How to Make Money as a Content Creator Without Burning Out in 2024

It’s my 200th episode of the Creative Magic Club podcast!! 

To celebrate, I’m pulling back the curtain on what it’s really taken to sustain a business I love for the past 7 years, and to consistently publish a podcast for 4 years. 

In this week’s episode I cover:

• What it really takes to build a 6-figure online brand without burning out. I share how I have cultivated daily devotion and follow through (and considerably improved my abilities as an ADHD-brained creative!) I’ll give you a clue: it has required keeping things SO SIMPLE, while learning to become more comfortable with complexity. 

• I share how it has been about following my intuition, and building the skill of listening to myself, that led me to the strategy of selling high ticket coaching. A super smart that has sustained me financially as I grow my audience, brand and impact.

• I share how I came to the conclusion that the one thing that’s always top priority for reaching my goals is…. content!! I love to write, create and connect, so I chose to build my business around those things. This is why social media marketing is the skill I’m continually focused on improving, investing in and in hiring team members to support me with. 

Plus so much more that I know will support and inspire you to get clear on your next moves to scale your brand to 6-figures and beyond! 

Write a sales post to attract your soul mate client using you astrology chart with my FREE 5-part training series! 

When you book my Cosmic Sales Intensive, You’ll walk away with a full, clear, compelling, sales page for your high ticket offer that will attract ready to buy clients and that you can continue to make sales with for years to come.

 Clients who have been through this offer have sold out a high ticket relationship coaching mastermind & had 20 applications within 48 hours of publishing.

https://withsarahmac.com/cosmic-private-intensive/

Chapters

• 0:12 Building Wealth as a Creative Entrepreneur
• 15:21 Intuitive Decision Making in Entrepreneurship
• 19:15 Mastering Content Strategy for Business Success
• 31:08 Joining Contest for Coaching Session

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

What's up? This is Sarah Mack, and welcome to Creative Magic Club. Together, we'll discover inspirational stories of creative entrepreneurs living out their dreams, doing the work they are most passionate about and building wealth in magical and fun ways, while building a six-figure income. As a writer and coach, helping other women to launch their dream businesses, I've connected with so many incredible people and seen it proven again and again that you can thrive financially doing whatever it is you are passionate about. I am here to share life-changing strategies for mindset, making money and reaching more people with your work in a business and life filled with creativity, freedom and fun.

Speaker 1: 0:58

Hi, sarah Mack here and welcome to the Creative Magic Club podcast, your place to live wildly rich and creatively free as a six-figure creative, doing the work that you love, that you were put on this earth to do, and having so much freaking fun doing it. I can't believe this is our 200th episode I've been going, for. I started this in 2020, so it's been four years. Wow, wow, wow. I've pretty much published every single week and I'm celebrating that because I think it's a real testament to how I do things, which is keeping things simple and keeping it fun, because if this wasn't fun, I wouldn't still be here doing it, and if it wasn't simple, then it would not be sustainable for me to do week after week, and I've definitely developed my strategy. I've definitely been going deeper and deeper into podcast strategy because this is a project that just brings so much to my life and business that I want to get better and better at it. But I'm not like a podcast genius over here. You know, we've had close to I think it must be around 14,000 downloads at this point, which is a huge number of downloads when you're just thinking about individual people downloading my episode, listening to my content. But you know, compared to some of the other podcasts, it might not seem that big.

Speaker 1: 2:30

So I want to talk about making money as a content creator, which I've been doing. I mean, I've officially had my coaching business since 2017. So that's seven years, and before that I had my copywriting agency, but that was more of a. You know, obviously I'm still delivering a service, I'm creating offers and programs and creating digital products, but that's essentially content like that's how I get paid to be a content creator. That's really what my intuition has drawn me to. Intuition has drawn me to like I didn't know anything about business before I started I didn't have an MBA. I went to school for drama and film and was working in the film industry, so I've had to figure it all out. As I've, you know, embarked on this entrepreneurial content creation journey and I can honestly say that it's working out great, that I'm I love it, like I've loved it consistently.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Obviously, you know there are highs and lows in entrepreneurship. Things don't always work out the way that you hope they will. Some things just don't work, some things just do. But I think it's such a blessing that I started my business in the middle of a burnout, with really no resources to get me going, because I had to develop the skill of listening to my intuition and letting that be the thing that guided all of my strategic decision making, and that's why it's consistently worked out for me. And you know, yes, I've had flop launches. Yes, I've had tight months, but I've made money every single month in my business. I've consistently signed clients. I've consistently made money. Yes, I've had tight months, but I've made money every single month in my business. I've consistently signed clients. I've consistently made money. Yes, I've had high years. Yes, I've had lower years, but I've consistently been making money since I started. So I want to just share a little bit of behind the scenes of why I think it's worked out for me, why I think it's been so fun for me and why it's worked consistently for me, so that not only it can inspire you, give you some insights and keys that will support you to thrive as a content creator in your own unique way, but also to demystify it a little bit and talk about really what it takes.

Speaker 1: 4:43

So let's dive in, shall we? What does it take really to build a online brand that has generated hundreds of thousands of dollars without burning out? So it's a case of daily devotion, like full-blown, all-in commitment. And if you want to hear the story of how it all began, go and read my book the Six Figure Creative Heal your Relationship With Money, doing Work you Love, and you'll hear in depth the details of how it started out in the middle of a crisis in Bali, having a panic attack around having no money, having no job and having terrible health. That's where I started.

Speaker 1: 5:21

But from that moment when I decided to take the leap into entrepreneurship because I wanted to create, I wanted to express myself, I wanted to make a positive impact and I wanted to have a limitless potential in my income. It has required hyper focus and a lot of follow through and keeping it as simple as possible, which I won't say that I've kept it super simple I have in some ways and I won't say that I've kept it super simple. I have in some ways and I haven't in others. As someone who received an ADHD diagnosis, this is something that I've really struggled with in the past is having a vision, having an idea for a creative project and actually trusting myself to take the tasks to execute it, to follow through, to actually complete it and see it through and realize it. There was you know how many dead creative projects never made it to life from my journal, from my desires, from my intention, from my visions so freaking many. But entrepreneurship was the place where I built those skills, because if I wanted to eat, if I wanted to pay the bills, I had to get good at following through. So entrepreneurship and my business has really been a place that has given me the skills that I've then been able to apply to my creativity and to my creative projects. And you know, completing and publishing my book is probably the biggest project creatively that I've embarked on by myself. Obviously, I've had tons of amazing support with it, but it's been a process of slowly building that trust with myself, slowly building the skill set that have allowed me to follow through on bigger and bigger projects and obviously, my business is the biggest project of all. You know.

Speaker 1: 7:01

People keep asking me how's your book launch been going? And one thing that really has surprised me about this process is just how excited people get about books. I feel like it's kind of like weddings To me. People are, like I don't know like unreasonably more excited about these things than some of the other things in life which you know. I think businesses are really freaking exciting and a lot of work and like really, you know, a massive creative endeavor, and I feel like they should be celebrated more than like a book.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Obviously, a book is a big deal. You know. It requires a lot of depth in your creative work to, you know, go in detail into telling a story in that way, but for some reason, people get super hyped about books. I think books are obviously amazing, but I think you know, like a program launch is such a huge deal, like even launching an online brand and growing an audience of several hundred thousand people sorry, several hundred people, let alone several thousand people like that, to me is a huge deal. It takes so much creativity and commitment and vulnerability and devotion and, okay, went on an ADHD tangent there. So the point I was trying to make about commitment and follow through is to really build the skills and the systems that work for you to realize your vision, to realize your idea and to actually be able to track it and be like am I seeing this through to fruition? Am I finishing?

Speaker 1: 8:39

Because I think one of the things that holds us back as creatives which is really really common, which I've been through and continue to go through and I see in my clients all the time which can really hold us back, particularly when it comes to making money, when that unconscious sabotage kicks in, because we feel safer not being really visible, not really taking a stand for our work and our message, not making the uncomfortable ask of inviting people to support us, to buy our work. We unconsciously resist that and one of the most common ways I see that resistance showing up is in trying to do too many things at once, and that was one of the very first conversations I had with one of my very first business coaches who convinced me to put down the book that I was writing. At the time I was writing a book that was about dating advice for men and you know it wasn't really in alignment with my vision for my business and it was a project that was taking time, albeit not that much time, but I really had to be dedicated with my priorities to get my business to the place where it could then support me to write my book. When it was, you know, I'd done that work and getting up and running and it was working and thriving and bringing in money. So prioritization, really like having a tracking system. So you can notice, because we unconsciously do this right, we unconsciously are like I'm going to do this and this and this and this and this and I'm going to work on all these projects at once and it humanly impossible and then that kicks up all of our insecurities around not being good enough. Why am I not succeeding and actually you're just being the worst boss in the entire world in giving yourself an inhumanly possible number of tasks to do and actually the real work is in whittling down those priorities and being like, well, what am I focused on now and what is on pause? It's not that you have to abandon your projects. You can do it all, you can have it all, but not at the same time if you don't want to burn out Right.

Speaker 1: 10:38

So what's helped me is getting really intimate with my Google calendar. I also have a written calendar. I use passion planner because my ADHD brain really likes to write down what are the things that I'm focused on today and to cross them off one by one. Sometimes I'll use post-it notes too if I want to like reorder the things that I want to work on. So those tools work really well for me of knowing exactly what my priorities are, the things that I am choosing and desire to get done that day, and then when I sit down to work, my brain isn't like going in a million places. It goes to my planner or my post-it note or my google calendar and it knows exactly what I'm focused on.

Speaker 1: 11:20

And, as a manifesting generator, I don't like rigid structure and schedules and I really rebel against that. So I like to go with the flow in my day. I'm not necessarily saying you know, from this time till this time I'm working on this. I'll allow myself to follow the energy and what I'm feeling called to work on throughout the day and I can pick which tasks to work on when, and I can bump them around. But I still have a clear intention and it's taken me a while. But now I'm at the space where I know a reasonable amount of workload and I know my energy, that I can give myself what's actually attainable in a day, and if there's something that doesn't get done, it's maybe, you know, a little part of a task or something that I can bump over to the next day. But by the end of the week I've pretty much accomplished everything I set out to complete that week and it's taken years for me to get to this place.

Speaker 1: 12:15

So I wanted to share that. You know, finding a system that works for you, for your brain, for your energy type, to just follow through on the things that you want to accomplish type, to just follow through on the things that you want to accomplish. So the next piece has really been about following my intuition and building the skill of listening to myself because, like I said, I had no business training. There's still so much that I don't know and yet I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars and I've had a really good life for the past seven years living a very passion-fueled business. So it just goes to show that you don't need a lot of the things that you think you might. And that's not to say that you know there aren't edge skills and pieces of education that would genuinely really support me.

Speaker 1: 13:01

But you can't do it all, especially when you're a small business or you're a solopreneur. I have a very small team and I like it that way because I don't like complexity, but I'm definitely leaning more into it and building the skills and the capacity to hold more complexity as I grow my business. But it has to be something that I go at my own pace. And I say this to my clients all the time you're going to go at your own pace. You know, all the time you're going to go at your own pace, you know there's no way you're going to go at a different pace than the one that is right for you and that's going to depend on your phase of life. You know, are you raising kids? Are you taking care of other family members? Like, where do you live? Where is your home? What's going on in the world? There's always going to be these outside influencing factors that our business is going to have to adapt to that we are going to have to adapt to and build new skill sets.

Speaker 1: 13:54

So learning to really lead from a place of intuition, I have found has got me the fastest results because, you know, in my head I was like, oh, I'm going to need to go and study an MBA or do a whole training program on business and I didn't have to do any of those things. I don't have a single certification in anything and yet, you know, I've helped hundreds, if not thousands, of clients to change their lives and to create incredible results. So, building that skill of listening to myself, of actually using that skill, using that tool, you know, on a daily basis, so that it's become such an ingrained way of making decisions, obviously sometimes I get off track and I overthink things and I overcomplicate things. But knowing, you know, having that morning ritual, having those embodiment practices whether it's a two-minute breath work exercise, or doing a few sun salutations, or going for a walk, or doing some stream of consciousness journaling, or doing my money mindset process work that gets me tapped in to my intuition and actually creates space for me to listen and gets me out of my head that's always where the ideas drop in and obviously I've built that awareness to pay attention to the ideas and having a system Like initially, I would have the back page of my journal.

Speaker 1: 15:21

I would never go anywhere without my journal. Every intuitive idea that dropped in when I was like living my daily life, I would write it down in the back of my journal. Every intuitive idea that dropped in when I was like living my daily life, I would write it down in the back of my journal and then I would come back to it and then I would schedule it. So not only is it about having a vision, taking action, following through, but listening for those nudges day to day. And actually the thing that I have found has increased my success the most is closing the gap of, you know, standing between when I get the idea and then executing the idea.

Speaker 1: 15:51

Intuitive ideas are meant to be enacted on as soon as possible and obviously sometimes they're big visions and they're long-term visions that we work towards and that's fine. But know that if an idea is tapping you on the shoulder, there's a reason for that. So pay attention and take a step towards it at every given opportunity that you can. Because I didn't know what high ticket coaching even was. I didn't even know what the coaching industry was when I had my first business, my copywriting agency, and you know it turned out to be a strategically excellent decision for me to build my business around high ticket offers because it's financially sustained me as I build those other business skills around growing my audience and you know, back end systems and getting my shit together with financial organization, getting over my money, ish, and doing all of that healing work that has been required for me to grow my visibility and, you know, remove the emotional drama from the work that leads to the results. So being visible, creating content, showing up, being a leader, walking my talk, navigating the challenges, holding you know all of the life stuff while maintaining consistency in my business. I've got better and better and better at these things because of the personal growth that entrepreneurship has catapulted me into.

Speaker 1: 17:18

So you know my intuition has always put me in front of the right people, the opportunities, and I have learned to really fine tune my self awareness to pay attention to an opportunity and to have the mindset of I'm going to make this work for me and I'm going to jump in and I'm going to see, even if I don't have all the answers, even if it doesn't make any apparent sense right now, I know that feeling when I'm getting the nudge, when something just feels right. So, developing that communication with yourself, knowing how you experience your intuition and what are some of the tools and the processes and the rituals, the environments that tap you in to that conversation with yourself, how does it show up for you? So you know, take a moment to check in with what your answers are for these questions and strategically schedule them into your day so that living from your intuition is not just a maybe I will or maybe I won't. It's a chosen strategy that you do everything from in your personal life, in your health, in your creative life and in your business and your financial decisions. Obviously, when it comes to money, it can be more difficult because there are generally so many other heightened emotions around money that are, just you know, kind of wired into us, like fear, scarcity, insecurity. So you know, obviously, hopefully you've been following my work and you continue to, and you read my book, the Six Figure Creative, and at some point you take my program, create money the fun way, which really gives you the tools and the skills to deprogram that fear and that anxiety that we have associated and connected to our relationship with money, because then that leaves a lot more space and clarity for you to be able to act from your intuition and to have confidence and to have faith and to make bigger and bigger moves that will pay off for you financially.

Speaker 1: 19:15

The next piece has been really recognising the one thing that gets me to my top priority goals, and you know, that's something that's a question that I continually ask myself. It's one that I've gone deep into and that has really informed my business strategy, and that one thing is content. You know, I didn't just do social media marketing because that's what everyone else is doing. You know I didn't just do social media marketing because that's what everyone else is doing. I mean, to an extent I did because that's what I learned from my mentors, but I actively have chosen it. You know, I've asked myself the question in my business how do I want to make the money that I want to make? How do I want to make the impact that I want to make? What are the sustainable, repeatable ways that are going to sustainably and repeatably bring me in income, month after month, year after year? Because we have to choose a path that we're willing to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Speaker 1: 20:16

And obviously you're evolving. Things are going to evolve, the industry is going to evolve, social media is going to evolve, but building a skill set and a toolkit around things that are possible for you and your skill set and the things that you like and the things that you don't like is so, so, so important, instead of you know being like, oh well, my coach told me I have to do this and I'm really resenting this and I don't really want to do it and so I'm not going to do it consistently and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So really making that conscious choice of this is the strategy I am choosing for me and I'm choosing it wholeheartedly and these are the reasons why. And actually sitting down and having that conversation with yourself like which platform, which content types? Or like where do you want to be having conversations with new clients? How do you want to be delivering your message? Where do you want to be reaching people? What makes sense for you?

Speaker 1: 21:13

And choosing it wholeheartedly and, in choosing that, being willing to say no to some of the other things, right, right, so you can get really good at the strategies that you have chosen, because I knew that I love to write, I love to create, like I was doing this before I'd even figured out how to monetize it. I had any idea how to monetize writing and creating. I had a blog called Project Girl where I would write about relationships and sexuality and creativity and elevate the voices of women artists and I just really wanted to do that, like that was a big part of my mission and my drive and something I wanted to contribute to my community, and that was like one breadcrumb on the trail that led me to doing the work that I do now, where I'm able to get really well paid for creating content that impacts people in meaningful ways that I have intentionally chosen. I've always loved to connect with people on social media. I've loved creating for social media from the beginning. So you know, realizing that I could build a business and income streams around these channels has been a dream come true for me, and this is why social media marketing is the skill I'm continually focused on as my top priority. It's what I invest in continually, in re-educating myself and improving my skill set and having support with, you know, not only through mentorship and online education, but also with my VA and my podcast editor, who take a lot of the day-to-day tasks off my plate so I can really focus on the parts that I enjoy in creating and sharing my voice and my message and building my brand and connecting with people and building relationships online. So that brings me to my next point, which is really consciously centering on the strategies that I genuinely enjoy and then building clear sales and marketing systems around them. That has really been the key to running a business I love for seven years and you know there's a little bit of a difference between the things that come naturally to me, the things that are easy, the things that are like I'm good at already, and the things that I want to be good at. You know there's still every day I'm experiencing that discomfort of the growth of I want to be at this next level with my business and my brand and my impact and my work and my message. And you know there's still skills I need to learn, which takes time, which is uncomfortable, which takes deep work and focus and concentration, which takes time, which is uncomfortable, which takes deep work and focus and concentration. There's always going to be another version of that in business, which is why I love to be in business, because I love to learn and I love to grow.

Speaker 1: 25:19

And then you know reels as an example. I like wanted to do reels, but I also didn't. I wanted to be expressing myself through video. You know my background is in film. I've actually really enjoyed editing and creating video in the past. But the idea of like having to crank out reels and having to spend more time on social media than I was already spending creating just written text and like visual images, like static visual images but there was a part of me that had the desire to do that. I just resisted the additional work that it genuinely required for me to build, just put in the time to create the assets that I wanted to create. And you know when I found my way into it and I had to find my own way into it because my background in making films obviously that's like a very, very different process to making a 90 second social media video and being able to make several of them, you know, in a week period. So it took me several years to get to the place where it's now as easy for me to put together a reel as it used to be to put together a caption and a photo a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1: 26:26

So knowing that if you know there are strategies and there are ways that you want to be building your business that you're currently not good at it doesn't mean that you have to be good at it already to choose it as your strategy. I think you can find that balance of what's accessible to me now and what's the vision. What are the skills that I really desire to build out, and those are always going to be the ideas that just never go away. You know, I think I resisted it for a couple of years and I was like you know what I'm so bored of listening to myself negotiate with myself about just writing some fricking reels. And I'm going to do it, and I'm just.

Speaker 1: 27:00

You know, I had to have a conversation with my coach and I had to have her speak the words to me. Maybe you just need to give yourself some more time to figure this out. Like actual time on my calendar and, as is always the case with things that we resist, you know it took like 45 minutes instead of 20 minutes for me to create a post or something like that. In my head. It felt like it was going to take 10 hours. So whatever's coming up for you around this conversation, pay attention to it, give yourself a little bit of extra time to explore. You know, just play, see what it might look like to create at that new level or in that new way that you're really feeling called to step into. And here's the truth content strategy, social media strategy, your specific corner of your industry, whatever that is, it's always going to be changing. So it's not the same as it was. There's always going to be a new way. There's going to be a new challenge, like we're going to be asked to evolve, especially with the rate that technology is constantly evolving. So this brings me to my last and final most important point. Me to my last and final most important point, which is mindset, mindset, mindset and the mindset of self-compassion and the mindset that puts you in the highest possible level of performance that you can bring today right.

Speaker 1: 28:22

This is not about perfection. This is not about getting everything right at all. This is about being willing to be messy, being willing to be uncomfortable. This is about being willing to be messy, being willing to be uncomfortable, being willing to see everything as a win, being willing to be your absolute greatest champion every single step of the way, because that's ultimately what's going to make it most fun for you, and I'm so glad I learned that lesson early on to really indoctrinate myself into radical celebration of myself, radical celebration of every single thing I do every single day. To see it all as evidence that it's working, that it's adding up, to see everything as a reason why I am going to succeed and get to my goals. Because that's a choice we have every day. We can choose the reason why it's not working. We can choose to wallow, we can choose to complain, we can choose to look at everything that's wrong or we can choose the contrary.

Speaker 1: 29:15

So, having that consistent, non-negotiable practice and I've had times where I got complacent and I dipped out of my mindset practice and did that affect my results Abso-fucking-lutely so don't do it. Don't get complacent. You know all the cliches that you hear all the time beginner's mindset every freaking day. Do your mindset work, no excuses, use my money flossing six minutes a day and if you don't know what that is, go and read my book and go and watch the first live stream on my sarah mcmagic instagram where I explain what that is. So those are the things that have kept me going over these past seven years and kept me not only going but having the best time doing it and continuing to grow and figure it out.

Speaker 1: 30:00

And I'm so excited about what's coming next. I'm so excited about my next chapter, continuing to grow my brand, continuing to share my book with more people. I'm going to create my audiobook next year and I'm really excited for my next writing project. I'm not sure which one I'm going to officially dive into next. I'm going to wait till the audio book's done. But stay tuned for more fun, more creative adventures in business and money.

Speaker 1: 30:25

And for those of you who know that content is something that you need ongoing support with, like we all do, I'm very excited to announce I'm officially launching my next mastermind. It's going to be brand new and we're going to be focused on content creation, with content creation workshops, using your astrology to inspire you, keep you aligned, keep you focused on your most compatible clients, have the most fun doing it, really developing self, compassion for your challenges and to purposefully lean into your strengths. That's going to open up cashflow and impact in your brand storytelling and in your business. So DM me the word mastermind if you want first dibs on early access, early bird pricing. I'm so, so, so excited.

Speaker 1: 31:08

We'll officially be joining uh joining starting in January, and please go and leave a review of the show on iTunes. Take a screen grab, email it to fun at with Sarah Mac dot com and you will be entered into a contest to win a one on one coaching session with me. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. Please share this episode on social media and tag me Sarah Mac magic or creative magic club with your biggest takeaways. Please share it with people who you know would benefit. I'm sending you so much love and I'll see you next week. Bye. For more inspirational content, head over to my website with Sarah maccom and please support the show by liking, commenting and subscribing.