I spent two weeks analyzing my favorite Creator Businesses
During the Twitter storm “How to get rich without getting lucky, the great Naval Ravikant tweeted: “There are almost 7B people on this planet. Someday, I hope, there will be almost 7B companies.“
He means 7-billion companies of one. Soloporoneurship is the future- or the ideal future. It’s an advanced form of specialization leading to more decentralization.
While most people talk about Soloporoneurship and Creatorpreneurship, I talk about Purposepreneurship.
The only alternative to working hard is working smart. There are a lot of high-performing entrepreneurs; it would be a waste of time not to learn from their journeys.
Seth Godin said, “There is too much of average, and if you want to be noticed, you have to create something special.”
The first step in the path of this “utopic” future is when more people share more of who they are. Each person has a unique touch, skill, and genius similar to their fingerprint.
Austin Kleon said, “Steal Like An Artist,” I say, “Collect Like A Creatorpreneur.”
Determined to grow my “purposepreneur” business, I investigated what has worked rather than reinventing the wheel.
I studied the beginnings, business models, and journeys of my favorite creatorpreneurs on the internet today, and I’m sharing my deep dive with you.
#1. Justin Welsh
The diversified solopreneur. He’s on a mission to generate $5M in revenue from multiple businesses.
As of Oct 2021, his one-person business crossed $1.3M in revenue. It took him 810 days.
Here is how he did it.
On December 2018, Justin experienced a severe panic attack which led him to announce his plans to quit his VP of sales role at a SaaS firm.
What comes after aligns with my philosophy. He quit after 7 months but with a plan. He has already started building a LinkedIn following to reach 18k, his website was up and ready, and he was able to book 50 discovery calls on the first day of his journey to solopreneurship.
He started by advising new Saas firms — He used his zone of expertise.
His first online product came after a recommendation from a friend. He launched “The LinkedIn Playbook” at $50 for his 18K followers and made 1500 sales.
He built it by looking back at his DMs. People asked him questions about LinkedIn growth more than Saas businesses.
In the future, He said, “I pivoted as the audience asked certain questions.”
The guy is a growth genius. He found his “unique ability” and created a service around it.
He experienced fast growth on LinkedIn to reach 130k followers after 2 years and 289k on September 2022. In the meantime, he conquered twitter to reach 30k in 12 weeks and 191k now.
His secret is “Systems.” He publicly shares “The Content Matrix.”
He doesn’t think about his next post. “Most people assume I will wake up in the morning and think about writing. That’s further from the truth. This is a job; I treat like one,”- He commented during an interview with “Ship 30 for 30.”
He has a super organized posting calendar by day and time of the day. Most importantly, he builds a template structure to use in his posts. You can find these on his website.
He recommends copying structure from successful accounts.
In 2019 Welsh made a refresh to his LinkedIn growth product, priced it at $150, and sold 3500 in 6 months. His Motto is “Give an accessible price and aim to have people talking about your product online.”
In March 2022, he launched the content creators course, and it made 212k in sales as of Aug 2022.
His main goal is to work less and be free on time and space. He’s currently splitting his time between course creation, content writing, SaaS business advisory, and building his Newsletter, “The Saturday Solopreneur.” I also see that he makes income from newsletter sponsorships, but I don’t have a clear idea of the volume.
Takeaways
1. Start working on your solopreneurship venture before leaving your job
2. Find your niche but be open to pivot
3. Focus on growth by engaging with the audience
4. Devirsify platforms after mastering each one
5. Create products that answer the audience’s questions.
6. Connect with people with similar outreach when you grow
7. Pay other experts for guidance and connections
8. Be organized and have systems in place
9. Make online products’ prices accessible
10. Create posting templates after analyzing data and other creators
#2. Ali Abdaal
Ali abdal has a team now. But, he started as a solopreneur in 2017 and hired his first employee in 2019.
He’s now running a 20 people creator business after quitting his job as a doctor in 2021 and making $4M following the creator business model.
In a nutshell, his 2021 income comes as follows:
. $2.5 million from his Part-Time YouTuber Academy
. $800,000 from the Skillshare course
. $430,000 from brand deals and sponsorships
You can find the breakdown of his 15 income streams here.
His story is fascinating, and his creator business model is fascinating to me.
I found him fascinating because he was able to find a balance between his demanding day job and his passion for video creation and personal development.
According to him- The Creator Business model has three main sub-models
- The Bridge Model
This model is the most common. It’s based on two pillars: free content and paid content.
The free content funnels people to the paid content, which provides resources to create the free content. The flywheel effect
The model works according to the 99:1:1 rule, which applies to most creators’ businesses. 99% of the content is free, and 1% is paid, targeting 1% of the audience who can afford to pay for it.
The bridge between free and paid content is the email list. The strategy is not to mention the courses in the free content and discuss them more on the email list.
2. The 3 Levels Model
It takes 3 steps to create a creator business.
Get Going: get started making something. You’re not getting good unless you get going.
Get Good: here, you can start looking at details, branding, and production, and you get some engagement.
Get Smart: decide whether you want to treat your creation as a hobby or a business and to what spectrum. If it’s a business, you want to make it about serving the audience and not your creative needs.
3. The Creaotprneur Business Model
This is what worked for Ali and other creators.
Assuming that you “Got Smart,” decided to pursue creatorneurship, and amassed a couple of hundreds of subscribers/ followers, your next step would be understanding how your business can fit in this model.
Workflow, Cashflow, Outflow
In a nutshell, it’s about figuring out the strategy and systems, creating products/ services and making money, leveraging your time, and expanding your business. Ali divides a list of 3 items: Workflow, Cashflow, and Outflow.
Item #1: Workflow
It has two components strategy and systems.
a. Strategy:
This step is crucial and entails embodying a business mindset. The strategy consists of:
. Finding your niche: use the hedgehog concept
. Target audience: demographics, geographics, and psychographics
. Value proposition: study competition and find your added value
b. Systems:
Creation implies volume. Consider ways to leverage your time to create a multiplier effect between your input and output. Ali suggests identifying areas of focus and creating templates.
Item #2: Cashflow
After finalizing the strategy and systems, it’s time to find ways to create products and generate money to sustain the business.
You can’t make money from a product or service without clients!
Turn strangers into clients using the pentagram model:
Stranger → Fan → Friend →Prospect → Client
. Create content through multiple platforms to turn strangers into fans
. Use a lead magnet to earn permission to market your services and turn your fans into friends.
. Use Opt-ins to prospect the friends
. Learn about your prospect’s problems, solve them and learn how to sell your products and sell your services.
Item #3: Outflow
The last step of the creator business model is about freeing your time and focusing on your unfair advantages. It’s the step where you can hire people and delegate tasks.
You can follow his in-depth strategies detailed on his website here.
Takeaways
- Create content
- Create Systems
- Strategize as big businesses do
- Start creating while you’re working your day job
- Solve problems and learn to sell your products
#3. Pieter levels
Pieter levels make $2.7M/year with 0 full-time employees. His goal now is to live a more laidback life after working on his projects for 10 years; he started in 2013 and had been living a nomadic lifestyle.
He started by accident by sharing the diary of his travels in a blog for his mom to read.
Most of his businesses are based on being a Digital Nomad. Currently, 3 generate income; the others are part of the funnel to create a bigger audience.
RemoteOk- the biggest; it’s a job board website with $1.6M/ year and 94% margins. Second on the list is the Nomad list with 100k/month income.
One of his tweets summarizes his business philosophy: “Only 4 out of 70+ projects I ever did make money and grew. >95% of everything I ever did failed/ My hit rate is only about ~5%. So…ship more.”
I guess that his primary income comes from sponsorships and his slack nomad community subscription fees.
He relies heavily on automation hence the high margin ratios and free available time to create the lifestyle he wants
to learn more about the indie way of building businesses. Read his book Make.
Takeaways
- Chose a topic your care about and shared your opinions
- Predict trends
- Build communities
- Create more
- Leverage technology for automation
#4. Tiago Forte
I find Tiago Forte very unique in his way of running his business. Most of his revenue comes from online classes. He makes 1M/year and has newsletters with 40,000 subscribers.
There are some unique hacks to learn from him.
Forted started by selling a productivity class on skillshare. It was the only productivity class on a platform for creatives.
The class was popular. However, a sudden change in the skillshare business model took his revenue from $30/ student to 30 cents. It was only then that he figured out that he couldn’t reach out to h his audience.
The same thing happened to him with the blogging platform Medium after reaching 5.6K followers.
Today Tiago runs a 40,0000 subscribers newsletter on convertkit and recommends owning access to your audience.
He gained subscribers by writing lengthy and in-depth blog articles. His view on selling classes is interesting. He thinks everyone should start by building at least a 5000 subscribers audience, then do live interactive classes while charging a premium price. Cohort classes are his preferred model.
One of the ingredients of his business success is his collaboration with David Perell. They both do successful class launches twice a year.
Forte makes 90% of his revenue in one week in April and one week in September after the class launch.
His strategy of selling classes is based on experimenting with the email subscribers by sanding broadcasts and testing the feedback.
He loves writing blog articles and thinks of products as the source of funding for his hobby.
Takeaways
- Build a solid audience first, then start selling classes
- Collect emails early and talk to the audience frequently
- Build interactive classes
- Collaborate with other entrepreneurs
- Do something you love
- Charge premium
#5. Tim Dinning
The Aussie blogger with 500M content views. Tim dinning creates content on LinkedIn and Twitter, and Medium. He was named “Voice of the Year” by LinkedIn and gained around $400,000 followers.
Blogging on Medium and LinkedIn helped him make over 300K and gain access to write in CNBC & Business Insider.
His journey started with battling mental illness after giving up on a business he had with his brother.
He writes about self-help, personal finance, and LinkedIn.
He’s a machine! The guy writes 10 articles a week while working a 9 to 5 job. He’s now a full-time content creator and teaches people how to build an audience on LinkedIn through his online class.
On top of Twitter and LinkedIn postings, He wrote more than 5000 articles!
One of his motivations for writing was to create evidence against his mental illness at the beginning. Writing an article is evidence for his brain that he can do something.
If you are curious like me, how he writes 40 articles a month. Here is his writing schedule
Wednesday and Saturday writing for Medium between 10 am — 6 pm. He writes 5 articles each day.
Sunday: featured images selection
Monday: editing
Thursday: Write for Substack. Substack doesn’t work by copy-pasting content from other platforms.
Tuesday-Thursday-Friday: Work on his online course and research through consuming other people’s content and synthesizing the ideas in the app roam research
He aims to launch an online course monthly to solve people’s pain points. He had partnered with Todd Brison because he failed to make course sales for 3 years.
His strategy is to create content and connect to people on multiple platforms while tailoring content for the platform.
He recommends spending time creating content and collecting emails rather than working on updating your profile or looking for ways to hack the algorithms.
Here is his process
High-quality content → Call to action → Landing page ( best way free Ebook or Free email course)
Takeaways
- Create quality content at a high volume
- Focus on creating content first
- Find people’s pain points and offer a solution
- Tailor the content to the platform
- The best lead magnet is either E-book or an email course
- Partnerships are an outcome multiplier
- Spend time researching your articles
The best way to use this article to turbocharge your success is never to forget what makes you unique. Take what worked for these fantastic entrepreneurs and adjust it to your case.
Researching them was beneficial to my purposepreneurship journey.