Why 99% of Creators Are Broke… & How to Fix This! | #ThinkPodcast #202

this is one of the best business modelsfor the Creator economy what problem doyou think you can really solve forpeople right now and I think that asentrepreneurs our job is just to be paidproblem solvers if there was any kind ofCreator who was Prime for this kind ofbusiness model a YouTuber is in theperfect position there's never been morepeople online or coming online thanthere are right nowso while there's never been moreopportunity in the Creator economy tobuild a six or seven figure business 99of content creators still findthemselves broke and that's becausethey're missing critical pieces of theircontent creation Empire that we're goingto be covering in this episode so I'msuper fired up to be talking to BrockJohnson who is an Instagram and socialmedia growth expert for creators andentrepreneurs he's also one of the leadinstructors and faculty of the marketingimpact Academy and insta Club Hub andhe's going to be breaking down theelements that most creators do not knowthat are critical for making this asustainable business and income andactually going full time in a real wayand so Brock welcome to the show Seanthank you for having me super fired upto have you on and you've been on thethink media podcast before but I want toactually start off with your story andwe can mine a bunch of tips out of itbecause today you're a seven figureentrepreneur at 25 years oldum newly married been married for awhile you already snowboarded 30 timesthis year living a pretty cool lifehelping a lot of people but back at 21you earned almost six figures you earnedover ninety thousand dollars in a yearon social media which was is very rareyou know some people for sure have maybemade a few bucks in affiliate marketingthey've got a little bit of YouTube adsgoing they've got maybe a sale or two ofmerch or something else they're doingbut there's a Chasm that most creatorsdon't end up Crossing which is actuallyfiguring out how to make thissustainable and that's because they'remissing some pieces so tell us yourstory what was happening back around2021 for you yeah absolutely andactually let me backtrack and say Idefinitely don't have it all figured outnow by any means uh but I'm more thanhappy to go back to kind of where Istarted when I knew even less than I donowum and so my business started when I wasa freshman in college I was a studentathlete so I had books and ball all daylong I had very little free time and Idefinitely didn't have the time to getlike a normal typical job and so my momcame to me and uh I actually reached outfirst and was like Hey I know I can'twork a typical job I can't work a nineto five I need to be able to provide formyself though because my goal is tobecome financially independent from youand my dad like I wanted to cut thatthat umbilical cord and be able toprovide for myself without the qualityof my life significantly deterioratingimmediately and so that's when she kindof was like okay well then let's start abusiness and at that time uh a coursewas what my original business was it was19 so a relatively low price point Ididn't have a huge social mediafollowingum and in order to figure out what thatcourse was she asked me what problem doyou think you can really solve forpeople right now and I think that asentrepreneurs our job is just to be paidproblem solvers and so I had to identifytwo things things in order to createthis first course and and thus my firstbusiness it was what problem can I solveand where is there a Gap in the marketor basically what problem needs solvingbecause plenty of problems have alreadybeen solved so what problem can I solvethat hasn't already been solved and atthat time it's going to sound funny tosay it now Snapchat was all over thenews for the dangers and the beware andteens are on it and who knows whatthey're up to and there's creepystalkers on Snapchat with disappearingmessages so everyone was reallyconcerned about Snapchat very similar tohow they're concerned about say ticktock nowadays but at that same time Ihad just taught my parents how to useSnapchat as a way to communicate with meas a freshman in collegeum and so I was like well I know how touse Snapchat I am 19 years old so I'm ateen I I know what these kids are up toand so I could make a course basicallyteaching how to use Snapchat and how tokeep your teens safe on the app and thatwas my my very first business in how itgot started it yeah that's wild and youknow that's probably my favoritebusiness model is the e-learningindustry Forbes just updated the numbersthat it's going to be over a billiondollar a day industry by 2025 and itjust continues to explode teaching whatyou know packaging it into an onlinecourse and thereby jumping past needingan algorithm or a platform to pay youpennies exactly for being monetized insome way so go a little bit deeperthough what was kind of that initiallaunch and how did you build thatbusiness what were some of the elementsneeded to package that put it togetherand actually get it to Market totally soof course I needed a platform to housethe the e-course and there's plentyonline I found one that worked for methat could just kind of house and selluh create landing pages for that actualcourse in terms of the creation of thecourse it was as raw rough bootstrappedas you can get I rented out a privateroom at the local library and I didn'teven have a tripod at the time so I justleaned my phone up against some booksfrom the library the angle was like onthe table shooting directly up mynostrils I hung like a little Bannerbehind me which I still remember it waslike crooked very badly crooked um iteven fell down in one of the videossuper rough and I just banged it out forlike three or four days in a row I juststayed in that room I would bring mylunch with me and I would be in therefor hours and hours recording as muchcontent as I could and then eventuallyum once I was done with all that filmingI had it sent off to an editor becausevery early on I learned the lesson thatI'm not gonna be able to do all thismyself and we were coming up on thefootball season so I knew my time wasgoing to be even more pinched so I sentall that content off to an Editor tojust be roughly chopped up nothing fancyum and then it was football season sothen for about six months I couldn'treally do much I couldn't really promotemuch and also I didn't want to I wantedto focus on that current season of mylife once that was over I I got all theediting back I've added it all into thecourse and then it actually became timeto start promoting and launching andtalking about it and that was primarilydone uh on social media yeah that'samazing and so was that what got you toninety thousand dollars or did you haveto add on some other things add on otherthings so this is really the theDifference Maker that initial launch wasnot amazing like it was I think we maybemade two thousand dollars in total offof that launch which I'm not sayingthat's not you know something to beproud of but also that's hardly evenpaying a month's rent especially thattime I lived in Washington DC Idefinitely paying a month's rent inWashington DC I quickly pivoted becauseagain I realized that there was a holein the market and I listened to myaudience which I think is absolutely keyand what I was hearing from them fromall of these primarily moms who are nowlearning how to use Snapchat as theysaid great well now I know how to keepmy kids safe but I also have theknowledge of how to use Snapchat and Ihave my own business I have my own sidehustle I have my own network marketingcompany I have my own real estatebusiness I'm trying to grow how can Iuse this new social media Snapchat toleverage it to to grow this business andthis was something that I was activelydoing doing because while I was teachingpeople how to use Snapchat I was alsoencouraging all of my students to joinmy community on Snapchat and startinteracting with me so I had in buildingmy Snapchat for parents businessaccidentally built a business and a hugeknowledge base of how to use Snapchatfor business and so I quickly pivotedwithin about six months of the initiallaunch and kind of stepped away from theSnapchat for keeping your kids safeangle and rebranded in Snapchat forbusiness instead of teaching otherbusiness owners how to grow and Marketon Snapchat and so that's how Itransitioned from the first course whichwas I think about 19 during my initiallaunch in the second course which was alot more knowledge based there's a lotmore packed into it and also it was alsofor a different clientele so it wasn'tfor parents just keeping their kids safeit was for business owners and so thiswas something that I charged a littlebit more for I think it was maybe fiftydollars or fifty Seven dollars for thatsecond course and that launch was whatgot me a lot closer to this 90 000 markthat I hit in the first year yeah that'samazing and again for if you'relistening to this the question is whatdo you know that you could package intoan online course that solves a problemfor somebody this is such a coolindustry because yeah there's someexpense in software and there's someskills to learn but because it's adigital product your shipping is easyrefunds are easy and any kind ofcustomer service support is easy andfulfillment with the tools that are outthere do you remember what you used Iknow that inside of the marketing impactAcademy you I think review lots ofdifferent tools because it's likethinkific and teachable and kajabi anddifferent options do you remember whatyour original one was it was originallykajabi that was my first one yeah and atthink media we've really built like ourwhole business on kajabi some people saywhat is the best and it's it's kind of aplatform war between these there'skartra and there's new ones showing upand there's pros and cons to each ofthem but the key is you definitely needa vehicle to package it into a way soyou can sell it and take payment and Iknow that's kind of overwhelming we'lltalk about some resources laterregarding that but you know what'sfascinating about this isI want to highlight when you kind offigured out Market message match and ifyou could you figure it out too youthought okay well if it's businessowners if I can help somebody make moneyget customers get leads grow theirbusiness that is a you can charge morefor that too because of the result thatit's going to deliver what's fascinatingis we got to talk to Miss excel atSocial Media Marketing World she'steaching Excel which if you can connectyour course to how it could make someonemore money in this case you get apromotion you come in with Excel skillsshe came out of corporate she's got 100Ka month business selling Excel andMicrosoft Suite courses a lot of peopleare teaching different uh JavaScripttype stuff or coding but then also a lotof people teaching homeschool how to getstarted if people are teaching likebeginner Bible study courses and whatnotfor somebody that wants to dive intoTheology and whatnot so listening tothis what do you know that you couldpackage into an online course this isone of the best business models for theCreator economy and the cool thing isyou also don't need a huge audience topotentially generate some serious moneythe two thousand dollars you earned is alot more than a people who stay stuckjust hoping they go viral hoping thatthey you know get a zillion views andget paid a few pennies for that nothingagainst YouTube ad revenue or all theseother options but you're really takingyour business Destiny into your ownhands in this regard by packaging whatyou know into an online course so whatare some of the biggest mistakes thatyou see you've got 639 000 followers onInstagram at the point of doing this gotit you also have talk about some otherthings that you're doing you've got twoside projects you've got a YouTubechannel that's kind of a passion projectyeah but you've also got a YouTubechannel that's kind of surprising that'sgenerating some decent money on the sidewhat's happening there yeah so uh thoseYouTube channels they're really fun onelike you said passion project my wifeand I we do a lot of Vlog content justkind of documenting our life we weretalking about the other day it's just agreat uh almost like a video diary andwe're gonna have it for years to comeeventually one day if we have kids thenwe'll be able to show them these videosand make them sit on the couch and watchthis was your mom and dad 15 years agobut then we also have our dogs YouTubechannel which is just essentiallyrepurposing content from her Instagrampage taking her YouTube or her Instagramreels repurposing them into YouTubevideos and sharing YouTube shorts andthat Channel's blown up and that's supereffective and we're now starting to getinto brand deals and relationship withother dog influencer companies to startworking on the actual income stream fromthat side and then I also have my ownYouTube channel so I guess I actuallyhave three YouTube channels and myYouTube channel is just kind of anotheriteration of what I share on Instagramwhich is social media growth tips andInstagram strategies and that sort ofthing but the way I got here and the wayI got to 600 something thousandfollowers on Instagram 300 000 somethingfollowers on Tick Tock it wasn'tovernight definitely and it was also notall at once it was one out of time itstarted with Snapchat and when I was onSnapchat I was working really hardposting dozens of Snapchat stories everysingle day I got up to over 10 000followers on Snapchat back in like 2017and that's what I was using to grow mybusiness but at the time Tick Tockdidn't exist it had just been namedmusically and was bought by bite dancelike there was no Tick Tock yet therewere no Instagram reels I was barelyposting on Instagram I definitely wasn'tposting on YouTube I wish I would haveum but I just got started with oneplatform and then I grew and I pivotedand I evolved and I'd let my intereststake me in different directions Ibrought in more staff but all thesethings were one at a time nothing wasyou know all done at once people can nowlook and see like wow he's got all thesedifferent channels and all thesedifferent accounts with thousands andthousands of followers but what theydon't see is that I started on YouTubewith like basketball trick shot videosand creating content in that way when Iwas like 11 years old so now I now have15 years of experience creating contenttrying out different businessesrebranding pivoting and changing and soit's taken a lot a lot of time a lot ofeffort a lot of dedication andconsistency to get to where I am todaythat's encouraging too because I knowpeople are at different stages in thejourney and so hearing that this isn'tovernight but one of the things I wantto highlight is oh in just a second Iwant to talk a little bit about thebiggest mistakes people make thebuilding blocks of actually getting awayfrom being dependent on algorithms orjust being a broke Creator but gettingsome of the pieces that people aremissing but I want to highlightsome of our listenersare passionate about documenting theirlife about vlogging about sharing theirstory and which I think is amazing butthat is one of the least viable cratereconomy businesses in our opinion thatwe teach what I actually love is thatyou figured out a viable business thatactually funds your passion Pro projectsit is our conviction at the think mediapodcast that real artists Don't Starvewe all hear about Starving Artists butreal artists Don't Starve and so thatthat now you can do that stress freebecause you have this other thing payingthe bills so for some listening to thisI just want to even speak directly toour community it's like there is maybeyou have your passion but you're tornbecause they're all also might besomething practical and there might bedifferent brands we always encouragepeople figure out the brand that is theshortest path to revenue because thenonce you've got cash once you have cashflowyou can then fund your artistic projectsas opposed to saying I'm just going tohave a vlogging channel so maybe likeflipping your thinking and thesequencing of your events you guys justwent snowboarding 30 days this seasonMammoth is having crazy levels of snowso you're saying that you can gomultiple more you guys just uh gotapproved for an offer on a house in ParkCity you are able to live this greatlifestyle but it didn't happen overnightand it didn't happen by picking thewrong vehicle first yeah the basketballtrick shots video as well so that didn'twork out but but even but it it was ithappened because you saw what were goingto even go deeper into in just a secondbuilt a real business yeah websitefunnels the thing need you know needaround that product package which youknow got all those things in place butthat was the unlock that opened the doorto the life you're living and to thenput staff around it virtual assistantsaround it help around it so also being apet lovers you can have that channel aswell and even fun you're essentiallyfunding other business you're that whatis your dog's name Mila Mila couldactually become a decent brand youshould get some brand deals she'sstarting to become that herself and thatmay that might be the first thing youstart with but if you're listening tothis maybe not so even the sequencingcan't do everything at once but if youdo the right things in the right orderit could be the door that opens up to tolaunch all your creative projects overthe next two three four five yearsabsolutely and I think like you said oneof the biggest challenges or the biggestmistakes that a lot of early creatorsmake new creators will will stumble onis knowing which to start with whichstep to do first what to create firstand I loved your point about picking thethe path to revenue quickest what'sgoing to get you to making money thefastest maybe not what you're mostpassionate about maybe not what you wantto do for the rest of your life butwhat's going to be able to make youmoney so you can get the ball rollingwhere are the quick wins to be foundbecause if you are consistently you knowchasing your passion project but there'sno income coming in there's no Revenueyou're not able to keep food on thetable then it's not going to last verylong it's going to be a really drainingexperience where instead if you startfrom a place of I'm going to take careof my basic needs which in the world welive in a basic need is you need somesort of income you need some sort ofmoney to to be able to afford thesepassion projects this art whatever it isthat you truly want to do and so tobring this back to my own story I wasn'tpassionate about helping moms keep theirteens safe on Snapchat I wasn'tpassionate aboutum you know teaching people how to growa business on Snapchat it was justsomething that I learned to do and I wasgood at and I recognized that there wasa gap in the market that I could filland now I've grown and I'vebuilt these other passions that I can gomore into and I can make Vlogs of myselfsnowboarding even though I know thatthose are going to be the absolute worstperforming videos on my YouTube channelI can have the freedom to take a fewhours and edit my own snowboard videoand pretend I'm Travis Rice and post iton my YouTube channel it'll get 200views but I'm fired up about it and I'monly only able to do that because Ientered the pain cave early on and Iembraced I embraced the suck and Iembraced hey I might not love doing thisbut I'm good at it and there's a marketfor it that's really really strong so Iwant to talk about the marketing impactAcademy and then we'll talk about uh alot of tips we can learn for thefoundations of building our businesssocial media strategy but this episodeis uh brought to you by Mia bonus.comand again full transparency years agoI'm trying to remember when I want tosay around 2014 or 15 I became a studentof the marketing impact Academy thisprogram changed my life you now co-runthis program as one of the instructorswith chalene Johnson your mom and I hadthe opportunity of originally doing aninterview with her even doing somefreelance video for her and then I gotexposed to this world that changed mylife because as a tech YouTuber YouTubead Revenue was earning a few hundredbucks once I kind of got to scale andAffiliates I started to by having peopleclick affiliate links talking about techI was able to earn a few thousand andthat brought me to six figures but whatskyrocketed our business to sevenfigures which to also make thispractical you know oh well Sean you'vebeen doing this for a while you knewvideo or well yes but also like yourstory it took a decade to learn all theskills and invest in online courses andmy learning and myself and my educationimagine if you just did 10 of sevenfigures I'm not even very good at maththat's 100 Grand I think so yeah imaginejust a five percent it's an extra fiftythousand dollars I mean you did twothousand dollars in your first coursewhatever just the practicality ofpackaging what you know in an onlinecourse figuring out how to do that andthen figuring out the 52 things I didn'tknow of eventually like well how are youeven gonna make the offer well how doyou even structure an offer how do youeven put together a webinar and Iremember in these early days of thinkmedia I was watching the marketingimpact Academy on my phone on atreadmill at Fitness 19 in Las Vegas andand wild story because now Omar Eltakori is one of our content creatorswe're in his Studio here in Vegas A lothappened since then he came in and weactually re-got connected and I was likeHey Omar crazy to see you here he's likewhat are you doing I'm like I'm studyingI'm trying to learn the skill set ofcreating an online course and learninghow to Market it and learning how tobrand and all this different stuff anduh then we started to make videos and hewas a video editor all that to say isevery year and it's actually been Ithink a couple years since we've eventalked about this we have let ourcommunity know about this program thatchanged our life we only like to shareprograms we vetted you know work withbrands or companies that we vetted butpeople can know that we are students ofthis program and what's kind of cool iswe've put together some specific YouTubetrainings that are separate that arejust extra because you guys recentlyopened the doors to the marketing impactAcademy so without going further intothat if you want to check that out itsaid Mia bonus.com and you can seeeverything in the show notes but give usan overview of what this is and let'sget into some value about the thingspeople learn inside of the marketingimpact Academy totally so I told you mystory earlier of how my mom was reallythe one who guided me in starting theSnapchat business and to give you thethe full background story I was reallyhomesick I was really struggling I wasopposite in the Country California iswhere I grew up Washington DC is where Iwas going to school and so I called mymom crying one day and I was like Heylike I just need you to come visit melike I'm feeling homesick I'm reallystruggling so she flew out and we stayedup in her hotel room until like 2 or 3A.M making this business plan working itout figuring out all the differentpieces what needed to go in what orderbut unfortunately she's not available tofly to every single person who is cryingto her on the phone and meet with themand stay up till 2 A.M in their hotelroom so that's where the marketingimpact Academy comes into play andessentially what it is is it's more thanjust a course and that's why it's calledthe marketing impact Academy becauseit's truly an entire entire businessschool but imagine you show up yourfirst day at college and they just handyou every book that you're going to readfor the entire duration of college theyhand you every syllabus and every one ofyour professors is just standing theresmiling you're going to be extremelyoverwhelmed and not know what to do andso what I think the the unique value isthat Mia provides is a step-by-stepblueprint of here's the order that youneed to go in but there's stilleverything else you could ever want toknow so there is YouTube lessonsprovided by you there's Instagramlessons provided by me there's Facebookthere's email list building there'swebsite design there's branding andmarketing and Pitch deck all of thesethings that can feel overwhelming ifyou're just kind of dumped on your lapbut instead there's a step-by-stepPlaybook that's actually going to walkyou through here's day one here's daytwo here are the fundamentals ofactually building a business not justgetting views and crossing your fingershoping that you go viral and get a fewpennies for every you know couplehundred thousand views that you'regetting but actually building asustainable business and then how do youbuild this other side hustle and thisother stream of income and this otherside hustle so you can you can chaseYour Passion projects and you can do thethings that truly bring you Joy youdon't have to stress so much about wherethe next paycheck is coming from orwhere you're going to you know find yournext customer yeah I love it and being astudent I know that you continue toupdate the curriculum and change it someof the elements that if someone wants tobuild uh 50k 90k multiple six figureseven figures that I that I took awaywas I think first getting clear on youraudience I think a lot of people listento this they may not even reallyunderstand who their person is yeah Ilearned the term lifer from you guys andit's kind of another way of sayingAvatar although you do think about itdifferently and I think if you thinkabout it better and you go into thatthat's first getting absolutely clearand this will help you just in thecontent creation but then in the productcreation clear on who it is that youserve what prom do you solve then alsolist building 99 of people probablylistening to this right now are aredoing it wrong because they aredisrespecting email marketing oh my goshyes it's pretty wild speak on that yeahabsolutely it's shocking it's scaryhonestly to see how many people puttheir faith and and all of theproverbial eggs in the social mediabaskets which ultimately in this Web 2.0world that we live in we are operatingon rented territory we don't own oursubscribers we don't own our followerswe don't own the access to themalgorithms are always changing platformsmight get banned they're always you knowchanging their features and so it'sgetting tougher and tougher and toughernot even to mention increasedcompetition to reach our quote-unquotefollowers it's so challenging but anemail list is something you own it's away to contact people that doesn'trequire an algorithm it doesn't requirethis third party uh you know mediatedcommunication through Instagram orTwitter or whatever and so an email listis absolutely essential and to speak toyour point about knowing your avatarknowing your niche as some people mightsay a lot of people you'd be surprisedthink they know their Avatar they thinkthey know their Niche and we recentlydid a study 97 of our new incomingstudents who believe that they haveidentified their Avatar or they knowtheir Niche they know what their thingis they actually haven't fully done sothey haven't gotten deep enough theyhaven't gotten specific enough and sothat's step one that's step one forgrowing on social media for building abusiness that's absolutely essential and97 of people not only don't have it butthink they have it and they actuallydon't yeah no that actually isn'tsurprising to me and it might belistening to this that might be a hardpill to swallow because what can happenis we just get we get too far down theroad we do fall in love with our topicwhich fine you could do what you wantbut it's not a guarantee that's going tobe successful what's cool is you and uhchalene Johnson Brett Johnson chaleneand Brett have been mentors in my lifefor years now was so fortunate to beable to do video production for them youknow I think maybe as early as 2013 2014and all these different quotes anddifferent things that they've taught mehave been absolutely life-changing butwhen people are uh trying to start abusiness you want to learn from someonewho's done it been there done that andas mentors I don't know what the numberis but they've built multiple seven andeight figure businesses like five or sixor seven you know what I mean in Fitnessin physical Goods in digital products inthe health industry in other Industriesso even reverse engineering back this ismy one of my favorite words these daysis viability if you don't even get yourstep one right you don't get yourfoundation right what everybody getsinto is like you guys are buying a houseand probably one of the things that'smost excited uh exciting is is eventhinking about decorating it Furniturewhat TV are we going to get what art arewe going to put up but if the foundationis off on your house yeah or if even theroof and the walls and the structure iscompromised then all that cool furnitureand all that cool artwork is going toget soaked when it starts to snow andrain in Park City yeah and that's what'shappening to a lot of people they'relike how do I get more you know views onmy reels or my YouTube shorts or how doI just you know get people more engagedin the comments that's like step 20 andgoing all the way back to not justgetting your foundation right butviability from the start knowing am Igoing to be creating a product that'llactually sell will this fly will this besomething that actually works out if youget that right then you start buildingyour list then you actually have toshoot it though package it promote itname it then you have to actually buildouta process to host it online what arejust some of those steps obviously wecan only cover it at a 30 000 foot levelhere in this conversation but once youronline course is done what are just afew of the pieces that you then have todo next yeah and so these are definitelythings that are covered and I love thatyou mentioned like will it Fly becauseour good friend Pat Flynn who wrote thatbook He's also an instructor inside Miayes and so earlier I mentioned thisanalogy of like you walk up on yourfirst day of college and all of yourprofessors are there in front of you andthat's similar to what it's like inM.I.A and that there's not just myselfand my mom there's also as I mentionedearlier yourself Pat Flynn and dozens ofother industry experts because Irecognize I can't be an expert ineverything and also as an entrepreneuryou either have to turn to these expertslike yourself like these other uh youknow people who are well versed and havebeen doing these things for decades tolearn or you have to try to become theexpert yourself which is an option butit's oftentimes going to be one that'sgoing to include a lot more headache andfrustration and take a lot longerum but in terms of actually the steps tobuilding a business first and foremostlike we've already talked about you haveto know that Avatar you have to know thetopic the niche the sub category who areyou specifically trying to address andeven getting it so specific that youhave one individual person in your brainI think of one of my friends fromcollege his mom like that is the exactperson I'm thinking of when I'm creatingmy content when I'm designing my courseswhen I'm building my business once youhave that we have to of course then godown the route of how are you going toget this product or is this even goingto be a product an e-course what is theactual offer going to be and then weneed to go about getting customers whichmost people think is social media theonly way but there are actually a lot ofother ways that we cover in Mia thatdon't require going viral and twerkingon Tick Tock and posting 19 YouTubeshorts per day in order to go viral andjust reach a giant quantity of peoplebut all of those things are absolutelytaughtum and explained in depth in the academyyeah and and I'm leaning heavy ondigital products online courses becauseit's one of my favorite business modelsbut there is at Mia live there is peopleyou learn from there was a sea shellsperson is that Shopify who's doingjewelry what was that story yeah yeah Iremember that story she um she sold Ithink it was some sort of like seashelljewelry yes which I feel like it's atongue twister and she was selling it onShopify yes uh Sally sells on Shopifywith the seashells yeahum and yeah she has a six-figurebusiness just on Shopify and she'sselling this custom handmade jewelry andI don't think she has a huge socialmedia following at all in order to buildthis business yeah and so the the coolthing is marketing impact Academy yougot to learn marketing online marketingbranding positioning and and these bestpractices that 99 of craters are aremissing because we do we just fall inlove with the front end content yeah andthat's when social media gets fun iswhen you have a back-end business that'sbuilt So eventually got to upload thecourse there's all these things thatseem overwhelming but that's why it'snice to have someone to show you step bystep in a and a group of people and Ialso do want to speak specificallybecause so many people are part of videoranking Academy already which is oursignature YouTube course this also ifyou're part of video raking Academy thisis the next step this is also a goodfirst step but a lot of people in videorecord Academy ask us constantly how dowe learn this next set of skills how doI build an email list how do I packagewhat I know into an online course how doI upload that market that promote thathow do I build out the sales sequencehow do I build out theum different pages that you need andthen the payment processor and connectit all together and to your point justlike people who made the smart move andinvested in video record Academy ofcourse you could try to go it your onyour own and become an expert on allthese things but that is the worst waybecause it's uh so slow it's just gonnatake you years if not decades and youcan compress time if you value your timeyou just take the paint by numbers uhprocess and and again when I waslaunching it I was just shocked becauseI was like every time I would get to athing like okay now I want to eventuallycreate a web class and if someone'slistening to the think media uh podcastright now you've probably seen one of myweb classes one of my webinars would bekind of the old school term we like tocall them web classes or master classesthere's masterclass.com or whatever is apopular brand and so we're just alwaystrying to use the language that peoplewould understand it's a free onlineclass about YouTube which is one of thethings that we would let people see andthen let them know about our YouTubecourse at the end like even how youstructure that class you could sit downand just try to wing it but instead Ijust painted by numbers that those webclasses just followed I think what'scalled an MIA is the infomercial formulayep and life-changing I've watched thatthing like 10 times yeah and then I justjust was like okay so this would be thestructure and then of course I filled inmy knowledge and my understanding aboutYouTube but even also storytelling Imean there's too many rabbit Trails Ican take right now and all thesecritical components and storytelling andlearning to craft your story I knowyou're deeply passionate aboutstorytelling you have a storytellingbook and you think about these storiesand how they illustrate the business soanywaysum I have a couple final questions foryou but I want to back to speaking tovideo record Academy this would be yournext step like I want to encourage youif you're listening to think mediapodcast you're part of era at Miabonus.com not only do we have some extrathings that we're including during thewhen they open the doors to Mia it's thebest business model for YouTube contentcreators especially that are ineducation and you know one of the thingsBrock that's interesting is I um was atSocial Media Marketing world and Italked to the course creator platformsteachable thinkific they had some staffthere and we we got into a conversationand they said our most successful coursecreators using our platform areYouTubers and I said the reason why wasbecause if 65 percent of people aregoing to YouTubeto solve a problem or ask a questiontheir your discoverability there whichthe whole promise of era is the is theopportunity to get found get discoveredand build no like and Trust in a freeenvironment right where they're watchingfor YouTube videos but then people havealso what's already happened between youand them is they've already decided ohlike I kind of like this person's Vibeoh this person's been helpful and thenif you're able to be like hey if youwant all the things all in one placelike I also have this course availableand it could be anywhere right kajabi orudemy which we don't really recommendbut it could be anywhere and you knowultimately that's it becomes the one-twopunch because I I think that this shouldbe a piece of almost everybody listeningto this at some point should create anonline course it's just such a greatasset even if it's not your main thingand you lean heavy in other directionsyou know teaching how you did what youdid or to your point getting inside ofthe marketing impact Academy and justgoing through the process of unearthingsome things you don't even know yettotally you don't even know what youdon't know yeah totally and there's somuch of that in there and I also thinkspeaking specifically about YouTubecreators is from a technical standpointthey have those skills to create thevideos create the audio create thatcourse it's essentially the same thingas making a YouTube video the only thingis it's put in a specific strategicorder and it's put behind a paywallthat's the only difference reallybetween an e-course and a YouTubechannel even the the playlists onYouTube YouTube are very similar to whatyou would be offering inside of ae-course and so I think that if therewas any social media or any kind ofCreator who is Prime for this kind ofbusiness model a YouTuber is in theperfect position I totally agree and youknow another reason to uh some mistakesto avoid is some of the things thatpeople avoid a lot though is or need toavoid is wasting their time on thingsthat don't work working on the wrongstep in the wrong order but alsopotentiallyavoiding a lot of lost revenue and asyou mentioned that YouTube is trying toget into the course game basically theyare are now adding on platformintegration of content behind paywallsto equip creators to package what theyknow to either a part of Channelmemberships where you can do exclusivecontent just for your channel members orthere's some new features YouTubepremium all of this other stuff bigwarning to people listening to this isYouTube is uh like the mafia kind ofwhen it comes to some of these featuresbecause they're taking like 30 soimagine you build a six-figure coursebusiness in a year a hundred thousanddollars you're gonna give YouTube thirtythousand dollars crazy and so alsohaving product comparisons of thesedifferent where you like all theselittle details matter because when youtake the shortcut to just get goodinformation and good education you knowthe difference between thirty thousandor thirty percent five percent or nopercent as are some of the platforms youjust do the math and these could be thedifference makers to having a lot moremoney in your pocket viability so we'vecovered a lot so I want to give one onefinal question for you in just a secondwould be just your parting advice forContent creators and entrepreneurs thatwant to increase their revenue and andsome parting words but just to be clearon exactly what's happening we wanted toget this episode to you think mediapodcastum because again once a year the doorsopen to the marketing impact Academy youcan go towww.miabonus.com and that's of course in theshow notes and just check out all thedetails out there again you know howchoe we are uh we just love to sharewith you programs and products that havechanged our life this has now been acommunity we've been I've been on tripswith uh Brock and chalene and Brettthey've spoke at our event I think likeevery single year chalene Johnson you'vespoken her event like two times and soyou may already be familiar with uh thiskind of community maybe not all thedetails for the extra bonuses that we'redoing uh that we're offering during thistime are at Mia bonus.com and in thisshow notes and we just believe in thisprogram wholeheartedly and it's simpleit's pretty simple because it's changedour life and it has actually made thinkmedia what it is today we have thefront-facing content creator thing goingand that's what I was able to figure outbut I was lacking the back end businessbuilding Brick by Brick online businessyou know mechanics that are all brokendown beautifully and a whole lot morethan that as the academy continues toevolve so uh this all this of course islimited because they only openenrollmentum you know for a limited time so checkit out that's all in the show notes anduh Brock I want to ask you though finalparting words of the opportunity you seeright now for making a living in your onyour own terms maybe being able to quityour nine to five Be Your Own Boss andjust advice for Content creatorsum when it comes to this yeah I think mymy final piece of advice would just beto be bold enough to bet on yourself youknow I'm reminded of kinee quarter wholeft her corporate job she's an MIstudent left her corporate job and isnow the world's number one financialhypnotherapist and that was done becauseshe was willing to enter the pain caveshe was willing to embrace the suck butshe knew how to do it in the right orderso she was willing to make the jump butshe knew where to jump right like if I'mpicturing myself uh you know climbing upa rock on the edge of some Lake and I'mgonna jump in you need to jump becausethat's where the difference is going tobe made but you got to know where tojump you got to know how high you got toknow where what's the direction to headin and I think that that's uh what Iwant to encourage these entrepreneursthe these video creators to startlooking for and I think that that'shopefully something that we can providefor them is the where to jump butultimately be bold enough to bet onyourself and rip off that Band-Aidbecause there's never been a better timein human history there's never been morepeople online or coming online thanthere are right now I know there are alot of industries that might feelsaturated or feel like oh I I miss thema mark on that the only way that youmissed the ship is if you never actuallytry to get on so yes one has left theport but there's another one leavingright now and there's another oneleaving tomorrow you need to get on andyou need to to jump in the water so tospeak and rip off that Band-Aid step upto the plate I feel like we could giveendless analogy shoot your shot you knowthere's a swing the the bat there's amillion different uh analogies we couldgive for this but ultimately you need totake that first step you need to be boldenough to to bet on yourself I love itBrock Johnson of course we'll link upall of the stuff we've talked about thislimited offer with our bonuses and allof this in the show notes but you'realso creating incredible content on uhInstagram and you've got some YouTubechannels uh shout people out if theywant to connect with you Brock 11Johnson across all social networksthat's where you can find me Brock thankyou so much thank you