Jo Franco: [00:00:00] I got to L. A., no money, just debt. Meet with this lady and I get a 60, 000 deal to film a show. And I think I had like 40, 000 subscribers. And that was just the beginning.
Narrator: Meet Jo Franco. She started vlogging on YouTube, made it to Netflix, and built a successful business.
Jo Franco: The thing about platforms is you need to know how it works.
Think about why people use YouTube. YouTube is a search engine. YouTube is a how to platform. The channel started blowing up when I started making videos. We'd have these one off brand sponsorships. You would get boatloads of money, but then you'd get nothing. That wasn't my vision.
Nathan Barry: We're trying to build sustainable revenue.
There's much easier ways to do it.
Jo Franco: What would it look like to create a business on the back of that?
Nathan Barry: Nine out of 10 creators that I talked to are like, why would I ever do cold outreach? I'm like,
Jo Franco: When we talk about the subscriber count, going from 40, 000 subscribers to 200, 000, that happened because, and the quicker you learn that, it just grows the business faster.
Nathan Barry: Wow. What did it look like growing the YouTube channel the [00:01:00] first, you know, four or five years?
Jo Franco: It was so painful. It was bad. It was really bad. I wasn't using the platform the way it should have been used. I've never been one of those creators that follows the trends. I've always been like, I wanna do this video because I think it's cool, which is not what you do if you're trying to grow on YouTube, right?
For the most part. So the first three years, it wasn't optimized to actually be searchable. The thing about platforms is you need to know how it works. If you're dealing with YouTube, think about why people use YouTube. YouTube is a search engine. YouTube is a how to platform. So if you're making videos about traveling to obscure places with no tangible knowledge, no one will ever stumble upon that video unless they might be going to that place.
The channel started blowing up when I started making language videos and talking about like how to say the French are and like he versus good and all of these videos that my business partner at the time we were both learning French and we wanted to use this. We were so broke. We couldn't travel. Let's be honest.
And then we started doing language [00:02:00] videos because language allowed us to like travel figuratively. And those language videos went viral and kind of like inundated everything else. So 400 pieces of content just kind of like grew what seemed to be overnight, but it was like four or five years of diligently posting with very few comments and, and likes.
Nathan Barry: So the way that I've heard it described before on YouTube, and I want you to see if this matches your experience or if you think it's good advice is that your content should almost be split in half where one portion of your content on YouTube is really all about. The search engine, what are people, what problems are people already searching for that they're going to come to me and come across my videos.
And then the rest of the content, whether it's half or a quarter or something like that is about much more of the connection, right? This is my story. This is who I am. This is me out traveling in this case. Does that match your experience?
Jo Franco: Yeah, I definitely think that now, after 12 years of doing this crazy, crazy job, [00:03:00] which is so wild.
Like I thought about this when I hit 10 years, I don't know if you feel this way to 10 years into entrepreneurship. I'm like, I'm still doing this because at first it feels so crazy that check after check and month after month, your creations are what is feeding you. It's what's clothing you. It's what's like buying the furniture in your house anyways, 12 years later.
I'm just like, yeah, I got to learn. That this is not just a hobby. This is my job. And if it's my job, how do I optimize? So that is very much the approach today. The first seven years, there was like Joe beta version and now Joe new version that is like new and improved the first chapter, we had to learn that the hard way, and it was luck.
It was a bit of luck. It was a lot of hard work, but definitely a lot of luck.
Nathan Barry: your journey early on coming into the creator economy before we called it the creator economy. Yeah. I was talking with a creator who they said something like, you know, when the creator economy started, like during the pandemic and I looked and I was like,
Jo Franco: [00:04:00] what?
I wasn't there in the hairy scary days. Like, so I started back in 2012, which I remember actually having this thought when I first started, I thought that I came in too late. I literally thought that I came in too late and it was only 2012. And I was like, kind of reluctant, like, is it even worth it?
People are already like doing big things there. Maybe it's too cluttered.
Nathan Barry: Right.
Jo Franco: And I kind of quieted that monkey mind and I did it anyways. And I'm so glad that I did because I didn't, I didn't know that it was actually just the beginning of it, of everything.
Nathan Barry: So what would you say to someone who now in 2024 is like, I really, I love this content, this industry, but it's too saturated.
Jo Franco: I think, like all things, everyone is going to have similar ideas. It's just humanity. We all have many ideas. But if you really align with, like, your magic sauce, it doesn't matter if there are 300 WordPress themed businesses. If you align it with something that only you can do, it becomes something different.
So, when I first started [00:05:00] YouTube back in 2012, there weren't really travel vlogs. That wasn't a thing. It was, like, sit down, Home computer vibe. Like parents are in the kitchen making dinner and you're like, Hey, welcome to my channel. And that wasn't what I identified with. You know, I'm like, I want to be a business woman.
I want to travel the world. I want to speak languages. And I didn't have examples of people doing that. And so after I quieted that monkey mind and stopped thinking that I was too late. Actually, there's a twist. It wasn't just that I thought it was too late. I was only using YouTube to capture this chemistry, to pitch it as a TV show.
Because in the time that I started, the only success that I thought would be capable, like would be possible is like, Oh, I want to take this traditional because there was no roadmap for a YouTube channel for sponsorships. Like that wasn't a thing. So two things happened. The executives that I was pitching back in the day said, no, So that's like classic story.
What happened was not only did I have to quiet the monkey mind to be like, okay, maybe it's not too late, [00:06:00] but I kind of posted on YouTube to prove that it did work. And so it became this journey of like, okay, maybe this isn't for traditional, but maybe we can find people on the internet and maybe this is even a better place.
It's a very slippery slope with travel vlogging. And imagine you're doing that three times a week for seven years. That's literally what I did. And you know, there are tricks of the trade. Like there are beautiful things about it. I don't regret any of it. I have my entire 20s cataloged in these beautifully edited videos, which we were filming.
We were editing. It was like a one stop shop. Also very painful. But the learning from that is crazy. Like when you're doing three videos a week, it's so much better for your For your connection to this platform because you know that if a video is bad on a Tuesday you still have Friday and Sunday to make up and so it created this resilience of just like testing crazy things and mastering the edits and mastering the [00:07:00] storytelling and Looking at disjointed pieces of content and then making it mean something in the edit when I booked a Netflix show which then was like In between Joe beta and like Joe today was this crazy pit stop where I auditioned for this Netflix show Called the world's most amazing vacation rentals.
Nathan Barry: There's two things about the YouTube experience that I think are really important that you touched on one is the pace of repetition like the pace of learning and so if you're thinking about Learning something new Trying it out seeing what works and then incorporating that back in Most people have a cadence on that that might be once a month or longer, right?
And so you, you're saying like, okay, I'm going to spend a month or a week, you know, whatever it is making this. And then we're going to tee up for this big thing and we're going to put it out there and then we'll learn from it. But for you dropping three a week on [00:08:00] YouTube, You're learning really, really quickly.
Jo Franco: And it means that I'm working really, really quickly. And so there are cons to that too, because a lot of times I felt like while the videos were like, I look at those videos and I'm proud because they're well edited, but I always thought to myself, like, what, what if I dedicated more time? Like, what if there was a little bit more intention?
What if there was more study? And so I started to get this hunger for this craft. Like what was coming innately to me, I learned quickly was a craft and something I didn't mention is I actually went to business school and so for a lot of my life, I thought I was only the business. I never said I was a creative and in the beginning of my YouTube career, I would say I'm an entrepreneur and my business partner would be like, we're YouTubers.
And I'm like, don't say that. That's a bad word. Like, Oh, I'm not like, Hey guys, welcome to my channel. You know, like that wasn't my vision. I love you. But I just saw like, what would it look like to create a bigger community or a [00:09:00] bigger platform so that it's not just YouTube. Like YouTube is the megaphone that calls people in, but like, what is the business on the back of that?
And also because I grew up with really talented siblings who are, my brother's an artist, my sister's a singer. And so to me, that was what being a creative was. And I couldn't find my thing. So I was like, I'm not a creative. Of course, now looking back at it, I'm like, wow, this is insane. Like, everything I did was with the baseline of creativity.
But I think because I had that itch for the business sense, it was easier for me to say, I'm the business. I can pitch sponsorships. I can cold email and cold call agencies and like, get on the phone with the people and get meetings, which is actually how I started getting paid before the, the economy of creators existed.
I would cold email people. Do you know Skyscanner?
Nathan Barry: Yes.
Jo Franco: So my first brand deal, I slid into the LinkedIn inbox of the CEO because I found an article that he had written about reaching out to young travelers. I think I had like 4, 000 YouTube subscribers at the time. And I sent him a DM, I was like, [00:10:00] Hey, just came across this article, I have a young travel channel, would love to connect.
He was like, wow, this is really interesting, connect to the marketing team. And I started making videos out of their blog content. And getting paid like 500 bucks a piece, which I thought was a lot of money. And I'm like, wow, maybe this is a, this is a business.
Nathan Barry: There's something interesting that you mentioned about cold outreach, that there's a lot of ways you can make it really effective, especially if you find someone who in this case, right, he wrote an article sort of soliciting this kind of content, this sort of outreach in a way he's saying he's interested in this, but a little pro tip, if you want to, uh, get into an organization like for pitching a brand deal or that sort of thing, if you email the top.
And say, Hey, I want to do this. Here's my pitch, all of that. Usually they don't have time. And so it's just no from an assistant or something like that. But those assistants are usually trying to curate an inbox and get through it. And they're just trying to get it out of their inbox. And so the best question to ask is, here's what I would like to, like, here's what I'm [00:11:00] trying to do.
Would you mind just connecting me or pointing me to the right person, the organization to talk to about this? And they go, Oh, perfect. That's actually easy to Sarah, our head of marketing. And, and then you get this intro from. The CEO or the office of the CEO to the head of marketing. And so then you already got past one gatekeeper.
And so it's really fascinating as you go that direction. In this case, going straight to the CEO works.
Jo Franco: Well, actually I did ask, I was like, is there a marketing department that's working on content? I would love to talk to them. And I was like, and then he did, he was like, yeah, here's the head of marketing.
And then he became a lifelong friend that definitely was a pivotal moment in the journey because now it's easy to see how creators can make money back then. It literally was not a thing. And back then, in the, in the WordPress days, which by the way, love that because I probably bought one of your themes, I, I was also selling the, like I was looking at the inventory of our social media and being like, okay, a blog costs this, a tweet costs this, like pricing it out.
And I would cold email people and I'll build these packages. [00:12:00] And this is how we started paying our rent. This is what happened to take us to full time.
Nathan Barry: When was it that you got to say the first 10, 000 in revenue as a creator?
Jo Franco: 2015. So I started making videos in 2012. Three years later I moved to LA. Uh, I turned down a full time job offer at a travel company.
And it was like a make or break. I got to LA. No full time money. No money. Just debt. A lot of debt. And I went to this media agency to actually complain about the contract they gave me. Because they were taking 30 percent of ad revenue and I was like slamming my hands on the table I'm like you are standing between me and paying my rent.
What are you giving me in exchange for this 30%? So I'm like really flipping tables. I go to the bathroom in that agency a woman sees me She's like you have a travel channel with that friend of yours We just put your name in the hat for a deal with AT& T. Can you come in for a meeting? Meet with this lady and I get a sixty thousand dollar deal to film a show like within the first month of being in LA
Nathan Barry: And so then for the next few years, the [00:13:00] business is driven entirely on brand sponsorships.
Is that right?
Jo Franco: Yeah. So the first four or five years, we basically got that deal and it was a web series, which is actually a little bit different than sponsorships. And this is how I started dipping my toes into hosting. Because when you're doing a web series, it's like full crew production kind of schedule.
And I saw myself like kind of thriving in that environment. You're doing it with a brand partner, so there's like this brand integration, but it is like you're hosting a show, which is not the same thing as doing a brand sponsorship as a creator. In addition to the show, we filmed the show, eight episode travel series, I helped come up with the concept too.
So I was like always a little show creator. No one ever told me though, I'm like, why didn't nobody tell me, like this is what I should do. And in addition to that, we'd have these one off deals, brand sponsorships, and I started seeing that it was exhausting. So So this was really a problem. You would get boatloads of money, but then you'd get nothing.
Nathan Barry: Oh, the, like the ebb and flow. Like it would [00:14:00] spike and you would get
Jo Franco: like 60 K here and then maybe nothing for three months. And then maybe you'd get 20 K and then like nothing for a month. And then this like scarcity grew inside of me where you don't know if you can turn down the brand deal. And that was not something I wanted to, to live off of, which is when I started talking to my business partner, like, Hey, how can we create a business bigger than us?
that has a different element of monetization so that even when we're not traveling, if we don't want to accept sponsors, there's still a business that's growing. So we launched this travel platform called shutupandgo. travel, and then I like brokered affiliate flights, you could buy flights, and then it became this whole thing.
So this is when I started dipping my toes into like, what does this look like as a business that can scale without me?
Nathan Barry: Yeah, and I mean, that's an interesting thing where you have this attention coming in, and at first the attention is going to the brands that are paying you. But then you're saying, all right, how do I channel it into products?
You know, more of a connection with the audience. How did that go?
Jo Franco: So we did all the kinds of [00:15:00] revenue streams you could think of. Merch, live events, uh, you know, we did obviously the sponsorships. We started doing, one of my favorite things was that I wanted to give other people the chance to travel the way that I was traveling, because at this point we were getting so many offers that we couldn't take everything.
So I trained 25 global contributors. In mosquito nets in Kenya, like while filming brand deals and they are then traveling themselves, which was a really cool win for me. And that was always the goal. I was like, how can I give this to other people so that it's bigger than me? I just always never liked the idea that the business starts and ends with you.
Like that to me is not appealing. Like, if you think of just being a creator and just being a YouTuber where your face is the business to me, there's great power in that, but it's just not as impactful as that. Like, I'm going to die one day, like we're all going to go, like, and then what's, what's there? So I started having these kind of like bigger picture questions of what is this all for?
Nathan Barry: So a lot of creators talking, talk about wanting to be, [00:16:00] you know, the solopreneur. They want to, uh, not have a team that, you know, it's just them and the freedom that it comes from that, the lack of responsibility, maybe they're using a few freelancers or others. Um, and I, I used to think that I was in that camp.
And then I got a team and I started to build a business bigger than me. And I was like, this is amazing.
Jo Franco: What was amazing about it? What was the big shift in your idea of what it was versus what it actually is? I think
Nathan Barry: it was two big things. First, the level of ideas, like my ambition could be significantly larger because before I'd say like, I'd love to do this, but I can do this, like this small part of it.
And so I kept needing to, like, reduce my appetite to match my abilities. But with a team, I could say, oh, we can expand so much more. The other thing is, in having a team, I just, I wasn't alone, I had so much more support in it. And so, like, in building Kit, uh, the first time that we had some issue [00:17:00] with the app, when I realized there are so many more qualified people You know, there's like four more qualified people to fix this than me.
I actually don't even, like I used to bring my laptop with me absolutely everywhere because if something went wrong, I needed to fix it. You were
Jo Franco: the bottleneck.
Nathan Barry: Right. But now, I mean, you know, starting probably 2015, 2016, realizing like, oh, okay, no, there's, there's a team behind this and it gave me so much freedom and peace of mind.
But
Jo Franco: it comes with tremendous amount of trust. Yeah. And tremendous amount of like, who's the right fit, and who do you actually like, and there's like a whole learning curve of growing a team, but what is interesting about what you just said is that you like basically proved yourself wrong.
Nathan Barry: Oh yeah.
Jo Franco: Which is nice, because here we are today.
For me, I kind of knew, I, I think all creators are pretty self sufficient. Like if you want to be a creator, it's because you're independent. But I thrive with that collaboration of it all. And even having a business partner was so helpful for that because we were able to bounce [00:18:00] ideas off of each other, but I didn't want it to just end there.
Like, I really, really wanted it to be a bigger melting pot of ideas, and it was a bit of a conflict with my business partner because he didn't want too much of a big team. And I was always like, What can we do to make this a giant global business? Like, I really wanted to make it like a big, huge thing.
Now I'm somewhere in the middle. So anyways, we have Joe Beta, which is like no email newsletter list, no true business, just sponsorships. We have Netflix Chapter, which is me realizing the benefits of being a creator, me really craving creative control, which you don't have as a TV show host, and also understanding that there's like a big giant knowledge gap that I needed to fill.
Like if I want to do the next chapter, it's like how can I bridge the gap between YouTube and TV and make something conversational? I don't know. And then, and then COVID hits and then like everything kind of comes to crazy hall.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. There's so many different chapters there, but diving to the Netflix a little bit, let's [00:19:00] talk about that more.
What like step functions or what came in your business as a result of that and getting that much attention and that from a major brand, like, you know, what step function happened?
Jo Franco: Well, a lot of people don't know this. When you film a show, you can't really post about anything. So I kind of like fell off the face of the earth for two years.
Nathan Barry: People were like, I guess you gave up being a creator and you're like, no, I'm creating all of this
Jo Franco: stuff. Just wait, just wait. And I couldn't talk about it. And so it was like a bit of a suffocating feeling because creating to me at that point wasn't just for business. It was like a way to process my life, right?
It was like digestion of my experiences. It was, it was just like this communication back and forth with the audience. So I had to basically stop and I went really introspective as one does when you feel like you don't have a voice. And so I've always journaled. I had always journaled. All my travels were documented.
I had never shared them and on the Netflix show, as we're working six days a week, traveling every two days, like sleeping in new [00:20:00] beds, I got really good at packing and the show stops in the middle of production. So it was a little bit of a crazy twist because of COVID. And they stopped indefinitely. And so we had this like gray area and I couldn't talk about what I was doing.
So I was like, Hey guys, I'm back. Maybe not. Like I didn't know how long I'd be back. And so then I did something crazy. I took a picture of a personal journal entry, not something that I planned to share. And I just said, Hey guys, I've always journaled. This is an entry. And somebody responded on Instagram and I had like a hundred something thousand followers.
So it wasn't a small account. And I'm like over here sharing my deepest darkest secrets. And they were like, Hey, Joe, start journaling with us. Like, can we start a journaling challenge? And this was a big, big, big turning point because I just started the next day. And I was like, okay, every day I'll give you a prompt.
We'll journal together. I'll send you my prompt at the end of the day, check back in for the next day. I [00:21:00] do this for 90 days for free. And I'm still on pause for this Netflix show, indefinite pause. We might go back. Maybe we won't. Will the show get cancelled? Maybe it won't. And I'm like, alright, I think I'm going to start a new business.
So I coded on WordPress. Could have used a template.
Nathan Barry: There you go.
Jo Franco: And I was learning this new business model of the membership. And, and this is when I was like, wow, there's so much to learn here. And this is when I started learning about lead magnets, email funnels, like all of this stuff that I was just not focused on because I was too busy making the content.
And then my company, Jill Club, the journaling club, was born. And then the month after I founded this company, the show comes back into production and I'm like, okay guys, we're going to keep doing meetings on Sundays. Cause it was the only day I had off from shooting the show.
Nathan Barry: Okay. So you just worked it around that.
It's still not telling people. No. Why everything happens on Sundays. Quit it. Quit
Jo Franco: it. And today, since that day, Sundays are still the biggest [00:22:00] journaling session days because of this crazy, just like because of necessity, I had to do it on Sundays. And the other thing, too, that was really crazy is like, I built this company because I think I needed it when I was filming the show.
I felt so I was just like, I need time to reflect. I need to, like, digest all of this stuff, and you would think that you'd be exhausted because you're doing 14 hour date days filming shows. But those sessions gave me more energy. So I actually started with one session a month as a benefit. And then I said, No, let's do it two times a month.
During the production. And that, I think, was the magic sauce. Because it wasn't a business that I made thinking it would be a business. And this is part of the beauty of it, but it's also part of the challenge. Which I think we gotta get into.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, I want to talk about that. But for some context. So what was the product itself that you were selling and how did you price and package it?
Jo Franco: This is also crazy. So I I love coming up with something I haven't seen before. So I decided to invite people into a [00:23:00] zoom room and zoom was kind of new. You guys remember like the early covid days were all figuring out the buttons and stuff. And I put together a presentation with like Five to seven prompts in a theme.
So I picked a theme. I think it was like power. And I thought, how cool would it be for us to go on a journey of thought and have a before a during and an after, like mild, medium spicy. And then everybody's kind of like journaling on their own. I played a little vibey music in between three to four minutes per prompt, put them in breakout groups and have these people all around the world talk about these deep, deep And the vulnerability that I think I shared and that they shared just created this crazy space.
And also where else are you going to talk about deep things with somebody in Finland, somebody in France and someone in Brazil. And like you start taking this global temperature check and you realize you're not crazy for thinking how you think. And there's some action that can be taken from these thoughts.
So the. The model, the way I describe what, what I created is like, imagine a yoga [00:24:00] class, but for journeys of thought in a global space with tangible action out of your deep reflection, guided by prompts. That's, that's what I do. It's a mouthful.
Nathan Barry: And then what did you charge for it?
Jo Franco: I think the first time I launched the membership, it was like 30 bucks a month.
And I got like seven members and I'm like, Oh my God, I can make money. And then again, I went on the show. And so for the next year and a half, I wasn't all hands on business development. I was like in between takes talking about this new club. It wasn't ideal. It literally wasn't ideal. Once production stopped January of 2021, this is when my mind exploded because I had to learn so much about growing the business.
Pricing models. What is a funnel? Better lead magnets. And it felt like in the last three years even, like I think now, I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I get it. But for the last three years, I've been in the weeds, [00:25:00] not necessarily optimizing what I am very good at, but not being able to find the right collaborators that can do it better, and I would hire people and they would mess it up, and then I would have to learn to undo their mistakes.
So I was that person carrying around my laptop everywhere until recently. And it's like, Ooh, I'm glad that I did it. Cause I now speak the language of the business. I know what is happening and I can like fire someone if they're bad and fix their problem. But looking back, I'm like, there was a lot of time that was not as optimized.
Because if, if I can find the people to do what they're really good at and I can do what I'm really good at, then everything moves faster. It just wasn't the case.
Nathan Barry: Yes, you talk about in your business sort of this before and after right of how you ran things for the first seven or eight years and then you know how you ran things afterwards.
What were the biggest pivots? How do you view your time as a creator and running a creator business differently from them?
Jo Franco: I feel like the [00:26:00] the first big pivot from YouTube to like something different was the platform was building this platform and creating an entity that wasn't attached to my face.
Really liked because I think I like time travel all the time. I'm like, if I'm 80 years old, am I still going to like this? Which I don't know if you do that, but it's helped me make a lot of decisions. And I quickly understood if I'm making a young travel show right now on YouTube, I'm probably not going to want to do this forever.
Nathan Barry: Right?
Jo Franco: So it was like, okay, let's build a platform that can exist. Even if I'm not a young traveler, this platform still has a purpose because there will always be young travelers, right? So that was the first pivotal moment. The next pivotal moment was realizing that I needed to have basically two business divorces because I had this business partner.
We were 50 50. We had amazing chemistry and it was basically like divorce in business. First of like the channel and then the trademark and then the platform.
Nathan Barry: And that's all around everything travel related.
Jo Franco: And that was all the travel stuff. [00:27:00] And this was in 2019. And we were kind of growing apart for the last three years of the channel.
Like I started making my own videos and he was doing his. I'm so proud of what we built. But there was just a moment where you realize like, I think I'm outgrowing this. But this is a public thing now. So it's like how do you walk away from a million people who have grown up with you because you're no longer connected to this vision.
That was another huge, huge moment to be like, okay, I think I'm ready for the next thing. Obviously, the Netflix chapter was its own beast. COVID then interrupting that and showing me, oh, you've always journaled. You will most likely always journal, and this is not something
Nathan Barry: Right, when you're 80 looking back, that's a constant that will still be there.
Jo Franco: It will still be there whether I have arthritis and I'm only doing like audio journals or whatever I'm still going to be documenting because this is clearly how I digest my life Making videos was a part of that but writing was also a part of that so this is where [00:28:00] the spark kind of started to be to be brighter and be obvious for me where it's like How can I align my values how I want to see the next decade of my life and growing a business without sacrificing what?
I love to do And being honest with myself. And it was really hard to pivot from like being a travel creator to being a journaling girl. Like what? Like doing live journaling? People don't even know what that is. Cause I kind of made it up. Now people are doing it. But in the time that I made it up, it's like, what?
You just asked, like what do you mean? Like what is that? It's still new.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, to explain the concept. It's helpful to understand that. But if you were to go back to someone I Either yourself 12 years ago or someone just getting into creating now, what are the things that you would say? What's the advice that you would give?
Jo Franco: Uh, get ready to struggle. Like get ready to work a lot. And, um, I don't know. So I love learning languages. It's like one of my [00:29:00] passions. And I think it's been really helpful to learn the language of the business. I really do look at all of these chapters of the business as languages, like learning the tech and learning the automations and learning the copywriting and learn, and I've been reading and studying and doing trial and error, but also know when it's time to delegate that stuff when you can, because the transition I'm in now is like, how can I do what I am really good at that I cannot hire for.
And I know you have the same. It sounds like when you started to have a team, it was like a big moment for you.
Nathan Barry: Oh, yeah. I mean, it's huge to get to that point. And then you start to realize, like, wait, what are the things I'm doing? Because I've always done them versus what are the things I'm doing? Because I'm I'm great at this in particular.
And so for me, I ended up spending way more time on our product strategy rather than the implementation of that strategy, a lot more time connecting with creators and being out there in public and a lot more time creating content. Okay, these are the places that I can have the most leverage. And I actually shouldn't.
[00:30:00] Be in the weeds on all of these other things. And it's still a hard thing to learn. Like I catch myself, you know, doing something like, wait a second, this was not the best use of my time in particular.
Jo Franco: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: Yeah.
Jo Franco: Yeah. So I think it's like learning where your magic sauce is and and knowing that the rough.
Stuff won't last forever. I think that's also a really good lesson, like it isn't going to be easy if you're trying to be a creator, but knowing that that is not always how it's going to be the other thing, too, is that collaborations are genuinely everything like at every moment because we're talking about pivots in like my own journey.
But when we talk about the subscriber count and like the actual growth of the business, those pivotal moments of going from 40, 000 subscribers to 200, 000 that happened because yeah, People started shouting our channel out. That happened because people started collaborating because we reached out. It wasn't something that happened in a silo and the quicker you learn that, the easier it is for you to like, not only meet super cool people that become great friends, but it just grows the business faster.
And so knowing that this is a [00:31:00] collaboration and it's okay to ask to like collab and, and try to chop it up with people, that was a big lesson. Uh, and, and the cold outreach I think is always a good lesson. Like, don't be afraid to ask for, for what you're looking for or pitch the person. And even if they say no, which maybe they will, I certainly get so many no's.
You get the practice in the pitch. And so it's always more to win than to lose.
Nathan Barry: I think that's something that I really want more and more creators to do because we tend to think about it of like, Oh, I'm a creator. I produce content one to many, and that means that opportunities are now inbound to me. Why am I not getting opportunities?
And it's like, well, you actually have to pitch them. Like, and so the combination of creating content and putting it out there, so you have this body of work to point to, and then direct outreach to go get in front of someone, and they're like, this is a random email from who, I clicked through and okay, he or she actually creates some pretty interesting stuff.
Like the [00:32:00] combination of those two things is so powerful. But I would say like nine out of 10 creators that I talk to. Why would I ever do cold outreach? I'm like,
Jo Franco: why not?
Nathan Barry: Why not? What do you have to lose?
Jo Franco: You know, another thing that I just thought of that I think has definitely changed how I see content and it happened right after the show when I was starting to make content again I couldn't imagine another decade of my life making content for content's sake It didn't add up to me because when you're making content for content's sake and you make a video and you put your all into it but you're making a video for the audience For the machine and not for yourself, if that video performs badly, you're going to hate yourself.
You're going to be like, wow, I suck. This sucks. Why am I doing this? So then I have this moment, I'm like, well, what if I document what I'm already doing? I'm learning languages. Why don't I just put a camera on myself when I'm taking these crazy Arabic lessons and like document that process. And then if that video doesn't get any views, it doesn't matter because I learned Arabic.
Right? And so then I started thinking, [00:33:00] like, I'm not going to make content for content's sake. I'm going to make content because it's my life anyways. And then I'm going to build a business on the back end so that even if the video doesn't perform, the five people that did watch that video might become journaling members, might travel to retreats with me, and it becomes less about the virality, but more about, like, this is a business funnel, but it's also a life processing funnel.
activity, right? Like it's not trying to play the game. It's like making the game play for you in a weird way.
Nathan Barry: Well, I think that anytime you're in pursuit of something, people want to come along and help you achieve that, right? And so you're saying, I'm going to go learn these things that live an interesting life and this is just the documentation of it instead of the, okay, what can I make in this moment that It's called, uh, I think, it's called, uh, like, understanding of the content might get views?
Correct. That's a totally different way to think about it.
Jo Franco: And it makes the relationship with the whole process a little bit better.
Nathan Barry: Yeah.
Jo Franco: I always try to look at things in like, will this check three boxes at least? Like will this be fulfilling? Will I learn something new? Will this be financially [00:34:00] lucrative?
Those are just examples. Or like will this bring me closer to friendships that I'm excited about or whatever. You can go on and on but like making sure that it checks more than two boxes at least. And that's how you know it's like something worth investing your time in.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. I like that. Okay. So give me the breakdown of the business today.
And maybe if we just talk like on the income in the business, like allocate it percentage wise to each of the different areas.
Jo Franco: So I officially actually have two businesses. I have a European company that I just formed, which Belgium bureaucracy, it's a lot, but I have just founded Joe club in Belgium cause that's my new home.
Move there for love. A lot of paperwork for love, but he's worth it. And then I have my business here in the U. S., which is my personal business. So the way that these companies are split officially is, the Joe Club side of the business is journaling workshops, live journaling membership, so online sessions.
We host ten sessions a month about not only [00:35:00] journaling through different prompts and introspective activities, but for language learning. We also do retreats as of two years. So we're hosting three global retreats and I'm like in the weeds, scouting the properties, checking the water pressure, right? Like, and I love doing that, but it's a lot.
And then the Joe Franco side of the business is the speaking events and the brand partnerships and making ads that are then licensed and boosted, you know, that kind of brand hosting personality side. Two things are happening right now. On the Joe Franco side of the business, like I said, I want to be a showrunner, so I actually enrolled in a film school master's program, which I'm doing right now.
As if you weren't
Nathan Barry: doing enough things already.
Jo Franco: Let's go
Nathan Barry: get a master's degree.
Jo Franco: But the degree is negotiated and like, the funny thing is I did the interview and the director was like, you should be teaching. And I'm like, but I'm here to learn. Because again, I had this appetite to like, learn this blank spot of what is storytelling?
How do I serialize a concept? But [00:36:00] I know how to make one standalone YouTube video, but what does it look like with a journey? So I signed up for this program and I actually just filmed a pilot, a TV, or I edited a pilot that I filmed three years ago. I filmed content three years ago with a crew in Greece, hired a local crew, did the production beat sheet, did the interviews, did the whole thing.
Didn't edit it until I had done enough research to do case studies on other TV shows. See what I like, see what I didn't. The Joe Franco side of the business, I'm at a point where I'm ready to. Sell that show and film that show, which is a show about untranslatable words, looking at travel through the lens of language, which is something I've pitched producers and they all say it's too smart.
No one's going to like it. So I'm like, okay, I've heard this before. It looks like I got to do it myself. The Joe Franco side of the business, it's this beautiful heart filled business. It's very intimate as far as like their wholesome groups, even the retreats, people are really just pouring their hearts out.
So I'm at a point there. Where it's profitable and I have a [00:37:00] team and I just hired my growth, you know, an ops director, but I'm looking for something that's scalable in the sense that it's not, maybe it's not as like human capital heavy because everything needs a facilitator. Everything needs my energy or my facilitators energy.
So the two things that I could do there is either this like franchise model of, let's say you want to be a retreat leader and you want to Joe club retreat template, we train you and you do retreats. Or local chapters, or it's like a sass product where it's this tech tool that allows you to look at your journal entries and we have this giant backlog of prompts.
What should I do?
Nathan Barry: Okay, so you want to dive into the future of the business? Um, and so those are the two paths basically that you were considering. One is scaling with with Joe club scaling the events and retreats and franchising that
Jo Franco: well, so I have to talk about the links between these two sides.
Because a lot of. people might not see it and it's really [00:38:00] crazy because I've had to do all of this work of mind mapping because I have these different passions of learning languages. I'm learning Dutch right now. I know I like do business right now. I'm organizing my Italian retreat in Italian. Like this is not me with a translator.
This is me. And like next week, that's where I'll go. So I have,
Nathan Barry: so just really quick, I like your, I like your YouTube influencer impression. I like your Italian YouTube influencer impression even more. Oh my God,
Jo Franco: yeah. And so I have this, like, tremendous excitement about the, the journaling and the language and the travel as a tool for introspection.
So those are the connective lines between, if I make a TV show about language, it's not just a TV show. It's actually a show where I'll journal in the show and I'll Talk about language at the same time. The Joe club side of things is like, there's this continuation, there's this opportunity for you to connect with global thinkers, for you to have this introspective [00:39:00] journey and the retreats are like this big, beautiful thing that I love to do because it's then encouraging other people to travel for the first time into this like local experience.
I was going to hire a travel company to like package the retreats for me. And I got a quote. I was so underwhelmed. I was like, we're not going to a dusty hotel. Like that's not what we're doing. And so I learned quickly. Okay. Maybe it's like, if I want gritty off the beaten path, I need to drive down the dirt roads.
I need to meet with these people. And so I love the retreat side of the business. I really love it. So impactful, but you can imagine it's really hard to scale that with just me doing it. So an option would be to train facilitators to run that business.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, and you've had this approach, you know, where, where you've done some franchise type things earlier with the travel business, where you're bringing other collaborators in.
But as you're trying to make this decision of where to go in the business, what are you optimizing for?
Jo Franco: I, I want to empower, it sounds cheesy, [00:40:00] but it's genuinely true, I want to empower my team, and this is still what I had in my mind in the shut up and go days, I want to empower, empower my team to like, do what they've always wanted to do.
In this weird way, for instance, my facilitators, they don't come on to my team and then just do what I tell them to do. They come to me and they're like, I'm an art teacher. And I'm like, Okay, let's do art journaling. And now this is a format. I love music. Okay, let's do bring your own song by OS and we're going to use song lyrics as a catalyst for prompts.
Like so that's how I work with people. So when I think of the optimizing using, What I would be optimizing for is like empowering my team, giving them a space to like really shine, letting them run, giving that impact, like that business is changing people's lives and then doing my thing on the TV side.
Nathan Barry: Right. And so I guess in that is that, that the Joe club side of it is bringing in the income and [00:41:00] revenue to allow you to invest in the TV side and, and build your show and the things you want on your own terms. Or like, what does each business do for you from the business and financial perspective?
Jo Franco: So it's crazy because when I think about Joe Club, I, I never thought of it.
In the beginning, I certainly didn't think of it as like, I want this to be a moneymaker. Now it is becoming a moneymaker more and more. So if I look at the rev split, I think 60 percent is still me doing my like, Joe Franco, look at my channel kind of stuff. It's crazy. Which I don't do that, but you know, the brand side of this stuff and like hosting and speaking, let's say 60 percent is, is Joe Franco.
And then that 40 percent is Joe club financially speaking. What I want Joe club to be able to do is just grow to pay people to have amazing careers, doing what they love in this like very niche space, helping other people, growing themselves in this travel kind of culture. Yeah, in an ideal [00:42:00] world it would be super cool to have Joe Club be the financial engine so I could film my shows.
I think that would be the greatest thing of all because then I wouldn't need to rely on production houses or brand deals. It would be nice to like bring them in if it makes sense. I think the best case scenario would be, while it's not the only thing I can see happening, but the best case would be Joe Club becomes the financial engine eventually that allows me to tell the stories I want to tell.
Nathan Barry: I mean, that would be amazing to have your community that's continually growing be like your, your own patron. Yeah. You get to create the art that you want in the world and have any time, you know, maybe you're trying to decide between a, uh, a company funding or sponsoring the show or selling it to, You know, a production house or like, you know, a producer in that way.
And you're like, Oh, which one do I like better? You have this third option of like, or fund it myself because, you know, I have this, this base. So what do you think is the biggest bottleneck [00:43:00] in, like on the, the Joe club side of scaling that?
Jo Franco: I think it's deciding what is the best scalable next thing. The membership is scalable.
We're working on that.
Nathan Barry: Yep.
Jo Franco: The, the like virtual membership is scalable. And it could be very profitable, but I don't see it and I don't really want it to be the thing because that that if it's too gigantic, it'll lose a little bit of its magic unless I like segment people. So I think I'm looking for like what is the next if we're talking cash opportunities, like what is the cash cow?
Is it a SAS platform? Is it? And if that is, then I'm certainly not qualified myself. So like coding this stuff, nor do I want to. So is that a co founder?
Nathan Barry: Yeah. So I guess the next thing that I'd ask is what are the skills? that you most want to learn in this. So I have this idea that talked about, um, in the ladders of wealth, which is that making money is a skill and you're going to build this up over time.
And you have to learn all of these different skills as you go. And you've done this [00:44:00] all throughout your career, taking on really difficult, you know, project, learning these skills and leveling up. And so what are the skills that you most want to learn?
Jo Franco: I think it's the storytelling and, you know, I mean, I know I love storytelling.
I've studied it, obviously, but I want to learn through the experience. I want to learn through the experience of making a show season after season and connecting it to the brand, connecting it to the business that I've been growing. And I also want to learn the like empowering the manager, empowering, empowering the team and seeing them actually lead that business to where it needs to go.
Nathan Barry: Okay. That's really helpful. Um, from, I was gonna say the unsolicited advice, you actually just solicited the advice. Okay. Uh, I would not pursue a, a software product.
Jo Franco: Really?
Nathan Barry: And the reason is it's just really, really hard. And so if you were talking about the things that you most want to learn next and you're like, Oh look, I really want to learn how do I incorporate more technology into this or how I'm going to scale this with AI or [00:45:00] how to get into, to tech and I'm really pursuing recurring revenue in a way that's different from a membership.
You know, and all those things, and I really want to understand how to work with developers and all that. And that would, if those are the skills you wanted, that would bring you down that path. But that's not anything that you listed. And so if we're trying to build sustainable revenue for, to be able to drive storytelling, there's much easier ways to do it, I think, in scaling what you already have than in going and learning just a crazy number of new skills.
As much as you love learning new things. How many languages do you speak?
Jo Franco: Seven.
Nathan Barry: Seven. Yeah. So you love learning new things. And I have no doubt that if you were to, uh, point your attention towards learning a programming language versus spoken language, you'd, you'd absolutely crush that too, but I think that it's really important to view decisions like this through the lenses of, okay, what am I optimizing for, you know, and it sounds like it's, uh, consistent recurring [00:46:00] revenue that, uh, can really fund all of your creative pursuits.
And, uh, it's, like, becoming world class at storytelling. And so the intersection of that, to me, is looking for ways to scale JoeClub that, that might be 10 or 20 percent different from what you're doing now, but at a larger scale, versus pursuing something totally new. Because I could see you spending multiple years going down the software path, and it just being an incredibly difficult journey.
Jo Franco: One thing that I have been feeling, and I don't know if you have felt this, I'm pretty sure you have. What I'm tired of doing and, and this is like clearing it up for me. I'm tired of doing many things crappily.
Nathan Barry: Uh, yeah.
Jo Franco: Like I'm really tired of being like, I'm doing this and I'm doing that. And like, I know that I can make these things better if I just did that one thing, but I'm actually doing 10 of them and they're all crappy, which is like better than average, but still like, I know that I can dedicate [00:47:00] more energy into something if I do less.
So that's definitely where I am now. So this is helpful.
Nathan Barry: Yeah, and that's, that's the thing, anyone listening who has worked with me closely, like if my team listens, they would know I spread myself way too thin. I try to do way too many things and it's really only when things start to fall apart that I realize like, okay, I'm, I'm overcommitted, uh, and I do
Jo Franco: it.
So it's natural. Is this just like the founder brain? Is that how it works?
Nathan Barry: Yeah. I mean, that's how I live my life, um, for better or worse. It served me really well, but it gets to this point where I realized, okay, I'm not doing these things. Well, because I'm constantly chasing new ways, new, new things to do.
Instead of going back, okay, what is the goal and how do I, what's the most direct path to that goal?
Jo Franco: Yeah.
Nathan Barry: And so the direct, if the goal is, you know, an amazing community that, that drives recurring revenue and, you know, on a larger scale to fund the rest of the creative pursuits, then I bet if we dive into Joe club as a business, there's a lot of key ways that you [00:48:00] can do that.
Like, okay, okay. Here's how we're going to scale the membership. Here's how we're going to, um, solve that bottleneck of, okay, if we go, if we get 50 percent more members, it becomes a less personal experience. I bet if you are just focused on that problem, you'd come up with 20 ways to solve that, right?
There's, there's very specific bottlenecks that are actually very, very solvable.
Jo Franco: Yeah. So you're basically just telling me like, keep doing what I'm doing.
Nathan Barry: I think focus
Jo Franco: and focus on the content stuff.
Nathan Barry: Cause the thing that I see you light up the most about. Is the storytelling and the show and, and how you're going to integrate that with Joe Club.
Recently,
Jo Franco: because of film school, I had to do this pilot, which I assigned myself. And most people are like, all right, a log line. And I'm like, I'm going to do a whole pilot. And when I finished this pilot, I realized I hadn't been that excited about something and maybe ever, and this is not something I'm getting paid to do.
It was very painful. I was editing for many, many hours on end. [00:49:00] Ripping my hair out definitely had moments of imposter syndrome like I'm so bad like it's trash When I finish that I'm like, wow, this is crazy that for something I'm not getting paid to do I blocked off a week of time This is what I'm most excited about And now it's just the question of okay, where do we take this next and it could be traditional publishing house Could be as in like not publishing production.
I'm actually working on a book too guys But it could be traditional route or the branded route. And so that's just like the, the hairy stuff that I have to comb through now of what side of the content do I want to take it in?
Nathan Barry: Yeah, I think that you'll be most served by narrowing things down and doing fewer things really, really well.
An analogy that I often use is I think about strip malls versus skyscrapers. And so a lot of creators, when they build their business, let's say you build a business to, Uh, I've seen people scale this up to 150, 000 or 200, 000 a year in revenue as a creator and you're like, this is incredible and I'm selling maybe two [00:50:00] products, right?
One's making me 100, 000 and the other's making me 50, 000. Then people typically go, okay, with this audience, if I added a third product, that'd be the best way to get to the next stage. If I added a fourth product, then, okay, now we're adding all of this up and now we're at 250, in revenue and up from there.
And I've seen people scale this. This is the strip mall model right where you have these individual stores kind of next to each other to a really high level. But I've always seen it cap out. It might cap out at a few hundred thousand. It might cap out at a million, but it always caps
Jo Franco: because they're spread too thin
Nathan Barry: because they're spread thin and they're trying to manage all of these things.
And before you know it, you know, you're creating all of these new things and then you look back and you're like, oh, I'm actually not proud of this one anymore because it's four years old and I really should rerecord all of that content. And then the management and the upkeep. becomes so much and instead if you take If you experiment with a lot of things in the strip mall approach because you were learning we're iterating [00:51:00] and then you find something You're like, okay, this is starting to work Instead of going since this is working.
So I'm now gonna do this
Jo Franco: This is literally what I'm doing and I've had this conversation at the last the last mastermind that I went to I was having conversations And all roads pointed to the same thing, which everybody's like, just scale, which you already built. And I'm like, but an app, but a physical journal.
But, but, and they're like, you built the thing. And it's true. I've like really spent four years kind of crafting this live journaling format, training my facilitators. But there's that, like, I'm going to break it now because it's fixed. Like we do that. I think as entrepreneurs, like when you solve the problem, that's so big and scary.
The first gut instinct is like, what do I do next? Which is not. Joe club is not the most strategic approach is what it sounds like.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. Because often as you move onto the next thing, the previous one stops working as well. And so in your case, I would find that that one thing and say, okay, this is the skyscraper that I'm going to build.
And you just say, what does it look like to grow this and to really keep investing and making this product better? [00:52:00] How would I make it? So that, uh, every person who joins Joe club refers a friend and what if I spent an entire month. Just thinking about getting all of our members to refer friends. How would I dial in the automations?
How would I create that? That experience it just makes you want to tell a friend How could I have a journaling prompt that is inherently social that requires me to interact with somebody else and sort of bring? Them into the Joe Club Ecosystem right and if you obsessed in those ways, then I bet you could not only have a better Experience of how you run Joe Club, but you But you can get to the point that you're running it at two, three, four times the size and revenue with about the same effort.
Jo Franco: It's funny, like you kind of know this stuff intuitively as in like when somebody tells you, you're like, yeah, this is the right thing. What you're saying, it sounds like a great freedom. It's not innate. Like I wouldn't think, yeah, let me just double down, which is again, why I came here and I'm like, is it a SaaS product?
[00:53:00] Is it this? Is it The reason is because it feels like it's not as freeing to just focus on one thing, but the way you're saying it, and I can genuinely see that is like, it's actually the most freedom.
Nathan Barry: Well, because it's the most freedom to then do what lights you up the most, which is the storytelling stuff.
And I'm
Jo Franco: not like spending a decade trying to learn a whole new line of business. I'm just doing what I want to do.
Nathan Barry: Yeah. And so it's like, what's the most direct path. And it's like, scale what we have so that. I can build a storytelling business that is deeply integrated and I can fall in love with that aspect of it.
Jo Franco: We're done. So
Nathan Barry: helpful. Joe, it's been really, really fun to see the way that you build the business, the energy that you bring to everything. I feel like you, you live years at a time in a month and it's just incredibly inspiring. So thank you so much for. sharing it with all of us and Telling you a story.
Jo Franco: [00:54:00] Thank you, and I didn't talk about this This is a shameless plug. You didn't ask me He didn't ask me to talk about this But I really think that when I started growing the newsletter it changed how I looked at my business Which was this new chapter like the start of this new chapter started with me joining convert kit now kit and now Again, when I look at the videos, it's not so much.
Did they go viral? It's like how many people have I gained? Got an into my ecosystem to build the strategy that I see going until I'm 80. This is no longer Content for content's sake like this is a real business.
Nathan Barry: I love that's
Jo Franco: crazy. Can you realize that that's what you guys are doing?
Nathan Barry: That's I mean, that's what we're all about is building the foundation of all these creator businesses and just helping in any way that we can
Jo Franco: But like we need to talk more about this offline guys.
It's serious. You're not on convert kit now kit It's really, it's a game changer.
Nathan Barry: That sounds good. Well, to wrap up, I'd love to hear two things. One, if someone wants to check out Joe club and join that community, what's the best way to do it? And then the second thing is [00:55:00] what is one piece of content that you would point people to that just is some of your favorite storytelling where they can immerse themselves in.
Jo Franco: Oh, that's so tough. Uh, okay. So Joe club is easy. You can find Joe club at J O C L U B dot world. And it's Joe for journaling, but also for my name, but just for journaling. And the video I would point to, it hasn't come out yet. My TV show pilot, you can actually get my TV show pilot by joining my newsletter.
Nathan Barry: I like it. I like it. And where would someone go to join your newsletter?
Jo Franco: They can go to joefranco. world slash newsletter.
Nathan Barry: That is a great callback. It's true. All right. Well, Joe, thank you so much. And it's been a really fun conversation.
Jo Franco: We have to have a part two. Thank you.
Nathan Barry: If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search Billion Dollar Creator, and go ahead and subscribe.
Make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who [00:56:00] else we should have on the show.