For our Season 3 finale, Naga is in conversation with podcaster and content guru - Jay Acunzo to discuss, what differentiates great creators from all others, how to find your first 10-50 true fans? Is there a one size fits all approach to monetization? Reach out to Jay Acunzo and Check out his content - Member Group (Paid) - https://jayacunzo.com/membership Podcast - 3 Clips – https://jayacunzo.com/3-clips Podcast - Unthinkable – https://jayacunzo.com/unthinkable-podcast Twitter – https://twitter.com/jayacunzo Website - https://jayacunzo.com/ Books: Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work Reach out to Naga – Twitter - @n1n3stuff / @PassionPeop1 (https://twitter.com/ThePassionPeop1 ) Facebook - The Passion People Podcast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thepassionpeoplepodcast/ More about EpLog Media - You can follow us and leave us feedback on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @eplogmedia, For advertising/partnerships send you can send us an email at bonjour@eplog.media. If you like this show, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts, so other people can find us. You can also find us on https://www.eplog.media/thepassionpeoplepodcast DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on all the shows produced and distributed by Ep.Log Media are personal to the host and the guest of the shows respectively and with no intention to harm the sentiments of any individual/organisation. The said content is not obscene or blasphemous or defamatory of any event and/or person deceased or alive or in contempt of court or breach of contract or breach of privilege, or in violation of any provisions of the statute, nor hurt the sentiments of any religious groups/ person/government/non-government authorities and/or breach or be against any declared public policy of any nation or state. Sound Attribution and Credits - Music from Pipo and Wowa(you should check out their music on Spotify here - https://open.spotify.com/artist/6zZPxLiRfbGUnoEAJmfJJN) from Unminus. All music other than the jingle on the episode is under the CC0 License and downloaded from freesound.org , freemusicarchive.org and unminus.com Transcript [00:00:00] Jay Acunzo: [00:00:00] you hear the phrase creator economy used quite often. And I think what we're living through is a very dangerous transition for a group of people who are trying to earn a living and a comfortable living at that using their creativity. [00:00:15]it's also very dangerous because with that momentum comes this, misunderstanding that to do this, you need to be famous that you need to be an influencer. And I think fame and influence is becoming way too closely tied to the creator economy. [00:00:31]most importantly, this shifting mindset from essentially building on rented land like YouTube or Twitter and moving over to a platform you actually own like your own website and email list. [00:00:43] Naga S: [00:00:43] Hey Jay. Hello and welcome to the passionate people podcast. And thank you for taking the time [00:00:48] to be on the show. [00:00:49]Jay Acunzo: [00:00:49] Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it, [00:00:50]Naga S: [00:00:50] Jay, you have an extremely unique perspective, given your background in content marketing, the kind of shows that you've launched and the amazing work that you do at three clips. [00:01:01]So as, as we start. I would love to just get like a 30,000 feet view of the content landscape from your lens and how it looked at the start of 2020 and how COVID has changed it. [00:01:13]Jay Acunzo: [00:01:13] Yeah. I'd love to answer. I spend very little time thinking about the trends and what everyone else is doing, because if I did that, I think I would probably break down. [00:01:22]I'm so focused on trying to. Serve the audience that I'd like to serve that it's difficult to follow the trends, but I will say that I think what we're living through, you hear the phrase creator economy used quite often. And I think what we're living through is a very dangerous transition for a group of people who are trying to earn a living and a comfortable living at that using their creativity. [00:01:46]Because on the one hand you have momentum. Which is helping more and more people say, well, I have this craft, for me, I like to create shows. I like to tell stories about the workplace. Somebody else might focus on a different niche, [00:02:00] but I have this creative craft. It's never been a better time to go and build your own audience, which by the way means moving off of social media, using social media, but not stopping there, moving people to your website and your email list, building an audience. [00:02:14]And serving that audience more deeply with products and experiences that they pay for. So it's never been a better time for that, but it's also very dangerous because with that momentum comes this, misunderstanding that to do this, you need to be famous that you need to be an influencer. And I think fame and influence is becoming way too closely tied to the creator economy. [00:02:39]So I think where I'd like to see this all go. Is to have a middle-class develop. So middle-class in a, like a classic sense that there's a sociologist named Dennis Gilbert. He wrote a great book called the American class structure in an age of growing and an inequality. And Gilbert defines middle-class as upper and lower middle-class. [00:02:59] So there's two little segments, but they combined to make up about 45 to 50% of the total population. And that 45 to 50% is judged based on their ability to have a comfortable standard of living significant economic security, considerable work autonomy, and a reliance on their own expertise to sustain themselves. [00:03:21]So what I'd like to see is a future in the not too distant future, by the way, where we stop trying to be super famous and have. Massive and impressive audience reach. And we actually truly embrace the ideas like Kevin Kelly's 1000 true fans or Seth Godin's smallest viable audience and try and find a small number of people who react in a big way to what we do and serve them more deeply. [00:03:49]And how do we get there? I think we need to stop trying to be social media famous and trying to serve people with our craft. So my fear. Is that way too many people are [00:04:00] way too excited about more and more, more bigger, bigger, bigger, get famous in a niche or anything. General. My hope is that we can get to a place where 45 to 50%. [00:04:08] And that's, I think that's the bar. If you look at all, creators are 45 are about half of them able to earn a comfortable standard of living with significant economic security work autonomy. Using their expertise to sustain themselves. And I think it's going to take a lot of education to get there better tools. [00:04:27]And most importantly, this shifting mindset from essentially building on rented land like YouTube or Twitter and moving over to a platform you actually own like your own website and email list. [00:04:39]Naga S: [00:04:39] Got it. Let me double click on some of the concepts that you've spoken about here. Right? First one is Kevin Kelly's , a hundred true fans or legions thousand true fans, or what they talk about in terms of how much money are these folks willing to give you so that you are able to pursue your craft. [00:04:56]Right? So in order for us to be able to get to these thousand of these hundred people, you will at least need to reach like a 10,000 folks or like, you know, 5,000 folks. Right. And they might eventually convert into those smaller number of people who might end up being, who are potentially be able to sustain us financially. [00:05:14]So if your suggestion is for folks not to be too worried about having a broad reach, or I think what you're really trying to say is that people should not approach like a, have a spray and pray approach, where they say that I'm trying to get everyone is my audience. And you're saying that you really need to have a niche. [00:05:31]But my question is more fundamental in terms of how do you really build that first initial audience who would be like the top of the funnel for your paying customers later on? [00:05:41]Jay Acunzo: [00:05:41] Everything I'm about to say is going to sound incredibly hard to do, because everybody wants to see the final result, but I assure you, I don't know any other way to do this other than you get incredibly lucky. [00:05:51]Lightning strikes and suddenly lots of people know who you are. So I think those stories are mostly myth here. Here's what I encourage people to [00:06:00] do. Stop thinking about the funnel and think about your audience as a series of concentric circles. So kind of like a bullseye in the middle and bigger and bigger circles moving out from the middle. [00:06:09]When you think of it like a funnel, I think you do think of it kind of the way you just described it, Naga where you need to reach 10,000 people to get a hundred or a thousand to. For example, subscribed to your newsletter. I actually think you need to just put aside the funnel, right? Stop trying to reach a lot of people first and convert a few people in the end of it all. [00:06:29]And start thinking about these concentric circles, where in the middle there's this circle called super fans. And as you radiate out from super fans, you get closer and closer to total strangers. What most of us try to do when we market, what we do is we go to total, strangers may be passive observers of our work, and we try to basically try to get them to like us quickly. [00:06:52]And that makes no sense. So whether you think in like human relationship terms or dollars and cents. It's inefficient and ineffective to try and convince total strangers that you're worth subscribing to or paying it's a lot easier and a lot more in line with how humans work t
