Create content 10x faster with notetaking

Hey everyone!

This is The Steal Club, a newsletter for creative entrepreneurs.

Usually, I don't send two emails in the same week, but this one was too good to pass up.

Today's email is a little bit different because...I didn't write it.

​Matt Giaro did.

He's an expert at helping content creators streamline their content creation workflow, so it felt like a great person to bring as a guest writer.

As a reader of this newsletter, you know I'm super focused on how to generate content ideas, since it's one of the biggest pain points for creators.

Taking notes is an essential part of my content creation process. I take notes from the content I consume so I can "steal" from it later.

In this email, Matt will teach us how to create a powerful note-taking workflow in just 15 minutes.

No more Alex for now. Let's dive into it!

Time to read: 4 minutes, 40 seconds

Today’s issue is a special one.

Because it will teach you a skill that will help you stand out from the crowd.

As a subscriber to The Steal Club Newsletter, you already got a ton of valuable information to start crushing it on Twitter. You have the strategy, the tactics, the frameworks, and the tools.

But everything you know won’t matter if your content sucks.

You could have the best frameworks, the most compelling hooks, and the sharpest copywriting techniques… if what you have to say is just average then you’ll never stand out.

Yet, most creators focus on the hacks and tricks without taking the time to think about the meat and essence of their content.

But when you study the greatest copywriters, you’ll be astonished at how much they focus on what they call “big ideas”.

David Ogilvy, Eugene Schwartz, Gary Halbert, and countless others.

They all were great at writing copy… But they’re even better at finding great ideas.

The world’s greatest marketers understood the importance of big ideas.

Today I’ll share with you a simple 3 step framework that will help you come up with your own unique insights and get noticed for your ideas in a fast and fun way.

Let’s get started.

## The secret to great ideas

If you want to create content that stands out, you’ll first have to understand how your brain comes up with ideas.

To simplify, Your ideas are a patchwork of what you’ve consumed in the past.

Our brain links information together.

What you’re consuming today is the raw material for what you will create tomorrow.

In other words, your inputs influence your outputs.

And if you’re creating content, you’re probably also consuming a lot. Yet, most of this consumption is wasted and gets forgotten.

Here’s why.

## Preventing your brain from flushing the toilet

Research over the past decades has shown that our brain has a limited storage capacity. In short, we’re bad at remembering things.

Especially the details.

This is why we don’t remember more than one or two big ideas from the books we’re reading.

To avoid forgetting, you need a way to store the great ideas you come across so that you can combine them together and find your big ideas.

Enter: notetaking.

Your notes are where you store your inputs and your raw material to come up with big ideas.

They are the starting point of your content creation.

You’re probably already using Notion or any other notetaking tool. But unless you have the right workflow, you’ll never be able to squeeze out the full potential of your notes.

Here are some common mistakes I see people make:

• They never revisit their notes
• They’re not able to find what they are searching for
• They don’t have a system that empowers thinking instead of simply retrieving.

This brings us to the next step.

## How to set up a rock-solid workflow in just 15 minutes

When you scroll around Youtube, you’ll see many people showcasing complicated workflows.

You don’t need any of that.

An effective notetaking system leverages 3 simple concepts:

• Isolate every idea into a single note
• Rewrite every idea in your own words
• Link your note to relevant ideas

Let me give you a concrete example.

Here’s a note that I took from the marketing classic “Positioning - the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing”.

(👆If you don’t see the image above, be sure to activate “display images” within your email provider.)

As you see, this note has been created with the three steps mentioned above

## How to come up with unique insights

So now comes the question: how can you turn this into an exciting insight?

You should know the answer: By combining ideas together.

This is why I recommend you use a notetaking tool with backlinks.

Why? Because backlinks mimic how our brain processes information.

There are plenty of them. I use Obsidian.

As an example, Obsidian has something called “graph view.”

It allows you to see the connections between your notes.

Here, I’m using a depth level of 2:

And here’s one idea I found in just a few seconds:

An interesting connection between “You can only position yourself against something” and “Sell people what they want.”

This sparked the following insight:

You should position yourself (or your product/service) against what people currently do by identifying what people want.

Here are some examples:

• People want to build apps without learning how to code.
• People want to sell online courses without learning copywriting.
• People want to get followers on Twitter without having to create daily and spend 3 hours interacting with others.

This tiny insight gives me an avalanche of ideas to create short or long-form content. I can even build complete products around this one simple idea.

In fact, I heard the great Kennedy saying that:

His magnetic marketing course has been selling for 20+ years and is all about one idea: Stop chasing clients. Start attracting them.

Today, many marketers use the same Dan Kennedy idea to sell their high-ticket coaching programs.

They’re not geniuses. They simply piggybacked on a great idea.

## Create great content 10x faster

A powerful notetaking system (like the one I just showed you) is content creation on steroids.

Not only does it store your best ideas, but it also helps you come up with unique insights to blow your audience’s mind.

​If you want to build a notetaking system like that, be sure to check out my 7-day FREE notetaking course by tapping this pretty link right here.​

Matt Giaro

And that's a wrap!

I'm trying to get more guest writers on board to share their expertise with us.

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See you next week!

Alex Llull Thief Master The Steal Club Share this newsletter | Say 👋 on Twitter | Sponsor this newsletter

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