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Hey legend,
You’re feeling stuck on your creative journey, right?
Like me and the hundreds of creative professionals I’ve helped, you currently find that your progress has plateaued, and you’re unclear about your major roadblock or how to overcome it.
From spending thousands of hours studying the trajectory of history’s greatest creatives and artists, I’ve bottled the journey into the 3 key stages.
This guide will help you identify which stage you’re currently in, what your biggest roadblock is and how to overcome it.
Ready to level up? `
Let’s go!
💥💪🏽💯 Stage 1: Starter
You’ll find yourself stuck in this stage if any of these sounds like you:
- You’ve never created and posted content online
- You have posted content before, but you’re inconsistent AF
- You stay stuck researching, learning or hoping for “things to fall into place.”
🛑 Your roadblock is:
You procrastinate creating because you disguise it as your need for perfectionism.
As a result, it cripples you from starting (or improving) because you’re always waiting for the right circumstances, inspiration, equipment, niche or any other nonsense excuse.
“Amateurs wait for the right circumstances,
Professionals make any circumstances right for them.”
– Mamba
🟢 To overcome this roadblock:
You need to set up a non-negotiable commitment to an immersive period of high-volume output:
- 100 tweets
- 100 reels
- 100 podcasts
- 100 newsletters
- 100 stories; or
- 100 pieces of whatever content you need to get good at creating!
Your sole focus in this stage is to build the habit of consistency and the muscle of creating.
Forget quality (for now).
Plus, quality only comes from quantity.
Lots of it.
For those familiar with James Clear, you may recall this story from Atomic Habits about the importance of clocking a lot of repetitions when getting started in any new habit or skillsets.
Plus, no one will see your first 100 pieces of content because your account won’t have many followers 😅 So this is the best time to get your worst work out of the way as soon as possible.
Only move on from this stage once you’ve shared or published (at least) 100 creations.
There’s another reason why I suggest 100, and that’ll come into play for Stage 2 (hint: more data)
Alice Burrows, a Melbourne-based tech professional (also from our Storyteller Sprint community) set herself a challenge to publish 100 TikTok videos during lockdown that she coined #100DaysNewMe
And she did it.
Did she go viral? Nope
Did she earn millions in pa$$ive income? Nope
Did she get better at making TikTok content across those 100 posts? 100%, YOU BET SHE DID. She overcame the roadblock of getting started with absolute flying colours, moving out of Stage 1 and onto the next one.
📊🤔⚙️ Stage 2: Strategist
You’ll find yourself stuck in this stage if any of these sounds like you:
- You’re making content consistently, and you’ve had some successes…but you’re unsure why
- You don’t understand why some content outperforms others even if your efforts are the same
- You’re annoyed that you’re wasting time doing repetitive tasks for each piece of content
🛑 Your roadblock is
You don’t have a repeatable system to help you consistently re-create your winning content.
In Stage 1, the focus was solely on quantity (and ignoring quality or vanity metrics), but now that you have 100 pieces of content…you also have 100 separate pieces of data on what works and what doesn’t work.
🟢 To overcome this roadblock:
Look at your data.
And use it.
Every content platform has its own version of an”Analytics Dashboard” helping you identify trends in the data that show which content topics, formats or styles resonate most with your audience.
Your sole focus in this stage is to double down on the content type outperforming all others and then create a system to replicate that success.
“We don’t rise to the level of our goals. We fall to the level of our systems.”
– James Clear
Systems are the reason why you can get the same quality Big Mac at McDonald’s stores across the world…by stores that teenagers are running.
Remove as much friction from your content creation process by making it as easy for you to do by creating:
- Workspaces that are dedicated to creating content to save time from setting up equipment
- Templates for documents, thumbnails or videos when it comes to creating new content
- Checklists that cover sequential and repetitive tasks to save your cognitive energy
- Processes that you carry out before you create content to re-engineer success
Paolo Garde, a Sydney-based tech professional (also from our Storyteller Sprint community), has a YouTube channel where he shares videos on a range of personal interests, including minimalism, tech and self-improvement.
During the last few Sprints, he noticed that in his YouTube analytics dashboard that videos related to the topic of barefoot shoes were beginning to outperform his other YouTube videos across various metrics.
So he doubled down on this niche by researching high-performing ideas and creating optimised thumbnails and title combinations…all before he’d start filming a video.
That way, his system was engineered to re-create his previous successes with this niche. And it’s paying off:
Since then, he’s also launched a blog, organically grown a following on his @thebarefootshoenerd Instagram account and even received complimentary shoes from a barefoot shoe brand he’s personally using and enjoys promoting – how good!
⚠️ Important to note:
Paolo’s YouTube journey didn’t start by making videos on the barefoot shoes niche. He started making (a lot) of content for an audience that resembled him and the interests he wanted to explore.
When the data showed that videos he started making about his experience with barefoot shoes outperformed others, he leaned into the niche.
So remember to focus on your audience first, then let your niche find you.
Now that Paolo’s conquered Stage 2, it’s time to move onto the final stage.
🔀 🌿 ✨ Stage 3: Seasonal
You’ll find yourself stuck in this stage if any of these sounds like you:
- Your content is consistently performing well…but you’ve lost your passion for the niche
- You’ve become known as the “go-to” person for your niche, but you feel like an imposter
- You crave exploring different topics outside of your niche but fear losing followers or growth
🛑 Your roadblock is
You feel that you’ve become pigeonholed by your niche, audience or algorithm and can’t evolve your content.
This is a challenge that many experienced content creators face, as the content that helped them grow their brand and get through Stages 1 & 2 isn’t the content they want to make anymore.
“What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There”
– Marshall Goldsmith
You’re human.
And that means that your interests will evolve.
Eventually, you’ll want to explore new things as your shift into new “seasons” of your life.
So it only makes sense that your content should reflect that.
🟢 To overcome this roadblock:
Pause.
Reflect. Step back.
Reinvent yourself.
Listen to your intuition.
And do what you actually want to do.
Yes, it might be scary. But your #TrueFans will stay with you because they love you, not your niche.
Think about Madonna, David Bowie and even Kanye…they managed to re-invent themselves multiple times across their careers with each subsequent album release, reflecting their seasonal shifts as an artist.
Cindy Moon, a Sydney-based corporate professional (also from our Storyteller Sprint community), felt like she was boxed in by the TikTok algorithm around the style of content that had grown her following to +2k followers.
The style of content was “Day in the Life of a Corporate Worker“ videos and felt she was being penalised with low reach whenever she made videos outside of this style.
So after a lot of deliberation coupled with amazing support from our community, she finally felt the confidence to shift her content niche and style when she resigned from the corporate role she was vlogging about (i.e. a shift in her life season).
Since then, she has focused on more personal topics she was passionate about, including how she overcomes her challenges with ADHD and mental health while pursuing a more fulfilling full-time role and sharing updates with her TikTok community.
Not only has her audience of #TrueFans stayed with her, but she’s attracted even more raving followers after posting a TikTok video that went viral (and was inspired by a conversation during one of our Sprint Check-Ins!)
That is how you transcend Stage 3 and become Madonna.
Just joking.
But it is how you remain relevant and timeless.
Remember, nothing is permanent in this world.
Everything is constantly changing, so give yourself permission to evolve.
And yes – sometimes we just need to have support (or faith) and rip off the band-aid.
Your content should always be an extension of who you are and your future, not anchored to your past.
So the 3 stages of your creative journey and their roadblocks are:
- Starter: Letting perfectionism stop you from starting or improving. Make 100 pieces of content.
- Strategist: Not being focused on replicating your success. Use your data, and double down on what works.
- Seasonal: Boxed into a format, niche or platform. Reinvent yourself and evolve your content.
🕺🏽Mamba