Speaker 1: 0:23

If there's one thing I can do, it is publish content consistently. I mean, there's a few things I could do, but publishing regularly is one of those things, and I'm going to toot my own horn for a second, and I'm going to toot your horn, too, for a second. If you publish content consistently, let's just toot horns for a second. Publish content consistently, let's just toot horns for a second. It is a lot of work, publishing day after day, week after week. What have you? Because publishing is not just publishing. There's so much that goes into it.

Speaker 1: 0:57

This podcast is somewhat simple to just get out for me, but at first not simple, maybe for you too, if you have a podcast. At first it was like you're putting together all these pieces and then it starts becoming second nature and your brain starts having to require less oxygen I'm guessing to produce the thing, to do the thing that you're doing right. Just like driving when you're first driving, like you're kind of freaked out about everybody else on the road and the next thing you know it becomes second nature and you're like I could do this while I'm eating a hamburger or something, and with publishing content, wow, like it's a similar thing, where the more you do it, the simpler it gets or I shouldn't necessarily say the simpler it gets the less energy it requires oftentimes. Now, sometimes it's not true for everybody, but for myself that has been true. Because of that, I've been able to get this podcast out easier, you know. I've been able to make short form videos easier. I've been able to experiment with different content formats easier. I do a weekly email newsletter show up in the creator club, do client consulting calls, run content clips, like all of these things.

Speaker 1: 2:11

If you saw it like on paper it would be crazy, and if I saw what you did on paper it would be crazy too, because there's a lot of things you do just to get one thing done. You know, I think about making coffee in the mornings for my wife, all of the things that have to happen for the coffee maker to just go right. Not only do you have to have the coffee maker on the counter, it plugged in, you got to keep it clean so that there's no buildup in there. Uh, the taste good. You have to order the coffee, coffee. Uh, if, depending on the type of coffee it is, I might have to grind it up and then keep that fresh, keep that stored, like all these little actions, but after a while, of course, you're just like thinking about something else while you're making coffee with content.

Speaker 1: 2:54

I find you know whether it's podcasts, short form video, long form video, interview, whatever the type of format is writing a newsletter? In the very beginning, it's like you don't have a system, you don't have a muscle memory way of doing things, and so you just do it, but you have to think about everything, right? What this really brings me to is like the way I'm able to stay consistent, publishing consistently, and why I'm even like inspired to share this topic with you this week in particular is because I watched Alex Hermosi video. It might've been like a month ago now, and he was talking about one of his approaches to creating content is looking back at his last week in his calendar and then making content around that. And if you're in the creator club, yeah, I'm definitely thinking about what you said on yesterday's call about, about, oh, this is where I had a weekly live call. You're like no one's going to talk about this in his podcast, kind of You're not wrong, but I lost my train of thought. He looks back at his last week and I was looking back at my last week and then thinking about like what I'm going to create content about. It's been an absolute crazy past couple of weeks.

Speaker 1: 4:09

And then I look back like at the last, actually the last two years almost yeah, about two years and all of the things that you know personal life wise that I've been through. That's not necessarily like hard. This is not like oh Dylan's been through some stuff. That's not necessarily like hard. This is not like oh Dylan's been through some stuff. That's not really just like major life transitions. You know, I don't talk a lot about that on my podcast or in my content at all, because I keep it separated, because, at the end of the day, like this is a job, it just is closely tied to a passion of mine. But I do try to keep it separate. But I will kind of share just a second.

Speaker 1: 4:44

So I've talked about this a little bit on my podcast but you know, a couple of years ago, having a daughter and then like that transition, like didn't miss anything, was able to publish consistently throughout the whole thing, didn't miss a podcast episode, didn't miss an email newsletter, didn't miss an Instagram post no one knew that I had a kid unless I shared it privately, which I didn't share with many people, unless we had something scheduled, I was like, hey, but can't do it during this time Cause I'm having a kid. And I just find it interesting because I I will talk with people and anyone can come up with an excuse on like why they can't publish something, why they can't get something out. I'm like man, I think back, I was able to publish during that time and not miss anything. If I could do that and still be present and not ever feel like I was working when I was with my wife and we're introducing our daughter to the world, like didn't feel at all, like I was not present, and I know my wife would say the same thing, but I was still publishing, I didn't miss anything, right, because I had some reps built in before that where I could just kind of breeze through it. I planned ahead, I knew that was coming.

Speaker 1: 5:56

And then you have other life events which for me actually has been the last couple of weeks, where even unexpected things happen, which I'll briefly share about which my wife uh, we went skateboarding, like this was two weeks ago, and she wanted to join this skateboarding group for girls. She's been skateboarding most of her life. I'm into skateboarding too, not, you know, just cruising, nothing crazy. So she's not new to skateboarding at all. Neither of us are of us are. And so she was like oh, I want to get some practice in before I go to this meetup for this girl's skateboarding group.

Speaker 1: 6:31

That weekend again two weeks and like two days ago it was on a tuesday. So we're like okay, let's go to the skate park nearby. We go over there, and we're there for like two or three minutes before everything changes. So I'm in there and I'm like, oh, I'll just grab some photos of her because, like, this is about her, it's not about me. I'm just here to support her, like that's my role in going to the skate park right there. And so I'm like standing there against the wall and I'm like grabbing a couple of photos, nothing photographer-esque, just like. Oh, like she'll just kind of skate around and I'll just grab some photos. And again, we're there for like maybe two minutes. I record a little video and I put my phone in my pocket and just not even thinking of anything of it, not on my phone, just putting it in my pocket. I just hear her call my name, dylan.

Speaker 1: 7:20

I look up and she's like on the ground. I'm like what? I just like run over there, I'm like what's going on? You know what she's like? Ah, my ankle is didn't feel good, like look in. I'm like, oh, there's no way we're going to be able to get back home because we're in the skate park, we're in the bowl kind of, and there's no. Just ambulance comes, the whole thing.

Speaker 1: 7:48

She fractured her tibia and fibula, I believe it is, and what had happened was she was just skating in a straight line and a kid young kid had to have been early teenager wasn't paying attention hit her, uh, and she twisted her ankle and that caused the fracture same fracture, actually, that ufc UFC fighter Conor McGregor had when he snapped his ankle in the ring. If you saw that it was horrific looking. Same thing required a similar surgery, basically like the last two weeks and two days been dealing with that and absolute painful. Now we have a daughter and it's just pretty wild to think like how much, of course, life can change in an instant, which you may be super familiar with, especially if you're like a little bit older, sometimes even if you're younger, like myself went through a lot of traumatic like deaths in my younger days, and I know life is fragile and everything can change in a minute until you're reminded of that and then something does happen in your life is like whoa, that's crazy. So my wife, you know how to get surgery. She had to get rods installed and then earlier this week she had surgery to get the rods removed and then plates installed.

Speaker 1: 9:07

And when you have a toddler, totally different ballgame when it comes to, you know, running the household because you got to do everything. You know I got to do everything for my wife and then I got to do everything for my wife and then I got to do everything for my toddler. I got to do everything for myself. I got to do everything for the business. I got to coordinate things. You know, just like, running the household is way different because we we keep a clean house over here at the Schmidt residence. You know like, top to bottom. You know laundry's, like good dishes are good, never an email in the inbox. Like you got to keep things tight over here. You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: 9:35

So, yeah, so like the last couple of weeks has just been intense on that front, but still haven't missed any publishing. You know, still recording this episode for you and you wouldn't know unless I had told you or less you were in the creator club and I had canceled. You know I had to cancel one call, so I guess in a way hypocrite here, like publishing consistently but did have to miss a little bit. I've had to tweak a couple of things here and there, but I've still published it consistently and it's not at the detriment of like I've been there for my wife, been able to be there every step of the way, been able to be there every step of the way, been absolutely improving my skills at becoming a patient advocate, making sure that she's getting her needs met and she's not in pain and that she's like we're not missing anything. And I could do a separate episode or, if you ask me you know, another time to share about how I've been using chat, gpt of all things to really get better at becoming a patient advocate of like learning terms and just kind of learning about the situation, because it's new to me in that scenario. And so ChatGPT has been like absolutely helpful there, which has been unexpectedly cool, and I've been able to use some, like you know, jiddah mind tricks on how to navigate the hospital system, using it in a good way that gets my wife the care she needs and the care she deserves, but sometimes working in with ER staff and whatever it's like kind of tricky. So that's been really helpful and I share all this.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Just to kind of give you like an extra view of what I'm talking about when I mean, like you know, just using two examples there of not missing a beat while still being off recording a podcast, for actually I take that he had a podcast a few years ago, almost like a different life for him, and then he got married, he had a kid and he was like Dylan, I want to start a podcast again. I feel like I'm starting from scratch the whole thing and I'm, like you know, helping him. And then he finds out unexpectedly that he's having twins and he was already had his hands full, like with his career and with one kid. And then you know he's having twins and I'm like, well, you know, in my head I'm like I don't know how he does that, like how could he possibly? He's not your type of like tech whiz like myself, like where he would be able to just bust out something, figure it out. But sure enough, he has his twins early, a month early, and he still gets his podcast out. I'm like what I was not expecting this man to like. Push through with that, because twins prematurely like what I don't expect.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Like there's so much going into that that could just rock the ship of your calendar and your just life and you could easily be like, yeah, like you don't need to do the podcast, you just need to do that stuff. And this is kind of what we were talking about a little bit in the creator club briefly yesterday is like, yes, there's like people that will always find a way. I make sacrifices just for doing this podcast. Right, like there are other things I could be doing. Everything in a way, it is a sacrifice, right, and for me the trade-off has been so much better doing this podcast versus being in my bed right now, being like, oh, I'm so tired because I slept in a hospital chair the night before or whatever. You know that's how important this is to me. And it's again not like a boohoo, or you should do what I'm doing or you need to do it this way.

Speaker 1: 13:23

I'm just sharing it because there is, I think, sometimes a lack of transparency on like what is sacrificed to publish consistently at extremes, right, at certain times, it's all good. You're like I got it in my schedule, I could just publish because my life works this way and it's predictable. And then everyone's life at some point has a curve ball and you got to adapt and you either just like, put it on the back burner and it stays on the back burner and then you just go about your life and you're like all right, well, that was a thing that I need to get back into doing or you just do it in seasons you don't have to always do it or you have, like you know, you just kind of have approach. You're like, okay, I'm going to miss a week and that's cool too. But there is, like you know, because consistency means different things to different people. Right, for me, consistency is publishing a podcast every week and sending out a newsletter every week and publishing multiple times per week on social media. Like that, to me, is consistency. If I don't do that, then I'm like okay, like I need to reevaluate which. I haven't been in that situation. Okay, I need to reevaluate which. I haven't been in that situation.

Speaker 1: 14:33

What I'm saying is the spectrum that you find yourself on of what's the right fit for you, and doing that is going to take sacrifices because you know I could be caught up on Netflix or all that stuff which that's probably why I'm recording this is because I'm not a huge Netflix fan, like I'm not a huge TV movie guy. I find it very hard to do that. I have to really get into it. But even then I'm like Ooh, the podcast. I'm like fun, I love showing up here. I love doing this. Why do I love like fun? I love showing up here. I love doing this. Why do I love doing it? I don't know Well, that's a topic for a different episode but I love this and I wouldn't want to miss this and I find myself wanting to show up for this. Like I said, the last couple of weeks easily could find myself just being like you know what? I'm just going to go to bed early because I deserve it. Right, I deserve it. Sure, sure, I do. But I also enjoy this and if I enjoy something, I feel like I deserve to give myself the opportunity to do the thing that I want to do, which is recording this episode. So, all that to say, I'm not trying to like wrap this up with a bow, but I guess if I had to try to wrap it up with a bow.

Speaker 1: 15:37

I would say for you, if you can find what consistency means to you, which might look different than what it means to me, what are you willing to sacrifice to publish consistently? Have you ever thought about that? Because I think about that sometimes. I've had to sacrifice not browsing social media to publish consistently because there's not enough hours in the day, like I can't do it. I there's literally. I just can't even fit it in If I want to show up, be a good father, be a good husband, be a good business owner, and just just one of those things you could spend a lot of time on right, not to mention all the other things. So I share all this too.

Speaker 1: 16:20

Just so you realize, everything you do, especially in the content creation realm, you're sacrificing somewhere else, and I think it's also a misnomer. I feel like is the right word to say there a misnomer or something that it gets all the way easier later on? Because yes, it does, like I shared at the beginning where it does get easier later on, but that doesn't mean that there's no sacrifices later on. And I think where people go wrong is when we talk about burnout and consecration, that they think I'll just go so hard right now and then later on I won't have to go as hard, and I don't believe that to be true. I think there just has to be some harmony, some balance of the whole thing. Where you go hard, however hard is for you Like, and hard is really just probably sacrificing. I'm guessing like this doesn't feel hard right now for me to recording this, but you have to still go, you have to push forward with it and that's not always easy. Even though it is easier now than it is in the beginning, you know it is easier later on than it is when you first start out.

Speaker 1: 17:27

As we wrap things up with this episode, I'm curious for you what you have to sacrifice to publish consistently, because I've shared what I have to sacrifice, which is being caught up in social media, like being in the know or feeling like I'm in the know about all of the things. I'm not a big politics guy, but you know I'm definitely not caught up this week on politics. I have to sacrifice, you know, probably some social time sometimes, but then I also pick up social time in other ways. But I'm curious for you what have you found sacrifice? Because obviously it must be worth it if you're sacrificing certain things to do what you're doing, and I I think it's worth like recognizing that and if you want to share it with me, send me a DM, send me a message, send me an email. Hi, I'm Dylancom, and I'd love to know I'll catch you in the next one.