much support as we require from them. And it's amazing how wonderful it [00:34:00] feels. And how secure you feel once you have built this support system around you?

[00:34:05] I have Jen, I have Toby, I have my husband, I have my mom, I have my daughter, I have my son. I have a support system. I have friends that I can reach out to no matter what comes up. And yeah, they can reach out to me as well. Yeah. And it is just a very secure feeling when you have that. So work at it.

[00:34:23] It's worth. I

[00:34:24] will say, this is something I struggle with. That's why I was like, Shelley, why don't you talk about support? because I tend to. that I have it around me all of the time. Yeah. And I think that you, as business owners also have it around you all of the time, and it sometimes is about asking and about having those honest conversations with other people and saying, look, I, this isn't gonna happen.

[00:34:50] If I have to do this by myself, this is I'm getting frustrated. I need some support. .

[00:34:56] Yeah. And it never hurts too, when you're in a good place to, to reach out to other people and say, you know what? I have some extra time. I just got canceled on this thing that I was gonna do. And I have 10 days.

[00:35:07] Is there something I can do with you, for you, help you out in some way, and you could spur some new opportunities in your life by doing that.

[00:35:16] For example, if I were to have 10 extra days, Shelley yeah.

[00:35:21] If that would happen, if that were happen. Oh, that would never happen.

[00:35:26] but you're right there.

[00:35:27] When you suddenly have extra time, it is helpful then to pay it forward and to see what you can do to help others. It's also important to ask for help when you need it. I think that all of this can really help and again, Part of, one of the things that you can do, that's really supportive is getting the rest, reaching out when you need help.

[00:35:47] And then also providing it to other people that can be a very restorative process.

[00:35:51] When you take your eyes off your own problems and put 'em on a somebody else's your own problems shrink.

[00:35:57] Exactly. Yeah, exactly. [00:36:00] So I feel like we've talked about this pretty good. Do you have anything to add on. I,

[00:36:08] I would just like to offer to people.

[00:36:10] If you are getting in a bind with your content, marketing, your content creation, if it's hard to keep up with it, I have a framework available to you that keeps it very simple. That gives you the minimums for getting content marketing done every week with a very little effort, and you can get my framework and schedule at framework.agkmedia.studio.

[00:36:35] Just go grab that, print it out. It's two infographics, stick it up on the wall and just follow along with it. Super easy. And and it gives you that framework to follow that, then you don't have to wonder, am I, am I doing enough? Am I doing it right?

[00:36:52] And for me, if you're wondering, why is Jen suddenly talking about something that sounds an awful lot, like project management, leadership.

[00:37:00] Guess what? That's what I have a master's degree in. So all of the marketing that I do is backed by pro good project management. Looking at goals, tying the goals together, an operations way of looking at it. And also tech cuz I'm nerdy. So I know what I'm talking about. I've led huge projects and I have a content up on my website called three keys to reach business goals where I distilled it down to three keys to help people reach their business goals.

[00:37:34] And it's available. We've put it in the chat. Basically womenconquerbiz.com/three-keys-to-reach-any-goal will also be in the show notes. So you'll be able to get to it at any time. And it should be a good thing for you to think about. It goes into many of the things that we have talked about today, but from a different perspective.

[00:37:57] So if you're having some trouble finding [00:38:00] those priorities, this could be a lot of help for. Get it.

[00:38:04] It's free business coaching. How often you get free business coaching from a guy, from a woman, an amazing woman with her kind of background

[00:38:14] so that, oh, let me that is what we have going on today.

[00:38:18] So you ready for tweaks of the week tweaks of the,

[00:38:21] week

[00:38:23] what's your tweak. So my tweak. is called it's a free headline analyzer. Offered by Co-Schedule one of, if not the most important thing I have it. So I'm gonna open it up here for people to see one of the most important things about anything that you create is the headline.

[00:38:42] It's easy to forget. How important headlines are because it's the first thing that people see. It's the reason why they click. Okay. We spend a fair amount of time working on headlines for this show. I spend even more time on my writing, coming up with stuff, whether it's a newsletter or writing for somebody else.

[00:39:00] So what CoSchedule does, is it the, their headline analyzer? What it does is it goes through and gives you all of the. Details on how good of a headline you have, what type of words you're using. If those words are going to be helpful, in terms of getting people to come in and they talk about, so if we're talking about words, it's just looking at like word balance.

[00:39:26] So this headline that we have here, as an example is. Why horrendous social, vulnerable post, the crying CEO . So there was a guy who like crocodile teared on LinkedIn. I'm such a

[00:39:41] victim feel sorry

[00:39:43] for me, boo-hoo CEO, victimhood thing, and I got all this bad press and I wrote about it for my newsletter.

[00:39:49] As you can see over here on the left hand side, there are all these attempts at trying to like, write a good. Headline. These are some of the old headlines. I can't remember how many iterations [00:40:00] of, this crying CEO post I had, but it goes through and it tells you how many common words, how many uncommon words, emotional words, and power words you have.

[00:40:11] And. So basically you wanna hit on all of that. You wanna use words that people that are common words that are uncommon, but the two most important types are emotional words and power words. So you want to get people to understand from an emotional standpoint, why your headline is important, why should they click on it?

[00:40:33] And then also from a power standpoint. It means like horrendous crying. These are like power words that can elicit like a response. So there's a little psychology going on in here. And then the other thing that it does is it looks at how many words is this. Harder easy to read in terms of a reading level.

[00:40:56] Cause you have to understand, most people read at about an eighth grade reading level. We

[00:41:00] can read more quickly if it's like sixth grade, we can just read it quickly

[00:41:04] understand it immediately. I unapologetically tend to be really nerdy. I'm a word nerd. The English major in me just cannot do other things.

[00:41:14] So anyway, My reading level tends to be higher, tends to be like 10 11th grade. I talk a lot about tech and, but my clients are also nerdy people too. The headline type. So you'll notice that there are different types of headlines. Listicles are like your top five of whatevers. Why is a type, how to, which is what a lot of these episodes we have is another type of headline.

[00:41:36] The sentiment. Is it positive? Is it negative? Is it neutral. So basically you don't want neutral. You want to elicit some sort of sentiment. When you write a headline, this program will tell you if it is or not, and then skim ability. So if it's skiable meaning the first few words in the last few words, is it really telling people what it is that you.[00:42:00]

[00:42:00] Them to know. So on this one, so the whole post again is why horrendous social vulnerable post the crying CEO, like that's the whole headline. Then the skim ability is why horrendous social. The crying CEO. So it's going and I'm like, ah, close enough. that works for me. And then what the other thing, and this is why I really like this headline studio is it goes into the SEO.

[00:42:27] I don't have the full, I don't use CoSchedule for everything. So some of this stuff is locked out, but I don't really care. It's looking at the keyword quality. I usually skip some of this stuff, but , you'll see that. It'll tell you how much traffic that it was really hot for a while. So it's viewed as an easy win and something that people are gonna read.

[00:42:47] And then. What I like, I usually go down to the bottom here to the headline competition. And this is really great because I get to see some of the top posts about the same topic, and you'll see that they are all about the same topic. And then from an SEO perspective, it's looking at it and saying, you are better worse, the same as all these other posts

[00:43:10] And what that is like over the long haul are people. Possibly going to click on this because of this headline that you've written. So all of which is to say that pay attention to your headlines, pay attention to the words that you're using in your headlines. Use one of these tools of which there are many, but definitely this is the one that I like the best, which is headline analyzer by Co-Schedule we'll put that out in the world.

[00:43:39] It looks like Shelley already posted that in the chat. It'll definitely be in our show notes as well, but whatever it takes, pay attention to those headlights.

[00:43:49] Yeah. It's a huge part of the content. And even if you have a blog post. Put up I don't know, six months ago, but it didn't do very well. And you thought, this was really good content.

[00:43:58] Why didn't it do very well. Yeah. [00:44:00] Run your headline through that analyzer and see if you can improve it.

[00:44:03] And I did that with all of my content yeah. Cause I was like, I'm not getting what I want. What's happening. so this is one of the things that I can tell you. When I say over and over again, you need to use the words that your customers are using.

[00:44:19] It's because again, I like to use big words. Guess what? It bit me, right? Cuz I wasn't using the right words to describe what was going on. And people didn't know it wasn't coming up and search people didn't know what I was talking about.

[00:44:31] And wanna grab 'em by the feelings.

[00:44:32] And you just wanna make sure that you're, that it's making sense to people.

[00:44:36] So this really helps you with that. Like with the emotions, with understanding if this is even if you put your headline in and all of the other headlines have nothing to do with the same topic, that's what we in the business like to call a context clue. that you, your headline might be a little bit off base and.

[00:44:55] Taking care of all of these different things can really help you and your marketing. Guess what? It helps with burnout too, cuz you'll get the answer quicker. When you write the post the first time, whether or not it's gonna work and that's really what we're trying to get to here is like quicker results tools like this can really help.

[00:45:11] I think. Yeah. Have you used something like this before? I

[00:45:15] have I, when I do my YouTube video ti titles, I run it through TubeBuddy has a keyword Explorer and they give you a rating of, zero to a hundred. How. Strong it is, basically it's how many people are looking for that and how much competition is there on that.

[00:45:34] So it rates it that way. And that's why you're some other

[00:45:37] suggestions too. Yeah. That's why you're not seeing all of our YouTube in there is I use TubeBuddy for the YouTube stuff. Yeah. And then what I use CoSchedule for is. Like how I write about it, how I talk about it,

[00:45:52] but I'm gonna use this more for my LinkedIn newsletter.

[00:45:56] Cause yeah, always

[00:45:57] that'd great. I always need help with that. LinkedIn [00:46:00] newsletters, blog posts, newsletters in general. This is all great for all of that. Anytime you need to write something, you could use it for yes and no. Depends on your email. Provider your email marketing provider. You could use them also for your subject line of email marketing, but you have to be careful because things that work well in headlines, don't always work well for email marketing, things like free exclamation points.

[00:46:28] Some of that stuff doesn't translate well into your email marketing, but sometimes you really can use it for that. So it is a very flexible tool. Cause you could put just about anything in there and see how people are gonna react.

[00:46:42] excellent. Thank you for the tweak of the week. Did you wanna talk about headline studio pro

[00:46:47] or no?

[00:46:49] That's the one that I'm using. That was what I was showing is oh, it's I think it's like $5, $10 a month or something

[00:46:56] like that. So the headline analyzer is free and the headline studio pro is not free, not

[00:47:01] free. Okay. I think that with the studio pro you get all the SEO nerd stuff. I

[00:47:06] see, I got it all.

[00:47:09] Are we ready for inspiration? Yes. All right. Today's little inspirational nugget comes from Epititus. This says if the grain sprouts before the stock is fully developed, it will never ripen display fruit too soon, and the winter will kill you. So we have to think about when we're planting seeds, when we're working, especially at content marketing and doing our SEO, it's a little.

[00:47:37] At a time and the seed takes time to germinate. You put the seed in the ground and it stays there for a while. Now, once it starts to grow, it'll take off, but you have to be patient until it does grow. And the the question came up. Are you sizzle? Or are you steak? All sizzle and no steak means someone or something does not live up to its reputation that something, or someone is touted as [00:48:00] being bigger, better, more important, more talented or superior in some way.

[00:48:03] But in reality, they are not . So we have to ask ourselves, are we, what are we concerned with form or function, sizzle or steak? We wanna work on our. Foundations and build them strong and steady and have that momentum so that when we're ready to grow and show then our roots are strong and deep. So that they can hold us when the wind blows and the storms come.

[00:48:30] Suddenly you find out, that this contract you were counting on is not going to come through. Can you withstand that? Do you have the foundations to support you during those difficult times? Yeah. And you have to have expectations that are in based in reality. So for instance, if you are wanting to grow an audience in a community online, through content marketing, content creation, it's going to take 18 months to two years of hard work before you're gonna hit that minimum viable audience that helps you to grow without so much work.

[00:49:04] But the first two years are gonna be hard, just expect it. And first

[00:49:08] two years, first hundred blog posts stay with it. Yeah. I think it's Malcolm Gladwell. There's all this research out there. Although they're finding different things that, about how true it is or not. But if you focus on something, I think they said for a thousand hours, that's when you begin to master it, the problem that most people have is they give up so much.

[00:49:31] Earlier than that. That's true.

[00:49:34] and because we don't have that expectation of how long it's going to take to get there, we see all these great big stars, right? These TikTok stars, these YouTube stars they made it overnight. And why can't I? And then we get discouraged too easily because we have our expectations are too.

[00:49:51] Yeah. Yeah,

[00:49:52] we gotta readjust. Gotta readjust. Gotta, and that's the main thing, like it's almost like you knew what we were talking about today and you [00:50:00] came up with that inspirational

[00:50:01] nugget almost.

[00:50:06] thank you so much. That was awesome, Shelley. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for everybody who's listening or watching. And that's a wrap forWomen Conquer Business this week, and we'll see you again

[00:50:18] next.

[00:50:21] Thank you for joining theWomen Conquer Business podcast, hosted by Shelley Carney and Jen McFarland. Please subscribe and leave a comment or question regarding your most challenging content creation or business problem. Then share this podcast with family and friends so they can find the support they need to expand their brand and share their message with the world.

[00:50:42] Check the show notes for links to valuable resources and come back again next week.