Value Creation: The Single Skill That Built My $1M Solo Business

alrighty my friends fasten your seat belts because this one has been a long time coming and for those that read the newsletter before this on the same topic uh understand that it is possibly better than sex so if you're ready for a video that is better than sex Buckle in one of my favorite failed businesses was creating digital art with Photoshop and you can see here that this is one of my uh favorite pieces I have a bunch and if you want to see any of them you can scroll all the way to the bottom

of my Instagram and this was the first time I realized the power of social media in building a business but I didn't realize that I was building a business at that time and so I emulated how larger accounts grew their following by tagging Community pages that share digital art creating the best Composites I could so they would get shared and remixing photographers images in hopes that they would share my content and this is kind of like mentioning a large account and a Twitter thread so that they retweet to Their audience or it's like tagging someone

in an Instagram post based on an idea that they gave you so that they share it to their story and then boom you have eyes on your content and you're gaining a following that's one of many like social media growth strategies and so this was almost five years ago now it was in 2017 so I think six five so bad at math but one yeah but that's when I first grew to 2500 followers on Instagram and so after locking myself in my room learning how to use Photoshop forgetting to eat most days when I'm sitting

there creating these little pieces of art I gave up I love to create but I had no idea how to monetize and my art was valuable but it wasn't valuable enough to demand payment other people didn't perceive it that valuable and so I realized that I couldn't sustain that lifestyle as an artist and I felt like I had to learn a more profitable skill in order to start freelancing with that and then uh slowly build up from there and just have art as a side hobby but of course I was an idiot and if I

could go back and change things I would and if I knew what I knew now I would probably still be doing that photoshop art but I do love writing a bit more now I believe the universe conspired in my favor and I ended up finding something that I truly enjoy but if I were to go back I would continue growing and realize my audience as a traffic source and I'd create a product or service to send that traffic to so courses and coaching in this case and someone who did this well that I didn't really

see anything I bought a course from this guy called visuals of Julius and that's how I learned to do this and so it didn't register in my mind like hey I bought this course why don't I create my own just show people how I made the favorite piece that I showed you in the screenshot earlier and that alone would probably build a sustainable income for myself just by promoting that through my audience that is continuing to grow and then the next thing is that I'd learned copywriting marketing and offer creation to position my product in

the market then I would partner with personal development creators to visualize their best ideas and become an authority in that space so in other words I do everything that we talk about in the one person business model series and so the skills that I learned through these failed business models like Photoshop and others they can they created who I am today so I use Photoshop in my own thumbnails I create my own thumbnails I create my own Instagram designs I create my own website I create everything because I had I learned that skill and tried

to create a business out of it until I finally stumbled upon being a Creator and so I started from that point of Leverage but aside from all of those skills there is one skill that is responsible for 95 percent of the results of my business success and it has contributed the most to my brand sales content and just Revenue growth over the past three to four years and that's what we're going to talk about today and I call this skill value creation do what you love but study psychology marketing and sales so you don't become

a starving artist every money making skill that people tell you to learn is linked with universal patterns and human psychology and yes I'm getting spiritual here Universal patterns that's what everything is built from the essence of being is how knowledge was constructed knowledge is second order being and spirit is first order or in other words experience we have to experience something before we can label it turn it into knowledge share that knowledge and then everyone operate and communicate to form a social Fabric and civilization and so if skills aren't linked with human psychology or Universal

patterns then they don't make money and if they don't make money like Photoshop art for example which isn't inherently persuasive or it doesn't necessarily communicate the value of something that people desire in order to give you money in the form of value that you want then you need to stack skills you need to stack the skill that we're going to talk about in this video onto the other skills that you have right now that you want to monetize and so at the base of all human behavior including people pulling out their credit cards to pay

you are three things the first is survival which is the desire to replicate information in your genes and Consciousness both physical and mental second is evolution so the desire to outpace destruction through creation and the third is transformation so the desire to achieve a higher quality of experience these are all fairly similar and we're going to consider them synonymous for the rest of this video so storytelling Games music architecture anything that is created also mimics these patterns because as I said everything that we create is that of being from reality and so you can observe

and dissect these patterns in these things we're getting a bit like off topic here but I just want to paint this picture and show you how deep this actually runs so in the simplest way that I can explain it and package it up into a framework this whole human behavior um framework is purpose path priority so the first is purpose and behavior change starts with becoming aware of a problem and then a goal revealing itself in order to overcome it so a transformation goal equals purpose purpose equals desire desire equals how problems come into existence

like how a story opens a curiosity Loop by implying or directly stating that there is a problem that hooks your attention in order to read through the story and follow the highs and lows that also reflect in something like architecture when you're creating the grooves or designing an image or something like that and that hooks your attention to read and figure out what the transformation is and what the solution was to create that transformation that people want in their lives that's what engages our mind with reality and how we communicate with others and so it's

also how people start a landing page or a YouTube video or any form of content there's always a problem that is implied state did and then Amplified in order to hook and grab attention to lead into a solution and it reflects in your personal life as well where once you become very aware of a problem in your life and how it is spreading and impacting other areas of your life you get fed up with it once you become conscious of it and then you work to overcome it to create a transformation for yourself so by

the lesson here is by shining a light and making people aware of their problems you create purpose not only in yourself but in others so the second thing is the path so when a problem is identified or someone is made aware of the problem they need Clarity on how to overcome it right because if you just make someone aware of a problem then then they don't know how to overcome it or it's not that important to them or there is no Clarity which we've talked about many times before where you need to order Consciousness through

structured information or else chaos ensues overwhelm overthinking anxiety we don't want to cause that in our customers so we create a path that we can illustrate in our content or our products in order to bridge the gap between the problem they're facing and the transformation that they're trying to acquire and so the third thing is priority because all of this problems are determined by perceived importance right one a problem to your friend may not be a problem to you or it may not be an important problem to you and so this is why it's important

that we frame what we're talking about here from the right perspective because if a problem isn't important to an individual or you are writing content or creating a product or something else and the problem just doesn't register with them it's not important it doesn't hit because you aren't speaking their language or like you're just off like you didn't do your market research then it's not going to catch their attention and you aren't going to make any money and so humans perceive problems from the lens of their identity this is why it's important that you target

a customer Avatar or create one and this is also why I like to take the route of turning yourself into the customer Avatar and marketing to your past self and attracting the people that are like you see the most profitable niches you video because that's a lot easier to do and it's more fulfilling to do because you already have it all in your head you don't have to work with someone you hate in order to make money you just Market towards your past self and the identity associated with that because you know that perspective best

because identity and perspective are very closely linked and so your perspective on things that forms a foundation of your content your writing your products whatever you create and the people you attract to create a shared perspective and perspective is very goal and vision oriented so you are leading people towards a goal or vision and attracting people to that through your content and therefore able to Market your products better towards them and then it just click creates a holistic business model that you truly enjoy doing because think about it like if if you're trying to make

a gamer aware of a problem like a health problem and they already have all of these preset beliefs and they're identified with being a gamer and drinking Mountain Dew or G Fuel and all this other stuff and you're coming in and you're like hey you're unhealthy they're just gonna be like Oh no you're an idiot uh like you know how gamers are they're very like closed-minded and frankly idiotic in most cases there are some open-minded ones but you know what I'm talking about you have to position the product in a very specific way to speak

to that person you have to understand your customer is what I'm saying here and so by the way you can this is the same framework that I used in uh how to take back control of your life that video because it's the same it's the same thing for changing your life and changing other people's lives this is a universal principle of value creation for yourself and others okay so now let's talk about the value creation framework because we just talked about purpose path priority and we have a lot to go over here this is going

to be a long video but it will be worth your time so in the things that we list our off going on here there's going to be like eight things that we list off treat all of these as marketing Firepower or marketing Legos these are pieces that you can use in your landing pages sales Pages opt-in Pages website content brand bio everything because you have to capture hold and deliver value on the attention you captured and so these that we're going to talk about are these steps from turning dirt into gold because marketing is perception

no it doesn't matter how good your product is it matters about how important and valuable that product is perceived by other people and so these eight steps are what is going to help you illustrate that perceived value and so these are the steps that when I applied them to my business and kind of had that aha moment this is what I need to do this is what brought my business to 1 million plus dollars closing in on 2 million in Revenue in the past three years and so we're going to assume that you are learning

this in order to create an offer or create a better offer or promote a product that you already have if you don't check out my previous one person business model video in and of itself the series and the best business model to make 1 million in like 2023 or something like that and the you have a 100 000 product in your head I've made a ton of videos on these so the first thing that you need to understand is levels of awareness you need to understand the problem the problem is the first thing that we're

trying to identify here and you have to be able to illustrate that problem to the people that you're talking to in your content and product and so also note that these overlap with the nine stages of ego development watch the video by actualize.org if you want to understand yourself better and it also overlaps with spiral Dynamics the spiral Dynamics stage stages in philosophy so the first level of awareness is unaware they're unaware of a problem in their life and this is where most viral YouTube videos uh Instagram all content this is how people are positioning

it is from the unaware stage of people problems so you want to write and speak to people and show them how a problem is impacting their life to make them aware of it so if you're trying to help someone get fit you may point out that a lack of proper nutrition or a certain way of eating is contributing to the grogginess or feeling tired or low energy that they are feeling so a tweet that I would write you're always tired because you stuff your face with hot pockets ubereats and foods that lead to nutrient deficiency

so it's a bit harsh but yes that's my style so level two the second level of awareness is that your readers are aware of their problem but they may not understand it or they aren't aware of a potential solution so they aren't acting on it so a post I would write here is if you're tired all the time weigh yourself every morning eat your body weight and protein drink water until you pee clear walk 10 000 steps a day thank me later when you feel so good that you hate the thought of ruining that feeling

with junk food and so in long form content you can both illustrate the problem and provide a solution you can walk through multiple stated levels of awareness here but with short form content like a tweet or a short or a real or just an Instagram post or something like that you're usually going to be targeting level one through three in order to uh generate the most attention and capture the most of your audience because 95 of the market are beginners so with short form content you don't want to be too high level or clever save

that for long form so that you can present an entire argument introduce them to the problem make them aware of it provide a solution and help encourage them to act so level three is solution aware they're aware of a solution or your solution and you just need to put it in front of them or you need to put the solution in front of them like give them steps to overcome their problem and so level four is product aware where people are aware of your solution and other Solutions on the market and so your job in

this level of awareness and understand that everyone is in a specific level of awareness at any time when they are interacting online right whether it be when they go to your profile so when they're looking at your bio which level of awareness are you targeting is it too high level or is it too broad and then when they click on your website what's the level of awareness they're at now when they go through your emails what level of awareness are they at when they're looking at your content which level of awareness are you targeting and

so in this stage your job is to present a reason or an argument for why your solution is better than those on the market and benefits Rich language is key here so here's a post I would write why you should start intermittent fasting morning focus is insane you don't have to plan morning food lunch and dinner can be massive meals and I could finish this but you get the point and this is already getting very long but you can see how intermittent fasting is more of a novel solution for a specific person that is has

a specific lifestyle where you can provide the benefits to that and how it will impact your energy levels and everything like that and so level five is that they are most aware of their problems and they're aware of the solutions on the market and they're aware of your solution they're sold on it all they need is some form of an incentive or to have a promotion placed in front of them or it's like that final barrier where they're tipped over the top and so you can use like a limited time sale or some other scarcity

tactic here but you just be careful with those so we got through the levels of awareness that was like the longest one of these but the second is positioning so here are the eight human desires which we will talk about but this is a cool little graphic that you can look at so now that we understand the levels of awareness we can begin to craft a persuasive message and so by the way this is all this a lot of this is from digital economics my master class for productizing yourself so if you want a notion

template to actually walk you through crafting this content product promotions and all that stuff and creating your brand then I would check that out links in the description and so we've discussed the Eternal markets many times before which are health wealth relationships but we're going to take it a bit deeper here so there are eight human desires that are impossible to ignore and all of your content all of your copywriting all of your sales Pages landing pages and whatever must be framed from a problem residing in one of these right you have to find a

problem and then attack it from a specific angle this is positioning or creating an angle in marketing so this is how you start or frame what you are going to write or speak about so the eight human desires are Survival Life enjoyment Freedom From Fear sexual companionship comfort and Clarity perceived status safety of community and social acceptance so you want to educate people on the problems they are facing in one of these domains relating to your product or service so if you're selling like a make money online product you can take the status angle and

be like oh I live this fancy lifestyle and I have this Rich car and then people want that so you catch attention and then you can create an argument around that once it's framed from that it's much easier to write or you can go from the life enjoyment angle which is a bit less scammy where if I'm teaching a skill I can be like here's how the quality of your life is going to increase from learning this skill and that's how you start or frame your persuasive message and so I would encourage you to think

about the product or service that either you sell or is being sold like you can think of my products if you don't have a product so two hour writer me teaching writing and content and branding how can you frame that through Survival Life enjoyment like survival you need skills in order to survive in the modern world you need high value skills in order to make a specific income and then if you wanted to you could even frame this under like sexual companionship where it's like here's what you do you have to learn how to write

you need to build a brand for yourself and then you from that place of social Authority with a lot of followers get to DM the man or woman that you want and have that leverage over the people that don't have many followers you could do it that way it's not the smartest way to like write your copy but you could and so the thing with this is is notice how every single person's Niche is self-improvement or self-actualization right that's the broad Niche where you can break it down into the topics that you talk about within

the health wealth relationships markets but I'm just saying this to prove that my theory still holds true which is to solve your own problems document the solution online and improve others to raise the collective Consciousness it still holds true so now on to number three which is the big problem so now we have levels of awareness and positioning and now we need from those two we need to identify a big problem that we can start our writing speaking or Creations office or content products promotions whatever it may be what is the big problem from the

level of awareness that people are sitting in so dependent on where you're writing the content and then whatever angle you choose to go from so like life enjoyment what's a big problem relating to that so from Level 1 the unaware stage and the perceived status angle I can identify a big problem like not having a six-figure income and then I can agitate that problem as to why a six-figure income is impacting the rest of their life it's impacting how like who they can actually get a date with it's impacting what kind of location they can

live in it's impacting possibly their ability to pay their bills comfortably that also crosses over with the survival angle and how the world naturally lacks a level of respect for them I don't know if this is true I'm just we're painting a picture here and so is this shallow yes welcome to human life depth comes after you solve the shallow problems in your life and others you have to raise people beyond the surface level problems that they have but you can't just let them skip that they have to solve those things in order to reach

that place of depth because frankly nobody cares about mindfulness or existentialism or spirituality when they can't pay their bills like if if the only thing if the entirety of their mind is narrow stressed and focused on paying the bills and trying to get a girlfriend like like 18 year olds do and all of this other you have to work them beyond that and you can't just ignore the shallow superficial because these are the stages of development that you have to raise people up right your ego has to develop now the fourth thing after the big

problem see this is where we're getting into purpose path priority we have the problem and now we need the path or the solution so the fourth thing is a unique mechanism because you need a solution that stands out from everyone else's and again this is why I always recommend figuring it out for yourself right solving your own problems in a unique way and going through the trial and error that makes you an expert on that problem that you are solving so that you can help others people solve it from a unique way because if you

just take exactly what someone else is doing I'm not saying not to do this but if you just take exactly what someone else is doing and Patch it up as your own not only are you not going to be able to teach that but it's not not going to be unique in any way you don't have the experience to make it unique so you take from multiple sources in order to solve your own problems and then through experience you can come back and reflect and create a solution on your own and so this is like

how grego Gallagher combined uh intermittent fasting and reverse pyramid training to create a training program that fit his lifestyle perfectly and he understood like the back of his hand and how it impacted his life so that he could Market it in a great way and he definitely took the perceived status angle by at the beginning he was like flexing uh Lamborghinis and hot women and all this stuff but he's going down different angles now and that's just how things work he changed my life for the better and I didn't really care about the Lambos or

that but I like his training philosophy and so you have to think about how you would solve the big problem step by step and then create that on your own so I like to think about it from the lens of a book right the book If you were to have an end goal problem at the start how would you fill that in what are the chapters and the sub chapters and then how are you going to write and deliver on that so after that then you slap a compelling name on it and my two hour

writer or my two hour content ecosystem inside the two hour writer is an example of that you can understand everything that we're talking about here by just looking at that landing page now the fifth thing is bullet spray benefits so if you've ever started copywriting you're going you're starting to see where I'm getting at with all of this and how a persuasive argument is formed but once you have the big problem and the unique mechanism to overcome it for that is your product or service then you need to help people understand why it is applicable

and relatable to their lives and how it will benefit their lives so my favorite way to do this is by bullet points right just bullet points benefits bullet spray them with it because when you give a bullet point list rather than just like not making it very clear as to how it's going to benefit their life it's like a list tweet right a list tweet is like five steps to a better life go on a walk one two three four five right five bullet points and when people read through that they may not agree with

the first one they may not resonate with the second one but the third bullet point they're like oh yeah I love that I'm gonna like and retweet and so it's the same thing with the bullet spray benefits you list as many compelling benefits as there are or as you can and just one of those may be the reason that they buy so now the sixth step in value creation is proof so a lot of people talk about social proof or testimonials and those are important but many people don't have those at the beginning and when

you don't have those of course it should be your full-time job to get those from the people that buy your products or services but a lot of people get afraid to sell something because they don't have social proof or testimonials but what you do have is personal experience and you have the personal experience of others in the form of statistics and anecdotes that you can research and find online to form your compelling argument in your writing and so this is why I start 90 of my videos or newsletters with a personal experience that illustrates the

problem and then I can talk about my story and how I overcame it right everyone's first product can just be something that they created for themselves and they talk about their personal experience the problem they're facing and how they overcame it and then once they get testimonials they can just add that to the landing page and you're fine you may make less sales at the beginning and that's fine it's all a progression so the seventh step to Value creation is the big idea and what a big idea is is it's pretty much like I like

to think of it as a one sentence summary of everything else that we just listed so it's a one sentence summary that illustrates the value of what you're providing so most the most popular quotes are very big Ideas the content that you like so much are very big Ideas the parts of this video that caught your attention and caused excitement in you are big Ideas right I talk about how I hunt for Big Ideas in the last video that got abysmal views for some reason that sucks because it's why do all of the most important

and most valuable videos just like not get many views if you want something go watch the last video which is on reading how to stop forgetting everything you read watch it all the way through I probably I promise it'll change everything you think about content creation and reading in general because Big Ideas are found by hunting for them and making them your own right all of the all of my newsletters and everything I keep a database of Big Ideas when I'm scrolling Twitter and a tweet sticks out to me I copy paste that into notion

when I read something in a book I highlight it and the notion connected to read wise uploads it to notion and I can refer to those at any time right you need a place to capture ideas because then you use those ideas and sprinkle them throughout your newsletters and landing pages and so some examples of like common Big Ideas are that Bitcoin is the digital currency of the future or that Uber is the modern taxi service or that chat GPT is everything and so this can overlap with or be any of the points you listed

out recently like the big problem or the unique mechanism's name and then the eighth and final step of value creation is a risk reversal and end result right because you have the problem that is positioned towards a specific level of awareness and then you have the unique mechanism or your solution for overcoming it you have the benefits associated with that but what's the clear outcome and what's on the line if they do not reach that clear outcome right what is the desirable end result here and so a compelling risk reversal is going it's what's going

to be it's what's going to help you close the most deals at the beginning of your journey and most people opt for like a money back guarantee which is cool but you can spice it up quite a bit you can get creative with it and really do anything you want if you play back and forth between like the the desirable end result and the risk reversal associated with that so an example when selling something like a dating product is that if you don't land five dates in 60 days then you we refund your money right

that's a desirable end result five dates and a risk reversal if you don't get those five days in 60 days then you get your money back why would you not buy that and that puts pressure on you to deliver especially if you're a beginner it doesn't matter if you haven't gotten those results before that's why you're refunding their money if you can't achieve it and that's what puts pressure that's what makes you actually act that's what makes you try to deliver and through trying your hardest to make that work you realize what's actually possible and

then the next time you come back from a better iteration and then it slowly gets better and better with time and of course here you can add caveats to your risk reversal in your landing page or whatever it may be right you can say we will give you your money back but only if you execute and can prove that you executed on every single action here so then you think about it and it's like okay well maybe they have to get their number and then land the five dates right and so then they can send

you screenshots of the text that they're sending back and forth between them and then if your methods just didn't work out then they refund the money but if they actually execute on everything you said then it's almost impossible for them to fail so it's a win-win for both people where the pressure is put on you to deliver and the pressure is put on them to actually act on what they purchase because most people don't do that so now that was it but I want to reiterate that you want to treat each of those eight things

as marketing Legos in everything you use and you have to practice at every single moment to get good at this watching this video is not enough watching anything or reading anything is not enough you have to start a project encounter to real world problems and let reality teach you what watching this video can't because there are thousands thousands thousands thousands of minor nuances that you will pick up consciously and subconsciously as you are making progress and none of those nuances can be Illustrated to you in a course content or like a book so here are

a few places where you can use these pieces for your value creation the first is social media posts so in long form content it usually follows the format of illustrating a problem agitating the problem giving context and raising them up the level of awareness right so making them aware of the problem in their life and how it's impacting their life so that's agitating the problem and then giving actionable steps to overcome that problem so you're giving them a solution so they're solution aware and then incorporate a bullet spray list of benefits or just incorporate benefits

so that they are encouraged to implement it into their life and then use the big idea of all of that as your headline title or whatever ever it may be right the one person business is not only a unique mechanism but it is a big idea that are my most popular YouTube videos so long form content can walk people through all levels of awareness right so for engagement you usually Target one through three so you start with a problem that people are unaware of you make them aware of it you agitate the problem or make

them aware of it more and then you provide a solution and that's pretty much it it's usually the problem solution that's content but for sales right you usually go from two to five so you're targeting a more specific person that is aware of their problem you illustrate why that problem is uh impacting their life and why they need to change their life and then slowly through the end you introduce them to your product and provide an incentive for them to act on it and so short form content is kind of it's limited to less it's

usually limited to one or two or three of these things at a time where like the big idea can be a tweet in itself or the problem and the big idea or the problem and unique mechanism or the steps that forms like a tweet an Instagram post a real whatever it may be and so that was just social media content but this can also obviously be used on a landing page or sales page and so the best way to practice this is to take this video with those eight steps and pair it with copywriting Frameworks

like Pastor which is problem amplify story testimony offer and response you can just Google these things or Ada which is a interest attention interest desire and action or pass which is problem amplify and solution and then you get better with time by using those Frameworks and structuring all of the eight things that we talked about here within those Frameworks and so on a landing page or sales page for the headline and sub headline or everything above the fold right the very first part of the website is where you're trying to fit and summarize all eight

of these value creation steps and so the next place you can use them is a course curriculum right because you don't want to just stop being persuasive once you get into a course you want people to you want to capture tension in each module you want to walk them through give them steps to overcoming the problem that is presented in each section and that's how you get them to act right and then the last place is just an everyday conversation right when you're talking to someone practice this start with a problem that you're facing and

then let the conversation Carry On from there that's how you articulate your points this is articulation more than it is just marketing and so that is it for this video this is extremely powerful if you actually use what we talked about here and practice it that's the key so let me know what you thought of this let me know if you thought it was valuable in the comments make sure you like while you're there subscribe uh digital economics is the master class links in the description where I break down much more than this this is

just a part of digital economics to our writer is also very useful if you want to build a brand build a following and learn how to write persuasive digital content the modern Mastery is just a community that you can join for five bucks with 180 plus strategies on business and life and with that thank you for watching we'll see you in the next video peace