Coffee Social | Social Media Marketing, Content Creation, & Entrepreneurship
Hi! Welcome to Coffee Social! We’re spilling the beans on all things business, social media, and entrepreneurship. Your hosts Mimi Langley and Jonathan Howard will be leading candid conversations packed with their New York personalities, as they delve into social media marketing, YouTube and Instagram strategies, building confidence, and making money as solopreneurs.
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Coffee Social | Social Media Marketing, Content Creation, & Entrepreneurship
Why Relying on Motivation and Momentum Is A Disaster Waiting to Happen | S2 Ep25
Answer this week's question...
Are you TEAM VIDEO (all about reels and TikToks) or TEAM PHOTO (still loving grid aesthetics)?
You don’t need more motivation. You need a system—and the discipline to stick to it. 💥
Let’s face it—motivation is fleeting. But if you’re serious about growing your brand and showing up on social media consistently, it’s time to build discipline that lasts.
In this episode of Coffee Social, we’re spilling the coffee on how to actually stay consistent with your content as a solopreneur or creator—without burning out or faking the vibes.
We cover:
💡 The real reason you’re not posting consistently
🧩 What discipline looks like for real-life humans (not robots)
🎨 Fun ways to fall back in love with creating again
🗓️ How to build sustainable content habits that stick
If you’ve been in a creative rut, too tired to post, or waiting for the “perfect” day to show up—this one’s your reminder: you already have everything you need. Now let’s build a plan that works like clockwork.
Grab a cup and enjoy!
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I don't need motivation and momentum. I need to know that these are the things that need to be done in order for my business to be successful. If I want my business to be successful, I do these things, and if I'm not doing those things, then I don't care about the success of my business. You need discipline, and that takes hard work. But we have to understand, as entrepreneurs, there's nobody watching us, there's nobody holding us accountable. We have to hold ourselves accountable if we want to be successful. It's Coffee, social, the podcast, all about social media and business. And now here are your hosts, jonathan Howard and Mimi Langley.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone. Hi, Jonathan Howard, look at you dancing over there. Hello, mimi Langley, you're so excited. Hi, jonathan Howard, look at you dancing over there. Hello, mimi Langley, you're so excited.
Speaker 1:I love this episode.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're ready to talk about it, and obviously you guys are listening in because of what the title is telling you, so we know you're ready to talk about it too. So well, welcome to Coffee. Social Cheers everyone Cheers. You have ice cubes. You always have a cold brew, don't you?
Speaker 1:Which I love about you Before we dive into Steve's topic Because I'm freezing, because I'm freezing here and I'm drinking a cold brew with ice in it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's talk about that for a second before we dive into, obviously, the topic. We always have a little bit of banter. If it's your first time listening to Quality Social, we have a little bit of banter and then we jump into the topic. But a lot of you already know this. But if you don't know, with this podcast and with a lot of podcasts, a lot of podcasters will record in advance, record a lot of their episodes in advance, and that's kind of what we do. So you might be seeing this in August, but we're recording it in January right now.
Speaker 1:It is January, yeah, and it is. You may or not know that there was this polar vortex thing going on in the United States during January and it is freezing, not only in New York, but in North Carolina it's freezing too.
Speaker 2:I mean everywhere is getting hit.
Speaker 1:Florida is freezing yeah.
Speaker 2:Everywhere is getting hit and right now there's wildfires happening in California, in Southern California, which is wild because usually they don't happen during the winter. It's like what's happening right now. There's wildfires happening in California and Southern California, which is wild because usually they don't happen during the winter. Right, it's like what's happening right now Is Earth trying to tell us something?
Speaker 1:Earth is really upset about things and I understand yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2:We should all ground. Remember grounding.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, so anyway, yeah, I'm wearing like 17 layers of clothing. Right, get you know. Anyway, yeah, I'm wearing like 17 layers of clothing, right, so it might look weird.
Speaker 2:If you're watching the youtube video, you might be like why are you guys looking like you're? You know it's winter time, it's summertime right now. So, yeah, it's winter, it's winter right now, jonathan, listen, let's go ahead do a quick intro and then yeah, and then let's dive in so let's get into this.
Speaker 1:Hi, my name is jonathan howard and I disagree with everything Mimi's going to say on this episode.
Speaker 2:That's true, that's enough of an introduction right there Over to you Mimi. Tbd Hi, I'm Mimi Langley and I'm always right. Oh, okay, let's go, let's go, I'm ready, okay, so struggling with consistency.
Speaker 1:As an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2:It happens, you guys, because for a lot of us, we are solopreneurs, right, we're doing everything, but we're also trying to balance it with everything else in our lives and so sometimes, you know, being consistent especially when it comes to creating content you could fall off. Sometimes it happens, jonathan, you know what happens. So we're going to talk about, we're going to give our pro tips on, kind of like, how to get through those hurdles if you are struggling to stay consistent. But before we dive into the pro tips, let's just there's some points, okay. The first one is and I wholeheartedly believe in this, see, I have to set this up because I already know what Jonathan's going to say Stop for a second and take a deep breath.
Speaker 2:And I know you probably have heard people say this. You know when things are going crazy, just like stop. I know we want to react and we want to. You know, just stop for a second breathe and give yourself some grace, because I think sometimes we overlook at what we're actually doing, what we're actually accomplishing. Do you know what I mean, jonathan?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Okay, what is so bad about giving yourself some grace Just?
Speaker 1:tell me there's nothing bad about giving yourself some grace if it's a one-off situation, if it's something that oops, I didn't remember this or this came up or these things that happened once in a while. The problem is people get into consistently missing their goals, their deadlines, their things, never reaching what they want to reach, and that's not a time when you give yourself grace. That's when you have to look at what's going on and what's causing it and, honestly, wait, I won't go off on that yet.
Speaker 2:First of all, I love that because you're right, I think some people use the grace card. They pull the grace card too much, too often and it's like, okay, so we're in the same spot we were two years ago.
Speaker 1:Right. And if you're in the same spot you were two years ago and can honestly say that your business hasn't grown, you haven't built anything new, you haven't tried anything new, then stop giving yourself grace and start doing something.
Speaker 2:Right, I know I say this every episode. Jonathan is the Jillian Michael. He's going to give it to you straight, and I actually I can see both sides of giving grace, so I can totally see that it's like give yourself grace for like a second and then let's move forward. Right, it's not just stay in grace mode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and a lot of people stay in that grace mode and a lot of people stay focusing on the past instead of focusing on what you need to be doing to actually get to the next step.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's also important, when you are struggling with consistency, to ask yourself why, like, why haven't I been consistent? You know it's a bunch of questions you can ask yourself. Is it this particular social media platform that I'm just not caring about anymore? Is it other things happening in my life right now? My season of life right now is completely different than it was a couple months ago, when I could give more. So I think it's good to have those reflection moments. What do you think it's great to?
Speaker 1:reflect. It's great to reflect, there's importance in you actually reflecting, but here's the thing Are you reflecting and when you reflect back on that thing that stopped you from reaching your goal, was that thing more important than your actual fucking goal? Because if it's not, then why did you waste time on that thing that is not as important as your goal? Is it for you to maintain a lifestyle that you are accustomed to? If you're going to have to cut back because you worried about certain things that didn't really matter, then why are you worrying about those things? Focus on the things that actually matter in your business. If you have to do these certain things in order to make money, then do those things. Stop making excuses for those things not being done.
Speaker 2:You were coming in hot this year I told you. This is like a step up from season one. Season one, you were like teeter-tottering a little bit. This one you're like I'm Jonathan Howard. I'm just like I don't know if I should go right into my closet.
Speaker 1:You're scared of me.
Speaker 2:today I'm a little scared, no, but it's nice to get different perspectives, because you're going to have people that are very light like me I'm not one, do you know what I mean? And then you're going to have people that are going to give you their point. So I think it's good to get different points. Okay, last thing, and then we'll jump into pro tips. But I think it's important to define what consistency means. We always talk about that, people throw around consistency that word all the time and sometimes you feel pressure to, I don't know, meet other people's consistency if that makes sense, jonathan. So I think it's important to define it for yourself.
Speaker 1:And you know I've said this before you have to define your own consistency. Here's the thing Is that consistency that you defined working for you to reach your goal? So you have to look at that, because if you define your consistency, as I'm going to post once a month on social is that really doing anything for you, right? And if it's not, then either get rid of it or up it a little bit Like cause. Honestly, I don't see. You know and we've talked about this in the episode where I talked about you know, building your content, calendar and stuff Everybody should be able to post three times a week on one platform. There's a way to do that. It takes less than an hour.
Speaker 1:So if he does talk about that, you guys and I talk about that and I give you the steps on how to do it. So I think that's a minimum consistency and that's going to move you along a little bit. It's not going to be if you're posting seven days a week but I understand that as an entrepreneur you don't have that time maybe but once a month, then why are you doing it To me?
Speaker 2:it's like and it could be once a month for a certain thing. Maybe you have an email list. You didn't really want to tackle having an email list, but it's important to at least reach out to those people that maybe once a month for a goal, for an email list might make more sense for you versus, you know, using Instagram to get you know, get people to buy. Yeah, okay, yeah Smart. I mean what? If my goal, you know, maybe I want to be a YouTuber and my goal is I want to hit a hundred thousand subscribers, you could if you post a video a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but really slowly.
Speaker 2:I mean no, but you know, some videos take off. You know what I mean. But, your chances are much, much higher if you're posting. You know a little bit more frequently.
Speaker 1:And you learn much faster. That's the other thing, guys Like when you put out the data points to learn from and that's all posts are it's data points. It's what, how, what's doing? Well, when you put out more data points, you learn faster. That's so true.
Speaker 2:See, I'm happy we're having this conversation.
Speaker 1:Let's see if you're happy when I get to my tip.
Speaker 2:I hope people are like yeah, I can do this, or they're feeling more defeated. Thanks, jonathan.
Speaker 1:Let's see what happens when they get to my tip.
Speaker 2:Well, let's jump into a commercial break first.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Because we have to keep the lights on. Do you have your button?
Speaker 1:I have my button. Okay, so Jonathan's going to roll the commercials.
Speaker 2:We'll be right back you guys in a few seconds.
Speaker 1:Lever pull. Are you tired of not having the time, not having the clarity, not having a clue what to post or what trends are even important on social media? There is a solution out there, and that solution is the Signature Membership. The Signature Members membership will help you by providing you a strategy showing you how to remain consistent, always having ideas on what to post and having clarity in your content. Overall, it's even going to help your visibility and your ability to make money on social media.
Speaker 2:Okay you guys, we're back, we are back. Are you ready for pro tips now, now that we've gotten you through reflection point?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, somewhat, I don't know if I want to reflect anymore. They're like. This scared me yeah.
Speaker 2:If you're in your closet, come back out, come on out. Maybe, Jonathan, I have two pro tips. I mean, obviously there's more than these kinds of tips to kind of get you through the struggling point, but you have one main one, one big one. Do you want to go first? You want me to go first? I think you should, because I'm going to end lightly with me.
Speaker 1:I think you should go first with your first one. Go first with your first one.
Speaker 2:Okay, so make it fun again. I make it fun. I mean, you know Jonathan always talks about this like it shouldn't be my gosh. I have to post like it shouldn't be, because that's not going to last.
Speaker 1:You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean, If you're not enjoying yourself, it's just not going to last, you guys, and so you have to find ways to make it fun and so try to bring back the fun. You know some examples you could pick. Like, maybe there's something you're really into right now. Like, pick like a theme or a series that you can do for your people obviously has to align with what you're all about, so they're not completely like you know what your people want.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you know, talk about, I think, just to at least get it going. You know what I'm saying. Like, pick something that you actually enjoy talking about and that you want to share. You know, to have the same old, same old that makes sense.
Speaker 1:What would be a good?
Speaker 2:theme.
Speaker 1:You gave the wrong.
Speaker 2:I do have three tips, not two, so that was the first one. Make it fun, make it fun again.
Speaker 1:Make it fun again. I can't disagree with that.
Speaker 2:No, you always talk about that. What would be an example too for people to like kind of shake it up and do something off the wall?
Speaker 1:I'm up with a video series that you think is bizarre. Play a role of the character of your ideal customer.
Speaker 2:They're always fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel weird doing them, but I know that in every single Reels challenge that I ran, everybody felt weird doing them. But they were the best videos and they were fun and they always performed really well.
Speaker 2:That, and I was also thinking news hacking If you've never tried that before, you know, pull something that's really trendy right now that you can again align with what you do and what you're all about. So like, for example, jonathan went to the Arrows Tour, you know he could pull that in and makes you know some kind of business advice out of it blog post about that. Yeah, I know, yeah, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So like go visit my blog things like that, exactly to make it fun again. Okay, my second tip. My second tip is find something that's going to drive you some type of motivation to, to help build the momentum to start that momentum again, to get you going again. Whatever it's going to be, I always tell Jonathan, if I want to clean my house, sometimes all it takes is me watching someone else cleaning their house on YouTube to push me to clean my house. So maybe it's you listening to motivational we always talk about motivational compilations on YouTube, right? Or something that's going to spark that fire in you, and there's a lot of people out there that don't believe in the power of motivation. Jonathan R, what do you have to say about this?
Speaker 1:I'm leaning in on this one, okay. So motivation and momentum mean nothing if you don't have discipline. And that's the problem with most people is they don't have the discipline. I don't care that somebody else is cleaning their house. That's not going to motivate me. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Sorry, mimi, but if I have discipline, I don't need motivation and momentum.
Speaker 1:I need to know that these are the things that need to be done in order for my business to be successful. If I want my business to be successful, I do these things, and if I'm not doing those things, then I don't care about the success of my business. You need discipline, and that takes hard work. But we have to understand, as entrepreneurs there's nobody watching us, there's nobody holding us accountable. We have to hold ourselves accountable if we want to be successful. And why are we unwilling to hold ourselves accountable? Don't we want the success that we put a ton of time into this? What are we scared of? And if you are scared of something, you got to figure that out and get past it, because you're stopping yourself from reaching your success.
Speaker 1:And I was very calm in saying that because, I really wanted to lose it.
Speaker 2:He really is leaning in. If you're not watching the YouTube video, watch it. You are right. Like I mean, there are a lot of what you're saying. It hits me Because discipline it's a habit. I guess we can replace discipline and put the word habit. You have to make a habit out If it's something that you truly want to meet, a goal that you really want to meet. It's like losing weight If you depend on motivation you're not going to do it.
Speaker 2:Like you're going to be up and down, yeah, All the time. So you have to develop systems. You have to develop a system. You have to. I have an entrepreneurial friend who says these are my non-negotiables. Like, these just have to happen, Even if I have a, I'm in a crappy mood, it just has to get done Five o'clock every day. It has to be this. So, yeah, discipline is really hard to obtain, though what do you think has gotten you to? Because you're really disciplined? I've seen Jonathan go through all the moods. I mean so much stuff could be happening to him, but he still shows up. So what do you think has gotten you to that point?
Speaker 1:Systems and practice.
Speaker 1:And I say this when it have to, and I say this when it comes to everything. I say this when it comes to showing up on video. I say this with all sorts of different things. You have to do the things that are hard when they're hard, so that they become easy. And that's practice, that's showing up and doing it, and it's the reps, and it's getting the reps in and it's. You know, football players don't learn how to do all those things just because they did it once. It's not talent, it's practice.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean, it is a lot of practice. I was also thinking like just something else too that could help. There's so many different methods out there. You guys, like Mel Robbins, has the what is it the five second rule, right, like, is it five, four, three, two, one, one. And then you just do like for me. Sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm allowing myself. Okay, sure, I'm not feeling like you know, journaling right now or whatever, or sending out this, writing this email, so I'm allowing myself 10 minutes. Lay on the couch, do absolutely nothing. Set a timer for 10 minutes. When the timer goes off, get your butt up and do it.
Speaker 1:Do it, do the hard things first and the other thing that's true the other thing that mel robbins does a lot of and I really have started to embrace some of this is let them oh my gosh, it doesn't, you can't control it let them do it. And when you say that after this person pulled some shit on me, let them.
Speaker 2:It's a whole phenomenon right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Makes a difference.
Speaker 1:It really does. I'm glad you agree with something I said. This episode oh stop.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me go ahead. I'll give my last tip and then, if you have anything else that you want to add about this whole consistency thing, absolutely For me, I've struggled. I don't even want to use the word struggled because it's it's almost like you haven't trained yourself to do it.
Speaker 2:Well, everybody's a different type of creator. Everybody, you know everyone is a different type of personality, like, or human behavior, or however you want to throw whatever you want to throw in there, we're not all the same. We don't all operate the same. What it works for Jonathan will probably never work for me, except you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Like you just have to play around with these things and see if it will. Um me, I would say Instagram is one of my main platforms and I mean, I've been on Instagram for a long time. I've built my viewers on there. They know me, they know what I'm all about. I went through a period and I'm still kind of in there. I went through a period where I didn't want to create a post. I just could care less about creating a post or creating a reel. Okay, so can you find another way to create on that particular platform that at least is going to keep you going, keep you visible, until you're ready to kind of go back and do everything else? So like stories, that's where I'm trying to go to. So I'm looking at Instagram. I know I don't want to show up on posts right now or create a reel, so what else can I do? And that's when I've kind of fell in love with stories.
Speaker 1:Well, stories are easy, because it doesn't increase your visibility and it doesn't help you build your audience.
Speaker 2:But it does nurture the people that are already following you.
Speaker 1:It nurtures the people that you have and that are following you. So if you're in that nurture phase and you want to maintain, but remember, when you're in maintenance phase you're losing people every day. That's natural. When you're in maintenance phase, you're going to lose people every day because you're not seeing people. New people aren't seeing anything. So if they're new and they're going to your profile, they don't see anything new. They're not seeing anything in your, in the feed from you. So that engagement is going to drop. So you're not going to get new people.
Speaker 1:You will maintain some of your current people. Some of them will see your stories, depending on if they're engaging with your stories. Some of them may not, because if they're not engaging with your stories, because they engage with your regular content they're not seeing you. So, yes, is that serving? What you need to look at is is that serving me? Is what I'm doing on social media serving me and helping me reach my goals, or is it hurting me? And if it's hurting you, then maybe you got to look at things a little bit differently and figure out a way to make it work for you.
Speaker 1:Defining your consistency, figuring out where you want to be showing up, all of that. You have to create the systems and the discipline around that so that you are doing it and it's not an option, it's non-negotiable. Like you said, it has to be a non-negotiable. You have to understand that this is what you're showing up and doing. Minimum period done and that can change at different times of the year for you, but you have to make sure that you're really saying this is the minimum. I cannot do more than this and it may be. I'm launching next week, so this is the minimum, which is much higher than my normal minimum, and I got to do this. But you got to figure out what my desk is shaking. I'm throwing my hands. It's important and really it boils down to the discipline. If you don't have systems and discipline, you're never going to remain consistent, because it's easy to fall out of a habit.
Speaker 2:I just remember. I just was thinking of something have a system for when you are going through the struggle bus for consistency, like, have an entire system to handle that, because you know it's going to happen at some point.
Speaker 1:Content that's ready to post.
Speaker 2:Or repeating content. Yeah, regurgitating content. Yeah, or even like reels and stuff like things that worked really well.
Speaker 1:You can re-upload those or scheduling. So you may have a bad Monday, but if you scheduled on Sunday, you're good to go Right and you guys there's a lot to this. Yeah, called discipline.
Speaker 2:Well, and also when you're reflecting, maybe it's not the fact that you're struggling with consistency, maybe you're just changing and you're ready to shift, you're ready to pivot. There's a lot of factors. You're making an excuse, but okay no really, though, I mean, you really do have to dive into it. I'm telling you guys, it's not just one layer. Most of the time it's not one layer.
Speaker 1:But do you have if you've made a pivot before? Do you have consistency after you make the pivot, or do you lack consistency then as well?
Speaker 2:Right, right. So it might be really. It could be deep, it could be related to childhood. I mean, you know it's just, you know we throw around these things.
Speaker 1:But and everything's deeper. Yeah, look at your patterns. That's probably the best advice at the end. Look at your patterns and if there's a very clear pattern of you not being consistent over and over and over again, it's probably your discipline.
Speaker 2:Just saying how was that?
Speaker 1:you guys Probably your discipline, just saying how was that, you guys? That was an episode. So if you don't hate me and you still like Mimi, make sure you go over to wherever you listen to podcasts and give Mimi five stars, because I know this episode is not going to get me five stars, but make sure you go over and rate Mimi.
Speaker 1:Give us a, drop a comment. I'd love to hear what you have to say about this episode over on Spotify. You can drop comments over on Spotify. We hear what you have to say about this episode over on Spotify. You can drop comments over on Spotify. We'll go check those out and respond to them. So thank you for that. And yeah, anywhere you listen to podcasts, give us a you know, give us a rating, give us a review. We'd love to hear from you and we'd love to hear what else you'd love to hear from us.
Speaker 2:And with that, mimi, over to you the one that they're going to like this episode. Well, I'm probably going to have to have a therapy session after this, Just with me, therapist. Honestly, Jonathan, no one can hate you, because what you share I mean it's just insights from your own experiences. Okay, you guys, Thank you again for watching the most important question of them all, and that is are you team motivation or team Discipline? What do you guys like better?
Speaker 1:What they like better is motivation. What's going to actually move them forward is discipline, but you know we don't always like what we have to do.
Speaker 2:I feel like we should just create a whole retreat surrounding this. Oh my gosh, I would pay you so much money if you could lead this retreat. All right, you guys, I'm going to yell at you all.
Speaker 2:Make sure you check out the rest of the Coffee Social Library. We have a ton of episodes Season one we have. We have a ton for season two right now, so definitely check them out. All about social media and business, share this with an entrepreneurial buddy and we'll see you in the next episode. Thank you everyone. Bye, everyone, bye, jonathan Howard, bye.
Speaker 1:Mimi Langley Cheers we survived.
