All right, so we've covered brand, we've covered content, and now we are on to team. And I would argue this is actually one of the most important parts of the whole puzzle. And personally, it is probably my favorite section of this entire course. This is where I get a lot of enjoyment and fulfillment for myself in my career—building teams and helping to develop them.

Why Your Team Is Everything

A couple quick things that I want to share with you before we really dive in on why your team is everything. Ultimately, your team is not just there to execute. They are a multiplier of the vision that you have. A strong team doesn't just help you scale. They are there to help you build something far bigger than you could ever do alone.

Now, a lot of people watching this probably have never built a team. Definitely not a media or content team. A couple things to keep in mind that will help us as we go through this section:

1. You don't hire just for skills. I actually emphasize hiring more for culture than skills. I find it a lot easier to train skills than culture fit. You want to make sure that they align with your brand, where you're wanting to go. So, where you are right now and what you're wanting to accomplish and the subject matter that you're going to be speaking about. They should be interested and curious about those things.

2. You want to make sure that you're hiring based off of platform goals that you have. And so you want to identify what are the different platforms that we are emphasizing this next year or years and build the team around that—not just your traditional videographer, editor, designer, audio engineer roles.

3. You want to make sure that they fit into your overall creative process. If you don't like a lot of preparation for film days and you like to go off the cuff, then you need to make sure you're hiring people that are comfortable with that and able to ask you good questions to prompt more information that comes out of you.

4. We don't hire just to fill roles. We hire to solve problems. So, if there isn't a problem that you can diagnose, then there shouldn't be a role that we're hiring for this non-existent problem. Ultimately, what you end up doing is bringing somebody on that ultimately has no purpose on the team. And that is shitty for both parties.

The Cost of Bad Hiring

Another one is that a bad hire doesn't just slow you down, it massively slows you down. It takes months to recover and you lose a ton of money in the process. And so what we're going to do in a little bit is we're going to walk through my entire hiring funnel. And I really encourage you pay close attention during this section because what we've talked about—brand, content—that's super important. But mistakes made on hiring your team are going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars and are going to become a massive headache and ultimately it causes a lot of people to write off this whole team thing. "I'm just going to do it myself with one other person."

That's not the way that we want to do this. But we want to do it correctly from the start so that we build the correct foundation. And lastly, the best teams aren't built overnight. They require patience, intention, and investment in people who align with the desired outcome and the brand that you are building.

What You Need vs. What You Want

So first, before we hire anybody, let's define what we need. There's what you need and there's what you want. We are only going to hire on the prior. What you need.

A lot of people hire way too quickly and they hire for roles that they think they're going to need. They've maybe heard people mention like that you need this, and what they don't do is they don't hire based on constraints. What you want to do is look at your process and what is causing the biggest constraint.

For example, before we dive into this, if you are filming a bunch of content but nothing's getting edited, there is a very clear and obvious constraint. It's editing. So, what would you hire? An editor.

If, on the other hand, you're always getting videos done in post-production, but you don't have enough in the pipeline. So, the editor is sitting there twiddling their thumbs being like, "What the fuck do I do?" Maybe you hire a videographer or a content strategist that can help you ideate and come up with new ideas to film.

We are hiring based on problems and constraints we have in the process, not off of some random perceived idea of what we should have on the team.

Three Critical Questions

Now, to avoid making the mistake of hiring just what you want or what you think you need versus hiring off of problems you have, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What tasks are taking the most amount of time away from high value work?

Okay, so an example of this is if you're a content strategist but spend 50% of your time editing videos, you might need an editor. That's probably not the best use of your time and skills, okay? Because ultimately, you were hired to be the strategist. And if you're splitting your time, sure, in the beginning, you're going to have to do that as you're building the team, but eventually we get to a point where we're going to want to specialize.

And so, if you are finding that you were hired or you hired someone for a very specific role and they're fulfilling multiple roles, the way to scale up or improve efficiency is to hire somebody to do that role. In this case, hiring an editor to relieve time for your content strategist.

2. What's slowing down execution?

And I hit it already at the top, but I'm going to hammer it again because it's really important. If you're finding that you're filming all of this content and then it's just not going out, it's not getting done, you need to hire an editor. If you are always ready to film, always ready to edit, but you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs, not knowing what the fuck to actually film, than a content strategist or ideation strategist, whatever you want to call them, that is going to be the critical role to bring into your team.

Whatever the bottleneck and constraint is, that is what you want to hire around. This is how we actually scale rapidly.

3. What content opportunities are currently being missed due to lack of resources?

So, for example, if we identify that YouTube is your number one most important platform and you're posting one video a month and your goal is to get to two, but the current bandwidth of the team only allows for one. Well, then we're going to go up to the question above and we're going to find out which part of the process is our constraint and then we are going to hire for that.

Ultimately, it's all boiling down to hiring around the problem, the bottleneck, the constraint that you have on the team. This is how we're going to scale fast. If you hire five editors, but editing isn't your constraint, you just brought on a lot of cost for no gain because you don't have enough input to match the output the editors can accomplish.

Hire for Leverage, Not Convenience

Please prioritize hiring for bottlenecks over convenience. Just because you're really good at hiring videographers doesn't mean that you need to hire five of them. You want to make sure that when you're hiring, you're hiring to create more leverage, not just offloading busy work.

In fact, oftentimes what you can find is as you bring more people on, you can actually eliminate the busy work because you start to recognize the big tasks that actually move the lever for the team. Ultimately, we're not just trying to lighten everyone's load. We're trying to accelerate execution and the impact that each individual has for the collective team, which drives bigger impact for the brand at large.

Platform-Specific Skills Matter

Now, a huge mistake I see a lot of people make is they hire for general skills, not platform specific needs. What do I mean by that? Well, there is this very interesting split in our world that is occurring right now. You have great DPS, people that are great at filming beautiful videos. You have editors that are incredible at editing these beautiful commercials or these long form films that you see going out on Netflix, etc. And they are incredible editors at their craft.

But what a lot of people don't recognize is a great editor for a Netflix film is not a great editor for a YouTube video. They are very different skills and very different needs. Same for the videographer. A DP that works on some like Amazon or Hulu documentary is going to have a very different set of skills than somebody who is filming, let's say, a vlog for one of the YouTubers, one of the big YouTubers online. Okay? Completely different needs.

And right now we're still in the early stages of really understanding the nuance and difference between those kind of creatives. And so what you get a lot of times is people hiring somebody who is a great graphic designer and they make amazing brochures. They're so good at designing your logo, your website, but they fucking suck at YouTube thumbnails because it is a totally different skill set.

And so what we want to do is identify what are the platforms that you are focusing on, which we've already done. And once we've done that, then we want to build the team around those specific needs. If you're not doing a lot of graphic design work, brochures, business cards, flyers, website updates, then you don't need a traditional graphic designer. If all they're doing is YouTube thumbnails, then actually typically those individuals do not have a traditional graphic design background because a lot of YouTube thumbnail best practices slap in the face of traditional graphic design best practices.

The Social Media Manager Trap

Now, another version of this is, and this is the funniest one, people being like, "All right, we're going to post some content on social media, so we're going to hire a social media manager." This is the fucking worst thing in the world.

If they're a generalist, if they are great at all of the platforms, they suck at all of the platforms. The reality is in 2025, there are very few people on planet Earth—I would say less than .001%—that actually understand at a master level all of the different platforms. It'd be fucking impossible. They're evolving all the time.

And so, what you're going to actually find that you want is you want channel specific managers, not a social media manager. So instead of hiring a social media manager that oversees all your different platforms, maybe what you're going to do is in the beginning because you can't afford to hire a manager for all five of the platforms that you're on. Maybe what you do is you make sure that your creatives that you bring in emphasize one of those platforms so that they have a greater understanding than you do of how YouTube works or Instagram or LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever the new one in 2026 is.

My LinkedIn Strategy Example

Now, on the contrary, if LinkedIn is where the majority of your business results occur, where a lot of conversions happen, where a lot of your customers are, and a lot of interesting conversations happen, well, I would actually recommend hiring a LinkedIn writer. Again, notice I didn't say copywriter, just general. I said LinkedIn writer. Hire them before a video editor.

Like, if you look at how we approached content for Rston in 2025, we started posting on LinkedIn before any other platform. And so we emphasized that. We started working with a LinkedIn writer—a freelancer—and instead of making video content right away, we actually emphasized that because I had a feeling that that would generate a good amount of leads for our business. And it did. We made sure to align our hiring with our actual needs.

So as an example, instead of hiring a generalist, you might hire a YouTube editor and immediately get 2x the content output. You might then bring on a short form video editor to maximize repurposing that long-form content. Ultimately, a lot of the times we're trying to build a scenario where the individual, the talent on camera isn't spending all their time creating content.

So maybe for a while you have the long form that you're doing and the editor does that. They 2x the output and then the short form editors are just utilizing that same media, that same footage and repurposing it, but you're getting two, three, four, five times the amount of impressions you would if you were just doing the long form. Then maybe you hire a platform strategist. And notice I'm saying a platform strategist, not social media strategist, because what you want to do is you want to make sure they are specifically tailored to the platforms you're prioritizing.

Now what you might find in the beginning is you need to hire somebody who is a gangster at YouTube. They understand LinkedIn and you know they dabble with Instagram. That's fine. But you just want to make sure that they are prioritizing and more proficient in one. The generalist is not what you want.

If it's not fucking obvious by now, the key takeaway is always hire for the highest impact content first. Whatever platform you're getting the most traction on, make sure you hire around that. And whatever platform you're hiring around, hire for whatever the biggest constraint in the process for creating for that platform is.

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Chapter 15: Streamline Your Hiring Process - From Job Description to Decision

From: 3:36:44 - Writing Job Descriptions and The Hiring Funnel

Writing Job Descriptions That Attract the Right People

All right, cool. So, we've defined what we need. We've defined the role. Now, it's time for everybody's favorite activity, which is writing a job description. Now, I say that sarcastically, but I actually, for whatever reason, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with my brain, I love writing job descriptions. I love the whole hiring process, interviewing, everything. It's my favorite. But if it's not your favorite, I think walking through this is going to be extremely helpful for you.

What do you get with vague job descriptions? Vague fucking candidates. Be very specific with responsibilities and expectations.

The Four R's Framework for Job Descriptions

I like to use the four R's framework for drafting job descriptions. And rather than just running through the different four R's, I actually want to describe what each R is and then walk you through an actual job description that I have here right in front of me on my phone.

First R: Role
What contribution is this individual making to the organization? What function do they have within the team?

Here's an example for a brand director role:

"Company is looking for a brand director to build and scale the CEO's personal brand across YouTube, LinkedIn and other key platforms. This role requires a deep understanding of content strategy, social media growth, and personal brand development. You will be responsible for transforming CEO's thought leadership into an influential digital presence that resonates with entrepreneurs, business leaders, and innovators."

Second R: Responsibilities
What are they going to own? What tasks are they going to own on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly basis. This is a very extensive one. Under responsibilities, we have it broken down into different subsections:

Content Strategy and Execution:

• Establish and scale the CEO's YouTube presence, leveraging his speeches and interviews to create both long-form and short form content, eventually building on top of this and developing platform native platform first YouTube content
• Develop and execute a LinkedIn content strategy incorporating a mix of written posts and short form videos derived from existing content

Creative Production and Management:

• Oversee the filming and editing process for social content, ensuring high-quality production and platform specific optimization

The responsibilities are going very tactical into what they are owning. What are they doing on a daily basis that you expect them to do?

Third R: Requirements
This is what are the skills and experience they need or are required in order for them to do this job to get this role. For example:

• Three plus years of experience growing a personal brand with proven success in scaling reach and engagement
• A strong background in filming, editing, and social content production, both short form and long form
• Experience managing creatives
• Exceptional storytelling skills with the ability to extract and refine high value insights

This is just telling them this is what you need to be able to do and have done in your career thus far in order to qualify for this role.

Fourth R: Results
What are the success metrics that we are tracking? What does success look like? What are we expecting them to do and accomplish or what are we expecting to have happen based on their responsibilities? Think of it like responsibilities is the input and results is the output of those responsibilities.

Examples:

• Establish the CEO's YouTube channel with consistent long-form uploads and high performing clips. A minimum of two videos per month
• Scale LinkedIn engagement and follower growth through a mix of written and video content. Posting at least two written and two video posts per week

We want to make sure that it is not only describing the efforts, but it's very specific on what the output will be. If you want to be doing two videos a month, make sure to specify that, not just say "establish CEO's YouTube channel with consistent long form uploads and high performing clips." That would be very vague and not helpful.

Additional Elements to Include

Two things that I like to add to the four R's:

Communication and Cadence Expectations
I always like to make sure that a candidate understands—if you expect them to respond at 7:30 a.m. in the morning on Slack, well, that's not necessarily the norm in most workplaces. And so, if that is an expectation you have, make sure you vocalize it and make it clear to them before you hire them so that they can tell you whether or not they are down for that or not.

Core Values
I like to ensure that if a candidate is going to come in and join the company that they agree with what our core values are. And ideally, it's something that they already prioritize in their personal life. And so when they hear your core values, they actually resonate with it and are able to speak to, "oh, I live my life by this. This is actually how I apply blank core value."

My Complete Hiring Funnel

All right. We've defined the need. We've defined the role. We've even created a job description using the four R's framework. And now we need to start the hiring process. I'm going to share with you my hiring funnel.

Now, this is probably going to seem pretty extensive and maybe a little too much. It's worth it. We talked at the top about how expensive it is to hire somebody that is not the right fit and then have to exit them and rekick off the search. It is a brutal, painful process. Trust me, I've been through it multiple times.

Do everything in your power to not shortcut things. I will tell you, I have hired a lot of different creatives and anytime that I've made a mistake on it, it's for only one reason. I was in a rush. We had pain on the team. We had pain in our process. We had a very clear definition of what we needed. And we were clearly solving a problem because it was a problem we were feeling every fucking day.

But I tried to shortcut the process and I ignored red flags that were pretty fucking obvious and in my face.

What this hiring funnel is designed to do is to make those red flags very clear, very obvious, and then allow you and your team to discuss them. Ultimately, we're never going to find when we're searching for a candidate a 100%. There it just doesn't exist. So what you're looking for is an 80% and you want to discuss with your team if that remaining 20% is something you feel confident either you don't need or you can train.

Step 1: Application and CV Submission

The first part of the hiring funnel is you need to have a place where candidates can submit their CV and potentially even a video. You can use Indeed, you can use all these different platforms or you can have something hosted on your website. I would encourage you to do that if possible.

Don't overemphasize CVs - it's not the most important thing by any means, but it does reveal some potential strengths or weaknesses. For example, if you notice that a candidate has had 10 jobs in the last five years, that is an interesting thing. Not necessarily something that's going to rule them out, but it's definitely something you're going to want to have a little bit of a further investigation on and discuss in the screening call.

The Optional Video Submission

For the video portion, I highly encourage anybody that I'm working with to give the option for a candidate to submit a video. I wouldn't require it, but I would definitely give them the option.

Why? Because there's no personality, no human element that comes through in a CV. You're not going to see how they talk if they talk too much, their negative or positive tone, their little quirks, their silly personality that come out. That can be such a massive benefit for you to see how you feel they will fit with the rest of your team.

I remember this one candidate came through for a creative director role we'd been looking for about 3 or 4 months. I was very impressed with their CV, but what really impressed me and stood out was they had made a video—not like an edit that was showing what their skills were. It was a video of them talking about their experience, their background, their passions, and how that applied to the role we were hiring.

It was amazing. It was a multicam video, too. It was very clear that this individual was hungry for the role and truly believed they were the right fit. They put in way more effort than any of the other candidates. And spoiler alert, we hired him.

Step 2: The Screening Call

After they submit their resume or CV, you're going to have somebody on your team that is going to be doing screening calls. What you're trying to do is you're verifying that they are aligned with the salary expectations, the role expectations, and getting a sense of their communication style and fit.

This initial screening helps filter out candidates early who might not be the right fit, saving both parties time and energy in the process.

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Chapter 16: Hire for Culture, Train for Skills - The Complete Interview Process

From: 3:46:32 - Technical Interviews, Assessments, and Culture Fit

The Deep Dive Screening Process

You're verifying that the candidate understands all the basics and they're good with it—salary expectations, whether they want to be in person or remote or hybrid, communication expectations. If you're an organization that needs somebody working 6 days a week, you're making sure that they're okay with that. If this role is someone who is traveling, let's say it's a videographer that's always going to be on the road traveling five days a week, you need to make sure that they saw that in the job description and they're good with that.

You're also verifying a little bit of experience. I give a few questions to the screeners, whoever is doing it, whether it's a recruiter or just somebody else on your team. I tend to provide them two or three slightly technical questions. The reason why is because oftentimes if I'm running the technical assessment or the technical interview or the final interview, I want to watch the screening call. I want to understand how they showed up so that I know how to interview them.

By asking a few light technical questions, you get a lot of insight on whether or not they know what the fuck they're actually talking about or if they're just kind of bullshitting you. Or the craziest thing that I've literally encountered five times in the last month is individuals using AI that is listening to the question in the background and spitting out an answer in bullet points for them to regurgitate to you.

This is becoming a very big thing and it's alarming. If you get a good technical question or two into the screening interview, you typically can avoid this and sus out if it's actually Sarah answering the question or if it's ChatGPT.

The Technical Interview - Assessing Strategic Knowledge

Once they get through your second line of defense, which is the screening call, you're going to go to a technical interview. Now, ideally, this is conducted by somebody who actually understands the role deeply.

For me, luckily I understand all the different roles on a creative team. So I'm able to do a technical interview for any role. Designer, motion graphics, videographer, editor, copywriter, content strategist, channel manager, anything you name it. Often times you don't have somebody like that in your organization. And so if you don't, what you're going to look for is somebody who can understand the role as best as possible.

What this might look like is doing some research on what a YouTube video editor is and what they need to be proficient in so that you can actually ask them the right questions. Because if you don't ask them the right questions, you're not going to know if they're the right fit.

Testing Strategic Thinking, Not Just Technical Skills

Your goal with the technical interview is to assess strategic knowledge and the ability to execute. You want to make sure they have both.

For example, if I'm interviewing a short form editor, let's say I have a brand and we have a very known style of short form content, and a lot of people copy it. I'm going to not ask the short form editor, "Do you know how to make what we are currently doing?"

What I'm going to ask them, and this is what I've done with many of the different brands I've worked with, I'm going to ask, "How would you go about innovating on this? I'm tired of the style that we've been doing for the last 6 months. I need something fresh and new. What would you do in order to get that new style?"

What I'm not looking for is the right answer of "this is the new style I would do." I'm looking for how they think. How would they go about getting that new style, creating that new style? Because the problem for a lot of editors is they're very good at following rules and instructions. They come from a checklist army, but they don't have ownership and they don't have the ability to create innovation and drive a new style, new format on their own.

So that's where you're trying to assess their strategic knowledge and abilities to execute on said strategic knowledge.

The Technical Assessment - Seeing Real Execution

If they pass the technical interview, you're going to want to immediately provide them a technical assessment. This should mirror what their actual job looks like. You don't want to do something that has nothing to do with what their day-to-day is. This is your opportunity to see how do they show up on the tasks that I'm going to be giving them daily, weekly, or monthly.

For example, if we're hiring that short form editor, they just walked me through how they would go about creating a new style for our short form content. So, what am I going to do for the technical assessment? I'm going to give them 72 hours and maybe one hour of raw footage and let them create a new style for our short form content.

What We're Really Testing

What are we testing in this? Well, one, we gave them a 72-hour deadline. So, we're seeing how are they with time management and commitments. Number two, they're going to have to deliver this item to us. How do they go about delivering it? Do they just upload it to Google Drive and hit share straight from Google Drive? Do they package it into an email? How is their communication?

Number four, we're seeing can they actually execute on what they were saying in the interview? They talked a good talk of how they're going to come up with a new format and new style. Can they actually deliver on that?

And number five, do they show their work? Maybe they created this new style, but do they explain how they went about it? That's bonus points, but if somebody does that, what that shows me is they have the strategic ability, they're very creative, they can execute, and even crazier, they could train somebody else to do the same. If they can understand the why and the how, then they can duplicate that to anybody.

Please just make sure that the technical assessment lines up with what their actual role is. You don't want to waste anybody's time. The other thing too—ensure that you give every single candidate for the same role the same technical assessment. If you give them different shit, you don't know how to measure them against each other versus if they all have the same thing, you're able to assess who's the right fit and who's not the right fit for your team.

The Culture Interview - The Most Important Step

If they absolutely blew you away with their technical interview and their technical assessment, congrats. You're on to the next round. It's not over yet. Culture interview.

If you are a team, an individual or a company that actually operates off of your core values and builds your culture accordingly, then this should really fucking matter. This is where you find out, okay, they're very technically proficient. They're very good at their job. Now, the way they operate as a human in the workplace, does that work with the current humans we have in the workplace?

Why Culture Trumps Skills

For example, if speed of communication is a high priority, like you send a Slack message and expect a response at the latest five minutes later, and this person prioritizes deep work and will go 8 hours a day without checking their Slack, they might be an incredible editor and do amazing work, but it might not work well for your team. If you expect 5 minutes and they wait 8 hours, you're going to be fucking pissed, and you're going to be pissed, but it's not really their fault because you didn't do a good job of determining whether or not they lined up with your communication culture.

Honestly, a lot of the hires that I've made, I actually overemphasize their cultural fit over their technical fit. And it's just my belief that I can train the technical gap pretty well. It's actually really not that hard to take an editor who you might rate as like a five or six out of 10 to like an eight or nine fairly quickly.

However, somebody culturally that you rate as a five or six, taking them to an eight or nine, that's going to be a lot harder. You're talking about ways that somebody operates in and outside of work. And so, if they're getting reinforcement and they're building the pattern of doing it outside of work, you have a big hill to climb.

So, I prefer if somebody is technically mid, but they are culturally great. They show enthusiasm, lack of ego, and they're willing to do whatever the fuck it takes. Man, I'd hire that person at a five or a six over an eight or nine editor who has a massive ego, who can't take any feedback, and is kind of lazy.

Real Example: Trevor Odum

Actually, an example of this is Trevor Odum. I hired Trevor about 3 years ago, and I would call him probably a 6 out of 10 in his editing. Culturally, he was a 10 out of 10. He showed massive humility. He showed extreme eagerness to learn, willing to do whatever it took, hard fucking worker, would take the shitty responsibilities as well as the cool responsibilities, and showed a lot of consistency, especially for a young age.

I hired Trevor and we trained and worked on his technical skills. And the reason why we were able to work on the technical skills and he was able to see growth is because he had the soft skills. The culture of it was very much there. I'll take that all fucking day over somebody who is highly proficient but a fucking asshole.

Culture Interview Questions That Actually Work

Ways that you can identify whether or not they're a culture fit is asking about their past work environments. What was that like? How do they approach problem solving?

A question that I really like to ask is: "If you're in a meeting with five or more people and somebody gives you direct feedback in front of everyone, how do you respond?"

"If somebody is demanding that you drop what you are currently working on and assist them, but they're not your manager, how do you respond?"

I like to give them real life scenarios that actually occur in the workplace. What I just mentioned is two of many very common occurrences that happen in the workplace. If I know somebody who's higher up on the team, maybe the CEO or CMO has a preferred way of communicating, I'm going to ask them how they feel about that preferred way of communicating.

A lot of CEOs actually prefer very direct, very quick communication. They don't add fluff. They don't add smiley faces and things like that. I like to ask, are you okay with that? Sometimes if you're hiring a videographer to film with a CEO, for example, the CEO is not going to want to talk to the videographer about their life. They're not going to want to talk about anything other than what they are there to film. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But I need to make sure that the videographer is going to be able to handle something like that and not need to talk about their personal life with their boss.

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Chapter 17: Start Lean, Grow Intentionally - Building Your Team Without the Bloat

From: 4:14:50 - Growing Intentionally and Multi-Role Hiring

The Danger of Overhiring Too Early

I laugh because this is a huge problem that I see with media teams and then they have to do massive layoffs. Avoid overhiring too early. A small, high impact, nimble SEAL team six style team will accomplish so much more than a bloated inefficient team.

I believe in hiring specialists, but early on these specialists need to be willing to be multifunctional. They have to wear multiple hats. You might have somebody who is specializing in YouTube long form editing, but you're probably going to need them to cut some fucking short clips and maybe even create some thumbnails. That is okay. In the beginning, that is what you're going to need. And so, you need to make sure that you emphasize that in the hiring process.

The Multi-Functional Approach

Here's an example. If you're at the very beginning stages and you're limited on budget, you probably need a videographer and an editor, but you might not be able to afford hiring both. And so, you're going to hire somebody who can do both. Somebody who can film and edit. You gain a lot of efficiencies in that.

Ultimately, down the road, you're going to want to send them down one path or the other so that they can be the specialist and you can get the most out of their skill set. But in the beginning, you have to have people wearing multiple hats.

So again, if you need a videographer and editor and you have a very limited budget, I recommend hiring somebody who is skilled at both. Now, you need to make sure you identify which one is the priority. If you prioritize really good filming and steady hand and all that fucking great question asking, and maybe they're not as good at editing, maybe that is an okay concession to make at the stage you were currently at.

Why Starting Lean Actually Matters

Why does this actually matter? Like, why do we want to not overhire? I mean, it seems obvious, but I'm going to run through just so that you really understand why you should avoid this.

Reason 1: Avoid Unnecessary Payroll Expenses

Number one, you avoid unnecessary payroll expenses before proving the ROI on content. I truly believe that anybody who does content correctly will get an ROI literally no matter what they do, even as an employee. However, you might not be doing it good, and you might not be at the point where you can actually hire enough people or the right people to do it well.

And if that's the case, then you might be putting out content that sucks and doesn't provide anything. In which case, I don't know that I'd be scaling your team up from there. You're just going to be hiring more people that are not capable at actually driving awareness to your content, which means you're driving your ROI down because you're adding headcount and payroll, but you're not adding any profitability or revenue to the company from the content.

Reason 2: Keep Operations Nimble

If you keep the team smaller and don't hire too quickly, well, you also keep operations nimble, making it flexible, easy to pivot and move around as needed.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to change process, priorities, everything, because one, platforms are constantly evolving and changing and requiring new things for you to win, but also your client. If you're building a team for the CEO or founder, or if you are the CEO and founder yourself, your desired outcomes, your preferences are going to change.

You might really enjoy doing vlogging for a while and then go into a season where things are stressful and you don't want to have a camera around all the time and you need to make more sit down direct to camera style content like this. Well, you need a nimble team that is able to pivot and reverse engineer those needs.

If you have a massive bloated team, oftentimes, I mean, think of it like, you know, if you're turning on a dime in a little speedboat, it's not going to be that difficult. But if you have to turn on a dime in a fucking oil tanker, you're fucked.

Reason 3: Building Context Across the Team

The last benefit that I really see here is there's a lot of context that is developed. You allow the individuals on your team to understand the various functions that you have on the team. Well, how is that helpful?

Well, one, when you bring in more specialists, they're able to communicate in an educated way because they did the role at least at some capacity. So, they can speak the lingo. They can talk the talk.

Two, they understand what any request they make actually takes for the other person. They know that if you're asking them to edit a video that was just shot this morning and edit it by the next morning, you're going to be up all fucking night. A lot of people don't realize that.

And so I think that it's not only effective in helping the team communicate and work together well, but you also get this benefit of if somebody is sick or quits or gets fired, you have people on the team that do maybe not at the same level, but they understand the role and how to function within it.

The Framework for Growing Gradually

As the team scales up, you're going to go through this process where you take these specialists who you are asking to be generalists for a short period of time, and you're going to move them back into their specialist role again as the team scales.

I just want to share a very quick little framework for you on how you go about expanding these roles gradually:

Step 1: Start with Multi-Role Hires

You're going to start with the multi-role hires. So, it's going to be somebody who is highly proficient at filming and they're really good at editing and so they're doing both of those tasks. They're handling multiple tasks.

Step 2: Document and Define the Process

Then what you need to do is ensure that you are documenting and defining the process. You want to make sure that all the workflow, every little tiny little thing that this individual is doing is documented and it's super clear for the next person that comes in.

Once you do that, this videographer and editor, they're highly proficient at filming and good at editing. They should document their whole process for editing. And once you hire an editor, they no longer need to edit. So, they can now focus entirely on filming. They can specialize.

Step 3: Specialize as You Scale

So, that leads us to number three, which is specialize as you scale. Once the volume starts to increase, volume of output and volume of members on the team, you can start to split roles to improve efficiency.

For example, if I am an editor, but I also have to jump up every two hours and film with the talent I'm working for, I'm losing massive efficiency in my editing.

Every editor that is watching heard that—the moment that you break out of the edit, it's not like you lose that 1 hour that you went to go film. You have another 30 to 45 minutes of trying to get back into that flow state that you were in. And honestly, a lot of times it's very difficult to get back into it. In general, it doesn't take 30, 40 minutes. It might take waiting until the next day.

And so, anytime that you can allow somebody to stay in that flow state, especially an editor, a designer, somebody that's doing more batch work like that, you gain so much efficiency and what I subjectively call quality.

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Chapter 18: Full-Time Employees vs Contractors/Agencies - The Strategic Decision Framework

From: 4:21:42 - Full-Time Employees vs Contractors/Agencies

The Key Question Every Growing Team Faces

Now, in the interest of starting lean and growing intentionally, a very common question that comes up for people is, well, do I hire full-time in-house employees or do I hire contractors and agencies?

My team and I, we broke down, we actually created like a whole table that we're going to walk through that contrast the benefits or potential downsides given different scenarios, different factors that we're wanting to keep in mind. And we're going to compare full-time employees versus a contractor or agency.

Factor 1: Budget - The Reality Check

The first factor that we're looking at is budget. And this is obviously a major concern especially for those of you who are in the early days, right? You're maybe a startup or you're a solopreneur and you don't have a lot that you're working with. This is where I'm at right now. I don't have any massive budget or anything and so I'm having to think strategically about what I bring in full-time versus contract out.

Full-Time Employees

Higher long-term cost. You have salary, benefits, training, right? If you bring somebody in, you need to invest in them. And the difference between a full-time employee and a contractor here is you don't need to be training contractors. In fact, they should not require any sort of training. They should come in batteries included. They should be able to do the role immediately. You're not going to be paying for your contractors to attend a workshop or consume courses online. That's something that they should be doing on their own time and their own dime.

Contractors/Agencies

They're more cost-effective for short-term projects or specialized needs. Here's a great example. This very course that we're working on, there's a full-time employee working on it and there's a contractor working on it. Behind the camera right now is Trevor Odum and he is actually on our team, but then we are working with an amazing motion graphics artist named Michael and he is a contractor because right now I don't have the need for full-time motion graphics. I wish I did, that'd be fucking awesome, but that's not the place that we're at right now.

And so, if we were to bring him on full-time, we wouldn't have enough work for him anyways. And so, it's far more cost effective and operationally less intensive to be able to just bring him on on a project-by-project basis.

Factor 2: Workload - Ongoing vs Project-Based

Full-Time Employee

This looks like ongoing daily tasks that require their full-time attention. If you don't, like I just mentioned with our contractor that we're working with for the motion graphics, if you don't have enough work where they're doing daily tasks, then it is most likely not a full-time role and not necessary at this point.

For example, a lot of you are filming content, right? But maybe you only film once or twice a month. Why would you have a full-time videographer if all they're doing is showing up twice a month to film with you in batches? That to me is a great scenario where you would want to hire a contractor or an agency.

Contractor/Agency

The workload looks more like project based, it's flexible or it's temporary work. Maybe you have a scenario where you have an event coming up, and instead of just having one videographer, you need like four different people going around and capturing B-roll, testimonials, filming the keynotes, whatever. This is a scenario where you might hire a bunch of contractors or an agency to fulfill this temporary work.

Factor 3: Expertise - Deep Investment vs Specialized Knowledge

Full-Time Employees

Typically they have deep knowledge and a long-term investment in your company. Even if they don't come in with master level knowledge, that's fine. You're going to invest in them. And if they're the right culture fit, as we discussed throughout this whole section, they're worth it. And you're going to invest in training. You're going to provide them courses. You're going to provide them workshops. You might sit down one-on-one with them once or twice a week to really pour into them.

And that's something that you're going to get the return on because they are a full-time employee working for you.

Contractors/Agencies

However, on the flip side, contractors, not the case. Contractors should come in as the expert. Ideally, they have specialized knowledge that may not be needed long term.

A great example of this is in the past what I've done is hired agencies for 3 to 6 months and we bring them in and we have them school us, teach us on what they're doing, provide us the playbooks of how we can move forward without them. I think of it like expedited learning. You're almost paying for like a fast pass to be able to move past some of the clunky learning stages that a lot of people take like 2 or 3 years to get down. You're able to accomplish that in potentially 6 months with a really quality agency.

Factor 4: Speed and Agility - Time vs Consistency

Full-Time Employees

It takes time to onboard and train an employee. Typically, you're looking at 60 to 90 days before they're really up to speed and executing at the level that you're looking for. The beauty though is they do provide continuity and consistency.

So once they are onboarded in theory, as long as you do a good job of retaining them and you provide a good work environment where they're always able to grow and learn, they are more likely to stick there. And so you're going to have the same person working on the same projects.

The problem on the agency side that I've experienced is agencies do tend to have a higher turnover rate. For example, when I've worked with YouTube agencies, what you'll find is you might have like seven different editors over the course of six to 12 months that work on your projects because they're turning through them. No matter how good they are at having playbooks, checklists, all that shit, there is a difference and you start to notice that it's not as consistent in the quality or in the style.

If we're looking for extreme consistency here, I probably would not recommend going the agency route.

Contractors/Agencies

The benefit on speed and agility that you get with the contractor or agency is you do get immediate access to expertise. Unlike a 30-60-90 day onboarding plan with an employee, agencies would be fired immediately if it took 90 days for them to get up to speed. Typically what you'll find is maybe you have an onboarding call with them, but then after that they're ripping.

And so if you do have something that you need done immediately, the agency or contractor route might be a better solution for the short term for you.

Factor 5: Brand Consistency - Deep Understanding vs Oversight Required

Full-Time Employees

What you may think of is like making sure that they have the right logos, fonts, colors, all that shit. And that is important and I care about that. But that's not what I emphasize the most when I'm talking brand consistency. I'm thinking about like messaging or topics that maybe the talent we're working with have no desire to ever talk about.

Or maybe we know as a team that there are certain statements in context of what's being said that are fine, but if they're cut out of the context, it's going to be really bad. That's something that you're going to be able to reinforce and establish extreme clarity on with somebody that's in-house far more than a contractor or agency.

The reason why is because not only are they constantly working on projects for you, they are also involved in your internal meetings. And so they're getting feedback far more consistently than an agency or contractor. So they know where they stand with the content that they are creating, and when they do it right or when they do something that goes against brand guidelines.

Contractors/Agencies

Typically on the contractor and agency side from my experience on brand consistency, this is one of the areas where it requires the most amount of oversight. I can't tell you the amount of times that an agency that I've worked with over the years just didn't quite get it right when it came to what we were trying to do from a brand positioning and association standpoint.

Even down to simple things like if the talent on camera is referencing a successful entrepreneur and a not successful entrepreneur, they might flash up two individuals that we want no association with. And that happened very consistently when working with contractors.

Factor 6: Scalability - Long-term Growth vs Testing Theories

Full-Time Employees

Full-time employees typically, I believe, are more scalable because they are more ideal for your culture and building culture and training people into leadership roles. You're able to scale the team up in my opinion because maybe you hire somebody as a video editor and over a year or two train them up to be a manager and they can oversee other video editors.

And because of that, they understand the culture and the DNA of the team. They understand the brand and what the preferences of that brand are. And so not only are they able to continue to use that and implement that within their work, they're able to train future members of the team. This is really good for consistency and scalability.

Contractors/Agencies

The benefit of contractors on this is actually not long-term scalability, but they are very useful in testing out a theory.

For example, if right now you are emphasizing YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, and you recognize that LinkedIn is one of the platforms that you should really, really fuck around with in 2025 because it is the only platform right now that has true organic reach. That's an interesting hypothesis. I would argue that you are correct, but you don't totally know.

And so rather than going out and hiring a full-time LinkedIn specialist that might cost you a lot of money, what you could do is take three to six months and test it out with an agency or a contractor. Then you're not making the high investment and long-term commitment to an employee and you're just doing an experiment and validating whether or not this is something worth investing in.

Maybe we would bring on a contractor to work on our LinkedIn for 3-4 months, and they're making the content. We're tracking the performance. We're tracking whether or not it's generating qualified leads for us. But then we're also working with this contractor because they are an expert, a subject matter expert in that field on developing a playbook that then we can use internally as our guiding light for the new hire that we bring in full-time once we have validated this idea.

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Chapter 19: Onboard Your Team Effectively - The 30-60-90 Day Success Framework

From: 4:39:16 - Onboard Your Team Effectively

Why Onboarding Makes or Breaks Everything

Amazing. We've hired all these individuals. We've identified their roles. We've made it clear to them. Now, we need to onboard them. And I will tell you from experience, a poor onboarding process leads to weeks or months of wasted productivity and a demotivated employee.

The Tale of Two Onboarding Experiences

I will tell you an example. I started at a role one point in my career and I remember the first week I didn't have any of the tech set up right—like the Asana, the Zooms, all that shit, none of that was set up for me. I didn't have my work laptop and I had no expectations that had been given to me, no deliverables that were required. I didn't even know what meeting cadence I should be on. I had no clarity and what happened with no clarity? Extreme anxiety.

I was constantly wondering like am I living up to the expectations that my boss has? Am I doing what is required? But how can you know if you're doing that if you're never informed of what is required and what the expectations are?

On the flip side, I also had a recent role where I started and I had gotten a 30-60-90 day plan given to me like 5 days before my first day. So I went into day one knowing exactly what was expected of me, knowing what my schedule looked like. I had all the equipment necessary and I was fucking motivated to do some fucking work.

So what you get is if you prepare an employee and you allow them to know what is expected, you're going to get a highly motivated workhorse. If you do not provide that, you're going to get a highly anxious, apathetic individual and that may only last for that onboarding period, but it might just carry into their entire employment.

The 30-60-90 Day Framework

If you do a structured 30-60-90, it eliminates confusion and sets very clear expectations from day one. We're going to create that 30-60-90 day plan. This is a structured three-phase onboarding approach that ensures new hires integrate to the team smoothly and understand what the fuck they're there for.

Days 1-30: Orientation and Core Learning

Think of the first 30 days as orientation and core learning. They need to gather context. Yes, of course they ask questions. You gave them the spiel in the interview process. I'm sure you sent them some about us packet, but let's be real, that's all bullshit. That's not actually how the company runs. That's not how communication occurs. That's not where they gain the insights on how to communicate with the CEO versus the CMO versus their direct manager.

This is when they're understanding the company vision, the values, the workflows. This is how the sausage is made. This is where they learn the core processes, the systems. They see a content calendar, asset management, maybe you use Asana or ClickUp to manage everything. They're getting to understand and get a feel for how you operate.

I often like to give smaller tasks. I don't want just knowledge acquisition to occur during this phase. I do want to give them tasks. One, because I want to make sure that they are able to execute. Technical assessments are great, but you really learn a lot in the first 30, 60, 90 days about an employee. I want to make sure they're doing that, but I also want to give them wins and momentum that they can build upon.

I truly believe if you nailed the opening 30 days, you have such a better employee-employer relationship.

Also, don't just leave them on an island to themselves and let them just figure it out. There's very rare cases where that is the right move. Maybe if that's what the role is actually like all the time, okay, sure, you could justify that to me. But if the role is not going to be like that, make sure that you do regular check-ins with this individual.

For example, if you hire an editor, this might look like them shadowing your senior editor or some experienced team member and ultimately they're reviewing high-performing content from the past. Maybe this editor they're shadowing is walking them through their top five YouTube videos of all time and explaining why they got to that level and how they're implementing those frameworks and those structures to future videos.

Days 31-60: Taking More Ownership

Then you have the 60-day, the next 30 days. Well, what are we doing there? This is where we want to have them taking more ownership. What does that look like? Well, they begin executing independently on their core responsibilities. They're no longer just doing small tasks or just shadowing. They're actually owning tasks of their own.

They're also developing their own workflows and systems within the team. We have team-wide process and workflow, but then within that, individuals have their own way of operating. Every editor has a different way that they set up a file, right? Some editors like to go through all the A-roll and then start adding music and then B-roll and blah blah blah. Some of them like to go section by section and they go A-roll, B-roll, music, graphics, and then on to the next section. Allow them to build their own workflow and utilize that for the greatest efficiency that they can have.

In these next 30 days, at the 60 mark, you're wanting to also analyze their work. Look at how they're going about their workflow, the process, their communication, and the final output, and give them feedback. This is where you can start to reinforce the good things and help correct the things that aren't as effective or helpful for the team or process they're working on.

An example here is an editor would probably be editing full YouTube videos, uploading them, and then we would be reviewing the performance and giving them feedback accordingly.

Days 61-90: Full Integration and High-Level Contribution

And then the last 30 days, this is the 90-day mark. This is the last section of their official onboarding. We are fully integrating them into the team and giving them a high level of contribution. No longer are they working on small tasks or owning their own task. They're owning the big tasks. Whatever the number one most important thing that we listed on the responsibilities on their job description, they are now owning that entirely.

This also looks like owning it entirely with minimal supervision. So, instead of me coming in and checking in on them during the edit five or six times, I might check in with them at the beginning like I would any editor, maybe a midway point and then upon completion.

We're also now at the point where they're demonstrating actual results, like true impact they're having against their KPIs that we're holding them accountable for. If they're a YouTube editor, watch time. Is the watch time at least average, if not better than average, what our normal performance is, or if it's slightly below, are they improving the watch time each video they're doing? I always am looking for rate of progress. Are they at least improving?

The Critical 90-Day Review

And finally, at the end of the 90 days, you want to actually conduct a 90-day review. Sit down with them, walk through everything that they've done, tell them all the wins they've had, all the things that you love, the way they communicated. Reinforce that and make sure they continue to do those things.

But also, there may be things that you noticed in the opening 90 days that weren't as desirable or as effective, and you want to correct those. The last thing you want to do is just ignore a problem and just hope that it goes away. They don't go away, they get bigger.

And so, at this 90-day check-in, this is where you want to give them some very real feedback. If there's something that they cannot continue doing, tell them now. If you do not tell them now and they continue doing it, that is not their fault. That is your fault. It is your job at this point to inform them of any behavior changes that need to occur.

The Complete Onboarding System

So now that we have the 30-60-90, that's amazing, but that's not the only part of onboarding. That is a piece of the pie. That is a tool in the belt, but it is not the entire belt. If we want to make onboarding seamless and effective:

1. Provide a Clear Plan Before Day One

This is sending onboarding materials. This is like a company handbook, a vision deck, a strategy deck, whatever that looks like for you. And the 30-60-90 that we just went through.

2. Assign a Mentor or Onboarding Buddy

Often times, if you don't assign this, they will make their own friend there, right? And that's great, but you want to make sure to also intentionally pair them with somebody who is going to really help them in the role that they have. Ideally, somebody who has a lot more context on the organization and team and how they function.

This allows them to speed ramp their learning but also have somebody that is a guaranteed or verified point of contact for when they have questions because in the beginning we have a multitude of questions and typically we're afraid or embarrassed to ask them.

3. Schedule Regular Check-Ins

You're not going to have a pulse on how this person is doing and how it's going if you're not checking in with them regularly and getting an update. I prefer typically in the first month to do multiple check-ins per week. So maybe it looks like instead of one 30 minute meeting, it's three 10-minute meetings, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, end of day.

This is also an incredible opportunity to celebrate wins and reinforce great actions. If they're a new hire and you're on a call, a brainstorm meeting, let's say, and you're beating up a YouTube video idea, and they contribute a thought, even if it's not a good one, but they actually speak up, man, immediately give them daps for that.

I remember there was a hire that I made a couple years ago and I want to say like day one he was sitting in a meeting where nobody asked his opinion on it. He volunteered it and in some organizations they might not like that. I immediately stood up and gave the dude a high five. I was like this is incredible. You're day one. You're nervous as hell. You don't know anybody. Nobody knows you. Nobody knows your background or skill set and you're already contributing to the overall discussion. That's what we're hiring people for. We're hiring people to contribute, not sit and fucking be a fly on the wall.

4. Build an Onboarding Portal or Resource Hub (Optional)

This can be fancy like, you know, using some software to automate the onboarding or it can be as fucking simple as a Google Drive folder that has your vision deck, your strategy deck, context on the team, SOPs, playbooks, video tutorials on workflows, Q&A document with the founder or CEO to give more context on the organization. Anything that you feel would help make this person's life within the org easier can live in this hub.

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Chapter 20: Develop and Retain Your High Performing Team - Beyond Checklists and Into Ownership

From: 4:55:10 - Develop and Retain Your High Performing Team

The True Nature of Team Development

All right, we have defined what we need. We've defined the roles. We've hired the individuals and we have onboarded them effectively. Congratulations. You are fucking killing it. But now we have to develop and retain this high performing team, right? We brought all these amazing individuals in, but we need to make sure that we keep them and we give them an environment that makes them want to stay and feel like they are growing and empowered rather than stifled and capped at their growth.

A strong team is not just about hiring the right people, though that is very, very important. It's also about developing them into leaders, lining up opportunities with their individual long-term goals, not just the companies, and ensuring that they never stop growing. Always giving them opportunity to further their growth and see that where they are right now, the ceiling is always moving up.

So, they're never limited with the amount of growth they can have within your team. If your team is not evolving, you're not scaling, you're just maintaining.

The Retention Formula That Actually Works

What does this actually mean for us? What does this give us as a result from effective onboarding? Well, I'll tell you. You get faster ramp up time. People are actually going to get up to speed and able to execute on their role at a high level much, much faster.

But number two, the most important thing, stronger retention. It costs a lot of money to lose an employee, like two and a half times what they actually costed you originally. Employees who feel supported and cared for and actually have clear understanding of what is expected of them stay longer and perform better.

Number three is you typically get more ownership and initiative. Clarity from day one fosters confidence and independent problem solving. This is somebody who if a problem comes up they're not just immediately running and tapping on your shoulder and being like "Sarah how do I solve this?" They are somebody who is going to if they come to you they're going to come to you with proposed solutions.

Creating a Culture of Ownership, Not Checklist Armies

One of the first things I can recommend in trying to retain employees and keep them on your team and keep them feeling satisfied and like they're growing is creating a culture of ownership.

A lot of individuals that have creative teams out there really believe heavily, I would argue too heavily in SOPs and checklists. Now they are very important, right? Checklists ensure quality control. SOPs ensure that we are operating in a very similar function and similar way when operating on a process.

The problem is if you build an army, I like to call it a checklist army. You're building individuals that only follow instruction and don't take ownership for themselves. I believe that high performing teams thrive when they take real ownership of their role. Instead of waiting for direction from you, they are taking action. They're solving problems. They're innovating on content and ideas themselves.

If you are the only one making decisions, you don't have a team. You just have a bunch of assistants that are running around doing your bidding. You have what I call a top-down approach rather than a bottom up approach.

How to Encourage Real Ownership

Here is how you encourage ownership on your team instead of doing what we all want to do because we care about everyone on our team. I mean, every person I've ever hired, and whether or not you fuck with this, I don't give a fuck, I love them to death. I care about every person I've ever hired an insane amount.

And so what sometimes occurs then is you want to solve problems for them. You want to make their life easier, but that fucks them up.

So what you want to do to create a culture of ownership is you actually want to not solve their problems. When they come to you with a question or a problem, instead of being like, "Here's the answer. Here's the solution right away." You put it back on them. Ask them:

• "Well, how would you handle this?"
• "If I got hit by a bus right now, how would you handle this?"
• "If I was out sick for 3 weeks, how would you handle it?"
• "If I went on vacation for two months, what would you do to solve this problem?"

Oftentimes, they know the answer or they're creative enough to be able to solve it. Typically, what you're finding is they might be being just slightly lazy or more than likely they've been in a previous environment where their leader did solve all their problems because their leader didn't trust them.

Moving From Problems to Solutions

And if you start noticing that they just bring a bunch of problems to you, encourage them to stop bringing problems and start bringing solutions. So if they're constantly asking you how to solve something, encourage them to move from asking you how to solve to being like, "Which of these two or three solves would you recommend I try?"

That is going to be far better. But then again, I would recommend that you put it back on them and say, "Well, which of the three do you think is going to be most effective?"

Give Them Autonomy With Accountability

And third, give them autonomy with accountability. Meaning, empower them to make a mistake. If you're going to ask them, how would you go about solving it? They present the idea. You might know that's not going to work. But if it's not absolutely mission-critical, I would encourage you let them fail.

They will learn so much more from that than from always getting it right based on what you say. And the crazier part, and a lot of people don't realize this, but they are paying attention to what you are doing. They're seeing here that you trust them and you trust them despite a potentially not correct or not ideal outcome.

When you do this, you empower them to gain confidence and continue to solve problems. And when they realize that there's not a consequence to them getting it wrong and that you're just going to encourage them to go about it differently next time, they have no fear. And when you don't have fear, that is when creativity thrives.

Creativity is not only important for creating content, it's important for solving problems.

Real Example: The Creative Director Who Learned to Lead

As an example, I once had a creative director who was technically incredible, right? A brilliant mind, an incredible strategist. But I'm gonna be honest with you, they lacked a lot of personal skills and ability to read another person in the moment.

And so a lot of times when we would be filming with the talent we worked for, this individual would ask me, "How do I handle this situation?" And a lot of times it was in the moment, and so instead of them just verbally asking me, they were texting me.

And I started to notice that I was answering it always. I was solving it for them. And what I realized was three months into doing that, they had not improved. They always listened to me. They acted on what I said, but they kept asking questions at the same rate.

And so what did I do? I started saying, "Well, how would you handle this?" And sometimes this person would say something that I knew was going to piss the talent we were working with off, potentially interrupting the entire shoot, and maybe we wouldn't actually get a video that day. Short-term bummer, long-term gain.

What ended up happening is he learned from his mistakes and started to be able to figure out how to solve the problem on his own to the point now where he is leading the initiative for that individual and knows how to engage with them and handle any problems that come up very effectively without texting me.

Developing Leaders Through Teaching

Now, we've identified that we want to build and empower these leaders, right? Well, how do we develop people as a leader? I believe that teaching is actually an ultimate hack here.

I love team training, but I don't like to lead it myself. Not all the time. Of course, I'm going to do team trainings here and there. It's important to hear from your leader and to hear straight from the horse's mouth. But I actually believe that the best version of this is when you empower the team to do team trainings.

Why Teaching Others Creates Mastery

Why does this work? Well, I think a lot of us have probably heard the traditional saying, but it's traditional for a reason. It's true. You learn a lot by teaching. And so, giving people on your team the ability to train others and teach others allows them the opportunity to learn more about that, to really ingrain that learning into their repertoire, into their utility belt.

It teaches mastery. If you can't actually explain something, you don't fully understand it. You might be able to do the action.

An example is editors. A very early entry-level editor who isn't super experienced or technically proficient if you ask them, why did you cut this video in this cadence? A lot of beginners and novice editors will say "it felt right." And that's a totally acceptable answer, but it's not a technically sound one.

An editor who truly understands would say, "I was training the audience to understand and expect the cadence that I was going to edit in because the next scene was going to be very dramatic and I was going to break that pattern. And by training the audience to get used to cuts on that pattern, when we deviate from the pattern, it emphasized that moment." That would be an editor who is very technically proficient and understands the psychology behind editing.

The key takeaway here is I want you to change the way you think of onboarding. It's not about introducing process and introducing team members. It's about setting up new hires to fucking win early and often which benefits both them and yourself.

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Chapter 21: Build a Strong Team Culture - From Alignment to Mastery

From: 5:03:32 - Building Team Culture Through Training and Development

Building Internal Expertise and Revealing Hidden Strengths

And the magical third thing that you get here, which is absolutely incredible, is you reveal hidden strengths and passions. I can't tell you how many different times that I'd have somebody on one of my teams, they would do a training on something that I had no idea that they were really proficient in and were passionate about.

You learn all these interesting things, like people that love sound design, and all of a sudden you realize, oh yeah, that's right. All your edits are really good with sound design. Or you discover that somebody's really passionate about storytelling, and you realize, huh, now that they think about it, all of your videos actually do follow a very, very specific and strategic storytelling framework. Holy shit. And then you get to spread that information to the rest of the team.

And what happens is they start to develop their brand within the team. And so if somebody does a presentation on storytelling, for example, and George, another editor, has a question about it, they're going to go to that person. And so what that does is increase efficiency. Rather than sitting and trying to solve a problem on your own, you know who on the team is the subject matter expert to go to to solve the problem with.

How to Implement Team-Led Training

How do you actually implement this? Well, I would recommend that you conduct a weekly training. Rotate between the different members of your team on who leads the training weekly.

I also recommend setting up what is called like a mentorship loop. This is where you take somebody that is more senior on the team and you pair them with a more junior level individual. This doesn't mean seniority as far as tenure, but as far as skill set. So maybe you have a videographer that's been on the team for a year and then you hire a brand new videographer who is far more technically proficient. I would recommend pairing them together.

The cool byproduct of that is the new videographer, she can help train him on technical proficiencies and he can help train her on proficiencies on how to operate within the organization and how processes work. You get a win-win on both sides.

Aligning Individual Goals with Company Growth

Now, oftentimes when you're hiring an employee, we're humans, so we're selfish. We're thinking about what's in it for us. What are we trying to get out of this person? How can we maximize the returns from this human? But what I would recommend is gain understanding on what their long-term career goals are and start to line up opportunities that you give them with those long-term goals.

If they want to be in a place of leadership or they want to hold an executive role and they're an editor right now, well, something that would be very good for you to do is give them those training opportunities so they can gain the skill of communication and presenting.

Often times, especially with creative teams, there's this myth out there that, oh, creatives don't want to talk to anybody. They just want to be locked in a room and create. And I believe that that is true but my belief is the why behind that is because they've been trained, they've been told that's how they are. They work for an organization and the organization never gives them the opportunity to communicate with clients or with the whole team. They never give them presenting opportunities because they say "well creatives don't like to do that" so we're not going to give them the opportunity.

Whatever their desired outcome is for their career, it is your job if you want to hold on to them for a long time to make sure that you give them opportunities to grow towards that.

The Cost of Misalignment

If you have somebody on your team that has expressed what they want to accomplish and what you are doing and the opportunities you're providing them are actually going in the opposite direction, what you're going to have is somebody who becomes very dissatisfied with their role and will want to leave at any opportunity they have.

Stop being like most leaders and start knowing what your people, what your team wants. This is why creative teams lose great people. It's usually not because of the work output and stuff. It's because they no longer see themselves growing towards where they want to be. In fact, often times they see themselves growing away from where they're wanting to be.

The One-on-One Framework That Works

So, I recommend doing this by conducting one-on-ones. And here are a couple of great questions that I love to ask during a one-on-one:

Question number one, very, very basic and obvious, but most of you don't ask it. What's your long-term career goal? If you find that out, the amazing thing is you can give them opportunities that move them towards that that also serve the company.

Where do you see yourself after this? Do you see yourself at another company? Do you see yourself starting another company? Do you want to jump to a different industry? Are you wanting to experiment with different roles?

And third, what skills do you want to develop? Is there anything that you've been interested in? If they're a video editor, but they're really passionate about motion graphics, how cool would it be to be able to give them more opportunities? Maybe you're not able to make them a full-time motion designer because that's not what's required on your team for the content you're producing. But maybe what you can do is say, "Well, I mean, it would be cool if we made our lower thirds a little bit more fancy and we did some cool transitions and maybe we got a little bit crazier with how we animate text."

You're giving them an opportunity to hone in on the skill that they care about most and where they're wanting to go. And then what you're going to get as a byproduct of that is them sticking around a lot longer.

Making Growth Feel Real

So the goal here is ultra simple. Make sure you align their growth with what they're doing daily. If they feel like they're just checking boxes and doing tasks, they will eventually check the fuck out.

A really good example of this is I had somebody who was at a manager level on one of my teams that really expressed in the opening—literally in the interview process—expressed that they eventually wanted to be a CEO and they wanted to have a pretty large organization that they ran and at this point they were at a manager level.

And so what did I do? I started to give them more opportunities to oversee the team or a section of the team entirely. So, not just a manager level, but I gave them a lot of the responsibilities that I had without necessarily giving them a director title right away. One, just to prove that they can do it and make sure that we were putting them in the right spot, but I wanted to give them the opportunity to start to hone in on skills that were necessary and more importantly to be able to identify deficiencies they had that they needed to work on to eventually get to the point where they would be a CEO.

The Transition from Generalist to Specialist Culture

Now, your jack-of-all-trades, your generalists or your specialists who are willing to generalize, that's going to work in the early days. And it's actually not only going to work, it's necessary. You can't hire specialists entirely from day one, unless you have unlimited money and really deep pockets. But even then, I wouldn't advise doing that.

But eventually, you get to a point where specialists are the way that you're going to actually drive real results. We talked in the content section about specializing content to specific platforms. Well, the same thing is going to happen with your team. In order to make that content special to the platform, you're going to need the individual to specialize in that platform.

Why Specialization Transforms Your Team

Here's why this matters. When you move from the generalist workflow to a specialist workflow, you get individuals who execute at much higher levels. They gain massive efficiency by doing the same thing or relatively same thing over and over and over rather than hat jumping. They really iron out all the kinks, all the weird inefficiencies. They develop beautiful workflows on this because they're doing it all day every day.

Also, this leads to mastery, which reduces the amount of revisions and back and forth that you have to have with your team. You would not believe how effective it is and efficient it is if you can eliminate two rounds of revisions across all your editors on your team. Sure, in a week that was nice, but add up all that time over a year and you're saving weeks of your time.

The Individual Benefits of Specialization

The benefit for the individual is that specialists have way more long-term career value. They are able to earn far more throughout their career because they are a specialist. Companies will pay far more for that than somebody who is decent or proficient at everything.

So, by you investing in them as a specialist, you know, the reality is unfortunately there's all these people that we love that we have on our team and we want them forever, but they're not going to stay with you forever. The nature of a career and of a job is that there is an expiration date most of the time.

It is my goal if you join my team, I want to set you the fuck up so that when you go to the next spot, you are 10 times better than you could have ever imagined. And the way you do that is you promote specialization. They will typically be far happier and earn way more throughout their career.

Real Example: Trevor's Specialization Journey

Here's an example of this, and this is pretty typical that I find in creatives, but specifically short form editors for whatever reason. Trevor on my team, I hired him about three and a half years ago now. And I remember we brought him on as a short form editor.

About 9 to 12 months in, he started getting to the point where he had mastered how we do short form and was absolutely crushing it and started noticing the editors that were working on long form content and how sexy that looked and how interesting and shiny that was. And around 14 to 16 months in, he started vocalizing to me how he was considering wanting to move from being a short form editor to a long form editor.

Now, a little bit of context for you is at this point, we had reached a serious level of mastery to where he was the go-to guy on the team for shorts. In fact, so much so that every other short form editor whenever they ran into an issue would go to Trevor to help solve the problem.

And so what I proposed to Trevor is two different paths. I said, "Dude, you're an A player. You're a gangster. I want to keep you around and happy. So I'll move you over to long form if that's what you want." Now, it won't happen overnight because we are a business and we have needs, but we can transition you if that's what you want.

The way this will work is if you move over to long form, you're going to go to the bottom of the totem pole. You're going to the very bottom of the ladder. Like there's already some serious gangsters over there and you're not as experienced in it. So, you're going to be starting from zero.

Now, on the flip side, you could continue down this editing short form path. Right now, you're the top dog. And I see very soon in your future you managing all of the short form editors. Not only being the person that they come to with their problems and helping them solve and the one who always ends up having the most viewed clips, but you actually manage them.

Now, a little bit more additional context. This shit was young as fuck. He was 22 when we were having this conversation. A 22-year-old managing editors that were like six, seven years older than him potentially. This was a crazy crossroads for him.

And I told him, I said, I believe that if you specialize, you will go into a place of leadership that there's not a world where you'll get there if you go over to YouTube. That will take years for you to establish here. We're already 2 months out from this. And if you go up to that level, then eventually if you want to do a lateral move over to long form, you move over there in a totally different position. And so you're not starting from zero. You're starting from a place of leadership.

And so he chose to stick with short form. We gave him some long form edits here and there because he's a creative guy and he wanted to do it. Whenever somebody on my team vocalizes an interest or something they're passionate about and want to do, I want to do my best to give them that opportunity.

But we focused on short form. And guess what? He not only was promoted to senior editor, he was then promoted to lead editor. So he was promoted the most out of anybody on the team and he was managing three different editors at the age of 22 and 23. It was fucking absurd. He only got that because he chose to specialize.

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Chapter 22: Remote vs In Person vs Hybrid - Building High-Performance Teams Across Any Model

Based on: Team Culture and Communication Principles Throughout the Course

The Reality of Modern Team Building

Look, here's the thing about remote vs. in-person vs. hybrid—it's not about what's trendy or what other companies are doing. It's about what actually works for your specific team and the type of content you're creating.

I've built teams across all three models, and let me tell you, each one has its place. But the fundamentals we've covered throughout this entire team section—hiring for culture, creating ownership, developing people—those don't change based on where people are sitting.

Remote Teams - The New Reality

Remote work isn't going anywhere. And honestly, for content teams, it can be incredibly effective if you do it right. Here's why it works for creative teams:

The Benefits That Actually Matter

First, you get access to talent globally. That YouTube editor who's absolutely crushing it? They might be in another state or country. That motion graphics artist who has the exact style you need? They could be anywhere. Why limit yourself to people within a 30-mile radius of your office?

Second, creative work requires deep focus. And let's be real, most office environments are fucking distractions. The random meetings, people walking by, conversations happening around you—it's productivity cancer for anyone doing creative work.

Third, flexibility leads to better output. Some of my best editors do their work at 2 AM. Some are morning people. Some work best in 4-hour blocks with breaks. Remote work lets people work when they're actually productive instead of when you think they should be productive.

The Remote Challenges You Need to Solve

But remote isn't all sunshine and rainbows. The biggest challenge is communication and culture building. Remember what we talked about in onboarding? That "how the sausage is made" knowledge? That's harder to transfer remotely.

You need to be way more intentional about:

• Check-ins and communication cadence - Those regular touch-points we discussed become even more critical
• Documentation and processes - Everything needs to be written down and accessible
• Creating connection - People need to know each other as humans, not just Slack avatars

In-Person Teams - The Traditional Approach

In-person still has massive benefits, especially for certain types of creative work. When you're doing a lot of collaborative ideation, when you need to film content regularly, when you're working with complex equipment—being in the same space matters.

When In-Person Makes Sense

If you're creating content that requires a lot of collaboration in real-time—like brainstorming sessions, creative reviews, or complex productions—in-person can be more efficient. The back-and-forth that takes 20 Slack messages can happen in a 2-minute conversation.

For onboarding and training, especially for junior team members, there's something to be said for being able to physically sit next to someone and walk through processes. It's faster and more intuitive.

And let's be honest, some people just work better with the energy of being around other people. Not everyone thrives in isolation.

The In-Person Downsides

But in-person comes with real costs. You're limited to local talent, which might mean settling for someone who's a 7 out of 10 instead of finding a 9 out of 10 who lives across the country.

Commute time is productivity time lost. If your editor is spending 2 hours a day in traffic, that's 10 hours a week they're not creating. That's not sustainable long-term.

And office overhead is expensive as fuck. Rent, utilities, equipment, coffee, snacks—it adds up quickly, especially in the early days when every dollar matters.

Hybrid - The Best of Both Worlds?

Hybrid can work, but only if you're strategic about it. The worst version of hybrid is when it's just random—some people in the office some days, others remote, no real plan.

Making Hybrid Actually Work

The best hybrid approach I've seen is function-based. Certain activities happen in person, certain activities happen remote. For example:

• Creative reviews and brainstorming - In person
• Deep work like editing and writing - Remote
• Team meetings and culture building - In person
• Individual tasks and focused work - Remote

Or it's project-based. When you're in pre-production and planning a big shoot, everyone's in person for a week. When you're in post-production and everyone's editing, they're remote.

The Hybrid Trap to Avoid

The biggest mistake I see with hybrid is treating it like "flexible remote" where people just show up whenever they feel like it. That's not hybrid, that's chaos.

If you're going hybrid, you need clear expectations about when people are expected to be where, and why. Otherwise, you get all the downsides of both models with none of the benefits.

The Real Success Factors (Regardless of Model)

Here's what I've learned after building teams in all three models: the location matters way less than the systems and culture.

Communication is Everything

Whether you're remote, in-person, or hybrid, you need clear communication protocols. How fast do people need to respond to messages? What's the difference between a Slack, an email, and a phone call? How do you handle urgent vs. non-urgent requests?

In remote teams, this is obviously critical. But even in-person teams need this shit figured out because not everyone is always at their desk.

The Tools Have to Work

Your creative workflows need to be optimized for your model. If you're remote, that means cloud-based asset management, version control systems that actually work, and project management tools that everyone actually uses.

If you're in-person, you still need these things, but you can get away with more casual handoffs and verbal communication.

Culture Needs to be Intentional

Culture doesn't just happen—you have to build it intentionally. And that's true whether people are in the same room or on different continents.

Remote teams need virtual coffee chats, team calls that aren't just about work, and ways for people to get to know each other as humans. In-person teams need to not take that connection for granted and still be intentional about team building.

My Recommendation: Start with What You Need

Don't choose a model based on philosophy—choose based on what your team actually needs to do the work.

If you're creating content that requires a lot of equipment, if you're doing a lot of collaborative creative work, if you're in the early days and need to build culture quickly—start in-person.

If you're doing a lot of digital work, if you want access to the best talent regardless of location, if you need people to do deep focused work—start remote.

If you have a mix of needs and the budget to support the complexity—go hybrid, but be strategic about it.

And here's the most important part: you can always change. I've seen teams start remote and move in-person. I've seen teams start in-person and go remote. The model should serve the work, not the other way around.

The fundamentals we've covered—hiring the right people, onboarding them effectively, developing them into leaders, creating a culture of ownership—those work in any model. Focus on getting those right first, and the location becomes a lot less important.

Remember: great teams are built by great people doing great work together. Whether that "together" is in the same room or across time zones matters way less than you think.

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Section 4: Monetize Your Brand

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You've built the foundation. You've created content that resonates. You've built a team that executes. Now it's time to turn that influence into income.

But here's where most people fuck it up. They think monetization is about selling harder, pitching more, or finding the right "hack" to get people to buy. That's not monetization—that's desperation.

Real monetization starts with understanding that trust is the only currency that matters. Everything else is just tactics.

I'm going to walk you through the exact framework I use to monetize personal brands—not just my own, but the dozens of creators I work with who are generating six, seven, and eight figures from their personal brands.

This isn't about becoming a salesperson. This is about becoming so valuable that people ask to pay you.

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Chapter 23: Trust Before Transactions - The Foundation of Ethical Monetization

From: The monetization philosophy throughout the course

Let me be completely transparent with you about something. When I was putting together the pricing for this course, I had a fucking crisis.

I sat at my desk for three hours debating whether to charge $297, $497, or $997. Not because I didn't know the value—I knew this course could change someone's entire career trajectory. The crisis was deeper than that.

I was terrified of being seen as just another guru selling a course.

You know the type. The guy with the rented Lamborghini, the fake testimonials, the countdown timers, and the "limited time offers" that somehow never expire. The entire industry that's made people skeptical of anyone trying to monetize their expertise.

But here's what I realized during those three hours of pricing anxiety: The problem isn't monetization itself. The problem is monetizing before you've earned the right to.

The Currency of Trust

Trust is the only currency that actually matters in personal branding. You can have a million followers, you can have the best marketing funnels, you can have the most compelling sales copy—but if people don't trust you, none of it fucking matters.

And trust isn't something you can shortcut. You can't growth hack it. You can't buy it with Facebook ads. Trust is earned through consistent value delivery over time.

Think about the brands you actually buy from. Not the ones you follow for entertainment, but the ones where you actually pull out your credit card. What do they all have in common?

You trust that they'll deliver on their promises.

That's it. That's the entire game.

The Three Pillars Before Monetization

Before you even think about making money from your personal brand, your brand needs to do three things:

1. Provide Massive Value for Free

Give away your best stuff. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but the people who hold back their best content "for the paying customers" are the same people who struggle to get paying customers.

Your free content should be so good that people can't believe you're not charging for it. That's not a loss—that's marketing. When someone gets incredible results from your free content, what do you think they assume about your paid content?

I've given away frameworks in 15-minute videos that consultants charge $10,000 to implement. Why? Because when someone sees the value I provide for free, they know the paid stuff is going to be even better.

The goal isn't to keep your secrets. The goal is to demonstrate your expertise so clearly that working with you becomes the obvious next step.

2. Demonstrate Credibility Through Results

Talk is cheap. Results are expensive.

This is why testimonials are so powerful, but only when they're specific and verifiable. "This changed my life" is worthless. "I implemented Caleb's content strategy framework and grew from 10K to 100K followers in 6 months while landing my first $50K client" is everything.

But here's the thing about results: you have to help people get them for free before you can charge for them.

That's why case studies are so powerful. Document the process. Show the before and after. Let people see exactly what happens when someone implements your strategies.

Your free content should be a sample of the results your paid content can deliver.

3. Establish Real Relationships

Transactions happen between strangers. Business happens between people who know, like, and trust each other.

This is why the personal brand model works so well. People aren't just buying your product or service—they're buying into you as a person. They're investing in the relationship.

But relationships take time. You can't build a relationship in a 7-day email sequence or a 30-minute sales call. Relationships are built through consistent interaction over months and years.

Reply to comments. Answer DMs. Show up in your community. Be a real person, not just a content creation machine.

The Temptation of Quick Monetization

I get it. You've put in months of work building your audience. You're creating valuable content. You're seeing engagement. You want to see some return on that investment.

The temptation is to start selling before you've really earned the right to. To launch that course when you have 5,000 followers. To start pitching services when you've been creating content for three months.

Here's the hard truth: rushing monetization is the fastest way to kill your long-term potential.

I've seen creators with 50K followers make more money than creators with 500K followers. The difference? The 50K creator spent two years building trust before they ever asked for a dollar. The 500K creator started pitching on day one.

The Trust Account Analogy

Think of trust like a bank account. Every piece of value you provide is a deposit. Every ask you make is a withdrawal.

Most creators are constantly overdrawn.

They make one deposit (a decent piece of content) and then make five withdrawals (pitch posts, affiliate links, DMs about their course, etc.). Then they wonder why their audience isn't converting.

Successful monetization happens when your trust account is so full that you can make a withdrawal without going into the red.

That's why when I finally launched this course, people were asking me when it was coming. They were ready to buy before I was ready to sell. That's what happens when you focus on deposits first.

The Credibility Markers

Before you monetize, ask yourself honestly:

• Have I helped people get results for free?
• Can I point to specific examples of my strategies working?
• Do people actively engage with my content, not just consume it?
• Am I known for something specific, not just "general business advice"?
• Do I have genuine expertise, or am I just repackaging what others have taught?

If you can't answer "yes" to all of these, you're not ready to monetize. And that's okay. Building a personal brand is a long-term game. The creators who win are the ones who are patient enough to build the foundation properly.

Remember: It's better to monetize late with a strong foundation than to monetize early and destroy your credibility.

The irony is that the longer you wait to monetize (while consistently providing value), the easier monetization becomes. Trust is the ultimate conversion optimization.

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Chapter 24: Define Your Monetization Model - The Five Paths to Profit

From: Monetization strategies discussed throughout the course

Here's what nobody tells you about monetization: There's no one-size-fits-all approach. The model that works for Gary Vaynerchuk isn't the same model that works for Tim Ferriss, which isn't the same model that works for Pat Flynn.

But after working with hundreds of personal brands, I've identified five primary monetization paths. Most successful creators use 2-3 of these, not just one.

The key is understanding which models align with your strengths, your audience, and your long-term vision. Because the wrong monetization model can actually hurt your brand, even if it makes money in the short term.

The Five Monetization Paths

1. Services (High Touch, High Value)

This is where most personal brands should start. Why? Because services give you direct access to your clients' problems, which becomes the foundation for everything else you build.

Services include:

• Consulting (strategy, implementation, problem-solving)
• Done-for-you services (content creation, marketing, operations)
• Coaching (1-on-1 or group coaching programs)
• Speaking (keynotes, workshops, corporate training)

The pros: High margins, direct client feedback, builds case studies, establishes expertise quickly.

The cons: Time-intensive, hard to scale, income tied to your personal time.

I started with consulting. $5,000 per month retainers helping businesses with their content strategy. It wasn't scalable, but it gave me something more valuable than money: deep understanding of my clients' actual problems.

Every course I've created, every product I've launched, every piece of content I've made has been informed by the hundreds of hours I spent in the trenches with clients. You can't fake that level of insight.

2. Products (Scalable Knowledge)

Products are how you scale your expertise without scaling your time. This includes digital products, physical products, and software.

Digital products:

• Online courses (comprehensive training programs)
• Templates and frameworks (actionable tools people can implement)
• Masterclasses (deep-dive training on specific topics)
• Books and eBooks (authority building and lead generation)

Physical products:

• Merchandise (brand building, not typically a major revenue source)
• Tools and equipment (if you're in a niche that uses specific gear)

Software:

• SaaS tools (if you have technical expertise or team)
• Apps (mobile or web-based solutions)

The pros: Scalable income, can be sold 24/7, builds long-term assets.

The cons: Requires upfront investment, customer support needs, marketing intensive.

My rule for digital products: Only create products that solve problems you've already solved for clients. This ensures you're building something people actually want, not just something you think they need.

3. Affiliates and Sponsorships (Leveraging Others' Products)

This is where you recommend other people's products or services and earn a commission. But here's my non-negotiable rule: Never promote anything you don't personally use and believe in.

Affiliate opportunities:

• Software tools you actually use in your business
• Courses and programs that have helped you get results
• Physical products that align with your brand
• Services that you genuinely recommend

Sponsorship opportunities:

• Brand partnerships with companies that align with your values
• Product placements in your content
• Event sponsorships for your community or content

The pros: Passive income potential, no product creation needed, can be highly profitable.

The cons: Requires high trust with audience, income dependent on others, can damage credibility if done wrong.

I get offered affiliate deals every single week. I turn down 95% of them. The 5% I accept are products I already use and would recommend regardless of the commission. My audience trusts my recommendations because they know I'm not just shilling products for money.

4. Community and Memberships (Recurring Relationships)

This is the Netflix model applied to personal brands. Instead of selling one-time products, you create ongoing value that people pay for monthly or annually.

Community models:

• Paid mastermind groups (high-value, small group experiences)
• Membership sites with exclusive content and community access
• Cohort-based courses with live interaction and networking
• Private communities with ongoing support and resources

The pros: Recurring revenue, compound community value, deeper relationships with audience.

The cons: Requires constant value delivery, community management intensive, churn management.

The key to successful communities is exclusive access to you and to each other. People don't just join for the content—they join for the connections and the ongoing relationship.

5. Advertising and Content Monetization (Audience as Product)

This is where you monetize your attention directly. Your audience becomes the product that advertisers pay to access.

Options include:

• YouTube ad revenue from the YouTube Partner Program
• Podcast sponsorships and ad reads
• Newsletter sponsorships and promoted content
• Social media brand deals and sponsored posts
• Speaking bureau bookings paid for by your audience size

The pros: Can be very scalable, relatively passive once systems are in place.

The cons: Requires massive audience, income tied to algorithms, can hurt audience relationships if overdone.

My take on advertising: It should never be your primary monetization model, but it can be a nice supplemental income stream once you have significant scale.

Reading Your Audience's Signals

Before you pick a monetization model, look at what your audience is already asking for.

I spend time every week going through my DMs and comments. Here's what I'm looking for:

• What questions do people ask most frequently? (Course opportunity)
• What tools do they ask me to recommend? (Affiliate opportunity)
• Do they want to work with me directly? (Service opportunity)
• Are they asking to connect with other people in my audience? (Community opportunity)

Your audience will tell you how they want to pay you. You just have to listen.

The Progression Strategy

Here's the monetization progression I recommend for most personal brands:

Phase 1: Start with Services
Build expertise, get case studies, understand your audience's real problems.

Phase 2: Add Products
Turn your service expertise into scalable digital products.

Phase 3: Layer in Affiliates
Recommend tools and resources you genuinely use and love.

Phase 4: Build Community
Create recurring revenue through ongoing relationships.

Phase 5: Scale with Advertising
Add advertising revenue once you have significant scale.

Each phase should build on the previous one, not replace it. The most successful personal brands have multiple revenue streams that reinforce each other.

The Biggest Monetization Mistakes

Mistake #1: Trying to monetize too early
Build the trust account first. Monetization without trust is just spam.

Mistake #2: Choosing models that don't fit your strengths
If you hate being on calls, don't start with coaching. If you're not technical, don't try to build software.

Mistake #3: Promoting products you don't use
Your audience can sense authenticity. One bad affiliate recommendation can destroy years of trust building.

Mistake #4: Not diversifying revenue streams
Relying on one monetization model makes your business fragile. Diversify, but don't spread yourself too thin.

Remember: The best monetization model is the one that serves your audience while playing to your strengths. Everything else is just tactics.

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Chapter 25: Share the Knowledge, Sell the Execution - The Content Creator's Secret Formula

From: Value-first approach examples throughout the course

I'm about to share a formula that completely changed how I think about content and monetization. It's so simple that most people dismiss it, but it's so powerful that it's the foundation of every successful personal brand I know.

Share the knowledge for free. Sell the execution for a fee.

Let me tell you a story that'll make this crystal clear.

The Harley-Davidson Exhaust Pipe Story

A few years ago, I was obsessed with motorcycles. Not just riding them—modifying them. I wanted to change the exhaust pipe on my Harley to get that perfect deep rumble sound.

So I went down the YouTube rabbit hole. Found this guy who had the exact bike I had, the exact sound I wanted, and he made a 20-minute video breaking down the entire process. He showed me exactly which exhaust to buy, exactly how to install it, every tool I'd need, every potential problem I might run into.

The video was incredibly detailed. I could have done the work myself. He gave away everything.

But you know what I did? I called his shop and paid him $800 to do the installation for me.

Why? Because even though I had the knowledge, I didn't want to spend my Saturday in a garage, potentially fucking up my $20,000 bike. I wanted the result without the risk, hassle, or time investment.

That's the difference between knowledge and execution.

The Framework That Changes Everything

Here's what that Harley guy understood that most content creators don't:

Giving away your knowledge doesn't cannibalize your business—it creates it.

When you share your frameworks, your strategies, your step-by-step processes, you're not giving away your competitive advantage. You're demonstrating your expertise while simultaneously showing people how complex implementation actually is.

Let me give you a business example. I have a framework for landing clients that I've shared in multiple videos, blog posts, and even in this course. It's five steps:

1. Identify your niche - Get specific about who you serve and what problem you solve
2. Create valuable content - Demonstrate your expertise in that niche
3. Build relationships - Engage with prospects before you ever pitch them
4. Make soft offers - Let your content do the selling, not your sales pitches
5. Deliver exceptional results - Turn clients into case studies and referral sources

I've literally given away the entire framework. People can implement this themselves. And yet, I still have clients who pay me $10,000 a month to help them execute it.

Why Free Knowledge Creates Paid Demand

The more value you give away, the more trust you build. The more trust you build, the more people want to work with you directly.

Here's what happens in people's minds when you share valuable knowledge:

Phase 1: Skepticism
"This is probably too good to be true. Let me try one small thing."

Phase 2: Recognition
"Holy shit, this actually works. This person knows what they're talking about."

Phase 3: Overwhelm
"This is more complex than I thought. I can see why this works, but I don't have the time/expertise/confidence to implement it properly."

Phase 4: Desire for Help
"If their free stuff is this good, their paid stuff must be incredible. I want them to help me implement this."

Most creators stop at Phase 1 because they're afraid of giving too much away. The real money is in Phases 3 and 4.

What to Share vs. What to Sell

Share the strategy. Sell the implementation.
Share the framework. Sell the execution.
Share the knowledge. Sell the application.

For example, in my content strategy work:

What I share for free:

• The content pillar framework
• How to research your audience
• The posting cadence that works best
• Storytelling structures that convert
• Community engagement strategies

What I charge for:

• Analyzing their specific market and competition
• Creating their custom content calendar
• Writing their actual content with them
• Optimizing their strategy based on performance data
• Ongoing strategy adjustments and improvements

The free content demonstrates my expertise. The paid service applies that expertise to their specific situation.

The Implementation Gap

Here's what most people don't understand: There's a massive gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it effectively.

Think about weight loss. Everyone knows the formula: eat less, move more. The knowledge is free and available everywhere. Yet the diet and fitness industry is worth billions of dollars.

Why? Because knowing what to do and successfully implementing it are completely different challenges.

The same is true in business. People will pay for:

• Customization - Applying general principles to their specific situation
• Accountability - Having someone ensure they actually follow through
• Expertise - Getting guidance from someone who's done it successfully
• Speed - Getting results faster than they could on their own
• Risk mitigation - Avoiding the costly mistakes that come with trial and error

The Confidence Factor

When you freely share your best strategies, you're not just giving away value—you're demonstrating confidence.

Think about it. Would you rather work with someone who jealously guards their "secrets," or someone who's so confident in their expertise that they freely share their best stuff?

Scarcity marketing is a sign of insecurity. Abundance marketing is a sign of confidence.

I share my strategies because I know that even with the same knowledge, most people won't execute as well as I will. Not because they're not smart enough, but because I have years of experience implementing these strategies, making mistakes, and refining the process.

My value isn't in the knowledge—it's in the speed and effectiveness of implementation.

The Content Creation Application

For your personal brand, this means:

In your content, give away:

• Your frameworks and strategies
• Case studies and examples
• Step-by-step processes
• Tools and resources you use
• Mistakes to avoid

In your offers, provide:

• Personalized application of your frameworks
• Done-for-you implementation
• Ongoing support and optimization
• Custom strategy development
• Direct access to your expertise

The Trust Multiplier Effect

Every piece of valuable content you share multiplies trust exponentially.

When someone gets a result from your free content, they don't think "Great, now I don't need to pay this person." They think "If this person's free content got me this result, imagine what their paid content could do."

Free value doesn't reduce demand for paid services—it increases it.

I've had clients tell me they hired me specifically because they implemented one of my free frameworks and saw immediate results. The free content became the best sales tool I could have created.

The Long-term Competitive Advantage

Here's the beautiful thing about this approach: It creates a competitive advantage that gets stronger over time.

When you freely share your knowledge, you attract an audience that values learning and implementation. These people become your biggest advocates, your case studies, and your referral sources.

Your competitors can copy your content, but they can't copy the trust and relationships you've built through consistent value delivery.

Remember: Information wants to be free, but implementation will always have value. The more freely you share your knowledge, the more valuable your execution becomes.

Your expertise is not a finite resource that gets depleted when shared—it's a renewable resource that grows stronger through use.

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Chapter 26: Build Your Offer Stack - The Architecture of Scalable Revenue

From: Course structure and pricing strategy concepts throughout the course

Most personal brands fail at monetization because they try to solve everyone's problems with one offer. That's like trying to perform surgery with a hammer—technically it's a tool, but it's not the right tool for the job.

The most successful creators don't just have one product. They have an offer stack—a strategic progression of products and services that meet people wherever they are in their journey with you.

Why One-Size-Fits-All Doesn't Work

Think about your audience right now. You've got people who discovered you yesterday, people who've been following you for years, people with $100 budgets, and people with $100,000 budgets.

How the fuck are you supposed to serve all of them with one offer?

• The person who found you yesterday isn't ready to hire you for $10,000
• The person who's been following you for years might be insulted if you only offer a $97 course
• The small business owner has different needs than the enterprise client
• The complete beginner needs different support than the advanced practitioner

A single offer forces you to either leave money on the table or exclude parts of your audience.

The Five-Stage Offer Progression

After analyzing hundreds of successful personal brands, I've identified a five-stage progression that maximizes both value delivery and revenue generation:

Stage 1: Free Content (Trust Building)

Purpose: Demonstrate expertise and build trust
Price: Free
Examples: Blog posts, YouTube videos, podcasts, social media content

This is your marketing. It's not directly monetized, but it's the foundation everything else is built on. Never skimp on this stage—it's what creates demand for everything else.

Stage 2: Lead Magnets (Value Demonstration)

Purpose: Collect contact information while providing substantial value
Price: Free (but requires email/contact info)
Examples: PDF guides, email courses, templates, checklists, free tools

This stage is crucial for two reasons: It moves people from passive consumers to active subscribers, and it gives you a chance to deliver value directly to their inbox.

Stage 3: Low-Ticket Offers ($10-$100)

Purpose: Convert browsers into buyers and fund your marketing
Price: $10-$100
Examples: Mini-courses, templates, small group workshops, short consulting calls

The goal here isn't profit—it's conversion. You're turning free followers into paying customers. Once someone has paid you once, they're exponentially more likely to pay you again.

Stage 4: Mid-Ticket Offers ($500-$5,000)

Purpose: Provide comprehensive solutions for committed buyers
Price: $500-$5,000
Examples: Full courses, group coaching programs, workshops, done-for-you services

This is where most creators make their money. It's high enough to be profitable but accessible enough for motivated buyers who aren't ready for your premium services.

Stage 5: High-Ticket Offers ($10,000+)

Purpose: Work directly with serious buyers who want maximum results
Price: $10,000+
Examples: 1-on-1 consulting, done-for-you services, masterminds, speaking engagements

This is where you work with people who value speed and personalization over price.

Why Most Creators Skip the Foundation

Here's the mistake I see constantly: creators want to jump straight to high-ticket offers.

They see someone charging $25,000 for a mastermind and think "I should do that." But they're missing the foundation that makes high-ticket offers possible:

• Trust built through consistent free value
• Proof of concept through low-ticket sales
• Systems refined through mid-ticket delivery
• Case studies created through successful client work

You can't build a house starting with the roof. The offer stack is the same—each stage supports the next.

The Economics of Offer Stacking

Let's say you have 10,000 email subscribers. Here's how different conversion rates work across your offer stack:

Stage 2: Lead Magnet (Free)

• 10,000 email subscribers
• Conversion rate: N/A (already subscribers)
• Revenue: $0
• Purpose: Trust building

Stage 3: Low-Ticket ($97 Course)

• 10,000 potential buyers
• 2% conversion rate = 200 buyers
• Revenue: $19,400
• Purpose: Convert followers to customers

Stage 4: Mid-Ticket ($1,997 Coaching Program)

• 200 previous customers
• 10% conversion rate = 20 buyers
• Revenue: $39,940
• Purpose: Serve committed buyers

Stage 5: High-Ticket ($10,000 Consulting)

• 20 previous program graduates
• 5% conversion rate = 1 client
• Revenue: $10,000
• Purpose: Premium service delivery

Total revenue from one 10,000-person email list: $69,340

But here's the beautiful part: The person who buys your $97 course is 10x more likely to buy your $1,997 program than a random subscriber. Each purchase increases the probability of the next purchase.

How I Built My Offer Stack

Let me walk you through how I developed my own offer stack:

Stage 1: Free Content
YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, this course—all free content that demonstrates my expertise in personal branding and content strategy.

Stage 2: Lead Magnets
Free PDF downloads, email courses, templates—things that require an email address but provide immediate value.

Stage 3: Low-Ticket ($97-$297)
Mini-courses on specific topics like "Content Pillars" or "Personal Brand Positioning"—bite-sized solutions to specific problems.

Stage 4: Mid-Ticket ($1,997-$4,997)
Comprehensive programs like this Personal Brand Course—full transformations with group support and community access.

Stage 5: High-Ticket ($10,000-$50,000)
1-on-1 consulting, done-for-you content strategy, speaking engagements—premium services for serious buyers.

I didn't launch these all at once. I started with free content, then added lead magnets, then low-ticket, and so on. Each stage informed the next.

The Offer Stack Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake #1: Starting with high-ticket
You haven't earned the right to charge premium prices until you've proven value at lower price points.

Mistake #2: Too many options
Don't overwhelm people with choice. Have one primary offer at each stage.

Mistake #3: No logical progression
Your offers should build on each other, not compete with each other.

Mistake #4: Pricing gaps that are too large
Don't jump from $97 to $10,000. Create stepping stones.

Mistake #5: No backend strategy
Every offer should have a logical next step for buyers who want more.

The Value Ladder Strategy

Think of your offer stack as a value ladder. Each rung provides more value, more personalization, and more results—at a higher price point.

Bottom rung: Free content (high volume, low personalization)
Second rung: Lead magnets (medium volume, some personalization)
Third rung: Low-ticket offers (lower volume, more personalization)
Fourth rung: Mid-ticket offers (low volume, high personalization)
Top rung: High-ticket offers (very low volume, maximum personalization)

The goal is to move people up the ladder, not to get everyone to the top.

Some people will be happy with your free content. Others will buy your low-ticket offer and be satisfied. A few will work their way up to your premium services.

That's exactly how it should work.

Creating Your First Offer Stack

If you're just starting, here's your roadmap:

Month 1-3: Focus on free content. Build an audience and understand their problems.

Month 4: Launch your first lead magnet. Start collecting email addresses.

Month 5-6: Create your first low-ticket offer based on the most common problem you see.

Month 7-9: Develop your mid-ticket offer based on feedback from your low-ticket buyers.

Month 10+: Consider high-ticket services for your most successful mid-ticket clients.

Remember: Each stage should validate demand for the next stage. If people aren't buying your $97 course, they're not going to buy your $2,997 program.

Your offer stack isn't just about maximizing revenue—it's about serving your audience at every stage of their journey with you.

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Chapter 27: Let Your Content Do the Selling - The Art of Invisible Sales

From: Content-to-conversion strategies throughout the course

I fucking hate sales calls. I hate pitching. I hate the feeling of trying to convince someone to buy something they might not want or need.

But I love making sales.

The difference? I let my content do the selling for me.

By the time someone gets on a call with me or clicks "buy now" on one of my offers, the sales conversation is already over. They're not trying to decide whether to buy—they're trying to decide when to start.

That's the power of content-driven sales.

Why Traditional Selling Doesn't Work for Personal Brands

Traditional sales tactics—cold calling, aggressive pitching, objection handling—all assume that the prospect doesn't know you, doesn't trust you, and isn't sure if you can help them.

But personal brands operate in a completely different environment.

Your prospects have been consuming your content for weeks, months, or even years. They've seen your expertise in action. They've gotten results from your free advice. They've watched you solve problems for other people.

By the time they're ready to buy, the trust is already there.

That's why traditional sales techniques feel so forced and awkward for personal brands. You're trying to build trust in a 30-minute call that you've already spent months building through content.

The Five Ways Content Sells for You

1. Teach with a Soft Call-to-Action

Instead of: "Buy my course on email marketing!"
Try: "Here's the email sequence that generated $50K in sales last month. If you want the complete framework, including the templates and automation setup, check out my Email Marketing Mastery course."

You're leading with value, demonstrating expertise, and making the pitch feel like a natural extension of the free content.

The psychology: People think "If this free advice is this good, the paid content must be incredible."

2. Share Client Success Stories

Instead of: "My coaching program gets results!"
Try: "Sarah implemented the content strategy we developed in our first month together and landed two new clients worth $25K. Here's exactly what we did..."

Then at the end: "If you're ready to build a content strategy that consistently attracts high-value clients, let's talk about working together."

The psychology: Social proof is more powerful than any sales pitch you could write.

3. Document Your Process

Instead of: "I'm the best at what I do!"
Try: Actually show your work. Take people behind the scenes of client projects, course creation, business strategy sessions.

When people see your process in action, they understand the value of working with you directly.

The psychology: People don't buy products—they buy transformations. Show them the transformation in action.

4. Address Objections Through Content

Instead of: Handling objections on sales calls
Try: Create content that addresses common objections before people ever get on a call with you.

"The Real Reason Most Personal Brand Courses Don't Work" (addresses the "I've tried this before" objection)

"Why I Don't Guarantee Specific Results (And Why You Should Be Suspicious of Anyone Who Does)" (addresses the "what if it doesn't work" objection)

The psychology: When you address objections proactively, you eliminate most sales friction before it happens.

5. Use Lead Magnets That Qualify Prospects

Instead of: Generic lead magnets that attract anyone
Try: Lead magnets that attract your ideal clients and repel everyone else.

For example, instead of "10 Social Media Tips," try "The $10K Content Strategy Framework for Service-Based Businesses."

The second lead magnet will attract fewer people, but the people it attracts are much more likely to buy your high-ticket services.

The psychology: Self-selection is the most powerful qualifying mechanism.

The Content Sales Funnel That Actually Works

Here's the funnel I use to turn content into sales without ever feeling salesy:

Stage 1: Problem-Aware Content
Help people identify and understand their problems. Most people know something is wrong but can't articulate exactly what.

Stage 2: Solution-Aware Content
Show people what good looks like. Give them a vision of the transformation they want.

Stage 3: Product-Aware Content
Demonstrate your expertise and show how you help people achieve that transformation.

Stage 4: Most-Aware Content
Address the specific concerns and objections of people who are ready to buy but still hesitant.

Each stage moves people closer to purchase without ever feeling like a sales pitch.

The Difference Between Selling and Showing

Let me show you the difference with two examples:

Example 1: Traditional Selling
"Are you struggling with content creation? Do you feel overwhelmed trying to come up with new ideas every day? My Content Strategy Course will solve all your problems! For just $997, you'll get 8 modules of step-by-step training that will transform your content forever. Click here to buy now!"

Example 2: Content Selling
"I spent 3 hours yesterday helping a client restructure their content strategy. They were posting every day but getting zero engagement. The problem? They were creating random content instead of strategic content. Here's the framework we used to fix it..."

[Provides valuable framework]

"This is the same framework I teach in my Content Strategy Course, along with the templates, examples, and optimization strategies that turn good content into great content."

Which one makes you want to buy?

The second example doesn't feel like selling because it's not focused on the sale—it's focused on the value. The sale is just a natural extension of the value.

Content That Converts vs. Content That Just Entertains

Entertaining content gets likes and comments but doesn't drive business results.

Converting content educates, inspires, and motivates people to take action.

Here's the difference:

Entertaining: "10 funny things that happen when you work from home"
Converting: "The 10 productivity systems that helped me build a 7-figure business from my home office"

Entertaining: "My biggest business failure"
Converting: "My biggest business failure and the 5 lessons that helped me bounce back stronger"

Both can be engaging, but only one positions you as someone worth paying.

The Long-Term Relationship Strategy

Here's what most people don't understand about content selling: It's not about individual pieces of content converting. It's about the cumulative effect of consistent value over time.

One video won't make someone buy from you. But 50 videos that consistently solve their problems, challenge their thinking, and demonstrate your expertise? That builds the relationship that makes buying feel inevitable.

Think of your content as a long-term relationship strategy, not a short-term conversion tactic.

The Authenticity Factor

The reason content selling works so well is because it's authentic. You're not putting on a "sales voice" or using manipulative tactics. You're just being yourself and sharing value.

When someone buys from you after months of consuming your content, they're not buying from a stranger—they're buying from someone they feel like they already know and trust.

That's why conversion rates are so much higher with content-driven sales than traditional sales methods.

Measuring Success

Don't measure content success by likes and comments. Measure it by business results.

Track:

• Email subscribers from content
• Sales calls booked from content
• Direct sales from content
• Client inquiries from specific pieces of content

The best content marketing doesn't feel like marketing at all—it feels like help.

When someone says "Your content convinced me to work with you," that's when you know you've mastered the art of invisible sales.

Remember: People don't buy when they understand your product. They buy when they understand themselves and see you as the guide to help them get where they want to go.

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Chapter 28: Play the Long Game - Monetize Without Losing Trust

From: Sustainable monetization principles throughout the course

Here's the harsh reality about monetization: Every time you ask for money, you withdraw from your trust account.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't monetize. It means you need to be strategic about how and when you do it, because trust is finite, and once it's gone, it's almost impossible to rebuild.

I've seen creators destroy years of trust building with one bad product launch, one affiliate promotion that goes wrong, or one service that under-delivers on promises.

The long game is about monetizing in a way that actually increases trust over time, not depletes it.

The Trust Equation

Every interaction with your audience either adds to or subtracts from your trust bank account:

Trust Deposits:

• Valuable free content that gets results
• Authentic storytelling and vulnerability
• Consistent delivery on promises
• Going above and beyond expectations
• Admitting mistakes and fixing them quickly

Trust Withdrawals:

• Asking for money without providing value first
• Promoting products you don't personally use
• Over-promising and under-delivering
• Being inauthentic or manipulative
• Prioritizing profit over people

The goal is to make sure your deposits always exceed your withdrawals. And the bigger the withdrawal (like a high-ticket offer), the more deposits you need to have made first.

The Three Long-Game Monetization Strategies

Strategy 1: Deliver Massive Free Value First

Before every monetization effort, ask yourself: "How much value have I provided to this audience lately?"

If you've been pitching more than you've been providing value, you're overdrawn on trust. Stop selling and start giving until the balance tips back in your favor.

Here's my personal rule: For every piece of monetized content, I create at least 10 pieces of pure value content.

That means for every sales post, affiliate promotion, or course launch, I've shared 10 valuable pieces of content with no ask at all. This keeps my trust account constantly growing.

The irony is that the more value you give away for free, the easier it becomes to make money.

Strategy 2: Build Return Systems, Not One-Hit Wonders

Most creators approach monetization like they're trying to go viral—big launches, aggressive promotion, then radio silence until the next launch.

This is the equivalent of treating your audience like ATM machines. You only show up when you want money.

Instead, build systems that create ongoing value and ongoing revenue:

• Email sequences that provide value while introducing your offers
• Content series that educate while demonstrating your expertise
• Community engagement that builds relationships while showcasing results
• Case study content that helps others while promoting your services

The Netflix approach vs. the movie approach: Netflix keeps you engaged with a constant stream of content. Movies try to get all your money in one big event.

Be Netflix, not a movie.

Strategy 3: Protect Your Reputation at All Costs

Your reputation is your most valuable business asset. It takes years to build and seconds to destroy.

Here are the non-negotiables for protecting your reputation while monetizing:

Only promote products you personally use and believe in. If you wouldn't recommend it to your best friend, don't recommend it to your audience.

Under-promise and over-deliver on everything. It's better to surprise people with bonus value than to disappoint them with unmet expectations.

Be transparent about your business relationships. Always disclose affiliate relationships, sponsorships, and partnerships.

Handle problems quickly and publicly. When something goes wrong (and it will), address it immediately and honestly.

Price based on value, not market pressure. Don't raise prices just because someone told you that you could. Raise prices when you've increased the value.

The Critical Question to Ask Before Every Monetization Decision

Before launching any offer, promoting any affiliate product, or asking for any money, ask yourself this question:

"Will this increase or decrease trust with my audience?"

If the honest answer is that it might decrease trust, either don't do it or change your approach until you can honestly say it will increase trust.

This one question has saved me from more reputation-damaging decisions than any other business principle I follow.

Long-Term Thinking in Action

Let me give you some specific examples of how long-term thinking changes your monetization approach:

Short-term thinking: Launch a course because you need money this month.
Long-term thinking: Wait to launch your course until you've helped enough people for free that there's overwhelming demand.

Short-term thinking: Promote a high-commission affiliate offer because the money is good.
Long-term thinking: Only promote affiliate offers for products you've personally used and gotten results from.

Short-term thinking: Raise your prices because a competitor is charging more.
Long-term thinking: Raise your prices only when you've added more value or achieved better results for clients.

Short-term thinking: Create as many products as possible to maximize revenue streams.
Long-term thinking: Perfect one offer before creating the next one.

The Compound Effect of Trust

Here's what most people don't understand: Trust compounds.

When you consistently prioritize your audience's success over your own short-term profit, something magical happens. Your audience becomes your sales force.

They start referring people to you. They defend you in comments. They share your content without being asked. They become invested in your success because you've been invested in theirs.

This is why creators who play the long game often out-earn creators who focus on short-term optimization. Their audience does the selling for them.

The Trust Multiplier Effect

Every time you choose long-term trust over short-term profit, you multiply your future earning potential.

Example: I was offered a $50,000 sponsorship deal to promote a course creation software that I'd never used. The short-term thinking would have been to take the money.

But I knew that promoting a product I hadn't personally tested would hurt my credibility with my audience. So I turned it down.

Six months later, that decision led to three clients who specifically hired me because they trusted my recommendations. Those three clients were worth more than $200,000 in revenue.

The $50,000 I didn't take turned into $200,000 I did make, plus the long-term trust that will continue paying dividends for years.

Building Anti-Fragile Revenue

The long game isn't just about protecting your current income—it's about building revenue that gets stronger during difficult times.

When economic downturns happen, when platforms change their algorithms, when competitors enter your market, the creators with the strongest trust relationships are the ones who survive and thrive.

Trust-based revenue is recession-proof because it's relationship-based, not transaction-based.

The Patience Paradox

The paradox of long-term monetization is that the longer you wait to monetize, the easier monetization becomes.

But most creators can't handle this paradox. They want results now. They want revenue this month. They optimize for speed instead of sustainability.

The creators who build long-term wealth are the ones who can delay gratification. They understand that every month they spend building trust is a month that will pay dividends for years to come.

Your Long-Term Monetization Checklist

Before any monetization effort, ask yourself:

• Have I provided at least 10x more value than I'm asking for?
• Would I recommend this to my best friend?
• Am I solving a real problem or just trying to make money?
• Will this increase or decrease trust with my audience?
• Am I thinking about this quarter or the next 10 years?

If you can't answer these questions positively, you're not ready to monetize that opportunity.

Remember: The long game always wins. Trust is your most valuable asset. Protect it at all costs, and it will pay you for life.

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Chapter 29: It's Your Turn to Take Action - The End is Just the Beginning

From: Final encouragement and next steps throughout the course

We've covered a lot of ground together. Nearly 7 hours of content, 29 chapters, and enough frameworks to build a personal brand that generates life-changing income.

But here's the thing about knowledge: It's worthless without execution.

I could give you the world's best blueprint for building a skyscraper, but if you never pour the foundation, it doesn't matter. The same is true for everything you've learned in this course.

What You've Learned

Let's take a minute to recap what you now have access to:

Foundation (Section 1):

• How to define your brand identity with surgical precision
• The art of authentic storytelling that builds deep connections
• Audience psychology and how to speak directly to your ideal person
• Personal brand positioning that cuts through the noise
• Content pillars that ensure you never run out of valuable things to say
• Platform strategy that focuses your effort where it matters most

Content Strategy (Section 2):

• How to choose your content medium based on your strengths
• Platform selection that maximizes reach and engagement
• Posting cadence that builds momentum without burning you out
• Storytelling frameworks that turn ordinary experiences into compelling content
• Community-driven content that builds relationships, not just followers
• Content scaling systems that multiply your output
• Experimentation protocols that optimize performance over time

Team Building (Section 3):

• How to identify exactly what roles you need to hire for
• Streamlined hiring processes that find A-players faster
• Culture-first hiring that builds teams aligned with your vision
• Starting lean and scaling smart to maximize capital efficiency
• Employment models that work for modern creative businesses
• Onboarding systems that turn hires into high-performers quickly
• Development and retention strategies that build careers, not just jobs
• Culture building that creates ownership and excellence
• Work model strategies for remote, in-person, and hybrid teams

Monetization (Section 4):

• Trust-first monetization that builds long-term sustainable revenue
• The five monetization models and how to choose the right ones for you
• The knowledge vs. execution framework that makes selling feel natural
• Offer stack architecture that serves every type of buyer
• Content-driven sales that eliminate the need for aggressive pitching
• Long-term monetization strategies that compound trust over time

That's not just a course—that's a complete business operating system.

The Implementation Challenge

But here's what I know about you right now. You're sitting there feeling one of three ways:

Option 1: Overwhelmed
"This is amazing, but there's so much. Where do I even start?"

Option 2: Excited
"I can see exactly how this applies to my situation. I'm ready to implement."

Option 3: Skeptical
"This sounds great in theory, but will it actually work for me?"

All three reactions are normal. All three are valid. But only one leads to results.

If You're Feeling Overwhelmed

Start with one thing. Don't try to implement everything at once.

Pick the section that resonates most with where you are right now:

• If you don't have clarity on your brand identity: Start with Section 1
• If you know who you are but struggle with content: Start with Section 2
• If you're creating content but can't scale: Start with Section 3
• If you have an audience but aren't making money: Start with Section 4

Master one section before moving to the next. Building a personal brand is a marathon, not a sprint.

If You're Feeling Excited

Channel that excitement into immediate action. The best time to start implementing is when you're motivated.

But don't just consume more content. Start creating.

• Write your brand positioning statement today
• Publish your first piece of strategic content this week
• Define the first role you need to hire for your team
• Create your first lead magnet if you're ready to monetize

Excitement without execution is just entertainment.

If You're Feeling Skeptical

Good. Skepticism is smart.

Don't just take my word for it. Test the frameworks.

Pick one small strategy from this course and implement it for 30 days. Measure the results. If it works, implement another. If it doesn't, adjust or try a different approach.

The frameworks in this course have been tested by hundreds of creators. But the only test that matters is whether they work for you.

The 30-Day Quick Start Plan

If you want to see immediate results from this course, here's your 30-day implementation plan:

Week 1: Foundation

• Complete your brand positioning exercise
• Define your content pillars
• Choose your primary platform

Week 2: Content

• Create and publish 5 pieces of strategic content
• Start engaging with your target audience
• Begin building your email list

Week 3: Systems

• Set up your content calendar
• Create templates for your most common content types
• Establish your posting schedule

Week 4: Optimization

• Review your analytics and performance
• Double down on what's working
• Adjust what isn't

By the end of 30 days, you should have a clear brand identity, consistent content output, growing audience engagement, and the systems to scale.

The One-Year Vision

But 30 days is just the beginning. Here's what's possible if you consistently implement these strategies for one year:

• A clearly defined personal brand that stands out in your industry
• A content strategy that consistently attracts your ideal audience
• A team that multiplies your impact and frees up your time
• Multiple revenue streams that generate meaningful income
• A business that works for you instead of you working for it

This isn't theoretical. This is the exact progression I've seen with dozens of creators who've implemented these strategies.

The Resources You Have Access To

Remember, this course isn't just the video content. You also have access to:

The Complete Course Transcript: Every word of this course in a searchable, reference-friendly format

Implementation Worksheets: Step-by-step guides for implementing each major framework

Template Library: Proven templates for content, hiring, monetization, and more

Resource Lists: Curated lists of tools, platforms, and services I actually use

Bonus Content: Additional strategies and case studies that didn't fit in the main course

Don't let these resources sit unused. They're designed to accelerate your implementation and increase your success rate.

The Support System

You're not doing this alone.

Connect with other course participants, share your progress, ask questions, and get feedback. The community you build through implementation is often more valuable than the strategies themselves.

The Mindset That Makes the Difference

Here's the difference between people who succeed with this material and people who don't:

Successful implementers think: "How can I apply this to my specific situation?"
Unsuccessful implementers think: "This probably won't work for me because my situation is unique."

Successful implementers think: "What can I implement this week?"
Unsuccessful implementers think: "I'll start implementing when I have more time."

Successful implementers think: "What can I learn from this failure?"
Unsuccessful implementers think: "See, I knew this wouldn't work."

Your mindset determines your results more than any strategy or tactic.

My Promise to You

If you implement the strategies in this course consistently for six months, your personal brand will be unrecognizable.

You'll have clarity on who you serve and how you help them. You'll have content systems that work. You'll have team members who multiply your impact. You'll have revenue streams that support your lifestyle and goals.

But here's my promise: This course is just the beginning.

The real education happens when you start implementing. When you publish that first piece of strategic content. When you hire your first team member. When you make your first sale.

That's when the real learning begins.

The Final Challenge

So here's my challenge to you:

Don't let this course become another piece of content you consumed but didn't act on. Don't let it sit in your "someday" pile.

Take one action within the next 24 hours. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be a step forward.

• Send one DM to someone in your target audience
• Write one piece of content using the frameworks you've learned
• Post one personal story that builds connection with your audience
• Create one lead magnet that provides value to potential customers

The size of the action doesn't matter. What matters is that you take action.

Your Personal Brand Journey Starts Now

Building a personal brand that generates meaningful income isn't about perfection. It's about progression.

Every successful creator started exactly where you are right now—with an idea, some knowledge, and the decision to begin.

The difference between successful creators and everyone else isn't talent, luck, or special circumstances. It's consistent implementation over time.

You have everything you need. You have the strategies. You have the frameworks. You have the tools.

The only question now is: What are you going to do with them?

Your personal brand journey starts now. Make it count.

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