How to Set Yourself Up for Endless Content Inspiration

INTRO: After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place. Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life. Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast. And here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive into today's topic [00:01:00] because I want to use it like a mini brainstorming session for you when it comes to your content and creating an ecosystem for you and your business that allows you to do it in a way that's really genuine in a way that you want to so that it can be fun and creative and that you're necessarily having to think your way To creating content or that you have to manufacture or engineer the content a certain way in order to be successful.

If you're in my world, my guess is, is that you love going against the grain. You might be a bit of a disruptor or a creative rebel. You definitely want the autonomy to do it in a way that is authentic to you. But that can be really difficult when there's a ton of noise out there saying that we need to do things a certain way.

Like you've got to be consistent and post at least five times a week on social in order to stay visible and relevant and top of [00:02:00] mind and all of those sorts of things. Or you need to email your list multiple times a week asking for a sale if you want to create consistent and predictable sales in your business or that you have to do these.

Big live launches and create a ton of hype with these really tight deadlines if you want to see the sales in your business that we know we see other people making and I know that you already know this is that there's so many different ways to create success in your business. There's so many different ways and methods that work.

It's just a matter of whether or not they work for you. And a big question I get asked when people are considering Spellbound is how and who are the most successful in Spellbound? And I get that question. I understand but I also don't necessarily align with that question a lot of ways [00:03:00] because your success is going to look very different than somebody else's.

And I think we get into the habit of comparing somebody else's success, right? We look and go, well, this person achieved this, and this is how and why they achieved it. So it's also possible for me. Instead of, instead of, Using our imagination and imagining what we want and believing that that imagination, that intuition that drops in, those nudges that are leading us towards something that we actually desire is possible for us.

even if we don't see it modeled. And so I want to use this episode as a brainstorming session, so to speak, where we're coming up with a variety of different ways that one You can create content for your business, you can create that ecosystem, but more importantly, you can sort of develop a creative process [00:04:00] that really works for you so that the content that you're putting out there, like I said, is fun and inspirational and you're not trying to manufacture it to get people to do something.

Unless, of course, that's what you want to do. And if that's what you want to do, that's totally cool. It is totally your choice. But I personally prefer to create content from a place of inspiration and a place of, you know, creativity and a place of not necessarily adding to the noise in the online space.

to it from a different perspective, a different way of looking from it, all of that. That's sort of what my intention is anytime that I'm creating content is how is this going to benefit a, the people that are going to come across it? Is there a benefit to it? Is there some sort of value that they'll walk away with?

Is there a perspective shift that will happen, which can be so valuable? And am I adding to [00:05:00] an already noisy space or am I adding, you know, again, a different perspective or a different way of looking at it or my own unique spin on it so that I'm not adding to the noise, for example, you know, how to attract more clients, you know, lots of us are saying that there's so many business owners out there saying that.

is the unique perspective that I bring to the table when it comes to client attraction, when it comes to sales, when it comes to marketing, when it comes to business, what are my own unique stories and are they different? And how are they different? And can I share more of that lived experience? And I want to share an amazing story with you because I have a client right now in Spellbound who's just seeing such epic results.

And I'm so, so celebrating her because when she originally came to work with me, She said in her own words that she felt like she was drifting in her business and she had gone months without really selling a lot and she was trying a bunch of different things [00:06:00] like lowering her price or adding a membership and she just felt like she was drifting.

That was the biggest thing and felt sort of very stuck and now the results that she's creating in her business are absolutely epic and she shared with me in a voice note. that last week she made 8K in sales. And one, the money wins are amazing. I like, obviously, when people are generating money in their business, absolutely.

But I also love the money wins below the surface. Like, what is it below the surface That is the really juicy piece here. And for me is, is that for the first time in her business, she's feeling a certain way about it. She's feeling really excited and motivated and that things are actually working in her favor now.

She said that it feels like the dominoes have kind of fallen, right? And now it's just like, they're just going and it's no stopping her in a lot of ways. But the thing that I said to her is why she's experiencing this [00:07:00] in a lot of ways is, is that she's in full alignment and embodiment to the message she's putting out there.

But more importantly, and as a result of that, the way in which she's articulating what she does is very, very unique from a lived experience perspective or a client perspective. Like it's not the cookie cutter framework type of content that we often see, right? Like how to generate a consistent sales in your business in the next 30 to 60 days or something like that.

I mean, we see those messages everywhere. She's taking her own unique lived experience and her client's experiences and her own framework that she takes people through and she's putting a story element to that in a lot of ways and so her content is unique. When you come across it, it isn't that standard Headline that we see like how to lose 50 pounds in 20 days or how to make 10k in 30 days or how to attract your next [00:08:00] five clients like that's not the messaging she's putting out there because she's not wanting to add into the sameness or blend in and that is a lot of what I, you know, mentor and guide people towards, but it's also how I live within my business.

And I didn't always do it this way. I'll be really honest with you. And I've, I've shared this story many times, but I spent 12 months posting five days a week, going live once a week, selling every single day, sending multiple emails to my list every week selling. And I sold one high ticket offer in a 12 month period.

And thank God I had my copywriting Business on the side there, or within the business, the primary revenue for the business was my one to one copywriting services. Thank God that was what I had in order to sustain me, because what I was [00:09:00] doing wasn't working, and It wasn't working because one, I was using brute force to sort of make it happen.

I was trying to think about what I had to write every day in order to get people to do something, right? Traditional direct response copywriting will teach you, you need to have a hook to grab people's attention. You need to then have the middle or body copy hold their attention. And then you have to have a call to action that gets them to do something.

And it's that framework that 99. 9 percent of people follow in a lot of ways and it's designed to get people to do something and I'm not saying that we don't necessarily want to use some of that. I'm just saying that if that is all we're thinking about doing in our content, one, I truly believe it. I feel like we're just adding to the noise out there, but I also feel there's, there's an inauthenticity or there's not a creative element to that because we're all fitting into the same framework.

And I did that for 12 months. [00:10:00] and it didn't work. Now, it might work for other people, but I'm such a creative person, and so I need to have that creative freedom in my business, and I have to have that creative freedom in anything that I'm building or creating, otherwise it kills the process for me.

Whereas direct response copy, for me, feels like an outcome driven thing. It's like, there's a outcome we want people to take when they read this. And for me, when I'm creating content, if I'm only thinking about the outcome, I've already killed all of my imagination. I've already killed all of my creativity.

And therefore, my posts often don't land because they don't have that same sort of feel and essence to it because it feels forced, manufactured, engineered. All those sorts of things. So I want to take this opportunity to sort of walk you through a little bit of an exercise that you can apply in your [00:11:00] own business, in your own life to really start to figure out what your creative process is, and then where you might be resisting that because of something so you were told or you heard or you believe, um, because really that for me is what killed my creative process.

I was giving away a lot of my own inner authority to sort of everybody else around me and what everybody else was saying. And I was doing it because I wanted to get it right. And I wanted it to be successful more than anything in the world. And so I put all of my faith in a lot of ways into outside mentors and guides.

And I wasn't, letting that run through my own internal compass. And again, I'm not saying this because I don't value my mentors or my guides. I absolutely do. And I always have a mentor or guide in my corner to support me, because I think it's really, really valuable to have somebody That can reflect back to you [00:12:00] what you might not be able to see and to support you, therefore, in moving quicker to be able to spot the resistance.

So for me, after 12 months of using sort of brute force and seeing very, uh, minimal results as a result of it, I started to question, Whether or not what my mentor had advised me to do worked for me. Not that it didn't work for other people, because it worked for her, and other people were seeing success with it, so it wasn't that it didn't work.

I think that's the other piece I want to really clarify, because I think we can get wrapped up in I invested in a thing, or I had a mentor tell me to do this and it didn't work and therefore they must be wrong. And the truth is they're not, they're just communicating and sharing and guiding based on their own experience in a lot of ways.

And it can be difficult for lots of mentors to be able to hold capacity and space for disruptors, creative rebels, people that go against the grade, and to be able to see that [00:13:00] The leading thing here for me is, is really supporting people and leading with their intuition and allowing them to follow that even if there isn't a clear how ironed out, right?

So that they get that drop, they get that seedling, they get that idea, and to be able to pursue it and take action, even though the outcome that they want isn't clear, right? They just go, I have an idea. I don't know why I'm pursuing this, but I feel really called to pursue it. And that for me is, again, a big part of the work that I do with my clients because it's so, so important, uh, in my opinion, for people to really step into their own authentic expression and to really create a sustainable business.

I don't believe that we can create sustainability in our business if we're going against that. Our Own Natural DNA and Blueprint. Can we create success? We [00:14:00] absolutely can. I've done it, but it's not sustainable because at some point we're going to hit burnout. We're going to get to a point of deep frustration, maybe apathy for what we've created and all of that.

And so I want to take this opportunity. To support you in really identifying your own creative process and then also identifying where you might have made parts of that creative, creative process wrong. And I'm going to do that by sharing sort of my process with you. I've never been somebody that can batch content.

for months and months in advance. It goes against literally my whole design. I'm very spontaneous in my creativity, meaning sometimes I can produce a ton of things and other times I don't have that same creative flow, so to speak. And I've learned to navigate that based on my own inner pulse, right? I get a pulse that's like, okay, it's go time.

I'm very spontaneous [00:15:00] you create and then it's like I go inside or inward and it's like there's a slowness, right? It's like seasons. And so for me, what I discovered when I was posting five days a week and going live once a week and sending multiple emails a week and all of those sorts of things was that I was completely going against my own inner blueprint that was like more seasonal.

And I think a lot of us are designed this way, to be honest, that we go through seasons in our business. Like for example, winter, right? A lot of times in winter months, we can feel the need to like hibernate and slow down and turn inward and all of that. And then in like spring and summer, we can feel like this creative push to create.

And yours, your seasons might look different. Mine, I've always sort of felt in the fall, I get a ton of creative downloads in the fall. Um, sometimes I get a lot of them in the spring and summer. So it just depends on your flow. I don't have a one size [00:16:00] fits all. It depends, I think, on the year as well, but I've never been able to really batch content or follow sort of that traditional content strategy.

So for me, I knew that I needed systems or some type of system in my business or machine or something that would do a lot of the heavy lifting for me. You know, like, in so that in the months that were like pauses or slow down or whatnot that I wasn't then not online or not you know visible. And so for me I don't rely on social media content and I don't rely on it because That to me is something that then I have to commit to doing five days a week or four days a week or whatever.

And it's not sort of where my energy flows, so to speak. And then when it comes to actually creating the content, I need to have the creative liberty to [00:17:00] write and communicate and share what it is that is on my heart in that moment. So. we are often told we need to have like a consistent message

I am somebody who could talk about a variety of different things. Therefore, trying to pigeonhole myself into like one specific topic or one specific thing just has never jived with me. And so I've always been like, I could talk about business and leadership, travel, life, food, creativity, you name it, TV shows.

I don't know. Like it's just adventure. There's so many things that I could. talk about endlessly. And therefore, if I try to pigeonhole myself into one thing, I become very stagnant. And I think that was the lesson I learned when I was posting five days a week, because it was very sort of robotic, but it was also very cookie cutter.

And it was like talking about the same [00:18:00] thing over and over and over again, which created exhaustion, frustration, stagnancy, depression, In me and in my business right we saw that in the results that I wasn't receiving and I was putting in a ton of effort and so you would think i'm putting in a ton of effort then therefore we should I should see the benefit of that and I just wasn't seeing that and so.

The reason why I posted five days a week was because, and sent all those emails, was because my mentor at the time was saying that that was what I needed to sort of do in order to be successful and to be visible. Like people needed to see me consistently over and over saying the same thing in different ways over and over.

The other thing is, is that when I, because I'm multi passionate and multi faceted, I've always had sort of this conditioning that I've carried with me is that when I'm doing a bunch of different things, it can come across as like scattered or all over the place or not [00:19:00] consistent. And so there was always that in the back of my mind that was like, I, I can't talk about different things because then people won't know what I stand for.

They won't know what my brand is. They'll get confused and all of these sorts of things. And that for me, you know, cause me to dilute my message in a lot of ways. So. When it comes to that creative process for me, when I, when we walk through this and sort of brainstorm, this is, I want you to sort of ask yourself, like, what actually feels genuine to you when it comes to your creative process?

Like, where do your ideas come from? How do they drop in? That sort of thing, because for me, whenever I have a creative block, it's usually because I'm trying to think about what I need to say and how I need to say it. When I just allow the ideas to sort of flow through me, is when I get into flow and I'm able to create, and then my posts and my content, tend to land a hell of a lot better.

So it's understanding where your [00:20:00] creative ideas come from and how they come through. Most of mine will come, usually when I'm not sitting at my desk trying to think about it. Like if I had to sit here today and be like, what am I going to talk about on the podcast? I would have recorded this a hundred times.

You know, I would have started, stop, started, stop. That's how I know when I'm not in frame. When I'm starting and stopping, starting and stopping, writing, deleting, writing, deleting, I'm not in flow. When I'm in flow, the words just flow. And so, but if I'm trying to come up with some sort of topic or idea to talk about, from that manufactured thinking brain perspective, I kill my creativity and nothing really kind of flows out of me.

This is my process. So my question for you is what is your process? Where do your ideas come from and what feels really genuine for you? And, and, and what comes alive for you in your body when you think about what you want to talk about and how you want to talk about it? And then the other question [00:21:00] is, if you could talk about something or a things in general, and you could talk about them endlessly and you'd have all of the energy in the world to talk about it.

What would those be? And are those congruent with what you're currently talking about? And it doesn't have to be one thing. Okay, because when I think about that question, I'm saying I could talk about travel, adventure, leadership, integrity, business, marketing, sales, copyrighted content, you name it. I've got a variety.

Photography, art, creativity, innovation. I mean, there's so many things that I could talk about with endless energy. And so it's not about saying, well, I have, I can only talk about one thing or I have to pick my favorite thing. Because for me, I can't answer those questions. Like, what's your favorite color?

I mean, I love a lot of them. And that's a manifesting generator thing in general. I think we love a lot of things. And then the other thing that I want you to consider is, is what does that process [00:22:00] look like for you? Is it linear? So for example, when you're sitting down and writing, or you're sitting down and recording something or whatnot, when the ideas come in, is it sort of linear?

Meaning, are you writing sort of in a linear way? Are you sitting down? Speaking in a Linear Way. What does that process look like? Because my creative process is more circular or non linear in that I can jump around from point to point, meaning sometimes I'll write the middle of the post before I write the start and the end.

Sometimes I'll write the whole thing and then I'll go back and change the end. Sometimes I'll start talking and then the conversation or the podcast episode will veer in a totally different direction based on what flows out of me. So my process is so not linear and maybe yours isn't either. Like maybe your creative process is a bit of hopping around.

Maybe your creative process is really quick. Maybe the idea comes quickly, you execute quickly, and it gets out there. Maybe your creative process is You get an idea, you need to let it [00:23:00] marinate for a while, and it takes a longer time to come to fruition, and no process is right or wrong, no process is better or worse than, and if we follow this pro, like our own blueprint, and we follow our own creative process, then I can almost guarantee you that what you put out into the world will be a hell of a lot more well received than if you're trying to manufacture and engineer it and think your way through a framework or think your way through a post or a podcast episode, like, I have to say this on this.

In order to get somebody to click the episode, to buy it, to watch it, whatever it is that you're putting out there. It's that genuine, authentic story, or share, or thought that kind of dropped in that you knew you needed to put into a quote or something. It's that. You know, it's interesting because I had a woman that I was [00:24:00] working with, a while ago, I was teaching in somebody else's community, and I may have shared this on another podcast, but I think it's really worth sharing, because this particular woman would hear songs, but she would be able to take the song, like, melody, and turn it into, like, poems almost, but poems to, like, promote her business.

And she was like, is this sort of like a normal thing? But she's like, it's just so effortless to me. And I'm like, Well, it might not seem normal to other people, but to me, it's so effortless to you, which means it is your process. And then when we looked into her human design, she had the one eight channel, which is from the G center to the throat, which a lot of like musicians and famous singers and different things like that have, it is like, an expression channel in a lot of ways, but I was like, it's no surprise that this is literally your gift.

Like, I don't even understand how you came up with it because I just don't get it, right? I'm just like, this is not [00:25:00] natural to me to take a song melody and be able to write a poem that has nothing to do with the song, but fits so well with what it is that you're selling and talking about. It was just so magical to watch.

And so that's what I would love for you to sit with and journal on, is like. What comes easy to me, what comes natural to me, is talking natural, is being in an interview setting natural, is writing long form natural, is being in one to one natural, is speaking in front of a group natural, like all of these sorts of things are leading and guiding you to your own creative process, your own authentic expression.

And it's Not from a place of like, well, how I don't understand. I don't know how to do it. Because when we sit there and go, I don't know how I don't know how I don't know how, again, we're cutting off that natural tendency to just follow and allow our intuition to lead us. We're cutting that off because [00:26:00] our ego is going, but I don't know how, or I don't, I just don't know how to do it, or I'm not good at this, right?

I'm not good at marketing. I hear that so often, and I often will say when, you know, When you do good marketing, you're speaking from the heart and it's genuine and authentic. To me, that's good marketing. And so I think when people say that to me, or I believe, or feel, or sense, is that they're not good at the way marketing is being taught.

They're not good at what they believe they need to do in order to market well, when in reality, marketing well is good. Literally speaking from the heart and showing up authentically in your marketing. So creating a message that is in alignment with your values, is in integrity with who you are, is this embodied message.

You're not trying to sell something that isn't in alignment with you. You're not trying to talk in a way that doesn't sound like you. [00:27:00] You're not showing up online in a way that isn't genuine to who and what you want to contribute to the world. And I saw that twofold in what I was doing. Posting five days a week, asking for a sale, and emailing multiple times a week, you know, sharing and asking for a sale, like, you'd think I would have made a hell of a lot more sales doing it that way.

And again, I'm not saying that it doesn't work for people, because it does, it absolutely does, but it doesn't work for me. And it doesn't work for me because, I am not here to just sell self by my thing, by my thing, by my thing. I'm here to have conversation and open up dialogue and create inspiration and come from a place of intentionality.

And that for me wasn't intentional. It was very robotic. It wasn't creative. I don't think it's very innovative. I don't think it's an innovative way to market or sell. And again, no judgment. I think those methods work for people. They just don't work for me. [00:28:00] And so there's no wonder why I wasn't seeing the results in return.

And yet I was putting in so much bloody effort. And so I'm going to leave you with those sorts of questions to start to really identify your creative process, because it's from that place that you will be able to really tune into your authentic expression and your voice. If we don't know what your creative process is, we'll have a hard time being able to identify what your authentic expression is, because Nine times out of ten, we'll be trying to fit it into a certain way of marketing, like posting five days a week, or following some script or template or whatnot, and what, what's going to sort of drive the show and lead the way is your process.

End. knowing what that is. And then from there, it can be like, well, this comes so naturally to me, you know, coming up with song lyrics or using a song melody to write content in a lot of ways. [00:29:00] And again, she wasn't using the music or anything like that, but it was just the way that the melody and the lyrics of that song were presented.

She was able to present that. you know, her own way of speaking through that. And that she said, I just hear music and then I hear what I want to say. And I'm like, run with that. And anytime she posted it, she would get like so much more engagement than when she just posted like something, you know, you know, more markety or more salesy, so to speak.

And to me, again, like I said, the best marketing, in my opinion, is heartfelt. It's genuine and it's authentic because truth and love to me are the highest frequencies. And it's a frequency. When we're speaking from a place of truth and we're speaking from a place of love and genuine care for the people that we want to connect with, you cannot dispute that frequency or energy that goes out.

People will feel it. They 100 percent will feel it. And that to me is what is [00:30:00] captivating. And that to me is what pulls people into what it is that you're doing. Even if, you know, it isn't crafted to the highest degree of direct response marketing or copywriting, right? Because your people aren't even actually like You know, assessing it from that perspective, they're assessing it based on how they feel.

It's that emotion that draws people in and has them taking action. And emotion will come from the frequency behind the language, the words, and that to me starts and ends with your creative process, because it's from that place that you're able to truly speak from that authentic expression that only you carry.

You're the one who carries that unique frequency. And when there's incongruency in that, because we're trying to conform or we're trying to fit into this homogenized approach, we lose the essence of your unique frequency. So I really hope that. The brainstorming, it's less [00:31:00] brainstorming, it's more of like a collective journaling and introspection and invitation to turn your gaze inward a little bit and to go, What is my process?

And therefore, what is, what comes really natural to me in terms of expression, even if it doesn't freaking make sense, like the music lyrics into content. Just trust it. I would love for you to trust it. And then I'd love to invite you to push the boundaries a little bit if you haven't already and you aren't already doing it, whatever drops in for you, I'd love for you to spontaneously share something that may or may not be on brand, that may or may not seem to seemingly fit into what you typically talk about.

I would love for you to tune into that body and go, what brings me alive? And then post that and see what happens. I would love to hear from you. When you do, try and test that out and you can DM me over at Creatively Owned. Cheers! Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also [00:32:00] find us on social media at creativelyowned and online at creativelyowned.

com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.