#612: Butcher, Baker, Content Maker

Do you ever feel like you're drowning in ideas? A new idea, a new project, something comes into your mind every month, every six months, every day, and you think, oh, I'd love to do that. Oh, I should do that. And then the content avalanche onslaught begins. And you think, how do I know what to do? I have so much that my soul wants to sing out. But how do I get it out there and what do I do with it? How do I make it happen? Well, that's what we're talking about today. Butcher Baker, Content Maker. You're going to find out maybe what you do best at, what it looks like, what it feels like. So stay tuned. Flow Dreaming. It's a show where we talk about the power of your mind to change your world around you, to literally affect the fabric of your reality. We talk about this feeling of hope and joy and relief. And that is what being aware of your flow does. It gives you a feeling of power again in your lives. Breathe. I'm Summer McStravik and welcome to another episode of Flow Dreaming. Hello, my loves. This is episode number 612 of Flow Dreaming and it's called Butcher Baker Content Maker. Everybody remembers that nursery rhyme from their childhood. At least those of us, perhaps in the western countries. Butcher Baker, Content Maker. Not candlestick Maker. Content Maker. And following on the heels of episode 611, I realized I had more to say about this new field that I've been walking into recently. In episode 611, I was talking to you about Born to Make and this new concept of making, of being a maker. Kind of trying to explain to you what it is and why I've been moving in this direction. So we're gonna continue that conversation in today's episod. As I point out to you, a few things that I explored about a week or two ago with a lot of you in my Facebook community. I do have a Facebook group. It's a closed group, but you are welcome. You are invited. You just have to apply to come in. It's called I love Flow Dreaming. Well, about a week or two ago, I ran a five day sequence of live flow dreams with everyone in that group. So we got together every day around lunchtime and I shared with them a few concepts about Born to Make and what it means to be a maker, to be a highly productive person. And I also shared with them some of the pitfalls that we run into as makers and how we can get ourselves around them both energetically and as well, by doing actual physical things in our life. So My foray into this world where I want to show people not just how to create non physically, not just how to use flow and ease and understand what resistance is and you know, your perfect and ideal paths and energy structures, et cetera. But I want to show you how that is pretty much married goes hand in hand with the physical work, the building of things, the way you actually spend your hours in your life. These two are brother and sister. They are night and day, light and dark, yin and yang. You can't have one without the other. So going back to that five day challenge that we just did, I introduced everyone to a lot of the ways that I take charge of my day, take charge of my life, take charge of my thinking, how I build things, and especially how I've been really shifting my understanding of my place as not just a co creator, but a maker, maker, maker. I spend my days making things, I call on flow, the universe guidance, my greater self as my co partner in the making of things. But day to day I better have some good strategies, I better have some good solid sense. I better have built a wealth of knowledge around, for instance, what I need in order to spread the flow dreaming empire out into the world. So for me this has meant brand building, marketing, enrollment, sales, websites, how to find and figure out what is my actual content and what form do I want it to take out in the world today. And I realized every one of these has become a stumbling block for one or more of us. In one or more of these areas we walk into it and immediately it's like quicksand. We get bogged down. We start with saying something like, well, I want to write a book. And then we think, well, maybe I should do a blog. Well, hold on. I think I need a website so that I can advertise my book. So I need a website, blog and a book. But wait, what if I get it up on audible and away we go. You always hear me talk about rabbit holes in our personal growth. Go down the rabbit hole with me folks. Well this is such a rabbit hole when we start to look at what is the perfect means of expressing myself. What kind of content creator am I, what do I know and what form or shape should it take out there in the world? So that's what Butcher Baker content maker is about today. And one last reference to that, I love flow dreaming five day challenge. It's called five days to find you'd make and it explores this. So it's gonna give you a better bedrock for what we're talking about today. And in the last episode. But it's also going be available on YouTube, so I'd like you to take a look for it there because it's nice to be able to see things in sequence. And I know on Facebook it can sometimes be a little tough unless there's a watch party or an event created. I'll see what we can put together, but look it up on YouTube as well. Okay, so moving into butcher baker and content maker. One of the biggest, I'd say, points of connection that occurred during the five day, five days to find or make challenge was when I was talking with you about this tendency in those of us who are makers, producers, to always feel like I can't stop the flow, right? I cannot stop the flow of ideas. My soul, my self, my being wants to express. And I often find myself going in 50 million directions as a result. Either I'm working on 10 projects at a time or the other thing happens to me, I freeze up and I don't get to work on anything because I just don't know what to do next. Blog or website or whatever it may be. So when we look at it like this, I need you to see yourself as a person who has a kind of divine inspiration to get your message, your talent, your skill, your ability out into the world. Frankly, it's what you'd most like and prefer to be spending your time making every single day. Not making, taking things you don't care about. Not many of us care about being a cashier at a department store, but we do it by God, because we have to support the kids and family. But there's that thing inside you that says, you know, you should share this. Other people might like this, you're good at this. In fact, you might not even say, I'm good at this, but you might say, I have a real passion to learn about this and I'd love to be around other people who want to learn with me. So maybe I can make something that will allow that to happen. I would love to spend my days doing that. So this is a characteristic of a maker. You have this impulse in you, you have this deep desire in you. It doesn't matter if you're confused again. I went through the five stages of a make of any kind of project in that five days to find you'd make challenge. So I can't go into that right here, right now. But this is one big characteristic. You have this urge, but you often have so many ideas or you've spread yourself in so many directions, or you've stopped and started so many times that you're beating yourself up for it and saying, gosh, summer, I flow dream all the time, but I just still can't get anything created and really built in my life. Well, this is why I'm here for you now, stepping us all into this next phase. This is a perfectly natural way to feel as a maker. Hmm. I have seven or eight books on my nightstand right now, all in various stages of reading. I have two books on my desk in various stages of reading. I don't allow myself to keep more because I find it distracting to have more than two in my workspace when I'm working. This is natural. I have a lot of ideas and they go in a lot of directions. Yet how do I harness those? How do I know which ones are going to be fruitful for me and which ones I can allow to die on the vine? This is really important to you as a maker. Not every idea has to come out expressed. So when you look back at that trail of things that you started and stopped over the years, stop beating yourself up about them. Instead, look at them and say, oh, this is a natural byproduct of my personality, of my beingness. I get a lot of ideas and I feel inspired. I'm not meant to make all of those things, but my joy around them, my feelings, my desire around them somehow clicked in, filled a perfect little spot, a piece of the bigger puzzle that leads to the things that I actually am going to make you understand. So maybe you wanted to sell Barbie doll clothes and, and online. I don't know why I picked Barbie doll clothes. I made those for fun. They popped in my head. Maybe I want to sell Barbie doll clothes online. Oh, I could create the cutest little, you know, line of clothes and sell them and then you just forget about the idea about five days later. And then you say, oh, another. Another missed opportunity, another lost thing, another thing I didn't do. Yeah, but maybe that idea came to you because what it was saying is, hey, let's get creative again with our hands. Let's be designery, let's be fashionable, let's do something like that. That was felt really good and juicy, and that's going to be part of your actual next make. You following me here? Butcher, baker, content maker. It all comes down to what is your content going to end up being. Now, in Born to Make, I think one of the best things that I have offered to my community, by the way, Born to Make, it's a monthly community. It is a very low Cost membership. You can come and leave anytime you like. So there's no forced, you know, amount of enrollment time. Dip in. Enjoy it. Those of you who have come in as my founding members, what it means for you is the longer you're in, the more your library is going to stack up with really good pieces of material, the more valuable it comes. If you're curious, go over to flowdreaming.com borntomaker it will be enrolling periodically. When it closes, though, it will be closed and you will just have to wait or get on the wait list. So going back to that, one of the best pieces of content that I have dropped that community thus far is something I call the Content Map. And in it I put down something like 30 plus forms that you could put your knowledge into, you could pour your dream, your vision into. You're like, what does that mean? Well, that's where content makers often get the most confused. Going back to what I was saying, where we get tripped up, we have so many ideas, but then we're never quite sure what form they should go into again. Book, website, blog. That's just an example. Could be Barbie clothes, whatever it is you're making, right? And then we get stuck and stalled out because we don't know which one is right for us. We don't know which one will have the biggest impact. We don't know which one will be the easiest for us, the most in alignment with us, the most in our flow. As a maker, one of your very first jobs is to figure out which is my path, which is my container for my content, which is the best container for what I have to offer. Now, I've done this work for you. I've searched and I've. You guys know, I've made so many products over the years. I have made audio CDs, downloadable CDs, webinars, live events, retreats, full programs, and schools, online events. Multiple, you know, multiple online events. Books, Gosh. Books in translation, live keynotes, just everything. These are all forms of content. And I have been through quite a few physical products. Oh, add that. I know I'm skipping quite a few. So I've been able to look at all of these different forms and kind of distill them down to, this might be one for you. Actually, I help you discover this is the one for you. Now, this is so clarifying for all of you because what it means is you can stop running around like, oh, there's a terrible phrase, a chicken with its head cut off. That's an old farm phrase I grew up with, but I think I need to scratch that from my vocabulary because it's kind of cruel. But keep, stop. Keep running around like a crazy chicken chasing one thing after another, right? All of those things that people are telling you to do and buy and take my book writing course and take my online summit course and take my this and do this and that. What all these people are saying is, I have a form of content. Mine is the best. Are you interested? You have to learn. You have to gain the ability to say yes or no, this is my form or no, that's not my form. And yes, it will often mean testing out a few forms we don't always know right from the get go. But there are certain little whisperings in your heart and there are certain energies in your being, your flow that are already there, already existing. Saying, this feels good, this doesn't. This is most you and this isn't. As content makers, as creators, what we really want to do is find the path of expression. This is where this blends into flow dreaming. Find the path of expression that is most in alignment with your heart, your skills and your joy in doing it, period. It doesn't matter if someone says you'll make a million dollars if you go over and do this thing. You will make the most your income, your audience, your customers. They will grow and multiply when you are actually expressing the form, the means, the way of getting out your knowledge that is most in alignment with your soul, period. Not someone else's. When you're doing what's someone else's alignment, not yours, not in your flow, not your natural best form. The best you can end up feeling like is a third rate copycat. A person who is struggling to get something done that doesn't quite fit, doesn't quite feel right. Someone else told you to do it because you'll make a lot of money and you realize it's not working. So this is where flow, dreaming and content making start to blend. What's in my path of ease? What's in my path of alignment? I'm going to give you guys one example and hopefully this will get your own wheels kind of turning in your mind and you can start asking yourself, what am I doing right now? That's really not me. It's really not my ideal form of expression. But someone said to do it and I said I was going to do it or I got my hopes all up about money, et cetera, et cetera. I did it. So here's an example from me as I already Mentioned. I have made so many forms of content, yet I know when I am creating something on a page, when I am writing an email, when I am writing a few paragraphs, working on my book, I love that form of expression. It flows out my fingers, ideas open up and sort of shake out of my soul onto the page. The download comes through. It feels right. So right off the bat, I know if it's written, I'm probably gonna like it a lot. If it's written, I will like it a lot. As a result, I write a lot of emails, I write a lot of blogs, I write content for my website, I write flow dreams. I do all kinds of things like this. It feels right and good and it's an easy flow for me. As a result, people enjoy them. People read them, they like them too. They can tell that I'm liking making them. You guys ever got an email in your inbox that is so canned and bland? You know, some done for you template that just felt ugh, Right? You know what, the person who sent that, they didn't enjoy making that, they did it because somebody said, use my template, it'll convert. Use this, It'll work for you. No, it worked for the person who first wrote it. Maybe not for you. Second example, you know this podcast. I love podcasting. I love speaking into a microphone in this really intimate setting with you. It feels so good to me to not have a camera on. Nobody's looking at me. I have no sense of self consciousness. I'm fully, purely in this conversation with you. None of my show is scripted for me. It's what content do I feel like I need to express today? Here it comes. This means that anytime I can find myself being recorded, being in an interview, anything that's verbal, I really love. Especially verbal without visual. You guys seeing how I'm distilling this down now. I enjoy being on stages. I really enjoy workshops. For some reason, I get a big kick out of those. Even though I'm being looked at, but it's not being recorded, right? There's nothing of that sense about it. Right. I don't do a lot of YouTube. Even though I said I was going to put something up on YouTube, I don't make stuff for YouTube. I'm not a YouTube performer for you. I'm a podcaster and I'm a recorder of flow dreams. I make audios. I make hundreds of audios. So already I have narrowed my ideal forms of content into these two things that I really enjoy, two ways of expressing. Now when I look further down the road I realize, well, gosh, you know, writing, there's a billion different kinds of ways I could write and places I could write and things I could put my writing into, etc. But that's the next step. And that's not for today. Today I just want you to realize you are a maker. You are a content creator, whether you know it or not. Please start seeing yourself that way. It changes everything because instead of just going through the motions of your day, you start to realize every moment. I'm co creating something, I'm making something. Sometimes I'm making feelings and emotions and I'm communicating with my flow and I'm making my future. And sometimes I'm just making something in the moment. Right now, I'm recording a podcast. I am making this for you right now. What are you making? Maybe you're making up your mind. I'm kidding. Maybe you're driving home. So maybe you're making a trip home, but you're also making yourself drink in some new bit of knowledge, right? You're adding something to your own mind, to your being. You're making every minute you're making. So the big question is, what are you making each minute? Now the next question that a lot of people really ask is, is the thing I'm making profitable? Fair question. Because if you're constantly outputting something, it makes perfect 100% total sense that when you output it, you should have a return. What goes out should come back in. It's a natural cycle, yin and yang, right? The dao round. We go in and out, back and forth, out and in. So profit making, multiple streams of income, your own side hustle. These become really important to a lot of us who are makers. And to wrap all the way back to the beginning of the program, if you're a maker, with that constant download, that constant stream of ideas, well. Well, I hope now I'm at least starting to walk you toward how to winnow them down to a favorite make. A most fluid form of making. Once you start to reach that, you can start to discard all those other ideas that keep flooding in. This is not the whole picture by any means. It's just a tiny little step one after that, then the next question appears. How do I monetize my make? How do I do it physically with strategies, with business and marketing and enrollment or client building, audience building, whatever it may be, brand building. And how do I do it in my flow? How do I align my inside to match my outside make that my friends, I have to hold back for either another episode or if you don't want to wait for that, because I don't know when that one's coming yet. I really do invite you to come and visit me inside of my Born to Make community. Just go to flowdreaming.com born to make and go ahead and sign up. Enroll. It is very low cost. Like I said, it's just an in and out. Stay as long as you wish. And if this is really striking a bell, come with me because our crazy band of makers, we are already on our way to increasing cash flow in a lot of their businesses, to helping them identify their brand, and mostly to simplifying all the crazy productive ideas that we have in our lives and finding all what is the area, the direction that really fits me. Because if I can just get that, if I can just feel that, just imagine how smooth you'd feel right now. Imagine how easy and flowing this whole output could become. Well, that's what I have for you. So I'm gonna wrap up today's show. We didn't do a whole lot of Flow Dreaming in today's show, but that's okay. You can go back through my archives, find out more about flow Dreaming. We usually talk about car consciousness, about flow, energy, co creation and so forth. Tons and tons. Like I said, 611 episodes now that you can browse through and I'll see you all next time for another episode of Flow Dreaming. If you love Flow Dreaming, I have something else that I think you will also adore. It's called Born to Make and it's my monthly community where we gather all over the world and I offer you and give you all kinds of things from flow dreams to actionable pieces of advice, life hacks, etc. With a particular emphasis on making, creating. So whether you're an entrepreneur or you have a side hustle, or you're just working on some kind of project, I'm here to help you and show you how I have translated all of my flow draining into the things that I'm actually creating and building in my life. So you're going to get tons of great information. Meet a beautiful like minded community of busy doers, makers and creators. It's very low cost and you can come and go anytime you like. There's so much more to say, so the best thing to do is go to flowdreaming.com born to make and check it out. I would love to see your beautiful face in our community and start supporting supporting you as you grow and develop these things that you are creating so beautifully in your life. And I'll see you next week for another episode of Flow Dreaming.