The Content Matrix Framework

How to Never Run Out of Content Ideas Again

You know that sinking feeling when you stare at the blank page?

• "My niche is too specific."

• "Nobody cares about this stuff."

• "I've already covered everything."

Last week, I had a coaching call with an MLOps founder who was convinced she had run out of content ideas after 1 month. Her niche? Building CI/CD pipelines for recommendation systems in e-commerce.

"Too narrow," she said. "Too boring."

I pulled out a framework I've been developing for the past 3 years. By the end of our 30-minute call, we had mapped out 180+ unique content pieces.

She hasn't stopped posting since.

Today, I'm sharing that exact framework with you.

You'll learn:

• Why "niche exhaustion" is a myth (and the psychological shift to fix it)

• The "altitude" framework that turns one core topic into hundreds of posts

• 10 simple "lenses" to generate your next 30 ideas, starting today

• A 5-step system to map out a month of content in under an hour

• The full 30-lens framework to systematize idea generation (paid subs only)

Let’s dive in.

🧠 The Psychology Behind "Niche Exhaustion"

Here's what's actually happening when you think you've run out of ideas:

You're stuck looking at your expertise from 30,000 feet. It's time to zoom in.

Here's what I mean:

• From 30,000 feet: "I write about MLOps"

• From 10,000 feet: "I write about CI/CD pipelines for ML"

• From 1,000 feet: "I write about debugging failed deployments"

• From ground level: "Let me tell you about the time our model started recommending dog food to everyone because of a timezone bug in our pipeline"

See what happens when you zoom in?

At 30,000 feet, MLOps looks like one topic you can exhaust in 20 posts.

But when you get close enough to see the details, you realize:

• Every bug is a story

• Every failure is a lesson

• Every success is a case study

• Every workaround is a tutorial

The closer you look, the more you see.

📐 The Content Multiplication Framework

I call this the Content Matrix Method. It's stupidly simple, but it works wonder every time.

Here's how it works:

1. Take your core niche (no matter how specific)

2. Run it through 30 content angles

3. Watch your "narrow" niche explode into hundreds of posts

Let me show you exactly how this works with our MLOps friend's "impossibly narrow" niche.

⚡ 10 Content Angles to Start (With Examples)

I'm going to use our MLOps friend's "impossibly narrow" niche to demonstrate. Watch how each lens transforms the same expertise into completely different content:

1️⃣ Tips

Quick wins that save hours of pain:

• The 2-minute check that prevents 90% of pipeline failures

• The one kubectl command that saves hours of debugging time

• The 15-minute deployment hack that cut our release time by 80%

2️⃣ Skills

The abilities that separate amateurs from professionals:

• Infrastructure as Code: From YAML nightmare to elegant solutions

• Reading stack traces: The skill that separates junior from senior MLOps

• Stakeholder translation: Turning "the model is diverging" into business speak

3️⃣ Tools

The software decisions that make or break your workflow:

• The $0 monitoring stack that outperformed DataDog

• Why we ditched Airflow for Prefect (and cut costs by 70%)

• MLflow vs Weights & Biases: The $50K decision we got wrong

4️⃣ Lessons

Hard-won wisdom from expensive mistakes:

• The $100K lesson: Why you test rollback procedures before you need them

• What I learned from deploying a model that discriminated against 30% of users

• The lesson that cost 2 weeks: Never trust data scientists' "production-ready" code

5️⃣ Steps

Concrete sequences you can follow today:

• 0 to production: Your first model deployment in 7 concrete steps

• The pre-deployment checklist that caught 47 production bugs

• Building your first feature store: A weekend project guide

6️⃣ Mistakes

The failures that taught you more than any success:

• The config typo that took down production for 6 hours

• The time I deployed a model trained on test data to production

• Why I ignored monitoring alerts for a week (and lost $50K in compute)

7️⃣ Books

The reads that actually changed how you work:

• The book that made me rethink everything: "Release It!" by Nygard

• Why "The Phoenix Project" is required reading for my team

• The 20-page paper that's better than any MLOps book

8️⃣ Questions

The questions that reveal everything:

• The one question that predicts 90% of ML system failures

• Questions to ask before deploying any ML model to production

• The 5 questions that reveal if your pipeline is actually production-ready

9️⃣ Stories

Real incidents that stick with you forever:

• How a intern's question led to our biggest architecture win

• The 3am page that changed how we think about model drift

• The typo that cost us $100K in compute (one missing comma)

🔟 Frameworks

Mental models that simplify complex decisions:

• My decision matrix for build vs. buy in MLOps tools

• The SPACE framework adapted for ML team productivity

• The "3 R's Framework" for debugging ML pipelines (Reproduce, Reduce, Repair)

And that's just the first 10.

Paid subscribers get access to all 30 lenses (including the 20 that most creators never discover).

🎯 The 5-Step Implementation Guide

Here's exactly how to use this framework:

Step 1: Brain Dump Your Niche (5 minutes)

Write down your niche in the most specific, jargon-filled way possible. Don't simplify. The specificity is your superpower.

• Bad: "I help with data"

• Good: "I optimize real-time feature engineering pipelines for fraud detection models in fintech"

Step 2: Pick Your First 5 Lenses (2 minutes)

Start with the ones that feel most natural. From my observations, these are the easiest:

• Tips (everyone has tips)

• Mistakes (we all make them)

• Stories (you've got war stories)

• Tools (you definitely have favorites)

• Questions (things you wish people asked)

Step 3: Generate 3 Ideas Per Lens (15 minutes)

Set a timer. Write fast. Bad ideas often unlock great ones.

Pro tip: Your first idea is usually generic. Your third idea is usually gold.

Step 4: Pick One and Write (30 minutes)

Choose the idea that makes you think: "Oh man, I could rant about this for hours."

That energy translates into engaging content.

Step 5: Build Your Content Calendar (10 minutes)

One lens per day. Rotate through all 10.

By the time you complete one cycle, you'll have:

• 10 pieces of content

• Data on what resonates

• 2-3x new ideas for round two

📈 The Multiplication Effect

Here's where it gets intense.

Each lens doesn't just give you one idea. It opens a category.

Take "Mistakes":

• Process mistakes (skipping tests)

• Career mistakes (staying too long)

• Technical mistakes (the config typo)

• Learning mistakes (ignoring fundamentals)

• Communication mistakes (not warning stakeholders)

Suddenly, one lens becomes 5 subcategories.

Now do your math:

• 5 subcategories × 30 lenses = 150 angles

• 150 angles × 3-5 examples each = 450-750 pieces of content

From one "impossibly narrow" niche.

Ready to never run out of content ideas again?

Paid subscribers get access to the all 30-lens framework with specific examples. These includes some of my highest-performing angles: Experiments, Predictions, Behind-the-Scenes, and Hot Takes. These alone generated my most viral content.