I watched a Gary Vee video and he was telling someone to do more documenting to help create more content without feeling burnt out. So, I took the advice, and here are some things I'm doing right now.
Thanksgiving just happened. We do our thanksgiving the weekend before, so what did I do Thanksgiving? Worked… Yep, I'm loving helping you guys and creating and getting more merch out for you. So Thursday and Friday, I didn't go shopping, I worked. and I have so many messes, I have no place to go. So, I worked on my bed, while my sheets were in the wash.
I always have a long list of things that need to get done for you guys. I love doing it, but I need structure to do it. How-ever, if I have too much structure, I get frustrated and bored. I need variety. Melissa Leger shared Cara Alwill Leyba's story the other day. She was talking about a time block. It's literally this block with times marked on it. You roll the block to see how much time you'll spend on a project. I took that idea and made my own blocks.
1 has the activity I will do. Like practice singing, create content, work on merch, etc. then there is a block for each side of that one. So, say it land on singing, I have a block that has warm ups and genres. If it lands on content, I have things like tiktok, blog, youtube, etc. So I figure, if I'm feeling like I need some variety, then I can use these and let the blocks decide. I did make a block that have time on it and one that has number of (ie: number of videos, number of songs, etc). That way, if I am feeling unmotivated, I can roll how long I'm going to spend on the activity. I'm guessing I'll be hoping for 15 minutes if I'm feeling unmotivated, but then end up going way longer. Sometimes when we don't want to do something, we can say "it's only" however long, and it makes it easier to start. I'm guessing I'll either end up removing a bunch of the blocks and only using a couple of them, or not use any of them. But we'll see. I haven't used them yet.
The other thing I did was got merch up on my website.
There's a follower in particular who go excited about my content, googled me and found my site, then got excited about my bandanas. I hadn't been talking about merch because I didn't think people were interested. But now that people are really starting to catch fire of the content I'm putting out, I'm like, I should make more merch available.
So I posted 2 paints I did, 3 necklaces I made, and a bunch of earrings I made. I also made another pair of earrings to put up. Next project is to work on more jewelry and drawings that will go with them. Currently I'm doing all one of a kind, hand made merch.
Eventually I'll branch out into mugs and shirts and what not, because there's no way I could ever keep up with making 100% of the merch myself. Right now I'm taking care of all the supplies, processing and shipping too. Eventually I'll end up outsourcing shipping, because as I grow, I know I won't be able to keep up with it. But for now, it's just me.
This is a very very small portion of what it takes to run a business as a content creator. But there's a glimpse behind the scenes of what I'm personally doing, and what it takes on the business side of things.