This is where the intro goes
I figured I would take you along with me for my day, a day in the life of a content creator, and a mom, and a person who’s trying not to lose her absolute mind while dealing with the quarantine. So today, I’m doing lots of things. My six-year-old, Flynn, has his Kindergarten graduation today, which is basically him doing a drive-by at his school to say goodbye to his teachers, to get the last of his paperwork, and then I have an interview for my book, which I’ll dive into as well. I have a talk with my AMA, my American Marketing Association and just all kinds of stuff. So, join me!
Mom Life First, Always
My favorite part about making treats for other people, is there’s always leftovers for the family. I may or may not have cookies for breakfast. Whatever, it’s fine. So while my tea brews and my kid fills out his last assignment, I have to address this hot mess express I have going on, because you know, can’t look like crap even during a quarantine. Gotta put that best foot forward.
Since we’re in quarantine, I haven’t put myself together in a while because I don’t have to. It seems like a waste of money to me to just put on makeup for no reason. Well the reason I put on makeup is to present myself in the best possible light to other people in the world, so that, I have some credibility, but here we are, day 9 million of quarantine. I don’t want people to have my appearance stop them from doing business with me, but I mean, I’ve just been hanging out on my Zoom calls, living my best pajama life, so I guess it’s time for me to adult. Alright, make up done, hair fixed. Better. Now it’s time to take my kid to the school so he can say goodbye to his teachers.
I love his priorities:
Mom: Hey Flynn, what are we going to do?
Flynn: Go to school, and I’m gonna be in first grade!
Mom: Want to go see your teachers?
Flynn: Yes!
Mom: Are you excited?
Flynn: Yeah, to give them cookies.
So, the cookies he’s talking about, total mom fail. They’re put together with duct tape. Flynn received a sweet goodie bag filled with pencils, glowsticks, a maze, snacks (YAS!), and he received the Technology Wizard Award!
Then cue all the feels. I have a first grader now. How’d that happen?
Flynn: I miss you!
Teacher We miss you too, bud!
Then do the works
I’m going to be doing some Zoom action, talking with Vincenzo Landino for my book! My book which is called “Inspiration from Desperation.” We’re talking about Vincenzo’s adventures with Meerkat, and how he was using live streaming during a period of time where I was too occupied with keeping my children alive, you know, like growing them and breastfeeding them and all that stuff, I kind of missed out on all of this stuff that happened on the social webs. And so he’s like going to fill in the gaps, share his story about how he got into Meerkat, and then how Meerkat completely died and how he overcame it. So, I’m looking forward to it. This has actually been a really fun thing for me to do. I’ve actually done a couple of these interviews. I talked with Dennis Crowley, who was the founder of Foursquare. Fun fact, I used to be the Foursquare expert, like that was my thing. It’s just going to be really fun with this book because I love the idea of having all these different people to bring in and tell their stories that are kind of in line with what my journey has been like. So, keep reading for all of that goodness.
Reflecting on the knowledge overload
So, I had an amazing conversation with Vin. I’ve been following Vin for a really long time and in fact, and I told him this in the interview, if it wasn’t for him, when I connected with him on Facebook in 2016, I wouldn’t know about Amy and her book. I wouldn’t have read it, I wouldn’t have bought it. And I wouldn’t have had the solution I needed when my family got sent to South Korea to keep my business going. Because I had to use YouTube to keep that business alive. It was just such a great conversation, he said something really important that I feel like I need to share here. Because we talk about content marketing and this is a day in the life of a content marketer, the reason I interviewed Vin for my book is because he’s talking about Meerkat. There is this period in the social mediaverse, about the last 10 years, where I didn’t get to really participate in new things that were happening because I was birthing babies and then feeding them and growing them again and for anyone that’s been a mom with newborns, especially two under 17 months, it’s all-consuming and you just miss things. I reached out to him to be like “Hey, can I get in a story with you about your rise and fall with Meerkat?” And I shouldn’t say rise and fall, Meerkat rose and fell, he just kept rising. But he talked about two things I think are great.
- You need to say yes to things and take action now. Because you never know when that moment is going to change your life. If it wasn’t for one single moment in his career, everything he has right now wouldn’t have happened. Or rather, it’s very unlikely that it would have happened. He wouldn’t have his wife, he wouldn’t have his business, he wouldn’t be living in Ohio, all of these things.
- Everything that he’s learned from Meerkat about going live and making things happen and working with brands in 2015, everything that’s going on now, in 2020, those same exact principles apply. You still need to be present, you still need to have some fundamental things that go on like connecting, building a story, being real, all that kind of stuff, that’s what live streaming really gives to you, that’s what Meerkat was all about.
And he shared that he pays attention to what other apps and things are going on out there, but he knows he doesn’t have to be involved in it because the fundamentals are still the same. Which I find to be such an interesting perspective because it’s really true. The fundamentals of online marketing right now are kind of the same. The content is unique, but the delivery and the expectations and some of the norms are all the same. While that’s not the main message of my book, it’s a big part of my book. And my book talks about my last 10 years, my unfiltered failures and successes as an OG social media marketer over the past 10 years. There’s so many things that have stayed the same that are just really awesome and I just had to share that with you, it was so good.
Speaking and Presenting
Next, I’ve got to get ready for my presentation with AMA and find a moment to feed myself because food is essential. My speaking gig went really great, everyone really liked it. I had lots of follow up, which is what we’re always hoping for with these kinds of things. Full disclosure, it’s like five hours since I’ve finished the presentation and I had lunch and I got super tired. I always get super tired in the afternoon. So I’ve taken to napping. So I totally took a nap and then my husband has been super drained too because we live in Arizona. It’s hot, he’s busy, he’s doing the dad thing all the time. And so I snuggled with my babies for a little while. We watched shows and snacked on Pirate Booty and just had a good time. So now, it’s like six o’clock at night, my kids are eating and doing stuff, they’re probably gonna do bath time, and I’m sitting down to answer emails, catching up on projects because that’s how it works.
So one of the things I love about living my life on my own terms is I get to decide when things are going to happen, which means sometimes I snuggle during the day and work during the bedtime routine. Some of the things I’ve been working on are answering questions, scheduling things, working on my book because it is a constant work in progress. So the chapter that I was just working on with my editor is chapter six and I have added a bunch to the original version. What I’ve been doing with a lot of my book chapters, after I read them and we get them edited, is adding my moment of inspiration. My book is called “Inspiration From Desperation” and it’s all about when I was in these really crappy little places and all these failures or setbacks would happen and the inspiration piece is what I learned through that obstacle or challenge. I want to give these segments, these little chunks of hope and light to help people turn things around when they are in their obstacles.
The point of my book is to let people know they are not alone. This journey, this entrepreneur thing is crazy. The book is going to be interesting, we get into the really intense emotional stuff. Things like when I lost my job at CBS 5 that I worked so hard for, I became a military spouse, marriage, trauma, PTSD, and more, all while doing business. So it’s going be really interesting to get that feedback and tell the story. You can see the two really big differences in my life in this book. There’s pre-babies, pre-military life and post-babies and military life. So yeah, that’s where we’re at with the book.
Finishing up the day with the little things
This is a totally different kind of content, right? It’s 7:47, so my daughter is in bed. I took a break to read her a book and get her all ready. My son plays video games with my husband during this time. It’s their time because he’s older and my kiddos share a room so we have to stagger them going to bed. Now what I’m gonna be doing is a tangible content creation. So I have these Women of Youtube podcast stickers. I have the Women of YouTube podcast that I do and I got these stickers made by TubeBuddy and I have a Facebook group called the Women of YouTube group that’s an expansion of the podcast. I do weekly office hours, I do monthly trainings, we do channel reviews, people post some questions like “what do you guys think of this, what can I do better, what am I missing?” You know, we talk each other off the cliff sometimes. So I put up a call on the page, I was like, “hey, who wants a sticker? I got a bunch of these sitting around.” So I am going to be mailing them, I’m writing these up and mailing them out. I had these really funny cards that I found that I’m sending with them just ’cause they’re super fun. They say things like ‘Are you Siri? Because you autocomplete me’. Just for the extra pick-me-up and I’m gonna write on the back of them fun little messages to everybody in the group along with it. So, you know, real life. There’s something about a hand-written card that just goes a long way with people. So that’s what I’m doing. Do you ever run into the issue where you’re writing a letter or have to mail something and you can never find your stamps? All right, finally found my stamps, off to the mailbox now. One of the things I love about our house and this part of town, is that the mailboxes are like actual mailboxes like at your house versus community ones. That might be totally normal for you where you’re at but in Phoenix, not as much.
So, the husband is finishing night time with my son, they usually play games when my daughter goes to bed. Got the mail out, I had a really good day of content creating. I had a speaking gig, I had an interview I did for the book that I’m writing, took care of some personal content for the business, and of course created the in-person content to help grow my community. Because sometimes you have to take it offline. Sometimes you just have to get tangible, provide the goods and let the people know that you appreciate them with those notes and those little extra pieces of swag that just cost you a postcard and some postage. So yeah, so I’m gonna go enjoy my garden. I’m not going to totally spoil this for you because I have a video coming out about what gardening has taught me about content creation. Spoilers: both take a lot of time.
So long, farewell
I hope you enjoyed my day with me, like this is what my days look like. Every day it’s creating some form of content and helping things get happening for other businesses or for my brand. That’s what it is. I’m a big believer that a lot of the content you should be creating is for your own business. One of the things that so many content creators get sucked in is making content for other people and they forget about themselves. I am 100% the other way around, I am always trying to create content for myself first because I am the expert, I am the leader, and my team is the one that takes the lead from me so I set the example. I hope that you got a lot out of this. Until next time, I’ll see you soon.
Recent Comments