"I look awkward on camera"
"I don’t sound smart enough"
"This looks terrible"
"I’ll do it later"
Yeah… familiar, right?
Welcome to the content creation sh*t show: where nothing works as it’s supposed to, you’re constantly glued to your phone & end up feeling like full-time content creator / part-time business owner, and overall clown
You’ve been there. I’ve been there.
Which is why I took a workshop called Spill The Stories back in October, to start to regain some control & confidence over how I show in the platform that’s been my main lead-generator for the past 6 years.
And you can’t even *imagine* my face of surprise when in this workshop I bought there’s a screenshot of my “Good mornin’” stories as an example of what good content looks like. Meanwhile I was sitting there thinking I was doing it all wrong??
So in this episode, I’m joined by Michelle from Hello Lemon (aka the queen of turning your not-so-boring everyday life into easy content and the host of said workshop) to talk about just how much we’re overthinking content creation — from how you look, to what you say, to whether your life is even “content-worthy” in the first place.
Spoiler: it is.
The content bar feels impossibly high right now, and Michelle made a really good point about WHY that is.
The loudest, most visible people on social media are influencers & creators whose *literal job* is to entertain and produce. When we're consuming all of that, we absorb it as the standard without realising we're comparing our reality as business owners to someone who does this for a living.
That comparison builds up slooowly. Over time, you build these narratives: "my life isn't interesting enough, my setup isn't aesthetic enough, what I have to say isn't valuable enough"... and you just stop posting.
But the second problem is that we're also too close to our own lives. The espresso I make every single day after lunch is completely unremarkable to me. Michelle pointed out she'd actually love to see how I make it! 'Cause to someone who doesn't know me well yet, that's a glimpse into who I am beyond my work.
We take the familiar for granted, and in doing so, we miss the moments our audience would genuinely connect with.
And when we don't post, we never collect the evidence that our life IS interesting. Which means we keep believing it isn't. It's a cycle, and the only way out is to break it.
Michelle teaches all her clients what she calls the "Creator Mindset", and the keyword is mindset.
Creators share everything:
They have this audacity to treat their own lives like they're worth documenting because they genuinely believe they are.
You don't have to go that far. But borrowing even a fraction of that energy, removes the self-imposed limits. It opens up a part of your brain that stops asking "is this worth sharing?"
The other piece Michelle added: always come back to the WHY. If social media is your main marketing channel and you're a personal brand, how else are people going to connect with you beyond your skill set?
Skill is replaceable. You aren't. Once you're anchored in that purpose, picking up your phone to grab a clip of your morning coffee routine feels less a lot more intentional.
The conversation around low-lift content (stories-style carousels, native Instagram fonts, no Canva in sight) has gotten loud enough that some of us who actually love making things look on-brand have started to feel like we're trying too hard.
Michelle's take: it comes down to personal preference, full stop. What matters is consistency within whatever you choose.
The problem isn't either approach. It's mixing them without intention, so visitors can't get a read on who you are or what to expect from you.
My designer-brain addition: when someone clicks through to your website after seeing your grid, those two worlds should feel like they belong to the same person. A very native, beige Instagram grid linking through to a beautifully designed website is a missed opportunity (and a slightly jarring one).
And yes, we both acknowledged the irony that low-lift posts sometimes wildly outperform the ones we spent forever on. That's a separate grief we're all processing together.
A lot of clients come to me stuck in this in-between season: old branding they want to ditch vs. new branding that isn't ready yet.
Michelle's answer: lean into photo dumps and work-in-public content. You don't need polished brand assets to share color palette previews, a screenshot of your mood board, the notes from your strategy call, or even just the feeling of being mid-process. The creator mindset (again) really comes into play here: you have to believe that what you're building is a big deal, and share it like it is.
The goal with working in public is to collect small bits of emotional investment from your community along the way. Then, when the big reveal comes, it lands because people have been on the journey with you. If you disappear for three months and resurface with "new website, who dis", nobody's going to care as much as you hoped.
There's this whole narrative going around that offline is better, analog is the antidote, log off and live your life... we get it, but Michelle also finds it slightly paradoxical when it's being said in a reel (same).
Michelle's take is that the relationship between online and offline works both ways, and both directions are valuable:
Building something real on social media, having global clients, being active and present... it gives you confidence when you're out in the real world talking about what you do. She also mentioned she started running to have something to document for content, and the accountability of having to share her progress actually got her out the door.
Stepping away from the screen and talking to actual humans in other industries is genuinely one of the best sources of content ideas. Michelle mentioned a conversation with a friend in banking — trying to make banking cool for younger audiences — sparked an entirely new campaign idea. We're all so deep in our own bubbles online that we forget there's a whole world of inspiration outside of it.
Also, a gentle reality check on the over-saturation panic: most people you know in real life have no idea what your day-to-day online business life even looks like. The world is not nearly as full of your competitors as your algorithm-curated feed would have you believe.
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Social Media Content Strategist
Over the last 5 years as a Brand & Marketing Designer, I’ve helped freaks like us design their unconventional brands so they can step onto the main stage & own their weird. Because if you wanted to be, look or sound like everyone else, you wouldn’t be where you are today. Now it’s your turn.
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