Speak to Your Old Self: Audience-First Content Strategy

Is called digital abandonment. You're allowing people to find other people when they should be so focused on the value that you're giving. But it isn't a them problem or an algorithm problem. It's a yo. I'm just in my head and I can't stay present. It's not hard to be consistent when you're yourself, because you are yourself every single day.

Welcome back to our second session of day two of the Creator Summit. I am so excited about this next guest who is a personal branding expert. We're going to talk about burnout, authenticity, and building a brand that feels right for you and real for you. So I'm excited to welcome Nikki Saunders to the stage today for our second session. Nikki, how are you?

What's happening? How you feeling?

Good. How are you?

I can't complain. I can't complain at all. I'm here.

I like it. Well, I'm glad you're here. Super glad you're here. For those who don't know Nikki Saunders, what is it that we should know about you?

Oh, very simple. I'm a kid from Queens, New York. Shout out to everybody who's in New York or the surrounding areas. I am a geek in real life that just happens to like hats and sneakers and things like that. But I really try to help those who have an idea and create a global brand from that right through content, through being on social media. So what got me started was working with this motivational speaker called Eric Thomas. I saw him on YouTube. He started yelling at me. I was like, why are you yelling at me? And then I binged on his videos, ended up in his community, and got granted the opportunity to run his social and grew it from 300k to over 2 million followers. And so we're here. So I'm just a geek that finds social media tools, content tools, and just help other people from the stuff that I've done with. With clients.

So cool. What a great story, by the way. From 300,000 to 2 million, I think everybody in this room would be like, wow, like, what did that take? What. What were. Like. And again, there's no secret. The secret is there's no secrets. But, like, what was your. What was your mindset? Or, like, how did you think about growing from. From 300k to 200 or 2 million on that? What were you focusing on? What were you really? What were the core tenets of what you're building?

The same that I do to this day, which is focus on the audience. Right. I think as brand owners, we Always focus on what are the needs, like what are the goals, followers, KPIs revenue and like we disconnect from the audience. The second that I focused on the audience, people felt seen and heard and the content started to work, right. So it wasn't necessarily any like social media hacks doing it in this kind of format. It was speaking directly to the audience based off what they need and only creating content that they're like, you know what, I needed that today, right? And that's how I've been going for like, like I said, I'm, I'm trying to figure out my path of staying inside and being to self to now this crazy world of social media, right? So I wish when I was starting up that there was a person who looked like me, sounded like me, maybe have some of the same background, whatever, same of the small sense of humor to just teach me, right? Like in one location and so cool. I'm speaking to the introverts, the people who don't necessarily like to be in front of camera. The people who are like, this is super overwhelming. So I'm trying to understand me first because we normally speak to ourselves first. I'm trying to understand me first. Super self awareness. And then I'm like, okay, this is where I'll do some research. This is where, okay, here's the basics. 24 to 55, this, they, they want to do this, they have this type of brand, they don't, they, they struggle with consistency, they struggle with monetizing. Okay, great. Then I'll go into AI and be like, I'm gonna give you all of this. Hit that deep research. What else can you tell me about it? What are their pain points, what are they struggling with, what are their desires? Because all of that is going to be content for me. I don't have to go outside of that and try to figure anything out. I go, what is, what is my audience struggling with? And I'm just going to create content off of that. And that's where they go, how did you, how did you know I needed that right now? Like, how did, like we have never met before? Like why, why did you know this? So it's, it's always for me the first step is going to be self reflection. Because we always, for most of us, right when we're talking about personal branding is, yo, I'm speaking to my old self in some way, shape or form. Not maybe completely, but in some way, shape or form, I'm speaking to my old self.

Yeah, I had a mentor once tell me he's like, I'm not reading your mind. I've just been where you've been before.

That's a fact. That's a fact.

I love the frame of like, talking to an older version of yourself or a younger version of yourself. A version of yourself five years ago.

Yeah.

One of my favorite creators are people who don't forget that. And they're like, what did I need five years ago? How was I feeling five years ago? And this is where again, again, the theme of this whole summit is empathy as a superpower in business. It's like, can I remember what it felt like not knowing what to do? Can I remember what it felt like putting out a piece of content where I'm like, everybody's gonna hate this. Like, this bully from high school who I haven't talked to for 16 years is gonna come back and like, make fun of me again or my, my XYZ person is gonna see this and I'm scared. It's like, do I remember those feelings? And can I just create content that is like kind of a love letter to that older version of myself that's struggling or in a hard spot or doesn't know what to do and how do I just serve that? And I think that's my favorite type of content creator. So, Nikki, we're going to have an awesome conversation. If that's the base we're talking about today, that feels like, again, like, you, you couldn't have known that was the theme of what we were talking about all, all day yesterday and today. Because there's like, this is the stuff that actually works, right? It's not like there's not like a hack to go get a bunch of followers. The hack is like talking to people in a way where they feel like, how'd you, how'd you know, How'd you know that was a thing?

Well, there, there, there are hacks, but we're talking about long lasting and long lasting brands that will continue to bring long lasting revenue. There's no hack for that, right? There's, there's true understanding of, of a person that is on the other side of the phone, the computer, at your events or whatever. That's. That's the true understanding of that.

Yeah, it's true. How, how are you practically doing that? So, like, are you, like, having a conversation with younger Nikki? Are you like, closing your eyes and meditating? Like, how are you actually doing that? How are you thinking about that kind of content that that old Nikki needs? When you're, you're thinking about Creating your content.

So what, what's crazy? I have this, this ritual that every day I, I journal, right? And so when, when I journal, I go with, with three things. I go three things that I'm proud of, three things, things that I'm learning and things that are just on my mind that I'm like, I still want to know more about, right. In these conversations, there's something that is a desire or want or a struggle that my audience has because I'm. No, I'm not really too different because for me, how I look at myself, it's. Other people may look at it like, oh, Nikki is an expert at this and that. And I'm like, I'm a student of the game. I'm still trying to learn. I'm just doing things without the care of failing or how I look, right? So in this journal thing, then I'm going into to AI and being like, hey, can you break this down into different content ideas based off of my audience? Right? So it takes my day of, like, regular smegular day, like, not specifically speaking about content ideas or business ideas, like just speaking, and it breaks it all the way down into what my audience may need, what I could write about different ideas. So I'm, I'm taking that and then I'm applying it to my day of. Okay, Is this a YouTube video? Is this, you know, a written post? Is this a short. What are we creating? How do I feel today? Because I'm big on. You gotta work in your natural. Not really force yourself to create content. Just work in your natural. If today you don't feel like recording, then write it. At least take a screenshot of it, put it as a picture. There's your visual side of things. So that's kind of how, on a practical side, that I'll come up with these ideas on a regular basis.

Okay, so two things that came out of that that I want to talk about. One is you said something about, like, not caring about what people think about you and, like, not caring, like, how'd you get there? Like. Because that feels like a massive block for people. That's like, man. But I actually, Nikki, if I'm just being real, I actually care a lot about what people think about me.

Yeah.

And, like, like, this is a big blocker. How do you, like, get in that mindset of, like, all right, like, let's go. I'm gonna do this. Even though I, I, I care a lot about what people think about me.

Yes. So first you gotta humble yourself, right? When we start, we we swear that we have, like, celebrity problems. Once we start posting, like, all these trolls are gonna come and all the negativity is going to come in. If in the beginning, if they don't like us, they continue to scroll, we don't necessarily see the feedback, right? We then start getting in our head. So the low numbers mean they don't like me, right? We make up the different scenarios where there's nothing in a rule book, law book, nothing that says, hey, these numbers mean you suck. That doesn't. There's nowhere in there, right? So the, the biggest thing isn't necessarily what people think. It's what we think. We're our biggest critics. And it's, It's a. It's a deeper work of, like, how do I move myself aside to be like, okay, I could post this, right? The great thing about social media is, like, we could post it. Run away, like, Outpost. I'll be like, okay, I'm out for like, a couple of minutes.