PDF Summary:Create Something Awesome, by Roberto Blake

The internet and social media platforms have sparked a revolution in content creation, opening new doors for artists and passionate individuals to monetize their talents. In Create Something Awesome, Roberto Blake guides you through this creator-driven economy, showing how to build a genuine personal brand, establish an engaged following, and leverage multiple revenue streams to create a sustainable, scalable business.

Blake explores various paths for creators to earn income, from providing services and earning royalties to launching e-commerce ventures and leveraging affiliates and brand deals. He offers strategies to overcome obstacles like imposter syndrome and keep your motivation fueled for long-term growth. Whether you're just starting out or seeking to professionalise your creative work, Blake provides a roadmap to unlock the earning potential of your passions.

(continued)...

He shares his personal path of embracing a radically candid and authentic approach after moving into freelancing. Though this approach might alienate some, it attracts individuals who hold comparable principles and perspectives, fostering a stronger and more unified group.

Practical Tips

• Develop a 'values audit' checklist for your brand's marketing materials. Make a list of questions that assess whether your content reflects your values, such as "Does this advertisement promote honesty?" or "Is our social media presence respectful and inclusive?" Regularly review your materials against this checklist to maintain brand integrity.
• Establish a mentorship relationship with someone whose career you admire for its integrity and sustainability. Regularly discuss your career decisions with them, seeking advice on how to prioritize your principles over immediate validation. This relationship can provide you with an external perspective and help reinforce the importance of building a career based on your values.

Establishing a Consistent Brand Identity Across Platforms

Establishing a strong individual brand starts with showcasing your portfolio, establishing your reputation, and expanding your network. Prior to the rise of social media, Blake's personal blog served this purpose. It showcased his work, brought interview opportunities, and led to a job offer from a New York advertising agency. Today, while social media channels are essential, creating your own site and blog still holds value for discoverability, searchability, and controlling your branding.

When establishing your online presence, ensure consistency in your individual or business identity across platforms. Whether you choose to use your real name or a brand name, consistency is vital for recognition and to prevent impersonation. Consistency extends to the material you share and the values you promote, creating a cohesive brand experience for your audience.

Practical Tips

• Create a digital storytelling project to showcase your portfolio by using free online tools like Adobe Spark or Canva to craft a visual narrative of your work, achievements, and testimonials. This approach allows you to present your professional journey in an engaging way that goes beyond a traditional resume or portfolio, making it more memorable for potential clients or employers.
• You can start by identifying your unique value proposition to ensure your site and blog stand out. Think about what makes you or your business special and how you can communicate that through your content. For example, if you're a local artisan, your unique value proposition might be the handcrafted nature of your products and the stories behind them. Use this angle to create blog posts that share the creation process or the inspiration behind your work.
• Create a content recycling workflow where every blog post you write is broken down into multiple smaller pieces of content for social media. This could include quotes, infographics, or short video clips that highlight key points from your blog. By doing this, you ensure that your social media followers are consistently directed back to your blog, reinforcing your own site as the central hub of your content.
• Set up a monthly 'identity audit' where you review your profiles across various platforms to check for consistency and signs of impersonation. During this audit, update any outdated information, ensure that your messaging aligns with your current goals and values, and report any fake accounts or misuse of your identity.
• Create a personal brand mood board to visually align your values and content. Start by selecting images, colors, and fonts that resonate with your core values and desired brand image. This visual representation will serve as a guide when creating content, ensuring that everything you share is in harmony with your brand's aesthetic and ethos. For example, if sustainability is a core value, your mood board might include nature imagery and a color palette inspired by the earth, which you would then reflect in your content.

Ways to Develop an Engaged Following

Attracting and building a following is a primary focus for many creators. It requires niching down, consistently providing valuable, top-notch content, and leveraging collaboration and community engagement. Being patient and persevering is crucial, as growth is often incremental and requires sustained effort over time.

Identifying Your Specialization and Target Audience

To distinguish yourself and attract an audience, you must "niche down" – narrow your focus to a specific area where you can become known. This requires identifying your passions and talents and understanding whether there's demand for them.

Blake recommends asking yourself a series of questions to pinpoint your specialization: "What do I love most?", "What skills or knowledge do I excel in?", "Can this generate income?", and "Is there a need or demand for this?" Finding the overlap between passion, talent, earning potential, and audience demand is key to establishing a sustainable and fulfilling creative profession.

Other Perspectives

• A narrow focus could exclude potential audience segments that may have been interested in a broader content or service offering.
• Identifying passions and talents can be a complex and evolving process, not a one-time assessment.
• Innovation often comes from pursuing passions and talents regardless of existing demand, suggesting that demand can be created rather than just understood or met.
• Self-assessment can be biased or inaccurate, potentially leading to an overestimation of one's skills or passion for a subject.
• Some individuals may find fulfillment in pursuing their passions as hobbies rather than as a career, especially if monetizing their interests leads to stress or diminishes their enjoyment.

Delivering Consistent, High-Caliber, Valuable Content

While the importance of producing quality material is often emphasized, the definition often remains vague. Blake breaks down "quality content" into three actionable areas: the quality of production, the quality of performance, and personality.

Quality of production, referring to audio and video quality, includes factors like image sharpness, color quality, lighting, background, composition, and stability. Audio quality focuses on clear sound, little noise in the background, and a positive experience for the audience overall. Performance quality encompasses clear communication, emotional connection with viewers, and confident delivery. Finally, personality is perhaps the most subjective, but it's crucial to show your genuine self, showcasing your unique quirks, storytelling, and humor.

Other Perspectives

• The emphasis on high production values may not be as critical for certain platforms or audiences who prioritize authenticity or rawness over polished presentation.
• Good lighting and composition are crucial, but they should not overshadow the need for accessibility features such as captions or descriptive audio for visually impaired audiences.
• A positive audience experience is subjective and can vary greatly depending on the content's target demographic; some audiences may prioritize content and message over audio perfection.
• Emotional connection with viewers can sometimes be achieved through subtlety and nuance, rather than overt displays of emotion or confidence.
• Relying heavily on personality might overshadow the content's substance, leading to a situation where style is prioritized over substance, which could compromise the value of the content.

Using Collaboration, Networking, and Building Communities

Collaborating and creating a network are valuable tools for growth but should be approached with a focus on mutual benefit and respecting others' time and reputation. While collaborations with larger creators can bring significant exposure, building relationships with peers in your field can result in mutual growth and support.

Blake emphasizes the importance of developing a community, not just an audience. This involves actively engaging with those who follow you, fostering feelings of belonging, and creating spaces for interaction beyond your primary content channels. Platforms like Facebook, Discord servers, and Reddit are ideal for fostering community engagement.

Other Perspectives

• In certain cases, networking can be time-consuming and may not yield immediate or tangible benefits, leading to inefficiency.
• Focusing solely on mutual benefit might overlook the potential for collaborations to serve a greater good or contribute to a cause that transcends individual gains.
• Collaborations with larger creators can sometimes overshadow the contributions of smaller creators, leading to an imbalance in recognition and benefits.
• Building relationships with peers in your field might lead to competition rather than mutual growth, as individuals may be vying for the same opportunities or audience.
• Focusing on community development can sometimes lead to a dilution of content quality, as efforts may shift from content creation to community management.
• Fostering feelings of belonging can sometimes lead to echo chambers, where dissenting opinions are discouraged, limiting the diversity of the community.
• Managing multiple interaction spaces requires significant time and resources, which may not be feasible for smaller creators or organizations.
• Some community members may not use or feel comfortable on these platforms due to personal preferences or concerns about data security, which could limit the inclusivity of the community.

Overcoming Challenges and Maintaining Motivation

As creators reach new milestones, the sense of validation often fades as previously exciting achievements become the new normal. It's common to feel discouraged and question your progress, especially when comparing yourself to seemingly more successful creators. To combat this, creators need to shift from an external focus on affirmation to an internal drive rooted in discipline.

Handling Imposter Feelings and Lacking Confidence

Imposter syndrome, coupled with comparison, often presents a major hurdle for creators. Seeing rapid success, particularly those deemed "instant hits," like creator Peter McKinnon, can trigger doubts about one's abilities.

Blake encourages creative individuals to prioritize decisions based on data rather than emotional responses driven by fear of missing out. Instead of being envious of others' superficial metrics (likes, followers, views), he recommends analyzing your own data, incorporating audience feedback, and refining your approach.

Practical Tips

• Start a "Small Wins" log where you record daily achievements, no matter how minor they seem. This could be as simple as writing a paragraph, sketching a new design, or coming up with a project idea. The act of writing down these wins helps to reinforce your sense of accomplishment and counters feelings of inadequacy.
• Develop a personal "Skill Expansion Plan" by identifying a skill you want to improve, setting specific goals, and tracking your progress over a month. Use a spreadsheet or app to log hours spent practicing and milestones reached. This strategy emphasizes personal development over external success metrics, reducing the impact of comparison.
• Create a decision journal to track and reflect on past decisions using data. Start by recording the decisions you make each week, noting the data you used to inform your choices and the outcomes that resulted. This practice will help you see the effectiveness of data-driven decisions over time, reinforcing your confidence in your decision-making abilities.
• Engage in a monthly 'data detox' where you abstain from checking social media or other platforms that trigger comparison for a set period. During this time, concentrate on analyzing your own data and progress in various aspects of your life. You might, for example, use this period to review your fitness tracker's history to see how your personal health metrics have improved over time, rather than scrolling through fitness influencers' posts.
• Use social media polls to gauge reactions to your ideas or presentations. After sharing content, create a poll asking followers for their opinions on clarity, engagement, and relevance. This not only provides immediate feedback but also increases audience interaction, making your social media channels a two-way street for communication improvement.

Developing a Disciplined Approach and Long-Term Mindset for Sustainable Growth

Blake emphasizes that staying motivated in the long term requires shifting from depending entirely on drive to cultivating structure and responsibility. Consider creating content as a profession rather than just a pastime, and view your audience as your customers.

To stay mentally well, avoid setting unrealistic expectations or comparing your journey to others. Embrace incrementalism, focusing on consistent execution and improvement rather than chasing overnight fame or immediate triumphs. Surround yourself with supportive communities and acknowledge that building a successful creator career is a long journey, not a short race. Remember to celebrate your milestones, find joy in the process, and build a career that's sustainable and aligns with your values and goals.

Other Perspectives

• Structure and responsibility might lead to routine, which could potentially stifle creativity and innovation, both of which are crucial for long-term success in many fields.
• Treating content creation solely as a profession might lead to burnout due to the pressure of constantly producing content that is commercially viable.
• It could lead to an overemphasis on metrics and analytics, causing creators to chase trends or audience preferences at the expense of their own interests and creative vision.
• Some individuals thrive on high expectations and find that they perform best when they are pushing the boundaries of what seems realistic.
• Incremental progress can sometimes be too slow to capitalize on time-sensitive opportunities in a fast-paced market.
• Over-reliance on community support can sometimes prevent individuals from developing their own resilience and problem-solving skills, as they may become too dependent on others for validation and advice.
• Some creators achieve rapid success due to viral content, which can make their career trajectory appear more like a short race than a long journey.
• Focusing too much on celebrating milestones could potentially distract from the overall objective and lead to complacency, causing one to lose sight of the larger goals.
• The concept of sustainability in a career can sometimes conflict with the need for adaptability and flexibility in a rapidly changing job market.

Monetizing Creative Content and Establishing a Business

This section delves into the various business models of the creative economy, outlining different monetization strategies for creators: services, royalties, affiliate programs, and e-commerce. It guides creators on varying their revenue sources to reduce reliance on a single platform, building robust businesses by leveraging their relationships with their audiences, and ultimately scaling and professionalizing their operations for long-term sustainability and growth.

Understanding Business Models in the Creative Economy

It's crucial to address the toxic perspective numerous creators develop toward money. Creative work, especially enjoyable, often doesn't seem like traditional "work," leading to guilt about earning a profit or being paid for it. Blake emphasizes that creative professionals should not underprice or undervalue their creations. Earning income from what you enjoy isn't cheating.

Options: Services, Royalties, Affiliate Marketing, E-Commerce

Blake breaks down the six essential business models within the Creator Economy: providing services, royalties, affiliate marketing, e-commerce, brand deals, and memberships. Freelancing, a prominent example of the service model, lets creators monetize their skills directly—graphic design, writing, editing videos, and more—providing flexibility with time and control over clients.

Royalties, typically associated with music, books, and licensed photography, can be generated from various platforms, including YouTube's advertising system, which Blake leveraged to grow his income significantly. Another crucial model, earning commissions for referrals to other companies' offerings, often generates income passively via ongoing percentage payments. This model played a vital role in Blake's own financial success, significantly increasing his monthly income.

Practical Tips

• You can diversify your income by starting a personal blog with a focus on content that aligns with your interests or expertise. Use the blog to experiment with different monetization strategies such as sponsored content, digital product sales, or offering exclusive content to subscribers for a fee. For example, if you're passionate about photography, create a blog that offers photography tips, reviews of equipment, and sells your own presets or e-books on photography techniques.
• Explore micro-gig platforms to offer bite-sized services related to your hobbies. If you enjoy activities like photo editing, creative writing, or making short videos, sign up on platforms that cater to micro-gigs. These sites often have a low barrier to entry and allow you to start small, offering quick tasks that can be completed in a short time frame. For example, you could edit someone's vacation photos, write product descriptions, or create 15-second promotional videos for social media.
• Develop a comparison website that helps users choose between products in a specific category, using affiliate links to generate income. For instance, if you're interested in technology, you could create a site that compares different types of headphones. By providing detailed comparisons and personal insights, you help consumers make informed decisions while potentially earning commissions from their purchases through your affiliate links.

Choosing the Right Monetization Strategies for Your Audience

Choosing the appropriate monetization strategy depends on your audience, their disposable income, and what they're inclined to support. Selling goods or offerings to your audience without intermediaries strengthens your independence but requires understanding their needs and desires. Identifying the culture and spending habits of your audience will guide you in building a successful business.

Creating a company that aligns with your audience's values and interests is crucial for long-term sustainability.

Context

• The economic environment, such as local economic conditions and employment rates, can impact disposable income and spending habits.
• Selling directly to consumers eliminates the need for intermediaries like retailers or wholesalers, allowing creators to have more control over pricing, branding, and customer relationships.
• Different age groups or regions may have distinct spending behaviors, influencing how products are marketed.
• When a company aligns with its audience's values, it fosters a sense of loyalty and trust, encouraging repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.

Developing a Sustainable Creative Enterprise

Beyond individual revenue strategies, building a sustainable business necessitates diversification. Creators need to look beyond revenue from advertising or partnerships with brands and consider incorporating multiple income sources, including direct sales and membership models, to create a more resilient and scalable business.

Varying Revenue to Reduce Single Platform Reliance

Blake emphasizes the significance of diversifying revenue sources. Depending entirely on income from platforms, particularly advertising revenue or brand sponsorships, leaves creators vulnerable to changes in platform policies or fluctuations in the advertising market.

This diversification can be achieved by selling what they offer, using referral marketing, and establishing membership programs. These streams offer greater control and independence, helping creators build a more stable and lasting business.

Practical Tips

• You can partner with local businesses to offer bundled deals that include your products. For example, if you create handmade soaps, partner with a local towel company to create a bath bundle. This not only diversifies your revenue but also taps into the customer base of the partnering business, potentially increasing sales for both parties.
• Consider offering personalized video messages for fans or clients through a platform like Cameo. If you have a particular skill or a small following, you can create custom content for individuals, such as birthday greetings, pep talks, or quick tutorials, providing a unique service that taps into your personal brand.

Leveraging Audience Relationships and Building Your Base

By recognizing your audience's needs and wants, you can determine goods and offerings they would willingly buy, contributing to greater earning potential. Focus on finding solutions to problems within your area of expertise and offer valuable products that your audience will genuinely appreciate.

Blake highlights the idea of Lifetime Value (LTV). This represents the total sum a customer spends with your brand over time. Creating offerings and experiences catering to your most passionate fans encourages greater expenditure from them, significantly increasing your total earnings. This could be achieved through membership programs, exclusive content, premium merchandise, or even individual coaching.

Other Perspectives

• Recognizing audience needs and wants is not always straightforward, as these can be complex, varied, and subject to change over time.
• Concentrating solely on your area of expertise might limit the growth of your business, as diversification can be key to resilience in a changing market.
• LTV calculations can vary greatly depending on the business model and industry, making it a less reliable metric for cross-industry comparisons or for businesses with diverse revenue streams.
• Overemphasis on premium offerings could alienate other customers who might feel neglected or priced out, potentially harming the overall brand community.
• Membership programs can create a financial barrier for some audience members, potentially alienating those who cannot afford to participate.

Scaling and Professionalizing Your Artistic Output

Creating a creator business worth seven figures requires scaling beyond individual efforts. Hiring and outsourcing tasks like editing, marketing, and administrative tasks free creators to concentrate on activities that are of great value and build a professional operation that attracts opportunities. By building a team and implementing systems, creators can scale their output and reach, ultimately unlocking greater earning potential.

Hiring and Outsourcing to Increase Productivity and Efficiency

As your business grows, managing all aspects alone can be overwhelming and unsustainable. Blake advises incorporating aspects of traditional business practices into your creator endeavor. This includes hiring team members to support administrative tasks, editing, marketing, and developing content, allowing you to concentrate on upper-level activities.

Outsourcing non-creative tasks can be a game-changer, freeing up your energy and schedule to focus on creating content and building relationships with your audience. This transition requires a mindset shift from being a solo creator to developing a team and fostering a collaborative environment.

Practical Tips

• Create a 'task menu' for potential freelancers or service providers, detailing the tasks you want to outsource. Include clear instructions, deadlines, and quality expectations for each task. This will streamline the process of handing off work and ensure you maintain a high standard for your content and audience interactions.
• Adopt financial planning software to manage your creator endeavor's budget and revenue streams. Tools like QuickBooks or Mint can help you track your expenses, forecast your income, and make informed decisions about where to allocate your resources, much like a business would to maximize profitability.
• Start a "teamwork journal" to document your daily thoughts and actions as you transition from solo work to team collaboration. This can help you reflect on your mindset changes and identify areas where you might be resisting the shift. For example, note down moments when you find it hard to delegate or when you feel the urge to micromanage, and then brainstorm ways to overcome these challenges.
• Start a "Skill Swap" session within your team where each member teaches others something they excel at. This encourages knowledge sharing and shows that everyone has valuable skills to contribute, fostering a sense of unity and respect.

New Revenue Streams: Creator-Driven Products & Services

Blake highlights the emerging trend of businesses driven by creators transforming the marketplace. Creators, with an intimate grasp of their followers and data-driven insights, are poised to launch successful direct-to-consumer (DTC) businesses in various sectors.

Examples include Emma Chamberlain's coffee brand, Prime Hydration, a sports drink launched by KSI and Logan Paul, and Peter McKinnon's collaborations with Nomatic and PolarPro. These ventures underscore the unique advantage creators possess—their loyal followers, brand recognition, and deep comprehension of what their audience needs and prefers.

Practical Tips

• You can start a small-scale DTC initiative by selling a unique homemade product online. Begin by identifying a niche product you can create, such as handcrafted candles or organic skincare items. Set up a simple online store using platforms like Etsy or Shopify, and use social media to directly engage with your audience, gather feedback, and refine your offerings based on customer preferences.
• Identify your unique skill or hobby and brainstorm how it could be turned into a product. For instance, if you're skilled at painting, consider creating a line of custom-painted phone cases or if you love gardening, develop a seed kit with your favorite plant varieties.