How to Come Up with Infinite Content Ideas
The Amplified Impact Podcast
August 17th, 2023
I got a cool question on YouTube recently…they asked how I come up with content ideas for my daily podcast.
With over 200 episodes released since January 2023, plus daily tweets and posts, keeping it fresh might seem challenging.
Here’s the scoop…Creativity is like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
I’ve been creating content since 2014, so don’t compare yourself to my output if you’re just starting.
For fresh ideas, I rely on a “Story and Idea Bible.”
I jot down events from my life and interesting concepts I stumble upon. Combining and reinterpreting these ideas often leads to unique content.
I also believe in documenting over creating. Everyday moments can hold surprising insights.
Reacting to content you see on social media is another goldmine for ideas.
Creativity isn’t just about inspiration; it’s a skill you can nurture.
Flex that creativity muscle daily, and you’ll find content flowing more effortlessly.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Daily creativity is the minimum amount of work that you need to put in if your goal is to become a truly creative creator, like a true creator.”- Anthony Vicino
LEAVE A REVIEW if you liked this episode!!
Let’s Connect On Social Media!
instagram.com/theanthonyvicino
Join an exclusive community of peak performers at Beyond the Apex University learning how to build a business, invest in real estate, and develop hyperfocus.
Learn More About Investing With Anthony
Invictus Capital: www.invictusmultifamily.com
Multifamily Investing Made Simple Podcast
Passive Investing Made Simple Book: www.thepassiveinvestingbook.com
Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
The other day, I got a really good question on YouTube. In the comments, somebody asked, where do you come up with all these content ideas? Because if you guys don’t know, if you didn’t realize, this podcast Amplified Impact is a daily podcast, which we’ve started in January 2023. So as of right now, we’ve released 200 and ish podcast episodes. So every single day, another your five to 15 minutes episode. Plus, that’s not even taken into context. All the daily tweets and the LinkedIn posts, the Instagram videos, which are typically very different than the ones that we do on the YouTube channel. So if you didn’t know, go check out all that stuff. But all that’s to say is like, every week we are putting out, off the top of my head, probably close to 70 pieces of unique pieces of content.
Anthony Vicino:
And the question, it’s an interesting one. Where do you come up with the content ideas? How do you not just say the same thing over and over again? How do you not run out of inspiration? And where does the creativity come? And so I said, hey, I’ll do an episode on the pod on this topic and share some of my thoughts on where I get my ideas from. And then more importantly, the core of this, I think, is the idea of creativity as a muscle. When you’re first starting out, if you’re not used to being creative, if you haven’t exploited that muscle on a consistent basis, it’s like going to the gym for the first time. It’s going to feel very hard. You’re going to feel sore the next day. But the more that you go in there, the more your capacity to lift increases. The less soreness that you have, the quicker you’re able to recover, the more interesting things you’re able to do in the gym in the future.
Anthony Vicino:
Right? It’s the same with creativity. What I found is that creativity is not this. I think a lot of people think it’s based on the muse. Like, when the inspiration strikes, I will have the power to do the thing. And sure, like when the car is crushing the child, the mom has the power suddenly to go lift the car. She finds the muse, she finds the inspiration. But our goal is not to just be able to summon the creativity in these once in a lifetime moments of massive explosion of output. Our goal is to be able to consistently, every single day, show up and flex that creativity muscle.
Anthony Vicino:
And the thing that I’ve noticed for myself is the more I am creative, the easier it is for me to be creative in the future. And it’s hard because sometimes you don’t feel like being creative because it’s an act of creation, which is harder than an act of consumption. And so sometimes your motivation is low, your inspiration is low, and it’s like, I don’t have anything. My well is dry. I think even on those days, showing up and figuring out how can I still be creative? Even the minimal act of creativity, I think, pays dividends. In the same way that showing up every single day to the gym and doing a little bit of work, moving your body, getting your steps in, it pays dividends. And so for context, I think this is helpful. For people that maybe don’t know, my story is that I’ve been creating content now since 2014 in one way, shape or form.
Anthony Vicino:
I had a blog way back in the day when I wanted to be a science fiction fantasy writer. The blog was called Weekly Short Stories, which from the name, you can surmise that we put out stories every single week. And from there then we wrote twelve books over the last decade. We’ve done a lot of content on medium long form blogs and articles for the newsletter on hyper focus, entrepreneur, all sorts of content. And so my creativity muscle is very well developed in the grand scheme of things. So looking at where I’m at now in the amount that we’re able to output versus maybe where you are if you’re in chapter one or two or three of your story, versus looking at chapter 42 of mine, just understand we’re just in different places. And I’ve been going to that creativity gym longer maybe perhaps than you have. And so don’t judge your output based off of somebody else who’s been doing this for many, many more years.
Anthony Vicino:
Okay? But I think daily creativity is the minimum amount of work that you need to put in if your goal is to become a truly creative creator, like a true creator. If you want to be able to take advantage of media leverage and all the potential that comes with that, you need to be able to flex that muscle on demand. Now, some things that have helped me with that is to realize that you don’t need to be massively creative every day. Sometimes it’s just a single sentence written for Twitter that can be like, it can take me a half an hour sometimes to write that one thing that can be exhausting and that can be enough. I think it’s just important that you show up and you do the reps every single day. Now, some things that have really helped me get those inspirational ideas is here’s a couple. Number one, when I’m coming up with ideas for this podcast, let’s say the first place that I look to is my story and my idea Bible. And my story Bible is just a journal that I keep where I write down things that happen in my life every time I have some kind of emotional reaction to something or something big and pivotal happens.
Anthony Vicino:
It may be something that’s small and mundane, but I think could be interesting and maybe interwoven into a broader topic at some point. I just write a quick sentence about it in my story bible. And then the same with ideas. As I’m going out in the world, as I’m listening to podcasts, as I’m consuming content on YouTube, I’m paying attention. I’m being an observer of my reactions. And whenever there’s something that piques my interest, I make a note of it. I write down the idea, and then later when I’m sitting down to figure out what do I want to talk about today? I’ll look at my stories from my life and I’ll look at those ideas. Those might be those on two different sheets, paper, maybe two different journals, right? I’m looking at those and I’m looking for ways that I can combine them.
Anthony Vicino:
Because one of my favorite ways of being creative, like if you guys are familiar with the three B’s that’s bend, blend, and break pieces of information, those are really the three ways that we can be creative. What I mean by that is number one is we bend a piece of information. So we take something and we slightly tweak it. It’s not a big bend, but we just come at it from a slightly different perspective. Or we blend it where we take two ideas and we combine them into one, or we break them and we just rebuild it into something completely different. I did a podcast episode on that concept a little while ago. So I would go back and look at that, the three B’s of creativity. But when I have my story bible and my idea bible, I can start to take these concepts.
Anthony Vicino:
My creativity tank is full, or I’m sorry, my curiosity tank is full because I have the raw inputs here. Now I just need to figure out how to put them together to deliver the output I’m seeking. And sometimes I fail. Sometimes I put the wrong story together with the wrong idea and it comes out weird. And you guys are like, I don’t think that one landed. And that’s okay because again, we’re being creative every single day. That means you have an infinite number of at bats. That means you’re going to come back tomorrow, you’re going to try again, you’re going to do better, and you’re going to realize that story and that idea, they don’t go together very well.
Anthony Vicino:
But what if I come at it from this angle? Okay, so the story and idea bible have been very, very valuable to me. And if you’re trying to build some kind of personal brand where you think you’re going to be going on podcasts, you’re going to be doing public appearances, the story bible in particular is massively valuable because when you’re on podcasts, you need to have your story, your origin, like how you got to where you are. You need to have all that stuff pretty sussed out so that you can talk about it coherently in a way that engages a very cold audience. If you’re going on somebody’s podcast and the audience has no idea who you are, you need to show up as your best self. For me, the way that I’ve been able to do that or the way I feel confident being able to do that, is when I come in with my story bible pretty well rehearsed. Okay? So I think that’s just an easy, low hanging, fruit way to become a better storyteller and to become more creative, because now you don’t have to worry about the idea. Now you just have to worry about on how you express the idea. Okay? Some other things to think about is to document versus create.
Anthony Vicino:
Sometimes it’s just enough to show up and share what’s happening in your life. We take for granted sometimes that the things that are happening in our life are not going to be interesting to other people because to us, we are living in the moment. And it seems mundane, it seems boring, it seems trivial, whatever we’re experiencing in that moment. For instance, yesterday I came home and my dog had peed on the floor twice. Okay, that seems very mundane, very boring, right? And there doesn’t seem like a very good reason to share that story, but you can imagine how you could weave that story into all sorts of narratives. Or you could take that and you could have all sorts of interesting takeaways, which is, why is it that we get so frustrated with our animals for peeing on the floor? I got so upset the second time she did it because I was like, why are you doing this? But if you were to use what Alex Romozi calls the frame of the veteran, and you say, if every single day for the next thousand days I came home and my dog peed on the floor, I would no longer be upset about it, because it wouldn’t be the outlying event. It would just be the reality of that’s what happens every single day. And so you would then look at this event and say, well, if it happened to me a thousand days in a row, could I adapt and not be upset by it? Then in the moment moment on this one time that she does it, then yes, I can also let go of it and not let it own me in my mental space.
Anthony Vicino:
And I think that’s a really cool frame, right? So we could take this story of just documenting this frustration that I had with my dog peeing on the floor, tying it into this other idea of the frame of the veteran, and boom. Now you have a unique, interesting piece of content that a lot of people can relate to because a lot of us have pets that pee and poop on the floor and it’s very annoying, but we love them and so we put up with it. So document don’t create. Another great idea is just to scroll through social media, twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, wherever, and just observe the content that stands out to you. And then if you have some sort of strong emotional pull towards it, maybe you disagree with it. Take that piece of content, share why you disagree with it, if you agree with it, do a piece of content on it, and why you agree with it. And so the world is full of opportunities to be creative. It’s just a matter of seeing the things that are already in front of you with new eyes.
Anthony Vicino:
Truly, if we could come at the world with the eyes and the wonder of a three year old or a five year old, you would never have any shortage of inspiration. The problem is that we’ve just been living this life for so long and looking at the same things with the same eyes for so long, and that we just become blind to what’s in front of us. And so to be creative, I think, first requires you to be able to very clearly see the world as it is in front of you, and then to imagine what could be. And if you do that, and if you make a practice of it, if you develop that creativity muscle on a consistent basis, then you will never struggle to come up with content ideas. So hope this brings you guys some value. I’ll see you in the next episode. Till then, stay hyper focused, my friend. Bye.
This Week On YouTube
These 3 Daily Habits Made Me A Millionaire in 3 Years
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
1. Unleash your hyperfocused mind to dominate life, business, and everything in between? Here’s how:
→ The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the exact system I used to overcome ADHD, write 12 books, build 4 businesses, and acquire $70M of real estate.
There are a handful of spaces left in The Hyperfocus Masterclass for those who want to snag the early bird preorder special discount of $49.
Email anthony@anthonyvicino.com to let me know you want on the waitlist.
2. Learn to passively invest in commercial real estate with better returns, less risk, and zeo hassle.
→ Invictus Capital: my real estate private equity firm.
→ Multifamily Investing Made Simple: Top Apple Podcast.
→ Passive Investing Made Simple: Amazon Best Selling Book with 100 5 star reviews.
3. Want more like this? Check out these 3 popular articles from the vault:
