What to Do When Marketing Feels Hard

Andrea Jones [00:00:00]:
If you're having one of those days where you wake up, you look at your to do list and you go, what if I just didn't? Same girl. Sometimes we just don't feel like marketing our businesses. It feels like, I don't know, trying to run a freaking marathon, but you got flip flops on. It's a struggle bus. And if you're like me in a season of your life where sometimes you just don't feel like marketing, today I'm gonna dive into the who, what, where, when, and how of it all. I've got some data and facts to back this up. Let's get into it. Before we do, a word from our sponsor.

Andrea Jones [00:00:36]:
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Andrea Jones [00:01:17]:
If you wanna get on the Riverside train, check it out today, the links in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA, D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Alright, y'all. Hi. Hello. Welcome to this episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm all about simpler, smarter marketing for busy people. And in today's episode, this one hits close to home because y'all, I have not felt like marketing for a long time. And a lot of the people that I work with actually feel like this permanently.

Andrea Jones [00:01:50]:
You know? Like, they come to me because they're like, Andrea, I don't wanna post on Instagram today. I don't wanna write that email. I don't wanna record a podcast. Even though I know it helps my business, I don't feel like it, quote, unquote. And especially if you're not tracking the data and the numbers behind it, sometimes it doesn't feel like anything is happening. And, let's talk about it because we're all here. I'll start off with a little bit of a personal share in this episode today. As y'all know, or maybe you don't, if this is your first episode, I'll clue you in to the fact that I have spent the last four years either being pregnant or having children or small babies.

Andrea Jones [00:02:31]:
K? So I have two kids. My oldest is three. My youngest is one. So basically, since 2021 yeah. 2021, I I got pregnant in July of twenty twenty one. I've been pregnant or having babies, and I'm tired, y'all. So my first kid, I did a whole series, like, how I prepped for my marketing, the aftermath of it all. And you can go back.

Andrea Jones [00:02:59]:
I'll put the links in the show notes of those two episodes. Y'all, I was glowing. Stunning. Especially pre baby, Andrea, I was like, oh, this is kinda hard, but I'm gonna go for it. My first baby, easy baby. It was great. It was lovely. I worked in fact, in 2022, I had my highest revenue year ever business.

Andrea Jones [00:03:17]:
We almost hit a million dollars that year. It was fantastic. It was fun time had by all. And then I got pregnant with my second baby, and life was like, Andrea. Let's just mix things up a little bit. I was like, okay. Cool. I'll just wait and see.

Andrea Jones [00:03:32]:
And, if y'all have been tracking along with me, I have made a lot of changes in my business in the past year, and that's because I am in the season of life where my brain is going to my babies. This is not something I expected. And especially with my second baby, she is like me, meaning she's needy and clingy, in the best possible way. I love her to death. And, also, it takes a lot of energy to care for that child. She just needs mama. She likes to be held and cuddled, whereas my first kid is, like, miss independent. She's actually like, no.

Andrea Jones [00:04:08]:
I I don't need you right now, which is great. Love that for her too. But it's hard. It's hard being a mom. And so a lot of the work that I've been doing over the past year is how do I take the marketing advice that I've been given over the years, marketing advice that I've practiced over the years, and streamline it into more mindful way? Hence, about a year ago to the date, I rebranded this podcast to be the Mindful Marketing Podcast to really talk about all of the things that I've learned and really apply it in a way that makes sense for you and for me. Because a lot of the people that I work with, even if you don't have small kids, you have busy lives. You maybe have chronic illness. You maybe have aging parents that you have to take care of.

Andrea Jones [00:04:52]:
Maybe you're going back to school or maybe you have a full time job and your business is kind of limited with the amount of time that you can put into it. And so a lot of the advice take someone like Gary v, for instance, who I love, I admire. I followed him for years. And, also, I am not Gary v. I do not have his energy level. K? I do not have his life set up. Okay? Like, he had a partner who, like, I think they're divorced now. But anyways, he had a partner who took care of the kids, and he was able to basically work nonstop all day and all night.

Andrea Jones [00:05:23]:
And he's the kind of person who says, yeah. I only sleep, like, five hours a day, and I'm fine. That's not me. I wake up exhausted after nine hours of sleep, y'all. And and I still go through my whole day. And, like, thankfully, both of my children sleep through the night, because otherwise, I don't know how I would survive. And I'm still over here struggle by saying, I don't I am not Gary v. I can never be him.

Andrea Jones [00:05:45]:
And so even though the advice that he gives in, like, a bubble, you go, sure. That could work. I can spend all day on social media. The reality is a lot of us have other demands that are more important than that. And the reality is we also are running our businesses. His business just happens to be social media, so easy for him to say to be on it all day long. Right? And so there is a different energy that goes into marketing your business when you don't feel like it, when you're maxed out, when you're at capacity. And I'm saying that.

Andrea Jones [00:06:17]:
I'm sharing my personal experience to to prove to you, hi. Yes. Hi. I'm here with you alongside of you. Top that off with, what the heck is happening in the world right now? Like, what is happening? I live in Canada, y'all. I'm from The US. Those of you who are in Canada or The US will fully understand right now what is happening. We just went through, like, another wacky election cycle, and y'all voted him in.

Andrea Jones [00:06:44]:
He's in charge. I'll leave it at that. The drama, the aftermath, these tariffs. I mean, the Canadian politics too. We we're in an election right now. At the time of recording, this is almost done, so we'll know who our new leader is. But I don't know who it is at the time of recording this. And y'all, Canada's our politics aren't supposed to be this dramatic.

Andrea Jones [00:07:05]:
Why is it so dramatic? It feels like we're in a US election cycle. And I moved to Canada because that well, because I, you know, I met my husband and fell in love and moved to Canada. But also, it's my understanding that Canadian politics isn't supposed to be this dramatic. So what is happening in the world right now? Right? And it's like all of that, you know, the chaos of our our day to day lives, the chaos of politically what's happening, the chaos of socially what's happening economically, what's happening, what's happening in our communities, existential dread. Okay? Where all of this is piling up and then, and then we have to go on Instagram and write cutesy little post that's like, oh, buy my stuff. Like, I'm not feeling it. I'm not feeling it. And so I wanna normalize that because it's not I think most people actually do feel this, and we we kind of ramp it up for social media, especially if, like, if like I said, you're you're going through all of this.

Andrea Jones [00:08:03]:
Not like, I feel like we're still reeling from the pandemic even though that was five years ago. It feels like there's been this shift that we're all feeling, and we can't go back to the before times. And so now I'm sitting here recording this podcast for you going, okay. We're here now. What do we do? And I think the first thing is just to acknowledge and name this situation. Like, be, like, really honest with yourself and say, this is the reality of what's happening. I just don't want you to be like me, where, you know, I I had my second baby. And for a while, I thought, I'll just wait it out.

Andrea Jones [00:08:39]:
I'll just wait it out, see what happens. I'm not feeling great. My baby needs me. My business, I don't even have the time and energy for it. So if you've been listening, I did sell off a big portion of my business, most of it. My agency, I sold off my agency. I really shrank down my available hours, and even more recently, cut that back even more. I did things like quietly close the retreat that I'm hosting, and postpone that indefinitely.

Andrea Jones [00:09:08]:
There's a lot of changes that I've made, now. But for a while, I just kept pushing forward going, it'll it'll get better soon. It'll all feel better soon. I'm just gonna keep pushing forward. And that, my friends, is what leads to burnout. And I did. I burned out. I ended up going to my doctor.

Andrea Jones [00:09:25]:
She said, Andrea, you have postpartum depression and anxiety. We need to get this sorted now. And I was like, okay. Cool. So I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, therapy, medication, meditation, daily walks, reduced work hours. Like, let's get this train back on the tracks. But what I wanna acknowledge in sharing this is that just because you are in this season of your life where things aren't, quote, unquote, the norm, that doesn't mean that you are lazy. It doesn't mean that you're a failure.

Andrea Jones [00:10:01]:
It doesn't mean that your business is doomed. It's just acknowledging where you are here now and today. Okay. This is what I'm feeling. This isn't how I normally am feeling, but I'm going to accept and acknowledge, and then we can move forward with the action steps from there. But I gotta you gotta accept where you are right here and right now in this season of your life. Inside of the Mindful Marketing Lab, we call this our winter season. And some of us, winter can last years.

Andrea Jones [00:10:30]:
Sometimes it can last days, weeks, months. For me right now, my winter season probably would be about a year since I had my baby. She's a year old now, but I didn't really know I was this deep into the winter season until about four months ago. So that acknowledgment period actually helped me move forward with a lot of my marketing because, otherwise, I was sitting here beating myself up trying to throw spaghetti at the wall because I felt like it's not working. K? So you may be there too. So what do we do? What do we do about all of this? Well, the first thing I wanna talk about is actually being available and being on all the time is one of the biggest myths of marketing. Right? And this is something that my friend Gary v, like I said, he doesn't know me, but he's my Internet friend. I have met up one time in person.

Andrea Jones [00:11:21]:
Anyways, I followed his his advice for years. And actually, when I started the Savvy Social podcast, now the Mindful Marketing podcast, one of my first episodes was about how I disagreed with some of his the stuff that he says because I actually soaked it up, tested it out for myself, for my clients, and actually found this to be true, which is posting less can actually get you more results. Okay? Posting less frequently can get you more results. Now I will say this, a lot of people talk about posting a lot. Okay? And I think there is some truth to it, but it's not what you think it is. So a lot of people, a lot of marketers talk about posting a lot. Take a if you take a course, for instance, on Instagram. Let's say you go to, like, Skillshare and you take a course on Instagram.

Andrea Jones [00:12:18]:
Something that they very consistently say is post every day or post three times a day or post five times a day. I once, watched a TikTok expert. I don't know if that's the right term, but this TikTok person say they post TikTok eight times a day. Okay? And I was like, eight times a day? Oh my gosh. Like, eight times a month, and I'm, like, patting myself on the back. Right? And I think that there's some truth to the frequency in that. In that, you're actually building a skill set. K? So I don't think it's the content itself that makes posting eight times a day valuable.

Andrea Jones [00:12:56]:
I think if you make TikTok your full time job and you wanna post eight times a day on TikTok and that's your only thing that you do, you really hone in a skill set that is TikTok like, TikTok focused content. And I do think there's some value to that if you wanna be a TikTok creator. Right? Like, let's say you wanna be a TikTok influencer. Your entire revenue model surrounds TikTok. Yes. Go for it. Post eight times a day. Sure.

Andrea Jones [00:13:20]:
For business owners, though, what will happen is if you post eight times a day and you're studying TikTok and you're creating content for TikTok, what happens is you're dependent on TikTok giving you money. And you're not actually building a business that is sustainable and has legs. Right? So all of these TikTok people now are having to backtrack because, TikTok may be banned. So the way that I teach marketing is we're going a step deeper than that. I'm not saying arbitrarily post on TikTok eight times a day. Sure. It could work for you. You build a skill set on TikTok.

Andrea Jones [00:13:56]:
The skill set I'm trying to help people build is marketing. K? So you can take that marketing skill set and apply it to any platform and any vertical and any medium and any style of content and any placement. Okay? The value in posting frequently is learning that specific platform for a lot of my people, though. The disadvantage of posting that frequently is that you are not actually running your business, my my friends, if you're posting on TikTok eight times a day. Okay? So I talk to real people, real hubids who have real lives, that real people, real hubids who have real lives do not have the time and capacity and energy to post on TikTok eight times a day. And in fact, if they try, they're going to get eight really crappy pieces of content that hardly mean anything, and they're going to fail. Okay? So I want you to think about this myth of of posting more frequently will get you more results. And instead, I want you to flip it on his head and think about how can you create content that, one, supports you and, two, supports your clients.

Andrea Jones [00:15:01]:
K? So the content that supports you, meaning you can create it fairly quickly and easily and low energy, and two, the content that actually supports your clients, not the algorithm. K? Not TikTok, not Instagram, not Facebook, but your clients. And this is the question that people get stumped on a lot of times. Like, yes, we can tweak it and optimize it for the platform, but the two more important questions are, can you create it and do your people wanna consume it? K? Once you answer those two questions, then, yes, we can talk about optimizing it and tweaking it and getting the best results. Right? But we gotta start with the foundations. It's not about posting frequency. It's about answering those two questions. Now I will say I do have data to back this up.

Andrea Jones [00:15:46]:
So there is a particular article that I I did a lot of studying on for this, this particular episode. There's two of them. One is, from columncontent.com, and then the other one is from axios.com. I also have a little bit from HBR as well. But that one is more theoretical, but I'll put it in the show notes as well. So the data behind this, this study done, this was done in 2024, and it found that 80% of people are now feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information that's online. K? 80% of people say, I'm so overwhelmed by the information online. So let's start there.

Andrea Jones [00:16:27]:
So when I think about people saying I need to create more content, that is not the answer. And especially when we think about AI, and we'll get to AI in a second, when we think about how much content there is online, we literally cannot consume all of it. Like, the collective human experience cannot consume the amount of content that's being created online. It's fascinating. Right? So we don't need more content. We need content that's more specific. K? So not more content, but more specific content. Also, reach is dropping because of this.

Andrea Jones [00:17:01]:
So when people say that, oh, Instagram reach has dropped. So the recent study said, Instagram organic reach dropped 18% in 2024. K. 18% decrease in reach. It means 18% fewer people are seeing your content. That's not because of the algorithm. People like to blame the algorithm. It's not the algorithm's fault.

Andrea Jones [00:17:21]:
K? It's just that we're producing more content than we ever have in the history of anything, because this is all so new. Right? Right? It's all so new. Like, I remember in 02/2007, me waiting for my my Facebook login account. Because 02/2007, you had to have a a university email address to sign up. 02/2006, I guess. You had to have a university email address to sign up. And I had just gotten mine because I just got accepted, and then they made it available to everyone. Like, 02/2007, ‘2 thousand '20 ‘5.

Andrea Jones [00:17:53]:
In the history of time, this is not a lot of time. Right? So in the history of time, we've never had this much content produced. So if there's so much content being produced and engagement is dropping, we need to make sure that the content that we are sharing is very sticky. And people see it and they wanna see it. Because, yes, the algorithm does have an effect here, but the algorithm is just choked by the amount of content that there is out there. It's not that your content is bad. K. You could have post the same thing five years ago, and it would have gotten more engagement because there was fewer content five years ago.

Andrea Jones [00:18:31]:
There's just more now to consume. Okay? So 80% of people are feeling overwhelmed by this information. Engagement has dropped by 18%. And then a lot of brands, according to this, column article, columncontent.com, it says, more brands the more brands push out content, the more that audiences are tuning it out. This is according to 2025 marketing analysis. K? So the more content you produce, the more likely someone is going to tune it out. Anecdotally, I see this myself as well. So when I'm scrolling through my content, let's say I'm scrolling through, like, Facebook or something, and I see, like, a double post, y'all know what I'm talking about.

Andrea Jones [00:19:15]:
Like, you see a post from one person, this one the like, a person. You like it, and then you're scrolling and you see another post from that person. I, like, skip it because I'm like, I just saw a post from them. I wanna see something new. Like, we all do this. Right? Unless it's, like, your bestie or your mom or, like, your your cousin, like, you're not going to be engaging with it a brand that frequently. We like to see a mix in the feed unless it's, like, big news. Right? We like to see a mix in the feed.

Andrea Jones [00:19:41]:
And so by posting less, you're actually giving your people an opportunity to engage with your content. K? Hootsuite actually, came out with an article about this recently as well and said that three quality posts are worth more than five low quality posts. So they're actually encouraging you, especially smaller teams and solar entrepreneurs, to post less frequently. K? So posting less is actually your friend, and that's the first thing I wanna talk about when we're thinking about the season that we're in. You could give yourself some grace. You don't need to post all the time. The second thing that I want you to think about is reposting and repurposing content. K? Reposting and repurposing content.

Andrea Jones [00:20:24]:
I think as especially creative types, like my graphic designers, my copywriters, my web designers, my artists. Like, we feel like the content that we're putting out, it has to be original every time. K? There's this myth that we have in our heads where we feel like we have to create new content all of the time. But I wanna give you permission to repurpose. And in fact, you should be repurposing a lot more than you think you should. Okay? Like, if you're getting tired of saying the same thing over and over again, you're you're probably on the right track. And I want you to think about how big brands do this. One of my favorite examples is pumpkin spice latte season in Starbucks.

Andrea Jones [00:21:10]:
Okay? Like, they have created a fandom around a pumpkin flavored drink. I don't even like it that much, y'all. I love Starbee's. Starbucks is in life. Give me my caramel macchiato every day. I will drink it every day. Okay? With almond milk, because my stomach don't like regular milk. So pumpkin spice latte.

Andrea Jones [00:21:34]:
I still go ahead and buy one because I like hype and I like marketing and I like the the the tradition of it all. And why is it a tradition? It's not because Starbucks said pumpkin spice latte, here's one. No, no, no. They have repeated it year after year after year to the point that it's embedded. It's embedded and other companies are now copying that. I saw Tim Hortons have a pumpkin spice drink. I think they actually call it pumpkin spice latte. It's terrible.

Andrea Jones [00:22:07]:
Tim Hortons near me does not even have almond milk, so I could never drink it it anyways because otherwise my tummy be mad at me. Even Dunkin' Donuts has pumpkin spice. I think even McDonald's does a pumpkin spice something. It's everywhere now. Right? It's everywhere. And people who like it love it, and they're not tired of it. And so I want us to think about our brand, our knowledge, our expertise, the things that we say. I want us to think of it like a pumpkin spice latte.

Andrea Jones [00:22:36]:
It's not for the people who don't like it because y'all know there are people who, like, hate pumpkin spice latte with a passion. Okay? They're, like, make whole campaigns about how much they don't like it. Right? Starbucks doesn't care. Right? They keep doing it because peep they they're talking to the people who love it. K? So when you talk about the work that you do, when you talk about your message, when you talk about your, frameworks, when you talk when you share your stories, I want you to share them as if it's pumpkin spice latte. Because you're going to be saying it again and again and again. And the more that you say it, the more that people are gonna love it. Okay? So do not feel like you have to be original all the time.

Andrea Jones [00:23:19]:
Reinvent that wheel, honey. Okay? So examples of way that you could do this, just straight up riposte. I'm doing that right now. As I said, I'm in my winter season. Y'all, I have been creating content in this business for eleven years. I mean, talk about the same thing for, I always say since, like, 2017, '20 '18 because in the beginning, I told y'all I was, like, hard into the Gary v, do everything post hustle all the time. And then I quickly realized after doing that for three years, that's not sustainable. And even then, I had no kid.

Andrea Jones [00:23:49]:
Like, what would I say? I had no kids. Anyways, repost the dang content. Okay? If you are especially if you've been doing this for more than a year, you have so much content that you could just straight up take and post again. Okay? It doesn't have to be reinvented. Now I do want you to think about this like pumpkin spice latte. We don't drink pumpkin spice lattes in March. Right? That would be weird. So I don't want you to post pumpkin spice latte every single month because then it's not special.

Andrea Jones [00:24:21]:
But you can take your pumpkin spice latte post or season and repost that yearly. Right? So an example for me is a lot of times in July and December, I'm talking a lot about resetting, resting, rejuvenating because that's what I'm doing. So I kinda recycle those posts every year. The new year, it's like I do my LinkedIn challenge every year, so I'm reposting those every time. So take your old content, your past content, and repost it straight up. You can also remix content as well. You know, taking a blog post, turning it into a carousel, taking a carousel, recording it as a reel, taking that reel, rerecording it as a talking head, pulling a quote from that, and reposting it as a quote graphic. We have so much content that we're creating daily, weekly, monthly.

Andrea Jones [00:25:13]:
Take that and repurpose it. K? A stat for this. 94% of marketers report that reusing content in some form is an effective way to scale content strategy without doubling the workload. This is from marketers who are paid to do this as their job. Okay? So I want you to be your own pumpkin spice latte moment. Repurpose that. K? To use another Starbucks example, they do the Christmas cup every year, and the cup designs don't look that different. In fact, I can almost promise you that, like, they recycle some of those designs.

Andrea Jones [00:25:49]:
K? People still go out and buy the cups. They buy them in droves. They sell out all of the time. So have your pumpkin spice latte moment. Okay? Last thing I wanna talk about oh, second to last thing I wanna talk about is AI in all of this. AI is not your enemy. I am on this passion kick for this because ChatUpT, in its the form that we know now kind of launched in the November of twenty twenty three. Okay? So it's been a year and a half of this tool being available.

Andrea Jones [00:26:21]:
Y'all, I use Chatopiti every day now. I bought the I spend my little $20 a month on the premium version, and I use it every single day. I used it very hesitantly at first because I used it in a very basic way. And I don't want you to get stuck in the basics. K? So some people are using this very basically, and you sound basic. I'm talking you go to ChatGPT and you say, I'm an accountant. Write me a post about how it tax season's almost over, and it gives you, like, the most generic sounding post in the history of time. That's how most people are thinking about ChatGPT and using, AI tools like Gemini, like, Claude, like, what is that? X, x groke Grok? I've realized I've never said this out loud.

Andrea Jones [00:27:08]:
What a terrible name. Elon Musk is anyways, that one, all of them. They're great tools. However, I feel like a lot of us are using them in the most basic way, and I don't want you to sound like a LinkedIn bro. Okay? We're not a brosiff. I want us to think about using AI as if it's our thought partner and our assistant. Okay? And what I love about tools like AI and ChatGPT is it's very reflective. Right? It can help you analyze.

Andrea Jones [00:27:38]:
It can help you dig deeper. It can help you scratch instead of scratch the surface, dig below the surface. See what I did there? It can help you with the things like content repurposing and being more impactful with your content. It can help you with, you know, all of those things. Right? But I think there's this little bit of hump that we have to get over with some of us that that thinks AI is the enemy. And so AI is not the enemy. It's your friend. K? And I'll take a moment here to talk about a new AI resource that I have.

Andrea Jones [00:28:09]:
If you go to onlinedrea.com/ai, I have a free 10 part audio series where I talk about how I use AI in my everyday life, especially in my marketing and in my business, and it goes beyond the basics. So definitely check that out. I had a lot of fun creating it, and we've created so many AI tools inside of the Mindful Marketing Lab that this will give you a little preview of that. Alright. So AI, it's not here to replace you. And I know especially when I'm talking to marketers, it can feel like that. I've had a number of conversations lately with my marketing friends where they talk about how, you know, AI does feel like it's replacing some of the work that we do. And if you feel that way, I encourage you to actually start studying it.

Andrea Jones [00:28:50]:
In my opinion, it's a nonnegotiable at this point. It's embedded in everything. You can't look at a Facebook comment without it summarizing the sentiment. You can't even Google anything without the AI result coming at the top. It's embedded in our freaking inboxes now. Right? You can't put your hand in the sand and ignore it. It's here to stay, study it, and start using it as a tool. Otherwise, you your business will become antiquated.

Andrea Jones [00:29:13]:
So AI. I'm not just speaking out of the side of my mouth here with this. Another stat, 89% of small business owners say someone in their business is now using AI. This was a 2024 survey. Another thing from that same survey said that 62 of small businesses reported an increase in productivity after adopting AI, and then 63% of those people notice a higher overall job satisfaction. Okay? So not only are AI tools increasing productivity, but people are happier with their jobs. And I actually think this is very, very helpful. And I've been having these conversations with my business friends lately.

Andrea Jones [00:29:57]:
I think it's our I'm gonna get on a little bit of a soapbox, but I think it's our capitalistic mindset, which I'm not anti capitalist. I will say that. I'm not anti capitalist, but I do wanna label it and name it. Like, the society that we're raised, especially those of you who, like, live in US or Canada like me, we glorify work and hustle and especially the time that it takes to work. And so we feel some kind of way when a machine, a tool, a robot can come in and do the work at a fraction of the time. But to me, this feels like the factory era. Right? Like, in that early nineteen hundreds, we had this economic boom in The US because of the rise of the factory machines that could do the job of humans and, like, one machine would replace a hundred hours of human work, let's say. That to me is what AI feels like.

Andrea Jones [00:30:53]:
Now, of course, after that, we did go through the Great Depression, which kinda sucked. So I'm hoping that's not what happens here as well. But the other side of that is, like, the future looks bright, and at least now there's no, like I was gonna say there's no racism, but anyways, wow. What a sidetrack. Y'all are getting a journey in this episode. Okay. AI. AI is here to stay.

Andrea Jones [00:31:17]:
I think it's our job and our duty to study it and learn how to use it ethically and thoughtfully and mindfully. And I think the small business owners, the online business owners, and the solopreneurs, and the marketers who actually learn to use AI as a tool will be farther ahead than their colleagues, than their than their competitors. Okay? Use these tools to help you. I'll give you a little bit of a twist on this as well or, I'll give you a little piece of advice that I think can help with the repurposing, and I'll share one of the ways that I do this. I just uploaded a video to YouTube on how I do this. But I get a lot of information out of AI, and I actually use it to help me prepare for my show. Right? I feed AI a lot of information, and I use it as a resource tool that refines my thoughts, organizes my thoughts, and puts my thoughts together so that it speeds along the process. Instead of me having to manually outline something and think of, like, oh, here's the thing that goes first and it flows into this.

Andrea Jones [00:32:22]:
I can put all of that gobbledygook in the chatty bitty and say, can you organize this for me in a flow that goes smoothly and makes a really impactful episode for my listeners? K? Use AI as a tool. Last thing that I'll say is I want you to also think about on those days, especially where you have low energy. I'm talking you wake up and you go, oh, this is not happening today. And I'll tell you what I have those days, especially with two small kids. My oldest is in daycare. And y'all, those daycare germs take me out. They take me out. I swear this year, I was sick from, like, October to March, just every week, sick with a new something.

Andrea Jones [00:33:03]:
So recording my podcast became very challenging. Recording videos on TikTok, almost impossible. Recording new Instagram reels, forget it. Recording tutorials and videos for my membership. Not I couldn't do it. Right? And so there are days where you have low energy like that, where it's really challenging to show up to do the bare minimum. So I want you to think about what is your minimal viable marketing. K? Minimal viable marketing, MBM.

Andrea Jones [00:33:33]:
K? We talk about this a lot in the Mindful Marketing Lab because I think we sometimes put equal amounts of emphasis on all of our marketing categories. We gotta do the podcast in YouTube and post Instagram and Facebook and threads and LinkedIn, and we need to send out an email today. And it's like, okay. I actually also have to do work too on top of all of that. Who has time for this? Right? And so I think we put equal weight sometimes on all of those marketing, placements when the reality is you should have a minimal viable marketing output so that you know this is the minimum that I have to do right now. Very minimum, and you should be constantly questioning what that is. K? Because if you try to put equal weight on everything, you will burn out. And on those low energy days, then on top of that burnout, you're you're give you're guilting yourself into it, and that causes a spiral.

Andrea Jones [00:34:30]:
Ask me how I know. Alright? So minimal viable marketing. I'll give you an example. Mine is my podcast. I won't send an email that week. I won't post on social media that week. But the very minimum thing I will do is post a podcast episode. And if I can't record a new one, I'll go back in the archives and pull pull one from, like, two years ago because, y'all, I've been talking about I've had my podcast since 2018, but I've been talking about this stuff since 2014.

Andrea Jones [00:34:54]:
So there's quite the backlog of stuff. K? Even before the podcast, I was doing live streams and classes, and I there's so much I can pull from. I was even talking with, my assistant, the lovely, Jemmy, about all of these live classes that I'm teaching in the lab. My next low energy day, that's gonna become a podcast episode because I've taught some really good ones this year that I think I could give as a teaser here. Right? So minimum viable marketing, decide what that is. Then when you have medium high energy days, we're stockpiling. Okay? Some people like to call this batching. I call this my digital brain.

Andrea Jones [00:35:37]:
K? I stockpile as much as I can in my digital brain. My digital brain is a hub. I use Airtable for this if you wanna know the tech behind it. But I put lots of stuff in my digital brain for my low energy days so that I can just pull from that when I need to. Okay? So I build my digital brain in your table. So for example, right now, minimal viable marketing, this podcast episode. It's 10:00 at night, on a Friday night. I had a busy week, but you know what? The kids are asleep.

Andrea Jones [00:36:11]:
My husband's asleep. The house is clean, and I have my makeup on still. And I was like, I'm gonna record this podcast episode because that's by minimal viable marketing. If I got distracted, I could record a TikTok video, but nope. Podcast. Minimal viable marketing. Okay? Then I use my repurposing system to repurpose the podcast. So my assistant helps me with this, and, of course, we use Riverside for this, our lovely sponsor.

Andrea Jones [00:36:40]:
Now I have two social media posts guaranteed every week that come directly from this podcast, and I could make more if I wanted. So I the only thing I had to do was focus on the podcast, and then my assistant can repurpose that. Hey. Minimal viable marketing. The other thing that I'm doing is again, I'm in my winter season. I just don't have time, energy, space to do all the things I usually do. And so I went back through some of my reels that I recorded last year and the year before and the year before that, and I pulled some of my favorites. We're we're doing a rerun here, friends.

Andrea Jones [00:37:13]:
We're reposting that reel the exact same way. I just watched them to make sure I wasn't saying anything too specific, time, date thing, or promoting anything that, you know, I don't do anymore, you know, saying, like, savvy social podcast instead of mindful marketing podcast, things like that. K? We're reposting the exact same thing. Minimal viable marketing. Alright? You can do this. Be gentle with yourself and get help. K? Do not feel like you have to do this alone. You're allowed to ask for help, and it's one of the reasons why I created the mindful marketing lab.

Andrea Jones [00:37:51]:
Our members in the lab are doing this together. There are two new things that we're doing in the lab that could really help people like you. One is every single Monday, I started doing mindful Mondays, where we meet together asynchronously in our community space. I have a little guided thought question. It's kind of like a meditation and a reflective moment. Less than five minutes, y'all, because, you know, we don't have time, in your podcast app, make it easy for you. And we think about and analyze what our minimal viable marketing is. We talk about things like, what if I don't feel like posting today? Help.

Andrea Jones [00:38:30]:
What's going on in the world? K? So though that's a new thing that I'm doing in the lab. And then the other thing that we do in the lab, which we've always done, is coworking. Sometimes, if you're like me, you need that accountability. Okay? If I don't have someone sitting there with me going, what are you working on? How is the progress going? Have you done it? Sometimes it just doesn't happen, brads. K? It's a body doubling thing. I never used to be this way. In fact, I did not like coworking before. I didn't see the point because because I was pretty self motivated.

Andrea Jones [00:39:02]:
I didn't have kids. Right? The work was my life. Now I'm like, there are a million competing tasks and priorities here, but you know what? I'm gonna sit down and work on my marketing for an hour with my people. Okay? And so sometimes you need that too. So either of those things resonate with you, come on in and join us inside the Mindful Marketing Lab. I'd love to have you. And that's this episode. Next week, I'm gonna talk about Blue Sky.

Andrea Jones [00:39:28]:
I have been spending some time on there on one of my alt accounts, having a lot of fun, and I wanna share my thoughts. Should you be on Blue Sky? Tune in for that next week. In the meantime, make sure you rate and review us on Apple Podcasts And Spotify, it helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcast, and that's because of your support, my friends. I'll see you next week. Bye for now.