How to Stop Drawing a Blank When Creating Your Marketing Content

INTRO: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Katherine Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen her and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be the Sought After Entrepreneur podcast, and here's your host, Katherine Thompson. 

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode, and I cannot wait to dive in [00:01:00] today's topic because if you're a business owner and you feel like you're drawing a blank every time you go to create that marketing content for your business, writing those weekly emails, writing the blog posts, showing up on social media and creating content, maybe it's even recording a podcast episode, you're like, I don't know what to say.

Or how to say it, and your day just gets busy. So you move on with things and you just don't do it because you are drawing a blank, as I call it. Then you're gonna wanna keep listening because I'm gonna share with you why this is happening and how to shift beyond this. So I also share a lot about this in my selling, the Invisible training and where to sort of, Focus, but I'm gonna break this down for you in this podcast episode as well.

If you haven't watched the training though, I highly suggest that you do, cuz I do touch on some of the other things that you can do in order to sell your services, especially if you're selling The Invisible. And you can click the link around this show, uh, to sign up for that on demand free training. So the first reason why [00:02:00] this.

Often happens for business owners where they're like almost tongue tied. It's like, I don't really know what to say or how to say it is because there's a lack of clarity on basically their offers and how to really articulate what they do, why they do it. There's a lack of clarity around who they actually serve, so they're not really clear on who their audience is, and so they're trying to fit in a bunch of different types of people, let's just say.

And it becomes sort of jumbled or they just don't really have the clarity on how to communicate with these people, and they don't really know what makes them different. Which is what I call a messaging problem more than anything. And the biggest problem I see is, is that business owners, entrepreneurs, they actually start in the content creation and the copy side of things, right?

It's like, I have this business, I have this offer. You know, you might know what your offer is, but you don't really know how to articulate it in a way that gets your audience going, heck yes, I [00:03:00] want that thing. So you start to create content to talk about the different things that inspire you, or you start to create content that like even tries to sell the thing that you have and you're creating it from what I call that micro, right?

It's like, what do I post today? What email do I send this week? And what ends up happening is, is that you're gonna end up drawing a blank, because over time that stimulation of what to post, when to post, how to post it is gonna run out because your messaging is actually the thing that fuels them. When you're super clear on who you are, what you do, why you do what you do, what your offers are, who your offers are for, and what ultimately makes you different, that all fuels your marketing.

And this is the biggest mistake I see pretty much all entrepreneurs do is that we either try to talk to too many people, we're trying to be too many things to too many people. Not only does that dilute the message, [00:04:00] it also creates what I call this drawing a blank. Cuz we're like, I just don't know what to say.

I don't know when to say it. I don't know how to say it. What do I post today? What do I post tomorrow? How do I create enough content to talk about the thing? That I'm wanting hear, wanting to talk about. So if you're in this sort of like drawing a blank phase, that I want you to go back and revisit that messaging, right?

I want you to go back and ask yourself, what do I offer? What is this offer? And can you articulate the value of that offer that ultimately speaks to? The people that you wanna work with, whether you're a product or a service-based business. And I'm not talking about, when I talk about articulate the value of what you do, I'm not talking about like putting into words the features of your product or your service.

I'm not talking about, you know, I'm selling a coaching package that has this many calls and it's gonna support you on this, right? I'm talking about what is the value of the [00:05:00] work that you do for your clients, and how is that different? Than other people that are in the market with you, right? What is your unique proposition?

What is your unique ways of doing things? How do you see the world in a unique way? All of this will fuel your content marketing, and that's where you have to start. Oftentimes, I'll hear people say, Well, I want the content strategy. What's the content strategy and when do I post and how do I post it? And I'll often say, well, what's your messaging?

What's your offer? Well, I don't really know how to put into words what my offer is. And I'm like, well, I can't actually create a content strategy for you until I know I. What your offer is, cuz your offer ultimately is going to, like I said, fuel the marketing. So if you're drawing that blank, I highly, highly recommend you go back to what I call the basics and I say the basics and not sort of like a demeaning way of like, oh, you're a newbie in the world.

Because oftentimes [00:06:00] as your business grows and as you evolve and as you grow, your messaging strategy will also evolve and grow too. So if you've been like, Trucking along and you're established and you've got sales coming in and clients, and then all of a sudden you hit this point in the road and you're like, I feel like I'm drawing a blank.

I don't know what to talk about anymore. It's likely because your message needs to evolve. Or you've just been talking about it for so long that it's been sort of become sort of second nature, that you might need sort of a refreshed eye on what you do to sort of re spark some inspiration. Again, it goes back to the messaging, revisiting that messaging going, how have I changed?

How have my offers changed? How have my products and services, how has the delivery of what I do changed? All of those sorts of things we wanna sort of revisit. And I have created this phenomenal quiz. What's your elevated edge if you're sitting here going, I have no idea what [00:07:00] makes me different. I don't actually feel any different.

I feel the same as everybody else. I don't feel any special than, or more special than anybody else. That I want you to go take that quiz because that quiz is gonna show you. What your elevated edge is, it's actually gonna highlight what makes you unique. And it's like I said, if you've been following me for a while, you've likely heard me talk about this.

It is seriously one of the most thoughtful quizzes on the innerwebs, if not the most thoughtful quiz. There's so much there that. Not only helps you define what your elevated edge is and what makes you different, it also reveals like the customer experience that would be really beneficial for you to create within your business.

There's so much there, like what platforms to be on a social media. Tips and tricks and stuff based on who you are and what your elevated edge is. It is seriously phenomenal. That link is also around here, but it's creatively owned.com/quiz if you want to take that. It's absolutely phenomenal, and [00:08:00] that is a really good starting point to start to spark.

Some of that messaging, foundational messaging pieces that you need in order to fuel your content and your marketing going forward, right? If you feel like you're just kind of winging it and throwing spaghetti against a wall and creating posts sort of on a whim, then like I said, this is a really great place to sort of start and sort of lay the foundation so that you have that, you know.

Content fueled by your messaging, and you can move out of that, what I call drawing the blank. Now, also a reminder. If you're well into your business and you feel like you're drawing a blank, then there's one other thing that can often happen, and I touched on one of them, right? I touched on the one thing where it's like maybe your messaging has evolved and maybe the vision of your business needs to evolve with that, and all of those sorts of things.

But there's one other thing is, is that when we get so ingrained in our business and we get building our business, it's really [00:09:00] easy for. Entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial spirit to do, do, do, do, do. And before you know it, we can become burnt out, let's just say, because our to-do list is so full of stuff, and if our to-do list is so full of stuff.

We don't have the creative capacity to even intentionally, intuitively come up with what to say and how to say it because our brain is full. So that can be another factor that impacts what I call drawing the blank. You might have your messaging foundation down tickety boo, and you know exactly who you are, what you stand for, who you serve, what your offers are.

You know exactly that and you've got this beautiful customer journey that you're taking people on. But from time to time you feel like you get into this sort of like creative rut. One of my clients calls it, you know, they feel creatively constipated. Like it's like I just can't come up with ideas. And oftentimes it can be.

Either because we're thinking so hard about the ideas we need to come [00:10:00] up with, or our schedules are just completely jam full. We don't even actually give ourselves the space to create, which then creates that, what I call creative constipation in a lot of ways where we just are blocked and we can't actually, we feel like we're drawing a blank, but really we've actually just blocked our creative flow.

My suggestion to that and to move out of that is to. Step away from the doing, step away with trying to create content, step away with trying to force it right? And give yourself the space and time to get into that creative flow. And that might be going for a walk, that might be painting, that might be cooking, that might be literally taking a week off social media and not scrolling, right?

It might actually be sitting in a coffee shop. It's oftentimes when I'll recommend clients, I'm like, I think you just need to go sit in a coffee shop, especially if you're working alone in your house. You know, if you're an online coach or [00:11:00] consultant and you work primarily in your house or by yourself, let's just say, or you've got a remote team, then sometimes it requires you to go out and actually be in public and be in other people's energy to spark.

Ideas and to have that creative flow coming in. And so that might be something that you need to try. So, That's another reason why we can feel like we're drawing a blank and when in reality we're not really drawing a blank. We've just blocked that creative flow and those intuitive hits and downloads that are so, so powerful for us to be creative in our business.

And that can be, like I said, when you're. Working your, your plate's full. Maybe your client roster's full. Maybe your business is just like sell and sell and sell and you're doing an amazing job and you just don't have the capacity. I know I felt like this in my brick and mortar, um, and lots of small business owners, brick and mortars will probably be like, yeah, I feel you on that.

Like the day-to-day operations of running a retail business, let [00:12:00] alone a custom winery where you're producing wine is like we don't actually really have time to. Think about creating content because there isn't enough hours in the day to actually do that. Right. Which is why a lot of my content for my brick and mortar was behind the scenes.

It was me walking around the store while I was working, right, documenting me fun, uh, funneling wine and making wine and draining a barrel. And that got people going, oh, that's so cool. I want to check that place out. You know? But it wasn't. What I say in the online business world, the coaches and consultants, where there's a lot more like long form content that goes into writing the emails and social media posts and stuff like that, uh, in order to sell the services.

So those are sort of like the two reasons why. You would be drawing a blank in your business. The first one is what I call a messaging problem. It's actually not a content creation problem or anything other than that. It's literally the messaging. It's going back to the foundations, who you are, what you [00:13:00] do, what you stand for, what makes you different, what, what are your offers and what makes your offers different, and can you articulate the value of those offers.

In order for them to resonate with your audience. That's the messaging foundation. That alone will spark insight on the content that you create for your marketing, and also help you map out that customer buying journey, which is again, one of the mistakes I see a lot of business owners do is, is that.

They don't create that customer buying journey, right? We've got this offer and then we just on a micro level, start to create content. We'll just post on social media. We might start a Facebook, you know, page. We might write a website, but we don't actually think about what is the journey? Are we taking people on from that very first point of contact with our business, whether that's a physical retail store or an online virtual business.

And where do we actually want people to go and what does that journey [00:14:00] look like? This is what I call the meta. This is what we're looking at from that big picture perspective, which is what a marketing and messaging strategy is all about. And then when we have that in place, then that fuels all of the actions we take, the intentions that we make, the cadence in which we communicate to our audience, right?

If you're speaking to busy moms, you're not gonna send them 15 emails a week, you know, cuz they're not gonna read half of them. Right. So you've gotta, again, look at the audience, like, who's my audience? And are they gonna be, you know, reading long form emails, or are they gonna be listening to bite-size podcasts in their ear?

Are they going to be on social media scrolling and digesting content that way? Or are they completely off social media and they're wanting to see stuff more in person? You know, maybe, maybe I'm going to a vendor fair or a trade show, or a mar a local market to sell what I sell because that's where my people are at.

Can you see where the difference is? I lots of clients, all that'll come to me. They'll be like, I'm on, you [00:15:00] know, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and I'm posting on all of these things. I'm thinking about going on YouTube and I've got an email list and I've got a website. I'm doing all things. I'm like, how effective?

Is that for you? And they're like, well, I'm not really seeing the results, or I'm not, you know, I'm putting in a lot of effort but not really seeing the payoff in the results. And it's because there really is no strategy. It's like, I'm just gonna get on all the things and hope to God my message lends on people's lap and it doesn't work that way.

And so again, going back to sort of drawing the blank is like really laying that foundation for your messaging and everything else will be clear right when we know who we're talking to and why we're talking to them. Then the cadence in which we communicate. Will just unfold for us. You know, it might not be showing up on social media five times a week.

It might not be sending two emails at least a week in, uh, to your list. Right? Again, so much of the rhetoric on social media and digital marketing and marketing [00:16:00] in general is like, you've gotta do this, this, and this to be successful. And that sort of cookie cutter formula plays into the drawing of the blank too, because it's like, oh, I have to post five times a week, but I don't know what to say and when to say it.

And so I just don't either post anything or I post something like on a whim or whatnot, and it's not really effective. And we spend this energy and time trying to fit ourselves into a prescribed approach to marketing when in reality, Posting five times a week might not resonate with your audience.

Showing up in stories on Instagram might not resonate with your audience. If they're busy professionals, they might be spending more of their time on LinkedIn. You know when TikTok became the rave, everyone's like, I'm moving over to TikTok. The engagement's amazing. And it's like, but is your audience there?

We can, we can jump over to TikTok and we can grow our, you know, following to thousands and thousands of people and have this [00:17:00] amazing engagement. But like who's there and who's scrolling? Because I don't spend time on TikTok. So if I was your audience, you wouldn't catch me over on TikTok. Like, I have an account, but I don't spend a ton of time there.

Most of my time is spent on Instagram. So again, it's really knowing who your audience is. But again, I don't digest a lot of content on Instagram. I don't. Digest a lot of content in email, right? Again, it's, it's understanding who your audience is and how to best communicate with them is what is going to drive everything that you do in your business.

And then again, back to the offer, right? Is like, what is the offer and how are we communicating that offer to our audience? That will help you move. So beyond that, drawing a blank. And then if you're, you've fall into the other category where you're busy and your brain is full and you're trying to, you know, do, do, do, do, do.

Then you're likely create, you've hit that sort of creative block, and that could be contributing to that drawing a blank [00:18:00] piece now. You might be listening to this and think, okay, Catherine, what is your stance then on something like chat, g p t, because that's a really great way to spark insight and give insight and have some ideas and, and all of that.

And I feel like that. Piece of it, because I, I get asked this a lot. Well, what do you think about chat G B T? Should I be using that to sort of spark ideas? And I have a lot that I want to say about this, but I don't, and I don't know if it's, if I wanna say it here right now in this moment, but I do want to preface that like any technological advancement, any technology that comes out, there's always pros and cons to it.

So I'm not gonna sit here and say like, chat G B T is horrible and terrible and. Oh my God. It's replacing humans and the human feeling and all those sorts of things, but I'm also not gonna sit here and rave about it as the thing that's gonna be like the savior, savior for you if you are drawing a blank.

Because if you're coming from that energy of like, I [00:19:00] just need something outside of myself to tell me what to do, how to do it, when to do it, you've already outsourced your power as the business owner. And most entrepreneurs that I work with are not well-versed in marketing and sales. They're not trained in marketing and sales.

And so now you've gone and given your power, let's just say, to an AI bot to tell you what to say, when to say and how to say it. And your, and, and the downfall of that is in the blind spots I see happening all over the place is you've just taken that and gone, okay, cool. Now I'm gonna go implement this thing.

And you still are no further ahead cuz you don't really know then what works and what doesn't work, or at least you won't know how to spot it. Right? It's almost similar to hiring a coach and a coach being like, do this, do this, follow this cookie cutter step and you'll be successful. And when you go to implement it, it doesn't work.

It's like, Well, why didn't that work? Well, now I don't know why it worked, and I just [00:20:00] paid thousands and thousands of dollars for someone to tell me to follow their steps. The AI bot is the exact same thing, right? When we're feeding it with prompts or questions or whatever, it's just spitting out. Sure. It might be intelligent.

Sure. It might be able to give you some inspiration and insight. But you still have to know how to make that work within your business. You still have to know whether or not that fits within who you are, your values, what makes you different. You still have to have the know how to navigate the marketing of it.

You know, I, I recently read somebody say, oh, it, you know, it, it will, it will help you create the most effective marketing plan. And I was like, effective in what capacity? Right. Effective in that it gives you words on paper and therefore you can just check something off a to-do list going, sweet, I have a marketing plan now, or have a marketing strategy now.

Well, how do you know it's effective? It's only effective if it helps you create results in your business. Right? [00:21:00] That's when it becomes effective. Effective is not measured by the fact that it spit out a bunch of stuff to you, which then goes and tells me again, we look at the world of integrity and marketing, which is a whole nother conversation, which is we've gotta be really, really, really cautious about what we're claiming.

Which to me is one of the biggest downfalls with chat G P T, and that's compromising integrity, right? We see a lot of marketing claims out there to me that are so out of integrity and that claim that I saw about chat G P T, and I'm seeing them all over the place is like, it's gonna help you do this.

It's gonna help you do this. It's gonna save you millions on hiring copywriters. It's gonna save you millions on hiring, marketing people. And at the end of the day, it's like the claim that's being made is the fact that it's gonna save you on these people because AI's gonna be able to do this for you.

And it's giving people this like, oh my God, this is amazing feeling. And [00:22:00] in reality, The integrity piece that I feel like is compromised is the fact that it's not gonna tell you what's working and not working right. It's just gonna give you a to-do list and then it's gonna complete your to to-do list for you, which to me is why so many entrepreneurs struggle in the first place.

Cause we're just following this to-do list. Check. Got that done, posted a piece of content today. Check. Right? We're going through the motions. We're acting like a robot in a lot of ways, which is what the AI is, right? It's a robot and it's, and it's operating from that perspective. And it was built from that perspective, right?

It was built from what I think is like patriarchy and the flawed masculine of like doo doo, do and look. Now you can pump out, you know, 7,000 pieces of content in 2.2 seconds. Like, What if we actually paused for a moment and said, huh, I'm drawing a blank. I'm gonna create really intentional content and that might look like communicating with my [00:23:00] people once a month instead of falling back into the trap of I've got a post seven times a.

A week, and I've gotta email my list at least two times a week. And I've gotta, you know, business is being built in what I call the, like wounded masculine of like, do, do, do, it's like industrial era of like this conveyor belt. Like how much can we produce and how quickly can we produce it, and how much can we get out there?

That's one reason why you're likely drawing a blank is because you're trying to keep up with this. Produce, produce, produce, produce, when for most of us, we're cyclical beings. We're not designed to be go, go, go, go, go all the time. We're not designed to be talking all the time. We're not content factories.

And that to me is what the AI system is. It's turning us into even more content factories like I don't think we need more content out there. That's not intentional, that's not potent, that's not being well thought out. I don't think we need more of that. I think we [00:24:00] need less of that, which is. What I teach, which is what I'm about right, is reinventing the way we do marketing.

It's rethinking the way we do marketing, right? It's, it's taking our time back when it comes to marketing in general, of like starting to shift the belief around what do I actually need to do in my business to be successful? How can I market in integrity? How can I create claims in my business that are truthful and authentic?

That is what I want you to walk away from this episode with, right? If you wanna use tools that can help you spark inspiration, great. My whole hope is that we don't start to rely on these tools as the savior to our business. We don't rely on these tools as the thing that's gonna just help me pump out more content.

That we don't rely on these tools as the thing that's going to replace. Really amazing [00:25:00] experts in our business, bookkeepers, marketing people, copywriters, whatever. Whatever else this is gonna do for us is like that, that human connection, that human touch within our business, that humanness in our business.

Is should be, in my opinion, the foundation of our business. It's why we're in business. We're we're humans. We're here to connect, right? Your audience is here to connect with you. You're here to connect with your audience, and you're here to create an impact in what you do. Whether that's delivering a product or a service, it doesn't matter, right?

There's a humanness, and if you want to rely on tools and technology to support you and to improve, What you do phenomenal. But I don't want you to rely on tools that are gonna be used to one, I think completely bypass what it means to be a human and ultimately be authentic and in in integrity with your work, [00:26:00] which to me is the foundation of really, really, really phenomenal marketing To me, marketing is grounded in authenticity.

And if we aren't authentic within what we're doing, Then that's where the marketing gets a bad rap and gets a bad name. And so my invitation to you is if you are drawing a blank, and even if you're not, to go back to that messaging and to revisit why you do what you do, to revisit why you serve the people that you serve, and revisit why this offer these products or services that you're putting out into the world.

Why, why you're so passionate about them. Go back and take a moment and revisit that if you haven't done that already. And then look at, okay, now how do I make this happen? And can I shift my belief around what I actually need to do in order to be successful? Do I need to send 7,000 emails to sell what I [00:27:00] sell?

Do I need to be showing up every single day on social media? Get really clear about that and really intentional. That is authenticity, right? And sometimes, oftentimes, authenticity looks like going against the grain, right? We've been conditioned and taught that we need to do all of these things to be successful.

And now we've got these tools popping up that are like, look, you can produce 70,000 more things in like 2.2 seconds. Woo-hoo. Does, does it mean that the content that you're producing, therefore is more intentional? Is it more thoughtful? Right? Can we relieve the pressure that we need to relieve from ourselves to be on all the freaking time?

Can we pause for a moment and go, huh? Do I actually need to be sending all of these emails every single week or can I pause for a moment? Or am I [00:28:00] just in a season of my business where drawing a blank is part of it? You know, I'm just, I'm, I can repurpose content that I've already created. I don't need to be creating content from scratch all the time.

I don't need to be coming up with all these new novel ideas, all the, all the time. I can actually ride the ebbs and flow of my business, which is this cyclical way of living, right? We're not designed to be on all the time. And I would hate for us to start relying on what I think is an AI bot to keep us on all the time, right?

Or act as a savior in our business some way, shape, or form. Like, wow, this is miraculous. Now that I know what to say and how to say and when to say it right. If you didn't know what to say and how to say and when to say it, that's where we wanna start. And then we wanna, you know, work from that place of intention versus any other place.

So with that, I hope this episode has been really powerful for you to [00:29:00] address sort of where you're at when it comes to drawing a blank and how to move and shift through that, and also giving you an invitation to consider. The integrity of the work that you're putting out there and the words that you're using and how you're using it and the claims that you're making, and to be really, really, really intentional about that because they have the power to impact.

And we get to be on what I call the right side of marketing that is grounded in authenticity and truth and not in manipulation and over grandiose promises that are actually not true in any way, shape, or form, like, It's gonna help you create an effective marketing strategy, which to me is just like, I just get so rattled with that, um, because it preys on people that don't know.

Marketing. It preys on people that are not well versed in marketing and most business owners aren't. And that doesn't, it's not a bad thing, it's just the truth. [00:30:00] And so as marketers and people that are selling things, we need to be even more in integrity with the promises that we make because, It's not about preying on people's deepest desires or biggest fears.

That's not what it's we're here to do, right? In my opinion, we're here to make the world a better place, and how do we do that? We don't do that by putting people into more suffering, more pain. We don't do that by, you know, preying off people's fears and deepest desires. That's not how we. Market and sell inauthenticity and integrity.

So with that, I'm gonna leave you there cuz I kind of went on a chat G B T ran. Cause I knew I was gonna get that question. Lots of people ask me that question and that is my insight there. I'm not telling you not to use it, I'm not telling you not to play around with it. I'm just. Wanting to invite everybody listening to go back to sort of the basics in your business and get back down to that foundation of why you're doing what you're doing in the first place.

And from that [00:31:00] place, you will be surprised how quickly ideas start to flow to you and how quickly the words start to flow because your back. In your own anchor within yourself of like, why the heck am I doing this in the first place? And that gives everything that you do purpose, that gives your words purpose, and that's felt beyond anything.

So with that, I'm gonna leave you there because I could go on forever about this because I'm very, very passionate about it and reinventing and rethinking the way that we do marketing and the way that we look at it. Um, and so I also cannot wait for next. Week's episode because I have a special guest on, I'm bringing a guest back on, and she's gonna be talking to you about the identity of the person that you need to be within your business in order to operate from integrity, but also to scale your business with a team, which is something that we often don't.

Think about, or we build a team and then we realize we've [00:32:00] built it, that's not in alignment, or we're not getting the best out our team, or it's not performing as well as we wanted to. And all of the things that come with hiring a team. So if you've heard this saying, you've gotta be the person now in order to.

You know how be the leader of that seven figure, six figure, whatever figure business you wanna run is like, you've gotta be that leader now. And if you've all, if you've heard that and thought, I have no idea what that means, like I can't even fathom what that even means, like, what's wrong with who I am right now or what needs to change, then you're gonna wanna listen to this because this is one of the most practical episodes that I've recorded with somebody who.

Is an operational specialist. So with that, be sure to subscribe to the show so that you can hear that episode when it drops. Cheers. 

OUTRO: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.[00:33:00]