Transcripts
1. Let's go: [MUSIC] Ninety-nine
percent of people using the Internet do
not produce content, but the one percent that do are ripping all of the rewards. I'm going to show
you how you can cut up all your personal brand and business by becoming a
content creation powerhouse. My name is Jodie Cook, and I'm an entrepreneur
and author. I'm also a prolific producer. I've written 20 books
and hundreds of articles that have been read by millions of entrepreneurs. My subscribers receive my
blogs as emails twice a week. I tweet regularly
and I have accessed insane opportunities by
showing up consistently. The problem is that
without a system in place, prolific producing can take
so long as busy professionals just don't have time
to be constantly on the content writing spending
all of our days writing, filming, editing, and
scheduling for our audiences. There isn't space. We want to be running
our businesses, serving our clients,
not fluid to social media and
publishing platforms. This class is all about how you can prolifically
produce content to maximum reward without it zapping all of your
time and energy. This is done by setting up the content
production system and I will show you
how to make yours. In this class, we'll
cover how to find your unique content concepts and come up with
your strategy for prolific producing
without hitting blockers like imposter syndrome
or fear of being seen. I'll show you the systems and the status of
prolific producers; people who published
to a growing audience every single day, and I'll share how you
can create this for yourself using my prolific
producing formula. This class is for anyone who wants more online influence and exposure to put themselves or their brand in the
spotlight and attract fans, followers, sales,
and opportunities. Once completed you're
going to be set up as access and you will
have the plan to match. I know that you have
a message to share, you have insights to teach, and you have information
that can really help people. Finding your audience and
engaging consistently with them will ensure that not
only do share your message, but also that you have a
trusted voice of authority that I cannot wait to hear
from again and again. This is how you build
a loyal audience. This is how you
attract opportunities. This is how you
amass super fans. I'm so excited for you
to join the class. Grab a pen and paper
and let's get started. [MUSIC]
2. The top 1% of the internet: In this lesson, you
will learn how to be in the top one percent
of the Internet for maximum for
business success. Did you know that 90 percent of Internet users
simply consume. They use the Internet to scroll, to read, to click around. they listen, and they learn
from what other people teach, but they don't do any
teaching themselves. They order food, they take
taxis, they watch movies, they laugh at cats
doing silly things, and they buy clothes that
get delivered to their door. Their interaction with the
Internet stops at consumption. The next nine percent consume, but they also engage. They comment and
they like and share, and they add their opinion and they further the conversation. Maybe they write the odd review
or they upvote on Reddit. They mainly consume, but they contribute
to the Internet in a really small way as well. What about the other one
percent that remain? These one percent
represents the producers. These are the people
who create videos, podcasts, articles and blogs. They tweet their insights, they share what they learn, they document their business
journey and they add value for other people, one percent. If you're watching
this class right now, you suspect that you
could be one of them. Perhaps you're going in
that direction already, but you want to know
how you can do more. Perhaps you're producing
prolifically already, but it's taking up
all of your time. The fact that you are
looking to learn more about this tells me that you should
be in that one percent. You have a message,
you have insights, you have a story that can
benefit other people. I believe that there are two ways to
prolifically produce. Both of them start with you
doing cool stuff yourself. Running your business,
doing your art, doing you're creating,
making great work, traveling, exploring,
meeting new people, learning how to do things, and trying them out. Seeing what you're capable of in all areas of your life and work. Production has to start
with this because you doing cool stuff is what
makes you interesting. It doesn't need to be about you. The cool stuff you do
might involve finding out things about other people or finding things out
about the world. For example, you might have
amazing insights because of how inquisitive you are
on one specific topic. But either way, doing
cool stuff yourself is the foundation of
prolific production. I don't mean doing it because
of how it looks online, I mean doing it because
it fascinates you, doing it because you can't
stop thinking about it. Doing it because you
can't not do it. That is the foundation
on which we build. After you are on the way
with doing that cool stuff, you have two options. You either tell people
about what you're doing or you teach other people
how they can do it too. I'm going to go into
quite a bit more detail on each of those options. Telling people about what you're doing means you are documenting. You're sharing what
you do as it happens. You share your diary, you keep a regular blog
or a regular blog. You provide some
entertainment value so that other people enjoy following along with
your adventure. You keep me coming back to
see what you're doing next. There are plenty of prolific producers
who do exactly this, and we're going to visit their systems later
on in the class. The second option is that you do the cool stuff and
then you teach other people how to do it too. Instead of being a documenter, here you are an educator, a teacher, a guide, an enabler, maybe
even an inspiration. You delve into your work and you figure out how you help others to get the same benefits that you got from it,
whatever they are. Maybe you learned how to get to a high level in
sport or business, or how to get on
the TV or how to make these amazing
healthy recipes. So your prolific production
becomes teaching other people how they
can do these things too. Documenting or teaching, but both involve you doing
the cool stuff first. So the giant scary problem
with producing and prolific producing especially is that you're going to be
busy doing this stuff. You're going to be busy
running your business. You're going to be busy
creating and selling your art, honing your craft
and winning clients. You're probably so
jam-packed with the actual doing that you might not feel like you have time
to document or teach. That's what this
class is all about, and we're going to overcome
that problem together. Busy people especially
need systems and they need stacks in place to create
effortless content. Get ready to learn yours. For the duration of this class, I invite you to turn
off any distractions. Grab a pen and paper, as well as the
accompanying workbook. Give yourself permission to indulge in your personal
brand and your business, and immerse yourself in the possibility of
prolifically producing content and multiplying
your results while saving time and effort.
3. Start prolifically producing today: In this lesson, you
will learn why you absolutely must
produce consistently. The alternative to prolific
and consistent production is either sporadic production
or zero production. Neither are any good for your audience and
therefore, your brand. Sporadic production probably
won't get you anywhere. That isn't enough
consistency for someone to really
get to know you. You're sharing in
peaks and troughs, in booms and busts. Someone could really get on
board with your message, be happily consuming your
insights and then here nothing for weeks or months. Zero production isn't
the answer either. Not producing anything
at all means you're using the internet
like the 90 percent, definitely not like
the one percent we're looking to emulate. There are so many reasons you should produce consistently. Think back to a time, if you can, before the Internet, before social media,
before it was possible to create and publish to
your heart's content. Back then, if I wanted to make
a huge success of myself, I would have to knock on metaphorical doors and
wait to be picked. My strategy would
be one of hope. I'd knock on the
doors of agents, publishers, employers,
record labels, galleries. I would line up as one of
thousands of hopefuls. I'd show them my
work and I'd keep my fingers crossed
that they chose me. Now, I don't need
to do any of that. Instead of waiting in
line to be picked, I can simply show up. I can find my own audience. I can do my own promotion. Sure, I can enlist the help of partners but really
it's all on my terms. There is no waiting
to be chosen. In this way, the tools we have at our disposal
mean it's far less about banging down doors and far more about building
our own houses. We can build these
amazing houses filled with our
art, our passion, and our creativity and people will be banging
down our doors to work with us and to
offer us opportunities. That is what prolific
production can do for us and I've
seen it firsthand. The first book publisher I
worked with approached me. They sent an inquiry through my website and they
asked if they could commission me to write a book
about Instagram marketing. They'd seen that I'd written
some articles and e-books on the topic of Instagram and they were ready to offer
me a contract. They approached me. It was a crazy role reversal. Approaching publishers, especially ones of their size,
is notoriously difficult. It's really hard to get responses from
commissioning editors. You have to create
a book proposal. You have to prove that
you're going to write a book and sell loads of copies
from your own marketing. This approach didn't follow
any of the normal rules because I've been
producing content about Instagram marketing and sharing it in the places
that already existed. Less knocking on doors, more building your own house, and having people
knock on your door. That is what I want for you. A phrase I like is book famous. We're not necessarily
trying to get you into Hollywood movies or
world-famous on a global stage. Although if that
is what you want, we can definitely try but
what we're trying to achieve for you is book fame
for you and your brand. Being known as an expert
or a voice of authority in your specific industry
in your specific field, whatever that might be. For me, it's entrepreneurship. For some, it's a certain type of art or a certain
type of performance. For others, it might
be neuroscience or coaching, or coffee shops. No matter what industry
you are mastering, it really is true that the one percent get
all the benefit. They get those
inbound inquiries, they get those serendipitous
introductions. The same effort goes further. They grow their audience
day by day until in a year or a few years
time it's unrecognizable, and that brings
more opportunities. They make more sales, they make more money, they make more impact and a
far bigger difference because all those benefits
compound again and again. They believe in
themselves first, they start taking action first. Their efforts are
rewarded in bigger ways, it happens little by little and then suddenly
you look around and realize that your
life and work is unrecognizable from
where it used to be. Not to mention, it's
fun, it's cool, it's a great game
to be producing and receiving offers
and opportunities and inquiries and words
of thanks from people who love your work and who has
made a difference for. If you could hit
upon a system for doing it well and
doing it efficiently, why wouldn't you
prolifically produce? Even if you don't have
anything to sell to anyone right now, start producing now. It takes time to build
an audience and it takes time to gain attraction. The sooner you start, the sooner you will
have an impressive presence and the more of a foundation you have for any
of your future endeavors. You can always go back. You can stop at any point if you decide
you're done producing, you're done with
being out there, you're done with being seen, you can just stop but
definitely don't avoid getting started because you might just love everything
that comes with it. I'm so excited to work
through this with you. First, we're going to find
your unique content concept.
4. Your unique content concept: [MUSIC] In this lesson, you will learn how to find
your unique content concept. The foundation of
prolific production is knowing what you are
uniquely placed to produce. You get to notice by
knowing your mission, and by having a
mission statement. You might be
thinking, [LAUGHTER] I don't know my
mission statement, but it's actually far
simpler than it sounds. Your mission is this, how you live and how you serve. Everyone has a mission. Everyone has something that they were put here to achieve, and we might as well
believe that that's true for the purpose
of this class. My grandma for example,
had a mission. She had four kids, and her mission was simply
to raise a happy family. That's one line;
raise a happy family, and it incorporates both how she lived and how she served. My mission is to
discover what I'm capable of and help
others do the same. You might be able to think
of entrepreneurs, artists, and even brands who have a
clear mission in what they do. What mission are you on? If you don't know this
for sure right now, there are three methods
that I want to take you through to help you
put this into words. One way is to write a list of every cool thing you've ever done in your
professional career. What we're looking for is
for things that you've done in your business
or area of work, that mean you have
answered within you that you can share
in your content. This is stuff that you've
achieved, or learned, or experienced while running your business or
learning your craft. This could be things
adjacent to your business like your lifestyle or your
home setup for example, but get them down on your piece of paper in your workbook. Anything cool you've
learned how to do and complete it, write it down. Also, write down anything
that you have ever achieved. If you've started a business, if you've sold your art at show, if you taught yourself
how to edit videos, or grow a mailing list, write it all down. Then next, write down everything that you are
comparatively good at. You might know these as those things that you do
where other people come in, so they tell you that
you're good at something, and they seem impressed. Whatever it is, however
small it might seem, write it down in your workbook. With everything that
you've written down, take a look and see
what is coming out. Are there any trends? Are there any themes? Are there any that are very
relevant to your audience? I imagine that you've missed lots out and you're
actually good at or knowledgeable about
many more things than you've written down, but what are those things
that keep being mentioned? It might be something to do with your creativity,
or your writing, or your endurance, or your
inspirational nature, or even your patients. There will be something, I'm sure of it. When I wrote down every
cool thing that I did, I took it one step further to think more about my content. Before every cool thing
like grow a business, sell a business, write a book, I wrote the phrase "how
to" in front of it. Try this out with your list. Take your cool stuff
and just write "how to" in front of every item. See which of these sound right, and imagine each of these "how to" statements was an article title
or a video title. Imagine each was a name of a
talk that you had to give, how would you feel about standing up and sharing
what you knew about how to do that thing that
you've already done? Chances are pretty good. The second exercise
is one that I love, and it's called the zone
of genius exercise. Here is where you draw three big circles
in a Venn diagram. In one circle, you
write what I'm good at. In another circle, you write, what I like doing, and in the third circle, you write what the world needs. The intersection of
these three circles is where you are uniquely
placed to serve, and therefore uniquely
placed to produce from. When you're completing these
circles, don't be shy. No one else needs to see
what you've written down, so give yourself permission
to pat yourself on the back and allow yourself to admit that actually you're pretty
good at something. Write it all down, this will help you find
your zone of genius. If the intersection of
your zone of genius; so filling in that middle part where those three circles meet, doesn't present itself
straight away, keep going. Play around with what
you've got in there. Take a bit longer
for the exercise. You could go for a walk or
you could meditate on it. Something will come up, you will find it. It might hit you like a truck in the middle of the night and
you wake up and be like, "Yes, this is [LAUGHTER]
my zone of genius. I know my mission." The third exercise for
you to try is less about what you're good at
or what you like doing, and it's more about
what you know. I'm calling this the
knowledge bubble. What is in your
bubble of knowledge? I ran this exercise
with my friend Quinn. She runs a company
that focuses on user experience or UX for short. UX is what she knows
everything about but she wants to start producing content on
more than just that field, so we ran the knowledge
bubble exercise together. We wrote down UX, and
then we wrote down these peripheral
areas that she could also speak confidently about. They were in adjacent areas to UX but still within
her knowledge bubble, so we also included search
engine optimization, conversion rate optimization,
e-commerce in general, or being a company founder, or growing a software business. Software business is in
general running a business, running a remote team. We started making this list, and it just grew
and grew because one topic seemed to unlock
another two or three. When we had a bubble of words, our next task was to
find the statement that tied everything in
the bubble together. The format I gave her
for this statement was, I help X do Y. X was
her target audience, Y was a broad term
for those things that she knew about that were
in her knowledge bubble. For my friend Quinn, it
was I help Sass founders scale from 1-5 million by
focusing on user experience. That was it, that was
the sentence that encompassed all of those areas. When she had her mission
statement if you like, it was really clear which
topics fit into that. It became so clear
how she was uniquely placed to produce and
add value and who to. Three exercises:
every cool thing, your zone of genius,
your knowledge bubble. Give each of these exercises
ago and see what comes up. Find your unique
content concept, and be clear that
it's your thing. Feel confident that it is. As you stare at these
words in front of you, I want you to realize that
you are the best person in the entire world to talk and share about this
combination of things. Only you, no one else, you are preaching
what you practice. You are sharing the solutions to problems that you have solved. You're going to be
operating from a place of insane authenticity, that means imposter syndrome
doesn't get a look in, and neither should
fear of any kind. It's your duty to show up and be of service to other people. You owe it to the
world to help them by sharing what you know,
it's your mission. Even if your topics
are things that other people on the
Internet talk about, no one else in the world has
your unique combination of skills and experience plus your unique way of
delivering the information. Because everything we've
discussed is what you already know or you're
already good at, it's going to be far
easier for you to produce, and it's going to be better and more useful to other people. When I did these exercises, I found it so useful. The clarity that comes can
be absolutely game-changing, so do the exercises,
revisit them. Keep going until you
figure out your mission and your unique content concept. Next, we're going to cover your strategy for
prolific producing. [MUSIC]
5. The strategy for prolific producing: [MUSIC] In this lesson, you will learn the strategy
for prolific producing. Your time is best spent doing things that only you can do. Your time is best spent
producing your art, getting all that wisdom
and creativity out of your head and down into a
format that is shareable. It's probably not
best spent editing your creations into
various formats for different social
media channels, writing captions with hashtags, and scheduling everything up. The strategy for
prolific producing requires that you focus on one area and work out how to delegate or automate the rest. Ideally, the cadence is that you produce once per week and then it's magically
transformed into content that is
published every day. How will we get to this place? By thinking about
these three steps. The first is the law
of least effort. This law does not mean that
you do not put in any effort. Is that you find what
feels effortless. Find what feels effortless
to you to create. What do I mean by this? There will be some way of you producing that comes
so naturally to you that you feel
like you could do it all day and we need to find it. I'd like you to think about
your normal week and think about when you find yourself
in a state of flow. Flow is when we are
so engrossed in something that time just flies. You might feel like you
could keep going forever. You might not be
consciously operating. It might almost
feel like something else has taken over and you're just flowing and you're just creating and it's all happening. That is flow state. Finding what puts you into
the flow state is how we follow the law
of least effort. The flow state might come
when you're writing. It might come when
you're talking, chatting away to friends
or two customers. Maybe it's when
you're making jokes. Maybe it's when you're
solving puzzles. It might come when you're
presenting on camera or drawing or
painting or doodling. What do you do that
feels effortless? This is where you have a gift. The law of least effort
says that you find this thing and then you
outproduce everyone else. Because it feels effortless, you will make it look easy. You will appear superhuman
because you are prolifically
producing with ease. Ask this question of yourself. When do I feel most
in flow state? That is what we
need to do more of. The key to getting into your
flow state and being able to produce in this way,
is reducing friction. When I was writing my book, 10 Year Career, every
night before bed, I loaded the manuscript
up on my laptop and I put my laptop on my table where I would see it as
soon as I woke up. I hid my phone so I wouldn't
check it first thing. Every morning, I headed
straight to my laptop to begin writing before anything
else would distract me. Noah Kagan, the founder of
AppSumo produces videos. He has a recording
setup in his house. He's configured it with Alexa. When he's ready to begin
recording, he shouts, Alexa, let's go and the lights, camera, and microphone turn on, ready to hit and see
what he's got to say. A friend who was
interviewed on a lot of YouTube channels and
loves talking to camera, makes the most of wearing makeup to record her own videos. Whenever she finishes
an interview, she will turn on her own camera
and she'll keep talking. She has videos of her own
to use in hair content. Perhaps you lay
out your materials somewhere that they stay
all the time or perhaps you shut off distractions on your laptop or
maybe you download a new app that lets
you talk into it and create MP3 files of your voice. Maybe there's a
immovable entry in your calendar every single week that looks like it's
an actual meeting, but it's just a
meeting between you and you in which you produce. However, you can reduce
friction, do it. These will help you get into that flow state that leads
to effortless production. The next step is defining
the medium on which medium, does your law of least effort
activity best lend itself? If you can effortlessly write, it might be a blogging
platform or maybe Twitter or Medium or heyworld. If you can effortlessly talk
and describe and explain, it might be a
podcasting platform. If you feel effortless, talk into camera,
perhaps it's YouTube. If you can effortlessly deliver punchlines and short to the
point stories and jokes, then maybe it's Instagram
or maybe it's TikTok or maybe it's an actual stage
with an actual audience. Your law of least effort is going to align with a platform really well and that will
become your primary platform. We're going to produce
in other places too, but having a primary platform
is really important. Up to this point, our goal has been to understand what you can produce and keep producing
that is unique for you. Then the goal is to understand the primary medium that this
content naturally fits. Finally, we get to the step
where you separate what only you can do from what
someone else can do for you. In an ideal world, you do what only you can do
and you outsource the rest. To find out what this
ideal scenario looks like, we're going to run a bit
of a thought experiment. Let's say that
every day you spend the first 90 minutes producing in accordance with your
law of least effort. Then when you've done
this, what you have in front of you is
the raw materials. The fruits of your
labor, the video files, the Word documents, the MP3 files of your voice, the canvases with your art. Now, let's imagine you had unlimited resources to
share that far and wide. You had all the time,
you had all the skills, you had all the money to
edit and hire other people. What would you do? Let's use this thought
experiment to work out your dream production scenario. Maybe you can write endlessly
on all sorts of topics that fit with your
mission and you want to get your
words out there. You might hire an editor
to edit your words. You might hire
someone else to craft amazing headlines and to
schedule articles on Medium. Someone else might chop all your writing into tweets and schedule them on Twitter. Then maybe a graphic
designer might turn your words into
beautiful graphics, that they then share on
Instagram and Pinterest. What would you do with
unlimited resources? Write all of these options down. Don't be constrained
by anything. For now, think of
exactly what you would do with no constraints. I want you to completely understand the
difference between what only you can do and what
someone else could do. The main strategy for prolific producing
is following the low of least effort and matching
your output to a medium. Turning this into a plan of action lies in creating
your stack and your system to get closer to this dream scenario that
you've just outlined. Next, I'm going to
talk you through the systems and stacks
of prolific producers. We're going to delve
into how they do, what only they can do, and where they get help. We'll cover what they
produce, what they automate, and what they delegate
and the systems that they have for producing
daily content. [MUSIC]
6. Systems of prolific producers: documenting: [MUSIC] In this lesson, we're going to look at
the systems and stacks of prolific producers in a variety
of professional fields. This is how we get
inspiration and ideas. Remember the thought experiment
that we just completed of your perfect content
creation system. Well, we might be able to find you something
that's even better, that makes even more sense for your unique content concept by studying and learning
from other people. Remember that I
said that there are two ways to
prolifically produce. One, is to do cool
stuff and document it. One, is to do cool stuff and teach other people how to
do that same cool stuff. Well now, I'm going to show you examples of people
who are doing both. We're going to start with
people who document daily. I want to start with one of
the most prolific producers of all time and that
is Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary's law of least effort way of producing, is him talking. You hand him a microphone, and he will just go. [LAUGHTER] That is his strength. He can talk at length
on so many topics, so it makes sense that
he maximizes that. One content strategy
that Gary has shared, is his cornerstone method. This is where there's
one cornerstone piece of content that is then
transformed into other content. This is a solid strategy and we're going to
look at it in terms of his daily production for
the AskGaryVee Show. He has found his law of
least effort speaking. He has created a system for
speaking to people regularly, answering their
questions, then being booked into his
diary in batches. When he's doing this, there
happens to be a camera there. He sits down for
an hour or so and people are lined up
to speak with him. He answers their questions, he goes into detail
on certain topics, and then he says bye, and he moves on to
the next guest. Then, he has an editor whip these mini interviews up into podcast episodes that
go out every day and they're topped entailed
with intros and outros. Then, they also make
shorter video clips from that content that goes
out via social media. Why this is an example
of documenting, is that he's doing this
while he's working, so he's doing this while
he's running businesses, and he's doing
various other things. He's there in his office, he's talking to you as
the audience member, and you feel like you're almost interrupting
his work day. He's interrupting his work
day to engage with you, which is quite a cool effect. This system specifically, forgetting for a moment all of the other ways that Gary
reproduces content, is a cornerstone system based on questions from his audience. A stack is a combination
of specific tasks, that helps create publishable
content from raw content. Here, Gary's stack includes the organization
of the guests. It includes the setup
of the recording space. It includes Gary answering
their questions, the editor making
podcast episodes, a different editor
making videos. His team are spending
loads of hours, but he's spending far fewer, which means that he
can focus on his hours being spent where he is
uniquely placed to serve, which is on camera, on the mic, and not on the edit. Is your effortless
way of producing your voice and speaking? If so, maybe this kind of
strategy could work for you. Another person who documents
daily is Angela Gargano. Angela is an athlete
and she is the owner of Pull-Up Revolution
and the fitness brand , Strong Feels Good. She's got a really interesting
way of documenting daily that I want to share and it all comes from her calendar. On Monday, she shares an Instagram graphic of
what she's up to that week. Then she shares daily stories
of her doing those things. This might be working out, it might be doing deep work, it might be doing yoga, it might be behind the
scenes of a photo shoot, preparing stock, or having
cools with her members. The documenting daily pictures
and videos are unedited, unpolished, and personable. You feel like you're in
her living room with her, working on her
business with her. Her law of least effort
is simply just working. It's doing the work, and
it's taking pictures of it. She's so used to photographing her life
that it feels effortless, so she's able to produce
in huge quantities. Angela's system is to document every part of what she's doing, to share what goes into building a successful fitness brand. Her stack begins
with her schedule. The schedule already exists, but it's shared online
in graphic form. Then she's turning
her daily activities into updates across Instagram. The beauty of this
strategy is it looks like Angela's
doing every part of it, but she's probably not. She's taken the pictures
because that has to be her, but they are likely
shared with an assistant, and that person is
then adding captions. They're annotating and they're scheduling or they're
posting those pictures. They're pretty much
making the graphics that bring the daily
documenting to life. Angela is being busy
doing what she is doing and her stack
involves making graphics, making videos, stories,
and boomerangs, all on Instagram, but she's focused on doing what
only she can do. You don't necessarily have to
be doing interesting stuff every single day
in order for you to be documenting daily, and for that to be your
strategy. You really don't. In building a business or in establishing
yourself as a brand, it can be refreshing to see that someone is
taking the day off to read books or to hear that they booked
into many meetings, and they felt frazzled
by the end of it. But the whole point of the documenting strategy
is it's like a diary. You're sharing the highs and lows and you're
working on it being interesting and adding values that other people
like to follow along. For this to be successful, they have to feel an
affinity towards you. They have to like
you, and they have to feel like they want
you to succeed. What you're doing
also has to have something in it for them. Maybe you're inspiring them, maybe you're a few
steps ahead in a certain field and your audience is looking
to learn from you. If you're going to follow
a strategy of documenting, you still need to remember
that your audience is watching because there's
something in it for them. One simple way of
documenting daily, if you're effortless way
of producing is writing, is by using the
hashtag BuildInPublic. This is on Twitter
and this is where creators and coders and business owners
document their activity and their progress and
they add that hashtag. People follow along and they get new people on board
with their journey. It helps them to find
their community and their customers whilst also providing accountability
for them. With all of these
documenting systems, like Gary, like Angela, you choose one thing and
you do it consistently, so speaking, or writing,
or photographing. Then you create a stack, and you work out how you can delegate and automate
different tasks in it so that prolific production doesn't become your
full-time role. Have a think. How
could you document your journey in such a way that people want
to follow along, and what is in it for them? [MUSIC]
7. Systems of prolific producers: teaching: In this video, we're
going to look at prolific producers who focus on doing cool stuff
and then teaching other people how to
do the same [MUSIC]. This is slightly different, the documenters we're focused on sharing their journey for entertainment purposes
and to help people by simply being the example. These next people are focused on turning the cool
stuff they have done or learned into a way of
educating their audience. Each has a system and a stack, each focuses on their law of least effort
way of producing. This is Emma Storey Gordon. Emma describes herself as
someone who helps people who feel like they have been
dieting their whole life. Why can't she help these people? Because she has
felt that way too, she's overcome this
feeling and now she's perfectly placed
to share her wisdom. Emma's law of least
effort way of producing is to answer
questions on camera. Her system is to show up at the same time every week for
an hour-long Instagram live. She logs on sometimes
with a business partner, sometimes alone,
and she talks about topics that have come up
for her during that week. She might answer
questions that have been asked by clients
that she works with, she might share anonymized
client breakthroughs, and she might share strategies and insights
that are going to help her audience with
their nutrition and their relationship
with food. She might discuss something
in the news that falls inside her knowledge
bubble once per week, one hour Instagram live. How does this turn
into daily content? Well, Emma's stack involves what she
says in these hours. Because she knows exactly
what she's talking about, she's confidently and she's
clearly explaining concepts. As Emma is talking, she's running Otter.ai
in the background, which is transcribing
what she says. This transcript is picked up by an assistant and the assistant
is turning these words, phrases, and answers into
graphics for social media. She'll create a square format
and rectangular format, she'll pull out specific lines and she'll use them as tweets. She's turning that
one hour per week of talking into daily
social media content. Someone talking at an
average speed of 130 words per minute would say
8,000 words in an hour. Eight thousand words, they
give how many tweets, graphics, and even
articles that could be. But the work that's gone
in comes easy to Emma because she loves
chatting and she loves answering questions
on Instagram lives, and she knows her industry. The stack, collect
inspiration from the week, talk on camera for an
hour, transcribe the talk, turn this into tweets, graphics, mini-articles, schedule them across
social media, done; daily content
from one hour per week. Could you emulate
Emma's strategy? Someone else I want to tell
you about is Jake Thompson, the founder of
Compete Every Day. Jake has done cool
stuff himself, he has built a business, he's gotten super-strong, he's overcome challenges to
develop a strong mindset, he's worked out how to
keep improving himself, and now he's teaching other
people how to do that too. Jake's law of least
effort way of producing is writing, so he writes. Jake spends one morning
per week writing solidly on whatever comes into his head on the
topics of motivation, peak performance, health,
fitness, and mindset. Remember the knowledge
bubble that we mentioned right
back at the start, Jake is picking topics from his knowledge bubble and he's
free-writing about them. This writing is then
transformed into way more places to
create daily content. Firstly, it's broken down by many topics and scripts
are created for podcast episodes
every single day and new podcast
episode goes back and it all stems from his one weekly stint
of consistent writing, and then simply reading in a compelling way
what he's written. Then really similar to Emma, phrases and concepts
from his writing are turned into Instagram
graphics as well as tweets. Jake actually goes one
step further here. He sees which phrases and which concepts get
the most engagement, he sees which resonate
the most with his followers and his listeners, and he turns them into
products in his store. The Compete Every Day
store sells tanks and T's with motivational
phrases on them and they've all been
created by Jake, tested on social media, and then printed
onto merchandise. Jake's work itself involves
him being booked for keynote speeches but
his content system makes it so easy to prepare. He says to his client, what would you like me to talk about? Then whatever they say, he goes into his
writing files and he finds what he's already
written on that topic, and then he turns
that into a speech. Hopefully, you can see how
this system can multiply into other areas of your work far bigger than daily content. It can lead to books
and courses and speeches and scripts
and even clothing. With both Jake and Emma, they look like prolific
content machines because they follow the law of least effort to produce
in their favorite way. They stick within their unique
content concept and they delegate or they automate everything else in
order to produce daily. Finally, I want to
show you one aspect of my system for producing
daily content. Something that fits
into my law of least effort is
asking questions. I absolutely love geeking
out on questions. I've written guided journals
full of questions and my courses often have
questions as the titles. I've seen firsthand,
how powerful the right question can be
in changing someone's life, so I make huge use of two places for getting
answers to my questions. One is HARO, which stands for
Help a Reporter Out, and one is the journorequest
hashtag on Twitter. I first realized the power of this system a few years
ago when I logged on to HARO to ask the
Internet two questions. One question was, how are you raising
entrepreneurial kids? One was, how were you raised
to be entrepreneurial? These are two questions I really wanted to
know the answer to. My zone of genius is
entrepreneurship, is at the heart of
my knowledge bubble, and I was so curious
about the answers. HARO was the perfect
place to ask these questions
because what followed was over 500 responses. It was over 40,000 words of people responding
to these questions. I mean talking about
effortless content creation. My two simple
questions had produced essentially a whole
books worth of content, so that is what I did with them. I turn the words into a book called How to Raise
Entrepreneurial Kids, a how-to book based
on case studies, based on the answers to two questions shared
in the right way. Even now I still incorporate questions into my ways of
producing daily content. My system is asking questions to get answers from
entrepreneurs who are my target audience and
then turning these into articles and adding my spin
and adding my commentary. All of these topics are
within my knowledge bubble, so running a business,
entrepreneurship, building a team, crafting your dream lifestyle and staying stoic
throughout the journey, and they're all things
that I've done. When these questions,
I'm collecting the lessons from the cool stuff other people have done and exploring the answers further
and often the question itself will inspire a
whole lot more answers based on the cool
stuff I've done. My stack is every Tuesday I'd
journorequest on Twitter, goes out with a question about entrepreneurship using the
hashtag journorequest. My content assistant
copies and pastes all of the responses into
a word document with the question at the top, she then groups the similar
responses together and I turn this outline into
an article and I post it on my blog or
on my Forbes column. Then my content assistant
takes the words and the phrases that I've used and turns them into solo tweets, we see which resonate the most, and then she turns them into cute graphics that are
also shared online. This stems from one question
per week over Twitter, but it's a robust enough system
to produce daily content. What questions might you be
able to ask the Internet? How can you produce
solidly once per week and have that turned
into daily content? How could you show up consistently in a
way that is aligned so well with what you
know about and what you like doing that you've
really looked forward to it? That's important
because the more enthusiasm you have
for what you're doing, the more that you
will keep doing it. As part of putting
this class together, I asked other prolific producers to tell me about their systems. I share the question on Twitter, I use the hashtag journorequest, and people who produced daily content told
me what they did. I'm going to add this download to this lesson so
that you can check out their methods and see if any of these might work for you. In this lesson, there have been three people taking the
cool stuff they have done and turning
it into a way of teaching other people
how to do the same, they are all examples of
people producing to educate. On Twitter, there
are more examples,. No matter who the
prolific producer is or which field they're in, each has a system, each has a stack of
tasks that layer up. Now I want you to give full attention to your
system and stack. Visit the thought experiment
that you did earlier, and since I've shown
you these examples, think about if
anything has changed. So can you add anything in? Can you modify the process? Keep thinking and keep
developing your plan. Next, we're going
to go deeper into the logistics of your
prolific prediction. [MUSIC].
8. The prolific production formula: [MUSIC] In this lesson, you will learn the prolific
producing formula. My goal for you is
that this class sets you up to post daily
in at least one place. Whether that's a specific
social media platform, a podcast or a blog. I'm very sure that your
content should be daily, each and every day. But why? Your audience members are
probably very busy people. They're out and about, they're booked in meetings, and they go into events. Even if you do post every day, they might not see what
you post every day. But the more they do
see and hear from you, the more familiarity
they get with you, the more affinity, the
more they begin to know, like, and trust you. Because what you're saying or writing has substance behind it. Each post is reinforcing you in their minds as someone that
they want to hear from. It's not just beneficial for
your existing followers. Daily posting grows your
following an average of four times faster than posting
less than once a week. Consistent, intentional,
prolific production means daily content. My three-step formula for producing prolifically is what I want you to have in
mind as you're planning your approach and
preparing to share daily. The steps are step 1, ideation. Step 2, execution. Step 3 delegation. Got it? Ideation, execution, delegation. The ideation phase is
where you become inspired. Is where you take everything in your head and you start to come up with how it
manifests in content. This is where you keep
a log of your ideas. You record when the inspiration strikes
and you find a way of jotting down the words and phrases that you're going
to expand on later. The second phase is execution. This is where you're
effortless delivery happens. This step is important
to plan and get into the diary as
an immovable event. The execution could look like that one morning a week where
you write continuously. It could be that Q&A that you do every week as an Instagram live. It might be where
you record a stream of consciousness into
a voice recorder. When you know your
unique content concept and your lore of least
effort way of producing, as we discussed earlier
in this class you can plan and execute
each and every week. The material you create in the execution phase
becomes your inputs, your voice notes, you're
writing, your interviews, your cornerstone content, your illustration
and your drawings, your phrases,
concepts, diagrams, sketches, your hosted shows. This is your art in its most raw form and the
volume of this is important. The more effortlessly
it comes to you, the more you'll be able
to produce regularly, the more that can be done
with it in the third phase. The third phase of delegation is where your system
comes into place. How will you delegate and
automate your way in to turning your execution
into daily content? We covered the systems of five prolific producers
in the last lessons. You've got your dream scenario from the lesson before that and now we want to turn this
into your plan of action. How will you delegate? Will you hire someone to
do elements of your stack? There are so many skilled
people who could help you turn raw material into
amazing content is just about finding
your perfect one. This might be a videographer,
a podcast editor, a virtual assistant,
a graphic designer, an editor or a content manager. Here's what you should think
about the system and be able to explain how someone else
would put it into practice. Even if you're not thinking
about outsourcing just yet, do this now anyway. Let's say that you are writing for two hours every
Monday morning and you want someone to turn
that writing into daily tweets and
into key graphics. You should write the process
for each of these things. For the tweets, you want them to go to the folder
with a specific name, find the Word document
labeled a specific thing, and take out sentences
that would make good tweets based on the
following parameters. It's punchy. It appeals to a target audience off and then your
target audience. Then shed your three per day using TweetDeck, for example. Maybe you add an
approval stage here. You say to schedule them up to four days in
advance and then they email you when they're scheduled so that
you can check them. The process described
here becomes your system. The system for taking your regular weekly content and turning it
into daily output. First, maybe you're
following this system. You might be honing it and
you might be following it and you might be making
sure it works for you. After that, you might look at someone else to take it over. Using platforms like Upwork, you can find really skilled and very reasonably
priced people who are exceptional at
following instructions and executing tasks in this way. If it's right for you, put the feelers out there, see if you can find someone
to take this off you. Perhaps you have
friends with skills in different areas
and you can put in place some skill swap with them. Maybe a friend makes you seven video clips from your
one weekly video. Maybe you write them some
catchy headlines for their writing and you turn
them into Instagram captions. Maybe you take this opportunity
to learn a new skill yourself because now you
know exactly what you want. The three-step formula is
ideation, execution, delegation. Repeat again and again, until prolifically
producing content is effortless for you. Soon, they so becomes so much of a habit that you're going
to do it automatically. You'll become fluent in
your weekly execution. Ideas for content will just fly out you out of
nowhere and you'll be looking forward to
your execution phase every single week because you can clearly see how it translates into
consistent updates. Remember, the goal is to
find what feels effortless. The goal is to do
what only you can do and find help with
the rest so that you can focus on your
unique value whether or not it is the
right time for you to hire help only you can decide. But there are so many
ways of doing it and even so many online
tools that can help you. Some of my favorites and some that I've heard recommended are, descript for making short
video clips from longer ones, for editing and adding subtitles and for
publishing to social media, the Pablo app from buffer for making cute graphics
straight from URLs, there's the podcast platform Buzzsprout that lets
you preload intro and outro for your podcast
episodes so that you can just upload the
middle and then publish. Then there's Crello, Animoto and of course Canva. For each of these, you
could learn how to set it up or you could hire an
expert to do it for you. If a Canva, for example, a Canva pro could
set you up a load of templates that you
could use for years. There are so many
options available for your delegation phase and
you can absolutely begin the delegation part with tiny baby steps before you
ramp up to full delegation. There's a whole section
in your workbook with space for you
to outline how you're going to follow the
prolific producing formula. The next lesson, we'll
go into more detail on how to keep the
production machine going. [MUSIC]
9. Keeping the production machine going: In this lesson, you'll learn
some useful tips and tricks to keep your production
machine going. You have your system
in mind and you know how you are going to
share content daily. I cannot emphasize enough how
important this system is, especially if you're
going to outsource. What I know for sure is the [inaudible]
producing daily involves reducing any friction, making stuff flow, removing
blockers to action, and making it the default
that your system runs. We've talked a little
bit about how to reduce friction in
your execution phase, but I want to reduce friction in your ideation and your
delegation phases too, phases 1 and 3, as well as give you some more ideas for
your execution phase. Let's start with
the ideation phase. Reducing friction here
means being open to inspiration and letting
ideas come to you. It means always carrying
a notebook with you so you can jot down
any source of inspiration, any idea for a question, or a piece of writing, or a topic to talk about to
camera or into a microphone. Go to whatever
lengths necessary to make sure you always have paper. Something else that will assist your ideation is
changes of scenery, so working from coffee shops, visiting museums
and art galleries, getting in the car and exploring a different part of town. All these new inputs
mean your brain is forced to process
stuff differently. Things are less familiar. It can't just work on autopilot, so it needs to change
how it's operating. This can be amazing
for new ideas. Getting good at coming up with ideas is like training a muscle. It's going to be
difficult at first and then it will get
easier and easier, and soon you will become
an ideas machine. Reducing friction in the
execution phase means firstly, making it easy for you to do your creative
endeavors every week. But there's something else
I want to mention here. You may well have a backlog of this content that you
can use to get started. Whatever your way of
producing well be, have you produced it before? If you love writing, you might already have
plenty of words that you've written ready to whip
up into daily content. This might be the same with
podcasts that you've been on. It might be the same with
interviews you've recorded, or emails that you send, or random word documents that are just saved
on your computer. Now is the time to make use of all the stuff you've
already created, put it into that machine, and get turning it into tweets, or videos, or podcast episodes. Whatever your chosen medium is, dig through your
old dusty files and see what can be repurposed. Reducing friction in
your delegation phase, the part where your
raw material is turned into shareable
content means that it follows a
schedule that is the same every single week
or every single month. Let's say someone
is helping you turn your voice recordings
into podcast episodes. The schedule to follow should
be the same every time. By the end of Monday, you upload them into a folder. On Tuesday, they edit and they put them
into a sub folder. Then you have Wednesday
to check and approve, or make changes, and then on Thursday, they schedule across
every platform. Maybe you follow a
monthly schedule. But either way, there
should be a schedule. Every aspect of
this needs to have a system and a process
to take case by case decisions and any waiting
around out of the picture because they will only
slow you down and they'll turn this into
a painful exercise, which it definitely
doesn't need to be. Within the schedule,
there's going to be folders and documents
that are clearly labeled, there's going to be deadlines, there's going to
be clarity as to who has the final say
on what goes out. There's going to be if
this then that decision, so if someone doesn't
respond by their deadline, what happens to the content? Does it get scheduled or not? Make sure everyone
knows what's happening, everyone knows the plan, everyone's on the same page. Even if you're not delegating or outsourcing anything at all, it's still really important to have a system that you stick to. Break it down to the smallest
parts of what you're doing. What do you do on
Monday, on Tuesday, etc? Make your schedule
and stick to it. Aim to reduce friction
in each one of the three parts of your
prolific production endeavors. Anyways you can systemize
your actions further. We'll remove guesswork,
take out ambiguity, and ensure your content machine is well and truly running. [MUSIC]
10. Over to you: Huge congratulations
and a big thanks for completing this class
on prolific production. We have covered a lot. Hopefully, you are full of
ideas and plans and you are ready to get going with
producing daily content. This is all based on combining your unique content
concept with the law of least effort to produce
every week in one go. Then it's about establishing
a system and a stack for turning this into daily content whether that's podcast episodes, articles, tweets,
videos, emails, graphics, or any posts online. It has been my huge pleasure to walk you through
my frameworks and methods as well as
show you examples of other people who are
showing up consistently. Now, it's over to you to
put all this into practice. Work out your concept, find what feels effortless, dig deep into who you are and
the value you have to give, and then show up. Put aside any fear
of being seen, any niggling voices
telling you to hide in the shadows and put
yourself out there. You have a message to share, you have valuable
insights to give and the benefits
are going to come back around to you as soon
as you begin and don't stop. Your project work
will help guide you along the way to
create your plans and please do upload
your findings into the class so that other
students can see. I wish you every success for
your prolific production.
Jodie Cook, Entrepreneur, writer, athlete.
