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Oops. I lost all of my TikTok drafts. Welcome to the Muthership Creator Strategy. Let's talk about it. I want to use this as an opportunity because I always take something that does happen to me, whether it's on social media or something that maybe one of my studio members has experienced, and I turn it into a lesson.
Helen:In this case, guess who's a lesson? Me. Because I had 1,900 drafts in my TikTok, and that is absurd in the first place. It should never have been like that. It's just that it wasn't so easy to not get there because of my lack of systems and lack of process when it comes to my TikTok drafts.
Helen:So I wanna talk about creating systems, phone storage, and how to manage your data because we are in a world of data. And everybody you know, we're talking about data centers, and people are worried about AI. The data on emails, the data on these apps, it's all being housed in a data center. So we can say whatever we wanna say and listen to whatever people have have to say about that, and I know we have to fix it. That's a problem that needs to be addressed.
Helen:That is no joke. However, we are still even if you think, well, I'm not using AI. Well, you're using TikTok. You're using social media. You're using email.
Helen:It's all stored somewhere. Let's get back to it. So the reason why I think we need to address and create a system is that you won't get to a point where it's it's impossible to manage, and I was at that point. 1,900 drafts. Oh my god.
Helen:Even if I delete 10 a day, it's gonna take me forever to do. So what I wanna do is explain, first of all, I'm gonna validate why I had all these drafts. No. I'm not gonna validate it. I'm gonna tell you why.
Helen:But I would, let's say, try a TikTok for five tries. Let's say I'm doing a dance or let's say I'm whatever I'm doing, and I do five attempts to get the transition right. And I I don't know. That was pretty good, but I probably could do it better, so I do it again instead of deleting and doing it over. And so I would accumulate.
Helen:But what's funny is that a lot of times, would go back and use those drafts. So I would go back to one and say, oh, I'll do a new ending if it was a transition. So I will say I do use them. It was not like they were sitting there and never used. I would go back and I'd pick one out.
Helen:As a matter of fact, I had a couple that I was gonna post, so it's really frustrating that now I don't even have that option anymore. But what I think I'm gonna start doing now is creating a better system for my drafts, and I'm gonna help you now with talking about storage as well for the phone. And all of these things that I am learning are things that are included when I teach. So in my studio, at the retreat, we're gonna be talking about how to do it. We're I'm gonna be showing everybody here's how you wanna organize, and I'm gonna help people create a system.
Helen:So this is the last day for the discounted retreat. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Let's get to systems. It's gonna be a very big priority for me as we as I move into the next phase, meaning my new phone. So come with me on the journey.
Helen:Okay. First things first. When you are putting creating content, you have different ways you can do it. You can create, use your regular phone, put the editing, do the editing cap cut, export the final video, then you can upload it to TikTok. So you don't necessarily have to create in TikTok, and we know this.
Helen:I teach this all the time. But the the the other part of this is then you have a ton of projects in CapCut, and they stay there forever. Then you have a ton of raw footage that you don't delete after you edit the video. So you've gotta think in your mind, what is your checklist going to be, And what is your process gonna be? And how many drafts do you actually wanna keep housed in the app?
Helen:Because, God forbid, you do have something happen to your phone, anything in the app is automatically lost when it's a draft and you move to a new phone. This is not the case with your photos, obviously, and it's but it is the case usually with CapCut, I think usually. You lose the projects unless you have put them to the cloud. Yes. Actually, you do.
Helen:You lose the projects. So it's the case in any app. Most of these apps, when it's the draft stage and it's not posted, it is not kept. It's held locally. So if you download that app on another phone, you'll notice you won't have your TikTok drafts if you download your TikTok on your iPad, for example.
Helen:Alright? So that's how that works. So what you wanna do as a creator, and this really comes to Betsy pointed this out. She's like, how many drafts should we have on hand? And you should just have enough on hand.
Helen:Like, if you are posting week to week and you're batch creating, you don't wanna have five months worth of your drafts in there because if your phone goes, you've lost five months of drafts. You don't need that many. I think a week's worth of drafts is enough. If you're batch creating and you're putting them in your phone so that they're ready to go, you could put them in week every week. We are making them in another app.
Helen:You're uploading them to TikTok. You're getting them ready, captions, text on screen, thumbnail, and then this way you can hit post or you can schedule it. But you don't have to have them weeks out stored in there because then you would have to do that work all over again. So I like to think of, like, how much work would I wanna do over again? And that's how many drafts I would keep stored.
Helen:So you can do your content. You can edit in CapCut. One system would be as soon as you finish editing and you export, delete the raw footage. That would be one system. I don't necessarily wanna do that because I may go back and do a reedit and say, oh, maybe I'll change the opening line.
Helen:So I don't like to just delete the the raw footage right away. But there's a system for deleting the raw footage, so I'm gonna share that. Alright? So let's try and keep this organized. The reality check is your drafts are gonna pile up.
Helen:Don't let them pile up. If you do a if you do a task and you do a a TikTok and you try it five or an Instagram Reel and you try it a few times, in a week, go back and look at your drafts and say, let me clean up. It's almost like maybe schedule a time. Maybe it's Sunday night. Instead of the Sunday scaries, you do the Sunday cleanup.
Helen:I don't know. And you go in there and you just say, what do I not need? Delete. Delete. Delete.
Helen:So you've gotta create a working system, and I will tell you that one of the things that I'm gonna try and do is make sure it's so automated. So for example, you will say to yourself, before I have my morning coffee I I don't wanna do that because I don't drink morning I don't drink coffee. For me, it's tea. Before I have my morning tea, I'm gonna look at my phone quick and see if there's any drafts I have to delete. Like, attach it to another thing that you do automatically habitually.
Helen:It doesn't have to be morning coffee. Maybe it's something you do once a week. I don't know what that is. I'm trying to think of what do people do once a week. Maybe it's when you clean your bathroom or something.
Helen:You say, okay. Cleaning my bathroom, cleaning my storage. So you take a half an hour, and you go through last week's videos, and you go clean out. Okay. I've posted.
Helen:Okay. I don't need this raw footage anymore, and now I have filed the finished edit into a folder that is called tutorials or skincare or dancing or whatever. So you have folders, albums in your phone, you file them. So creating a system, but then the system for the system has to be created. In other words, you can have the system, the process that you're gonna do, but you have to set a system for the time you're gonna do it.
Helen:Otherwise, it won't get done. You can have all the systems you want. If you don't have a system for doing the system, it's not gonna get done. So you've gotta attach it to something else you do in your life, and that's your cleanup time. And here's another strategy for you, which I kinda love, and I was doing it so well for a while, and then I I I lost steam.
Helen:But you can in your photos, you can search by a date. So today's date, August 14. You put in August 14, and it shows you all of the August 14 photos for years that are in your phone. So you can do it by day. This some creator posted about this, and I'm like, this is a good system.
Helen:So you do it one day at a time. So every day on August 14 so now you have to say, when is that gonna happen during my day? Is it gonna be when I'm watching TV at night? When I'm laying in bed right before I shut off my phone? Whenever it is, you have to have a trigger where you're gonna say, now's the time, and I'm gonna go through my phone and look at today's date and delete what I don't need anymore.
Helen:And that's a way of cleaning keeping your phone clean day by day by day that is not an overwhelming task. So I would say run with that one. Okay? That's a that's a good skill, a good strategy, but you have to have a system for doing the thing. And then it's like, oh, one day you're so busy, you're at work, or something happened, and then you went out to dinner at night, then all of sudden you're in bed and you didn't do it.
Helen:Once you start missing a day and you let it go, it's like it's gonna pile up to be a week, and it's gonna be not sustainable. So you've gotta figure out something where you're doing something automatically and you attach it to that. Now storage on the phone itself, problematic. Because even if you do the deleting and you do all the things, eventually, years go by, this the the data's coming, even if you're deleting things. So the other way to do it is to have a system where you transfer things to your laptop, and then you put it on a hard drive, or you put it into a cloud, a Dropbox, or a Google Drive.
Helen:And I will say there's certain things I have a system for that I do that when I record this podcast, and it's a video, and it's a long video. So those videos immediately get edited, exported, and then airdrop to my laptop. They get put into a folder in my Dropbox. It's so easy to systemize because I do this once a week, and I created a system for it. So boom, the thing goes, then it's in the Dropbox, and then when my Dropbox gets full, I take months worth of the podcast and I put it on a little, it's not here, external hard drive, and then I drop it off there.
Helen:So I have a system set up for that, and you can do the same thing. You can have a system set up for I can set up the same system for tutorials, And I guess the issue is there, I'm doing them every day, so it's really it's it's more work to keep up with that, whereas this is once a week, so it's very systemized and easy to do. But it's if you think about the system and you can make a system for the system, you will actually be able to keep up with it. I have never missed it on the podcast. Every week, this gets trans edited.
Helen:This gets transferred. This gets dropped air dropped. It gets put away, and it gets deleted off my phone. And that's how I manage the storage that does so it doesn't build up with these longer episodes. So take that and run with it, and think about how you're going to make sure you do it.
Helen:And I think that you can if you're a person who exercises, you could relate it to that. Like, oh, when I do my exercise, the the last fifteen minutes when I'm cooling down, that's when I'm gonna check my storage on my phone. When whenever it is in your day that you can fit it in, it has to become a habit. And they do say that if you do something for five minutes a day for once you hit a certain period, I forget what the threshold is, I don't know if it's two weeks or a month, it becomes a habit. And that's what you have to do.
Helen:You have to create a new habit. We have a digital we have a need to create a new digital habit. Otherwise, we're gonna get overwhelmed and we're gonna get, like we're gonna be drowning in data. Now I'm gonna circle this back to say, this is your last chance to get in at the discounted rate for the retreat. If you don't care about the discounted rate, you still have time.
Helen:Okay? But the rate is gonna go up after today because now we're getting to the point where I have to start shelling out the money to hold the places and make sure I have the spaces and the reservations I need and all of that. So, you know, you can come into it up to the deadline. I'm forgetting when the deadline is. I think it's September 11 or something, somewhere around September where it's the final deadline, and then we're shutting it down completely.
Helen:But we're close to having to cap it anyway, so I'm almost at a point where I'm not gonna be taking more people either way. So waiting is not your friend. If you really wanna go and you're just thinking about it, at least email me and tell me, hey, by the way, I know I haven't hit the button yet, but, you know, how many more slots are left? And I'll talk to you about that because each day I'm getting I get the sign ups, and I just wanna make sure that I'm not gonna overtake people because I wanna make sure everybody gets the personalized experience that I would like to deliver at this. It's gonna be very hands on.
Helen:We're gonna be doing all the things. I'm gonna be coaching some of you with how to be more natural on camera. That's what I love to do for my work, so I enjoy that. The editing thing, cannot wait to sit down and show people. I cannot tell you how much that changes it for people.
Helen:When they can sit with me and I show them in real person in real life, and I do it with friends of mine when I'm together at dinner, I'm, like, showing people how to edit. This is what I'm doing all the time. It's really it's gonna lock in. Okay? So if you're having trouble and you need and you're a kind of person that just needs to sit with someone, this is this is an opportunity to do it.
Helen:Alright? So hopefully, maybe, I will see you. I am so looking forward to those of you who are already coming. I'm gonna promise you a fun time. I just had a really good meeting with a prod production that I'm doing next week, and the people on the phone call were like, we can't wait to shoot with you.
Helen:We've seen some of your they've seen some of my behind the scenes wrap up videos, and they're like, we wanna be on set with that energy. So you're gonna be able to be in person for three days with the energy, and I have lots of it. Lots of it to go around. So hopefully, I'll see you there, and I'm gonna make it a very, very memorable weekend for anybody who decides to take the leap. Alright.
Helen:Good to see you, and I'll see you next week. Thanks for being here.