This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey friends, what's up? Welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Guillebeau. Today, a listener question, and I always love to hear from our community. You all are doing some interesting things, and this is an interesting idea.
We've got a listener, Brody. He wants to offer non-toxic men's lifestyle advice, and he wants to be the person he needed when he was younger, which I think is a wonderful therapeutic goal. If you can think about, okay, what was I like when I was a little kid? Whatever fears or insecurities I had, whatever was going on in my inner world as a six-year-old or a nine-year-old or a 12-year-old, what did that person need? And then in this case, Brody, he's like, well, how do I translate that into lifestyle advice, some kind of brand?
I'm not sure what the medium is, if it's a podcast or a YouTube or something else, but presumably there is some goal of building platform, building his brand with it. So you're gonna hear more about it from his question, how to position this work or message it for the right people, and this is always something you wanna think about. When you have a personality-based brand or you're offering some type of advice or guidance or perspective, how do you figure out the best way to do that because that's going to affect ultimately your success in doing it? So let's see if I can be somewhat helpful to Brody, his question and my answer coming right up. [Music]
Hey, this is Brody.
I didn't have a dad growing up and I wanna be the person I needed when I was younger. That's a phrase I borrowed from my therapist. Specifically, I wanna offer men's lifestyle advice about how to be a better person and cope with the challenges of the modern world. I know it's a big market, but I'm also running into a problem defining it more clearly. There are a lot of guys out there doing something like this, but it seems like they've organized into some camps that I don't necessarily wanna be part of.
What I mean is that some of these figures are essentially political and I wanna avoid that. Still, I see why some of the big communities attract such a following, so that's my question. What can I do to position myself well and not water down my message while also being welcoming to everyone and avoiding toxic masculinity? I know, that's a lot to accomplish, but this is important, so I'd love to know what you have to say about it. Thanks for all the inspiration through the books and podcast.
Hey, Brody, what a cool mission. The world needs people like you and I also think you don't need to worry too much. What you need to do is create some flagship content. Flagship content is like, this is the content I want people to discover. Maybe they have seen a video about me or they've otherwise heard about me and they come to my website or to my social profile.
What's the one thing that I want them to take away? What is the message that you have for the world? What is the mission of Brody's men's lifestyle brand? So you need a manifesto or you need your best 5,000 word blog post, long form of content, or something else that is just really surprising or interesting or in depth to this market, to the people that you are trying to serve. So it's basically your TED talk, but in a different form, most likely.
And then you need to follow the small army model, also known as 1000 True Fans. I wrote a lot about this in my first book, Long Ago, The Art of Nonconformity. You need ambassadors who are excited about what you're making. So you have some kind of lead generation that brings people in, what people call top of funnel. Sometimes you have the flagship content that really gets them hooked.
And then you have recruitment where you're like, "Hey, I need help in spreading this message." And speaking of community, is there a way to turn this into not just an online project, but something in-person as well? I have a bias towards in-person events. I love doing book tour and spending a lot of time each year working on a really big annual event. It's not the only way to do it, of course, but I just think there's a lot of power and value in in-person connection, especially in an increasingly virtual digital world, et cetera. But whatever you do, Brody, I think you're on the right track, bringing them in, giving them something interesting, and then giving them a mission.
If you do those things, you were very much on the right track. If you don't do those things, then you're gonna suffer from a lack of clarity. People are gonna be interested, but they're not really hooked. They don't quite know what to do. So that's why I think this is the path.
I wish you well, let us know how it goes. Listeners, what are you up to? Do you have a mission, a quest, or at least a small business idea, a side hustle idea? sidehustleschool.com, we've got resources there. We've got links downloading streaming options for every single episode in the archives, going back nine plus years.
And of course you can subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts for the new episodes that come out every day, every morning, in fact. That's it for now. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
