80: Ep6: Nobody Told Me How to Stay Consistent With Content When Motivation Disappears

You've poured hours into a post, hit publish, and watched it land with a thud. Just crickets. And in that moment, the question creeps in: is something wrong with me? Should I just pivot to something else? If you've ever wondered why you're still showing up when the growth is slow and the engagement is low, you're not the only one. In this final episode of my Nobody Told Me series on The Creative Bodega, I'm sharing the one thing nobody told me would end up being my superpower: consistency. I'm getting honest about the numbers, the near-burnout seasons, and the two things that actually keep me going when motivation is nowhere to be found. If you're building something online and quietly questioning it all, this one is for you.

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

Things I cover inside this episode:

• The real numbers behind 80 episodes, 290+ newsletters, and nearly 2,000 Instagram posts
• Why I took my first-ever three-week break from Instagram, and what I was scared of
• The reason it always comes back to the women I serve, not the metrics
• Why most people quietly disappear online, and how the gap compounds
• Systems first: how to stop relying on motivation that runs out
• Purpose second: finding the why that carries you through the low-everything days
• The full-circle truth about reps that I opened this whole series with

Resources & Links mentioned in the episode:

• The Messaging Edit won't be taking place in the fall as planned! I've switched gears, totally pivoted, and am building a brand new program called The Newsletter System. You can hop on the Sept 2026 waitlist HERE!

✨💌 CLICK HERE to hop on The Newsletter System waitlist (join for first dibs on the limited spots plus a behind-the-scenes tour of my full newsletter process)

Connect with me:
📲 Follow me on Instagram: @its.em.connors
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🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership
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Transcript

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I have found a system for every commitment that I have made in my business. Have you? Because the system is what holds me together when the motivation just isn't there. Welcome to the Creative Bodega Podcast. I'm M 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 The Creative Bodega Podcast, and welcome to the final episode, episode six of my summer series, the Nobody Told Me series. So it is Nobody Told Me, six honest truths about building a personal brand that nobody told me when I started doing this almost six years ago. The things I wish someone had sat me down and told me early on. Honestly, the things I still have to remind myself of to this day. I'm not sitting here like I'm on the other side, and good luck to you. Not even close, okay? So before I get into today's topic, I just wanna do a quick recap of where we've been. So if you have been listening to the previous six episodes, first of all, thank you, and second, I hope this series has felt like a bit of a permission slip as much as anything else. So we started with how long it actually takes, the reps, the unglamour showing up, and the fact that there is no magic comfortable pill, and there never will be. Then we talked about visuals, and specifically how your face and your energy are your most powerful visual asset as a personal brand, way more than any color palette. Episode three was the story bank episode, finding four to five core story themes in your life that you return to again and again, so that the personal content never feels like you're oversharing or performing. Episode four was the habits that are keeping you invisible, okay? Consuming more than you create, following too many competitors, trying to do it alone, stuff like that. And last week was the permission slip episode. Nobody is watching you as closely as you think, and the cost of staying invisible to avoid discomfort that is so much higher than the occasional sting of somebody maybe pushing back on you. So if you missed any of those, please go back. They are short. I'm trying to keep these under 15 minutes. The whole series was built for busy-ass geriatric millennials, female solopreneurs. That's a mouthful, right? Today's episode six. This is the last one, and I saved this for last on purpose, and I actually switched gears on what I was gonna talk about. On the last episode, I said it was gonna be something about your messaging, but I'm gonna be launching into a whole lot of messaging content in the coming weeks with the messaging edit coming up this mid-September. That's my live program all about nailing down your messaging, so you can stand out. Because the truth is that there's one thing that kind of underpins everything we've talked about, and it just felt worth mentioning. Nobody told me that my consistency would end up being my superpower. Just wasn't on my radar, to be honest. It really-- It wasn't really anything that I thought was that great. I just thought everybody decided to start a business and commit to things and be crazy consistent. I wanna share some numbers with you, and this is not to brag. It's genuinely not what this is about, but because I think when you hear them, something might click for you. This is episode 80 of the Creative Bodega podcast. I have not missed a single week since I released episode one in March of 2024. I have sent over 290 newsletters, so every single week. Again, I've maybe missed five total weeks in five and a half years for holidays, most likely, or vacation. And I am closing in on almost 2,000 Instagram posts since I started my Instagram account back in October of, I don't know, 2020? Yeah. That'd be six years this fall, this October. And if I added up every story on Instagram I've ever posted, which I honestly shouldn't do because the number slightly actually kinda sounds unhinged, it'd probably be somewhere around the range of 10,000 stories in five and a half years. 10,000 stories. And here's the detail that I love the most about recording this particular episode. As you're listening to this, it's actually the day I'm coming back from a three-week break from Instagram. Today should be, if all goes well, August 10th. It's actually July 9th as I'm recording this. But my plan is to take a three-week break from Instagram. That's the longest I have ever taken away from social media since I started the Creative Bodega, and I'm not really wearing that as a badge of honor, to be really honest. It's just facts. I'm going away with my family, and I wanna be completely unplugged, you guys. I don't wanna deal with it. I want to have some breathing room, just some space to think and to be so present and to not be hopping on Instagram every five seconds. I wanna soak up every single moment of this. My kids are nine and 10. They're not gonna like me that much in the coming years. We are preteen, and I'm scared, okay? So I just... They still love me, and they wanna hang out with me, and they want me to be in the lake with them, and they want me to do stuff and play cards, and, like, I wanna be there. I don't wanna be saying, "Hold on one second while I finish this post." Like, F that, seriously. So I took a three-week break. Today's gonna be my first day back. It's so weird to even say that. It makes my heart race. I'm really scared. What am I scared of? I don't know. I don't know. People leaving or being like, "What happened to that girl?" Or thinking I disappeared or unfollowing me. I don't know, but honestly, I, I think more than that, the women that follow me are gonna be like, "Do it. Do it, and thank you for doing it because you're giving me permission to do it." I think that's what's gonna happen. If I know my women well, especially inside the coven, they're gonna say, "Get it, Em. Do it. My kids are older. You're never gonna have this time back." You will never look back and say, "I wish I woulda worked during that three-week vacation." Who would ever say that? I'm gonna look back and have some really amazing core memories with my babies, and that's what life is about. That is why I built this business. Anyways, I'm digressing, and I'm going completely off-script, okay? So I'm with my family the last three weeks, completely unplugged, and believe me, I guarantee I soaked up every minute, and I still showed up to record the series before I left. Again, I said it's currently July 9th. This comes out August 10th. I'm pre-recording all of this to get to my editor so that a episode can come out every week still. Like, it just... Really no skin off my back. It's very different than Instagram. I can just r- you know, schedule a podcast to come out, and I don't have to do anything. I don't have to engage. I don't have to check that my ManyChat was set up right. I don't have to share it to Stories. There's so much that goes into Instagram that doesn't go into a newsletter or a podcast. So I'm still gonna do the newsletter and the podcast for the three weeks I'm away. Monday morning, it's gonna come out, both of them, bada bing bada boom, done. I don't have to do anything after that. So it's not about being on 24/7. That's not what I'm saying, but it's about honoring your commitments, having integrity with yourself if you committed to something, even when or especially when You're busy, or you'd rather be doing something else. And I have come very close to burning out, I'm not gonna lie, more than once. There have been seasons where showing up felt completely pointless, or exhausting. And especially when the engagement was low and the growth was slow, which is right now. I am in a full-on season of that, and I post something, and I'm really proud of it, and it took me a long time to make, and it just lands with a thud, you guys. A thud, and some crickets chirping in the background. Where I'd look at other people who were doing what I do, and wonder why they're taking off and I'm not. Is something fundamentally wrong with me? Maybe I'm not built to do this. Maybe I should pivot into something different, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I know you all know what I mean. I think every single person building something online has had that moment, and the question is, you know, what you do when you get there. And for me, and this is the really honest answer, it always comes back to the women that I serve. Not my revenue, not how much I'm making, not my follower count, not the launches, or any metrics, or any of the things that look good on paper. It's the humans that I'm serving. And I've had so many jobs in my life. I'm 45 years old, had a lot of jobs. Well, not that many, but I worked in fashion design out of college, then I moved to interior design. I've worked in public relations. Every one of them felt, and I don't really know a better word to say to describe, but frivolous. Like I was moving things around, but not ever actually helping anyone. It felt- I mean, listen, my bosses made it feel like the world was ending or we were curing cancer, but we're making clothes and we're ordering lamps. Let's be serious about this, okay? We're not changing anything for anyone in the world, and that feeling of purposelessness is something I spent years quietly carrying around without fully understanding what it was or why I felt so empty in all that I did career-wise. And then we started our CrossFit gym, and I started working with people on their nutrition and coaching, and for the first time, I was sitting across from someone, watching them work towards a goal and seeing them get stronger, seeing their confidence shift, and I felt something I had never felt in a job before, and it lit me the you-know-what up, and that feeling is what I come back to every single time I wanna quit or I'm questioning everything I'm doing. Not my business results, the helping, the help-first mentality, the message from a woman who says that this podcast changed how she thinks about showing up, a DM from somebody inside the Content Coven who just landed their first client, the person who tells me they've been listening since episode one and they finally started posting consistently. That's why I'm still here, and that's why I keep showing up. And when you find your version of that, the real reason underneath the revenue goals or stupid follower accounts, that's what will keep you going, too. I guarantee it, and if that's not strong enough, you're gonna quit, right? If your why, if that deeper reason is not strong enough, you're gonna quit. If it's just about money, making money fast, whatever, like, you're gonna quit. Now let's talk about why most people don't make it to their version of episode 80 in their podcast or whatever, 300-some in their newsletter, or 2,000 posts on Instagram, because it's not actually one thing. It's, it's a lot of things. It's all the things. Burnout, comparison, not seeing results fast enough, losing touch with your why, trying to be everywhere at once, over-committing and under-delivering. It compounds. One week missed becomes two. Two becomes a full month, and then the guilt of the gap makes it even harder to come back, so you stay away longer, and suddenly you're one of the accounts that just quietly disappears into the abyss. And people say, "What happened to that girl?" I've actually had people say that to me. They thought I disappeared, but it's the algorithm is not sharing my stuff with them, and they thought I disappeared, and they had to search me up. As the kids say, "Search it up." They searched me up, and they're like, "Oh my God, she's still posting." Like, yeah, I am. You gotta engage with my shit if you want to see my shit. That's how it works, or the algorithm is just gonna put me into the silent abyss. Anyways, I do watch this happen a lot, and accounts that I used to love and people I thought were building something really real, gone. Not with some big announcement, just literally gone, and it's not because they weren't talented. It's definitely not 'cause their content wasn't good, because it definitely was. It's because consistency is genuinely hard to sustain without the right systems and the right reason behind it. So here's what I wanna offer you, two things that have made the difference for me. Systems first. Motivation is so unreliable. It shows up when things are going well and disappears the second things get hard. You cannot build a personal brand on motivation alone. I promise you that. You will run out of it. What you can build is a system, a batching process that means you're never creating content the day it needs to go out, or a newsletter template that makes it easier to sit down and write every week, or a podcast workflow that becomes so routine it happens on autopilot, and that's where I'm at right now. I'm not gonna lie, and it is a beautiful thing. I have found a system for every commitment that I have made in my business. Have you? Because the system is what holds me together when the motivation just isn't there. Purpose second. So systems first, purpose second. Your system will carry you through the low motivation days, but your purpose, your why, is what carries you through the low everything days, the days where the system feels pointless and those results are completely invisible and you're genuinely questioning everything. You need to know at a level that's deeper than any strategy I can offer you why you're doing this, and I don't mean to make money or to have a lot of followers. I mean the real answer, the one that makes you feel something when you say it out loud. For me, it's the women. It will always be the women that I am serving. I don't want you to give up. I want you to do something you love, and I want you to experience the freedom of time and never having a boss again. And to teach something that lights you up, and give. It's so rewarding. So find your version of that. Write it down somewhere you'll see it, and on the days when showing up feels so freaking impossible, go back to it. Here's the full circle moment I wanna leave you with. We started this series talking about reps, about how there is no magic pill, no shortcut, no version of this where you skip over the uncomfortable part and land straight in confidence and results. It's just reps, you guys, over and over and over again, long after it starts feeling exciting and new. And we're ending there too, because the women who build something real, the ones who are still here five years from now with audience who trust them and businesses that sustain them, they're not gonna be the most talented ones, or the most strategic ones, or the ones with the most perfect brand aesthetic. They're gonna be the ones who were still showing up when everybody else disappeared, and that can be you. It just has to be a decision you make and then you honor over and over again This is the end of the Nobody Told Me series, all six episodes. I hope you've enjoyed it. DM me, let me know. You have no idea what that means to me when you show up in my DMs and tell me you listened, and tell me whatever. That you liked it, that, that this one episode resonated more than the other, whatever. DM me anything letting me know you're consuming my content. It will light me up more than you know. I really hope something in here gave you the push that you needed, whether it was the episode one reminder that it just takes time, or episodes three permission to stop over-sharing and build a story bank instead, or today's reminder that consistency is not glamorous, but it is kind of everything. If this series has resonated with you, I would give anything for you to share it. I would give anything for you to go rate my podcast, or leave a review would be phenomenal. Send it to a solopreneur friend who's in the thick of it. It means more than you know. And if you're ready for what comes next, I want to tell you about two things. First, the Content Coven. Y'all know, it's my membership for female solopreneurs who are done figuring it out alone, okay? Monthly trainings, Canva templates, challenges, and a community of women who get it. Second, it's something I'm really excited about that's coming up in September. It's called The Messaging Edit. It is round two. Round one sold out in 24 hours. It is where we go deep on the piece that makes everything else we've talked about in this series actually convert, okay? Your story bank, your pillars, your personality, your consistency, none of it reaches its full potential without really clear messaging underneath. So the waitlist is open now. I would love to see you there. My next episodes are gonna be definitely focusing more on messaging, but the link is in the show notes to hop on that waitlist. It would be just phenomenal to work with you on the inside with a very intimate, small group of women, and me coaching you one-on-one. All right. Until then, keep showing up. You're building something real. I see you, I appreciate you. I have the utmost faith in you. I'll see you on the next episode 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