Hey guys, Julia McCoy here. Welcome back to my Youtube channel.
Today's topic is going to be all about how to start your own content
business, if this has been your burning question,
how do I start my own content business? Well,
now is the time it's never been a better year to get into content
and you actually don't need that much to get started. In today's video I'm going
to share with you how to do it and some of the pitfalls to avoid from
my journey so you don't make the same mistakes,
let's get into it. [Background Music]
Okay, so first if you're completely brand new
and you're just like you know completely new, you're at ground zero, you don't have
the skills yet, maybe you came from another career, maybe
you're fresh out of college and you have no experience,
first thing I'm going to direct you to is actually my pathway in this new book
that I launched called skip the degree save the tuition
and inside this book I share an actual pathway that helps you build a
digital skill set from your passion and that pathway is the four else, first
find out what you love doing then learn all you can about it
then labor get your hands dirty and finally level
up, so love learn labor level up. I've taught this pathway to my students
and I was really pleased to unveil the full
pathway in my new book skip the degree. Let's talk a little bit more about that,
so you're at ground zero you really don't
know what to do but you know you want to get into
content as of this year content marketing is worth over 400 billion
dollars as an industry and in the next two years it's expected
to grow another 200 billion dollars and this is not some
flavonoid data guys this data comes from technavio which is one of the leading
technology research and advisory companies,
and I'll have a link to that in the youtube description I'll throw it up
here on the screen so you can actually read more about why
the industry is worth this much but if you're thinking about getting
into content it now is the time it has never been a better time in the
history of the world literally but let's go back to that pathway.
So, first you need to find out what you love to do if you love writing
content creating content writing copywriting seo content writing
would all be excellent choices because the main technique there is writing
and in the blog recap of this video I'll throw it up here on the screen we have a
few opportunities listed so you can kind of
look at what's out there in the market, there is so much you can do in the field
of content so once you find a general direction to head in and it could be as
broad as writing, that's what I started doing,
then you need to learn all you can about it
and I know our topic today is how to start your content business but guys
I really believe in being a practitioner first.
I am not a fan of just starting some business
getting people together to deliver a service that you have
no idea what the deliverables should look like,
you have no mastery or even experience in that service
or you couldn't even guide a client on what to look for in the end product
so especially in the content industry if you're going to start a business
I truly recommend starting it from the solo approach
where you first become the expert. So, for me I started out 10 years ago as a
content writer before I started express writers which is now a full-blown
content agency with over 40 services and 100 writers on staff and a fully
custom-built e-commerce content shop, one of the industry's only e-commerce
content shops I might add but before all that I was just a content
writer and I was employed by companies, so I was able to get
contract gigs and guys that was how I started and I
spent a year there, I like to say that before express
writers there was express writer and that was
Julia Mccoy now I've seen a lot of marketers out there with big companies
and they really can't deliver on their in-service but it exists
their company is successful but I'm gonna guess that you're not watching
this video with a lot of funds in your pockets
you don't have a financial stream to fall back on, maybe
you want your content business to be your main source of income, then you're
going to get so much more out of it I promise you if you approach it from that
practitioner first perspective where you pick up the skill,
you learn everything you can about it and you labor, you get your hands dirty
doing the work yourself for a while first. So, whether you're delivering seo
writing as the end service copywriting, landing page writing, sales
page writing, long form facebook ad copy, white papers,
ebooks, that list that you could specialize in
really goes on and on, whatever it is that you're going to
deliver as a service and build a business
around first become a practitioner and do it yourself.
If you understand it it is so much easier to run a business
you can jump in and consult clients if your salesperson isn't able to pick up
the phones that day you can jump in and manage the content
edit and deliver and it's just so easy to be the
entrepreneur or the business owner that fills in those gaps which
I really believe in doing. So, when you're learning you might be asking yourself
well who do I learn from and what do I learn?
I wrote a book called skip the degree save the tuition so it's
not necessarily college that I'm going to recommend
I would recommend to find a practitioner that you can look up to
for me one of the people that I study and read
constantly and I have since the beginning is John Morrow
at Smart Vlogger, he has created some of the world's most
read content and if you get a chance to read his story it's truly inspirational
once you find that practitioner to look up to I really recommend taking the next
step and investing in yourself take a course
from a practitioner in the field you want to be an expert in
that is one of the best ways to learn it goes so much further than a textbook
because you're learning from someone who's been there done that
if not been there doing that right now, and they can teach you
all the pitfalls to avoid so that you don't have to go through
all the struggles in the trials, you can have a proven road map
into a paying gig, so taking the next step
investing with the practitioner in the field you're studying,
when it comes to digital skills I cannot recommend enough I do this,
I hire coaches I pay for programs and I can tell you it gets me a lot further
than trying to guess at that particular skill or
process or tool or angle, whatever it is I'm trying to learn,
once you've learned a lot you've gotten some knowledge under your belt
then there's nothing left but to simply labor to get your hands dirty and to get
into the work. You can sign up to a freelance platform
and get your first clients, that way Upwork isn't a terrible place to begin
if you're a complete beginner, you can also go to Job boards and look
on places like Indeed, Linkedin for job opportunities, when it
comes to laboring you truly need to dedicate yourself,
there's no shortcut here, there's no way around
it you have to get your hands dirty and you have to put in the work
and don't expect to get paid expert rates if you're a complete beginner
you can make a trade-off you can lower your rates by asking that client their
permission to showcase the work you do for them in your portfolio,
you can also do a trade of services you can trade your services in exchange for
a recommendation or a referral to another client
and thus you're building that ladder of skills, you're learning your skills,
you're getting your hands dirty and then you can eventually get into
leveling up which is my fourth L and really the beauty and the magic here.
So, whenever you want to start a content business like we were talking
about the best way is to become a practitioner
first and then build your team and scale sure you can go at it the other way many
do but if you want that legacy a reputation a
business that lasts, I truly recommend this way first the
practitioner way forward, you love what you do, you've learned a
lot about it, you've labored, you've gotten a
reputation, you've gotten your hands dirty, you've gotten clients,
now it's time to charge for your skills level up
grow a team so you've probably heard of the three p's right
people product process well I like to say
it's passion people and process because without a passion for what you do
you can burn out, so quickly down the road and if you don't have a purpose
why would you devote years of your life to it so that's why it's so important to
start from a place of passion do you love writing do you love sales do you
love people do you love working with people
all of those things will lend themselves really well to a job and content
so when you're leveling up you can think about scaling,
adding people, creating a team and this is when you can delegate and the magic
can happen, you can make more revenue without
sacrificing more of your time hand in hand with that as you scale you
need a process, you need to document what you do
so you can replicate roles, hire people easily,
even if it's as simple as just opening a google doc and outlining the kinds of
roles you think you want to hire for or writing down the roles you do that
fill up your day and you get way too busy you probably
need to hire for those roles, you're at a place where you can level up.
People, that's the hardest thing I've ever done it is
really hard to get that particular p right because
if you hire the wrong people everything can come crashing down and
yes, it can be that dire, so that's why
nowadays I tell some of my students in the constant hacker academy if you can
be one person be one person don't grow this giant team
because with that comes a lot of headaches you do
have to hire and you do have to fire if you want to maintain good standards
and unfortunately hiring people that don't work out is just
part of the process whenever you're scaling and you have to have people to
deliver a service in the long run what I found out that
works really well is treating my people like partners I
hire people that don't need to be managed,
now I don't blindly trust them I set goals and expect them to meet them
and they do but what treating a person like a partner means is that you let
them set their own schedule, you really don't question
their day by day play by play and you don't babysit,
you don't nag, you don't check in with them too much you can literally kind of
step back and allow them to be good at what
they're doing but you need to find people that are good at managing
themselves in order for that to work out and being
disciplined and working from home is not for everyone so make sure you're looking
for that trait, having a more autonomous team that you
can trust to manage themselves is so much peace of mind and that person
is worth their pay. The parts that we outline the steps here
are all repeatable so remember consistency is key
whenever you're learning whenever you're laboring whenever you're getting your
first clients it's never going to be an overnight thing
you have to work at it, the good news is I've been doing this for 10 years
I thought I would last maybe one or two years and here we are 10 years later and
we're doing about a million a year that's in sales through our content shop
at expresswriters. Content is a hot commodity now more than
ever, we're living in the greatest digital age
that mankind has ever known that sounds dramatic but it's 100
percent true and if you want to jump in build your own content business, I cannot
encourage you enough now is the time and you don't
have to grow this huge team you really don't have to you can
have peace of mind and be one person with a great income, you can even be a
contractor for a company for a long period of time and be
really happy and have truly rewarding work in this industry,
as always on the content hacker blog you're going to find a
juicy recap I'll put the link up on the screen
of today's topic, so all the points we talked about you can just scroll and
read I don't know about you but I really like
to read after or while I watch videos sometimes so hopefully you find
this helpful. And if you have any questions about how
to start your own content business or you know which direction to go in I
know this can be a lot to take in it was for me at the beginning
I am happy to help drop your questions in the comments,
if you haven't yet please hit that subscribe button smash that like button
if you learn anything from today's video I will be sharing lots more content this
year on my youtube channel so I hope that you're subscribed and I
get to see you around for the next video. Thanks for watching.