"What the hell am I supposed to write for marketing content?"

For many creative makers, creating and putting out content is one of the most common roadblocks on the Year of Hustle Roadmap. And it comes early, in week two!

If you don't want to get stuck in week two of our calendar-of-hustle, use this free set of lessons to help you create marketing content that converts!

Accelerate your progress along the Year of Hustle Roadmap by learning how and why good marketing actually helps create to sales, and how YOU can create marketing content that actually converts even if you don't consider yourself a writer.

Before now, these lessons have only been available as part of our premium class 30x500 Academy. But we're including them for free as part this Year of Hustle series!

1: How to do marketing that actually leads to sales

The word "marketing" conjures different ideas for different people - you might even have an idea of what "marketing" is coming into this class.

But have you ever stopped to think about how effective marketing actually works?

It's easy to resist learning how effective marketing actually works when so many of the guides and tips are as vague as "advertise on Google and Facebook!" or "try content marketing!" Useless, right?

Not only do those kinds of recommendations lack the specific detail you need to take action, there's no way of knowing if your time, effort, or money will work... until it's too late and they're already spent.

In 30x500, we're all about using processes and removing the guesswork. You need need concrete, specific, repeatably follow-able steps. Otherwise you're just stabbing in the dark.

You need to know the individual, specific steps that a potential customer takes that leads them to discover you, to believe you have something they need and want, and eventually make a purchase?

To understand those steps, you first need to understand how marketing from a customers' point of view. Click play on this video to learn how that looks.

2: Getting over writers block (5 min. exercise)

Writers block. "Blank Canvas Syndrome." Whatever you call it, it seems like half of the battle of creating marketing content is figuring out what to write about.

But don't let that psych you out. Instead, try out this quick 5 minute exercise to see if you can get over it. Don't worry, you're not being graded here - give it your best shot and see how you do.

Set aside 5 minutes to complete this timed exercise. Click play when you're ready!'

3: Learn our Ebomb Recipe that works EVERY time

But are you supposed to do about that wave of panic that comes over you every time you sit down to create an ebomb? "What the heck should I write? Will anybody care? Is this going to be a waste of my time?"

Lucky for you, there's a recipe - a step by step and SPECIFIC process - that you can follow to create infinite ebombs that produce results.

Play the video below to learn that recipe through studying examples of ebombs in the wild. It's so forehead-slappingly simple, and literally anybody can make it work, even if you have no audience and don't consider yourself a good writer. Really!

Ready to try using this recipe yourself? We've got another exercise ready for you!

4: One Thread. A Zillion Ebombs. (10 min. exercise)

The idea of having to create marketing content on-demand can feel completely paralyzing...but it doesn't have to be.

You've already learned that you don't ever need to pull Ebomb topics out of thin air. You know there's a recipe you can follow to create SUPER effective Ebombs that people will read, and love, and even share.

All you have to do is a little Sales Safari (that's our step-by-step process at the heart of 30x500 Academy - for systematically finding pain in your audience).

Just remember that the more specific you can be, the better.

Here's your chance to practice! Once again, we've pre-selected a thread for you.

5: Evaluate: How strong are your topics?

The toughest part about learning new skills is that feeling of "I'm not even sure if I did it right." The good news is, you don't need to wonder...OR get it perfectly right. You just need to practice and work to improve.

Use the document below to compare your work to former 30x500 students & and us (your expert teachers)!

Take your time to study the examples and questions closely - it will help you know where you can focus your efforts to improve! Remember, the goal here is to check yourself by asking: " How did I do? Did I follow all of the steps in the process? What can I improve?"

6: Action Challenge! Create your first Ebomb.

You're going to ship your first Ebomb.

You're going to become an Ebomb-producing machine. You'll overcome the mental roadblock of only being able to write when you're "inspired" or feeling creative, or the feeling that stop you from sharing because "that's too obvious to write" or "a million people have already written about that topic."

But you've gotta ship your first, and this Action Challenge shows you how simple it can really be.

It comes in 3 steps, which you should complete one at a time.

1. Collect Audience Questions
2. Ebombs on Easy Mode
3. Ship an Ebomb!

Part 1 - Collect audience questions (approx. 1 hour)

Remember, a question is a great first indicator of pain in your audience, and best of all, questions are easy to spot once you start doing Sales Safari.

Start by picking one or two of your audience's watering holes – note: if you're not sure how to find and select quality watering holes, we cover this in depth in class!

Then, set aside 1 hour of uninterrupted time to browse those watering holes with the explicit mission to find questions that indicate your audience is struggling, confused, or in some other kind of pain.

DON'T worry right now about if the question's been answered or not - just focus on collecting and noting the questions that members of your audience is asking, in their own words.

DON'T limit yourself to questions that you have the knowledge to answer...you're just collecting questions right now.

Save these questions and the related links into your Sales Safari notes. Shoot to gather at least 10 questions in the hour - if you can find more, even better!

Part 2 - Ebombs on Easy Mode (approx. 1 hour)

You won't have to spend very much time on Safari to start uncovering some of your audience's pains.

Does that mean you have enough data to know what product to build? Of course not. But you DO have enough data to start dropping Ebombs, and building a connection to your audience.

Remember that Ebombs are really just tiny fixes; each Ebomb is the antidote to a tiny, specific pain your audience has.

Which means you can easily create Ebombs simply by answering questions! There's no "spark of genius" or "creative zone" necessary when you're setting out to help people.

You've already done the background work of gathering questions. Now you can turn each one into an Ebomb.

1. Pick 2 questions from the list of found questions.

   To save time, choose questions that you can answer without much additional research - look for the kind of questions that you'd respond to in an email or a comment thread based on your own experiences and what you already know.

2. Answer each question. Just their question, not all of the possible permutations of the question you can imagine.

   This might be the hardest temptation to resist, as your brain sneaks in and starts trying to pull you off track: "what about when..." and "here's another thing to consider..."

STAY FOCUSED on the question they asked, given the information they provided. Single, specific pain. Single, specific fix. Resist overcomplicating and overthinking. If there are multiple possible scenarios, choose only one to answer and note the other scenarios for future Ebombs.

Still feeling a lot of pressure?

Don't worry about writing to "everyone", just write to the person who asked the question (you can even reference them directly. Think of it like an email; your answer doesn't need to be more than a paragraph or two. That should take a lot of the pressure off!

Part 3 - Ship an Ebomb! (Approx. 10 mins)

Once you've written two Ebombs, it's time to ship one. Really, truly ship one!

1. Take one of the Ebombs you wrote and publish it to your blog.
2. There is no step 2!

Well, there are more steps in the Year of Hustle Roadmap, but that's the last part of THIS practice exercise. The more you do it, every new post will be better, so don't stop here!

And once you hit publish - which might be scary but you should do anyway - email us a link to your first Ebomb in whatever format you're most comfortable publishing: blog post, youtube video, podcast episode, etc. We'll respond with a high five!