An Honest Convo About Online Business (from a 16 year biz owner)

Big Money Blueprint (FREE TRAINING) 👉 https://brendaturner.com/big/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to today's episode. Today I'm going to help you to understand online business, social media, and influencer culture, the toxic aspects of it. And I'm also going to help you to grow your online business with the tools that you're going to receive in today's episode. So I've got a lot of thoughts about this because I've been doing online business for the past 16 years. For the past 16 years, I've had an online business. And it's very important for me to mention that I've never been an influencer during those 16 years. And I've got thoughts and opinions about influencer culture and creator culture that are going to kind of ruffle some feathers today. I've also got some thoughts about the way that social media is in general today. And I'm going to be doing all of this with love. What are we doing with YouTube? What are we doing with Instagram? What are we doing with TikTok? What are we doing here? I'd like to start very important trailhead that I like to start with is we are business owners first. So on my channel, I'm speaking to primarily business owners. Okay. Whether or not you've started your online business doesn't really matter. But I'm talking to business owners here. If you're not a business owner, you're more than welcome to stick around because a lot of the tools that I mentioned do help with general like prosperity and they do help with general wellness in your life. But the tools that I'm offering when it comes to YouTube, these are for business owners. Okay. So another way to say this is YouTube is not a slot machine. It's not going to make us millions of dollars unless you have a viable business model to start with. But I can help you in this episode to really understand this and build yourself a solid business if you'd like to. But what I wanted to just bring home here is we are not cogs in a machine. I'm not sitting here tap dancing for some algorithm to be an in a quote unquote influencer. And one of the reasons I created this video was because I recently saw a post in my feed from a woman who said being a full-time influencer and content creator ruined my life. Thank God I went back to my corporate job. And I took a look at her channel, and sure enough, she was an influencer. Okay, so there are a couple kinds of people who create for social media. And one is not better than the other. But I'm just going to give you the realistic overview of how I've built a multi-six-figure business that doesn't stress me out, that gives me an empty calendar. I'm just going to lay out the nuts and bolts of it, but I also wanted to just talk about just how this all works so that you fully understand. So sometimes people get on YouTube and they want to make a bunch of money on YouTube by just posting a bunch of content onto YouTube and living your life for everybody to watch on YouTube. And then you're getting paid by AdSense. You're getting paid through ad revenue and sometimes brand deals and sponsorships. And there's nothing wrong with that. But that woman that I just mentioned who said, Thank God, hallelujah, I got off social media and my life is so much better. I think that's probably going to be the case for 99% of people who are trying to do influencer stuff. If you take a look at any of the influencers over the past couple of generations, almost all of them have reported burnout, dissatisfaction, because it's not healthy. We're not meant to be animals in a cage. And I think that's the dark side of social media, if I'm being honest. So if you're trying to make a bunch of money on the internet and like hit it big and you think this is going to be a meal ticket and all that stuff, statistically speaking, it's not going to work out. But if it does work out, statistically speaking, you're probably going to end up pretty miserable, depressed, and anxious. And if you're one of the lucky ones who isn't, you know, then congratulations. I'm really happy for you. I really truly am. I'm happy for anybody who can follow their dreams. And if you want to be an influencer, you know what I mean by that, if you want to show up and post every single minute of your life for content and live your life through a lens, I mean, go for it. I just don't think that's a healthy way to be. You know, once again, there's no judgment here. I'm not judging anybody, but I'm just laying the cards out very plainly. So that's one kind of person who posts on YouTube. The other kind of person who might post to YouTube is somebody that's like uh a massive entertainer. You know, we got the Mr. Beasts, we've got the Jake Paul's, we got the Freds, those mega wannabe super, super famous, mega trillionaires, you know. All judgments aside, if we take a look at it from honest eyeballs, these people are more or less in the film industry. And they're creating very high production, very high budget, um, basically movies on a regular basis. So they have a film crew, they're doing video editing, they're doing plots, they're doing stories. Mr. Beast has a whole huge production crew. So he's more or less, I consider them more or less like the movie maker influencers. But now I want to just give an honest take on basically all the rest of it. So all the rest of it being what's left over after that. We have the hobbyists, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. YouTube as a creative outlet, I think that's very healthy. You know, you're not trying to make a living from it, you're just posting videos because you enjoy the creative process. I think that's great. I think sharing a skill set that you have and making um videos from it, I think that's beautiful. And then we're getting into the category that I'm in, okay, and the people that I teach. I don't want to have anything to do with basically any of the other formats and far in so far as what I'm teaching about here and what I've been teaching about the past couple years, is I'm teaching business owners how to grow their business online. Okay. That was what my path was, and that's why I teach it. So I started my online business after already being a certified strength and conditioning specialist and a nutrition specialist. Okay. I was already doing these things in real life. And then I decided to take it all online. So it wasn't like I was scrambling, sitting here scratching my head, trying to figure out what I'm gonna talk about. And see, a lot of people, they don't understand that part of it. I get about 25% of my comments are people who don't really understand that I'm not sitting here saying YouTube is some giant slot machine. There's plenty of teachers out there who are trying to sell that dream to you. I'm not one of those teachers because I'm not full of shit. Okay. YouTube is not a slot machine, and it will not make you rich unless there's something that you have to promote that is something people want to buy. So, how it works in simple in simple terms, in simple practical language, is you have something within you that you're really good at. And before you go starting an online business, I really recommend that you get some customers and clients in real life. Most of the people who follow me already have some customers and clients in real life. Okay. But if you haven't had any customers or clients in real life and you're trying to start an online business and serve customers and clients, and you've never actually done the thing, that's a really tall order. I believe that's a really tall order, and it's really smart to start teaching about or offering things that you've actually already done in real life, so that you're not out there trying to scramble figuring out whether or not you have a viable business. Okay. I'm not here to crush dreams. I'm not here to stomp on anybody's dreams and tell you you can't do it. You can literally do anything you want to do. You can. You can do anything you want to do. But I'm gonna give you the steps right now, okay? So if you haven't had customers in real life, and if you don't yet have a viable business that you would like to grow with the internet, meaning you haven't yet had customers giving you money, now it's time to actually get some customers, right? And so I highly recommend that you get a viable business model before you start, you know, working yourself to the bone trying to figure out how to do all of this online business stuff. Get at least four or five customers in real life to pay you to learn something. This is not something that online business teachers, by the way, most of them are not gonna say this because then they lose sales. Me saying this, I I don't have anything to sell you in today's episode. But me saying this, it's not very, you know, it's not very smart business strategy because I'm supposed to tell you, come to me and I'll teach you how to start your business or whatever. But I'm telling you right now, don't go paying a business coach to grow your online business if you've never had customers in real life. Please don't do that. I'm more than happy to do that, by the way. You know, there are people that I'm working with right now who haven't yet had customers in real life. Um, so that's not like against the rules, but I'm saying if I'm if I'm just being a straight shooter with you, you've never had customers in real life, go and get some and then grow your online business. If you can't find a customer in real life, it's gonna be really hard to believe in yourself to sell that thing on the internet. Okay. So that's first things first. Now let's talk about short form. Okay, so short form content. Uh I just can't stand it. You guys already know how I feel about it. Most most people already know how I feel about short form. Short form content is um one of the worst things I think to happen to the internet. I really do. And uh what one of the worst things to happen also to online business. And I think it's wasted a lot of people's time. And I think what's happening with short form content is it's causing this poverty consciousness in business owners. Okay, so what's what's happening is we're creating from this space of lack. Not we, but most people. Most people are creating their content from a space of lack. Most people are creating content from a space of trying to get something, trying to get an end result. The business coaching out there is an awful lot driven towards short-term thinking. So it's post as much as possible, get on that hamster wheel, post, post, post, post, post. And the results of that, it's you're trying to get eyeballs. You're saying, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. I've already talked about this a million times, but I'm gonna say it in this video one more time. When we're doing look at me shit, nobody cares, and they're not gonna pay attention to you, they're not gonna listen to you. It's all starting to sound like noise to everybody. So this traditional kind of marketing strategy of look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, it never really worked all that well anyway, but especially today, the short form junk, the short form stories, the reels, cold DMs, especially, people are getting blind to it. The short form content is impacting the way that we think about things, it's impacting the way we interface with our work, it's impacting the way that we think about our ourselves, it's impacting the way that we interface with our ideas for crying out loud. We get an idea, and before it fully blossoms and forms, we don't give any time for the for the idea to fully room ruminate, to germinate, that's the word I'm looking for, germinate, and we just go ahead and post it on Instagram, get a couple hearts, and then do it again, because your business coach told you to. By the way, the only people making money off of Instagram are those business coaches who teach about posting every damn day to Instagram. And if you make money from Instagram, I'm really happy for you. This is not meant to be an Instagram rant, but this is just me talking about the state of things right now and why it's just not a great idea to follow the quote unquote trends. So let me offer the let me get back on track and offer you the basic framework that I really enjoy and that I have enjoyed for the past 16 years. So I have, at any given moment over the past 16 years, I've had something to sell. And it's always involving something that I'm really knowledgeable, knowledgeable about and something I'm really passionate about. Those two things kind of for me, they're very important. If I'm not super passionate about it and I'm not super knowledgeable about it, and I don't have a lot of applic, applicable experience, applicable experience, and I don't have lots of you know direct experience, I'm not gonna be teaching about that thing. And so when I have something that I'm really excited about, it absent it flows, there's constantly new things that I'm interested in and you know getting certifications in. I got all kinds of I'm I'm up to here with certifications. So I highly recommend that if you're like me, where you're a very passionate business owner and you love the learning experience, go ahead and start learning as much as you can. Keep getting those continuing education certifications in fields that don't necessarily make sense to you, but just that you enjoy. And then I use those things, those tools. I have a major toolbox, and I use those tools to create experiences, offerings, live events, courses, programs, and all of these things are based in actual, direct, experiential knowledge. So because I have direct experiential knowledge and the things that I'm offering, I'm very confident in those things. So that's really important. Showing up and offering whatever it is you're really passionate about. And it doesn't necessarily have to mean that you have a bunch of certifications, by the way. It could just also be something you have direct experience with. Bonus if you've had people that you've worked with in real life. This is also just me speaking frankly to the business coaches out there who are being very predatory. So there's a lot of very predatory business teachers out there. I don't ever want to just disparage anybody's work, and I would never call any one particular person out. But I've been doing this once again for 16 years. I've seen lots of trends come and go. The AI train is ridiculous. If I could just rant a little about the AI train, everybody in their mom, in terms of business coaches, has an AI bot. And they're telling you that their AI bot, part of their multi-thousand dollar offering, is that they have an AI bot that they're gonna let you use. And you're not gonna get any coaching from them, but you'll get all the coaching from their AI bot. Don't worry. And also, everybody and their mom is talking about how you're gonna get left behind if you don't use AI. And I'm telling you from personal experience that the less that you use AI, the faster your business is gonna grow. Nobody wants the AI slop. Nobody wants the AI coaching, nobody wants AI videos. Everybody is in absolute agreement that they don't want to get a coaching from an AI bot. I actually watched a teacher that I love spending 45 minutes creating some mediocre visual art kind of ad thing that he could have probably done in five minutes if he just sat down and used his actual brain. And we've got these business coaches out here selling AI courses to help you to build your business with AI and all that. To me, it's an immediate red flag. Bullshit. It's all a bunch of bullshit. So short form is bullshit. It really truly is. The AI nonsense, it's bullshit. I could go on and on about AI. I'm gonna have to have an expert come on the show to talk about AI, but it is such utter bullshit. This is coming from a millennial who has fully embraced every technological advancement that's come through over the past couple decades. I was here before the internet was born, and I've been here throughout every iteration of the internet. And AI is one of the most underwhelming technological advancements of my lifetime, the most overhyped, underwhelming, most detrimental to humanity. So, anyway, let me get back on track, whatever track we were on. I'd like to tell you about what I'm doing for my online business and my strategy that's been working marvelously over the past couple years. I'm doubling down on humanity. I'm doubling down on quality. I'm doubling down on excellent offerings. I'm doubling down on what I know to be true. I'm doubling down on sanity. I'm doubling down on taking really good care of myself and my clients. I'm doubling down on good old common sense. With all the noise, all the AI slop, all the short form stuff, all the screamy highlighter yellow nonsense, it's all becoming just everybody's banging utensils against pots and pans. And it's becoming just noise to everybody, and they're becoming immune to it. And the only way to stand out in this situation is to simply be good, be human, be simple. Have you ever seen uh the most beautiful art has a lot of white space many times? The most beautiful typography or web design, lots of white space. So the simpler, the clearer, the more heartfelt, the deeper, the better off your business is gonna be. What I'm saying is rail against the machine. You know, do not be a cog in this insane world. Do not let this world influence your life's work for crying out loud. Do not let Mark Zuckerberg influence your thoughts, the way that you express yourself. Don't let Instagram coaches take your ideas and turn them into 30-second clips. Don't let the short form world influence what you're going to be offering. There are no rules in this game, is what I really want you to understand. There's no rules in this game. You can do whatever it is you'd like to do, however you'd like to do it. And 100% of the time, when you do things the way that you and your soul want to do it, it's going to end up so much better. If you're feeling like you're in a straitjacket and you're trying to figure this whole thing out, I just more or less gave you one big convoluted, maybe kind of confusing spider's web shape of a video. I know this wasn't totally cohesive, but there wasn't a super cohesive way for me to express what I wanted to express today. The next video that I'm going to be talking about here is invisible marketing. So that's if all of this kind of sounded maybe a little bit intangible and ephemeral, and you want to get a practical strategy for showing up, standing out, and making great money on the internet with invisible marketing. That's the new thing that I think that it's not so much new, but I think that's the new pivot that really good business owners, if you're paying attention right now, that's the pivot you're gonna want to make. So come learn how to do invisible marketing with me right here. And I'll see you in the next episode.