Sean McCabe is the founder and CEO of seanwes media, and Daily Content Machine. Sean is a prolific and successful creator, author, and influencer. His course, Learn Lettering, made $80,000 in the first 24 hours. For nearly a decade his podcast, blog, and courses have helped creators grow their brands, content, and skill sets.
Sean’s website is a treasure trove of courses and resources for anyone looking for business knowledge and creative support. Sean’s book, Overlap, shows creators how to turn their passion into a successful business while working a full-time job. His podcast includes almost 500 episodes on content creation and entrepreneurship. His latest venture, Daily Content Machine, turns creators’ best content into clippable moments they can share across their social media accounts.
I talk with Sean about what it’s like being a successful creator. We talk about growing your audience and connecting with them. We cover how to learn new skills fast, and about developing a growth mindset. We also talk about managing stress as a founder, how to handle burnout, and much more.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why good writing is the foundation of great content
- How to connect better with your audience
- Leveraging short-form content to grow your brand
- Pricing at full value without feeling guilty
- How to avoid burnout, and what to do if you’re already there
Links & Resources
- Sean McCabe on The Nathan Barry Show episode 003
- Craft + Commerce conference
- ConvertKit
- Enough
- Ryan Holiday
- James Clear
- Marie Forleo
- Ramit Sethi
Sean McCabe’s Links
- Follow Sean on Twitter
- Check out Sean on Instagram
- Sean’s website
- Daily Content Machine
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Sean:
If you are a founder, you should be in therapy. Full-stop. You need a therapist. I thought I didn’t. I had a great upbringing. I’m all good. Everything’s healthy. I don’t have any problems. The problem was I didn’t know the problems that I had. I didn’t realize what I was stuffing down. I didn’t realize what I was avoiding.
There is so much to unpack that you don’t know you need to unpack.
[00:00:30] Nathan:
In this episode I talk to my friend, Sean McCabe. We’ve known each other for seven years now. It’s been a long time. We’ve been in a mastermind group together. He’s actually been on the show before. Sean is a wildly talented designer. He got his start hand-lettering.
I think last time he was on the show, years ago, we were talking about that aspect of his business and how he built this substantial course business. Selling courses on hand-lettering, on marketing, on writing. He’s spoken at our conference Craft + Commerce, all kinds of things. Sean is one of the most prolific creators that I’ve ever known.
It’s also super fun that he’s a friend and lives right here in town. We just have a great conversation. We talk about how you create content, which is one of those things that it’s not even how you create content, it’s why. Where that comes from. The internal drive in what you use. Where you choose to have as a source of fuel and energy to put into that creative output.
How some sources are really good and productive, and others can be kind of like a house of cards, and it can be harmful. We also talk about scaling teams as a creator. How do you know when to build out a team around your business? He’s done that two different ways. So I get to ask him about some of the things he’s learned and applied differently.
I’m going to stop there. There’s a lot of good stuff. So with that, let’s dive in.
Sean. Welcome to the show.
[00:01:59] Sean:
Hey, Nathan, just saw you recently. We were playing volleyball, or something.
[00:02:03] Nathan:
Or something, like two days ago. You moved to my city. It’s kind of…
[00:02:08] Sean:
Yeah. It’s horrible. It’s a terrible place. Boise. Don’t move to Idaho.
[00:02:15] Nathan:
You mean Iowa? Boise, Iowa.
[00:02:17] Sean:
Iowa. Yeah. Don’t, yeah. Did I do okay?
[00:02:21] Nathan:
Yeah. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to say. If you Google something about Boise, Google has the accordion of extra questions, or things you might want to know. One of them is, “Does Boise smell?” and it’s just like auto complaints in there.
And I was like, what is up with that? I clicked on it, and it’s this satirical article that has 12 reasons you shouldn’t move to Boise. One of them is the city dump is right in the middle of the city. Another one is like that the Ebola outbreak hasn’t been fully contained yet.
So it’s not really safe. I think there was something about lava. Anyway, it’s just an article about all the reasons to not move to Boise. So I think you’re right in line.
[00:03:08] Sean:
Stay, away. That’s what they tell me to say.
[00:03:11] Nathan:
Yes, but if someone were to ignore that and move to Boise, they could come to our weekly volleyball game on Wednesday nights.
[00:03:19] Sean:
It’s casual. It’s open.
[00:03:21] Nathan:
Let’s try it. Yeah. It’s been so fun having you and Laci here. It’s also been fun because you started a new company. Your company is producing and editing and creating all the clips for this podcast. So, connections on so many levels.
[00:03:37] Sean:
Yeah. We produce this show, like the video show, the audio show, and then find clips and make those clips for social media. It’s been great. We love this show. Our team’s favorite content. So, I’m a little biased, but it’s fun to be on. Because my team’s going to work on this.
[00:03:58] Nathan:
Yeah, exactly. I made sure to spell your name correctly in the setup, and I know they’ll get it all.
I wanted to ask what sparked—like maybe first give a summary of Daily Content Machine, since that’s what you’re spending nearly all of your time on. More than a normal amount of time on. So, what sparked it, and what is it?
[00:04:19] Sean:
Fun fact. This is not the first time I’ve been on the show. The last time was episode three, 2,624 days ago.
[00:04:30] Nathan:
Give or take
[00:04:32] Sean:
I was doing different stuff then. It’s been a crazy journey. Right now the newest iteration is an agency.
We produce video clips. We turn long form video shows. If you have a video podcast or other kind of long form video content, we found that the hardest part is finding all the good moments in there, and turning those into short clips. That’s what we do. I designed it for myself, really.
I wanted it to be where you just show up, you record, and, everything just happens? What is your experience, Nathan, with having a video and audio podcasts made, and clips and all that published? What do you, what’s your involvement.
[00:05:14] Nathan:
Yeah. So I think about who I want on the show, I email them and say, will you come on the show? And then I talked to them for an hour, and then I read no, either way. I don’t even do that. Yep. That’s my full involvement. And what happens is then really what I see is when the show comes out, which I don’t touch anything from that moment on. I actually probably notice the show coming out like, oh yeah, that’s the episode that we post this week. Cause we have a three week delay on our, production schedule. And so I noticed like, oh yeah, I had a David Perell on the show when I get the Twitter notification of like, David, Perell just retweeted you.
And I’m like, oh, what did oh, right. Yeah. Because his episode came out and then every, I mean, David was especially generous. Right. But every clip that week seven in a row, he retweeted and posted to his, you know, hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. Right. Cause it makes him look really good. It’s clips of him delivering these, you know, soundbites of genius, perfectly format.
And he’s like great retweet share with my audience. I think that one, I picked up like hundreds of new Twitter followers, just, you know, maybe more just from, from, that. So it’s a, it’s a great experience. The side that I haven’t done as much with that I really want to. and you and I talked about this a lot when we. Like early days of Daily Content Machine and what could it be? And, and then, getting my show set up on it is the transcripts in the show notes that you all do. cause first you found the most interesting points of the show and then second there’s text versions of all of that. And then they’re all like neatly edited and, and everything.
And so,
[00:07:01] Sean:
A lot of re-purposing options.
[00:07:04] Nathan:
Yeah, so like if you ask the same question or a similar question, like, Hey, how’d you grow from a thousand subscribers to 10,000. Tell me about that process. If you ask that consistently, which I’m not great about asking the same questions consistently, but then over the course of 20, 30 episodes, you have this great library of answers to that question and you could make like compile it all, write some narrative and it’s like, oh, there’s an ebook that would be 15 pages long and could be a free lead magnet or a giveaway or anything else. It’s just a total by-product of the podcast and Daily Content Machine. So I’m a huge fan. That’s my experience.
[00:07:42] Sean:
Well, it’s great to hear. yeah, we wanted to make it, I wanted to make it, so I just show up. I record myself doing a podcast with the camera on, and then I walk away. Like I don’t have to, the footage sinks. It goes to the team. They produce it. They made me look good. They make me sound good. They find all of the best things. I said, things my guests said, they think about my target audience. What are their struggles? What are their goals? What do they want, what do they need? How would they search for it? How would they say it themselves? And they work together to come up with good titles for them, then produce it, flawless captions, you know, do the research, how’s the guests build their name.
How does their company name capitalize? Like make sure it’s, it’s all polished and then publish it everywhere. So I just show up once a week for an hour and record, and then I get to be everywhere every day. That’s that’s at least the goal. And I’m hearing you say like one of the benefits, but one of the benefits of finding clips out of your long form shows to post on social media is you give your guests something to share.
And there’s kind of two, two ways of approaching podcasts. And one is kind of the old school way, you know, People used to blog and the used to subscribe to RSS feeds and like, you know, that’s how they consumed their content. And definitely you still want to build your own platform, have a website, have a blog, you know, definitely have an email newsletter on ConvertKit but now we’re, we’re posting Twitter threads. We’re posting more content natively and people are consuming more natively on the platforms. So there’s the old idea of, I have a podcast, here’s a link, go listen to my podcast, go watch my podcast, go watch my video shifting from that to, Hey, why don’t we deliver the best moments of the show?
Because people are consuming short form content, and that’s how they’re evaluating whether they want to subscribe, whether they want to spend an hour listening in depth to that interview. We’re giving them all of these entrance points and just providing value natively on the platform. Instead of asking them to go off the platform and interrupt their experience, it’s here you go.
Here’s some value here’s where you can get more.
And, and that that’s such a great way to. Bring new listeners on as well as to give the guests something to share, because think about the experience between a guest, being told like, Hey, your episodes out, will you, will you share a link to it? And they’re like, Hey, I was on a show, go listen to the show.
It’s such a great interview. You know, we, we do it. We want to help out that, that person with the podcast. But imagine if the best moments that, where you said that the smartest things with all of your filler words remove and your tangents remove was tweeted, and there’s a video right there. All you have to do is hit retweet.
It’s free content for you. It looks good. But then also for you as the show host, it promotes your show and gives you a new awesome.
[00:10:28] Nathan:
The other thing in it, like the retweet is fantastic, but a lot of people want that as original content on their social channel. And so having like the, the deliverable that I get from you all is, is. Yeah, it just shows up in Dropbox of here’s all the videos for all the platforms and everything, you know, from my archives and all that.
And I’ve sent those on to the guests when they’re like, Hey, can I post this? Not every tweet. Like I want to post it with my own, title or tweaks on that. And so I can just share that whole Dropbox folder and they’ll, they’ll go find the exact thing they want to share and, and use it in their own softens.
Like, yes, absolutely. Because the pre-roll or like the, or the post roll on that video is like, go subscribe to item newsletters. It’s like, yes, please.
[00:11:14] Sean:
And it’s not like Nathan, that you would have trouble getting guests, but if one had trouble getting guests for their show, or you want to get someone that’s like really big, really busy, they get all kinds of requests all the time. Well, imagine if they’re evaluating between these different shows, you know what, what’s the audience size?
What am I going to get out of it? You know, especially if you don’t have millions of downloads on your podcast. Well, if you’re providing these additional assets, like, Hey, we’re going to make clips of this. You’re going to get content out of this. It can help people make that decision to come onto your show as opposed to maybe another.
[00:11:46] Nathan:
Yeah, totally. I want to go, so somebody different directions. This is, we talked about an agency and the business that you’re starting. I have a question that I’ve kind of asked you one-on-one sometimes. And I want to know why build a business with a team and like build this X scale of business rather than go the indie creative route.
Right? Because if we want to, if you wanted to say independent, no team, you could probably make a business doing $250,000 a year. Work on it, maybe 20 hours a week, something like that, you know, hanging out in the studio, you’d still have your podcast. You could sit down and like, you’re one of the most prolific writers I’ve ever met. so you could do a bunch of those, those things. And yet you keep trying to do and succeeding in doing these much harder businesses of building a team. And I have to know why.
[00:12:39] Sean:
Nathan, I don’t know. I don’t know why. I kind of know why, uh it’s it’s like it’s going to get deep. I mean, it, it probably really goes back to childhood and being, being the oldest of 13 kids feeling like. I don’t know if my parents are watching, but like, I felt this, this pressure to be successful, to be a good example, to be, to be a leader, you know, like to be productive.
And, you know, I’m working through a lot of that stuff in therapy, like learning, like where did my motivations come from? And like, you know, it is this healthy because, you know, you know, my, my background of extreme workaholism for like 10 years, like, Nope, no joke. It was really bad. Like 16 hour days, seven days a week for 10 years, like all I did was work and like that’s, that’s my tendency.
And I think something beautiful came out of that, which is this sabbaticals idea where since 2014 now I’ve taken off every seventh week as a sabbatical. So I work six weeks and I, I take off a week and we do that with our team and all of our team members. I paid them to take off sabbaticals and it’s just been beautiful.
The heartbeat of the company. And like, it’s been really good for me as well in terms of, you know, burnout prevention and just unlocking my best ideas, but that’s, that’s my tendency. And, you know, th there’s, there’s all kinds of reasons. And, you know, there there’s messages that we hear that maybe were said or implicit, you know, growing up that we internalize.
And so I think, honestly, Nathan it’s, it’s probably just like chasing, like, I’m going to be dead honest, like, like it’s, it’s just like, I think of your post that post that you titled about enough, you know, and, you know, thinking through it, like, like if I were to just think of a number, you know, it’s like, no, that’s not enough, you know, and I know that’s not healthy.
So like, yeah, I could totally, I could totally do the solo thing. I could totally make 600. Work part-time, have less stress and maybe I should, you know, maybe I will eventually, but there’s something in me that wants to build something bigger, but at the same time, it’s just so much fun. Get it, like, I just love processes and systems and like, you know, building things that can scale.
And so, yeah, it’s.
[00:15:08] Nathan:
Well, let’s lean into it more because I have the same thing on two different sides. Like I made the same leap from a solar creator to having a team. and there’s sometimes I miss aspects of the solo creator thing. Like there’s a level of simplicity and like, I look at somebody’s product launch or something, and it does $25,000 or $50,000.
And I’m like, oh, I remember when that amount of money was substantial in that it moved the needle for the business and like, and drove real profits. Now, like 25 or $50,000 gets eaten up by that much of expenses, like immediately, you know, cause the, the machine is just so much, so much bigger. And so I have the same thing of, of pushing for more and trying to figure out what. Like, what is that balance? And, and, yeah, I guess, how do you think about the balance between gratitude and enough and drive and ambition?
[00:16:08] Sean:
Yeah, that is a great question. It is. It is a balance. And as someone who has a tendency towards all or nothing thinking like, I’m, I just get obsessed. Like if I’m, if I’m about something like, I’m just all in, or I don’t care at all. Like I’m really not in between. And that I think is a double-edged sword.
Like it’s a reason for my success, but it’s also a reason for all of my downfalls and like, you know, going years without exercising and losing relationships and friendships, because I was so consumed by what I was building, you know, it is very much a double-edged sword. And so I think the answer is balance, you know, in what you’re saying, w what do you, what do I think about the balance?
I think it is a balance. It has to be, you have to be operating from a place of enough and then have things that are pulling you forward. You know, something that you’re working towards having goals I think is healthy. You know, it’s. Something that gets you out of bed in the morning. You’re excited about what you’re doing.
You have this vision for where you’re going, but it’s operating from a healthy place of, I’m not doing this to fill a void in my soul. Right? Like I’m not doing this because I believe I’m not enough because I believe I’m not worthy of something. But, but because I know, yes, I matter I’m worthy. I’m important.
And I’m excited. Like, I think that’s the, I’m not saying I’m even there. I just think that’s the balance to strike
[00:17:34] Nathan:
Yeah. I think you’re right in this. It’s interesting of the things that you can do in your, I guess, life, maybe the creative Dr.. I think there’s a tendency of using that insecurity to drive creative success that can work really, really well for an amount of time. Like if you need to finish a book, grow your audience to a thousand subscribers, you know, like accomplish some specific goal.
And he used the chip on your shoulder and the feeling of like, this person doesn’t believe in me and that like triggers those deep insecurities on one hand, it’s wildly effective and on the other, it can be super destructive and it’s such a weird balance and place to sit in.
[00:18:21] Sean:
Yeah, a double-edged sword, for sure. Like it can, it can be what helps you succeed? And it can be your downfall. So you have to wield it wisely. unintentional illiteration you ha you have to be careful with that because it’s so easy to just get consumed by it, to drown in it, to let this, you know, whatever it is, this, this, this drive, this motivation, the chip on the shoulder, whatever it is to let it take you to a place where you’re just like, along for the ride, you know, on a wave, going somewhere on a, on a, you know, a tube floating down the river, right.
You’re just being taken somewhere, but are you being taken where you wanna go?
[00:19:05] Nathan:
Well, yeah. And then realizing, like, it might feel like you are up into a point, but then I guess if you’re not aware of it and you’re not in control of it, then you’ll get to the point where the thing that you were trying to succeed, that the book launch, you know, hitting $10,000 in sales or whatever else, like that’s not going to have any of the satisfaction and.
[00:19:25] Sean:
If I can take an opportunity here just to speak very directly to a point. If you are a founder, you should be in therapy. Full-stop like you, you need a therapist. I thought I didn’t. I was like, I had a great upbringing. I’m all good. You know, everything’s healthy. I don’t have any problems. The problem was, I didn’t know the problems that I had.
I didn’t realize what I was stuffing down. I didn’t realize what I was avoiding. There’s so much stress, you know, being a founder or even any, any C level executive in a company, like there’s just so much going on, and you’re responsible for so many things it affects your personal life. It affects your relationships.
It affects how you see yourself. There is so much to unpack that you don’t know, you need to unpack. And there’s probably also stuff that, you know, you need to unpack. and Maybe you don’t want to, but I went my entire life until the past year. Never going into therapy, never went to therapy. I’m like, yeah, that’s great.
You know, if you have some serious problems or a really bad childhood or whatever, like yeah. That’s, you know, I support, it like positive, you know, like golf clap and I’m like, oh my gosh since I’ve been going on. I’m like I didn’t know why I was doing the things I was doing, what my reasons were, what my motivations were, the ways that it was unhealthy to me, the way that it was affecting my relationships.
So I just want to encourage everyone to go to therapy. I promise it’s going to be beneficial
[00:20:53] Nathan:
Yeah.
I cannot echo that enough. I’ve had the same experience and just having someone to talk through whatever’s going on in your life, whatever, like even just interesting observations. When someone said this, I reacted like that. And that doesn’t quite add up. Like, can we spend some time digging into that kind of, you know, and you realize that like, oh, that wasn’t, that wasn’t a normal, like healthy reaction.
And it had nothing to do with what the person said or who they are or anything like that. I had to do it. This other thing, the other thing that I think is interesting about therapy is when you’re following people online, you’re partially following them for the advice and what they can do for you and all of that.
But I think the most interesting creators to follow are the ones who are on a journey and they bring their audience, their fans, along that journey with them. And a lot of people are on a really shallow journey or at least what they put out online is a really shallow journey of like a, I’m trying to grow a business from X to Y I’m trying to accomplish this thing.
And it’s like, Like, I’m happy for you. There’s like tips and tactics that you use along the way. And that’s moderately interesting, but I think if you’re willing to dive in on therapy and why you do, or you make the decisions that you do and what really drives things, it makes for as much deeper journey, that’s a lot more interesting to follow. And all of a sudden the person that you followed for like learning how to do Facebook ads is talking about not only that, but the sense of gratitude that they were able to find in the accomplishments that they made or how they help people in this way or other things that’s like a really authentic connection.
And I think that, even though like growing a more successful business is not the goal of therapy and, and all of that. Like, it has that as a by-product.
[00:22:42] Sean:
It does. It definitely does. Although I’m, I definitely look at things the way that you’re saying, which is like, what is. Productive output of doing this thing. And it’s like, yeah, that’s why I need to be in therapy to understand why I apply that lens to absolutely everything. but I I’ve found it immensely helpful.
I would say I would echo what you’re saying. in terms of sharing your journey, both the ups and the downs. I think that the highs of your journey are only as high as the lowest that you share, because otherwise it’s just kind of it’s, it’s flat, you know, there’s nothing to compare to like th th in the hero’s-journey-sense you know, we we’re rooting for the underdog who is going through challenges, and then we’re celebrating with them when they have the wins.
If you know, if you’re not sharing the, the, the low points, it’s not as relatable. Now that doesn’t mean you have to share everything you’re going through. You don’t, you know, you can keep some things, you can keep everything personal. I’m just saying, if you have the courage to share what you’re going to find is that you’re not alone.
You’re not the only person going through these things. You’re not the only person feeling these things. And sometimes the biggest failures or, or the things that, that hurt the most or the most difficult to go through when you share those, those can actually resonate the most. That can be where your, your community really steps up.
And you, you feel that, more than any other time.
[00:24:07] Nathan:
Yeah. I think that, like I wrote this article a few years ago, titled endure long enough to get noticed, and it was just actually wrote it, it was off the cuff. I was on a plane just like needed to get something out that week. And it was an idea about serum on my head and I wrote, wrote it out, send it off.
And, just the replies from it, because it took a more personal angle and it was talking about some of the struggles and a bunch of the replies were like, oh, that’s exactly what I needed in this moment. Like, I was about ready to give up on this thing, you know? And, and that was that bit of encouragement. It ends up being this thing that feeds both ways. If you’re able to take care of your audience and then if you let them, your audience can take care of you of saying like, oh, that that was really, really, meaningful.
[00:24:49] Sean:
Can I turn it around on you for just a second and, and ask, I, I know Nathan, you’ve been writing recently, you’re on a bit of a streak and for those. Following your journey for a long time. They know you’ve, you’ve gone on streaks for periods of time. You made an app to log those things. We’re talking about this recently.
And I was just curious, what, what made you start writing again? And it may be, if you can touch on like the identity piece that you were sharing with me.
[00:25:17] Nathan:
Yeah.
So most good things that have come in my business. Many of them, at least for a whole period of time, he came from writing. I wrote a thousand words a day for over 600 days in a row. And like, that was. Multiple books, a 20,000 subscriber audience, like just a whole bunch of things so I can work it from and everything else. And I’ve, I’ve tried to restart that habit a handful of times since then. And yeah, you were asking the other day, I’m trying to think, where are we out of the brewery? Maybe? I don’t know.
[00:25:51] Sean:
Yeah. Something like.
[00:25:51] Nathan:
Well, I’ve all something. And you’re just asking like, Hey, you’re restarting that what what’s driving that. And the thing that came to, I actually came to it in a coaching therapy conversation was like, I’m a writer. That’s who I am. You know, it’s part of my identity and yes, I’m also a, a creator and a startup founder and CEO and whatever else, but like, realizing that. I’m most at home when I’m writing, that’s not what I’m doing. Writing is my full-time thing. And like, here’s the cadence that I put out books, you know, obvious thing of like Ryan holiday, he’s super prolific, like a book or two a year, you know?
I’m not a writer in that way, but I, I have things to say and, words have an impact on people in the act of writing has such an impact on me that I realized that I feel somewhat of this void if I don’t exercise that muscle and stay consistent of not just like teaching and sharing, but also taking these unformed thoughts that bounce around in my head and it, and like being forced to put them out in an essay that is actually coherent and backs up its points and like, Yeah, it makes it clear.
So anyway, that’s the, that’s why I’m writing again. And so far it’s been quite enjoyable. I’m only on, I think, 20 days in a row of writing, writing every day, but it’s coming along now. I have to look. 21 today will be 22.
[00:27:19] Sean:
Nice. Yeah. Right. Writing is so great for clarifying thinking. And I love the, the identity piece. It’s like, I’m a writer, you know, that’s what I do. And I think it’s interesting to think about whether it’s kind of chicken and the egg, right. Maybe, maybe James clear would, would disagree, but like, does it start with a belief that you’re a writer and therefore you write, or is it the act of writing that makes you a writer?
And if you, if you aren’t writing, then you’re not.
[00:27:50] Nathan:
Yeah. I wrote something recently and maybe it’s a quote from somebody of, if you want to be the noun and you have to do the verb, you know, and so we’re looking for, how do I become a writer? How do I become a painter? How do I become a musician An artist, any of these things? And it’s like, if you want to be a writer?
Yyou have to write, you know, like, and I think we, we get so caught up in the end state that we start to lose track of the, the verb, the thing of like writers, write painters, paint, photographers, take photos, you know? And so if you’re not seeing progress in that area, then it’s like, well, are you actually doing the verb?
And yeah, that plays a lot into identity and, and everything else.
[00:28:37] Sean:
I like what James, James clear says about like casting a vote for the person you want to
[00:28:43] Nathan:
Yeah, I think I referenced James on. So it’s the, I reference you probably every fourth episode. And then James, maybe at like, just on alternating ones.
So the thing that I quote you on all the time is the show up every day for two years, like I always had create every day as a poster on my wall, and I really liked the for two years, angle. And so I I’d love for you to share where does the for two years part come from and why, why that long? Why not for two months or two decades or something else?
[00:29:16] Sean:
Right. It really, the whole show up every day for two years, idea came from me, drawing letters, hand lettering. You know, you think of the Coca-Cola logo. That’s not a font. That’s, you know, customer. That’s what I would do is draw letters. Like, like what you have behind your head, that type of style of lettering.
And I just enjoyed doing that and I, it wasn’t a job or anything, and I really didn’t pursue it seriously for a long time, even though I enjoyed it as a kid, because I thought I could never make a living at this, you know? And it’s that like productivity filter again, what can I be successful at? You know, as opposed to like, Hey, what do I enjoy?
You know? And, it took an artist telling me, Hey, if you enjoy it, just create. because cause you enjoy doing it. Just create. I was like, yeah, I don’t know why I needed that permission, but I did. And I just started creating and I was creating for me, like, because I loved it. And I was sharing on Instagram and Twitter and places like that, the drawings I was making, but nobody really cared or noticed for the first two years.
And it, it, it, that was okay with me because I was doing it for myself. I loved the process. I love the act of. But somewhere right around two years, it was just this inflection point. It’s kinda like you say, you know, like do it until you’re noticed, right. And people started asking for custom commissions, do you have posters?
Do you have t-shirts? And the reason I recommend that people show up every day for two years is it’s not going to happen overnight. You know, hopefully in that time you find the reason for yourself that you’re showing up. and the two years part is arbitrary for some people within eight months, they’re on the map and people notice their work and maybe they could quit their job or, or whatever.
Right. But two years is really just to give people a mark, you know, to, to work towards. by that time they figure out like, oh, it’s not actually about two years. It’s about showing up every day.
[00:31:16] Nathan:
Yeah. And a lot of what I like about two years is it since your time horizon correctly. and it helps you measure your like past efforts. I think about, you know, if you’ve thought about starting a, like learning a musical instrument or starting a blog or any of those things, you’re like, eh, I tried that before, you know, and you’re like, yeah, I showed up most days kind of for two months, maybe, you know, like when you look back and you analyze it, you’re like, oh, I didn’t show up every day for two years. And there’s also sort of this implicit, I guess conversation you have with yourself of like, if I do this, will I get the results that I want? And cause the, the most frustrating thing would be to put in the effort and to not get the results and how the outcome you’re. Like, I tried it for so long and I didn’t get there. And so I believe that if you’re doing something like creating consistently showing up every day, writing every day for two years and you’re publishing it and you’re learning from what you, you know, the results you try and consistently to get better, you almost can’t lose. Like, I don’t know of examples of people.
Like no one has come to me. I actually emailed this to my whole list and said, like, what is something that you’ve done every day for two years, that didn’t work. And people came back to me with story after story of things that they thought would be that. And then it like started working a year or year and a half in, or at some point in there because it’s really hard to fail when you’re willing to show up consistently for a long period of time.
[00:32:54] Sean:
And I think there’s a point of clarification there kind of a nuanced discussion where some people might say, well, you know, where where’s, where’s the other end of the spectrum, where you’re just continually doing a thing that doesn’t work, you know, doing the same thing and expecting different results.
And I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here. Like when we say show up every day, Showing up everyday to your craft, you know, for yourself to better yourself, whether that’s writing or drawing or working on your business. This doesn’t mean never course-correcting, this doesn’t mean adapting or adjusting to find product market fit.
We’re talking about showing up for yourself. This doesn’t mean even posting every day. It’s not, it’s really not for others. Like share what you want. If you want to tweet every day, if you want to blog or post your art every day, go for it. I actually tried that and, you know, it was pretty exhausting and that’s part of why I made Daily Content Machine.
I was like, how about I show up one hour a week and you turn that into Daily Content for me. but still on all the other days, I want to show up for myself. And, and often for me, it starts with writing as well. I think it all starts with writing, whether it’s a business idea or a course or a book or content like writing is just the seed of all of that.
So I like writing, not because I. It was born a rider or anything. I just see results from it. So for me, it’s showing up in writing, even if I’m not posting that, or I’m not posting it now, you know, it’s just for me.
[00:34:19] Nathan:
Yeah. And that’s an important point because a lot of the time my writing is just chipping away at some bigger thing. Like some of the long essays that I’ve written have been written over the course of three or four months, you know, it’s not like I got it together and like published it and it was ready to go.
It was like an ongoing thing.
What, like, what are some of your other writing habits? Because you’re someone who has written a ton, I’ve seen you consistently write like 4,000 words a day for an entire month and stuff like that. yeah. When someone asks you, how do I become a better writer? How do I write consistently any of that? What are some of your tips?
[00:34:55] Sean:
Yeah. I’ll tell you how not to do it, which is how I’ve done it, which is back to our earlier discussion. Just kind of all or nothing. my first book I wrote in 14 days, 75, 80,000 words, and my, my second book, which I still haven’t edited and published. I was like, I want to show people that things take, as long as the amount of time you give them, how long does it take to write a book a year, 10 years a month?
You know, two weeks, I was like, I’m going to try and write a hundred thousand words in a single day. So I live streamed it, and my idea was to speak it and have it dictated, right. Have it transcribed. I made it to 55,000 words. And these are like, it’s, it’s all you, you can find it. it’s, it’s coherent words like this.
Isn’t just feel like, like the book was in my head. I made it to 55,000. My voice was going and I’m like, I think I’ve got most of the book. I’m not going to kill my voice. And that’s, as far as I made it. So I failed on the goal, but still got 55,000 words. But then for the next, like three, three or six months or something I hardly wrote.
Cause I was just like, oh yeah, you know, look what I did. You know, I wrote all those words and it’s like, no, that’s not the right way to do it. Like I actually, I think there was a point to what I was doing and it was, it was a fun stunt or whatever, but I kind of regret that, you know, I wish I just stuck to, you know, you had that, that idea of like write a thousand words a day and this is something I would share with people as like an idea for starting out, Hey, try and read a thousand words a day.
And I found out people would get stuck on that. They’d be like, I wrote 830, 2 words. I’m a failure. I’m just gonna give up and wait until the weekend when I have more time. And it’s like, no, that’s not the point. The point is to just show up and, and put some words there. So maybe for you, it’s a time like write for 20 minutes, write for 15 minutes, write three sentence.
And maybe you keep going, you know, but like put in the reps, show up, you know, put on the running shoes and go out the front door. If you don’t run the five miles, that’s fine. You know, walk around the block, but show up. And so I I’ve done it both ways and I don’t prefer the stunt way where I write 50,000 words in a day.
I prefer the, the, the ones where I write 400 words every single day, that week
[00:37:06] Nathan:
Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. And I’ve, I’ve, had that a lot of times where I was like, oh, I can’t write today because I, I wouldn’t have time to hit 500 or a thousand words. And so that’s something I’m doing differently this time around of like, look even a hundred or 200 is a, is a success, any amount of, of doing the reps as good.
[00:37:26] Sean:
I want to lean in on that idea of defining success as less. What I mean by defining success as less is, and this is especially helpful. If you’re going through a hard time, if you’re feeling burned out, if you’re feeling depressed, w with remote work, growing and growing, you know, w we’re commuting less, we have more time.
We have more flexibility in our day, but we, we tend to fill that time with just more and more work. And it’s really easy to get to the point where you feel overloaded. And you, you go into your day just too ambitious thinking. You can get too many things done and ending with disappointment. Like I didn’t get all the things done, you know, and you’re just on this perpetual cycle of disappointment every day, setting yourself up for disappointment, trying to do too much.
And instead of defining success as less. And so if you’re, if you’re feeling depressed, I mean, this gets as small as today as a success. If you brush your teeth, like today’s a success. If you shower, today’s a success. If you walk around just your block, that’s it not run a mile, you know, not come up with a new business plan or outline a whole course or something.
Less defined success is less, when I would do podcasts, I, you know, a podcast is what an hour, maybe two hours or something like that. But it takes a lot of energy. If you’ve never been on a podcast, you know, it takes energy to record. And I would feel bad after I record a podcast, not getting as much done afterward, you know, like, oh, I didn’t get that much done.
I mean, I recorded a podcast, but then I was supposed to have this and this and this, and just beat myself up. And I realized like, Hey, that, that podcast I recorded, that’s going to be heard by thousands of people. That’s really high leverage work. And I brought my best self and I really showed up and I really delivered.
And that was good work. And you know what, on days where I have a podcast, I’m going to define that day as a success. If I show up and record that podcast, anything else is a bonus. And, and you just make that smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s accessible to you until it’s attainable for you. So maybe it’s like write three sentences.
If you show up at all to your writing app and write three sentences, the days of success. And what you’ll find is more often than. You’ll keep going.
[00:39:34] Nathan:
I think that’s so important in, and I imagine most creators have been in that position of no motivation feeling depressed. And then you beat yourself up because you didn’t get anything done, like deriving yourself worth. This kind of goes back to the earlier conversation, driving your self worth from what you create can both be very powerful in that it can feed itself really well.
And then it is also incredibly fragile. And I’ve gotten to that point where if you end up in the downward spiral version of that, then like not creating, not accomplishing something. Leads you to feel more upset and depressed and so on. And it like when it works, it works well. And when it stops working, it fails spectacularly.
And I think you’re right. That the only way out of it is to lower that bar of success to something crazy low that you can’t consistently. And then, you know, gradually you’re way out of it from there.
[00:40:34] Sean:
Yeah, you, you are more than what you do. You are more than what you create. You are more than what you produce. You are more than your job. You are not your company. You’re not the money in the bank. You’re not how much you make each month. You’re not the decline in revenue from this month compared to last month.
Like you’re none of those things. You’re a person you’re a human outside of that with independent work. And that’s such a hard thing to internalize, but, but if you can, I mean, you, you, you just become impervious to all the things that can come against you. You know, you just become unstoppable. Nothing’s going to phase you.
Like you can embrace the highs and embrace the lows and just ride the rollercoaster. And I’m just describing all the things that I don’t know how to do, but I’m working.
[00:41:20] Nathan:
Yeah. It’s all the things that we’re trying to, like lean in on and remind ourselves of, in those, in those tough times, I have a friend who has his game, that he played his, a few little kids, and his sort of a little game that he plays with them over time. And he like in a playful, joking voice, he asked them like, oh, what do you need to do to be worthy of love? And it’s like turned into the thing for they, like, they’re like nothing, you know? And he’s very purposefully trying to counteract this idea of like, oh, I need to earn worthiness. I need to earn love. If, if I like show up for my parents in this way, if I take care of my family in that way, if I’m not a burden on other people, then like, Then I’ll be okay and I’ll be worthy of love and all of that.
And so he’s just playing it, like making it a playful thing with his kids from a very young age to basically instill this idea of like, you are a complete whole person and you can’t, like earn worthiness of love and you also can’t lose it.
[00:42:19] Sean:
I’m just thinking of the titles for this episode, that my team’s going to come up with, like how to be a founder worthy of love.
[00:42:26] Nathan:
Yes, exactly.
[00:42:28] Sean:
Don’t use that title.
[00:42:31] Nathan:
Okay. But I want to go, you’ve built a, a team twice, for first for Sean West, as a business, you know, of the course and content, community business. And then now for Daily Content, I want to get into, like what you like, how you built the team differently between those two times and what you learned. but before we do that, let’s talk about as a solo creator. When you’re thinking about making that leap to something where you need a team to build it to the next level, maybe you’re at a hundred thousand dollars a year in sales, and you’re looking at maybe the roommate’s eighties and the Marie Forleo’s of the world where like a few, rungs above you on the same ladder.
And you’re like, okay, that would require a team. What are some of the things that you think people should consider in that leap?
[00:43:22] Sean:
My biggest mistake was applying the right advice at the wrong time.
Like I’m not a, I’m not a reckless person. Like I’m going to do my research and learn and like get all the smart people’s advice. And so every, every big mistake I’ve made was as a result of applying great advice from smart people at the wrong time.
And so it’s, and, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone really, really talk about this. There’s a lot of people slinging advice who should really be asking questions, but at the same time, you can’t even blame them. Cause like Twitter, there’s no room for nuance. Like you tweet fortune cookie tweets, you know, with, with advice and like, hope that people apply it at the right time.
Like, that’s just kind of how it goes. But like, you know, to, to your point of like looking to other people and what they’ve built and like, oh, that’s what I would need and stuff, you know, I, I heard things. Delegate, you know, you don’t want superhero syndrome. Like you need to empower other people and delegate the things you’re not good at delegate the things you don’t like to do, delegate the things you’re good at.
And you like to do, but you shouldn’t do because you’re the founder and you need the vision, you know, like, so it’s like delegate, delegate. And so, okay. All right. Hire. This is going to sound really stupid, but no one told me that you need to make sure the thing that you’re doing is working before you hire, because hiring is scaling, which means to make something bigger.
And if you’ve got a bucket at the beach and the bucket has holes in it, and you scale that bucket, you have a bigger bucket with holes. Like th th that’s not better. That’s like, do you, do you like the stressful problems you have now? How would you like problems with another zero on that? Like you have $30,000 problems.
Do you want $300,000 a month problems? Like, you know, it’s not fun. so nobody’s told me that and looking back, it’s like, it’s so dumb. Like, do you think making this big. Automatically makes it better. It’s just going to automatically make the problems go away. No, you need to, you need to scale. What’s working, do more of what works and, and, and slow down and hold off and make sure the thing you have is working before you grow it.
I don’t know if I answered the question, but I’m just speaking to my past self.
[00:45:32] Nathan:
You totally did. So what are the things that, like, how does that play out as you’re building Daily Content Machine, versus the previous team?
[00:45:40] Sean:
The difference here is my, my previous business required me to function and I hired people around me, you know, to support me. So I wasn’t doing all the work, but I had to show up. I had to, you know, whatever I had to write, I, you know, come up with an email or blog or. Or live stream or podcast or whatever.
It was like, it was built around me and there’s nothing wrong with that. Like, that’s totally fine. You can build a business where you do what you love and you’re supported by your team. I just found that you can, you can do something that you love and burnout, like after you do that for years and years and years, it’s not even that I don’t like podcasting or I don’t like writing cause I actually do what it ultimately came down to is that I don’t like having to do it.
And if I don’t, if I don’t, then everything falls apart. And so with this new business, the agency, it was like, okay, like the first thing I want to build from is this can’t require me to function. It has to be built in a way that the team can run things where it’s like, I don’t have to be on the strategy call.
I don’t have to do the marketing. Like my face isn’t necessarily the reason people are coming to. and that, that really shifted how we build things.
[00:47:01] Nathan:
Yeah. I mean, that, that’s a huge thing. And like, I imagine you defining all of these roles and early on, you might be doing a bunch of them to test if it works and to build out the systems, but none of them are like defined by your own unique skillset. Like you actually I’ve loved watching your systems and the, as you’ve shown me behind the scenes, because you’re breaking it down and you don’t need one person who is a fantastic video editor and copywriter and project manager talking about that, actually, because I think so often we’re trying to find the employee or the team member. That’s like the, the unicorn perfect fit. And you’ve made a system that doesn’t require.
[00:47:42] Sean:
Exactly. And we did start out that way, where, when, when I was initially hiring for, you know, this Daily Content Machine service that we have, what’s involved in that process and we talked. Clients and prospects all the time that like the Mo one of the most common things they try to do is either build a team in-house that can find all the best moments scrubbed through the long form content, edit it.
Well, you know, titles, research, all of that, the build that team in house, or hire a freelancer and the problems with either of those is like what I’ve identified as it comes down to the person doing, doing content repurposing well requires nine key skills among them like copywriting and marketing and design and animation and rendering, and like, you know, SEO and all of that stuff.
And I’m not saying there’s, there’s no one out there with all those skills, but, but those people are doing their own thing most of the time,
[00:48:38] Nathan:
I think I’m a pretty good Jack of all trades. And I think if we get to five of those, probably maybe on a
[00:48:45] Sean:
You could probably do most, I can do most too, but I don’t scale, you know, so I’m trying to, I’m trying to scale me. and the first thing I tried to do was hire someone who could do all the things like, okay, you need to be able to, and that very quickly was not the way that was not going to work.
So we realized we need specialists. We need people who are really good writers. We need people who are really good animators. People who are good editors, people who are a good quality assurance, reviewers, people who are good project managers, you know, all of that. And that’s, that’s what probably sets us apart.
You know, the most unique thing is like, we learn about your audience and we find all of the moments and like teaching people, I’ve talked to people who have their own teams, or they’re trying to build teams for doing this. And that’s the hardest part is how do you teach someone how to find those moments?
Like video editing is commoditized. You can find a video editor anywhere, but what happens when you try and get a freelancer who can just chop up clips and animate it and put a slap a title on it? Yeah. Th they’re not, they don’t care about the quality. They’re not capitalizing the book titles and the company names and spelling the guests.
Right. You know, and the titles of the clips, that’s like half of it, you know, like half of it is the title, because that’s going to determine whether someone sticks around and clicks or watches or whatever, and they’re not thinking the right way, or they’re not finding the right moments. And so the person who’s outsourcing, they’re trying to go from, I’ve been doing this myself.
I’ve been editing my own video. I’ve been scrubbing through my own long form content to now, okay, you have got this freelancer, but now you’re a project manager and a quality assurance reviewer because their work isn’t up to par. And so I have people asking me like, how do you teach people how to do this?
Well, how to find those moments, what’s going to provide value to the audience. How do you title it all? and that part, I’m not giving away because that’s, that’s our home.
[00:50:33] Nathan:
Yeah. And that, that makes sense. So you described Daily Content Machine as an agency and it is, but I was like, great. You’re an agency. Here’s my other idea for a show where. Like a dream it up and produce it. Or actually we build my website for me, like your, your designers on all that.
Right. And your answer would be like a flattened and I think that’s really important for the business. So can you talk about the difference between the agency that you’re running in productized services and how you think about making that scale versus like a, an agency of, Hey, this is our hourly rate.
These are the projects we’re best at, but we’ll kind of take on anything.
[00:51:11] Sean:
So maybe I’ll I’ll I’ll title the clip of this moment, how here’s, how you will try it like this. Here’s how you create a six figure agency. And for. It is by saying no to almost everything and getting really specific about what you offer and to whom. So my previous, the previous iteration of my business, I was out of a scale of one to ten I was working at a level 11 effort, you know, to bring in six figures with this version of the business. It’s like a one or two in terms of, you know, getting people to give you vast amounts of money. And the difference is in what you’re providing and, and to whom. So you’ve kind of got this, this matrix of products or services that either make money for your clients, or they’re just nice to have.
And then on the people side, you have, it’s a generalization, but people who have money and people who don’t, and I was always playing on hard mode, you know, I was trying to sell like kind of more premium stuff to people who didn’t have money. And I’m like, you know, feeling bad about not being able to give stuff to the people who don’t have money.
And it’s like, you know, what a really great way to do this would be to provide premium services that make money for people who have. So I decided I’m going to start with six to seven figure business owners. What is it that they need? And what is it that, that I’m good at, you know, core competencies. And that’s where we came up with this idea.
And the hardest part has been not giving into shiny object syndrome. All of the things that we could do, all of the services that I want to build. And it’s like, no, there’s so much more juice in this one thing. If we just stick to this and just become the best at finding, identifying, and producing and distributing clips from long form content and just be really, really good at that.
There’s enough complexity in that, you know, and just see that as the game, like, how can we get really good at this? How can we sell this better? How can we deliver it better? How can we increase the quality and just getting really focused and aligning what you offer the value of that to the people you’re offering it to within four weeks with just a page and a form.
This was a six figure book.
[00:53:16] Nathan:
When I think about the price of the offering. So I think I have. for what I pay for and Daily Content Machine paying about $5,000 a month. Is that right? I think somewhere in there.
[00:53:28] Sean:
So, what we didn’t say is you, you kind of talked me into, adding another service, which is, we also do the video and audio show notes, transcript, like podcast production piece. So like, we’ll produce the full thing. You just show up and record sync the footage to us. We’ll produce the show and we’ll make the clips.
That’s actually been a really nice bundle, but I’m like, okay, that’s it, that’s it. You know? So you kind of have some extra services in there.
[00:53:53] Nathan:
Yeah.
To be clear, you don’t want to let your friends, even if they live in the same town, as you convince you to like change your agency,
[00:54:00] Sean:
Nathan’s very convincing.
[00:54:03] Nathan:
I distinctly remember. I even invited you over for dinner and convinced you of it,
[00:54:07] Sean:
How am I supposed to say no,
[00:54:08] Nathan:
Exactly.
[00:54:10] Sean:
You made an offer. I couldn’t refuse.
[00:54:13] Nathan:
But in that, so you’re talking about like what you’re selling to someone who might not be able to afford it, or like you might make a course that you charge $5,000 for that is absolutely worth every bit of that when in the right person’s hand and apply it in the right way. But you’re going to have a bunch of people trying to buy it, who like, aren’t that person who’s going to get the leverage to make it a clear 10 X value or something like that. And so you might have in this position where someone’s like, oh, $5,000 is expensive. Should I buy it? I don’t know. And you’re like, honestly for you, I don’t know if you should buy it.
Like you’re not in the target market and that’s, that’s $5,000 one time in the case of this. And this agency, this productized service, I guess, $5,000 a month. And so actually two of those clients, and you’ve got a six figure a year agency business. And it’s just interesting. The thing that you said made me really drove home the point of, there’s not necessarily a correlation between effort and income and, and effort and output. And so you found a model and kept, kept tweaking until you found one where it was like, look, there’s a ton of work that goes into this, obviously. And there’s a bunch of really smart people working on editing and transcribing and captioning and everything in the show. but like, it, it doesn’t have to be crazy complicated, whereas some of the other business models that you and I have both tried have been way more effort for way less.
[00:55:40] Sean:
Yeah. And what can really hold you back is not realizing who you’re trying to market to. And. getting Talked down in your prices by accidentally catering to the wrong people. So like people who can’t afford your services, you could get on call consultation calls with them. And they’re just like, I just don’t have this much money and can you do discounts?
And you, you almost start to feel bad. Like, you know, how can I charge this much? I must be charging way too much. And it’s like, or maybe you’re serving the wrong customers. Like, you know, when you talk to the right people, that may actually be really cheap. I remember when I started designing logos, this is like a decade ago.
My first logo, I charged like 150 And then, once I sold that I got enough confidence to charge 300. And then I was like, I, you know what, instead of doubling again, I’m going to charge $750
[00:56:30] Nathan:
Ooh.
[00:56:31] Sean:
I did that. And you know, I’m like slowly building on my portfolio and I got up to like, $1,500 and clients were paying that and right around there, you start to get people resisting.
Now you’ve got a price with a comma and it gives people. pause And they’re like, can you come down? Can you do a little bit cheaper? And it’s so tempting. You, you want to do that because you want the job. You, you want them to be happy. It could be a good portfolio item. And I remember just kind of fast forwarding through this, but like, you know, just mindset shifts and stuff.
Eventually I got to the point where there was this startup out of San Francisco they wanted a logo. And I was like, this would be really valuable for this company, you know? And I somehow mustered up the courage to charge $4,000. And I found out later from a friend of a friend, you know, from someone that worked there that they thought I was like super cheap because someone else they knew or some other agency was going to charge $25,000 And I was like, wow, like I’m over here. Just like feeling bad about my prices, thinking I’m going so big. And really I’m. I was just serving the wrong code.
[00:57:34] Nathan:
Yeah. And it’s so interesting because the person who’s only able to pay $500 or only thinks the logo is worth $500. It’s not that they’re wrong or they’re devaluing your service or something like that. It’s that maybe it’s for a side project or it’s for a business that just got off the ground or any of that. And so it’s not worth getting offended over or something like that. It’s like, we just don’t have product market fit, like product customer fit. It’s not a thing here, you know, and my services are better for, you know, bigger, more established companies. So the saying no to, to, services, occasionally getting talked into specific services by your somewhat annoying local friends. but then where does it go from here as far as what are you looking to, to, to add more clients and, and keep scaling and growing?
[00:58:30] Sean:
Yeah. That’s what we’re trying to figure out right now is it’s always tricky. It’s a blessing and a curse when you have an audience, because it can kind of create false product market fit. Like you, you think you have something and then you exhaust your audience and then you’re like, oh, like I kinda need to figure this out.
You know, that’s like, we’re experiencing that right now because like, I was getting like 40% close rates on consultation calls on sales calls, and now we’re not, and it’s. Oh, no, like what’s happening. And it’s like, well, I think those people probably knew me for several years, you know? And then like, there’s just all this trust and still Nathan we’re a year in and we don’t have, like, we don’t have a proper website for, for the agency.
It’s like a page with a form. That’s it? There’s no, there’s no examples. There’s no case studies. There’s no portfolio item and we’ve made it this far. but you know, when people don’t know you, they need that social proof and they want the examples and they’re looking for past versions of success. And like the sales cycle is a little bit longer.
And so that’s where we’re at right now is like figuring out kind of like Mar marketing channel fit. And I know well enough to know, like it’s better to, and back to right advice, wrong time. it’s a good idea to be everywhere if you can, you know, cause different people consume on different platforms.
Even if you don’t use Instagram. Other people do, even if you don’t use YouTube, other people do it’s. Beyond LinkedIn, even if you don’t, you know, that like there’s, there’s some, there’s some sound reasoning to that at the same time. You don’t want to try to do all of that all at once, you know, and, and spread yourself too thin, like pick one channel, do one channel.
Well, and when you’ve got that down and it’s easy and you have systems and it’s not taking too much time, then expand to another channel with the goal of like, ultimately diversifying kind of like investments. You don’t want to just diversify all at once. You know, like, like try some things out, you know, focus on one thing at a time, see what works for us.
I, at least I know that much. And so it’s like, okay, I’m not trying to do every version of marketing, you know, like, oh, do we do affiliates? Do we do ads? You know, do we do content? Do we do cold outreach? You know? I’m trying not to do everything at once. So we’re kind of dabbling in one thing at a time and seeing what fits.
[01:00:48] Nathan:
So how many clients do you have now for the agency that are the consistent tenders?
[01:00:53] Sean:
Not a lot. It’s still very small. And we’ve had like, I it’s under a dozen cause like some, we had like several accounts, like not renew and stuff. So it’s still very small. And for three or four months, I stopped marketing and sales completely because I did not want to break this thing with scale because I notice things in operation that were the operations that were not going well.
I’m like, this is going to be really bad. Like if we just sign more clients, it’s going to be really bad. So, I had clients pay upfront for like six months or 12 months of service, which kind of gave us time to focus on operations. And now everything’s humming along smoothly. Like the systems we’ve built can support like dozens or hundreds of accounts, even like, we don’t need it right now, but it’ll support where we want to go.
But it’s still a very, it’s actually very small, like again done, like almost no marketing a year end, still don’t have a website. Like it’s pretty much just been all internal focused.
[01:01:52] Nathan:
One thing that I’ve respected a lot about how you’ve set it up is like, as a client, I could see it produce that they could see it as a client. And then, as, as a friend and, you know, business peer and all that. It was the times that you’ve tried things and then been like, oh no, we can’t do that. We can do this version of it where like, well, I came, remember what we shifted in, in the production of this podcast.
Right. But we, we added the, like the video service, because most people who come to you, you know, have their show being produced already. And, and then they’re bringing it and say, Hey, can you make clips? And, and all of that, of this. And so, you know, we added things and then you, then you tweaked and changed it because you’re like, yes, I can totally make this work for this client.
And maybe even five more, but like at 50 clients at a hundred clients, there’s no way that this will ever work. And so we’re not going to do it now. And I have a ton of respect for that.
[01:02:42] Sean:
I’ve scaled a bucket of holes before, and it’s like, I don’t want bigger problems. No, thank you.
[01:02:49] Nathan:
Yeah. okay.
Something that you also preach a lot that I really appreciate is. this specifically, if you’re doing a podcast, like turn on the camera, why?
[01:03:01] Sean:
Yeah. If you’re doing a podcast, you’ve got to film it. There’s so much more you can do with this. We’ve just found when you try and repurpose audio files, it just doesn’t perform as well. On Twitter. People resonate with people’s faces and they connect with humans. So just turning on your camera for your own show, even if you don’t want to post it yet, even if you’re not repurposing it, at least you have it.
We have a lot of clients that have just a backlog. They had a podcast, it goes out audio only. They don’t even produce it video, but behind the scenes, they recorded the zoom calls. So they’ve got all the zoom recordings in the cloud and they’ve just got this massive backlog. And now we can repurpose that and resurface it and put it on the different plans.
It just gives your content legs. It’s like thinking of like a wood pallet and you, you know, you, you build something on it and you want to move that. It’s like, it can’t go anywhere. It’s like, it puts wheels on that pallet, you know, your content. So even if you’re on someone else’s podcast is what I tell our clients.
If, if they’re like, I don’t know if I record enough content, it’s like, you probably do. And you’re just not like making use of it. Like anytime you probably get, podcasts, interview requests, sometimes you’re like, I don’t know if I have time for this is the audience big enough? I feel bad asking that question, but you’re thinking about it, right?
And like a way that will help you create free content and justify going on. Maybe those smaller shows and building those relationships is even when you’re on an audio only podcast interview, turn on your own. And record yourself, use your webcam, use your iPhone. Don’t overthink it. Don’t do the external DSLR, Thunderbolt HD, my convert.
Like I know it gets complicated. Don’t go down the rabbit hole, but just film yourself. And now you’ve got video. You can do stuff with that. You can repurpose because you’re probably already recording the content that.
[01:04:51] Nathan:
Yeah. And that, that’s something that I think about all the time, because exactly we talking about, when you go on that show, you’re like, can I justify the time for the size of the audience or any of those things? And it’s like, yeah, you can, if you’re going to reuse that elsewhere, like you told a story on that random podcasts, it’s going to go out to maybe a hundred people or something like that. And if you can pull that story back and say like, oh yeah, but I’m going to have it, you know, turned into clips and transcribed and it’s going to turn into a, a, a, another blog post or another idea then it’s totally.
[01:05:26] Sean:
And here’s a free idea. I tell my clients this as well. I’ll give you two. One is a live-stream Q and A. There’s just such a win. You’ve got the live engagement. You’ve got people asking you questions, which essentially writes the titles for you. It’s reading their minds. But then you’re also maximizing your input.
You’re leveraging your time where you could show up for 30, 40 minutes, answer 21 questions, and then there’s three weeks worth of daily clips that you made in like half an hour. So, Q and A, even if, if you don’t have a big enough audience for live, do async. Send out an email to your list, add it to your “welcome” auto-responder.
“Hey, what’s the biggest struggle around X?” Put that in a spreadsheet, show up with an outline, and just knock it out. A week’s worth of Daily Content for you right there. The other idea is, I was talking to someone who coaches founders, and he had a rate for every-other-week calls of a certain length, and access to a Slack and stuff like that. It was like maybe $850 a month.
What you could do is charge $1,200, but say, “I can do $850 if I can record this,” and repurpose the content. Maybe you could come up with some arrangement where it’s pinned on your video, and it doesn’t show the person, or you edit out sensitive details, but you’re already giving advice on your coaching calls, on your consulting calls.
You’re creating content. All it takes is just like a little tweak to expectations you set with your clients, and then you don’t have to create more. You have content, right?
[01:07:03] Nathan:
Oh, there’s so much good stuff. It really just takes this idea of creating content, being a huge hurdle that you’re trying to carve out time and trying to make it happen, and turns into something that you can show up pretty consistently and make it happen, in a somewhat meta sort of thing.
Your team has mentioned that they’d like episodes to be between 50 minutes, and an hour and 10 minutes, just for finding the right amount of content. So we’ll try to stick with them that. So, I think you might be the only one of the only guest that has come on the Nathan Berry show twice, in his relatively short run of, I don’t know what we’re at, 45 episodes or something like that.
[01:07:43] Sean:
Yeah, I think you’re over 50.
[01:07:44] Nathan:
Over 50. Alright. See, I like that. You noticed that side of it, but we’ll have to do this again because it’s just so easy, and we can riff on whatever we want and it’s it’s great content.
[01:07:56] Sean:
Well, thanks so much for the opportunity. Nathan always love getting to chat with you.
[01:08:00] Nathan:
Yeah. So where should people go to learn about Daily Content Machine to follow your stuff? Are you podcasting? What what’s going on?
[01:08:08] Sean:
Yeah. DailyContentMachine.co. That’s going to take you to our page with a form on it that’s not very fancy.
I have a video there. If you’re listening in the future the website’s awesome. The transition to the animation. The illustrations. It’s beautiful. You got to check it out.
No, I’m just kidding. But you can follow me on Instagram, Twitter, that kind of thing @SeanWes. So S E A N W E S.
[01:08:37] Nathan:
Sounds good. Well, thanks for joining me.
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