The smell of coffee fills the room. I'm sitting at my desk in a Zoom waiting room, and the screen flickers, and then my coach Jeremy's face shows up, and we get into it. So we were talking about what to talk about before, and we jump right into it, and I share that I am frustrated about the state of my podcast and show.
And he goes, "Tell me more." And so the list shows up, as the caffeine hits my blood. But I start going off on how the new offer I've been designing is making me feel uneasy, and I'm continuing to work on the brand and the big idea behind the show and everything, and how does it all tie together, and it's going so slow, and I'm impatient.
And as I'm listing out all of these frustrations, it comes up that I'm actually just really insecure about doing something new. And it was in that moment where it hit me, as a coach, that I felt like all of this was off all the time, So today we're gonna talk about how you don't find your voice by studying the craft of creating, but by paying attention to the stories you're already in.
Hi, I'm Shawn Buttner, certified high performance coach. This is the Input Output
So starting off, let's get into the input in finding your voice as a creator. Now, it's all, at least in my experience, based on a false assumption that your voice is the craft of the thing you're creating, tons and tons of reps, and a very specific niche or topic that you can speak to. And this is actually a red herring because really your main input into your creator voice is your attention and where you're putting that attention.
And most creators are generating content instead of observing their lived experience, So the real raw material here is the things that you're noticing in your day-to-day life, and it's been there the whole time.
[00:02:18] SIGNAL
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So what is the signal or the work and the breakdown, right?
So for me, the last 10 years I've done over 700 YouTube videos, about as many newsletter, weekly newsletters, about over 150 podcast episodes, and tons of social media. I had over 400 landing pages, and all of that work was helping me build skill, but it always, deep down in my heart, fell flat. and what that meant is it didn't feel like it was me.
It felt like I was echoing ideas that I had heard from other people, or I was using these words that weren't really mine, and I wasn't really adding to the topic or space. And,after 10 years I asked myself like, what gives here?
Why is this happening? And I realized that it was-- I was learning. I was copying my heroes, and that's where many creators kinda get stuck because for me, copying my heroes also meant hiding behind borrowed ideas. So I didn't have to share my life online because that was really scary and I'm-- I didn't really-- I'm not-- really don't have interest in doing that, so I hid behind it.
And I was hiding vulnerability of expressing strong opinions, making people angry. It's a little bit of people-pleasing probably. And again, like I, I was hiding any type of who Shawn is online. And so this question again, what gives? Was the first question that started to unravel all of the showing up, all of the hard work that I put in without getting the results, which was audience growth or actually people connecting with my work.
And so what gives leads me to start questioning, what am I doing? And so I start joining a bunch of business groups and creator groups to try to figure it out. And my buddy Patrick, a retired partner from Accenture who one day was talking about the power of stories to make multimillion-dollar deals.
And so he's talking about the importance of stories and story structure and how do you make stories, and he challenged the group to list every story you tell regularly. And I remember him asking that question, and he said, "I'm gonna give you a few minutes." And for three minutes I stood frozen in panic because I didn't have any stories I was regularly telling.
And that was like, oh, this could be part of why things aren't connecting. And so he challenged us to write one story per day. It didn't matter how small, but notice the things that you find interesting, notice the things that resonate, notice the things that make you feel different, and try to pull lessons out of that that you could tell others.
And why does this work? Because when you focus on trying to tell a story, you have to figure out the meaning of the story, and in order to pull out the meaning of the story, you have to have a point of view, and your point of view is your voice
[00:05:51] CTA - Join the newsletter to see the written version
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Before I get into what changes when you start implementing today's idea, this week's newsletter of The Output is the written version of this argument. You can go to shawnbuttner.com/joinus to sign up and get access to it, and we'll see you there
[00:06:15] OUTPUT
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So what changes when you start to find your voice? You have content from your own lens and point of view, and it's different from what's borrowed. And so if you feel like your content feels hollow, it's a source problem, it's not a production problem.
And when it's right, you know because it feels connected to you. It's not some performance. You're not an imposter in making it. You're standing up for what you really truly think about something. And this particular episode opened with a coaching session story, so that's me applying this practice in real time in that when I realized that it was a similar, like, coaching situation I had done 100 times with other folks, just applied to me, I was on the other side of it.
I'm like, "Oh, this is interesting. This is something that I should put into my next piece of content." And so I did it in the newsletter, and I'm doing it here in the podcast.
[00:07:13] CONCLUSION
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So one question for you today, what's happened to you today that you're still thinking about? And what are the things that have happened this week that you're still thinking about?
And it's not, what should I create, but what are you already connected to? What are you already feeling? And then pick one of the things bouncing around in your head that has stuck with you and take one moment from it, one lesson, and put it in your next piece of content.
[00:07:43] WRAPUP
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If this resonated with you, let me know. Send a note to [email protected]. I read every single one of them, and it helps me see what's landing with the show and, you, and what is working, so it's good feedback for me to improve.
With that, this is Shawn Buttner signing off