#37 - Tintin Smith: The Inner Battles of Starting Your Own Creator Business

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 00:03

So you were part of Ali Abdul's team early on and you helped them grow into millions of subscribers and from that revenue, correct?

Tintin (: 00:14

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 00:17

A lot of people really like Ali myself included. You know, I work with him for a while. That's how you and I kind of got connected. My question though is if Ali Abdul is so great, why does it seem like everyone leaves his team?

Tintin (: 00:33

yeah, I, ⁓ my, my friend, my friend, Saf was on a podcast the other day and he was, think it was also asked this cause he also left Ali's team. ⁓ I think the main reason for that is Ali's own journey as a, as a kind of individual, but creator and entrepreneur was that he always valued and prioritized, ⁓ kind of financial freedom and the freedom to do the things that he wants to do.

and live the life that he wanted to live. And so I think when he kind of, started building his business and hiring people and the question came up of like, you know, how do I interact with my team in terms of like. Encouraging them on their own side hustles or not. think Ali could, because he valued that so much himself. I think he could only support people. and I think he values it to the point where I think he actually encourages people to start their own thing and build their own thing over trying to get them to stay.

Like I think he actually sees it as almost more of a sign of success for him as an individual to get people to kind of start and build their own thing. Cause he thinks that's, know, that's key value for him is the freedom to do the things he wants. so I think people leave his business because he encourages them to, and he like helps people do that. And I think that's an amazing thing about Ali is he is really helps people realize their own dreams. Now, obviously if, if one of his

team members dream is to stay in the team, part, to have a job and be part of a business. Then he'll obviously allow them to do that. But I think for the people who want to explore doing their own thing, I think he's like extremely supportive of that. And that's ultimately why people leave. Um, I don't think you necessarily, like, I don't actually feel the same way. I have one team member now. Um, and she is great. She's called Alice. And I'm now like thinking about the same thing. I'm like, how do I interact with my own team member about.

in terms of like side hustles or whatever. I think I broadly embody Ali's philosophy, but I think one difference is I don't, ⁓ I think I will try to make it attractive as possible, as attractive as possible to stay in the, ⁓ like working in my company or business or whatever, because I want to like find and keep great people who, and built and like, who are very happy, ⁓ working in this business. Not that Ali doesn't do that, but I he like these days.

I think he like actively encourages people to like, to learn the skills to go off and do their own thing. Um, I'm not sure I'll be basically, I'm not sure I'll be as, as, as active in that, in that way. Um, but yeah, I mean, that's why, uh, I think that's why so many people leave is cause he just makes, uh, we helps you helps you do that supports you.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 03:24

What did you do before you started working with Holly?

Tintin (: 03:28

I was a management consultant for quite a short period, just, just a year as a graduate out of kind of university, well, like after COVID. And then, I had like a sort of four or five months spell in between leaving that, quitting that, and getting the job with Ali where I was kind of doing a few things part-time. was working as like an, ⁓ educational tutor, like a private tutor to sort of, kids and teenagers.

And then also working in like a sort of education company, which was sort of like a tutoring agency. I was kind of working there part-time and yeah, that was kind of brief thing in between those two jobs. But like, I didn't have much of a career before, before joining Ali's team. Cause I was like 25 or so.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 04:21

So how did you get on his team if you had such like so little experience?

Tintin (: 04:21

Yeah.

Um, the key, two key things, I think probably one is I had started my own YouTube channel. And by the time I ended up applying for the job, I had about a thousand subscribers and I posted maybe like 50 videos or something like that. So, um, I think it's always interesting if like for YouTubers to hire people who have experienced making YouTube videos. So I think that was a big thing. Um, I started my YouTube channel in.

October of: 2021

like future employees and team members is actually the customers of your products. And something I just didn't appreciate at the time. It's now something that like seems increasingly obvious. I'm like, yeah, of course that makes sense. But yeah, so many in these online businesses, so many of the team members come from the products themselves, like as students or as just customers, whatever they, ⁓ they, and the reason it's a good fit is cause people are like,

They're kind of pre-filtered already. They like understand the business. already follow the business. They typically like the business and it just makes, it makes a lot of sense for them to end up working there. But yeah, I was a student in Ali's part-time YouTube Academy and, um, and then the job came up a month or two after that finished and I applied and they kind of knew me a little bit at that point. I had a thousand subscribers. I had a job in consulting and I think I was like,

just a decent applicant for the role that they were looking for.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 06:26

So you started off in the education space. You made 50 plus videos, got to a thousand subscribers on YouTube. Then you took a PtyA his, his course slash community and learned more about YouTube and then started working for him, helping with, like the video scripting and the process itself of making videos correctly. What was your actual role?

Tintin (: 06:39

Yeah. Yeah.

Well,

yeah, actually to start with the job title I got hired for was course writer. And that's because at the time, basically Ali was looking to make lots more courses like Skillshare classes and just like courses that he would own as well that weren't on Skillshare. ⁓ which is kind of what he was doing that year. And that, ⁓ was a role that they were looking for. And I joined like a, another person also sort of in that role.

And then, but then over the next four months, ⁓ the business kind of shifted a lot, changed a lot. Some people were let go. It kind of just things, a lot of things changed and my role became redundant. then Ali at that point needed help on the YouTube channel. It was basically just him. And so I then started to help out with scripting with short form content in particular at that time. ⁓ and over the course of like a month.

I went from like helping Ali on, ⁓ with a few things to then just being the producer and running the whole channel and making the thumbnails and writing the hooks and working with the sponsors and, ⁓ coordinating with the team to talk about different, various different products, like, like the part-time YouTube Academy. And over the course of the next two years, kind of just like ran that round the channel, basically did everything to do it, to do with that.

Um, we were working with all the video artists, thumbnail designers and like everything in between. Um, so that's kind of how that evolution happened from joining the team to end up working, working on the YouTube channel. just happened to be in like a good position to, to, to fill the needs that Ali had at that time. Um, because I had lots of experience like making my own videos and I was just a good fit to help out. was just like, love the channel, loved working with Ali. I was just like super keen and.

⁓ He needed more help on it at that moment.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 08:53

Okay. So you went from being in the education space, making YouTube videos, learning how to make better YouTube videos, helping Ali on the education side, and then helping Ali on the YouTube like video side, then you left. So

Tintin (: 08:53

Yeah.

Mm.

Yes.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 09:16

You left to start your own business, helping educational YouTubers, correct? Like actually helping educational YouTubers actually build a business and make money from YouTube. each of these things, like you stacked skills and experiences, right? So was almost like, I think one thing a lot of people who want to become creators really struggle with early on.

Tintin (: 09:29

Yeah, exactly.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 09:48

is that they don't have any skills. They have no skills or, or, or, or no expertise. It's obviously better if you have expertise and just suck at conveying that expertise. That's fewer skillsets you have to learn. But I think a lot of people underestimate just how much work goes into a successful creator career or business. So even so at 25,

Tintin (: 09:50

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 10:17

You're just like, I didn't really have a whole lot of experience. Well, man at 25, you know, if you did like, so at 25, I was what probably, ⁓ I was getting my master's degree, right? I was in grad school.

So even so you're not like fresh out of high school. You're not even like fresh out of college because 25 year older than than college a lot of times like exactly. But even then you're like, I don't really have a lot of experience. But then I do the consulting. I learn about it. I do tutoring. I'm in the education space. I'm learning how to teach people. I'm learning about curriculum design, things like this.

Tintin (: 10:35

Yeah. Couple years out. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 10:56

then I start learning about YouTube and thumbnails and hooks and intros and calls to action and choosing topics and just getting comfortable on camera. That is a huge thing, is just getting comfortable on camera. And that is something like I still struggle with sometimes with solo videos, because I'm not talking to a real person. People are like, the camera adds 10 pounds or whatever.

Tintin (: 11:09

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 11:24

four kilos, whatever it is, right? Whatever the conversion is. But it also drains like 20 or 30 % of your energy. So just learn, and even if you don't feel awkward, you lose a lot of your energy and you come out as like monotone. So you're learning all those skills. Then you start to work with him with the course creation stuff. Then you get even better with like learning how to do thumbnails for creators at that level.

Tintin (: 11:25

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 11:51

and what actually goes into a good video. How do you keep people hooked the whole time? You know, retention graphs, all that other stuff. Then you said, okay, I now feel like I have enough experience, enough expertise, enough, just understanding of what goes into building a successful business that I'm now going to take everything I've learned over the last however many years and teach other people.

Tintin (: 11:57

Hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 12:18

since you've left and you've been building your own business. How long has it been at this point?

Tintin (: 12:25

10 months since I left. Yeah, not even a year, yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 12:27

10 months, okay, so not even a year in.

Walk me through that journey of going from the safe, secure, you know, relatively padded job and that great team, great people, all the resources, the fucking budget, like whatever else, right? To everything being your responsibility in all ways.

Tintin (: 12:46

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah. there's many, there's so many, many things, guess, elements to that. ⁓ I had experience obviously quitting my job before. I quit the consulting job and doing that was really, really stressful and really scary. I had so many like doubts and concerns and, ⁓ I found the whole process like a very challenging.

And I really wasn't sure what was going to happen. Quitting Ali's team. felt like totally different in the, the, in there were almost, almost directly three years apart. ⁓ the, quitting of the two jobs and those three years, I had just learned so much about business YouTube, making money about teams, about like how, yeah, ultimately I think how to make money in a

as an individual, also in a team. And I think my confidence of like being able to earn income, not least because I had Ali's name behind me, which is like the credibility I've ridden off for the last few years now. And it goes a long way. So I just knew, I just had, was ultimately just like a complete difference in confidence from quitting one job to quitting Ali's team. Like I just felt so much more confident that I was going to be able to

make enough money to start with, but also probably make more money on my own. And the actual decision to leave.

just sort of became natural over time. It was never like there was one stressful moment, particularly it was just kind of something that I just thought a lot about. I spoke to the team about, I to Ali about, and eventually it just became clear to me that that was what I wanted to do. I've always really prioritized learning and growth and the question of like, which path is going to help me learn more about the things that I want to learn about.

is one that I think about a lot. at the end of last year, or like throughout last year, towards the end of the year, it became very clear to me that like entrepreneurship and starting my own thing was the path that I wanted to learn about. wasn't even that was like, I was just getting, I kind of reached the ceiling of growth, think within Ali's business, just because it's a small team. There's only so many roles. Um, and Ali's obviously the key man. So like, can't progress into that role. So I just, I just felt like, you know what, the thing that I want to learn about now is like doing this myself.

And so I quit, it wasn't overly stressful. was reasonably confident that I could get, I could make money basically, ultimately, but it was like, I was, I was definitely nervous. I didn't really know what was going to come in this year. And then in January, I had this month of like, it was quite a strange month in many ways, because I just left and I had this course called thumbnail masterclass that I

wanted to kind of relaunch, cause it had been closed for a couple of months. And so I relaunched it towards the end of January, but that month I basically had no meetings. I didn't really talk to anyone. I, ⁓ refilmed parts of the course, just kind of wrote some emails. Like I just read it, the whole, course thing and launched it, made a bunch of money and it was really cool. And I was like, wow, this is, ⁓ really fun, but

Uh, was, I was also sort of really fueled by energy, optimism and motivation. I just, think it was riding on confidence, to be honest, at the start of the year. And so it's totally different experience. And I wasn't feeling, as you said, like, talk me through, talk me through the kind of, uh, the journey of this year and going from the nice team into just being on my own. I actually felt a little bit more relief at the end of the year, to be honest, or at the start of this year, just having the freedom to like now to.

to grow and to push myself as much as I wanted. And so that month, I had like a really fun month doing that. But then I kind of was like, do I really want just like a passive course business where I really talk to anyone? Like, what's the next thing? And then in February, I was like, you know what, let's let, let's, I think I can help YouTube is make more money. And the, the big picture thing here was I loved working with Ali and I think he's an incredible guy.

I w and so many people look up to him and want to build businesses like him. And I wanted to help more of those people build their own version of Ali's business and help YouTubers without millions of subscribers and millions of views build like sustainable six figure businesses. And I was like, that really motivates me. I had the idea last year and I just thought I really wanted to explore that. And so in February, I was like, what is stopping me doing this?

Um, like today, and I was like, there's no good reason why I can't, was thinking I might do it in April and I was like, why can't I do it right now? I just had it in my mind. So I just sent an email, um, to my email list, which I'd kind of built up over the last couple of years. And I launched this program and I got like 15 students into this thing that I hadn't even built and then kind of built, I've been building it since then and just kind of growing it, getting more students and making it better and just help educational YouTubers.

⁓ without millions of subscribers build sort of build their business and, ⁓ monetize that audience more efficiently and just build something sustainable. and that's the challenge of building that has been quite immense, I would say. ⁓ but I, and I chose, I chose that challenge because it felt like the, the biggest growth opportunity for me and.

I'm really pleased that I kind of lent into it and just like went for it. Cause it's a lot more scary working sometimes with people like one to one or a bunch of people, like a big group, um, especially consistently. It's just like a bit more intense. You have to be engaged every day, all this kind of stuff. But I think quite a lot about like the circle of competence. I don't know if you know that whole thing. Like if you push yourself too far, it is, it is, uh, kind of stressful, but I get quite bored. I think when I reach the.

edges of my circle of competence. And I do the same things all the time, where feel like I'm not learning and growing. And I was like, no, this feels like the next frontier. So I just kind of launched the program and I feel like this year I've just been like constantly growing every single element of the sort of entrepreneur skill set, the YouTube skill set. It's been a lot of learning and growing trying to onboard more and more students, make their program good, actually get people results, actually help people like build their business, employee people.

Like hire a team member, manage finances, how that understand how all of that stuff works. Um, yeah, it's been a lot, definitely, but, uh, it's been a very cool year and, um, it's crazy to think that we're coming to the end of it, to be honest, uh, now that we're in October, but, yeah, that's a kind of general overview of that. The last like maybe 10 months a year or so.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 20:17

Well, the really interesting thing with you. So in the education space, there are a lot of like fake gurus, like snake oil salesman and things, people teaching you how to make money or how to grow on YouTube, but they have never made money or they have never grown on YouTube. So all they're doing is just rehashing shit they've learned from other people and everything's theory, right? It's not the same, but similar to like the, the worst parts of academia.

Tintin (: 20:35

So.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 20:46

where like some of my friends who've gotten MBAs, they're like, look, my MBA was kind of trash because none of my professors were entrepreneurs, but they were trying to teach me about running a business and they had no idea how to act like all they had was theory or like economic theories or some shit and theories very quickly break down when they run into reality and in the online space, especially in the creator economy space.

Tintin (: 20:56

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 21:15

There's so much bullshit. There are so many people like, here's how to grow a viral audit. Here's how to go viral and grow a huge audience or here's how to hit 10 K RR 10 K RR is always the fucking the number everybody throws around. And well, but, the thing is, is like, have you ever made 10 K RR? Have you ever grown an audience? Have, do you actually understand what makes a good thumbnail and what doesn't? Because you have

Tintin (: 21:26

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm in that game.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 21:42

the data to back it up or you have your own track record, right? Even like you said, like one of the ways you got the initial job with Ali is cause you're like, look, I've, I've already gotten a thousand subscribers. I've had 50 plus iterations of making fucking YouTube videos. I know what it is like to go through this process. You actually know what you're talking about from multiple angles, right? You know about it because you did it before working with Ali.

Tintin (: 21:56

Mm-hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 22:09

You got extra good at it working with Ali. And then since leaving, you now have an educational YouTube business effectively. Like that is what some of your, your content is, is behind the scenes and things. So you have earned these insights in these strategies and whatever in multiple, multiple ways. So you are trustworthy.

Tintin (: 22:14

Mm.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 22:38

Not because you read it, not because you watched the top 10 videos on how to grow on fucking YouTube. You've actually done it. And that is such a rare thing, especially like, know, go ahead.

Tintin (: 22:42

Yeah.

I

⁓ well, I was just going to say, what's interesting about that is when I launched my program, I hadn't actually myself built a six figure business directly from my own YouTube channel. And that definitely was like an imposter thing for me. I was like, I, it would be more helpful if I had because, ⁓ because there would be obviously better credibility.

But I had made, ⁓ tens of thousands of dollars online through various things like one-to-one consulting and launching my own course. Kind of, as I mentioned, I don't like two launches of that, but I was mainly like, I just think I can help people solve, solve this. ⁓ I had, I had the credibility of working with Ali and running Ali's channel, but I wasn't Ali. And so I kind of didn't have that credibility.

behind me necessarily at this point now in the year, you know, kind of seven, eight, eight, nine months on from launching it. feel a lot better about that credibility because now I have my own YouTube channel and the, my pro my own program has now done, ⁓ like good numbers in revenue. And I feel a lot better about my own credibility in that sense, but I kind of, when I actually launched it, I actually was a bit.

concerned about that side of things and people being like, has he actually done this himself? Kind of thing. And I was like, well, yeah, I said, you know what? I actually haven't like launched my own channel and turned into a six figure business, which is ultimately what I was kind of helping people, helping people do. So it did feel a bit funny from that perspective. And I just was like, I'm not going to let that stop me. So I appreciate what you're saying, but there was that, there was actually in truth that element for like of it for me, which I kind of just had to.

to push through and, ⁓ the credibility was I have run a channel that has done this. I understand all the principles and I can help them apply it to, to your channel as well. And ultimately that was enough. Like you don't actually need to, I had done it, but for someone else, so I hadn't done it myself essentially. So, ⁓ and I did feel a bit, bit funny about that, but, I think you don't actually need to have done the thing directly as the

person leading the business or running the business or whatever, to then help other people. You can just be the number two or the number three or whatever, ⁓ to actually kind of go out and do something similar. And I think that's quite common. You often see people who are number twos going off and do doing something, ⁓ because they learned all the skills and then they're like, I can help. can apply this to other, other creators and businesses now. but, ⁓ yeah.

So I thought I would mention that because I think it's important context.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 25:48

No, I love

that. So, but so one, like you said, you had results in that you had applied those, those concepts and strategies to help someone else do it. So you have like the case example, the case studies, you have those results for somebody else, not necessarily yourself, but your expertise has had already led to that with at least one other person. So that that's fine. Right. I was specifically saying people who had never gotten anybody results, they had never done it themselves.

It was all theory, never based in reality. ⁓ but I love what you said because despite the fact that you had results for somebody else, you didn't have it for yourself. And then that was when imposter syndrome or some insecurity and things kicked in because, and like, you know, prices change as, as a program improves and things a lot of times, but even at the beginning, your

Tintin (: 26:19

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 26:42

your program, your cause it's like a water, like a three to six month membership is kind of how it was originally framed. I think. Okay. Okay. So, okay. Six to I know it was like a monthly, so like six to 12 months, it was positioned as a premium offer relic. It was like thousands of dollars worth of an investment for this thing. So it wasn't like here's $300 a month or, know, $99 subscript. Like it wasn't that right. It was a premium thing. So

Tintin (: 26:48

⁓ Six to 12 is not, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 27:12

Not only are you kind of battling your own internal imposter syndrome and things like this, you're also charging a premium price for something you yourself haven't done. How? Cause cause you cause you're a good, but with this caveat, you're a good dude. You're not a piece of shit who preys on people. I wouldn't have you on if you're a piece of shit. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you do everything with integrity and, and, and with the perspective you genuinely want to help people and you pour

Tintin (: 27:21

Yeah.

Hmm.

I appreciate that. Yeah, let everyone know.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 27:43

everything into your stuff. Right? Like I've been in your, your current community and things like, so I get to see things and I get to see things. Some like, some of the like behind the scenes things you pour yourself into this, right? And you do a phenomenal job of, of running this community and teaching people. And now some people have gotten incredible results. Some people have had six figure launches, right? So, so, so today it's easy to look back and like, ⁓ I've totally helped a bunch of people. But at that time, when you launched,

Tintin (: 28:12

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 28:12

⁓

premium priced product that you hadn't built yet that ⁓ you yourself hadn't gotten the results from. How did you navigate that internally? Internally how how how did you hit publish to make that offer public?

Tintin (: 28:25

Yeah, yeah ⁓

Yeah.

That's a really interesting question. makes it sound like in some ways, I was like, what the hell was I doing? But the internal conversation at that time was really...

what is the best way to help the kind of YouTuber that I want to help and how can I help them essentially? Like what, what, what help can I, can I, I, can I give? And I realized that the kind of YouTube I wanted to help was the kind of intermediate advanced YouTuber who'd built a bit of an audience teaching something online and wanted more help building a business around it. There were a couple of friends that I had who had done that and I'd seen it and I was like, this is

Amazing. And, ⁓ obviously he'd work with Ali and so like, it was very much just like, I know this is possible and I just want to help more people solve this problem. It was just like a part of, YouTube and business that I was really interested in like helping people with. I'd also, I did have at that point at the time of launching, I basically had one, one, one to one client who I had been kind of, ⁓ working with specifically on this. I'd had a bunch of one-to-one clients on YouTube stuff.

⁓ over the years, ⁓ like tens of, of clients, but then I had one who was helping specifically with like the monetization side of things. And that helped a little bit, but essentially the, this is what I talk to my students a lot about is. Running an experimental mindset, sorry, yeah. Having an experimental mindset and running experiments and.

thinking about what is the next step or the current bottleneck to making the, ⁓ to making progress. And at the time it was like early February. And I was like, I have this idea for this group coaching program that helps educational YouTubers with audiences build sustainable businesses. I want to get a hundred students in it. Like I had this vision for it.

Like what stopped me doing it right now? And I was like, well, I have a bit of an audience myself. have 5,000 YouTube's on this list. Like, what if I just let them know about it? If no one's interested, then I didn't have to do anything with it, but I'll just like, ⁓ share a little form. If people are interested, they can fill out the details. And I kind of use those two, two things. thought one is, okay, I'll just run an experiment. I'll just share this form. See what happens. It was at the bottom of an email. So it wasn't even like a big announcement. It was just like, by the way.

I'm thinking of doing, I'm going to do this. ⁓ if you're interested, fill out the form. And, ⁓ so it didn't feel like too big a deal from, from, that side of things. I was just like, I'll see what happens. And then, ⁓ in terms of the kind of the bottleneck thinking, I was like, well, what is stopping me going from idea into action here was just having that form, letting people know that they were interested. So that was the bottleneck and then bunch of people applied. And I was like, they're like 60 plus applications. was like, ⁓ okay.

I was like, well, I guess I better talk to them. Like, then I hopped on a bunch of sales calls. I was absolutely terrible at first. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. And I was selling people on something that didn't exist. I was like, Hey, I'm doing this thing. I'm going to like do a cohort of YouTubers. this is happening. Like there's a big discount cause it's the first time it's going to happen. Like, you interested? And I managed to get, ⁓ like 15 people to join.

So I did a bunch of sales calls over, over like three weeks. I did like 25 sales calls one, I think one week I actually did, ⁓ like the majority of them, like 18 or something. was, ⁓ it was a lot in that week. Yeah. The mindset side of things was just,

There's no reason I can't do this. I can help people do this. If it doesn't work.

then I don't really lose anything.

And of course I was nervous and a bit concerned about it, but I just, I've become obsessed over the last few years. Ever since I sort of was a consultant and started ⁓ making, like writing online and then making videos and then quitting my job, I've become obsessed with this idea of like, if you have an idea for something that you want to do, you've got to do it. You've got to just take action. the whole...

I have an idea and take action thing. I've just become like obsessed with. So it was quite in my nature at this point. And I was like, there's nothing stopping me doing this. Like, why can't I just let people know about it and see what happens?

yeah, I think that hurdle is really tricky for YouTube is to get across like selling something to that audience. But ultimately the thing I think most people don't, most people forget about is that you can just say, doing something, put lots of effort into saying, into telling people about it. And if no one signs up then.

You just don't have to do it like you, because obviously the intention is genuine. It's like, I'm going to do this. If people sign up, you say, I'm going to do this thing. I'm looking for 10 people. I'm looking for five people, 50 people, whatever it is. This thing is happening. I'm going to help you do this, ⁓ or achieve this thing and get better at this thing. And if you don't want to go ahead with it after doing a bunch of promotion or whatever, then you just don't go ahead with it. And you either tell people, Hey, there wasn't enough interest. I'm not going ahead with this.

And you refund people if they paid or whatever, or you just don't actually mention, ⁓ you just, ⁓ like you let the people know who kind of signed up maybe that it's not going ahead, but then you just don't mention it to the rest of your audience and they just don't hear about it again. And it's just not that big a deal. So yeah, at that point, I think I just like drunk the Kool-Aid of just kind of do stuff, take action. I'd seen Ali do this kind of stuff like a million times where we launch things and then not gone ahead or just launch things and things gone wrong.

And was just like, it'll be fine. But it was stressful.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 34:51

I love that.

Because I would assume, well, I don't assume, I know, but ⁓ a lot of the people you work with now, because one of big things that you do is you, like you said, you help people who already reasonably know how to grow a YouTube channel. They know how to make videos. They probably have some type of domain expertise because you're focusing on educational YouTubers, not entertainers.

So many of them, when they start to create their own product or service, because that's one of the big things you help people with pricing is a huge thing. Pricing psychology, ⁓ coupled with imposter syndrome, because one, there's the hurdle of who am I to do this? Who am I to ask people for any amount of money for anything? But then the second piece is how do I choose a

Tintin (: 35:27

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 35:50

price point that is quote unquote reasonable relative to what I'm offering relative to what people would actually value and it's a complicated thing.

Tintin (: 36:04

Mm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 36:07

I remember so like, so for me, and this is one things that I've, I've taught people before too, is I, I think that everybody, every creator should coach to some degree or offer some sort of like service because like for me coaching.

If I had a quote, regular business, I would need to probably pay like a marketing agency or a market research agency to do research on my ideal audience and customers with coaching. People pay me to teach, to tell me more, to give me insights about them. Right? Like, so like if I work like with a seven figure founder, they pay me and they say, Hey, here's what I'm struggling with. Help me. So then I get to.

Tintin (: 36:36

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 36:56

I get paid to learn of what works, what doesn't, what do they struggle with? And then as a creator, I can turn those insights into YouTube videos, into an article, into something else. And then that attracts other people who, and then the fly will continue to try. I remember when I first left the therapy world and started charging people for coaching, because early on I offered it for free for like a testimonial. And I think.

Tintin (: 37:13

Yeah, absolutely.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 37:26

The first time I charged somebody, it equaled like $250 per session. And this is like, when I left my therapy job, I was making the equivalent of like $50 an hour. And I, and I didn't know how I would spend all that money. So to charge five times that I was like, this is insane. Nobody will ever, ever pay me this amount of money.

Tintin (: 37:34

Mm-hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 37:54

And one of the first clients I got, he laughed in my face cause he was like, I was expecting you to charge three to four times that, ⁓ for this type of engagement. I was like, fuck. Like I have my own, like limiting beliefs around pricing and what people are willing to pay or what they would value. Cause I'm like, why would anybody pay me money to just sit and talk with me for 45 minutes or an hour? Like that sounds insane.

Tintin (: 38:18

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 38:21

So one, there's that of like, who am I to do this? But then it's like, how do you pick a price? How do you pick a price that you are again, even reasonably comfortable doing? What have you seen both in your work overall, but especially within your current community, what are the common ways that these things manifest and what have you found to be most helpful for

Tintin (: 38:46

in terms of picking the right price for you in that moment and your product in that moment. Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 38:51

that, but also

navigating the, am I to do this? Who am I to charge people for this?

Tintin (: 38:56

Yeah.

think in my space in the sort of YouTube world, the value is like reasonably clear is like, you know, if you kind of, if you do the right things, you can make, you can make good money. So it's easier to, to feel like you can justify the higher prices, but definitely like pricing itself is just like, you have to go through this journey. think every, well, not everyone has to go through the journey because some people just automatically maybe get it or just a bit more comfortable charging higher prices. Those people do exist.

They're just a bit, I think typically a bit more naturally entrepreneurial and they see the value in what they're doing and understand that sometimes things cost more just like there are bigger numbers in the world. Whereas I think most people, you know, a thousand pounds or a thousand dollars, it's just like quite a lot or like, know, in most people's personal lives, that's just like quite a lot of money. And most people come from that perspective, thinking about it from the like personal angle of like, wow, that's kind of a lot of money, all that kind of stuff.

And so for most creators, YouTubers, you go through this journey where...

You do your first, like your first paid stuff. ⁓ if it's one-to-one coaching, the advice I generally share is like, start at a place that you are kind of comfortable with that doesn't make you, your skin crawl. ⁓

get going at that price point and then just slowly ramp it up. The whole kind of like advice that, know, Alex Hormosi shares around, ⁓ you know, making your price, just making your prices like ⁓ generally as high as possible is good business advice, but like ultimately doesn't consider the kind of emotional factor. And it takes time to get to that point. So now maybe me and you feel more comfortable charging high prices.

because we've just gone through the emotional rigmarole of like the whole thing. And we're just kind of more comfortable being like, yeah, this is the value that it provides. Like it's just, this is how much it costs because, ⁓ you know, the ROI is there and we believe in the thing, but when you're starting out, you don't believe in your experience. don't believe in your product. You don't believe in, ⁓ like how likely it is that people get results. So it's all just like quite a lot of, all these emotional hurdles that you have to go through. And also you're probably less experienced.

So I think typically, um, it obviously depends on a lot on what you're doing and selling, but just like starting from a place that makes you feel comfortable, maybe making it a little bit higher than that, just to kind of keep you, um, slightly uncomfortable is a good thing. I think where people find often find this trickiest is with like courses or digital products, where there's no active delivery. Because if you're doing active delivery and you're charging a thousand dollars or $2,000, and you're actually getting on calls with people.

Or you're actually like, you know, engaging with people in a community or some kind of whatever it is. You can always kind of put in extra effort to make up to make people feel like that money was like well spent. And that's definitely something that made me feel more comfortable with charging thousands of dollars ⁓ for coaching in general. was like, I will just give them more coaching if they feel like they, if, if, if I feel bad about the value, if they complain or if like, it just doesn't feel good, whatever I would just like offer.

to do more sessions, to give more, just to work really hard, all that kind of stuff. Whereas when you're pricing a course, that's kind of tricky because you can't just give more that easily. And so ⁓ that's maybe a slightly different thing and people do typically under-price their courses. But ⁓ yeah, I think of it typically like a staircase with pricing, which is just...

Just get on the ladder and then increase your prices over time. You'll realize it's not as big a deal as you think it is. and, ⁓ it also makes it easier to get clients and improve if you start lower and actually just like make it a no brainer for people. ⁓ but then definitely as my prices have increased, every price increase is a psychological and emotional journey for me to say on a sales call to people.

or to actually like get comfortable with them. Like, Whoa, this is like, this is almost $10,000. Like this is crazy. You're like, you know, like that. You're just like, Oh my God, is that really, that's a lot of money. Like to kind of get comfortable with it at each level. Um, you know, I'm sure maybe at some point there'll be, you know, I'll be offering something that's, that's a lot more than that. If it's like, you know, mastermind or something at each price point, you just have to get comfortable with selling it. Um, and.

At least that's how I think about it and how I approach it because I don't have that gift where I'm like, I can just sell something that's $100,000 and like, you know, feel comfortable about it. Like I've just, I'm just like, the numbers are so big and it takes me time to get used to it.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 44:01

Well, I like, I don't want to those hormones or who, but this idea of what is the a thousand dollar, like what does my a hundred thousand dollar offer? Like if I were to offer anything for a hundred thousand dollars or a million dollars, whatever, but if I offer something for a hundred K, what would that look like? And then you can, and then like that's just, it's, it's a really helpful exercise to figure out like, well, what would I create that would provide

Tintin (: 44:14

Mm.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 44:27

over a hundred thousand dollars worth of value so that that would be a no, despite the fact that it is a six figure investment, it would still be framed as a no brainer. And then you could any, even if you don't like ever offer that you can, you know, reverse engineer and like, well here's a $3,000 version of that. Let me put that out. Right. And so two quick stories related to this. ⁓ one of my friends, I won't say who it is because I'm going to say what he charges, but

Tintin (: 44:36

Mm-hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 44:57

Uh, one of my friends, he's an executive coach and he's a big name in the executive coaching world. He works with a lot of like, uh, CEOs and corporate types. He and I are talking one day. He's like, yeah, I'm doing this three month coaching program for this company and I charged them $40,000 and we meet every other week. I was like, Jesus Christ. Like that's so much fucking money for you to just go for like 90 minutes, twice a month for only three months.

Tintin (: 45:21

No.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 45:26

Like I did, I don't know what the calculation for that is for like hourly, but I was like, that is an insane amount of money. He's like, it's, a, it's a fucking line item for this company. And one of the reasons for that was he's like, I only work with really big companies who would charge that. I, know another, ⁓ coach, she also, you know, does a lot with CEOs. She's like, I charged 10 K a month for two 90 minute sessions. And it's like a six month minimum.

Tintin (: 45:28

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 45:57

She's like, I, I work with 10 people at a time and I'm booked out for the year. And it's like, you're bringing in $50,000 a month or whatever the fuck the math was. She's bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars for just one part of her business. And so one, that's just a really good filter of who can afford the thing, the price you want to charge.

Tintin (: 46:13

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 46:25

But then on the other side, or our friends, ⁓ chewy, he's, he's, ⁓ big on YouTube in like the jujitsu space. I've shared the story before, but, ⁓ I don't think with you, chewy, he, he's again, he's grown his own channel to hundreds of thousands. He's, ⁓ the co-owner of a brick and mortar jujitsu gym. like a quote, real business. He's got a newsletter. He does a lot of instructionals. and he also teaches marketing to other business owners.

Tintin (: 46:38

I think so.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 46:56

So one time Chewy did like a free marketing flywheel seminar. Shit that you and I at this point we know all about, but at the time it was new for that area.

And he offered it for free. I think like 40 or 50 people RSVP'd and like maybe a dozen actually showed up to something that he would later be able to charge like thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for. It was completely for free because he was just beta testing it. And I'm taking a sit and they're taking copious notes because like this motherfucker knows what he is talking about. He's giving this away for free. I can't believe that one dude gets up halfway through. He's like, Hey, Chewie, I gotta go, man. I got a hair appointment. I gotta go to the barber. And it's like,

You couldn't have like rescheduled your fucking haircut in the middle of this. So like after what I went to chewy, I was like, dude, this was so good, so valuable. I can't believe more people didn't show up. And I can't believe that one dude just left halfway through until he said, people don't value what is freely given. And I've never forgotten that because I think a lot of times as creators, when you're newer,

And I mean newer as far as like offering your own paid things, right? Cause like some of the YouTubers that you've worked with, they're, they're seasoned as YouTubers, but they're, but they're new when it comes to creating their own products and services and charging for them, right? Cause like they've, they're used to like ad revenue or sponsorships or something else, right? This whole idea of, let me make it super cheap or let me just give a lot away for free because

Tintin (: 48:17

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 48:28

Internally, I'm just afraid to charge my worth because I don't know what my worth is or maybe I devalue my

Tintin (: 48:34

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 48:36

But it's this combination of one people won't value what you give away for free most of the time, but two really looking at, you building an audience of people who can afford the prices you want to charge? Like so many people build audiences of tire kickers and not decision makers. And that's one of the reasons they struggle so much. What are your thoughts on

Tintin (: 48:51

Hmm.

Yeah. I think that obviously a good way to get people to, ⁓ buy your stuff is to make it feel like a no brainer going back to the kind of homo, a homosy thing. And definitely a good way to feel okay about your pricing is just make it seem like a really, really amazing deal. And it's always just a case of like value discrepancy, like, and if you're charging $5,000, what does it, is it going to help this person more than that?

But then with the free stuff, 100%, people pay when they pay attention. That's the, like, know, the kind of quip that I have in my head.

giving away stuff for free is yeah, it's like obviously content these days. It's a great way to get people into your kind of, it's your world giving stuff away for free. But then if you want, typically, if you want to help people make real progress, then they need to invest in something because they just don't care until, until they, uh, until they invest. lots of people obviously do make great progress just through free content.

something I think about is actually less so what are the prices I want to charge, but who do I want to help? And if you think in terms of who do I want to help, are the like price that you can charge as a set is an afterthought or is like, sorry, not an afterthought, a secondary part of that. I personally don't like the whole spiel around like, I don't like it that much. The whole spiel around, you know, just work with

⁓ the people who can pay the most like entrepreneurs, businesses, whatever. I'm like, well, yeah, they have the most money. And that is like the quickest way to be able to charge 50 K, ⁓ per month for whatever service that you're providing. Like your, like your, ⁓ friend, ⁓ who's charging 40 K for, you know, it's a couple of 90 minute calls like that. I think that obviously that is an efficient.

business in many ways, but lots of people just don't want to build that kind of business. They want to build a different kind of business where they help different kinds of people and the prices that you can charge are naturally lower. And I'm quite interested in like, how can I make those businesses work? ⁓ where you're doing different kinds of things. So if like in my business, I can't chart, like my audience doesn't have 50 K to drop on, ⁓ consulting for like a year or whatever it might be.

⁓ maybe, maybe they do, but like typically the price point I can charge is like a little, is, know, it's still significant, but a little bit less and every niche has different price points. ⁓ and obviously it's a critical part of building a business, but like I see building a bit, building a business is very much like understand your landscape, understand what you're trying to do, understand all the different, ⁓ options available to you. But I think, I think thinking about who you want to help is like, ⁓ at least for me personally, is a really key motivator. I wouldn't want to help.

Like one of the reasons why I left Ali's team was because I loved working there, but I kind of was like, you know what? I'm more interested in helping people make their first hundred thousand than help Ali make another million. And, ⁓ even though I could potentially have like charged people like Ali higher prices for my services, if I wanted to help with their YouTube channels, that kind of thing. So, ⁓ that's like a difference between me and Saf who, Saf is a friend of mine who I met while working with Ali.

who is now running an amazing done for you service kind of YouTube agency where he like runs the whole YouTube channel for you and works with Daniel Priestley and is absolutely killing it. He works with these like high profile people and he can charge quite high prices. But I just was less interested in actually working with that level of entrepreneur because they weren't the people that I actually wanted to help as much. And that was just like a, let's say like a different side of that coin.

instead of just thinking about how do you work with the people who you can charge the most, if that makes sense.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 53:03

for sure.

Tintin (: 53:03

Thank

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 53:06

lot of people chase money to the exclusion of meaning and wonder why they end up miserable. There's nothing wrong with wanting money. There's nothing wrong with working with people who have a lot of money. If that is what you want to do, if it isn't, you will burn out. Like period. Like if you, you know, one of the reasons I think a lot of us go into entrepreneurship is to never have

Tintin (: 53:24

Yeah. Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 53:32

I don't know if you all have this phrase, but like never have like a case of the Mondays again, or the Sunday scaries.

Tintin (: 53:37

Yeah

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 53:39

Like as an entrepreneur, I don't have those anymore, right? Like I don't dread the week starting because I'm like, I'm excited to work on what I'm working on. Well, if

Tintin (: 53:42

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 53:54

If you're working with people you low key don't really like or doing work you don't really care to do, why are you an entrepreneur? Like you could just get a job that would have way less stress. Cause like as an entrepreneur, all the fires and there's always some fire coming up. You got to put all the fires out. Your business is always on your mind. When you go to sleep, when you wake up, sometimes in the middle of your dreams, your business is there.

Tintin (: 53:59

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 54:21

It's super hard, especially when you have like a solo business or a smaller business, smaller team. It's just always on your mind.

Tintin (: 54:27

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 54:29

And everything is on you to do to figure out whatever, why sign up for that amount of stress and uncertainty and no work life balance. Cause like evenings and weekends, like that's cool. And sometimes you can like carve out pockets, like when you own your business, you'll still be, cause I know like later you got like a, like a football game, soccer for the Americans.

Tintin (: 54:43

Yeah. ⁓

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 54:58

You have like you have a game you're going to go to. That'll be fun. I'm sure. But if something stressful is going on in your business right now, then in the middle of the game, you're gonna be like, fuck, I need to do that tomorrow. shit. I forgot to that email. That doesn't go away. So why the fuck would you sign up for that only to work with people you don't fucking like? Just get a job.

Tintin (: 55:07

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

100%. I mean, like, just as we're talking about it, I'm thinking about if I was feeling like under pressure or I was maybe having like a low moment in the business and let's say I was like up a little bit late. I mean, late for me is like, you know, eight or nine. I typically like stop working like six most, most days. ⁓ I just, I'm like more of an early person. I stopped working around then, but like occasionally I'm working at like eight o'clock and if I was

If I was like at eight or, you know, on a Sunday evening or Saturday night, doing what working when I didn't want to be working. ⁓ and I was the work that I was doing was for like very successful entrepreneurs already. I would just probably feel like this feeling of like, this is what I to be doing. Like I'm just kind of helping this person like, you know, get even further. don't know. just, it doesn't, it just, it wasn't, it wouldn't be as exciting to me as like.

When I've got, when, when, when, you know, someone that I know and like in my program in Germany or in New York or in like, you know, wherever it is has like posted in my community and, ⁓ or like, has like reached out for some help. I'm so much more motivated to help that person because I get them, I relate to them. I want to help them like, ⁓ you know, make the, make the sort of transformation in their business.

They've got like 50 K subscribers. They've worked super hard to get there and they want to like turn this thing into a full-time income, or they just want to like go from kind of almost working to like really thriving. Like I'm so much more motivated to help that person like reply to the DM at like, you know, 11 PM at night, because, ⁓ I just, that's cooler to me. That's just more interesting to me, but there's no right or wrong in terms of what business you build. Like it's just kind of what, what motivates you and what interests you and what kind of work do you want to be doing?

But yeah, that's kind of, ⁓ I think for me is like a big motivator is like, who am I actually working with? What problem am I helping solve in the world and who am I actually helping? Yeah, that kind of stuff.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 57:33

Well, it's almost like you're more interested in helping people build a business than scale a business in that. ⁓ so a common question that I've seen both in your community and in, some of my own community and some others I've kind of worked with, ⁓ a common question creators have on, on an earlier part of their journey, regardless of how many subscribers they have, they could have zero, they could have a hundred thousand.

Tintin (: 57:40

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 58:04

But when they're earlier in like the monetization, like the actual business part of it is how do I deal with the pressure from my friends, my family, my wife, my husband, whatever around getting a real job or you know, when am I going to stop doing this YouTube hobby stuff? Cause this isn't, this isn't a real job. This isn't real work. This isn't a real business because you know what? This isn't really making a lot of money.

One, it may, maybe it's costing more money than it makes, or maybe it isn't making as much money as my job did or my job does if YouTube is like a side thing for me. So now every dollar I spend on, on YouTube things, whether it's a course community, whether it's a camera, whatever. And every hour I spend scripting, recording, editing, making funny little thumbnail images or some shit, all of that.

Tintin (: 58:42

Hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 59:01

My friends and family are like, what are you doing? You're wasting your time. You're not a kid. You're an adult act like one.

when you want to get a real job. And I think that's one of the things, one of the, the, the places you come in rally here, you're less interested in helping somebody at this point in your, in your career, you're less interested in helping somebody like Ali or Daniel Priestley or somebody who is well established, knows how to make money, has made a fuck ton of money. All you would really be doing is help them scale what they're already doing. First is this person who's like,

Tintin (: 59:29

Hmm.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 59:35

you know, stereotypical like, my wife is on my ass. Like, you know, I'm, spending all this fucking money. Cause like, and that is even like, that isn't even a stereotype. Like I've had, like people have said, like my wife is on my ass all the time to get a real job. And one, my advice is probably will divorce her because you need to support a partner, but that's a separate thing. That's my own bias, but whatever. But it's, it's this thing of that's where you come in of like, Hey, let me help you build an actual business. One,

Tintin (: 59:39

Yeah, that's who I work like, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:00:05

so that you can feel that that confidence of like, ⁓ I know how to support myself, support my loved ones. I know how to turn this into a real money making endeavor, but it also helps you helps people. It also helps people navigate that, that uncertainty, that doubt, ⁓ and get a little bit of validation to have like, Hey, this is a real job. This is me making money. This is actually putting food on the table now. It isn't just me making funny videos on YouTube or some shit. I think that's really where you have a lot more.

Tintin (: 1:00:28

Mm.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:00:35

passion alignment obsession with in this, in the journey of like the creator journey, like what phase people are in.

Tintin (: 1:00:41

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, definitely. Legitimizing that online hobby, in some ways and like turning it into a proper business. But yeah, a hundred percent. think, ⁓ the world is like slowly waking up to, you know, the online business. And while if you're in the bubble, feels like how the hell could you not know about how much money you can make on YouTube or how much money you can make?

with an online business or like with one of these, ⁓ like all these various business models, like how the hell could you not know about this? But like lots of people just still don't for whatever reason. and I think these days there is like more and more proof that it is a legit path and enough kind of like evidence on enough YouTube channels. So you can always like, you know, if you're 18 and you're like kind of your mom's like, why are you, you know, trying to start a YouTube channel or whatever.

Then there's lots of evidence that you'd lots of like channels that you can show and be like, look, look at all these channels. Like they kind of, make money and they like, you know, this is like, you've made lots of money doing, something really cool here. And, but I think with the, especially with the, with this whole, ⁓ this whole thing, you can make this whole online business thing. You can make six figures if you persist for like three years.

I think that is like a reason, a really reasonable ⁓ outcome to expect. you basically, if you set that goal, if you're like, want to make six figures in three years. ⁓ And I'm just going to be really tactical about it. Whether that is starting a YouTube channel or it's like, actually I'm going to learn a certain skill and get really good at it and help people in this world. Like, you know, email marketing or ⁓ video editing or whatever it is. ⁓

Like the path and the principles is not that complicated. And I think that outcome is actually like increasingly possible for lots and lots of people now. And, doing it through YouTube is quite hard. ⁓ but I think, ⁓ it's not crazy outcome to reach for anymore. there's lots of evidence, increasing amounts of evidence that it's like, you know, a legit path and, but yeah, definitely still a struggle if you're just entering the space.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:03:09

Another thing with this, um, it is self promotion, right? So again, a lot of what we're talking about is, you know, not, not how to grow as a YouTuber, but how to use YouTube almost as like content marketing to actually grow a business. That's really where you come in of like, how do you make a thing? So now all your YouTube shit funnels to that thing. So you can actually make, you know, money directly from your audience rather than third party monetization.

Tintin (: 1:03:25

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:03:37

Cause there are lot of variables with third party monetization, right? Which is sponsorships, ad revenue, affiliates, you know, things like that. Those are fine. And, and those can be really good, but the amount of it, the conversion is just way lower, right? Like you can get a hundred views on a video, but if it is the right video for the right audience, a hundred views can translate to a good bit of money. If you have a direct offer.

Tintin (: 1:03:49

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:04:07

A hundred views. There's virtually no amount of sponsorships, ad revenue affiliates that that would bring in a meaningful amount of right? Let alone if you're getting 10,000 or a hundred thousand views on a video, right? It's just, and that's always my thing with, with, with creators when they're early on, it was like, you have to figure out a way to have direct monetization. A service is usually the fastest way because the service you can just change in the moment, right? That's, that's super adaptive. Like you can change your pricing on the call. You can change the scope of it. All that shit.

Tintin (: 1:04:32

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah,

absolutely,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:04:38

And then you can productize what you figure out. That was my journey. ⁓

But one issue a lot of people run into after the imposter syndrome, after the pricing shit is like the cringe factor of self-promotion of, I have this thing and this is how much I'm charging for it. Here's where you can get it.

Tintin (: 1:04:55

Mm.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:05:03

because one, we feel like we're being spammy or salesy and being salesy quote unquote is a lot of times disingenuous. You're like, you know, and we've all seen those videos or read those articles where it's just, it's just a sales letter that wasn't framed as a sales letter and there's no real value in it. Like if it's a VSL, that's different. I, I am going into it with this understanding. ⁓ or if it is like standalone valuable,

Tintin (: 1:05:27

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:05:31

And then at the end, it's like, Hey, if you want to go deeper, get more shit here, you know, buy my thing. Cool. Standalone valuable, ⁓ away from me to get more awesome. There's all kinds of integrity with that and honesty and shit. But a lot of us are so afraid of, being, you know, a hustler being whatever that we're, we're so afraid of promoting the thing we've made. And I tell people all the time, if you have made something that you deeply believe is, valuable and will help the person you want to help.

Tintin (: 1:05:35

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:06:01

If like you have a responsibility to let them know how to get it, otherwise they will continue to struggle because they won't know about your thing.

I, uh, like a day or two ago, I looked at my analytics on my website and I saw like a huge spike in traffic to this one specific article that's years old. Uh, and it came from Reddit. I was like, what the fuck? Why am I on Reddit right now? And long story short, it was, it was in a chess sub Reddit. I don't play chess more of a checkers guy, but, um, so

Tintin (: 1:06:32

No way. Yeah. Super interesting.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:06:37

A couple of years ago, I to New York city and I almost got hustled by this chess player who goes by the name cornbread. And, and this is, this year is an older article. And basically I likened that experience of how he was like, yeah, this is a free chess lesson, free this, free that all you owe me 20 bucks. And it's like, you said it was free. He was like, I said the first lesson was free. This is, we played a second game and it was just like this, like just street hustler things. And I likened that to, I won't name them.

But there are people within the creator, the creator economy community where ⁓ they will say, Hey, here's a free thing. And then they immediately upsell you or Hey, sign up to my free AI newsletter. And then after the first issue, they're like, you got to pay now, or as soon as you buy one thing, they immediately upsell you. And, and again, I, well, I won't give too much context because it's very easy to figure out who it is, but, ⁓ some people legitimately have good value ladders.

Tintin (: 1:07:09

Yep.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:07:33

but other people are just trying to ring as much money out of you as soon as possible. That was the parallel I made in the article of like, Hey, don't be a hustler. Like a street hustler actually like build something with integrity, whatever. And you know, never trust a man named cornbread. I guess in this Reddit thread, somebody else had come across cornbread in New York city or in DC.

Tintin (: 1:07:37

Mm.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:07:57

So then like all these, like, you know, these redditors are like talking to like, as soon as I Googled cornbread, New York city, this article came up, which is mine, I've never trusted man named cornbread, but then other people, but then other people read it. People who are not my audience. Okay. Other people read it. They're like, ⁓ this guy's talking about being a hustler. And then at the end of his article, he's like, Hey, sign up for my free course. He's a hustler. He's full of shit. And then they're all like,

Tintin (: 1:08:08

no way.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's play a funny.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:08:26

Yeah. And I've also, I've gotten zero newsletter signups from like close to a thousand views on this in like a day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not my audience, but, then they were like, yeah. He, probably, he'll give you one lesson and then he'll, he'll immediately charge you. And so they're like, I, don't usually comment on shit. And I was like, Hey guys, just so you know, like I'm the dude that wrote that this is actually just like, try to explain like what the fuck a lead magnet is or like a welcome sequence to people who have no idea. just like, this is actually a free like multi-day thing.

Tintin (: 1:08:30

Yeah.

Interesting, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Get out of

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:08:56

I do have a CTA at the end to like join my community if you want. was like, but 99 % of my audience never buys my shit. That's okay. I still want there to be value for it. And actually I looked at it today and wondered, he was like, I'm sorry. You're not one of those guys. I just assumed I was like, the world is healing somebody on Reddit fucking apologize. Like, but, but, but it was that thing of like, a lot of people are so afraid to promote themselves because that's what they're afraid of. They're afraid they're going to get attacked on the internet. Right?

Tintin (: 1:09:10

early.

Wow.

Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. All misunderstood.

yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:09:27

Yeah. How have you either personally dealt with that or how have you seen, have you helped other people navigate that the cringe of self promotion and the fear of like, what if people come after me for being a sellout or for, trying to, to scam them in some

Tintin (: 1:09:47

It's hard to know specifically like what the general principle is, but I think I have always embodied.

being as transparent and genuine as possible or tried to be. just kind of Ali gave me a lot of inspiration on this front, which was like, he would kind of embody this. Yeah, I want to do this thing. And if you don't want buy it, that's fine. Like, you know, no stress. ⁓ this is what I'm doing. There's the things that if you want it, like no worries. And I think that is that kind of attitude is like a good way to get.

started. I don't necessarily think it's the best way to actually make money. Ali has a big enough audience. He can get away with that. That kind of like, ⁓ you know, loose kind of like, yeah, I'm doing this thing, like, you know, and I'm going to help lots of people, solve this problem. And I have this bunch of credibility, but like, you know, no stress if it's not the right time, if you can't afford it, which is not for you, whatever, no worries. And just being like a nice, trying to be like a nice, likable person. I think he's like an, it's like a

Non, not very specific thing, but that's something that I try to the energy that I try to bring in my content. It just as an online person, it's just like coming across as genuine and not like, I'm just forcing people to buy things. And if I do talk about my own offers, say it in like a real way, a kind of non, ⁓ I just don't like. When I don't like the idea of trying to.

come at trying to be pushy. Um, like you see some people do online, but I think you have to feel like you have to figure out what is authentic to you. What is like natural to you. It just doesn't, you know, some people, let's say, go back to Alex or Mosie, like he can be really salesy in the right context. Like in his recent launch, he's very good at it and it feels authentic to him. Like, I feel like it would take me quite a long time to work towards that point, to be able to get comfortable using language in that way, or kind of pushing that hard in certain.

in certain like situations. So I think with self-promotion, it's just kind of

doing it in a way that feels like natural to you and, ⁓ but kind of constantly trying to like raise the, still raise your skills or like increase your skills in the way that you can talk about your things. at the same time, that's a bit of a broad, broad answer. think the way I just kind of say, I just try to not think too hard about it. I'm just like, yeah, I have a thing that this is like, I help people more basically in exchange for money. Like that's the, that's the pitch. ⁓ in my videos is like, yeah, if you're interested, then you can check it out more details down below. ⁓

ultimately like don't push too hard. And there'll be many entrepreneurs out there. Maybe some who are listening to this who are like, you know, you can make way more money if you just like were more aggressive, more and not like not aggressive in a bad way, just like active in your selling. And, um, but yeah, self-promotion is just like, it's just, it's just, again, it's just practice. It's just getting, putting in the reps and, um, getting comfortable doing, doing things that initially feel uncomfortable.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:13:10

That makes me think of like the spotlight effect where, you know, we think more people are paying attention to us and they remember what we say way more than they actually do. The number of times I've had somebody say, ⁓ I didn't know you offered coaching or ⁓ I didn't know you had this community. I'm like, how do you not know? Well, it's a combination of, you know, even like with newsletters,

Tintin (: 1:13:26

Mmm, yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:13:36

You know, my open rate is, fairly high. It's around 50 to 55%. You know, my list is smaller, but that's a decent open rate. ⁓ but the other half of people rarely if ever open them. Well, one, I'm like, why the fuck do you subscribe? But it's like, so not even all of my newsletter subscribers hear everything I say every time, but then, you know, on social media, a small percentage of your audience ever sees your shit.

Tintin (: 1:13:44

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:14:06

So one right out the gate, most of the people you have access to don't see your thing on a day to day basis. But then even of the ones that do either they forget because they were scrolling social media and I just, didn't log in the brain or they weren't at the right point in their journey where your offer was, was relevant or they were ready for it. Right. My, my last cohort, so cohort three of the alchemy of fear, I had people join who had been subscribed to me fruit.

for years and didn't join the previous cohorts. ⁓ some of them had bought a couple of courses I had made, but most of them had never bought from me. But then all of a sudden they were ready. Well, if I hadn't have promoted it the way I did, they would have never, right? Cause either they wouldn't have seen it. They wouldn't have remembered it or they just, it wouldn't have come at them at the right time. was like, ⁓ now I'm ready for this.

Tintin (: 1:14:41

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:15:03

So again, it comes back to like, have a responsibility. Like again, if you, if you've built something you believe in, if you haven't, we'll fix that first. But if you have your audience will understand either they will understand of like, ⁓ this is something super valuable. I may or may not be ready, but I trust that this is a good offer regardless of whether or not it is for me. The people who say, ⁓ they're a sellout now. they're just trying to get money out of.

those people, no matter how many of those people there are, are not in your audience and should not influence your decisions. Like shred it. Cause like some people will never buy and some people will be mad at you forever giving them an opportunity to buy something. Like some people like that's just how they are. Like they just, Oh, you, you, you, you straight up can't. Yeah. Well, you like you straight up can't right. And you know, dude, even, like, you know, we talked about Ali before.

Tintin (: 1:15:42

Yeah.

Yeah. And you can't help those people. It was harder to help them. Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:16:02

I've seen, haven't like fully watched them because they're all bullshit, but I've seen a couple of videos of like, look at all these on these fake gurus online. And then they'll like, they'll have all these face with the fucking red eyes and shit. And I'm like, one, even publicly, all these is super solid dude. Privately, he's a super solid dude. Whatever you have to say is you're just full of shit, right? And, but, but there are people who will hate you forever having a paid offer. And I think that that fear

Tintin (: 1:16:11

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:16:31

That insecurity, that doubt that creators have is one of the many things that holds them back from building a sustainable business, a sustainable creator business, from putting themselves and their ideas out into the world in a way that can actually bring them money.

Tintin (: 1:16:49

Yeah, I totally agree.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:16:52

from a, a like mindset perspective, what are, what is the biggest or what are the biggest things that you've seen hold creators back regardless of the level of audience size they have.

Tintin (: 1:17:12

I think.

Yeah, a lot of it is worrying about ultimately things going wrong, ⁓ where you kind of share something and you post an offer of some kind and you just get some kind of like, you know, ⁓

What's the word lash back? What is it? Um, backlash. was like, what the hell is the word lash back backlash? I don't know why I can, I was like, it was right in front of my head. Um, um, yeah, worrying about getting lash back. Um, yeah, I was like, what the hell is going on? I'm like, there's what I couldn't get that word out of my head. Um, uh, the wrong one. Um, yeah, people are worried about that. It sounds really like basics. So, know, people are worried about stuff going wrong, but it's like,

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:17:35

Backlash.

It's okay. English is only your first language.

Tintin (: 1:18:02

That's ultimately what they're worried about. And the things going wrong is like their reputation being ruined or like people stopping watching their content or people buying and then wanting refunds and just like things getting out of control. But like there's that quote, I think it's Seneca, which is like, you know, we suffer more in imagination than the reality. And it's so true with just like selling stuff online. ⁓ as you can, you can just do it like in a way that feels aligned with you and, ⁓ in the language that feels comfortable to you.

and you genuinely make a good offer, like a good product, like that's the most important thing. So the product itself is genuinely good. And you believe in that, then it's a lot easier to sell stuff. But I think if you've just got an audience and you've never sold anything before, like there is a moment where it comes down to like, you actually have to.

put something out there and that moment is stressful. You just have to, to commit. Like there's no, there's no, there's no easy option. At some point, if you're trying to sell some of your ordinance, you have to commit and make, uh, make the thing like available to a bunch of people. And it's why I joining like a program like mine is can be very effective is cause you join, you get help from people like me who have helped lots of people do it, but then you can also join a community of people who are.

also all doing the same thing. And it suddenly makes it feel lot easier and, ⁓ more, ⁓ normal. you're like, like this person, like that offer kind of sucks or like that landing page kind of sucks. And that, like, they're chucking that around the place. Like, you know, like I could do a way better job than that or like, this person's amazing. They gave me so much advice. Like we've really connected over, ⁓ the fact that we have like similar businesses and I now feel so much better about like sharing my own offer. ⁓ yeah, I don't.

think there is like a one size fits all hack for like getting over the fear of selling stuff to your audience. Ultimately it comes down to just putting stuff out there and seeing how, seeing how it goes. There is that famous example of yes theory, the YouTube channel, ⁓ where they, they shared a course with their audience, which was I think around how to grow YouTube channels. think I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it was like $350.

And that audience went nuts in the comments. Um, they had to like, really, they were just like how, like, guys, this is so not chill. Like why are you sending course $350 is so much money. I think it was just the audience they built and the expectation they'd set was, was not that it was not a course business. They didn't have that relationship with the audience. had this, but they kind of, the whole channel was built on these values of like, um, community and togetherness and like seeking discomfort and kind of.

I guess, to some extent, kind of doing free things with friends, ⁓ which like a lot of their videos were about, and they got a lot of backlash for sharing a course. but otherwise I've heard of like very few examples of where things have gone wrong. And yes, there is like an entertainment channel first and foremost. So I just didn't align. Whereas like, if your channel is all about, here's how to do this thing. And then you have an offer, which is here's how to do this thing faster and easier.

and more fun, ⁓ and it's cost this much money. Like, it's hard to get wrong with that.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:21:30

any parting words of wisdom for people.

Tintin (: 1:21:41

I always come back to like just, ⁓ well, I come back to a few, a few things in the kind of business business game. One, think like following what excites you and where you are going to learn the most is like a great combination for just like making good decisions. ⁓ over, over the course of like, you know, your life is just do the things where you're excited about what you're going to learn. ⁓ and you'll just like follow your excitement. think it's like a generally good principle.

And then, ⁓ the other thing that I think quite a lot about is in business is very, simple, which is just keep going. Like, think, ⁓ I think keep, keep going. get start, keep going, get better is like a good three-part framework for like pretty much anything that you want to, ⁓ want to do in life. It's like the first thing, the hardest part is one of the hardest parts of starting the thing. And then.

keep going is also very hard, but then getting better is also hard. And like, I still feel like I'm on that journey of the same journey that I was on when I started my YouTube channel in the first place, which was just like, start, keep going at better. just kind of, and I just, I'm exploring lots of like different businesses on that journey, but yeah, very broad generic advice, but that's something.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:23:01

Well, it's, I love it because fundamentals don't change. And that's, it's like, there's no secret. Like it's that start get better. What was it?

Tintin (: 1:23:14

Keep going, get better.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:23:15

Yeah.

Like that, like that's it. Right. Like, do the thing, get better, do the thing, keep doing the thing. Like that's, that's the secret, right? Love it. ⁓ where can people go to learn more about you, your work, your community?

Tintin (: 1:23:31

Hmm. ⁓ so the, but I actually, I didn't actually have like a one easy answer to that question. The best place. Yeah, we'll have links. The best place to go is my YouTube channel, which is Tintin Smith. It's just my name. I actually have two YouTube channels. One is for YouTubers. One is like about my personal life. So if you search my name, then both of those will probably appear. ⁓ but then.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:23:41

I'll also have links below as well, but it's just so you can say.

Tintin (: 1:24:02

I also have a free roadmap, document, which is all about how to grow a hundred K YouTube business. And we can link that, but then my actual program is hundred K Y T.com. So one zero zero K Y T.com. And that's like, if you want to learn more about that.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:24:20

Awesome. and do like, thank you so much for this. I love you. I love your work, both the professional side, but also like your behind the scenes, like YouTube channel and newsletter. Cause you have two of everything. It seems like the business and then like the behind the scenes of the business and they're all great. and I have seen like within your community, the a K YouTuber, ⁓ Academy, is that the name? Okay. How do you a ⁓

Tintin (: 1:24:41

It's just 100k YouTuber at the moment, but maybe I can add Accelerate.

Corey Wilks, Psy.D. (: 1:24:45

So I've been in the a hundred K YouTuber and like I've seen people post about having six figure launches and things. So it's like a four, a four to five figure investment can help you unlock a six figure business. Right. And yeah. Okay. So four figure investment for a six figure return. That's insane. Right. ⁓ obviously asterisk results, not guaranteed, but, possible, ⁓ high lurk and minimum. Like I've, I've seen how much work you put into it and I've seen results people have gotten. So I highly recommend people check it out. Like I said, what we'll have links to everything below. Dude this was so good.