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Hey rebel solopreneurs 🦸♀️🦸♂️
Most solopreneurs spend two hours on a Sunday trying to come up with post ideas.
They end up with three half-finished drafts and the same vague topics they wrote about last month.
The problem isn't discipline or creativity — it's that pulling ideas out of thin air is a terrible system.
There's a two-prompt fix that fills an entire content calendar in 10 minutes — and it starts by asking two questions most writers never think to ask.
⛳️ Here's the scenario
Meet Nina.
Seven years in corporate HR.
She quit to start a consulting practice helping small business owners hire the right people the first time.
Every Sunday, she'd sit down to write a week of LinkedIn posts.
Two hours later, she'd have three half-finished drafts and a mild headache.
Not because she didn't know her topic.
She knew HR cold.
She knew exactly which hiring mistakes cost businesses the most money.
But every time she opened a blank doc, the same thing happened.
She'd type something like "5 tips for hiring" and immediately feel like she'd already written that exact post three times before.
She hadn't.
She was just pulling ideas out of thin air.
That's a terrible system.
One Wednesday morning, she was at a coffee shop nursing an oat latte when the woman next to her glanced over at her screen.
"You look like you're trying to solve a math problem," the woman said, nodding at the blank doc.
Nina laughed.
Explained the situation.
The woman closed her laptop.
Turned out she'd spent 12 years teaching content strategy to professional writers at a journalism school. (Nina's oat latte almost ended up on the keyboard.)
The woman looked at Nina's screen.
"Show me the last post idea you tried to write," she said.
Nina typed it out.
"5 tips to avoid bad hires."
❌ What Nina had: "5 tips to avoid bad hires."
✅ What it became: "The exact question stressed-out founders forget to ask in every interview — and why it costs them three months of lost time when they hire the wrong person."
Same topic. Completely different level of specificity.
"How did you get there?" Nina asked.
"Nicolas Cole — he runs a writing course called Ship 30 for 30," the woman said. "He has a framework for this. I've been using it for years."
She leaned forward and explained two things, slowly.
💡 First — stop starting with a topic. Start with a person and a problem.
Most writers think of topics.
The best writers think of a specific person who has a specific problem — and write directly to that person.
There's a two-part question that makes this easy.
Who, exactly, am I writing for?
And what do they want to be able to do?
Once you know the person and the outcome, ideas become obvious.
You're not writing about "hiring." You're writing for a stressed-out founder who's been burned by two bad hires — so they can finally trust their gut and hire fast without regret.
💡 Second — pick an angle, and the idea writes itself.
Every topic can be approached four ways.
Actionable: here's how to do it.
Analytical: here's the data behind it.
Aspirational: someone went from A to B, and you can too.
Anthropological: here's why this problem exists in the first place.
Most writers only ever write actionable posts.
But their audience is hungry for all four.
The moment you have a person, a problem, and an angle — you don't have one idea.
You have four.
She pulled a receipt from her bag and slid it across the table.
"Two prompts. Run them in order. You'll never stare at a blank doc on a Sunday night again."
Here's what each prompt does:
▶️ Prompt 1 — Build your idea bank: Takes your audience and their goal, and fills four buckets with post ideas — one for each angle. You go from zero ideas to thirty in under five minutes.
▶️ Prompt 2 — Write the post: Takes the strongest idea from your bank and turns it into a complete, ready-to-publish LinkedIn post — headline, body, and closing line included.
Nina opened her AI sidekick and got to work.
🎯 Step 1: Build your idea bank
⏱️ 5 minutes
This is where you stop pulling ideas out of thin air.
You give your AI sidekick three things: your audience, their goal, and a topic you want to explore.
It comes back with a full bank of post ideas — sorted into four buckets, each covering a different angle.
An angle is just the way you approach a topic. "Here's how to do it" is one angle. "Here's why this problem exists" is another. Same topic, completely different post.
I want to make LinkedIn post ideas using the FOR WHO / SO THAT method
combined with 4 content angles.
Here are my inputs:
My audience: {e.g. first-time founders who've never hired before}
Their goal (SO THAT): {e.g. they can make their first hire without
wasting 3 months on the wrong person}
Topic I want to explore: {e.g. interview mistakes}
Make 4 post ideas for each of the following angles — written as a
specific post headline, not a vague topic:
Actionable (here's how): practical steps my audience can take right now
Analytical (here's the breakdown): data, patterns, or breakdowns that
explain the problem
Aspirational (yes, you can): a success story or mindset shift —
going from A to B
Anthropological (here's why): the root cause behind why this problem
exists in the first place
Each headline must be specific enough that one exact reader thinks
"this was written for me."
No vague titles.
Write like a human talking to another human.
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "5 ways to onboard a new employee."
✅ After: "The first thing most founders get wrong in week one — and why the new hire quietly starts looking for another job by day 30."
"Why 'let them figure it out' is the most expensive onboarding strategy a small team can run."
"I onboarded my first hire in 3 hours. Here's the exact checklist I still use 4 years later."
"The psychology behind why new hires go quiet in week two — and what it's telling you about your culture."
[Nina's AI sidekick filled in the remaining sections...]
She had sixteen post ideas in front of her.
All of them specific.
All of them actually interesting.
Not one felt like something she'd already written.
But ideas on a list don't help anyone.
She needed to turn the best one into something she could post today.
That's Step 2.
📝 Step 2: Write the post
⏱️ 5 minutes
Now you take the strongest idea from your bank and turn it into a complete LinkedIn post — opening line, body, and closing line.
Complete means ready to copy and paste. Nothing left to write. Nothing left to figure out.
Take this LinkedIn post idea and write a complete, ready-to-publish post.
Post idea: {paste the best headline from Step 1}
My audience: {e.g. first-time founders who've never hired before}
My tone: {e.g. direct, warm, no fluff}
Write a complete LinkedIn post that includes:
1. A one-line opening that makes the reader stop scrolling
— no "I" starts, no questions, no "here's how" openers
2. A body section (4-6 lines) that gives the core idea
in plain, concrete language
3. A closing line that gives the reader one clear next step
or a thought they'll carry with them
Rules:
- No bullet point lists in the body — write in sentences
- No corporate jargon
- Write like a human having a conversation, not a thought leader giving a speech
- Be specific — vague is useless
- Keep the whole post under 150 words
Here's what changed:
❌ Before: "The first thing most founders get wrong in week one.
New hires need support. Make sure you check in with them. Give them resources. Have a clear onboarding plan. Communication is key."
✅ After: "Most founders lose their best hires in week one — before they ever know it's happening.
The new hire shows up ready.
But nobody told them what a good first week actually looks like.
So they do what anyone does when they're unsure — they go quiet and wait.
By week three, they've decided the job isn't what they thought.
By week six, they're interviewing somewhere else.
The fix takes one conversation on day one."
Nina posted it that afternoon.
Four people she'd never heard of commented.
One of them asked if she did one-on-one consulting.
She did.
🏆 Nina's results
Before:
Two hours every Sunday to produce three half-finished drafts
Ideas so vague they felt like she'd already written them before
Posts that disappeared into silence with almost no engagement
After:
A full idea bank of 16 specific post ideas in under 5 minutes
A complete, ready-to-publish LinkedIn post in another 5 minutes
First consulting inquiry came in from a post she wrote using this system
Total time: 10 minutes. Not a wasted Sunday afternoon.
Her AI sidekick built the idea bank and shaped the post.
Nina chose the angle and hit publish. BAM.
Two prompts.
Ten minutes.
A full idea bank and a post ready to go — without pulling a single idea out of thin air.
That's it, my fellow outliers!
Yours 'finding high-potent AI shortcuts so you work less' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️