Battling for Motivation

8 min read

Saturday 27th November 2010 - 4:21pm..

Dimitar Berbatov has just scored his 5th goal for Manchester United in a 7-1 win over Blackburn Rovers.

Only 3 players before him had scored 5 goals in a Premier League match (and only one since) - feel free to send me an email with your guesses on who they are.

But..

Dimitar Berbatov was one of the laziest players I have ever seen play - he rarely got into second gear but he was supremely talented and when he got an opportunity to score, he quite often did. But he looked lazy.

I constantly looked at him and thought to myself “Come on, you can do more.. run a little bit more”

His performances on the pitch were affected by his confidence - if he was struggling with his confidence, he didn’t score.

If he wasn’t feeling it - he walked around the pitch and he didn’t chase down balls. He had a lot of natural ability but he looked lazy.

Why am I telling you this?

“Because I feel like sometimes I’m a tubbier version of Dimitar Berbatov albeit in a different industry.”

For the past year, my confidence in ‘creating’ has been at an all time low, I haven’t been able to get out of my own head and I’ve been struggling to get motivated to create anything. I’ve been meandering around the pitch and not really putting in the effort.

💭 The last edition of ‘The Clique’ was on August 5 2022.

💭 The last vlog on my Youtube channel was on September 5 2022.

💭 Even worse - the last post on my Instagram channel was June 9 2022.

I’ve been in all the right positions on the pitch (to continue with the analogy) but I just haven’t scored. I’ve meandered through and the motivation to actually get going just dropped so much that I’ve now entered the longest period in time where I haven’t ‘created’.

My confidence took a HUGE hit in July 2022 (more on this in a later episode - I promise - I can’t say more for legal reasons) and my workload increased exponentially. Not only did I not have the time to ‘create’ but my confidence being so low meant that my creative juices were not flowing and I didn’t want to create.

You see, I’ve suffered with confidence drops before and these previous lows have led to burnouts (as I tried to push on through and create more and more) but it’s nothing like this - it’s been a wilderness of content and it’s been hell.

I have lost count of the people who have asked me about my ‘100kg in 100 days’ challenge and the number of times Julio has asked me to vlog again (because he wants to be in them)

I’ve had EVERY intention of vlogging again - I take my cameras everywhere with me, I’ve even recorded full episodes of a vlog but never edited them. Last week I went to the south of France (it was SAFI’s 60th birthday) and I took my cameras with me - they did not leave my suitcase - despite the perfect opportunity to start, it just didn’t happen.

The Manchester United phase of Dimitar’s career was the final ‘big’ phase - he moved to Fulham, Monaco and PAOK after leaving Old Trafford and never captured the heady heights again - I believe the team at Manchester United was a big factor in Dimitar’s success - the systems and flows that the team had around them (thanks to Sir Alex Ferguson) helped Dimitar become the best striker he could be and ultimately allowed him (despite his lazy exterior image) to be a fairly decent goalscorer.

So to bring it full circle to Dimitar & I - I’m not lazy, I’m just not motivated enough and I don’t have enough support to score alone.

So if I want to become a fairly decent goalscorer (to stretch the analogy to it’s most extreme final point) what can I take away from this and change?

⚙️ Optimise for Success - Making the ‘team’ work.

A lot of my social media output was disjointed, I’m sure I’m not the only one to feel this way - there was nothing coherent or joined up about my social content and I haven’t been working smart;

⚽️ My Youtube channel is heavily focused on Vlogs and whilst I enjoy the editing process, the actual publishing and creation of thumbnails for example was a real pain - I’d quite often grab a screenshot from the vlog and use that as a thumbnail. This made the cross promotion of my videos harder as I’d always have to give context which meant I needed to think about every post. Believe it or not, this was the primary factor in not editing the vlog in the first place!

⚽️ None of the videos I create could be added to Instagram as they are all filmed in landscape so whilst my time would be taken up with editing vlogs, it had a negative impact on my Instagram.

⚽️ Coming up with content ideas for Instagram was always a chore - 7 ideas for content each week (I liked to post once a day)

⚽️ My newsletter was always ‘one step more’ from being finished, it always needed a tweak here or an edit there to make it perfect before I sent it out - which almost never happened. I also didn’t want my newsletter hosted on LinkedIn (despite it having some healthy subscription numbers) as we’ve seen recently that LinkedIn quickly remove features if they feel like it - profile videos is just one of those things they’ve removed.

⚽️ Finally, my website was very ‘SalesChange’ orientated - a copy I created in lockdown to satisfy the growth of the carousel community on Instagram and a ‘side hustle’ to protect any income issues with my day job thanks to the pandemic but it wasn’t a ‘brand’ that I wanted to be associated anymore.

So, I changed it all - over the last 12 months, I’ve taken a step back and created this website (www.immattking.com) and it will now host everything that I create.

⭐️ My Youtube channel will continue to exist but I now have a thumbnail template which is easily editable and will showcase what the vlog is about (it has the actual title) so if I need to promote it on other platforms, I can with relative ease. For anyone who wants to look at any of my videos without the need to search for my Youtube channel, they can visit the page on my website and subscribe from there - its optimised.

⭐️ My Instagram content will be a result of my weekly email but chopped up into relevant pieces - I won’t focus on delivering 7 individual and unique pieces of content, instead focusing on creating something that means something as a collective piece but it’ll be in bite sized chunks.

⭐️ The newsletter you’re reading is now ready to roll - in fact, I’ve already written next weeks episode to be one step ahead. I need to be writing about things which interest me and not trying to focus my efforts into trying to guide all my content into a niche. When I try to niche down (as I did with SalesChange) then I lose all sense of what I’m about and it becomes boring for me.

⭐️ SalesChange as a brand is now DEAD. ☠️. It’s not coming back to life - as I said before, the brand meant I was limiting everything I was doing to be sales orientated and whilst I love sales and everything that brings (I’ve made a career out of it) - it’s only one part of my game and I don’t want to just be known for it.

⚙️ Focus on what keeps you going.

When I began my newsletter at the start of 2022, I lost my way immediately because I was trying too hard on what my readers would want to read instead of focusing on writing what I want to write and letting them find me.

The thing is, if you focus on trying to write/create/produce something for someone else - you’ll never find your way as everyone wants something different. It also means that you’ll never be happy creating that content as it doesn’t get you passionate about it.

‘Why do it then’ I hear you ask? Well, if you focus on creating content for others - it’s a quick way to give people what they want and they will follow along. Instead, if you focus on writing/filming/creating something that you want to create, you’ll create fans of your work and you don’t have to focus on what they want as they have already found it.

My focus over the next few months is to create a habit - become consistent and the only way I can do that is to write about what gets me excited and then work from there. If it brings me 10 loyals subscribers, so be it. If it gets me 100, even better and who knows, if it takes off then I’m in a win:win situation - it means people are there for what I want to create and I don’t have to stress over what they need.

⚙️ Finally, have fun.

Every single piece of my content has one common theme - I have fun making it and it’s fun to promote it. Whether it’s a short promotional video for You are The Media (check this out) or a vlog - every single thing I’ve created is fun.

I am getting back to fun.

Fun is where I need to be in order to be consistent and there are just two ways I’m going to make it fun;

⭐️ Experiment and be Creative - I’m not going to stick to the same old formats or styles. I’m going to look at trying new things, take risks, and let my creativity flow. I always seem to have fun when I am trying to mix things up a little or do things in a way that I wouldn’t normally do them.

⭐️ Involve Others - One thing that I’ve come to realise is that my content works better when there are others involved. Julio has become a huge part of my vlogs and people ‘know’ him because of how much he features in the vlogs. I want to bring more and more characters into my content and the more. I do, the more I hope it will resonate with others.

👉🏻 To Summarise

Dimitar Berbatov was one of my favourite ever players - his lazy, relaxed style was disarming - he’d be in the game for so long without any meaningful impact that it would make the opposition players relax. This is all he needed - a small area on the pitch, enough space to bring the ball down and place it into the net.

So you can see the parallel between mine (and your) content creation struggles and Dimitar, we’re all talented but seemingly lazy when we don’t create. We both need a little bit of space to flex that genius and a decent team (process/flow) around us.

After any period of low confidence and low content output, to get back into the game you need a more coherent strategy - this makes sure you have the motivation to continue and it will mean you have fun in your content creation process.

🛠️ Follow-up Actions for you to take:

1️⃣ Optimize for Success: Review your own content creation process and see if there's room for improvement. Consider using templates for recurring tasks, creating content that can be used on multiple platforms, or restructuring your creative workflow.

2️⃣ Create What Excites You: Instead of focusing on what you think your audience wants, create content that truly interests you. You're more likely to be consistent in your content creation when you're passionate about what you're producing.