Creating Elite Players: Newsletter Day 20
My next three nights are sorted. I know where I'm going to be staying, and should be able to get back to booking Airbnbs again by Friday. That's a relief.
So, today I wanted to share about lessons I've been learning. I say that as though there won't be more lessons during the creation of Elite Payers: Newsletter, though I fear that will not be the case. Intuitively, though, I know the hardest part is done and over with.
Here's what I've been getting pounded into me on this roller-coaster ride of a journey:
Don't Let People Take Advantage of You
Just don't do it.
Anyone with a grain of humanity in them will want to give things away, whether it's giving of their time or resources. Giving their friends discounts on products and services, helping them move, or offering to drive them places. They'll take a pay cut for an opportunity to learn, give away their best ideas in hopes of becoming known, or agree to volunteer and intern opportunities in hopes that they will one day turn into more.
The best thing you can do, though, is to take care of yourself. If you aren't taken care of, others will have to worry about you, and unfortunately, most don't want to, and won't worry about you as much as you hope they will, even in seemingly dire circumstances.
You've got to charge what you're worth, and have a clear demarcation between what you do for an income versus what you do for volunteerism and humanitarianism. Otherwise, the lines will blur, and you will resent those who don't show up to help you when you think they should have been there.
Whatever you tolerate persists, and that includes your salary or income.
Sell Aggressively
It's easy to feel guilty when selling something to your audience. You've spent so much time building excitement and nurturing your relationship with them through free content. But what is it all building to? A launch, of course, and launches go sideways if you don't sell.
At the end of the day, it's a pointless head game. You're way overthinking it.
You may get a few unsubscribes and un-follows while marketing to your audience, sure. But those people weren't going to buy anyway. They weren't your customer. Let someone else deal with the freeloaders. You don't want to encourage the perception that you're cheap, even if you are.
If you don't sell at a regular cadence, not only are you leaving money on the table, but you're also training your audience to pay attention to your free content while ignoring your paid content.
It goes hand in hand with the last point. You've got to take care of you first. You can't help others when you aren't overflowing with abundance.
Content Isn't Your Most Valuable Asset
Process is. Marketing is. But content falls somewhere behind these.
Anyone can put together a product. There are ways of doing it that don't involve you using up all your precious time, and if you want to market and sell well, you've got to start handing off anything that isn't under that header anyway. You can't dedicate all your time to creating, because people won't know anything that isn't promoted well.
There is a different dimension to this for artists. We love what we do. We can't just delegate our songwriting or instrument tracks to someone else. It's like asking your virtual assistant to go to Disneyland in your absence.
But the most prolific artists always have teams around them to handle the tedious grunt work that falls well outside of the scope of creativity and is well below their pay grade.
With huge chunks of your work delegated to others, you can focus more on the critical pieces in your business that will lead to meaningful results.
Karma is a Bitch (or Some Other Platitude)
A lot of people B.S. their way through life. They don't just cheat on tests in school, they also scam people out of substantial amounts of money. This happens more than you think, and the situation is worse than you might assume, which is a good reason to stay on guard.
First, don't be one of these people. They may appear to get ahead faster in life, but they end up biting it hard later, whether it's getting scammed themselves, serving jail time, getting chased by gangs, or worse.
Second, be better than them. You do that by adhering to the first two points ("don't let people take advantage of you," and "sell aggressively"). You can sell ethically and aggressively. Do it because you don't want people to miss out on an opportunity, not just because you will one day need those funds to get through a tough time.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. Drop a comment so I can follow you and connect with you personally.
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