i'm feeling spicy...

Hey friends 👋 

2024 is upon us and I wanted to make some predictions and share some lessons from 2023.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

Media over marketing. Podcasts, YouTube, and other social platforms are booming. I think going forward we will see marketing departments transformed into media departments. Entertain, educate and give value to your potential customers.

A new force. The power of the creator has not yet been realised. In a recent interview, YouTuber Ali Abdaal said he tweeted about a new business he launched. Within a few weeks, they had a pipeline of £2M in monthly recurring revenue. With his audience, he was able to help launch a business that would soon be doing £24M a year. The key here is trust.

Creators on the C-suite. I recently read of a creator being hired as the CEO of a company. It was a great fit because the creator’s audience was perfectly aligned with the business. In some ways, they had just removed the need for a marketing budget. Going forward I think we will see this happening a lot more.

Personal branding grows. I read a report that shows more professionals are now putting efforts into personal branding. Most don’t have a clear approach but as everything becomes more transparent a personal brand is going to give you a huge edge in years to come.

I think books are the cornerstone of this. I was listening to a podcast with Jim O'Shaughnessy recently where he spoke about how his career expanded after writing his book.

A lot of people think a book is something that you write after you achieve your big goal. That’s not the case for most authors. For most, it’s the catalyst.

📗 If you’d like to write or publish a book in 2024. We can help.

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If you’re interested drop me an email.

My lessons from 2023.

Titles first in content. I used to focus very heavily on the idea for a video. I have since reframed it to focus more on the title. Is it something people will click on? It’s a small shift but it transforms things entirely. If I can’t come up with a killer title I don’t even make the video.

And then sometimes you think you’ve nailed the title and it still flops. Like the video below. Hey ho, that’s content for you.

Viral replication. You can spend a lot of time trying to come up with a unique idea for content. You’re best putting your energy into stealing ideas. Find something that has gone viral and give it your own spin. Don’t copy it exactly of course. Plagiarism isn’t cool but take the idea and build upon it. This gets you so much closer to what people want.

Look for whitespaces. The other part of this is not trying to create Fitness content. That’s so saturated. At this stage, it’s going to be super hard to break into it unless you have a completely different approach to everyone else.

No more small boy stuff. If you listen to the MFM podcast you will know this phrase. It’s something I have thought a lot about this year. I also joined an entrepreneurs club in London this year. A variety of founders from those doing £250K a year to as much as £50M a year.

Everyone there is very capable, smart, charming, and knowledgeable. So what’s the difference between the £50M founder and the £250K a year founder? A few things:

• market - simply choosing a larger market

• a more pressing problem - the £50M founder was creating climate tech that enables the decarbonization of the food and drinks supply chain

• riding the wave - that £50M founder was in an expanding market

• self-belief - he believes he can

It’s really that simple.

Media isn’t for everyone. I have always enjoyed it. I used to make videos as a kid and post them on vimeo way before content creation was a thing. All businesses will have a media department going forward but you will see more where they hire talent or have a variety of presenters as it were.

My YouTube channel got 227,000+ views in the last 12 months. This is unreal to me 🤯 

One video that flopped and surprised me was this one all about why introverts are naturally more suited to sales when compared with extroverts:

Hope you enjoyed it. Let me know your predictions for 2024 and your lessons from 2023

Patrick ✌️