How to Mindfully Build a High-Quality Audience at Your Own Pace or Be Forever Held Hostage by Your 9 to 5

On Life and Business
With Jake Erickson
March 4, 2023
Read the online version here.

Imagine the day you tell your boss, "I'm done in 2 weeks."

Your bank account is rolling in $10,000 a month. You've worked so hard these past months. Maybe even years.

You didn't even think it could be this simple!

All because you've stuck to a fool-proof system that built a following for you online that you one day monetized.

Building an audience daily is one of the most powerful things you can do. It provides social proof, new opportunities, increased traffic, and more.

And you only need 1,000 followers to make a living. If you have yet to read it, Kevin Kelly wrote an article about how any creator, artist, musician, or anyone producing works of art only needs 1,000 True Fans to make a living. You can read the article here.

But building an audience is a lot of work, you say. The biggest roadblock you're facing is having enough time because you’re working 50 hours a week at your 9 to 5. You're also stressed and don’t know what you need to do.

I'm 100% in your shoes. That's why I've spent countless hours of research taken from some of the greatest minds in online audience building and distilled it in this guide. As a result, you will learn the best of the best in the game right now.

By the end of reading this guide, I promise you will have the exact steps for creating a stress-free productive routine that will grow your audience outside of your 9 to 5. And this audience won't be low-quality — they will have people willing to take out their wallets and pay you.

Let us begin.

The High-Quality Audience

It doesn’t matter how many followers you have.

It only matters that you get high-quality followers and can drive traffic to your offer (future offer). So a fundamental formula is: how much traffic you can bring x how good your offer is = $$$.

You WANT to end up with a bunch of followers with credit cards. Otherwise, you have traffic for your profile, but no one will buy. The BEST way to gain high-quality followers is to be an EXPERT at knowing where the fish are and TO fish.

So how do you find the fish?

Well, first, you need to understand the three eternal markets. Think of the three eternal markets as big oceans where most fish are. They include:

1. Health

2. Wealth

3. Relationships

Everyone that purchases anything is hoping to get a certain result in one of these three areas of their lives.

I'm not going to dive in on this too profoundly, but what's important is each of these has sub-markets to tap into. And those sub-markets have fish whose needs aren't being met.

Let's say, for example, you sell lead generation for creators making $100k-$200k per year — ask yourself what sub-market you're in.

Then go to the accounts in that sub-market and pull people out of it and into your niche.

You do this by engaging with the people there. In this case, the sub-market would be any community or place online with people likely to buy marketing services.

Here is a breakdown of the niche we chose:

Wealth (core market) > Marketing services (sub-market) > Lead Generation (Niche)> For Creators (Sub-Niche)> Making $100k-$200k/Year (x3 Niche)

Our niche addresses a smaller group of people whose needs are not necessarily being met by the submarket. Hence, if you're good, you have a competitive advantage you can market out in that space.

I'm going to get very simple because many people overcomplicate this.

If you're selling fruit to the general public (which is a niche to the food sub-market), go to grocery stores, produce sections, and farmers' markets and engage with people buying the produce. If you're niche and only sell to people between the ages of 40-60, talk to them.

If you want people willing to pay you or follow (if you have no offer yet), you NEED to pull from some market. If you still need an offer, produce content in a market you're most interested in FIRST. If you want to make people more money, it would be inefficient to produce content in the health space.

Now that you understand the fundamentals of driving traffic to your page — let's start with the next big piece.

Profile

Here's a ton of value to optimize your profile for a minimal time.

You need to get it right because if you don't, all of this doesn't matter.

Credibility. People want to have an assurance that you're competent and trustworthy. They want to avoid following a brand they waste their time on.

The first step to credibility is setting up a great profile page.

Here are the main ways to optimize your profile:

• Have a simple username

• Have a clear HD profile picture with a headshot

• Have a clear, concise bio explaining where you're at in your journey

• Have a banner with brand colors

• A link showing your building something

• High-quality pinned posts

• High-quality content

So many times on Twitter, I have looked at profiles only to see retweets or reposts.

Don't be that guy. People want to follow people who are building. Look at the top influencers you follow and tell me if they're reposting a bunch of content by others.

No, they're their own show.

First-Rate Networking

Here’s how to grow online.

Earlier in this guide, we discussed pulling people from a market to our profile. The way we are going to do this is to create a Dream 100 List.

What is that, you say? It’s a list of 100 accounts that your Dream Customer follows.

Who is your Dream Customer? The people who hang out and socialize in the same corner of the internet as you (if you’re productizing yourself) — or where your offer is BEST likely to sell. With this, you don’t need to create any traffic — the traffic is already there.

To get your Dream 100 List, you must take a step back from your niche offer/topics and go up to the submarket level. Within the submarket are all the niches where your traffic resides. All you need to do is figure out WHO is controlling that traffic.

Then:

• Make them laugh, smarter, and more money

• Ask them interesting questions

• Engage their content like a bro

• Subscribe to all their services

• Buy their products

• Follow them

Engagement can be in the form of likes, retweets, replies, profile visits, link clicks, and mention clicks. It is the fuel that promotes the reach of your content because of the algorithm.

Many people don’t realize the benefits of engaging for 30-60 minutes daily, but it’s important because you have to hangout where your customer is. Your customer follows the list owners, bloggers, podcasts, and social media accounts in your sub-market. And your job is to pull them out of it into your niche.

Essentially, put yourself on their radar.

Once you’re on their radar, ask them genuine questions about where they are in their journey and give them value. Then, send them tips, resources, articles, systems, and videos, or continue showing interest.

The goal is to connect with people who have traffic and grow together.

Don’t just take. GIVE.

Just start because once you see the benefits, you’ll never stop.

Integrating Business Into Your Lifestyle

Engaging with your Dream 100 every day can seem overwhelming if you're working a full-time job.

Time management is critical.

Our main goal is not to burn out. Instead, we want a sustainable routine and strategy to stick to daily. This section will focus on designing your routine at your own pace with your 9 to 5.

Your first decision is to pick a platform.

I recommend starting with Twitter because it's a short-form platform.

In James Clear's article, he talks about the Two-Minute Rule, which means that if you want to start new habits that stick — break them down into small actions that are easy to perform. For example, you can build a writing habit online on Twitter, where your content is a few sentences long — or you can use LinkedIn and Medium, where you'll be busting out books daily. The choice is yours.

Let's keep using Twitter as our example to grow.

Building a minimum content strategy is an absolute must.

It’s the list of tasks you need to get done every day to continue growing. Many creators and entrepreneurs recommend taking outrageous action every day, but again — they don't know that:

1. Your time is limited

2. You can burn out

3. You're a beginner — quality and then quantity

So we'll start with the bare minimum content strategy.

The bare minimum content strategy is for individuals who are just getting started. These individuals want to see wins. They understand that the more experienced they get, the more their content quality and speed improves.

Bare Minimum Content Strategy:

• Write 2 tweets per day

• Engage with 5 accounts in your Dream 100 per day

• 1 direct message to your Dream 100 per day

• 1 piece of long-form content per week (thread or newsletter)

In the beginning, as you get more experienced, you can increase the quantity of your content to what is most comfortable for you.

I would note this next tip down.

Your rule every day should be to produce work challenging enough that it’s not boring — but also easy enough not to get stressed and quit. You're looking for balance. That is the optimal way to build an audience — a disciplined routine that you can consistently stick to daily. That is how to grow your audience at your own pace MINDFULLY.

On routine, I write in the morning and do my engagements/DMs in the evening. It works for me because I write at my peak mental state, and after the day, as my willpower is sapped by my 9 to 5, I can finish engagements/DMs (which doesn't take too much will).

Also, you don't have to start with the bare minimum content strategy. I'd recommend doing more — but this is for the sake of getting your habits burned into your system (which is the most critical part).

As you increase the quantity of your content throughout the weeks/months, you may be thinking about how far you can take this. And my answer to that is, how far do you want to go?

Hustler Content Strategy:

• Write 5-7 tweets per day

• Engage with 100 accounts in your Dream 100 list or potential customers per day

• 100 direct messages to your Dream 100 list or potential customers per day

• 3 pieces of long-form content per week (thread or newsletter)

• 3 giveaways a month

• And more

The reason why anyone stresses with business is that they’re doing too much.

I realize that that statement is an oxymoron to the Cold Email Wizard picture. But it’s necessary to be wise enough to know your limits. To know oneself.

If you can do it. Perfect. If you can’t — it’s always best to keep it simple and start small.

It’s a scientific fact that setting small challenging (I emphasize challenging because they can’t be easy) goals and hitting them will increase dopamine.

Dopamine is the chemical in our brain for reward. We are rewiring our brains to be rewarded for completing challenging goals, making goal pursuit pleasurable.

One of the best resources I’ve come across on goal-setting is this podcast episode by Andrew Huberman here.

So make the beginning of building your personal brand easy but challenging enough. Anyone working a 9 to 5 can message 1 person daily, write 2 tweets, and engage with 5 accounts. And if you can get everything right — your audience will also be high-quality because you’ve targeted the correct market.

Here is a summary of the action steps you need to do:

1. Identify your Dream Customer

2. Optimize your profile

3. Build your Dream 100 List

4. Network with them

5. Choose the content strategy that suits your needs

6. Adjust the output of your content strategy as your skills increase

I challenge you to start now.

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Want to learn how to build a Personal Brand online, check this article out!

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