How to Make Millions as a Content Creator With Amy Sangster

I think that you have to create a business strategy that supports the time that you realistically have to create content. I think that personally, this whole game of building a brand is so long game. I'm definitely not chasing views anymore. I'm chasing depth. I think that is the first step is just asking yourself, "What have I achieved?" Even if I'm not an expert just yet, but what have I demonstrated in health, wealth, relationships, like whatever it might be? What are you really, really passionate about and how can you help other people and how can you just document that? Or create a community around that of people that are interested in that same thing? And I think that anyone that's experiencing a pasta syndrome, it's only because either you don't have the competence just yet, and you can get that through experience, or you don't have the confidence, and that just is because you don't have the competence. And so all of that just comes from taking the first step. Tell me what you're seeing into 2026 is going to be the move for brands to be visible. So I think. Welcome to the Jen Gottlieb Show. Amy Sankster, gangster with an S. That's it. We just set it on the way in here. How do you spell your name? It's gangster with an S. I will now never not say that. My nickname in high school was Amy the Gangster. So, I like the least gangster person ever have blonde hair blue eyes, but here we are. Oh no, you're a gangster. You are. If I know any gangsters in business, it's you. So I'm so happy to finally have you on the show. Thank you for having me. This is a long time coming. You are such an impressive woman in so many ways, but I feel like you are very much. You're very public online. You guys can go follow Amy on Instagram. She has the most beautiful, very aesthetic and Instagram. But we might not know about Amy is that she is a gangster tech founder. Is building one of. Hear me, like right here, I'm going to say it. Like one of the biggest tech companies in the world. I do believe that it will be that. And we'll get there, but I really want to unpack how we arrived at you being a tech founder. Yeah. Building this unbelievable platform, because a lot of people that listen to my show have an idea and they feel like it's too far away for them. Or they feel like they're too late to start that. Yeah. Or they have absolutely no idea how they could possibly get from point A to point B. And when you look at your story and you look at your point A, you would never in a million years imagine that it would bring you to the point. I think you're not your way past being now, but where you're at now, you could never connect the dots looking forward. No. So when we sat down, you were like, how's it YouTuber? Yeah. Can we back up to your first experience in, I guess you could say, entrepreneurship or like the creator economy? Yeah. So definitely never thought that I would end up here. That's for sure. Tech founder was not something that was an aspiration. I wanted to be a teacher. My mom, my sister, like everyone in my family were just high school teachers, primary school teachers. And in a sense, I am a teacher now, but kind of had a roundabout way of getting there. So I first started. I was just working in a bank. I was someone that always knew that I wanted more out of life. Like I saw the traditional path. And I was like, oh, that's not for me. I was studying finance, worked at a bank. And everyone said, oh, you're making it. Like, this is it. And I'm like, this can't be it. I had like a coffee addiction. I hated. I was looking at the clock waiting for the minutes to tick down. I just, I knew I wanted more, but I had absolutely no idea. Like, no idea how to get out of what I was doing. So I just started looking at what everyone else was doing. You know, anyone in my world that was doing something different, I was like, all right, you got to teach me. So I had a friend at the time. His name was Lewis. And he was born kind of into an entrepreneurial family. His dad was a trader. And he was the only person I knew that wasn't working. And I was like, all right, what are you doing? And so I started hanging out with him more and just picking things up. And then he got me into the whole world of personal development, which back in the day wasn't what it is now. But I went to, you know, all the Tony Robbins seminars and all that. And it opened my eyes to this completely different side of life. And I still had no idea about a year and what I was going to do. But I was starting to dabble with like eBay. This was when Trump's shipping on eBay was a thing. I started trying to trade like him. I was just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. And it all started to shift and change when I started sharing my story. So to back up a little bit in this process, I was pretty lonely. I'm sure when you were kind of changing and pivoting in your life, you were looking for people that were on the similar vibe to you. And I think when you do make a pivot, it's very easy to feel very alone because you have all these people that you've congregated in your life because of shared values. And now you shift your values, you shift your goals. And now all of a sudden you don't have anyone. And so that was very much me. And one night I was doing a little manifesting, which I know you're a fan of. And I was looking at, I wanted an Audi R8 at the time. So I was on YouTube and I found a guy named Robert Kimler. And he was a young guy that had my dream car, yes. But also just seemed to be making moves in life. Like he clearly had similar values to what I did. So I'm an introvert, you know this. And I never ever send anyone messages online. Like I very, very rarely reach out. But I did in this case, send him an email. He lived on the other side of the world because I was in Australia at the time. He did something that he said he never does. And he responded to me. And so we got to talking. And he was a big YouTuber naturally. And we met for his 21st birthday. I came over to America and that kind of kicked off a very interesting love story. So things transpired. We fell in love. He got me onto YouTube. He was like, hey, now that your business had started to pick up, trading it picked up, eBay had picked up, like all the things that I was doing, I was making enough money now to finally leave my bank job behind. And he had a car channel at the time. He's like, you should buy a Lamborghini. You should put it on my car channel. And I was like, all right, why not? Let's do it. And so I became 22 year old girl wise Lamborghini on YouTube. Which now looking back is so corny and so funny. But it turns out 11 million people saw that video. So that was like my first creator for a, I guess you could say. And it changed everything because when you go from having no audience to having 11 million people and 100 million people watch his channel, it's so many things become possible. Like now you have people listening. And so from there I learned business and that led me on this whole other journey that we can get into. But that was the first thing. So when you you had viral for something that you weren't necessarily wanting to do business in, like you didn't go into that thinking, I want to be a car YouTuber. So I'm going to do this and create this video. I think that's happening a lot to people right now. They go viral by accident. Maybe they create, I mean, Hawk to it. Like things like that. Like people go viral by accident. They don't mean to. And then suddenly they become known for that thing. So I, but you, you managed to keep a very successful online business running, even though I don't think you were selling luxury cars or doing anything in that space. So can you talk to us a little bit about how you did that or how somebody can maybe they take an accident by reality and they have this audience. And how can they leverage that audience for what they want to do? Yes. Rather than getting stuck in an algorithm that they don't want to be in. Yeah, absolutely. So I think the positive thing is that I went viral for something that depicted a lifestyle that I was aspiring toward at the time as well. And I was learning all about. I was obsessed with finance and getting ahead. And I think that's very common for a lot of people. They wanted out of their jobs. I wanted out of my bank job. And so even though the car part of the story maybe wasn't intentional, what it did do was bring me an audience of people who were all looking for answers to the question that I had been asking myself for the last few years as well. And I had just been a little bit further ahead on the journey than them at the stage that they found me. And so I think for someone that is listening that's like, "Huh, you know, I have this audience. What can I offer to them?" Commonly we think we have to be an expert at the thing. I certainly was not an expert at business or finance at the time. But I did know enough that I had gotten a couple stages ahead of the people that had found me. And so I actually turned my love of finance and love of just entrepreneurship and getting out of the traditional society into a curriculum. It was like an OG online course back in the day. It was like all typed up. It wasn't even video. It was very elementary. But it changed a lot of lives. And I think that is the first step is just asking yourself, what have I achieved? Even if I'm not an expert just yet. But what have I demonstrated in health, wealth, relationships, whatever it might be? What are you really, really passionate about? And how can you help other people? And how can you just document that or create a community around that of people that are interested in that same thing? What was your first course about? So personal finance. So I told investing. So I learned and I was fascinated with compound interest. And I was like, oh my gosh. No one's teaching us this stuff. If we had learned this at like 10 years old, 16 years old, we would have been so much further ahead, but no one teaches us that we have to save and invest, a portion of our money. And so that was kind of the foundation of it. It was all the trading and investing stuff that I had learned. But really it was just how to escape traditional society. Because that was really the questions that I was asking myself early on. Okay. So you get famous through cars. But it makes sense. Because the people that are watching the car channel want money. And they want to have this luxurious lifestyle. Yeah, they want to learn how to make money to buy these cars. Totally connects. Yeah. You create a course for those people. Here's how you can make this money to maybe buy these cars. Yes. And so that it makes complete and total sense. So you've got this course. Teaching people how to make money. That's obviously what you don't, that's not what you do now. Well, in a way, maybe. But tell me the next chapter of the story. So now how do we end up? Now do we get here? How do we get here? Well, that was what, like 15 years ago. I mean, mid 30s now. That was like my young 20s. So it's got a few chapters to get here. But basically I knew nothing about digital marketing, online business, none of that at the time. I just had the benefit of having a massive audience, you know, through those videos. And I thankfully hit the nail on the head with what people actually wanted from me first time around. I did, made all the mistakes, did everything wrong. But through the years I learned all of those things. I learned online business. Well, what was that big mistake that you made during that time? I mean, I took a year to build the course with no proof that it was even going to sell or that people really wanted it. it was just a hunch and I think that's a big mistake that a lot of people make is they spend so much time and sometimes money, thankfully it didn't spend money on it, but so much time and money building a product that there's no indication that people even are going to buy. So now I do things the other way around and I pre-sell everything to make sure there's interest before I go and build it. But that's what I mean. I made all the mistakes. It was so heavy on content when people really just wanted the outcome. So I had to learn all of this through the years. And thankfully me and my business partner at the time we did and we grew that to multiple seven figures and that kind of was my first love of business is really just growing this business. And then it was about when I was 28, 29, I was like, okay, I think I'm done being the finance car girl. I think I'm ready for the next chapter in my life and my business partner at the time too. He had grown to be someone very different. I had grown to be someone very different. We're like, let's go on to the next chapter. So it took a little break and I was like, huh. It was a COVID time actually by that stage. And we were cooped up. My partner hunter went in the house and I'm like, I need a break from him. I need to go for a walk. And so actually the girls that Natalie and Danielle from Boss Babe lived around the corner for me at the time. So we were just messaging on Instagram. We went for a walk and we got to talking about all the things that I learned and whether they're at in their business. And that led to a partnership where I was helping them grow their business for a couple of years. In the midst of that, we ran into the exact same problem that I faced that I know you've faced as well, where it was just so hard to find software that made it easy to put together your courses, your events, your payments, your chat, all in one simple place that actually looked good too and was like good to use. And so that was just the problem that kept coming up, kept coming up and I'm like, all right, well, two things here. First, I feel like I'm ready for a new challenge. I'm someone that likes a challenge. And so I'd been doing like online education for a long time and I was ready to move into something new. I wanted that new thing to be a bigger opportunity as well and a business that I could potentially sell. And this problem was one that I just knew like the back of my hand and I figure if you're going to go into a business, it should be one that you feel like you're an expert at. And so I'm like, well, if someone's going to build a platform, I know nothing about software at the time. So I had to figure that part out, but I do know the experience that I would want. And so that's what set me and my co-founders off onto Building Membrough, which is where we are today. So if you're listening to this and you're part of any of my communities, that is where I house. All of my stuff. Yes. Thank you so much. Just using the platform, loving the platform, being an advocate for the platform, it's amazing. Sister, it's good. It's good. It's beautiful. It's sleek. It's easy. It's easy to use, which is really important for me because I don't know how to eat. I don't want to create a limiting belief anymore than it already is in my mind. But I need easy peasy. And this is very easy for us to use. But here's the thing, though. Having an idea of having a tech company, when you've never created one before, it's like a nice idea. But actually taking action and building one, when you have zero experience and building a tech platform, tell me what went on in your brain. This is more of a mindset question. Were you like, Hell yeah, I got to do this. I'm going to figure it out and start performing ready. Or was there any imposter syndrome resistance to do hesitate to do procrastinate on this? Or were you like, I'm all in? I think both, simultaneously. So my personality type at the time, we've talked about this, was an INFJ. And the funny kind of analogy for INFJs is you simultaneously believe I am these shit and I am shit. And that is so cool. I never heard about that. Yeah. So I kind of fluctuated between being overly confident. Like, yes, we're going to do this. We're going to make this a number on platform in the world. And then getting into it and recognizing that there are a lot more challenges and a lot of things that I had to learn and be humbled by. So I think I didn't give myself enough time to question it. That's kind of how I operate is I'm going to make a decision. If it doesn't work out, I can always reverse the decision. But if I sit around and think about it, then all that's going to happen is limiting beliefs are going to creep in. Who am I to build a software platform? That was true in that moment. And so I had to learn the skills and also have the experience over the last few years to actually teach myself and prove to myself, well, you're this person and you have these skills and you're doing it. And I think that anyone that's experiencing a pasta syndrome, it's only because either you don't have the competence just yet and you can get that through experience or you don't have the confidence. And that just is because you don't have the competence. And so I just took one step, learned that I was in over my head, kept taking another step and you just solve the next problem in front of you over and over again. And eventually you become competent and that's all it is. So it sounds very simple, but there was a lot of sleepless nights in there. Is there ever a moment during this process of building this that you felt like quitting? Oh, for sure. And I'll look at my partner Hunter at this time because he's seen it behind the scenes. Like, I think any founder goes through this. I'm sure you've been through this where all the time, right? Like, we're women as well. We have hormones. And so, you know, we all experience these fluctuating emotions every single day. But for me, I just recognize feelings are not facts. They're just feelings. And I don't have to listen to them. I can acknowledge them, but I don't have to take a different action based on how I feel each day. So some days I might wake up and feel incredible. And like I can do anything, that doesn't mean that I should act any differently. I should act in line with my values and my values where I'm going to show up and be consistent. On the contrary, I can wake up and be like, oh my god, who am I? This is, you know, this is crazy. What am I doing? I want to just go back to running a lifestyle business, which I had done previously. That was way more chill. But again, I don't have to react to that. I can just keep going and eventually over a period of time is that same feeling is there for three plus years or something. Then yeah, maybe I'll take a different action. But if you react day to day, then you're just going to get pulled around by your emotions. So I just tried to helpfully ignore them as much as possible. Leila Ramozi has a quote that she says all the time. I think it's like, fuck your feelings. Stick to the plan. It's one of my favorites. Yes, very good. I wasn't thinking about that a lot lately. Yes. You're listening to the Jen Gottlib Show. So I'm going to pivot a little bit because you have so much knowledge in this area of building community and all my marketing. And a lot of people that listen to my podcast are building brands, are marketing on the internet and building communities. Yes. So you are also building a, so you're building a platform for people to have communities, but you also have a community within that number as like it's called rise, but you're building another one. Yes. That is probably out by the time this podcast released and you can talk about that too. Yes. It's the most important thing to start thinking about if you're like, okay, I'm going to build a community online, whether that be a membership, a course, a community, any type of continuity program where people pay you monthly or they show up, even if it's free, if you have nothing and you're starting from scratch, what would be the best thing to start doing? Okay. I mean, I could take it in so many different directions, but I think the best place to start, even if you have confidence in what you think people want is to talk to people. And I did this like I practice what I preach. I did and I still do member up demo calls from the day that we started the company till today. I have one day blocked out on my calendar every single week where I talk to customers. And that is some of the most valuable time that you can spend. I know that it doesn't scale. I know it's not sexy, but you learn so much just from talking to people and not surveying people, not giving them, you know, little boxes to check because that's your language then that you were using to describe the problem that they have or what they want. You want to hear the way they describe their problems. You want to hear the way they describe what their dream outcome looks like on the other side of being in this community or being part of this curriculum. So talk to people first and foremost. And then from there, develop kind of an MVP, just like the bare minimum. Do not do the mistake that I did and spend a year going and building something based on that because you're trying to be perfect and avoid potential failure. Well, MVP. So minimum viable product, basically the simplest thing possible that's going to help this person because like I said, I spent so much time building this thing and thankfully I got lucky. It worked out for me. But so much of the time we have this big idea that we want to create and we're so excited about it from our perspective. And we want to make it beautiful and we spend so much time and money and effort on it. And then we put it out to the market and we realized, actually, didn't really land the way that we wanted it to. It needed a little bit of tweaking. And now if you've already gone to all that effort, I got to rebuild the whole thing. You got to rebrand it. You got to change everything. So the way that I like to do things is just pre-launch it just with the idea alone. So you just create a concept of what you think you're going to create and you go out to your existing audience or people in your warm circle of friends and you say, Hey, I'm thinking about creating the things. This is what it's going to be. I have this vision where you're going to achieve XYZ thing in it. It's going to be great. Would you like to be a part of it? And most of the time your friends and family, your mom are going to say like, that's amazing. Yes. But the real test is when they actually pay you for it because a lot of the time people say it's amazing, but it's not valuable enough for them to actually give you their money. So you want to get a couple just pre-launch customers in the door just to give you the confidence then to go and spend that time and effort to go and build it out. So that's kind of how I've done everything is talk to customers, pre-launch at first, get a couple people going through the curriculum, deliver it live. Like a lot of the time we think we have to have, you know, 4K cameras recording this beautiful curriculum. You don't need to do that. So up on Zoom Live, people are going to love it because they get to connect with you more personally. You're going to hear again from them, oh, I have this question. Once you've done that a few times, you're going to learn all the gaps that you thought you had covered. Then you can go and film it. Then you can go and kind of crystallize it and film it so that it's one and done and people can just consistently go through that. But I think that process of iteration is hard for people because I'm a recovering perfection. So I want to do it all perfect the first time, but it's counterintuitive because you're only going to waste time and effort. You are speaking my language sister. So the program that I have is on member up. I have two programs on member up, actually three. But the main thing is that you can do it all the time. why we really connected was because I was building this program called Stage Leaders. And the way that I launched it was exactly what you said. I put one photo on Instagram and I was like, with the name of it, it wasn't called Stage Leaders at the time. It just had the name and I said, "Who wants to be on the wait list for this thing?" Yeah. And that was it. And then I got a bunch of emails of people that wanted to be on the wait list. And that I did not build the course. I didn't build the, I maybe I outlined the problems I was solving. Yeah. Sold people into something that was not built yet. Just the problems I was solving. How to do it. Put them into member up. You guys, listen, this is not fancy. Got on Zoom once a week. And actually before even got on Zoom once a week, I asked them a question in member up. I said, "What do you want to learn here? Why are you here?" Yep. And they all told me what they wanted to learn. Exactly what to create. I took all the things that they told me what they wanted to learn. And I made modules exactly about what they said they wanted to learn. Yes. And then I topped out one week at a time. So simple, right? That's how we built stage leaders. Yes. And so simple. And I think that you're so right when you say that people spend months and months and months building a course and then trying to sell it when they they're building the course based on not much information. They don't even know when anybody wants it. A thousand percent. And so genius. Yeah. I mean, it's so easy to sit behind your computer in a dark room by yourself and hypothesize what people want. But it's so much easier if you just ask the people and just do exactly what they say. Yet so much of the time we just like shelved that and we're like, "No, no, no, this is the right way." And I did that, right? But it's just so much easier. We did it with member up as well. We launched something very, very, very simple. We did a ton of customer research beforehand. I was a customer as well. And I'm still a customer. I use it every day. So it's just so much easier when you just talk to people right before this interview. You were telling me what you wanted on member up. It's like, great. I don't have to guess anymore. We don't need to go away as a team and like, hypothesize stuff. We just build it. So good. It's so good. And that's why I was telling you those things. We're like, this is like, I'm your user. I'm, I'm diehard writer, diefan, like using this thing. I'm going to tell you everything that I think would make it amazing. You guys, you have to try it. It's already incredible. And worse, and what's really cool is, Amy's very accessible. You are very accessible. Like, I love that you do that tutorial every week. Yeah. The people can talk to you. Like, can you imagine if you got to speak to the person that creates the platform that you use every single week? Yeah. And I'm a user of this. And I could text you and be like, Hey, we love this. Or like, can you help us with this? Or can you teach our team? And you've been so gracious. Thank you. And above and beyond always over delivering, it is, it's just such a cool experience. And what I think everybody's looking for that might not know exists yet. So hopefully you're listening to this. You know, we're going to put all the links in the show notes of how you can get started on member up, whether it's participating in a community or starting your own community. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. And we're about to launch V2. So it's a perfect timing. By the time it comes out, I imagine that's already live because it's launching very next week. And things are, you know, we launched out MVP. So practice what I preach. We launched out, you know, version one of the platform. We learned so much from, you know, old incredible people that we have using it. And now we've kind of crystallized all of those learnings into beat two. So it's a really cool time to come and join us. And I think one of the biggest things that we've learned that I was just sharing with you is, you know, we can't compete with the kajabi's, the teachables, the things that have been around for 10, 15 years. There's no way that we're going to beat those platforms. So we have to do things differently. And so from these interviews that I've been doing, the number one thing that kept coming up other than just simple and beautiful, because everyone wants simple and beautiful was, I need help getting found. Like, I want more members. I want more sales. That's the thing that as creators, who doesn't want more of, right? Whether you're a million dollar creator already or your someone that's just getting started, we could all use a little help. And so what we built in was discovery, which is the coolest part. Now it's all a connected network. And, you know, members of your community, I can go to their profile. I can see that they're a member of someone else's community. I can click, so I can find it. And just like Amazon and one click, I can now join that community. So that user now just got another paying member out of thin air. They didn't have to do any of the marketing and sales to get that member. And everything's going to grow exponentially that way. So that's kind of a big shift with V2 that I'm so excited to kind of test. It's a hypothesis right now, but all the indications are there that it's going to really help creators grow, which I'm excited about. It's so cool. All right. Let's talk about visibility a little bit because that's I think the thing that you're said you're working on. But you also, we had a whole conversation out where we had dinner or lunch. I don't remember. I think it was dinner. I don't remember what. Tango was a mid-afternoon lunch. It really was like a very late lunch or something. It was a little dinner. And we were talking about all of the new ways that people are creating content right now. And you are an expert in YouTube. Let's just be like be very clear. You are a tech entrepreneur now that founded member app, but you are a YouTube expert. And you did a lot of work with Boss Bay, which is one of the biggest entrepreneurial platforms like on the internet for women. And you had a lot to do with their content creation and their growth there. So I'd love to hear about what you're seeing today. So it's always changing. Yeah. We are in a trust recession. Yeah. We are in an intention economy. Yeah. It's all changing. Yeah. Everything's changing so far. Yeah. So I think there is a big distinction distinction between visible and profitable because often people want the numbers, the vanity metrics. I want the million views. But like we talked about if those views don't come from someone that's actually able to be served by your community, your products, your courses, whatever it might be, then those views mean nothing. And so being visible, yes, that's something that we all aim to to achieve. But you want to be visible to the right people. So I think that in 2026, it's less about having you know, viral content, unless you're an entertainer versus an educator. And it's more about how do I create niche content? How do I become the expert in this one specific thing? And instead of going broad, go super deep on that thing and create a ton of free value around that. So that then people see that and they're like, man, if this is the free content, I can't even imagine what the paid content looks like. So although, you know, I'm someone that really went broad in the beginning, I'm definitely not chasing views anymore. I'm chasing depth. And so my YouTube videos nowadays, they definitely don't get a million views anymore. But I'm not creating Lamborghini content anymore. I'm creating, you know, 90 minute in depth trainings about, you know, all the things that I've mastered over the years. And that is more valuable to my customer than, you know, the Lamborghini content was. So I think that is going to be the secret is going deep versus going broad. But again, it's you have to fight human nature because everyone wants the vanity metrics. I think the other thing you mentioned, trust or session. So, you know, more and more creators are coming online. AI is also, you know, sketching people out. What's real? What's not real? And everyone's using many chat nowadays where, you know, I can message someone and I get this automated response from them. And we never really feel like we're connecting anymore on social media. It all feels very transactional. I think. And so I think authenticity, like the people who go against the grain when people say, you sag, and the people who are more and more authentic, more and more real, like actually responding to your own DMs versus having a man each add in there. I think those people are going to win. I agree. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. It's we're going to swing back to real life connection more than ever before. Yeah, I think that that's we made a complete swing to very, and authentic, and very optimized and very systematized. And I think we are going to go back in the other direction and the people that are going in that direction are definitely going to win. Thousand percent. I mean, we saw it in COVID, right? When connection was scarce, it became more valuable. We couldn't go and give someone a hug. So that's all we wanted. And it's the same thing now, I think on social media when everyone's a robot, when everyone has the many chat, when everyone has the exact same canned response, the people who are actually showing real authenticity, that's going to be the commodity. People are going to be like, damn, this person's real when 99 of the other people that I just spoke to are not. Get outside of your comfort zone and into your best life one small step at a time. So when you're when you're creating content now on your own for a member of, let's say, or for your personal brand, because I know that you you have a program, also a new program that you're launching. Yeah. What's your strategy, your content strategy, and you can walk us through step by step. Are you running ads? Are you doing all through organic? Are you sending them into a setter in your DMs? Like we can get granular here for the people that understand what I'm saying. Yeah. If you don't understand what I'm saying, maybe you want to save this episode too when you're at or at that point in your business. But Amy's so brilliant at all this that I kind of selfishly want to just hear what your strategy is to generate leads. Let's do it. And it's so funny because we are like polar opposites in a beautifully complimentary way. Like, I'm like, Jen, how do you how do you speak like that? Like how do you storytelling? You're like, how do you do that stuff that you're doing? So I love this. But um, but I kind of have a different strategy now because of the season of life that I'm in. Like I'm quite busy at this stage with member up and everything that I'm doing. And so I think that you have to create a business strategy that supports the time that you realistically have to create content. And so, you know, I kind of see it where there's paid and there's organic and organic. The beauty is you don't pay for it, but it's also unpredictable. And so if I'm relying on, you know, people to find me and potentially become customers only through organic right now, then that would be sporadic because the time that I have to create content right now is very minimal. And so I don't want to have inconsistency in my business. So now is a time where it really makes sense to run ads. However, I think we're over the age where ads on their own right are going to work. You need to have a personal brand and you're just adding fuel to the fire. So yes, I'm paying for that attention on Instagram where, you know, people might find me from an ad, but they're coming into an Instagram that is full of organic content that helps them understand my story who I am, how I can help them and build that trust factor and then, you know, have conversations from there. So I'm a big believer of doing absolutely everything yourself in your business, wearing every hat, which, you know, every entrepreneur kind of has to do in the beginning. But a lot of the time once we get some resources behind us, we kind of graduate from that. And we're like, no, I'm going to hire everyone to do everything. I just don't work that way. I want to do everything Thank you. myself in the beginning. Light at the end of the tunnel is once I systemize it, once I know how to do this, then I can hire someone and manage them better because I know now how to do the job well. I couldn't manage them if I didn't know how to do the job well and if I hadn't created that system. So when I started, you know, my coaching business again, it's so funny because I got into software thinking, oh, I'm not going to be in coaching and education anymore. We're in software now. And what I learned through all of these demo calls is, okay, we can provide the best software on our people don't have the business strategy. It's not going to help them. That's like software is just a conduit to getting someone to their goal. And so I created another business rise and it's kind of transitioning to something even bigger in the coming months, which I'm very excited about because I believe that the creator economy needs real business education. It doesn't exist. Like all these things that we're talking about are just scratching the surface on now. No one talks about this. You have to figure it all out by yourself. So I want to be the one that talks about it more and help more creators make more money, but also build brands that feel really good to them because I think there's a lot of Iki kind of strategies out there nowadays. So I want to be the intersection for that. But back to kind of systemizing everything. I did everything myself when I was building this business and, you know, I did all my DMs myself. I did all the calls myself like every single hat I wore it so that I could systemize it. And now I have helps. And now I have an amazing enrollment team who take calls and enroll people into my programs. I have people in my DMs who are amazing and they're able to support and help as well. I still go in there like I still send voice notes. If anyone's got a voice note for me, it's actually me. It's not some weird AI or anything like that. But I do believe in scaling and systemizing, but still making sure that human touch is there in the same process. So in a nutshell, right now how I'm running things is, you know, I run ads to an organic Instagram where, you know, I create content that is all optimized for DMs. So if you go to my page, you'll see that pretty much every single post has some kind of CTA to get something or to chat about something. And it's going to repel the people that I can't help and it's going to attract the people in there that I can support from there. We just have authentic conversations. And if I can support them, then I have a simple little video that I send over on how I can support them. And if it's a fit, then they chat with my team. And that's how I do things. That's awesome. And you guys go through Amy's funnel. Like try it out. Check it out. I can't really curious. I always tell people to do that. Like I do an old and not even want to know how somebody's funnel works or how people are generating leads and you're really in the nitty-gray. I love to look and see how people are doing it. So you said that people are doing things in a bad way. Yeah. I said that a lot of creators are out there doing it wrong or they're slimy or sleazy. Yeah. What are some of the things that you're seeing where it got like thank God you're listening to this listener because you're never going to do this. Whatever Amy's saying. Like just if someone tells you to do this like a guru online or coach or something and I do this strategy, please know that this is not the way to go. Like what are what are you seeing? Yeah. It's like, uh, don't do that. So caveat and disclaimer. First of all, something I'm really trying to do is not judge anyone or anyone or anything. Okay. That is doing the thing, right? Because I think it's easy as a content creator myself. If I am judging anyone creating content, then I'm just judging the outcome that I'm ultimately moving towards. So I tried not to judge. But on the flip side of that, there are some things that I'm like, okay, maybe that's not the best strategy. And so I think a big one is only optimizing for like a new follower all the time and not deepening the connection with your existing audience. So if you're just creating, you know, surface level like lead magnet posts all the time just over and over and over again and, you know, we're all running businesses on social media. It's not a secret. But I think if you just treat your audience as though, you know, that's all it is just day after day. If you want my PDF on this and it's just over and over and over again. And you're not actually sharing anything about you, your life, your story where you're headed, where you've been, how you can support them. Then it's just very transactional feeling. And so I think that is one of the biggest mistakes as someone who also is very motivated to get results. I think that can lead you to only posting business content all the time. Something I fight against myself. I'm like, how much of, how much of myself do I share? Do they really care about this? But every single time that I actually open up and share the real stuff, it may not seem like a direct business impact, but it has this intangible quality of just building an actual community of people who care about what you're doing or who see themselves in your story. So yeah, I think it's it's indirect, but yeah, not just treating your your audience transactionally, which unfortunately is very, very common nowadays. It's common because people get addicted to it. Yeah. Like they start to see that it works and they start to grow their list or they start to make money on their thing. And then they're addicted to each post, yeah, directly monetizing. Yeah, but again, we are in this trust recession where people are just they're not they're not trusting understandably so because there's just a lot of big transactional stuff and be able to not real an AI and things like that online. And I think that personally, this whole game of building a brand is so long game for me. I look at it as a long game. I'm building a relationship with these people. I want them to know me inside and out. That's why I go live every single day, put my makeup on in front of people. And I'm like, this is what's going on in my life. I'm a shit day today. Yeah. You know, like you're not alone in this. And really the more that and that's not going to necessarily like I never rarely. I'll every once in a while have a call to action on that live. Most of the time I do not. Yeah. And I just have this strong belief and it's paid off for me that like I actually skew more no calls to action. Yeah. Because then when you make one people are like, oh my god, you've given me so much and I love you and I've been connecting with you for so long and you showed me this is it on your nose yesterday. And well, he's like, give me the thing that you're that you're buying. So I love that you said that. I think agree authenticity is going to win. And I even don't even like that word because everyone's using it. It's very like what does that it mean, but it's true. Yeah. It's true. Yeah. I think every single time it's like a bank, right? You're making a deposit. A little deposit of connection every time and you don't want to be asking every time. Right. So deposit deposit deposit. Ask. Mm-hmm. Gary V has a book on this. He calls it something. Yeah. I have jab jab right. That's the one. Right. I have a red. I'm just sitting on my bookshelf. Yes. Of course. Every every Gary book is on my bookshelf. And I don't think I've read any of them. But I like Gary. I listen to all his content. I know the concepts. Yes. We all do. So good. So good. So what's the future for you? So we're we're building. Remember of you are a tech founder. You've got this new community. Tell us how we can help how we can support. What's what's going forward? I appreciate that. So the future. I mean, if my story proves anything, it's that we have absolutely no idea what the future is going to hold for any of us. But what I'm just so focused on right now, like I said, is creating real business education for the creator economy. And also providing them an easy software platform that actually helps with the hardest part, which is growing and monetizing. So all of my focus, all of my attention is on that. And if you're someone that needs help with the strategy, creatorbusiness.com without an "Oh." So creator with R. Creator without an "Oh." Yeah. Creator without an "Oh." That's cool. Creator business. That's the education part of it. So if you're the funnel that I just talked about, if you're wanting to set that up, if you want to understand how it all works, and kind of see behind the scenes and have a real system to predictably make money as a creator, not just post and some comes in here and hope, but actually create a true creator business, then that's what I can support with. So if you're building a community and you've already got all that figured out, and you just want a sexy simple platform to use, then memberup.com, you can get a free trial there and come build your community. So good. So good. I'm really excited that you're teaching this creator business thing. I haven't seen anybody do it yet in this way. Yeah. And it is so needed. It's ridiculous. Yeah. You see, it's really, really easy, you guys to get online and look at all the big creators that have millions of followers and think that they are absolutely crushing it, but I know personally that many of them are struggling very much in business. Yeah. Because they're great at getting the people to watch. They're great at getting that, and that's amazing. And so great. And that takes true talent. Yeah. Adding brand deals, but the brand deals don't pay that much. Yeah. And you need to understand how this whole business model works. Yeah. And no one taught it. And some people figured it out. And some people did it. Yeah. But now everybody can go figure it out and learn from you. Yes. And I think that is, you know, there is education out there for brand deals, and there is education out there for like some elements of the creator economy, but not for what we're doing. Not for, you know, building your own community. Not for building what I like to call like a high cash flow business because those brand deals, like you said, you might spend like I did one with Skillshare one time. They paid me a thousand dollars. And, you know, I spent days creating that video for YouTube. Like this is not a good ROI. And so understanding, I think a lot of the time you just have to go through all of these business models to figure it out, but understanding what's actually going to get you to your goal. Because most of us we start a business because we want more free time, and we want more money. But we end up with all these ideas because our visionaries and we over complicate crap out of it. We don't know how to make any of it work. And so we end up with less free time and less money. And then ultimately we quit. And we go back to our jobs, which wasn't what we wanted either way. So I'm just really passionate about sharing right off the jump kind of the map of the creator economy. Like, you know, me, I love systems. So everything's like a diagram of like how to navigate this. Like if we don't have a map, how on earth are we going to get what we want to go? So having being a creator that's navigated this and done all the wrong things, it makes so much sense that I can just share the map and help people actually choose the things that are going to get them to their goals versus having to go down all the wrong calls, get really defeated by it. And then ultimately quit and end up some way that they didn't want to be anyway. So thank God for you. I'm so excited. All of the stuff for Amy is going to be in the show now. Thank you. It has been so much. It's always so fun talking to you. Thank you. Like we just were opposites, but we're like very much the same. Yes. Like you are amazing. She has a new puppy. So go follow her on Instagram. I know I was going to bring him today. I should have brought him. What is that on your lap? I would have thought that I would have been very distracted. I don't even know. I was waiting real quick. Just for fun. I don't even know where we're at with. but did you know there's such thing as puppy yoga? They are sending me ads like crazy and bokeh or a tone. You know, and you can do yoga with a room full of tiny puppies. - I literally am gonna sign up for it. - Oh man. - And I was thinking about podcasts, like puppy pod, - Puppy pod, stop it. - Puppy yoga, like puppy pod, next time. - Next time I'll bring him, I'll bring him. - Well, I'm thinking about puppy yoga and because I'm in the puppy stage right now where he's like making a mess, everyone's like this sounds horrible, but the K-Pi-Podler is very high. - Boop ever, I didn't even think of that. Anyways, we'll put that to the side. - I can keep talking to you forever and ever and ever. - Thank you so much for watching the Jen Gottlieb Show. Go hit up Amy on Instagram and all of her other links that she's got, she's got so much going on. So grateful for you. - Thank you for having me. - Thank you. (upbeat music)