Question: Why can’t companies call me in BEFORE their content becomes a hot mess?

Answer:
You can’t make content plans with nothing there to work with. It’s like organizing your sock drawer when you’ve never even worn shoes. Maybe you are from the Barefoot Island where no one has ever heard of socks. Suddenly, the Island is underwater due to climate change and all the indigenous folks have to go live in Chicago with those bone-chilling winters.

So, they start buying thick wool socks and sturdy shoes, which kind of works. Depending where they’re living in Chicago, they could have other worries as well. Let’s say they don’t have ready access to a laundry machine, so every week they have to buy more socks until their basement is full of dirty wool socks, so full in fact, that you can’t even get in there to get the socks in the back.

At that point, having some moths in there to eat the socks would actually help. It’s the old self-correcting problem thing again.

Anyhow, I would just pick out random bits of legacy content that either make sense to you, or are appealing for entirely the wrong reasons (exotic artifacts of engineering). Cobble them together into an outline with 3-5 levels so people will think you are an organized thinker.

While you’re doing this, you’re figuring out how the company actually works: who needs what, and whether they will actually cooperate with anything you try to put in place. At the end of your project, do a hand-off where you show them how it’s organized. As their eyes glaze over, you can then say, “Or you can extend my contract and I’ll manage it for you.”