James Allen shares the insight that transformed his content strategy: "model the cake, innovate the icing." Take proven ideas, remix them with your own twist, and study multiple creators to find what's missing. He offers a free content-planning template designed to generate searchable value and attract leads.
When I was trying to find my niche and market myself into the world, I struggled. I think I jumped between 5 to 7 different niches until I landed on teaching online business. And the truth is that I was hesitant because I was scared. I thought, what do I know about online business? There's so many other business coaches out there. How am I supposed to stand out? And even if I do stand out, why would people want to invest in me? I was trying to create something that's never been done before, some completely new approach. And that right there is what was keeping me stuck. So I spoke with a friend of mine named Tyson, who shared with me some of the best marketing advice I have ever received. He said, model the cake, innovate the icing. And today I'm going to share with you why that was so valuable. What is up, my friend? My name is James Allen. I'm here to help you build an online business based on your knowledge and expertise while working 20 hours or less per week. And one of the biggest things that's going to drive revenue and new leads over to your knowledge business is creating free valuable content like this. Now, this could be a blog, podcast, or a YouTube channel, but you want something that's going to be evergreen where people can always search it no matter what, day or night, anytime, anywhere in the world. People are able to find you and then check out your website. Automatically, it's gonna pitch products, services that you have, but it all starts with great content. So to help you create even better content than you're already doing, or just at least get started with creating content, I'm going to give you a content planning template. This template's gonna help you create searchable, quality content that makes people want to learn more about you so that it drives more hot leads to your business. And you can start using this today. To get your template, just go to ProfitYourKnowledge.com/content, or you can click the link in the description of this episode. So when you hear model the cake, innovate the icing, what do you think about? For me, I think I don't need to recreate the wheel. It's up to me to find what works, what I like, steal those things, and then add my own twist to it and think to myself, what's missing? How can I teach this a little bit different? And this is also known as remixing, where you take things that work, things that people enjoy, and you repurpose them into a way that is original. Because this is one of the biggest things that's gonna drive revenue to your business, is original quality free content that people can find so that that they can try before they buy. Buy meaning your products and services. Now a great book to learn more about this is Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. I think everybody who's a creative person, you're making art, music, free content, a blog post, podcast, whatever, you're creating something and putting it out there into the world, it can be incredibly overwhelming to think I have to create something brand new every single day. Now inside Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon said this. Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don't come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn We learn by pretending to be our heroes. We learn by copying. He also said, don't just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don't wanna look like your heroes, you wanna see like your heroes. That is modeling the cake and innovating the icing. It's taking what works from multiple different sources and then adding your own spin to it by asking ourselves, what's missing? What would I do differently? So what I encourage you to do is just that, find your heroes. And there's no set number on how many people that you should model from, the more, the better. And when you find those heroes, jot down what you like about them, consider what you like about them, and think, what would you do differently? Model the cake, innovate the icing. That is how we become original. You yourself are a combination of comedians that you've seen, of music that you've heard, lyrics that you've listened to, that you've sang to yourself while you're driving your car. I know you do it. You're just a huge combination of bits and pieces of fragments of others. That makes you you. Every time you learn something new, like you are right now, you're modeling the cake, innovating the icing, taking bits and pieces that you enjoy. And this is honestly something that held me back for so long because I thought I have to do something completely new, but it's totally false. I believe that the world needs more generous, authentic content creators that provide immense value in the marketplace by teaching people your knowledge and expertise and passing that down because knowledge is the best currency. And if you're thinking, well, what do I know? There's already a ton of people teaching the thing that I would teach like cooking or fitness or business, but the number one thing that those people do not have and that makes you different is you. So do not let imposter syndrome get in the way of you creating creating what you want to create, teaching the things that you want to teach, and then ultimately create a business from that that also gives you time freedom, because it's entirely possible. I was at a seminar one time and the speaker said, dance the dance you were taught until you can dance your own dance. Be the resource that you wish you had when you first started. And it's not by copying one person, it's by copying many people and making it your own. Model the cake, innovate the icing. Once you have your idea of what you really want to do, how you want to teach, you're pulling from all these different sources. Once you get that process going, you got to get out there and start teaching people, and you need to get better at being discovered online. And YouTube is one of the best platforms to do that, which is why you should check out that last lesson I did on how to use vidIQ for better YouTube SEO. And while you're at it, let me know down in the comments, when you hear model the cake, innovate the icing, what does that mean to you? I'll see you in the next one.
