The Two-to-Three Content Pillars System
Pick two or three durable topics you can talk about forever, then make vulnerability one of them.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 86%
This was the whole substance of the $5,000-a-month advisory business Sahil Bloom started in late 2020 as an LLC, serving roughly five startup clients, mostly founders he had personally invested in. The engagement was light — texting plus about one call every other week — because the deliverable was a repeatable content structure, not labour. The structure: choose two or three pillars you can credibly speak on consistently, typically building the company in public, the industry you operate in, and lessons learned along the way. The third pillar deliberately includes vulnerability, which Bloom grounds in the pratfall effect: when someone perceived as competent shows a chink in their armour, people like them more. He also stresses the pillars must be picked against saturation — 'building in public' was open territory when Copy AI's founder was doing it, and is now ultra-saturated.
Origin
Bloom's portfolio-company founders kept asking how he had grown to 75,000 Twitter followers, so he formalised his answer into a paid advisory retainer instead of answering the same question ad hoc.
Core principles
- 01Two or three pillars, not ten — consistency beats range
- 02Every pillar must be something you can credibly speak on for years
- 03Reserve one pillar for vulnerability and lessons learned
- 04Pick pillars where the topic is not already saturated
- 05The founder sets direction; a team can execute the volume
How to run it
- 1
Inventory your credible territory
Write out everything you have genuine standing to talk about — what you build, the industry you sit inside, the things you are actively learning. Credibility is the filter; Bloom notes the space is now full of people writing about building companies who are not credible on it.
Watch out Do not pick a pillar because it performs for someone else. If you cannot speak to it for two years, it is not a pillar.
- 2
Cut to two or three pillars
Narrow the inventory down to the two or three themes you will return to consistently. Bloom's default set for founders was building companies, the industry vertical, and lessons learned along the way.
Pro tip Three is the ceiling. More pillars means the audience never learns what you are for.
- 3
Pressure-test each pillar against saturation
Before committing, check whether the pillar is already crowded. Building in public was genuine arbitrage when the Copy AI founder was among the first doing it; by the time of this conversation it was ultra-saturated and no longer differentiating.
Watch out A saturated pillar still costs you the same effort but returns a fraction of the attention.
- 4
Build vulnerability into one pillar deliberately
Share the misses, not just the wins. Bloom names the mechanism explicitly — the pratfall effect — where a person perceived as perfect showing flaws becomes more likeable, not less.
Pro tip Pair every vulnerability post with what you actually changed as a result, so it reads as a lesson rather than a performance.
- 5
Hand execution to someone else and stay on direction
Bloom's clients did not want to spend time producing content; they wanted to understand the structure and let their own people run it. Set the pillars and the standard, then delegate the output.
Pro tip This is what made a $5,000-a-month retainer viable on roughly one call every other week.
In the wild
In late 2020, after reaching about 75,000 followers, Bloom set up an LLC and began advising roughly five startups on content strategy. The engagement was almost entirely the pillars framework plus ongoing feedback — texting and a call every other week. Clients were founders he knew or had personally invested in, typically at around $25,000 per investment.
→ Five grand a month per client on minimal time, and on companies he had invested $25,000 into he was recouping the investment in roughly five months of retainer.
Bloom points to the Copy AI founder as one of the first to run 'building in public' as a pillar — sharing the journey and the lessons while the territory was still open. Bloom used the same slot in his clients' pillar sets while it still worked.
→ The pillar was a growth engine while unsaturated; by 2022 Bloom describes it as ultra-saturated with a million non-credible people writing the same thing.
Common mistakes
Running ten topics instead of three
Without a fixed pillar set, output is reactive and the audience never forms an association between you and a subject. The whole point of the constraint is that repetition on a narrow set is what compounds.
Copying a pillar that is already saturated
Bloom is explicit that 'building in public' worked because few credible founders were doing it. Adopting a pillar after the arbitrage closes means competing on volume against a million people with the same angle.
Treating vulnerability as a content tactic rather than real
The pratfall effect works because the flaw is genuine. Manufactured humility reads as performance and costs credibility on the other pillars too.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and operators who want a personal platform but keep posting randomly and inconsistently
Not ideal for
People chasing a single viral hit, or brands that need paid-acquisition volume this quarter
From the transcript
“you need your two or three pillars of content that you're going to be able to talk about consistently that are like valuable for you…”
“it's called the Pratt fall effect have you ever heard of that it's like uh when when people who you perceive to be perfect show…”
“I was charging five grand a month um to a startup for basically like you know it was like texting and then maybe like one…”
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Sahil Bloom