005: How to Create Content That Connects (Even When You’re Out of Words)

It’s easy to overthink content and freeze up in front of the blank screen. But content doesn’t have to be complicated. We just overthink it. 

In this episode, we’ll talk about how to take the pressure off your content, share one real piece of your bigger story, and post in a way that actually connects.

We’ll cover:

• The difference between social content, free content, and paid content
• How to simplify your message without watering it down
• Three core buckets: Relatable, Helpful, and Vision
• Why consistent, human connection beats a perfect plan

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Transcript

Becky Brown  0:01 
If you're a Christian woman building a business and want it to be purposeful and profitable, we've got you covered. I'm Becky.

Laurie Graham  0:08 
And I'm Laurie. We have both built successful businesses that we love without losing our faith, humor, or our sanity. This is Smart, Soulful Business.

Becky Brown  0:17 
Real conversations to help your business fit your life and not the other way around.

Becky Brown  0:21 
Welcome back to Smart, Soulful Business with Becky and Laurie.

Becky Brown  0:30 
I'm Becky.

Laurie Graham  0:31 
I'm Laurie, and together, we are figuring out how to continue growing businesses that fit our lives with faith, purpose, and a pace that doesn't burn us out. Last week, we talked about burnout, and today...

Becky Brown  0:45 
We are talking about something that trips up every single one of us at one time or another: content—specifically, what to post when you have no idea what to say. Because even when your heart's in the right place, it is so easy to overthink it, to completely freeze up, and just disappear online for a month whenever you feel like it.

Laurie Graham  1:08 
Yeah, if you struggle with content, you're not alone. I just want to acknowledge that. If you're doing anything online, there's so much content, you know, and we're going to talk about all the layers. But I always love it when once I post something, I go, "Oh, shoot, I wish I hadn't posted that," especially if they're videos, and then we just let it go.

Laurie Graham  1:25 
But Becky, before we jump into the content stuff, I just kind of want to share what my life has been like this week. Because I think when we talk about business, it sometimes feels heavy, and like we're just fitting this piece in, and we don't always talk about the benefit of having businesses that we love.

Laurie Graham  1:45 
What my life looked like this week is I flew to Colorado with my middle daughter to see my other kids who live in Colorado. So I was out of town for several days, and we had fun and walked around Golden and, you know, took selfies by the river and went out to eat and all this kind of stuff, and my business is still running the same as it was. And I got back, I just threw in a load of laundry between our podcast recording here, and I'm like, people have no idea.

Laurie Graham  2:10 
Sometimes there's so much—I don't know how to say this—but sometimes there's so much struggle in business that we forget that this is really so cool that I have my own business, and I can work in my jammies, and sometimes I'm on a screen, and, you know, sometimes I'm not.

Laurie Graham  2:29 
How do you see that in your life?

Becky Brown  2:33 
You and I have talked about this a lot: switching our language. Because when we—I'm going to say "naturally," I'm not sure that's the right word—when we naturally talk about our businesses and what's on our list for the day, we go into "I have to." I have to do this. I have to send this email. I have to meet with these people. You and I have totally intentionally flipped our language to "Today, I get to."

Becky Brown  2:55 
And that was in my head this morning. I just dropped my kids off at school, at their Mother's Day Out program. And on the way home, I was thinking, "Man, I get to go home and record podcasts and like, bring together one of my best friends in life with business. What a privilege that is!

Becky Brown  3:14 
And I get to do it from the comfort of my home with my dementia dog behind me who's struggling in life. And I get to, like, hang out." It is sad, and I get to spend time with him because of my business. And I get to, like, my parents were just here for a week, and I got to pull back a little bit from my tasks this week because they were here, and I got to be more present with them because of the flexibility and the fluidity that I've created in my business.

Becky Brown  3:41 
So there are a lot of "I get tos," and most of the time I'm working in workout clothes and in comfy places—sometimes out on my back porch in the sunlight, sometimes on my comfy couch with a cozy blanket. So lots of "I get tos" with this.

Laurie Graham  3:55 
So if you are building a business or thinking about building one, I think it's so important to look at the "get tos" and to keep in mind why we're doing what we're doing, which is why Becky and I talk about how to build a business that fits in your life instead of trying to fit your life around your business.

Laurie Graham  4:15 
We will push back against that. Your business is not your only or your sole or your highest priority. It's interrelated, and we believe in building businesses that do fit in our lives, and all the things God's called us to in relationship and joy in knowing him. It just shouldn't be a drudgery, right? It just shouldn't be.

Laurie Graham  4:39 
Okay, Becky, keep going.

Becky Brown  4:41 
Yeah, and so I mean that applies even to what we're talking about today with content. Content doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it, because I think it actually gets more complicated when we try to keep work as a separate box from all of these other things going on in our lives. I think that's so true. When we think about, like, "Okay, what is God already doing in my life? What is he speaking to me right now? What's going on in my life, my relationships? What are my struggles? What are my successes? What's going well?" When we look at those things, often, that's where my best content comes from.

Becky Brown  5:13 
So yeah, just an interesting thing to pay attention to, but we are going to walk you through three layers of content today. Before you decide what to say to your audience, it's important to recognize why you're saying it. So there are three layers of content that we're going to talk about today that really apply to every business. And those three layers, they don't all serve the same purpose.

Becky Brown  5:40 
So the three layers we're going to be talking about are social media content, lead magnet, or free resource content, and paid content.

Becky Brown  5:49 
With social media content, we're talking about your top-of-the-funnel content. It's the public stuff; it's scrollable. People are just finding you through a random post that pops up on Instagram or a Facebook post that was suggested to them by Facebook. It's about connection and encouragement, and it's not about a sales pitch yet. That's not the goal of social media content as a whole.

Becky Brown  6:14 
We're also going to be talking about lead magnets, which is your free resource content, and it's still free, but it's a little bit deeper than the social media scroll-past content. This is for people who are more ready to take a small next step, whether it's a download, a workshop, a quiz, or a short guide.

Becky Brown  6:33 
And we'll go deeper on this in future episodes. Today, we're just going to touch on it, but we also have your paid content. This is the transformation layer. That's where your courses, your membership, your guides, and your products are—where you deliver outcomes and not just share ideas.

Laurie Graham  6:56 
Okay, I just love how you just unpacked all those three because as you were talking, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that's such a great way to delineate that." And I think, when you said social media content, when you got to the lead magnet/free resource content, you're like, "This is where we go deeper."

Laurie Graham  7:11 
And I thought, "You know, it's so interesting," because when I do social media content, I always want to be helpful. Like, I don't want it just to be some quote that's out there. I think about being helpful, but the lead magnet, the free resource content, that's actionable, yes. Like, it's a little different, right? The social media content is helpful, it's encouraging, it's connection, like you said. The lead magnet/free resource, it's actionable. Like, that's the PDFs we're creating for the podcast.

Laurie Graham  7:39 
We hope this podcast is so helpful. We wouldn't be speaking if we didn't want to be helpful. But that lead magnet we're creating for each one, that free resource content, the PDF you can get, it's actionable, so specific. And then, like you mentioned, the paid content is just a deeper, transformational layer.

Laurie Graham  7:56 
Becky, I was taking notes while you were talking. I'm literally saying helpful, actionable, transformational. I've never—I really hadn't thought about it in the—I thought about layers of depth, like connection or like with my business, but not in that way. That was really beautiful. Thank you.

Becky Brown  8:13 
And I think it's really important to remember that these layers are so easy to mix up, right? There are people who are doing the right things, but in the wrong order or in the wrong way. And so they're showing up on social media, but they're showing up there and trying to sell something before they've connected with their community there, before they've built trust with their people. And so, doing that before you've earned that trust doesn't get you the same results as when you've got these clear containers in place.

Becky Brown  8:47 
And I think, you know, that's one of the things I want to call out in the beginning: it is so easy to get discouraged and give up when you try something once and it doesn't work. So, somebody told you to create a product, and all you have to do is share it on social media and people will buy it, and that's going to be the start of your business. So you follow their directions and you put it up and nobody buys it. That's when it's so easy to give up on your business and say, "Well, obviously, I can't do this because I followed their steps and they didn't work."

Becky Brown  9:16 
So there are so many catches, so many traps that you and I have both fallen into over all these years. We've both talked about it in both of our businesses in different ways, where you're working so hard to create the product and it doesn't sell and you don't know why, or you're using all of your time to create free content that you don't even have time to create a paid product to actually support your business and the time you're spending on it, or you just don't have good boundaries in a free community, and it sucks up all of your time. And so this information today is just about giving you clarity in each of the pieces and seeing how they each weigh out in your business right now, and how you want to shift those things.

Laurie Graham  9:58 
Yeah, I love that you just talked about time investment, because in these three layers: the social media content, number one; number two, the free resource content, or what many people will call that, a lead magnet; and number three, the paid content; you just totally pinged in my brain: This is a time investment. Like, we have to watch our time investment in these areas. And the deeper you go in these layers, the more time you should be spending.

Laurie Graham  10:25 
You should be spending tons more time... Gosh, I hate that we said "should." To be the most impactful, right? If we spend more, the paid content should get the depth of our time and energy. Social media content, it comes and goes, and sometimes I flip that. Like, I do these quotes on Sunday for my other business, and I'm like, "Oh, it needs to be perfect. It needs to be this." And then I'm spending five hours coming up with a quote that's going to be gone in a day. I mean, people just either post it or like it or not, and it's gone. And so I think these layers, not just the purpose of them, but it should also be reflected in how much time and energy and heart we put in.

Laurie Graham  11:04 
Social media content: encouragement. That's great; it doesn't have to be perfect. The free resource content: that's actionable. That should be more helpful. It should be more practical. Like, just do it. And that paid content: transformational. If we're looking at transformation, that should get our energy and our heart and our time and our—sorry not to be "Jesus frosting-ish"—but our prayer, like, you know, really laying that before God and saying, "Okay, God, what's next for me?" Right? Did I just get too spiritual there?

Becky Brown  11:37 
No, no, I think it's a really good point and a really good awareness. And things have really shifted in how things have been done on social media over time. You know, we went from Twitter to then, all of a sudden, the norm on Facebook was basically every social media post being like its own blog post. They got so long form, content-wise, that it was like, that's a good point.

Becky Brown  11:59 
How can I possibly write the blog post and then write the long-form content and keep up with the amount? Because they tell you all these rules or expectations for social media that you should be posting 10 to 12 times a day. The ridiculous amount that it feels—it feels overwhelming, and it feels like, "I will never be able to do this." And I want to challenge that because I think things should be shifting, and you should be paying attention to what's going on in your business, and you can tweak it to fit you.

Becky Brown  12:30 
I'm actually just starting on Instagram to test something new with Reels, and I'm kind of in my own head calling them my "bite-sized faith Reels." And it's just the shortest little phrase that I'm putting on a picture of my quiet time that I take anyways. And so they're fast, they're easy. I put them up, and I'm trying to post those more often because the goal of social media is just get in front of people, get in front of people, get in front of people. And it doesn't have to be this deep stuff. That's why you join my email list. That's why you're reading blog posts. There are different places for those pieces of content.

Laurie Graham  13:05 
Yeah. So, the bulk of the rest of this podcast episode is really going to be about your social content. So we can't cover all the content in one episode, or even three episodes. You'll hear a lot more from us on lead magnets and resource creation, and creating content for your paid resources and the transformation. But what we're going to focus on now is really the social content.

Becky Brown  13:31 
Yeah. And so, let's talk about that. And we're going to give you three core buckets of content. It's not a perfect system, but we're going to give you three core buckets that just keep things simple, authentic, and consistent. And you don't need a whole 30-day plan to do any of these. We're just going to give you three buckets to consider for your business.

Laurie Graham  13:53 
Yeah, so let's just really throw this out there: Social media should not feel like a full-time job. You know what I mean? And it can—it can suck us in, right? And so we need to keep in mind the purpose of it: we're connecting, we're encouraging, you know, and stay on that edge of not light as far as impactful content, but "light" as far as our energy and our effort, right?

Laurie Graham  14:17 
So, okay, Becky, give them the three buckets, because I like these. I think it's important.

Becky Brown  14:22 
Yeah, I do too. So the three buckets we're going to talk about today are, number one, your Relatable Bucket. That's your real life, your reflections on it, sharing the story behind things, letting people see the human side of your work, the moments where you're learning or laughing about yourself or adjusting your plans, and just like, "Here's what I'm learning behind the scenes about this topic" that you're speaking to your audience about. So number one, your first core bucket is just the Relatable Bucket.

Becky Brown  14:52 
Number two is the Helpful Bucket. This is more practical and more purposeful. So that's where you offer your audience a really useful, doable idea that's rooted in your own experience. So it's just your perspective of "three ways that I protect my creative energy on busy weeks," or whatever that looks like for your audience. It's more of the Helpful Bucket.

Becky Brown  15:15 
And number three, which is what I think you're best at, by the way, is the Vision Bucket, where it's about encouragement and empathy and speaking to what you believe is possible for them and why their work matters in this area—whatever area you're talking to them about—helping people feel seen where they are and inspired about where you are supporting them to go. And, yeah, like, for example, telling them, "Oh, you don't need a bigger following, you need deeper connection." There are just all kinds of examples for each of these, depending on your topic.

Laurie Graham  15:49 
Yeah, no, I love it. You know, the title of this podcast episode is "How to Create Content That Connects Even When You're Out of Words." So as we're talking about social media, I'm just thinking of so many people who have said to me, "How do you come up with all these ideas?" or "I have this idea for a business, but I don't know what to say," or "Who would want to hear from me?" or, you know, "What do I have to say? What do I have to offer?" You know, it feels like this treadmill, but it's not.

Laurie Graham  16:17 
If you think about these three buckets, we all have things in life. You and I shared things; we shared about, you know, I was out of town and and you have a dog with dementia. You know what I mean? It's relatable. This is where your social content comes from. It can come from your life. It can also be helpful. It can also be vision. We all have all of that. I love knowing that I don't have to be the smartest person in the room to create consistent content value.

Laurie Graham  16:50 
I hope we all can kind of feel that, right? So Becky, you mentioned that you think I'm really great at the vision, encouragement, and empathy one. So the three buckets: as you're listening right now, think of which one of these is more natural for you. Like, you can come up with relatable stories all the time, or you can come up with helpful content, or maybe you struggle with the vision, or you like that. So, relatable, helpful, and vision—as you're listening, which one are you great at, and which one maybe is not as natural for you?

Laurie Graham  17:19 
Because we're really saying that all three of these are important. It doesn't necessarily have to be balanced or even, but they're all going to connect with different people in different ways. And we like to see behind the curtain. We like to see how people's real lives are. We also like that really helpful, practical content. But if we want to change the world, that vision, that thought leadership, that encouragement, that empathy, "We see you"—it's so important.

Laurie Graham  17:45 
So for you, Becky, which one of these is kind of the natural place where you gravitate for social media content, and maybe which one do you avoid a little?

Becky Brown  17:55 
I have clear answers for all of those.

Laurie Graham   17:57 
I think you're great at all these. Becky does all these three, like, you do them all so well!

Becky Brown  18:03 
Well, well, you see all of me though. You see business me and behind-the-scenes me, and I like that. So, yeah. So, okay, I would say, in my business, what I share on social media, I love sharing the relatable, behind-the-scenes stuff; that feels natural to me. I love sharing on Instagram stories. I share about my quiet times and my journaling and faith insights that God is speaking to me about. I share about my dogs, and I share food that I'm cooking and art that my kids made me, and that feels really fun and easy for me. I think I do okay on the helpful side of things.

Becky Brown  18:37 
My blog posts are where I give more of that content than on social media, and so I kind of get touches when I share my blog posts on social media. But I would say that as far as my business and social media, I kind of avoid vision. I want to do this well, and I actually think I do this well in person, but on social media, it's really hard for me when I don't have the person sitting in front of me, because I think of empathy as such a response. I can help people feel seen when I hear something about their story and respond to it, and that's harder for me to do on social media when I don't have the physical person in front of me. Yeah, I think that's really true. Yeah. So what do you think you're good at?

Laurie Graham  19:21 
You know, it's so funny because I know we're going to talk a little bit more about consistency with posting and, you know, keeping this sustainable. I'm just so spotty. Like, "Oh, I'm in it this day. I'm going to do this this day." That's been a challenge area for me, right? But when it comes to sharing my life, I always want to. I think one thing I probably think about maybe more than I need to is I don't want it to be me-focused, right? Yeah, but at the same time, that's what makes us all relatable. Yeah, and it's probably why I say "we" all the time. You know, like, you and I are even a "we," right? We are a "we."

Laurie Graham  20:07 
It's very difficult. You and I have both struggled with not really wanting to be the face of our company, which is hilarious, because we totally are. For sure. But it's—and I think that's a little bit of that tension as a Christian, as a person who loves Jesus—it's never, there's always a tension, right?

Laurie Graham  20:25 
And so as I think about the social media thing, one thing that really helps me is the schedule, which I know we're going to talk about a little bit. My daughter has helped me a lot in that. But yeah, I'm just, yeah, I'm so spotty, Becky. I'm good at some things at different times, and then I'm better at the other ones. And I'll totally forget to be helpful and be talking about my trip, and then I'll totally talk about some vision statement and forget to be helpful. So I think I kind of go back and forth on all of it.

Becky Brown  20:51 
Okay, so talking about being authentic and relatable and all of those things. The interesting thing about social media is that it can get pretty personal. You get to decide how much to share, how deep to share. How do you decide what's personal enough to share, but not so deep that it leaves you feeling exposed or overly vulnerable to strangers?

Laurie Graham  21:19 
Well, you know, I'm not good at that, first off, so I feel overexposed all the time. Yeah, I share a lot of my heart. And I know this isn't social media, but I do online conferences. I always cry. I cry in the pre-show. I mean, I'm just kind of all out there and pretty authentic and vulnerable. I think for me, the line is when it's getting into other people's stories, where I just don't... like, if it's going to affect my kids or my friends, or if there's anything that sharing that goes beyond my bubble, I really don't share it. Like, I would have to ask.

Laurie Graham  21:51 
I mean, I have a book written that I'm probably not going to release ever, because I would need to ask, you know, people's permission for sharing certain stories. You know what I mean? So I think that's it for me. But I would generally say I overshare. I mean, I've had my daughter has, like, edited things out of the podcast: "Mom, you can't share that," you know. And, you know, even, like, a place I volunteer, she's like, "Mom, you can't share that," you know. And so, she'll kind of hold me back. So I don't think I'm really great at that.

Becky Brown  22:18 
Yeah, it's tricky. I always change my boundaries. Like sharing my kids' faces on social media, is that okay? Should I not be doing that? How do I protect my kids and also share that I'm a mom, doing this whole thing? It is a tough thing to balance, and I never claim to be doing it right, quote, unquote, the right way. It's tough.

Laurie Graham  22:38 
But that tension, that's the tension. The tension: I want to be real, but I don't want to overshare. Absolutely. I want to be helpful, but I'm also not the smartest person in the room. You know what I mean?

Becky Brown  22:50 
Yeah, for sure. And there are so many different avenues that we could go down on this content, and even just, we could do a whole podcast on just the privacy and how to decide your own boundaries there and things like that.

Laurie Graham  23:01 
But let's do that someday. Write that one down.

Becky Brown  23:03 
Okay, we should do that someday, but we're going to keep going on today's topic, and we are going to talk about how you can keep social media in a sustainable place for you and your business. You talked about how you were spotty. I tend to show up. I don't always show up well, but I tend to show up pretty consistently. And consistency isn't always something that comes from your calendar. It often is something that comes more from your capacity.

Becky Brown  23:31 
And so we talked about burnout on our last episode, and if you are running on fumes, your creativity will always feel harder than it should. So let's just talk about that for a second. In the scheme of social media, when you're tired or in a hard season, which you and I have both been in a whole lot since we've been running our businesses, how do you keep showing up without faking it, with the "Jesus frosting," and the pasting on the smile?

Laurie Graham  24:00 
Okay, so one of these things, and depending on where you're at in your business, this may work for you. If it's not currently where you're at, work toward this. Becky and I are going to say you need to do this. This is the whole point of being an entrepreneur: you have somebody around you who's helping you do that, and you pre-schedule. I mean, that's what it is, because in my business, it's super consistent because it's pre-scheduled, and I also have people helping me, right? You know, we have this post that comes out every Sunday. It's a quote. I don't know the day because I'm not running it, but the blog post gets highlighted on this day, and it is a pre-scheduled calendar. And I would say—I know we just said consistency doesn't come from a calendar—but this is the consistency for me. It is calendarized and it is pre-scheduled. 

Laurie Graham  24:46 
And so I think earlier on, when it was more organic, coming from me, it's not going to be super consistent because it is dependent on my capacity, right? And some of the pieces are, and I think we've got to just let it go and say again, it's not brain surgery. This isn't life or death, you know, and kind of giving ourselves grace. But the way that I show up without faking it is, it's pre-scheduled, and other people are helping me. Yeah. I mean, that's just the reality of it. And I think sometimes we limit how much... you can sit down in a day and decide what posts are coming out on what days. And, you know, every Wednesday is a post about your community, or every Monday is a tip. This is a tip about, you know, I don't know, if you're making cards or, you know, whatever your business is, you know, there's a tip on a Monday and a community post on a Wednesday and a personal post on a Friday. For me, that helps a lot, because I know that that's the day, whether it's pre-scheduled or later. I just think that calendar is really helpful. Yeah. So what about you, Becky? Do you want to push back on anything I said, or add to anything? Okay?

Becky Brown  25:54 
No, no, I think that you're nailing it. I think that adding some kind of structure is really important with social media because...

Laurie Graham  26:01 
Structure!

Laurie Graham  26:02 
Thank you. That's the word that I didn't have.

Becky Brown  26:05 
Well, let's just call out social media for what it is. Social media is a black hole that could take every second of your every day, of your every work time, for as long as you let it, because basically every social media channel tells you the more you post, the better. So post more and post more Reels now, on top of your normal content and pictures, and make sure that there's long-form content, and make sure that there are hashtags. I mean, social media people are on it all the time, and they're scrolling past it. So your two seconds of fame, or not even, like a split second of fame, you know, it could eat up everything.

Becky Brown  26:42 
And so putting a container on it, that structure that you're talking about, on "these are my three posts," and change it based on your seasons. I have had to change my social media posts drastically. There have been some seasons where I've posted every day, and I've wanted to, and I've wanted to test out different strategies with my audience in a group versus on a page versus on Instagram or Reels. I'm testing out all kinds of stuff constantly, but I'm not on social media constantly, because that could very easily eat my entire life away. And so I would say those buckets are really, really, really helpful to keep social media contained, because if you let it, it will take all of you.

Laurie Graham  27:21 
So as we talk about creating content, even when we're out of words, which, you know, basically we're talking about, how do we come up with what we're going to say when we're not sure what we're going to say? Can we talk just a little bit about deciding ahead of time? Because I think that's where you and I are both leaning, and I think that's where we've gone with our businesses: deciding ahead of time.

Laurie Graham  27:42 
And I think the buckets that you talked about were so perfect. It would be so easy, you know, let's say you're starting out, you're a solopreneur. It's just you, which is where we all start, right? That's where we all start. Why not? Every Monday is your helpful post. Every Wednesday is your vision post. Every Friday is your relatable post. Or, like, these are your three buckets. Or the first Monday of the month is your relatable post. The second Monday of the month is your helpful post. It doesn't have to be three times a week. It could be weekly, but a mix of these buckets. I think, you know, that relatable real life reflection.

Laurie Graham  27:42 
This is who I am behind the curtain. This is how it relates to real life. You know, that second bucket: helpful, practical tips and tools. No matter what you're teaching, no matter what you're selling, there's always something helpful, practical. And then we've got that vision part, that encouragement, that empathy, that—I was going to say connection, but that's really the relatable one. The vision one is, for me, it's a little more like thought leadership. Like, "Hey, this is the concept or something."

Becky Brown  28:43 
So this is really what you're working for. You think you want just the practical, helpful ideas, but really you want this life of freedom and calm and peace and transformation—the transformation that they want to experience, not just the things they want to do.

Laurie Graham  28:59 
Love it. Love it. Yeah. Well, thanks for going on my squirrel little offshoots there, Becky.

Becky Brown  29:06 
Always, always.

Laurie Graham  29:09 
You know, we've talked about a lot in this episode already. Before we dove deep into social, where we're always like, "Oh, what are we going to say?" I think it's really important to understand social media is part of the content, but it's not the deepest part. We've got the social content, we've got the free resource content, and we've got the paid content, right? To understand where we're putting our effort and our energy. I think that can lighten up the pressure of this social content hamster wheel that we're on, right? I'm picturing the hamster's wheel that just goes round and round. We need to put it in its place. Social media is important. It's a big piece of connection, but it's not the transformation, right? It may lead people there.

Laurie Graham  29:54 
Becky unpacked those three core buckets of the soulful content for social media: the relatable, the helpful, and the vision. And we talked a bit about our capacity and the clarity of understanding ahead of time how much weight to put on this, given our capacity and being able to adjust. So, like, if you want to give them... Oh, yeah, the flexibility, for sure. Do you want to give them the action step?

Becky Brown  30:24 
How to put this in place. Here at Smart, Soulful Business, we are all about learning and then doing. So you have learned information today. Your minor transformation from this is just the action step. We want to encourage you to pick one story, one insight, or some kind of encouragement that you want to share with your audience this week. So it could be something small, whatever that looks like for you, whatever came to your mind as we were talking about social media today.

Becky Brown  30:54 
Write it down. Turn it into a post using one of the three buckets that we shared: relatable, helpful, or vision. Don't overthink it. Write it down like you would speak to a friend on a coffee date, and then post it and move on with your day. Schedule it, batch them. Do three at once, and then schedule and batch it. But pick one thing that you want to share with your audience this week.

Laurie Graham  31:15 
And as you said, share with your audience. We know tons of people are listening right now, and you haven't started your business yet. You're just on the edge. Your audience is whoever is there. It's your friends and family. It's your Facebook, you know, thread, or your profile—whatever they call it. Yeah, not super techie here. Or your Instagram, you know, whatever that is, that's where you share. Don't think you need to develop an audience before you put this into place. Right now, like Becky just gave you a very specific action. You don't have to have an audience first. You already have one. Sometimes, I think we make this bigger than it is, and so just kind of lean into that. If you're at the baby stages of your business, again, we're all there. We've all been there. We all are there. So that really is your audience.

Laurie Graham  31:51 
If you are tired, though, of staring at the blank screen and wondering what to post, to make it even more practical, grab our free 25 Plug-and-Play content prompts. These are great. I had so much fun creating them. Yes, they're so great. So go to the link in the show notes. Grab them. You literally—we've split out the three buckets and given you specific, like, just plug and play. Put your story in there. Put your tip in there, to make it so easy that you're going to be able to write these posts that sound like you. Not copycat. Not like a template, okay? Not like that, but it's a prompt that's going to lead you straight into an amazing post. So grab that link in the show notes and grab those 25 Plug-and-Play content prompts.

Laurie Graham  31:33 
Yes, so great. That is our slightly deeper step for you. But if you are ready for transformation, if you are ready to invest in your business and do the things with support around you, come join us in Soulful Strategy. It's where we help women build businesses that are smart and sustainable and grounded in faith and emotional health. And we would love to walk with you through this as we are already walking through it, and share deeper, more transformative things as we are doing all of these things in our businesses, together, alongside each other.

Laurie Graham  33:18 
And the link to join our Soulful Strategy membership is in the show notes as well. So all right, well, we have to head out for the day and get back to our lives—not just our businesses, but our lives. And we know you have that, too. So you've got this. We've got you. Go team.