I Am That Content Creator Podcast

Ep #129 You Can Build A Business That Still Works When You Can’t Show Up

• Kristen Werner & Mia Steel • Episode 129

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You know that feeling when you open your phone to create… and instead you get hit with dread, brain fog, and a scroll of bad news that makes your work feel pointless? Mia gets real about falling off the content wagon for months, what an ADHD slump actually looks like behind the scenes, and why forcing “consistency” can make everything worse.

We unpack what helps when you’re juggling executive dysfunction, rejection sensitivity, school holidays, life, and the hormone chaos of perimenopause. Rather than pushing out content for the sake of it, we talk about building safety nets that keep your business stable: low-budget paid ads that bring in leads while you’re offline, tracking your cycle to plan around your best days, and designing offers with monthly recurring revenue so income doesn’t crash every time life gets loud. We also make the case for content that lasts longer than 24 hours, like podcasts and SEO blog posts, so your work compounds instead of disappearing overnight.

Then we dive into AI for neurodivergent entrepreneurs, including how we use a Notion “second brain” to store our voice, frameworks, links, workflows and brain dumps so tools like Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT can produce content that actually sounds like us. We share how a blogging agent can create weekly posts, support SEO, and help you show up even when you can’t, plus the ethics: human-in-the-loop reviews, disclosure, governance, and mindful use.

If you’re ready to stop relying on motivation and start relying on systems, hit play, subscribe, and share this with a mate who’s stuck in a content funk. After listening, what’s one system you want to build first?

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Welcome And What We Stand For

SPEAKER_00

Are you ready to master the art of creating content that converts? Hey, I'm Mia, a mum of two, who went from being a burnt-out ambo to six-figure content creator in less than a year. All while now beginning a late ADHD diagnosis. And I'm Kristen, also a mum of two, and a former corporate branding queen to an entrepreneur. My dyslexic brain sees marketing very differently, and that's my superpower. And together we're showing women like you how to master video marketing and create content that generates income. Whether you're just starting out or ready to scale, we are breaking down everything from landing brand deals to building your own empire. Welcome to I Am That Content Creator Podcast, where we turn scroll-stopping content into serious income. No filters, no bluff. Just real strategies from two neurodivergent mums who get it. So let's turn your phone into a video marketing machine. And let's go! Let's go!

Mia’s ADHD Content Funk

SPEAKER_01

Guys are professional time. Okay, there's no control done. What the hell is going on? My name is Mia, and I am an entrepreneur who has a podcast who hasn't gotten on and recorded a podcast in months. Thank you to my business partner, Kristen, who obviously loves podcasting, because let's just face it, she's a bit of a yapper and I'm not, but she has held the fort for I Am That Content Creator podcast for weeks because I have just been in one of those ADHD funks. I have had massive content blocks. I don't even know what's going on. Usually I'm the one that is posting on TikTok three times a day, every single day without fail, showing up for the podcast once a week. I don't, I just think it's just been a combination of ADHD burnout, school holidays, family stuff. We moved house. It's just, I just feel like things have just been piling on and I have not been prioritizing any form of content. I think I'm gonna say, I think it started when all of that stuff started happening with the war and Trump. And I was getting so much negative stuff on my podcast, on my TikTok feed, and I just felt, I just wanted to disconnect from content basically, because I just felt like every time I opened my phone, there was bad news, bombings, whatever else was going on. And I just, I just got into this. I don't know, it's hard to explain. I feel like some people would know what I'm talking about, but just this real disconnect, just thinking, why, why am I even doing this? Like people are dying, the world's gone to shit, who cares what you know I've got to say on TikTok or the podcast. And I just went into this real funk and then I got out of a rhythm. And it is so true what they say about content is just a muscle. You've just got to work it constantly. And when you stop doing it for a while, it's really hard to get back into. And so I've been working on the back end of the business, doing lots of things with AI. I've just been doing a lot of the busy work and I haven't really fronted in content for a while. So I'm trying to get back into it. I've jumped on here. Kristen's still on holidays with her kids. So I thought, you know what, fuck it. I'm just gonna jump on, record a podcast, see what comes out of my mouth, and yeah, let's see what has been going on in me as world for the last, I don't know, months, months,

Staying Consistent Through Burnout

SPEAKER_01

months, months. So I had this idea of talking to you guys about AI today because I've been building some pretty freaking cool things in the background that I will share on this episode. But I think I'm gonna start this episode with how the fuck do you stay consistent with your content when you have ADHD, when you have rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, when you have executive dysfunction, when you have hormones, perimenopause, burnout. Like I just feel like half the time the battle with content and running a business is trying to figure out your hormone cycle. You know, you'll have three or four days in the month where you're just an ideas machine and you're ready to go and launch, I don't know, a 500 people in-person event. And then the next week you can't even get yourself off the couch. So how do you navigate this? And I'm finding, well, we've all we've always been banging on about this as business owners with ADHD and kids and all the rest of it, is running paid ads. We've been running ads, you know, this whole entire school holidays. So we've had leads piling in this whole entire time. Our leads have been quite cheap, which is amazing. We've got a good ad running. So that has taken the pressure off of just constantly having an ad running in the background. You don't have to spend, you know, hundreds of dollars a day on ads, but just a simple, you could just be doing $5 a day, $10 a day. If the ad's working well and people are signing up or even perhaps purchasing your offers, having that ad running in the background is an absolute lifesaver, especially when you just can't show up on content consistently. Cause let's face it, it's sometimes it is hard. And, you know, the last few months have been testament to that for me. I've just, I just haven't been able to show up. And I'm not depressed. I'm not, you know, in a massive burnout. I I just I don't know what it is. I just don't know what it is. And I need to get back into that groove of where it's feeling comfortable to just pick up my phone and post a piece of content. Because this has happened to me before when I find content really easily, it's flowing. I pick up my phone, I post, and then I'll go through these big slumps where I just can't show up. So running paid ads in the background is super, super helpful when you just can't show up. Another great thing is, well, tracking your cycle as well. So you can sort of tell, okay, I'm not just a big bag of lazy, you know, fried potatoes on the couch. My hormones are actually, you know, having an input in my physical ability to do things, especially if you're in your 40s like we are now, this perimenopause thing, I tell you what, hits you like a bag of shit. And it's it just feels like everything is overwhelming. So being kind to yourself and understanding that hormones do play a really big part in how you function. And I look back on, you know, when I had a full-time job, I'm like, how did I do that? I just, I just had to force myself to show up. And that wasn't good for my mental health. It wasn't good for anything. So going easy on yourself and just saying, you know what, this week my hormones are just completely out of whack. I've got my ads running in the background. I've got a few drafts in my, you know, drafts folder. I've got some other passive income. Hopefully, you're working on that with your monthly recurring revenue, which is what we bang on all about all the time about, especially as an ADHD entrepreneur, having that money coming in every month for when you are burning out is super, super helpful. But just going easy on yourself. You know, I haven't beat myself up about my whole content. Uh, what do you call it? Falling off the horse with my content recently because I know that I need to prioritize my mental health. I need to be in the right frame of mind for my content. There's no point in posting content just for the sake of it. Like it, it's not gonna help you, it's not gonna help your business, and it's just gonna, you know, cause more trouble than anything. So going easy on yourself. And this is why me and Kristen bang on about monthly recurring revenue all the time, is because we can foresee what is gonna happen in our monthly cycle. We can foresee that school holidays is gonna affect our business or Christmas or, you know, our burnout or our spicy, shiny objects. We can foresee that because we have this awareness of how our brain works and we have built this brain first business to catch us when this sort of stuff happens. Because it's inevitable. It is inevitable. If we were selling a one-off course or one-off offer, our sales and our revenue would plummet every time, you know, school holidays is on or every time we need to take a break. So having that awareness, that self-awareness of how you work as a human being, as a woman, is really important too. So setting up things and systems inside your business to catch you when those things happen is paramount. And even things like when your kids are sick or when you're sick, or if you've got, you know, family shit going on that you have to deal with, having the monthly recurring revenue and having content systems that are long term, like our podcast, like our blog, which I'm gonna talk to you about in a minute, content mediums that have a lifespan longer than 24 hours, like your TikToks and like your Instagrams. So having a think about the bigger picture going forward is so, so important. If we didn't think about these things and I've just had like a three-month content burnout session, like we would have been screwed. We would have been absolutely screwed. So that's

Building Safety Nets With MRR

SPEAKER_01

one thing. And then the next thing is implementing AI into your business. Can I tell you that some of the systems that we have set up inside our business is not only taking the pressure off the executive dysfunction that we experience as like, oh my God, the inbox is full. Oh, I've got to do this, I've got to do that, I've got to, you know, write this email, I've got to do all the things. And then, you know, that's another thing that takes you away from creating the content because you're too busy on the back end doing all the admin stuff and all the stuff that you didn't sign up for a business, but you've got to, you've got to do. Using AI in an ethical way that actually helps you and your business and helps you to save time or create more time so you can, you know, get creative and do the things that you love is, I'm gonna say, one of the best things that has happened to me as a business owner in the last seven or eight years since I've been trying to run a business. Because for the first time in our lives, me and Kristen talk about this all the time, for the first time, there is something that works as quick as us or quicker than us, is able to articulate the thousand thoughts that we have every single day into really precise, nicely written pieces of work that came from our head, but have just been executed beautifully, that we just couldn't do ourselves. Because when you have ADHD, dyslexia, like our brains work so fast that we find it really hard to sit down and get it out in a way that people will understand. Because when you're trying to get it out on paper or on the screen, the thoughts just come out too fast and everything just seems to come out chaotically.

Why AI Changes Everything

SPEAKER_01

So when you put it into AI first and it helps to articulate your thoughts, it's it's a just been a game changer for us. And so what we've done in our business is we've created a second brain in Notion. If you haven't heard about a second brain in the AI world, come to one of our masterclasses. We're actually holding one this Friday. So this Friday, the 17th of July, we are having a masterclass where we're going to show you how to build your second brain inside Notion, which basically just acts as a second brain for your business. If you've got ADHD like us, I'm sure that all of your business stuff is all over the place. In Google Drives, on the desktop, in your notes app, in your head, on pieces of paper, or written down in, you know, one of your 17 notepads. It's all over the place. So when you're using AI, AI is not going to know where to grab all this stuff. And you're just going to be forever giving it context or pasting things in or changing things. But when you build a second brain that AI can tap into, all of a sudden everything is there. It knows who you are, your voice, your audience, your offers, everything about your business, your financials, your workflows, your SOPs, your links, your images, your branding, your everything lives in this second brain. And then it doesn't matter if you use Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT, all of these AI systems can plug into that second brain and start building new tools and assets from your second brain, not from random stuff that it's just pulling from anywhere. And I can imagine you've been the same. You might have said to Claude, can you please write me an email to my email list based on this, this, and this? And it'll write it. But it doesn't sound like you, it doesn't have any context about your business. And it, you're just gonna have to change it. So when you build the second brain, oh my God, it is just like a weight taken off your shoulders because everything lives inside this place that AI can just tap into. And we have systems set up. We actually have a brain dump system that's set up that goes into our second brain. So we will open Claude and we will brain dump our ideas, our thoughts, our feelings, just anything that we want. And it'll ship it to notion inside this brain dump folder or table. Claude kind of gets all the brain thoughts and organizes it all into different headings and lines and into this beautiful table where we can just go in and we can pull from that and create an email, create a podcast, create a blog, create a TikTok video based on these brain dumped ideas that we've just put in there on a whim when the thought comes to us.

Notion Second Brain Setup

SPEAKER_01

We voice note everything and it just goes into this second brain. And this is how we've set up our blogging agent. Once a week, it goes into our braindump ideas inside Notion, picks one, it creates a blog based on the braindumped idea, based on our frameworks, based on our IP, based on our offers, our audience. It pulls our graphics, our images, our branding, our affiliate links, everything. And it puts it into a weekly blog and pings us inside Slack every Monday morning and says, Hey girls, the blog's ready for you to look at. Go and review it. Tell me if you want any changes. And if you don't, I'll ship it live to the website. And so I go in, read the blog. Yep, perfect. Ship it live and it's live. And within two to three weeks of doing this, when our ranking on Google and AI Search has recommended us. I was playing around with it the other day and I was in Gemini, I think it was, and I was just pretending that I was looking for one of our keywords, AI tools for ADHD entrepreneurs. And what do you have it? AI recommended Hive Hub Collective, because I've set up our blog to be optimized. SEO, GEO, rank for specific keywords. It audits our blogs, it puts our blogs in a way that is easy for AI and Google to scrape. It has given me all the instructions to set up Google Search Console and all these beautiful things that I had no idea. And on the back end, because we build, we built our website in c using Claude Code. So our blog, Claude Code, does our blog. So on the back end, Claude's doing all the metadata, all the site mapping, all the all the jargon in the SEAO world that I'm no expert on. But all of a sudden, Claude is doing that for us and we're ranking really, really quickly. You know, during my content slump, Claude's been writing the blogs for us every week, writing our emails for us, doing, you know, cleaning up our folders, collecting testimonies, like doing these things that would just take us so bloody long to do. All of a sudden, it's on autopart. And when we've got this executive dysfunction and we can't bring ourselves to, let's face it, write a blog once a week, which is never gonna happen. All of a sudden, Claude has done it for us. And

Blogging Agent And SEO Wins

SPEAKER_01

the thing with AI is I know the conversation, I've seen it online, I I I can see both sides, AI slop. And you know, if I I I posted in a Facebook group talking about this blog and this blog agent, and half the comments were excited, show me how to do this, this is amazing, so good. And then the other side of the comments were AI slop, it's ruining the environment. How could you like so I understand both sides, but when you're using AI, there are ethical ways to use AI and there are unethical ways to use AI. You can use AI responsibly and you can use AI irresponsibly. You know, being aware of the environmental impacts is super, super important, you know, and putting some governance in place in your business. Like we don't generate AI videos, we don't try and deceive anyone, we don't use AI just for the sake of it, just you know, wasting tokens and all that sort of stuff. We and we have systems in place that anything that our agents build for us or create for us is always based on our ideas, our thoughts, our frameworks, our offers, our links, our content, our podcasts, our IP, our branding, everything that's ours. Basically, all it does is kind of just articulates, put things together, like with the blog. It writes the blog, but it's pulled from all of our sources, pulled from our ideas, pulled from places that we have given it permission to pull from. And there's always a human in the loop. Always. We're always checking it. Even on our blog, we have disclaimers. AI assisted us to write this blog. Like be honest about what AI has done for you or is doing for you. Where have you used AI? If you've got an AI-generated image, tag it and say this was made with AI. Like we're not here to deceive people. We're not here to make them think that, you know, we're this amazing blog writing expert and all of our blogs have been meticulously written word for word by us. No, they haven't. But in the big scheme of things, we're using our blog to help us get found, to help us get found on Google organically, so we can help more people. It's not slop, it's not blogs just for the sake of blogs. It's actual helpful information from our second brain. We've just used AI to quickly put it all together for us so we can spend more time, you know, helping our clients inside our membership or creating new offers or coming up with new frameworks. So there's good and bad ways to use AI. You know, we're in the frame of mind that as women, especially, using AI to help us articulate our ideas, do the admin that we have trouble doing, help us to organize our frantic, chaotic ideas. You know, we're using it in a way that's actually helpful for us. And we're not really ashamed of that. You know, we we have governance inside our business where we have safety nets, we have rules for our AI, we uh disclose AI content, you know, we don't put any sense of information into AI. You know, you've got to have these rules around it all for it to work properly and for you to use it ethically. And us as women, you know, there's a real, what's the word, concern that if women don't keep up with

Ethical AI And Clear Rules

SPEAKER_01

AI, there's a real possibility that we could be disadvantaged. You know, if if AI is dominated by the male race and females are refusing to use it, firstly, AI is getting trained on all of the male ideas and all the male ways of thinking and doing things, which is a little bit scary. And B, if we let the males take over in this AI era, we're gonna have to go back to relying on men because, you know, a lot of the jobs that are run by that women have could be replaced by AI. And so if you're not upskilling, if you're not understanding, if you're not implementing, yeah, there's a real chance that, you know, we'll get left behind and all of a sudden we're relying on men for our again. So I I totally get, you know, the argument that AI is ruining the planet and the water. And there's some real, real concerns on AI being misused, misused for bad. But I think we're at that time in reality where even if all of us say no, we're not using it, it's the big rigs. It's it's in everything, it's everywhere. It's almost inevitable that it's gonna happen. They're not gonna stop using AI because a bunch of us just said, no, I'm not using it. And, you know, there's AI has a way of being able to do good in the world, but also do evil. But if we can focus on the good, it's gonna, there's gonna be a better outcome. AI is helping with medical advancements, it's helping educate people that would never have been educated before. It is, you know, finding things out that perhaps humans wouldn't be able to do on their own. And so I prefer to look at the positives just because I feel like this tool is exciting and scary at the same time. But I feel like AI needs women in the space. It needs women within the tools, within the systems, helping people build it out, having opinions, implementing systems and rules and governance so that it is not used for evil. And the environmental impacts are real. They're absolutely real. But there are currently companies who are finding better ways to cool the data systems, better ways to, you know, save water. There are ways that you can use AI without having to rely on data centers. So running local AI tools on your desktop that don't, nothing leaves your desktop. So AI models like Olama, which everything just lives in your desktop. So all of your data and everything is stored on your desktop or on your, you know, your own GPU. Yes, you've got to have quite a bit of space on your computer to do that, but it's absolutely possible, especially if you're dealing with sensitive data that you don't want leaked on the internet. You can use programs like that where everything is just local. And so I understand both sides of the story with the whole AI debate. I constantly see it online. I'm constantly thinking on both sides. I'm not denying anything, that's for sure. But I think we can use AI responsibly without completely boycotting it. I mean, it's going to be very difficult to completely boycott it when it's in our smartphones, it's in our electric cars, it's in all of our, you know, platforms that we use every day anyway. But I think there's just ethical ways that you can use it. Only using it for things that actually move the needle, actually save you time, actually put out good content based on your ideas, your frameworks, not using it just to create, you know, I don't know, your color chart and use it to generate videos that are just for fun kind of things. And inside our business, I believe that AI is giving us more time to help more people, basically. And we're actually not re replacing anyone with AI. I mean, obviously it's me and business, uh, me and Kristen that are running the business. We've got our lovely VA Leah, and we're, you know, empowering her to use AI. We're not going to replace her with AI, and we're empowering our students to use AI to get the job done. Most of our members inside evolution. Are neurodivergent and do struggle with executive dysfunction, too many ideas, not being able to start. And so AI is this beautiful tool that just helps them get to the next step, helps them write their email, helps them brain-dump all their ideas so they can be articulated. And when you build this second brain, just inside notion, all of a sudden, you know, everything starts to work. And all the tools that you build with AI actually work. And you don't spend as much time tweaking them and wasting all your tokens redoing things because it's all based on everything that's inside your head or inside your business anyway. So you're saving a lot of time and effort and tokens doing it that way. And so back to the whole, you know, content slump that I've been in. During that time, we've had blogs written, you know, our podcasts are still getting downloads. Our money is still coming in every month because we've set up our business as a monthly recurring revenue system. So when, well, I'm not going to say if, because when you have these slumps using systems like this is just an absolute game changer. And so if you're interested in how to build your second brain, come to our workshop on Friday where there will be a replay if you can't come live. We weren't going to do replays, but every

Masterclass Invite And Memberships

SPEAKER_01

time we've done this workshop, people have emailed us and said, Oh my God, I need the replay. So we will send out a replay. If you're interested in building a blogging agent, like what I've explained, we can help you with that inside Hive AI. That's our monthly membership where we are helping business owners implement AI into their business. We've actually been into a few AI communities over the years. And although helpful, they have just been so completely overwhelming, so much information, so much tech talk, jargon. It's just been so overwhelming. So what we've done inside Hive AI is intentionally made it super, super simple on how to set everything up, how to do all the foundations, your scaffolding, your second brain properly, so that when you do go and build something like a blogging agent or a content agent or whatever it is you want to build, it just works seamlessly. It has rules, governance, your voice, it knows everything about your business. It just works. So if you're interested in building tools like that in a simple way without all the tech bro talk and everything, Hive AI is going to be your place to be. We meet twice a month. Once a month we have an AI build. This week we're doing the blogging agent build with our members. And then we have another QA session where you can come and ask us any of your questions about AI. We can, you know, problem solve through any issues that you're having as well. So come and join us in Hive AI. If that sounds like something you would like to do, that's a cancel anytime membership. And then obviously, we always have Evolution, which is our high-touch business group coaching program. Absolutely love it. The women there are just next level, just doing incredible things. We are so proud of them. And they inspire us as much as we inspire them. They're just so, so cool. And the things that they're doing are just, it's that whole saying, like we say this all the time. Fuck it, just try it. Just try it. And half the time, things happen that you just would not expect, you know? And it's things like you would never know if you didn't try. And I think when you're in a community with other women just doing the same sort of things as you and just closing their eyes and just jumping in, just going for it and then seeing the outcome, it is so inspiring. It just makes us want to do more as well, seeing what they're doing. So if you're interested in joining Evolution with us, please send us a DM or let us know, email us, and we'll be more than happy to invite you into that beautiful arena that we have built with these women. But in the meantime, I am going to go and post a TikTok, go and post an Instagram reel, get back into my content flow because, like I said in the beginning, it is like a muscle. If you don't use it, it gets weak, you get a bit tired, it doesn't feel right. But as soon as you get back into that motion of just posting, I know it'll just come back to me. I know it will. So that is what I'm gonna go do. And I'm not gonna beat myself up about not doing a podcast in months, not posting, you know, continuously, because I know that this will happen again. And I know that every tool and everything that I've set up inside my business is built for longevity, is built because I know this will happen. It is built because of my executive dysfunction, my burnout, my hormones, my children, my everything. So don't beat yourself up if you've been in the same slump as me. Let's get back on the bike, let's just keep going. Tomorrow is a new day. Who cares about yesterday? And I hope this podcast has, you know, helped you realize that it all happens to all of us. It really, really does. But setting up tools and systems inside your business to catch you when you fall on these times is super, super important. And this is all the things that we talk about inside our

Get Back On The Bike

SPEAKER_01

program. So we'd love to have you on board. But thanks for listening. Hopefully, you'll see me on the socials more. Uh, my kids just went back to school today. So that's one big reason why I've jumped on to do this podcast because I'm like, oh my God, I have the whole day without anyone interrupting me. Bless the Lord. But anyway, I will wrap it up now. Glad to be back on the pod. I'll see you on the socials. And like I said, don't beat yourself up if you are a potato on the couch for weeks. Just it happens to the rest of us. All right, peace out. Podcast. Absolutely. There's so many good ones, too.