The Content Engine I Can Actually Stick With

I recorded a podcast every day for the past couple of weeks and a handful of people have asked me if this is gonna be the new content strategy and short answer is yes, but there's a fair amount of context that I think is actually really beneficial to anybody who is creating content to grow their business and or create a personal brand and or grow their personal brand and personal influence. And particularly anybody who's using personal channels and their personal voice slash brand to grow the business that isn't specifically a creator business meaning if you're using your profile as a founder or CEO of a service company or something like that to grow your business or you're not just selling online courses for how to grow a personal brand right. So you have an actual company, you're using an establishing a personal brand to grow a legitimate business. I think this will be helpful because the more that I talk to people the more they seem to have a lot of the same conflicts right. And so I ran into some challenges and I think I've come up with a strategy that's really effective at addressing the challenges around you know wanting to continue creating content making sure that it's useful for the business, making sure that it's authentic to a brand and ensuring that it scales with authenticity and all of that. This is my solution so I'll break it down for you here in in this podcast in in case it's helpful. Like I said short answer yes this is the strategy. And you know the the thing going into this with the goals for content for me I had three like one is you know establish and maintain a brand that's gonna grow my business right. Like obviously I I want to in some way shape or form ensure that there's value being generated for the businesses that I that I own and operate. And you know we've got MSP Sales Partners which focuses on you know building out sales teams and processes for IT companies and then we have Repeatable Revenue Ventures which is you know very limited on engagements that we have but it's investment and equity based deals for companies that want to scale. And I want my content to grow those businesses obviously so that's one goal. The second goal is I want to teach you know what I know and and what I'm learning as I'm learning it to other business leaders. And you know I I benefited more than I can possibly imagine or say in this in this show from people who created content and put themselves out there and I have for a very very long time through books a long time ago through you know I mean Tim Ferriss a decade plus ago and and so many others have put such great content out there for me to learn from and I don't know for me it was particularly important perhaps like growing up because I had to rely on mentors like I didn't have a father figure, no one in my family was really business oriented or or entrepreneurs and so I just like sucked up all this this content and I want to I've learned a lot and I think that I have a lot to share but I'm also learning a lot and you know sharing these lessons as I as I go. So that's the second goal. The third goal is I I wanted to do something that I wanted to do like I actually enjoy creating content and there have been times candidly in this process where I haven't and you know when I sat down six years ago uh and I I was kind of like you know starting the business online was becoming a real it was a challenge it was tough and I sat down did like a full day audit and I I why am I doing this like what is the purpose and you know what one of the things was it was having the the freedom and the flexibility to create content that I wanted to create it was because I liked it because I enjoyed it because I benefited from it it's a thought process right like I'm clarifying my own thoughts I'm refining my own thoughts I'm challenging my own thoughts as I'm writing and as I'm creating so I wanted to do that. So I've got these three goals in mind and I I kept running into to to challenges and there were two big challenges that I ran into with content. One is all those goals which is this is really common if you've got three goals the goals end up conflicting with one another. We would do content that got leads you know grew the business and then I didn't want to do it after a period of time. I'd just get tired of saying the same shit or the topic would get really boring or it just felt so narrow like I I wanted to talk about a wider range of topics then what my like the specific problem that my my ideal client had and I know it's selfish but but I'm the core content creator I'm the machine and you know if I burn out and I break then it doesn't it doesn't really work. And so one issue was we'd find the stuff that generated leads but then I didn't want I would burn out on on creating it. And then we would you know we'd create systems to make it easier like we you know we did the ghostwriter thing we did the AI thing we did like all of these other ways of you know scaling content and voice and you know I had a a ghostwriter tell me said like dude you're you're like the worst client to to have like I love you but you know it's like you're you're so particular on how you want things framed. It was because you know I would push back on shit like hey it says in this hook you know the other day I was talking to a business owner that said XYZ and I was like no I wasn't and like I don't want to use that as a hook it feels dishonest or we would talk about um like a really nuanced topic of like sales quotas and they would take a piece of what I said but it requires necessary context and oversimplify it and it would change the meaning and I'd be like no I don't I don't like this. So yes I'm probably like the worst person to to write for. You're burning out, the systems that we're creating to to make it easier and more efficient aren't quite working why don't we have you create more content that you want to create like get back to you just just create the stuff you you want to create and I'm like okay. But then that didn't grow the business as much because I'm talking about a wider range of topics then what my ideal client wants to hear. So I'd start creating content that I wanted to create which was more nuanced and I admittedly like to to provide a lot of context because I like to teach that wasn't the stuff that would grow the business so there was like this constant internal conflict right with the goals competing with each other. The second issue was I wanted significantly higher quality from the content meaning I wanted faster growth I wanted better engagement I wanted wider reach I wanted higher impact like I wanted it to be better in every way and you've probably heard me say before like quality comes from quantity like if we wanted to get dramatically better then what we would need to do is like dramatically increase the amount of content we were creating so that we could get the data and the response and the feedback that we needed to determine what was working and what wasn't. Well on some of these channels like YouTube trying to 5x or 10x the amount of content that you're creating on that channel requires a substantial amount of time and a you know and budget uh because there's it's not just sit down record and publish it's sit down you know frame it right make sure the hook's right you got to get the thumbnail right you got to get the title right you got to do like all of these things just to barely move the needle right. And and one issue that we're trying to solve right now on the quality side is better engagement on YouTube like I've been at it for two and a half years and you know the average video is getting a couple hundred views well that's great you know but that's not and I'm I'm in it for the long game but I could create one a day and at 200 views you're like I don't know am I am I really getting the data I need. And in order to create that content we're going to start taking shortcuts on things like thumbnails and titles and scripting and everything else. So it was like you know we needed more more quantity um we needed a much higher volume to to get the data we needed. So I came up with an idea that half of it I stole and then half of it I took the idea that I stole and repurposed it um and the the idea addresses both of these challenges and it is basically I'm going to create content that I want to create on dedicated channels and my team is gonna be responsible for going through that content and turning it into content that grows the business. It keeps me focused on the things that I want to create and gives me the freedom and the space to to to stay energized and stay and stay authentic and create what I want to create and then it gives the team like what they need like the ability to go through that as a library of content and pull out everything that they want. So I will post unfiltered what I want on X. Now listen like I I have level one autism which means I get hyperfixated on something and I'm hyperfixated on business so 90% of what I post is still gonna be business and sales because it's what I think about you know almost all the time um but there is other stuff you know like there's there's stuff on mindset philosophy fitness that that science that I do think about uh write about have thoughts on and you know so I'll post on X primarily business and sales stuff of course but uh other stuff and it's gonna be raw unfiltered and they'll go through that and turn that into other short form content like Instagram LinkedIn Facebook short form and everything else. So it's a thought pad and then similarly we're I'll I'll record on the podcast um long form and as a thought pad uh on topics that I want to talk about at the cadence of production that I want to create maybe it's you know at the moment it's one a day could be two a day could be you know two a week at at some point. I basically post freely and not scripted not worrying about if it's the right hook not worrying about if I have the right retention in 30 seconds and that's gonna allow me to create the stuff that I want you know stay energized and it's going to create give us the volume that we we basically need if I'm just cranking out a ton of content they're gonna be able to not only take the stuff from the podcast and say hey this would make a great YouTube video and here's how we would position it and the data actually supports that but it's also going to be the stuff that gets repurposed elsewhere you know so it makes content creation for the business a lot easier it makes content creation for me a lot easier and we find kind of the the synergy between it. It's you know we're going to drive quantity to get the quality we're going to address all the goals I think um and it keeps me from from burning out as I as I create. So hopefully this is helpful for for you if you have you know a a content person that's capable of going through your content and turning it into to something else and repositioning it and saying hey let's let's turn this into a slideshow and let's turn this into a screen capture and let's just turn this into a full post maybe it's something that'll help you um has definitely helped me so far I'm enjoying the process a lot uh more right now and um I hope you are too. And now you know where to find me on the channels if you want it more unfiltered or if you prefer the more refined version where to go for that too. Thanks adios.