Yesterday, my husband and I had friends over for brunch. After a few hours of chatting together, the boys retired out to the backyard to talk about manly things (RC cars and bicycles, I assume?) while my friend and I stayed inside to talk about womanly things, like entrepreneurship.
She and I are both authors who are branching out from the traditional “write a book, sell a book” model of running our businesses. She’s building a membership community, while I’m creating Story Rebel.
Different businesses, same basic problems: defining audiences, creating sales funnels, nailing messaging, pricing what we’re worth, and…
Oof.
Staying consistent with our content.
Which, yeah.
Most entrepreneurs I know struggle with this. They’re wearing the hat of “marketer” along with every other hat, and content creation takes a lot of time! It’s easy to feel like you’re caught in a hamster wheel you can’t break free from—and it’s extremely easy to fall out of that wheel.
Sound familiar?
If so, you might have told yourself you need more discipline. But that’s probably not the case.
You’re an entrepreneur, so I’m guessing that you’re a goal-oriented person who normally gets things done. The problem is that there’s just SO MUCH to get done.
And creating content—newsletters, blog posts, social media—takes a ton of time.
Here’s the thing, though. It doesn’t have to be such a time suck.
How much time are you wasting on content?
Think back through the last few times you sat down to create content for your business. Where did you spend the most time? If you’re like most people I’ve talked to (and like me), your biggest time sinks are probably:
1) Trying to figure out what to say
2) Trying to say it perfectly
When you know what to say and you’re confident in how it’s coming out, the content flows.
When you’re spinning your wheels, second guessing your topic/audience/message, and then—once you’ve finally written it—spiraling around whether or not it’s perfect?
That takes forever.
I promise, it’s not that you’re “not a good writer.”
I’ve worked most of my career in content marketing. I’ve worn a marketer/strategy hat a few times, but mostly I’ve worked in the trenches as a content creator, creating pieces according to the strategy the marketing team at Amazon or Whitepages Pro or wherever was crafting.
I can knock out a blog post, no problem… when it’s for someone else. But I spun my own wheels until I finally did some soul searching and realized I was ignoring a glaring, basic lesson from my career as a content marketer.
So here’s the real reason you’re wasting time on content.
You’re treating content as one job, when it’s actually two.
Getting off the content hamster wheel
Most entrepreneurs are acting as content creators, stuck on a hamster wheel of creating individual content pieces and hoping against hope they connect with their audience.
But if you’re an entrepreneur, you need to be a content marketer.
There’s a thousand courses out there on how to go viral on TikTok, how to use AI to write your newsletters, and how to slay with LinkedIn posts.
And those are all great skills for content creators to have—as an entrepreneur, you’ll probably still have to be your own content creator for much of your business.
But fewer people are talking about how entrepreneurs can become content marketers. And if you can do that, I guarantee we can fix those time wasters we talked about above. (And then some.)
Let’s dig in a bit deeper.
Content creator —> Content marketer
What do I mean when I say there’s a difference between a content creator and a content marketer?
In most marketing departments, those are literally two different roles. You have someone with a birds-eye view developing strategy and deciding what needs to be created, and someone at the ground level creating the pieces.
Most solopreneurs I know know they need to be spending time on strategy but end up scrambling in the creator role, never able to catch their breath enough to strategize.
We can do better—and I can teach you how to put on your content marketer hat without adding too much more to your plate.
(Partly because once you start acting as a content marketer, you’ll wast a lot less time when you put on the content creator hat.)
So.
What’s the difference between the content creator mindset and the content marketer mindset?
Content Creator Mindset
- Focus is tactical, piece-by-piece: “What can I post today?”
- Measures success by likes, views, or going viral.
- Works in isolation: each blog, video, or reel is its own project.
- Consumed by output (“I need to post more, faster, better”).
- Often reactive—posting because they “should” or saw others do it.
- Content feels like a to-do list item rather than a strategic lever.
- Priority is creating more efficiently (faster writing, AI tools, batching).
Content Marketer Mindset
- Focus is strategic, big-picture: “Where does this fit in the customer journey?”
- Measures success by business outcomes: leads generated, conversions, sales.
- Works in systems: sees how each piece flows through the funnel (TOFU → MOFU → BOFU).
- Consumed by impact (“Is this moving people closer to becoming clients?”).
- Proactive—plans content to match launches, seasons, and customer needs.
- Content feels like an investment in growth, not just busywork.
- Priority is strategic alignment (clear messaging, storytelling, funnel fit).
In other words:
Content creators ask: “What can I make right now, and will it work?”
Content marketers ask: “How can I engineer a cohesive, compelling journey for my customers?”
Once you get in the habit of acting like a content marketer, the questions a content creator asks basically answer themselves. No more spinning your wheels trying to figure out what to make, or stressing about whether or not it will work.
Time to get practical
I promised you that picking up the role of content marketer in your business wasn’t actually going to add more work for you—because I know the last thing you need is another set of to-do list items piling on top of the mountain of unfinished tasks you already have.
Trust me.
We’re not adding new work to your plate, we’re adding a layer of strategy that will actually reduce wasted work. Making this mindset shift will be a total time saver and anxiety saver.
Because here’s the thing: If you have been on a hamster wheel of content creation that doesn’t feel like it’s moving you forward, it’s because it’s not. Hamster wheels are fixed in one place so the little guys can get exercise without leaving their cage.
If content creator are in hamster wheels, content marketers are in hamster balls.
You know, those clear plastic balls that allow hamsters to careen wildly around the room, taunting the pet cat and giving you panic attacks when they come hurtling into the kitchen?
(I think my metaphor has officially broken down.)
The point is, content creators are producing content that keeps them stuck in one place. Content marketers build systems that move them forward.
Content marketing cycle
Here’s what that looks like:
Step 1: Audience and Goals
Start by really understanding your audience and goals at both a macro level and a micro level.
In other words:
- What does your overall marketing funnel look like for your business?
- What does your audience need to know at each stage of their journey through that funnel?
- What launches are you planning, or business initiatives do you have coming up?
- If your business has cycles, where are you in those cycles?
⌛ Time saver: When you give yourself a solid foundation, it lets you set goals for an individual piece of content and make sure it’s aligned before you’ve wasted a bunch of time and energy creating it.
Step 2: Plan your content calendar
Use the understanding of your business goals and knowledge of your marketing funnel to plan your content calendar in broad strokes.
I’m not saying you need to decide in October what you’ll post next March—and, in fact, most of us shouldn’t. Instead, outline your quarter/year in broad strokes, then get more detailed week by week.
Think of your content calendar like a living document. It will guide you, but shouldn’t box you in. You’ll revise it as you go along.
⌛ Time saver: When you know what you’re going to write ahead of time, you don’t waste valuable writing time figuring it out.
Step 3: Create your content
Once you have goals and a plan, put on your content creator hat and execute on those content pieces in an efficient manner.
They should be easier to write because you have a plan and goals—and in a later email, I’m going to show you some tips and tools to help make content creation faster (and get around any perfectionist blocks).
⌛ Time saver: When you have a plan, you can more effectively direct “content creator you” to work more efficiently (and enjoy the process more).
Step 4: Publish and repurpose
Publish your content, and also repurpose it in a repeatable way. Maximize on the work your content creator self did! It’ll help you get off that hamster wheel!
Come up with a strategy for distributing and promoting each piece across multiple channels, and then repurpose it smartly to create multiple pieces that reach your audience in different ways.
Don’t be afraid to repeat yourself. Only a tiny fraction of your audience will follow you in every channel, or see everything you post.
⌛ Time saver: Get more reach with less effort when you strategically repurpose content.
Step 5: Learn and reflect
Track and assess how things went—both with real metrics that matter to your business and feedback from conversations with customers.
Then, use what you’ve learned to refine your plan.
⌛ Time saver: Spot trends and learn what’s working and what’s not more quickly, so you don’t keep creating content that doesn’t serve you.
Step 6: Rinse and repeat
You’ll notice that this cycle takes you from Strategy and Planning into Execution, then through Learning on the way back up to Strategy.
You’ll also notice that all but one of these steps falls into the realm of content marketer rather than content creator.
Which, yeah.
That makes it look like a ton more work than you’re already doing, right?
But it doesn’t have to be. Stick around, because as we get deeper into this content marketing series, I’m going to tell you how to put systems in place that make this cycle flow smoothly—even if you’re a one-person shop.
Besides, what if you could shave off 50% of the time you spend on content creation time by adding an hour or two of content marketing strategy time per week?
If you still aren’t sure, check out this tutorial on creating a content calendar. In it, we’re going to get you a quick win that will set you up for the rest of the year and save you a ton of time and stress in the next quarter.