I never thought I’d learn such great advice from an event called GymCon – and I never thought it would put creator’s struggles into such sharp focus.
Do these three things in your head, right now.
- Think about where you are in your creator career.
- Think about where you want to be, think of your goal.
- Think about everything you can do to get there.
How do you feel? Take a minute if you need to.
This feeling is most likely the same feeling you have every time you think about your channels, growth, views, followers, the next video etc. You’re building a career and it’s stressful – and it’s okay to feel this way.
If you did the above and you’re feeling happy and hopefully, like you have everything figured out… first of all, I’m super jealous. Secondly, you can stop reading. Thirdly, still jealous.
For everyone else, you may be feeling a variation of the following. Anxiety and overwhelmed, or hopelessness and sadness.
That feeling is the key to understanding where you are and what you need to do next.
Let’s break it down into two parts.
Anxiety and feeling overwhelmed
If this is you, it’s because you can see so many different possible paths to reach your goal.
The problem is, which path do you take?
When answering the question above, you might have thought something like, “I know I can reach my goal if I: made more videos, maybe focus more on YouTube Shorts, maybe do some collabs, jump onto the right trend, spend more time editing, maybe starting a newsletter will help, I have this great idea that might…”
Which one is the right one? Is it all of them? Is it one of them? Is one going to make things worse? Will it even work? I only have so much time.
Anxiety, overwhelmed, paralyzing dread.
(this is me, by the way, and it’s a very real daily struggle)
Sadness and feeling hopeless
If this is you, it’s because you don’t know what to do to reach your goals.
It’s not that you have too many possibilities; it’s that you don’t even know what to do. You’re stuck, you’re lost.
When answering the questions above, you might have thought, “I want to reach this goal… but… I don’t even know where to start or what to change.”
Sadness, hopelessness, paralyzing despair.
The good news and the answer
As much as these feelings truly suck (that’s an understatement), it tells us exactly where we are and what we need to do. Here’s how to break through those paralyzing feelings and create actionable items to move you towards your goal.
If you’re overwhelmed
You need to understand all the paths and prioritize something.
Write down every single option you’re thinking of. Then analyze them. If you’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed at all the different ways to analyze them (the vicious cycle is very real), answer the following sections: “possibility of growth, time to start, time to complete, and effort to upkeep” and label them with “none, low, medium, or high.”
For example…
Creating weekly YouTube Shorts
Possibility of growth: High
Time to start: Low
Time to complete: Medium
Effort to upkeep: Medium
Collab with another creator
Possibility of growth: Medium
Time to start: High
Time to complete: High
Effort to upkeep: None
Once all of that is laid out, pick one and start.
Sometimes the easiest thing to start with is something with a low possibility of success but takes no time to start, low time to complete, and no upkeep.
You’ll know what’s right to start with.
If you’re feeling hopeless
The cause of this is a lack of paths, and a lack of paths is normally a result of a lack of information.
Research a bunch around a topic, then write down all the paths uncovered. Once all those paths are laid out, if you feel anxious and overwhelmed because suddenly you have way too many paths… see above.
The best way to find those paths is to
a) Pick one metric you want to improve that will bring you closer towards your goal. Go as small and to the root as possible. For example, instead of picking “views” as the metric (it’s too big of a metric with many other metrics that cause views), you’re better off picking “average watch time” as the metric since a higher average watch time tends to create more views.
or
b) Ask a friend who can give some ideas or hire a coach/consultant who can look over everything and give advice on paths you can take.
Each path you see will feel like a ray of hope.
Thanks for reading.
This advice stemmed from Alex Hermozi’s 60-minute keynote on Branding presented at GymCom 2023 – of which he spent only 5 minutes talking about branding. You can watch the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGq0uVspNms&t=441s
