Craftsman Creative

[00:00:00] All right. Welcome back. This is the third part of the movie series, a short series I'm doing on my new framework. M O V I E stands for movie, and I'm very excited for this one. The V stands for visibility. So first, where do we come from? We start with mindset. That's the m. outcomes is the, oh, so now we're talking about visibility.

And visibility encompasses everything from awareness, distribution, getting in front of an audience, your niche, traffic to your website, impressions on social media. It encompasses all of that. So that's what I mean by visibility. Now, visibility is required for your business if nobody knows it exists. It's very unlikely that you'll end up with clients and customers for your products and services.

So if it's required, we gotta figure out how to get visibility for our business. Now, one of the mistakes that I see a lot of creators make early on is they try to be [00:01:00] everywhere and everything for everyone. And that is a quick way to get burned out and a quick way to make no progress. So you want to do the opposite, do less, but.

And the way you do that is by defining the audience that you serve with your business and then figuring out how to get visibility with them and just them. So let's solve the niche or niche thing once and for all, shall we? Cuz I've, I've see hundreds of creators talking about defining your niche, narrowing your niche.

And I don't know why I shifted from niche to niche, but I used to say niche. Niche just feels better on the tongue maybe. So let's talk about. Who should you be targeting with your business? There's the idea of a minimum viable audience. So you need the idea of an audience or group of people or niche that is going to be able to sustain the type of business that you want.

So if you go back to the last step of outcomes, You should have [00:02:00] defined how much money do you wanna make? How much does your business need to make in order to pay you that much? What, what kind of, uh, mix of products and services, at what price points do you want your business to provide, to give you those outcomes?

Right? So now that you know the outcomes for your business, we're kind of reverse engineering and saying, okay, well how big of an audience do I need to be able to get visibility with in order to sustain that business? , you might be able to have a business where you coach Fortune 500 CEOs. Well, there's only 500 of those.

So are you gonna be able to have a sustainable business with just, you know, a very small percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs? Yeah, cuz you can charge them millions of dollars a year to coach them. That's what Tony Robbins does his minimum. Coaching package is a million dollars plus equity in your business, so you can have a thriving business with a small group of people, but most of us are looking to serve artists or [00:03:00] creators or small businesses in Kentucky or startups right now.

We wanna go even smaller than those general. and the easiest way I've found to do that, I used to say focus on desires, not just demographics. So you don't just define their age and location and job description and hair color. , those are the demographics, but you define the desires. What outcomes are they after and can you help them get them with your business?

That's a very helpful framework and I share it with you now because it is helpful, but I found one that I like even better at this point cuz it's so simple. I want you to find the group of people that already overvalues what you do. I'm gonna say that one more time. Find the group of people or the audience that overvalues what you.

Here's an example of that I, I did about 12 or 13 different podcast appearances last year, not including my own [00:04:00] podcast or the 10 K Creator show that I did with Joe Pulitz. So another dozen podcast appearances last year, one of them resulted in over $25,000 of revenue into my business from one of them.

The rest of them hardly. So what was the difference? Well, that podcast was called Grow Your Video Business . So the audience is a bunch of video production company owners or people who are solo creators when they, when they do video production and commercial work, and when a film producer comes on that podcast and talks about how to grow your business and how to shift your mindset and how to get the outcomes that you want.

They're listening. They're eagerly listening because. They overvalue what I do. They see film producer, film director, you know, feature film production as the holy grail. That's secretly what they all wanna be doing. Not to discount what they already do [00:05:00] with commercial work and documentaries and industrials and stuff, but they overvalue my experience, what I do.

And so it was a lot easier to get people from that podcast reaching out to me and emailing me and saying, Hey, I'd like to book a strategy call, or, I'd like to know if you have any coaching openings, or, I created a, my high ticket offer because of one of these individuals. We got off a strategy call and I, I instantly saw how I could help them.

I put the pitch together, I emailed it over, and an hour later, they booked me for my big $15,000 package. Very first try. That's what happens when you can get in front of an audience of people that already overvalues what you do. And yes, today is gonna be a little bit longer episode . So stick with me. I guarantee and promise it will be worth your time.

So how do we do this? Okay. We want to get in front of the right audience, and then what we wanna do is [00:06:00] systematically pull people from that audience into our business. Okay? So the way we do that is we give every piece of content a job. And a purpose, and I'm using content as the example because that's what most of us are already doing.

We have social media, we have a blog, we have a newsletter, we have a YouTube, we have a podcast, we have a medium, whatever it might be. We're producing content and that is the. the main way that people are learning about our business. That's the main way we're getting visibility. This certainly applies to ads and joint ventures and all the other types of cross promotion and, and recommendation referrals.

All the other ways you can get visibility for your business. But let's focus on content because it's something we, 99% of us, I think do. All right? So the principle here is you wanna give every piece of content a job and a purpose. So let's walk through this and I will include a screenshot link, um, in the, [00:07:00] in the description so that you can see kind of what it looks like, um, laid out and in order.

All right. So at the very top, or the very first thing that most people see from your business is not your core product, . Okay. The first thing they see is short form content for free on a. They see it on TikTok or YouTube or Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, um, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, any short form, free content that doesn't require any cost.

To access. It doesn't require an email address, doesn't require to sign up for anything. It's just free. Sometimes the algorithm is even serving it up for you, uh, to get it in front of the right audience. Okay? Free short form content. So that's something that's going out every day, every week, whatever your cadence looks like, generally it's one or two times a day because you want to give yourself a lot of, at bats the chance of something to really take off and resonate with your audience.

and you wanna [00:08:00] feed the algorithm. It sucks sometimes, but that's the reality. Uh, the nature of the beast is you gotta feed it. So your free short form content, the job is to point to your free long form content. So you get people a little bit of taste, a little content snack as my friend Carl Richards calls them and now it's like, Hey, come over here.

I've got a little bit more of that snack over in this little bowl over. . So what is your free long form content? Well, your free long form content is the stuff that is free, but it's on your platform. So it's your podcast, your blog, your medium, your YouTube channel, whatever it is, but you own the platform.

Now, YouTube is arguably something you don't own, but still, you know the, the free video that is recorded and lives on YouTube, but it lives also on your blog and you're pointing people to it, right? So you're getting people. Off of the platforms and onto a platform that you own, your website, your podcast, et cetera, et cetera.

And this is long [00:09:00] form content. So it's 5, 10, 15, 30, 62 hours, minutes long, and that is where you are really going deep with people and you're showing them that you know what you talk. You're talking about, you have authority, you have experience, you have empathy. You understand where they're coming from, and you know how to solve their problem.

You're creating tension where you're saying, I know the thing that you want and I know how to get it, but you need to go to the next step in order to get it. And so the job of the long form. Uh, content is to point people to your lead magnets. Okay? So free long, short form points to free long form on your platform, which points to free lead magnets now free because it doesn't cost anything other than an email address or a phone number.

We're generally speaking in terms of email with this audience. Um, there's plenty of, you know, companies that use salespeople and the entire. [00:10:00] Um, point is to get people's phone numbers so they can hop on a call and do a sales pitch, but that's generally not what we're talking about in this industry. But if you've got a business and you're a video production company, absolutely.

You're trying to get an email address, a phone number, a name, a position. You're trying to get as much information as possible. So it's free because it doesn't cost dollars. But it is, um, not free in the sense that it does require an email or way to contact and the permission to do. . Okay, so what are lead magnets now?

I've got a whole workshop on this that I recorded back in like November, so if you're, I'll talk about this in a second, but we can go deeper on lead magnets another time. But lead manages are thing like a scorecard or a workshop or an email or audio course, or a digital download. Anything that is.

Something, right? Like you generally would pay to attend a workshop because you know, you could charge 50, a hundred, $200 for those. Cause there's a lot of good [00:11:00] information. If it's a workshop and not just a sales presentation, then you're helping people and they're getting some of your time, which is worth money, right?

So you could generally charge for it, but you're giving it for free as a lead magnet. Um, you could give them a digital download of your book, which normally costs $20, but you're giving it for free. A scorecard is one of my new favorite lead magnets. They work really, really well because they give them a response, um, results that say, here's how your business scored, or Here's how you scored, and if you want to improve that score, hop on a call.

right? Um, so lead magnets, the purpose there and the jobs there are twofold. One is to point to the other lead magnets because the more value that you can stack and give to people now that you have their email address, the better. Right? So whenever someone signs it for my workshop, I say, Hey, make sure you take the free scorecard because you're gonna want that before the.

And after the workshop, I enroll them in my free email course, the free five day [00:12:00] welcome series that everybody gets. But still, it's valuable if you frame it that way. And at the end of a workshop, I give 'em a digital download of my book. So I make sure that as soon as someone comes into my ecosystem to this visibility or content system, They're getting a ton of value from me before I ever ask for anything in return.

So here's my scorecard and it's valuable. Sign up for the workshop. Get my email course. Get the digital download. They point to each other, but every single one of them also points to the next part of the content system, which is getting on a call or buying a digital product. Okay? So if they got a. Email course, the end of that email course should say, Hey, you, if you got this far and you're interested in this outcome, I have a product that solves it, or it gives you that, um, solution.

So click here and I'll send you more info about it. You can send 'em to a landing page, you can send 'em another email sequence that's more of a sales sequence, and then all of it is happening [00:13:00] automatically in the background. 24 7. The course business that I started in 20. Um, does between three and $8,000 a month, a hundred percent through email.

I don't touch it. I don't reach out to people. I don't follow up with people. I don't do workshops. It all is running on email and it just works because people are coming in, they're getting a lead magnet, like a free preview of a course, and then the email does its job and says, if you want this outcome, click here.

And then it promotes the course. That gives them the outcome, and then people buy the courses. So that's how it's working and it is awesome. So you can see how this, um, content system starts to really work for you in the background and starts building your business when you've got it completely built out.

But there's two or three more steps. So lead magnets point to a call or digital product. So if your core product, if you don't have a digital product, Um, is freelance work or a full like consulting or coaching package. You want to get people on a discovery call [00:14:00] or a diagnostic or a strategy call or something like that.

Generally, the gender ruly, they're 15 to 30 minutes long. They're free, and the last five or 10 minutes is your sales pitch. You're gonna say, look, here's the plan as I've presented it for you. This is how I can help you get the outcomes you want. You created tension through those lead magnet. By saying, I know how to get you this thing.

Hop on a call. They hop on a call. You show 'em the plan. If they want the plan, then they sign up and they become a customer. So your call or your digital product points people to your core product. That's the job or purpose of that part of the content system. So you go from short form to long form to lead magnets to call or digital product to your core product.

This is the thing that every time you sell it, it generates, I don't know, $2,000 worth of profit for your business, not just revenue profit. after you've paid yourself. So your core product might need to be, uh, priced a little higher. Might need to raise the prices [00:15:00] there, but that's okay. But your core product is the thing that you ultimately want people to buy.

That's the $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 high value core product of your business. Now, if you don't have one of. , that's something you gotta build out, right? , and we'll talk about your product ecosystem in the next episode. And we talk about systems and implementing them, but there's still one last step. So your call or your digital product points people to your core product and your core product points people to recurring revenue.

Okay? So for example, my core product is the Craftsman system. It costs 12,500 or $15,000. And I probably shouldn't include the pricing cuz maybe it's gonna change and, and get, uh, and get raised. But there's a one time fee and then it costs a little bit more if you do, uh, pay it over three months. But once the system has been implemented and delivered and I'm done, [00:16:00] I don't want that amazing client to go away and never see them again.

I want them to continue to pay me, but I really, I want to continue to serve them and that's why I've earned that ability to. Continually get paid. The way you do that is having a recurring revenue product. So my recurring revenue option with the craftsman system is monthly coaching and optimization. So I'm gonna monitor their business.

I'm gonna keep track of their. Data and analytics. I'm gonna make sure the systems are all working. I'm gonna come in and optimize them. They have access to me. If they have questions, shoot me an email, shoot me a text, whatever. And then twice a month we hop on calls, which are very specific to coaching the c e o to be a better leader, like shifting their mindset.

Leadership principles and skills, freeing up their time, increasing their ability to lead and to get their, um, aligned with their purpose and their business. All those things are part of that recurring package, and that's a thousand dollars a [00:17:00] month. So imagine 5, 10, 20 clients down the line. I probably don't even need to have new core product clients because I could just service the monthly retainer clients and still be making five, 10, $20,000 a month from that, right?

So that's why you want the recurring revenue. Now, on a smaller scale, I've got. The Society of Independent Creators, which is where that's $500 a month as I'm recording, or not a month, excuse me, $500 a year. As I'm recording this, it'll go up every 50 new members so that it kind of l self limits , so I'm not growing it to a thousand people, but probably a couple hundred.

And it doesn't get too overwhelming, but still that's recurring revenue that's gonna scale and grow every single year. So people join the core product of an event like the 10 K challenge or the upcoming summit that I'm gonna do, and then there's the recurring revenue aspect after that. Okay. So free short form, free long form lead [00:18:00] magnets, caller, digital product, core product, recurring revenue.

That is the whole system. The Craftsman content system, as I'm calling it. Every piece of content has a purpose. . And so what do you do with this? Well, if you don't have all those pieces, start at the top and work your way down. So if you're not doing short form or you're not doing ads, you don't have a way to get in front of your audience.

You need a way to get in front of your audience and then just systematically go through, spend a week on each one or a month on each one as you're getting to your core product or recurring revenue. Those take longer to create and get working, but get all the pieces in. Okay. And then if you do have all the pieces already, make sure that they're doing the job, that they're serving, the purpose that they, um, exist for.

Right? Your lead magnets need to be generating leads. So if you don't have people signing up for your lead magnets, you need to optimize that part and get people. Getting your lead magnets, and if it's not pushing people to a call or a digital product, that's not working. So you gotta [00:19:00] identify the constraint and then go fix it.

That's the secret to systems thinking. Go identify the constraint, make sure the system is generating the output or the outcome that you want from it, which is. More awareness, more prospects, more leads, more customers, more clients. Okay. Now again, if you don't, um, know how to create a lead magnet, shoot me an email.

Darren craftsman creative.co. It's d a r e n one r, please, and let me know that you need help with the lead magnet. I'll send you a link to a previous recording of a workshop that I did on that very subject. It's about an hour long, talks about how to create a lead magnet. Or you could just join the Society of Independent Creators, where we have all the recordings of every past workshop that I've done, as well as the full 10 K challenge from January, 2023.

So you get access to all of those with your membership as well as access, uh, free registration or complimentary registration to all [00:20:00] events as long as you're a member. So that's pretty cool. All right. Here's the thing. Wrapping it all. . If you get visibility right, then you're well on your way to turning your audience into prospects.

Prospects into leads, leads into customers and customers, into clients. That's what we're gonna cover in the next part of this five part series. Now, if you haven't taken the scorecard yet, please go do that now. I want to help you see where your business is at and how we can help you grow it at the end with the results I give you very.

Clear and next step, uh, recommendations as far as books and podcasts and workshops and emails and blogs that I've done over the last year and a half that are very specific to what you need right now. So go take that scorecard, go to scorecard dot crafton creative.co to take that. And if you haven't come to one of my workshops, I'm loving these.

I've been, I've done three as I've recorded. Um, just in this new kind of framework, I've done many over the last few years, , but [00:21:00] three recent ones that are all really, really good. They've got like 4.8 stars, um, on the, uh, feedback or the reviews from people that are attended. We've got 15 to 30 people showing up each time.

They are so much fun and I'm helping you go deeper on these different aspects of building and growing your creative business. So, I'd love to have you join us in one of the free upcoming workshops. Go to workshops dot craftsman creative.co to sign up, and I hope to see you there. That's it for today's episode.

Tomorrow, or in the next episode we'll talk about the next step, which is implementing systems. I cannot wait and I hope you'll join me there. Thanks.