Afraid To Post Content? Let's Fix That.

Welcome to Q and A Wednesday, where I answer a real question about starting, growing, and scaling your business. Today's question comes from Sherry, and Sherry asks, how do I get the confidence to create and share content? Every creator, every business owner, every entrepreneur, including myself, has felt that fear of hitting publish, of putting that video out there. So I'm going to show you how to build that unstoppable confidence so you can create and share your work real quick. If these episodes help you in any way, hit subscribe. It helps us keep bringing you practical business insights three times a week for free. Thanks. Let's start with the truth that most people want to hear. Confidence doesn't come before action. It comes after it. You don't wake up one morning magically feeling confident. Confidence is built by doing, not by thinking. Think about anything that you're even semi confident about. You're confident because you've done it over and over again. A good example is driving. Think about learning how to drive. You were nervous the first few times behind the wheel, but after a few hundred times, you built confidence. Your confidence became automatic. You can now drive and listen to music and talk to somebody and even eat some fries or drink a coffee, right? The point here is that that didn't just manifest itself from one day to the next. You built that confidence of driving because you drove so much. And creating content works the same way. You don't get confident so you can post. You post so you can get confident. And that's great news because it means you don't have to wait to feel ready. You can just get started. Let's dig deep and really answer the question. Why are we afraid to post this content? Create this content, put it out there in the world. The biggest reason, in my opinion, is not about time or skill. It's about the fear of judgment. We ask questions like, what will people think? What if I sound stupid? What if no one likes it or watches it or, you know, hits that, like, button, whatever it might be. The truth is, is that no one's paying as much attention as you think because you're just starting out. Everyone's too busy thinking about themselves and what's in it for them. So that's really something you need to focus on how you can add the most value and make it beneficial to other people. They're not really thinking about you and how confident you look. And honestly, the few people who will judge harshly, they don't pay your bills, right? You don't need them anyway. Okay, Every successful creator that I know and admire and that you admire with massive followings. They started with zero confidence and zero audience and zero followers and zero email list subscribers and zero dollars. The only difference is they hit publish anyway when they weren't confident. Let me share a little honest story. One time I was driving in my car and for some reason my media player, my radio looped the playl and played the first episode of this podcast, $100 NBA show that published on, I believe August 11th of 2014. This is over 11 years ago and I couldn't find the pause button fast enough. It was so painful for me to listen to. I was, you know, scrambling to just stop this, right? And honest truth is like I can't listen to the first a hundred episodes of this podcast because it's cringe worthy for me, right? But I'm glad I did it because those reps allowed me to get better and better. And if I don't have cringe worthy work, it really means I started to too late. It also means if I don't have cringeworthy work, that I wasn't progressing, I wasn't getting better. So it's good to know that in comparison to what I believe I'm creating now, it's cringeworthy. So it's okay. You gotta get started before you're ready. It's okay. And the beauty of this whole situation is that your audience is small in the beginning. So not a lot of people are listening, a lot of people are watching, not people are reading your posts. So therefore the embarrassment or, you know, the uncomfortable feelings is not at a large magnitude with all the reps you're going to put in in the days and years to come. And as you start building your audience, you start to grow, as your audience grow and grows, and that way your content gets better and better. The fastest way to gain confidence is to shift your focus when you're creating the content about the audience and not yourself. When you're just thinking about yourself, you're really saying, I'm the most important thing here. What will people think about me? You're making the content about you. It's not about you. When you think, how can I help somebody today? How can I make their life a little bit better? You make it about them. And confidence comes when you're in service mode, when you're really trying to serve your audience. So instead of thinking, is this perfect? Ask yourself, will this help someone take one step forward, one step closer to their goal? What I found is incredibly helpful when I'm creating content is I ask myself, would I Have found what I'm about to share to be helpful. When I was getting started, right, I put myself in the shoes of my audience member, of my listener, of my viewer. That's the bar. That is where you want to be when your intent is to serve. You stop performing and you start connecting with people. One of my favorite hacks when it comes to video content is try to shoot videos as if you're having a FaceTime conversation with somebody. If I was giving advice to somebody, a friend of mine, a family member, how would I speak to them? And this is what I would do, right? Right. I would present in a personal way, being myself and give examples that would be relatable to them. When I started the 100 nomination show, like I mentioned, I was nervous too. But I told myself, if this episode helps one person, it's worth it. So I hit record. Then another day, I hit record, Another day hit record and fast forward. Hundreds of millions of Downloads later. Literally 300 million downloads later. The truth is that I feel a little bit nervous before I hit record, even till today. But that means I care. That means that I want it to be great. And that's all right. I have more confidence for sure because I've done it so often and I've done it for so long. But I also lean on the fact that it's okay to be a little bit nervous. It's okay to be on your toes and want to deliver. So I want to give you a quick system to build confidence quickly. It's a practical system you can use right now, like this week to build confidence fast. Step one is to lower the stakes. You're not delivering a TED talk here, right? You're recording a 30 second second video, for example, or a short post or tweet. Keep it small and doable. Just put yourself out there. Step two, Set a schedule. Consistency builds confidence. Pick a certain day of the week or a few days a week to create and publish content. You could batch it so you're creating content for the whole week in one or two days and make it non negotiable like a debt you have to pay and actually put it in your calendar so you're reminded. Number three, use the 10 rep rule. Promise yourself you won't judge your content like watch it, look it, look at it, review it, until you created 10 pieces of that content. The first 10 are just practice. And practice has to be real practice where you create and you put it out in the world, you share it with the world. No one critiques their first 10 workouts right at the gym. Why are we doing this with our content? Don't worry about it, okay? Just put it out there. Success is publishing. Step 4 Build a feedback loop. Ask your audience one question. Was this helpful? That's all you really need. Ask them at the end of your video or in your post. Was this post helpful? If so, how so? So you can learn what to double down on and what to do better. And of course, what resonates with your audience. And Step five Celebrate your effort, not the outcome. You can't control the views, you can't control the likes, but you can control consistency. Reward yourself for publishing, for being out there, for sticking to your publishing schedule and not the amount of views or likes you get because you can't control that, especially at the start. Do this program I just shared with you for 30 days and you won't need to find confidence. You will have earned it over those 30 days. So Sheri and everybody who's listening, how do you get confident to create and share content? You don't wait for it. You build it yourself. Confidence is the reward for taking action and not the prerequisite. You want to serve. Don't perform, okay? Don't try to, you know, tap dance for people here. What you're trying to do here is really connect with people. Like a FaceTime call you want to post. You don't want perfection here. You just want to share with the world. And remember, if you're nervous, that means you care. It's okay if you show up with that intent to help, you really can't lose. Thanks for the awesome question, Sherry. If you have a question you want to ask here on Q and A Wednesday, make sure you ask it by just submitting it over@100mba.net Q and we'll answer it right here on the show. And if you want to continue to learn from me, then you need to check out our three Things newsletter. It's absolutely free. I send you an email every single week with three things. Something to think about, something to learn, and something to do. So you're scaling up week after week. It takes 5 minutes to consume and over 800 people have signed up just last week. Just go to 100- MBA-NET NEWSLETTER before I go, I want to leave you with this. Confidence is one of those things that builds over time. You can't rush it. You have to be patient and understand that you're never going to be 100% confident. Okay? You're just going to be more confident than yesterday. So be patient with yourself and make sure that you do so you can build that confidence. I'll see you in the next episode.