Motivation vs. Discipline: The Truth About Consistency

Discipline, not motivation, is the true key to maintaining creative consistency and building long-term success as a content creator. After two years of weekly podcasting without missing an episode, I've discovered that commitment and systems matter more than feelings or inspiration.

• Motivation is helpful to get started but discipline is what keeps you going
• Write down content ideas immediately or you'll lose them forever
• Speed from idea to execution is crucial - don't overthink
• Building a creator community for accountability and support
• When brands ask to use your content, don't be afraid to charge them
• Your creative work has value - know your worth and ask for payment

Chapters

• 0:06 Welcome to Uploaded and Unfiltered
• 0:47 Motivation vs. Discipline for Consistency
• 1:54 Capturing Content Ideas Immediately
• 4:29 Building a Creator Community Hub
• 7:22 Getting Paid for Your Content
• 9:36 Closing Thoughts and Appreciation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of Uploaded and Unfiltered, a podcast in which I, your host, jermaine, interviews another content creator in regards to their journey thus far. I've said that at least 108 times and I feel like I need to change it. We'll see. But as you can guess I saw by the album art, today is a solo episode. It is August 4th, the day before this podcast goes up, and I ain't really got nothing to talk about. I mean, granted, I have a million things that I could talk about, but I'm not really feeling like talking about anything today, except for the streak that we're on Now.

Speaker 1: 0:47

I've seen a lot of posts and I believe a lot of people think that you need to have motivation to do such a feat, to be on such a streak, to be steadily consistent the way I've been, and I'm here to tell you that that is a bunch of bullshit. Motivation is something I think we look at motivation incorrectly. Motivation is cool and great and you get that motivation when you watch somebody's random TikTok video and you're like man, I'm inspired to do something. Motivation is a good jumpstart to getting to where you want to go, but motivation is not what's going to carry you there. I'd argue that being disciplined is more important than being motivated to do something. And let me explain Now. I would say that I'm disciplined to keep up with my streak on this podcast. A because it's super dope to say that I've been doing this for two years plus straight and I haven't missed a week. It also shows that, hey, anything is possible. Like I literally can't think of a reason why I wouldn't post a podcast unless all my computers were on fire and my phone was on fire and I had no access to the Internet for like two weeks. Then maybe, and even then, I'm going to get to a point where I'll be uploading these in batches and have them scheduled out for months on end. So even then, I don't know, we'll see but because I'm committed and dedicated to keeping that streak going, nothing's going to stop me. Motivation is cool. When you first start a project, you're motivated to begin, you're motivated to get the ball rolling. But again, I would argue that motivation is not what's going to keep you going for the long run. But yeah, outside of that, everything has been going smoothly today. Actually, on TikTok I posted a total of 12 pieces of content. I'm not bragging, I'm just letting you know that it's possible when you stop caring so much about how you show up on TikTok.

Speaker 1: 2:48

For a while there I was super not worried, but concerned with making sure that all my content that I put up on my kryptonite page was of a certain quality, a certain length, a certain subject matter. But for the last few weeks, if I think of an idea, I just pull out the phone or pull out the pocket three and start shooting and get that piece of content recorded. The faster that I can go from idea to shooting to uploading, the better it's going to be for me in the long run. Because there are so many ideas and I'll get on this in a second so many ideas I have let go to time because I didn't write them down, because I didn't act on it fast enough or I talked myself out of it. Fuck that. If you have an idea and you have the means to do it right then and there I would highly suggest doing it. But if you can't, at the very least write that idea down, write it down, type it in a note somewhere on your phone and make sure that you document it, because I see or I feel like the more I do that, the more likely I am to either do that idea or, when I'm out of ideas and I can't think of anything on the day, I just go to that note page, or I can open up those notes on my notebook and be like, all right, this is something I can work on right now and I get. But for real, but getting an idea, even you, you tell yourself you're like, man, I'm going to remember this. No, you're not. No, you're not. It's rare. Did you remember ideas that you want to do for content creation and actually execute on them months later if you hadn't written it down? So just do yourself a favor write it down and you're good to go Now.

Speaker 1: 4:29

My last piece of information or topic that I want to talk about is I am very close to opening up some type of spot where creators can hang out together, bounce ideas off of each other and generally keep each other motivated when it comes to creating content and becoming consistent. Content and becoming consistent. I feel like the more people you have around you who are doing the same things that you're doing, the more likely you are to stick with whatever thing you're trying to keep consistent and if you have a place where you can bounce ideas off of one another, get feedback from people who are doing something that you are doing as well. I see nothing but positives coming from that. Now, I've always been hesitant on creating a community of such nature in the past, because people are weird and I don't like dealing with weird people, so I just avoided it. But, just like this podcast, if I'm the one running it, I think I'd feel better and it would stay to the caliber that I would like it to stay at.

Speaker 1: 5:35

So I don't know what this community hub is going to be. I don't know where I'm going to do it. I'm leaning towards Discord because I like Discord, but it's definitely going to be a place where we're not going to have any slackers. We're not going to have any people just hanging out in there. I want to get to a point where we have monthly meetings or weekly meetings about the content we're creating, where we want to take our content. We stay accountable for each other. We have maybe a display sheet or a display board where it says okay, crip wants to make three videos a week and the community would check in and make sure I get that done. It would also be a place where you would drop all your links to whatever new piece of content you have up and you have a community to help you get that ball rolling.

Speaker 1: 6:21

As far as getting it in rotation to the algorithm goes, so something I've just been toying with in my head I don't know if I'm going to make it paid, I don't know if I'm going to make it free, I don't know what the signup process is going to look like, but I'm saying it out loud now. This is me writing down the idea because I think it would be valuable in the long run. So eventually I will stop being lazy. I'll stop being negative about it. Actually, right now I'm not being negative about it. If I made such a community, it would be amazing. I just need to figure out what it looks like and how to get it done. I need to put a system in place and make it happen. So let me stop dragging my feet on that and get to work. And before we go, there's one other thing. I don't think I've talked about it on the podcast. I think I did a little bit with crew last week, but I just want to reiterate If somebody is coming to you from a company and you are been posting videos or content on their product and ask you to use your content for social media.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Try to get payment. Start with yes, you can. Here is my fee $50, $20, $100, $200, however much you believe that your content is worth. Figure that out now. And when somebody comes to you and asks you, hey, can I use this on our social media accounts, you can say yes, and here's my fee, and already have that ready to go. Don't be afraid to ask to get paid for the content you're creating. This is one of the reasons why a lot of us are creating content, and if they think that your content is good enough to go up on our socials for free, they can damn for sure pay you Like, simple as that.

Speaker 1: 8:00

So the situation I have with Mesmoglobe is they hit me up in my Instagram DMs, which I'm never in there, but that's where they sent me the message. They were like hey, we love your YouTube video, can we use it for social media? I didn't even think. I didn't even think. I said yeah, sure, because I thought it was going to be like a quick hey, check out this video. I should have got clarification. I should have came up with a list of things that you can and cannot do with my content, but I did not. So this is on me.

Speaker 1: 8:29

This is a learning lesson and two things. I could look at this and have it be a negative, because let me tell you, oh my God, go to Mesmo Globes TikTok. I haven't checked out their Instagram in a while, but their TikTok has like 11 videos of me on it which, like I said, I'm telling myself this is dope, that a company sees my content and they think it's good enough to put up and advertise for their product. Love that Next time we're going to get paid for it, though. But again, I'm trying to keep it positive, to look at the neutral and the positive of any situation that happens to me, and this is what I've come up with. If I already knew a company, I already knew that my content was good enough to get paid for it. I already knew that Duh, this is just that. What's the call? Oh my God. I just blanked out for a second that evidence in real life outside of me that what I'm saying is true. So I'm going to use it as that move forward to the next project or opportunity and be very, be better prepared, and with that, I'm going to leave you to your own devices.

Speaker 1: 9:36

Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast. Shout out to everybody who's been listening and if you've been listening since number one, hit me up, let me know. There is a link in this podcast that you can send messages to the podcast. I highly suggest doing it. I think it would be fun. For anybody else but me, I think it would be amazing. Go ahead and use that. I think you can leave a voicemail and we'll bring it up on the podcast whenever you do that. Other than that, appreciate y'all for listening. Like I said, keep creating content, keep being amazing. Don't let anybody tell you that you can't do something because it's just showing their insecurities, not yours. Other than that, as always, protect your mental, keep creating content and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.