How to Land Your First Clients as a Digital Creator, With Tiago Faria

What would you do if you had to scale the income of your content business fast?

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In this episode, I talk with Tiago Faria about what he calls his "hand-raising method for client acquisition." Tiago is a digital marketing expert who spent eight years working at Google, advising CEOs and marketing directors from some of the largest companies in Europe and the Middle East. He now helps small- to medium-sized companies, entrepreneurs, and professionals to scale their online presence and sales via digital marketing strategies.

We discuss researching your offer, generating leads, managing time as a content creator and entrepreneur, and scaling your content business.

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Transcript

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[00:00:00] Tim: Hey everyone, my name's Tim and this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Riverside FM. Riverside has a range of great tools to help podcasters and YouTubers record and edit their shows. 

[00:00:10] But the one I want to talk to you about today is the teleprompter feature. And one of the nice things about the Riverside teleprompter is you could use it on screen or as a popt script.

[00:00:20] That means if you're like me and you prefer talking more directly to the camera with some basic notes, you can still have those off to the side on your second screen and reference them as needed. 

[00:00:30] With an electronic script, it's also easy to make changes to continue improving your content. And because it's in dark mode, it's not going to mess up your lighting, like that.

[00:00:40] I see a lot of use cases for this for podcasts, intros and outros, talking-head YouTube videos, corporate training videos, and more. Check it out in the link in my description and use the code mytogblog for a 15 percent discount. And now, on to the show.

[00:00:54] 

[00:00:59] Tim: So what would you do if you had to scale the income of your content business really fast? Let's say you suddenly lost your day job, or you decided that the time had come to go all in full time. 

[00:01:11] Well, probably the fastest way would be to sign a few high-ticket clients, who would provide the base of income that you need while you scale up the other parts of the business. Things like courses, digital products, affiliate sales, and so on.

[00:01:24] But then what if you're just starting out, and you don't have a huge track record or a lot of social proof behind you? How are you going to ever hope to land your first client then? Well, that is one of the key questions for my discussion with Tiago Faria.

[00:01:38] Tiago helps entrepreneurs launch and scale their businesses through digital marketing strategies. He spent eight years at Google working with CEOs and marketing directors of some of the biggest European and Middle Eastern companies. 

[00:01:51] In 2018, he published 90 blog articles in 90 days sharing everything he learned and tested at Google. In 2019, he launched a podcast where he got to talk with even more international entrepreneurs and experts. And then, in 2020, he began producing YouTube videos where he's published more than 200 of those and built an audience of over 1,800 subscribers. So he's got a lot of insights to share through all of that.

[00:02:15] And in this episode, we talk about what he calls his hand-raising method of client acquisition, which can help you identify and land your first high-ticket clients and put you on the path to getting your content business off the ground. 

[00:02:28] We also talk about getting focused on your key business priorities, maintaining that focus with discipline and the right strategies over time, and then creating evergreen assets so that your efforts do compound over time and you're not just caught on some kind of endless hamster wheel. There's a lot there that I think you'll find helpful, so let's get into it.

[00:02:48] 

[00:02:50] Tim: Hi, Tiago. 

[00:02:51] Welcome to the show. 

[00:02:52] Tiago: Hi, Tim. Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor and a pleasure.

[00:02:56] Tim: Yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time. In our discussions when we're leading up to the episode, I was really interested in what you had to say about revenue generation as content creator.

[00:03:08] And I remember we talked about how one of the fastest ways to generate revenue is to start offering fee for service. And I think that's a model that you're pursuing right now. So I was wondering if you could share your thoughts about that and why you see it as preferable to something like sales of digital products or course, which a lot of other creators are also following.

[00:03:26] Tiago: Yeah, sure. So well, I think both models are more than valid and anyone can succeed in both of them. But in my personal experience, what I've been experimenting the last few years of trying everything and and anything I've fallen into all the shiny objects and all the traps that the gurus send us our way.

[00:03:44] But yeah, what I found out, so I've created courses, online courses, small courses Yeah. It's possible to, you know, have a good, good business around that, but in one way it's a bit harder because you're usually charging a bit lower cost, like it's like low-ticket prices. So you need a lot of volume in order for it to reach your goals.

[00:04:02] Basically, if you really want high goals you're gonna be, need a lot more volume. You're gonna need to create a bigger audiences and invest more on ads. And it's mm-Hmm, you'll gonna be needing to talk to, to, you know, to, to meet new, a lot of new people call recent cold audiences and then try to, to generate revenue out of that.

[00:04:19] So that, that's one of the points that I find it a bit more challenging for someone who is starting out, at least at the beginning stages. Zero to 10 K. 

[00:04:27] And the other point is that because we're in the help industry and you've tried to help people get generate some transformations, right? Get some results. And it's harder for you to generate results. If you're just sending people over to watch some videos and like some 30 hours of videos and try to have a result out of this or watch, it's I've seen a scary statistic some months ago, where it says like only around 3 percent of people actually finish courses that they watch. And imagine the percentage of people that watch and implement and succeed.

[00:04:54] So it's going to be a scary, a scary percentage. And that that's, that's the negative part because if you're not generating results to people, you're not getting testimonials, you're not going to have a long lifetime value. People are not going to be overly pleased with the results you're offering.

[00:05:10] So those are the main drawbacks of that model for me, at least when you're starting out. For when you, when you're trying to starting to scale, it makes total sense for you to go to the lower ticket approach to then, you know, create a big audience of buyers that afterwards you can try to sell your high-ticket items versus if you want to start in a more easy way, for me, it's to start selling higher ticket programs, which would involve not only people watching videos, but also having some sort of some type of access to you so you can keep people accountable, so they can ask you questions and you remove obstacles. And in that way, you kind of make it easier for people to have real results. To generate transformations and also for you with more positive, because you need less clients to reach higher goals, right? So if you're selling something for a thousand, two thousand, three thousand euros, you just need basically a couple of clients, maybe five clients to you for you to reach your goals.

[00:06:02] And it's, it's easier to sell five, five people per month than hundreds of people per month, right? I think it's a math issue there. 

[00:06:10] Tim: For sure. Yeah, there's a lot there to unpack. I think you know, first of all, like the shiny object syndrome, I think that's totally normal. A lot of creators, including myself, I've fallen into that.

[00:06:20] And, I had seen that statistic about the course completion and it is scary when you imagine that the completion rate is that low, but I actually believe it because of the shiny object syndrome, right? Like you, you start a course. We've probably all done this. You start the course and then it's like, implement some of it. And you're like, I don't know, it's not going well. Or you see this other great thing. It's like, Oh, maybe that's the, maybe that's the ticket there. And you switch to that. And yeah, that's why like a lot of creators have trouble making progress at the beginning. So I could see how like coaching, consulting and accountability route being much more successful in helping people. 

[00:06:57] I think the challenge that I've thought about with that is that you're kind of trying to go right to selling high-ticket items. And so, usually a lot of creators will use those lower ticket items as the funnel to get people to eventually work with them at the higher ticket price. In a way you're trying to skip over that and say like, I've got this product, it's high ticket, work with me.

[00:07:20] How, how do you, how do you do that? And I understand that you had like a hand raising approach to client acquisitions. So how does that fit into getting people from that point of being like zero. We're not, not working with you at all. It's like, okay, I'm going to buy a high-ticket consulting offer from you.

[00:07:37] Tiago: Yeah, definitely. You're completely right. And it's a very good question. And I think it all boils down to the, the offer itself. You really need to double down your efforts on that. And, you know, for the first few weeks, months, create something that is actually what people want to buy. That's the key.

[00:07:53] It all starts, in my opinions. You need to choose a very specific niche, right? Who is the actual person you're trying to help? And what is the actual problem you're trying to solve? And the ideal thing to do is to, instead of being in your own minds and trying to invent everything and trying to figure out what people need is actually to talk to people.

[00:08:11] I'm sure you already have around you. Previous clients, leads, audience members, where you could just tap into them and just interview five to 10 people and ask them some questions about what's your current obstacles, your main frustrations nowadays, or how does it make you feel? What is your objectives, goals?

[00:08:28] Because like, with those interviews, you can capture the emotional words that people are using. And the goal is to understand exactly what is the desperate problem, the actual problem that they want to solve right now. And that's just something that they say, ah, one day, maybe I will want to figure that out.

[00:08:43] Like, for example, if you're a health coach, you're just saying, ah, I'll help you lose 15 kilos, 15 pounds in the next, whatever people already heard that a lot. It's like something that they've tried before multiple times. It doesn't work there. Ah, one day it will happen. So it's not a desperate problem that they have right now.

[00:09:00] Versus if you say something like I'll help you lose your weight. And help you out with like your knee problems or some back pain that is bothering you right now, that's constantly keeping you limited in your li daily life, right? And that's more of a desperate problem that they would like to solve right now.

[00:09:13] So if you, if by design, you create an offer around that, you create urgency, and a reason, a strong reason for them to buy now. And, and that's the way you start creating a, an offer that is really good that people, people will actually wanna buy. So if you, if you focus your efforts in an urgent now problem. And then you, promised like a very strong transformation. Of course, if you can't deliver it, right, you're not going to be inventing anything. The goal is to generate transformations and then have testimonials, case studies, et cetera. But if you focus your efforts on that, people are willing to pay a good amount of money to solve problems that they really need to solve, want to get rid of, right. 

[00:09:48] So that's the basis of creating a high-ticket offer is solving an urgent problem. And, and you charge a bigger amount of money because you want to help them deeply, profoundly, and solve a big problem for their lives. And for that, you need, you know, big resources from your side, time, commitments, et cetera.

[00:10:04] And, also people that buy higher ticket items, they're more committed as well, right? So, okay, I put some money in this, I better do something about it and not just put it in a digital shelf. 

[00:10:17] Tim: Absolutely, think that's a great explanation. And it totally lines up with what I've even seen myself do with software services sometimes.

[00:10:26] And like vidIQ is a good example, like the higher tier subscription isn't cheap, and I wasn't even really looking for that solution at that time. But as I went through their materials and I realized, oh, this could really help and, you know decide to invest in it. It's because that material was so compelling, and as you say, like, the potential of transformation was so compelling. So it can, you can get someone from A to B, and I think it's exactly right, like you're saying, you know, doing it through that research.

[00:10:57] Tiago: We tend to, we tend to ignore that by the, I did it for many years, like being on my mind only. Ah, I know what they want. I'm just creating this. And then they will buy for sure.

[00:11:06] And it's never like that. This, the first step, is the step that most people want to avoid is to talk to people, but it really makes a big difference. Not only to collect those emotional words that will convince you to buy at the end, but also because it opens up opportunities for you to, okay, you're talking to these people, they tell you they have a problem, you create something around that, and then you can go back to them and say, Hey, I just created this. Would you be interested? You know, so you can immediately start. Collecting new clients, even though you don't have too much experience, for example, you don't have testimonials, right?

[00:11:36] Tim: Right. You, you offer it to the people you did the research with. It's a great idea, because they told you what their problems are. And it's like, Oh, by the way, I, I thought about it and I've got a solution. 

[00:11:45] Tiago: Yeah. What do you think? What's your opinion? Like, it's going to be very soft in that way you presented. 

[00:11:49] Tim: Right. 

[00:11:50] Tiago: But not only that, you can also tell them, you know, By the way, do you know someone that would be interested in this kind of offer?

[00:11:55] And you proactively create like your own referral rewards program, where you incentivize people to send more people to your offer and you give them a commission or a referral fee, for example. And this way, out of just talking to five to 10 people, You can suddenly have, you know, multiple people coming to your world, highly motivated, recommended by others.

[00:12:15] And, as you see, tapping into what you have in your world. That's, that's my approach. The anti marketing thing is tap to what you already have in your world to create a cool business. 

[00:12:23] Tim: That's cool. And I want to ask you a little bit more about that research process. You talked about, you know, talking to an initial 10 people. And I think this is another barrier that prevents people from doing that research, because they think, well, I don't have a massive research budget. I can't do, you know, mass market surveys or, you know, Yeah. You know, a lot of qualitative research. So I was interested, you say 10, do you think that's really enough to to get people started?

[00:12:51] Tiago: Yeah, definitely. The more the better, of course, but it's already definitely enough. And I don't recommend sending like a questionnaire or something. It should be an actual interview where you would invite the person on a Zoom call and not for you to take notes because it's not the idea is not for you to put your own interpretation of people's words.

[00:13:08] I would actually recommend for you to record the call. Because that way you can actually, you know, you take the transcript and you have actual words, emotional words that people are using, right? That then you can use in your own offer, the way you communicate afterwards, the way you create content. Because if the more you reflect the actual market's mindset and what is in their mind, the more do you feel like, yes, this is for me. Tim is talking to me. He's the only person that can help me because he understands me better than anyone else. So 10 people is already enough for you to start seeing a pattern, collecting emotional words. 

[00:13:42] And during those interviews, you should not you should not just ask generic questions. You should be more like, okay, but how does it make you feel during the day? What is that? How does it look like during the day? So you try to uncover the more emotional answers because those are the magical words that you can. 

[00:13:55] Tim: That's great. Yeah. You're getting your, like your product research and your market research done at the same time.

[00:14:01] Tiago: Exactly. 

[00:14:02] Tim: That's brilliant. But how do you incentivize people to participate in that? Cause a lot of people are, I would think are going to be like, I don't know, I'm busy, you know? 

[00:14:09] Tiago: Yeah. 

[00:14:10] Tim: Why am I doing this interview? 

[00:14:12] Tiago: That's true, but you'd be surprised by how many people would say yes, if you position it like something like, Hey, I'm trying to create a program around this specific topic, would you be interested in? And I would love to have your opinion. We'd be available for like 10, 15 minutes just to answer a couple of questions around this topic. I would love to, you know, talk to you. And if you have previous clients, previous leads, they will definitely say yes faster. They will happily participate.

[00:14:37] And once you have those clients that you worked with on a call, if you didn't do it before, you can also even use the opportunity to ask them for a testimonial, like a quick, quick testimony. Hey, I worked with you before with this. How did you feel before? What was it? How was it working with me? How do you feel right now?

[00:14:53] So, for you, for your clients, it's easy, but also for your audience. If you create a post, like, like the one I said, I'm trying to create a program around this area to generate this transformation would be willing to give me your opinion. People love to give opinions. And if you say that is like, I just want your feedback. And it's just 10 to 15 minutes. You will see that many people will be happy to. 

[00:15:11] Tim: Yeah, I think that's key, the very limited time.

[00:15:14] Tiago: Definitely. 

[00:15:15] Tim: Because people are usually able to give 15 minutes, but if it's longer, then it's harder, you know, to get the, to get the buy in. 

[00:15:22] Tiago: I think you get surprised by how many people say yes.

[00:15:24] Tim: Yeah, and I think this also shows the you know, as creators, we often hear about the importance of depth of connection with an audience versus the breath. I think it's a great example of how depth of connection with, you know, a few people, is so much more valuable.

[00:15:39] Imagine if you even have like a list of 100 people you can reach out to, and they're likely to say yes to that 15 minute call, how much more valuable is that than 10 K followers that just, you know, don't care. That you just like, they barely, you know, know who you are and would you know have trouble having that level of trust to want to engage with something like that. 

[00:15:58] Tiago: Absolutely. True. 

[00:15:59] I think that's all you need. Just talk to a few people in depth, like you said, because then you have the multiplier effect, because you can go back to them, ask them if they know anyone else. And then, you suddenly start creating a team of people that are wanting to do things for you to have your best interest in mind. And of course there'll be rewarded for it. But you know, using what you have in your world right now, it's enough for you to kick off and have a really fun, interesting conversation. 

[00:16:23] Tim: Yeah. So, as you're crafting this offer, do you approach it as like, that's the one main thing that I'm working on right now?

[00:16:31] Or like, in the business you're creating now or in the past, have you thought about more like I need to diversify my sets of income to provide some more stability? 

[00:16:41] Tiago: Definitely. Definitely. But first of all, I think you shouldn't think already, like in my having multiple products, in my opinion, I think you should first double down on this first high-ticket offer.

[00:16:51] And once it's proven that it works and you already tweaked it with feedback from people that you're going to have after having sales calls after going through the process with some people and then figuring out even better. Once you have that running and proven that it works, then it's a good idea to start thinking about, okay, what else can I give to these people?

[00:17:10] Because once you solve one problem, you open up other problems, right? For example, if I help you I don't know, find leads, maybe next thing you'll need, okay, now I need a team of closers, you know, to capture all these leads or whatever. You just, you always open up new problems. And that way you can start thinking of the lifetime value of the client.

[00:17:27] So what's the next problem I can help them solve? And the easiest people for you to sell other products is for the people you already helped, right? They will say, yes, very easy. Yes. Yes. You already helped me. I want to continue with my adventure with you. So you can start increasing your product variety, like the next steps after, after you solve this urgent problem.

[00:17:45] And then. You can also, once you reach the, the 10 K above levels, you can start thinking, okay, I can go have fun with funnels and ads, et cetera, create a lower ticket products, like entry products, right? Run ads around that, and then you upgrade those people to the high-ticket offer and then for the higher, higher, higher ticket offer, you can start playing games after. But only after you have something proven that works. In my opinion, I think it's the best approach.

[00:18:10] Tim: I think that's so interesting because you're kind of starting at the top of the pyramid and you're building the stuff below it. Whereas like. 

[00:18:17] Tiago: It's like in the middle, because you can also, you'll solve bigger problems afterwards and you can solve smaller problems. 

[00:18:26] Tim: Yeah. Cause a lot of, a lot of folks will try and start at the very bottom, like the freebie.

[00:18:31] And then it's like, here's a smaller paid product. Then here's like a medium product. But I could see the benefits of where you're starting in the middle more because then you gear that lower stuff to lead to the middle part more clearly, because you know, you know, the destination. And I think that's the risk of going the smaller product route is like where you don't know exactly the destination yet.

[00:18:55] Tiago: It also gives you more peace of mind, like I said, because if you just focus on low tickets, you need a lot of volume, a lot of ads, a lot of crazy things and to pay off for the ads, you need to sell a lot of smaller ticket. So yeah, I think in all senses, it makes a bit more sense to start in the medium tier.

[00:19:13] Tim: I think people worry about, yeah, I think what people worry about in the mid tier is it's going to take a more investment of time and money to create the mid tier product. Yeah. And what if it flops? And I'm like, I poured everything into it. And if it flops, I'm doomed. 

[00:19:27] Tiago: Well, you don't need to take a lot of time. 

[00:19:28] Basically, what I do is when I create something new, I just make a draft of what I think it will be, what I'm going to be creating. So, and I sell it first if people are not interested in it, but since I do this study, right. I talk to people, I know what they want. I create something around that, what they want.

[00:19:44] So it usually starts working. You just need to tweak around like after some the beta version will change a bit, et cetera. But you always have the chance to not do it if nobody wants it. You simply just don't go through.

[00:19:56] Tim: Yeah. You develop like a beta project or a 

[00:19:59] Tiago: Beta group that you run through it live, right. For the, for some weeks, six, eight weeks, whatever. And if no one wants, wants in, that's fine. You just don't do it. 

[00:20:07] Tim: That's right. 

[00:20:08] Tiago: Just lost some time creating a draft and thinking about it. 

[00:20:11] Tim: That's good. Yeah. Great way to mitigate the risks of and, and you have seen those courses, right? Where they offer you the chance to create like this fully fleshed out project product and then launch it. And then I think that's the risk with those is you just like. 

[00:20:25] Tiago: It happened to me many times. 

[00:20:26] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:20:27] Tiago: Losing weeks, creating a massive, huge library of a course and then break it. Right. Nobody, nobody was interested.

[00:20:34] The tendency as creators, we have the tendency to put everything we know into our first course, right? It's like a big library, big encyclopedia course, right? Which doesn't reflect what people actually want. I mean, we just put everything we think people need, but then it's, it's a trap.

[00:20:50] Tim: Yeah, I've seen an interesting approach to this on Twitter recently where somebody is putting out a course, yeah, short course to work with them and they said, I need 10 people to sign up and I'll create it if I can find 10 people. And they describe the problem and then so, they're about halfway there now, and like, they're in that really good place.

[00:21:09] Like, they're in the position of launching it or not, depending on if they see sufficient interest. 

[00:21:14] Tiago: Yeah, absolutely. You can be public with that or not. You can simply say, I'm watching this course and on the January something. But then if, if nobody wants to buy it, you just, you're just quiet. Don't continue the conversation with anyone, right? 

[00:21:26] Tim: Okay. 

[00:21:29] Refine it. Talk to the people who were interested, see what they really interested in. Yeah. Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense. 

[00:21:38] Tiago: Creating like, the minimum viable products that like they say, right? 

[00:21:41] Tim: Yeah, yeah. So what about creators who are in that position of like, they want to be a content creator themselves and they're working on, you know, their own content, which kind of relates, relates back to the products they're selling, but it's kind of a different activity, right?

[00:21:55] And then you've got the business end of it, which is like building the products. Researching them and sending them out there and working with clients to do client work, although it produces the highest income, it's also taking up the most of your time directly. So, how do you balance it? How do you figure out as a creator, like what percentage do I spend on each or you know, do I go all in on one or the other at a particular time?

[00:22:20] Tiago: It's a great question. I also struggled a lot with that sort of doing everything on top of my knee. Like we say in Portuguese, on top of my knee, like improvising. Yeah, it's, it's a problem. It was only when I talking to one of my mentors he said, you, you don't need to have like percentages of things. But as long as you do one thing for marketing, one thing for sales, and one thing for product delivery or whatever, your day is fine.

[00:22:43] You know, at least just one thing, if you, if you do that consistently for long periods of time one, your business will grow definitely because you're focused and you're doing things every day. And two, you'll feel, you'll feel much more productive at the end of the day because you did something that mattered, you know. That's because, you have to choose just one specific action for those three areas. You feel like, okay, I achieved something. I focused on something that is actually going to move the needle. So even if it's a small thing, like answering, following up emails with people that you're trying to close for sales you know, sending some outbound emails to invite people for your podcast or whatever could be your marketing activity for the day.

[00:23:21] And then for delivery. Okay. I need to make a video that explains this topic a bit better. So, and then we'll just a few hours in today. You already. Your day is done. You can focus on other things. You can enjoy your family or whatever, or, or you just do the rest of the activities that you want to do, like answering emails going to social media.

[00:23:39] But as long as you can focus on those three things and you do just one thing. Long term, you know, the momentum builds up the compounding effect builds up, and you, you feel much, much better at the end of the day. Cause I used to be, feel, I used to be super busy all day doing multiple things and not organized fashion.

[00:23:56] And I'll, at the day, I'll feel, ah, I didn't accomplish nothing, anything. I was just like a busy bee, but things didn't progress, right? So you need the structure around yeah, yeah. It's a terrible feeling. But right now I finished the day and I'm like, okay, I can go enjoy my family without thinking about these things. Oh, I didn't do that. And I just did my three things and I'm good for the day. 

[00:24:18] Tim: What were the three categories again? 

[00:24:20] Tiago: One for marketing, right? To bring people to your world. One for sales to, to turn leads into clients. And then one for delivery, like for how you deliver your programs, create creating course materials, asking for referrals for your current clients, you know, in terms of delivery. 

[00:24:36] Tim: That's a great breakdown because, yeah, I could see that then you're contributing to moving each thing forward a little bit each day.

[00:24:43] Tiago: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:24:44] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:24:44] Tiago: And you, you focus on the 80, 20, right? The actually important things and you feel productive. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:24:50] Tim: Absolutely. And then, so that kind of answers the question of how you balance the needs of your business versus the needs of being a creator. 

[00:24:58] Tiago: Yeah, I think it's, it's, we don't have to complicate so much, right? We don't have to be like, I want you to spend 50 percent on this, 70 percent on that. Just choose one thing that you think is important for that day in either of these areas, right? 

[00:25:11] Tim: Yeah. It's identifying, I've heard them called the needle moving activities, things that actually matter.

[00:25:16] Tiago: Yeah, yeah. Because either of these areas are things that move, yeah, move the needle and get you closer to your goals, right? 

[00:25:22] Tim: Good point. You know, in this world with social media and as a creator, that's an important part of your you know, your overall business that you're building, but you can end up spending a lot of time on things that aren't needle moving actually cause it's always little things you could do and it might help, but it's like figuring out, no, these are the actual things I need to do that matter. 

[00:25:45] Tiago: But you can still do the, all the other things, like lurking social media, but I would recommend what works for me is to, I start my day doing those three things, like maybe it's even just a morning and then I'm free to do whatever, or maybe sometimes it takes a bit longer if I'm doing a bigger outreach, marketing campaign or whatever. But yeah, if you do those three things in the morning, then you're free to do whatever you, you want to procrastinate on the internet.

[00:26:11] Tim: That's right. Well, how, how did you get into this business to begin with? 

[00:26:15] Tiago: Well, I I, I worked at Google for eight years, so I was in this digital marketing world for, for a long time since 2011.

[00:26:24] But I got, I got tired of the corporate world very quickly and burned out in the sales environment of selling Google ads, being consultant for a huge corporations. The last three years of Google, I, I understood that was psychologically unemployable. I couldn't stand anymore. The idea of having a manager nagging your brains every, every week I was just feeding big corporations and I feel, I felt I needed more, use my creativity a bit more, more open, open ways, like not just being limited to Google ads. And Facebook ads were growing like crazy at the time was I'm missing out on so many things.

[00:26:56] So yeah, then, then at some point I decided, okay, I need to, to quit. And we decided together with my wife, thank God she accepted it, to quit Google and come back to Portugal. Cause I was in Dublin, Ireland was the European headquarters . 

[00:27:09] On my departure decided to, okay, I'm going to help local businesses, entrepreneurs in their digital presence. But I was, I hit against a brick wall because I was complicating my life and my clients' life too much because I was using big companies strategies for, you know, myself. Creating a company from scratch, helping small entrepreneurs using funnels ads, all those things. So it didn't work out for the, for the first years.

[00:27:33] So, I needed to start simplifying my process. After doing many things and falling into all the traps, all the shiny objects for, for three years, I finally decided, okay, well, I'm going to work with a mentor. I'm going to focus, create a plan. Focus on a specific niche to where am I trying to help.

[00:27:47] What is the problem I try to solve? And simplify my process as much as possible. And inspired by this, this book getting everything you can out of all you've got. I looked at all you've got this last sentence, all you've got. 

[00:27:58] So that's why, how I reached the, okay, what do I have? I have contacts, right? My list of contacts. I have followers. I have my current network. And that's how I reached out my anti marketing strategies using your assets to, you're just simply tweaking the way you position yourself and the way you present your offer and the way you sell that offer to the people around you and, give something to those that don't need your offer right now, but they might, they can help you in other ways, like using the referral rewards program.

[00:28:25] So that's how I came about this anti marketing method. 

[00:28:29] Tim: You know, I think it's a lot harder than people realize looking at it from the outside, like how, how challenging it is to put together a strategy that'll work, you know within a specific market like that and being a creator at the same time. Because you can graph it out, like, in terms of the strategy, you just described and it sounds, well, that's straightforward, but actually being into it, it's different.

[00:28:53] Right? And and, and not you know, you kind of have to almost go through making some of those earlier mistakes to realize, oh, yeah, those really are mistakes. You go back to where, where we started for some reason. 

[00:29:07] Tiago: It doesn't matter how many books you read. 

[00:29:09] Tim: Yeah. 

[00:29:09] Tiago: You think I'm going to be super prepared right now.

[00:29:11] I've read all these books and it never, it never is like that. We always have to go, go through the trenches, make mistakes in the world. That's really the only way you, you learn and improve, right? 

[00:29:22] Tim: It's true. I just think it's one thing to know it theoretically and another thing to go through the experience. 

[00:29:29] Tiago: Unfortunately, it's that way, but it is absolutely true. And I think it's, I don't know. It was a, it was a hard experience many years going through this. Some people are lucky and they might find something very quickly, but most of the times it will take, I don't know. One, two, three, maybe more years until you figure out what is the actual voice, who you're trying to help exactly, the offer you're trying to create. 

[00:29:59] It's, and it's always a work in progress. Your main offer is not never going to be a closed work. It's always, you're always going to be improving it. You get new questions from your clients, from sales calls. You have new objections, you have to incorporate in your own offer.

[00:30:13] You go through it with multiple people and you always find something that can be improved. So, yeah, it's, it's a long term game that can be accelerated if you decide to work with someone that already is steps ahead of you. For three years, I didn't choose any mentor. I was trying to do everything on my own, like, ah, I can do this myself.

[00:30:29] I know all these books and all this. 

[00:30:30] Tim: It's also very common, I think, you know, we all figure like, oh, we've, yeah, we've read the books and we've just got the, the knowledge. 

[00:30:38] Tiago: I also had my podcast and I'm, I'm reopening it now. But I, the way I tried to get authority here in Portugal was by creating my own podcast and interviewing local celebrities, et cetera. And what I've learned through all of, almost all of them is that they, early on, on, on their careers, they, they chose a mentor to, they chose to work with, mentor, a coach to accelerate the processes.

[00:30:58] So I found, okay. Yeah. They must have some reasoning around behind us. So maybe they're right. 

[00:31:04] Tim: Yeah, absolutely. And, and having that just sounding board, I think is probably helpful to, to, to keep you from going off of those paths and explaining why, you know, it's a, it can be a challenge. Like definitely see that helpful.

[00:31:18] Tiago: Yeah, having a mentor or a coach keeps you also accountable. You know, you have someone to report to. You cannot just start procrastinating and falling to a new, different, shiny object tactic. Just focus on one thing and you do it until it works. 

[00:31:31] Tim: Right. 

[00:31:31] Tiago: That, I think that's the, the, the key that I've learned is you focus on one thing until it works. Not, not if, if it works. No, it's until it works because otherwise you keep going in circles and circles. And it's a trap. It's a trap. 

[00:31:46] Tim: Do you think that's maybe the biggest mistake that you see other creators making?

[00:31:49] Tiago: Yeah. And I was like that way. So, definitely. All of us, most of us, when we come by default, almost, I don't know, it's human nature. Maybe we're trying to always find the easiest way, the fastest way. We always usually think that the most complex and fun, interesting way might be the fastest, but usually it isn't. Usually, it's the going back to the basics. Using everything you've got already, the boring way.

[00:32:12] Yeah. Yeah. Miles Beckler. The guy I mentioned, he actually says that successful businesses are boring business. Like you said. Yes. Because they're focusing on one thing. Something works. You just keep repeating that until improving on that. Yeah. I definitely use, like, until it works, and then keep doing the same.

[00:32:30] And then, of course, once you have something huge working very well, then you can start experimenting different things. But yeah, until then it's not advisable in my mind. 

[00:32:38] Tim: But yeah, but the, the success you get by sticking with the one thing that's, that's, that's the good part of what comes out of that.. Maybe boring, but it's so much you know, so much more likely to lead to success.

[00:32:50] Tiago: Yeah. And it's a problem, it's a problem to reach that stage where you're comfortable waiting and you have your patience. But, I think the, one of the keys, for you to get there is, okay, you really need to have a plan. Like I said, when I chose my mentor, we created a plan and you have a real clear vision of where you want to be.

[00:33:07] And once that's very clear and you know where you're going, you start, you know, it's okay. I'm just going to keep going until it happens because I know where I'm going and I trust the process, you know, and I think that's, that's key for us to be patient and not go after the shiny objects. 

[00:33:20] Tim: Yeah.

[00:33:21] Tiago: Just remain calm. You know, don't stress out. If something doesn't work immediately, just, you know, keep going and you'll get the reward for, for sure. If you're focusing on something that is proven to work, right. If it's something simple, right. 

[00:33:32] Because if being an entrepreneur and reaching like the 10 K level is already so complicated, you need to learn so many things, go through so many learning curves. If you, if you even put on top of that, a complicated strategy, it's hell, right? Simplify, use simple things, do it consistently, and look in the long term that, because you know where you're going. So just keep going. 

[00:33:54] Tim: And, speaking of that, do you have a favorite tool or resource that you use to help run, your business or your social media. Like what software tool or specific like planning resource helps you?

[00:34:05] Tiago: No, I actually don't have any specific tool. I mostly talk to people and I get questions, I get comments. So once you have an audience and a client that you're working with, or an audience that people are engaged with you, they, they always ask you questions and that's something that feeds your content creation, right?

[00:34:20] You, already know what to do and you're focusing on what people want to hear, right? Instead of what's in your mind again. But yeah, I, I'm not a very, I'm not one of those Instagrammers or those TikTok. I don't like that kind of game of the reels and et cetera. I prefer the I prefer this. I prefer podcasting.

[00:34:36] I prefer creating my own podcast. And I prefer assets that you create that, that stay here forever. Like, you create a YouTube video, for example, and it stays there forever. People keep searching for it and you'll keep finding your, your content. It's something that is, is, is you create now when you have results further down the line, rather than just creating a reel and then disappearing for the next.

[00:34:55] Tim: So yeah, it's a great point. It's why I've really shifted away from those short form kind of content. Even though I've you know, previously thought, oh, that was a good method to get your, you know, audience to grow because you're reaching a lot of people with, you know, relatively little effort compared to like, especially if you're making well, especially if you're making long form content and you can kind of redistribute it, piece out short form content. 

[00:35:21] Tiago: It works. It definitely works. 

[00:35:22] Tim: There's still, you know, there's still some value to that, but I think it's all the other stuff that goes around it. Like around trying to maintain those separate platforms, while at the same time you're doing a long form platform such as YouTube or podcasts. It's, it's, that's what becomes hard to balance. It's like just the, the engagement aspect of it and the, the planning and the, You know, you have to think that every step does take some time and so, yeah, to refine back to the long form and really just find maybe one short form method, to get the reach is, is the way to go.

[00:35:58] And, and even in your case, I can see that becomes in a way less important because it's more about the depth of the connections. So it's a, it's another way. 

[00:36:06] Tiago: I'm not saying it doesn't work, of course, Instagram works like crazy. If you like that game and you play it hardcore, you can get amazing results.

[00:36:15] It's just a personal preference that I prefer to create assets, right? That one, something I create now will have fruits for long term rather than just short term things. But yeah. 

[00:36:25] Tim: Yeah, yeah. They're, they're alternate strategies and you can win with either one, but it's, if you're a single person, it's hard to win with both.

[00:36:34] Tiago: Yes. 

[00:36:35] Tim: It's like, and once you get to the scale and you have the team behind you or whatever, sure. Go, go, go out there and do both. Do three things if you want, but you need the resources. 

[00:36:46] Tiago: Be everywhere. 

[00:36:46] Tim: You need the resources to support it. 

[00:36:48] So, yeah, I, what you've said today, I think makes a lot of sense about like a strategy that's manageable and sustainable for like a single entrepreneur. 

[00:36:56] But one thing we didn't talk about was like how you scale that though. Cause that's, one of the things that happens, I think for, for people that are solopreneurs or just small entrepreneurs, they run into that ceiling where like, I'm at, I've got my three or four clients, but they're taking up all my time so I'm at the limit of what I can do. How do I scale beyond this? So that I have, you know, financial freedom or you know, more stability, more, you know, I can mitigate the risks more because you're just bigger. 

[00:37:27] Tiago: Yeah. First of all, if, if those three clients are taking all your time and you still don't have enough money to hire someone, you're doing something wrong there, right?

[00:37:34] Maybe you're undercharging. Yeah. Maybe you're not selling enough or, you know, you first need to figure out, okay, is it this the right offer for my dream business? Maybe I need to create something that solves a bigger problem where I can charge like three, five K, something like that. Because then once you have that rolling, you can start outsourcing other parts of your business.

[00:37:54] Like,activities that require your attention that are low value, sending emails, and doing repetitive tasks. That's the first step for me. It's to start outsourcing smaller things that I can easily outsource to, you know, virtual assistants. For a couple of hours a day, something like that. That will start releasing your time.

[00:38:13] Also, you have to increase your prices, you know, you get more revenue, you start having more money to invest. Then yeah, definitely. So once you start getting that offer working, outsourcing some parts of your business, then you start thinking, okay, how can I sell more things to these people that bought from me, right?

[00:38:28] The lifetime value we talked about, and you can start increasing even more the, the revenue you get, which gives you space to start hiring out people actually for your full time team. And that's how you slowly start getting out of the business and not, not being all the time the one stop shop or everything, but sorry, chief everything officer, which is my goal now for the next year is to, okay, I don't want to be doing everything. I want to start removing myself a bit more. So yeah, that's definitely on my, on my agenda. 

[00:38:59] Tim: That's perfect. 

[00:39:00] Yeah. That, that was that was my next question is, is what's up, what's ahead for the next, what's ahead. 

[00:39:06] Tiago: I need to keep focusing on the lifetime value of my clients, you know, okay, what else can I offer them. How can, how can I keep helping them solve the other problems that they have and keep them happy because it's easier for you to to make money out of the people that you're already helping nowadays, because it's easy to sell them something else, right?

[00:39:21] Rather than trying to bring new people that don't know you from anywhere and then trying to sell them something it's easy for you to, okay, instead of focusing on new clients all the time, why not focus on the current clients I have and how else can I help them? Because that way you create a more peaceful business for yourself.

[00:39:37] You're not constantly hunting for the new clients. First of all, you have a network of, of referrers. Like I said at the beginning, people that are sending referrals, people that are recommended by others, which are also very easy to sell because when someone is recommended to you, that person already comes pre sold and then, okay, this guy recommended means it's a trustable person, et cetera. 

[00:39:55] So that's going to be my focus, definitely the lifetime value. And then. The, the hiring. Starting hiring people to replace even more parts of my business, because, it scares me a bit the thought that imagine that something happens and I have to be absent for three months or something. I'm sorry, Emily. I don't know. And then the business stops because all depending on me. 

[00:40:17] Tim: That's scary. So that, that is the one of the key risks of entrepreneurship, right? Like if you're the, if you're the show, if the, the show is unavailable. . 

[00:40:27] Tiago: Exactly. And most people don't think about it. I just started thinking of it recently, but it's, it's, it's stupid.

[00:40:32] How come we never think about that? Like, , you're a one stop shop, right? And yeah, if you stop the shop stops. Right? We should start thinking about it as early as possible. Right. Start slowly outsourcing smaller tasks, right? That's the safer way to do it, if you don't have enough revenue to start hiring full time, but getting the habit of doing it, I think it's, it's a great idea. Ultimately, having this vision. Okay. I need to, yeah. To be irrelevant here. 

[00:40:59] Tim: Exactly, I was just going to say ultimately making yourself replaceable.

[00:41:02] Tiago: I always had this mind that I'm creating my, my, my personal brand, you know, I'm the face of everything. But yeah, it's also, maybe it's not the best idea. I'm starting to think that everything on my name and, you know, because one day maybe I want to get out of here, you know? Have this rolling completely on its own. So there's something, yeah, that's what's in my mind for next year, for the years to come how do I get out of here? 

[00:41:26] Tim: That's a, that's a great note to end on, but I was wondering if you could tell people like how you help creators or other businesses. And How can people get in touch with you?

[00:41:36] Tiago: Yeah, sure. So the, the first way to, to get in touch to, to lurk me a bit is to go to Tiago Faria pt, T-I-A-G-O-F-A-R-I pt. My assets are still in Portuguese. I'm, I'm starting the process of internationalizing my brand, but you can use Google Chrome translate, you know, lurk me a bit there. And if you want, you can shoot me an email with some questions or whatever you want to talk about Tiago at tiagofaria.pt.

[00:41:59] And if you want to have a call with me, it's kind of a diagnostics call to see, you know, what kind of assets you have. Maybe you can already start having a cool business and unearthing clients from your current audience network contacts. You can just go to Tiago Faria. pt slash call. I love to know new people, so it could be fun.

[00:42:18] Tim: Well, you've obviously got lot of experience with this and really appreciate you taking the time today to share it with us. 

[00:42:24] Tiago: Yeah, it was a true pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It was very fun, very fun, very fun. 

[00:42:29] Tim: Thanks Tiago.

[00:42:30] So lots of great takeaways from this episode with Tiago and I got two things in particular that I want to highlight, and a third bonus thing that I'd like to share with you by way of conclusion. 

[00:42:40] And the first thing relates to what Tiago said about qualitative research for product development, in that you don't need huge numbers of respondents in order to get started with this. As a researcher, I've seen and worked on projects where the main patterns and contours of the data do start to emerge after talking to 12, 15, 20 people. 

[00:43:02] And I mean sure, you can get a little bit more nuance, or do more market segmentation, if you've got more numbers. But if you're starting with a small- or medium-sized prototype product, you don't need that off the bat.

[00:43:14] What you need is to be able to get started with the resources that you actually have. Put out a beta version of your idea, collect feedback on that, and then develop and iterate further from there to keep on improving the product. And that's how you're ultimately going to get to your goal. 

[00:43:30] But the key to this whole thing is that you've got to be talking to the right people. And that's why I developed this research template to help you identify who those people are. I've added the link in the description, it's free, so check it out if you think that might be helpful. 

[00:43:43] The other thing I really wanted to talk about was how Tiago organizes his day, where he has three main things that he's focusing on marketing, sales, and delivery. I found this very helpful myself, because as we've talked about before, one of the challenges of being a part-time creator is that you have to put a lot of thought into task prioritization and time management. And in a way, Tiago's system gives us a template for thinking about what should be on the priority list.

[00:44:11] And I've kind of adapted this template to my own situation of being a podcaster slash YouTuber and thinking about, okay, what are the key priorities within that realm? And so the three buckets I've been using are production, promotion, and monetization. And this has been great because what I was finding before was that most of the time would go into the production of content, both short- and long-form.

[00:44:36] But not nearly enough time would go into the promotion of existing content that we'd worked so hard to produce. And even less time was going into long term priorities, like building an email list, developing products, and creating strategic partnerships with sponsors and other creators. 

[00:44:53] It's that classic problem where the things that are seemingly urgent in the short term take over from all of the time that could be invested into things that are important long term, but not necessarily urgent in the immediate sense.

[00:45:08] If you're an entrepreneur or content creator of any type, you have got to fight against that on an ongoing basis. And the system that we've been talking about offers a great way to do that. And so maybe not every day, but certainly over the course of a week or two, I've gotten a lot better at checking off items within each of those bucket categories. So in this way, the whole kind of system is moving forward in tandem in a much more effective way. And those longer terms, strategic things are just so much less likely to get lost in the daily hustle of content creation and everyday life. 

[00:45:45] And so speaking of promotion, the last thing that I wanted to mention is a new offer that Tiago has developed to help podcasters and YouTubers like you and me get ourselves booked onto other people's podcasts.

[00:45:57] I recently did this myself when I appeared on the Scenic Digital Route podcast with Rene Morowitch. And I can tell you it's a great way to get more exposure for your show, develop strategic partnerships with other content creators, and get feedback and learn things from other creators as you're working with them.

[00:46:13] But here's the thing, it does take time to identify the right partners. Make the pitch for why you're a good fit for the show. Engage in pre calls and consultations to plan out what's going to go into the show, not to mention the work that goes on afterwards as you're trying to promote the show so that both of you will get the most out of the time and effort that you put into creating it in the first place.

[00:46:36] Can you imagine that Tiago went through this process to appear on more than 60 podcasts within the last few weeks? And through that process, he's learned how to get booked on shows that are like within the top 5 percent of all podcasts, which could be a major boost to your exposure and credibility. In fact, he calls the offer the Credibility Catalyst.

[00:46:57] And if you're interested in checking that out, I've added Tiago's contact details into the description, and if you let him know that you heard about the offer on this show, he'll give you a 20 percent discount. And if you do pursue this strategy for getting your name out there more, you're going to want to have a landing page that you can send people to so you can offer immediate value and collect contact details.

[00:47:17] And for that, you'll want to watch this next video here, where I talk about how to create your first lead magnet. Thanks for watching. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, and we'll see you in the next episode.