The One-Person Business: Mastering the Art of the Creator Economy | by Fabio Marciano | May, 2023

Your Creator Journey: Unlocking the Path to Solopreneur Success

These days everyone wants to build a social following, and I cannot blame them. You listen to the news daily, and several companies are announcing layoffs.

Smart people are taking matters into their own hands. They are looking to build a side hustle that is both satisfying and lucrative.

I started building my audience on Twitter early this year. I read thousands of posts and went through dozens of guides. I realized that 99 percent of people don’t know what to do on Twitter, especially when it comes to:

• Creating content

• Finding their Voice

• Monetization

• Growing their account

I summarized what it takes to grow a healthy and profitable audience on Twitter.

I call it The Creator Journey.

It will show you the exact game plan to break free of the Twitter Rat Race:

The big accounts understand The Creator Journey.

This might feel overwhelming but don’t worry; I’ll take you through it step-by-step.

Let’s talk about how to use it:

You start any game at the newbie level.

For creators, that’s the Consumption stage — you invest time, effort, and money to learn how to become a master.

Choose what level is right for you.

No FOMO or shame in the level you choose.

?Consumer
?Apprentice
?‍?Expert
?‍?Pro
?Master

I bet you want to jump straight to making a lot of money as an expert, right?

Sorry. There’s a critical question to answer first:

Why are you even on Twitter or your social platform of choice?

Your priority and reasons will tell you the actions you must take.

Don’t worry; the smarter and harder you work, the faster you move to the next level.

Priority — Goal: Taking action, building things, helping others

• Consumption — Here to learn and be entertained
• Attention — Looking to build a following/business
• Monetization — Looking to make money and share knowledge
• Education — Bring people together, educate
• Conversion — Converting you to the category

A Call to Action!!!

The world rewards CREATORS.

Your computer and phone are tools for CONSUMPTION or CREATION.

When you share your ideas online, you become a magnet for people.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to connect and help others.

Stop leaning back and consuming content.

Rant over.

Let’s continue…

The Creator Journey is about building an audience, making an impact, and making money.

6 key areas to master at different levels are:

• Content
• Uniqueness (Identity)
• Engagement
• Value
• Traffic
• Monetization

Here’s the journey visual one more time:

CONTENT is what you provide to the platforms and to followers.

The more unique your message, the more value you bring, and the volume of work (quality+quantity) you put in, the more profitable you can be.

• Consumption — Learning & entertainment
• Attention — Writing tweets & threads to capture attention, resharing others’ POV
• Monetization — Unique and original POV
• Education — Bring people together, and educate them about a different path.
• Conversion — Converting you to the category and ecosystem, a new identity (I’m a Funnel Hacker, Solopreneur!)

If you copy what others do, you’ll never stand out. We gravitate toward contrarian and attractive characters.

• Identical — Sea of sameness to start
• Imitation — Imitating their heroes, wordsmithing, synonym soldiers
• Authentic — Finding your unique, differentiated voice
• Remarkable — compelling, striking, noteworthy — contrarian POVs, frameworks, unique language
• Unicorn — Purple cows (see Seth Godin), category of one — see category pirates

Now let’s talk about delivering VALUE.

The more followers you have, the more people can see your message.

The goal is an engaged audience that can’t wait to hear from you.

• Friends — your mom and family
• Followers — Some success, time to grind it out
• Buyers — Bought your course or ebook: Retweet and curate your stuff
• Super Fans — They advocate for you and become your case studies — take action, get results, and help spread your word
• Evangelists — You have achieved omnipresence in the market and beyond. See Brooke Castillo, Codie Sanchez, Grant Cardone, Tony Robbins, Naval.

Value — Goal: Deliver an overwhelming amount of value, always

• Excitement — All creators need raving fans to give them energy
• Insights — Curation and summaries help people pressed for time
• Skills — Giving people the skills they need in specific areas is invaluable
• Hope — Showing what’s possible, creating the belief that they can do it
• Transformation — Completely changing someone’s life for the better

You need traffic sources — both borrowed (social media, youtube) and owned (email, websites, discord) to drive your growth.

“Grow your audience on public platforms. Own your audience on private ones.” — Dave Perell

• One Source Borrowed — one social platform
• Multiple Sources Borrowed — a few social platforms and a newsletter
• Multiple Sources Owned — add in email, website, SEO optimized, discord
• Referrals + Organic — traffic from referrals, website, youtube, etc
• Affiliates + Paid Ads — to scale when you saturated the market, your own affiliate program + paid ads (see Russell Brunson)

Too many people want to get rich quickly, so they use hacks to grow their accounts and sell crap.

Don’t do that.

Look to provide VALUE first, then monetize.

Said another way:

Build your audience first, then make money.

So, what do you have to offer your hungry fans?

Each step along the way, you add more income sources:

Consuming — none, spending $$$ on stuff they’ll never use

Commissions — affiliate products & invoices for work done

Commerce — products (digital & physical), subscriptions

Coaching — 1–1, cohort-based coaching, newsletter subscriptions

Continuity — Subscriptions, SaaS tools, masterminds

Hat tip to Ryan Lee on the Infopreneur 5Cs framework.

• You’re on a creator journey whether you realize it or not
• You can learn to play at any game level without previous skills
• Build something that delivers value and transforms people’s lives
• Learn the basics of copy, and practice a lot
• Comparison is the thief of joy
• Everyone sucks at the start, and no one cares, so go for it
• The faster you move from Consumption (of content and buying crap) to Writing and Creating, the quicker you’ll see success (fans, retweets, cash, satisfaction, and gratitude)

What’s more:

• You can get wealthy, quit your job, and live a fantastic life; you just can’t do it overnight
• You have to put in a LOT of work to make it happen
• BE > DO > HAVE: The key is to focus on who you need to BECOME. Next, focus on what you must DO to HAVE the lifestyle of the creators you admire.
• It’s not HAVE > BE > Never DO — This order does not work
• The effort required is worth the short-term sacrifice to become a successful creator

I hope you enjoyed this thread and the visual.

Be sure to follow me here on Medium for more insights like this.

Follow me on Twitter for more information on how to become a creator and build wealth the right way — @fmarciano

Have a fantastic day, my friend.

Namaste.