Creators: Demonstrate You Can Help People By Helping Them First
It’s the oldest strategy in the suitcase, yet few creators use it. If you want people to believe in your work, show them how it will transform their lives, transform their lives, then ask for money.
It’s easy to make a promise, but will you be one of the few who delivers?
People want to read what they want to read. They want to listen to what they want to listen to. We filter, box, categorize, and divide. The new customer model isn’t “how many subscribers can we get?” The new model is “how few customers can we get to sustain our work that matters most?” The minimum viable audience, or MVA.
Taking first, is the old model.
It’s still the most-popular model, by far. It’s called push marketing. Look at any Instagram ad. “Buy this magic belt!” “Buy this unicorn tape dispenser.” “Buy this monthly subscription game, where you become obsessed with serial killers (whaaaat?).” “Buy this app that teaches you how to have feelings.”
What if we give first?
What if we proved we did what we said we could do, before we asked our fans for money? What if we proved we could help them in the way we said we could help them, before they paid us to help them? Whaaaaat? Crazy-talk. I know.
What if we pulled, instead of pushed?
What if our work was so good, a certain percentage of our followers couldn’t help but buy it? We could give away most of our best stuff, while still serving a certain percentage of our customers in a premium way. The premium customers would fund the rest of the operation.
Don’t get me twisted here. I’m not some kind of altruist, where I think we should all skip through the daisy fields, holding hands, and high-fiving the squirrels. I’m a commercial, blue-collar creator. This means I’ll never apologize for asking to be paid for my best work. And I’m not cheap.
But I give first. I give a lot. I give until my eyes bleed.
Why? Not because it’s some sneaky way to get a customer, or some law of reciprocity horse-crap, where you trick people into buying by making them beholden to you. Nope. I give because it’s the right thing to do. I give so I can sleep at night, knowing I’ve really helped people.
I give first, because I enjoy the positive fan mail, from people I’ve actually helped. I give first, because it feels good. I give, because feeling good is selfish and I like to feel god. Sure, I get a lot of weirdos who don’t like what I do, but that’s OK. If I didn’t bother the weirdos I wouldn’t be pushing the direction of my work hard enough.
We give before we ask.
I know there are a lot of skeptics, especially writers like me. Writing’s a real bitch. You can spend a year or more working on a book, course, or story. The last thing you want to do is give the thing away. That means you’ve got to make more things, so you can charge money. More work. More time.
Take a step back when you feel this way.
Think about birthdays instead. Not some birthday, where you buy the person a cheap-ass candle and shove it in a cheap-ass gift bag, on the way to the party — because you hate them. No. Think about the birthday where you really care about the person. The kind of gift that has meaning — where you can’t wait to see their face when they open it.
This is the right amount of giving.
Or, if you don’t like the cheap-ass candle/good birthday metaphor, think of it this way: Give until it hurts, then give a little more. That’s how much you should give to your tribe. That’s how much a creator should care about they people she serves. Not just any group of random Schmoes, but your tribe — your freaking people.
We’re build a tribe for life.
At least for the life of the idea. We’re not selling one-off, magic belts, unicorn tape dispensers, or flashlights (I hope not, at least). We sell transformation. We sell escape. We sell entertainment, experience, growth, safety, or better health.
I’d rather wake up and check my phone, knowing there’ll be a dozen thank-you emails from the night before (my phone) — versus the guy who crams ads down your gullet until you give up and buy, because you can’t remember why you shouldn’t. The crammer will make more money, hands-down. The flashlight guy makes millions of dollars a year, no joke. But I bet the flashlight guy doesn’t get thank-you emails.
Push marketers aren’t bad people.
These are great people. This is about what each of us wants from our work. I used to be a push marketer. I made a lot of money doing it. But I felt like a terrible person when I went to bed at night. I ran my business for three years before I took the whole thing down. A dozen books — down. A client list — fired. A monthly course — all pulled. Then I slept better. I took a break. Then I learned to give.
The damned birthday party (not the one with the candle — the other one).
If you make a promise, deliver the promise first, then ask for the money. There are many ways to accomplish this: 14-day free trials, freemium models, pay-what-you-want models, Patreon-like patron models. Email courses. Create a ton of content. (I’ve written over 340 posts on Medium alone, in eight months). Make videos. Start a podcast. Give it away.
But… how do I eat?
Figure out a way to earn five dollars per email subscriber within the first thirty days they join your tribe. Offer them something small, but worth ten-times the sticker price. This is all hard work. Have a couple day jobs while you get it going. The last thing you want to do is make a stupid business decision so you can afford underwear.
Keep giving until it hurts. Then give a little more. A certain (small) percentage of your tribe is willing to pay you a lot to do the hard parts, to hold their hand, to give them extra attention, or the opportunity to call you on Sunday. A certain percentage of your audience will buy a couple mid-level products. This is how you eat.
But, the whole time, we keep giving until it hurts. Then we give a little more.
We never know when our hockey-stick moment will come (the part where you sell a little every day, then BOOM, you sell a lot). That’s the luck part, where opportunity meets hard-ass work. You don’t get to engineer the hockey-stick moment. The best you can do is give your work the tools to thrive when opportunity presents herself.
None of this is easy, but what choice do you have?
It’s this or a job at Blockbuster. And there’s only one of those stores left on earth.
We’re waiting for you.
(Enroll in My Free Email Masterclass: Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers)
August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.
Creators: Demonstrate You Can Help People By Helping Them First
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