A creator shares three lessons from building a client base with a small following: use clear positioning instead of buzzwords, make content that solves your audience's problems rather than just what interests you, and set goals around what you control like posting frequency, not subscriber counts.
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I've been creating content since 2021, and today I want to share with you some of the biggest lessons that I've learned over the years that have allowed me to have clients even with my small following. Now, the first one is this: clarity equals clients, clever equals confusion. What I mean by that— over the years, I've been really dialing in on who, who exactly do I want to help. And how do I want to help them? And when I started to develop my I help statement to indicate to others exactly who I am and to position myself as the individual who can best help them, I was always trying to be clever and memorable, and I was labeling these individuals in a way that didn't necessarily make sense to them or they wouldn't identify as. So when I was creating all this content specifically for them, they didn't watch, which meant that they didn't become clients. Whenever you're trying to position yourself to be the individual that can help a specific group of people, you have to be clear on exactly who you help and how you help them and what transformation that they can expect when they're experiencing you, rather than trying to be clever and unique. And make it sound fancy and sound good, that confuses people. No one is trying to go through your page and dissect it like a calculus textbook, especially if they're dealing with a problem that has given them excruciating pain that they really want to get rid of. They're looking for a fast solution. When someone comes across your page, they just need to take a quick glance and look into— determine for themselves that, oh, He can help me with what I'm going through. Nah, he ain't the best fit for me. So how can you get more clear in your positioning so it doesn't confuse people? Number 1, understand exactly who you're helping and don't try to label them in a way that they probably wouldn't identify as. Don't try to come up with these buzzwords and these fancy words and these clever sayings to describe their problem if it's not how they describe them, right? Use clear language that even a kid would understand. That's how you get more clear rather than clever, which can be confusing. Here's the second lesson that I had to learn, and man, it took me a long time to learn it. I needed to stop creating selfish content and create service-based content. Now, when I say that I was creating selfish content, I'm not saying that I was a selfish person. I'm not saying that I care only, only about myself. When I say that I was creating selfish content, I was creating content on topics that I was convicted to share. I was delivering messages that I was motivated to share rather than what exactly other people wanted to see and hear. I was creating content from ideas that was coming from here rather than conversations with others or understanding others. And the selfish content came because I didn't understand my audience well enough to know exactly what they were dealing with, what problems that they need to solve, and what desired outcomes that they wanted to, uh, to experience. I didn't understand that my selfish content was repelling them away. It was the main reason why nobody cared about my videos, you know. And it was frustrating because I was putting all this time, all this energy and effort Into these videos that I believed they were great, and the only people who watched them were me, myself, and I, and Casper. And I had to remind myself of some words that my father said to me back when I was a teenager. He said that people are inherently selfish. We all do things for our own benefit. I needed to understand the reason why anyone would want to watch my videos is because they find it benefiting for them, and they didn't. Because like I said, those ideas came from up here rather than me having those conversations and understanding my potential audience better. Now, when I say that I needed to create service-based content, this is the type of content that is specialized for your specific audience, is catered specifically for them. And what is— what it's going to do for you is build that trust enough where they will want to become clients because they feel like you can best help them. Because in your content, you position yourself as the person who can best help them. You're speaking their language. You're speaking in a way that they feel like you can understand their problems. You're speaking in a way as if you may have experienced something similar or you've had some type of experience of helping other people with that similar problem. This is the type of content that they will identify with quickly because you've done the job to cater it for them specifically. So how do you create service-based content? Well, you have to understand your audience. Clarity of who you help, how you help them, and understanding what they're dealing with and what they're going through and what they would like to go through It's very important. It is very important. And your best content is not going to come from you and what's inside your head. It's going to come from you, from having conversations with them, understanding them, or speaking to people who are going through what you've been through. Not only is this content a game changer because it makes people feel immediately seen and heard, but what it's going to do for you is give you unlimited content ideas. You see, when I was creating content that for topics that I only wanted to talk about, I felt like I was getting burnt out fast because I could only cover the same topics for so long and a certain amount of topics for so long because I didn't understand my audience well enough. But once I did, I could understand the different things that they were going through, what they were experiencing, and I could say it in slightly different variations that will not only build that trust of me understanding the problem that they were going through, but it will also give me more content ideas and to explore different pathways more deeply. So not only is it essential for you to create service-based videos, but it's going to be a game changer when you decide to turn over to creating that— those type of videos rather than selfish videos. Now, the last lesson that I had to learn over the years is this: set goals based off of what you control rather than what others have control over. What I mean by that, coming into YouTube, I was like every other crazy and insane individual who wants to create content and create an income from it and, and have a strong following from it. And I used to have this goal of having a certain amount of subscribers by a delusional timeline. And what was crazy about that is that I don't have control over when someone decides to subscribe to me. I don't have control of the time frame of when it happens. And I found myself getting disappointed a lot. Now, I will commend myself because I never gave up from creating content, but I know there are plenty of coaches and other creators who have given up. Because they haven't met their unrealistic goals at an unrealistic time frame. You see, you don't have control over what other people do and when they do it, but you can have influence on that. Now, influence starts with understanding your audience better. Are you starting to see this recurring theme of why it's important to understand your audience better? You see, when it goes back to that second lesson that I learned, if people are inherently selfish and they do things for their best interest, within their best interest, you can influence people to subscribe and to become clients of yours when you are serving their best interests based on the content you're putting out. Listen, I hope you brought your appetite today because I'm cooking. When you're creating that service-based content is going to do its work of, again, making people feel seen and heard. And that's what influenced people to make the decision to subscribe to your channel, to interact with your channel, or to go beyond with that channel and decide to work with you and become a client of yours. And what I needed to understand at that time is that instead of making goals based off of outcomes that I don't have control over, I needed to make goals based off of inputs that I do have control over. I can control how often I put out content. I can control what type of content I put out. I can control what I say within this content. I can control the conversations that I, that I can have to understand my audience better. I can have control over the quality of my content. And my goal and focus when I first started creating content should have been on those inputs rather than those delusional outputs. So if you want to increase the influence on the outcomes that you desire, have goals that are more centered around the inputs rather than outputs. You can have a simple goal as far as every video that I put out, I want the new video to be 10 times better than the last video. You could put out a goal as far as Every content that I put out from here on out needs to be service-based content rather than that selfish content. I'm going to share with you my biggest goal that I have that does have impact and influence on the outcomes that I desire. Every time that I put out a piece of content, I do want to make someone feel seen, heard, and understood. I don't want to just reach their heads. I want to reach their hearts because the heart is what influences decision, but it also creates that connection between me and that specific person. And if I do that in every video, I don't have to target everybody. But if I do that specifically for someone in every single video, then I know that the content that I'm putting out is great quality. So I'm interested to know how long you've been creating content and what are some of your biggest lessons that you've learned over the years? By the way, I've been speaking highly on having clarity of your audience. And if you need help with that, you can always reach out to me on IG. My Instagram handle is down below. If you're ready to take control of your life and develop that confidence that you've always been waiting for, then these 2 videos will help with that.
