From Fear to Confidence: A Content Creator's Journey

Welcome back to another episode of the Putty Report. So I was thinking about this recently when somebody was asking me about showing up and being confident in my content, and I was thinking, when did that change? Because I came across this picture. It was actually, you know, facebook, love it or hate it. I mean, it's one of those things that I'm glad that I documented a lot of things on Facebook back in the day, like you know, six, seven years ago, because now I get these memories that pop up and I can see what I was doing in 2017.

It was actually August 2017, I had done my first public speaking appearance and this was like the first one since, you know, doing presentations in college or being an MC for events, which is also what I did in college, but this is the first time I'd done something where it was me putting myself on the line and creating a presentation and being very, very nervous about it, but it was actually at my church, so I did it at a church. I created this presentation that was all about writing and how to just do creative writing, what creative writing is, and I remember being so scared, so, so, so, so scared, and I think back, I saw that picture and I just you ever have like you see a picture and you see, like the nostalgia just hits you and you have that, this whole reaction of like, oh my gosh. I remember how nervous I was in that moment or how sweaty I was or how my heart was pounding and I hope no one could hear it through the microphone because, oh my God, I was shaking so bad and so scared. But I started thinking about when did that change? Because it also happened whenever I went live for the very first time on Periscope. I still remember holding my phone and my hand was shaking and I thought, oh my gosh, my voice is cracking and people are gonna be like who is this person? What are they doing here?

And then now today, I can flip on my phone and just immediately start talking for Instagram story, or I can start recording a YouTube video and feel very confident. Where does that come from? Like, what is the secret formula to make that happen? Well, there's no secret formula. I'm gonna share my formula with you, but it is the equal sign. So imagine you're actually looking at a formula. You think you're having confidence in your content. That equals showing up all the time. Showing up plus consistency, so showing up consistently over time. So think about if you have like the parentheses of showing up plus consistency in parentheses over time. Time is the factor that everything really happens.

Because what happens is people will come to me and say, well, I tried a YouTube video once and I hated it, so I stopped. I thought about doing a podcast episode, but I listened to my own voice and it was not good. I didn't sound like I knew what I was talking about. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know how to transition from one segment to the next and it sounded like an idiot. And I'm just like it's just not for me. It's not for me and it's really unfortunate when I hear people say that, because it wasn't for me either. I didn't know how to do any of this stuff. I didn't know how to do podcasts, I didn't know how to do YouTube, I didn't know how to do Instagram stories. I didn't know how to record myself, I didn't know what to say, but I kept showing up consistently over time.

And here we are today and I do feel confident. And I do feel. You know, I still get that nervous energy right before you go on stage, but it fires me up, and I'm excited to do it because I know that I have a message that needs to be shared, which I'm sure you do too. I know that you have a message that other people need to hear. So, if you're looking for the secret sauce to have confidence in creating your content, it's showing up consistently over time and that's what I'm gonna continue to encourage you to do Keep showing up, stay consistent, keep doing it and you will have that confidence building in your content. But that's all I have for you today. So, as always, remember, keep it fresh, keep it fun and just keep going.