207: Creating Killer Content & Never Running Out Of Ideas - #GrowYourLife

Hey everyone, thanks for listening to the Grow youw Life podcast. My name is Jared Magrakowski and this podcast help coaches, trainers and mentors scale their businesses and make millions of dollars online using the strategies that I've learned over the last 20 years of working with some of the top mentors in the world and scaling multiple coaching businesses to over $20 million. And so what I want to talk to you about is how to never run out of content to create and how to actually create killer content. Because right, there's a difference between just run of the mill, like content for the sake, but then there's also just being able to have amazing content that impacts people, that helps people. And so how do you bring that balance? Personally, I don't think content just for the sake of content is really worth it. And I've always had a standard of creating a killer level of content. People have always asked me, what's your methodology for doing that? And it's really simple is I just listen to what people ask. I just listen to what are their problems and then I teach solutions. I if I don't know the solution that I want to create a content, full piece of content for, I will learn it. For instance, I've had people for a long time asking me, you know, how do you manage your time? To be honest, I have a belief that I'm working through that. I'm not really the best at time management, but the truth is the evidence shows otherwise that I actually am pretty good at time management and that I actually get a lot done and I'm actually very efficient. So what I'm learning is because I don't feel super confident in teaching that topic just yet. I teach small aspects of it over time to people, whether it be on my social media, whether it be to my groups or my podcast. So here's what my methodology is for teaching killer content. First off is I will usually use my podcast and my social media content when I don't have it fully reflected find, and it's not quite ready yet to package as a course or put together as a training. Because I mean, to be honest, when I record a podcast episode like this, while I stand behind everything that I've said in my podcast and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time, I have changed my mind on some of the things that I've said in old podcasts, I don't put a lot of weight into like considering what I'm going to say for a podcast episode. For instance, this episode we had a lady Jacqueline in our coaching group ask me this question. I was like, you know what? It's a really good topic, and I might make a course on it. And I was like, you know what? I should make that this week's podcast episode. So then what I did was I just kind of went around and I thought, okay, what would I want to teach people? What are some of the main aspects of teaching this to people? So the. So the first starting point is, know your audience. Who are you creating content towards? All content creation starts with knowing who you're actually talking to and what are their problems? What are their goals? What do they want to learn? The goal of content is never for you to try to look smart. I don't make my content for you to think nice things about me at all. In fact, I have a lot of people who think nasty things about me because my content is not as refined as other people. But the ones that really resonate with my content, they love it. And I. I get rave reviews. So I'm gonna keep doing what I do. Part of my methodology is I don't take content creation that seriously. I focus on one specific type of person. What is their problem? Sometimes I might even focus on one person. Like, right now, I'm just imagining that I'm teaching this to Jacqueline and a few other clients that we have in our group that are similar to her that want to know my methodology for making content okay. And so, but then I look at, okay, what is it? What is a question that that person has asked me? And I really focus specifically on not what do I want to teach people? Sometimes I'll do that, but rather, what do these people want to learn from me? What are they actually asking me about? And so I create mechanisms and opportunities in my community where people get to ask me questions, where they get to ask me what they want to learn, and the community actually tells me what they want me to create content about. And so that's one of the first things, is know your audience and then create mechanisms where people can actually tell you and ask you what they want to learn. Now, this is where mindset comes in. And I'm telling you, content creation, almost everything when it comes to this business is, it all links back to mindset. But here's a big one. You don't need to have all the answers. You don't need to know everything. When you can grasp the fact that it's okay to not have all the answers, that, okay, just because somebody asks you a question, if you don't know the answer, that Like I gotta, I asked a. I get asked a ton of questions on taxes and corporate structure and legal matters that I am not qualified to answer, nor do I like legally want to answer. And so I just tell people like, that's not my lane. I don't have the answers to those questions. You need to talk to an attorney about that. And so be okay with not having the answers. And then focus on what are the stuff that you particularly do know information about. Okay. And so know your audience create mechanisms where they can ask you questions. And then from there when they ask you questions, I'm walking around. So obviously loud noises from trucks driving by happens. Some people would go back and edit that out of their podcast. I personally have no desire to just because I'm not going to take the extra hour out of my day to do that. So there's just another aspect of that. Might that piss off some people? Sure. If that makes them angry, oh well, not my problem. And so that's part of the thing is like when you make content, your goal isn't to please people. Your goal isn't to always give people and always have the answer and always do what people want. You can't. It's impossible to. You're not always going to have the answer to every question people ask you. You're not always going to have the answers to what people need. But you might have an answer, one or two answers. You might not have all five answers that they need, but you might have one or two from your area of expertise. And so just focus on those one or two. That doesn't mean that you're not good enough or that your content's not valuable because you neglected two or three other topics that people might want to learn. So understand that you creating content is not about you validating your worth to other people. You got to get that out of your head. Trying to find self worth, validation from your content creation, that's one of the biggest things that will help you because then you'll teach from a place of confidence. The other thing that I love is that if you can get yourself into a flow state. So for me, I went and walked around my neighborhood for about 10, 15 minutes and it got me into the mental state of mind that I needed to be in to be able to deliver this content to you very clearly without needing. I don't have a bunch of notes in front of me, I don't have this perfectly polished outline. None of my content is actually built with a perfectly polished outline except when it's in my Coaching group. Now in my coaching group I do kind of map things out in a more outlined format because people are making an investment into me and so I do want that to be in a more organized fashion. But when I'm just making a podcast or I'm making a piece of content for my social media, I don't do that. I'm more just flow off the cuff like I'm having a conversation more conversationally like we're, like we're doing a video chat together is kind of my, my thought process when I'm making social media or podcast content. So knowing your audience, working through the mental blocks that you might have, such as not having all the answers, fear of failure, it not being perfect enough, there being mistakes, there being edits, there being background noise. But I'd recommend just not even worrying about any of that stuff, to be honest and actually training your brain to not. Because the amount of energy that I see content creators spending in non content based issues such as making their content sound perfect, look perfect, editing everything outright, the, the impact that it has on the bottom line for them is so minuscule that they're, they're wasting precious energy on making their content perfect when I would actually rather they have a prolific level of content. Now that's more on the technical aspects of it like sound and, and all that. How do you actually come up with good ideas? And this is kind of the, the last piece that I'm going to share and this is the one that a lot of people ask me for. How do you actually come up with good ideas? Well, I, I break down what is the problem that the person has? What do they want to learn? And usually I'll go to an app like Chat GPT and I'll start to ask Chat GPT, like what are some of the problems that somebody who's trying to do XYZ might have or what are some solutions that they might have? Now I might not have all the answers to know how to teach about all those problems or solutions, but I can make a mental note about two or three of them and then that gives me ideas for what to talk about, for what to share with people. I don't ever really use the AI to tell me what to make my content about, but what I do is I use it to take an idea that I already have and expand it so I might have one or two ideas. And then I'll use ChatGPT to sort of go on a little idea journey and pull more ideas out of me that are already in the Deep recesses of my brain that are already deep inside there that maybe I forgot that I had. And then that helps me really come up with some great ideas. At the end of the day, the way to actually really come up with good content, and this one is probably the hardest strategy, but the most important is the more content you make. Especially I like video and recorded content because it takes seconds to just press record, put a piece of content out there. And I didn't have to sit down and write a whole book. I could transcribe this and I could go through and even create mental notes and things like that. But the more content you create, what it'll do is it'll create a connection to other ideas. So, for instance, this piece of content right here, this podcast episode, it might create a branching idea of what are five other questions that somebody might ask about creating content. Like, how do you get into a flow state? How do you break past perfectionism? What type of equipment do you use? Personally, I'm just using a selfie stick in my cell phone because I've actually found that I produce really good content when I'm just walking around my neighborhood like this. Okay. And so don't get stuck in the weeds of trying to make your content really good and perfect. And that might go against what we started this episode with. You're like, hey, wait, I thought you were going to show me how to make killer fire content. Now you're just saying make content for the sake of content. No, not necessarily. Because if you're actually answering questions that your audience has, and then you use the AI tools to kind of branch out into other ideas and then you catalyze them, asking additional questions, those ideas that you create content around are going to be really good. They're going to be laser focused on what your audience actually wants to learn. And so what I find is content creation is kind of like a push pull relationship, where when you put a piece of content out there, you release it and then you listen for the feedback that you get. Unfortunately, what I found is that podcast episodes and social media content have the lowest level of quality of feedback. And truthfully, that goes against what most of us want, what most of us desire, what we would like, because obviously it's free, it's cheap, you can put it out there. That's why you creating content where people actually register with their name and email address and join you for a virtual event. Or maybe they purchase a workshop with you for $7 and you organize a Q and A panel where a group of people asks you strategic questions about the content that you taught. So you teach and then you have Q A. When you do this, you teach and then have Q A, it exponentially increases the the branching topics that you can come up with because you're able to crowdsource a group of people in how they receive your content. And so then the feedback loop, they give you feedback for what? For how they received it, for how they understood it, and for what they wanted to learn. And so whenever I'm creating content, I'm always trying to do it from a perspective of encouraging a feedback based conversation where somebody else is going to respond to what I'm saying and then they're going to ask me questions as a result of the content. And so the content isn't just me talking, isn't just me sharing what's on my mind, but it's actually creating a back and forth two way conversation with my audience. See, this goes back to what we talked about. When you know your audience and you're focused on how can I serve them, deliver value to them and actually answer their questions instead of just how can I prove how knowledgeable I am, how can I deliver fire content? That sounds great. And instead you make it conversational around connecting the dots for another person. You can really take things to the next level with your content. And the last thing I'm going to share is listen to content from others. Specifically, I don't listen to content that's related to what I'm an expert on because I find that that really negatively affects my ability to own my expertise. But what I do listen to content on is topics that I'm not familiar with from other great teachers that might be related to what I'm an expert on. For instance, I listen to a lot of personal development content for my own growth, and then that helps me actually process my thoughts, organize my thoughts, and see how other expert content creators put their content together. So for instance, you listening to this podcast could actually be a way for you to get better at creating content. I talked about this in a previous episode about a month ago is you can borrow the energy from other experts. When you create content, you can borrow the energy from other people that are great teachers, whether it be in audiobooks or podcast format. Again, hear me out. I'm not talking about plagiarizing the exact topic. I almost never listen to content from other people that teach the same topics that I teach because it's just going to get too muddled and I'll probably end up accidentally copying what they've said, just because that's just the way that our brains work. But I will borrow from the energy of teachers that teach on other topics that I have an interest in, and then I will learn, okay, how do they craft their arguments, how do they build their ideas? And from there, I would say, okay, if they were going to teach this topic that I'm an expert on, how would they share this same topic, such as, you know, how would Ryan Holiday teach how to create a great content? How would Jocko Willink teach how to create great content? How would David Goggins teach how to create great content? Those are three authors that I like listening to their audiobooks. And so I'll listen to their audiobooks. You know, how would Jay Shetty put together a training on how to make great content? And then from there, I'm able to borrow that energy and how they structure their trainings and how they structure their content and filter in my own unique topic while learning from how these other experts have done it. Learning from the best allows you to actually borrow the energy from other people and use it as a model and a template for your own content. And it might even unlock unique questions that you never thought to ask, which then will spark ideas. And this is such a huge part of it. It'll spark ideas that you never thought might affect your audience. And then you could even bring other topics from other areas, other practices into your coaching program or your training or your podcast or your content. And so these are just a few strategies that I've used to make great content, to never run out of ideas for content creation. We're really utilizing Chat GPT a lot now to where what I might do to create good content is. I'll just go for a walk around my neighborhood. I'll take some notes, I'll write them down in my phone, and then I'll put it into Chat GPT. And we're doing a training in my group called the Chat GPT Prompt Academy. But one of the commands that I ask it is take these notes. I've just got bulleted notes that I write down, like, you know, perfectionism, listening to other people's podcasts. The basically the stuff that I just talked about in this episode. And I'll tell Chat GPT, okay, write out and map out a talk with timestamps that takes these topics and shares about how to create great content. And it will literally map that out for me. And then if I don't like what it does, I'll say, okay, remove that part, add this part into there. And that's actually how I put together this podcast episode is I actually mapped it out that way. I went for a walk for about 20 minutes and I mapped out some of the topics that I wanted to share with you. And then the AI was actually allowed me to actually put it together in a formatted way to help you. Now, there were five other topics that it brought up. I didn't want to teach on those, but I taught in the ones that I actually had expertise in. And that's how this podcast episode was generated. And that's how I'm coming up with new ideas for content for you, by implementing both AI as well as the feedback loop for my clients to create better content. And you can as well grow your life. We'll talk soon. Have a good one.