this is one of the best business models for the Creator economy what problem do you think you can really solve for people right now and I think that as entrepreneurs our job is just to be paid problem solvers if there was any kind of Creator who is Prime for this kind of business model a YouTuber is in the perfect position you got to just press record 99 of content creators still find themselves broke and that's because they're missing critical pieces of their content creation Empire that are critical for making this a sustainable business and income
and actually going full time in a real way and so Brock welcome to the show Sean thank you for having me so tell us your story what was happening back around 2021 for you yeah so my business started when I was a freshman in college I was a student athlete so I had books and ball all day long I had very little free time and I definitely didn't have the time to get like a normal typical job and so my mom came to me when she kind of was like okay well then let's start a
business and and at that time a course was what my original business was it was 19 so a relatively low price point I didn't have a huge social media following um and in order to figure out what that course was she asked me what problem do you think you can really solve for people right now and I think that as entrepreneurs our job is just to be paid problem solvers and so I had to identify two things in order to create this first course and and thus my first business it was what problem can I
solve and where is there a Gap in the market or basically what problem needs solving because plenty of problems have already been solved so what problem can I solve that hasn't already been solved and at that time it's going to sound funny to say it now Snapchat was all over the news for the dangers and the beware and teens are on it and who knows what they're up to and so everyone was really concerned about Snapchat very similar to how they're concerned about say tick tock nowadays but at that same time I had just taught
my parents how to use Snapchat as a way to communicate with me as a freshman in college and so I was like well I know how to use Snapchat I am 19 years old so I'm a teen I know what these kids are up to and so I could make a course basically teaching how to use Snapchat and how to keep your teens safe on the app and that was my my very first business and how it got started yeah that's wild it's the best business model for YouTube content creators especially that are in education
and you know one of the things Brock that's interesting is I um was at Social Media Marketing world and I talked to the course creator platforms teachable thinkific they had some staff there and we we got into a conversation and they said our most successful course creators using our platform are YouTubers and I said the reason why was because if 65 percent of people are going to YouTube to solve a problem or ask a question their your discoverability there which the whole promise of era is the is the opportunity to get found get discovered and
build know like and Trust in a free environment right where they're watching for YouTube videos but then people have also what's already happened between you and them is they've already decided oh like I kind of like this person's Vibe or this person's been helpful and then if you're able to be like hey if you want all the things all in one place like I also have this course available and it could be anywhere right almost everybody listening to this at some point should create an online course it's just such a great asset even if it's
not your main thing and you lean heavy in other directions you know teaching how you did what you did or to your point getting inside of the market impact Academy and just going through the process of unearthing some things you don't even know yet totally you don't even know what you don't know yeah totally and there's so much of that in there and I also think speaking specifically about YouTube creators is from a technical standpoint they have those skills to create the videos create the audio create that course it's essentially the same thing as making
a YouTube video the only thing is it's put in a specific strategic order and it's put behind a paywall that's the only difference really between an e-course and a YouTube channel even the the playlists on YouTube YouTube are very similar to what you would be offering inside of a e-course and so I think that if there was any social media or any kind of Creator who is Prime for this kind of business model a YouTuber is in the perfect position I totally agree some of our listeners are passionate about documenting their life about vlogging about
sharing their story and which I think is amazing but that is one of the least viable crater economy businesses in our opinion that we teach what I actually love is that you figured out a viable business that actually funds your passion Pro projects it is our conviction at the think media podcast that real artists Don't Starve we all hear about starting artists but real artists Don't Starve and so that that now you can do that stress free because you have this other thing paying the bills so for some listening to this I just want to
even speak directly to our community it's like there is maybe you have your passion but you're torn because there are also be might be something practical and there might be different brands we always encourage people figure out the brand that is the shortest path to revenue because then once you've got cash once you have cash flow you can then fund your artistic projects as opposed to saying I'm just going to have a vlogging channel so maybe like flipping your thinking and the sequencing of your events but if you do the right things in the right
order it could be the door that opens up to to launch all your creative projects over the next two three four five years absolutely and I think like you said one of the biggest challenges or the biggest mistakes that a lot of early creators make and new creators will will stumble on is knowing which to start with which step to do first what to create first and I loved your point about picking the the path to revenue quickest what's going to get you to making money the fastest maybe not what you're most passionate about maybe
not what you want to do for the rest of your life but what's going to be able to make you money so you can get the ball rolling where are the quick wins to be found because if you are consistently you know chasing your passion project but there's no income coming in there's no Revenue you're not able to keep food on the table then it's not going to last very long it's going to be a really draining experience where instead if you start from a place of I'm going to take care of my basic needs
which in the world we live in a basic need is you need some sort of income you need some sort of money to to be able to afford these passion projects this art whatever it is that you truly want to do and so to bring this back to my own story I wasn't passionate about helping moms keep their teens safe on Snapchat I wasn't passionate about um you know teaching people how to grow a business on Snapchat it was just something that I had learned to do and I was good at and I recognized that
there was a gap in the market that I could fill and now I've grown and I've built these other passions that I can go more into and I can make Vlogs of myself snowboarding even though I know that those are going to be the absolute worst performing videos on my YouTube channel I can have the freedom to take a few hours and edit my own snowboard video and pretend I'm Travis Rice and post it on my YouTube channel it'll get 200 views but I'm fired up about it and I'm only able to do that because
I entered the pain cave early on and I embraced I embraced the suck and I embraced hey I might not love doing this but I'm good at it and there's a market for it if you want to watch my full conversation with Brock Johnson just click or tap the screen and hit like if you got value out of this video and I'll see you in the next one
