Do You Actually Like Your Content?
I disliked basically every partner I had before I met my fiance.
I’m talking like I actively disliked who they were as people.
I didn’t like their hobbies. I didn’t align with their beliefs. I didn’t vibe with their friends. If we hadn’t been romantically involved, I wouldn’t have wanted to even be around them.
That’s the level of dislike we’re talking about.
Yet somehow, despite this, I’d fallen into toxic relationships with them. And stayed in them wayYyYy too long.
I say “fallen,” but it’s not like I fell into these relationships by chance. I made a conscious choice to be in them.
It was just for all the wrong reasons.
BUT since this isn’t a dating newsletter, we won’t dwell on my love life for too long. There *is* a point here!
Are You In A Toxic Relationship With Your Content?
The first step of creating sticky, signature content that has a long shelf life is to NOT BE IN A TOXIC RELATIONSHIP WITH IT.
And like, it seems so obvious??? But somehow it’s so easy to find ourselves fighting for our lives on the content creation hamster wheel of fire. Creating content that we don’t even LIKE. Convincing ourselves that it’s fine and we just need to get on with it.
But just like the “happy couple” on social media where it’s obvious something just isn’t quite right, when you’re creating content that you don’t truly care about or believe in, people can smell that shit.
When people can tell your heart’s not really in your content, or that you half-assed a draft just to meet some arbitrary quota of yours… they’re not gonna care about it. Or share it.
You can’t expect content that YOU don’t even like to stick in other people’s brains.
That’s kind of what I did with the first iteration of this newsletter you’re reading right now.
I started it in September and called it Sunny Sampler. The concept was a marketing newsletter with a brunch buffet kind of feel. I created 5 different unrelated segments with fun lil names and icons, meant to be a take-it-or-leave-it type of thing for subscribers. It was honestly a vibe.
However, while I loved the idea of it, I actually HATED executing on it. What was supposed to be a biweekly newsletter turned into monthly, and I never really talked about it much online.
Because I just didn’t like it. Like, at all.
Whenever I finished writing a new edition, I wasn’t really proud of it. I didn’t feel like it showcased my expertise or any of the things that make my content unique.
I was having more fun writing my other newsletter for ADHDers than my business one. The final straw was when I realized I was getting more of a positive response to THAT newsletter than the one that was actually supposed to be helping me grow my business!!!
That’s when I decided I deserved better and broke up with Sunny Sampler.
Now here we are. So far I’m 30 minutes into writing this email and I’m in such a flow state that I NEVER EXPERIENCED with the old version of the newsletter.
The words are coming out faster, ideas are flowing easier, and the content is already (imo) 1000x better than anything I ever wrote for Sunny Sampler.
And if I had to guess, you guys are going to find way more value in it.
If you think you might be in a toxic relationship with YOUR content, here are some signs you’re sticking it out for all the wrong reasons:
→ You dread sitting down to create it
→ You’re not proud to share it
→ You’re creating out of obligation, not excitement
→ It doesn’t align with where you want to go
→ People aren’t responding to it
What I’ve realized is the more I actually LIKE the content I create, the more other people like it, too.
It hits way harder and resonates more than something I shipped out feeling “meh” about.
Just like I did with my actual relationships, I finally learned that settling for “good enough” when you’re actively unhappy is a waste of everyone’s time.
Now I’m with a partner who’s my best friend and confidant (and based on how many times we think the *exact* same thing, I’m convinced we share brain cells).
And now I also have a newsletter I’m actually excited to write and share.
So if you’ve been stuck in a toxic relationship (the romantic kind OR the content kind), let this be your reminder that you 100% deserve better.