Okay everybody we are at episode 40 thank you so much for coming here on this journey with me i’m steve and we’re gonna rock this out and today we’re gonna talk about the business you’re avoiding building because look you know we’ve covered a lot of ground over the last 10 episodes for anybody that doesn’t know i record in 10 episode blocks and this is the last one of the blocks so in the last 10 we covered things like direction ai messaging visibility follow through and and today to tighten it all up. I want to pull back the lens a little bit and have a real conversation. You know, look, most business owners I talk to, they’re not building the business they actually want.

They’re building the business they think they can have or the one that they think they’re allowed to have. Or maybe it’s the safe version that wouldn’t look too crazy if it failed. And they’re all doing it quietly, running the business that makes sense on paper. The one that other people understand, the one that’s close enough to what they know to feel manageable. Meanwhile, the business they actually want, the one that would genuinely light them up, that’s still in their head, sitting around, rattling around in their head, waiting, getting talked out of every time they get close. So they start doing stuff towards it. They get close to that new point. They talk themselves out of it.

And I want you to ask yourself something very candidly and directly. What’s the version of your business you haven’t let yourself fully admit you want yet? I know that for me. So my goal for myself personally was to be out loud and be out present more in 2026 than I ever have before. I post very sporadically, very rarely. I build lots of things that nobody ever sees. I’m literally like the king of shadow builders because I build for other people on a regular basis. I’ve built entire universes that my name is never attached to over and over again, time and time again, and I never tell anybody. I decided this year changes. This year, I pull back the curtain. It’s kind of like Bar Rescue.

We’re like, we’re going to pull back the curtain and show you what’s really going on behind the scenes here. And then Jon Taffer screams at you like a lunatic, who I love. Freaking love that maniac. He’s one of my favorite crazy people on the planet. Because he’s not really crazy, but people think he is. But he’s so dedicated to the one thing he has such a superpower on that people are too stupid to realize that if you just listen to this man, he can fix everything.

And I get that the show is a TV show and it has the TV show reality vibes of what happens behind the scenes and all that but you know these bars all fell because these people were failures to begin with right, a lot of times these people didn’t embrace what would genuinely light them up, that idea sitting in their head they didn’t know how to execute it so they failed we don’t have to, ask yourself what’s the version of your business you haven’t let yourself fully admit you want yet. Maybe it’s a niche down version where you only work with one specific type of client and charge accordingly be laser focused. Maybe it’s a thought leadership path, the podcast, the book, the speaking gigs.

Maybe that could feel too big to be real. Maybe it’s getting out of the day-to-day and building a team so you can actually think. Like instead of having everything fall on your back, maybe you need to start building a squad around you. Maybe it’s cutting the revenue in half to get your life back. Think about all the people that will work for the almighty dollar and then their kids don’t know who the hell they are. I can proudly tell you, and I mean this with all my heart, I have refused deals that would have made me a whole lot more money in my lifetime. But it would have taken me completely away from watching my kid grow. And yeah, now she’s 14. Now she’s a teenager.

Now she’s, you know, can be in high school and rock her own path. She doesn’t need me as much as she did when she was little. But there was no money that would have taken me away from being around those days when she was little, making those core memories. I mean, hell, that’s why we do what we do. But if you’re not doing things for your family in the grand scheme of things, you’re doing it just for your business, you’re an idiot. I’ll say that right now.

your business should be able to work around your family and work with your family hell involve your family have to take them out for a day and have them hold the camera while you do a three minute clip i mean geez this isn’t that hard you know they’ll have fun with it they’ll make fun of you it’ll be silly you’ll have a good time i mean trust me i love going on content i went on a content creation mission with my daughter a few weeks ago during a day off of school for her it was freezing cold. And I really wish we didn’t pick the day that we did. It was like 20 out with massive wind right after a huge snowstorm. And it was literally the first day I kipped my car out of the block of ice that it was.

And we drove around. We went to a coffee shop and had lunch. We went down to the beach. We were on tops of buildings and tops of parking garages, filming all kinds of rock and roll videos for her stuff and for her Instagram. And it was a blast. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m glad that I have the flexibility in my life that I’ve created to be able to do that with her when she’s off. Because I’ve got a lot of friends who don’t know a damn thing about their kids and they’re just hoping it works out. And I feel terrible for them. Some of them, I know their kids probably better than they do because they hang out around mine.

So I see them from that, from osmosis, and I probably know more about them, which is insane. But hey, it is what it is, right? So think about it. Get that niche down version where you’re working something specific. Maybe it’s you get it out of that day to day, build that team, cut to revenue, get your life back, whatever it is, whatever it is, just name it. Because you can’t rise your way to a destination you haven’t actually chosen. The whole framework of what I do in Rise is that you have to have clarity. We need a path. So here’s what this 10-episode arc has really been about. It’s been getting you ready to move your ass. Not just feel better about yourself. Look, I don’t really care. I don’t know you.

You don’t know me. I’m just another voice in the clouds. right? Literally. I want you to feel better. I want you to have a destination. I want you to be ready to move. You know, not just think differently, but move in the direction of the thing that you actually want to build. That’s where I want to support every single person that wants to build something. If you want to build something amazing, I am 100% here. Hit me up anywhere you can find me. I’m always down to have a conversation. AI is going to help you get there faster. For some of it, clear messaging will help people find you. Visibility will fill that pipeline, but you got to do the things to get visible, right? Following through will make it real.

It will help with the conversion side of things in your life. But all of it requires you. You first got to be honest about what you’re building towards and what the goal is and where the clarity is at. So let me ask you this. What’s the business you’ve been avoiding building? Because right now I give you permission for that to be real and for that to be your next thing, that to be your now thing. And let’s all go build it together. And our riff of this episode is going to be, you can’t rise your way to a destination. You haven’t had the guts to choose yet. So let’s get a little more guts in our life. Let’s get a little more gusto, people. Let’s kick a little more ass and let’s do it together.

I’m totally here to back your play. But you got to put it out there and be visible and let me know. Otherwise, how can I help somebody I don’t know? I got to know you. You got to know me. You can join the community. keep listening to the podcast. We’ve got a lot more coming out over this year, so it’s just going to be a hold the space. Go to stevelichtman.com, get everything you need. I am Steve Lichtman. This was unfiltered and unshakable. And no, even at the end of episode 40, I don’t have a jingle yet. We are jingless. Yeah, maybe I should make one in AI and make a ridiculous AI jingle. And what is it? Sono? Suno? Sora? Suno? Whatever one it is, the audio one. I tried it for a couple of months.

It was horrible. I mean, for people that actually can make music, it’s crap. But to make a stupid jingle at the end of the episode, maybe I could just yell and scream into my mic a little bit and turn it into something funny at the end that we could paste in at the end. And then I’ll ask people to tell me how much they like it or hate it. And we can go from there. All right, guys, you’ve been fantastic. You’ve been magical. I appreciate you for every minute you’ve listened to me in these 40 episodes. And I hope you stick around for the next 40 or 400 more. Take it easy, guys.

Episode 39 and for everybody that doesn’t know i record usually in 10 episode bricks like a psychopath over a couple of hours yeah so we’re at episode 39 and today we’re going somewhere that gets uncomfortable fast and we’re talking about follow-through not the concept the personal reckoning with it because look here’s what i’ve noticed, Most business owners don’t have an execution problem. They’re actually really good at that. That’s actually what made them their business. They have a follow-through identity problem. They execute in bursts. They show up strong when motivation’s high. They post every day for two weeks and then disappear. I’m guilty of that. I think we all are sometimes, right?

They start the outreach campaign and abandon it on day four. And launch the idea and pull back before it has time to work and actually be of any benefit. And then they wonder why nothing’s building traction, right? Nothing’s building traction because traction requires time in the market. And if you keep resetting the clock every time you have a new idea or every time you don’t think something works after 10 seconds, you’re always in a permanent reset mode. You’re resetting that clock over and over and over. And here’s the thing about follow through, right, that nobody ever wants to talk about. It’s not about discipline. It’s about identity.

When you think of yourself as someone who follows through, your behavior shifts.

When you think of yourself as someone who tries things you’re always leaving yourself a mental out to leave so if you always say ah I’m going to try this tool I’m going to take another shot at it I can do this I’m going to go for it you’re always going to keep going for it, when you systematically tell yourself I’m going to get this done and go to the next step, you’re programming yourself to follow through you’re mentally controlling yourself which is what we all should be doing having the greatest control of our minds And in this day and age, with everything that’s out there, with all the science and technology and ways to live healthy, exercising available at every street corner, you know, healthy foods are available if you look for them.

I mean, granted, the world tries to poison us, but like we could live really clean, healthy, intellectual lives. Following through is just a product of that. When you’re just always trying shit and always throwing shit on the wall and hoping it sticks, that’s desperation. That is a mental out. It’s the hugest mental out. So let’s go to the execute phase of RISE today from the RISE framework. Because it’s, you know, the deepest one. Because execution isn’t just about doing the task. It’s about becoming the person who does that task every time. Not perfectly, but consistently, right? You notice a trend here. It’s not about being perfect all the time, guys.

It’s about being consistent and doing things over and over and building it into your system of your life. The gap between where you are and where you want to be, I’d bet the follow-through gap is a bigger piece of that than strategy offers or marketing. I bet that’s your biggest gap is follow-through. So here’s a question today for you. In the last 90 days, three months, start of this year, say. Last 90 days, what did you commit to publicly or privately that you didn’t follow through on? Name it. Not to beat yourself up. I’m not trying to do this to make you feel like shit. Don’t get me wrong here. It’s to help you identify the problem. Like, what did you say you were going to do and it didn’t get done?

I can tell you for me, I said I was going to rock my podcast into 2026. I got busy with other things with work and with other commitments and launching an app. And yeah, I haven’t posted it for about six weeks. It went dark, maybe a little longer. That was me. I didn’t follow through. I didn’t record. You know, and then I did record. And then I, that’s a whole other story. I did record. And then I lost the SD card I recorded on with my other device. And yeah, that one’s on me. But I didn’t bother. Like, I was just like, all right, whatever. And then I didn’t follow through. I just let it be. Right? So for me in the last 90 days, that’s something publicly and privately I didn’t follow through on.

So, look, I’m giving you an example of real life, my real life. But you got to do this. This is to help you identify the pattern of where you don’t follow through. Because once you start seeing the pattern, you can start breaking it. Like for me, it’s about too many balls in the air at once. Some are eventually going to drop. I’m not a professional juggler, but I often believe myself to be. And that becomes my problem because there’s only so many you can juggle at once. Only so many flaming swords I can throw in the air at once and catch without losing a finger. And I don’t want to lose the finger. so I let the swords drop, right? That’s not following through.

Following through is getting better at catching them swords and catch them all. So that’s where we’re here or why we’re here. So when you think about the pattern, you can break it, right? Because one kept commitment is going to change everything. If you just keep one commitment to yourself over the next seven days, you’re going to break the cycle. Then you can do another. Then you can do another and another. And that’s how your identity rebuilds. That’s how you turn yourself from being the person who tries things to the person who gets shit done and follows through. By beating yourself up over and over again. It sounds funny, right? It sounds funny. Like, beat the hell out of yourself over and over, guys.

And if you beat the crap out of yourself enough, you’ll eventually affect positive change through pure personal abuse. Hell, that could have been the episode in 30 seconds or less, and I wasted five minutes of your time. So, the riff of the episode. You don’t think your way into consistency. You have to behave your way into it. Think about that for a minute. You can’t just dream it up. You actually got to do the work. You got to follow through. So with that, folks, have a wonderful day. I’m Steve Lichtman. This was Unfiltered and Unshakeable. Have a great one.

All right guys episode 38 here and i want to go a little deeper on the ai conversation today i’m going to do that too so this is going to be way more ai content because i’m diving two feet deep like a lunatic for a while now you know i’m i’m deeper than i’ve ever told anybody with it or ever admitted to it even when i was anti it because i wasn’t anti ai i was anti the way people were presenting their their ai solutions the way people were presenting their oh look at me on chat GPT. I had to make three social media posts for me, you know, and they put no content in there or context.

That’s why I always was shitting on it for years because the people that are stupid were just the lazy people were just making a mess out of it. But my number one concern I hear when I bring this up is, but I don’t want to sound like a robot with AI. And look, that’s a totally valid and completely fair concern because we’ve all seen AI content out there that reads like it was written by someone who’s never in their lifetime had a human conversation.

Like they lived literally in a bunker like they’re in the tv show fallout and they they just came out of their freaking bunker you know it’s buzzword soup fake enthusiasm m dash is everywhere the posts that start with things like in today’s fast-paced world we all have heard and seen this bullshit up and down our linkedin feeds and on our social media feeds everywhere and that stuff is everywhere and it’s killing the feed but here’s what i want you to understand that’s not what ai has to produce at all that’s what lazy ass prompting produces that’s when you when you use ai without giving it any context without telling it who you are and without feeding it your actual ideas hell of course it’s going to sound generic and sound like crap it doesn’t know you and the fix is simple but most people skip it you have to give ai your voice first right that’s what building a digital twins all about.

Here’s how. Before you ask AI to write anything for you, I want you to tell it three things. I want you to tell it who you are, who you help, and I want you to tell it how you naturally talk, casual, direct, no jargon, maybe a little rough around the edges. And then lastly, I want you to give it a sample of stuff you’ve already written or said that sounds like you. So give it some podcast that you’re on. Give it some content that you’ve written. Give it your book. Give it something to actually work off of. Then when you ask it to draft something, it’s working from your material in your voice. You still got to clean it up. You still have to add specific stories, real moments.

But now you’re editing a draft that’s at like 70, 80% instead of staring at a blank page. And look, the goal is never to let AI replace your voice. It can’t. It can never fully replace you. No matter how hard people try, I’m not into that. The goal here is to stop letting the blank page silence you. It’s taking ideas out of your head and putting them onto paper and turning it into something that can make it happen for you to get your words out to the world so you’re not in the darkness, you’re not in the shadows, you’re not silent anymore. So what I want you to do is try this today.

Open up whatever AI tool you use, I could care less, paste a paragraph of something you’ve written before and say, write in this style, see what it gives you. You’ll realize that it’s going to give you something better than maybe you’ve gotten in the past. And then you adjust it from there. And it only takes one session to start pushing it in the correct direction and getting it right. You’ll make a separate project, upload the files to that project from your other things that you got going on, and just start really working AI into a system that is an extension of you and a beneficiary to the work that you’ve done in the past that helps you create faster work for yourself in the future.

It’s how you scale yourself. It’s really easy once you start putting the work in. And it’s not a lot. So the riff of the episode today is going to be this. AI doesn’t steal your voice. Lazy prompting does. So give it something real to work with. Right? Artificial intelligence. It’s artificial intelligence.

Why do we keep forgetting that we’re still the, part that’s not artificial we’re the human part we still have to add the human voice to it we’re always going to have to add human voice no matter how good it writes as us never going to know every story in your head, and that’s what you have to start bringing out or at least start recording them all and then putting all those stories into your AI system then you might get closer to something but man I can’t even fathom having to talk that long, so look I’m Steve Lichtman it’s unfiltered and unshakable thank you so much and i will see you in the next episode.

Episode 37 i don’t know why i say the episode numbers when i start now it just seems to feel like i don’t know i could add some more gravitas to it like i’m i’m doing it man i’m putting the effort in and i really am and i’m really hoping that people are enjoying it today i want to bust out one of the most common things right that i hear when someone’s business isn’t where they want it to be my offer needs work i hear that all the time my offer needs work Steve, my landing page sucks. All right. So they go back and they rebuild the program. They restructure the package. They’ll rewrite the sales page 100 times over, right? Landing page hell. And then they wonder why nothing has changed.

The results stay the same. And here’s the truth, that it might set you free. It might also piss you off and make you want to turn off the episode. You know, that set your offer probably isn’t the problem. Your visibility is. Right an imperfect offer that people can see will always outsell a perfect offer that’s invisible every single day of the week every single day and look i’m not saying here that your offer doesn’t matter it totally matters it absolutely matters but there’s a sequence here and most business owners are getting it backwards they’re over engineering the product and they’re under-investing and getting seen.

So you spend all this time and energy building this amazing, amazing product in crickets. That sucks, but let’s think about it this way. If 10 of the right people actually saw what you do this week, would any of them want it? Answer that honestly for yourself. If the answer is yes, you have an offer. You also have a visibility problem. If you answer no, well, you got to go back to the drawing board, right? If you don’t have something that people would even want, well, then you got to get back to the drawing board and start over. That’s fine. But this is for the people that said, yeah, I have an offer. But then nobody’s saying it. Nobody’s engaging it. So how do we fix the visibility?

Well, there’s a lot of ways that we could fix our visibility, right? Number one, you show up consistently in the places where people are. Might be LinkedIn. Could be X, could be Instagram, could be TikTok or YouTube, could be somewhere else. It could be Medium. If you’re an article writer on Medium, it could be a million other places. Could be the podcast. Maybe it’s your emails. You know, you talk about the problems your clients are dealing with. You share your thinking. You stop hiding all the good stuff behind a paywall that nobody’s found yet. Like if you put everything behind a wall and nobody knows it’s there, then nobody knows you’re there. Think about that for a minute.

If you hide all of your content behind paywalls or you hide all your content behind private one-on-one consulting and one-on-one meetings and one-on-one this and sign up for that. And there ain’t nothing out there for the universe to know who you are or what you are or what you can do. You’ve got no visibility, man. And you’re just, you’re in the shadows. You’re not even building in secret. You’re building invisible. That’s really bad. That’s an invisible offer. I’m going to be mad. So here’s this week’s move. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to reach out to three people in your network who can either use what you do or refer you to someone who could. Not a sales pitch, just a regular conversation.

Just, you know, visibility starts in conversations. So just open up conversations to people that you know. Don’t sell them. We’re not talking about making a pitch here. Just reopen the conversation with these people. Start talking to them again. Like, be seen. Be alive. Because your offer is probably fine. But you got to get it seen. And if you just sit quietly on LinkedIn all day and just look at other people’s shit and just click like, nobody sees you. Nobody remembers who’s individually liking them. That’s bizarre to even think that that could be a reality, especially with anybody who’s got some traction on their account.

If they’re getting hundreds of likes and comments and whatnot, they absolutely don’t see you. So get seen, okay? And here’s the riff of the episode. We’re going to keep this one short and sweet. An imperfect offer that gets seen beats a perfect offer that’s invisible every time. Put that one in your pipe and smoke it, folks. I’m Steve Lichtman. This was unfiltered and unshakable. And as always, thank you so much for being here.

All right everybody today episode 36 no fluff man it’s gonna be another no fluff day it’s always a no fluff day it’s kind of always me just ranting like a lunatic about something and hoping that you take a few notes and and it guides you and motivates you in five to eight minutes in a direction that helps you do something better for yourself in the day today we’re going to talk about the price you pay for playing small and it’s just something that i’ve been sitting with and i think a lot of you probably just need to hear this right now this is one of those things where it’s a sticky note that was stuck in my monitor that said, like, in quotes, stop playing small, and it sat there for months and months and months.

And then I took that one day, I took it and started fleshing out an idea, a little bit of an idea. You know me. My podcast episodes here are always under 10 minutes, so I try to keep them five to 10 always. And just a brief idea to tell you there’s a price that you pay for playing small. And most people will never calculate it. You think that playing safe is free. They think that staying quiet is being neutral. And they think waiting until they’re ready will cost them nothing. But it’s not free. It costs you clients who needed you and found someone else. It costs you the momentum you would have built if you just started six months earlier. Think about everybody.

If you started six months earlier than you did today, wouldn’t you be six months ahead of where you are now? It costs you your own confidence because every time you hold back, you teach yourself that you can’t be trusted to follow through. You’re abusing yourself when you do these things. And, yeah, I get that it’s being dramatic, but it’s business abuse at the very least, if not emotional and mental abuse, that you’re sitting there grinding your ass off and working your ass off and busting hump every day and you’re looking at the same end result and you’re like, why isn’t it growing? If you’re stuck like that, well, a lot of times it’s the price of playing small. And look, I’ll give you a great example.

I had a client about three, four years ago. She was absolutely brilliant. All the credentials you can need for what she did for a living. And totally a real deal type of person who had been, quote unquote, getting ready to launch a coaching program for, poof, well over a year before I met her. And she told me she was waiting until the website was done. And it was one of the reasons that we had gotten connected, because she had heard that I would help her make it more fantastic and give it more punch and impact and really brainstorm with her the idea behind what we’re doing with the website. Like, I’m not a web builder by trade. I can build them, but it’s not what I do.

I’m the person that gives the idea, that builds the whole brainchild of what we’re going to do with it. Now, with technology these days, I could actually speak that into existence now, which is so much cooler. But that’s not here nor there. That’s not today’s point. Today’s point is this was a person who said they were waiting for their website to be done. Till she had more testimonials. That was the next thing. So the website was done. And she goes, I’m not ready yet, Steve. I need more testimonials. Okay. We got them. The next excuse was, you know what? Doesn’t feel right. Something’s off. And I’m sitting there thinking, I mean, this is, this lady looks absolutely killer on this website.

Like, she is a destructor of all things in her universe. I mean, she is, you know, the giant marshmallow man of Ghostbusters. Like, she’s got it all. She’s ruling the city. What the hell? Like, that’s another excuse. But you know what was actually holding her back? She didn’t believe in her own value at the end of the day. And the website just became the excuse. And we got to that after a few weeks. I mean, I’m pretty blunt. So I will let people be themselves, of course, because I believe that’s the most important thing that we could all be honest with ourselves and be who we are. But after like a month or so of it, I had to call it out because we were talking every other week.

So, you know, by the third time of that, I was like, oh, yeah, you know, look, I think maybe the website’s an excuse. The bigger issue here is that you don’t want to own this. And she realized it. And, you know, the truth is this. Here’s what playing small actually is. It’s protecting your ego from the risk of being seen and rejected. And that’s exactly where she was. And I get it. We all feel that way. The fear is real. But the cost of just not dropping this out to the universe is 10 times realer. Because, like, here’s a great example. I record this episode right now, episode 36, unfiltered and unshakable. And I never post it for whatever reason.

Why the hell do I spend the last, well, four and a half minutes already recording this then? Just wasting my life then if I don’t actually put it to action. And that’s one of the things when I flip my own personal effort switch a while back, I realized that this has got to be the time where if you’re creating stuff, you have to share it. If people hate it or people think it sucks or you don’t have an audience, who cares? Keep going forward. Not everybody wakes up and has a million person audience. that is built with thousands and thousands of five view pieces to get you there.

You’re not gonna make one post and hit it out of the gate unless you have a marketing and advertising budget that’s through the roof that I could spend, right? That’s the truth for everybody. If you give me no marketing budget, you’re only gonna go as far as you work and hustle and grind. That’s facts. Like them, leave them. Doesn’t matter to me. Those are still facts. You can’t deny that. So when you’re playing small and protecting your ego because you’re afraid to be seen, you’re afraid to get rejected, and you’re afraid that people are going to say you suck. That fear is killing you. It’s ruining your growth because you’re sitting there strapped by the fear. So you need to use Rise.

You need the reset more than anything. You need to go watch and take my eight-day challenge of the fuck it switch challenge on my community. You 100% need to go take that now. Go to stevelickman.com, click on community at the top. I got a brand new website. You know, it was something to see. Look, I was somebody who, I used my website and it’s an excuse, but the reality was I truly hated it. I built what I thought everybody wanted. And then I looked at it and I was like, oh, I fucking hate it. That was how I said it. I remember I was looking at the final product. I’m like, oh, this sucks. I don’t want this. And I thought about it while I was busy with other projects for about a month of what I wanted it to be.

And then I was like, I just want to deliver the news, man. I want to be the anchorman. I want to be Will Ferrell from Anchorman and just, I just want to deliver the news. And the news is going to be whatever news I see fit as far as marketing, AI, you know, being yourself, using my RISE framework. Just everything that I believe is what can help people live a happy business life and do it in a way where they can love what they do. They can be fucking empowered to hell and back. And they can do it with a smile and do it without being miserable and do it in a way where you don’t give a flying you-know-what when somebody doesn’t like you online because nobody’s going to love you all the time. everywhere.

That’s the internet, man. That’s nothing you can do about it. So let’s reset. Go take the course. Go take the effort switch eight-day challenge. It’s eight days, eight videos, usual three to five-minute videos. I don’t keep it long. I get right to the meat, you know, meat and potatoes kind of guy. So we get right to it. When you reset, that’s when you step out of the fear state, right, for just that second, and you can see the truth. That’s when you have something real to offer. And withholding it’s not protecting you, right? You’re never protecting yourself by doing that. It just delays the version of your business that’s actually possible.

Like, you are literally stepping in front of yourself and delaying the inevitable when you play too small. So I want you to think about this now, and we’re going to end it. What’s one thing you’ve been playing small about? Name it outright. Like, say it out loud. If you’re sitting in your car, if you’re sitting in a train, write it down, whatever. Just say it out loud because that’s your identity. Right? Or actually, that’s actually not your identity. That’s your identify. Right? Once again, my brain works faster than my mouth does, which is ironic because it moves pretty fast. But that’s your identify, right? Your identify is the one thing you’ve been playing small about. So go make one move on that today.

And today’s riff is going to be this. playing it safe isn’t neutral it has a price tag but are you looking at the bill, it sounds like the opening to a megadeth song do you know the price for peace all right we’re gonna leave it with that i am steve lichtman this was unfiltered and unshakable thank you so much and remember guys don’t play it small you are tall.

[0:00]All right, folks, this one, episode 35, and we’re going to up the ante. I had done a podcast a while back about the five-minute content plan or something. I don’t remember the exact term, but what I realized was that’s for people that are super efficient and work at a breakneck pace. So instead, I want to give you something today that you can literally use this afternoon because I know you’re busy, and I know that content feels like a grind, and I know most of the quote-unquote content strategy advice out there is you’re built for people with marketing teams. And in fairness, maybe my last post about a five-minute content plan was a little bit more geared towards people like myself who can kind of do every step of the phase, right, just boom, boom, boom. I could have three or four apps loaded and just go from thing to thing to thing in a matter of minutes. And that wasn’t fair. So let’s do this instead. Let’s think of this as the 20-minute content system for a business owner who has real work to do, which should be everybody listening for the most part, except for my dog.

[1:06]I make my dog listen to the podcast every single time it comes out, so I get an extra listener. I have a burner phone just for the dog. She sits there, she stares at it, she eats her treats. She doesn’t seem to be a fan. But, you know, hey, even she could do this in 20 minutes. So here’s what we’re going to do. The problem most people face, you sit down and create content, you stare at a blank screen. And that blank screen wins every damn time because you’re trying to write from nothing. And writing from nothing is brutal as hell. It’s the worst. When you just sit there and go, oh, what am I going to do? Or you go, even if you look up a trending topic or something, it’s tough because people don’t know where to start from. So we’re going to stop starting from nothing. We’re going to start leveraging some tools that are out there. So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to set a 10-minute timer. You’re going to open up a Word doc or a voice memo on your phone. Then you’re going to answer three questions out loud or in writing. What’s the number one mistake you see your clients make?

[2:07]What question do you get asked most often? And finally, what’s something you believed five years ago about your industry that you now know is completely wrong? I don’t want you to edit it. I don’t want you to format it. Just dump it out, raw, messy, and real. Just like, you know, it’s what they call prog mess, right? Prog mess, messy progress. Just drop that into something. When a timer stops, you have your material. You’re now going to take that raw material. And like what we talked about a couple episodes ago, you’re going to drop that raw material into your AI tool, whether it’s your ChatGPT, your Gemini, your Claude. It doesn’t matter. You’re going to ask it to turn that content into LinkedIn posts, into a three-post series even, depending on how much you give it. With each one focused on a single idea from what you submitted, short, punchy, controversial, or conversational, I guess. I’m controversial. More conversational, I guess. Brain fart, you know, boring, controversial. So it kind of makes sense that

[3:10]I would say that instead of conversational. So just short, punchy, going back and forth, getting the person engaged. You spend five minutes now cleaning up the one post that sounds most like you. So out of those three, if there’s one where you’re like, whoa, that is like, that really hit it good. Spend five more minutes now and edit that post. Don’t take it right from the AI. I never take something direct from AI. I mean, I’m a huge believer of AI gets you there, but you have to be the one that drives that run in. So it might load the bases for you, but you still have to be Aaron Judge of the Yankees and go up to the plate and knock those runs in. So that’s you editing. You’re knocking those runs in. That’s your content for today. Go post it. It’s that simple. The content’s done, right? Now you got two other pieces that you can either give more context to, work it a little further. And that one chat, now you’ve turned it to three solid pieces of content, not just slop, not just give me three posts about insurance. You know, for my marketing, no. You’re giving it real question and answer content

[4:14]that it can now use those three questions to build three great posts. And here’s the thing. It’s not about you being coming some amazing content creator, right? This isn’t the plan. it’s about you not being invisible right just like the last episode talking about you know building in secret it’s about not being invisible because your clients are on linkedin right now and they’re looking for somebody who knows what you know so be the person they find why be another just name on a list that they don’t see that likes one of their posts down the road bring the heat bring it like spend the 15 20 minutes you need to get this knocked out today yeah look if you’re efficient you could do this in 10 honestly honestly you could you could i could talk those three answers out loud in five minutes max it’ll be hundreds and hundreds of words in five minutes then have the ai pump it out then another five ten minutes to edit i’m out in 10 15 minutes easy you don’t need a graphic every time just post the text content doesn’t always need

[5:16]a graphic, especially if your graphics are always AI. If your graphics are always shit slop, then you don’t need that every time. Post a graphic when it matters. Take a real picture. Go walk outside with your dog. I’ll take a picture of my same podcast hating dog out in the backyard and I’ll post her. She’s going to be mad at me now that I’m saying this, but it is what it is. She’s not a fan. I can’t help it. It’s a dog. So the riff of the episode is this. Stop starting from nothing. Your expertise is the content. And AI can be the assembly line. So let it manufacture for you from your original IP the base content that you can then go in and edit, right? That’s the end of the story here. It’s what it all comes down to. Let things help you. But let things help you in a smart way where you’re actually giving it content and context. All right, guys, that’s it. 20 minute content system. Yeah, really, man. It’s there. I’m Steve Lichtman. This is unfiltered and unshakable men. Yeah. Have a wonderful day.

[0:01]All right this next episode gang is something that heck i’m i’m probably guilty of more than, anybody right so we’re at episode 34 and we’re gonna get keep it real and this one it might sting a little bit i mean sometimes they do but that’s kind of the point is to say something where you’re like shoot that’s me so you can have that moment where you’re like you know it’s time to change and i’m somebody who’s been there with this right so this is this is gonna be a topic that hits home with me. I’ve been there, done that. And it’s this, you’re building in secret. Think about it. Stop building in secret, really. That’s going to be the title of this episode, probably stop building in secret. That seems to make sense. You know, you’re building in secret. What I mean by that is this, you’re working on the offer. You’re tweaking your website. You’re refining your program and what you deliver. You’re getting everything just perfectly right before you tell anybody. Like you keep it all in. You’re just doing it all. You’re doing all the background work and nobody knows. And I get it.

[1:01]It feels like the responsible thing to do. It feels like the professional thing to do, not to half-ass it, right, with something that’s not finished. It feels safer than putting something out there and having it be imperfect. And look, for me personally, I have that problem. I’m one of those people where I can look at something over and over and over again and just ride that perception of imperfection in my head to not release things. Honestly, it’s why I made the entire F*ck It Switch challenge in my community. The whole reason I built that challenge was a personal challenge to myself to get this done because I have so many ideas, man. And if I just did nothing but content production for the next year, I could be busy every single day. That’s how much I’ve got written down. That’s how much content I’ve created. That’s how many pages of stuff that I’ve written.

[2:04]And we’re not talking about AI stuff. We’re talking about me writing it over decades now. Just content, just stuff, things I do with people. I do keep records of my conversations with folks and the main things I build, the structures I build, so I can have it for reference. Fed all that stuff into the old GPT there, into the old Claude. And man, oh man, it can turn itself into a manifesto. But look, here’s what’s really happening. You’re hiding, right? And every day you stay in build mode and you’re not putting something into the world, you’re paying a price. And it’s not just about missed revenue. It’s also missed feedback, missed momentum and the slow erosion of your own belief that it’s actually going to work. The market doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards presence, consistent, visible, honest presence.

[3:08]If you’re around all the time, you start getting seen. If you’re around once in a blue moon and nobody has a clue when it happens, guess what? Nobody knows you exist. It’s not the worst thing for some people. They have enough referral business and they’re happy with it. But for people that want to put themselves out there in the universe, you actually have to do it. I remember when I launched my first real program, I spent weeks polishing it. I spent three more weeks finding reasons not to announce it. Meanwhile, I got a DM asking if I had anything like that. They didn’t care that it wasn’t perfect. They were just asking, hey, do you have a course like this? And I’m like, yeah, kind of, but it’s not up yet. That’s a struggle a lot of us fall into.

[4:09]We want to do something, we have a passion for something, but when it gets to the brass tacks of putting it out there and letting people react, we get afraid and we turtle up. How stupid is it to hold back because you’re afraid of what some random person on the internet is going to say? Build for you. Build for who you want to help and how you want to help them. Don’t build for critics. What you need to understand is this: you don’t need a perfect offer, a perfect website, a perfect solution to start the conversation. You need a real one. As long as what you’re building is legit, that’s all that matters. Today we’re on the Execute side of RISE. I want you to tell one person today what you’ve been building.

[5:09]Not to sell them. Just say it out loud. I’ve been doing a lot with Claude Code… coding a tool using their agentic coding features mixed with my own abilities. I’ve completely re-fallen in love with technology and coding after about 15 years of walking away from it. I had a daughter who was born and I wanted to spend time with her and not late nights at the CLI hacking away. But I’m obsessed again, and it’s a better time in life to be obsessed with this technology. So look, today: tell one person what you’re building. Don’t sell them, just say it out loud. Because once you say it out loud to another human being, it stops being an idea and it becomes something real.

[6:11]Now you have to wonder, if that person sees you again, are they going to say, hey, Steve, how’s Project X working out? Oh, it’s still in my mind. Or, oh yeah, it’s live now, here’s a link. That’s what I wanted to tell you today. Stop building in secret. The world can’t hire what they can’t see. The world can’t benefit from what they don’t hear. You can’t reach people if they don’t know you’re out there. You have to put yourself out there, no matter how scary it is. Today’s riff: The market doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards presence. Write it in the comments, on social media, wherever you want. Put it out there. Let people know what you’re doing.

[7:13]Show people what you’re building in the background. Because if you don’t tell us, nobody’s going to know. Thanks so much, guys. This was another episode of Unfiltered and Unshakable with yours truly, Steve Lichtman. Take it easy, guys.

[0:01]All right, everybody, today, episode 33, and today we’re going to get into something that just absolutely drives me nuts, man. And it might be the thing that’s quietly costing you more business. Maybe more than anything else you’re doing wrong. Yeah? It’s your marketing sentence. It’s the thing that you say when somebody comes up to you at a networking event or just anywhere and goes, hey, man, what do you do? Every time I ask somebody that, I go, what do you do? They say the same thing to me, right? And look, I know we’ve touched on messaging before, but today I really want to be surgical and tactical about this, this one thing, because I see so many smart, capable people, just completely blowing it in this one moment. Like freaking legends that because they stumble and fall over themselves on the, what do you do? Response that I wanted to make this to help people. So here’s the test.

[1:04]If somebody asks you, what do you do? Can you answer in one sentence that makes them feel something? Like, can you feel energy from it? Do you feel somebody’s vibe from it? Not understand everything about your business because nobody will in one line. Like, that’s impossible unless you’re like, I’m a heart surgeon. Okay, great. But that’s not typically what in the world of corporate business doing business with business, that’s not typically what you’re going to hear somebody say. Just feel one thing, whether it’s curiosity, relief, recognition, something, man, right? Just something. You got to feel something when somebody asks you, what do you do? Your response has got to give them energy. Most people give what I would call the LinkedIn bio answer. Yeah, they rattle off their title, maybe the industry, maybe years of experience. And the person’s nodding in front of them, they’re already checked out. They’re like, oh, fuck this, right? That’s just, you know, that’s what they’re thinking. They’re just looking around the room for the next place to walk to.

[2:06]And it’s not because they don’t care. They might actually like you a lot. You’re just boring the hell out of them and nothing landed, right? Because you’re sitting there going, well, I’m a financial analyst with 23 years experience. First, I worked at Wells Fargo. Then I worked at New York Life Insurance. And then I worked out, like, nobody cares. It’s nothing personal. If they get to know you down the road, they’ll care. But they’re not going to care now meeting you in a room with a bunch of other strangers. You need to make them feel something. The sentence that’s going to work, it’s not about what you do. It’s about what changes for someone when they work with you. Think about that for a minute. Think about it this way. Don’t say, I help companies with strategic marketing solutions. I might do that. Hell, I’ve been doing that for 20 years. Maybe more. Definitely more. I’m old now. Instead, I would say something along the lines of, I help consultants go from

[3:09]invisible to booked out in 90 days. Now, I’m not a lead gen guy per se. I do a lot of lead gen work, but don’t get me wrong. That’s not me personally, but that is a better version of instead of walking up and saying, hi, I help companies with strategic marketing solutions. Okay, another marketing guy. I help consultants go from invisible to booked out in 90 days. Now somebody’s got their attention up they’re going wait you get something done in a time frame right there’s a difference you can feel it one describes the service and the other is describing the destination the destination is all people care about nobody cares about what you do let’s be honest with ourselves what we all do is commoditize there’s a million other people doing it unless you’re truly you know even when people say you’re a category of one you’re a category of one of many. That’s just the way that goes. If you truly believe you are a sole single category

[4:10]in anything, that is called delusion. Yeah, unless you’re on stage as an artist or something, and you’re the only one doing that song that way, that time, that how, then yeah, you know, we’re pretty much all in the world of business. Everybody’s kind of doing the same thing, just different versions of it for different people in different ways. So let’s use rise in this situation. The move here is identify. Identify what your people actually want. Not what you offer, what they want to experience on the other side of it. And then simplify your message and distill it down to that one thing. And your homework for this episode is going to be write your one sentence right now while you’re listening. What changes for someone when they work with you? Try to keep it under 15 words, give or take. Read it out loud a bunch of times. If it sounds like a PowerPoint slide, do it again, man. Just do it again. If it sounds like, if it sounds all herky-jerky, Just be like, screw it and start off again. I believe in you. I know that you’ve got this. Look, one sentence. It’s all I’m asking for today. That’s the move.

[5:11]One sentence of what changes for someone when they work with you. And the riff of the episode is going to be this. It’s the one thing I write down for all these. So I’m always going to read it at the end. People don’t buy what you do. They buy where you can take them. And now you guys understand how when I write down one riff for an episode, I could turn it into an eight-minute piece. Thank you so much. I’m Steve Lichtman. This is Unfiltered and Unshakable, and I will see you on the next episode.