Andy Black
Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
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EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
LEGACY MEMBER
I posted this as a Twitter thread a while back, which means it was edited down to within an inch of it's life.
I'll come back and edit it nicer for the forum, and probably post to LinkedIn as I've ditched Twitter and it's damn character constraints.
Hope it helps!
Let me know your takeaways and what you'll do different going forward.
Andy
------------------------------------
HOW TO CREATE BATTLE-TESTED CONTENT
- You KNOW helps people at scale
- Brings inbound leads for your service business
- Has people pleading to buy a SHORT course
(WITHOUT NEEDING TO BE AN EXPERT)
STEP 1: Create content you KNOW helps people at scale
1) Find people to help. REPLY and help them - where they are.
- Don't try to get them onto an email list to help them via email.
- Don't try to send them to articles you've written already (unless you've already gone through this process).
2) Keep showing up. Keep helping people.
- If you can’t do this for 30 days without expectation of anything in return then maybe this particular topic isn’t for you. Follow your nose until you find some topic you can’t NOT help people with every single day.
3) Keep an eye out for where you repeat yourself.
- You’ll remember you already wrote something and go looking for your previous reply(s).
- If you can’t find them you’ll rewrite it from memory, a little better than the first time.
4) To stop repeating yourself, create an article/thread you can point people to in future.
5) Keep pointing people to those threads in the future.
TADA!
You’ve created battle-tested content you KNOW helps people at scale.
IMPORTANT:
Help people where you can get feedback. Go where they are. Don’t post to the void where no-one will see it, and don’t post where you can’t get feedback.
Refine your help/message/posts based on initial feedback, confusion, and queries.
Refine, refine, refine until your response flows from your fingers.
I’ve found active forums and Facebook groups great for this. Twitter seems to have an even faster feedback loop.
The faster the feedback, the quicker it’s polished.
STEP 2: Get known as “The XYZ Guy/Gal”
Signs it’s working:
- People start referring to you as “The XYZ Guy/Gal”.
- People start tagging you when someone has a problem with XYZ.
- People start DM’ing you for help with XYZ.
Voila! You’re now getting inbound leads for your XYZ service.
NOTES:
- You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be helping people and SEEN to be helping people.
- This can happen sooner than you think!
STEP 3: Divorce your time from your income
- I chose to create a course first, for many reasons that I’ll go into in another thread sometime.
- You may choose to create an app, hire people, or do *many* other things to divorce your time from your income.
TO CREATE A COURSE:
- Wait till people ask if you have a course.
- Keep a look out for the “shut up and take my money” moment when someone pleads with you for a shorter version of all your content and says they'll pay for it.
- Create a short post telling people you’re thinking of doing a course/workshop/whatever on XYZ for $X and ask who’s interested.
- If you get replies then you’re off to the races. Not only do you know it’s a course people want (for $X price), but you also have a ROUTE TO MARKET.
- Produce a ***SHORT*** course.
For heavens sake, please don’t create War and Peace.
What's the main thing people are stuck on that you can quickly help them overcome? Create a short course that helps people overcome that obstacle.
Some people will pay for a short course from you so they DON'T have to go through all the content you’ve produced to date.
These are the people value their time and will buy the shortest route from
to 
.
My first course was ONE hour long.
In my sales page I said people could buy a 24 hour course on Udemy for $10
... or my 1 hour course for $299.
In the DIY market, some people put a value their time and will pay to learn faster.
That course sold over 120 times to the community where I’d been helping people and created all my threads.
It brought in $40k over 4 years with "only" the initial announcement that the course was available.
IMPORTANT MINDSET STUFF
Ignore at your peril.
To be in business we have to do two things:
1/ Help people
2/ Get paid
Focus on *helping people* with little expectation and good things will happen.
If you want to get paid eventually then do it for some subject you KNOW people somewhere already pay to get better at.
“Money is proof you helped your fellow man.”
(MJ DeMarco)
Start with one person. Start now.
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person closest to you.”
(Mother Theresa)
I'll come back and edit it nicer for the forum, and probably post to LinkedIn as I've ditched Twitter and it's damn character constraints.
Hope it helps!
Let me know your takeaways and what you'll do different going forward.
Andy
------------------------------------
HOW TO CREATE BATTLE-TESTED CONTENT
- You KNOW helps people at scale
- Brings inbound leads for your service business
- Has people pleading to buy a SHORT course
(WITHOUT NEEDING TO BE AN EXPERT)
STEP 1: Create content you KNOW helps people at scale
1) Find people to help. REPLY and help them - where they are.
- Don't try to get them onto an email list to help them via email.
- Don't try to send them to articles you've written already (unless you've already gone through this process).
2) Keep showing up. Keep helping people.
- If you can’t do this for 30 days without expectation of anything in return then maybe this particular topic isn’t for you. Follow your nose until you find some topic you can’t NOT help people with every single day.
3) Keep an eye out for where you repeat yourself.
- You’ll remember you already wrote something and go looking for your previous reply(s).
- If you can’t find them you’ll rewrite it from memory, a little better than the first time.
4) To stop repeating yourself, create an article/thread you can point people to in future.
5) Keep pointing people to those threads in the future.
TADA!
You’ve created battle-tested content you KNOW helps people at scale.
IMPORTANT:
Help people where you can get feedback. Go where they are. Don’t post to the void where no-one will see it, and don’t post where you can’t get feedback.
Refine your help/message/posts based on initial feedback, confusion, and queries.
Refine, refine, refine until your response flows from your fingers.
I’ve found active forums and Facebook groups great for this. Twitter seems to have an even faster feedback loop.
The faster the feedback, the quicker it’s polished.
STEP 2: Get known as “The XYZ Guy/Gal”
Signs it’s working:
- People start referring to you as “The XYZ Guy/Gal”.
- People start tagging you when someone has a problem with XYZ.
- People start DM’ing you for help with XYZ.
Voila! You’re now getting inbound leads for your XYZ service.
NOTES:
- You don’t need to be an expert. You just need to be helping people and SEEN to be helping people.
- This can happen sooner than you think!
STEP 3: Divorce your time from your income
- I chose to create a course first, for many reasons that I’ll go into in another thread sometime.
- You may choose to create an app, hire people, or do *many* other things to divorce your time from your income.
TO CREATE A COURSE:
- Wait till people ask if you have a course.
- Keep a look out for the “shut up and take my money” moment when someone pleads with you for a shorter version of all your content and says they'll pay for it.
- Create a short post telling people you’re thinking of doing a course/workshop/whatever on XYZ for $X and ask who’s interested.
- If you get replies then you’re off to the races. Not only do you know it’s a course people want (for $X price), but you also have a ROUTE TO MARKET.
- Produce a ***SHORT*** course.
For heavens sake, please don’t create War and Peace.
What's the main thing people are stuck on that you can quickly help them overcome? Create a short course that helps people overcome that obstacle.
Some people will pay for a short course from you so they DON'T have to go through all the content you’ve produced to date.
These are the people value their time and will buy the shortest route from
to .My first course was ONE hour long.
In my sales page I said people could buy a 24 hour course on Udemy for $10
... or my 1 hour course for $299.
In the DIY market, some people put a value their time and will pay to learn faster.
That course sold over 120 times to the community where I’d been helping people and created all my threads.
It brought in $40k over 4 years with "only" the initial announcement that the course was available.
IMPORTANT MINDSET STUFF
Ignore at your peril.
To be in business we have to do two things:
1/ Help people
2/ Get paid
Focus on *helping people* with little expectation and good things will happen.
If you want to get paid eventually then do it for some subject you KNOW people somewhere already pay to get better at.
“Money is proof you helped your fellow man.”
(MJ DeMarco)
Start with one person. Start now.
“Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person closest to you.”
(Mother Theresa)
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