Valeria (3:04)

They don't need for anything. So for them, it's just like they. They want to contribute to the world. They want a creative outlet, they want to build a community. It's pretty, like, it's a pretty virtuous pursuit because they really have no intention to make money. They don't care if they do. If they. In this, these, you know, the people kind of in this first bucket, if they do, it's a bonus to be able to go show their family. Hey, look, I.

Troy Sandich (3:24)

Is this like, kind of like the same avatar as somebody who sold a company?

Valeria (3:27)

No, because somebody who sold a company went through a real hardship to get that done. I'm talking about like somebody who married.

Troy Sandich (3:33)

Well and they just want an audience.

Valeria (3:35)

Yeah, they just want to. It's a hobby. They just want to have a hobby. They don't even have anything to prove. They just want to build a community. They want to have. I see it all the time. Like, I see it. People who join us, they. And like, I don't say it in a negative way. I mean, they, they're financially sound, they have no need for money, but they want to make a difference in the world. They want to have a voice, they want to. They want to help. They have a cause, they have an art that they want to share with the world. So that's kind of one group. A second group are people who want to replace traditional employment income. So somebody who can make, let's say, I don't know, like on a very basic level, let's say an esthetician who would make $60,000 a year wants to make a hundred thousand dollars a year being a creator who can set her. Her own hours. I was gonna say his. Her own hours, but I don't know any male estheticians. But, you know, she could set her own hours and she could have the independence of being an entrepreneur, being a creator, doing brand deals while creating community and, you know, having the benefits of the experiences that she's going to get the fame. It's nice, it's pleasant. Right? So that's kind of the second people who are just trying to replace employment income and also how. And that's more stable than employment income because you don't know when you're going to get fired.

Troy Sandich (4:47)

It's so funny that you say that so casually, like in your mind, because you live in this world, you just Said creator income, which is really just solopreneurship in my mind. I think being a creator is a solopreneur. You just said that creator income is more steady, more reliable than employment income. But that it's. That is such a flip from what most people believe. I mean, like, most people believe that they're in their nine to five and they haven't branched out into solopreneurship creating, trying to monetize what they know, trying to monetize a brand because they feel like.

Valeria (5:19)

I can tell you why, but remember that I have to tell you about Bucket three.

Troy Sandich (5:22)

Yeah.

Valeria (5:22)

Because otherwise I'll forget about Bucket.

Troy Sandich (5:23)

Okay. You do Bucket three, but then you're.

Valeria (5:25)

Selling you that first.

Troy Sandich (5:26)

Yeah.

Valeria (5:26)

And then Bucket, Bucket two.

Troy Sandich (5:27)

Yes.

Valeria (5:27)

So in Bucket three are the people who want to hit the grand slams. Those are the people who want, like, they. It's. They want fame, but they want the money that comes with it. They want to make millions of dollars a year. They want to have. They want to be celebrities, they want the experiences, they want the clout, they want the respect. They want the fans. They want it all. They want. They want to build generational wealth, becoming a creator or an influencer or a celebrity, whatever you want to call it. So those are the three buckets, right? The hobbyist who's already financially sound and they don't need the money, but they want to share their love of whatever with the world. Okay. And that's great. Number two are people who want to, you know, replace employment income with, to your point, solopreneurship. And then there's Bucket three, which are people who. They want to go for it. They want it all. Right? And it's a lot of the times when I have my, like, so what we do, like, with creator method, we also have like consulting clients. So they come to us and they kind of. We go aside and we do consulting with them. And I start the conversation. I'm like, these are the three buckets. Which one are you? Tell me which one you are. Because the advice that I'm going to be giving you and the processes and the mindset that I'm going to build in you is going to be based on your desired outcome. It needs to. So your actions need to map to your desired outcome. Otherwise it makes no sense. So if you want to go. If you're in Bucket three. Okay, then here's your strategy. If you're in.

Troy Sandich (6:50)

I have a question just between the. I understand that, but does Bucket people going into Bucket three, most of them, do you not feel like they should just reevaluate their North Star and actually end up in Bucket two. Like, do you feel like it's actually viable for most creators to say, I want to build $100 million creator brand?

Valeria (7:09)

I believe that anyone can get to Bucket two.

Troy Sandich (7:13)

Yes, that's Bucket. But the hundred million dollar is Bucket three.

Valeria (7:16)

Bucket three requires, it requires, I want to say talent, but it just requires a lot of sacrifice. A lot of sacrifice. It really does. It requires endless amounts of work, dedication, being able to sacrifice, being able to say, you know what? I love my kids and it hurts my heart every time I have to be away from them. But in order to achieve what I want to achieve, I have to do it. And that's a constant struggle that Valeria has where it's like, Valeria could literally be gone all the time. If she said yes to the things that she could say that, you know, she could potentially say yes to, that would drive her career even further. But she has to say no to most things because she doesn't want to be away from the kids. And so it's this constant, Valeria, you should go to this. Me telling her, and she says, no, I want to be at home with the kids. Because at the end of the day, she's still just a mom. She's a normal mom. Not. When I say just a mom, I don't mean that in a derogatory way. I mean she's a mom that's a priority. Yeah. And she's down as a priority. And I, and I always have this like debate with her. And I say to her, valeria, you will do more for our children by continuing to achieve and setting the example for them than you will by sitting home with them. You're not going to. But then she's like, I'm going to miss it. I'm going to miss. They're going to be older, I'm going to miss it. And she's right to a certain degree. So it's a matter of finding the balance. But going back to this whole Bucket three thing is I believe people can achieve it, but the amount of sacrifice they need to, to, to, to make is, is, Is off the charts. But I think Bucket two is very, very attainable. You said something about how you thought. I said it casually. How it's like I said that, you know, creator income is more stable than employment income because with employment income, you're relying on essentially your one client. Right. Your employer. But with creator income, you are, you're essentially you. You have multiple Sources of revenue, whether it's, you know, brand deals, whether you have a subscription plan, like a subscri, whether you have a book, whether you have there. There a podcast. There are a number of ways that. But a podcast is still, it's still advertisers, right? It's just a different kind of medium and a different cohort. But yeah, I mean, so, yeah, so like Bucket two, I believe that it is, it is more stable. I believe the income is far more stable because it just takes a little bit of time, like, to become an employee. You don't have to build the asset of a personal brand. You don't have to build a community, an audience so you can go directly from whatever it is you've learned how to do into being an employee. And the distance between knowledge acquisition. Right. And employment, it's fairly small. You can get your diploma or degree, or you get a little bit of experience, you can go and monetize that in the form of employment right away, which is great, and I'm not knocking that. But then in order to get the equivalent of employment income, you have to go through this period of time where you're being both an employee and in the evenings you're trying to get scale as a creator until you hit that inflection point where you can say, okay, now I can switch over into being a full time creator. It's that pain that people don't want. And so that's what stops a lot of people. It's that pain. The other thing that stops a lot of people from pursuing this is their own uncertainty. One of the reasons that Valeria succeeded, and I don't like taking credit for my wife's accomplishments, but I'll take credit in this case because when she started, I told her, you're a star. I told her that you're Bucket three. I hadn't established buckets in my mind yet at the time, but I said to her, you are going to be a household name. You have the ability to do it. You have the talent to do it. And I said to her, I said, your life, documenting your life will be your art. And she, she calls me on that every now and then. She reminds me, remember you said that shit to me?

Troy Sandich (11:03)

Yeah.

Valeria (11:04)

And so. And I said to her, you don't have to do it. You don't have to do it. But when I saw that first $10,000 check come in, and now we're kind of. I'm weaving.

Troy Sandich (11:14)

Right, I know you're weaving.

Valeria (11:15)

That first $10,000 check came in that was unexpected and I can get into that story in a second. But when that first brand deal came in and it woke me up to what she was doing and I looked into it and I was like, listen, if you want to do this as a business, we can do this and you can go all the way and I'm here for you and I'm going to support you and we're going to build a business. And you know, I said, or you don't have to. You really don't have to. Because when I met Valeria, it never crossed my mind what she would do for a living. Like, I didn't even think about it. Like looking back now, it was probably irresponsible of me. I met a girl, she was amazing.

Troy Sandich (11:52)

And you'd already, when you met her, you'd already had like a ton of career success you had. I was out of deal find by that time.

Valeria (11:59)

Yeah, it was right, it was. I met her at the same time. I literally on our first date, I was taking calls with the buy with the buyers, the people who bought the equity in that company. Yeah, on our first date. So I had to step away and deal with that. So it was like happening right at the same time. But. But yeah, like I basically told her, I said like, you don't have to do this. You don't, like you don't. But if you do this, like, you know, I just, I gave her that confidence. And what I'm seeing right now is that a lot of people who are a lot of people want this, more people want this now than they did back in 2017 when Valeria started. I mean, it's really exploded. But you know, I tell. I can see that what's holding people back is the fact that they don't have that support. They don't have that person or group of people or peer group telling them.

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Why?

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Troy Sandich (15:48)

People, I mean like if we're going to be candid, most people that are looking to be creators cannot just not worry about income like they have to worry about.

Valeria (15:57)

Valeria had that advantage. He didn't have to worry about income.

Troy Sandich (15:59)

Yeah. So that, I think that's, that is a huge factor. So I'm just curious if you could, if you could even help a creator set benchmarks in their journey so that when they start to create and they start to see some traction, what should they look for as like a positive KPI that they're on the right track to eventually quit? Because they'll be doing this, you know, from five to nine after the job, they'll be doing it on the weekends. And I think that the biggest question mark that they'll have, like you, you mentioned this, is and, and the biggest pain that they'll have is I don't know when I should make the jump into full time creator because I still have to pay rent or my mortgage or feed my family at the end of the month.

Valeria (16:43)

Okay. So, okay, remind, what's the first question I want to ask?

Troy Sandich (16:46)

First question, the first question is what markers or KPIs should a creator look for that they're on the right track.

Valeria (16:52)

So when they're first starting, their KPI is creating content and posting it. So here's what happens. They go in, they'll do three posts and they'll start analyzing data. Oh, the algorithm didn't like this one or this didn't perform as well. So I shouldn't do this format. I should. No, no, no, none of that. If you haven't started yet, first thing you need to do, okay, the first thing you need to do is you need to establish what am I interested in, what am I good at and what is there a demand for. And then you take those three things, okay, you, you figure out what your content buckets are, you do research, you figure out what your formats are gonna be. Okay, it could be one format, it could be two or three. To begin with, you look at other successful creators and again, once you've done the cross, once you've done the cross reference analysis of what you're good at, what you're interested in and what there's market demand for you, then go, you set up your content plan, you start executing on it. The KPI to look for is the creation of the content. Make 300 posts. Because you have to do the reps, you have to build the muscle, you have to get confident in front of the camera, whatever format you're doing. If you're doing fashion, you have to be comfortable showing what you're wearing, you have to be comfortable talking, you have to be comfortable. If you're making food, content, making your food, doing Whatever it is you're doing, really the achievement is the creation and deployment of the content. And that's what a lot of creators, they don't do. It's like going to university and on day one, sitting in class after an hour saying, where's my degree? Why don't I have a degree? You haven't done the work. So that's that, that's really what it is. The first thing is like your first several hundred people.

Troy Sandich (18:30)

So what do they do instead? Because that to me is like, when you're saying that, it makes so much sense. Because this is what I did with the show.

Valeria (18:35)

Yeah.

Troy Sandich (18:35)

So now I have a nice little set and we're recording with nice little cameras. This took me six years and about almost now I was looking, we're almost at 700. I published podcasts, some short, short ones, some interviews. But.

Valeria (18:48)

Yeah, but so, so a lot of people, they make the mistake of expecting what you have in a month after making 10 reels. So I've never seen, I've never seen any other industry like that where people are looking at it and saying, you know, I, I've had creators tell me, I've been doing this for two weeks. You, you laugh at somebody who does this yourself. Yeah, but that's, but that's to a novice at the beginning who's never done this. That's their expectation because they're looking at your day 5,000 or whatever. Day 3,000.

Troy Sandich (19:19)

Yeah.

Valeria (19:20)

You know, that's what they're looking at.

Unknown (19:21)

Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.

Valeria (19:38)

Foreign.

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