Introducing YouTube Memberships–Help Fund Our New Business Venture

we have a dilemma so this is not your typical me teaching you something but I hope you'll stick around to figure out what it is we're talking about here's the dilemma I'm an educator at heart I've been teaching for a really long time and I've been struggling with the business model some of you heard me talk about this before here's the problem I want to create content I want to release it all for free for you all the time so you can watch all of this but it's in direct opposition to me as an entrepreneur and for my ability to support and grow my team and pay them a livable wage what many of you don't understand is this is free for you to watch and I appreciate you watching 1,00% bottom of my heart but we pay people to help us produce so although you just see me on camera there's lots of people behind the camera behind the scenes that are doing things like dgo and mo making the content editing and managing our channels Amy talking to all the brand sponsorship opportunities that exist and making sure we get the right ones that are line with what we do or Rich helping to book guests for the podcast and making strategic suggestions on how we can grow that so you can see there's lots of people writers producers and editors working behind the scenes to make all this possible in my heart of

hearts I wish I could just make this forever and to move towards our mission of teaching a billion people but I can't I'm a person who's not satisfied with stagnation and we've hit some kind of cealing here and we have to figure out how to get to the next level The Dilemma really for me is how do we give you content to help you while you the ones who really get value from it an opportunity to reciprocate the value by supporting us so that we don't have to Market and create funnels create courses we can just teach and that is where I'm in my happy place that is me in my zone of Genius doing the work that is Meaningful that is impactful that has lasting value that's what I want to be able to do so I want to talk to you about a potential new business model that will allow all of you who really support us to take us to the next level now having a lot of subscribers or followers is nice but many people would refer to that as a

vanity metric the real metric that matters is the value per fan so if we have 100,000 people willing to support us by purchasing our products by joining us in a premium subscription model then we know we really have 100,000 fans we don't really have 2 and a half million fans and I want to test if this model is true I've heard from many of you in person at the airport on the street about how the videos we've created have touched you have changed your life who have created tremendous value for you so in a little bit I'm going to do something very rare I'm going to ask you for something here's the thing we've been kind of keeping it secret because I hate marketing and sales and I'm not very good at it to be honest with you I want to create value for you and I hope in some way you find your way to our website and participate in one of the many things that we do currently our business model is structured around a few things we make digital courses and resources that you can buy we do group coaching either in the future program or accelerator I do public speaking and I also do one-on-one Consulting and coaching in many of you this might be a news flash because you didn't even know about this because I'm rather reluctant to talk about it I believe in this I believe in that you should give value to people and not have any expectations but every once in a while we have to let you know about what we're doing so that you can find ways to support us as we support you this is how societies are

built you get value you give value now I want to tell you a little bit of a sad story it's around 2019 that I converted my entire office space and my company to creating content 100% fulltime this means there are many miles to feed but there's this giant build building that we've converted into a dedicated event space where we can host workshops for over 100 people and we actually pulled it off we invited none other than Marty num who wrote The Brand Gap the brand flip and the designful company to host a workshop the first of its kind on brand strategy we had people flying from all over the world including Australia and China it was an awesome in-person experience it was so magical that everyone got together to learn and it made me so happy that was the first and last ever in-person experience we ran in our office space because as many of you know the pandemic happened and then we went into seclusion so all this stuff that was being built up was just sitting there Gathering dust and cobwebs fast forward to today I've been itching to get back in it but I want to be smarter and more Nimble and I want to create this new hybrid space that is the best of all the things I've been able to receive as a student and as a teacher and recreate that in a structured way here I am in New City in Pasadena and I want to build this hybrid school learning environment where it's a physical space that is open to some members of our community where we can gather and create very specific types of content whether it be podcasts or having guests with a live audience running experimental prototype workshops where we can host exclusive dinner parties and use some of that to share and broadcast with all of you some of you love building a brand we want to be able to do programs like that and also to have Apprentice is coming into the studio and working with me in order to do that I need a physical space I have some locations that are ideal for doing this that I think going to be fantastic for what we do and I'm affirm that the best

performing content that's on the channel involve real people working in a real space working together to Me This Is My Jam as you know some of our best content comes from the tension that exists between me the teacher and the student trying to figure out an idea together and that friction is what creates the magical moments where we have breakthrough moments like in the how to price a logo video or tell me why I should buy this where there's a cheap buyer who doesn't want to pay but doesn't want to let me go those are the kinds of moments that I think are so magical that want to be able to create on a regular basis if you want to if you're so willing I would love to get your support so that the next 10 years can be very different than the last 10 years and how we can take this next level in a little bit I'm going to describe to you how you can support us and become a premium member to the channel but before I do that let

me explain some things so with your help I want to be able to shift away from a course model where you buy and consume products that are hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars to one that's supported by the broad range of people who call themselves future true fans this takes me to a concept that

many of you have heard me talk about before called the 1,000 true fans an article that was written by Kevin Kelly he was one of the co-founders of Wired Magazine and the executive editor he wrote you don't need 100,000 followers you don't even need 10,000 followers you need 1,000 true fans who are willing to step up and support what you do who would buy the Audi book The Written book and the Digital Book of the same book I think some of you actually exist out there because you've been sustaining members or you support me in other ways and we see that we truly appreciate you and now what we want to do is we want to roll this out to everybody so let me tell you what that plan looks like those of you who want to see more of what we're doing to allow us the ability to teach you and to produce events and maybe even game shows or series like behind the brand will have an opportunity to support us we created two tiers in which you can join the first

tier is super easy it costs $1 a month you get a badge to say I support the future it's your way of saying thank you to us for the things we've done the impact we've created in your life or to help you get around that dark corner in your life it's also our way to say thank you back to you to recognize you and to honor you we think that no matter where you are in the whole world if you've received at least a dollar worth of value from us which I hope is the case that you'll agree that this is a way to support the future and no matter what your economic standing is in the world I think you can do this and I'm counting on you to do this tier two is where this gets really interesting it'll be $15 a

month and this is where we will house content that we would unlist or that are unreleased or unfiltered these longer format things that should be courses that we charge money for but we now will have a new home to put this content for the rest of you don't want to get on with this program of paying for premium subscription to the YouTube channel I want you to rest assured we'll continue to release content that we have in the past and for Content that we deem should be behind the premium subscription model what we'll do is release it for a fixed period of time we're thinking 48 hours but we can adjust this as we go so you have the opportunity to watch it for free but afterwards it will be moved into the premium section for those who can afford to pay us to $15 a month currently we have 2 and half million subscribers and growing at about 20,000 subscribers a month if we got less than 5% of you to step up let's say 100,000 people were to support us even at the minimum level I would be able to use this money to pay for my team to have a livable wage for us to scale what we do with writers producers editors content managers but more importantly to fund the creation of this new hybrid learning space I've been talking about so that the nature of the content will change if you can do that I believe we will radically change the business model moving away from courses to a subscription model now you might be thinking also like this feels like not right to you but I'd ask you to think about this you pay for a Netflix subscription you pay for maybe skill share or master class I want to ask you something how many of those things that you paid for actually put money in your pocket that left you feeling more confident more capable and more able to do what it is that you do and the chances are probably not many so I'm hoping that you'll support us and there's a quote I want to share with you it's from Anna lape that every dollar you spend is a vote for the world that you want to live in and with your vote and how you stand we will be able to continue pushing forward into the future and ultimately achieve our goal of disrupting the education industrial complex to make education affordable for everyone thanks for watching this video I appreciate your support I'll see you in the future