This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Kind of interesting question slash situation slash dilemma from a listener today. This listener, he's got a business. He wants to help people with multiple streams of income. He's actually built a number of streams of income for himself. He also has a YouTube channel, a podcast.
He's trying to keep up with a lot of different networks. And above all, here comes the situation, challenge, dilemma, et cetera. While he has a worthwhile message, it is helpful and positive. He's not really seeing the traction and growth that he'd like. Now, a lot of people have this experience, right?
They have a message that they want to share. They have a product or a service. You know, they are trying, of course, to get more sales. They feel like they're not reaching enough people or the people they're reaching are not converting to whatever they're trying to sell. So what do you do in this situation?
Like what should he do, which we'll look at in a moment, but what should you do if you find yourself in this situation? And what if you're planning to debut a YouTube channel, a podcast, a TikTok, something else? You know, there could be anything these days. How do you choose which one? How do you decide which others are essential?
Like where do you need to support your business through different networks? And how can you avoid going crazy, trying to keep up with everything, right? Which is definitely not possible. So on the surface, we're looking at this topic, how many social platforms should I post to? But I'm hoping we can go a bit deeper in looking at this guy's specific situation.
His name is Brooks, his detailed question, along with my answer is coming right up. [Music]
Hey Chris, Brooks Conkle from Alabama. Long time listener of the show. Probably listened to 100 plus episodes ever since first reading "The Art of Nonconformity." I appreciate you putting out that work. My side hustle is my personal brand at brooksconkle.com.
So obviously I have the blog, I have a podcast, I have a YouTube channel, even make TikTok content. So my question to you is your thoughts on should I triple down and create on one channel at a time or should I look at growing evenly and creating on all channels at one time? Obviously growth is a little bit slower if I do that, given my time constraints, but I'm curious to see what your thoughts are, whether to buckle down or spread the time out. Thanks and I appreciate your thoughts. - Hey Brooks, what's up?
Thank you for the call, thanks for the question. Glad to know you've been around for a while. And I see on your website, I actually spent a good amount of time looking at his website, his YouTube, a couple other things. I see that he has something like 17 sources of income, which is a lot of sources of income, right? It's pretty cool.
I don't think I have 17 sources of income myself, but that also leads to my general response to the question, which in looking at everything, I think Brooks needs some focus here because even on the site when he talks about all of his sources of income, he mentions the 80/20 rule, how the vast majority of your outcomes come from a small percentage of inputs. In this situation, most of the money he makes comes from a few of these sources of income. And I think that principle is probably helpful when we start thinking about networks and how to have impact. For Brooks specifically, like a lot of people have this same kind of message. What he's teaching, it needs a bit more proof of concept, it needs a bit more specificity.
I think like even with Cytosol School, I had been an author, I had published, I think five books or something before Cytosol School. And when I decided to start this daily podcast, the first three years, every single day, it was all case studies, all case studies and storytelling, day in, day out rather than teaching. Or if there was teaching, it was teaching through the stories. Like that was my hook essentially. 'Cause I was like, well, even though I've been somewhat established in this space, it is a very crowded space.
So I need to think about what I can do differently. And what is the essence of what I hope to communicate? So this is my advice to Brooks and to probably some other folks out there. What is the single most important thing you can communicate? Like what is the message?
So I think the problem isn't so much diversification or being on lots of different networks or focusing on one network. I think it is a question of clarity, a lack of clarity, or let's just say like, there could be more clarity. And then in terms of the networks or platforms, like ultimately I do think that one of those platforms needs to be the focus. And whatever else you do kind of exists largely to support that, at least until you get to a different level of growth. So I do think it's a mistake to try to replicate the same message across all these different platforms, especially when you can see like, oh, I'm not making much of an impact.
It feels like I'm kind of speaking into the void, even though I have a lot of experience and I want to share. So, and Brooks on his website even says like, I don't want to just do one thing, which I totally respect on the same way, but that's not quite what we're talking about here. Again, it's a question of clarity and focus. And so Brooks knows a lot about platforms already. I would think more about the core mission, the core mission and message.
That's my take on that. Good luck, Brooks, let us know what happens. Listeners, if you have a question, something you're going through, something you're trying to figure out, I can be helpful, at least I'll try to be helpful. Come to slideuscleschool.com/questions. We will continue to feature them throughout the year.
Along with different stories, tips, updates, and reports from our global community. You are amazing. Thank you for being out there. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
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- From the Onward Project.
