124: JB’s 5 C’s System for Content Curation and Production

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I sometimes hesitate to share things because I'm holding myself to the standard that I must be the end all, be all expert on something when instead when I can shift to see myself as a qualified curator, a curious person who reads a lot of this type of content, who then has a kind of honed curiosity mechanism. I have a collection bucket where it gets refined. I'm intentional about where in my content calendar it goes. I at that point give yourself permission to hit Publish.

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Hello hello Free Timers. How often do you find yourself sitting there with idea block, writer's block, talker's block, everything block, and you just can't seem to stay on schedule for your ideal content production. Today I'm going to share with you my 5C's system for content production. I can't say that I'm perfect at this either, but I can tell you that these five Cs help me stay on track for the long arc of creativity and the long arc of having a platform. I've been platform building online for 17 years now and let me be the first one to say nothing that I do is ever perfect. I feel awkward all the time. I miss deadlines to myself all the time. And yet I keep going. And for some crazy reason, I've kept going for 17 years of hitting publish and doing what I call ongoing public, original thinking, thinking out loud, sharing it, curating things, sharing those, and just generally trying to add value week after week. I have friends who have never missed a newsletter in 10 or 20 years of publishing. They've never missed a podcast episode on their intended day of the week. I actually feel that they should be here delivering this episode. This one is for those of you that do struggle with consistency. You do have a delightfully tiny team, if any, but you like staying small. So you also don't have a big full time team of content producers or people who are writing things for you. You are still at the heart of it, at the heart of the operation, and you just want to be a little more consistent and a little more confident with the content that you're creating. What I'm sharing with you has helped me ramp up my production to 12 podcast episodes a month, a Pivot List newsletter that I send twice a month and time well spent that I say is weekly ish that I send every Friday. I also produce a lot behind the scenes for the private BFF community for small heart based business owners. Things like a monthly mailer, some posts in our private circle community, bonus episodes on a private podcast feed, a monthly Q and A call with me, a Brilliance Barter Hot Sea exchange that we do the following week. And then that doesn't include any content of one off events or workshops I might do, being invited to other shows. So there's still content production and thinking out loud that happens not regularly on my own platform, but more as a one off. But that gives you an idea of the scope of organizing what is one area of the business. By the way, content production is something that a lot of us have to keep up with and it could be seen as marketing, but it's often not the number one thing paying the bills. So it can sometimes feel like you're on a treadmill or in a hamster wheel just furiously trying to keep up. It's never ending. You want to repurpose things as we learned from Ellen Dibb. I'll put that fantastic episode in the show notes and this episode is to help you get even more organized so you can sleep at night knowing that your content production process is streamlined, taken care of, and everything has a home. Now I do have help. I've mentioned One Stone Creative many times. They take an episode once I've recorded it solo or with a guest and run with it. They help do all the rest. This episode is not focusing on the delightfully tiny team aspect of content production, but it's focused on how do you feel clear and confident when you sit down and it is time to create? How do you make things easier for yourself? How do you batch content? How do you stay energized that you feel like you have a well of ideas that you can draw from? Today is a good example because when I record at the studio like I'm doing today Time is money. It is literally money. I'm paying $50 an hour and if I sit down and I don't have ideas in mind, if I don't have a plan of what I'm going to record, then I literally sit here, as I did actually do today, for 20 minutes, staring into space and procrastinating. And I just feel the money burning because I've paid for this space. So if I don't hit record for the first 30 minutes of when I've sat down, that's $25 that just flew out the window and not for a good enough reason. So it's on my mind. How do I come in? Always knowing what I'm going to do. And part of the reason I do pay for this space is specifically to get out of the house and hold myself accountable. Part of the reason that these solo episodes do actually come out every Friday, yes, it's because there's a team helping. And it's also because I pay for studio time so that I can batch episode creation. And I also am really intentional about my collecting of ideas and snippets and interesting nuggets leading in to batch creation days. Without further ado, let's get into JB's 5C's system for content production.

Number one, carve out time for consuming content that energizes you each day. Your pick. Whether you want the sea to be carve out or consuming, this is important. And I think that a lot of us shortchange ourselves that we think that reading in the morning is frivolous or I don't have time for that or there are so many other things I need to do or maybe I should check my email first. I am very intentional and I gave myself permission a long time ago to carve out time every morning for consuming content. Part of it is that it warms up my brain. Part of it is that it's inherently joyful. I just love it. I love reading and I love having quiet time in the morning with my coffee all to myself. Reading. I love reading in the dark. I love when I wake up before sunrise because Ryder's not anxious to get outside and I know I have extra time that I can steal away and read. But some of you might feel hesitant or self conscious to give yourself too much time that reading and consuming content that energizes you is key. I'm not talking about doom scrolling on your phone and feeling completely depressed by the news or social media. Compare and despair. No. Carve out time for consuming content that inspires you. That energizes you, that gives you ideas, that fuels you. For me, some of my content that I regularly return to any nonfiction books, I really do nerd out on reading business books. I love them. I don't read a lot of memoirs or fiction, so that doesn't really make my morning routine. New York Times. I still subscribe to the inky version, the New Yorker. I just re added my the Week subscription. I even just added Monocle magazine. Sometimes I cancel all my subscriptions. I used to subscribe to Vanity Fair and Wired and I just could not keep up. I had, as I'm sure you can imagine, piles and piles of magazines and newspapers in my house. But I kind of hit a lull recently where I thought, all right, I'm going to expand my content bucket a little bit. I'm enjoying I actually because I have so many cool systems now, primarily through notion, I love it. I'm like, I want to feed my content machine because it's all built. So this carving out time in the morning, on the contrary to it seeming frivolous, it's actually really important. If you are creative in any way in your business, it's so important to fuel your mind in the morning and get inspired and see what synapses start firing and what connections you start making. So if you haven't already, figure out when you're really energized in the day. If for you, it's the morning, that's cool again. I feel like this ritual pairs really nicely with coffee because I love coffee. The smell, having a hot mug in my hands and reading is so satisfying. So I will often read for, if I can, one or two hours before I ever check email or look at anything that could give me even the slightest tinge of anxiety or a feeling that I better hurry up and finish so I can get to actual work. I started to see myself that this is really important time for fueling one of my biggest assets, which is my mind. That's the one thing that I have that no one else has, is my unique mind and my lens and my specific curation. I'm not saying that's better than anyone else's, not at all. But I'm saying something that I can uniquely do is learn and grow and see what I'm curious about. So you hereby have permission to do. Number one, carve out time for consuming content that energizes you every day.

Number two, follow your curiosity. I love the way Tiago Forte talked about this in episode 111, building a second brain. That episode is the same title as his book Building a Second Brain. And he says, don't worry about judging. Is this nugget that I find this little paragraph in an article you read, a profile of somebody. Don't worry if it relates to your work, don't worry if it's going to be helpful later on. Don't worry if your audience will want to know about this, follow your curiosity and if you have the tiniest tinge of excitement, set it aside in what I would call an inspiration box. If it's a physical article, or take screenshots with your phone, or capture links. So don't be self conscious if the things you're collecting don't seem to go together. When I was basically hoarding old magazines, I had so many oh my goodness, sometimes they pile up. If I'm going through a stressful time and I remember tearing out all the articles. I actually had fomo. I was not going to just throw away that stack of magazines because I had a FOMO for what was going to be in there, what was I going to miss? And as I was reading, I just ripped out pages of everything I wanted to capture everything that I felt was an interesting little factoid or profile or quote. And I put them in a box. I had a white kind of almost shoebox sized box that I called the Inspo box. I just threw them in there. This was not an organized slip box. Ryan Holiday has one. There's all different names for the slip box. I've heard it called Zettelkasten. Elizabeth Gilbert has written many of her books with this shoebox that's neatly organized with index cards. That's a little different than what I'm talking about, what I call the Inspo box. The Inspo box is you just throw toss all your inspo in there if it's in physical form, and then later you can go back through and take photos with your phone. I ended up actually just doing a bulk upload. You can select a bunch of photos and drag them into a Notion database and then a bunch of cards get created that you can later go back in and zhuzh up spruce up. One more thing I want to mention about following your curiosity is not to be self conscious if things that you like don't seem to go together or don't seem to fit your quote brand or your ideal audience or the specific buckets of content that you've promised to talk about publicly. I feel that in the many, many years that I've been blogging and podcasting, I'VE seen a lot of people struggle with this and hold themselves back. They go, I'm interested in five different things and everybody tells me I need to pick. Yes. While that may be true to figure out the clients that you want to serve, the problem that you want to solve for the clients you want to serve, as Pamela Slim talked about in episode 117, in terms of creating content, I think you need to be yourself. I think your unique Venn diagram of interests is what makes you unique and actually is what attracts people to you. It can get kind of boring if you only talk about one thing and if you're leaving a lot of your curiosities off the table. So I remember really kind of early on to when Tim Ferriss was podcasting, he explained that part of his process is he doesn't worry that every episode be thrilling to every single listener. He seemed to rotate between episodes on bodybuilding and body hacking. Then maybe psilocybin and his interest in psychedelics for mental health and healing. Then maybe he would have one on some famous actor or musician or someone at the top of their game and someone like me. Maybe I was not that interested in the bodybuilding episode, but then there I would catch another one. So every five or so there would be one that I absolutely loved and where you would get into the nitty gritty of, let's say, somebody's creative process and exactly how they work their daily routines. And I would love that one so much that it didn't matter that I didn't love all five in that sequence. And then maybe for some of his truly right down the strike zone, ideal listeners, maybe they did love all five because we are all dynamic, well rounded individuals. We're going to like a lot of things. And it's very likely that your Venn diagram of interests and passions, although it's unique and that's what makes you unique, might attract other people. So if I talk about heart based business and puppies and peloton, I'm guessing at least some of you listening intersect on two or three of those things. So either one or two or three. But then, okay, we still have points in common. Speaking of Tim Ferriss, I really enjoyed the interview he did with Tim Urban. I'll put that one in the show notes. And Tim Urban talked about creating for a stadium of 10,000 of himself. I just love this. So he was saying I do this weird thing where I assume that my audience I just picture a stadium full of me. So it's a narcissistic fantasy. I'm writing for the exact post that I would be thrilled to get, he says. So that's my focus group right there, right in my head. And it's easy because we're all kind of special, unique people. Except not really. There's like 100,000 copies of each of you out there somewhere. And the truth is, if I just write for me, there are a lot of people that have my exact weird taste. I just know that. So that's who I'm writing for. And that makes it easy. I just love that. So can you imagine following your curiosity while you're consuming content, giving yourself permission to create for a stadium of 10,000 of you?

We'll be right back just after this.

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That brings us to number Add snippets to your collection bucket. If you don't already have a collection bucket, I highly recommend this. I was inspired to create mine, as I mentioned through reading about people's process like Ryan Holiday and Liz Gilbert. And this dates back to Gosh. I think John Locke was the originator of this idea. I read about it in more detail in a book called how to Take Smart Notes. They've profiled this German guy. It's called the Zettelkasten Method, which translates to slipbox. Mine is digital. Mine is in notion. So I know that Ryan and Liz Gilbert use actual index cards. I don't know if Ryan still does, but I do mine digitally in notion. I shared this in episode 34. I did a walkthrough of how I organize research and ideas, and I also share a bunch of notion walkthroughs and looms in the Author Toolkit that's free and in the Free Time Operations Dashboard. That's the Full on ninja. Done for you. Epic. Every single thing that I have figured out and created. That's where you can get that. So as you know, these will all go in the show notes, but I want to tell you that if you don't already have a collection bucket, create one. Because when you are following your curiosity, that is not the time that you want to craft something into a beautiful piece of content for your audience. You need to be able to quickly throw it in a box, physical or virtual. That's a collection bucket that gets slightly more organized than when you first capture them. So my collection bucket actually has a lot of fields in notion or metadata. Mine's quite complex. I like to track what's the source, what's the publication, what type of snippet is it? Is it an image? Is it a meme? Is it a quote? Is it a podcast? Like, I go really detailed. I tag by topics. Is this about abundance, gratitude, order from chaos? I have unique tags that are unique to me and my interests. And I also have a line in Notion, it's called a multi select, where I say related projects. And I will tag things that they relate to. Pivot or Freetime or the author toolkit or the operations dashboard. Or I have one tag called Next project. That's the mystery tag that means, hmm, I don't have a project for this yet, but I'm interested in this. Or I know that the next project is starting to take shape. I don't even know the name of it yet, but I'm going to tag it as such. In notion, you can include images. I include links to the original source. It is just a way to have something that grows smarter over time. Again, Tiago calls it a second brain. I call it your extended business mind, something that lives outside of you that is this deep well that you can tap into when it's time to create.

Number four, tag these snippets for your content calendar. So that's our fourth C Content calendar by type. When you save a snippet, do you already know that this would make a great solo episode of a podcast or intro to your newsletter? My newsletter, I share a tip and tool. I share quotes, I share inquiries. So I know my newsletter format and I know what type of snippet might be a good fit for one of those three things in the newsletter. Maybe as you're saving a snippet, you know it's for social, or maybe you don't know yet exactly where you want to share it. And so I tag those as inbox. So it's important that in addition to a collection bucket, you have a content calendar. And there is a way to view that content calendar by type of content that you are committed to producing when it's time to draft something like a newsletter. Now all of a sudden, when you view your collection bucket by content calendar and content type, you already have all the little snippets to potentially draw from. So the last step of this is that once you have incorporated something like a quote into your newsletter, mark it as such. You would mark it that, okay, this has already been applied. What I love about this system that I didn't used to have prior to this year is that I used to share all kinds of good stuff in my newsletters for the last 10 plus years and then it would just disappear. Not only was I not repurposing them as part of the welcome series autoresponder as I do now thanks to Alan Div, but I also did not have those great snippets that I was curating saved in a collection bucket. It's very hard to go search my email and pull them back out of my newsletter delivery software. But now when I put them into the collection bucket and I mark them as already used, at least they stay in the collection bucket. They don't just disappear in email or in the newsletter software.

The final step of the 5C system for content production is See yourself as a qualified curator and share regularly on the Pivot podcast in episode 281 on feeling impostery, I share my mindset shift that helps me hit publish, and that's to become a qualified curator instead of an end all be all expert. So I sometimes hesitate to share things because I'm holding myself to the standard that I must be the end all be all expert on something when instead when I can shift to see myself as a qualified curator, a curious person who reads a lot of this type of content, who who then has a kind of honed curiosity mechanism. I have a collection bucket where it gets refined. I'm intentional about where my content calendar it goes. At that point, give yourself permission to hit publish. See yourself as a qualified curator. It's okay if you're not the number one world's most leading, foremost expert on the stuff you want to share. Share what you know, what you've learned, what you're inspired by, what's been helpful to you so far. If you want more on this and my episode on the Pivot podcast on rapid course creation, you can also see how I translate a process like this into rapid course creation that's in pivot episode 196 called Agile Public Original Thinking.

So to recap our five C's 1. Carve out time for consuming content 2 follow curiosity 3 add snippets to your collection bucket, 4. Tag them for your content calendar by type and 5 see yourself as a qualified curator.

I would love to hear about your process. What did I miss? What tips and tools have you found helpful for systematizing, content creation, curation and production? And you hereby have permission to not to be a genius in the moment that you're sitting down to create content. I can't wait for you to try this if you haven't already of giving yourself a well to draw upon from a collection bucket that you just dropped down your bucket and you already have all kinds of little snippets large and small from your curiosity and intuition that you can do something with. And you also have permission not to be an end all be all expert. Try leaning on that identity of qualified curator instead. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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