Do the Work

Better Content, Better Management, and Why Specificity Changes Everything

• Reuben & Terri Driedger • Episode 22

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0:00 | 23:40

In this episode of Do The Work, we’re breaking down two skills that can dramatically change the trajectory of your business: creating better content and becoming a more effective leader.

We start by diving into the 1% rule of content creation..why your content does not need to be perfect to work, but why small improvements over time can completely change your growth. We break down practical ways to improve your hooks, visuals, audio quality, storytelling, and creativity without becoming overwhelmed or stuck chasing perfection. 

We also talk about one of the biggest content hacks most creators ignore: turning real conversations with clients and prospects into content ideas that actually resonate. 

Then Terri shifts into a powerful conversation around management and leadership  especially for business owners hiring their first VA, setter, co-coach, or admin support. We unpack why vague communication creates frustration on both sides and how specificity changes everything when leading a team. 

If you’ve ever felt like people on your team “should just know what you mean,” this episode is probably for you. 😅

We finish with rapid-fire Q&A around mini ads, how quickly followers can turn into clients, and whether mini ads can still work for newer coaches or higher-level businesses scaling past six figures.

Free Resource
Want our free mini ad training + content hook ideas?
DM us on Instagram with “MINI ADS” and we’ll send them over.

About Us
Coaches Creating Impact helps health professionals scale to $10K–$20K+ months using proven systems for content, lead generation, and sales.

Connect with Us
Reuben IG: https://www.instagram.com/reubendriedger/
Terri IG: https://www.instagram.com/terridriedger/

SPEAKER_00

We're a do the work podcast where help girls learn to stop winging it and start scaling.

SPEAKER_01

Where your host, Ruben, and Terry, he's the ideas guy, he's the system bring. And together we help you get clients, grow your audience, and actually run a business at work.

SPEAKER_00

Expect real talk, tactical strategy, and the kind of perspective you can only get when you're building two things at once a company and a mayor. Let's jump in. Welcome, welcome, welcome, everyone. Hello. Welcome to another week of incredible strategy from Terry and Ruben Drieger. Yeesh. How are you doing today, Terry?

SPEAKER_01

I got my period.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That sucks. I'm sorry. But I still found it out a 1600 meter swim this morning, and I'm very proud of my time.

SPEAKER_00

I ran a little bit. That's good. It was an easier day. Guys, I have a race coming up on Sunday.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. 50 kilometers. I'm so pumped to cheer you on. It's gonna be awesome. My parents are coming along, so we're gonna be a whole fear crew. Yeah. I'm uh I told you. Are you prepared? Yes. Do you have a list of what you're bringing along? Yes, you told me. So here's my fear. One of our friends, they uh went to an altar. He was running, okay? And when he started, he realized that he didn't have nearly anything he needed at the halfway mark when he was gonna see his wife. So she frantically is like driving around, running around, trying to get everything he needs for the halfway mark. And this is like my worst nightmare. So I'm I keep telling Ruben, you need a list of everything you need, and you need to have it all together so that I I can support you at the aid station.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I do got the list together. Do you have the shit together? Well, that's what we're gonna do Friday morning.

SPEAKER_01

We?

SPEAKER_00

Me. I'm gonna do Friday morning. I told Terry that when I finish the ultra marathon in the mountains right after the race, she to take me a piece of content of me lying there all disheveled and uh bloody and everything. And I'll be talking about how life is hard sometimes, but if you want to be like great at anything, you have to push yourself, da da da. So there might be great. There might be an Instagram reel coming soon where I look really bad. So stay tuned.

SPEAKER_01

Stay tuned.

SPEAKER_00

So stay tuned. Anyways, we got um a really fun podcast today. Terry and I were talking about what we're gonna be diving into today, just before the podcast here. So I'm gonna be talking about some content stuff that I've been I've been noticing recently. And Terry wants to talk a little bit about management. Why are we talking about management, Terry?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, because you told me I had to come up with something, and it's been something I dealt with in the last 24 hours, I think probably three times.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So also because good management versus bad management, what's the difference in business?

SPEAKER_01

What what is the difference between uh having a business and not exactly?

SPEAKER_00

That's why it's important. That's why we talk about it.

SPEAKER_01

Let's be real, there are bad managers who have built incredible businesses. It just sucks to be in them.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So, anyways, we're gonna be talking about that because there are some of you that are listening to this who are starting to hire your first VA or co-coach or even a setter, and um good management is gonna get a lot more out of people and make your life a lot easier. So it's gonna be important to talk about that. So let's dive in. Let's talk about content first. So I've been like experimenting with a bunch of content recently, and uh I thought that I would just come on here and talk a little bit about how I think about content when I want to improve things. Because one of the things with content is like the truth is you can always be improving things, and sometimes it can feel overwhelming because there is so many things you could improve. You could get a better camera, you could have better mics, you could um get someone to edit edit them, you could spend more time prepping, all these different things, and it's it's really overwhelming. And so I want to first start before I go into some of the specifics of what I've been trying and what I've been working on, is to just talk about like, hey, your content right now is already good enough to post. Like a lot of people can get clients with what I call 75 to 80 percent good content. Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_00

Um, so many people wait like want to wait till their content's perfect, and that just never happens. And so, number one, this is not me saying, like, get your content perfect. This is me saying when you're thinking about content, think about just small things that you can keep doing a little bit better. And so I want to walk you through what I am thinking through when I create content, and when I'm thinking about what can I make it basically uh evolve so that it can keep on getting a little bit better. So, one of the things that I've been doing recently is just doing a much better job of the hook. Okay, so the hook is something that I mean everyone, all of you know, but the hook comes in multiple forms. We have kind of three main things you can think about with the hook. You have the visual hook of like the on the video, let's say the reel that you're crafting or the carousel. What's the first thing that people see? So we have the visual hook that's gonna get people to stop. Then you also have what's the text on the screen hook. We talk about this a lot when we talk about mini ads, but in every single reel or every single carousel, what's the text on the screen that's gonna cause someone to stop and actually take note of something? And then we have the audio hook. The audio hook could be the words that you say, the music that's playing, or even sound effects, right? Like the other day I did something where like I kind of like slammed a book down in the first second and it got more views because I think people were like a little bit like, oh, what's going on? So one of the things that I think about when I'm about to create a piece of content is like, okay, how can I just make the hook a little bit better than maybe I have in the past?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

With the words that I say, the text that's on the screen, the visual, all these different things. So it's just like, okay, how can I make it a little bit better? You don't have to make it perfect today. No. But just think about like, okay, this is how I was gonna do it. How can I make it a little bit more engaging to get a little bit more people watching into the video or watching the carousel or like swiping through the carousel? So that's the one thing I've been noticing quite a lot. Um, the second thing that I've been doing more and more of is making sure that I am trying to improve how the quality of the video and the audio are. Now, this has taken a lot of time. I mean, Terry, when did we get mics in our business?

SPEAKER_01

Well, probably in the first year, but then they were terrible. Yeah, we case. So, guys, if you're gonna buy a mic, here's my recommendation. Save up for a great mic. I think we have probably bought brand new mics every single year in our business. And uh in the lot in the last year, um And we've been in business for 10 years. 10 years, yeah. Um in within the last year is the first time that we actually have mics that we're actually using. Yeah. That we're not like buying a $30 mic off Amazon, using it once, and then never using it again. Uh, because we finally bought expensive, great mics. Like there are places in business you can go cheap. Mics is not one of them.

SPEAKER_00

No, no, they're not. So mics you need to spend more money. But what I'm saying is like for some of you that don't want to spend money on mics or even on um, let's say a camera, because we still shoot our content off of iPhones, by the way, is like you can still just find ways to get better audio and better video with an iPhone. Absolutely. And so making sure that you have really good lighting is a big thing, using whether it's ring lights or going outside or getting close to a window, just having better quality video and being more intentional is gonna be helpful as well.

SPEAKER_01

And if you don't have mics yet, you can't afford them. Uh, in Cap Cut, there's a feature called enhance voice, and it's it's actually phenomenal. It's actually pretty decent. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So there's different ways to just like improve things slightly because at the end of the day, content is one of those things that I always just think you should always be just slightly evolving. One percent. One percent, yeah, exactly. Well, how you can do one percent better. The third thing I want to talk about with content is like, yeah, we got the hook, we got like the quality, and then just thinking about getting creative. One of the things that I've been trying recently is like, hey, getting outside to shoot content more, even shooting some like widescreen videos as reels, which have performed better than some of my reels. Interesting, so like just trying to get creative. I've also like had a lot more like visual where I'm like drawing stuff on paper and different things like that, and I've just had really great feedback off of it, and so like getting creative with your reels because oftentimes we can just do like simple b-roll stuff, which b-roll is great, or simple talking head stuff, which is again, it's just good stuff. But if you can get creative, and I've even noticed like use using visual things, like using visual representation in the videos, helps people understand things or help like teaches people better. Yeah, so, anyways, those are just a couple of things that I've noticed that are helping my content do better and get more views and more comments and more leads. And I think it just comes down to exactly, Terry, what you said. It's like the 1% rule. And these are just a couple of the areas that I've been thinking about. So, um, the last piece. I think I already said the last piece, but I think this is the last piece. I need to stop saying the last piece.

SPEAKER_01

He does this in meetings too, where he's like, one more thing. And I'm like, do you mean 20 more things?

SPEAKER_00

Or yeah, I'm trying to give people hope and then I dash their hopes. They're like, the meeting's almost done. No. No, two more hours. Um one of the other pieces is I've started to have a notes, um, a note folder on my phone, and I take notes of when I think of interesting things. So, like when it's like when a client says something interesting, I write it down, or when a prospect says something interesting, I write it down. Or yesterday I ran a workshop and someone kind of had this like reason of like why mini ads maybe wouldn't work for them. I write that down. Because I want to have all these ideas so that when I come into content creation, I want to have these like interesting stories or ideas or whatever it is where I can create content that isn't maybe as boring and bland as a lot of people, and kind of comes from the real world of what I work with in. Because I think then it's gonna be more relevant to people. So that's the other piece that I've been playing around with that I'm really interested to uh see how you folks try this out.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, and I used to do this in private practice all the time, like sales call. I like I would force myself to after every sales call, after every coaching call, after every Loom video, like every time I interacted with a client or a prospective client, it became content. Like something within that call or video or voice message or text message uh became content. Because if you can base your content off of your literal clients, what they're going through, or your prospective clients, like you're quite literally speaking to your ideal client all day long.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly, exactly. So try those out in your content again. Just adopt the 1% rule of just like always trying to improve it. Um, because if you do that, you'll usually stay ahead and keep on evolving. It's the people that like just kind of like give up on the 1% that it might not happen instantaneously, but in six months or 12 months, all of a sudden their content is just going down the dragon and it's not keeping up with the rest of the world. So keep up with it. But Terry, I know you want to talk about management.

SPEAKER_01

How I manage. I know I am so I'm gonna write a book one day and it's gonna call it's gonna be called How I Manage Remotely. How I man Oh!

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love this! Thank you. How I manage remotely. Yeah, and then you need to get a what is those, like um, like when someone like recommends your book and you can write down your book, you need to get it from Michael Scott.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, absolutely. Dwight Schurd. Dwight.

unknown

How I manage.

SPEAKER_00

This is great.

SPEAKER_01

So you had a couple instances of management this last week, and you kind of wanted to talk a little bit about Yeah, so something I have noticed is a a lot of managers don't manage specifically, and they think it's not a big deal, and it is I don't want to be dramatic, but it is like crippling their ability to manage. So for an example, you might tell someone, um, we need to push harder this week, we need to be hitting KPI better, but you're never even mentioning a number. Um, and then I'm having a conversation with this individual, and they're like, I keep being told I'm not performing well, but like I don't even know what I'm supposed to be hitting. Um, or another thing is I was having a conversation with an individual yesterday. There was someone on the team that was upset that someone had something had not gotten done from this individual. And she was like, they never told me what date they wanted it by. Right. Um, and and guys, like specificity when you are talking to the people who are working for you is so, so, so, so, so, so important. Um, because you then often end up behind their back being bitter, that they aren't performing well, they aren't doing things fast enough, they didn't complete something, like they did it 80%, but not 100%. Um, and really the issue is you not communicating well. Like you need to be able to say, hey, Sarah, I need you to send five messages in the next 20 minutes. And when it's done, I want you to send me a thumbs up in Slack. Like there needs to be a definition of done, there needs to be a literal number for KPI, um, and you need to have an actual deadline. Yeah. And you need to learn to be specific with everything you say to your team. Otherwise, you're gonna end up bitter about them because you feel like they're not performing well, and they're gonna end up frustrated with you as a manager because they sense that you're not happy with their performance, but they truly feel like they're doing as good as they can. And so, learning, um, like even yesterday, I had a conversation with a manager. I won't name names. Um, and they were saying, I was being really hard on them. They kept on saying specific things, and I would interrupt them and I would say, What was that number? Or because they weren't saying a specific number. And and they would be like, My team, and I'm like, who on your team? Like, I kept on because this this was had been a repeated issue with this manager that like people on their team are getting frustrated, the manager's getting frustrated, and I just called them out on it, and they got really frustrated at me. But I think my point got across.

SPEAKER_00

Your point got across, and that's where like we as humans, like, and and I'm so bad at this, it's so easy, it's so easy to just tell someone, like, hey, like this is what I want you to do, da da da. But yeah, get in a higher volume, yeah. But like, because and then again, because I'm an ADHD, I often think through the entire thing, but when I communicate it, I don't give the entire thing. Yeah, and when I I think, oh, I've given it to them, they know everything that's in my head, but I actually didn't give them everything that's in my head.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, and it's fascinating, even with you, how if you're frustrated at one of your team members, I'm like, okay, so when did this conversation occur? Exactly what was said. Did you make that expectation exactly clear? And then I can see in your eyes you have this moment of like, oh shit, I didn't communicate.

SPEAKER_00

I didn't communicate it as specifically as I could with a deadline with the specific person. Like, yeah, there's all these things that I've just watched you manage and see like how your team just like performs so well. Yeah. Um, I mean, what are some like if someone's let's say hiring their first VA, what are some ways to just start this right off the bat so that like they can get into the habit without getting any bad habits?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so in my brain, when I'm talking to a team member, I'm asking myself, what is the specificity? More than often it's a KPI, right? It's like two, five, two hundred. Like it's it's a specific number. If you're talking to an admin person, it might be get my email down to zero. Like, like be specific about your KPI, your expectation, your actual number. Um, then you want to be specific about your deadline. I want this done by noon. I want this done in the next five minutes, I need this done next week. Um, and then you need your definition of done. How are you gonna know when it's done? Are they sending you a Slack message saying, yo, this is done? Um, are you going into the dashboard to see it? Like, like there has to be a definition of done. This is fully complete and it has been communicated to you that it is complete. So those three things, even if you are quickly throwing something to someone in Slack, it has to encapsulate those three things. Sometimes when I don't have time, I will ask um someone on my team to respond to me with the three things. As in, if I'm like, hey, I need this and this and this to get done. Um, what do you think is a realistic deadline for this? And what is going to be our definition of done? And then they'll come back to me with it. So, but but those three things have to be part of every meeting, every conversation, every task given out. Um, because and then also, then if someone is genuinely not performing well, you have such a clear expectation to come back to. Like, hey, Tuesday morning on our tactical, I said you needed to hit this number by this date, and this was our definition of done. Why did this not occur? Um, whereas if you have not said those three specific things, that conversation of them not performing well becomes incredibly awkward because they might be like, Well, I didn't even know that was the number. I didn't even know that was the definition of done. Um, it just makes things really murky. For sure. And when it comes to calling people out on performance or calling them up into being a higher performer, you don't ever want things to be murky or unclear. Clarity is everything.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you don't want to be able to like that you they shouldn't be surprised if you call them out for not hitting somebody. No, no. Like at the end of the day, if you don't give them clarity, you almost can't call them out. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But if you give them absolute clarity and they like affirm that I got that clarity, yeah, and then they don't do it, then it's very much like you can call them out and hold them accountable to that. Absolutely, yeah. No, absolutely. So, folks, some good management advice there. Um, we only got I got three questions here today. Actually, I got these three questions on the workshop that I ran yesterday. Oh, cool. All about mini ads. And so I wanted to just quickly answer them here because I think if people in the workshop had these questions, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening to this that might have questions. So there are three questions. The first question about mini ads was like, is this just for people who are already making money on social media, or can brand new coaches do it as a great question. So, first of all, like most of the people who join our program are people who have been building business for a bit, and like, yes, they uh Yeah, usually in the like three to five K a month. Three to five K per month range. That being said, we do on the off chance have some people who are newer to business. And I was actually yesterday on the workshop, I pulled up an example of one of our clients, Julia, who had had zero clients, and two weeks into running her mini ad, she already was signing up clients from a mini ad. So which is a little abnormal. It absolutely is. Yeah, that that's let's be so like not everyone who's brand new is gonna make that happen. We have some people that it takes two months, three months, four months if they're brand new to get their first client if they're brand new. But I just wanted to like share some examples of like, yeah, you can still make that happen if you're brand new, even though most of our clients are kind of a bit further along. Um, how long did it take you to get your first client? So long, six or seven months. It was crazy.

SPEAKER_01

I think that's why we don't have a ton of compassion when new people are like two months in and they're like, I've been caught in a client. I'm like, dude. I know if you only have two months of patience, exactly it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Like I would say on average, I'm trying not to exaggerate. Terry, tell me if I'm exaggerating. Okay. I think that 80 to 90% of our clients get results quicker than we were able to back in the day. Oh god, yeah. Like, probably a higher percentage, probably a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01

I think we're probably the best people to be business coaches. Because like, like a lot of business coaches out there, they're like, Yeah, I started my business and I was at a million dollars and two years, and like that was not us. Like, we went through it. So when we have clients who are just like frustrated at their progress, me and Ruben are like, yeah, that's hard. Like, yeah, we like we get it, and and we're gonna be the ones who push you to have more perseverance because there's if if we would have had as little perseverance as we see a lot of people having, we would never be where we are today.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly, exactly. So, good reminder to persevere. And yeah, if you're brand new, the mini ads can work for you. The second question I had is like, hey, with a mini-ad, when you get these new followers, like how quickly can you turn them into clients? Like from the day they follow you to when they become a client. Like, how quickly is the turnaround? Now, there's a massive range. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

So I want to- And it's a compounding range, which is actually a positive thing.

SPEAKER_00

It absolutely is. Yeah, because like let's say the first month you run them, you get some clients, but in month three, you might get people who followed you a week ago, people that followed you a month ago, people that followed you three months ago.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, because we like, like now, we have close clients from ads that we ran like 18 months ago. Exactly. So it is compounding, which is great.

SPEAKER_00

It absolutely can compound. So I'm gonna share with you a bit of a range on the fast end of things. A lot of our clients, actually, one of our clients posted in our community yesterday. She's consistently getting new followers to become clients within seven days. Wow. Which is crazy. So they literally find out about her seven days ago and then they check out her content, have a conversation, jump on a stage. Damn, we're not even that good. It's it's crazy fast. So now some people will take more like two, three, four weeks. Um so you can get it happening pretty quick if you other things are really dialed in.

SPEAKER_01

And guys, this is where you have to become a client of ours. We see what we're doing strategically is we're giving you guys our mini ad strategies for free. So that you will start getting followers, and then you're gonna be like, uh oh. Uh-oh. How do I make these into clients? And then you're forced to hire us. There's so that's our evil plan.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, they come to my workshops like yesterday, they start getting 20, 30, 40 followers per week, or I should say per day. Um, and then they're like, oh, I need to now turn these people into clients. And so then they join our program. Yeah. We teach them how to turn them into clients.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Anyway, that can happen pretty quick. The last question I got is like, hey, mini ads, I get it, I see posts a lot about people getting to 10k months. Can I scale with mini-ads? And so the final question is we have two clients right now who are in our scale program who have done $40,000 or even $50,000 a month with mini-ads. And so you absolutely can grow and hit some really big months. Actually, we had we had a client last year do it was like $80,000 or $90,000 a month for mini ads as well.

SPEAKER_01

So like you having said that though, for us past the million dollar mark, yeah, we are doing back end ads.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we are doing actually boosted and backend ads. Yes. We're doing a bit of a variety. So yeah, mini ads can definitely grow a business to bigger heights. Um, and so, anyways, those are the three questions I got. And I answered them on the workshop last night, but I wanted to answer them here as well. So, that being said, folks, we got some other work to do. So, I guess we have to hop off the pod for today. Is it work or is it eating food?

SPEAKER_01

For me, it's work. For sure, me too.

SPEAKER_00

Anyways, folks, have a great rest of your day, and we'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_01

Bye guys.