How to Turn Your YouTube Channel Into a $100,000+ Business | Jo Franco

I got to LA, no money, just debt. Meet with this lady and I get a $60,000 deal to film a show. And I think I had like 40,000 subscribers. And that was just the beginning. Meet Jo Franco. She started vlogging on YouTube, made it to Netflix, and built a successful business. The thing about platforms is you need to know how it works. Think about why people use YouTube. YouTube is a search engine. YouTube is a how-to platform. The channel started blowing up when I started making fuck videos. We'd have these one-off brand sponsorships. You would get boatloads of money, but then you'd get nothing. That wasn't my vision.

We're trying to build sustainable revenue. There's much easier ways to do it.

What would it look like to create a business on the back of that?

9 out of 10 creators that I talk to are like, why would I ever do cold outreach?

I'm like, why not? When we talk about the subscriber count going from 40,000 subscribers to 200,000, that happened because— and the quicker you learn that, it just grows the business faster. Wow.

What did it look like growing the YouTube channel the first, you know, 4 or 5 years?

It's so painful. It was bad. It was really bad. I wasn't using the platform the way it should have been used. I've never been one of those creators that follows the trends. I've always been like, I want to do this video because I think it's cool, which is not what you do if you're trying to grow on YouTube for the most part. So the first 3 years, it wasn't optimized to actually be searchable. The thing about platforms is you need to know how it works. If you're dealing with YouTube, think about why people use YouTube. YouTube is a search engine. YouTube is a how-to platform. So if you're making videos about traveling to obscure places with no tangible knowledge, no one will ever stumble upon that video unless they might be going to that place. The channel started blowing up when I started making language videos and talking about like how to say the French R and like qui versus que, and all of these videos that my business partner at the time— we were both learning French and we wanted to use this. We were so broke we couldn't travel, let's be honest. And then we started doing language videos because language allowed us to like travel figuratively. And those language videos went viral and kind of like inundated everything else. So 400 pieces of content just kind of like grew what seemed to be overnight, but it was like 4 or 5 years of diligently posting with very few comments and likes.

So the way that I've heard it described before on YouTube, and I want you to see if this matches your experience or if you think it's good advice, is that your content should almost be split in half, where one portion of your content on YouTube is really all about the search engine. What are people— what problems are people already searching for that they're going to come to me and come across my videos? And then the rest of the content, whether it's half or a quarter or something like that, is about much more of the connection. Yeah, right. This is my story, this is who I am, this is me out traveling in this case. Does that match your experience?

Yeah, I definitely think that now after 12 years of doing this crazy, crazy job, which is so wild, like I thought about this when I hit 10 years. I don't know if you feel this way too. 10 years into entrepreneurship, I'm like, I'm still I'm still doing this? Like, yeah, because at first it feels so crazy that check after check and month after month, your creations are what is feeding you. It's what's clothing you. It's what's like buying the furniture in your house, right? Anyways, 12 years later, I'm just like, yeah, I gotta learn that this is not just a hobby. This is my job. And if it's my job, how do I optimize? So that is very much the approach today. The first 7 years, there was like Joe beta version and now Joe new version that is like new and improved. The first chapter, we had to learn that the hard way. And it was luck. It was a bit of luck. It was a lot of hard work, but definitely a lot of luck.

Your journey early on coming into the creator economy before we called it the creator economy. Yeah, I was talking with a creator who they said something like, you know, when the creator economy started, like during the pandemic. And I looked and I was like, what?

I was in there in the hairy, scary days, like So I started back in 2012, which I remember actually having this thought when I first started. I thought that I came in too late. I literally thought that I came in too late, and it was only 2012, and I was like kind of reluctant, like, is it even worth it? People are already like doing big things there. Maybe it's too cluttered, right? And I kind of quieted that monkey mind and I did it anyways. And I'm so glad that I did because I didn't, I didn't know that it was actually just the beginning of everything.

So what would you say to someone who now in 2024 is like, I really, I love this content, this industry, but it's too saturated.

I think like all things, everyone is going to have similar ideas. It's just humanity. We all have many ideas. But if you really align with like your magic sauce, it doesn't matter if there are 300 WordPress theme businesses. If you align it with something that only you can do, it becomes something different. So When I first started YouTube back in 2012, there weren't really travel vlogs. That wasn't a thing. It was like sit-down, home computer vibe, like parents are in the kitchen making dinner and you're like, hey, welcome to my channel. And that wasn't what I identified with, you know. I'm like, I want to be a businesswoman, I want to travel the world, I want to speak languages. And I didn't have examples of people doing that. And so after I quieted that monkey mind and stopped thinking that I was too late, Actually, there's a twist. It wasn't just that I thought it was too late. I was only using YouTube to capture this chemistry to pitch it as a TV show, because in the time that I started, the only success that I thought would be capable, like, would be possible, is like, oh, I want to take this through to traditional, because there was no roadmap for a YouTube channel for sponsorships. Like, that wasn't a thing. So two things happened. The executives that I was pitching back in the day said no. So that's like classic story. What happened was not only did I have to quiet the monkey mind to be like, okay, maybe it's not too late, but I kind of posted on YouTube to prove that it did work. And so it became this journey of like, okay, maybe this isn't for traditional, but maybe we can find people on the internet, and maybe this is even a better place. It's a very slippery slope with travel vlogging, and imagine you're doing that 3 times a week for 7 years. Yeah, that's literally what I did. And you know, there are tricks of the trade, like there are beautiful things about it. I don't regret any of it. I have my entire 20s cataloged in these beautifully edited videos, which we were filming, we were editing. It was like a one-stop shop. Also very painful, but the learning from that is crazy. Like when you're doing 3 videos a week, it's so much better for your, for your connection to this platform because you know that if a video is bad on a Tuesday, you still have Friday and Sunday to make up. And so it created this resilience of just like testing crazy things and mastering the edits and mastering the storytelling and looking at disjointed pieces of content and then making it mean something in the edit. When I booked a Netflix show, which then was like In between Joe beta and like Joe today was this crazy pit stop where I auditioned for this Netflix show called The World's Most Amazing Vacation Rentals.

There's two things about the YouTube experience that I think are really important that you touched on. One is the pace of repetition, like the pace of learning. And so if you're thinking about learning something new, trying it out, seeing what works, and then incorporating that back in, most people have a cadence on that that might be once a month or longer, right? And so you're saying like, okay, I'm gonna spend a month or a week, you know, whatever it is, making this, and then we're going to tee up for this big thing and we're gonna put it out there and then we'll learn from it. But for you dropping 3 a week on YouTube, you're learning really, really quickly.

And it means that I'm working really, really quickly, and so there are cons to that too, because a lot of times I I felt like while the videos were, like, I look at those videos and I'm proud because they're well edited, but I always thought to myself, like, what if I dedicated more time? Like, what if there was a little bit more intention? What if there was more study? And so I started to get this hunger for this craft. Like, what was coming innately to me, I learned quickly, was a craft. And something I didn't mention is I actually went to business school. And so for a lot of my life, I thought I was only the business. I never said I was a creative. And in the beginning of my YouTube career, I would say, I'm an entrepreneur. And my business partner would be like, we're YouTubers. And I'm like, don't say that. That's a bad word. Like, oh. I'm not like, hey guys, welcome to my channel. You know, like, that wasn't my vision.

Not that there's anything wrong.

I love you, YouTuber. But I just saw, like, what would it look like to create a bigger community or a bigger platform so that it's not just YouTube? Like, YouTube is the megaphone that calls people in, but like, what What is the business on the back of that? And also because I grew up with really talented siblings who are— my brother's an artist, my sister's a singer. And so to me, that was what being a creative was. And I couldn't find my thing, so I was like, I'm not a creative. Of course, now looking back at it, I'm like, wow, this is insane. Like, everything I did was with a baseline of creativity. But I think because I had that itch for the business sense, it was easier for me to say I'm the business. I can pitch sponsorships. I can cold email and cold call agencies and like get on the phone with the people and get meetings, which is actually how I started getting paid before the, the economy of creators existed. I would cold email people. Do you know Skyscanner?

Yes.

So my first brand deal, I, I slid into the LinkedIn inbox of the CEO because I found an article that he had written about reaching out to young travelers. I think I had like 4,000 YouTube subscribers at the time. And I sent him a DM. I was like, hey, just came across this article. I have a young travel channel, would love to connect. He's like, wow, this is really interesting, connect to the marketing team. And I started making videos out of their blog content and getting paid like $500 apiece, which I thought was a lot of money. And I'm like, wow, maybe this is a, this is a business.

There's something interesting that you mentioned about cold outreach, that there's a lot of ways you can make it really effective, especially if you find someone who in this case He wrote an article sort of soliciting this sort of outreach in a way. He's saying he's interested in this. But a little pro tip, if you want to get into an organization, like for pitching a brand deal or that sort of thing, if you email the top and say, "Hey, I want to do this. Here's my pitch," all of that, usually they don't have time. And so it's just no from an assistant or something like that. Those assistants are usually trying to curate an inbox and get through it, and they're just trying to get it out of their inbox. And so the best question to ask is, here's what I would like to, like, here's what I'm trying to do. Would you mind just connecting me or pointing me to the right person in the organization to talk to about this? And they go, oh, perfect. That's actually easy to find. Sarah, our head of marketing.

Yeah.

And, and then you, you get this intro from the CEO or the office of the CEO to the head of marketing. And so then you already got past one gatekeeper. And so it's really fascinating as you go that direction. In this case, going straight to the CEO worked.

Well, actually, I did ask. I was like, is there a marketing department that's working on content? I would love to talk to them. And I was like, and then he did. He was like, yeah, here's the head of marketing. And then he became a lifelong friend. That definitely was a pivotal moment in the journey because now it's easy to see how creators can make money. Back then, it literally was not a thing. And back then in the, in the WordPress days, which by the way, love that because I probably bought one of your themes. I was also selling the— like, I was looking at the inventory of our social media and being like, okay, a blog costs this, a tweet costs this, like pricing it out. And I would cold email people and I would build these packages. And this is how we started paying our rent. This is what happened to take us to full-time.

When was it that you got to say the first $10,000 in revenue as a creator?

2015. So I started making videos in 2012. 3 years later, I moved to LA. I turned down a full-time job offer at a travel company. And it was like a make or break. I got to LA, no full-time money, no money, just debt, a lot of debt. And I went to this media agency to actually complain about the contract they gave me because they were taking 30% of ad revenue. And I was like slamming my hands on the table. I'm like, you are standing between me and paying my rent. What are you giving me in exchange for this 30%? So I'm like really flipping tables. I go to the bathroom in the agency, a woman sees me, she's like, you have a Travel Channel with that friend of yours. We just put your name in the hat for a deal with AT&T. Can you come in for a meeting? Meet with this lady and I get a $60,000 deal to film a show like within the first month of being in LA.

Wow. And so then for the next few years, the business is driven entirely on brand sponsorships. Is that right?

Yeah. So the first 4 or 5 years we basically got that deal, and it was a web series, which is actually a little bit different than sponsorships. And this is how I started dipping my toes into hosting, because when you're doing a web series, it's like full crew production kind of schedule. And I saw myself like kind of thriving in that environment. You're doing it with a brand partner, so there's like this brand integration, but it is like you're hosting a show, which is not the same thing as doing a brand sponsorship as a creator. In addition to the show, we filmed the show, 8-episode travel series. I helped come up with the concept too, so I was like always a little show creator. No one ever told me though. I'm like, why did nobody tell me like this is what I should do? And in addition to that, we'd have these one-off deals, brand sponsorships, and I started seeing that it was exhausting. So this was really a problem. You would get boatloads of money, but then you'd get nothing.

—Oh, the ebb and flow, like it would spike in the—

You would get like $60K here and then maybe nothing for 3 months, and then maybe you'd get $20K and then like nothing for a month, and then this like scarcity grew inside of me where you don't know if you can turn down the brand deal, and that was not something I wanted to live off of, which is when I started talking to my business partner like, hey, how can we create a business bigger than us that has a different element of monetization so that Even when we're not traveling, if we don't want to accept sponsors, there's still a business that's growing. So we launched this travel platform called shutupandgo.travel, and then I like brokered affiliate flights. You could buy flights, and then it became this whole thing. So this is when I started dipping my toes into like, what does this look like as a business that can scale without me?

Yeah, and I mean, that's an interesting thing where you have this attention coming in, and at first the attention is going to the brands that are paying you. But then you're saying, all right, how do I channel it into products, you know, more of a connection with the audience? Yeah. How did that go?

So we did all the kinds of revenue streams you could think of— merch, live events, you know, we did obviously the sponsorships. We started doing— one of my favorite things was that I wanted to give other people the chance to travel the way that I was traveling. Because at this point, we were getting so many offers that we couldn't take everything. So I trained 25 global contributors in mosquito nets in Kenya, like, while filming brand deals, and they are then traveling themselves, which was a really cool win for me. And that was always the goal. I was like, how can I give this to other people so that it's bigger than me? I just always never liked the idea that the business starts and ends with you. Like, that to me is not appealing. Like, if you think of just being a creator and just being a YouTuber where your face is the business, to me, there's great power in that, but it's just not as impactful as, like, I'm gonna die one day, like, we're all gonna go, like, and then what's there? So I started having these kind of like bigger picture questions of what is this all for?

So a lot of creators talk about wanting to be, you know, the solopreneur. They wanna not have a team, you know, it's just them and the freedom that comes from that, the lack of responsibility. Capability. Maybe they're using a few freelancers or others. And I used to think that I was in that camp, and then I got a team and I started to build a business bigger than me, and I was like, this is amazing.

What was amazing about it? What was the big shift in your idea of what it was versus what it actually is?

I think it was two big things. First, the level of ideas, like my ambition could be significantly larger, because before I'd say like, I'd love to do this. But I can do this, like this small part of it. And so I kept needing to reduce my appetite to match my abilities. But with a team, I could say, oh, we can expand so much more. The other thing is, in having a team, I wasn't alone. I had so much more support in it. And so in building Kit, the first time that we had some issue with the app, when I realized there are so many more qualified people. You know, there's like 4 more qualified people to fix this than me. I actually don't even— like, I used to bring my laptop with me absolutely everywhere because if something went wrong, I needed to fix it. You were the bottleneck. Right. But now, I mean, you know, starting probably 2015, 2016, realizing like, oh, okay, no, there's a team behind this. And it gave me so much freedom and peace of mind.

But it comes with tremendous amount of trust and tremendous amount of like, who's the right fit and who do you actually like? And there's like a whole learning curve of growing a team. But what is interesting about what you just said is that you like basically proved yourself wrong. Oh yeah. Which is nice, 'cause here we are today. For me, I kind of knew, I think all creators are pretty self-sufficient. Like if you wanna be a creator, it's 'cause you're independent. But I thrive with that collaboration of it all. And even having a business partner was so helpful for that because we were able to bounce ideas off of each other. But I didn't want it to just end there. Like, I really, really wanted it to be a bigger melting pot of ideas. And it was a bit of a conflict with my business partner because he didn't want too much of a big team. And I was always like, what can we do to make this a giant global business? Like, I really wanted to make it like a big, huge thing. Now I'm somewhere in the middle. So anyways, we have Joe Beta, which is like no email newsletter list, no true business, just sponsorships. We have Netflix chapter, which is me realizing the benefits of being a creator, me really craving creative control, which you don't have as a TV show host, and also understanding that there's like a big giant knowledge gap that I needed to fill. Like if I want to do the next chapter, it's like, well, how can I bridge the gap between YouTube and TV and make something conversational. And then COVID hits, and then like everything kind of comes to a crazy halt.

Yeah, there's so many different chapters there, but diving into the Netflix a little bit to talk about that more, what like step functions or what came in your business as a result of that and getting that much attention and that from a major brand?

Like, you know, what step function happened? Well, a lot of people don't know this. When you film a show, you can't really post about anything. So I kind of like fell off the face of the earth for 2 years.

And people were like, I guess you gave up being a creator. And you're like, no, I'm creating all of this stuff.

Like, just wait, just wait. And I couldn't talk about it. And so it was like a bit of a suffocating feeling because creating to me at that point wasn't just for business. It was like a way to process my life, right? It was like digestion of my experiences. It was just like this communication back and forth with the audience. So I had to basically stop, and I went really introspective, as one does when you feel like you don't have a voice. And so I've always journaled. I had always journaled. All my travels were documented. I had never shared them. And on the Netflix show, as we're working 6 days a week, traveling every 2 days, like sleeping in new beds, I got really good at packing. And the show stops in the middle of production, so it was a little bit of a crazy, twist because of COVID and, and it stopped indefinitely. And so we had this, like, gray area, and I couldn't talk about what I was doing. So I was like, hey guys, I'm back, maybe not. Like, I didn't know how long I'd be back. And so then I did something crazy. I took a picture of a personal journal entry, not something that I planned to share, and I just said, hey guys, I've always journaled, this is an entry. And somebody responded on Instagram and I had like 100-something thousand followers, so it wasn't a small account. And I'm like over here sharing my deepest, darkest secrets, and they were like, hey, Jo, start journaling with us. Like, can we start a journaling challenge? And this was a big, big, big turning point because I just started the next day, and I was like, okay, every day I'll give you a prompt, we'll journal together, I'll send you my prompt at the end of the day, check back in for the next day. I do this for 90 days for free, and I'm still on pause for this Netflix show. Indefinite pause. We might go back, maybe we won't. Will the show get canceled? Maybe it won't. And I'm like, all right, I think I'm going to start a new business. So I coded on WordPress, could have used a template. There you go. And I was learning this new business model of the membership world. And, and this is when I was like, wow, there's so much to learn here. This is when I started learning about lead magnets, email funnels, like all of this stuff that I was just not focused on because I was too busy making the content. And then my company, JoClub, the journaling club, was born. And then the month after I founded this company, the show comes back into production and I'm like, okay guys, we're going to keep doing meetings on Sundays because it was the only day I had off from shooting the show.

Okay, so you just worked it around that. It's still not telling people No. Why everything happens on Sundays.

Couldn't, couldn't. And today, since that day, Sundays are still the biggest journaling session days because of this crazy— just like, because of necessity, I had to do it on Sundays. And the other thing too that was really crazy is like, I built this company because I think I needed it. When I was filming the show, I felt so— I was just like, I need time to reflect, I need to like digest all of this stuff. And you would think that you'd be exhausted because you're doing 14-hour days filming shows, but those sessions gave me more energy. So I actually started with one session a month as a benefit, and then I said, no, let's do it two times a month during the production. And that, I think, was the magic sauce, because it wasn't a business that I made thinking it would be a business. Yeah. And this is part of the, the beauty of it, but it's also part of the challenge, which I think we got to get into. Yeah, I want to talk about that.

But for some context, so what was the product itself that you were selling and how did you price and package it? This is also crazy.

So I love coming up with something I haven't seen before. So I decided to invite people into a Zoom room and Zoom was kind of new. You guys remember like the early COVID days, we're all figuring out the buttons and stuff. And I put together a presentation with like 5 to 7 prompts in a theme. So I picked a theme. I think it was like power. And I thought, how cool would it be for us to go on a journey of thought and have a before, a during, and an after, like mild, medium, spicy? And then everybody's kind of like journaling on their own. I played a little vibey music in between, 3 to 4 minutes per prompt, put them in breakout groups, and have these people all around the world talk about these deep, deep prompts. And the vulnerability that I think I shared and that they shared just created this crazy space. And also, where else are you going to talk about deep things with somebody in Finland, right? Somebody in France and someone in Brazil. And like, you start taking this global temperature check and you realize you're not crazy for thinking how you think, and there's some action that can be taken from these thoughts. So the, the model, the way I describe what, what I created, is like imagine a yoga class but for journeys of thought in a global space with tangible action, okay, out of your deep reflection guided by prompts. That's, that's what I do.

It's a mouthful. And then what did you charge for it?

I think the first time I launched the membership, it was like $30 a month, uh, and I got like 7 members. And I'm like, oh my God, I can make money! And then again, I went on the show, and so for the next year and a half, I wasn't all hands-on business development. I was like, in between takes talking about this new club. It wasn't ideal. It literally wasn't ideal. Once production stopped January of 2021, this is when my mind exploded because I had to learn so much about growing the business, pricing models, what is a funnel, better lead magnets. And it felt like in the last 3 years, even like I think now I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I get it. But for the last 3 years, I've been in the weeds, not necessarily optimizing what I am very good at, but not being able to find the right collaborators that can do it better. And I would hire people and they would mess it up, and then I would have to learn to undo their mistakes. So I was that person carrying around my laptop everywhere until recently. And it's like, oh, I'm glad that I did it because I now speak the language of the business. I know what is happening and I can like fire someone if they're bad and fix our problem. But looking back, I'm like, there was a lot of time that was not as optimized, right? Because if I can find the people to do what they're really good at and I can do what I'm really good at, then everything moves faster. It just wasn't the case.

Yeah. So you talk about in your business sort of this before and after, right, of how you ran things for the first 7 or 8 years and then, you know, how you ran things afterwards. What were the biggest pivots? How do you view, you know, your time as a creator and running a creator business differently from then?

I feel like the first big pivot from YouTube to like something different was the platform, was building this platform and creating an entity that wasn't attached to my face, which I really liked 'cause I think I like time travel all the time. I'm like, If I'm 80 years old, am I still gonna like this? Which, I don't know if you do that, but it's helped me make a lot of decisions. And I quickly understood, if I'm making a young travel show right now on YouTube, I'm probably not going to want to do this forever, right? So it was like, okay, let's build a platform that can exist even if I'm not a young traveler. This platform still has a purpose because there will always be young travelers, right? So that was the first pivotal moment. The next pivotal moment was realizing that I needed to have basically two business divorces. Because I had this business partner. We were 50/50. We had amazing chemistry, and it was basically like divorce in business. First of like the channel, and then the trademark, and then the platform.

And that's all around everything travel related?

And that was all the travel stuff. And this was in 2019, and we were kind of growing apart for the last 3 years of the channel. Like I started making my own videos and he was doing his I'm so proud of what we built. But there was just a moment where you realize, like, I think I'm outgrowing this, right? But this is a public thing now. So it's like, how do you walk away from a million people who have grown up with you because you're no longer connected to this vision? That was another huge, huge moment to be like, okay, I think I'm ready for the next thing. Obviously, the Netflix chapter was its own beast. COVID then interrupting that and showing me Oh, you've always journaled, you will most likely always journal, and this is not something—

right, when you're 80 looking back, that's a constant that will still be there.

It will still be there whether I have arthritis and I'm only doing like audio journals or whatever. I'm still going to be documenting because this is clearly how I digest my life. Making videos was a part of that, but writing was also a part of that. So this is where the spark kind of started to be to be brighter and be obvious for me, where it's like, how can I align my values, how I want to see the next decade of my life, and growing a business without sacrificing what I love to do and being honest with myself? And it was really hard to pivot from like being a travel creator to being a journaling girl. Like, what? Like doing live journaling? People don't even know what that is because I kind of made it up. Now people are doing it, but in the time that I made it up, it's like, what? You just asked, like, what do you mean? Like, what is that? It's still new.

Yeah, to explain the concept, it's helpful to understand it. But if you were to go back to someone, either yourself 12 years ago or someone just getting into creating now, what are the things that you would say? What's the advice that you would give?

Uh, get ready to struggle. Like, get ready to work a lot. And I don't know, so I love learning languages. It's like one of my passions. And I think it's been really helpful to learn the language of the business. I really do look at all of these chapters of the business as languages, like learning the tech and learning the automations and learning the copywriting and learn. And I've been reading and studying and doing trial and error, but also know when it's time to delegate that stuff when you can, because the The transition I'm in now is like, how can I do what I am really good at that I cannot hire for? And I know you have the same. It sounds like when you started to have a team, it was like a big moment for you. Oh yeah.

I mean, it's huge to get to that point. Then you start to realize like, wait, what are the things that I'm doing because I've always done them versus what are the things I'm doing because I'm great at this in particular? And so for me, I ended up spending way more time on our product strategy. Rather than the implementation of that strategy, a lot more time connecting with creators and being out there in public, and a lot more time creating content. 'Cause I realized like, okay, these are the places that I can have the most leverage, and I actually shouldn't be in the weeds on all of these other things. And it's still a hard thing to learn. Like, I catch myself, you know, doing something, I'm like, wait a second, this was not the best use of my time in particular.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so I think it's like learning where your magic sauce is, And knowing that the rough stuff won't last forever, I think that's also a really good lesson. Like, it isn't going to be easy if you're trying to be a creator, but knowing that that is not always how it's going to be. The other thing too is that collaborations are genuinely everything, like at every moment, because we're talking about pivots in like my own journey. But when we talk about the subscriber count and like the actual growth of the business, those pivotal moments of going from 40,000 subscribers to 200,000, that happened because people started shouting our channel out, right? That happened because people started collaborating because we reached out. It wasn't something that happened in a silo. And the quicker you learn that, the easier it is for you to like not only meet super cool people that become great friends, but it just grows the business faster. And so knowing that this is a collaboration and it's okay to ask to like collab and, and try to chop it up with people So that was a big lesson. And the cold outreach, I think, is always a good lesson. Like, don't be afraid to ask for what you're looking for or pitch the person. And even if they say no, which maybe they will, I certainly get so many nos, you get the practice in the pitch. And so it's always more to win than to lose.

I think that's something that I really want more and more creators to do because we tend to think about it of like, oh, I'm a creator. I produce content one-to-many, and that means that opportunities are now inbound to me. Why am I not getting opportunities? It's like, well, you actually have to pitch them. The combination of creating content and putting it out there so you have this body of work to point to, and then direct outreach to go get in front of someone, and they're like, this is a random email from who? Oh, I clicked through and okay. He or she actually creates some pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, like the combination of those two things is so powerful. But I would say like 9 out of 10 creators that I talk to are like, why would I ever do cold outreach?

I'm like, why not? Why not?

What do you have to lose?

Why not? You know, another thing that I just thought of that I think has definitely changed how I see content, and it happened right after the show when I was starting to make content again. I couldn't imagine another decade of my life making content for content's sake. It didn't add up to me because when you're making content for content's sake and you make a video and you put your all into it, but you're making a video for the, for the machine and not for yourself, if that video performs badly, you're gonna hate yourself. You're gonna be like, wow, I suck, this sucks, why am I doing this? So then I have this moment, I'm like, well, what if I document what I'm already doing? I'm learning languages. Why don't I just put a camera on myself when I'm taking these crazy Arabic lessons and like document that process? And then if that video doesn't get any views, it doesn't matter because I learned Arabic, right? And so then I started thinking like, I'm not going to make content for content's sake. I'm going to make content because it's my life anyways. And then I'm going to build a business on the back end so that even if the video doesn't perform, right, the 5 people that did watch that video might become Journaling members, might try travel to retreats with me, and it becomes less about the virality but more about, like, this is a business funnel, but it's also a life processing activity, right? Like, it's not trying to play the game, it's like making the game play for you in a weird way.

Well, I think that anytime you're in pursuit of something, people want to come along and help you achieve that, right? And so you're saying, I'm going to go learn these things and live an interesting life and this is just the documentation of it, instead of the, okay, what can I make in this moment that might get views? Correct. It's a totally different way to think about it.

And it makes the relationship with the whole process a little bit better. Yeah. I always try to look at things in, like, will this check 3 boxes at least? Like, will this be fulfilling? Will I learn something new? Will this be financially lucrative? Those are just examples. Yeah. Or like, will this bring me closer to friendships that I'm excited about or whatever. You can go on and on, but like making sure that it checks more than 2 boxes at least. And that's how you know it's like something worth investing your time in.

Yeah, I like that. Okay, so give me the breakdown of the business today and maybe if we just talk like on the income in the business, like allocate it percentage-wise to each of the different areas.

So I officially actually have 2 businesses. I have a European company that I just formed, which which Belgian bureaucracy, it's a lot. But I have just founded Jo Club in Belgium because that's my new home. Yep. Moved there for love. A lot of paperwork for love, but he's worth it. And then I have my business here in the US, which is my personal business. So the way that these companies are split officially is the Jo Club side of the business is journaling workshops, live journaling membership. So online Sessions. We host 10 sessions a month about not only journaling through different prompts and introspective activities, but for language learning. We also do retreats as of 2 years, so we're hosting 3 global retreats, and I'm like in the weeds scouting the properties, checking the water pressure, right? Like, and I love doing that, but it's a lot. And then the Joe Franco side of the business is the speaking events and the brand partnerships and making ads that are then licensed and boosted, you know, that kind of brand hosting personality side. Two things are happening right now on the Joe Franco side of the business. Like I said, I want to be a showrunner, so I actually enrolled in a film school master's program, which I'm doing right now.

And that, as if you weren't doing enough things already, let's go, let's go get a master's degree.

But the degree is negotiated, and like, the funny thing is I did the interview, and the director was like, you should be teaching. And I'm like, but I'm here to learn, because again, I have this appetite to like learn this blank spot of what is storytelling, how do I serialize a concept. I know how to make one standalone YouTube video, but what does it look like with a journey? So I signed up for this program, and I actually just filmed a pilot, a TV— or I edited a pilot that I filmed 3 years ago. I filmed content 3 years ago with a crew in Greece, hired a local crew, did the the production beat sheet, did the interviews, did the whole thing. Didn't edit it until I had done enough research to do case studies on other TV shows, see what I liked, see what I didn't. The Joe Franco side of the business, I'm at a point where I'm ready to sell that show and film that show, which is a show about untranslatable words, looking at travel through the lens of language, which is something I've pitched producers and they all say it's too smart, no one's gonna like it. So I'm like, okay, I've heard this before. For it. Looks like I gotta do it myself. The Joe Franco side of the business, it's this beautiful, heart-filled business. It's very intimate as far as like their wholesome groups, even the retreats. People are really just pouring their hearts out. So I'm at a point there where it's profitable and I have a team and I just hired my growth, you know, an ops director. But I'm looking for something that's scalable in the sense that it's not— maybe it's not as like human capital heavy because everything needs a facilitator, everything needs my energy or my facilitator's energy. So the two things that I could do there is either this like franchise model of let's say you want to be a retreat leader and you want a Jo Club retreat template, we train you and you do retreats or local chapters, or it's like a SaaS product where it's this tech tool that allows you to look at your journal entries and we have this giant backlog of prompts. What should I do?

Okay, so you wanna dive into the future of the business. Um, and so those are the two paths basically that, that you were considering. One is scaling with, with Joe Club, scaling the events and retreats and franchising that.

Yes. Well, so I have to talk about the links between these two sides cuz a lot of people might not see it. And it's really crazy because I've had to do all of this work of mind mapping because I have these different passions of learning languages. I'm learning Dutch right now. And I like do business. Right now I'm organizing my Italian retreat in Italian. Like, this is not me with a translator. This is me like, "Ciao Simo, come stai? Tutto bene?" And like next week, that's where I'll go. So I have—

So just really quick, I like your YouTube influencer impression. I like your Italian YouTube influencer impression. Even more. Oh my God.

And so I have this like tremendous excitement about the journaling and the language and the travel as a tool for introspection. So those are the connective lines between if I make a TV show about language, it's not just a TV show. It's actually a show where I'll journal in the show and I'll talk about language. At the same time, the Joe Club side of things is like there's this continuation, there's this opportunity for you to connect with global thinkers, for you to have this introspective journey. And the retreats are like this big, beautiful thing that I love to do because it's then encouraging other people to travel for the first time into this like local experience, right? I was going to hire a travel company to like package the retreats for me, and I got a quote. I was so underwhelmed. I was like, we're not going to a dusty hotel. Like, that's not what we're doing. And so I learned quickly, okay, maybe it's like, if I want gritty, off the beaten path, I need to drive down the dirt roads. I need to meet with these people. And so I love the retreat side of the business. I really love it. So impactful. But you can imagine it's really hard to scale that, right, with just me doing it. So an option would be to train facilitators to run that business.

Yeah. And you've had this approach, you know, where you've done some franchise type things earlier with the travel business where you're bringing other collaborators in. But as you're trying to make this decision of where to go in the business, what are you optimizing for?

I, I want to empower— it sounds cheesy, but it's genuinely true— I want to empower my team. And this is still what I had in my mind in the Shut Up and Go days. I want to empower my team to like do what they've always wanted to do in this weird way. For instance, my facilitators, they don't come on to my team and then just do what I tell them to do. They come to me and they're like, I'm an art teacher, and I'm like, okay, let's do art journaling. And now this is a format. I love music. Okay, let's do bring your own song, BYOS, and we're going to use song lyrics as a catalyst for prompts. Like, so that's how I work with people. So when I think of the optimizing, what I would be optimizing for is like empowering my team, giving them a space to like really shine, letting them run, giving that impact, like that business is changing people's lives and then doing my thing on the TV side.

Right. And so I guess in that, is that the Joe Club side of it is bringing in the income and revenue to allow you to invest on the TV side and, and build your show and the things you want on your own terms? Or like, what does each business do for you from the business and financial perspective?

So it's crazy because when I think about Joe Club, I, I never thought of it in the beginning. I certainly didn't think of it as like, I want this to be a moneymaker. Now it is becoming a moneymaker more and more. So if I look at the rev split, I think 60% is still me doing my like Joe Franco, look on my channel kind of stuff, which I don't do that. But, you know, the brand side of this stuff and like hosting and speaking, let's say 60% is Joe Franco and then that 40% is Joe Club. Financially speaking, what I want Joe Club to be able to do is just grow to pay people to have amazing careers doing what they love in this like very niche space. Helping other people, growing themselves in this travel kind of culture. Yeah, in an ideal world, it would be super cool to have JoClub be the financial engine so I could film my shows. I think that would be the greatest thing of all, because then I wouldn't need to rely on production houses or brand deals. It would be nice to, like, bring them in if it makes sense. I think the best case scenario would be— while it's not the only thing I can see happening, but the best case would be Jo Club becomes the financial engine eventually that allows me to tell the stories I want to tell.

I mean, that would be amazing to have your community that's continually growing be like your own patron. Yeah, you get to create the art that you want in the world and have any time, you know, maybe you're trying to decide between a company funding or sponsoring the show or selling it to you know, a production house or like, you know, a producer in that way. And you're like, oh, which one do I like better? You have this third option of like, or fund it myself because, right, you know, I have this, this base. So what do you think is the biggest bottleneck in like on the, the Joe Club side of scaling that?

I think it's deciding what is the best scalable next thing. The membership is scalable. We're working on that. Yep. The, like, virtual membership is scalable and it could be very profitable, but I don't see it and I don't really want it to be the thing because that, that if it's too gigantic, it'll lose a little bit of its magic unless I like segment people. So I think I'm looking for like, what is the next— if we're talking cash opportunities, like, what is the cash cow? Is it a SaaS platform? Is it? And if that is, then I'm certainly not qualified myself. Myself to like be coding this stuff, nor do I want to. So is that a co-founder? Yeah.

So I guess the next thing that I'd ask is, what are the skills that you most want to learn in this? So I have this idea that I talk about, um, in The Ladders of Wealth, which is that making money is a skill and you're going to build this up over time, and you have to learn all of these different skills as you go. And you've done this all throughout your career, taking on really difficult you know, project, learning these skills and leveling up. And so what are the skills that you most want to learn?

I think it's the storytelling. And I mean, I know I love storytelling, I've studied it obviously, but I want to learn through the experience. I want to learn through the experience of making a show season after season and connecting it to the brand, connecting it to the business that I've been growing. And I also want to learn the, like, empowering the manager, empowering the team, and seeing them actually lead that business to where it needs to go.

Okay, that's really helpful. Um, from— I was gonna say the unsolicited advice, you actually just solicited the advice, so.

Okay.

Uh, I would not pursue a, a software product. Really? And the reason is it's just really, really hard. And so if you were talking about the things that you most wanna learn next and you're like, look, I really wanna learn how do I incorporate more technology into this, or how I'm going to scale this with AI, or how to get into tech, and I'm really pursuing recurring revenue in a way that's different from a membership, you know, and all those things, and I really want to understand how to work with developers and all that, then that would— if those are the skills that you wanted, that would bring you down that path. But that's not anything that you listed. And so if we're trying to build sustainable revenue for— to be able to drive storytelling, there's much easier ways to do it, I think, in scaling what you already have than in going and learning just a crazy number of new skills. As much as you love learning new things, how many languages do you speak? Seven. Seven. Yeah. So you love learning new things. And I have no doubt that if you were to, uh, point your attention towards learning a programming language versus a spoken language, you'd, you'd absolutely crush that too. But I think that I think that it's really important to view decisions like this through the lenses of, okay, what am I optimizing for? It sounds like it's consistent recurring revenue that can really fund all of your creative pursuits, and it's becoming world-class at storytelling. The intersection of that, to me, is, looking for ways to scale Joe Club that they might be 10 or 20% different from what you're doing now, but at a larger scale versus pursuing something totally new? Because I could see you spending multiple years going down the software path and it just being an incredibly difficult journey.

One thing that I have been feeling, and I don't know if you have felt this, maybe— I'm pretty sure you have— what I'm tired of doing, and, and this is like clearing it up for me. I'm tired of doing many things crappily. Oh yeah, like I'm really tired of being like, I'm doing this and I'm doing that, and like I know that I can make these things better if I just did that one thing, but I'm actually doing 10 of them. Yep. And they're all crappy, which is like better than average, but still like I know that I can dedicate more energy into something if I do less. So that's definitely where I am now. So this is helpful.

Yeah, and that's, that's That's the thing, anyone listening who has worked with me closely, like my team listens, they would know, I spread myself way too thin. I try to do way too many things, and it's really only when things start to fall apart that I realize, like, okay, I'm overcommitted.

But you do it, so it's natural. Is this just like the founder brain? Is that how it works?

Yeah, I mean, it's how I live my life, for better or worse. It served me really well, but it gets to this point where I realize, Okay, I'm not doing these things well because I'm constantly chasing new ways, new things to do, instead of going back, okay, what is the goal and how do I, what's the most direct path to that goal? And so if the goal is an amazing community that drives recurring revenue and at a larger scale to fund the rest of the creative pursuits, then I bet if we dive into Joe club as a business, there's a lot of key ways that you could do that. Like, okay, here's how we're going to scale the membership. Here's how we're going to solve that bottleneck of, okay, if we go, if we get 50% more members, it becomes a less personal experience. I bet if you are just focused on that problem, you'd come up with 20 ways to solve that. There's very specific bottlenecks that are actually very, very solvable.

Yeah, so you're basically just telling me like keep doing what I'm doing. I think focus. And focus on the content stuff.

Because the thing that I see you light up the most about is the storytelling and the show and how you're going to integrate that with Jo Club. Yeah.

And the journal. Recently, because of film school, I had to do this pilot, which I assigned myself, and most people are like, I'll write a logline, and I'm like, I'm gonna do a whole pilot. And when I finished this pilot, I realized I hadn't been that excited about something in maybe ever. And this is not something I'm getting paid to do. It was very painful. I was editing for many, many hours on end, ripping my hair out. Definitely had moments of imposter syndrome, like, I'm so bad, like, it's trash. When I finished that, I'm like, wow, this is crazy that for something I'm not getting paid to do, I blocked off a week of time. This is what I'm most excited about. And now it's just a question of, okay, where do we take this next? And it could be traditional publishing house, could be as in like not publishing, production. Like I'm actually working on a book too, guys. But it could be traditional route or the branded route. And so that's just like the hairy stuff that I have to comb through now of what side of the content do I want to take it in.

Yeah, I think that you'll be most served by narrowing things down down and doing fewer things really, really well. An analogy that I often use is I think about strip malls versus skyscrapers. And so a lot of creators, when they build their business— let's say you build a business to $150,000 or $200,000 a year in revenue as a creator, and you're like, this is incredible, and I'm selling maybe 2 products, right? One's making me $100,000, the other is making me $50,000. Then people typically go, okay, with audience, if I added a third product, that'd be the best way to get to the next stage. If I added a fourth product, then okay, now we're adding all this up and now we're at $250,000-$300,000 in revenue and up from there. And I've seen people scale this, this strip mall model, right, where you have these individual stores kind of next to each other, to a really high level. But I've always seen it cap out. It might cap out at a few hundred thousand, it might cap out at a million, but it always caps. Why?

Because they're spread too thin?

Because they're spread thin and they're trying to manage all these things, and before you know it, you know, you're creating all these new things, and then you look back and you're like, oh, I'm actually not proud of this one anymore because it's 4 years old, and I really should re-record all of that content. And then the management and the upkeep becomes so much. And instead, if you take— if you experiment with a lot of things in the strip mall approach 'cause we're learning, we're iterating, and then you find something and you're like, okay, this is starting to work. Instead of going, since this is working so well, I'm now gonna do this.

This is literally what I'm doing, and I've had this conversation at the last mastermind that I went to. I was having conversations and all roads pointed to the same thing, which everybody's like, just scale what you already built. And I'm like, but an app, but a physical journal, but, but, and they're like, you built the thing And it's true, I've like really spent 4 years kind of crafting this live journaling format, training my facilitators. But there's that like, I'm gonna break it now 'cause it's fixed. Like we do that, I think, as entrepreneurs. Like when you solve the problem that's so big and scary, the first gut instinct is like, what do I do next? Which is not the most strategic approach, is what it sounds like.

Yeah, because often as you move on to the next thing, the previous one stops working as well. And so in your case, I would find that one thing and say, okay, this is the skill skyscraper that I'm going to build. And you're just saying, what does it look like to grow this and to really keep investing in making this product better? How would I make it so that every person who joins Joe Club refers a friend? And what if I spent an entire month just thinking about getting all of our members to refer friends? How would I dial in the automations? How would I create that, that experience? That just makes you want to tell a friend? How could I have a journaling prompt that is inherently social, that requires me to interact with somebody else and sort of bring them into the Joe Club ecosystem, right? And if you obsessed in those ways, then I bet you could not only have a better experience of how you run Joe Club, but you could get to the point that you're running it at 2, 3, 4 times the size and revenue with about the same effort.

It's funny, like, you kind of know this stuff intuitively, as in like when somebody tells you, you're like, yeah, this is the right thing. What you're saying, it sounds like a great freedom. It's not innate. Like, I wouldn't think, yeah, let me just double down, which is again why I came here and I'm like, is it a sasprana? Is it this? Is it— the reason is because it feels like it's not as freeing to just focus on one thing. But the way you're saying it, and I can genuinely see see that is like it's actually the most freedom.

Well, because it's the most freedom to then do what lights you up the most, which is storytelling.

Because I'm not learning the SaaS stuff and I'm not like spending a decade trying to learn a whole new line of business. I'm just doing what I want to do.

Yeah, and so it's like what's the most direct path? And it's like scale what we have so that I can build a storytelling business that is deeply integrated and I can fall in love with that aspect.

We're done. Thanks. So helpful.

Joe, it's been really, really fun to see the way that you build the business, the energy that you bring to everything. I feel like you, you live years at a time in a month, and it's just incredibly inspiring. So thank you so much for sharing it with all of us and telling your story.

Thank you. And I didn't talk about this. This is a shameless plug. You didn't ask me, he didn't ask me to talk about this, but I really think that when I started growing the newsletter, it changed how I looked at my business, which was this new chapter. Like, the start of this new chapter started with me joining ConvertKit, now Kit. And now again, when I look at the videos, it's not so much did they go viral, it's like how many people have I got into my ecosystem to build this strategy that I see going until I'm 80. This is no longer content for content's sake. Like, this is a real business. I love that. That's crazy. Can you realize that that's what you guys are doing?

That's— I mean, that's what we're all about, is building the foundation of, of all these creator businesses and just helping in any way that we can.

But like, we need to talk more about this offline. Guys, it's serious. If you're not on ConvertKit now, Kit, it's really— it's a game changer. That sounds good.

Well, to wrap up, I'd love to hear two things. 2 things. One, if someone wants to check out Joe Club and join that community, what's the best way to do it? And the second thing is, what is one piece of content that you would point people to that just is some of your favorite storytelling where they can immerse themselves in the world of Joe Frankel?

Oh, that's so tough. Uh, okay, so Joe Club is easy. You can find Joe Club at joclub.world. And it's Jo for journaling, but also for my name, but just for journaling. And the video I would point to, it hasn't come out yet, my TV show pilot. You can actually get my TV show pilot by joining my newsletter.

I like it. I like it. And where would somebody go to join your newsletter?

They can go to joefranco.world/newsletter.

That is a great callback. It's true. All right. Well, Jo, thank you so much. And it's been a really fun conversation.

We have to have a part 2.

Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search Billion Dollar Creator and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.