174. The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to a $10k/month Personal Brand ft. Modern Millie

16:37Camille Adrian:You're getting paid for your work and how much work you're doing. How long does it take to edit? How long does it take to film? Scripting the video, negotiating with the brand. So that's very active. A lot of creators and my students, they enjoy the more passive income streams and like digital products or selling a mini course. And any creator can create a digital product and it could be$27 and just sell it in your LinkedIn bio. And that is something that, yes, you put up the upfront work, but if you're continuing to create content around the topic of your ebook, it's a great passive income stream.

17:13Modern Millie:I think in theory, that sounds awesome. And I obviously it's like done very well for a lot of people. How does someone build an audience that is willing to go spend$27 on a product from them compared to the limitless amount of options of, you know, creators that they can buy stuff from?

17:35Camille Adrian:The best way I've found is creating generously. I know it might be controversial, but I don't really think you need to keep anything behind a paywall to be successful. And I've found even for me, in the beginning of my journey, I thought, okay, well, what do I teach that's free? And what do I teach that's paid? Whether you're teaching or not, it's like, what do you talk about in that's free? Or what do I talk about that's in my ebook? And for me, I just say, teach it all. Teach it all organically. And that builds so much trust. The no-like trust factor is so real when somebody knows you and they begin to like you and then they will trust you, then they'll buy from you.

18:23Camille Adrian:And I think the best way to build that trust is by continuously giving back to your community and giving to your audience for free and giving free value. because the reason they'll pay is for peace of mind or ease of use. So an analogy that I like to use is Thanksgiving recipes, right? There are plenty of free recipes on TikTok, on Pinterest, on Google, Chachapiti. You could literally find all the free recipes for building a Thanksgiving course, right? Let's say you are in charge of Thanksgiving this year and you have to do it all by yourself. You have to do it all. You got to do the green bean casserole.

19:00Camille Adrian:You got to do the turkey. You got to do the pecan pie. You got to do it all. Would you rather go find every single recipe individually and then organize it and print it out because it's free, find all the free ones, or would you rather pay 10 bucks for somebody who has already put a whole Thanksgiving meal of like, here's all the recipes that you need. This is the grocery shopping list. Here it's$19. I would rather pay$19 for somebody that already has it organized for me. Yeah, I could find it for free, but the peace of mind and being able to do that so effortlessly is something I would happily pay for.

19:37Camille Adrian:So that's kind of like an analogy that I usually use.

19:40Modern Millie:I want to stay on this analogy for a sec because cooking content, there is so much cooking content out there. So when it comes to personal brand, how can someone stand out in a quote unquote saturated market like the food industry, right? It's like there's so many chefs out there on TikTok, whether it's like at the highest level or you're just like a regular home cook. So how can someone think about creating content in a way that's going to allow them to stand out in a more saturated market?

20:08Camille Adrian:I love that we're on the food topic because the answer to this is perfect. The best way to stand out is by like finding your own recipe for content creation. I don't mean find your own recipe, like make new recipes. Yeah, you could totally bring new recipes to the table and try wild things like, oh, I put the In-N-Out burger inside of a Taco Bell taco. Let's see what it tastes like. Yeah, you could do like out of the box things. I'm talking about your recipe behind content creation. The best way to find what your unique advantage is, I found is from testing all the things. And so find creators that you love.

20:52Camille Adrian:It could be large millions of followers creators, or it could be smaller creators. Find those creators that you love and the content that they love. I want you to experiment with all the different ways that they're creating content too. This is going to kind of broaden your horizons on all the different video types. So if somebody is filming like Teenie, I don't know if you guys know who Teenie is. She's food creator, TikTok. She was on MasterChef. Love her. Wait, no, it was ProLevelChef. She's on ProLevelChef with Gordon Ramsay. And anywho, she has super casual vibes. Her phone is just set up in one spot and she's talking to the camera.

21:29Camille Adrian:So you could try that. And then find another creator. If they're doing all these cool angles and fast paced edits, not talking to the camera, try that. I want you to try all the different ways to deliver food content possible. and when you're trying all these recipes, you'll start to figure out, oh, I really like a little bit of this from this person. I really liked a little bit of this from this person. I really liked leaving in this blooper. I left in this blooper and people kept commenting on it. And so I really want to make a little bit more relatable stuff. So you have to kind of test all the different recipes out there to figure out your unique way to bring things to the table.

22:04Camille Adrian:And that's like the best way to, you're not going to know upfront, like this is how I'm going to go viral and this is how I'm going to be unique in my space and stand out. No, you have to try all the things and then your unique recipe will make you stand out in your space.

22:18Modern Millie:Do you think someone needs to think about the audience? Meaning like, are you paying attention to metrics a ton to figure out what you should lean into more? Or I've heard you talk or I've heard you mentioned a few times, you're like, if you like this, stick with this. If you like that, stick with that. And so like, how much do you think someone should be thinking about how much they enjoy making the content themselves versus how it's performing from an audience perspective?

22:43Camille Adrian:You can do both. So you can focus on both. And I also will say, I think it depends on what your goal is as a creator at that time. And your goal can change. Like you could have a goal this month and then a different goal next month. And maybe your goal this month is just figuring out, okay, well, what's my unique angle? What kind of videos should I be making? So maybe you don't focus on analytics because you just need to figure out how to create good content. And then maybe you have a new goal of, well, I want to grow. I want to do a 30 day challenge. I want to grow. Okay. Well now's your time.

23:15Camille Adrian:Look at analytics, look at analytics because that's going to tell you what's working and what isn't. And I I'm an analytics gal. I love looking at analytics. I look at them daily for my YouTube channel, just because that part is so fun for me. And I think getting comfortable with analytics will improve your content no matter what. and they'll guide you in so many different directions, whether that's telling you what sort of topics to create content on, or even the view duration of a video, was your hook strong enough? Did you have a good hook, but then you lost them halfway? So analytics will always help, but when it comes to like, should you be looking at them or not?

23:55Camille Adrian:Just figure out what your goal is right now and kind of let that decide for you.

24:01Modern Millie:What are the most important metrics per platform? I think with YouTube, and I'll say, oh, every analytic is important.

24:11Camille Adrian:But to be spicy, I'll just try to pick one analytic per platform, and then people will go crazy disagreeing with me. For YouTube, I would say click-through rate is the one you want to focus on because the packaging of your videos are so, so, so important. You could have the best edit on YouTube ever, but if no one's clicking to watch your video, you wasted all your time. You need to know your packaging. And by packaging, I mean your title and thumbnail and how they're working together to get clicks onto your video. I'll drop one common mistake that I see people make with packaging, especially beginner creators, is repeating the same text in both title thumbnail.

24:56Camille Adrian:That is like wasting real estate. If your title is, this is how to grow on Instagram in 2025. Let's say I made a YouTube video. The title is, this is how to grow on Instagram in 2025. The thumbnail, I am not going to say grow on Instagram because it is just repeating the same thing. And so I like to think of the thumbnail as the scroll stopper. What's going to stop someone's attention and stop their scroll, get their attention, get them to click. So that's the thumbnail. Maybe the thumbnail instead, I would say zero to 100 ,000 followers. That's really cool. That's interesting. That might get somebody to stop scrolling.

25:32Camille Adrian:And then the title will then communicate what the video is about. So that's kind of how I see that relationship working out. Somebody sees the big thumbnail, they're like zero to 100 ,000 followers. Whoa, oh my gosh, let me read the title. What's this about? How to grow on Instagram? Oh my gosh, yes, this is perfect, right? So that's kind of how I see the logic working there. with Instagram. Adam Mosseri has talked about which metrics are the most important. Adam Mosseri is the head of Instagram for people who don't already know. And I feel like he just posted a video last week talking about which metric is important.

26:06Camille Adrian:And I feel like it keeps changing every single time. Every single time he answers it. I think right now it was the view duration. It wasn't likes. It wasn't comments. It was either the like retention, how long people are watching your video for, or it was shares. I don't think it was shares. I really do think.

26:27Modern Millie:I think it was AVD for sure.

26:30Camille Adrian:Yeah. So I think it was shares because that's what people were saying. Oh, you need to do shares and saves. Focus on that. But I think recently it was the view duration of a reel specifically. Reels are great for getting new eyes to your account. So if that's your goal growth then focus on reels and then secondary analytic is the average view duration

26:52Modern Millie:how long are people watching the video for are you using trial reels at all to help grow your brand

26:57Camille Adrian:i am using trial reels is it growing my brand no i feel the same way i feel like one of i posted

27:05Modern Millie:one and a guy had like three views i'm like what are we trialing here we just i know i keep seeing people be like oh this is blowing up my account i'm like you guys are full of shit i posted trial real got 17 million views and i gained 30 000 followers in a month i'm like dude i posted trial real it got 50 right so what am i doing wrong i don't understand it doesn't make any sense to me they don't i i mean i don't know i don't think i think it's like a bunch of bs honestly the trial real thing specifically the packaging on youtube the tip that you brought up is great and it was a hard lesson that me and brayden had to learn early on with the podcast we had the mindset of man if we just make a great show like people are gonna find it and it's gonna grow and there was some validation in that because word of mouth you know guerrilla marketing like there were people talking about our show that were finding us but man were we playing youtube on hard mode it's like we just crank the difficulty up crank the difficulty up let's let's see how hard we can make this on ourselves but it's so true and you know i've heard colin and samir talk about this a lot.

28:11Modern Millie:You hear a lot of the top creators who have a real strategy when it comes to YouTube specifically talking about the packaging and how important it is thinking about title and thumbnail first. It also, I think, allows you to have clarity on being able to create a lot of different videos, because if you can think about like a hundred, like 50 to a hundred different titles and thumbnail ideas, it allows you to be like, okay, I know exactly what the roadmap kind of looks like over the next six to 12 months, because I've, I've done the homework of like, let me, let me brainstorm a ton of ideas and come at it from a more strategic perspective, as opposed to like, what am I making this week?

28:54Camille Adrian:Yeah, no, I agree. And I always get hesitant saying, oh, this is the most important thing. This is the most important thing, because I know some people, they'll just take that to heart and then they'll be so stuck like, well, I can't make a video because I don't have the perfect title thumbnail. So I always get nervous when I say that, but it's true that packaging is so, so important and can really just change the trajectory of a video and a channel. I had a student who she already had videos uploaded and they were great videos, but the packaging was just not done well. And all she did was change packaging of videos that she had already posted, updating thumbnails, updating titles.

29:36Camille Adrian:And immediately her channel started growing and then she got monetized within three months just from changing packaging. So it is really important. And for me, I'd say 50, 50 % of the time, sometimes my ideas are led via audience feedback or a new update in the industry. But the other 50 % of the time, I won't move forward with an idea unless I already know the title thumbnail combo before I even start scripting and filming.

30:03Modern Millie:What are like top two biggest mistakes you feel like you made as a creator, maybe when monetizing your brand or as you were growing, maybe it was picking a platform that if you reflect back on, you could help someone save a lot of time and a lot of energy on?

30:18Camille Adrian:One of the biggest mistakes that I made was creating unnecessary friction when there didn't need to be. For example, I had put in my two weeks at my corporate job. I left and I was like, I'm going to do this creator thing, become a full-time creator and work for myself. Woo, so exciting. And those first three months I focused on creating a website and building my website because I wanted to be an educator. So I was like, well, I have to have a website. Okay. Three months later, I had zero income and I had to go back to getting a job because I was creating unnecessary friction. For some reason, I believed I had to have XYZ before creating content when it was just, it was unnecessary friction.

31:07So I say, create the

31:09Camille Adrian:least amount of friction as possible so that you could start moving the needle forward with content creation. And I see it a lot of times it being, the problem is being like, I have to have a website or I have to have a blog, especially people who want to do podcasts. They're like, well, I have to have show notes and I have to have my blog ready, you know, and that you don't have to have all that set up. I say, just take messy action. Done is better than perfect in the beginning. Just start creating. And so that was one of the biggest mistakes I made in the beginning.

31:39Modern Millie:I'll tell you what, we don't got a blog. We don't got show notes. There you go. We just write up questions and bada bing bada boom. So if you're wondering if somebody's listening to this and they're interested in creating a podcast, I love the advice of messy action because we were very messy. Like we had no fucking idea. We just had an idea for what we thought the show could be. It's also changed a lot over the years. What we once started, like how the show started versus where it's at now, completely different. And we just took messy action. We were like, I think we have some good advice that we can share.

32:14Modern Millie:And it sounds like a fun thing to do. So let's do it. But we still think about we're four year. I believe we just crossed. We're about to get to four years damn near every weekend doing the show. And when we think about, OK, what is three to five years? Like you said, look out into the future. We're scratching the surface of like five to maybe 10 percent of if this was to be done at like 100 percent execution. we're probably scratching the surface at five to 10, but we're still seeing results and it doesn't need to be perfect right off the rip. And I just want to kudos to you on that. What was the, when you were going back into the job force and you quit your job, you're a full-time creator, talk us through those conversations that you were having internally with having to go back into work.

33:06Modern Millie:Because I think a lot of creators or maybe people that are at a nine to five right now and they're doing it, they're thinking that it's just going to be like this perfect match made in heaven when they quit their job. Like I'm for sure going to be able to do this. And you talk about lasting 90 days. What was going on then? And what advice do you have to someone who might be in a similar situation? Now that you look back, you're doing it full time now.

33:27Camille Adrian:Yeah, there weren't many conversations happening other than between me and my husband, fiance at that time. And it was all positive. It was always like, okay, well, you, you went all in 90 days. That doesn't mean you have to stop going back to work. Doesn't mean you're giving up on anything. If anything, you're being smart about it. You know, you're like, oh, I noticed I'm not making money. Maybe I should be making money, you know? And there's, there's nothing wrong with having a job while being a content creator. There's nothing wrong with, okay, you left your job to be a content creator and then you're not making the income you thought, okay, let's go back, get a job again.

34:07Camille Adrian:Like there's nothing wrong with that. Everybody's journey is going to look completely different. And I just want, if anybody is in that situation, you going back to any sort of job is not failing. It's not you giving up. It's not, okay, well my dream is over. It's not the end of anything. It's just part of your journey. It's a transition phase and you can still turn this into a full-time income, I was able to I was able to do that within that next year of going back to work.

34:42Modern Millie:So I also think having a part time job or full time job while creating content might actually be the smartest thing for certain creators, because all of a sudden, once your full time income is reliant on your content creation journey and your personal brand, there becomes a much added pressure that comes with that. And if you talk about, you know, the world of brand deals, a creator might start taking certain brand deals that gets thrown at them because it's a good amount of money. And they're like, I need to pay my bills this month. And I'm only able to do it if I take on this brand deal. And then they might start compromising their personal brand.

35:21Modern Millie:And so I really like that idea of like, if you're a creator, like there's no shame in balancing a full time job or a part time job because it might actually lead to you making better content because you're not reliant on the content to generate you the income.

35:36Camille Adrian:I agree. Also, I think some people thrive off of schedules. And I've noticed for some people having a part time job or full time, they're able to balance their content creator workload as well because they're like, OK, cool. This is my time for this. This is my time for this. And so having some sort of structure has helped with that organization of their lifestyle.

35:57Modern Millie:So what changed the second time you decided to quit your job that allowed you to actually make it work? If someone is creating content, they're starting to build a personal brand and they're like, I want to make the leap. I want to quit my job. What do they need to maybe have set up? And what changed for you that second time around that allowed it to stick and actually work?

36:18Camille Adrian:Yes. The second time I didn't build a website, that wasn't like my first goal. I decided, well, I know this is so, but for me, I didn't think about it. If you wanted to make income and replace your income, then focus on the income related tasks. For me, I was focusing on a website. That's not going to bring in money right now. Yes, down the line after the website's built, maybe I could put digital products up there and that's where people could book coaching calls, but you don't need a website to do that. So ask yourself, what do I need to do right now? Again, that messy action, what could be done and getting done better than perfect.

37:02Camille Adrian:And for me, I just started creating content. I knew I wanted to do coaching and work with students and help other people grow their socials. And so I said, screw the website. Let me just start creating content, teaching what I know. And it automatically started to attract my ideal audience. I created my own coaching group. And I think another thing that helped me was investing into a course that helped me get a little bit more organized with my business and my strategy. So I invested in a course called Course from Scratch taught by Danielle Leslie. This was in 2020 or 2019. And, um, that's when I started to build out my coaching group and my first version of a course, it wasn't this master course.

37:51Camille Adrian:It was the MVP. So minimum viable product of my course, the done is better than perfect type of course. And I think investing into something made me put in some real work. And I'm not saying if you don't have the money go broke. But I did use like a credit card because I didn't have the money. And I was like, I'm just going to put this on a credit card. And every time I've invested in myself and my dreams, I've noticed my business significantly grow. That has been a common theme across my entire journey is every time I've reached this next level of success, it's because I invested in something to help me get there.

38:30Camille Adrian:Not saying people have to do that, but those were the two changes was less friction and then investing into myself.

38:37Modern Millie:Is there a specific platform that you recommend people start out on if they're trying to get into this space? Like, do you recommend they start with short form or do you recommend just starting right off the bat with YouTube? Like if they already have a decent skill set and they're not like just from zero, what do you think is the best one to start on?

38:56Camille Adrian:I love this question. You know, the audio that's like, oh my gosh, I love this question. That's me right now. Freaking out. Okay. Because it's going, the answer is going to be different depending on the person. I hate that answer. It depends. But let me talk about the different people to help hopefully give clarity. First thing is, where are you naturally? Where do you enjoy consuming content? What app do you gravitate towards naturally? Some people, they naturally gravitate towards Instagram. If that's where you love being, be on Instagram. So ask yourself, which platform do you love? I loved YouTube and I still love YouTube.

39:31Camille Adrian:And so that is where I wanted to focus on. I consume long form content. I love consuming, playing YouTube videos while I get ready in the morning. I love listening or watching video podcasts. That is where I love. So that is why I focused on YouTube. So ask yourself, what do you love to do? Same thing. Do you like long form or do you like short form? If you don't like long form, maybe don't be on YouTube. I don't know. Focus on short form. Now, when it comes to short form, if somebody is like, yes, I love short form, but which one Instagram shorts, Tik TOK right now, I see a lot of creators for I'll shorten this answer.

40:04Camille Adrian:A lot of creators see success on shorts when they are leading shorts to a long form video. So if you do want to do long form shorts are a great way to get people to that long form. Yes. There's a lot of great viral shorts creators, but when's the last time you heard of like an influencer go viral and you're like, oh yeah, they're a YouTube shorts creator. You know, like you haven't heard of that. So shorts, I would say is more so if you long-term goal is long form. Now, Instagram versus TikTok, which one do you want to do? Instagram, I think is great for people who do want to niche down. If you love the tip of people saying niche down, you know your lane and you're like, yeah, I really want to hone in on, let's say it's a topic.

40:47Camille Adrian:We could have a whole other conversation about what niching down is, but let's say it's the traditional sense of like, oh, I need to focus on fitness or food. And you're just picking one topic, quote unquote, one topic. Instagram is great. Why? Because that is how their algorithm is built. They created account-based embeddings to help categorize your account. So basically what account-based embeddings are is their algorithm will study your account as a whole and assign it one topic. So if you are creating content in one topic and they could easily see your account and say, oh, they're creating food content.

41:23Camille Adrian:Then they know who to push your content to. So that is why Instagram works so well with niching down. If you're somebody who does not want to niche down and you want to be a lifestyle content creator, TikTok is going to be a better bet for you because they do not have account-based embeddings. They do not topically categorize your account. Each unique video has its own chance. So you could really theme down a video and be like, Like, oh, I'm going to do fitness in this video. And the next video, you could talk about your plant, the Monstera that you have in your house and how you're taking care of it.

41:56Camille Adrian:You know, like you can talk about literally anything on TikTok. Of course, you want to have strategy. I'm not saying do whatever the heck you want and don't have strategy. There's some strategy there. But you have more flexibility because each video is weighed against the algorithm on its own.

42:11Modern Millie:I've never heard about the account embedding. And I think that's really interesting. So thank you for sharing that. I would love to get into the strategy because a lot of people, I would bet, are like, I'm posting on content, but it's not working. It's not landing. I've been posting a ton. And most of the time they're like kind of capping with how much they've actually, how much effort they've actually put in. But also they're just kind of posting willy nilly, no strategy. So for someone looking to actually have strategy when it comes to social media, how can they think about that from a strategic standpoint, as opposed to just posting a bunch of content and seeing what works and like hoping for the best?

42:58Camille Adrian:Yes. I feel like there's three strategies that have worked really well from what I've taught. There's a bajillion. I'm not saying mine are the best way and the only way to grow. That's not what I'm saying, but this is just from what I've seen the past few years of teaching and being in the world. Niching down is a strategy. People roll their eyes, including myself. Nobody loves to hear that, but it works. The reason people say it all the time is because it works. So niching down, what is that? Niche is a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. I don't think fitness is just a niche.

43:36Camille Adrian:It's more so like, well, I really want to help busy moms who are just getting started on their fitness journeys, be able to work out and get stronger from home. That is a niche. You could create anything that falls in line with that mission, with that passion that talks about what you do, who you do it for, and the value that you serve. So that's kind of like the traditional niche we hear and talk about. You could apply that on any platform, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, you will see success. If you're going down that rabbit hole, having content pillars of subtopics. So let's say that was my niche, helping busy moms, blah, blah, blah, blah.

44:17Camille Adrian:Then I could pick a content pillar of like, okay, what are some at home workouts they could do? I could even do like at home leg workouts, at home upper body workouts, or I could even do how to manage your time and get organized if you're a work from home mom. So like, what are those different topics? Plug those topics in into the search engine of your platform and it'll tell you what to create content on. What do I mean by that? If you're creating content on TikTok, plug in fitness for women in the search bar and see what is suggested under that because that is what the platform is telling you people are currently looking for.

44:52Camille Adrian:So those are your video ideas. If you want to have strategy, follow those search engine recommendations. This is fancy word SEO. Yay, you just learned SEO, search engine optimization. You're utilizing search engines to have a strategy. Another strategy that you can implement is the audience-based approach. This is when instead of having a niche, you could focus on who you want to create for. Ali Abdaal on YouTube, I love using him as an example because when he started, all he wanted to do was help college students. And it didn't matter the topic he was focusing on. He was like, okay, this is how I study for this.

45:29Camille Adrian:And this is how I organize this. Oh, this is how you could do this. So it was just any video you wanted to for college students. I'll randomly bring that plant analogy back in. Okay. Let's say you're doing YouTube. You have, Oh, these are the plants that I have in my dorm. It's for college students. Okay. This is, these are the outfits that I'm wearing going back to school. It's for college students. Again, it's different topics, but you're still creating for one audience in mind. That's the audience approach. That works well on YouTube and TikTok, not necessarily Instagram. Instagram is really the only place where you got kind of got a niche down.

46:04Camille Adrian:And then finally, the third strategy is identity. This is where a lot of lifestyle creators thrive because they don't want to feel trapped in a box. They want to be able to create anything and everything. Identity approach is figuring out, this is the hardest one, how to, what the overlying theme is with all of your videos. What is like that theme? What is part of you that you bring to the table that you could theme all your videos around? Is it a unique trait that you have? Is it where you live? What sort of things are you known for? So you could be like, you could always focus back on, oh, San Diego as a San Diego mom or being raised in San Diego.

46:45Camille Adrian:These are my favorite foods in San Diego. So you could focus on location. You could focus on, I know one of my students, she is curly hair. So that's like, she kind of ties everything back to having curly hair, even in like her day in the life of vlogs. She just talks about in that video, like, oh, the struggle of having her curly hair. And she's like, oh, shoot. Frickin brush got stuck in my hair again. You know, like what are those unique things that you could try to layer a lot of your videos together? I, a lot of students have struggled with this, but once we find what that theme is, there's a lot of that friction goes away and there's a lot of like snowball growth after that.

47:19Camille Adrian:So those are kind of the different strategies somebody could try depending on what feels true to them.

47:24Modern Millie:If you were back at zero tomorrow and we had 30 days or 45 days to try to get your account back into a stable state, what would be the steps that you would take? Like take me through everything that you would think about. Would you sit down and have a whiteboard session for like this is the group I'm trying to target with my content? I want to know the nitty gritty of what you would do.

47:45Camille Adrian:Yeah, I think the first, let's say, four to six days, I wouldn't even post. I would just focus on what my plan was. So like day one is figuring out what do I want to be known for? What kind of content do I want to be creating? And then doing market research of what is already working well right now. wow so I'm gonna not say I'm gonna be a Instagram teacher or a social media coach because I feel like that could be a cop-out for me of like well I already know what to do so this is what I would do so let's pretend Millie not an educator right now she is starting a new coffee account okay we're doing a new coffee I'm gonna be a coffee content creator and I'm gonna pick one platform in the beginning I'm just gonna focus on one for me let's say it's TikTok I'm gonna just look up all the coffee creators right now, figure out what the heck is working well.

48:38Camille Adrian:And when I find videos that I resonate with, I'm going to save them into a collection on TikTok and organize the collections into different topics or different themes or video styles. So what, when you're looking at other creators, you go to the search, let's say coffee at home. I type that search in, I could look up the search engine recommendations that I write that down. Okay. Coffee at home recipe coffee at home nespresso so write down all the things i resonate with boom there's a bunch of ideas or press search change to the search filter so that you're only looking at recent videos from the last 30 days that's going to tell you what's currently working and then as you're scrolling few things to do as you save to collections you're going to be like okay i'm going to do coffee recipes cool i'm going to have whole video on coffee recipes save the coffee recipes that are working well.

49:30Camille Adrian:Oh, I noticed there's like coffee vlogs. Okay. I'm going to save a coffee flop blog collection. So that way you're kind of getting an idea of all the different types of videos. Another thing I'm going to be looking for as I'm scrolling is the viral ratio. So I could look to see what videos are performing well. And I think once somebody sees, Oh, this video has millions of views or hundreds of thousands of views, they're like, wow, I'm going to recreate that video because it performed really well. But pause, you first need to see, go to that creator's account. How many followers do they have? If that creator has 2 million followers and they had like 100 ,000 likes, well, that makes sense that they got some good traction there.

50:17Camille Adrian:I maybe wouldn't try to replicate that video strategy because the video probably did well because they already have a large audience. So instead I'm trying to find creators who have a lower following, but a high view count like count. So let's say they had 20 ,000 followers, but the video had 200 ,000 views. That's a ratio where I'm like, okay, there's a recipe here that worked for them to help them go viral. I want to lock in on this video. And so those are the videos that I'm actually saving to the collections. Now, once I have all of my collections, again, this is like day two, you know, I'm not even, I haven't even filmed anything.

50:54Camille Adrian:We haven't posted. But day two, now I'm going to kind of map out, okay, what are those first videos that I'm going to film? And maybe I pick three or four videos and I, on all my different collections, I'm going to study the hook of each collection. So what first three seconds of a video do I want to test out? Am I going to like slide this using my fricking large water bottle? Am I going to slide the coffee cup to the camera and say like, here's a recipe for blah, blah, blah. So I'm looking at all the other creators. What sort of hooks did they use? There's three different types of hook, a text hook, a visual hook, and an audible hook, what's said or what's heard.

51:35Camille Adrian:And so I'm studying all three of those things and asking myself, what do I want to do? I'm writing down all of my ideas, ideally in some sort of notes app or content calendar, because all ideas will be coming to you at this point and you want to just get them all out of your head. And then maybe by day three or four, that's when I'll start to film a few things that I've noticed and want to test. I'm just going to maybe film a handful of videos, maybe five, and post them over the next few days to see what's working. And so there's the strategy aspect. Over the next 30 days, ideally, if you want to go hard, you could have one good strategy video that you post every day for 30 days.

52:15Camille Adrian:And then on top of that, you could have more inspiration videos that you post willy nilly. So every day for 30 days, I have a strategy video where I, I did my SEO research, right? Practicing a hook, you know, I'm doing all these things on top of that, as the day's going, if I walked up to my computer and I was like, Oh, I already drank my latte. I'm going to quickly film a little thought video where I'm like, here, let me face it this way. Cause my baby's face is on the screen and I'm not showing his face. Um, so maybe I just do a little thought where I'm like, don't you just hate it when you finally get to sit down to your computer and you already drank your coffee?

52:48Camille Adrian:What do I do? Do I have to go make another coffee or am I just going to have to not drink anything for the rest of the day? Like just record a little thought and post it. So you're doing half analytical strategic and then half organic fun in the moment stuff. And I think that recipe will give you a good balance for you'll start getting videos where you could study analytics and the organic authentic feel that the audience will get to connect with you and want to follow. So I know that was kind of a lot.

53:14Modern Millie:I love that. I want to ask you something that I've seen people talk about. I'm really curious to hear your take on it. People that are educators and they give out a bunch of great information. I've noticed that some people will be like, you know, they put out their offer, whatever it is. Maybe it's a$25 ebook. Maybe it's a$500 thing, whatever. And people will have like no, no one will raise their hand to purchase said thing. And I'm curious as to why that is. if you are giving away everything like what is it that does make someone want to convert and purchase your product or what makes something someone not like you know like i've seen both sides of it somebody like oh you know if you share everything is someone going to end up purchasing your product i think i feel like we have shared everything and if we have put something out people have purchased it from us and it's not like i don't think it's a hard sell because there is this built up trust with us and you have an idea of like, OK, well, I got a lot of I got a lot of great information about this.

54:14Modern Millie:I am trusting that whatever I pay for is going to have a good return for my investment. Like, what is it that makes some people like not sell a product or some people sell a product? I'm just curious because you are an educator.

54:27Camille Adrian:Yeah, I think the biggest thing, if I had to pick one, my question would be to that person was, did your audience ask for this? did they want it? And I think that's the biggest thing that it comes down to because I've seen the same thing where I would launch something that I was so excited about and then barely get any sales and I'm like, what the heck? Why did this flop? It was because nobody asked for it. Nobody wanted, nobody cared for it. And I think the biggest example I could pull is I had a course that was an email list course and how to start and grow your email list. And a lot of new creators don't care about an email list.

55:08Camille Adrian:And I knew that, but I'm like, well, they should care. They should care. I can't force them to care about something that they don't know or understand is important. So I have to focus on, well, what do they want right now? What result can I get them right now? I can help them grow in 30 days. Okay, great. If I could get you to grow in 30 days, I literally had a student where I'm like, okay, if I could get you to 10 ,000 followers in the next three months. Was that okay? Yeah, for sure. I'm like, okay, I will do that for you if you start your email list right now. So like we had that little exchange.

55:42Camille Adrian:And so I think people, when I get them those results of like, oh, wow, my account actually grew. Now I'm going to listen to you and what you're saying. So when you're launching a product though, I think audience feedback is the most important thing. The most success that I've had with products that I launch is not only ones that I know my audience needs, but ones that I've built with my audience. The first course I ever created, I created on Instagram stories asking people, oh, should I have this or should I not have this? Okay, you've taken an Instagram course before. What did you like about it?

56:16Camille Adrian:What did you feel like it was missing? Oh, you didn't feel like it did like an algorithm deep dive? Cool, let me do that. And so like really working with my audience to build something that they almost feel like they built with me. those are the products that I've launched with the most success.

56:29Modern Millie:There's so much that you've touched on that I want to talk about. One. Figuring out the virality versus how many followers someone has. I've never thought about that, but that's fucking genius. Like if they got two million followers, hopefully it's getting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views. So like looking for that outlier, I think is a great, a great piece of advice. Second, are you guilty? Because I have this. I have saved. So I have a bunch of different collections on TikTok and I have saved a ton of videos. and my toxic trait is I'm gonna go through all of these one day and I got all the travel locations that I'm going to travel to one day I got all the recipe all the recipes that I'm going to try out one day I'm curious to see do you have a bunch of safe stuff like you just had a kid right do you have a bunch of like saved mom tiktoks you're like I'm going to go through this at some point

57:21Camille Adrian:oh yeah I mean if you don't and you magically are somebody who's like yeah I actually go through my collections every night before bed like i would be impressed with you i there's we'd have to throw

57:33Modern Millie:them on a watch never yeah they're doing that something's off something's off something's a little off um and then the the other thing that i want to ask you about is strategy for launching a product i was a touring concert photographer for i'd say two two and a half years and i was like man i've kept a google doc of everything that i've learned from going from never starting a never having shot a concert to now being really dialed. Like I know exactly what it is and people are following me because they enjoy the content that I'm posting around, um, concerts. And then I spent all this time making a course and then I go to sell it and I didn't like tell anyone I was launching.

58:14Modern Millie:I was just like, yo, made this course, drop it. I was expecting to make a ton of money because I'm like, yo, everybody knows me as a concert guy. They say they like my photos. People of course want to learn about how to take better concert photos. And I barely sold any. and it's because I didn't have a strategy when it came to like launching it and I also just like made it without asking my audience or thinking about my audience if it's actually something they would want so I say all that to say when someone thinks about launching a product whether it is you know a lower tier like entry level product or a high ticket course what strategy do you recommend they take or what strategy have you seen work for yourself or other creators that you teach to have the best success on the day of the launch of the actual product?

59:00Camille Adrian:I think warming up your audience to the idea that you're launching something is really helpful. So yes, talking to them and making sure it's something they want, you know, you got to do that product market research and the confirmation can confirm your idea before it's created. You got to really confirm, okay, this is the right idea to invest my time creating, asking your audience, is this even something you want? If, and maybe it's not like, is this something you want? Check yes or no. Maybe that's not it, but maybe you throw three different options to them. You're like, man, I have this idea for a course.

59:36Camille Adrian:I have this idea for a digital product and I have this for like an ebook. So throw all three at them and be like, Hey, these are three things that I've been kind of playing around with. You could even just be like, some people have asked about it, you know, drop that in there. People, people are talking

59:50Modern Millie:about it let me tell you i'm getting thousands of dms every day it's like you going on the q and a yourself you're like when are you coming out somebody asked about this course i'm dropping thank god we have tons of people who are really showing interest here that's funny yeah so if you

1:00:07Camille Adrian:want you could drop that and just be like yeah some people have asked me about these things i've been thinking about doing this this or this which one do you want to do or even instead of having the idea. You don't have to have the idea yet. Maybe you ask them what their goals are. What's something that you think I could help you with? How could I help you? And asking them kind of getting direction on what to create when you have the direction on what to create and you are creating it, interacting with your audience while you create it, and even giving them like a launch day to look forward to.

1:00:37Camille Adrian:I think people, they get nervous to launch because it's like selling and nobody, not nobody, that's very drastic and dramatic, but I'm going to say it. Nobody wants to sell because it's like, oh, I don't want to sound too salesy. But if you're warming up your audience, you're not selling to them. You're following up on what you said you would do and you're delivering exactly what they're expecting and what they're wanting because you've asked them, they want this. You're not cold sell. Hey, buy my thing. It's like, Hey, we've been working together. This is something you've wanted. Boom. On this day, I'm going to open doors and I'm going to get this over to you because this is something we've been building together.

1:01:21Camille Adrian:And that feel, that doesn't feel like a sell because they've been there through the whole process. So having a day and then warming up cold audiences to that offer too. So let's say you're launching on January 1st, just to be simple. January 1st is when you're launching. I would say for all of December, you're creating content, organic content around that topic and building conversation around that topic already so that by the time January comes, cold audiences or even people who aren't maybe interacting with giving feedback, they're kind of just ghost followers right now spying on you and stalking you a little bit.

1:01:56Camille Adrian:those people, they're getting warmed up to the idea of like, oh, this person's really knowledgeable on this topic. Maybe when they do launch it, I would buy. So you're really just building that warmth there. If you have a bigger product you're launching, I typically do like a six week lead up minimum of where I have all of my socials planned around warming up my audience for six weeks. That's like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, email list, all the things. So that's for a larger launch but if it's a digital product you could probably just do two weeks of just create content around that topic and then launch it let people know you're going to launch it boom i mean yeah

1:02:36Modern Millie:you can either you can sell your own stuff or you could sell someone else's stuff really i also think you know what i mean i also think you're doing your audience actually a disservice if you don't sell the knowledge to help them achieve results that they want faster because either they're going to pay for it with their time or and it's going to take them a lot longer or like you said you invested in a course it's like or they can pay with it with their money and if you're actually and i you can actually provide them value i think where like selling courses and um or digital products all that stuff yeah where i think where it gets a bad rap is because there's some bad actors out there.

1:03:18And I think that people are selling bullshit and it gets a bad rap because

1:03:24Modern Millie:there's bad coaches and bad coaching. I think there's bad actors in any industry, but I think that you can feel scummy a little bit or there's a certain connotation around like selling information. I just think it's it's it's gotten a bad rap, I think, because it feels like everybody's kind of selling something. But if you're someone who you're like, I truly know that I can generate results for my audience. Like I think you're actually doing a disservice by not selling something because you're genuinely helping people.

1:03:54Camille Adrian:I love that. Yeah, I agree completely.

1:03:56Modern Millie:Right now. I mean, you just had a baby. Life has changed a lot. Are you now creating everything on one day? Do you have a new process now that you have a child and you're balancing being a CEO and being a mom and being a good spouse? Like what is this new life now look like going forward?

1:04:14Camille Adrian:I love this. Two things. One thing that surprised me was I feel more passionate about my business now than I did before. I was really scared that I would lose this. I love what I do. I love YouTube. I love teaching. and I feel like a lot of people in like podcast interviews I would hear or in conversations of scrolling on TikTok a lot of people would say well you really have to sacrifice a lot you have to give up you might have to put your dreams on hold and I've always been a very big dreamer and for me the idea of putting my dreams on hold terrified the crap out of me because I'm like I love this I don't want to put this on hold but like I will I will I'm willing to do that and so I was willing to kind of see what happened with my business and see if I would have to give everything up because that's what I thought I would have to do.

1:05:10Camille Adrian:But if anything, I feel more excited and more passionate about what I'm doing. I'm stoked to scale my business to that next level. I feel like taking maternity leave, I got so much more clarity on the different levels that I can go as a creator and a CEO and how I could help more people. Because now that I am a mom, I relate with a lot of my students who are also parents and they're a lot of their why is like I want to be a creator because I want to have financial stability and be able to send my kids to sports and be able to pay for those extracurricular activities and so I get it and so now I'm even more driven to help more people because if anybody could have this balance that I have and I could help them achieve that that's what I want for them and that's what I want to do so that's the first thing that surprised me was I I'm more excited than ever before.

1:06:01Camille Adrian:And then the second thing of like, how the heck do I actually balance all the things? I think having my partner and my husband is really, really helpful because we have built this business together. So we get to kind of tag team on who is parent at that time, you know? So in the mornings from anytime baby Jay wakes up to 10 AM, I'm, I'm on mom duty, right? I got it. Don't worry, babe, go work out, go to the range, go get some work done, do whatever you want. And then from 10 to two, we swap and John will step in. He'll be dad mode. He'll zoom around with baby or stay here, whatever. And so 10 to two, that's when I'm content creator mode.

1:06:48Camille Adrian:And I feel like because I have a baby, I'm more efficient during those four hours. I'm like limited. I'm like, I have to, I have to get the most important things done. So I feel like I'm more efficient because I have to be. And then we swap back from two to, like, depends on the day, like two to five or two to six, then I'll jump in. And then John will do bath time, bedtime, all the things so that I could go work out or I could have phone time, screen time, like blah, potato time, you know? So having that balance is really helpful and building the business that we did build is what helps us be able to do that.

1:07:25Camille Adrian:So I, understand I'm not a lot of people have that opportunity and the position and I am very grateful to have this lifestyle that we have, but that's what I'm doing for balancing business.

1:07:38Modern Millie:What is maternity leave look like as a content creator? Because a lot of people think that if they leave, their audience is going to forget about them and they become quote unquote irrelevant. So what did maternity leave look like for you as a new mom? Balancing content creation.

1:07:58Camille Adrian:Yeah, that was crazy. I took three and a half months off, but I don't know why I did this. I prepped over 100 videos before I left so that my team could post for me while I was gone. Wow.

1:08:16Modern Millie:Wow.

1:08:16Camille Adrian:So I was also secretly pregnant because I didn't tell anybody. I didn't post about it on social media. You could scroll all the way back. I wasn't showing my belly. I wasn't saying I was pregnant. And so like my third trimester, January through March, that was me just busting through as many videos as I could and creating as much as I could. I had a very positive pregnancy experience. So some people might not be able to do as much batching as I did. And so I did batch a lot of content and I created systems with my teams and approved. I approved content. So I'm in January filming for July pretty much.

1:08:57And I'm my team's writing captions.

1:08:59Camille Adrian:They're editing. We're all in like this batch creation mode. And I am approving April, May, June, July content before I leave. So my team's like, oh, how's this caption sound? I'm like, actually, let's reword this. So that was what I did because I felt like that was the best option for me and because this is the main income stream for my whole family. And so I needed to make sure I was still showing up on socials, even though I wasn't showing up on socials. And I think everybody's maternity leave will look different, but you can take breaks and come back and see success. I took a six month break off of Instagram where I didn't post at all.

1:09:41Camille Adrian:And then when I came back, everything was fine. Like there was, I, it was this big, Oh no, what, am I going to get punished by the algorithm? No. Yeah. There was maybe two weeks where it was like, wow, traction's really low, but I just kept posting and I made it through that rut. So there's been times where I have ghosted and I came back and everything was fine. So those are two very drastic examples and options and both are okay.

1:10:06Modern Millie:During those time periods where you maybe did have like a lower performance and views or comments and all that stuff, what do you tell yourself and what do you tell the people that you talk to or you coach? Because I feel like as creators, there is always going to be like these highs and these lows. Like we might have five episodes in a row that do super well. You might have one that slips down and it's really easy to be like, yeah, we're fine. We're finished. It's fine and hang it up, just call it a day. And I think that's a reality for many creators, whether they're YouTubers, whether they're Instagram, TikTok creators, it is going to have like an up and down.

1:10:44Modern Millie:And maybe even if they're selling a product, there will be an up and down. What have you noticed about your business and the things that you talk to your team about during those periods?

1:10:52Camille Adrian:The few things it is totally normal, I will say, to experience ups and downs, especially if you're somebody who maybe you're a new creator and then you had like your first video break through maybe 10 ,000 views. It almost feels like every video after that is a failure, but it's not like there's always going to be things, times where it like, okay, let's get it back down to the usual performance, the average and your average views. And that's okay. Everybody's average views and engagement is completely different. So it's normal to have high highs, low lows. I still experienced that six years in completely normal.

1:11:29Camille Adrian:If you're somebody who is going through that where you're like, oh my gosh, I am in a rut. Everything is falling apart. I have to throw in the towel. Oh my gosh. Woo is me. I want you to stop focusing on the analytics for a few weeks. Stop looking at the numbers. Stop looking at how many views did this video get? How many likes did this video get? Because I think what happens is we get so tunnel vision on, oh no, this isn't perform well. Let me try this. Oh, this didn't perform well. Let me try this. Sometimes you need to not try all those things and you just need to find your groove. You just need to like, okay, let me just create something that fulfills me right now.

1:12:07Camille Adrian:Because if you're stressed because everything's going downhill and you're losing all the views that you usually get, take a step back and just create for fun. Give yourself one week of just for fun, for you, And then come back with a fresh perspective of like, okay, now that I had some fun, it's not as serious as I think. Now let me come back with fresh perspective, look back at the analytics from the past 30 to 60 days, see what I could improve on this next video. Not like a bajillion videos, like have a whole master plan of, okay, this 90 day challenge, but just like take it one video at a time after that.

1:12:40Camille Adrian:I do think you just need to start creating for yourself a little bit, find the joy in creating again, and then the views and that will come with time.

1:12:47Modern Millie:I think you're so right because I we both moved recently and we felt like it's just been like breathing through a straw. Like we got we were like we're doing this pod every single week. We can focus on doing a really good show. But our socials have slipped for both of us. Right. Would you agree with that? I would agree with that. It's been as much as I would not like to as much as I would like to say we've been doing great. It's like the pod is crushing and the views are there. The numbers are there. The comments are there. but I feel like on our own personal channels, it's been like we kind of have both felt like we have to get our our home situations in order because it feels like I have this cloud over my head of all these things and I'm like running another company at the same time.

1:13:27Modern Millie:And I'm like, I can't I can't show up online at this exact second how I would want to. And that that advice feels really good because I'm going to get back into it this week. Clean my room, get it, get back, get back in it me and brayden both have home offices for the first time and it don't look like an office right now let's just say that there's been a lot of stuff that's been funneled into the office yeah that isn't meant to be in the office exactly but we need to keep the living room in the bedroom kind of clean you know so i'm like walking into the living room in the bedroom like damn i got a nice apartment and i open the door of the office i'm like let me shut i can't work in here let me shut that shit back what is this for a few more weeks i won't even look at it Yeah, God, it's it's so interesting.

1:14:08Modern Millie:Do you have a like a literal setup to where you just plop down and you're like, I'm ready to record. Yeah. Do you have like that one spot in your office or in your home?

1:14:17Camille Adrian:For YouTube? Yes. But for short form, no. For short form, I feel like it's kind of more throughout the house on the go where I'm feeling inspired. for my long form behind me i have my youtube set up on wheels and it'll either face this way so that my desk is the background or it'll face that way where the bookshelf is the background but

1:14:40Modern Millie:you gotta let them know about the subscriber plaque you gotta let them know yeah i got it

1:14:44Camille Adrian:i can't wait to leave that it's in the background of every video you gotta be a youtuber yeah we

1:14:50Modern Millie:we need one of those we're about 25 of the way there we're we're on our way we're on our way on our way. So funny. What is the difference between a creator who has a lot of followers, maybe 100 ,000, but ain't making any money? And someone who doesn't have as many followers, maybe five to 10, maybe 20k, but they're making a full time living doing content creation. What is the difference between a creator who has a lot of followers who isn't making a lot of money, or maybe a little bit, but not enough to sustain a full-time job and someone who maybe doesn't have as many followers, but they actually have a business behind content creation?

1:15:32Camille Adrian:I think the biggest difference is the small creator is probably most in tune with their audience. They're most engaged with them, connected with them. Whether they create like a digital product or an offer or not, even if you're doing brand partnerships, your audience is engaged. Brands will pay you higher if you have that engagement rate and your audience is there. I've had students land brand deals with under 1 ,000 followers because their audience is engaged and their audience trusts them and likes them. And the creator is there in the comments replying. They are building the community. It's not just follower.

1:16:12Camille Adrian:It's not just subscriber. It's not just audience at that point. It's a whole community. And I think being able to build your community is ultimately where income will then follow. Whether that community buys from you or it's brands that are putting content or paying for your content to be in front of your audience, it will be the same.

1:16:30Modern Millie:And if someone hasn't yet created any sort of digital product or a course, but they know that they want to go down that route of whether it's coaching or creating a digital product, I know you gave the advice of figuring out what it is you actually can help your audience with and auditing your audience and figuring out what they actually want. Do you also recommend just like, hey, let's not think about the$500,$1 ,000,$1 ,500 course? Is it let's start small, let's build a$1 entry product, build the email list, and then start thinking about like the master plan? Or do you kind of recommend just like, let's go balls to the wall right off the bat.

1:17:11I love the entry level digital product, something$47 or under,

1:17:20Camille Adrian:maybe even like you could go up to 97, but I feel like that might make you feel like you have to put a lot more effort into it. So I feel like that sweet spot is 47 and under for an entry product. So I would absolutely start that because you can create a$47 offer in a weekend, you know, whereas like a course that's going to take more time. So if you're more, Hey, I need to start making money sooner rather than later. A$47 product is doable. And all you would have to do, maybe you don't ask your, your audience, okay, what should I do? If you don't have an audience, maybe you still need to validate your idea by looking at other creators in your industry and seeing what offers they have.

1:18:01Camille Adrian:So still validate that what you want to create is wanted and needed by some audience out there.

1:18:08Modern Millie:Do you remember what the first time was that you made like real money with your personal brand and you were like, oh my gosh, there is a future here where I don't have to be in corporate America anymore. Yeah.

1:18:21Camille Adrian:There are two significant holy cow moments for me that are just core memories. The first is getting my YouTube channel monetized. that was the first time that I made money ever and it was it was during the summer of COVID when I was just like everybody was in creator mode you know what I mean and so I started posting on my YouTube channel and I got an email that was like oh your paycheck is on the way or something from YouTube and I was like huh what are you talking what felt like a scam at first

1:18:55Modern Millie:time the first time you get that google email you're like this is bullshit this is that yeah

1:19:00Camille Adrian:i was like there's no way i think i also hadn't posted in a few weeks and so i was like did something happen what's going on i guess one video i posted had started to pick up traction and go viral and then i was monetized and i made maybe a hundred dollars on that first paycheck but that was when i was like i can do this i can do this that was the confirmation of this is possible for me. Let me go all in.

1:19:25Modern Millie:So then how far into your journey was that about that was almost one

1:19:31Camille Adrian:year after I had left my corporate job. So I put my notice in October 4th, 2019. And through the rest of that year, I tried to build my website. Uh, didn't work by February. I was back in the work field. And then that year, 2020, July is when I got monetized. Yeah.

1:19:56Modern Millie:Amazing.

1:19:57Camille Adrian:That next kind of big breakthrough moment was the first time I made money in my sleep, quote unquote. I had, I mean, not quote unquote, I really did. It was the first time where I was like, what the crap? People do this? I was building my course. It was one year later. So 2021, I was building a course and I created a wait list because my audience, they were building it with me. So I was like, hey, when this launches, get on the wait list. I had a wait list going where I was building up my email list and I had the launch date set. And so I pre-wrote an email that was like, hey, course is open. You can now buy it.

1:20:33Camille Adrian:Here's the sales page. So I scheduled that to go out Monday morning. And I remember waking up that Monday, getting ready to like, okay, I'm going to do a launch, do Instagram post, going to do all the things. And I rolled over, grabbed my phone and I had an email saying that people had already bought my course. And it was just from sending one email. I had, I think the course at the time was, I think it was$597. So about$500. And I had three people buy from the email just within like two hours of sending the email. And so I made like over a thousand dollars from literally being asleep. And I was like, holy cow, people can really make money in their sleeps.

1:21:16Camille Adrian:I thought that was just a thing people said. And so that was just a really big moment for me too.

1:21:21Modern Millie:What has been the most difficult part of growing the team? Like what growing pains have you experienced? And then if you have fixed the solution, what has the solution been for some of those?

1:21:33Camille Adrian:Yeah. The hardest part is finding, finding people you know that first hire is like what the heck am I doing what do I do and I would first I'd started working with people on like Upwork and Fiverr and just working one off with random talent there with random tasks and then I needed more consistent help and so I was like how do I do this the first person that I hired was a VA and I found them through my community And a lot of my team I've actually found through my followers, which I never, I remember, this is so weird. I remember being a new creator, hoping one day to have a team and listening to a podcast of somebody answering this question and them saying, oh yeah, I actually found a lot of my team for my audience.

1:22:22And I'm like, what?

1:22:24Camille Adrian:That's weird. Like, I'm not going to build my team for my audience. Like what if they try to, I don't know, like stalk me or I have weirdos in my audience. Like, what do you mean you hire people from your follower? What? I did not understand it. But now retrospect, a lot of my team have been from followers. They are just like the most passionate about what I'm doing because they're like, I don't want to be a creator, but I love what you do and I love who you help. And I want to be a part of that. And they are the most passionate, energetic, loyal, talented people that I've found. We just put out another job listing just a few weeks ago and we posted it on LinkedIn, Indeed, and to my audience.

1:23:06Camille Adrian:And the people that we're really loving are the people from my audience just because there's so much passion and want to be a part of the community. And so that is just finding people was the first hardest part. Now it's about the hardest thing is how do you go from like contractors and everybody having tasks that they do and being a content creator, having a team, transition that to how do you build a business? How do I turn CEO and how do I now manage a team that it's not just like, okay, you reply to comments, you edit videos, you post. It's like, no, how does everybody now work together? Because I think right now everyone has their individual role that they do really well.

1:23:51Camille Adrian:But now I need to figure out, OK, how can we get everybody to work together towards one cohesive goal? So that's kind of the next challenge that I'm facing.

1:24:01Modern Millie:I think it's cool to hear that you are still working through it and you don't have everything figured out. I think that's really important to hear because people probably will look at you and be like, I've always got it all figured out. And the fact that you are still working through that. I also think that, you know, we've also found some great people just by posting on our stories. We kind of live more so in like the photo video land. And so finding people who can shoot just through posting an Instagram story or in our discord is is huge. I want to ask you about like nurturing your audience that you already have, because I think people are always caught up in I need to go viral.

1:24:40Modern Millie:I need to grow followers. I need more numbers. But you probably already have some sort of group that's following you and nurturing them and building a closer community with your audience that you already have versus trying to just chase the numbers is probably a better idea. And so I'm curious to know what ways do you go about nurturing your audience, whether it be via, you know, the email list, or like you said, you have like a community. So I'm curious to see, or I'm curious to hear about like your experience with the community that you already have built, whether it is on social or offline via like email or like a discord or something.

1:25:24Camille Adrian:I will start general and then specific. So general, I'm just talking social platforms, my followers, subscribers, audience base there for engagement. It's going to look different for everybody, but for me, replying to comments is important. So making sure I'm replying to people who take the time to comment on my ish. Something that's really cool lately is YouTube has the option where you can reply to comments with voice notes. And I think that is so freaking cool because I'm a voice memo gal.

1:25:55Modern Millie:When did you get this? I want to see if we have this.

1:25:58Camille Adrian:It's only on phone, mobile. So make sure your YouTube app is updated. I haven't seen it on desktop.

1:26:04Modern Millie:but really cool wait through youtube studio or through no just youtube the app okay i gotta try this i gotta try this out right now let me we're big on the voice memo this would be hilarious huge for the team especially for oh talking shit yeah i'd be like oh yeah you sometimes we get some comments and people roasting us and we we're really funny guys so we think of like really funny text responses no i i see i see a oh i can send a video oh yeah i don't know video yeah i

1:26:35Camille Adrian:got a little video situation going on oh that's cool that's like maybe a short response so here let me show you funnier yeah video is even funnier can't see um interesting oh that's great well i I have here this little like audio thing where I can reply with voice note.

1:26:55Modern Millie:Oh, interesting. Okay. So I do not have the audio option yet. I'm going to call up my buddy Neil. I wonder if it's like, um, you might have a beta subscriber number wall too. Oh, interesting. No. Yeah. She called us up and comers. Okay. We're up and comers. It's fine. We'll work through that. No, you work through that. I'm kidding.

1:27:15Camille Adrian:You had said you were working towards the plaque. So I was like, maybe it's behind the plaque. I don't know. Maybe it's behind the plaque.

1:27:21Modern Millie:Yeah, it's probably behind the plaque. It's super fair. It's super fair.

1:27:23Camille Adrian:Okay, I'll just go right now. Thank you for having me. It's been great. No, no, we're kidding. We're kidding. So in replying to people, I think replying as personally as you can is great. Whether it's replying to comments or voice note or even replying to comments with video, whether that video response is then in your stories or as its own Instagram reel, TikTok video, I think having those personal responses are important. I have somebody in my team replying to my DMs for me. I can't, I just, I can't do that. So somebody does that for me. And then when it comes to content creation, a lot of, I say it's like a 50, 50 strategy right now where 50 % of my content is actually I'll say 25 % of my content right now is, okay, how can I grow with like strategic specific videos?

1:28:13Camille Adrian:25, the other 25 % is more like, okay, let's just have fun with trends. And then 50 % is what are questions my audience is asking? Can I make a video on it? So I make fresh content catered around audience questions specifically. So following where my audience is interested, that's how I engage with them. Now, internal community, I have my BSP Slack community. That is for students who join the BSP model, which is like the big kahuna online university for content creators. they join and then they get access to some, they get some access to Slack. With that, obviously replying there, I do voice memos.

1:28:54Camille Adrian:I do screen recordings. I have coaching calls every month where it's like, ask Millie anything, come on the coaching calls. At the end of the year, we do a movie night. So every month in October, November, December, my favorite time, we do like a Halloween movie night where everybody can be on this live movie and then have the chat. So we have a Halloween movie night, not Thanksgiving, but like maybe we'll watch like Harry Potter in November or Christmas movie in December. So we have like movie nights and just having guest coaches in just trying to give as much value as I can to people who like raise their hands and are like, yeah, I want to invest in this thing.

1:29:29Camille Adrian:It's like, OK, how can I make this the most valuable part of my community and spend most of my time? The people who are in my BSP community is where I spend most of my energy.

1:29:39Modern Millie:Have you watched Four Christmases during your movie night for the December?

1:29:45Camille Adrian:No, I think last year we watched Home Alone. Nice classic. The year before that, we watched, I think we watched The Grinch.

1:29:57Modern Millie:You got to watch Elf this year, I feel like. I feel like that one's up.

1:30:00Camille Adrian:I totally can see that.

1:30:02Modern Millie:Have you seen Four Christmases? I have not, but I need to add it. Okay. Okay, me and my fiance were telling Brayden and his girlfriend that they need to watch Four Christmases. Vince Vaughn, it's awesome. Top tier Christmas movie. I'll add it to my list this year. Add it to the list. Add it to the list. I got one more for you. If you could give some advice to your 18-year-old self before you popped on this journey, what would you say?

1:30:29Camille Adrian:I think 18-year-old me was very scared to show up as myself. And that is why she created Millie as an alter ego, uh, because my real name's not Millie. It's a short version of my name. My first name's Camille and I all growing up, that's who I was and graduating high school, going into college. I just felt like I couldn't be myself and be accepted. and people, I was either too much of this or too loud, too much, too perfect or too unperfect. I had a very interesting upbringing, which not, yeah, which could be a whole other conversation. So I was like, I just want to get away. And I just want to be this confident person.

1:31:17Camille Adrian:I want to be confident. I want to be able to be goofy, silly, and outspoken and not feel like I'm being judged left and right. And so when I went to college, I was like, I'm going to be Millie. I was like, I'm going to introduce myself as Millie. And Millie is this confident, outspoken, funny, maybe not funny, but at least she's like willing to say jokes out loud and have it fall flat. You know, like that is who Millie is. And so telling her just like, embrace who you are and don't try to be somebody based off of what everybody else wants you to be or who you're trying to please, because you cannot control how other people perceive you.

1:31:55Camille Adrian:You can only control who you are and what you do. So forget about other expectations and what other people want and focus on what you want. And because when you just focus on yourself and being who you are, connecting with who you are, you can have the life of your dreams and you deserve to have the life of your dreams. So just embrace who you are and forget what anybody else will think.

1:32:18Modern Millie:Millie, I love it. This has been such a fun conversation. Thank you guys for joining us for episode 174 of the 505 podcast. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button. Drop us a comment. Let us know where you're tuning in from, and we'll see you guys all next week. Peace.