Creating Content From the Sh*tstorm

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Hello and good evening, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, coming to you live on the Facebooks, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram. And I'm gonna try to be better at checking the Instagram feed for comments because it's always hidden on a different screen. And I always, like, don't want to see the video over there because it does not match up with the normal video. So we're gonna try to fix that that right now. Anyway, welcome, everyone. Like I said, we are going live to the Facebooks, LinkedIn, YouTube and Instagram. Wanted to do a little bit of housekeeping because sometimes I go live to all these platforms and I don't see all the comments and it's not. And so I love this to be interactive and I love calling you guys out and bring you into the conversation, answering your questions, but sometimes I just don't see see your comments until way after. So if you comment and I don't call you out, it is not that I'm ignoring you. I have nothing against you. It's just that I genuinely didn't see the comment unless he said something rude, then I might ignore you, but I don't have a whole lot of rude people on here. So, anyway, today I want to talk about something that I learned a long time ago. And it's one of those things that I learned and then, like, didn't realize it could be useful to other people until I was talking to someone today. And it's how to create content when your life is crumbling around you, when things feel like an absolute shitstorm and you are having all the feelings and you might be having a meltdown, you might be having a mental breakdown, you might be having what we could kindly call a spiritual awakening. Okay? Which, as Brene Brown says, is just another word for breakdown. Anyway, when that happens, unfortunately for us, like, we are business owners. We have started a business, we're growing a business. That business can only continue being a business if we have clients, right? And so to get clients, we have to market ourselves. And typically, especially for those of us in the online space, marketing ourselves includes posting social media. And so, like, as you would normally do, you know, all the advice is, you know, saying go out and be vulnerable and authentic and share your true self. And of course, that is great advice for when things are going well, when you feel like you're failing at life and you're failing in your business, and everything is going wrong, wrong. And you can't point to any single thing that seems to be going right. And I'm just saying this, like, this happens to everyone. If you're in this right now, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you're in this. It is the worst. It is the worst feeling in the world. I've been there so many times myself. And know that it doesn't last forever. Okay? Every season comes to an end, okay? We just finished spring. Or. No, we haven't even finished spring. We have another, like, 11 days left. It's about to end. We're about to get into the really, really warm, sticky summer here on Cape Cod anyway. So if you're in a shitstorm right now of emotions, maybe something's going wrong in your relationships, maybe you're having a financial crisis. Maybe, like, any number of things is happening in your life. Know that you're not alone. Know that, hi, I've been there and I came out of it. If I could come out of it. I'm a shit. A shit show when things go wrong, but if I could come out of it. You can come out of it, okay? I promise you. And know that you don't have to share all the vulnerable bits of what you're going through right now, okay? Not necessary. All right? You can absolutely be vulnerable and authentic later when this open wound is scarred up and it's healed, okay? I want you to think about it, like, just like that, you know, if something is going terribly wrong in your life and you are feeling so crappy about it and it's really eating away at you and it's painful, imagine it just like that. It's an open wound. Like, if you had an open wound, would you just go around exposing it to everyone? Of course not. It's going to get infected, you know, and people are going to be grossed out. Like, no one's going to want to invite you over to their house for dinner anymore. If you're just going to come over and be like, check out this wound I have, you know? So weird. However, everyone loves a good story. Everyone loves to see a good scar, you know? And, like, imagine the wound, right? So you can wait until it's healed. You can wait until the pain is no longer there. You can absolutely share this later. But what do you do when you're in it and you have to share content because you have a business and you need to get clients and to get Clients, you need to market yourself. And to market yourself, you have to create content for social media. And all this baggage has just, like, plopped on top of you, and you feel like you're losing it. Here's what I learned how to do, how I learned how to handle this very early on. I'm going to teach you all about it. So when you feel awful, when you feel, like, depressed, when you feel like you're failing at absolutely everything, you do not need to share about how you feel you're failing at absolutely everything. But let me give you this. Think of when your clients feel like they're failing at absolutely everything. Seriously, every single one of us has, you know, a moment that our clients go through. You know, for me, it's when they. They've started a business and they are not getting any clients and they're really freaking out. They feel like they're failing at it. For my business partner, David Fryman, for him, it may be they feel like got a summons or something, or they got a demand letter, and they feel like they. They're about to fail their whole lives or they're being sued for the first time. So we want to take the emotion that we're experiencing about our situation, and we want to apply that emotion in a post about our ideal clients, and we want to empathize with that feeling that we're bringing to the table. Right? And we want to just, like, put it in a framework of what our clients go through. Right. I'm. I'm a massive believer that words carry energy. All right? And so when you write a piece of content from a happy place, you know, it's happy, it brings joy. Like, people take positive energy from it. And of course, like, you know, great energy attracts great clients. But don't be afraid to. To utilize, like, those bad feelings as well. You know, when you're feeling down on yourself, that is absolutely an energy that your clients feel sometimes, you know, and you empathizing with them, feeling that and why they're feeling that and creating some content directed at them to make them, like, feel just a little less alone and a little more understood and normalized in their struggle, that's incredibly valuable. It's massively reassuring to them. And let me tell you, if you can make someone feel seen and heard and understood and accepted and celebrated and, like, they're not alone, from a post where you don't even know who you're speaking to, you build a ton of trust that way, all right? So you do not need to share all the terrible things that are happening in your life. Okay? You absolutely do not. You can wait until, like, it's healed and it's done. You feel better about it. But absolutely don't let that emotion go to waste. One of the skills that I teach a lot of my clients, and it's really, really hard when you first start, is when you're writing a post about something you want to really, like, get into, like, the body feeling of feeling that emotion. So, like, when I feel rage. When I feel rage, my chest, like, opens up. My shoulders, like, don't get tight. They just get, like, locked in. And I can feel, like, the heat rising in my neck and my, like, face just goes hot. And it feels like I could breathe, not breathe. I, like, could shoot fire out of my eyeballs, I think. I feel so scary. And I am scary when I have, like, when I'm angry. Doesn't happen very often. Don't worry. We're not. We're not worried about me going off on anyone. But anyway. But like, that. If you describe that. If you describe that sensation, how it feels in your body, like you're ready to go to war on something, you can absolutely, like, elicit that from the people who are. Who are watching or reading. You know, when we. When we describe, like, sucking on a lemon, just thinking about it can make our salvatory glands, like, produce more saliva, right? Because, like, we know that sensation of having acid in our mouth, right? And that's the. That's the chemical response our body has to acid in our mouths. It's the same when we're talking about emotions. Same when we're talking about, like, that. That palm sweat you get when you're about to step out on stage and there are, like, 700 people, more people than you were anticipating in the audience. And you realize, like, some people used to work with. And you're like, just describing this like, my breathing is getting a little more shallow, you know? And you start thinking, like, a million miles a minute. And you start thinking a lot faster, like, that's a million miles a minute. See, I'm getting nervous just talking about this. All right? And you know, sensation, like, when you are about to step out on stage and you're like, I have to pee. I really have to pee. And you might have peed, like, 10 minutes ago, but you're like, no. When you talk about that, when you describe that, when you played out for people, genuinely, people will start feeling that sensation. Because we're empathetic readers, right? There's not one single novel that you have ever read where you did not empathize with the main character as if you were them. Right? It's the same in content. You know, it's, it's short form. You're not writing a whole story. You're not writing a whole novel. There's no like major arc and twists and turns and all the things. But you are writing. You are writing a story, essentially. So using that emotion from whatever shitstorm you have going on in your life is going to be incredibly powerful. But I want to just reiterate, use your emotion for whatever terrible thing is happening in your life. Think about when this emotion shows up for your ideal client and describe that situation with this emotion. Okay? Pour that emotion into this post about where they're struggling. And I, I just can't wait to hear from you once you've done this, like, what the impact is. And remember, you do not have to share any of your trauma. Okay? You do not have to share anything vulnerable. You don't have to share anything terribly personal even to be able to connect with your audience. All right? And to be able to attract high paying clients from those people. Elizabeth, hello over on Instagram. Great to have you. Anyway, quick little live this evening. I. So many. I've been talking to so many folks this week. This week. It's only Monday. Oh my God, it's been, it's been a day. Been talking to so many people today who are just like having stuff go on in their lives, you know, losing loved ones, really stressful situations, you know, stressed out about money, stressed out about relationship. All of it, all of it does impact you. Unfortunately, we're not robots. Unfortunately. Like, we don't, we can't just like compartmentalize all of the bad things in our life into this little container over here and then just be happy, go lucky and perfect in our business all the time. I wish that were the case. If they can ever develop some kind of drug that makes that possible, like, let's go. Hi. Oh my God, it's been so long. We have to catch up soon anyway. But yeah, like, bring, bring the emotion, bring the emotion. I think we, I don't know, we oscillate between this feeling of needing to share everything and also needing to process everything. There's a place in the middle that will still allow you to, to attract clients while also respecting your own healing process or whatever is going on. All right? So anyway, this is my. Oh God, my 24th day going live in a row. I have six more days of there. Any topics that you want me to go live on in the next six days. I need ideas, honestly. So just go ahead and DM me whatever you want me to go live on. I am taking requests. Keep it appropriate, please. Anyway. And I cannot wait to go live with you tomorrow. And Elizabeth, thank you for joining. And to everyone else who joined who I. I don't see your comments aren't coming through. Or maybe you're not commenting. Thank you for being here. I hope this is helpful. All right, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. Have an amazing night, everyone.