Why Growing Your Audience Won't Fix Your Income

I'm going to say something kind of bold today, but creators believe one dangerous myth, and this is the myth.

If I just grow my audience, the money will come.

And it sounds logical and it feels like the right thing to do, but it's wrong.

I'm telling you, it's dead wrong.

And it's never going to work.

Growth isn't going to happen if you have a broken business model.

And that's what so many creators, you might be watching this or listening right now, and your business model is broken.

And if your business model is broken, I don't care how many more people you get, more people is just going to be more wasted opportunity.

And it's going to be more money that you waste in both your dollars and your time.

Because growth, even explosive growth, you know, going viral, everybody talks about, I want to go viral.

It's going to be amazing.

Growth doesn't fix a broken business model.

But I'm going to tell you today how to fix that business model.

Foreign.

Welcome to the content Creators account.

I'm Ralph Estepp Jr.

I'm a licensed account.

I've been doing this for 30 years.

I'm a business coach, and I'm known as the content creators accountant.

And the best part of all of those things is I'm just like you.

I was at a conference this weekend and somebody said, hey, Ralph, I see you're a content creators accountant.

Can I work with you?

Absolutely.

So if you want to work with me to help you build systems and help you be a better, better podcaster and a better content creator from the business side, just reach out to me@content creatorsaccountant.com because what I do every single day is I help creators build income, not just audiences, because honestly, you can have the biggest audience in the world.

I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of people, subscribers, downloads.

But if you don't have a business model, guess what?

You're going to stay broken.

So let's talk about why this happens.

I'm going to walk you through a few steps.

Number one thing, and you've probably thought this before because you've said it.

I've heard so many people say at this conference, I hear a lot of people say, what's that magic number?

Oh, if I can just hit 10,000 downloads.

Okay, you hit 10,000 downloads, what happens?

Or if I can just grow a little more, then all of a sudden it's going to magically work.

And that's what so many of us buy into.

So we push harder.

We build more content we put more effort into it, we spend more time.

But guess what?

Your time costs money.

Your effort cost money.

But you do all of those things.

You grow this audience and the income doesn't change.

And the bad part is you're doing exactly what a lot of these idiots tell you to do.

They keep telling you, I went to this conference, there were so many speakers that said, well, just grow your audience, put out more content, Just be consistent, deliver.

And guess what?

If your models broken, you're going to stay broke.

So I don't blame you.

You're doing exactly what you're told to do, but it's not working, is it?

You look at your bank account and it's not getting any better.

And the problem with this is, even as you grow, think about this.

I'm going to, I'm going to use a term here.

Amplifier.

We all understand amplifiers because we're like, oh, we got to have an amplifier for a microphone so people can hear us.

It works the same way in your content engine.

When you do grow, growth is going to amplify whatever system you already have.

And guess what?

If your system is broken, it's going to get worse.

When you've got a system that works, growth increases income.

But listen, if your system is broken, and so many people who are listening to me right now, your system is broken, hear me on this.

And when you do grow, if you don't fix the system, what's going to happen?

You're going to get more frustrated.

You're going to have more downloads, you're going to have more subscribers, more followers, and your broken system is going to get worse because growth just amplifies whatever system you have.

And if you have no system, man, it's just going to get ugly.

Because so many people think, well, you know, I'll just figure this out once I get that bigger audience.

But think about it like in terms of a leaky bucket.

If you pick up a bucket and you walk across the room, you fill it up with water, but it's got big holes in it.

By the time you get to the other side of the room, what's going to be in the bucket?

Nothing.

So you can have a big audience.

But if your bucket is broken, if your bucket is leaking, if it's got huge gaping holes in it, I don't care how, how much water you pour into it, you're going to lose more, you're going to lose more money, you're going to lose more of your time, and you're going to lose your sanity.

You're going to go.

You're drive yourself crazy seeing all these things.

If you have a bucket with holes in it, the fix isn't putting more water into it, is it?

Because you can put as much water in as you want, it's still going to be a leaky bucket.

The answer is fixing the holes.

If you're on a lake and you've got a boat.

I've got a pond here on my farm and I got a boat.

So I can go out there on the pond.

Well, if I got in that.

Yeah, boat.

So I'm stumbling my words.

I'm a little frustrated today because I talk to so many people about this and they just don't get it.

But if I'm on my pond and I've got this boat and I get in the boat and the next thing you know, I look down and there's water coming in the boat.

If I don't plug those holes, I'm not going to be able to get out on that pond and I'm going to sink.

And so many craters are doing just that.

They get bigger buckets and they pour more water into it.

But it's leaking like a sieve.

My grandmother used to say, son, it's leaking like a sieve.

Yeah, it is.

It's going everywhere if you don't fix those holes.

Let's talk about what that looks like.

Let's talk about what a broken model.

Because you may be like, wait a minute, Ralph, how is my model broken?

Let's talk about what that looks like.

Let's say you have content.

Most of us, if you're a podcaster, if you're a content creator, guess what?

You have content that's fantastic.

You have an audience that's great, and you've got some engagement.

But like I've said for the last six weeks or so, if you don't have an offer, if you don't have a system, if you don't have a revenue plan, what's going to happen?

I was talking to a person this weekend.

I said, I went and listened to your show and it's great, great content.

But I was standing at the checkout line and there's no register there.

I don't know what to do with it.

What do you want me to do with it?

So people are showing up for your stuff, but there's nowhere for them to go.

You haven't given them anything.

Listen, that's not a growth problem, that's a design.

Your system is broken.

Let's get into some specifics.

Let's say you've got a podcast that's growing fast.

You went from 1,000 to 10,000 downloads.

Listen, that's a huge progress.

People are like, listen, random.

Oh, that's fantastic.

I got a ton of audience people.

I got a ton of engagement.

But how much money's in your bank account?

How much revenue do you have?

Nothing.

Almost zero.

Let's break it down.

Your audience is growing, but here's the problem.

You don't have a problem that you're solving.

You're talking to people, you're giving them information.

But what are you actually striving for?

What is the problem you're solving?

And if you don't have a problem with your audience, if you don't understand what they're coming to you for, how do you build an offer?

Because you don't have anything to offer them.

And if you don't have a problem, you don't have an offer.

Guess what?

You don't have a system.

And then you scale it up and guess what happens?

You have more audience.

People with nowhere to check out.

Imagine you went to the Walmart, right?

You get to the Walmart, you get your cart, you're going down the aisle, you're putting all this stuff in your cart.

You get up to the front and there's nobody there to check out with.

That's what your content is doing right now.

You got people with carts full of stuff, and there's nowhere to give you any money.

Now some people say, well, I'll just set up a tip jar at the front.

You know, buy me a coffee.

Good luck with that.

You're going to make peanuts.

And here's why.

It gets even worse as you grow.

A lot of people miss this because now you got more people coming.

You got more people piling into the Walmart.

You got more people with cards.

They're filling it up, but they don't see an offer, they don't hear any direction.

There's no action for them to take.

You can have 10 times the audience and you've got 10 times the wasted opportunity.

And here's the thing a lot of creators don't want to talk about.

People see that and they listen to your content.

They think, well, that was really good content, but what am I supposed to do with it?

They didn't tell me what the problems is they can solve.

Oh, that's great.

You gave me some great information.

But, dude, what does that mean to me?

And that's just a lost opportunity, but it just scales even higher.

And that's why?

You've got to build both of these things at once.

I've had so many people tell me, oh, Ralph, you got to build your audience first, and once you build that audience, then you can monetize.

That's a bad plan, and it's not going to work.

You got to build both things at the same time.

You got to build the audience and the monetization at the very same time.

And that means this.

From the beginning, before you press record, before you understand any of this, your content needs to lead to your problem, needs to lead to your offer.

All inside of a system.

You can't do that later.

If you start off and you go with the content, but you forget the other parts, you are going to have a big, big fat zero at the end.

You can't build an audience and then monetize.

You got to build both at the same time.

That's the whole point of it.

So you got to design very early and scale later.

I'm almost.

It's almost better if you had a hundred downloads and you have a strong system, that monetization.

Now, I'm going to make an assumption here.

You don't have to monetize your show.

You might be doing something.

Hey, Ralph, this is a passion project.

This is a hobby of mine.

Great, fantastic.

You can tune me out right now because I'm not.

You're.

I'm not who you want to listen to.

I'm very clear on who my audience is.

My audience are people who are doing this to at least offset the cost of this.

I'd really like to talk to the people who are looking to make money, because I can show you how to do that.

But that monetization strategy's got to be designed early.

It's a lot easier to build it right from the start than try to fix it after the good.

Pretend like you're a construction person, right?

And somebody hires you to build a house, and you put the roof up first.

Let me think about that.

You have a house and you build the roof first, but you haven't put a foundation in it.

You haven't built the first floor, but you got a beautiful roof.

Well, there's a lot of content creators got beautiful roofs, man, but there's nothing underneath of it.

You got to start with the foundation, design it early.

And here's the sinister part.

You got to do that because your content has to be based on that.

So many knuckleheads are out there doing content, but there's no deliverables, there's no intention.

There's no idea of what the audience actually needs.

So you got to start off there, and then your content fills in that gap.

You go out and you think about it like this.

You go out to your audience, you say, hmm, what is my audience's biggest pain point?

Then you build the content around that.

But so many people get that backwards.

They build the content first and say, well, let me figure out how I can shoehorn in an offer for this.

And what happens then?

They go look for sponsors.

They look for sponsors, have absolutely nothing to do with their show.

Because I need money, Ralph.

And then the audience is like, why am I listening to this podcast?

There's a sponsor that has nothing to do with any of it.

But see, if you build it intentionally from the start, then you can grow something.

Let me contrast this.

Let's talk about Creator A.

Okay.

Creator A has a focus on growing.

Only raise your hands if you're Creator A. I was Creator A for a long time.

My goal was just grow and grow.

I want more downloads, I want more engagement.

I want more YouTube followers.

You know, when I got after all those things, I got almost 800,000 YouTube subscribers along my channels.

And people say, oh, that's great, Ralph.

But if I had designed the monetization strategy from the start, I could have had 800 and been making more money with this, to be blunt.

And see, when you focus like Creator A on growth only, you get a huge audience.

But you got low income, maybe you got a couple dollars of CPM coming in, but the one thing you will have is a high level of frustration.

These are the people that do it for a while, and they burn out because they're not getting anything from it.

They're putting in more time and more effort, but they're not getting anywhere.

So they get frustrated.

They got a huge audience.

People are like, I can't believe Joe walked away from his podcast.

Look at how big his podcast was.

But Joe didn't build it with any intention.

He just walked into and said, let's build it.

It'll be huge.

But there was no system built.

But let's look at Creator B.

This is.

I love Creator B.

Creator B has a focus on growth and monetization.

I'm not saying don't grow your show.

You've got to grow your show.

Listen, you got to bring people to the table.

If Walmart said, look, we've got a store here, but we're not going to let you in the store.

You can't buy anything, right?

You got to do the same thing.

So you got to build the audience, but you got to build that together.

And when you do that, what you do is you align your audience with your offer.

And here's another thing I heard somebody say this last few days.

Make sure the people you're talking to can afford you.

Make sure the people that you're talking to can actually buy your products and services.

Because you may be talking to people who have needs.

But listen, if they can't afford to pay, you stop talking to them.

And that's not being mean, it's just factual.

You got to have an offer that people can pay for, and you got to build an audience of people that can afford to pay for it.

I know that sounds simple, but it's so true.

So let's look at content creator B.

The same amount of effort as A, but the building growth and a monetization strategy at the same time.

The same effort, different strategy, and a much different outcome.

Now, you don't have to take my word for it.

There are a lot of people on the outside that agree with me.

Russell Brunson, he has a company, Click Funnels and Traffic Secrets.

What he says, and it's brilliant.

He says more traffic won't help if the funnel, funnel underneath is broken.

If the funnel doesn't put water into it, doesn't funnel into something, it's not going to work.

You got to fix the conversion path first.

You got to build it at the same time.

Now, Seth Godin, a lot of people know Seth.

I actually didn't, never heard of Seth before.

I did a little research and Seth's got it together.

And Seth talks about what he calls the smallest viable audience.

You notice what he said.

He didn't say the biggest audience.

He didn't say the most engaged.

He said the smallest viable audience.

Because what he's getting at is chasing that scale.

Chasing that volume is the wrong goal.

Serve a specific audience, deeply know who your audience is.

It could be 200 people, but if they've got the money and they know what they need and you've, you've, you've laid that out for them, that's going to be huge.

Let's talk about Amy Porterfield.

Everybody knows Amy, the Amy Porterfield Show.

She built the offer and the funnel early at the beginning, and she said, don't wait.

Don't wait until you're big enough to monetize.

It's all different people and they're all saying the same thing over and over.

It's not just Ralph saying it.

These people are well known in the industry, the people who've built real online business, all say it.

More traffic is never going to fix a broken funnel.

It's never going to fix a broken system.

Now maybe right now you're realizing, Ralph, man, I focused on growth.

I had never focused on monetization.

I'm not shaming you.

I'm not a judgment guy.

Like, as you get to know me, I am never going to criticize you.

You're not alone in this because you've been buying into the same garbage that all these podcast gurus and all these people all over TikTok and the Internet.

And you are saying we'll just build it and build it and build because we all watch the show.

You build it and they will come.

Guess what?

They're not coming.

And if they do come, they're not going to pay you.

If you need help right now to help you fix that, this is what I do.

This is my passion.

Go to content creators, accountant.com audit and apply for a content monetization audit.

And you want to break it down.

I'll help you fix your model, help you build that offer.

And here's the best part.

I'm going to help you create a real revenue system from the beginning.

Now, one of the things you're going to learn about me is I always want to give you action steps.

So let's break it down into some action steps.

Number one thing you do, you can hire me, which is a great idea, and you should hire me.

But let's say you're not ready to hire me quite yet.

Here's the first thing I want you to do.

Audit your model that you're operating in right now with one question.

And once you see this, you're gonna be like, oh, I can't unsee this, Ralph.

But here's the question.

If my audience doubled tomorrow, would my income double?

So let's say right now you've got an audience of I, I. Ralph, I get 200 listeners per day.

Let's say that's 400.

If that happened, would your income double?

Just answer that in your own head.

You don't have to just shout through the.

Shout through the camera if you want to.

If the answer is no, you got a model problem, not a growth problem, because I just doubled your downloads.

And guess what happened?

Nothing.

Second step.

And this is a step that so many creators forget.

You got to define the problem that you solve.

What is it your audience actually needs?

And you got to be clear.

You got to be able to.

I was talking to a guy at this conference the other day.

And I said to him, I said, I love your podcast, it's got a lot of energy.

I said, but at the end of listening to it, dude, what are you trying to solve?

And he couldn't answer.

He was befuddled.

He's like, I don't know.

I said, you got to know that in one sentence.

It's got to be crystal clear.

So number one, if your audience doubles, does it double your income?

Number two, do you understand their problem?

Number three, do you have an offer?

When somebody listens to you?

When somebody buy, like, think about me.

Right now, I have an offer for you, right?

My offer is let me help you fix a broken model.

And I've given you a website.

I've given you a way to do business with me.

That's fantastic.

I have an offer.

I know who my audience is, I know what you need, and I have the ability to give you what you need because I've been doing it for 30 years.

Well, if you've got a podcast, if you've got a YouTube channel, build that offer and it can be super small, super niche, just one group of people.

Here's my offer.

Now, you notice what I haven't talked about yet.

Not once have I mentioned content in this four step thing.

Now I'm at step four.

Now we're going to talk about content because now we know the problem, we know the solution and we know your offer.

So now we'll build the episodes, we'll build the content around that alignment and then every.

Listen to me, hear me on this.

Every single piece of content you put out has to align with that.

There's no one offs.

And like, here's what I did this weekend, that's great, that's fine.

For your personal YouTube channel.

If you're running a business with your content, every single piece of content needs to point to the problem, the solution and your offer.

If you do that and you increase your audience, here's the thing, I'm going to guarantee you, you will see guaranteed positive results.

Now I want to leave you with this because you've been lied to for so long.

Growth is not the solution.

It's just an amplif going to amplify whatever you have.

And if your system is broken and if you don't fix your business model, more growth is never going to help you, but it will expose the problem faster.

So right now, if you're tired of trying to push this stone uphill and you want help fixing your model, go and talk to me directly go to content creatorsaccountant.com audit.

I'm give you 15 minutes of my time absolutely free.

Because I know once we talk, you're going to be like, oh, I got to hire this guy.

He's going to help me.

And let's turn that growth into real income.

Because guess what?

You can make real income in content creation.

This is what I do every single day.

I AM Ralphie Step Jr, and I am the content creator's accountant.

And I want to work with you to help you make a model that actually works.

I'll see you in the next episode.

Every beat I drop just opens the door.