184. 3 Lessons for Solopreneurs & Content Creators to Be Consistent and Committed to Your Goals

All of us have goals that require us to be consistent with certain habits or action items in order for us to achieve those goals. But what happens when things keep coming up and you honestly are struggling with consistency? 

Because you can’t stay consistent with those habits or action items, now, your goals seem pretty much impossible to hit for the year. So you just put a pause on them, focus on something much smaller until the year ends, and try again the next year. 

But if you’ve clicked into this episode, chances are, you’re not ready to give up on your goals for the year yet.

Let’s have a conversation around how you can rebuild your consistency and commitment for those specific habits or action items you need in order to finish the rest of this year as your best year yet.

COWORK & CHILL With Cheryl (CCC)

Before we explore this topic, I’d love to introduce to you one of our signature programs, COWORK & CHILL With Cheryl (CCC). COWORK & CHILL with Cheryl is a 3-month 1:1 program where I work as your creative and strategic content partner. 

Together, we will create your content pieces together in our 1:1 CCC sessions, and you’ll also get tailored feedback on how to sharpen your unique voice, improve the clarity and structure of your ideas, and critically evaluate your content.

This action-focused 1:1 program is designed to build your content consistency muscle, content speed and efficiency muscle, stretch your creativity, and ultimately help you create your best work yet week after week.

Inside CCC, we can work on anything related to your thought leadership, your body of work, your business, or personal brand.

For example, we can write a full script for your podcast episode, which you can then record after. Or we can rewrite your sales page for your offer, or work on that email sequence you’ve been putting off for a whole month. Or we can also work together to help you *finally* start that LinkedIn newsletter and help you actually stay consistent with it week after week.

Building your body of work and becoming known for your thought leadership, AND being consistent with it. This matters for the purpose of building your personal brand, signing clients for your business, attracting speaking opportunities and positioning yourself as an expert in your niche. It also matters because frankly, with the rise of AI, there will come a time when literally everyone can easily and quickly use AI to create lots and lots of content.

Realistically, there will come a time in the near future where AI can do a darn good job at writing like a human. And when that comes time, that is NOT the time to get started with building your body of work.

If anything, starting then is going to be a tad too late already. Instead, NOW is THE time to get started with building your body of work.

Start NOW so that you have a track record of building thought leadership. Start NOW so people can see how you’ve been proactive with building credibility and expertise in your field. Start NOW so you start paving the way for opportunities sooner than later. This is NOT something to keep putting off.

For those of you who are excited to roll up your sleeves and build your body of work and thought leadership, I’d love to be there with you and work on this together inside COWORK AND CHILL WITH CHERYL.

For all the details about the program and to book a discovery call to explore how this program can support you, head on over to cheryltheory.com/ccc.

With that, let’s dive into the conversation for today.

In This Episode:

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How you can stay consistent and committed to your goals as a solopreneur or content creator

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My 2024 goal that I fell off track with

I’m pretty sure that all of us have set goals at the beginning of the year. We have also thought through the action items or habits we need in place in order to make those goals happen.

But when it comes to actually doing those action items or habits consistently, week after week, month after month, let’s be honest, things come up. Life things pop up unexpectedly. Some weeks are way harder than others.

As the year progresses, you get more and more tired. Which also means that you’ve fallen off track with your goals, and end up abandoning your goal altogether for months and months.

Right now, perhaps you’re reflecting on how the year has gone and you remember this one goal you set for yourself and how you completely put it to the backburner because you just couldn’t stay consistent with the necessary habits or action items that’s required.

This is a scenario I think all of us can relate to in some way, shape or form.

For me, I have several habits that I really, really, really wanted to be consistent with this year. But, honestly, I didn’t make it happen.

Going to the gym regularly on a weekly basis was one of those goals I set at the beginning of the year. Frankly, from January to the middle of May, I went to the gym just a handful of times. 

However, right now, at the time of recording this episode on August 10 2024, I’ve been going to the gym, on average, 3 times a week, for the past 3 months.

I repeat: 3 times a week, for 3 months. Consistently. Week after week, for the past 3 months. That’s a BIG DEAL for me since I’ve been struggling to rebuild my habit of exercising for several years, especially since I’ve moved to singapore.

Now, for the first two months out of the past three months in May and throughout June,  I didn’t do anything super intense. I would mostly walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes at a 12 incline and speed of 5 km per hour. Occasionally, I would do a light jog for 30 minutes. This felt good for me and my body at the time, since I was literally just re-starting my gym journey again.

But you know what’s absolutely fascinating? Even though I was super happy that I’m seeing progress in my consistency, my brain wants to say “But Cheryl, you used to run 5km in under 30 minutes 3 or 4x times a week. Walking on the treadmill? That’s embarrassing.” 

I am so mean to myself! But that truly went through my head for a while. And this is the reality for so many of us as we try to start something new or restart something. We’re putting in the time and effort and hard work, yet our brain can be ruthless in terms of the things it says to us.

But the truth is, in this current season, I need to remember that my goal is:

1) simply to get up and move, and

2) be consistent at it.

Running 5km in 30 minutes can be a future goal. But it’s simply not a priority right now.

So I kept going. Then, around 3 or 4 weeks into my journey to rebuild my health habits, a friend asked whether I’ve noticed a difference in my energy since I started working on my gym consistency. My honest answer at that point in time was, “No, not really. But I do see noticeable progress in terms of feeling so much less resistance towards going to the gym.” And, again, that matters to me, especially for this season of my health journey.

I think it’s also worth noting that over the past few years, especially since moving to Singapore, I chose to prioritize other areas of my life over my physical health and making time for exercise.

Now, I have to take responsibility for those decisions and rebuild my habits from scratch. This is not a problem at all. My only focus for this point in time is to keep it light and keep it moving.

Likewise, it’s also important for me to acknowledge all the times in the past few years when I would come up with excuses for why I don’t want to or why I shouldn’t go for a run. For example, “It’s too hot to run outside in Singapore” or “I’m tired, maybe tomorrow”.

Naturally, I lost my running “skills” over the past few years. Again, I have to take responsibility for those decisions and rebuild my habits from scratch, and it’s totally no problem. Just keep it light and keep it moving.

Three perspectives on rebuilding consistency and commitment to your goals

Rebuilding my consistency and commitment to exercising was one of my 2024 goals.

For some of you, maybe one of your goals is to rebuild your consistency and commitment to building thought leadership and building a body of work that showcases that thought leadership.

Maybe life things kept coming up. Work got busy. Other priorities took precedence. Overall, you found it hard to find the time, energy, and mental capacity to sit down and work on your content and work on your goals you set at the beginning of the year. 

If that’s what’s happening, I’d love to share a few perspectives that might be useful to you.

LESSON 1: Take time to evaluate WHY you didn’t hit your goals

If you didn’t hit your goals or you’re struggling to be consistent with the habits or action items that are necessary to hit certain goals, do take time to evaluate WHY you didn’t hit your goals. Come up with specific reasons why this was the case.

For instance, what were the thoughts or actions (or lack of) that held you back or slowed you down? Be clear on this so you can make changes moving forward.

For instance, maybe right now, content is feeling really, really slow. And because it’s taking so long to write a single LinkedIn post, you find it hard to stay consistent or stick to your posting schedule.

But if you were to take the time to evaluate WHY it is hard to do what you planned out to do and therefore you’re finding it to hit your bigger goals, maybe you realize what’s really happening is that you low key think that what you’ve been writing isn’t good. In fact, you’re also kind of embarrassed about it.

For instance, you cringe when you read back on your recent posts, and you want to shrivel up at the thought of someone who knows you in real life reading your content.

To top it off, you can’t help but wonder how you’re going to differentiate yourself from everyone else online. After all, you’ve been following the content “best practices” and modeling after what the LinkedIn Top Voice peeps are saying and writing on the platform.

If it’s working for them, then it should work for you too, right?

THAT.

You realize that THAT is what’s tripping you up. Thinking you need to follow the content best practices and doing what all the LinkedIn influencers are doing.

Now that you’re aware of what has been slowing you down and getting in the way of you being consistent with what you say you’d do, now you can explore potential options and solutions.

For example, what are the tools, support, or coaching that you need in order to help you write 10/10 content that you’re proud to share, even with people who know you in real life? 

How can you start bringing out YOUR voice in your content, rather than letting your voice be completely hidden and overshadowed by all the sentences and phrases you think you’re supposed to add in your post in order to “hook” the reader or get more likes and engagement?

Side note: This is also something we can work on inside CCC. Ultimately, I want to help you write brilliant content that you’re proud of and go through your content to identify what doesn’t sound like you, so we can figure out exactly what your voice is, moving forward. 

Start by evaluating WHY you aren’t able to stick to your plan of action that is needed to hit your goals. Then start stretching your brain and come up with as many options and potential solutions as possible.

Lesson 2: You can always recommit and start over.

You can always recommit and start over.

If other things came up this year and certain goals were simply not a priority in the past [insert timeline], no problem. You can start making the necessary decisions and start taking action to rebuild your commitment to those goals again. No problem at all. Let’s keep it light and keep it moving.

Similarly, when it comes to your body of work and building thought leadership, if you fall off track for months and months.. Hey, even if you took a whole year or two off, you can always, ALWAYS, choose to restart the clock, right now.

You can always turn over a new leaf, which is actually the message behind my first tattoo ever. Speaking of tattoos, I have 4 tattoos.

This leaf on my wrist is my very first tattoo ever. It’s by far the smallest one of my four tattoos. I got it during a rough patch in my early 20s and I decided you know what, I can start over. I can restart my timeline, I can give myself a fresh start today. I don’t have to be bound by the past or what has happened before.

This is easier said than done. But, sometimes, you just need to put a pause on things that are important to you.

That’s exactly what happened between August 2019 to around February or March of 2020, when I burnt out from running my business on top of my 9-5 job.

I was overworking in my business to the point where it took a toll on my mental and physical health, and even though I was signing clients and making money in my business. It just reached a point where that was no longer worth it. I needed to rest and recalibrate. 

So I completely stopped my business. Everything I had built to that point, the consistency, cadence and momentum that I had built up, all of that just came to a stop.

When I decided to give my business another try around March 2020, I was extremely low in confidence and had very little self belief as an entrepreneur.

I felt embarrassed about needing to take time off, especially when I saw my peers who started the same time as I did back in 2019 who are now way ahead in their business.

I didn’t believe I had anything of value to share with my audience. Some people who started around the same time as me, they were signing on clients consistently and some were making 10k months.

Needless to say, I felt a lot of comparisons and envy, and also even shame and guilt for taking a 6 month hiatus. I struggled a lot internally during this phase of my business.

Who am I to share my thoughts about showing up online and building a business when I had to take a break for 7 months to get my life back together? I felt like I had lost all credibility. 

But here’s the thing. I can always, ALWAYS, recommit to myself, to my goals, and to doing better and becoming a better me. Even if all the business coaches and marketing gurus preach about consistency and if you do otherwise, that means you’re not taking action and you’re killing your own momentum. But honestly, that’s a very short term way of looking at it.

Remember, your goals are not just a three month project. It’s not like if you don’t hit your goals within the three months, then SCREW IT. Just forget about it all together.

No. This is a long term journey.

Consistency is a long term journey. And if your goals matter to you, I hope that you are willing to stay committed to being in the “game” for as long as it takes, simply because you genuinely enjoy what you do.  

One of the most profound thoughts that have kept me going now that I am in the fifth year of my business, is that I am okay with my business journey not looking linear or perfectly consistent.

This means I am okay with taking breaks, even “long breaks”, depending on what I need in different seasons of my life.

That said, because this work matters to me, you can bet that I will always come back after I take the rest I need.

I can always choose to rebuild “consistency” and recommit to the vision I have for the impact I want to create. I can always turn over a new leaf.

All that to say, if you’ve fallen off track with a certain goal, you can give yourself a fresh start right now and restart the clock.

Today can be your Day 1, so let’s recommit to yourself and your goals. Rebuild those habits. Get up. Keep going. You’ve got work to do. 

Sounds good? Awesome. Now, moving forward to lesson 3.

Lesson 3: Everything is a skill. You can continue to hone and practice your skills to move closer to your goals.

The third lesson is, everything is just a skill.

Everything is a skill. 

You can continue to hone and practice your skills to move closer to your goals.

If it’s a new skill, you can continue to practice it and build your way up to your preferred level of the skill.

If it’s a skill that you “lost”, that just means you need to put in the practice so you can get that skill back to the level it was before.

Just like how I used to be able to run 5km in 30 minutes, that was simply a skill I didn’t practice during the past few years. And now, I have to rebuild it again. Not a problem at all. I know how to do this skill and I’m committed to practicing this skill again.

The same concept applies to our work as solopreneurs and creators. Everything is just a skill that requires time, repetition, and practice.

Here’s another example. When I first started my podcast in 2020, I was spending a minimum of 6 hours per episode to write, record, edit and upload my episode. And my episodes were typically 20 minutes long.

Compared to today, it takes usually 4 hours, no more than 5, to write my outline, records, briefly edit and then upload the episode. Now, my episodes are typically 30 minutes. And I now do both an audio and video podcast. Whereas in 2020, I was only doing audio.

Again: Everything is just a skill that requires time, repetition, and practice.

I hope that we’ll continue to work on our thought leadership and build a body of work that sets you up for your goals. Whether it be growing your solopreneur business, landing speaking engagements, or something else.

I hope that even if you may have slowed down during some seasons, or hey, even for those of you who might have taken yourself out of the game for a while, if there’s a goal that is important for you to work towards, then please, keep going and recommit to building consistency behind the habits or action items that will drive you closer and closer to your goals.

An update on Cheryl’s 2024 goal (hehe)

One more thing before we wrap up for real. I would love to share an update on my exercise journey. Three months since committing to rebuilding my exercise habit, I am now able to run 5km on the treadmill in less than 30 minutes.

On days where I’m feeling more sluggish, I’d walk on the treadmill at an incline of 12 and speed of 5km per hour for 45-60 minutes.

I am VERY proud of my progress and am looking forward to keeping up with this consistency 🙂

Sounds good? Awesome. Let’s get to work.

Listen to the Episode

Additional Resources

THE AUDIT: BUILD A DIFFERENTIATED & TIMELESS BODY OF WORK

– Audit 9 different parts of your body of work

– Identify the specific areas you can improve on right away to set your business apart from the rest

– Book a free 60-minute AUDIT CALL with Cheryl to create an actionable plan together

Get the free audit: https://cheryllau.com/audit 

Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy

Episode 76. Getting Out of a Slump or Burnout in Your Business

Episode 110. Creating 5-Figure Soft Launches by Being Consistent

Episode 175. How to Keep Going When You Feel Behind in Business and Discouraged AF

SOUNDS GOOD? AWESOME. LET'S GET TO WORK

LET’S GET TO WORK

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