Craftsman Creative

[00:00:00] Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the Craftsman Creative Podcast. My name's Daren Smith. I'm the founder of Craftsman Creative. And yeah, I do all this content, everything I write, everything I record. It's all me. You're getting me every single time. How cool is that? Let's dive in today, but first, I wanna tell you about something.

I've got some cool workshops coming up over the next few weeks, so if you're listening to this, the day it comes out, or within the first week that it comes out, head over to workshops dot craftsman creative.co. And I've got two really cool ones coming up in March, 2023. The first one is how to Grow Your Business through Podcasts, and it's a joint workshop with my buddy Jeremy Ends who runs the podcast marketing something Podcast Marketing Academy.

There it is. And some other sites that he runs. So he's great. Knows tons about podcasts and marketing, and I'll be talking about how to show up and be a good guest on podcast, but also how to use your own content [00:01:00] to generate leads and grow your business. So that'll be a cool one. The other one, Is my signature presentation or workshop where we'll dive into how to build a bespoke creative business.

It's an overview of what we teach deeply in like the 10 K challenge and in the Society of Independent creators and how we help people go through that when they work with us as clients and customers. But for you, I'm gonna give you a nice overview, give you one or two takeaways that you can implement right away into your business and see some growth.

And then when you're ready, you can come and join us in the Society of Independent Creators Community, or come in and get coaching or consulting with Craftsman Creative. So that said, let's dive into three ideas. Today we're talking about visibility and what does visibility mean? Another word is awareness or distribution.

Whatever you might call it, audience awareness, all those things combined. I use the term visibility and if you're not already familiar with why I'm choosing a V word [00:02:00] next week I think I'm gonna outline my new framework for building creative businesses. So that'll be exciting. It's a little teaser for you, but let's dive in.

First idea, maybe a short one. Everything is downstream from leads. So this is the very first sentence in Daniel Presley's book, scorecard Marketing that recently came. And I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go grab your copy. It's really good. And that first sentence really knocked me on my feet.

When I read it, I was just like, oh, you're right. Everything is downstream from leads. So this principle has been top of my mind the last few months. Without leads, you don't have a business and. With enough leads, on the other hand, you can become what he calls oversubscribed. And in that scenario, you have opportunities to raise your prices, decide how much you wanna work, decide who, what kind of clients and who you wanna work with.

You can take time off and all those things because you're oversubscribed, you're profitable, you have enough work coming in, and you've escaped that kind of feast or famine situation that many [00:03:00] freelancers, contractors, coaches, creative entrepreneurs find themselves in far too often. The next question obviously then is how do I get more leads if everything is downstream from leads and I need more of them?

How do I do that? And my short answer for you today is in any and every way that works, . So there's no one answer. So plenty of gurus online will. Sell you on the one funnel challenge, and here's how to use Twitter to get more leads and here's how to do LinkedIn prospecting, and here's how to do cold outreach.

They sell you that because it's what they know, right? And there's the truth is that there's no one right answer. So until you have more leads than you can handle, my suggestion is to focus on just one or two channels. So right now I've. Not turned off social media, it's really easy for me to post once a day.

It takes me 30 seconds and I don't really go on to social media anymore. After this recent digital detox that I did in the month of [00:04:00] February. It was really nice and really rewarding, and my business grew because I was focusing on the areas that mattered and not on social media and dooms scrolling, but I digress.

Just focus on one or two channel. So I'm focusing now on podcasting and workshops. So I'm spending tons of time making sure that this podcast is good and valuable. Every week I'm getting good feedback, better than I've ever gotten in the past from podcasting. So I think the work, making sure this was gonna be a valuable thing for people to tune into every week worked.

And these workshops that I just mentioned, doing one or two. And then I'm also gonna try to get on two to four podcasts as a guest in the coming months. And the rest of this year, I want to do 25 at least. This year. I did 12 last year. I would like to double that this year. I think I've already done three, so I'm well on my way.

Now it's about connecting with people and et cetera, et cetera. So anyway, what I'm saying is you find one or two channels that can get you the leads that you're looking. , I'm then using social media to an email to tell people about [00:05:00] the podcasting and workshops. Maybe you would call that four channels, but really the leads are generated at the podcast and workshop stage.

So then, you want to reverse engineer. You gotta think through how many clients do you need per month, or how many sales do you need per month, and how many leads do you need to talk to or to get into your email system in order to get that many clients. It's really simple math that you just reverse engineer, and by doing so by reverse engineering your number of leads.

All you wanna do, if you're just starting and doing this for the first time, or if you're like, I'm gonna commit to getting more leads and getting oversubscribed, then take that lead number and stick it on your wall or your computer screen and make a goal and a commitment to hit that number every month.

My number is a hundred new leads, and I track that through the scorecard, and I've mentioned that in this podcast before. If you go to scorecard dot crafton creative.co, it'll take you to an awesome scorecard. 30 questions takes a few minutes, yes or no questions. And what it does is it [00:06:00] gives you an idea of what systems are working in your business and which ones are not either non-existent or not working, not providing the outcomes that you want them to.

And that's a great starting point to identify, okay, what's the one or two areas I wanna work on this year or the next three months? Because if you try to do it, It's too hard, so you find one and you focus on it. So that's how I'm counting my leads is through those scorecards. My number is a hundred a month because between people that listen to the podcast and the workshops, I've got people that are coming in and are interested in my high ticket stuff and people that are interested in my coaching and my community.

So a hundred leads should lead to enough new business every month to keep me oversubscribed and on my way to having really good revenue. Okay, so there's your first idea. Everything is downstream from leads. That should be a major focus for you if you currently are not oversubscribed. Okay? Second idea, your minimum viable audience.

So let's do some math, shall we? , how big an audience do you need for your business to succeed at the level you [00:07:00] want it to? And again, we're bringing up this idea of reverse engineering it so you can discover your number fairly. . So I want you to think about the following for you. How many sales do you need?

How many calls do you need? How many leads, how many prospects, and what size audience, and. Let me give you some numbers around those, right? So you wanna identify, maybe you need four sales per month. So you need two to five times that number of calls. You need 10 to 30 times that number of leads, 10 x or so prospects, and 10 x or so audience.

So let's use the 10 x as our number cuz it makes for really easy math. Okay? . So let's use, for example, you have a $2,500 offer. Maybe you do video production, maybe you do monthly coaching or consulting for businesses. And so your offer is $2,500, so you need four sales a month to get $2,500. Or $10,000 a month, right?

2,500 times four, 10,000. So in order to get those four sales, you need 10 calls. [00:08:00] That's 2.5 x and you need a hundred leads. That's 10 x and a thousand prospects. That's 10 x and then a 10,000. Audience. Another 10 x. So this hypothetical person, maybe it does seem to align with you perfectly, but that's okay.

This hypothetical person would need 10,000 people to see their short form content on social media and get 10% of those off the platform and onto what's called an owned channel. So like a blog, a podcast, a workshop, something like that. These long form owned channel content pieces. Then have a call to action to get a lead magnet or to become a lead, to get an email, to get a download, to get a scorecard, whatever it might be.

So 10% of those people become a lead. So look, we got 10,000 impressions or things on social media. 10% of those people who see that content, come over and click on a link and go to your blog, a thousand people a month, read your blog. So it's [00:09:00] 250 a week or 200 or so a week. So if you're only getting 50, yeah, you're gonna have to four x that thing.

But let's keep going with this. 10,000 people a month. See your short form content, a thousand people a month. Visit your blog, a a hundred of them. Join your email list or become a lead. And those leads start getting emails every month and 10. Decide that they're ready to learn more about the service because the emails do a good job giving context and tension.

And those a hundred people turn into 10 calls, which turns into four sales cuz you've mastered your sales pitch and you've got people coming in every week, right? So as you can likely guess, if any part of that system is underperforming, you wouldn't end up with four new clients every. So if you don't have 10,000 people viewing your short form content how are you gonna get a thousand people per week over to your blogs?

Are you guest posting? Are you. Putting the link in your podcast appearances, like, how are you gonna get a thousand people a month over to your website? [00:10:00] Okay. You gotta figure that out. Most people choose content because it's what they know and it's easy and it's what they're already doing.

So they just optimize it to get more people from social media over to their. website, and if you're not getting a thousand visitors to turn into a hundred new email subscribers or leads every month, then that part needs some focus. If your a hundred leads aren't turning into 10 calls, then that needs your focus, et cetera, et cetera.

So you need enough awareness to generate enough engagement that turns into enough interest in conversion. Okay? So I really want you to think about what are your numbers, and as soon as you have them, that becomes another target to hit every day or week or month to make sure you have the deal flow coming in consistently.

Okay? So all these systems are connected. Your email engagement system's connected to your lead generation system, which is connected to your content system. All these. . So last thought for you. Let me check my time here. I'm at 10 minutes. That's good. I would, I want, wanna try to keep these till 15 or less or I think I've gone to 20 once or twice.

So [00:11:00] let's keep this last one short. This last idea is that you have an awareness problem. These are all connected, right? These are all very similar. Seth Goden has often said to artists and creators, you don't have a product problem. You have an awareness problem. The problem is that nobody knows you exist.

Okay? My guess is that statement is true for 99% of us, maybe even more . So just as everything in your business is downstream from leads, what comes before leads is awareness. So you have to identify an audience of people that are perfectly targeted. Their needs align with what your business provides. , and then you've gotta figure out a way to get a consistent number of people to become a prospect, to go from passively consuming your content on social media to actively clicking, engaging, signing up to learn more and becoming a lead.

So you might have the most amazing lead magnet or email welcome series or 60 minute webinar, but if no one knows about it, the [00:12:00] results meaning more clients in sales, they don't just magically. So every part of the system has to be working in order to get the desired outcome. The mistake I see a lot of creators make is they think that they're not selling enough because they're not good enough.

And it goes back to this fear of I'm not enough. I have, I don't have enough experience, I don't have enough credentials The number of people that are incredibly talented musicians that I see going back over and over again to get another degree, because they think that's the answer.

And for some people it might be it. It's not a blanket statement that you should not go get more degrees, but. A degree does not give you an audience or a guarantee that you'll make revenue and have a business, right? It's just a degree. So not to discount it, but I do discount it in that context of I'm not enough, so I need more credentials, or I'm not enough, so I need to hone my craft even more and get better and better.

It's generally not a craft problem or a skill problem or a product problem. 99% plus of [00:13:00] the time. It's an awareness. So focus on the actual problem, not , what you think is the problem. And if it comes down to that, then it really just is a matter of you deciding to say, every week I'm gonna spend an hour or three or five on.

Awareness, right? Getting more people to know that the thing you made exists. So I'm doing this now for these workshops. 80% of the time that I'm spending in a month is on promoting and following up with leads from the workshop. So two to three weeks of promotion for a one hour presentation. . So whatever that ratio turns out to be a 10 to one, I'm doing much, much more promotion, but it's working, right?

I'm three weeks out for the next big workshop and I already got 20 people signed up, so that's solid. I only need really 50 to turn into one or two calls, and if I got two of those workshops a month and that's four calls, then I can get one client and that's really all I need right [00:14:00] now, right? So you gotta think of it that way.

How are you gonna get enough people? Off of like the platforms and being a passive audience to being an active, engaged prospect or lead for your business. All right. That's it for today, man. I kept it under 15 minutes. Look at that. Go us. So if you have not yet gone over and taken the scorecard, I highly recommend that you do that because it will give you tons of clarity on where you're at.

And as I've probably spoken about before on this podcast, you need three things to get anywhere. You need to know where you are, where you're going, and how to get there. So that's what we provide at Craftsman Creative. We give you all three of those things, but you can start with where you are. And the easiest way to determine that is to take this free scorecard.

So head over to scorecard dot craftsman creative.co. Take the free scorecard, and guess what? I'm actually taking time every week to dive in, look at people's scores and give feedback. So you might even get a five to 10 minute video from me with some [00:15:00] extra ideas on how to improve your score and where to put your focus for the coming months on how to grow your business.

So thank you so much for listening. Hey, if you wanna do one last favor in the. 20 seconds. I have left Share this podcast with a friend. If you enjoy it. If you're getting value from it, I would love for you to share a link in your newsletter or post it on social media and just say, Hey, this is great. You should check it out.

Podcast discovery is notoriously difficult and non-existent. The platforms don't really do a good job. There's no. Algorithm for discovering podcasts, right? Maybe that's an idea for one of you to go make, 32nd clips as swipeable , TikTok style, algorithmic, fed clips to discover new podcasts.

But until that day comes. We rely on listeners like you to share it with other people. So if you like the podcast, please share it with someone else and I would be greatly [00:16:00] appreciative if you do thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week with a couple more ideas.