Your content is supposed to be cringey (and a final reminder)

In 2017, I volunteered to record audio at a conference. It was a way for me to get free access to paid events and, more importantly, to preserve the ideas being shared.

There was one speaker who was absolutely magnetic.

Confident, charismatic, she mesmerized the entire audience - and she was talking about sex, so you know how that was, don’t you?

I recorded the entire program and saved all the recordings.

About 18 months later, that same speaker reached out to become a client. She wanted to start a podcast.

Unknown to her, I told her I still had her audio from that conference and sent it over.

Her reply shocked me.

“I don’t listen to my voice 😭”

How could this be?

This incredibly confident woman, who could command a room, cringed at the sound of her own voice.

This isn’t just a paradox; it’s a phase.

I’ve been a podcaster since 2014, and I’ve seen this journey play out time and time again. It’s an emotional ride that I call the “3 Stages of Content Creation”:

1. The Cringe Phase: This is where you and I start. Your content feels embarrassing. You hate your voice, your writing, your videos. You feel like going offline for weeks. As at 2014 when I started my first podcast, I did not genuinely like how my voice sounded. In fact, someone compared my accent with Steve Harris and said I sound like “Baba Ijebu” (If you’re non-Nigerian, that means a chronic village man) But as one creator later told me, “I wish I knew being cringey was just a stage, I wouldn’t have been so hard on myself”.

2. The Comedic Turn: This is when you start to laugh at your own work. “I can’t believe I was so worked up over this... it’s actually kind of funny”. This is your brain adapting. And you’re freeing yourself to do more of what makes sense to you.

3. The Creative Breakthrough: At this stage, you’ve survived the ick. The struggle gives way to flow, and you’re finally creating with confidence. This is where most people expect to arrive in an instant, but it only comes with practice.

I know some of you are stuck in that Cringe Phase. You’re trying to get into content creation, or start a business, or launch a new idea, and you feel like you’re not good enough.

So what do you do? You think you need more information.

You buy another course, read another book, or watch another YouTube video, hoping to find the secret that will make the cringe go away.

But you’re just widening what I call the “Delusional Gap”.

This is the gap between your ‘Hearer’ (the part of you that loves to research and plan) and your ‘Doer’ (the part that is terrified of failing). You’re feeding your ‘Strategist’ but starving your ‘Performer’.

The more knowledge you accumulate without implementation, the wider this gap gets, and the more “intelligent but useless” you feel.

Your ‘Performer’ does not need more knowledge. It needs a different environment.

To rebuild the atrophied “doing” muscle, your Doer needs three things:

• Simplicity: Very small, very clear steps.

• Safety: A place to fail that feels uncomfortable but is relatively safe.

• Pressure: A force that pushes you past the friction, making it “more painful to stay there than it is to move”.

This is why structured containers work so well. It’s why we run workshops, sprints, invite you to join cohorts, or hire coaches. They provide the simplicity, safety, and pressure we need to finally take action.

That is exactly what I’ve designed for today.

My private class, “The Basics of Starting a Business in the UK,” is one of such structured container. It’s not more information. It’s a simple, clear, and focused session designed to close that gap and help you do the work.

This is your last chance to join us. We start in some hours, at 10 am (GMT).

Here is the link to join: https://luma.com/5cqsghg5

I look forward to seeing you there.

Live courageously,

Dayo Samuel