How To Write Content That Converts When You’re Lacking Confidence

I'm Kinsey Machos, your host and founder of the category Queen. Welcome to the podcast for coaches, consultants, and course creators who don't just want to dominate their niche, but they desire to play in their own league. My mission is to help you unlock the power of your unique brilliance and use it as a vehicle to gain recognition, reach more people, and make more money. Not too long ago, I took a bold leap, leaving behind a six figure corporate salary with nothing more than a used MacBook and a burning desire for more freedom. Today, our brand has become globally recognized, helping thousands of female founders to become industry leading experts. Join us each week as we go on a journey together to discuss mindset, marketing and money, and more importantly, the real life discussions about balancing success with motherhood and marriage.

Because we're a community of women who build and scale impact driven businesses, but do it without sacrificing the things that matter most to us. Welcome to the category queen show. Hello my fellow category queens. I'm so happy to be here with you today. I hope you're having such an amazing week, whichever day it is that you're plugging into this week. Currently, at the time of this recording, it is spring break for our kids. We did decide to just hunker down on the spring break and not do any traveling. We have a lot of traveling coming up, both kid related, business related. My husband and I are taking a few trips, just the two of us, so we're really excited about that.

However, we had a conversation a couple of weeks ago about the fact that we can't not do anything for a spring break anymore. We only have a handful of spring breaks left with our oldest. So as much as we kind of avoid traveling over spring breaks, it's so ridiculous and busy. We will definitely start pulling the trigger on that next year. I think that things really change. I think perspective changes so much when I know, at least for us, things really shifted when our oldest became a teenager. As he enters high school, a lot of things feel differently, right? When you start to think about only having four years left with him in the house and what you want to do before then and the experiences you want to create, it's so wild, right?

People say it passes in a blink of an eye and it's so cliche. But if I had any advice for the newer mom, or even if you have kids that are in elementary junior high, that it's really important to start evaluating the quality of time you have with your kids, I don't believe that quantity is the focus right now. Of course, if you get no time with your kids because you're working around the clock with your job or in your business, that needs to shift. But we really focus on quality and making sure that the time that we do have with our kids is really important. It's intentional, even if it means we're just watching a movie on the couch together, that we're all in it, right? We don't have our phones out.

We're really making an effort touch that physical connection and letting them know that they're important to us and showing them through our actions that we value the time with them because they do get older and they don't want to spend as much time with you. They want to be with their friends and they want to be out doing things. And so I'm just seeing how that is playing out into even our tween, our eleven year old and then definitely with our 14 year old. I want him to want to be with us, even if it's not as much as it used to be, but also if it means having his friends around us. Right? Like, I want our home to be inviting and welcoming. And it goes back to really setting those intentions of how do you make your home that way?

So just a little nugget there, but enjoying this kind of low key spring break. Kids are out of the house right now, so I am just getting a moment of peace and quiet, which is so amazing. But let's talk about creating content that converts when you're lacking confidence. This is really important because I think just like the weight loss industry or the health industry, a lot of people have the misconception that, or make the mistake of this idea that motivation is the thing that's going to bring you to your results, right? And so it's like, if I'm not feeling motivated to do the thing, I'm not going to do the thing. And so we're just waiting. We're waiting for that motivation to come. And sometimes it may come on its own.

I find that you can actually activate motivation itself, and we're going to talk about that. But at the highest level, when you think about creating content or getting the results you want to get, you cannot rely on your emotional state to bring you to the finish line. You cannot rely on motivation to go to the gym. You just have to learn how to go to the gym. You cannot rely on inspiration to flow to you in order to write content. You have to be able to write content without inspiration. You cannot wait for somebody in your circle to validate you as an expert, you have to decide to be an expert. It all comes down to you making these intentional decisions and putting in the work regardless of how you feel.

Now, I'm going to be the first one to say that your emotions should not be suppressed. And this is not about ignoring your emotions. Your emotions are a really powerful tool. And even in some of the past conversations, in the past episodes, we've been having, we've been talking a lot about how emotions impact you and the importance of regulating those emotions. So you're not making decisions out of place that you're not proud of, right. If you're letting your emotions constantly drive what you're doing or the decisions you're making, you will find yourself in a place that you do not want to be in. And I'm only saying that from personal experience. Anytime I've made a decision from an emotion, from an extreme emotion, I have always regretted that decision.

And so we have to learn how to regulate our emotions, but also produce results without having those emotions even present. Right? And so what I hear a lot is this idea that I'm not confident, I'm not a good writer, I'm lacking confidence. I don't have all the things. I don't have testimonials, I don't have a big audience. And so what happens is we either ignore writing altogether or we write content, but it's through a really crappy belief of these thoughts of, again, I'm not worthy of this. Nobody wants to hear what I have to say, right? And if you think that you're not thinking those things, I just want to offer that. It's likely that you are. You just haven't brought it into your conscious brain yet. Right. There's a lot of subconscious activity that's happening, but you're completely unaware of it.

And so therefore, you don't know how it's impacting the results you're getting. And so I don't want to talk too much about that. There's some other episodes that really dive into the thinking around this, and we'll link up to that episode around how your thoughts really impact who you are and how you're showing up online or in your business or in your life. You can apply it to anything. But today, I want to focus on some things that you can do when you're not feeling inspired or when you're not feeling confident or clear to write content. Because at the end of the day, if you want to grow a successful online business, you have to be present online. And if you want to make money and get clients, you have to write content that captures attention.

You have to write content that is able to bring people closer to your offer. Writing content that generates interest for your offer. Write content that creates that emotional connection so people know, like and trust you. I hope that you know by hanging around me long enough, if you've been around is that content is king. You cannot bypass this step if you want to grow, create success from a longevity perspective, but also if you think about impact, you will multiply, amplify significantly, quantum leap your impact. If you know and hone, if you know how to write content that converts and further hone that skill, it is truly a non negotiable. And it's not just about content, it's just generally being able to communicate a message in a compelling way. So you cannot skip this.

And it's so fascinating how many people come to me and they're like, I'm not getting any clients. But when I ask them what they're doing to get clients, they can't really tell me, right? They'll say, well, I'm writing content, but it's like once a week or they're like, I'm having conversations, but it's not even with their ideal client. And so we have to just be honest with ourselves and really know that. First of all, you have to know what's going to bring you results. At the end of the day, if you think about getting clients, it's content and conversations. Content, conversations. That's it. You're writing content consistently by demonstrating your expertise and connecting with your audience. And you're making sure to have conversations about your offer, but also conversations to build relationships and foster that network around you.

Those are going to be the things that are significantly going to drive your success as a coach online. So first of all, let's make sure to be honest that if this is not something that you're building inconsistently into your money making activities, then that's the first step. You have to do it consistently. And again, I don't love to say consistently because I think there's a lot of trigger around that and like, oh, I need to post more. But consistency is the trick. It's the life hack, right? If you read the compound effect by Dan Hardy, like, that was one of the first, most impactful books that I ever read coming into personal development. And it's just these little things that you do day in and day out.

You may not see the results right away, but over time, you can't not win if you do them consistently over time. So consistency is the key. Now, this doesn't mean work harder or post more or whatever you're thinking relates to that. But if you're being honest, it's like, am I consistently developing this skill? Am I consistently doing the things that I need to do? They're going to drive the needle forward. However, here's what happens, is the consistency or the knowing of what you need to be doing completely goes by the wayside or gets derailed when you're feeling a negative emotion, something like not confident or you're feeling really doubtful, or you have a lot of fear, or you're thinking, I need a client today because I need money. Right?

And so if you have any negative emotion that's consuming your brain and consuming your mind, you're more likely to get knocked off that momentum trail and into really just stagnant or worse, regressing, not getting the results you want, not getting clients, not consistently showing up. And you're going to get outperformed by the people that are showing up consistently, not because they're better than you, not because they're better, they're not a better expert. It's really about who is in it to win it. And so the truth is that so many people let their emotions completely take them off trail, and then things start to really spiral and it's hard to even see at that point, what should I be doing versus what I shouldn't be doing, because you are allowing your emotions to kind of dictate your behavior. And so I want to share that.

First of all, it is possible to create really great content. And again, I wrote the title of this episode around writing content that converts when you're lacking confidence. But this is in anything you do in your life or business, and it's about knowing how to keep going, how to keep doing the thing when you're not, quote unquote, feeling good. You're not feeling the most confident when you're in a low octane season, right? A lot of women know, especially if you have been around me some time, we talk a lot about even tracking your cycle and how that impacts your hormones and how your hormones are going to also impact how you're feeling in certain parts of the month. Right. If leading up to your period, the first, let's see, one to two weeks out, you're going to be in a lower octane season.

Your confidence doesn't come as easy. Your clarity doesn't come as easy. You're going to have more of the negative beliefs come in. They're going to feel more true than they ever have before. And then after your period leading up to your ovulation, like peak season, at that 14th day or so, that's when you're going to be like, oh, hell, yeah, I'm going to take over the world. I'm dominating. I'm the best, right? And you might be laughing because you're like, oh, my gosh, this is so me just alone. Having this awareness of how your period is impacting your confidence levels and your creativity levels is going to be really important because you're going to see, okay, this isn't really true. This is just my hormones, and that's okay. But you cannot put your business on hold when you're not feeling confident.

And that could possibly be a couple of weeks out of the month when you're not feeling as confident or if things are not going your way and you let that dictate what you do, you will just continue to produce the results you don't want to produce. Right? If you create content, you're like, I'm not getting any clients. And so you let that seep into your belief about, this isn't working, so you stop altogether. What happens? Well, you don't get results. And then you just validated to yourself that nothing is working. So we have to really be careful about letting our emotions kind of dictate what we're doing and what we're not doing. But also know that no matter how good you are at regulating your emotions or managing your mind, you will not feel good 100% of the time.

It just is what it is. I love Brooke Castillo. She says life is 50. You're going to have negative emotions 50% of the time. You're going to have positive emotions 50% of the time. You're going to have negative experiences 50% of the time. You're going to have positive experiences 50% of the time. And so if your benchmark is I have to be feeling good all the time in order to create success, you will be chasing something that does not exist. And what happens when you are running after something that doesn't exist? You burn out. You feel really discouraged, you feel defeated. And so it's kind of like, what is the point of all of this?

So let's honor the fact that you're not going to feel good all the time, but you do desire to continue to grow your business, amplify your voice, make an impact. And so how do we actually do the things when we're feeling not so great when confidence is totally tanked when you're feeling like the world is against you because everything is not working, how do you continue to show up? How do you continue to write really great content? So, first of all, I want to talk about your writing habits now. Again, you could replace this with anything, right? Whether it's a writing habit, a workout habit, a sales call habit, whatever that looks like. I want you to think about the thing that you are trying to get better at or really perfect. It has to become a habit.

So what this looks like specific to writing content is a do you have dedicated times that you're writing content? Do you have these locked down as if they were your hair appointment or as if they were your kids doctor's appointments? Right. What I find is people will walk into the new week and they know they need to write content, but they don't have carved out times to specifically do it, especially if it's something they're avoiding. And so they either don't do it at all because they get consumed with all the other things that probably don't even matter, or they wait till the very last minute to just scrap something together and it's just crap. And they wonder why their content is not converting.

And so you have to have, just like anything else that you make a commitment or a priority in your life, you have to have this on your calendar. What gets scheduled gets completed. And so this could look like having a couple hours a day, 1 hour a day, a couple hours on a few days per week. Your schedule is going to look different than mine, and mine is going to look different than Susie's or Joelle's or whoever. And so the point here is making sure that it gets on your calendar and that you honor that if you have 1 hour a day marked out to write, then nothing else gets into that pocket of time, or you're not doing anything else. I find that a lot of people want the perfect time management system, but the problem is not the system itself.

It's them following the rules within the system. So when it comes to time blocking, and I have another episode on this regarding time management hacks, and so I will link that up into the episode, into the show notes. But when it comes to following your own rules, if you have that locked into your calendar, then it means you're actually doing that. You're not scheduling appointments over that time, you're not taking phone calls during that time, you're not taking clients during that time. So it's really important that you have the committed time dedicated to building this habit as a writer, right? It's not just about creating social media content. It's not just about checking something off your to do list. It's about really becoming a better communicator and developing that through your content habits.

And so first of all, making sure do you have this carved out on your calendar? And then secondly, are you actually completing these pieces of content? So here's the other thing that I find is that people will carve out time to write, and they either will write a piece of content and not share it because they are judging themselves. They're thinking it's not good enough, or they'll just write without anything being completed, and so they just move on to the next thing, thinking, oh, I got some writing done, but they're not actually completing any one thing. So you have to give yourself a deadline to finish something, but you have to be specific about what it is you're finishing. If you want to get two pieces of content done in 1 hour, then your goal is to finish it.

It is not your goal to perfect it. It's not your goal to extend it to 2 hours because you didn't finish. You're training yourself to complete. And by doing this is what develops the skill. It's not about letting your perfectionism take over and tell you it should better. You should wait or don't share this idea because you're going to run out of ideas. Whatever that looks like. You have to learn how to complete and you have to then learn how to share. Which brings me to the next element of this, which is being willing to suck at something and embracing that journey of mastery. Because what happens is we judge ourselves so harshly that we don't step into our full voice, we don't step in our full potential, right? So we're just like playing small, but then we also hide. We hide.

We're not sharing our content, we're not writing what we really want to say, we're not showing up consistently. Whatever that looks like. When we're hiding, nothing gets noticed. And so if you are hiding because you feel like you're not good enough, I'm just asking the question here, how is hiding going to get you better when you are just willing to suck at something? And I'm not saying you even suck at content creation, right? That is not the point here. But I think that you're in your mind if you're like me, something's never good enough. Something's never good enough, right? It's never going to be good enough. And so it's like, well, I have to better at first before I can actually do this. But the getting better is the journey of mastery.

And in order to master something, you have to suck at something first. And part of that process is, again, this iteration of writing content, completing it, sharing it, rinsing and repeating, even if you don't feel like it's very good, even if you feel like you could do better, right? But when we start to really train ourselves to create these habits, to write in a way that is compelling, even if, again, we have those negative emotions, you'll actually surprise yourself at what you can start to produce in such little time and how your work just gets better and better. You don't need more time, you need more of the mastery. And the mastery comes in with the creation, the completion, and the publishing within the context of content that converts.

But you could apply this again, to anything that you're wanting or developing in your life. What does that mastery look like? If you want to get stronger at the gym, you go to the gym, you lift weights, and you lift weights until it's easy, and then they get heavier. So you lift heavier weights, right? Getting stronger doesn't happen by thinking about getting stronger. You have to go and start small. You have to go and start to build those foundations to mastering your strength. So that's really important when you think about being willing to suck. I think that people really forget that everybody starts here.

Even for myself, as somebody who is a content master, a marketing master, if you were to look at my content and my live videos, even some of my podcast episodes, when I was just getting started, I was so bad in comparison to what I am now. Now, I wasn't necessarily thinking about that, even though it would creep into my brain. But I was on a mission. I was on a mission. I had goals, right? And I was willing to do the things to meet the goals. And so if we go back to you, are you willing to do the things to meet your goals, even if it's hard, even if you suck at it? Right?

Again, I'm not saying you suck at it, but I think that we can all really honor the fact that we're not going to be good at something when we just start, even the people that are a little bit more natural at it. So the other piece to this that I really want to start to bring to the conversation is this idea of not waiting for inspiration or not waiting to be, quote unquote, in flow, that you can activate it. So just like my example, when I talked about a lot of people wait for motivation to strike to go exercise. Same thing goes for writing content. It's like, well, I don't have any ideas, so I can't write content right now, or I'm not really in flow state, so I can't write content.

But if you read any of the literature around, even getting in flow, it has nothing to do with a natural state, right? It doesn't happen to just be in flow. There are things that happen before that, and there are things that happen during and after. And so I don't want you to wait for inspiration to strike, for you to develop this skill to write content. If it's already on your calendar, then this will help with that, right? And you might find that as you sit down and write content for your time that you have associated with that you're not feeling inspired. And so what might happen is you're like, well, I'll just wait, I'll wait, I'll move this down further so that then I'll feel more inspired or then I'll have more ideas, or then I can be in flow.

But that is not the case now. Again, in some periods of the day, you might feel like flow is a little bit easier to come by or ideas are a little bit easier to come by. But when we translate that into something that's actually produced and completed, we have to create the intention to do the thing. We have to put in the time to bring that idea to fruition. But a lot of times, you're just not going to naturally feel that way. And so what would it look like to activate inspiration or activate motivation? So a couple of things here is that you have to, first of all, figure out what works for you.

Ideas for me are going to be looking at some best selling books, looking at some people not in my industry, but other industries, to see what they're talking about, the topics that they're creating, the podcast episodes of, the titles of their podcast episodes, what their audience is really resonating with. I don't study a lot of people in my own industry because it does muddy my thoughts a little bit. And so I try to really make sure to protect my own sort of beliefs, if you will, or thoughts by not studying people in my industry. But you can get a lot of good ideas. And I won't say never, there definitely are times that I will or really just see what's working for them.

But a lot of times I can get enough inspiration just by seeing what other people are talking about in other industries. That's one way even going back to the idea of best selling books, titles for books are always such a good inspiration for me. Also revisiting old content. I love doing this so much, you'll find that you probably aren't even reusing your best content enough. So that's another sort of reminder to make sure that you're repurposing old content, or at least updating it, but also thinking about what ideas come from that. If you're looking at old content or even looking at some of the books you've read in the past, if you're like me, when I read a book, I mark that shit up.

I underline things, I circle things, and sometimes just opening an old book and finding something that I've circled will instantly generate an idea. So for you, think about what would work for you to start coming up with some ideas if you're, quote unquote, lacking that creativity. But what I want you to really watch out for is that it's not necessarily lack of ideas, it's really more of lack of belief. And this brings me to the last point around awareness. When you walk into completing a task or writing content and you're not aware of the thoughts that you're having during that activity and the emotions that it's creating, this is where that disconnect happens and you start to really operate in sort of an auto programming mode.

You're just going to continue to say the same things, do the same things, and create the same results. So we want to get you out of that sort of cycle of same and into a new version of you, into someone who has different thoughts that are in alignment to your goals, someone that can feel again, you can generate a feeling just by creating a new thought. And if you want to start hacking your results, this is the best place to start. If you don't feel confident when you sit down to write, what is something you can do to instantly feel confident? Feelings, yes, are a sensation in the body, but you can activate those sensations. This is so powerful, and we talk a lot about this in emotional regulation, but you get to decide how you want to feel instead.

Now, there's another component to this where even for me, someone I'm a little bit more higher anxiety. So I will have feelings of anxiety without even really knowing what they're coming from, or it's just truly a sensation in the body that I can't necessarily connect anything with. But more often than not, the feelings you're having are coming from the thoughts that you're having. And so it's really important to become aware of that when you're sitting down to write and you really clear your mind. So what would help here is brain dumping, really getting your thoughts out of your brain, seeing what is sticking out to you as far as a negative thought that's creating a negative emotion and then decide what you want to think and feel instead.

If you're sitting down to write and you're thinking about that client or that potential client that told you no yesterday because you're too expensive, and so you're starting to wonder if you should change the price of your offer and you're second guessing the value of your offer. And so you sit down to write content and that's just replaying on your head or in your head, what do you think is going to happen? Right? You're not, for one, operating at your fullest unique brilliance because you are actually feeling lack and unworthy. And so if we don't change that programming, even that cycle of what you're thinking and how you're feeling and how that's playing out into your actions, then you are going to unintentionally create results you don't want to create.

So it's really important that you understand that you can change that feeling of not being confident. You can change that feeling of not being clear just by deciding to feel something different. One of the things that I find so fascinating, and I learned this also so many years ago, but I think it's been so ingrained in me that I forget how powerful of a tool it is. But people will come to a coaching call, or we'll be in conversation and they'll say things like, I don't know, or I'm unclear, but you have to know that those are not two phrases that are going to serve you. And the truth is, you do know and you do feel clear. Those are two decisions that you are making unintentionally or intentionally.

But if you go into doing something and you're telling yourself I'm confused or I don't know, you're just going to create more confused feelings or more of the I don't know type of results. And so even if you are missing something, right, you might feel like you don't have the full content strategy that you need in order to create content that converts. Or you don't feel like you can do an effective sales call to get people to say yes, or you don't feel like you have an offer that's selling. There's still things in your brain that you do know and you have to access that no matter how you're feeling or what's going on that day. And you will learn how to create results even when you're not feeling good. Feeling good in this context of negative emotions, right? When you're sick, that's different.

But truthfully, at the end of the day, you're going to have non negotiables that you will do. And it doesn't matter if you're feeling confident or not, you will do them. And when you train yourself to do them, even under some of the most not so great circumstances, that is what is going to be the thing that catapults you. It's not about feeling more confident, it's not about feeling more clear. You just train yourself to do the thing and you get better and better because you're doing it consistently. And you start to get out of this pattern of excuses, right? And you learn that in order to get the things you want, you do the things you need to do. And there will always be excuses there. But will you be someone that makes excuses or will you be somebody that makes money? Right?

And this is what it comes down to. And so to wrap this up, when you're not feeling confident, when you're not feeling clear, when you're feeling confused, and you're telling yourself that you can't do the thing you need to do in this context, writing content that converts, then we need to go back to really the foundations of what you need in order to create results, right? So we're going to stop relying on our motions to dictate what we do and how we show up. You're also going to develop a writing habit. You're going to have dedicated times to write no matter what. And you're going to train yourself to complete the work in that period of time. So we're not just writing to make ourself feel good, we're writing and completing and we're publishing.

You're also going to learn how to activate inspiration or activate ideas when they're not coming to you more naturally. This is going to be unique to you. But when you can also tell yourself that you have plenty ideas in your brain and you don't even need inspiration, this also will benefit you, right? A lot of you are just producing from lack, and so you get lack results, right? And so, of course, if you're telling yourself you have no ideas, your brain will solve for no ideas. So solve for something better, solve for something or allow your brain to help you solve for something that you actually want. Then really making sure that you're enjoying the journey of becoming, enjoying the journey of mastery.

Being willing to suck at the thing first, knowing that by you doing it consistently, day in and day out, you can't not win, you can't not get better. You will get better, but you just have to get a little bit comfortable with being uncomfortable. And then lastly, that awareness piece. Really starting to tune into what you're thinking and how you're feeling when you sit down to write or when you sit down to do whatever it is you want to do in order to create the results that you want in your life. Your thoughts create your feelings, and your feelings drive your actions, and your actions are the things that create results. If you're only focused on the doing, you're only focused on those results or the actions. Without understanding the upstream impact of your thoughts and feelings. That's when we get into the spiral.

We just keep producing the results we don't desire. And so bring awareness to your thoughts. What are you thinking? How are you actually feeling? And what are ways you can start to shift that? Just by doing a brain dump of those thoughts and feelings, you will see all the lies and grossness that your brain is holding on to and you can start to replace them with better thoughts which will then allow you to feel better, have better emotions so that you can create your best work. The truth is, my friend, you have a unique set of gifts, you have a unique voice, you have a unique brilliance that needs to get out into the world. Don't play small. Don't hide. Don't wait for more confidence to come because ultimately, you will always be waiting.

Really lean into this process and start to really ask yourself, what would it look like for me to really amplify my gifts, amplify my voice, help more people just by starting to create more consistency in my writing habits and the development in what that looks like. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you next week. Hey, if you're ready to stand out online and get paying clients consistently without having to fumble your way through tech run ads or create complicated funnels, I want to invite you to join us in the category queen school, where you're going to learn my simple, proven formula for getting clients online. It's risk free. You either make your money back or we'll give you a refund. Just head over to kinseymachos.com/thecqschool and join today to get instant access. We'll see you inside.