Nathan Barry with Rachel Rodgers, and Paula Pant on Billion Dollar Creator:
So now, the second rule, or law, is that you need to sell products, and not attention.
And that’s a bit of a weird thing when you think about an audience of creators. Right? We’re really good at attention. We’re really good at selling attention. Right?
Sponsorships. If you get a sponsor for your YouTube channel, right? Or a sponsor for your newsletter, you are selling attention.
And, so, I’m here to tell you that anyone building a business at this different scale is not selling attention. They are selling their own products.
Rachel:
Yeah, you were saying earlier, Paula, that you— you sell, like, advertising on your podcast, right? You have some affiliate things that you’ve done, or maybe some sponsorship things that you’ve done.
Is that the larger part of your business, or is it the product that you sell?
Paula:
It’s the product that I sell. Absolutely. So, the overwhelming source of revenue— probably between 70 to 80% of the revenue at Afford Anything comes from the course that we sell, Your First Rental Property.
(Audience applause)
Nathan:
Oh, you have some fans here for the course!
Paula:
Thank you!
Nathan:
I like it!
So, as you’re thinking about— another example would be Ryan Reynolds. Right? He was getting paid to do commercials for other— for other products and, who knows, maybe make up some numbers: if he was getting paid $1 million per commercial.
As he does that, he’s thinking somewhere in the back of his mind, ‘Well, hold on. If you’re paying me $1 million for this, which — amazing deal, that sounds great — but, it has to be worth more than that to you, as the brand.’
And it invites the question,
- How much more is that worth? How much more is his endorsement worth?
Is it worth $1.1 million?
Or $10 million? Or 100? Or, like, how much? And so something that he did, is he just said,
- ‘OK I’m going to buy companies or buy substantial shares of companies, and use my own— this attention that I have to grow something that I have equity in.’
And, as we know from Aviation Gin exiting for, I think, 700— $700 million, and Mint Mobile exiting for $1.3 billion, like, turns out that attention that he had was worth way more money than he was getting in sponsorship and endorsement deals.
You have to know that whatever money a sponsor is currently paying you, your audience relationship is worth 5X, 10X, maybe 100+X that amount.
Your friendly ad partner pockets those extra X’s.
Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that — it’s the arrangement you agreed to.
But.
Creators who simply take the time to develop their own offers (on their own platforms) are often surprised to discover their true professional value as a casual recommender of products — in the form of a few more commas in their bank accounts.
— Tang
Nathan Barry’s owned platforms are: ConvertKit and NathanBarry.com.
Rachel Rodgers’ owned platforms include: HelloSeven and RachelRodgers.com.
Paula Pant’s owned platform is: Afford Anything.
