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Welcome to 1% Better. A weekly newsletter where I provide simple playbooks to grow your following, earn more revenue, and live a more fulfilling life.

Today at a Glance:

• Why I’ve NEVER had writer’s block

• Simple strategies for generating new ideas

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Generate Unlimited Ideas for Content Creation

I get a lot of questions about writer’s block and how to deal with it. My advice is always this: don’t get writer’s block. It might sound arrogant at first but let me unpack that. You’ll never get writer’s block if you create the proper systems to generate ideas.

The only way you’ll ever get writer’s block is if you stare at a blank screen. No part of your creative process should be staring at a blank screen. Let’s walk through the process and techniques I’ve used over the last year to never suffer from writer’s block.

Hub and Spoke Model

The core of my creative process is called the hub and spoke model. I take a hub piece of content (typically my threads) and turn them into 20 different pieces of spoke content.

So, for instance, if I write a thread on five side hustles you can work on, I’ll turn each of those side hustles into individual tweets over the next several weeks. Then I might take that thread and do a deep dive piece in a newsletter. You can take one piece of hub content and turn it into dozens of spoke content.

1. Build hub content (typically long form content like threads or newsletters)

2. Turn into spoke content (short form tweets and videos)

Steal Like an Artist

If you haven’t read “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon you need to get to it. An excellent book about how to draw inspiration from other creators in an ethical way. As J. Cole/ the Bible once said: “There is nothing new under the sun”. There is nothing creatively unique anymore. Everything created today has been inspired by something else. Here’s how I’d recommend finding inspiration:

1. Create X Lists of accounts in your niche

2. Subscribe to as many high-quality newsletters as you can

3. Read tons of books and take notes

4. Have a good note-taking app (I like Notion), and write down every idea that comes to you as you consume inspiration.

Get Inspiration from Yourself

You need to be reviewing your past content. If I’m ever struggling to find inspiration, I invariably capture dozens of ideas just by going back and reading old tweets and threads. I perform all my content review in a Google Spreadsheet.

Every night I go into this sheet and enter all my tweets from the past day. I put in the likes, replies, and retweet counts. Then weekly, I review this sheet and check to see what worked and what didn’t. I always formulate new ideas by going through my history.

Find New Angles

What do I do with all this old content I’m reviewing? I try to find new angles and also apply new lessons learned. Say I wrote a thread on copywriting tips. Maybe I’ll take this thread and then use it as inspiration to develop formatting tips. I take this idea of improving your writing content and find ten different ways to approach that topic.

To some, this might seem repetitive, but this will only be a small minority. Most people (the ones that you made your content for) will appreciate the different angles and perspectives you’re taking.

Also, the more you create content, the more you learn. I’ll find threads I wrote back in June that were great concepts but executed poorly. I’ve learned new ways to make compelling threads in the seven months since. So I’ll take that old thread and apply the new lessons and methods I’ve learned.

Again, for a small percent of your audience, it might feel repetitive, but for most people, including ALL the new audience members you’ve picked up in the meantime, they’ll highly appreciate this new approach.

These are a few of my main systems for ideating content. With these techniques, I have yet to suffer from writer’s block in the last 3 years.

The last thing you want to do is stare at a blank screen. Build some proper systems, and that will never happen.

Helpful? Here’s some other ways I can help you out:

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60 minute coaching session that will totally change the way you create content: Alex Finn 1 on 1 coaching session

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Alex