Hello, hello, hello my podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite online business podcast. If you are listening, if you are tuning in, if you are watching on the day that it drops, it is Monday, oh my god, August 3rd. August, welcome to August.
So today we are talking about content and the fact that it will always be queen. This episode inspired by a few things. Number one, a convo conversation that I had with a client this morning.
Number two, a recent program that I just launched that was a big success and I'm still like wow, I'm over it. Crew 52, if you're listening and you're in it, you're watching and you're in it, thank you. I'm just fucking, I'm stoked.
For those of you who don't know, Crew 52 is a year of accountability for content creation. And the third thing that inspired this is the uptick in the number of folks starting a substack. Regarding substack and my feelings on it, I did a whole episode about this like, I don't know, a year ago.
Time is a flat circle, so maybe it was two years ago. For all I know, it was two years ago. I actually don't know.
But Courtney, Jojo, you can link those, thank you. Link that, so thank you. You know, do what you want to do with substack.
You can hear my thoughts on it. They haven't changed. I have more to say now, but also do what you want to do.
But if you follow me for a bit, and by a bit I mean back into the PT movement days, you know that I've always said as well that the nervous system is queen. And she is. And now we are today declaring that content is also queen and will also always be queen.
And yes, that is because we can have more than one queen. Why? Because this is a matriarchy and we make the fucking rules. This is a maestroarchy, actually, on this right here.
But in general, matriarchy, that's where we need to be. That's where we fucking need to be because look at where we're at. Patriarchy ain't the way.
But back to the episode. If you want to run an online business, you got to make content, period. Even with an in-person business, you want to be found on Google, go follow Lex for this.
You got to write those fucking blog posts. Check Lex out for all that stuff. I'm going like this with my hand if you're watching on the cameras because her office is right there.
But you got to make content. I was served a new-to-me creator the other day. She's in the online business space.
And I'm still not sure how I feel about her, so I'm not going to mention her by name. I don't like to recommend people until I've vetted them. But you bet your ass that the first thing I did was check if she was on Instagram because I found her on threads.
And then I went and checked her podcast episodes. I call this giving people the opportunity to binge your brain. We see this and we experience this with Netflix.
Don't recommend me. I'm talking to Netflix, not you, but also you. Don't recommend me a new show that has one season and three episodes and immediately pass.
I'm looking for a show with six seasons. Each season has 15 episodes. Each episode is an hour.
Giddy up. Yes. We just watched Hacks.
We fucking devoured that. And now we're on to The Bear. Those are shorter episodes.
Don't love that, but it's probably better than I don't end up staying up as late. But I prefer nighttime. I can stay up to 1 a.m. every night.
And I usually do. It's usually like midnight. I force myself.
But either way, we're on The Bear. And yes, Ted Lasso's coming back. So it's exciting week to week kind of thing.
But we watched Ted Lasso all at once. We waited. And then I tend to wait with shows.
I don't trust people's reviews. And I got to be like, all right, I'm going to give this thing a shot because I have other shows. But back to the brain binging.
It is what people want. Admittedly, I am people when I say that in that sentence. It's what people want.
But I also do feel comfortable speaking for others in this instance. As a consumer, content allows us to learn things. Meaning that the creator can provide value.
It allows us to relate to the creator. It allows us to connect with the creator. It helps us understand the creator.
It builds trust. Slight tangent, but not really. I stay on threads.
I fucking hate it, but I stay on threads. And I saw a creator that was asking about Jessie Jean. For those of you who don't know, Jessie Jean is the originator, I don't know, the owner of the app challenge.
If you know what that is, it doesn't fucking matter. But either way, they were asking about another creator. Her name is Jessie Jean.
And they were asking about her political stance. And because this person couldn't find anything. And the person was like, I might take this down, but felt brave.
So I'm posting it. Does anyone know Jessie Jean's political stance? I made a firm resolution to not give any money to Trump directly if I can help it. And so before I go and buy this woman's course, I would like to know.
And I fucking love that question. And other people did too in the comments. And they were just like, immediate follow to that woman.
I was like, yeah, I didn't follow her. But I was like, yeah, that's a great fucking question, right? Side note, if you're new here, and you haven't heard it in a bit, on this podcast, in this business, my business, it is now always and forever, fuck Trump, fuck ICE, and fuck this whole administration. And if you're silent, I am side eyeing you.
Yes, I am. Okay. So content, it allows us to learn these things about the creator, build trust.
As a creator, like I said before, it gives people a way to binge your brain. And that is completely different than picking your brain. And I fucking hate that phrase.
Hate it. All right. And again, this is perhaps this is a byproduct of Netflix culture, but I actually have zero issue with this reality that people want to have a lot of stuff to consume when they find you.
I don't think people should expect it or say anything to you about it. But also, you as a creator should not expect people to stick around if there isn't anything there. Okay.
So another reason that I made this episode is because I've been thinking about things. What things? All the things. But I do think about things that kind of like, what does it mean for the future? How things are changing? And one of those things that I think about is AI, obviously.
You know, side note, oh, great sunset. I know I got a little distracted there, but really nice sunset. Side note, this predicting, that is all that social media is in general.
Fucking the worst. So much on Instagram is people just like reporting stuff or predicting stuff. They're just like, here's all the bad shit that happened.
And like, then they get an audience behind them. Like, I don't, this is the worst. What can I do about this? Or you go to, you know, the FinTech, FinTech, I don't know how, I think it's pronounced FinTech, financial tech side of things.
It's fucking worse. I stay over there and I hurt my own feelings. But they just be predicting shit, but like nothing ever happens.
So don't watch it. If you care about your blood pressure, don't watch it. Because it is really just lots and lots of speculation with zero action items and zero repercussions for all the people that are doing bad shit that I guess is somehow legal, but also like, is it? Zero repercussions.
But back to the AI thing. You all know, I am, or if you don't know, now you do know, I'm very much into AI. I'm interested in it.
I'm enjoying it. Yes, there are downsides. I know, if you don't like it, don't use it.
If you hate me because of that, that's, that is also very much your choice. Very much. But I have a whole other podcast all about AI.
It's called Prompting Curiosity. You can go check it out. We will link that.
Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, Jojo. But y'all know that there is a lot of speculation and there's a lot of catastrophizing, in my opinion, about the future and AI.
And to me, one of the things that will always protect you and insulate you as a personal brand is content creation. I would offer that human generated, and when I say human, I mostly mean like individual human created content is also fantastic for businesses and corporations, which is why they look to use what's called UGC, user generated content, and they reach out to influencers. I almost knocked that bowl over.
But that's not my zone of genius, right? Knowing what businesses and corporations, their marketing side of things. But yes, AI can generate content. Yes, it can.
And it can do it at scale, which is going to be its downfall. And it can do it quickly. Also, that's really the biggest thing that's going to contribute to the negative feelings around it.
But it excels at mimicking, not creating. Right? And I'm going to catch it for this next part thing I'm going to say. But I'm saying anyway, because I do think that it can be good at quote, unquote, creating music.
I guess I know it's trained on stolen shit. I'm not saying it's good that it's doing it. I'm saying that what it turns out goes viral.
It's catchy. Right? And where I'm further going with this is that it can never replicate a concert, at least not I don't see that happening anytime soon. Anytime soon.
And I can't even, you know, I have, I have a DJ controller and I still cannot understand going to watch a DJ isn't like when you just watch them hit the buttons, but like it's a thing. And I can't do that. You can't go watch an AI, at least not now, maybe in the future.
That's the thing where people would just go and watch TV screen and watch their favorite AI thing, you know, create, but as it stands right now, and I think as something that will always not, I think I know something that will always be a thing always is the artist, the artistry, the performance, that type of content creation that AI can never can never replicate. Right? So what I'm getting at here is that content is queen, and it will always be queen. It is the way that we battle AI.
It is the way that we will build trust with our audience. It's the way that we find our voice. It's the way that we get answers to our own questions about what the fuck am I doing? What am I even doing this? What am I even saying? I'm gonna figure it out.
Content. So this is an online business podcast. And that's the lens that I frame things through.
And if you want to have an online business, you need a way to attract customers, full stop. Of note, earning money, I'm talking about earning money by selling things to your audience, like monetizing your audience, not the platform itself, not getting paid by the platform itself. That's not what I do.
I teach people how to build an audience that wants to pay them for stuff. Right? So taking what we're talking about with content creation, and the fact that this is through an online business lens, that's what this podcast is about. We're gonna have a business, you need to sell shit, you need customers, you need customers and clients.
There's two ways to get customers or clients as organic or paid. That's it. Organic, we're looking at word of mouth, we're looking at social media, like all the various platforms and social media.
Paid, we're looking at ads, which those ads often work better after organic proof of concept. But it's not the only way. Right? Jill has actually told me about plenty of businesses that they are just like, all ads all the time.
It's all they've ever done. Okay, that's fine. Not for me.
Not my zone of genius. So again, I am acknowledging there's another way to get customers. The way that I know, my zone of genius, that organic route.
Right? I don't think there's any other way. Organic paid. Maybe if you can think of one, message me, drop a comment.
I'm not I'm not challenging you like oh, but I can think of So unless I do the same bullshit as the FinTech pods, FinTech podcasts, I want to give you some action items and some specifics as it relates to content creation. Right? The main point, however, of course, being of this episode being that it's just to remind you that content is queen, and it always will be. So I want to cover where to start, where you go, how much do you do? Does it ever end? Spoiler, no.
It doesn't ever end. It ends when you want the business to end. Or you pass off to somebody else, but it never ends.
Because we need clients coming in. All right. So where do you start when it comes to content creation? When I when I, as it relates to online business, I teach it in three phases.
Right? First is social media, then email marketing, then productizing of a service. Productizing of a service meaning that you're going to build and sell something. Build, launch, and sell something.
All right? If we move down a level to the actual content creation, we are looking at that social media bucket going into email marketing as the foundation. Right? And when that's on lock, when we got social media on lock, and we got email marketing on lock, that's when we think about diversifying how we reach and teach our people. Not where, but how we reach and teach our people.
People have different learning styles. Auditory, audio-visual, you know, visual only. They like to read things, like to hear things, and that's what we'll look to how, that's what I'm speaking about when I think diversifying how you reach and teach your people.
All right? Worth noting, folks who like to make money from the actual platforms themselves, they will oftentimes go lateral. Right? So they may go from like Instagram and then over to TikTok, or they may have started like that. Whereas I won't tell you to do that.
I'm going to tell you go pick one social media platform, one type of funnel platform, and then we go into email marketing. And then we will go into another type of content. And so my suggestion would be social media first, which is typically going to be audio-visual for most folks.
TikTok, Instagram, Instagram is obviously my preference. Then we go into long form written, which is going to be your email. All right? Then we go into audio only, which is going to be podcast.
And then we can look to go into long form audio-visual. Of note, when I say long form written, I am talking about email, but you can also double, you know, double dip there and make it for blogging as well. All right? But you see that's going to come before you go into the podcast.
That is more of a lift. And then I'm going to have long form audio-visual YouTube being the last thing. I recommend this order because this, or I recommend this in general, because it truly allows people to binge your brain, right? People learn differently.
But if you go in this order, it allows you to repurpose content because social media, long form written, audio only, you could talk about the same thing on those three different things. Whereas on Instagram and TikTok, you may be like, maybe you're putting the same things on both, but they're not going to hit the different platforms. Whereas you can, as Lux likes to say, talk about a little, a lot.
Talk a lot or about a little. She says it the other way. Talk a lot about a little.
So if you've niched down, then you can be talking about the same kind of specific topics, but in these three different mediums, and you can use the same idea and just repurposing. I also recommend this order because I think it's easiest to actually stick to it because it habit stacks. And it goes from what I perceive to be the easiest, kind of a lower lift, shorter, not as much like technical stuff as needed.
And then we can go into the more complex things on top of that. But as it relates to where you actually start, that's going to be up to you and whatever comes easiest to you, whatever you're most interested in and where your people are at. For most folks, it's going to be typical social media, Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook.
Podcasting is tough as a initial top of funnel strategy because it's tough to get discovered that way. It's less organic, and you'll likely need more strategy for that and pitching to people and getting people on. It's a very different lift.
As I teach it, podcasts are great for relationship deepening. So people will find you on another platform, and then they go to your podcast, and they're like, wow, I'm all in on this person. I want to listen to them a ton.
So they really don't get discovered there, but you really solidify that relationship on the podcast. Blogging or Substack could absolutely be your top of funnel, but you are probably going to need to throw in some sort of threads in there. Or if you're on Substack, throw in some notes.
You need these shorter blips for people to find and latch onto and get exposed to. But if you're a writer and you be writing, then yeah, those may make the most sense as your top of funnel and not the traditional social media. I do pay for two Substacks.
One is a weekly AI roundup, and I just want to support this person because I was on the free tier for so long, and I was like, this guy is doing a lot of work, and let me just throw him some monies. Would I prefer it to be on his platform and not on Substack? Yes. And then one is Sharon, and I found her on Instagram first, and then I pay for that as well.
A large part of that is just a way to support that creator. Would I love for it to be somewhere else? Yes, but it's not. YouTube could be the top of funnel, the first content creation platform, but it's a heavy lift because of the tech and the editing.
But it is absolutely viable. Again, you pick what you want to be this top of funnel. The frequency for content creation is going to be dependent on the platform and obviously dependent upon you and what your capacity is.
But secondary to that, it will be the platform. So Instagram, how much can you be consistent with? Volume will always be your friend on Instagram. I will always say that.
Post more, post more, post more. YouTube per Jojo, my guy. If you want to learn, go to him, reach out to him.
He does sessions. He has a course coming. Jo, see what I did there? But as per Jo, when you go to launch on YouTube, you want to have like two to three episodes.
I talk about this for the podcast as well. You want to have two to three episodes, you put those out, let the algorithm do its thing, and then from there, you go into what he suggests a weekly cadence. Again, can you stick with that? It's only you know, but this is the suggestion.
Substack, I have no idea what the frequency would be, but I'm pretty sure, like I said earlier, that you probably should do some notes in there as well. And if it was me on Substack, I would shoot for weekly. That's the ones that I subscribe to is weekly.
And actually, Sharon, she posts something like every day. So you pick your primary platform, you go all in. When the habit is formed and content creation is second nature, then you layer on email, right? Because you don't own any of those platforms and you need a way to own communication and then contact with your people, right? I recommend just asking for an email address before creating a lead magnet and going through all of that.
You can just say something like, hey, you like this, let me make sure we stay connected. You want more of this deeper dive? Join the podcast. Join the podcast.
Join the email list. Join the newsletter and start with that. And then as a starting cadence, I recommend writing monthly.
I write weekly. I am a content monster. I have no shame saying that, but I would recommend starting off monthly because it's sustainable for people.
And then you can increase the cadence from there. Next, and by next, this could be years later for folks who are like, all right, I got my social media on lock. I got email on lock.
I'm ready to add something in. My recommendation would be a podcast, right? It is all audio, right? And this, we, again, we are looking to diversify how we reach and teach people. We went from social media in for most people, which is going to be audio visual, short form, then we went to email, longer form, and it's all written.
And now we're going to a longer form, or it could be short there, but it's still longer than Instagram, right? So medium to long form, audio only. If you want to learn how to start your own podcast, because you're like, yeah, I've been thinking about doing this, round four for my podcast program, press publish, we will start in the fall or the winter. I haven't decided yet.
Right now I'm focused on but we will put the link for the wait list in the show notes. Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, Jojo.
But for the podcast, my recommendation for frequency would be weekly, but again, do what you can do. I have clients who do bi-weekly and that is what allows them to stay consistent. So that's the best cadence.
Worth noting, I tell my folks audio only podcasting, unless one, you have the money to have someone else just edit it and edit those videos and upload by someone. Jo does this, right? If you want to have someone, you want to have the money to pay Jo to edit the videos, upload them, you know, do something with it, flip them up. That it's, it's not, it's not an easy task.
So pay your people. You can do video if you have that. And if you've got all of your imposter syndrome shit out of the way, because people are like, oh, I don't like how I look or like, I don't know if I'm saying the right things and it's going to take too long to make it.
It is exponentially easier to do an audio only podcast than it is video and audio or video podcast. I have both. This is a video podcast.
My prompting curiosity is audio only and that's strategic. And it has been a year. I tell folks to do a hundred episodes of audio only before they go to video, because that's about two years worth of content.
And by then you're like, all right, I got this. And like, I understand how to record. I can do it in one take.
Like I don't stumble over my words. I don't have to do a ton of editing, but it is a much bigger lift to do a video podcast. Like, and then what are you even doing with it afterwards? You put it on YouTube.
Okay. Um, but you actually may be better off actually just doing shorter videos that are on specific topics. And if you want to know more about that, ask Joe.
Okay. Ask Joe. So after you've gone through podcast, right? So first we said social media, then we go into newsletter, then we do a podcast after that.
That's when I would recommend layering in YouTube. Right? Again, my guy, Joe is the best for learning all things YouTube. Um, we'll put his information in the, in the show notes as well, but YouTube is a bigger lift.
It's a bigger list, the biggest list of all of them. Right. And in my opinion, if you have all the other things on lock, right, you're consistent.
You can talk to the camera because you did social media and you can write because you have an email list and you've got to actually connect with these people. You're not all up in your head because you've just been making content for so long. You know what your niche is or like at least a general direction.
It will make making long form video that much easier. Right? So there's a reason I suggest to go in that order. So I know that I am partial to this content creation approach as it relates to online business, because what I did, it's what I've coached literally hundreds upon hundreds.
It's into the thousands at this point, but it's like very, it sounds fake when you say like, I've worked with thousands of people and you're like, have you? So I just say hundreds upon hundreds. I work with a lot of people on this, right? And I know I'm partial because of that, right? But like I said earlier, if you want an online business, you need customers and clients, right? We are talking again about an online business where you make money from your audience, right? Directly from your audience, right? Not from the user platform paying you. And to that end, you have to build that audience.
You have to attract that audience. And the easiest way, my opinion or the way that I teach and suggest and attracting them organically would be social media, right? You can attract them organically. You can go and get them from paid route.
That is not my zoner's genius. I am 100% into and 100% zoner's genius knowledgeable about the organic approach, namely through Instagram as the super top of funnel approach, right? So if you're going to go organic, you need a way to get in front of these people. You need a way to build trust, and you need a way to eventually hawk your wares.
And to that end in the online space, content will always be queen. So go post some fucking shit. Okay.
All right. That's all I got for today. If you got comments, questions, additions, subtractions, any of those things, hit me up.
Send me a DM on the old Instagram and the movement. My show, you can send me a text 3107372345. We'd love to hear from you.
All right. As always, endlessly, endlessly, one more time. Endlessly appreciative for every single one of you.
Until next time, friends. Maestro out.
Watch this episode on YouTube!
Check out my other podcast, Prompting Curiosity
Get on the waitlist for Press Publish
MOTM #661: Should You Start a Substack?
Connect with my YouTube guy, Joe: @docjoeo
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