in the context of creating content preaching teaching podcast and leading your team etc do you have a process for creating that content you have a process and if so what does your process look like Adam great question let me answer it I'm gonna broaden it a little bit and just talk really about content creation because not everyone's gonna teach like I do in my role but most everyone will create content you're gonna write letters you're gonna cast a vision you're gonna inspire and instruct at meetings or so on so I'll do my best to hit
the high points first of all we need to understand that we're never just speaking we're always leading as leaders we're never just blah blah blah blah blah we're never just trying to communicate content we're trying to do is we're trying to lead people toward a direction toward an action toward a destination we're not just speaking we're leading there's three questions that we want to be able to answer before we communicate anything first of all what do I want the people to know what do I want them to feel what I want them to do but
I want them to know feel and do we want to start with the know we want to be able to clearly define what specifically we want to communicate for me when I'm communicating a weekend message I try to work hard to be able to capture the essence or the big truth the big idea in one sentence if I can't narrow it down to one sentence then it's not yet clear and me that one sentence everything should point to that big one sentence for the leadership podcast what I want to do is I want to I
want to define a narrow topic broad is difficult to communicate the more narrow you get the better and the more strategic the communication can be so what I want them to know second thing is what I want them to feel why is this so important facts don't move people to action emotions move people to action so we want them to feel something when they when we communicate with them then finally what do we want them to do what is the action that you hope your communication creates what do you want them to do if you
don't have a clear do you're not clear yet on your content creation remember the more things you want someone to do is less likely they are to do them if I gave you an assignment so here's the nine things I want you to do you chances are you're not gonna do any of them it's best to have one big clear ask if we ask for one thing we're more likely to get one thing than if we ask for five things were less likely to get one thing at all now creating content let me just tell
you it is exhausting it is exhausting it takes extraordinary concentration to create high-quality concise and clear content so here's them behind the scene thoughts you're gonna want to create the right environment and that means the right time of the day when you're most creative the right kind of tools you want to you want everything to be in an environment that moves you toward that creativity for me I'm gonna tell you my philosophy I like to work in about four hour windows if I only have two hours I don't have enough time to get immersed in
the content I can't do it for six hours that's too much so I like a four hour window I understand many of you will never get a four hour window but you don't have the volume of content to create that I do and say you're you don't want to find out your rhythms what's the right window time for me earlier is better I'm more creative early in the morning and so I want to create the right environment like literally it's down to I've got a couple of drinks that I like to have nearby I like
to have my snacks I listen to ambient music some music that has kind of a rhythm behind it but no words and it helps keep me focused people don't interrupt me during that time it's like literally I'm creating my little creative cave and you want to do your own version of that I'm gonna describe the process as simply as I can and I'm put it in six points first thing is this I want to research absorb and capture ideas yeah if I'm doing a leadership podcast I'm gonna spend a couple hours researching looking at different
teaching googling stuff reading books listen to podcast and jotting down notes if I'm gonna read an article literally I'll skim it and can I could probably read eight or ten articles in a five six minute period where I'm just capturing little ideas and putting them down they don't let's start organizing once I've got a lot of continum estar organ seeing what common ingredients we have and start trying to get it organized then what I'm going to do is start illustrating for interest once I have some kind of workable outline I'm gonna try to create interest
to keep people engaged it might be a funny story if I'm doing a weekend message or it might be kind of a tweetable quote that you're gonna want to write down while I'm teaching a leadership podcast the number four I'm going to edit down this is crucial less is more or less is more or less it's more we get emotionally attached to content that we discover and we like and I'm going to edit down edit down edit down edit down I bring in other people often to help me edit down I'll ask them what do
I like that you don't care about and oftentimes like I don't really care about this oh but I love that so much but I really try to listen to them because as communicators we often communicate too much too much losses people edit down edit down number five I let it sit the best communication I'm going to do is not something that I create in one sitting it's actually going to be something that often has several weeks of time to it and then number six I'm going to revisit it on a fresh day after I've slept
a couple of times what happens is my antennas are often up during those times and I find a couple of other ideas I come in and look at it on a fresh day and suddenly I have great clarity to click clarity to it that's what my process looks like for one podcast sometimes people say you know does this just come out of you naturally thank you for that compliment no it does not I work a long time on these I might spend three different four hour blocks literally creating a 20 minute teaching for the podcast
you have to work longer to teach high quality shorter and I'll spend a lot of time on it takes a lot of work to make content simple and easy to digest
