Courtney Johnson (0:00)

Foreign welcome to Slay the Gatekeeper. I'm your host Courtney Johnson and I am here to un gatekeep the gatekeep. Thank you so much for being here. Enjoy. Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of Slay the Gatekeeper. I am your host, Courtney Johnson. I am so excited to be here today. I have a very, very special episode today because I am reading your questions. I posted a video saying that I wanted to give you guys free advice, free consulting. If you send me a question and you guys delivered, there's a fuck ton of questions and I'm going to jump right into these. First question from my friend Guy Thompson. Guy says, how do you decide which digital products or lead magnets to make first? This is such a good question. So what you're going to do, first step, you are going to sort by your top performing posts. Whatever platform you post the most on. Go find that platform, find your analytics and find your top performing post. The reason why you want to find your top performing post as a subject for your first digital product is because your top performing post is already proven. Like it's already proven that your audience wants to hear that topic from you. It's already proven that your audience cares about what you're talking about. So step one, you're gonna find your top performing posts. Step two, you are going to build that out. So you can build that out into maybe a webinar, maybe a PDF, maybe a guide, maybe a mini course, whatever. I really recommend your first digital product to be free. So you can start collecting email addresses. So make it something that's really, really small. For example, a checklist or a guide or journal prompts or something. Another great way to think about your first digital product is you can actually just host a free webinar or a free mastermind or even like a free consulting session. Take that recording and then make that recording your mastermind digital product. So you're gonna figure out what your top performing post is. You are going to build that out into a very small digital product or you are going to host some sort of like free webinar and make that your digital product. You are going to put it out for free. Then while you're putting it out for free, people are downloading it for free. You're collecting email addresses. What you're gonna do is set up another digital something that expands on product A but goes deeper and goes more in depth. Next question is really spicy Knives Monroe asks how to make a living as a video creator and personal brand in the next 90 days. What are my exact steps. Honestly, 90 days is kind of short to make a complete living as a content creator. However, it is possible. I have seen it done. The first thing I would do is start posting every single day and you need to post value added content. Give away an absurd amount of content for free. Like if you are giving away an insane amount of content for free, people are going to gravitate towards you. After you start posting every single day, after you're giving away a ton of free value, like a radical amount of free value, you're going to create an offer. A Hundred Million Dollar Offers is a really great book to teach you how to make an offer. But you're going to make an offer and you are going to start to promote that to your audience. I would also recommend starting to reach out to brands as soon as you possibly can. Even if you only have like 500 followers, you can still start reaching out to brand. Start getting gifted collaboration. So brands are sending you something as a gift in exchange for you posting a story about it or a post about it. Do really, really, really well on those gifted collaborations. So much so that they want to start paying you. They want to start paying you to create content. Then you can get into ugc. So you're posting every single day. You're giving away a radical amount of value for free. You're doing gifted collaborations and you're turning those gifted collaborations into paid collaborations and user generated content. And you have an offer based on whatever your area of expertise is and you're that offer to your audience on the reg. Okay, Luxtrends store asks how do you convert viewers into actual buyers and customers? You have to give a radical amount of value away for free. For example, let's say you are a makeup brand. You need to be putting out makeup tutorials, you need to be putting out makeup inspiration. You need to become the authority on makeup. So when your target audience comes to their buying decision, they naturally gravitate towards you. If you are having a hard time converting your audience into paying customers, you're either not giving enough value away or there's something wrong with your product. Next question from Brookie Cookie. I wrote a children's rhyming story, but I want to get it copyrighted first. Where do I begin? Also, how do I get published? I don't know shit about copyright. Find a lawyer. As far as how to get it published, I would recommend listening to my podcast episode with Ellen Polk. We talk about how to get your book published. Gula Bodessi asks how to start a podcast Start with the minimum viable product. What is the minimum viable product for your podcast? Let's say you have a podcast about real estate. I would start off by just creating a social media video series about real estate where you're interviewing people with the same three questions and it's a one minute interview. Or maybe you're doing a Zoom interview and you're just sharing the Zoom link and that's the podcast, right? Like, start extremely, extremely small and then iterate on that. So again, maybe you're starting with Instagram reels. One minute conversation. You're doing it via Zoom, and you're asking them three questions and the quality is kind of shitty, the questions are kind of shitty, and the editing is kind of shitty. V2, improve the quality. So maybe you're moving from Zoom to Riverside. V3, you're improving the quality of the questions. V4, you're changing it from maybe 1 minute to 10 minutes, right? And then you're going to iterate and iterate and iterate slowly and slowly and slowly until you get to a full podcast. Or you could just pay a producer like 10 grand and get it all set up for you. Normalizing the basics asks how to make money when you're completely burned out from corporate. Okay, let's do a little exercise. You're going to ask yourself, what would I do if I had unlimited access, unlimited resources, unlimited money? I'm talking, I'm getting a billion dollars every single day in my bank account. I have access to anything I want. Like, I have unlimited access. What would I be doing with my life? What would you be doing? Maybe you're like, I would finally start to publish my art. I would finally write that book. I would travel around the world. Whatever your answer to that question is, is typically where your zone of genius lies, and it's typically where your purpose lies. So answer that question, figure out what that thing is, and start doing that thing on the side again. Maybe it's painting. Maybe you're really passionate about painting. You want to start painting and you're burnt out from your corporate job. Start painting. Start painting on the side. You're going to see that that is like activating your creative spirit. You're so fucking excited and reinvigorated around painting, and then you will slowly start to make money from that. TheJustin Neff asks, what's your main sources of income and which ones do you use social media for? My main sources of income brand deals is about one third of my business. I create content for mainly, like B2B SaaS companies. Another big chunk of my business, maybe 50% is my cohorts, my digital products, my courses, my coaching. So all of the resources that I'm providing around building your personal brand. The last 20% is honestly random things. I don't even know I have an Airbnb, but that's more like breaking even vibes paying for my mortgage. Last time I calculated, I think I had like 12 streams of income. So honestly, I should probably break all of those down. But yeah, main things comes from brand deals and the educational resources that I'm creating for others. Currently burnt the fuck out in my current field. I'm trying to direction into something totally different. Where would you recommend I start? Okay, what you're going to do is you're going to go on google.fucking com, you're going to google the one thing PDF and then you're going to see this like Farsi or Arabic or something script and it says the one Thing Purpose worksheet. Click on that, do that Purpose worksheet. Come back and thank me. Blue Child asks, I got an llc. But you know what other documents are needed to make a business legit. Example. Example. An ein. Yes, you do need an ein. I would use Taylor Brands. Just go on Taylor Brands, type in what you need. It's going to give it all. It gives you like a little chat bot where you can get your ein number and all the other legal things. Or you can also hire a lawyer. But that. That's a little spicy. Biani e asks, as a college student, how would you restart your career from scratch today? Would you go to TikTok, Instagram or LinkedIn first? How do we set ourselves apart from the crowd? Well, first off, I probably would not have gone to college college, honestly. I mean, I learned some shit in colle, but I didn't really fit in in college. I don't really like college that much. I was kind of a weirdo in college, to be honest. I probably would have skipped out on college and learned sales somehow. Or I would have interned or apprenticed for a content creator, a course creator, some big figure if you want to stand out from everybody else while you're in college. I would start with LinkedIn. Just start posting on LinkedIn one time per week. And if you make that a habit now, it's going to pay dividends down the road. There are 1 billion users on LinkedIn and less than 1% of those post one time per week. So if you can literally just start posting one time per week, you're going to be in the top 1% of the entire LinkedIn. Now imagine where that's going to take you as a college student. You are starting this from being a college student. That's insane. You are going to outperform all of your peers because you are already going to have a library of your expertise before you even get into the real work field. It's going to be insane. All right, this username I cannot pronounce. I'm so sorry, but they ask. I am a certified coach, by the way, what the fudge is a coach certification? So many fudgeing people come to me being like, courtney, I just got certified as a coach. Now what do I do? I'm like, why do you need a certificate? Whatever. Maybe, maybe you do need a certification. I don't know. I'm a coach. I've never been certified. I think a lot of those certifications are scams, but I'm open to being proven wrong. I just see a lot of people get certified to be a coach and then they don't do shit with it or they think their certification is going to matter. Nobody gives a fuck about your credentials. Nobody gives a fuck about your certifications. What they care about is the results that you can bring them. Okay, I got certified at this school, I got certified at this personal coaching. No one gives a fuck. What can you do for them? What problem are you solving for them? It's the only thing that matters. Okay, continuing with this question, I just started integrating spirituality in tech. How do I monetize my business? I post on LinkedIn every day and I've started posting videos. Well, first of all, congratulations for starting to post on LinkedIn. Congratulations for starting to post videos. In my opinion, you don't even need to post on LinkedIn every day. Maybe like four times a week is a good number. I'm very excited that you're posting videos, but as far as how to monetize your business, pick a specific problem and then create an offer around that problem. For example, you're talking about integrating spirituality in tech. Maybe you are going to address burnout. You're going to address burnout for tech workers, and you're going to say, look, I know what it feels like to work in tech, and you're super burnt out and you're lonely because you're working from home and you're not fulfilled. That's where you're going to step in as a coach. So you're going to create some sort of offer offering around solving that problem. What I want you to avoid is making an offer that's too broad. All right? If you're just making an offer that's like, I help people in tech that is way too broad and people aren't going to buy it. People aren't going to care. You want to get a lot more specific. So I help remote tech workers decrease burnout or I help people mindfully transition from the healthcare industry to the tech industry. Pick specifically what you're going to offer. Now you might say, courtney, I don't want to pigeonhole myself. And that's okay. It's okay. This is not an offer you have to stick with for the rest of your life forever. Just test it out. So the easiest way to do that is by adding a calendly link to your LinkedIn profile Featured section and making it a very clear call to action of booking a one on one with you or booking coaching with you. And again, make sure you're adding in the problem that you solve. The problem that you solve of integrating spirituality and tech. By the way, I think that's really cool what you do. I think we need more of that. C10one asks, how do you find which digital products are in demand? I have personally never looked or researched what digital products are in demand. I just create digital products by thinking about the problem that I want to solve. My whole mindset around creating digital products has been I want to create things that I wish I would have had when I was going on a journey or I was trying to solve a problem for myself. So I look back at myself a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, and I'm like, shit, what do I wish that that version of Courtney would have had? What would have helped her a lot. And then I go and create that thing. I encourage you to start to learn how to tune into your intuition. That's gonna guide you a lot more than just like the data on what digital products perform the best. Because when we're not creating from the heart, when we're creating from what statistically it's telling us is like the next thing to do, you lose all passion. Your audience can sense that you don't have a passion. And I know it can sound woo woo that I'm like, eh, lead with your heart. Your heart's gonna tell you, but I promise it fucking will. Where's this camera? It fucking will tell you. Jamie Cropley asks, how do I make $1 online in 2025, even if it takes me an entire year? There's so many ways you can make $1 online. Oh my gosh. And by the way, if you can make $1 online, you can make $10 online. And if you can make $10 online, you can make $100 online. And if you can make a hundred dollars online, you can make $10,000 online. Same shit, different scale. It is way fucking harder. It is way harder to go from $0 to $1 than it is to go from $10 to $10,000. So how do you make $1 online in 2025? Where I would start is making a paid calendar scheduling link. This could be maybe for a 30 minute call with you around your area of expertise. So think about something that you already accomplished that you're really proud of. Did you overcome some sort of hardship in your life? Did you finally graduate and get that degree? Did you get prom? Heal a wound that allowed you to be in a really amazing partnership. Whatever that thing that you've already accomplished, start to help other people do it. Make a calendar link where they have to pay to talk to you. Start really low. I mean honestly, start for like $50 or $100 for an hour and I promise you, people will book it. Like, put a calendar link in your LinkedIn Featured section right now. Every time I've told somebody to do this, at least one person has booked it. R605Life asks, what's your advice or process for brand deals? So I do two things. One, I do a lot of outreach where I just message brands on Instagram and ask them to send me free shit. I'm like, hey, I love your product. I am a user of your product. It's really cool. If you're ever open to any partnerships, I would love if you can keep me in mind. And then they send me free shit. And sometimes that stuff turns into paid deals. I also have a brand manager that basically manages all my brand deals for me. That's been amazing. Elizabeth, Talent, Kelsey, she's so cool. But if I had to start brand deals for from scratch, I would start by making a list of every physical and digital product that I consume. Every single app, like down to like my bank and where I get my hair done and the skincare I use and the apps I use on the daily Make a list. Just start documenting your life. Start naturally posting about them because these are already things that are embedded and organic in your life. Start naturally posting about these things. Once you post it organically about a brand, like three to five times, screenshot them, save down those videos, send it to the brand, and out of every 10 brands you reach out to with this at least 30% are going to want to work with you in some capacity. Miranda Doesbrands asks, are your consulting and ghostwriting clients all inbound? Yes. I have never in my life done any outreach for ghostwriting. Everybody comes to me. Do you know why? Because I solved a problem. I am the embodiment of a solved problem for somebody else. They see me post on LinkedIn. They see how well my LinkedIn posts perform. They see that I have been posting, posting on LinkedIn for years and years and years, really consistently. So who, who are they going to reach out to? Of course they're going to reach out to me because they're going to say, courtney, I saw how you solved this problem. I saw how you did this thing. Now I want to do that thing. I want to do that thing for myself. You honestly don't need to do a ton of outbound. If you are posting, if you are posting consistently, people should be coming inbound to you. Because when you are posting consistently, you are creating top of mind awareness. So when your target audience comes to their buying decision, they're naturally gravitating towards you. Katankora says, you suggested creating a Wins folder during your career. What would this look like? How would it fit into a portfolio? So I think of a Wins folder like your own personal review curation. Every time somebody sends you a nice slack message, or a client compliments you via email, or even a coworker texts you to congratulate you on something, take a screenshot and put that in either a folder in your phone or a folder on your desktop. Every time you're feeling down, come back, open up the Wins folder and it helps you recalibrate. It helps you give yourself some love and shows you how amazing you are and how far that you've come as far as how it integrates into your portfolio. A lot of them probably won't make sense in your portfolio, but there will be those key few compliments or reviews that I would just take the screenshot, put the screenshot in your portfolio. So it might be something like, oh my gosh, Sally, that graphic design brand kit you gave us was so incredible. Our whole team loves it, right? Like a client telling you you something nice. You could throw that in your graphic design portfolio. I also really encourage you to start using LinkedIn reviews. It's really important to have like five to ten LinkedIn reviews. If you don't have them already. Go ask your coworkers, go ask your friends, go ask your family. I don't fucking care who it is, just go make sure you have some Reviews on your LinkedIn. I am Antonio Lazo asks, how do you define brand deals? What type of content or deliverables are you producing? So there's two types of brand deals you can do. Actually, there's a lot of types, but there's two main types. One is user generated content and one is like influencer work. So user generated content is your creating content that's going on their page, not on your page. You are acting as like an ad hoc social media manager to them. This is the easiest influencer work to get into. You don't have to have a following at all. You just have to know how to speak on camera, how to be on camera, how to post. Actually, that's not true because you don't even have to be in the videos if you're doing user generated content work. The second type of brand deal, the one that I do the most, is I actually promote a product. And that could either be an Instagram story, a podcast ad, or a video or written post. On social media, normally the process is the brand reaches out, my manager negotiates with them, she sends me an offer. If I agree to the offer, there's usually some sort of onboarding component where I learn a little bit about the brand or I try out the tool or the product and then I usually draft a script, get the script approved. Once the script is approved, then I record it and then I bill them for money. Hasant g asks, is your social media strategy guide for all social media platforms or specific ones? I'm looking to grow my business. LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook pages. So I do have different digital products focusing on specific platforms. However, content creation is a skill. Content creation is a skill that once you learn it, can be applied to literally any platform. I think it's such bullshit when course creators or content experts or marketing experts are like, I'm gonna give you the exact prescription on how to be successful on this one platform. Yes, that might work for a little bit, but that's not actually teaching you how to create content in a way that's sustainable for you. My next question is from Spink and it's about my level up on LinkedIn program. Spink asks, is this catered towards women or am I just under a false impression? My cohort is for everybody. I do say that I help women. Like I help women build their personal brands, but I help everyone build their personal brand. The reason why I say I help women is because if I said I help everyone, I believe that would be too broad. And I want to help more women. Sorry men. I love you and I will help you. I just want to help more women because, like, I'm a, I'm a woman. Next question. How do I get over a negative money mindset? I still see money as something that is bad or evil. Girl, you got to know that money is neutral. Money is completely neutral in the same way a hammer is neutral. You can use a hammer for good, you can build a house with a hammer, and you could probably murder someone with a hammer. Money is the same thing. Money is just leverage. Money amplifies what already is there. If you are an asshole, money's gonna make you even more of an asshole. But if you are a cool, giving, generous person, money will make you even more cool and generous and giving. Also if you're still in this mindset of like, rich people suck, they're awful. But I want money, but I still think it sucks. And money is great, but it's also evil. And your brain is kind of going back and forth with these different competing stories. What I would recommend is start to find expanders. Start to find people in your life that you know or even people online that are using their money really ethically and that are making really good, big, amazing changes in the world. Because if you don't have an example of it, your mind is still going to continue those stories of telling you it's evil and it's bad. Next question. Julia wins again asks do you have any advice for people that are on their content creator journey with adhd? Two pieces of advice here. One, you have to, have to, have to surround yourself with other people that are on the same journey. If it's just you in isolation, it's going to be really, really fucking hard. Find content creator meetup groups. Go to places where other content creators are like a podcast studio or content studio or content networking events. Maybe brand pop ups like you got to go and meet other content creators. You have to have people in your life that are doing the same thing as you, that are on the same path as you. The other advice I would recommend is coworking. Co working has helped me so, so much. Body doubling has helped me so, so much. I really like the tool flown. It's great for coworking. I also have my own content creator specific coworking club. Would love to see you there. But you need to create that support. But you need to create that support. You need to have those people around you that are mirroring what you're doing and take mushrooms. Next question. Leah is asking, do you think freelancing is the way to go? I think freelancing is a good bridge between corporate world and being on your own. I personally don't think that freelancing is sustainable forever. It's not very scalable. However, it's really, really good to start. It's a really good place to start to gain your autonomy, to start to gain your own sovereignty. Freelancing is great to go deeper into your skills and also gain confidence around starting a business. The really, really successful people that I see that have gone from corporate world to a ton of success usually have freelance as a step, a necessary step in their path, but not as the end of their path. I love this question. Okay, Jay Cassie asks I need a transformational experience right now. Any recommendations? I'm in Austin. Honestly. Okay, I can't really give you. I can't on my podcast. I can't do this on public. I can't give you my people. But what I would do if you were looking for a transformational experience because publicly I cannot promote D U R G s. Go to a breath work class. Go do a breathwork workshop. You'll get plugged in with the right people. Breathwork in itself is a crazy transformational experience. Trust me. Breathwork is so fucking powerful. Literally craziest experiences of my life have been like psilocybin, DMT to be magnetic and breathwork fit food wise Asks how do you think blogging will do in 2025? I don't know if traditional blogging will ever come back. I kind of wish it would. However, I do think that Substack is going to be even more impactful in 2025. Substack notes have a lot of virality right now. If you're looking for a newsletter platform, I would definitely recommend Substack. I'm not personally on it. I think it's more for like creatives but also tech founders. I'm seeing a lot of tech founders have a ton of success on Substack. I don't use it because I find a lot of value in converting people through sequences. Substack doesn't have that feature, but Substack is kind of like the new OG blogging. Sarah Contino asks, can you talk more about the private IG theory? Thank you, yes. Oh my gosh. I have a prediction for 2025 that brands are going to be sponsoring private Instagram stories. There is an inherent trust in private Instagram stories and there's an exclusivity and brands have yet to exploit that. I'm not saying this is a good or a bad thing. I am just saying I think this is coming and I think brands are actually going to be paying a premium even though it's shown to less people to be in creators close friends stories because the impact is so, so deep because of that exclusivity. Michelle asks, given that people can go to ChatGPT for life coaching, can you share how a coach can position implementation and transformation experiences as the focus offer rather than course info? I have a nervous system regulation course but want to build a community experience of women implementing and supporting each other's results with me as a guide. Yeah, this is really, really important to understand. For 2025 we have access to all of the world's information at the tip of our fingers. Nobody needs to buy your course. They can find that information from AI. So you have to have a differentiator. My recommendation for a differentiator is entertainment, community and implementation. So entertainment. You have to be entertaining and funny and interesting when you're on your courses. When you're teaching, you have to be teaching in a very interesting way. That is something that you have that AI doesn't have yet. Second, you need implementation. So you have this course. Don't just give the course away and go away. Have some sort of accountability group, have a coworking group, have support coaches that help with implementation. You need to have some sort of implementation component because that is also something that AI can't do. That you can do. And lastly, community and human connection. Can you bring your course alumni in person together? Can you connect people? Can you have some sort of intentional networking that's attached to this course? Those things are going to set you apart and those things are why people are going to buy your course rather than just going to ChatGPT to find the same information. Infernex says I have yet to have someone convince me that posting on social media isn't just a huge waste of time for business. Probably because your social media sucks, dude. Alter ego asks, how do I deal with the trolls? I get a lot of mean and negative comments. You have trolls. That's fucking amazing. Trolls are a huge honor. It is a huge honor to have trolls. My God, anyone that's relevant in the world has trolls. Look at the most influential people in our entire world. Half of the world hates them and half the world loves them. If you want influence, you are going to have trolls. There is no way around it. Every time you get a mean comment, every time somebody says something rude to you, every time you have a troll in your comment section, say thank you for it. Trolls are amazing. Trolls are like little engagement fairies that sprinkle magical algorithm dust on your post. I fucking love trolls, and you should, too. Anytime My clients are like, oh, my God, Courtney, I got my first troll. I'm like, congratulations. I am so proud of you. Hell, yes. First troll. And hopefully more to come. Because, my friends, if you ain't getting trolls, you ain't relevant. Okay, last question is from Catherine. Annabelle. Catherine asks, can you give some advice for somebody who has a career gap of about 10 months? Girl, you either say you were freelancing or you say you had to sign an NDA. Don't tell them you took 10 months off. Lie. Okay, maybe I have time for a few more questions. Avery asked. What do you think about the four hour work week? I like it. I like the book. It was really helpful. For me, Four hour work week was my first step on my journey of delegation. Delegation is really fucking hard and a really hard skill that I had to learn. But, man, y'all start delegating, you need put $100 this month aside to start practicing how to delegate. Get your house cleaned, get your car cleaned by somebody else. Hire somebody on upwork to finally organize those files. You will not be successful unless you learn to delegate. Period. There are absolutely no exceptions. You have to delegate. Delegation is not something you're good or bad at. It is a skill that you have to practice and that you have to learn. But I don't have enough money to delegate. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Okay, you do. Period. You can invest $50 a month into delegating, and if you can't, you got bigger issues. Okay, guys, I found my money transparency video, so I'm breaking down my income streams. Airbnb, 6 to $10,000 a month. That's one rental apartment. 0 to $2,000 a month. That's two digital products, 250 to 1500amonth. Brand deals, 5 to 15,000amonth. Affiliate marketing, 10 to $100 a month. Ghostwriting, 1 to $3,000 a month. Patreon, 2 to $3,000 a month. Cohorts, $20,000 a quarter. Coaching and consulting, 1 to 5,000amonth. Speaking. Zero to a thousand a month. High yield savings account, dividends, investments. Zero to a hundred dollars a month. And then creator, fund, or just like platforms, paying me 50 to $1,500 a month. So that is 1212 streams of income. Okay, let's call that a wrap. Thank you. I love you guys. I'm so thankful you're here. Xoxoxo See you in the next episode. Okay, y'all, if you like this episode, you would love, love my Patreon. Okay? You get exclusive access to me, exclusive content, tons of other resources, and a lot of juicy, okay? So I hope to see you on my Patreon.