Stop Waiting, Start Creating

Excited to have you reading this week’s Personal Brand Brief! If you want to join 11,906 others getting helpful marketing tips sent straight to their inbox, hit the SUBSCRIBE button above. Also, if you like the newsletter, you’ll love my NEW Leverage Linkedin Course! Want 50% off the price? Click here for the New Year discount! 🎉

This week’s set up:

🆘 Problem: The fear of making a mistake holds many people back from ever creating.

💡 Solution: Stop waiting and worrying; start creating and getting feedback.

🗺 Next play: Create systems that turn your consuming into creating and watch the long term equity that compounds in your personal brand.

Honest Question

Let’s get real here. If you’ve read this newsletter since day one and haven’t tried anything different (shared a Linkedin post, launched an article, or messaged someone new), I've failed you... ❌

As great as it feels to get likes/comments on these articles, that’s not my priority. 

My main goal with this newsletter is to inspire people to:

• get off the couch, raise the standing desk, and start sharing your ideas online in a way that gets you excited and builds your personal brand 🎬

Too often, I see people consume, consume, consume without ever putting anything into action. They memorize their favourite books, mention their top podcasts, exchange leadership quotes (I’m guilty of all of this as well)… and while none of this is bad, it becomes a roadblock rather than a runway for our output.

If you’re not actively changing the way you live or work after what you’ve learned, I believe you’re asleep at the wheel and not doing justice to how you spend your time. 💤  

As encouraging as I like to be, I want to challenge readers of this newsletter to stop waiting, get off the virtual couch, and start building your idea/skill/talent/niche/goal etc. for the world to see. 🌎

Because the worst thing you can do to your personal brand, is not creating anything at all.

Think about everything you’ve learned over this remote time. How can you start channeling the 100+ podcasts/books/zoom webinars you've learned from to create something so that 10 years from now you can say, “Hey, this is something I learned, so I was inspired to create X, what do you think?” This process is how we create our personal brand over time. 🔑

The projects, the spare time, the relationships - all of those are outlets to learn and develop new ideas. But if you’re slow to build, what will inspire people outside of your workspace be curious and connecting with you? Are your passions, ideas and projects visible for your industry to see? Or do they have to wait to magically run into you in a conference, remember your name and look you up online? 🔍

Stop waiting for the perfect opportunity; start creating and relationships will form.

One of the lies we tell ourselves before sharing something is that it “needs to be perfect”. But often times, this holds us back from ever seeing progress and the feedback that follows. New tip: Don’t let the fear of making a mistake hold you back from stepping out to create things for your community.

Progress Over Perfection

📎 Bottom line → Your voice matters! And the # of degrees you hold, books you’ve written, or stages you’ve spoken on should never hold you back.

A lot of great things happen when you’re willing to take a first step and be humble enough to learn from the feedback of others. I do it all of the time.

For my TEDx talk and my Leverage Linkedin Course, I built things 80% to the finish line, published a private link to my landing page or google doc of notes, then asked friends/mentors to take a look and share their honest feedback to help finish the final 20%.

I gave them permission to "roast my idea" (photo proof below) and the ideas they were willing to share were much more helpful then if I would have shared the update after everything was finished.

🛑 Stop and Ask Yourself:

If you were inspired by Simon Sinek and saw him in a coffee shop, would you rather tell him — 

1. 💬 Hey, I’ve been watching your shows and podcasts since day one and I feel so inspired OR
2. 🚀 Hey Simon, your podcast led me to a build this website where I do XYZ, and now I have a full time job interviewing inspiring people in my industry… thank you for changing the way I live my life. 

My guess - Simon would be 200% more excited and likely to upgrade that coffee to a lunch with option #2 😏

Our goal with learning should be to build skills, not become million dollar founders. When you hear an idea, you can create a plan, build out a prototype, and ship it to your community to hear what they think. It's so much more gratifying than hitting the wake-up, like, scroll routine 👎🏻

Make your focus progress, NOT perfection. Don't make it about sure vanity metrics, but the intangibles like passion alignment and new relationships. We learn best by doing. Not by sitting on the sidelines.

ACTION BYTES 📲

In Ann Handley's book, Everybody Writes, she talks about writing an "ugly first draft" to get it out of your system and rolling on future ideas. She says,

"The Ugly First Draft isn’t a pass you give yourself to produce substandard work. But it is a necessary part of the process of creating above-standard work." - AH

📚 Takeaway: allow yourself to be okay with producing something that isn’t perfect so you can edit it later. It’s about process, not results.

If your goal is to become an international speaker one day, how much are you willing to jump onto podcasts, spontaneously give toasts, or MC events out of your niche area?

If you want to write a book, are you regularly practicing writing - even if it’s not perfect?Start small, like LinkedIn posts or blogs before taking a big leap and living out that NYT best seller book tour...

📍Your task this week is simple: DO something.

1. Pick one thing you want to start creating content for 💭
2. Set a 10min block 3x this week to focus on the output (plan, write, post) ✏️
3. Tag me if you want me to check it out! 👋🏼 

🔨 For example:

1. You want to launch a podcast.
2. This week, make a list of 20 people you'd like to interview and reach out to one.
3. Design some graphics or write the questions for the first interview.

Stop waiting for the perfect time.

Start creating those first drafts and you'll be off to the races.

💡 Thought of the Day:

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper." — E. B. White

Thanks for reading till the end. If you have any ideas that sparked, drop me a note here! Want more stories or certain topics covered? Let me know in the comments!

Stay outta’ trouble and catch you next week. 

Cheers! 👋🏼

Joel 

P.S. Not sure how to “start creating ideas online”? Check out my Leverage Your LinkedIn course for easy ways to create content and build an engaged community on LinkedIn to meet your personal branding goals - whether it’s landing your dream job or developing your online presence.

#Marketing #SocialMedia #Innovation