Authentic Creativity & Making Money

Do you ever long for the ability to create without worrying about the money? Well, join the club. I think a lot of us who are here in my community have that desire. And you know what? It is completely worthy and it's possible if you just do it step by step. Now let's first talk about how a lot of us, we are especially heart based service providers, we start creating a new business or a new offering and it comes out of the abundance of our desire to serve, to connect, to create. And yet we also require that it needs to make a certain amount of money or to get a certain number of clients. And that attachment of requirement to make money or to enroll a certain number of clients, you can tell that it pollutes the purity of the service, the creation or the connection project. Right? So it's important to understand that there we're really talking about two different sides of this. One is hobby and one is business. Okay? You need to understand this because if you don't, you require your hobby to make money and you perhaps don't realize you can put more of your hobby in your business. So let me explain. The yearning to just create without thoughts of money is essentially what a hobby is about, right? You can practice enjoying playing music or creating art or writing or any kind of creative project where you're like, this is just for me, this is something that inspires my, you know, a different side of me than I usually do at work. And that's a wonderful and necessary, I think it's a necessary aspect of life to carve out at least some time to do our hobbies without thinking about whether this is going to make money. The thing about a hobby is that we don't even care if it's purely a hobby. We don't care if anybody likes it or not. It's done because we enjoy it, we love it, we love the activity itself. We're not doing it as a performance in front of others. Now, some hobbies, such as music or even some art, we do enjoy performing in front of us, sharing it with others and having them be delighted. But at that point it starts to go into the territory of business. Now, when I say business, I don't literally mean that has to make money, but what a business is. Where does money, income come from? In a business? It comes from other people's spending. Your income comes from your client's spending, your client's decision to spend with you. Right? And, and so a business requires that other people are on the same page and would be excited and interested, willing to pay money for a product. So you know, on the one hand you're doing it for yourself, and on the other hand for business, you are doing it for others if you want the business to survive. If you're not doing it for others, it's a hobby, you're doing it for yourself. You don't care if anybody likes you, don't care if anybody ever spends a single dollar on your hobby. So these are the two ends of the spectrum that we need to respect and understand. And so many of us heart based people, we start a business or we create an offer a new program, a new service, a new package, a new offering, a new course and we just think, my God, this thing's, I love this thing so much. And I'm going, you know, I love this thing so much. There's a hobby part of it and it must make this much money, it must enroll this many clients. And so we often find that it doesn't because it came out of the hobby stage. It came out of our abundant love for that skill or that area of life for that particular subject of study or whatever it is. It came out of that. And then yet we expect that people will pay us for it. And we get disappointed. And we might even have expected that it would make us enough money. So we spend all this time and effort, maybe even money, on the hobby and then we realize, oh wait, I've been in hobby mode rather than in business mode and now I can't make a living because it's. So how can we eventually create a life where we can be in hobby mode and still people want to pay us for it? This is why I always talk about the importance of growing a true fan base. Right? A community and audience of true fans means the people that you've shown up in front of again and again and again and again, year after year. It takes several years. This is not said enough. It's often, I mean, I've seen thousands of solopreneurs operate over the years and usually you don't make a, you don't make a living wage until at least the second or third or 10th year. You know, some people take some 10 years. And yet a lot of you are expecting that's going to happen in three or six months. I don't know where that came from. Well, I know I do know where that came from. It's a lot of the people in my industry are selling you that you can make six figures or even five figures in what, three, six or 12 months. I'm going to tell you that having seen a lot of these, having seen a lot of solopreneurs of all. Of all types of. It usually takes at least a year or two to start making $5,000 a month. I'm sorry that no one else told you this, but I'm not trying to plant a limiting belief either. Who knows, it might take you three months, but to expect that it will take you three or six months without having built a successful business before is expecting. Requiring a lot of, of your hobby. Especially if, especially if it's something that comes out of your love of creating and service and exploration and your dreams, you know, your pure enjoyment. And then to expect it to make $5,000 $7,000 a month in six months, a year or 18 months. I recently heard another very experienced content creator, Joe Polizzi. He had created the Content Marketing Institute, and he says that content creators should expect to take 12 to 18 months of building an audience before they can monetize it. Let me say that again. A content marketing expert who has built a whole institute around it and has consulted and taught many, many people, he's one of the true experts in the industry, says 12 to 18 months of consistent content before you can expect to monetize it. Which is why he actually sometimes recommends that people buy content properties like buy someone's blog, which can take tens of thousands of dollars to be able to start monetizing it. But it's like if you don't have the tens of thousands to buy someone's blog and probably might not be able to find someone whose blog you respect enough to be able to buy it or that you align with enough, then we build our own audience. That's how I do it. That's how most of my clients do it, most of my students do it. And instead of spending tens of thousands in one fell swoop, you spend probably several thousand. But gradually over time, with ads, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn ads, to build an audience of true fans. And once you have an audience true fans, again, it probably takes 12 to 18 months. Once you have an audience of true fans, you are then able to sell almost anything that they want and that they will buy it. So, all right, let me. Let me again, big picture, and then we'll talk a bit more detail. The bigger picture again is to understand that when you are just creating from a love of creation and exploration, you are in the hobby mode. And to require that other people must enjoy your hobby, require that other people must enjoy your art enough to pay you for it, is asking a whole lot before you have grown an audience of true fans. And how do you grow an audience of true fans? 12 to 18 months of consistent content. Now, how consistent? Joe Polizzi, when you know he has at least one or two quality blog posts every single week, right? And probably several short videos. I mean, you know, someone like that is a professional and he expects 12 to 18 months. So for those of you who are creating a quality blog post once a month or once every two weeks, probably going to take two or three years before you can start to expect. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to discourage you, I don't mean to place limiting beliefs. I'm just telling you what we are seeing in the industry. Now, again, you might be a miraculous person and do it in three to six months, but the more you focus on building a true fan audience, the more you are willing and able to show up authentically in an interesting way and consistently. And using ads. Enough ad dollars, a couple hundred dollars a month, ideally, to run ads to bring enough people a couple hundred a month. Yeah, three to 500amonth, ideally. But even if you start at 30 to 100amonth, it's okay. It's just, again, how fast do you want to do it? If you want to do it faster, several hundred bucks a month slower through, you know, again, 12 to 18 months. That's 30 to $100 a month. So you build an audience of true fans. Why are they true fans? How do they come to you? Well, you need to learn how to run ads. Again, do you expect to just post stuff on Instagram and YouTube and suddenly your audience keeps growing? Hashtags don't work. Hashtags don't work. Not in the way that you're expecting. Oh, my God. Hashtags. Now, I can make money doing it. Hashtags obviously work in subtle ways and over a long, long period of time, but ads work much faster. If you said hashtags, Come on, are you serious? You want to be discovered with hashtags? Really? How's it going? Have you tried it? Of course I've tried. Of course I have tried it. Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. I've tried hashtags everywhere. I've tested them with my marketing mind and my marketing instinct, I've tested them. You know, they're not a reliable strategy that I would recommend to anybody. What's reliable? Ads. You've got to spend at least $30 to $100 a month if you want to build a true fan audience with ads. You either, you know, ideally use Ads and you use collaborations. Those two are reliable. Those two I bank on and I use and I bank on all the time. And I recommend strongly to my clients all the time hashtags. Are you kidding me? And just being. Hopefully, word of mouth being discovered. No, it's not reliable. You can't expect that word of mouth comes from ads or collaborations. Word of mouth comes from your work. Okay, either your work being so damn good that it stretches, but how do you. How does your work become so damn good? Do you think your work is already so damn good in your own mind? It is, but not every. No one else thinks that or not. No one. Not enough people yet, as you've noticed, think your work is so damn good. A few people might, but that's the start of your true fan audience. You have to get your work out in front of tens of thousands of people for a few dozen of them to think you're so damn good. You see what I mean? So like. And you get so damn good by putting out tons and tons of content. Tons. I mean, like, you notice how often I put content out there. I'm so consistent. And by doing it consistently and noticing what works, what is making an impact, then I can adjust myself in that direction again. I put out a lot of stuff, kind of like in hobby mode, I just put out a bunch of stuff. I notice what makes an impact and I do more in that direction, which is more in the business mode. I do more content in those directions because I know that that's what people want. And if people want that, they will tend to share it more often or like, or engage. And then the algorithms help with that. And I push it along with much, much faster with ads and with collaborations, meaning other people interviewing me and me interviewing other people in return. Similar size audience, similar sized audience as me. And so you, you, you build a true fan audience by doing just a whole lot of content. You got to do more than you probably are doing. And I know you don't want to hear that. I know you're exhausted, which means if you're exhausted means you have to keep better boundaries about your work. I keep very good. I take four naps a day. I've said people who are my program know this and we often joke about it. You have to keep really good boundaries of your work. How many hours you work at each stretch, how you work. You work. I work lightly, right? So I don't make anything so serious. Everything's so light for me, everything's so casual. But that's how I Can I can be so consistent showing up year, day after day, month after month, year after year. And I'm still very happy and healthy. You got to work lightly. You got to set a lot of boundaries with yourself, with yourself. Besides with the people in your Notice the doors closed. I don't let my family members just barge in and say whatever they want. Right? Boundaries with others, boundaries with yourself. And a whole lot of content. Like just every day. If you can, you gotta put out content. If you can't do it every day, do it three times a week. If you can't do it three times a week, do it twice a week. If you can't do it twice a week, you got to do it at least once a week, once a week. You're slowing down. It's going to be three to five years now rather than two to three years every day, 12 to 18 months. You're now monetizing your business, right? So creativity and money making must understand that people won't pay you for your creativity because you think your creativity is so great, but nobody else does. Until you show up day after day after day after day, after 12 or 18 months. And then you have with ads, ads, hopefully to get it out in front of tens of thousands of people. And then you have enough people, a couple dozen people, maybe a couple hundred people who think your creativity is pretty great too. And then once you have those couple hundred people, ideally then move into. Okay, so first of all, build an audience of true fans. Step two, move into the space of curiosity and alignment. Well, you're in that curiosity, alignment the whole time, hopefully when you're, when you're testing content for, for two, three years, right? Your curiosity and alignment, meaning I wonder what's going to work. Let me go ahead and test this out. I don't know if it's going to work. I'm just going to test it out. Am I going to be interesting to watch on video? I don't know. Let me play. Let me test it out. Let me show up consistently for six months as a test consistently every day for six months to see if I really like it. To see if yes. You don't just go three videos and you're like, no, I don't like it. Six months daily. That's what I did. Right? I did six when I was first starting to make videos. Six months daily. Monday through Friday. You can take the weekends off if you want to, but six months daily to figure out if this video thing is really for me or not. If you can't do Daily. Like I said, if you can't do daily, three times a week. If you can't do three times, twice a week. If you can't do twice a week, once a week is a bare minimum, right? For six months to test something out. Because only after six months will you have built in just enough skill. Just enough skill where you're comfortable, you're confident, and now you can really express yourself. And I mean, notice I'm able to really express myself on video, right? Took a lot of practice to be comfortable at this. It doesn't come naturally. I wasn't natural on video. So, anyway, you build a true fan audience in curiosity and alignment. Alignment, meaning you're curious to test a lot of different things and your alignment means you're wondering which ones make the most impact, and then you align yourself more and more in that direction. Oh, I've talked about 10 different topics and two of these make the most impact. So let me align myself more with those two topics and create more in those two topics. You see, once you built a true fan audience, then a couple hundred people who follow you on a consistent basis and many of them comment or at least like your stuff, then you can talk to them again in curiosity and alignment to say, what would you buy from me? Yes. Now, if you're too shy of asking that, at least try to ask, what have you purchased in my field, in the field of whatever it is you do, personal growth, spiritual growth, relationship, career, you know, health, whatever it is you do, what have you bought in this area? Have you bought any coaching? Have you bought any workshops, courses, programs? What have you bought, you know, or what could I sell that maybe you think my audience would. Would, would, would sign up for. So you ask your true fans what they would buy and what they have been buying so that with curiosity and with alignment, you put those offers out. Now you're in business mode because you've been in hobby, hobby mode, testing different things. You're kind of moving gradually towards the business mode because now you're building true fan audience. Now you're in business mode where you can say, let me give you what you want, rather than me coming out of my own creativity and love of creating and exploring and. But then I'm still in myself. I'm still in my own head. Too many of us are in our own heads and we wonder why people aren't buying it, because number one, we don't even have a true fan base yet. Not enough people anyway. And number two, we haven't asked them in the business Mode, what would you buy from me? Because then I will make it. You want to buy that? I will make it. And then you make it. Now, of course, you might give them several options. Out of these three things, which one would you most likely buy? They'll tell you, out of these three, I'd buy number two. Okay, great. Now you make number two and then again you poll them. Hey, I made number two. Which title do you think sounds best? Or what should I name the program? What should I name the service? But you always keep aligning yourself with the audience, your true fans, along the way of creating something. You create with their feedback all the time. So that that's how you make money through your creativity. You see, that's the whole journey. You first test out a lot of different things from your love, from your creative, knowing that it takes 12, it takes a year to five years to build enough fans who actually want to spend money with you. Then you can ask them what would they spend? And then you can make for them. And then now you're making money. Now I'm not saying you don't make a single dollar in those five years or three years or one year, you know, because you already have a skill set and a service. Probably a lot of you watching this already have and you already can go to your network and ask them to share, spread the word or to buy something. But in terms of starting from scratch, if you had nothing, it would take that time. So I hope you would please give your, your creativity some more patience, some more generosity of space, spaciousness and to be really with gusto. Test a lot of different things from the hobby place, trying a lot of different things out, not caring if anyone likes it because you don't know if they'll like it or not. Stay in curiosity and alignment, give yourself the spaciousness of time of years and you will be able to make money from your authentic creativity. I hope this is helpful. I hope this is inspiring and a little bit of a pep talk and a reality check perhaps. I look forward to your comments below. Thanks for joining me.