08:22Maria Wendt · Listicle
How to Easily Create a Reel a Day (in 8 Minutes)
A business coach breaks her daily-Reel routine into four habits and three bonus tips — no editing software, just friction removal.
April 11th 2023The argument in one line.
Content ideas don't run out when they come from three renewable, deliberately-mined sources: your own comment section, unplugged thinking time, and total honesty about your real story.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You already post regularly but keep hitting 'I don't know what to say today' and want a repeatable sourcing system instead of waiting for inspiration.
- You run a personal brand or coaching business and could go deeper by sharing your actual story instead of generic tips.
- You want a realistic posting cadence to build toward daily content without burning out in two weeks.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for a done-for-you content calendar or an AI content generator — this is a mindset and habit system, not a tool.
- You post as a faceless brand account with no personal storyteller behind it — the 'don't censor yourself' method assumes a visible personal narrative.
The full version, fast.
Running out of things to post is a sourcing problem, not a creativity problem. The fix is three renewable inputs: mine the comments and questions under your own posts (or bigger accounts' posts if yours are still small), protect unplugged thinking time because consuming content and creating it compete for the same mental space, and stop hiding the risky parts of your real story — distinguishing that from 'good censoring,' which only exists to protect other people, not your own image. Layer in a stage-gated posting cadence (three times a week for a clean month before adding a fourth day) and a personal swipe file of formats that already worked, and volume stops being the bottleneck.
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00:00 – 00:33
01 · The claim: four posts a day, never short on ideas
Opens by stating she posts four times a day plus stories and genuinely wants to post more, setting up the three-part system that follows.
00:33 – 03:34
02 · Mine your comment section
Walks through a real post's comments line by line, showing how single comments about sharing the good and the bad, celebrating every win, and a specific dollar figure each spin into standalone content ideas — including studying bigger accounts in your niche if your own comments are thin.
03:34 – 07:32
03 · Schedule deliberate thinking time
Argues that consuming content and creating content draw from the same mental tank, so she deliberately limits input — no social feeds, unsubscribed from other coaches' emails — in favor of unplugged thinking time and direct conversations that feed original material.
07:32 – 13:40
04 · Never censor your real story
Distinguishes good censoring, which protects other people, from bad censoring, which only protects your own image, then illustrates with her own risky moments — a near-cancellation in 2020 and years spent hiding that she wasn't personally wealthy despite running a seven-figure business.
13:40 – 16:04
05 · Build the posting habit in stages
Closes with the practical mechanics: build from three posts a week to four, only add volume after a clean month without missing, and reuse a personal swipe file of past viral post formats — plugging a paid template product.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Every question or reaction under your own posts is a content prompt already validated by an interested audience.
- If your account is too small to generate comments, study the comment sections of bigger accounts in your niche instead.
- Consuming content and creating content draw on the same mental space, so heavy scrolling directly reduces original output.
- Unsubscribing from other people's content (even competitors' emails) protects the mental room needed to have original thoughts.
- There's a real difference between good censoring, which protects other people, and bad censoring, which just protects your own image.
- Publicly admitting a business mistake or a slow-growth stat builds more trust than a polished highlight reel.
- A near-cancellation over a tone-deaf post is treated as raw material, not something to scrub from the record.
- It took four years of running a nominally seven-figure business before there was any real cash saved.
- Posting volume should escalate in stages — three times a week for a full clean month before adding a fourth day.
- A personal swipe file of your own past viral post formats is reusable structure, not a replacement for having something real to say.
- The more content you create, the more ideas you generate for future content — output compounds instead of depleting.
Content ideas come from comments, thinking time, and honesty.
IDEA SUPPLY
Running out of things to say is usually a sourcing problem, not a creativity problem — comments, deliberate thinking, and an uncensored personal story are renewable inputs.
- Every question or reaction under your own posts is a content prompt already validated by an interested audience — mine your comment section before inventing new topics.
- If your account is too small to get comments yet, study the comment sections of established creators in your niche for the same raw material.
- Consuming content and creating content compete for the same mental space, so scheduled unplugged thinking time produces more original material than more scrolling does.
- There's a difference between good censoring, which protects other people from real harm, and bad censoring, which just protects you from being judged — only the second one is starving your content.
- Openly sharing setbacks like money mistakes or slow growth builds more trust than a polished highlight reel, because it matches how you actually behave off-camera.
- A sustainable posting cadence is built in stages — three times a week for a clean month, then four — not jumped into at full volume.
- A swipe file built from your own past viral posts is reusable structure, not a replacement for having something real to say.
Terms worth knowing.
- Liquid millionaire
- Someone whose net worth includes cash actually saved and accessible, not just business revenue or paper valuation — distinct from running a nominally seven-figure business with little to nothing set aside.
- Good censoring
- Restraint used to avoid unnecessarily hurting other people or exposing someone else's private business, as opposed to withholding your own story out of fear of judgment.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
04:21
“When you're consuming content, you can't create content.”
10:24
“That's my fourth year of running a seven-figure business. It took me four years to get to that point, and that's kind of embarrassing.”
13:37
“The more you create content, the more ideas you have for creating content.”
15:40
“Post three times a week for four weeks in a row. If you don't miss, you get to graduate to doing four times a week.”
Word for word.
Read-along
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metaphor
I obviously post a lot to Instagram four times a day plus stories, and I literally never run out of ideas.
In fact, I love recording and doing all of this so much. I have more content ideas than I know what to do with.
I literally would love to be posting five times a day, six times a day, seven times a day. If InstaBollywood can post a 100 times a day on their Instagram account, four times a day is nothing, and I have so many ideas, but I wanna share with you what I do because I get asked this all the time, like how how do you do that?
How are you posting so much? So I wanna share with you, um, a couple of different things that I do, and the first is I always get inspiration from the questions and comments I get.
And I wanna show you specifically what this looks like. So this is one that I just posted a couple hours ago, and I wanted to show you some of the comments. Below, because if you are doing this right, you will it's not just questions, because you might be like, well I don't get asked questions.
And you can do this, by the way, if you aren't getting any comments at all on your Instagram stuff, you can do this to up, like, go and look at other people's accounts and see what comments and questions they're getting in your industry. So this is me just sharing, like, the ripple effect of sharing our story and how someone used my story to inspire someone else who was discouraged.
So it wasn't even me sharing my story. It was them sharing my story to feel encouraged. And then I love this comment here.
He said, I really love the fact that you're sharing both the good this one, let me just get my mouse, this one here. I really love the fact that you're sharing both the good and the bad of running a business, growing, and just being yourself. Right there, that's three content ideas.
That's sharing the good and the bad. I can make a post talking about some of the worst things that ever happened to me as a business owner. I could talk about my highlights, like some of the best things that ever had happened to me as a business owner.
And then you can also talk about growing. I can make a whole bunch of content on growing and what it's been like for me to grow. And then finally, I can make a whole bunch of content on just being yourself and being authentic and how that's worked so well for me.
And so another one was like, every win should be celebrated.
I can make a whole bunch of content sharing my students' wins that are smaller. I I think smaller wins are sometimes more relatable, so I can make a whole bunch of content on that. And then people need to be more grateful.
I can make a whole bunch of content on gratitude. And so I'm always looking. You can see how my brain is working here.
I'm always looking for more ideas from the comment section of my stuff, and it's not just them asking specific questions. Um, um, Another one here, like, but $300 in one week, I'd love to have made that. I can make it I can easily help people make $300 in a week.
That's easy. That's so easy. I'm used to people, my students making $300 every single day.
So for me to make a piece of content on $300 a week, easy peasy lemon squeezy. So if you are training your brain to look sorry, I'm just gonna turn this off because this is too much. If you're training your brain to look for ideas, you will find them everywhere you go, not just in, like, specific questions, but in actual comments that are just adding to the conversation.
And if you are, you know, maybe a smaller Instagram account, you don't have to be comments that are made on yours. Go find the leaders in your industry and see who people are commenting on their stuff.
There's tons of bits and pieces that you can pull out and make a lot more conversation with. And that's how I'm able to post so much.
The other thing that I do is I think about our industry a lot. I think about it, and I think about what people get wrong, and I think about where people get stuck, and I think about where people allow themselves to play small, and I think about, um, conversations I've had with colleagues, or I think about people that used to be my heroes that then I met in person and they were like complete shitheads.
I just think about our industry a lot. I'm a student of our industry. I'm a master in my industry, but I'm also a student of our industry.
And so I'm constantly thinking about my industry. And when I say thinking, it's like walking the beach with no headphones, no conversation, just thought.
Literally thinking. I think it's so hard to think in our culture and our society, where we are overstimulated or constantly consuming content.
But when you're consuming content, can't create content. And so I consume very little content, but I like to spend my free time, the rare moments I have where I'm not with my kid, and she's with her dad, and I'm able to just think and have a thought to myself, I think about our industry, and I really think about it.
Like, what could be better? What aren't people talking about? Um, what are people afraid to be vulnerable about?
What are the taboo subjects? Where are people that are my colleagues not going the distance?
Where could they be better in integrity? I just think about all this stuff all the time, and I'm constantly in my own head about it. And it is gives me like a never ending stream of conversation that I can then turn and put into selfies or whatever.
So when you're thinking and when you're not consuming, you could actually create. How many times are you scrolling TikTok, and scrolling Instagram, and consuming?
I like to think of it like there's a a tank, and .
There's no room for me to have my own original thoughts. So I'm very careful not to fill my content tank up with anything but my own thoughts, which I think can sound egotistical if you aren't taking it in the spirit with which it's intended. We have so much to learn.
We have so much to learn, but I'm not really learning from my Instagram feed. I'm learning from books.
I'm learning from conversations with people. Like, just had a coffee the other day with a guy that was one of the very high up executives of Disney. Best believe I'm learning a lot from him.
That's a good conversation to be having. So when I say I'm not consuming and I'm not learning, it's not from a place of ego. It's not from a place of arrogance.
It's from a place of, this is a bad use of my time. I there's so many other ways I can learn, and I need to be learning, and I need to be thinking, and I need to be clearing my mind and removing it of clutter so that it can be filled up with the conversations and the thoughts I wanna actually be having and I wanna actually be sharing.
So learning that I need to be very intentional about what I'm consuming and so that I can have the mental space to think, that's where a lot of my ideas come from, my own head, because I'm thinking.
And that's why my content feels very different from everybody else's because there's only one Maria Wentz head. There's only one gray matter here that's unique to me, there's only one that's unique to you.
And so be mindful. Like, I unsubscribed this was years ago, but I unsubscribed from every business coach's email list.
I'm, like, off of everybody for the most part. And instead, what I do is I get the idea for an experiment that I wanna run, and I test it out.
I go test a bunch of marketing campaigns, track everything meticulously, and then I share the data with you guys.
I I go and I do some cool shit, and then I report back on it, and that's what works really well. So that's the other way. That's the second reason I have never ending content ideas.
I wish you guys could see my iPhone notes. It's ridiculous. And then the third thing that helps so much is I do not censor myself at all.
I've said a lot of dumb shit online, and almost gotten canceled a couple of times. One was really bad.
It was in June 2020, right, when all the, like, everybody was getting canceled, and I just didn't know any better. I'm trying to be an ally and saying all the wrong things, and that was a great learning experience for me. And so there's I think there's a difference between being a moron online, which I've learned from because I have been stupid online before, and then, like, sharing about yourself.
I never censor myself. I never censor, um, not my truth because I think that's kinda silly, but, like, my story.
The reality of what has happened to me, the reality of my experiences, all the painful learning like like, even just now, me sharing that story about how I got canceled for something stupid, that's me not censoring myself. That's me being honest with you.
That's me being transparent with you. That's me sharing and saying, hey.
Like, I've made a ton of mistakes as a business owner. I have learned some very painful, very embarrassing lessons. And there's you censor yourself so you don't hurt other people and so you become a better person.
That's good censoring. And then you learn and you do better and you learn what might be offensive to other people, and I never wanna offend anyone. That is like the I never wanna offend anyone.
I just hate the idea of that even I hate the idea of even one person having their feelings hurt over my content. Like, I I hate that so much. That's different than what I'm talking about.
I wanna make sure it's I'm being very clear with the difference here. Good censoring is where we literally become better humans so we can get along with everybody on the Internet.
That's a good thing in my opinion. That's fine. Like, let's have manners.
And then there's censoring yourself because you're afraid to share your story, where you are holding yourself back from being vulnerable and being transparent and being authentic because you are worried about what people are gonna think about you.
So for me, I've . I've shared a lot of the painful stuff I've gone through as a person. Just, I mean, you know if you follow me, you know the stuff I talk about, and you know some of the more painful things I've gone through as a human being, and it's been very hard to share.
It's been kind of embarrassing. Like, one of the big things that was so embarrassing for me for years that you guys probably know about is I was so embarrassed that I was I had been running a 7 figure business for, like, three or four years, and I wasn't a millionaire yet because I spent the money so foolishly.
I had nothing saved between taxes and the stupid shit I spent every month. I had nothing really saved, and it wasn't until last year that I hit millionaire status.
Right? I now have, like I'm an actual cash million. Called a liquid millionaire.
I'm a liquid millionaire now. But that's my fourth year of running a 7 figure business. It took me four years to get to that point, and that's kind of embarrassing.
It points to me not being good with money. It also points to me having some money mindset issues I had to learn how to work through. I was comfortable being, like, broke, not because that's basically what you are.
Right? When you don't have anything saved, you're you're I was kinda broke. I was making some figures, and I was kinda broke, and that's embarrassing.
But I never censored that. I've never censored myself ever. And all of that to say, when you don't censor yourself, there's lots of things you can talk about because you're always going through new experiences.
There was a very interesting experience that happened to me recently that I I'm gonna share. I'm like, I'm working through how to process it the right way.
And that's a that's an that's another big difference, by the way. It's like, don't have to share right away. So there's something that happened to me that I'm excited to share.
I'll probably put it on Instagram first. But I haven't yet figured out how I'm gonna tell the story in a way that's respectful to everyone. And so I think that when we don't take that time to process wisely, we can end up or other people's dirty laundry really quickly, and I've definitely done that too.
And I've learned to take my time to process. I'm gonna tell this story. This is something that happened to me.
It's very interesting. It's fascinating, but I have to think through everyone who's involved in this story and how I'm gonna tell it.
And that's part of, like, it goes back to step two, is sometimes when I do my thinking time, I'm literally thinking through the ramifications and the repercussions of telling this specific story and, like, thinking through all the players and how am I gonna, like, tell it in a way that's not gonna backfire on me or embarrass a friend or whatever.
Right? And so it's okay.
I just wanna make sure we're all really clear here so we don't start, like, airing your dirty laundry. Never censoring yourself doesn't mean running your mouth all the time. It means opening that inner layer of privacy that we might not naturally ever share publicly and allowing people to step into that.
But you can be mindful and classy and graceful in how you do that. I like to think that I am. I don't think I got it right a 100% of the time, but I've got it right a lot.
And it's because I I very intentionally if you think about it like circles, I bring you into my inner circle, and I let you have it all, really.
There's very few things you guys don't know about me. You know, I was homeschooled, you know, I'm one of nine kids, you know, kinda what I've shared before, I'm not gonna share here, but I've shared before kinda what happened, um, with my kid's dad.
Um, I've shared it all very transparently, very I like to think very gracefully. I like to think very tactfully.
Probably didn't always get it right, but, um, when you don't sense it yourself, not only does it give you content ideas, is great, but it also builds a lot of trust. And I never have to worry about someone saying, oh, she was so different in person, or she's so weird, like, she's so, like, different than she is online.
Because you guys know me like a friend.
And because I've been really honest and I've been really transparent, you trust me like a friend. So I think that the more you create content, the more ideas you have for creating content.
And then the other, like, pro tip I will tell you is that because I post four times a day. Right?
So you have to get some kind of system going. And up until, like, literally last month, I was doing it all myself. I got 400,000 followers all by myself.
No assistant, no team. It was literally just Maria went making and scheduling every post up until literally last month.
So I'm at, like, 400,000 something followers. The first 400,000 followers all from scratch, all by myself.
So I got really good at making systems. And one of the things I did was I created these templates based on content that had gone viral.
So I got, like, my 55 like, these post these style posts always go viral. So 55 of them, or it's like, anytime I do variations of these posts, they go viral.
And then I just, like, copy and paste and fill in the blanks. So if you want, I can link to those down below. Those are super helpful for me.
And what it's gonna do is it's gonna allow you to post more, and the more you post, the more you're going to give people commenting. Right?
Especially if they're using my templates and you're going viral, then you're gonna get a bunch of comments, which is always so motivating and so encouraging. But you're also gonna like get into a rhythm, and you're like, oh, you know what? This thing that I just said made me think of this, so I'm gonna say this.
And so what I found is that the more I post, the more I want to post, and the more ideas I have to post. I would say start by posting three times a week and never miss it. So post, like, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, never miss.
Then add in a Thursday, never miss. Don't try to go, like, zero to a 100. Start oh, first of all, get yourself some systems.
Get yourself organized. Get yourself the templates if you wanna grab them. It's up to you.
It's totally fine, but get yourself organized, and then pick a content schedule that you can slowly build up to.
People get so motivated and so excited, like, I'm gonna post two times a day, and they do that for two weeks, and then they burn out. It's much better to start with three times a week, which is less than you'd like to be doing, and then work get you know, kinda like leave yourself a little bit of excitement.
Post three times a week for four weeks in a row. If you don't miss, you get to graduate to doing four times a week. Don't miss.
You get to graduate. Do it very slowly, and your reward for posting consistently is to get to post more. So I've learned a lot.
I just published a video, um, the other day on seven big lessons I learned getting 400,000 followers. If you wanna go check that out, I highly recommend it.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The claim is bold: four posts a day, plus stories, without ever scraping for an idea. What follows isn't a hack — it's a sourcing system built on three renewable inputs anyone can copy: the comment section under your own content, deliberate unplugged thinking time, and a refusal to hide the parts of your story that feel risky to share.
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:33list
Three renewable sources of content ideas
- Mine your own comment section for questions and reactions
- Schedule deliberate, input-free thinking time
- Never censor your real story (distinct from protecting other people)
The organizing structure behind never running out of things to post — three inputs that regenerate on their own instead of requiring fresh inspiration.
Steal forany personal-brand content calendar that's running dry
08:31concept
Good censoring vs. bad censoring
Good censoring holds back details that would needlessly hurt someone else; bad censoring hides your own story out of fear of judgment. Only the second one limits your content supply.
Steal fordeciding what's safe to share vs. what you're just scared to share
15:40list
Posting cadence ladder
- 3x/week for 4 straight weeks, no misses
- 4x/week once the first month is clean
- Keep adding only after another clean stretch
A stage-gated way to build up to daily posting without burning out in the first two weeks.
Steal forany creator trying to go from sporadic to consistent posting
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
14:14link
“if you want, I can link to those down below”
low-pressure mid-outro mention of a paid template product, framed as optional rather than a hard pitch, placed right after establishing credibility with the 400k-followers-solo story
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
Visual structure at a glance.
