Welcome to the Badass Empires podcast, where we help early stage entrepreneurs, side hustlers, and aspiring corporate dropouts to build their own purpose-driven online business from scratch. In 2019, I left my high-flying corporate career behind to build what is now a multimillion dollar knowledge base coaching empire.
One that gives me an immense amount of freedom and allows me to make a real difference. Some people's lives. This experience transformed me forever. And now I'm here to show you how to build your empire, the one that allows you to work from anywhere, fund your dream lifestyle, and fulfill your calling all at the same damn time.
So ready to rule. Grab your crown, badass, your empire awaits.
So you may be surprised to hear that. I used to be a career coach. I know. Crazy, right? I'm sure. I'm sure you might have guessed somehow, but yes, I used to be a career coach over six years over at Badass Careers and before that I. I had a very long, highly successful international career in human resources recruitment as a learning and development leadership development and recruitment specialist.
Okay? So I was very much in the world of work, in the world of careers and thriving industries and skill sets and the best place to be. And let me tell you, I have not seen something like this in a very long time, which is. One of the fastest growing, most lucrative industries to be in right now. And you need literally zero qualifications to get started.
And of course, it is the industry that I myself have pivoted into and jumped into, which is the creator economy. But I wanna break it down for you today because there are so many misconceptions about the creator economy that you have to be an influencer and you have to do this and that to make money online, and it's just not the case.
There are so many different options within the creator economy, and I wanted to actually break down for you. The different kind of job and career options within this hugely exploding, booming economy, which is so exciting to be a part of, and walk you through where the best place to play is. Okay. So the creator economy is an economy that allows any sort of content creator or service provider, coach, course creator, freelancer, whatever they are.
To leverage the power of the internet to generate income. Okay. So using our wifi connection and the fact that we can speak to hundreds, if not thousands of people at any one time, and get that visibility on who we are and what we do. Okay? And this industry has. Huge growth potential. It's just getting started.
I know it seems like everyone and their dog is a content creator these days, but it's actually not the case. We're still very much in the early adoption phase and. The market growth is predicted to exceed over 500 billion USD in the US alone when it comes to this kind of world right now. So it's definitely one of the fastest growing industries and an incredibly profitable and lucrative industry to be a part of.
And then within that, there's a very specific skillset that's going to be hugely, hugely profitable to know about. And this is. Where we anchor the kind of personal, brand based, knowledge based, expertise based businesses that we're running. But again, there's still a lot of confusion between different business types and different service provider models, and I want you to get really, really clear on all of those today so that you can understand how that you can get your slice of the pie and navigate this incredible industry to be in and what skills to really, really focus on honing in on.
So the creator economy, let's talk about it. It is permissionless, it's global, it's limitless, and it is fueled by the digital revolution, and it is not slowing down anytime soon. Now, there are a lot of ways that you can become a creator and make money. I'm not even gonna go into some types like royalties, drop shipping, like there's so many ways you can make money online.
We know that to be true, but I want to. Speak to the highly qualified, very ambitious professional right now who is wanting to create a career pivot, a career change towards more freedom and fulfillment, and they want that to be lucrative and. You. They want any career move that they make to be a successful one.
They wanna earn great money. They want to be able to be proud of what they do. They wanna find purpose in what they do. Okay, so we're gonna be really speaking about the options within the creator economy that allows you to work to that kind of standard and. In observing the creator economy, I've kind of boiled it down to just four main areas of work underneath the umbrella that is the creator economy.
Now the first is consulting and freelance. Now consultants, freelancers. Most of the time these people are taking what they were getting paid for in corporate and. Working solo. It could also not be the case. They might be very passionate about social media and become a social media manager, but this is very much in the done for you, if not heavily done with you space.
Okay? So you might become a freelance physiotherapist. You might become a freelance social media manager. You might become a freelance digital marketing specialist. You might become a freelance. Pet health specialist, but essentially you're taking a similar skillset and you're still getting paid, except you are having to land your own gigs and your own clients and sort of work for yourself in that way.
It's also very much, as I said, quite hands-on. You're typically delivering things to clients in a custom way. So for example, custom website builds or custom. Logos and brand mood boards, for example. Okay, so you're very much still. Working and delivering, but just to the clients that you get to choose. And in that way there are a lot of pros and cons.
Okay? The pros are that you can get started making money instantly. You can leverage your, you can, you don't even need to create content. You can leverage your network. You can. You contact past colleagues, you can contact past stakeholders and clients and ask for referrals. There are usually people out there who can put you in touch already to get started with.
It can be very, very fast in that way, which is really cool. You don't need anything fancy. You can just have a really nice pitch deck that you pulled together on Canva. You don't need a website or anything, and you can just, through chatting to people, reaching out to people, voice noting people, emailing people with your pitch deck, and then you know.
Maybe even doing some brand audits or some, some audits of some kind pertaining to the area that you are in. You know, you can start landing clients pretty quickly without a big social media presence. The flip side, however, is that you're still stuck in this world where you are trading time for money. So you could be a, let's say a change manager and you could go out and become a contractor and be charging like big money, a huge hourly rate, and B, earning a lot more than you were in terms of like a salary and in-house salary.
And that's really cool. But at the end of the day, a, as much as you might be earning really great money. It does tend to taper out at some point, and you hit some sort of market cap at some point and you're having to physically show up and do the work and charge for those hours as well. You could also be a service provider who is just earning a really, really great hourly rate.
Let's take for example. Mm, a keynote speaker. So you might be a speaker, professional speaker who speaks at conferences and, and, and, and does that as a kind of service that you provide. But again, even though you might be being paid like a disproportionate amount of money per gig. So for example, you know, 5,000 USD for a 90 minute workshop that you're hosting because you have a specific experience or skillset that lends yourself to do that kind of thing.
At the end of the day, you still have to prepare the gig, show up for the gig, and. You know, land the gig, keep those gigs coming in and you're still in that way trading time for money. Even if it's really, really great money you are, you're still trading the fact that you are there and you are present. And if you were really sick and you had to cancel, and often in this model, the consultant, the freelancer, you lose gigs, lose C clients, push out deadlines.
Like there's still very much a tie towards your time being traded for. Work you need to deliver and being traded for that money that you're trying to receive. Okay. So it's very much dependent on you still now. It's a great way to get started and we often have people inside of Empire era who have started in this way or want to start in that way.
To land a couple of those, one-to-one high touch custom clients in that way first, and that's a brilliant idea, but it's not inherently scalable. Okay. So that's the consultant, freelancer kind of area. The next area you have are the influences. Now the influences. Are the most visible and famous in the creator economy.
And this is why it drives me crazy when people say, I wanna run my own business, Rosie, but I don't wanna be an influencer. Like an influencer is a whole different profession. It's like you getting a human resources degree and you wanna get into recruiting. Okay. And you say to me, Rosie, I really wanna get into recruiting, but I don't wanna have to be a learning and development professional.
And I'd be like. You don't have to. Why would you? Just because it's under the human resources umbrella doesn't mean that to do recruitment, you need to do learning and development, or you need to do restructuring or you need to do like, it's just not the same thing. It may look like it to someone who's outside looking in and doesn't quite get it, but influences are not the same thing as what we do.
So influences. They sell themselves, they sell their lifestyle, they sell their workouts. They, they sell, sell their outfits. They let people in to their lives, to their private lives. They share details often of their partner, of their children, of their, what their home looks like, like they are curating an image of themselves.
And then they're often selling other people's products, right? So they are. Selling those cushions from their couch that they have purchased, or they get a brand sponsorship deal and they're selling a 10% off code for their detox drinks or whatever it is. And they're selling things that they use, but not things that they've created.
And so selling. To a legion of people, it's like how to become a mini me basically in this, like how to look like me or live like me, or parent like me. It's a very, very, very different way of doing things and for me personally, as someone who has very high standards about what I wanna do for work. I'm not personally interested in selling myself, selling myself as a person.
That's of no interest of to me. And also no one would buy that. Like, like no one's gonna buy like little old me in my pajamas, like cuddling with my cat right now. Like, it's just not, it's just not a thing and it's not something that I want, I, I, I just don't want to live like that. I don't want to share details of my life.
I don't want to. I just have people know more about me than they need to on the internet. Um, I'm very privacy conscious around my baby, like it's just not something that appeals to me. At all. And so people are quite surprised when they're like, oh, but you're an influencer. I'm like, no, that's quite a different profession.
So some pros are, you know, if, if that comes naturally to you, if you are always on and you just don't mind vlogging your day to day and sharing every moment with the internet and that sort of suits you, why not make money off it? Cool. Go for it. I guess the pros being, you know. How much purpose are they finding in that?
How much cognitive stimulation? And again, these might not be things that they're looking for, which is like totally fine. And, and you know, how much of, of that business model is also sustainable and long lasting? Like if you're building a business on. The fact that you have a really beautiful, tidy home and young kids, well, they won't always be young, or that you look a certain way, maybe you won't always look that way or that you know, you've got a snatched waist, well, maybe it won't always be snatched.
You know, it's like, so it's one of those things that, for me, it's just kind of like, it's a why not moment in time. Like I don't wanna judge anyone making money that way. Go for it. But it's just not something that I'm interested in at all. Then the next sort of big category underneath the Creator Economy umbrella are the affiliate marketers or the user generated content gurus.
So these people are. Creating content to sell other people's brands and products. So for example, you might have a TikTok account that is wholly dedicated to really cute cat accessories. So you know, toys. Beds, those hamster wheels you can get for cats. And they have these really viral videos of these cute cats playing with cool toys.
And then at their Lincoln Bio or their TikTok shop or whatever they're using. You will be able to shop that thing, grab that thing, uh, or comment the word, and they'll send you the link. And you see people doing this with like, for example, um, tech technology to like film for content creators like the coolest, um, LED Ring Light or the coolest magnetic.
Tripod or like this and that, and people are creating these, these videos around it, and they're like, comment word if you want the link. Now what happens is that when you, they send you that link, it's usually to Amazon, you'll click on that link and if you purchase a thing, they'll get 4% of the sale price.
Now, if that's happening thousands or tens of thousands of times, this is how they're making their money. The crazy thing with Amazon as well is that. You will get 4% of the, it might not be 4%, it's anywhere. It could be like 1%, 2%, but it's around like two to 4% depending on the country, but you could have 4% of the entire cart value.
So if they click on my link to buy that cute little teaser toy for your cat, but they also end up buying a drone because they're like, oh, I'm, while I'm on Amazon, let's pick up that drone we've been looking at. You'd actually get the 4% of like the $2,000 purchase as well. So. It can be quite interesting, and it's a good way to create, let's say, these faceless kind of brands.
Another way you can do it is that you're actually creating user generated content, either faceless or with your face, and you are using people's clothing, products, whatever it is, but brands will, uh, essentially give you the thing to create content with. And in creating that content. You will have an affiliate link either working directly with the brand or some brands are just part of these kind of MER affiliate marketing networks, where you can sign up and you can apply for multiple different brands and programs and and, and start creating content in that way.
Now, this might sound really appealing in a lot of ways, which is like, ooh. Love the fact that it's faceless. Love the fact that I don't have to create a community. Love the fact that it's, you know, all online and all that kind of thing. And yeah, it can definitely be appealing for sure in that way. But there are two main things that really scare me about this particular area of the creator economy.
Firstly, you are a victim to others. If Amazon decides to take away its affiliate marketing, if. A brand that you are partnering with drops your contract. If anything happens, your revenue streams are cut, and that does not appeal to me at all. I've always liked to have a sense of sort of control in that empowerment around my revenue streams and owning those revenue streams.
The other big thing around this that I've got a big question mark around is what about AI being able to create, like anyone create, can create faceless content, let alone AI being able to create stock footage and being able to. Replace the human effort that goes into particularly things like user generated content.
So I've got a bit of a question mark on the sustainability of this area in general. So again, not saying that it's useless, not saying that it's not appealing to some extent, but just like all of them that we've mentioned so far, the freelance model, the influencer model, and now the affiliate sort of marketing model.
There are definitely some downsides that aren't as appealing as the fourth type of way. You can work with the creator economy and make the most of this booming, booming industry, and that is becoming a personal brand educator. Now, a personal brand educator, what is it? Essentially it's me. Um, it's that kind of person who is able to package a skill, some knowledge, some experience.
Find one marketable or monetizable skill that you have within your whole realm of life experience. And I'm gonna be honest, I can find at least $5 million business ideas in every single person I meet. So it's, it's quite easy in that way. But you find one skill. Well, it's easy to find. It's, it's, it's not easy to decide, but you find your skill and commit to it.
And you create content around that. Now, the reason that this business model worked really, really well, it worked for me for not even French, for my YouTube channel. It worked for me for Badass Careers, and it's working very well for Badass Empires is because of several reasons, but. Firstly, it's very, very purposeful and meaningful, which I've seen people be able to stick to longer.
Okay? 'cause you're empowering others. You're helping others, you're helping other people to win, and you're helping other people to reach their goals, and it's very, very meaningful. And also, humans want to learn from other humans. So in the world of ai. Connection and trust and being able to relate to and work with other human beings is becoming incredibly desirable and incredibly profitable.
They do not want to learn from a robot. They do not want to learn from an anonymous logo or company they've never heard, heard from. People want to work with other people. And what's really cool is, is all about helping people to reach their goals in all sorts of different areas of life. It could be health, money, confidence, relationships, mindset, lifestyle, creative pursuits, and it, it really comes down to the fact that you build a community around your content and people in that community, they either want to achieve the same thing and they share the same values, whatever it is, but it's very, very human.
In that way. So the basic model goes like this. Number one, you're using your skills to help people. So you figure out how you can use some kind of experience or expertise to help a specific type of person to achieve a specific result. Now that's not so different to consulting and freelance, right? So that's where you're sort of like, okay, but what's the difference between that and a consultant or a freelancer?
Well, we're gonna get into it. The next step is that you add value to thousands of people's lives for free. So you build an online community where you can be of immense value to those people for free, and you get recognized for being yourself and for being generous, and for creating a community and a space where people can have really cool conversations around your topic.
Then the third step is that you package up your genius, not into a consulting offer where you're trading time for money, but into a scalable offer. Now, to be a hundred percent clear, a lot of us, myself included. We'll start with one-to-one coaching. I did it when I was, you know, helping people to grow their YouTube channels over on, not even French.
Um, I offered that as a service for a while. I did it when I was doing one-to-one careers coaching with badass careers and in Badass Empires. When I started a new business, I did not go straight to a scalable offer. I went straight to private coaching because you do start. Stress testing your methodology and your coaching one-to-one so that it can be so high touch and very supportive and you can ensure that people are getting results and it's in working with people one-to-one, that you can really land your scalable methodology.
But once you've got that scalable methodology, this is when you will design and sell some kind of course or coaching offer where essentially people will have. Steps that they need to go through. They could be workbooks, they could be video modules, they could be just weekly missions you send them on, but they will have things that they need to do in order to achieve their goals, in order to make shifts, in order to move forward in that area of life.
And then typically you have some kind of q and a or coaching components. So it could be being able to ask you questions in a community forum. It could be a discord, a slack, it could be, you know, calls, it could be all sorts of things, but typically you have a place where people can ask for your personalized advice on applying the materials to their unique situation.
And when you design it in a smart way, you people can get amazing results and feel wholly supported, even if you are helping 20 people at a time or 200 people at a time. And I've made over $4 million over the past five years doing this. Okay. And like I have to make sure you understand the potential of this business model is absolutely insane because it's very purposeful and it's very scalable and profitable, and it's very sustainable, which are three things that I'm really looking for.
And then underneath the creator economy, while it might look very similar on the surface of like, oh, okay, so they offer services and they create content. They're actually very, very different flavors. Now, the main thing that will hold people back here is saying, I do not have a skill. I do not have some knowledge.
I do not have something that I can create content around. And most of the time when I hear that, I know that people are overthinking it because. Like, it's absolutely wild to me how I can show you evidence of people using the exact same skills that you have right now, and they are running successful businesses and building incredible communities and making amazing money.
And you'll still tell me that it's different for you. Like I will show you a piece of content that they've created, for example, um, just so you want to create a business all around playing the recorder. I will show you a video that says. Beginner recorder lesson 10 minutes long on YouTube, 3 million views.
And I'll ask you, could you create a similar video to this? Could you create a 10 minute video doing a basic recorder lesson for absolute beginners? And you'll sit there and look me in the eye and say, yes I can. And then when I pushed, like, so why aren't we doing it? Then you default back to like, oh no, but like.
I'm different. People won't listen to me. People won't like, I'm not qualified enough. I'm not this enough. I'm not bad enough. Like, because your brain is so scared of doing it. But I think what's happening is that human beings are not meant to like, it's kind of silly. The amount of opportunity that we're being exposed to right now.
Human beings are not actually meant to be exposed to this amount of like, it challenges the whole system we're a part of. It doesn't make sense for our brain. Our brain cannot compute. A, that number of people, and B, the, the fairness and the justice and being able to make a disproportionate amount of money and it just doesn't make sense.
Like our brains have not caught up. And so your brain will be like, this is a scam. This isn't real. You can't do it. You're not enough. And it will talk you out of it, but like seriously, it could be so simple. How to write a resume, how to do meal prepping, how to play the recorder, how to deep clean your house.
How to play creatively with your children. It could be anything. It could be the smallest, smallest thing, but you need to commit to it and you need to stick to it. You know, people think it needs to become this huge, complex thing. Over at Badass Careers, I had the ability, the knowledge, the expertise, the experience to create programs around, uh, women in leadership to create programs around onboarding, to create programs around like a billion different human resources topics, leadership, coaching, change management, like you name it, I've worked in it.
Okay. But I focused on career change going from one job to the next. Making sure you have your clarity that you're marketing yourself so you can get a nice pay raise out of it, and you land the opportunity as quickly as possible. I focused on that and I spoke about that for five years. I didn't make it overly complex.
I didn't water down my messaging. I really focused on what, to me, felt like a fraction of my skillset, and you have to be able to sit with that. So you could absolutely do this. Anyone, anyone? Anyone, anyone has. Million dollar businesses just sitting there right inside of them. Truly, truly, truly, truly, truly.
And we're just all overthinkers. You know, we're completely overthinking it because this isn't natural, but I'm really glad we had this conversation today. Today 'cause it was very, very important to me that you knew that there was this crazy booming industry called the Creator Economy. And that. There are different areas to play within that industry and that the number one most lucrative skill that you can possibly, possibly employ at the moment is visibility around a simple, simple skill that you have.
Visibility is everything. Leveraging content, leveraging the internet to get visible. On who you are and what you do, even if you're not the best in the world at it. Even if you're only two years into your journey, and there are other people creating content who are 12 years into their journey, I couldn't care less.
Those who get that visibility, those who dare, those who are audacious enough will win. So. You've got all the information you need, the creator economy, visibility, a simple skill building a community. Go and take your slice of the pie, badass, because there are literally billions, billions of dollars being traded right now, and they're just sitting there waiting for the taking, waiting for you too.
Put yourself out there and grab a slice of that pie. I'd love to hear what you thought about this episode. As always, please do come and send me a voice not to DM over on Instagram at Badass Empires and. Otherwise, stay badass. Reign on, grab that crown of yours. Keep building your empire, and I will see you right here at the same time next week.
A shit ton of income, crazy impact, a business that you adore. Just by listening to this episode, you will one step closer to your very own badass empire. Now I wanna hear from you, tag me in your stories, or send me a DM over on Instagram so I can learn what resonated with you most. Owen, if you are the kind of badass who is willing to help us out big time and take a few minutes to rate and review this podcast, make sure you send us a screenshot of that review at [email protected] so I can send you a juicy freebie to say thank you.
Until next time, keep showing up for your future and we'll keep smashing goals in the next episode.
