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Unknown
I wanted to record this episode because I've seen in the past couple of years big influencers quitting on social media. Big names going away from it because of mental health.
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Unknown
And many other people talking about mental health and content creation.
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Unknown
And I think I know why, because Alessio and I, we've built a YouTube channel as well.
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Unknown
Very big one. Well, 220,000 subscribers. And we've been lucky enough to build a business, a multiple six figure business on the back of it.
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Unknown
But it wasn't easy.
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Unknown
And I think if you want to grow an audience in 2024, given all of this mental health issues, we want to build it in a way that is sustainable, that is actually enjoyable, and then you can grow a business as well.
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Unknown
Instead of just thinking about the vanity metrics.
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Unknown
Hi friend. This is Iacopo and Alessia.
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Unknown
And
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Unknown
Let me start by listing all of the things that we personally did since 2016. To grow a YouTube business. If you wanna call it like that. And the mistakes that we made, the struggle that we had. And also transitioning to something that we found new and new, a more sustainable way of doing something that's more enjoyable but still wildly profitable.
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Unknown
You know, my wife and I have been chasing views and subscribers and watch time for years. The first thing that I set my mind into when we started the first YouTube channel, Lazy Dancer Tapes, was.
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Unknown
Let's get as many subscribers as possible. This way we'll get monetized on YouTube and earn money from it. And money from views.
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Unknown
Back in 2016, we didn't have a threshold of 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours watch time, so we got monetized immediately.
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Unknown
So we started running ads on our few videos that we had on the channel. And I still remember the first check from Google that was not even a dollar. After a few months of working our butt off.
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Unknown
But despite that, we thought, let's just do more of this. You know, few videos equals few dollars. More videos equals more dollars. So we started doing more and more and more. We spent years just purely creating content for this big algorithm machine.
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Unknown
Even in groups, Facebook groups and communities, I see people only thinking about YouTube monetization.
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Unknown
And it frustrates me so much that I'm here telling you how to do things right, instead of continuing to fall into this algorithm trap.
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Unknown
We wanted to make our social media channels our main stream of income, but we didn't know how to monetize it outside the revenue.
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Unknown
After burning out, we said there's must be a better way. How do we make money with this thing? And a few things came to mind when googling it. When YouTube buying it and finding different influencers like Roberto Blakes and many others that are popping up right now.
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Unknown
You could do partnerships, sponsorships, you could do affiliates, and you can sell digital products.
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Unknown
And we did a little bit of everything, but at the end, we landed on digital products. Because. What is the point of doing sponsorships if it feels like you are selling somebody else's stuff and you still have to work for it? What is the point of doing affiliate if you still need a huge audience? Audience to get commissions on the affiliate links?
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Unknown
So we said, why don't we just sell our own stuff? Well, we didn't have any
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Unknown
digital product to sell, so we created one. And that's when we started selling membership and we started seeing decent money coming in.
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Unknown
Even if in the end, we managed to have a decently big channel and a decently big business as well. I don't think the struggle that we went through was worth it.
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Unknown
I mean, don't get me wrong was totally worth it. We learned so much from it. But now, in retrospective, I see the main two mistakes we made there.
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Unknown
The first mistake we made is that we try to grow a big channel, and therefore we had to appeal to a broad audience, because this is how the YouTube algorithm works. It will push your video to the audience that it's more likely to like it.
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Unknown
and if you want a lot of views, you need to be very broad and being trendy.
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Unknown
But it's exhausting, and it requires you to really pump a lot of energy on things that you might not even like producing.
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Unknown
The second mistake we made was selling only low ticket products.
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Unknown
It was a good entry point for us. We were not confident in selling high ticket products at the time, so that was for us, the comfortable ground. Then we started with what we knew was doable for us. But the problem with that is that we created a machine that was hungry for views and hungry for new customers every single month.
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Unknown
Here's a great thing about having a big channel. For example, one of our launches was a free online event to launch our membership membership
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Unknown
having about 150,000 subscribers at the time, we managed to have more than 1200 people registering for the free event and usually when you have a free event, you want to offer people something under a paywall.
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Unknown
In our case, it was a membership and we were expecting about 1 to 2% conversion rate. In fact, out of 100 people, out of 1200 people registered, only half of them showed up in the live and only about 100 people signed up for the membership.
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Unknown
So if you have a big channel, you can rely on a ton of traffic and drive this type of big events
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Unknown
like the big gurus are doing rightfully because they have partners, they can run ads, they have profitability, they know their stuff, they know they can rely on traffic.
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Unknown
But what are the small channels going to do about that? Can you compete with somebody that has got 200, 500,000 subscribers? You cannot use the same model, and if you want to get there, it's going to take you a long time to get there. If you don't burn out before
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Unknown
So hopefully I convinced you not to go for go growing this big channel and trying all the things that the gurus are doing. That's in the past. We are in 2024.
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Unknown
but for you to embrace this new way of doing things, new way of growing an audience of clients, you've got to forget about one thing that you probably is really dear to you. Vanity metrics.
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Unknown
Instead of obsessing about how many views did my video get by refreshing on your analytics page, you obsess over what is the actual people that you want to attract. What do they think about what? What are their frustrations? Their desires? Their dreams?
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Unknown
If you create videos around that, you will only attract people that are thinking and being triggered by that kind of stuff.
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Unknown
So the first step for you would be to list down.
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Unknown
All of the things that your ideal client is going through right now.
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Unknown
What are the main obstacles they're going through every day? You can talk about that. What is the aspiration? What do they want? What is that something that they want to attain today. But for some reason they can't get there.
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Unknown
Thinking about that,
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Unknown
instead of obsessing with the algorithm and SEO and all of that rubbish. Just think about a few keywords. Just few keywords that come to mind that might trigger the interest of your ideal client.
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Unknown
There is no algorithm hack. There is no perfect title description. Get rid of all of those apps that help you put together the perfect test, the SEO friendly video. Forget about all of that. Just use a few keywords that you know only your ideal client will be attracted to.
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Unknown
A simple example I did not overthink the title for this video, but I know many of my ideal clients. One of their mental block is that they think they need a big audience. And the title of the video is That new way to Grow an Audience in 2024 or 2025? So with that keyword new and audience, I know that I'm going to attract people that yes,
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Unknown
they want to grow an audience, but that find a new way, a different way, because the old way sucks.
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Unknown
Then after you've got a list of keywords that are going to attract your ideal client,
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Unknown
it's so crucial that you create content that you will enjoy.
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Unknown
A lesson I made this mistake to grow a big channel. We stepped into trends. We stepped into topics that Alicia didn't really want to get into, but she did it anyway. We did it anyway because we needed a lot of views.
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Unknown
And this is what burns you out. It's not the amount of hours that you spend creating content is the quality of those hours. And I remember when I started my visual effects career, I used to love sitting in front of a computer for hours during the night without sleeping, because I was enjoying learning how to create 3D models.
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Unknown
I never burned out on that. I started burning out on that when deliveries for movies were imposed on me. When they had an unrealistic deadline that I had to meet, I was still doing what I was doing in my bedroom when I was 18, but then it became a chore. It became a frustration when I I had to do it.
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Unknown
The same goes for content creation. If it's terrible, if it feels like a chore, it's going to burn you out. So
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Unknown
keep it simple. Think about the best people you can help and you want to work with, because you want to create a business around your social media and create content that you also enjoy creating for them.
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Unknown
Then, within your content, it's not all about teaching. You should also share about your story, just like I did a moment ago when I told you about my visual effects background. People want to know who you are. They want to know what you like, what your values are.
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Unknown
I personally like to relate with people that take care of themselves physically and mentally, that have a good relationship with her partner and their partner, because these are the values that I have.
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Unknown
I want to have a balanced life where I take care of my health, my finances, and my hobbies and my wife, because I think it's really important to me. What is it important to you? I want to know if I'm watching a video that you just created. I want to know a bit about you because I'm not going to buy a program from you if I don't quite trust the way you live your life or the way you carry yourself.
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Unknown
So don't think that people don't care. I care so other people will care too.
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Unknown
Then if you design your content around explaining your method why you are different, and also you give people call to actions to make them do a specific thing. Liking a post, writing a comment, sign up for a, an event. Download the free resource that you have. People will do it. People are not going to do what you're not.
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Unknown
Tell them to do. So for example,
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Unknown
if it's been useful, this video so far, click on the like button. It will really help spread this message
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Unknown
and see if it works. It's a test.
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Unknown
I promise you, if you start ignoring the analytics and obsessing over your ideal not any client, just your ideal client,
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Unknown
creating this type of content,
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Unknown
you will attract less views. Some. I'm telling you to do the exact opposite of what everybody else is doing, like get more views. I don't want you to get more views. I want you to get the right views because your life depends on it.
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Unknown
Your mental health depends on it. And also you want to attract only a few types of people. Not everybody. So it's going to take a while to get the hang of it. But this is the key for audience creation. Now if you want to have an audience of buyers as well, there are a few things that we want to look into.
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Unknown
Now, because an audience by itself is just a bunch of likes and subscribers, you cannot deposit that in the bank and you're not going to impact any one as well. We want to look into monetization as well.
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Unknown
for Lazy Dancer tapes, back in the days we've
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Unknown
we needed to launch products, usually our membership. But sometimes it was self-standing products as well. So what what was our strategy? Our strategy was to create a live online event which was completely free.
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Unknown
Remember, we were all about growing a big audience, so everything we did was for free. Give as much as you can. So we created this events to launch our products.
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Unknown
There were free. That's why we had thousands of registrations.
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Unknown
And if you have a big audience that it's it's probably a good idea. So you can have a lot of people going through your funnel. But if you don't have that volume of traffic, what do you do? I recommend you and we are doing this as well. I recommend you to create paid low ticket online events.
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Unknown
So outside your free content you can think about giving a masterclass, a workshop, a webinar very specific to fix a narrow but complete problem.
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Unknown
meaning get your ideal clients. Do something with you practically, but also investing a little bit of money in themselves with you.
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Unknown
Every view, every click, every comment is a micro yes, but when somebody pays you money, it's a way bigger. Yes. So the sooner you can get that yes, into the bank account, the sooner a relationship is built.
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Unknown
So something you could do if you have a small audience first to grow your email list. Second to monetize a little bit immediately. Third, to create a bigger relationship with your audience is a paid low ticket workshop.
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Unknown
Think about a problem you can solve with this workshop. Announce it, promote it for 7 to 10 days and you're done.
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Unknown
You should not overcomplicate this. It should be easy.
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Unknown
maybe something that you're really doing for your clients. Just package it all up and create a workshop for it.
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Unknown
In the workshop, you can have the chance to deliver massive value people that were on the fence, maybe buying your high ticket product, they would say, this is incredible. I gain so much value from this workshop. I might sign up with you for maybe a close proximity program, maybe a coaching program, maybe a 1 to 1, whatever you have.
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Unknown
But the beauty of the low ticket product is that you can then introduce your high ticket product. There. The difference is the not dealing. You are not dealing with cold people that don't know who you are. They don't know how, if this is going to work for them or not, because it already invested something with you, so they already pre-sold in a way on you.
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Unknown
And if you have done a good job on your content, you told your story. They know your method. They know what you offer. It's a never easier sell. At the end of the workshop.
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Unknown
This is basically it. This is the way that even channels below 1000 subscribers can make thousands of dollars without AdSense, without affiliate, without sponsorships, which is all of the things that all of the other people are trying to do because they don't know any better, because they've been sold. The dream that coming from their dream, being burnt for it, it's not worth pursuing.
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Unknown
Your ideal clients or the people that you want to impact? They need you right now. They don't need you five, six, ten years from now. Where you manage to grow a big audience. They need you now. And
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Unknown
This is a beautiful way for you to really narrow it down to who you want to talk to. What type of value can you bring to the table? For whom? For whom? Specifically? And just go directly to them. Speak directly to these people. It will seem like nobody, nobody cares. But you never know who's watching. And as soon as you start putting out offers about a lot ticket workshop people will show up, especially if you ask them beforehand what would they like to to do if you if you ask them options, maybe on the title of the workshop, maybe on the topic that they want to work on.
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Unknown
Use your community because you are helping them. You are their guide and as soon as you have something more valuable than free content, they'll jump on it. If you've done your marketing research well.
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Unknown
I don't want to overwhelm you with more information, but let me recap. I really hope you understood that growing a big channel, whether it is totally doable for anyone dedicated enough to do so, I want you to really understand that
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Unknown
the why you want to do it. If you don't have a big enough, why you're not going to get there.
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Unknown
It's very difficult, especially nowadays.
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Unknown
And I gave you a new recipe to grow an audience of buyers and audience of clients that is not going to allow you to create a big channel. And at least within the next few months, but it's going to create an immense level of impact for you and the people that you want to help
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Unknown
You will manage to monetize your channel sooner and not be discouraged by the algorithm trap anymore.
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Unknown
So instead of speaking to a broad audience and speak to a very narrow audience, then when it comes to monetization, try a little ticket workshop, promote it for just 7 to 10 days. Get people in and then introduce them to your next level of support, your high ticket offer. This is how you move your people from social media into your ecosystem, into becoming a client coaching client, to 1 to 1 clients.
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Unknown
That's the magic recipe is not difficult, is it? It just requires you to have the right mindset to implement it.
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Unknown
there are no secrets, just a set of skills that you need to put in place one step after the other. But I don't want you to burn out in the process.
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Unknown
And this is the reason why I made this video.
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Unknown
And I
