This all started out as a conversation within a business coaching pod I lead. But the more I thought about it, the more it applies to anybody who wants to be a content creator in 2025. I think being a professional content creator will be more and more common in the future days so I’m revising what I originally wanted to share so it can meet the bigger audience of anybody who wants to be a content creator.
It doesn’t matter what kind of content you want to create. If you want to be able to call yourself a creator, you have to be able to create. This means creating videos, making posts, graphics, podcasts, whatever have you. But there inevitably comes a point where you want to make something good, and this is like poison for the creator because creativity and pressure don’t mix well at all.
I need to tell you at this point: why am I trying to teach you about content creation when I’m not even a big influencer myself? That’s a valid point, and you’re free to disregard everything I say. But like my business coaching, I’m not really interested in getting you big numbers. If you want to get business coaching that gives you a lot of money, I think you have other teachers who are more effective for that purpose. If you want to get the maximum number of followers, again I think you have other teachers who are more effective for that purpose.
I’m interested in your happiness. The more you can be in business in a happy way, the more likely it is for you to make money in a sustainable way. The more you can be creating in a happy way, the more likely it is for you to get a lot of followers and engagement.
So for the goal of creating from a happy place, you need to first be able to CATCH a moment of inspiration and convert it into an output. Why is this a necessity? I think the best way to show you is what happens if you can’t. When you can’t convert your ideas into an output, the idea will go into your brain’s backlog. Unfortunately this isn’t going to be a one time incident, and you will likely be backlogging ideas over and over.
What happens when ideas get tangled is, even if you are able to output something it will feel like (preemptive apologies) poop that’s not fully out. Yeah, it’s not like there’s NO output, so there is a bit of poop; but you can feel that there’s a lot more in there.
Even worse, the tangled ideas will make it difficult for you be clear about your own thoughts and you will confuse yourself about what it is you’re saying. How many times have you lost track of your own thoughts, as you were expressing something inside of you? This is a telltale sign of blocked outputs.
The first skill to build over any other skill is the skill of capturing inspiration and converting it into output as soon as possible. This makes sure you’re getting into a habit of self-expression, and while you may think it’s a wasted opportunity to express it so quickly it’s actually the opposite of what really happens: the more you express something and convert it into an output, the clearer it becomes in your head because you’re able to observe it from an outside perspective. This is why study guides help you study, this is why classes exist. Ideas communicate through external means and that communication includes you-to-you communication.
A difficulty with the first skill will be perfectionism. You will not be creating good, well-polished outputs. You will likely be creating short bursts of unorganized thoughts and that is precisely the point. If you can’t even output those, how do you expect to output organized and well-produced thoughts?
Only after you are confident and easy-flowing with the first skill can you contemplate the second skill: the ability to capture inspiration and maintain it. What will happen as you’re building skill #1 is, you’ll want to elaborate and expand just a little bit more. You’ll want to explain and add just a bit more color. And then boom! Inspiration has slipped away.
If you work on maintaining that inspiration without the ability to express at all, you’ll build a habit of inability to express and it will actively work against you. This is why the order of the skill development is so important. When you trust and know that you can output things with ease, you’ll have a much easier time holding on to an inspiration because you can press “submit” at any time you want while maintaining the inspiration.
So suppose you’ve built your skill #1 and am able to express 10% of a bigger idea in an instant. Then you work on gradually expressing 50% of the idea, and when you feel like the inspiration is about to run out you release it even if it’s at 23%, for example. Then you’ll work up to expressing 50% of your idea, and then eventually 100% of your idea. This will somewhat be the difficult part of skill #2; you’re always going to output knowing that there’s more there.
The cool thing though: while you’re doing that, your idea will branch out and take different routes inside of your head and it will continue to nudge you to express in a different way over and over again. This internal pressure that comes from the difference of what you output vs. what you want completely expressed is what will push you to the third skill.
The third skill to build is the ability to be independent of inspiration. You will sit down to express your idea to its fullest potential because you are clearly seeing that you are not doing it justice by keeping it inside of your brain. By this point you have so many different outputs you’ve already let out into the world, they will all help you all fully materialize your idea.
Moreover, the internal pressure you’ve built over the past days will really get you to continue working on it until it is sufficiently expressed. But the bad news: the difficulty in developing this skill will be your focus and stamina. Skills #1 and #2 both have to do with developing your ability to press submit. You might be wondering, then why didn’t skills #1 and #2 prepare me for focus and stamina? Well, you kinda need both the ability to press submit AND focus/stamina because without both… You’ll create your wonderfully full-fleshed idea and you won’t be able to press submit. This is a horrible feeling to feel.
Fortunately, if you’ve been following my work for a while you’ll know that I’m a big believer in Buddhist practices. Buddhist practices are meant to foster exactly focus and stamina. By constantly challenging yourself with voluntary, humanly possible activities you will be able to consistently bring your focus back to your work for a prolonged amount of time. What would have taken old you three months would be dine in two days, because you’re that focused and not drained.
These are the three skills that are the basic requirements of content creation. Last word of advice: it is NOT that you are applying these skills in a sequential way to never regress. You will continuously be exercising skill #1 while you’re doing skill #2. You will be doing skill #1, #2 while doing skill #3. You’re constantly going to either ride the wave of inspiration or have something developed far enough to sit down and complete. This way, content creation can be truly effortless.
This is an absolutely wonderful intro to my upcoming class, How To Create & Offer Coaching Products People Want To Buy. It’s happening on June 21st, 2025 at 7AM Pacific time; recordings will be available. Also get started with your Buddhist practices by following my guide.