Own Your Audience LIVE Session with Q&A

Hello, welcome everybody. We're going to give just a couple of minutes to let a couple more people join and we'll get going talking about TikTok and what the heck is going on with the U.S. government and this new potential legislation. Please do go ahead and drop questions in. We're live on multiple platforms here, so you can drop questions into Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or LinkedIn, and I will answer them as we go. I'm going to kick off here soon about Well, what's going on? The state of affairs with where the legislation sits in the United States government. What the potential outcomes are if this passes. And I have so many windows open, I can hear myself talking. I'd love to hear where you're joining from as well. I'm in Fort Collins, Colorado, right on the foothills of. Rocky Mountains, um, just about 40 miles north of Denver. And, uh, we got about 10 inches of snow last week. Some places got like 30 inches, and today it's 60 degrees and sunny. So I guess you never know what you're gonna get. All right. Okay, let's just get started. And again, please pop questions in. I've got a team member over here on the side that is helping me out to make sure that I get all those covered. But basically, here's the state of affairs. There have been discussions for years and years at this point about the U.S. government banning TikTok in the United States, and there hasn't been any real movement, just a lot of you know sort of threats, if you will, to move in this direction. And finally, the House of Representatives has voted to eliminate TikTok in the United States. Now, if you know how U.S. government works, first it has to pass in the House of Representatives, then the bill goes to the Senate, and if it passes in the Senate. It goes to the president's desk. The Senate has not set a date for when they will vote on the potential legislation. So that's still completely up in the air. Again, the House voted just last week. So it typically takes the Senate a little bit of time. And sometimes they put together votes quite quickly and sometimes ad hoc. So who knows when that's actually going to happen, but I would anticipate sometime in the next couple of weeks to month. And the reasons that this legislation is under consideration is because the United States government sees ByteDance, who is the parent company of TikTok, as a potential national security threat for a couple of reasons. One, the Chinese government can demand personal contact information, like anything that you use to register your TikTok account, from from ByteDance. So they can sort of subpoena that information, if you will, from TikTok and have all the personal information for every single person that's on TikTok. Of course, there are hundreds of millions of people on there. So obviously the United States government does not want the Chinese government to have personal information for United States citizens as much as possible. So that's sort of the umbrella of the national security risk and The other serious concern is potential for the Chinese government to insert propaganda into our feeds on TikTok, right? So we're scrolling through and they can control what we see, right? They control potentially the algorithm. And we have a major election this year in the United States of America. And so that's a major, major, major thing. So if we do not have control over what Americans are being shown on the platform, that could be The big deal, right? That's a problem. Okay, so again, date not scheduled for the Senate vote, and again, they're pretty slow going, but it has passed just step 1 of 3. When the Senate votes on it, if it votes no and just declines the legislation, this all goes away and things will continue as usual. At least that's what we can expect at this point. However, If the law does pass in the Senate by majority vote, it will go to the president's desk. President Biden did say that he will sign this into law. I definitely see the irony there since they just launched a President Biden TikTok campaign for our account for his campaign this year. So that's sort of funny and has some irony behind it, but whatever. So he said he will sign it into law. Now, if he does sign this legislation into law as it's written right now, ByteDance, again, the parent company of TikTok, will have 6 months to sell TikTok to a company that the United States basically approves of. And so there's a number of complicating factors that go along with that. One, TikTok is going to be really, really, really, really, really, really expensive. So there are not too many potential suitors who could even afford the platform. Okay, so that's issue number one. Issue number 2 is the Chinese government has the power and authority to prevent ByteDance from selling. So even if the legislation passes the Senate, signs on, uh, the president signs it into law, and within 6 months ByteDance finds a suitor who's willing to pay the price tag that the United States government approves of, the Chinese government can still put the complete and total kibosh on that and block the sale. Okay. So that's one way this could go down. Another way it could go down is if Biden signs it into law— again, would have to pass the Senate for that to happen— then we would assume that ByteDance would potentially sue and take, take the case to court. And I'm assuming under the guise that the legislation is unconstitutional, and a judge in the United States of America would have the authority to deem the legislation unconstitutional and therefore null and void. I'm not a lawyer, but that is how the process can work. And so there's so many potential opportunities for this to go south, even if it passes through our regular government systems to sign legislation into law. Let's see now. ByteDance also has 5 board members. 3 of which are Americans. They're kind of like using that as a, hey, Americans are protected. And so just kind of FYI, that's kind of important piece to the puzzle here. But of course, we don't know what any one individual's motivations are or anything like that. And so, but that is being cited frequently that there are 3 Americans, one of which is part of BlackRock, which is one of the largest hedge funds operators in the world. They control a lot, a lot, a lot of companies and have significant interests in social media platforms. And interestingly, Trump, when he was president in 2020, tried to ban TikTok and then has recently reversed his position. Again, it's a presidential election year here in the US, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of politically driven motives behind all of this, and that's Speculation on my part, but that's usually how it goes around here. Let's see. Okay. Now, if the bill does get signed into law, passes the Senate, gets signed into law, a lawsuit potentially is posed, and ByteDance loses, the Chinese government does not block the sale. Let's say this all goes through, and TikTok potentially goes away. They, uh, you might be asking like, well, can they take TikTok off of my phone? Like, can the United States government do that to me as an American? No, they cannot remove the app from your phone, but they can prevent any future downloads from the App Store, Google Play, all those kinds of things. Anywhere you can get access to TikTok as a new user, they can prevent you from doing that. And here's the kicker: they can prevent updates, software updates, from shipping to your TikTok app. And so that would—I mean, we all know how frequently and how annoying software updates are. And so if you're missing, you know, two, three, four, five, ten updates, the app is going to be fairly well rendered useless, which is a big problem. So that's kind of how I would see this going—is that it's not going to be removed from your phone, but it's going to become. Defunct and unusable in pretty short order here in the United States. And an interesting point, I don't know if many of you know this, many US-based apps are actually banned in China, including but not limited to Google, YouTube, Twitter or X, WhatsApp, and Facebook. So I think that's kind of an interesting— I read an article this morning, I think from CNN Business or New York Times, that's sort of like, you know, China's getting a taste of its own medicine potentially on blocking what Citizens are able to see. Okay, and importantly, you will be able to download all of your videos from TikTok. So if you are a content creator and you're relying on TikTok for storage of your content, that's a bad move. So if I were you, I were in your shoes, you need to have backups not only in duplicate but actually in triplicate, right? And so recorded to your phone, that's That's one place. And then you need to make sure you're paying for iCloud storage. If you have an iPhone or an Android phone, you've got to have extra storage on your phone. So I would house the videos on your phone. I would house them on social media platforms. I would also house them on, for instance, Google Drive or Dropbox or some sort of third-party storage. And we also take all of our video content for our courses, for social media, for everything. And Every quarter we dump it onto a giant physical hard drive that lives in a fireproof box in my house. And so we actually have all of our content in 4 different places. And that is a really, really bulletproof strategy. So if you're a content creator, you're relying on TikTok as a storage mechanism, that is a big problem. Start pulling your content off immediately or at least copying, right? So you need to have copies again, duplicate. Triplicate, and we even have 4 copies. So, um, shoot for that kind of protection under your content. You spend a tremendous amount of time and effort in creating that content, and you need to be able to reuse it. Okay, so now we've covered potential things that might happen with the legislation, but I think the, the crux of the issue is there's a lot of potential obstacles. And obviously I do not know, but my best guess would be that nothing is going to happen inside of 8 months. And so that takes into account the rest of the process of going through the Senate, the president's desk, the 6-month grace period, potential lawsuit, potential block by the Chinese government to sell the company. So lots of different things can happen. I think really worst-case scenario is you've got 8 months. Um, okay, but let's talk about what it means to have your audience on social media and to rely on social media platforms instead of having ownership of your audience. So at Level Up Creators, we talk a lot about renting an audience versus owning an audience and renting an audience. And renting an audience is having an audience on social media. It's relying on social media to keep your audience safe, right? And to— you're waking up every morning and you're relying on Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, everywhere, YouTube to not change the rules such that you don't lose the followers that you've built. And so again, you've worked unbelievably hard for this and you need to own those leads, right? In the business world, I come from the business world. I started, I have 10 years of experience in the creator economy before the creator economy was even called that. And I've got 10 years in the software as a service realm, right? The business-to-business realm. And businesses know that they need to own their leads. Even if you don't consider your social media audience a lead at this point, I want you to start thinking of them that way. I want you to use this framework that will allow you to— this mental framework that will allow you to do what's called retaining optionality. And that means leaving the doors open for yourself in the future. And in this particular instance, with social media platforms, That looks something like having an email list, having a backup plan. So again, rented audience or social media followers—you don't have their names, you don't have their email addresses, and you don't have any way to contact them outside of that specific social media platform—that can pose a really, really big problem if the rules change. This happened way back in the day with Facebook. If anybody listening remembers that, there were Facebook—I think it was. Fan pages and they did away with them literally overnight. And millions and millions of people lost track of their leads essentially because Facebook decided to change the rules and it screwed so many people. And then Elon Musk bought Twitter, changed the name, changed the algorithm last year. Right. And, you know, that's still kind of continuing to sort itself out. And then now we've got this situation with TikTok and this is not going to stop happening. I can promise you that. There are, you know, few people in power and governments who have control over these entities and legislation. And those people are probably not me and you, right? So what you can do to protect yourself and retain optionality as a creator to potentially create a business beyond brand deals and affiliate deals, you know, things that happen specifically on social media platforms is again, to start owning your audience, own your potential leads. So you want to take people from, social media following and give them a reason to move over to your email list. Okay. So this is like a secondary channel. People have to opt in to join an email list. I'm sure we are all on various email lists anytime we buy a product online or grab what's called a lead magnet, which is a free downloadable asset that you receive in exchange for giving a company or a person your email address, right? Top 10 list, a guide. We have a couple of free courses and free guides and things like that that we use as lead magnets. And so if you sign up for any of those, which you can do through the link in my bio, you're on our email list. And so you'll receive not only what you asked for, but you're opted in to receive our weekly email newsletter. And what that allows us to do is communicate with you with your inbox real estate and on social media. But what's really most important to us is that email address, because then we can communicate with you on your terms. And we want to teach you how to communicate with your audience on your terms and their terms. Again, you have to get permission to send people emails. And we're going to help you understand how to give them a good reason to do so. But first, let me explain why you might want to have email addresses far beyond what we're talking about here with ownership versus renting email addresses. So typically, when you have email addresses, you have the opportunity to create an online business and online businesses consist of manner of things. I'm sure you're all familiar with brand deals and affiliate deals right now. That's 2 sort of tried and true revenue pathways for creators. And beyond that, the world is kind of your oyster. There are so many opportunities that you can create for yourself and income opportunities that you can create for yourself through the creation of digital products and services. And the best way to sell digital products and services is not just to your social media followers, but the people who join your email list are really going to be your super fans, the people who are most interested in you and what you have to say and potentially willing to pull out their credit cards and purchase something from you, which is pretty awesome. You're clearly, you know, you've built your social media account around your area of probably the marriage between your area of passion and your area of expertise. And you have curated a community around that subject matter. And so it would make sense for you if, especially if you're teaching what you know to your social media audience, to create digital products and services that kind of take people to that next level. Right. So we're all familiar with creating courses. I'm sure everyone, every creator on here has seen ads and ads and ads on their Instagram feeds or TikTok feeds or wherever for instructions on how to create your own course. And that is a really great starting point for digital creators. And the way that kind of a sales funnel, if you'll— if you're familiar with that terminology, um, works when you're selling something like a digital course is kind of like this. So you have your social media audience, and then you want to give people that follow you on social media a reason to get on your email list. So that would be through a lead magnet or joining your newsletter. Newsletter is the absolute easiest thing to do, even if that totally freaks you out and overwhelms you. I promise we will walk you through the entire process there. And we actually have a challenge that you can join that we're starting later this week. And it is a 4-day challenge that will help you set up a free account with ConvertKit, who is an email service provider. And we're gonna teach you how to create a landing page really, really simply to make it super easy and start your own newsletter. We're gonna teach you how to create ideas, how to write it, how to batch content, schedule it, everything you need to know. So you can actually sign up to join that challenge right now at newsletter.welevelupcreators.com. I need to make sure I said that correctly. Yes, newsletter.welevelupcreators.com. So just drop your email address in there and then we will enroll you in the challenge. Our landing page is not up until tomorrow because we're moving very quickly to try and get you all the information that you need about the TikTok situation. So, but really this applies again for anyone who is relying solely on social media to keep track of their audience. So All right. Get people onto your email list via a newsletter and/or a lead magnet. And then over time you do what's called nurture that email list. And you do that through regular newsletters. And so that could be on a monthly, every other week or weekly basis, even if you want to get really, really consistent and show up in their inbox frequently. And the way that you deliver value through a newsletter is by looking at your most successful social media content. What are people watching and invested in and interacting with the most, right? Likes, shares, comments, views, and extrapolate on those types of— we have a question coming in. Let me get to that in just a second. Extrapolate on that content within newsletters. I mean, I'm sure you've got 15 to 50 to 100 pieces of, you know, your top content on your social media platform of choice. That is the data that you can mine immediately to get your newsletter topics for the first, you know, 15 or 50 ones of these that you're going to write. And so it's sort of an extra above and beyond value add to people who again are your super fans. Okay. And let's go back to lead magnets because the question is, what are the tips for lead magnets? So lead magnets should solve a clear problem and the way that you can think about what lead magnets you create is, let me think, the phrase is basically get this thing for free and it will help you do XYZ with little to no effort. So I'm going to make your life easier if you download this digital asset. And by digital asset, I mean it could be a mini course, like an email drip course, like something you get over 3 or 4 days, which is actually what our Own Your Audience Challenge lead magnet is. It's an email drip course that's gonna go out over the course of 4 days. A top 10 list, a template, a guide. Like we have a how to make AI sound like you guide. We have a creator business blueprint guide. Another email drip course we have is Creator to CEO. And so you wanna think about the problems that your audience has and what you have to offer based on your unique experience and skillset. To solve those problems. That's really as simple as it is. And all the best products and services in the world, whether they're free or paid, solve a problem, really a really painful problem in particular for a particular subset of the population, right? A specific customer persona, if you're familiar with that marketing terminology. So figure out something, a problem that you can solve for your specific community of followers and Apply it to a top 10 list, a free guide, a mini course. It could be video or again, written and dripped out via email. And there's a lot more options than that, but I'll stick with that for now. But as long as it solves a problem and it's compelling and you can create a hook for your landing page where you sort of advertise this lead magnet, you're good to go. And so a hook, you guys are also familiar with hooks, right? You're all social media content creators. And so you are creating amazing hooks and that's how that's played a big part of your ability to grow your audience. And so unique selling propositions or unique value propositions are simply hooks. And so if you can sort of translate that skill from the hooks that you create for posts and carousels and reels and videos to a landing page for a lead magnet and stuff that you sell later on, you're as good as gold. So think about what hooks have worked the best for you on social media and apply that same principle to a landing page that will advertise your We'll call it top 10 list. And actually I was talking to a client this morning. We were talking about a new lead magnet, like top 50 hooks for Instagram. And so that creator is going to start offering that lead magnet. So, and he teaches people how to grow their Instagram and TikTok accounts through video, right? So that's a perfect, perfect, perfect lead magnet. So it is a very logical connection between your audience and what you have been providing. It's just a little bit more like it's a level up from the free content that you provide. So someone puts their email address into your landing page. And then on the backend of that, you can, on the backend of this, you can do this through ConvertKit. They receive whatever you promised them, right? So top 10 hooks or something like that would be delivered probably in just like a PDF, right to their inbox. No big deal, super easy. And then here's where the magic happens in terms of nurturing leads. One, again, that person gets on your newsletter list. Until or unless they unsubscribe right there in the driver's seat. But until or unless they unsubscribe, you have the ability and right and permission to take up a little bit of inbox real estate. So once you've delivered the value, and again, you're sending newsletters on hopefully a regular cadence to continue to add value, you have the ability to, once you've nurtured those leads, to offer them something for sale. And this is primarily what we do at Level Up Creators. We have our consulting firm and we also have Level Up Creator School, which is basically the education that you need and our fractional team of advisors. It's like full-stack business operators for online business owners like yourself. And what we encourage people to do is over time, first step is building an email list and nurture those leads through lead magnets and newsletters. You want to develop a suite of products and services, digital products and services that you can sell to your email list in particular, because those are the people who are going to feel most closely connected with you. And you can have the ability through marketing automation to deliver the right offer at the right time to the right person in the right way. We teach you how to do all of this, so don't get lost in the terminology or anything like that. Um, but it's just making a really compelling offer that that solves the problem for your customer and doing that over and over and over again with different types of products and services. So some examples would be a first purchase might be, you know, if your lead magnet is 50 hooks, maybe the first purchase digital products that you have on offer is a $39 list of 250 of the most compelling hooks for social media in 2024. And So that's a $39 product. It's fairly inexpensive. You've spent the time, the intention, the work to nurture those leads. And some people will be willing to pull out their credit cards, pay you $39 and receive 250 more hooks from you. Right. And then a next logical progressive step from there would potentially be something like a course on how to grow your Instagram followers from you know, $0 to $10,000 in 30 days or something like that, right? It's got to be a really compelling hook. Don't over-promise and under-deliver. Don't do that at all. But you're trying to solve a problem, right? So I do this thing for you, my email subscriber and social media follower, so that I can make your life better. I can solve a specific problem. I can promise you this specific value outcome and transformation, right? You're going to go from this to this if you buy my awesome product or service. All right. So let's say you've got a course and someone buys your course for $149, say, and they have a great experience with you. So now they've made 2 purchases from you. They're singing your praises. They're talking about you on social media. They are offering you testimonials, which you can then circle back around and put into landing pages. And from there, the sky's the limit. And we are always moving people toward recurring revenue. And recurring revenue is, um, the old school term for recurring revenue is mailbox money. And I explain this as you are offering value on a consistent and ongoing basis. So we call this the mutual— actually have this written on my whiteboard right now— the mutual value exchange continuum. So it's like this infinity figure 8 and it's value inputs And then consumption of value. So you as the creator and business owner are putting in value and inputs in exchange for money on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis, and your customers are consuming that value. But it's not a one-time transaction like the $39 purchase or the $149 purchase we just talked about. We're actually talking about, uh, something like a membership community. A mastermind, something where people are paying you again on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. This is sort of the holy grail for online business owners, whether you designate yourself as a content creator, digital creator, creator educator, solopreneur, entrepreneur, uh, trainer, coach, consultant, whatever the case may be. If you are selling products and services online, you want to get to the point where you are selling something that is consumable and that you can continue to sort of refill on value at a regular cadence. For instance, Level Up Creator School is a membership community, and so you as a creator would pay me and my team a subscription fee. It's like subscribing to a fractional team plus getting a ton of education and access to us and other creators like you. And so we are coming to the table 5 days a week on weekdays with live events, trainings, accountability sessions, office hours, webinars, what we call action workshops, where we actually get together and get things done. And so we are coming to the table with a truckload of value and not just one time, like with a one-off individual course, but we're providing value month over month over month over month. We're giving people a reason to stay on and continue paying, if that makes sense. And so we, our goal with our recurring revenue product, Level Up Creator School, is to teach you how to create recurring revenue digital products and services. So whether that's again a membership community of your own or even group coaching, uh, group coaching programs or masterminds, that's our ultimate goal. Because there comes a time in life where we all need to make as much money as we can in as little time as possible. No matter what your life circumstances are, sometimes we are forced over the edge and need that. I needed that in my late 20s when I had a massive, massive health crisis that I thought was career-ending at the time. I had to quit the job that I had been in for almost 10 years and loved and was very successful in every way that, you know, you could measure professional success. And suddenly I was very sick, medical bills are stacking up, and I had to make— I had to figure out a way to make as much money as possible in as little time as possible. But I had to quit my job. I had to quit the, the steady high-income, high-paying, really, really amazing job. So that was quite a conundrum. And so I spent the next couple of years sorting that out and have certainly regained my career and then some. But the way that I thought about that was I took my area of expertise, think about like a 3-circle Venn diagram, my area of expertise, what I'm passionate about and what I love, and then what people pay for. Think about 3 circles like that. And I was looking for the center of those, of that 3-circle Venn diagram to land on what I could bring to the marketplace that I could charge the maximum amount of money for and I could do on my own terms. Like, I needed, I needed a fast way to write my own ticket. And so what I landed on at the time, as I had already become— I'd spent 10 years in online recurring revenue since it was in its infancy. So I started that back in 2005. And I decided to become a consultant for other membership communities. And so I started my first consulting firm that way. And that was very successful, went really well. And then I started acting as a fractional executive. So I would come in and be like the chief sales officer or chief revenue officer for larger membership sites and communities. And then that led me to the software as a service world where I was the same type of executive basically, and have come all the way back now to the creator economy. And I'm bringing all the skills and the team that has followed me from different positions at different companies to you, right? And so our goal is to help you find the center of that Venn diagram and be able to live the life that you want to live by working as little as possible. It takes a lot of work upfront, but with a recurring revenue product and service, you can— well, the sky is really the limit, especially if you have an audience, people are listening to you. And that's kind of like the full scale of what you can do as a creator. So I hope that makes sense. And I hope that provides enough of a sales pitch, if you will, that you cannot just rely on social media for your audience. And if you do, you are subjecting yourself to potentially, you know, have rule change, algorithm changes, government regulation and legislation changes, ownership changes of those platforms. So again, the whole point of why we're here today is to talk about what happened, what is happening with TikToks in the United States, TikTok in the United States of America, and what you can do in sort of an offensive position right now. So the chess move is to offensively start to not just migrate your audience from one platform to another. You could certainly do that, obviously, um, that, that would be a really, really good idea. But ultimately, you're kind of just playing a game with the people who are in control of these social media platforms. And for you to take control and to be in the driver's seat of your business now, or your potential online business, you have to go from renting your audience to owning your audience. And let's see if we have any more questions coming in. Okay, somebody that joined a little bit late is asking for an update on what the heck is going on with TikTok. Let me go back to the top here, the TikTok legislation in particular. So again, TikTok is owned by ByteDance. ByteDance is a Chinese company, and if you know anything about the United States and China, um, they're not exactly best buds and best friends. Uh, China does not allow apps like Google, YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp, and a number of others— X— to operate in China. And now the United States is not wanting to let a Chinese-owned company, ByteDance, who owns TikTok, operate in the United States. So this has been going on for years and years and years. It's finally come to a head, and the United States House of Representatives last week voted for the removal of TikTok's operations in the United States. So that does not mean anything has been signed into law. That is step 1 of 3 in the American sort of governmental process of how legislation gets proposed and then signed into law. The next step is for the Senate to vote on the legislation that the House passed. We do not know when that will happen. The Senate has not scheduled a vote and there's just pure speculation about when that might be. That's step 2. And then step three, if if if if the bill is passed into law by the Senate, President Biden has said that he will sign the bill into law, and that would make it official. But that does not mean that TikTok is banned immediately. I want to be really really clear about that. So the way that the legislation is written is from the time that President Biden signs the bill into law again, it has to pass the Senate first. ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok— it's a Chinese-owned company— will have 6 months to sell TikTok to a basically a buyer that the United States government approves of, like probably a US-owned company, right? Uh, or that's a presumption on my part, but I'm pretty sure that's where this is headed. So they would have a 6-month grace period to find a buyer that the US approves of, but even if that happens There's a number of things that could prevent this from all going down that way. So one would be ByteDance could bring a lawsuit against— I'm not even sure who the entity is— is the US government. And a United States judge could deem the legislation that had been passed to be unconstitutional, and therefore, like, it doesn't matter. It just goes away immediately if, you know, the judge who gets assigned the case says so. And another thing that could happen is the Chinese government has the authority to ban the sale of TikTok, and so they can kill it on that level too. So I think there's a whole lot going against this bill, but I think it's a really, really good and important lesson for us to remember as content creators who really do rely on our, our social media audiences, that we are not in control of these platforms and that we are renting our audiences. On all of these platforms, we saw this. We've seen Facebook make massive changes to their rules and algorithms over time. Good luck having your post seen if you're a business if you're not doing paid ad spend with them. They took away fan pages at the drop of a hat, and millions of creators—well, people at that time not even called creators yet—lost their audiences. Last year, Elon Musk bought Twitter, renamed it. Changed the algorithm, changed some of the rules, and we're still kind of seeing the trickle-down effects of that. And now we're talking about this new legislation on TikTok. So the important thing is to go from renting your audience to owning your audience. And we're defining owning your audience as having an email list. And having an email list is getting people who are your super fans, who are most interested in you on social media, to sign up for an email newsletter or a free digital download or something like that. So that you can communicate them with directly with them through their inboxes, not just relying on social media. So you can communicate with them on your terms so long as they are subscribed to your list. Got a couple more questions. Okay. Okay. This is a great question. What if I've never offered a product and I'm nervous about asking something of my audience? That totally makes sense. And we hear that a lot. From creators. Things like, you know, it feels like selling out. It feels really icky to sell products and services to my audience. You know, they won't trust me. Okay. So a couple of things on that. One, the data actually very clearly shows that social media followers unfollow accounts for almost the sole reason that there's a values misalignment between the person the creator. So it does not have anything to do— unless you're just— there's exceptions to this, what I'm about to say, obviously. But, um, there are very few occasions where people are going to unsubscribe because you are selling something. Now, if you are in people's faces all the time pushing brand deals, pushing products and services over and over and over, and your content that was a value add and that people came to follow you on your social media account for That's the wrong approach. But if you're the person who's asking this question and you're nervous about selling to your audience, then you probably already are approaching your audience with this posture of service and this posture that I'm here to help you, to add value to you. I love creating content with and for you. And, you know, it's like your audience is kind of your baby, right? You've taken so much time and effort to build it and maintain it and continue to grow it over time. And so I can totally understand the fear of people unfollowing you, right? Sometimes that can feel really, really personal. So the way that you overcome that is one, know the data. I've got actually a course on this in Level Up Creator School. It's called How to Sell for Creators Who Hate Selling. And I do cite all of these particular statistics that companies like ConvertKit, Teachable, Thinkific, Adobe all come out with these like annual creator reports and they have these amazing updated statistics. So people won't unfollow you because you're offering something awesome. People unfollow by and large because of values misalignment between a creator and a follower. So just know that straight out of the gate. Next, you only want to make digital products and services or physical products and services that solve a problem, that add value to your community of followers' lives, that make their lives better in some way. Take them from A to B, right? Your, your product or service should provide a solution that provides a transformation and helps people feel, uh, what's called foundational desires. I won't get all into like buyer psychology right now, but you want to make people feel like they're in control, they're powerful, they're smart, they're beautiful, they're, they're wanted, they're part of a community, um, they're attractive. I mean, there's this massive list of foundational desires. Power, People want to be perceived as smart. People want to feel smart. They want to feel confident. And so you want to sell products and services that solve specific problems and help people realize those foundational desires. It's kind of this like virtuous one-two punch. And so we only help creators who are there to help their community of followers and who are approaching them with this posture of service. And that's why we have been successful with the creators that we work with, because they're approaching things this way. And then we're working together to find solutions that their specific community of followers needs. And then we just figure out the right way to package those up, because I said this earlier, the best products and services in the world solve problems for their target audience. So one example would be your neighbor. Maybe they drove home a new BMW last week. So not only is that solving their transportation problem, but it's also solving their— I really need to be perceived a certain way by my neighbors and the people at my work. My workplace, like perceive me, right? So you want to be seen a certain way. So the things that we buy, the things that we wear, the cars we drive, the houses we live in, the neighborhoods we live in—they all like they're social signals, right? I'm sure this has been a huge thing in the media right now—is social signaling. And we want people to think about us a certain way, and we want to be perceived a certain way. And your social media followers, the data, all those reports I just mentioned actually back this up as well. Your followers want to be like you. They already know, like, and trust you, and they want—they're following your account because it's centered around. A central topic that they're very interested in. And the more they watch you, the more you're in their inbox with this email newsletter and lead magnets, like we're talking about, the more, the closer they feel to you and the more they feel like they are like you and mostly not in a creepy way, right? Like that can get weird in a hurry. But for the most part, if you are approaching this with a posture of service, a posture of I'm here to help solve problems. People are not gonna feel weird about being asked to purchase something from you, right? You're one of their favorites. Most people have 3 to 6 creators— again, the data shows this as well— um, that people really attach to. And so if you are one of those 3 to 6 creators for a handful of people that follow you on social, which is probably thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, they want to buy stuff from you. Because they know, they trust, and they like you. And so how you figure out is another question. Thanks for submitting this. How do I figure out what problems my audience has? Take a look at what, which of your posts, reels, carousels, any social media engagement has gotten the most engagement. What has gotten the biggest response? What types of content? So if you are, let's say, an entrepreneur and you are, or maybe an entrepreneur coach, and your social media account centers around helping people build businesses. And if you posted a piece of content that was like, here's how to handle objections. Objections are like any opposition to purchase anything. Like it's too expensive. I don't believe it'll work. I don't have enough time to do that. Those are all objections. So if that was one of your most popular posts ever, then that would indicate that your social media followers don't know how to handle objections and they really, really, really, really need help. Handling objections. And there's a lot of fear that goes around that and around selling. And so you as the creator and the entrepreneur coach would probably want to put out a lead magnet about like top 5 objections and how to handle them, which would allow you to provide a lot of free value, but in exchange for an email list. And again, that goes along with this whole theme of moving from renting to owning your audience. So top 5 objections and how to handle them. And then You wanna have that lead magnet connected to a marketing automation nurture sequence. So this is something that's preset up in the background. We do this all the time for clients. It can be very complicated and annoying, but we make it very, very simple and ConvertKit helps it, helps make it very simple as well. And that's where we're encouraging you to go and set up a free account and start building your email list like now today. So you would build on that top 5 objections and how to solve them. Probably leading people who grabbed that lead magnet toward a course that you sold for $499 or whatever the case may be. It's like a very comprehensive deep dive on objection handling that would go all the way back from how to all the way back to like how to prevent objections to how to handle the most difficult ones. Right. So a really, really comprehensive course. So I hope that makes sense, but, but look to your content. I mean, look to your social media content and see what people are most engaged with, have enjoyed the most. And that's a, that's a good start. And again, we are starting this Own Your Audience Challenge this week. You can go to newsletter.welevelupcreators.com, drop in your email address, and we will enroll you in the challenge. It's a 4-day challenge, and we're going to help you move your audience from rented to owned. And that's going to involve setting up a free, completely free account on convertkit.com. They are a tremendously powerful and popular platform for creators. It is a tool that is for creators by creators. And so set up an account, build a landing page with a compelling value proposition, which our challenge emails will help walk you through exactly how to do that. And it's part of this problem identification process we've just been talking about. And we're going to teach you again now, create a landing page, create a newsletter with a hook or unique selling proposition, if you will. And then how to create a newsletter, how to generate ideas for your newsletter and how to continuously generate ideas for your newsletter. We even have an AI guide that we point to. You can also get it through the link in my bio directly. This AI guide that we point to where we help you fill in specific data points about you, and then we have these copy and paste prompts to help you write all manner of content, all matter of content that content creators need to write. So that definitely includes how to brainstorm ideas for, I mean, social media content, but newsletters in particular, help with writing newsletters and all in your tone of voice. So, um, we are here to elevate creators, right? The name of our company is Level Up Creators. And so our entire stance is that you as an individual have something, a very unique value to share. Again, it's that marriage of what you're passionate about, what you know and have like deep expertise and knowledge in, and what people are interested in and will eventually pay for deeper and deeper levels of your knowledge and expertise. And We believe that there is a way out from corporate America, from being saddled to a job for 40 years and a 9 to 5. And we are here to help creators like you make as much money as you can ethically by solving really painful problems for your community of followers so that you can create the life that you want, right? This is a write-your-own-ticket kind of thing. Like, that's the whole ethos of the creator economy is Come here, bring your passion, bring your knowledge, bring your expertise and your vision, wisdom with you and write your own ticket. So we're here to help you put all the pieces together of how those businesses work. And I can assure you that a big, big step in that you've already done a lot of the audience building part. And that is so, so, so hard and it's so unbelievably valuable. Um, and so I've got to give credit where credit is due on that for sure. You've built an audience. But it is a rented audience. So with the rented audience, again, you've got specific risks that come with that, which we've seen in the past, specifically with changes in Facebook, Twitter to X under Elon Musk's ownership, and now with what's potentially going to happen to TikTok. So you've got to take this rented audience and create an email list and a compelling reason for people to jump from social media to your email list via a digital download, really cool asset or a mini course or something like that. It's called a lead magnet, or just get them to hop on your newsletter where you can go into, again, deep dives about content that's already done well on social media. This is kind of a little something extra and exclusive. Again, you've got to give people a reason to give you their, their email address and that real estate in their inbox for sure. But that's kind of the foundation that you can lay to build an online business where you do sell a suite of digital products and services that are very thoughtfully created and crafted for your unique community of followers. That's done on autopilot through this system called marketing automation, where you don't have to lift a finger once the system is set up, or very often, and your email subscribers and customers are in the driver's seat. They see the content that is most relevant to them so that you, on autopilot through marketing automation, can continuously make the right offer at the right time in the right way to the right person. And that's the ultimate goal of every marketing department in the world is to find what problems they can solve for a specific community within, you know, the global population and speak to them in a way that shows them that they can actually for real solve their problems. So, um, in, in our consultancy and in Level Up Creator School, we really want to lead you toward recurring revenue opportunities where there's this mutual exchange of value on an ongoing basis, um, because that's where tremendous value and deep, deep relationships, not just between you and your community members, but Between your community members. I mean, building relationships in social media comments is really, really difficult. So we want to let you have your own platform, right? Like a membership community, uh, and also have opportunities for like high-ticket small group coaching programs or cohorts. And that's kind of like unlocking— that's where you can get to high 6 and 7-figure revenue and even 8-figure valuations if that's kind of the way you want to go. But we're here to help you Write your own ticket. So let's see if we have any other questions real quick. Okay. Writing a monthly or weekly newsletter seems daunting. Tips for coming up with ideas for content? Yes. Okay. So there's a really specific way to do this. One, again, I've said this a million times today, but figure out which content works best, has worked best with your audience. Like what's your most popular content? You can expand on those ideas. You can have a newsletter. And nobody said that your newsletter has to be like a 1,000 or 2,000-word essay or anything like that. It could be, you know, top 3 tips for XYZ a week, or, you know, people are following your account. If you're a very entertainment-driven account in particular, it's like 3 awesome things I did this week. I mean, that's totally a newsletter idea. I will teach you XYZ, that kind of a thing. Like our newsletter goes out every week and we talk about How to help creators make money, specifically all roads leading to recurring revenue. And so whatever your value proposition is, you want to try and come up with as many topic ideas based on your content, on what's going to resonate with your audience. Now also look at competitors' content. Do not ever steal a competitor's content, but look through their account, look at their highest performing reels, um, Google problems that your audience have and like see what comes up. What other solutions have other creators and businesses and individuals come up with? That are relevant to your audience. So there's a lot of searching you can do on Google, on YouTube, on all the social media platforms. Again, kind of like doing a little, an ethical data mining exercise with your competitors and what we call ecosystem partners, which are non-competing businesses who are tangentially related. Like they have the same audience as you, but they're not offering the same things as you. Look at their content and see what's performing the best and see if you're in a position to expand on that. Or even just have enough information to feed ChatGPT a smart prompt and help it write you a draft that's like 90% of the way to done. And then this is a longtime ConvertKit strategy. This is Nathan Barry, the founder. He is really big on at the bottom of each and every one of your newsletters, have like a little PS section, like, hey, what are you struggling with the most? Or, you know, you can reword that question to, make the most sense based on your audience. But what are you struggling with the most? How can I help you? What value can I provide for you? What are you curious about? What are you interested in? Whatever question like that applies to your audience is perfect. It's absolutely perfect. And people will reply and they will tell you what they want to hear from you. And so if you keep building your email list and you keep asking that question and people reply and then people reply from a larger pool of email subscribers, you will have a never-ending list of content. And we are also really big on content batching, like sitting down and writing, you know, 4 to 12 newsletters and corresponding blog posts. That's what we do here at Level Up Creators at a time. And again, we've got, you know, strong value proposition for our newsletters. We are here to help creators build recurring revenue opportunities, right? So you can live the life you want. You can write your own ticket. And you subscribe to our newsletter to get like little strategic chess moves that you can implement every single week. So I hope that's helpful. I know this can seem a little bit overwhelming, but again, join our challenge. It is the Own Your Audience Challenge. It's a 4-day email challenge. So you get an email to your inbox every day for 4 days teaching you exactly. And we'll walk you through step by step with screenshots and GIFs or GIFs. On exactly how to create an account, set up a landing page, come up with a unique selling proposition, and create a newsletter. And then we'll remind you of all these ideas we've talked about today, and then some on how to continuously come up with ideas so that you can be really, really consistent with your audience. So again, I talked about this at the beginning— retain optionality. Even if you have no plans whatsoever at this point to sell digital products and services to your audience, you want to have the opportunity to do so. And again, Be— take an offensive posture, like offensive as opposed to defensive, now and start owning your audience, especially on TikTok, getting moving to other platforms, uh, and also building an email list so that you can move your audience from rented to owned. And at the very least, you will have your super fans. You will control their contact information. You will control when and how you can reach out to them. And that's the beginnings of a business, even if you Again, never plan to run one. You might find yourself changing your mind in the not too distant future because the opportunities are really endless for content creators like you who have built audiences around a central topic. The people that follow you know, trust, and like you very much. They want to feel connected to you. They want to build community with you, and you have such an amazing opportunity to do that. Thank you so much for everybody who joined. I had a great time chatting today. Appreciate those who submitted questions as well. We're going to sign off, and I will be back on again. Tomorrow at what time? 3 PM, uh, EST tomorrow. So we'll see y'all then. Thanks and have a great evening.