This Issue
There's a question that sits underneath everything we've covered in this newsletter that nobody asks out loud: what do you actually say?
Showing up consistently matters. The system that makes it sustainable matters. But none of it works if you don't have a clear answer to what you're putting out every week and why anyone should care about it.
The answer isn't a content calendar. It isn't a list of trending topics. It's a formula that most people already have the ingredients for and don't realize it — and it's the same formula that took this newsletter from 350 subscribers over several months to 1,300 in four weeks.
In this issue:
Why most people don't know what to post and what actually fixes it
The three-part formula that makes content consistently worth reading
What happened when I changed my approach and why the numbers moved immediately
The Framework: Personal Story + Relevant POV + Timely Hook
Most content advice focuses on format — carousel versus text post, long form versus short, hooks and CTAs and optimal posting times. That's not where the problem is.
The problem is substance. Most people don't have a repeatable answer to what they're going to say this week, so they either wait for inspiration that doesn't come or they produce something generic that blends into everything else in the feed.
Neither builds an audience. Neither builds trust. Neither compounds.
The formula that actually works has three parts, and all three need to be present for a piece of content to earn sustained attention.
Personal story. This is your moat. AI can produce volume, aggregators can produce coverage, but no one can produce your specific experience — what you lived through, what you learned from it, what it cost you, what it gave you. The more specific and honest the story, the more weight it carries. A generic observation gets scrolled past. A story rooted in something you actually experienced stops the scroll because it's the only version of that story that exists.
Relevant POV. The story alone isn't enough — it needs a lens that makes it useful to the person reading it. Your point of view is what turns a personal anecdote into something with transferable value. It answers the implicit question every reader is asking: why does this matter to me? A strong POV is specific, arguable, and grounded in your own experience rather than borrowed from someone else's thinking.
Timely hook. The story and the POV earn the trust. The timely hook earns the attention. Anchoring your content to something happening in culture, in your industry, or in the news right now gives people a reason to engage with it today rather than saving it for later. The hook is what makes evergreen thinking feel urgent.
All three together is what makes content worth reading, worth sharing, and worth subscribing to. Remove any one of the three and something breaks down — the story without a POV feels like a diary entry, the POV without a story feels like a take, the hook without either feels like noise.
Field Notes
Before this newsletter existed, I was running a separate weekly newsletter called 10 Things — a curated roundup of the most interesting stories I was tracking across marketing, media, and culture each week, with my own context on each one.
I started it as a daily newsletter on Beehiiv. For a while it worked. Then life got busy, energy ran out, and 10 Things was the thing that fell off. But before I walked away from it entirely, I looked at the data. Of all the subscribers I'd earned, 45% had come from LinkedIn. So I relaunched it there as a weekly newsletter with a post explaining exactly what happened: "Writing a daily newsletter was so f*cking hard. Life got busy, energy ran out, and 10 Things was the thing that fell off. But the data told me something I couldn't ignore — 45% of the subscribers I earned came from LinkedIn. So I'm bringing it back here and publishing weekly."
900 of my LinkedIn followers subscribed the same day.
The post that drove the most traction in those first four weeks was "The AI Layoff Wave Is Here and Your Resume Won't Save You" — 15,296 impressions. Looking back at why it worked, all three parts of the formula were present without me consciously planning it that way.
The personal story was the foundation: I had been laid off from Block as part of a broader fintech wave, and I knew exactly what it felt like to have your employment status change overnight with no warning. That experience wasn't borrowed from a think piece — it was mine, and the specificity of it is what made people stop scrolling.
The POV was the layer that made it useful: Consistent Content is the career asset that survives a layoff because it moves with you through every job change, every restructure, every industry shift. That's an arguable claim grounded in something I lived through, not a generic observation about personal branding.
The timely hook made it urgent: AI-driven layoffs were happening across every industry in real time. The story wasn't just relevant — it was happening to people in my audience's feeds the same week they read the post.
Four weeks in, 10 Things is at 1,300 subscribers. The formula didn't just change what I was saying. It changed how sustainable saying it felt, because I stopped waiting for inspiration and started working a repeatable process that I already had the raw material for.
The Build
The formula is simple enough to run every week if you have a system behind it.
When you sit down to plan your content for the week, start with the personal story first. What happened to you recently that's worth sharing? What did you observe, learn, or experience that your audience hasn't lived the same way you did? That's your anchor.
Then find the POV. What does that story mean for the person reading it? What's the specific, arguable thing you believe because of what you lived through? That's your layer.
Then find the hook. What's happening right now — in the news, in your industry, in culture — that your story connects to? That's what makes it timely.
When you have all three, you have something worth publishing. When you have a system that prompts you to find all three every week, you have content that compounds rather than resets.
The Principle
Consistent content compounds when every piece is built on a story only you can tell, a POV only you can hold, and a hook that makes it matter right now.
The Archive
Recent issues: Issue 008: You Don't Need More Content, You Just Need a System
Tool library: Notionly
Full archive: Consistent Content
ICYMI
Tools I Use...
📧 Beehiiv: Where my newsletter lives — and my website, and more. Use this link to get a 14-day trial + 20% off for 3 months → Launch on Beehiiv
🎙 Granola: Takes notes in my meetings so I can stay present in the conversation. Get 1 month free → Start taking notes
📅 Buffer: How I schedule and plan content without letting it take over my day → Schedule your posts
💻 Gamma: Build presentations in less time with AI doing the heavy lifting → Try Gamma
💬 ManyChat: Turns post comments into real conversations automatically → Start here
🗣 Testimonial: Makes collecting social proof effortless without chasing clients. Get 15% off for 12 months → Gather your testimonials
🔈 Whispr Flow: I talk, it types. Game changer for first drafts → Try it now
🎬 Guideless: Turns screenshots and workflows into clean product videos without overcomplicating the process → Try Guideless
✉️ Kit: A strong option if you want email, automations, and paid products in one place → Check out Kit
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