Systems
The 90-minutes content system
If you feel behind, it’s because you lack the skills to move quickly in today’s fast-paced world.
You’ve been told you need to work hard, work 80 hours a week, and if you refuse to work more than 30 hours a week, you’re called lazy.
Hustle culture told us we have to work until our backs break before we have the right to call ourselves a solopreneur, solo founder, or entrepreneur. Some of us did, and then our family, focus, friends, and health suffered for it.
Here’s the truth: If you have a business that relies on content, all you need is 60-90 minutes a day to get your content ready for all your social media. If you’re spending more than that, you’re doing a lot wrong.
The One-Person Business Era
We’re in an era when one person can start a business online, promote it with social media without spending more than 4 hours daily, and get more done than people with a team of 6 people, without sacrificing quality.
I run a one-person business as a solo founder, making 5 figures without stressing myself to burnout.
Things are changing. What takes a team of 6 to do now can be totally automated with 2% of the funds it takes to run such a team. If you’re not taking advantage of this now, you will be far behind when the time comes.
If you think you need a team to run your business, think again. What you need is the skill to create systems that make your content creation easy.
One person can now create content, manage content, post content on multiple social media channels, create a product, promote the product, etc. All they did was think, delegate, automate, systemize, and eliminate, while others still follow the old ways of creating content.
The Problem With Nonstop Creation
If you’re working nonstop as a creator, writing content for your social media accounts one after the other, and spending more than 4 hours every day as a solo founder or solopreneur, I urge you to rethink how long you’ll be able to sustain that energy.
Those who will win are the ones who can go as far as possible without allowing their business to run them.
Sure, there are people going about this the wrong way, posting mediocre content they asked AI to spit out by giving poor context. You ask AI to write you 10 LinkedIn posts, and you wonder why no one engages with your crappy content. That’s not what I’m here to talk about.
But should you wait to make such a mistake when you can learn from someone, so you can do it faster and better?
My Content Confession
Quick one: I hate manual work, especially work I have to repeat over and over again. I think it’s because I’m a strategist.
I’m one of those people who, if they’re given a task of 3 hours, will spend the first 2hrs 30mins building a system that gets it done within 10 minutes and spend the rest 20mins to rest.
Here’s how I manage my entire content within 90 minutes daily.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking, is that possible? Yes, it is. I know people spend 2 hours writing a LinkedIn post, and I’ve also been there, so I understand.
My 90-Minute Newsletter System
This is the pillar that holds my content, the one I can’t delegate to anyone or anything. I love writing my newsletter, so I do it every day, even if it’s one line (the lie I tell myself, and end up writing 800 words in one sitting).
I have a system that guards me and keeps me consistent.
The first rule: if I do not do anything in a day, I must write, either for a client or for myself. After writing my newsletter, I always feel good.
Here are the rules I live by for my 90-minute writing:
- After my 20-minute morning routine
- On my PC without WiFi
- Open Notepad alone
- Set a 90-minute time block (10-minute break in between)
- I write for two sections
- Then I take a walk
It’s not that hard to stick to it if you have a system like this in place.
If you’re worried about writer’s block, we’ll talk about that along the way. I do have a writing block, and I still have it for the first 2 minutes before I start writing.
Those first two minutes, I just stare at the blinking cursor, racking my brain to know where to start from, not because I don’t know what to write, but because I want the hook to be good enough for me to make it better in the editing zone.
Note: your first newsletter doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be good enough and clear to read.
I’m not the best writer, I make grammatical errors too, but that won’t stop me from writing again tomorrow.
I write 5 newsletters every week, not just for myself alone, but for clients.
My Newsletter Researcher
If you spend hours researching what to write about or paying someone to do that for you, you’re not even playing the game. Remember, we do not want to rely on manual work as a one-person business.
I automate 80% of my content process, and doing research is one of them. I don’t want to spend hours doing research I might end up not using, when I can pay less than $5 a month to have it in my CRM (Notion) with one click of a button.
Here’s how it works:
I use Notion for my content creation. All content is kept and organized on Notion. From my newsletter, LinkedIn posts, X posts, Substack notes, and many more live on Notion.
My Notion database is connected to Make, an automation app. I use Make to automate most of my content tasks and lots of other things.
I dump my idea in an idea block. When I change the status of a page to “Research”, the Make automation will take my idea, research it, and return that research content to the research block.
Every Sunday, I pick or write ideas I would like to talk about, then change the status to Research, and the app will conduct the research I need to help me gain a clearer sense of what I’m writing about.
I don’t have to spend time asking Google and going to multiple forums just to end up on YouTube after watching a video for an hour, with no use to what I want to write about.
My Content Repurposing (My Favorite Part)
If you still manually repurpose your content, well, at least you’re better than people who write content for each platform, or worse, those who generate random content from AI without their own idea.
The repurposing system is set up on Make. Whenever I change the status on a Notion page to “Check newsletter”, the Make automation will take my newsletter and check if there are any grammatical errors. If there is any, it will fix it and return a new version. It doesn’t rewrite or change anything in my newsletter, only fixes grammatical errors I missed.
Yes, you can call me lazy that way.
Here’s where the magic happens: after auto-correcting the newsletter, it will use the newsletter to write 3 LinkedIn posts, 15 X (Twitter) posts, and 10 Substack Notes.
All this is running even though I’m not in my Notion or asleep, because this is the new advantage we get to enjoy now, and you should use it while you can.
You can check my LinkedIn Page (Owol Destiny) to see how my posts are performing with the small number of followers that I have. It performs far better than any generic content you’ll get from AI without a good prompt and context.
All this content is sent back to each respective place, well organized on Notion, for me to use whenever I want.
My Content Scheduler
Good, but I don’t want to post the content myself every single time. I can post 5 posts manually on X (Twitter) every single day, but that’s not the best way to use one’s time. It might be a very busy day, and I’ll forget.
Some might say: Why not schedule it on X (Twitter) once every week or month? Yes, I did that. I quickly realized that I was spending close to 8 hours a month scheduling posts. Moreover, if I need to repeat it, I’ll set up a system for that. Remember, as a business owner with no team or a small team, you should avoid manual work if you can.
Here’s how the automation works:
I change the status on the page where the post is on Notion to “Accepted.” That post will be flagged, and Make will run, take the post, and send it to Typefully (the third app) to schedule. Typefully schedules my content for X and LinkedIn.
I know this sounds simple, and now it sounds like all I do is click buttons on Notion, while all my content is done for me. Don’t forget I still write my newsletter 90 minutes every day. I don’t use that much time anymore because I’m getting better at writing my thoughts down more quickly and systemizing my content process.
What I Manually Do (1 Hour Every Sunday)
- Cross-check LinkedIn posts
- Cross-check X (Twitter) posts
- Cross-check Substack notes
- Cross-check Newsletter
- Change post status to Accepted if the post is good to go
- Change 3 newsletter page status to Research
- Write 1-3 ideas I would like to talk about someday
The Exact Time Breakdown
What exact time does it take me to have my posts ready every week? That’s the question everyone mostly asks me.
- 90-60 minutes daily for newsletter writing (mine or client)
- 60 minutes on Sundays to check and accept posts and plan the weekly newsletter
- 60 minutes on Saturdays to design post/newsletter images
That’s all I do every week to have content to post every day, without burning out.
Only those who are ready for the next wave will succeed. The rest will fall behind, thinking, “Where did we get it wrong?” You don’t want to be among those.
But you don’t have to because I’m currently perfecting this system so that others can use it for themselves.
If you’d like to use such a system for your content, join the waitlist.
Talk soon, dont go anywhere,
- Owol
P.S. The first 10 people to join the waitlist will get it for a coffee price. You don’t want to miss this opportunity before it launches on February 2nd.
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