The Proffitt Podcast

Where to Invest Your Time and Money as a Creator

January 31, 2023 Krystal Proffitt Season 1 Episode 389
The Proffitt Podcast
Where to Invest Your Time and Money as a Creator
Show Notes Transcript

Time and money -- two of our most precious resources. Especially as busy creators!

Today's episode is dedicated to walking you through four essential skills that deserve your time, money, and attention to make the most out of your content. I'm walking you through how there's a sliding scale of "investments" and that no two creator journeys are alike. 

Whether you have ample time to learn new things or are ready to drop hundreds or even thousands of dollars into your creator journey, I'm sharing where you can make the highest return on your investments.

Tune in to hear personal stories of where I've spent most of my time on my journey and where I happily swipe my card to get the job done faster.

 What if I gave you a check for a thousand dollars to invest in your podcast? Or what if I told you that you would have an additional 48 hours to edit and create your video content for YouTube? Or better yet, what if I told you that you would show up tomorrow? Open your laptop, turn on your computer, and all of the emails for your next launch.

Were already complete. All those sound amazing, right? , like whether it's our time or our money or other resources that we have. The idea of having the ability to really just embrace the creator journey in the way that. So often feels very.  unrealistic. Okay. Let's just call it what it is. Because what happens is I will see a new influencer come on the scene, right?

Someone that just sprung up outta nowhere and then all of a sudden they went from zero to 10,000 followers or a hundred thousand subscribers. Like I've seen this multiple times, and what people don't. Because they'll come to me and they'll say, well, so and so, you know, it's almost like I feel like, um, cre the creator world is managing a bunch of children at times.

Okay. Look, I hope, I hope that's not like a patronizing thing to say, but it's something that I see as someone that's been in this industry for a long time. I feel like there's. This like tinge of jealousy that happens where people say, well, I've been doing this or I've been trying to do it, but so-and-so just started and they already have a hundred thousand followers.

Like, what am I doing wrong? And all of that to say is everyone has their own journey and everyone makes investments in their business.  a different way, whether it's your time or it's your money. Like there is a sliding scale of making investments as a creator. And that's what we're gonna talk about today.

Um, I actually have some great resources and I'm gonna mention later that, uh, there are podcast episodes and YouTube videos we've already covered in the past that are going to be super, super helpful in a few very specific ways that you can save time and save money. But what I really want to talk about is the sliding scale, because you can either go all in and invest thousands of dollars upfront to get the perfect experience that you're looking for, for yourself or for your audience.

Or you can invest the time and energy and effort in doing it yourself. Those are really the two ends of the spectrum, we'll call them. You're either doing it all yourself and you're investing a lot of time, or you're paying a whole bunch of money. Upfront and trying to get the product that you want as quickly as possible.

So most of you will fall in the middle or slightly to one side or the other, whether you, you know, depending on your resources. But we need to talk about some of the most important areas of your content journey to invest your time and your money as a creator so that you're making the most out of those resource.

Whether you have more money or you have more time, or you are somewhere in the middle where you're just like, Hey, I'm just trying to make this work and I wanna make sure that I am really focusing on the areas that are gonna move the needle. And make a difference. So that is what we're gonna talk about today.

So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Profit Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch, and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, crystal Prophet, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time saving shortcut.

So let's get right to it, shall we?

Okay, so if you listen to my daily podcast, the Potty Report, shout out to those of y'all that tune into that. I'll have a link, uh, in the show notes for you to check it out. But this whole week, I am really diving into each one of the things that we're covering here today. In a very specific way. So if like, go check out those episodes because it's going to have probably more stories and a little bit more focus on specific things that we're gonna talk about.

But I think it's really important that as a creator, You're constantly evaluating your resources and what you can do to allocate those properly because like I said earlier, you may have more money than time. You may have more time than money, or it may change year to year, and this is something that I can tell you.

Having been doing this for several years, it's absolutely changed year to year, how much time that I have, so. Let's go back for a second, like let's jump in the time machine and go back to 2018. Back in the day I was staying at home with our youngest son. He was not in kindergarten, he wasn't in public school.

He had like a Mother's day out program that we put him in. , which meant he would go twice a week to the school and it was from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM and those were the days. It was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those two days were the days that I had to get stuff done. Like on those two days, I made it happen.

Now, The other days, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I had a little bit of time to get a few things done, but I didn't have that focused uninterrupted, like it's just me in the house and like no one else is here. Like that only happened two days a week when I first got started. But I also didn't have a ton of money to invest as a creator cuz I was just getting started.

I didn't want to. Hundreds or thousands of dollars because I didn't even know if this thing was gonna work. I didn't, I was like, Ugh, I don't wanna spend, you know, a ton of money on courses and programs or apps that I just didn't even know if they were gonna be around in six months. And I just had no idea what I was doing.

Let's be honest. I had no clue. I got free. Uh, software was using Audacity, which is free, and I was using the free trials. Oh my gosh. I'm a sucker for a free trial. If you got an app out there, like, I will try that free trial  before I start investing a monthly cost or even like a high premium for the thing, like I'm going to try it out.

So that is what I did in the beginning of my journey. I was like, okay, I'm gonna take these two days a week and I'm gonna make the most out of them.  because those were my limited resources, and everybody has limited resources. So I want you to first, before we really dive into what you can invest, whether it's your time or your money, look at your resources.

Like what do you realistically have to spend, whether it's your time or your money. On being a creator. Maybe you only have like two hours on a Saturday. Maybe you have 30 minutes Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or maybe you only have like $200 to get this thing off the ground and like going and making it happen.

Or maybe you've been doing this for a while, you know, like, you know what? I got a few hundred bucks this year. Like it's, it's the beginning of the year. I'm gonna go ahead and make this investment cuz this is the thing that I've been wanting to do. Maybe you're leveling up or you're doing something, but that's what I want you to do is like, first of all, have a reality check on what do you realistically have.

As your baseline resources, because I want you to think about those and kind of allocate them through The next things that we're gonna talk about, cuz we're gonna talk about specific skills that you can invest in, and I want you to consider these as we're talking about them. Okay? So think about your resources.

What do you actually have whenever it comes to time and. , write that down, put it in a Google doc, put it in a notes, you know, notes thing on your phone, and think about those as we talk about these four skills that I want you to think about as a creator. Okay? Number one, the first skill editing. Okay. This is going to apply whether you're a podcaster, a YouTuber, someone that writes blog posts, someone that is editing social media content like editing really covers the full spectrum of content.

because you have to have good content. You can't just throw up a first draft of anything and expect it to be incredible without some pass of editing. Again, this could be your audio editing, your text, your video, but. Investing in editing as a creator has paid off so well for my journey. Now I'm kind of the anomaly.

I do realize that I will throw that out there. I have at this point, created, actually, here, let me check it. I didn't write this down before we got started, but I want to look real fast because I don't know what the, the most current number is of how many actual podcast episodes I've created. But add that.

Add that one. And we are officially at 1,149 podcast episodes. That's bonkers, right? So between the Potty Report and the Profit podcast, I've created over a thousand and, or I guess 1100 at this point. Podcast episodes now. That's wild. You don't have to do that . You absolutely don't have to create that many podcast episodes.

But I will say in editing all of those, you bet you're bottom dollar, that I have gotten better at editing because I made an investment of time. Now, at the very beginning of my journey, what I did was the bare minimum, right? I did the absolute bare minimum when I first got started, cuz I was like, okay, I basically just need to edit.

All of, well, I did it too much. I edit out all the ums and all the pauses, all the breath sounds like I don't edit, uh, all that junk out today. Okay. It's not, mm-hmm. You just, you get better at talking. Okay. For those of you that are just starting with your podcast, like you do get better, you feel more comfortable talking.

You don't have as many of those like word flubs or things that you would consider editing out. You just get better, and we're gonna talk about that too in a little bit. But editing at the very beginning looks like me. At the most basic level, nothing fancy. There wasn't like transitions and music and like really fancy things.

It was just me recording, stopping, editing done. But as I went through and I got more comfortable with Audacity, I was like, okay, now I wanna do this. How do I do it? And instead of saying, okay, I'm gonna go hire an editor, I said, I'm gonna go learn how to do this on YouTube. I really wanna do this. I've been thinking about it.

I'm 10 episodes in and I wanna make this better. So I went down a rabbit hole. I started investing my time in learning how to edit and it has paid off. And eventually, so I did that for two years, right? I edited my own content. In Audacity for two years, and then I switched to Hindenberg, which is the software that I use today.

I switched to that and it was a one-time investment. It's not a monthly subscription that I have to pay. I'm not a huge fan of monthly subscriptions if I don't have to do them. I wanna like gimme the lump sum payment. Paid for it. It was a $99 investment to buy this software, which makes my life so much easier.

So, so much easier. It auto levels my loud voice , like it just, all of it. It just, it's so much, it's an easier software for me to use and I just really enjoy it. So that is how, like in a nutshell, remember I told you there's a sliding scale of your resources so upfront. I invested time, but then after two years I said, you know what?

I love this. Like I'm doing my podcast, like I'm gonna keep doing it. Where else can I invest? And I said, absolutely. Investing in a software that works better for me. So then I eventually invested my dollars. I invested my money. Now there's gonna be some of you listening that you're like, crystal, I have no desire to ever edit anything, outsource it.

Outsource it, but that's an investment of your money. Okay. Like that's not just, it's not gonna be free unless you have a family member. And I gotta tell you, those relationships usually don't work out. . Okay. I've heard, oh my gosh. I can't even tell you how many times I have had someone tell me. , I hired my nephew, or my cousin's gonna do it, or my husband's gonna do my editing or this and that and those.

I mean, it's, it's a unicorn situation when that actually works out long term because maybe that person agreed to do it at the beginning and then, They realize that they don't care about the actual topic that the podcast host is talking about. So they're like, Ugh, I don't really don't wanna listen to this over and over again.

And maybe they didn't think about that from the beginning, but edit, like outsourcing your editing to a family member, it's a dicey situation. So I'm just gonna throw that out there, even if it's free. It may come at a price . It may come at little bit of a strain on the relationship, but editing or outsourcing your editing can be something that's very lucrative.

For those of you that know you have no desire to do it, you don't wanna have that be a hassle in your content creation journey. But I will say it's gonna take you time and I hope that you spend some time investing in finding a good editor because there is a difference between someone that'll say, I'll do this for.

$20 an episode or you know, whatever the price point is, and someone that is actually really good at it and is able to do it on a consistent ongoing basis, it can be hard to find. So I encourage you, if you're going to invest your money and finding an editor, invest your time in finding a really good one.

And referrals are always the way to go. It's always the way to go. There's probably some editors listening to this right now. That's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you don't wanna just hire someone, like you wanna find a really good one. So always ask for referrals whenever you're outsourcing any of the items that you're doing in your content.

So editing, that was number one, skills to invest in as a creator. Whether you are investing in someone else's skills to edit your stuff or your own, spend the time to spend the money to make it happen. Okay. Number two, the skills to invest in. Customer journey. Now, this is a beefy one, okay? This is not as cut and dry as editing as like a simple skill.

This is one that has a lot more like subcategories underneath it because what a customer journey is, what that means is every touchpoint that your audience has the opportunity. To engage with your content, interact with you personally, or just have an experience with what you're creating. This could be listening to a podcast episode, watching a YouTube video, being a part of a funnel, reading one of your emails, watching your content on social media.

And I actually, um, I put this out in this episode, I believe will come out today for the potty report, but I put out a challenge to. I want you to write out what your customer journey is. If you don't know it, you absolutely need to do this exercise. And maybe this is, um, a podcast episode like for the future that we need to do, but your customer journey, you need to know it.

You need to write it down and it like take out the word customer. If you're like, crystal, I'm not selling anything. Your audience journey, you need to know what that is. Even if people aren't buying anything from you, you need to know well are. Listening to my podcast and then going to my website. Are they listening to my podcast and going to social?

Are they going to social first? Seeing my little sound bite and then going, listening to the podcast, are they on getting on my email list? Are they, you know, emailing me, uh, to like my customer support site? What is their experience like if they are a customer of mine? Like whether it's on a platform like Cajabi or your WordPress website, like there's so many different touch points and.

This is absolutely gonna be a sliding scale on your budget and your time on what you can manage to do yourself, because maybe you are terrible at copywriting. Okay, I'm raising my hand here because this has been me for a really long time. I was like, okay, I'm gonna get better at this. So I started investing.

I invested my time first because it's what I had. Like I said, 2018, well stay-at-home mom, trying to get her business going. I. Invested heavily in my time of writing, and I've talked about journaling before. It's something I do every day and it's made me a better writer, but journaling on its own won't help you be a better copywriter in the digital space.

Right? Journaling is more of a therapeutic thing that I do. It's kinda like working out or doing something for like my mental health, right? Like it's, it's something that I do in a bubble.  that I don't necessarily share with other people. But that habit of writing all the time has made me more comfortable with writing more extensive things, like writing a lot more, writing emails every re week, writing sales pages, writing, blog, post write, like I just, I feel more comfortable writing because of that habit.

But copywriting is very different. I've invested in courses, I've hired a copywriter before. I have worked with copywriters, like I have put myself around people that are smarter than me because this is a skill that I wanted to get better at. So when you're looking at your customer journey and you're like, where do I invest?

What do I do? Copywriting is one of those that if you're not gonna do it yourself, Then you need to find a good copywriter. And copywriting is your podcast descriptions for your episodes, right? It is your blog post. It is what you're putting on your YouTube descriptions or your YouTube channel, or whatever you're doing on your website.

Like all of these are areas of copywriting that. You are gonna do yourself or you're gonna ask someone else to do. So, list out all the different ways that copywriting affects what you're creating and say, okay, I'm gonna spend time getting better at this one area. Even if it's like you're about page on your website.

Do you know how much time? Okay, and let's just throw this out there. Do you know how much time, energy, and effort I spent redoing. My about page on my website, because copywriting doesn't come natural to me. It's something I have to work at and it's something I've invested so much time and money getting better at over the years.

So the customer journey, copywriting funnels, this is another one. You can invest money in this one. Okay? If you have the ability, invest money in having a really good funnel. What softwares or what applications, that's totally up to you. There are so many different out there, whether you're investing in like I Love Convert Kit, this is my email service provider, and I invest in having that monthly.

Email service that helps me have automations and tagging systems and landing pages, and it just helps me have better funnels. I also have cajabi, and that helps me, you know, have my products and have my serv, like e everything is in one place. So I've invested my money in that, but also my time in setting everything.

Properly. So again, I, I don't wanna spend too much time on this cuz I think I'm gonna do an entire episode on customer journey, but I want you to sit down and say, where do my audience or my customers inter interact with me? Engage with me, list out every single one of those touch points and say, how can I invest in these areas?

Whether it's your time or your money, you need to be making an investment there. All right, let's move on to the next skill that you need to have. And that is number three. Your time getting better or practicing, let's just call it that. That's, that's like an easier way to say it. Practicing. And what I mean by this, um, this is something I, I've told this story before, but I had a meeting the other day where I had to do a presentation.

and I did the presentation and it was like 10 or 15 minutes and afterwards I got a few accolades, you know, like I got pinged. I was like, Hey look, great job. You did so well. And it was one of those things where outwardly I just said thank you, you know, like to that person, they gave me the compliment. I said thank you.

But internally I was saying, you have no idea. How many hours it's taken me to do that 10 or 15 minute presentation with little to no mistakes at all. You don't know, like you don't know. The years it's taken me to speak in front of an audience and not be. Crazy shaky, or super, super nervous or get off on tangents and forget the thing that I was talking about or supposed to be doing, or having my calls to action like you have no idea.

But all I said outwardly was, thank you. , and this is the time that I have spent investing in my own journey to get better the time that I've spent practicing. And I already told you all, like I've done over 1100 podcast episodes. So speaking today on this podcast, it feels effortless because I've invested the time and you will see.

The return on the time that you spend wherever it is in your content. So maybe you're spending time feeling comfortable on camera. , right? You're trying to feel comfortable on camera right now, and you're just like, oh my gosh, this is never gonna work. Like I recorded one YouTube video, it was terrible, and I just, I haven't gotten back to it.

You have to keep showing up and doing it again. You have to invest that time, invest that energy, invest that. Effort back into what you're doing to get better. Cuz you're not gonna be great. You're not gonna be great. When you first write your very first email to your audience and you're like, crystal, that was terrible.

I never wanna do that again. No one responded back to me. No one hardly even read it or opened it, or I don't even have a big enough email list for it to matter. You have to invest that. You have to practice. You have to keep showing up even when it's hard. Like I think back to the very first time I ever did a webinar.

and my mom was the only one that was there. I know. Super embarrassing, right? The very first webinar I ever did in 2018, and my mom was the only one that showed up. And I look back at that and say, I did it anyway. , like I did it anyway because I wanted to get better so I could have been in my head that's like, oh, you suck.

Like the only person that is here and she's probably not even paying attention. She's probably just has her phone on or her computer up somewhere and she's in the kitchen doing something else.  like I could have let those thoughts get to me. , but the bigger goal was I want to get better. I have no idea what I'm doing.

I want this to feel easy. I want this to feel like it's something that is effortless to me.  in. Fast forward five years, like six years later, here we are, and I do feel comfortable. I never in my life thought I would've gotten a compliment doing a 10 or 15 minute presentation ever. At that point, because I was like, I don't even know what I'm doing.

I don't know how to not read everything that's on my slide, but instead incorporate, you know, little anecdotes here and little stories and like, I never would've imagined that that would happen. But what happened is time and investment and consistency to achieving that goal of feeling more comfortable on camera behind the microphone.

Just being in my own skin and feeling comfortable presenting so you can make that happen the more you invest your time to. Better. Again, this could be money, this could be hiring a coach, taking a program, or it could be just the time that you spend with yourself, like cheering yourself on and saying, you can do this.

Like you got this. Yeah, we're pretty terrible right now, but we're gonna be better in a few years. We're gonna be better in a few months. We're gonna be better just in a few weeks if we keep showing up and doing it. And this brings me to the fourth thing that I have to share with you today, and that's getting out of your comfort.

getting out of your comfort zone. Like I feel like this is the thing that I'm supposed to say one, right? Because I'm like, I'm your coach. I'm trying to help you get better here. But it's also the thing that I know I hate to hear. When people say, get outta your comfort zone, because one, I know they're right, and two, I really don't want to do it.

I think it's the resistance to it, right? I really don't wanna do it. I'm like, I've created this little bubble of, you know, Love and sparkliness and comfort where I'm just like, I'm just so cozy here. Like it's nice. It's just nice in my little cozy bubble of happiness, and I don't wanna pop it. I don't wanna pop my bubble.

I don't want anybody to disturb the homeostasis that I have achieved in my comfort. . But I can also tell you like there's this journey, right? You have the customer, not the customer, the creator journey where you are just getting started. So if you've been creating content for a while, I want you to go back to the very beginning and think about.

The very first time you hit publish, whether it was on a podcast episode, a YouTube video, your very first social media post, the first email that you sent out, like think back to some point in time when you hit publish for the very first time. You were getting outta your comfort zone. It was hard. It was scary.

Maybe it was exciting. Maybe it was thrilling. Maybe it was all of the emotions wrapped up into one, but you were getting outta your comfort zone, putting yourself out there, and then you're going along maybe for two or three months, and you're like, okay, I got this. Like, it's still a little messy, but I got this.

You hit a level of homeostasis again where you're like, I, I, I mean, I, I feel this, like I, this is good. And then you're like, I'm not growing. You hit a point where you're like, I've kind of plateaued. I don't know how to get out of this. And you have two options. You can either keep going on that path of not growing, not getting better, and it's pretty just stale, like it's kind of flat lining in your growth.

or you can get outta your comfort zone. Maybe that look like getting on someone else's podcast, asking to be featured in, um, you know, an article or having someone interested in sharing what you're doing and they need your permission to do it, and you're like, oh, I don't know, like, that's a big deal. Like, I'm gonna get the spotlight shine on me.

And I was just like, oh, I don't know. This happens to everyone at some point where all of a sudden what you have put out there gets noticed or someone finds interest in it, or you say, you know what? I'm gonna start running paid ads, or I'm gonna start marketing my content better. And then you're like, but I've never done this before and I'm really uncomfortable.

and that's the area where you start growing. And I hate those like cat posters that are like, you know, get outta your comfort zone. Like, don't stay in your C like don't blah, blah, blah. Like all those things. I'm imagining the, the cat poster and like the Lego movie . If you have kids and you've watched a Lego movie, you know what I'm talking about.

But it's like, it's so frustrating cuz you know it's right. You know, it's. I hate it. I hate it too. Like I'm admitting this to you. I hate it when someone tells me, get outta your comfort zone, cuz I'm like, why? It's such a, it's, I love it here. It's cozy in my comfort zone. I don't wanna leave it, but I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna challenge you.

that getting out of my comfort zone has been the thing that has made all the difference. I look back at, before I rebranded my podcast, that was really getting out of my comfort zone cuz I felt like I was abandoning everything that I had set out to create. And it was, it was a little crisis of like identity in my brand.

I'm like, but I created this thing. I can't abandon it. I can't walk away from it. Like I created this thing. Like this is what it's supposed to be. But I was getting outta my comfort zone and I said, no, I'm gonna go all in on podcasting and helping people and in making that switch, having the courage to get out of my comfort zone is what has landed me here today.

If I wouldn't have made those decisions back in 2019. . I don't, I, would I still be podcasting? Would I still be creating content at all? I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so. I think that I probably would've burned out. I would've been tired of what I was doing because I wasn't fulfilled in the content that I was creating at the time.

So getting out of my con, my comfort zone, there we go. I feel like is what has saved me in so many ways on this. . So those are the four skills, okay? Editing customer journey, taking the time to practice and get better. And four, constantly getting outta your comfort zone. These are my challenges to you. Like figure out how you can get better at these and how you can invest in these areas.

And then the last thing I wanna talk about is making the decision whether to do three things. Delegate, outsource or learn it. That's what I want you to do. So if you were to write down all the skills that you have as a creator and what you're doing every single week to create your content, I want you to go next to every single one of those and say, can I delegate this to someone on my team?

Can I outsource this to a contractor or a freelancer, or even an app? And then the last one is, or can I learn it? Can I spend some time or some money investing in learning this thing that could really help me as a creator? So that's, that's your homework. That's what you gotta go do. Write down all the skills that you are doing currently today, or the ones that you wanna have as a creator and say, how can I invest in these areas?

Real fast. I wanna mention, I'm gonna put these in the show notes, but I wanna mention there's three other podcast episodes that if you're like, okay, I want to, I'm motivated, I wanna go like tackle these things right now, there are three podcast episodes that I've done previously that I want you to go listen to.

Number one is How to Save Time and Money Creating Content. Okay? It's gonna be linked to the show notes. Two, four content time WA wasters that you can't afford. That's a really good one, especially if you're like trying to figure out, well, how can I only have limited amount of time? What can I do? And then the third one is how to invest in your podcast.

What if I gave you a thousand dollars? You remember how that's how we started this whole podcast episode. I actually did a podcast episode. How to invest in your podcast. What if I gave you a thousand dollars? Um, and I think that all of these can be really helpful, especially if you're motivated right now.

You're like, okay, I wanna do this. I'm gonna invest my time, I'm invest my money. Where do I make that happen? What are gonna be like some of the ways that I can do that? So go check out all of those. They're gonna be linked in the show notes, but that's all I have for you today. This episode ended up being so much longer than I thought it was gonna be, but I feel like I feel really good about all the different things that we covered because all of it's important.

You have limited resources, whether it's your time, your money. Your energy, your effort. I get that. I understand that I have the same challenges too, and I want to make sure that you're making smart decisions when it comes to investing your valuable resources. But that's all I have for you today. So as always, remember, keep it up.

We all have to start somewhere.

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