In my first year of creating content consistently, I made about $300,000 total.
And that was only about 3/4 of the year.
The next year, my first full year of creating consistent content, I did about $600,000… double the year before.
And this year, I’m on track to easily do over $1 million.
Now, I’ve made that much in a year before… but the last time I did it:
- I spent 40% of it on ads
- My costs were through the roof
- I didn’t hardly take home any profit
This time, I’m likely to cross 1M in profit, something I’ve never done before.
And that was only in a few years of doing this! That’s not that long.
(Yeah I’m talking to you marketers who create content for 2 weeks and then quit because you haven’t seen a result…)
In the grand scheme of things, 2–3 years is an insignificant amount of time for a business.
And if you’ll commit to this simple business model for that short time, you can see amazing things happen.
So in this letter I’m going to break down how it works.
The Creator Business Model
I always say that most entrepreneurs should run 2 businesses:
The one that you own, and the one that you are.
Meaning, if you’re an entrepreneur or founder and you own a software company, or an agency, or other business…
You should also be simultaneously building a personal brand and monetizing that as well.
This is what I call the Creator Business.
Business models for other businesses can be very complex, but the Creator Business Model is very simple. It goes like this:
- Make good content every day
- Occasionally sell your audience a product
That’s it.
The problem that most “marketers” run into is that they only see their social media content as a tactic to drive leads to their business.
So the main thing is the business, and the content is just another promotion channel for the business.
A personal brand sees it differently.
In a way, the content is your business, as in, it’s the core of your effort.
And oh, by the way, you also have a product or service that people can buy.
In fact, your audience may not even know about your business until they’ve built a solid relationship with you through your content (and that’s why they become such good customers).
Let’s unpack that.
The 80% Rule
One major way that the Creator Business Model is different is that 80% of your content is pure value and entertainment for your audience.
(As opposed to marketers who are constantly trying to sell in every post)
And then 20% of your content has a call to action or pushes people to a product (and even that is usually behind valuable content as well)
80% of the time you are making deposits into growing your audience and building your relationship with them.
20% of the time you are making small withdrawals (where you’re asking for the sale, launching a product, etc.).
It’s like building an investment portfolio (like with stocks or crypto).
When your portfolio is up, it’s smart to take profits.
But you don’t want to take everything out or you won’t have any money left in your portfolio to continue making more money.
This ratio is what makes or breaks a business’s ability to grow organically.
If you’re trying to build something massive and meaningful, you want to spend MORE time on providing value—maybe it’s 90/10 instead of 80/20.
Spend more time making deposits and take less “profits”. Your momentum will grow even bigger over time.
But the 80% Rule is a good starting point for building something that makes you money now AND grows over time.
The mistake most marketers make is trying to make as many sales as possible whenever they launch a product.
It’s like they’re trying to sell their entire audience every single time.
So the first time they launch the product, they get a ton of sales.
And the next time, less.
And the next time, less.
And the next time, less.
Until they decide, “well, I guess I’ve sold this product to everyone on earth that wants it.”
(Sorry bud, but you’re likely nowhere near that saturation…)
See, the problem is when you do 80% selling and only 20% content, you’re constantly taking withdrawals from your audience, but not making enough deposits to refill it.
And you burn your audience out.
Instead, when you launch a product, don’t try to sell it to everyone.
Just focus on scooping the cream off the top.
The people who have been following you for a while, who have trust with you, and who are ready to buy.
For everybody else, it’s okay, catch you next time.
What that does is it leaves room for your influence to continue growing, rather than withdrawing all of your momentum.
The Secret Selling Tactic
Now that you know the 80% Rule and you’re going to spend most of your time just creating valuable, entertaining content…
When it comes time to push a product how do you do it?
Using Secret Selling.
When you do it this way, it won’t even feel like you’re selling to your audience.
The only people who will ever actually see you sell are the ones who are interested in buying.
And for everybody else, it will just look like you’re an awesome person who just keeps on giving value.
To use the “Secret Selling” tactic, you simply create video content just like you would on any other day.
It’s valuable and entertaining, and people love it.
Then at the end of your video, you give people a simple CTA that invites them to comment a keyword down below if they want to learn more about your product.
When they comment, you use a tool like ManyChat to automatically send them a DM with the link.
The advantage of this is that the only people who ever see your link are people who have already raised their hand and are interested.
So you get high quality leads, and you only ever scoop the cream off the top, instead of mass-spamming links to your whole audience.
Plus, these videos will often get even more views than usual because the extra engagement helps prioritize them in the algorithm.
I’ve made tons of sales and gained tons of webinar registrants, email subscribers, etc. many times from just ONE video like this that went viral from all the engagement.
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In a nutshell, this is the entire Creator Business Model.
This is basically all I did to make $300k, then $600k, and now $1M in revenue in one year.
When you commit to this practice over time, it allows your results to compound and get bigger and bigger every year.
That means that your next product launch will be the worst one you ever do.
And in the time between this one and the next one, your audience will grow, you’ll gain more momentum, and build more connection with your audience…
And your next launch will be even bigger.
What other questions do you have about building your personal brand, creating content, and growing your business? Hit reply and shoot me a message, and I’ll answer your questions in a future letter.
