You don’t need 100 ideas. You need 3 core stories.

Author

Stephen Stanberry
August 27th, 2025

Hey friend!

I’m standing at my desk, with a cup of tea.

Staring at this monster spreadsheet with 147 content ideas. Each one color-coded. Each one ranked for "viral potential."

"How to scale without burning out." "Secret productivity hacks." "Why most marketing fails."

Three months of work. Six posts published. Zero clients.

The real problem wasn't that I needed more ideas.

It was thinking I needed 147 different things to say when what I actually needed was 3 core stories.

Those 147 ideas were just me avoiding the hard work of finding my real stories.

So I deleted the whole thing and asked myself one question: What are the 3 moments that completely changed how I think about business?

Took me four days to find them:

Story 1: The day I lost my biggest client because I tried to sound like everyone else Story 2: The coffee shop conversation that flipped my entire approach to selling
Story 3: The your fired in the middle of feeding my twins

Those became everything. Every email traces back to one of those 3 stories. Every post connects to one of those moments. Every sales call starts with sharing one of them.

You don't need 100 content ideas. You need 3 core stories that explain why you do what you do.

The moment I started building everything around those 3 stories instead of chasing new topics, everything changed. Real replies. Real conversations. Real clients.

The Action Step

Stop trying to think of new things to say.

Find your 3 core stories. The moments that completely changed how you see your work.

Every piece of content you create should connect back to one of those 3 moments.

That's your content strategy for the next year.

What are your 3 core stories? Those aren't just content. They're your competitive advantage.

Talk soon, Stephen

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