Reading time: 5 minutes
Hey legend,
Growing up, I used to think that “freedom” meant having an abundance of options for your life.
Since then, my definition has changed.
A lot.
Because I now realise that having endless options or choices to make is a…
NIGHTMARE 🤦🏽♂️
Here’s why.
Analysis Paralysis is the psychological discomfort we experience from having too much information and being unable to commit to a single choice or direction due to the fear of making the “wrong” choice or forgoing a better outcome.
And it’s a silent epidemic that’s infecting anyone with access to the internet.
Constant pings & dings from your apps competing for your limited attention.
Newsfeeds saturated with conflicting advice from self-appointed gurus.
Endless channels, podcasts or shows to binge.
It’s crippling us all with indecision.
And as a result, we’re becoming less effective at leading ourselves and those around us.
We delay, procrastinate or avoid making crucial decisions that will propel our lives forward because we’ve been subconsciously conditioned to believe that the grass is always greener.
Or as Michael Lim, a prolific Medium writer (and current member of our Storyteller Sprints) shared in his latest newsletter when summarising his key takeaways from Meg Jay’s book 🔗The Defining Decade:
“Delaying a decision is not the same as making a better decision”
– Michael Lim
How many times have you looked back at crossroad decisions in your life and realised you should’ve just made a decision sooner?
Imagine this:
Person A takes 1 month to stall on a decision relating to their business or career.
Person B takes 1 day to make the most informed decision they can, on the same decision as Person A.
🤔 Where do you think they’ll both be at the end of the month?
Because even if Person B makes a decision that doesn’t immediately lead them in the right direction they’ve now got real-world feedback and can make an even better decision to correct course faster than Person A.
Meanwhile, Person A is still researching and delaying (procrastinating) taking action by hypothesising what they believe will happen.
Person B has results and feedback; whereas
Person A has nothing.
On Social Media
With the recent launch of the Threads app, Instagram’s response to Twitter, you might be feeling like this:
- Should I double-down on Threads now?
- But what about my audience on TikTok?
- I heard that YouTube Podcasts are blowing up!
- Should I repurpose my Instagram Reels across multiple platforms?
Take a deep breath my friend
💨💨💨💨💨
Feeling better? Great. Remember this:
Scattered Focus = Scattered Results
If you’re just getting started as a solopreneur (one-person business), you only have so much bandwidth with what you can focus on.
The most successful business owners and creators commonly attribute their disciplined focus on ONE platform or product that led to their breakthrough, which enabled them to later diversify their focus (due to having more resources/a team around them).
Serial entrepreneur Alex Hormozi shared in an interview:
“My biggest explosion happened in my entrepreneurial journey when I went from having 9 businesses at the same time (everything was always on fire) to one.
When Leila (Alex’s partner) came in, she was just like ‘If we just did one thing, I think we would win’So the trait I was missing at that point was focus and discipline…I couldn’t say no”
– Alex Hormozi
So until we “cut” or “kill” off non-essential commitments, we won’t make any meaningful progress in a single direction.
Here’s the process that I walk my students and clients thoughts to drastically simplify their brand’s content creation process that I wish I had when I was first getting started.
☝🏽 Pick 1 Audience
Focus on serving one type of person.
The worst thing you can do is try to make content or grow a brand that pleases everyone. You’ll just exhaust yourself and become resentful in the process.
Because you’ll be moderating, generalising or washing down your authenticity so much that you’ll become a “vanilla” brand in a sea of unique flavours.
Instead, you want to be the equivalent of a:
- Pistachio
- Hazelnut
- Dulce de leche
- Salted Caramel; or
- Any iconic ice-cream flavour
Because these are polarising.
People either obsess about them or obsess about their distaste of them.
You want someone to land on your brand, business or product and subconsciously say:
F*CK YES…or no.
You don’t want a maybe.
I’m not sure if this is a formally recognised law, but heck, Mark Manson owns it:
☝🏽 Pick 1 Format
Focus on learning, conquering and mastering one content format first.
Given there’s a learning curve for every content format, don’t make it unnecessarily harder on yourself by trying to simultaneously master multiple formats.
Just pick the one format that most aligns with your natural strengths
- Great at public speaking, presenting & storytelling? Pick video
- Great at exploring topics through conversation? Pick podcasting
- Great at expressing your thoughts through writing format? Pick writing
- Great at doodling, drawing & visually representing information? Pick graphics
Loes (@linesbyloes) integrated her natural strengths as a designer to start communicating with more impact to her colleagues and clients as a consultant.
She started to have a lot of interest from others wanting to learn her method for visual thinking, which she now teaches through workshops & training.
☝🏽 Pick 1 Platform
Focus on publishing content to one platform.
Pick the platform that primarily favours your content format.
If you’re unsure which to commit to, you can consider:
- Which one are you most familiar with as a user/consumer of content? or
- Which one do you already have the largest audience of followers that you can build on?
Now like a horse with blinders on…ignore, delete or deactivate all other platforms (for now) so you can become relentlessly consistent and master that platform.
☝🏽 Pick 1 Message
Focus on one overarching message for your brand (and stick to it).
Creativity comes from constraint.
It comes from finding 1000 different ways to say the same thing.
Whether your message surrounds a single:
- philosophy
- technique
- product
- process
- method
- belief
…around helping your audience bridge the gap between where they are (problem) and where they want to be (solution), you want to position yourself as the go-to person for doing that.
You want the message associated with your brand to become “quotable” in the minds of your audience because…
So in summary, to make meaningful progress with your content:
- Pick 1 Audience: Serve 1 type of person that’ll say F*CK yes when they see your brand
- Pick 1 Format: Focus on the format that comes most naturally to you
- Pick 1 Platform: Choose the platform you’re most familiar with, or have the largest audience on
- Pick 1 Message: Say the same thing, 1000 different ways.
And if you’ve already conquered one format/platform and are ready to branch out to another one, I highly recommend CWC 014: Let’s Build Your Funnel to help you align all of your content into a cohesive strategy for your brand.
See you in the next one legend,
🕺🏽 Mamba