Most coaches are drowning in ideas but stuck on execution. Here’s the simple SOP framework that finally gets your content into the world.
You have the ideas. You have the expertise. You have the passion for what you do and the desire to share it. So why does your content keep stalling out before it ever reaches the people who need it most?
The answer probably isn’t what you think.
It’s not a lack of creativity. It’s not a shortage of topics. And it’s definitely not that your message isn’t worth hearing. After years of working with coaches and consultants, Darren Cooper and Dustin Pead of 1898 Creative have landed on a truth that changes everything: coaches don’t have an idea problem. They have a system problem.
This post is inspired by Episode 017 of the Coaching with Content podcast, where Darren and Dustin break down the exact SOP framework coaches need to stop losing their best ideas and start building content that actually works.
The Ideas Are Already There
Here’s a scenario that might sound familiar. You’re in the middle of a coaching session and your client says something that stops you in your tracks. A story, an insight, a breakthrough moment that perfectly illustrates a concept you’ve been trying to teach for years. You think, “I need to remember that.” And then, somewhere between that moment and your next free window to sit down and create content, it vanishes.
Or maybe you’re driving home and an idea hits you out of nowhere. A podcast topic, a hook, a framework that would resonate deeply with the people you serve. You make a mental note. But by the time you get to your desk, the idea has dissolved.
This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a capture problem.
As Dustin explains it, your best ideas don’t disappear because you’re not creative enough or disciplined enough. They disappear because you haven’t built a system to catch them.
The Lego Box Problem
Dustin uses a simple analogy that makes this click immediately. Think about an adult Lego kit, one of those 2,000-piece builds. If you never open the box and empty out the pieces, nothing gets built. The puzzle doesn’t assemble itself with the pieces still inside.
Your ideas work the same way. They need to come out of your head before anything useful can happen with them. The first step in any content system isn’t strategy or scheduling or platform selection. It’s a brain dump.
Get everything out. A legal pad, a whiteboard, a voice memo, a massive Post-it note on the wall of your studio. The format doesn’t matter. What matters is that the pieces are out of the box and in front of you where you can actually work with them.
The Three-Tab System That Runs a Podcast
Once your ideas are out, you need a place to organize them that you’ll actually use. At 1898 Creative, Darren and Dustin run every client podcast on a simple Google Sheets production schedule with three tabs.
Tab one is Release Dates and Details. For every upcoming episode, you’re tracking the record date, the release date, the episode number, the episode type, the topic, whether there’s a guest, the working title, the current status, and any relevant notes. That’s it. Everything that’s usually floating around in your head, making your next episode feel chaotic, gets grounded in one place.
Tab two is the Story Vault. This is the idea capture system for coaches who are constantly generating material in between recording sessions. When a client says something powerful, it goes in the Story Vault. When a drive-time thought hits, it goes in the Story Vault. When a conversation surfaces a perfect analogy, it goes in the Story Vault.
Dustin took this one step further in the episode by connecting it to AI. Voice message your Claude project while you’re driving, tell the story, and let it populate the spreadsheet for you. The insight and the system working together so you never lose the material again.
Tab three is the Guest Bank. If you’re a coach who interviews experts, keeps a running list of potential guests so you always have the next conversation ready to schedule.
The whole system is available free. Just reach out to Darren at 1898creative.com.
Why Simple Is the Only System That Lasts
There’s a temptation when building any new process to make it comprehensive. To account for every scenario. To build in redundancies and fail-safes and branching logic. And then to never actually use it because it takes more energy to run the system than to just wing it.
Dustin’s rule on this is clear: pretend you have T-rex arms. Build every process close enough to reach without straining. If it takes real effort to engage with your system, you won’t engage with it. The goal isn’t a perfect system. The goal is a system you’ll actually run.
A good SOP is always wet cement, he says. It evolves. It settles into your natural flow over time. But it has to start somewhere simple enough to use on day one.
The Four Phases Every Coach Needs
Once your capture system is in place, Darren maps out four phases every coach should build a process around when it comes to podcasting and content creation.
Pre-production is everything before you hit record: episode planning, topic selection, guest sourcing, production scheduling. Most of what’s in this post lives here.
Production is recording. Darren’s advice is deceptively simple: just hit record. The reason so many coaches get stuck in production isn’t technical. It’s mental. They’re waiting to feel ready. The process is the cure for that.
Post-production is editing, processing, and packaging your content. This is where a team or a done-with-you service like 1898 Creative becomes important.
Distribution is getting your finished content out into every channel where your audience lives. This is, Darren admits, where his own SOP breaks down most often. The distribution phase has the most lanes and requires the most consistent follow-through, which makes it the phase most likely to stall without a clear system.
SOPs Fight Decision Fatigue
Here’s what often gets missed in conversations about content systems: the real enemy isn’t inconsistency. It’s decision fatigue.
Darren tells a story from a recent client production day that captures this perfectly. After the recording wrapped, he stood in the middle of the studio staring at his gear, unable to decide what to tear down first. Not because the task was hard. Because there was no pre-decided sequence. Every step required a new decision, and the accumulated weight of those micro-decisions left him spinning.
The moment he remembered he had a process, everything cleared. He ran the play. Done.
That’s what a good SOP actually does. It doesn’t just organize your workflow. It removes the friction of decision-making so your energy goes toward the work that matters.
And as your coaching business grows and you bring on team members, these systems become even more valuable. Every SOP you build today is an onboarding document for someone you’ll hire tomorrow. It’s a delegation tool that lets your business grow beyond you.
Three Steps to Take This Week
You don’t need to build a perfect content system today. You need to build a good enough system that moves you forward. Here’s where to start.
Do a brain dump. Get everything out of your head today. Episode ideas, story fragments, guest names, frameworks you’ve been meaning to teach. All of it on paper before you go to bed tonight.
Get the template. Reach out to Darren at 1898creative.com and ask for the podcast production schedule spreadsheet. Start filling it in with what you already know.
Record your process. The next time you sit down to work on your podcast, use Loom or a voice note to capture what you’re doing as you do it. Let AI turn it into a written SOP you can hand off later. You don’t have to write the SOP. Just hit record.
Great ideas deserve the systems that keep moving them forward. Your content, your coaching, your message: all of it is too important to stay stuck in your head.
Watch or listen to Episode 017 of the Coaching with Content podcast for the full conversation.
Full Transcript
Darren: Hey, welcome back to another Coaching with Content podcast episode. We’re glad that you’re here. I’m here, Dustin’s here. Dustin, what’s up, man? Good to see you again today.
Dustin: Hey, hey. Glad to be back.
Darren: Well, you’re in studio. I’m in my home studio, live from what I call Studio B out here in Atlanta, Georgia. That gets me thinking. We need to name this studio here. Something cool and awesome.
Dustin: You just called it Studio B. We can’t call it Studio C.
Darren: I call it Studio B for a couple of reasons. Do you have 30 seconds for story time?
Dustin: Heck yeah, man. Come on. Story time with Dustin.
Darren: My studio space sits right next to my wife’s studio space. It’s separated by a big wall with an open doorway. We’re creative people, so we call them studios, not offices. She had hers established before I put mine in. Before it was a studio for me, it was my home bar because I’m a bourbon collector. I had all 200-something bottles of bourbon that I’ve collected since 2015. There’s a Jack Daniel’s barrel sitting over here. It had the vibe I wanted for basically a man cave slash bar. I had named it Chiefs Whiskey Bar. So I decided I was going to name this side Studio B because it used to be a bar. Studio B for bar.
Dustin: I like it. That’s creative and very simple.
Darren: When I walk in, I say open Studio B. When I’m done for the day, I say close Studio B.
Dustin: So what you’re telling me is that when we get the nameless robot that helps you, when we get one here in the studio, we’ll just have to come up with something. We got some work ahead of us.
Darren: I would put it out to our listeners. What do you think we should name it? Drop your creative studio name ideas in the comments below, or you can email Darren at 1898creative.com. That’s D-A-R-R-E-N at 1898creative.com.
Let’s get into today’s show. What are we talking about today?
Dustin: I don’t even know.
Darren: People stopped listening when I started talking about my basement. So Dustin, today I want to talk about SOPs, standard operating procedures. And I want to start by letting people behind my mind a little bit. You know this about me, but most listeners don’t. I’m an ideas guy. I love to come up with cool and creative things. I love to dream up those realities. But when it comes to implementation, I start to kind of glaze over.
A handful of years ago, I was building 1898 Creative alone in my basement. You and I started talking, and very quickly you said, “Hey, you’ve got to figure some things out on the systems side. You need structure to what you’re doing so you can actually execute on these ideas,” and so that you deliver the things you say you’re going to deliver in a timely manner. So you and I started working together, and you brought in just the whole idea of structure, meaning SOPs, organizing the brain and the mess to make sure things are actually moving.
Today we want to talk about the fact that a lot of coaches, consultants, and thought leaders who are out there trying to build something rarely have idea problems. They usually have system problems, or what we could call today execution problems, or SOP problems.
Dustin: Follow through.
Darren: Exactly. Because when you started working with me, the systems were bad. But over the years, we learned we were able to build a sustainable business and a sustainable workflow because of those systems. Today we want to talk about this in light of a podcast. We do a lot of podcasts for our clients. We help them launch or leverage those podcasts. We have systems we’ve put in place over the years.
I thought today would be a good conversation around this idea, to help those that might be going, “I have ideas for content, but they’re not getting out into the world.” And when you don’t get your ideas out into the world, nobody hears from you. Nobody understands your expertise. And it’s harder to get people to work with you over time.
So Dustin, you’re a systems-minded person, an SOP person. Let’s say somebody’s out there going, “Man, I’m just not getting things organized and done.” Where would you tell them to start? What is one simple thing they could do?
Dustin: Man, there are so many places to start. I’ll probably start a little analog and then give you a part two going digital with a tool we use at 1898.
First thing is you’ve got to get it out of your head. The reason things don’t get done is because they just live in your head and nowhere else. Nothing’s written down. No one else knows about it. No one’s keeping you accountable.
So number one, you’ve got to get it down. I call these brain dumps or mind dumps. It’s great to do on a legal pad. You can do it on a Remarkable. I recently did it on a two-foot by three-foot Post-it note in my studio.
I’ll nerd out for a minute. I’ve gotten back into Lego recently. When you get those adult Lego kits, they say 16 or 18-plus on them. There are like 2,000 pieces. You don’t open the box and leave the pieces inside. You empty them out and sort them. They’ve already done some sorting for you. They have bags, and you start with bag number one. You open it, go through those pieces, finish phase one, then move to phase two.
It’s the same thing here. Any time you’re trying to get something done, you need to get the pieces out of the box. The puzzle is not going to put itself together with pieces inside the box. The Lego kit is not going to put itself together with pieces inside the box. So number one, get it out on paper, on a whiteboard, on an Asana checklist, whatever. Get it out of your head and get it down.
Number two, specifically for podcasting, what we use here is what we call a podcast production schedule spreadsheet. Ours live on Google Sheets. We have one for every single podcast client we have.
There are simple columns. Column A: when are you going to record it? Column B: when are you thinking about releasing it? Column C: what episode number is it? Then episode type, is it a full episode or a segment? What’s the topic? Are you going to have a guest or co-host? What’s the title going to be? Then status columns, not yet recorded, recorded, or scheduled. And a notes column to keep your ideas organized.
Those are the Release Date and Details. And I’m going to throw it back to you on this one, Darren. Talk to us about the Story Vault.
Darren: Did we talk about that on an episode already?
Dustin: We did. You can go back and find the Story Vault episode, Episode 13. I’m literally looking at it right here on our Coaching with Content podcast production schedule.
Darren: I love the Lego analogy. That really does describe what’s going on in my brain when it comes to this podcast. So many random pieces rattling around.
The brain dumping piece has really encouraged me. When I start to feel overwhelmed, that just helps get things down. And what you just described with the podcast production schedule is just a way of getting things down on paper. You’re able to do exactly what you just did. When did we talk about that last? Oh yeah, Episode 13. That’s the power of the system right there.
The Story Vault is something we’ve started implementing with our clients as a way of capturing stories. When you’re having a conversation and a story hits, something that levels up the communication of the point you’re trying to make, if you’re not capturing those stories, you’re missing out.
The Story Vault is a way of capturing those moments. When a client says something great, write it down. When you think of something while you’re driving, pull over and add it to the Story Vault. Too often those ideas are just rattling around in our heads like a bunch of Legos.
Dustin: And here’s something I was just thinking about, building on the AI conversation we were having before we hit record. The best ideas tend to come to us when we’re driving or in the shower. The reason is because our brain is focused on a single task and we’ve eliminated distractions, so it can actually function the way it was designed to function.
So what I’d recommend is either voice email yourself or voice record yourself to tell the story. Drop that transcript into a cloud project called Story Vault, and then let it populate your spreadsheet for you.
Darren: That’s some next-level stuff right there.
Dustin: It’s just an idea. How many times do we already do drive-time voice memos back and forth on Slack or text? What I’m saying is, let’s leverage what we’re already doing and implement it into the Story Vault.
Like, I have a task for my son every Friday that says document client magic moments. I honestly should move it to daily because by Friday I forget. What that means is I’m documenting client stories so that when someone asks, “What difference do you even make, Dustin?”, I have all the magic moments ready to go.
If we’re talking about coaching with content, we’re talking about the content you want to put out. This is content, folks. We’re giving you the SOP to create content in a world you already live in, without having to dig around searching for gold with a metal detector.
Darren: If somebody just took that simple voice note to Claude prompt process, I think that would be worth its weight in gold for starting some type of process. You could even do that in the process you’re trying to document. When you record a podcast, these are the things you need to do. Do it on a voice note, then throw it into Claude and say, “Help me flush this out into a standardized operating procedure.” In doing that, you’re going to get further faster. It takes your jumbled thoughts and puts them out into a streamlined process you didn’t even recognize until you started doing that.
Dustin: A couple of things I’ll add. Number one, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t get caught up in the perfection chain. A good SOP is always wet cement. It’s always evolving and settling a little into what your natural flow is and needs to be.
I always talk about this with my clients: don’t make any new process so far out of your reach. Pretend you have T-rex arms and bring that process really close to where you are. If it takes any real exertion to go to that process, you’re not going to use it.
Number two, it’s important to jot things down and do the brain dumps and voice memos, but if you do nothing with it, it does you no good. In terms of actually getting things done, brain dumps do nothing other than releasing that pressure. You have to do something with it.
That’s why I say make sure whatever process you use, whether it’s the production schedule spreadsheet, an AI voice dump, drive-time thoughts, or a Field Notes guide in your pocket, you have to consistently go back to that one thing. And I always say make sure it is one thing. If it’s multiple things, now you’re wasting time just figuring out where you wrote it down.
Build the Story Vault template, take 45 minutes one time, train a Claude project to connect to this spreadsheet, and just open up your Claude app while you’re driving and start telling a story. It knows to drop that story right into the spreadsheet you’ve connected to that project.
Darren: You’re blowing my mind. Even just that process, that’s a really beautiful way of capturing ideas and making sure you never lose one. You could even say, “Give me a strong hook to bring this story to life,” and all of a sudden Claude’s saying, “Hey, start this way,” and you’re going, “Man, I didn’t even think about that.”
Dustin: The spreadsheet has three tabs. If you want it, reach out to Darren at 1898creative.com. Tab one: Release Dates and Details. Tab two: Story Vault, which we’ve been talking about how to automate. Tab three: Guest Bank. If your podcast isn’t going to feature guests, ignore that tab. But if you want guests, while you’re riding down the road and think of a potential guest, say it into your Claude project and it populates onto your sheet.
Darren: This is a masterclass in AI-assisted SOP building. I think a lot of people overcomplicate this stuff. We’re living in an age where things can be easier than we expect when we actually sit down and think about the tools at our disposal. You can create a simple system around it. Simple systems are the key to a good, winning, repetitive system. Three tabs and a Claude project. That’s your system.
Keep it simple, keep it within reach, don’t overcomplicate it, and take one step toward it this week.
Your step this week is to email Darren at 1898creative.com to get your template. We’d love to share that with you and let it start serving you in podcasting and content creation in any way that will help you grow your business.
Now, let’s say somebody’s out there. They’ve got Claude set up. They have things ready. I think there are four phases or four categories to think through when you’re building your podcast SOP, whether you’re talking it through with a human or with Claude.
Those four phases are pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution. What are your processes for each? For me, Dustin, we’ve gotten a lot of this stuff set and ready. But sometimes my SOP breaks down at distribution. We have it set up, but sometimes I don’t follow it to a T.
If you sat down today and looked at those four phases, talked them out, put it in a Claude prompt, said, “This is my pre-production process, this is my production process,” that’s going to help you brain dump and get at least 95% of the way there.
Dustin, what do you think is the biggest hiccup for people in those four phases?
Dustin: I think it’s different for everybody. For you, it’s distribution. For a lot of people, it’s production, actually hitting record. People go, “What am I even going to say?” And we always tell them, just hit record.
Everything we’ve talked about with the production schedule, that’s all pre-production. And to let you all in on a little secret, Darren and I already had this conversation last week. He just didn’t record his portion of it. So if he would have followed his SOP, maybe we would have hit record the first time.
Darren: That was a simple oversight. Hit record literally means just start. I know a comedian who does a podcast and says, “I don’t know what this episode is going to be about. I name it after I’m done.” He just talks for an hour about whatever it could be.
Dustin: So pre-production is what we’ve spent most of this episode talking about. Production, just hit record. Post-production, find yourself a good team. Hashtag 1898creative.com. And distribution, the reason people hiccup there is because there are so many different lanes to put content in, and every lane needs to speak its own unique language. The answer to that hiccup is either a good team or a super simple process that takes less than 10 minutes.
Darren: If you need a team, reach out to us at 1898creative.com.
What these SOPs have helped me do is really battle against decision fatigue. I was out on a production yesterday with a couple of clients. I got all the gear out of the car, walked in, set it up, hit record, we did the episodes, and then I packed it all back up.
Every time I set up or tear down, there are all these little decisions. What do I tear down first? The cameras? The audio? The mic cables? There’s a process for everything going back into the box. But I still stood there after the production yesterday going, “What do I do first?” I went from one thing to the other thing to the next thing. I was almost overwhelmed by tearing down something I do every single week.
And in the middle of that, I just thought, “Dude, you have a process for this. Just run the play.” And I finally stopped. I was able to execute. Decisions fell to the wayside. That’s what SOPs do. They battle decision fatigue.
When you’ve got things into Asana, into SOPs, into different processes, it’s just: set the play and run the play.
And every organization wants to grow beyond what it is today. When you create the right SOPs, it also helps on the delegation side of things. SOPs become everything when it comes to building a team that’s bigger than you.
We recently brought on Nikki, shout out Nikki, to help on some assisting stuff. She’s new to the team and it’s like drinking from a fire hose. But what you’ve helped me create are these SOPs for her to step into, a video, a checklist, a document. She messaged me today saying she found something in the SOP but had a question. I answered it. She got it done. As the team builds, the SOPs become more and more important.
If you don’t get this done, you’re constantly spinning your wheels, constantly kicking those Legos out of your head, constantly falling into decision fatigue.
That’s what’s super cool about this process and why, even though I’m not a systems-minded person, I believe in them completely because they’ve changed the game for me. Dustin, you’ve been a catalyst for me in that.
Dustin: Love it.
Darren: Go to DustinPead.com if you’re interested in Dustin helping you.
Alright, let’s wrap up. Give me a simple next three steps. Someone’s made it this far. Their brain is spinning with everything they could be doing. Break it down for me, Dustin. What’s my takeaway from this episode?
Dustin: Got you.
Number one: do a brain dump today. Don’t go to bed with all these things in your head. Trust me, you’ll even sleep better.
Number two: reach out to Darren at 1898creative.com to get this podcast production schedule template that we use for every one of our clients, and begin populating it.
Number three: use AI to your advantage. Record everything. Record it into AI verbally. If you’re on a laptop or desktop, use Loom to record it. There are so many things out there now that can document your process for you while you’re doing the process. You don’t have to make time to write the SOP. Just hit record while you’re doing it.
Darren: I love that. That’s a great, simple path forward. If you guys take action on those things today, I know it’ll be a game changer.
Here’s what I believe: great ideas deserve the systems that keep moving them forward. Great ideas need systems to keep moving forward. That’s what we help you do at 1898, walking alongside you, coaching you, done-with-you services. If you’re out there making it happen on your own right now, that’s why this stuff is important. Step into it.
Dustin: Love it. Just hit record. That covers a multitude of sins. Just get out there and hit record.
Darren: As we wrap up today, I want you to remember something I believe deep in my soul: you are an artist. You have something you’ve been put on this world to do, to bring it out into the world and into life. You are an artist, and you are loved more than you could ever imagine. Go out and create your art. Share it with the world. It all starts by building some SOPs. Go out and create your art, and we’ll see you here next time on the Coaching with Content podcast.