How To Make Money As A Creator In 2024

everybody stop window shopping There's an opportunity on the other side of the window that you've been looking at for a really long time it's this thing that we're all talking about the attention economy the Creator economy whatever it is it seems like everyone's having fun on the inside but here you are face press up to the glass and saying like uh I'm too old I'm not smart enough I'm not good-look enough I know it's hard to keep up my drip game ain't that and you you know what you're missing one of the biggest opportunities in your life in this video we're going to break down what the creater economy is and what you can do to capture some of this if nothing else it buys you a little bit of runway for whatever it is you're doing it might be extra spending money or to help you out through a rough patch in your life but more importantly it's to help you find out and discover this person that's inside of you and to share that with the world stick around all right Chris so you have been in the content marketing and content creation content business space for quite some time going on 10 years now if someone is entering into the space now and if someone wants or maybe they have a business model that isn't a Content or digital business right and they want to start exploring this as a revenue stream how might they do that what are some of the observations that you have around the content marketing space the content business so just right off the Jump just in case people don't understand the term Creator economy or media business can you just give us your perspective and your understanding of what that is given your background I I wish I had a perfect definition for you Mo so I'm just going to wing this one and just tell you what what my impression is so if you're watching this video like that's not what the Creator economy is about well I humbly apologize in advance that I may not have the definition I think what social media has given rise to this new class of creative intelligence work like where you can speak about something and there's multiple ways for you to generate a revenue stream from this and it's given birth to something that is not the stereotypical I'm going to go to work for someone from 9: to 5 5 days a week and it's a wonderful thing and I think this was ushered in in some some way by YouTube creating a platform for all of us to be broadcasters to create our own TV networks and to attract our own audience and build relationships with sponsors and YouTube makes it pretty easy for us to monetize and it's I use that word carefully to monetize our audience in that loow hanging fruit super passive income is you get AdSense Revenue so if your channel is speaking on topics that advertisers desire you have a higher CP M cost per thousand views and if you do something where it just not attracting the correct audience you get very low CPM so on the high end you might get $35 per thousand views on the low end you might get a dollar and that's a vast difference there so someone who has a million or 2 million or 100 million views but they're getting very low CPM you're not going to get paid very much and this is what we call like low hanging fruit because you don't actually literally have to do anything you don't have to field sponsors you don't have to do anything except for do what it is that you want to do to connect with your audience now our channel is such that in I guess our Peak we did $360,000 of Google ad sense YouTube Revenue money and for many people all over the world that's going to be a god- awful amount of money just for you being you and I think that's wonderful and when we look at the median income from developing countries it's going to be anywhere between $ to $110,000 annually so someone who is able to record or produce videos from their spare bedroom or their garage or basement making $360,000 they're going to be making more money than doctors and attorneys do in their own country and that's a wild idea now I don't think our results are typical and I don't I'm not saying this to flex on anybody I'm just giving you a point of reference okay and if this is all you wanted to do this is great our friend unes Dinda never told us how much money he makes on his YouTube channel picks him perfect but basically he smiled and says I'm good and this guy routinely drops videos that gets hundreds of thousands of views within the first 24 hours so he's on a different level than us that's just a point of reference there okay now we have to go beyond this to say like well if you're in America $360,000 is not enough to pay you for your content and for the team that ultimately has to show up to help you cuz this stuff does not happen by itself so now you get into other ways of making money but before I get into that did I answer the question for you Mo 100% I just wanted to give people the exposure especially those that may not be as well versed as us or you know drinking the Kool-Aid on a regular basis that there is an entirely different money-making machine and model that they can kind of tap into please continue with what are some other forms of Revenue that people can make if they enter the Creator economy okay now Pandora's Box is going to open up for you when you go beyond just what Google AdSense might pay you for a view and I want to point to this article and I'm assuming if you're watching this video or listening to this it's it might be a new thing for you a resource and it's often reference but the Godfather of all of this is Kevin Kelly he's one of the co-founders the executive editor for Wired Magazine and he wrote an article many many years ago kind of pre- social media boom if you can believe it is that to make a good living you don't need a million fans you don't need 100,000 fans you just need 1,000 true fans so the article is called 1,000 true fans and I think it's a seminal work that many people have pulled from including myself he he posits that if you have 1,000 true fans who are going to buy uh your book your audio book and the digital uh version of the Kindle vers of the same book you have a true fan someone who's willing to go wait in line or to register early so they don't miss out on the next thing that you're going to do and they're willing to spend $100 with you in profit each year you would make $100,000 as long as you're not living on the coastal cities in America you're going to be okay if you make $100,000 I think that's fine for most people but we can take this idea and we can scale this up like what does this mean when you show up and you build an audience and there's engagement there they're basically saying you have my trust you've earned Goodwill I'm willing to go and do the dance with you and so you can do multiple things and so I'm just going to run off a bunch of different ideas top of my mind so that people can go down and see what fits for them if I have an audience of a thousand true fans that means in theory if I write a book a digital book or an audio book that they're willing to buy it and that's one way you could sustain yourself so if you write a book which I have and I kickstarted that book and my goal was to get $30,000 the book is called pocket full of dough linkoln bio or Link in description okay and when we launched that we were hoping to get 30,000 or I wouldn't do it and I was blown away because we not only hit our $30,000 goal within the first week we got somewhere north of 70 I think it was like $75,000 where it ended up which blew my mind as a firsttime author as a relatively unknown person outside of my YouTube channel there were not people willing to support me and the cherry on top of that MO is there were five books available at $1,000 each with a certain perk I know in my heart to this day and I'll swear to this those people did not buy it because of the perk they bought it because they wanted to support me they really wanted to support me and one of the coolest things is to read through and see who was at the th000 level which was just totally like it touched me emotionally I was like wow I didn't know you would do that for me and and I just feel kind of like really grateful and humble that this would happen so this is one thing that you can do as someone who creates cont content is to say like you know what if you love this content I'm going to codify this I'm going to organize it I'm going to do the research and the editing and I'm going to produce one volume of content that you can consume for 25 bucks or $30 or whatever the price point is that's one way the next thing that having content has done for me personally is it's given me access to higher profile events with bigger audiences and to ultimately up my speaking fee there was a period or a season in my life when I was doing public speaking where I was being paid $0 to speak it actually cost me money to speak meaning I'd have to drive give up my time and I was just doing it for free but today I'm happy to share with you I went from going from free to like a couple thousand bucks to 10,000 to $30,000 within a relatively short period of time because people see the content they are auditioning you the entire time they're like we like the things that you say we like how you sound and you're messaging and and just the whole persona but that we love your audience and they're very engaged and so we think by having you as a headliner that this is going to attract people quite literally before we did this call today I was telling you I was doing a webinar with one of our friends Neil dingra and he's having me there because some part of his audience wants to know more from me or haven't heard of me and so this is an opportunity for us to connect and it's a pretty awesome thing so some of you who aspire to be authors or public speakers which are the original thought leaders if you had a stronger social presence with a more engaged fan follow following think about how that might amplify your efforts today there are other opportunities the next thing which is pretty obvious is to have people who are who have aligned interest with you who want to sponsor your channel like say I'm using Apple products I'm using Canon and Sony and Lumix and I'm using lots of products all over my my desktop and and and Logitech so some of those companies in Road might say look hey we'd love to support you we'll send you equipment that's awesome so instead of costing money for you to go out and acquire the gear the manufacturers will give you the gear and they just don't give you the gear they give you the gear ahead of everyone else and often times there's no obligation if they're just giving you gear it's like gifts and kind there's no official sponsorship thing you should disclose that you were given the the device if it was given to you but you're not obligated to say good or bad things now my general rule of thumb is I accept everything I don't talk about everything and I I I had the caveat where if I don't like it I won't say anything but if I like it cuz I need to be genuine then I can say it cuz I'm not going to be out here pedling things that I don't like cuz it's not good reflection on my values and it's not a good way to keep my community involved in what I'm doing and so when you escalate the sponsorship not only do they give you their products to give you cash in hand as they say money and this is an awesome thing so we're approached quite often to talk about products and services that are aligned AI software tools plugins things to make designers lives easier and those people will give you some money they'll give you thousands of dollars to tens of thousands of into over $100,000 I've done two such promotions or collaborations that have paid me 120 Grand each and that to me blows my mind you work all year for YouTube for yourself actually and you might make 300 Grand that's a lot you can do three sponsor deals in a year and barely do anything and make 360,000 you know the really cool part of this and I want to share this point too is that the kind of sponsored posts that you do are low production high integrity High authenticity so it's like unlike the old commercial days when a client gave us 150 Grand to make a commercial they expect craft Services they want to know who your DP is and they want to make sure there's a whole crew and there's a stage and there's wardrobe and casting and like ah all your money is gone but for sponsored content however you create content normally is what they're expecting so you already own all the gear and if it's just talking to camera or often times they just prefer you to shoot on your iPhone the production cost is very little and you then get to reap most of the profit now I want to share this idea with all of you it's a it's an observation I've had recently in the old days I'm talking about the last 10 years there was value in hiring a crew to go and shoot videos to promote a product or a launch or something like that and to squeeze it down let's talk about the real estate market so if you're selling a property that's $5 million plus up into the $100 million range you're going to want pristine video quality old days they would bring you out and you'd have expensive cameras and gear and crew and big gimbals and this whole production and set up lights everywhere and they would pay you money to do that and those days seem to be quite gone because the technology that has been democratized has created a lower barrier to entry cameras are cheap sensors are great lenses are fairly cheap so any person with like a nice graduation gift from their parents can go out and produce high quality photo and videos so it's eroded the market what I've seen though is a shift away from getting paid to produce the video but getting paid to host the video I'm watching videos that are for properties that are $3 million and up with a variety of people hosting and their talent and their ability to speak runs the gamut I I don't want to name names but I watched this gentleman he was talking about a piece like property that was $7 million somewhere in Los Angeles he's going through he's talking about it and it's fairly fact-based but I'm not really feeling anything and I'm like he didn't really add anything and then there's this guy I don't know what his National or his ethnicity is his name is enus and he does the craziest properties the most expensive Penthouse sold in the world the most expensive property in Dubai 34 million 80 million $200 million proper property and the reason why he's invited or probably paid to speak about these properties is because a people enjoy watching the videos they they have hundreds of thousands of views some of them have over a million views and he brings a personality to it so here's the here's the paradigm shift if you will Mo is this if you're a videographer who shoots Properties or events or weddings change your mindset change what you sell to move away from the production aspect of it to the hosting of it this is where the X Factor comes in where you exponentially increase the value and you become Irreplaceable you are one of one very critical idea so the difference between NIS and other people who present property they're like well this is marble countertop and this is wooden cabinets I'm like what Andis would say this I first want to walk you through the beautiful foyer and we're going to go into the kitchen I just want to take a moment and tell you this is Kata marble and this is book Matched and look at the chamford edge and I love the beefiness the thickness of this and imagine you sitting there having breakfast with your family or having a meeting here and entertaining all these people right this is Quon Oak that's been pickled matte finish and the hardware is German and DET talkx about it look look at the Soft Touch look at the thoughtful features that they've included in here and when you're ready to to like make all this stuff disappear you push this button and everything disappears so his level of speaking about architecture and fixures and painting a picture in in our minds is way different than this other person who's been doing these properties both of them are experienced they tell a totally different story and there's a reason why NS is the guy they call to do these videos and what's really interesting and I'm seeing a trend here is he has some banter with a camera person so it's like this whole show between and and and the camera guy and they're like what do you think I've never seen the camera guy but he does speak and he brings a different perspective and they're like oh I didn't notice that that's a good thing that you just brought up and the chemistry between the two is almost like a video podcast about real estate property so those of you out there who are shooting architectural videos for real estate you're probably getting paid a couple thousand bucks to do this but I bet you they're not flying you across the world to New York to LA to Dubai to parts of Europe to France to Turkey to talk about the property cuz you ain't that person they'll just hire a local person to do it for much less let's let's talk about this cuz we have a few friends that I mean we have many friends that do this for a living we do right I think if I was a person hearing this for the first few times it's really hard to wrap my head around you mean to tell me I can make money for just showing up and sharing my knowledge I want you to ground this in reality for someone who's hearing this for the first time what is kind of the mental shift you have to make to enter into this type of occupation to believe that this is something that can be done outside of the evidence that other people have been doing it well look the world has changed and it's changed a lot to even use the Playbook from 5 years ago makes you feel like really ancient and out of touch we have to do this thing and you can listen to me or you don't have to entirely up to you but I want you to mark on your calendar this is the first day I heard of this concept and what I choose to do now let's revisit this in 3 years so some of you will make no changes and you're like okay I made the right gamble look at where I'm at now and the ones who made the right decisions will will be affirmed that they did the right thing I can almost guarantee you if you don't heed what I'm saying you will not reap the rewards of what I'm going to tell you and your life will not change for the better it will change for the worse as we've seen this right we used to go out and do real estate videos and I would say like you know it's 40,000 bucks and they would pay us and now they're not going to pay you $4,000 forget about that like the real estate agent themselves will go and just like take a few Clips with their phone and literally posted on the website I know cuz I work with real estate agents right because there's no value ad so the big shift here and this is what you need to hear from me okay which is you have to be less of behind the camera talent to in front of camera Talent that's the big shift okay there's only one of you in the world and when you hide that you're holding back to Value there's lots of people who can move the camera people who can edit and do color grading and add some visual effects lots of people actually there's a whole lineup of them because they're in my DMs all the time but there's very few people who could talk about things in a way that captures your imagination there's just a handful of people I'm watching all these real estate videos and I I stumbled into a rabbit hole now I'm comparing contrasting and I'm out there into the real world extracting the lessons and sharing with you guys so that you can level up and learn I I promise you this if you're laying tile work if you're doing Plumbing if you're a roof contractor or a person who uh trims Lawns or spray cleans driveways the minute you get good at making the content part of it your business will change and we've seen this people who clean rugs oh my God piece of garbage cars and clean out every little piece do to some of that ASMR thing with the like little brush cleaning out the gaps in between the gear shifter oh it makes me so happy it's so satisfying and all they're doing is they're not even on camera that's the crazy part all you're seeing on camera is the before and after as it's happening so because I think sometimes people will hear you say like you have to be in front of the camera there's a lot of ways to be in front of the camera outside of video like you can write I know a lot of writers that make very good money with courses that are just written blog posts um videos that are that you don't see them they they call themselves like faceless creators right they make a good script and they talk about and there's good videography and b-roll around it so in front of the camera just means to make the content to actually present the content to the world present your thinking to the world the medium can change it could be audio it could be written it could be video what we're talking about is you got to stop being invisible to the media indeed when anyone else can do it then anyone else will do it and anyone else will charge a lot less than you that's the problem the reason why these videos work so well so this is like a subnote to our conversation is if you want to have the formula for creating videos that get seen by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people you follow a couple formulas number one you avoid speaking if you can because when there's no dialogue in it it is something that can appeal to people heart of hearing people who speak a d language and it's Universal so your audience just opened up to everyone in the world versus just to people understand this language so you focus on visual storytelling the second part is you take in the more powerful of the two senses what you hear ASMR is a powerful thing because the soundscape in which you create are more satisfying they're more hooky if you will than the visuals that you see don't believe me watch your favorite movie and turn the volume down to zero and see how you feel conversely turn off the screen turn up the volume and you imagine the lightsaber battle the start Destroyer flying past you and you you feel all the feels my theory on this Mo I think it's more than just a theory the difference between a lowbudget production and a blockbuster film is all the money they spend in sound design in composing a additional voice over recording and everything else they do to make the sound Lush and you can feel it versus capturing natural sound so they do fulley they do all kinds of things and I was listening to this uh this Instagram account that showed how they designed the sound for like Godzilla or something this is a sound designer at their best they're taking sounds like this watch I'll do this for you for your ASMR heads and they'll take that and process it through something and they'll add Reverb and it was like and then you're like that was where it was from this is not just fully this is beyond this is sound design and they would add in like a young calf and like like that and they would take that and they would change it and now sounds like Godzilla is like and you can hear it you're and they layered this stuff in MO focus on the thing that people listen to more than the what they watch the sound design the soundscapes and so there's plenty videos of pressure watching hedging Lawns and whatever they do that's super super satisfying okay the next part to having something that go viral or getting lots of views is seeing a real transformation once we look at the ugly overgrown lawn and it's like there's bald patches of grass and crab grass and you can't even see the sidewalk you're slowly pulling back the curtain to get to the destination and it's it's super addictive cuz like I can't leave now I need to know how the story ends and it's a story that's very easy for us to follow so you have real transformation you have a before and after so if you can include that like the the dirt rug that's just like there's nothing there and then next thing you know it's like a Nintendo Pokemon rug I'm like that was underneath all that to reveal that thing or the car this is something they've mastered in television like those Home Makeover shows they can never show you the finished product because as soon as you see the finished product you're out cu like oh I like it I don't like it thank you so they just show you working on it and then Ty the host says show me the house and they push past the the photo before and then you see it and there's tears of joy and you're like this is the culmination of it so we don't necessarily watch for the end result we watch for the transformation and the feelings that we get so if you focus on those three things your videos are going to have a much higher probability of catching the algorithm because people want to see that this is important there's a before and after there's no dialogue it's rich with soundscape and Design if you do nothing else just follow those three roles and your videos should perform better yes 100% when there's a good payoff and you can see that transformation like I think one of the biggest takeaways for me as I got into this space on a smaller scale currently and continuing to build my own personal brand is like do not just be a watcher like be a student when you consume like take a second and pause after you watch a really good video whether it's a short or a long video and ask yourself like why did I stay the whole time what are they doing that's keeping my attention and then and then when you ask that question like watch it again and like literally ask yourself like how did they open the video what are the sounds that are in there what are the clips how are they shooting especially those that are like have really figured it out what I love to do is go to a profile that's huge now but everyone starts at zero right and I like to just scroll all the way down because I'm a student of content and I can you know you can see the transformation when they figured it out because it's just little building blocks on top of each other of making micro changes over time to really nail it and once they nail it nine times out of 10 they just stay in that pocket they stay in the pocket that they're good at so big takeaway is go from Watcher to student when you consume anything to add to that I'll make it easier for you yeah I'll make it easier for you I learned this from Brenan cane look at pieces of content through the three FS the three FS okay facts fun and feeling ask yourself what did I learn in terms of facts what are the data points in which they're sharing with me in this video how how am I having feelings of fun what are they doing actively to make me feel like this is super fun and lastly what checking with yourself what what are the emotions I'm feeling what did they do to elicit those emotions from me the best most viral videos do all three simultaneously because as it turns out through the studies that Brendan has done that 90% of the population learns from one of these three things so if you only speak to facts you only get 30% of the population if you only speak about feelings then you only get get 30 so you want to incorporate all three things so getting back to our architecture example okay it's pretty easy to see in architecture so there's the person who quite literally walks you through the property tells you how many square feet the lot is where it's located what neighborhood it's in those are all facts square footage how many bedrooms onsuite baths whatever it is it's like blah blah blah there's two pools two fireplaces that's all facts necessary and I need to know the price too but not very captivating and then there's are people who then bring a feeling to it and the best way to elicit a feeling is you say this magic phrase it begins with imagine mhm or picture yourself MH and there's something really strange about this word so if I were to direct the audience right now imagine yourself working in a beautiful home overlooking the ocean or the Canyons or the desert and you waking up every morning surrounded by nature and beauty and just realizing how great your life is then imagine yourself walking your slippers over to the kitchen and there's a hot espresso already made for you because your part-time live-in Chef whatever it is has prepared you your favorite meal can you smell the RO of the coffee can you feel the the salty air from the beach the crispness of the the the mountain air from from summer or spring or whatever it is you can because you can't help yourself when somebody says imagine or picture yourself it's it's one of these magical phrases that opens up the subconscious mind to allow us to go there and so that's what these people do they say imagine entertaining 100 guests and they're by the pool someone serving drinks and this is your wine seller and you get to talk about X Y and Z that's what you do when when you activate the feelings part of it and then the last part is to have fun now some of these real estate videos I've seen this new woman and I'm watching her videos and she always does one wacky weird thing in the video and it becomes part of her subconscious signal to the audience cuz we're like What weird thing is she going to do she's fairly attractive good proportioned woman and she'll go in and she'll go into the home gym and she goes you know what I'm going to try to lift this weight it's 50 lbs I'm not sure if I can do it but let's try and we're like oh my God and she does it like good for you good for you or she'll sit in the sauna and it's like okay that's the wacky thing that she's doing so she's having fun and we get the sense that she enjoys her job so we enjoy watching the video with her here's an exercise you're like okay Chris I'll easy for you guys to say you like to talk and you have a good vocabulary do this watch one of these real estate videos these home tours make some notes and then play it turn the volume down and talk over it it's really good practice it's something I'm going to do with my kids and my wife I'm like okay everybody we get to watch this pick up some terminology write some notes think about what you want to say and then each person gets to do the presentation to the exact same video if you do this enough times you're going to start to see like oh I can do this let's switch gears briefly here to sports I love P listic Sports Mano Mano hand toand combat right either boxing or mixed martial arts and and one of the best ever to do it is a guy named Jim Lampley we've talked about him before he's on the HBO broadcast team and the broadcast team usually consists of three people a play-by-play guy a color commentator and a former pro athlete champion and what's really interesting and it's unparalleled because I haven't seen anybody us do it as well as Jim lample he's been doing this for decades is he's the play-by-play guy but what he described is not literally what you see and it makes me become so excited again if you turn the volume off a sporting event it's not so exciting but if you turn the volume on and I've gone to Live Events when I've watched UFC fights before it's not the same experience I'm not saying it's better or worse but I I want to hear Joe Rogan I want to hear whoever is in the booth talking about the fight because they add texture and Nuance to the to the event that I can't perceive with my eyes alone okay so what Jim Lampley will do is like he throws a jab another jab it's unanswered he's like saying come at me if you have the guts I'm like that's not what he's saying but I feel like he could be thinking right and the other person recalls and then surprisingly he throws a left hook back and barely misses grazing the nose of the other person like he could smell the leather on his glove or he was like he just gave him a haircut there any any closer and it would probably be lights out good Night Irene you know whatever he they're going to say and Jim Lampley does just so well I wish the play-by-play people at the UFC could do this because that would take sport that I love so much to the very next level Joe Rogan serves as the color commentator right he's not a professional athlete but he adds color and comedy and I think this is where hip-hop people do such a good job you know let's just say it black and brown people do this really really well and I'm just I'm addicted to these videos where they do reactions what you want to do is you have this Ultra Clean Ultra minimal kitchen but you have a toaster you have a oven you might have a microwave you might have a food mixer and you have a coffee maker and it clutters this beautiful design so what they do is they build in these things where you can hide all that stuff until when you need it and it's hidden behind a wall they call it appliance garage and the very thoughtful kitchens the ones that are designed for people to actually use and live in they design these into it and so there's this marble backsplash and this wall just comes sliding up and the guy who's doing this oh my no no I I need this right now this is so good you know he goes so over the top like and he's like swearing and angry that it's so good that I'm like he needs to do the voiceover for every that's like this because he's so funny so he through his talent through his voice through his lens and his language his cultural experiences can describe something or just react to it in such a way that it makes the video infinitely more watchable I think I hope that people listening are hearing these examples and saying oh I can do this because there's different formats to content like a lot of people that may be watching our Channel right now is like well I have to educate and I have to you know teach something and I have to be like brilliant at this thing and and Chris started making content after 25 years in business and it's like you can ease into it even the inkling of telling yourself like well someone's already doing it just kind of push that to the Wayside because like Chris said you have a specific flavor you have a specific side you have a specific background that you bring that to if you choose the commentator route if you think about that type of video now it's very different than this whole like pressure washing hedging Lawns and things like that these are reactionary commentary videos and the video itself is the fact part MH it's an appliance garage I get it mhm but what they're adding is fun and feelings that's all they're adding to it that's right way over the top and it's delightful to see people so excited about something or so angry about something you know those videos are like no no afcan way that's not going to work I'm like oh my God my life has changed take my money take all my money right now I will they're like I will go into poverty to buy this right now and they do it in their own Charming way and it's such a beautiful thing to see and so in this world the companies produce products facts they're looking for people to bring fun and feeling to it and that could be you those now kind of primed okay this is a viable thing this is something that I can do based on your 10-year history now with this domain tell people what they should avoid doing if they enter this thing three things that you should avoid when making content is number one don't treat this as another means to Market your products and services this is not about advertising to your prospects that's a whole different Channel that's a whole different person who's going to teach you how to do that that's necessary and vital but don't take what we're doing and pervert it into ways to get more money from people because you're not going to create long-term value for yourself you're not going to develop a thousand true fans by advertising to them every second that you get a chance to number two is have a hypothesis and just start creating and test and experiment and learn as you go at some point if you stay in the game long enough and not quit you will find your magic formula and once you find your magic formula you go all in on that and so this is a wonderful piece of news for many people which is don't wish for or want an instant hit because you didn't get time to expl explore all these things it's good for you to explore lots of things so that you know what you really want to do so you can refine it and you can get better and better if you watch the original Mr Beast videos when he's a kid saying somebody's name for like a million times but he took those principles about creating Cliffhangers or stunts over-the toop things Feelgood videos and I think he said he spent something like1 120 million dollar a year making content which is bananas to me so he figures out how to create mini Cliffhangers create overthe toop videos but only through the process of trial and error so I think it's really important for you to enter into this with not with such a fixed idea as to who you're going to be I'll make this super personal relatable to you okay when I first was making content it was about ux design and UI for websites that's not my jam it's not what I do but I did it because that's what Jose did and that's what he knew and eventually I started making videos about logo design or typography and layout because that's what I knew but that wasn't my jam either it wasn't until one of my former students asked me hey I I need some business coaching I can't afford to pay you what can we do I'm like well if you peer on camera allow me to tell the story and we're super transparent about everything then that will give me value and sure enough an audience started to show up and it told me hey Chris there are a lot of people out there making design content some of them are better than you some of them are worse there's a lot of people out there making business content again some of them are better some are worse but very few people who can actually speak authentically from a place of experience design and business and that could be you and when I started making that content it started to connect and resonate with people I enjoy talking about this and so now it's like I let the audience tell me like what is good and valuable not once in my life did I think during those period that we would have two and a half million subscribers on our Channel talking about the business of creativity I'm like this is too nerdy this is so Niche why would anybody watch this stuff but you know what shows you what each one of us knows about our audience which is very little there's a community for everything like there's literally a community for everything there is going to be somebody that aligns with the interest that you are passionate about and I think that's a really cool thing like don't we have who's who's our friend he made like a second Channel about Pokemon cards Pat Flynn yeah he likes Pokemon there's an audience for that and that one blew up fast than his original content marketing channel don't sell yourself short like Chris always tells me your weirdness is going to be what attracts people and I think he's really right in that regard for sure that'll lead me to my third Point here and which is everybody emulates the people they think are successful in the process of emulating what successful and is a great way to learn there's nothing wrong with that you lose some part of yourself cuz you're now a poor copy of someone who's doing it better and longer than you and why would someone choose you over the original person so I I'm I'm coming to embrace this idea that being weird is better than being better being different is your competitive Advantage so in your pursuit of emulating what other people do you're some poor copy of that person and it's okay to do this so that you learn and you you you go through the mechanics and like now I know how to create content that's great but at some point you need to turn the lens on yourself and say like what makes me different and unique and people are noticing this about me and my transformation from from this 10-year Arc from being the guy who wears the suit literally with suit and tie talking about business being quite stiff on camera to this person who's like with the drip the street wear layered on top of the LV stuff you know and then me leaning into my personality laughing wholeheartedly and sometimes crushing people's souls online it's just that's who I am that is me all of me and you can love it or you can leave it or you can be about it whatever pick your poison I don't really care what is a final word that you would want to give somebody for this video and I feel like if if I have a hunch the if the community wants more videos Around The Creator economy making money online uh through the Creator economy just tell us in the comments below if you want more videos around this topic and we'll be glad to do so but Chris final thoughts let me land the plane for you okay number one is make the commitment to do something and start putting out content and don't fall in love with your content so much so that you can't make any changes I don't know why people do that there's nothing that says you can't change tomorrow and show up differently and and and and talk about the things that really stirs your soul and makes you really happy you can do that any point in time and number two is don't be so proud to beg you know what you do your content and you're you're like stuck and you're like I've been doing this for a couple of years I'm not going anywhere go get some freaking help you know reach out to another Creator and say you know I really admire your content I've been following it and is there something that we we where we can make an arrangement where I study under you I can pay you something is do you have any kind of programs that I can enroll in and often times creators are just happy to help other creators but don't do it on your first video do that after you do your 50th video because it looks like you you're just trying to shortcut everything in life and I want to just give up give a shout out to somebody in particular when we were fairly young in our YouTube game there was a gentleman his name is Roberto Blake we had a relationship with him and he's like hey a couple things that you guys can do that will change it for you he taught us about titles and algorithms and thumbnail design and he just talked to us through it and he didn't ask for anything exchange I'm a fan of his he's a fan of ours and it's just two creators getting together to talk and we've benefited from that and that helped me to get the kind of momentum that has kept me in the game for for as long as I have because I'm not going to lie to you I think I'm pretty resilient I think I have determination and fortitude but you know what four years in if you don't get results you're like I just want to jump off a bridge how long did it take you before you saw results well I'm not say four years but you know it didn't take but it took some time though it didn't just happen over I would say about a year that's a long time about a year into making content I started to look at things a little bit differently and then when we found results you go you go where the gold comes out you know it's like that's where the gold is let's go back in there and we keep doing is and you know what none of our growth has been hockey stick growth except for doing the shorts that we saw like remember you and I were talking oh yeah I was walking and I called you one time I'm like mo mo uh have you seen this video it's like it's got 100,000 views and you're like dude which one there's no video there has 100,000 views and I see the one that's 240 I'm like oh shoot I messed up and I went back and I looked at it it's like it's like 360 I'm like holy cow we finally got it the first time in our Lives four eight years into the content creation game let's see that was during the pandemic 2020 that would be uh six years into content creation we actually had our first viral hit maybe our first and only we don't really have viral videos we create meaty hearty nourishing video sandwiches that take time to process and eat this ain't fast food everybody is a slow cooking I I do want to add something and I had to learn this the hard way really do have fun in those beginning stages when you don't have an audience like experiment so much because guess what people won't even see that stuff because you don't you haven't set expectations you haven't nurtured them to to like come for a certain thing like all these different things have a lot of fun in those beginning stages I would argue stay as much as possible outside of the results like definitely look at your insights look at your analytics tweak things but you should be tasting a lot of different things in those beginning stages I'll leave the audience with these three ideas and they're connected and it's something that uh my former business Mentor shared with me rest in peace Kier McLaren do the work trust the process stay out the results you stick with those three things you're going to do well in life do the work trust the process and stay out the results all right gang that's everything if you enjoyed this video please make sure to subscribe because I noticed that not a lot of us are subscribing but we are watching so we need to change that for the YouTube gods and Chris tell them about some of the upcoming changes that are going to be happening on the channel here shortly I'm going to get real real with you all right now you all know that my mission is to teach a billion people how to make a living doing what they love and our community is broke there they're broken a lot of different ways but they're not broken they're just broke financially and the only way we can continue doing what we do to make this big impact that I want to change and disrupt education the way it's done is some of you guys have to buy our products and I also simultaneously realize is we flood you with so much content that we put so much value in this that there's no room on your plate for anything else so you're like I can't get through the free content why would I buy something else so this is unfortunately me sabotaging my own career and we're feeling it like everybody's feeling the Financial pressure and our our sales are down and I'm trying to think what do I need to do differently so moving forward what we're going to be doing is we're going to release videos and there's going to have they're going to have an expiration date I'm not sure yet what it's going to be but let's just say it's 48 Hours it might be a little bit longer to give you a chance to view it maybe 72 hours something like that where you get to watch the content for free this fulfills my mission to teach people for especially for people who need it the most who can't afford to buy our stuff no problem so tune in watch the videos share them with people and everyone extracts maximum value from it but afterwards it's going to disappear it's going to be moved into our premium channel only the people who subscribe or pay for that will be able to watch it I think this way we can have a happy balance between these two things so if you want to continue watching make sure that you not only become I forget the term for it but not just subscribe and follow the channel but become a premium member so you can support us in our Endeavor to teach if enough of the people that watch this stuff who literally tell me in the comments you changed my life you you helped me through rough patches you made this kind of money but they never buy anything so it's like guys you got to help me help you I want to do this so those who are in a position who can afford it you support everyone who cannot and we think what we've done every single day is to Foster an audience and community that is here for each other it's not a doggy dog world it's like we run with the wolves and it's one giant wolf pack and we take care of our own that's how we can do this so I hope you'll support me in this endeavor so you're going to start to see a slowly disappearing library of videos we realize what we've done is we put too much content out there in our Zeal to teach people but we're undermining our own business operation because you're just not buying our our our stuff and we we can't continue to do this and I'm in it for the infinite game I need to make enough money so that I can pay people a livable wage so we can have fun doing this while teaching you and continue to do this for not years to come but decades to come so that's it for me I hope you support this endeavor let me know your thoughts in the in the comments below