Episode 006: Josh Spector - Creating, Promoting, and Monetizing Your Content

Creator Business Show
November 1, 2021

Josh Spector is a consultant, newsletter publisher, and creator. Josh shows other creators how to identify their audience, and helps them monetize their content. He also helps creators develop social media strategies, grow their newsletter, and build businesses around their creative work.

Josh publishes a weekly newsletter called For The Interested. It features ideas to help creators produce, promote, and make money from their creations. He also shares his knowledge on Twitter, and runs a second newsletter called This Is How I Do It. It features a behind-the-scenes deep dive into exactly how Josh creates, markets, and sells his content, products, and services.

In this episode, Josh and I talk about eliminating distraction as a creator. We talk about not spreading yourself too thin, and making sure you’re connecting with the people that need you the most. We also talk about how you present transformation to your audience, and much more.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • A simple trick for increasing your conversion rate
  • A savvy mindset shift for staying motivated as a creator
  • Getting the most value and production from your content
  • A clever branding strategy to make your newsletter more appealing

Links & Resources

Josh Spector’s Links

Transcript

00:00:00 Josh:


I’m huge on repurposing content. Most people don’t get nearly the value they should out of the content they create. Every blog post I write is not only going to be a blog post that is evergreen and can be used again. Whatever the underlying idea is, the quote unquote “intellectual property” within that blog post, I’m going to leverage in all sorts of different ways.


00:00:34 Chikodi:


Hey guys, this is Chikodi, host of The Creator Business Show. Today, I’m talking to Josh Spector, from JoshSpector.com.


He’s a consultant who works with creators. He helps them identify their audience, and he helps them monetize.


We’re going to talk about how you eliminate distraction. How you eliminate spreading yourself too thin, and make sure that you’re talking to the people who need you. We’re also going to talk about how you present your transformation.


A lot of great content. So, I’m really excited to dive in. Thank you for joining us on today’s episode of The Creator Business Show.


Josh, do you want to tell us a little bit about who you are, and what you do?


00:01:23 Josh:


Thanks for having me. I am an audience growth strategist, consultant, and newsletter creator. I run the For The Interested newsletter, which I have done for a little over five years now. It comes out every Sunday, and then I have a one paragraph daily weekday edition, as well.


It’s designed to basically help creators produce, promote, and profit from their creations. It’s a combination of usually one original article a week that I write, as well as curated articles, and videos, and podcasts from other people. In addition to that, in terms of, how I generate revenue, there are ads in the newsletter.


That’s one revenue stream. Working as a consultant is probably my main revenue stream. I sell some info products, and I have a—I don’t actually call it a paid “newsletter,” I call it paid “resources,” which we can get into. But, people are more likely to pay for resources than a newsletter, which is something interesting I discovered.


It’s called, This Is How I Do It, and that has an archive about 60 or so resources in there. And I publish a new one every week, as well.


00:02:48 Chikodi:


You publish a new resource every week?


00:02:50 Josh:


Yes. Each of those are deep dives behind the scenes of how I do something to grow my audience and business. So, pretty much everything I do is how creators grow their audience and business in various ways. Whether that’s consulting. Whether that’s showing how I do it. Whether that’s sharing information and you know, in my newsletter, and things like that.


00:03:13 Chikodi:


That’s a brilliant turn of phrase, resource, not newsletter. How much revenue have you seen grow by calling your product a resource instead of a newsletter?


00:03:26 Josh:


Well, I don’t have a, I don’t have a specific number, but I can say so I’ve I launched, this is how I do it probably a little over a year ago. almost a year and a half ago. And I think initially I was calling it a paid newsletter and, you know, like with anything, the messaging is always sort of a work in progress.


And I started to notice that as I would experiment it, promoting it in my free newsletter, you know, I was always sort of tweaking the copy and what happens when I do this. And I just, I don’t have specific numbers, but I noticed when I refer to these things as resources. They, it converted better. And I think there was a perception of value that, people believe their quote, unquote resource is more valuable than a newsletter.


The other thing is, you know, to be honest, so each of these resources, they’re, they’re evergreen, they’re timeless for the most part. So it actually, in a lot of ways is a more accurate description than a, you know, it’s not, here’s, I’m not sharing news, I’m not sharing here’s what happened. and, and as it, as time went on, certainly as it went on, like when someone joins now and, and I offer, there’s two ways I sell it.


You can get an annual subscription. right now that’s $120 a year. or I make select individual issues from my archive available for single purchase for $15. So I don’t, I don’t even offer a monthly subscription anymore. so it’s annual, or if you want to sample it, you can buy one of those individual issues.


So again, that too is a very sort of resource dynamic. So when someone’s buying now, they’re not just getting everything I share for the next year. They’re getting the 60 resources that are already in there. And I think that’s very different than the typical paid newsletter, which depending on sort of what they’re covering, like their archive may not be that valuable.


Right? Like I I also like the term resource, because I think it’s more, timeless. It suggests that what you’re paying for is sort of this collection of information, as much as you’re paying for the new stuff


00:05:46 Chikodi:


And did you get that idea from somebody or did you just, was it like a flash of inspiration? Like, let me experiment with this.


00:05:53 Josh:


Yeah. I mean, it just, it’s just sort of, it just sort of came to me as I experimented and, and stuff evolved. you know, the one thing with everything I do my free newsletter as well. Like I’m very focused on creating sort of evergreen, longterm, valuable content in everything that I do. I don’t cover, you know, my newsletters not going to cover here’s the new Twitter feature, you know, Facebook announced desks.


Like I don’t cover news. I want everything that I create to have a longer window of value. So that, and again, that’s true in free and paid products. So as a result, you know, this is how I do it, the pay price. Has been way more, you know, it just continues to get more and more valuable because I’m building up this archive and content library, which is really different than I think how a lot of people think about certainly media businesses, where they’re like, what’s in the news today, you know?


And they have, if I cover, you know, I saw Twitter today, I think rolling out like tips, functionality, you know, if I do a thing about Twitter, rolling out tips, that’s fine. But that’s valuable for maybe a week, a couple of weeks, a couple months at most. if I do instead do a thing about the underlying principles of how to turn Twitter followers into customers, for example, that’s likely going to be valuable for years.


Right. So, you know, and, and I, my background, I’ve been a full-time consultant for over five years now, but before. I’ve worked in a variety of jobs in, you know, marketing and media and entertainment. so I have sort of a Hollywood background and I think what a lot of people, I think not purposefully, but I now have realized that I’ve sort of adapted some of that.


Like the real value in Hollywood is in the content libraries. It’s not the new stuff, it’s the intellectual property. And it’s the libraries, right? Think about how much money the office has made after they stopped making episodes of the office. Right? These timeless assets are massive. And if you compare that to, let’s just say hypothetically like a news broadcast, there’s not a lot of value in an episode of the nightly news from a month ago


00:08:22 Chikodi:


You can’t sell yesterday’s hotel room.


00:08:25 Josh:


Right? Exactly. So, so I think that approach of understanding that when you do things that are relatively evergreen or time. The, the return on investment. You know, when I have blog posts that I wrote five years ago to get me new clients today, the value of that time spent creating just compounds over time.


And, and it’s, you know, I’m always amazed again, you can’t do it with everything, but I’m amazed that people choose to invest in things that have a very short value span. Doesn’t seem like the best use of time


00:09:02 Chikodi:


Yeah. Well, I was just thinking in terms of SEO, you know, it’s like people aren’t searching for yesterday’s news, but they are searching for evergreen resources. So by investing your time on the front end to something, that’s going to have lasting value, you create it once and it can pay dividends in perpetuity.


So it’s a very smart strategy. You’re a creator is creator. Talk about your audience for a second.


00:09:28 Josh:


So my audience, you know, I use the term, creator sort of very broadly. you know, it’s not, my audience, you know, I tend to focus more on sorted in what I would call sort of independent creators or individual creators. I’m not, and this is true of my consulting as well. Like a lot of what I share may be relevant to big companies or big brands who are trying to figure out social strategies or how to use newsletters, but I’m really more focused on sort of the individual creator.


And I have my audience spans all of that. Right. I have people who work at studios and then I have people who are, you know, into comedians or writers or trying to write a novel or whatever. but I’m more focused on, you know, like anybody I’m sort of focused on. Helping, you know, there’s a thing where I always sorta talk to people about target audience.


And I think a lot of times, you know, your target audience is the person you are a few years ago. So for me, my audience is people who want to use their creativity to sort of build independent businesses and make, you know, make a living at it. And that can take that takes all different, you know, there’s a big difference between a comedian and an entrepreneur.


Let’s say, although the entrepreneur to be successful needs to learn how to be more creative and the comedian needs to net learn how to be more entrepreneurial. So I’m sort of somewhere in the middle of that kind of art and business spectrum, helping people on each side and try to figure out how to do do the other, but it definitely skews individual independent people as opposed to a sort of bigger company.


00:11:18 Chikodi:


I love what you just said, that your audience is who you were a few years ago.


00:11:22 Josh:


Yeah.


00:11:23 Chikodi:


I was checking out your, your tweets and your, your medium posts. Do you want to talk about how you actually do the hands-on consulting? you said I’m paraphrasing here, but basically that, creativity is addition by subtraction and that constraint is really central to delivering the maximum value.


So how do you actually get somebody to go through that journey of deciding and committing to doing one thing and doing that one thing?


00:11:58 Josh:


Yeah. I mean, I think it, obviously it depends a little bit on who the person is and what their goals are and what they’re, what they’re trying to do. But in general, I think what I help people with a lot is, clarity.


00:12:09 Chikodi:


You have clarity calls, right?


00:12:11 Josh:


Yeah. Well, it’s funny because I was tweeting about that the other day.


And, you know, there are typically when I work with clients, so what I don’t do


00:12:20 Chikodi:


So you don’t do newsletters, you do resources and you don’t do consulting. You do clarity calls.


00:12:25 Josh:


Right. Well, I do consulting also, but even the consulting, like, you know, I, I am not, I’m not interested in building an agency, a company like that kind of thing. So I can only work with so many people because I, you know, it’s just sort of me, it’s from a consulting perspective. So what I, what I like to do is I have not been, you know, I don’t do social media management.


I don’t do I’m much more on a strategic level than it. You know, I’m going to help you figure out how to do this. I’m not necessarily going to do it for you. so typically when I work with clients, it’s one of two things, it’s kind of a one-off consulting coaching call, or it’s a sort of, usually one to two.


Sort of, I’m going to help you develop a full strategic plan and start to start to implement it. Right? So those are kind of the two, two ways. I typically work with work with clients and those coaching calls, which initially were a little bit like, Hey, let’s get on the phone and we’ll talk about whatever problems you have.


And I’ll give you some suggestions and feedback. They were a little sort of freeform I’ve, you know, within the past few months, I’ve sort of come up with this framework that has been super effective. And so, and that’s what I’m calling these creator clarity calls. And basically it’s, I take people through this framework and how I I’ve realized that the most important thing you can have to succeed is you really need to be clear on what your goal is, who you need to reach to accomplish it, and sort of how you’re going to do that.


And so on these calls, which are, are they’re 90 minute calls, and I take people through this framework. And where do you see they come out at the end of. Clarity about all these things, including what content they’re going to create, what they’re, you know, which it all leads into. This is what really my goal is.


This is who I need to reach to accomplish it. This is what those people want. This is how I can provide value to them. This becomes my messaging, my, you know, my, my products, my services, my Content, it all aligns to sort of these things. So they come out with clarity and alignment and sort of a plan of, cause one of the things I found is, is a lot of creators.


They’re just not sure they have general or vague ideas about what they want to do or who they want to serve or how they want to monetize or, but they’re not sure. Right. And so I think the, the value of this and why I’ve sort of


zeroed in on this clarity piece is because once you have. It makes everything else easier.


Like it’s still hard, right? You say, it’s not good. You still have to put in the work and you have to create the content and you have to do the sales and make products and build an audience and do all of those things. But those things are almost impossible if you’re not clear and strategic about what you’re trying to do.


And just as importantly what you’re not trying to do.


00:15:19 Chikodi:


And it sounds like you’re trying to boil it down into one sentence for the


00:15:23 Josh:


Yeah. So, so they, so, right. So basically it’s, you know, we, we wind up with one sentence of a goal, one sentence of who you are, your ideal audiences, and then a series of one sentences about what that audience wants. Typically I tend to call them sort of specific wants, but you wind up with basically six to nine sentences.


Right. And you know what I say to people as then, you know, that is your guide point, your filter, your everything, everything you’re doing. Is designed to address and answer one or more of these Watts. And if you’re creating or doing something that doesn’t, you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere, right. Or your goal or the other stuff is wrong.


But so that’s that’s really powerful because it gives people not only does it give them a filter, but it helps them generate content ideas and helps them generate product and service ideas. It helps them understand. They’re able to look at that and go, let me go look at my website or how I’m positioning my newsletter, how I’m, you know, talking about this product, like, is your messaging matching?


Those wants, because if it’s not off.


00:16:32 Chikodi:


Right. It tells you what not to do. Right. And that’s more important than what to do because there’s 99.9% of life is not doing things.


00:16:41 Josh:


Yeah. And along those lines, like one of the things I always say to people is, you know, when I have conversations with people and they’re frustrated about like, oh, I’m struggling to grow my audience or this or that. I’m like, look, you know, You have one of two problems. I guarantee you you’re either doing too much or you’re doing too little, right?


Every creator who’s struggling to grow an audience is in one of those camps. You’re spread too thin. You’re using six social platforms when you should use one, or you’re not doing enough, right. You have a newsletter that you publish. Once every six months, you have a blog post, you know, like you’re not actually putting yourself out there.


What’s amazing is when I say that to people, they, without even digging into it, you know, I’ll sort of say that. And I’ll say, which of these do you think is your problem? And they know instantly and it’s kind of half and half. Right. But there’s definitely people that they’re like, you know, I know how is this going to grow?


You know, how am I going to grow my YouTube channel when I’m making one video every three months? Like, it’s just not going to happen. Right.


00:17:45 Chikodi:


Just need to say it out loud to


00:17:46 Josh:


Right. And, you know, and, and, and maybe again, I don’t know what the percentages are, but maybe even more. So at least with the people I talk to, because you know, they’re, a lot of them are doing too much and they sort of want, they feel like they have to do everything and be everywhere and use all the, you know, use all these platforms.


The social media platform. One is like is, is, is like maybe the most common version of that because they go, oh, I need to put, I need to be on Tik TOK and


I need to be on Instagram and I need to do this. And there’s opportunities on LinkedIn and I should do a podcast and, you know, and all of those things are opportunities.


But like, what I always say to them is, you know, if you, it takes a lot of time and effort to succeed on any one of these platforms. So all the time that you’re spending on another platform, like you’re just less likely to succeed. Like me. I used to


00:18:42 Chikodi:


Yeah, you can suck at six things or you can be really good at


00:18:45 Josh:


Right. Like if you just compiled all that into one platform and they go, yeah, but what about all the op you know, the stock, the people that are there and whatever.


And I say, I was like, you know, do you really think, like, let’s say you’re using Twitter and you’re also using Instagram and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, but I can’t not use Instagram. It’s


00:19:01 Chikodi:


Yeah, you


00:19:02 Josh:


It’s whatever And I’m like, how do I know you sit back? And I’m like, do you really think there’s not enough people on Twitter for you to build the successful thing you want to build?


Because that’s what you’re saying.


Like when you’re like, I have to be over here and here and there, you’re suggesting there’s not, there are more than enough people on any one platform for you to build an


00:19:21 Chikodi:


Totally,


00:19:22 Josh:


Write.


00:19:22 Chikodi:


Know, Blair ends,


00:19:24 Josh:


Yes. I don’t know him personally. I know.


00:19:26 Chikodi:


Win without pitching manifesto. He had a great interview where he said, basically that is that as an entrepreneur. And if we just substitute creator for an entrepreneur conveyor, you know, create our entrepreneur, we always want to see what’s behind the next door and success is that process of choosing that one door.


And then as soon as you go through that one door to the exclusion of all the others, you find out that there’s more doors behind that one, and you’ll never be able to open all the doors behind the one that you choose.


You’ll never be able to run out of ways to use Twitter or YouTube or LinkedIn. And is that kind of what you’re telling


00:20:06 Josh:


Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s hard to do, right. Especially for me, who’s like sort of, you know, I see all of this stuff. Right. I know. I shouldn’t say I know, but I truly believe I could launch a podcast that would be really successful. And I have for years thought about doing so I’ve even recorded some episodes.


Like I haven’t pulled the trigger ultimately because it’s like, I can only do so much. And if I’m going to do that, so this is another thing that I’ve learned in general. You know, if you’re going to add something on or do something new, something else has to go, you can’t just keep adding. And, and I remember, and I forget where I heard it from, but I remember somebody talking about this and they were actually talking about it even like in a corporate environment.


Right. And they were like, you know, anytime your department adds a meeting, that’s fine, but they need to remove one. Right? Like you, otherwise, you just can’t keep adding on. So while I see opportunities on podcasts while I’d like to do it, I haven’t done it because at the end of the day, I can only do so much.


And I’m like, well, I don’t want to get rid of this newsletter that like, where am I going to make the time for it? And so it’s just sort of on the back burner. And, but I think a lot of people fall victim to feeling like they have to do everything. And that’s why, like, when I have this conversation with them and I’m like, look, you’re either doing too much or doing too little, especially on the doing too much side.


They’re sort of relieved to have someone, you know, it’s nice advice to get, to have someone say, like do less. Right, right. Get rid of some of this stuff and things will get better. I mean, again, my Twitter took off when I stopped using the other stuff, because I had, I got time was reinvested into Twitter and it’s not just the time, but it’s also the focus of messaging.


Right. You know, you’ll see people who they, you know, let’s say you have a newsletter and someone signs up for your newsletter and then they get their welcome email. And you’re like, follow me on Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn and Tik TOK and what, and it’s like, they don’t do anything right. Versus follow me on Twitter.


You have, you know, they still might not do it, but you’ve got a much better shot as sort of, if fo again, this goes back to clarity, right? It, the fewer things you’re doing, the more you’re able to sort of focus your messaging. And say, you know, go here, connect with me here do this. it just simplifies that right there.


00:22:31 Chikodi:


You know, I heard, I think it was build one, grow the other. applied or it was some something to that effect of, you know, grow an audience here and use the other ones. And, you know, there’s algorithms that dictate success on any of those platforms.


So if you’re just, I mean, you’re the expert, not me, but it’s like if you know, specifically that your audience is hanging out here and you really deeply engaging with them, but the content is working, then you can just fluff the algorithm for a different platform and not really be concerned about, you know, like having to deeply engage across all these other platforms.


You can just be everywhere without having to spread yourself thin. If you know that your audience is in one place.


00:23:19 Josh:


Yeah. And the other piece of this too, is, you know, and this gets into sort of a different topic, but like, I’m huge. I’m huge on repurposing of content. And also, you know, most people don’t get nearly the value they should out of the content they create. So, and again, this, this goes a little bit back to maybe some of my Hollywood background.


And you think about, you know, you think about, intellectual property, right? So, you know, Disney makes a movie and those characters become, you know, or it become theme park rides. It becomes merchandise. It becomes soundtrack albums. It becomes spinoff, TV shows. It becomes spinoff Disney plot, right? Like they understand.


You know, the movie may be the initial creation, but it’s the underlying ideas and intellectual property that are the value. And they continue to use them in a million different ways. Right? So I’m the same way. Like if I write a blog post or not, if, but every blog post I write is not only going to be a blog post that is evergreen and can be used, whenever the underlying ideas, the quote, unquote intellectual property within that blog post, I’m going to turn into multiple tweets.


I’m going to turn into things I say to consultants are things I say to clients. I’m an, I’m going to leverage in all sorts of different ways. I’m going to share it in my newsletter. I’m going to, I might use it as an intro in my newsletter. All of that stuff and it becomes this and vice versa. Right? So things that I say to, you know, we’re recording this when this is done, I will listen to it.


Or someone who works for me works with me will listen to it and I will pull out things and be like, oh, that thing I said, that should be a tweet. Oh. And then I’ll post it on Twitter and maybe it’ll do well. And like, oh, maybe that should be a bigger blog post. Oh, maybe that should be this. Maybe I should put it in my newsletter.


And, and not just once initially, but when it works, you know, I repurpose tweets all the time. Like if I post something today that does well, you’re going to see it again three months from now. And you know, and again, and it’s going to resurface here and I’m going to repackage things in interesting ways.


And so most people do not do that. most people create a thing, they share it once or twice. And that’s it


00:25:54 Chikodi:


Yeah. what I talk about with, cause I, I serve clients too. And when we, when I talked to them about Content, I talk about the Thanksgiving Turkey strata. So it’s like, you have the big Turkey on Thanksgiving and you eat what you can eat and then, you know, slice it up for sandwiches. You make Turkey soup, you have leftover stuffing.


So then you have, you know, you have that big bird and it can be repurposed a lot of different ways.


00:26:19 Josh:


Yeah. And so, you know, again, I think most people, or a lot of people, don’t a lot of creators don’t take advantage of that and they don’t think that way. And so as a result, that that’s what leads in part to some of the overwhelm of how do I create all this content? How do I, whatever. And I think, and this is another sort of side note, but there’s people have a lot of assumptions.


About the way things need to be done. Right. So, you know, I, an example I use a lot is I was talking to someone who is a comedian and we were talking about, I’m huge, obviously on newsletters and email lists. And I think everyone, like, that’s the it’s way more valuable than a social media following or whatever.


So I was talking to him and I was like, look like, you need to grow your email list. You know, you need a newsletter to do that. and it can’t just be promoting your shows. It needs to be something that provides value to people and, you know, and he was like, look, I get it. because you need a direct connection to your audience.


And he was like, I get it but I don’t want to write a newsletter. I certainly don’t want to write one every week. Like, it feels like a lot of work and I’m not used, like, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I know I need this. But like, I just, I don’t want, that’s not what I want to create. I said, I get it. But I think you have assumptions about what a newsletter is or has to be that are not.


True newsletter. All I said to him, I was like, all you need is a reason for someone to give you their email address that involves them getting something valuable from you on a regular basis. Right. And I was like, your quote, unquote newsletter could literally be one sentence. I was like, your audience thinks you’re hilarious.


They’re interested in what you find hilarious. Once a week, you could email one sentence. It’s like, Hey, this is the funniest thing I saw this week


00:28:16 Chikodi:


Yeah.


00:28:17 Josh:


As it’s funny and good, they will love it. And they will love it in part because it showed so short. I know you don’t want to write a whole thing. A newsletter doesn’t have to be a whole thing.


They don’t really want to read a whole thing. Right. So I said, versions of this for like the past couple years to various clients of like a newsletter can be totally different than what you think, as long as it just provides value, it doesn’t have to be this big project. Right.


And I was like, it could be, you know, I bet a one sentence newsletter would do great.


And after saying this over and over again, I was like, all right, I’m going to do an experiment. And I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and let’s see if I’m right. And instead of a sentence, I gave myself a paragraph and I started this sort of separate newsletter called the daily graph. And it was, we, every weekday, I sent one paragraph sometimes with a link.


Sometimes it was just a sort of observation or temper, whatever. And, I promoted it on my main newsletter and which has about 18,000 subscribers. And I got like a thousand of them subscribed initially. And they loved it, like huge open rates, huge click rates. it was easy for me to write because I was also worried about the grind of like everyday sending a thing.


But because it was so simple, I was able to schedule like a month in advance. I didn’t feel any pressure of like having to come up with stuff. And it worked really well and I was growing it and it got to about 2000 subscribers. And I got to this point where I was like, all right, well, this thing really works.


People really like it. I have 2000 people getting this thing. I have 18,000 people getting my weekly. I know the 18,000 would like this. It’s just tough to get people to actually check it out. And I was like, I can try to like, grow this thing where I can flip a switch and just merge them and be like, Now, my weekly is also this Daily, this week, day one paragraph thing.


And that’s what I did a couple of months ago. And it’s been great. You know, people, people love it. you know, it is to the bigger picture, like, and I use it, the newsletters and example, but I think it’s true of YouTube videos or Twitter. It’s true of everything, right? These assumptions that there’s a way it has to be done.


And that olives X amount of work, like it’s just not true. All it has to be is valuable to people, And once, once you realize that it frees you up to, I think, frees people up to go, oh man, you know, like I think there’s anyone that’s using. For example, if you’re tweeting once a day, you could have a newsletter,


00:30:44 Chikodi:


Could it be just the length of a tweet? Right.


00:30:46 Josh:


Yep. It’s just a way that instead of the algorithm, everyone’s actually going to get it. Now, if your tweets that’s a different story, but


00:30:53 Chikodi:


For sure, sure. Yeah. speaking of assumptions and money, you know, I’m assuming that one of the difficult parts of your job is actually having uncomfortable conversations about money with creator clients. And my assumption is that they feel that they have to grind and struggle and that the part of the, that they’ve chosen a life of, of grind and that they shouldn’t, that there’s a ceiling on how much money they could make.


Is that, do you encounter that in your. In your work where people don’t really have a confidence around the money part. And that part of what you have to do is help them see just how, how profitable they could be.


00:31:38 Josh:


Yeah. I mean, I would say, I would say, well, so money is definitely a piece of it, but I think everybody’s sort of relationship. To monetization is that like, they all sort of have their own unique issues around it. So there are definitely people that there’s definitely, I don’t know how to get from here to there, right?


Like, how am I ever going to monetize? You know, I want to leave my day job, but I need to make X amount and how, you know, I’m not making anything right now. And how am I going to do that? So you definitely have those people. Then you have another set of people who are almost the opposite end of the spectrum, where they’re completely unrealistic about how easier this is.


They think it’s going to be easy. Right. They see everything else and go, oh, I just put up a course, look at all these people, making money on courses. I’ll just throw up a course and everybody will buy it. you know, they, that’s the other end of the spectrum where like, that’s not going to happen. Like, you know, like I’ve had people, you know, I had a real estate agent come to me.


And be like, oh, will you help me sell my course? And I was like, okay, but do you have any audience? No. What do you want to start with? Like putting content out and like building an audience? No. I’m like you think people who don’t know you exist, they’re just going to randomly buy your real estate course.


And you know, it didn’t really work shouldn’t, you know, I think he was surprised he shouldn’t have been surprised because he tried to like go to like step 10 without doing steps one through nine. so you have people on that end of the spectrum. then you have the other piece with the money thing is pricing and value.


People are all over the map. Most people dramatically under price, based on their own sort of, and especially when they’re starting out, you know, based on their own insecurity or they pick prices just based on.


It seems like most people charge five bucks a month or 10 bucks a month for their thing. again, they get focused on what the thing is versus the value it provides.


You know, how could I charge $50 for an ebook? Well, if your eBooks actually good and it’s going to help people make $5,000, 50 bucks is cheap,


00:34:03 Chikodi:


Nothing.


00:34:04 Josh:


Right? Like, you know, but they’re in the mindset of like, it’s only any book and people can get, you know, quote unquote real books for $25. And how could I, you know, so I think there’s the money thing is complicated.


And everyone’s sort of in a different position. You know, I was talking to someone the other day who had is a, an academic background, in sort of English and writing and his. An expert in persuasive writing. And she wants to start getting people to hire her as a speech writer, basically, speeches and presentations and that kind of stuff.


And we were talking actually about, not pricing, but we were talking about Content and I was like, okay, well you need to put content out there. That is basically like how to write persuasive speeches. Like you want to address the things that the people that you want to hire you. And she was like, but I haven’t done a lot of speech writing.


And I was like, yeah, but you’re, I’m not telling you to say like, Hey, here’s my advice. As an expert speech writer, who’s written a million speeches, but you are an expert in persuasive writing. So as an expert in persuasive writing, here’s how I think you can apply what I know to your speeches. But so that gets into the money thing.


There’s a lot of people that are going after. Whatever it is client sales, but their own insecurities or imposter syndrome is obviously huge of like, well, yeah, I want this thing, but who’s going to pay me for that. you know, like, am I, what quality, especially when they’re starting out, like what qualifications do I have?


And as a result, they undercharge or they’re hesitant, you know, I see one of the things I point out all the time is like, you know, the word aspiring drives me crazy. Like when I see in like people’s bio, like aspiring writer D right? Yeah. They do publish blog posts. Yeah. So you’re a writer, like you’re not an aspire.


Like when you say I’m an aspiring, this aspiring that you’re just telling people, like you’re sinking yourself before you even start. Right. You know, we’re living in a world and this is why I like working with creators and I’m so, and I am on myself and I’m so sort of excited about this space in general is that like, you know, the gatekeepers are.


You don’t need someone to say, you’re a writer because I’m giving you a book deal, or I’m hiring you to do whatever. Like if you write and you put stuff out there, you’re a writer, like say it own it.


00:36:38 Chikodi:


Yeah. Stripe says you’re a writer, not, somebody paying you. Yeah.


00:36:41 Josh:


Yeah. Like, and because, because if you tell, and I’m not saying to like, I’m never, you know, I would never tell anyone to sort of lie about their level of experience or whatever, but you don’t, you know, and again, to each their own, everybody, like does it their own way and learns their own way.


But like, I laugh when I see people going like, oh, I want, I need to go get a certain social media certificate of like, I need to take this thing to, you know, oh, I’m a certified social media manager. Like, that’s just your own insecurity. Like you can either, you either have the skills and you’ve learned to do it, or you haven’t.


00:37:20 Chikodi:


Where you have the chutzpah to just get out there and


00:37:23 Josh:


Right, right. Like, and again, like I’m not saying learning is great and take all the courses you want and all I’m not saying not to get the education, but the idea that you need somebody to give you permission to do, you know, I have a thing that I had written an article about this at some point, but like, you know, you don’t need to wait for someone to give you your dream job to start doing your dream job, whatever it is, like start doing the thing you want to do.


Like, if you want to be a writer, write You don’t need a book deal, you don’t need a, you know, whatever. same thing was, you know, and it goes true for everything, right? Like if you want to be a marketer, go market something like, even, even if you have to do it for free, like, you don’t need someone to hire you to, do that thing.


Right. If you want to give it, you know, if you want. Give investment advice or whatever, like go get, offer free advice to someone. if it you’re, you know, works you’re on your way. but I think that’s the, there’s definitely a lot of insecurity. There’s also a lot of config, you know, confusion, both in terms of, I don’t know how anybody does this, this seems impossible.


And then on the other end of like, oh, it seems so easy. Everybody’s a, you know, everybody’s a creator and making money and I’ll just go do this. and again, I think there’s, you know, for me, so I’m, I’m 46 years old. So I was, you know, a decade into a career before social media was around. So I have a whole other perspective, I think, than a lot of people in this space.


Because I understand what it’s like to create and market things in a sort of pre social media world. But I also, you know, my first blog was in like 1999 or 2000. Like I also understand the sort of social media landscape. So I think the combination of those things, I see a lot of people that are maybe older than me, that don’t quite get the social media stuff.


And then I say people that are younger than me, that like came out of college and their first job was like running some Twitter account, but they have no concept of like


00:39:35 Chikodi:


Marketing.


Yeah.


00:39:37 Josh:


No concept of sort of marketing or business outside of that.


00:39:41 Chikodi:


Yeah. Yeah. Well, let’s stay on the money topic if we can, you know, cause this is The Creator Business Show, you know, kind of like, can you talk about how you get someone to understand their earning potential? There’s like you said, you don’t need to wait for someone to give you your dream job. But on the other hand, people don’t have the confidence necessarily to choose themselves.


So it’s like, can you talk about. You know, you don’t have to name names, but like how you helped a client see, like, I could actually be making three X what I’m making or just that journey to monetization and like how you help people identify the opportunities to make the maximum amount from their


00:40:23 Josh:


Yeah. So the first thing I would say is that, both audience growth and monetization is all about, is always rooted in providing specific value to a specific group of people, right? So that’s the first thing you need to figure out, you know, who are you going to help and how are you going to help them?


And when I say that to people, you know, when I talk about value and you know, they go, well, how do you define, or how do I know what’s value? What’s valuable, right? And to me, value is transforming. So it’s someone who’s at point a and wants to get to point B and your content or product or service or whatever you’re, you know, you’re going to charge for, helps them make that transformation.


So the first thing to do is get really clear on what that is, right. I want to help these people get from here to there. And that bridge is how you’re ultimately going to monetize. If there’s not transformation, it’s probably not valuable. And it’s probably going to be extremely difficult for you to monetize.


So I always talk about, and I see this, especially with like content creators, you know, they, a lot of times aim for interesting as opposed to valuable, interestingly fine, interesting, difficult to manage. Right. Interesting is, oh, that was a, you know, interesting blog post about this and interesting video.


But if it’s not helping them transform and it’s not helping them get from point a to point B, they’re probably not going to pay for it.


So once you get clear on that, now the question is how valuable financially is that transformation for people, right? And this depends a lot on who you’re helping and what you’re helping them do.


And you know, like, so that can be all sorts of things, but from a straight sort of monetization standpoint. So then once you start to think about that, you also get into, I have a blog post, and of course, I won’t remember all the questions now, but I have a blog post about like six questions to consider before you.


Before you try to monetize something. Right. And so one of them is like, you know, are you, are you selling to people who know they have a problem or don’t right. Massive difference either can work huge difference. Right. Do you have to convince people that they have a problem that you’re going to help themselves?


Or are they already out there going, I got a problem. I need a solution for this. another one is, you know, really thinking about, do you want to build a business where you’re selling to, you know, you’re charging a high price to the few people or, you know, like I think the example I use is like, you know, are you selling a $10 product to a thousand people, a hundred dollars product to a hundred people.


And I get screw up the math now I thousand dollars product at 10 people, whatever. Right? Like those, and again, anything can work, but those choices are going to completely shift. Your approach to products and services and audience growth and, and who you need. Right. If people get hung up on reach and followers, well, if you’re selling a high price product and you only need a few people, you don’t need a lot of followers, you don’t need a lot of right.


You don’t need, you know, but, but your positioning needs to attract those people. You don’t want to attract $10 buyers when you have a thousand dollar product.


00:43:53 Chikodi:


That, you know, that’s really interesting too, because there’s actually really good business Content. There’s really good advice on Tik TOK. And there’s obviously hundreds of millions of people on Tech-Talk, but finding that $10,000 a service buyer on Tik TOK is not impossible, but you know, you really, your odds are very low.


I was actually watching a copywriter. I have a really good conversation about, you know, levels of awareness of your buyer and someone just, you know, role-playing with himself about, if your buyer already knows they have a problem, and this is how you talk to them. It’s like, that’s great. That video got 400,000 views or something like that, but it’s like, did that actually convert into any copywriting clients for him?


Probably not.


00:44:42 Josh:


Yeah. And so I think to, to sort of give you a specific example, so there’s a client I’m working with now who has a free newsletter. That is, it helps people, people who speak, they’re not Chinese natives, but they, they speak Chinese as sort of a second language or they’re, you know, they do business in China.


So like they, they already are sort of probably intermediate to advanced level Chinese speakers, but they want to both sort of. Practice and keep up to date with new slang and understand how to better communicate in Chinese with Chinese business culture, et cetera. Right. So his newsletter is about that.


It’s great sort of niche audiences, you know, he’s, it’s free newsletter, he’s, you know, built it’s going well. And so when I started working with him, part of what we were doing is talking about like, all right, well, how do we figure out, how do I monetize this? Right? And so I think when we started, you know, he, his initial thought was what most people’s, you know, he’s on sub stack.


What, you know, his initial thought was what most people do is like, oh, I create a paid version. And, you know, they’ll people who pay will pay five, $10 a month, whatever we’ll get extra issues or you know, that this and that. And one of the things, especially with paid newsletters that I say in terms of monetization is, you know, people don’t want, they don’t pay for more.


They pay for different this idea. And it’s how most people approach it. I think it’s why most of these paid newsletters. even if they love your newsletter, they probably don’t want another issue a week or like, they just, don’t what they’ll pay for. And this is what I did with, this is how I do it. And, you know, that’s totally different it’s related, but it’s totally different than what goes in my newsletter, my free newsletter.


Right. I was like, let’s start with that. And let’s, let’s sort of go through, you know, what could you sell? That’s different, you know, your newsletter is drawing them in now let’s offer them something different. This may be more valuable that helps with that transformation. and we’re still figuring out what that is.


But for example, You know, maybe they pay for community where they can talk to each other. Maybe you do a series of interviews with experts. The interviews are in Chinese. So they’re listening in Chinese and talking in Chinese and, and those people are talking about, you know, I, you know, I said, I was like, you know, bring in a, you know, a business translator who works in China and have them talk about the communication problems they see from non-Chinese speakers.


Like that’s really valuable for what these people want. Right.


00:47:26 Chikodi:


Cause they want transformation.


00:47:27 Josh:


Right. It’s that transformation. Right. And, and so I was like, you know, when you start to, you know, think about, you know, or maybe it’s, you know, even packaging up some of his existing stuff, like he shares in each issue, like idioms or phrases that have like come into the lexicon.


I was like package up a year’s worth of those and sell them as an ebook. Like people that just joined you. but then on top of that, you know, you want to factor in your audience, right? Audience for the most part has money. Like they’re professionals they’re successful. A lot of them are probably able to expense it.


So their businesses paying when you get into the monetization, as opposed to, you know, let’s think about this the way everyone does their sub stack, and it’s a $10, whatever. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s this video slash community, you can charge a lot more. Right. So that’s an example of sort of how I work with people and sort of how I think I encourage creators to sort of think about monetization as opposed to just like, well, I guess I’ll do this because this is the way everybody does it.


00:48:33 Chikodi:


So your, your approach is really transformation from money


00:48:39 Josh:


Yes. Yeah. Cause I think that’s, that’s what, that’s where the real value is. Yes. You can make money from. You know, interesting or inspiring or entertaining or whatever. If you’re talking about real, real money, in most cases, people want transformation. And the other thing is if you go the other route, right.


If you’re not doing transformation and you’re like, you know, look, I just want to tell really interesting stories, right. Or I just want to, you know, make funny videos, some, something like that, right. If you’re doing that, you need to understand that when you’re in the entertainment or interesting space, you’re now competing with Netflix and Hulu and Chris rock and the world’s biggest YouTubers all of that.


Right. For interesting. When you’re training, when you’re in transformation, you’re only competing with people who are offering that same transformation. if you get niche and specific enough, you may even find a space where you’re not really competing with anybody.


00:49:44 Chikodi:


Yeah, I mean, even, even in that, even in that instance, you’re really competing with your.


Cause most people do nothing, you know?


So, I mean, I got a, I got an advertisement from Tony Robbins in my email today and it was like, you know, like broadly speaking, I’m an entrepreneur. So he has something to say to me, but really it’s like, he’s not going to address any problem I specifically have, whereas I could actually talk to you and get a


00:50:14 Josh:


Yeah.


00:50:14 Chikodi:


Get a reframe on a problem that I, and then I actually am grappling


00:50:19 Josh:


And by the way, like, this is all stuff that for me, like I’m learning and evolving as I, you know, as I go, like, you know, I literally just, this week started labeling like that consulting thing is this creator clarity call, right? Because it was a step further to. You know, now that I have this framework and I’ve been doing it and I’m like, wow, this works really well.


Why don’t I present it as that again, in terms of transformation, like, even if you think about how I talked about it, you know, had we done this call three months ago? I would have been like, yeah, I do coaching calls and we talk about whatever they need help with and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. Versus people that are trying to figure out, trying to get clarity on like my goal, my audience, you know, my, my, my content, my Marketing, my product services.


That’s what we’re going to do. Like I’m going to take, you’re not sure to here’s exactly what you’re, you know, here’s exactly what you can follow. That is way. And by the way, like, I have raised my prices accordingly because it’s a clear transformation. It’s no longer, you know, what a lot of people do with coaching calls, which is like, Hey, you know, you can pick my brain, like, okay.


And by the way, that can be helpful too. And people will buy that too. But I think it’s, you know, it’s better both for me and for the people to go. No, I’m gonna, I’m going to get you from here to here. Point a to point B.


00:51:39 Chikodi:


You know, there was something that, that occurs to me that you were talking about earlier, where, someone said that they want to be a speech writing consultant and they haven’t written a million speeches, but like you said, you, Josh are growing and experimenting and having the humility to say, I don’t know everything, but this is what I do know.


And I guarantee you, there’s a lot of things that I do know, even if I don’t know everything that you, as the recipient of transformation don’t know and want to know.


And that authenticity really binds me to somebody when they say I do know a lot. And I also don’t know a lot. So as opposed to someone who says I know everything and I’m inflexible and I’m not open to new knowledge.


So I think that’s an important part of. The positioning or just the reframing for somebody who wants to get out there and do more is it’s like, no, you don’t have to know everything, but can you guide someone to that transformation?


00:52:40 Josh:


Yeah. And it’s, it’s sharing with, you know, everything I don’t know, or that hasn’t worked or that I haven’t figured out yet all opportunities. Because if at some point I figure it out, I can turn around and teach it or sell it or whatever. So I think a lot of people go, I don’t know how to do this and in the moment, and look, you may not have I made there things I may never figure out.


Right? Like, there are things that have, you know, I’ve been doing consulting for five years and you know, six months ago I stumbled into this framework. Right. But if you’re, if you’re constantly doing and trying and not going like, oh, I don’t know how to do that. Or I can’t do that. So, I guess that’s just not for me, you know, those are oppor, those are opportunities, right?


Like, you know, again, my, you know, my newsletter ultimately going Daily, which was never, the plan is a perfect example. Right. I kept saying, I’m gonna, you know, try this, you know, oh, you got a Daily would work at Daily, would work at Daily, you know, whatever. And I’m like, all right, let me try it. And then it worked and now I’ve sort of figured out and what’s fascinating is I have people coming to me and going, like, now I’m thinking about, I love your debt.


And I’m thinking about doing that. Right.


00:53:54 Chikodi:


Chinese idiom of the day could be a really easy way to do, you know, one


00:53:59 Josh:


Yeah.


You know, so, but that, that process too many people it’s too easy to, I don’t want to say, give up, but it’s too easy to sort of write off the things that they haven’t figured out and especially, you know, to bring it back to, to bring it back to monetization.


You know, look, it takes time. Like you’re not gonna, you know, most likely you are not going to just flip a switch and it’s going to work, right. Like you’re not going to suddenly be like, all right, now I’m now I’m rich. Like you’re going to have to iterate and some products are going to work and some are, and you’re going to sort of figure it out as you go.


And that’s a part of it. That’s a big part of it too.


00:54:41 Chikodi:


Yeah, there was a tweet that you shared that I really liked and it was, you know, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing successful.


00:54:48 Josh:


Oh, it was not. Yeah, it was. I just did it last night. Actually. People seem to really like that one. I think it was, this is what progress feels like. And it was nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Something.


00:54:58 Chikodi:


Yes, Exactly.


Exactly.


00:55:00 Josh:


That’s, it’s, it’s very, I’m not surprised it resonated with people.


00:55:05 Chikodi:


Yeah.


00:55:05 Josh:


It was one of those that I posted. I was like, I have a hunch. People are gonna relate to.


00:55:08 Chikodi:


Yeah. Well, you know, that is really one of the most critical things and is so hard to do as a human being and then living in capitalism where we see, you know, what, what we perceive to be an overnight success is that to get to a level of fluidity and earning potential and everything, you do have to have patience, and it can be really difficult if you want to quit your job.


If you are trying to get your first job, to be able to devote, you know, six months to something, because it doesn’t, you know, in hindsight, six months has no time at all when you really hit your stride, but to think, okay, I’m going to do this 180 days, you know, is, is, seems in our human mind, like quite a bit of quite a bit.


00:55:58 Josh:


Well, I also think, and I have a post about this that, I think the post is called, like only do it. If you’re willing to do it a hundred times. Which sounds intimidating, but when you read the post, it’s actually not, it’s actually inspiring. I think so, but, but basically, and I say this to people all the time.


So when people start things for my recommendation is you should start it within output goal, not an outcome goal. Right? So I use a hundred as an example, but that hundred days could be a hundred tweets. It could be a hundred hours. It could be 20, it doesn’t even have to be a hundred, the idea is, you know, pick a thing and go, I’m going to do this X amount of times.


Like if I launched a podcast, right, I might go, I’m going to put out 12 episodes of this podcast. I’m going to publish a new one, you know, once a week. And that’s my goal. I don’t care. It’s not about how many people listen to it. It’s not about, even if I like it, I’m going to do it and using this as an example.


And if I’m going to post 12 episodes. And at the end, I’m not even going to think about quitting or it’s working. It’s not working at the end of 12. I’m going to take a step back and I’m going to go, do I like doing this? Is it working? Do I want to keep doing it? So what happens is a couple of things when people don’t approach it that way from day one, they start thinking about, should I quit They’re constantly?


Should I quit? Should I not quit? Is it working? Was this a mistake? The other thing is if they don’t have an end point, it seems endless, which also makes them want to quit versus, well, I’m only doing 12. I said, I’d do 12 at the end of 12, number one, they have a sense of accomplishment, even if nobody listened to it, they were like I said, I was going to do 12.


I did 12, number two, they now cause a lot of times people won’t quit because they don’t want to feel like a quitter or a failure or whatever. You don’t have to feel like that when you only committed to. You don’t have an end point. You’re constantly like, well, if I quit, then I told everyone I was going to do this and now I’m going to look like a failure and whatever.


Right. But, so when you do that, it frees you up. It removes all of the removes, all of the pressure of success that a lot of people feel right off the bat—which again, is not realistic in most cases—it allows you to just focus on the thing. It allows you to focus on the thing that is completely in your control.


I can’t control if anyone listens, I can’t control. If anyone buys, I can’t like, I can’t control any of that, but I can control the output. Right? So you have a hundred percent chance of succeeding if that is the way you frame it. And so I, I, again, whatever the number is that you pick, I highly recommend that approach.


Not only, I mean, you could argue to have that approach forever, but especially when you’re starting something, Because it just changes the whole dynamic Because otherwise I do. I think people are constantly like, literally from day one, they’re like, should I quit? is this working


00:59:02 Chikodi:


I’m not a billionaire yet.


00:59:04 Josh:


Yeah. Right, exactly. You know, and even again, like it’s great to set goals of like, I want to build my audience to this point and I want to, you know, make this much money and there’s nothing wrong with setting those goals. But like those you’re never going to be able to control that.


00:59:18 Chikodi:


Yeah. That’s why shipped for 30 is so. So effective. It’s like, you’re commit to 30 days, you’re doing it in public. You’re


00:59:25 Josh:


Yeah.


00:59:26 Chikodi:


A bunch of other people and you can write a paragraph for 30 days. Promise you.


00:59:31 Josh:


Yeah. You know, and, and ultimately, no matter what happens, you, you know, right. If people were doing that without that they would three days in go, I don’t know if this is working. And I found my own experience. Like when I do things without setting that sort of clear output, I wind up bailing on them all the time.


Cause I’m like, I don’t know, like this seemed like a good idea, but maybe not.


00:59:57 Chikodi:


Yeah. And this is episode six of The Creator Business Show and, you know, most people when they start a, their own podcast and I’m doing this fortunately for Pico, but most people stop after seven. So yeah, pat Flynn, who was also a creators creator.


01:00:16 Josh:


I was booked for episode six


01:00:17 Chikodi:


Yeah, right now we have a interview scheduled well into the future.


But, you know, that, that output goal, as opposed to the, what do you say? It’s the output, not the end point output, not outcome. Yeah. That, that it’s like, James clear atomic habits, you know, it’s just like, if you commit to drinking a glass of water at a specific time, then it doesn’t matter what it does for you because the result will, will happen.


Yeah. Well, very cool. I can talk to you for quite a bit longer. and, I’m really grateful for, for your time, you know, to recap, one of the important things you talked about was really bringing down the bar for yourself of what it means to produce regular content. If that means that your, your email newsletter or your resource is really just the funniest thing you heard all week or all day.


And that’s what your audience is into. Then you don’t have to overthink and make it a big production. you know, you talked about a specific client who, is talking to, Chinese, Chinese speakers who are doing business in China, then that they could just benefit from getting one idiom per week or an annual collection of all the new words that, that, this person learned and that people are actually willing to pay a lot for value and for transformation.


And so if you’re, if you are offering transformation, you’re competing either with very few people or nobody, and a focus on the transformation and the money will follow.


01:01:56 Josh:


Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s also, the transformation piece is also a great.


Filter or check for people because like, it’s very easy. Like when I talk to someone and I go like, well, what’s the transformation you’re helping people make. And if they can’t answer that, like it’s very illuminating to them of like, oh, well, I just think I share interesting stuff.


Okay. But, you know, you’re expecting people to just pay for interesting stuff.


And it’s not that no one else, some people may, but in general to really build something sort of meaningful and successful transformation usually has to be a piece of it.


01:02:38 Chikodi:


I agree. I agree. Yeah. On a, on a personal note, I’m really looking at how to help people transform into the leaders of the future to solve humanity’s greatest, issues. And so I know that there are plenty of people willing to, to step up for that. And I can also, I do have the, the ability to be patient.


01:03:00 Josh:


What’s you know, what’s interesting about that is like, you know, and I do this when I talk to people all the time is like the language and words chosen are so important. So like say what you just said again,


01:03:13 Chikodi:


Okay. So I want to help specifically startup founders deal with global warming and, you know, humanity scale crises through entrepreneurship and become the thought leaders that get the funding and create monumental change in human society.


01:03:30 Josh:


So how would you describe your point a and point B? Where are they at right now and where do they want to be?


01:03:37 Chikodi:


So, they’re a company that is funded that has a product in market. And has a massive, you know, trillion dollar industry and they are growing a multi-billion dollar company. So they’re the CEO of a business juggernauts at the end, and people are coming to them for their perspective for their product.


And because they, they have a mission and they understand they’re able to articulate what that mission is. it’s clear in the product that they’re building and the impact that they’re creating as needed in, in society.


01:04:15 Josh:


Product is global warming.


01:04:17 Chikodi:


Not necessarily. I mean, it’s, it’s, it has a value to society, you know, and clearly the most important thing to society is how do we live on a planet that’s rapidly warming and becoming inhospitable to human life?


01:04:32 Josh:


So, it’s helping them sit there, companies in early stages, helping them get to the point where they’re massive or whatever.


01:04:38 Chikodi:


Yeah, it could be an early stage, but it’s on a trajectory towards, you know, making a planetarium. And there they’re the empathetic leaders. So I think what I’m actually struggling with the most is the nomenclature around what kind of leader they are. I’m thinking either inclusive or empathic. So, you know, Elon Musk is an incredible entrepreneur and


01:05:00 Josh:


Right.


01:05:01 Chikodi:


But he’s not the type of leader that I want to cultivate.


I want people that have more soft skills and are doing good things


01:05:08 Josh:


So give me a specific example, like your ideal client or whatever customer, whatever would be who or not. It doesn’t have to be a name, but like,


01:05:16 Chikodi:


Yeah.


01:05:17 Josh:


Person that’s doing this.


01:05:18 Chikodi:


Well, so I was talking to a woman last week and she’s raising a $50 million VC fund for, women of color and, you know, black women invented call waiting close caption, or sorry, CCTV, you know, incredible, incredible inventors. So. She is, you know, what I, what I pitched to her is that she’s at the forefront of a trillion dollar, movement of, value created by black women CEOs.


And so for her, her positioning is she’s raising the money to then invest in these companies that are going to create a trillion dollars of value. So broadly, that’s my mission too. And I basically gave her that is like a trillion dollars of value. So I could even be more specific. I want to help the CEOs that create a trillion dollars of value, tackling global warming and others, planetary scale problems.


01:06:14 Josh:


So let’s use her as a specific example. You want to help her do what?


01:06:19 Chikodi:


I want to help her become a leader and communicate her mission and values to the market.


01:06:26 Josh:


But is she not a leader already?


01:06:28 Chikodi:


Well, she is a leader, but then every leader needs help with. Communications speech writing, you know, how to really communicate that mission so that people either want to join the company. They want to fund her or they want to buy. And so it’s really comes down through things.


01:06:45 Josh:


That piece I think was w is what was missing from your district.


01:06:49 Chikodi:


Is the buy fund or.


01:06:53 Josh:


It’s sort of what you’re actually going to help her do. Right. Because I think you’re describing it as like, sort of be a better leader, whatever. But when you start to get into the specifics of, you know, I want to help leader these types of leaders, however you define, you know, these types of leaders, better sort of communicate their message, like when you start naming this, because I think what happens a lot of times is people go like they, you know, they use sort of describe what they do and kind of industry jargon.


And it’s like, okay, but I don’t really know what you do or what, you know, like what, okay, well, what does that mean? Right.


And then especially like, there’s one, hold on. Let me actually pull it up on Twitter. Cause there was, I was having this conversation with somebody yesterday. so I had asked him his goal and he said, he goes, I help organizations and individuals become well-rounded innovators by using human complexity as an advantage, not a problem to overcome. And when I said to him is I was like, not bad, but I would guess most people don’t know what using human complexity as an advantage means.


Without an explanation, I always ask myself, is anyone walking around using this term? I doubt anyone is saying, I wish we could use human complexities and advantage.


01:08:06 Chikodi:


Truly truly. Yeah,


01:08:07 Josh:


Right. So if you think about, and that’s why I like drilling down into a specific person, cause it can help you sort of extrapolate. So if you think about that woman and both, you know, like once you start saying.


Oh, I’m going to help you be a bigger leader or better leader or whatever. You know what I mean? It’s like, okay. I don’t know. But when you go, like I’m going to help you amplify your community, you know, or, or, you know, I forget the three things you said, but like,


01:08:34 Chikodi:


So hiring talent,


01:08:37 Josh:


Right,


01:08:37 Chikodi:


More investment and then getting more customers


01:08:40 Josh:


So that when you see what I mean, in terms of the clarity, like now people know like, okay, I know exactly what that is. And when they know exactly what it is, it allows them to go. That’s what I’m looking for. Like there are people out there that are going, I need to fix. So again, I’m using her as an example.


Right. But even if she existed and didn’t know who you were, she very well might be going. I gotta figure out how to hire I to figure out how to raise more money. And I got to figure out how to do this third thing to get from here to here. And then you come with. She’s probably not going. I got to figure, I mean, again, different people have different things, right?


She’s probably not going, I need to figure out how to be a better leader,


01:09:25 Chikodi:


Right, right.


01:09:26 Josh:


Even though those things are part of it. The specifics are like, these are the PR, like, it’d be very interesting. I know you’ve already talked to her, but just hypothetically, right. Someone else in her position, be very interesting to sort of ask them like, you know, put the transformation question to them.


Describe to me like, not you, but her. Right. Like if I was talking to her, I’d be like, talk to me about where you are. Talk to me about where you want to be and what you think you need to get there. And if you do that with, with us few people that you think are your sort of typical ideal clients feel probably you probably see some things where they’ll say some words that you’ll be like, okay, I’m gonna use that word.


Like that language. Well help. And then it sort of resonates. So like, in your mind, you, you know, you can sum it up, you know, it’s not that it isn’t the leadership thing, but it’s like, you want to use the word that people are people are looking for. And it just, it makes it more clear. Like I said, like, you know, that guy, that whatever he said, like, you


01:10:31 Chikodi:


Human


01:10:31 Josh:


Humor,


01:10:32 Chikodi:


And,


01:10:33 Josh:


You may not know all that But like that nobody’s, nobody’s out there looking for that.


01:10:37 Chikodi:


Yeah, totally, totally. But people are out there looking for their next, senior engineer. So,


01:10:43 Josh:


Yeah. Right. And I think, especially when you’re able to describe that sort of specific person with some specificity, that specific thing now just starts to become really clear.


01:10:58 Chikodi:


Yeah. I have to prepare...


01:11:03 Josh:


Right.


01:11:03 Chikodi:


Prepare people before I have a meeting.


So, how do people get ahold of you? I know that you probably, even if you’re not recording your own podcast, you have other commitments.


01:11:14 Josh:


Yes. So, JoshSpector.com and ForTheInterested.com is my free newsletter. That’s a great place to start. They can sign up there at ForTheInterested.com/subscribe, and they’re welcome to email me, [email protected]. Or, I’m really active on Twitter. That’s my one platform, @JSpector, J-S-P-E-C-T-O-R.


01:11:42 Chikodi:


Who’d you like to hear from?


01:11:44 Josh:


Creators, broadly defined creator-entrepreneur types. I help all sorts of different people, but especially people that use writing newsletters or Twitter to grow their audience and business. I can help an Instagram person, a YouTuber, or a podcast, or a small business. But in terms of my specialty, newsletters and writing Twitter as well, is sort of what I prefer, and what I use.


I can help a YouTuber, but probably probably going to help you more if you got a newsletter.


01:12:33 Chikodi:


Nice. Nice.


01:12:34 Josh:


I would say that also, I’m a huge proponent of newsletters. I think everyone should have one. They’re algorithm proof. So, whether you have a newsletter or you’re thinking of starting a newsletter, I’m happy to help.


01:12:51 Chikodi:


Awesome. Well, maybe we’ll get to do episode part two of this in a few months time. Josh, thank you so much for telling us all about how to focus in on what you want to do. Also, talking about output versus outcome. Really, really important.


We talked about how to automate what you do, so you’re not overwhelming yourself. You’re not burning yourself out. So, there’s a lot of really great topics that we talked about, and it’s been a fantastic conversation. Thank you very much for joining us.


01:13:28 Josh:


Yeah. Thanks for having me.