🚀 💡 Dickie Bush's Multi-Million Dollar Course Empire - IdeaEconomy💡 🚀

One of my favorite creators, Dickie Bush, is interviewed by Jay Clouse for the second time.

Dickie is the co-founder of Ship30for30 cohort writing challenge that has had more than 4000 students and millions of dollars in revenue.

"Since our first interview, Dickie has grown his Twitter following from 10,000 to more than 175,000 at the time of publishing. He's also now served 4,000 students through Ship 30 for 30.

In this episode, we talk about Dickie’s wild year of growth, the evolution of the Ship 30 for 30 student experience, Dickie’s underrated growth technique, and why adding his new software product Typeshare is adding to their business Flywheel."

Lexi Grant shares her journey from a freelance journalist to her own content marketing agency. She later started her own site, The Write Life, leveraging the skills and talent she had in her agency. The Write Life went on to sell for mid-six figures."

Her latest business is They Got Acquired, which profiles businesses that have sold for between $100k and $50m.

There are some good insights in this podcast. I'm especially impressed by the production quality. This is going to be a big company.

Big Idea: Great example of the value of approaching your creator business as a startup rather than a solo creator. There are much bigger opportunities when you do everything at a higher level.

Related link: Nathan Barry breaks down this growth path in Ladders of Wealth Creation.
 

"Justin Moore is a sponsorship coach whose course launch skyrocketed after he niched down."

How Justin Moore leverages ConvertKit to create landing pages and offer lead magnets to grow his email list and sell his cohort-based course.

Big Idea: Good example of the power of finding a narrow niche. Justin focuses on helping creators find brand sponsorships. He's built an email list with 3000 subscribers, a YouTube channel with 41.1k subscribers, and can now sell a $1000 cohort-based course.
 

"Conduct an audit and see which pieces of content you have recently published that have signs of content market fit. There could be more links than other assets. it could be more social shares than other assets. It could be more referral traffic than other assets."

"Once you have a spreadsheet that outlines all of the different ways in which you have content market fit… The next step is to start running those pieces of content through a distribution playbook. A playbook that is rooted in helping these pieces of content drive as much ROI as possible. A playbook that is built to give these pieces of content more reach than they would if you continued to operate like you have been for the last year… A playbook that looks exactly like this:"

Related Links:

15 Proven Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Blog

5 Marketing Strategies for Writers Who Hate Promoting Their Own Work
 

Jay Clouse reflects on switching from a strip mall to a skyscraper creator framework. 

"I've built four courses, seven paid workshops, I had a small paid newsletter at one point, and two different memberships...

In January, it all added up to 24 different revenue streams!

I'm not going to knock the strip mall model – even though I think we can agree even the term "strip mall" is less aspirational than "skyscraper." 

Well, as they say, "What got you here won't get you there." My aspirations as a professional creator are a lot bigger than what I've built so far, and now I have the ability to be more thoughtful about how I'm building this business.

So I asked myself – what does my business look like as a skyscraper?"

Big Idea: Creators often need multiple income streams to make a full-time living, however, there are advantages to going all-in on one big idea.

Some examples are Dickie Bush, David Perell, Tiago Forte, Dru Riley, Pat Walls, and Niall Doherty.
 

"There are some creators who have managed to build strong businesses with relatively small audiences. They’ve accomplished this by drilling down into lucrative niches and then selling high-priced products to just a few customers.

Case in point: the Startup Parent podcast. When I interviewed host Sarah Peck last May, it was generating only around 2,000 downloads per episode, and its newsletter following was even smaller. Despite those low numbers, she was on track to generate $200,000 in 2021."

Another example of how niching down helps. 

via @fortheinterested

"My experience is that growth takes twice as long as you think and is twice as hard. The biggest advantage you can give yourself is to devote as much of your energy, resources and focus to the actual content itself rather than the sugar high of piling up big follower and subscriber numbers that are likely more quantity than quality."

via @rosie.land
 

"Steph Smith, Head of Trends.co and author of “Doing Content Right,” shared her perspective on what makes good content and what she tells every creator to do before they start their own newsletter."

"Smith encourages creators to think about how they’re differentiating what they produce. Most of the time, the differentiator is not as groundbreaking as you might think. Many people find the Hustle to be funnier which gives them more joy in their day. The same goes for Barstool Sports in the sports category. James Clear’s 3–2–1 newsletter is so concise that it’s more stress-free, she explained, because you can get through it faster."

“If you can’t articulate to someone: ‘My content is more X than my competitors’ then your content is probably not differentiated enough and other people can’t recognize why they should pay attention to you and not someone else."

via @gregbussmann
 

"Although you can’t hack virality, you have more control than you think. If you use these viral marketing tactics, you’ll increase your odds of going viral."

A report on the New Creator Economy with an industry mapping and list of investors in Web3.

"Platforms are becoming community-led where both creators and their audience members have the opportunity to have greater upside based on their contributions."

via @forefront
 

Here is a selection of the best links I've found this week to level up your creator skills.

Why You Might Want To Leave Your Content Ungated - davidbaker via @fortheinterested

How To Collect 700+ Emails Via Twitter DMs - alexgarcia

The Reddit Ads Experiment: What We Learned for $250 - ladder via @swipefiles
 
How I Built 5,660 Backlinks in 30 Days - backlinko