People spend on average about 43.56% of their time writing or thinking about writing for their business.
Okay, I made that up. But I had you going for a second, didn’t I?
Honestly, I’ve dropped the stat with clients before, and they haven’t batted an eye. They’ve kind of nodded along and wallowed just a little, because it feels kind of true, right?
Like, we spend so much freaking time thinking about the words we need for this whole business game—between website copy, social media, client experience stuff, emails, proposals, guides… if you’re a service provider, so many of us have guides of some kind. Blog posts. If you’re into the launch game, launch copy. It’s endless.
And to those same clients, I also always say: that’s the gift and the curse of it—that you’re never going to run out of opportunities to use words on the internet.
So I know it can feel endless. Like, you’re thinking about the post you haven’t written. Or you reread the one you did but haven’t published yet for the 1200th time. You’re thinking about the website page you haven’t updated yet, or you screenshot something someone else said because maybe you’ll remix it later. Put your own take on it.
You put it in that Instagram save folder or into the swipe file on your phone. You open that notes app and then you close that notes app. And then you consider going on a hiatus from all the word things because, my God, it’s too much.
You wonder if you should redo your website or when you’ll redo your website. You wonder if your business is going to crumble if you just stop showing up for a few days. Because again—it’s too much.
I get it, dude. So many times I also find myself in this spiral. So I’m certainly not saying this from a place of someone who’s overcome this feeling of pressure and overwhelm.
So many times, I myself will open Instagram. Close Instagram. Open it again with the promise to myself that, “this is the day I’m going to post.” But when you’re not feeling it, it can feel infinitely hard.
So instead, I’ll go make a snack and a coffee and procrastinate with client work or something of the like.
But your words for your business should be a source of fun and excitement. And not everything’s going to be fun and exciting all the time, but writing—or creating, in whatever way works for you—for your brand or business, especially when you’re a personal brand or a small business owner, has the potential to be such a wonderful and—sounds cheesy, but—beautiful creative outlet.
It is such an amazing opportunity to get your unique experiences and perspectives and thoughts and brainwaves down on paper—or in a Reel, or whatever—for other humans to connect with.
Like, I don’t say this from a woo place, but there is something very magical about that. And that I really love.
What really holds us back from doing that is this feeling like… like we’re doing it wrong. Or like we’re not doing enough. Or like we should be doing it more, or differently, or… what’s the point? ’Cause there’s so many people on the internet.
But I think it’s really important to remember that just because you’re feeling a little overwhelmed by all of this right now—and that’s been keeping you from creating and writing for your business—relatable. Doesn’t mean you’re lazy. It doesn’t mean you’re disorganized. Or like you’re bad at marketing. Or bad at content. Or you’re not disciplined enough. Or any of that crap.
It just means you’re holding on a little too tightly.
And you’re letting that fear of doing it in the wrong way, potentially, hold you back from doing it at all.
It just feels like the stakes are too high.
And like, we just need to give ourselves a little bit more room to breathe. And also to trust that little voice in your head.
Again, this isn’t woo. Or maybe it is a little woo, and that’s okay too.
I recently watched a documentary about songwriters, and so many of them talked about how they’ve been asked: “How do you write a perfect song?”
And all of these people have written Grammy-winning songs we’ve all listened to. And not a single one of them was able to tell you exactly how they came up with that winning song idea. Or what makes the perfect song.
So many of them said: “That idea popped into my head one day and I just… I kind of just rolled with it.”
Now, they’ve had years of practice, of course. So writing a song is easier for them than it would be for you or me to have an idea. So of course there’s skill involved.
Me turning an idea into a story, of course, is going to take less time than maybe you—if you’ve never written a story before.
But it starts with giving yourself permission to not grip those words so tightly.
And to not feel like every single one needs to make you money or ring perfectly true with every person in your audience.
Again, it comes back to that gift and the curse: there are endless opportunities—and will be endless opportunities—for you to write and create for your business.
So I want you to—it’s easier said than done, I 100% can recognize this—but I really want you to consciously ask yourself:
“In what ways am I holding on too tightly to the things that I’m saying on the internet?”
Of course we want to do everything with integrity and be good human beings.
But where am I holding myself back from just saying the thing I feel like saying?
Because, dude—“because I felt like it” is 100% a valid fucking reason to put something on the internet for your brand.
So I want you to ask yourself:
Where are the places that I’m holding back?
Because I think the thing has to sound smart, but also approachable, but also reflect this personality that Steph is telling me I am, but should really hint at my offer, but, like, don’t be too salesy, and like be helpful, but don’t be generic…
All of these swings that we put ourselves through—rather than just allowing ourselves to express.
To trust ourselves. And to express ourselves.
Just because “expression” is being used in the sentence doesn’t mean it’s not also strategic.
Brand. Marketing. All the jargony words. They get to also coexist with words like expression. And art. And magical, in my opinion.
If you want to be in this for the long haul—in the sustainable content creation haul, in the sustainable marketing haul—you have to do things and ground things in what feels good and works for you.
And more often than not, not everybody’s going to work in a world where—even if you like structure, even if you like a content plan—that content plan’s going to work for you all the time.
That’s just not how this fucking works, dude.
Life changes. Seasons happen. Your brain changes.
If you are hyper-creative, then a structure actually feels like the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.
She raises her hand.
I cannot follow a plan.
So I’ve had to release this idea that there is a specific checklist of words that I need to write.
And when I release that pressure—that there’s specific… and this comes back all the time, like I said, I’m talking about someone going through it, not over it…
But that percentage of time I spend thinking about writing words for my business is released when I realize that it’s never going to end.
So we can stop thinking about it all the time and just recognize: that was our baseline.
What is a bare minimum amount that I can create for my business and still feel good about?
And every quarter or whatever—I don’t really work on a scheduled timeframe—but it usually works out to every few months, I’ll sit down and ask myself:
“What feels good this week, even? Or this month?”
And for me, right now—as of this podcast being created—a lot of my creative energy is going to re-establishing the foundations of my own business. Creating a podcast. Rewriting my website copy. Reforming client experiences.
So that means Instagram stories? I feel proud of myself if I post one story a day.
It’s an activity I’ve really enjoyed doing in most seasons. But I have to release the pressure somewhere, right dude?
And I say “right” because… it is right.
Seriously, like—I want you to take a deep breath right now. Let’s do it together.
If you’ve been thinking about all the words you haven’t written yet—all the time—all that’s going to do is keep you stuck in the overwhelmed feeling of all the things you have yet to do.
And it’ll keep you from doing anything.
So I want you to just remember:
These are just words on the internet.
These are just words on the internet.
This isn’t life or death.
You’re gonna create what you need to create in the time that you need to create them.
You’re allowed to write something or say something just because you felt like it.
You’re allowed—in fact, are at the moment being encouraged—to play with your words.
You’re allowed to create things just because you think it would be cool. Or your dreamy people might think it’s cool too. Or because you had the idea pop into your head and thought:
“Why not?”
Like, “I wonder what that would be like—to create that thing.”
Your words are powerful. Your voice matters.
But let’s just, like, zoom out for a second and stop being so hyperfocused on developing the perfect voice or the perfect messaging.
Let’s really zone in on the mindset behind this pressure we put on ourselves—to create for our businesses and the way that we create it.
The amount of time we spend thinking about it. And ideating. And being out in the world and thinking, “Oh, this would be a great story. I should create content around this.”
I love those poppy ideas—but don’t make them your whole life.
You’re not going to ruin your business because a sentence wasn’t perfect.
No one is going to banish you to the depths of will-never-buy-from-you-again hell because of this, you bitch.
Like, if you change up your Insta bio on a whim and then change it back? Okay?
No one’s thinking about you that much. I’m sorry to tell you. That’s another curse.
Sustainable storytelling is the benchmark.
So let’s take the pressure off any one thing crushing—and recognize that the more you play, and the more you experiment, and the more you create from a place of foundational fun, the easier it’s going to get.
And the more fun it’s going to get.
And the more you’ll be able to kind of, like, drown your self-doubt in these shots of what I call—anyway—shots of “fuck it, good enough.”
Because again—back to that curse of: there’s endless amounts of opportunities to create for the internet.
And if we go all perfectionistic on every single thing we want to put out—because we’re worried, for all the numerous reasons we can be worried about these things—we’ll never create anything.
And you never know what’s going to be the thing that’s going to click for somebody.
So I want you to try things. Let them break if they need to.
It’s cool if you hate something you created last week. Just create a new thing.
Like, absolutely no one around here knows what the fuck they’re doing.
They love to make you feel otherwise, but we are all just figuring it out as we go and have absolutely no clue—with 100% certainty—what’s gonna land and what’s not.
This is why I always start—and why we started the first few episodes of this podcast—around how brand voice work shows up in your life already.
And building that brand personality. And that world around your brand.
Because when you do—and the core messaging pillars, so your core points of view and perspectives, like what are the beliefs that you’re grounded in in your business…
Because for this whole business writing thing to work in the long run, you need to be willing and able to just like have fun with all of this.
To get wildly creative in whatever way that looks for you.
And to, like, give yourself permission—or to find the guts, ’cause it is, it takes guts—to put something out there in a way that you haven’t seen before.
Or just because you felt like it.
Because people don’t go scrolling looking for, like, thought leadership, alright?
Nobody’s out here being like, “I really need some thought leadership today.”
Okay?
They go on a scroll looking for something original. Or something interesting. Or something resonant.
Something they connect with.
I want you to think about your saved Instagram folder.
The stuff that’s in my save folder are things that I was like, “Wow. I really need this reminder every once in a while.”
Or it was content I thought was cool.
It’s never because I’m thinking, “Wow, what an expert. I’m so glad they worded that in that perfect sentence with that great headline.”
I can never in a million years tell you what the headline was of a caption.
I could tell you maybe what the caption was about—if it resonated with me.
So it all starts with giving yourself permission to pursue those ideas.
And then you can edit in the cool headline later—if you need to, or want to.
It all starts with these foundations, dude.
With you building that self-trust. And the trust in your expression. And the trust in your ideas. And the trust in your voice. And your personality. And your messaging.
And you can build the frameworks and the strategy in from there, alright?
And we’re going to talk way more about that in the next episode too.
And I know—it’s easy for me to say all this. Even if you know that the pressure is fake, and that you don’t have to post everything to be perfect or whatever, it’s still hard.
I’m 100% with you. I get it.
So this is where we practice. Like everything else. We need to build it as a muscle.
When I first started my business, I was living in this bumfuck town in the middle of Northern Canada. The only other career I had ever had was as a bartender, working in the service industry—did it over a decade.
And now I found myself with a… I was a student at the time, in book publishing. Had finally started pursuing my word-nerdy career. Did not think it would be in this direction—but anywho, story for another time.
But I found myself in this place. And I got to decide.
I had nothing else to do. Nowhere else to be. Literally, there was a grocery store.
Came back with five dogs. The call to the wild was real.
And I made a choice. I was going to finally put my thoughts on the internet. And I had one rule:
If I wrote the thing, I posted the thing.
And that was the muscle I committed to building. Putting my thoughts on the internet.
They were not dramatic in any way. They were not political or hot takes. I do not do hot takes anyways—different conversation.
But it was vulnerable all the same. And it is.
But now, I could not be more grateful for the fact that that’s where I started. That I built up that muscle. And that that’s where I found myself.
So I want you to think about this as a muscle. That loosening the grip on your words—or whatever connects more with you (those are words that have connected with me, because I can visually imagine myself loosening the grip)…
I want you to practice it.
Try the thing. Write the thought. Post the post.
Without worrying about strategically where this fits into a fucking perfect content plan, or how it’ll get you clients, or any of that.
Maybe even you used to do this, and now you’re reconnecting back to it.
I’ve certainly gone through cycles where I’ll enter into—I’ll follow too many marketing bros or something—and I’ll enter into a cycle of over-fixating on this.
But you can tweak it next time. You can try something different tomorrow.
This is how voices and messaging systems get built.
This isn’t—again, kind of like the brand world exercise—it can feel fluffy. It’s not fluffy.
Voices and messaging systems are not built by you sitting at a Google Doc and filling out a workbook and coming up with this perfect system.
They’re built a little at a time.
They’re built by you unearthing them. And by you putting in the reps.
By you deciding, like, looking back at your content and thinking, “Wow. I still really resonate with this.”
That’s a messaging pillar, probably.
But you wouldn’t know that unless you had created that from that place. I can guarantee you wrote that thing from a place that you felt very connected to—which is why you still feel connected to it.
So this is strategy too, okay? If that makes you feel better.
You’re going to build your voice by using it.
You’re going to build your messaging by discovering it.
And by allowing yourself to practice communicating it in different ways.
Or—that’s at least how I’ve built it. And how I think it’s the most effective.
And that’s why, whenever I work with clients, the guides that I build for them are the baseline.
The messaging pillars are things that I want them to internalize—and then go out and practice.
They’re never scripted.
I’m never writing them a script of, “When you talk about this, you say this.”
No.
I tell them: “This is what this pillar means. This is why it matters. Here are angles as examples of how you could communicate this in your content.”
Go have fun.
The opportunities are endless.
Some of your weirdest ideas might be the ones that people remember—or need to hear—right now.
Some of the best posts you’re ever going to write are going to be the ones that you wrote on the fly. Half asleep. Half bored. Just, like, following the feeling of that weird-ass idea.
And even if they don’t resonate with it, or you don’t get a bunch of saves—that doesn’t mean they’re a waste.
The amount of times I’ve received DMs from people months later who saved my emails so that they could read them when they had more brain space—and thank me for how much they resonated…
All those months—I can’t help but think of all those months I spent being like, “Oh. Nobody has responded to this email. They must not have liked it.”
No.
People—I want you to think of your own behaviors when it comes to content.
How many emails do you love and respond to?
How many posts do you love? Save? Even don’t save—but love? It changes your day, and you don’t comment. You just click that like button and move on.
This is how you learn to trust your voice, dude.
Above the likes and the clicks and the replies.
’Cause this is a data point too.
We talked about in the brand world episode how the things that inspire your voice and personality are a creative direction—and that’s a data set.
This is also a data point.
The ideas that inspire you. The ideas and angles that keep coming up again in your brain—just from a place of inspiration and enthusiasm—is also a data point.
People talk a lot about the likes and the clicks and all of that being your data set. Your data points.
And of course—we build up to that.
But until you feel good about the things you’re writing about and putting on the internet, it’s only going to stifle you to focus on those other bits. Okay?
Talking from experience here.
I just… no. I cannot.
So above all else, remember: the internet is moving way, way fast. Nobody’s watching as closely as you think they are.
I just really want you to go out there, my dude.
So practice. No notes to add to your little notebook folder that we’ve started putting together.
This episode? All I want you to do is consciously loosen that grip on the words.
Just that.
And we’ll keep going from there.
