The “Content Creation Triangle” is a rule of experience Raymond Hou uses to evaluate content and knowledge products: originality, quality, and volume usually allow a creator to achieve only two at a time. Original, high-quality content often takes longer to produce; original content produced at scale may sacrifice quality; and consistently high-quality content produced at scale should prompt a check into whether it relies heavily on repackaging, rewriting, or team production. 1
This is not a rigid law for all creative work, but a starting point for due diligence. Its purpose is not to assume that high output means something is wrong, but to prompt questions: Where did the original experience behind the content come from? Who judges its quality? What sustains its production capacity? Raymond extends the framework to choosing courses and instructors, asking whether a paid product is grounded in work, creations, and cases the instructor has actually produced.
Five Checks for Choosing a Course
First, examine how much of the course comes from the instructor’s own practical experience, cases, and workflows. Raymond uses “more than half” as a rough threshold. The key is to determine whether the content has been tested through real tasks, rather than simply reorganizing information that can be searched for.
Second, distinguish “first producing professional results, then designing a course from that experience” from “treating the act of launching a course as proof of expertise.” Publishing a book, offering a course, and having a polished marketing page can prove that a product exists; none alone proves that the instructor has accumulated transferable practical judgment in the field.
Third, observe whether an instructor frequently changes topics, and whether each change is supported by work and sustained accumulation. Working across fields is not a problem. But if topics shift only with market trends, without a verifiable history of practice, it may be difficult for the course material to form a stable method.
Fourth, use the Content Creation Triangle to examine where the content comes from. When someone consistently maintains both high quality and high output over a long period, the reasonable next step is not to dismiss them, but to find out how collaboration, research, licensed references, editing, or AI workflows support the work.
Fifth, distinguish learning notes from paid knowledge products. Beginners’ notes can be valuable public sharing, but paid products usually need to go further: extract personal experience into an ordered teaching process that can be practiced and receive feedback. This reflects Raymond’s proposition that “the value of a course lies in the process, not only in the class” (see Education Is One Person Lighting Up Another; a Course Is Delivery (Education Is People Lighting the Way for People)).
An Adjustment for the AI Era
Generative AI is reducing the marginal cost of research, organization, rewriting, and production, making it possible that “choose at most two of originality, quality, and volume” will gradually be broken. A creator can retain their experience and judgment while using AI to speed up research organization, first drafts, format conversion, and quality checks. Mature teams can also maintain higher output through clear workflows. The Content Creation Triangle is therefore better understood as a warning signal in the AI era, rather than an inviolable law.
This adjustment does not invalidate the principle; it shifts due diligence toward the division of work between people and AI. Do the original questions and experiences come from the creator? Is someone responsible for the key judgments? Are AI outputs verified? Can the work explain its methods and sources? When creators can answer these questions, high output does not necessarily mean repackaging. When these steps are opaque, even polished work may be packaging without transferable practical knowledge.
Position in Raymond’s Framework
This strategy connects Writing (writing), Business Thinking (business thinking), and knowledge-product design. The triangle offers a quick way to recognize the structure of content production; the course-selection criteria apply that perspective to buying decisions. It preserves a human–AI collaboration standard that remains applicable: tools can amplify volume and collaborators can improve completion, but creators remain responsible for the source of their experience, the quality of their judgment, and learning outcomes.
Source
Footnotes
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Raymond Hou, “How to Identify a ‘Packaging-Style Instructor’? How I Choose Courses and Teachers + The Content Creation Triangle,” public Facebook post, 2024-04-30. View original ↩