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Why We Create?

• Lincoln Bradshaw • Season 1 • Episode 10

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The last couple of years, there's been a very large number of people take interest in podcasting for many different reasons. As with any endeavor in which the barrier to entry opens up and attracts lots of new talent, there's a bell curve of peak interest. The majority find themselves unable to keep up, asking, "Why am I doing this?" 

Well today's conversation may shed some light on why these individuals do what they do. If you have a love for something it's never really work, or is it? Everyone's got an OPINION, what's your's?


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Host:

Our own focus, I think there's some kind of, like I said, weird paradox there. We're part of something bigger, but we need to focus on ourselves to contribute to that. So really appreciate those points. We just had someone jump up to the mic. And it was the another podcast. Do you have something to say another pod? Hey, what's

Lincoln Bradshaw:

going on? Guys, I appreciate you letting me bring me up to talk. Yeah. So I was listening to some of the conversation and looking at the question of like, Why do I create and I think mine's a little different. It was It came kind of really weird. So for me, so for me being African American, right. So a lot of things kind of brought me to this point, I hate to say that, you know, had anything to do with politics, but politics kind of drove it. But I've always thought that, that was how I came up with the idea for my show was was it was going to be set in stone. But I didn't realize that there was just so much I didn't know about podcasting about information about, you know, this road, right. Like, I literally wanted to do the show last year, and I was like, Oh, I'm gung ho, and then realize how much you know, that's, I mean, biting off more I can chew right at the moment. I, you know, again, once you start putting it in process, but the thing that I felt was that I wasn't about to be deterred, and I think the fact that I pushed through, like that little bit of like, pushback, or, you know, questioning, because my biggest question was, am I going to be comfortable with people criticizing what I have to say, right? Like, you can have a show, you can come up with the idea. But do you feel that what you're coming up with and want to put out in the hemisphere? Are you going to be okay with it, people destroy and tear it down? Like I had to come to grips with that. And once I got past that point, it's I really don't care what people think, like, I'm only going to do what's true to me and do why I want to do and I had a couple people, you know, shout out to Pixie, who and a couple others who helped me get to that point, right. And so for me, the reason why I started creating has changed, because I think the voice that I want to the voice that I want to be heard is evolving. Like, again, everybody has their story. And I just kind of wanted to share that with you guys. But that that's kind of where I'm at work in progress.

Host:

Awesome, man. I think we're all works in progress in our in our own right. But I appreciate your honesty, would you say that? The journey that you've taken has been something that it's been a growth? And that's why maybe you've changed your your purpose for creating? Or would you say that? It's you just found your voice? Like it was there, you just didn't know? And now you're figuring it out? Or have you have you changed yourself, like on personal growth through the process?

Lincoln Bradshaw:

I think it's, I think it's a combination of all the above, right? So you have to So there, you don't know what you don't know until you're thrown into the fire. So for me, the reason why I wanted to do it was because of XY and Z. And then once I started going down that road, I realized there was more, there's more to it. Like, this is like my reason for wanting to do it and seeing what the possibilities were. In the beginning, it was very overwhelming. That was again, part of my fear push back, do I really, you know, oh, man, I can there's so many opportunities and things you can do with it? Am I gonna be comfortable with it? Are you going to be okay, and then once I was able to kind of ask myself, do you care more about doing the doing the work? Or do I care more about the opinion of others? And once I got past that, that was really one of the growth moments because I wasn't ready to do the show last year, even though I did do one episode, right? And where that growth, where you're what you're specifically saying is that moment that I felt that I was ready to take that next step was when I committed to when I committed to my 2020 to schedule, right, every time I have a show on the first of the year. And then the first year just happened to fall on a Saturday. So every two weeks, like clockwork, keep it pushing, keep the calendar full, you know, and I've kind of started from a journey of, well, I wanted to talk about this. But now I'm going I'm doing I said I'm a military kid, I decided to reach out to the kids I went to high school with when I lived in Germany. Right. And so that project is really kind of taken off in directions that I never would have thought but it's making me hungry for more to find the next thing that I want to do. Does that make sense?

Host:

Absolutely, Ben, I love it. I appreciate your sharing this. This is excellent. Excellent stuff. There's a I don't know, I gotta check out your pod. But it sounds like you got a whole episode in there. Just this this journey and this growth that you're talking about. I mean, I think that's I think it's awesome. Appreciate it. It sounds like pixie has to do with it. So thank you to pixie

Lincoln Bradshaw:

she had a little bit of damage. She helped me out a little bit scammy through that rough patch.

Host:

Nice, nice. That's, that's why we're here. That's the community that we're talking about. Awesome. Great work. Are people Lavinia, you got your hand raise what's up?

Unknown:

Hi, thank you so much for having me. I feel like I have to confess that I don't have a podcast that I love to share, as I love the stories of how everyone came to their content creation journey. I feel like I did this like the wrong way around. No, I didn't. I didn't come to content creation. As an I was, I didn't set out to do that. I started doing it. Because the truth is, I'm a really bad salesperson, I had a I had a career. And then I just, I was speaking of speaking in public a lot. And then I started to get paid to do this. And so I thought, Okay, I'm gonna go out into the world and be a professional speaker. And then the problem with that is, you have to be able to sell a little bit at least, so that people will book you. And I was really bad. Really bad at it. But I was really good at writing. So I, my native platform, if you like is LinkedIn. And I'm really new to Twitter. So if you want to join my, like, 500, I think 500 followers that I have now. So please do. You're very welcome. My My home is on LinkedIn. And when the great things that I discovered through LinkedIn is LinkedIn allows me to write and it really rewards long form written content, and at least it did. And so that's what I did, I would write, I would write articles. And these articles would bring me clients. Because that's where the people who booked speakers live, they all live either either on Twitter here, or they live on LinkedIn. And so they would see me write about things and they liked the way I thought about things. And then they would book me for events, and then so forth. So then I got a business going. And then of course, the pandemic happened. And every every single booking I had in March of that year, canceled. And then I turned to writing again. So I started to write since my specialties around the way people cope with change Emotionally, I would write about how how people could help themselves through through lockdown, and all of the complex emotions people were feeling at that time. And because I was writing about this, suddenly, I realized, oh, LinkedIn is paying attention to me. And I got all these people, all these editors on LinkedIn paying attention to me and following me on LinkedIn. And by the November of that year, they named me one of their top voices. And so then we're just like, LinkedIn Hall of Fame. If you've never heard of it, it's up with that. Now, I train on LinkedIn, because it opened up a whole new business avenue for me. So on Twitter, mostly, I talked about whole different platform, which is LinkedIn. I talked about how people can do better on it. And, you know, there's a lot of benefits to being on LinkedIn, just like that great things about Twitter, and you can repurpose your content from here or there. And they're very, very, they're very complementary platforms. And I think you could do really well on both. I haven't quite proven that yet, because I'm doing really well there. And I'm kind of finding my feet here. So thank you so much for having me. On your space. I do rent a space myself, I do my first space last week. I'm doing a second space tomorrow. So again, it's all around LinkedIn. And if you have a question, and you want to ask me about it, I'm always here. And thank you so much for sharing your journey. I'm learning so much. And I'm learning so much about how to host spaces as well. So for all you pros out there, thank you for letting me be like me on and that's me, I'm Lavinia and I'm done.

Host:

Makes a video appreciate your perspective as well. I'm setting a theme that we all come to our creation journey, for one thing, and maybe we find our way towards something else. And which proves to me that it's that it's really ultimately, there's ups and downs left and right. And there's ways to learn there's different platforms, there's different formats. I found LinkedIn to be more long form content related as well. And so if that's your jam the video and that's what brings you joy, what you feel that you're best at. That's, that's wonderful. I happen to like to talk a lot. My wife tells me to talk too much. So spaces seems to be a good a good format podcasting for me as well. Priyanka, thanks for taking the time. Oh, I think she just jumped off. I was about to give her give her the mic. Well, so are we sorry, we missed Priyanka. It's been a great discussion so far. If you have something to say you want to jump up to the mic, by all means love to hear your story about why you create. Please join us just request net Europe.

Unknown:

thank Bob. My wife says that I talked a lot too. So we're in the same club. Why did you Why couldn't you just say it's shorter? And it's I don't know. I didn't realize I said it so many times. but that's the way it is. I just want to give it I really resonated with what another pod opinion talked about in terms of like, writing or creating to use my words around in my understanding of this loop, but like writing, or creating, based on like what you want to create, and based on what really resonates with you versus creating, to try to get like, or, you know, that sort of thing. I was just listening to a podcast this morning called unthinkable by Jaya konzo. And his work is all about resonance and how, you know, there's a tendency to create in order to get the clicks and to get more eyeballs, and sometimes, focusing that way doesn't really help you get the workout that you really want to get out. It's sometimes waters down the true richness that, like we're here to deliver. And so sometimes it can take longer to create something that's really aligned with what lights us up. But when we get those, when we put work out like that, and the people, our fans, you know, true fans will often surpass the people that are just creating for volume. So, just wanted to put that out there really resonated with me.

Host:

Awesome, thanks for that. That recap. Welcome, Alex, one of my favorite tweeters out there. If you got something to say, Man, we'd love to hear your perspective jump up. Liam, you've been you've been quiet and I a I'm sure you're feverishly thinking and taking notes. Any thoughts on on the last couple of things.

Unknown:

I've just been really enjoying everything that people have been sharing, I think dialing back into all writing reasons of what's working for us and the time and what what is driving us in the moment is way more powerful than searching for engagement on your threads. And I just really love those points from another call. And that resonates with me so much. And while while you guys have been talking, I've been sitting in introspecting on why am I really doing that? Why am I really creating right now. And I just want to share the conclusion that I've come to, because I think it's important for figuring out how the piece of content creation fits into the wider life that I'm trying to build. Because I think a lot of people miss that and content creation becomes that life. So for me it is a part of the bigger life that I'm trying to build. So the reason I get out of bed in the morning is to help others close the gap between where they currently are and when I want to be. It's why I'm a consultant. It's my passion. It's why I'm creating and sharing my knowledge and experience on Twitter connecting with others and sharing stories. Hopefully adding value to people people seem to think they are but it's always looking for feedback on that but that is directly enacting that so that quick reflection has some cemented in my mind this is something not only that I enjoy there's something I absolutely need to continue and continue connecting with people and putting time into just wanting to share that with you guys

Host:

always appreciate your respectively we have Alex Jones up to the mic Alex if you got something to add to the conversation please add my friend. Priyanka is back in so Priyanka, I'll definitely shoot you up to the mic if you if you got a comment. We want to hear from you. When we talked about creating in our purpose. Liam I think I could have I could do a 24 hour long space on the word Purpose, my life that the times where I feel that I without direction, I'm indirectly, the least productive, but directly the least fulfilled. And so I think it's very important to define your purpose. So Liam, if you could say that, that one more time, what you said your purpose is to get people between where they want to be just say it, I'm bossing it, but I think it was awesome. And then we'll go to Alex.

Unknown:

Absolutely. So my purpose is to help others close the gap between where they currently are, and where they want to be. The same seem as simple as that. And when we can communicate the light is so much easier to find people who resonate with our purpose, and then they join us on that mission. So finding it in a simple sentence, I think is is certainly a way forward. If you do host a 24 are spaced on purpose. I will happily join you for that.

Host:

Will they let me record it for that long? Or is that like, smash up the servers or something? I don't know. All right, cool. If we do that we're gonna need like 10 hosts because I can't, I can only reset the room so many times. All right, Alex, man, good to hear from you.

Unknown:

Bob Lim, not some other person real familiar faces their pre Africa survey and sign up really, really great to see you all and speak with you. I guess, just to reiterate what Liam says, what we're building online, it has to link to our long term vision. Doing what Liam and many of us here are doing, building others up helping others adding value. Through the noise, I think is so so important. I think in a world of chaos, a lot of noise by producing high signal insights, or the likes of the involve that excellent, excellent tweets, I think it really adds that extra touch in Twitter is a wonderful platform that can showcase that perfectly. Other social media sites such as Instagram, Tik Tok, not so much, I think, yes, yes, the virality, but not so much for producing high signal, curiosity inducing problems that can really make someone pause in that day make someone think and hopefully add value to their lives, and at the end of the day, make them better off. So I think that's the reason why I created people on do the same. I love Liam's point, allowing someone to, or at least taking someone from where they are to where they want to be. I think we all have a vision, we all have goals and objectives. And being a small part of that and helping someone on that journey, I think is truly wonderful. So thank you for that Bob, which has been

Host:

awesome. I, I took note of what you just said, you want to make someone pause in their day. That's super powerful language as well. I'm getting all kinds of good quotes from y'all today. I do see we have Priyanka back up there. So Priyanka, if you if you want to speak please, please join the discussion.

Unknown:

Hi, everyone. I've been lose a while on Twitter. But I guess that's also my way of taking a downbeat stepping back. So this form is pretty interesting. Because it kind of goes back to what I do. In my profession, to being in the helping profession and being a counselor training. What that said about self and taking care of yourself, and kind of understanding where you stand when you are trying to help somebody. I've mentored and I found myself, identity to be attached to it. And then then in that process, when that was mentioned about burnout, I have been there when I had to pour hours and hours of my time and diffusing price situations. For others, I forgot to take a downbeat. I forgot to, I couldn't say no, I asked myself at that point that what am I doing this for? Am I doing this to inflate my ego? And why am I why do I want to be in this helping profession just to boost my self identity is am I doing this for selfish reasons to kind of make myself feel better good. And do I need to recharge before I help others? So these questions I've asked myself oftentimes when And in, in hearing somebody else's crisis situation, what they're going through, emphasizing and in the process, synthesizing, which can definitely lead you down to the slope, because you're putting yourself in that vulnerable situation without the person you're listening to. And then you are, you feel like a mess. You know, because you're, you're projecting a lot of those things onto yourself. So in this situation, I often took a step, taking a step back, asked myself, Why am I doing this? Why am I creating even why am I writing that has taken me a long time to do and to practice, I think taking a downbeat is not distracting you from what you're doing, or is not taking you away from your goals. But going back to yourself, to the root of the matter why you are creating why you're doing this. So this is very important. I think I suffer a lot from this. And definitely in our field, a lot of imposter syndrome comes in, we often doubt ourselves, why are we helping our clients? Are we helping the person who's sitting in front of us? Or am I kind of fueling my ego and going into so this is goes in a rabbit hole, this is this is like a very, very slippery slope. So it's important to really take a step back, just taking a step back, take a few breaths, and just ask yourself, what is the purpose of that situation? Why are you in that situation? Why are you creating? So this is very important to me. So yeah. That's my two cents on this. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. And I love seeing I want to mention Liam mentioned in one of the spaces in my earlier adventure into the Twitter world of dipping into a bucket, to how much of helping is actually taking away from yourself, how much of it is taking away from your safe space and your face? So yeah, that's what I like to add.

Host:

Thanks Priyanka, appreciate it really glad you're able to jump back up. Hopefully, those connection issues don't maintain I, I think we have an incredibly honest group of people today that have been sharing, I started with pixie when she was backup your early on. And I, you know, Liam, I don't know if, if you thought this way, but I thought when we were you know, as we've been doing more of these spaces, every week, I've I felt the better quality, the stage is really directly correlated to people's candidness. And that's what that's what the creators unwind. It's what kind of my mindset is behind this group is to give us a chance and to not be so wound up on all of those metrics and things that we always talked about in the creator community. And, you know, in these spaces, we may not learn a specific actionable steps on how to grow our following, but we're gonna learn how to take care of ourselves and loosen up a little bit and take that time that Priyanka was talking about. So I really appreciate you all I commend you for being open and honest about you know, the struggles in it, but in a positive way to help each other here. So thank you for for that. If you're if you joined since we last gave her a shout out here. Please request the mic. If you've got cut something to share. We try to keep it to an hour. So we got about 15 minutes left. But yeah, if you got something to say please request the mic. We'd love to hear from you on on why you create. Alright, Matt, what's up?

Unknown:

Thanks. Yeah, I just want to reinforce what Priyanka was saying about she seemed to build off of what Alex in terms of like taking a pause and asking her SWAT selves like, you know why we're doing this. And I just want to say that like, it's really important that we're on that because like, as Priyanka saying that slippery slope, like, the sneakiness of art or ego minds that can make us believe that like, we're doing these we're doing what we're doing for the right reasons but but you know, are we miss identifying or miss defining our value Miss attaching our value to the thing that we're doing? Right? So it's like, well, I'm doing this for the people. But why? You know, why? Because I want to serve the people. But why, like, it's important to like, go deeper to see like, Well, are you doing it because you want to feel better about yourself? Right? Are you doing it because you think you're going to be more valuable because you're in service. Because that's a super slippery slope, because then it will never feel like enough as the more that you do, you'll just never never really get to a place where it feels solid, if your valid value if you make your value conditional on how much you accomplish and how much you give. So I think it's just really important that we develop discernment and awareness, to know ourselves of like, okay, you know, the doing and the giving, and the serving, can never really give us that sense of security, inner security that we desire that needs to that that depends on us, not on what we're doing. And once we can claim that first house, then we can, from a place of value, I've said this before, like, we can create from a place of value, rather than to create to get value. So from a place of value we can create, and then then there's a sense of wholeness and resonance in what we're creating what we're, if we're creating, to try to get value than that that's almost a shore path to burnout.

Host:

Create from a place of value, rather than try to gain value. Love it awesome stuff. Net, your perspective today has been really enlightening. Actually, my, my recap that I'm going to throw out is going to be a little bit longer than it normally is, this week, got some good stuff out there. You know, just kind of sticking with that theme of what you're talking about creating for value, versus creating from a place of value. I think if we think about in our lives, I mean, the work that we do, especially if we have a professional life outside of our Twitter persona, if you will, I think there's immense value that we can all provide for people, we all have experience in, in the areas that we work in or in the lives that we live. And so I think it's important to acknowledge the power and the ability that we have to make a positive impact on people. You know, much of the much of my digital Twitter community world is around encouraging people to have have the mindset that they can provide immense value, and that we don't always have to try to find value. And I think there is something to be said, for the mindset, that if you're constantly looking to try to gain value, you're you're not giving yourself enough credit. You we all have something amazing to provide. Where you know, those of you who are in the space, might be here thinking May I hope I can learn something about why I should create. And I hope you do. And I've learned a lot of things in the past 45 minutes or 50 minutes. But truthfully, I think it's really more about what we can all bring than work and what we can all gain, which is excellent. So we've got about 10 minutes left, if anyone wants to jump up to the mic. We just had a bunch of people jump in recently. So rather than try to list all the names, by all means, if you're new jump on up, I'm going to go over to the lazy, stoic and say what's up?

Unknown:

Oh, Hi, Bob. Thanks so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. I have a podcast, the Warren film, I watch horror movies. But also my more creative pursuit is on YouTube. I create video essays that 20 to 30 minutes. I publish once a month, it's usually about some sort of philosophical educational topic, and I tie it to some sort of pop culture movies or TV. I started this about two years ago, after I had stepped away from a lot of my social media just because of the toxic political clients, particularly in a lot of my friend groups, I've really stepped away from there and started a new I created this the lazy still a persona inhabit across all social media. I just want to try and create things out of a place of love and affection. And I find that like in creation. A lot of people have said this and pointed out the creation is always a battle against some form of resistance. There's always resistance otherwise, you'd never make anything, if something wasn't trying to prevent you from making it. Just like working out. It's a constant battle against laziness and lethargy. You never want to go and go for a run, but you know, you have to, and it's a battle. Yeah. So you you have to conquer that battle, just like you have to create and conquer your resistance. And the way I go about like creating topics is usually if I go out looking on the internet for something, and I can't find it right, it's not done well. It's not done perfectly. Then I tell myself, it's my job now to create that. My wife recently convinced me to read the books from Gary Chapman called The Five Love Languages. And it's about how to communicate your affection between partners and he has one about raising children with the five love languages. And I realized, you know, the one people didn't need to read these books are men and it's not very well. It's not written to that audience. So I created a video essay where I explained the Five Love Languages physically to men. And I thought about like, what are the movies? Men love to watch? And it's movies like The Shawshank Redemption. The Big Lebowski. Think Austin's once upon a time in Hollywood, and every one of these movies has a male to male friendship relationship in which they communicate via the love languages. And that's what I have an example of how i Something didn't exist, and I created a right or perfected the communication of that idea better. So it's all about battling, finding that resistance and climbing that mountain

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Lincoln Bradshaw

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