Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Howdy rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Carter writes a daily newsletter that helps freelancers land high-paying clients.
He started it after watching talented freelancers stay stuck at $40 an hour.
His pitch is simple: you undercharge because nobody taught you how to price.
And his readers? They want exactly that — a clear path from $40 to $4K.
⛳️ Problem:
Carter opens a blank doc every morning and panics about today's send.
So he chases a fresh topic each day — pricing, pitching, scoping, follow-ups.
By Tuesday he's lost down three tangents and still hasn't pressed publish. Yikes.
Six weeks in, his streak has snapped twice, and readers can't name his angle.
His problem: how to fill a week of issues without hunting for a new topic.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ 5 questions for endless content
Picture a photographer with one beautiful tree.
A beginner shoots it once and moves on.
A pro walks around it — close up, wide, from below — and gets five great shots.
Turns out the same tree, from five angles, beats five different trees.
That's how Justin Welsh writes.
He runs The Saturday Essay, read by 200,000+ solo entrepreneurs each week.
His one-person business cleared $10M without a team.
His take: most solo creators burn out chasing a brand-new idea every morning.
The fix? Take one moment you already lived.
Then look at it from five angles, instead of hunting for five new topics.
Teach how you pulled it off.
Share what you noticed.
Push back on the advice everyone gives.
List what you'd do differently.
Explain why it worked.
One lived moment becomes five issues — and the newsletter finally has a shape.
And get this — Welsh runs it on himself constantly.
Say he raised his rate and the client said yes.
He teaches the move, questions why it worked, then argues the contrarian take.
Same moment, five angles, five issues — none of it invented.
🚗 The steps
🧠 Step 1 — Pick one idea you already lived this month.
Think of a chef cooking with what's already in the fridge.
No grocery run.
No new recipe.
Just the good stuff already on hand.
Carter does the same — he skips LinkedIn trends and picks a real moment.
He grabs the week he raised his rate from $60 to $150 an hour.
The client said yes without a flinch.
He types one sentence: I doubled my rate and the next client said yes.
🔄 Step 2 — Let AI draft an angle for each lens.
Imagine handing one photo to five editors.
Each one crops it differently — and hands you five fresh shots in a minute.
That's what AI does here. Carter feeds it his one idea and the five lenses, then curates.
Teach — the exact email script he used to raise his rate.
Observe — what he noticed about his own voice on the pricing call.
Contradict — why most freelancers should NOT lower their rate to win the deal.
List — five rate-raise signals he wishes he'd spotted six months earlier.
Why — why the client said yes, and what that taught him about $40/hr work.
📅 Step 3 — Stack the five issues across the week.
Picture a tray of cookies cut from one batch of dough.
Same dough, five shapes, one for each day of the week.
Carter slots his five angles onto the calendar, Monday through Friday.
Monday is the Teach issue.
Tuesday is the Observe one.
By Friday, readers have heard the same story from five sides.
And just like that — they finally know what the newsletter stands for.
The prompt below will run one idea through all five lenses using the steps above.
You just tell it the one thing that actually happened to you this month.
🧸 One real moment + five lenses = a week of issues nobody else can write.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt or just run as is, your AI sidekick will use the example values and will give output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
My one idea (a single real moment, decision, or lesson from my own work this month — not a trend, not a hot take, something I actually lived through):
{e.g. I raised my freelance rate from $60 to $150 an hour and the next client said yes without flinching}
My platform (where I publish — podcast, newsletter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Substack, etc.):
{e.g. daily newsletter distributed on LinkedIn, 200-word issues}
For Audience: {e.g. freelancers stuck at $40-60/hour gigs who want a clear path to $4K projects — they want honest moves, not hustle-bro pep talks}
For Outcome: {e.g. five issue briefs I can draft back-to-back this Sunday, one per lens, scheduled Monday through Friday}
Outputs:
1. The Teach lens — one issue brief that teaches a tactical how-to from the idea (title + 3-sentence summary + 1 personal example).
2. The Observe lens — one issue brief sharing a non-obvious observation I made during the moment (title + 3-sentence summary + 1 specific detail).
3. The Contradict lens — one issue brief stating a contrarian view most people in this audience get wrong (title + 3-sentence summary + 1 line of evidence from my life).
4. The List lens — one issue brief in list form (5 things I wish I'd known / 5 questions to ask / 5 mistakes to avoid).
5. The Why lens — one issue brief explaining the deeper reason the moment played out the way it did (title + 3-sentence summary + 1 takeaway for the reader).
Then pick the strongest of the five and write the full issue in my voice — opening hook, 3 beats, closing line.
One real moment from your own week.
One Sunday of planning instead of five.
One newsletter your readers can finally describe to a friend.
That's it, my fellow contrarians!
Yours 'making sure your AI sidekick handles the grind and you don't do boring stuff anymore' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️