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In this episode, I would like to talk about how to use the content that you create to change what people know you for. Especially if the work that you find most aligned today has expanded beyond what your body of work or your content archives reflect. This episode is definitely going to resonate with you if you have already established an audience, some content archives where you have demonstrated maybe a prior version of your professional identity, a body of work that demonstrated what you once wanted to be known for, but is no longer giving people an understanding of the depth of who you are and the work that you want to be known for today. And the issue is, is that if you are not consistent with creating content today, your old content is out there reinforcing this old identity. That's what we're going to talk about today. You see, yesterday someone was sitting in the hot seat in one of my mastermind groups and a powerful question was brought to the room. This happens to be somebody who is an established entrepreneur. He already has a very successful service based business. He has plenty of current client work coming in and there is currently a flow of new clients coming in through referral channels. He also happens to have an existing content platform and he has already proven that he has the ability to create compelling content that people enjoy. In fact, he already has an audience that has produced a lot of attention and over time has created some passive revenue. And while there's still some revenue being generated from that content that's already out there. The issue is that his content channels had kind of been dormant lately and he came to his hot seat with this question, how should the content that I create moving forward fit into my schedule and support the business that I'm building now. Now, some background about this person is the fact that he has recently made the decision just within the last year or so that he would like to move beyond being seen as primarily a technical service provider. He has a desire to help people through deep and meaningful conversations around business with strateg and coaching. I certainly resonate with this desire and shift. And this person who was in the hot seat yesterday is representative of at least five different conversations I've had with other entrepreneurs who once did service based technical Let me get in there and do it for you entrepreneurs who now want to do a little bit more of that strategic consulting and or coaching role. But for this member of my mastermind group, the issue was I don't know where I would fit content into my work schedule right now. There's some part of me that feels like I should be consistent. I should be creating content. I have this audience that's out there. I know that they care about the content that I create. I know that it has the potential to bring more awareness to the fact that I exist. But right now, I already have a steady flow of incoming service based work that is already bringing in the income that I need. I already have the revenue, I'm able to support my family. And there's lots of opportunities that exist for for me to participate in activities with my family. And I just don't want a commitment to content creation to get in the way of delivering the best that I have to offer to the clients that I've currently said yes to. And I don't want some arbitrary commitment to content creation to pull me away from time with my family and missing out on some of these opportunities that my business affords me. The whole reason I created my business in the first place. So as I sat and listened to the context of his conundrum, if you will, I recognized that he was thinking about content. Through this frame of increased awareness increase. It'd be nice, but it's not necessarily important to me right now. I might be able to reach potential clients, but I have a pretty consistent flow of clients now. There's some possible passive income generation, but my income needs are met. I love to show up and be helpful through meaningful conversations, but quite frankly, I have an outlet with that. I'm currently doing that with some of the people that I'm working with now. And it became very clear to me the reason why this client was having a difficult time making a commitment to consistent content creation was because of the way it was being framed in his mind. You see, most people struggle with a commitment to content because of other obstacles. Some people lack ideas for content. This guy does not. He has lots of ideas. Some people lack the technical skills required for creating compelling content. This client does not. This client has all of the equipment, he has all of the workflows figured out. He even already has an audience. And there are plenty of opportunities for him to expand. However, what he thought was the issue was an insufficient amount of time available for content creation. But the deeper issue was how he was framing the idea of content creation in his mind. You see, first, he had no immediate pain demanding that he create content. And second, he had a definition of consistent content, meaning that all channels need to be operating weekly. And when it comes to not feeling any immediate pain demanding that you create content, I've seen this before. When the current version of your business is working, the future of your business will rarely feel urgent when your current business is producing visible demands on your time and attention, such as client work that shows up and arrives with certain deadlines. You've got messages that come back and forth and invoices that need to go out and sometimes be followed up on. And there are consequences to everything that goes on with all of the current work that you're doing and if there is some new version of your professional identity that is emerging, identity building work simply does not come with an external deadline and therefore your urgent current repeated work will defeat the prioritization of your important work. So if you are struggling with consistently showing up with content, it may not be a consistency problem. It may be that you have not yet decided that shaping your future identity is important enough to compete with today's revenue producing work. And for some of you, that is exactly what is happening. One of the things that I did with this client who was in the hot seat was help him reframe the purpose of the content that he was creating. Going into it, it was very clear he had shared in context that he thought of content as potential additional awareness for his business out into the world. He also very clearly spoke about the fact that it feels good to create content that adds value to others, that serves others. And I really love doing that. It feels so good to provide that content. But what if the whole idea of creating content, the purpose of the content, the primary purpose of the content, is not for awareness or even creating value for the people who consume it? What if the actual role of the content is strategic, to help you redirect your business to the place where you want it to go next? What if you begin to think of every piece of content that you produce is an opportunity for you to communicate who you are now. What is it that you do today? How has your work expanded? Every episode is not just episode of a podcast. We're talking about any piece of content. Email, newsletter, YouTube, video, short video format. None of the it doesn't matter what the platform is. What if every piece of content is an opportunity to teach people how to perceive you? The question is, is are you teaching people intentionally with every piece of content? And the bigger issue is, when you stop publishing content, the market doesn't automatically update its understanding of you. It continues to associate with you the clearest and most repeated evidence that it already has. So your archived body of work is what's consistently reinforcing the current work that you're trying to expand beyond. And I am not making any case for removing your archives. I take My own example of this. I had been known as the podcast Answer man, widely and deeply throughout the world. And this identity was something that I had established throughout years of highly consistent content. And that identity as the podcasting go to expert for the technical aspects related to podcasting. It was an accurate and and meaningful identity for me for 12 years of my business journey, but it eventually became incomplete. I had throughout the years found that I had greater connection to the idea of helping people expand their mindset as it relates to business and possibilities that exist for them. Helping them overcome limiting beliefs, identify belief blind spots, helping them see things in a way they were not able to see for themselves. So I became very clear about the fact that I no longer wanted to be known as the technical go to guy for podcasting, but instead I wanted to be known for business strategy and mindset and mastermind group facilitation. And so obviously I went and changed my bio on my website and maybe on some social media platforms and things like that, but that's not enough. When people were coming across my content, the fact is, is they were searching for technical answers to the problems that they were facing. And that content was leading them to stuff that was out there that certainly showed a prior version of my professional identity to them. But thankfully, many of those people who found value in what I shared actually went and found the most recent versions of the content. So if they found my YouTube channel, they checked out some of the more recent videos. If they were following me, or if they found me through a podcast episode, throughout the archives, through a search, maybe in a podcast directory, got them the answer that they wanted. But then all of a sudden they clicked to see what the most recent episode was, however it happened. The thing is, is people who are brand new to who Cliff Ravenscraft is, I have the ability to direct their perception of who I am and the work that I do today, my professional identity, by consistently creating new new content that is designed to share who I am today, the value that I bring today, what are the current different ways that you could work with me. These are the things that I have the ability to do. And it is for this reason. It is the primary reason for why I create content today. It's not just general additional awareness. It's not only because I enjoy providing valuable content that serves others. And I'm not saying that I don't love that. I do. In fact, I'm creating this piece of content in hopes that it will serve you, but I do have a very real strategic purpose for creating this content. In fact, think about this. I am using an example of a question that was brought to a hot seat from a client in one of my facilitated paid mastermind groups. This podcast in and of itself is designed to actually teach you this valuable lesson about creating content with strategic design and framing it in a way that can help people understand your expanded, evolved professional identity and the work you want to be known for today to give further evidence of the work that you do in the world. And I'm doing that by actually doing it myself. It's very clear today that I want to be known as somebody who facilitates powerful mastermind group environments. I'm demonstrating with this episode the quality of my strategic thinking. I am sharing the depth of the conversations that I facilitate. I'm even communicating the kinds of entrepreneurs that I serve and the clarity and the movement and momentum that happens in the rooms that I facilitate. I want to share three strategic functions of content. Now, these are not commandments that you need to follow, but I would encourage you to at least consider when you are getting ready to publish your next piece of content. When you're getting ready to design or outline your next piece of content, the first function that you could use is positioning. That is exactly what we've been talking about. Be intentional about communicating who you are, what you do, what you believe, how you think, what problems you help solve, and what you want to be known for. In fact, you could even ask yourself this question. If somebody consumed only this one piece of content that I'm about ready to create and publish, what would it teach them about who I am and the value that I offer? That is one strategic function of your content that could be a part of what you produce moving forward. A second function is direction. Each piece of content that you produce could lead someone to take one intentional next step. And here's where I see a lot of content creators get it wrong. They have five different things that you could do. All these unrelated calls to action. I've been guilty of this myself. But instead, if you wanted to give people the direction of the next step to take, it could be anything. Like, hey, I want you to after this, listen to this other episode, send them straight to another podcast episode, or watch this other video, or join my mailing list, or explore an offer, or apply for this particular event, fill out this application, send me an email and ask let's start this conversation. Whatever the case may be, it doesn't always have to be some step that immediately produces a sale. But the purpose is to know exactly what you are inviting next in the relationship and knowing that before you hit record, what is the one next intentional step? That will be the direction that I will give to this person who has just received all this value from my content. And the third function that it can serve is service, but without sacrificing strategy. Your content should provide genuine value to people and it should reflect your heart for serving others. But just don't allow. I want to create something helpful to be a substitute for strategic clarity. It is so possible for your content to be so much more than just an expression of what you know and your heart for serving others. It can also be an evidence of who you're becoming. It can be an invitation for the market out there to see you the way you want to be perceived. And it can also be used as a clear path toward the next step you want them to take with you. Every piece of content teaches people how to perceive you. The question is whether or not you're intentionally teaching them. And the other part that I want to address is the idea and framing the idea of consistency as defined by some sort of frequency. Consistency and frequency are two different concepts. Consistency does not have to mean daily or weekly, or even constant or high volume. In my mind, consistency is more along the lines of choosing a rhythm, finding the rhythm that is intentional, that can be sustainable, that is predictable enough for you to maintain over time. But that rhythm also needs to be significant enough to accumulate evidence that it's working. Now, for this member that was in my mastermind group when I helped him understand that he could reframe the way he's thinking about content and seeing it as an opportunity to change the perception of his professional identity. And that consistency doesn't actually have to mean weekly. What he chose for himself right there in a single hot seat, is that from this point forward, he is going to make one piece of content every month, published on a very specific day each month. And he will sustain this for the next six months. And he even committed to blocking out and protecting one hour on his calendar within the next week. And when I asked him, on a scale of 1 to 10, how committed is he to to living up to and in alignment with that agreement, he was a 10 out of 10. And here's something I want you to think about. Even if he would have chose quarterly, quarterly content created with strategic clarity is more valuable than a burst of weekly content followed by nine months of silence. The reality is that the minimum effective cadence is the cadence for which you will genuinely put onto your calendar and protect at all costs. And I think it's important for me to say that not all cadences produce equal results. A quarterly or monthly rhythm will create evidence more slowly than a weekly rhythm. But a slower sustained rhythm is always better than an aspirational schedule that repeatedly collapses. And one of the things that I've learned through all of the years that I've been facilitating Mastermind groups is having an insight and or a breakthrough or the reframing of how I think think about something is incredibly valuable. But it is not complete unless there is some commitment to the calendar. In this case, he came in and says, I need to know where production, where content production will fit into my business. So there needed to be some minimum publishing commitment. There needed to be a specific date. There needs to be time blocked out for preparation so that he can sustain focus during that block of time. And the way that we do things in Momentum Mastermind is we not only have you commit to putting something on the calendar, but we choose a date for which you will report back the results of your committed action. Just because you say something matters to you doesn't mean that it really matters to you. You prove that something matters to you by choosing a date and time for which you will devote to doing it, and you protect it. That's how you demonstrate that this genuinely matters. Here, at the end of the episode, I want to ask you if you would be willing to make two commitments. The first commitment is to edit the evidence already in your archives. Take 10 pieces of your most recent content that you've published, even if it's a couple of months ago or years ago, and ask yourself these questions. What would somebody believe that I do based upon only these 10 pieces of content? What identity does it reinforce? Is that identity current, incomplete, outdated, confusing? And also, here's the last question. What important dimension of my work is absent? The second commitment is to put your next piece of content on the calendar. Here are your decisions. What date will it be published? What strategic role will it serve? What identity will it reinforce? And what is the one single next step that I will offer at the end? When will you prepare it, and when will it get published? All of these questions related to these two commitments will be found in the show notes. Here's what I want you to know. Your current work may be profitable, and it may be respectable, and it may even be enjoyable. But if it is not the fullest expression of the work you want to be doing three years from now, you cannot allow today's success to consume every hour that could have been invested in creating tomorrow's. Professional identity. I'm not telling you to abandon the work that you're doing today. I spent 18 months transitioning from podcast Answer man to the mindset Answer Man. But during those 18 months I was intentional about consistently creating evidence of my new professional identity and I would encourage you to do the same. The insight that I shared with you today came from my Momentum Mastermind group. This is the work that I know that I was put on this earth to do. Creating rooms where entrepreneurs can bring real outcomes that they desire, get clear about who they are, what they want, and identify what is currently standing in the way so that they can gain the clarity and insight of knowing exactly what the next aligned step is. Not that we're trying to solve everything all at once, the whole path to get there, but what is the next aligned step? And then to make a commitment to put it on the calendar to protect your focus during that period of time and to commit to a date where you will come back and report the feedback, the results that you got from that action and rinsing and repeating over and over again. If you are someone who has outgrown your old professional identity and you know that information is not what's holding you back from creating the new professional identity and desired outcome that you desire, my Next Level Mastermind Momentum Group may just be the room that helps you turn your information into committed action and builds you the momentum you desire towards the life you want to create next. If you would like to learn more, head over to cliffravenscraft.com momentum that will be linked in the show notes as well. And after you've had a chance to look at the page, reach out to me and let me know if this feels like something you'd be interested in pursuing. If so, we could have a conversation to talk about what that would look like. From there. I look forward to hearing from you and seeing you gain momentum in the life that you desire to create. Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the next level podcast and some man.