I Am That Content Creator Podcast

Ep#108 [PART 2] Your Content Isn’t Cringe; It’s Just Off-Purpose. Let’s Fix That With Knowing Your Why

• Kristen Werner & Mia Steel • Season 1 • Episode 108

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Your content shouldn’t feel like pushing a boulder uphill. When you lock onto a deep, personal why, ideas snap into place, messaging gets simple, and your audience leans in because they finally understand what you stand for. We open up about the messy, vulnerable path to clarity and share the exact tools we used to build brands that can pivot without breaking.

We walk through the seven whys exercise, showing how to move past surface answers like money or freedom and get to the moments that shaped your voice. You’ll hear how a mission-first pitch unlocked funding, sponsorship, and national exposure, and why that outcome wasn’t luck it was alignment. Simon Sinek’s golden circle isn’t just theory (see YouTube for full video); it’s a practical filter for your offers, scripts, and social content, especially when your brain doesn’t fit the old mould. 

If you’re neurodivergent, your difference can be the value: simplifying the complex, documenting the real process, and giving others the map you wish you had.

We don’t sugarcoat the discomfort. Digging for your why can feel slow and awkward, but that tension is where breakthroughs live. We share voice-note tactics, story prompts, and a simple check: if content feels forced, you’re probably off-purpose. 

Bring it back to the foundation. We also talk strategy: why TikTok is leading consumer discovery, how to use it as a top-of-funnel engine, and how to keep your through line intact across every pivot and platform.

If you’re ready to stop chasing trends and start building a brand that lasts, press play. Then subscribe, share this with a creator who needs the nudge, and leave a review to tell us the first “why” you uncovered.

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SPEAKER_02:

Are you ready to master the art of creating content that converts? Hey, I'm Mia, a mum of two, who went from being a burnt-out ambo to a six-figure content creator in less than a year, all over getting a late ADHD diagnosis.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm Kristen, also a mum of two, and a former corporate branding queen to an entrepreneur. My dyslexic brain sees marketing very differently, and that's my superpower. And together we're showing women like you how to master video marketing and create content that generates income. Whether you're just starting out or ready to scale, we are breaking down everything from landing brand deal to building your own empire.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to I Am That Content Creator Podcast, where we turn scroll-stopping content into serious income. No filters, no blood. Just real strategies from two neurodivergent mums who get it. So let's turn your phone into a video marketing machine. And let's go! Let's go. Okay, there's no done.

SPEAKER_03:

Deep, deep why and why it matters for your wonderfully spicy brains. Well, no one is you and that is your fucking power. And it may seem really cliche, but it's very true in terms of nobody is you and that is your power. Your stories are unique. Your life lessons are unique. What you've been through is unique, and nobody can take that away. Nobody can copy it. Nobody can do anything about that, but you can learn how to use that as your secret power. And that's why we really enjoyed doing this work, which is understanding your deep why. And for me, understanding your deep why is knowing kind of that secret source to your passion and your purpose and what drives you and what keeps you kind of grounded at your core. And for me, it's allowed you to have and it's allowed me to be the backbone of every pivot I've made. Because I know deep in my core what my deep why is. I know what I stand for, and I know that at any point I can pivot. If I'm coming back to that deep why, then it's aligned with me and it's the foundation of who I am. And we want this to be the foundation of who you are and understanding what that foundation looks like and how you build from that foundation. And so your deep why drives your your story, basically. And for me, it's one of my favorite topics. It's like a child that's three that's like, why, why, why, why? There's a reason they ask why is because they want to know the answer. And as adults, we go surface level. Why does that happen? Oh, because that goes that way. Why does that happen? Oh, because we do that. Why does it? But if you keep going and you keep uncovering it, you will discover something that I guarantee you've potentially never tapped into. And some of our community members that are here, I've seen your beautiful faces. You may have done this work and you may be ready to revisit it. But it's also something that when you do this work, something shifts in you. So when I say why are you here, this is not why you're here today, because then I go, okay, cool. Why? Well, why did you sign up? Why do you feel that way? Why did you click that? What's in you? Like you keep going down and down and down and down until you find it. Why do you do what you do is not just a question of, oh, I'm, you know, I'm a graphic designer because I like to create craft and designs. Okay, why? Because I can see things visually and it's easy for me. Okay, why? Because, you know, writing a book and things like that, like that's quite difficult with my dyslexia. Okay, so why? So the creation process is really fundamentally beautiful for me, and I get a real kick out of it, and it helps me articulate what I really want to say, and you just keep going. You never stop until something hits. And why do you want your business to grow is another thing. Because for me personally, it's not just to make money so that my family can live happily and we can get what we want. For me, it's about the fact that I want my family to be in a position where I can be a stay-at-home mum and I can be here for my kids and I can pick them up and they can one day turn around and go, Oh, yeah, mum was there for me. She was always there. Like that's the fundamental. And like, why is that? Why do I feel like that? Well, my mum's like that. So, you know, you just keep going because these things hit. And so you might feel this big overwhelm with doing something like this because it's big and it's new, and it can offer like you won't, well, you might, and I hope you do, but there's a fair chance you won't discover your why today, this week, this month, or even in the next couple of months, because it's an ever-evolving thing. And and do not put pressure on yourself to discover this now because it needs to evolve with you and you need to do this work, and that's why we have a community. That's why this is not a done-for-you course and off you go and catch you later. This is something that you come back to. We take our students through constantly, we're always reminding them about what's the deep white. Is that a line? Or yet yes or no? Let's go back and do that. And it can feel really slow in such a fast-paced environment, and that's okay. And in a noisy, noisy environment, it's very hard to find the quiet space to do this. But I really urge you to continue to test and try this. And something that I've always said and that I truly believe in is the big question is would you build your house on sand? Let me know in the comments. If you built a brand new house, would you build it on sand? I'm gonna say there's a there's a no. Yep, Jen says no. Very smart, very smart. And it's an absolute no because it'll fall over. Like, like your house will fall over. And for me, the foundation, the why work is the foundation of your brand, the foundation of who you are, the foundation of your business. And if you build that on sand, shit falls through the cracks. It falls over, a kid stomps on it, someone knocks it over, it blows away in the wind, wave comes, gone. If you build it on concrete, rock, solid, hard concrete, your brand, you understand who that is, who you are, then you can have a two-story house, you can do an extension, you can put a pool in, you can put another story on top, you can pivot, you can change, you can turn, because that core solid foundation is always there. And that's what we ultimately want to come to. A blanci. Yeah, wow, that's true. And so the the real message is that the foundation is your brand. So your business brand and your personal brand, for me, they are interconnected and they are interrelated because you usually build a business from a personal experience, a transformation, a problem you've solved, something like that. So it comes from this core resonance of who you are. And so when you understand that brand, then you're able to build brick by brick by brick and then create something that's solid enough that it's not going to fall over, that you're going to be able to continue to grow. And it's what drives your brand. It's what you're always able to come back to. And it's got a clear purpose and a clear mission, and it makes content creation easy. If content creation is hard, it's often because you're not coming from a place that you truly understand what you stand for. And you truly know that what you are creating and what you are putting out into this universe is ready to change someone's fucking life. And it might be that it's it feels really small and inconsistent. Oh, that's sorry, insufficient. Because it's not like, you know, totally mind-blowing and change life. Like you're just doing, I don't know, I think I saw a teacher before, you're doing teaching notes and things like that. But that could change someone's life. You having the courage to do something differently because you believe in it, and then offering that to somebody else to help them in their life, that is life-changing. It doesn't need to be mind-blowing. It just needs to be you've created it because you clearly believe in it and you want to help somebody else in this process.

SPEAKER_02:

I was gonna say, your content is a really good way to figure out if something is in alignment or not to your why. Because whenever I sort of stray from my why a little bit, the content feels really hard. And when I come back to it, the content just comes out. It just flows. It's so easy and effortless.

SPEAKER_03:

I think maybe you also stop caring what other people think. Because you go, but this this means something to me. And I know that if I share this, it will help somebody opposed to the other kind of content that feels forced and really uncomfortable. And so I don't know if you've heard this before. It's a Simon Seneck quote that I love. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And this particular quote changed my trajectory or came at the right time in my business in my life. And I'm gonna share that story with you right now because it's something that I continue to teach, and it's a moment in my time that's a catalyst in my story that I hope, if you haven't heard this, is a catalyst in your story today, and you can take it with you in this journey. And so I'm gonna show you the video and then we're gonna kind of come back to this. And I'm gonna share when this story entered my life, and it might make sense to why it was so pivotal to where I am now.

SPEAKER_00:

I call it the golden circle. What it proves to us is that people don't buy what you do, people buy why you do it. People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

SPEAKER_03:

That particular video was sent to me at a time when I had a project called the On It Project. And we were we started a project, this was before online businesses and things like that. And we started a project that we wanted to talk to young women around owning their space and becoming resilient in who they were and what they stood for. And we wanted to help them with their personal brand and understand the power of who they were so they could be resilient, they could be strong and not strong and fit and thin. We wanted to educate them around how to build their body and build their strength and how that interconnects with who they are and who they're gonna be. And the whole project was incredible. We taught thousands of young women and we got to a point where, like, okay, well, we want to do uh we're both fitness trainers as well. So we wanted to do personal training sessions with these girls. Like, well, we need some equipment and we need a few, you know, we need a backing. So we went to a Anytime Fitness and we sat down in a boardroom full of personal trainers, and there was one guy, and this guy sent me this video. There was this one guy, and I was like, he's the guy, that's the guy we're talking to. So we pitched what we wanted to do. We pitched the project, we pitched what it meant to us, we pitched the entire thing and what we needed from them. And when we left, he said, Oh, that was that was really good, girls, that was great, but we'll be in touch. And then the next day is when we got an email that said, watch this video and then call me. And so we watched that video and we were both like, wow, that was that was really cool. Like goosebumps, that's that's great. And he said, Um, that's what you did for us in that room. I was like, Oh. He's like, you sold us your why. And we all believed it, and we're gonna fund you and your business. And we had we were on a national radio show promoting the anti-bully campaign within schools. We went out to schools, they paid for sponsorship, they gave us$5,000 worth of equipment. We were just two girls at the time, girls, women in our 20s that believed we had a story and we needed to change people's lives. And these guys were like, yeah, cool, because they bought our why. And so that video to me, every time I watch, I'm like, oh my god, fuck we I'm even getting rational now. I fuck we did that. And if you can do that, that's where shit changes.

SPEAKER_02:

That's where your message changes. Fucking sorry, it's powerful stuff, and when you start to wander and sort of get distracted by all these things, when you bring it back to that why, that's when it becomes powerful, and that's when that longevity is there because you don't waver from that. There's lots of distractions, but you can't waver from it.

SPEAKER_03:

And so when you do this why work and when you want to start creating something that matters, this is the stuff that will change people. This is the stuff that when you do the deep why and you do that deep work and you do say to yourself, Why do I do what I do? Why does this matter? Why is this important? And you keep digging and digging and digging, you'll naturally come to this. This is something that it'll just happen and it'll just hit you. And one other exercise we've got. This was a moment, so this was the radio deal that we did. We spoke to hundreds of students, they sponsored us. Like, this was life-changing for these students as well as us, but like this happened because we shared our deep why. And one exercise that we will encourage you to do, which is also in the why workbook that we're going to um share with you, is this particular project that your seven whys, and this just takes you down the path of doing your seven whys and asking again and again and again, and you will have your aha moment. And it wasn't until I think I sat writing voice notes because I that's how I roll, and I just asked myself over and over again, and I was like, I I felt like I I had it. I felt like I knew what it was, and then I kept going and going and going, and then it hit me like a 10-ton truck. When I was doing this again after the ONUP project stuff, I did this again, moving into this space and moving into women and people women like yourselves. I did this project again, this exercise again, and it hit me like a 10-ton truck the moment that it all came to surface, which was I think the same moment and the same why that I did the owner project, and that was to simplify things. You know, with my dyslexia, I like to solve problems, I like to create solutions, I like to detangled things and messy then uncomplicated things, uncomplicate things to make it easier for you. And that's my mission, that's my why, because I don't want people to feel like how I felt all through school that was just stupid and I can't get it, and there's red pen everywhere, and I'm just I'm not understanding what everybody else is doing, and everyone's telling me to do it that way, and I can't do it that way because I want to do it this way. And so this for me is my deep why and what I still live by. But doing those exercises got me there again, and and I really encourage you to do the same. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That seven whys exercise really helped me because before I met Kristen, I didn't do this work. I just I'll tell you on the next slide what what I was doing, but this the seven whys, it makes you go so deep and it's really difficult. You won't get it for a while because you'll have to do it again and do it again, but you'll almost get to it when you start to break open and the tears come and you're like, oh my God, that's why. That's my why. So for me, so when I did the seven whys, this is what I got to. And even more recently, since being diagnosed with ADHD, I'm realizing that I'm speaking to this woman who thinks differently, and I don't want her to feel stuck or feel like they have to be in this system that wasn't built for them. And I'm here to show them that if I can break out, if I can do it, you can do it too. So, you know, in my content and we'll go through this in your personal brand with your through line, I show by doing, I lead by example, I document my journeys, I keep it real, I take people on a real-time journey. So everything that I do online, it comes back to that why. I just want to get that woman and shake her and say, you can do this. And when I start to, if I see a shiny object or something and I follow it because I've got ADHD and it doesn't align with my why, I can really easily go, wait a minute, that's that's not about this. That's not in alignment. And I need to reassess and come back to this deep why. And every time I do it, like we said before, the content gets easier, the messaging is more powerful, and you grow a lot faster.

SPEAKER_03:

So on the next slide, I think I put it's also just important before we move on to the next one is to know that, you know, you might have been to webinars in the past, boot camps in the past, things like this in the past. And there's lots of teaching that goes on, and there'll be some teaching in the next few days that we want to get you through. But there's not a lot of people that we know of, certainly, that we've seen that do this work, that encourage you to do this work. And this is the stuff that breaks you open enough to actually take action or feel comfortable, comfortable and confident enough to take the next step. And that's why that's why we're so passionate about it. That's that's why it always gets me. Because if you're willing to do this work, what is possible for you on the other side of this and what we've seen has been possible for the members inside our community because they've done this work, that's the stuff that some people just aren't teaching. And they're certainly not doing it in their free stuff because they want to hold that close where we want to break that open so that you can actually see the possibility and opportunities of what lie ahead when you lean in to who you are and why you do what you do.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. And so before I did this work, I've been trying to make businesses work for probably seven or eight years. And all these other businesses that I used to start, I just wanted to make money. If someone said, Why do you want to start a business? I just want to make more money. I want to have my own business. And they weren't built on foundations. They might have been great ideas, but they they weren't connected to anything. They were just very surface level. And so with no foundation, they all sort of just crumbled away. And so it wasn't until I did this deep work where stuff really started to happen. I think on the next slide, I've got, you know, this when I just started leaning into my AHD and just creating and testing and failing and just doing all these things, it wasn't until I discovered my deep why through documenting all my journeys. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm obsessed with showing other women how I was doing this, exactly how I was doing this. I wasn't so much teaching, I was showing them and documenting. And then all of a sudden, you know, I built three six-figure businesses in under 12 months each because I was leaning into that deep why. So it wasn't the businesses necessarily that were lighting me up. It was showing others that they could do it too. And so my foundations became solid. Even though I was evolving and pivoting and doing all these things, everything came back to that deep why. And it just, the momentum just started to come. And when I would sort of stray from it, I could tell the money would drop off, things became hard, it was just a bit messy. And I had to reassess and come back. And you know, I haven't had to burn anything down because everything is tied back to that why and that personal. And just remember when you're doing that seven Y work, just don't go hard on yourself if you can't get to that seventh Y just yet. Because it'll it's it's quite difficult to get there. You really got to go deep and dig deep until you get there. Um, and you'll go through, you know, your kids and money and the family and all that stuff. And then it just goes way, way, way deeper down. And you know, we talk to a few people who are like, Oh, why are you doing this? And I just want to prove to someone that I can do this because they've, you know, bagged them out in the past or something. It's like, no, no, that's not your deep why. You can't base your business because you're trying to prove to someone that you can do this, it's got to go much, much deeper. It's not the money, it's not this, that, the other.

SPEAKER_03:

Every time you think you've got it, you just double check and you go, yeah, but why? But why? And just it it gets uncomfortable. And if you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing. If you come like it's called a comfort zone for a reason, because comfortable. So just do this, allow yourself the discomfort because the other side of that is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And we wanted you guys to do this work today first because when we go into the other stuff, day two and three. So we're talking about your dynamic personal brand and content and your evolving digital product, we want to make sure it's all based on solid foundations. Even though, you know, you might not get there straight away, just knowing that that's you know, where you've got to set your foundations up is gonna really help you in the future. So, what if you can't find your why? I've been searching for many years. Yeah, look, I mean, it it took me years and lots of trial and error to actually figure it out and go, oh my god, that's what it is.

SPEAKER_03:

You've also got to be ready for it, like in terms of you've got to be willing to know that it's going to come and you're gonna find it. Like it's it's really a a big opening up process, and it's something that I know how it is there, and it's something that we might even, you know, when we open this up and we go for it, we might even have a session that's just that. That's it's something that um, like I said, when I did mine, I'm not a journalist, so I just got my voice recorder. I think I've still got it on my phone, and it went for about an hour and a half, and I was just there. And at one point I said in the thing, I was like, this feels so stupid. Like I'm sitting by myself in a room just talking to my phone about this, and then I just kept going and going, and then it hit me and I just broke into and I was like, That makes sense.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wouldn't have maybe even found my deep eye if I didn't get on TikTok and create content and document all these journeys because I wouldn't have figured out that oh, that's why it's working because this is what I was supposed to do. I wasn't supposed to just sell a product and you know, do it that way.

SPEAKER_03:

So and if you've got that big dream and that vision, and I think, you know, for those of you that are here, I I have this gut feeling that you've got a bigger vision for yourself. You believe that you weren't put on this planet just to go to work for nine to five and just do it that way, and just like you were know that there's something in you that's meant to be out there. And so if you know that, then the deep why work is worth the effort and you will get there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And also the vulnerability of putting yourself out there and getting uncomfortable will bring the why to the surface a lot quicker.

SPEAKER_01:

Kind of scary to think that 2026 is coming in three months. And imagine if you're in exactly the same place as you are now, where you're not getting the likes, you're not getting the follows, you're not getting the comments, and you're not getting the interaction from your audience, but you are putting in absolutely everything. We don't want that from you. We want you to blow up 2026, but 2026 is your freaking year. And did you know that TikTok is the number one platform for consumer discovery? That's beating Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. So stop wasting time on the other platforms and put TikTok at the top of funnel marketing. And that is exactly why we have built the blow up on TikTok Innighty Day Challenge. Help you get to grow your brand and build a ride or dark community that actually freaking fires from it. So if you want this and want to jump into the joints, all the details of it for DMS. The challenge starts now. You can join us inside our hot collective community on a monthly basis, or you can buy the challenge out live. Otherwise, we are live right now, and if you want to see it next before 2022, this is the message we needed to hear. So come on, let's go.