Most brands don’t care about your numbers! It’s true, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. Justin Moore knows a thing about brand deals. He’s done 500 himself, and over 1,000 through his agency. Today he teaches creators how to get paid brand deals through his cohort-based course, Brand Deal Wizard. And in today’s episode, we cover a lot, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Top Takeaways

• You need to be able to articulate why brands should pay you — and it’s not just about your numbers. Most brands want to pay me for access to your audience.
• There’s tremendous power for brands to be aligned with key voices in their industry.
• Don’t just put brands in a box that is your pre-defined offers. Get on a call (YES — get on a call), ask them what their goals are, and come up with offers that align with what they need.

Show Notes

• Justin on Twitter
• Creator Wizard on YouTube
• Brand Deal Wizard (Justin's Cohort-based Course)
• Creator Wizard Newsletter
• Don't be a Jealous Creator
• Join Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Nexcess | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

Starting a business has never been easier. We can now sign up for a free ConvertKit account, get a nice-looking landing page, and even start selling products in mere minutes. Because of that, it can be tempting to jump into “making” the business without thinking about why your business exists. According to Cara Chace, that is a recipe for disaster. Listen on to learn why. Plus, in Build Something More, Cara tells us about her previous career as a special agent.

Top Takeaways

• You need to define why you’re doing what you’re doing. This will be the guide for your decision-making. And here’s an important tip: define success in a metric other than money.
• When you feel like you’re in the “messy middle” and don’t know what to do, create a brain dump of everything you’re doing in your business. Keep what you need and eliminate the rest. It helps to ask, “Would the CEO of my company be doing that 10 years from now?”
• Don’t rely on someone else’s playbook for your own business because they usually have a WOW factor that you don’t have yet.

Show Notes:

• Cara Chase
• Cara on Instagram
• Cara on Pinterest
• How You Can Do $10,000/Hr Work
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Nexcess | TextExpander | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

“Get a real job.” “If you’re going to start a business, you need to grow.” “Hustle.” If you’re starting a business, you’ve probably heard this “advice.” You’ve also probably heard that you need to do exactly what someone else did. But all of that is poison to our creator businesses. And Dr. Shante Cofield has the antidote: Moar You. If you want to know the importance of values-based marketing, how to be vulnerable enough to grow, and the seasonality of life, this episode is for you. My conversation with Shante is real — and it’s important for anyone who works for themselves to hear.

Top Takeaways:

• On imposter syndrome: We need to get objective and trust the data. It’s easy to get down on yourself, not want to brag and feel like you’re not the real deal. But you need to listen to what people are telling you. If you help them, you are helpful.
• It’s easy to want to talk implementation of your new business or content because that’s concrete. But you need to define your values first. Without values, you are directionless.
• On values: value-based marketing is not shouting your opinion on Twitter. Values are verbs. They are things you do, vs. the things they say. They are how you build your best life, and they need to be at the core of your business.

Show Notes:

• Shante Cofield
• Shante on Instagram
• The Bridge Framework by Chris Lema
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Nexcess | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

Perhaps it’s fitting that today’s interview is a play in 3 acts. After all, I’m talking to Melanie Deziel, speaker, author, and founder of Story Fuel. It makes sense that we talk about creating good content in 3 acts: idea generation, brand deals, and coming up with headlines. This discussion is completely packed with fantastic advice to help up your content creation game.

Top Takeaways:

• When it comes to content, we often focus too much on the format, and not the actual message. instead, determine what you’re saying first. Then figure out how to best say it. The “how” drives the format and where you’ll publish.
• Brand-sponsored content is being created in collaboration with or on behalf of a brand that wouldn’t be created otherwise. They are leveraging your trust, so find overlap between what the brand wants to say and what your audience wants to hear.
• When writing headlines, remember they are a formula. Ask “What’s the purpose of this headline,” or put differently: what is this content doing? That should help you determine the type of headline to write.

Show Notes:

• Melanie Deziel
• Melanie on Linkedin
• Melanie on Twitter
• Melanie on YouTube
• Melanie on Instagram
• Say it Again: Your Business NEEDS to be on TikTok with Alex Rossman
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Nexcess | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

Imagine being perfectly positioned to deal with the pandemic from a k-12 school's standpoint. That’s Jeff Utecht. Instead of just being in the K12 space, he specializes in technology implementation for K12 schools. But he didn’t just fall into that. He spends years building a brand, understanding his audience, and giving away content. How has that helped him? Listen to find out! Plus, we get deep into education during the pandemic in Build Something More.

Top Takeaways:

• You create great content by understanding your niche and your audience. Jeff and his team know what their audience is asking, and created content to answer those questions.
• Their podcast is a big piece of their sales funnel. Every time they put out a free guide, they do a podcast episode and encourage people to download the guide, which requires an email list. As a result, they have a great list to sell directly to (as well as continue to provide free value).
• If you’re going to leverage social media, make sure to be where your audience is, and further, find the right hashtags people are following. Doing that allows you to target the right people and grow your audience!

Show Notes:

• Jeff Utecht
• Jeff on Twitter
• Jeff on Linkedin
• Jeff on Instagram
• Jeff on YouTube
• Jeff on Facebook
• Shifting Schools Podcast
• Building in Canva
• Creating Better Online Courses (That You can Charge More for) with Wes Kao
• Learning Management and WordPress: LifterLMS with Chris Badgett
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Nexcess | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

When I was in college, building a community felt pretty easy. Have some event, get free food, people come, people talk. Maybe they will bring some of their friends. This happened all the time – campus events, weekends at the bar, over the summer. So I thought building a community online would be similar. Easier even! There are no geographic boundaries. I would just invite people to come to my community, and they'd go and hang out.

But that didn't happen. In fact, my community was a baron wasteland. And in July, I decided to shut down that aspect of my membership. So what went wrong? Well, I think there were a few reasons...and that's what we'll talk about in today's episode.

Top Takeaways:

• Think about community as you start a new endeavor. I thought about mine too late and most of my students were already done with my content and had no reason to come back.
• You need to help your members with the habit of going to your community every day. You can do that by doing more events, or even having content exclusive to your community platform.
• It’s up to you to drive the community. People won’t just go to an online community and start conversations at the beginning.

Show Notes:

• SPI 603: The Secret to Building the Best Community Online with Drew Dillon
• Circle
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Moft | Nexcess | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

Today’s episode is a little different. Sara Loretta and I met through Jay Clouse’s Creative Companion Club. I mentioned I was offering free podcast coaching for episodes of this show, and she pitched coming on to talk about podcast guesting. While I thought we were going to talk about her advice for being a good guest, what we ended up doing was having a great conversation about our experiences. But don’t worry: it gets tied together at the end. Because we’re constantly told that online business owners need to be on brand. But the truth is being open, and showing the personal side, establishes the like and trust factors. And ultimately, that is how you be a good podcast guest.

Top Takeaways

• It’s up to the podcast host to reach out to you with a topic in mind. They need to come up with the topic and questions based on what best serves their audience.
• As a potential guest that’s pitching yourself, you should have a few topics ready to send out to people. Podcasts are, after all, a great way to establish authority and expertise.
• Have a few stories to tell that reinforce your points and add background to your topic. Personal stories help people connect with you. And while you won’t win over everyone, you shouldn’t try to.

Show Notes

• Sara Loretta
• Sara on Instagram
• Sara on Twitter
• Sara Loretta at Notion
• Why We Succeed Podcast 
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Nexcess | TextExpander | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

It’s another live coaching call. Scott Cowan runs a podcast called Explore Washington State. It’s part of a greater site all about Washington. The podcast publishes 3-4 times per week, and he’s looking to grow his audience and potentially increase his output to 5 times a week. Listen in as I give Scott advice about SEO, website improvements, and pointing his enormous Instagram following to the show.

Top Takeaways:

• Having a good website with easy-to-speak URLs is the best way to send people to your podcast. Easy to share on social media, and easy for listeners to share too.
• Optimize titles and descriptions. Use them to tell people what the episode is about, and use keywords that will help the episodes show up in searches.
• Instead of trying to grow your podcast directly, grow your newsletter and social media followings. Then share your show with those audiences — your newsletter especially can be ripe for growth and promotion.

Show Notes:

• Scott Cowan
• Scott on Facebook
• Scott on Instagram
• Scott on Twitter
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Moft | Nexcess | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

Interested in starting or growing a podcast that actually generates revenue? Check out my new show, Make Money Podcasting! 

Listen to all of the episodes and subscribe at https://makemoneypod.com/

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/

We all deal with grief. It could be the loss of a loved one. Maybe the loss of a job. Or the feeling that you’ve lost control of your life or your business. Throughout the pandemic, many of us experience grief in one way, shape, or form — and Dr. Sherry Walling is no different. But she decided to write about her grief. First, it was just for her. Then she shared it. Then she decided that her writings could help countless people and turned them into a book. I’m grateful she took the time to talk to us today. We get into how grief affects us, what creators can do, and the book writing process.

Top Takeaways:

• When you experience grief, writing is a helpful exercise. It helps you process your feelings, but it also allows you to write a new reality for yourself.
• Life doesn’t necessarily stop, but you have more space and time than you think. It’s OK to slow down for a while.
• Reconnecting to hope happens in tiny moments, like getting up, hugging a loved one, and even making a meal. Listen to your body and do what is best for you.

Show Notes:

• Get Touching Two Worlds: A Guide for Finding Hope in the Landscape of Loss
• Sherry Walling
• Sherry on Twitter
• Sherry on Instagram
• How the Great Grief Led to the Great Resignation | Fortune
• Join the Creator Crew

Sponsored by: Moft | Nexcess | LearnDash

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Streamlined Solopreneur helps overwhelmed solo business owners go from overwhelmed to having their time back.

Each week, Joe Casabona shares one practical idea — a system, tool, or strategy to help you get your time back without selling your soul to AI...and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life, or your health.

Looking for a place to start? Take the Solo Systems Starter Quiz. 60 seconds, 8 questions, and I will tell you what system you should build first, and exactly how to build it. https://streamlined.fm/quiz 

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasabona/