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Go something up. Take bigger swings. You guys all get to take bigger swings. This is why I created Content Club. Because content club, I'm like, oh, I'm procrastinating on my content. Well, not anymore. Now I literally have to be on Zoom every single day creating content or else I'm scamming people. I just don't know if the world needs, like more products from me. So unless it's something I really love and really care about, like, I don't know if we need more like plastic and all packaging and in the world, but if it's your dream, it's your dream. Welcome to Built In Public. I am your host, Courtney Johnson. I've been a full time content creator and a personal brand strategist for seven years. And I really built my career sharing the process, not just the outcomes of personal brand. Built In Public is about what it actually looks like to build a brand, a business, and to build real leverage in the creator economy. We're talking strategy, systems, audience growth, monetization, and that uncomfortable middle ground between. I have an idea. And this is actually working. I'll be sharing what I'm testing, what's working, what's not not. And I'm going to be bringing on people who are building their careers and companies out loud too. If you want honest conversations, practical insight, and zero bs, you are in the right place. Let's build in public. Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode. I'm super pumped to be here, super pumped that you guys are here. I'm running a little experiment. I'm running a podcast experiment, and I will share the results of this with y', all, especially for people that have podcasts, people that are on Spotify. But I want to see how comments relate to viewership on a podcast episode. So I'm asking you guys to do me a favor that will take you literally two seconds. If you're listening to this on Spotify or on YouTube or wherever, will you go in the comment section and write what you ate for breakfast? I'm going to measure this against other episodes and see how comments do when it comes to viewership. And I'll let you guys know. I had a poke bowl for breakfast, which is a really weird breakfast, but there's a smoothie shop by my house that has poke bowls for some reason at 7am so that was my breakfast. I'm excited for today's episode because I asked y' all to submit questions and you guys got some good questions, you got some juicy questions, you got some questions that kind of Pissed me off, but I'm going to answer them. So without further ado, let's just dive into it. Okay. Daniella M. Asks, how do you take a leap? I've been sitting on an idea for about four years now, and I full heartedly believe it will work out. But I don't want to go for it alone. I want a business partner. Other people tell me to just start it alone, but that's where I freeze. I've written it down, discussed it, even have future upgrades planned out. But I'm mad because I know the only thing stopping me is me. And I don't know how to get around that. Okay, so you have this business plan. You have this great idea. You know that this great idea is going to work. What do you do? You're overwhelmed when you actually go to take action. And I'm going to tell you why you're overwhelmed. Because you are putting too many steps together. You're trying to do too much at once. You're trying to create this whole business plan, this whole whatever, in one go. What you get to do is break it down. I know this sounds so simple, but I'm going to give it to you in a way that hopefully will stick. Whatever this plan is, let's say this business plan is to start a clothing marketplace of small businesses. How can you create this in the next two hours for $10? Okay. And you might be thinking, well, Courtney, I can't because the initial investment is 50,000. I need this. I need it. I need this. Okay, what is the smallest, tiniest way to start this in the next two hours with $10? Maybe that is curating your favorite small businesses and putting it into a spreadsheet and sharing that out on social media. That's version one. Maybe you want to start a course and you have this idea that this course is going to really be successful. I really want to put out this information. What's the minimum viable product? How can you create this in the next two hours for $10 or less? Well, instead of making a course, maybe you could write a blog post and post it on your LinkedIn and eventually that's going to turn into a course. But it starts as a blog post. Then maybe you make it into a YouTube video as a version two. Then maybe as a version three, you do a free webinar. Maybe. Maybe as a version four, you do a paid webinar. Maybe as a version five. That's when it turns into a course. Another example. Let's say you want to start a community. You want to do in person events, you want to do retreats, you want to bring people together again. What's the easiest, smallest way to start a version of it? A bad and messy and scrappy version of that in the next two hours with $10, you could invite three friends to come over to your house for a half day and do some goal setting together. What this does is it gets you in the energy of what you're creating. It gets you in the energy of that big picture thing. But we can't have the iPhone 20 without the iPhone 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5. And if they're waiting to get all the technology perfect with the iPhone 20, we're never going to get there. So you got to start with a minimum viable product. So what is the absolute smallest version of this thing that you can create? Go create that. I promise you, Daniella, it's gonna make you feel so much better. Stop overwhelming yourself. And also, you don't need a co founder. And also a co founder is not gonna wanna work with you unless you have some sort of proof of concept. So again, this is the proof of concept. If it's a retreat, the proof of concept is five friends came over, we had a goal setting workshop. It worked really well. Now I'm gonna move on to version two. Version two is now it's five strangers and instead of at my house, it's at an Airbnb. And so I went from spending $10 on a case of sparkling water to spending a hundred dollars on an Airbnb for the day. And then the next version is I actually got an Airbnb for the weekend and I spent $1,000 on it and I brought 10 people and whatever. Slowly iterate. But stop trying to do everything at once. Next question from Brad Lisa. Brad Lisa. That's a cool name. It's like Brad and Lisa combined. Bradleysa asks so much of the advice out there is to use client stories or your own stories. But I'm a therapist and I have to abide by HIPAA laws and I' making myself the subject of my stories is best. What are my options? So I had a therapist come through level up on LinkedIn and she had the same problem where obviously she cannot share about her clients. That violates hipaa. So what she did was she started talking about celebrities. She had a video that said, if you were my therapy client, here's how I would onboard you. Snooze. Boring. She made the exact same video. But she said, if Britney Spears was my therapy client, here's How I would onboard her, just that slight change, Even though she onboards everybody the same way, just that slight change makes it more interesting. Now you might be thinking, but how? Who can I talk about? Whatever. Let's say you're an EMDR therapist. You don't have to talk about your own clients. Talk about things that are publicly available. So maybe in Selena Gomez's documentary, she talks about how she did emdr. You could make a post saying, here is the therapy that Selena Gomez did to overcome, blah, blah, blah. And here's the quote that Selena Gomez gave about the therapy. So it's not your clients. These are things that are publicly available. You're borrowing the brand affinity of a major person, and it makes you look great. Who else? Find other people who publicly talk about therapy. Find celebrities, Find books. Another example is like, let's say you're a lawyer and you can't talk about your clients because what you're doing is confidential. Find public cases to comment on. Find public cases to talk about. So maybe you're a IP lawyer. You might make a post that says, here's a breakdown of Taylor Swift's legal battle with Spotify and my perspective on it. You're showing your expertise, but you're also not having to, like, hide anything and you're not having to share anything about your clients. So just share publicly available information. Comment on publicly available information. There's also so much resources around therapy. Like, you definitely don't have to talk about your clients at all. You could talk about books, you could talk about podcasts, you could talk about, of course, your own journey. But the fastest way to get a bunch of followers is just like going and finding every celebrity that talks about therapy and sharing out what they already say publicly. Okay. Krista asks, how do you handle being misunderstood without shrinking or over explaining? I feel myself bumping up against this. Not even in real life, but in my imagination. I'm imagining future negative feedback. Okay, so you're afraid of being misunderstood on social media. The first thing you're gonna do is go read the book. The Courage to Be Disliked. The Courage to Be Disliked separates all of life into two buckets. Things that are my tasks and things that are your tasks. It's my task to make my own perception of who I am. It's my task to have integrity with myself. It's your task to judge or think whatever you want about me that is none of my business. And through this book, it goes through parables and stories around how to actually implement in your life one of the most profound, transformative books I've ever read. And it will obliterate your fear of what people think about you. But you also probably have a core belief that says I need to be understood to be safe, or everybody has to understand my perspective in order for me to be safe. So it's basically your brain going into threat protection mode, going into identity protection mode. The truth is, if everybody understands you, if everybody always understands everything you're saying, you're probably not being very honest. You're probably not being very truthful. So people are gonna misunderstand you. That's actually a really good thing. That's a really good sign. Because when you think about the person you wanna be, when you think about this giant version of yourself that's making the biggest impact possible, that's living your dream. That person is misunderstood. Think of any major figure making an impact on the world. That person is misunderstood. I hate on. On social media, where you literally could be like, here's my leg workout. And somebody will be in the comments being like, so you hate people that don't have legs. You're against people without legs. Where's the adaptation of this workout for me because I don't have legs? Like, people will be on your ass for anything on social media. It's annoying, but it's part of the game. So when you see it, celebrate it. Be like, heck, yeah, I reached this milestone. I'm so excited. This is the best thing ever. So to that, I say congratulations, But I get it. It's scary. Like, it is scary. Especially if it's people you know, Especially if it's your friends and your family because you're like, well, what if they misunderstand me? What if they misunderstand me? What if they are reading this out of context? What if they think that I mean this other thing when I mean this. This other thing, right? I get it. It's really scary. And it's none of your business. Something I love to do is to think about, think about how I'm being selfish. When I start to get in those stories, I know that I am on earth to impact the most amount of people as humanly possible. And I know that you are here to do that too. And when I start to get into my stories of, oh, my God, but what will people think? What is he gonna think? What are they gonna say about me? I'm being selfish because I am letting my own discomfort get in the way of the impact that I'm meant to have on others. I am letting my body discomfort. I am letting my emotional discomfort stop me from making the impact I'm meant to make. And that is selfish. That is selfish. And then also it's fake. It's fake. It's manipulation. If you are in people pleasing. If you are trying to put every single little puzzle piece together to make sure everybody perceives you in a certain way, make sure that everybody understands what you're saying. You are being manipulative and fake. You're being a fake ass bitch. You're being fake because that's not what you truly believe. And so you can get in this trap of like having to keep up with this appearance or having to keep up with saying the right thing all the time out of scarcity, of I'm afraid what people are going to think. But it's inauthentic, it's fake. And it's keeping you from your vision rather than bringing you towards your vision. So know that it's a massive milestone. Go read the book Courage to Be Disliked and, and know that it's. It's a good thing. Like it's a good thing to be misunderstood. It's great. It's amazing. It is a milestone. And we're not here to make everyone like us. We are here to hold up mirrors to people around us. We are here to trigger people. That's okay. It's part of it. Everybody's on a different dimension than you and not everybody's going to understand and that's okay. Also, controversy gets more likes and more comments and more views, thus makes you more money. Okay, question number four. Shane asks, what do I do if Cringe Mountain feels like Everest? Cringe Mountain can completely feel like Mount Everest. It can feel like you are climbing up the mountain and there is no end in sight and it is so scary and nobody around you understands. But I'm going to guess something about you. If you perceive Cringe Mountain to be Mount Everest, you probably are not surrounded by people who are also climbing Cringe Mountain. Because I used to feel like Cringe Mountain was Mount Everest. I used to feel like it was completely insurmountable. I used to feel like Cringe Mountain was absolutely so fucking scary and I couldn't even step a pinky toe on it. I was so scared. But the reason why I was scared is because I didn't have expanders. I didn't see other people do it and there wasn't anybody in my circle that was doing it. So Shane, what I'm going to assume about you is I don't think you have a lot of People in your circle that are also climbing Cringe Mountain. Because when we're surrounded by people that have similar goals as us, that are doing similar stuff as us, our bodies and our brains want to create connection. We want to belong in the tribe, in the community. So if other people are climbing Cringe Mountain, your body and brain is going to want to climb Cringe Mountain too. So I assume that you probably don't have a lot of people around you that are climbing Cringe Mountain. So you need to get some new friends. This is one part of success that a lot of people don't understand is you're going to lose a lot of friends. A lot of people are not going to understand you. A lot of people you're going to realize just don't provide any value to your life. Even if they didn't do anything wrong, even if they're totally nice people that are absolutely great and you love, you get to a point where you realize that other people around you, that you're becoming the sum of other people around you. And if they are not on the same trajectory as you, leave them, leave their ass. Or at least hang out with them less. So, Shane, go find people that are climbing Cringe Mountain. Go find them, go hang out with them, go surround yourself with them. Those are the people that you need to be around if you want Cringe Mountain to feel more like a ant hill rather than Mount Everest. Question number five from Ella. Oh, hey, this is a good question. Ella says you've talked about a manifestation technique where you think about what you don't want and you think about what you won't like. So first let me explain that one of the most underrated manifestation techniques is to think about what you don't want to about the thing you're manifesting. For example, if you're manifesting money, ask yourself, what do I not want about money? Do I not want the responsibility? Do I not want to have to pay more taxes? Maybe I don't want to deal with, like, big money problems. Maybe I don't want to have to hire a cpa. Maybe I don't want to pay big bills. So once you figure out what you don't want about money, money is going to attract to you so much faster. A lot of it is because you see the shadow. You see the shadow of what you don't want, and then you also lessen the importance of the thing. And so it's going to attract to you a lot faster. Let's say you are manifesting a partner. Maybe you ask Yourself. What do I actually not want about having a partner? Well, I'm not going to be able to go out with my girls as much, and I'm probably not going to have as much time. And what if they're mean to me? Like, if you can start to think about the negative, the manifestation comes faster. I don't know why this works. It's really crazy. But it works. Especially with money. You gotta understand what you don't want about money. Because if you are not manifesting money, if you are calling in money and it's not working, it's because you haven't explored the shadow side of that. And the shadow side of that is, what do you not want about it? What are you scared about it? Are you scared of power? Are you scared of success? Do you not think you'll be able to maintain it? Do you not think that your family or friends are going to be accepting? Because now you're making way more money than anyone in your family ever has. Once you realize what you don't want about it, it's so much easier to move forward and get that thing. So Ella asks, what do you not like about success? Okay. I have been on a incredible trajectory for the past few years of my life. I'm so blessed, and I'm very successful. I run a incredibly successful business. I have a book deal. I have half a million followers online. I have a great life. I'm living my dream. Like, I'm truly living my dream. But I love this question because this question is right in line with that manifestation technique. So what do I not like about success? The first thing I don't like about success is that you lose a lot of people in your life. There's just really no way around this. I went to a conference one time, and they had us take out a piece of paper, and they said, write down the five people you spend the most time with. I'm like, oh, I've done this exercise before. Whatever. Then they said, write down how much they weigh. Each person write down their income, each person write down their positivity on a scale of 1 to 10, each person now average those out in one year. This is how much you're gonna weigh. This is how much money you're gonna make. This is how positive you're gonna be. And I looked at that and I was like, oh, shit. Well, a lot of my friends are skinny bitches. So that part was fine. But the money, I was like, oh, if I keep hanging around these people, my income in a year from now statistically is going to be really low. And my. I'm going to be really negative. And I'm not. I don't fuck with that. Like, it is true that we are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with. And if you want success, you have to leave people in your life and they did nothing wrong. And they're amazing people and they're great. But if they're. If they're taking away from your mission on Earth, you're going to outgrow people. That sucks. That sucks. That's probably the worst part about success, is outgrowing people. Another hard part about success is responsibility. There is a lot of responsibility. There's a lot of responsibility that comes like, it's a. It's definitely a level up in your. You're forced to level up your integrity. You're forced to level up so many things around you. You're forced to level up your leadership. And that can be difficult. So that's something I would say. It's not that I don't like about success. It's just been. It's been hard. It's been difficult. You're responsible for a lot. What else do I not like about success? I pretty much like everything else. It's really great. It's really, really nice. Oh, you also have to live in the discomfort. So you know that feeling that's in between you and doing something really scary. Maybe you're at an event and you want to go up and talk to someone and you're like. You're in that feeling of, like, walking up to them and you're like, okay, I made the decision. I'm going to talk to them. I'm really scared. I'm really nervous. That feeling is kind of like the feeling that I have to live with all the time, every day. So it's like not figuring out how to overcome that feeling of the fear, but how to actually live inside of that forever and ever again. Not something I would say I don't like, because you start to develop, like, a kink for it. Like, you literally become horny for. Not like literally horny, but like energetically horny for difficult things. You guys have probably experienced this, like, in working out where you're. Maybe you're an athlete or maybe you start working out and the really hard workout class totally sucked, but it actually is so fun and you really look forward to the challenge. That's kind of. That's kind of the vibe. Oh, my gosh. Excuse me. I just chugged. Chugged a matcha guys. I went to this medical retreat in Mexico, and they do all your blood work, they do all this test, and they were like, stop drinking dairy. And so I haven't had dairy in, like a month. It's absolutely crazy. I really miss dairy. But anyway, so I downed a oat milk matcha, which feels a little. My tummy's a little raw. Oh, that's another thing that I would say I don't like about success, is that you can't be sick. Like, if you don't feel good one day, it's like, okay, sorry. You gotta pay your people. You gotta figure shit out. You still gotta show up for your clients. You just. You can't reschedule things unless it's like a big emergency. I think I've rescheduled, like, one thing ever, and that was because I had a crazy ear infection where I thought I would die. And the only thing that helped it was smoking a bunch of weed. They put me on all of, like, the heaviest painkillers and it didn't work. So I just smoked a bunch of weed. And then I couldn't facilitate level up on LinkedIn, so I had to move it. That was the one time I moved it because I was sick. But you, yeah, you also can't really be sick. But it's worth it. All of this is worth it. It's all 100 million percent worth it. Worth it, worth it, worth it. I just did a 2026 recap with my team, and just to see the impact that we've created over the last year, I'm like, I don't. I don't fucking care. Put me on a hamster wheel. I'll do. I'll do whatever the fuck it takes. Guys, I like, it was like two people, they got their Visa sponsored and double their salaries because of the content I'm putting out because of level up on LinkedIn, because of content club people. Like, got one person was like, I'm so embarrassed by the amount of money I'm making. I'm like, fuck, yeah. Like, I. Anyways, the. The impact when you get out of your own way is worth every single inconvenience. Love this tweet from Lila. I love this tweet from Layla Hermosi. She said, the wrong person needs you to stay small so they feel comfortable. The right person pushes you to grow into your best self. Yeah. I mean, the truth is, most people don't really want you to be successful. They want you to be comfortable. They want you to fit into the box that they have in your mind. And if you're around too many of those people, it creates this like feedback loop where they expect you to show up in a certain way, you show up in that way and it's really hard to break of it because they're going to rebel anytime you break out of it or grow as a person. So the best people in life push you. And that's kind of the litmus test. Is this person making me better or are they bringing me closer to my goal or away from my goal? Ryan asks, I'm chronically overwhelmed. You do so much, how the fuck are you not overwhelmed? I get overwhelmed from time to time for sure. But if you are chronically overwhelmed, read the book. The one thing that book took me from chronically overwhelmed always like in this overwhelmed panic state to knowing exactly what I need to do every day. It just simplifies your life down to one thing. So anytime you get overwhelmed, anytime you're like, oh my gosh, I have too many projects on my plate, too many people need things from me. It boils down to the one thing that makes everything else easier or unnecessary. This is a non negotiable. If you're working with me, if you're a one on one client, you have to read the one thing or I'm not going to work with you. Go read it. It is so transformative. Top five transformative books in my life for sure. Okay, Lynn asks, how do I get out of a procrastination shame spiral? I get in such a negative mood and I can't do anything. If you are in a procrastination shame spiral, I have one hack that might help. So you're going to go to Spotify, you're going to type in middle school dance playlist and then the year you were in middle school and then you're going to put that music on full blast. It's going to be so silly and dumb that it's going to shake you out of whatever procrastination shame spiral you're in. I also find that coworking is really helpful. I create my own co working containers. So if I'm really procrastinating on a project and I know it's going to take me three hours to do, I'll block off three hours on a Friday and invite like 40 friends to it. So I have to show up and I have to be there. I force myself. This is why I created content club. Because content club, I'm like, oh, I'm procrastinating on my content. Well, not anymore. Now I literally have to be on Zoom every single day creating content or else I'm scamming people. So it's really helpful. It's really helpful. So middle school dance playlist and go make some coworking containers. Okay. Number eight, Joyce asks, I'm feeling impatient with my growth. Do you have any content hacks or tough love for creators who aren't seeing the results as fast as they want to? Yes. So you're a creator. You're growing, but you're not growing as fast as you'd like to, and you want to pour some fire on the results. Here's what you're going to do. Number one, talk about celebrities or notable figures. This always, always works because you're borrowing the brand affinity of that person. So let's say you talk about makeup instead of just talking about makeup tips. Talk about Taylor Swift's makeup, talk about Rihanna's makeup, talk about Beyonce's makeup, or talk about, I don't know, Jeff Bezos makeup when he goes and does a talk. Second thing, you're going to talk about news. This also is high likelihood of going viral. So you're going to comment on news in your industry. That is always a great way to have a boost because you're riding viral trends. It's definitely not a sustainable content system forever. But if you want that boost, if you're impatient and you're like, I just want to get more followers right now, talk about celebrities and talk about news. The next thing is curating memes. Anytime I want a follower boost, I put together a meme dump. Just I go to my saved Instagram post, I put together all memes and inspirational quotes, I tag the creators, and then I post that. I usually get like 500 to a thousand followers every time I do that. And that's if I'm, like, at the next milestone in my. In my followers, I will do that to push it over the edge. Next thing is be a little bit more controversial. So you don't have to intentionally be controversial. Just ask yourself, where am I holding back? And stop holding back. And then, last thing I would tell you is honor your downloads. So you're gonna be driving this week, and you're gonna get an idea, and you're gonna be like, oh, that's a really good content idea. I'm gonna add it to my notes app, and I'm gonna put it in my phone and I'll come back to it later. But here's the thing. You will not come back to it later. So what you have to do is literally skirt, pull off to the side of the road, get out your phone. I don't care if it's raining, I don't care if the audio's bad, I don't care if the lighting is bad. While you're in the energy of the idea, pull off to the side of the road, film it and post it right there. Or maybe you're on a walk and you're sweaty and you look gross. I don't care. Film it and post it right there. Maybe you're at the gym, maybe you're in the shower and you're still of shampoo in your hair. I don't care. Put a towel on your head, film it and edit it and post it right there. Ask any content creator what is their most viral video? What is their most viral pose? It is always the one that came to them in the shower or on a run or while they were driving and they just threw it out there. These are your best ideas. This is the feminine chaos energy of content creation and this is, these are the things that go viral. Now this is not a sustainable strategy. You, it would be very, very hard to build a personal brand only when the inspiration strikes. But what you can do is you can create the conditions for the inspiration to strike and you can honor the downloads that come to you. So again, not none of these things are super sustainable for a long term strategy. But if you're impatient and you want to boost your content, that's what I would recommend. I would also recommend repurposing your top performing content. So go to all of your posts, see what is the top performing, save it down, repurpose it or recreate it. That's going to give you a boost too. And then also go to other people's pages and look at their top performing content. A lot of people don't know you can actually steal other people's top performing posts. So you're going to go on TikTok, on Instagram, whatever platform you're going to sort by their most top performing posts of all time. You can also use viral Finder for this. There's a couple of tools that do this. You're gonna look at their top performing posts, ideally actually from the last like year. And then you're gonna look at the patterns in them. Is it a talking head? Is it a green screen? Is it a carousel? What are they talking about? What's the topic? And then you're gonna recreate your own version of that. Now do not steal, go read the book, Steal like an artist if you want a strong ethical framework for how to take people's ideas without stealing them or ripping them off. But that's almost a guaranteed way to be successful. Because when we're only looking at our own data, maybe we have, you know, a hundred posts in the last year, that that's not enough data to really show you what's really working. But if you go look at 30 different people's top 100 posts, that's so much more data and that's going to give you so much better decision making in your content creation. Oh, my gosh. Okay, this next question isn't a question. It's actually a kind of a review. So the cash isn't checked yet. But my elevated LinkedIn present as a result of your LinkedIn program led to a client opportunity with $40,000 in guaranteed revenue. And that's not capped in 2026. If anyone needs proof that LinkedIn matters with a giggle emoji and a star. Oh, that's amazing. I love that. Congratulations. Yeah, LinkedIn is LinkedIn be crazy. But you guys know this. Like I, I don't gotta keep being like, get on LinkedIn, start posting. You guys already know this. I say this enough. I would be curious though, if you're not already, why put it in the Spotify comments or the YouTube comments and I will help you out. Question number nine. This is Anonymous. They asked to not use their name. I want to do mushrooms, but I don't know where to start. That's great. Yeah, I mean, there's so many places to start. But somebody I really admire, his name's Paul Austin. If you go on Instagram and type in Paul Faustin, he does like cohorts with microdosing mushrooms. He doesn't like, he doesn't like sell mushrooms or anything, but he has courses to help you integrate mushroom, you'll be fully supported. But I would go follow him on Instagram, join one of his cohorts, and then that's a really great way to like ease into it and have really low doses of mushrooms. Use it for work or something before you go full force. But. Or you can go full force. Fuck it. That's fun too. Honestly, just like, move to Austin. Move to Austin. Okay, next question. Chandani asks, how does LinkedIn help product based businesses? Are there revenue generating opportunities for low ticket offerings through LinkedIn? Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, Chandani. So I used to have a B2C company. I had a product based business. I sold yoga mats and I use LinkedIn now. LinkedIn wasn't for B2C sales. Like, it's not like I was slinging yoga mats individually on LinkedIn, but what I was doing on LinkedIn that worked well is I was connecting with wholesale retail buyers that was super successful. I would just go find who's the Academy sports buyer, who's a Nordstrom buyer, who's whatever, go add a bunch of them on LinkedIn. I would build in public. So I talk about my journey of creating a yoga mat company and that was also really successful because all of these buyers felt really connected to my mission and my message. Another thing that I would use LinkedIn for is people that ran retreats and events. I would also wholesale to them. So anyways, I would wholesale to retailers, find the buyers on LinkedIn and I'd find retreat people who ran yoga retreats on LinkedIn. I would sell to them. Also hotels and hospitality. I used to do a lot of wholesale deals with hotels, like making them custom yoga mats. So they were on LinkedIn as well. I connected with them on LinkedIn and then also just like general speaking and press opportunities from LinkedIn. I think it'd be so fun to have a CPG company again. When I left my yoga mat company, I was like this. I'm never doing this again. Like, I hate cpg, but something about it I kind of miss. There's like a wholesome thrill. I just don't know if the world needs like more products from me. So unless it's something I really love and really care about. Like I don't know if we need more like fucking plastic and all packaging and shit in the world. But if it's your dream, it's your dream. I would love to start a Matcha company though, just because I love Matcha, but I'm not going to say it on the show anyways. I fucking love Matcha. I don't know if you guys love Matcha, but there's like a Matcha shortage. There's a Matcha crisis. Anyways, what I'm going to say is I got, I got a little bit slammed for making yoga mats because yoga is like obviously not my culture. So I would be afraid of getting slammed again for making Matcha because that's a obvi. Not. I've never even been to Japan, so maybe I'd have to find a partner for that. Anyways, watch out. Matcha coming soon. Masha asks. Oh my God, Masha, you sound like Matcha. Matcha. Masha Macha. Masha asks. Hi, would love to hear more about weekly calendar planning and Productivity. Is your week planned by themes? Do you allocate a day just for social media content or do you block it daily? Okay, so Masha wants to know how I calendar block for social media content. Well, Masha, you have come to the right place because guess what I do. I get on Zoom every single day from 8 to 9am Central. And I sit down and I say, by the way, I sit down with like 40 other people that are all on Zoom with me. And I'm like, hey guys, here's what we're posting today. Here's the format, here's the template, here's exactly how to do it. Here's examples for Instagram, for LinkedIn, for TikTok, for Substack, for whatever. Here are all these ideas. And then I help people brainstorm and I coach people through any fear of being seen. And then we actually create the content together. So there's about 45 minutes where we're actually like on Canva and then we're on video editor and whatever and we post it together and then we share our wins. So that's how I calendar block. And the best part of it is you can actually join me. I would love if you join me. It's called Sunrise Content club. It is 1:47amonth. I think. I fucking love it. And that's like I created it because I just, I was trying to find it. Like I was literally googling content creation, co working, content creation, whatever, content creation, support like creation, co working, writing. I couldn't find it. I couldn't find it anywhere. And I was pissed. I was like, why is nobody making this? I always use Flown. Flown is like coworking that has specific sections for like writing and studying. So I use that a lot when I was writing my book, but I'm like, why does this not exist for content? And this is actually a really great tip. If you can't find something. If you're on Google into the depths of the night trying to find something and you can't find it, that might be a sign that you should make it. And that is a gap in the market that only you can fulfill. This is really exciting. I made a annual content club. It's actually cheaper than month to month content club where eventually I'm going to turn this into like a, a bigger offer. But I'm, I'm beta testing it right now. So if you guys want to get in on like a really cheap price where I'm actually doing a ton of other structure around calendaring. So in annual content club, I'm doing money dates. So it's like already structured time on your calendar where we come together and we do money tasks together. Once a week there's strategy sessions. So I'm going to do like quarterly content strategy sessions where it's already on your calendar and then quarterly or not quarterly weekly co working sessions where it's just already on your calendar. So I'm actually setting this up right now. Like, I'm creating a whole system to where if you're a content creator or content creator based business, or you're a business owner with content creation attached, eventually I would like to, I would like this to be evolved to where you don't even have to put thought into, like, when's my strategy day? When am I creating content? When am I doing money stuff? What? When am I doing client stuff? Like, it'd be really, really cool if it was all like laid out for you to take away the mental burden that comes from like planning and strategizing. Anyway, so I'm super pumped about that, so I would love to see you join. Okay, next question. Rebecca asks, if you were trying to turn a personality driven podcast and social presence into a real business, what would you simplify or cut first in order to create momentum and scale faster? Yeah, a tip that my manager gave me. This is like top secret. A tip that he gave me that I'm going to start to implement. He was like, stop calling things a podcast. Like people have podcast fatigue. Instead of calling it a podcast, call it a show and showify it a little bit more. How do you create your own show? Like Hot Ones or Subway Takes. And I don't know what that looks like for my own personal podcast. I know that I am pondering this right now, so I would just pass on what my manager told me and that is showify it. It's so interesting because I, I obviously have this podcast, but I also advise on my fiance's podcast, he amazing podcast. It's called Life of Flow. Go listen to it. It's great. I mean, it's about like vascular surgery, which might be boring for some of you guys, but there's some really cool episodes, especially the ones with me. They're great. And his podcast is just so interesting because they specifically target vascular surgeons and like even more niche, like Spanish speaking vascular surgeons. And there's only like 300 of them in the world. I don't know if it's 300. There's not a lot. So they have a very low listener count but a very high intent. Like they like, they own the market. There's like 300 of them. And all 300 listen to their podcast and it's super highly monetized. Like, no joke, their brand deals are like $25,000 for podcast. And I'm like, I what the. Anyways, and so I always bring that up as an example because it's an example that like, to monetize, you don't necessarily need to have the biggest show or the biggest audience. It just needs to be very clear in who you're serving. And so I think that's what Life of Flow has done really well. And I think that's what you could do differently. Rebecca is like, who are you talking to? Are you talking to, like, I know you talk about celebrity gossip, you talk about pop culture. There is celebrity gossip, pop culture shows that only talk about the Bachelor, that only, like, are talking to Gen Z, women that only are talking to men. I don't know. So I would just be curious. I really wish I had a better answer for this. I'm just sharing what I'm learning because I'm really in this too. Like, I feel like I've mastered so much my business. I feel like I've really mastered content. I've mastered time management, I've really mastered off my offerings. I've really mastered level up on LinkedIn, I've really mastered content club. I've really mastered like selling on webinars, all that. But I feel like my podcast is the one thing I haven't mastered yet. So I feel like we're on this ride together. But what's interesting is about what you're asking is you're asking. You said my content gets engagement, but it doesn't reliably turn viewers into long term followers or paying fans. So I had a Patreon for many years. I stopped my Patreon. Unfortunately, I rest in peace Patreon. It was awesome. But that definitely helped monetize and help bring people deeper because I had all the exclusive content. Exclusive content? Um, no, not like that. But I did have spicy, saucy content on there and that really helped. Cause then I could tease like an intro to the podcast that you had to go to the Patreon to listen to. Or there was a topic I just wasn't comfortable talking about out loud publicly. So I would talk about it on the Patreons. I would be curious on how you're monetizing. Like, are you monetizing through ads, are you monetizing through offerings, et cetera. There's this concept that when You're a creator. You can either sell your audience or you can sell to your audience. So you can sell your audience, meaning you go to brands and you say, hey, I have these demographics, I have this audience. Pay me to do brand deals for you. Or you can sell to your audience, meaning you create your own offers and you sell to your audience. You sell those directly to your audience. Some people do one, some people do the other. Some people have a combination of both. But it's also important to know where you stand on that spectrum when building your personal brand and when monetizing your personal brand. I would also do unconscious money work because it's not logical. Like monetization is not logical. I didn't strategize my way into level up on LinkedIn or Content Club as a, as an offer. I didn't strategize, I didn't do a chatgpt prompt. I like got downloads from the heavens above. So I would also figure out if anything is blocking your money making, go do some subconscious work around that. Unblock your money making muscle and I think the ideas will flow faster. It's such an interesting concept of balancing the masculine and the money making and the structure with the feminine idea flow of content creation. I think it's really beautiful. Like, what a blessing that we get to experience this. Rebecca also asked, what's the most common invisible mistake you see creators make and how would you fix it? That's a really good question. I think the most common, the most common invisible mistake I see creators make is they are not authentic. They are posting what they think people will like. They are posting what they think they should post. They are posting what some algorithm or strategy is telling them to post, rather than being in their creative flow or being in their own authenticity. And people can sniff that out. Like you go, people can sniff out if you are performing. And a major mistake I see content creators make, especially in early stage, is they're very much performing. I think of it like a newscaster. Like they're showing up, they're like a newscaster, they're reading the lines. But there's not really like the presence and embodiment under it. You can almost like sense the fear. So that's, yeah, a lot of internal work. I don't know all these answers. I'm like, just go eat a bunch of mushrooms. Or like lsd. That's very businessy vibes, you know. Another really common invisible mistake I see content creators make in early stage that's holding them back from everything they dream of is the people that they surround themselves with. Like, if you're surrounding yourself with people that are silently judging and cringing at your content, your subconscious is going to know and you're going to sabotage yourself because you're afraid of belonging to. You gotta let some people in your life go and you gotta surround yourself with more people that are doing what you're doing. This is like massive invisible mistake. Anytime I see people coming up against an edge of like, I just cannot break through this amount of money per month. I can't break through this amount of followers. I always ask them, who are you surrounding yourself with? Who are your friends? Who are the people around you? Like? Usually it's not so good. Usually they're not people that inspire you. So also, who are you surrounding yourself with? Are you making sure that you are the littlest fish in a big pond? Are you paying to get into rooms? Because sometimes you kind of gotta pay for your friends. I spent a lot of money on masterminds and coaching in order to be in rooms with people that make my butthole clench really hard. Another thing you could do is just uplevel your guests. Can you have crazier guests or as I call butt clenching guests? So who are those butt clenching guests? And go make those those asks. If you want to grow your podcast, make a list of 20 people that are probably going to say no to coming on the podcast. Guests that are so butt clenching that you are so scared to reach out that your hands are shaking. Like, I want those people on the list. So you're going to make the list of 20. You're going to go to Instagram, you're going to go to email, whatever. Reach out to all 20 of them. I promise you, at least two of them are going to say yes. I do this every single month. I pick the scariest, craziest people that are absolutely going to say no. I reach out to all of them. They somebody says yes, and then I shake my way through the interview. So take bigger swings, ask for bigger people. And if you want to understand how to get in front of really big celebrities, or maybe entrepreneurs, politicians, thought leaders, read the book Content Based Networking. Content Based Networking basically tells you how to create win win scenarios where you are giving somebody content basically in exchange for free consulting for you. That also is really helpful as far as taking bigger swings. This is all like a subconscious game, guys. This is like 99% unconscious. Okay, maybe not 99. I'd say maybe 80% unconscious, 20% conscious work. I just had a webinar today for level up on LinkedIn. It was so fun. And something I realized during the webinar is I was like, oh my gosh, like level up on LinkedIn has evolved so much into being like, really 80% on just subconscious. Like not only how to overcome your own subconscious blocks to being seen, but also how to speak to your target audience's subconscious rather than speaking to their conscious mind. And I just think that's so cool. And guys, this is a lot of information that's kind of been gatekept because this is information that is crucial in propaganda manipulation, cult psychology. But I've been studying this and implementing it on my own so I can use it for good, which is really freaking cool. Anyways, this is so much of a subconscious game. There's very few people in my life where I'm like, okay, you just need to take the conscious route. Like some people are usually like airy fairy. They're really in the clouds. I'm like, okay, you need to come back to earth. You need to come back to fucking earth. But most people are already on earth. You just get to be floaty, floaty, floaty a little bit also, like get out of your routine, go somewhere else. Go travel, met, like go fuck something up. Take bigger swings. You guys all get to take bigger swings. Okay, our last question is here. Our last question from Jen. By the way, guys, I love these Q and A episodes. Every time I do an episode like this, I'm like, oh, I forgot to ask for questions. And then I'm like on my Instagram story the day before I being like, hey guys, ask me questions. I'll answer it on the Q and A and A podcast. So if you guys have questions for upcoming Q A podcast. Because I really want to start doing like one a month or something, maybe even themed. I think they're so fun. Leave it in the comments too. YouTube comments, Spotify comments. Does Apple podcast have comments? I'm not sure. I don't know where you're listening to this on, but if you leave a comment, I promise I will include it in the next Q and A episode. I love doing these. I love answering Yalls questions. I love wherever you guys are at and being able to guide you to what's next. Guys, I'm going to cry. Last question Jen asks. Any advice for those pivoting from traditional 9 to 5 into entrepreneurship? Best advice is to start monetizing before you leave your full time job. So create a digital product, start consulting on the side, Start doing whatever on the side to build the Confidence and then leave your job because you have the reps and you have the different levers that you can pull to make money. A mistake that I see people make when they're leaving their nine to fives is they think that they can just drop it all in like one big dramatic crescendo and become an entrepreneur overnight. But it really doesn't work like that. The same fears are going to come with you when you quit your job. Now, I quit my job in a dramatic crescendo because my boss was sexually harassing me and I had no other option and it was getting really bad and really dangerous. So I was like, fuck it, I'm gonna leave. But I already had some freelance experience and had built that confidence. So anyways, you wanna leave your nine to five, Step one is build the confidence around freelancing around a digital product, around being able to make money on your own, around consulting, whatever that might be. Step two, start to build a personal brand. This is gonna make your life so much easier. Once you leave that job, you're already gonna have a personal brand. So you can already start making asks. You. Step three, start to collect email addresses while you're at your 9 to 5. So you can do this through creating a digital product, creating a lead magnet, whatever. Aim to have like 500 email addresses by the time you leave your 9 to 5. That way, when you first put out your offer, when you're clear on what you want to ask for, what support you need, you already have those email addresses. You don't have to start a newsletter or anything, just collect email addresses. Because you never know what the algorithms are going to be like day to day. It's a mystery. And so that just really helps you gain ownership. And what else? Leaving your nine to five, surround yourself with other people that are doing it. This has been a really interesting, common theme throughout this episode. You gotta surround yourself with people who are also entrepreneurs or you will never succeed as an entrepreneur. If you're an entrepreneur and all your friends are on 9 to 5, you're gonna be sucked back into 9 to 5. You're gonna be sucked back into that life. If you don't want that life, you have to find new friends. And again, it doesn't mean you have to ditch your old friends completely. Just find a new group, be an entrepreneur spaces. Because again, our bodies and our brains do everything. We are biologically wired to fit in. They do everything to fit in. So if you are around nine to fivers, your body and brain and your subconscious is going to literally manipulate you to fit in with them. And do you want to fit in with them? If you're stepping into entrepreneurship, you probably don't. But again, that goes back to the story of, like, but I don't want to be an asshole, but they're so nice to me, but they're my friends. We've been friends for years. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Great. That's amazing. You can still be friends with them. Just expand your circle. I'm telling you, it is not gonna work if you don't expand your circle. That is like number one. That's actually was my biggest turning point in content creation. I was really inconsistent as a content creator. Super inconsistent. I would start, stop, start, stop. I just really didn't fully own it or embody it. And then a friend invited me to an influencer event, and I was like, okay, fuck, I'm just gonna tell everyone I'm an influencer. So I went into this party, I'm a content creator. I'm an influencer. I create content. Or I'm blah, blah, blah, blah. Which was true. I was creating content just inconsistently. And something about that party just completely shifted my identity because I showed up, I introduced myself as that person, and I swear to God, by the end of that party, I was that bitch. I was a content creator, and I was consistent every single fucking day after that. So claim that identity. Claim it. I know it's uncomfortable, but again, your mission is more important. Your mission is so fucking important. And you know it. You know it. You know it deep down in your soul. That's why you're listening to this right fucking now. Because you have a mission. And some of you guys are even scared to say that out loud. You're scared to say who you want to help, the impact that you want to have on the world out loud. Some of you guys have owned it. You know what you want. It's just a matter of believing it's true. And some of you guys know what it is, and you believe it's true. And that is like fucking rocket fuel. But anytime you're in that scarcity, anytime you're in that fear, anytime you're in that, oh, this is uncomfortable. I don't feel like it today. Whatever. Go back to your vision. Look at your vision. Remember your vision. Remember the impact that you're meant to have on the earth. That's always going to supersede any feelings. Guys, on my webinar today, this girl, no judgment. This girl in the comments goes, but, Courtney, what if I don't feel like posting. What do I do on days that I don't feel like posting? I was like, do you have kids? She's like, yeah, I have kids. I'm like, great. What if there's a day where you just don't feel like feeding your kids? You're like, I've been really consistent. I've been feeding my kids for, like, years now. I've been so consistent. I don't want to feed them for the next few weeks. Like, I need a break. I don't feel like it. You would never fucking do that. You would never do that. Why? Because your children are so precious and incredible and amazing and it's literally your duty on earth to raise your children and make them healthy, happy human beings. They are your legacy. They're meant to do massive things and you know that. So obviously you're going to feed them. You're not just, oh, I don't feel like feeding them today. It's the same with your dream. It's part of you. It is attached to you. You get to be a disciple to your dream. Today is going to be days where you don't feel like it, okay? There's going to be days where you don't feel like feeding your kids. There's going to be days where you don't feel like showering, but you still do it anyways. Your dreams do not give a fuck about your feelings. I didn't feel like waking up today. I didn't feel like driving 30 minutes to the studio. I didn't feel like checking my email. I didn't feel like making progress. I didn't feel like posting. I didn't feel like hosting content club. I didn't feel like it. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because when I surrender to, oh, I don't feel like it, I am robbing the world of the mission that I'm here to to create. I'm robbing the world of the people I'm meant to impact. Like, I look at the people that were impacted from my content and my offerings in 2025 and I'm like, if I don't feel like it, I am robbing people of this opportunity and so are you. So next time you're like, I just don't feel like it. Tap into your mission. Tap into your vision. Tap into the bigger picture. Tap into why you're here. And I promise you that will supersede anything you're feeling now. It's funny because I have a positive mission. Like, I want to Help people, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it didn't start out that way. The mission started out as, fuck this. My boss was sexually harassing me. I left that job because it got really bad. And it got to a point where it was a little bit dangerous. And I fueled the entire start of my business on anger. It was on, fuck that, dude. I will never be in that situation again because I didn't leave that job for a long time because I couldn't afford it. And I ended up leaving it, still being broke, $30,000 in debt. I still couldn't afford it, but it took me so long to leave because of money. So what launched my business was the fucking rage that I felt. I was in such rage of, fudge you. I will never be in this situation again. I will never fucking be in a situation where I am disrespected just because I don't have the money to leave. Fudge that. Watch me, motherfucker. Not only that, I tapped into the rage of, if it's up to me, this will never fucking happen to anybody around me. If you are following me, if you're in my community, if you are my client, if you are a friend, if you are my future daughter, I will do every fucking thing in my power to make sure that you are never in that situation. I will give you every piece of information. I will un. Gate keep anything I can. I will hold you accountable to get your bag, to make your money, to get support, to build a personal brand, because fuck that. To be in that situation where you cannot leave an abusive situation because of money is horrific. It feels so awful. It feels so trapped. So that was literally the rocket fuel of my business. I'm like, fuck, fuck him. Fuck off. Fuck everybody. I'll never let this happen again. Okay? We have since come to a bigger vision that is not just in anger, but in excitement and vision, in love. And as you can tell, it still really fires me up when I think about that. I think there's probably some rage left there. Oh, my goodness. This rage is alchemized in my book. I talk about the story a little bit in my book, and I'm excited about that. But, yeah, what a blessing. I mean, it sucks that it happened, but what a blessing that I was able to just pure rage my way through launching a business and. And creating my mission. And I just. I want everybody to have autonomy. I want everybody to have. To have what they need to succeed. And I want everybody to live their dream. And the only thing standing in between, you're in your dream is cringe. It's a discomfort. It's excuses. I would definitely go, if you haven't already and listen to the episodes with Bill Perkins and then the episode with Anne. They are literally the most successful people I've ever met in my life. They are absolutely incredible. They are both self made which is crazy. Like Bill is a self made billionaire. Ann is self made and she exited for a hundred million dollars and now she's worth 160 million wild. And I'm like, what's your secret? What's your secret? Give me the secret. It all comes down to not making excuses and staying in vision. That's it. Period. So honestly, the answer to a lot of yalls questions. Stop making excuses. Stay in vision. Your mission is really fucking important in this world because you would not be here if it wasn't. I fucking love you guys so much. I've said fuck like 5 million times today on this podcast. Anyways, I fucking love y'. All See you guys next week.