The Nathan Barry Show

Trying to avoid center stage? You can get all the benefits of building an audience without putting yourself in the spotlight. In fact, you don’t even have to be the center of attention to connect with your peers and build relationships with your clients. Allowing your brand to take center stage can bring your business the returns you’re looking for and the email list you want. Ruben Gamez is here to tell us how you can stand back and let your work and your products speak for your brand. He is the creator and lead marketer for his website BidSketch.com, but you’d never know it. He and his team put together professional business proposal templates for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to find work and build a business online, but you won’t see him speaking at conferences or selling on tv spots. That’s because he prefers for his business – his tool – to speak for itself. Find out how he built his audience through his own specially designed content marketing campaign, and how he designed a product that practically sells itself. Topics Discussed Creating and using drip campaigns to your advantage Using your email list to your advantage for pre-sales and promotions How to build an efficient contract team Developing your skills and uncovering your skillset How you can do content marketing for your blog Find out why we don’t always trust Google Resources Check out ConvertKit.com/blog for conversion tips and tricks Get a proposal template from Ruben at bidsketch.com Follow along with all of the great things Ruben is putting together @bidsketch and follow him personally @earthlingworks on Twitter.

If you’ve ever felt like your blog posts are a shot in the dark, this episode of the Nathan Barry Show is for you. Working to build an audience never has immediate results, but don’t be discouraged by your lack of response! My guest today will tell you how to produce valuable content over time in order to generate the right kind of response you need to see your business succeed. As a professional freelancer, Brennan Dunn knows the ins and outs of creating an audience and a viable client list. His style of content creation and content marketing has been a huge influence on my own business style. He first started by writing a business blog about the conversations he was having with his own customers as an ingenious way to get new customers and build his email list. This pro-active approach to business, including writing and publishing an e-book, creating his own content, and using paid acquisition through Facebook, is what he’s talking about with us today. You can apply his insight to your own marketing plans to develop something that works for you. Brennan has probably had a bigger on impact on the way I do online business more than anyone else. Brennan has built an audience by communicating with them regularly: regular emails promoting new/regular blogs, direct conversations, free advice, promotionals – Brennan pre-sold his e-book to his Planscope emailing list.  He also offers a range of products to better serve your clients that results in more income for you. Topics We Discuss What the very early days of audience building look like How consistency converts your early subscribers into customers Paid acquisition and why you should be using it already How to use Facebook’s Target to promote and communicate with clients What to do for a product or book launch Pros and cons of payment plans for customers (spoiler alert: it’s worth it!) Contact Subscribe to Brennan’s list at www.freepricingcourse.com Learn more about Brennan and his insights on freelancing doubleyourfreelancing.com If you have a minute, I would really appreciate if you would write a review on iTunes about today’s episode. Whether it’s good or bad, let us know what you think by posting a review in iTunes. This season of The Nathan Barry show is sponsored by Kajabi.  Check out how you can create, market, and sell your own digital products through the power of the platform at Kajabi.  And let them know that The Nathan Barry show sent you.

Today we’re sharing what sorts of things you should give away to build your brand and how to create them. Content is a great way to up your value and really fine tune your audience. There are a few important things to consider when picking an audience, and it’s important that you choose wisely. Strive to maintain a personal brand, instead of a subject-based brand; that way, even if you deviate, you’ve created an audience that follows you. Paul Jarvis dives into his biggest mistakes when trying to begin a career in writing, why he ended up releasing a vegan cookbook, and the success story behind it. He shares a lot of great information with us today, including: What he’s pursuing and who his audience is The one thing that all content marketers are getting wrong His top tip for a person with a budding audience How he attracts clients by focusing on business and “what’s in it for them” The unexpected benefits of having an audience We wrap it up by talking about the importance of over delivering now to get great results later, how we batch our content and articles, and how Paul used Medium and Amazon to boost his articles to the number one spot. Paul has distributed over 100,000 copies of his book “Everything I Know”, and currently has about 25,000 e-mail subscribers. He’s been crazy successful, and was happy to share a wealth of tips and advice with us today from his journey. Links and resources: The Audience Building Challenge by Nathan Barry The Freelancer podcast Invisible Office Hours podcast Paul’s website The Creative Class by Paul Jarvis Paul on Medium Paul on Amazon Be sure to check out Paul’s stuff, and if you have a minute, I would really appreciate if you would write a review on iTunes about today’s episode. Whether it’s good or bad, let us know what you think by posting a review in iTunes. This season of The Nathan Barry show is sponsored by Kajabi.  Check out how you can create, market, and sell your own digital products through the power of the platform at Kajabi.  And let them know that The Nathan Barry show sent you.

Wracking your brain trying to develop the best marketing campaign? When you think about it, marketing is really just big companies competing for attention. But I’m here to tell you about one of the biggest cheats these companies are missing out on. While they’re too busy fighting each other over a few seconds of everyone’s time, you can be working toward building an audience. That’s right, an audience. When you have an audience, you already have a group of people who want to pay attention to you! I’ve created this podcast to help those of us running our own businesses online build our audiences and our success. I’m talking about personal experiences, I’m bringing on guests who have used social media in unique and interesting ways, and I’m going to teach you how to build yourself an audience that goes beyond creating a simple email list. On today’s episode, I’ve invited Jason Zook to talk about how his audience helped build his brand and helped him succeed as an entrepreneur. “Building a really great audience that you have a conversation with is only going benefit everything that you’re doing tenfold,” Jason says on today’s show. And he offers advice on email marketing and building an online community that you can start using today in order to start that conversation. Along with his insights, this podcast is chock full of tips for: Getting your customers excited about your brand Learning the difference between hard work and luck Building an online community that’s dedicated to your brand and your products Jason’s peculiar insight on what it’s like to auction off your own last name Listen in and let us know what you think! Share your audience building tips, let me know what topics you want to hear about, and leave us a review on iTunes. This season of The Nathan Barry show is sponsored by Kajabi.  Check out how you can create, market, and sell your own digital products through the power of the platform at Kajabi.  And let them know that The Nathan Barry show sent you.

Nothing I do is completely original. In fact, so many ideas that people credit to me are originally from someone else. In this episode I want to give credit to the people who’ve provided some truly impactful ideas to the world. This is not a complete list by any means; I’m sure I’ve missed someone, so I plan to add to this list over time. I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to leave a comment if you have something to add! Show Notes 1. Slow, consistent progress Lifehacker article on “Don’t break the chain” (Seinfeld said he didn’t come up with this, but I’m still going to believe he did :) 2. Writing 1,000 words per day Chris Guillebeau first introduced me to the idea of making consistent progress in order to actually finish a book. Here’s his post on the topic: How to Write 300,000 Words In 1 Year. 3. Writing to a pain Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman gave me a solid introduction to copywriting. Through plenty of direct feedback on my sales pages I learned all about writing to a particular pain in my headlines and copy. Amy and Alex go on to talk about the pain, dream, fix model of writing sales pages. You can find Amy & Alex here. I haven’t taken their course 30×500, but I’ve heard wonderful things about it. 4. Multiple packages An offhand comment by Chris Guillebeau has made me tens of thousands of dollars. 5. Selling digital products Tim Ferriss talks about drug dealers in 4HWW. 6. Making a living from self-publishing to a small audience Sacha Greif and Jarrod Drysdale showed me how it’s done. 7. Travel hacking Chris Guillebeau is the master of this hard-to-believe travel methodology. 8. Focusing on a few core products Jeff Goins, Laura Roeder, & Sacha Greif are excellent examples of this. 9. Syndicating content instead of guest posting James Clear taught me that your best content should appear on your own site. 10. Webinars to grow an audience Brennan Dunn, Danny Iny, Jeff Goins, & Brad Fallon taught me everything I know about how to run profitable webinars and joint ventures. 11. Email marketing ConvertKit Academy is something I built for authors who want to learn how to connect better with their audiences and apply email marketing best-practices so they can sell more books.  

In the previous part of this episode we met three talented people – Brandon, Samuel, & Jason. We chatted a bit about their successes with self-publishing and learned how they used my book Authority as a roadmap for creating and publishing their work. In this episode, we dig deeper into how each of these fine gentlemen came up with the topics for their books, dealt with technical challenges, and got the word out. They also share several ways in which their lifestyles improved as a result of their successes; you definitely don’t want to miss that section. Hope you enjoy! Show Notes Build a Ruby Gem – the book Brandon Hilkert launched after reading Authority Professional Email Design – the latest project by Jason Rodriguez following the success of his first book The Elements of User Onboarding – author Samuel Hulick claims to have botched his book launch, but still managed to land some lucrative consulting gigs (and over $37,000 in revenue) ConvertKit – a tool I built to help creative people get a landing page up faster so they can build their email lists, launch products, and get more sales. Real people have used the information in Authority to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling educational products to their enthusiastic audiences. Get your copy of Authority to find out how you can too. Or you can check out what a few people have said about Authority on Amazon.

Have you ever wondered if it would be possible to make an independent living selling your expertise? In my book Authority I lay down an end-to-end plan for how to research, write, and publish a book to an excited and profitable audience so you can do just that. As it turns out, the methods I outline in Authority work extremely well for many people. Luckily I was able to get a few people who’ve had amazing success on a hangout; we talked for a while about their experiences publishing their first books (and earning very impressive revenues from them). Keep in mind that none of these talented folks had big audiences when they started. This is part 1 of a two part episode showcasing some of our most successful Authority customers. Hope you enjoy! Show Notes Build a Ruby Gem – the book Brandon Hilkert launched after reading Authority Professional Email Design – the latest project by Jason Rodriguez following the success of his first book The Elements of User Onboarding – this breakthrough book by Samuel Hulick landed him some sweet consulting gigs (and over $37,000 in revenue) How to make a full-time salary from one book – an article I wrote since this recording outlining what I’ve learned from multiple book launches. Real people have used the information in Authority to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling educational products to their enthusiastic audiences. Get your copy of Authority to find out how you can too. Or you can check out what a few people have said about Authority on Amazon.

Why don’t people share financial numbers? In this twenty-minute audio essay I delve into some of the reasons why people are afraid to be financially transparent, and why I’ve chosen to ignore those reasons in favor of exposing my revenue numbers (and why you should too). Show Notes Sacha Grief – one of the people who’s inspired me most to start publishing books and be transparent about the process. Jarrod Drysdale – a great designer and one of the inspirations behind my design books. The App Design Handbook launch – here’s the blog post I published where I revealed all my launch numbers – and got accused of bragging as a result :-D Want to try something fun? Leave a comment below with a financial number you’re comfortable sharing. It could be anything from your latte budget to how much your most recent product launch made!

One of the most effective ways to show potential customers how your product could be useful to them is to feature it in a promo video. Well-made promo videos can be inspiring, insightful, and fun. The problem is, video can take a bit of time to learn how to do right. Luckily I have a good friend who runs his own video production studio. His name is Caleb Wojcik; you might know him from Fizzle, which he recently moved on from to run his studio full time. If there’s one person I’d recommend to take video production advice from it’s definitely Caleb. I recently asked him to hang out with me and talk video for an hour; we dug into gear, production techniques, and some sweet hacks to make your editing workflow quicker. This episode will be especially insightful if you’re thinking about making a promo video for your product. Enjoy! Show Notes Caleb Wojcik’s DIY Video Guide – if you’re getting into making promo videos for your business, I can’t recommend this guide enough. Caleb Wojcik’s gear guide – we talked a bit about gear, but it’s way too easy to waste time figuring out what gear to buy instead of actually making videos. Luckily Caleb’s done all the work for you in this free guide. Pat Flynn’s website – we mentioned our friend Pat a few times; here’s his site if you haven’t had a chance to see his work yet. Wistia’s “down and dirty” lighting kit – for less than $100 you can make your own professional lighting kit, my friends at Wistia show you how. Caleb and me hanging out – the live hangout this podcast recording is taken from.

If you dream of selling your own products and creating a lifestyle of flexibility and independence, it’s going to be pretty tough to do that without an audience. Not only that, but that audience must be comprised of people who love what you do and have the financial means to pay you for solutions to their problems. There are many ways to build an audience, but very few of those methods lead to a profitable audience. In this short audio essay, I share with you three habits which helped me build an audience of amazing people – people who not only love what I do, but also get a ton of value from my products. They’ve been the key to my success, and if you build your audience the right way, it can be a game changer for you too. Enjoy this quick listen! Building a profitable audience takes time, and it can be a difficult process without guidance. Luckily I wrote an entire book about how to build a profitable audience from scratch – and how to create a valuable product you can sell to them. Real people have used the information in Authority to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling educational products to their enthusiastic audiences. Get your copy of Authority to find out how you can too. Or you can check out what a few people have said about Authority on Amazon.

This is part two of the live event Sacha Greif and I put together in August of last year. As a reminder, you can watch a video of the event here, and you can listen to part one here if you missed it. Enjoy part two of The Self-Publishing Hangout! Sacha, Justin, and Paul are all super helpful, knowledgeable, and experienced in their respective fields. You should definitely follow them and subscribe to their email lists. Here’s where you can find them online: Sacha Greif Justin Jackson Paul Jarvis

In August last year Sacha Greif and I put together a live event called The Self-Publishing Hangout. We brought on Paul Jarvis and Justin Jackson to round out our panel. You can watch a video of the event here, or checkout my podcast episode below.     Since recording that episode each of the guests have gone on to do amazing things. You should definitely follow them and subscribe to their email lists. Here’s where you can find them online: Sacha Greif Justin Jackson Paul Jarvis See you in part 2!

Today I’ve got my absolute favorite product creation and launch story to share with you! Sean McCabe started as a web design consultant, then built up a following for his true passion: hand lettering. He then started teaching and grew a massive email list and then launched a training product. He shares the story and all the launch details (including exact revenue numbers) in this episode.   Here’s where you can find Sean on the web: His main site, Seanwes.com The seanwes podcast His new book, The Overlap Technique His tshirt and print store And finally, the wildly successful Learn Lettering course Here you can see the very first tshirt Sean sold in his store.             Don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes.

Few things have paid off better in my business than a focus on email marketing. In building my list up to 18,000+ subscribers I’ve learned that email is the most profitable marketing channel around. Easily beating out Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. To learn more about email marketing I brought on three of my good friends: Brennan Dunn, James Clear, and Corbett Barr. All three have built highly profitable email lists in the last few years. Enjoy the episode! You can find each of their businesses (and subscribe to their lists) here: Corbett Barr — Fizzle.co Brennan Dunn — Planscope.io, BrennanDunn.com James Clear — JamesClear.com Please go to iTunes and subscribe and write a review. It would really help me out! See you in the next episode!  

In January 2013 I wrote a series of goals for the year. One of them was “launch a podcast.” How does a goal like that take 18 months to be realized? Well, first I created all kinds of reasons that a podcast was much harder than it actually needed to be. Finally after recording episodes and working sporadically on it for over a year, I’m ready to launch! This first episode is a short book I wrote called The Productivity Manifesto. If you read my last post you know that productivity is something I’ve excelled at in the past, but am struggling with right now. So it seemed like a good topic to revisit for episode one. After listening please do me a huge favor and write a review on iTunes. Good reviews are critical to getting an audience for a brand new show. See you in the next episode!