What it REALLY takes to make $20k⧸month

Hey guys, it's Will. And it's been a few months now since I hit my first 20k month as a one person creator business for the second time. And I'm just gonna talk about it with you in this video, share some insights here. Because I remember the first time that I did it back in 2018, I think it was. And I was pretty surprised that it happened because like most people, probably you watching this video, I'd seen all the ads about people making money online, all the gurus saying this and that and the other, and I kind of never really thought that it would be possible. Like, I just figured that it was for other people and not for me. And since I've actually done this now twice in a row in two different businesses, in two completely different niches, once back in 2018 and more recently again in 2030, 2023, I can sort of see the steps that I took. And I just want to share what actually was involved in this process in this video to help you do the same. So there's no magic pill here. Like this is just legit, honest, me recounting my steps so that hopefully you can do this for yourself, learn from some of my mistakes and mess ups and speed up your own progress. And I, I don't have, by the way, like millions of followers. I don't even get that many views on the videos that I make. And I also don't work a crazy amount. I probably average probably about four hours a day, I would say. So this is pretty attainable for most people if you're willing to show up and, you know, be brave and do the work because I'm not special and to take you back to sort of my beginning. So it was around 2018, I started trying to make money online. So I started trying to trade stocks. Didn't really get anywhere with it at first. I made a bit of money, lost a bit more money, but my goal was to become a professional trader. So I was like, that's it. I am going to trade stocks. That is how I'm going to get rich. And this is super important to my story and what got me to my first 20k month back in 2019 and my second, sorry, 2018 and my second 20k month back in 2023. But I started making content about it. So first on Twitter, then on YouTube, no one really watched my videos at first. I made loads of tweets and videos over about a year. Nobody really paid much attention. They didn't like take off, you know, they might have got 100 views, 300 views, 700 views, that kind of thing. So that was pretty frustrating. But it was just important because I was learning the skill, the skill of content creation, the skill of storytelling, the skill of putting a video together, editing, that kind of thing. And alongside that, I was getting better and better at trading. And one day I got a message on Twitter which basically said, will, I've been following you. I can see that you're doing pretty well. I am not doing that well. Please could you help me in any way? And I said to the guy, well, yes, I think that I can. The guy was local to me. And in the end, he PayPal me $50 through PayPal. He came to my parents house, sat next to me for about three hours, made notes, thanked me, went off on his way. I was happy, he was happy. And that was my first ever customer. I've still got the receipts from that to this day. And that was really great because it showed me that my skill as a trader and as a creator was valuable because people were finally slowly starting to pay me for it. And that was a massive breakthrough for me because it just taught me people will pay me for my knowledge and just to talk to them and tell them stuff. So that first $50, it felt like $500 to me back then. It was amazing. And I also wanted to get to this place where I could leverage my knowledge rather than leverage my time. Right, because when I was trading, I'd have to be there, do it, sit at the screen, wait for the trades, put them on, track them, that kind of thing. So what I did then after that first customer, so he made notes that day at my parents house with me, he let me keep a copy of that word doc and I started messaging my other Twitter followers and trying to sell it to them for the same $50. And that made me my first 500, 1,000, $2,000 or so. Then I turned that into a Dropbox folder of videos to go alongside the word doc. I raised my price and that got me my first 5ish, 7ish, 10k ish dollars or so. All the while, I'm still making YouTube videos, I'm putting out tweets, and I'm building a small audience. I had like 400 followers on Twitter, 1 or 2000 subscribers on YouTube. And that's what got me to my first 20k month as a creator in that old business. That was my first time getting there.

And what's even crazier is that I actually went on to scale that company to 16.4 million over just above five years. And then I sold it last year to a private equity firm for millions more. That's not what I want to kind of talk about in this video. There's other videos here on the channel that you're watching right now where you can go and kind of learn more about how I exited. I want to stay on the topic of my first 20k month as a one person creator and how I did it right in my own business, you know, and again in this new business as well. So again, I've done this twice.

And one crazy thing that I've learned from both my last business and this new business.

Is you don't need a big following and you certainly don't need loads of views. Like I've had videos on my old channel and on this channel as well actually that have got 50k views, 100k views, 200, 300k views, 500k bloody views. And those videos are often the ones that make the least amount of money, not the most amount of money, which I know that makes no sense by the way. It's still absurd to think that millions of people have watched the videos that I've created. But the crazier thing, the crazier thing is that that didn't even make the most money, right? I always just thought if I can get millions of views that I'll just explode and money will rain down from the sky quickly and easily. Does not work like that, unfortunately. I wish that it did. And I'm not saying that getting all these views is bad or anything like that, I'm not saying that, but it's not necessary. And it's not even something worth aiming for either. If, if it happens and you get loads of views, amazing, sure. But getting caught in that cycle, which is something I did for quite a while, it was really painful, not very fruitful, and I learned a lot of hard lessons and wasted a lot of time and energy as well. So now let's come up to today and after I learned that views don't equal money. And it took me a long time to learn that, by the way. But that's when everything changed and I took a new approach to making money as a creator, making content. So to illustrate this, I'm going to pop two videos on the screen right here. So this video, 524,000 views and this video, only 5,400 views. I want you to guess which one of those made me the most money. I'll tell you. And you won't believe this. They've Made about the same amount, and that is multiple, multiple six figures, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, that's partly down to how high my prices are for the consulting that I sell. Right? But how on earth can one video have like half a million views and one have just above 5,000 views and they make the same amount of money? Well, that's what I'm going to explain to you now. And this is the key takeaway from this video. Please, please take this to heart. It will save you so much time and energy. See, I've made some videos on this channel that have got 10,000 views, 30,000 views, and they only get a few sales. And I've made videos on this channel that have got, you know, both a massive amount of views and a tiny amount of views. And I've realized it ain't about the views. It's about problem awareness, which creates buyer intent. Please, please write this down if you want to make money as a creator. Problem awareness and buyer intent.

See, I've made videos in the past that didn't mention a key problem or offer a key solution. And sometimes they get a lot of views, sometimes they don't, but they almost never get me hardly any customers. They might get a few because of the view count, but barely any. And on the other side of that, I've made videos in the past that did mention a key problem, did offer a key solution. And again, sometimes they get a lot of views, sometimes they don't get a lot of views. But regardless of view count, they always get me floods of customers. And sales. And clients. Every time. Every time. I feel like I've cracked the code on how to make videos now that get sales regardless of view counts. How cool is that? And that in itself is the fastest and easiest way to make 10k a month or 20k a month as a creator, just making content and selling your knowledge that if there is a secret, that is the secret. Problem awareness and buyer intent.

And when you get this right, two things happen. So number one, you can finally control how much money you make when you make content. And two, you can charge more because there's more people wanting to work with you, which is basically supply and demand, especially if you coach people one to one, like I do, because you've only got so much human time. So the more people who want your time, the more you can charge for your time.

It also means.

That it's more sustainable, right? Because then you're not waiting for the next customer to come in. Because in the past, for me, you know, before I knew how to do this. Sometimes it just might not come. And there were periods where I get no new sales, only a few new sales. Loads of sales, only a few new sales, right? It's a bit of a weird thing, but when I learned how to make videos that create sales boom. Now not only is your income sustainable and predictable, but you can scale further. Because when you do get loads of views on a video that creates problem awareness and buyer intent, you get so many sales from it and it just gives you like tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars from a single video. And I experienced this a handful of times and learned to control it. So how can you do this? Well, it's actually really simple and easy, right? You just do this. Step one, write down your dream customer, who are they? What do they do? Like who is the person? And then step two is to write down all of their problems and just make videos, talking about the solution in a wow, not how way. Now this is a big mistake that crushes your sales. Never teach people, only give them a light bulb moment or a breakthrough to provide value and then position yourself and your solution so they have to buy from you to learn everything else that they need.

So if, for example, your solution is a car, well, just give them a basic driving lesson in the video, which is super valuable for them, so they're happy, but don't give them the car itself. Wow. Not how, then you've got value, right, that you've given them, but they then need to buy the car hopefully from you to drive going forwards and the car is your course or coaching program.

Another example, if your solution is like how to make coffee, right? Well, just give them a lesson in a video and teach them how to make coffee, which is super valuable for them so they're happy, but don't give them a coffee machine, don't give them any cups, don't give them any coffee beans and stuff. Wow, not how. And then they need to buy all of that stuff, hopefully from you to make coffee going forward. So the coffee machine, the cups, the coffee beans, again, that is your online course, that is your coaching program, that's your book, that kind of thing. And this is completely ethical, by the way, because it's impossible to give people everything they need in just one video. That is just like, it's just not possible. And this is literally why courses and coaching programs exist. Because learning a skill, it's a process and it requires structured teaching, ongoing coaching, support as you learn, you make mistakes, you get back up, you keep going, you Work with your coach on them. So you can't give people everything they need in one video or just a few videos on YouTube. A video itself is great, but it's never going to get you liked the whole way. It's just a video. Again, that's why coaching exists. Humans need humans. We need to ask questions. We need to get feedback tailored to our situation. And videos alone, they can't do that. But what videos can do, if you make them correctly, is create problem awareness, buyer intent. And that's what turns your content as a creator into huge amounts of income, like it has for me and many of the clients that I've helped to do this over the years always remember, wow, not how. So to come back to these two videos that I mentioned a second ago, right. The reason that they both may be multiple six figures in sales is despite the view count difference, the video with the lower view count, right. Talked specifically around problem awareness specific to my ideal customer. So it resonated with them, created by your intent, and led to like 100 or 200 of those viewers buying from me. So if you ever make a video and you get like a thousand views and no sales, or even 5,000 views and no sales, it's either because you're teaching too much and giving too much how instead of keeping it. Wow. And then people think they know enough and they'll go and fail and then blame you, which is another problem, or you're not focusing on problem awareness and really driving home the problem that your ideal customer has and how you can solve it for them, leading them to. To not need to buy from you to bridge the gap. Okay. And again, they'll go and try it on their own. They'll think they've got what it takes. They'll fail and blame it all on you. Now, obviously this goes without saying, but just to make sure I tell you everything that you need here, I also mentioned in the videos that if you want to work with me on a deeper, more intimate level, you can do that. And you can hire me to coach you one to one. And you can then go through my training program and I'll share all of my knowledge with you. So I always put that in those key videos so that people have a call to action to Axon. And then people interested in getting my help would click the work with me link. That's also in the description of this video. They'd apply to work with me, and if they're a good fit, I let them in and I help them to do what I do. Basically, and make like massive amounts of money through content as a creator. And that's pretty much the simple solution to generating more revenue and as a creator without having to rely on views, pretty much, Pretty much at all, more or less. All right, you do need some views because you, you don't need that many views, basically, in order to get a customer. And then when you do get a customer, you can provide them a great experience, you can work with them on a more intimate level, and it's just better for everybody. It's better and easier and faster for you. It's better for the customer when you do those things that I just told you about. It's a true win, win. So you might be wondering, well, how do you do this? Maybe, maybe you're not a content creator. Well, that's fine. You probably have a skill, you probably have expertise, and you don't need to be the world's best at it either. You could be a 3 out of 10 that teaches zeros or ones. You could be a 5 out of 10 that teaches twos, threes, maybe fours. Right? The truth is, I don't think what I do is particularly groundbreaking. However, that kind of makes sense because I'm me. I already do it. I've made over 35 million over my last two online education businesses. I've exited one of them. I've been doing this for pretty much eight solid years now, since about 2017. So to me, this stuff is second nature. It's normal for me. But most people aren't me. In fact, I don't think anyone is me except for me, which means that their knowledge is not where mine is as it relates to certain topics, or who better to help them than me, right? And it's the same for the people that you're going to help, right? They might have an idea about what you're best at, but they don't know enough. They want to know more. They want someone to give them feedback or help. They want somebody to point out their blind spots. And that's what you can do as a creator, right? And, and as an online educator.

Provide your knowledge to the world in the form of content. Build an audience, a portion of that audience. Maybe they're just sick and tired of trying to do something themselves. And they say, you know what? I'm going to invest in this person so that they can help me, so they can hold me accountable. That's going to fast track their progress. And you put a price on that. And it's pretty much the simple way of generating income. As a content creator, you're putting value out there, goodwill out there, people find it and some of those people will pay for your help. Okay, you just need one or two clients a month. You're going to charge 2, 3, maybe 4K. And you pretty much, when you've done that, you've got a full time income and that's on the lower end of pricing wise as well. And if you've got five clients at 3K, which is not too high, not too low, that's like 15k per month or like whatever. You do the math for yourself on what you want to charge. So what you need is content, you need an offer, you need a sales process, and then you just create content in line with that offer and you mention it to people and just watch as people say, hey, I want to do this, what's the deal, what does it involve? How much money do you want and how do I pay you? And of course there's learning to be done. Like you need to figure out how to make the content, you need to figure out what the offer is, you need to figure out how to actually, I guess, sell the offer, what price to charge, which is kind of the easy part because you're an expert, so you already know how to do the thing, right. So it's just about delivering on the front end, you know, sharing the information to gain the awareness that you need to drive sales.

So.

It'S been a game changer for me, this whole content creation space.

And it's probably the easiest opportunity that exists right now in the world. I've made literally millions just doing this. It's so simple, it's so easy. And I would say to pretty much just take out your iPhone and record yourself talking about something that you are good at that you know very well. Just like I'm doing right now, I'm in the living room here at my home in Bali with my iPhone on a tripod talking and I don't know how long this is going to be going for. Right. It kind of seems almost too good to be true. You might even be thinking that right now I'm proof that that's kind of not the case. But I know it does feel like that, how fast you can just make life changing money just doing this. But if you want to learn those skills of content creation, storytelling, offer creation, building a sales process, what to charge, how to do everything, all this stuff, if you like, I could just hop on Zoom with you and coach you one to one, give you my training program that will basically put my brain in your head. So I'll put a link below this video that you can click. There's a quick explainer video about who I can and can't help. Feel free to book in a quick call to chat about me helping you. The initial call is free, by the way, there's no charge and if we're a good fit, you can invest in some help from me and I'll just teach you everything and help you do it. And we'll have fun and make you some money selling your knowledge. Or if you're tight on money, grab a copy of my book. It's like $10 or $20 depending on if you get the paperback or the hardcover or the audiobook or the ebook. You know, whatever you prefer. So check that out if you want to learn the skill. If you want to make this a reality for yourself, this is the fastest way to do it. With just direct support, mentorship, all the resources, all of my knowledge there to just help you get this right the first time. So check that out if you're interested and if not, I'll see you in the next video soon.