78: Ep4: Nobody Told Me These Habits Were Keeping Me Invisible

Do you ever feel like you're doing everything "right" online, posting, following the tips, showing up consistently, and still getting completely ignored? It's not your strategy. It's not the algorithm. It's a handful of small, sneaky habits quietly keeping you invisible, and once you spot them, they're easier to shift than you'd think. In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I'm walking through exactly what those habits look like, why personality gets remembered while generic content gets ignored, and the small moves that actually change things. If you've ever wondered why people aren't opening their wallets for you yet, this episode is for you.

Check out the full show notes for this episode CLICK HERE.

Things I cover inside this episode:

• Why generic content gets ignored while personality is what actually gets remembered
• The real reason people need to trust you before they'll ever buy from you
• The one habit to notice first: which accounts quiet your brain versus fuel it
• Why muting or unfollowing the noisy accounts is the first small shift to make
• Closing the app and making something instead of scrolling past someone else's
• The habit of sitting on your ideas instead of posting them, and why that stops now
• Why asking for help and joining a community moves you faster than doing it alone

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

The generic content's gonna get ignored. Personality's gonna get remembered. And in a very saturated market, which pretty much we're all in at this point, being remembered is everything. Welcome to the Creative Bodega Podcast. I'm Em Connors, Instagram content strategist, one of 43 Canva Verified Experts worldwide, and a mom of two who is not on Instagram for fun. I'm there to market my business, grow my email list, and get the heck off my phone, and that's exactly what I teach. You can expect simple content strategy, visual systems, and Instagram to email tactics that actually work without taking over your life. Let's get into it. Welcome back to my little summer series called Nobody Told Me. Six episodes, basically, talking about things that nobody told me would happen, would be required of me, whatever, when it comes to building a personal brand. Personal brand, there is a person behind the business. You are the face. You require trust for people to open their wallet to you. We're on episode four, and today we are talking about habits, specifically the ones that are keeping you invisible, and I'm not pointing fingers over here, my friend. From the outside looking in, I'm not. I have lived every single one of these. I S-H-I-T you not. Like, so again, this episode's really not about strategy or the algorithm or posting at the right time or using the right keywords, blah, blah, blah, right? These are self-imposed habits, things we do to ourselves, sometimes without even realizing it, that are keeping us small and stuck and wondering why nothing is working to help us grow our business or grow our personal brand Or be happy with the brands and the businesses that we've built, to be super honest. There's five of them, okay? Five habits, self-imposed. Let's go, okay? Are you ready? 'Cause these episodes are fast, so we gotta move, move, move. Habit one, ugh, this one hurts my soul, consuming more than you create. I have many women in my world where it's just like they're not showing up, and they're not posting, and it's like they're in my DMs all day long, and they're liking everything I do and commenting on my posts, but they're not posting. And I'm like, as my kids would say, "Bruh, bruh." Like, this is sneaky 'cause it maybe feels productive, right? You're scrolling on Instagram. Y- you're maybe telling yourself you're doing research. You're watching other people's stuff, content, maybe taking some mental notes, right? You're saving stuff to collections, so, you know, you're consuming, consuming, consuming, and calling it maybe work or not even realizing that you're doing it. It's not work, okay? It's actually avoidance dressed up as inspiration. So I'm not saying you should never consume content, not at all. Obviously, you're listening to this podcast right now, and listen, if you are liking and commenting on my stuff, I love you for that, and I appreciate you more than you know. And I'd like to think that it's time well spent, but there is a ratio problem happening for a lot of people, a lot of solopreneurs, and it goes something like an hour of scrolling for every 10 minutes of actually creating. So I wanna call you out, and I want you to flip it. I want you to flip the script. I want you creating more than you're consuming. Close the app- Open Canva or your notes document, and I want you to make something. Doesn't have to be perfect. Uh, you know, doesn't have to be your best work. It just has to be something, right? Because content that lives in your head or in saved folders on Instagram is not helping anyone, especially you, okay? The accounts you admire the most are not spending their mornings watching everybody else on Instagram. I can pretty much guarantee you that. They're creating, and there is a big difference. What do I do to stop consuming? I've got time limits created on Instagram. So basically, Instagram will warn me when I've reached my time limit. It'll give me like a... It basically will say, "Do you wanna be done for today, or do you want 15 more minutes?" And so I have to make a choice, and then I'm like, "Oh, damn, I've been on Instagram that much? Like, I gotta get off." It is a wake-up call. So I recommend you do that. I'll try to put a link in the show notes with how to set up time constraints on Instagram. Okay, habit number two, following your competitors way too closely. This is my kryptonite. This is the habit I have struggled with the most personally, and I, I wanna be super transparent about it. I am constantly now muting and unfollowing people who do what I do. It's not 'cause I don't respect them or like them, 'cause I do. I mute them if I really like them and we both follow each other 'cause I don't wanna offend anybody. It's not because I think I'm better than them. It's literally because the louder they are in my feed, my friends, the quieter my brain gets, my thoughts, my creativity, and that is not good. I'll be having, like, a great week, right, in my business, ideas flowing, content's feeling good, like I'm showing up for myself, and then I will see someone in my space doing something, and suddenly I am spiraling. Should I be doing that? Why is their engagement so much better than mine? What am I missing? Should I be... You know, should I still be doing this? Am I good enough, right? And just like that, my own voice gets quieter and quieter and quieter. And the mute button is one of the best decisions that Instagram ever provided me with. I use it without guilt, without having to apologize, and no one knows on the other side that I've done this. It just means I'm muting their stories, their posts, whatever I choose to do, and that is about protecting my energy, my creativity, my clarity when it comes to my own business. So I really feel like the most powerful differentiator for us as personal brands is our unique perspective on stuff, our unique approaches to what we are experts in. You can't access that perspective when you are constantly consuming and swimming in everyone else's perspective. Okay? So unfollow, mute, protect your brain. This is fully allowed. Habit number three, not infusing enough of your personality or edge to what you do. This really does connect pretty well to habit two if you ask me, because when you're consuming everyone else's content constantly, you start maybe unconsciously sounding like them. Your captions start to look like theirs. Your topics start to mirror what they're talking about, right? And you're suddenly just another account saying the same thing the same way as all the others. Blending in, I get it, feels super safe. Uh, and I do understand that 100%. Putting your real personality into your content can be vulnerable. It can feel risky. What if people don't like it, right? But here's what I know after five and a half years of doing this, the content that has built my business, the posts that have gotten shared, saved, and gotten people to slide into my DMs, the episodes people have told me changed something for them, none of it was safe. None of it was maybe palatable for the, the masses. Everyone will like this version of me was not the one that showed up when I created that content. It was the real version, the one where I have opinions, the ones that, you know, reference things in my world that make up who I am, right? And, you know, things like how I listen to true crime podcasts, or my rescue pit bull, or dying a little inside at kids' parties when a random mom tells me she follows me closely on Instagram, and I'm like, "Oh God, help us all." The generic content's gonna get ignored. Personality's gonna get remembered. And in a very saturated market, which pretty much we're all in at this point, being remembered is everything. You-- And then I'm not saying you have to be loud or controversial, right? 'Cause that's not my MO. You just gotta be specific enough and, and personality infused enough that someone reads your content or sees your content and thinks, "That's how I would say it. Like, this is my person," right? And that specificity only comes from letting your actual personality lead, my friend, okay? Habit number four, letting self-doubt hold you back. This one shows up in a lot of ways. Perfectionism to the point that you don't post. I mean, how many people can relate to that? Decisions that never get made, 'cause what if you make the wrong one? Offers that sit in a Google Doc for six months, or a freebie for that matter, 'cause you're just not sure that if it's good enough or if you're ready. Captions that get written and deleted and written and deleted again and again. Self-doubt dressed up in a cute little outfit as perfectionism is one of the most expensive habits a solopreneur can have, keeping you invisible Because, uh, if you're waiting for someone to tell you you're ready, or if you're waiting for yourself to feel ready, you're never possibly going to get there. Okay? No one is more qualified than you. No one is more deserving than you. You deserve to be there just as much as everyone else. And there's people out there who are doing the damn thing scared and imperfect and building their audiences while you sit there invisible and quiet, waiting for everything to feel and be perfect, which just does not exist. I made my first $12,000 with a four-week course with scrappy slides, incredibly underpriced. It was not perfect, it was not polished, but I put it out. I gave myself a deadline, and it gave me the proof that I needed, the proof to give me the confidence to keep going You will not think your way out of self-doubt, I promise you that. You will only act your way out of it. One imperfect post, one crazy, scary decision to make something live, one thing offered before it feels ready, that's how it works every time. So trust yourself enough to start. The refinement can come later. Habit number five, doing it alone. This is the one that feeds every other habit on this list. When you're isolated, when you are building in a vacuum with no one around you who gets it, self-doubt gets so much louder. Comparison is worse. The personality gets more muted because you have no one reflecting back what's working. The consumption probably goes up. Scrolling feels like you're connecting when it isn't. So I think of my early days of building the Creative Bodega and how much harder it was before I had people around me who understood what the heck I was doing. My husband was so incredibly supportive, but he wasn't a solopreneur building an Instagram presence at the time. There were things he just could not fully understand, and none of my friends did what I do. They still don't. Or my family members. I needed women around me who got it and who did it just like me. So community to me is not a nice-to-have, it is a business asset. Having people around you who are in it too, who celebrate the small wins, who you have to bounce ideas off of, it can change the entire experience of building something online. I really do believe that. So you're not supposed to do entrepreneurship alone. Nobody is. The solopreneur or entrepreneur who insists on figuring everything out by herself in her own head without any outside perspective or support, she's making it so much harder than it needs to be, in my opinion. So find your people before you need them, before you're making money. Don't give me that excuse, "Oh, well, I wanna join this or sign up for this, but I can't 'cause I'm not making money yet." Guess what? That's probably not the way it's gonna work. You probably need to put a little money into investing in yourself, and then the results will come. It's what happened for me. It's what happened for me. I had to shell out money that I didn't have to get to where I am, you know? And it was uncomfortable, and it was really scary, but it was better than figuring out alone, and it fast-tracked me there. So by the time you feel like you need them, you're probably already running on empty longer than you should've and closer to giving up, which I don't want anyone to give up. I don't want anyone to give up. So These are the five habits, all self-imposed in my opinion, all of them incredibly fixable. I want you to start with the one that hit the hardest when I said it, the one where you felt it in your chest a li- a little bit, okay? A little bit more than the others. So start there and just make one shift. Unfollow the accounts or mute the accounts that are making your brain quiet. Close the app and make something instead. Post the thing you've been sitting on. Ask for help. Join a community. Okay? Small moves consistently. That's just, that's, that's how it's gonna work. Okay? So on the subject of not doing it alone, that's exactly what The Content Coven's for. Okay? It's my membership for female solopreneurs. It's generally one of the best rooms I've ever been in or ever built. Monthly trainings, templates, community of women who are in it with you celebrating your wins, answering your questions, making the whole feel thing a lot less scary and lonely. If you're on the fence, the link is in the show notes. That is episode four of my Nobody Told Me series. Next week, nobody told me that nobody was watching that closely. In my brain, everyone was staring at me waiting for me to mess up, so it's This is gonna be a permission slip episode. If you have ever not posted something 'cause you're afraid of what people would think, that, that episode's gonna be for you. I'll see you then Thanks so much for hanging out with me on The Creative Bodega Podcast. If you loved this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode to help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, thecreativebodega.com, or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next episode.