So you’ve been showing up online every single day like the gurus told you to, sometimes twice a day, sometimes even three times per day.
You’ve used your trending music, your carousels are the latest Canva hype, and your LinkedIn posts are scheduled in advance because you’re so organised.

But The thing is, you’ve not landed a single new client.
Not one booking, no one sale.
But hey, at least you’re feeding the algorithm, right?
Posting every day is not a strategy.

It’s a hamster wheel.
An addictive one, but a futile 1.
And today’s episode is about busting the myth that if you just post more, your business will magically grow.
And I’ll show you why this thinking is broken and how to create content that actually convert.

Hello and welcome to Sniffing Out the Bullshit, a podcast for ambitious entrepreneurs who want help wading their way through the bullshit jungle of entrepreneurship.
And then the tools, skills, and mindset that actually required for success.
I’m your host, Sabrina Chevannes The No Bullshit entrepreneur.

For years, the biggest social media advice we’ve been told is be consistent.
Show up every day, document, don’t create.
And I’m pretty sure Gary Vee said it once and then all the hustle Bros just turned it into some kind of religion and that every content coach on Instagram is preaching.

If you’re not posting daily you’re basically invisible.
And Oh my God it’s so annoying and it’s caused so much stress and pain for so many people.
And sure, showing up definitely matters, but not in the way you think.
It’s nothing to do with the algorithm.

It’s because practice actually builds skill.
With every post that you do, you should be learning something.
You collect data from how your audience reacts to your content and then you know what they want to see more of, what they want to talk about, and inevitably how you should be positioning your services or your product depending on what your business is.

And that’s what your content should be about.
But because of all the damn algorithm posts that we currently seem to see, we seem to be more connected with the vanity metric side of things.
But The thing is, views don’t equal leads and followers don’t equal sales.

And a viral post does not more often not create a full client pipeline.
It usually just cause headaches.
And the algorithm isn’t your friend that you get to know and get to know what it wants so you can help you.

It’s a machine.
And if you don’t have a plan for where all that attention goes, it’s just noise.
And look, I’ve been there myself.
I’ve totally felt the need to pose every single day.
And in fact, at some point, I was at the place where I’d feel like it was a complete disaster if I forgot to post one day, I’d be like, Oh my God, so the algorithm’s going to punish me now.

I genuinely felt that way because that’s the narrative online.
It’s like you’ve lost your Duolingo streak and you have to start all the way back at day one or something.
Even the thought of that quickly out.
So, you know, I was just showing up every single day and not getting anywhere.

Enough business that to justify the time that I spent online.

And that’s what people don’t realize.
You see, it’s not just about whether the leads come in, because I got leads coming in, but it’s actually more about how much time you spend collecting those leads and whether there’s a more effective way to do that.
Because your CPA or your cost per acquisition can work out very expensive if you use your hourly wage to count your social media hours.

Because I, I was posting quality content, right?
I don’t do trends or recycle the people’s posts.
All my stuff is a visual content and I often do video content, which takes time to make right clips on this podcast, for example, or no bullshit talks, my other podcasts.

And you know, I, I make those and, or I share articles that I’ve written and researched, like from scratch, I do opinion pieces and I create carousels which I personally design like custom design or my team helps me design, not a template.

And I personally create all the content in those carousels with tonnes of advice and stuff.
So my shit takes time to create because I really, really want to provide value to my audience.
But The thing is, because my content is created for humans, my genuine audience, right?

It’s not created in a particular way that will go viral because it doesn’t provide that damn engagement bait that AI and all these templates seem to do.
And so even though I know that the right people will love my content, it’s much harder to get to the right people.

And so I totally get why so many people get frustrated with this because I spent all that time creating good quality content and it only reaches 1000 people.
And meanwhile you see all the gurus talking about their 50K reach on their posts even though they basically just as like wrote something generic.

They wrote 5 words and it’s semi inspirational and, and it just goes viral.
Like you’re just like what?
But let me break down these numbers for a moment.
Right?
1000 people.
So if you were asked to speak on stage at an event in front of 1000 people who were all there to listen to you and they were your target audience, you’d think that was amazing, right?

Because it is.
So why is it different on social media?
Like if you actually curate your audience properly, and then you make sure your content is done properly so that you are always in front of the right people and your posts are designed intentionally to get business, just as you would when you’re creating your keynote.

And surely this is a win. 1000 people?
Do you really need 1000 people on every single post to be able to convert?
And if you do, then your content isn’t good enough, your conversion rates poor.
And that’s what you need to be working on, not the actual numbers.

It’s unfortunately right.
This is just not how people think, because we’re trained to think that reaching only 1000 people is bad.
And we know logically surely, that reach does not equal results.
But psychologically, somehow we are wired to chase it anyway.

And according to Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke, our brains become addicted to the anticipation of reward, not actually to the reward itself.
So every time we post and we check views, comments or reach, we’re getting micro doses of dopamine and it becomes compulsive.

Anna actually says the compulsion to seek likes, followers or reactions light up the same reward pathways in the brain as gambling.
Now it’s funny because the same people preaching the stuff about the algorithm are often the same people who are doing the whole kindness as virtue thing and, and saying, oh, you know, gambling and casinos are bad people.

But it’s you’re just encouraging that same behaviour and actually throwing your money at content and generating social media and outsourcing to editors and all that sort of stuff.
That’s also gambling if you don’t have a strategy.

So what is the difference?
So knowing all this, it totally explains why you behave in certain ways when you’re consistently posting every day.
You feel restless when you haven’t posted, you refresh your analytics obsessively, and then you feel less worthy when a post underperforms, right?

Because even though you’re a founder, a rational adult who understands business metrics, this emotional loop is really powerful.
So let me give you some more numbers so we can put this into perspective.
And when I say numbers and perspective right here, I mean money.

So if your founder charging £100 an hour, let’s say for simple maths and you’re spending just 10 hours a week, again, simple maths making content that doesn’t convert, that’s basically £1000 a week loss because you’re not converting.

And you spent those 10 hours, £100 an hour, you’re making a grand a week loss.
That’s 4 grand a month.
And I’ve only suggested 10 hours a week here, right?
So you’ve got to add up all the time you’re spending writing posts, creating the graphics or videos, engaging with those posts because Oh my God, like if you’re not constantly engaging, then the algorithm’s going to hate you even more, etcetera.

And let alone the research and everything else.
And I haven’t even counted, you know, people you’re hiring to help you with this 10 hours a week.
I’ve, I’ve suggested that.
I think that’s quite reasonable.
And I totally get why people outsource their content because of this, right?

It makes sense.
But for me, that only works if you’ve got a business that’s not personal at all.
It doesn’t require that personal touch because I feel like you need that personal touch in most of the service businesses especially.
It’s like you need to have it where you can be completely detached from your audience or, and you just need to push out your products, right?

Because if you’re outsourcing your engagement and things like that, then that’s not you building a rapport with your audience, which most of the time you do need in a lot of these businesses or you, if you don’t care about how often does that see a call at all, you can totally do that too, right?

But you know, if you’re in a business like mine, like I am, I believe all about genuine relationships.
And I work 1:00 to 1:00 with people, right?
So I need to have every single conversation in my comment section and in my DMS because I need to understand who I’m talking to and what their pain points are.

And like, if someone then comes to me, I need to know all our previous conversations and, and you know, remember what we talked about our discussions.
Because if it’s like a bloody BA doing that for me, I’ve got no prime relationship.
If I jump on a call with them, it’s going to be distant.
It’s going to be weird.
And I’m not going to close that call.

And that’s what people don’t realize.
I jump on the sales calls.
I’m like, oh, I’m not to do anything beforehand, but you’re not going to close.
And even if somehow you managed to close miraculously because they bought into your content, that relationship is going to die down quickly if you haven’t bothered building up a little relationship.

So I personally feel like I have to be doing all the work here, which is means I have to be really strategic about it.
And it makes me think about this quote from Cal Newport’s Deep work, right, is where he says clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

So the algorithm may push volume, but your business likely needs clarity.
And so you don’t need 1000 people liking your posts.
You need 3 of the right people to send a message or Click to your offer.

And that’s what helps you kind of work out what you need to do and what you don’t need to be doing, what you could be cutting out of your posting schedule.

So I guess the question is, how do you make that happen?
Let me just have my coffee and help you with that.
All right.
So in fact, you, you might be reluctant to take advice off me when when I’m talking about this because you probably see me everywhere.

I look like I am creating content every day.
And So what am I meant to know on this?
Like bloody hell.
Well, The thing is I have been doing this for bloody years and I have processes in place that do allow me to create multiple pieces of content every single day without burning out.

But most people are not there yet and I can happily help people if they are at that point and they want to know how to step it up.
But.
And The thing is like I’m actually converting for my content for starters.
So even when I don’t pace that often and I decide to take a bit of a break, I actually still convert.

So this is a great place to be and it’s taken me years to get here, to be fair.
So I thought I’d let you know what I do to get a positive RIMO content.
And there’s a framework that I use with my clients and myself when I’m building a content strategy that’s designed to actually sell.

Not go viral, not stroke an ego, but sell.
So here it is.
The first part is to know is that strategy starts with audience intent not your idea bank.

Because I know everyone says just post what you know, but what you know and what your audience needs to hear to move closer to buying are often 2 very different things.
So before you start to come up with ideas and create your content, just ask yourself what mindset shift or piece of information does someone need to trust me to need me or to pay me?

Because that’s the starting point to everything.
And #2 is that every post must connect to a goal on your buyer journey.
And if you don’t need your buyer journey, get to get back and understand your buyer journey first.

You’ll probably be listening to this and you’ll start to realize there’s a lot of holes.
And I think this is the thing when people just kind of just delve in, there’s a lot of holes.
So not every post needs to sell, but it does need to earn its place in your content calendar and not just be fun.

Ask yourself, is this piece of content helping people discover me?
Is it building trust?
Is it positioning my offer?
Is it overcoming objections?
Was it nudging them towards a conversion?

And if it’s not doing at least one of these, then just delete it.
It’s just noise.
So #3 I’d say content is leverage, not labour.
So if you’re grinding out daily posts with no Evergreen system, then you’re just on that damn hamster wheel again.

Now I believe that every founder needs some kind of hybrid model.
When I say that hybrid model, it’s a combo of two different types of posts.
I’d say you need your Evergreen posts, which are your high performing pieces that bring in traffic or leads consistently over time.

So Evergreen means it doesn’t like age really consistently does stuff.
So that’s your SEO work.
You know, YouTube has great shelf life blog posts, your newsletters, signature carousels, for example.
And then on the other hand, you have your real time content that connects and engages people.

So that’s your LinkedIn post, your reels or stories, right?
And I’d say you should be spending lots of time on the former and making sure you have a smart repurposing strategy for the latter.
And this is how you scale visibility without scaling your hours.

And I was reading Hubspot’s latest data marketing report, right?
And they actually said that the most successful creators repurpose each of each piece of content in actually 3 to 5 formats.
And I thought that was crazy, but actually it’s the method that I, I’m starting to do now.

Like you’ll start to notice that I am actually picking a theme every week.
And I am essentially doing a theme and I’m creating, for example, this, this podcast.
And essentially it’s going to be then a blog post, a YouTube video like then then it’s going to be reels.

It’s going to be a LinkedIn post and sub stack articles.
You know, I’ve always lacked in my repurposing strategy before because I just love creating new content, but it’s a lot of effort as you know, and I just didn’t see the ROI inconsistently doing new stuff when only a team presentation of my audience had usually seen that previous stuff anyway.

So I’m going for this like, you know, theme per week and essentially repurposing.
We’re not repurposing.
I am creating different content on each platform.
But, you know, when you’re talking about the same sort of topic, it comes in the post, and I want to see how it goes.
And I’ll report back in a few weeks and let you know.

But, you know, lots of these people just have one thing and then repurpose it.
So it definitely saves a lot of time.
And our #4 I’d say is distribution is more important than creation itself.
Because I believe that the best content in the world means nothing if no one’s going to see it, right?

So which is why everyone cries about not reaching people, but you want the right people to see him.
And I think this is also where it comes in.
Like if you’re spending two hours writing a post and then only two minutes distributing it, then you’re doing it backwards because distribution shouldn’t be about just hitting post.

Well, we’re still scheduling it a week in advance, forgetting about it.
Instead, it should really mean sharing with your mailing list, putting on medium or sub stack or YouTube.
You know, another platform that works, tagging relevant people into your post.
Relevant people not spamming top creators to get their reach.

Following up with people who engaged previously with your posts and and sending them the stuff that you think might work.
Turning the topic into a lead magnet, or using that post as a launchpad for conversation.
So strategic distribution is how you multiply visibility, not just pray to the algorithm gods that you make it go viral.

Which never usually leads to anything good anyway, right?
And then #5-A day is feedback loops matter more than frequency because posting every day without even checking what works is basically just content diarrhoea, right?

You don’t need to be posting more.
However, you do need to be listening harder.
So ask yourself, what are people actually engaging with?
Where are the drop offs?
What’s converting?
Who’s D Ming you and why?

Those are the questions that should guide your next post, not a random free content calendar template that you’ve downloaded from someone else who’s stuck in a hamster wheel but has great vanity metrics for self validation.

So here’s what I want you to remember from this episode.
You do not need to be a content machine to build a successful business, but you do need to be a clear communicator with a compelling offer.
Because most of the founders I work with, they’re not failing or feeling they’re failing because their content isn’t good.

They’re usually not getting the results they want because they’re using content to compensate for their lack of clarity.
So let me say this again, They’re posting every day to try and get more visibility when what they actually need is more focus.

Because clarity is what actually converts.
Consistency doesn’t, at least not on its own.
And I don’t know if you’ve read the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.
It’s great book, but it explains this curse of knowledge, right?

Basically, like once you know something deeply, you then struggle to communicate it simply.
And that’s at what I see the trap that most founders are falling into with their content.
They over explain, they over post and they overdo.

But the brands that grow, they simplify, they identify by one problem they solve and they speak directly to the people who need that solved and then they back off the rest.
And that’s why some of us get annoyed when we see basic content doing well.

But sometimes that’s what works and that’s what we should be doing.
We want to create educational content.
I know from me, I don’t like that stuff.
I think it’s too basic.
So I’m obviously attracting of small people who happily have content like this, but sometimes we need to just break it down even further.

I know that I am working on that myself.
Because do you know what?
Constantly creating content without a good system can actually lead to cognitive burnout.
Because I’ve often created the Harvard’s Business Review article on decision fatigue, because it shows that every additional choice we make in the day, even choosing what content to post, reduces our willpower and performance elsewhere.

And if you’re a founder, you need the energy elsewhere.
You’re not a content creator first, remember, you’re CEO.
So you’ve got to start acting like one.
You’ve got to protect your time.
Make fewer, higher leverage decisions.
And that includes making fewer, higher leverage posts.

So as I mentioned earlier, if you use my framework to be strategic with your content, you’re going to start seeing much better results.
You’ll get more leads and somewhat more importantly, you’ll feel less stress and less pressure and you’ll gain back so much more time.

So remember, clarify your positioning, which means nail your audience, your offer, and your POV.
You need to build a high converting content engine, which we mean I’d say like 1 newsletter, one podcast, one blog or one on YouTube.

Pick your long form lane and then repurpose that.
So you want to use short form to drive traffic, but not to prove your consistency because your goal isn’t to please the algorithm is to prime your leads, right?

And then I’d say remember to measure what actually matters.
So that means conversions, you’re say actual sales or even conversations that you’re create Content creates, not likes.
Because if you went down to posting three times a week, but you signed clients on it, that’s way better than 30 days of consistent content that burns you out and convert to no one.

So if you’re listening to this and you’ve felt like you’re failing because you’re not posting every single day, you’re not like you’re just playing the wrong game.
This isn’t a race to who can create the most reels.
It’s not about proving that you’re always showing up.
It’s about showing up when it matters and with purpose.

So please, let go of the streak, let go of your guilt, and definitely let go of that damn guru’s rule book.
And instead, write your own strategy.
And now that I’ve hopefully got that message through to you, here’s what I want you to do today.

I want you to go back through your last 10 posts.
How many of them had a clear job?
How many directly helped your ideal customer take one step closer to hiring you?
If it’s less than half, it’s time for a new plan.

And if you’re ready to stop churning out content for the algorithm and start creating with intention, this is your permission slip.
Because you’re not lazy for posting less, you’re smart for posting strategically.
So please, drop me  a dm or tag me on socials.

I’d love to see your most strategic piece of content or your biggest posting without a plan.
Horror Story, whatever works.
I hope you found today’s episode useful.
Until next week, please keep sniffing at the bullshit.