The learning center

Nothing has made me more money and created more opportunities than creating content for my audience.

Many entrepreneurs see this and agree that creating content is a powerful way to attract ideal customers…but then they hit a mental roadblock.

Picture this. You’re getting ready to write or record a piece of content and start having second thoughts. A negative voice inside your head starts intruding with,

“Who do you think you are to be doing this?”

“Why would anyone read, watch, or listen to you?”

“So-and-so is better than you at this and funnier and richer and better looking.”

It’s a sort of imposter syndrome. You feel uncomfortable presenting yourself as an “expert,” especially when there are other people who are more knowledgeable. Also, what will your industry colleagues and peers think?

If you’re comparing yourself to your peers and fearing their judgment, then remember they’re not your target market. You want to impress your prospects and customers, not your industry colleagues.

If you’re truly uncomfortable presenting yourself as an “expert,” you can adopt an alternative content creator “archetype.”

In my new book, Lean Marketing, I outline the 5 content creator archetypes:

The Expert: The Expert is the most common content creator archetype. This person has domain authority through knowledge, expertise, or experience.

The Curator: The Curator sifts the wheat from the chaff. Their value proposition is that they’ll save you time and effort by sorting through everything and only sharing valuable and interesting content with you. Media companies, best-of lists, museums, and the news are all examples of curation.

The Interviewer: The Interviewer is focused on people and conversations with them. If you don’t have a lot of expertise or authority of your own, it’s a great way to borrow them and have some rub off on you. Oprah Winfrey is a great example of The Interviewer archetype.

The Amateur on a Journey: The Amateur on a Journey archetype openly admits that they have limited or no expertise in their field of focus but will take you on their journey to mastery and discovery. They share both their wins and losses along the way, which makes them very relatable and can make for compelling content. Tim Ferris is an example of this. He has openly shared his journey in various fields, such as learning skills, health, and investing. (More recently, he has taken on The Interviewer archetype.)

The Enigma: The Enigma archetype lives an original, interesting, or unusual life and shares some of it with their audience. Entire industries have been built around getting a look inside the lives of the rich and famous. While you don’t necessarily have to be a celebrity, the key to success with The Enigma archetype is doing cool or unusual stuff that people wouldn’t normally get to see. Allow your audience to peek behind the curtain.

Which content creator archetype resonates the most with you?

I was recently being interviewed on a podcast, and the interviewer asked me why I wrote my latest book, Lean Marketing.

I remember Seth Godin once answering the same question, and he said, “I only write a book when I have no choice.”

I feel the exact same way.

Writing a (good) book is such an unreasonably difficult, long, and painful process that no one with any sense would do so… unless they had no other choice.

Having seen what’s happening in the marketing space over the last few years has forced my hand.

Every marketing guru you listen to has the same message — do more.

Every marketing agency has the same message — spend more.

Every social media manager — post more often to more platforms.

It’s exhausting and overwhelming.

You scroll social media and the volume has been turned up louder and louder. The claims are bigger and bigger.

One prominent marketer recently promoted his membership program. The sign-up bonuses included 118 hours of recorded video content and a funnel how-to guide that was 653 pages long—that’s not including his main content and courses.

WTF? That sounds like a frickin’ nightmare, not an incentive.

Drinking from a firehouse is a bad way to get hydration.

What I want, and what most entrepreneurs want is the few things that will make the biggest difference.

When I look at what the most sophisticated marketers in the world are doing, what’s surprising is how long their not-to-do list is and how short their to-do list is.

Their marketing is lean.

We run a world-class multimillion-dollar coaching, consulting, and training business.

Do we do TikTok? Nope.

Instagram? No

Podcast? No (but coming soon)

YouTube? No

Funnel-blah-di-blahs. No

Yet we a drowning with inbound leads. We just hired two new salespeople this week to keep up with the lead flow.

That’s why I wrote my new book—to share the refreshing and important message that you can get bigger and better results by actually doing less marketing.

More importantly, I wanted to show you how to implement a lean marketing infrastructure in your business.

You can pre-order the new book HERE.

If you’d like immediate help getting lean marketing implemented in your business, book a marketing audit HERE.

There’s so much friggin crap online regarding AI right now.

Open up TikTok or Instagram, and you get some pimply teenager on your FYP page starting their video with “I’m going to show you how to make 100 Instagram posts in under two minutes”

Hold that thought for a moment and look at who you’re actually following on social media. Really, have a look. Likely it’s:

• a real human being doing cool shit (inspiration)
• a real human being telling you a story (entertainment)
• a real human being teaching you something (education)

Often, it’s a combination of all three. If that’s who you follow, why would your audience want anything less?

No one wants your crappy AI-generated motivational quotes set to a sunset background. No one wants your cliche-filled AI-generated article or social post. This stuff is just spam and noise.

Despite this, I spend hours every day in AI and AI-assisted tools.

In fact, I dedicated a whole chapter in my new book, Lean Marketing, to AI (chapter 6).

Here’s a quote from that chapter (page 129):

“AI is truly the Iron Man suit for marketers, allowing you to do more with less and helping you build a truly lean marketing infrastructure. I think of it as enabling us to be the conductor of the orchestra rather than having to play each individual instrument..”

AI is making me orders of magnitude more productive, but I’m not using it to generate content for me, because it’s not very good at being Allan Dib. It’s also not very good at telling my stories and experiences.

It’s my Iron Man suit.

I’m using it to augment my abilities, making me faster, more productive, and more efficient.

The right tools are important…but how you use them is even more so. Many people get faked out — they think if only they had Michelangelo’s hammer and chisel, they could create the statue of David.

The right tools combined with the right skills will make you an unstoppable marketing superhero.

I love the Internet. It brings together all these "weird" communities and subcultures.

Recently I got a video in my social feed about a controversy going on in the fountain pen community.

Yes, seriously.

My first reaction was, "There's a fountain pen community??"

My second reaction was, "There's CONTROVERSY in the fountain pen community!??

If ever there was a community where I'd expect peace and tranquility, it would be a fountain pen community. 😂

Google "Lamy dark lilac controversy" if you think I'm messing with you.

It really brought home to me the importance of focusing on and understanding a niche.

Here's a passage from page 33 of my new book Lean Marketing:

"I’ll often ask someone who thinks they’ve niched down what their target market is, and they’ll say something like “women over 40 years old.” Great, so that’s narrowed it down to 1.5 billion people.

What do we do with that?

While I wouldn’t say you can’t be too niche, chances are that when you think you’ve niched enough, you probably haven’t.

You want your niche to be an inch wide and a mile deep. An inch wide means you target a very tightly defined segment or subsegment of a market. A mile deep means a large enough addressable market is looking for a solution to a specific problem.

This doesn’t have to be a huge market. It just needs to be the right market for you. You can be successful beyond your wildest dreams, even if 99.9 percent of the planet has never heard of you.

Have you nailed your inch-wide, mile-deep niche?

I hear it every day:

“I need to wrap my head around it first.”

“I need to figure out my strategy.”

“I’m researching and learning.”

Look, I get it. I’m the strategy guy. The 1-Page Marketing Plan is all about your marketing strategy…but…this is just your starting point.

Be honest with yourself.

Do you really need more information?

More data?

A more comprehensive strategy?

Or is it just procrastination and fear that's driving you?

If you consume information and plan forever, nothing can go wrong.

After all, nothing's actually happened.

It's all just theory.

It feels safe.

On the other hand, doing is riskier.

When you do the things you've planned, there's a chance it might not work out.

In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it won’t work straight out of the gate.

It’s scary. It sucks.

But it’s also the only path to success and mastery.

Every master was once a disaster.

In my new book Lean Marketing, I talk about an affliction that particularly plagues smart people.

“Too many smart people think they’re measuring twice and cutting once but often they never cut. They just measure forever.” (Lean Marketing page 24)

It’s easy to get caught in an endless loop of gathering more information, doing more research, and endless planning.

You know what produces the very best information?

Action.

A better path is to accept that your plan is imperfect and course-correct as you get real feedback from the market.

A scientist in a lab spends some time putting together a hypothesis (plan) but then spends most of their time running the experiments that generate the data.

What’s stopping you from doing the same?

What I saw on my wife’s phone shocked me…

It was some grainy TikTok videos with poor lighting, and poor sound, shot on a cell phone while driving, but they have MILLIONS of views. 

It’s one woman’s epic tale of being deceived by, marrying, and divorcing a pathological liar.

ReesaTeesa has been blowing up TikTok and has racked up over 200 million views 😲WTF?

Curious, I went onto her TikTok page to see what the fuss was all about and, more importantly, to see what was so compelling to so many people.

Two hours later and totally sucked into her story, I’m shouting, “Oh no, he didn’t!”

Her story is broken up into 10-minute videos that span over 50 parts! It would take you over 7 hours to watch the whole lot… and millions of people are watching.

She’s breaking just about every rule taught by social media “gurus.”

Good lighting - nope

Scripting - no

Editing - nonexistent

Production quality - as low as it can get

Keep your content short and to the point - hell no

In my new book, Lean Marketing, I outline how to create great content. The cardinal rule is: don’t be boring. You can break almost any other rule except this one. You do this with compelling storytelling.

The human mind is hardwired to pay attention to information delivered in story form, and ReesaTeesa does this in spades.

She’s an ordinary person telling her story of heartbreak…a story that’s probably less interesting than many of the stories you have but just haven’t told.

Some of the elements that keep you hooked:

• Continuous new open loops - you NEED to know how they resolve
• Vulnerably - she tells you how it is even when it doesn’t make her look good. This builds massive trust.
• Authenticity - it’s clear she’s being herself, not some airbrushed caricature or performance for social media
• It’s often raw, and she conveys emotion. You want her to win.

ReesaTeesa cost me hours of my weekend but reinforced powerful lessons in content creation and storytelling (at least that’s how I’m justifying it).

You don’t need all that fancy stuff. Just turn on your phone camera, be yourself and start telling your story...

I've found entrepreneurs grossly overestimate how aware their customers are about their product range.

Have you ever been bewildered as to why one of your best customers bought something that you sell from someone else? When you ask them why they didn’t buy it from you, you facepalm as they reply, “I had no idea you sold that.”

In a previous life, I sold telecommunications services - Internet access, fixed lines (remember those?), wireless services, VPNs, and so on. We encountered this problem constantly.

“I didn’t know you guys did [insert service we had been selling for years] that’s a shame as we signed a two-year contract for that with another provider just last week." 🤦

We radically reduced the probability of this happening by paying close attention to a key metric - products per customer. If a customer had only one product with us e.g. maybe Internet but not voice services, that was a problem for three reasons:

1. The customer had a fragmented experience. They’d get multiple bills from multiple providers. Technical issues frequently meant finger-pointing between providers.
2. We were capturing a lower share of revenue than we could be
3. It gave a competitor a foot in the door to steal the customer from us

By paying attention to and rewarding our salespeople on the “product per customer” metric, we massively reduced these issues. These were also the easiest sales to make because the customer already knew us, liked us, and trusted us.

If you sell multiple products, you need to segment your customers by product line and consistently make them aware of the products they could be buying from you that they currently don’t.

In many areas of life, your efforts and your results are linear. You try a little harder, you work a bit more, and you get proportional gains.

This is much less true in business. You can somewhat brute-force your way to a mediocre level of success, but soon enough, you’ll encounter a plateau that you just can’t break through, no matter how hard you work.

Running a business is much more akin to standing in front of an impenetrable vault that requires a four-number combination to unlock. Inside is everything you ever dreamed of. 

When you have one number dialed in, you get nothing.

When you have two numbers dialed in, you get nothing.

When you have three numbers dialed, despite being close, the vault remains locked, and you still get nothing.

However, when you dial in that fourth number, everything changes.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill described this phenomenon:

“When riches begin to come they come so quickly, in such great abundance, that one wonders where they have been hiding during all those lean years.”

The stuff inside the vault that you desperately want (lots of revenue, plenty of profit, happy customers, awesome team) is often being blocked by that final frustrating digit that’s missing.

For many businesses, that missing digit is marketing.

The coolest part of what my team and I do is helping clients crack that final digit and then hearing that satisfying click as the vault unlocks for them. I’ve seen it happen many times, and it never gets old.

If you can relate to feeling like you have most of your digits dialed in but want my team to whisper that final digit in your ear, book a marketing audit HERE.

Back in 2016, ConvertKit was just another email marketing tool. They were pulling in $70-80k a month but needed something more to break out. Enter Nathan Barry (the founder) and Darrell Vesterfelt, just two guys on a ski trip, were hashing out a strategy to ramp up growth.

The Game Plan

When your business is small, you don’t need 10 different marketing strategies. By chasing 5 rabbits, you’ll catch none. You need one repeatable strategy that works. 

Forget fancy gimmicks; Darrel came up with an idea for webinars. It was their golden ticket. Affordable, effective, and right in the wheelhouse for a lean operation like ConvertKit. The goal? Pure and simple: Max out on webinars.

The Hustle

ConvertKit went all-in. We're talking about 150 webinars in just 365 days. All the webinars were the same but each was hosted by a different affiliate. They partnered with anyone keen to join their affiliate program, size of the audience didn’t matter. The message was clear: Everyone gets a shot.

The Raw Tactics

1. Friction-free sign-up: ConvertKit's affiliate program was pretty easy to get into. Sign up, get going, and earn money.
2. Audience Size Doesn’t Matter: Big fish, small pond – didn't matter. ConvertKit teamed up with anyone ready to act. Although, they managed to book Pat Flynn in the first quarter. This webinar alone got around a thousand signups within 24 hours.
3. Real Value, No Sleazy Sales: Their webinars offered pure value and asked nothing in return. At the beginning of each webinar, they countered “typical webinar sales traps” objections by announcing “We’re not going to sell you here a single thing”. Instead, they gave away online courses, ebooks, and t-shirts. And affiliate partners often gave freebies of their own.
4. Laser-Focused on Bloggers: Darrell and Nathan knew their target audience – bloggers. And they stuck to it, making every move count.
5. Reliable Tech: Nothing flashy, or breakable. Just solid, reliable tools to get the job done right.

This helped ConvertKit grow by over 625%. 

They went from $98k/month to $625k/month within a year. 

If the lesson you took away from this story is that webinars are the key to rapid growth, then you learned the wrong lesson.

Often marketing is made out to be some weird, incomprehensible voodoo. However, the reality is it’s about creating a simple, solid plan and being consistent with it.

ConvertKit’s story isn’t about a magic bullet. It's about being intentional and consistent.