In short
The Intrinsic Value Podcast - Episode MI278 Summary
Episode Title
How to Become a Successful Online Creator w/ Varun Balsara
Episode Description
Robert Leonard interviews Varun Balsara, co-founder of “Let’s Level Up,” a platform supporting online content creators in building profitable communities and scaling their businesses. The episode covers the burgeoning creator economy, effective monetization strategies, and how to leverage tools like ChatGPT for content creation and marketing.
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Key Takeaways
- The Creator Economy
- Definition: The creator economy, or passion economy, refers to individuals monetizing their skills and knowledge through online platforms.
- Market Size: Estimated to be over $104 billion in 2022, a significant growth from 2019.
- Growth Rate: Reported to have grown by 119% over two years, with 165 million people entering the space.
- Turning Passion into Business
- Identify your passion and what you are knowledgeable about.
- Utilize a framework called "coach market fit" to align what you love with what the market needs.
- Conduct primary research to understand market demands and potential gaps.
- Sales Funnels for Creators
- Sales Funnel Types:
- Email sign-up through lead magnets (free resources).
- Webinar funnels for direct engagement and selling.
- Video Sales Letters (VSL) to attract leads.
- Marketing Without a Large Following
- Networking: Engage with your immediate network and rekindle connections.
- Building Relationships: Comment on industry leaders’ posts to gain visibility.
- Content Consistency: Frequent, quality engagement on social media is essential.
- Use of ChatGPT
- Content Creation Aid: ChatGPT can help generate content quickly, allowing creators to focus on higher-value tasks.
- Efficiency: It can assist with writing scripts, emails, and even course outlines.
- Overcoming Perfectionism
- Launch Before Perfecting: Emphasize that "done is better than perfect" to avoid procrastination.
- Validation Through Sales: Start selling your ideas to validate interest before fully developing them.
- Standing Out in a Saturated Market
- Focus on your unique qualities and experiences.
- Develop a contrarian viewpoint to differentiate your insights from others.
- Emphasize incremental improvements rather than aiming for radical changes.
- Common Challenges for Creators
- Mindset Issues: Many creators undervalue their offerings or struggle with pricing.
- Consistency: Engagement requires ongoing effort to maintain momentum.
Entrepreneurial Journey
- Emphasizes the importance of focusing on the customer and their problems over the noise of competition.
- Encourage adaptability and a willingness to change products/services based on customer feedback.
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Resources Mentioned
- Let’s Level Up: Platform for creators to scale their businesses.
- ChatGPT: AI tool for enhancing content creation and marketing efforts.
Conclusion
This episode serves as a valuable resource for aspiring creators, offering insights into navigating the creator economy, building a business around one’s passion, and utilizing modern tools and strategies effectively.
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Contact Information
- Varun Balsara: [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/varunbalsara) | Email: varun@letslevelup.io
- Let's Level Up: [Website](https://www.letslevelup.io)
For more insights, visit [The Investors Podcast Network](https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00You're listening to TIP. On today's show, I chat with Varun Balsara, who is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Let's Level Up, which is a platform that helps online content creators build profitable communities and scale up their businesses. During this episode, Varun and I chat all about the growing creator economy as the market for online creators has grown immensely over the last couple of years with more and more people interested in sharing their knowledge online. But a lot of people are having difficulties learning how to monetize it and succeeding in turning their passion into a business.
0:34Today, Varun gives us a masterclass on how to do all of this. He discusses everything from how to decide what your passion is and what your content should be based on the different ways that creators can monetize their knowledge through content creation, how to stand out from other creators, especially if you're going into a saturated field. He also talks about how to market and sell content online if you don't have a big social media following, the different sales funnels creators can use to market their content, as well as how to use things like ChatGPT to your advantage in content creation and marketing, and so much more.
1:09If you're someone who's interested in turning your passion into an online business, but you aren't sure where to begin or how you would even go about monetizing it, Varun covers all of this and more in today's conversation, and he gives us a great blueprint of where to start and the most important factors that make online creators successful. So without further delay, I really hope you enjoy today's episode with Varun Balsera. You're listening to Millennial Investing by the Investors Podcast Network, where your host, Robert Leonard, interviews successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation.
1:54Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Millennial Investing Podcast. I'm your host, Robert Leonard. And with me today, I am joined by Varun Balsara. Varun, welcome to the show. Lovely to be here. Thanks for having me. To start off our conversation today, give us a little overview of how big the creator economy is and what the creator economy market is. For sure. I mean, maybe let's start with what exactly is the creative economy or the passion economy and to sort of summarize it in a few words it's basically think of it as a opportunity for anyone who is really interested in something be that a hobby or a personal project and the market rewarding that person for pursuing that project and it could be anything from monetizing how to teach someone how to do origami or it could be as far intricate as how do you actually trade in options or derivatives on the stock market.
2:49And so it's this whole unique way of thinking of careers now and thinking of like side incomes and being able to pursue those passions and get paid and rewarded for it. You know, as of 2022, the creator market size is estimated to be over about 104 billion. And it's more than double of what it was in 2019. And then, you know, there was a study published in August 2022, I think, by Adobe. It just suggested that the creator economy has grown by over 165 million people globally in the last two years, which is an increase of about 119%, right? It is a very, very, very growing economy. And it's a very exciting space to be.
3:31Lots of activity happening in this space as well. How does somebody, let's say maybe they have a passion or something they think they would want to do online, but they just don't know where to begin. How should they get started? Where should they get started? I think it's just important to sort of set the context for what I think would be a perfect definition for a creator. I think it's anybody who has the ability to share what they know in a very succinct way, whether that can be through a course, whether that can be through an outcome, which is probably a tangible good or an art piece, or it could be a book, like anything that you can convert as something that you're passionate about, and then you can convert that into something that's monetizable, and there's an exchange of value, you probably are a creator.
4:17And the monetization part we'll come to later, but most creators start off with a specific passion. And then they think about monetizing it later on. If we have to work backwards, you know, where the best place to start is, I have this framework called the coach market fit. And you can remove the coach with course or expert it's sort of a derivation of what we talk about in the startup world which is like product market fit right a product is said to have product market fit when the product is in alignment with the market that it serves and so you usually start out as a creator or as an expert just asking yourself like what are the things that you really really love to do whether that's podcasting whether that is speaking and interviewing people whether that's singing, dancing, teaching people how to do stocks or finance or property investing.
5:05It doesn't matter what it is. It's just about defining what is it that gets you alive. And there can be a couple of things. But then on the other hand, if you want to be a little smart about it, you want to probably work backwards and say, well, is this specific thing that I'm creating also going to add some monetary value to my life? And most people want to have that side income, want to have that sort of side hustle, or maybe want to go completely into that side hustle at some point. So then you start thinking about, okay, so if this is what I'm passionate about, what is it that the market really wants to learn from me?
5:39Or what is that specific thing in the market that's missing that I can then provide? And so then you do a bunch of things. You do primary research, which is basically talking to your specific audience. So if people want to learn property investing from you, and if I have absolutely no experience in property investing would people really want to learn from me probably not so then i would sort of start asking people what's the what do they really want to know what's their struggles where are they really not focusing their energies on where do they want to learn a specific outcome or a specific skill set or is there something that's lacking out there once i have that then i start understanding what that coach market fit really looks like or that course market fit or x market fit looks like and that intersection between what I'm really passionate about and what the outcome or the market really wants to learn from me or that wants to buy from me that's that specific intersection which is going to basically get me my passion but also monetize that passion really effectively and that's I think is that sweet spot so where do you start it's a very simple thing you put out a piece of paper you say what you're passionate about you then ask yourself what are the different things that people have asked me to probably speak on, guest lecture on, podcast about.
6:51Go talk to those people, ask them what they're probably struggling with, and then create a product that will then serve those people. And then the best form of validation, put it out there and see if they buy. If they do buy, you're probably onto something. What if someone doesn't have a large social media following? What if they don't have any social media presence really at all, but they have this idea and they want to put it out online? How can someone with no prior social media experience or following really get their idea out there to try and monetize everything you were just talking about?
7:24Yeah, I mean, so many different ways of doing it. And I think like you might be really underestimating how many followers you or rather overestimating how many followers you actually need to sell something online. We've worked with people and we'll get into that in a little bit, of course. but we've worked with people and seen people succeeding with just a few hundred or a few thousand followers it's not like you have to be in the millions to actually sell something and if you have absolutely no idea where to start i think a great place to actually ask yourself where you want to begin is to understand where your audience is hanging out so for example if i'm someone who's targeting professionals the best place to actually start hanging out is on linkedin right you probably want to start creating some kind of content that shows that okay this person actually exists this person is really sort of knows what they're talking about and i don't mean you post every day but you can post every other day and the best strategy is actually standing on the shoulders of giants so the best thing that i like to do is you know when someone comes to me with that same thing saying oh varun like i have no idea where to begin i don't even have a large audience i say who are your top three influencers in your field and where do they hang out great now go and post value bombs on their social media posts what this basically does is you're adding value to them so you're getting recognized by that industry leader if they comment on you but even if they don't comment on you you still have eyeballs on that specific comment so if you're posting something that you're truly passionate about that you truly believe will add unique value then people are bound to listen to you and that's almost how you you sort of shortcut your way into growing your audience same thing applies for like a youtube same thing applies for like an instagram with a few nuances but you start with that community element you start building those three to four to five maybe loyal fans that really really want to support you and chances are if you've lived fairly long enough what i mean by that is like if you've gone to school if you've had genuine social connections with people your whatsapp phone book your facebook you know friend list is more than enough to start with you can actually make thousands of dollars just by figuring out who you're selling to and the chances are that the person you're selling to is sitting right now in your phone book and you just don't know about it.
9:36And so reaching out and rekindling old connections, talking to people and being open about, hey, look, this is what I'm providing. This is the value I'm giving you. And then seeing whether people pay for that. It's just a great place to start. When it comes to social media, how often does someone need to be posting? Some people believe in quality over quantity. So you don't have to post that much, but it just has to be really high quality. Other people, maybe Gary V. would say something along the lines of quantity is quality or can be quality. So how do you think about this? So I think consistency over anything else really trumps it.
10:13Like there's no guarantee that you can be qualitative or like have quality posts every single time that you post. And on the flip side of it, if you just post stuff that's very generic or cliched and you don't have your own voice, no one's really going to listen to you. And so the balance is up to you how you want to strike it. But I would just say consistency. and when you don't have a big audience the best place to actually start two best places one is actually in the dms like a lot of the people that succeed in the creator space have a great following but a lot of them also what you don't probably know is that they actually sell a lot in the dms so coaches experts consultants that are doing seven figures eight figures a year what they do is they hire a lot of sales representatives that actually start messaging people online And so the genuine connection that is built is actually in the DMs.
11:00That's number one. Number two, if you don't know what to post, just start by engaging with people in that specific industry. Just as an example, if you're in the product space and you want to help people break into product management and you don't have that much of an audience, you follow people in that same space who do have a great audience and build relationships with them. So you can start diverting, not diverting, but like speaking to people within their audience to say, hey, look, I exist. Why don't you come and follow me and I will give you more information. But equally, what's interesting to note is the third thing that we're seeing consistently is people are moving away from being solely reliant on platforms.
11:42And what do I mean by this is people are making sure that they have their social presence just to show people that, hey, look, I exist, I'm legit. But where the actual value add comes in is through getting and building your own email list. and there are tons of studies that show that like a great solid marketing list actually leads to higher conversions when you're selling products and this is more important than ever when it comes to you dealing with the creator economy space because right now tomorrow any social media platform can change the way in which people are viewing your content and are following you an algorithm change can basically make your traction go way up or way down and so what people are realizing is that while social media might give you that initial push, what's really valuable is actually having an email list, which I can own and I can call my own without having to rely on any other social media platform to actually drive traffic for me.
12:38And in that process, you're actually seeing a lot of people build their own email lists and send out newsletters, for example, on a very regular cadence. And that's how they start building their audience. I know this has happened to me in the past. I think there are a lot of people that are like me, but they want to have everything done or perfect before they really launch. And I think I've gotten better at this over time. I've heard a lot of talks about how people say that you should be kind of embarrassed by your first version of your product or your website. So I think I've gotten better at this, but I know that there's a lot of people that struggle with this.
13:13They want to have everything done, want to have everything built. They want it to be perfect before they actually launch. So how do you approach that? What advice or feedback you have for people regarding this? Should they make sure everything's done, ready to go perfect before they launch? Or should they just see if they can get signups first and then build it after? Should they pre-sell? What do you think on this? Yeah, this is what we say all the time, right? Done is better than perfect. It's almost always the case. And here's why. This is age-old saying that says, build and they will come and if you follow that advice you you're very there's a very strong chance you're going to fail and that's equally true for most things that you do even in the startup space or building product i'll give you a very interesting example so we had a creator once who had built a massive audience in a specific geography and he just suddenly decided to sell his course and his learnings from that community into a completely other geography and he made absolutely zero sales he refocuses efforts back into like selling to his own community and he sold out his course so there's something to be said about like just going out there of course knowing where you're selling and who you're selling to that's important but after you do that don't let that become like a place where you procrastinate because very often when we talk about this whole coach market fit thing people will start saying oh you know i've not really started to actually find that coach market fit let me do a little more research and so you almost use that as an excuse to procrastinate and so what we say is you start selling first right don't even create stuff you have a general outline of something you start selling and marketing it just to understand whether people are buying it because hopefully you're not someone who's going to rip somebody off right you are going to deliver a great experience but the delivery of great experience is usually easier than selling and marketing for most people and so creating and so for example marketing and selling is usually what comes first and then building comes second and i know this is something that most people feel really uncomfortable about but when you really understand it what selling and marketing does is you're validating what your offer is and if somebody is saying yes to paying you for that offer then it's your job to actually give them a great experience and if you don't that's on you but almost when people start putting that faith in you then you start realizing okay maybe there is something so a very clear example of this if you want to build a course right i'll give yourself maybe four weeks five weeks depending on on different variables but let's just say you have launch a course in five weeks you would have a general outline of what you want to teach them and the learning outcomes that somebody wants to sort of you know what they were going to get once they're done with your course that should be enough to convince someone whether to come in or not because the content and what you're going to teach is what they're going to do after they sign up to you so you need to perfect the first process before you even start the second process and that is why i always say like market and sell and then build because building the experience actually you get a lot of insight when someone signs up.
16:04Because one of the things that you can start doing is start interviewing people. Hey, thanks for signing up. What do you like? What do you interest? What are you expecting to do? And then you can keep tweaking your actual content to then best serve the people that have actually given you their hard earned cash. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Even Einstein had blind spots. That's why modern science is built on the idea of peer review. Investing may be more art than science, but that doesn't make pure feedback any less valuable. The tricky thing is finding qualified people who are interested and willing to help vet your investment ideas.
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19:09And for a limited time, you can use code STOCKS15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. Going back to this idea of someone not being big on social media or not having a big following, how else should they market? What other sales funnels or marketing funnels could and should they use? So in terms of like, if you're just absolute beginner, absolutely starting out, like ads is usually almost the worst way to start. I'm going to quickly rule that one out. It's an easy answer, but it will break the bank. So unless you're willing to spend thousands of dollars on marketing through channels like Facebook and YouTube, I would completely advise against that what i am going to advise is something that's a little more tedious but it usually sets the tone which is consistent posting which is very important because as soon as you start reaching out to someone people will want to know you exist online and you're legit i don't mean go and set up a website i just mean simply have a presence where your audience hangs out so for example if it's real estate and you figure out that people are on instagram or linkedin and depending let's just say it's real estate for i don't know c-suite executives most of the times they're probably going to be on linkedin and so if you've identified that then try and build a persona on linkedin again you don't have to have thousands of followers a few hundred is great to start with but then once i'm done with that then i start again start commenting where the industry experts hang out so start commenting on their posts and then start serving their posts a lot of the times the people that comment on posts are the ones that are super engaged with that specific topic and so starting to build relationships within the ecosystem within linkedin for example by shooting a dm and genuinely getting to know that person build a relationship with them build a rapport with them and then say hey look this is what i'm planning to do are you interested that actually leads to so many more sales and we've for the majority of our first year in business that's actually how we sold what we're building today and it was its relationship was permission based marketing right at the very outset of it and so like that really is beneficial yes it takes time it's a volume game but it does set you up for great success because you start building your audience over time like that so it is a bit of working hard but at the same time it actually sets you up once that is done then of course there are different things that you can do right then there are three major funnels that you can use and just just to sort of clarify what that means for your audience a funnel is basically where people come in or they usually get something for free and then it's almost like they're going through a journey with you to buy a specific product usually the end outcome of a funnel is a purchase so typically what people do to get someone to sign up on their emails for example is to give them a freebie or a free resource and then once that is done there are emails that are triggered to say value-driven emails that you send out and then there's a launch of a course and then value-driven emails and the launch of another product that's sort of the usual way a lead magnet functions the other way if you start developing and if you're starting to make revenue for your whatever your creator business is then a webinar funnel works even better because we've seen the webinar funnel work great because you basically send leads which are people who are interested in you so that's usually through running either a facebook ad or just building an audience and saying this is a webinar you get them onto a webinar you provide them with value and then towards the end of the webinar you tell them hey look this is what i'm selling would you be interested and if you do a good job of it most of the times people land up paying you on the spot or they book a call and then you sort of sell them on the call depending on this works really well for like coaching and consulting services and the final thing is a you do the same thing as a webinar but it's more like a pre-recorded webinar we call that the vsl funnel which is the video sales script where people come in they see what you have to offer they then book a call with you and then as soon as they book a call with you they have this call you explain to them what the product is what the offer is listen to what they have to say and then provide your services or solution as a way to combat that problem that they have and that usually leads to a sale.
23:27So these are the couple of methods that you can potentially try out. But again, I would always start with the messaging because that is the most effective way to genuinely create those first five to 10 clients that genuinely become your true fans. Because guess what? If you do a great job with the first five or 10 people that sign up to whatever you're doing, they're going to be your most avid fans that will then shout about you and get you more customers. And so don't skip that part. And many people get lazy with it, but the ones that actually succeed have done a really great job at having that genuine connection with people.
24:05How do you balance giving away content for free versus the content that you monetize? Should you be giving away everything for free? And if you do that, then how do you monetize? Let's say you have an online course. How do you balance what to give away for free and what to put in the course and behind a paywall? Is it just different packaging? How do you think about that? this is a lovely question just like we spoke about course market fit or like a coach market fit there's also a content market fit and you're right you don't want to basically lose out on people by talking about fairly generic stuff because if you don't have a voice then you're never really going to attract the right kinds of people so if you do decide that like content is the way to go and like i'm going to develop a personal brand online one of the key things to actually start by doing is like okay what do i want to talk about what is already being spoken about and then what do people really want to hear and then you find gaps within those and then you fill them up with valuable content i wouldn't worry too much about giving away valuable content for free because let's face it like when you when you start chatting with chat gpt a lot of the content that comes out of there is pretty valuable stuff people aren't really paying for content anymore because that's almost like a thing of the past what people are paying for is for you to help them out and for you to fast track their journey through your experience and so what people really pay for is accountability what people are really paying for is the ability to have that conversation with you and to execute not necessarily to give content so i wouldn't worry too much about giving valuable content that you're going to teach on the course what most of the best creators course creators coaches give all that information for free you can get it online for free but why do they still do very well because a they've already developed that trust and they've given that content for free and it's valuable it's helped people and the next thing is while i can give you that content i don't think or i don't guarantee that you're going to actually implement that and so then what you really pay for then is the implementation execution and accountability I hope that sort of clarifies it.
26:14How should creators, online content creators today be using chat GPT to benefit them? And then on the other side, the inverse side of this, how could it negatively affect or potentially disrupt the industry of online content creators? I think a lot of people today are getting scared of chat GPT. And there's almost like this existential crisis saying, oh my God, chat GPT is going to ruin me. but the thing is chat gpt is lowering the barrier for somebody to learn something which actually is great news for creators because you don't want to spend your time like even if i give you content i can maximum charge you what maybe a hundred dollars if it's extremely valuable content but where the actual money lies and it goes back to my earlier point is when i can actually help you implement that content in the context of your life and that usually happens when you sit in front of a coach and have a one-on-one or in a group where you have community that really can't be replicated with chat gpt so i would almost encourage everybody who's probably not using chat gpt to start using it because it helps you push content out faster and if you know how to use prompts in a nice in a really really smart way and that is we can get into that if you like but there are tons of ways in which you can just leverage chat gpt in a really really nice way to get valuable content out there, right?
27:33Obviously make it your own, do your own research and all of that. But leveraging that, it's at the end of the day, it's a tool. And you need to be able to leverage that tool really well, which basically means that now newsletters, content, you know, you can write scripts for your videos. You can write actual copy for your emails that you're going to send out in your newsletters. All of that means you're saving on time, time that can now be spent on higher leverage activities which basically bring you more revenue aka the coaching aka the consulting aka forming a community all of those high leverage activities which an ai at least for now can't really do you're bringing people together and that is very powerful accountability is powerful being able to create in a space with other people get valuable feedback that is super helpful and because the feedback is not just a text-based chatbot telling me, okay, do this, do that.
28:30But it's also sociocultural, right? Like if you sit in like a course, which is with participants from around the world, you're also getting their experiences. And that is very difficult to replicate. So yeah, I mean, use ChatGPT because it helps you get done with the lower leverage tasks. But the higher leverage tasks, it frees up time for that specific task that you can do that will actually bring in more leverage and therefore more revenue to your business. What are some of the most popular or most efficient and successful props that you think could be applicable for someone just starting out?
29:03One thing I've really realized is the ability for ChatGPT to become like your personal, like, I don't know, secretary. It's a super good way to do that. Like, so if you characterize it as just that, you then also need to realize that it will do exactly what you tell it and no more or no less and so what that means is if you leave anything up for interpretation you're going to get a super super generic response so something that i love to do is i love to sort of study styles of people that are writing online on let's just say linkedin so if i if i love a linkedin creator i will basically take that post and i will ask chat gpt to basically analyze the post and say what did this post do really well?
29:47It'll tell me whatever, right? Now I've got ChatGPT to affirm what it needs to do. The next prompt that I write is, hey, I've written this specific post. Can you now maybe emulate a similar style, bases your feedback above and rewrite this post for me? Now what you've done is you've contextualized what ChatGPT needs to do and you've given it a very specific prompt of what you then need to do. If you start thinking of using ChatGPT is a series of prompts i.e the prompts being the instructions then what you're really seeing is a very nicely very very fast targeted personal assistant just executing tasks see it doesn't really have a mind of its own it will not understand stuff that intensely but if you break it down into like the smallest possible component and tell it exactly what it needs to do you will get a very good outcome but If you say, write me a post on the five things you should be doing when you're podcasting, you're going to get a very generic response.
30:50Other than just chat GPT, what other tools or resources or tips do you have for online content creators to become more efficient and productive? Yeah, I mean, we can chat about GPT in a whole other podcast and happy to do that. But one thing that would be super cool to do is, and I've only started experimenting with this recently is for example when you when you want to write content you almost make chat gpt interrogate itself let's just say i tell chat gpt to write me a post and i say now critique your own post it's going to give you a critique of that post and then you say hey use your critique to rewrite me a better post and you keep going back and forth by the third or the fourth iteration you have a really really good post or a newsletter and then very specific prompts that would be really interesting to start trying to use and like there's a lot of information out there online and i know it can get very overwhelming but like just break it down into first principles if you're talking to like a five-year-old child about certain instructions how would you write or how would you talk to them you almost want to use chat gpt in a similar way like instructionally it's still a very infant it doesn't it cannot infer what you're thinking it can only infer what you write and if you write more specifically you usually get a great outcome so for example if you want to write a really detailed comment on an influencer you really like you can put what you think you should be writing and then say hey chat gpd can you make this comment a little more snappier a little more hilarious or a little more dash given what you think that person is going to like and it'll rewrite that for you and then if you like it use it if you don't like it you can always change it but that self interrogation part i think was a game changer for me because you're almost getting chat gpd to talk to itself and then keep doing it so one of the things that we do at let's level up like one of the key things that we're actually building and it's in the works rather is you can now start creating your entire course content with a few clicks so if you're a if you're a property investor right what you do is you give the system a prompt and you say okay i want to create a course on this these are some of the topics i want to create and then i hit enter and it will create an entire course outline with information within that course and so what you're doing then is you're going into that course and just changing a few things that you don't think might be working or not and so now what our system has done is it's fast track the journey for a individual from i don't know what to do which i call the cold start problem to now okay i have something to work with and that's something to work with then can start becoming a lot more intricate and detailed and so i guess the last way you can actually use chat gpt of course if you're not using a tool like ours is just starting with a prompt.
33:33So say, hey, I'm thinking of writing a post on X, Y, and Z. Can you maybe tell me what the structure of a blog on LinkedIn or a blog on Medium or a blog on Substack looks like? It'll give you the points. And then if you want to double click on a few points, you then go and ask ChatGPT, can you double click on it? And so by the end of it, you have all the information. ChatGPT has understood all the information. And then you're like, okay, so now can you write me an entire post? And so there you have it. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message.
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37:19That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. You mentioned earlier in our conversation that consistency is such an important factor. How long do you think someone needs to be consistent or how reasonable, what's a reasonable timeline you think for someone just starting out to build a community and then most importantly, really get their first sale, their first dollar in their online content creation business? This is an interesting question because there's no right answer. And usually it's the various ways in which you can take this. And I say that because let's just say you're a 50 plus author who's done really well for themselves but does not use linkedin very often or twitter and now wants to get into you know you're you're fairly elderly and so you don't have that kind of knowledge of how to use social media but the fact is you're a very successful individual and there are a lot of people already following you because they've read their books now if they come online on linkedin or twitter it's a short period of time if they if they play their cards right to be able to then gain a massive following and then sell digital products on the other hand if if you're relatively younger and you have nothing to show behind your name as in like societal standards show behind your name and you have nothing sort of no career really backing you and stuff like that it might become a little more difficult in terms of a time frame to actually then start selling but even then we're seeing 18 year olds 19 year olds 16 year olds are doing very well for themselves by selling digital products online.
38:56And I mean like educational products as well. It again depends on like how quickly you're able to figure out that creator market fit, which is like, who am I? Who's my audience? What's the best way to actually segment that audience and then narrow it down really specifically? And then can I start consistently building an audience around it or a community around it where people are actually following what I have to do? Can I build that meaningful connection with somebody or a few people to start off with? and so the faster you get to that point the faster it will be but there are no overnight successes people have people build audiences over time some people do it faster than others because they probably have a little more clarity and they've probably done a lot of groundwork without actually knowing about it quick example if you are a struggling actor and you suddenly have a netflix series your instagram account if the netflix series is great is going to blow up but you have put in a lot of effort to actually get to that point you've done what it takes right and so very often in the content game even in the creator game you start seeing the creator really go slowly and then there's something that they do their content gets shared they sort of innovate on a few strategies and then you see them exponentially explode it's a lot like podcasting right like your first 10 episodes are probably going to fail and then you you sort of see that oh my god people are listening to me oh gosh like i'm now i'm hitting those numbers right like that's the same thing that happened to me.
40:19Like I never thought I'd get into an Apple top 20. My podcast would get into an Apple top 20 chart. But then that consistency over time and like just having that love for the game. Next thing you know, like you have a notification saying, hey, you're in the Apple top 20 charts. I'm like, so it's a small things that really, really, you know, it's those small moments in time, the small steps that you take that if you zoom out over a period of time, you see so much growth. These days, so many different industries, topics are crowded and they're saturated. So how does someone just getting in, how do they stand out from the crowd?
Read the full transcript
40:56What do they do to really establish themselves in their chosen industry when there's already so many established creators maybe in their field? So this actually ties in a lot of what we've been speaking about earlier. One is the coach market fit, right? Really figuring out who you are, what are you passionate about and the best ways to do that as i mentioned just to quickly recap go and figure out where you're being invited who you're talking to what do people really ask for advice from you on and then the market which is what is out there in that space that i'm really interested in and like can i do something really better or something very unique and that better and unique could actually start off by being marginally better as well you know most of the times people keep thinking about it as like i have to do 10x better but like that 10x is an iteration game if you don't start now by being incrementally better you're never going to get to 10x and like that's the most frustrating part of like talking to someone who has that sort of almost chained by that thought is like oh i'm not 10x better than someone why would someone come to me well you have to start somewhere so just pick a lane and start and then you can pivot along the way but if you don't start you're never going to know what's going to actually happen so just pick a lane and start of course do the groundwork and then talk talk to as many people as you possibly can in your specific niche so if you want to get into property investing right if you have say 10 years in the in the space and say there's an absolute newbie you have 10 years worth of experience that you can showcase and most likely that newbie is probably in your network your friend knows somebody your mom knows somebody your family friend knows somebody and so you start with your phone book right and that's how you start getting that first second climb your testimonials will stack up you start getting more referrals if you're doing a good job if you're not doing a good job and if you have nothing to sell then i would really question whether you're on the right track but given that you have all of this in place you can then start moving on and trying to find that complete differentiator saturation also is a very interesting concept because a lot of the times we have this limiting belief that we aren't good enough or that there's too many people in the space but the truth of the matter is people are coming to you for you right and i love to say this because it's it's what i call as like your unique you like what is that skill set what is that and it could be very simple things right like and there's another concept called the feature not a bug which is all the bugs that you think are in your body i have a very ridiculous accent i look a funny way i talk a funny way i have a uncomfortable giggle i laugh in a particular way those are what you perceive as bugs but that can actually be huge features for somebody else so when somebody is listening to you and they go oh my god i love that accent it's like wow okay so you're actually building a niche around something that's unique to you and nobody can actually copy you again you'll never find this out unless you have a very specific not even specific but as long as you start doing stuff you automatically start knowing what's working and what's not and the last thing i think is just having a contrarian perspective i call it the the seep of which is like the contrarian point of view which is essentially can i take a topic that i truly believe in and do i have something to actually talk about which most people will fight me on but i can substantially validate so just an example my contrarian point of view is you should start marketing and selling before you actually start making your course or your coaching program now most people are going to say that's complete bs and like you don't know what you're talking about but then i can pull out tons and tons of examples and i can give myself and i can back it up with revenue figures to show why that works and why that actually leads to a great student outcome i have used this in my marketing methods and now this will obviously piss a few people off but what this is doing is it's also getting me people that actually really like me And so in being different, but not for the heck of it, but like, it's not a hot take.
44:58It's a genuinely different contrarian viewpoint. Don't be contrarian if you don't have anything contrarian to say, but figure out what that unique perspective is. And that is what people come to you for. So when people come and say, Varun, can you help me out? They get that I do this. It resonated with them. And now they want to learn. Rather than just going vanilla and saying what everybody in the industry is saying. because I'm pretty sure everybody has a contrarian viewpoint. They're just probably scared to speak about it. So hone in on that because that definitely becomes a differentiator.
45:30From all the people you've worked with, when someone comes to you and says that they're not really making progress or not hitting the goals that they want, what are typically the biggest reasons why they aren't getting as far ahead as they maybe should be or want to be? Honestly, two things. One is just the mindset. People leave so much money on the table and it's sad because they're like oh my god i'm not i'm pricing it too high when in reality they're actually pricing it too low there's like a lot of like that mindset around like charging people is a bad thing and sort of that's one of the biggest limiting beliefs that people have so a lot of the times it's a lot of mindset shift that we need to create with people and the second thing is just a lack of consistency like you know what you need to do you have seen initial results but now you've just got complacent because you think it's working and that machine's going to work for you but guess what like you do have to still put in the work and so if you're not doing those two things most likely you're going to probably start hitting a plateau and this is consistently what we've seen with people who struggle and the third thing is they will do all of this they'll get to a point we're doing really well so really well is maybe like making five or 10k in monthly revenue and then they'll be like oh my god i can't handle demand and then that's when it comes to the systems and actually the scaling of the systems.
46:48How do I put the right systems in place so that I am not bothered about whether the backend technology is working, whether this is working, whether that's working? And how do I just consistently scale my coaching business or whatever my creative business is without the headache of technology? As we get towards wrapping up, tell us a bit about your own successful entrepreneurial journey. tell us about your story and some of the top tips, advice, lessons that you've learned throughout your success building your own businesses? I think maybe starting off with what I said earlier, it goes for the creative space as well.
47:24Done is always better than perfect in most cases. Of course, for some cases, it just doesn't apply. So getting out there and just doing it and seeing what happens usually is a great, great way to start. I know most people say do a ton of research and stuff like that but like research and all happens along the way the best second uh the best validation whether you're a startup your product is working is not usually a wait list but is if someone can actually pay you for what you're actually providing so if they can lend that hard-earned cash to you uh that's usually a proven metric for okay well you're probably onto something i guess the third thing would probably be focusing a lot on the consumer and the customer more than all the noise that's out there like you're going to get a ton of advice and that's great you can say thank you to it but you don't have to listen to everything that people say just focusing on like is the customer benefiting am i adding a lot of value to my audience and like just obsessing manically about that is usually when you build great businesses and i think putting that customer first is is a very it's a very cliche thing but often more often than not you'll see most people don't do it and that's why they they sort of kind of struggle and yeah i think fourth would be fall in love with the problem not necessarily the solution so most people say you know don't get to attach to the solution i say get attached but to the problem because your solution is a method to solve a problem it usually may not be in the first instance that specific so like be adaptable to like pivoting as it comes but yeah genuinely love the problem because that love for the problem will result one fine day in a great product and if not then you know that probably it's it's not a problem that you think is worth solving and that's also okay and i guess the last thing is don't take advice from someone who hasn't been in your place just as an example right like if somebody tells you to do something and they're not really there yet like just ask yourself whether that advice makes sense because they haven't gone through it so what they're really probably doing is they're probably stuck in an echo chamber and just rattling advice that they have heard without actually going through it themselves and so fundamentally do you want to take advice from someone like that or do you want to take advice from someone who's a little ahead of you in the journey who's gone through everything you've gone through right that's what actually makes coaching and just getting a coach and someone to help you out really really a game changer because yeah you're paying them money but you're paying the money to help you fast track learning and your learning curves.
49:59So pay money if it means that you're actually getting that help in fast tracking and make sure you spend it on someone who's actually been there, done that rather than selling you some fairy tale. Varun, thanks again for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. I know your time is super valuable. So I appreciate you taking time out of your day to join me here on the show. For anyone listening that wants to connect with you, learn more about what you got going on, learn more from your resources, where is the best place for them to go? Where do you want people to find you? Sure. So you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn so I can share that link with you.
50:33It's Varun Balsara, V-A-R-U-N, B-A-L-S-A-R-A. You can email me on varun at letslevelup.io. And for a little more on what we do, we help online creators, which are typically coaches and consultants scale their learning academies online. So we have the technology and we have the one-on-one support and tools to actually help you get there. So we're a full stack solution that helps you build different courses. So whether that's pre-recorded courses, coaching programs, one-on-one programs, and sort of create the entire sales funnel and the entire backend tooling kit. So you're not worried about admin, logistics, all of that.
51:14So we streamline the entire process for you into one tool, replacing 10 plus other tools. So you can check that out if you're interested at letslevelup.io. Awesome. I will be sure to put that all in the show notes. As always, for anybody that's interested in connecting with Varun, you can find those links below in the show notes on your favorite podcast player or at theinvestorspodcast.com. Thanks again, Varun. It's been a pleasure. All right, guys. That's all I had for this week's episode of Millennial Investing. I'll see you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by the Investors Podcast Network.
51:52Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin. And every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.
From the publisher
Robert Leonard chats w/ Varun Balsara to discuss the creator economy's size, online careers, leveraging Chat GPT, & much much more!
Varun is an entrepreneur and co-founder of “Let’s Level Up” – a platform that helps online content creators build profitable communities and scale up their businesses.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
00:00 - Intro
02:27 - The creator economy, what it is, and how big of a market it is today.
03:44 - How to turn your passion into an online business and the different ways creators can monetize their knowledge through content creation?
23:29 - The different sales funnels you creators can use to market their content.
31:54 - How to use Chat GPT to your advantage in content creation and marketing?
49:54 - How to stand out from other creators?
58:10 - Varun’s best tips on how to market and sell content online if you don’t have a big social media following.
*Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences.
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