How To Build a Million Dollar Business From Your Audience

I have over 3 million followers across all platforms. 1.5 million on TikTok, 1.2 million on Instagram, 765,000 on Facebook.

That's amazing. What happens when your platform gives you reach but not revenue? That's what Eric Rhodes is dealing with right now. He's a full-time DJ making $600,000 a year through events. But as his platform grows, the business model needs to catch up.

It's been something that's been bothering me to know that there's something out there that I haven't figured out yet.

2 to 3 years from now, where do you want to take this business?

Revenue-wise, I'd love to be $2 to $3 million.

I basically see two paths to monetize going forward. Path number one is earn more from music fans, and then path number two is serve a niche, teach to a niche.

I personally like the idea of a high-ticket offer.

I think there's a lead magnet in here that DJs would really care about. So now on the DJ side, it's like, okay, now I have attention from a much smaller group of people. What's the highest value place that I could direct that attention? You would be better off selling them a—

That's a great idea.

What we've done is gotten to a targeted list and we try to sell them one thing.

This has been very, very helpful.

Eric, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Nathan Barry.

It's always fun when we can do a local episode with someone who has built a massive audience as a creator. So Way to represent Boise. Thank you.

Absolutely proud of it.

So we've both been building businesses here in Boise for a long time, but actually didn't cross paths until really this summer. So it was our mutual friend Franny that made a connection, and then you came out and DJ'd Craft and Commerce, and that was a ton of fun.

Yeah, I was, uh, really excited to be able to do that. It's a fun crowd.

It's a great crowd.

Oh my gosh. Yeah, I got to DJ the welcome party and then the, and then the, the the final one.

Yeah, it was a good time. So it was like 400 creators hanging out in Boise. If anyone wants to come, I think there's still some tickets available. So it's a—

Must go.

Yep. It's a good event. Um, but I want to hear a little bit about your background because it was one of those things where it's pretty normal. Like you book a DJ for event, that's a normal thing. And then, um, you know, cause I knew a little bit about your background. Everyone was like, oh no, he's, he is very popular on the internet. You know, it's not your average local Boise DJ. Um, So if we— let's actually just start there. Like, what is your social following? And like, let's get the kind of that breakdown of your business right now.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I have over 3 million followers across all platforms. So I'm at 1.5 million on TikTok, 1.2 million on Instagram, 765,000 on Facebook, and about 90,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Okay, nice. Yeah. And so you've been— how long have you been working professionally as a DJ? Well, it's been a while.

Yeah. Well, I started in 2000 for fun and then made it a career in 2011.

So you've been doing this a while.

I've been doing it a long time. Yeah.

2011 is right when I got into content creation.

Okay.

When did the, like the online side of it come about?

It started after, after COVID 2021.

Yeah.

So May 4th, 2021 was the first post reel that I ever did. Actually, it was a TikTok and I had been thinking about posting mixes on social media, but just, it never felt like the time was right until then. And as soon as I posted on May 4th, 2021, I got instant success. And within a couple months I had a viral video and it was just, it just took off from there and completely, completely changed the trajectory of my business.

That's amazing. Okay. So what does, like, what type of content are you putting out? Like, what is it? Individual reels? Is it Like what types of things are you doing?

A lot of individual reels. Mostly it started off me just showing somebody how I transition from one song to the next.

Okay.

Basically displaying, hey, this is what you're going to see for the 3 hours that you hire me for your event. This is one little snippet. Enjoy. And then that has just evolved over time into making mashups of different genres, taking like a '90s hip-hop beat, mixing with a country song and just giving it a whole new life. And then it's come in, it's really become apparent that people love my nostalgia. So I make quick mixes of 30 hits from 1995 in under 3 minutes, and people just love those videos right now. So those are really hot, but mostly just longer reels is what I put out.

Yeah, I like it. Okay. And then what was the first video that went viral or what were some of those early ones?

I transitioned from TLC, No Scrubs into NSYNC, Bye Bye Bye.

Okay.

And, you know, I'm mixing it, singing along. Along and it just blew up on TikTok.

Uh-huh.

July 2021, I was actually at a wedding and because I DJ weddings at the time and I was like, kept checking my phone and I'm just like watching this video just accrue numbers. And all of a sudden I see Lance Bass commented on it and I was like, this is insane. What is happening here?

Yeah.

So that was, that was my first viral video.

Okay.

Yeah. And within less than a year I ended up having a million followers on, on TikTok. So it didn't even take a year.

Wow. Okay. So if you were to look back, I normally I'd ask someone who did it over like 10 years, you know, if you were to try to do it faster, what would you do? In this case, like you did it pretty dang fast, but what are a few of those things that you noticed like, okay, this is what really worked. If I was starting over again, I would do these specific things.

Sure. For me, it was, it was being myself. I can't express that enough. Just being yourself. It's easy to try to be yourself on camera, but to actually just be yourself.

Yeah.

Is, is one thing. And then also having the skill of whatever you're doing. So there are some things I already knew because I had been— I have a background in television and, you know, working with cameras. So I know that you look at the camera, you talk to people like you're on the other end, like they're right there in front of you.

Right. Like talk to an individual, not a big group or like those types of things.

100%. Like you and I are talking right now. So there's that. But then you also have to have the skill. Like I knew what I was doing was good. So I had that confidence to be able to put that out and, and feel good about it.

That's something that I notice a lot. We often look to and celebrate these people who are these content creators who came in and made a huge impact. And they're usually already professionals in some other category. You know, if you take like Uh, Jefferson Fisher, he's teaching communication skills, right? But he's a trial attorney. He's been doing this for like 20 years and he's used to being in front of a judge and a jury and like nailing all these finer points. And he's like, oh, you want me to teach that on Instagram? Yeah, I can do that. Like no problem. Right. Or Andrew Huberman, you know, he's a Stanford professor. He's, you know, like has all of this expertise and then he's like, okay, let me just use content creation as a medium to share it with more people. Totally. And so I think that that's a very common thread in people who have some level of breakout success or an accelerated path like you did is like, well, I've been doing this professionally since 2011 and oh, you want me to do it in this new format?

Great.

I can learn that.

Exactly. So it wasn't necessarily an overnight success, so to speak. It really was all of the training that I had, all of the experience, all of the failures, everything had accumulated up into 2021, when I started to post, I had all of that ready to go.

Yeah.

And I even knew how to frame my shot correctly. I was, you know, and I was following creators before because I had listened to a lot of Gary Vaynerchuk in 2020. And so I was really into TikTok, but I wasn't just doomscrolling. I was paying attention to creators that were teaching you how to speak into a camera and how to— I didn't do a lot of this, but like cut your shots at the right time. And so I was studying it. For about a year, just until I had the—

before you dove in.

Before I dove in. So I was really mindful of how people were creating, how they were showing up on camera, how they, like, just the nuances of it. So I think it, they'd say now just show up and, you know, prop up your camera and talk to it, which I think is, there's some value to that, but I really do think studying people that are successful at it and why is a, is an important element to that.

Yeah. And I think probably a feedback loop in that. I'd actually be curious about this for you. Something that I found in writing my book is that really, if you want to be successful at anything, there's kind of 3 core ingredients. The first is to show up consistently, like actually do the thing. The second is, um, to have accountability in doing that, right? Is there someone who's expecting you to be at the gym at a certain time, right? You work out with a friend every, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 7:00 AM or a trainer or something like that. And the third is a feedback loop where how do you actually know if you're getting better? And that's what was sparked by what you were saying is like, You know, what's your feedback loop of knowing, does this work? Uh, am I getting better? All that, right? If you're going to learn public speaking and you go to Toastmasters, right? Well, there's your feedback loop and there's some of your accountability and all of that as well. I'm curious, one, how that resonates, and two, if you had a feedback loop in your content creation.

When I started to get some success and have eyeballs on me that didn't know who I was, they, there were some, there was some negative, there was some negativity that came along with that, right? Naturally. And at first I got upset and didn't kind of know how to process it, but then I would, I'd go, okay, they don't know me, doesn't matter. But then there were some people that would say things that kind of hurt a little bit, but then I go, there's some truth in that.

Oh yeah.

When they say this guy talks too much before he mixes, we just want to hear the mix. I go, okay, is that First I'm like, shut up. But I'll go, maybe, maybe I do talk too much. And so I sit back and watch my videos and go, yeah, I do. It does kind of take me a while to get to the good stuff. Maybe I tighten up those talking points. So I started to listen to some of that negativity and use it as a positive to make my videos better.

I like that because like looking for the element of truth in it, because as a creator, you have to learn to tune out the noise. As you know, I'm a big Taylor Swift fan. She talks about how she hasn't had comments on her Instagram for many, many years. She's just like, "I don't hear all of that." And that type of skill as a creator is so important to basically say, "Look, I am here to create and I'm going to figure out how to do that without being inundated with the noise of the world." But at the same time, there is feedback, there's some signal in some of that noise. And so if you can find that balance, you're like, okay, where's the Where's the element of truth in this of how I could make it better? I think that makes a lot of sense.

I would even have people say your audio's not very good. So there was actual constructive feedback. They might send me a direct message and that was really kind of them to go, hey, you may want to figure out how to get your audio better because your videos are great, but they don't sound very good. Oh shoot. Okay. Yeah. Maybe I do need this adapter thing. Anyway, it, yeah, I just, I'm always looking for feedback, whether it's in my creation or anything in my business. How can. How can I get a little bit better by what other people say about me?

I love that. And I think actively seeking it out is so important because feedback is a gift.

I'll text people at an event, like I'll have fans who, uh, I'll go to an event, they're excited to see me and I'll ask later, how, how was it? How did I show up compared to what you see me on online? And I had one lady go, you know, you're, I'm used to seeing you with a big smile. You're energetic on the screen and fun. And, but when you, when I saw you live, you were really serious.

Okay.

Your face, you weren't smiling as much. And I was like, oh yeah, I'm really locked into my song transitions and thinking. I go, I need to actually have the same stage presence. So I start learning from that feedback.

Stage presence is an interesting thing. When you are at home in your house, you don't have the audience to feed off of in the same way. Right. And something that I struggle with is if I'm making content and it's just me and I'm recording something like I get quieter and smaller and like, you know, just everything about it. And I have these friends who are so good at content and they're like, they're real. They'll just like turn, you know, turn it on and they'll bring up their energy levels and all that. But I'm curious for you, like, how do you, how do you manage that? How are you more energetic when you're, it's just you and the camera?

It's so funny because, you know, DJs talk about this. Like we are, a lot of us are introverts that are put in these extrovert positions in front of hundreds, thousands of people.

And so that's me.

I'm naturally more introverted, but you put me in front of a camera, nobody's around, I feel like I can be more myself. That kind of goes back to getting that feedback from that lady when I was in front of the crowd. I tend to shrink up a little bit, right? And so I've had to overcome that. So it's been natural for me to be able to just make a fool of myself or be extroverted on camera when no one's around and less likely to do that in front of a large crowd. Yeah, it's really interesting.

That makes sense. So we talked about the audience side. Now let's get into the business side. And you and I were hanging out at an event, um, by Franny who runs Ampersand Studios, a mutual friend of ours.

Shout out Franny.

Oh yeah. And, uh, you know, we were talking about like different opportunities to grow your audience, how to monetize in new ways and all of that. And then I was like, wait, we could just make an episode of this. Yeah. So if you're up for it, you wanna jump on the board and just talk through what the future looks like?

I'm down.

Yes, let's go. Okay, so we wrote a little bit up here to, to pregame it, but what I'm curious about first, let's just talk about revenue in your business right now. So what was revenue in 2024? Close to $700,000.

So I was like $685,000.

All right, that sounds good. And then what's the breakdown of where that revenue came from? Sure.

About $600,000 $85,000 of that was DJ related, in person, making mixes for people.

Okay. But mostly, yeah, just DJ related. Mostly in person for that? Yep. Go events. There's some other things in there, but that's the bulk of it. Bulk of it, yep. And then the other, what's the other $85,000 from?

That's a mix of a little bit of Patreon subscription, brand partnerships, a little bit of social media payouts for viral reels.

Okay. Yeah. And then, so the bulk of the business is driven by you showing up in person and putting on a great event for people?

Yes.

Making sure that that 100 to 1,000 people, like, they had a great time?

Absolutely.

Okay. And then what's 2025 look like? Or if you were to forecast to the end of the year?

Yeah, 2025 is looking a little bit not as good, but about $100,000 less. So I expect to make about $575,000.

Okay. And what's driving the difference there?

Less events booked. So one of the things I did is I raised my rates, you know, in hopes that I could work less and get paid more, which has been nice. I haven't had to travel as much, but now looking at the final numbers, it's— I'm going to make less as a DJ.

But you're on the road a lot less.

But I'm on the road a lot less. I— yeah, and I've focused on booking local events a little bit more, which I charge less for those.

Yeah, because you don't have—

so I probably did as many events, but I don't, um, I'm not bringing as, as much.

Okay. Yep.

Yes, but it's nice. I have a family, so it's those time, that time with them is important.

Is that, so $100,000 different. Well, actually let's finish out this thought here. Sure. Is that a pretty similar breakdown or what? Yeah.

Yeah, so I think I'm around $85,000, $90,000 for the Patreon. And the brand partnerships were practically non-existent this year. So a lot of it was more Patreon.

And so this would be like $490,000. Yep. Okay, cool. This is very, very helpful. So what I wanted to ask is, you know, you're $100K less. Usually in business we want the revenue numbers to go up. Yeah. But there's very specific trade-offs in that. Like not all revenue is created equal. And I've seen a lot of people chase like bigger and bigger numbers as profit goes down, happiness goes down, all of that. So I'm curious, if you look back on the last year, was this a worthwhile trade-off?

You know, I think so. And when I, You know, some of that money for DJ events is travel expenses, hotel flights, and all of that. So really my actual income wasn't affected by $100 grand. It was less than that. But I think it was good. You know, I tend to be a little more— I spend less than I make. So it wasn't a huge hit.

Yeah.

But yes, it was worth it. I got to spend a lot of time with my family this year. It was fantastic. But I would love to have.

Right, so now it's like, okay, how do we grow?

That's why we're here.

Grow revenue while keeping control of your time.

Exactly.

Do you want to do, you know, so like we decreased this, decreased events booked a bit, decreased travel quite a bit, and decreased revenue just a little bit. Do you want to play that forward? Like does this events booked trend to zero?

No, I still love what I do. But I don't want to be dependent on that. And what I would love to do is DJ events that are not only, that not only pay well but are fulfilling to me. So finding those like, heck yeah, I got, I want to do that event as opposed to it's a paycheck, I'm going to go do that event. So yeah, so I think it's 2 to 3, maybe 4 events a month.

Okay.

And then the rest I'm able to be home and figure out how to monetize by making content, growing email, whatever that might look like.

I love that. Okay, and so then 2 to 3 years from now, where do you want to take this business revenue-wise?

I'd love to be $2 to $3 million.

Okay, great.

Which is ambitious, but I think it's definitely doable.

I mean, you definitely have the audience size for it. So let's talk audience a little bit, 'cause that's, it's always like, all right, let's take inventory of what we have. Okay. For me, from the outside, it looks like you kind of have 2 different audiences or 1 big audience and a smaller niche. Within it, so all right, so if we're talking audience, you said 3 million across platforms, is that right?

Yes.

I never know.

More than that now, geez.

But yeah. That's awesome. Almost 4. So I guess let's just write the, so for TikTok, that was 1.5?

Yes.

Instagram?

1.2.

And then Facebook? I don't know why I abbreviated. 2 of them anyway, but in Facebook at 600K?

675. I think it's growing like crazy. I had 600 2 weeks ago.

Okay, that's interesting. So Facebook is taking off right now.

Blowing up, yeah.

Yeah, so one way that I— But yes. That something I'm curious about this is you kind of have like, if there's this big circle of 3 million people, right? Mm-hmm. That are fans, you probably have a much smaller circle within that of like DJs, right?

Yeah, so there is this segment of DJs who follow, who are inspired, yes. But majority is—

If you had to guess how many people are in that DJ category?

I mean, I'd probably say 10,000 to 20,000. Yeah, it's hard to say exactly though.

Oops, I said 10 to 2. 10 to 20 is safe, I got you. Yeah. So the reason I bring this up is like this is a very large audience. Yeah. But I think it's gonna be a tougher one to monetize. And we've actually talked about some of this in, you know, like as we didn't mention YouTube, but like you've got a YouTube audience as well. And from us talking offline, you're not able to monetize, you can't run YouTube ads in the same way that Ali Abdaal can, right? 'Cause of the copyright on the, you can't monetize.

I can post videos that have other people's music, but those artists make the money off the ad revenue and I make nothing. So it's, that makes sense.

That's the struggle. They created the original music, so they get that and you, Yeah, can give views, but come on.

So that's the trick is like, is the pain point I guess is how do I grow or how do I monetize this following outside of events knowing that I have, I play music that isn't my own?

Yeah.

I guess that gets tricky.

It's definitely, we almost have two problems nested in each other. Like one is the how do you monetize a huge audience where the revenue per subscriber, revenue per viewer tends to be quite low. And then the other is like you often, you have this other thing taken off the table of like you can't just straight up do AdSense, you know?

Exactly.

On YouTube. Yeah, I'm not selling a product or anything like that. Right, okay, so how many YouTube followers do you have?

90,000.

Okay. And then I know you have the email list. How many subscribers do you have on there?

Around 15,000.

Okay. I like it. Well, I've noticed from following you that you're doing more things to drive email list growth. Like that's a more recent thing.

Yes.

What's working the best to drive list growth for you?

Either sending people Spotify playlists of the videos that I'm making, 30 hits from 1995. Go, go type in this into the comments.

Oh, comment this word.

Comment 1995.

Or ManyChat automation.

ManyChat email to Spotify. Link. Same with YouTube. If I do an individual mashup, I might put that on YouTube, have them funnel to email to get the YouTube link. So that's how I'm growing the email right now.

That makes sense. Normally with an audience, the way I think about it is that you want to teach a skill that makes money to people who have money. So this is a Venn diagram of two different circles. I wanna start here. Right? And so we've got those two groups and then I want to iterate.

So makes money and has money.

Yeah, so it's, I should add one more word, skill. So a skill that makes money to people who have money, right? That's where I've done really well, right? I'm teaching software design to professional designers, companies, developers, all of that, right? And we're right in the sweet spot of this. And so you can charge hundreds or thousands of dollars. Or if teaching business skills to MBAs, like, great, we're right in here. If you're teaching career skills to high school students, it's like, definitely makes money, but they don't have money. And so we're starting to get a little off this Venn diagram. If we're teaching knitting to 12-year-olds, we're like way outside of this. Sure, yeah. And so in your case, you are not teaching a skill that makes money. You might, it might be people who have money, right?

Out of a lot of people who follow me, there are a lot who have money.

Yeah. And so it's interesting to think about like, what I love about this problem is it sits outside of like my core wheelhouse. And so that's why when you're talking about it, I'm like, I don't know. Let's turn on the cameras and figure it out.

Sure. So it's been something that's been sort of bothering me, or at least excites me a little bit to know that there's something out there that I haven't figured out yet. Like, what do I do? So yeah.

So that's the reason that I highlighted these 10,000 to 20,000 DJs. And I want to see if there's other categories within this audience because obviously being a professional DJ is a skill that makes money, right? You've clearly demonstrated that. For you and I living in Boise, Idaho, like, you're doing fantastic. And then there's definitely a group that has money. So within this group of DJs, we can meet our Venn diagram. I'm curious, as you've spent time with this 3 million person audience, are there other subsets that come out of it in the same way that we pulled out DJs that fit sort of this or just in general? Maybe even if there's just even broad categories, then we can see if they fit that.

I think there are a lot of solopreneur types. I can't scan my entire audience, but I try to pay attention and I see a lot of women who have like, who are real estate agents or they're, you know, fitness for women over 40 or whatever kind of their creators trying to figure out how to monetize. Yep.

They're business owners. I mean, you said creators.

I think so.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm gonna, I don't know if this is like a diagram that makes sense, but I'm just gonna say audience growth.

Then I have, you know, just the general fans.

And they might span every demographic and all.

Yeah, absolutely. General music lovers, I think.

Yeah, so people who own, I guess audience growth is kind of a, a desire, like something they, a goal to learn, right? People who want to grow their business, people who want to grow their DJ business specifically, or skill set, audience growth. There might be people who say like, oh, I love what you're doing and I'm trying to learn this other thing. And I noticed that you grew very, very quickly.

Yeah.

Like, how does that work? What can I learn from you?

Yes.

I basically see two paths to monetize going forward. I think that path number one is like earn more from music fans.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then path number two is the find a niche or serve a niche, teach, teach to a niche. Maybe we'll say that.

Okay, so it would be like Maybe it's social media growth or something along those lines. I think so.

Okay. Or like how to run a DJ business.

Oh, even tighter. Got you.

Yeah, so one of the, actually the first product, maybe the first like education product that I ever bought was called the Web Design Business Kit. It was from a website called SitePoint and they were based out of Australia. Popular at the time. This is probably 2009. Okay. I think, and it probably could have been a digital product, but what you got in the mail was this big binder that was effectively a book, but something about packaging as a binder, like the perceived value was higher than, than a book. It had a CD with it of like all the contracts and documents that you would need. It had checklists. It had basically everything you need to run your web design business.

Business.

And it was like, walked you through every step of the process. And it was just like, not only theoretically, like here's how you should do it. It's like, no, but use this contract, right? Or here's a proposal format and all of that. I probably paid $200 for it and it was worth every penny.

It sounds like a steal.

Right? Yeah. Because like in the skill that makes money to people who have money. Now I was 19, 20 years old, so I like didn't have a lot of money, but still like it was worth the investment.

Yeah.

So you could do something like that for DJs or one of these other niches. Right. But let's stay in this like earn more money from fans for a moment. 'Cause you, even though we said you can't monetize on YouTube, you are making money off of Facebook directly on some of these little platforms, right?

Yes. Pretty much Facebook right now is paying out.

How much is Facebook paying out right now?

Yeah, I just, Received $6,500 deposit this month from Facebook.

For the last 30 days?

For the last 30 days.

Okay, that's way more than I would've expected.

Yeah, and I'm not posting every day either, so.

And that's because as you said, Facebook is just popping off right now.

Yeah, my videos are getting 500,000 to millions right now.

That's wild.

It's really good compared to any other platform.

So we stay in this like earn more from fans category. There's obvious like scaling revenue there. We can scale Patreon. You touched on brand deals for a second.

Yes.

But we were talking, we've talked separately, like you don't love brand deals, is that right?

So I don't love them, but I'm not opposed to them. Yeah. If they make sense, if they're a good fit and I'm able to just be myself still and not be regulated. I've had some brand deals that I just didn't feel quite aligned and I wasn't excited about it. So one of my things is, as long as I'm excited about it, it pays and I'm able to still— it doesn't interfere with my family too much.

Yeah.

Then I think it's a good fit.

Okay.

But yes, I'm not excited about brand deals even though they could be very lucrative.

What are the things come to mind? Like if say all of this was off the table, like we're not going to do any niche content or all that. We're just like serve the fans.

Sure.

What else comes to mind? What would it look like to scale revenue?

I think Patreon's a good opportunity right now. Okay. Because it's, I think it's low barrier for my fans to join my Patreon.

And the price point's $10 a month on that?

For right now, yeah, it's $10 a month. So it's not a lot of money. And they get some music-related things. And I'm just trying to figure out what that real value is to where I feel really confident growing it to thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people. But it's got to be right.

You know what I mean? When we, like, you know, if you did the corny, like, close your eyes and imagine $2 million in revenue, is Patreon A big part of that?

It can be.

Okay.

I think it can be. It's figuring out what that is.

What the offering is.

What the offering is.

Yeah, 'cause you can bring your personality through.

But it gets tricky because what people want from me are mixes and mashups. And those things really aren't, it's just a gray area of monetization.

Like that. Ownership of it and all that.

Yeah, 100%. So it's like, what would, you know, Sally in Nebraska who's just a huge fan, what would wanna make her pay $10 a month to be closer to Eric Rhodes?

Yeah, if you imagine that conversation, someone comes up to you after a set, the kind of person who's like such a fan where they're like, oh, you were on tonight compared to the one that you did before, you know, or any of that. Like what do they want?

Maybe that's what I need to start with is surveying them and going, what, what, outside of music, what would you want? And maybe that's via email, social post. I guess I got to do it in a way that isn't like, hey, how can I make money off you?

I think it's the—

It's very, you know, how can I bring more happiness to you guys outside of my social media? What would—

Yeah. So I think it's an interesting question. It has to be authentic to the way that you do business and all of that, right? So obviously you coming out with like a Nielsen survey to fill, you know, people are gonna be like, what even is that?

I think it's literally a talking head video.

I think it is. You know, where you're like, hey, I'm, you know, planning my content for 2026, both what is out in the public, also what comes on the Patreon. And I just wanna know like, what, you know, what do you wanna hear from me? What types of connect, like, when do you feel the most connected? Like, how can I make your life better? Yes. If you're up for it, drop a comment in this video. If you really wanna do me a favor, go fill out this Typeform. It'll take 3 minutes. Ah, but still have a form. I think so. Yeah, that's smart. Because then you'll collect a little bit more and you can draw.

And the diehards are gonna be the ones.

Yeah.

The true fans are gonna be the ones that will actually fill that out. Mm-hmm.

And you can incentivize that information. Right, where you can say, if you're up for filling this out, it would mean the world to me. And as a thank you, I'll give you this video that I made of, you know, a particular mixer. Something like that. Yeah. People are like, I want that. Yeah, I'll—

That's smart.

And then you could even, we gotta brand it in some way. I was thinking about the comment, you know, like comment to get the link kind of thing because that does feed the Instagram algorithm.

Oh yeah.

We'll see how long that keeps. I'm like shocked that that still works. It's one of those things where like 4 years ago I was like, this will stop working at some point.

And it's still going strong.

And then 4 years later it's stronger than ever.

Which is so funny 'cause everybody's doing it now. So it feels a little bit—

But I'll scroll through someone's Instagram feed and it'll be like 10,000 views, 20,000, 10,000, 12,000, 200,000. And inevitably I'll click on the one that's a 10x outlier and it will have a, like 10x outlier on views and it will have a comment automation happening there.

And you're like, I think it gets all of the, it gets the comment stream going, which boosts the algorithm.

Oh yeah. —of your video. It works amazingly. Yeah. So what I would do, what I was thinking about is you don't wanna say like comment survey to get this 'cause that's not a branded moment. Like what's— Sure. What's the word? Comment superfan, comment, right? You know, something that's like, oh, I'm helping you. Comment gift. That's not even quite right, but—

Yeah, I know what you're saying though.

It's very—

You're right though, make it fun, make it playful, fun and brandable.

Yeah.

Um, I think the key is too, I think people will inevitably default to, we want your mixes. So when I'm asking that question, I think I need to be very clear that, hey, outside of just listening to a mix, like, what, what would be the thing, or what are the things that you would want? Yeah.

And so I put that in the video and in the survey. Yeah. Okay. But I think that's interesting because then if the survey then we'll learn a lot from that. That's a great idea. Because there's not really a clear path to scale ad revenue here that I see, or sponsorship revenue. And so, 'cause Facebook doesn't seem like it's been happening long enough that you're like, ooh, we're gonna, you know, I'm confident that for the next 3 years I'm gonna pay the mortgage off of.

It can go away tomorrow. Yeah. I did talk to somebody who said there's an opportunity to maybe put written playlists on my website as more of a blog. Okay. And get ad revenue on the blog. You—

I don't know what that—

I haven't really researched that at all.

Um, I mean, it would definitely work as a category. I'm just not sure the earnings would be enough. Yeah, because the thing that you've pulled off is like the distribution algorithms of social, the way you create content, your skillset plays really well to that. And so for written content, you have to learn an entirely new, there's actually not built-in distribution. Everyone, so if you look at food content creators, they made a crazy amount of money off of Google search, that organic search traffic. And then they heavily monetized all their sites, tons of ads, all of that. And made great money. Like I know a lot who are making $1 to even $5 million a year off of that. But it's all coming down like crazy because Google search is going down like crazy and this is being replaced by ChatGPT. Sure. So you don't go to Google and say, hey, give me that recipe for whatever. You go to ChatGPT, say, give me the recipe. And it's like, great, let me give you just the recipe without the life story, without all the ads. It's kind of an old style. It is trending down substantially. Okay, makes sense. Because now you have to bring your own traffic, which it might be worth doing. You're just never gonna be able to drive enough traffic to that written content to make the ads make sense.

Might as well just get people here and put some written content on there. That's where I'm gonna be posting my playlist. That's where I'm going to be posting things that may—

yeah, whatever comes out of the survey. Sure, that makes sense. Is there anything else before we move from the fan side to the one of these niches? Is there anything else that we should touch on? I love the survey idea.

Not that I can think of off the top of my head. I've, you know, thought about next to it, and this goes into more in-person, but like maybe doing meetups in the cities that I'm DJing in. Like, that could be a way to monetize, but then that requires a whole other planning process to create this like small event that I'm going to do. And I don't even know if people show up for that.

And it's a whole— I mean, that is something of like, if you're getting paid $20,000 to DJ an event, there's an element of like, well, could I draw my— could I run my own event? But as you point out, that is a big undertaking. Which I'm trying to avoid for the most part. And you like, If this is a relatively high margin business, at least initially, that's gonna be a pretty low margin business. Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, maybe not a good idea. Yep.

All right, well let's dive into the other side. Really, you know, teaching content, teaching a skill that makes money to a specific niche, that is the bread and butter of so many of the most successful content creators. So let's dive into what that would look like. Okay. Is there, of these different niches, intents, DJs, business owners, people who care about audience growth, anything else pop in mind or should we run with these three?

Off the top of my head, I can't. Okay. It seems to me that DJs are probably the first.

First one to go with. To go with.

Because I do get asked a lot by DJs, oh, we wish you'd teach us how to.

So if we run with DJs, as an option here. There's a bunch of things that we wanna make sure that we have with this group. Credibility, pretty sure you have that. Access is another one. You know, there's lots of times that you're diving into like, oh, I'm gonna do this thing for this audience. And like, they don't care about who you are. You have no way to reach them. So like you have credibility and access. Yep. I think that probably a really important one, and I'm curious for your take on this, is desire. Like again, we fast forward 3 years, $2 million in revenue. You're, let's say that the fan side has grown from, you know, $500,000, $600,000 in revenue to $1 million. But now the DJ, like teaching, serving DJs has now grown. Maybe it's still a small audience, but it's grown to $1 million in revenue and you're spending half your time or more doing that. Are you excited about that? Like, do you have the desire? Are you like, oh, that'd be amazing to be like developing all of this talent and helping them achieve that in the business? Or are you like, I don't know, man, I kind of would rather just do it myself.

That's the struggle because I do feel a bit of a pull to want to do that, but I don't want to spend half my time working on it. So I think if I could create something that Maybe I bring on another person to help support me with all of that. So I'm able to spend some time creating ideas, maybe recording the videos, or however that looks. And we're strategically putting it in a 10% box and not a 50% box. Then I'm good with that. Okay. I still love DJing too much and my family too much to want to put that much time into it. Right.

So I wrote down yes, but, because it's like, yeah, absolutely. We've got some constraints and some non-negotiables, which I love. Yeah.

And I don't think, you know, because I'm obviously business-minded too, I don't think whatever I created would be worth half my time monetarily. Okay. From DJs.

Well, let's get into another one, another, um, uh, category here. It's like— and that is willingness to pay. So there's a lot of industries that we have passion for, we have all of this, and you're like, look, man, they're just never gonna pay. Like, where's the willingness to pay in the DJ community?

Yeah, no disrespect to my DJ brothers and sisters, but, uh, history shows that they aren't willing to really spend a lot of money. I think it's a small group of people that would actually be willing to invest in leveling up in a way that's worth it for me and for them.

We're either targeting a small group of people that would pay a lot or maybe a larger group of people that would pay a little bit.

Yeah, and I think that's kind of where that desire is low is because I know it will, it could be a lot of work with potentially not a lot of reward. Because of the few amount of people that would be willing to invest in something high level like that. Okay.

Is there anyone that you've seen build a thriving business training DJs?

I have some friends who have worked their tails off to, and it's for years, and it's a struggle to get them. And are they— But they're not, but nobody's, I'm kind of a, I'm in a unique position. So there could be opportunities because of where I'm at.

The questions I was gonna ask, like do they have the, No. Do they have the credibility and access that you have? No. Okay. So I'm in a unique territory, I think. Yeah. It's good to notice what they've done and okay, that's some signal here. Is there an element of this or something that they would be, the DJs in your audience would be very willing to pay for? Maybe someone was trying in the past to try to teach very broad educational content. How to DJ. And is there some aspect of it where you could dive right in and be like, okay, but this is the pain point that people would, it's a burning pain point, the sell a painkiller, not a vitamin kind of idea.

Yeah. One of my friends who, he built this all-encompassing, he calls it the DJ's Vault. It's kind of like what you described when you bought that The Web Design Business Kit. It's a whole kit. He has videos of, you know, this is what a contract looks like, this is how you market, this is how you do all these things. And it's fantastic. And I used to use it back in the day to help grow my wedding DJ business. So all of that's out there. I recently had a DJ who I didn't know personally fly out to Boise to spend a couple of days with me, and he was just so willing or so persistent and excited that I was like, you know, I'm not going to charge for any of this. Come out, let's play some golf, have some dinner. And when he left, he was just energized. He's like, I'm so inspired by you. I'm so motivated. Everything you talked about just like fired me up, and I've raised my rates and a bunch of things that we talked about. So I, I think it might be a small group that— I don't know what it is. It's almost an intangible, but it's— yeah, what I'm letting— I'm somehow showing them that they can think bigger than they— because I think DJs tend to a little bit insecure, kind of don't think big type of people. They're just sort of focused on the music and they've never—

It's always interesting to think about the product spectrum of the price points. So $100 at one end, 'cause we're not gonna sell anything for less than $100, especially we're in this teaching something to a niche. In the fan side of it, absolutely $10, $25, all of that, great place to hang out. But when we're, teaching skills that make money, $100 is going to be our, our floor. So between $100 and $10,000, there's a lot of opportunities or a lot of different things that you could do there. And I've seen some people with very small audiences, but they might have a lot of credibility or access to the right people. I've seen them monetize really well, you know, but they're just like, I'm getting 50 people in to a $10,000 program. And that, obviously that's a lot of money. Was it $500,000? $500,000. Now $50,000 might be a lot, but if you're like, hey, okay, is there an event that I could host that's 10 people at $10,000? And it's on the level of what you just described where you're like, hey, come to Boise. Here's the range of things that we're going to do. I actually just went on a trip to Italy with my wife. And it was put together by a content creator who Hillary has followed for a long time named Shay Elliott. And it was a 7-day trip. They did so much. I'm like, I don't know what the margins are on this, but it was $10,000 for us as a couple. And it was food and wine and cooking class and like behind the scenes at all these restaurants. And you're like touring a 1,000, like a winery where they've been making wine in this location for 1,000 years. And there's this family and it's like the head of the family that's giving the tour and tasting. And you're like, it's like all this access where you, that was just a few weeks ago and I'm still like, I can't believe we got to do all of that. Yeah, that's a good deal. And so, yeah. And lodging was included and all that. Anyway, but to say like you could make something for 10 people at a $10,000 price point, you're like, all of a sudden, Hey, that's a 20% boost in revenue.

Do you think it could be like a, and I don't know if you're suggesting it's a one-off thing like you just talked about in Italy, or could it be a group coaching situation too where maybe we're checking in a couple times a month and—

I mean, everyone would get more out of the in-person thing if they already know each other, you already kind of know their businesses. That sort of thing. So I mean, group coaching is a very successful business model for people who have the level of credibility and access that you have. Okay. So yeah, any, like, I guess as we write things down on our scale, so at this end, right, we've got masterminds, coaching. At this end it's like books. And then somewhere in the middle Is courses. Got it.

And I personally like the idea of a high-ticket offer. Uh-huh. For one, it's, it's worth my time. Mm-hmm. But also I feel like if someone's going to pay to do it, whatever that is, if it's a mastermind coaching for 10 grand, they're going to be serious about it. And so I'm going to feel good about the time that I'm putting into it because they're going to actually want to learn and want to get better and take the information and do something with it.

And so 2 years from now, the chance that you can look at their career and go, oh, I had an impact, they took that and ran with it, is pretty high. Yeah.

Because you knew they were committed. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's important to me. Like I'm not, I have, you know, I'm ethical. I want to give the best, most I can and I want serious people to follow along, so.

So I love the idea of going to a mastermind or coaching. My hesitation is that you have a huge audience and you don't know who the DJs are. You don't have a way to reach them yet. So you would need something, a precursor to that in order to continually funnel this big audience, you know, like out of the big group into the DJ segment.

I see what you're saying.

And so, which is a very solvable problem, right? Like we would do this, you've got 15K on the email list, So you would make, actually, let's just run through that. Why don't you write here? I'll brainstorm some ideas and you write down. Okay. It's about how do we find the DJs? DJ search. DJ search. I like it. Let's do it. Green. Add some more colors to this.

With worse handwriting. It's not good.

As long as you get your spelling dialed in, then you'll level. You beat me on that one. That's funny. All right, so the DJ search. I think we need a couple, maybe 2 lead magnets of some kind. That makes sense. Something where the people are going to opt into.

So I'm sure they would want my playlist from X event or something like that.

I think— Does that differentiate enough? Does it, do fans and DJs both want that? I see what you're saying. Now, if people really want that, great, it's a fantastic lead magnet, do it. And then in the signup flow, so I'll just—

Are you a DJ or are you a fan?

Yeah, and I'd probably use a different word than fan. Music lover. Music, yeah, there you go. So we've got our two lead magnets, probably the next thing is we need segmentation.

So lead magnet, you're saying would be the— For example, the playlist from X event.

Yeah, so let's write that one down. I think there's other lead magnets that we can brainstorm as well. Gotcha, okay. And then this was segmentation, music lover or DJ. Yep, yeah, exactly. So what you can do, you know, you've got the 15,000 people on your email list now that's continually growing. We can ask this question for all of our different lead magnets. Like in an automation flow after someone subscribes, even if they subscribe for the 30 songs from the '90s, you can ask them somewhere in an automation like, cool, and are you a DJ or are you a music lover? And so you can constantly through that automation just be tagging people and then your DJ group is just continually growing. That makes a lot of sense. And then you know, Okay, how big is this actually? Who's in there? And then if people who are tagged as DJs, then you can start to get into like, do you do this professionally? Is this a hobby? You just have a passion for it? You know, like, you know, I DJ at my friend's wedding. Or it's like, no, no, no, I made $100 grand a year as a DJ.

You know, I'm trying to level up. You can figure out who those people are essentially. And so that's just more layers in segmentation.

I see. Now, I do think going back to lead magnets, I think there's a lead magnet in here that DJs would really care about and other people just really wouldn't. There's something in Facebook ad targeting where people on Facebook and Instagram where people let the, let the creative do the segmentation. Okay. So people used to do so much targeting where like, well, I really only want to reach women between the ages of 30 and 40 in this demographic who have jobs like this. And the audiences get so narrow, it gets very expensive to run that ad. And so what is more common now is in the ad copy, in the headline, on the image or in the video or whatever, you know, it's basically like, are you a business owner in Boise? Are you a DJ trying to do this thing? Where you end up, the thing is so specific that if I'm not a DJ, I just skip past it. But if I am a DJ, I'm like, oh, I need that, right? You know, so like, what would those things be that only a DJ would care about?

I guess I'd have to think about that a little bit.

I think if you did a guide to how I doubled my rates as a DJ— oh, people, oh, I—

yes, right? Like, because I was, I was, before I blew up on social, I had a pretty— I was pretty well known in the wedding DJ industry. Nationally. And it was one of the things that people would talk about me like, look at Eric Rhodes, he's making this amount in Boise, Idaho as a wedding DJ. Right. And so I was inspiring people to charge more. So that is actually spot on. Great. Let's write that down. I love it. I'm just thinking out loud. Like, yeah, that's okay. So when you say double rates, that's such a specific value proposition. That makes so much more sense.

Where it's like, hey, I know I've got tons of people listening who you all love music. For just a second, I'm gonna talk only to the DJs. Now, something that's been so special to me is being able to do all these events, but taking time away from my family. And so actually, you know, I built up to the point where I could over the last 5 years have been able to double my rates. And I want to break it down exactly how I did that. And, you know, it's been meaningful not only for my business, but it's meant that I can make the same amount of money and spend twice as much time at home. And that matters to me because I had young kids, you know, like And someone watching that is like, I want that. For sure. And so they're like, it's totally free. This is something that I've just made for you. Go ahead and click this link or comment this word and we'll send it to you.

So is this an ad or is this a reel that I put together?

Yes. Both? Yeah, the best ads are organic content that works well and you just amplified it. Got you. So I would start with a reel. And then if it does really well and you're getting the right people, then you might consider running it as an ad if you can find the right segments. Okay. Alex Hormozi did something where he only ever, so he does tons of free organic content. Yes. And then he runs ads to his own audience and that's where he's asking you to do something. 'Cause he finds that the targeting to his own audience is pretty cheap for an ad. Okay. And so a lot of his calls to action of like download this thing or sign up for this workshop aren't in his free content. They're in, or I guess his organic content, they're in his sponsored posts to his own audience. That makes sense. And so he's just free, free, free, free, free, lots of value, lots of value. And then— Yep, he's using that credibility to get a higher performing ad. Makes sense.

Um, okay, so with that, would you suggest I sprinkle in maybe some, um, educational content for DJs? I would try it.

Yeah. And see, there's other approaches here. Sometimes people create a separate channel, uh, you know, you see that on YouTube, create a separate Instagram of like, hey, here's where I talk about only this, right? Because often the niche accounts do better. Okay. Because then it's like Oh, someone's just engaged, the right person engaged with 100% of this. And Instagram's like, great, I'll help you find more of the right people. Sure. So that would be interesting to explore. We don't wanna get so far down a path that like now you're running 5 accounts and you're— Yeah. That makes me nervous, like, to do all that. Doing all of this. But that's a good start. Yeah, I think that's interesting. And then, you know, if we were really into, categories of content, right? So you have double your rates. Another one that I would do is like how to grow your audience as a DJ. Sure.

I think people are going for lead magnet. Yeah. Side note, could there be two Patreons? Maybe. Could there be a DJ one and a fan one or something like that?

Okay, so let's explore that for a moment. So when we were hanging out a few weeks ago, I was telling you about my Billion Dollar Creator essay and you went and read that, right? So the premise of the essay is if you have this attention, what's the most valuable place that you could direct that? And for most people that's selling a product of some kind and there's aspects of the product, right? If it has recurring revenue or repeat purchase, there's a lot of elements there. And so in this fan side, we're talking about, okay, how do we, who do we direct this attention to? And the Patreon really stands out. There's not like super high willingness to pay if you're at like $100 or $500 a month. Like, I don't think that's gonna work on your Patreon. And so then we come back to that, but within the fan side it works, right? And we could scale it. So now in the DJ side, it's like, okay, now I have attention from a much smaller group of people. What's the highest value place that I could direct that attention? Okay. Is if I make a DJ Patreon, maybe that's at $25 to $50 a month, somewhere in there. That's right, 'cause we're teaching the skills to make money to people who have money. I think what you're going to find is that it's harder to get people, I think the value proposition will be a little bit nebulous, so it'll be harder to get the conversion. And then you'll see churn somewhere in months. 3, like 2 to 4. And so your lifetime value, you know, the total amount made from that customer is gonna be somewhere in this like average, somewhere in like the $60 to $120 range. And you would be better off selling them a very specific course for a very specific outcome. And then when you have something else to sell them, upselling them to that other thing. I get that. That, that's not always the case, but that's, that's my gut feeling here.

That actually made me think of some of the people that I know that have been trying to serve DJs sort of broadly.

That's their struggle. Are they selling it like the membership, or either a membership?

Yeah, mostly it's a membership. Mhm.

That I really think— so I think you're spot on with that. I think the course with multiple price points is the way to go. So if we were doing something at this— well, let's outline a couple options. Of what to teach. So it would be like, um, we'll just say business as a broad category and then audience growth.

Yeah, I was gonna say I'm gonna lean away from like actually how to DJ because there's so much of that out there. So yeah, yeah, how to get booked. I think, I think there's a whole sort of group of like how to present yourself, how to, yeah, show up properly, how to follow up. With leads.

I think there's like a whole— Right, 'cause someone's like, I just love to make music and experiences. And it's like, cool. So you know how in sales follow-up is really important? And they're like, not a clue. What are you talking about? You know, like—

Yeah, that's for me with that early on.

For me as a designer, I was like, I'm just here to design stuff. It's like, so let me teach you about follow-up.

It's easy, yeah, 100%.

So we have these categories of things. And what I would want to do is take one of these pain points, and it might be like doubling your rates, how to double your rates as a DJ.

I like that one personally.

And you might do it as a lead magnet, that's some of the stuff, and you go into more detail. And so what I would do is I would make a course that has two versions. One of them is at $99 and one is $249. And what you would do is, and you might play with the pricing on this or that kind of thing. Sure. The idea of the two packages. So the $99 version is all about here's how to do it step by step, all of that. The $249 version is like, let me do as much of it for you as possible. Okay. And in that sense, it's here's the exact script to use, here's, the contract. So my version of this is I was teaching how to design iPhone applications. That was the first book that I did. I wrote the book, I sold it for $29, and then I had a version at $79 that included a bunch of videos that went with it for like the education. And then I had a version at $149 that was, here's all of my Photoshop files here, you know, like Right. Here's the very practical things. All the templates I use as a professional app designer and the cheapest version sold the most copies and the most expensive version drove the most revenue. And later on I ended up at $39.99, $249, like for future iterations. And so 50% of revenue would come from that $249 package or more. And I ran the math of had I only run, like had the basic package, I would've done a third of the revenue as what I did because I like did tiered pricing.

Makes sense. Something for everybody, but the majority of people are gonna keep following the little path and go, I want it all. Yep, exactly. Why am I here? I want it all.

And then the other thing is after someone buys the $99 version, you'd be like, awesome, let's dive into this. Also, if you wanna upgrade, of, you know, here's the option to do that. And so even a portion who initially chose one version will then upsell for the difference. Yeah, yeah. And so I would choose the most important, like the biggest pain point, and go from there. So I guess now, as we kind of map out a few options, what we've done is gotten to a targeted list. So we've gone from the big audience to a targeted list of DJs. And we try to sell them one thing. Okay. And in doing so, we're going to touch on the willingness to pay. Like, does the credibility come through? All of that. And then you're not jumping straight to a $10,000 offering or something like that. Right. And you can still float that, right? $10,000, you only need 8 to 10 people to make it worthwhile. You might be able to float that with a survey once you've got 5 to 10,000 DJs on your email list specifically.

That makes a lot of sense. Starting there.

And I would just eventually choose one of these that's like the most intense pain point. And especially where someone can do the math. Okay, all right, Eric, I give you $249 How is it gonna be worthwhile to me? You're saying I can double my rates? What if I only raise them by 50%? And they're like, okay, but I'm charging $4,000 right now. I raise it. Okay, so I get $6,000 on that. Oh, so that would pay for itself 10 times over in the first gig. Yeah, almost make them feel foolish for not getting it. Right. And so it's like, you're so, going back to this, our little Venn diagram here, you're like so clearly in the skill that makes money. And you've narrowed it down to people who have some amount of money, right? They're professional DJ of some kind. Then you're like, there's a very clear path here. And that would let you test the waters. And also, I guess the way I think about it, let's say you go down this path and it makes $25,000, right? Off of this launch and all of that. And you're like, okay, it doesn't move the needle. Right. It doesn't really get me that much closer to the $2 million. My worst case scenario of that happening is I took a bunch of knowledge that was in my head and packaged it up in a way that's useful for the next generation of DJs, right? Because these are timeless skills. You're not teaching a tactic for like, that's a one-off, right? It's like these are core principles that will always matter. And so I think your worst case scenario is you got paid $25 grand to package up something that will serve the world for a long time. Sure. In your best case scenario, let's say it makes $100 grand or somewhere in that ballpark and you're like, oh, there's something really here. And that turns into a path. Like we're still quite a few steps away from building a DJ education business that will drive a million in revenue. But like we've diversified and we're down that path pretty far.

100%. And I think even just what I will learn from that whole process, who knows what that could be used if it's quote unquote not a failure per se, but like you said, it's only 25. And, but I still help people, but I'm gonna learn a lot from that. And that might be used for, who knows if I get into public speaking, I can take some of that knowledge for this or that, or I can use it for a different offer later on. I've now sort of understood how the system works and yes. So I feel like it's building a skill, even just attempting it.

Well, and that's so much like actually the premise of the book that I'm working on is that making money is a skill and really the combination of hundreds of small skills. And so when you have that mindset going in, you're like, oh, I'm going to get really good at lead magnets. Yep. Even if that will carry over to everything else I'm doing, that is a core skill on social media. And you're like, I'm doing it well now, but what if I was going from 7 out of 10 to 10 out of 10.

You're like, what if I keep practicing that?

Right. And then when I get great at segmentation, okay, wherever I go, that is such a useful thing to get down to a specific group, talk to them in a specific way. Like, okay, haven't really had to do sales pages before, right? 'Cause I just send people to Patreon, right? That's a skill. All right, I'm gonna have to learn that one, you know? And then teaching educational content. You can come in here to Kit Studios, sit down in one of the other studios and like record the— Perfect. Record the course, like all of that to build on your point of as you level up these skills or like stack these skills, it's gonna serve you really, really well. Yeah, I love this.

I think that's something that I, you know, maybe afterward figure out how, what the steps are to get to that point. 'Cause you know, I'm sure there's a lot of work involved and it's—

Well, maybe as we wrap up, let's break down a couple of those steps. Okay, yeah.

So, you know, like, what's the first thing I need to do if I'm, you know, I got an event this weekend, focus on that, next week's clear, what am I doing first thing Monday morning?

Yeah, I think the first thing is we need to get that, we need to like make the DJ search happen, right? And so it's like identify a target audience or like figure out how, I guess if we're really just breaking it down, the simplest steps, I would make that lead magnet.

Okay, so the double rates. Yep. Figuring out what that—

that was the worst star ever. I don't know.

So create first lead magnet. Lead magnet.

That could even, if you wanted, that could, if this is the easiest thing to make, that could be a video. You could over the next week, right, as you're on your way to the event or all of that, you could be pulling out Whisperflow and just talking to it and being like, okay, here's what made a difference, here's all of this. And you go into ChatGPT and you say, all right, take all of my notes, put it into an outline for a video script. And then you walk in here to one of our studios, throw it on teleprompter and just talk through that outline. Boom. And then you're not, there's no design, there's no writing and editing and you gotta edit the video. But like, sure, but that's what I'm good at.

Let's play the strings, right?

So to me, that'd be the easiest way to do it. And someone would be like, oh man, I learned so much watching Eric. Now he's talking to me as a DJ directly. Like he sat down in the studio and he is teaching me this core thing.

So this, so when you say, make the thing in the studio, that's the full course?

That's the full course, or is that the— I think it's the lead magnet to start.

Got it.

You'd package it up in some way that's a little more concise. So here's the 5 key steps to double, or the 5 key ingredients to double your rates as a DJ. And it's actionable, it's valuable, but it's like a, 10-minute video. Okay. Right? It's not a full course 'cause this is what we're giving away for free and we're using to test the interest. I see. And then— That's it 'cause that, so that's our lead magnet. And then from there, what the next step that I would do is the segmentation inside of Kit. Okay. So a couple prompts where you can ask people either running a poll in your email list or tagging, things like that. Okay. And that's going to let you kind of break them off into— Yep. Yeah, that's gonna let you segment them off and have them in a particular place that you can talk to them in that way.

So if I'm getting people, should I get them to the email list through the video as well?

Yep, through the video. The video is how, it's like what you're doing is you're, Remember the video that we talked about where you're saying like, hey, you're teasing it with a reel. Yes. And then you're saying comment or click this link and that's a landing page. And when they sign up, then they get sent the full video. Right, that's the lead magnet style. And then, oh, the other point of segmentation would be from, it's not the survey, but basically, your welcome email flow. Just ask everybody like, are you a music lover or a DJ? I need to get back into that.

I'm not doing that anymore.

You can just turn on like build out an automation and then it'll just always do it after they subscribe. So we can show you how to do that. That's straightforward. Okay, awesome. So yeah, let's, I guess, yeah, segmentation inside of Kit, and that's gonna be through that automation so that that'll be good. And then I think the next step is going to be research. Like, what actually— there might be a handful of calls that might be within a certain audience researching. You want to know, um, with the DJ community, what are the words they use to describe the problems? What is the acute pain point that they're feeling? Okay, sure, you're only able to charge a certain amount for an event. That's the academic version of what does it feel like? If you were able to charge 50% more for your events, what would that mean for you? What have you tried so far? And so you're testing for the words that they use, their most painful problems that you could solve for them, their willingness to pay. Just trying to understand that. Okay. And then from there I would record the course and launch.

So the course is video based?

I would, because that's your skill set. Yeah. And the perceived value on video is higher for whatever reason. A full book that someone spent 3 years on of their life is worth $19 on Amazon. But like videos that you did in less time, could be worth, like the perceived value, it could be hundreds of dollars.

Sometimes it's a live webinar or something that somebody will do and it just lives forever and it makes them lots of money.

Yeah, there's all kinds of options there. And then we'll get into the launch. There's obviously lots that goes into all of that. We're glossing over some steps.

For sure, yeah, this isn't gonna be simple one-week process.

But the cool thing is that this first little bit, Can be simple. Yeah, that can work well. Okay, so we've covered a lot of stuff. We have not fully executed a plan to get to $2 million yet, but I think that as you said, you're going to stack a lot of skills and we've got a good direction to pursue here and some things to explore. I'm really curious, like how you felt coming in versus, you know, what you're feeling and thinking about now. Sure.

Yeah. No, this has been very, very helpful. I know before I came in it was all kind of cloudy. Yeah, because I know what I'm, what I'm really good at doing events. But now to have this written out. I'm excited. Like, I actually have some steps that I can take, and just being able to talk through it and get your mind in here to, to help me map it out is, uh, it's energizing. I like it.

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. You bring a lot of energy, excitement to everyone that you serve, and so I'm glad that I can do the same when you— yeah, come hang out in my studio. Yeah, awesome. Well, if people want to follow along, check out your content, whether they're a music lover or a DJ, Where should they go?

All platforms @djericrhodes. DJ E-R-I-C-R-H-O-D-E-S. Perfect. Thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me.

If you enjoyed this episode, you'll love episode 61 with Justin Moore, where we built a $2 million creator business plan. We dug deep on business model clarity, sustainable scale, and what it really takes to build beyond content. Be sure to like the video, subscribe for more, and I'll see you next week.