Hi friend 👋

A few months ago in Spain, I was sitting at dinner and genuinely asked myself, am I slacking? Like, is this two-hour dinner appropriate?

And nothing was even wrong. I'd been doing my best work before my team came online, nobody was pinging me, and I was getting the exact same amount done in a lot less time. But instead of enjoying that, I went back and double checked my work to make sure nothing had slipped and nobody on my team could feel a difference, and of course nobody could. I was just sitting in Spain, living the exact life I moved there for, trying to figure out if I was allowed to have it 😂

And I have a feeling I'm not the only one who does this. So when I ask what you want from your creator business, I'm asking about a lot more than your next revenue goal. I want to know what you'd actually do with more time, and whether your business is giving you any of it.

That doesn't mean every task has to be your favorite thing, because some work is just work. But before we start planning how to do more of it, I want us to look at which parts you'd actually want to do again.

There's an exercise I use in Creator Business Therapy that starts with your last 30 days of content, sponsored and organic. You already know which posts performed. What I want to know is which ones you actually enjoyed making, and which ones just felt like work.

Pull up your last 30 days of content, and next to each post, write down what you liked about making it and what you'd rather not do again.

Include the sponsored posts too, because getting paid for something doesn't mean it can't also be fun.

And when you get to one you hated, I want you to be annoyingly specific with me for a minute. What part did you hate? Was it the hours you spent figuring out how the product worked? Was it chasing feedback? Was it changing things you thought were already done?

Those are really different problems, and I wouldn't give you the same advice for them. You might love the research and the experimenting and the actual making of the thing, and what you really dread is everything that happens between sending the draft and getting it approved. I don't want you deciding you hate making videos when what you actually hate is managing revisions.

Sometimes it goes the other way, too. I was on a call with a creator recently who told me she loves building out custom workflows, which honestly surprised me, because that's usually one of the things creators hate the most. That's exactly the kind of thing you'd never figure out from your analytics.

For the posts you wouldn't want to repeat, try finishing this sentence:

"I'd do this again if ______."

If your answer is "someone else handled the back-and-forth," then we have something to work with. But if you had the time, the support and the freedom to do it your way and you still wouldn't want to, that's a different conversation.

And give the good ones the same attention. "That was fun" is a start, but why was it fun? Did you love teaching something? Getting to try a product? Having room to follow an idea you were curious about? We're looking for what you want more of too, because otherwise we could get really good at taking things off your plate without ever making room for the stuff you actually miss.

Pick one thing you want more room for, and then look at what would need to change for you to actually have that time.

If you miss making content that isn't tied to a brand brief, please don't just add it on top of a week that's already full. Could you take one fewer campaign? Could someone else handle the back-and-forth that keeps eating your writing time?

And yes, we do have to look at the money.

If you need that campaign to pay your bills, I'm not telling you to drop it because you'd rather be doing something else. It just means we need a plan, either for replacing that income or for changing how you deliver the work.

Knowing you want something to change doesn't mean you have to change all of it tomorrow. But you do need to tell the people helping you run the business. When that creator told me what she loved, my first question was, does your manager know that about you? Because your manager might be working really hard to bring you more of something you've quietly decided you want less of, and you have to give them the ammunition.

That conversation could sound something like:

"I want more time for my own content next month. Can we work out how many campaigns I can take on without losing that?"

Now they know what you're actually trying to do, and they can help you choose, instead of bringing you every opportunity and leaving you to feel guilty about every no.

By the end of this, I'd love for you to have one thing you're making room for, and one thing you're changing to make that possible.

If you want somewhere to actually sit down and do this, we made you a little tool for it. It's called The Happiness Budget, and it walks you through what you enjoy, what keeps eating your time, and the one trade you want to try next month. And just so you know, your answers stay with you. Nothing gets sent to me or my team, so you can be completely honest (especially about the posts you hated 😉).

Make room for me →

And the thing you're making room for doesn't have to turn into another offer or channel or revenue stream.

A two-hour dinner is also an option. Apparently I needed that reminder too 😂

Talk soon,

Tara