The Sunday Night Content Panic

Picture this: It’s Sunday night. The kids are finally asleep. You sit down with good intentions to plan your content for the week. You open your laptop, stare at the blank screen, and suddenly feel that familiar weight in your chest. Monday’s coming fast, and you have nothing ready.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Most coaches start their business to make an impact and spend more time with family, but somehow end up spending more hours creating content than actually coaching clients or being present with loved ones. This post is inspired by our latest episode of The Coaching with Content Podcast, where Darren and Dustin break down exactly how to escape this cycle.

Why Content Becomes Chaos for Busy Coaches

The reality is harsh but true: You’re not lazy. You’re not lacking ideas. You’re just trying to do everything yourself while juggling the beautiful chaos of parenthood and running a business. Between client calls, soccer practice, and the daily demands of life, content creation becomes another overwhelming task on an already impossible list.

The problem isn’t your message—it’s powerful. The problem isn’t your expertise—you’ve got plenty. The problem is you don’t have a system that works for your real life, complete with crying toddlers, unexpected interruptions, and the constant mental juggle of being an entrepreneur and a parent.

Framework 1: The Weekly Big Three

Stop trying to do everything. Start with three things.

This framework comes from productivity expert Michael Hyatt, but here’s how to apply it specifically to your coaching business:

How it works:

• Every Sunday night (or Monday morning), identify three things that MUST happen for you to feel successful by Friday
• Write them down physically—the act of writing engages your memory
• Balance your focus: one business development task, one client deliverable, one operational item

The magic happens when you get ruthless. You might have six important things, but force yourself to choose only three. This isn’t about doing less work—it’s about doing the right work first.

Real example from the podcast: “I know I have to record a podcast this week for the business. That’s not a client deliverable, but it’s something that will move the business forward. These business tasks are always the first to fall off the to-do list, so when I write them as one of my big three, I have to do them.”

Framework 2: The One-Place Rule for Task Management

Your brain isn’t a filing cabinet—stop trying to use it as one.

Whether you choose Asana, Monday.com, or even Post-it notes, the tool doesn’t matter. What matters is having ONE place where everything goes. Here’s why this changes everything:

The 23-Minute Problem: Research shows you lose up to 23 minutes every time you context switch. If you switch contexts three times a day, you’re already losing over an hour of productive work just from mental transitions.

How to implement:

• Choose one system and commit to it completely
• When you get a text, email, or random thought—immediately put it in your system
• Add context in the description: “Follow up with Jim because he wanted pricing for the group coaching program, and I told him I’d send it by Tuesday.”
• Set future you up for success by explaining the “why” behind every task

The freedom this creates is incredible. Imagine waking up each day and your system telling you exactly what needs to be done, because past you did the work to set you up for success.

Framework 3: The Four-Hour Content System

Stop creating content daily. Start thinking monthly.

This framework allows you to create a month’s worth of content in just four hours total:

Hour 1: Sunday Strategy (30 minutes)

• Review your content calendar
• Choose four core topics for the month
• Set up your recording space (camera, audio, lighting)
• Plan your weekly big three

Hours 2-3: Marathon Recording (2.5 hours)

• Record four long-form pieces of content (10-30 minutes each)
• Focus on teaching, not perfection
• Batch everything in one focused session

Hour 4: AI-Powered Repurposing (45 minutes)

• Use AI tools to create blog posts, social media captions, and email content from your transcripts
• Break long-form content into 5-10 minute segments
• Create 30-60 second clips for social media platforms
• Generate YouTube descriptions, hashtags, and promotional copy

Final 15 minutes: Schedule Everything

• Use scheduling tools like Buffer or Later
• Set it and forget it
• Your content works while you sleep

The Real-Life Test

These frameworks aren’t theoretical—they’re battle-tested by real coaches dealing with real life. During the recording of this very episode, Darren’s son was literally acting like a dinosaur upstairs, chasing his sisters around while he was trying to deliver valuable content. That’s the reality of being a parentpreneur.

But here’s what makes the difference: having systems that work even when life gets chaotic. When you have your big three written down, your tasks in one system, and your content batched and scheduled, you can handle the unexpected without derailing your entire week.

Your Next Right Decision

You don’t need to implement all three frameworks at once. Pick the one that resonates most with your current struggle:

• Feeling scattered and unfocused? Start with the Weekly Big Three
• Constantly forgetting important tasks? Implement the One-Place Rule
• Drowning in daily content creation? Try the Four-Hour Content System

The goal isn’t perfection—it’s progress. These systems free your mind so you can be present with your family, focused with your clients, and confident in your content.

Your voice matters. Your story matters. And with the right systems in place, you can share both without sacrificing your sanity or your family time.

Ready to implement these frameworks? Listen to the full episode of Coaching with Content for more detailed examples and real-world applications.

[Subscribe to Coaching with Content for weekly insights]

Full Transcript

Darren: Here’s the harsh reality. You started your coaching business to make an impact and have more time with your family. But somehow you’re spending more hours creating content than you are actually coaching clients or being present with those that you love the most. Every Sunday night, you sit down with good intentions to plan your content for the week. Monday rolls around and you’re scrambling to post something, anything between soccer practice and client calls.

By Wednesday, you’ve fallen behind. By Friday, you’re beating yourself up for being inconsistent yet again. Sound familiar? Well, here’s what I know about you. You’re not lazy. You’re not lacking ideas. You’re just trying to do everything yourself while juggling the beautiful chaos of parenthood and running a business.

And as a dad and a business owner myself, I’ve felt that crushing weight of knowing my message could help people, but feeling like I need 30 hours in a day just to keep up with content creation. That’s why today Dustin and I are going to walk through three simple frameworks that have helped other coaches and consultants go from content chaos to content confidence without sacrificing family time or your sanity.

All right, well, welcome back to another Coaching with Content conversation. We have, as always, my good friend, and I’m just going to call you a cohost now at this point, buddy, Mr. Dustin Pead. What’s up, man?

Dustin: What’s up? Yeah, I think it’s common law now.

Darren: It’s common. Yep. Yep. It is common law. That is how we have got you on this podcast. See, I said to you at first, like, will you come on for a couple of episodes? I’ll probably get started. Stop by for the first couple as we get started and then more work and some other guests and yadda yadda.

Dustin: Yeah. Sucker.

Darren: You’re in this thing now, buddy. It’s like I said, no, I don’t know if it was the last released episode, but one of the last episodes that we did, talked about me being the Andy Richter and I’m officially sitting in that Andy Richter chair now.

Dustin: Yes, I like it. I like it. Well, welcome Andy.

Darren: Thank you for being here. You are very Conan though.

Dustin: Oh, it’s on YouTube, man. He’s a bit team Coco. I just let’s look at him.

Darren: If I, if I had some stuff in my hair, I can flip that thing around just like Conan, man.

Dustin: He was my inspiration there for awhile. So, you know, I like it anyway.

Darren: Anyway, that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. Today we want to talk a little bit about busy entrepreneurs, busy. I will even go ahead and say parentpreneurs because I am one of those, Dustin, you are one of those. And I’m sure that there are people out there that whether they have little kids at home or not can feel the pressure of, Oh man, there’s so much to do. There’s so many things swirling around. What do I do next? How do I get it all done? And it’s just, it just becomes crazy.

And I think this came to life. I don’t think you were on the call Dustin, but a few weeks ago I was on a discovery call with a new client, right? Down here in this little dungeon of a basement that I have my set up and this was a client that I’ve been been talking with for a while trying to get on a call. And so finally at books and we’re having this conversation and we’re in it, right? Like I am putting sales one-on-one to the test, right? And I’ve tried to get these folks to see what, how, and what we can do to help them achieve their goals as coaches and consultants.

And right in the middle of one of my best points, all of a sudden come around the corner is my, this time it was my youngest daughter who had no pants on and was crying because her brother had smacked her in the nose. Right. And I’m in the middle of like trying to sell this thing and also like, there’s a crying toddler here. Oh my gosh, what do I do and how do I help? And it’s not like an easy fix where it’s like you just pat her on the back and say, there, there, you’re fine. Like she’s literally like losing it. Right.

And so I’m trying to figure out what to do. And luckily the folks on the call, they had kids themselves, so they understood and they get it and they’re just like, all right, you know, and so I took care of it and then we moved on.

Then that reminds me of even another story where I was on a call, same thing, and this time it was my oldest boy. He comes around the corner and he’s frustrated about something, so I just hold him while I’m on this call because I knew the gentleman that I was talking to had kids as well, so I’m holding him and all of a sudden, my belly and my chest feel very warm. Oh no. And I’m like, what is happening?

And I pull him back and I realized that he has peed all over me. Yeah. You know exactly what’s happening. Yeah. Yeah. And so as I share these stories, maybe you haven’t had something as crazy as that happened, but we all know, and I’m sure Dustin, you have some stories along these same lines of we have these life situations that happen when we’re trying to do our work as coaches, as consultants, as entrepreneurs, and life just gets in the way.

And we go, how do we handle all of this stuff? Dustin, do you have any fun stories of your kids growing up or your kids are a little older? So they’re a little more respectful now, maybe.

Dustin: Yeah, my kids are older, 12 and 14 at the time of this podcast recording, but we do homeschool. So they are here when I work from home.

Yeah, I have to just be, like my kids are old enough now where we’re all in a text thread together and I’m really enjoying that. I’m really enjoying being able to text the it’s called the Pead fam. I’m really enjoying being able to text the Pead fam. Literally before we started this, I just texted them and in all caps just said recording just so that they know like you can come down. There’s a room like next to here. Like you can come down, but you’re going to have to be uber quiet and you cannot interrupt.

So yeah, I’ve never, I’ve never gotten peed on in the middle the day. Well, you know, that’s the joy of toddler land, I guess. But I think that when you work in this kind of environment and most coaches or consultants are going to be working either out of a home office or something like that, where there’s a lot of distractions, a lot of things going on.

Not to include all of the task lists that continue to build up with coaching calls or different things that happen. And it can become extremely overwhelming very, very quickly. And for us here at 1898, obviously we’re talking mostly about content creation and how we can help kind of streamline that process. But Dustin, when I was early on in 1898, I was getting to a place where I was making some sales, I was getting some things in the door, started

Darren: Having more and more projects than I had ever had before. And you and I were talking because you are a creative consultant that really helps on the side of, let’s kind of streamline your process so that you can get more done. In fact, you have a great tagline that you can share with us about what you do for us creative minded folks out there. What’s that tagline that you use on your podcast?

Dustin: Yeah, I tell everybody I’m taking creatives from chaos to clarity. That’s it. We do that through their processes and systems. I mean, there’s a lot of chaos going on in a creative brain and in a coach’s brain or any entrepreneurs brain. But when I just come in and kind of help organize the thoughts and the systems around what actually makes the engine run.

Darren: Yeah. Yeah. And you’ve extremely helped me in this process. And I think what a lot of people that are listening to this can wrap their minds around whether they’re parentpreneurs or just entrepreneurs in their own right is that there are so many things that come at us in any given day. And there are so many right next, right next decisions that the- Next right decisions. There it is. That’s what I’m trying to say.

There’s all these things that you can do next and they would be good things that you could do. But what do you do next and how do you make sure that your processes are in place? And today here in a little bit, I want to share just a quick little four hour framework for us busy entrepreneurs when it comes to content creation. But Dustin, I want to really highlight what you do extremely well. And that is walking through the processes. And so I’m just going to kind of pick your brain here over the next few minutes and just kind of see how you would coach in this regard.

And I think if you are an entrepreneur or a parentpreneur and you are overwhelmed right now, just lean in right now because I know that Dustin is going to share something that’s going to help you because it’s helped me extremely over the last. No pressure. What’s it been? A couple of years?

Dustin: Yeah, don’t suck now Dustin, it’s been a couple of years you’ve been working with we’re coming up on two years this October actually.

Darren: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, I love it. I love it. Well, Dustin, let’s talk a little bit. Let’s frame the idea around. And it’s, I’m going to pause here for a second and say, I know you can’t hear it necessarily, but currently as we’re recording this, my son is acting like a dinosaur running around upstairs, chasing his sisters around. So it sounds like a stampede above me. So one, you hear it, you know why they didn’t get the text message.

Dustin: They didn’t, they didn’t get the text message, something about not being able to read or something. So yeah, yeah.

Darren: So this is real life, real example of what it’s like in the flesh right here. But anyway, Dustin, let’s talk, you know, somebody is an entrepreneur. They’re finding themselves in that place. They’re balancing the coaching calls with the content creation, with the family life, with the friends, with all the things. What would be maybe one thing, let’s just start there. What would be one thing that you would say, implement this and this is gonna help you a ton. I know you have a bunch of frameworks, but maybe find one that you’d be like, this is where I like to start with most people.

Dustin: Well, I was randomly kind of cleaning off my desk here as we were getting started with this recording and I picked up this notepad of, that I. I’m the nerd that will like, if something doesn’t exist, I’ll create it so that I can use it. Like I need the tool. And what I wanted a few years ago when I was using, not even a few years ago, like last year, I used the full focus planner a lot. I still use it every now and then, but one thing that I wanted to have in there that I used to just take a Post-It note and slap it on in there and move it every day was what my weekly big three was.

Darren: This is good.

Dustin: You kind of write that at the beginning of the week if you’re familiar with the full focus planner, then you turn the page and you get into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and that page is four or five pages behind and it’s not in front of you anymore. Yeah. And so I used to take a stick, like just a regular post-it note and write those big three on there. Then I would also underneath it, I would write, these are the tasks that I’m going to do this week to get closer to my goals. I think this one little notepad has been a game changer. Even when I’m not using full focus, I still fill it out every week and I’ll leave it stuck on my desk or I’ll stick it on the cover of my remarkable or whatever. But yeah.

I’ll try to show it on the screen if it’ll focus on it. I don’t know if it will or not. But just, yeah, just as big three at the top of it. So it’s the week’s big three and then goal tasks underneath it. So my advice would be to just pick three things. If you’re, if you’re overwhelmed, I mean, this is not a Dustin principle. This is a Michael Hyatt full focus principle, but this is how I use it. Just pick the three things that you’re like in order for me, like forecasts, right? So

If you don’t have time on a Sunday night after the kids go to bed, get up early Monday morning before they get up. If they get up at five, then you get up at three. Just figure it out. It’s just a season. It’s going to pass. Trust me. So here, can you say that again? Please just a season. It’ll pass. Okay. But embrace it while it’s here, you know, cause then they’re, then they, then they, it’s a whole different set of things. Yeah. Either way, like there’s always, there’s a bunch of stuff.

But forecast whenever you’re sitting down to begin thinking about the week, whether it’s Sunday night or Monday morning or whatever, to start forecasting like, Hey, in order for me to close the lid on my laptop on Friday afternoon and crack a beer, like before I do that, like when I, when I get to that point, what will have to have happened in order for me to feel like this was a good successful week?

In the business because we’re talking about here is the business right. So what’s a good so so in that that’s where I get my big three from right. Hey there’s only three spots you might have five or six things listed but okay now I got to get ruthless you can go okay I got six things that I really think that are the most important but let me instead narrow those down to three.

Darren: Yeah. Well that’s a bunch of ideas floating around in my head but since I had this notepad in front of me I know that that’s perfect. That’s perfect. And I think even if you just started there, what, what is happening when you do this, which is what you didn’t necessarily teach me this, but this is kind of a subset of what you brought in a couple of years ago was you taught me to be intentional. And I think that that is what a little tool like that allows us to do. Because if anybody out there’s mind works like mine, it’s I sit down and I go, well, I got a few things written down here that I need to do today, but then you open your email and somebody’s emailed you a client, maybe ask a question. So you respond to that. And then all of sudden that leads you over here to this other thing. And you start to do that a little bit and you’re like, crap, I was supposed to do this checklist today. So you go back to your checklist and then, okay, you start working on that again, but then you get distracted because your phone rings. And then now all of sudden it’s like,

Now you go back to maybe creating content or looking on social media for inspiration or like, and you’re just, you’re rambling, walking around the wilderness, trying to pick up things and you never get anything done. And so what the big three allowed me to do, and I’m going to admit, I’m not always perfect at keeping it in front of me. So sometimes I get to the end and we go, Oh crap, was the, was the, where are my big three? Did I happen to do them? I don’t vote. What the big three allows you to do is to be intentional on your week. And that is often what a lot of us miss myself as the chief. Oh You know, the chief, what’s the word? I break that rule all the time. The chief rule breaker. I do that every single time where it’s just like, I am not intentional. The kids will be running around upstairs. I go upstairs to kind of help calm everybody down. And then the next thing I know I’m

Somewhere else and not doing what is in front of me, right? And the big three allow you to be intentional. And something that I’ve done with the big three that you’ve helped me kind of understand is looking at, you know, there are certain times that you got to work on those four clients, but then there’s other times that you have to work on the business, right? So in my big three, I try to say,

What is something that’s working on the business? What’s something that’s like on the business and client adjacent and then maybe a client deliverable? It’s kind of how I walk it through. I know you tie them into your goals often. So it’s like, if you’re trying to hit certain things, how does that tie into that? But that’s something that I’ve tried to say is like, okay, I know that I have to record a podcast this week for the business, right? That’s not helping clients per se, right? Like a client deliverable.

But this is something that’s going to help move the business forward, will always be those things are always the first things that come off the to-do list, right? They’re always the first things to fall off. So when you write them down as your big three, go, I have to do those this week. And now you start to find yourself intentional on what you do as you move forward. And it’s just a beautiful thing.

Dustin: Yeah. And I’ll say too, even if you do forget to come back to it. We talked about this and one of our most recent episodes and then I expounded on it and one of my most recent podcast episodes, but the physical act of writing something down is directly connected to your memory. Yep. It’s the reason why, like when you think of something, you’re like, I need to write this down somewhere so I don’t forget it. Even if you write it down somewhere and you’re like, where did I write that down at? You’re still, never done that.

Darren: Yeah.

Dustin: You’re still more likely to remember it if you have, if you never wrote it down at all. Yeah. Right. Like I will often look over at my wife while I’m driving and we’re having a conversation and something will pop into my head that we need to do has nothing to do with whatever she’s talking to me about. So I have to apologize for that for a second. I say, look, I’m sorry. I this is not what we’re talking about, but I need you to help me remember to that when we get home, we need to X, Y, Guess what? Guess what? We always forget whatever that was because neither one of us wrote it down.

I can’t write it down because I’m driving. She’s not writing it down because she’s thinking, I’ll remember it because I’m the smarter one. And she’s the smarter one. But neither one of us remember it. Right. And it’s because neither one of us wrote it down. I literally this morning had an idea while I was getting ready. And I emailed it to myself. Nice. Because I was like, I want to write this down in a place where I’m going to remember it. And I’ve been trying that out recently about emailing it to myself.

Now I’m at the point where I have a virtual assistant for a few hours a week and she does email management. There’s now we’re getting into the idea of like, if you see an email from me, it needs to go into the Asana. Like it needs to get added to Asana like soon. So I don’t forget about what it was. Just copy and like, and she’ll link the email. Like she’ll put a link to the email in the description of the task. So when I get to it,

It’s like, what was I thinking here when I got out of the shower or that night when I was up late with bad pizza and indigestion? You know, what was I, you know, was like right back to it.

Darren: Yeah. Yeah. That’s really good. And that helps. That into like three different areas. But no, no, that’s that’s so good. And it is true that there you could almost be overwhelmed by the amount of things that you could do to get organized and kind of streamline your thoughts. And so.

We’re just going to walk through a couple here. And so I love the fact that you brought up the big three. The big three is awesome. Do that every Sunday night or Monday morning. That’s going to be a game changer for you. Even if you’re not planning out your entire week, just plan the big three for cats. I am sitting in the Friday night. The work week is done. What is it that I want to feel? What is it that needs to get done in order for me to the three things that need to get done in order for me to feel like this was a successful week? It’s so good. Anybody can do three things. And

I’m going to bring in a little to tag on to our second one here that we’re going to talk about is, is I want to walk a little bit of Asana through or task management software, right? You were big Asana people here. You’re like basically certified in Asana so you can tell us all the things, know, I am doing a course right now.

Dustin: Well, see, I knew, I knew you would be in there, but,

Darren: You’ve really brought this up and something that I have, now that Asana is put together for us and basically what we use it for, for our clients. And then I’ve started to use it for my own personal stuff. So obviously get your client stuff in there and go listen to system. It’s like, it’s like monday.com or base camp or like all these are all the ones that are out there. We just, I just, Asana to me is the most intuitive one where I don’t have to think too hard about it.

And it’s kind of pretty too. It’s the prettiest one. Every time you check stuff off, you get like a flying unicorn.

Dustin: Yeah, it’s like, yeah, it’s like, come on man. It’s like, let’s go. Let’s go. So now, yes, that’s what, that’s what it is.

Darren: Well, I should have probably framed that a little bit. Yeah, thank you. So this project management software, and obviously when it comes to client deliverables, you can put it in there, you can get your dates in and go listen to Dustin’s podcast to get all the insights on, you know, do versus do frameworks and all the things that will help you just crush it. And fact, shout out your podcast real quick.

Dustin: It’s creativity made easy. Yep. Yep. So go, go find it wherever audio podcasts are listened to, go find it. I might even say just pause us now and go find it. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Darren: But Asana, what I’ve started to do that’s been really helpful is because for me, I get a text message from somebody and I’m like, I need, I need to uncheck it because I hate the little bubbles, you know, on my, on my phone, the little one, two, three, I need to uncheck it, but I also need to remember that. And then I do exactly what you and your wife do where it’s like, Oh, I remember that. So I read it and then I don’t, or I, I unread it again, you know, as you know, where you can make the bubble come back and it’s like, Oh, I remember that later. But what I’ve tried to do, especially with the Asana system that you’ve helped us develop is

Okay, I see that. And now I just go straight to Asana. I create a task. If it’s an email, we actually have the little button on the email that says Asana task and it just goes straight there and I can type it in, Hey, check this out and do it tomorrow or whatever. You can put a date on it. And so I’ve been trying to make Asana my brain, if you will, like just the brain dump, everything, if an email comes in, if a text message comes in, if, I’m driving and I need to remember something. Hey, put this in, you know, my phone real quick and just type it in, put a date on it. Then you can organize it later and send it to whatever due date you need to put on it.

But that’s been something that I’ve been trying to do because in my workday flow, an email will come in and maybe I’ll see it by accident, you know, like I didn’t need to see that, but now I’m thinking about it. So I need to do something with that. And I’ve been trying to get everything into Asana.

So that I can make sure that I remember it and not have, like it just, it takes all the pressure and all the stress off me when I go, oh that’s, yeah. It’s somewhere that I know I won’t forget it. And it’s huge. So Dustin, if you were, give us a two minute, it’s a high task, but give us a two minute Asana breakdown, right? Like maybe somebody’s like, I’ve tried this before.

I don’t, it hasn’t worked for me. I don’t really know what to do with it. Well, how would you coach somebody in two minutes or less? Ready? Timer go.

Dustin: All right. Two minutes or less. Here’s what I’m going to say. You don’t have to use Asana. That’s what I’m going to say. I don’t care if you, I tell my, I tell people that I coach and my clients all the time, like, I don’t care if you use Post-it notes. It doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, you need to just be consistent and using the same thing.

So wherever you’re going to dump your tasks or your thoughts or your ideas or your don’t forget. So your big threes or whatever, just make sure it’s in a place that you’re going to return to. I don’t care if you use the notes app on your phone. I know people that do that and they do great with it, but you have to be consistent about dumping things in one place. The reason why we get so off track is because we’re it’s the, where’s my car keys thing, right? It’s where did I write that down at? Like we said earlier, like

If you have the one place like the next to there, like Darren and I wake up every day, not knowing what we need to do that day. Just like, imagine the freedom that that brings for a second. And then we open up our project management system of choice, which is Asana. And it tells us what to do. Now it’s not telling us because it’s smart robotics is telling us because past us did the work to put what we needed in there for today us.

Right. And so we’re putting the context of things in there. We’re putting the descriptions of things in there. We’re linking things to email so that we don’t have to think about it. I’ve told this on a recent podcast episode. You lose 23 minutes when you have to context switch. The average person loses up to 23 minutes when you have to context switch. If you had to context switch three times in a day, you’re already losing over an hour of work a day just from context switching. So just use one place.

I don’t care if it’s Asana or post-it note or your iPhone notepad. It doesn’t matter. Legal notes, like it doesn’t matter. Just use one spot and notice what it is when you go to it. If you go, I don’t understand still what I need to do. Then take note of that, learn from it and make sure when you’re putting stuff into it that you set your future self up for success.

Darren: That’s so good. That’s so good. And I know that I You have kind of trained me in this over over the last couple of years and it’s so funny because I I find myself in the descriptions now like talking to myself how I would. Yeah, you know like it just just plain as day like hey dude you said to follow up with this guy because he wanted to do XYZ and and so you told him you would do this by this date so make sure you do it. OK thanks.

You know, with is the, the greatest example. Follow up with is the greatest example. Every business owner, every coach and consultant in here constantly has someone asking you to follow up with them or you know that you need to follow up with somebody. Put the context of why you need to follow it. Like you don’t need to write all that out in the task. So we just say, my mind would say, follow up with Darren and in the description, it would be me talking to past me talking to today me. Yeah.

Saying, Hey, the reason you’re following up idiot is because they said that they wanted X, Y, Z. And you told her that you would do a, you know, ABC and you know, okay. Oh yeah, that’s right. I did say that. Great. Thank you. Past me. Okay. Now I’m into it. And now you just saved yourself the what? And then sometimes when you get so like, why did I, and then you freak, and then you’re like, it must not be that important if I don’t remember how many times have you said that to yourself? It must not be that important if I don’t remember. That’s a lie. It is important. You just didn’t write it down somewhere. That’s what we’re going back to the write it down thing again.

Just write it down somewhere.

Dustin: Man, that’s, you know, fired up.

Darren: Oh, I know. And it’s so I’m the kind of person that just will, will hold onto those things, right? Like hold onto the text messages, hold onto the emails, try to remember the things that I said I would remember, try to do this. And I find myself so my mind is so full of all these things swimming around that that’s when you find yourself disconnecting from family.

Disconnecting from friends, disconnecting from conversations, not getting done what you want to get done because you have so much in your brain. It’s hard to kind of wade through the soup that’s happening and simply utilizing the, big three for the week and in a project management process of some sort and just getting everything out of your mind and into one location.

That has been an absolute game changer. And I know it sounds so elementary. Sounds so maybe for some of you it sounds so duh. Yeah, oh we know this. But how often do we not do it? And every time that I begin to take all these thoughts and put it into the processes and the things that Dustin’s helped me create over the last couple of years, it has freed my mind. Now, if I’m out with the kids and something happens, I write it down, I can forget about it.

I can forget about it because in two Mondays from now it pops up on my thing and says follow up with Jim. I go who’s Jim? I click on it and I’m like oh yeah Jim and then I do it and it’s so it sounds so elementary and so simple but it’s often the first thing that we overlook.

Dustin: Yeah yeah man those are those are good things and Dustin as we as we land the plane I want to walk us through because we talk a lot about content creation around here.

Darren: And so as a third little piece that I want to put us together is what we’ll call, we like to build frameworks on these podcasts as we go. Like you did a couple of weeks ago, but we’re going to build what I’ll call the four hour content strategy. If you implement, can easily just in four hours, everything kind of done and wrapped maybe even for the month for you if you do it right. And so

I want to walk us through this little framework because we talk a lot about content creation around here. And so if, if you’re, you know, we, we have the, the big three that we talked through, then we have the project management software like Asana that we talked through. Now we’re going to walk through a four hour content creation strategy or framework that you can implement. So you got a lot of things that you could do. This is, this is a power packed, you know, episode Dustin, we’re just giving them all the things, right? You know, whatever, whatever.

Anyway, let’s talk through, let’s talk through this, four hour content. Sorry. I was thinking about how I could hear that dinosaur there earlier. I know, man. He just stopped just now. He just stopped. It was to hear this framework. Let’s give it to him. And you know what’s crazy too, Dustin is that it terrifies his younger sister. He’ll act like a dinosaur and she freaks out and screams.

And then we tell her he does this because you scream and then they do it like she screams so he does it more. And then it just becomes this vicious cycle. It’s just like, Oh man. Oh, like when you’re trying to create content on a regular basis.

Dustin: Yes. I’m trying to bring it back. That is a great segue. Thank you. Thank you for bringing me back here.

Darren: Alright, let’s talk through this four hour. If we break these down, I’ll let you know how long each is. Each task will take and then you can add it up later and see if I’m actually good on my four hours. But the first thing or the first step in the system is to do a little bit about what Dustin said already is to take Sunday night and do a quick strategy session for the week, maybe even for the month. Alright, so this is 30 minutes.

Where you just sit down, you review your content calendar that you’ve created and you’ve worked on. You choose four core topics for the month and then you set up your recording space. This is something that you hear people that like to work out. I like to say it that way because sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. But people that enjoy working out, they say some of the best things that they do is they set out their running shoes the night before. They set out their clothes the night before.

So on Sunday night, go set up your system, make sure the camera’s in the right place, make sure the audio’s good and kind of in where it needs to be, the lights are ready to be flipped on and just ready to rock and roll, right? If you did that on Sunday night for Monday or Tuesday or whatever day it’s gonna be, just simply set that up. So take Sunday night, just put a little strategy together. I think that coincides with what you were saying too, Dustin. Like they could tag this up with writing down their big three for the week as well.

Dustin: Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

Darren: So if they took 15 or 30 minutes and did that on Sunday night, step two would be to put the monthly, it was called a marathon recording, right? We talk a ton about this at 1898. We, we, this is a huge belief of ours. If you’re a coach or consultant, you are really good at coaching. You’re really good at consulting and you need to do that. You don’t need to be in the weeds of content creation all the time.

So how can you set it up? How can you set up your system where once a month you’re creating content for the whole entire month, right? You sit down and you record four long form, we’ll call them long form, 10, 15, you know, if it’s a podcast like this and it’s 30 plus minutes, then that’s great. How can you do four of these episodes or pieces of content long form once a month, right? And that’s going to be everything that you need for that.

So if you plan, you know, 30 minutes on a Sunday, you can easily knock that out in two and a half hours, right? You sit down and create all your content on say a Monday. So now you’re, if my math is correct, we’re three hours into this, right?

Dustin: Yep.

Darren: My math is, my math is nothing today. That’s great. Yeah. Sunday night prep. Then you get your monthly marathon recording day prepped and then big thing once you have all of your stuff recorded, I know this is a hot word right now but use the power of AI to help you. Use the power of AI. This is something Dustin that you and I have really stepped into the last year or so to go how can this not replace us but make us move quicker, enhance what we’re doing. And so

At 1898, we often run the content creation operating system, right? Where we’re helping you record these episodes or this content once a month, and then we take it and we break that content into a ton of repurposed content. Here we go again. If you’re a long time listener, I have a hard time with repurposed.

Dustin: Dude, you’ve got in my head about this now. Anyway, you’re going to say it.

Darren: Oh anyway, oh you can repurpose. Repurpose. Everybody knows what you’re talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Your content into all kinds of things.

So if you have a long form podcast, Dustin and I recording this long form podcast, 30 plus minutes, we’re going to take it and break it into segments, which is five to 10 minute segments. Right. And then those segments are going to get cut into shorts or reels, whatever platform you’re on. If you’re Instagram reels or YouTube shorts, TikToks, whatever you want to call it. Now you got your 30 to 60 second cuts of that. But then using the power of AI, you can now take the transcripts and you can get blog posts, you can get LinkedIn posts, you can get descriptions, you can get anything that you need to have tweets or threads or whatever you want to. Hashtags.

All of the things, YouTube descriptions, it literally can do it all for you very quickly and obviously edit and check it and all that kind of stuff. But now, if you spent 30 minutes on a Sunday planning, you spent two and a half hours putting the content together and making it happen, and then you spent say 45 minutes chopping up all of the content into the different things that you need and where it needs to go and how you need to distribute it out, and then boom.

You distribute it out, which takes us to step four, which is to set it and forget it, basically schedule it. Right. So grab the Buffers or the Laters, the software that you can just put stuff in, utilize the apps. I think all the apps now allow you to schedule things out and just put the plan together. Right. And then just set it and forget it. So within four hours, you can have a whole content system done for you that just works on your behalf while you’re sleeping.

Dustin: Yep.

Darren: And so that is the four hour content system. That could have been a whole podcast episode in itself, I’m sure. But it’s a segment for sure. There it is. This is why I have you on the podcast is for more than that, but you know what I mean?

Dustin: Eh.

Darren: But man, if you took one of the three things that we outline, whether it’s the top three for the week or the project management system or the four hour content system framework that we just broke down. If you just implemented one of those things in the next few days or the next few weeks, it’s going to radically change what you’re doing and how you feel about your business.

And that’s the big thing that we want to make sure that we do with all of our clients. We want to help to make sure that the stress load and the level of all the things that are floating in your mind can just settle down, that you know what the right next step is to take. And that’s what it’s all about when you come up with these frameworks and these systems. And I got to be honest with you, I’m not a big framework or a systems guy. I’ve never been, but the last couple of years working with my boy Dustin over here, he’s brought me, he showed me the light.

You’ve brought me into the light, buddy. And you’ve helped me understand how these can help achieve the goals that I have. Right. Like I’ve hit more goals in the last two years than I probably ever have. Right. I used to write down goals and then just kind of see what happens at the end of the year. You know. And now it’s like, no, there’s strategic things that happen. I’m doing the right things to get to the place that I want to be. So I guess I say all that, Dustin, and say thanks, man. Thanks for showing me the way.

Dustin: Hey, don’t mention it. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.

Darren: Anyway, anyway, well, let’s wrap this thing up. Let’s call this one in the books. We’ve kept you here long enough, but my hope is that one of these frameworks, one of these ideas you can implement today and literally change the trajectory of your business. If you’re a parentpreneur and you’re struggling, hopefully this just relieves some stress, but also just know that we’re out here in the soup with you too. So sometimes it’s just hard.

But just keep working, keep moving, keep doing what you do best. And the big thing that I want everybody to know and always remember is that your voice matters and your story matters. And you need to create that and bring it out into this world. So go out and create your art this week and we’ll see you next time here on the Coaching with Content podcast.