How To Revive a Stalled Newsletter — with Ben Collins

Summary

Podcast Summary: Growth In Reverse – Episode: How To Revive a Stalled Newsletter with Ben Collins

Release Date: February 12, 2025

In this insightful episode of the Growth In Reverse podcast, hosts Chenell Basilio and Dylan Redekop engage in a comprehensive discussion with Ben Collins, a seasoned newsletter creator who has successfully grown his Google Sheets-focused newsletter to over 55,000 subscribers. Despite his achievements, Ben finds his growth stagnating and seeks expert advice to reignite his newsletter’s momentum. This episode delves into various strategies and actionable insights aimed at overcoming growth plateaus in newsletter businesses.

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1. Introduction to Ben Collins and His Newsletter

[00:00] Chanel: Ben Collins has spent nearly a decade building a thriving newsletter centered around Google Sheets, amassing over 55,000 subscribers. However, in 2024, his growth metrics began to flatten, leading him to seek strategies to rejuvenate his audience.

[00:21] Ben Collins: "Metrics across 2024 were sort of flat or down a little bit, and years prior, they've been growing, growing, growing."

2. Transitioning Business Models

Ben elaborates on his shift from a course-based revenue model to launching a membership program in September 2024 to create a more sustainable income stream.

[03:13] Ben Collins: "I've done these launches now since 2018. It's like a six-year or something of this very spiky, boom to bust type model."

[03:34] Ben Collins: "With the AI tools now, especially in the field I am, it's more effective to do some live style teaching and workshops."

3. Leveraging Custom GPT Bots as Lead Magnets

Dylan introduces the idea of using custom GPT bots to attract new subscribers, inspired by Caitlin Burgoyne’s successful implementation.

[07:00] Dylan: "One interesting example was Caitlin Burgoyne using the Ouchie Bot Pain Finder as a lead magnet tied to her course."

Ben shows enthusiasm for this approach and discusses his initial experiments with custom GPTs.

[09:04] Ben Collins: "I built one internally for myself that say a custom GPT. But I didn't go very far with it."

4. Enhancing YouTube Presence

The conversation shifts to optimizing YouTube strategies. Ben acknowledges the potential of YouTube but highlights the challenges he faced in maintaining a consistent content schedule.

[13:05] Dylan: "There's opportunity to teach people how to use AI to solve your Google Sheets issues."

[14:57] Ben Collins: "I think YouTube is just like a gigantic opportunity still now... I think that if you lean into your specific niche and your unique selling point, there's still opportunity there."

5. Maximizing LinkedIn for Growth

Chenell emphasizes the effectiveness of LinkedIn for promoting technical content, suggesting strategies like carousel posts and regular updates about membership benefits.

[16:15] Ben Collins: "My VA turns the weekly newsletter into LinkedIn posts, but I need to better connect that top of funnel into my actual funnel."

[21:09] Chanel: "You could do a 30-second video about one cool feature, which could attract more eyeballs."

6. Collaboration with Other Creators

Dylan proposes collaborating with creators like Andrew Campfi to tap into complementary audiences, enhancing mutual growth without significant additional effort.

[24:17] Dylan: "Collaborating with other creators allows you to benefit from each other's audiences without doing all the work alone."

Ben shares his positive experiences with collaborations, including organizing a spreadsheet competition with a firm that builds tools for Google Sheets.

[25:13] Ben Collins: "The whole thing was a good, fun experience."

7. Hosting Events and Workshops

The hosts discuss the potential of hosting more focused live events or workshops, noting Ben’s past success with "Sheets Con." However, Ben expresses reservations about organizing large-scale events again, citing personality preferences and logistical challenges.

[26:10] Dylan: "Partner with another collaborator and do it together."

[27:24] Chanel: "Organizing a conference could be a huge opportunity for quick growth."

[28:50] Ben Collins: "I can't see myself organizing a conference again... it's not a match for my personality."

8. Utilizing Reddit for Engagement

Dylan introduces Reddit as an underutilized platform for engaging with power users in niche communities. He suggests authentic participation and linking to Ben’s articles when relevant.

[30:00] Dylan: "Answering questions genuinely in Reddit forums can drive traffic without overt self-promotion."

[31:18] Ben Collins: "Reddit is a bit under the radar, but it's there and there's a subreddit for everything, including Google Sheets."

9. Implementing Referral Programs

Chenell and Dylan explore the benefits of referral programs, using examples like the "Dink" pickleball newsletter. They discuss creating hyper-relevant incentives tied to Ben’s niche.

[32:20] Chanel: "A referral program with rewards like a Google Sheets mug or SaaS tool discounts could be highly effective."

[33:14] Ben Collins: "Morning Brew and HubSpot have done a very good job with referrals."

10. Moving Subscribers Down the Funnel to Membership

Ben identifies the need to enhance operational strategies to convert top-of-funnel leads into paying members. Strategies discussed include:

• Regular Promotion: Consistently mentioning membership in newsletters and social media.
• Office Hours: Introducing dedicated Q&A sessions or office hours to add value.
• Enhanced Communication: Better conveying the benefits and activities within the membership program.

[35:29] Ben Collins: "I need to improve operations to move people from top of funnel down into the membership."

[40:36] Chanel: "Adding a block in newsletters to highlight upcoming events can drive membership signups."

11. Personal Reflections and Future Steps

Ben reflects on the complexities of modern content creation, acknowledging the abundance of tools and platforms while emphasizing the importance of focused, high-quality content.

[44:40] Ben Collins: "It's harder to stand out now... focus is key."

Ben concludes by summarizing the strategies discussed and expressing his intent to implement the most suitable ideas.

[43:32] Ben Collins: "ChatGPT bot, YouTube, LinkedIn, one-on-one collaborations are great ideas. Referral programs, I'm unsure about."

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Key Takeaways:

• Innovative Lead Magnets: Utilizing custom GPT bots tailored to your niche can effectively attract new subscribers.
• YouTube Opportunities: Despite challenges, leveraging YouTube by focusing on niche-specific content and streamlining production can yield significant benefits.
• LinkedIn as a Power Platform: Regular, value-driven content on LinkedIn, such as carousel posts and short videos, can enhance visibility and drive engagement.
• Collaborative Growth: Partnering with complementary creators facilitates audience expansion and shared growth without excessive individual effort.
• Engaging Communities: Actively participating in niche forums like Reddit can drive targeted traffic and increase newsletter subscriptions.
• Referral Programs: Implementing referral incentives aligned with your niche can amplify subscriber growth organically.
• Funnel Optimization: Enhancing operational strategies to move subscribers from awareness to membership is crucial for sustainable growth.

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Collins [00:21]: "Metrics across 2024 were sort of flat or down a little bit, and years prior, they've been growing, growing, growing."
• Dylan [07:00]: "One interesting example was Caitlin Burgoyne using the Ouchie Bot Pain Finder as a lead magnet tied to her course."
• Ben Collins [09:04]: "I built one internally for myself that say a custom GPT. But I didn't go very far with it."
• Chanel [16:15]: "You could do a 30-second video about one cool feature, which could attract more eyeballs."
• Ben Collins [35:29]: "I need to improve operations to move people from top of funnel down into the membership."
• Chanel [32:20]: "A referral program with rewards like a Google Sheets mug or SaaS tool discounts could be highly effective."

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Conclusion

This episode of Growth In Reverse offers a wealth of strategies for newsletter creators grappling with stagnant growth. By exploring innovative lead magnets, optimizing content across platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn, fostering collaborations, and implementing effective referral programs, Ben Collins is poised to overcome his growth challenges. The hosts provide practical advice and creative ideas, making this episode a valuable resource for any newsletter creator aiming to scale their subscriber base and build a sustainable business.

For more insights and strategies, subscribe to the Growth In Reverse podcast and join Ben Collins' newsletter at benlcollins.com.

Transcript

[Chanel]

What happens when a newsletter that was once thriving kind of just hits a wall with growth? Over the past decade, Ben Collins has grown his Google Sheets focused newsletter to over 55,000 subscribers. And he's built a sustainable business by any stretch of the imagination. And even though his business isn't growing like it once was, he is still making a great living. But the problem is that his growth has really just stalled.

[Ben Collins]

Metrics across 2024 were sort of flat or down a little bit, and years prior, they've been growing, growing, growing.

[Chanel]

And Ben wasn't sure what to do next. So instead of just discussing his Deep Dive, Ben actually enlisted our help to brainst some ideas on things he can do and ways he can actually start reigniting that growth. This might just be the first edition of the Growth in Reverse coaching session on the podcast. Some of these ideas Ben was not really keen to, but some I have a feeling he's going to test out. So can we help get Ben's newsletter growth back on track? Or is his newsletter doomed to slower growth? Let's find out. Ben, welcome to the show.

[Ben Collins]

Hi, Chanel. Thanks so much for having me on. It's great to be here.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. This episode's gonna be a little different. I'm excited because I initially reached out to you to kind of come on, talk through the Deep Dive, what you've done to grow, and you were like, are you sure you want me to come on? Because I'm not sure. I feel like some. You said your growth has been kind of flat over the last year or so, if not down. So we actually thought it would be fun to kind of talk through some ways to kind of boost that back up, regrow the newsletter, if you will. Um, so I'm excited to kind of talk through this. Dylan and I have come up with some interesting ideas. Some you'll probably be like, absolutely not, but I'm excited. So you were kind of just going into, like, what happened in 2024. Do you want to kind of rehash, like, where things have been since? The Deep Dive was written in November 2023. So it's been a little over a year now.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. So 2023 was my ninth year as a creator and I'd say eight of them were professional, you know, as my full time sort of gig. And yeah, I think really honestly, it started it through Covid, but I was able to just sort of power through. But then 2024 came along and I really felt totally burnt out. I took a bit of a break. I carried on with my newsletter. So it wasn't necessarily apparent from the outside that I was doing anything different. By summertime, I decided to formulate a plan and then worked over the summer months to launch the membership, which we can go into detail down the road, but yeah, launched this new membership in September, so. So I've been sort of building back up from there and like you sort of alluded TO metrics across 2024 were sort of, you know, flat or down a little bit. And years prior they've been growing, growing, growing. As any course creator knows, you make big chunk of revenue for that course when you do the launch. So you have to be launching to make money. And that's kind of why I thought I need to figure out a different business model because I've done these launches now since 2018. So what's that? It was like six years or something of this very spiky, boom to bust type model. And yeah, I just, you know, because I didn't launch anything new in the first half of last year, I didn't make any. I didn't have any big sort of launches. So there was the regular monthly income, but that's, you know, you know, 8 percentage of the overall revenue for the year. But the launches certainly are a bigger percentage of it, so.

[Chanel]

Right, yeah, no, that makes sense. So just to give people context. So your business right now, as far as I know, is mostly courses. You have a lot.

[Ben Collins]

12 courses, I think it's maybe 15.

[Chanel]

Yeah, yeah. Wow. And then you recently launched this membership that you were referring to. Is that. Does that include access to your courses too?

[Ben Collins]

Not at the moment. It's kind of a new thing. And actually I've been doing live workshops inside of the membership because I think, you know, with the way AI is progressing, the sort of traditional way of just having a video that you watch and then you try and copy it and do it yourself and then go back and watch the video a little bit more. You know, with the AI tools now, especially in the field I am anyway, which is like a very technical data and spreadsheets and coding other ways to do that now with these AI tools, which can be more effective because it can be much more immediate. And, and so I'm finding that actually it's more effective to do some live style teaching and workshops and things. But the, you know, the whole back catalog of courses is still the nice thing is that the spreadsheets have this incredible backwards compatibility. So anything that worked 10 years ago in a spreadsheet almost Certainly still works today because they're compatible because you know, sheets just live on for that long spreadsheets.

[Dylan]

Right.

[Ben Collins]

And so, you know, 95% plus of the courses, you know, can still be used and applied today. So there's still a huge amount of value in those, that archive of courses. So yeah, you know, at the moment it's not included in the membership. But you know, that's not to say it won't be at some point in the future.

[Chanel]

No, that makes sense. Okay, cool. So we kind of understand. And you have sponsors in your newsletter too, right?

[Ben Collins]

I do, yeah, I have. So the weekly newsletter has been running now for about six or seven years. So we're up to mid-3002 now on the issues. And I've had sponsors for probably the last 18 months or two years. So it's not a huge amount of revenue because I don't charge like really high prices. It's, it's more of a self serve model where people can, you know, they fill in the forms and actually I have a VA that helps me and she, she basically runs that sponsorship side for me. But it certainly contributes and it's nice to build relationships with these clients. But I'm not really looking to expand that and you know, offer packages with YouTube videos and sponsored posts and things like that. Not sort of at the moment.

[Chanel]

Um, okay. So I think that helps kind of understand where you're at and I know. Are you still like hovering around the 50K subscriber mark?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, it's 55K. Get the weekly newsletter and then the act, the whole entire list is about 67K. And I, I'm still in the process of figuring out what that delta is all about. I. Oh geez. So I, you know, because I, I've transitioned newsletter providers at some about three years ago, two and a half years ago, and I think some of the subscriber metadata, if you like, wasn't. I didn't capture everything necessarily. So there are some people there, I'm not quite sure about how they're on the list. There are some people there that have had signed up through a, a form once that hadn't been properly connected and I didn't realize for the longest time and I'm like, why are these people on my list? And then I' go through this form that just wasn't connected. So I've made all mistakes in the.

[Chanel]

Book like that you could also just send them one email and be like, hey, you know, if you still want this, if by any chance.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, yeah. So I have yeah, I've tried that. I've done that once actually, and with one big group and some, some of them moved across and, you know, some of them obviously decided to move on.

[Chanel]

So we have about 55k. We'll say awesome, I guess. So Dylan and I, like I said, we kind of brainstormed a little bit and I'm sure some other ideas will come up as we're just talking through. I feel like maybe we should just jump in now that we have a little bit of a backstory and that kind of thing. So, Dylan, you had one that was interesting at the top. Do you want to jump into that one?

[Dylan]

Yes, yes, I would. We're talking about ChatGPT, right? Again, these are just ideas, Ben, so take them with a grain of salt. But what we've seen a few creators do is leverage basically a custom GPT, so building their own, you know, GPT model inside ChatGPT. Or you could probably do this with just about any of the big AI models and they've used. Used it as a lead magnet to get them, get them new subscribers. So one interesting. Probably one of the best examples I saw somebody doing this was Caitlin Burgoyne from why We Buy the why We Buy newsletter. And she basically used the, what she called the Ouchie Bot Pain Finder as a. Something that naturally tied to a course she was trying to sell. So the course she was trying to sell was called Painkiller and she wanted to help basically help your customers find pain points so that you can help solve their problems. Right. And so with this course, she introduced this, she called it the Ochi Pain Finder Bot. Sorry, that's a mouthful. And really it's, it's basically it was free access to the, the bot, but you had to get on the waitlist for her course. And so this flywheel worked really well for her. Um, I even tried out the bot and it was, it was. No bots are perfect, but it was, it was pretty interesting to use and try to figure out how to improve my, my messaging and stuff like that. So it was really. Well, I thought it was just really well done. It was something unique and something I hadn't seen a lot of people trying. And so I thought there could be potentially an opportunity for you to leverage, whether it's just creating a custom GPT bot for obviously your, your niche of Google Sheets. Um, I don't know if we've actually even mentioned that. Ben's. What you do is, is all around Google Sheets and Google Sheets tips and that sort of Thing. So I thought, I mean, there's a lot of people who are probably searching for this information and if you created a custom GPT that could help them with that, that could be really useful. That could be something a lot of people would be wanting to use now. The argument back is, well, anybody can just type in, I need this formula for, you know, XYZ I'm trying to solve in in Google sheets. And just a chatgpt conversation might spit that out. Maybe there's a way that you can alter it to make it a little bit more effective and efficient too.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, it's a great idea. I like that actually. And I have experimented a little bit with, you know, thinking along those lines not in terms of a lead magnet, that's kind of a novel way to do it, but just in terms of actually building. So I built one internally for myself that say a custom GPT. But I didn't go very far with it. It was very much just when they announced that I just wanted to go and just play with it a little bit.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

But I do think it could be really pretty interesting if I could, you know, give it all of my blog posts from all the years and sort of train it that way on that data. And then I'm curious, was this one that the example you gave there, is it embedded in the sidebar of a website or does it. How does it. How do people find it and interact with it?

[Dylan]

Yeah, so she actually made it gated as far as I understand because I went looking for it actually for in prep for this conversation and I couldn't actually find it. I couldn't search for it anymore. And so the way she did it was you sign up for her wait list and then as you are going through her waitlist sequence that she created, she sends you this, basically a surprise and delight of this, this Ochi pain finder bot. And so people got access to it through her email. So she sent a link to, to that custom GPT through their waitlist sequence. So you can, with all these bots, you can just like use them and then save them to your sidebar in chat GPT as most people are probably aware. So I believe create something like that. But hers no longer seems to be around. She might have sunset it perhaps.

[Ben Collins]

Cool. Yeah, I think it'd be really interesting to do one and then embed it on my website. So when people arrive at the website through search, you know, right now people probably either land directly on article they've searched for in Google or they just land on my homepage and go to my search bar on my website. But if they were then presented with the custom GPT as a way to try and answer their question firsthand, then, you know, you could run through a quick conversation and then perhaps after a while, it set it to say, on the fourth interaction, prompt them or, you know, prod them to sign up for your email list sort of thing. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure, you know, there's a way to sort of work that into the conversation that's not too overbearing and whatever, you know. So that's really interesting. I think there's definitely an opportunity there.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Cool.

[Ben Collins]

And that would be an interesting project as well.

[Dylan]

Yeah, it'd be fun. I'm sure you'd have a lot of fun getting in the weeds with that.

[Ben Collins]

Exactly.

[Chanel]

It would be fun to almost like, have it be so good that, like, I think just in my experience, when I have issues with Google Sheets, I always end up typing the wrong thing into Google, and it takes me forever to figure out what it actually is called. Like a certain type of function or something. Like, I'm typing in, how do I do this one thing? But it, like, doesn't actually show up. Right. And it's probably just me not using the right verbiage. But I have to wonder if there's a way for this bot to even be, like, smarter than Google in a sense of, like, if it pulls in all of the, I don't know, the information that you have on your site in a way that, you know, if someone ever has a Google Sheet question, they could just go to this one chatbot that you've set up and use it and it's like, has your name all over it, branded well, and all that stuff.

[Ben Collins]

So, yeah, and the. They're getting so good now at answering technical questions, actually, that when you think about, do I go to a blog post and read this long blog post and then copy and paste lines of code or formulas and then try and modify them for my own data? You know, it's more efficient to go through the chatbots now and just use them in combination with, obviously with your knowledge and with the understanding, because you can't just blindly sort of go ahead. But they're really getting very good now at giving you credible answers. But you just still have to know, you know, what you're asking and what you're. What you're getting back to make sure that you're getting, you're not getting stuff that's giving you the wrong answer that's obviously the.

[Dylan]

I think one thing that actually just came to mind too, is, Chanel, I don't know if we were talking to somebody or I maybe I was listening to a podcast. Just this has just all of a sudden surfaced in my head, so I can't remember where it came from, but somebody was like, basically saying, I'm not. I don't want to teach people the information they can easily access. I want to teach them how to access that information properly and efficiently. So kind of like what you were just saying, Chanel, like, if Ben could teach people like, hey, here's how to use AI to solve your Google Sheets issues, or here's the best way to do it, or here are the tools and how to use them most efficiently. Like your most recent YouTube video you just published within the last day or so here, Ben, about using.

[Ben Collins]

Was it stream streamlined AI or Google's AI studio. That's right.

[Dylan]

Yes, that's right. AI's Google Studio, where you're basically just like, talking to it and it's giving you exactly what you need. So, like, I was like, this is. This is amazing. I'd love to learn how to use that. So maybe there's an opportunity there to teach people just how to use. Infuse AI with their. Their Google Sheets.

[Chanel]

That kind of leads into the next. That I wanted to bring up. But you kind of gave some context around why you're not doing more of these. But I was gonna say your YouTube videos seem to do extremely well. Um, everyone seems to have, like, thousands and thousands of views. Um, but the most recent one that you published seems to be like, 11 months ago. It would be awesome to see you do more of that and even just like, leverage them in a different way. Like, yes, there are some people out there talking about all kinds of tech stuff, and they're gonna get millions of views. But I don't think that's your goal here. So I think, um, if you can just kind of lean into your personality of it and how you present things, I think it could be kind of interesting. Clearly, there's a market for it.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I think YouTube is just like a gigantic opportunity still now. I mean, it's hard to stand out. I think, you know, sometimes if I could go back 10 years and just start and put every video I made, instead of courses, just put them all onto YouTube, you know, and wonder where I would have got to today with YouTube. Because once you kind of have that archive on YouTube with the momentum and they keep. They just get this monthly Watch volume of search and watches and things. You know, that's just a consistent sort of lead gen there. But yeah, I still think, I still think that there's a huge opportunity on YouTube. I mean, there's always this fear, oh, you know, I should have started on YouTube five years ago or 10 years ago and crowded now. But I'm not sure that's true. I think that like you said, if you lean into your specific niche and your unique selling point, you know, the way you talk, the way you teach things, where you do things, there's still opportunity there. I actually did publish a video yesterday on YouTube, so it was 11 months ago.

[Chanel]

I saw the LinkedIn one.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, the same one as LinkedIn actually, I put on YouTube. And so I think, yeah, I still would like to do more on YouTube, definitely. I think I just need to. I think I. It was very naive. When I started In January of 2024, I thought, yeah, I'm just going to do two videos a week for the rest of the year and then realize that, wow, this is, you know, it's just really, really time consuming. Not, not so much the, you know, the teaching part, because that's my zone of expertise, but all the rest of the things around YouTube, like, you know, creating good thumbnails and catchy headlines and putting clicking boxes at the end of your YouTube videos and, you know, all the stuff around the videos that you need to do to make them really successful and filling out the whole description properly with all the tags and the time markers and things, and that stuff was like, really time consuming because I didn't really know what I was doing with that stuff, you know, so I'm definitely very much an amateur with YouTube. But I think the solution is, if I want to go further on YouTube, is to find people to help with that. You know, just a thumbnails expert who can just create me a thumbnail for each video. So I'm not doing that piece. That would be a huge time saver, for example, and also the quality. So things like that. I think that that was one mistake I made that if I do it again, you know, I'll look for more specific help from the right people.

[Chanel]

Got it.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah. Just to kind of make that easy.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I mean, I'm just looking at better sheets. Andrew Campfi plays in the same space and he. He's seen something working because in the last like three weeks, he's published like 70 videos. They're all like two minutes long. They're short. They're like really short clips. I don't know, I mean he essentially just takes the same picture.

[Ben Collins]

I've talked to under a few times, you know, and he's got a kind of a different personality and different style and different approach and so it's really.

[Chanel]

Yep.

[Ben Collins]

It's really cool now that the, that there's quite a few different voices now in this Google workspace world. So. Yeah, I like what Andrew's doing and he, I mean 70 videos in three weeks, that's incredible.

[Chanel]

So it looks like he's just taking. Actually some of these are like a minute, minute and a half. But they're short.

[Ben Collins]

Short form content then. Yeah. Interesting. Are they shorts or are they actual.

[Chanel]

They're regular videos.

[Ben Collins]

Interesting.

[Chanel]

But they're, I mean each of them already has like 20 views or not more. Some of them are like 200.

[Ben Collins]

Yep.

[Chanel]

So it's interesting. I think he's just leaning into the search piece of YouTube.

[Ben Collins]

Yep. Well, I think it's the sort of second biggest website for search or something after Google itself.

[Chanel]

Yeah, it's probably closer to first at this point in my guess.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Um, but yeah, his, his thumbnails are all the same. It's just his one picture of him like and he's got like the title. So I, I think if you were to create a template that a VA could probably help you with this pretty easily. Not that you need to create 70 videos but I think the fact that he is doing that means there's like some, it's a signal that there's something happening that he's seeing. Could be interesting. Yeah, I mean I think the other thing, the LinkedIn video you did was great. I think you should do more of that and maybe even lean into a shorter on it like you don't have to do. I think it was like a 30 minute video. Maybe you can do something that's more like top of funnel content to get more eyeballs on it. A 30 second video about how to do one really cool piece of that thing that you were showing. I think that could do pretty well.

[Ben Collins]

So I like for example, writing the newsletter which I'm sure you'll, you'll appreciate Chanel, because you know you can go deep, you can write, you can really go into topics. And part of the reason I've stayed away from social media or not being super into it is because, I don't know, I just like longer form content where you can get into a topic and it's, it's not just a surface level.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

You know, here's this little trick to do, you know, I like to sort of try and say, here's a way to improve this whole process you're doing or something, you know, so it's, it's always a balance. And you know, I've definitely always preferred to be on the long form side. And that's why I think I prefer writing to video. Because video you keep feeling like you're being pushed towards. It should be portrait format and it should be under a minute and it should be sort of all flashy and graphic flying around and I don't know.

[Chanel]

Well, you don't have to go that crazy with it. But I mean, I'm the same way, obviously. You know, I write really long form pieces, but lately I've been kind of forcing myself to post on LinkedIn. And of course LinkedIn is a little bit shorter form. I actually, I knew carousels were doing good on LinkedIn, so yesterday I posted one. At the time I was like, is this really going to help people? Because it was just like, you know, six or seven tips in a carousel. I'm like, this is like really dumb, but I'm going to try it, see what happens, and I will. I am very surprised. Like people are commenting saying like they already went and updated their welcome email. So like people are taking action based on this like tiny little piece of content. And I'm like, well, that makes me feel good, like the world's getting better emails now because I posted that piece of content on LinkedIn.

[Ben Collins]

You're right, you're right. You're absolutely right. I think it's the, the old story of you have to meet your reader where they are.

[Chanel]

Right.

[Ben Collins]

You know, and so, and I do think back to your point about LinkedIn, I think again, that's another area that's definitely makes a lot of sense for me. So, you know, obviously we'll have to put TikTok on side because we don't know what's going on with that. But that's certainly really my scene. And then Instagram I don't think is really either the best place for my content. But LinkedIn is where people are hanging out. Typically they're probably at work. You know, it's okay to look at LinkedIn while at work, right. And it's all full of professional people. So I think that makes more sense for sort of a topic around this very work focused. And I think that, you know, LinkedIn, what I like with LinkedIn is, you know, it can be a blend of written video, these carousel, there's a few different ways you can approach it. And you can bring in a bit of storytelling as well as the actual topic itself. So yeah, it's a bit more. They're like micro blog posts which are more akin to what my newsletter is, is like. And so, you know, I quite enjoy writing those. So I think you're right. I think so. That video I did on LinkedIn was about six minutes long, I think. And I think there could be a sweet spot where it's, you know, two to three minutes long, but it's still more of that traditional format where it's perhaps a landscape orientation, talking about your screen, sharing some things on screen and rather than the sort of talking head in front the iPhone sort of thing. Um, yeah, but yeah, LinkedIn's good on definitely. I think there's opportunity there.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I mean, like you said, people are allowed to scroll LinkedIn at work because it's not looked down upon. And if you're able to like stop them in their feed and like help them with a problem that they had in a quick post, I think that could be interesting. You could even do. So I was looking at your spice up your sheets life. It's your current like lead magnet. It's a long PDF. Um, you could easily spend like six hours one day and like create a bunch of content, like short form content around that.

[Ben Collins]

About to say actually my, my weekly newsletter, my VA turns that into LinkedIn post. She's sort of working through that back catalog. So there's sort of, you know, the weekly newsletter will come out and then anywhere from a week to sort of a few months later that'll be repurposed as a LinkedIn post. And you know, and they go out I think twice a week maybe or three times a week, you know, and we recycle ones from years and years ago because, you know, I think that's perfectly reasonable to recycle. And they do, you know, that does well. I think one thing I could do better is try and connect that top of funnel into my actual funnel. I don't do a very good job of that. So that, you know, encouraging people to get onto the email list rather than just staying on LinkedIn.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I see you have some GIFs in here for some of them too, which is interesting. I like that because it kind of shows people like what you're going to help them solve in a quick tip.

[Ben Collins]

An underrated actually for showing technical things like this because, you know, sometimes you don't want to record the full video, but at the Same time having 15 screenshots to scroll through isn't particularly helpful either, but a quick gif can really bring the whole thing to life.

[Chanel]

I was even thinking you could do a carousel around here are the top 20 keyboard shortcuts you didn't know existed in Google sheets or something?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I've never tried carousels. I should.

[Chanel]

You're right, they're doing well. I will say that I don't want to like the format, but it's doing well. So sometimes you just gotta play the game, I guess.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I was gonna say play the game.

[Chanel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think LinkedIn's a huge opportunity. Uh, we don't have to go too deep into that anymore.

[Dylan]

But I think we were looking through your LinkedIn profile and noticed if people went over to your page, I don't believe you had a. A really obvious way to either sign up for your newsletter or get to your website. So that could be like a really quick and simple.

[Ben Collins]

Yep, yep.

[Dylan]

Add on.

[Chanel]

Oh, the other thing I was gonna say about YouTube videos, I know you were relying heavily video before. I feel like having a YouTube video for some of those major blog posts that you have and embedding that in the post could do really well to get like traffic to both of those. I know it's a lot of work.

[Ben Collins]

But it has worked well actually because I did that for some of the top posts. Like one, the top one is conditional formatting. So I went and created videos for that actually did two, I did a basic and an advanced. And they're now the best two best videos on YouTube. And it is that cycle where they help each other. So, you know, the videos send people to the website and then the website, because the video is embedded there. You know, people who come through search to the website then watch the video. It is a really nice virtuous cycle there where they do help each other. So definitely that is something I was doing and I do think that is a good strategy.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

So identifying the top posts and then doing. Creating videos for them.

[Chanel]

Yeah, I think that could be good.

[Dylan]

We mentioned Andrew Campy. So an opportunity here that we saw and that we've seen a lot of people leveraging as well is just doing more collaborative work. So collaborating with other creators that are in similar spot in your space or kind of complementary spaces, if you will. So Andrew came to mind because I've. I've been following his work for a while as well. He tends to. From everything I've seen, he focuses a lot on like Google Apps scripts and that sort of thing. But doing that within the confines of Google Sheets as well. So he was the first person that came to mind. And then like, if you, you know, there's obviously lots of other creators who are doing Google Sheets types, Newsletter types of newsletters, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that kind of thing. So the whole point here is basically getting these collaborations in place so that you can. You can each benefit from being exposed to each other's audiences without having to do all the work that it would take to normally get in front of those kinds of audience.

[Ben Collins]

Yep, yep. Yeah, definitely. Definitely something I have not done very much of in the past. So, I mean, one of the best collaborations I did, it was more. It was a. Was a sort of. It was a client relationship really, but it was a firm who builds tools that work with Google Sheets. And we did a. A spreadsheet competition. And then I. For the competition, along with one or two of their employees. And it worked. Yeah, I mean, it worked really well for them. They paid me, so that was the return I got. It was like a really. It was fun to work with other people and it. And it was, you know, it was certainly sort of a win, win, win for everybody because I think the people that. The people who joined in the competition as well and then came to the video things to watch, so it came to the webinar to watch the results. All got to learn as well from this, from the whole experience. So it was a. It was a really. The whole thing was a good, fun experience.

[Chanel]

It's almost like a Google Sheets hackathon.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, exactly.

[Dylan]

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool.

[Chanel]

That could be interesting to do. Yeah, I think you could get a lot of, like, momentum with that.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I mean, events are definitely an opportunity. You know, I did that Sheets Con, that live online spreadsheet conference in 2020. I mean, it went off. It went really, really well. But I did realize that I do not want to run big events like that. You know, there's like a million moving pieces and just wasn't my or my personality did not suit trying to organize, you know, an event with that many moving pieces. I still like to just focus on a task and work on one thing and have one big thing to work on. But I do think that, like, there's. In the Excel space, there's some really big online conferences that are only getting bigger and bigger each year, and I think more and more that will be appealing to people. We sort of. We're just looking for more human connection and to see what other people are doing and to collaborate with other people. And yeah, I think that that has accelerated from the, since the COVID years. So yeah, definitely there's opportunities there for everything from the sort of pairing up with another creator to do something, which is, you know, what I'd like to do through to running these big events with 20 or 30 creators and thousands of people coming along. I think there's room there for it as well. So I think that, I think that can apply honestly to creators. Right now there's probably opportunities to run more live things, more live workshops, more one day conferences, half day conferences, that sort of thing.

[Chanel]

You didn't like doing Sheets Con much, but I, I thought that was a huge opportunity for you moving forward if you did want to like get some growth happening pretty quickly.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I mean, I think I did. I loved the event. It was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed hanging out with all the people and meeting people. It was so stressful though, for the few months trying to make sure all the ducks were lined up and.

[Chanel]

Yeah, well, is that something you could hand off some of it to your va?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, potentially.

[Dylan]

Or you could partner with another, again, another collaborator and kind of do it together so you're not just in it alone as well.

[Ben Collins]

Yep, yep.

[Chanel]

Yeah, definitely you could. I mean, I feel like the sky's the limit with that. I Googled Google Sheets conference and yours still comes up first. There's nothing out there.

[Ben Collins]

And you know, I think there is still an opportunity there for sure.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

Because there's a really big Excel one that has just been growing and growing and growing every year.

[Chanel]

If you could even like partner with. I don't know if Google has like people on their team that do outreach to like influencers and stuff. It could be interesting to try and get them on board and partner with them to do it. You could even have like a miss Excel come speak because she's doing some Google Sheets stuff now too.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, there's no shortage of people who could come speak, I'm sure.

[Chanel]

I thought that would be fun and help fill up your sponsorships. Probably because you can position the conference as like part of a package and say like, hey, you get 10 spots in the newsletter plus help us with this conference. Yeah, I thought that would be a good one. But if it's a lot of work mentally, then maybe not.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I can't. I just can't see myself organizing a conference again, even an online one. It really was just not a match for my personality or the way I like to work. So I think because, you know, one Thing I most creators probably have as part of their mo, the way they run their business is they do it because they enjoy the fact they can control sort of the type of work they do and the people they work with and, you know, tailor it to where they're, where they are. So, you know, if you, if you love, if you're an extrovert and you love people and then maybe, yeah, you would go into event management and organizing events and things like that. If you're more like myself, I prefer to, you know, I'm more of an introvert and so I'd rather work on single projects and more do more writing and more sort of, you know, that side of things. So I think that one thing we do as creators is we can tailor our businesses to match, which I love. But I do think it is a good, a good idea. Maybe just not for me.

[Chanel]

Yeah, maybe you can partner with some really outgoing person who wants to do that.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, I'd happily be a speaker.

[Chanel]

If anyone's listening, wants to put on a conference with Ben. He doesn't want to do any of the logistics, but he's got the blueprint.

[Dylan]

For the first go round. So, yeah, oh, I've got an idea for something that would be maybe more, a little bit more on the focused end and that leans more towards writing. And I again, don't know if you've tried this at all or if this is your cup of tea, but what I've seen a lot of people, not a lot of people I've seen some people do really well is going into Reddit forums, especially when it's something where the answers aren't always obvious and you kind of have to go into forums to find answers to these problems. So I'm sure, sure there's a decent contingent of subreddits on Google Sheets and Excel, potentially you could do is go into those sheets, answer questions genuinely, authentically, start going to those forums and man some questions on Google Sheets and, and you can always. You don't promote, you don't want to promote because self promotion gets you banned on, on Reddit, you could always say, I found a really helpful article from and then linked to it. And yes, it is, it is self promotion to some degree. But if you're filling out, if you're answering these questions which you have of fast knowledge, you could probably answer just about any question around Google Sheets in any of these subreddit forms. I think there could be an opportunity to grow there as well, or at least drive some traffic to your posts, especially if you get one that really kind of blows up or an answer that gets upvoted a whole bunch. Again, playing the Reddit game, we talked about playing the LinkedIn carousel game. This would be sort of the same approach.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, Reddit's an interesting one, isn't it? I think it sort of just flies under the radar there, but it's. A lot of people hang out on Reddit. It's a good place to reach people. So it is worth a thought for sure. I haven't really, I mean, historically, again, I haven't done hardly anything on Reddit. I did mention sheets con in Reddit, which helped, I think get some people across.

[Dylan]

Okay.

[Ben Collins]

And I did around about that time I was answering a few questions here and there, but it's been years since I've sort of actively participated in those sheets groups there. You know, it's just, you know, it's hard work to spread your time as a single creator, you know, so. But certainly Reddit is, like I said, I think it's a bit under the radar. We don't really talk about it very often or think about it, but it's just there and it's. Yeah, there's a subreddit for everything.

[Dylan]

Exactly.

[Ben Collins]

There's definitely a few for Google Sheets and that's where that's the most passionate sort of users hanging out. You know, if you're on a subreddit about Google Sheets, you obviously are, you know, a power user and really kind of into it, so.

[Dylan]

And you're probably already subscribed to Ben's newsletter hopefully. Yeah.

[Chanel]

That's funny. Okay, so that's one. I think another one that could be interesting is putting together a referral program. I've seen a couple of newsletters do it pretty well. One of them is a pickleball newsletter called the Dink. Their referral program is. So they partner with some of their sponsors or larger brands in the space and they'll like. If you refer five people, you get free pickleballs. If you refer 50 people, you get a free pickleball paddle. So it's like hyper related to the things that those people are interested in. And only people who play pickleball are going to want a free pickleball paddle. So it's like you're getting the exact right audience from that. Something like that could be interesting. Like if there are other software tools or even like a extension or something that's paid that people would want that they can't get anywhere else except for paying for it, if you could partner with them. And like do some sort of referral program. I think that could be interesting.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. A lot of, there's places like the Morning Brew and HubSpot and the Hustle and things have done a very good job, haven't they, over the years of referrals as well. So yeah, it is, it is something I think that could work well.

[Dylan]

And the nice thing with this is they were doing a lot of physical products, whereas you don't have to worry about that. I mean you could make a Google Sheets mug that, which could be kind of fun. I honestly would probably rock that. But, but I think doing it with like a SaaS tool or SaaS products or like a Chrome extension, that sort of thing would be obviously essentially free for you because you don't have to have anything created and printed. And also on the, on the idea of referrals, one thing I, when I was, when I was working at Sparkloop, who does referral programs? Aleta Solis from SEO fomo, she'd run these milestone giveaways, so kind of like a referral program, but these are more giveaway focused. And what she would do, which was really smart was since obviously the people reading her newsletter were really into SEO. SEO, they want to learn about it or they were experts, they wanted to get better. She would reach out to basically companies like Ahrefs, you know, all the, all the big Semrush as another one and try to get these basically packages or discounts from these companies and say, listen, I'll feature you basically in every newsletter while I'm running this giveaway, this edition and in exchange your. I just want like maybe a 50 discount on your product or you know, something maybe a one year free trial for the winner of this giveaway. And so again she's kind of building these collaborations with these partners and then also giving her readers and her subscribers exactly what they would want, what they'd be willing to share. Because I mean who wouldn't want those, those tools aren't, they are not cheap. So who would want to save the money on that? So it was really well aligned and it worked really well for her too.

[Ben Collins]

Yep, yep. Interesting. Yeah, that's cool. There's certainly, you know, the SEO market is similar. There's plenty of SAS tools again in where I am, in the space I'm in that come to mind for that. What about, so the, the other issue I'm thinking through is because obviously we've talked a lot about top of funnel stuff here, social media and YouTube and things are all sort of top of funnel stuff is I think I need to improve operations to move people from top of funnel down into. Try and get more people into the membership. So that's the, I think that's the other area that I want to spend some time thinking about this year.

[Chanel]

And so you're, you're more focused on getting members versus selling courses at this point, right?

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, at the moment, yep.

[Chanel]

Okay.

[Ben Collins]

Although actually I. So I had all the courses lined up on the sidebar of my website. I took them all away for the membership and they've been selling better since I removed them all from the sidebar and just there's a single button that says courses instead of having.

[Chanel]

That's amazing.

[Ben Collins]

They're selling better now when there's just a single button to click the courses instead of everyone listed up. So, you know, which is great. But yeah, I've moved a lot of my autoresponders for when people sign up now to push them towards the membership instead of the, the courses. But you know what, I think that there's just a certain reluctance to sign up for subscription packages at the moment. I think a lot of people have. Because everything has become subscription now. You know, you go and buy a, something from cvs, you know, for your health, whatever, and it tries to sign you up for sort of refills once every month or something or, you know, any, any products for your pets now are all subscription based. And I think there is a fatigue amongst us as a public. You know, we just don't want more stuff that we're putting on our credit cards because it all adds up even a little bit here and there. Yeah, because I certainly saw that when I launched. I had a few emails from people saying, you know, I'm going to stick with the courses because it's just a one off payment and I'm not signing up for something on a, on an annual basis. So it's definitely been an interesting challenge because it's a different business model that I have not quite, you know, entirely figured out yet.

[Chanel]

Do you think it would be beneficial for like a tech company or a business that's heavily involved in data to buy a couple seats for their people?

[Ben Collins]

I mean, that would be. Yeah, I think that would be great. And I do have a, I have a group plan option that a few people have signed up for. I haven't actively approached companies to try and market that again because I don't really know how to go about doing that. A lot of this comes down to kind of as a Creator, you have the craft that you're known for, that you do, and then you have the selling of that craft or the marketing of that craft. And I think creators tend to fall into. You end up being slightly better at one or the other or one is your comfort zone. And I certainly feel more on the craft side of, you know, what I like to do is solve problems and do the technical things. And the marketing has always been, you know, is a challenge. You know, one thing for this year that I definitely need to do is find another coach. So I worked with a coach back in 2000 from about 2018 to 2021 ish when I was sort of growing the whole course business, which was immensely helpful figuring all that out. And so I really think, I think that's the. What I need to do next is find another coach again kind of to have sessions almost like we're doing now. Right. Of just bouncing ideas around and then coming back and following up two weeks later or a month later and seeing. Making sure I've actually followed through, you.

[Dylan]

Know, because a business and an accountability coach.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, the accountability is huge. Right. You know, when you've been. Especially when you've been doing something for a long time, you know, because it's easy to fall into the. Into a sort of groove of just doing the same things and.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

So I think you need someone just to push you against it. I definitely think that's something I'll be looking at this year is to soon as well to find a coach to work with.

[Chanel]

I think one of the things that's helping me because I'm in a similar boat. I mean mine's more of a community than a membership focus, but similar concepts. I think talking about it more on social because I mean it's so basic. But like I never talked about it really until recently. So I think even just posting certain things, like I think in the community. I looked at your sales page and it says you do like regular calls about new things that are happening. So I think that lends itself really well to social. So like if a new feature comes out on Google Sheets, you can post about it and say, hey, we're having a call this week on Friday. If you want to jump in, you can join the membership. Like just stuff like that. Yep. Or after the call, like somebody had a big takeaway or changed something and it saved them 10 hours at their job. Like post about that stuff.

[Dylan]

Yeah, I know.

[Ben Collins]

Yep. Yeah, true. It's sort of what is it that someone else to hear about something seven times before they'll take action or something. Yeah, but I mean, just. It's just about reminding people that it's there. There'll be one thing, like you said, that maybe that will just give them the little nudge they need. He's talking about that new feature. I want to go find out how that new feature works and that's enough to nudge them into.

[Chanel]

So I have a question. So you do calls bi weekly, you said? Every other week.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, so I. I haven't sort of set it to a schedule yet. So I launched in September. We did a workshop in one in October, one in November, and we've got three this month in January. So I guess it will work out to be about one or two a month. Probably two a month. But I'm not sort of. Not yet anyway. At least sticking to the rigid schedule until I just had this running for a little while longer. Just to sort of figure out what the baseline is.

[Chanel]

I was just thinking with the type of content you do, there's probably a huge opportunity for you to say maybe you don't want to do a weekly call, but we have every other week call or something you can send in your questions. Like, I guarantee there are people in their jobs that are like, I have this project, I don't know how to fix this. And like, I know you don't necessarily want to do consulting, but just having the ability for them submit a question somewhere and get it answered by someone like you would be a huge benefit. I think people would pay more like 500 or more a year for something like that just to have you almost like on. Not on call, but like that option to have that.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you think sort of like an office hours. Yeah, yeah, definitely, I think so. I have a list of a few ideas to try and grow the membership and certainly that's near the top of the list. And I think I could, you know, I was thinking about it last. Earlier this week actually after the workshop was just to say maybe add an extra hour on the back of the workshop that just people can hang around for if they want and we can answer questions about the workshop or. Or any other sheets questions or it could be its own dedicated slots. So yeah, I think so. I ran and I did a cohort course in 2021. 2. Two editions of a cohort course actually, which is, you know, kind of similar to what we're talking about now. Actually you have the workshops each week and we had a weekly office hours and that was always my favorite session because, you know, it Wasn't just me, this one way thing. It was sort of the whole group just getting together. Someone would ask a question, you know. Yeah, often I would answer it. But also we'd also get lots of other people chiming in with their ideas and things. So it was always just a fun session. So I do think that that's coming.

[Chanel]

Okay.

[Ben Collins]

I think that could work really well. And I think that then I just need to do a better job of communicating to the, you know, 54, whatever, thousands who are members or however many is and saying, look, this is, you know, what you're missing out on and what we're doing.

[Chanel]

So yeah, I feel like you and I can both do a better job of like promoting it. In our regular emails just having like a block that's always at the bottom saying like, this week we're doing this, this week we're doing like. And just sign up here, sign up here. People need to see that. A bunch of times I forget that too.

[Ben Collins]

Actually. I've scheduled my newsletter Monday already and I'm. As soon as this call finishes, I'm going to go and put a block in.

[Chanel]

Yes.

[Ben Collins]

About what's happening on the app script.

[Chanel]

I hope you get at least one sale from it.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a section in my newsletter and then I just would always find that I would, it would get towards the end of the week and I hadn't written it and I'd run out of time and I'd be like, I'll just, I'll just cut out this week and I'll do it next week. And you know, it's. I think it just needs to be that you need to reorder the priorities. So before you write the newsletter, you write things like that blog. So it's just in there disreputable for the members. We're doing XYZ and then you can fill out and then go write the actual newsletter because it's, you know, the newsletter is the easy bit because you know, that's what I do and I just enjoy that bit. So it's sort of natural just to go there, write that out and then you think everything else you sort of don't want to do, so you've got to do that other stuff first, I think.

[Chanel]

And then the newsletter and speaking to my soul. I do the same thing every week.

[Ben Collins]

So basically you just need to be told to do it.

[Chanel]

I'm going to do this thing, it's going to be so good. And then like, like Sunday morning rolls around, I'm like trying to get it published and out there. And then I'm like, I guess next week I'll do it. I have a feeling there are a lot of people writing newsletters who do the exact same thing. So it's a constant battle. Well, this, I think this was fun. I know we only have a few minutes left, so I don't want to like run over on your time or anything, but I feel like we should have you come back on in like six months or something and talk through like what's happened.

[Ben Collins]

That would be interesting.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chanel]

I think it'd be fun.

[Ben Collins]

Let me recap then.

[Chanel]

Yeah. So tell us what you took away.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, well, because I've been making, I've been writing notes actually, which is why I sort of have my head down if you don't. So we've got the chat GPT bot, which I like, so I'll give that a thumbs up. Yeah, we've got the YouTube, which I like as well. I'll give that a thumbs up. LinkedIn, I like that. We'll give it a thumbs up. One on one collaborations, I think is a great idea. The event I'll pass Reddit, I'm not sure about and referral programs, I'm, I'll look, you know, worth thinking about, but I don't know if I would necessarily do that. So that's my top of funnel stuff. So definitely three or four great ideas in there. And then in terms of sort of moving people through the funnel to try and get more membership signups, I think just talking about it more often is so important and something that, you know, I did the launch, I did a Black Friday promotion and I have not really mentioned it very often in between. And I think you just have to keep, keep talking about it and sharing all the cool things that are happening. Yeah, that's a big one. I think the idea of office hours is a great one. And then, yeah, again, talking about it really. And a sort of specific action is to put it into my weekly newsletter about what's coming up to try and get some excitement around what's coming that week.

[Chanel]

I feel like we're going through similar struggles on the membership promotion, LinkedIn front.

[Ben Collins]

So, you know, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's so interesting being a creator in the space at the moment because on one hand there's never been a better time to be a creator because there's so much, so many tools out there to help us, so much opportunity and then on the other hand it's never, I Feel like it's harder than ever. You know, 10 years ago, if you had a basic WordPress site with an email signup with a PDF, you could make a huge business. And now it's like people are way more sophisticated and way more competition. A lot more people in the space doing it. And people are fractured all over the place now. You know, blogs are just one avenue. That's one crowd. We've got all the social media platforms now to hang out on. And so, I don't know, it feels a lot harder as well to.

[Dylan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Collins]

To stand out now. So, yeah, I think it's more than ever before. You have to be really smart about where you put your time because there's so many places to try and be and you can go wrong if you try and do it all.

[Chanel]

Yes, agreed. Focus is key, especially now. Yeah, yeah.

[Dylan]

And I think the. With everybody, the. The democratization of all this stuff, making it easy for everybody to do it, it just means the good content will always, I think, rise to the top. And I think, Ben, you. You publish really good, quality content. It's really informative and really interesting. I think that you've got. You've got at least that going for you or, you know, a copycat, for example, doesn't have the knowledge and the drive and the insight that you do. So I think that's an advantage that you can. A feather in your cap, if you will.

[Ben Collins]

So.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

Thank you.

[Chanel]

Awesome. Well, this was fun. Appreciate you coming on. Like I said, we'll have to have you back and kind of recap and regroup and see what happens.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, definitely. And I appreciate all the ideas.

[Chanel]

Yeah.

[Ben Collins]

Thank you very much for sharing. Definitely gives food for thought and a lot of homework, it sounds like.

[Dylan]

Yeah, a little bit.

[Ben Collins]

Thanks.

[Chanel]

And if anybody wants to sign up for Ben's newsletter, you can go to benlcollins.com and we'll link that in the show notes too, and follow him on LinkedIn. On LinkedIn, because I'm sure there's going to be some more good stuff coming.

[Ben Collins]

Yeah, we'll definitely be posting there.

[Dylan]

Yeah.

[Chanel]

Thanks so much.

[Ben Collins]

Thanks very.