---
title: 'Content Creation Strategy: How to Create Without Burning Out'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=FUAq2Mh7IgY'
video_id: 'FUAq2Mh7IgY'
date: 2026-07-14
duration_sec: 0
---

# Content Creation Strategy: How to Create Without Burning Out

> Source: [Content Creation Strategy: How to Create Without Burning Out](https://youtube.com/watch?v=FUAq2Mh7IgY)

## Summary

In this webinar, Jay Clouse and Reagan Pugh discuss strategies for creating meaningful content that aligns with personal and professional goals. They emphasize the importance of understanding your audience, finding your unique voice, and maintaining consistency without burnout.

### Key Points

- **Introduction and Purpose** [00:00] — Jay Clouse and Reagan Pugh introduce the session as part of the Unreal Collective member spotlights, focusing on content creation strategies.
- **Reagan's Background** [02:00] — Reagan Pugh is a keynote speaker and co-founder of Assemble, a consultancy. He emphasizes the value of content for building a speaking practice.
- **Should You Create Content?** [04:00] — Not everyone needs to create content. If your business thrives on one-on-one interactions, focus on that instead of forcing content creation.
- **Audience of One** [06:00] — Content should start with yourself—reminding you of your purpose—and then serve a specific audience. It's okay if it's not for everyone.
- **Minimum Viable Audience** [08:00] — Create content for a specific person with a specific problem. When they think 'you read my diary,' you've succeeded.
- **Voice and Authenticity** [10:00] — Your online voice should match your real-life voice. Avoid flowery language; be human. Shipping at 80% is often better than perfect.
- **Losing Followers is Okay** [12:00] — Unsubscribes mean you're narrowing your focus. It's better to have a smaller, engaged audience than a large, indifferent one.
- **Taking a Stance** [14:00] — Provocative stances attract the right people and repel the wrong ones. If you're not taking a stance, you're not saying anything.
- **Finding Your Voice** [16:00] — Journaling and writing letters to a specific person can help uncover your unique perspective. Reflect on your experiences.
- **Managing Email and Distractions** [18:00] — Check email twice a day, remove it from your phone, and turn off notifications. Batch communication to protect creative time.
- **Batching Content** [20:00] — Create multiple pieces of content in one sitting (e.g., writing several blog posts on a plane). This reduces burnout and increases efficiency.
- **Repurposing Content** [22:00] — Write one piece of content and adapt it for different channels (e.g., show notes, social media posts, emails) rather than creating unique content for each.
- **Consistency and Trust** [24:00] — Consistency builds trust with your audience. Under-promise and over-deliver. A content calendar helps maintain regularity.
- **Setting Boundaries** [26:00] — Communicate expectations with clients and colleagues about your availability. Use signals (e.g., headphones) to indicate focus time.
- **Email vs. Social Media** [28:00] — Email provides direct, uninhibited access to your audience, unlike social media platforms that can change algorithms. Build your email list.
- **Growing Your Email List** [30:00] — Personally ask people to join your list via email, text, or social media. Partnerships with complementary creators can also expand your reach.
- **Shipping Imperfect Content** [32:00] — Don't wait for perfection. Ship at 80%—your audience will still get value, and you maintain momentum.

### Conclusion

Creating content is about serving a specific audience with your unique perspective. Focus on consistency, batching, and authenticity to build trust and avoid burnout.

## Transcript

hello everybody welcome we've got a full room today which is super exciting excited to chat content with all of you and with my friend Reagan Pugh hey coming to you live from Irving Texas hello Christian hello neben hello John this is super interactive guys we want to take your questions would love for you guys to type into the chat where you're calling in from got some folks from Texas got some folks from Pittsburgh and Ohio let's know where you're coming in from I would also love to hear what brought you here what you're working on and why this is interesting and a pain point for you we have a lot of prepared content and ideas here for you that we're excited to share we've collaborated on it for the last week or so but like I said we want this to be interactive so share any questions you have in the chat or in the ask a question function preferably the ask a question function so we can keep them organized and make sure we get to it otherwise we might lose it in the chat but super excited to see you guys all here this is part of a series called unreal collective member spotlights I've gotta know Reagan even better through unreal collective which is a community for founders freelancers and creatives we have a 12-week accelerator to help people grow their project or business Reagan is a two-timer a veteran and it's been really really great to get snow even better through that but very much somebody that I think of as a super close friend so Reagan to introduce him a little bit because I love how much people love to have BIOS about them read while they're on a call live yes I demand it pleased Reagan delivers keynote speeches and workshops on personal effectiveness and leadership development around the country under the banner of assemble the consultancy he co-founded in 2016 before assemble he guided initiatives on storytelling culture and leadership development at companies like Nike PepsiCo Western Digital the Kimberly Clark and Kimberly Clark as chief storyteller with the innovation can solving firm Calypso raiga has designed leadership courses for Texas State University Trinity University and Angelo State University Greg and my man excited that you are here so grateful to be here thank you and thank you all for giving us your time today yeah love seeing all these different places people are from and also relevant about Ragan is he is a prolific writer these days writes a weekly newsletter that I highly suggest subscribing to at Ragan q calm and as for myself obviously founder of unreal collective that community four founders freelancers and creators I was just talking about but also think of myself as a writer and podcaster started off writing daily posts for a year back in 2017 and now I've settled into a weekly cadence for writing as well as a bi-weekly cadence for podcasting so we're here to chat content Regan I introduced you but can you give a little more about background and introduce yourself certainly man again thank you for being here what a joy that we are able to sit here and spend an hour this afternoon to talk about this and we don't think your your presence here lightly have to once really quickly plug J and the Unreal collective if you've got an idea or a project that you can't put gas behind I would highly suggest you join unreal get into a cohort and spend 12 weeks making that idea come to life I wouldn't have the writing cadence or discipline that I have today if it wasn't for that so that's why we're here and it's awesome man you know did this this is such a fun thing to do because it's not something I would have ever chosen to do myself because you know oftentimes the things that we know how to do and that we have skill in our belief about the value of the things that we bring to the table and in the quality of our perspective that we've spent our careers honing we don't know we stop believing that those are valuable because we're in our own heads and we hear those thoughts all the time and what we want to talk about today is this idea that you have a unique perspective and if you can remember that and create a discipline around creating content that makes sense for you man you can really add some value to the people that you're trying to serve I've always been a writer and I've always written in a journal and never did not believe that I could blend that with the work that I do so right now today the the focus that I've got in 2019 is building a keynote speaking practice my consulting firm is assemble primarily does workshops at this point but in 2019 partnering with the Unreal collective I'm trying to get on more stages and what I found is in order to do that in order for people to understand my perspective and want to bring to their audience I need to be producing content on a regular cadence so that means blogging that and social all that kind of stuff and content guys we're talking all forms of content we write in writing a couple times but we're talking photo video anything that you are creating and putting out into the world as an introduction to you and your voice that is going to be involved in sort of the strategy and mindset that we're talking about here today right podcasts all that good stuff so that's that's where I'm at right now that's what my focus is in jou before we kick off guys sure like a quick story of an evolution of why I think contents really important yep please do so I was working at this consulting firm Calypso and I got tasked with writing the weekly newsletter and man I was so pissed about this because yeah I had the email people about like send me your baby photo tell me about send me your wedding picture what did you eat in the team meeting this week until one day finally realized I try to post a blog every week anyway about what it means to live life more effectively and what it looks like to be more compassionate on other people what would it look like if I infused my voice into this newsletter as a way to add value to the firm and then after doing that for a year next thing we know we've got this really healthy blog internal blog and newsletter for people in the firm and this is when I realized that creating content doesn't have to kill you it doesn't have to be your job we can find a way to marry the work that we want to do with this idea that we can create content and add more value to ourselves and everybody else so it's something to hopefully spread that something that you're saying but not saying is that probably that became more successful and better read once there was a genuine voice behind it and not somebody trying to act as the disembodied entity of the corporation dude you can you can tell an angry writer when you read one you know absolutely man good work so where I'd love to start guys is before you get into the actual act of creating content I want to give you the opportunity to liberate yourself a little bit and ask yourself should you be creating content at all because a lot of people the reason they get into creating content are doing it because they have this lover of because I should because that's what people do and so I have to also but I want to tell you and liberate you by saying you don't have to you know there are a lot of people as joking with Regan before we got on here I'll talk to a Reagan or Reagan a lawyer from time to time who will say I just hate Twitter there's no reason to have Twitter if you hate Twitter and a lot of businesses don't need social media a lot of businesses don't need to create content so sometimes the answer to creating content is just not because you can look at what is already working for your business in terms of your business development strategies or what's filling your sales pipeline if spending your time getting coffee with people one-on-one is what typically leads to your sales or growth in whatever you're doing it's probably worth focusing more time on getting coffees with people one-on-one then making sure that you're pumping out two articles a week or or making some listicle that isn't actually going to get read yeah couldn't agree with you more man and when I think about this idea of why should we create content first I think it has to start with the audience of one which is yourself so when you're creating content is the work that you're doing reminding you of who you are and why you're doing what you're doing and then to is it reminding your audience of who they are and why you guys are a good fit together if you don't have a compelling why there I think you're gonna find yourself pretty stuck and frustrated yeah which I think Reagan and it's getting a little bit ahead of ourselves kind of goes the question of audience who is it for what is it for why are you creating this content at all is what you're just talking about and so can you expand a little bit more on that point of who who are you writing to yeah you know I'm just gonna go and say it here at the beginning of this you should probably read Donald Miller story brand book because there's a lot of wisdom there and understanding your audience Jay you see you said who is your audience and why are you help me with that who is it for what is important this is a Seth Godin idea basically that if you look at whatever you're doing this is your work not just your content it is for some people and is not for other people if you serve Realtors you don't need to be creating content that caters to photographers you know your content should be aligned with your work serving the same audience or it's probably a waste of time to be creating content and it's okay that it is not for everybody it's okay that if you write a piece on how to win more listings or how to help a buyer's agents that it's not attractive to somebody who's not in real estate that's fine your work can't be for everybody yeah and I think people get tied up in the idea of their following or my losing followers or you know men like my followers not as big is those folks and men when I lose people I'm learning and growing and in my mindset to say man thank goodness I was able to narrow my focus of my message even more clearly that someone said well that's not me anymore another Seth Godin thing that I've been jamming on lately is this idea of creating a Minimum Viable audience if we can understand with such clarity the exact kind of person customer client with their specific problem and dreams and create content specifically for them so every time they're reading a tweet or a podcast or a video or a blog and they say I thought I was the only one that thought that way are you in my skull right now are you in my head you read my diary that if you ask me is the biggest one of all time I listened to an interview with Tim Ferriss fairly recently and he was talking about the 4-hour workweek which got like he is I think it's still the number one sold book on Amazon and in the business category or something and he never set out to write that level of a success of a book but in retrospect and this has the benefit of hindsight so take it for what it's worth he says that what do you think some of the magic came from was the fact that when he was writing that book he was writing it in his head to somebody very specific it was something that he was trying to write to his friend who needed to hear it and as we go through this we're gonna talk about finding your voice here in a second the more aligned your content is whether it's photo video writing any type of content the more line it is with who you are as a person in real life the more successful it's going to be you know there's something about writing in particular that people will change statements from saying like oh I saw this really cute dog at Starbucks to start throwing in like these flowery puffy words of like saw this beautiful canine as I was you know getting a Frappuccino you're like people don't talk that way in real life and the way you talk online and through your content should not be different than the way you would talk in real life because we feel that and we get it and like that's not the most interesting kinds of things that we can consume yeah people are so obsessed with with continuing to make things more perfect and I found shipping things at 80% and more human always wins of the day a note we had here Reagan and something that you said the idea of losing followers when I first started writing I had a MailChimp notification on for every time somebody unsubscribed I got an email from MailChimp saying new unsubscribe which was like the most painful thing in the world especially when you're just getting started and from a pure proposed proportional standpoint you're not getting a ton of new followers or readers at the beginning every single incremental like loss felt so painful initially so two lessons out of that one don't turn those notifications on because it's not serving you know it's not gonna make you happier or create better work because you're not happier and you're like more scared but to don't be afraid of people doing that to the to the earlier point of you know things being for some people and not for some people keep in mind again why are you creating this work and there's probably two main reasons and a lot of the people on this call are probably because it is aligned with a marketing strategy to ultimately work with people as clients or sell them some sort of product and so your content strategy should be geared towards optimizing for that and if somebody is unsubscribing guess what they're not going to be a client they're not going to be a customer or they unsubscribe because you're not being true to your voice and they were getting what they wanted from you preach so that is maybe the type of feedback you want to hear from people who are stopping to follow along is it just felt fake or it didn't feel real but generally you know if people are unsubscribing that means you're no longer paying for them to be on your list you're no longer wasting time trying to cater to a wide range of people but continuing to hone your message to be for a specific group of people who are self selecting and enrolling into the type of information that you can share that they want yeah man a mentor mine in Jay you've been saying this a lot recently too you know I was about to deliver a workshop recently and she said okay cool your plan sounds great but it's really it's really bland here's what I want you to do in your workshop I want you to make sure that at least 30% of the people in the room don't agree with you no I want you to make sure that you are taking a provocative stance that is going to get you out of the middle so that people are either going to say I absolutely do not see the world that way so that you're free for people to say I absolutely do see the world that way not know sounds like sounds right totally if you're not taking stances or making assertions in your work you're not saying anything and so there's not really any reason for me to follow along because if like if there's a blogger or somebody creating content all around you know the idea that cake is good that's something we can all generally agree with you know like cake is pretty good I don't need to follow somebody specific and tell me the cake is good because that's something I can get from people all around but what I want to follow is people who are giving me information that's scarce it's something that I'm not getting from other people and typically that comes from a particular viewpoint or a way of seeing the world 100% I have friends that hate me every time I post something on Twitter about get out of your email inbox you think that that's real work and it's not and what you're doing is you're lying and you're making up a reason to waste time oh man people get angry about that because we find identity and how productive we are on email that's a lot and then that's wrong you don't you agree with me talk more about that because you you've done a talk about the idea of being productive isn't necessarily the win yeah dude we yeah the Whitney Whitney and Marcelo or maybe Marcelo are fired up right now yeah dude so here's the deal man and it took me a long time of trying to figure out ways to talk about being productive and in thinking okay well how do I make sure everyone from every walk of life and if they're a real estate agent or an insurance broker or a teacher that they all feel like they're respected in the way that we talk about being productive and finally I realized that we are it is incumbent upon each of us to navigate our life in a way that makes sense and so all I can do is basically give my playbook for the way that I've freed myself from trying to feel like I was productive enough for everybody else so I wrote this TEDx talk called this our best work have to kill us and in that talk it says for all of those people out there who wear this busy Badge of Courage and whenever people talk to them about oh man I'm just so busy but you know I love it I just feel like I'm in a killer mode that you're wasting everybody's time I had to take a stance there and as a result I've now got this voice around this idea that busyness is not productivity that if we find our identity and our work we'll never achieve the quality of work that we that we once could and that if I can speak to those people who believe that I'm gonna go a lot further than if I try to talk to everybody about how to manage their email INBOX can you talk more about finding your own voice I know you just wrote something about hearing your own voice can you talk about what that means to you yeah I think a lot of times we don't even necessarily know what our perspective is and I find people saying well what would I say if I was gonna write anything at all and I wrote a blog about this a while ago called the most effective leaders or the most reflective leaders and for anyone regardless of what kind of content you're trying to produce you need to get some words on a page and you need to begin something I would recommend a journaling practice and for me when I get feel lost and I feel like what do I need to write this week how do I need to talk about my business I'll sit down and I'll do one of two things I'll free write where I'll write a letter just like you talked about how Tim Ferriss wrote his book to one specific friend I've got an old student that I trade emails with and sometimes she asked me about life questions and I'll write dear so-and-so and then I'll write a letter to her about how to navigate a life challenge and simply pretending that I'm writing to someone whom I care about deeply or sometimes I'll write it to my younger brother man then that frees me up to have this really unique perspective that has my heart in it because there are stakes all of the sudden and yeah I want to I want to dive into some more nuts and bolts type ideas of how to create content which platforms how to share it how to do it in a way that doesn't burn you out we've had a couple questions so far that I want to riff on before we shift gears Mylene just asks if you could talk more about managing your inbox in that as something that is not a badge of honor just tactically is is how to do that yeah how to manage your inbox it did not treat as a badge of honor number one go unsubscribe from every newsletter that you've got number two except ours yeah except ours yeah yeah yeah yeah all right but all of them like Brooks Brothers things dude you know you can't afford a Brooks Brothers suit don't act like you can go and subscribe from there you know but the other thing is I check my inbox once in the morning and once in at night and then I shut it down the rest of the day like check it at 9:00 and then check it at 3:00 I don't have email on my phone I took you completely off my phone it does the app doesn't exist I don't have notifications on my computer yeah sorry I don't know where else to go with that it reminds me I've been thinking a lot like that email is a lot like open open air offices which people you know think that the open space offices great keeps bad I kind of understand that but as someone who worked in an open space office they were constant drive-bys for attention people see that you're there they'll walk by and they'll say hey I gotta talk to you about this thing it's constantly pulling you out of your ability to create and do work that matters at that moment and having notifications on your email inbox is just like a digital drive-by yeah well and and Jay you talk a lot about batching and you know we're gonna talk today about what it what it looks like to have a creative process where you chunk time to protect it for things I think if you can look at your day and say to yourself you know in the big it whenever I'm most effect have you taken an inventory about when you're most effective at most tasks like think to yourself when do I do best at doing the analytical you know data-driven research kind of stuff when am i best at coming up with new thoughts and brainstorming when am i kind of dead and I should probably meet with people because that's energizing during my day understand those blocks for yourself and protect them I want to follow that thread because totally agree with that in terms of theming your days or parts your days where you know that you can do some of this creative work I think this is a super core to continuously making content without burning out or without killing yourself is batching and doing it when it feels a little bit more natural so for me I know that my best creative time is in the mornings it's right when I wake up until I hit decision fatigue around the afternoon sometimes I go for an afternoon run and get some more get a second wind but a lot of times after the morning my best thinking is gone I can accomplish things in 30 minutes in the morning that might take me two hours later in the day totally so understand when that is true for you and then if you are on some sort of cadence of creating content that you want to do weekly or even daily you don't have to sit down do this week's and then wait until next week to do next weeks for the last month I haven't had to actively write for my newsletter because last time I was on a plane I wrote it all in a Word document I wrote several Word documents of articles because it was just flowing it was easy there was no way to have distractions on that plane because I didn't have Wi-Fi because I'm cheap and and because it's a really good excuse and circumstance to do this kind of work so I busted out almost two months worth of articles on that plane and when you get in the zone you're doing that do that right now on our podcast we put out at least one episode a week sometimes two but our goal right now is getting runway through the end of June on that podcast and it's a lot of work but it's work that we batch into a couple days we'll do a mega weekend of recording where we'll have six interviews record over the course of two days and then that gives us a month and a half of content for just a couple of really hard days that's good I mean I do something similar with my blog writing practice in that on my calendar I have the title of the blog that I'm going to publish every Wednesday and that goes out for the next three months so I'm always when I'm doing my morning creative writing practice knowing what's coming up in the next week so I can be drafting that I haven't Evernote filed that throughout my day when I'm thinking about a unique perspective that might be a good tweet or a theme for a blog I keep an Evernote file and about once every other week I'll theme a day that's a social media day and I'll use something like HootSuite or later to go in and schedule tweets or Instagram posts for the next two or three weeks and I don't have to worry about doing that every day Chelsea just put in the chat it's harder working with the remote team checking emails twice a day when people need answers to get their work done as a former product manager totally get that people are always dependent on me to give them yes or no or a decision to make things happen what really liberated me from that mindset a little bit was thinking you know if I was in a meeting right now they would have to wait to the end of that meeting and if a task is important enough you can treat it the same way yeah man not only would they have to wait for you to finish that meeting but at the same time this might be a nice kind of nudge for you to look at ways to make them feel a little bit more independent and liberated and take more responsibility over decision making yeah yeah Regan's something else that's been really helping me create content and do it more easily we have our podcast and for that podcast I have to create show notes I have to make social media posts I have to make a wordpress page for the site and then I have to set an email announcing that that thing went out and what I've started to do is write the same content for all of that so what I was doing was writing show notes and then copying that over to the website and then I would tweak it and make it a little bit different for the email and we could make a little bit different for the social media and what I found is okay what is the voice that I can bring to this that is consistent so that I can create it in one place and share it on all of those places so I'm not creating four pieces of content for all these different channels I'm reading one piece of content mm-hmm and I think that's another approach to batching things yeah I think you hear a few different perspectives here particularly you know in the Instagram influencer world where you know your content needs to be unique and different and people are going to know whenever you're copying from one thing to another I think they need to ask yourself in that situation what do you really want do you really want your message to clearly reach the people that you're intending for it to reach so that they'll do the thing you want them to do or do you want to be known as the person who has a unique post on every social media channel about the same thing and if you're really interested in being that really engaging per posts kind of a person that okay but I don't think that yet you need to prioritize it if it doesn't matter for your your intent yeah going back to the first point I made on this should you be creating content at all two things that I think are mistakes that people make all the time one a dead channel is worse than no channel so if you created a sweater because you think you needed a twitter but you haven't tweeted in over a year like that's doing you more of a disservice than it is doing you a service by existing second being that bad content is also doing you a disservice it's better it's better to pull back and put some time and intent into making something that's worth seeing less frequently than just putting out tons and tons of content that no one actually cares about it gets any value from something we haven't really talked on regan is consistency you might kick us off there yeah and to your point there I think that consistency it can be different for every individual and every organization as you said better to produce a really solid monthly newsletter that has stock full content that's stretch and tailored to your audience than to try and be the person who does a Tuesday and Thursday update if that doesn't work for you when we talk about consistency yes we talked about how get the consistency of the things that you take live but also I want to talk about the individual habit that's necessary for you of consistency and to me that looks like riding 750 words in the morning before I do anything else using 750 words calm if those if there's people out there who need a drafting tool so for you to have consistent content that means that you need to be creative consistently which means that you need to be protecting time at a regular cadence for you to do creative work and then man for me I really wanted to be like Seth Godin and Jay Klaus and write a daily blog but man what I found out is that that didn't work for me because I take a lot of time editing my content and then I was feeling like a terrible person because I couldn't keep up with that clip and again the quality of the things that we take live and how specific they are to our audience is more important than being able to do the this amount of volume now that said for me I know that I need an external accountability source so my audience knows that on Wednesdays I produce a blog and for me a regular blog on Wednesdays right now is about as consistent as I can be yeah you don't want to fall in the trap of the person who never works out and says you know what I'm gonna work out now I'm gonna do it five days a week because if you're not if you set unrealistic and high paced expectations of yourself and you can't live up to them then it's going to ding your own social contract with yourself and suddenly you just saw that you broke that agreement you made with yourself which makes it okay to break that agreement again and again and again the point and the point of consistency is this social contract this agreement that you're making with people who are following your work because everything in the content world is based in trust and value I'm going to put aside the fact and assume that you're creating valuable content but I want to talk about trust for a second and say if you tell people you're gonna send something out weekly and you don't people are going to think they cannot trust you and if they can't trust you why would they work with you or buy from you it's better to under promise over deliver obviously than to over promise under deliver every time that I ship an email on Sunday it's building trust with the people who read those emails and it's building a little bit of a sense of legitimacy it's it's professionalism you know people want to work with professionals and if you can't exhibit professionalism then they're not gonna work with you which brings us back to this idea of why are you creating content anyway and if you find yourself in the middle of creating stuff that you don't want to be creating then man that's a really risky place to be because eventually you're gonna not do it because you don't even want to in the first place and that's gonna have negative effects on the people that you're trying to demonstrate or build trust with I'm gonna highlight something you said a little bit ago Regan that's on this point if you're going to be consistent creating a Content calendar which does not need to be complex super-important having a even if it's just a simple spreadsheet that has the dates and a topic that you're writing about or a list that has potential topics I worked literally off of an Evernote list that just they think of topics I write them into that Evernote list and when I say you know what I'm gonna write today I look at that list to see what are the topics don't write about I'll bust out like five but have something so that you know what you're writing and when and you're not waiting until the eleventh hour to both think of an idea and write the idea and edit the idea and schedule it just totally and I'll read it what I said earlier I have on my calendar every Wednesday the title of the blog idea that I'm going to publish so next week I've got a title of a blog that I thought of when I was on the car the other day I haven't written it yet but I put the title of it on my calendar for next week so that when I'm drafting that's the thing that my focus goes to we've got a lot of questions here Reagan so I want to read some of them out we have some from I'm gonna read from the chat first I tried to move things into the Q&A section Jenny asked do you schedule time in for interacting with others on social media email responses and so to be honest I do not I allow myself to be distracted too easily because for a really long time I've aired too far on the side of accessibility I thought if I'm accessible and respond to people that's going to build the relationship and it has but it's gotten to a little bit of an unsustainable place so I am actually looking to take a cue from Regan here and limit the number of times that my email tab is open I good we all need to do that now and I schedule time for social media responses man I don't have I don't have notifications on my phone for any social media don't have them man we live in this world of scarcity where we think if I don't respond to them right now I'm gonna miss that deal or that engagement I'll block 30 minutes every day where I say now I will get into my social media app and I will respond to the direct messages and the likes that I've received Whitney asked to build on what Chelsea said how do you set boundaries around emails and drive-bys for clients and bosses and people who rely on you to be available when they need you I'll kick this off real quick I think the biggest key here is setting expectations as early as possible and you know the old adage the best time to plant a tree was yesterday the second best time is right now if you haven't said those expectations already have conversations people to say hey this isn't trying to do it's ultimately going to make me more effective in my role or it's gonna make our relationship better or it's going to make the final product better but here is what I need you to agree to and you know there may be a little bit of negotiation because they may say hey here's a circumstance you're not considering and you can come up with a contingency plan for that but try to set expectations to say I am NOT at your beck and call if I'm at my desk it does not mean that I am open for conversation or maybe you have a little signal you know whether you have if my headphones are in leave me alone I used to sit at my desk with my headphones in not listening to anything because I knew people leave me alone but have a signal and have language even if it's nonverbal so that people know this is when Whitney is available to come chat with or not look here sometimes I hesitate to say this stuff around you know boundaries because I totally get I work for myself and not everyone has the freedom to do that sometimes you are in a job where you have a contract that you give them your time and attention and they give you money and part of that job description is you need to be available on email if that's the case then yeah work to mitigate distractions as much as possible but if you need that to do your job then great if you don't like it I'd go get a different job now that said to Jays point I would always have the conversation with your superior whoever has expectations of you being available all the time with the simple question what do you really want do you really want me to be accessible whenever you have a random thought and responded within 15 seconds or these are the three priorities we discussed that I'm going to be focusing on right now I'd really love it if I was able to protect time to do those for you and for us and for this organization how about I promise that I get back to you within two hours anytime you ping me I think a lot of times its self-imposed guilt that pushes us to just on immediately 100% you know if i if i text reagan and say hey are you ready for this webinar this morning i don't need him to text me in the next five minutes I need him to text me before it's critical and he knows when that is because he's an adult you know so if you trust people to be adults and to understand the circumstances and what's important and when which you should if they're on your team then you need to allow yourself some grace and release some of the self-imposed pressure to be immediately available all the time because like I said every time I think about this I just put myself in the mindset of if this is a scheduled meeting even if people didn't know I was in a scheduled meeting I could respond an hour later and say hey sorry I was in a meeting totally what right and not to go too far in this direction but may if someone gets anxious because you don't respond to something within 30 seconds they need to like go get a meditation retreat or something like that I mean there's something else going on that you can't control we had a question here from Chelsea with tools like slack asana air table whatsapp we do you think email might eventually become more of a myspace situation as in like gone or will email contend email content always be king when communicating thinking ahead into the future I am super pro email email has proven to be in tap like really really resilient over the years as a mode of communication and I think the biggest reason why and why I'll continue to be in the corner of email is that that is a agreement you make with somebody else to have direct permission to contact them into a very personal place and it is not at the whim of a third party with how and when you communicate with that person a lot of these things and this is this is why I don't really care about building my Instagram following and I know you can do a lot with Instagram followings and marketing but that can change overnight and I've heard stories of people building businesses that are built on Facebook whether it's Instagram or Facebook using paid ads or using their pages and overnight small changes can kill that business entirely and kill those relationships because you're no longer communicating directly with the customer you're communicating with Facebook who's communicating to the customer this is the point it's it email is the new phone number right and aside from having someone's direct phone number and direct email I haven't seen any other thing have that much direct access to a person so maybe there might be a thing where we get that but until then I think the the main thing to highlight of what Jay said is direct uninhibited access where you guys can do whatever you want together yeah I think there will always be some medium of that I don't think I don't seen anything that's taken over it from email that's not a centralized social media type platform so I'm still in the the email camp let's see we got more questions here and they asked a question area feel free to keep asking question guys if and when we run through them we'll go back to some of our prepared notes Paul said can you give me an example of batch copy Paul if I'm understanding you question correctly I think you mean about an example of bashing the creation of copy and yeah I mean the the easy example is to have a list of the things that I know I want to create and set aside 2 maybe 3 hours and go through a list and make all of it it's a lot easier to get into the swing of creation in most mediums and stay there then to do a little bit come out of it go back in the world of urgency and responding to people and then go back into creative time it's a lot easier to get into an unencumbered space and stay unencumbered stay in that state of flow than pulling back out if that's not what you're asking Paul let us know answer Jenny's question of do you schedule time for interacting with people while you're looking at the next one yeah if you lack him or hate him Gary Vee has is pretty prolific when it comes to creating content and he recently released a deck on what it looks like for him to take one piece of content whether that be a talk or a blog and turned that into 40 different pieces of content there each for different channels so Paul one thing from my perspective on batching content is I can take one blog that I write in that language turns into every social media post turns into an idea for a podcast interview turns into a next talk etc Whitney asked how do you manage communication you received by text poorly so what I try to do because you can't mark text unread and my my personal ability to go through like things that need to be actioned are things that are unread I'll do one of two things I'll either retexe tit to myself and leave that message unread or I'll respond and say hey yeah happy to help please send me an email and I give them my email I pushed them into the funnel that is something that I can keep managed people think I'm grumpy but dude whatever I say hey I will lose track of text because I generally do that you use texting for personal reasons if you wouldn't mind tzimmes to my inbox now get to it right away yeah I don't do it I do not do business over text same say or facebook Messenger no Marcelo asked what are your recommendations on work rest intervals man I've been shaming Pomodoro's lately you know if you google tomato timers that I'll give you a 25 minute sprint with a five minute break I like to do three of those in a row and then take a longer break that's what a what do you got I think it's gonna be highly up to you like for me I've pushed myself into a work space where I need one day off a week and then I can work six days hard like almost like a camel so for me it's like I will fill up my schedule with what needs to be filled I just try to optimize for open spaces where I can do the creative work so if a day is going to be all days of meetings I try to batch as many necessary meetings into that day so that can protect an entire day of open space as opposed to having days that are a lot of context switching J themes just days and he taught many of us debt which is really valuable and so on that point seeming of days I mentioned it earlier I have unreal calls on Monday and Tuesday so my themes those days are client calls Wednesday I don't allow people to book time on my calendar and that is an open creative day Thursday I'll do meetings days like business development meeting days and Friday is another open days you can do that without entire days you could do mornings you could theme your mornings creative mornings and have client meeting afternoons you know some people don't have the full flexibility to batch and theme as intensely as I do because they work at a company or someone else ultimately has some level of control of their schedule but understanding when you do certain tasks best and see like protecting that time blocking it theming that I found to be super helpful I don't take meetings on Mondays or Fridays and I work three 12-hour days Tuesday Wednesday Thursday where I get most of my work done and to invoke tim ferriss here if you do work at a place where there might be more rules dude the rules exist because they've always existed and you never know what kind of freedom you might have over your schedule if you only asked right again it's like the self-inflicted guilt that if people aren't asking it of you then you don't necessarily need to do it on their behalf and if you're assuming that you're doing it on their behalf make sure that you're doing it on their behalf talk to them ask them have a question from Marcelo what do you think about this statement create content that your target market would appreciate while subtly promoting your brand by reflecting your value proposition in your topics Marcelo I'll say I agree with that I mean here's the thing though this is another mindset thing related to selling if you are afraid to sell your ideas your product your service then you're either one not believing in that idea product or service or to thinking about sales the wrong way because if you believe in it you should believe that whatever they're trading whether it's time and attention or actual money is worth the trade for you giving them that idea then receiving that idea then receiving that work then receiving that product and if you believe that trade to be worthwhile then you should feel compelled to give them that option to make that trade at any chance that you get and so typically if you have a product an idea a business that you believe in you're creating content that serves the same audience and that content can be a vehicle for saying hey by the way here's something that can help you even more and this is the trade that you have to make whether it's time and attention or whether it's cash and again if you believe that that trade is worth it then there's no problem with having that in your content couldn't agree more than one word Marcelo I disagree with in your statement is the word suddenly people need for us to tell them what we want them to do we assume that they know but man that's like the guy that you know tries ask somebody out on a date by being like music do you like music I like music are you interested we have to tell people what we want them to do if the people who follow you and have enrolled in your work won't get mad at you for it and my email subscriber box I have a thing where every other week I'd learned this from Jay I'll have a thing that says hey I'm doing the webinar why don't you join me for the web but hey I'm trying to book keynote speeches for May why don't you join me if the people are following me because I think I had value they're not gonna get mad at me for trying to do more of what I'm trying to do yep yep we have another question here from Christian working in a start-up and remote team sometimes it's tough for us to maintain the focus on content creation whether it's a blog LinkedIn so on we've had great ideas that were turned into outlines and drafts then forgotten about because people got into the habit of diverting focus to their other responsibilities would you say this is more of a sign that we need to reconsider while we're trying to create content in the first place or figure out a way to hold everyone accountable in schedule maybe it's both lots of breakdown here yeah I would say a couple things you said we have great ideas that are turning to outlines and drafts never forgotten about assuming that great ideas mean that they are serving the business's interests and this in the stand point like again back to Reagan's point of know why you're creating content if this is a great idea because it's going to help the customer and use your products and service better if it's a great idea because it's going to get you more products or customers then it sounds like it should be a priority because the business is going to exist to serve customers and make a profit so if it really will serve those things you need to figure out a way to make it prioritized from the company standpoint if people are diverting back to their responsibilities that inherently means you're prioritizing that other work over this and that's inherently saying that that work is going to bring more value to customers to the company than that content and if that's true they should do those things if it's not true you need to have a transparent conversation and say this is why this is a priority and walk the talk by actually making it a priority and saying you're gonna do this work before you do this over here you know one perspective here too might be if you've got all this content you're gonna create because you're gonna have this great content strategy that can get really intimidating uh and one thing you might try and do is say okay instead of saying we're gonna have this big content strategy from here on out say what if we did a three-part series where we talked about this and by the end of that it was done and then you're able to breathe and go well what worked well for us in creating a discipline for content strategy how do we need to protect our time moving forward and you successfully completed a task versus feeling like you fail at the habit of creating content as a business and whether it's in a company or whether it's you individually if you don't know when you're creating that content you're gonna be in a rushed difficult situation to actually make it you should be able to look at your Crider and know this is when i'm going to be making this or it may not happen if you were on a calendar the way that I do if you can't show when it's going to happen and when it's going to be made you can't guarantee that's going to be made so whether you're a company trying to prioritize this as part of your time over there an individual block it on your calendar say okay Thursday is the day that I'm writing or sometimes it's you know maybe you're a solopreneur and sometimes Saturday is a day that you're creating content because the world around you is quiet I do a lot of my creation on the weekends if you need it and if you need external accountability say to your audience we're about to ship a three-part series about how did your Lex and then you have to do the thing yeah Jay let me ask you a question have you ever shipped a piece of content a podcast or a blog when it's maybe 80% of what you hoped it would be almost every time mm-hmm yep so sometimes we have to realize that our customers don't have the ability to interact with the thought or idea or service that we want to provide them unless we put it in their hands and sometimes you ship it at 80 percent and nobody notices and they don't notice because I may have context over what 100 percent would look like they probably don't and so they're still saying wow I'm getting a ton of value from this even if it is 80 percent of the value that you could have theoretically given but you're still giving them a gift of 80 percent of that work that they wouldn't have if you didn't press [ __ ] because you're like you know why this can be better yep riggan we're gonna be wrapping up here soon guys if you have more questions put them in the chat put them in the ask a question area would love to know more about the content you're creating or any specific questions you have around that you guys all came here for a reason obviously so we're happy to riff on that a little bit more riggan has there been any other game changers for you in terms of keeping up your weekly cadence certainly you know having an external accountability has been really valuable and consistency has been important not only because I want to create trust with my my readers but I also really appreciate the momentum that you start to feel after you get into the cadence of the thing yeah and the more that you get it I gotta say having a backlog of stuff already created it's hard to get the hamster wheel or the the flywheel turning in the beginning but if you are two weeks ahead on whatever type of content you're creating you don't have to wait two weeks for that to publish and then try to get another two weeks ahead if you're two weeks ahead try to do another two weeks and then try to do another two weeks you know over time small incremental gains now you're a month ahead two months ahead you really increase your flexibility and optionality as an individual because you've already put in some of the work of making that stuff so really worthwhile to try and get ahead whatever schedule you're posting on and by the way if you're behind schedule that is a moment to share with your audience and have a human moment and instead of not sending anything say hey guys I know you're expecting something from me today I don't have it and then explain why but you're still honoring that contract to say I'm going to communicate with you on this day at this time and I think often that has actually received just as positively as something that's bigger dude that's so good because if you think about it when people engage with us they believe that I've got this challenger problem that J is going to help me figure out and if J shows me that he's been where I am and he shows me that he's human man I'm gonna trust him to take me to the promised land Jenny asks a question that says any advice about expanding the current email list yeah I'm good family to getting other people in my pipeline besides having the forward to a friend button in the bottom you're excited Regan you want to start I'm excited cuz you got me on this dude Jay Jay got me on this idea of like literally sitting down and I've blocked time to do this the last month or so where I will email and text and go on Facebook and say hey lately I've been doing this blog that talks about X here's a link to a recent post would you mind if would you mind joining the journey if so send me your email and literally one by one and then I will take their email and add it to the list the next thing you know in the last month and a half I've added over a hundred people to my list yeah literally one by one though yep same I can say the exact same thing the yes rate out of a hundred asks 98 people said yes yes no totally fine but it's so much better that you know I I think we've all been on the receiving end of an email that has an unsubscribe button because it's from an ESP that we did not sign up for and whether it's good content or not you're like hey I didn't ask for this I'm getting that explicit permission is super important and people when you ask just say yes and they can opt out at any time but I totally agree with the one-to-one analog method the other method that's a little bit can be bigger scale but is definitely also a lot of work is around partnerships and this is a huge point of emphasis for me right now is to identify people who serve a similar audience to you but probably in a slightly different way and going to those people and working on a partnership with them to say hey what can we do together you know what Reagan and I are doing right here right now this is a partnership you know Reagan's going to follow up with you guys to say if you enjoyed this here's a way to get in touch you'll get emails from Regan if you don't like them you don't need to be on yeah but this is this is exam perfect example of a partnership where I'm saying I know that the people who are following me are going to appreciate hearing from Regan so I'm gonna bring him on I'm going to email my list to say hey I'm gonna be talking to Regan and the people who opt in to receiving that now they have enrolled in Reagan's journey they understand that Regan exists and you know will start to communicate with him directly and vice versa yeah yep I also have if I hope she's on your I have an intern named Jamie who's amazing and she's going through and writing custom messages to my LinkedIn contacts about joining my email list and everyone says yes so we could do a whole thing I'm getting awesome interns but that's the thing that's amazing I need one of those well Regan we've reached the end of our questions here we're wrapping up if people want to learn more about your work or work with you where should they go guys thank you for joining us today I am at Regan Pugh comm Rea J&P ugh comm and from there you will see videos of my speeches and please go sign up for my blog I write every Wednesday about finding more clarity and meaning in life at work I'm at Regan pew on Instagram and Twitter and would love to join the conversation with you there yep and obviously I'm J my blog is Jay Klaus comm podcast is upside I am you guys will get my weekly newsletter that is based around thinking bigger and earning more as a freelancer and creative if at any time you don't like that please unsubscribe or reply reply and let me know what you're thinking awesome step here thanks for joining us guys thank you guys have a great way