[00:00:01] Intros
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Hey everyone, it's Shawn and this is the Creators That Crush podcast, and I have a confession to make. Over 700 YouTube videos and 400 landing pages and 175 podcast episodes and newsletters. I realized late last year that the problem wasn't showing up, doing the work, being on a deadline and producing. It was the clarity I had about myself in relation to the work.
And as I explored this, I started to develop an idea of the creator as the ultimate input into all of the technology systems and processes that they interact with. So we're doing a soft launch of. This idea where you are as a creator are the ultimate input. And so the show today, we'll be testing out a new format where we start with input, which will be me as a creator.
We'll start with Signal, the work that I've been doing, the. To get clarity and then the output, which is the result or the show that I'm tentatively we'll call input output. So again, today what we're gonna be talking about is my clarity journey and a five step framework to get a bit more clear and what my results have been over the last five months.
[00:01:23] The Input
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let's start with the input again. I'm Shawn Buttner and I have a 15 year career in tech, both as a software engineer and business analyst. And I specialize in communicating with the business side so that the engineers could understand what to build. What that work taught me is that most of the time people just want things to work and they don't have a clear idea of what just work really means.
So drilling in, really figuring out, if you want technology to automate something, you really have to understand what you're asking so that you can get better results. Was a sweet spot that helped me get promoted over and over again throughout my career. throughout my career. about 10 years ago, I got certified as a high performance coach 'cause I wanted to lead an engineering team and.
Being a high performance coach is just helping people get clear on what they really want so they can live the life that they want. So very similar thread, and that same idea doesn't apply just to building software. It doesn't apply just to helping people live the lives that they want. It's the same for ai.
When do you use ai? Are you clear about your goals? And what you're trying to automate, are you clear on what great output looks like? The end game that is helpful and not just a distraction because what AI has allowed people to do is create a massive amount of content and not have any connection to it.
And for me, I wasn't getting the business results that I wanted. Like I mentioned at the top here, I was the common thread through all those. Different inputs, but I wasn't getting the results I wanted.
So the, the first 10 years of my career, the goal was to help people live better lives, but that was borrowed language from my coaching career. Like, I wanted that, but it wasn't my word. I didn't feel like I owned it, and so I always felt a little off saying it, and. The real issue for me was I'm a car carrying introvert, and so I was hiding myself behind the other people's ideas.
So vague stories. I hedged opinions. They didn't want to make anyone upset, and I avoided controversy. And the irony of that is I'm coaching people on clarity and alignment in their tech or personal lives without doing it myself. So. This is what I actually want to do. I want to help people build businesses they love and are aligned to who they are, because that's what I wanted.
I want financial security. I want fulfillment, connection, and purpose in the work, and I want to feel like I'm making an impact and difference with others.
All of that led me to really start clarifying my thinking, my ideas, when I could add to the space of high performance and utilize my experience with technology. So I started to treat content as idea exploration and not production. I even for 10 years, like weekly newsletter, weekly video.
Doing quarterly marketing efforts. There's always a deadline, which turned everything into a check mark. So I was just doing it to check it off my list when I shifted my content to idea exploration, kind of like what I'm doing here now, it made it more fun and engaging.
I sounded more like myself. I could work through ideas publicly and I started to notice patterns in what I was talking about. I could start to mine my own content for further ideas. This all led me to realize I had to show up way more in my content, meaning I had to state my opinions very boldly. I had to get outta my head, start sounding so afraid or so robotic, and feel when I was communicating.
And that's how this framework emerged that I'm gonna share with you today. I discovered it one by one through working myself and with client work. And the pattern is when things feel off, there's somewhere where you're not clear and you're misaligned with who you really are. So for example.
If you're an honest person and you're forced to sell like a used car salesman, you're going to meet resistance because you, you're lying to people and you feel like you know that slime is just not gonna work. And so I've been working on AI the last three years, and as soon as I started to define.
Myself, my beliefs, what I'm thinking, the ideas that I, I want to develop. There's immediate change in how AI was responding to my prompts and brainstorming and, and coaching.
[00:06:28] The Signal: Five Areas Of Creator Clarity
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the five elements of this framework are your ideas ip, like what ideas do you want to own?
It seconds your beliefs. What connects you to your ideas? What do you stand for? Third thing, taste your quality and standards and what quality means to you.
Like how do you know if something is good? How do you know if a podcast episode is good? How do you know if a pe something you've written is great and excellent or not? And when it's not, that's the cue to continue to work, right?
We need to also talk about stories. How do you communicate all of the above from your experience from.
And then five expression, your tone, your phrases, your rhythm. How do you sound when you are you, what is your word choice? What mannerisms or gestures? And I'm extra gesturing right now into the microphone, but, you know, tones raise those rhythm.
Why do these matter? Because these five inputs are the input for everything downstream. You know, your AI tools team, your own processes. If you improve one of these ideas, you'll see a great output, you'll see a great quality change.
But if you improve all of these, everything is just. Amazing.
[00:07:46] The Output
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So having defined all these, how. Did things change for me? I felt more connected and less robotic. I felt comfortable showing up as myself more, and when I create something and I listen back to the podcast episode or review writing, I don't cringe internally because I feel like me and it doesn't feel borrowed.
It feels like it's processed. It feels like it's. Going somewhere, and very practically getting clear on those five areas. Improved. What, how the AI outputs immediately. Drafting copy pages for my website, helping me spot when I'm unclear in an outline or a piece of writing, it helps me.
You know, follow up with questions. If I get stuck of like, okay, where do I go with this idea? Like, what are some questions that I haven't answered in this piece? And I get questions and like, how would I answer that? And then you go, you don't get the AI to to tell you what to think, but it's good at kind of uncovering those questions you haven't addressed yet.
ultimately I'm doing more drafts of things. I'm creating more, but. Without having the AI generate it I'm still generating it, but it's a more sustainable, enjoyable process. And you know, honestly, like I haven't had any sale increases yet, and I'm a middle of implementing a bunch of ideas that have come up from doing this work.
But I am enjoying myself again. I'm feeling more connected. I'm more motivated, I'm more looking forward to, what am I going to say today? And how am I going to say it? And I can see how I'm improving the my ideas and how things are structured and being a little bit more concise and not bearing the lead in my content, which is something I do all the time.
And as a high performance coach, I know that clarity is the foundation for everything and your performance and whatever you do, if you are more clear on who you are, how you're going about it, and what you're going after. It will drastically improve from working with, with clients and whatnot.
[00:10:18] Wrapping Up - Quick assessment
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wrapping up. Here's a quick assessment for you.
Number one, how clear are you on your ownable ideas? On a scale of one to 10,what is an idea that is uniquely yours or how you phrase it? What would you say? And if you had a couple automatically where you're like, oh, these are my frameworks, these are my things, that's a 10.
So second, you know your beliefs. On a scale of one to 10, how often do your beliefs, your messages, your opinions show up in your work? 10, all the time. Very opinionated. One not opinionated at all. Five maybe not consistent.
But third thing is taste. So rate yourself on a scale of one to 10 on. How well you understand your taste, like how do you define a high quality podcast episode or a high quality YouTube video versus not? And so if your taste is well-defined, that's a 10.
Um, fourth thing, raise yourself on a scale of one to 10 on your stories. Uh, what are the consistent stories you are telling on a scale of one to 10, if you have five signature stories or things that you could pull from to illustrate your ideas, that's a 10. If you have zero, that's a one.
And then finally, your expression, your style. What are. What's your jargon, your way of phrasing things, your gestures, your colors, um, your fonts, like those types of things.
How do you express yourself in writing and in person on camera? And could you define that on a scale of one to 10 now?
[00:12:03] New Workshop
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If you want to go deeper on these five ideas or want to develop your communication document for Do Working with ai, I do have a webinar series that you can join. You go to Shawn Buttner dot com back slash ai to learn about the You First framework, and on there we talk about.
A little bit more in depth, these five areas on how to define it. I also have a freebie, um, a tool that will help walk you through how to create this document for yourself, for chatt or anthropic or whatever tool you use, and it helps you get clear on communicating what you need to tools, or you can also use this to work with your team.
[00:12:51] FINISHING UP
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So finishing up. Creators must lead their technology processes and team. And you do that by being clear with yourself because if you are clear on who you are as a creator, you can communicate that clearly outward to the world. Today's episode is one way to do it, and yeah, I hope you enjoy it. If you have any thoughts on this format, you're excited for it or not, please email me at support Shawn Buttner dot com. I'm gonna try this out a couple more times in a couple of different ways, but just all good. So with that, guys, this is Shar.
You're signing off. We'll see you on the other side.