Episode 491: Are you documenting what matters?
Do you ever wonder if you're really capturing the moments that matter in your business?
We get so caught up in the hustle that we forget to document the journey—the wins, the lessons, the behind-the-scenes moments. In this episode of the My Daily Business Coach Podcast, Fiona Killackey dives into how you can start documenting your business story in an authentic and meaningful way.
In today’s episode, we’ll talk about:
The struggle with documenting your business journey—and how to make it feel natural
How to capture the unscripted, everyday moments (even when you don’t feel “camera ready”)
Why you don’t need everything to be polished or perfect—just document what truly matters to connect with your audience
Simple, practical ways to start documenting your wins, challenges, and growth without feeling overwhelmed
If you’ve been putting off documenting your journey or feel stuck when it comes to recording your business’s progress, this episode is for you.
Hit play to learn how to turn everyday moments into a powerful narrative that connects with your audience.
Connect and get in touch with My Daily Business
Your one-stop destination for premium business tools and resources
Do you love your life as a small business owner?
Let's be real.
Sometimes we just don't. It's my hope that this, the My Daily Business Podcast, helps you regain a little of that lost love through practical, actionable tips, tools and tactics, interviews with creative and curious small business owners, and in depth coaching episodes with me, your host, Fiona Killackey With more than 20 years experience in marketing, brand content and systems and having now helped thousands of small business owners, I know what it takes to build.
A business that you can be proud of and that actually aligns with your values, your beliefs, and your hopes for the future. So much of our daily life is spent working on and in the businesses and the brands that we are creating, and so it makes sense to actually love what you do.
So, let's get into this podcast and help you figure out how to love your business and your life on the Daily.
Hello and welcome to episode 491 of the My Daily Business Podcast. Today it's a quick tip episode and honestly, if you're somebody who struggles with content or feeling like you don't have the content to back up your ideas and so therefore can't execute quickly, then today's episode is absolutely for you.
Before we get stuck in, I want to let you know that group coaching is open and we are interviewing people and we have filled up, gosh, almost all of it to be honest. So if you're interested in that, please go and check it out at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching. Even if you're listening to this outside of real time and it's currently February 2025, we will have a waitlist or it may even be another time in the future that we're opening up. So either way, go and check out mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching.
The other thing I wanted to mention, and I did a shout out on Instagram recently for this as well, is that if you have found this podcast useful and we get so many DMs, which I absolutely love and I would love it though if you could take that energy and that excitement which is so appreciated, and bring it over to Apple Podcast or Spotify and leave a review. It just really, really, really helps in so many ways. It helps other small business owners find it, it helps us with the ranking which makes all of this work feel like it's worth it, and it also just helps other people see what it's about. 🙏
I know that I often read reviews before I tap into a new anything really, whether that's a podcast or a movie, I go and check out what other people have to say about it. So if you have enjoyed this, and I know that you have, because we have pretty good engagement and we have a lot of DMs, please, please, please, could you please leave a review? It doesn't have to be a written review. You can just tap the stars, whatever suits you. But please, from the bottom of my heart, it would be so incredibly appreciated.
Hello and welcome to episode 491 of the My Daily Business Podcast today.
It's a quick tip episode and honestly, if you're somebody who struggles with content or feels like you don't have the content to back up your ideas and therefore can't execute quickly, then today's episode is absolutely for you.
Before we get stuck in, I want to let you know that group coaching is open, and we are interviewing people. We have filled up, gosh, almost all of it, to be honest. So, if you're interested in that, please go and check it out at mymdailybusiness.com/group-coaching. Even if you're listening to this outside of real time and it's currently February 2025, we will have a waitlist or it may even be another time in the future that we're opening up. So either way, go and check out mymdailybusiness.com/group-coaching.
The other thing I wanted to mention, and I did a shout-out on Instagram recently for this as well, is that if you have found this podcast useful—and we get so many DMs, which I absolutely love—I would love it if you could take that energy and that excitement, which is so appreciated, and bring it over to Apple Podcast or Spotify and leave a review. It just really, really, really helps in so many ways. It helps other small business owners find it. It helps us with the ranking, which makes all of this work feel like it's worth it. And it also just helps other people see what it's about.
I know that I often read reviews before I tap into anything new, whether that's a podcast or a movie. I go and check out what other people have to say about it. So, if you have enjoyed this—and I know that you have, because we have pretty good engagement and a lot of DMs—please, please, please, could you leave a review? It doesn't have to be a written review. You can just tap the stars, whatever suits you. But please, from the bottom of my heart, it would be so incredibly appreciated.
Lastly, let's of course acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these lands. For me, that's the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
Alright, let's get into today's quick tip episode.
As I said earlier, if you have ever struggled with content—not necessarily the ideas, but the execution—I know how you feel. I definitely feel like I have struggled at times with this. And, you know, sometimes it's like, "Oh, I've got all these ideas," but then how do I get those ideas, particularly into video format or something else?
So, what I want to talk about today is: are you documenting the stuff that matters?
For example, let's say you have... Okay, not even for example—this actually happened.
So let's say you get offered a book deal like I did back in, God, 2018. I think it was the first one, which then led to their book Passion, Purpose, Profit. When I first got that, I did document some of it. I kind of wish I'd documented more.
But what I mean by that is, let's say you get the book deal. You would have had conversations before that. So, you may even screen grab the email that you sent in the first instance. You might record yourself if you know that you're going to research book publishers for the next 10 minutes or 20 minutes. Just put your camera up and create some B-roll of you just looking for that stuff. Or take a screen grab of their website and be like, "Oh my goodness, I'm trying my luck with them today."
You don’t have to document and then publish in real time, but what you're doing is getting that information in real time. So that should you then want to do a Reel or YouTube or something else with it, you have all of these elements to pull together, rather than trying to do it after the fact.
You’ve probably seen it—I’ve seen it sometimes where people try and go back, and you can tell it’s not real or genuine. And that just really puts people off. So, you may as well just do it in the time.
When I had that, the things that I did document—I remember I documented, I did screen grab the actual offer, which is great because it’s not just for your social media. I’ve used those screen grabs in my course How to Get Your First Book Published. So, if you’re interested in that, you can just go to mymdailybusiness.com/courses.
But I took screen grabs of that. I also remember vividly filming a video in my car, outside the publisher’s office, when I was about to go and meet them for the first time. I did it again when I was going to go in and look at cover options for the book, which I didn’t like any of the cover options.
I remember I was so excited in the car, in the video. And then I went, did them, came back, and I was like, "Ah, we went through 14 and I didn’t like any of them."
And then I documented again, writing the content. I documented my Post-it notes up on the wall, and you can see— I just documented, documented.
With the second book, I did the same. I remember, like taking videos. I felt kind of awkward, but I took videos in Officeworks (which is a stationery store here in Australia) of me printing out the manuscript. I took a video of flicking through the manuscript at Officeworks. I took a whole bunch of content.
I probably could have taken a lot more for that. But what you're doing is then being able to, if you publish that in a Reel, take people along for the journey.
But even if you don't publish it in real time, you’ve got it there for yourself. And also, these sorts of things—they come up in your memories. Like if you’ve got an iPhone, often memory photos will come up, and it’s just reminding yourself of how far you’ve come.
Now, it could be, like I said with the book, it could also be, let’s say, you know, anything first—like a first staff member, a first getting your keys to your new office.
It could be getting your first piece of artwork for your office. As you can see, I’ve got a lot around me. I love buying art. I love just, yeah, I love—we’ve got art all over our house.
All these things are helping people understand who you are if you're sharing them, but also allowing you to have a whole bunch of content ready to go. So that when you have that idea, it’s about just matching that idea with the content you already have, rather than having this idea, laying it all out, doing these mood boards, doing story ideas, and then being like, “Oh, God, now I have to film five different things and I don’t know if I’ve got the time.”
So therefore, just that idea never actually gets executed.
Another thing that came up recently for me was when I documented getting my nails done at this event when I just moved back to Australia. So that came up, and I think it was 10 years ago exactly. It was really fun to see it the other day because I was like, “Oh my goodness, I still get my nails done. Kind of fun!”
And it’s something that I enjoy and I’ve always enjoyed. It’s just part of who I am. And so people know that. People, when I go to workshops, they’re like, “Oh my goodness, look at your nails! I always see your nails on Instagram.”
It’s just a small little thing, but it’s like, that’s part of who she is. And it’s super official, as it sounds, seeing that memory.
And I have to shout out the small business owner, Ice Cream Nails, because I remember that is how I met them. I met them at an event where they were doing my nails, and they looked so good.
And so, it’s about, am I documenting?
So, if you’re listening to this, going, “Okay, yeah, I have some things that I could totally start documenting,” what do you do?
In Thursday’s episode, I’m going to do a much longer episode—a coaching episode—all about this. The actual tips and tactics for creating this content, storing it, file names, being able to find it again. Because that’s one of the big things—you take all this content and then you don’t know where it is.
So I will definitely be going through that in more detail in the next episode. But for now, looking at behind the scenes.
So, if you’re about to do a photo shoot, are you capturing imagery before the photo shoot starts? I know I had one recently with Hilary Walker. She’s a fantastic photographer. And so I asked her, “Is it okay if I take photos of you setting up here? Is it okay if I take photos of you, like, checking the lights and doing all of that?”
And she was like, “Yeah, totally fine.”
So just remember, if you’re doing anything, is there a behind the scenes that I can capture now?
People love that stuff. Honestly, my last job, when I was head of marketing for a major brand here in Australia, the behind-the-scenes stuff, especially at photo shoots, especially when we’re about to, like, I know, go and do a talk or anything, was the most engaged content.
You’d think it would be the actual campaign shoot and other things. But so often, it was people wanting to see what actually goes on behind the scenes.
And people think, “Oh, well, my stuff…” Like, you’re so used to it that it can feel really like, “Oh, no one would ever listen to that or look at that.”
I remember years ago, I was working with an interior designer out of Sydney, and they went and did sort of a check-in with suppliers and looked for new things. I think it was like every Wednesday or every Tuesday.
And I said, “Why don’t you just start documenting that? You don’t have to show your face, you can just start documenting. I’ve gone to this fabric store, I’m looking at these tiles now. Document just, I don’t know, the steering wheel or something. Now I’m driving to the next place.”
And they started, and it became a whole series for them.
And I think this is the stuff. We are so close to things that we think they’re quite boring and mundane and ordinary, whereas other people want to see it. Even other people in your industry, such as other interior designers, wanted to see, “Where are you going? How do you do that? How… Maybe I need to change my part, or, oh gosh, we have that in common.”
The other thing is saving screenshots of things. I do that all the time. But I’ve often talked about having a sunshine folder. So, when people send you nice things, whether it’s a nice review or a reply to your email or something else comes in, save it to your sunshine folder.
Now, that’s usually with emails, but you can have a sunshine folder on your phone and just screen grab stuff that makes you feel good, that makes you feel like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve had so many wins,” put it in there.
But also, you can reuse that stuff to present to your audiences.
So, it’s really just about like, “Can I screenshot this? Is it exciting? Do I feel some kind of way?” And even if it’s a negative way, it’s like, “Could I screenshot this and make this into content later on?”
So, it’s really about just reminding yourself to document things regularly and not just always feel like, “I have to come up with the idea, then come up with a plan, and then film.” Often you can just film and screen grab and do all the other things.
And then, when you come up with your ideas, be like, “Okay, how do I match that back to the content I already have?”
I think content creation is such a beast for a lot of people, even myself. I have worked in content creation in some capacity for 23 years, and it is still something that I’m like, “Ugh, occasionally, I often get really excited about it, but sometimes it is like, ‘Oh my gosh, another thing.’”
I have to create another thing. So, if that is you, look through your screen grabs already. I'm sure you've got a whole bunch of content you can already use. Look through your Sunshine folder if you already have one. Start looking at behind the scenes, and start documenting as much as you can.
And again, it doesn’t always have to be you with your face in it. It’s not about you necessarily selling, it’s about you connecting with your audience and showing what really happens in your business.
So, that is it for today’s Quick Tip episode. If you want to go through this in text format, you can find it at mydailybusiness.com/podcast491.
Now, we are going to be launching YouTube in 2025, so we are recording all of these in video, which is very strange for me to be doing, looking at myself when I’m usually just talking into GarageBand. So, we will be doing that sometime later on.
But for now, if you want to go through the text format, you can find that again, as I said, at mydailybusiness.com/podcast491.
If you want to join Group Coaching, you can find that at mydailybusiness.com/groupcoaching.
And for anything else you might need – templates, eBooks, my real books in physical format, courses, business coaching, all of it – you can find it at mydailybusiness.com/shop.
Thanks so much for listening. I’ll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Podcast for a range of tools to help you grow and start your business, including coaching programmes, courses and templates. Check out our shop at mydailybusiness.com and if you want to get in touch, you can do that by email at hello@mydailybusiness.com or you can hit us up on Instagram at mydailybusiness_. You can find us on TikTok at mydailybusiness or find me Fiona Killackey on LinkedIn. I look forward to connecting.
